He drew the soldier"s short pointed blade and tried a thrust. Immediately he lost his balance and fell on his side. Laboriously, painfully, he regained his stance, reflecting that he wouldn"t fight any duels while standing on stilts, not if he could help it.
What was he forgetting? He paced across the room once or twice (for practice) while he mulled it over. Of course! The signal horn!
Lathmar heard the stone slab sc.r.a.ping behind him as he strode over to the balcony. He bent down over Veck"s body and grabbed the horn, yanking it to break the thong that attached it to the dead soldier"s uniform. He straightened and turned as forms began to walk through the empty doorway behind him.
Two corpse-golems. One for Veck and one for Thurn. The King nearly panicked, wondering if they were to kill and drain Thurn as Thurn had drained Veck. He wondered if he could fight them off while he was standing on stilts....
They stood before him and paused, as if waiting for orders. Should he speak? he wondered. Clearly not; he"d heard no one but the Protector"s Shadow speak since last night. He gestured at Veck"s corpse, slumped over the rail of the balcony.
The two corpse-golems picked up the dead body and carried it away. It left a ribbon of red blood behind it; the King hoped this wasn"t unusual. He followed in an imitation of a military stride that was stilted in every sense.
He did not dare turn to see how the two gargoyles were looking at him. Would they notice him? Could they notice him? They didn"t seem to be mere automatons. But did they know or perceive enough to penetrate his disguise? He didn"t know. There was little he could do but play the scene out. He followed the corpse-golems to the stairway and averted his face when he had to turn.
When they had descended several flights of stairs the King began to breathe a little easier. But he wasn"t out yet. It was likely that the corpsegolems had instructions to kill him down below, to water the thorns. Clearly the adept considered Thurn and Veck mere waste matter, a fact that bothered the King on several levels, though there was no time to think about it now.
The King tried to think about nothing as he did what he had to do next. He drew his sword and beheaded the seraphic, emptily smiling corpse-golem nearest him.
The effort sent him staggering against a wall; when he recovered he saw that the headless golem had proceeded heedlessly on its way, still holding up its share of Veck"s dead body.
The King had expected that, though it unnerved him. He stumbled to catch up and, when he had, reached down into the severed neck and grasped the name-scroll in the chest cavity. He pulled it out through the neck and the golem fell, shorn of its pseudolife, at his feet.
The other corpse-golem paused for a moment, then proceeded to drag Veck"s body down the stairway. The King, gagging, disabled it the same way he had the other. Then he proceeded down the long stairway alone.
He came finally to the corridor where he had entered the tower. The teams of corpse-golems were leaning motionless on their wheels, as if resting. He hated to do it-hated to draw attention to himself in any way whatever. But he lifted the signal horn to his lips and gave two blasts.
The corpse-golems sprang to movement, if not to life. They turned their wheels; the wall at the end of the corridor rasped open; the iron stair began to unfold downward on its chains.
Lathmar waited until the stair was completely unfolded and the golems stopped. He descended the stairs, wobbling as he went but neither hurrying nor lingering. After he stepped off he turned and blew two blasts of the horn again. As he turned away the iron stair began to fold upward again.
The King strode stiff-legged toward the hedge gate. He stood by the wheel and blew the single blast. These golems, too, responded, turning the wheel to lift the section of hedge, the only remaining barrier between him and escape. He could see daylight on the far side.
Then, without any visible or audible command, the golems stopped. Each golem turned its sweet dead face to the King and stared at him with dead mismatched eyes.
His disguise was broken. Perhaps someone had found the golems and Veck"s body on the stairs; perhaps it had been the signal to open the hedge gate. Either way, they knew him.
But the way was open and he took it, charging up the blood-brown slope of bare earth. The wheel began to turn again, dropping the hedge on top of him.
He rolled clear, and drawing his sword, he slashed the bindings of the greaves and the ropes holding his legs to the stilts. Then he shook them off (greaves, stilts, and boots) and jumped to his feet. He ran barefoot into the dead city, shedding armor behind him as he ran.
Would he escape from an army controlled by the demonic presence who ruled the tower of thorns, in a city they knew and he didn"t? It seemed extremely unlikely. The only thing that heartened him, that helped him run faster and longer than he ever had before, was the fact that the odds had been even longer that he wouldn"t ever escape the tower, and he had.
Think I"ll make a mad pig my heraldic banner, he thought as he dashed up a crooked alley half blocked by ruins. He threw himself to the ground between two piles of rubble so that he could rest, and breathe, and listen.
He heard some groups of marching feet, or thought he did, but they didn"t seem especially near, or headed toward him, so he stayed put and thought.
What would they do? What would he do, if he had all that manpower (to use the term loosely) at his disposal?
The answer was clear: flood the streets of the city and cordon off the Dead Hills westward. The direction they would be least concerned with would be southward, toward the harbor of the Old City. Those streets were supposedly haunted by the curse of the Old G.o.ds, the curse that came from the sea. But he would have to risk it. The sea might provide some protection from the magic of the Protector"s Shadow. Besides, no one believed in the Old G.o.ds of Ontil anymore. Did they?
