The Wide World's End (39 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WO

Fire, Gods, and a Stranger

That night they camped just past the crest of the Dolich Kund. It was a cold night: an ice-edged wind beneath searingly bright stars and Horseman, the only moon in the sky, standing somber and low in the east.

They made a fire, of course, and partial occlusions to block the wind, but Kelat was obviously down-hearted. He was possibly comparing his bed last night to the long series of cold campsites in his future.

That was bad, not just for Kelat but for all of them. Morale was important on a long journey with a small company, as the three elder companions knew well. Deor looked several times at Kelat's glum face and then finally said to Morlock, “Do the thing with the fire.”

Kelat looked up, instead of down, which was a start. Morlock obligingly reached into the heart of the fire and drew forth a handful of live coals.

As Kelat watched with an open mouth, Morlock juggled the bright burning coals with his fingertips. Deor watched, too, with a knowing grin: he never got tired of this trick. Ambrosia, however, was watching Kelat's open admiration with an envious sideways glance. Eventually she reached into the fire and began juggling coals as well.

Now Kelat was looking from Ambrosius to Ambrosia with unfeigned and delighted wonder.

Ambrosia looked Morlock in the eye and lifted an inquiring eyebrow. He nodded. She tossed him a coal and he tossed one back in the air, and from then on they wove a complex tracery of red light, juggling some coals and playing catch with others, until they began to fade, and Kelat's amazement grew cooler and more familiar.

He eagerly asked how they had done it, and wondered if he could learn it, too, and Ambrosia and Deor explained to him about the blood of Ambrose and their immunity from fire. In the end he was almost as downcast as he had been before, although he kept stealing glances at Ambrosia's hands.

Morlock pulled some glowgems from a pocket in his sleeve. They weren't as bright or as satisfyingly fiery as live coals, but he thought they might serve a purpose here. He tossed one to Kelat. The Vraid was startled, but caught it instinctively. Morlock showed him how to juggle it, and guided him through the steps of adding a second glowgem. He caught on quickly, not dropping them too often, and Morlock left him to practice juggling under Deor's watchful and amused eye.

Ambrosia gestured to him and they walked together into the dark beyond the range of the fire or the hearing of their two companions.

“You're corrupting my princeling,” Ambrosia remarked drily.

“Oh?”

“Oh, yes. Soon he'll care about loyalty, and honesty, and wonder, and then what kind of king will he make, hey?”

Morlock grunted. “A good one?”

“Unlikely. Morality is different for kings, Morlock, than for the people they rule.”

“Eh.” Morlock knew little about kings, or being ruled, so he couldn't say this was untrue.

“That's easy for you to say. Too easy, as I have often told you before.”

“Eh.”

“Be that way, then! I suppose I have other Uthars to choose from. I could bear to fuck this one, though, and that's not nothing.”

Morlock somehow disliked discussing sex with his sister, and he hadn't realized that's what they were doing. He considered long and hard and said, “Oh?”

“Yes, it's part of my deal with Lathmar the Old. I will pick the next King of the Vraids and mate with him.”

“Hm.”

“Yes, yes, I see what you mean, I suppose. But it's a way to wield power among the Vraids in a way that they understand.”

“Is that important?”

“Not if the world ends, Morlock. If the world doesn't end, then yes, it is important. When I was a girl, growing up in that horrible little house in the woods with Merlin, I swore I'd visit every place in the world and conquer the places that seemed interesting. The Vraids will do the conquering part if I play the game right. And I usually do.”

“I know.”

Ambrosia laughed and put a hand on his arm. “I suppose I wouldn't find you so irritating if your opinion wasn't so important to me.”

Morlock's opinion was that world conquest was a sad waste of talents as extraordinary as Ambrosia's, but he had never told her that and never would. Something about her upbringing had scarred her, shaped her, focused her on this quest for power. It wasn't for Morlock to reshape her. That wasn't his kind of making.

Before them was the dark, river-scarred, densely forested northern plain. He gestured at it and said, “What's our route north, you think?”

