James Enge - This Crooked Way

He smiled unpleasantly at me, his teeth gleaming through the night shadows. Him and his map of the future. How I hated him. How I feared him.

Our friendly thug Fesco appeared at the doorway and nodded.

Merlin looked at his other thugs and gestured at me.

Suddenly there were several thugs on each side of me, and some in front of Merlin, and some behind the rest of us. It was like a military formation. It was awfully crowded on the stairs of the crooked house.

"I thought you were going to let us go."

"Shut up," he replied briefly. He looked at the thugs surrounding me. "If she doesn't shut up, you make her shut up. Don't kill her, though, unless I tell you to."

"Liar," I whispered hopelessly.

In his way, Merlin was as hard to irritate as Morlock. Morlock could irritate him, naturally-Morlock can irritate anyone …the master of all irritants, that's what they should call him-but I had never been able to. Until now. What I said then got deeply under his skin. His face turned toward me and I saw his features working strangely in the light of the major moons.

"I don't intend to betray you, Naeli," he said. "I simply wish to verify that you have not betrayed me. I keep my word. I suppose Morlock told you differently?"

I didn't say anything, because he seemed like he was about to do something crazy. Eventually he calmed down and we went, a slippered platoon, into the crooked house.

In the front room the forms of my brother and two (surviving) sons could be seen in the moonlight from the open window. Merlin eyed them from a distance; then he waved his thugs away and stepped closer to the sleeping forms. He drew a dagger and plunged it into Roble's face. Roble's chest continued to rise and fall, as if he were sleeping. Merlin turned away to stab Thend and Bann. None of them reacted.

"Damnation," he said sincerely. He turned to one of his thugs and said, "Fesco. Take Elnun there. Go find the thing in the next room that looks like a girl. Rip it to pieces and come back to me."

Appalled, Fesco whispered, "But what if-"

"You can speak normally," the wizard interrupted. "Light a lamp or two while you're about it. No need for secrecy. They're long gone. Aren't they, Naeli?"

"Yes," I said, since it was now obvious.

"I wanted so badly for you to do the clever thing," Merlin complained. "I hoped against hope. You won't say where they went, I suppose?"

"No."

"You may change your mind about that," said Merlin, "or I may change it for you. What a lot of work that would be, though! I think we'll just search the house, first."

"You-" will be wasting your time, I was going to say, but thought twice about it. If he wanted to waste his time, it was fine with me.

"You!" Merlin repeated mockingly. "You!"

"Drop dead."

"Someday I will. Long after you have died and been forgotten, of course."

Fesco returned alone. "It wasn't a girl. Something in its belly bit Elnun when he stabbed it and he's dead."

"I told you to make some light," Merlin complained. "Do it now, and-"

"Aurelius," Fesco interrupted, "unless you tell me more about this job, I'm leaving and taking my men with me."

"We're here to capture someone," Merlin said. "That's all you need know."

I remembered how some of the bravoes had reacted to Morlock's name in Aflraun, so I decided this might be the time to speak up. "It's Morlock Ambrosius," I said. "That's who he's sending you after. Heard of him, have you?"

Fesco was appalled, but skeptical. "Can't be. He'd be centuries old."

"He was in Aflraun tonight," one of the thugs said. "He killed a man and burned down Whisper Street and smashed the keystone of the Aresion Bridge-bar!-with his fist, like this: barn. I heard about it from-I heard about it from-This guy told me."

Fesco turned to Merlin. "What about this, Master Aurelius?"

"His name's not Aurelius, either," I said. "He's been lying to you about everything."

Merlin looked at me for a moment, smiled gently, and said, "I've not been lying, but it is true that I have not told you all that I know. I seldom do. Fesco, my true name is Merlin Ambrosius."

Every one, and I mean every one, of those dirty soft-shoe cutthroats went down on one knee.

"Great Master," Fesco said, bowing his head reverently, "forgive us and command us."

"Get back on your feet and do as I direct," Merlin said kindly. "You'll still be paid. I don't expect anything from gratitude."

"We do not forget. We will never forget."

"That's good to know," Merlin said. "I, too, have a long memory: for good and evil, Naeli. For good and evil."

His threat meant nothing to me; I was just trying to fill up time. I wondered what Merlin had done in the past to receive the instant devotion of these alley-bashers.

The thugs got lamps and divided up into various groups to search the house. Merlin had the now-docile Fesco pick five thugs to accompany him, and me, into the Mystery Zone.

"The fame of it has reached even across the great river of the north," Merlin told me slyly. "So I naturally take this chance to visit it without the usual admission price."

They went very carefully. Fesco and two thugs preceded us through the Gate of Shadows (the dark room we used to disorient visitors), searching it carefully before Merlin and I entered, followed by the thug rearguard. They tried the same thing with the zone itself, but their formation broke when a couple of the thugs tripped and fell up a wall.

Merlin waved me through and followed along, an expression of wonder lighting his pale cold features. The two thugs were standing on the wall, disoriented. One of them made it back to the floor, but the other staggered like a drunk and ended up standing on the ceiling.

"Well," said Merlin to me, "I won't lie to you, Naeli. I find this remarkable. At times like these, I almost wish Morlock and I were on better terms. I don't suppose you can tell me anything about this?"

"What's it worth to you?"

"How mercenary. Or are you talking about your family?"

"I'm not talking about money, anyway."

"Well, if you put it like that, I don't think anything you tell me will be worth any concessions for your family's safety. As long as they are levers I can use to apply pressure on Morlock, I'll use them. When they are not, they've nothing to fear from me. You see how honest I am with you, Naeli."

I was honest with him about something.

He laughed and said, "You're not the first to say so, though others had more elegant ways of putting it. Well, I think what we have here in your Mystery Zone is some sort of four-dimensional polytope."

"It is," I conceded.

"Well, that much is obvious, isn't it? But I'm having a little trouble working out the geometry. Is it regular, do you know? Did he ever show you a three-dimensional map of the thing?"

"No."

"He may not have one. He can do multidimensional calculations in his head. God Creator knows where he learned it-not from the dwarves; all the math they know is bookkeeping. He stayed at New Moorhope for a time; perhaps they taught him there." He shook his head. "No, I just can't work it out. Unless he knows a way to bend gravity?"

"He says gravity is more malleable in the fifth dimension," I remembered.

"Is it?" Merlin said thoughtfully. "Is it really? The four-space polytope must be nested in some sort of fifth-dimensional structure then. Interesting. I'll have to give that notion some serious study, one of these days. I'm indebted to you, Naeli."

"Then-" I broke off.

"Ask your question. I know you've been dying to."

"Why are you wasting your time in the one place in Laent where you know Morlock is not?"

"Of course Morlock is here, Naeli, or will be soon."

"Does your map of the future tell you that?"

"As a matter of fact, it does. Not that I needed it. Yours were the actions I had trouble predicting."