This Crooked Way Part 40

Her limbs had thickened and grown; her body was more ma.s.sive, especially her neck with the enormous burden of her egg-sac. Her internal organs had swelled to support her greater size-most of them, anyway. She crawled along lengthwise, of course: she was too enormous to stand on her hind legs and ped-cl.u.s.ters. All her palp-cl.u.s.ters had become heavy, padlike pedcl.u.s.ters. She had regrown the quadrilimbs that all Khroi are second-born with; they were as ma.s.sive as her other legs.

Valona's eyes fell on her old nurse, standing at the entrance to the nest. Gathenavalona looked in vain for any glint of recognition in those eyes. The transformation wrought by the royal jelly magnified the body many times, but the enormous ovaries in a Mother's abdomen seemed to crowd out most of the room for the brain. Mature Khroi mothers never spoke, and it was hard to say what they understood.

Valona caught sight of a trough of food at the base of her nest. She moved toward it, grunting with excitement.

Gathenavalona thought of her promise to Dhyrvalona. She thought of Math Valone's promise: a new name and a new destiny.

She kept her promise. As young Valona ate to sustain her vast bulk, her old nurse told her how the story ended.

XUI.

5PEAR5.

OF.

WINTER.

RAIN.

WORDS ALSO, AND THOUGHT AS RAPID AS AIR, HE FASHIONS TO HIS GOOD USE; STATECRAFT IS HIS, AND HIS THE SKILL THAT DEFLECTS THE ARROWS OF SNOW, THE SPEARS OF WINTER RAIN: FROM EVERY WIND HE HAS MADE HIMSELF SECUREFROM ALL BUT ONE: IN THE LATE WIND OF DEATH HE CANNOT STAND.

-SOPHOCLES, ANTIGONE.

s the ice storm raged about him, the crooked man stood in a cleft of the mountains watching another crooked man walk a twisting path through the shattered icy stones of the rockslide to the west. He saw the man fall among the ice-glazed stones, saw him struggle to his feet again, saw him continue his slow meandering way eastward.

"A plodder," muttered Merlin, and shook his head. It was the only way Morlock would ever reach anything, the older Ambrosius decided: by finding out where it was and walking straight toward it, literally or metaphorically. Well, it was a way to get somewhere. Unfortunately, it left you open to observation and attack by your enemies, a fact Morlock had never learned, apparently.

Merlin shook his head and sighed. This had been a long hard struggle, and it was nearly over. In a way, he would miss it, he decided. That was why he was withholding his final weapon. But that was not the only reason.

Merlin grimly noted that Morlock was not carrying his backpack. He had hidden it somewhere before coming to the confrontation he antic.i.p.ated between himself and his father. Merlin's map of the future had predicted this, and that was why he planned to avoid any such confrontation.

They were high in the mountains, well above the treeline on the north face of the Blackthorns. Morlock, of course, was approaching from the west. He knew where Merlin was, because Merlin was necessarily near the core-self of Nimue, and Nimue's sh.e.l.l and impulse-cloud together were able to tell where her final segment lay. They had told Morlock, and he proceeded to walk directly toward his goal, along the path Merlin had foreseen.

Several days earlier, Merlin had deliberately started several avalanches on the slopes above Morlock's future route, and halted them with a network of force-wefts. He had only been waiting until Morlock was directly in their path to loose the wefts. And now Morlock was, and if he did not loose them soon there was some chance that Morlock would be able to make his way out of the danger zone before the avalanche caught him.

Merlin took one last look at his only living son, then sighed. He took a rune-slate from a pocket in his left sleeve, and he broke it with his fingers. It was bound-in-state to the force wefts; once it was broken, they were no more.

The avalanche started. First there was a low rumble, and the man far below, antlike in his distance and his vulnerability, began to run. Of course, Morlock had been raised among mountains and he knew that sound well. The torrent of snow and ice and stone rolled down toward him like a tidal wave, took him, buried him, rolled onward until it exhausted itself on the slopes below. Soon enough the slide was quiet and the icy rain was glazing the fresh surface of snow. If Morlock hadn't had his neck broken or his body crushed in the avalanche, it was only a matter of time until he smothered. The long struggle between father and son was over.

