He lay atop her, gasping out words of love and worship, and the world wasn’t silent anymore.
He heard his beloved’s voice as if from far away, through the golden fog of carnal ecstasy: “Well. That wasn’t so bad. How soon can you go again?”
It was a long night, and yet too short.
In morning’s blank, ugly light her beauty was still sacred, transcendent, superbly practical. She set about the tasks of the morning as if they had sex every night.
As the others were still disestablishing the occlusion over their shelter, and somewhat out of earshot, he said to her, “If—”
She said, “I’ll tell you when I’m done with you.”
And that was what he had to hold onto that day. She was not done with him. She had never, in the course of the entire night, said that she loved him. And of course, love had little to do with her choice of a life-mate. And would a demimortal like her condescend to be the life-mate of a wholly mortal man whose life was so much shorter than hers?
The worst possible way to look at it was this: she was mating with him because, nosed or noseless, he was the only eligible man for thousands of miles. This was all the more possible, since he’d heard her remark to Morlock something about “my brother, a dwarf, and a meat-puppet that looks like a werewolf.” Kelat wasn’t any of these things; hence, last night—and tonight, possibly, and perhaps an indefinite number of nights. Then nothing, when she had a longer list to choose from.
It was worth it, he decided. He’d have given up a thousand noses to have what he had with her now, however long it lasted.
The random assignments of shelter mates continued. When Kelat and Ambrosia had a shelter to themselves, they coupled like murkles in heat. Otherwise, they were companions on the road, no different than the others. Kelat assumed that the others knew, but nevertheless no one ever referred to it, giving the affair a pleasing quality of sneakiness and privacy.
One day, Kelat was concerning himself with numbers (the bites of food left in his disturbingly light pack; the odds that he and Ambrosia would pair off tonight), when he saw a piece of ice falling from the sky.
The weather had been as monotonous as the road north: clear and cold. He wondered if this was the first blast of an ice storm . . . but the sky was cloudless; the silver sun glittered on the ice, almost an arch, or a. . . . There were scales or something on the arch. . . .
Liyurriu snarled and ran forward, but it was too late: the gigantic ice-dragon’s tail slammed down and trapped the Ambrosii and Deor beneath it.
The werewolf ran on. Kelat threw off his pack and ran after him, drawing his spear as he went.
The ice dragon’s gigantic wolflike head slithered into view. It was almost impossible to see its glassy outlines against the white snow. But Kelat could see hollow fangs that dripped with something like venom. . . .
Liyurriu had closed with the dragon’s head and seemed to fly up into the air. Then Kelat realized the werewolf was climbing something—some feathering, or icy plates on the side of the serpentine head.
He kicked off his snowshoes and leaped for the same—hoping it was there rather than actually seeing it. He landed a foot or two off the ground, sliding across a piece of nearly invisible ice, leaving scars from his cleated boots. He jumped at the next feather, and the next, until he was beside Liyurriu in the back of the thing’s gleaming, surprisingly narrow neck.
It was ware of them, and the head began to twist around. That was good because it was turning away from their companions, still trapped under the tail. It was also bad because they nearly fell off. Liyurriu and Kelat both grabbed for the nearest dorsal plate and managed to hang on.
The werewolf put his misshapen jaws to the back of the glassy neck and gnawed at it.
Kelat saw his purpose. Break through the scaly skin—sever the spine. If it was like dragons of a more familiar kind, that might kill it.
A jet of translucent shining ichor sprayed out of the dragon. Liyurriu tried to dodge aside but could not. The jet fell across his foreleg and it shattered like glass. Liyurriu fell silently away, and the task was left to Kelat.
He could see no other method than Liyurriu’s, nor did he expect any different fate than Liyurriu’s. That didn’t bother him. It was wonderful, after a lifetime of being a spare part that no one would ever want, to know his purpose in life: he was born to love Ambrosia, and to die defending her.
What did worry him was the thought that he might fail. He must not fail.
He stabbed with his spear deep into the ice-dragon’s neck, dancing away from the jet of freezing ichor and steam that sprayed out. Then he did it again and again. The jets were smaller, easier to avoid, flowing through the several holes he had made. He cut a channel between them, and the deadly muck flowed away thickly down the side of the beast.
There was a strange weightless sensation, as if he were flying. Then he saw that he was: the dragon’s head was in midair. The beast was lifting itself up, perhaps to crash its head down and shake him loose. If so, he had moments, perhaps only a moment.
He stabbed into the glassy trench he had made, as near the center of the neck as he could tell, as deep as he could drive the spear’s blade. And he struck! He struck something.
His hands, drenched in ichor, were numb and void of feeling. But they still gripped the shaft of his spear. He drew it out and stabbed again and again and again. The dragon’s head struck the snowy ground and the shock threw him off it.
He tried to get to his feet, but his body would not respond. He saw that the spear-shaft in his hand was broken a handsbreadth below where his hands still gripped it.
He craned his neck to look at the ice-dragon. It was lying near at hand in a steaming pool of its own glassy ichor. Its eyes were open, filled with rainbows in the sun’s pale light. But it wasn’t moving. He guessed it was dead.
Ambrosia came running up to him.
“You stupid son-of-a-whore!” she screamed. “I’ll kill your stupid, noseless face!”
That was when he knew that she loved him. It was terrible to lose her, and the world that was suddenly his, in that moment. But the knowledge was something he could carry with him into the darkness, and he hugged it close to him as his awareness ebbed away.
When Morlock dragged himself out from beneath the dead ice-dragon, he heard Ambrosia screaming and got up to run toward her. But he was stopped by the sight of Liyurriu’s body, shattered like a clay figurine, past all repairing.
Its eyes were open, though, and they were on Morlock.
“Shall I sever your life?” he asked, drawing his deadly dark sword.
“You forget,” said a voice, speaking flawless Wardic through Liyurriu’s unmoving jaws, “that this body is not truly alive. It will be no more use to you and yours, Ambrosius, and I plan to abandon it.”
“Then.”
“Good luck at the end of the world, Ambrosius. I will know you if we meet again. But you won’t know me.” The voice laughed a little through the werewolf’s deformed, unmoving jaws. Then the wolvish eyes closed and Liyurriu was silent forever.
Morlock looked about and saw that Deor was already with Ambrosia by Kelat’s fallen body. He strode over and said, “Dead?”
“No,” Ambrosia said tonelessly. The focus-jewel hanging from her neck was glowing, as were her closed eyes. “Help me.”
Kelat’s hands and forearms were bone-white with frost, as was his left leg. There was no doubt what help Ambrosia wanted: she must be concentrating the heat in his body on those frozen areas, thawing them out before they died.