Текст книги "The Wide World's End"

Автор книги: James Enge

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The God and His Enemies

“Are you enemies of the God?” the Gray Folk asked, their red eyes twitching with anger.

Deor waited for Morlock to say something, but he was sort of twitching himself. So the dwarf got up and said, “Ruthenen! I am Deor syr Theorn, Thain to the Graith of Guardians and cousin to the Eldest of the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam. I greet you.”

“We do not ask who you are, we ask: who are you? Are you enemies of the God, or not?”

Either the truth or a lie seemed equally likely to get them killed. Deor decided he would rather be killed for the truth. “We are not enemies of your God, but neither are we friends. He’s no god of ours.”

“It is enough,” the leader decided. “Excantors, disarm them and keep them safe.”

“Let it happen,” Ambrosia suggested in Wardic, and Deor nodded. Kelat seemed inclined to follow Ambrosia’s lead, no matter what the situation and Morlock—there was something wrong with him. He was in no state to be making decisions.

Some of the Gray Folk picked up their packs and weapons; the others surrounded them.

“Begin!” said the leader.

The excantors sang. It was a harsh, deep music, but not unharmonious. If there were words in it, they were in a language Deor did not know. The excantors began to march, and the four companions perforce marched with them—south and east, into the burning heart of Grarby.

They came to a jail. It was crowded with Gray Folk who jeered as the excantors chanted their way down the narrow stone hallway. There was a cell at the end; it was occupied by Gray Folk in kilts. These were hustled out of the cell and stuffed one at a time into other already-overcrowded cells.

“We must leave you here,” the leader of the excantors said apologetically to Deor, “but we will return with food and other comforts. May the God not be with you.”

“Uh,” said Deor, driven to Morlockian levels of terseness by confusion. Were they guests or prisoners? What were the Gray Folk fighting about?

He put these questions to Kelat, but the young Vraid was as bemused as he was. “It was not like this when I was here before. The town was very quiet. I never saw a fight, much less a war.”

Morlock was sitting on the floor with his arms wrapped around his knees, his luminous gray eyes fixed on something that was not present. Deor sat down beside him and said, “Morlock. . . .”

“It was so hungry,” Morlock said. “So hungry. In so much pain. It could never eat enough to dull the pain. The pain frightened it. The dark frightened it. It was meant to have eyes but didn’t any longer. It didn’t notice the cold but it was always cold. I noticed. I noticed the cold. Then it died and it didn’t want to die. But it died and died, and it keeps on dying.”

“That damn sword,” Ambrosia said. “He told me something about it. It’s dangerous to kill with the thing.”

“If—” Kelat began.

“Shut up. Deor, let him be for a while. If need be, I’ll go into rapport with him and try to bring him out of it. But the fact that he’s talking is actually a pretty good sign, as these things go.”

There was a key rattling in the lock of the cell. Ambrosia, Kelat, and Deor turned toward the door as it opened; Morlock didn’t seem to notice.

The leader of the excantors was there. He spoke to Ambrosia, “Lady, are you Ambrosia Viviana?”

“I am.”

“The Olvinar would like to speak with you.”

“Hypage opisô mou,” hissed Morlock.

Deor thought he was muttering gibberish, but Ambrosia looked startled, then laughed. “I’ll be careful, ruthen. Look after the children for me.”

She left the cell with the excantor, who locked the door and silently led her away.

Halfway up the long hall, Ambrosia said, “Why aren’t you chanting, if you don’t mind me asking?”

The mandrake shrugged scaly shoulders as crooked as her own and said, “It agitates the godstruck. And . . . I don’t think it really does any good.”

“Oh. What good is it supposed to do?”

“Keep God out of your head.”

“Is he often, um, in there?”

“Wouldn’t be much of a god if he wasn’t, would he?”

“I couldn’t say. Which god is he again?”

“There’s only one God!” said the excantor reflexively. “And he, uh, doesn’t exist,” he added lamely.

Theology was never a strong subject with Ambrosia, so she didn’t inquire further along these lines. There were more immediate questions, like: “Who is this Olvinar, then? I take it he exists.”