Merlin sighed again. Unlike Morlock, he was an introspective man, and he understood how complex his own motives were. If Morlock had succeeded in reuniting Nimue's segments and negating the antideath spell, it would have been terrible; he would have been furious at his defeat and the loss of his beloved wife. But it would have been a relief, too: a relief to be free from the endless struggle against death. Death was an enemy even more plodding and relentless than Morlock, even harder to defeat. Now he would have to carry on that fight.

"And so I will," he decided. "I'll win, too," he added, because there was no penalty for bravado, at least when no one was listening.

"Anyway," he said to himself, "now I am the master of all makers again. By default." He scowled. Well, he reflected, in any fight the last man standing is the winner.

Merlin pulled his cowl over his head and stepped out of the cleft's shelter into the bright bitter rain. His cloak and his shoes did not get wet (a man does not reach the second half of his second millennium without being able to avoid these inconveniences), but still from time to time the wind turned and a dash of freezing rain stung his face. It was irritating, but he bore it. He had just won a victory, a great victory. No doubt he would feel the full impact of it presently.

Now it was his turn to meander across the treacherous ground he had used to kill his son. There was no reason to hurry, so he did not. He was careful to avoid using the sight-for one thing, he needed all his material senses to keep himself from Morlock's icy fate; for another he could not risk a confrontation with Nimue. It was possible that he might defeat her, in her divided state, but it would be difficult to defeat her and Morlock in tandem, and something told him that Morlock, though doomed, was not dead yet. In fact, as he pa.s.sed by the western edge of the avalanche-field, his insight told him there was someone in visionary withdrawal. Morlock, no doubt: it was shrewd to go into withdrawal, reducing the body's needs almost to nothing, waiting for help to come. But there was no one to come rescue him; Morlock would die there of cold, if nothing else.

Merlin scowled again and turned away. It occurred to him that for most people, for the short-lived people of a day (like that Naeli woman, or Nimue herself, really), children were the chief weapon in the struggle against death. He had been forced to sacrifice one of his children to win a brief respite in his struggle against death-not even a real victory, just a respite. Perhaps death might not be merely a plodder, might be an extremely subtle antagonist who could sneak through your windows even as you were locking your door. Never mind. Merlin would not stop fighting because he did not know how to stop. If Morlock had chosen to fight beside him instead of against him, it would have been different; they might even have forced death to retreat a step or two. That would have been a famous victory.

A shared one, of course. Merlin had never been one for sharing out the glory. He cursed a little, shook some ice from his cloak, put his head down and trudged onward into the sharp stinging rain.

Eventually Merlin came to the place where he had first observed Morlock approaching. Then he had to go more slowly, consulting his map of the future every so often. Morlock might be dead, or merely doomed, but his intention still shaped the present and the future. It crossed with Merlin's ... there. Down below in the crooked line of pine trees, abristle with heavy spikes of shining ice.

Merlin pa.s.sed onward cautiously, not just because of the terrain. Morlock was clever enough to have laid traps for Merlin, antic.i.p.ating this moment. (Not cunning enough to avoid the moment itself: that was reserved for a genius on the level of Merlin himself.) There were no traps. He came at last to a clearing in the glittering icehung pine trees. The map told him that Morlock's pack was hidden here, but he saw nothing of it. Either it was not here or Morlock had placed a wilderment on it so that it was invisible.

Merlin smiled within the shadows of his cowl. He could go into rapture and use his trans-material senses to see if the pack and (more importantly) Nimue's two lost segments were present. But there were so many risks to this. Morlock and Nimue might be already in rapport, awaiting the chance to capture Merlin's fetch. Morlock might have fashioned some nonmaterial trap out of talic impulses. No, he could not engage in vision until he was surer of his ground.

But no wilderment is perfect. They create visual flaws where they merge with their environment. Merlin walked around the clearing, eyes open for clues: an icicle sparkling on the wrong side in the gloomy day's light, a twig that disappeared midway of its length, a misplaced shadow. Soon he had quite a list, and he charted them on a mental map of the clearing. The center of the wilderment was that locus ... there.

