James Enge: This Crooked Way

Tervin silently surrendered his sword; the senior guard stepped forward and remarking, in a conversational tone, "In the name of the Emperor," lopped off the head of the struggling victim. The sword bit deeply into the table-golem; several of the arms fell with the severed head to the floor.

The senior guard leapt back immediately to avoid the gush of poisonous Ambrosial blood, then took another step back when he saw that there was no gush of blood. The headless form in the table-golem's arms continued its useless struggle.

"No," croaked Charis, his throat dry. "This can't be happening."

He stepped forward, as if against his own will, and touched the gleaming edge of the severed neck. It was clay. He reached down into the open throat and drew out a life-scroll inscribed in Morlock Ambrosius's peculiar hooked style. The body ceased to move.

"They told me you were cheap," Morlock's voice sounded behind and below him.

He turned and, looking down, met the calm gray gaze of the severed head that looked like Morlock's.

"They told me you were cheap," the severed head remarked again, "so I expected this. I am somewhere you can't reach me. Have the information ready when I send for it and I'll hold no grudges. But do not betray me again."

"I won't," whispered Charis, knowing he would have nightmares about this moment as long as he lived. "I promise. I promise I won't." Then he turned away from the suddenly lifeless head to soothe the frightened guards with gold.

That night the unbeheaded and authentic Morlock lay dreaming in the high cold hills north of Sarkunden, but he wasn't aware of it. To him it seemed he was lying, wrapped in his sleeping cloak, watching the embers of his fire, wondering why he was still awake.

An old woman walked into the cool red circle of light around Morlock's dying campfire. He could not see her face. She bent down and took the book of palindromes from Morlock's backpack and flipped through it until she reached the page for that day. She carried it over and showed it to him. Her index finger pointed to a palindrome: Molh lomolov alinio cret. Terco inila vo lom olhlom.

Which might be rendered: Blood red as sunset marks the road north. Son walks east into the eastering sun.

He looked up from the book to her face. He still could not see it. He wasn't able to see it, he realized suddenly, because he never had seen it. Then he awoke.

He opened his eyes to find the book of palindromes open in his hand. It was his index finger resting on the palindrome he had read in his dream.

Morlock got up and restowed the book in his pack. Then he settled down and built up the fire to make tea: he doubted he would sleep any more that night.

He was caught up in some conflict he didn't understand with a seer whose skill surpassed his own. Any omen or vision he received was doubly important because of this, but it was doubly suspect as well.

He much preferred Making to Seeing: the subtleties of vision were often lost on him. In a way, he had made the book of palindromes so that he would have some of the advantages of Seeing through an instrument of Making. He thought the omen pointing him northward was a real omen, and it was possible that this one was, too. But it was possible that one or both had been sent by his enemy to mislead him.

Morlock drank his tea and thought the matter over all night. By sunrise he had struck camp and was walking along the crooked margin of the mountains eastward, keeping his eyes open for he knew not what.

One morning, after many days of travel eastward, Morlock awoke to find his pack had been slit and the book of palindromes stolen. He spent some time thinking about why the thief had stolen that one thing, and what the theft might mean. In the end, he shouldered his violated pack, belted on his sword, and took after the thief.

Morlock was a master of makers, not trackers, but the ground was soft in early spring and the track fairly easy to follow, perhaps too easy. The trail led north and east, toward a place Morlock had particularly wanted to avoid.

When the thief's trail took him as far as the winterwood, as he had known it must, Morlock Ambrosius sat down to think. To enter there was to gamble with his life, and Morlock hated gambling: it was wasteful and he was thrifty-some said cheap. Still, there was the book…. And the note. It had been staked to the ground, just next to his slit pack …staked with a glass thorn from the same pack. (The chamber of the thorn was broken and the face inside was dark and lifeless. Another score to settle!) The message was simply a stylized figure of a hand with the fingers pointing northward …toward the forest of Tychar, the winterwood. The meaning was as clear as the slap in the face the symbol represented: Forget your book. It's gone where you can't follow The note was addressed "Ambrosius."

So it was someone who knew him, someone bold enough to rob him, someone who had preferred, when he was vulnerable, to insult him rather than kill him. He had a desire to meet this person.

As he sat, pondering the dark blue trunks of the winterwood, he found the desire had not faded.

He kindled a fire with the Pursuer instrumentality. As he was waiting for it to grow to optimal strength, he took off his pack and set about repairing the slit. There was a patch of gripgrass not far away; he spotted it by the long deerlike bones of an animal it had killed. He drew a few plants from the ground, taking care not to break the stems or tear the central roots. He sewed up the slit in his pack, carefully weaving the gripgrass plants into the seam.

The fire was high enough, then, so he took the thief's note and burned it in the Pursuer fire with a pinch of chevetra leaf. The smoke traveled north and east, against the wind, toward the forest: that was the way the thief had gone.

They called it "the winterwood." The trees stood on high rocky ground; it was cold there, even in summer. The trees there, of a kind that grew nowhere else, flowered in fall and faded in spring. They resembled dark oaks, except their leaves were a dim blue and their bark had a bluish cast.

Just now it was early spring; patches of snow lay, like chewed crusts, beneath the hungry-looking trees. The leaves, crooked blue veins showing along the withered gray surfaces, were like the hands of dying men. They rustled irritably in the chill persistent breeze, as if impatient to meet and merge with the earth.

Morlock did not share their impatience. When he saw the smoke from his magical fire enter the tree-shadowed arch of a pathway (a clear path leading deep into those untravelled woods) he shook his head suspiciously.

So he sat down again and took off his shoes. After writing his name and a few other words on the heel of his left shoe, he trimmed a strip of leather from the sole and tied it around his bare left foot at the arch. He did the same with the other shoe (and foot). He muttered a few more words (familiar to thosewho-know). Then he picked up the shoes, one in each hand, and tossed them onto the path. They landed, side by side, toes forward, about two paces distant.

He stood up and moved his feet experimentally. The empty shoes mimicked the motion of his feet. He stepped forward onto the path; the shoes politely maintained the two-pace distance, hopping ahead of him step by step. Morlock nodded, content. Then he strapped his backpack to his slightly crooked shoulders and walked, barefoot, into the deadly woods.