This Crooked Way Part 33

"Morlock, he has to be dead. Did you see what that thing was doing to him?"

"Unlikely!" That was all he said. He actually pulled a needle and thread out of his pockets and started sewing himself up as he hobbled along. It was pretty horrible, but just stumbling along watching was even worse, so I said, "Can I help?"

"No. Blood. Burn you."

"Your clothes don't burn," I pointed out.

"Dephlogistonated."

"Deef-what does that mean?"

"My clothes don't burn."

"Have you got some gloves that have been dephloginated, or whatever you call it?"

He didn't stop walking (if you could call it that) or using the needle to sew up the terrible gash in his side. But his face became more thoughtful, less a mask of pain. "Hm," he said at last. "Dephlogistonated gloves. Excellent idea, really."

"Then you have some?"

"No." The pain clamped down on his features again.

When he was done sewing up his side he settled on a curb for a moment to wrap bandages torn from his cloak around his wounded leg.

"Morlock," I said, as he rose to move again, "we have to talk."

He grimaced. "No doubt. Walk, too. I go south."

"Back through the Kirach Kund?" I said. "Is that where you sent them? You-"

"Can't go meet them!" he interrupted.

I relaxed a little. That was the hardest part of the conversation I'd antic.i.p.ated: telling Morlock we had come to a parting of ways. Then I thought a little about what he'd said.

"Do you mean you can't, or I can't?" I asked.

"I can't," he said. "You shouldn't. Think it through."

I would have much preferred that he explain it to me: both because he knew more than I did, and so that I could argue with him. But getting words out of Morlock was like uprooting tree stumps, even at the best of timeswhich this wasn't.

Anyway, I could see what he meant clearly enough. If Merlin had some way of tracing us or following us, we would lead him straight to Roble and the children. Then we'd be back in the same situation: all of us at risk because of this duel between Morlock and Merlin.

"Do they know?" I asked finally.

"No," Morlock admitted. "They expect us."

"Why-?" I started to ask, then broke off.

Morlock snarled at me, and sounded like nothing so much as the werewolf we had met in the mountains. I waited, but he didn't say anything else.

Anyway, maybe it was clear enough. He was fond of Roble and the children. Maybe even of that milky wench, Reijka Kingheart. And he'd had to walk away from them, his last words to them a lie: "I'll see you soon," or something like that. Otherwise they would have come with, or followed after, and he couldn't have that. Maybe that was it. Something was bothering him, anyway.

Abruptly, he stopped. It was as emphatic as shouting: I knew he had something important to say. His pale eyes, lit strangely by moonlight, stabbed through the shadows at me.

"I go south, then east over the Nar," he said. He swallowed painfully and continued. "You: north maybe. Northside of Narkunden, maybe s.e.m.e.ndar or Aithonford-places to work, hide, be safe."

"All right," I said. "When do you think I can see my children? Where will they be?"

He shrugged. "Spring or summer maybe."

"That's half a year or more!"

He shrugged again. "By then, eh. By then this thing between me and Merlin. It will be over. I think. I think he. He won't care about you then."

Merlin might not care about my family, but ... I suddenly thought of that look of betrayal he had fixed on me. He might be interested in looking me up to settle a score. It might be better for my family if I didn't come near them for a while, a long while.

It tore my heart, but I knew they would deal with it better than I would. And every mother knows that time of parting will come eventually: I just hadn't expected it to come that suddenly, to lose all my children at once. All my surviving children. I thought of Stador rotting in that hole in the mountains and sighed.

"How will I find them when it's time?" I asked at last.

I guess I expected him to pull some magical whatsit out of his pocket, but what he said was, "Look for Kingheart's Cavalcade of Wonders."

"What?"

"It's a carnival. A travelling show that goes from town to town."

"That's the business proposition Reijka had for me?"

"Yes. Her parents ran a carnival, but they wanted a settled life for her. They bought her a citizens.h.i.+p in Narkunden, a prentices.h.i.+p with a physician. But she hates it and now she's starting her own show."

"A carnival." I thought about it, and some icy pain deep within me eased a little. Not tied to any town with its stupid rules and laws. I'd known some travelling players in Four Castles and had always admired their camaraderie and freedom. "Not a bad life."

"Eh."

