Blood of Ambrose (21 page)

“We're hungry!” they moaned, in sharp bright voices.

“Are they alive?” the King asked, astonished.

“All flames are alive,” Wyrth said. “That's why they can be seen during a vision—you should know more about that than I do, Lathmar. But most of them don't live long enough to develop their intelligence. (Which, in your ear, is modest at best. They pun—abominably, I might add.) The nexus extends their lifetime indefinitely.”

“Why does he have them?” Lathmar whispered. “Are they pets?”

“I sometimes think so,” Wyrth said in his normal speaking voice. “But they're useful, too. A choir of wise old flames is very useful in cultivating gemstones, and some other things.”

“Why doesn't he feed them?”

“That's just noise. I gave them several fistfuls of wet charcoal last night, and I expect Morlock did the same this morning—you can see it glowing, there, in the center of the nexus.”

Morlock was holding the plate near to the nexus. “I know what you mean about being hungry,” he remarked to the flames. “I was just about to enjoy a delicious sausage tart for breakfast.”

Silence in the choir. “Sausage tart, eh?” said one voice appraisingly. “What are they made of?”

“Cornmeal. Pig fat. Pig intestine. Pig muscle. Everything but the squeal, as they say. And a selection of secret herbs and spices.”

“I hate herbs!” one bright voice screamed. “Spices are okay, I guess.”

“And herbs, too,” another voice added. “The proper selection of herbs really lends a pleasant savor to pig fat, or all the culinary authorities are snecked.”

“No herbs! No herbs! No herbs!”

“They're secret herbs, see? If you had any discretion you wouldn't even acknowledge their existence.”

“I'm about to secrete an herb on you, pal. And then…And then…”

“Yes?”

“You won't even acknowledge your own existence.”

A shower of sparky derision greeted this inept comeback. A flame war seemed imminent when Morlock intervened by remarking, “Then I take it you have no interest in a sausage tart for breakfast?”

Almost as one, a choir of bright voices told him how wrong he was.

“Then.” Morlock dropped a sausage tart into the nexus.

There was a brief moment of silence as the choir dug into the moist sausage tart. Then the nexus began to emit slumbrous smoky groans of delight. As the tart faded into coals and ash and memory, the appreciation became more verbal.

“Mmm. A fine texture in this crust—I can sense each individual granule of cornmeal. If only I liked cornmeal.”

“Hey! I remember germinating!”

“I remember how hot it was when the farmer cut our stalks.”

“That's nothing. I remember wallowing in the mud. Oink! Oink!”

“I remember the delicious swill.”

“I remember—hey, what is this I'm remembering?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, kid. At least we know our pig lived a happy life.”

“Oh, I'm squamous with the herbulent smoke of despair! It really does go well with pig fat, though.”

“Everything but the squeal, eh?” one voice giggled. “I'd squeally like some more. Get it? I'd squeally like some more. Did you get that? It's a sort of joke, but I really mean it. Squeally, I mean.”

Morlock dropped the second sausage tart into the nexus and covered it up with the scaly wrappings while the flames were still groaning in smoky ecstasy.

Returning to the table he remarked, “Finally, a practical use for sausage tarts.”

“And you call yourself a Theorn,” the apprentice said scornfully to his master.

“Wyrth,” said Morlock composedly, as he seated himself, “I ate those things nearly every day for twenty years at my father's table. Now I am master of my own shop and I need not and will not.”

“Your father?” the King asked. “I thought you were fostered by the dwarves.”

“I meant my foster father,” Morlock explained. “We do not consider the relationship temporary, though. I am still
harven coruthen
—chosen-not-given as kin—in the Deep Halls of the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam. Although I can never come there now.” His dark face grew darker.

“Have an egg,” Wyrth suggested anxiously to the King. “Or even two—one for each cheek, eh?”

Lathmar accepted an egg, but before biting into it asked, “But it was not the dwarves that exiled you?”

“No,” Morlock said flatly. “When I grew to manhood I became a member of the Graith of Guardians, like my father before me—my other father,
ruthen coharven
—Merlin. And it was they who exiled me, as they earlier did to him.”

“Why?”

“He—”

“I meant you.”

“Among other things, I killed a fellow Guardian.”

“Oh.” The King thought about what Ambrosia had said about Morlock's exile. “Why?”

