James Enge - This Crooked Way

He put the pipe in his mouth and began to play. I couldn't hear it, exactly, but somehow the feel of it penetrated the wax earplugs, almost like the Silent Word. It was a squeaky, spiky, chittering tune; it went on and on, never repeating but somehow always the same.

The rats began to appear, rising like a dark tide from the ground. The Boneless One seemed to try to halt them with the Silent Word, but its magic was masked by the endless chittering song from Morlock's pipe.

The Boneless One tried to eat the lives of the rats as they approached. Many died, but there were always more behind. The dark tide rose over the swollen shapeless form of the Boneless One and covered it.

The mindless whisper I always heard within me rose to an almost audible shriek and fell silent at last. The rats moved on to the other bodies scattered around the floor, leaving behind a bloody stain on the bone carpet and nothing else. The Boneless One was dead.

Morlock's pipe stuttered and shrieked. The living rats fled in terror. Morlock pocketed the pipe and tentatively unplugged one ear.

Both of my ears were already clear. The air was free of Silent Words; my mind was free of demonic whispers.

"Good idea about the rats," Morlock said laconically.

"I never liked rats before," I said, "but now I do. When I settle down, I'm going to keep tame ones, like birds."

Morlock grunted and climbed back up onto the root. "Up or down?" he asked.

I looked down at the bone-carpeted bellylike chamber, scattered with half-eaten motionless Bargainers. I looked upward to the light.

"Up," I said, and we went up.

We hadn't been at it long before Naeli's voice fell down to us from the light, followed by a rope. I swarmed up it and Morlock followed.

Naeli had tied it to the twisted tree standing above the mouthlike hole. The boys and Fasra were standing uneasily, with knives and clubs in their hands, at the edge of the hole. Further off, a ragged halo of Bargainers stood, glaring at us as we emerged from the pit.

"Let's get going," Naeli said to me crisply. "Some of these people don't seem to like what we're doing."

"I thought they'd scatter as soon as the Boneless One was dead," I muttered.

"Some did. But most of these guys were Bargainers because they wanted to be, and they suspect you of killing their god."

"That was Morlock," I said, gesturing at the bedraggled, crooked figure emerging from the hole.

"Roble's idea. Call it a mutual effort," he said. His gray gaze crossed Naeli's dark one; it was like swords clashing.

"Man, were you a lot of trouble," Naeli said. "I thought you were going to get us all killed. Morlock? I'm Naeli. This is Fasra. I guess you know my boys. Let's get out of here."

Morlock shook his head. "You go on," he said. "I have to find Tyrfing."

"A friend of yours?" demanded Naeli.

"My sword."

"Oh, that thing. The Whisperer had us bury it outside of town. I'll show you where it is." She turned and charged straight toward the crowd. We followed in a wedge behind. The Bargainers split up and ran as we approached, and soon we were out of town. We heard the Bargainers, although we didn't see them, gathering nearby in the woods as we dug down to recover Morlock's sword. So as soon as we had it we started moving westward as fast as our feet could take us.

That was days ago. We discussed going back to Four Castles, but rejected the idea. Naeli, with her filed teeth, would be an outcast there. And the thought of living among Coranians, who had fed on human lives to extend their own, was repugnant to me. Perhaps one of the three remaining Barons would pick up where the Boneless One had left off; perhaps they had already been stomped to bits by someone following Morlock's lead. Maybe Liskin would be the new power in Four Castles; he was already pretty boneless. It didn't matter. Four Castles was already far off and a little unreal to me, like somewhere you've read about in a book. It wasn't my place anymore. I don't have a place, at the moment; these days I have people instead.

Each day we move a little further west than I've ever been, camping at sunset. It's night, as I write this, but no one is sleeping. The boys and Fasra are sitting by the fire, swapping stories with each other and some jar from Morlock's backpack that thinks it's an old lady. Morlock is peering about inside Naeli's mouth; he says he can carve supplements for Naeli's teeth, so that she will have a slightly less wolflike smile.

I'm sitting here writing, not saying much-speaking aloud maybe one word for every thousand I scribble down. In a way, I think I miss the wordless whispering I have always heard in my head. It helped show me what I was by being what I was not: I was the enemy of the Enemy. But not now: in the last few days, I helped kill a Baron, the Enemy that lived in the woods, and (with them) my whole way of life. But here I am, somehow still alive. I don't feel like speaking much until I figure out who I am, now that the Enemy is dead.

This much I know. I will not live three hundred years. But, however long I live, I will wear no one else's uniform. I will swear loyalty to one person at a time. However long I live, my life will belong to me, and to those I know and care about. Except for that rule of love, all my hours are lawless now.

It's late; we had all better get some sleep. New lands, and new lives, tomorrow.

The truth is my blood and breath, master: I cannot lie. I could sell either the youth or the maiden for six fingers of silver in Menebacikhukh, that benighted city of the Anhikh Komos where I was born. I will give you three silver fingers for either of them, seven for both."

We were crossing the marketplace in Sarkunden when the slave-trader put a long corpselike hand on one of Morlock Ambrosius's slightly uneven shoulders and made his pitch. Before that day I'd never so much as seen the walls of a city this big. From what I'd seen inside those walls, I didn't think I was going to like big cities much, even before the slaver spoke to Morlock. As the maiden under discussion, I waited for Morlock's response with real interest.

Morlock shot a cold gray glance at the Anhikh slave-trader and pointed out, "Buying or selling human beings has been illegal in the Ontilian Empire for more than two hundred years."

"The contract would be unofficial, of course. I would trust to the honor I see in your face, and perhaps, for form's sake, a guarantee placed in the hands of some mutually reliable person." He let his eyes linger on me, stroking his lips in an oddly salacious gesture.

"Is he a slaver or a con man, Thend?" Morlock asked my brother. "What do you say, Fasra?" he added, glancing at me.

"Whatever's creepier," I said flatly.

"I might go as high as eight fingers of silver," the Anhikh continued, "in spite of the unfashionably dark color of their skin and their lack of manners. The latter would soon be mended, yes indeed it would. What do you say, master? What is your response, your (shall we say) wholly unofficial response?"

"I am not your master," was the first part of Morlock's unofficial response. The second part left the slave-dealer on all fours, gasping with pain.

"Keeps," Thend muttered to Morlock. Following his glance, I saw a couple of armored figures approaching.