The Lawless Hours By James Enge 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; 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 temporarily. 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. Try and tell that to Liskin. He was on me from the moment I entered the courtyard of Rendel's Castle. My sword and shield were both shorter than regulations allowed, he said; my cloak was dark blue, not black, he said; worst of all I had a long scratch in the black enamel on my armor, he said. I could have explained to him that long swords and long shields aren't handy for fighting in woodlands; a stabbing sword and a round shield are better. I could have told him that after sunset in the woods, dark blue is black, or so close as to make no difference. I could have said, in a reasonable tone, "Look, Liskin: it's twenty days until we get paid and I've got to help feed my sister's children. I can't afford to send my breastplate to the armorer's right now, not for a stupid scratch." I might have said all this, but I didn't have a chance. Liskin was still talking. 'Roble, you've got a slovenly appearance," Liskin said, proudly standing next to his own shield, which was leaning against the courtyard wall. "How do expect anyone you meet on the road to believe you when you say you're not a robber?" "Well —" I began, but he swept on. "I tell you, Roble," he told me, "I never appear for duty without the proper gear proper order. It isn't safe, and it just isn't right." He went on to tell me what he would tolerate from the person he rode with. I didn't have to listen to any of that. Because I knew what he'd tolerate. I glanced over at his shield, standing tall and stainlessly black beside him. _ my truncheon and struck it hard against the wall, scoring the enamel halfway down the shield. It bounced off wall and fell face down on the dirty cobblestones of the courtyard. Hitching my truncheon back on my belt, I looked at Liskin. He stood there, his mouth slightly open. Neither of us spoke, or had to. had a spare shield back at the Riders Lodge (he had a spare at every lodge in Castles). He could run and get it. But he wouldn't be back in time for muster, which was just about to happen So he had to ride with a scratched shield :7 miss muster; either way he broke a rule. I picked up his shield and handed it to him. After a moment's hesitation he took it Slinging it over his shoulder, he walked off without another word toward the mustering square. I waited a couple moments before did the same; by then the mustering officer had actually appeared. That night we were mustered by old Marmon. He had been a Rider for many years, but the time came when he could no longer stand the rough-and-tumble of the roads. By law of the Four Castles, he could eat and sleep at any of the Riders Lodges for the rest of his life, but you no longer got paid after you stopped riding the roads. So Marmon mustered us now and then (which paid a little something), and introduced lonely colleagues to his two "nieces" (which paid considerably better). He was grayer than your grandfather and only forty-five years old. Marmon walked down the steps of the stabler's house, hefting a hillconch shell to his lips. He blew a curt and negligent blast (strictly for form, as he saw we were all present). But the echoes were still ringing in the courtyard as we lined up on the mustering square. "Who rides to the east?" he demanded. "Arens," said one of the other pair, and, "Teck," said his partner. Marmon looked them over without enthusiasm. "Who rides to the west?" Marmon asked eventually. "Liskin!" "Roble." Marmon stepped over and eyed both of us. "Liskin, you seem to have a scratch on your shield," he said, and I'd swear the old pimp was smiling. "Yes, sir. Roble —" "I'm not your mother, Liskin," said Marmon sharply, and Liskin shut up. Marmon stood back and spoke to us all. "Arens and Teck, you're fresh from a month off, so I'll just caution you not to play hero. It's one thing when you're boasting in the tavern; it's another thing when you're out there in the woods. Remember: if you're lost, that's one more for the enemy to feed on. When in doubt, save yourself at least; bring back the bodies if you can. "More specifically, watch where you step. You'll be riding past the Bargainer village, and they've been setting man-traps all along the road and baiting them with real people. Take a long look at everything, especially the ground, confer with each other and, when in doubt, save yourselves. Go ahead and saddle up." They left and Marmon turned to us. Again, he was almost smiling as he looked at Liskin's shield. "You two are new partners," he