“I had my reasons.”

Wyrth was about to say something, but Morlock held out one hand. His eyes were like gray lightning as he glared at his apprentice. Lathmar had never seen him so angry, not since—not since he had asked the question about the Sunkillers, more than two years ago.

Lathmar found that Morlock's anger did not frighten him anymore, nor, obviously, was Wyrth intimidated by it. They held their silence, though.

It was Morlock who was troubled by his anger. He got up from the table and limped over to the window and back. He stood across the table from Wyrth and shouted, “Don't make me into a hero! I'm not a hero! I am a master of the Two Arts—Seeing and Making. It is enough. It is all that I am.”

“No,” said Wyrth quietly.

“I say it is,” Morlock replied, as quietly but more dangerously.

“
Rosh takna.
Morlocktheorn, when you, as a master of Making, tell me that a seedstone is to be inscripted in a certain way, it is up to me to accept what you have said and strive to understand it. When you, as a man, assert that you have twelve noses, it is up to me—as your apprentice, your
harven-
kin, and your friend—to correct that error. No one, not even you, can be merely the sum of their abilities. I don't know why you should be ashamed of your very occasional heroisms. It was no coward, at any rate, who slew the Red Knight at Gravesend Field.”

“No one slew the Red Knight. There never was such a person. Your example is especially inapt. It was the maker who recognized the presence of a golem on Gravesend Field and took steps to sever its name-scroll.”

“I never knew the life of pure reason could be so adventurous! I suppose our people, the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam, awarded you the name ‘Dragonkiller' because you framed some especially trenchant syllogism? The slaying of Saijok Mahr—that, I suppose, was some deplorable accident, perhaps a fall from a height?”

“That was different,” Morlock said sharply. “The dragons came against us. It was life or death, not only for the dwarves, but for all the peoples of the north.”

“I don't know what you mean by ‘different.’ I'm not accusing you of being some folly-driven thrillseeker. Nor am I accusing you of being perfect—Sustainer Almighty,
I
know better than that. It was me, remember, who dragged you out of that tavern in Venche, weeping and vomiting. It was me who knocked you cold rather than listen to you whine for another drink. It was me you nearly strangled the next morning, trying to force your way past me to get one. If I say that you are a bad-tempered evil old childish bastard of an egomaniac—and you are—it's because I have occasion to know it. If I say that, occasionally, you show admirable qualities that have nothing to do with your superb technical skills, I have the same authority.”

“I'm not evil,” Morlock disputed, “nor admirable.
Harven
, shall we end this quarrel?”

“Why not? I'm not responsible for what you are. You're not responsible for what I think about it.”

“Hmph. I, however, am responsible for what
you
are. At least as regards your superb technical skills.”

“Ur. This sounds bad. I suppose that seedstone didn't bloom properly.”

“No. There were too many continuous lines in the matrix, I think. In the time before the council meeting, I'm going to set you a problem in spatial representation of motion in a time continuum. Lathmar, you may listen in, if you wish.”

Lathmar didn't. Grabbing a last egg, he waved good-bye to the makers and wandered off to find his Grandmother.

Karn was waiting anxiously outside the King's apartments when Lathmar passed by. Lathmar had asked Ambrosia to appoint Karn as his personal guard within Ambrose. He couldn't help being fond of Karn (for Lorn's sake, perhaps), although he had reason to suppose Karn wasn't very reliable. But then, it wasn't very likely to be dangerous in Ambrose.

“Your Majesty!” Karn cried, coming to attention.

“At ease, Karn,” His Majesty said.

“I was worried when I didn't find you in, Your Majesty,” Karn said earnestly.

“I was up in Morlock's tower,” Lathmar replied. “You should get up earlier, Karn.”

“I woke before dawn, Your Majesty. But I had to have breakfast.”

“Well, I've had mine. Have you seen my Grandmother this morning?”

“I have not seen Her Ferocity this morning, Your Majesty,” Karn said solemnly. He did not share, at least apparently, Lorn's distaste for the Ambrosii, and he was always making up new titles of honor for the regent (safely out of her earshot, of course). Lathmar's favorite, coined after an especially and unnecessarily (it seemed to the King) fractious meeting of the Regency Council, was “Her Bickeritudinery.”

“Let's go track her down, then.”

