Blood of Ambrose

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE KINGS JUDGEMENT

And now," said Ambrosia, leaning back, her iron-gray eyes as cold as death, "it is time for me to pass sentence on the condemned traitor, Karn. Guards, seize him."

"Ambrosia, a word with you," Lathmar said urgently.

"Later, Your Majesty."

"Now, my Lady Regent. Or should I say Protector?"

That got her attention, though the look she threw at him was not a warm one.

"As you wish, Your Majesty." She motioned him forward, then sat him down on the throne and bent forward to hear his whispered words.

"Grandmother, you will spare Karn."

"No. If that's all-"

"It is all. It is everything. For you, madam, for you!"

"What are you talking about? Please keep your voice down."

"Once and twice last night, Karn could have run away to save himself. He didn't. When there was no hope, when you weren't there, he saved me. You need to hear that before you pass judgement."

"Suppose I don't?"

"Then I'm done. You can carry on your damned war for your damned empire without me."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I'll make it known that you acted against my wishes and why. I'll make it known that you killed Karn even though I had personally assured him that his life would be spared. I'll make it known that I'm as much a prisoner of the Lady Regent as I was of the Lord Protector."

"And you think-what? That soldiers will leap up out of the ground to take your side? That-"

"I think it will make your war against the Protector harder to win. I think it will make the peace that follows impossible to win."

"You're taking a rather big risk, Lathmar. After all, if you are not an asset to me, you are a liability."

"I understand your threat perfectly, madam," Lathmar hissed. "I understood it before you uttered it. Karn pledged his life for me; now I pledge mine for him."

"You're making a mistake, Lathmar," Ambrosia said, with unexpected mildness. "Karn is not the man you think him."

"The mistake is mine to make. Not yours, madam."

"Stop calling me that. Step back; tell me the tale of last night's doings, in whatever detail you think fit; I'll use it as a pretext for sparing Karn's life. But," she said, seizing his arm as he began to draw away, "understand that it's only a pretext. We'd all be safer if he were out of the way. He's a weak link in a chain that must not break."

Lathmar shook loose and stepped down from the dais. His hands were trembling, so he clasped them behind his back before he began. "My Lady Regent, before you pass judgement on Legionary Karn, I wish to speak in his defense."

"Say on, Your Majesty," said Ambrosia cheerfully. "I am your least humble servant."

"Madam," the King began pointedly, "last night I left Ambrose with certain members of this council to survey matters east of the city…."

For brevity's sake, he began the tale with their walk through the grave fields. He was weary beyond words, but he kept his voice hard and clear until he had told how Erl and Karn appeared to rescue him when all seemed lost. He didn't mention Wyrth's terror at the prospect of the corpse-golems. Then his voice broke and he found it hard to stand, much less go on.

"If it pleases the regent," Erl said hesitantly, "I could carry on the story, since His Majesty is-"

"No need," Ambrosia interrupted. "Thank you, Erl. And I thank you, Your Majesty; your intervention was timely indeed."

Lathmar nodded, wearily.

"The punishment of treason, as I remarked yesterday, is death. Karn was guilty of treason in that sorry episode, and I fully intended to have him executed this morning, if he was so ungallant as to make it through the night alive. Instead of killing himself, as I had hoped, Karn spent the night earning the gratitude of the King and myself in a selfless act of bravery. I find I cannot now give him the punishment his treason deserves, but neither can I leave him unpunished."

Ambrosia seemed to brood for a moment, and then continued, "The man who can't take orders shouldn't be in a position to give them. Karn has proved his fitness as the King's bodyguard, under the supervision of Commander Erl, so that is precisely the rank I assign to him. He is stripped of all seniority and rank in the Royal Legion, and will forfeit a year's pay. I'd sentence him to a beating and a jail term as well, but a beating would not affect a man of Karn's indomitable courage, and he'd only escape from the jail cell. He is to consider himself to have been very leniently dealt with, and he may be assured that if he fails in his duty again, I will personally cut his damn throat.

"I would be pleased to welcome the emissaries from the Wardlands at this time, but I have kept the Protector's people (to use the term loosely) waiting longer than is really civil. I hope you'll join me for dinner-or we should make it supper, perhaps? Some of us will need a good day's sleep. Yes, Kedlidor?"

The Rite-Master of Ambrose and current (and reluctant) head of the Royal Legion had entered the council chamber, his arms full of red cloth.

"I beg your pardon-Your Majesty, my Lady Regent. But Councillor Morlock particularly wished me to bring these to the Guardians of the Wardlands-"

The tall, thin, fair-haired Guardian cried out, "Isn't he a good fellow! Here I was imagining him lolling in a hot tub scrubbing his toes, when he was working away on replacing our cloaks."

Wyrth, who had been unwontedly silent all this while, spoke up almost grudgingly, "It wouldn't have been so hard. We've had the garments roughcut for months. He only needed to fit them to your size."

"Well, mine fits like a glove," the dark woman remarked. She looked more than regal with her red vocate's cloak across her shoulders, and the King, finding he was staring, forced himself to look away. "And it glows like the dark edge of a rainbow-what talents that man has."

The big brown-haired Guardian rolled his eyes at this and said, "Thanks," briefly, to Kedlidor, swinging the red cloak over his broad back.

"And where is my esteemed brother, Kedlidor?" Ambrosia asked. "I expected him here some time ago."

"He said if you asked, my lady …I'm sorry but I don't understand it."

"Perhaps you should quote him exactly."

"He said, 'If Ambrosia asks, tell her I've gone to get my spider."'

Lathmar couldn't help it; he burst out in laughter tinged with hysteria. Wyrth muttered a curse and dashed out of the room. On that somewhat chaotic note, the Regency Council broke up.

Supper that night was a formal affair, although the regent wasn't present. Negotiations with the Protector's agents had gone into a marathon session, and Ambrosia wanted to see them through.

"But I believe," the King said wryly to his guests from the Wardlands as they gathered in the antechamber, "that I am competent to host a supper."

"You are quite right, Your Majesty-quite right," Kedlidor said approvingly. "The Lady Regent exercises only your judicial, legislative, military, and civil authority. All ceremony remains within your purview."

"Well, with Kedlidor's blessing we can chew our beef without any dreadful fears that we are being ceremonially incorrect. He has been RiteMaster of Ambrose from time immemorial, as well as the commander of the Royal Legion, from a more recent date."

"That's an unusual combination of offices, isn't it?" commented the tall fair-haired vocate they called Jordel.

Kedlidor's wrinkled face took on a pained expression. "A persistent joke of the Lady Regent's, I fear," he said sadly. "She does most of the work herself, leaving me with administrative trivia."

"Kedlidor does himself an injustice," the King remarked to the company as a whole. "When the time comes, he can lead troops and fight with them like a lion. And in a war like the one we have in hand, Gr-Ambrosia rightly says that most of the battle lies in knowing whom you can trust. We trust Kedlidor because we've seen what he can do."

"A royal `we,' Your Majesty?" murmured the dark, gloriously beautiful vocate named Aloe, standing nearby.

He basked for a moment in the hot golden delight of her full regard before he realized that some sort of answer was required. "Yes-but, no, not really. That is, I feel that way, and so does the rest of the Regent's Council."

She nodded, tactfully not taking notice of his confusion, which confused him even more.

"But you needn't worry," Kedlidor was saying to Jordel. "Though as Rite-Master my rank is far too low to sit at the King's table, as Legionary commander I just merit the honor. You won't lose status by sitting with me."

Jordel's hazel eyes nearly crossed in his effort to follow Kedlidor's pedantic line of thought, but then his face cleared and he laughed aloud. "Well, perhaps concern should run the other way. I'm nobody in particular without my red cloak, you know. My first job was stealing cowpies."

"`Cowpies'?" Now it was Kedlidor's eyes that were crossing. "In the sense of…?"

"Manure."

"Er …" Kedlidor did actually look as if he were about to question Jordel's right to sit at the King's table.

"I wasn't aware that cowpies were valuable, Vocate Jordel," the King observed, emphasizing the title slightly for Kedlidor's benefit.

"Well, they aren't usually. But then, they're not especially well guarded either. My semi-dad used to pay me a penny for every dozen I brought him. He wanted them as fertilizer for his farm, which didn't do terribly well, despite my undoubted talents as a coproklept."

"Semi-dad?" Kedlidor asked, irresistibly attracted by what was apparently a new genealogical term, or perhaps merely afraid to ask for a definition of "coproklept."

"Oh, just someone my mother took up with after my real dad died," Jordel said airily.

"Lom bluthian, kreck hloth,"* said Aloe, quietly but audibly, out of the side of her mouth.

The heavily built brown-haired vocate called Baran grunted. "Watch it. I'm sure the King knows enough of our speech to get by."

Aloe turned back to the King and smiled. He was thunderstruck by the curve of her rosily dark lips, the flash of her teeth like lightning. "Is that true, Your Majesty?" she asked. "I suppose you call it `the secret speech,' as most do in the unguarded lands."

"Unguh guh-guh-That is, I know a certain amount." The King was about to go on, but then he realized that it would be impolitic to address the content of Aloe's muttered comment to her peer. But he was fascinated by it. Neither Morlock nor Wyrth were in the least concerned with status or prestige, as Lathmar had been carefully taught to recognize it, and he had assumed that people from the Wardlands felt the same way-Jordel's comments seemed to imply as much. But Aloe seemed to be genuinely, if faintly, embarrassed by Jordel's reminiscences.

"But, um, this question of status-that is-you know what I mean, Kedlidor?" He was sorry to push the question off on Kedlidor, but he had incautiously met Aloe's golden eyes again, and he found it difficult to string words together.

But the Rite-Master was up to the challenge. "Yes, indeed, Your Majesty; I thank you very much for raising the matter. The trouble is, vocates, that we have been unable to settle which of your number should sit at the King's right hand-the place of honor, you see."

Baran grunted. "I'm the oldest. Jordel was made vocate first, but we don't count that type of seniority as authority in the Wardlands. I suppose we could flip for it."

"Oh, come now Baran, don't be dense," Jordel said lightly. "Surely Aloe is in charge of our little embassy. The place of honor is hers."

Baran shrugged. "I don't see that she's in charge. But she can sit where she likes, as far as I'm concerned."

Aloe laughed. "Thanks, B." She turned to the King and said, "Subject to your approval, Your Majesty. I'm afraid I don't have any interesting stories about stealing cowpies."

"Oh, that's all right," he said, awash in confusion, and offered her his left arm. She lightly placed her right hand on his left forearm, and he simultaneously felt a hundred feet tall and totally inadequate.

They walked together through the doors into the dining hall.

This was not the Great Hall. They were too few by far for that echoing monstrosity; also, there were no windows, which the King insisted on whenever possible. So tonight they supped in the High Hall of the North-atop a long, low tower just above and behind the Thorngate of Ambrose. There were windows on three sides, and the roof as well, and the room was unlit as they entered.

The sun's last light was long gone from the eastern sky; bright drifts of stars stood out there above the sullen reddish horizon of the city. The greater moon Chariot hovered overhead, mounting up toward culmination. Northward the edge of the blue sky was notched by dark angles: the not-toodistant peaks of the Whitethorn Range. The third moon, Trumpeter, stood fiercely radiant in the west.

Aloe gasped, and the King felt for the first time the peculiar satisfaction of impressing an impressive woman. "Creator, what a view!" she said at last. "It reminds me of some of the high halls under Thrymhaiam. But even those didn't have more than one rank of windows-much less skylights."

The King indicated to Thoke, the chief servant of the table, that he and his assistants could light the hall's lamps. This unfortunately made it difficult to stargaze, but much easier to see what one was stabbing with one's fork.

"You have been under Thrymhaiam, Vocate Aloe?" the King asked, turning back to Aloe with interest. He had heard so much of the dwarvish stronghold from Wyrth and Morlock that he occasionally had dreams of the place.

She threw a golden glance at him that was difficult to read, but seemed to be in a quandary as to how she would reply.

"We've all been there," Jordel remarked from behind. "Aloe, Baran, and myself. Back in the Year of Fire. But I suppose that Aloe went there many a time after that."

This gave the King a great deal to think about. The Year of Fire-unless Lathmar was misremembering his stories (and he didn't think he was) was centuries ago, when dragons had invaded the Northhold of the Wardlands. He was stunned to think that Aloe was so old-or Jordel, for that matter. They both seemed young people just out of adolescence. At least physically. Now that he thought of it, it would be unlikely for people so very young to be bearing the responsibilities that Jordel and Aloe did. Baran's age didn't seem much older, but rather indeterminate, something like Morlock's. No one who saw Morlock act or talk could doubt his vigor; no one who looked in his eyes would doubt his age.

But they were as old as Morlock if they remembered the Year of Fire- Lathmar remembered Wyrth saying that Morlock himself was only a young man then. His ancestor Uthar the Great hadn't even been born!

Morlock must have known them. Why did he never talk of them?

With a cold shock, Lathmar remembered Grandmother saying of Morlock, He was married to a woman he loved-the only one he has ever loved (may she be damned for a poisonous bitch)….

Aloe? It would explain why she knew Thrymhaiam, the land of Morlock's dwarvish foster parents. It would explain the rather arch tone in Jordel's voice when he mentioned the fact.

It pained Lathmar inexpressibly to imagine Morlock married to Aloe. He wasn't sure why-when he thought about it, Morlock was the most remarkable man he'd ever known, and Aloe might well be the most remarkable woman. Some would call it a fitting match. But that wasn't how he felt about it.

His feelings were running riot-that he knew. But what bothered him most was the fact that Aloe must know it-that she was counting on it. He had noticed how Jordel and Aloe had maneuvered to have her sit beside him. Because it amused them? Because they thought it would be to their advantage? Because he might let slip something, in his confusion, that he should not have said? The Wardlands were not hostile to the Ontilian Empire, but neither were they allied to it-they had no allies.

By now they were seated at a long table of gleaming, beautifully grained kattra wood. The King had rather absentmindedly assisted his guest of honor in sitting and had gestured to the servants to begin pouring the wine and serving the food. They were eating in high style, he reflected grimly, when compared to crunching bread that the bakers had thrown out as too stale for the Protector and his men. But this was a very small party compared to the dinners Lathmar remembered from during his father's reign-each person at table had but one servant behind him, for instance.

Aloe's cool, firm voice broke into his reverie. "You're deep in thought, Your Majesty."

He met her eyes and was thrilled to discover that they were as alarmingly beautiful as ever. But now he could speak as they crossed glances.

"I was thinking about a story I once heard," he said thoughtfully, "about a hero named Jordel who walked with his companions against the Dark Seven of Kaen. I was wondering if your companion was named after this hero."

Jordel was not so far away that he couldn't hear this. He laughed and said, "Someone's been lying to you, L-Your Majesty. Baran, don't punch me in the ribs when I'm talking."

"Eh. If I kept that rule when would I ever get to punch you in the ribs?"

"You must ask me sometime when I seem inclined to give a rat's ass; we'll debate the whole question then, I assure you. No, Your Majesty, I'm quite sure there was no hero named Jordel who walked against the Dark Seven, for I was a member of that harebrained expedition myself-the hareiest member, if not the brainiest. God Sustainer, what a nightmare that was!"

Through the first two courses Jordel entertained them with obviously distorted recollections of his adventures in Kaen as the thain-attendant of the vocates Illion and Noree. He gave his audience to understand that his prudence and restraint had saved the group time and again from the disasters caused by his companions' intellectual brilliance and heroic couragedangerous qualities, of which Jordel boasted he had not the slightest trace, not the faintest whiff or suggestion of a trace.

From time to time the King glanced over at Aloe, and once he found her looking at him with unguarded approval.

"That was well done, my friend," she whispered to him. "We thought we had you cornered, and then you turned our weakness against us."

"Your weakness is not as weak as he pretends," he murmured in reply.

"Naturally not. If there were a real threat, Jordel would be as reasonable as anybody. But in the absence of one he can rarely resist the temptation to listen to his own voice."

Having utterly debunked the defeat of the Dark Seven, Jordel was passing on to tell of his misadventures in the Year of Fire, when he personally had saved the Wardlands from the courage and intelligence of a more numerous cast of even more heroic persons. But he took a few moments to denounce these poisonous qualities again-particularly courage, which he described (in the words of some ancient poet, whom Jordel seemed to have made up on the spot), as the "unconquerable waster of worlds!"

"That's a fine way for a rokhlan to talk," remarked a sardonic voice from the doorway.*

The King looked up from Aloe's eyes to Morlock's, who was standing at the far end of the table. Wyrth was just coming into the room behind him as he spoke.

"Your pardon, Majesty," said Morlock formally. "We had some tasks to perform."

"More sewing, Morlock?" said Jordel cheerfully.

"Nothing so uplifting," Wyrth said, stumping up to the table. "No, we were settling the ruffled feelings of a horse."

"I didn't know feelings had ruffles," Jordel observed.

"Only the finer feelings, Vocate Jordel, so your ignorance does not surprise me. I suppose you've told them your dung-stealing story by now?"

General laughter at Jordel's expense ensued, during which Morlock seated himself and gestured for Wyrth to sit beside him. Wyrth seemed to demur. Morlock spoke firmly in response; the King only heard, "…I require it."

Lathmar wondered if Wyrth might still be embarrassed about his behavior in the presence of the corpse-golems. But then he saw the searing glare of hatred that Wyrth shot toward Aloe as he sat down.

"Master Morlock's horse is jealous of his spider," Wyrth said in a voice that belied his expression. "We rode down to the hills east of the city where we left it-you remember, Your Majesty-and our plan was that I would ride Velox back-"

"Is Velox the spider or the horse?" Aloe asked.

"The horse, madam," the dwarf said coldly.

"I could see you sooner astride a spider, Wyrth."

Wyrth looked down at the table and smiled a little, evidently against his will. "Velox is no ordinary horse," he said. "And that was the problem. He became terribly upset when Morlock entered the spider-"

Bewilderment was so general at the table (neither the vocates from the Wardlands nor Kedlidor had any idea of what Wyrth was driving at) that Lathmar felt compelled to explain about Morlock's bizarre craft.

"Anyway," Wyrth resumed, "that was our plan-we would ride Velox down to the spider, Morlock would direct the spider back, and I would ride Velox. But Velox became extremely upset whenever Morlock made to enter the spider. So we had to coax the horse into the compartment, to show him there was no danger in there."

"Sustainer," said the King wonderingly. "All three of you in that space? It must have-"

"It smelled dreadful, Your Majesty," Wyrth interrupted. "In fact, you can be grateful that we're so far down the table-we both schmeck of nervous horse, or I'm much mistaken."

"We'll take your word for it, Councillor," Lathmar said. "But you'll be hungry and thirsty. Thoke," he said to the servant standing behind his chair, "see to the needs of Councillors Morlock and Wyrth."

"I don't-" Wyrth began to say, and broke off when Morlock glanced at him. Impatiently he turned to Jordel and said, "Notate Jordel, could you give me a piece of bread from your plate? Do you mind if I dip it in your wine?"

He ate the wine-tinged bread and turned to Morlock, spreading his hands. "There. Can I do more?" He turned up the table and called to Aloe, "What do you say, vocate? Are we quits?"

"I've no claim against you, Wyrth," Aloe said composedly.

"There. Master Morlock, I take your point, but you know as well as I do how much work we have in hand that only you or I can do. If you'll permit-"

Morlock nodded. "I'll see you later."

"No doubt. With your leave, Your Majesty. .

His Majesty had forgotten he had any say in the matter and had taken a mouthful of ragout. He waved dismissal in a gesture so casual that it made Wyrth grin and Kedlidor gasp. The dwarf waved back and dashed away through the door.

"You inspire strong feelings in your dependents, Morlock," Aloe remarked. "Dwarven, equine, corvine …"

"I have no dependents," Morlock replied. "Wyrth hates you because his father taught him to do so. Dwarves can be very loyal to that sort of feeling."

Aloe was now distinctly annoyed. The King watched her face in open fascination, and when she noticed this, she smiled slowly.

"At least he only had one father-that must make things less confusing for him," she purred. "Wouldn't you say, Your Majesty?"

The King swallowed, reflected, and answered, "Under no circumstances would I say so, Vocate Aloe, even if I thought it. Councillor Morlock, what do you think of the ragout?"

"Not bad," he remarked. Somehow the King thought he wasn't referring to the stew. "But, Thoke, if you please, take this cup away and bring me some water."

"No, no!" Jordel cried. "Morlock, drink with us! It's a poor heart that never rejoices."

Morlock's dark face was more than usually impassive. He hesitated for a moment and said, "I'll rejoice, if you insist. But I'll drink water."

Jordel subsided with a wounded look. The servant Thoke brought Morlock a cup of water, disapproval like a mask covering his normally deferential features.

"You're an awkward fellow, Morlock," Baran observed. "Always were. Never could get along with people."

Morlock said something in the secret speech that the King didn't quite understand, but whose purport was fairly clear.

"I don't think I know that verb, Councillor Morlock," Lathmar said pointedly. It seemed to him that the supper was spiraling out of control.

But Baran was laughing out loud. Apparently gross insults of this sort were not always insulting.

"That didn't sink any deeper than the knife you aimed at me this morning," Baran was saying.

"Since you mention this morning," Jordel said, "and since our expert on Morlock affairs is sulking at the high end of the table, maybe you'd answer me a simple question, old friend and sometime enemy."

"Maybe I will," Morlock somewhat assented.

"Just what the hell is going on around here? What are these weird creatures running around dressed up like some religious order reanimating corpses which pretend to bake bread which other zombies pretend to eat? Because I'm damned if I can understand it."

"I don't want to contribute to your damnation, Jordel-"

"When did you change your mind about that?"

"-but with the King's permission I'll tell you what I know."

"There was a time when you'd ask no man's permission to do anything," Aloe said in her cool angry voice. "Much less a boy's."

The King was stung, though he tried not to show it. Morlock met his eye and shrugged.

"You've my permission to say what seems good to you, Councillor Morlock," he said, looking away from Aloe.

"Well, it isn't much. The Companions, these figures who collect and rearrange corpses, are agents of an entity whose name I don't know. He offered himself to the King's late Protector-"

"Late Protector?" said Aloe leaning forward. "I thought he was still alive."