said, "and something tells me you're not going to get along. That's fine with me; it's fine with the Four Barons. You don't have to like each other. But do your job. That's all." He waved us away. "Marmon," I asked, "what's the road like between here and Caroc?" "Nothing unusual. Some older children staying out late — 'just walking in the woods, mother,' you know. That's about it. Get on the road." I turned away with Liskin and ran toward the stables. The sun had almost set. "He didn't tell us not to be heroes," Liskin complained. "I guess he forgot," I said. It was twilight when Liskin and I rode out of the courtyard of Rendel's Castle and down the main road through Rendel's Town. Liskin and I were both blowing on hillconches as we rode, and off to the east we could hear Arens and Teck doing the same. We made quite a racket between us; there can't have been a person in castle or town who didn't hear us. That, of course, was the idea. We rode on to the stretch of gravel road at the edge of town, then reined in and turned. Liskin blew another blast on his hillconch and then I broke the law. "By the authority of the Four Barons," I shouted, "Masters of Caroc, Rendel's, Etain and Bleisian (castles and towns and lands between), I declare the limit of the law. From town to town, through all the woods, from northern hill to southern plain, I say the law has vanished with the light and will return only with the sun. Until that time, those who enter the woods or walk the Road are guilty of their own suffering and loss, even to their deaths. Let their souls be cursed and their names be forgotten. I declare all this in the name of the Master of Rendel's Castle (here unspoken) and my own, Roble of the Riders." Liskin blew a final blast on his hillconch and I shouted, "Naeli!" Liskin looked at me in surprise (for this was not part of the rite as he knew it) but he didn't say anything. We rode over a small wooden bridge that arched over a narrow stream and galloped down the road into the lawless woods. The Riders began as a guild of gravediggers, and in a way that's what we still are. Our primary duty is to collect the dead bodies that accumulate along the road during the lawless hours. Equally important is to collect "strays" — people travelling, ignorant, on the road or lost in the woods. These we conduct to a place where law prevails. Finally, there are those who go beyond the law by choice: to kill or along the road during the lawless hours. These, too, we bring out of the woods they don't resist, then all's well. They have, after all, committed no crime, not after what they have done. If they resist, we bring them out anyway; if necessary, we kill them and bring the bodies out. That's the one law the Riders carry with them through the lawless hours: bring the bodies out. For every body left in the woods after dark became the subject and sustenance of our enemy, the Boneless One, the Whisperer in the Woods. That was why the Four Barons had long ago declared the woods and the road through them to be beyond the law after dark: to prevent people from straying there. Those who didn't fear the Enemy, whom they had never seen, would be held back by fear of their fellow-man, whom they knew all too well. It had been a good idea, I'd always thought — perhaps the only thing that could have kept Four Castles alive across the centuries. But it was an idea, some were beginning to suspect, that was doomed to failure. Because there are always outsiders, who stumble into the woods without suspecting what dwells there. Because many who should know better simply do not do what is best for them. Beacause there will always be a few who say to themselves, I won't be killed; I will kill. (And if they're right they leave a body in the woods, and if they're wrong they leave a body in the woods. Either way the Enemy, the Boneless One, gets what it needs. finally, because of the Bargainers, who grow more numerous every year.) The first trap was on the road itself. It looked like a woman in a white dress dragged off the road by three men with the narrow filed teeth of Bargainers. Glancing over at Liskin, I saw he had drawn his sword and was preparing for is charge. I whacked him across the visor and said, "It's a trap!" He gaped in surprise. At the sound of my voice the "woman" turned toward us. Her hair and skin were as dark as mine; her nose was as high arched and delicate as my mother's been. Her voice was ragged with desperation as she cried out, "Help me! Help me! Why won't you help me?" I should know better by now, but it got to me. It always got to me. Alev, in contrast, was pretty callous and could even make conversation