Blood of Ambrose (23 page)

“Drop dead,” muttered Morlock and rode on. When he glanced back a few moments later there was no farm, no garth, and, of course, no girl.

It was well after sunset, and the rain had long since stopped, when Morlock decided to camp for the night. He found a level spot that was no soggier than anywhere else, but did not build a fire. He tied Velox to a tree near a pool and some decent, if soggy, pasturage, then went to lay his own bedroll some distance off, on the other side of a stand of trees.

When he had done so, though, he didn't crawl into his bed, but circled back through the trees and grabbed the neck of a skinny old tramp who was attempting to untie Velox's reins.

“Here now!” gasped the tramp. “You've a sharp eye and a sharp ear, so I won't deny I was stealing your horse. But that's not a killing offense in these parts. Let me just give you the contents of my wallet (it's not much!) and we'll call it square. What do you say?”

“We won't.”

“Let me go, damn you!”

“Why? So that I can meet you three more times in three different guises tomorrow?”

The stranger's face sneered at him in a way that he recognized. “Careless—leaving your horse in a tree. Every sorcerer from A Thousand Towers to Vakhnhal must have heard of it.”

“But none were so quick as you, Father.”

“You were, God Avenger destroy you.” The tramp's face melted like butter on a griddle.

Morlock tightened his grip and shouted, “
Preme, quidquid erit, dum, quod fuit ante, reformet!”
^*

The face settled into that of a white-bearded, blue-eyed old man with narrow proud features and a crook in his shoulders. “You're too suspicious,” he complained, gasping. “Let me go, won't you? I won't turn into an adder or a scorpion or a Kembley's serpent. I came to talk to you.”

“You're lying,” Morlock said, not loosening his grip.

“Actually, I'm not. True, I chiefly hoped to abscond with your remarkable horse. But I know the unlikelihood of actually stealing any dwarf's
property—
”

“I'm not a dwarf.”

“I know. Dwarves have the decency to maintain a fixed abode. You're still bound hand and foot by dwarvish ways, though—as tight-fisted and grasping as any dwarf who reverted to wormhood.”

Morlock said nothing but waited.

“You see!” the other said at last, as if he had proven something. “Exactly like a dwarf. Anyway, I knew I would probably fail in my theft, and if I did I was willing to settle for a talk with you.”

“Hmph.”

“Don't grunt at me, sir! I believe I have established that I am not about to change into a venom-spitting monster as soon as you release me.”

“Change?” Morlock asked coolly, but let his hands relax.

The older, now taller man turned to face him and smiled with a mouth as wry as his shoulders. “I'm always happy to earn a bitter word from you, Morlock. But what would your dwarvish father say if he heard you address me with such barbed irony?”

“Old Father Tyr is dead these three hundred years.”

“But conscience never dies, does it, Morlock? Nor the fire of sin. I'm sure he taught you that, being so very, very righteous?”

Morlock felt descending on him the red cloud of rage that always hung over his dealings with Merlin. “What a fool you are—” he began.

“What would your harven-father think?” Merlin interrupted. “Shame! Shame! (I'm sure he taught you all about shame.) Remember, Morlock
theorn
, he stands now in the west with
Those-Who-Watch
.”

“You left me with them,” Morlock muttered. “Why did you do it if you hate them so much? And me, for being like them?”

“You're puzzled. Resign yourself to it, Morlock. The ways of love and hate will forever be mysterious to you. You cannot encompass my thought with mere
reason.
”

That was it, Morlock realized. Merlin was simply jealous. He had left Morlock to be raised by the dwarves, but he resented the love that had grown up between the fosterers and the fosterling. Merlin had hoped—what? That Morlock would loathe his foster father and long for his natural father?
Love
and
hate
were grandiose terms to use for the greedy desire to be regarded and the peevishness resulting from that desire's frustration. But Merlin was typically grandiose about anything relating to himself.

Morlock, thinking all this, said dismissively, “Then.”

“You mean, I suppose,” Merlin replied, his voice rising with irritation, “that you think you do understand. As if you could know—”

“That's nothing to you.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. What I know, what I understand, is not in your control, so there is no point in it being in your mouth. You said that you wished to talk with me. If it was about this, you have your answer.”

“You won't tell me how you made this horse fly, I suppose,” Merlin said sulkily. “That's nothing to me as well?”

“Yes.”

“And after I scraped those red barnacles off your back! You're a grasping, ungrateful, cold-blooded little bastard! God Sustainer, how I hate you! I wish you were dead! Have you got anything to eat? Because I'm hungry.”

“I have flatbread and cheese. You're welcome to share it.”

“Most generous.
Most
generous. I save his life and he offers me a piece of cheese in return. At that, it's probably a fair return. Local cheese, I suppose? God Creator, what nasty filth you eat to keep life in you. What's to drink?”

