Blood Of Ambrose Part 31

"Not bad," he remarked. Somehow the King thought he wasn't referring to the stew. "But, Thoke, if you please, take this cup away and bring me some water."

"No, no!" Jordel cried. "Morlock, drink with us! It's a poor heart that never rejoices."

Morlock's dark face was more than usually impa.s.sive. He hesitated for a moment and said, "I'll rejoice, if you insist. But I'll drink water."

Jordel subsided with a wounded look. The servant Thoke brought Morlock a cup of water, disapproval like a mask covering his normally deferential features.

"You're an awkward fellow, Morlock," Baran observed. "Always were. Never could get along with people."

Morlock said something in the secret speech that the King didn't quite understand, but whose purport was fairly clear.

"I don't think I know that verb, Councillor Morlock," Lathmar said pointedly. It seemed to him that the supper was spiraling out of control.

But Baran was laughing out loud. Apparently gross insults of this sort were not always insulting.

"That didn't sink any deeper than the knife you aimed at me this morning," Baran was saying.

"Since you mention this morning," Jordel said, "and since our expert on Morlock affairs is sulking at the high end of the table, maybe you'd answer me a simple question, old friend and sometime enemy."

"Maybe I will," Morlock somewhat a.s.sented.

"Just what the h.e.l.l is going on around here? What are these weird creatures running around dressed up like some religious order reanimating corpses which pretend to bake bread which other zombies pretend to eat? Because I'm d.a.m.ned if I can understand it."

"I don't want to contribute to your d.a.m.nation, Jordel-"

"When did you change your mind about that?"

"-but with the King's permission I'll tell you what I know."

"There was a time when you'd ask no man's permission to do anything," Aloe said in her cool angry voice. "Much less a boy's."

The King was stung, though he tried not to show it. Morlock met his eye and shrugged.

"You've my permission to say what seems good to you, Councillor Morlock," he said, looking away from Aloe.

"Well, it isn't much. The Companions, these figures who collect and rearrange corpses, are agents of an ent.i.ty whose name I don't know. He offered himself to the King's late Protector-"

"Late Protector?" said Aloe leaning forward. "I thought he was still alive."

Morlock shrugged.

"It's a moot point," the King explained. "At any rate, he is no longer my Protector, though he continues to use the t.i.tle. Go on, Morlock."

"This ent.i.ty offered himself to Lord Urdhven as a magical patron, but I think that was just a ruse. Now it seems that this adept has been using the Protector as a stalking horse to occupy Ambrosia while he engages in some plan she would have stopped, or at least interfered with."

"You say 'he,"' Baran observed.

"I made visionary contact a few times, and the figure in question seemed to be male. But ..." Morlock shrugged.

"Part of his plan is clear, anyway," Jordel observed. "He's filling the city with zombies."

"Corpse-golems," Morlock corrected.

"What's the difference?"

"I don't know what a zombie is. These things are golems made with parts from human corpses."

"Morlock, you're a pedant."

"Maybe, but I have a point. Golems do not act independently; in a very real sense, they do not act at all, but simply follow orders."

"I had a thain-attendant like that once," Jordel remarked. "He-"

"So you mean that the adept has agents in the city, instructing the golems," Aloe remarked, ruthlessly waving aside Jordel's reminiscence.

"Yes. The Companions at least; that thing that looked like a dead baby for another. But what these agents are I can't tell."

"I thought you just said what they were," Jordel complained.

"He means their nature, Jordel," Aloe said.

"At first I thought they were harthrangs-demons inhabiting dead bodies," he explained parenthetically to the King and Kedlidor. "But they appear to my talic perception the same as they do to my eyes. If they are harthrangs, I don't understand why this should be. If they are not, I don't know what they are."

"I'll tell you one thing," Aloe offered. "There's an exile from the Wardlands involved in this somehow. The colors that the Companions wear: gray, red, and white-the same as the colors of the three ranks of Guardian. That's an exile's joke."

Morlock nodded slowly. "Or the joke of someone who wants us to think that. It could be another ruse."

Jordel laughed derisively, and Baran said, "Maybe you're being oversubtle."

Morlock shrugged. "I saw Merlin recently," he observed.

"What?" shouted Jordel and Baran as one. Even Aloe leaned forward with renewed interest. So Morlock told the tale of Velox's apparent fall from the sky, and Morlock's rescue of him, and what had followed.

