Part 24 (1/2)
”Wait!” Gjyrning gasped.
”Only a moment, Gjyrning. More deeds await me this dark night.”
”Morlock ... what will you tell them of me ... the ones who live under Thrymhaiam?”
”I can never go there now,” Morlock said, and slid the blade of his sword between the dragon's neck-plates into his skull, killing him. He jumped down and limped away as the dim red eyes grew dark behind him.
The scene was strangely dark with the dragon dead. Where the dragon had bled there was a sullen glow among the bare blackened stones of the Giving Field, and Thend saw that Morlock's blood, too, lit smoldering fires among what little there was to burn. Most of the light came from the cold bitter moons overhead.
Morlock limped down the line of posts until he reached Thend. Reaching up his sword, he slashed the thongs holding Thend on the hook. Thend fell to his feet and gasped. ”Thanks!” he said, inadequately but sincerely, and then added, ”Ouch!” His arms hurt suddenly.
He looked guiltily at the crooked man, who had suffered far more, but Morlock just said, ”Stretching the limbs hurts worse when it stops than when it's happening. Can you use your arms?”
Thend flapped them around a bit. ”Yes,” he said.
”Then we'll deal with them later. We have things to do.”
”Right.”
Thend ran over to where his property was. He found a knife strapped to his pack and came back with it. As Morlock watched, resting on his sword, Thend s.h.i.+nnied up the pole where the Lost One was hanging and slashed the rope that bound him to the hook. The Khroi took the fall on his carapace and slowly rose to stand on his ped-cl.u.s.ters, flexing his boneless arms and turning his head slowly to look at Thend several times with each of the eyes on his pyramidal face.
”You're welcome,” Thend said pointedly. After what Marh Valone had said, he was sure that the Khroi could understand him and speak if he chose. The Khroi didn't, though, at least not then. Thend glanced at the werewolf hanging on the next post over.
But Morlock was already limping there. He put one hand under the hogtied werewolf's back and said politely, ”Snap at me and I'll cut you in half.” The werewolf didn't snap at him. Morlock reached up, slas.h.i.+ng the bonds holding the werewolf, and carefully put the beast on his own four feet.
The werewolf spun about and snarled.
Morlock held Tyrfing at guard and waited.
The werewolf glanced over at the dark hulk of the slain dragon, then back at Morlock. He backed away a pace, then another, and his gaze dropped.
”Then,” said Morlock and turned away.
The werewolf took a long look at Morlock's back, and eventually trotted after him.
Morlock walked (if that was the right word) straight up to the Khroi and rapped on his pyramidal head as if it were a door.
”Anyone there?” he asked.
The Khroi backed away, as if threatened. ”Warriors may not speak to outsiders,” said the Khroi at last, speaking through only one of his mouths in a buzzing unclear voice very unlike Marh Valone's. ”But I am not a warrior now. I am nothing. Yes, I am here. I see you.”
”What's your name?” Morlock asked.
”I have no name,” the Khroi said, ”except my true one, which the G.o.dswho-hate-me know but I do not.”
”What do your horde-mates call you?” Thend asked.
”That does not matter,” the Khroi said. ”I am lost. The G.o.ds have remembered me, to my doom, and now I have no horde, lest my doom become theirs.”
”What do you think you owe Thend, here?” Morlock asked.
The Lost One looked at Thend with one of his eyes. ”Nothing,” he said. ”Everything.”
”I see your point,” said Morlock. (Thend wished he did.) ”Does your debt extend to a willingness to act? Will you do something for the chance to go untethered to the G.o.ds-who-hate-you?”
”What?” the Lost One asked reasonably.
”Thend's mother-”
Both the Khroi and Thend started a bit at this.
11 -yes, his mother,” Morlock continued, ”was one of the captives taken to the Vale of the Mother. Of your mother, of Valona. Will you take us there?”
”You are the Destroyer,” the Lost One said in his expressionless buzzing voice. ”You will slay Valona. You will slay the horde.”
”No,” Morlock said. ”We seek only to rescue our friends. Besides, what is it to you? You have no horde any longer. They cast you out, for their own good, not yours. The only horde-mate you have now, as far as I can see, is Thend. He is not one of the d.a.m.ned; he is not one of the lost. How will it be if you cross into the realm of the G.o.ds with one such as him for your hordemate? Perhaps it will ease the G.o.ds' anger.”