“Water.”

Merlin laughed aloud, then stared through the shadows. “You mean it, don't you? What did you do, run out?”

“No.”

“You mean you brought water in your bottles
on purpose?
”

“Yes.”

“I didn't expect this of you, Morlock. Really, I didn't. At least I thought I'd get a decent drink from you.” They were moving toward Morlock's campsite as Merlin ranted on. “The one thing right about you, you've managed to make all wrong. What's the point? What's the point? How can you stand to be yourself without being drunk? You've given it up entirely, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Are you too cheap to pay for the stuff? You could always steal it.” The old wizard accepted a slab of cheese and a flat cake of bread. “No, really—why?” He bit into the bread greedily and shouted, “What in chaos—? Oh. Of course. I forgot myself. Call a dwarf greedy and he'll break your teeth with ‘generosity.'” He reached into the flatbread and pulled out a gold coin. “I'll keep this, if you don't mind,” he added. “I can use it in getting home, and a prankster should always pay for his fun.”

Merlin sat down on Morlock's bed and buried his cold muddy feet in the sleeping cloak. Then, between bites of bread and cheese, he held forth on Morlock's shortcomings, finally adding, “And you're a word-breaker, too—I've finished the food and you haven't even offered me water.”

Morlock's silhouette, dark against the dim blue sky, made no motion or sound.

“Is that a threatening silence—or merely somber reflection?” Merlin asked gaily. “I hope you've taken my words to heart, but I am thirsty, so how about it?”

The silence continued.

“Are you pondering some dark stroke of magic,” inquired Merlin, “that will wipe the world clean of a cantankerous old necromancer, or are you sadly pondering the unfordable river between Ambrosius senior and Ambrosius junior—which is always to say, between genius and mediocrity?”

Silence.

Merlin issued several more speculations on the meaning of Morlock's silence to the same effect (or lack of effect). Finally Merlin ran down and stared at Morlock's silhouette.

“Light begins to break,” the wizard muttered. He stood up and walked over to where Morlock's silhouette stood, motionless and unspeaking, in the lesser shadows. Merlin put his hand out to the shape, and it passed through empty air. “A simulacrum, then,” Merlin noted, and circled it widdershins. The silhouette changed shape as he moved, giving every appearance of a backlit solid object.

“Well made, of course—one expects that of him,” the wizard noted. “It's the slyness that's surprising. He must have leavened the spell when I was biting down on the gold piece. I would have noticed it, otherwise.”

Merlin was a little dismayed. He was prepared to concede—to himself, if never to Morlock—that his son was the superior maker. But in the
use
of power, in cunning and trickery, Merlin was unprepared to acknowledge his son as master, or even a serious rival.

“Ambrosia's influence, possibly,” the wizard reflected. “She was always cleverer than he. And he was only finding an opportunity for running away. If his cleverness serves his cowardice, it's no danger to me or my plans. Still…it's a bad sign. I'll have to do something about Morlock.”

Merlin abstractedly wandered back to the blanket and, warming his feet in Morlock's abandoned cloak, he speculated on ways he might destroy him.

*
"Choke whatever it will be until it becomes what it was before.” Ovid,
Metamorphoses
11.254.

he castle was not the same without Morlock, or so it seemed to Lathmar. It reminded him of how the castle had felt whenever his parents left—colder, somehow, and not nearly as safe. Nor could he dismiss this feeling as a childish fantasy: the last time his parents had left the castle they had come back in coffins, drowned in a shipwreck on the Inner Sea (so Urdhven claimed).

If the others felt the same they didn't show it. Ambrosia went ahead with her plans to retake the City Gate. This succeeded with such remarkable ease that Ambrosia speculated the Protector's Men had orders to retreat if attacked—or that they were simply afraid to stand against the royal forces, backed by Ambrosian magic. Either way it was a good sign, she said, and Wyrth and Kedlidor agreed.

The sortie into the city also had been a great success. The detachment of Protector's Men outside the City Gate had been driven halfway to the Great Market. The royal troops, led by Ambrosia in person, had taken advantage of some especially enthusiastic retreating by the Protector's Men to sneak back to the City Gate unobserved by their enemies.

“They've lost, and they know it,” said Ambrosia in the next Regency Council. “It's only a matter of time, now.”

“If that's true,” Wyrth replied, “why not press for total victory? Why negotiate?”

“I'm tempted,” Ambrosia admitted. “But time is a problem. We have to look past Urdhven to the other regional commanders. If we take too long to dispose of him, they may try to swing things their own way—perhaps carve off their regions as independent kingdoms, perhaps make a straight grab at Ontil for imperial power. If we can make Urdhven knuckle under, the regional commanders will probably follow. If not, the sooner we get at them the better. What's wrong with your face?”

