by James Enge
He sat up gasping. The bond was broken. Had they failed?
The first thing he noticed was that he was lying in the snow alone. He looked about and saw that Ambrosia and Kelat were setting up an occlusion and talking in that intimate way they had when they thought that nobody could hear them. Deor’s hearing was quite acute; his intolerance for the mating habits of the Other Ilk was equally sharp. Fortunately he had great skills at not noticing what he didn’t want to notice.
Morlock was on his feet, dragging Skellar’s body up on to the bridgehead of the broken Bridge of Souls.
“Here, you!” he called, leaping to his feet. “Wait for me!”
Morlock waited, and Deor, as he caught up with him, gathered up Skellar’s dangling feet. “What are we doing?” he asked.
“Skellar is dead at last,” Morlock said. “I thought I would toss it over the edge of the world.”
“Better than burying it in snow for ice-dragons to gnaw on,” Deor agreed.
They carried the dead mandrake to the edge of the broken bridge and tossed it off. They watched in silence until the body was lost in the misty blue gulf below.
“So,” Deor said. “You made it back, harven.”
“Yes.”
“Did it work?”
“Eh.”
“Not good enough, harven. Try again.”
“The Soul Bridge is broken. The wound in the sky seems to have closed. But we don’t know if the sun has been permanently harmed, or if the Sunkillers will try again.”
“If you had to guess?”
Morlock shrugged. “They may have other problems for a while.”
“Then we go home.”
Morlock looked a while longer into the misty gulf. Then he turned his back and walked away from the end of the world: homeward, as Deor supposed.
A year and fifteen days later, on the tenth day of Harvesting, the fourth day of fall, four ragged travelers walked up the long slope into the northern edge of the Dolich Kund.
The watch-dwarves on duty were playing dice on a flat stone in front of Northgate. One raised his eyes to look at the travelers with friendly curiosity as they approached and then said in Ontilian, “Hey! I know you!”
The woman in the group said, “I know you, too, watcher, though I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.”
“Kudh Spearholder, Lady Ambrosia,” said the watch-dwarf with the sun-bright hat, doffing said hat and bowing low. He snapped a few crunchy Dwarvish syllables at his fellow watchers and they leapt to their feet.
“Lady Ambrosia. Sir Ambrosius.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Lord Ambrosius.”
“Morlock.”
“A beautiful name. A golden name.”
“Eh.”
“Noble travelers, the weather is warmer than it was when I shared your fire a summer or two ago, when it seemed the world was dying. But won’t you come in and accept the best of what we have to offer? The Lorvadh has standing orders that any of you, any one of you, who cares to pass through our territory be treated with the highest honor. He would himself be honored to see you again.”
“We’re not sure we’d be honored to meet him,” Ambrosia said. “Sorry if that wounds you, Kudh Spearholder.”
“Oh, you’re thinking of old Vyrn, last year’s Lorvadh? He’s no longer a master. He found it cut into his moneymaking. Spends his hours wallowing naked in gold coins, I’ve heard. No, Fyndh is the new Lorvadh, and there’s some talk of keeping him in the job next year, too.”
“I’d be glad to meet with Fyndh again,” said Ambrosia. “And Morlock has some business to discuss with the master makers under the Blackthorns.”
“Then we part company here, my friends,” said Deor. He had promised himself he would never set foot in the deep halls of the Endless Empire again. “No, don’t get weepy on me. Kelat and Ambrosia, I’ll see you soon, I hope. Morlock, I’ll meet you back in Tower Ambrose. I mean to stop by Thrymhaiam on the way and give them the news there, so you may reach the city first.”
Morlock grabbed his forearm, saying nothing of course. Kelat stuttered out something behind his mask. Ambrosia nodded warmly and said, “Travel safe, Deortheorn. We’ll expect you at the wedding.”
“That will depend,” Deor said and turned away to march up the slope. His enthusiasm for the mating rituals of the Other Ilk was limited.