“We should avoid the twin cities, Aflraun and Narkunden,” Ambrosia said. “I recommend a detour to the west. In time we'll come upon the Bay of Bitter Water. If it's navigable, maybe we can travel by water for a while.”

Morlock grunted with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

“You can build a boat, I suppose? With Deor's help?”

“Yes. But I would prefer not to.”

Ambrosia laughed politely at this. Then she remembered something—possibly their arrival at Grarby. “Hm,” she said thoughtfully. “Hm. Well, even so, it might be safer than land. The plains near the werewolf city are dangerous indeed, and they'll be getting hungry, too.”

Morlock thought about the deep, cold waves of the Bitter Water and felt a certain chill that did not come from the frosty air.

They talked for a while longer of the road ahead and then returned to the campsite to turn in.

Day followed night, and then more days and nights. They walked and walked. They gave Narkunden a wide berth, following Ambrosia's advice. The sun was a pale, white disc that a man might look at without any particular pain. The weather grew colder, a wintry sort of summer.

As they walked north, they met many animals fleeing south: white foxes and wolves, rabbits and preems, birds of every kind. And there were bears, deadly white bears mad with fear or hunger, killing recklessly among the other animals and perfectly willing to eat the four travelers.

Kelat killed one bear that charged them. They stopped to butcher it and skin it: they might need the meat or the fur on the long road ahead. Afterward they tried to fend the beasts off without killing them, but both Ambrosia and Deor had bear blood on their hands before another call passed.

Many of the days went by without incident that Morlock would afterward recall, but then came a day when they ran into creatures more dangerous than a bear.

Dawn came that day behind a dense curtain of cloud, and they kept the fire alive until the very moment they had to break camp. They walked slowly, picking a careful path across the trackless plain: the day could not have been darker without being night. The wind was bitter, but they would have to grow used to it, and worse yet.

“Is the sun dying at last?” Kelat asked.

Morlock shrugged, and no one else even did that. There was no way to answer this.

“We have been passing that tree for half an hour,” Deor remarked presently.

That was different. All four travelers stopped and looked closely at the tree, black against the blue gloaming.

“I don't think it's a dryad-beast stalking us,” Ambrosia observed presently.

“What's that?” Deor snapped. “And why not?”

“Dryad-beasts hide in a cocoon that looks like a tree and prey on passersby,” Ambrosia said.

“Canyon keep them. Why are you sure it's not one?”

“I'm
not
sure. But my insight doesn't sense the talic imprint of an animal. It's more like. . . . What would you say, Morlock?”

“A god.”

“Hell and damnation!”

“Possibly. I remember . . . I remember something like this in Kaen. It was an avatar of their god of death.”

A female figure wrapped in darkness stepped out from the open air. She carried a long, bright sword in her right hand.

Morlock drew Tyrfing.

“Are you crazy?” hissed Ambrosia.

“I am Morlock Ambrosius,” said the crooked man. “I will not die without a struggle, even if a god of death has come for me.”

“Very noble. But we might try talking first.”

“She has not come to talk.”

The deathgod stepped closer. Her face was not easy to look at, but her scar-like mouth seemed to twist in a smile.

Then a new door opened in the air and another god stepped out. This figure also seemed female. Her garb was bright where Death's was dark. Her body seemed dark where Death's was pale. Her smile was equally grim, and she carried an equally bright sword in her left hand.

She held up her right hand and a mouth appeared in the dark palm.

“Stand back, sister,” said the pale mouth in the dark hand. Morlock did not hear the words with his ears; they stabbed through him. He saw the others bending over in agony around him.

Death held up her pale left hand. A mouth manifested there. Its dark lips replied, “Justice, there is a time for all things to end. This is that time. It is my time.”

“All times are mine,” Justice replied. “Your power overmatches theirs, and this offends me.”

“Justice, my beloved sister, you are among the weakest of all the Strange Gods, as I am the strongest. Do you think you can stand against me?”

“Yes.”

