Blood of Ambrose Page 22

  Morlock's first thought, seeing him perched in the top branches of the ancient tree, had been that the horse was an illusion, set there by some sorcerer as a prank—or a trap. He had spent nearly a day in vision, testing the phenomenon with all the powers of Sight, before he approached within a bowshot.

  His insight had told him that the horse was real, which did not, of course, preclude the possibility of a prank or a trap. But it meant that he could not simply walk away.

  Morlock returned to ungrowing the tree and reduced it to the point where the horse could walk freely away. He called to the horse (“Velox!”), which approached him without suspicion. He knelt down and examined the horse's belly. There was only a superficial wound; it had been bleeding freely, but when Morlock looked at it the surface was a thick gleaming clot. There was no other wound—but there had been: looking for them, Morlock found a network of scars on the horse's belly.

  “What are you, then?” he demanded, rising. “Horse, or something else—some immortal come to earth in horse form?” Again, the horse looked at him with wide silvery eyes and said nothing.

  “Well, don't mind it,” Morlock said. “I will consider you my friend, Velox. If you are not him, you are, at least, equally remarkable.”

  “So!” said an unfamiliar voice. “It is your horse. We had wondered.”

  Morlock turned on his heel. Some distance behind him stood a youngish-looking man in the gray cape of a thain—least of the three ranks in the Graith of Guardians. In his right hand was a silver spear of Warding.

  “You have not listened carefully enough,” said Morlock. “He may be mine or not. Who are you? I take it you know who I am.”

  “I'm Thain Renic of the Guardians. Although I don't see your right to challenge me on the borders of the Wardlands.”

  “We are not in the Wardlands, but the empire of Ontil. And I, as it happens, am a minister of the King.”

  “Ah—as to that—who was it that said a country is only as large as its weapons will reach?” Renic shifted his feet to fighting stance and aimed his spear at Morlock's throat. Morlock watched with no apparent interest as dust from the dry plain settled down to obscure the high polish of the thain's boots. “And I have the weapon,” Renic continued.

  Morlock directed some of the energy from the ungrown tree out of his crystalline focus and into the spear.

  “If you—Spit and venom!” Renic screamed abruptly, and let go of his spear, which glowed green around the grip.

  “Do not disturb me,” Morlock said, and turned back to the tree. Painstakingly, he inscribed the helices of force hidden in his crystalline focus onto the tree, leaf by leaf, branch by branch, forcing it to grow back to its former size. Or something like it: he had lost the force he had used against the thain's spear.

  Night had risen before he lowered the now-dark focus and looked on the full-grown tree. He turned to find Renic staring at him.

  “Are you still here?” he muttered.

  “You are an exile manipulating power on the border of the realm I guard,” Renic said stiffly. “As such you are a threat that must be watched.”

  Morlock grunted and pocketed his focus.

  “Are you telling me,” the thain shrilled, “that you stood there for half a day simply and solely to rearrange the leaves of a plant?”

  “Why should I tell you anything when you've told me nothing, not even your real name?” Morlock countered. “Nevertheless, I know who you are. Go home, ‘Thain.' Your duty is discharged.”

  The man who had called himself Renic glared at him as he turned away. Morlock went to the bank of a nearby creek, where he had left the horse he had ridden there—a chestnut gelding named Ibann. Ibann was still there, quietly cropping grass, his reins bound to a nearby tree. Not far away was Velox, drinking deeply from the stream.

  Morlock scowled. He had half hoped that Velox would take advantage of his freedom and wander off. He was not a great horseman, and he did not relish the prospect of conducting two horses over what was potentially hostile ground.

  Still, he had come here because he would not abandon Velox again. “Come then,” he said to the black charger. “We go east from here.”

  Morlock dreamed that night that his eye sockets were full of shadow. He turned from a glass that reflected his eyeless image and walked down a stairway that wound like a helix of cellular force. At each turn there was a mirrored door that opened as he passed. He never remembered some of the things he saw there. But at one turning the door opened and he saw a young girl with a face he did not know, but whose shoulders were as crooked as his own. She wore, incongruously, Renic's highly polished boots.

