Blood of Ambrose Page 13

  “Morlock!” she shouted in her brother's ear.

  He responded with a rasping cough that might have had a syllable of Dwarvish in it.

  “Don't revert to type, you useless bag of knuckles,” she stormed at him. “Talk to me in my own language. And don't say anything noble and self-sacrificing: we've already been to too much trouble on your account.”

  “I said,” Morlock croaked, “'Pack my pack.'”

  Her head ringing with pain and the loss of rapture, she cursed him for a nine-tenths dwarvish deviant crookback bastard.

  He shrugged.

  Ambrosia snarled and jumped to her feet. She packed his pack, not omitting the chisel-grip and hammer she had used to break his bonds. She understood Morlock's demand: it would have been an act of madness to leave the pack behind. The books alone would have made a half-wizard like Steng a power among those-who-know.

  The sounds attendant on her brother rising to his feet sickened her; she kept her face averted. They needed to know now if Morlock could move about on his own. When it proved that he could she finished knotting the straps and turned around to shoulder the pack.

  He moved toward her, his face bloodless as a ghost's. “I'll—”

  “You'll shut up. Now's not the time to let loose the mordant wit and conversationalist we all know rages within you. I can handle your damn pack.” She grunted, though, as she took the weight of it on her shoulders. (No wonder he grunted so much.)

  “—take Tyrfing,” he finished, as if she had not spoken.

  Glumly she passed him the dark ornamentless sheath that lay upon the table. She saw Lathmar goggling at the dark crystalline pommel, and almost smiled. She sensed an incipient hero-worship there. Ah well: it could only prove dangerous if both of them lived through the night, which seemed somewhat unlikely.

  “Now!” she said. “We'll go break out Wyrth—”

  “What about Lorn?” the King demanded (speaking to Morlock, Ambrosia noted wryly).

  “I know where he is,” Morlock said impassively. “But I don't know where Wyrth is.”

  “But I do,” Ambrosia said.

  Morlock nodded.

  In the tense silence they all heard, faint and far off, the echoing reports of booted feet on stone.

  Ambrosia swore. It was a waste of time, but it was the only alternative to You poor dear, I can't have you wandering around this nasty castle all by yourself.

  “You never learned the hidden passages, did you?” she said accusingly.

  “No.”

  “You'd better take Lathmar, then. He knows some.”

  “Good. We'll meet when we can.”

  She moved forward and embraced him briefly. “Go, now. I'll sow confusion in their ranks.” She kept her tone neutral. He hugged her back, a hard shell inside a hard shell, she thought, behind the mask of her visor. Then he was gone, and Lathmar, with a woeful look backward, followed him through the doorway.

  This night would be wasted time if they managed to get themselves killed, she reflected. (She took no thought for Lorn.) She hated to waste time, so she set straight on sowing confusion, taking the still-bloody sword she had slain Steng's guard with and putting the grip in Steng's right hand, which clenched upon it reflexively.

  “Ah, Steng!” she said. “If you didn't exist we'd have to design and build you.” She allowed herself a single fiercely satisfied thought about what the Protector's Men would likely do to the poisoner-turned-torturer if they had the chance, then passed from the bloody chamber to the rising din of the corridor outside.

  The King knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about healing. He didn't know how much blood a person could lose and still live. Morlock's grave sallow face, though impassive, was somehow imprinted with sick weariness, and Lathmar noticed he limped as he walked.

  “Is your leg hurt?”

  “An old wound,” Ambrosia's brother said flatly. “Be quiet now.”

  The King of the Two Cities shut his half-open mouth, and they moved as quickly as they could down the dark narrow stairway that led to the pedestal floor. They were on that floor, well lit and well aired, when a door opened in the corridor behind them and a group of chattering soldiers came out—hiding from their troop leader, not taking their search seriously. Until it succeeded: their voices fell silent as Morlock turned against them and drew the accursed sword Tyrfing in a single movement.

