Blood of Ambrose

CHAPTER FIFTEEN DREAMS AND DECISIONS

It was her usual nightmare about Morlock. Aloe Oaij recognized it almost before it had begun, she was so used to it by now. As it began they were back in that house they once owned in Westhold, right on the edge of the land, where they could watch the sun rise up out of the sea each morning.

She loved the sea and often lured Morlock into the bright bitter water to swim, shocking the locals (who never entered the western ocean if they could help it). But his skin was as pale as a mushroom and would often burn. Her skin grew even darker and her hair a brighter gold. They would walk (talking, silent, listening, laughing) through the nearby woods; they would go into the village and trade songs with the locals; they would read and work.

She had come into his smithy once while he was working with Deor. It was hot as a volcano and he was stripped to the waist, exposing the unlovely twist in his shoulders. His face was clenched, too, as he hammered out something on the anvil-it was not an image to make a woman swoon. But it was in that moment Aloe understood why she loved him. With the intelligence of a maker afire in his eyes, with the controlled guided strength of his movements, he was an image of power: a man who could strike a dragon from the sky, the master of all makers, a relentlessly determined will made flesh. She had fled from the moment, but the moment had never fled from her: she was in that forge still, gaping like a lovesick girl at her ugly powerful husband.

And then he was going away, saying words that meant nothing, that she could not even hear in her dream, going away. She had begged him to stay, but he didn't even seem to hear her. And as he walked away he grew older and more crooked; his skin grew almost as dark as hers, but not smooth: withered, weather-beaten. He limped as he walked, and the bright red of his vocate's cloak darkened to the black of an exile.

She woke screaming, "God Avenger damn you, why don't you die?" She lay there, sobbing, then quiet, the same dark thought lingering in her wakening mind. Why didn't he die? Everything he had been was gone. Everything he had sought to be had failed. Why didn't he die? How could he stand to go on? The Morlock she thought she had known would die rather than live in exile, called traitor like his hated ruthen-father before him. Any man with any kind of pride at all, with any kind of decency, would simply and quietly die. She couldn't love a man with no pride at all. She could not. She must not. She didn't. The dreams meant nothing. Someday they would stop. She would find a way to stop them.

She opened her eyes.

Her paramour of the night before was looking at her with his mouth open. He didn't look at his best, but he still looked pretty good: he had something of Naevros's smug self-approving catlike handsomeness. (Nothing like Naevros's strength and grace, of course, but what had that come to, in the end? Ugly clever Morlock had killed him along with everything else she had ever loved.)

"Were you talking to me?" her last-night's-sleeping-potion asked.

"I might as well have been," she said coolly. "Take your things and go, won't you?"

He was weak enough to protest, but not strong enough to protest long. Presently she was having breakfast alone on a balcony that looked over the river Ruleijn and the City of a Thousand Towers.

A familiar knock came at her chamber door.

"Get your own breakfast!" she shouted.

The door opened and Jordel came in. He was dressed for the street, with his red vocate's cloak tossed carelessly over his shoulders. He tossed it as carelessly across her bed and stepped out onto the balcony. Throwing himself into the chair opposite her, he said, "I never eat breakfast-a nasty habit. I'll Just have one of your rolls, and some ham, and some toast and jam, an egg or two, and a cup of tea, if you don't mind."

"I do," Aloe said, purely for form's sake, as he helped himself. "Where've you been this morning?"

"Well, I keep having these nightmares about Morlock."

"That's not funny, Jordel."

"It isn't meant to be. God Sustainer, I wasn't married to him. Although he did save my life once, and that's the sort of bond which-"

11 -which means nothing whatever to you, Jordel. I know; I've saved your life myself."

"I don't think so, my dear."

"See what I mean?"

"Anyway: these nightmares. It began to look as if some sort of prevision was trying to make itself felt. So I caught one of them in a dreamglass and brought it to Noree this morning."

"Ugh. Poking around other people's dreams is a nasty business. I'd as soon be offered a stool sample or a urine sample as a dream sample."

"I'll keep that in mind, my dear. Shall I tell you about it?"

"If you must."

"No sooner did I get there when I found that Noree had another patient. You'll never guess who it was!"

"Illion."

Jordel's long, rosy face began to take on a discontented expression. "Has he already been in here? He said he was going to talk to you."

"It was just a guess, Jordel. You and he were always about equally sensitive to previsions." Since this was both true and flattering, Jordel's hazel eyes began to look more cheerful again. "Also," she continued relentlessly, "you both opposed Morlock's exile." This was also true, but riskier territory: Jordel's expression became more cautious again. "Go on, won't you?" she said finally.

"Yes, well, Noree took both dreamglasses and collated the dreams; then she meditated for a while."

"She doesn't cross the street without meditating for a while. She ought to be at New Moorhope and not in the Graith of Guardians."

"Do you want to hear this or not?"

Not sure that she did, suddenly, Aloe held her hand out concessively without speaking.

"Noree says that Morlock and his sister-"

"That bitch."

"Indeed. She says that Morlock and Ambrosia are involved in a power struggle in Ontil."

"We knew that. There's some sort of succession trouble in that empire. Nothing for us."

"That's where you're wrong. Noref says the power which moves against Ambrosia and Morlock is not merely political-it is a conflict of deep magic, and Merlin is involved. The Wardlands themselves may be threatened."

"You can't take that seriously about Merlin. She's crazy on the subject of Merlin."

"My dear, you didn't know Merlin like I knew Merlin, and I wouldn't say I knew him at all. If Noree, who fears nothing else, fears him, that should tell you something."

"It tells me everyone has to be afraid of someone."

"What a beautiful thought: almost like a song."

Aloe sighed and said, "All right, Jordel: if you didn't come by for breakfast and you didn't come by for my insights, what did you come by for?"

"Well, isn't it obvious? We'll have to send someone to keep an eye on the situation. Either Morlock and Ambrosia, or Merlin, or their antagonist may become a danger to the Wardlands. But we can't send just anyone up against people like that."

"So you propose to send me."

"No one is proposing to send you, Aloe, but you might send yourself. No one can slip Morlock the needle like you can; your powers are sure; and, of course, there are those insights of yours."

"Are you going?"

"Yes. Even if the Graith doesn't decide to send anyone, I think I'll wander up that way; perhaps Baran would also like to come. Because I don't like the look of it, Aloe-I don't like the look of it or the feel of it. Neither do Noree and Illion. I'd be pleased if you'd come with. But I know it will be difficult for you if you do."

Aloe, in unfeigned distress, put both her hands over her face and held them there. When she dropped them the distress was gone, or at least under control. "I'll come along," she said flatly. "If it's as bad as you say, you'll probably want my help. Should we put it to the assembled Graith or just set out on our own?"

So they began to lay their plans.

On that same early fall morning, far from the Wardlands, the King awoke at dawn. He didn't ring for servants; soon he was washed and dressed and bustling up the corridor that held the ministerial apartments. He rang at Wyrtheorn's door. When his first tug at the bellpull received no response, he yanked at it continuously until he was rewarded with an incoherent shout within. He opened the door to the apartment and said, "I was thinking about breakfast."

"A bad habit, but not one beyond breaking," remarked a nightcapwearing bearded shadow within. "The first step is acknowledging that you have a problem. Give it a try, and come back for me around noon."

"There's a meeting of the Regency Council this morning, Wyrth, or had you forgotten?"

"So I had, so I had. When you're my age you'll wish you could forget unpleasant matters as easily as I can, if you remember me at all by then, that is. Let's see-I suppose the sun will be rising soon?"

"It's burning a hole through your shutters right now!"

"That seems unlikely. I made those shutters myself. Oh, well, you might call the corridor attendant and have him bring me some water for washing." He stumped off to find some garments in his wardrobe, and the King himself fetched a basin of water from the corridor pump. The dwarf was scandalized almost (but not quite) beyond words, and he gave his King a harsh lecture on propriety as he washed, gesturing wildly with a wet rag which, at various points in the diatribe, served as the royal scepter, the Rite-Master's staff, the limp sword of a rather inept swashbuckler, or the pen of a scribe as he prepared to (not) write the unwritten laws of What Was Done and What Was Not Done. The King laughed more, perhaps, than the jokes deserved, because he was so fond of Wyrth. The dwarf was the one person to whom all the formalities and legalities of their situation seemed to mean exactly nothing. To Wyrth he was simply Lathmar, and this business of kings and empires was simply a tiresome game "the grown-ups" (as he often referred to Morlock and Ambrosia) had thought up.

The dwarf disappeared into his wardrobe to change, and as the King's laughter subsided, he thought he heard a gentle rhythmic chanting. Presently Wyrth reappeared, clad in garments of decent gray with his hair and beard brushed.

"Let's walk across and see if the master's up," Wyrth said. They did, but Morlock's apartments, directly across the corridor from Wyrth's, were empty. "He's up in the workshop, I guess. Let's whomp up some food and bring it there; he'll never eat, otherwise."

They clattered down to the kitchens, where Wyrth supervised the cooking of a large breakfast in the dwarvish style, although the cookswearing that to inflict "them hard-bowelled eggs an' nasty sossidge-pies" on the King was treason in the meaning of the act-insisted on adding some honeyed hotcakes and bacon to the platters. They drafted a fat, gentle, eternally complaining baker's helper to carry the food to the tower chamber that served as Morlock's workshop. The lock on the doorpost recognized them, acknowledged them with three separate blinks of the single glass eye in its comically ugly bronze face, and uncurled its strong iron fingers from the door, allowing them entrance.

"Praise the day, Master Morlock," shouted the dwarf, kicking open the door and entering the workshop with a platter in each hand. "Don't junzp- we've brought food."

The Crooked Man was sitting cross-legged on the broad windowsill of one of the many windows in the chamber, showing no signs of jumping. But his eye sockets were bruised with weariness, and his eyes shot with blood-he hadn't been sleeping well lately, Lathmar knew, though he didn't know why.

"Harven, Wyrth. Good morning, Lathmar. There's tea made."

"Hmph. I suppose you think you've done your part, then …while me and Lathmar have been down in the kitchen since before dawn, slaving our fingers to the bone over a hot cook-"

Wyrth raved on as he unstacked plates and served out tea and sausage tarts. The King promptly returned the sausage tarts.

"That's more for us," said Wyrth cheerfully, while still managing to imply that His Majesty had breached the unwritten laws of What Was Done and What Was Not Done.

Morlock silently collected his sausage tarts onto a separate plate and walked over to a nearby worktable. There he put aside some wrappings made of some sort of scaly hide and revealed a nexus of dark branching crystal, aswarm with live flames.

"We're hungry!" they moaned, in sharp bright voices.

"Are they alive?" the King asked, astonished.

"All flames are alive," Wyrth said. "That's why they can be seen during a vision-you should know more about that than I do, Lathmar. But most of them don't live long enough to develop their intelligence. (Which, in your ear, is modest at best. They pun-abominably, I might add.) The nexus extends their lifetime indefinitely."

"Why does he have them?" Lathmar whispered. "Are they pets?"

"I sometimes think so," Wyrth said in his normal speaking voice. "But they're useful, too. A choir of wise old flames is very useful in cultivating gemstones, and some other things."

"Why doesn't he feed them?"

"That's just noise. I gave them several fistfuls of wet charcoal last night, and I expect Morlock did the same this morning-you can see it glowing, there, in the center of the nexus."

Morlock was holding the plate near to the nexus. "I know what you mean about being hungry," he remarked to the flames. "I was just about to enjoy a delicious sausage tart for breakfast."

Silence in the choir. "Sausage tart, eh?" said one voice appraisingly. "What are they made of?"

"Cornmeal. Pig fat. Pig intestine. Pig muscle. Everything but the squeal, as they say. And a selection of secret herbs and spices."

"I hate herbs!" one bright voice screamed. "Spices are okay, I guess."

"And herbs, too," another voice added. "The proper selection of herbs really lends a pleasant savor to pig fat, or all the culinary authorities are snecked."

"No herbs! No herbs! No herbs!"

"They're secret herbs, see? If you had any discretion you wouldn't even acknowledge their existence."

"I'm about to secrete an herb on you, pal. And then …And then …"

"Yes?"

"You won't even acknowledge your own existence."

A shower of sparky derision greeted this inept comeback. A flame war seemed imminent when Morlock intervened by remarking, "Then I take it you have no interest in a sausage tart for breakfast?"

Almost as one, a choir of bright voices told him how wrong he was.

"Then." Morlock dropped a sausage tart into the nexus.

There was a brief moment of silence as the choir dug into the moist sausage tart. Then the nexus began to emit slumbrous smoky groans of delight. As the tart faded into coals and ash and memory, the appreciation became more verbal.

"Mmm. A fine texture in this crust-I can sense each individual granule of cornmeal. If only I liked cornmeal."

"Hey! I remember germinating!"

"I remember how hot it was when the farmer cut our stalks."

"That's nothing. I remember wallowing in the mud. Oink! Oink!"