"But what was the horse doing in the sky?" asked Jordel.

"No," Aloe said, rubbing her forehead. "Please don't answer that, Morlock, unless you think it's relevant. You can satisfy Jordel's natural curiosity some other time."

"Morlock," Baran observed, "all you've just said makes me even more sure that Merlin is involved here-is probably the adept himself."

Morlock shrugged. "It should have done the opposite."

"What? Why do you say that?"

Morlock rubbed his face and, turning to Aloe, opened his hand in silent appeal.

"I see what you're driving at," she said slowly, "and I think you're right. Listen, you two," she said to Jordel and Baran as they turned to her to protest, "what is this adept's defining characteristic? Apart from his power."

"Necromancy," Jordel said. "Using corpses for magical purposes."

"Try again. It's a pretty common form of magic in the unguarded lands."

"I'm not going to try again. Tell us your thought."

"This adept can keep his ident.i.ty a secret. Merlin can't. Even when he's trying to adopt a disguise, he can't refrain from exposing his ident.i.ty. It's vital to him that everyone must recognize his presence and his genius. He could never stand in the background for a period of years while his plans developed."

"Hm," said Jordel meditatively.

"But if the Ambrosii weren't all accounted for," Aloe continued, addressing Morlock, "I'd suspect one of you. This business has a family stench about it."

Morlock looked as if he were about to speak, but didn't. Suddenly the King knew what he had been about to say, or thought he did: one of the Ambrosii was not "accounted for" as Aloe put it. There was Hope, hidden inside Ambrosia.

Lathmar began to feel panic, tried to suppress it. Hope couldn't possibly be the Protector's Shadow, could she? But the more he thought about it the less he was sure. After all, what he knew about Hope, her limitations and abilities, came from Hope herself. And if she were the Protector's Shadow, that meant it had been there with them every moment, had known every plan, every stratagem. And they could only avoid this by excluding Ambrosia from their councils. And that, itself, would be crippling-like chewing off a leg to escape a trap....

At that moment the door at the end of the hall opened and Ambrosia and the Protector entered side by side. Behind them walked Vost and Steng, somewhat uneasily, wearing the surcoats of Protector's Men.

Those sitting at the table rose, except for the King. He felt, rather than saw, his bodyguards tense behind him.

"Your Majesty," said Ambrosia, "I bring guests for your table."

Lathmar inspected Grandmother carefully for signs of insanity. What he saw instead were poorly disguised traces of triumph. He guessed that she had concluded a treaty with the Protector on favorable terms. It was usual to fix a treaty with a display of hospitality, hence this somewhat surprising appearance at his table.

"Ambrosia," he said slowly, "any guest you invite is welcome at my table. However, those two gentlemen"-he pointed at Vost and Steng-"wear a device I do not recognize. They must put it off before they sit."

Ambrosia almost winked at him: he had said exactly what she wanted him to say. He tried to keep his face polite, but internally he fumed. One day he would miss one of these subtle cues, and then- The Protector had turned his leonine head toward his men.

"Our agreement, Lord Urdhven," Ambrosia said quietly.

"Take those things off, you two," the Protector said gruffly. "That's all over."

Vost looked like a dog who had been kicked by his master, but he obeyed. Steng was already working at the laces of his surcoat. He tossed it aside, and the King thought he could see the man's long, ropy fingers trembling. He sat at the table as far as he could from Morlock or Ambrosia.

Urdhven, in contrast, sat down next to Morlock, with Ambrosia on his other side. "Thoke, you old monster," he cried at the servant behind Morlock's chair. "Are you still the master of the cups and plates?"

"Yes, my lord."

"You'd better call up some of your minions-we're hungry, had a long day negotiating."

"Yes, indeed, my lord. I was about to bring in the final course of fruit, cheese, and dessert wine. Would you ... ?"

"That'll be fine, Thoke," said Ambrosia.

Thoke disappeared into the preparation room, trailed by the lesser servants.

They returned in a moment, each carrying fruit and cheese arranged on a plate. Some servants had more than one tray, to accommodate the new guests. Nonetheless, the King didn't get served until Commander Erl gestured at one of the servants, indicating that the King's place was empty.