with the traps until they vanished in (I guess) frustration. "Go to hell," I muttered desperately; it was the best I could do, usually. "Help me!" she screamed. "Help me! Why won't you help me?" "Shut up," I muttered. "You're not real." It went on for a while longer until the Enemy gave up and the illusion-bait disappeared. Left behind (because it was real, not illusion) was an immense man-trap or horse-trap, really, since it was made to catch our horses as we galloped the rescue. I dismounted and went forward to move the thing out of the way and break it with my truncheon. Liskin remained on his horse as look-out, which was in accordance with the Rules and (for once) good sense besides. "Be careful!" he called to me as I hustled the shattered trap over to the side of the road. "There's sure to be a Bargainer or two nearby in the wood!" "You think?" I grunted as I hurled the broken metal into the woods. At that moment I was glaring eye-to-eye with a Bargainer crouching in the brush alongside the road. He made no move toward me, nor I to him, but he smiled at me, showing his teeth filed sharp as needles. My irony had been lost on Liskin. "Of course!" he said. "There had to be someone on hand to attack us and haul the bodies into the wood!" "I've learned a lot from riding with you, Liskin," I remarked, backing carefully toward my mount. I could not see any companions to my Bargainer out there. Possibly he was alone. If so, he could be killed and his body hauled out of the woods, which was a good thing, in theory. In practice, it was a little early in the night to start collecting corpses; no god knew how many we would be hauling by the end of the night. It would be extremely bad if we had to stop before dawn and bum some bodies on the road. Also, there was the possibility that the Bargainer I saw was not alone — that he was just another form of bait. I weighed the alternatives. reflected that it was Liskin, not Alev, who was watching my back, and decided to let the Bargainer go. He apparently made a similar decision about me. At least, he made no move against us as I remounted and we rode away. "We'll have to tell the pair riding east from Caroc tonight about this Liskin said, after a while. "Right." Still later he asked, "How did you know it was a trap?" "The woman was my sister." He thought about this for awhile, and then just had to say, "But she could have been travelling east from Caroc —"" "Naeli's been dead for five years," I told him. "She was lost in the woods."Liskin was silent for a long time. Finally he said, "I'm sorry." (That's what you're supposed to say, isn't it? It's one of the Rules.) "Her own damn fault," I replied, to get him to shut up. It worked. But it didn't work with Naeli. Nothing ever worked with her. Naeli's last child, a girl, had been born two months after the death of the (He'd been a miner and was killed in a cave-in.) At that time she was living with her husband's step-parents, but about a month after the birth they began wondering aloud how she was going to help pay the expenses of the household. She took the hint, as only Naeli could, and stormed out of there. She stormed all the way Rendel's to Caroc — not so easy, seeing that she had three boys and an infant girl to tend to — and moved in with me. At the time I was a journeyman jeweller, working for a crafty old half-caste named Besk. I was doing well enough to support my sister's family. And, although there was only one kind of work for women that paid a decent wage, Naeli out where she could. She worked a plot of ground behind the house, selling of her produce, feeding the rest to us. (She referred to us collectively as the and pretended to mourn each individual vegetable. She would cry out names she had invented for each tomato-root, then shout, "But no! Their suffering is on their heads! They were born like vegetables, let them die like vegetables' their piths be accursed and their names be forgotten!" And the children laugh, scandalized, and even I would grin. Except for the people she cared Naeli took nothing in the world seriously, including the Enemy.) Naeli was half-crazy, anything but a rule-keeper. She was a good mother though. She taught her children how to read Coranian and the two oldest sons apprenticed out — one to a blacksmith, the other to a carpenter. It wasn't easy to achieve this, sons were supposed to follow the trade of their fathers; that first law of the Guilds. But Naeli was tireless in her petitioning, bribing when she could afford to; she insisted that none of her sons would go to the mines to die like their father (in a cave-in) or his father (withered away by some illness breathed