"I remember the delicious swill."

"I remember-hey, what is this I'm remembering?"

"Get your mind out of the gutter, kid. At least we know our pig lived a happy life."

"Oh, I'm squamous with the herbulent smoke of despair! It really does go well with pig fat, though."

"Everything but the squeal, eh?" one voice giggled. "I'd squeally like some more. Get it? I'd squeally like some more. Did you get that? It's a sort of joke, but I really mean it. Squeally, 1 mean."

Morlock dropped the second sausage tart into the nexus and covered it up with the scaly wrappings while the flames were still groaning in smoky ecstasy.

Returning to the table he remarked, "Finally, a practical use for sausage tarts."

"And you call yourself a Theorn," the apprentice said scornfully to his master.

"Wyrth," said Morlock composedly, as he seated himself, "I ate those things nearly every day for twenty years at my father's table. Now I am master of my own shop and I need not and will not."

"Your father?" the King asked. "I thought you were fostered by the dwarves."

"I meant my foster father," Morlock explained. "We do not consider the relationship temporary, though. I am still harven coruthen-chosen-not-given as kin-in the Deep Halls of the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam. Although I can never come there now." His dark face grew darker.

"Have an egg," Wyrth suggested anxiously to the King. "Or even twoone for each cheek, eh?"

Lathmar accepted an egg, but before biting into it asked, "But it was not the dwarves that exiled you?"

"No," Morlock said flatly. "When I grew to manhood I became a member of the Graith of Guardians, like my father before me-my other father, ruthen coharven-Merlin. And it was they who exiled me, as they earlier did to him."

"Why?"

"He-"

"I meant you."

"Among other things, I killed a fellow Guardian."

"Oh." The King thought about what Ambrosia had said about Morlock's exile. "Why?"

"I had my reasons."

Wyrth was about to say something, but Morlock held out one hand. His eyes were like gray lightning as he glared at his apprentice. Lathmar had never seen him so angry, not since-not since he had asked the question about the Sunkillers, more than two years ago.

Lathmar found that Morlock's anger did not frighten him anymore, nor, obviously, was Wyrth intimidated by it. They held their silence, though.

It was Morlock who was troubled by his anger. He got up from the table and limped over to the window and back. He stood across the table from Wyrth and shouted, "Don't make me into a hero! I'm not a hero! I am a master of the Two Arts-Seeing and Making. It is enough. It is all that I am."

"No," said Wyrth quietly.

"I say it is," Morlock replied, as quietly but more dangerously.

"Rosh takna. Morlocktheorn, when you, as a master of Making, tell me that a seedstone is to be inscripted in a certain way, it is up to me to accept what you have said and strive to understand it. When you, as a man, assert that you have twelve noses, it is up to me-as your apprentice, your harven- kin, and your friend-to correct that error. No one, not even you, can be merely the sum of their abilities. I don't know why you should be ashamed of your very occasional heroisms. It was no coward, at any rate, who slew the Red Knight at Gravesend Field."

"No one slew the Red Knight. There never was such a person. Your example is especially inapt. It was the maker who recognized the presence of a golem on Gravesend Field and took steps to sever its name-scroll."

"I never knew the life of pure reason could be so adventurous! I suppose our people, the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam, awarded you the name `Dragonkiller' because you framed some especially trenchant syllogism? The slaying of Saijok Mahr-that, I suppose, was some deplorable accident, perhaps a fall from a height?"

"That was different," Morlock said sharply. "The dragons came against us. It was life or death, not only for the dwarves, but for all the peoples of the north."

"I don't know what you mean by `different.' I'm not accusing you of being some folly-driven thrillseeker. Nor am I accusing you of being perfect-Sustainer Almighty, I know better than that. It was me, remember, who dragged you out of that tavern in Venche, weeping and vomiting. It was me who knocked you cold rather than listen to you whine for another drink. It was me you nearly strangled the next morning, trying to force your way past me to get one. If I say that you are a bad-tempered evil old childish bastard of an egomaniac-and you are-it's because I have occasion to know it. If I say that, occasionally, you show admirable qualities that have nothing to do with your superb technical skills, I have the same authority."

"I'm not evil," Morlock disputed, "nor admirable. Harven, shall we end this quarrel?"

"Why not? I'm not responsible for what you are. You're not responsible for what I think about it."

"Hmph. I, however, am responsible for what you are. At least as regards your superb technical skills."

"Ur. This sounds bad. I suppose that seedstone didn't bloom properly."

"No. There were too many continuous lines in the matrix, I think. In the time before the council meeting, I'm going to set you a problem in spatial representation of motion in a time continuum. Lathmar, you may listen in, if you wish."

Lathmar didn't. Grabbing a last egg, he waved good-bye to the makers and wandered off to find his Grandmother.

Karn was waiting anxiously outside the King's apartments when Lathmar passed by. Lathmar had asked Ambrosia to appoint Karn as his personal guard within Ambrose. He couldn't help being fond of Karn (for Lorn's sake, perhaps), although he had reason to suppose Karn wasn't very reliable. But then, it wasn't very likely to be dangerous in Ambrose.

"Your Majesty!" Karn cried, coming to attention.

"At ease, Karn," His Majesty said.

"I was worried when I didn't find you in, Your Majesty," Karn said earnestly.

"I was up in Morlock's tower," Lathmar replied. "You should get up earlier, Karn."

"I woke before dawn, Your Majesty. But I had to have breakfast."

"Well, I've had mine. Have you seen my Grandmother this morning?"

"I have not seen Her Ferocity this morning, Your Majesty," Karn said solemnly. He did not share, at least apparently, Lorn's distaste for the Ambrosii, and he was always making up new titles of honor for the regent (safely out of her earshot, of course). Lathmar's favorite, coined after an especially and unnecessarily (it seemed to the King) fractious meeting of the Regency Council, was "Her Bickeritudinery."

"Let's go track her down, then."

They found the Regent, Ambrosia Viviana, inspecting the new bridge from Ambrose to the City Gate.

The last two years had been busy indeed. The Protector's forces had instantly put Ambrose under siege. At first they were commanded (publicly, at least) by Vost. But soon the uneasy Protector's Men were soothed by the sight of Urdhven himself (or itself-the King could no longer think of his uncle as a human being). He was, Genjandro reported through crow-post, sporting new scars on his neck and wrist. These, it was given out, had been acquired in the fight with the dragon. This satisfied some of the Protector's Men; others, who knew or had heard a truer version of the fight in the Great Market, quietly deserted.

At first, the Protector's forces had attempted to keep Ambrose entirely under siege. But this soon proved impossible. Ambrose was designed to be siege-proof: even if all three outer gates were taken (as they were, in the first success of the Protector's counterattack), the bridges could be broken (as they were-the King shuddered when he remembered the breaking of the City Gate bridge) and traffic could pass into and out of Ambrose by the river Tilion. It would take a large force indeed to cover that great river on both banks for its entire navigable length.

Naval assault was the only solution, and Urdhven soon tried it, sending tall ships (mounted with siege towers and crammed with men) up the river Tilion from the harbor. These went down in flames before Morlock's Siegebreaker, a catapult that hurled burning phlogiston-imbued stones for an almost incredible distance. The same device could have reduced half the imperial city to smoking rubble, but did not-a fact which was widely commented on in Ontil, according to messages they received from Genjandro.

The Protector soon had a manpower problem. His recruitment could not keep up with his desertions (Protector's Men had always been opportunists, and following the Protector was no longer so obviously a path to opportunity), and he needed more men than ever. Eventually, he pulled his men out of the Thorngate and the Lonegate, maintaining a garrison only at the City Gate.

The bridges from Ambrose to the Lonegate and the Thorngate were rebuilt by the King's forces, and each were garrisoned by hundreds of the new Royal Legionaries. The Ambrosian forces, at any rate, had no manpower problem-or rather, theirs was the reverse of the Protector's. They could not welcome into Ambrose everyone who wished to defect from the Protectorthere simply was not enough food, water, or space. Members of the old City Legion were generally welcomed (if someone already in the Royal Legion would vouch for them); Protector's Men were pardoned of treason, but rejected from the King's service. Ordinary people of the city or country were told to return to their homes, obey the laws, and await the King's justice.

Among each group of citizens turned away were a few well-trusted former Legionaries or castle servants who went into the city as spies. Genjandro was their chief, and he now led a network of spies that encompassed the city.

"Urdhven can't win, now," Ambrosia said flatly in the Regency Council, the day after the last naval attack was repulsed. "It's just a question of letting him and everyone else know that."

From that moment on her priority had been the rebuilding of the East Bridge and the recovery of the City Gate of Ambrose. Tactically, this was a triviality, as she explained to Lathmar-even a waste of resources. Strategically and politically, though, it was vital. As long as the Protector's Men held the City Gate, Urdhven could pretend to the city that he held the Ambrosians in check. If the Royal Legion held the City Gate and could sally out of it when they chose, the Protector's position would appear as precarious as it was in fact.

But the work had been slow. The bridge had to be built of dephlogistonated wood, which was iron-hard and almost unworkable, if light and strong. The workmen went out in full armor, to protect them from the arrows of the Protector's Men holding the City Gate, and still there were casualties. There was a company of royal bowmen stationed at the guardhouse of the inner gate, and they returned fire against the Protector's Men whenever they appeared, so that the workmen labored among frequent showers of missile weapons, friendly and hostile. Unfortunately the iron of a friendly arrowhead, if misaimed, penetrated quite as deeply as a hostile one (if not deeper, as these had been forged under the supervision of Morlock and Wyrth).

Now the bridge was done at last, though. It had been finished only yesterday afternoon, and already the Protector had sent two attacks along it. On the first attack, Ambrosia waited until the bridge was crowded with Protector's Men and then worked the release that split the bridge in two up the middle, dumping the fully armed soldiers into the river, where most of them drowned. The second attack came a few hours later, after dark-more lightly armed troops, creeping along the surface of the bridge like mountaineers. They had crept up to the center of the bridge, turned left, and crept off the side, drawn by illusions projected into their minds by Morlock and Lathmar.

Ambrosia was eyeing the bridge with great satisfaction from the guardhouse of the inner gate when she heard Lathmar's voice behind her.

"Good morning, Your Majesty," she said without turning. "You really shouldn't be here without armor, you know."

"I promise to run like a rabbit at the first bowshot," the King said, and the Royal Legionaries on the post laughed deferentially. Ambrosia smiled, too, Lathmar could see-presumably because she knew he had spoken with complete honesty.

"It's an hour or so until the Regency Council. Did you have something to discuss with me, Majesty?"

"Yes: two things." The King caught himself before he said "madam." She had become more unapproachable and grandmotherly than ever upon taking over the command of Ambrose, but she had taught him, on pain of her severe displeasure, that he must not address her as his superior. As regent, she wielded his legal power, but she was still his servant, as much as the kitchen staff. That was the theory by which she held her power, and she insisted that he abide by it (at least in his manner of speech).

"Let's walk the walls then," she suggested. They climbed the many stairs leading to the top of Ambrose's high walls; when they finally reached the open air Ambrosia gave her guard and Karn a single gray glare; they retreated out of earshot as she and Lathmar walked the heights.

It was a cold, pale blue day in early spring. The King, who wasn't dressed for the outdoors, soon felt his teeth begin to chatter; Ambrosia took no notice of the cold, but listened intently to him while she eyed the city below.

"The first thing, Grandmother, is Kedlidor."

"No."

"You haven't heard me."

"I've heard him. He wants to be let off from the command of the Royal Legion. He asked me and I told him no. Now he's asked you to ask me, and I still say no."

"Why?"

"For one thing, he's too good at the job. I know how he hates it, Lathmar. But he has done it superbly, from that first day when he took and held the inner Lonegate and Thorngate. He's completely ignorant of military matters, I grant you, but he has an eye for picking the right subordinate. Plus, he's excellent at training the men-a real fiend for drill. You were inspired when you put him in command of that Kitchen Crusade."

"Your decision is final, then?"

"It usually is. You should resist being used in this way, Lathmar-as if you were my chamberlain who could wheedle me into changing my mind. You're the sovereign-act like it."

"Support you without question, is that it?"

"Yes, effectively. But make it seem as if it was your idea all along-as if he should go through me to try to change your decision."

The King said nothing about this. Ambrosia glanced at him, smiled, and said, "What else was there?"

"Morlock says you have asked him to stop training me as a seer."

"Yes."

"I want you to tell him you've changed your mind."

"I haven't."

"I want you to."

"The Sight is a dangerous skill for a ruler, Lathmar. To see beneath the surface of things can sometimes be a great advantage, yes, but so much of what we do as rulers involves the surface of things. We shouldn't grow too detached from it. Philosophers rarely make good kings, no matter what the philosophers claim. Besides, it is physically dangerous. Have you kept an eye on Morlock recently?"

"Yes."

