Blood of Ambrose (37 page)

Blackened bricks were falling about him like rain now. He lurched and fell and struggled to get up, but his legs were trapped by the slumping wall. A curtain of brick dropped down on him as he tried to wrench free.

The collapse of the rest of the building killed the bodies of the woman and the man. The boy escaped through a tear in the tottering wall and ran away into the twisting streets.

But Genjandro saw none of this; the collapse of the west wall had killed him also. He had been merchant, then conspirator and spy; now he was just another dead soldier, half buried by the city he had struggled to save and to destroy.

A crow who knew his voice heard him shout and heard the building fall. The crow was wise enough to know that the city was unfriendly to crows and that this might be a trick. But one of the words that the voice had shouted was important; Morlock and his dwarf often used it (though the crow did not pretend, even to himself, to know what a
lathmar
was).

So the crow risked descending into the cloud of mortar and ash rising from the fallen building. There was some meat among the ruins, but it was too fresh to be interesting, and two of the clumps had a dangerous smell about them.

It was the third pile of meat that had cried out, the crow guessed. It was mostly covered with brick, so the crow couldn't tell if it had been Genjandro. The midsection was burst open, and some of that smelled most tempting, if it were not for the falling cloud of mortar dust. The fellow's clothes were torn, also, spilling the contents of his pockets. Apparently he had been carrying some mixed seed and grain in one, a practice of which the crow wholly approved. The crow was sorting through this when he found the sheet with Morlock's name on it.

The crow squawked wearily. Why did these things always happen to him? Now he'd have to fly all the way to Ambrose—a long way to travel with night coming on. The paper looked rather large and heavy, too, a real wind-drag. He was perfectly willing to play with entities he considered his equals, and he could understand playing games with pebbles and so on, but why Morlock and others insisted on playing games with paper, across such horribly long distances and tediously regular patterns, he could not understand.

Still, the crow was fond of Morlock. And it was a chance to get out of the city and get some clean food, without this dust and ash all over it. And there was the treaty. The crow irritably plucked the half-sheet of paper up, shook the dust of the city from his wings, and flew away from the wreckage of Genjandro and his dreams, north and west, straight as an arrow to Ambrose.

hen I call this session of the Regency Council to order,” Ambrosia said in dry businesslike tones. “I've asked the vocates from the Wardlands to sit with us, and Commander Erl, not just as the King's chief bodyguard but as a man of resource and courage. If any of you can think of someone else who ought to be here, feel free to name him or her.”

“Wish Genjandro were here,” Wyrth muttered.

“So do I,” Ambrosia said clearly. She put her hand to a wrinkled, bloodstained half-sheet of paper that lay on the table before her. “But courtesy of Morlock and his feathered friends, we have Genjandro's last report. It doesn't tell us much, but what's there might be enough.”

Morlock stirred at this, and Ambrosia turned toward him with a fierce unhappy smile. “Oh, are you awake there, brother? I thought you might have gone to sleep again.”

The Crooked Man looked her in the eye until she looked away, a little embarrassed. “I was going to say that Genjandro's message, with the King's story, tells us what we need to know.”

“How fast to run?” Jordel inquired. “I was just thanking God Sustainer for the Wards around the Wardlands.”

“They're no defense,” Aloê said. “Every wall, material or immaterial, is worthless unless it's guarded by soldiers. And the soldiers are the weak points, against this enemy: they have wills that can be seduced.”

“I'll run if I have to,” said the King in a low voice. “I'd rather defeat this thing somehow. It's eating the heart of our empire. I don't see that we'll have better luck against it in Sarkunden than we're having here.”

Jordel cleared his throat, and said, somewhat nervously, “Well, you touch on a delicate point, Your Majesty.
Our
realm is a different one, and we need to look to its interests.”

“Here it comes,” Wyrth said.

Jordel turned to him in surprise. “It?” he said.

“
It
, sir. Now that the danger is greatest and we most need aid, you discover that you have an urgent appointment in some other part of the world. We are not your allies; you have no unbreakable ties with us either of blood or”—he glanced aside at Aloê—“other fluids. Why should you not go? If—”

“Wyrth,” said Morlock, “enough.”

“Master Morlock, I am your apprentice. But I am also an independent member of this council. I admit it is an anomalous situation, but I believe it allows me to have my say.”

“You aren't,” Morlock said bluntly. “You're having Jordel's, and damning him because you put words in his mouth. We've no time for that. We may have hours; we may have less. Shut up and let the Wardlanders speak.”

