Blood of Ambrose Read online

  Well, death was near enough to them now; there was no need for them to deal it to each other.

  There was still a battle going on up the long, dark slope above them. The King could see several body-sized fires on the slope, and the clash of weapons.

  Then the Companions and corpse-golems who had followed them down the hill were upon them. Lathmar and Wyrth instinctively went back-to-back. The King struck out at their enemies with all the rage he had felt against Wyrth. But he was cool enough to remember how Morlock had fought against the Protector on the bridge: it was futile to go for mortal blows against the living dead. But they could be crippled. And they were armed only with the tools the Companions had used on the corpses: mallets and knives and saws.

  But there were so many of them! They crowded around in a stinking wall: the corpse-golems stinking of blood and worse, with their mismatched limbs, red seams everywhere on their half-naked bodies, the cold pitiless perfection of their mask-faces. The Companions stood back, waiting, watching. They knew the corpse-golems would do what was needed.

  So did Lathmar. But he fought on desperately, all the more when Wyrth began to laugh bitterly.

  “They want us alive!” he shouted.

  That frightened Lathmar more than anything that had happened yet.

  Presently Wyrth was struck on the side of the head and fell unconscious to the ground. The King grimly stood over him and hewed at any dead limb that presented itself to him. But he knew it couldn't be long now.

  The King felt a pair of cold hands close on his neck from behind. He turned, struggling and failing to strike at one of the dead arms. He saw it fall with a flash from its shoulder. He didn't understand what he was seeing until there was another flash and the corpse-golem's head flew from its shoulders.

  There were armed men behind them—at least two of them.

  “Golems!” he shouted. “Can't killed! Cut hands!” He wondered if he was making any sense at all.

  “Understood!” was the terse reply.

  The two fighting men advanced, their swords flashing in the light of the lesser and the greater moons. The ill-made corpses fell in a welter of severed limbs. The dark-cloaked Companions were beginning to move forward.

  “Get the dwarf!” he shouted.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” said one of the soldiers. With a burst of surprise, Lathmar realized it was Karn. The other, the one who had spoken first, was flat-faced fearless Erl. But there was no time for questions or answers. Karn picked up the unconscious dwarf and they fled south, Lathmar leading the way toward the sea.

  The King remembered what Morlock had said about the Companions being unable to cross running water. He didn't know if the sea counted, but he hoped it would be inimical to them. It may have been, or they may have turned back for other reasons, but by the time they reached Morlock's spider the Companions had given up the chase.

  They rested by it, keeping an eye out for their enemies in three directions.

  “Can you make this thing work, Your Majesty?” Erl asked.

  “No. We'll have to walk back to Ambrose.”

  “Too bad—it's been a long day for me.”

  The King agreed. Karn said nothing.

  “Karn,” said the King quietly, “how did you come to be here?”

  “Well, Your Majesty…some time ago, I worked on the prison level.”

  “Ah. You knew a way out of your cell.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. Through the waterways. So I saw the spider pass. I knew it was Morlock and his dwarf—who else could it be?—so I followed. I thought if I could help him, or talk to him he might…Well, Ambrosia listens to him. The Lady Regent, I mean.”

  “I understand. Well, we'll see if she'll listen to me. Unless you would rather just walk away right now. You've earned that, I think.” The King felt Erl tense up beside him, but he said nothing.

  “No, Your Majesty,” Karn said glumly. “I'll go back with you.”

  Erl relaxed, and the King asked him, “And you, Commander Erl? How do you happen to be here?”

  “Well, Your Majesty, it was me Karn worked for when he guarded the cells.”

  “Aha.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I was watching him, and I followed him. I was interested to see what he'd do. When it turned out he was following you three, I met up with him. We armed ourselves from the locker in your spider, here—”

  “Not mine.”

  “No, Your Majesty.”

  “Well, we'd better get going. Those Companions might be able to get word to the Protector's Men; if we're to make it across the Port Island Bridge we'll have to do it soon.”

