James Enge: Blood of Ambrose

He bowed his head, clenching his teeth. He thought he understood her, and rather better than she knew him. It was strange to love someone, to look into her eyes, and to see oneself mirrored there as a nothingness cloaked with power. It was the cloak of power she loved, not the man who wore it. He could not say these things; they blocked his throat, too great, too terrible to be spoken. It is Morlock who loves her, he said to himself. But the man she loves is Merlin's son. She had never realized that they were not the same man, that they would never be, that he could not let them be.

He heard a sound behind him and turned to see Lathmar standing behind them, the boy's eyes twin pools of grief and shame. The young Emperor fled up the hallway, his bodyguards following at a practiced run. Ambrosia came out of the council chamber, looked up the hall, looked at Morlock, and shrugged.

He turned back to his ex-wife. "You've hurt him," he said fiercely. "I won't forget this."

"Save your anger for our enemy," she said, smiling. "I'll be here when you get back." Then she kissed him, and he found he could not resist her. She turned away and walked up the hall after Lathmar, her red cloak swirling behind her. Perhaps he would not be able to resist her, either, Morlock reflected gloomily.

"Did you know Merlin sent me off to school one year?" Ambrosia said as he turned back to her.

"No," said Morlock, genuinely surprised.

"It was such a disaster. I'll tell you about it, sometime. Anyway, this is a little like the end of the school year-fast farewells, so much to say that nothing gets said."

So he held her hand, kissed her forehead, and said nothing at all.

She kissed him on the lips, hesitated, then kissed him again. "From Hope," she whispered, and walked away almost as quickly as Lathmar had done.

"Nothing disgusts me as much as schmaltz," said Jordel disagreeably, stepping forward, "so I won't say good-bye. No point to it! You'll be a pest and a botheration to the Wardlands until the mountains wear away and the Guard fails."

"A pest, maybe," Morlock conceded. "But a botheration?"

"Don't try to bandy wits with me at this late date; you're not equipped for it. You don't even know what a bandy is―deny it if you can! See you, Baran."

"Good-bye. Good-bye to you, Morlock," the big man added. "Thanks for the horse. Think he'll carry me?"

"He carried Ambrosia, Wyrth, and me," Morlock said. "I'm fairly sure it was him. Let him run free in Westhold when he's carried you there, eh?"

Baran said he would, clapped Morlock on the shoulder, and was gone.

"You're not even going to say good-bye to Velox?" Wyrth said querulously.

"No," said Morlock, who badly wanted to. "He might cry, and I couldn't bear that."

"Ach, you're a cold and pitiless man. I suppose you're only waiting for me because you want help with your spider."

"That, and one other thing."

Wyrth became solemn, even grim. "I know. We never talked about how I failed you in the gravelands."

"That's nothing."

"Not to me," Wyrth replied, stung.

"Then it's your business," Morlock said coldly, if not pitilessly. "I should have warned you what was in the offing or forbidden you to come. Your suffering falls to my blame. Frankly, I have worse things on my conscience."

"And I'm the one who knows," Wyrth replied. He hesitated and asked, "What's the other thing, then?"

"I call you master, Wyrth."

"What?" the dwarf said irritably. "You can't do that. I'm just an apprentice."

"I can, and you know it. I should have done it a half century ago. You know that, too."

"You're doing this as a going-away present," said Wyrth angrily. "But when you come back, we won't be able to travel together anymore. Or maybe you're thinking of giving up traveling."

"Master Wyrth, you need to sit at your own bench, work in your own shop, dream your own dreams, and do your own deeds. If you do, you may become the greatest of all the masters of Making. I say so."

Wyrth bowed his head and raised it again. "All right, ex-boss. I guess I'll see you at the craft meetings. Let's get this spider of yours on the road."

He was weeping as he walked, but he took no notice of this so neither did Morlock.

Wyrth was glumly sorting through the accumulations of stuff in Morlock's workshop. In truth there was not so very muchno more than forty or fifty donkeys might have carried. Since, in the event, it would have to be carried by one old man with crooked shoulders and one dwarf (headed in different directions, he kept reminding himself incredulously), some sorting needed to be done.

He was tempted to carry nothing. To walk back to Thrymhaiam with nothing in his hands, stand on the Rokhfell Hill, and shout, "I am a master of Making! The greatest maker in the worlds has said so!" On reflection, this didn't seem practical-he would need food and water on the way; there were some notebooks with useful things in them; he didn't like to go anywhere without a few tools…. The items mounted up.

There was a folded slip of paper not far from the choir of flames. Wyrth opened it and read it to see if it was worth preserving or if, as he thought, it had been put here to become fuel for the ever-hungry choir.

The note read:

Morlock-

I am alive.

Hope.

"Odd," he said. Was the last word a signature or an injunction? He had heard of someone who might have addressed Morlock in this way- Morlock's other sister, Hope. But she was supposed to have died before he (Wyrth) had been born. Of course, that might have been the purpose of the note …to let him know it wasn't the case. Wyrth tapped the note against his nose reflectively three or four times, refolded it, and put it back where he had found it.

The Emperor entered the room quietly, as if he didn't want to be heard. The clash of his bodyguards' boots and armor outside the door made that more or less impossible, so Wyrth looked up and said, "Yes, Your Majesty?"

"Is Morlock away?" Lathmar asked.

"He has been away some hours," Wyrth said.

"Oh," said the Emperor emptily. "I thought …I thought he might need this." He held up the signal horn with which he had escaped the adept's tower.

Morlock and Wyrth had discussed the horn and agreed it would be useless to him-the corpse-golems would be instructed to disregard it. But, Wyrth thought, as a pretext to say good-bye, the horn would have been pretty useful. Too bad Lathmar hadn't thought of it sooner, that's all. In lieu of saying all this, he grunted.

"You're getting as bad as Morlock," Lathmar said, laughing. He grew more solemn. "When do you suppose we'll know …one way or the other?"

"If he succeeds or dies, you mean?" the dwarf said querulously. "I don't suppose it's occurred to you that he could succeed and die-or that you might be better off if he didn't come back?"

"No," said the young Emperor so defiantly that Wyrth knew he was lying. Normally he disapproved of untruths, especially unsuccessful ones, but he had to give the boy credit for trying. If Morlock fell on his sword for this young twerp, the young twerp had better prove to be worth the sacrifice.

"Well," he said, in lieu of saying all that, "what news from the walls? I guess you've come from there."

"We are besieged again," Lathmar said solemnly. "There are bands of corpse-golems led by Companions of Mercy at every outer gate."

"Where's Ambrosia? I take it she's still leading the troops."

"Yes, she's at Thorngate. She was wondering if you have something that might-might-"

"Put a bug down their hoods?" Wyrth thought it over. "We can try a few things. Give me a hand, won't you?"

The current of the river carried Morlock down to the sea. He dozed a bit, barely troubling to guide his spider craft. There would be work to tire him soon enough.