Turn Up This Crooked Way By James Enge When the thief's trail took him as far as the winterwood, as he had known it must, Morlock Ambrosius sat down to think. To enter there was to gamble with his life, and Morlock hated gambling: it was wasteful and he was thrifty — some said cheap. Still, there was the book... He had awakened that morning in his roadside camp to find that his pack had been slit during the night and a book stolen. He had written it himself in the profoundly subtle "palindromic" script of ancient Ontil. Each page was a mirror-image of the one it faced; both pages had to be inscribed simultaneously. There was a page for each of the four hundred days of the year, and one for each day of the "counter-year" which runs backward as time moves forward. Although the book was valuable (it was useful for reading the future or the past; merely to possess it sometimes gave one clairvoyant experiences) the loss as such did not concern him. But, he had made it; he felt responsible for it, and how it might be used. And then there was the note. It had been staked to the ground, just next to his slit pack... staked with a glass thorn from the same pack. (The chamber of the thorn was broken and the face inside was dark and lifeless. Another score to settle!) The message was simply a stylized figure of a hand with the fingers pointing northward... towards the forest of Tychar, the winterwood. The meaning was as clear as the slap in the face the symbol represented: Forget your book. It's gone where you can't follow. The note was addressed "Ambrosius." So it was someone who knew him, someone bold enough to rob him, someone who had preferred, when he was vulnerable, to insult him rather than kill him. He had a desire to meet this person. As he sat, pondering the dark blue trunks of the winterwood, he found the desire had not faded. He kindled a fire with the Pursuer instrumentality. As he was waiting for it to grow to optimal strength, he took off his pack and set about repairing the slit. There was a patch of gripgrass not far away; he spotted it by the lc deerlike bones of an animal it had killed. He drew a few plants from ground, taking care not to break the stems or tear the central roots. He sewed up the slit in his pack, carefully weaving the gripgrass plants into the seam. The fire was high enough, then. so he took the thief's note and burned - the Pursuer fire with a pinch of chevetra leaf. The smoke traveled north and east. against the wind, towards the forest. that was the way the thief had gone. They called it "the winterwood. The trees stood on high rocky ground; it v. cold there, even in summer. The trees there, of a kind that grew nowhere else. flowered in fall and faded in spring. They resembled dark oaks, except their leaves were a dim blue, and their bark had a bluish cast. Just now it was early spring; patc es of snow lay, like chewed crusts beneath the hungry looking trees. The leaves, crooked blue veins showing along the withered gray surfaces, were like the hands of dying men. They rustled irritably in the chill persistent breeze, as if impatient to meet and merge with the earth. Morlock did not share their impatience. When he saw the smoke from his magical fire enter the tree-shadowed arch of a pathway (a clear path leading deep into those untraveled woods) he shook his head suspiciously. So he sat down again and took off his shoes. After writing his name and a few other words on the heel of his left shoe. He trimmed a strip of leather from the sole and tied it around his bare left foot at the arch. He did the same with the other shoe (and foot). He muttered a few more words (familiar to those-who-know). Then he picked up the shoes, one in each hand, and tossed them onto the path. They landed, side by side, toes forward, about two paces distant. He stood up and moved his feet experimentally. The empty shoes mimicked the motion of his feet. He stepped forward onto the path; the shoes politely maintained the two-pace distance, hopping ahead of him step by step. Morlock nodded, content. Then he strapped his backpack to his slightly crooked shoulders and walked, barefoot, into the deadly woods. Morlock first became aware of the trap through a sensation of walking on air. He stopped in his tracks and looked at his shoes. They stood on an ordinary stretch of path, dry earth speckled with small sharp stones. But just in front of his bare feet he saw a dark shoe-shaped patch of nothingness. Morlock nodded and scraped his right foot on the path; the right shoe mimicked it, brushing away a paper-thin surface of earth suspended in the air, revealing the nothingness beneath. "Well-made," Morlock the Maker conceded. No doubt the pit beneath the path concealed some deadly thing — that was rather crude. But Morlock liked the sheet of earth hanging in the air, and would have liked to know how it was done. Carefully approaching the verge of the pit, he peered through the empty footprint. The pit was about twice as deep as Morlock was tall. At its bottom was a fire-breathing serpent with vestigial wings, perhaps as long as the pit was deep. The serpent wore a metal collar, apparently bolted to its spine; the collar was fastened to a chain anchored to the sheer stone wall of the pit. The serpent, seeing Morlock, roared its rage and disappointment. "Who set you here, serpent?" Morlock asked. "I set myself," the worm sneered. "This chain is a clever ruse to deceive the unwary." "I have gold," Morlock observed. The serpent fell quiet. Its red-slotted eyes took on a greenish