"Then you know how ill he is. He has been sending his mind out of his body so frequently these past few months that their connection has grown tenuous."

"He says there is a danger we aren't facing-"

"Yes, I know: the Protector's Shadow, Urdhven's magical patron. But you have to take problems one at a time, and if Morlock can't even locate this adept in his visions, he must be a very remote danger indeed."

"Or very well protected."

Ambrosia made a noise in her throat.

"Grandmother, you saw yesterday how useful the Sight can be to us in our struggle. The more I know, the more I can assist Morlock."

"That's the short term. We won't be cooped up in Ambrose forever."

"What is useful here and now will be useful in other places and times."

Ambrosia smiled and said, "Have you talked to Morlock about this?"

"Yes. He told me he would think about it."

"Then that is your answer. If Morlock decides to teach you in spite of my request, there is nothing I can do about it. If he decides not to teach you, the same applies. My powers as regent don't cover control of Morlock's mind. Don't mention this to him, however-I'm hoping against hope that he isn't aware of it."

The King was relieved to hear that there was at least one thing in Ambrose over which she didn't claim direct control. But he didn't say as much.

The Regency Council convened a short while later. Ambrosia was there as regent, of course, and the King (who didn't need to be there, but insisted on knowing what was being done in his name). Morlock and Wyrth were each councillors in their own right, as was Kedlidor-not as Rite-Master, but as head of the Royal Legion.

"As to the City Gate," Ambrosia was saying, "I think it is high time that we took it. But the time has come, indeed, to do more than that-perhaps make a sortie in force against Urdhven's men in the city."

Kedlidor was listening solemnly, his face growing longer by the minute. He clearly dreaded the thought of leading his soldiers in house-to-house combat. The King was staring idly out a window, wondering when spring would appear outside the calendar. Wyrth was absentmindedly folding threedimensional representations of four-dimensional figures as he listened intently to Ambrosia. Morlock sat like a living shadow opposite her, speaking one word to her forty, as now.

"Why?"

"Urdhven has been sounding out the field marshals of the various domains, hoping to strike up an alliance that will break the stalemate against us. He can't have had much luck, or his ally would be here."

"He should have called for help before he needed it," Morlock remarked dryly. "No one wants to help someone who needs help."

"Cynicism makes you talkative, brother. I knew something must. But you see, don't you, that now is the time to move on Urdhven. If he has begun to understand that he can't break the stalemate, now is the time to instill in him the fear that we can."

"That there is a stalemate at all is our victory," Wyrth remarked. "But in the long run it may be in the Protector's favor. I agree that an offensive, even a small one, should be our next concern. Urdhven knows now he cannot take Ambrose back by force or by treachery."

There were thirty bloody months of experience behind those words; they were all silent for a few moments, remembering.

"Still," Morlock said, breaking the silence, "we cannot take the city. And Urdhven must know this."

"`No,' to both of your ideas, Morlock," Ambrosia said eagerly. "I begin to see a way we could take the city by a well-timed assault on a gate held by our agents-in-place, along with a civil rebellion led by Genjandro's people inside the city. It would take time to prepare, but we're able to do it if we can afford the time. We may not be able to afford the time; the empire is dividing up into armed duchies, and if it is ever to be united again it must be soon. But Urdhven may not be aware of this. Further-let me finish, please-Urdhven can no longer be sure what we can or cannot do. We have successfully trespassed on his expectations too many times. That uncertainty will eat at him, and it is up to us to ensure that it takes big bites."

"To what end?" Morlock asked.

"A treaty, of course. We must kill him or treat with him, and just now he is out of our reach, even if we could figure out how to negate his magical protections. And he has the same dilemma regarding us. Sooner or later we must sit down at a table and cut a deal."

"Hmph."

"Don't grunt at me. Of course we hate him-"

"I don't hate him. But I could never trust him."

"Well, let me tell you, brother, I hate him. I hate him. I hate that mag- gotty little poisoner of his. I hate his private army that's poisoning the loyalty of the empire's troops. I hate his stupid face. I hate everything about him. One of my fondest memories is smashing his nose with my forehead when he came to gloat over me, after his thugs had broken my wrists. Ha! That startled him. I expect he had his eyes painted like a trollop's on the day of my trial, for I know I heard the bridge of his nose crack."

"And therefore," Wyrth prodded gently, "you will treat with the man?"

"Therefore. You don't sign peace treaties with your friends, Wyrth; you sign them with your enemies. And you don't do it because you trust each other, Morlock, but because an arrangement is the best way out of an intolerable situation. The art of fashioning a treaty is finding grounds for mutual advantage to the two parties. That's trust, if you want it: both sides will keep the agreement because it is in their interest to do so."

"Hmph."

"You may grunt like a skeptical pig, Morlock, but stranger things have happened. It's not as if I were telling you a horse had dropped from the sky."

Morlock's face lit up with renewed interest. "Are you telling me?"

Ambrosia was taken aback by his reaction. "Uh-that is, er, why do you ask?"

"We'll put them in a carnival act-the Grunting Ambrosii," Wyrth whispered, quite audibly, to the King.

"I had a dream you told me that a horse had dropped out of the sky," Morlock explained to his sister.

She looked at him narrowly. "I can't say one did. But there is a report that one did, landing in a tree, no less."

"Is it still there?"

"Morlock, haven't you been listening? I don't know that it was ever there. But if it ever was, no doubt it still is. How would a horse get down from a tree?"

"With help. And where was this?"

"The report came from Nalac, a village not far from the Gap of Lone."

"I know it. The tavern there was where your soldiers arrested me, long ago."

Ambrosia laughed. "Was that the place? End of the Kaenish War, wasn't it? If-Where the hell do you think you are going?" she demanded, for Morlock had stood and was walking to the door of the council chamber.

"Nalac," Morlock replied, pausing.

"You are not," Ambrosia stormed at him. "And what for?"

"He's thinking it's Velox, of course," Wyrth suggested. "And so it might be, though I can't see how."

The King found himself meeting his Grandmother's astonished gray eyes. Then he said, "Of course! The flying horse! Was his name Velox?"

Ambrosia's face took on a distant remembering expression. "But that was nearly three years ago…."

Morlock shrugged his wry shoulders. "Flying horses are not everyday occurrences. I'll go to see."

"Morlock, this is no joke. I need you here. We'll take the City Gate within a day or two, and then make our sortie into the city. Shortly thereafter we'll begin negotiations with Urdhven, if it looks like we can't kill him."

"I'm not a soldier nor an ambassador. Wyrth can build you infernal devices as you need them. I'll be back in two calls* or less."

"I won't have you bouncing around the countryside for Urdhven to pluck like a ripe peach!" Ambrosia shouted. "If the Protector's Men take you, we'll have to bargain our left elbows away to get you back! And I won't do it! I'll let you rot this time, you worthless, bad-tempered bastard!"

"Ripe peaches don't bounce," Morlock observed from the doorway. "I'll see you soon, my friends."

"Good fortune, Morlocktheorn," Wyrth called after him. "You mustn't worry about him, Lady Ambrosia-he'd have taken me if he'd thought it was at all dangerous."

"So what if it is?" snapped Ambrosia, wiping her eyes. "I won't miss him any more than I miss my period. Tomorrow we move to retake the City Gate. Wyrth-what have you got that will help?"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN REUNIONS

The leaves of the tree clenched like fists, growing inward. The branches hunched like shoulders, shrinking into the trunk, growing more slender with each moment. The bark, too, grew less dark, less dense; the moss on its side melted away like green snow in the spring sunlight. The sphere of crystal in Morlock's hands sang with a tone only he could hear, grew warm with a heat only he could feel, glowed with a light only he could see.

"A moment," he called to the black horse lodged in the branches. "A moment more."

The ungrowing tree had descended to saplinghood, bent almost double with the weight of the horse upon it. When the horse's hooves reached the ground, Morlock said (in the Westhold dialect all horses seemed to understand), "Now: stand." The horse's hooves firm on the ground, he stood still. His blood stained the pale green-gold leaves of the tree beneath him.

Morlock ceased the ungrowing of the tree until he was sure that the horse's entrails, lacking the support of the tree, would not gush onto the earth. When he saw that they would not, he wondered why not. In fact-

"Why aren't you dead?" he demanded of the horse, who merely looked at him with silvery patient eyes and said nothing.

It would be worth knowing the answer to his question, Morlock reflected, but unless the horse actually did speak he doubted he would ever learn it. Passing by the fact that Morlock had last seen this horse (if it was this horse) hurtling into the sky years ago, he had (according to the evidence) fallen out of the sky among the branches of this tree, and he had been there (according to the reports) something like a month. The horse was not unscathed by these unusual adventures, but neither was he dead from impalement, hunger, or thirst.

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 elsesome 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 youngishlooking 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, " Prenie, quidquid erit, dunz, quod fuit ante, refornzet!"*

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, tooI'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."

Merlin was a little dismayed. He was prepared to concede-to himself, if never to Morlock-that his son was the superior maker. But in the use of power, in cunning and trickery, Merlin was unprepared to acknowledge his son as master, or even a serious rival.

"Ambrosia's influence, possibly," the wizard reflected. "She was always cleverer than he. And he was only finding an opportunity for running away. If his cleverness serves his cowardice, it's no danger to me or my plans. Still …it's a bad sign. I'll have to do something about Morlock."

Merlin abstractedly wandered back to the blanket and, warming his feet in Morlock's abandoned cloak, he speculated on ways he might destroy him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR

The castle was not the same without Morlock, or so it seemed to Lathmar. It reminded him of how the castle had felt whenever his parents left-colder, somehow, and not nearly as safe. Nor could he dismiss this feeling as a childish fantasy: the last time his parents had left the castle they had come back in coffins, drowned in a shipwreck on the Inner Sea (so Urdhven claimed).

If the others felt the same they didn't show it. Ambrosia went ahead with her plans to retake the City Gate. This succeeded with such remarkable ease that Ambrosia speculated the Protector's Men had orders to retreat if attacked-or that they were simply afraid to stand against the royal forces, backed by Ambrosian magic. Either way it was a good sign, she said, and Wyrth and Kedlidor agreed.

The sortie into the city also had been a great success. The detachment of Protector's Men outside the City Gate had been driven halfway to the Great Market. The royal troops, led by Ambrosia in person, had taken advantage of some especially enthusiastic retreating by the Protector's Men to sneak back to the City Gate unobserved by their enemies.

"They've lost, and they know it," said Ambrosia in the next Regency Council. "It's only a matter of time, now."

"If that's true," Wyrth replied, "why not press for total victory? Why negotiate?"

"I'm tempted," Ambrosia admitted. "But time is a problem. We have to look past Urdhven to the other regional commanders. If we take too long to dispose of him, they may try to swing things their own way-perhaps carve off their regions as independent kingdoms, perhaps make a straight grab at Ontil for imperial power. If we can make Urdhven knuckle under, the regional commanders will probably follow. If not, the sooner we get at them the better. What's wrong with your face?"

The remark was addressed to her sovereign, Lathmar VII, who was staring at her with wide eyes.

"Nothing," he managed to say, without stammering.

Her expression softened. "You're thinking of your parents. I'm still not convinced that Urdhven murdered them, but I can sympathize with you to some extent."

"`To some extent,' madam?" asked Wyrth, his voice unusually harsh.

"I don't know if you ever met my father, Wyrth, but I would have paid someone to murder him. I begged Morlock to do it, once, but he wouldn't-"

"Madam."

"I'm sorry to shock you, Wyrth. I assure you Morlock would hear nothing of the idea. Of course, at the time he didn't know Merlin very well. In any case, Lathmar, we'll work the treaty this way: no amnesty will cover the murder of the late Emperor and his consort. So if, in due time, we find proof that Urdhven killed them, we can still charge him with treason and execute him."

"If he can be executed," Lathmar said, thinking of the night they took Ambrose.

"He can be. What's alive can be killed. In fact, if I understand what you and Morlock told me about Urdhven's condition, he is vulnerable in a rather obvious way. He may even be aware of this, since he has rather fastidiously avoided appearing before Ambrose since that fateful night. So there it is: I promise you that your parents' bodies will not be swept under the rug by any treaty. Does that satisfy you?"

"Thank you, yes," Lathmar answered politely. But the truth is that he hadn't been thinking about his parents at all. He had been thinking that his family was somewhat larger than he had realized.

It came about like this. He had been walking the night before past the ministerial apartments, wondering if he should knock on Wyrth's door and wishing there were some point in knocking on Morlock's. But then it seemed to him that he heard someone moving about in Morlock's apartments. He had stopped at the door and, hesitantly, rapped on it.

The door was opened by a fair-haired woman whose face he didn't know, but who was nonetheless somehow familiar.

"Good evening, Your Majesty," she said politely. "I'm sorry, but Morlock hasn't yet returned."

"Good evening to you, ma'am," Lathmar said. "May I ask …?" But as he met her fearless blue eyes, he could think of not one question to ask her.

