by James Enge
The pain was pain. He didn’t relish it, but he could bear it. The shame of his stupidity—that would be with him for the rest of his life: every time he looked at a mirror; every time he chose not to look; every time someone looked at his face; every time they chose not to look.
The day was cold and searingly bright. He was so sick of the endless cold, the endless snow and ice. And now the shame, like vomit, filling his gorge. Maybe death was better than this.
But he would not be weaker than the others. Not again. Whatever burdens they bore, he would bear them, too. He would show them, and himself, that he could.
He found himself walking next to Morlock, with the others some distance ahead.
“I’ll never forget what you said to me,” Kelat remarked quietly.
Morlock looked at him with those gray eyes, bright and cold as the horizon, and waited. There was a calm in him that nothing could touch. Kelat envied it and hated it.
“I’ll always remember,” Kelat continued, “that you gave me something to live for, even if it was only hate.”
Morlock relaxed indefinably. “Well. I have natural gifts in that direction. So Ambrosia is always telling me.”
“And you’re not worried about me acting on the hate?”
Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. Kelat waited, but he didn’t say anything more. They walked together in silence for a long while.
That afternoon, as the sun was eastering, Kelat was walking alone while Morlock and Ambrosia conversed in low voices ahead of him. He couldn’t catch everything they were saying, but finally he heard Morlock say, in an annoyed tone, “People are born every day with faces worse than he has now.”
Ambrosia replied heatedly, “Those people are not the King of All the Vraids.”
“Is Kelat likely to be?” Morlock sounded surprised.
“Someone has to be. You can say it doesn’t matter, that a civilized people wouldn’t care what its leaders looked like. But the Vraids are, at best, semicivilized.”
“A civilized people doesn’t have leaders,” Morlock replied.
Ambrosia laughed, taking it as a joke. Morlock did not laugh, and Kelat wondered why. She glanced back toward him and he didn’t meet her eye, or give any sign he had heard them. He didn’t want to betray any sign of weakness. He was painfully aware that this was itself a sign of weakness, but he couldn’t help that. It was his only way forward, his only plan of action.
At dark they pitched camp, ate a few bites from their dwindling stocks of food. Then Morlock and Deor turned in while Ambrosia stayed up to keep watch in visionary rapture.
“You should sleep, too,” Ambrosia said to Kelat, who had made no move toward his sleeping cloak.
“You were going to teach me about the Sight,” he reminded her.
She almost spoke, stopped herself, looked at him (he was glaring though his mask), and nodded.
For some reason, he found it easier to focus on the spiritual exercises than before. And once he felt himself floating above his body: not cold, not in pain, not ashamed. He turned toward Ambrosia and saw her talic presence, like bright, fiery flowers. Behind her lay a shadow, still as death.
Then it was gone, and he was in his body again.
“That was extraordinary,” Ambrosia said, and seemed to mean it. “Rest now. Meditate on what you’ve learned, and even more what you’ve unlearned.”
He nodded and turned to wrap himself in his sleeping cloak.
Thus ended his first day as a noseless freak.
The end of the world seemed a world away. Morlock remembered seeing it from the gondola of the Viviana, but he didn’t truly believe in it any more. It was just necessary to keep on walking and walking until they froze or starved or were killed by monsters. He remembered the reason why they were there. He remembered it the way he remembered being warm, or drunk, or the afterglow of sex. These were historical facts. But they had no relevance to his life now.
Loneliness was as much a part of this journey as the deadly cold and the hunger. Paradoxically, there was also a lack of solitude. They were always in each other’s company, and they grew weary of each other’s faces and voices. By mutual consent they started spending more time alone—leaving many paces between each other, the little company strung out on the long, narrow road.
Morlock’s antidote through this time had been thoughts of Aloê Oaij. But by now all those thoughts were a little threadbare, and they did not keep the chill of loneliness out anymore. He felt as if she were talking to him constantly, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. That meant thoughts of her were laced with frustration as well as comfort. Then one morning he woke up and the words were gone. Her voice was gone. He could not remember exactly what her voice sounded like. That was a bad morning.