The remark was addressed to her sovereign, Lathmar VII, who was staring at her with wide eyes.

“Nothing,” he managed to say, without stammering.

Her expression softened. “You're thinking of your parents. I'm still not convinced that Urdhven murdered them, but I can sympathize with you to some extent.”

“'To some extent,' madam?” asked Wyrth, his voice unusually harsh.

“I don't know if you ever met my father, Wyrth, but I would have paid someone to murder him. I begged Morlock to do it, once, but he wouldn't—”

“Madam.”

“I'm sorry to shock you, Wyrth. I assure you Morlock would hear nothing of the idea. Of course, at the time he didn't know Merlin very well. In any case, Lathmar, we'll work the treaty this way: no amnesty will cover the murder of the late Emperor and his consort. So if, in due time, we find proof that Urdhven killed them, we can still charge him with treason and execute him.”

“If he
can
be executed,” Lathmar said, thinking of the night they took Ambrose.

“He can be. What's alive can be killed. In fact, if I understand what you and Morlock told me about Urdhven's condition, he is vulnerable in a rather obvious way. He may even be aware of this, since he has rather fastidiously avoided appearing before Ambrose since that fateful night. So there it is: I promise you that your parents' bodies will not be swept under the rug by any treaty. Does that satisfy you?”

“Thank you, yes,” Lathmar answered politely. But the truth is that he hadn't been thinking about his parents at all. He had been thinking that his family was somewhat larger than he had realized.

It came about like this. He had been walking the night before past the ministerial apartments, wondering if he should knock on Wyrth's door and wishing there were some point in knocking on Morlock's. But then it seemed to him that he heard someone moving about in Morlock's apartments. He had stopped at the door and, hesitantly, rapped on it.

The door was opened by a fair-haired woman whose face he didn't know, but who was nonetheless somehow familiar.

“Good evening, Your Majesty,” she said politely. “I'm sorry, but Morlock hasn't yet returned.”

“Good evening to you, ma'am,” Lathmar said. “May I ask…?” But as he met her fearless blue eyes, he could think of not one question to ask her.

“Won't you come in?” the strange woman offered, and stood aside.

Lathmar entered without hesitation. Then, as she closed the door behind him, he wondered if he should have hesitated. No one knew where he was, and he knew nothing about this woman—including how she had gotten into Morlock's rooms, which were secured by a lock designed by Morlock himself.

But as she turned to face him, something struck him about the way she was standing…something about her shoulders.…

“Your pardon, ma'am,” he said, “but are we somehow related?”

“Very astute, Lathmar,” she said approvingly. “I am by way of being your great-great-great-and-so-on-great aunt. My name is Spes.”

“Spes. Hm.”

“If you'd rather, you can call me Hope—that's what Spes means, in my mother's language.”

“Hope. Yes, I think I will, if it's all the same to you, ma'am. What was your mother's language, if I may ask, madam?”

“Latin—she was a lady of Britain, Nimue Viviana.”

Lathmar nodded slowly. “Oh? I, uh, I was not, uh, aware that Morlock and Ambrosia had a, a—”

“'Sister,' is the technical term in genealogy, I believe,” said Hope, with something like the authentic Ambrosian asperity. Then she softened it with a smile. “No, they wouldn't have told you, I expect. Both of them think that I'm long dead, and I decided it was best to let them think so. You should feel free to talk about me to Morlock, but I don't think you should mention me to Ambrosia.”

“No?”

“No. She's very jealous, you know, and she never cared for me at all.”

“Ah. So you live here in hiding?”

“Yes.”

“Then, when we were in the secret passages, you were there too?”

“Yes, but not in the way you mean, Lathmar. I know that the passages grew very tiresome for you, and the time you were in them seemed very long indeed. But my prison is even older than they are—older than Ambrose.”

“I don't understand. How did you come here, if you didn't use one of the passages?”

“I didn't come here. Ambrosia did. She often does. When Morlock is here, she talks with him; when he's not, she takes comfort from being among his things, such as they are.”

A sudden dreadful thought occurred to Lathmar, and he looked intently in Hope's face. She laughed in his.

“You're thinking,” she said, “is this Ambrosia gone mad—or possessed by some spirit, perhaps of a long-dead sister?”

It had been exactly what he had thought. But he could see that her face, though like Ambrosia's, was not the same. Among other things, her eyes were blue rather than gray, and she had almost no wrinkles. She was shorter and stockier than Ambrosia, and seemed a much younger woman physically. But there was a quiet wisdom in her eyes.

“Are you a ghost?” he asked her frankly.

“No,” she said as frankly.