"Did you travel with them?" I asked. "With Reijka's parents? Is that how you know her?"

"Yes, Lonijka Kingheart and her husband took me in once." He looked away; there seemed to be some painful memory hidden behind the words. "That was around the time Reijka was born."

"Huh."

"Good fortune to you," he muttered, and turned away.

Wait, was what I did not say. Maybe I should have. Whatever I should have said, I didn't say it. I didn't say anything, but just stood there with my jaw clamped shut as he hobbled away and disappeared around a corner.

I did like him at first, and a little bit toward the end, too. But not enough to die in that stupid vendetta between his father and him-and not enough to forget that my son had died in it. I waited until he was gone, and then I walked away in exactly the opposite direction.

That was quite a while ago. I suppose by now one of them has killed the other, or maybe they're both dead. I never did hear how it played out. I sort of wish I knew, but more importantly I wish I knew if it was safe to see my family again. I've been working on a farm north of Narkunden for the past two years, and the farmer just came in and told me to knock off work for the night.

A carnival is coming to town.

XII.

INTERLUDE:.

THE.

AN0INTIN~.

THE TREES WENT FORTH ON A TIME TO ANOINT A KING OVER THEM; AND THEY SAID UNTO THE OLIVE TREE, "REIGN THOU OVER US." BUT THE OLIVE TREE SAID UNTO THEM, "SHOULD I LEAVE MY FATNESS, WHEREWITH BY ME THEY HONOUR G.o.d AND MAN, AND GO TO BE PROMOTED OVER THE TREES?" AND THE TREES SAID TO THE FIG TREE, "COME THOU, AND REIGN OVER US." BUT THE FIG TREE SAID UNTO THEM, "SHOULD I FORSAKE MY SWEETNESS, AND MY GOOD FRUIT, AND GO TO BE PROMOTED OVER THE TREES?" THEN SAID THE TREES UNTO THE VINE, "COME THOU, AND REIGN OVER US." AND THE VINE SAID UNTO THEM, "SHOULD I LEAVE MY WINE, WHICH CHEERETH G.o.d AND MAN, AND GO TO BE PROMOTED OVER THE TREES?".

-JUDGES.

he day of anointing is a proud day in the life of a Gathenavalona. So the elders say; but the Sisters are silent. Gathenavalona did feel proud, a little, as she watched the ceremonies. The carapace and face-sh.e.l.l of her charge were peeled carefully away, and the royal jelly applied directly to her purplish pulsating flesh. Old Valona was there, wearing the Wreath of Parting, and Math Valone crowned the new Valona with a Wreath of Becoming. There was a dance, which the Sisters partook in, since it involved no mating. There were speeches and ceremonies and stories and feasting from dawn nearly to dusk. This would be a very special season of Motherdeath, some said the best kind of all.

Gathenavalona tried to be happy, but her heart wasn't in it. At her former charge's insistence, she went along to the new Mother's Nest and settled in for the night together.

"The place is too big for me," said young Valona (Dhyrvalona no more since her anointing). The jelly gleamed all over her exposed skin.

"You'll grow into it," Gathenavalona predicted. "The Mother is the greatest of all the Khroi."

"When will my egg-sac grow in?" Valona asked sleepily.

"Soon."

"Will you still sleep in my nest when I'm big?" Valona asked, sounding sleepier yet.

Gathenavalona closed her eyes. "If you wish it," she whispered at last.

Young Valona sang: "Gathenavalona! Speak up!"

"Gathenavalona! Stand tall!"

"Gathenavalona! No one hears what you don't say."

It was the sort of thing a nurse says to a young Khroi after her Second Birth. Gathenavalona laboriously blinked one eye. Her former charge was making a joke, and she felt obliged to register amus.e.m.e.nt.

Two of Valona's half-open eyes opened wide, and she was clearly concerned; her soft gleaming head was somehow more expressive without its chitinous sh.e.l.l.

"Would you like to hear a story?" Gathenavalona asked, with feigned gaiety, before Valona asked her a question she would have to answer.

Young Valona's eyes went half shut again. "Yes," she said thickly, with just one of her mouths. "Tell stories. Am tired. Feel strange." She rolled over and lay at ease in the Mother's Nest.