When they took breaks from walking, one or more of them would leave the road. Originally these were opportunities to relieve themselves—at least in Morlock’s case. But eventually he started to leave the road just to be away from the others, to be free from the boredom that was as mindless and intense as rage.
There was little variety in the harsh, white landscape—even the hills were often shadowless, if the day was cloudy. But it was something slightly different. On the long, tedious trek north, even little reliefs were welcome—necessary.
One day, as Morlock walked around a small hill on the east side of the road, he was surprised by the sight and sound of something new. It was a kind of flower grown from ice. It was a little like a woodland tulip: seven petals surrounding an open face. It was about as high as his knee, and it was emitting a low, silvery tone, like a wind-chime in the chill, persistent breeze.
As he took a step closer, the tone changed, became deeper somehow.
That was interesting, and it had been so long since something interested him that he stepped still closer. Then the tone changed again. It was fascinating, and the sound was reminding him of something; he wasn’t sure just what. He stepped closer and saw that a second glass flower was rising up from the snow to join the first. The tone it emitted was like and unlike the first. Together, they made a sound that was very pleasing, and increasingly familiar to him.
He took a step closer, and a third glassy flower rose from the ground to stand with the others.
The music was warmer now, as warm as a human breath in the icy air.
He stepped forward.
Now there was a crown of woodland tulips the color of glass, their faces toward him, singing a wordless song in a voice that he knew.
It was Aloê’s voice; he recognized it now.
He recognized something else. The tulips lying on the ground had been concealing something: a sac of darkish fluid set into the snow. In the sack were floating half-melted (or half-digested) ice insects.
They had been drawn by the music, as he had been drawn. They had gotten too close, as he was getting too close. And they had been swallowed by something, some mouth beneath the snow crust. He thought he could feel the surface shifting slightly underneath his snowshoes as he stood there amazed.
He thought of stepping backwards instead of forwards. He thought about it for a long time. But he didn’t do anything about it. The thought of stepping backward and losing the sound of Aloê’s voice was inexpressibly painful to him. But that was only part of it. His legs were not under his control. They were numb, almost, but not with cold. What if the sound was vibrating the strings of his nerves and overmastering his ability to move? Had he been stung by something, and was he feeling the effects of the venom? Was this binding magic of a kind his talismans did not protect him from?
He managed to not go forward. But the truth was, he could not go back.
He thought of drawing his stabbing spear. But as soon as the thought entered his mind, there grew up an impassable gulf between intention and execution. Nor could he speak, to call Tyrfing to his hand.
So he stood there, bathed in the voice of his beloved wife, expecting death.
A howl broke the spell—a long, ulula
ting, meaty howl from a wolvish throat. The ice flowers rippled like water. Some turned away in the direction of the howl; others stayed, gazing at Morlock. But the music, and the magic, was broken.
“Tyrfing!” shouted Morlock.
The deadly crystalline blade flew around the hill to his outstretched hand. He stepped forward and swung the blade like a scythe, mowing down the ice flowers. They shattered like glass and their voices fell silent. The howling, too, had ceased.
Morlock felt something moving under the snow and waited for the flower beast’s mouth to appear. He was disappointed when it didn’t. He stepped forward and slashed through the stomach sac, letting its dark fluids and half-dissolved contents flow into the surrounding snow. The movement under the snow stopped.
Morlock took three long steps back and turned to face the howler.
It was Liyurriu. The left side of his face was smashed flat, like a clay figure that someone had dropped on the floor while it was still wet and then stepped on. There was a definite list to his four-legged stance. But Morlock knew those ape hands and feet.
“Stay where you are,” he said to the werewolf. “The weapon in my hand can sever your life from your body, however they are bound together.”
