“That must be why the peddlers don’t hawk their wares,” Morlock reflected. The more magic workers there were nearby, working their various magics, the more likely a shouted word would send one of their spells awry, perhaps disastrously. This would be a quiet town. Also, a very unsafe one. Morlock was starting to wonder if this drink would be worth the trouble.
The fox was worried about something else. “Hawk? Are you sure that’s the right word? I thought it was a kind of bird.”
“It is, but sometimes it means to call out to people so they will buy your stuff.”
“Oh, yes. No one does that. It is weird. I thought it was because of the fairs of wizards.”
“What?”
“You know the old saying. Do not peddle in the fairs of wizards, for they are supple and quick tobbangers.”
“What are tobbangers?”
“People ride them downhill for fun when there’s snow or they’ve stolen a chicken or something.”
“Never heard of them. Or your saying.”
The fox peered up at him with a suspicious eye. “Are you sure you’re Morlock Ambrosius? You don’t seem to know much.”
“I know your friend owes me a drink. Where is she?”
“Not far.”
It was far. The fox led him on a circuitous path through the winding streets of the silent town drenched with magic and sunlight, past many a fortified tower emblazoned with mystic sigils. At last they came to a tall, many-towered, rambling house of many wings, standing in a field of tiger-lilies at the edge of the world. In the truncated fields nearby, vermilion sheep rooted in the dirt for bugs and other fodder. In the doorway of the house lounged a burly, greasy sort of doorkeeper with an unusual number of heads scattered around its body—several on necks protruding from the broad shoulders, a couple peeping out from the gaping armpits of the doorkeeper’s tunic, one on each knee and so on. Morlock stopped counting at fifteen; there were almost certainly more, from the muttering sounds emitted by the doorkeeper’s ragged clothing. He or it had seven arms; three of his hands held clay jars wearing thin gray lips. Periodically it held a jar up to one of its mouths and there was a high, keening sound, like the scream of a ghost.
Trolls protruded heads and limbs like that, before they split up into several smaller selves, but Morlock didn’t think this was a troll. Seams of old scars crisscrossed the ancient body. It hadn’t grown; it had been constructed in this guild of lifemakers. Morlock didn’t need to ascend to rapture to see that the body was a harthrang, the corporeal anchor of a soul-eating demon or shathe.
“Making a delivery,” the fox said to the many-headed doorkeeper.
The doorkeeper stepped aside and gestured with several of its hands. “Enter.”
Morlock was ware of the spells woven into the threshold, the many-headed monster, even the orange flowers nodding on their long green stems.
“No,” he said. “Not without some safeguards.”
“You’re shrew,” Gawr the fox said approvingly.
“Am I?”
“Yes. That means,” Gawr added helpfully, “that you chew right through something. These guys can’t be trusted. Hey, Lesion!”
“Legion,” the patchwork door-monster snapped irritably, from several mouths.
“Hey, Lesion,” the fox repeated, “go call the High Sarkoptic or somebody who can take an oath.”
“I’m here, Gawr,” said a bald, bronze-colored, elderly man, coming out of the shadows of the entryway. He was not tall or imposing; his gray gown was plain and he wore no badge of office. But the doorkeeper stood respectfully out of his way, and even the brash little fox seemed abashed in his presence.
“Is this our distinguished guest?” the old man asked genially. “How shall I call you?”
“I’m Morlock Ambrosius,” said Morlock Ambrosius. “And you?”
“People usually call me Xudnas,” said the man who was not really named Xudnas. “We would be delighted if you could help us with our troubles.”
“I’m not in the helping business.”
“Of course not, of course not. I quite understand that you have … er … retired. From active practice. Nonetheless, you are a mage of some status and reputation.”
“I don’t bother with reputation. I make things. I used to. I still do, sometimes.”