  None of them mentioned Morlock. There didn't seem to be much point.

  They walked all night, crossing the Port Island Bridge without trouble and passing through an unguarded gate Erl knew into the countryside west of Ontil. By then Wyrth had regained consciousness, and the King had nearly lost it—it had, indeed, been a long day. The dwarf and the two men took turns carrying him: they dared not be caught by the Protector's soldiers in open country. They reached the Lonegate of Ambrose around dawn. They were instantly put under guard and dragged before the Lady Regent, an early riser.

  She sat on her dais in chain mail and a surcoat embroidered with the black-and-white crest of Ambrose. The sword of high judgement was drawn and placed across her knees. Standing below her in front of the dais were three people—two men and a woman. They all wore red armbands and an indefinable air of strangeness. The woman, at least, was strikingly beautiful. Her skin was the darkest Lathmar had ever seen; her hair and eyes were golden. As she looked on him and smiled slightly he felt dirty and bedraggled and weather-beaten and, at the same time, rather wonderful. Then she looked past him and her smile vanished; he wondered why.

  But all these thoughts were driven from Lathmar's mind when Ambrosia pinned him with her iron-gray gaze and said, “Your Majesty, just what the hell have you been doing all night?” He found it hard to answer her, but it turned out this was a rhetorical question: she already knew.

  Half the Companions surrounding Morlock were destroyed, and he was nearly out of phlogiston when he decided it was time for a change in tactics. The King and Wyrth were either safely out of the way or caught by now. He scattered the remaining phlogiston broadly, shaking out the aethrium tube, so that a fire leapt up on the dry grass of the hillside. The Companions retreated from the blaze, and several of the corpse-golems fell lifeless, their name-scrolls compromised. Morlock swiftly put his cloak on the back of one of these and his weapon in the dead hand. Then he lay facedown in the smoldering grass and waited.

  When the fire died down the Companions returned. He didn't risk looking up, but he could hear them milling about the fallen bodies. Presently they moved off, herding the remaining corpse-golems back to the others.

  Morlock waited until he thought it was probably safe, and then waited that long again. When he lifted his face from the ground he was alone, except for the rotten half-burned flesh of his fallen adversaries.

  “Probably none of us were worth recovering,” Morlock reflected. “Fire taints certain kinds of magic. I'd better take that sword.” (Like many a lonely man, Morlock was more talkative when no one else was present.)

  He took back the fire-torn cloak and slung the sword belt over his shoulder with the sheath down his back. He'd move more freely that way, especially if he had to crawl, as he expected. He had more spying to do; it had been madness to let Lathmar and Wyrth come along. He hoped they were safe, but that was their lookout, now. He wanted to know where those corpse-golems were going.

  After crawling on his hands and knees downslope, he went to his stomach and crept slowly along a gully at the base of the hill. By the time he got a sight of the front of the hill, there was very little to see. The Companions were gone; their carts were gone; the mausoleum door was closed. The herd of corpse-golems was stumbling along the dusty track toward the city.

  Morlock scraped back along the gully, out of sight of the mausole
um. Then he took to the hills, running parallel to the track the corpse-golems were following. He hoped to avoid being seen by any Companions that might be shepherding the golems.

  But there were none. When he had gotten ahead of the herd of stumbling ill-made zombies, he risked peering out at them from behind a ridge. They were alone, accompanied by no caretaking Companions.

  He returned to his parallel course, still taking care that he not be seen. The Companions might have instructed one or more of the corpse-golems to watch for him. His course meandered more than the herd of golems, but he was moving faster, so he kept pace with them pretty well.

  Finally, though, he had to risk closer contact. As the stars were spinning around toward dawn, the herd of corpse-golems shuffled toward one of the gates in the eastern wall of Ontil. It would be guarded by Protector's Men. If Morlock wanted to know where these things were going in the city (and he did), there was only one course of action.

