Part 32 (1/2)
The thugs got lamps and divided up into various groups to search the house. Merlin had the now-docile Fesco pick five thugs to accompany him, and me, into the Mystery Zone.
”The fame of it has reached even across the great river of the north,” Merlin told me slyly. ”So I naturally take this chance to visit it without the usual admission price.”
They went very carefully. Fesco and two thugs preceded us through the Gate of Shadows (the dark room we used to disorient visitors), searching it carefully before Merlin and I entered, followed by the thug rearguard. They tried the same thing with the zone itself, but their formation broke when a couple of the thugs tripped and fell up a wall.
Merlin waved me through and followed along, an expression of wonder lighting his pale cold features. The two thugs were standing on the wall, disoriented. One of them made it back to the floor, but the other staggered like a drunk and ended up standing on the ceiling.
”Well,” said Merlin to me, ”I won't lie to you, Naeli. I find this remarkable. At times like these, I almost wish Morlock and I were on better terms. I don't suppose you can tell me anything about this?”
”What's it worth to you?”
”How mercenary. Or are you talking about your family?”
”I'm not talking about money, anyway.”
”Well, if you put it like that, I don't think anything you tell me will be worth any concessions for your family's safety. As long as they are levers I can use to apply pressure on Morlock, I'll use them. When they are not, they've nothing to fear from me. You see how honest I am with you, Naeli.”
I was honest with him about something.
He laughed and said, ”You're not the first to say so, though others had more elegant ways of putting it. Well, I think what we have here in your Mystery Zone is some sort of four-dimensional polytope.”
”It is,” I conceded.
”Well, that much is obvious, isn't it? But I'm having a little trouble working out the geometry. Is it regular, do you know? Did he ever show you a three-dimensional map of the thing?”
”No.”
”He may not have one. He can do multidimensional calculations in his head. G.o.d Creator knows where he learned it-not from the dwarves; all the math they know is bookkeeping. He stayed at New Moorhope for a time; perhaps they taught him there.” He shook his head. ”No, I just can't work it out. Unless he knows a way to bend gravity?”
”He says gravity is more malleable in the fifth dimension,” I remembered.
”Is it?” Merlin said thoughtfully. ”Is it really? The four-s.p.a.ce polytope must be nested in some sort of fifth-dimensional structure then. Interesting. I'll have to give that notion some serious study, one of these days. I'm indebted to you, Naeli.”
”Then-” I broke off.
”Ask your question. I know you've been dying to.”
”Why are you wasting your time in the one place in Laent where you know Morlock is not?”
”Of course Morlock is here, Naeli, or will be soon.”
”Does your map of the future tell you that?”
”As a matter of fact, it does. Not that I needed it. Yours were the actions I had trouble predicting.”
”And you never did.”
”Oh, of course I did. I hoped you'd do the sensible thing, but I rather thought you wouldn't. Shall I outline it for you? Morlock made those simulacra and you sent your family and him away somewhere-possibly with someone you came to know in Narkunden. If necessary, I'll look into that. You told them you'd catch up with them later, after decoying me off their trail. When they were safely away, you summoned me. You have no intention of ever seeing them again and are quite prepared to die. Is that about it?”
He was exactly correct, so I told him he was wrong.
He ignored me. ”You don't really know Morlock, though, it seems. Once the family is well away, or on its way, he'll be back.”
”Why?”
”Are you being modest? The oldest reason in the world.”
I laughed.
”You may overestimate the number of women who have looked on him without some mixture of fear and disgust.”
”Who says I don't?”
Merlin looked at me almost sadly. ”I'm being honest with you. Why can't you be honest with me?”
I really think he thought I was being unfair. He admitted to causing the death of one of my sons, and was willing to kill everyone I cared about as a secondary effect of his schemes. But I disappointed him because I wasn't more forthcoming about who might or might not have been the recipient of my girlish laughter. Death and justice, what a mirror-kisser he was.
In the uncomfortable silence that stretched out between us, we suddenly heard, faint and far off, the harsh sound of men screaming in the last extremity of pain or fear.
”He's here,” Merlin said in a businesslike tone. ”Fesco-”
He never finished. There was an earthquake, or something-the floor started to s.h.i.+ft under our feet. The ground was pretty lively in Four Castles; we lived just south of the Burning Range and we were always suffering earthquakes. (My husband died in one, when a quake collapsed the mine he was working in.) So I knew what I had to do: get out.
But as I turned on my heel and the floor writhed like a snake beneath me, I saw the door at the end of the hall slide out of sight. Then the shaking threw me off my feet: we were all of us tossed in a heap, including the guy who had been on the ceiling, and I had to concentrate on not getting impaled by their drawn blades.
I was successful, but a couple of them weren't. When the rest of us shook loose from each other and stood up, two of Merlin's thugs didn't. One was Fesco: he was coughing up blood and seemed unlikely to be doing much else for the rest of the time he had left. The other was the guy who had been on the ceiling: he had fallen straight on somebody's sword. He wasn't moving at all.
”Two down,” I said. ”Five to go.”
Merlin glanced at me sharply, and then his withered face bent in a sneer. ”You're an optimist, young woman. Still, it was clever of him to build this toy to trap me with. The ingenuity of its making is relatively trivial, you understand; one expects that of him. It's his cunning use of it that really impresses me. He's learning, old as he is. If he had Ambrosia's unsparing ruthlessness or Hope's steady devotion, he might really become dangerous someday.”
He looked up and down the Mystery Zone. The hallway had changed shape. It was now longer, with a sharp turn at either end.
”Two of you,” Merlin said, ”lead off. The other two, follow. Let's see what the other side of this place looks like.”
The four surviving thugs (Fesco had stopped breathing) all looked as if they had to think once or twice before deciding to accept Merlin's orders. But they did, falling into place without a word to him or each other, and we moved up the corridor. When they reached the turn, one of the lead thugs shouted, ”They're down there!” and ran on ahead around the turn.
We heard boots thundering up the corridor behind us.
”Penned in!” Merlin hissed. ”Can he have brought allies?” He grabbed my arm and hustled me around the bend.
Allies. I was terrified that this meant Roble and my children-what other allies did Morlock have? I glimpsed back as Merlin dragged me around the turn in the hallway. There were armed men approaching up the hallway behind usnot anyone related to me, I thanked the Strange G.o.ds: the sweating frightened faces were pale as fish-bellies. They did seem a little familiar, though.
Merlin stopped as soon as he had dragged me around the bend. He turned around. There were sounds of fighting from both ends of the corridor. I looked down and saw the lead thugs fighting with someone just around the bend. Turning back, I saw our rearguard thugs fighting with someone just around the corner.
”Stop it!” shouted Merlin. ”Stop it, you idiots! You'll kill each other!”
All the fighting stopped. I saw two bodies lying on the corridor floor ahead of us. They looked awfully familiar also: one of them was certainly Fesco.
”There's only one turn in the corridor,” Merlin muttered. ”It's bent back on itself. Then-wait a moment- He didn't have a moment. A hatch opened in the ceiling in the middle of the hallway and Morlock dropped out of it. He held a sword in one hand, not Tyrfing, and a dagger in the other. He raised the sword to guard as his boots struck the floor. The hatch shut by itself; you couldn't even see a line where its edges were.