“Excellent. Excellent. The thing is, we have need of a visiting consultant, as it were, and we can’t really trust—we would rather—”
The town was full of sorcerers and they needed one. But they would rather depend on a passing stranger than let a neighboring guild into their secrets. So Morlock guessed, anyway. It might have taken this stately gentleman many minutes to make this point, but Morlock’s head was already throbbing like the soul-drum of an Anhikh komos.
“I get it,” he said briskly. “What is it you need? The odds are I’m not selling it.”
“We need your answer to a question—that’s all it amounts to, really.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Yes, that is the question, isn’t it? We can certainly feed you, house you, get you that drink you’re interested in. We can get you money, too, of course, but …”
“Eh.” Like any competent magic-worker, Morlock could make gold by the cartload if he needed it, which was pretty rare.
“Well, we just slaughtered some vermilion sheep and the mutton in the refectory is especially good today.”
Morlock’s stomach turned at the thought of food, but he supposed he would have to eat at some point.
“Then. Your guild feeds me and gets me something to drink. I’ll give you my opinion, for whatever it’s worth. We’ll both have to give self-binding oaths, of course.” Morlock didn’t like how the Sarkoptic had been waiting there, in the shadows of the entryway, for him to enter without safeguards. He glared this rather than saying it, and from the way that Xudnas dropped his sand-yellow eyes, Morlock gathered the message was received.
“Wait a second,” said the fox. “You got your Ambrosius. What about my friend?”
“Fair enough.“ The High Sarkoptic made three gestures with each of his withered bronze hands and said, “Your friend is released and restored to her status as a provisional semi-permanent adjunct to the Collegium.”
“Ha ha!” said the fox triumphantly. He dodged between their feet and was lost in the shadows of the guild-house.
Xudnas and Morlock each swore self-binding oaths that neither would harm the other nor let the other come to harm during Morlock’s stay at the guildhouse. They each ascended into the visionary state to anchor the oaths in the talic roots that bound their lives to their bodies.
Once he was sure that the oaths were valid, Morlock descended from the visionary state and stepped into the guildhouse.
“I’d like to show you around, if I may,” the High Sarkoptic said.
“Not unless it’s necessary,” Morlock said.
“I think it is,” Xudnas responded. “You’ll need to understand the issues before you can pass judgment on them.”
Morlock grunted and opened his left hand in concession. Xudnas proceeded to talk a great deal. Morlock paid little attention to what he said, but waited for the flood of words to ebb away. When it showed no signs of doing so, Morlock started to count his breaths. After two thousand he would give up the prospect of a drink and a meal and walk away.
By the time Morlock’s count had reached five hundred they had climbed a winding stair to the second floor of the guildhall’s central tower. The floor was one large windowless room, in which a great many people were working at isolated work stations: some were reading, some writing, some fiddling with foul-smelling fluids or strips of dried meat. Near at hand, one played a slow silent tune on a flute carved from bone. Xudnas had a great deal to say about this, but his cheerful tone was beginning to sound strained; he may have begun to notice Morlock’s inattention.
Then Xudnas touched his wrist, something Morlock noticed because he disliked being touched. While the Sarkoptic had at lea
st part of his attention, he hurriedly said something like, “And here is someone you know, I think.”
Morlock looked around and saw the talkative little fox, Gawr, sitting on the shoulder of a woman with reddish-yellow hair and a set, weary expression. A stream of noisome fluid was running out of a funnel, through a channel atop her work table, and disappearing down a funnel at the other side. She was painstakingly inscribing cursive letters on the surface of the dark fluid with a stylus made of a fingerbone.
“Don’t let us interrupt you, Clivia,” Xudnas said genially. Morlock guessed this was an instruction to keep working; Clivia certainly took it as such.
“You lied to me, little friend,” Morlock said to Gawr.
The fox flinched and looked away. “I’m sorry—filled with rebets. But Clivia was in the meatlocker—was going to lose her rank. I had to bring the lifemakers something they wanted and they wanted you. Now you’re here and Clivia is a temporary-permanent adjunk again, with a chance at permanent-permanent adjunk.”
