This Crooked Way Part 12

I admit it was weird. I hadn't had a chance to look at the blade before, when Morlock was fighting the Bargainers. The blade was like a long pointed slab of black basalt with veins of white crystal running through it. It seemed as if the white parts began to move, like white flames flickering against a black background. Morlock almost seemed to flicker a little bit, too, and his gray eyes actually seemed to glow. He closed his eyes and I could see the light of his irises shining eerily through the thin skin of his eyelids. His movements were sluggish, almost sleepy.

It reminded me of how he had been when I first saw him. He was going into the rapture state, I suddenly realized. Why?

... the sort of magic Coranians have always been good at ... he'd said, right before the Silent Word struck us both down. He'd meant the kind of magic that preserved physical life by devouring someone else's ... no, their tal. It was just what the Enemy did. I'd wondered then if the Enemy might once have been a Coranian, though I didn't have a chance to ask the question.

Did Morlock think the Enemy might be here-not in the woods but in Four Castles? Could he use his altered vision in the rapture state to find out?

The Baron was shouting for someone to take his sword. I didn't move to obey; if Morlock was doing what I thought he was, I wanted to know the answer at least as much as he did.

Eventually, though, three soldiers wearing the Baron's surcoat approached. The light in Morlock's eyes died; the light in the sword faded. I was wondering whether to intervene when he opened his eyes and peaceably surrendered the sword, hilt-first, to one of the guards (who seemed reluctant to touch it). He shrugged off his backpack and handed it to the second guard (who grabbed it with two hands and grunted a little; it seemed to be pretty heavy). He nodded politely to the third guard. Then he kicked him in the crotch, knocked him down, and ran past him.

I was as startled as anyone. (I'd figured Morlock was going to surrender and plead for the Baron's mercy. Not a shrewd move, necessarily, but one where I could lend my a.s.sistance without ending up in the slammer.) Before I knew it the crooked man was up on the dais, struggling with the Baron, with both of his hands on the Baron's left arm. Morlock wrenched the arm suddenly; there was an indescribable sound, like a moist crackle, and he had torn the arm from the Baron's body.

But there was no blood. And something dark dangled and writhed at the Baron's side, where his arm had been, like muscles with no bone or skin.

The guards had dumped Morlock's sword and backpack and (except for the one still rolling around on the floor with pain) were going to the Baron's rescue. But this stopped them. Like everyone else they stood gaping at the scene playing out on the dais.

Morlock stripped the severed arm of its sleeve and rapped it against the back of the throne. It was hard, chitinous, like a sh.e.l.l. He presented the torn end to those standing agape in the hall; we could see that it was hollow. The Baron of Caroc wasn't human-just a sort of land-crab that looked human....

"Is your enemy the Boneless One who lives in the woods?" Morlock asked. "What of a boneless one who walks among you-misdirects your efforts-eats your lives?"

He took the Baron (who was striking at him with one remaining clawlike hand) by the armless shoulder. He tore the shoulder in two different directions, and the Baron's torso came apart. Morlock tipped him forward and something oozed out of the gaping tear in the chest, like the soft boneless body of an overcooked snail. It fell on the dais steps and slid down a few, leaving a gleaming trail of slime behind it.

It had human eyes, though. And its shapeless mouth screamed in the Baron's voice as Morlock stepped forward to crush it.

The crowd's horror burst into panic. I wasn't the first person to rush for the door, but I wasn't the last one, either. Pretty soon we were all charging toward the wide doors of the audience hall, forcing our way out, yelling our heads off. The crowd spun me around as I went through the door, and I caught a glimpse of Morlock, calmly shouldering his backpack, his sword back in his hand, the Baron a red smear on the dais steps behind him. He met my eye and saluted me gravely with the sword. Then the crowd pushed me out through the door and I lost sight of him.

The morning was warm; I was tired; my armor was heavy. It took me a long time to get from the Castle to the Riders Lodge, where I shed my armor with the help of one of the duty squires. I kept the sword, because I'd bought it with my own money, and I didn't expect to be back.