He turned back to have a final glimpse of them, but they had gone inside the deep halls by then, and the watch-dwarves had gone back to playing dice. He did get a little weepy then, although he didn’t know why. Only later did he understand. Perhaps he had felt the future without understanding it. He never saw any of them again.
Morlock stayed on, enjoying the hospitality of the Endless Empire only long enough to make a new nose for Uthar Kelat.
The young prince was resistant to the idea at first, but Ambrosia insisted. “My friend,” she said, “if you had lost your nose bravely in battle, it would be one thing. But your kinsmen will be cunning enough to sniff out a nose lost to frostbite—a fool’s injury, or so those who have never seen the deep north might think it. No, you’ll wear your nice nose and like it, my friend, or we will never be married.”
Kelat’s noseless face was torn with mixed emotions. “If I marry you, do I have to be the next King of the Vraids?”
“Not exactly. You get to be, which is somewhat different.”
Uthar Kelat was unconvinced, but he consented to wear a nose.
Morlock had made a wooden leg or two in his time, but replacing a facial feature required developing new skills. He got quite good at creating lifelike noses out of wax, but the problem was that none of them looked really convincing against the mobility of Kelat’s face. But the master makers of the deep halls under the Blackthorns put their heads together with Morlock, and together they developed a nose of wax and fungus, with pseudo-muscles woven of spider silk. Morlock sealed the pseudo-muscles to the real muscles of Kelat’s face, and wove the scarred edge of Kelat’s skin together with the false nose. The result was a masterpiece of making, its greatness revealed by the fact that no one would ever be able to tell it was made at all, unless they already knew.
“That’s your wedding gift,” Ambrosia said when they parted company. “Don’t bring anything else.”
“Bring it where?” asked Morlock, confused.
“To the wedding, brother. I didn’t get to go to yours, but you will be at mine. Give me about a year to set it up—that should be enough time.”
Morlock’s wedding had been a dinner at which he and Aloê had told their friends they were married, but he knew they did things differently in the unguarded lands, especially royal families. He nodded, hugged his sister, and turned away.
Kelat was waiting to shake his arm in the Vraidish fashion. “Thanks,” Kelat said.
“Watch out on hot days,” Morlock said. “I don’t think the wax will melt, but. . . .”
“Oh,” Kelat raised his hand to his face. “I’d forgotten about that. Thanks for that, too, then.”
“What else?”
Kelat threw up his hands in exasperation. “You figure it out! When you do, remember I said it. Good fortune, Morlock.”
“And to you and yours,” said the crooked man, and turned away toward the crooked, high horizon.
He crossed the Dolich Kund and then struck westward through the foothills of the Whitethorns. It was a meandering path, but it suited him. There was fruit and game, and the early autumn weather was warm and golden. He even came upon a hill town that had people dwelling there, although he made a long detour around it.
He came to the Gap of Lone from its northern edge, and one afternoon, as he was about to turn from the rough hills into the flat plain of the Maze, his eye caught a searing glint of something polished or crystalline atop a nearby hill.
It was odd. No one dwelt here. No one built here. But the thing that he saw didn’t look natural. He was tempted to go look more closely at it. The longing to go home tugged
him in the other direction. But home had waited a long time already, and he was still a vocate to the Graith of Guardians: they would want to know if someone was settling in these slopes, so near to the Wardlands.
He climbed the hill.
The thing at the top was an oblong box made of crystalline stones. Inside the box was a body. He recognized it long before he reached the top of the hill. It was, or had been, Naevros syr Tol.
Naevros lay, as if sleeping, encased in the stone. The sunlight made the crystal glow, reminding Morlock of the armor his avatar had worn when they fought beyond the wide world’s end. The body was dressed with Naevros’ customary elegance, but his cloak was not the red cloak of a vocate. It was the black cloak of an exile, separated from the Wardlands by the First Decree.