Morlock shrugged.

"It's a moot point," the King explained. "At any rate, he is no longer my Protector, though he continues to use the title. Go on, Morlock."

"This entity offered himself to Lord Urdhven as a magical patron, but I think that was just a ruse. Now it seems that this adept has been using the Protector as a stalking horse to occupy Ambrosia while he engages in some plan she would have stopped, or at least interfered with."

"You say 'he,"' Baran observed.

"I made visionary contact a few times, and the figure in question seemed to be male. But …" Morlock shrugged.

"Part of his plan is clear, anyway," Jordel observed. "He's filling the city with zombies."

"Corpse-golems," Morlock corrected.

"What's the difference?"

"I don't know what a zombie is. These things are golems made with parts from human corpses."

"Morlock, you're a pedant."

"Maybe, but I have a point. Golems do not act independently; in a very real sense, they do not act at all, but simply follow orders."

"I had a thain-attendant like that once," Jordel remarked. "He-"

"So you mean that the adept has agents in the city, instructing the golems," Aloe remarked, ruthlessly waving aside Jordel's reminiscence.

"Yes. The Companions at least; that thing that looked like a dead baby for another. But what these agents are I can't tell."

"I thought you just said what they were," Jordel complained.

"He means their nature, Jordel," Aloe said.

"At first I thought they were harthrangs-demons inhabiting dead bodies," he explained parenthetically to the King and Kedlidor. "But they appear to my talic perception the same as they do to my eyes. If they are harthrangs, I don't understand why this should be. If they are not, I don't know what they are."

"I'll tell you one thing," Aloe offered. "There's an exile from the Wardlands involved in this somehow. The colors that the Companions wear: gray, red, and white-the same as the colors of the three ranks of Guardian. That's an exile's joke."

Morlock nodded slowly. "Or the joke of someone who wants us to think that. It could be another ruse."

Jordel laughed derisively, and Baran said, "Maybe you're being oversubtle."

Morlock shrugged. "I saw Merlin recently," he observed.

"What?" shouted Jordel and Baran as one. Even Aloe leaned forward with renewed interest. So Morlock told the tale of Velox's apparent fall from the sky, and Morlock's rescue of him, and what had followed.

"But what was the horse doing in the sky?" asked Jordel.

"No," Aloe said, rubbing her forehead. "Please don't answer that, Morlock, unless you think it's relevant. You can satisfy Jordel's natural curiosity some other time."

"Morlock," Baran observed, "all you've just said makes me even more sure that Merlin is involved here-is probably the adept himself."

Morlock shrugged. "It should have done the opposite."

"What? Why do you say that?"

Morlock rubbed his face and, turning to Aloe, opened his hand in silent appeal.

"I see what you're driving at," she said slowly, "and I think you're right. Listen, you two," she said to Jordel and Baran as they turned to her to protest, "what is this adept's defining characteristic? Apart from his power."

"Necromancy," Jordel said. "Using corpses for magical purposes."

"Try again. It's a pretty common form of magic in the unguarded lands."

"I'm not going to try again. Tell us your thought."

"This adept can keep his identity a secret. Merlin can't. Even when he's trying to adopt a disguise, he can't refrain from exposing his identity. It's vital to him that everyone must recognize his presence and his genius. He could never stand in the background for a period of years while his plans developed."

"Hm," said Jordel meditatively.

"But if the Ambrosii weren't all accounted for," Aloe continued, addressing Morlock, "I'd suspect one of you. This business has a family stench about it."

Morlock looked as if he were about to speak, but didn't. Suddenly the King knew what he had been about to say, or thought he did: one of the Ambrosii was not "accounted for" as Aloe put it. There was Hope, hidden inside Ambrosia.

Lathmar began to feel panic, tried to suppress it. Hope couldn't possibly be the Protector's Shadow, could she? But the more he thought about it the less he was sure. After all, what he knew about Hope, her limitations and abilities, came from Hope herself. And if she were the Protector's Shadow, that meant it had been there with them every moment, had known every plan, every stratagem. And they could only avoid this by excluding Ambrosia from their councils. And that, itself, would be crippling-like chewing off a leg to escape a trap….

At that moment the door at the end of the hall opened and Ambrosia and the Protector entered side by side. Behind them walked Vost and Steng, somewhat uneasily, wearing the surcoats of Protector's Men.

Those sitting at the table rose, except for the King. He felt, rather than saw, his bodyguards tense behind him.

"Your Majesty," said Ambrosia, "I bring guests for your table."

Lathmar inspected Grandmother carefully for signs of insanity. What he saw instead were poorly disguised traces of triumph. He guessed that she had concluded a treaty with the Protector on favorable terms. It was usual to fix a treaty with a display of hospitality, hence this somewhat surprising appearance at his table.

"Ambrosia," he said slowly, "any guest you invite is welcome at my table. However, those two gentlemen"-he pointed at Vost and Steng-"wear a device I do not recognize. They must put it off before they sit."

Ambrosia almost winked at him: he had said exactly what she wanted him to say. He tried to keep his face polite, but internally he fumed. One day he would miss one of these subtle cues, and then-

The Protector had turned his leonine head toward his men.

"Our agreement, Lord Urdhven," Ambrosia said quietly.

"Take those things off, you two," the Protector said gruffly. "That's all over."

Vost looked like a dog who had been kicked by his master, but he obeyed. Steng was already working at the laces of his surcoat. He tossed it aside, and the King thought he could see the man's long, ropy fingers trembling. He sat at the table as far as he could from Morlock or Ambrosia.

Urdhven, in contrast, sat down next to Morlock, with Ambrosia on his other side. "Thoke, you old monster," he cried at the servant behind Morlock's chair. "Are you still the master of the cups and plates?"

"Yes, my lord."

"You'd better call up some of your minions-we're hungry, had a long day negotiating."

"Yes, indeed, my lord. I was about to bring in the final course of fruit, cheese, and dessert wine. Would you …?"

"That'll be fine, Thoke," said Ambrosia.

Thoke disappeared into the preparation room, trailed by the lesser servants.

They returned in a moment, each carrying fruit and cheese arranged on a plate. Some servants had more than one tray, to accommodate the new guests. Nonetheless, the King didn't get served until Commander Erl gestured at one of the servants, indicating that the King's place was empty.

This annoyed Lathmar, but he could understand it: Thoke had gone to serve at the far end of the table, and he had forgotten to have someone stand in for him here.

Then, too, Thoke was, as Urdhven had called him, the master servant of the dining hall; he always acted as personal servant to the most important person at a banquet. Apparently he had forgotten that for purposes of ceremony, at least, Lathmar was that person. Thoke was standing behind Urdhven's chair, at his beck and call, indicating by his manner who, in his opinion, was the most important person present. The King glanced at Kedlidor to see if he had picked up on this-he imagined the Rite-Master giving Thoke a searing lecture on propriety after the supper was ended-but Kedlidor was engaged in some sort of conversation with Ambrosia and Urdhven.

There was something else, as well, though. The feeling in the room had changed when Ambrosia and the Protector's group had entered. Lathmar couldn't put his finger on it-he felt as if something horrible were about to happen. As if something horrible was happening, which was real although only he could see it.

Now the wine came in, brought by a fleet of butlers. The King was served (wine and water) without having to specially request it, and he was about to salute Aloe with his goblet when a dispute broke out in the lower half of the table.

Thoke had approached Morlock with a bottle of dessert wine, hesitated, and then served Urdhven instead. He went on to pour wine in Ambrosia's cup.

"Wait a moment," Urdhven said, a hint of unpleasantness in his manner. "Aren't you drinking with me, Morlock?"

"I'm drinking water, if that's what you mean."

"That's pretty small-minded, if you ask me."

"I didn't."

"I come here to settle a treaty with the regent, and you sit there drinking well water. Where's the bond if we're not all eating and drinking the same?"

Morlock silently offered Urdhven a piece of cheese from his plate. Urdhven didn't take the cheese, but he did seem to take offense.

"Come off it, Morlock," Ambrosia said impatiently. "A mouthful of wine won't kill you."

"Lord Urdhven is free to share my water, if he likes."

"Most improper," Kedlidor said, surprising the King. "Pledge a treaty in well water. Unheard-of." He spoke in spurts, as if he were being jabbed between utterances.

"That's what I was telling him earlier," Jordel complained. "Why not live a little?"

Morlock said nothing now. He looked at no one. Thoke, taking this as permission, raised his bottle to pour wine in Morlock's cup.

Lathmar's sense of dread darkened the world. It was as if every gesture, every word at the table masked some evil secret. And all his impulses told him that if the Protector (that thing-that shell-that mask of nothingness) wanted something very badly, he was not to get it. Could the wine be poisoned?

Or was it the wine itself? Wyrth had sometimes referred to Morlock as a drunk. But the King had never seen him drunk. But then he had never seen Morlock drink. Was it possible that the man's iron will, his intellect-everything he was, everything that Lathmar loved him for-could be drowned in a sip of wine? Lathmar couldn't believe it. He didn't believe it. It was too stupid. But he couldn't risk it.

"Thoke," he said, his voice cracking with strain, "come here. I want you."

"Pour, pour," Urdhven said impatiently.

"I'll be with you in a moment, Your Majesty," Thoke called.

The world went completely dark. Lathmar was angry at Thoke's insolence; he was frustrated by his role as a regal puppet; he was afraid for Morlock. He heard himself shouting, "In a moment you'll be dead!"

When he returned to himself he was standing. So was everyone else at the table, their faces mirroring various forms of shock. Thoke was sprawled facedown on the floor, his face in the rushes, sobbing. Karn and Erl stood over him with swords drawn. Their faces, expressionless, were turned toward the King: they were prepared to kill Thoke at his word.

The King drew a slow deep breath. His sense of imminent danger had diminished. There was light in the world, again-there was hope that he could do something, that he could speak and be heard, that he was something other than a mere puppet. But there was a darkness in himself, too; he understood that now for the first time. Perhaps that was the most dangerous darkness of all.

"I spoke in haste," he said, his voice still unsteady. "He's a fool, but he doesn't deserve death. Take him to a cell, Karn-one with no escape hatch," he added. "The regent can deal with him tomorrow."

"Yes, Your Majesty," said Karn. He picked up the sobbing servant by main force and hauled him away. Erl returned to stand behind the King's chair.

There was an awkward silence as the King took another long breath. Then he spoke again. "I apologize to you all. Guests should not have to hear such a thing from their host."

They murmured various inconsequentialities, but he spoke on through them. Damn it, Ambrosia would roast him alive for this later. Everything he could say would be swept away before the imperious storm of her displeasure. But if he spoke now she would have to listen-the farce that gave her the power of regent compelled her to listen. Her burning gray eyes told him as much.

"However," he continued, "it pains me to say that I deserved more from some of you, as guests and as subjects, than I have received tonight. Lord Urdhven, you must not countermand orders I give to my servants. This is not your castle. It is my castle. You do not rule here. I rule here. You will acknowledge this or our treaty is broken and we will fight to the last soldier."

After a short pause, Urdhven said easily, "Of course, Your Majesty. I beg your pardon, and that of all here. I let old habits lead me astray." At that moment it occurred to Lathmar that Urdhven must be dead. This smiling urbane thing was not Urdhven.

"Your Majesty is not quite correct-I beg his pardon for saying so," Kedlidor said, in his scratchy pedantic voice. "The terms `rule' and `reign,' though often confused-"

"You beg my pardon, do you?" Lathmar interrupted, some of his anger returning. "I withhold it. A moment ago you sat by and watched a servant disobey my express command and did nothing to intervene. Had you shown then the nice concern for propriety you show now, that poor man would be spending the night in his own bed instead of a prison cell. I am displeased with you, Kedlidor. Leave my presence."

Wave after wave of emotion passed over Kedlidor's face. But he was too much the Rite-Master not to acknowledge the King's right to dismiss him. He bowed his head and withdrew without a word.

You can only be killed once, the King reflected, and continued, "Lady Ambrosia, I find you too have lacked respect. Your familiarity with your brother should not blind you to the fact that when he is a guest at my table, he will not be compelled, nor cajoled, nor pestered to do this or that."

Ambrosia briefly rebelled. "Your Majesty, with respect, the last time someone made Morlock do something he didn't want to do-"

"Precisely," the King cut in. "Morlock Ambrosius can look after himself, none better. I expect you to look after me, as your sovereign-the respect due to me and to guests at my table, whether they be your closest kin or utter strangers. If I am not sovereign, then what is your office? Whose power do you wield? In whose name do you rule if I do not reign?" He paused, breathless, somewhat intoxicated by his defiance, at a loss as how to continue.

Ambrosia smiled like someone who tastes blood in her mouth. "I was wrong, Your Majesty," she said. "I apologize." And she bowed her iron-gray head.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO SHADOWS SPEAK

The half cup of wine that Thoke had poured remained at Morlock's elbow for the awkward remainder of the supper. Morlock kept smelling it, and more than once he had caught himself reaching out to pick it up.

On one of these occasions he looked up to see the Protector's eyes looking at him.

"Old habits die hard," he said wryly.

"I hoped they hadn't died at all," Urdhven's mouth said frankly. "But who knew the little King had such fire in him! I suspect Ambrosia will give him a paddling behind closed doors."

Morlock reflected on this for a moment, then said, "We've met before, haven't we? Earlier today?"

The smile on Urdhven's face became broader yet. "Superb. Really excellent. I had heard good things about you, you know, but I didn't see how they could all be true."

"They probably aren't."

"Oh, I'm sure of that. How did you know?"

"Just a guess. You're clearly not Urdhven."

"That is, as the little King would say, a moot point."

Urdhven's fingers reached out to take a grape. He tossed it in his mouth and crunched it open-mouthed so that the juice squirted. He swallowed. "Get it?"

"I got some of it," Morlock remarked, brushing away a few droplets from his tunic.

"My dear sir, I'm so sorry. But do you see what I'm driving at? Is the grape me, or am I the grape? That's the way it is with Urdhven and me."

Morlock looked past Urdhven's shoulder to see if Ambrosia was following this. But she was saying something rather stiffly to Vost across the table.

"Oh, she hasn't noticed," Urdhven's mouth said. "In fact, she's going through one of her periodic fits of Hope. She's finding them harder and harder to suppress, I believe. That's probably what I will offer her, when the time comes-the hope of a future without Hope, as it were."

"The time?"

"In time I expect to eat you all as I ate Urdhven. You won't know it until it's too late, but I can get each of you to let me in, I think. And, once I'm let in, I never leave."

"We're not all like Urdhven."

"I should hope not: one likes a little variety in the souls one eats. But you all have fears; you all have weaknesses; you all have secret or suppressed longings. Each one of them is a door, and through many of them I can enter."

Morlock shrugged.

"Don't make a pretense of your strength, Morlock! I see how you're pressing your hands against the table to disguise their trembling. You want that cup of wine so much! I can give you the pleasure of wine without the poison of drunkenness. Or I can give you something you want more: I can make it so that you never want to drink again."

"So can a sharp edge, or a noose," Morlock commented. He held up his hands in midair, turned them palm up and palm down. They didn't tremble.

"You can exert control over your impulses for a moment, for an hour, for part of a day-oh, day after day. But not forever. You can't guard your dreams; I've often entered into people while they were dreaming. I wouldn't tell you this if there were any chance of your doing something about it."

This last certainly wasn't true: he might hope to provoke fear, despair, rash action. But Morlock wasn't about to say as much. He shrugged again.

"You're ungenerous, Morlock. And you haven't even asked me my name."

Morlock said carefully, "I know the answer your kind always gives."

Urdhven's mouth laughed politely, and his body turned away to address some remark to Ambrosia.

Morlock's left arm was gripped by Jordel, and Morlock turned to face him.

"What was Urdhven saying to you?" Jordel asked.

Morlock reflected. "Nothing," he said, with perfect if misleading accuracy. He gestured slightly with his right hand, hoping Jordel would take the hint to talk about it later.

Apparently Jordel did. "All right," the vocate muttered, releasing his arm. "It's not like you're my junior in the Graith anymore. Say, do you remember that time in the Grartans …"

The supper wound down to its conclusion. Ambrosia rose to escort the Protector and his followers out, throwing Lathmar a look that clearly menaced an unpleasant future conversation. Morlock thought he would have to intervene in that.

The King approached him presently and whispered, "You wouldn't have drunk, I suppose? I suppose it was all for nothing?"

"I'm not sure," he replied honestly. The boy deserved the truth. "I'm never sure when I'm offered a drink whether I'll drink or not. Anyway, it wasn't for nothing: I thank you, Lathmar. You were right about the others, too; their behavior was curious. I think I'll talk with Thoke before I go to bed, and perhaps Kedlidor as well."

"What is it?" the King whispered urgently. "That thing that pretends to be Urdhven?"

Morlock was surprised by this, but not very much. The boy's insight was becoming very sure indeed.

"He wants me to think he is a shathe," Morlock said thoughtfully. "So I naturally assume he is not. Apart from that, I'm not sure."

"If-" the King began. Then he saw Aloe approaching and he fled, throwing her a wounded look. His bodyguards followed hastily, their dress armor clanking as they ran.

Aloe was smiling indulgently as she reached Morlock. "He's very young to be a player in this sort of game," she said, nodding her head toward the departing King.

"Or perhaps you're too old," Morlock replied. "You hurt him badly tonight."

"You're soft, Morlock. But that won't do him any good."

"That's what Ambrosia says about me."

"That bitch."

"And that's what she says about you."

"Well, perhaps I am, in a good cause." She put her right hand on his chest, and he grew absolutely still. They stood that way for a few moments, oblivious of the others in the room. Then she dropped her hand to take his elbow. "And you've been very uncivil to me," she said, as if continuing a conversation they'd been having. "You haven't offered to show me your workshop."

"Would you like to see my workshop, Aloe?"

"The magical workshop of the master of all makers? I suppose it might have a certain tame interest. Since you insist, I'll accompany you there."

She did, and, in the event, he did not speak to Thoke or Kedlidor that night, as he had intended.

"You are lovely in the morning light," Morlock remarked to Aloe as she stood in the western window of his workshop, silhouetted by the dawn.

Aloe, who was aware of it, said, "I wish you were. Why is it I'm never done with you, I wonder?"

Morlock paused, then answered seriously, "You are never really done with anyone."

Aloe was touched for a moment that Morlock saw her as so loyal. She knew it was a quality he prized highly. Then she realized he was thinking about Naevros.

"You're right," she said flatly. "I can never finish things with someone and walk away-even when they're dead, or in exile. What should I do about it?"

"Nothing," said Morlock the exile, with a crooked smile. "I can offer you tea and hotcakes for breakfast. It's a long way down to the nearest kitchen."

"I suppose you cook them with the same spatula you use to measure out darkleaf and dogbane."

"No, these are strictly cooking utensils. I gave up alchemy after I invented the still-"

"The still what?"

"The still is a mechanism which purifies, concentrates, and refines certain essences. That of wine, for instance."

"Sounds lovely."

"Hm. Well, it seemed a good idea at the time. Of course, I was drunk more or less continuously back then."

She laughed as if this were a joke, although she suspected it was not. "Hotcakes are fine," she said. "Anything to put on them?"

"Wyrth's own fireberry jam."

"Hm. You're sure there's no dogbane around here? Because-"

"It's pretty good jam. Try it."

She licked it off his finger, and tasted it again on his lips, and they said nothing more for a while.

"Morlock, your hotcakes are burning."

"Eh. Oh, you mean literally. Er. Breakfast will be a few minutes late."

"Indeed it will."

The sun was well up before they finally had their hotcakes and jam. As they ate, they talked about the matter at hand. Aloe was amazed at how easy it was to talk to him and to listen to him. There was a soul-deep comfort in it, the easing of a long-felt icy pain.

"I've missed you, Morlock," she said impulsively.

"And I you."

"Once I thought-it seemed to me that you threw away everything for nothing. But now that I see you the master of this great state-"

"Wait. This state is not mine. You see me as a servant of the crown."

Aloe laughed. "That's just a legalism. Why, that boy would do anything you told him to. Anyway, we all know that it's Ambrosia who has really ruled the empire all these centuries, and now she's growing too old to do it. I was shocked when I saw her. Who can she leave the job to except you?"

Morlock looked as if this had really never occurred to him, and Aloe laughed again. "Anyway. If-"

Morlock held up a hand and looked at the window. Aloe followed his gaze and saw a crow standing there on the sill. Morlock got up and stood over it as it gasped out some croaking syllables. Morlock answered briefly in the same language, and the crow's response was briefer yet. He took a fistful of grain from a closed jar nearby and scattered it on the silt with a final croaking word. Turning away he headed for the stairway door.

"Morlock! What is it?" she called.

"The King is gone." Then so was he. She ran to follow him.

When they arrived at the Great Hall, the regent was already sitting at the head of her council. Kedlidor and Wyrth were there, along with Jordel and Baran and the King's bodyguards, Erl and Karn. Ambrosia lifted her haggard face to sneer at Morlock and Aloe as they entered.

"Now we know the night's events have passed their climax," she began, "since these lovebirds-"

"Shut up," Morlock said briefly. "A crow told me that the King was taken into the dead lands by two soldiers in royal surcoats early this morning, before dawn. The guards at the King's chamber say that no one entered there since Kedlidor, late last night."

Kedlidor nodded in confirmation. "And he was well, and alone, when I left him," the Rite-Master said. "And so-"

"Wait a minute, Morlock," Ambrosia said. "Are you suggesting that two Protector's Men stayed behind from the conference, disguised themselves as royal guards, and kidnapped the King? Because I saw them out myself."

"No, I think they really were Royal Legionaries. Or had been, before their insides were eaten. Like Kedlidor here."

Kedlidor screamed, "I have not been eaten!"

A brief silence followed, punctuated by the Rite-Master's sobs.

Ambrosia sighed. "I knew he was a traitor, but I thought he was one of the ordinary sort. That's why I kept him in charge of the Royal Legion-as long as the news was always good for us, always bad for Urdhven, it served to overawe him. And it worked: Urdhven signed the treaty on our terms."

"The Protector is gone, too, devoured by his Shadow." Morlock turned to Kedlidor. "You say you have not been eaten."

"I'm not. I'm not. I am still myself."

