Blood Of Ambrose Part 38

"We will say he is asleep. Or dead."

"Oh, dead, by all means, if you don't mind. That way I shall inherit the family estate."

"This represents the Protector's Shadow and his relationship with the body of someone whose awareness he has consumed. The string is the talic connection between the Protector's awareness and his subject's body. For it to be effective, it must have two ends-the one in the subject and the one in the tal-body nexus of the controlling awareness."

"I a.s.sume that, enjoying this experience as I do," Jordel continued calmly, "I kill the rest of the members of this council and attach their fingers to mine with bits of string."

"Plainly."

"Well, this is a gory little thought experiment, I must say. Is it getting anywhere?"

"Jordel: your hand is tired."

"I don't think so, old fellow-I'm quite comfortable."

"The hand with the strings," Morlock prompted.

"Oh! Well, I'll move them to my other hand."

"Do that, won't you? But remember that at any moment, while your hands are tangled up with string, someone might come through the door and lop off your head."

Jordel's eyes crossed and uncrossed. "I begin to see," he said slowly. "You think it would be that difficult to transfer his awareness, along with his control of the bodies whose minds he has eaten, to a new body."

"Even more difficult, Jordel. Your awareness already has a talic connection with your other hand; the Protector's Shadow would have to establish one with his new body. He would have to put the two bodies in talic stranj and transfer his strands of control gradually from the old to the new. He will not do this while there is any danger that his enemies will come upon him while he is preoccupied."

"'In talic stranj,' urk. I wish Noree were here-this isn't my sort of problem."

"Morlock," Aloe said intently, "surely your string-finger example isn't the only possible way the Protector's Shadow could maintain control over his subjects."

"In theory, no. I ran up several multidimensional models in my workshop after I read Genjandro's note. For instance, the central awareness could have been shared among several bodies, some of whom could have served as fallback positions if others failed. Or each body could have been truly intercon- scious with all of the others, with talic strands extending from each of the members to all of the others. There's true immortality, if you want it."

"G.o.d Avenger, make him stop!"

"Shut up, Jordel," Aloe said curtly. "Morlock, if these other models are less vulnerable to attack ... Are they?"

"Yes."

"Then why do you a.s.sume that the Protector's Shadow chose the most vulnerable model?"

"Bad tactics," said Ambrosia curtly, and Wyrth, with a remembering look, smiled briefly.

"I don't a.s.sume he did," Morlock said flatly. "It's what he must have done. There may be practical considerations I am unaware of-this isn't my sort of magic. It may be that sharing awareness among several physical forms would require sharing of ident.i.ty. The Shadow would not eat these beings; together they would become a true group mind. This would not appeal to him."

"No," the King said firmly. "It wouldn't."

"Or perhaps he simply made a tactical error in his first improvised, er, meal, and has stuck to the model ever since. It doesn't matter. This is the method he has chosen."

"You keep saying that," Aloe said. "But-"

"He defends his body," the King said distantly.

"He-what do you mean?" Aloe asked, focusing on Lathmar.

The King shifted uneasily in his seat. He looked at Morlock, but Morlock simply gestured for him to continue.

"He grows these hedges of thorn around the tower. He hides the door. The only window is hundreds of feet above the ground. He blocks the door to his workroom like a tomb." The King waved his hands. "Don't you see?"

"Even more," Morlock continued. "He gutted his body of its vital organs, sealing them away to protect his body's life. If it were not vulnerable, if it were not important to defend it, he would not hedge it around with these elaborate defenses. He would not suffer the inconvenience of a rotting body. It is his weak point. We must strike it."

"Or," Jordel said triumphantly (he had been waiting centuries to say it), "he wants it to seem that way. Isn't that possible? That the whole tower setup is an elaborate feint to draw an opponent (you, Morlock, or Ambrosia) to death or captivity?"

Morlock nodded slowly. "I considered the possibility. I broached it to the King. He thinks it unlikely. I trust his intuition."

"He was there, you know," Wyrth pointed out.

"Yes, but, begging Your Majesty's pardon and all that," Jordel said, "suppose he's wrong?"

