“Hm.”
“Yes, yes, I see what you mean, I suppose. But it’s a way to wield power among the Vraids in a way that they understand.”
“Is that important?”
“Not if the world ends, Morlock. If the world doesn’t end, then yes, it is important. When I was a girl, growing up in that horrible little house in the woods with Merlin, I swore I’d visit every place in the world and conquer the places that seemed interesting. The Vraids will do the conquering part if I play the game right. And I usually do.”
“I know.”
Ambrosia laughed and put a hand on his arm. “I suppose I wouldn’t find you so irritating if your opinion wasn’t so important to me.”
Morlock’s opinion was that world conquest was a sad waste of talents as extraordinary as Ambrosia’s, but he had never told her that and never would. Something about her upbringing had scarred her, shaped her, focused her on this quest for power. It wasn’t for Morlock to reshape her. That wasn’t his kind of making.
Before them was the dark, river-scarred, densely forested northern plain. He gestured at it and said, “What’s our route north, you think?”
“We should avoid the twin cities, Aflraun and Narkunden,” Ambrosia said. “I recommend a detour to the west. In time we’ll come upon the Bay of Bitter Water. If it’s navigable, maybe we can travel by water for a while.”
Morlock grunted with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
“You can build a boat, I suppose? With Deor’s help?”
“Yes. But I would prefer not to.”
Ambrosia laughed politely at this. Then she remembered something—possibly their arrival at Grarby. “Hm,” she said thoughtfully. “Hm. Well, even so, it might be safer than land. The plains near the werewolf city are dangerous indeed, and they’ll be getting hungry, too.”
Morlock thought about the deep, cold waves of the Bitter Water and felt a certain chill that did not come from the frosty air.
They talked for a while longer of the road ahead and then returned to the campsite to turn in.
Day followed night, and then more days and nights. They walked and walked. They gave Narkunden a wide berth, following Ambrosia’s advice. The sun was a pale, white disc that a man might look at without any particular pain. The weather grew colder, a wintry sort of summer.
As they walked north, they met many animals fleeing south: white foxes and wolves, rabbits and preems, birds of every kind. And there were bears, deadly white bears mad with fear or hunger, killing recklessly among the other animals and perfectly willing to eat the four travelers.
Kelat killed one bear that charged them. They stopped to butcher it and skin it: they might need the meat or the fur on the long road ahead. Afterward they tried to fend the beasts off without killing them, but both Ambrosia and Deor had bear blood on their hands before another call passed.
Many of the days went by without incident that Morlock would afterward recall, but then came a day when they ran into creatures more dangerous than a bear.
Dawn came that day behind a dense curtain of cloud, and they kept the fire alive until the very moment they had to break camp. They walked slowly, picking a careful path across the trackless plain: the day could not have been darker without being night. The wind was bitter, but they would have to grow used to it, and worse yet.
“Is the sun dying at last?” Kelat asked.
Morlock shrugged, and no one else even did that. There was no way to answer this.
“We have been passing that tree for half an hour,” Deor remarked presently.
That was different. All four travelers stopped and looked closely at the tree, black against the blue gloaming.
“I don’t think it’s a dryad-beast stalking us,” Ambrosia observed presently.
“What’s that?” Deor snapped. “And why not?”
“Dryad-beasts hide in a cocoon that looks like a tree and prey on passersby,” Ambrosia said.
“Canyon keep them. Why are you sure it’s not one?”
“I’m not sure. But my insight doesn’t sense the talic imprint of an animal. It’s more like. . . . What would you say, Morlock?”
“A god.”
“Hell and damnation!”
“Possibly. I remember . . . I remember something like this in Kaen. It was an avatar of their god of death.”
A female figure wrapped in darkness stepped out from the open air. She carried a long, bright sword in her right hand.
Morlock drew Tyrfing.
“Are you crazy?” hissed Ambrosia.
“I am Morlock Ambrosius,” said the crooked man. “I will not die without a struggle, even if a god of death has come for me.”
“Very noble. But we might try talking first.”
“She has not come to talk.”
The deathgod stepped closer. Her face was not easy to look at, but her scar-like mouth seemed to twist in a smile.
Then a new door opened in the air and another god stepped out. This figure also seemed female. Her garb was bright where Death’s was dark. Her body seemed dark where Death’s was pale. Her smile was equally grim, and she carried an equally bright sword in her left hand.
She held up her right hand and a mouth appeared in the dark palm.
“Stand back, sister,” said the pale mouth in the dark hand. Morlock did not hear the words with his ears; they stabbed through him. He saw the others bending over in agony around him.
Death held up her pale left hand. A mouth manifested there. Its dark lips replied, “Justice, there is a time for all things to end. This is that time. It is my time.”
“All times are mine,” Justice replied. “Your power overmatches theirs, and this offends me.”
“Justice, my beloved sister, you are among the weakest of all the Strange Gods, as I am the strongest. Do you think you can stand against me?”
“Yes.”
“Then prepare yourself. But these mortals will die from witnessing our battle just as surely as they would from my blade. Look how they cower when we signify to each other!”
“I am not alone,” Justice signified.
Morlock strove to stand straight when he understood Death’s remark about cowering. As he did, he saw that the barren field had sprouted a shadowy crop of gods.
A door opened in the air and Morlock fell through it. He fell to ground on a narrow paved street, and Tyrfing clattered on the stones beside him.
“Are you all right?” he heard a voice saying.
Morlock looked up to see a balding, ruddy-faced stranger standing over him. Beyond him was a graystone building, rather out of place in a street full of dark wooden houses. The stranger was standing in the open door of the building, above which was a symbol of a counterweight stone on a pair of empty scales.
Morlock thought about the stranger’s question and said, “Yes.”
“A man of few words? All right. Here.” The stranger offered him a hand to get up, but Morlock was already rising, Tyrfing in his right hand.
Morlock looked around. “Where am I?”
“Narkunden,” said the stranger. “Never been here? You haven’t missed much. They’re talking about abandoning the town if the next winter is as bad as the last one.”
Morlock grunted. “Think it will be?” he asked.
“It’ll be worse. I’d bet a nickel on it, which is as much as I ever bet on anything. But they won’t abandon the town.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not like things are better down south. If the sun is dying. . . . Some things you can’t fix by running away from them.”
“How do you fix them?”
“Um. Let me rephrase. Some things can’t be fixed.”
Morlock grunted again. “Is there a bar or a wineshop nearby? I need a drink.”
“No one needs a drink, unless they’re a drunk. Are you a drunk?”
Morlock shrugged. “If I were, would I admit it?”
“You might. Drunks come in all the types of people there are: proud, ashamed, defiant, apologetic, you name it. But I’m not inclined to help a drunk find another drink. There’s some of it in my family. You understand.”