by James Enge
“He can’t be that bad,” Aloê replied, fully aware she was expressing a hope rather than a fact.
“I’m just telling you like he told me. He says I’m old enough to face facts, that I’m a very smart girl. When I’m a little older, I’ll make him face a few facts. I will!”
“The rat-bastard. I’m sorry, honey.”
Ambrosia seemed to be sniffling a bit, but she replied with great dignity, “That’s all right. Not your fault.”
Another ocean of silence passed—longer than a lifetime, but shorter than a night.
“Listen, Aloê!” Ambrosia said urgently.
“What is it?”
“Oh! I’m sorry! You weren’t asleep, were you?”
“I wasn’t asleep. What is it, honey?”
“I’ll tell you my plan for getting out of here, and you don’t even have to tell me yours.”
“Don’t tell me anything you don’t want Hope to know—”
“I know you like her better than me; everyone does. But it’s me that’s going to get us out of here. And I’ve got to tell you now because it’s going to happen now. I’ve been repressing Hope so that I can finish it.”
“Repressing?”
“Yes. I’ll explain that later, if you really want. But I’ve got to tell you this other thing now. Aloê, I got to!”
“All right. What is it?”
“The problem is how to get out of here, right? Because every time we try to bust out of the cage somehow the cage itself stops us. Am I right?”
“You are right.”
Ambrosia laughed, a little crazily, and said, “So I applied the Nemean principle, is what I did.”
“What’s the Nemean principle?”
“There’s this old story about this big guy running around the world fighting monsters. One of them is this lion, the Nemean Lion; its skin is so hard that arrows and swords and stuff just bounce off it. So he kills it by clubbing it to death—”
“Subtle.”
“Listen, you’re fighting a monster, you have to do what works. Am I right, or not?”
Aloê had the odd feeling that Ambrosia was speaking from personal experience. From her own, Aloê acknowledged, “You are right.”
“Anyway, he’d like to use the lionskin as armor, because he might be fighting someone else someday. But how does he skin it?”
“You tell me.”
“He uses the lion’s own claws. They’re the only thing hard enough to cut the lionskin. You see where I’m going with this?”
“Not really.”
“We’ve got two cages here. What if we can get one of them to rip open the other? The cage’s defenses are directed toward an inward threat, not an outward threat. You see? All we have to do is bait one of the cages to attack the other!”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that. Anyway, how could we do it?”
“In principle, it’s very easy. The wickerwork beasts, as you call them, are triggered by the blood of Ambrose. But they also absorb the blood shed within the cage.”
“How do you know that?”
“We’ve been in here for months. Or maybe you don’t menstruate?”
“Oh. Right.”
“So the trick is to get the blood out of the cage somehow.”
“Well—”
“And the obvious solution was to unweave part of my fireproof cloak, imbue the threads with my blood, craft a particular physical impulse into each thread that would draw them to re-form into a kerchief-sized piece of cloth on the exterior of the cage beast, and feed them through the wickerwork thread by thread.”
“Fairly obvious, I suppose.”
“Figured it out forever ago. Crafting the impulses was tricky, but kind of a fun puzzle. There hasn’t been much else to do around here. Anyway, except for a few details, I’ve mostly been waiting for another cage-beast to show up.”
“Ambrosia, I think you should talk to Hope before you try this—”
“That’s not possible, for a couple reasons you don’t seem to understand, and one that anyone could. I’m not going to try this. I have done it. I’ve been feeding the threads through the cage-beast all night. And I think it’s working. Listen!”
In the silence that followed, Ambrosia heard a distinct sniffing sound. The nose of the wickerwork beast that held her had smelt a fresh source of Ambrosian blood.
The cage abruptly changed shape, rising in height and narrowing drastically. Aloê leapt to her feet and narrowly avoided striking anything with her glass staff.
She was worried that the reeds would emerge to bind her again, but they didn’t.