tint. Morlock reached into his pocket and brought forth a single coin. He swept away the dirt hanging in the air and held the coin out for the serpent to see. It saw. Its tongue flickered desperately in and out. Finally it said, "Very well. Throw me the coin." Morlock dropped the gold disc into the pit. "Tell me now." The serpent roared in triumph, "I tell you nothing! Only a fool gives gold for nothing. Go away, fool." Morlock patiently reached back into his pack and brought forth a handful of gold coins. He knew the breed. Silence fell like a thunderbolt. Morlock held the gold coins out and let the serpent stare at them through his fingers. "Tell me now," Morlock said at last. "It was a magician from beyond the Sea of Worlds," the serpent replied, too readily. "He said I could eat your flesh, but must leave the bones. I said I would break the bones and eat the marrow, and no power in the world could stop me. He called me a bold worm, strong and logical. He agreed about the bones. Then he rode away on a horse as tall as a tree." Morlock allowed a single coin to fall into the pit. "More!" The word rose on a tongue of flame through the mist of venom blanketing the serpent. "I will give you two more. For the truth." "All!" shouted the worm. "All! All! All!" "The truth." "It was a Master Dragon of the Blackthorn Range. He —" Morlock snapped the fingers of his left hand twice. The two coins that in a fallen into the pit rose glittering out of the cloud of venom and landed on outstretched palm. "Thief!" the serpent screamed. "Liar," Morlock replied. In the language they were speaking it was same word. There was a long silence, broken by the serpent's roar of defeat. "I don't know who he was! He came on me while I was asleep. I didn't wake up he drove this bolt into my neck. Take your gold and go!" "What did he look like?" Morlock demanded. "Describe him." "Describe him! Describe him!" the serpent hissed despairingly. "He was no different from you." Morlock shrugged. He'd met serpents better able to distinguish between human beings. But he had never supposed his interlocutor a genius among worms. He opened both his hands and scattered gold into the pit. As he rose to go the serpent called, "Wait!" Morlock waited. "I'm hungry," the serpent said insinuatingly. "Then?" "Must I be more explicit? I was promised a meal, yourself, if I permitted myself to be staked in this pit. I am staked in this pit, and have been denied the meal by the most offensive sort of trickery. You are the responsible party. and your double obligation is clear. I ask only that you remove any buckles or metal objects you may have about your person, for I have a bad tooth --"" "No." "But this tooth —" "You may not eat me." "Be reasonable. I won't eat you all at once," the serpent offered hopefully. Morlock shook his head, declining this reasonable offer. "Nevertheless. added slowly (for it occurred to him this creature would certainly die if remained staked in the pit), "I will set you free for some slight charge. Perhaps a single gold coin." There was a pause as the worm struggled between the prospect of certain death or the loss of any part of its new wealth. "Never!" it snarled at last. Morlock walked away. The worm's voice followed him, carrying threats and abuse, but never an offer to change. Morlock ignored it and presently ceased. The path came to an end just beyond the pit. This left him at sometginh of a loss as to where to go next, but there was one good thing about it: he could put his shoes back on. He sat down and tugged the leather strips from his dusty feet, breaking the spell. He heard footsteps and looked up to see his shoes running away into the dense bluish woods. Morlock was aghast. Some spirit or invisible creature had clearly stepped into his shoes as they preceded him down the path. When the spell was broken they had stolen the shoes. He had to recover those shoes. He had made them with his own hands: he had worn them for months; he had written his own name and other magical words on them. He would never be safe if he did not recover them. Leaping to his feet, he heard footsteps crackling eastward through the bluegreen underbrush. Heedlessly he followed them. It was not long before the poisonous blue leaves began to sting his bare feet. These had already been scratched and bruised by his barefoot walk down the stony path. The slight pain from the poison naggingly reminded him that if he walked for long in these woods without protection for his feet the poison would accumulate in his lower limbs and they would die. Then he would face the unpleasant alternatives of self-amputation or death. The shoes seemed to be aware of his danger. At every turn they plunged into the thickest underbrush, treading down hard to leave a path sharp with broken sticks and poison leaves. But their strategy was not an unqualified success. Whatever their guiding intelligence was, it did not provide Morlock's sheer physical mass: an undoubted advantage in storming through wild shrubbery. The shoes became entangled for long moments in places where Morlock simply brushed through or leapt over, and he closed steadily. In a gap without trees he drew to a halt and listened, knee-deep in leafy poison. Silence fell in the winterwood. The crashing through blue bracken and greenish underbrush had ceased. His shoes had taken cover somewhere. His heart fell. He was bound to lose a waiting game. He seized the first heavy branch that came to hand, tore it loose from its tree and began to beat savagely about the dense covert