Текст книги "The Wide World's End"

Автор книги: James Enge

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“Eh.”

“I sense your distaste, and to some extent I share it. On the other hand, a man has to live and times are hard.”

“I suppose.” Morlock thought of the Khnauronts’ invasion of the Wardlands. He shrugged and drank again.

“How would you go north from here—if you had to go alone?” Morlock asked Angustus.

The other shook his head. “I? Would not go. Singly or in bunches. You realize that northeast of here is the dreadful city of werewolves Wuruyaaria?”

“I’m not worried by werewolves.”

“If you’re not worried by a city of werewolves slowly dying of starvation, I suppose there’s no point in even mentioning the riptide of superpredators fleeing south in search of meat, the desperate gods afraid of losing their worshippers, the ice-monsters that rule the bitter northern edge of the world, or the Sunkillers from beyond it. So I won’t.”

Morlock had already met some of the gods and he took monsters on a case-by-case basis. “Who are the Sunkillers?” he asked.

Angustus pointed at the ceiling. “The guys who are doing that. Killing the sun.”

“What are they like?”

“I’ve never met one. Not to my knowledge. A lecturer at the Lyceum has a theory that they are colonists, making the world habitable for their form of life. Another thinks it’s pure malice.”

“How do you know it’s not a natural phenomenon?”

“Direct contact in rapture. Some of the seers didn’t make it back to their bodies alive, but enough did that we know this is being done to us.”

Morlock nodded thoughtfully and drained the last of his wine. “I know someone who says . . . it’s a kind of idealism. They are opposed to biological life in principle.”

“Idealism is often incompatible with life,” Angustus agreed cheerily. “You may not see it that way. But as a fat, middle-aged man, I think there’s a lot more to be said for kindness than correctness.”

“I’m well into my second century of life, Angustus.”

“Yes, the Ambrosii live long, they say. But you have the restlessness and impatience of a young man—the belief that you can change the world, or save it, at least.”

Morlock shrugged. “I am not impatient.”

Angustus smiled into the dregs of his wine and did not respond directly. “No, I would not walk north from here for any reason. If there were some way to fly, I might try that: I’d like to have a conversation with one of these Sunkillers. But I suppose flying is impossible. That’s what they say at the Lyceum. Something about wingspans and weight ratios.”

“What about dragons?”

“Dragons are mythical. Would you like some more wine?”

“No,” Morlock said. He could still fell the bitter metallic burn of the stuff in the back of his throat.

“It’s good to know when to stop,” Angustus said agreeably, and gathered Morlock’s cup from him.

The time to stop was before you began with the kind of rotgut Angustus served out. But Morlock reminded himself that the stranger had shared with him in a time of scarcity and he said, “Thanks for the drink. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Maybe. But I’m thinking of getting out of town. Things are getting weird around here.”

“I thought you said that there was no point in going south?”

“There are more directions than north, south, east, and west.”

Morlock nodded. “I suppose so. Good fortune to you.”

“And to you.”

Morlock found himself walking down a narrow street of dark wooden houses. He hardly took note of what his eyes were seeing. Something the stranger had said was taking root in his imagination. In his mind he was seeing a dry leaf dancing in the hot air above a campfire.

CHAPTER THREE

To Market, To Market

When Morlock fell into the air and vanished, Ambrosia grabbed Deor and Kelat by an elbow each. Almost as rapidly, she ascended into rapture and entangled her tal with theirs. In the next instant, the air swallowed them and spit them out on another patch of ground. But they travelled together, as they might not otherwise have done.

They hit a patch of frozen turf in the same instant, and she released her grip on the others in time to keep her own elbows from being twisted to the breaking point.

“What did you do?” Deor shouted, rolling to his feet.

“Kept us from separating,” Ambrosia growled, climbing to her own feet. Kelat was already standing but she ignored the hand he was offering her. “Maybe,” she admitted after a moment.

“What happened to Morlock?”

“What happened to us—only a second sooner.”