This annoyed Lathmar, but he could understand it: Thoke had gone to serve at the far end of the table, and he had forgotten to have someone stand in for him here.

Then, too, Thoke was, as Urdhven had called him, the master servant of the dining hall; he always acted as personal servant to the most important person at a banquet. Apparently he had forgotten that for purposes of ceremony, at least, Lathmar was that person. Thoke was standing behind Urdhven's chair, at his beck and call, indicating by his manner who, in his opinion, was the most important person present. The King glanced at Kedlidor to see if he had picked up on this-he imagined the Rite-Master giving Thoke a searing lecture on propriety after the supper was ended-but Kedlidor was engaged in some sort of conversation with Ambrosia and Urdhven.

There was something else, as well, though. The feeling in the room had changed when Ambrosia and the Protector's group had entered. Lathmar couldn't put his finger on it-he felt as if something horrible were about to happen. As if something horrible was happening, which was real although only he could see it.

Now the wine came in, brought by a fleet of butlers. The King was served (wine and water) without having to specially request it, and he was about to salute Aloe with his goblet when a dispute broke out in the lower half of the table.

Thoke had approached Morlock with a bottle of dessert wine, hesitated, and then served Urdhven instead. He went on to pour wine in Ambrosia's cup.

"Wait a moment," Urdhven said, a hint of unpleasantness in his manner. "Aren't you drinking with me, Morlock?"

"I'm drinking water, if that's what you mean."

"That's pretty small-minded, if you ask me."

"I didn't."

"I come here to settle a treaty with the regent, and you sit there drinking well water. Where's the bond if we're not all eating and drinking the same?"

Morlock silently offered Urdhven a piece of cheese from his plate. Urdhven didn't take the cheese, but he did seem to take offense.

"Come off it, Morlock," Ambrosia said impatiently. "A mouthful of wine won't kill you."

"Lord Urdhven is free to share my water, if he likes."

"Most improper," Kedlidor said, surprising the King. "Pledge a treaty in well water. Unheard-of." He spoke in spurts, as if he were being jabbed between utterances.

"That's what I was telling him earlier," Jordel complained. "Why not live a little?"

Morlock said nothing now. He looked at no one. Thoke, taking this as permission, raised his bottle to pour wine in Morlock's cup.

Lathmar's sense of dread darkened the world. It was as if every gesture, every word at the table masked some evil secret. And all his impulses told him that if the Protector (that thing-that sh.e.l.l-that mask of nothingness) wanted something very badly, he was not to get it. Could the wine be poisoned?

Or was it the wine itself? Wyrth had sometimes referred to Morlock as a drunk. But the King had never seen him drunk. But then he had never seen Morlock drink. Was it possible that the man's iron will, his intellect-everything he was, everything that Lathmar loved him for-could be drowned in a sip of wine? Lathmar couldn't believe it. He didn't believe it. It was too stupid. But he couldn't risk it.

"Thoke," he said, his voice cracking with strain, "come here. I want you."

"Pour, pour," Urdhven said impatiently.

"I'll be with you in a moment, Your Majesty," Thoke called.

The world went completely dark. Lathmar was angry at Thoke's insolence; he was frustrated by his role as a regal puppet; he was afraid for Morlock. He heard himself shouting, "In a moment you'll be dead!"

When he returned to himself he was standing. So was everyone else at the table, their faces mirroring various forms of shock. Thoke was sprawled facedown on the floor, his face in the rushes, sobbing. Karn and Erl stood over him with swords drawn. Their faces, expressionless, were turned toward the King: they were prepared to kill Thoke at his word.

The King drew a slow deep breath. His sense of imminent danger had diminished. There was light in the world, again-there was hope that he could do something, that he could speak and be heard, that he was something other than a mere puppet. But there was a darkness in himself, too; he understood that now for the first time. Perhaps that was the most dangerous darkness of all.

"I spoke in haste," he said, his voice still unsteady. "He's a fool, but he doesn't deserve death. Take him to a cell, Karn-one with no escape hatch," he added. "The regent can deal with him tomorrow."

"Yes, Your Majesty," said Karn. He picked up the sobbing servant by main force and hauled him away. Erl returned to stand behind the King's chair.

There was an awkward silence as the King took another long breath. Then he spoke again. "I apologize to you all. Guests should not have to hear such a thing from their host."