"But his voice is always in your head. When it speaks you must obey."

Kedlidor simply sobbed and shook his head.

"He told you what to do at the supper last night-to support the Protector when he offered me a drink," Morlock continued. "Answer or die."

"Yes."

"And later?"

"I …He told me to go to the King as if I were suing for pardon. So I did. He told me to bribe the guards to let me in. So I did. He told me to push the King down the escape shaft. So I did."

"And there were two eaten guards at the other end of the shaft? How were they to get him out of Ambrose?"

"I don't know. I don't know. Do you think he tells me things? I tell him things; I tell him all I know, but he doesn't tell me. He doesn't tell. Doesn't tell."

"That wasn't part of your deal, I suppose?" Morlock asked.

"You don't understand!" Kedlidor screamed. "You'll never die! I'm getting old; I've been so afraid. I didn't want much. I didn't want to live forever. I just didn't want to be afraid anymore, afraid of dying…."

"I can cure that," Morlock Traitor's Bane said calmly, and stepping forward, he broke the old man's neck. He threw the body negligently on the floor.

Aloe was shocked, and shocked again that no one else was. Even Jordel and Baran seemed to approve the action.

"I suppose he knew nothing more that would be useful to us?" Ambrosia asked temperately.

"Almost certainly; there was little left of him. I suspected something of the sort last night. Kedlidor was behaving oddly, and the thing that dwelled within Urdhven's body knew of matters that had been discussed at the supper before he arrived."

"What are we up against, Morlock? Surely it's time for you to speak."

"I still think our enemy is an adept. I think, though, that he has bent his power to duplicate the abilities of a shathe. That is, he can seduce a will into destroying itself, and get sustenance from the event-and control the dying will."

"God Creator," Ambrosia said. "And he has Lathmar." She turned toward the wall to hide her face.

When she spoke without moving, a few moments later, her voice was deadly calm. "If we know our enemy, we can take steps against him. Morlock, you must see to that first thing. It is unfortunate that he has taken the King, but not fatal to us: the Protector is no longer a political force in the city, whatever has become of his soul. Wyrth, perhaps you can make an illusory King to serve for ceremonial occasions. If we can recover Lathmar, we will. But we must confront the fact that he is probably lost to us."

She turned her face back to the room again; they saw the tears streaking her face. "Morlock-Where is Morlock?"

"Eh, madam," said Wyrth. "He has gone to find the little King. What did you expect?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE THE DEAD CITY

Last of the living city of Ontil is the Old City-the capital of the storied First Empire. A triple curse killed it, the empire it ruled slipped away, and its people fled. Millennia later, Ambrosia and Uthar diverted the river Tilion; on its new banks they built a new city and gave it the proud name of the old one.

But the Old City was always there, just beyond the gray curtain of the Dead Hills. They remembered it and honored it by making it the domain of the imperial heir, along with the New City.

A triple curse. A drought from the sky that had never ended, not even after millennia. A curse from the sea, the curse of the Old Gods. And a curse from the earth: a plague that drove men mad and then killed by rotting the bones and the flesh.

People still came here. To hide, because no writ ran in the Old City. To die or to await death: there was no more suitable place. To uncover the past: for here it lay open for the taking.

And now its king was coming to it, for the first time since the founding of the New Empire, Lathmar reflected.

"Carried like a sack of beans by someone else, as usual," he complained aloud. "Someday someone will figure out a better way to transport a king. I just hope I'm there to see it."

He didn't suppose that he would be, but he was speaking largely for his own entertainment anyway. His captors (two men he had known as Thurn and Veck, members of his Royal Legionaries) seemed to have only enough awareness to abduct him and carry him out of the castle and the cityliterally in a sack, he believed, although he had been unconscious at the time. It was not even as if they were traitors, ashamed to make conversation with the king they had betrayed. Talking to them was like talking to rocks, to a wall, to oneself.

But now he said nothing as the skyline of his other city crept above the horizon. It was like a city in a dream, in a nightmare. A forest of stone towers rose up, but they were half-eaten by the wind, etched crookedly against the bitter blue sky. Nothing lived in the streets that they shadowed: the boulevards had been dead so long that even the dust of the dead trees had blown away. But as the King and his captors approached closer to the city, he did see one living thing lurking in the shadows: a vaguely human form, its head a hairless, shapeless mass, like a rotten gourd striped in fever-blue and pusyellow. It fled, staggering and shrieking as they came near. A plague victim-man or woman, Lathmar couldn't tell.

Lathmar was obscurely ashamed. For centuries, this place had been here, and people like him had ruled it in name and not given it a thought in reality. He had not cursed it; his people had not cursed it, nor caused the curse. But perhaps their indifference was part of the curse-a fourth curse, adding the cruelty of man to the hatred of earth, air, and sea.

"It's not as if I can do anything about it," he muttered to his peevish, unreasonable conscience.

They turned up a street where, to his surprise, Lathmar saw some dead plants. They stood in a wedge of darker earth …no, a sort of reddish dark streambed that ran along the broken gutter of an ancient street.

Then plants could grow here, if there was water. Or some other fluid: Lathmar wondered what sort of runoff had given brief life to those seedlings.

He was soon to know. They followed the dark stain in the ancient street around a corner. The screen of half-eaten towers parted, and Lathmar saw what he guessed was their destination. A tower unruined (or rebuilt, he guessed) standing apart from the others in a field of stumpy ruined buildings. Surrounding it was a hedge of thorns, and the thorns climbed like ivy up and all around the tower so that it bristled black against the blue dust-strewn sky.

How did the plants grow in this dead waterless place? The dark stain in the ground was deepest and darkest near the hedge. Nearby, tossed negligently among the bare foundations of the broken buildings, were bright bones grinning back at the sun. The bones of many men and women: hundreds of them, thousands, tens of thousands perhaps. Their blood had been shed to nourish the thorns. Some of the bodies were fresher: the King watched in horror as a crow landed on the head of one of these, plucked out one of its drying eyeballs, and gulped it down, neatly snipping the string of optic nerve with its bill. It looked right at him, rather quizzically, then bowed down to eat the other dead eyeball. Lathmar turned away shuddering.

The two soldiers who had been Thurn and Veck reined in by the hedge and dismounted. They cut the King's bonds and dragged him down to stand by them-rather unsteadily: the bindings had cut off the flow of blood, and his legs and hands were numb. Lathmar was fascinated by the hedge of thorns: the leaves were small and darkish green; the thorns were as long as Lathmar's hand, with points like daggers. They were dense and intertangled: no light passed through them.

Veck's hand raised a signal horn to Veck's mouth, which blew a single blast.

A creaking mechanical sound was heard, and then the hedge of thorn began to rise in the air. At least the section nearest them was rising. It lifted and the King saw this section of hedge was planted in huge vats; when they were clear he saw the vats were resting on a section of planking like the deck of a ship. It was being lifted from the ground by some vast screwlike mechanism. A team of corpse-golems-he knew them at a glance by their mismatched limbs and dead angelic faces-were working the wheel that drove the screw.

The soldiers dragged the King down the sloping blood-brown earth left clear by the lifted thorns. As they passed, the one that had been Veck lifted the horn and blew another blast. The corpse-golems stopped, turned, and began to push the wheel the other way. The section of thorn-hedge behind them slowly began to descend again.

They walked on to the tower bristling with thorns. There was no place to enter, but the soldiers stopped just below a bare patch, some fifteen feet up the wall. The soldier that had been Veck blew two blasts on the signal horn. The bare patch of wall opened on darkness, and presently a stairway began to unfold downwards to the accompaniment of unmusical clanks.

The King took special care to look at the sky as they ascended the stair; he guessed it would be the last time he would ever see it. There wasn't much to see: the dark blue bar of the sea to the south, some black birds hovering in the west over the Dead Hills. He paused at the top of the stairs, reluctant to surrender the light. But the empty-faced soldiers simply dragged him into the tower.

There were two teams of corpse-golems here, one team in each chamber on either side of the broad windowless corridor within. They were still straining mindlessly against their wheels, striving to lower a stairway that was already lowered. The one that had been Veck blew two blasts on the signal horn as they passed. (The sound was painfully loud in the echoing corridor, but only Lathmar seemed to be aware of it.) The corpse-golems stopped; they stood; they turned and began to push their wheels in the opposite direction, lifting the stairway. (The King wondered if they would continue to try and raise it after it was all the way up, straining at the wheels until someone told them to reverse directions again.)

The blank-faced soldiers took him up a long series of stairways to the top of the tower. He was out of breath by the time they reached there-if he ever fell behind they simply seized him by the arms and dragged him till he took to his feet again.

At the top of the last stairway the King found himself standing in what was obviously an antechamber. There was a monumental door flanked by two enormous particolored winged beings Lathmar took at first for remarkably ill-made gargoyles. Then one looked at him with mismatched eyes (one red and round, another narrow and slitlike, with a black iris peering through). Lathmar looked away, shuddering from fear and exhaustion.

The soldiers halted and stared at nothingness. They waited there without words. Then the huge winged beings stood, and together they lifted the huge stone slab (which the King had taken for a door) away from the doorway.

Within the empty place was a shadowy form. It gestured at the King with long, ropy fingers.

The soldiers pushed him and he staggered, almost falling. Then he pulled himself up and strode forward into the emptiness. He heard the soldiers march after him into the chamber beyond.

"Steng, I believe?" the King said to the shadowy form. He tried to keep his voice cool, but the tone wavered; he was tired and he was frightened. But he didn't let that stop him. As a king, as a ruler in the proud tradition of Vraidish conquerors, he might be a complete failure. But he'd die like a king, at least, never giving in. "I believe I had the pleasure of your company once or twice at Ambrose, though of course we were never formally introduced."

The form laughed, in a voice that was very much like Steng's …or was it? It was phlegmier, somehow-creakier.

"So you have, Lathmar," the other replied, "in a way, although I'm not Steng. I'm the original on which Steng was modeled. He was made in my own image. Don't you find that amusing? But perhaps you haven't heard that one. I forget which religions are current in these parts."

There was a crash as the stone slab was set back into place, sealing the room.

It was a broad open chamber, with a work desk and chair, and other furniture harder to name scattered about. There was a hole in the middle of the floor with spiral stairs leading down to a lower level. The room was well lit by a line of floor-length windows opening onto a balcony. But the other was standing with his back to these. The King stepped around him to inspect him more closely.

This certainly was not Steng. His right shoulder was hiked even higher than Morlock's; his hair was stringy and gray; the tip of his nose and the ends of his fingers seemed to have rotted away. But, in spite of that, the resemblance was striking.

The other, meanwhile, was inspecting the King equally closely, wagging his head as in disbelief.

"No, no," he said. "Incredible. Anyway, I can hardly believe it."

After several minutes of this, the King said, as sharply as his shaky voice allowed, "Well?"

"Well?" the other echoed.

"Aren't you going to tell me why you brought me here?" the King demanded, striving (and failing) to get something like the authentic Ambrosian rasp.

The other seemed surprised. "Tell you …? Oh, no. I don't think so. I mean, what's in it for me? And what good would it do you, really?"

"I'd like to know."

"People make that mistake all the time. `Better to know the worst!' they say, and then, you know, they blame you simply because they get what they think they wanted. No, I've done with that. I don't give people what they think they want, and I don't give them what they want. I give them what I want. It's easier and there's less fuss and screaming and things."

"What would you do if I started screaming?" asked the King, wondering if he could reach this oddly sensitive semicorpse through his finer feelings.

"Kill you," the other said briefly. "I'll tell you why I didn't bring you here. Some of me said, 'Oh, transfer into a young body this time-the little King, wouldn't that be amusing? Why, we could be Emperor after all, after everything.' But others of me, and I'm with them, they said, 'No, take someone like Morlock, or the dwarf or Ambrosia. Even if they're slightly killed they'll last better than the little King.' And these of me are clearly right. You're practically ordinary: an Ontilian man in the street, junior size."

Somewhat confused by this, the King said, "Transfer to Gr-I mean, to Ambrosia's body-"

"Don't call her Grandmother," the other said, with every appearance of jealousy. "I hate it when you do that. You've no right, you know. She's not your grandmother; she's nay grandmother. Anyway," he said, cooling off slightly, "she was the grandmother of my first body. I suppose the matter is somewhat more complicated now."

"You're not …not in your original body, then?"

"Well, I am and I'm not. That's the interesting thing. Even if I transferred into your body, I'd soon look like this again. The mind is subject to the body in many mundane ways, but the body yields to the mind, too. My talic imprint compels any body I wear to assume this form. Why, take this very body-it was female when I took it up, very recently dead, quite fresh and comfortable. Now it's quite male. It even has a penis. Would you like to see it?"

"No."

"Hm. No, I suppose you're right. My circulation is failing rather badly in the extremities, and I don't think I could bear to look at it myself."

The adept shrugged his crooked shoulders and turned away.

"The thorns could use some fresh blood," he said thoughtfully, looking at the two soldiers.

They walked together past the table and chair by the windows out onto the balcony. Once there, the one who had been Thurn killed the one who had been Veck. Then he slit the dead body's throat and upended it, so that the blood ran down the side of the thorn-covered tower.

There was a heavy scraping sound, and the King turned to see the other walking through the open doorway.

"What am I supposed to do?" he asked, ashamed of the piteous tone in his voice.

"It doesn't matter," said the other dismissively, and the gargoyles replaced the huge stone slab.

"It doesn't matter," the King said fiercely. "Doesn't matter." Of course, it didn't-it was what Morlock and Ambrosia did that would matter. That was why he had been kidnapped-as a distraction.

Ambrosia would not be distracted, he was sure. With the removal of the Protector, there was no other center for power than the one she chose to create. He, the King, had already proved to her that he might be more of a nuisance than an asset.

But Morlock would leave everything and come to get him-would come here, now. He could hear Wyrth saying, Blood has no price! as he stood there. Whereas Morlock never said it, anymore than he said blood was red, or the sea was deep, or the sky was up there in that sort of direction. Loyalty was his life. He would come, and the Protector's Shadow would have him. (Lathmar suddenly remembered the crow he had seen eating eyeballs outside this tower.) Morlock might be on his way here at this moment.

So the King would have to escape. He stepped over to the balcony, but he saw without surprise that the way was blocked. Even if he could contrive a rope, the thorns would cut him to shreds. The empty-faced body of Thurn was still holding the corpse of Veck over the thorns, watering them with the drizzle of his blood; the live soldier showed no more awareness of the King's presence than the dead one. He only knew he felt easier the farther he was from them.

There was no chance he could move the stone slab blocking the entrance. It took both the gargoyles together to do that. It occurred to the King that the Protector's Shadow was afraid of something-that this whole chamber was designed to protect something important. Whatever that might be, it wasn't obviously present on the upper level, so he went down to the lower one.

There were no windows on the lower level-apparently no doorway, either, although it was too dark to be sure. There were a few tables-almost like vats on metal stands-which shone by their own faint light. Lathmar stepped toward the nearest one.

Woozy with disgust, he saw in the vat a brain, a heart, a pair of lungsother organs he could not identify. They were not dead: the heart beat, the veins in the brain pulsed, the lungs breathed in and out. They were aliveplaced here beyond the reach of danger. The Protector's own? Or …those of the adept, yes. That made a good deal of sense. With these kept safe he could not be killed, any more than Morlock had been able to kill the Protector on the bridge.

The King raised his fist to break the crystal covering the vat, paused, then lowered his hand without striking. The adept would not have left him here if there were any real danger that he could do harm.

There was a snuffling, whuffling sound in the shadows across the room, near another gently glowing vat. The King was suddenly frightened, and he fled back up the stairs.

He was nowhere nearer escape, he reflected, at the top of the stairs. He looked at the two soldiers. Then he thought …

"Stupidest idea anyone has ever had," the King muttered to himself. "Mad pigs aren't in the running." It was the only idea he could come up with, though.

Lathmar crept toward the soldier that had been Thurn, picking up the chair from the worktable as he went. The soldier that had been Thurn did not react when the King struck him on the back of the head with it; it took several more blows before he dropped Veck's dead body and began to stagger. The King went on hitting him till he fell, until the chair was in fragments.

He stripped Thurn's body. With a curtain rope he bound Thurn's legs, with the knees drawn up to the chest. Then he took off his flowing nightshirt and put it on the soldier's body; he heaved the dead or unconscious form up on a couch and turned it so that the blank face was against the wall.

"God Sustainer, what a fool I am to think anyone would be deceived by this!" he muttered, but of course he didn't think they would be. Eventually, someone would come for Veck's body. It all depended on what came through that doorway when the gargoyles opened it. If it was the Protector's Shadow or one of his minions, the Companions of Mercy, then he was doomed. If it was one of these things like Veck or Thurn had become-empty, but capable of action at some obscure prompting-then he was unsure what would happen, what they could notice. But if corpse-golems came through the door, he might have a chance.

Getting into the mad-pig spirit of the thing, he took the other curtain rope and the fragments of the chair he had broken and made a pair of stilts, binding them to his legs. Getting up on them, he found he could walk reasonably well. Not with perfect naturalness, but who did, in this city of the dead?

He quickly put on Thurn's tunic and armor and spent some time walking around in them. The boots and iron greaves, both carefully laced to the wood, covered the stilts, and the soldier's tunic didn't leave much of his legs bare. They weren't quite a man's legs yet, but …they might pass a quick inspection, even if the eyes had a living awareness behind it.

He drew the soldier's short pointed blade and tried a thrust. Immediately he lost his balance and fell on his side. Laboriously, painfully, he regained his stance, reflecting that he wouldn't fight any duels while standing on stilts, not if he could help it.

What was he forgetting? He paced across the room once or twice (for practice) while he mulled it over. Of course! The signal horn!

Lathmar heard the stone slab scraping behind him as he strode over to the balcony. He bent down over Veck's body and grabbed the horn, yanking it to break the thong that attached it to the dead soldier's uniform. He straightened and turned as forms began to walk through the empty doorway behind him.

Two corpse-golems. One for Veck and one for Thurn. The King nearly panicked, wondering if they were to kill and drain Thurn as Thurn had drained Veck. He wondered if he could fight them off while he was standing on stilts….

They stood before him and paused, as if waiting for orders. Should he speak? he wondered. Clearly not; he'd heard no one but the Protector's Shadow speak since last night. He gestured at Veck's corpse, slumped over the rail of the balcony.

The two corpse-golems picked up the dead body and carried it away. It left a ribbon of red blood behind it; the King hoped this wasn't unusual. He followed in an imitation of a military stride that was stilted in every sense.

He did not dare turn to see how the two gargoyles were looking at him. Would they notice him? Could they notice him? They didn't seem to be mere automatons. But did they know or perceive enough to penetrate his disguise? He didn't know. There was little he could do but play the scene out. He followed the corpse-golems to the stairway and averted his face when he had to turn.

When they had descended several flights of stairs the King began to breathe a little easier. But he wasn't out yet. It was likely that the corpsegolems had instructions to kill him down below, to water the thorns. Clearly the adept considered Thurn and Veck mere waste matter, a fact that bothered the King on several levels, though there was no time to think about it now.

The King tried to think about nothing as he did what he had to do next. He drew his sword and beheaded the seraphic, emptily smiling corpse-golem nearest him.

The effort sent him staggering against a wall; when he recovered he saw that the headless golem had proceeded heedlessly on its way, still holding up its share of Veck's dead body.

The King had expected that, though it unnerved him. He stumbled to catch up and, when he had, reached down into the severed neck and grasped the name-scroll in the chest cavity. He pulled it out through the neck and the golem fell, shorn of its pseudolife, at his feet.

The other corpse-golem paused for a moment, then proceeded to drag Veck's body down the stairway. The King, gagging, disabled it the same way he had the other. Then he proceeded down the long stairway alone.

He came finally to the corridor where he had entered the tower. The teams of corpse-golems were leaning motionless on their wheels, as if resting. He hated to do it-hated to draw attention to himself in any way whatever. But he lifted the signal horn to his lips and gave two blasts.

The corpse-golems sprang to movement, if not to life. They turned their wheels; the wall at the end of the corridor rasped open; the iron stair began to unfold downward on its chains.

Lathmar waited until the stair was completely unfolded and the golems stopped. He descended the stairs, wobbling as he went but neither hurrying nor lingering. After he stepped off he turned and blew two blasts of the horn again. As he turned away the iron stair began to fold upward again.

The King strode stiff-legged toward the hedge gate. He stood by the wheel and blew the single blast. These golems, too, responded, turning the wheel to lift the section of hedge, the only remaining barrier between him and escape. He could see daylight on the far side.

Then, without any visible or audible command, the golems stopped. Each golem turned its sweet dead face to the King and stared at him with dead mismatched eyes.

His disguise was broken. Perhaps someone had found the golems and Veck's body on the stairs; perhaps it had been the signal to open the hedge gate. Either way, they knew him.

But the way was open and he took it, charging up the blood-brown slope of bare earth. The wheel began to turn again, dropping the hedge on top of him.

He rolled clear, and drawing his sword, he slashed the bindings of the greaves and the ropes holding his legs to the stilts. Then he shook them off (greaves, stilts, and boots) and jumped to his feet. He ran barefoot into the dead city, shedding armor behind him as he ran.

Would he escape from an army controlled by the demonic presence who ruled the tower of thorns, in a city they knew and he didn't? It seemed extremely unlikely. The only thing that heartened him, that helped him run faster and longer than he ever had before, was the fact that the odds had been even longer that he wouldn't ever escape the tower, and he had.

Think I'll make a mad pig my heraldic banner, he thought as he dashed up a crooked alley half blocked by ruins. He threw himself to the ground between two piles of rubble so that he could rest, and breathe, and listen.

He heard some groups of marching feet, or thought he did, but they didn't seem especially near, or headed toward him, so he stayed put and thought.

What would they do? What would he do, if he had all that manpower (to use the term loosely) at his disposal?

The answer was clear: flood the streets of the city and cordon off the Dead Hills westward. The direction they would be least concerned with would be southward, toward the harbor of the Old City. Those streets were supposedly haunted by the curse of the Old Gods, the curse that came from the sea. But he would have to risk it. The sea might provide some protection from the magic of the Protector's Shadow. Besides, no one believed in the Old Gods of Ontil anymore. Did they?