"Then you fight on without me. Next most likely is that there is a small core group of mind-bodies who consume together the infected minds and share control of the subject bodies. The task would be to identify and kill a significant number of these."

"'A significant number ...'?" Aloe wondered.

Morlock shrugged. "More than one. Less than the total number of mindbodies in the core group."

"And if it is the third model?" Baran asked. "Total interconsciousness, or whatever you said?"

"You'd have to kill them all."

"Easy for you to say," Jordel said. "You'll be dead yourself."

Morlock shrugged. "That's not how it is. If I fail, one or more of you should set out to do what I tried to do."

"Suppose we're all dead by then?" Jordel wondered.

Morlock gestured at Baran.

"Then it's up to us in the Wardlands, you mean," Baran said.

"Yes. You should contact Merlin as well. He's no friend to the Graith or the Second Empire, but I suspect that the Protector's Shadow will interfere with his plans, and he could be a useful ally. He has made a special study of necromancy."

"His plans," said Jordel musingly. "What are his plans, do you suppose?"

"He always has some plot or other afoot," Ambrosia said dismissively. "They never come to anything, always being somewhat overcomplicated. But it's nice to know one's father has something to amuse himself with in his extreme old age."

"Eh," said Jordel. His father, of whom he had been very fond, had died young.

"I take it," Ambrosia resumed, in a more official tone, "that the sentiment of the council is unanimous: Baran shall go to warn our neighbors in the Wardlands of the present danger, while Morlock shall go to the Old City to combat the Protector's Shadow. The rest of us shall man, woman, and dwarf the barricades here until some new strategy presents itself."

Nods around the table.

"I'm pleased to adjourn this last meeting of the Regency Council on a note of ringing unanimity," she said with a crooked smile. "We all have work to do, though the hour is late. Still, I ask you to wait and witness."

Morlock, who alone had heard this ritual formula before, looked up with interest. Ambrosia had stood and was walking, with a wooden box in her hands, over to where the King had seated himself, rather informally, farther down the council table. "Your Majesty," she said as she walked, "I had hoped to make this gesture with the high ceremony it deserves. But it may be that we will not all meet again. So" ... She opened the box, took out what was in it, and cast it aside. In her hands she held an iron circlet with no gem. Lathmar twisted around in his chair to look at it.

"This is the iron crown of Vraid," she said. "With it I crowned your ancestor, my beloved husband, Uthar the First, Emperor of Ontil on the field of battle. In that dark hour without hope we won through to victory. Will you accept now the heritage of your ancestors and be our sign of hope in this dark hour?"

Lathmar squawked, "You want to crown me Emperor, now, before breakfast?"

"Certainly. Unless you would rather someone else do it." She didn't look at Morlock.

"No!" the King said instantly, to Morlock's relief. "No, Grandmother: you do it." He stood, kicking his chair to the floor, and kneeled before her.

She placed the iron circlet among his disordered brown locks, saying, "I crown you Lathmar the Seventh, Emperor of Ontil."

Then he rose and she kneeled, taking off her chain of office and handing it to him. "Your commands, my liege?" she said softly.

He gripped the chain like a lifeline, but his voice was steady as he spoke. "I affirm the acts of my late regent, my well-beloved ancestress Lady Ambrosia Viviana. Let's leave the rest of the ceremonies for another time; we have a war to fight. And, frankly, I want breakfast."

"Hail Lathmar the Seventh, called the Wise!" cried Jordel enthusiastically. "Breakfast in droves, by all means. Maybe we should get an emperor in the Wardlands."

Baran pushed his chair over for this blasphemy, and thus ended the imperial coronation of Lathmar VII.

"Morlock," Aloe said in the Crooked Man's ear as the others were standing around the table talking. "You've other good-byes to say, so I won't keep you. But come back to me, Morlock: I say it to you like some stupid fisherman's stupid wife. Come back to me."

Morlock stood, took her by the elbow, and walked her out in the hall. "The time is come for an understanding between us," he said firmly.

She looked at him with her golden eyes and waited.

"I am no longer your husband," he said harshly. "You are not my wife. I am an exile, and you are a member of the Graith of Guardians. You could be exiled simply for saying what you have said to me. Don't throw away everything you are because of something which is nothing to you."

