This Crooked Way (41 page)

Morlock watched the bucket closely, waiting for the water to boil. Once it did, steam would upset the cover and that was bad. Moonlight would escape and, worse, firelight might enter. Fire destroys moonlight whenever they make contact, as does any light (except starlight, the most fragile and subtle of lights).

As intently as he watched, he almost missed the moment. The bucket, after muttering and shaking itself from the heat, suddenly grew quiet. A moment later, a puff of boiling steam shot forth from between the metal rim and the melting wax of the tablet. It was irradiated by a bolt of white-hot moonlight. Morlock slapped the tablet down against the bucket rim and snatched the bucket from the fire with his free hand. (It was hot, but it took a considerable fire to annoy Morlock; that was the destiny of his blood.) He leapt into the zone of Perfect Occlusion.

Water was still bubbling through the semi-liquid surface of the wax tablet, but no light accompanied it. Morlock took the wax tablet away and was pleased to see a considerable mass of cooling but still white-hot moonlight slumped in the bottom of the bucket. It looked almost dense enough to work it with his fingers.

Morlock, of course, did not risk this. He set the bucket down, sat down himself, and, clasping his hands, summoned the rapture of vision.

He reached out with the monochrome flames of his tal-self and worked the white-hot cooling moonlight into a sheet. Then he creased the sheet and folded it. He creased it again and folded it. And again and again: more than thirty times, until the sheet had become a long, thin dense strip of moonlight, narrowing to a point. It was still malleable, the hot orange color of a setting moon. In a perfect world he would have preferred to reheat it, but Morlock was a realist. He picked up the strip of moonlight and plunged it into a jar of cool water, where its radiance instantly became a brittle wintry blue.

Leaving it there, Morlock drew Tyrfing and stepped out of the Perfect Occlusion. The time was just before dawn. Morlock cut himself a suitable lump of twilight shadow from the hill's silhouette just before the sun rose on the opposite horizon. Quickly hiding the shadow under his cloak to protect it from daylight, Morlock sheathed Tyrfing and dismissed the rapture.

The weight of the world fell across his crooked shoulders. He had been in the visionary state for hours. And the worst of it was, he knew he had many hours to go before he could sleep.

When Morlock lifted his head he saw the listener standing not far away. The darkness, once symmetrical, now seemed to be sending out shoots or pseudopods into the right side of the listener's face. His nose had wholly disappeared, and this (along with the pinched fleshless character of his visible features) gave his face a skull-like appearance—not even a whole skull: a skull drenched in quicklime so that part of it was eaten away. The listener, Morlock guessed, hadn't long to live.

“Didn't you hear me?” the listener's second voice was demanding. He sounded peevish, like a sick weary child.

“No,” Morlock admitted.

“I said that…I'm sorry about last night. The darkness…that is, the voice explained—”

Morlock waved him to silence. “Tell me later,” he said. “I'm busy.” He turned away and walked back to the Perfect Occlusion, bright blue in reflection of the morning sky. Glancing back, he found the listener had followed him.

“What is that?” the listener asked, eyeing the occlusion.

“Part of what I'm doing.”

“Is it…?” the listener said, both eager and anxious, “Is it…another idea?”

“I'll tell you if it works,” Morlock replied sharply.

The listener's less-than-half-face looked hurt. Morlock was angry at the listener for being so oppressively weak, but he was also angry at himself for giving way to his irritation.

“Look,” he said finally, “you seem tired. Why don't you go to sleep?”

The listener nodded slowly, with his skull-like less-than-a-face. He turned away and stumbled wearily up the hill.

Morlock stepped into the Perfect Occlusion, now lit within by brittle blue light. He drew the chunk of twilight from under his cloak and the strip of moonlight from the jar of cool water. He spent the rest of the day sharpening its edge on the lump of shadow.

Just after sunset, Morlock carried two jars of water up to the listener's cave. One was hot—just off the fire, in fact. One was cold, just drawn from the well (with the restored bucket and chain). Under one arm was the wax tablet.