There was a creaking sound, and Aloê found that she could see in front of her. Part of the wickerwork beast had unfolded itself to make arms, ending in long sticklike fingers, which were reaching for a dark-stained rag on the exterior of another dormant wickerwork beast.
Aloê hoped that the chest-cavity was about to open and she could just leap out, and perhaps that would have happened.
But it turned out that Ambrosia was wrong about the wickerwork beast having no exterior defenses. As the one beast extended sticklike fingers to grab the bloodstained cloth, the other beast raised up a basketweave arm to ward them off.
The beast that contained Aloê formed its fingers into a solid blocklike mass and punched the other wicker-beast savagely.
Any fears that the blow had injured Ambrosia were dispelled by the girl’s shriek of triumphant (and slightly hysterical) laughter.
The wicker-beast containing Ambrosia now flowed into a different, more manlike form. The wickerwork around the chest cavity grew thin enough that Ambrosia could see the shadow, at least, of the girl’s form there. Ambrosia’s wicker-beast grew two arms with blocklike fists.
“Enough of this, gentlemen,” said Aloê. She would have preferred to strike at the wickerwork in front of her; it was thin enough to see through. But she didn’t have room for a full swing of her staff. So she planted her feet as firmly as she could on the wickery stomach-floor of the beast, gripped her glass staff with both hands, and drove it upward into the wicker-beast’s head, releasing the impulse charge.
The upper half of the beast exploded in a shower of green sticks and reeds. The body fell down to the ground, carrying Aloê with it.
“What happened? What happened?” Ambrosia was calling out.
“Mmmph,” said Aloê, half-stunned, and crawled on her hands and knees out of the hole she had made in her living cage.
She stood up and breathed in a grateful gust of free air. The light where she stood was dim and gray: it was dawning behind the clouds outside, she guessed.
The other wickerwork beast had not resumed its dormant cage form. It stood on two widely planted feet like tree trunks. It held its blocklike fists before it like a boxer. And its flat moist tympanum of a face was pointed directly at Aloê, shifting to follow her as she moved. Could it see as well as smell? Or was smelling enough to locate her precisely?
She spun her staff like a baton, recharging its impulse wells. It was glorious to be able to move. And she would celebrate by smashing that thing holding Ambrosia, and the one holding Hope as well—she didn’t see that one, but it must be close at hand.
The standing cage-beast lurched forward to strike at her. She stood her ground and struck a two-handed blow with the glass staff on one of the blocklike fists. The fist smashed apart into splinters. Aloê swung the staff back around and, stepping forward, struck the framework holding the flat tympanum face. It broke, and the tympanum ripped with a hideous wet fleshy sound. Aloê clenched her teeth and, dodging the beast’s remaining fist, continued to land blows at the top of the beast until it fell over and split.
Gasping with laughter, Ambrosia emerged from the breach in the wicker cage. Her limbs were trembling and she stood uncertainly, blinking at the dim gray doorway as if it were a blazing light.
Her hair was ragged, filthy, a dark red. Her long-nosed, strong-jawed face expressed determination and intelligence in spi
te of her present physical weakness, but she looked to be about fifteen. She turned luminous gray eyes, painfully similar to Morlock’s, toward Aloê.
“Hm,” she said. “You’re pretty.” Her voice was dry with disapproval.
The wickerwork beasts were still moving. They were sinking shafts into the earth, and Aloê remembered what Ambrosia had said about them being plants.
“Quick,” she said to the girl. “Where’s Hope? We have to rescue her and get out of here before those things regroup.”
“Hope?” said Ambrosia vaguely, as if she was having trouble remembering who that was. “Hope.” Her pale face split in a wild mad grin. “Hope is in here,” the girl said, tapping her thin chest.
It was a crazy thing to say. And yet: there was no other cage beast at hand. And Hope’s voice had come from the same direction and distance as Ambrosia’s had . . . but never at the same time.
What had the girl said? I am repressing Hope. What could that mean?
As she stood in doubt, struggling to formulate a question, her question was answered.
“Hope,” said Ambrosia vaguely. “Hope. I’m not.” She fell over on her side and began to writhe.