  He abandoned his sword and cloak, stuffed his knife sheath inside his waistband, and walked out to join the herd of corpse-golems. He was tensely alert for any sign of recognition or hostility, but there was none. As he shouldered his way into the trailing edge of the group, holding his breath against the stench of rotting flesh, the golems simply made way for him.

  The plan was not as reckless as it seemed. He was about as misshapen as the average corpse-golem in the group; he limped without effort. The only danger he foresaw was regarding his face: it hardly had the masklike perfection of the others in the herd.

  The herd of zombies shuffled up to the gate and began to pass through it. No words or signs that Morlock could detect were exchanged between the golems and the gate guards; perhaps this was a routine event. Morlock suspected so. But there was more to it than that: as he passed by one of the helmeted gate guards he saw a red seam running along his neck. The gate guards were corpse-golems, too. Well, that was one solution to Urdhven's manpower problem: recruit the dead, who notoriously outnumbered the living.

  When the herd had stumbled through the gate it began to break up into various groups (again, they were no signals: the golems must have been instructed on their name-scrolls). Morlock followed one of the groups that was heading north and somewhat west.

  They walked through dark streets that were strangely silent. Times they would pass the open door of a bakery: inside a corpse-golem in a white smock was miming the action of baking bread at a dark oven. Street-side food shops were open; corpse-golems came and went, exchanging copper coins for bowls and jars of nothingness, which were solemnly consumed on the spot, the stainless dishes returned to soak in a dry wash crock. Nearby on a street corner three children with pale perfect features and misproportioned rotting limbs solemnly played catch with a ball that wasn't there.

  The city is being eaten alive, Morlock thought to himself. How many quarters were like this, inhabited by corpse-golems? How could any of them be like this without the rumor running wild through the city?

  Abruptly, the sky above was alive with golden light: the sudden bright sunrise of Laent had come. As it did, a change passed over the scene that Morlock saw. The colors shimmered, woven into new form. The corpse-golems faded away under mundane forms. There was fire in the baker's ovens; water in the wash crocks; food and drink in the plates and cups.

  But, of course, there wasn't: it just seemed that way. Nothing could change the carrion reek of the place, and it was still strangely quiet for a city street at sunrise. But illusion protected the essential secret: that this quarter of the city was an open grave, inhabited only by the restless dead.

  Morlock had seen enough; he turned to go.

  Behind him in the street was a dead baby riding on the back of what appeared to be a dog's body, equipped with four mismatched human feet and a masklike smiling human face.

  The dead baby appraised Morlock with eyes like broken rotting bird's eggs. “You are not one of mine,” the baby said, in a glutinous tenor. “I'd have remembered you.”

  “And I you.”

  “I doubt it; this is not my only face. Wait a moment.”

  “I'm afraid I can't. Good morning.”

  “You're the one they talk about—Ambrosia's brother.…”

  But Morlock was running down an alley by then. He was not surprised to hear the soft slap of corpse-golem feet behind him and in front of him. He glanced about and began to climb straight up a crumbling tenement wall. By the time he had reached the third story he glanced down to see a milling crowd of zombies below, and he heard the unmistakable gluey voice of the dead baby shouting orders in an imperious wail.

  He leapt into a window on the third story and ran past an incurious zombie family, miming a breakfast of cold emptiness in the shadowy room. He made his way to the roof of the building and leaped across to the one on the other side of the alley.

  The dead baby was there on his monstrous grinning mount. “That was rather predictable, don't you think?” the baby sneered.

  Morlock shrugged, dashed past, and leapt across to the next building.

  “You can't keep it up forever!” the dead baby called after him.

  Morlock was aware of this, but he didn't suppose he would have to. He simply had to make it to a quarter that was largely inhabited by living human beings. That would have its own dangers, but he had reason to suppose that partisans of the King outnumbered those of his erstwhile Protector in the living city.

  Unfortunately, as he headed north and west, he found he was headed into a part of town where the tenements clustered less thickly. He was having to jump farther and farther to make it to the next building. Nor did he have the option of turning back; a glance over his shoulder showed him that the roofs behind him were sprouting corpse-golems after he passed.