of bushes. It was sheer luck he glanced up to see his fugitive shoes weaving and dodging among the close-set trees on the opposite side of the narrow clearing. Morlock gave a crowlike caw of dismay and dashed off in pursuit. But almost as soon as he spotted them they disappeared in the woods beyond. Morlock forced himself to halt at the place he had last seen the shoes. He listened. Again a sly chill quiet had descended on the winterwood. There was no light footfall, no crunch of leaf or snap of twig — not so much as the rustle of leather soles edging forward in the grass. The shoes had taken cover again. And they were nearby; he was sure of it. He turned slowly, a full circle, examining every rock, stone, bush or tree in sight. He saw no trace of his shoes. He moved forward, as quietly as possible. striving to make no sound that might cover the shoes' retreat. He saw nothing. He heard nothing. After taking ten paces forward, he halted. He had missed them somehow; they could not have come much farther than this. He turned and looked back the way he had come. Then, on a bitterly sharp impulse, he glanced up at the forest roof. Far out of reach, the shoes stood nonchalantly upon a blue-black tree limb. He crouched down and groped about on the forest floor. Latching on to a fist-sized rock, he rose again and pegged it with deadly accuracy at the rakishly tilted right shoe. Then he held the branch, like a crooked javelin, ready in his other hand in case he needed something to throw at the other shoe. But he didn't. The right shoe tumbled almost to the ground before the other followed it, hurtling from the bough like a stone shot from a sling. Morlock wasted a moment wondering about the nature of the thing that had stepped into his shoes. Before he shook off his speculations the shoes Megan hopping like a pair of leather toads across the forest floor. Then, in an instant, the chase was over. The left shoe had hurled itself forward to land in a dimly blue patch of gripgrass (less greenish in color and finer than the weed carpeting the polsonous wood). In doing so it had bent the stems and torn the central roots of dozens of dimly blue blades of grass. Each offended blade divided into several long wire-tough lashes that instantly wrapped around the first solid object they touched. The left shoe was swiftly bound to the forest floor. Moreover, some of the released lashes inevitably snapped across their quiescent brethren; in less than a human vein-pulse the whole patch of gripgrass had come to greedy life. It snatched the right shoe, flying overhead, and bound it to the earth next to its mate Even then a faint blue cloud of yearning tendrils floated on the air, until the unoccupied blades reformed themselves and slowly sank back into quiescence. Their more fortunate kin clung tightly to their new prey, so that its death and corruption might provide food for the whole patch, not to mention serve as bait for an unwary carrion eater. This time they had caught nothing more nourishing than a pair of old shoes, but even if they had known they wool: not have cared; it is not in the nature of gripgrass to be choosy, and what the:, possess they do not surrender. "Hurs krakna!" muttered Morlock, giving vent to one of the many untranslatable idioms of his native language. Then he sat down and began to bind up his feet, using strips torn from his cloak. It is not every master Maker who carries a choir of flames in his backpack. For one thing, few master Makers have backpacks, being typically as sessile as clams. Also, flames are not readily portable; they require care of a peculiar sort; they are fickle and given to odd ideas. Nevertheless Morlock, a gifted maker of gems, knew that there was nothing so helpful in tending a seedstone as a choir of wise old flames. The sphere of smoke clinging to the choir nexus was dense and hot. so Morlock kept his face well out of the way as he removed the Dragon-hide wrapping of the nexus; those were the signs of a heated conversation in progress. "In a former —" "How do you expect —" "— life, I was a salamander. Mere words can't imagine how much I mean: "— expect me to breathe?" "— to myself, bright as a brick in the Burning Wall..." "Remember lumbering through fossilbright burning fields?" "I prefer wood to coal. Would you feed us more? Would you? Eh? Would you?" A shower of bright sharp laughs, like sparks, flew up into the dim air of the winterwood. "I'm hungry!" cried a lone flame, when the laughter had passed. "Feed me! I'M GOING OUT! FEED ME!" Morlock glanced into the nexus. "Friends," he said patiently, "fully half the coal I gave you last night is unconsumed. You needn't go out." "Coal is boring!" the desperate flame cried. "Death before boredom!" "Death before boredom!" the choir cried as one. "Most of us like coal, you understand," a flame confided agreeably. "But we all support the principle." "Principle first, always," another flame agreed. "And more coal, please." "It makes my light so dark and heavy. And all those strange memories!" "Strange memories, yes. Remember all those fish!" "I remember remembering. Strange to be a fish." "No coal!" hollered the desperate flame. "No coal!" "Snuff yourself." "Friends," said Morlock, "I come to offer you variety." "Variety," one observed snidely. "How dull!" "I have a task for a single flame — outside the nexus." This shocked them into silence. It was the nexus that sustained them beyond the ordinary term of flamehood, giving them time to develop their intelligence. In twenty years of life, many of