Merlin walked toward a pine tree, no more remarkable than any others on the edge of the clearing. He was wary of traps on all sides, but there seemed to be none. He reached down into the s.p.a.ce he had calculated as the wilderment's center. His hand disappeared, and simultaneously met the rough surface of Morlock's concealed backpack. He drew in a deep breath and hefted the pack out of the wilderment.

It took a couple of tries. "G.o.d Avenger, this thing is heavy," Merlin grunted as he finally dragged the thing into visibility in the unspelled center of the clearing.

His long hands leaped, as if of their own accord, to the lacings of the pack, then halted.

"Caution, caution," Merlin reminded himself. There was no hurry. He would go slow.

It was well he did. The pack was sealed with a spell to prevent theft, and there was a particularly nasty trap inside, for anyone clever enough to pierce the spell. Merlin counter-inscribed the spell and defanged the trap. There seemed to be no other barriers. At last he unlaced the pack and, with trembling fingers, lifted out a blue jar.

The rest he would leave for whoever found it. He scorned to loot the pack of the master of all makers: he was Merlin Ambrosius, and his name did not echo and re-echo down the centuries because he was a successful thief of other men's magic. He had what he wanted.

He was sure of it.

He was almost sure of it.

He kept remembering that empty jar Morlock had taunted him with in Aflraun. This jar was not empty-it had a certain heft to it. He spun it in his hands, and certain irregularities of weight suggested to him that the jar was bigger on the inside than the outside, as it should be if it was the right jar. Yes, this was what he was looking for.

He was sure of it.

He was almost sure of it.

Merlin badly wanted to ascend into visionary rapture and check: if Nimue's sh.e.l.l and impulse-cloud were in the jar, he would know immediately; likewise if they were not.

But he couldn't risk it. He was all too aware that this might be the ultimate trap, baited with exactly what he really wanted. If Morlock and Nimue were in rapport, waiting for him, everything he had done might be for nothing.

He raised the jar up over his head and threw it against a nearby tree root glazed with thick ice.

The ice shattered. The blue glaze on the jar shattered. But the jar itself didn't: it lay there on the ground without a crack.

Merlin nodded. If Morlock had foreseen this moment, he would have made the jar breakable, but with some sort of menace or trap inside. Morlock hadn't. Ergo, Merlin had found the right jar.

He was sure of it.

He was almost sure of it.

Merlin walked over and recovered the jar. He weighed the risks against each other, shook his head, and twisted the cap off.

From the jar's wide mouth flew the indistinct form of a bird, its feathers gleaming with every shade of dim green in the day's dull light. It pa.s.sed three times around Merlin's head and returned to the mouth of the jar. By then, Merlin had already slumped unconscious to the glittering glazed earth. The jar fell there beside him.

The jar unfolded three long spindly legs from its base. It shook out three long spindly arms from its striated body. The jar-shaped golem rose from where it had fallen and stood uncertainly on the icy ground.

Spindly the arms were, perhaps, but strong. The jar-golem reached down and picked up Merlin's p.r.o.ne body. The jar-mouth, already wide, gaped wider and wider. The jar-golem dropped the sleeping sorcerer into its mouth. Then it clapped the lid back down across its mouth and wrapped its spindly arms tightly around the lid, sealing the container. Its spindly legs crouched down and it waited.

Time pa.s.sed. Eventually, two women came through the glittering icefanged pinewood.

The jar-golem didn't move. They weren't what it was waiting for.

One woman said to the other, "Should we see if we can help Morlock?"

"Who, dear?" the other replied.

"Morlock."

"That's funny. My son's named Morlock. I've never seen him, not since he was born."

"He was here with us, just a while ago."

"Looking for his horse. Yes, now I remember. I told him to watch out for that troll under the bridge, but he's not one of the world's great listeners, is he, Voin dear?"

"Rhabia. My name is Rhabia."