I went from the Riders Lodge to my house. It was mine, technically, but Naeli's older sons, Stador and Bann (already journeymen in their trades), were actually living there these days. Business is thin for any young man starting out, so I was paying for most of their groceries as well. Thend, the youngest, lived with Besk as his apprentice.

Stador and Bann, thank the Strange G.o.ds (or whoever really runs the universe), were at home instead of work.

"We heard you were dead," Stador explained, embracing me, "and then that you weren't-"

"I need you to go to Besk's, right now," I interrupted. "Take whatever you would if you were never coming back. Because you're not. We're leaving Four Castles."

"Why?" Stador wanted to know.

It was a reasonable question, but what was a reasonable answer? A stray I brought back from the woods killed the Baron of Caroc. The Baron of Caroc had no bones. The Whisperer in the Woods knows one of the Silent Words. None of it sounded reasonable to me.

"Your mother," I said slowly, "if she were alive, would certainly wish it. Is that enough? Will you wait for the rest?"

"Sure," they said agreeably, and each of them got a small bundle of stuff.

I sent them on ahead to Besk's to get Thend started. "If I don't follow in an hour," I said, "start without me. Don't come back here; go west, into the woods. I'll follow as soon as I can." There were some tools I needed to gather if we were going to rough it in the woods until we got to the lands beyond. I found a lump of beeswax, as well, set aside to make candles, and brought it with. I thought it might afford us some protection against the magic Morlock had unknowingly given to the Enemy in the woods.

There was someone pounding on the front door by the time I was done, so I went out through a window in the back of the house and ran away up the alley. I heard someone following me almost immediately, but I ran on for a stretch, hoping to tire them out.

Finally, I heard whoever it was gaining on me, so I halted and turned, my face friendly, my hand near my sword.

It was Morlock. My face fell, but my hand dropped away from my sword.

"I can't tell you," I said as he ground to a halt beside me, "how not glad I am to see you."

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders, his white face impa.s.sive. Maybe he was used to that kind of reaction. I could understand that, if he screwed up other people's lives as swiftly and as thoroughly as he had screwed up mine.

"You're leaving Caroc," he said, gesturing at my bundle. "Perhaps the entire, er-?"

"Four Castles, yes," I said. "I'm getting my sister's boys out of here, too. Somehow I don't figure my prospects in the Riders are what they were yesterday. What with me causing the Baron's death and all."

Morlock looked at me quizzically. "Would you want a career in the Riders," he asked, "knowing what you know now?"

"What do I know?" I said. I started walking again; I had to get to Besk's. Morlock fell in beside me. "So the Baron had a hard sh.e.l.l and no bones. It didn't mean he was a bad person."

"He certainly seemed like a pleasant fellow," Morlock replied solemnly, "for the little while I knew him."

I glared at him for a second, then had to turn away; I didn't want him to see me smile.

"Roble," he said to my back, "I need some help."

"Well, you certainly came to the right place," I said, turning toward him with renewed anger. "You certainly have a store of credit with me. There's nothing I wouldn't do for the man who wrecked my life."

"You've been cattle for these things," Morlock said, his face less impa.s.sive, his voice carrying an edge. "You and everyone you've ever known. Does that content you? Is it the life you'd wish for your sister's children? For your own?"

"I don't have any."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want-" I bit my sentence off. I wasn't that crazy about women as women, but I had thought about having a family sometimes. But I didn't want the Boneless One in the woods to eat my children, the way it had eaten Fasra, and Naeli, and countless others. I didn't want them to live in fear of the woods, the Bargainers, the Riders, the dark. I didn't want them to live the life I'd lived.

"Okay," I conceded gruffly, "maybe it wasn't such a great life. It was the one I had. Now, for taking it from me, you want me to-"

"I want you to help me destroy the enemy in the woods."

"What's it to you?" I demanded. "You can walk away from here and never come back."