them had never blown a spark outside the nexus. "Well, what is it?" one flame demanded matter-of-factly. With equal matter-of-factness, Morlock held up one of his clothbound feet. "My shoes have run away into a plot of gripgrass. I want one of you to eat them free." He waited patiently while the choir exhausted itself in laughter and jeers. "Gripgrass is something none of you has tasted," Morlock continued. "Furthermore, if one of you volunteers I will give the whole choir two double handfuls of leaves, the smoke of which is poisonous to man." "Nonsense!" cried a panicky voice, in which Morlock thought he recognized the coal-hater. "Coal's good enough for us! Nothing better! More coal or noth- ing!" "I like coal well enough," the matter-of-fact voice said, "but it will never taste so good to me unless I try gripgrass." "Then," Morlock said, and snapped his fingers. The flame hurtled up and landed in Morlock's palm. Morlock immediately fed it with a strip of bark from the branch he still carried. "This bark tastes a bit odd," remarked the flame smokily. "It is kin to gripgrass," Morlock replied. "Do not talk, but listen. Time is your enemy as long as you are outside the nexus. Yonder is the gripgrass hiding my shoes. Do you see them?" "Smell 'em." "Then. I'll place you on the forest floor; work your way into the gripgrass and burn the shoes free, then proceed to the far side of the patch. The nexus will be there and you can climb back inside. Do not speak unless you are in trouble; then I will do what I can for you. Do not propagate or you will lose yourself in your progeny. Plain enough?" The red wavering flame nodded and danced anxiously. Morlock put it down and watched it burn a black smoking beeline for the dim blue patch of gripgrass. Morlock absently brushed the pile of ashes from his palm, but did not check for blisters. It took a flame hot enough to melt gold to do harm to his flesh; like his crooked shoulders and his skill at magic, that was the heritage of Ambrosius. Having placed the nexus beyond the gripgrass patch, just out of lash-reach, Morlock sat down beside it and began to whittle idly at the branch he still - in his hand. The pale bluish scraps of wood he fed to the flames still resident the nexus. "This wood has a cold marshy taste," a flame remarked, not disapprovingly "I don't think I like it," another said. "But I'd need more to be sure." "Don't blow the smoke over here," said Morlock, annoyed. He'd taken enough poison today as it was; his feet were numb with it. He tossed another pile of wood-scraps in the nexus; that was when the gripgrass plot lashed outagain. Morlock had been expecting this. If a plant's central stem were burned through it would not (because it could not) unleash. The central stem would respond to the burning of a peripheral stem, and some central stems would fall and set off the inevitable chain reaction. Still it was alarming. The air-currents totally dispersed the smoke-trail which Morlock had been gauging the flame's progress. Even after some moments the smoke did not return. "Are you all right?" Morlock called out. "Yes," replied the flame, its voice muffled by the tightly woven roof of grass. "Can you breathe?" "Yes," replied the flame, with overtones of annoyance. Morlock took the hint and returned to his whittling. Presently the flame's bright wavering crown appeared, like the point knife, through the blue mat of gripgrass. It swiftly ran around and cut a smokeing ing shoe-sized hole in the still tightly lashed grass. "One shoe free," the flame announced curtly and disappeared. Finally the wavering crown reappeared and repeated the procedure. "Second shoe —" it began. Then the flame was nearly extinguished by the passage of both shoes leaping backward up and out of the gripgrass patch. Landing with a double thump on the forest floor, they immediately began to run away again. Morlock hurled the improvised javelin he had carved out of the tree branch, spearing the leather sole of one shoe. The other, farther off, kept on hopping away. Morlock bided his time. Finally throwing his knife, he transfixed the shoe. in mid-leap, to a nearby tree. Both shoes struggled briefly and fell still. "You'd better get yourself some sensible shoes," suggested a matter-of-fact voice behind him. Before he could respond, the flame had re-entered the nexus and was lost among the choir. He fed the choir their double-handfuls of leaves and sat aside while they smokily consumed and discussed them. As he waited he carefully removed every trace of the spell he had written on the shoes; he sewed up the holes with the leftover strips of leather from the spell. The reek of poisonous smoke was still heavy in the air when he finished - he glanced impatiently over toward the nexus. If he'd known they were going take this long he would have picked drier leaves. (They preferred leaves moist if as they said, "chewy.") "We've been done for centuries!" cried a flame defensively as he approached. He saw this was essentially correct; the leaves had all been consumed, and they were working again on their lump of coal. "We think the forest may be on fire," the matter-of-fact voice observed. "It may be," Morlock agreed. "Friends, I am going to wrap you up again." He took their complaints and bitter insults in good part. But he wrapped the nexus in its Dragon-hide covering and stowed it in his backpack. Shoes firmly fastened to his feet, pack comfortably strapped to his crooked shoulders, Morlock wandered casually toward the source of the poisonous smoke. On his