"Make things."
"Oh?" Iacomes looked him over, noticing the wooden glove on his left hand. "That from a work injury or something? Excuse my mentioning it if it's too painful."
"I seem to be changing into a ghost."
"Really?" lacomes was fully engaged in the conversation for the first time. "Can I see?"
Morlock undid the bolts that fastened the wooden sheath to his arm.
"It looks like those anchors are driven into bone," lacomes observed, watching him. "Didn't that hurt?"
"No. Unfortunately not."
"Unfortunately?"
"It's the illness. First the nerves ache, and then they seem to die and feel nothing, and then the flesh becomes ghostly. Now my arm has no feeling up to the shoulder."
"Hm."
Morlock pulled the sheath off and his hand lay exposed: vaporous, drifting, ghostlike.
"Does it hurt?" lacomes asked. "After it becomes ghostly, I mean."
"There is a kind of pain, but it's not physical. I can't explain."
"Hm. I hope I never understand fully, to tell you the truth. Can you move things with it?"
"Leaves. Feathers. Bits of paper. Nothing much heavier."
"Can you reach through things with it?"
"Not glass, or metal, or stone. If it was alive, or is alive, my fingers seem to be able to sink into it some distance. But there is pain for the other, I believe."
"I'll take your word on that," lacomes said hastily. "Hm," he added more thoughtfully, as Morlock pulled the wooden glove back over his ghostly hand. "This all reminds me of something. But what, exactly?"
"You know something about the ghost illness?" Morlock asked, pausing briefly as he rebolted the wooden glove onto his arm.
"Well, I read something about it once, and that's not the same thing at all. Where is that thing? Hey, Rogerius."
What appeared to be a brass head lifted itself up from among a tumble of gray stones. It was suspended in midair by nothing more obvious than its own intention.
"I asked you not to call me that," the brass head said, looking at lacomes with discontented crystal eyes.
"Did you notice when I ignored you? No? Oh, well. Rogerius, I want you to find something for me."
"I am busy at my visualization. I remind you that if I do not finish my visualization, you will not finish your project."
"I want you to find something for me," lacomes repeated patiently. "I read something once-"
"I sense an indefinite but fairly large number of documents-"
11 -about illness. That should narrow it down."
"Still indefinitely large."
"Oh, come on. I'm not a hypochondriac."
"Do you include emotional disturbances in your definition of illness?"
"Depends. Doesn't it? Everyone who has emotions has them disturbed sometimes. But some people are more disturbed than others."
"The number is still indefinitely large."
"All right. The document I am thinking of described an illness that had something to do with ghosts."
"If we include emotional disorders, the number of relevant documents is still very large. Would you like an estimate or a count?"
"Neither," lacomes said hastily. "How many if emotional disorders are excluded?"
"Is that wise? The intruder-whose name you have not asked but whom I have of course identified-is subject to a number of emotional disorders."
"Who isn't?"
"I am not."
"Assuming that's true (which it's not), so what? Who wants to be a disembodied brass head?"
"I do."
"Very well, I grant your wish: you are a disembodied brass head. Don't say I never did anything for you. Now exclude emotional disorders and give me a count."
"Seven thousand and forty-two."
"Hm. That's a lot."
"Ghosts cause illness. It's a scientific fact."
"Aha. Exclude ghost as cause. What then?"
"There is a much smaller number of relevant documents."
"How many?"
"Five."
"How many are in this room? I seem to remember reading it in here. Or in the third-floor tower. Or in the kitchen. How many are in the house, here?"
"Three."
"Bring them to me, eh?"
The brass head floated about the dim room, gathering dusty pieces of parchment in its teeth. It dropped them on the desk near lacomes and floated back to its nest among the tumble of stones.
"Thanks, Rogerius," said lacomes absently. "Well, this one is no good. It's Vespasian's dying joke-you know, `I think I'm becoming a god.' I can't think why he brought it to me. Though there is some overlap between `god' and `ghost,' I suppose, especially in Latin. And this is just a recipe for giving the morally ill the ability to see ghosts. I have no idea what use that would be, though I suppose in the right hands some use could be made of it. No, it's this that I was thinking of. see?"
He offered the parchment fragment to Morlock, who took it with his right hand. It was a set of instructions for making a mirror out of a unicorn's horn. The page was torn, probably from a scroll, but the mirror clearly had something to do with ghost illness (morbus lemuralis)-whether as cure or cause was not clear. There was a fragmentary notation along one torn edge of the page. It seemed to say lumina umbrosa. He pointed it out to lacomes.
"Yes, I couldn't make anything of that. `Lights full of shadow.' Makes no sense."
"But lumina can also mean `eyes' and an umbra can also be a ghost."
"Hm. `Eyes full of ghosts,' then. `Ghosts-in-the-eyes.' Ulugarriu!"
"Yes." Morlock nodded. "This will be useful to me. What do you want for it?"
"I don't have time to haggle right now. Why don't you just take it, and if I think of any little thing I can use-"
"You will not trick me into accepting an open-ended bargain."
"Well, it was worth a try. What have you got?"
They bargained keenly for a time, and in the end lacomes accepted three gold coins and a glass dagger for the parchment. "Though I don't know what I can do with a glass dagger," he said in the end.
"Take it, leave it, or bargain some more."
"No, I have this big job due and I've wasted too much time here already. We're even. Have a good day, and please don't call again."
"You're the worst salesman in the world, Iacomes," Morlock said, with a grudging admiration.
"Thank you, thank you. Praise from a master is indeed gratifying. Please pull the door completely shut as you go. Thanks. Thanks. Good luck, Morlock.
Morlock was back on the dim street, wending back toward the Shadow Market, before he realized something. He had never given his name to lacomes.
He turned back and tried to find lacomes' shop, but he lost his way in the twisting streets and finally had to give up. Hrutnefdhu met him as he was coming back to the border of the Shadow Market.
"What in ghost's name were you doing in there?" the pale werewolf gasped, who seemed especially pale for some reason.
"That's my business," Morlock replied curtly. He liked Hrutnefdhu, but he didn't like it when anyone tried to limit his movements.
"It's dangerous, that's all," Hrutnefdhu said apologetically. "The streets shift. They say nothing is ever in the same place twice. All sorts of weird entities come and go."
"Hm." There was something in this, but Morlock didn't want to talk about it. He was feeling a little odd, as if he was on the verge of the trembling madness that comes with a long bout of drinking.
"My friend Liuunurriu doesn't know anything about ghost sickness," Hrutnefdhu continued, "but he does know someone who might. He'll be back at twilight."
By now they were in the Shadow Market. The sun was high enough that misty golden light was falling on some of the black-and-white paving blocks. The place was almost empty of vendors: bright light and their shady callings did not mix, it seemed.
"I can come back, then," Hrutnefdhu said, when Morlock didn't answer.
"Thank you," said Morlock, whose body and soul were aching for a drink. "I may not be able to join you."
Chapter Twenty-three: War in the Air
It was another dark night. The sky above was stormy, split sometimes by lightning, but even above the clouds there was no moon tonight. Horseman had set just after sunset, and it would be seven days before Trumpeter rose.