One of the Lost One's eyes still rested unblinkingly on Thend. He did his best to look unlost and und.a.m.ned, since that seemed necessary to Morlock's plan.
”Very well,” the Lost One buzzed. ”But there must be no killing.”
”I don't promise that,” Morlock said. ”We may need to kill some Khroi to rescue our friends. If need be, we will die fighting. You must join us, join our horde and stand beside us. If not, we leave you here to go your own way. By yourself.”
The Lost One covered his eyes with his palp-cl.u.s.ters. Then he lowered them and pointed one longer stringy palp like a finger at Thend.
”He does not know what I am, why I am lost,” the Lost Khroi said. ”But you know. He is not our enemy, as you are. And you say this to me. You ask this of me.”
”If you were my enemy, I would have killed you already,” said the crooked man. ”Join us, be one of us, or stay here alone. And you must choose now.”
The Lost One closed all of his eyes for a long moment, then opened them. ”May the G.o.ds forget me,” he said. ”I go with you to the Vale of the Mother. Follow me; it is not far.”
Nor was it, as the crow flies, but none of them were crows. Each of them had lived through a long and dreadful day. The werewolf slunk along the ground, dragging his tail. The Lost One was given to fits of stumbling and shuffling; all his limbs would stiffen abruptly, as if from pain or maybe, Thend thought, some sensation the Khroi didn't share with other people. Morlock was perhaps the worst off. Every time the crooked man took a step his whole body twisted, reminding Thend of a millworks he had once seen where something had come askew and the interlocking machinery slowly destroyed itself. But Morlock moved as fast as any of them, never complaining, ripping strips from his clothing as he went to staunch the flow of burning blood from his various wounds. So Thend clenched his teeth and didn't complain about how much his feet and arms hurt.
The Giving Field was just across a ridge from the Vale of Council, where Thend had first awakened. The Vale of the Mother was on the north side of the Vale of Council, past the long sloping shoulder of a mountain. The journey down into the now-empty Vale of Council was not too bad, but the climb up the far slope tested Thend's resolution not to whine. Fear helped: fear for himself and for his family. There were strange sounds coming from over the far slope.
They finally came to the crest of the slope, crawling up the last stretch to keep from being seen. That is, Thend and Morlock did; the werewolf and the Lost One would not approach the crest.
The Vale of the Mother was formed by two shoulders of a mountain (one of which they lay upon). Across the vale was a steep shelving cliff of dark broken stone. Together the barriers formed an irregular triangle with a meadow running down its long narrow center. Thend guessed part of the far mountain had collapsed in older times to form the flattish floor of the valley.
In the valley itself there was a torchlit swarm of Khroi, male Khroi. They wore the black of elders, the white of warriors; Thend thought he even glimpsed the black, white, and red tabard of the Math. They were dancing or running an irregular course that looped back on itself twice.
Where the loops joined lay a ma.s.sive Khroi: Valona the Mother; Thend was sure of it. She crawled, lengthwise on the ground, too ma.s.sive and ungainly to stand. Unlike the other Khroi, she had a fourth limb extruding from her upper carapace and another from her lower carapace, so she swayed about on six legs, with two waving like arms above her.
Behind her she dragged a ma.s.sive sac full of bulbous objects: an egg-sac, Thend realized. It hung from her thick writhing neck. When the dance reached a certain point she trundled forward. Her pyramidal head split open in three parts and out of the horrifying gap came a horn or spike. The horn stabbed toward certain shadowy figures struggling on the ground, backlit by the torchlit dance. The Mother stabbed one, two, three, four times. And each stab was accompanied by a scream in the mother's voice. Thend's mother's voice. Naeli, not Valona.
Thend would have screamed himself, but he could not speak; his throat was knotted tight with horror. Shuddering, he got to his feet, not knowing what he would do, but Morlock pulled him down, off his feet and back under the crest of the ridge.
”We're too late,” Thend hissed, when he found he could speak. ”There's nothing we can do!”
”Shut up,” Morlock said, and turned to the Lost One, who was sitting, rocking in a circle with his palp-cl.u.s.ters over his eyes. ”You: listen to me. There are no seers in the Vale of the Mother. Where did they go?”