“Adjunct,” Morlock corrected him.
“Gesundheit,” the fox said politely.
Morlock turned to Clivia. “Did you teach him to speak?”
Clivia looked at Xudnas, who hesitated, then nodded benignly. “Yes,” she answered. “But he teaches me things, too. There must be a balance.”
“You should teach him to tell the truth,” Morlock said. “There are other kinds of balance, and I also keep a reckoning.”
“Hey!” squawked the fox, glaring down his orange snout at Morlock. “That sounds like a threat!”
“It is,” said Morlock, and passed on.
The conversation had disrupted Morlock’s count. He stoically resumed it at five hundred.
“So you see,” Xudnas was saying, as they descended the stairway on the far side of the dim, ill-smelling room, “they do most of the mere work, while the full members of our collegium devote themselves to contemplation, design, and policy, as you will see when we reach the studium.”
Morlock understood well enough. The temporary adjuncts did the work; the full members reaped most of the benefits. Morlock had walked from the western edge of the world to the end of the east and he had seen the pattern repeated more times than he could count.
“Now, let me show you,” Xudnas said, waving his coppery hands like flags.
“Not needed,” Morlock said.
“No, but look,” Xudnas insisted, as if Morlock were arguing with him. When they came out on the ground floor, they were on the far side of the tower from the entrance, in a dark sweet-smelling room where elderly folk lounged on many a couch. Some were engaged in animated conversation; others were staring at nothing that Morlock could see—lost in abstraction, he supposed. Some appeared to be napping. One wrinkled hairless figure of indeterminate sex seemed to be choking on their own phlegm.
“You see how peaceful it is in the studium,” Xudnas said urgently. “Each member has private chambers and laboratories staffed by adjuncts, of course. But most of us spend most of our time here in the central studium, engaged in reflection or conversation. Imagine how much thinking we can do, about things that really matter, when we are freed from the toil of working with base materials and our hands.”
“I do my best thinking with my hands,” Morlock replied, “and my feet.”
“I sense your impatience,” Xudnas replied soothingly, “but let me show you one more thing.”
“One of your members is dying over there.”
“Aha! So it seems, does it not? It’s really opportune. Let’s go down to the body farm.”
Morlock made a face. Lifemakers were always messing about with bodies, living and dead. “Nine hundred,” he muttered to himself.
“Excuse me?” Xudnas said.
Morlock didn’t bother to answer. The aged Sarkoptic led him down another flight of stairs to a dank cellar lit with green lamps. From the moist dark earth of the cellar floor was growing many a green, golden-veined plant, radiant in the bilious light. The fruits of these plants were human bodies. Each plant bore bodies in at least three stages of life—a baby at the base of the plant, a youth midway of its length, and a young adult near its apex. The bodies stood next to the plant, but each one was connected by a green-gold tendril running from the plant’s trunk to the crown of the body’s skull.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Xudnas said eagerly.
“Eh,” Morlock replied. Living is not a nice business, as the philosopher says, but lifemakers always seemed to be intent on making it more horrible than ever.
One of the bodies was convulsing. It was the adult body of a strapping young woman, but its throat was gargling phlegm, much like the dying old body on the floor above. It spasmed, then leapt off the moist earth floor and opened its eyes to glare about like a woman waking from a nightmare. The body’s breathing eased to something like normal. The eyes grew less wild. The head looked about. The house now had a new tenant.
“Long life to you, Colleague Suna!” Xudnas called out.
Suna smiled back at him. Her strong young hands reached up to snap the tendril connecting her to the plant. She turned her head to cough up a clot of dark phlegm. Then she turned back to Xudnas and said, “Long life to you, High Sarkoptic! And to you, guest Morlock. Your reputation precedes you.”
Morlock’s long life was a burden to him and his reputation an even greater one. He shrugged his crooked shoulders.