He shook his head. "When I was taught the Silent Words I swore never to pa.s.s their secret to someone who would use them for harm. Now, inadvertently, I have. There is only one way to redeem my word: to kill the thing that lives in the wood. I may not be able to do it alone. Will you help?"

"Urk." I thought about it-for about half a second. It was a chance to kill the thing that had killed Naeli. "All right. But I want to send my nephews on their way first, in case it doesn't work out. I don't want the Barons or whatever those things are after them." I paused for a moment, then asked, "What are they?"

"The Barons?" Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. "I'm not sure. At first I thought they might be segments of the Boneless One. But the Baron didn't know the Silent Word, or he would have used it to stop me from sh.e.l.ling him. Perhaps they were once Coranians, who fed on the Boneless One for so long that they became like it-"

"What do you mean?" I demanded. "Fed on it how?"

"That's how your society works, Roble. The aristocracy, the Coranians, meet in the Circles, and they are fed tal by the Boneless One. That's what gives them their extended lives."

"I thought all Coranians lived long lives."

"Not centuries-long lives. For that they need aid, some life-source beyond their own. This they get from the Boneless One-life-sustaining tal skimmed from his victims, or fresh corpses from the wood or the Road, and transmitted through foci of power hidden in their places of ceremony. In return, of course, they see that the Boneless One gets regular meals."

"They Bargained with the Enemy."

"Essentially," Morlock agreed. I guessed he hadn't heard my capital letters. To Bargain was the ultimate sin among my people, but that wouldn't mean anything to Morlock.

I walked in silence for a while, absorbing what he'd said. "Are you telling me," I said finally, "that the Enemy could attack us in the day as easily as in the night? That there are no lawless hours ... or that days are as lawless as the nights?"

"I'm certain your Enemy could act during the day. It simply chose not to. The herd could not be culled too often or too deeply; there always had to be enough stock to ensure a supply of meals in the future. Hence the Riders, and other things to keep the people of Four Castles thriving, even though a steady stream of individual persons were sacrificed. During the day, you thrived. At night, your Enemy fed."

It was as if I was listening to someone breaking the law, knowing that it would never be unbroken again. My whole life had been turned inside out: I thought I'd been fighting the Enemy, and all the while I'd just been guarding its herd.

I glared at Morlock. To him, this was all just a puzzle, and not an especially challenging one. "You figured this out pretty quickly," I said trying (and failing) not to sound hostile.

"When you've lived as long as I have you've seen most things more than once. The hive-cities of the Anhikh, south of here, are not so very different. But when I ascended to rapture in the Baron's hall I could read the threads of tal-contact between the Coranians in the hall and the thing in the woods, with a great dark locus in the Baron. I saw his true form then, too, hiding within its sh.e.l.l."

"So what's the secret of your long life?" I demanded. "Something similar?"

Morlock looked away. I'd finally gotten under his skin somehow. "No," he said finally. "I was born in ... a guarded land, far from here. Things are different there. I can never go there now. But whatever life I have is my own, not stolen from someone else."

I believed him, for some reason. Maybe because he seemed to have the usual complement of human bones. Which prompted me to ask, "Why does consuming someone else's tal make you boneless?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "My sister thinks there are two kinds of tal: one which unites spirit to flesh, and another which joins spirit to bone. The fleshtal would be easier to extract while the victim is still alive. But if you consumed only flesh-tal then your flesh would continue to live, but your bones would wither and die over time."

This was a disturbing thought, but what really shocked me was his casual mention of his sister. When I thought about it I realized there was no reason he shouldn't have a sister. But he hadn't seemed that human to me.

We came to Besk's smithy, marked with a golden anvil painted on the door. I leapt up the stairs and entered without knocking; Morlock followed me in.

Besk wasn't there, but the boys were sitting in the middle of the shop with their bundles beside them. They rose to their feet and stared at Morlock.

"Stador. Bann. Thend. This is Morlock Ambrosius."