Morlock stood there for a long time, gazing on his friend and enemy. He had no words to say, no prayers for the dead. He remembered the murder of Earno and his hands clenched. Then he remembered long hours of talking, laughing, drinking, fencing. He would say no curses either. Naevros was dead and, it seemed, exiled; the thing was done.
He turned to go.
Noreê stood below him on the slope. There was a black cloak in her hands, a red cloak on her shoulders. She looked at him without anger, almost with pity. “He meant something to you—didn’t he?” she asked wistfully.
“Yes.”
“And to me. He isn’t dead, you know. But his spirit is gone.”
Morlock thought back to the burning valley beyond the edge of the world. “He’s dead.”
Noreê looked away. “They put him out here,” she said, “because the body still breathes, once a day or so. They put a black cloak on him because they said. . . . Well, he earned it.”
“And worse.”
“But Bleys is still summoner, and Lernaion. There is no justice, only defense.”
Morlock waited.
“I cast a mantia that told me you might come this way,” Noreê said. “I . . . I used a path-magic to draw you here, too. I wanted to be the one to tell you, and I wanted to tell you here. Now . . . it’s not as I imagined it. But never mind.”
She turned to face Morlock and held out the black cloak toward him. “The Graith sends you this.”
He took it by reflex, looked at it uncomprehendingly. It was cut just like a vocate’s cloak, but it was black, not red. It was the cloak of exile.
He raised his eyes and looked into hers. “They can’t,” he said.
“They did.”
“I have a right to defend myself.”
“You have no rights in the Wardlands. You are an exile. Three vocates died during your duel with Naevros, did you know that? Many were hurt. All were frightened, and frightened people are easy to lead. . . .”
He ran past her down the slope.
“Don’t go back!” she called after him. “I don’t say it as. . . . Don’t go back! Don’t try to go back!”
He ignored her. He ran with long, even strides down the slope until he reached the plain of the Maze. He felt the talic resistance before him, felt with his insight the shifting path that would lead him, by slow gradual steps, toward the other side.
He ignored it and walked straight against the talic wall of the Maze. It was difficult, but there was a fierce satisfaction in taking each step. He was in a mood to fight something; the Maze would do. When he reached the other side they could kill him or treat with him. But he was determined to lay his defense before the Graith. Someone, someone would listen to him.
Alarm bells were ringing in the Gray Tower over the Gap of Lone; he could hear them from afar. He saw Guardians in three colors of cloak standing at the tower’s base. In his fierce battle with the power of the Maze, he didn’t bother to identify any of them. He would see them face-to-face soon enough. He held the black cloak aloft in a gesture of defiance for them all to see.
He was about a thousand paces from the end of the Maze when his left leg suddenly went out from under him. He fell into the dark, golden grass of the plain and didn’t understand what had happened until flame began to smolder around him. Then he realized: someone had shot him.
It must be a gravebolt, to strike from such a distance. It had passed through his left thigh; the wound was deep, but it had not severed the great artery of the leg.
His Ambrosial blood was spreading fire in the dry grass of the plain. The gravebolt, too, was burning. But before it was consumed, he saw the runic rose carved on the shaft.
On a warm autumnal day, Jordel stopped by Aloê’s new house to have breakfast and say, “You don’t have to do this.”
The one irritated her as much as the other, but it was the last day she would endure either one for a while: she was already packed for her journey north. Her ostler had already saddled Raudhfax, in fact.
“That’s a complicated teleological question,” she said.
“I didn’t ask a question.”
“You implied one. Can a mantia be broken?”
“I always try to avoid mantias, myself. Hate causal loops.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Jordel finished the rolls and tea that Aloê had made for her breakfast and said, “There! Ready to start?”
“I suppose so. Are you coming along?”
“Of course! Unless you’d rather I didn’t. Baran’s coming, too, although he discreetly waited outside.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was hungry.”
Aloê looked at her friend narrowly. “I thought you wouldn’t want to be seen with me, J?”