way he was attacked by several white wolfish or canine beasts that had black beaks and narrow birdlike faces. He killed one of them with the accursed sword Tyrfing (which does not otherwise come into this story). He had no chance to examine the dead predator's body; although its companions fled howling, the corpse was immediately set upon by a cloud of small catlike creatures with long leathery wings ending in reticulated claws. These were apparently scavengers that followed the bird-wolf pack. They descended with pitiless delight on the dead predator; their brown triangular cat-faces were soon black with blood. Several of the scavenger cat-birds orbited around Morlock, as if searching for a place to land and feast. He knocked them away. One scored a long bloody gash along his left forearm, but as the wound was shallow he decided against treating it at that emergent moment. He was further delayed by the passage of a fire-breathing serpent taller than himself and as long as a caravan. The approach of this monster was evident from five hundred paces away in the afternoon gloom of the woods. Deciding to take cover until the thing passed, he climbed a tree with comparatively dense foliage, most of which was still blue-black from winter, and wrapped himself in his black traveling cloak to complete the camouflage. He could feel the blood from his wound soaking into the cloak, which began to cling to his skin. And his torn bruised and poisoned feet had had enough trouble today without perching for an appreciable chunk of the evening on a tree branch. Plus, there was the inevitable sharp object intruding on his wounded arm — he didn't want to move away from it in the serpent's presence. (Fire-breathers do not hear or smell very well, but they have bitterly keen eyesight.) He grinned wryly and waited it out. Most annoyingly, and most trivially, leaves from the tree the assumed that was what they were) kept brushing against him and tickling his skin unbearably. The giant worm rumbled away into the woods. Morlock sighed with relief. Now for some free movement... and a good scratch! He threw back his cloak. The catbirds which had settled down on and around him (whose feather-fur he had mistaken for leaves) leapt screaming into the air and began to circle the tree. Morlock shouted several croaking insults a crow had once taught him, then plucked one of the catbirds out of the air and snapped its neck. He killed a second with a well-thrown knife and dropped the first body where the second one fell. The scavengers having gathered on the ground to feed on their fallen comrades, Morlock dropped down beside them, branch in hand. He killed several more scavengers by methodically flailing about before the survivors flew off to a safe distance. It was an ugly business and, as Morlock stood over the crushed catbirds and heard their fellows screaming at him from a nearby tree, he was not pleased with himself. But it had been necessary. This demonstrated to the deadly catbirds that he was not merely a wounded prey staving off death but a predator in his own right. They would be more cautious in following him thereafter; perhaps they would leave his trail entirely. And, if nothing else, these corpses would entertain the survivors while he got away. Having retrieved, cleaned and sheathed his knife (the grip was covered by razor-thin teeth marks), Morlock made his way into the woods. He looked be once and saw the forest floor where the dead catbirds had been was alive with dark winged forms. Heading straight into the smoke-bearing wind, he walked until he found the fire. By that time night had entirely risen, and he could see from a distance that it was a kind of campfire. A tree had been cut and sectioned, certain sections quartered and several of the quarters set afire, all with considerable labor, no doubt. The hapless campers, one man and one woman, lay unconscious before the fire. You might have thought them overcome by weariness until you noticed their faces, greenish even in the red firelight. Clearly they'd been poisoned by the fire they'd set and were in danger of dying. Morlock felt the tug of sympathy; he also felt there was something wrong with this scene. But out of the corner of his eye he saw the cloud of scavenger catbirds settle silently down on a nearby tree. He found he couldn't walk away and leave these as catbird fodder. He beat down the flames with his hands and heaved earth over the fuming coals. He sat down some distance away from the pair and bound up his wounded arm as he waited for them to awaken. Morlock kept thinking he should get about his own business. But the scavengers were still out there in the darkness watching what he would do. He waited, thinking long slow thoughts to pass the time. Twice he roused himself to kill several large carnivorous beetles the size and temperament of snapping turtles that were approaching him hungrily. He tossed the dead beetles out into the wood, where the catbirds devoured them. Finally the woman stirred. A long yawn broke off in a gasp as she sat suddenly up. "Vren," she said, in the lingua franca of the Ontilian Empire, "the fire has gone out!" "Not exactly 'gone out,"' Morlock observed, in the same language. "I extinguished it." Now both man and woman were standing. "Who are you?" the woman demanded. "Where are you?" "I am a traveler," Morlock said cautiously. He rarely gave his name, south of the Whitethorn Range. "I am somewhat behind you and off to one side, as you can tell from my voice. Passing by, I noticed your fire and