“Of course he exists. He would like to speak with you.”

“Well, then.”

The mandrake looked askance at her with blood-red eyes and then said grudgingly, “I must seem to you to be gibbering.”

“No,” said Ambrosia, lying with practiced ease. “But,” she added, because the best lies serve as gilt for the truth, “I don’t really understand what is happening here.”

“I will tell you the tale as I understand it while we walk.”

“It would be a kindness, ruthen.”

He looked at her again, more directly this time, and said. “Then. In the old time, there was one of us, we know not his name, he defied the calling of his blood and did not become a dragon. He learned of the Little Cousins under Thrymhaiam and the Blackthorns, and he thought he would create a religion to teach the Gray Folk to fight their blood—to not surrender to the evil within them. He was our lawgiver, our temple builder. But the temple was empty, for who—what god would be the perfect being who would inspire us to be perfect?

“Then the God actually appeared?”

“He appeared, and he was evil in our eyes and stank in our snouts. Many were lost to the dragon plague then. But a new teacher arose. He taught that this was an avatar of the God, sent to show us how not to be, how not to live. His imperfection was our guide to perfection.”

“Hm.”

“Well, it stopped the plague. We could live, together, as ourselves, and that was something.”

“And then . . . ?”

“And then came the Olvinar, the Adversary, the one called Lightbringer. He came to free us. He taught us that if we managed to kill the God, we would truly be free. It was a great word, and many received it gladly.”

“But not all.”

“No. Many still cling to the old foolish ways. And so we are at war with ourselves. The city burns, and we cannot cooperate to put out the fire. And the sun is dying, and some say it is because of the war against the God.”

Ambrosia put her hand on the excantor’s gray-plated forearm and said, “If I tried to escape, you wouldn’t try very hard to stop me, would you?”

“I would not try at all,” the mandrake said candidly. “I am . . . sick of it. Sick of all this.” After a pause he whispered, “When the Adversary . . . when he sends us out to fight our ruthen kin . . . I enjoy it too much. Sometimes I . . . feel a cold thirst in my throat that I would quench with hot blood. I dream blasphemous dreams of chewing the sacred flesh of my kin . . . breaking their bones . . . licking out the burning marrow with a long forked tongue. I can’t. . . . This can’t go on forever. It has gone on too long. Perhaps the world really must end. Perhaps I would welcome it.”

“Well, I’ll go with you and talk to the Olvinar, this anti-God. Perhaps we can sort out a less permanent solution for this mess.”

He nodded, clamped his long jaws hungrily a few times, and did not speak.

The Adversary lived in a house on the north side of town. It looked like a coil of great cable, wrapped around and around several storeys high, with a protrusion like a tower at the top.

There were two excantors chanting quietly at the front door. They held up their swords to salute their senior, then opened the door and stood aside.

“Go in, if you will,” her companion said. “He would like to speak to you alone.”

Ambrosia entered the dark doorway and heard the door closed and locked behind her. Protecting the Adversary? Imprisoning him?

The ground floor of the house was one big room interrupted by support columns. The stairway to the upper floors was exposed against the far wall.

The room was lit only in the center, where a white light-globe floated in midair. Beneath it, an old man sat at a table piled with books, light gleaming on his white hair and beard as he pored over a curious volume bound in brass.

The Adversary raised his head and looked at her with luminous blue eyes.

“Good evening, father,” said Ambrosia.

“Ah! Ambrosia my dear, my very dear!” Merlin Ambrosius leapt up and ran over to greet his favorite daughter.

“Ὓπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ!” she said, holding out both her hands to reject his embrace. Get behind me, Adversary! it meant in one of the unspoken languages from her mother’s world.

“What . . . ? Ah! Ah hahahaha!” He laughed for some time rather theatrically and then said, “Very good, my dear. A most amusing reference to that somewhat obscure literary classic. That’s one reason I enjoy talking to you, my dear: your suppleness of mind. Your brother would be sadly incapable of appreciating such a jest, even if he were well-read enough to make it.”

