James Enge: Blood of Ambrose

Everything is opaque to itself, Morlock knew. Matter blocks matter; even light blocks light, under certain conditions. Only tal could block tal. Morlock looked on the talic imprint of the adept, like a tower pierced by myriads of whispering thorns, and he knew at last. Somehow, through the adept's magic, the tower itself was an extension of himself. It was through the substance of the tower that life passed from his disembodied organs to the shell of his body. He had not seen the source of the adept's life because it was all around him.

He dashed forward again, feinting left, then right, then high, finally striking low, slashing away part of the sorcerer's robe.

The adept's legs were exposed. Each had five calflike stalks descending from the knee. Each ended not in a foot, but in a broad, gray-lipped mouth pressed hungrily against the gray stone breast of the chamber floor.

"So that's how you do it," he remarked calmly, and lunged, balestra, so that Tyrfing slashed the front of the sorcerer's robe and the gray flesh beneath it.

The adept snickered, his breath whistling oddly through the bones of his torn cheek and nose. "That's how."

Morlock thought he could see scars of surgery on the exposed bones of the other's face. So what he had told Lathmar was untrue: this body had not naturally assumed this form, in response to the adept's talic imprint; it had been crafted as deliberately and as cunningly as the winged gargoyles themselves. But less vulnerably; Morlock doubted his enemy could feel pain in any usual sense of the word.

"Where's the speech?" the adept sneered. "`Now, alas, too late, I realize …"'

Morlock dropped from the visionary state entirely. He wove a net of blades around his enemy, dancing aside from the deadly soul-blade, now the color of white-hot gold.

"You're hoping to wear me down," the adept said. "But you can't do that. You're working ten times as hard as I am, and I'm drawing new strength through the stones every moment."

Morlock feinted left and again thrust, slashing deep into the adept's belly. He did the same a moment later. A great flap of the robe and the dry skin underneath now hung open.

"Ow, that stung," the adept said drily. "Maybe you're hoping to outlast the soul-sword? You won't. The lightning will burn bright enough to kill until dawn. By then you'll be dead."

An orange-black spider, its body the size of a human fist, crawled out of the hole in the adept's belly, clung to the shifting surface of the robe, and stared at Morlock with its eight eyes. A green, faintly luminescent cord went from its body back into the hole in the adept. A moment later, it was joined by another spider.

"Pets?" Morlock asked.

The adept laughed. "I said 'Don't get attached to them.' I never said not to let them attach themselves to you."

Morlock's next two attacks slashed the green cords, killing the spiders. He guessed, from shadows he could see within the gap, that there were more where these came from. But he could afford to wait no longer: what the adept had said was true; he was wearing out.

He closed with the adept and brought the lightning sword into a bind. Then he plunged his left hand into the open belly of the adept.

The adept screamed and stabbed him in the face and neck with the dagger. He felt several lancing pains in his left hand: spider bites, laced with burning poison. He let none of this distract him. He closed his hand on the spine of the adept and, gripping it, lifted him from the floor.

The ten mouth-feet resisted, each leaving the floor with a separate sucking plop. The adept stabbed him with the dagger again, yet again, but the strokes were weaker. Holding the body aloft, Morlock walked to the balcony of the chamber and held the adept's writhing body as far as he could from any surface of the tower.

The dagger (dark with Morlock's blood) and the soul-bright sword both fell from the adept's nerveless fingers. Morlock thought he could hear screaming, the screaming of many voices (in triumph, in hate, in fear, in shame, in death), but the adept's gray mouth was slack and motionless. Perhaps the sound came from the tower. Maybe he was hearing some echo from the talic realm, as the souls of those the adept had consumed over the centuries tore loose from the dying hulk that had eaten them. Perhaps he was dreaming the sounds, for he was very close to unconsciousness as he stood there and stood there and stood there until the sounds receded like a tide of darkness and left him there, alone in the dark.

"You're telling me you're dead," he whispered to the dead face when the whispers died. "But why should I believe you? How would I know when a thing like you is dead?"

But, in the end, he could stand there no longer. He clenched his fist till the spine within his grip shattered. He cast the lifeless body as far from the tower as he could. Falling back, he lay still and stared at the dry stormy sky.

Lathmar's spirit leapt up like a silver candle; he felt Aloe's bronze glory singing beside him.

He was far past the state where words are possible, but he shared his sense of personal triumph with the spirit who had fought so bravely and so hopelessly beside him.

She responded with a gesture that unmistakably recalled a hawk in flight over a branch of flowering thorns.

Lathmar looked down a dark corridor that was shutting like a mouth and saw through it Morlock killing the adept.

The shock of the myriadic death drove Lathmar back from his vision. His soul flew home to his body, hungry for the knowledge that he was still alive.

And he was. He opened his eyes to find Hope kneeling over him.

"Something happened," she was saying urgently. "What was it?"

"The Protector's Shadow is dead," the Emperor said. "Morlock killed him in the Old City."

"But these things, these corpse-golems, are still alive," said Jordel, who was standing nearby. "A half dozen of them just tried to charge up the stairway."

"No, they're not," the Emperor said sleepily. "Wyrth. Tell him."

The dwarf looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. "I get it. If they're like golems, they're not alive. They're just carrying out the instructions on their life-scrolls."

Lathmar sat up. He was desperately tired. But the Emperor had work to do. "Right," he said wearily. "There will be thousands of these things-here and in the Two Cities. They'll be dangerous to us, but they can't really think. We'll first need to regroup the Royal Legion. No." He looked around the room. "Erl, congratulations. You're the new commander of the Imperial Legion."

"Urn."

"The correct response is, `Thank you for this high honor, Your Imperial Majesty; I will endeavor to justify your trust in me."'

"He was speechless with delight, Your Imperial Highnitude," Jordel suggested.

"Um. What does Your Majesty direct me to do?" Erl said, ignoring the opportunity to banter. (Something told Lathmar he always would.)

"Take Karn-where's Karn?"

"Dead, Your Majesty. He died bravely."

So? his Majesty nearly replied. Dead is dead. But it did matter. When he had looked around for Karn and missed him, he had been afraid the man had run away. Karn had chosen his job, or allowed it to choose him, and died at it. Lathmar hoped he himself would have an epitaph that good.

"Take Wyrth, then," the Emperor said aloud. "The stairway is still blocked by corpse-golems? Go down the escape chute. Collect a body-I mean, collect a group of soldiers and put them under discipline. Draft anyone you come across, now that I think of it: this is everyone's fight. Come back here, clearing the corridors as you go and suiting your tactics to the occasion. That's your short-term goal. When that's done, we'll clear the castle of these things. By then we should have enough troops to enter the city. That's the long-term goal: to cleanse the living city."