“You see how it is?” Xudnas said eagerly. “Full members of the collegium never need die. They are in constant empathic contact with a life tree that grows replacement bodies. The moment of our death is the moment of our rebirth.” He went on like that for a while, and Morlock counted breaths.
“Let me show you my own life-tree,” Xudnas said, taking Morlock by the arm and disrupting his count.
It was somewhat interesting to see four Xudnases at once: the baby resting on the ground, the pale youth standing asleep next to the green-gold tree, the bronzed adult standing on the far side, his eyelids flickering as if he were about to awake.
“Are they alive?” Morlock asked Xudnas.
“Technically. In a sense. Perhaps. But their identity will be erased when I take possession.”
“So your rebirth will be their death?”
Xudnas seemed taken aback. “I suppose so. But they are not really people, you know—just extensions of myself.”
The adult body on Xudnas’ life tree opened its eyelids in a slitted glare at its progenitor. Morlock looked from one to the other and shrugged.
The High Sarkoptic didn’t seem to notice the glare; his yellow eyes were intent on Morlock. “I can reassure you on this point, if you will give me a chance. Really, I can.”
“It’s nothing to me.”
“But of course it’s something. The life tree is one of the most important benefits of full membership in the collegium.”
Morlock was startled, then dryly amused. Very dryly. “You’re offering me membership?”
“Yes! If you’ll take it.”
“No.”
Xudnas urged him to reconsider. He insisted that Morlock’s personal qualities and skills would be a tremendous boon to the Collegium, and that the lifemakers could aid him in his work and in his life, that he owed it to the world to live as long as possible so that he could enrich it with his gifts, and many a similar argument. Morlock waited until he had run out of breath and then said, “No.”
“You’re inflexible?”
“I’m not a joiner.”
Xudnas said some more words. Morlock considered that he had wasted enough time here and turned away to leave.
“Wait!” Xudnas said. “We have your answer, and we are sorry for it, but we still owe you a drink and a meal. I hope you won’t mind my company during the meal; I still hope to change your mind.”
Morlock walked away. The prospect of a drink was searingly bright in his hungover mind. But he was just sober enough to know there was something wrong here. All he wanted was out. He thought this
, and he met the yellow eye of Suna, still standing and watching by her life tree. Her mouth opened in a strangely predatory grin and he heard something behind him.
That was the last thing he heard for a long time.
* * *
When Morlock woke, he was in the cage at the end of the world. He could see and hear and breathe, but could not move his arms or legs. His insight told him that Tyrfing was nowhere within calling distance, even if he could have wielded it.
Xudnas was standing over him, looking down with a sad, supercilious smile. “I’m sorry it had to happen this way,” the High Sarkoptic said, “but I’m not surprised. We’d heard a great deal about you, much of it bad. You could have been an ornament to our collegium. But all we really need is your blood. It has the most amazing properties! It is a phlogiston-binder—I don’t know if you knew that.”
“I do,” Morlock croaked.
Xudnas’ pale eyebrows arched even further. “You can speak? Remarkable. We’ll have to increase your dose next time. You’ve been slightly poisoned—nothing that will harm you permanently, but it will prevent you from making trouble when we come in to collect your blood. Over time, it will probably make you more docile, but that’s to your benefit, too. You’re far too willful.”
“I activate your oath,” Morlock gasped.
“Nonsense. You’ve no claim against us. We’re not harming you. In fact, we’re keeping you safe. You were drinking yourself to death out there, you know. We won’t allow that. You’re far too valuable a resource.”
“I had two things,” Morlock rasped. “My freedom and my sword. You took them both. There will be a reckoning.”
Xudnas laughed politely, as if Morlock had made a joke that he’d heard too many times before, and turned away. He said to someone standing nearby, “You may begin. Remind Kamraph to increase the dose of narcopsallion in future collections: we don’t want him causing any trouble.” The High Sarkoptic departed. Morlock had a brief sense that Tyrfing was near, very near, but that quickly vanished.
Guilds & Glaives Page 24