Ambrosia forbore to point out that she was not joking and that Morlock had quoted that very text to her less than an hour before. She said instead, “Why are you here, father? I take it you are the great Adversary of the local god.”

“Yes, yes, they flatter me with that noble title. You know the secret name of this god, perhaps?”

“Morlock says he is Rulgân Silverfoot, also called the Kinslayer.”

“Yes, indeed—although what point there is in calling a dragon ‘kinslayer’ is beyond my telling. It’s like saying, ‘the one with wings—you know, the one who breathes fire.’”

“Hm.”

“But, more to the point, what brings you here, my dear? I gather you didn’t expect to find me here.”

“Not until I saw that vile fish you made.”

“Oh! Oh. You spotted that as one of mine, did you? How?”

“The thing was vicious, ugly, and a patchwork of scars. The maker makes in his own image.”

“Oh, come now. I have very few scars.”

“It was also in dreadful pain. So Morlock says.”

“The pain of a fish. These are the trivia that your brother concerns himself with, my dear.”

“He was concerned with saving me and my companions.”

“Oh! Your companions, yes, I admit, I have little interest in them. But my emissary would not have killed you. Your blood would have poisoned him, among other things. No, I wanted you to come here, and here you are.”

“But you can’t have expected me. You came here originally for some other reason.”

“And so did you, but you haven’t told me either, you know. We can dance around and around the point and never come to it.”

“We think Rulgân knows something about these entities that are killing the sun.”

Merlin’s eyebrows rose in polite surprise. “Only that? Really?”

“It seems somewhat important to us.”

“I can’t understand why. This world is doomed. But there are others. You were always fairly good at mathematics, and I understand even Morlock eventually learned enough to plot a course across the Sea of Worlds.”

“That’s your plan, then?”

“Eventually. It can’t really come too soon, to my way of thinking. This world is becoming so unfriendly, what with all the cannibalism and warfare because of the crops failing year after year. And the winters lately. My dear, you have no idea how uncomfortable cold can be as one gets a little older. It’s been a thousand years since I could properly enjoy a snowfall without thinking: My joints! That old wound in my chest! My sinuses! God Creator, my sinuses.”

“Then why don’t you abandon the sinking ship of this universe and swim away to sunnier climes?”

“I quite understand and resent your rodental metaphor, my dear, but the fact is that my business here is not quite finished, and I hate to leave a thing as important as this unfinished.”

“If ‘this,’ whatever it is, doesn’t impede my own plans too much, I might be inclined to help you with it. Morlock would feel the same way, I’m sure.”

“Him!” Merlin shook his head. “No—the boy is soft as rancid butter. We never should have let those dwarves near him. Besides, he knows little or nothing of lifemaking, and that is what my business entails.”

“In that case, I won’t be of much help, either. It’s not one of my arts.”

“Now that’s where you’re wrong, my dear; I’m sure you’ll be invaluable. Won’t you help me, please? And then, I give you my word, I will assist in your little quest. If you can save this world, I would be well pleased—I have nothing against it, really.”

Ambrosia hesitated. Nothing was more dangerous than Merlin when he seemed plausible.

“Well,” she said, reluctant to commit herself, “what is it, exactly?”

“It’ll be easier to show you than to explain. Won’t you come up to my workroom?”

They went together to the stairway. Merlin went to some effort to make himself agreeable, asking after her sister and how her experiment with the Vraids was working out, and other matters that he probably didn’t care about at all.

The stairs and floorboards were made of wood, but the walls were not. It was as if the interior of the house was built to stand independently inside an already existing structure. The outer walls were like gigantic cables laid over each other. They were hard as stone, cold and somewhat oily to the touch, and their surfaces were scaled.

“First fish-beast—now snake-beast?” she speculated. But Merlin was rattling away about something and didn’t seem to hear her.

The second floor was broken into a number of rooms joined by open arches. In the room where the stairway ascended, there was nothing but a three-legged table, about waist high. On it stood a fabric tent, something like a tea-cozy, but much larger.