Well, he had his wind back; he should move south before the streets were all blocked. He rose to his feet, and a black-cloaked figure dropped down on him from a window above.

Desperately, the King stabbed at it with his sword (Thurn's sword, really), landing a serious but not immediately fatal wound where his assailant's neck joined its body.

The dark figure, whose hands were incredibly quick and strong, snatched the sword from his hand and hissed, "Well struck! But I'm on your side."

"Morlock! God Avenger, forgive me!"

"More to the point, perhaps, I do. I am amazed to see you alive, much less free, my friend."

"Well, I sort of blundered into it. Or out of it."

"Tell me later." Morlock was tearing a strip from his cloak, and the King took it to bind across his neck to the opposite armpit as a makeshift bandage. "You looked as if you were headed somewhere," Morlock commented, while he was doing this.

"I thought I'd go south-follow the seacoast back to the living city."

Morlock nodded slowly. "A good plan," he said. "But you'd have been killed by the curse of the Old Gods."

Now it was Lathmar's turn to hesitate. "Do you believe in the Old Gods of Ontil?" he asked.

"Of course not."

The King nodded, relieved.

"I just believe in their curse," said the Crooked Man. "But that's the way we'll go: I've brought along some cloaks of invisibility."

"Wonderful!" said the King.

"Oh, no. Quite ordinary. It occurred to me the last time I saw it." He paused. "I'm fairly sure they'll work."

The sudden burst of confidence the King had felt was oozing away almost as rapidly. Saw what? Only "fairly sure" they'd work?

"Let's go, then." Morlock stood, a little unsteadily.

"The streets-" Lathmar began.

"No: we go up. I suspect I can get us to the old harbor across rooftopsor, at any rate, above ground."

And he did. Four years ago the King might have been incapable of following Morlock's lead, but he had grown a good deal since then, and his fencing teachers had worked him hard. Leaping from roof to roof (or, on occasion, window to window) was not so very difficult. But navigating within the ruinous buildings was tricky indeed. There was rarely anything like a floor left, and those that remained were almost never to be trusted. They followed the lines of supporting walls and inner buttresses, walking like tightrope artists. It was rare that Morlock could not find a path over even the most treacherous surface, and when he could not he found a way around. His wisdom in avoiding the streets was amply shown before they had gone more than a block: the streets were full of marching corpse-golems, captained by red-cloaked Companions of Mercy.

But the King couldn't help notice that Morlock was growing weaker. The wound in his neck continued to bleed, and whenever Lathmar suggested they stop to tend to it, Morlock shook his head, winced, and said, "No time."

Finally they reached an open area where there were no buildings. By then it was getting dark.

"We've made good time," Morlock said, sitting down-or perching, rather-at the juncture of a wall and a support beam. "We should wait here until full dark."

"Then we have time to tend to your wound," the King said, relieved. Every time the Crooked Man had paused or winced, he had felt pangs of guilt.

"Time, yes. But I don't have anything with me for wounds."

"Oh."

They waited. Finally, it was dark enough to satisfy Morlock. He reached into the wallet at his belt and drew forth a faintly glowing, slimy piece of webwork. "Stand still," he said as the King flinched.

"What is it?"

"Your cloak of invisibility. Although it's more of a shawl, I suppose."

The King stood still while Morlock tossed it over his shoulders.

"When does it start working?" the King asked anxiously. He heard many shuffling feet not so very far away; it seemed to him they would want the invisibility in short order.

Morlock eyed him critically. "It is working," he said authoritatively.

"But you can still see me?"

"Of course."

Lathmar repressed a sigh. If Morlock didn't know what he was doing they were dead anyway.

Morlock took a second piece of greenish glowing webwork from his wallet and tossed the slimy thing across his own shoulders. The King noticed that it glowed more strongly at one place than at any other, and that the greenish luminescence was carried not only by the webwork but (more faintly) all over Morlock.

Morlock met the King's eye and nodded. They dropped to the ground and ran for the edge of the harbor.

The King saw a company of corpse-golems stumble into the strangely open harbor area from the north. And there was another to the east-Death and justice, there were crowds of them, even some coming from the west. They were surrounded. The sea was heaving strongly-surprisingly so, given how quiet the wind was. The King didn't think it would be safe to swim in it. And, anyway, maybe corpse-golems could swim.

Perhaps the cloaks of invisibility would get them out of this, but they seemed strangely ineffective. The several groups of corpse-golems, with their red-garbed captains, were heading directly for them.

"Morlock," he said, "I think they can see us."

"Of course they can," Morlock said, somewhat surprised. "We're glowing in the dark, you know."

"Then-"

The sea was raging as if there were a storm, though the sky was still as death, as clear as melting ice, lit by the clashing light of the three moons. But there was a light in the water that did not come from the sky-a greenish light, many greenish lights, rising from the heart of the sea.

The lights broke through the troubled surface of the water. They were eyes-great, filmy, glowing eyes, belonging to the heads of huge snakelike beings rising in anger from the waves.

The heads were shaped like great mallets: below each eye was a great flat snout like the striking surface of a hammer. There was no mouth that the King, staring at the beasts with his own mouth hanging open, could see.

They reared up high, staring with their glowing green eyes at the ground below, and then they fell. They fell like hammers, striking again and again at the intruders in the harbor. They smashed the corpse-golems; they smashed the Companions that led them; the great mallet-heads made the ground shake and opened up great cracks in the earth.

But they left Morlock and the King alone. The cloaks, Lathmar realized-the cloaks covering them with dim green luminescence, pulsing at the same rate as the serpents' own eyes (and they all pulsed at the same rate, he noticed, like many limbs fed by a single heart). For these eyes, they were cloaks of invisibility.

The King's pursuers by now had all been destroyed or fled. The serpents continued to pummel the ground in frustrated, unsated rage and finally, one by one, slipped back into the troubled sea, which slowly grew dark and calm again.

"What was it?" the King gasped.

Morlock nodded approval at his use of the singular. "It," he said, "was the curse of the Old Gods."

"I guessed as much, but what was it really?"

Morlock shrugged, winced, "That would really be a guess. Mine is: it's a security device."

"A security device!"

"A failed one," Morlock added. "The Old Ontilians had a reputation as grandiose but inept makers."

"Against who?"

"Pirates. The Anhikhs. The children of Kaen. The old Ontilian Empire didn't control the coast of the entire Sea of Stones, so their capital was subject to dangers that yours isn't."

"They made it to protect them," the King muttered to himself. "And it killed their city."

"The drought," Morlock observed.

"The river ran through the city then. The dead land could have been irrigated."

"The plague."

The King nodded and spread his hands concessively. But even as he did so he was wondering if the Old Ontilians, those grandiose but inept makers, had somehow unintentionally wrought the plague and the drought. The drought, after all, could have been an attempt to bring perpetual fair weather to the capital city and its environs. And the plague?

"Were there armies threatening Old Ontil by land?" the King asked.

Morlock smiled wryly, his face weirdly lit by greenish light. "Astute," he observed. "Not armies, exactly. But there was the perpetual threat of raids by barbarian tribes from the north."

"Then the plague was meant as a protection against land invasionmeant to strike only outsiders?" the King asked eagerly, then something Morlock had said struck him in a different way. "Barbarians from the north? Including my ancestors, the Vraidish tribes? We are responsible for the plague?"

"Guilt is not inheritable," Morlock said firmly. "I learned that the hard way, Lathmar. Anyway, if your guess (and mine) is correct, the Old Ontilians did this to themselves and died for their folly. That's the end of it."

"Except this place is still here. Death and justice, someday I'm going to come back here and break the curses-rebuild the city, or bury it."

"If you live through the night."

The King fell silent. Morlock led the way westward along the edge of the water, past the greasy squashed remains of several bands of corpse-golems. Past the smashed, cracked plain of the harbor region, they discarded their cloaks but did not take to the buildings again. Indeed, there were few to take refuge in: they had come to the edge of the Old City, where the Dead Hills ran down to the sea.

Presently, at some cue the King could not perceive, Morlock turned right and took a northwest course into the Dead Hills. They came, finally, to the mouth of a cave in the western face of a hill.

"Velox," Morlock said. "Trann."

Two horses came out of the darkness, saddled and ready for riding: Morlock's black, silver-eyed Velox and another-a chestnut gelding with white markings.

"From your stables," Morlock said. "Lathmar, this is Trann. He's not as friendly as poor old Ibann, but he's a sturdy, obedient beast, and we have a hard ride ahead of us."

Riding was one part of the royal education that had been skimped in recent years. Lathmar's parents had still been alive, he reflected grimly, the last time he was astride even a pony. But he shrugged, in a self-consciously Ambrosian gesture. He could do it if he had to, he guessed-and he guessed he had to. After a couple of false tries, he managed to get up in Trann's saddle.

Meanwhile, Morlock carefully put his head back and spoke three croaking syllables into the moonslit sky. A black bird came and sat on his outstretched hand. Morlock tied what appeared to be a tiny scroll on the crow's left leg. After a few croaking syllables were exchanged between the dark man and the dark bird, the crow flew off westward in the night.

Morlock turned and gestured to his horse, which approached him. He bowed his head to speak. The King heard only, "…nearly done …" and "…must get us there …" Morlock straightened slowly and, with an effort that clearly cost him pain, leaped into the saddle.

Velox, without prompting, trotted westward into the Dead Hills. The King shook his reins and persuaded Trann to follow.

It was late, but the living city was alive with light. The long war between the King and the Protector was over, and the people were celebrating the victory of the side they had secretly favored. Earlier in the day a disturbing rumor had passed through the city: that in a last attempt to gain the victory, the Protector's forces had kidnapped the young King and taken him to the dead city. Nearly spontaneous riots burst out against anyone showing the Protector's colors or known to be a supporter of the Protector.

Then word came that the King had been rescued by his terrible minister, the Crooked Man, who had gone to the dead city and slain the Protector in single combat, just as he had slain the Red Knight years ago. The regent dispatched a body of troops to bring the King and the other one, the dark man, safely home.

Now there was feasting and merrymaking throughout the city, but especially on Castle Street, the broad way that led from the Great Market to the City Gate of Ambrose. Here the King would surely pass on his way back to Ambrose, and the people of the city crowded along it to see him.

The regent, Ambrosia Viviana, watched the royal progress from the wall above the portcullis of Ambrose's outer City Gate. There were soldiers along either side of the road, but the truth was that they didn't have enough soldiers to line the street. Citizens thronged the road in front of the King. But they gave way before him.

"Have they got a couple of soldiers pushing people out of the way?" she asked Wyrth, who was standing beside her. "I hope not. This is Lathmar's chance to make a good impression on the people; it's worth a little delay."

"Eh, madam, I see none of that," the dwarf answered. "The people seem to be falling back of their own will."

They waited, Ambrosia wearing a face of ceremonial calm, Wyrth fidgeting.

Then the dwarf laughed. "Do you see it, madam?"

"Not very clearly," admitted the terrible old lady.

"The crowd surges forward; they want to see the King, to touch him perhaps. Do the people still believe that the King's touch will cure illness?"

"Some people will believe anything."

"Anyhow, they surge forward; they stop; they give way. Here: one is almost to the King; she looks beyond him and steps back. Morlock is there, with Tyrfing drawn, glaring at all who come near. God Sustainer-he's hurt."

"Who? Lathmar?"

"No, no-he seems well. You might think he'd be tired of cheers by now, but he's waving his hand and drinking it all in. It's Morlock-he's pale as a ghost, and there's a dark place on his shoulder-bloodstain, I think."

"Neck wound, maybe. They can be ugly. You brought the healing gear?"

"It's below in the guardhouse; the vocates are there. They all know leechcraft-better than I do, anyway."

They didn't speak. The heart of the cheering crowd grew nearer. Ambrosia could see Lathmar clearly now. He wore nothing but a torn brown soldier's tunic, but he had a kind of majesty about him. She was surprised at how grown-up he looked. There were tears in his eyes, tears running down his face, but he held his head like a man. Perhaps he could indeed rule, and not just reign, but she doubted it.

Wyrth was clearly right about Morlock. It was fear of the Crooked Man that kept the crowd at bay, but Ambrosia didn't see as they did. She looked at his pale face and dark-ringed staring eyes and thought, "Blood loss." She saw the sword wavering in his hands, his unsteadiness in the saddle, and she knew he was not far from collapse. Her brother was wounded, and this silly parade had delayed his healing.

The King finally reached the City Gate of Ambrose.

"Friend or foe?" she cried, giving the formal challenge.

"Your King returns. Open the gate!" cried Lathmar, obviously enjoying himself. The crowd thought it a good line as well, roaring its approval.

The soldiers on the gate began to raise the portcullis without waiting for Ambrosia's signal. The King rode forward and the crowd would gladly have followed, but Morlock wheeled his horse around and extended the cursed blade Tyrfing. Chastened, they fell back. Without evident command, Velox backed, step by step, over the threshold of the gate.

"Drop the portcullis when he's through," Ambrosia told the gate captain, and plunged down the stairwell.

She met Lathmar on the stairs. "Well met, Lathmar," she said, kissing his forehead. "I didn't hope to see you again. You'd better talk to the crowd."

"What should I say?" asked Lathmar, becoming less kinglike in the regent's presence, as usual.

"Tell them a bedtime story. Tell them to get home. Get out of my damn way." She hurried past him.

The King's horse (old Trann, it looked like) was standing nervously in the stairwell entrance. As Ambrosia pushed him out of the way, Morlock half dismounted, half fell from Velox's saddle. Wyrth dragged him toward the guardhouse, and Ambrosia ran up to assist him, careful not to touch Morlock's wounded shoulder.

"You stupid son of a bitch," she hissed in his face. "I'm getting sick of this. You go off to dance on the edge of chaos and we get to pick up the pieces as usual. Next time you'll listen to me or you can fucking rot. God Avenger destroy you, I hate your fucking guts!"

He kissed her tearstained cheek, and his eyes closed. The Guardians took him then and laid him on a table. Baran took shears and cut his bloodstiffened clothes away; Aloe took needle and thread and sewed up the tear in his flesh. Jordel anointed him with drugs to help him sleep, to heal his flesh, to restore his blood.

From outside they sometimes heard the King speaking to the crowd, sometimes heard the crowd roaring in response.

"I think he'll be all right, madam," Wyrth said finally to Ambrosia, who had sat silently weeping as the Guardians worked on Morlock.

"Who cares if he is?" Ambrosia said harshly. "We'd all be better off if he died now. Less to worry about."

"He'll outlive us all, madam."

"I hope so," she said dully. "I mean, I suppose so." After a pause, she continued in the same lifeless voice, "It's just that he's all I have left. Uthar is dead, and my mother is probably dead, and my father is lost to me-worse than if he were dead. People are born and grow old and die, century after century, and the new faces can never mean to me what the old ones did. And Morlock is the last, and maybe he was always the most important. Even more important than Uthar. Don't tell anyone, will you?" she said with a shaky smile.

"Your secret is safe with me, madam," the dwarf assured her solemnly.

The Guardians had taken Morlock to his room, and Wyrth had gone with them to watch over his master while he slept. Ambrosia was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with her arms crossed.

"Well," she asked, "what did you tell them?"

Lathmar looked her in the eye. "The truth."

Ambrosia grunted. "Be more specific."

"I told them the Protector was an agent of a sorcerer in the dead city. I told them the battle was not over yet. I told them how to recognize a corpsegolem and some things to do about them. I told them to beware of Companions of Mercy. I told them to burn their dead."

Ambrosia sighed. "All well said. If it had been said around the time you were born it might have done some good."

The King shrugged. "I was wondering," he said after a moment, "if he might not have a better claim than I do."

"Why?"

"He says he's your grandson."

"So are-Wait, you mean my actual grandson, the son of my son or daughter?"

"As I understood him, yes. He seems to be horribly old, rotting away. I mean-" he said, suddenly worried she might be offended.

She held up her hand. "You'd better tell me the whole story. Have you eaten or drunk?"

Lathmar suddenly felt faint. "Not since last night-it was-you wouldn't-"

"Never mind. Let's hit the kitchens; you can tell your tale between bites."

That was what they did. But early on in the tale she called for Erl and sent him off in search of Steng. It was clear he could tell them more if he would.

Erl looked for Steng most of that night. The poisoner had fled from the Markethall Barracks that morning during the general uprising against the Protector's people. Toward morning, Wyrth Joined Erl with a drawing of the poisoner and they searched together through the slums of the city.

It was nearing dawn when they found a landlady who said she had rented a room yesterday afternoon to someone who looked like the man in Wyrth's picture.

"And now I've a question for you," she screamed after them as they ran up the stairs of her house. "Do you know what time it is?"

They went to the room the woman had described and kicked in the door. It was too late: Steng was dead.

Extremely dead.

The battle-scarred Erl hissed and drew back, his throat clenching with disgust. But Wyrth moved forward, drawn by technical interest. Steng had apparently hung some sort of weighted device from the ceiling. It was a pair of knives that rotated laterally. He had released it and stood in its path. Wyrth recognized the nose, a few ropy fingers, the hair. But Steng was now a bloody ruin.

"Why?" Erl gasped.

Wyrth thought he knew but said nothing. Time enough to ruin Erl's day later on-to tell him that there was indeed a fate worse than the death Steng had chosen.

There was a note.

He says he's done with me-that I'm no use to him now. He'll eat me or cut me up and make me a golem. I won't let him. There was no address or signature.

"What does it mean?" Erl asked.

"Nothing good," said Wyrth. "We'd better get this back to Ambrose." They ran back down the stairs, pausing only to drop some gold in the outstretched palms of Steng's screaming landlady.

"Did you say something?" Erl called to Wyrth as they were riding through the Great Market.

Wyrth, too occupied in staying atop his horse to attempt a witticism, replied briefly, "No."

"I thought I heard somebody saying something."

Wyrth thought the same, but he didn't say so.

Later they learned it had started even then.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR THE DYING CITY

Be quiet, can't you?" Morlock muttered. "Trying to sleep."

"You've been sleeping for three days. Aren't you hungry? Aren't you thirsty?"

"Not for that."

"What are you referring to?"

"If-" Morlock sat up in bed and looked around. Wyrth was sitting at the right side of his bed in a circle of lamplight, a book open in his lap.

"I dreamed the adept was talking to me," muttered Morlock.

"It wasn't just a dream," Wyrth replied. "Anyway, we've all been hearing voices, awake or asleep."

"Thousands of them. But somehow all the same voice."

"Yes. Inglonor and the ones he has eaten."

"Inglonor. How did you learn his name?"

"It's a guess. He told Lathmar that he was Ambrosia's grandson, and of course that narrowed it down a bit."

"Hm. It wasn't like a dream, though-it was as if he was actually here, speaking to me."

"Well-where?"

Morlock gestured to the other side of the bed. Wyrth held up the lamp.

And there was somebody there, crouched down in the shadows. Wyrth put down the lamp and jumped across the bed, catching the other as it tried to flee.

The other laughed as Wyrth caught it by the shoulders. "I'll come for you all, soon," it said, and reaching up to grab its own throat, neatly broke its own neck. Wyrth let it go and it fell to the floor.

"Another for the corpse-fire in the gardens," he remarked.

Morlock was getting out of bed.

"Hey," said Wyrth.

"As it happens, I am hungry, and thirsty too. And it looks as if you have much to tell me."

"That's true enough," Wyrth conceded. He rang for the hall attendant while Morlock dressed.

"Treb," he said, when the attendant appeared, "it's another one of those." He gestured at the dead body.

"Sure it's dead?" said Treb.

"It broke its own neck."

"I've seen that trick before. Pretends to kill itself, and when you're not looking its sneaking off." Treb drew a long knife and passed it through the corpse's heart and neck. "Now it's dead." He deftly wrapped a cloth around the wounded neck to absorb the trickle of blood.

Wyrth nodded solemnly. "Better safe than sorry."

"Nice. Witty. One of your own?"

"Take the meat and go," said Wyrth, slapping him on the shoulders. (Treb was not too tall, so he could just manage it.) Treb, grinning, hauled the body away.

"That man," Morlock said, when Treb had gone, "has never before spoken in my presence."

"And tonight you were half-naked, and so especially terrifying."

"Wrong half for that," Morlock observed mildly, pulling on a tunic.

Wyrth waved his hands. "Fine. Tonight everyone makes game of Wyrth. Just so I'm forewarned. And forewarned is foreskinned-no, enough of that."

"Yes."

"It could be he's not scared of you because you are now a national hero, having rescued the young King."

"Hm. I think he might have made it back by himself. He's a resourceful young man."

Wyrth rolled his eyes. "Ambrosia considers him a bad-tempered and useless overgrown boy."

"That almost clinches it, I'd say."

"The other reason Treb isn't frightened of you …Well, it's been a long three days, Morlock……

It had begun for Genjandro three nights before. He had been settling his secret accounts with Vora, who kept his house and both sets of books-the ones for the merchant "Alkhendron" (his public face) and those for the spymaster Genjandro. She had been one of his agents, and a good one, too, but she had started to get nervous in the field and was making mistakes. So he had brought her in to work under his wing, and both of his businesses had prospered because of it.

"And something extra for Taan and Olis," he said. "They did far more than asked on this last job."

"Ugh," said Vora sadly. "You'll never put the spying business on a paying basis, Master Alkhendron."

"That's the treasury's problem," he observed, smiling. "If they want something, they have to pay for it. And you can call me Genjandro, now," he reminded her.

"Eh? Oh, that's right-it's your real name, isn't it? I can't get used to it. Are you going to go on being a spy, now that the war against the Protector is over?"

"Maybe," Genjandro said meditatively. "But not in the city. If Ambrosia and the King want to spy on their citizens, that's their business, but I won't be a part of it. On the other hand, I don't see why I can't import information as well as rugs and whatnot from Anhi."

Vora nodded, and they returned to their sums, working in silence.

"What?" Vora asked presently.

"I beg your pardon, my dear?"

"Did you say something? I thought you said something."

"No."

Vora nodded slowly. "Then you didn't hear anything?"

"No," Genjandro said firmly. This wasn't quite true. It was almost as if someone were whispering at his ear, but whenever he turned to look there was no one there. It had started earlier that evening, and Genjandro was very much worried it had something to do with the adept Morlock had told him of. But it seemed safer to deny the whispering, to keep it out of his acknowledged reality.

