Morlock signalled his indifference: the talic equivalent of a shrug.
Merlin struck, a lightning-branch of terror leaping out to infect Morlock's talic limbs.
Morlock banished it with Tyrfing and riposted with a triple-fanged stab of guilt-shame-weariness.
Merlin absorbed it with his diamond-shaped focus and remarked pleasantly, So much for old favorites. See how you like this!
But that was the end of it.
They had forgotten they were not alone.
They had forgotten because Nimue was spread thin through the world, like a three-cornered spiderweb.
But the tal-world is nearer the spirit-world, where distances matter not at all, and Nimue's physical division did not diminish her talic power.
The three-cornered spiderweb that was Nimue's fetch radiated sudden refusal.
Stop this, she said, and Merlin's attack died aborning.
It might have been the time for Morlock to strike a final, perhaps a fatal blow, but he didn't want to draw her anger on himself. He dismissed his vision and fell back into the chaos of matter and energy that those-who-donot-know call the real world.
He was lying on the ground in the forest, Tyrfing still gripped in his hand. Merlin's fetch had vanished and Morlock's body was free to move as he willed.
"Thanks, Mother," he rasped out when he could speak.
She didn't answer that he could tell.
He struggled to his feet and, sheathing his sword, headed through the woods westward.
Due west was the talic zone of danger he had avoided while travelling eastward. Now he hoped that whatever was projecting it would provide some cover from the malefic necromancer he knew at last for his enemy.
VII
INTERLUDE: BOOK OF WITNESS
OH, TO BEHOLD THY FEATURES IN THY BOOK! THY PROPER HEAD AND SHOULDERS IN A PLATE, HOW IT WOULD LOOK!
Every clutch of fosterlings, every phalanx of Virgin Sisters, every warrior-pod, every coven of seers and stand of elders had a copy of the book of Witness, and read this part of the tale from it in the season of Motherdeath. But this was the book itself, its leather cover cracked and often repaired, many of its pages inscribed by a pen held in a man's awkward stiff fingers. There were no harmony marks; it was traditional to read the words as written: flat, monovocal, with a single mouth. Some wore a dark-skinned man-mask for the purpose, but Gathenavalona, young Dhyrvalona's nurse, thought that was stupid.
She did think it was important for her charge to see the book itself, not a copy-and to hear it. The book had come into the horde's possession on the night of Motherdeath, and Roble's part of the story was already written within it in his own handwriting. After Motherdeath, when the seers were seeking to understand the catastrophe that had befallen them, they sought out other witnesses to the terrible events, speaking to them in dreams and recording their dream-voices in magic letters that could speak again, when called upon in the proper manner.
Marh Valone was the keeper of the book, and Gathenavalona stood now in his pavilion holding the book in her palp-clusters.
"I thank you again, Marh of Marhs!" she said gratefully. "This is a trust; I feel it deeply. I will return the book unscathed or die."
The horde-leader's pyramidal head inclined politely to acknowledge her courtesy. "Take it; keep it. Why should she-who-will-be-Valona not know of these things? Some of the elders disapprove, but I see no wrongness in it. Still, Gathenavalona-"
"Yes?" She paused fearfully in the act of backing out of his presence. She was not afraid of him physically: she was perhaps twice his size. She did fear what he might say to her, what sooner or later he must say to her.
He said it. "Old Valona is sterile. Her eggs have no life in them. Since the last implanting, some of the victims have died, some are sick, but there has been no new life. The tribe has no mother. There must be an anointing."
"Please, may it wait?" she begged, jangling the words disharmoniously from all her mouths. "I promised to tell her the tale of Motherdeath, the whole tale. Only a few more days-"
"Gathenavalona, Gathenavalona. Do you know what the last Marh Valone told me, on the night before I slew him and took his name?"
"Many things, I guess."
"So many, so many. But one thing he said was, `Gathenavalona will always want more time."'
"After her second birth, I fed her with my own blood," Gathenavalona said to the implacable Marh Valone. "I taught her to hunt; I kept her safe through all the days and night."
"Of course you did," said Marh Valone. "That is what Gathenavalona is for. Now the time is come for an anointing. That is what Dhyrvalona is for."
Gathenavalona closed all of her eyes, and opened them. She gestured submission, defeat.
Wordlessly the Marh stepped forward. He bent her arms until they gestured weary triumph. "That is the way," he said. It is not a time for grieving. Your task is fulfilled and you may rest for a time."
"I will still grieve."
"As you like." His harmonies indicated sympathy, implacability.
"When?" she asked.
"Soon. Prepare yourself. I suggest you say nothing to her."
"Of course." What could she say?
She backed out of the Math's presence.
Dhyrvalona was waiting for her back in the nest.
"Did you get it?" she asked excitedly, while another mouth said, "Is that it?" and her third mouth said, "Math Valone is the best of marhs!"
"He is not a bad one, I think," Gathenavalona said wearily. "He cares for the horde, above all."
"Need we wait for evening?" whispered Dhyrvalona impishly. "Can you read me a tale now?"
She was astonished when her nurse replied with a single mouth, "No need to wait. This is Roble's tale: hear his voice: `I will not live three hundred years…."'
ROBLE'S STORY
VIII
THE LAWLESS HOURS Hours
THE LAWS OF NATURE BREAK THE LAWS OF REASON.
I will not live three hundred years. I'll be dead before I'm eighty and, if I'm not, I'll wish I were. The Strange Gods of the Coranians never knew my name, and I don't know theirs. I'm not a Coranian knight-I'm not a Coranian anything, but especially not a knight. I'm sick of that mistake. People see me in my armor, on my horse, and they scuttle away or call me "sir." Some of the Riders like that; it's the reason they ride. But I don't need it; if anybody calls me "sir" I tell them straight out. Nobody calls me "sir," not even my sister's boys.
That night I was riding with Liskin. I wasn't happy about it. Liskin was a whiner, a rule-keeper: I'd heard about him. A rule-keeper, but his regular partner, Ost, was a bloody-truncheon, a dead-or-aliver who had killed ten people on the Road, just for fun, in the past year. There was no mystery about it: this was the sort of thing Ost liked to brag about on his nights off. It's not a crime to kill on the roads or in the woods at night, as long as you bring the body back to a castleyard. It's not a crime, but it's not what the Riders are about, either. A couple of us got together (I wasn't there but I heard about it) and asked Liskin what he was going to do about Ost. "What Ost does is not against the rules," he said. So the rest of us did what we had to do about Ost. Liskin didn't join us; it was against the rules.
I was the lucky winner who drew Liskin as a new partner, at least tem porarily. My regular partner, Alev, had gotten his legs broken in a Bargainer's man-trap the night before. That would never have happened if Alev weren't a rule-breaker and a bad example; we were strictly forbidden to enter the woods around the Bargainer village. But we brought his stray out, and brought him out alive. That's what the Riders are about, and not keeping any particular set of rules.