"Won't you come in?" the strange woman offered, and stood aside.

Lathmar entered without hesitation. Then, as she closed the door behind him, he wondered if he should have hesitated. No one knew where he was, and he knew nothing about this woman-including how she had gotten into Morlock's rooms, which were secured by a lock designed by Morlock himself.

But as she turned to face him, something struck him about the way she was standing …something about her shoulders….

"Your pardon, ma'am," he said, "but are we somehow related?"

"Very astute, Lathmar," she said approvingly. "I am by way of being your great-great-great-and-so-on-great aunt. My name is Spes."

"Spes. Hm."

"If you'd rather, you can call me Hope-that's what Spes means, in my mother's language."

"Hope. Yes, I think I will, if it's all the same to you, ma'am. What was your mother's language, if I may ask, madam?"

"Latin-she was a lady of Britain, Nimue Viviana."

Lathmar nodded slowly. "Oh? I, uh, I was not, uh, aware that Morlock and Ambrosia had a, a-"

"`Sister,' is the technical term in genealogy, I believe," said Hope, with something like the authentic Ambrosian asperity. Then she softened it with a smile. "No, they wouldn't have told you, I expect. Both of them think that I'm long dead, and I decided it was best to let them think so. You should feel free to talk about me to Morlock, but I don't think you should mention me to Ambrosia."

"No?"

"No. She's very jealous, you know, and she never cared for me at all."

"Ah. So you live here in hiding?"

"Yes."

"Then, when we were in the secret passages, you were there too?"

"Yes, but not in the way you mean, Lathmar. I know that the passages grew very tiresome for you, and the time you were in them seemed very long indeed. But my prison is even older than they are-older than Ambrose."

"I don't understand. How did you come here, if you didn't use one of the passages?"

"I didn't come here. Ambrosia did. She often does. When Morlock is here, she talks with him; when he's not, she takes comfort from being among his things, such as they are."

A sudden dreadful thought occurred to Lathmar, and he looked intently in Hope's face. She laughed in his.

"You're thinking," she said, "is this Ambrosia gone mad-or possessed by some spirit, perhaps of a long-dead sister?"

It had been exactly what he had thought. But he could see that her face, though like Ambrosia's, was not the same. Among other things, her eyes were blue rather than gray, and she had almost no wrinkles. She was shorter and stockier than Ambrosia, and seemed a much younger woman physically. But there was a quiet wisdom in her eyes.

"Are you a ghost?" he asked her frankly.

"No," she said as frankly.

"But you said that Ambrosia thought you dead, and you said that you came here with her-"

"I didn't actually, but that is true, in a way."

"How can that be?"

"Ambrosia and I live in the same body," Hope said matter-of-factly. "She came here to seek comfort and fell asleep in Morlock's chair over yonder. I felt the need to walk around a bit and speak in my own voice."

Lathmar drew back, appalled.

"You should be honored, Your Majesty," Hope said wryly. "You're the first person I've spoken with in nearly four hundred years. Your ancestor Uthar the Great hadn't been born then."

"I'm not-That is-I was just thinking how strange my family is."

"Everybody thinks that. But it's true you have more cause than most."

"Can you see and hear when …when-"

"When I am submerged? I didn't used to. But Ambrosia isn't as strong as she was, and often I can see and hear the outer world when she is conscious. That's how I knew you. And I can walk through her memories, sometimes. When none of this is possible I think and wait."

"Wait for what?"

"For Ambrosia to grow still older, I'm afraid. When she grows somewhat weaker, we will have to change places, and she will be largely quiescent while I am the active twin."

Lathmar said nothing to this. He wasn't sure whether it was a good thing or not.

"I suppose it's hard for you to imagine your Grandmother, as you call her, growing weak?" Hope said gently.

"Yes," said the King truthfully. "She's always been the strongest person I knew. Not just physically."

"I understand. But she's not as strong as she was. Soon, as I count time, she will not be as strong as she is. This will be a hard time for her: you will have to grow strong, Lathmar."

Lathmar nodded solemnly. "So that she can pass on the imperial power."

Hope laughed and shook her head. "Do you really know her as little as that, after having lived with her your whole life? She won't pass it on, Lathmar. You'll have to take it from her, before she grows too weak to wield it."

Lathmar was silent for a few moments, then said, "That will be difficult. Because I don't want it."

"I think you do, Lathmar."

"Everyone seems to think that I do, or I should. But I don't."

"Not everyone knows you the way I do," Hope said. "Our situations are oddly alike. What we most want is freedom-including freedom from someone we both love, Ambrosia. In your rather peculiar situation, that requires power of imperial scope: so that no one can govern you as Ambrosia has, or harm you as the Protector has."

Lathmar was not convinced, but what she had said troubled him. "You've given me a lot to think about."

"Well, thinking and holding back your words are two things you've always been good at," Hope observed. "You'll find them useful skills as a leader, though maybe not the most useful of all." She sat down abruptly in the chair and put her hand to her face.

"What's wrong?" Lathmar asked.

"I'm getting sleepy. That means Ambrosia is waking up. Would you please get me pen and ink? And paper-paper, too, of course."

Lathmar rushed over to a desk and brought back writing supplies. Hope held the paper in her lap, dipped the pen in the inkwell that Lathmar held, and scrawled a few words. Her eyes fell shut for a moment, then opened abruptly. "Good-bye, Lathmar," she said, smiling sleepily. "It's been so nice talking with you. Perhaps …again. Sometime." Her eyes shut and she lay back in the chair. The pen fell from her fingers on the floor.

Her body grew longer and leaner. Her hair faded to iron gray, darkened by rusty streaks of red. The features of her face became longer, sharper, thinner. Her skin was seamed with a network of fine wrinkles.

Ambrosia opened her eyes (gray, not blue) and yawned.

She looked around and caught the King's eye. "Lathmar! What are you doing here?"

"I heard someone inside," Lathmar said truthfully, "and I thought I'd see who it was."

"I must have been snoring. Can't remember what I came in here for."

Her hands moved in her lap, and the sheet Hope had written on rustled slightly. Lathmar thought Ambrosia was about to look down at it.

"Can we poke around a bit?" Lathmar said with feigned eagerness. "I've never been in Morlock's quarters when he wasn't here."

"Certainly not," snapped Ambrosia, and stood. The paper fell unregarded out of her lap. "Come along." She went to the door.

The King stooped and grabbed the sheet of paper. "What's that?" asked Ambrosia, as he joined her at the door.

"A message for Morlock," the King said. "I thought I'd give it to Wyrth to put up in the workshop."

"Have him put it by the choir of flames," Ambrosia suggested as she locked the door. "He thinks more of them than he does of you or me," she added jealously.

Mulling all this over, the King sat through the rest of the council session without saying a word or noticing what the others said. But as they adjourned, it appeared that they had agreed to send a messenger to Urdhven to propose terms.

"We might have you crowned by summer," Ambrosia remarked, slapping him on the shoulder as she departed.

Lathmar was less than thrilled. But he thought of what Hope had said, about power and freedom, and he wasn't sure. He still wasn't sure when he went to sleep that night.

But when he awoke the next morning, just after dawn, he was sure something was wrong. His intuition was ringing like a bell. He threw on some clothes, grabbed a sword from his weapons closet, and pulled open his door.

Wyrth was standing in the hallway, a troubled smile half-hidden in his beard. "Say, maybe there is something to that Sight business. Do you know what's up?"

"Just that something's wrong."

"There seem to be Protector's Men loose in the castle. I saw them in a courtyard-have no idea how they entered. But we have to get you to a safe place."

"Let's find Ambrosia."

"First things first. We'll get you safe-"

"Wyrth, Ambrosia's safety is first. Without her, we don't have a chance and you know it."

Wyrth twisted a knot in his beard. "I never did understand this politics stuff," he admitted.

"Besides: `blood has no price."'

"She'd deny that," Wyrth said, grinning now. "But then, we're us, not her. Let's go."

They were lucky with their first try: Ambrosia had just risen, and was ringing repeatedly for a hallway servant who didn't appear. When Wyrth and Lathmar explained what was happening, she turned to the dwarf and hissed, "And you brought hint through open corridors."

"Royal orders, Lady Ambrosia," said Wyrth, with a straight face.

"You sop, he doesn't have any authority to give orders. I'm the regent."

"Ah, well, madam, I'm afraid I never understood the technicalities of your laws very well. The salient issue, though, seems to be-"

"Yes, yes-what do we do now? First we put the King in the hidden passages. Then you and I, Wyrth, will nose about and see what has happened to the royal soldiery. There's something funny about this."

"Where's the nearest entrance to the passages?"

"Not near here. The bolt-holes are for royal persons, not ministers." She thought for a moment. "Come," she said at last.

They ran like thieves through the empty corridors until they reached the corridor above the audience hall. "There's one in here," Ambrosia muttered, and opened a chamber door.

She froze.

"That's right, Lady Ambrosia-come in," said Steng's voice.

Surprisingly, she did, drawing the King with her. Wyrth followed.

There was a company of Protector's Men in the room. Four of them were holding a man against the far wall of the room, while Steng held a knife to his throat.

"Come in, come in," cried Steng genially. "I suppose you were wondering where your brother had gotten to. Well, here he is!" And he took the knife and slashed Morlock's face.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN ENEMIES IN AMBROSE

Morlock's jaws clenched, but as far as the King could see, he hardly reacted otherwise. Steng flourished the bloodstained knife (blood spattered his ropy pale fingers also) and then put the edge against Morlock's throat.

"You see, Lady Ambrosia, you must make a choice," the detestable poisoner was saying. "You must choose between your distant descendant, whose presence lends a fictive legitimacy to your rebellion, or your brother, whose skills are necessary if that rebellion is to succeed. The shadow or the substance, Lady."

Ambrosia laughed. "Steng, you must think me as much a fool as yourself."

"Exactly as much, my lady-that is: none at all."

"If your offer was a real offer, you would be giving up what you consider substance (in the overrated talents of my brother) for what you call shadowthe fiction of legal status."

"Why not?" Steng's wide rubbery lips bent in a grin. "Why not? Your brother is no use to us. He will never serve our purposes. The real substance, the military power of the empire, is ours already, and I frankly concede that we consider Morlock as nothing against it. All that we lack is some shadow of legitimacy. It is a trivial thing, but if we can buy it with the nothing of your brother's life, why should we not?"

"The event will answer you," Ambrosia said, with real grimness. "You were, I repeat, a fool to enter here, Steng. When you, and that traitor who employs you-"

"The Royal Protector, madam."

"Regicide and attempted regicide are treason for every subject. This detail is no doubt inessential to a poisoner's education, but I assure you it is so; I wrote it into the code myself, about the same time as Ambrose's first foundations were being laid. When that traitor and coward whose spittle you lick (yes, I do refer to the Lord Protector) held this castle with all his military power, I managed to take it from him. You won't escape it if you harm my brother."

Steng's smile became one-sided and derisive. "Yet I do expect to escape, no matter what I have to do here. By the same route I entered."

That sank in, the King could tell as he shifted his gaze to his Grandmother.

How had Steng and a squad of armed Protector's Men entered Ambrose? The King was at a loss, and he supposed Ambrosia and Wyrth were as well.

Lathmar had a sinking feeling that Steng's argument was perfectly tailored to his Grandmother's instincts, as a ruler and as a sister. He decided he wouldn't be surprised if he ended this day in the Protector's power once more-

Morlock stepped through the open door behind them.

His sister glared at him. "You took your time getting back."

He shrugged his crooked shoulders. "I had some trouble at Lonegate." His eyes narrowed as he saw the Morlock against the far wall with Steng's bloody knife at its throat. "What is that?" he asked. "A joke?"

"A poor one," Ambrosia agreed.

Irritation twisted Steng's unlovely features as he took his knife from the Morlock-thing's throat. It looked at him suspiciously, then glanced at Ambrosia, but did not otherwise move.

"A joke that fooled you properly, Lady Ambrosia."

"Only a fool would think so. The thing does not act like Morlock. It hasn't grunted once in my hearing, at any rate. Further, you have had its blood on your skin for some time now without any evidence of pain or harm. But the blood of Ambrose burns, Steng-as you have cause to remember. I let you live then, but I see no reason to do so now."

The memory was clear on Steng's face. "Then we will take the King-"

"Try it!" shouted Ambrosia exultantly, and brandished her sword. "Wyrth-get Lathmar out of here. Find some royal troops."

"My lady, with respect-"

"Wyrtheorn," said Morlock flatly, "take the King and go."

Wyrth turned to Lathmar, who said, "No, I want to stay." He was fascinated by the change that had come over his Grandmother when Morlock entered. Wyrth did not bother to listen to the King's protests, but knocked the sword out of his hand, picked him up, slung him over his shoulder, and darted for the door behind Morlock.

Morlock moved forward to stand beside Ambrosia, and she clapped her right hand on his higher shoulder. "It will be like that day above the Kirach Kund-eh?"