The listener was still sleeping. Morlock put the two jars of water by the listener's pallet and dropped the wax tablet in the hot water to soften it. Then he returned to the Perfect Occlusion.

When he reentered the cave, he held the blade of moonlight in his right hand, the stone in the left. Dropping the stone next to the jars, he lifted the shining insubstantial blade and cut open the listener's chest.

He could hardly see the listener's heart, tangled about as it was with tendrils of invading darkness. The heart is the source or entry point of human tal; it would naturally be the focus of the darkness' attack, but would hold out until the end.

The end was dreadfully near. The listener's insides were rotten with darkness. Morlock clenched his teeth and reached through the tendrils of darkness until his fingers closed on the breathing fist-sized heart. He drew it out between the pale slats of the listener's ribs.

The listener stopped breathing.

Morlock moved with cautious speed. Until now the only danger had been that the listener would wake up. Now it was possible he never would. Morlock literally held the man's life in his hands.

He placed the heart in the jar of cold water. It quickly sank to the bottom, heavy with unshed blood and tal, pulsing futilely like a fish without fins. Water ran over the rim. He drew the wax tablet from the hot water and pressed it over the mouth of the cold jar, sealing the heart inside.

Now he picked up the fist-sized stone and (bending aside the pale ribs) placed it on the heart's dark pedestal.

The listener drew a long shuddering breath.

Morlock carefully folded back the listener's flesh, and it rejoined seamlessly. The filthy robe, too, healed like the second skin it was.

The listener choked out something in his sleep. Morlock couldn't tell what it was. He gathered up the jars and carried them away, along with the shining insubstantial blade.

Morlock was eating flatbread and dried meat, sitting between his fire and the Perfect Occlusion, when the listener came down the hill.

“Good evening,” Morlock said. “How are you?”

“I feel strange,” the listener said, in a rather hollow version of the second voice.

“Would you like some bread and meat?”

The listener shook his head impatiently. “Food is horrible,” he declared, in a slightly tinny version of the imperious first voice. “Flesh is nasty. Life is unclean.”

Morlock was in no position to disagree. He ate some more meat instead.

“Something has changed,” the listener said insistently.

Morlock said nothing. He wasn't ready to tell the truth, and would not lie.

“I'll go ask the voice in the darkness,” said the listener.

“If you do,” Morlock replied, “it will kill you.”

The listener looked at him for a moment, a single eye peering out of a mostly eaten face. He turned away and walked up the hill. Morlock watched him go into the cave and disappear. Then he followed the other, going up the hill and entering the listener's living quarters.

He was alone; the listener had gone on down the pit where the voice whispered in the darkness.

Morlock sat down and waited.

The night passed quickly. Morlock dozed on and off. The listener did not return until just before sunrise.

Morlock heard some scrabbling in the passage at the back of the cave. He looked over and saw the listener's hand clenching and unclenching on the threshold.

Morlock leaped to his feet and ran over. He drew the listener out of the passage and carried him over to the pallet.

Darkness had spread across the listener's face and throat, leaving only one frightened blue eye. His body jerked convulsively; he seemed only to control his right arm. The skin on his other arm was sallow, with poisonously dark veins woven into the slack muscle.

Morlock understood, of course. In fact, he had been expecting this. The darkness had devoured all of the listener's tal…or at least enough of it that he could no longer control his own body, or even make it breathe.

Pity bit Morlock like a snake. He knelt down by the convulsing listener and took his living hand. The listener turned his remaining eye to look at him. But Morlock could say no word of comfort. What was there to say?

The listener screamed. It came out as a mere gasp, since his vocal cords no longer knew how to respond, but Morlock understood. Some moments later, the listener's fingers relaxed in the nervelessness of death. Morlock let them go and the hand fell to the ground with a conclusive thud.