Aloê ran over, thinking the girl was having some sort of fit.
The body grew still before Aloê reached it. But it wasn’t Ambrosia anymore. Instead of a girl, it was a woman: taller, heavier, blonder, older, with eyes of dark blue looking out of a face with smaller sharper features than Ambrosia’s.
The dark blue eyes blinked a couple times, looking up at Aloê.
“Vocate Aloê Oaij, I guess?” said Hope’s voice out of this stranger’s mouth. “Thank you for getting us out of there. I presume it was you who did.”
“Yes,” Aloê said unsteadily. “Hope Nimuelle—what are you?”
“I am the daughters of Nimue and Merlin. We are twins, you see, of a special sort. When one is aware, the other recedes into non-being. We are never together, never apart.”
“God Creator.”
“Yes, or somebody. Help me up, dear: we need to get away before we are recaptured.”
“I’m not in danger of being recaptured,” Aloê pointed out, as she helped Hope up to her feet. The ragged red clothes that had been too long and baggy on Ambrosia were a tad short and a tad tight on her sister.
“Oh. Well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Aloê; I’ve been doing some thinking about it.”
“A family habit, I see.”
“But you must suit yourself, of course.”
“Well, I’d like to stick together for the time being,” Aloê said, “if it’s all right with you—with the both of you. But there is somewhere I have got to go, and if you won’t join me we’ll have to part ways.”
“Where are you going, then?”
“Deeper into the dead lands. I have to find this thing powerful enough to threaten the Masked Powers.”
By the light of the major moons, both hovering over the eastern horizon, Morlock was busy polishing the skis of his odd standing boat when the island gave birth to a god.
Morlock became aware of this when he saw the shadow of his mortal body lying on the ground beside his unfinished work. He looked up with the fleshless eyes of vision to see the luminous face of a god rising out of the island—a hump of undistinguished matter, turretted and spiralled with blazing talic force.
The god rose higher and higher—more distant from the material plane. But he saw Morlock. He reached down with one of his many unformed arms toward Morlock.
Rage uncoiled within Morlock like a snake. Another god trying to take him over, land hooks in him. Morlock clung to the knowledge that his body bore a talisman, that his psyche was protected. And he cried out to the god of love he had half-imagined with Aloê, in whom he could not quite believe. Aloê was gone; he had to find her. He had a life that mattered to him and others; it was more important than being the first acolyte of some former Kaenish heresiarch now calling himself a god.
The god continued to rise upward and reach down—but, suddenly, was gone. Some wave of talic force, high above the material plain, had driven him westward, like a wind driving a butterfly.
Morlock watched him go with fierce satisfaction, then turned to contemplate that wave of talic force. His maker’s mind decided it was artificial, the product of some inconceivably powerful immaterial artifact. More to the point, it would affect his immediate plans to travel eastward.
Eastward. Where Aloê had gone. The thought anchored him, dragged him back down into the entanglements of matter. He opened his eyes to find himself lying in the midst of a cloud of disassembled skeletons. He rolled to his feet and got back to it.
It took him a day and a half more work to finish the thing, working without rest. A good deal of the time was spent moving a forge, piece by piece, from the empty city at the top of the island down to the beach, so that he could use the sparse beach sand as a sealant and cement on his odd craft. He needed small but significant amounts of glass as well to anchor a web of talic mirrors and manifolds that would amplify the impulse-force applied to the propellers.
He supposed he should go down to the Apotheosis Wheel and continue Aloê’s interrupted investigation. He should continue on his mission to discover more about the Two Powers. He should do a great number of things. But he never wavered in his intention: he would go after his beloved; he would find her; if she had been hurt, he would have vengeance.
In the end, his work was done. It was an ugly thing: a narrow coffinlike hull mounted on a pair of bone-bright gleaming skis. A pair of propellers deep beneath the water would drive the craft. There was almost no room within the hull to move, and none for provisions or water. That was just by design: he had no provisions and would not need them for this trip. He would make it in visionary withdrawal. If it worked at all, it would get him to the eastern shore of the Sea of Stones relatively swiftly. If it did not work, he would think of something else.
