James Enge - This Crooked Way

Then somebody landed on top of the Khroi, making its carapace crunch horribly. It was Charis. The Khroi released my ankle to pound feebly at Charis, who rolled with it over to the cliff's edge and pushed it off.

But it had caught hold of him just long enough to keep his momentum going. His feet tumbled over the edge and his body began to follow as he clutched desperately for a hold on the bare dirt and rock of the ledge.

This, I guess, was the moment for a Charis-like calculation of who owed what to whom. Should I have tried to figure out if Charis was still in my debt? (I had, after all, saved his life twice, and he'd only saved mine oncebut I hadn't acted in order to save his life whereas he …) Well, I didn't. I didn't even think about Thrennick wanting Charis alive. There was a roaring in my ears like a river of fire, and I rolled over to seize the arm of this evil icy man who was, apparently, one of my blood-chosen, if not given.

He was saying something. I didn't pay any attention; I was trying to dig my feet into the ground. I hoped my weight, pressing down on the rough surface of the ledge, would be enough to anchor his.

The trouble was: it wasn't. In a silence that seemed to fill the whole world I heard the most horrible sound I've ever heard: my body scraping over the stones of the ledge.

"Help here!" I shrieked, into the sudden silence, and slipped a little fur ther toward the gulf. I really should let go now, I told myself. Can't do this, can't go over the edge with him. But I clung even harder to his arm, so hard that my fingers sank deep into the flesh. That seemed weird, even then, but I didn't have time to think why.

Then Naeli grabbed on to my feet, arresting my slide toward the cliff. I sobbed gratefully and hung on to Charis's arm.

But he was still sliding away from me. I didn't understand it. I wasn't moving, but he was still sliding off the edge of the cliff.

Then his arm ripped away from his body. I was left with it and, no doubt, a dopey look on my face. I'll never forget Charis's expression as he slipped, one-armed, away from me into the abyss.

Morlock was abruptly there. One leg thrown forward so that his foot was at the brink, he bent over and seized Charis by the neck. As Charis gasped and choked Morlock lifted him out of the brink and tossed him beside me on the ledge.

I was still gripping the severed arm tensely. When I realized this I let it go, kicked Naeli away hysterically, and jumped to my feet. I didn't know what Charis was, but I didn't want to be near him.

Morlock, however, had no such qualms. He was kneeling down beside Charis. At first I thought that he was holding Charis's one remaining hand: a pretty sentimental act for a man like Morlock, but you never know. Then I realized: he was feeling for a pulse.

And not finding one, apparently. "Remarkable!" he said to Charis's tormented face. "The skin temperature is lifelike. If there were a heartbeat, the likeness would be perfect."

"I was working on that," Charis said sullenly. "It's a minor issue."

"You still have a heart, though?" Morlock inquired, with an air of polite interest.

"Oh, yes," Charis replied. "I couldn't dispense with it. The entire torso is essentially intact."

"May I?" asked Morlock.

"If-Oh, I suppose it doesn't matter," Charis said gloomily.

Morlock reached into the horrible man's open shirt and felt around a little.

"That's not human skin," he said flatly, withdrawing his hand.

"Well, I decided to venture on a clay integument for my torso," Charis admitted, "but the organs are still functioning. They have less to do now, of course."

"You anticipate an extended lifespan?" Morlock asked. "Less wear and tear on the organs? You may be right. Anyway, this is an admirable achievement. Really remarkable."

That was when I started to laugh quietly to myself. An admirable achievement! That thing!

"What's wrong?" Bann said to me. "What's happening?"

"Don't you see?" I said, or shrieked, I'm not sure which. "He's turned himself into a golem."

Morlock looked over at me. "Not entirely," he said mildly. "Charis's limbs and skin may be golemic but the rest of him, his core, is as it was. Do you," he said to Charis, "get full sensation from your clay skin?"

Charis shuddered. "No, thank God Avenger. Really, Morlock the Maker!" he said, drawing himself up. "I don't think you fully appreciate what you call my achievement."

"Explain it, then," Morlock suggested.

"Do you suppose that I myself did these delicate operations on my own frame? I had to have golems do it. For each operation I created a team of golem-surgeons with careful and elaborately written life-scrolls. The slightest error in any golem's composition and I would not have survived a single operation."

"What makes you think you did survive?" I shouted. Then I put my hand over my mouth and sat down. I didn't feel that great; I don't suppose any of us did. Naeli and Thend both came and sat down on either side of me, each one putting an arm around me. That made me feel a little better.

Charis droned on wearily, "My face became so many masks. It wasn't mine anymore. As the Khroi's agent, I spied on the city. As your debtor, I spied on the Khroi. As the Khroi's agent, I had to hunt down the man spying on them. If my plans had succeeded, all my debts would be paid. I would have given you your information, surrendered you to the Khroi, and destroyed the spy in the city. But now all my bargains are broken."

"You would have destroyed yourself to fulfill a bargain?" Morlock asked.

"My crowning deed as a maker," Charis replied, smiling faintly. "When this …business interrupted me, I was writing the life-scroll of a golem which could replace my entire face."

"Oh."

Charis seemed to think Morlock was insufficiently impressed. "Don't you see? The delicacy of the operation-the need to inculcate the golem with my every skill so that the new face would be such a masterwork of artifice that no one would realize it was artificial!"

"Why?"

Charis glared at the crooked man as if insulted by so obvious a question. "All of you!" he shouted, waving his remaining arm. "The Khroi. The guards. Vernon. The water-gangs. You. All of you, everywhere, surrounding me with open mouths like baby birds squawking, `I want this, I want that, Do this, Don't do that, Tell me this, Don't tell him that, Give this to me, Take this from me.' Everyone screaming me me me and none of them me."

Morlock opened his hands and waited: he still didn't understand.

"It was my chance to escape," Charis said wearily. "The new face didn't have to look like my old face. Everyone knew who I was, but if I succeeded no one would know who I was. I wouldn't owe anybody anything; nobody would owe me anything. I could have been anyone. Anyone."

"Who is it you want to be?" Morlock asked patiently.

Charis thought for a moment. "No one," he said finally. He pushed himself over with his remaining arm, spun off the edge, and was lost in the red gloom. We heard his body make wet solid impact with the cliff several times as he fell.

"There goes my chance at a promotion," said Thrennick wistfully after a few moments of silence. "Master Morlock-"

"I am not your master."

"Fine; I just want you to do me a favor."

"What?"

"If you ever come back to Sarkunden-"

"Yes?"

"Please don't look me up. I mean, I still have nightmares about the last time."

The soldiers went back to the city through the sewers, but we took another narrow rocky passage up into the light. I couldn't believe how good the fresh air tasted and felt in my lungs, and my eyes drank down the light till I could feel it in my toes. Then I looked at the others and I noticed they were all bleeding as much as I was, if not more. This seemed to me very funny and terribly sad, more or less at the same time, but Naeli said a little hysteria under the circumstances wasn't unreasonable.