"Yes," Morlock said flatly. Clearly Ambrosia had referred to some specific tactic, and was not just engaging in nostalgic banter. The King caught a glimpse of the two crooked figures, dark against a bright thicket of advancing swords, and then Wyrth's foot kicked the door shut behind them, narrowly missing the King's nose.

The dwarf's short legs blurred as he dashed up the corridor. Lathmar knew he was headed for the guard station at the base of the next tower. "Wyrth!" he said. "Put me down! It will look better to the soldiers."

The dwarf complied without comment, and they ran up the hallway side by side. When they reached the guard station its hall door was closed, against all usage. Grimly Wyrth kicked it, shouting, "Awake! Awake! Intruders in the castle!"

The door opened. They saw that no one inside was asleep. There were, perhaps, a dozen armed men within, three times the complement for this station. Word of the breach had spread, clearly, and the soldiers were debating their best course. In their midst was Karn, recently promoted to the rank of secutor.

"Secutor," said Wyrth, addressing Karn as the senior soldier present, "a squad of Protector's Men-"

"We know," said Karn, interrupting. "I'm glad to see the King is safe."

Wyrth stared at the men in the room. "You know?" he demanded. "Did you know that this squad has the regent and Morlock pinned down in a chamber up the hall?"

The King was sorry to see the weakness he had suspected in Karn's character rise to the surface. The secutor licked his lips and said, "If-"

"Karn!" Lathmar interrupted. "Need is present. Bring your men at once!"

Karn's eyes shifted to avoid the King, and he said, "It may be better if-"

There was a clatter of armor and the thunder of booted feet in the hallway outside. Wyrth calmly knocked a soldier down, took his sword, and stood between the open door and the King.

These days Lathmar was considerably taller than Wyrth. Over the dwarf's head he saw the squad of Protector's Men stumbling down the hallway, Steng in the lead.

A moment later he saw their pursuers: two dark-cloaked, crooked figures, their eyes cold, their swords red with blood. One glimpse and they were gone, silently running down their quarry like wolves hunting deer.

"Those two old fools will get themselves killed," Wyrth remarked in a level tone, not as if he were discussing anything important. He turned to address the soldiers. "Secutor Karn, I trust you will have no qualms against intervening now? Excellent. A remarkable display of nerve."

Wyrth, the King, and the Royal Legionaries charged down the hallway after the Ambrosii. The King soon fell behind, and Karn paced him.

"Get up with Morlock and Ambrosia, Secutor," the King commanded irritably.

"Your Majesty, with respect-"

Lathmar glared at him. Karn turned away and trotted to the head of the Royal Legionaries, just behind Morlock and Ambrosia. They passed by a castle servant, fallen in the hallway. One of the soldiers stopped to attend to him.

"Don't bother," Morlock called back. "He's dead."

The soldier rejoined his troop. But Lathmar had already fallen behind, and anyway needed a rest. He knelt down by the servant, and found that he was still breathing.

Still, Lathmar knew almost instantly what Morlock had meant. The servant's eyes were open, but seemed to see nothing. There was a terrible sense of vacancy. The King wondered what he would see here if he were in the rapture of vision. He shut the servant's eyes, wishing he knew his name, and hurried on to keep up with the others.

They ran a twisting path right through the body of Ambrose, dead-butbreathing bodies of castle servants and Royal Legionaries littering the hallways.

The King began to see red. How had they done it? He demanded of himself over and over, but there was no answer. Had the intruders somehow killed everyone in Ambrose? Clearly not-they themselves were still alive. The King guessed that they had killed everyone in their path on the way in, and were taking the same path out.

That path, Lathmar realized, must lead to the Lonegate. They were headed away from the City Gate, and they were too far away from the Thorngate. Then, Morlock had said something…. It didn't matter. What did matter was: Lathmar knew of a secret passage that led almost straight there. If he took it, he might catch up with the Ambrosii (now out of sight in the corridor ahead).

On his next chance he swung left and found an entrance to the passage he wanted. Then he sprinted and walked as fast as he could until he reached the corridor outside the inner guardhouse on the Lonegate bridge.

He poked his head out, but there was no one in the hallway. He stepped out, breathing heavily, and went up the hall toward the inner guardhouse, wondering if he had missed everybody. Then he heard the tramp of many booted feet behind him in the corridor.

The King gulped. He wondered if, rather than missing everybody, he had beaten everybody to the goal. That was extremely inconvenient, since it meant that his enemies were between him and his defenders. He glanced up the hallway, but decided he was too far from the entrance to the secret passages, and ducked instead into the guardhouse. Royal soldiers lay scattered about the floor like dolls, dead but breathing. He ground his teeth, but there was nothing he could do for them. He ran up the stairway to the upper level, hoping the Protector's Men wouldn't trouble with it, but simply rush past toward the bridge and escape.

At first he thought his plan had worked. Steng and the Protector's Men burst into the guardhouse, and began to stream out toward the bridge. Then they began to shout and scream, and there were other noises the King couldn't understand. Drawn by an irresistible curiosity, he crept toward one of the bowslits in the chamber wall. Peering through, he saw a black charger was rearing up in the middle of the bridge, deftly kicking a Protector's Man with his right front hoof. The bodies of others were scattered around the bridge's wooden surface.

The remaining men of the squad and Steng stumbled back into the lower chamber of the guardhouse.

"What do we do now?" one screamed.

"We go upstairs and fill that damn horse with arrows," said Steng's voice.

The King glanced around frantically, but the place wasn't designed with any convenient nooks for hiding. He sat down on a stool and breathed deeply and calmly. A shred of a tactic occurred to him. It was unlikely to work, but the thought pressed itself on him with peculiar urgency.

Steng and a few Protector's Men appeared at the head of the stairway and paused, gaping, as they recognized him sitting there.

"But we left you back there!" Steng gasped.

"There are many of us," the King said carelessly. "Didn't you know?"

There was no way he could have known it, since it was what Wyrth would have delicately called "a damn lie," but the bit of misinformation seemed to impress Steng very deeply. His eyes grew round and he took a step backwards.

The King turned his head to one side and said, "Ah! There come Ambrosia and Morlock now-I assess their talic halos," he said, lying wildly but (he hoped) plausibly.

The Protector's Men vanished from the stairwell. Steng paused for a moment and met the King's eye. His face looked puzzled.

"You could try to take me by yourself," the King offered. "It would be easy-if I were who I seem to be, and if I were truly alone."

That was enough. Steng fled also down the stairs. Peering through the bowslits, the King saw him follow the Protector's Men over the side of the bridge into the green water of the Tilion.

He dashed down the stairs and out toward the bridge. He paused where the stone gave way to wood. The Protector's Men and Steng were floundering downstream, nearly around the bend.

The black horse looked at him with a silvery eye. He felt no threat, but then he hadn't tried to cross the bridge yet, either.

He felt a presence behind him, then, and turned. There was no one there….

But there was someone there; he felt sure of it. He took a step toward the wall of the guardhouse and glanced around.

There was nothing except a pair of oval shields bound together with twine, their convex sides outward, as if to contain something in the cavity inside. As odd as it seemed, this was what gave Lathmar the sense that someone else was there.

He stepped closer and saw that the shields were not bound with twine, exactly. It was just long blades of green grass, twisted together into a kind of makeshift rope. He couldn't believe that anything could be restrained by so feeble a restraint, but that was what his intuition told him.

His sense of the other was so strong that he found himself speaking to it.

"Who are you?"

He was not even surprised when it answered.

Many.

"That's no answer," the King complained.

You will know what I mean-soon enough, the mysterious (yet familiar) voice replied.

"How did you come here?"

I was sent, and then set. I would go if I could.

"What are you?"

Many.

"What does that mean?"

You will know-very soon now.

The King found that he had taken a step nearer the thing.

"How do you speak?" he wondered.

The same way that you do-with your mouth.

Lathmar realized that this was true-that the thing had been answering all the time through his own mouth, through his own voice.

Except that it wasn't his anymore. He found that out when he saw that he was taking another step toward the bound shields. He tried to stop, but couldn't.

He tried to scream, but the other one of him, the one that was many, laughed. It came out as a laughing scream, and the world began to fade before Lathmar's eyes. Through the mist masking the world he saw his hands reaching out toward the grass that bound the shields.

Then someone else was beside him, a pillar of black-and-white flames: Morlock.

Get out! Morlock shouted, and one of him wailed and another sobbed with relief, and abruptly there was only one of him again, and he fell to his knees beside the bound shields.

Groggily, he rose to his feet. Morlock (the plain Morlock of the nonvi- sionary world, his dark faced creased with urgency) seized him by the shoulders and said, "What is your name?"

"The King," he said sleepily.

Morlock grabbed Lathmar by the hair; his gray eyes stabbed at the King like spear points. "What's your name?" he shouted.

The King understood, hazily, that Morlock was afraid, and he thought this was interesting, as he could not remember another occasion where Morlock had so obviously shown fear. He thought about the other self, the one that had almost mastered him, and he understood what Morlock was afraid of. "Lathmar," he said, as clearly as he could, desperately hoping he would be believed.

Morlock, his dark face a mask of relief, released him. He patted him awkwardly on the shoulders and said, "Good. I'm glad you're well. You're not ready to face things like that, yet."

"What is it?"

"A shathe," Morlock said flatly.

Behind him, Ambrosia said, "Of course! There were shathe-wards on the old bridges, but we didn't think to put them on the new bridges. When was the last time a shathe was seen in Ontil?"

"This morning. That was why I sent Wyrth off to the City Gate and Thorngate. He can set wards that will hold until you and I come to put in place more permanent protections."

"You should have consulted me," Ambrosia said. "We each could have gone to a gate."

"I thought I might need you here," Morlock said.

The King drew a deep breath. The mist was gone from his sight; the living world pressed against his senses. Beyond Morlock was Ambrosia, and beyond her were the twelve Royal Legionaries, foremost among them Karn the secutor. His eyes pleaded silently with the King. Lathmar turned away deliberately to glance at the black horse, still standing guard on the bridge over the river Tilion.

"You were too cautious, Councillor Morlock," he said aloud.

"Was I so?" Morlock replied, smiling wryly.

"Yes, indeed. We didn't need Ambrosia, and we needed you only as an exorcist. Your charger and I were enough to hold the bridge against our enemies. He is worth at least a dozen of the Royal Legionaries, if I could pick the dozen."

"He will be flattered to know you rate him so highly," Morlock said, clearly noting the King's underlying anger but puzzled by it.

"I rate him more highly than that," the King continued. "If my Lady Regent is guided by my advice, she will appoint this horse to the rank of secutor at least." Then he turned and met Karn's eye at last.

"Oh," said Ambrosia coldly, "is that how it is?"

"Yes."

"I wondered when I glanced in and saw you all loitering in the guard station."

"Some of us were loitering more intensely than others, Grandmother."

"All right, you men: put aside your weapons," Ambrosia directed.

They were a dozen and she was one, but they clearly didn't even think of disobeying. They disarmed themselves and trooped up the stairs to the upper chamber of the inner guardhouse at Ambrosia's direction. She bolted the door shut behind them and shouted out to the King and Morlock, "I'm going to find some live soldiers. You two wait here for me."

Morlock nodded casually and guided the King over to the bridge. The black, silver-eyed stallion cantered over, and Morlock introduced him.

"Lathmar, Velox. Velox, this is Lathmar."

"Is this the horse you flew out of the Dead Hills?" the King asked eagerly.

"I think so. He is not quite as I last saw him, years ago, but he has had some remarkable experiences since then, perhaps enough to account for the changes."

"Does he still fly?"

"Not literally. But I've never seen a faster horse. It's thanks to him I was back in time."

"And when you arrived you found the shathe," Lathmar said flatly.

"Yes."

When it was evident that this was all Morlock was going to say, Lathmar asked, "What's a shathe?"

"A shathe," Morlock said didactically, "is a being that has no corporeal presence. It exists entirely in the tal-realm. It can exert its will on the physical universe, and manifest itself in various ways, but it can't be killed by any material weapon or force."

"How can they be killed?"

"By nonmaterial force. They can be starved to death also."

"Have you ever killed a shathe?"

"Twice that I know of. I kill them when I can, bind them when I must."

"Why?" the King asked. "Is it a religious …?"

"Because they are evil?" Morlock twisted his face wryly. "They may be. But it doesn't matter: I kill them anyway."

"Why?"

"You have not considered, Lathmar. These things can be starved to death. They live on the tal-plane, and matter does not affect them. What do you suppose they eat?"

Lathmar shook his head.

"Souls. The psyches of living beings able to take volitional action."

"Oh." Lathmar thought about how close he had been to releasing the thing trapped in the shields. "Oh. How?"

"They gain entry to the will by persuading their prey to do certain things. It doesn't matter what, as long as it is at the prompting of the shathe. The moment of greatest danger is when the prey accepts a favor from the shathe. Then the prey may find that his will is no longer his own. It is then an easy thing for the shathe to compel the prey to destroy himself."