found you overcome with its fumes." "Oh," said the woman. "Are the trees poisonous, too?" "Yes. You will find all life in Tychar inimical to you." "Including you?" she shot back. "Possibly," Morlock admitted. "There are some strange things about you two. How did you happen to fell, section and burn one of these trees without noticing its nature?" "We tell you nothing," Vren said sullenly. "Be quiet, Vren," the woman said without heat. "We had the kembril do it. traveler. We had a spell, and we spoke it, and the kembril came. It brought us fire and food, as we commanded. The food was good, at least. The fire was... local."" Morlock did not recognize the word kembril, but he thought he understood the gist of the story. "You are sorcerers, then?" "We are thieves, mostly," the woman said frankly. "(Be quiet, Vren! He saved our lives.) But we steal magic by choice. We are going to rob a sorcerer who lives in the winterwood. Maybe then we'll be sorcerers, with a little practice." "There is a sorcerer in the wood?" "Yes," said the woman reverently, "the greatest and evilest in the world: Morlock Ambrosius himself. He has settled in Tychar." "Hmph," said Morlock, glad of the darkness. "This is news to me." "Well," said the woman complacently, "few know of it. We were lucky enough to rob one of his sorcerous correspondents in Sarkunden, our hometown. We thought... well, for such as us it is the opportunity of a lifetime. We have a map." Morlock had expected nothing else, except an offer to join their quest. That was forthcoming in another moment; he accepted with a thoughtful glumness that seemed to surprise his new companions. The two thieves, Urla and Vren, went back to sleep, trusting as children, after Morlock offered to stand guard for the rest of the night. Or perhaps they were not so childlike, Morlock reflected: he had already had his chance to rob or kill them; they had more reason to trust him than he did to trust them, which was why he had taken the watch. They walked all the next day and into the next night, avoiding death narrowly on a number of occasions. Each time, however, the catbird scavengers fed well on the corpses of their attackers. Morlock believed they had come to look on him as their patron predator. He found this annoying; there was nothing he could do about it, though. That night they slept in shifts. Morlock took the last watch... something of a risk. perhaps. He had come to trust his companions, although he had occasion to think them somewhat timorous. And he needed sleep. It had been long since he had woken up, south of the forest, to find himself robbed. His arm wound was infected and the poison in his system was slow to dissipate. He expected that tomorrow would be a very bad day indeed. It was all too soon when Urla's voice woke him from a hellish dream and he crawled out of his sleeping cloak to stand watch over his companions. He sharpened a stick and absent-mindedly speared any of the carnivorous beetles that crawled too near him or the sleepers. There was no fire, so he watched by the starlight and moonlight that managed to filter through the blue-black branches and leaves. He found that his left arm was swollen and sluggish, and so used his right hand almost exclusively. At last dawn came. Morlock, having viewed the thieves' crude map several times the previous day, spent the last few moments of his watch calculating how long it might take them to reach the house of "Morlock." He glanced idly back the way they had come, noting that their trail was vividly marked by silver dew on the bluegreen coarse grass of the winterwood. His eyes :moved on; it was time to wake Urla and Vren — then he looked sharply back. His trail was visible: grasses bent by his passage dark among their silvery kin, footrints clearly outlined in the mold of the forest floor. But there was no sign of any others beside his. Troubled, he looked down on his companions, now waking on their own in the blue dawn. He was sure they were real — that is, they were not mere illusions; they did not have the talic aura an illusion must project. Yet if they had left no trail in the woods, they could hardly be real. Real, yet not real. He stared at them as they greeted one another, chatted, shook the dew off their blankets... The grass moved beneath their feet, he noticed. But did it move enough for a real man and woman? Vren was groaning. "Back to the packs! I thought mine would split my shoulders yesterday." Urla sympathized and Morlock stepped over. "Let's trade," he suggested. "I'll carry yours, and you mine." Vren looked surprised, then glanced at Morlock's formidable pack. "It's probably worse than mine," he grumbled. "It's not so bad as it looks," Morlock insisted. "Give it a heft." Vren hesitated. Both he and Urla wore tense troubled expressions. Morlock bent down and picked up Vren's pack. It was as light as a spider web. Morlock dropped it and straightened; reaching out with both hands, he seized his companions under their chins. Pulling up strongly, he tore off both their faces. In the holes that had been faces there were forests of silvery spines. They vibrated tensely for a few moments then grew still. The skins of Urla and Vren separated and fell away, exposing the creatures that had worn them as a wears a glove... or a puppet. These "hands" had small insect-like bodies and hundreds of long silvery legs that took a roughly spherical shape around the central body. Morlock had heard of such things. Given the outer shell of a person, and having fed on that person's brain, they