There was a brief silence, and Jordel said, with unusual flatness, “We have sent messages by certain means to our peers in the Graith. We have reason to suppose that they have been intercepted. The Graith must be warned. We flipped coins and Baran lost.”

“Or won,” Baran differed. “I will carry word to the Graith and return as quickly as I may.”

“You'd better take Velox,” Morlock said.

“Thanks,” Baran rumbled. “Heard about him.”

Wyrth was pressing his clenched fists against his forehead. The King looked at him and then at Morlock. Morlock knew that Wyrth was still tormented by the memory of his fear in the grave lands, and he guessed that the King realized it, too. He nodded, shrugged, and waited.

“Vocates,” Wyrth blurted.

“It's all right, Wyrtheorn,” Aloê said quietly.

Wyrth winced at this use of the intimate form of his name and laughed raggedly. “I hardly think so. You have all deserved better from me. You'll get it another time, God Avenger bear witness.”

“Morlock,” said Ambrosia impatiently, “this is your hour. It's time for you to speak.”

“I intend to go to the Old City and kill the Protector's Shadow.”

“See how easy,” muttered Wyrth.

“Kill him?” Jordel cried, amazed at the crudity of Morlock's proposal. “Which one of him? Which of the thousands he inhabits? Have we learned nothing about this enemy?”

“On the contrary,” Morlock said flatly. “We have learned everything.”

“If you mean his name, Morlock,” Aloê interposed, “I don't see that it is so very helpful. It's true that he may have been called Inglonor—and even you, madam, can't be sure of that, I believe?”

Ambrosia grunted. “I never met him. I don't believe so. My oldest boy was an insolent little prick, in some ways, but he didn't honor me so far as to introduce his bastards.”

“But,” Aloê continued, “the nature changes the name. To effect a binding spell upon he-who-was-Inglonor we would need to know more than we do—perhaps the names of every consciousness he has ever consumed and made part of himself.”

“His name is nothing,” Morlock said. “I intend to kill him, not bind him. Look, Jordel,” he said, choking off the verbose vocate's protests, “take a piece of string.”

“Why, I don't happen to have any string at the moment,” Jordel cried.

“He means you to consider an imaginary piece of string,” Wyrth explained.

“He might have said so.”

“You take the piece of string,” Morlock continued, “and you tie one end to your index finger and the other to Baran's index finger. Then, when you choose, you can move Baran's finger.”

“Unless he resists, you know. He's awfully strong.”

“We will say he is asleep. Or dead.”

“Oh, dead, by all means, if you don't mind. That way I shall inherit the family estate.”

“This represents the Protector's Shadow and his relationship with the body of someone whose awareness he has consumed. The string is the talic connection between the Protector's awareness and his subject's body. For it to be effective, it must have two ends—the one in the subject and the one in the tal-body nexus of the controlling awareness.”

“I assume that, enjoying this experience as I do,” Jordel continued calmly, “I kill the rest of the members of this council and attach their fingers to mine with bits of string.”

“Plainly.”

“Well, this is a gory little thought experiment, I must say. Is it getting anywhere?”

“Jordel: your hand is tired.”

“I don't think so, old fellow—I'm quite comfortable.”

“The hand with the strings,” Morlock prompted.

“Oh! Well, I'll move them to my other hand.”

“Do that, won't you? But remember that at any moment, while your hands are tangled up with string, someone might come through the door and lop off your head.”

Jordel's eyes crossed and uncrossed. “I begin to see,” he said slowly. “You think it would be that difficult to transfer his awareness, along with his control of the bodies whose minds he has eaten, to a new body.”

“Even more difficult, Jordel. Your awareness already has a talic connection with your other hand; the Protector's Shadow would have to establish one with his new body. He would have to put the two bodies in talic
stranj
and transfer his strands of control gradually from the old to the new. He will not do this while there is any danger that his enemies will come upon him while he is preoccupied.”

“'In talic
stranj
,' urk. I wish Noreê were here—this isn't my sort of problem.”

“Morlock,” Aloê said intently, “surely your string-finger example isn't the only possible way the Protector's Shadow could maintain control over his subjects.”

“In theory, no. I ran up several multidimensional models in my workshop after I read Genjandro's note. For instance, the central awareness could have been shared among several bodies, some of whom could have served as fallback positions if others failed. Or each body could have been truly interconscious with all of the others, with talic strands extending from each of the members to all of the others. There's true immortality, if you want it.”