The werewolf promptly sat and proceeded to gnaw a tangle from its curling, hair-like fur.
The beloved voice of his sister fell unpleasantly on Morlock’s ear. “What in Chaos are you doing here, Morlock?” Nonetheless, he was glad she was here to act as interpreter. Deor and Kelat were at her side.
“Almost getting killed,” he said. “Watch out for singing flowers.”
“And why are you menacing the entity who, apparently, saved you with another kind of singing?”
“You know why.”
“What’s to be done, then?”
“I want Liyurriu here to tell us what he is and who sent him.”
“And if his answers don’t suit you . . . ?” began Ambrosia, with a dangerous tone in her voice.
But the werewolf was already ululating a long and, to Morlock’s untrained ear, rather repetitive reply. Ambrosia heard him through, sang a few howls herself, each one of which got a copious response from Liyurriu.
“First,” Ambrosia said at last in Wardic, “he says that he is sorry he didn’t trust you with the truth back in the airship.”
Morlock grunted. “I’m not interested in apologies.”
“He is. I’m giving you the barest summary.”
“Thanks.”
Ambrosia continued, “He is sent here, he says, by a lifemaker in the werewolf city. The maker—”
“What’s his name?”
Ambrosia uttered a kind of howl.
“That sounds just like his name,” Morlock said.
“No, no—they’re really quite different. Listen, I’ll sing it again more slowly—”
Morlock held up his free hand. “Never mind. We can go on thinking of him as Lurriulu—”
“Liyurriu.”
“—yes. I doubt that I’ll ever have the need to speak Werewolvish.”
“You never know, Morlock. Anyway, what would your Oldfather Tyr say to hear you dispraising the study of languages.”
“As a matter of fact,” Deor observed, “he was not fond of wolves.”
“So be it! Liyurriu was sent by this lifemaker to aid us. He’s worried about the end of the world, you see, as well he might be.”
“Eh. Wouldn’t a werewolf like it if the sun never rose?”
“I asked about that. Werewolves get cold, too, it seems. Also, no sunlight would be bad for the prey, he said.
“Us, in fact.”
“Yes. He admitted that, too, by the way. He’s being very candid, Morlock.”
“Understood.”
“He’ll help us if he can. If we tell him to go away, he’ll go away. If you wish to dismember him, feel free to do so; the body is only an avatar.”
“Eh. He may have a dozen more.”
“He said he has more, yes.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he could have let you die just now, and then come after us one by one on the road. I thought you were high-handed before, but your suspicions were reasonable, given what we knew then. Now we know more.”
“Another mouth to feed,” Kelat pointed out.
“Uh—Prince Uthar makes a good point—”
The werewolf sang.
“‘This avatar does not need food,’” Ambrosia translated. “Any other objections?”
Deor shook his head slowly. Morlock said, “No.” Kelat said nothing.
“Now we are five,” Ambrosia said happily. “It’ll be nice to have someone else to talk with. Let’s get going!”
Ambrosia came up with a novel method of varying the monotony of their companionship. There was no reason why they couldn’t establish two shelters every night rather than one, and they could vary the numbers in each shelter: two in one, three in the other, one in one, four in the other. They could roll dice or draw lots to decide how many shelters and who slept in each one. Conceivably they could even have five different shelters, although that might be putting undue stress on the seers who kept them alive each night.
It was amazing what only a night or two of these arbitrary separations did for their companionship. They talked more during the day. They resented each other less at night. Kelat already believed that Ambrosia was wiser than everyone else, but she was always outdoing herself in his estimation. He did not say anything about this, however, and his expression could not have betrayed him, as he wore his mask all the time now.
Until the third night of shelter switching, when the gods of chance or fate assigned Ambrosia and Kelat to the same two-person shelter. Morlock, in the other shelter, was seer for the night.
“Come, Prince Uthar,” she said briskly once they had eaten their meager meal. “Off with the mask and I’ll check your wound.”