Well, he had his wind back; he should move south before the streets were all blocked. He rose to his feet, and a black-cloaked figure dropped down on him from a window above.
Desperately, the King stabbed at it with his sword (Thurn"s sword, really), landing a serious but not immediately fatal wound where his a.s.sailant"s neck joined its body.
The dark figure, whose hands were incredibly quick and strong, s.n.a.t.c.hed the sword from his hand and hissed, "Well struck! But I"m on your side."
"Morlock! G.o.d Avenger, forgive me!"
"More to the point, perhaps, I do. I am amazed to see you alive, much less free, my friend."
"Well, I sort of blundered into it. Or out of it."
"Tell me later." Morlock was tearing a strip from his cloak, and the King took it to bind across his neck to the opposite armpit as a makeshift bandage. "You looked as if you were headed somewhere," Morlock commented, while he was doing this.
"I thought I"d go south-follow the seacoast back to the living city."
Morlock nodded slowly. "A good plan," he said. "But you"d have been killed by the curse of the Old G.o.ds."
Now it was Lathmar"s turn to hesitate. "Do you believe in the Old G.o.ds of Ontil?" he asked.
"Of course not."
The King nodded, relieved.
"I just believe in their curse," said the Crooked Man. "But that"s the way we"ll go: I"ve brought along some cloaks of invisibility."
"Wonderful!" said the King.
"Oh, no. Quite ordinary. It occurred to me the last time I saw it." He paused. "I"m fairly sure they"ll work."
The sudden burst of confidence the King had felt was oozing away almost as rapidly. Saw what? Only "fairly sure" they"d work?
"Let"s go, then." Morlock stood, a little unsteadily.
"The streets-" Lathmar began.
"No: we go up. I suspect I can get us to the old harbor across rooftopsor, at any rate, above ground."
And he did. Four years ago the King might have been incapable of following Morlock"s lead, but he had grown a good deal since then, and his fencing teachers had worked him hard. Leaping from roof to roof (or, on occasion, window to window) was not so very difficult. But navigating within the ruinous buildings was tricky indeed. There was rarely anything like a floor left, and those that remained were almost never to be trusted. They followed the lines of supporting walls and inner b.u.t.tresses, walking like tightrope artists. It was rare that Morlock could not find a path over even the most treacherous surface, and when he could not he found a way around. His wisdom in avoiding the streets was amply shown before they had gone more than a block: the streets were full of marching corpse-golems, captained by red-cloaked Companions of Mercy.
But the King couldn"t help notice that Morlock was growing weaker. The wound in his neck continued to bleed, and whenever Lathmar suggested they stop to tend to it, Morlock shook his head, winced, and said, "No time."
Finally they reached an open area where there were no buildings. By then it was getting dark.
"We"ve made good time," Morlock said, sitting down-or perching, rather-at the juncture of a wall and a support beam. "We should wait here until full dark."
"Then we have time to tend to your wound," the King said, relieved. Every time the Crooked Man had paused or winced, he had felt pangs of guilt.
"Time, yes. But I don"t have anything with me for wounds."
"Oh."
They waited. Finally, it was dark enough to satisfy Morlock. He reached into the wallet at his belt and drew forth a faintly glowing, slimy piece of webwork. "Stand still," he said as the King flinched.
"What is it?"
"Your cloak of invisibility. Although it"s more of a shawl, I suppose."
The King stood still while Morlock tossed it over his shoulders.
"When does it start working?" the King asked anxiously. He heard many shuffling feet not so very far away; it seemed to him they would want the invisibility in short order.
Morlock eyed him critically. "It is working," he said authoritatively.
"But you can still see me?"
"Of course."
Lathmar repressed a sigh. If Morlock didn"t know what he was doing they were dead anyway.
Morlock took a second piece of greenish glowing webwork from his wallet and tossed the slimy thing across his own shoulders. The King noticed that it glowed more strongly at one place than at any other, and that the greenish luminescence was carried not only by the webwork but (more faintly) all over Morlock.
Morlock met the King"s eye and nodded. They dropped to the ground and ran for the edge of the harbor.
The King saw a company of corpse-golems stumble into the strangely open harbor area from the north. And there was another to the east-Death and justice, there were crowds of them, even some coming from the west. They were surrounded. The sea was heaving strongly-surprisingly so, given how quiet the wind was. The King didn"t think it would be safe to swim in it. And, anyway, maybe corpse-golems could swim.
Perhaps the cloaks of invisibility would get them out of this, but they seemed strangely ineffective. The several groups of corpse-golems, with their red-garbed captains, were heading directly for them.
"Morlock," he said, "I think they can see us."
"Of course they can," Morlock said, somewhat surprised. "We"re glowing in the dark, you know."