"Was I in that state?"

"I think so."

"But I never-"

"Tell me what happened," Morlock directed.

The King obliged, telling the tale from when he took to the passages. Morlock heard him through and said, "That was a good thought, to take the secret ways. I guess it was the shathe who gave you the idea to pose as a simulacrum of yourself."

"Why?" Lathmar demanded, annoyed. "Too clever for me?"

"No. But you said, `There are many of us.' That was what the shathe told you his name was."

"Oh." Lathmar's anger deflated. "That's true."

"And it appalled Steng, you say?"

"Yes."

"Hm."

Lathmar waited a few moments, then observed, "Whether you are my magical tutor or merely my councillor here, `Hm' seems insufficient."

Morlock smiled a crooked smile. "I was wondering if the shathe knew that it would affect Steng the way it did."

"I can't say."

"Perhaps we'll look into that."

"How …how did you bind it?"

"You're not ready for that knowledge yet, Lathmar."

"I'm not asking for a page from your spellbook. I just wonder how it was done-how grass can bind the thing."

"Plants have a kind of tal," Morlock replied. "But it is impenetrable by shathes, because plants have no volition. It is by seducing the will that shathes obtain control over the tal of living beings."

"Then how could it reach me?"

"I think you reached it," Morlock admitted grudgingly. "Your Sight reached out intuitively, as you were grasping for solutions to your dilemma."

"Oh." Lathmar paused, then remarked, "Grandmother wants you to stop teaching me about the Sight."

"That's not possible. You must obtain control over your gift."

Earlier today the King would have been delighted to hear this. Now, thinking about the thing that had nearly devoured him, that had reached him through his own power of Sight, he wasn't so sure. Then, abruptly, he was sure. True, he would have preferred to live in a world where such dangers didn't exist. But since they did exist, he decided he wanted to know about them, and what he could do about them. Maybe someday he could save someone as Morlock had saved him.

He looked up to find Morlock's gray eyes on him.

"Do you know what I am thinking?" he asked, feeling himself blush.

Morlock shrugged. "Some I know. More I guess. Most is closed to me. Here's Ambrosia."

The regent had returned with a troop of soldiers; the King turned to her almost in relief. She disposed some of the Royal Legionaries at the gate, charged others with escorting the imprisoned guards down to the dungeon level, and assigned one to feed and water and otherwise tend to "that damn horse-I hope Morlock doesn't start filling up the entire castle with his pets."

The King looked around to see how Morlock would react to this, but saw that Morlock and the shathe he had bound were gone.

CHAPTER NINETEEN DEATH, LOVE, AND A SPIDER

The trial of the eleven Royal Legionaries (before the regent in the presence of her council, only Morlock being absent) didn't take a great deal of time. The evidence showed that they had all obeyed their superior, Secutor Karn, in taking to the guard station and concealing themselves. But they had also failed to obey a royal councillor and the King himself when they had been given contrary orders.

"Respect for a superior officer is a fine thing," the regent remarked, in delivering her summary judgement. "But secutors don't rank members of the Regency Council, much less the King. These soldiers chose to obey the dictates of their cowardice. Given that they were following an illegal order of a superior officer, I'll incline to the lesser penalty. Commander Erl," she said, addressing the Legionary officer in charge of the dungeons, "have your men strip these prisoners of their uniforms, beat them each with twenty strokes, and expel them into the city. They are never to hold any position of trust or profit under his Majesty Lathmar the Seventh. So say I, Ambrosia Viviana, regent for the aforesaid Lathmar VII, King of the Two Cities. Let it be done."

The dungeon keepers, grim in their black surcoats with no device, marched the dumbfounded ex-soldiers out of the council chamber. Karn was left alone in the plain brown robe of the accused, facing the Regent's Council who would judge his fate.

"Your Majesty," Karn said hoarsely to the King, who sat with the council as usual. "Don't let her kill me. I admit it: I was afraid. I've been in battle before, but this was different. Your enemies have powers I don't understand, and I let that get the better of me. But I won't fail you again; I swear it."

"Shut up," Ambrosia said coldly. "Secutor Karn, this court finds you guilty of treason. The penalty, as you know, is death. Reflect on this overnight; we will summon you for sentencing in the morning."

Karn was visibly aghast. Officers were normally given a night's grace before a death sentence; they were supposed to use the time to commit honorable suicide, rather than face public execution. Commander Erl detailed several dungeon keepers to march Karn from the room; Lathmar gloomily watched him go. Would he have intervened with Ambrosia, if she had given him the opportunity? Possibly. He was glad she hadn't, though.

Ambrosia was speaking again; he had missed a few words. "…as we have more important matters at hand, specifically the question of reprisals against the Protector for today's raid. I'll confer with you and your aides separately, Kedlidor. Wyrth, see what you can come up with-I understand that Morlock is at this moment laboring on something particularly nasty in his workshop; perhaps you can assist him. We will meet tomorrow, an hour after dawn. I adjourn the council until then. But Wyrth and Commander Erl, wait here a moment; you, too, Your Majesty, if you please."

The scribes and attendants departed; Kedlidor also left, his face marked with dread at the thought of leading soldiers in combat again.

"The King needs a personal guard," Ambrosia said flatly. "We thought it was a formality in the castle, but today has proven how wrong we were. Erl, take this, you son of a bitch." Her sword was in her hand; in the next moment it was at Erl's throat. Somehow-the King wasn't sure how-Erl unsheathed his own sword and brought it up to parry Ambrosia's. His face didn't change expression, but as he watched her withdraw and sheathe her sword, he did the same.

"Erl," said Ambrosia, "you're the best swordsman this century (barring Morlock) and the bravest man."

Erl nodded coolly in acknowledgement of these facts.

"You're the King's new personal guard. I'm not demoting you: your lieu tenant can run the dungeons without you for a while. If you do this job right, there's a promotion in it for you; if you don't, we're all screwed."

"Yes, my lady."

"Wyrth, you'll have to help him. He's a tough pitiless bastard, but he doesn't know a damn thing about magic. That's the only thing that can touch the King inside Ambrose, but obviously we can't rule it out-not after today. "

"Yes, madam."

"Lathmar," Ambrosia said grudgingly, "it looks as if you're going to have to continue those lessons in the Sight."

"I've already seen to that," Lathmar said with a touch of sharpness. If she wanted him to act like a monarch in front of his subjects, she would have to start acting like a subject toward him. He prepared himself for a counterblast.

Ambrosia merely smiled. "That's all, then. I'll see you in the morning, if not sooner."

The King found it impossible to sleep that night. It was not because of his encounter with the shathe "Many." It was not even because he kept envisioning Karn, sweating through his last night of life (or, perhaps, already dangling from a beam in his prison chamber). These might have kept him from sleep, or given him nightmares once he reached it. But the fact was he never got near enough to rest for these to distress him. His blood was on fire; he paced endlessly about his rooms. The King was in love with one of his kitchen maids.

Her name was Guntlorta, which seemed to Lathmar a very beautiful name. Her hair was the color of dark honey (brown). Her cheerful laugh could be heard from one end of the Great Courtyard to the other. (Less biased observers remarked that it "sounded like a brass kettle falling down a flight of stone stairs.") Her complexion was like an unequal mixture of roses and cream, and as she had brought in one of the courses of his evening meal, he found himself longing to shower kisses all over the taut ripe curves of her body.

He would not have been the first to do so, but this was the first time the impulse had come to him, and he was struck with surprise. He tried several times to speak to her, but found he could not. Nor could he get her image (nor her scent, which was not at all of roses or cream) out of his mind.

Now he threw himself out of bed and paced frantically around the room. How could he see her again (without a bodyguard in tow, that is)? What should he do if he could manage it? Did he even want to manage it? He groaned, splashed cold water from the basin on his face, and paced about his room some more.

The truth was, he reflected ruefully, he needed advice-advice from a grown-up man he could trust. If Lorn had been alive, Lathmar would have asked him. If Karn were not in prison he would have been Lathmar's second choice-a poor second, though. True, he would have listened to Lathmar's problem patiently, and maybe advised him helpfully. But Lathmar had sometimes wondered uneasily if Karn mocked him before others as he mocked others before him. He didn't like to think of the other soldiers chuckling over their king's romantic dilemma. In any case, Karn was facing a dilemma far more dreadful than his. It would be cruel beyond words to pester him at this hour.

Who did that leave? Wyrth had been present at dinner. No doubt he saw what had come over Lathmar; he saw everything, it seemed. But somehow the King didn't want to talk to Wyrth about this. He didn't know how dwarves arranged these matters, and he didn't want advice that wouldn't apply to his case.

He wondered idly if Hope could help him, somehow-it would be pleasant to talk to her, at any rate. But he remembered suddenly that he couldn't simply knock on her door: she was hidden inside his Grandmother. He did not want to talk to Grandmother about this, he thought, shuddering.

It was Morlock or nothing, he decided, finally. He threw on some clothes and crept out into the hallway. The guards at his door were sleeping, and he crept past them up the hallway, and soon was climbing the stairs to Morlock's tower.

The lock on the doorpost of Morlock's workroom recognized Lathmar, winking a glass eye at him. It released the door from its long iron fingers and allowed the King to enter.

As soon as he stepped across the threshold he heard Morlock and Ambrosia talking on the far side of the workroom. He especially did not want to talk to Ambrosia just now, so he crept behind a table and waited for her to leave.

It took a while. Ambrosia, as usual, was angry.

"I don't understand you, Morlock," she was saying. "First you say this is the most serious attack we've had from the Protector's forces, and then you say we should not retaliate. I don't give a rat's ass what you say; that's bad strategy."

"What would I do with a rat's ass?" Morlock replied, sounding amused. After Ambrosia made a suggestion, he continued, sounding less amused, "Nonetheless, you misheard me. We don't know that this attack was from the Protector. I don't think it was."

"Then I think you're mistaken. His poisoner Steng led the attack, and you yourself said it must have been his magical patron who supplied the shathe."

"`Magical patron,"' Morlock repeated. "We call him that because Urdhven did. It was a mistake. Suppose he is not?"

"Suppose who is not what?"

"Suppose that the magical adept is not, in fact, Urdhven's patron. Suppose that Urdhven is merely the dupe or pawn of this adept, who uses him to distract us from some undertaking of the adept's own."

"Ur. I don't like that much, Morlock."

"It makes perfect sense, though. The adept never granted Urdhven a weapon like the shathe before. Why did he do so now? What imminent development did the adept, not Urdhven but the adept, find threatening?"

"You're talking about the treaty negotiations I'd begun with Urdhven."

"Yes. If we make peace with Urdhven, his usefulness as a distraction becomes slight. The best result, from the adept's point of view, is for negotiations to fail and the civil war between the Protector and the royal forces to resume. So the adept arranges for this feint upon the castle."

"Suppose you're wrong, and Urdhven is really behind this? He'll take it as a sign of weakness."

Silence.

"Don't shrug at me!" Ambrosia snapped.

"The attack failed," Morlock said. "Urdhven knows we are not weak. I leave it at that."

"You leave it to me, as usual, you mean," Ambrosia complained. "Suppose you're right, then: I continue negotiations as if nothing happened. Not quite nothing maybe-I'll start the next session by presenting Urdhven with the bodies of the Protector's Men we killed today-"

"A nice touch."

"Quiet, you. Meanwhile, you'll be off looking into this adept, this Protector's Shadow."

"Yes. I think I know where to begin-I had a dream the other night."

"You and your damn dreams. I had a dream the other night. I dreamed that for once you had decided to be something other than a pain in the ass."

"I think my dream is likelier to be true."

"Very amusing. Is this where you want this thing?"

"Yes."

"Do you want me to stay?"

"Not unless you want to."

"I don't. It was bad enough being there when you bound Andhrakar. You're sure you'll be all right? Shall I call Wyrth?"

"No. I'll be fine. Good night, Ambrosia."

"Good night, sweetheart."

The words went through Lathmar like a spear-and more than the words, the tone of voice. He had never, ever heard Grandmother speak to anyone like that. He thought of his mother, then Guntlorta, and writhed uncomfortably in his hiding place.

He heard their footsteps walking toward the door, the door open, shut, and lock, and Morlock's halting footsteps return alone from the door.

They walked directly from there to the King's hiding place.

"Come out from there," Morlock's voice said.

The King crawled shamefacedly out from under the table.

"You should not skulk," Morlock said. "It isn't kingly."

"How would you know?" the King shouted, furious from embarrassment and something else.

"I've known many kings," Morlock replied calmly. "What did you want of me, Lathmar?"

Lathmar growled, unable to speak. He didn't want to talk to Morlock about it. She had called hint …sweetheart. It boggled the mind. He was furious. He was jealous, he realized suddenly. And why not? Ambrosia was his Grandmother-she had been long before she was Morlock's sister. Waitthat didn't make sense….

