Part 6 (1/2)

”Oh, come now,” the stranger said irritably. ”Don't try to be forbidding. I know exactly what shape you're in. I watched every step of your journey; don't think I didn't. I knew the forest would do my fighting for me! I saw you scrabbling at the lock on my door (what a pitiful performance that was!) and I see now that you can barely stand.

”And where do you stand? In my place of power. Never doubt it, Morlock: I have a thousand deaths at my beck and call as I stand here. Do you doubt it? You still are silent?” The stranger shrugged. ”Very well. Why should you take my word for it?” He waved his hand and spoke an unintelligible word.

The weight on Morlock's crooked shoulders was suddenly heavier by several pounds. In sudden alarm, he unslung his pack and lifted out the choir nexus. Water poured out through the dragon-hide wrapping. The choir was dead.

”You killed my flames,” Morlock said hoa.r.s.ely. His eyes were stung by abrupt surprising tears.

The stranger laughed incredulously. ”'Killed'? The notion is jejune. I extinguished them. That water might as easily have gone in your lungs instead, or-heated to steam-in your heart or brain. Then it is you who would have been extinguished. I killed my hundreds perfecting the techniques, Morlock, and they work. Never doubt it-again.”

”I doubt you will find your own death jejune,” Morlock replied. Tears were still running down his face; he supposed it was a symptom of the fever.

”Don't threaten me, you battered tramp!” the stranger snarled. ”You were about to hand me your pack, that I might spare you what remains of your life. Do so now.”

A long moment pa.s.sed, in which Morlock seemed to consider. Then he slowly lifted the pack, holding it out to the stranger.

The stranger laughed and took the proffered edge. This, the only convenient hold, happened to be the place where he had slit the pack two days ago. When his grip was firm, Morlock pulled back, as firmly. The stranger's grip, resisting the tug, tore the gripgra.s.s woven into the sewn seam.

The gripgra.s.s, starved for nutriment, exploded into dozens of thin wiretough lashes, binding the stranger's hand inescapably to the repaired slit. The stranger emptied his lungs in an instinctive cry of pain and surprise.

Morlock pulled him off his feet, by way of the pack, hauled him over to the nearest window, and, still holding on to the pack, threw the stranger out. His body slammed against the stone wall of the house and he stared up at Morlock for a long moment, as if gathering breath to speak.

Then his body was dark with winged forms. The catbird scavengers had been waiting for their predator, and he had not disappointed them. In a matter of minutes the stranger was dead, dismembered, and devoured. Morlock drew in a pack stained with blood, s.h.i.+ning blue threads of satiated gripgra.s.s woven into the sewn-up slit.

Morlock carefully unwove the gra.s.s. It had caused him considerable trouble, preserving its integrity, and it served no purpose now. When he finally disentangled the gripgra.s.s, a matter-of-fact voice near his feet inquired, ”Do you want that?”

He looked down to see a single red flame burning a hole in the wooden floor. ”Because if you don't want it,” the matter-of-fact flame remarked, ”I'll take it.”

Morlock dropped the gra.s.s on the floor and the flame casually devoured it.

”A little too chewy,” the flame remarked smokily.

”The whole business was somewhat chewy,” Morlock replied. ”But it's over now, I guess.” Taking some water from a nearby table, he set about sponging the blood off his backpack.

Morlock set the flame-nexus out to dry and searched the dead sorcerer's house for his stolen book of palindromes. He found it finally, or what was left of it, in a gla.s.s jar submerged in watery acid that was eating away the book's pages. It had pa.s.sed the point of uselessness, so Morlock left it where it was.

Had Morlock been led to the dead sorcerer, or he to Morlock? Was the whole purpose of the encounter to deprive Morlock of the book of palindromes? He suspected as much.

If so, he should trust the book's last omen and continue his journey eastward.

He didn't know what awaited him there, but he gave it some thought as he left the watery sorcerer's house burning behind him in the winterwood.

VI.

An

OLD LADY.

AND.

A LAKE.

AS LOVE, IF LOVE BE PERFECT, CASTS OUT FEAR, So HATE, IF HATE BE PERFECT, CASTS OUT FEAR.

-TENNYSON, MERLIN AND VIVIEN.

very night for many days, Morlock had been dreaming about a house and a horse. The horse might have been Velox: Morlock couldn't see him or hear him, but he knew he was there, behind the house. The house was just a house, a little weatherworn cottage on an island in a deep blue-water lake between the unclaimed woods and the fuming foothills of the Burning Range. Morlock dreamed he was walking around the house trying to see the horse, but the horse kept moving to keep out of sight. That was all there was to the dream.

The first time, the dream was frustrating. The second time was maddening. The third left him thoughtful. He was deliberately not reaching out with his Sight to make contact with the future, as he suspected his enemy was laying traps for him in the tal-realm. But it seemed as if an especially insistent future was reaching out to make contact with him. He began to have the dream every night, sometimes more than once, as he continued his journey eastward, going deep into the crooked margin of the mountains to avoid a region to the south that some friendly crows had warned him about. His insight also said the place was dense with talic danger.

The fifteenth morning after the dreams began, he walked into a clearing between the unclaimed woods and the fuming foothills of the Burning Range, and there he saw a deep blue-water lake with a small island in it. There was a wooden footbridge from the mainland to the island, and in the middle of the island was the cottage of his dream.

Morlock stepped onto the bridge. At that instant, with a roar and a clanking of chains, a fair-sized troll leapt out from under the bridge and landed atop the wooden walkway.

”Now I eat you!” the troll proclaimed. ”I was set here with the precise and specific mandate to eat anyone on my bridge who crosses it without my permission, as you have done, so now I will eat you!” Its ear-braids quivered with antic.i.p.ation. ”Do you follow me, or shall I explain again?”

”I have not yet crossed the bridge,” Morlock pointed out.

”Oh!” The troll tugged fretfully in turn at the tufts of unbraided hair proceeding from several of its noses. ”Oh. d.a.m.n it. And I'm hungry, too. All I've had to eat for the longest time has been fish, and a bite or two from the Pernicious Grishk that lives in the lake.”

”What's a grishk?”

”It's pernicious and lives in the lake. And it gets a bite out of me at least as often as I get one from it, so I'm not sure that even counts. Are you going to cross the bridge or what?”

”If you'll stand aside and permit me.”

The troll put several hands in its pockets, and the leftover hands behind its back, and stood toward the edge of the bridge. Morlock crossed over to the island and went up toward the cottage. The troll groaned when it realized how Morlock had tricked it and slunk down into the water under the bridge.

Morlock looked the cottage over carefully. He walked around it once, very slow, widders.h.i.+ns. He saw no hoofprints in the soft ground, of a horse or anything else.

That wasn't surprising. Morlock suspected the dream's meaning, if it meant anything, was that he would get news of Velox here.

He shrugged and knocked on the cottage door. It was opened by an extremely aged old woman with a bloodless wrinkled face and sunken gray eyes.

”Excuse me, madam,” Morlock said, ”but I'm looking for my horse-”

”Is that supposed to be funny?” the old woman screamed, hiding behind her half-opened door.

”No,” Morlock said slowly. ”Why would it be?”

”And that 'disguise,' I suppose you call it.”

”I don't.”