Blood Of Ambrose Part 35

Velox, without prompting, trotted westward into the Dead Hills. The King shook his reins and persuaded Trann to follow.

It was late, but the living city was alive with light. The long war between the King and the Protector was over, and the people were celebrating the victory of the side they had secretly favored. Earlier in the day a disturbing rumor had pa.s.sed through the city: that in a last attempt to gain the victory, the Protector's forces had kidnapped the young King and taken him to the dead city. Nearly spontaneous riots burst out against anyone showing the Protector's colors or known to be a supporter of the Protector.

Then word came that the King had been rescued by his terrible minister, the Crooked Man, who had gone to the dead city and slain the Protector in single combat, just as he had slain the Red Knight years ago. The regent dispatched a body of troops to bring the King and the other one, the dark man, safely home.

Now there was feasting and merrymaking throughout the city, but especially on Castle Street, the broad way that led from the Great Market to the City Gate of Ambrose. Here the King would surely pa.s.s on his way back to Ambrose, and the people of the city crowded along it to see him.

The regent, Ambrosia Viviana, watched the royal progress from the wall above the portcullis of Ambrose's outer City Gate. There were soldiers along either side of the road, but the truth was that they didn't have enough soldiers to line the street. Citizens thronged the road in front of the King. But they gave way before him.

"Have they got a couple of soldiers pus.h.i.+ng people out of the way?" she asked Wyrth, who was standing beside her. "I hope not. This is Lathmar's chance to make a good impression on the people; it's worth a little delay."

"Eh, madam, I see none of that," the dwarf answered. "The people seem to be falling back of their own will."

They waited, Ambrosia wearing a face of ceremonial calm, Wyrth fidgeting.

Then the dwarf laughed. "Do you see it, madam?"

"Not very clearly," admitted the terrible old lady.

"The crowd surges forward; they want to see the King, to touch him perhaps. Do the people still believe that the King's touch will cure illness?"

"Some people will believe anything."

"Anyhow, they surge forward; they stop; they give way. Here: one is almost to the King; she looks beyond him and steps back. Morlock is there, with Tyrfing drawn, glaring at all who come near. G.o.d Sustainer-he's hurt."

"Who? Lathmar?"

"No, no-he seems well. You might think he'd be tired of cheers by now, but he's waving his hand and drinking it all in. It's Morlock-he's pale as a ghost, and there's a dark place on his shoulder-bloodstain, I think."

"Neck wound, maybe. They can be ugly. You brought the healing gear?"

"It's below in the guardhouse; the vocates are there. They all know leechcraft-better than I do, anyway."

They didn't speak. The heart of the cheering crowd grew nearer. Ambrosia could see Lathmar clearly now. He wore nothing but a torn brown soldier's tunic, but he had a kind of majesty about him. She was surprised at how grown-up he looked. There were tears in his eyes, tears running down his face, but he held his head like a man. Perhaps he could indeed rule, and not just reign, but she doubted it.

Wyrth was clearly right about Morlock. It was fear of the Crooked Man that kept the crowd at bay, but Ambrosia didn't see as they did. She looked at his pale face and dark-ringed staring eyes and thought, "Blood loss." She saw the sword wavering in his hands, his unsteadiness in the saddle, and she knew he was not far from collapse. Her brother was wounded, and this silly parade had delayed his healing.

The King finally reached the City Gate of Ambrose.

"Friend or foe?" she cried, giving the formal challenge.

"Your King returns. Open the gate!" cried Lathmar, obviously enjoying himself. The crowd thought it a good line as well, roaring its approval.

The soldiers on the gate began to raise the portcullis without waiting for Ambrosia's signal. The King rode forward and the crowd would gladly have followed, but Morlock wheeled his horse around and extended the cursed blade Tyrfing. Chastened, they fell back. Without evident command, Velox backed, step by step, over the threshold of the gate.

"Drop the portcullis when he's through," Ambrosia told the gate captain, and plunged down the stairwell.

She met Lathmar on the stairs. "Well met, Lathmar," she said, kissing his forehead. "I didn't hope to see you again. You'd better talk to the crowd."

"What should I say?" asked Lathmar, becoming less kinglike in the regent's presence, as usual.

"Tell them a bedtime story. Tell them to get home. Get out of my d.a.m.n way." She hurried past him.

The King's horse (old Trann, it looked like) was standing nervously in the stairwell entrance. As Ambrosia pushed him out of the way, Morlock half dismounted, half fell from Velox's saddle. Wyrth dragged him toward the guardhouse, and Ambrosia ran up to a.s.sist him, careful not to touch Morlock's wounded shoulder.

"You stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h," she hissed in his face. "I'm getting sick of this. You go off to dance on the edge of chaos and we get to pick up the pieces as usual. Next time you'll listen to me or you can f.u.c.king rot. G.o.d Avenger destroy you, I hate your f.u.c.king guts!"

He kissed her tearstained cheek, and his eyes closed. The Guardians took him then and laid him on a table. Baran took shears and cut his bloodstiffened clothes away; Aloe took needle and thread and sewed up the tear in his flesh. Jordel anointed him with drugs to help him sleep, to heal his flesh, to restore his blood.

From outside they sometimes heard the King speaking to the crowd, sometimes heard the crowd roaring in response.

"I think he'll be all right, madam," Wyrth said finally to Ambrosia, who had sat silently weeping as the Guardians worked on Morlock.

"Who cares if he is?" Ambrosia said harshly. "We'd all be better off if he died now. Less to worry about."

"He'll outlive us all, madam."

