Part 36 (2/2)
”What's your name?” Morlock asked. It was something he'd long wondered.
”Trannon,” the other replied in a light tenor, very unlike either the first or the second voice.
”Trannon, I am Morlock Ambrosius.”
They greeted each other solemnly.
”I am headed east from here,” Morlock said after telling Trannon the whole story for the third time. ”The nearest town, though, is Heath Harbor, somewhat north of here. I can take you there-”
Trannon refused. ”I know Heath Harbor well. I can reach there easily enough, if that's what I decide to do.”
Morlock pondered this comment as he finished folding up the disestablished Perfect Occlusion. When he had packed it away and tied the water bottles to his pack, he turned back to Trannon.
”What do you intend to do?” he asked bluntly.
Trannon looked thoughtful-at least, as thoughtful as he could. (Except for the reddish brown gouges on the left side of his face, the experience had left him looking rather unmarked and ingenuous.) ”Perhaps I'll stay,” he said. ”I can serve to warn people away from this spot-” He stopped short when he saw the expression on Morlock's face.
”That seems to me to be habit speaking,” Morlock said carefully. ”If there's one thing you must do, it's get away from here. Travellers don't pa.s.s by twice in a generation, and there is no danger of one stumbling across the darkness by accident; that pa.s.sage is closed.
”Still-suppose-”
Morlock shook his head. ”The decision is yours to make, but consider: if there is danger for anyone in this place, there is double for you. No, I will not debate this. The decision is yours.”
Trannon nodded solemnly and said nothing.
Morlock gave him a few blocks of dried meat and flatbread, over Trannon's protests. ”You can't get to your mushrooms now,” he pointed out, ”and you won't find game very plentiful unless you go further north.” He also gave Trannon the moonlight blade. ”I don't know if it will be any use to you, but it is well made and will last for some time, if you keep it out of sunlight and firelight. If nothing else, you can sell it in Heath Harbor.”
Trannon accepted the blade without protest. Possibly, Morlock thought, he felt he had earned it.
Morlock threw his pack over his crooked shoulders. ”Well, Trannon,” he said. ”We may meet again, or not. Either way, good fortune to you.”
”Good-bye, Morlock Traveller,” the other said. ”Thank you.”
Morlock walked away quickly. He had the feeling that Trannon was intent on doing something that would wreck everything Morlock had done. That was his choice; Morlock had discharged his own obligations, and they in no way included being Trannon's nursemaid forever. But the thought still bothered him.
He looked back when he reached the far side of the valley, and saw Trannon motionless in the moonlight beneath the toothlike hill.
Morlock set himself to climb the slope before him. When he reached the crest he looked back again. The other had disappeared. Morlock shrugged and walked on eastward.
When he finally got to sleep, late the next morning, Morlock's rest was broken by a nightmare. He dreamed that he had opened his own chest with a moonlight blade, intent on replacing his heart with a stone. But when he reached in to remove the heart, he found neither heart, nor stone, nor anything.
XIV.
WHERE.
NUR~NATZ.
DWELL5.
”ANYONE HERE?” HE ASKED, AND ECHO ANSWERED, ”HERE!”.
-OVID, METAMORPHOSES.
he storm was getting thicker and the day was getting darker-if you could even call it day anymore. Rhabia was having second thoughts about her decision to walk alone from Thyrb's Retreat to the town of Seven Stones. On a good day she could have almost made the trip by now, but she hadn't antic.i.p.ated how much the snow would slow her down. This was a bad road to travel at night; there were gnomes and werewolves living nearby. Unfortunately, it was too late to turn back: for all she knew the danger lay behind her. She'd have to trust to luck and keep going.
For a moment it looked as if her luck had deserted her: she saw a silhouette even darker than the sky, looming in the snow ahead on the road. Then she recognized the crooked form and laughed: it was just that odd wryshouldered man who had been staying at Thyrb's. She ran on to join him. He was no particular favorite of hers-she didn't even know his name-but there was safety in numbers on this haunted road.
”Hey!” she shouted over the hissing of the wind-driven snow. She wanted him to know she was coming up behind him: he was probably as nervous as she was.
He turned to face her ... sort of. There was just a dark patch where his face ought to be, with a slash for the mouth and two holes for eyes. A large dark hump loomed behind the featureless head.... She stopped, stricken by a sudden panic. But then one of his hands tugged at the dark patch and it came down around his neck; it was just a mask against the snow and the freezing wind. The face revealed was the one she expected to see: dark weather-beaten skin with a crooked smile and gray searching eyes that peered at her through the murk. The hump, she now saw, was just his rather large backpack.
”I don't know if you remember me,” she said, almost apologetically. ”I'm Rhabia. We sort of met back at Thyrb's.”
He nodded.
”I thought we could walk together, at least as far as Seven Stones,” she forged on.
He nodded again and gestured at the road beside him, as if it was his to give. When she was level with him he began to trudge forward through the snow again.
”It'll probably be safer for both of us,” she explained. ”There are werewolves nearby. Gnomes, too.”
He nodded a third time, and said, ”Werewolves are certainly less likely to attack two than one.”
”Cowardly beasts,” she agreed.
”Just careful,” he disagreed, and pulled his mask back up.
”Do you have to wear that thing?” she complained. ”It gave me a turn when I saw it.”
”I'm wearing it.”
”Oh,” she said, shrugging. It wasn't like his face was that much more attractive.
”I had to cut off somebody's nose once.”
”Oh?” she said, a little alarmed again.
”Frostbite. Now I wear this thing when it's cold.”
”Oh.”
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