“God Avenger, make him stop!”

“Shut up, Jordel,” Aloê said curtly. “Morlock, if these other models are less vulnerable to attack…Are they?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you assume that the Protector's Shadow chose the most vulnerable model?”

“Bad tactics,” said Ambrosia curtly, and Wyrth, with a remembering look, smiled briefly.

“I don't assume he did,” Morlock said flatly. “It's what he must have done. There may be practical considerations I am unaware of—this isn't my sort of magic. It may be that sharing awareness among several physical forms would require sharing of identity. The Shadow would not eat these beings; together they would become a true group mind. This would not appeal to him.”

“No,” the King said firmly. “It wouldn't.”

“Or perhaps he simply made a tactical error in his first improvised, er, meal, and has stuck to the model ever since. It doesn't matter. This is the method he has chosen.”

“You keep saying that,” Aloê said. “But—”

“He defends his body,” the King said distantly.

“He—what do you mean?” Aloê asked, focusing on Lathmar.

The King shifted uneasily in his seat. He looked at Morlock, but Morlock simply gestured for him to continue.

“He grows these hedges of thorn around the tower. He hides the door. The only window is hundreds of feet above the ground. He blocks the door to his workroom like a tomb.” The King waved his hands. “Don't you see?”

“Even more,” Morlock continued. “He gutted his body of its vital organs, sealing them away to protect his body's life. If it were not vulnerable, if it were not important to defend it, he would not hedge it around with these elaborate defenses. He would not suffer the inconvenience of a rotting body. It is his weak point. We must strike it.”

“Or,” Jordel said triumphantly (he had been waiting centuries to say it), “
he wants it to seem that way
. Isn't that possible? That the whole tower setup is an elaborate feint to draw an opponent (you, Morlock, or Ambrosia) to death or captivity?”

Morlock nodded slowly. “I considered the possibility. I broached it to the King. He thinks it unlikely. I trust his intuition.”

“He was there, you know,” Wyrth pointed out.

“Yes, but, begging Your Majesty's pardon and all that,” Jordel said, “suppose he's wrong?”

“Then you fight on without me. Next most likely is that there is a small core group of mind-bodies who consume together the infected minds and share control of the subject bodies. The task would be to identify and kill a significant number of these.”

“'A significant number…'?” Aloê wondered.

Morlock shrugged. “More than one. Less than the total number of mind-bodies in the core group.”

“And if it is the third model?” Baran asked. “Total interconsciousness, or whatever you said?”

“You'd have to kill them all.”

“Easy for you to say,” Jordel said. “You'll be dead yourself.”

Morlock shrugged. “That's not how it is. If I fail, one or more of you should set out to do what I tried to do.”

“Suppose we're all dead by then?” Jordel wondered.

Morlock gestured at Baran.

“Then it's up to us in the Wardlands, you mean,” Baran said.

“Yes. You should contact Merlin as well. He's no friend to the Graith or the Second Empire, but I suspect that the Protector's Shadow will interfere with his plans, and he could be a useful ally. He has made a special study of necromancy.”

“His plans,” said Jordel musingly. “What are his plans, do you suppose?”

“He always has some plot or other afoot,” Ambrosia said dismissively. “They never come to anything, always being somewhat overcomplicated. But it's nice to know one's father has something to amuse himself with in his extreme old age.”

“Eh,” said Jordel. His father, of whom he had been very fond, had died young.

“I take it,” Ambrosia resumed, in a more official tone, “that the sentiment of the council is unanimous: Baran shall go to warn our neighbors in the Wardlands of the present danger, while Morlock shall go to the Old City to combat the Protector's Shadow. The rest of us shall man, woman, and dwarf the barricades here until some new strategy presents itself.”

Nods around the table.

“I'm pleased to adjourn this last meeting of the Regency Council on a note of ringing unanimity,” she said with a crooked smile. “We all have work to do, though the hour is late. Still, I ask you to wait and witness.”

Morlock, who alone had heard this ritual formula before, looked up with interest. Ambrosia had stood and was walking, with a wooden box in her hands, over to where the King had seated himself, rather informally, farther down the council table. “Your Majesty,” she said as she walked, “I had hoped to make this gesture with the high ceremony it deserves. But it may be that we will not all meet again. So…” She opened the box, took out what was in it, and cast it aside. In her hands she held an iron circlet with no gem. Lathmar twisted around in his chair to look at it.