  The King thought it was all over with them then. The only thing between him and captivity was a sick, limping man older than Time. If the soldiers had seen Morlock as the King recently had (hung by the heels like a slaughtered pig) no doubt he would have been right.

  But (he realized this later) what they saw was this: the dark glittering edge of the accursed sword, and beyond it the smoldering hand and the sallow impassive face of the man who had killed Hlosian Bekh.

  They ran. But as they fled, they called out, shouting for their troop-leader, reinforcements, help. The King thought of Lorn's desperate stand against the Protector and his men at Gravesend Field and was ashamed for them. But Morlock wheeled about, seized him by the collar, and dragged him down the corridor.

  “I can walk!” the King protested.

  “Don't. Run!”

  The King ran, his short legs moving double-time to keep up with Morlock's long, irregular stride. The darkness of a stairwell closed about them and the King paused, sighing with relief.

  “Don't stop.” Morlock's flat implacable voice came out of the dark. “Once they pass the word there's no escape for us. Run.”

  They ran: down endless unlit stairwells, through wide corridors dangerous with light. The King remembered little of it later except his growing desire for sleep, a thirst for rest so intense it made all exterior sensations dim and dreamlike.

  He returned to himself at that blessed moment when Morlock drew to a halt, putting a hand on his shoulder. They were in a hallway he didn't recognize, but he knew they were deep under Ambrose: the weight of the stone above their heads was almost palpable.

  “Be quiet,” Morlock said gently. The King, about to protest that he had said nothing, realized he was gasping and gulping like a lungfish in a net. He tried to make his breathing less raspy and more regular, finally succeeding.

  “Now,” said Morlock, “we will enter the chamber together. There will be one or two attendants within. I will kill them—”

  “Why?” the King demanded.

  Morlock's strangely pale gray eyes peered at him though the shadows of the dark corridor. The King could not read his expressions (if he had any!), but he thought Morlock was surprised.

  “You'll understand,” he said finally. “Don't interfere. Tend to Lorn.”

  “What if he's not here? Suppose they've moved him?”

  “Then he is lost to us. Come now.”

  It was a clean, well-lighted place they entered, like a surgeon's chamber he had been taken to once when he fell sick, before his parents died. Like the surgeon, the attendants themselves were not clean. They looked up, sweat-stained faces twisting in surprise, from the bright bloody filth on the table at the center of the room.

  Morlock spoke, but the King never heard what he said, for at that moment he realized the squirming thing on the table was wearing Lorn's face. For a long stupid second he wondered why they had put Lorn's face on that thing. It was very like a mask: bloodlessly pale, fixed wooden expression, dark holes where the eyes should be. Then he understood; he understood everything.

  He walked straight to Lorn, ignoring the attendants. One brushed by him, plunging forward to Morlock and death; the other fled away to the far wall of the chamber.

  The King stopped at the table; spiked metallic forms gleamed dully with Lorn's drying blood. Lorn couldn't see him: charred wet meat was all that remained in his eye sockets. The King could think of nothing to say (did even Kedlidor the Rite-Master know a formula for this?) and simply reached to unfasten the manacles binding Lorn's stumps. This was a mistake; Lorn flinched at his touch, and the animal whine that escaped hi
s torn lips broke the King's heart.

  “No! No!” the King whispered urgently, frightened and obscurely angry. “I've come to release you!”

  “What is your name, friend?” Lorn whispered, breath whistling through the hole in his throat.

  There was only one answer for that. “I am your King.” He tried to say it firmly, but his voice quavered.

  “Majesty!” the tortured soldier gasped. He added loyally, “I knew you'd come.”

  He was lying. He must be lying, thought Lathmar, as his eyes filled with tears and his soft fingers strove to turn the bolts of the manacles. How could anyone think such a thing? How could anyone be so stupid as to expect it? He hadn't come, anyway. He'd been brought.

  When he finally unfastened Lorn's bonds he looked up to see Morlock standing at the door, evidently listening. The two torturers lay like broken dolls on the floor; Morlock had killed them without drawing blood.

  “Help me,” he said to his Grandmother's brother.

  “How?”