  Morlock! she shouted. This way! Hurry!

  I'm not the fool you think me, he shouted at her. No one is, except you. You have made yourself that way!

  At the last turning of the endless stair the door opened and he saw a Companion of Mercy: red-cloaked, red-masked. In the red-gloved hands Morlock saw a glass container filled with a shadowy fluid; in the fluid his own eyes were floating, bright with vision. As he reached out for the glass, the red-gloved fingers opened and it fell. It struck the mirror-bright threshold. The glass did not break, but the eyes shattered to bright reflective bits.

  Morlock looked again at the Companion, which had not moved since it let the glass fall. He stepped closer and peered into the eye sockets of its red mask.

  Through the mask he saw into a room, lit by a single lamp on the floor. Next to the lamp lay the body of the Lord Protector with its throat cut. No blood seeped from the wound. The body cast a shadow on the wall.

  The Protector's Shadow was not the shadow of Urdhven. It was of a seated man whose profile flowed like water as the lamp's single red flame flickered. The only stable thing about the shadow was its crooked shoulders. Nearby in the lamplit wall was a window filled with darkness.

  I remember! he said, his voice lifeless and dull in the dream. It was like his vision in the Dead Hills.

  Too late! said the shadow (and Urdhven's lifeless lips mimicked the words, mouthing them without sound). With a blinding sense of despair, Morlock felt the shadow spoke truth.

  There was a flash of lightning. Morlock saw in the suddenly illumined window the outline of ruined buildings. It was the dead city, he suddenly knew—the Old City of Ontil.

  He awoke to rain on his face. It was just before dawn. He wasted no time in striking camp and getting on the road.

  Three hours later the day was scarcely brighter, the clouds of the storm were so deep. He was standing in heavy rain on a cliff above the town of Nalac. He stood among a cluster of budding trees, their black wet bark the exact color of his wet cloak. He watched, through the dimness of the rain, as figures in red cloaks moved about the streets below, drifting like dead leaves.

  “Too late!” Morlock muttered. He wondered if he had made a mistake in coming here. He backed slowly away from the edge of the cliff, hoping the motion would attract no notice. Out of sight of the town, he turned to the horses.

  Velox was carefully drinking water rilling down a new leaf dangling from a nearly bare branch. Morlock looked sideways at him and thought that no one would be able to tell this horse had been perched or impaled on a tree, drying like smoked beef, for a month or so. His wounds were completely healed, and Morlock thought his gaunt ribs had filled in. In fact, drenched with rain, he could hardly tell the horse that was fresh from the royal stables from Velox…except, in the dim light of the rain-drenched day, Morlock thought there was a faint radiance about Velox's eyes.

  “My friend,” he said to Velox, “it's a long road to Ambrose. But you'll get me there, or no one will, I guess.” And he took the saddle from Ibann and put it on Velox.

  Leading Ibann, he rode Velox down the sloping north side of the hill. He gave Nalac a wide berth, but eventually returned to the road, supposing that his enemies could not cover the whole distance between the Gap of Lone and Ambrose.

  But as he cantered along the road that led south and east to Ambrose
and Ontil, he crossed a stretch of red fabric stretched across the road. He didn't notice the sodden muddy strip of cloth until Velox leaped like a hunter to avoid it. Ibann did the same behind them, screaming, and Morlock wheeled Velox about to see the strip settling back down on the road. Ibann was gone.

  It was then that Morlock noticed the watchers on either slope beside the road: tall, red-cloaked figures with eyes gleaming through their red masks.

  Were they there before, or had the trap on the road summoned them somehow? What had happened to Ibann? These were mysteries that intrigued him as a Maker. He would never have a chance to solve them, though, if he didn't get away quickly: the shadows above him were beginning to close in.

  He wheeled Velox again and fled up the road. But the road ahead was being closed off: two red-cloaked figures were pushing a laden death cart across the way. The place was well chosen: the brush on either side of the road was high and dense, interwoven with the surrounding trees.