Morlock watched his face with frank but unobtrusive interest as this internal struggle went on, and finally remarked, "Lathmar, you should be careful. There is a shathe in the room; not all those thoughts may be your own."

Lathmar's inner turmoil cooled instantly, as if he had been submerged in icy water. "That thing is here? `Many'?"

"Yes. I was just going to kill it. I want you to help."

No! a voice that was not quite his own said within him. So he said "Yes" firmly, out loud.

Morlock led him over to the far side of his workshop. There the two shields, still bound by the grass twine, were suspended by a black chain over a transparent vat that was filled with a blinding blue-white fluid. It bubbled like porridge over an open flame, though there was no visible fire beneath the vat.

"What is that?" the King asked.

"Aether," Morlock replied, "the substance out of which lightning is made. Unlike the four terrestrial elements (earth, air, fire, and water) it has a presence on the talic plane."

"And it is harmful to shathes?"

"Fatal. I plan to immerse the shathe in that crucible of aether. But that will set the grass afire and free the shathe. So beforehand I must fix it in place with spikes of aethrium-an alloy of aether."

"Oh. What do you want me to do?"

"Hold the shields while I place the spikes."

The King stepped forward doubtfully. To be near the bubbling crucible of aether was unpleasant in a way he could not quite define. His hair rose on end, as if he were afraid (he supposed he was). He wanted to turn away, to seek shelter. The light seemed to pass straight through him. His teeth were set on edge.

He reached out to hold the shields, and he was aware of the shathe. Suddenly the harsh unyielding light was comforting: he knew it was far more inimical to the shathe than to him.

Morlock was opposite him with two stakes of bright blue metal in his hands.

"You've done this before?" the King said anxiously.

"No."

"I thought you said-"

"I've killed shathes before, but not with this method."

"But you're sure this will work?"

"Sure? No."

"What if it doesn't?" the King demanded, his voice becoming shrill in his own ears.

"The aether will destroy the shields and grass, and there will be an angry shathe loose in the room."

The King thought about begging off, then shrugged. If the shathe got loose, then he'd run: it would be Morlock's business to do something about it. But if it didn't get loose, he'd never have to worry about its voice chewing its way through his head again.

Morlock watched the King's face until Lathmar made his decision, seemed satisfied with what he saw, and said, "Hold on firmly. I'm putting in the first spike."

The King obeyed, and watched as Morlock thrust one of the blue spikes straight through the pair of bound shields.

From the broken surfaces of the shields came jets of …something: like glowing steam with faces floating in it.

"What are they?" he asked, his voice quavering.

"The talic remnants of those it has consumed," Morlock said.

"Their souls?"

"I used that word this afternoon: I should not have. The talic self is not the soul, merely the shell through which the soul acts upon and is linked with the material universe."

"Then the shathe does not eat souls?"

"I don't know. No one knows. Some believe it; some don't."

It occurred to the King then, quite suddenly, that if he killed Morlock then the powerful being between the shields, who really meant him no harm, would keep him safe from all his enemies. And if he gave Guntlorta to it, it would make Guntlorta do whatever he asked, including-

"Shut up!" the King hissed.

"It's desperate," Morlock remarked calmly, seeming to understand. "The second spike, now."

The second spike produced glowing jets of distorted faces like the first. But the faces seemed more distorted, the glow more faint.

"It's weaker," Morlock remarked. He reached out and broke the black chain with his thumb and forefinger. The bound shields fell into the vat of aether and instantly went up in flames. Through the screen of their gray ashes the King thought he saw, for a moment, a dark red flame surrounded by a cloud of black smoke. But then this faded, like a fire by daylight, and suddenly was gone. There was only the unchanging, unresting, irritating brightness of the aether. The blue aethrium stakes slowly grew molten, sank into the aether, disappeared.

"It's gone," the King said with certainty.

"In a way. The thing may still exist in the spiritual realm, but it has no more talic presence-it can no longer affect the tal-world or the world of matter." Morlock moved away and returned with a blue aethrium slab. It was a relief when he clapped it over the vat and the King was free of its light and the shathe's darkness.

"Whew!" he exclaimed. "A long day, Morlock."

Morlock paused almost imperceptibly before he answered, "Yes, indeed."

He didn't seem inclined to continue, so the King prompted him. "You're not going to bed yet?"

"No."

"You're going out to search for the Protector's Shadow now?"

"Yes."

"Do you ever say one damn syllable more than necessary?" the King cried out.

"Only if it seems necessary," Morlock replied, smiling wryly.

"Can I come?"

Morlock looked at the King, at the covered vat, back at the King. He shrugged. "Yes. It will be dangerous, though."

"At least I won't have to try and sleep," the King said.

Out of his own thoughts, Morlock said, "Yes."

Morlock led Lathmar down a flight of stairs at the back of his workshop. The way from there became extremely complex, and the King soon lost track of where they were-Lathmar still did not know much of the palace in which he had lived his entire life. But they finally came down in a corridor that ran along the river. Morlock opened a trapdoor in the floor that had been invisible until he touched it. They went down through it, into a sort of crawlspace, down the middle of which ran a channel of dark water.

There was a large squat shape looming in the darkness near them, half submerged in the water, within a ring of folded spindly shapes. Morlock spoke a word to it that the King didn't understand; the side of the squat shape opened up, and light fell out. Lathmar saw that all of the shapes were connected…. It took a few moments to put the pieces together in his mind.

"Is this thing a spider?" he demanded.

"No," Morlock said, then shrugged. "It does look like one, though. Go in.

Lathmar was not thrilled by the prospect. But the alternative was "Stay behind," so he went, crouching, along the crawlspace and into the not-spider.

There was a central dome of polished bronze within; from it dangled some black cables that ended in what seemed to be monocles or eyepieces. On the floor beneath was a board with a set of peculiar switches. Next to the switches stood Wyrth, his head nearly grazing the top of the dome. He glared at Lathmar and Morlock as they entered, crouching as they walked.

"You thought you'd leave me behind!" the dwarf said fiercely as soon as Morlock was within.

"Yes," Morlock said, and would have continued.

"But you'll bring him along," Wyrth said, gesturing at the King of the Two Cities.

"Yes." This time it was clear Morlock intended to say no more.

Something in Morlock's tone made Wyrth glance at his eyes. Then the dwarf's gaze fell. He turned away for a moment, then turned back and spoke to Lathmar. "I'm sorry, my friend. That was no way to speak of you."

"It's nothing, Wyrth-don't think of it," Lathmar replied, more embarrassed than the dwarf

Morlock said nothing, but his manner was less icy.

"Master Morlock," the dwarf said.

"Wyrth."

"You can use an extra pair of eyes and an extra pair of hands, whatever you have in mind. I think I should come along."

"You'd be better off here. If you want to risk it, the choice is yours."

"Thanks. I'll-I'll come along then."

"Then be seated and answer the King's questions. I've got to pilot this rig." Morlock sat before the board of switches and strapped one of the dangling eyepieces to his left eye. (It looked rather disturbing-as if a headless worm were feeding on his eye.) Then, carefully, he spread out his fingers and put them, knuckle first, onto the board. There was a groove for each of his fingers, and above each set on the board was an upright post with a ring through it.

"What are the switches for?" the King asked.

"Each switch operates one of the legs of the spider. It will send an impulse to move from one of Morlock's fingers through a talic lens, which will magnify the impulse and make it able to move a much greater object. Each talic lens is in talic stranj with one of the legs-"

"Talic stranj?"

Wyrth grinned, "Sorry. That's the sympathy between a talic presencelike you or me-and matter (like our bodies) which enables the presence to act through the medium of the matter."

"Oh. What are the talic lenses made of?"

"Well, they are produced by the operator, effecting a change in his own tal through conscious effort."

"And he must move his own body in the material realm simultaneously, as he maintains these talic lenses?"

"Yes. And keep an eye on the ocellus (or external eye) of the spider, so that we don't bump into anything. You can see why there aren't thousands of these craft running around your city."

The King winced. He had, in fact, been thinking of a city whose streets were not stained by a single piece of horse shit. "And Morlock can move each one of his fingers independently of the other?" he whispered to Wyrth.

Wyrth looked surprised. "Of course. Can't-Well, I suppose it's the sort of skill one picks up in being a maker."

"Hm." Lathmar reflected. "At least he only needs to use eight of them."

"Eh?"

"Eight legs-eight fingers."

"Yes, but the operator must also control direction-back and forth, right and left. Morlock controls those with his thumbs." And Lathmar, looking, saw that Morlock had hooked his thumbs through the rings on the upright posts.

Lathmar was abruptly aware that Morlock had gone into the visionary state. He used the skills he had learned to avoid being drawn into the master seer's vision. The spider jerked and stood on its legs-not wholly upright, or they would have struck the low ceiling outside.

From sloshing sounds, Lathmar guessed they were keeping to the watery channel. He tried not to think what was floating in it with them-and, as a matter of fact, the water didn't smell at all bad, so maybe this channel wasn't a waste conduit.

"We are entering the river level channel," Morlock said in the strange croaking voice he used when speaking in vision.

"That means a fall of ten feet," Wyrth said. "Hang on!"

There was nothing to hang on to, so Lathmar braced himself as well as he could on the bare floor. The moment of free fall was disturbing, but the shock of the landing was slight-the spider landed on all its eight feet, not its belly.

"We pass from the channel to the river," Morlock croaked a while later.

"Put on the other eyepiece," Wyrth suggested. "There ought to be something to see, now."

Hesitantly, the King put an eyepiece to his right eye. There was, indeed, something to see. They must have left Ambrose from the north, for it was on their right side, now-its walls dark gleaming shadows, looming high above, the windows of its many towers glittering with glad light. The city, along their left, was more somber, but there were lights there too-a sort of red smear of light along the high eastern bank.

Lathmar tried to adjust his angle of vision by moving his head right and left-then blushed when he realized how foolish this was.

"Is there any way to move the view of the ocellus?" he asked Wyrth.

Now it was the dwarf's turn to be embarrassed. "No. Nor is there more than one. We ought to have put in at least two-one for the front, one for the back. Perhaps we'll remedy that-we've only used the craft four or five times, but it has been useful. In any case, it is a design flaw-we should be able to see what is sneaking up behind us. Not that anything is."

Wyrth was wrong about this. A man had spotted the spider in the castle waterways and had followed it into the river. Now he was floating in the partially submerged spider's wake, swimming frantically just to keep the craft within view. His breath sobbed, from fear and exertion, but he did not give up the pursuit. He could not: everything that he was depended on this one desperate gamble.

CHAPTER TWENTY CRAVE MATTERS

The spider traveled down the river to the sea, and then followed the shoreline eastward. It sloshed along, half submerged, until the sullen glow of the city was left behind. Then it unfolded its long legs and skimmed along the surface of the water for part of an hour. Finally it turned left and walked up on the shore.

The complicated eight-footed motion of the spider on land was remarkably and unpleasantly different than its movement in the waves. The King was wondering whether he was about to vomit when the spider suddenly ceased to walk, and its body descended to the ground. The King took several slow breaths and felt his stomach settle somewhat, and looked up to see Wyrth looking at him ironically.

"It's the opposite for me," the dwarf said. "I get queasy on the water."

An intangible tension eased. Lathmar guessed that Morlock had dropped out of the visionary state, and glanced over to see him flexing his fingers.

"Wyrth," the Crooked Man said in his ordinary voice, "open the hatch. We go on foot from here. You two should arm yourselves from the lockerwe may need to fight."

Wyrth opened the hatch first, to let in some fresh air, and then they served themselves with arms from the locker, a low chest built into the spider's inner wall. Wyrth took an axe and a long dagger; Lathmar chose a short pointed sword of the type he had been practicing with lately. There were several sheathed longswords. The King didn't think any of them were Tyrfing, but Morlock took one of them and a number of aethrium jars slung on a belt. Finally they stepped out onto the ground, the King crouching to get through the hatch, and Morlock bending almost double.

It was still night-well after midnight now, by the position of the stars. The thin steady wind was bitterly cold: it was the month of the Mother and Maiden, well into fall. Chariot, the greater moon, stood somber in the eastern sky, while Trumpeter's bright eye was open in the west.

The spider had brought them to a hillside, the city an umbrous glow on their left hand. The hills before them were stubbled with squarish irregular forms.

"We're among the graves," Wyrth said, an odd, almost quavering tone in his voice.

"Why have we come here?" the King asked, wondering if his voice sounded much the same.

Morlock shut the hatch behind him and walked northward, belting his sword around him as he walked. Wyrth and the King hurried to catch up.

"Well?" Wyrth asked, exasperation in his tone.

"I am here to find out more about the Companions of Mercy," Morlock said. "You two are here because you chose to come."

"Why do we seek among the graves?" the King asked.

"Because that is where the Companions go," Morlock said. "Be quiet now, or go back."

Wyrth fell into what seemed a rather glum silence, and they trudged for some considerable time among the grave-strewn hills.