  “I…I want to bring Lorn away from here.”

  Again Morlock turned his bright colorless eyes on the King for a long moment. Whether the glance expressed surprise, disdain, or some other emotion the King could not tell and did not care.

  “You'll have to carry him,” Morlock said. “Our enemies are at our heels and I'll be fighting soon. I'll tie him to your back, though.”

  When the dreadful weight of Lorn's ruined body came down on his shoulders, Lathmar nearly quailed. But there was no alternative. He would die himself before he left Lorn here.

  Morlock bound the flaccid body to his shoulders with twisted strips of cloth torn from the dead torturers' smocks. The King tried to gasp out an apology to Lorn for confining him after so brief a freedom. But Lorn did not answer; it probably hurt to speak, or perhaps he was unconscious.

  When the binding was done the King turned sluggishly toward the door they had entered, but Morlock said, “We can't go that way. There must be a door yonder; the other torturer headed for it.”

  Straining with each step the King followed Morlock to the far wall and waited through the endless dragging seconds it took for Morlock to find the secret door hidden behind a woven stone panel. Morlock cast the panel aside, kicked the door open, and stepped through, holding Tyrfing in a high, close guard as he glanced up and down the hall. He motioned the King to follow him.

  Dragging his feet along the slimy floor of the corridor outside, the King followed Morlock as he passed onward. There was the sound of booted feet behind them; the King hurried as best he could.

  Then he froze, along with Morlock, as a Protector's Man stepped into the corridor in front of them.

  “I just don't believe it,” the soldier was saying.

  “Madam,” said a clear-voiced but unseen speaker, “you have a tin ear. No one but my master would make so much noise when trying to be sneaky. No matter how many soldiers are behind us we ought to—”

  The speaker, now emerging into the corridor, stopped dead in his tracks and fell silent. A monstrous weedy green figure half a man's height, he raised his arm and pointed with a hand that dripped blood and water from the palm. The Protector's Man turned and froze, catching sight of Morlock and the King. Another moment of silence passed, and then the Ambrosii met with a roar of laughter as their enemies closed in from either side.

  It was a brief, achingly long time they stood in the open corridor, laughing at each other as the King stood apart, his burden and their danger growing heavier with every heartbeat. Then, abruptly (the King couldn't follow what they were saying) they moved together, back along the corridor the way Morlock and the King had come, with Ambrosia in the lead.

  Wyrth stepped next to the King and helped him shoulder Lorn, snapping the knotted makeshift cords around his waist like rotten string. The King was hoping that the dwarf would take the entire burden, but for some reason he did not.

  “—were an idiot,” Ambrosia was saying to her brother. “You should have guessed they would hold the two close together.”

  Morlock muttered something.

  “I said I was an idiot,” Ambrosia replied. “Or did I?”

  “No, madam,” the dwarf called. “That was us.”

  “Morlock, if you can't teach your froggy apprentice a lesson or two about silence, I'll—Trouble.”

  They were passing through the torture chamber again, and a company of soldiers was passing by outside. As the others got out of sight, Ambrosia stepped forward and engaged in gravel-voiced repartee with the patrol leader. The King couldn't understand a single one of their words—the world seemed to be expanding and contracting before his eyes; his face felt hot—but presently he found they were moving again.

  The scrape of stone on stone shortly thereafter announced their entry into a hidden passage. They climbed an endless series of narrow dusty stairways, lightless airless holes where they must always go single file and he bore the lion's share of Lorn's weight, blood running into his eyes and hair.

  Finally they reached a more open airy place, dimly and indirectly lit by openings near the ceiling. It must be day outside, the King realized. The dreadful endless night had ended at last.

  Wyrth gently lifted Lorn from the King's shoulders and laid him in the corner, tearing cloth from his soggy shirt to cover the stumps where Lorn's hands had been.

  The King collapsed nearby, drinking in the fact that he did not need to move, to flee, to hide, to fight, to pretend he was stronger than he was. Gasping he listened to the three others, chattering like veteran soldiers after a battle.

