James Enge - This Crooked Way

"What do I know?" I said. I started walking again; I had to get to Besk's. Morlock fell in beside me. "So the Baron had a hard shell and no bones. It didn't mean he was a bad person."

"He certainly seemed like a pleasant fellow," Morlock replied solemnly, "for the little while I knew him."

I glared at him for a second, then had to turn away; I didn't want him to see me smile.

"Roble," he said to my back, "I need some help."

"Well, you certainly came to the right place," I said, turning toward him with renewed anger. "You certainly have a store of credit with me. There's nothing I wouldn't do for the man who wrecked my life."

"You've been cattle for these things," Morlock said, his face less impassive, his voice carrying an edge. "You and everyone you've ever known. Does that content you? Is it the life you'd wish for your sister's children? For your own?"

"I don't have any."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want-" I bit my sentence off. I wasn't that crazy about women as women, but I had thought about having a family sometimes. But I didn't want the Boneless One in the woods to eat my children, the way it had eaten Fasra, and Naeli, and countless others. I didn't want them to live in fear of the woods, the Bargainers, the Riders, the dark. I didn't want them to live the life I'd lived.

"Okay," I conceded gruffly, "maybe it wasn't such a great life. It was the one I had. Now, for taking it from me, you want me to-"

"I want you to help me destroy the enemy in the woods."

"What's it to you?" I demanded. "You can walk away from here and never come back."

He shook his head. "When I was taught the Silent Words I swore never to pass their secret to someone who would use them for harm. Now, inadvertently, I have. There is only one way to redeem my word: to kill the thing that lives in the wood. I may not be able to do it alone. Will you help?"

"Urk." I thought about it-for about half a second. It was a chance to kill the thing that had killed Naeli. "All right. But I want to send my nephews on their way first, in case it doesn't work out. I don't want the Barons or whatever those things are after them." I paused for a moment, then asked, "What are they?"

"The Barons?" Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. "I'm not sure. At first I thought they might be segments of the Boneless One. But the Baron didn't know the Silent Word, or he would have used it to stop me from shelling him. Perhaps they were once Coranians, who fed on the Boneless One for so long that they became like it-"

"What do you mean?" I demanded. "Fed on it how?"

"That's how your society works, Roble. The aristocracy, the Coranians, meet in the Circles, and they are fed tal by the Boneless One. That's what gives them their extended lives."

"I thought all Coranians lived long lives."

"Not centuries-long lives. For that they need aid, some life-source beyond their own. This they get from the Boneless One-life-sustaining tal skimmed from his victims, or fresh corpses from the wood or the Road, and transmitted through foci of power hidden in their places of ceremony. In return, of course, they see that the Boneless One gets regular meals."

"They Bargained with the Enemy."

"Essentially," Morlock agreed. I guessed he hadn't heard my capital letters. To Bargain was the ultimate sin among my people, but that wouldn't mean anything to Morlock.

I walked in silence for a while, absorbing what he'd said. "Are you telling me," I said finally, "that the Enemy could attack us in the day as easily as in the night? That there are no lawless hours …or that days are as lawless as the nights?"

"I'm certain your Enemy could act during the day. It simply chose not to. The herd could not be culled too often or too deeply; there always had to be enough stock to ensure a supply of meals in the future. Hence the Riders, and other things to keep the people of Four Castles thriving, even though a steady stream of individual persons were sacrificed. During the day, you thrived. At night, your Enemy fed."

It was as if I was listening to someone breaking the law, knowing that it would never be unbroken again. My whole life had been turned inside out: I thought I'd been fighting the Enemy, and all the while I'd just been guarding its herd.

I glared at Morlock. To him, this was all just a puzzle, and not an especially challenging one. "You figured this out pretty quickly," I said trying (and failing) not to sound hostile.

"When you've lived as long as I have you've seen most things more than once. The hive-cities of the Anhikh, south of here, are not so very different. But when I ascended to rapture in the Baron's hall I could read the threads of tal-contact between the Coranians in the hall and the thing in the woods, with a great dark locus in the Baron. I saw his true form then, too, hiding within its shell."

"So what's the secret of your long life?" I demanded. "Something similar?"

Morlock looked away. I'd finally gotten under his skin somehow. "No," he said finally. "I was born in …a guarded land, far from here. Things are different there. I can never go there now. But whatever life I have is my own, not stolen from someone else."

I believed him, for some reason. Maybe because he seemed to have the usual complement of human bones. Which prompted me to ask, "Why does consuming someone else's tal make you boneless?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "My sister thinks there are two kinds of tal: one which unites spirit to flesh, and another which joins spirit to bone. The fleshtal would be easier to extract while the victim is still alive. But if you consumed only flesh-tal then your flesh would continue to live, but your bones would wither and die over time."

This was a disturbing thought, but what really shocked me was his casual mention of his sister. When I thought about it I realized there was no reason he shouldn't have a sister. But he hadn't seemed that human to me.

We came to Besk's smithy, marked with a golden anvil painted on the door. I leapt up the stairs and entered without knocking; Morlock followed me in.

Besk wasn't there, but the boys were sitting in the middle of the shop with their bundles beside them. They rose to their feet and stared at Morlock.

"Stador. Bann. Thend. This is Morlock Ambrosius."

Morlock and the boys nodded at each other civilly. But then Thend said, "He looks like a Coranian."

"I'm not," Morlock said seriously.

"He's really not," I confirmed. "They hate his guts; believe me." I pulled the block of beeswax out of my bag. "Listen, Morlock, I was thinking-"

"An excellent idea," he said, nodding.

"Think there's enough wax here to stop all these big ugly ears?"

Morlock grinned one-sidedly. "Just barely. But I should tell them something about the way westward before we plug our ears. You might do well to hear it, too. Perhaps we should bolt the door so we are not interrupted."

"No." I was thinking that Besk would return; I didn't want to lock him out of his own place. Also, there was a question I wanted to ask him, outside of the boys' hearing. "You go back into the smithy and I'll hold the fort here. You can tell me about it later, if'-we live, I would have finished, but I noticed the boys staring at me with wide eyes-"it seems necessary."

Morlock nodded, and Thend led the way back to the smithy.

"Why do we have to have our ears plugged?" Bann asked.

"The Enemy has a new magic," Morlock answered seriously. "Wax in your ears will protect you from it." The door shut behind him, cutting off his voice.

I leaned back against the shop counter and waited. I suppose it was a long time, but it didn't seem so; I had a lot to think about. Presently I heard slow footfalls coming up the stairs; the door opened and Besk stepped through.

He didn't seem surprised or pleased to see me. "Roble."