“Then prepare yourself. But these mortals will die from witnessing our battle just as surely as they would from my blade. Look how they cower when we signify to each other!”

“I am not alone,” Justice signified.

Morlock strove to stand straight when he understood Death's remark about cowering. As he did, he saw that the barren field had sprouted a shadowy crop of gods.

A door opened in the air and Morlock fell through it. He fell to ground on a narrow paved street, and Tyrfing clattered on the stones beside him.

“Are you all right?” he heard a voice saying.

Morlock looked up to see a balding, ruddy-faced stranger standing over him. Beyond him was a graystone building, rather out of place in a street full of dark wooden houses. The stranger was standing in the open door of the building, above which was a symbol of a counterweight stone on a pair of empty scales.

Morlock thought about the stranger's question and said, “Yes.”

“A man of few words? All right. Here.” The stranger offered him a hand to get up, but Morlock was already rising, Tyrfing in his right hand.

Morlock looked around. “Where am I?”

“Narkunden,” said the stranger. “Never been here? You haven't missed much. They're talking about abandoning the town if the next winter is as bad as the last one.”

Morlock grunted. “Think it will be?” he asked.

“It'll be worse. I'd bet a nickel on it, which is as much as I ever bet on anything. But they won't abandon the town.”

“Why not?”

“It's not like things are better down south. If the sun is dying. . . . Some things you can't fix by running away from them.”

“How do you fix them?”

“Um. Let me rephrase. Some things can't be fixed.”

Morlock grunted again. “Is there a bar or a wineshop nearby? I need a drink.”

“No one
needs
a drink, unless they're a drunk. Are you a drunk?”

Morlock shrugged. “If I were, would I admit it?”

“You might. Drunks come in all the types of people there are: proud, ashamed, defiant, apologetic, you name it. But I'm not inclined to help a drunk find another drink. There's some of it in my family. You understand.”

“I'm not a drunk.”

“Excellent. Perhaps you'll join me in a mug or two of wine? I usually partake around this hour.”

The stranger stepped back through the dark doorway behind him and motioned for Morlock to follow.

The stranger didn't look dangerous. After a moment's thought, Morlock sheathed his sword and stepped through the doorway.

The interior of the stranger's house was an image of chaos: books and stones and papers and dust lying around in heaps. On one of the stone heaps was a jumble of bronze pieces that looked like parts of a skull. The room was lit, not by a lamp but by a kind of window set into the wall. But there had been no window on the wall outside, and this window showed no scene that could be local. It showed a green field in early summer or late spring; there was a large maple tree with some ropes hanging from it. Morlock would have liked to know how the window was made.

The stranger was busying himself in a cupboard and he brought back a couple of mugs filled with reddish fluid that smelled like it might be wine.

“Not very good,” the stranger said ruefully. “But the best you'll find in town, I'm afraid. Any grapes they've managed to grow recently they kept for eating.”

Morlock raised the mug and said, “I'm Morlock Ambrosius, by the way.”

“Are you?” The stranger's vague blue eyes focused on him. “Interesting!”

“What's your name?” Morlock asked.

“Don't you know it?”

“No. Have we met?”

“I can't remember. You can't remember all the people you've met, can you? I expect someday you'll forget you've met me today.”

“We have not met yet. Formally, that is.”

“What? Oh, my name. I suppose you could call me Angustus. Some people do, around here.”

Morlock nodded. He was used to people who travelled under pseudonyms, although he tended not to trust them. On the other hand, this fellow had more or less admitted the name was not his own. Maybe that showed he was honest after all.

“Are you a maker, Angustus?”

“No. No. No. Not really. No. I've never thought of myself that way. Although I suppose I am, sort of. But I teach at the local lyceum, at least on a temporary basis. I know a good many curious things, although it's not clear that they'll be any use when the sun goes dark. Of course. . . .”

“What will?”

“Exactly.
Nunc est bibendum!
” Angustus lifted his mug in salute to Morlock and took a drink. Morlock did the same. The wine was pretty bad, but better than nothing.