"Do you really believe you are nothing to me?" she said, surprised.

"You would wander with me, from place to place, without a home, because I can never come to the place that is my home?"

She laughed, dismissing this fantasy with a wave of her hand. "I can see the future better than that, Morlock."

"Prophesy for me."

"You will be in the future what Ambrosia has been in the past: the true ruler of this empire. It took a long time, but now you have a place to call your own. You cast a long shadow-"

"An ill-chosen metaphor indeed," he hissed.

"Choose your own metaphor, beloved. The job is yours to do. I've never known you to shirk a job that was yours. I think I understand you now, at last, and I am willing to be a partner in your destiny, wherever it leads."

He bowed his head, clenching his teeth. He thought he understood her, and rather better than she knew him. It was strange to love someone, to look into her eyes, and to see oneself mirrored there as a nothingness cloaked with power. It was the cloak of power she loved, not the man who wore it. He could not say these things; they blocked his throat, too great, too terrible to be spoken. It is Morlock who loves her, he said to himself. But the man she loves is Merlin's son. She had never realized that they were not the same man, that they would never be, that he could not let them be.

He heard a sound behind him and turned to see Lathmar standing behind them, the boy's eyes twin pools of grief and shame. The young Emperor fled up the hallway, his bodyguards following at a practiced run. Ambrosia came out of the council chamber, looked up the hall, looked at Morlock, and shrugged.

He turned back to his ex-wife. "You've hurt him," he said fiercely. "I won't forget this."

"Save your anger for our enemy," she said, smiling. "I'll be here when you get back." Then she kissed him, and he found he could not resist her. She turned away and walked up the hall after Lathmar, her red cloak swirling behind her. Perhaps he would not be able to resist her, either, Morlock reflected gloomily.

"Did you know Merlin sent me off to school one year?" Ambrosia said as he turned back to her.

"No," said Morlock, genuinely surprised.

"It was such a disaster. I'll tell you about it, sometime. Anyway, this is a little like the end of the school year-fast farewells, so much to say that nothing gets said."

So he held her hand, kissed her forehead, and said nothing at all.

She kissed him on the lips, hesitated, then kissed him again. "From Hope," she whispered, and walked away almost as quickly as Lathmar had done.

"Nothing disgusts me as much as schmaltz," said Jordel disagreeably, stepping forward, "so I won't say good-bye. No point to it! You'll be a pest and a botheration to the Wardlands until the mountains wear away and the Guard fails."

"A pest, maybe," Morlock conceded. "But a botheration?"

"Don't try to bandy wits with me at this late date; you're not equipped for it. You don't even know what a bandy is--deny it if you can! See you, Baran."

"Good-bye. Good-bye to you, Morlock," the big man added. "Thanks for the horse. Think he'll carry me?"

"He carried Ambrosia, Wyrth, and me," Morlock said. "I'm fairly sure it was him. Let him run free in Westhold when he's carried you there, eh?"

Baran said he would, clapped Morlock on the shoulder, and was gone.

"You're not even going to say good-bye to Velox?" Wyrth said querulously.

"No," said Morlock, who badly wanted to. "He might cry, and I couldn't bear that."

"Ach, you're a cold and pitiless man. I suppose you're only waiting for me because you want help with your spider."

"That, and one other thing."

Wyrth became solemn, even grim. "I know. We never talked about how I failed you in the gravelands."

"That's nothing."

"Not to me," Wyrth replied, stung.

"Then it's your business," Morlock said coldly, if not pitilessly. "I should have warned you what was in the offing or forbidden you to come. Your suffering falls to my blame. Frankly, I have worse things on my conscience."

"And I'm the one who knows," Wyrth replied. He hesitated and asked, "What's the other thing, then?"

"I call you master, Wyrth."

"What?" the dwarf said irritably. "You can't do that. I'm just an apprentice."

"I can, and you know it. I should have done it a half century ago. You know that, too."

"You're doing this as a going-away present," said Wyrth angrily. "But when you come back, we won't be able to travel together anymore. Or maybe you're thinking of giving up traveling."