in deep under the earth). And she had her way: her youngest son, Thend, would be Besk's apprentice, or mine, when the time came. So she took care of her sons and loved them. But it was her daughter, Fasra who truly held her heart. She doted on the girl, spoiled her, labored long hours at the petty labor permitted to women so that Fasra could have a dowry. And affection was not misplaced: Fasra was a lovely child, with silver-pale hair, clear brown skin, and two black lightning bolts dwelling permanently in her storm-dark eyes. She was clever and engaging, too; everybody was fond of her. But it was clear, from the moment she took to her own feet, that Fasra had a will of iron, which she was not inclined to have anyone temper. And Naeli rarely could bring herself to discipline the girl (at once the last remnant of her husband and the radiant mirror of her own youth) as she should have, so matters became worse. Fasra, at first merely strong-willed, grew contrary; "no" meant yes to her and "yes" meant I won't. One day, when Fasra was around five or six years old, she was invited on a picnic with some of her friends; they were going to pick wildberries in the woods. The mothers of some of the children were to accompany them, but Naeli could not go. It was market day and she had a load of vegetables ready to sell. So she told Fasra she couldn't go. Fasra disagreed, and finally Fasra had her way. Naeli committed her to the care one of the other mothers in attendance, a friend of hers, one of the thousand and one people she knew in Four Castles. The children went on their picnic. The forest is a strange and beautiful place during the day, but still forbidding in comparison to the ordered life of town and castle. During the morning the children stayed close to their protectors, terrified by the approach of the smallest chipmunk. But, as the day approached noon, the terror receded; the children wandered farther through the green woods and golden clearings, seeking out skeneberries and clusterfruit and the three types of mushroom they had been taught were good to eat. As noon gave way to afternoon Fasra found herself with less in her basket than most. It wasn't because she wasn't clever or hadn't been taught. But she was moody and contrary. She looked for berries in the shade and mushrooms in the sunlight. It took her much of the day to learn that things grew where they grew, and not where she thought they should. She explained her theory to her custodian, Naeli's friend, as they sat down for lunch. The berries, she said, were like bright little suns; they could warm up the woods when it was too cool. The mushrooms were chilly and gray, like clouds; they would be pleasant in the hot sun-drenched clearings. Naeli's friend applauded the ingenuity of this idea, then asked how many berries and mushrooms Fasra had actually collected. Fasra reluctantly showed her basket. Then Naeli's friend showed Fasra her own daughter's basket: it was more than twice as full as Fasra's. Many children had brought in full baskets from the morning's berrying, Naeli's friend explained, perhaps a bit tactlessly, so a change of method seemed in order. Fasra's face fell and she turned away. But she wasn't stupid; she could learn a hard lesson when she had to. And she had brought three baskets along, which she was determined to bring home full to Naeli, whom she loved as fiercely as Naeli loved her. So she went to work in the afternoon in grim earnest. The nearby clearing had been plucked clean in the morning, so she searched the ones that were farther away. And she filled two baskets with clusterfruit and skeneberries, bringing them proudly back to her custodian. It was the third basket that brought disaster. She had resolved to bring back a basket full of cleft-caps, the rarest edible mushroom in our woods. But she started on this too late in the day. That third basket — and her iron will — sealed her fate. In midafternoon, the other children began to wander back, with berry-smeared faces and full baskets. They were happy, but tired, and a little frightened by the lengthening shadows. Darkness was rising from the earth; they wanted to go home; their custodians wanted to take them... but Fasra was missing. Naeli's friend left her own daughter in someone else's care and ran to the place where Fasra had been last seen. She kept calling out Fasra's name until the girl finally appeared at the edge of a clearing, like a wood-sprite reluctant to leave the forest-shadows. "Come back," Naeli's friend said to the proud child. "We're going home." -Not till I'm done. My basket's only half-full." Now, if I'd been there, I might have indulged