Blood of Ambrose

by James Enge

  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 invasion—meant 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 wh
at 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 blood-stiffened clothes away; Aloê 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 corpse-golem 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 a
re—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.