They found the Regent, Ambrosia Viviana, inspecting the new bridge from Ambrose to the City Gate.

The last two years had been busy indeed. The Protector's forces had instantly put Ambrose under siege. At first they were commanded (publicly, at least) by Vost. But soon the uneasy Protector's Men were soothed by the sight of Urdhven himself (or itself—the King could no longer think of his uncle as a human being). He was, Genjandro reported through crow-post, sporting new scars on his neck and wrist. These, it was given out, had been acquired in the fight with the dragon. This satisfied some of the Protector's Men; others, who knew or had heard a truer version of the fight in the Great Market, quietly deserted.

At first, the Protector's forces had attempted to keep Ambrose entirely under siege. But this soon proved impossible. Ambrose was designed to be siege-proof: even if all three outer gates were taken (as they were, in the first success of the Protector's counterattack), the bridges could be broken (as they were—the King shuddered when he remembered the breaking of the City Gate bridge) and traffic could pass into and out of Ambrose by the river Tilion. It would take a large force indeed to cover that great river on both banks for its entire navigable length.

Naval assault was the only solution, and Urdhven soon tried it, sending tall ships (mounted with siege towers and crammed with men) up the river Tilion from the harbor. These went down in flames before Morlock's Siege-breaker, a catapult that hurled burning phlogiston-imbued stones for an almost incredible distance. The same device could have reduced half the imperial city to smoking rubble, but did not—a fact which was widely commented on in Ontil, according to messages they received from Genjandro.

The Protector soon had a manpower problem. His recruitment could not keep up with his desertions (Protector's Men had always been opportunists, and following the Protector was no longer so obviously a path to opportunity), and he needed more men than ever. Eventually, he pulled his men out of the Thorngate and the Lonegate, maintaining a garrison only at the City Gate.

The bridges from Ambrose to the Lonegate and the Thorngate were rebuilt by the King's forces, and each were garrisoned by hundreds of the new Royal Legionaries. The Ambrosian forces, at any rate, had no manpower problem—or rather, theirs was the reverse of the Protector's. They could not welcome into Ambrose everyone who wished to defect from the Protector—there simply was not enough food, water, or space. Members of the old City Legion were generally welcomed (if someone already in the Royal Legion would vouch for them); Protector's Men were pardoned of treason, but rejected from the King's service. Ordinary people of the city or country were told to return to their homes, obey the laws, and await the King's justice.

Among each group of citizens turned away were a few well-trusted former Legionaries or castle servants who went into the city as spies. Genjandro was their chief, and he now led a network of spies that encompassed the city.

“Urdhven can't win, now,” Ambrosia said flatly in the Regency Council, the day after the last naval attack was repulsed. “It's just a question of letting him and everyone else know that.”

From that moment on her priority had been the rebuilding of the East Bridge and the recovery of the City Gate of Ambrose. Tactically, this was a triviality, as she explained to Lathmar—even a waste of resources. Strategically and politically, though, it was vital. As long as the Protector's Men held the City Gate, Urdhven could pretend to the city that he held the Ambrosians in check. If the Royal Legion held the City Gate and could sally out of it when they chose, the Protector's position would appear as precarious as it was in fact.

But the work had been slow. The bridge had to be built of dephlogistonated wood, which was iron-hard and almost unworkable, if light and strong. The workmen went out in full armor, to protect them from the arrows of the Protector's Men holding the City Gate, and still there were casualties. There was a company of royal bowmen stationed at the guardhouse of the inner gate, and they returned fire against the Protector's Men whenever they appeared, so that the workmen labored among frequent showers of missile weapons, friendly and hostile. Unfortunately the iron of a friendly arrowhead, if misaimed, penetrated quite as deeply as a hostile one (if not deeper, as these had been forged under the supervision of Morlock and Wyrth).

Now the bridge was done at last, though. It had been finished only yesterday afternoon, and already the Protector had sent two attacks along it. On the first attack, Ambrosia waited until the bridge was crowded with Protector's Men and then worked the release that split the bridge in two up the middle, dumping the fully armed soldiers into the river, where most of them drowned. The second attack came a few hours later, after dark—more lightly armed troops, creeping along the surface of the bridge like mountaineers. They had crept up to the center of the bridge, turned left, and crept off the side, drawn by illusions projected into their minds by Morlock and Lathmar.