Gathenavalona sat down beside her and told her stories until long after she was sure the new horde mother had fallen asleep. She did not weep, because Khroi do not weep.

XIII.

TRAVELLERS.

DREAM.

... THOU ART STILL THE SON OF MORN IN WEARY NIGHT'S DECLINE THE LOST TRAVELLER'S DREAM UNDER THE HILL.

-BLAKE, "TO THE ACCUSER".

is a long way from Aflraun to the eastern reaches of the Lost Woods, long even as the proverbial crow flies. And Morlock Ambrosius, despite certain legends to the contrary, was not a crow: he had to walk on, not fly over, the mazelike paths meandering through the foothills of the Blackthorn Range. Seven kinds of danger would walk those paths with him: thieves, earthquakes, volcanic outbursts, dark-gnomes, werewolves, dragons, and (most terrible of all, perhaps) the dragon-taming Khroi.

He was prepared for a bad journey. In fact, he counted on one. (There was some chance he would be followed, or at least observed.) But the journey was far from over before he realized that he hadn't prepared enough. This reflection struck him most forcibly on the journey's forty-second night: he was being stalked by a pack of werewolves and he had run out of both silver and wolfbane.

So he ran. Werewolves, in their nocturnal form, are like other wolves: if they flush a quarry who is determined and able to elude them, they usually give up and seek easier game (the very young, the very old, the gullible, and the morbid). But with his dark unruly hair, slightly crooked shoulders, and loping irregular stride, Morlock had a rather wolfish look about him. It wasn't impossible that they thought him a werewolf incapable of making the nocturnal change. There were such, Morlock knew, and these imperfect monsters (more were than wolf) were persecuted ruthlessly by their more perfectly ambiguous brethren.

He came to the verge of an unexpectedly bowl-like valley with a high toothlike hill in its center. He didn't like the looks of the place. He would have turned back or gone along the verge-except for his pursuers. Listening carefully, he thought they had broken from single file and were fanning out behind him. Whichever way he turned he would meet them. His only chance lay ahead. It would be better to confront them, if he had to, on a hill, with his back to the slope.

Leaping over the verge, he dashed down into the valley. Here he actually began to gain on them, and on the valley's level floor he held his own. The high hill loomed over him, black against the night-blue darkness of the sky, the silver drifts of stars, the blank unequal eyes of the major moons setting in the east.

Then: the chase was over. He stumbled and fell across a low hedge trimmed with flowers, planted at the base of the hill. But even as he leapt to his feet to defend himself from the imminent predators, he laughed. There was no mistaking the sweet clear scent of aconite rising from the broken leaves.

Wolfbane! He laughed again as he drew his sword and cut a pile of loose stalks with a single stroke. He thrust the sword into the earth and reached over one shoulder to draw a jar of fire-wylm from his pack. He scattered some wylm on the branches and they burst into flame. Swiftly he corked the jar and thrust it in a pocket.

Lifting a cl.u.s.ter of burning stems as a makes.h.i.+ft torch, he saw his pursuers: seven dark wolf-shapes, still as stones, watching the light with green glittering eyes.

After recovering his sword, he whirled the torch in the air, to feed the flame and spread the smoke, both deadly to his pursuers. He barked at them, the short staccato barks of an aggressor, and moved forward to the edge of the wolfbane and then beyond it, sweeping the burning stalks from side to side before him.

If he had challenged them earlier, they would have done their best to tear him to bits. But the werewolves were now far from anything they considered their territory; the intruder had made no claim on it, properly running when challenged; and since he dared to handle wolfbane, he was clearly no kin of theirs.

There was a brief but unhurried consultation as Morlock slowly advanced against them. They touched each other's noses and wagged their tails. Then, without a glance in Morlock's direction, they vanished one after another into the arc of shadows beyond the dying flames. When he was sure they were gone, he dropped the burning stems and ground them under his feet, turning then to stomp out the lingering flames in the wolfbane-lined hedge. Finally he moved back behind the hedge to catch his breath in relative safety.

But glancing up, he realized he wasn't alone. A tall robed figure stood farther up the hill, its features invisible in the shadows.

"Why have you trespa.s.sed on my hill?" the figure demanded, in a harsh deep voice. "You have stolen my herbs and wantonly cut and burned a hole in my hedge."