  “I never thought we would make it. Never.” (This was Ambrosia, his iron Grandmother.)

  “Your ready wit saved us, twice and three times,” Morlock remarked.

  “My ready womb. We were all as stupid as mad pigs, blundering about inside a farmhouse. Let me see that hand. I should have slit Steng's throat.”

  “It's better not. They spent more time than they could afford trying to read the scene in Steng's room. Or so I guess.”

  “Especially after I left my sword in Steng's hand.”

  Morlock chuckled, an unpleasant sound. “Good. Good. A flight above the mad pig level, I'd say.”

  “Save your breath for screaming. This is going to hurt. Wyrth, there's a water bottle somewhere in this uniform—damn, it's nearly empty.”

  “There's a water stone in Morlock's pack. It ought to serve us all for a few days.”

  “Is that why he wanted that albatross along? Morlock, if you had left that damn thing with Genjandro—”

  Morlock grunted, dissenting. “Delaying tactic.”

  “Scut.”

  “Not at all, Lady Ambrosia,” the dwarf chipped in. “You should have seen him, before the Protector's Men broke in at Genjandro's, frantically repacking so that the book on gold making was on the top.”

  “To distract Steng, or whoever opened the pack? So. Did it work?”

  Morlock grunted. “Yes. Steng's not a dangerous man. Wyrtheorn, don't bind those wounds yet.”

  “I was just going to sponge off the little King. Creator knows he's had enough blood dripped on him tonight.”

  “Let him rest,” Morlock directed. “He pushed himself as far as he could. He has nerve, that one.”

  Ambrosia laughed, a short sharp sound like metal breaking. “You've misread that book, brother. The old fire has gone out in House Ambrose.”

  “We'll see.”

  “We've seen. If—” She broke off as the King sat up. There was silence as he struggled to his feet. They were all three looking solemnly at him, and he glared back.

  “I don't care what you say about me,” he said thickly. “But none of you has said one word about Lorn, or made one move to help him. So don't. I don't care! He wouldn't want your help! Give me some of that water and I'll clean his wounds myself.”

  That had got them! He exulted fiercely as he watched their frozen faces. The silence lasted for five heartbeats, and then Morlock said evenly, “King Lath
mar, you cannot help Lorn. No one can. He is dead.”

  Lathmar turned and looked stupidly down on Lorn, lying not far away. It was true. It was obviously true.

  “He died almost as he spoke to you,” Morlock's voice went relentlessly on.

  “Why didn't you tell me?” the King cried. He was horrified that he had carried that bag of broken bones a single step. It wasn't Lorn. Lorn was far from here. Lorn was dead. Lorn was dead.

  “I'm sorry,” said Morlock's voice from near at hand. The King looked up and saw those bright enigmatic eyes on him. “I misunderstood. I thought you were acting as his kin.”

  Ambrosia laughed harshly. “Dwarvish scut! Dead is dead.”

  “It is a dwarvish custom,” Wyrth admitted. He, too, was suddenly at the King's side. “A slain, er, man has certain things owed to him. Revenge and burial, chiefly. Morlock provided the revenge; he thought you were bringing away the body for burial. I thought the same thing, but then I am a dwarf, and prone to believe in dwarvish scut.”

  “You killed him,” the King said thickly.

  Silence.

  “You all killed him!” the King shouted. His face wrinkled as he spoke, stained with dried blood, Lorn's blood. “You killed him. You and your empire!” He screamed the last word as if it were the filthiest word in any language—which it was. It had killed Lorn.

  “It is not our empire,” Ambrosia responded calmly. She had taken her helmet off; he had almost forgotten what her face looked like during the endless night.

  “It is,” the King said wildly. “You created it. You built it into something men kill other men for. It's yours…and the…the Strange Gods can have it, and you!”

  “Men will kill other men for a goat's knucklebone or a piece of dirt,” Ambrosia said calmly. “They'll kill each other for the fun of killing. More to the point, do you think men like Steng and Urdhven would be wielding power if any of us three had a claim to the imperial throne?”