Immediately the darkness began to rise from the listener's corpse. Tendril after tendril lifted, forming a complex drifting cloud in midair. Morlock stood up and watched it warily, prepared to draw Tyrfing if it moved toward him. But it didn't. When the last tendril lifted from the listener's corpse, the whole cloud drifted slowly, almost reluctantly, into the passage leading to the pit. It merged with the mundane darkness there and disappeared.

Morlock nodded. Without its anchor in the listener's psyche the darkness was dragged back to its trap under the hill.

He reached down and picked up the withered corpse, as light as a straw man or a rag doll. He carried it out of the cave and down the hill, laying it beside the Perfect Occlusion in which were hidden the moonlight blade and the dead man's heart.

Then he took a mallet out of his pack and returned to the cave.

The passageway down to the pit was easy to destroy. It had been built; its maker had deliberately balanced stress with counterstress. Morlock simply had to unbalance them.

Unpleasant work (he hated wrecking things), but nothing compared to what he had already done. The dwarvish maker who had made this passage and the demon-trap at the bottom of yonder pit had undoubtedly been a genius. But also a fool: if he had only had the presence of mind to perform this selfsame act, his own life and that of countless others would have been bettered, if not saved.

“Better late than never,” observed Morlock, who was fond of a proverb. He shattered the keystone of the last arch and it collapsed in ruin.

When the last sunlight had faded from the sky, Morlock brought out the sealed jar and the moonlight blade. He opened up the corpse's chest with the shining insubstantial blade, then laid the instrument aside. He reached under the dry slats of the ribs and pulled out the fist-sized stone.

Breaking the seal on the jar, Morlock reached in and drew forth the live struggling heart. He forced it under the ribs and watched as it wriggled into its accustomed place.

The corpse gurgled and convulsed. Morlock held it down as he carefully folded back the severed flesh. It rejoined seamlessly, and the dirty robe likewise, like a second skin. Morlock let the corpse go and stood back as it gurgled and convulsed its way into life.

In time the body stopped writhing and lay still, breathing heavily as it stared up into the night sky. Presently he lifted his head and looked over at Morlock.

“What's your name?” Morlock asked. It was something he'd long wondered.

“Trannon,” the other replied in a light tenor, very unlike either the first or the second voice.

“Trannon, I am Morlock Ambrosius.”

They greeted each other solemnly.

“I am headed east from here,” Morlock said after telling Trannon the whole story for the third time. “The nearest town, though, is Heath Harbor, somewhat north of here. I can take you there—”

Trannon refused. “I know Heath Harbor well. I can reach there easily enough, if that's what I decide to do.”

Morlock pondered this comment as he finished folding up the disestablished Perfect Occlusion. When he had packed it away and tied the water bottles to his pack, he turned back to Trannon.

“What do you intend to do?” he asked bluntly.

Trannon looked thoughtful—at least, as thoughtful as he could. (Except for the reddish brown gouges on the left side of his face, the experience had left him looking rather unmarked and ingenuous.) “Perhaps I'll stay,” he said. “I can serve to warn people away from this spot—” He stopped short when he saw the expression on Morlock's face.

“That seems to me to be habit speaking,” Morlock said carefully. “If there's one thing you must do, it's get away from here. Travellers don't pass by twice in a generation, and there is no danger of one stumbling across the darkness by accident; that passage is closed.”

“Still—suppose—”

Morlock shook his head. “The decision is yours to make, but consider: if there is danger for anyone in this place, there is double for you. No, I will not debate this. The decision is yours.”

Trannon nodded solemnly and said nothing.

Morlock gave him a few blocks of dried meat and flatbread, over Trannon's protests. “You can't get to your mushrooms now,” he pointed out, “and you won't find game very plentiful unless you go further north.” He also gave Trannon the moonlight blade. “I don't know if it will be any use to you, but it is well made and will last for some time, if you keep it out of sunlight and firelight. If nothing else, you can sell it in Heath Harbor.”