He made a disgusted face. “That kind of stupid, sloppy thinking is precisely why I came! You are my friend. You are my peer in the Graith of Guardians. You stood by me in some rough times. I stand by you.”
“Even though you disagree with me?”
“I don’t know that I do disagree with you. I simply say you need not do this.”
“Ever had a horse that was dying, J?”
“Yes. And, if you want to know, I always pay a professional horse-knacker to put them out of their misery for me. It’s a trivial comfort, but it helps me sleep better.”
“This’ll help me sleep better.”
“I’m not arguing with you, am I?”
“You are, in fact, arguing with me.”
“Well. You started it!”
She kissed his forehead, in preference to kicking him, and walked ahead of him out the door, where Raudhfax was awaiting her, along with Baran and the brothers’ two horses. Jordel’s was an ungainly, sway-backed, yellow nag that began to dance with joy as soon as he saw Jordel approaching; Baran’s was a stalwart brown stallion with an ill-tempered eye, a bit like Baran himself.
“Thanks!” she said to her ostler. “Take care of the house for me, won’t you? I won’t be more than a halfmonth or so.”
“Take your time,” said the ostler, and turned away as they rode off.
They did not, in fact, waste much time on their trip north. It wasn’t a pleasure excursion.
They found Bleys already in residence at the Gray Tower. He greeted them in the atrium with an unpleasantly warm smile.
“I wondered if you would really go through with it, my dear,” he said.
“Call me that again and I’ll cut your throat. I’ll do it personally, too—not through an assassin.”
His smile disappeared, reappeared. He turned away.
“Does everyone in the Graith know about that damned mantia?” she muttered to Jordel and Baran.
Jordel hah-hummed for a bit, and Baran finally said, “Yes. You should not have consulted Noreê. It’s the type of story that would amuse her.”
Noreê was also the greatest seer Aloê knew, apart from the unspeakable Bleys. Perhaps she should have consulted Illion, but he was undergoing the rigors of ascent to the rank of summoner—the one good thing to come out of the Graith recently, she thought.
On the afternoon of the day the mantia had foretold, she stood at the base of the Gray Tower, along with Jordel, Baran, Bleys, and a
handful of thains.
Then she could almost smell the lyrea leaves she had burned to summon the mantia; she could feel herself floating free from her body, in time, not space. She could see herself doing what she was about to do.
“There he is,” said Jordel quietly.
Too far away to tell who it was, she nonetheless knew who it was. On his shoulders was a weather-worn cloak of red; in one hand, a black cloak of exile.
She took up her songbow. She spun a gravebolt in her right hand until its impulse well was full. She fitted it to the bow and waited.
Morlock wasn’t following the shifting paths of the Maze. He was breaking across them. She guessed he must be furious, afraid.
He held the black cloak aloft and she knew he was furious, defiant. He had a right to be furious. He and his companions had saved the world that she and the Graith would have let die. He didn’t deserve this. But the Graith had decreed it: he was an exile, too dangerous to be allowed back into the Wardlands. Some feared that he was ambitious to be king. For some, it was bad enough that he could make the attempt. Some hated him, like Bleys, for their own reasons. Some feared him, especially after the battle with Naevros, when some of them had died, dropped dead from the dais under the Dome of the Graith.
Some of those things might change in time. But an exile who returned to the land was killed. That was the First Decree. He could not be allowed to return.
She took aim with the gravebolt.
In her vision of the future, she had seen herself doing these things and she had wondered why—why would she do this, how could she bring herself to do this? But the more she thought about it, the more reasons she thought of.
Not hate or fear. She had been afraid that terrible day of the battle beyond the edge of the world; she had felt pain, as Morlock’s damned sword shattered the soul armor they had made to protect Naevros. But she’d been glad the Graith and the Sunkillers were defeated, glad that the world would go on living.
But if he came back now, he would be killed. There was one way that she knew to keep him from coming back. She knew it would work because she had seen it in the future. Causal loop: knowledge of the future creates the future. . . .