They looked around. They were still somewhere on the northern plains, to all appearances. This ground was a little rougher and there was some scrub, not quite trees, toward what seemed to be the northeast. The patch was crosslit by the setting sun—along with something crouching down in it.

“God Avenger,” she whispered. “Come on! Let’s get out of here.”

“Why?” asked Kelat reasonably.

“Werewolf over there in that dead brush.”

“We can’t handle a single werewolf?” the dwarf asked.

“Werewolves are like rats, Deor. Where you see one. . . .”

“I get you.” The dwarf glanced around. “Some kind of city west of us.”

Ambrosia would have liked to know how he did that. She saw nothing to indicate a city there. Did he hear it? Did he smell it? Was it some kind of specialized talic insight? At the moment it didn’t matter, though. She said, “Then that’s our next stop.”

They strode westward. The wolf shape broke from cover and followed them, but they outpaced it before night fell.

Ambrosia drew to a halt and looked back uneasily.

“What’s wrong?” Deor said, stopping beside her.

“Apart from everything? It’s like this, Deor. A werewolf should have been able to keep up with us if it wanted to. Regular wolves get bored and wander off during a long chase, but werewolves are more like men.”

“Stubborn, you mean.”

“Yes. And there was something funny about the way the thing moved. Didn’t you think so?”

Deor snorted. “I know more about things below the mountain than above it. I’m no farmer, nor weidhkyrr.”

“A pity we don’t have someone so useful with us,” Ambrosia snapped back.

“It was like a child playing wolf,” Kelat remarked, forestalling Deor’s witty comeback.

“Eh?” She kept forgetting that he was there, and that he had things to say. “What do you mean?”

“It ran like a boy or a girl on all fours.” With surprising deftness, he moved his right hand like a child galloping over the open field of his left arm.

“Yes,” she agreed. “It was a little like that.”

She decided to wait for it. The others looked at her curiously for a while then settled in to wait, too.

Presently the werewolf came over the ridge they had just passed. It wasn’t surprised to see them; of course, it had scented them. It sat politely atop the ridge and waited.

“Who are you and why are you following us?” she sang in Moonspeech, the language of werewolves wearing wolf form (or “the night shape” as they call it). Deor and Kelat both jumped a bit as the howling syllables blew out of her, but they didn’t run away or ask stupid questions, so that was something.

The wolf stood on all fours and sang in reply, “I am Liyurrriyu. I was sent to find you, if you are they who go to the end of the wide world.”

“And if we are, and if we do, what business do you have with us, my furry friend?”

“I was sent to help you.”

“Why? And by whom?”

“By the one who watches in the night and guards us against the gods. By the mighty deviser and slayer. By the one who runs with no pack and yet with all.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Ulugarriu sent me—Ghosts-in-the-eyes. I am to help you, if I can.”

“It’s your world, too, is what this Ulugarriu is thinking.” The ululation of her howl made it clear that by your she meant werewolves in general.

“Yes.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“Survival.”

“What’s in it for you?” Ambrosia used the short bark that designated an individual.

“May I come closer?”

“Sure.”

Liyurrriyu loped downhill toward them. He (the werewolf was clearly male, and the -u ending to his name was masculine) sat down seven human paces away and held up his right forepaw.

But it wasn’t a paw at all. It was an ape’s compromise between a hand and a foot.

Ambrosia vocalized an interest in approaching nearer. Liyurrriyu tilted his head left and right in assent.

She walked over and knelt down beside him, taking his hand. It was covered in a leather glove—or maybe more like a shoe for the hand. She tugged the glove off and examined the astonishingly human hand within.

“You see how it is with me,” Liyurrriyu sang in whispered vocables. “I am a nightwalker, never able to assume the day shape. But I am also a neverwolf—never able to fully free myself from the ape.”

“And this Ulugarriu says he can fix you.”

“Of course Ulugarriu can fix me. He says that he will fix me, if I do all that I can to help you kill the Sunkillers.”