Presently they came to the top of a hill, and Morlock made them stop and hide in the moon shadows behind a grave marker in the shape of three horses, whose heads had fallen off over the years. Peering between their legs, the King saw a caravan of four death carts approaching up a dirt track that led back toward the city. The carts stopped at a mausoleum whose door was awry; the Companions driving them unloaded the dead bodies, stripped them, and stacked them like wood by the carts.

Companions dressed in gray came out of the open mausoleum. In their gray-gloved hands were saws and mallets. Casually, they began to dismember and mutilate the stacks of bodies, sorting the limbs by type. The blood of the corpses was black in the light of the moons, staining the dust of the track. The gray Companions with mallets took the dismembered heads and smashed the dead faces until the features were completely obliterated.

"Why?" whispered the King piercingly.

Morlock only looked at him, glaring with bright ice-gray eyes. Lathmar nodded, silent and ashamed. He heard a small series of intermittent sounds next to him, as if Wyrth were nervously tapping his fingertips rapidly on the stone grave marker. The King was relieved that someone besides himself was nervous, and glanced over in commiseration. Then he wished he hadn't. The dwarf's teeth were actually rattling; his eyes stared wildly at the scene below. He was clearly terrified almost beyond reason. The King somberly turned back to watch, wondering what Wyrth knew that he didn't.

All this while the red Companions were standing aside; they didn't seem to be watching or not watching; they merely waited.

Presently more Companions came out of the open mausoleum. These were dressed all in white: masked, cloaked, booted, and gloved in white. They bore in their hands knives, and masks, and what appeared to be scrolls. Some held between thumb and forefinger small glinting objects that presently proved to be needles.

The white Companions took the chunks of human meat and began to puzzle them into bodies again. The choice of limbs seemed to be more or less arbitrary; the white Companions worked together with reckless speed. Before they put on the first head, they drew the lungs and heart out of the bodies through the neck and tossed them aside in the dirt. Then they put a scroll into the chest cavity, pushing it down through the gaping throat. Finally one sewed a head on (the others were already huddled around a new corpse) and stood back. A spell of great force was effected; the King felt it in his fingers and toes, nearly spoke aloud in surprise. And the corpse stood up. The Companion took a mask and pressed it to the corpse's face, and abruptly they were one. The corpse turned away, stumbling to the pile of discarded clothing, and started to clothe itself. The Companion turned away to assist the others.

The scene was repeated over and over; the pile of discarded hearts beside the road grew into a fair-sized pyramid. The King thought furiously. These things, these pseudohumans, were like the golems Wyrth had told him about-like the Red Knight. They were vivified by a name-scroll. But they were different, too: they were crafted out of human flesh, not any lesser clay. Who was doing this? Why? How long had it been going on? The King began to see that Morlock was right indeed. There was something happening, more terrible and dangerous than the Protector's treason.

Wyrth's hands clutched at the King's arm. Lathmar turned reluctantly to look at his friend. The terrified dwarf pointed down at the scene below. Lathmar nodded slowly. Wyrth hit him on the chest and pointed again.

Lathmar looked down: what could Wyrth mean? Then he realized: the gray-cloaked Companions and some of the patchwork zombies were missing.

He turned in a fright to Morlock, but Morlock was already standing, a sword bare in his hand. Behind and below them on the hill, a line of gray Companions and resurrected dead was advancing.

"The second death!" Wyrth hissed. "The Gate in the West will be closed to us!" He covered his face with his hands and sobbed with terror.

"Get him back to the spider-to Ambrose, if you can," Morlock said quietly to Lathmar.

"If I can't?"

"Then leave him and get back yourself. Tell Ambrosia what you've seen. Everything depends on it."

I can't! the King wanted to say, but did not. Morlock was already halfway down the slope toward their enemies, who were closing a circle to meet him. The line had opened and there was a way for them to pass by-but only if they took it instantly. He jerked Wyrth to his feet and hissed in his ear, "Now we run! The second death, Wyrth! We must escape!"

Wyrth took to his heels, and the King followed; he heard clashing weapons behind him but did not look back. He heard soft feet padding behind him, but he did not look back. He began to be short of breath, but he didn't stop running-not until Wyrth did.

"Where's my master!" the dwarf cried, stopping in his tracks.

"Buying us time to escape," the King replied. "Come on!"

Wyrth cursed at him in Dwarvish. "God Avenger damn me, I've betrayed him, and so have you!" He drew his axe from his belt and turned to go back.

"Wyrth, no!" the King begged. "Morlock wanted us to get away. He gave everything for it. Don't-"

"I don't give a damn what he wants; I won't buy my life, in this world or the next, with his. You go. You'll find it easy enough when you start running."

The unfairness of this blinded Lathmar with rage, even wiping out his fear. As if he were a coward! As if he had crouched under a stone horse tail whimpering "the second death"! He was literally speechless with anger, and it occurred to him suddenly that he was holding a drawn sword that he had been well taught how to use.

That thought, paradoxically, cooled him. It reminded him of all those endless hours of training he had spent with Wyrth, how rarely he grew angry; how he was never, never afraid. But he had shown fear now; Lathmar thought he would welcome death, if it was the only way to escape the stink of his own shame.

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-toback. 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 corpsegolems 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 mausoleum. 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 Aloe 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 Aloe 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 talk, except himself," Baran remarked.

"He does have a sort of point, though," Aloe 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," Aloe 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," Aloe 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."

Aloe looked annoyed at this last comment, but let it pass.

"Then," Morlock said briefly, and continued to lead the way.

They came finally to a little shop with an apartment above it, a few blocks south of the Great Market. Morlock pounded on the shop door until a window on the second floor was thrown up and Genjandro's irritated face appeared. "Just what is your so-urgent need-" Genjandro began querulously. His voice broke off as he saw Morlock standing there among the taller Guardians.

"I told you I'd pay you next bright call!"* Genjandro screamed.

"We need money now!" Jordel screamed back, always ready to take a hint. "We'll take half if you pay us today!"

"Half, eh?" Genjandro said, more amenably. "Wait a time. I'll be down."

The window slammed shut, and presently the shop door opened. "Come in, come in," Genjandro said. "We'll drink tea. We'll talk. We'll make a deal." He swung the door shut and bolted it. Then, ignoring the others, he addressed himself to Morlock. "Well?"

"They're with us."

Genjandro nodded and made a gesture with his hand. Five shadowy figures rose up around the dark shop, carrying a variety of weapons: bows, clubs, knives.

"You take no chances," Jordel said admiringly.

"I beg your pardon, but we take dozens every day-far, far too many," Genjandro disagreed politely if briskly. "Had we any brains at all we would go into a different line of work. Hopefully, we'll soon have the chance. Morlock Ambrosius, it is long since we met."

"Good morning, my friend, and well met."

"The King is well, I hope, and my friend Wyrth?"

"I don't know."

"You have a story to tell, I see. What is it you need? Perhaps we can have breakfast while we wait for it."

"A cart, two black horses, needles, and red thread."

"Oh ho. No red cloth?"

"I'll take it if you've got it. I had planned to use my friends' cloaks."

"Hey!" Jordel shouted.

Aloe waved him to silence. "I think I know what he's got in mind-a good plan, Morlock. It may well work."

"Trivia, madam, trivia," Genjandro disagreed. "You should have seen the dodge we pulled on the Protector two years since-I think I may say 'we,' although my part was very small-"

"Essential," Morlock disagreed.

"Be that as it may, I can tell you the tale while we eat. Vora, our guests will be breakfasting with us. Kell: you heard the man. He needs a cart, two black horses, and some red thread. The rest of you may go about your business as we planned, but if any of you hear a rumor that Morlock is abroad in the city you should send me a message. Let's see, what should the code word be?"

"Seventeen," Morlock suggested.

"Superbly meaningless. Thank you. You see, my friends, he is a master of many crafts, including yours. Should you hear any rumor of Morlock's presence in the city, send me a message containing the word `seventeen.' Throw in whatever else you like, so long as it's of no consequence. Good day: we meet at the appointed time."

The others left, some by the front door, others through a trapdoor behind the counter.

"Your servants?" Aloe guessed, when they were gone.

"My fellow spies, madam. I have the honor to be the King's spymaster in the occupied city of Ontil."

"Indeed. May I know your name?"

"I don't think so, madam, but you may address me as Alkhendron. That's what I go by these days."

Genjandro/"Alkhendron" led them upstairs to his living quarters, where a small if cheerful dining room was laid, rather awkwardly, for five. The thread came; breakfast came; Morlock drank tea and sewed as the others ate and talked.

Genjandro amused them with the story of the silken dragon, eliciting the names of his guests (without seeming to ask for them) as he told the tale. It amused the three vocates enormously Jordel laughed until he wept, and even Aloe grinned a few times. In turn, Morlock-amusing his audience less, but interesting them even more-told what had happened the previous night, beginning with the departure of the spider from Ambrose through his meeting with the vocates in the dead quarter. (He did not mention Wyrth's terror: he blamed himself for that.)

"Don't like the sound of this," Genjandro said, when he heard about the corpse-inhabited quarter. "How much of the city have they taken over? What do they want?"

"We'll need to know as much as your people can tell us," Morlock said. "Next to this, the Protector is nothing."

"Almost literally, perhaps," Genjandro said musingly. "But I still don't understand how our friends here found you, or what their role in this is."

"We were following Morlock," Aloe said flatly.

Morlock glanced at her and glanced away. There were several ways to locate someone through magic. The easiest was if one had some sort of connection with the person through blood, or some other close tie, such as marriage. From her tone of voice, Morlock guessed that they had used this method to follow him. He could tell she liked it no better than he did.

"When we saw what was going on," Aloe continued, "we decided to follow from a distance. But when the zombie-riot started we thought we should get him out of there, if we could."

"And so you did," Genjandro said heartily. His eyes met Morlock's; he had not failed to notice that Aloe had not explained why she and her companions were following Morlock.

Morlock nodded and shrugged. He held up the red mask he had been making. "What do you think?"

"Very convincing," Genjandro approved. "Who gets to wear it?"

"I vote for Morlock," Jordel said. "He has the authentic air of a gravedigger, if you know what I mean."

Morlock grunted. "You'd smell the same if you'd been fighting corpsegolems all night."

"Well, we all have our favorite amusements. I suppose the three of us are to portray the unliving dead."

"The silent majority," Aloe remarked. "You might try easing yourself into the role."

Jordel, offended, threw up his hands. "You won't get another word out of me!"

Morlock donned the red hood, red gown, and red mask he had made while the others ate breakfast. He would hold the reins of the horses with his hands muffled by the sleeves of the gown-risky, but not as risky as waiting to stitch a pair of gloves.

The cart and horses were waiting in front of Genjandro/Alkhendron's shop.

"A thousand thanks, Alkhendron," Morlock said, shaking both his hands. "You've been a friend in need, as so often before."

Genjandro actually blushed and said, "It was nothing. Always a pleasure. No, really."

Morlock carried the Guardians to the would-be death cart for greater authenticity. Baran went first: a heavy burden. Jordel was as tall, but not nearly so heavy. However, he held his body stiff with all his limbs awry in an implausible imitation of rigor mortis; Morlock hoped no one was watching. Finally he carried out Aloe.

"Just like our wedding night-eh, Morlock?" she whispered through nearly motionless lips.

He grunted, dumped her in the back with the others, and covered them with a rough blanket. Then he jumped into the driver's seat and shook the reins. His mask was cut from Aloe's cloak, and it smelled like her. The soft velvety strength of her burned on his arms and chest: he had forgotten how much he longed for her. But, unfortunately, he could not forget how useless that longing was.

No one attempted to detain him as he drove straight through the Great Market and past it. The Protector's Men on duty "besieging" the City Gate of Ambrose simply stood aside when it was clear he intended to cross the bridge.

When they were out of direct line of sight, he pulled off the mask and hoped the guards on the other side of the portcullis would recognize him. Evidently they did, as he was not shot at while he approached. They raised the gate and he drove the cart in. On the far side he reined in and dismounted; the three vocates threw off the blanket and jumped down beside him as the portcullis rattled down to seal the gate.

"Welcome to Ambrose, Guardians," Morlock said as the Royal Legionaries stepped forward to receive them. "You'll pardon me if I leave you in the care of these soldiers-these are honored guests, Hundred-Leader; ambassadors from the Wardlands."

"Morlock," said Aloe, stopping him dead by putting her hand on his chest. "Where are you going?"

"I am going to tell Ambrosia what I've learned and what has happened," Morlock said. "This is her war, more than mine, and she needs to know. And if the King and Wyrth have not returned by the time I'm finished, I am going to go into the city and look for them. If they do return, I plan to take a bath"

"Well, you have your ducks in a row, as usual," she said, with a dark warm smile that pierced him to the heart. "We'll catch up with you later."

Morlock turned and fled into the stone ways of the castle, his heart beating like a boy's.