Safer for him-but for Vora? She was nervous-not a coward (she'd proved that!) but a worrier. It was why he'd taken her out of the field. Would she be safer knowing about the adept, or less safe? Would it make her worry more, or less?

"I hear him all the time, now," Vora said quietly.

"Who, my dear?"

"The adept. The evil presence in the Old City. The King told us about him."

"Did he?"

"Yes." Vora was weeping quietly, her sums put aside. "I didn't know he was evil when I first heard him. I didn't know. How could I know? He didn't tell me."

"Don't worry about it, my dear."

"Oh, it's past worrying. He's eaten me nearly entirely now; there's so little left."

"Oh. Is there?" Genjandro said, somewhat stupidly.

"I heard him first more than a year ago, Vora continued. "I was still working in the field then, cleaning in Markethall Barracks-you remember?"

"I do indeed."

"I was frightened nearly all the time. I never let you know that, but it's true."

"I never guessed it, dear girl," Genjandro assured her.

"Well, I was. And I heard his voice in a dream. He said so many things that sounded so wise. He said he could cure me of fear. He said I would never be afraid again. And so when I awoke I-I-I-I did something that let him in. He's been there ever since, eating away at me in the dark."

"My poor girl," he whispered. "We'll take you to Ambrose. You've seen Morlock-you know all those old stories are lies. There may be something that he, or those wise people from the Wardlands, can do."

Her weeping grew louder and more hysterical. "No. There's no time. There's so little of me left. But …he says …he says he'll spare me if you let him in."

Genjandro said nothing to this.

"It's easy," she said quietly, "it doesn't hurt. And he gives you thingspays for what he takes. Only, I've nothing left to take-nothing left. Please. Help me."

Genjandro didn't speak for a long time, and then he said, "She's completely gone, isn't she?"

A sigh escaped Vora's pale lips. "Yes," her voice conceded. "I finished her earlier tonight, while she was listening to little Lathmar tell the crowd about me. It was most amusing when she realized who I was and what I'd done to her."

"You shouldn't have begged. She'd never have done that."

"You'd be surprised what people will do, right at the end, when they're breaking up. In any case, I know that it's by compassion that you will come to me. You give of yourself rather easily, and someday I'll be there to take that first bite."

Genjandro laughed-not in defiance, but in simple amusement. "You don't know me, thing. I've spent my life buying low and selling high. You can't offer me anything worth what you'd take from me."

Vora's shoulders shrugged, an odd humping gesture. "Then I've misread you, and you're in no danger from me."

Genjandro stood and turned away.

"You can't get to Ambrose now, or leave the city," Vora's voice told him as he walked away. "Apart from that, go where you will and see what you like. You'll find it interesting. It's my city now."

Genjandro did find it interesting, and it was true that he could not reach Ambrose. He spent the night and much of the next day circumnavigating the walls of the city. But all of the gates were held by guards who would not acknowledge him or let him out-soldiers eaten by the adept.

The next night he slept-he could not do without it anymore-in an empty shed not far from the city's Water Wheel.

He woke the next morning to the sound of the wheel turning. He had, for a moment, the pleasant sense that everything had been a dream-that life in the city was going on as it always had.

But then, he realized, he would not have fallen asleep in this shed. He stepped out into the light, bracing himself for what he would see.

The Water Wheel was turning, the great man-powered wheel that drew water from underground rivers and aqueducts to supply the fountains of the city. It was being turned by men, not, as Genjandro had feared, by corpsegolems.

Genjandro went down to the gate where the workers entered. A great many men were waiting there-the Water Wheel was one place in the city where a strong man could always find work for wages. But with many of the men there were weeping children of various ages. And blocking the way to the wheel were several Companions of Mercy who either let a man pass or refused him at the behest of a smaller figure. As Genjandro approached he realized that the smaller figure was the dead baby Morlock had seen, still astride its monstrous dog-steed with mismatched human feet.

"No, no, no," the baby was saying impatiently to one importunate would-be worker, who held a small severed hand in his larger ones. "No exceptions. I'm not looking for souvenirs. You must bring the child here: that's all."

The man dropped the grisly object in the street and went away weeping. The dead baby turned toward Genjandro. Its eyes were wholly ruined-he could see maggots nestling there in the sockets-but it still seemed to see with them somehow, for it nodded and welcomed him by name.

"I'm surprised you remember me," Genjandro said. "You must have a great deal to think about."

The baby laughed. (Genjandro flinched, but didn't turn away: he was becoming hardened.) "But then, I have a great many minds to think with," it pointed out. "Would you be surprised to find I've thought a good deal about you in the past day or so?"

"Nothing surprises me anymore."

"A healthy attitude. A new world is being born, and I want to give you a chance to be a part of it."

"Drop dead."

"Too late!" the baby caroled cheerfully. "No, seriously, Genjandro: I hadn't realized how badly you want to get to Ambrose. I can let you pass, if you let me-"

"Drop dead," Genjandro repeated.

"You could tell them what you've seen-give them the intelligence you've gathered. And perhaps you were correct in what you told Vora. Perhaps the Ambrosii could cure you of me."

"You wouldn't suggest it if it were so."

"Not at all. I don't know, candidly-my sources inside the castle are rather limited at the moment, though I hope to have better ones soon."

Genjandro considered the offer carefully. "It's your best attempt yet," he admitted.

"And your answer?"

"Drop dead."

"You're a hard bargainer, Genjandro-I'll give you that."

"I mean to sell my life dear, if that's what you mean."

"Nonsense, nonsense," the dead baby said peevishly. "When the time comes you'll give it away. I just hope to be the beneficiary of your selfdestruction, that's all."

"It's nice to have a dream."

"Oh, drop dead," the dead baby said, and laughed. "I suppose you're hungry."

Genjandro was unwilling to admit this, but found he could not deny it. Even in the nauseating presence of his moldering interlocutor his stomach was growling.

"Have one of these," the dead baby said, and one of the Companions silently handed him a wooden ticket. Engraved on it was a complicated seal with many figures around a single capital I.

"What is it?"

"It's a day's work-credit," the dead baby said. "The new currency of the city. Nothing else will be accepted for any commercial exchange, under pain of my extreme displeasure (which can be pretty extreme). It's what these men are working for, here." Its tiny gray hand (several fingers were bare bone) gestured vaguely at the Water Wheel.

Genjandro opened his fingers and let the thing fall to the ground. "I'd rather steal," he said.

"Oh, don't do that! All property rights will be respected, because ultimately, you know, it all belongs to me. You really won't take it?" Insofar as the sagging little face could express emotion, it seemed to be surprised. "Why, these are valuable indeed."

"I can see that. That's why I refused it. I take nothing from you: that's how it starts."

"You're taking life from me," the dead baby argued. "I could have these Companions kill you right now, but I refrain."

"Then do it," Genjandro said with genuine indifference. "I owe you nothing."

"You could owe me gratitude for eternal life!" the dead baby said earnestly. "Consider, Genjandro! You're an old man; you haven't many years of life before you. But there's no reason for me, or anyone who becomes part of me, to ever die. You could live forever! And there's nothing that people won't do for more life, even if it's only a single day. Consider this line of men!"

"And children," Genjandro observed.

"The children are tangential. It's the men I ask you to consider. I have sent out word that only those who bring one of their children to me and kill it in front of me will be allowed to work today at the wheel. Men say they love their children; they say that their children are their future, their hope of life after death in this world, but look how many have obeyed-for a single day's wages, for a day's worth of food and lodging, of life in the present, they sell their future!"

"How do you know they're bringing their own children?"

"Well, I don't, really, but do you doubt it?"

Genjandro looked gloomily up the line of hard-faced men and weeping, pleading children. "No," he said finally.

"They've picked the younger ones, the feeble or sickly ones, the crippled ones, the ones they never really cared for," the dead baby continued. "Tomorrow or the next day they will work their way up to the ones they really care about. That's when it will become really amusing; you should stop back."

"Why do you hate children so much?" Genjandro wondered.

"I don't. I don't hate anyone. I can hardly afford to, since someday I will become everyone. But the souls of children, I've found, are a little like unripe fruit: they take a great deal of effort to eat, and the result isn't worth it. Meanwhile they eat, and that's a problem, as the city's food supply is not what it was. The fewer children there are, the less strain on the food supply. Also, the dead bodies can be taken to the butcher's shops and used for food by those whom I allow to survive. It's a temporary solution until I begin to expand in the countryside, but I think it will work quite well."

"Not in the long run. If you keep on killing children-" Genjandro paused.

"I'll have to keep on expanding," the dead baby said eagerly. "Yes, of course, you're right about that. But why not? Genjandro, did you know that at one time I longed to be the Emperor?"

"No," Genjandro admitted.

"Silly, isn't it? But it's true. My father was Lathmar the Second-the son of Uthar the Great and the Lady Ambrosia. It seemed to me that I deserved the imperial throne after my father died-instead they let some little girl have it."

"Were you-was your mother-"

"Oh, she was no one important. Just an Ontilian girl my father met while traveling. That little accident cut me off from imperial power, and I was very bitter about it, even after I poisoned her. I studied magic; I laid my plans for seizing power; I worked and waited. Then, one day, it happened."

Genjandro waited.

"You don't mind getting information from me, I see," the dead baby commented archly. "Well, why not? What happened was, one of my shathes got loose in my workroom. I had a number of them prisoner, trying to domesticate them. It seemed to me that they would be fearsome weapons if they could be controlled somehow."

Genjandro nodded unwillingly. He understood that he was accepting something from the enemy, but it was too important to refuse.

"It was trying to seduce my will-to eat me. The vistas it opened up were so remarkable I almost fell. Then I realized something-something extraordinary. If it could eat me, if it could be nourished and sustained by my tal, then I could eat it. So I seduced it with the prospect of devouring me, and in the end I consumed it."

The dead baby smacked its lips appreciatively. "A hard-won meal, but a very satisfying one. In the end, I ate most of the rest of the shathes in my workshop. The others became tame, since the alternative was to be eaten. From the shathes I learned how to eat people, how to assume control of their bodies, how to use the traits and abilities of devoured entities to inhabit a legion of bodies. That was when my ambitions changed, you see. Why become the King of the Two Cities when I could become the cities themselves? Why be the Emperor when I could be the empire? To see through many eyes, to be a multitude of beings simultaneously while remaining myself, to remake the world into my own image! Would you rather rule the world or eat it?"

"Neither," Genjandro said.

"You'll find out," the baby said simply, and turned away. A hard-faced man stepped toward it, almost shyly, dragging a weeping girl with a crooked leg.

Genjandro walked off, but he did not truly walk away. As he left the wheel behind him, he heard the dead baby's voice in his head, whispering, Was it worth it, Genjandro? I offered you the chance to go to Ambrose with what you knew, but then you knew nothing worth telling. Now you know something worth telling, but I won't let you go. I've got you now.

Genjandro knew it was true, but he walked on. There might be a way, in spite of the voice eating him from within, to make his sacrifice worthwhile.

He went home and had breakfast (although it was more like lunch by the time he got there). Vora's body was still there, and had opened the shop for business. He said to it, "Get out, or I'll kill myself before you can eat me." His sincerity must have been sufficiently clear to the whispering presence within him; Vora's body walked out the door and he never saw it again.

He wrote what he knew and guessed in a letter to Morlock, then burned it. It was too long. He wrote three more versions, each one shorter than the one before. The last was less than half a page, summarizing what he knew (without adding how he knew it or his guesses about what it implied). He trimmed off any part of the paper that didn't have writing on it, then, on the reverse, wrote Morlock's name and sketched the heraldic crest of the Ambrosii, the hawk and thorns. It looked more like a seagull over some rocks-Genjandro didn't claim to be a great artist-but it was the best he could do. Then he put a fistful of unground grain in one of his pockets, stuffed the letter in after it, and went out to find a crow.

He saw a number of them, all dead, their heads removed. Then, on a street corner, he saw a crowd of men and women in ragged clothes, like beggars, surrounding a Companion of Mercy. One of the beggars gave it a double handful of dark bloody objects-crow heads. The Companion dropped them one by one into a bag: ten in all. He handed the beggar a work credit.

Useful employment for the city idlers, whispered the voice in Genjandro's head.

Despair crashed down on Genjandro then: the thing within him had won. It was eating him; it would eat the city; it would eat the world. If someone could stand in its way, harm it somehow, Genjandro was not that person. If it would ever be defeated, it would be too late for Genjandro and his city.

His city. It was his city. Not some Vraidish king's; not some Ambrosian witch's. His. Not because he ruled here, but because he had lived here and would die here. Because he belonged to the place, the place belonged to him, by some mystic law that transcended any human rules of property or ownership.

Had he bought and sold, lied and cheated on occasion, lived and grown rich, amassed what power he could, solely for himself, all for his own benefit? He had thought so. But that man, if he'd ever lived, was already dead. He had thrown away fortunes, destroyed his own property and that of others, spent magic gold that came from nowhere. As the King's spymaster in the occupied city he had killed and ordered others to kill to protect his organization. He had lived in danger every day. For himself? So that he could settle down in the peace after the civil war and sell rugs and die-old, childless, and rich, regretted by none?

It had all been for the city, of which he was a part and which, he had thought, would survive him after his death. Now he knew it would not, or at least not for long, that it was already dying of the same insinuating voice, the same withering Shadow that was destroying him. His death was meaningless if his life had been meaningless; he grieved for neither but rather for the city that, till now, had given a meaning to both.

He walked vaguely toward the river Tilion. To the extent that he was thinking of anything, he was hoping that he would be able to drown himself in the river. But he never got there.

He was wandering down a street running westward when he looked up and realized where he was. There was a burned-out building not far off, its blackened brick walls supported by wooden struts. It was his warehouse, the one he had burned as part of the dragon ploy. He stared up at it, trying to recover the feelings of reckless amusement and triumph he had felt on that day. As he was standing there, a young boy ran into him from behind and they both fell.

"Don't let them catch me!" the boy cried.

"Them?" Genjandro said stupidly.

"They're not my parents!"

"No," Genjandro said dully. "I suppose not."

The boy looked him in the face and said, "Death and Justice! You've been eaten! You're one of them!" He desperately kicked at the old man until they were disentangled from each other, scrambled to his feet, and ran off. Genjandro croaked, "Don't go in there!"

Behind him on the street came a pair of figures, a man and a woman. Genjandro did not know them at first, but then some mark on their face, perhaps the same one the boy had seen on his, gave them away.

"Oh. It's you."

"Genjandro," said the man, in a voice reminiscent of Vora's, the dead baby's, the whisper in Genjandro's own mind.

"You're going fast," the woman said, in a voice which was different, but somehow the same. "A little too ripe, perhaps-but all the better for quick eating."

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"It's most amusing," said the man's mouth.

"Isn't everything?"

"Not like this," said the woman's mouth, acknowledging Genjandro's feeble gibe with a smirk. "I've eaten the child's parents, and now I'm hunting him through the streets in their persons. The parents' awarenesses live within me and try to resist, but there's nothing they can do about it. It sets up the most delicious pattern of emotional contrasts; I wish you could experience it. But you will, soon, of course. I shall do this sort of thing citywide once I get really organized."

"Genjandro," said the man's mouth, almost excited, "there's no way out of that building, is there? The windows were all on the upper floors, and the flooring and stairs are all burned away, so there's no way the child can reach them."

"As far as I know," Genjandro agreed heavily. He supposed the enemy had read it from his own mind-if he could even call it his mind anymore. "There may be damage …holes in the walls," he continued. "The boy may be gone already."

"Just walk around and see, won't you?" the woman's mouth said.

Genjandro did as he was told, simply because he had nothing else to do, because nothing mattered anyway. There was a good deal of damage to the west side-there were more support beams on that side. The ground sloped downward there, toward the river.

"Etkondel," cried the woman's voice through the open door. "Don't go to your father. He killed your puppy. I saw him do it. Then he made me say it ran away."

"I did it for your own good," barked the man's voice. "Don't let your mother have you, boy. She'll cut your balls off, if she can. You may hate me, but at least I'll let you be a man."

Genjandro leaned wearily on one of the supports, remembering what the builder had said-the one he had consulted after the fire.

"Etkondel, Etkondel," the woman's voice sobbed. "Help! He's going to hurt me again, I know he will! If you don't help me, I just don't know what I'll do."

"She's lying. She's always tried to poison you against me, and me against you. She's good at that. If you come out now, why, I'll let you help me with her."

Master Alkhendron, the builder had told him, we can't rebuild. At most we can keep the thing from falling down, and that's hard enough. The solution is to level it and build again.

"Etkondel, I'm afraid! Please help me!"

"Enough of this nonsense! Come out here now, boy. Don't make me come in there!"

I understand, Alkhendron/Genjandro had said to his builder. But he felt that only now did he really understand. The city was dead, ruined, a shell propped up with great and useless effort. But if he leveled it, then the boy would be able to build again. The city was dead, but need not die.

"Etkondel!" the woman's dead voice wailed. "I know you want to do what's right, what's in your heart! You won't leave me out here to be hurt by this horrible man!"

The dead father's voice shouted, "I say what's right and what's wrongthe Strange Gods damn your heart and whatever's in it!"

"Lathmar!" Genjandro screamed abruptly. "Level it, and I'll build again! The city isn't dead, it's just dead!" That was wrong, somehow, but there was no time to change it-he could feel the will of the other trying to work within him. He pushed the support beam in front of him and it fell. He pushed the next one, and it fell. He went down the line of supports, crashing into them, falling from one to the next, struggling to keep his feet so that he could knock them all down, level it all.

Blackened bricks were falling about him like rain now. He lurched and fell and struggled to get up, but his legs were trapped by the slumping wall. A curtain of brick dropped down on him as he tried to wrench free.

The collapse of the rest of the building killed the bodies of the woman and the man. The boy escaped through a tear in the tottering wall and ran away into the twisting streets.

But Genjandro saw none of this; the collapse of the west wall had killed him also. He had been merchant, then conspirator and spy; now he was just another dead soldier, half buried by the city he had struggled to save and to destroy.

A crow who knew his voice heard him shout and heard the building fall. The crow was wise enough to know that the city was unfriendly to crows and that this might be a trick. But one of the words that the voice had shouted was important; Morlock and his dwarf often used it (though the crow did not pretend, even to himself, to know what a lathniar was).

So the crow risked descending into the cloud of mortar and ash rising from the fallen building. There was some meat among the ruins, but it was too fresh to be interesting, and two of the clumps had a dangerous smell about them.

It was the third pile of meat that had cried out, the crow guessed. It was mostly covered with brick, so the crow couldn't tell if it had been Genjandro. The midsection was burst open, and some of that smelled most tempting, if it were not for the falling cloud of mortar dust. The fellow's clothes were torn, also, spilling the contents of his pockets. Apparently he had been carrying some mixed seed and grain in one, a practice of which the crow wholly approved. The crow was sorting through this when he found the sheet with Morlock's name on it.

The crow squawked wearily. Why did these things always happen to him? Now he'd have to fly all the way to Ambrose-a long way to travel with night coming on. The paper looked rather large and heavy, too, a real winddrag. He was perfectly willing to play with entities he considered his equals, and he could understand playing games with pebbles and so on, but why Morlock and others insisted on playing games with paper, across such horribly long distances and tediously regular patterns, he could not understand.

Still, the crow was fond of Morlock. And it was a chance to get out of the city and get some clean food, without this dust and ash all over it. And there was the treaty. The crow irritably plucked the half-sheet of paper up, shook the dust of the city from his wings, and flew away from the wreckage of Genjandro and his dreams, north and west, straight as an arrow to Ambrose.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE THE LAST COUNCIL

Then I call this session of the Regency Council to order," Ambrosia said in dry businesslike tones. "I've asked the vocates from the Wardlands to sit with us, and Commander Erl, not just as the King's chief bodyguard but as a man of resource and courage. If any of you can think of someone else who ought to be here, feel free to name him or her."

"Wish Genjandro were here," Wyrth muttered.

"So do I," Ambrosia said clearly. She put her hand to a wrinkled, bloodstained half-sheet of paper that lay on the table before her. "But courtesy of Morlock and his feathered friends, we have Genjandro's last report. It doesn't tell us much, but what's there might be enough."

Morlock stirred at this, and Ambrosia turned toward him with a fierce unhappy smile. "Oh, are you awake there, brother? I thought you might have gone to sleep again."

The Crooked Man looked her in the eye until she looked away, a little embarrassed. "I was going to say that Genjandro's message, with the King's story, tells us what we need to know."

"How fast to run?" Jordel inquired. "I was just thanking God Sustainer for the Wards around the Wardlands."

"They're no defense," Aloe said. "Every wall, material or immaterial, is worthless unless it's guarded by soldiers. And the soldiers are the weak points, against this enemy: they have wills that can be seduced."

"I'll run if I have to," said the King in a low voice. "I'd rather defeat this thing somehow. It's eating the heart of our empire. I don't see that we'll have better luck against it in Sarkunden than we're having here."

Jordel cleared his throat, and said, somewhat nervously, "Well, you touch on a delicate point, Your Majesty. Our realm is a different one, and we need to look to its interests."

"Here it comes," Wyrth said.

Jordel turned to him in surprise. "It?" he said.

"It, sir. Now that the danger is greatest and we most need aid, you discover that you have an urgent appointment in some other part of the world. We are not your allies; you have no unbreakable ties with us either of blood or"-he glanced aside at Aloe-"other fluids. Why should you not go? If-"

"Wyrth," said Morlock, "enough."

"Master Morlock, I am your apprentice. But I am also an independent member of this council. I admit it is an anomalous situation, but I believe it allows me to have my say."

"You aren't," Morlock said bluntly. "You're having Jordel's, and damning him because you put words in his mouth. We've no time for that. We may have hours; we may have less. Shut up and let the Wardlanders speak."

There was a brief silence, and Jordel said, with unusual flatness, "We have sent messages by certain means to our peers in the Graith. We have reason to suppose that they have been intercepted. The Graith must be warned. We flipped coins and Baran lost."

"Or won," Baran differed. "I will carry word to the Graith and return as quickly as I may."

"You'd better take Velox," Morlock said.

"Thanks," Baran rumbled. "Heard about him."