“Calm yourself.” Ambrosia put Liyurriu’s hand shoe back on his hand foot. “What do you think you can do for us?”

The werewolf growled thoughtfully. “I have lived on these plains all my life. I know many things. I can track and find. I can kill and kill and kill.”

“We’re all of us pretty good at killing.”

“You must be better. The bitter cold in the far north is sending all beasts fleeing southward. You must swim through a wave of cruel hunters, desperate to find prey. You are prey. I am hunter.”

Ambrosia had her own opinion about that, but nonetheless said, “You’re hired.” She rose to her feet. “Tell me about the city to our west.”

“Aflraun. We’re not going there, are we?”

“We are.”

“Urrrr. Better that than Narkunden, I suppose. They make werewolves wear muzzles there, or swear self-binding oaths not to eat fresh meat within the city limits.”

“Monstrous.”

“Dried meat. Burned meat. Salted meat. They put salt in it, do you see? Or they stain it with smoke!”

“Each to their own.”

“I suppose you’ve been there.”

“Frequently. And I have to warn you, if you travel with me, you will see me and my companions eat those variously mistreated meats. Nerve yourself up to it.”

The werewolf shuddered and sang, “I can face what I must face.”

Ambrosia hoped that this was true. She had an idea to make Liyurriu acceptable to the townsfolk of Aflraun, and she suspected it would test his determination to its limits.

The next morning, before dawn, Jonon, signudh on duty for the Shortgate guards, came to a rather sleepy alert and confronted a group of travelers coming from the trackless east.

This was odd. Few lived east of Aflraun, and those that did weren’t the type to travel to a city market or sample the secret joys of Whisper Street.

One was a dwarf. One was a Vraidish barbarian, from his hair and weaponry. One was a woman, crooked as an Ambrose, apparently the leader. The fourth was an odd one—as tall as the woman, but hunched over, he wore a long coat with sleeves and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his face. He seemed to have a pretty heavy beard.

“Greetings, travelers,” Jonon said when they were in speaking range. “Do you come in peace, war, or business?”

“Peace,” said the crook-shouldered woman Jonon had tagged as the leader.

“Have you got any food for trade?” Jonon asked. This was not an official question. But sometimes he made good purchases from food traders before they found out how much they could charge in the city markets.

“Food for ourselves; none to trade,” the woman said, disappointing but not surprising Jonon.

“Is your companion a werewolf?” Jonon asked. This was an official question. Wuruyaaria had made several raids against the outskirts of Aflraun and Narkunden; more were expected. They had been instructed to watch out for spies.

“Which one?” asked the woman ingenuously.

“The one that appears to be a werewolf.”

“My friend Laurentillus, here?” the woman said as if she were surprised, turning toward the shaggy one.

“If that’s his name.”

“Nonsense. Laurentillus, shake hands with the guardsman.”

Laurentillus didn’t move.

“Do the thing,” the woman urged. She nudged Laurentillus in the side. “The thing.”

Laurentillus started, then pulled off his right glove. He held out his right hand to Jonon. It was an undeniably human hand—calloused from much work, with an oddly hairy wrist. Jonon slapped the offered palm, causing Laurentillus to jump and withdraw suddenly.

“He doesn’t seem quite human,” Jonon observed.

“Doesn’t he?” said the woman, deftly slipping a coin into Jonon’s still-outstretched hand.

“Well, not much.”

Another coin surreptitiously changed hands.

“Well, who am I to judge? Still, my men. . . .”

“How much more?” the woman asked briskly.

Jonon hated to use his position to squeeze money out of travelers, but times were hard; even meat was getting expensive. He glanced at the coins in his palm. They were foreign, of course; Vraidish by the look of them. “Two more of these,” he said.

She supplied them cheerfully. He followed them through the gate, chatting of this and that. He didn’t want any of his underlings to squeeze any more coins out of them.

When they were well into Aflraun, and Jonon was about to turn back, the crooked woman caught sight of something and grabbed him by the arm. “Jonon, my friend,” she said, pointing at the sky over the cluttered western horizon, “what is that?”