“What’s that?” asked Ambrosia.

“Ah!” said Merlin delightedly. “That is the task at hand! Let me show you.” And he undid some fastenings and pulled the tent aside.

Standing on the table was a sort of egg made out of crystal. Inside the crystal were woman-shaped shadows, and a lurking flame, and a brain floating in the midst of it. Still attached to the brain by the optic nerve was a pair of eyes, bright gray like Morlock’s. They searched around the room and fixed on Ambrosia in something like recognition.

“You remember your mother, my dear?” said Merlin pleasantly. “Though perhaps you haven’t seen her lately.”

Ambrosia would have fled back down the stairs, but they were gone. Snakelike arms unfolded from the walls and held her fast.

“She’s getting very old,” Merlin said apologetically. “Her people were exiled from the Wardlands so long ago, you see, and of course they interbred with the peoples they found themselves among. Well, before your mother reached sixty, less than sixty years old, mind you, she was really quite decrepit. I’ve tried many ways to extend her life without damaging her selfhood. My thought coming here was to implant her brain and the rest of her awareness in Rulgân’s body. For various technical reasons, involving your brother and that gem he managed to implant in the beast, I have reason to believe the graft would be successful.

“But I could never get at Rulgân, you see. I bribed him with little favors—a gem that would transmit his awareness, and a spell to smash the Wards over the Gap of Lone, and a tribe of lifestealers to distract the Graith from his messenger. But Rulgân would never admit me into his presence, although he was weak enough to let me settle in this town. And he was aware of my intent at the last, and he raised up his believers against me. I’ve tried to fight them with a legion of unbelievers, but with a striking lack of permanent success. And it’s getting late, and the world is dying, and I’m not sure I could do this type of lifemaking in another world where the laws of nature are different.

“And here you came—a gift from God Creator, if I believed in any such ridiculous myth. I think your body will sustain your mother’s life for some centuries to come. Of course, that does mean we will be deprived of your charming company more or less forever. But I’m sure that’s a sacrifice you’d be willing to make, if you could be brought to understand what it means to me and, of course, for your mother.”

His blue eyes, colder than a winter’s sky, were on her as he spoke. She had known him all her life. He had raised her and her sister until she had run away from home. She knew how he talked, and she could translate what he said into what he meant.

What he meant was, I am going to core you like an apple and put this thing inside your corpse. And there is nothing you can do about it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dead Ends

The healer sewing up the side of Aloê’s neck was Master Snide, whose actual name turned out to be Cromber. She was surprised to find him an efficient and capable healer.

“Struck from long distance?” he asked at one point.

“Yes. I could only just hear the tone of the songbow.”

“And your cloak was drawn over your head? Possibly saved your life.” Cromber shook his head. “These gravebolts are well-named. They’ll be giving the necrophors more work than they will us.”

“I was glad to have one at Tunglskin, against the Khnauronts.”

“I suppose.”

“How long will you be?”

“I’m done. Stay and rest a bit, though. You lost some blood getting here. I’ll make you some redleaf tea.”

She had bled a good deal while searching for the would-be assassin in the shadowy street. But they had taken to their heels after their unlucky shot. No matter: she had the gravebolt. She thought she could find the songbow it matched. Raudhfax had brought her to the Well of Healing before she passed out.

Cromber brought two cups of tea: redleaf for her and blackroot for himself. They drank in amiable silence.

“How did your Wordweave game go the other night?” Aloê asked.

“Horrible,” he admitted. “I’m a bad player, and a bad loser.”

Aloê nodded. “This I understand. I hate to lose.”

Cromber wanted her to stay in the Well overnight, but she wouldn’t. It was that “hate to lose” thing. She felt she had lost a point and wanted to even the score.

She left Raudhfax at the Well and walked toward Tower Ambrose, sneaking through alleys when she could, sliding along in deep shadows when she must take a broader way.

Her thinking was this: the would-be killer would try again. The place she was most likely to go was Tower Ambrose. The assassin would wait for her somewhere near there.