Wyrth was pressing his clenched fists against his forehead. The King looked at him and then at Morlock. Morlock knew that Wyrth was still tormented by the memory of his fear in the grave lands, and he guessed that the King realized it, too. He nodded, shrugged, and waited.

"Vocates," Wyrth blurted.

"It's all right, Wyrtheorn," Aloe said quietly.

Wyrth winced at this use of the intimate form of his name and laughed raggedly. "I hardly think so. You have all deserved better from me. You'll get it another time, God Avenger bear witness."

"Morlock," said Ambrosia impatiently, "this is your hour. It's time for you to speak."

"I intend to go to the Old City and kill the Protector's Shadow."

"See how easy," muttered Wyrth.

"Kill him?" Jordel cried, amazed at the crudity of Morlock's proposal. "Which one of him? Which of the thousands he inhabits? Have we learned nothing about this enemy?"

"On the contrary," Morlock said flatly. "We have learned everything."

"If you mean his name, Morlock," Aloe interposed, "I don't see that it is so very helpful. It's true that he may have been called Inglonor-and even you, madam, can't be sure of that, I believe?"

Ambrosia grunted. "I never met him. I don't believe so. My oldest boy was an insolent little prick, in some ways, but he didn't honor me so far as to introduce his bastards."

"But," Aloe continued, "the nature changes the name. To effect a binding spell upon he-who-was-Inglonor we would need to know more than we doperhaps the names of every consciousness he has ever consumed and made part of himself."

"His name is nothing," Morlock said. "I intend to kill him, not bind him. Look, Jordel," he said, choking off the verbose vocate's protests, "take a piece of string."

"Why, I don't happen to have any string at the moment," Jordel cried.

"He means you to consider an imaginary piece of string," Wyrth explained.

"He might have said so."

"You take the piece of string," Morlock continued, "and you tie one end to your index finger and the other to Baran's index finger. Then, when you choose, you can move Baran's finger."

"Unless he resists, you know. He's awfully strong."

"We will say he is asleep. Or dead."

"Oh, dead, by all means, if you don't mind. That way I shall inherit the family estate."

"This represents the Protector's Shadow and his relationship with the body of someone whose awareness he has consumed. The string is the talic connection between the Protector's awareness and his subject's body. For it to be effective, it must have two ends-the one in the subject and the one in the tal-body nexus of the controlling awareness."

"I assume that, enjoying this experience as I do," Jordel continued calmly, "I kill the rest of the members of this council and attach their fingers to mine with bits of string."

"Plainly."

"Well, this is a gory little thought experiment, I must say. Is it getting anywhere?"

"Jordel: your hand is tired."

"I don't think so, old fellow-I'm quite comfortable."

"The hand with the strings," Morlock prompted.

"Oh! Well, I'll move them to my other hand."

"Do that, won't you? But remember that at any moment, while your hands are tangled up with string, someone might come through the door and lop off your head."

Jordel's eyes crossed and uncrossed. "I begin to see," he said slowly. "You think it would be that difficult to transfer his awareness, along with his control of the bodies whose minds he has eaten, to a new body."

"Even more difficult, Jordel. Your awareness already has a talic connection with your other hand; the Protector's Shadow would have to establish one with his new body. He would have to put the two bodies in talic stranj and transfer his strands of control gradually from the old to the new. He will not do this while there is any danger that his enemies will come upon him while he is preoccupied."

"`In talic stranj,' urk. I wish Noree were here-this isn't my sort of problem."

"Morlock," Aloe said intently, "surely your string-finger example isn't the only possible way the Protector's Shadow could maintain control over his subjects."

"In theory, no. I ran up several multidimensional models in my workshop after I read Genjandro's note. For instance, the central awareness could have been shared among several bodies, some of whom could have served as fallback positions if others failed. Or each body could have been truly intercon- scious with all of the others, with talic strands extending from each of the members to all of the others. There's true immortality, if you want it."

"God Avenger, make him stop!"

"Shut up, Jordel," Aloe said curtly. "Morlock, if these other models are less vulnerable to attack …Are they?"

"Yes."

"Then why do you assume that the Protector's Shadow chose the most vulnerable model?"

"Bad tactics," said Ambrosia curtly, and Wyrth, with a remembering look, smiled briefly.

"I don't assume he did," Morlock said flatly. "It's what he must have done. There may be practical considerations I am unaware of-this isn't my sort of magic. It may be that sharing awareness among several physical forms would require sharing of identity. The Shadow would not eat these beings; together they would become a true group mind. This would not appeal to him."

"No," the King said firmly. "It wouldn't."

"Or perhaps he simply made a tactical error in his first improvised, er, meal, and has stuck to the model ever since. It doesn't matter. This is the method he has chosen."

"You keep saying that," Aloe said. "But-"

"He defends his body," the King said distantly.

"He-what do you mean?" Aloe asked, focusing on Lathmar.

The King shifted uneasily in his seat. He looked at Morlock, but Morlock simply gestured for him to continue.

"He grows these hedges of thorn around the tower. He hides the door. The only window is hundreds of feet above the ground. He blocks the door to his workroom like a tomb." The King waved his hands. "Don't you see?"

"Even more," Morlock continued. "He gutted his body of its vital organs, sealing them away to protect his body's life. If it were not vulnerable, if it were not important to defend it, he would not hedge it around with these elaborate defenses. He would not suffer the inconvenience of a rotting body. It is his weak point. We must strike it."

"Or," Jordel said triumphantly (he had been waiting centuries to say it), "he wants it to seem that way. Isn't that possible? That the whole tower setup is an elaborate feint to draw an opponent (you, Morlock, or Ambrosia) to death or captivity?"

Morlock nodded slowly. "I considered the possibility. I broached it to the King. He thinks it unlikely. I trust his intuition."

"He was there, you know," Wyrth pointed out.

"Yes, but, begging Your Majesty's pardon and all that," Jordel said, "suppose he's wrong?"

"Then you fight on without me. Next most likely is that there is a small core group of mind-bodies who consume together the infected minds and share control of the subject bodies. The task would be to identify and kill a significant number of these."

"`A significant number …'?" Aloe wondered.

Morlock shrugged. "More than one. Less than the total number of mindbodies in the core group."

"And if it is the third model?" Baran asked. "Total interconsciousness, or whatever you said?"

"You'd have to kill them all."

"Easy for you to say," Jordel said. "You'll be dead yourself."

Morlock shrugged. "That's not how it is. If I fail, one or more of you should set out to do what I tried to do."

"Suppose we're all dead by then?" Jordel wondered.

Morlock gestured at Baran.

"Then it's up to us in the Wardlands, you mean," Baran said.

"Yes. You should contact Merlin as well. He's no friend to the Graith or the Second Empire, but I suspect that the Protector's Shadow will interfere with his plans, and he could be a useful ally. He has made a special study of necromancy."

"His plans," said Jordel musingly. "What are his plans, do you suppose?"

"He always has some plot or other afoot," Ambrosia said dismissively. "They never come to anything, always being somewhat overcomplicated. But it's nice to know one's father has something to amuse himself with in his extreme old age."

"Eh," said Jordel. His father, of whom he had been very fond, had died young.

"I take it," Ambrosia resumed, in a more official tone, "that the sentiment of the council is unanimous: Baran shall go to warn our neighbors in the Wardlands of the present danger, while Morlock shall go to the Old City to combat the Protector's Shadow. The rest of us shall man, woman, and dwarf the barricades here until some new strategy presents itself."

Nods around the table.

"I'm pleased to adjourn this last meeting of the Regency Council on a note of ringing unanimity," she said with a crooked smile. "We all have work to do, though the hour is late. Still, I ask you to wait and witness."

Morlock, who alone had heard this ritual formula before, looked up with interest. Ambrosia had stood and was walking, with a wooden box in her hands, over to where the King had seated himself, rather informally, farther down the council table. "Your Majesty," she said as she walked, "I had hoped to make this gesture with the high ceremony it deserves. But it may be that we will not all meet again. So" …She opened the box, took out what was in it, and cast it aside. In her hands she held an iron circlet with no gem. Lathmar twisted around in his chair to look at it.

"This is the iron crown of Vraid," she said. "With it I crowned your ancestor, my beloved husband, Uthar the First, Emperor of Ontil on the field of battle. In that dark hour without hope we won through to victory. Will you accept now the heritage of your ancestors and be our sign of hope in this dark hour?"

Lathmar squawked, "You want to crown me Emperor, now, before breakfast?"

"Certainly. Unless you would rather someone else do it." She didn't look at Morlock.

"No!" the King said instantly, to Morlock's relief. "No, Grandmother: you do it." He stood, kicking his chair to the floor, and kneeled before her.

She placed the iron circlet among his disordered brown locks, saying, "I crown you Lathmar the Seventh, Emperor of Ontil."

Then he rose and she kneeled, taking off her chain of office and handing it to him. "Your commands, my liege?" she said softly.

He gripped the chain like a lifeline, but his voice was steady as he spoke. "I affirm the acts of my late regent, my well-beloved ancestress Lady Ambrosia Viviana. Let's leave the rest of the ceremonies for another time; we have a war to fight. And, frankly, I want breakfast."

"Hail Lathmar the Seventh, called the Wise!" cried Jordel enthusiastically. "Breakfast in droves, by all means. Maybe we should get an emperor in the Wardlands."

Baran pushed his chair over for this blasphemy, and thus ended the imperial coronation of Lathmar VII.

"Morlock," Aloe said in the Crooked Man's ear as the others were standing around the table talking. "You've other good-byes to say, so I won't keep you. But come back to me, Morlock: I say it to you like some stupid fisherman's stupid wife. Come back to me."

Morlock stood, took her by the elbow, and walked her out in the hall. "The time is come for an understanding between us," he said firmly.

She looked at him with her golden eyes and waited.

"I am no longer your husband," he said harshly. "You are not my wife. I am an exile, and you are a member of the Graith of Guardians. You could be exiled simply for saying what you have said to me. Don't throw away everything you are because of something which is nothing to you."

"Do you really believe you are nothing to me?" she said, surprised.

"You would wander with me, from place to place, without a home, because I can never come to the place that is my home?"

She laughed, dismissing this fantasy with a wave of her hand. "I can see the future better than that, Morlock."

"Prophesy for me."

"You will be in the future what Ambrosia has been in the past: the true ruler of this empire. It took a long time, but now you have a place to call your own. You cast a long shadow-"

"An ill-chosen metaphor indeed," he hissed.

"Choose your own metaphor, beloved. The job is yours to do. I've never known you to shirk a job that was yours. I think I understand you now, at last, and I am willing to be a partner in your destiny, wherever it leads."

He bowed his head, clenching his teeth. He thought he understood her, and rather better than she knew him. It was strange to love someone, to look into her eyes, and to see oneself mirrored there as a nothingness cloaked with power. It was the cloak of power she loved, not the man who wore it. He could not say these things; they blocked his throat, too great, too terrible to be spoken. It is Morlock who loves her, he said to himself. But the man she loves is Merlin's son. She had never realized that they were not the same man, that they would never be, that he could not let them be.

He heard a sound behind him and turned to see Lathmar standing behind them, the boy's eyes twin pools of grief and shame. The young Emperor fled up the hallway, his bodyguards following at a practiced run. Ambrosia came out of the council chamber, looked up the hall, looked at Morlock, and shrugged.

He turned back to his ex-wife. "You've hurt him," he said fiercely. "I won't forget this."

"Save your anger for our enemy," she said, smiling. "I'll be here when you get back." Then she kissed him, and he found he could not resist her. She turned away and walked up the hall after Lathmar, her red cloak swirling behind her. Perhaps he would not be able to resist her, either, Morlock reflected gloomily.

"Did you know Merlin sent me off to school one year?" Ambrosia said as he turned back to her.

"No," said Morlock, genuinely surprised.

"It was such a disaster. I'll tell you about it, sometime. Anyway, this is a little like the end of the school year-fast farewells, so much to say that nothing gets said."

So he held her hand, kissed her forehead, and said nothing at all.

She kissed him on the lips, hesitated, then kissed him again. "From Hope," she whispered, and walked away almost as quickly as Lathmar had done.

"Nothing disgusts me as much as schmaltz," said Jordel disagreeably, stepping forward, "so I won't say good-bye. No point to it! You'll be a pest and a botheration to the Wardlands until the mountains wear away and the Guard fails."

"A pest, maybe," Morlock conceded. "But a botheration?"

"Don't try to bandy wits with me at this late date; you're not equipped for it. You don't even know what a bandy is―deny it if you can! See you, Baran."

"Good-bye. Good-bye to you, Morlock," the big man added. "Thanks for the horse. Think he'll carry me?"

"He carried Ambrosia, Wyrth, and me," Morlock said. "I'm fairly sure it was him. Let him run free in Westhold when he's carried you there, eh?"

Baran said he would, clapped Morlock on the shoulder, and was gone.

"You're not even going to say good-bye to Velox?" Wyrth said querulously.

"No," said Morlock, who badly wanted to. "He might cry, and I couldn't bear that."

"Ach, you're a cold and pitiless man. I suppose you're only waiting for me because you want help with your spider."

"That, and one other thing."

Wyrth became solemn, even grim. "I know. We never talked about how I failed you in the gravelands."

"That's nothing."

"Not to me," Wyrth replied, stung.

"Then it's your business," Morlock said coldly, if not pitilessly. "I should have warned you what was in the offing or forbidden you to come. Your suffering falls to my blame. Frankly, I have worse things on my conscience."

"And I'm the one who knows," Wyrth replied. He hesitated and asked, "What's the other thing, then?"

"I call you master, Wyrth."

"What?" the dwarf said irritably. "You can't do that. I'm just an apprentice."

"I can, and you know it. I should have done it a half century ago. You know that, too."

"You're doing this as a going-away present," said Wyrth angrily. "But when you come back, we won't be able to travel together anymore. Or maybe you're thinking of giving up traveling."

"Master Wyrth, you need to sit at your own bench, work in your own shop, dream your own dreams, and do your own deeds. If you do, you may become the greatest of all the masters of Making. I say so."

Wyrth bowed his head and raised it again. "All right, ex-boss. I guess I'll see you at the craft meetings. Let's get this spider of yours on the road."

He was weeping as he walked, but he took no notice of this so neither did Morlock.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX THE CROOKED MEN

Wyrth was glumly sorting through the accumulations of stuff in Morlock's workshop. In truth there was not so very muchno more than forty or fifty donkeys might have carried. Since, in the event, it would have to be carried by one old man with crooked shoulders and one dwarf (headed in different directions, he kept reminding himself incredulously), some sorting needed to be done.

He was tempted to carry nothing. To walk back to Thrymhaiam with nothing in his hands, stand on the Rokhfell Hill, and shout, "I am a master of Making! The greatest maker in the worlds has said so!" On reflection, this didn't seem practical-he would need food and water on the way; there were some notebooks with useful things in them; he didn't like to go anywhere without a few tools…. The items mounted up.

There was a folded slip of paper not far from the choir of flames. Wyrth opened it and read it to see if it was worth preserving or if, as he thought, it had been put here to become fuel for the ever-hungry choir.

The note read:

"Odd," he said. Was the last word a signature or an injunction? He had heard of someone who might have addressed Morlock in this way- Morlock's other sister, Hope. But she was supposed to have died before he (Wyrth) had been born. Of course, that might have been the purpose of the note …to let him know it wasn't the case. Wyrth tapped the note against his nose reflectively three or four times, refolded it, and put it back where he had found it.

The Emperor entered the room quietly, as if he didn't want to be heard. The clash of his bodyguards' boots and armor outside the door made that more or less impossible, so Wyrth looked up and said, "Yes, Your Majesty?"

"Is Morlock away?" Lathmar asked.

"He has been away some hours," Wyrth said.

"Oh," said the Emperor emptily. "I thought …I thought he might need this." He held up the signal horn with which he had escaped the adept's tower.

Morlock and Wyrth had discussed the horn and agreed it would be useless to him-the corpse-golems would be instructed to disregard it. But, Wyrth thought, as a pretext to say good-bye, the horn would have been pretty useful. Too bad Lathmar hadn't thought of it sooner, that's all. In lieu of saying all this, he grunted.

"You're getting as bad as Morlock," Lathmar said, laughing. He grew more solemn. "When do you suppose we'll know …one way or the other?"

"If he succeeds or dies, you mean?" the dwarf said querulously. "I don't suppose it's occurred to you that he could succeed and die-or that you might be better off if he didn't come back?"

"No," said the young Emperor so defiantly that Wyrth knew he was lying. Normally he disapproved of untruths, especially unsuccessful ones, but he had to give the boy credit for trying. If Morlock fell on his sword for this young twerp, the young twerp had better prove to be worth the sacrifice.

"Well," he said, in lieu of saying all that, "what news from the walls? I guess you've come from there."

"We are besieged again," Lathmar said solemnly. "There are bands of corpse-golems led by Companions of Mercy at every outer gate."

"Where's Ambrosia? I take it she's still leading the troops."

"Yes, she's at Thorngate. She was wondering if you have something that might-might-"

"Put a bug down their hoods?" Wyrth thought it over. "We can try a few things. Give me a hand, won't you?"

The current of the river carried Morlock down to the sea. He dozed a bit, barely troubling to guide his spider craft. There would be work to tire him soon enough.

When he reached the sea, he took up the controls and directed the spider eastward along the shore. Once he was past the city he took his craft to land and began a long, oblique walk toward his goal. He went north through the grave lands, then finally turned east again when he was north of Gravesend Field. He sped across the plain between the grave lands and the old riverbed on the Tilion. Then he took the dry riverbed into the heart of the Old City.

This occupied a good deal of time; it was dark before his spider crawled out of the empty river course at what was once a riverside quay. The sky looked cloudy, too-as if it might rain for the first time in at least two thousand years over the Old City. Morlock hoped not, for various reasons, but the most he could do about it was hurry, which he had planned to do anyway.

He scanned the streets on all sides with the spider's external eye, but he never glanced at the sky. So he didn't see the dark cloud that had formed behind him, following him from the grave lands.

He approached the adept's tower from the east, the last direction he would be expected from, or so he hoped. But in the event it seemed not to matter. There were not, as he expected, companies of corpse-golems and Companions patrolling near the adept's tower.

Morlock didn't like it. True, the adept, even after centuries, could only have a limited number of undead servants. (They could not remain usable forever for very long.) Also true, he had many uses for these relatively few soldiers: he had to secure a large city and assault a well-defended castle.

But if Morlock's theory was correct, the adept's principal need was to protect his central mind-body nexus at all costs. If the tower was as unprotected as it seemed, either Morlock's theory was wrong or the adept was somewhere else-possibly hidden in the city.

"Didn't think of that, did you?" Morlock said to himself, in the jeering tone he used to no one else. "Well," he continued, more reasonably (you have to live with yourself), "I can always hope the defenses are better than they seem."

The hedge of dagger thorns was high, but the legs of Morlock's spider were longer when fully extended. He simply walked the spider-craft over the hedge.

There were no corpse-golems on the far side, either. Morlock saw the work-wheel Lathmar had described; it was abandoned. The bare patch in the ivy-thorn covering the tower could be seen, as well: the iron stairs were drawn up and the stone door closed.

Morlock considered. This, as a matter of fact, looked rather promising, as if the adept had drawn up his bridge, so to speak, and trusted to his moat and wall to defend him. If so, the wall would have defenders: the tower stair inside would be lined with the undead waiting to kill him. Morlock hoped so, as he had no intention of going that way.

He walked his spider over to the wall of the tower, away from the shut entrance.

There was a screeching sound; Morlock turned to see that a number of dagger thorns had pierced the steel hide of his spider.

"Ugh," he commented briefly, and went to the weapons locker. He was already wearing a mail shirt under his tunic; from the locker he took a helmet and put it on. He also took up Tyrfing, in a shoulder sheath that he duly strapped to his crooked shoulders. Then, of course, the jars. He strung them separately across his shoulders, as he would need his hands free for climbing.

He released the hatch and crawled out on top of the spider's body.

He found his hands were trembling as he stood there. In fact, he found to his surprise that he was frightened. It was not the height nor the fight he faced that frightened him. He had grown up in the Whitethorn Mountains and free-climbed many a rock face more treacherous than this. And he had fought and killed so many times that the prospect of doing so again, merely to protect his own life, rather sickened him.

But that was just it. This wasn't for his life. It would be better, in some ways, if he didn't live through this. But if he didn't succeed in destroying the adept, far more would be ruined than his own life. He thought of Wyrth facing the second death, of his sisters facing the mind-torments the adept would inflict, little Lathmar…. The boy would never break, that Morlock knew, but what horrors he might have to face before he died!

We should have fled We should have waited for the wise ones from the Wardlands. Together, Illion, Norea, and I could have killed this thing. I wish I had a drink.

He put his trembling hands over his face and stood there until he grew still. Then, the voices in his head grown quiet, he took the first jar in his hands and stepped toward the thorns.

The jar was made of aethrium; inside it was phlogiston. In the hours before the last council, Morlock had dephlogistonated everything he could lay his hands on, while Wyrth frantically worked every piece of aethrium Morlock had in his workshop into suitable containers. In the throat of each jar was a piece of flint that scraped against a metal wheel when the cap of the jar was flipped open. The resultant spark ignited the upward-rushing phlogiston, resulting in a sheet, a rising cloud of flame.

Morlock flipped open the first jar, holding it among the dagger thorns. A river of flame crept uphill through the dark ivy-thorn, spreading out in many branches across the face of the adept's tower.

Morlock tested the tip of a burning thorn with his bare thumb. The point was gone. The point of a thorn is its most flammable part, and a thorn without a point is just a branch. And the flame, of course, could not harm him, by virtue of the blood of Ambrose the Old. Morlock nodded grimly and climbed into the rising river of flame.

His greatest danger was that a burning branch would fail to support his weight, so he moved as quickly as he could up the side of the tower. When the fire began to give out (the thorns were green with the blood they had drunk) he uncapped another jar and the way of flame opened upward again.

He was intent on climbing when he heard the whisper of wings on the air, a hiss audible even above the crackle of burning thorns. He kept climbing with his feet and left hand, but with his right he reached back and drew Tyrfing.

