James Enge: Blood of Ambrose

The gargoyle. What was it, anyway? Morlock could swear he had seen scars like seams crisscrossing the thing's back. Its body was made of many pieces, but what sort of soul inhabited it? Perhaps the thing was a harthrang, a demon possessing a dead body-one specially made for it by the adept. But harthrangs were not so closely bound to the bodies they inhabited that they could feel pain.

So the adept himself must be controlling the gargoyle body. But that hardly made sense either. The adept's consciousness had expanded to occupy many bodies. Even if he could feel anything like pain any longer it would only be one sensation in a forest of others-nothing to make him scream.

Morlock thought of ascending to the visionary state: if he was to defeat the gargoyle he needed to know what it was. But he would need all his physical ability to ward off the gargoyle's next attack; he could not risk ascending to rapture now.

It was coming; he could hear it. He glanced over his shoulders and saw it stall in the air. Why would it do that, unless …

He let his left hand open and swung to the right; unburnt thorns scraped against his mail shirt, and one pierced it and him. But the hammer struck the wall where he had been. Stone shattered, and mortar-dust clung to a patch of blood on the hammer's grip. The gargoyle's blood. It occurred to Morlock there had been blood on Tyrfing when he had sheathed it.

The hammer fell and was caught in the thorns below. It left a hole in the wall, through which dead gray arms reached for Morlock. He drew Tyrfing with his left hand, snarling as it caught for a moment in its sheath (the blood had made it sticky). Then he lopped off the arms reaching for him through the gap in the tower wall.

The gargoyle was returning below for its hammer.

Morlock took a moment for cold calculation. The gargoyle had a method of attack that could hardly fail, which he could not counter. But it bled; it could be wounded; it could feel pain. There was only one thing to do.

He did it, opening his right hand and falling, like the hammer, down the wall. He landed on the gargoyle's gray winged back.

"No!" it screamed. "He'll eat me if you-"

Morlock severed the screaming head from its neck, and then abandoned the gargoyle body as it suddenly relaxed in death. He was pierced by several unburnt thorns in the patch he leapt into, but not seriously. His blood caused them to flicker with sluggish flames that soon guttered out. He clung to the dark branches, listening to the dead body hit the earth below them, recovering his breath. "All hands, abandon gargoyle," he muttered when he could, then breathed some more.

Finally he took a jar of phlogiston and opened it, burning a new pathway upward. He ascended the bright ladder of burning branches, remembering that there was another, at least one other gargoyle; wondering about the enemy who awaited him above; hoping that those he loved back in Ambrose were still safe.

They weren't. The second siege of Ambrose had been shorter than the first, and more disastrous. Before Morlock reached the tower, the sack of Ambrose had begun.

The Royal Legion had fought bravely against their eerie attackers. Wyrth had set up a smaller version of the Siegebreaker on the inner Thorngate, and it seemed as if things were going well.

Then half of the defenders began attacking the others. There were eaten soldiers among the royal ranks. No one could be sure that the soldier beside him would not turn. Some fought and died; others fled; the battle was lost. Wyrth barely had time to tumble the Siegebreaker into the river before he fled with the others.

Ambrosia led the vocates from the Wardlands, Wyrth, the Emperor, and his two bodyguards through the screaming chaos of the sack to the High Hall of the North.

"It's as good a place for a last stand as any," she explained grimly. They had ascended the narrow stairway and stood around it; the doorway at the other end of the hall was shut, bolted, and barricaded. "I can keep us safe from the whispering of the Shadow in this relatively small space-"

"But Grandmother," Lathmar broke in urgently. (He supposed he could call her Grandmother again, now that he was Emperor.) "Won't you have to ascend into the visionary state to guard us? Shouldn't you stand away from the stairwell so that we can guard your body?"

She reached under her armor and pulled out a pendant. It was luminous with power. Lathmar gaped at it for a moment, then lifted his eyes to meet Ambrosia's amused gaze.

"I am in the visionary state, Your Imperial Majesty," she replied calmly. "I have been since the enemy stormed Ambrose."

"But-" But she was walking and talking normally. But the pendant, clearly her focus of power, parallel to Morlock's Tyrfing, attested that she was acting powerfully in the talic realm. "But Morlock can't do that!" he blurted foolishly.

"Morlock, despite your touching faith in his abilities, cannot do everything," Ambrosia replied.

"Shut your mouth, Your Imperial Majesty," Wyrth muttered. "What Morlock is to makers, Ambrosia is to seers."

"Unquestionably I am," Ambrosia conceded. "Unfortunately, I'm getting a little old for this sort of thing. Still, I can shield you from the Shadow's whispering, here. If he detects me and sends his minions, and he will, they'll have to come at us one by one up the stairs. Also, there's an escape chute in the hall beyond. Erl and Karn: if the enemy's forces break in, I expect you to put the Emperor down that chute and follow him. Get him safely away."

"No!" said Lathmar, loudly if not firmly. "I'm staying here!"

"Erl, Karn: you heard me."

Karn looked gloomy, but Erl said firmly, if not loudly, "Lady Ambrosia, with respect, we serve the Emperor."

"That's what I'm counting on, Erl. If the Emperor gets away, the empire is still alive. If he doesn't, then it's just food waiting around for the Protector's Shadow to eat it."

Erl didn't answer this one way or the other, and Lathmar saw he was in doubt. Now wasn't the time to press the man, but Lathmar was damned if he was going to go along with Ambrosia's plan. His days of being carried around like a sack of beans were over.

"Maybe we should all go down the chute," Jordel said calmly, "without waiting."

"You're at liberty to do so, vocate," Ambrosia said evenly, "if you can find it. But there's some chance that Morlock may succeed in what he is about. If so, we should be together, not running about like chickens with their heads chopped off."

"Because that's what the adept's former bodies may be doing?" Aloe guessed.

Ambrosia shrugged. "It's not like anyone knows what's going to happen."

It didn't take long for the enemy's forces to find them. Lathmar anxiously wondered if that meant one of them was being eaten, or had been eaten, by the enemy. Looking around the room, he thought he saw the same doubt on other faces and decided not to voice it.

They heard the enemy's forces breaking down the door in the chamber below. They all drew their weapons and stood around the stairwell.

"Truce!" called an oddly familiar voice, coming up the stairwell. "I don't want to kill you, you know."

Ambrosia glanced at Lathmar and rolled her left hand repeatedly in a circle. She was indicating, he guessed, there was no reason not to spend time talking. He nodded his agreement.

"You can come up," she said. "But only one of you."

"There is only one of me down here."

"I mean one body, Inglonor," Ambrosia said flatly.

"It's been a long time since I've heard that name," said the familiar voice, growing nearer. "I didn't even know that you ever knew it-isn't that amusing?" The speaker appeared at the head of the stairwell.

"Genjandro," whispered Ambrosia, sagging slightly. "I …I hoped you had escaped, my friend. That was what the crow told us: that you were dead."