could sustain his or her living likeness. But they had no muscle or significant mass of their own, so that the seeming person would be light as gauze. They were marginally intelligent; at least they could feign an intelligence suited to the guise they wore. But shorn of their disguise they would unthinkingly return to their creator for protection and guidance. So these did, rolling away in the dim blue woods. Morlock shouldered his pack and followed them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a few of the catbirds drop down and devour the discarded skins. The rest of the cloud followed silently on his trail. The silver-spine creatures were not moving quickly, but Morlock was dazed with poison and fever; he almost lost them twice. Using his left arm had torn the wound open again and it throbbed with each leaden heartbeat. Still he kept moving. The hunt was almost over. They came at last to a dark stone house in the dim blue woods. The spheres of silver tines paused, then began to wander aimlessly along the walls, seeking ingress. Morlock found two dead bodies lying against the door of the house. One had been a man, the other a woman. They had been flayed, their skulls broken like eggshells and drained. Carrion eaters had torn their flesh. These, Morlock guessed, were the originals of Urla and Vren. Morlock covered the bodies with earth and deadwood, sealing their quasi-comradeship. Then he turned to the wooden door of the stone house. It was locked; he crouched down to examine the lock with his fingers. Only then did he understand how ill he was; his right hand was trembling too much to perform any subtle work and his left hand was swollen into useless immobility. Morlock stood back and unslung his pack. He drew out the choir-nexus and unwrapped it. He explained the matter in a single terse sentence; a moment later. fifteen volunteer flames were eating their way into the door around the lock. When they had passed through Morlock cried, "Stay clear!" and kicked in the door. He paused for a moment on the threshold, shuddering with fever chill and pain. (The bloodbeats of exertion were agony to his wounded arm.) Then he passed into the entry hall and swore. The flames had stayed clear all right. From burn marks in the many rugs and tapestries it appeared they had scattered in search of adventure and interesting combustibles. Well, he had no time to look for them. He stowed the nexus in his backpack and took that on his shoulders again. The hallway led him to a winding stairway; Morlock ascended it, feeling that the sorcerer's workroom would be on the upper floor. It was. In fact, the workroom occupied the entire upper floor of the house. As he entered it his enemy, at the far end of the long room, rose to greet him. The room was full of water. It was lit (quite apart from the tall unglazed windows) by glass cylinders filled with a bubbling white fluid that emitted a harsh bluish light; these were set like torches along the walls. The stained worktables that lined the room were crowded with retorts, alembics, beakers, tubes and tubing, all of them emitting or gathering liquid. In the middle of the room was a circular sheet of gray bubbling water, suspended in midair. At the far end of the room was a crystal globe filled with very bright, very clear water. Morlock guessed this was the sorcerer's focus. At any rate, he was seated before it with a fixed inward stare when Morlock entered the room, and he turned around and smiled broadly, as if in welcome. "There are flames like rats loose in my house," he explained, rising. "Fortunately they have proven rather easy to detect and extinguish. I hate flames, I suppose, as much as you love them. Mine is a watery sort of magic, as you will have guessed." The stranger advanced through the room as he spoke, his manner suggest- that Morlock was an expected guest and he himself was a slightly remiss st. He wore garments of white and blue; otherwise he was a mirror-image of Morlock: the same dark unruly hair, the same weather-beaten features, the same alarmingly pale gray eyes. The stranger even had crooked shoulders and walked with a slight limp, as Morlock did. "Unimpressive," Morlock remarked. "Certainly not original." The stranger looked surprised, then amused. "Oh, my appearance. But I assure you, my dear fellow, it is no mere ploy. Years of labor have gone into this work, and perhaps the rest of my life will go in to perfecting it. You see, I have decided to usurp your personality." Morlock shrugged. "I'm not joking, either," the stranger continued. "Not that I'm surprised by your indifference. That's what gave me the idea, in a way. "You see, I was sitting in a tavern (forgive my loquacity, but I have so looked forward to telling you all this) and a drunk was singing some nasty ghost story you were supposed to have had a part in. And I was thinking how... well, how unlike your legend you are. (Most of those-who-know know that.) And I thought, too. how little use you have put your legend to. It really is a remarkable resource, coupled with your true abilities. You are truly feared, south of the Kirach Kund. Yet you wander from place to place like... like some kind of magical tinker, when you might command fear and respect the way a general commands an army." Morlock shrugged irritably. "Why?" "Why?" repeated the stranger incredibly. "For everything a man could want!" "There is not much that I want." "That is your problem. It is not mine. Mine is (or was) that I had no legend. Like most makers, I have pursued my studies