the little girl with a few more rents to pick mushrooms. I might have helped her. I might have bribed her with the contents of my own baskets. And if the child had balked again at coming home I might have said, You are more important to your mother than a basket of mushrooms. Or, weary from the long day, tired of the child's imperious manner, frightened by the onset of darkness, I might have done exactly what Naeli's friend did. Which was to shout, "No! Come now!" "Just a moment," Fasra said icily. "I'm not finished." "You're finished when I say you're finished!" Naeli's friend cried. "Darkness Is rising! Come home." "Not till I'm done." "We're leaving," Naeli's friend said, walking toward the girl, who ran back steps into the wood. "No!" shouted Fasra. "No! No! No!" Naeli's friend turned and began to walk away. "Goodbye," she said, over her shoulder. "I hope you can make your way out of the forest by yourself." There was no answer. After a few steps more she turned and looked back. Fasra had vanished. They searched for her, of course. But the day was growing old, and they had other children to take care of, their own children. Finally they returned to Caroc without Fasra, and Naeli's friend brought the terrible news to my house around sunset. Naeli came to Besk's shop immediately. She was weeping, but she managed to tell the story as she knew it. "Naeli, I'm sorry," was all I could find to say, as she sobbed. "I loved her, too."" "Her name will be mentioned at the next Mysteries," Besk promised her. His pale brown face etched with grief. He was very fond of Naeli, and Fasra too. "What do you mean?" cried Naeli, in fresh alarm. "Aren't you going to help me find her?"" Besk and I stared at each other in astonishment. Then Besk said firmly. "No. You must mourn her, Naeli. No one can help her now." "White-faced Bargainer," she cursed him. "Stay here and lick your pennies! My brother will still help me!" "Help you do what?" I shouted. "I won't help you commit suicide. It's already getting dark!" "She's alone!" Naeli said. "She's never been alone this long. She'll be getting cold. She'll be afraid. And soon it will be dark and they will come for her. The Bargainers. The Enemy. The Whisperer in the Dark. They'll come for her!" She stared at us in silence for a few moments as Besk and I refused to meet her eye. The thought of the beloved child dying alone in the dark woods was terrible. But there was nothing we could do. We knew that. We resented Naeli for not knowing it, too. "Help me!" she screamed in my face. "Help me! Why won't you help me?"" Then she ran from the shop, leaving the door swinging open behind her. I turned resolutely back to the work we'd been doing, a commission from Baron of Caroc which was to be ready the next day. But Besk reached over and grabbed me by the shoulder. "Go after her," he said. "Go now. Hurry, Roble." "No," I said stubbornly. "She'll come to her senses in a little while." "She's in her senses now," Besk replied. "But that doesn't mean for her what it does for dull fellows like you and me. She is a great one, an empress or a chant lady by rights. If she lived in the wide world, she would be one or the other by now, or something better than both. She knows everything you know, how the law is about to be broken in the woods. To you, that means she must not enter there. To her, it means she must. Go, Roble. Run. It may be too late as I stand here talking..." Besk was a good man, but he'd never sent me home early in the ten years I'd working for him. This, more than anything else, struck me with urgency. I dropped my tools and ran out the open door. The sun had set and the narrow lanes of Caroc Town were heavy with shadow. The dark blue radiance left in the evening sky was already dim and fading. As side-lanes for the Road I heard the hillconches ring out like thunder, breaking the law. "Naeli!" I shouted as I ran. "Wait! Naeli!" iidn't wait. At the edge of town there were only the black-armored Riders black steeds. I could hear the one's voice as I ran up to them, but made e of the words. (I realize now what he was saying, of course, having said it any times myself.) The one finished speaking and I asked them, "Have you seen a woman pass way? I —" The Rider who had not spoken drew his truncheon and pointed it at my throat. Neither of them said a word, and I found myself unable to speak either. Now I know that the Rider was only threatening to kill me if I tried to enter the woods. But then his gesture seemed full of mystic import. I had never confronted one of these Riders in their dark regalia before, never thought about what they wanted. The forest where Fasra had