Morlock and the boys nodded at each other civilly. But then Thend said, "He looks like a Coranian."

"I'm not," Morlock said seriously.

"He's really not," I confirmed. "They hate his guts; believe me." I pulled the block of beeswax out of my bag. "Listen, Morlock, I was thinking-"

"An excellent idea," he said, nodding.

"Think there's enough wax here to stop all these big ugly ears?"

Morlock grinned one-sidedly. "Just barely. But I should tell them something about the way westward before we plug our ears. You might do well to hear it, too. Perhaps we should bolt the door so we are not interrupted."

"No." I was thinking that Besk would return; I didn't want to lock him out of his own place. Also, there was a question I wanted to ask him, outside of the boys' hearing. "You go back into the smithy and I'll hold the fort here. You can tell me about it later, if'-we live, I would have finished, but I noticed the boys staring at me with wide eyes-"it seems necessary."

Morlock nodded, and Thend led the way back to the smithy.

"Why do we have to have our ears plugged?" Bann asked.

"The Enemy has a new magic," Morlock answered seriously. "Wax in your ears will protect you from it." The door shut behind him, cutting off his voice.

I leaned back against the shop counter and waited. I suppose it was a long time, but it didn't seem so; I had a lot to think about. Presently I heard slow footfalls coming up the stairs; the door opened and Besk stepped through.

He didn't seem surprised or pleased to see me. "Roble."

"Besk. Does the Enemy feed you?"

Besk's face, not the cheeriest I'd ever seen it, fell even further. "I don't know," he said at last. "There is life in the Silver Stones; in a certain ritual of the Mysteries, we can share in it, be strengthened by it. I ... I don't know where the life comes from."

"Did you ever ask? Do the Inner Circles know?"

"I don't know what they know," he said, but his eyes would not meet mine.

"So you ate Naeli," I said. "And Fasra. You and the other white-faces in the Circles."

He put his hand to his pale brown forehead, as if to check its color, and said haltingly, "I ... I don't know. How would I know, if it were ... If it were true? No, Roble, listen."

I nodded and motioned for him to continue.

"I learned something at the Mysteries, this morning. It's bad news from Rendel's, I'm afraid. Alev died this morning just after dawn."

Bring the stray out, Alev had screamed after the trap had closed on both his legs. I'm done.

But I'd pried the jaws of the trap open and brought him out.

I couldn't leave him there to die, but now he was dead anyway.

I couldn't conceive of it: Alev had been my partner for four years. I could imagine not being a Rider, not living in Four Castles, my own death. But I couldn't picture a world where Alev was dead.

There was another thing I didn't understand.

"Besk," I said, "how did you hear this? There hasn't been time for a baronial courier to ride from Rendel's to here since dawn. And no one would send a courier just to report a Rider's death, anyway."

"It's one of the secrets," Besk said slowly, "but I think you should know. Yes. It's necessary that you know. There is an interconsciousness in each Circle. We share things ... Not wills. Each man makes his own choices. But knowledge. We know what the others know."

"Not sure I'd care for that," I said.

"We get used to it. It can be useful. I knew what happened at the Baron's court this morning because many of my Circle were there. But other knowledge came later...."

"What do you mean?"

"It seemed like knowledge. It seemed so real. We learned that Morlock had used magic to delude the crowd, that you had helped him, that together you had murdered the Baron. I didn't believe it, even though ... I don't believe it. But the Circles are looking for you now."

"If-Are you telling them where I am?"

"I would not have betrayed you by choice, Roble. Believe me. But the moment I saw you, they knew."

A shape flew between Besk and me-a darkly luminous green bird whose form would not quite come into focus, as if it were wrapped in a dark mist. It flew around Besk's head three times. With the first pa.s.s his eyes closed; with the second his head slumped; after the third he fell to the ground. The green bird flew back to where it came from: the door of the smithy. Morlock, standing there, caught it in a gla.s.s bottle and closed the bottle with a stopper.