Tower Ambrose was on a bluff, and it could not be approached from the south. The place she had been attacked was to the east. She stalked the person stalking her in the shadows of the River Road east of Ambrose.

The wind was high that night, and its noise covered a multitude of sounds. That was good for her, so that she could move safely in the dark. But it was bad, also: it meant that her assassin could hide from her.

She came to a halt near the place she considered optimal for her own assassination. It was near enough to Tower Ambrose that the shooter could attack someone coming from two or three different sidestreets and then escape down two or three others if need be. Yes—if they were going to try again, it would be somewhere near here. She climbed up the side of a house she knew was empty and sat on the roof in the shadow of a dormer.

She sat still for a long time. She thought of it like fishing with her hands: you had to be still, let the fish become calm and brave. Then strike when they were unaware.

The wind changed, grew quieter. The stars spun in the sky above her. Some of the lights in the city northward faded as the night got older: people were going to bed—some people.

She waited.

A man wandered by, singing a song about drunken unicorns. He got stuck on the chorus and kept repeating it. Aloê heard him saying the same line for part of an hour as he staggered slowly up the River Road.

She waited.

Dawn was not near. But the danger that she would fall asleep in her perch was near.

She thought of something she might try.

She smiled and drew the gravebolt from her cloak, one side of its gore stained black with her blood.

The gravebolt would sound as it was released from the songbow. Were they in a kind of talic stranj, entangled in being?

She rapped the gravebolt against the edge of the roof.

Up the street, she heard the faint chime of a songbow.

She was on her feet in an instant, running across the roof and leaping to the next house over, swinging down a drainpipe.

By then the assassin was in flight up a sidestreet. But he (she guessed it was a man) had not tethered a horse anywhere near, of course. And she was lighter on her feet than he was. He was wearing a thain’s cape, she saw without real surprise.

As she got nearer to him he turned at last, deciding to make use of the weapon he carried. Had he used the thing as a club he might have had a chance, but he actually tried to fit a gravebolt to the songbow.

She threw herself at his knees and they went down together in the street.

As he was thrashing around to get free, she took the gravebolt stained with her blood and put it against his throat.

“Stop,” she said, and he stopped.

“Please don’t kill me,” he whispered. “I was only doing as I was told.”

“I—” would very much like to kill you “—am not going to kill you. Who gave you the orders?”

“Please. I’m afraid.”

In her rage it delighted her that he was afraid, and was weak enough to admit it, too. She wanted to shake him until he broke open like a stuffed doll.

She might be able to break him. But even more than that, she wanted answers from him. She needed someone to work with her—to check her rage—to ask questions she might neglect.

Her seconds would be the people to call on here, but one was dead and the other missing. For all she knew, this quivering uncooked sausage was responsible, and that thought made her even angrier, dangerously angry.

She got to her feet and dragged him with her. “Here’s an order: come with me.”

Jordel’s house was near at hand. She was pretty sure she could trust Jordel . . . and, if not, that was worth finding out.

Jordel was sitting sadly on his porch, a jar of wine in his hand. He took an occasional sip of wine as he moodily watched Aloê marching her prisoner up the street.

“Good evening, Aloê,” he said when she was near enough for conversation. “What happened to your neck?”

“This fellow shot me.”

“Oh. Should we kill him?”

“He says he had orders. I want to know who gave the orders.”

“Then we can kill him?”

Aloê laughed. Her rage was receding a little.

“I think we can let him live, if he helps us.”

“Oh. Do you absolutely insist?”

“That depends on him.”

Jordel stood. He grabbed the would-be assassin by his left arm. “Let’s talk, youngling.”

They went indoors. Jordel dragged the frightened thain up the stairs to a room in the front of the house on the second storey.

“Only room with a lock,” he explained to Aloê. “So we can lock him in, if need be.”

“Your house doesn’t have any locks?”

“It has a lock. That’s more than I usually need, you know. Nothing worth stealing. Except my heart, of course. In with you,” he said to the thain.

They all sat in chairs, the thain with his back to the door so that Chariot’s somber light from the eastern windows would fall on his face. And they talked.