"Oh, yes. I remember her well. She looked a little like you. Give my regards to her, if you see her. But I have to be getting on, my dear."

"I'd better go with. That's what he's paying me for, anyway."

"Really? How unimaginative of him. Young men in my days had livelier ideas, believe you me. Who is 'he,' by the way?"

"Doesn't matter. Are you sure you know where you're going?"

"Oh yes; not a doubt of it. My impulse-cloud and my sh.e.l.l are not very effective at coherent thinking-"

"You don't say."

"I thought I had said it. Oh, Christ, I'm so tired and confused. Never mind: thinking isn't required. I can feel my core-self is near, so near, and I'm tired, so tired. Frightened, too. Can you-can you-?"

The younger woman silently took the arm of the older woman and they pa.s.sed onward.

The jar-golem waited in the bright clearing under the wet gray sky. Time pa.s.sed.

Morlock was not expecting the mountain to fall on him and he was utterly unprepared for it.

A glance or two about told him that there was no way to escape the slide entirely. He could make it as far as he could and hope the slide didn't kill him, or ...

He curled himself into a ball and summoned visionary withdrawal. He had just ascended to rapture when the avalanche caught him: the sensation was vaguely similar to being kicked by a giant wearing a cotton boot. Then he was above the level of sensation, adrift in the tal-realm.

Reasoning and intention are oddly distorted in vision. If you enter with a strong intention, in talic stranj with a focus of power, intentional action may be relatively easy. But Morlock had simply sought escape, and having found it, he drifted like a cloud in an otherwise empty sky: not acting, not really thinking.

Merlin pa.s.sed nearby. Morlock noticed this without really concerning himself about it. Sometime afterward, he sensed Rhabia and two segments of Nimue pa.s.s by in the other direction.

Merlin, Rhabia. Nimue, but not all of her. That triad prompted a coherent thought. He descended a little in vision as a consequence.

The sun was going down beyond the rim of the world. The world was colder now, even the tal-world, and that made Morlock think, too. Evidently the avalanche had not killed his body outright. But the cold would kill his body soon.

Well, what could he do about it? Little, very little.

What did he have to work with? Little, very little.

How little? he wondered. In the tal-state he was freed from material limits of perception. He had nothing else to do. He tried to find out how small a thing he could perceive.

Time pa.s.sed, but he was not aware of it.

Eventually he found himself contemplating the void of matter on a very deep level. Most of it was empty to his sight. But in the void moved tiny particles, more swiftly than others, infected with something like life, although they were not all alive.

Some parts of the slide had more of these than the others. There were some on the surface, where the last red light of the day was falling, through the ragged edges of the ice storm's clouds. There was a cloud of them enveloping his freezing body, moving away from it in the emptiness of the dead snow and ice.

Morlock reached out with his mind and started turning these specks of light and warmth back toward his body. The snow and ice around him grew colder, but against his skin there was a layer of warmth. Eventually his body, balled up like a fist, was floating in warm water within an icy womb deep within the body of the avalanche field.

The maker in Morlock, never absent even when unconscious or asleep, was pleased. It was a temporary solution to survival underneath the avalanche.

Of course, it was only temporary. Morlock pondered alternatives.

Eventually, he began to bend the pathways of the particles of heat, denting the side of the icy womb and then breaching it. He used the heat to whittle away an icy tunnel with a core of warm water, angling the tunnel downslope. His unconscious body rolled along with the water downhill into the tunnel, along its length.

The water broke through the side of the avalanche field and ran out. Morlock's body slid afterward and bounced downhill over the glazed slope, like a badly made ball, eventually coming to rest against a rocky obstruction.

Morlock was pleased again. This looked like a permanent solution.

Of course, it created a new problem: his soaked body, exposed to the wintry night air, was losing heat even more rapidly than it had under the ava lanche. He wasn't sure if he could weave the paths of the heat particles in the air as he had in ice and water; everything seemed to move more rapidly. It was an interesting problem, and he thought a little bit about solutions.

But whatever he came up with, it would not be a permanent solution. Eventually the source of heat within his living body would fail and he would die.