  They charged straight at the death cart. Morlock drew Tyrfing, and the dark crystalline blade shed light in the rain-etched gloom. He called out to Velox in the Westhold dialect all horses are born knowing. Velox left the ground almost as if his horseshoes were still imbued with metallic phlogiston. They cleared the death cart easily and splashed along up the empty road beyond.

  Velox ran without terror, but with an endless vigor and speed that astonished Morlock. The Companions were far behind them when they came to a place where the road lay under shallow water for some considerable stretch. Morlock dismounted and led his remarkable steed off the road, and they blazed a sluggish (but, Morlock hoped, untraceable) path through open and rather marshy fields.

  Late in the afternoon they were still at it. Morlock took turns riding Velox and leading him, for he knew they could afford no lengthy stops (not that Velox ever seemed to tire). They passed only one farm in that whole time. There a rain-soaked figure stood at the garth and watched them approach.

  “Turn in here, traveler!” it cried as they passed, and glancing over, Morlock saw the face of the young girl from his dream, peering out from under a rain-heavy hood.

  “Drop dead,” muttered Morlock and rode on. When he glanced back a few moments later there was no farm, no garth, and, of course, no girl.

  It was well after sunset, and the rain had long since stopped, when Morlock decided to camp for the night. He found a level spot that was no soggier than anywhere else, but did not build a fire. He tied Velox to a tree near a pool and some decent, if soggy, pasturage, then went to lay his own bedroll some distance off, on the other side of a stand of trees.

  When he had done so, though, he didn't crawl into his bed, but circled back through the trees and grabbed the neck of a skinny old tramp who was attempting to untie Velox's reins.

  “Here now!” gasped the tramp. “You've a sharp eye and a sharp ear, so I won't deny I was stealing your horse. But that's not a killing offense in these parts. Let me just give you the contents of my wallet (it's not much!) and we'll call it square. What do you say?”

  “We won't.”

  “Let me go, damn you!”

  “Why? So that I can meet you three more times in three different guises tomorrow?”

  The stranger's face sneered at him in a way that he recognized. “Careless—leaving your horse in a tree. Every sorcerer from A Thousand Towers to Vakhnhal must have heard of it.”

  “But none were so quick as you, Father.”

  “You were, God Avenger destroy you.” The tramp's face melted like butter on a griddle.

  Morlock tightened his grip and shouted, “Preme, quidquid erit, dum, quod fuit ante, reformet!”*

  The face settled into that of a white-bearded, blue-eyed old man with narrow proud features and a crook in his shoulders. “You're too suspicious,” he complained, gasping. “Let me go, won't you? I won't turn into an adder or a scorpion or a Kembley's serpent. I came to talk to you.”

  “You're lying,” Morlock said, not loosening his grip.

  “Actually, I'm not. True, I chiefly hoped to abscond with your remarkable horse. But I know the unlikelihood of actually stealing any dwarf's property—”

  “I'm not a dwarf.”

  “I know. Dwarves have the decency to maintain a fixed abode. You're still bound hand and foot by dwarvish ways, though—as tight-fisted and grasping as any dwarf who reverted to wormhood.”

  Morlock said nothing but waited.

  “You see!” the other said at last, as if he had proven something. “Exactly like a dwarf. Anyway, I knew I would probably fail in my theft, and if I did I was willing to settle for a talk with you.”

  “Hmph.”

  “Don't grunt at me, sir! I believe I have established that I am not about to change into a venom-spitting monster as soon as you release me.”

  “Change?” Morlock asked coolly, but let his hands relax.

  The older, now taller man turned to face him and smiled with a mouth as wry as his shoulders. “I'm always happy to earn a bitter word from you, Morlock. But what would your dwarvish father say if he heard you address me with such barbed irony?”

  “Old Father Tyr is dead these three hundred years.”

  “But conscience never dies, does it, Morlock? Nor the fire of sin. I'm sure he taught you that, being so very, very righteous?”

  Morlock felt descending on him the red cloud of rage that always hung over his dealings with Merlin. “What a fool you are—” he began.

  “What would your harven-father think?” Merlin interrupted. “Shame! Shame! (I'm sure he taught you all about shame.) Remember, Morlock theorn, he stands now in the west with Those-Who-Watch.”