He looked, but he knew what she meant even before that. “It’s there sometimes, sometimes not. It keeps getting bigger. No one’s sure what it is, truthfully. People say a crazy man is building something in the sky over Narkunden. Maybe it has something to do with the end of the world.”

“A crazy man, you say? Tell me more.”

After he parted company with Angustus, Morlock walked down to the southern edge of Narkunden and made camp in an open field. The next day he left his things under occlusion and wilderment and went into town to buy food and drawing paper. He had two or three different designs for a flying ship in his head and he wanted to sketch out some of the ideas before he chose between them.

Food was expensive, as he had feared after his conversation with Angustus. A loaf of fresh bread cost two fingers of gold. Fresh meat was cheaper, but a rather odd selection: most of it was from game animals and predators.

But it didn’t matter much. Morlock was no epicure. He bought meat, bread, and mushrooms and set out to find drawing paper.

The cheapest place, so a dwarvish mushroom merchant told him, was Shardhut Scrivener’s shop near the Lyceum. Paper and ink were agreeably cheap there, as he discovered, but the place was dense with dark-gowned savants from the Lyceum.

Morlock collected the supplies he needed and went to stand in line so that Shardhut, the warty but agreeably cheerful shopkeeper, could take his money. Shardhut had three hulking assistants who didn’t seem to do anything, but perhaps Shardhut didn’t trust them with the cashbox. In the general confusion Morlock might easily have walked out of the shop with the goods in hand, but he had been raised by his harven-father with an exaggerated sense of property.

Morlock was not a talkative type, but the rest of the customers made up for that. Three of his line-mates were writing books about the end of the world, which they hoped to have completed to great acclaim before the world actually ended, and another was writing a book about how the world was not really ending, just going through a natural phase of transition, which would bring an end to all life. Another, who did not believe in the writing of books, proved through a set of syllogisms that the world’s weather was no different than it had ever been, as far as anyone could tell. Another was proving through syllogisms that nothing could be proven through syllogisms.

“What’s your opinion, Citizen?” asked the man behind him in line.

Morlock mulled over his options and then said, “I have heard that the Sunkillers are responsible—malefic beings from beyond the northern rim of the world.”

There was general laughter at this. He was informed, on good authority, that there was no northern rim of the world and that, if there were, there could not be anything beyond it. He was asked to define his terms. He was asked for the physical evidence or at least eyewitness testimony to support his claims. Then a red-faced, red-haired academic in a scarlet gown said, “This gentleman has been talking to Iacomes.”

Silence fell and every eye turned to Morlock. He said, “I did talk to a colleague of yours yesterday, but he said his name was Angustus—”

“Preposterous!” shouted the red academic. “‘Angustus’! How would one even pronounce that?”

“Angustus?”

“No, it must be one of his pseudonyms. Tell me, was he a tall, dark-skinned man with dark eyes and a pleasing manner?”

“No.”

“Then it must have been him! Do you know what he has been telling my students?”

Morlock didn’t answer, but the red academic didn’t seem to notice. “He tells my students that it’s not wrong to steal if they are hungry! Can you believe it, sir?”

There was a general murmur of outrage.

“What if the students starve to death?” Morlock asked. “Whom will you citizens teach at the Lyceum?”

“It would be a great relief to have less students,” remarked one of the academics. “Then I could write more books about the importance of education.”

There was a general titter at this citizen’s expense. “Fewer, Arnderus, ‘fewer students.’ You can’t use less as an adjective with a noun denoting a set of discrete objects.”

“Except for numerical measurements,” reminded another academic.

“Oh, yes, of course.”

Arnderus turned screaming on his tormentors. He grabbed fistfuls of reed pens from a nearby stand and began stabbing at anyone within arm’s reach.

“No discussions of grammar or usage, citizens!” bleated Shardhut, but it was too late; the linguistic analysis and the violence threatened to become general.

