He clenched his fists and prepared to meet them. The hairs on the back of his neck were rising.
Then the dark sky opened up and the lightning bolts fell. Like an avalanche of bright burning stones they struck the bridge, not one stroke but over and over, blinding bitter hammer-blows until the bridge shattered and the dark stones fell into the river and the red Companions with them, wailing at last in despair as the dark water received them.
Lathmar lost consciousness again, in the more ordinary way, and when he became aware of the world again, the thing was over. The bridge was gone; clouds of dust and smoke were settling around him, washed from the air by the rain; the Companions, if any survived, had gone from the far side of the ruined bridge.
Lathmar rolled to his feet and glanced about for Morlock. He was lying, still in rapture, next to Tyrfing at the foot of the bridge. But the bridge was gone and the rough margin of stone and earth was crumbling into the dark water below. Morlock and his focus were right on the edge. Lathmar reached toward them impulsively, but then drew back.
What if he was drawn into Morlock"s vision again? They would fall together into the river and be killed. But perhaps if he didn"t touch the sword directly ...
He reached out with one foot and tentatively hooked it under the hilt of Tyrfing. The dark rainy night stayed before his waking eyes. The leather of his shoe apparently insulated him from being drawn into the vision-or perhaps it was the fixed decision not to be drawn in that kept him clear. In any case, Lathmar shuffled backward, drawing with him the glowing sword hooked over his foot, and then kicked it back into the guardhouse behind him.
When he turned back to Morlock, he found he was alone. The edge had crumbled further while his back was turned, throwing Morlock"s unconscious body into the river.
Lathmar squawked and dove without thinking into the dark rain-torn water of the Tilion.
Rocks and earth fell behind him into the water; he struck out as hard as he could with the current: both to catch up with Morlock"s drifting body and to get away from the collapsing bridge foundation behind him.
He wondered at first if he should dive-surely Morlock had sunk below the surface? Then, between bouts of inhaling dirty river water, he wondered what he was doing at all. He was no great swimmer, even when he had only his own body to keep afloat. It was unlikely that he would be able to help Morlock, even if he could find him. But it was even more unlikely that anyone else would be able to help him at all. Grimly he dog-paddled on.
Soon he caught sight of a tangle of limbs floating on the surface of the river. It was hard to tell what he was seeing, in the intermittent flashes of lightning-there seemed to be too many limbs. But he directed his strokes toward it, hoping desperately he was not rushing toward a jumble of Companions of Mercy. Alive, dead, or undead, he had to think they would be unpleasant companions for a nighttime swim ...
What he saw, when it got closer, was almost worse. It was indeed Morlock floating on the surface of the river; his eyes still glowed faintly, indicating he was still in the withdrawal of rapture.
But atop him was the headless body of the Protector, one undead hand clutching Morlock"s mortal throat.
Lathmar shouted-whether in fear or anger he never knew-and flailed into them. It was a preposterous nightmare, unlike the unlikeliest scenarios that Morlock and Wyrth had put him through. He had no weapon; he had no way to hurt his enemy; yet it was desperately important that he defeat him. He hung on to one of the Protector"s arms and hit the chest as hard as he could with one fist. It gave a hollow meaty sound from the severed throat, but otherwise seemed to have little effect. The headless body maintained its one-handed grip on Morlock"s throat.
One-handed: Lathmar remembered that Morlock had cut off its right hand on the bridge. He seized the left arm and tried to pull it loose from Morlock"s throat. He a.s.sumed he was safe from the other arm-wrongly, as it proved. The headless body struck him with its handless right arm as with a club, and he fell away into the water.
In a moment he was back on the surface, spouting water, struggling toward the other two bodies. Over the roar of the river and the rumble of thunder and the hiss of the rain, he had the strangest impression the body was chuckling or snarling as he approached. But that couldn"t be, unless ...
He looked down to see the Protector"s head gnawing on one of Morlock"s hands floating nerveless in the water. The head"s eyes were on him as he approached, and the handless right arm prepared to club him off again.
But Lathmar ducked under the swing of the arm and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the head. He pulled it away from Morlock"s hand, the teeth carrying raw flesh away as they clenched in a desperate attempt to stay in place.
When Lathmar had the head in his hands it screamed, then choked on the bit of Morlock"s flesh it had in its mouth. Treading water, Lathmar held the head in one hand and punched it as hard as he could with the other. It flew away, lopsided, end over end, into the night toward the city side of the river.
The headless body abandoned its attempt to throttle Morlock and floundered away in the water toward the direction where the head had disappeared. Lathmar grabbed Morlock"s body and held on to it like a float for a few moments, regaining his strength. Then he began the long, laborious task of shepherding the unconscious body through the rough water to the side of the river where Ambrose stood.