  “You left me with them,” Morlock muttered. “Why did you do it if you hate them so much? And me, for being like them?”

  “You're puzzled. Resign yourself to it, Morlock. The ways of love and hate will forever be mysterious to you. You cannot encompass my thought with mere reason.”

  That was it, Morlock realized. Merlin was simply jealous. He had left Morlock to be raised by the dwarves, but he resented the love that had grown up between the fosterers and the fosterling. Merlin had hoped—what? That Morlock would loathe his foster father and long for his natural father? Love and hate were grandiose terms to use for the greedy desire to be regarded and the peevishness resulting from that desire's frustration. But Merlin was typically grandiose about anything relating to himself.

  Morlock, thinking all this, said dismissively, “Then.”

  “You mean, I suppose,” Merlin replied, his voice rising with irritation, “that you think you do understand. As if you could know—”

  “That's nothing to you.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. What I know, what I understand, is not in your control, so there is no point in it being in your mouth. You said that you wished to talk with me. If it was about this, you have your answer.”

  “You won't tell me how you made this horse fly, I suppose,” Merlin said sulkily. “That's nothing to me as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “And after I scraped those red barnacles off your back! You're a grasping, ungrateful, cold-blooded little bastard! God Sustainer, how I hate you! I wish you were dead! Have you got anything to eat? Because I'm hungry.”

  “I have flatbread and cheese. You're welcome to share it.”

  “Most generous. Most generous. I save his life and he offers me a piece of cheese in return. At that, it's probably a fair return. Local cheese, I suppose? God Creator, what nasty filth you eat to keep life in you. What's to drink?”

  “Water.”

  Merlin laughed aloud, then stared through the shadows. “You mean it, don't you? What did you do, run out?”

  “No.”

  “You mean you brought water in your bottles on purpose?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn't expect this of you, Morlock. Really, I didn't. At least I thought I'd get a decent drink from you.” They were moving toward Morlock's campsite as Merlin ranted on. “
The one thing right about you, you've managed to make all wrong. What's the point? What's the point? How can you stand to be yourself without being drunk? You've given it up entirely, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Are you too cheap to pay for the stuff? You could always steal it.” The old wizard accepted a slab of cheese and a flat cake of bread. “No, really—why?” He bit into the bread greedily and shouted, “What in chaos—? Oh. Of course. I forgot myself. Call a dwarf greedy and he'll break your teeth with ‘generosity.'” He reached into the flatbread and pulled out a gold coin. “I'll keep this, if you don't mind,” he added. “I can use it in getting home, and a prankster should always pay for his fun.”

  Merlin sat down on Morlock's bed and buried his cold muddy feet in the sleeping cloak. Then, between bites of bread and cheese, he held forth on Morlock's shortcomings, finally adding, “And you're a word-breaker, too—I've finished the food and you haven't even offered me water.”

  Morlock's silhouette, dark against the dim blue sky, made no motion or sound.

  “Is that a threatening silence—or merely somber reflection?” Merlin asked gaily. “I hope you've taken my words to heart, but I am thirsty, so how about it?”

  The silence continued.

  “Are you pondering some dark stroke of magic,” inquired Merlin, “that will wipe the world clean of a cantankerous old necromancer, or are you sadly pondering the unfordable river between Ambrosius senior and Ambrosius junior—which is always to say, between genius and mediocrity?”

  Silence.

  Merlin issued several more speculations on the meaning of Morlock's silence to the same effect (or lack of effect). Finally Merlin ran down and stared at Morlock's silhouette.

  “Light begins to break,” the wizard muttered. He stood up and walked over to where Morlock's silhouette stood, motionless and unspeaking, in the lesser shadows. Merlin put his hand out to the shape, and it passed through empty air. “A simulacrum, then,” Merlin noted, and circled it widdershins. The silhouette changed shape as he moved, giving every appearance of a backlit solid object.

  “Well made, of course—one expects that of him,” the wizard noted. “It's the slyness that's surprising. He must have leavened the spell when I was biting down on the gold piece. I would have noticed it, otherwise.”