As the hiss grew nearer he let his feet swing free and, hanging from his left hand, spun around so that his back was to the wall.

Silhouetted against the night sky, lit by the major moons, a winged but vaguely manlike figure was approaching, a great hammer in its hand. It must be one of the door gargoyles whom the King had seen outside the adept's chamber, Morlock guessed.

Once, when he was a young man, only just made vocate in the Graith of Guardians, his tutor in the arts of swordsmanship had made him dangle from a rope. Then Naevros had swung at him on another rope and battered him with a wooden sword as he passed. After several days of this, Morlock had gotten a wooden sword of his own to defend himself with.

I needed these skills once, fighting pirates in the Sea of Worlds, Naevros had told him, when he objected to the uselessness of the exercise. You'll learn them because I've sworn you can learn whatever I know, despite your crooked shoulders and your damned stubbornness.

The memory of Naevros's cool, tense, angry voice calmed him, as it had in many another fight, including the duel in which he killed Naevros himself. He braced his feet against the tower and lashed out with his sword, stretching out as far as his protesting left arm would permit. Tyrfing's edge crossed the gargoyle's hammer-bearing arm at the wrist and it screamed. Tumbling in the air, it recovered and flew away eastward. Morlock caught a glimpse of the thing's back in the moons' light as it flew off.

In a single motion, he sheathed Tyrfing and swung around to face the tower again. The thorns were burning in his hand; he had to move or fall. The gargoyle would be back in a few moments, but he had to make progress while he could. So he did, shouldering burning branches aside as he struggled upward.

The gargoyle. What was it, anyway? Morlock could swear he had seen scars like seams crisscrossing the thing's back. Its body was made of many pieces, but what sort of soul inhabited it? Perhaps the thing was a harthrang, a demon possessing a dead body-one specially made for it by the adept. But harthrangs were not so closely bound to the bodies they inhabited that they could feel pain.

So the adept himself must be controlling the gargoyle body. But that hardly made sense either. The adept's consciousness had expanded to occupy many bodies. Even if he could feel anything like pain any longer it would only be one sensation in a forest of others-nothing to make him scream.

Morlock thought of ascending to the visionary state: if he was to defeat the gargoyle he needed to know what it was. But he would need all his physical ability to ward off the gargoyle's next attack; he could not risk ascending to rapture now.

It was coming; he could hear it. He glanced over his shoulders and saw it stall in the air. Why would it do that, unless …

He let his left hand open and swung to the right; unburnt thorns scraped against his mail shirt, and one pierced it and him. But the hammer struck the wall where he had been. Stone shattered, and mortar-dust clung to a patch of blood on the hammer's grip. The gargoyle's blood. It occurred to Morlock there had been blood on Tyrfing when he had sheathed it.

The hammer fell and was caught in the thorns below. It left a hole in the wall, through which dead gray arms reached for Morlock. He drew Tyrfing with his left hand, snarling as it caught for a moment in its sheath (the blood had made it sticky). Then he lopped off the arms reaching for him through the gap in the tower wall.

The gargoyle was returning below for its hammer.

Morlock took a moment for cold calculation. The gargoyle had a method of attack that could hardly fail, which he could not counter. But it bled; it could be wounded; it could feel pain. There was only one thing to do.

He did it, opening his right hand and falling, like the hammer, down the wall. He landed on the gargoyle's gray winged back.

"No!" it screamed. "He'll eat me if you-"

Morlock severed the screaming head from its neck, and then abandoned the gargoyle body as it suddenly relaxed in death. He was pierced by several unburnt thorns in the patch he leapt into, but not seriously. His blood caused them to flicker with sluggish flames that soon guttered out. He clung to the dark branches, listening to the dead body hit the earth below them, recovering his breath. "All hands, abandon gargoyle," he muttered when he could, then breathed some more.

Finally he took a jar of phlogiston and opened it, burning a new pathway upward. He ascended the bright ladder of burning branches, remembering that there was another, at least one other gargoyle; wondering about the enemy who awaited him above; hoping that those he loved back in Ambrose were still safe.

They weren't. The second siege of Ambrose had been shorter than the first, and more disastrous. Before Morlock reached the tower, the sack of Ambrose had begun.

The Royal Legion had fought bravely against their eerie attackers. Wyrth had set up a smaller version of the Siegebreaker on the inner Thorngate, and it seemed as if things were going well.

Then half of the defenders began attacking the others. There were eaten soldiers among the royal ranks. No one could be sure that the soldier beside him would not turn. Some fought and died; others fled; the battle was lost. Wyrth barely had time to tumble the Siegebreaker into the river before he fled with the others.

Ambrosia led the vocates from the Wardlands, Wyrth, the Emperor, and his two bodyguards through the screaming chaos of the sack to the High Hall of the North.

"It's as good a place for a last stand as any," she explained grimly. They had ascended the narrow stairway and stood around it; the doorway at the other end of the hall was shut, bolted, and barricaded. "I can keep us safe from the whispering of the Shadow in this relatively small space-"

"But Grandmother," Lathmar broke in urgently. (He supposed he could call her Grandmother again, now that he was Emperor.) "Won't you have to ascend into the visionary state to guard us? Shouldn't you stand away from the stairwell so that we can guard your body?"

She reached under her armor and pulled out a pendant. It was luminous with power. Lathmar gaped at it for a moment, then lifted his eyes to meet Ambrosia's amused gaze.

"I am in the visionary state, Your Imperial Majesty," she replied calmly. "I have been since the enemy stormed Ambrose."

"But-" But she was walking and talking normally. But the pendant, clearly her focus of power, parallel to Morlock's Tyrfing, attested that she was acting powerfully in the talic realm. "But Morlock can't do that!" he blurted foolishly.

"Morlock, despite your touching faith in his abilities, cannot do everything," Ambrosia replied.

"Shut your mouth, Your Imperial Majesty," Wyrth muttered. "What Morlock is to makers, Ambrosia is to seers."

"Unquestionably I am," Ambrosia conceded. "Unfortunately, I'm getting a little old for this sort of thing. Still, I can shield you from the Shadow's whispering, here. If he detects me and sends his minions, and he will, they'll have to come at us one by one up the stairs. Also, there's an escape chute in the hall beyond. Erl and Karn: if the enemy's forces break in, I expect you to put the Emperor down that chute and follow him. Get him safely away."

"No!" said Lathmar, loudly if not firmly. "I'm staying here!"

"Erl, Karn: you heard me."

Karn looked gloomy, but Erl said firmly, if not loudly, "Lady Ambrosia, with respect, we serve the Emperor."

"That's what I'm counting on, Erl. If the Emperor gets away, the empire is still alive. If he doesn't, then it's just food waiting around for the Protector's Shadow to eat it."

Erl didn't answer this one way or the other, and Lathmar saw he was in doubt. Now wasn't the time to press the man, but Lathmar was damned if he was going to go along with Ambrosia's plan. His days of being carried around like a sack of beans were over.

"Maybe we should all go down the chute," Jordel said calmly, "without waiting."

"You're at liberty to do so, vocate," Ambrosia said evenly, "if you can find it. But there's some chance that Morlock may succeed in what he is about. If so, we should be together, not running about like chickens with their heads chopped off."

"Because that's what the adept's former bodies may be doing?" Aloe guessed.

Ambrosia shrugged. "It's not like anyone knows what's going to happen."

It didn't take long for the enemy's forces to find them. Lathmar anxiously wondered if that meant one of them was being eaten, or had been eaten, by the enemy. Looking around the room, he thought he saw the same doubt on other faces and decided not to voice it.

They heard the enemy's forces breaking down the door in the chamber below. They all drew their weapons and stood around the stairwell.

"Truce!" called an oddly familiar voice, coming up the stairwell. "I don't want to kill you, you know."

Ambrosia glanced at Lathmar and rolled her left hand repeatedly in a circle. She was indicating, he guessed, there was no reason not to spend time talking. He nodded his agreement.

"You can come up," she said. "But only one of you."

"There is only one of me down here."

"I mean one body, Inglonor," Ambrosia said flatly.

"It's been a long time since I've heard that name," said the familiar voice, growing nearer. "I didn't even know that you ever knew it-isn't that amusing?" The speaker appeared at the head of the stairwell.

"Genjandro," whispered Ambrosia, sagging slightly. "I …I hoped you had escaped, my friend. That was what the crow told us: that you were dead."

"A little bird told you?" remarked Genjandro's mouth. "You can't even trust birds these days, I guess. No, I found it possible to eat Genjandro in the end, just as I shall eat each one of you. Isn't that an amusing thought?"

Lathmar could see from Ambrosia's face that she didn't find it amusing-but that she feared it might be true.

Morlock clambered as rapidly as possible over the railing onto the balcony of the adept's tower chamber. If he had been the adept, he would have been waiting there with a blunt object to solve his Morlock problem once and for all. But there was no one present that he could see.

Near the window entrance was a sorcerer's worktable, and standing upright atop it was a strip of some translucent, irregularly glowing substance. As Morlock glanced at it he saw faces rising from the base of the strip, twisting and changing color as they passed up its length, then contracting and darkening at the top and sinking to the bottom again. Perhaps it was meant to be a lamp-there was no other light source than the window in the dim room-but it was very dim and irregular. On the other hand, it radiated power; most likely it was some sort of experiment or spell left here by the adept to run its course.

His fear that the adept was not present at all recurred to him. But, Morlock reminded himself, the adept didn't have to be here for Morlock to kill him. He saw the stairway leading to the lower chamber and leapt down it.

The lower chamber was darker; there was no window to light it. The air was thick down there, too; the whole place was redolent of rotting flesh. But the vats the King had described were there, glowing faintly by their own light.

Morlock heard a snuffling sound in the far end of the chamber. He drew Tyrfing and stepped toward it. He had not gone far when he saw its source. It was like an unfinished sketch for a body-no head, no hands or feet. From the way it flopped when it moved it seemed to have no bones. It snuffled and crept in a mindless circle around a vat containing human innards that breathed and pulsed and twitched with life.

Staring at it (the striations on its dark red surface were oddly like muscle tissue), Morlock thought suddenly of Urdhven. Was this formless form some fraction of his body, not superficial enough to be included in his walking self, not vital enough to be placed in the vat? And here it was, whuffling about in the hopeless hunger of being restored to its organs?

Morlock summoned the rapture of vision. It partly confirmed his guess: there were dim tal-lines connecting the misshapen shape with the organs within the vat. Other tal-lines stretched across the floor and up the stairs, out of sight. Going to carry life and sustenance from the vitals to Urdhven's walking shell?

He turned away. There were only two vats with organs in them; he guessed the other contained the organs of the adept's central body nexus.

These, too, were rippling with life. But no tal-lines extended from them that Morlock could see. Were they mere illusions? Morlock's insight said they weren't. He gazed at them, with his inner and outer vision, as they pulsed flaccidly on a surface that looked like the bare rock of the tower. He felt he was missing something.

He lifted his sword to strike. Like Lathmar, he felt that he would not have been allowed to come here if there was any chance of his breaking through the vat. But unlike Lathmar, he was armed with Tyrfing: it was worth attempting. The accursed blade, blazing with the black-and-white pattern of his tal, fell upon the unreflective transparent surface covering the vat …and bounced. He struck another time, and a third, with even greater force and less hope. The effect was the same.

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. No tree falls at the first chop. Perhaps, he thought, the inner surface of the vat was what it appeared to bethe bare rock of the tower. He decided he would try to turn the thing over when he heard a soft, shuffling footstep behind him.

He turned to find Steng stabbing at him with a dagger in his long, ropy fingers. No-not Steng: the adept. He avoided the dagger and punched the other in the face with his hand that held Tyrfing; the quarters were too close to use the blade itself. The adept's rotten nose squelched and tore under the impact of his fist.

Morlock contained his reflexive utterance of disgust, but when he saw the other stagger back to the stairway and stand there, he switched the sword to his left hand and wiped the fluid and fragments from his right hand onto his cloak.

"Well, I thought I'd try," the adept said apologetically, what was left of his nose dangling from his gray face. "Your vital organs are still conveniently located in your body, you know."

Morlock didn't answer this, but focused his inner and his outer vision on the adept. A dense cloud of spider-thin talic strands extended from the adept's body up the stairwell, as if the body were a marionette controlled by thousands of invisible strings. But the strings were woven into the talic imprint that rested on the body, and every time the adept spoke they sang in dissonant harmony, a soft cacophony of other voices calling out in pain. These were the strings controlling puppets, perhaps, but here was the puppeteer.

Why did the talic emanations of control go up the stairwell? The stones of the tower, as mere matter, should have been transparent to them.

"You're very rude," the adept said coldly. "Speak when you're spoken to-that's what my dear damned mother always used to say."

Morlock shrugged. He had come here with a single purpose, to commit the ultimate incivility. Besides, he didn't believe the adept was making civil conversation.

One of the talic emanations of control did not go up the stairwell, but toward the far vat.

The adept, who must have been in something like the visionary state continuously, noticed that Morlock noticed it. His gray mouth smiled, and the talic thread twitched, whispering in Urdhven's voice.

"Yes, you must have guessed-those are the living remains of the late Protector, the fellow whose shadow you so unflatteringly called me. He was so grateful to me when I cored him! It burned bright within him. He never understood, even at the end as I consumed him, that that was when I first began to devour his soul. Now he knows, of course. I keep that shred of him nearby as a sort of pet: I look at it sometimes, and think of what I did to him, and he reacts, and it's terribly amusing. Terrible for him, amusing for me. And that thing, the shred of him, it wants nothing but to be reunited with its innards, and of course it can't be-they're forever inaccessible. But it would take others, if it could get them. If there were other, unprotected organs in the room ..

Morlock turned and spitted at the headless, boneless shape as it leapt upon him. The adept laughed, and the laugh sounded closer, as if he might be approaching with the dagger while Morlock was occupied.

Morlock reached out with his talic awareness and snapped the talic threads emanating toward the blanket of muscle and nerve, the shreds of the soul-dead Protector. They quivered and went limp. Morlock shook them off and spun around, his sword at the guard.

The adept shuffled backward to the stone stairs. "Damn it, you sicken me," he hissed.

"I frighten you, evidently," the Crooked Man replied.

"It would take more than you to frighten me," the adept sneered, his gray lips twisting behind his dangling nose. "Your sister is more formidable than you are, and I'm eating her even as we speak."

"Then she frightens you."

"Nothing frightens me."

"You should look up `formidable' in a lexicon some time."

"I-" The adept paused. "You're trying to get at me!"

Morlock was buying time, in fact. There was something here that didn't make sense, something he might be able to sort out if he could think about it for a moment or two. He shrugged.

The adept started to say something, paused, then fled up the stairway, his robe trailing along the stairs with an odd sucking sound.

Morlock followed him up the stairs with cautious speed. It was promising that the adept was retreating, but of course there was some reason he felt safer upstairs.

The upper chamber was nearly as dark as the lower one. This was partly because the sky outside had gotten darker and cloudier since he descended. But it was largely because on the balcony was standing a gigantic gargoyle with outspread wings, a hammer in its left hand.

"Kill him!" the adept's voice sounded, from the darker end of the room. "Kill him and I'll release you; I swear it by the terms of our contract."

Morlock turned toward the gargoyle. With his inner vision he saw that it was a harthrang, a demon united to a body. But not a dead one: pretalic potential surged through the body like spicules of light interwoven with the darker flame of the demon's self.

Why did the adept want a demon who could feel pain? So that he could punish it, Morlock guessed: harthrangs could be stubborn and willful servants.

The gargoyle's body-stitched together from many different forms, human and animal, while still alive-was itself a horrific wonder of making. But Morlock could not hesitate to destroy it: he was caught between two enemies.

He leapt toward the gargoyle, knowing what he must do, hoping he had the time to do it. Beyond its gray wings, in the gray sky, lightning blinked its bright silver eyes and muttered.

Lathmar didn't like the bemused expression on Grandmother's face. It looked almost as if she were sinking into despair, and there was no point in that, no matter how desperate the situation was.

"Grandmother, he's lying!" shouted the Emperor, and he threw his dagger at Genjandro's face. The knife glanced off; the gray cheek opened, and dark blood seeped out. The cold features twisted in annoyance.

"That body is dead," Jordel said firmly. "If I understand how this thing works, he's lying about having eaten Alkhendron."

Ambrosia was nodding. But her expression didn't change, and Genjandro's dead voice continued to speak to her. "They don't understand," it said insinuatingly, "but I understand. They don't know what it's like to be lost in yourself-to be ruled by the will of another-of the horrible darkness you dwell in when your sister governs your body. If you explained to them, if you told them in so many words, they still wouldn't understand. But I understand, without you saying a word. You know what I'm offering to you, and you know that I can give it to you, and you know that you are going to accept it. While there's life, there's Hope. No life, no hope. No Hope, no life. I can free you from her, if you let me in."

"What the chaos is he talking about?" Jordel asked with mild interest.

"Hope is dead," Aloe said tensely. "I saw her die, centuries ago."

"I never knew her, madam," said Wyrth glumly. "But I think she's alive."

Ambrosia was wavering. Lathmar could see it. He started to go to her when iron-hard hands gripped his shoulders. "Erl!" he shouted. "Let me help her!"

"Majesty, I'm sorry," said Erl's flat voice. "But no one can help her. I think this was the hour she spoke of."

"No!" shouted the Emperor as they dragged him away.

"Hope," said Ambrosia thickly, as if drugged. "Hope." The light in her pendant seemed to be fading.

"While there's life, there's hope," whispered Genjandro's mouth. "There's always Hope. There's no escape from Hope. But I can give you escape. What else have you ever wanted? You've never really wanted anything else but to be free-free of her-yourself at least, at last, without Hope-"

"Hope!" shrieked Ambrosia. "Help! Hope! Help!" The pendant on her chest went dark, and she fell to the floor as if she'd been clubbed. The whispering in their minds crested in a wave that threatened to drown their thoughts.

Genjandro's body stepped out of the stairwell. "The strongest of you is gone," his dead voice said. "If-"

Ambrosia rose again behind him. Except: it wasn't her. It was a shorter woman, fairer, stockier, with blue eyes. She grabbed Genjandro's shoulders and pulled him backward. She threw her leg out behind the undead body and tumbled it down the stairs.

Wincing, she loosened the fastenings on Ambrosia's armor and looked around the room. "Aloe. Lathmar. Deor. I'm sorry I don't know you other gentlemen."

"You don't know me either, madam," Wyrth said respectfully. "But I'm honored to be taken for my father."

"Oh, you're Wyrth, of course-stupid of me. Ambrosia thinks of you often."

Genjandro's dead body came charging up the stairs, and there were corpse-golems shuffling behind it. Hope drew Ambrosia's sword and blocked the way. "I can stop him this way," she called over her shoulder, looking directly at Lathmar. "But I can't stop the whispering. I don't have the skills."

Was it an accident that she looked at him? the Emperor wondered stupidly. If Ambrosia failed, how could he succeed?

Then fail like she failed, he told himself. Do half as well!

"Erl," he said to his senior bodyguard (for Karn was wild-eyed with terror), "I must pass into the vision state. I will have to surrender volitional action in the world of the senses. Do you understand, Erl? You will need to stand guard over me."

Aloe turned her dark face, fierce with hope, toward him. "Champion Lathmar!" she shouted. "Jordel, you're for me."

"Always, my dear, if I understand you properly."

Lathmar was already ascending into the vision state. The cloak of matter and energy fell away. He found himself standing over his body.

Emerging from the shadowy hole of the stairway was the adept's avatar, a dark tower pierced through with myriad whispering shadows.

Lathmar leapt toward the enemy-willing himself against the other. He stretched out his hands (like nets of radiant silver wire) against the screaming shadows of the enemy. He entered the mind of the destroyer.

Of course it was too strong for him. He knew the other would break him down in the end-it began almost immediately. But he fought, as fiercely as he could, pouring out rejection for the other, and he felt the relief of the others behind him.

Aloe was beside him then, a bright danger like the edge of a bronze sword. She too struck at the enemy with her talic presence, and it eased Lathmar's burden somewhat. He felt he could fight longer now.

If there was a way to tell the passing of time in the vision state Lathmar didn't know it. After a timeless moment he sensed that the bodies in the room had moved, like chess pieces. Only in the end of a chess game there were fewer pieces on the board; now there were more, many more. Bodies without the talic imprint of souls, the empty presence of corpse-golems.

Perhaps now was the end. But how long was now? He fought on.

They were deep within the labyrinthine corridors of the enemy's mind, striking at whatever they saw. They looked out through thousands of eyes, a bewildering cacophoty of images.

Look! The command passed directly from Aloe's awareness to Lathmar's. He looked.

He saw Morlock fighting in the adept's chamber, Tyrfing in his hand alive with talic light.

The sky outside was full of bright darkness. There was a mind in the sky, preparing to think bright deadly thoughts….

Lightning! Lathmar cried. He's going to use lightning against him!

From Aloe, a sad agreement.

Her sadness puzzled Lathmar. He would never forget how Morlock had used lightning against the Companions on the bridge. Surely it would work as well against the Companions' master?

Then he realized: they weren't in rapport with Morlock's vision. They were in rapport with the adept. It was Morlock who would suffer the blast of the lightning this time.

They struck out as fiercely as they could, to distract the adept, to disrupt his spell. But it was no use. As they fought on, the lightning fell, dazzling the adept's delighted eyes.

Morlock, as he ran, raised Tyrfing against the gigantic war hammer of the gargoyle. With his left hand he grabbed the last jar of phlogiston, snapping with his thumb and forefinger the string that held it across his shoulder.

"Leave and I won't hurt you," he said to the gargoyle.

The gargoyle stared at him with lightless black eyes and said nothing. Morlock sensed that it feared the adept more than it feared him. But it held the hammer at guard and thrust with it: clearly the gargoyle didn't want to leave itself open to attack by swinging the hammer over its shoulder for a killing blow.

Morlock parried the shaft of the hammer as if it were a blade and dodged within arm-reach of the gargoyle. It was risky, but he had no choice. The thing was reaching for him with its empty right hand. Morlock didn't doubt it could kill him with that alone. He cracked open the jar of phlogiston and held the sheet of flame under the gargoyle's left wing.