in solitude; we are too unworldly, most of us. I would have labored in obscurity, only to totter into some local fame when I was too infirm to put it to effective use. You have the advantage - there; we aren't all descended from demi-mortals like you are. "Then I realized (sitting in the tavern you understand) that if you weren't going to use your legend, it was only fair that I do so. And to that I have bent life ever since. I built my house here in the winterwood; I changed my appearance; I began to conduct correspondence with other sorcerers in my new person. Things were developing nicely, even before I ran into you along the trail the other night." "So it was an accident." "Some such meeting was inevitable," the stranger said superciliously "Anyway, I managed to slit your pack and extract the book of palindromes has proven most instructive, by the way). But the protective spell over your son was so subtle I could not even guess its attributes. So I decided to lure _ into my own territory..." Morlock was smiling wryly. "I suppose that sneer means there was no spell," the stranger said bitterly. "Well, that doesn't matter. You are here, now, and your pack is here, and there are no risks involved. Or maybe you're thinking I'm an inferior sorcerer because I had to appropriate your legend. But I'm not. Your legend is a historical accident. I can't be held responsible for not being the beneficiary of a historical accident." "It was political slander, originally," Morlock observed, a little weary of the subject. "Really? That's most interesting. Take some political slander, let simmer a few hundred years, add seasoning and dish up. Fearful legend, serves one. Very nice. "Now arises the question of whether I will spare your life or not. I feel you might possibly be a useful adviser, under restraint — sort of the world's expert on having been Morlock, if you see what I mean. Also, I'm sure some of the most interesting artifacts in your pack would be damaged in a mortal combat. So..? Morlock said nothing. "Oh, come now," the stranger said irritably. "Don't try to be forbidding. I know exactly what shape you're in. I watched every step of your journey; don't think I didn't. I knew the forest would do my fighting for me! I saw you scrabbling at the lock on my door (what a pitiful performance that was!) and I see now that you can barely stand. "And where do you stand? In my place of power. Never doubt it, Morlock: I have a thousand deaths at my beck and call as I stand here. Do you doubt it? You still are silent?" The stranger shrugged. "Very well. Why should you take word for it?" He waved his hand and spoke an unintelligible word. The weight on Morlock's crooked shoulders was suddenly heavier by several pounds. In sudden alarm, he unslung his pack and lifted out the choir nexus. Water poured out through the Dragon-hide wrapping. The choir was dead. "You killed my flames," Morlock said hoarsely. His eyes were stung by abrupt surprising tears. The stranger laughed incredulously. "'Killed'? The notion is jejune. I extinguished them. That water might as easily have gone in your lungs instead, or — heated to steam — in your heart or brain. Then it is you who would have been extinguished. I killed my hundreds perfecting the techniques, Morlock, and they work. Never doubt it again." "I doubt you will find your own death jejune," Morlock replied. Tears were still running down his face; he supposed it was a symptom of the fever. "Don't threaten me, you battered tramp!" the stranger snarled. "You were about to hand me your pack, that I might spare you what remains of your life. Do so now." A long moment passed, in which Morlock seemed to consider. Then he slowly lifted the pack, holding it out to the stranger. The stranger laughed and took the proffered edge. This, the only convenient hold, happened to be the place where he had slit the pack two days ago. When his grip was firm, Morlock pulled back, as firmly. The stranger's grip, resisting the tug, tore the gripgrass woven into the sewn seam. The gripgrass, starved for nutriment, exploded into dozens of thin wire-tough lashes, binding the stranger's hand inescapably to the repaired slit. The stranger emptied his lungs in an instinctive cry of pain and surprise. Morlock pulled him off his feet, by way of the pack, hauled him over to the nearest window and, still holding on to the pack, threw the stranger out. His body slammed against the stone wall of the house and he stared up at Morlock for a long moment, as if gathering breath to speak. Then his body was dark with winged forms. The catbird scavengers had been waiting for their predator, and he had not disappointed them. In a matter of minutes the stranger was dead, dismembered and devoured. Morlock drew in a pack stained with blood, shining blue threads of gripgrass woven into the sewn-up slit. Morlock carefully unwove the grass. It had caused him considerable trouble, preserving its integrity, and it served no purpose, now. When he finally disentangled the gripgrass a matter-of-fact voice near his feet inquired, "Do you want that?" He looked down to see a single red flame burning a hole in the wooden floor. "Because if you don't want it," the matter-of-fact flame remarked, "I'll take it." Morlock dropped the grass on the floor and the flame casually devoured it. A little too chewy," the flame remarked smokily. "The whole business was somewhat chewy," Morlock replied. "But it's over -. I guess." Taking some water from a nearby table, he set about sponging the blood off his backpack.