He said no good-byes to Old Azh, but he did feel he should name his boat. He wasn’t superstitious, but he always had terrible luck at sea, and riding an unnamed boat was supposed to make bad luck worse.
“I’m calling you Boneglider,” he told the craft as it lay on the beach of broken bones and burned sand.
Morlock half pushed, half carried the Boneglider into the deep water just off the floating island. He climbed aboard, unsheathed his blade and laid it in the hull, and then laid himself down beside it. He elbowed the hatch shut and closed his eyes in the sudden darkness of the coffinlike shell.
Vision came on him swiftly, and with it a sense of menace from the east: the wave of talic force striking him, even as it had struck the god. But there were two differences. One was that the god was not anchored in matter, as Morlock’s talic self was. The other: Morlock did not ascend to the higher levels of vision but hovered low above the plane of matter and energy. He could resist the talic wave from the east for a while, but he feared it would get worse as he moved eastward, nearer the source (whatever it was).
Well, each trouble had its hour. That trouble was not yet; he’d worry about it when he had to.
He applied talic force to the impulse-multipliers at the base of the propellers. They began to spin, and the Boneglider lurched away from the island, slowly at first. Morlock touched the steering arc with his mind, and the boat’s course was now directly east.
The Boneglider was still lumbering through the waves slowly, very slowly, too slowly to use her skis. Morlock spread his talic awareness a little farther, mingling it with the waters around him. He funnelled the impulse energy of their motion into the impulse-multipliers driving the Boneglider’s propellers.
Faster now.
Morlock experimented with different geometries of thought-funnel, finally settling on a fifth-dimensional shape that drew in a maximum of impulse energy with a minimum of talic extension. He wove his talic self into a crown of such funnels wound about each talic multiplier.
Now the Boneglider was running through the water
faster. Soon she was standing on top of the waves, running along the surface of the water with her skis, holding the narrow hull away from the water. Only the propellers and the steering oar were actually in the water.
Morlock coldly estimated that the boat was moving five or six times as fast as a horse might trot. Speed was hard to gauge, as he could not exactly see the water with his talic vision, only the talic presence of living things and motive impulses in it.
Time was hard to gauge as well. Once he felt the presence of the sun over him, and a moment later (it seemed) two moons were peering at him: Trumpeter rising in the west, Chariot lowering into the east.
But time did pass, and soon he could trace its passage in pain, a pain that must be intense indeed in his body if he felt echoes of it in his vision. The pain increased as he went eastward. The talic wave, the force in the east, became like a wedge, prying his overextended talic awareness away from its anchor in his material body. If it succeeded in doing that, he would die. The thought of death carried no terrors in the visionary state. But if he died, he could not help Aloê, could never see her again. That was a terror worse than the fear of death.
Reluctantly, he veered his course northward, to ride the edge of the zone of hostile talic force. He would beach the Boneglider on the shore as near as he could to the eastern shore and then search out Aloê by foot from there.
For a while, he was running almost due north. Then the sense of dread, of threat and pain, subsided in the east. He turned the steering arc with his mind to a northeast course.
For all the pain, and dread, and sense of loss, this was the least unpleasant sea voyage Morlock had ever experienced. His body was seasick, as usual, but those sensations hardly echoed in Morlock’s talic self. He saw, for the first time, something of the wonder of the sea: its power and depth, the intensity of its life, the beauty no longer masked by nausea.
A shark passed nearby, its talic presence like a single musical note: hunger. He steered around a set of submerged rocks—the rocks themselves invisible to him, but for the sessile fish whose souls like single eyes looked out at the Boneglider as it passed above them. The plants too had a slow slumbrous talic life: one rope of sea-ivy as broad as an oak tree, rooted deep under the sea, throbbed with life that was almost at the level of awareness. What thoughts would it think if it ever woke?