“I’ve been taking care of it,” Kelat said sullenly.
“I’m not much of a healer, but I’m better than you are. You’ll concede that, I hope.”
“Yes.”
“Then: off with it.”
Kelat took his mask off, feeling more naked than if he’d taken off his breeches. She swiftly unbandaged his face and looked at his wound. “Good,” she said. “You have been taking care of it.”
“I don’t want to be—” He snapped his mouth shut.
“—any more of a nuisance that you’ve already been?” she guessed.
“Something like that.”
“On a long enough trip, everyone takes their turn at being a pain in the ass. Don’t let it worry you. Morlock was sort of an idiot about that glass flower, but you don’t see it bothering him.”
“I don’t see anything bothering him.”
“And you’d like to be like that? I suppose I understand. When I was young and foolish, I felt the same way. But in the intervening years, I discovered two things. One is that things bother Morlock more than he lets on. He just doesn’t show it the way we do because he wasn’t raised by men and women. The other thing was: I’d rather be me than anyone else in all the worlds.”
“Of course,” he breathed. It was a confession of his adoration. He knew it, only after he had spoken, and she knew it, too, he thought. Her radiant gray eyes fixed on his and she smiled. He reached reflexively for his mask, but she reached it first with her long, clever fingers and tossed it across the shelter.
“If you touch that thing again tonight,” she said, smiling angrily, “I’ll strip your clothes off and toss your bare ass out into the snow.”
“I don’t want you to have to look at the hole in my face,” he said, turning away from her. “My beautiful face,” he added bitterly.
She took him by the chin and turned that face toward her again. “I’m older than you are,” she said, “and I know that something can be broken and still be beautiful.”
“Like me.”
“Like your face. You are not broken. I’ve seen you stru
ggling with this, becoming a man under the weight of it and . . . and other things. But yes. I still find your face beautiful.”
She kissed the wound where his nose had been. He felt with horror her soft, firm lips on the ragged, seeping edges of his wound. He was shocked to the core, and without thinking he pushed her violently away. She landed on her elbows next to his discarded mask, her eyes wider and more luminous than ever and a crazy, terrifying grin on her face.
“That’s the way you want to play it, eh?” she said.
She launched herself with her elbows and landed on top of him. He tried to hold her away from him, but she was so strong. . . . Plus, she cheated by tickling him where his leg met his hip, which never failed to make him convulse (although he had no idea how she knew that). She rewarded herself with a long, wet kiss (on his mouth this time, thank the Strange Gods), and he could not even try to hold her away any longer.
“I’m not worthy of you,” he whispered in her ear.
She laughed wickedly and the sound stabbed him with pleasure. “That’s not your problem, Uthar. The only thing you have to decide is whether you want to fuck me.”
“Always have,” he whispered.
“Then get your damn clothes off. No, never mind!” Her left hand danced across the fastenings for his clothing while her right hand did the same for hers. In seconds they were rolling around unclothed on the floor of the shelter and he was exulting in the sacred, unspeakable beauty of her nakedness: rosy ivory skin shading to golden brown on her arms and face, iron muscles moving under her sheath of female softness, mouth wet on his, tongue searching desperately for his, then he was on her, ungracefully, eagerly, and she guided him with her clever hands, and her pubic hair scratched along the shaft of his penis as he sank into her, and she was hot and wet, hotter than the dying sun, wetter than the sea.
The world was silent. There was no sound anywhere.
Uthar moved his hips as far back as he dared; he felt he would die if his penis didn’t stay inside her vulva. Then he rode that silken slide of ecstasy down to its end again, and one more time, and then his body was shaken by a storm of orgasm. It was pleasure enough to unhinge the mind, yes, and it was a relief, yes, and it hurt. It hurt the way it hurts when you’ve been carrying something for too long, so long you’ve almost forgotten what it was like before you were carrying it, and then you set it down, and it’s wonderful to be free of it, and only then are your muscles free to feel pain.