  He reached a place where he had to leap several floors down to reach the roof of the next building, across a rather wide alley. He hit the edge of the roof with his chest, and the world went briefly dark. When he came to himself he was sliding off the edge of the roof. He grasped desperately at the edge with his fingers as he fell, but the bricks crumbled into dust in his hands.

  He landed, jarringly but in one piece, on his feet and one hand.

  Among three red-cloaked figures.

  With his left hand (the one not stunned by his graceless landing), he reached across and drew the knife in his waistband, his only weapon. It was knocked from his grip; he was seized and lifted by incredibly powerful hands. The man holding him threw him across his shoulders and ran up the alley.

  Upside down (from his perspective) Morlock saw the lovely mocking features of Aloê Oaij looking at him, bobbing up and down as she ran to keep up. “Another night on the tiles, Morlock?” she called, laughing as she ran. “Aren't you getting too old for this kind of thing?”

  “Enough with the banter,” cried her companion (in whom Morlock recognized Jordel, another member of the Graith of Guardians from the Wardlands). “Morlock, is this whole damned city filled with these ugh, these what-do-you-call-them, these zombies?”

  “No,” Morlock said. “Baran, put me down and I can guide you.”

  Jordel's brother, Baran, stopped and put Morlock on his feet. His face was broad and pleasant, and there was an intelligent light in his brown eyes. But he was seven feet tall, as tall as Jordel; they called him “Baran the Beast” back in the Westhold both for his strength and his temper, but there was little evidence of the latter as he remarked, “I wasn't sure you knew me when you drew that knife.”

  “I didn't,” Morlock admitted. “But there are few who can lift me with one hand.”

  “No doubt. You've put on some weight since I saw you last.”

  Jordel said, “And then Morlock cries, ‘A base canard!' And Baran assures him, ‘Truly, I but spake in jest; never was a warlock more svelte.' And then Aloê chips in with something equally witty, or partially witty, and so the long day wears on, and fairly soon those damned zombies are trying on our underwear.”

  “Jordel can't stand to hear anyone t
alk, except himself,” Baran remarked.

  “He does have a sort of point, though,” Aloê added. “These are my favorite underwear; I hate to think of a zombie getting them.”

  Morlock grunted. “Let's head west from here. We can't be far from the Great Market. Our man has a place around there.”

  They moved briskly along the disturbingly silent streets, until suddenly Jordel cried out, “Hey, something's different. It doesn't smell bad anymore. That is, it still does, but not as bad as it did.”

  He was right, Morlock decided. The charnel reek of the dead quarter was gone. His insight told him that the appearances of the street before him were real, not an illusion.

  “I don't think they'll pursue us here,” Morlock said. “It would be easier to alert the Protector's Men.” He drew to a halt. “I have to know what you'll do if they show up.”

  Jordel looked genuinely hurt. “Morlock, can you ask?”

  “I'm asking. We were comrades once, but we are not now. Our interests are not the same.”

  “It's a fair question, Jordel,” Aloê said. “Morlock, we've come to observe the struggle between your people and this necromancer, this zombie-master. We don't intend to intervene unless there is some obvious threat to the Guard. We're not crusaders for justice and opponents of evil everywhere, like you used to be.”

  “Of course,” Morlock said, ignoring the sarcasm. “Ambrosia and I expected you—or someone from the Graith—long since. The Protector may respect your neutrality, but not if you assist me in evading capture by his forces. If that will be important to you we must part company now.”

  “Well, I don't know,” Aloê said slowly. “Do you think it will be useful to us, Morlock?”

  “Candidly, no. The Protector is merely a pawn of the adept, some of whose powers you have seen or felt. The adept himself is, I believe, in the Old City. But the choice is yours, Guardians.”

  The three red-cloaked vocates each glanced at the other, and Jordel said finally, “I think we'll string along with you, Morlock. If this adept is a threat to the Wardlands, we may be able to use your help in stopping him. If not, we can always duck out the back door of Ambrose and head for home.”