The gargoyle shrieked and struck him down. He hit the floor rolling and sprang to his feet. The adept, who had shuffled nearer, lifting the dagger hopefully, shuffled away, a cheated expression on his gray rotting features.

The burning gargoyle was dancing and shrieking with pain on the balcony. Morlock dropped the empty jar and picked up a nearby table, throwing it at the gargoyle. It saw the table coming and raised its hands quickly to protect its unlovely face. It overbalanced and fell over the edge, its fading shriek stopping short with the meaty thump of impact.

"Any more gargoyles?" Morlock said coolly.

"No-that was the last," the adept said. "It was useless to me anywayit takes two of them to open the door, here, so we're both trapped. Isn't that amusing? I didn't anticipate you would or could climb the outer wall, and I was sure my first gargoyle would take care of you when I saw you creeping along out there."

Morlock reflected that the halls and stairwell of the tower must be packed with the adept's undead soldiery, and that enough hands and a few levers would move a stone far heavier than the one blocking the door of the chamber. But he saw no reason to tutor the adept in the principles of mechanics.

"The things were well made," he conceded. "But you should have made them impervious to pain."

"I would have, too," the adept agreed ruefully, "if I had anticipated today's events. But it made them so terribly amenable. Demons, you know, quite enjoy inflicting pain, but they never have to experience it themselves, and the effect was most amusing. They were broken to harness in record time-it was almost easier than eating them."

Morlock grunted.

"And there I thought we were going to have a civil conversation," the adept complained, tossing his head in irritation so that his dangling nose waggled back and forth. "I am a kind of maker, you know, using the substances of life. You can call it necromancy, but it's life, not death, which interests me."

Morlock glanced toward the window. His eyes told him that the play of lightning was becoming more frequent. His inner vision told him that a lightning stroke was imminent …and that an intention was drawing it toward this room.

He looked back toward the adept, who was smiling.

"Yes," he said quietly, "I was wondering when you'd catch on. Aether, the substance of lightning, is semi-intelligent in its ultraheated statesemi-alive. So it comes within my sphere of manipulations."

Morlock knew something about lightning, too. He knew that spicules of lightning-stuff were woven though the fabric of the universe. In deep vision he could weave a cloak of lightning particles to ward off the fire from the sky. He could assemble cells of antilightning particles as well, drawing down thunderbolts.

But he could not do so without surrendering volitional action in the world of the senses. The adept would simply step forward and kill him with its dagger.

"Unbelievably difficult to create a lightning storm over the Old City," the adept was saying cheerfully. "And it's always a dry storm-never rain."

Morlock ran across the room, standing so that the adept was between him and the window. Startled, the adept moved away; Morlock moved so that the adept was always between the window and himself.

"Oh!" said the adept, laughing. "Oh! You think-"

The lightning fell. Both Morlock and the adept were thrown to the floor. But the bolt did not hit either one. It struck the glowing strip on the worktable near the window.

The worktable itself burst into flying red ash, but the strip was not destroyed. As Morlock scrambled to his feet, the adept shuffled toward the strip of glowing faces, now shrieking silently, dark tormented lines dissolving slowly in a lightning-bright surface.

The adept picked it up and turned toward Morlock, his gray face agleam with new confidence.

"Bound souls!" he bragged. (Morlock was, after all, the master of all makers; the adept seemed to be childishly intent on impressing him.) "They hold an aetheric charge wonderfully."

"But not for long," Morlock guessed. His vision sensed the screaming of the dying souls, the agony of their bright brief damnation. "They must disorganize fairly rapidly."

"Right," the adept acknowledged, and whirled forward to strike Morlock with the sword of burning souls.

Morlock gripped Tyrfing with both hands and met the blazing sword of his enemy in a glancing parry. The shock nearly sent him to his knees, but he managed to keep his feet. The next stroke did not come swiftly-his opponent had a deadlier weapon, but he was no swordsman-and he was set for it. He even managed a glancing riposte, and the adept shuffled back.

Then the room was filled with flying black forms. The adept was laughing, swinging his bright sword, sending heaps of black feathers burning to the floor.

Crows-more than a murder, a rampage, a slaughter of crows. They must have followed him from the grave lands. God Creator, they were trying to help him.

"Get out!" he screamed. "This isn't in the treaty! You can't help me! Save yourselves!" He charged the adept, lashing out at him with Tyrfing in great double-handed blows, but the adept laughed as he saw the tears running down Morlock's face and kept shuffling away, striking clouds of black birds from the air, bright with fire, dark with departing tat.

In the end, they did flee, but countless crows (bright with fire to his weeping eyes, dark and lifeless to his inner vision) lay dead about the adept's chamber. The adept laughed at Morlock as he wept, his eyes stinging from the stench of burning feathers.

"You should never get too attached to your pets," the adept remarked.

Morlock dashed past the blazing sword, knocking it aside with a onehanded stroke of Tyrfing, and grabbed the adept's dangling nose, tearing it and a large portion of the attached flesh from the gray rubbery cheek. "For the crows!" he shouted in the adept's astonished partial face and, plunging back out of range, tossed the trophy off the balcony.

As he stood there on the balcony, staring in at the laughing noseless adept, like a spider at the center of a web of whispering talic threads, he wondered that it was so dark, so confined in the adept's chamber. How had he not seen the crows coming? Their tal should have stood out like a signal fire against the dead city. The stones of the tower should have been transparent to it. They were only dead matter …

But they weren't, Morlock realized. They couldn't be. Otherwise the adept would send his webwork of talic control through them. Instead, those lines of immaterial force must pass through the great window opening on the balcony.

Everything is opaque to itself, Morlock knew. Matter blocks matter; even light blocks light, under certain conditions. Only tal could block tal. Morlock looked on the talic imprint of the adept, like a tower pierced by myriads of whispering thorns, and he knew at last. Somehow, through the adept's magic, the tower itself was an extension of himself. It was through the substance of the tower that life passed from his disembodied organs to the shell of his body. He had not seen the source of the adept's life because it was all around him.

He dashed forward again, feinting left, then right, then high, finally striking low, slashing away part of the sorcerer's robe.

The adept's legs were exposed. Each had five calflike stalks descending from the knee. Each ended not in a foot, but in a broad, gray-lipped mouth pressed hungrily against the gray stone breast of the chamber floor.

"So that's how you do it," he remarked calmly, and lunged, balestra, so that Tyrfing slashed the front of the sorcerer's robe and the gray flesh beneath it.

The adept snickered, his breath whistling oddly through the bones of his torn cheek and nose. "That's how."

Morlock thought he could see scars of surgery on the exposed bones of the other's face. So what he had told Lathmar was untrue: this body had not naturally assumed this form, in response to the adept's talic imprint; it had been crafted as deliberately and as cunningly as the winged gargoyles themselves. But less vulnerably; Morlock doubted his enemy could feel pain in any usual sense of the word.

"Where's the speech?" the adept sneered. "`Now, alas, too late, I realize …"'

Morlock dropped from the visionary state entirely. He wove a net of blades around his enemy, dancing aside from the deadly soul-blade, now the color of white-hot gold.

"You're hoping to wear me down," the adept said. "But you can't do that. You're working ten times as hard as I am, and I'm drawing new strength through the stones every moment."

Morlock feinted left and again thrust, slashing deep into the adept's belly. He did the same a moment later. A great flap of the robe and the dry skin underneath now hung open.

"Ow, that stung," the adept said drily. "Maybe you're hoping to outlast the soul-sword? You won't. The lightning will burn bright enough to kill until dawn. By then you'll be dead."

An orange-black spider, its body the size of a human fist, crawled out of the hole in the adept's belly, clung to the shifting surface of the robe, and stared at Morlock with its eight eyes. A green, faintly luminescent cord went from its body back into the hole in the adept. A moment later, it was joined by another spider.

"Pets?" Morlock asked.

The adept laughed. "I said 'Don't get attached to them.' I never said not to let them attach themselves to you."

Morlock's next two attacks slashed the green cords, killing the spiders. He guessed, from shadows he could see within the gap, that there were more where these came from. But he could afford to wait no longer: what the adept had said was true; he was wearing out.

He closed with the adept and brought the lightning sword into a bind. Then he plunged his left hand into the open belly of the adept.

The adept screamed and stabbed him in the face and neck with the dagger. He felt several lancing pains in his left hand: spider bites, laced with burning poison. He let none of this distract him. He closed his hand on the spine of the adept and, gripping it, lifted him from the floor.

The ten mouth-feet resisted, each leaving the floor with a separate sucking plop. The adept stabbed him with the dagger again, yet again, but the strokes were weaker. Holding the body aloft, Morlock walked to the balcony of the chamber and held the adept's writhing body as far as he could from any surface of the tower.

The dagger (dark with Morlock's blood) and the soul-bright sword both fell from the adept's nerveless fingers. Morlock thought he could hear screaming, the screaming of many voices (in triumph, in hate, in fear, in shame, in death), but the adept's gray mouth was slack and motionless. Perhaps the sound came from the tower. Maybe he was hearing some echo from the talic realm, as the souls of those the adept had consumed over the centuries tore loose from the dying hulk that had eaten them. Perhaps he was dreaming the sounds, for he was very close to unconsciousness as he stood there and stood there and stood there until the sounds receded like a tide of darkness and left him there, alone in the dark.

"You're telling me you're dead," he whispered to the dead face when the whispers died. "But why should I believe you? How would I know when a thing like you is dead?"

But, in the end, he could stand there no longer. He clenched his fist till the spine within his grip shattered. He cast the lifeless body as far from the tower as he could. Falling back, he lay still and stared at the dry stormy sky.

Lathmar's spirit leapt up like a silver candle; he felt Aloe's bronze glory singing beside him.

He was far past the state where words are possible, but he shared his sense of personal triumph with the spirit who had fought so bravely and so hopelessly beside him.

She responded with a gesture that unmistakably recalled a hawk in flight over a branch of flowering thorns.

Lathmar looked down a dark corridor that was shutting like a mouth and saw through it Morlock killing the adept.

The shock of the myriadic death drove Lathmar back from his vision. His soul flew home to his body, hungry for the knowledge that he was still alive.

And he was. He opened his eyes to find Hope kneeling over him.

"Something happened," she was saying urgently. "What was it?"

"The Protector's Shadow is dead," the Emperor said. "Morlock killed him in the Old City."

"But these things, these corpse-golems, are still alive," said Jordel, who was standing nearby. "A half dozen of them just tried to charge up the stairway."

"No, they're not," the Emperor said sleepily. "Wyrth. Tell him."

The dwarf looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. "I get it. If they're like golems, they're not alive. They're just carrying out the instructions on their life-scrolls."

Lathmar sat up. He was desperately tired. But the Emperor had work to do. "Right," he said wearily. "There will be thousands of these things-here and in the Two Cities. They'll be dangerous to us, but they can't really think. We'll first need to regroup the Royal Legion. No." He looked around the room. "Erl, congratulations. You're the new commander of the Imperial Legion."

"Urn."

"The correct response is, `Thank you for this high honor, Your Imperial Majesty; I will endeavor to justify your trust in me."'

"He was speechless with delight, Your Imperial Highnitude," Jordel suggested.

"Um. What does Your Majesty direct me to do?" Erl said, ignoring the opportunity to banter. (Something told Lathmar he always would.)

"Take Karn-where's Karn?"

"Dead, Your Majesty. He died bravely."

So? his Majesty nearly replied. Dead is dead. But it did matter. When he had looked around for Karn and missed him, he had been afraid the man had run away. Karn had chosen his job, or allowed it to choose him, and died at it. Lathmar hoped he himself would have an epitaph that good.

"Take Wyrth, then," the Emperor said aloud. "The stairway is still blocked by corpse-golems? Go down the escape chute. Collect a body-I mean, collect a group of soldiers and put them under discipline. Draft anyone you come across, now that I think of it: this is everyone's fight. Come back here, clearing the corridors as you go and suiting your tactics to the occasion. That's your short-term goal. When that's done, we'll clear the castle of these things. By then we should have enough troops to enter the city. That's the long-term goal: to cleanse the living city."

Wyrth solemnly saluted the Emperor, and Lathmar suddenly realized that Wyrth was not his subject anymore. His oath had been to the King of the Two Cities; he was not a citizen of the Ontilian Empire. But if he would go along with the gag as long as was necessary, Lathmar reflected, it wouldn't matter.

"As long as everyone else does likewise," he muttered to himself.

"A true Ambrose," Hope observed to Aloe, who was smiling sadly. "Always muttering!"

The dry storm receded, and the dark sky grew silent. In a moment, Morlock thought, he would get up. He would go back to the city. He would retake Aloe to be his wife and replace Ambrosia as the power behind the imperial throne. He would again be the defender of a realm that needed him; his life would have a meaning and a purpose once more. He had succeeded, and the rest would be easy. He could now have back everything he'd thought he'd lost forever. All he had to do was betray the trust of someone who loved him.

In the dead tower of the dead Protector's dead Shadow, Morlock lay among the silent black bodies of the crows-and among silent thoughts that were blacker than crows.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN LESSE MAJESTE

Merlin Ambrosius walked into a cave deep in the Blackthorn Mountains. His tall body was bowed with weariness, not age. He'd had a long trip. He'd had a disappointment or two. He would be right as rain with a little rest. (He loathed rain.)

He sat down next to part of an elderly woman who was lying inside what appeared to be a block of ice. But when you put your hand upon it, as Merlin did, you found it warm as human blood. Nonetheless, it was ice, of a rather special type; it was slowly melting. There were a few drops on the ground underneath its shelf in the wall of the cave; if Merlin stayed for several days, as he planned, he guessed he might see another drop added to the tiny pool.

Merlin, the woman spoke directly into his mind, where have you been?

"Oh," said Merlin airily, "going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it."

Very funny, the woman responded. I suppose that means you have been trying to destroy our children again.

"Nimue, my dear, I have merely engaged in a little experiment. I set a rock spinning down a slope, a couple of centuries ago, and it has turned into a great landslide, engulfing kingdoms."

That means you failed, I suppose.

"It was just a ranging shot," Merlin replied. "I'll do better next time. At least I know where they all are, now."

Why do you hate them so?

Merlin took a while answering. But he told her the truth, since she knew it anyhow. "You should not have loved them better than me. When you betrayed me and I lost everything, I forgave you. I will always forgive you, I suppose. I can even forgive you for loving them. But I don't have to forgive then. I earned your love and they stole it. That's all."

Merlin, the old woman said, we short-lived people are not like you, who live half as long as forever. We give our children life, and love, and then we die. It's the way of things. You should have let nie die long ago.

"Not until this is done."

It will never be done. Don't you see that if you destroy them I'll hate you, rather than love you? Even now you disgust me with your selfish greed, as if love were a treat you could hide from the other children and hoard, wolfing it down in secret until it makes you sick.

Merlin didn't answer this. For one so young (she had been hardly more than a hundred when Merlin had put her in the block of ice and took other even more extreme measures to keep her alive) she was very wise, but she didn't know about the deadly wasting power of time, or the things the mind can do to itself. Her body was frozen, but her mind was awake and unsleeping, one long single day through the centuries.

If need be, he would walk away and not come back until her mind had torn itself to shreds and re-formed anew. She would have forgotten the children; she would have forgotten everything. Then he would return to her. And then she would love him, because she loved life and he would be the only living thing in her world.

Then, and only then, he would thaw the ice and allow her to briefly live and forever die.

On a day, the Emperor Lathmar VII rode through his capital city and saw that things were well, but not well enough. He was glad to hear that the streets were completely free of the songs that claimed the young Emperor had personally defeated the villainous Protector (who was naturally, if somewhat unfairly, blamed for all the undead horror his Shadow had wrought) in single combat on the ramparts of Ambrose. In obedience with Lathmar's decree, no one sang these songs in public anymore. (Ten times as many sang them in secret, and more around the empire would do so every year, but he would never know that.)

The cleansing of the city was almost complete. Whole quarters, overrun by the corpse-golems, had been burned to the ground and would have to be rebuilt. Now they lay under a heavy layer of winter snow, strangely empty and unmarked by all the horror that had passed there-like pages waiting to be written on. It would be Lathmar's job to make something of them, at least write the first few words on those blank sheets, and he was hastily boning up on the principles of architecture and city planning. Fortunately he had (in Morlock and Ambrosia) two of the greatest authorities in the world as his tutors. Unfortunately, he didn't think he would have them much longer.

The weather was cold; times, in many ways, were hard. But the city, freed from the shadows of tyranny and living death, still carried something of a festival air. And the citizens loved it when their ruler rode or walked among them; any conversation he had with anyone was likely to be interrupted with loyal shouts of salute …but just as likely to be broken by cries of, "Get rid of them crooky-backs, Majesty!" The crowd would fall silent whenever he turned toward them after someone cried this; no one would say it to his face.

But it was obvious that most of them felt this way. The Protector was hated above all, but it was widely believed that things had gone worse because he had used the weapons of the Ambrosii against them. The world would be better off without the Ambrosii and their damn magic, people were muttering.

Lathmar rode moodily back to the City Gate of Ambrose. Erl met him there, and they discussed the appointment of the new viceroy of Kaen…. That is, Lathmar discussed it, and when he had given certain orders, Erl said, "Yes, Your Majesty," and carried them out.

Lathmar, feeling lonely, went up to Morlock's workshop. It was empty: most of the stuff had been packed up. Wyrth had been making noises about leaving almost since they had brought Morlock back on a shingle and it became clear he was not going to die.

There had been moments, while Morlock was convalescing, that Lathmar had almost hoped he would die. He was afraid that Morlock would carry out Ambrosia's plan to become the new power behind the throne. And Lathmar wasn't going to allow that. There would be no more powers behind the throne, no more damn Protectors. It was Ambrosia who had cast him in this farce, and he was going to play his part to the hilt; if she didn't like it, she …

Lathmar choked these thoughts off. Morlock, in sentences of one syllable or less, had made it more or less clear to all interested parties that the job of ruling a world-empire was more or less beneath him. He had spoken more frankly in private to Lathmar. "I am a master of the Two Arts-Seeing and Making," he had rasped. "It's enough. It's all that I am." Then, as if that settled the matter, he turned back to his latest feat of making, a magical book in the palindromic script of ancient Ontil.

Lathmar had called him a liar, kissed his terribly scarred face, and run from the room.

Now he heard from a hallway attendant (Thoke, in fact) that Morlock had gone down to the stables.

He found all of them there: the two vocates, Jordel and Aloe; Masters Wyrth and Morlock; and Ambrosia. They were crowded around a horse- Velox, it looked like, and Morlock was laughing his raspy crowlike laugh.

"What's the joke?" he asked as he and his bodyguards joined the group. Anything that made Morlock laugh had to be pretty funny.

Morlock, still smiling, handed him a scrap of paper. "This was on Velox's saddle when he wandered back this morning."

It was a note written in the secret speech.

Morlock-

Your horse keeps running away. Screw it and you-I'm walking from here.

Good fortune.

Baran, Vocate

"Poor old Baran was never much of a horseman," Jordel remarked. "Although his first job-"

"Spare us your memories of manure this once, Jordel," Aloe interrupted. "I suppose we had better report back to the Graith-now that our patient is back on his feet again. Any messages for your former peers, Morlock Exile?"

"My love to Noree, of course," Morlock said mildly.

Aloe shot him a golden glare; she turned and walked off without another word to any of them.

"What was that all about?" Lathmar wondered.

"Oh, Noree never liked Morlock here much," Jordel explained. "Thought he should have been kicked out of the Wardlands before his parents were born-was always looking at him askance."

"No, I mean-" Lathmar began, and then suddenly reflected that Aloe's behavior reflected a disagreement with Morlock that was probably none of his business. "Never mind."

"I never do, but I'd better try to catch her up. I said my good-byes to you all when I thought we were going to die, so I won't cheapen them by repetition." He waved casually and walked off after Aloe. Lathmar never saw him again.

"Guards," Lathmar said without looking at them, "stand away." When they had, he broached his problem to the Ambrosii and asked their thoughts.

Ambrosia heard him through, though nothing he said seemed to surprise her. When he had finished, she said, "Well, if I were you, Lathmar, I'd find Morlock and me guilty of some dreadful but not very specific crime and give us ten days' law to leave the city."

"That's not funny," Lathmar said impatiently.

"I assure you, I find it far from funny. But I know a little something about this business of governing an empire-not one of the Two Arts, perhaps, but a useful trade all the same-and that's what I think the situation requires. It won't be the first time I was kicked out of Ontil, you know."

"What …what do you suggest?"

"How about lese naajeste-an offense against the monarch's dignity? It's convenient, hard to define, and quite serious-as you reminded me at supper one night."

Lathmar nodded slowly. "Well. May I ask when you traitorous dogs will be fleeing from my justice?"

"We're packed," Morlock said simply.

"Get the hell out then!" Lathmar shouted. "Who the hell needs you! I don't and no one else here does!" He was weeping uncontrollably. He knew it was wrong; he knew he was being stupid. Morlock took him by the shoulders, looked into his eyes, and turned away without a word. Lathmar clenched his eyes shut, and when he opened them he saw that Morlock had taken his horse and gone.

"Isn't anyone going with him?" he blurted.

"In a word, no," Wyrth said. "I've had enough of his endless yakking. Besides, I'm a master of Making, now. I've got to take my own path. Back to Thrymhaiam, I think-it's been a long time since I've seen home."

Lathmar wordlessly held out his hand. Wyrth took it, held it, and released it.

"See you," Wyrth said briefly, and left him alone with Grandmother.

"Hope had a dream about our mother," Ambrosia said, in the flat voice she always used when talking about her sister. Lathmar could not even imagine the accommodation they had made with each other (if, in fact, they had). "She says it's better if we aren't together-Morlock and, and us, I mean."

Ambrosia kissed him on the forehead and said, "Lathmar, you've done well, but you must do more-much more. Are you ready?"

"No."

But it was a lie and she knew it. She kissed him again and walked away, and he was alone at last in his kingdom, his empire. Even though it looked rather like a stable.

He dried his eyes and blew his nose. "Well, it's back to the books for me, I guess," he grumbled. "But, who knows? Maybe someday they'll call me Lathmar the Builder …or even Lathmar the Great?"

They were calling him those names already, but he didn't find out until long after he had earned them.