There was, in fact, no sh.o.r.e there. But Lathmar managed to find some irregularities in the stone wall where he could place his feet and lean back and rest.
His limbs were trembling like leaves, from terror and from the cold water. He had never been so exhausted, not even on that terrible night when he had hauled Lorn"s dead body halfway around Ambrose. For a long time he had hated to think about that night, and it still wasn"t pleasant, but the pain was no longer so sharp.
"This time I got there in time," he told Morlock"s unconscious form, with fierce satisfaction, if somewhat incoherently.
The terror and the satisfaction both faded presently, but the cold remained, grew worse. Lathmar began to realize that they would have to get out of the water somehow, or they would die anyway and it would all be for nothing.
He was just about to begin to feel his way upstream along the wall when the light behind Morlock"s eyelids faded and his eyes opened.
Morlock spat out some water, coughed once or twice, and said matter-of- factly, "So the bank gave way after the bridge collapsed? I thought it might."
"You might have mentioned it to me," the King remarked, coolly if not dryly.
"Sorry," Morlock replied. "Thanks for keeping me from floating downstream. I took a deep breath before I withdrew into rapture, hoping it would keep me buoyant. Did it?"
"Yes."
There was a pause as Morlock righted himself, found a foothold on the wall, and generally took stock of the situation.
"There is a bite wound on my hand," he observed after a few moments.
Haltingly, Lathmar told him what had happened after Morlock had fallen into the river.
"I"m glad you were there to save me from your Protector," Morlock said when he was done.
Lathmar was somehow both pleased and enraged by these quiet words.
"He"s not my Protector!" he shouted in Morlock"s dark, impa.s.sive face. Tears as cold as river water ran down his face. "He was never my Protector! You"re my Protector!"
Lathmar was horrified at what he had said, as if it were some dreadful confession, but Morlock wasn"t. He put one arm around the boy and held him as he wept. "Well, tonight you were mine," he remarked finally.
Thunderstruck, the King stopped weeping.
They worked their way upstream toward the site where the bank had collapsed. They weren"t sure they could ascend there, and they were sure it would be impossible anywhere else.
When they got there they saw two figures standing near the ruined bridge foundation.
"I hope you"ve had a pleasant swim, Your Majesty," the shorter one called down. "But if it"s not too much trouble perhaps you should come inside now. We"ve been at some pains to set you on your throne, and there is some work to be done, at Your Majesty"s earliest convenience."
Lathmar"s response is recorded in no history.
"Such language from a well-brought-up lad of royal blood," Wyrth replied, but he tossed down a rope without any further exercise of his wit. Together, he and Ambrosia drew the waterlogged King and Morlock from the river.
"Well, Lathmar," Ambrosia said, "you may be King only in name, and you may never be Emperor. But tonight you are Lord of Ambrose in fact as well as in law. You had better receive our homage before we go back in."
So the three adults kneeled, and one by one, Lathmar took their outstretched hands and placed them between his hand and fist as each one swore to him allegiance.
In a room within the living city, shut away from the storm-torn night, Steng lay dreaming of his true master. Elsewhere, in the dead city, Steng"s true master sat on a dark throne, dreaming of himself. Along the bank of the Tilion a headless body wandered, feeling its way with one hand.
And Lathmar VII, Lord of Ambrose and King of the Two Cities, followed his ministers into the castle he would rule for the rest of his life-however long that would be.
PART FOUR.
THE.
PROTECTORS.
5HADOW.
WILL YE WALK THRO" FIRE? WHO WALKS THRO" FIRE WILL HARDLY HEED THE SMOKE.
-TENNYSON, GARETH AND LYNETTE.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
DREAMS AND DECISIONS.
*t was her usual nightmare about Morlock. Aloe Oaij recognized it almost before it had begun, she was so used to it by now. As it began they were back in that house they once owned in Westhold, right on the edge of the land, where they could watch the sun rise up out of the sea each morning.
She loved the sea and often lured Morlock into the bright bitter water to swim, shocking the locals (who never entered the western ocean if they could help it). But his skin was as pale as a mushroom and would often burn. Her skin grew even darker and her hair a brighter gold. They would walk (talking, silent, listening, laughing) through the nearby woods; they would go into the village and trade songs with the locals; they would read and work.
She had come into his smithy once while he was working with Deor. It was hot as a volcano and he was stripped to the waist, exposing the unlovely twist in his shoulders. His face was clenched, too, as he hammered out something on the anvil-it was not an image to make a woman swoon. But it was in that moment Aloe understood why she loved him. With the intelligence of a maker afire in his eyes, with the controlled guided strength of his movements, he was an image of power: a man who could strike a dragon from the sky, the master of all makers, a relentlessly determined will made flesh. She had fled from the moment, but the moment had never fled from her: she was in that forge still, gaping like a lovesick girl at her ugly powerful husband.