“But you said that Ambrosia thought you dead, and you said that you came here with her—”

“I didn't actually, but that is true, in a way.”

“How can that be?”

“Ambrosia and I live in the same body,” Hope said matter-of-factly. “She came here to seek comfort and fell asleep in Morlock's chair over yonder. I felt the need to walk around a bit and speak in my own voice.”

Lathmar drew back, appalled.

“You should be honored, Your Majesty,” Hope said wryly. “You're the first person I've spoken with in nearly four hundred years. Your ancestor Uthar the Great hadn't been born then.”

“I'm not—That is—I was just thinking how strange my family is.”

“Everybody thinks that. But it's true you have more cause than most.”

“Can you see and hear when…when—”

“When I am submerged? I didn't used to. But Ambrosia isn't as strong as she was, and often I can see and hear the outer world when she is conscious. That's how I knew you. And I can walk through her memories, sometimes. When none of this is possible I think and wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For Ambrosia to grow still older, I'm afraid. When she grows somewhat weaker, we will have to change places, and she will be largely quiescent while I am the active twin.”

Lathmar said nothing to this. He wasn't sure whether it was a good thing or not.

“I suppose it's hard for you to imagine your Grandmother, as you call her, growing weak?” Hope said gently.

“Yes,” said the King truthfully. “She's always been the strongest person I knew. Not just physically.”

“I understand. But she's not as strong as she was. Soon, as I count time, she will not be as strong as she is. This will be a hard time for her: you will have to grow strong, Lathmar.”

Lathmar nodded solemnly. “So that she can pass on the imperial power.”

Hope laughed and shook her head. “Do you really know her as little as that, after having lived with her your whole life? She won't pass it on, Lathmar. You'll have to take it from her, before she grows too weak to wield it.”

Lathmar was silent for a few moments, then said, “That will be difficult. Because I don't want it.”

“I think you do, Lathmar.”

“Everyone seems to think that I do, or I should. But I don't.”

“Not everyone knows you the way I do,” Hope said. “Our situations are oddly alike. What we most want is freedom—including freedom from someone we both love, Ambrosia. In your rather peculiar situation, that requires power of imperial scope: so that no one can govern you as Ambrosia has, or harm you as the Protector has.”

Lathmar was not convinced, but what she had said troubled him. “You've given me a lot to think about.”

“Well, thinking and holding back your words are two things you've always been good at,” Hope observed. “You'll find them useful skills as a leader, though maybe not the most useful of all.” She sat down abruptly in the chair and put her hand to her face.

“What's wrong?” Lathmar asked.

“I'm getting sleepy. That means Ambrosia is waking up. Would you please get me pen and ink? And paper—paper, too, of course.”

Lathmar rushed over to a desk and brought back writing supplies. Hope held the paper in her lap, dipped the pen in the inkwell that Lathmar held, and scrawled a few words. Her eyes fell shut for a moment, then opened abruptly. “Good-bye, Lathmar,” she said, smiling sleepily. “It's been so nice talking with you. Perhaps…again. Sometime.” Her eyes shut and she lay back in the chair. The pen fell from her fingers on the floor.

Her body grew longer and leaner. Her hair faded to iron gray, darkened by rusty streaks of red. The features of her face became longer, sharper, thinner. Her skin was seamed with a network of fine wrinkles.

Ambrosia opened her eyes (gray, not blue) and yawned.

She looked around and caught the King's eye. “Lathmar! What are you doing here?”

“I heard someone inside,” Lathmar said truthfully, “and I thought I'd see who it was.”

“I must have been snoring. Can't remember what I came in here for.”

Her hands moved in her lap, and the sheet Hope had written on rustled slightly. Lathmar thought Ambrosia was about to look down at it.

“Can we poke around a bit?” Lathmar said with feigned eagerness. “I've never been in Morlock's quarters when he wasn't here.”

“Certainly not,” snapped Ambrosia, and stood. The paper fell unregarded out of her lap. “Come along.” She went to the door.

The King stooped and grabbed the sheet of paper. “What's that?” asked Ambrosia, as he joined her at the door.

“A message for Morlock,” the King said. “I thought I'd give it to Wyrth to put up in the workshop.”

“Have him put it by the choir of flames,” Ambrosia suggested as she locked the door. “He thinks more of them than he does of you or me,” she added jealously.

Mulling all this over, the King sat through the rest of the council session without saying a word or noticing what the others said. But as they adjourned, it appeared that they had agreed to send a messenger to Urdhven to propose terms.

“We might have you crowned by summer,” Ambrosia remarked, slapping him on the shoulder as she departed.

Lathmar was less than thrilled. But he thought of what Hope had said, about power and freedom, and he wasn't sure. He still wasn't sure when he went to sleep that night.