The thain’s name was Dollon. He was very afraid, and he was only following orders. If they would allow him to send a message to a friend, he would be grateful his whole life long. That was what they got out of him—over and over and over.

“How long do you think your life is likely to be?” asked Jordel impatiently on the tenth repetition of the thain’s request.

From below came the sounds of someone entering the house—voices they both knew, calling Jordel’s name.

“Come on,” Jordel said to Aloê. They left the room and Jordel locked the door ostentatiously behind him.

By then, Jordel’s visitors were climbing the stairs. One was Noreê, Aloê was somewhat relieved to see, and the other was Naevros syr Tol.

Noreê had been alerted by someone at the Well that Aloê had been attacked, and she had trailed her back to Tower Ambrose. There a householder told her that Aloê had captured someone and dragged him away, and in what direction. Deduction told her the rest.

“You mean there were people watching and listening as I fought that . . . that . . . thain?”

“Many. They were discussing it in the street as I passed.”

That gave Aloê an eerie feeling, thinking of all those faces in the dark, watching, doing nothing.

“As for me,” Naevros said, laughing, “I was just coming by to see if Jordel had anything to drink.”

“I had something to drink. Then I drank it. A polite guest brings something to drink, Naevros; he does not merely seek to sponge up the drippings of his host’s wine cellar.”

“Thanks for the lesson in etiquette, Sir Honorable Jordel of the Cowpies.”

“I think it’s ‘Honorable Sir.’ Isn’t it? What’s the correct usage. You’re of the gentry, Aloê; you enlighten us.”

“I’ll enlighten you with a brick.”

“You hear that, Naevros? That’s the sound of true nobility—often imitated, but in the end inimitable. I remember once—”

Noreê asked impatiently, “What are we doing out here if the prisoner is in there?”

“We’re giving him the chance to make a mistake,” Jordel explained kindly. “So far he’s made only two: failing to kill Aloê the first time, and then getting caught the second time. Now, if he gets away, we can follow him.”

“That’s very shrewd, Jordel!” Aloê said.

“I’m shrewder than I look. Please don’t point out how easy that would be.”

There was the sound of glass falling into the streets.

“Clod,” Jordel said, shaking his head. “Guardians, shall we . . . ?” He sauntered down the stairway.

Before any of them reached the first storey, there was a heavy blow on the porch roof and the sound of flailing. Something fell into the street outside.

They rushed out into the street. Thain Dollon lay there without moving. His feet had gotten tangled up, and he had fallen from the porch roof to the street onto his neck. There was no question that he was dead.

“Clod!” Jordel repeated, more emphatically.

Aloê felt crushed. It had seemed, for a moment, there was a real chance of getting somewhere in this business. Now there was only one more dead body, one more dead end.

“God Sustainer, I’m tired,” she whispered.

“Stay here with me,” Jordel said quickly, while Naevros was only opening his mouth. “Naevros and Noreê can alert the necrophors and oversee taking the body to a suitable boneyard. Meanwhile we will eat and drink and sleep, and you will have a new idea in the morning. You always do, you know.”

“Thanks, J,” said Aloê gratefully. She’d been dreading the trudge back to Tower Ambrose, its dark emptiness when she arrived there.

Naevros surrendered with a good grace, shrugged, and punched Jordel on the arm. Then he turned to Aloê. With a serious look he said, “Rest. Heal. The Wardlands need your shrewdness at full strength.” Then he embraced her.

“Thanks,” she gasped. She waved farewell to Noreê and went in with Jordel. He fussed over her with wine and fruit and cabbage stuffed with meat and things.

Aloê didn’t eat much. She was too tired, and a little nauseated. Naevros had been wearing a rather powerful scent, and it struck her as very unpleasant. It was an oily musky smell—made her think of lumberjacks, and not in a good way.

Then she remembered the scent that had stained the beds in the timber lodges not far from where Earno had died and been murdered.

And then, without really being able to prove anything, she knew or guessed something she would have preferred to never know.