James Enge: Blood of Ambrose

It had all been for the city, of which he was a part and which, he had thought, would survive him after his death. Now he knew it would not, or at least not for long, that it was already dying of the same insinuating voice, the same withering Shadow that was destroying him. His death was meaningless if his life had been meaningless; he grieved for neither but rather for the city that, till now, had given a meaning to both.

He walked vaguely toward the river Tilion. To the extent that he was thinking of anything, he was hoping that he would be able to drown himself in the river. But he never got there.

He was wandering down a street running westward when he looked up and realized where he was. There was a burned-out building not far off, its blackened brick walls supported by wooden struts. It was his warehouse, the one he had burned as part of the dragon ploy. He stared up at it, trying to recover the feelings of reckless amusement and triumph he had felt on that day. As he was standing there, a young boy ran into him from behind and they both fell.

"Don't let them catch me!" the boy cried.

"Them?" Genjandro said stupidly.

"They're not my parents!"

"No," Genjandro said dully. "I suppose not."

The boy looked him in the face and said, "Death and Justice! You've been eaten! You're one of them!" He desperately kicked at the old man until they were disentangled from each other, scrambled to his feet, and ran off. Genjandro croaked, "Don't go in there!"

Behind him on the street came a pair of figures, a man and a woman. Genjandro did not know them at first, but then some mark on their face, perhaps the same one the boy had seen on his, gave them away.

"Oh. It's you."

"Genjandro," said the man, in a voice reminiscent of Vora's, the dead baby's, the whisper in Genjandro's own mind.

"You're going fast," the woman said, in a voice which was different, but somehow the same. "A little too ripe, perhaps-but all the better for quick eating."

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"It's most amusing," said the man's mouth.

"Isn't everything?"

"Not like this," said the woman's mouth, acknowledging Genjandro's feeble gibe with a smirk. "I've eaten the child's parents, and now I'm hunting him through the streets in their persons. The parents' awarenesses live within me and try to resist, but there's nothing they can do about it. It sets up the most delicious pattern of emotional contrasts; I wish you could experience it. But you will, soon, of course. I shall do this sort of thing citywide once I get really organized."

"Genjandro," said the man's mouth, almost excited, "there's no way out of that building, is there? The windows were all on the upper floors, and the flooring and stairs are all burned away, so there's no way the child can reach them."

"As far as I know," Genjandro agreed heavily. He supposed the enemy had read it from his own mind-if he could even call it his mind anymore. "There may be damage …holes in the walls," he continued. "The boy may be gone already."

"Just walk around and see, won't you?" the woman's mouth said.

Genjandro did as he was told, simply because he had nothing else to do, because nothing mattered anyway. There was a good deal of damage to the west side-there were more support beams on that side. The ground sloped downward there, toward the river.

"Etkondel," cried the woman's voice through the open door. "Don't go to your father. He killed your puppy. I saw him do it. Then he made me say it ran away."

"I did it for your own good," barked the man's voice. "Don't let your mother have you, boy. She'll cut your balls off, if she can. You may hate me, but at least I'll let you be a man."

Genjandro leaned wearily on one of the supports, remembering what the builder had said-the one he had consulted after the fire.

"Etkondel, Etkondel," the woman's voice sobbed. "Help! He's going to hurt me again, I know he will! If you don't help me, I just don't know what I'll do."

"She's lying. She's always tried to poison you against me, and me against you. She's good at that. If you come out now, why, I'll let you help me with her."

Master Alkhendron, the builder had told him, we can't rebuild. At most we can keep the thing from falling down, and that's hard enough. The solution is to level it and build again.

"Etkondel, I'm afraid! Please help me!"

"Enough of this nonsense! Come out here now, boy. Don't make me come in there!"

I understand, Alkhendron/Genjandro had said to his builder. But he felt that only now did he really understand. The city was dead, ruined, a shell propped up with great and useless effort. But if he leveled it, then the boy would be able to build again. The city was dead, but need not die.

"Etkondel!" the woman's dead voice wailed. "I know you want to do what's right, what's in your heart! You won't leave me out here to be hurt by this horrible man!"

The dead father's voice shouted, "I say what's right and what's wrongthe Strange Gods damn your heart and whatever's in it!"

"Lathmar!" Genjandro screamed abruptly. "Level it, and I'll build again! The city isn't dead, it's just dead!" That was wrong, somehow, but there was no time to change it-he could feel the will of the other trying to work within him. He pushed the support beam in front of him and it fell. He pushed the next one, and it fell. He went down the line of supports, crashing into them, falling from one to the next, struggling to keep his feet so that he could knock them all down, level it all.

Blackened bricks were falling about him like rain now. He lurched and fell and struggled to get up, but his legs were trapped by the slumping wall. A curtain of brick dropped down on him as he tried to wrench free.

The collapse of the rest of the building killed the bodies of the woman and the man. The boy escaped through a tear in the tottering wall and ran away into the twisting streets.

But Genjandro saw none of this; the collapse of the west wall had killed him also. He had been merchant, then conspirator and spy; now he was just another dead soldier, half buried by the city he had struggled to save and to destroy.

A crow who knew his voice heard him shout and heard the building fall. The crow was wise enough to know that the city was unfriendly to crows and that this might be a trick. But one of the words that the voice had shouted was important; Morlock and his dwarf often used it (though the crow did not pretend, even to himself, to know what a lathniar was).

So the crow risked descending into the cloud of mortar and ash rising from the fallen building. There was some meat among the ruins, but it was too fresh to be interesting, and two of the clumps had a dangerous smell about them.

It was the third pile of meat that had cried out, the crow guessed. It was mostly covered with brick, so the crow couldn't tell if it had been Genjandro. The midsection was burst open, and some of that smelled most tempting, if it were not for the falling cloud of mortar dust. The fellow's clothes were torn, also, spilling the contents of his pockets. Apparently he had been carrying some mixed seed and grain in one, a practice of which the crow wholly approved. The crow was sorting through this when he found the sheet with Morlock's name on it.

The crow squawked wearily. Why did these things always happen to him? Now he'd have to fly all the way to Ambrose-a long way to travel with night coming on. The paper looked rather large and heavy, too, a real winddrag. He was perfectly willing to play with entities he considered his equals, and he could understand playing games with pebbles and so on, but why Morlock and others insisted on playing games with paper, across such horribly long distances and tediously regular patterns, he could not understand.