"I hope so," she said dully. "I mean, I suppose so." After a pause, she continued in the same lifeless voice, "It's just that he's all I have left. Uthar is dead, and my mother is probably dead, and my father is lost to me-worse than if he were dead. People are born and grow old and die, century after century, and the new faces can never mean to me what the old ones did. And Morlock is the last, and maybe he was always the most important. Even more important than Uthar. Don't tell anyone, will you?" she said with a shaky smile.

"Your secret is safe with me, madam," the dwarf a.s.sured her solemnly.

The Guardians had taken Morlock to his room, and Wyrth had gone with them to watch over his master while he slept. Ambrosia was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with her arms crossed.

"Well," she asked, "what did you tell them?"

Lathmar looked her in the eye. "The truth."

Ambrosia grunted. "Be more specific."

"I told them the Protector was an agent of a sorcerer in the dead city. I told them the battle was not over yet. I told them how to recognize a corpsegolem and some things to do about them. I told them to beware of Companions of Mercy. I told them to burn their dead."

Ambrosia sighed. "All well said. If it had been said around the time you were born it might have done some good."

The King shrugged. "I was wondering," he said after a moment, "if he might not have a better claim than I do."

"Why?"

"He says he's your grandson."

"So are-Wait, you mean my actual grandson, the son of my son or daughter?"

"As I understood him, yes. He seems to be horribly old, rotting away. I mean-" he said, suddenly worried she might be offended.

She held up her hand. "You'd better tell me the whole story. Have you eaten or drunk?"

Lathmar suddenly felt faint. "Not since last night-it was-you wouldn't-"

"Never mind. Let's. .h.i.t the kitchens; you can tell your tale between bites."

That was what they did. But early on in the tale she called for Erl and sent him off in search of Steng. It was clear he could tell them more if he would.

Erl looked for Steng most of that night. The poisoner had fled from the Markethall Barracks that morning during the general uprising against the Protector's people. Toward morning, Wyrth Joined Erl with a drawing of the poisoner and they searched together through the slums of the city.

It was nearing dawn when they found a landlady who said she had rented a room yesterday afternoon to someone who looked like the man in Wyrth's picture.

"And now I've a question for you," she screamed after them as they ran up the stairs of her house. "Do you know what time it is?"

They went to the room the woman had described and kicked in the door. It was too late: Steng was dead.

Extremely dead.

The battle-scarred Erl hissed and drew back, his throat clenching with disgust. But Wyrth moved forward, drawn by technical interest. Steng had apparently hung some sort of weighted device from the ceiling. It was a pair of knives that rotated laterally. He had released it and stood in its path. Wyrth recognized the nose, a few ropy fingers, the hair. But Steng was now a b.l.o.o.d.y ruin.

"Why?" Erl gasped.

Wyrth thought he knew but said nothing. Time enough to ruin Erl's day later on-to tell him that there was indeed a fate worse than the death Steng had chosen.

There was a note.

He says he's done with me-that I'm no use to him now. He'll eat me or cut me up and make me a golem. I won't let him. There was no address or signature.

"What does it mean?" Erl asked.

"Nothing good," said Wyrth. "We'd better get this back to Ambrose." They ran back down the stairs, pausing only to drop some gold in the outstretched palms of Steng's screaming landlady.

"Did you say something?" Erl called to Wyrth as they were riding through the Great Market.

Wyrth, too occupied in staying atop his horse to attempt a witticism, replied briefly, "No."

"I thought I heard somebody saying something."

Wyrth thought the same, but he didn't say so.

Later they learned it had started even then.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

THE DYING CITY.

e quiet, can't you?" Morlock muttered. "Trying to sleep."

"You've been sleeping for three days. Aren't you hungry? Aren't you thirsty?"

"Not for that."

"What are you referring to?"

"If-" Morlock sat up in bed and looked around. Wyrth was sitting at the right side of his bed in a circle of lamplight, a book open in his lap.

"I dreamed the adept was talking to me," muttered Morlock.

"It wasn't just a dream," Wyrth replied. "Anyway, we've all been hearing voices, awake or asleep."

"Thousands of them. But somehow all the same voice."

"Yes. Inglonor and the ones he has eaten."

"Inglonor. How did you learn his name?"

"It's a guess. He told Lathmar that he was Ambrosia's grandson, and of course that narrowed it down a bit."

"Hm. It wasn't like a dream, though-it was as if he was actually here, speaking to me."

"Well-where?"

Morlock gestured to the other side of the bed. Wyrth held up the lamp.

And there was somebody there, crouched down in the shadows. Wyrth put down the lamp and jumped across the bed, catching the other as it tried to flee.

The other laughed as Wyrth caught it by the shoulders. "I'll come for you all, soon," it said, and reaching up to grab its own throat, neatly broke its own neck. Wyrth let it go and it fell to the floor.

"Another for the corpse-fire in the gardens," he remarked.

Morlock was getting out of bed.

"Hey," said Wyrth.

"As it happens, I am hungry, and thirsty too. And it looks as if you have much to tell me."

"That's true enough," Wyrth conceded. He rang for the hall attendant while Morlock dressed.

"Treb," he said, when the attendant appeared, "it's another one of those." He gestured at the dead body.

"Sure it's dead?" said Treb.

"It broke its own neck."

"I've seen that trick before. Pretends to kill itself, and when you're not looking its sneaking off." Treb drew a long knife and pa.s.sed it through the corpse's heart and neck. "Now it's dead." He deftly wrapped a cloth around the wounded neck to absorb the trickle of blood.

Wyrth nodded solemnly. "Better safe than sorry."