And then he was going away, saying words that meant nothing, that she could not even hear in her dream, going away. She had begged him to stay, but he didn"t even seem to hear her. And as he walked away he grew older and more crooked; his skin grew almost as dark as hers, but not smooth: withered, weather-beaten. He limped as he walked, and the bright red of his vocate"s cloak darkened to the black of an exile.
She woke screaming, "G.o.d Avenger d.a.m.n you, why don"t you die?" She lay there, sobbing, then quiet, the same dark thought lingering in her wakening mind. Why didn"t he die? Everything he had been was gone. Everything he had sought to be had failed. Why didn"t he die? How could he stand to go on? The Morlock she thought she had known would die rather than live in exile, called traitor like his hated ruthen-father before him. Any man with any kind of pride at all, with any kind of decency, would simply and quietly die. She couldn"t love a man with no pride at all. She could not. She must not. She didn"t. The dreams meant nothing. Someday they would stop. She would find a way to stop them.
She opened her eyes.
Her paramour of the night before was looking at her with his mouth open. He didn"t look at his best, but he still looked pretty good: he had something of Naevros"s smug self-approving catlike handsomeness. (Nothing like Naevros"s strength and grace, of course, but what had that come to, in the end? Ugly clever Morlock had killed him along with everything else she had ever loved.) "Were you talking to me?" her last-night"s-sleeping-potion asked.
"I might as well have been," she said coolly. "Take your things and go, won"t you?"
He was weak enough to protest, but not strong enough to protest long. Presently she was having breakfast alone on a balcony that looked over the river Ruleijn and the City of a Thousand Towers.
A familiar knock came at her chamber door.
"Get your own breakfast!" she shouted.
The door opened and Jordel came in. He was dressed for the street, with his red vocate"s cloak tossed carelessly over his shoulders. He tossed it as carelessly across her bed and stepped out onto the balcony. Throwing himself into the chair opposite her, he said, "I never eat breakfast-a nasty habit. I"ll Just have one of your rolls, and some ham, and some toast and jam, an egg or two, and a cup of tea, if you don"t mind."
"I do," Aloe said, purely for form"s sake, as he helped himself. "Where"ve you been this morning?"
"Well, I keep having these nightmares about Morlock."
"That"s not funny, Jordel."
"It isn"t meant to be. G.o.d Sustainer, I wasn"t married to him. Although he did save my life once, and that"s the sort of bond which-"
11 -which means nothing whatever to you, Jordel. I know; I"ve saved your life myself."
"I don"t think so, my dear."
"See what I mean?"
"Anyway: these nightmares. It began to look as if some sort of prevision was trying to make itself felt. So I caught one of them in a dreamgla.s.s and brought it to Noree this morning."
"Ugh. Poking around other people"s dreams is a nasty business. I"d as soon be offered a stool sample or a urine sample as a dream sample."
"I"ll keep that in mind, my dear. Shall I tell you about it?"
"If you must."
"No sooner did I get there when I found that Noree had another patient. You"ll never guess who it was!"
"Illion."
Jordel"s long, rosy face began to take on a discontented expression. "Has he already been in here? He said he was going to talk to you."
"It was just a guess, Jordel. You and he were always about equally sensitive to previsions." Since this was both true and flattering, Jordel"s hazel eyes began to look more cheerful again. "Also," she continued relentlessly, "you both opposed Morlock"s exile." This was also true, but riskier territory: Jordel"s expression became more cautious again. "Go on, won"t you?" she said finally.
"Yes, well, Noree took both dreamgla.s.ses and collated the dreams; then she meditated for a while."
"She doesn"t cross the street without meditating for a while. She ought to be at New Moorhope and not in the Graith of Guardians."
"Do you want to hear this or not?"
Not sure that she did, suddenly, Aloe held her hand out concessively without speaking.
"Noree says that Morlock and his sister-"
"That b.i.t.c.h."
"Indeed. She says that Morlock and Ambrosia are involved in a power struggle in Ontil."
"We knew that. There"s some sort of succession trouble in that empire. Nothing for us."
"That"s where you"re wrong. Noref says the power which moves against Ambrosia and Morlock is not merely political-it is a conflict of deep magic, and Merlin is involved. The Wardlands themselves may be threatened."
"You can"t take that seriously about Merlin. She"s crazy on the subject of Merlin."
"My dear, you didn"t know Merlin like I knew Merlin, and I wouldn"t say I knew him at all. If Noree, who fears nothing else, fears him, that should tell you something."
"It tells me everyone has to be afraid of someone."
"What a beautiful thought: almost like a song."