Part 41 (1/2)

Morlock was not afraid of death; he had seen too much of it. It didn't trouble him that he had things to do, obligations unmet, because he knew that everyone leaves a trail of broken promises when they die. He would leave less than some.

On the other hand, there were things he wanted to do, problems he wanted to solve, things he wanted to make. He wondered if he could make an object solely out of the heat particles he saw dancing through the midst of the material void: a heat sculpture, a heat tool, a heat weapon. If he died now, he would never do that.

Morlock was not afraid of death, but given the alternative, he found he preferred life. He dismissed his vision.

The weight of the dark cold world fell on him. The cold was an agony, but under it burned darker, deeper pain from his bruised and battered body.

He forced his stiff aching limbs to unbend.

He was shuddering in the bitter dark rain so much that he could hardly make his limbs obey him. But he somehow made his way across the avalanche field, like a frozen sea that lurched occasionally under his feet, to the clearing where his pack and the jar-golem were.

The jar-golem rose to stand: this was what it had waited for.

As for Morlock: there were flames in the nexus, dry clothes in the pack, and the man who was trying to kill him was trapped in a jar. It looked as if he would live long enough to do some more making.

Night was much deeper and the storm had changed from sleet to snow by the time Morlock made it at last to Merlin's cave in the cleft of the mountains.

He expected to see signs of destruction, and he did find some. There had been a doorway securing the cave, but water had filled its frame and frozen till it burst outward. He saw two pair of footprints in the rubble: Nimue's and Rhabia's, no doubt.

Beyond the broken door was a stone stairway with a two-headed watchbeast-one side orange, the other purple. Both sides were dead, their gaping mouths stopped with frozen water.

Morlock pa.s.sed down the stairway into Merlin's lair and came at last to an oval room in which lay the bodies of two women, one dead and one dying.

On the far side of the room Morlock saw his mother's body, lying motionless amid a shattered block of warm ice.

On the near side of the room lay Rhabia. She had been caught by a trap: a steel hoop had pa.s.sed through one leg and bound her to the floor. She was struggling to stop the bleeding-an obviously long struggle which had so far failed, given the pool of blood surrounding her on the floor. She looked up and saw Morlock.

”Took awhile, didn't you?” she said with false bravado. He could see the relief growing, the fear fading in her eyes.

”I suppose,” he said. He looked the situation over, then drew Tyrfing and broke the steel hoop on either side of Rhabia's wounded thigh.

”I'm going to slide it out,” he told her. ”It's going to hurt.”

”Can't you put me to sleep with your green bird?” Rhabia said anxiously. ”Like when you fixed my fingers?”

She flexed her hand where Nurgnatz had bitten off her fingers. Morlock hadn't really fixed them, simply replaced them with mechanical a.n.a.logues that worked fairly well.

”No.” He nodded toward the jar-golem, who had followed him into the oval room and was standing by the door. ”Busy.”

”Oh.” She looked away. ”All right, then.”

She pa.s.sed out before the metal was out of her leg. Morlock worked swiftly to sew up her wound before she woke. He wrapped her in a sleeping cloak and left her on the floor, since he was unsure where else he could put her safely.

The rest of the floor was dense with traps. Morlock made his way past them to where his mother's dead body lay.

The chunks of ice were warm as blood: Morlock didn't fully understand what they were. He suspected they were a product of water-magic, something perhaps he should know more about. But clearly they had been used to preserve (and imprison) Nimue's core-self. Her impulse-cloud and sh.e.l.l must have been able to break through the warm ice somehow and reunify.

Death would have followed almost instantly. As Morlock looked down on Nimue's face, he thought it looked different than he had come to know it from her sh.e.l.l. Was it because now she had joined with her core-self? Because she was dead indeed? He wasn't sure. He had never really known her, and now she was dead. Again.

He shrugged. He cut a hole in the side of the cave and buried her there, carving on the wall beside her the same epitaph he had used the first time he buried her.

By then, Rhabia had regained consciousness. He made a fire on the floor, as if they were in the middle of a wood, and brewed some redleaf tea to help her heal and replace her blood. She drank it with many complaints, clearly relis.h.i.+ng the warmth, and when it was done she obviously felt stronger. Tossing aside the cup she said, ”Do you want to know how it was?”

Morlock thought about what he had seen. ”No. Unless you think there is something I should know.”

”That's more thinking than we bargained for. You'll agree I carried out my part?”

Morlock went into his pack to get the agreed-upon sum of gold and handed it to her. The gold meant nothing to him; he could have easily have doubled the amount, or given her as much as she could carry. But he knew that the gold was important to her, not only for itself, but as a symbol of independence. The bag of coins he handed her had the exact amount they had agreed on back in Seven Stones.

She shook it with some enthusiasm. ”No more working for Thyrb,” she exulted. ”Maybe I can even set up my own retreat.”

Morlock nodded.

”Well,” she said after a few moments, ”I think I'll be getting out of here. Especially if the guy who dropped that mountainside on you is just asleep in there.”

Morlock nodded. ”Go back the way you came,” he suggested. ”It seems to be clear of traps.”

”Right.” She turned to go, paused, turned back. ”Think you'll ever be back up Seven Stones way?”

Morlock thought about how angry Merlin would probably be when he freed himself. He thought about Roble and Naeli and her children, and how much they had suffered from knowing him. He thought of Stador, dead under a head of rocks in the Kirach Kund. ”No,” he said.

”Oh. Good-bye, then.”

”Good fortune to you.”

She left, and he turned away to explore the rest of Merlin's cave.

Eventually, he found what he was looking for. In a room that looked more like a butchering shed than a wizard's workshop, he found a metal dish with a pair of silver eyes in it.

They looked at him-quizzically, perhaps with a little fear, certainly with recognition. He recognized them, too: they belonged to his horse, Velox.

”h.e.l.lo, my friend,” Morlock said, not sure if Velox could hear him, not sure if he would understand if he did. He was never sure about Velox.

Merlin, of course, had been lying when he had told Morlock that Velox was dead. Morlock had suspected as much. For one thing, he wasn't sure that Velox could die. An unusual beast in many ways.

Velox's separate pieces all seemed to be present in the dreadful bloodsoaked room. Morlock settled down to rea.s.semble them. He was tired, his body battered and aching, but the task itself gave him strength. This was a deed he had set himself to do, and it was near to completion now.

Slowly, the immortal steed took shape in the stony womb beneath the mountain.

Trapped in the jar, the old man struggled against his bonds of clay and sleep.

Already far off, the wounded woman walked away through the long cold night.

APPENDIX A.