It was then that Shardhut’s bulky assistants proved their worth. They waded into the fight, stripped the combatants of their goods, and tossed them into the street. In a few moments order was restored and the line to the cashbox was considerably shorter.

The conversation, when it resumed, was much more subdued, and it did not hinge on such fiercely disputed topics as the ethics of stealing or which adjective might be used with which noun. Mostly they talked about the end of the world and whether it would arrive before the next summer recess.

As Morlock was pondering the paradox of windbags who could contemplate their students starving with equanimity but were moved to blows over a point of language, he suddenly saw in his mind’s eye the perfect design for his airship. He no longer needed the pens and paper. He left them on a table and walked out into the street, where the linguistic fistfight still continued. He walked past, hardly noticing, thinking of a bag of gas floating high in the air, its angry heat perpetually renewed by contact with a living mind.

Morlock was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice when his basket became lighter by a couple mushrooms. But the thief in her haste let her hand brush against Morlock’s left forearm. An instant later, the thief’s wrist was in the grip of Morlock’s left hand. The thief gasped in pain and surprise, and the guilty mushrooms fell to the ground, where hands started to scrabble for them instantly. Morlock stomped on a few fingers, and soon he was left in peace with his thief and his mushrooms.

The thief was a young woman in an academic gown. Her face was thin and grayish, her eye-sockets shadowed with dark green, like old bruises. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I was just so hungry. And there’s a teacher at the Lyceum who says it’s all right to steal if you’re hungry.”

“Only if you get away with it.” Morlock let her go and recovered his mushrooms. When he looked up, she was still standing there, looking sadly at his basket packed with food.

Morlock was strongly opposed to theft, and he damned Angustus in his heart for setting children like this on a path they were utterly unprepared for. How many had ended up in jail or worse?

“I need the food,” he said harshly. Then on impulse he took a bag of gold and tossed it to her. “This should buy you something.”

She opened the bag, looked at it suspiciously. “Why are you giving me money rather than food?”

“I can’t make food.”

“That implies you can make gold.”

“Eh.” Morlock walked away.

There was a draper’s shop on his way and he went in and bargained for some ulken-cloth, to be sent to his camp south of the city. It was surprisingly cheap, compared to food, but he did need a lot of it, and the deal diminished his stock of gold considerably. He went back to his camp and secured his food in the wilderment there.

He turned to face the thin-faced scholar who had followed him all the way back.

She said nothing to him, so he said nothing to her. He turned away and went down the bluff to the banks of the River Nar.

He pulled sheckware buckets from a sleeve pocket, unfolded them, and filled them with yellow mud from the river. He hauled the buckets up the bluff to his campsite.

The young scholar was sitting nearby, resting her chin on her knees.

Morlock shrugged, dispelled his occlusions and wilderments, and set about his business. He made a fire, unpacked the portable forge the dwarvish makers of the Blackthorns had given him, and while he was waiting for it to rise to a useful temperature he had a drink of that mushroomy beer that the dwarves were fond of. Morlock was not fond of it, but he did feel that any drink was better than none.

“Master,” said the scholar tentatively.

“I am not your master.”

“What’s your name? Mine is Varyl.”

“My name is my business.”

“Are you about to make gold?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“May I take notes?”

Morlock thought for a moment. He did some math in his head, the primitive math of economics. He almost said no to her. Then he thought of those plump, red-faced, student-hating teachers in the stationer’s shop. “Eh,” he said aloud.

She took this as permission and pulled a tablet and stylus from pockets in her gown.

He ended up calling her over to the forge and explaining a few things to her. Raising the mass to equal the appropriate volume of gold involved a transition through a higher space, and he was concerned that she might not be able to follow it. But it turned out that she knew a good deal of metadimensional geometry. By the time his gold was cooling next to the forge, she had pocketed her tablet and was wandering away, chewing thoughtfully at her stylus.

Morlock never saw her again. But the next day when he went down to the market to cheapen some thread, he found that the price of food had doubled overnight. Many of the buyers were hollow-cheeked young people in academic gowns who seemed to have plenty of gold.