"Then-"
The sea was raging as if there were a storm, though the sky was still as death, as clear as melting ice, lit by the clashing light of the three moons. But there was a light in the water that did not come from the sky-a greenish light, many greenish lights, rising from the heart of the sea.
The lights broke through the troubled surface of the water. They were eyes-great, filmy, glowing eyes, belonging to the heads of huge snakelike beings rising in anger from the waves.
The heads were shaped like great mallets: below each eye was a great flat snout like the striking surface of a hammer. There was no mouth that the King, staring at the beasts with his own mouth hanging open, could see.
They reared up high, staring with their glowing green eyes at the ground below, and then they fell. They fell like hammers, striking again and again at the intruders in the harbor. They smashed the corpse-golems; they smashed the Companions that led them; the great mallet-heads made the ground shake and opened up great cracks in the earth.
But they left Morlock and the King alone. The cloaks, Lathmar realized-the cloaks covering them with dim green luminescence, pulsing at the same rate as the serpents" own eyes (and they all pulsed at the same rate, he noticed, like many limbs fed by a single heart). For these eyes, they were cloaks of invisibility.
The King"s pursuers by now had all been destroyed or fled. The serpents continued to pummel the ground in frustrated, unsated rage and finally, one by one, slipped back into the troubled sea, which slowly grew dark and calm again.
"What was it?" the King gasped.
Morlock nodded approval at his use of the singular. "It," he said, "was the curse of the Old G.o.ds."
"I guessed as much, but what was it really?"
Morlock shrugged, winced, "That would really be a guess. Mine is: it"s a security device."
"A security device!"
"A failed one," Morlock added. "The Old Ontilians had a reputation as grandiose but inept makers."
"Against who?"
"Pirates. The Anhikhs. The children of Kaen. The old Ontilian Empire didn"t control the coast of the entire Sea of Stones, so their capital was subject to dangers that yours isn"t."
"They made it to protect them," the King muttered to himself. "And it killed their city."
"The drought," Morlock observed.
"The river ran through the city then. The dead land could have been irrigated."
"The plague."
The King nodded and spread his hands concessively. But even as he did so he was wondering if the Old Ontilians, those grandiose but inept makers, had somehow unintentionally wrought the plague and the drought. The drought, after all, could have been an attempt to bring perpetual fair weather to the capital city and its environs. And the plague?
"Were there armies threatening Old Ontil by land?" the King asked.
Morlock smiled wryly, his face weirdly lit by greenish light. "Astute," he observed. "Not armies, exactly. But there was the perpetual threat of raids by barbarian tribes from the north."
"Then the plague was meant as a protection against land invasionmeant to strike only outsiders?" the King asked eagerly, then something Morlock had said struck him in a different way. "Barbarians from the north? Including my ancestors, the Vraidish tribes? We are responsible for the plague?"
"Guilt is not inheritable," Morlock said firmly. "I learned that the hard way, Lathmar. Anyway, if your guess (and mine) is correct, the Old Ontilians did this to themselves and died for their folly. That"s the end of it."
"Except this place is still here. Death and justice, someday I"m going to come back here and break the curses-rebuild the city, or bury it."
"If you live through the night."
The King fell silent. Morlock led the way westward along the edge of the water, past the greasy squashed remains of several bands of corpse-golems. Past the smashed, cracked plain of the harbor region, they discarded their cloaks but did not take to the buildings again. Indeed, there were few to take refuge in: they had come to the edge of the Old City, where the Dead Hills ran down to the sea.
Presently, at some cue the King could not perceive, Morlock turned right and took a northwest course into the Dead Hills. They came, finally, to the mouth of a cave in the western face of a hill.
"Velox," Morlock said. "Trann."
Two horses came out of the darkness, saddled and ready for riding: Morlock"s black, silver-eyed Velox and another-a chestnut gelding with white markings.
"From your stables," Morlock said. "Lathmar, this is Trann. He"s not as friendly as poor old Ibann, but he"s a st.u.r.dy, obedient beast, and we have a hard ride ahead of us."
Riding was one part of the royal education that had been skimped in recent years. Lathmar"s parents had still been alive, he reflected grimly, the last time he was astride even a pony. But he shrugged, in a self-consciously Ambrosian gesture. He could do it if he had to, he guessed-and he guessed he had to. After a couple of false tries, he managed to get up in Trann"s saddle.
Meanwhile, Morlock carefully put his head back and spoke three croaking syllables into the moonslit sky. A black bird came and sat on his outstretched hand. Morlock tied what appeared to be a tiny scroll on the crow"s left leg. After a few croaking syllables were exchanged between the dark man and the dark bird, the crow flew off westward in the night.
Morlock turned and gestured to his horse, which approached him. He bowed his head to speak. The King heard only, ". . . nearly done ..." and "... must get us there ..." Morlock straightened slowly and, with an effort that clearly cost him pain, leaped into the saddle.