vanished had now taken Naeli, too. But it was their forest, I realized: only they could cross and recross it in the lawless hours. I understand how they dared to do it. But I realized that I couldn't imitate them, that I must not. They had forbidden it. And in that strange moment they seemed to have more power than the Four Barons themselves. After all, the Barons could only say what the law was. The Riders said what it was not, and rode beyond its limits. "Will you at least look for her?" I pleaded, when I found my voice again. "Her daughter is there, too, a girl of five or six... lost in the woods." They still did not speak. I suppose they were simply hesitating, wondering whether to explain to me that they could not afford to wander from the Road, that they were powerless and couldn't really help. I suppose they resented me as I had - sented Naeli, demanding more than I could give. But I felt none of this. I felt as if I had bowed down in prayer to two statues of the Strange Gods, or asked a favor of a stone wall. Defeated, I turned and walked away in silence. They watched me go and then, no doubt, rode off into the lawless woods. It was long after dark when I finally reached my house. My sister's sons were sitting huddled around the cold fireplace in the front room. "Where is Naeli?" I asked stupidly, as if I didn't know. I guess part of me expected her to be there, to always be there. "She went to find you," Stador, the eldest boy said. "She said you would help I don't remember the rest of that night, or much of the following days. There were the funerals, strangely bitter with no bodies to bury. And I apprenticed my sister's youngest boy to Besk. A month and a half later I enlisted in the Riders. I thought it would be difficult to join. But it wasn't. There were always places falling vacant. The trouble with Liskin, I discovered, was that you could shut him up, but he wouldn't stay shut. He kept wanting to talk: about whether we were riding fast enough, about whether we were riding too fast, about whether we should have hunted down the Bargainers tending the trap. The subject didn't matter; he wanted to run his mouth. But, when you're riding through the woods during lawless hours, you have to pay attention to what's happening around you. You can't do that with someone nattering in your ear all the time. Finally, I had to rein in and tell him. I added, as an afterthought, that it was crazy to try to carry on a conversation in full armor on trotting horses. Up till then he had been nodding (like, chastened). But this he wanted to argue about. "Oh, I don't know, Roble —" "Bargain it, Liskin," I swore, then stopped. Over his shoulder I could see flicker of red light filtering through the night-black branches of the forest. "Stray!" I said, and pointed. He turned to look and said, "Or another trap." "Either way, there are bodies to bring out." I dismounted. Liskin didn't. "Roble," he said, "it's against the Rules to go that far from the Road." "Then don't," I replied. "But if there were any rules in these woods we wouldn't be here." I drew my sword and left the Road, plunging into the forest that had swallowed my sister and her child. The light was a longish way from the Road. It took me endless moments wend through the closer set treetrunks until I approached close enough to see that the light was from a campfire. Someone was sitting beside it. You get an eye for spotting illusions after you've been in the Riders for The illusion-bait is always something you want to see, the thing that's too goc be true. It's the image in your mind most likely to kick you forward before you have chance to think. There are a lot of variations the Enemy could play on this method: traps baited with simulacra of your enemies; traps baited with images of people you don't recognize; traps baited with sleeping or otherwise defenseless Bargainers, and so on. But the Enemy never does this; maybe it can't. Maybe the Enemy, for all immortality and power, is a little stupid. So I knew that what I saw before me was real. Because I was not in the least impressed. The stray was about average height. He had white skin, like a Coranian. had been burned dark on his face and hands. He looked like he spent a lot of outdoors: all his clothing (as dark as a Rider's) was travel-worn and weather-stained, and his shoes had been mended more than once. He had crooked ders and dark unruly hair. All-in-all: the sort of person you might expect to at your back door, begging for a meal or a mug of beer. He was too unpleasant not to be real. I looked the situation over carefully. Just because he wasn't an illusion. it didn't mean this wasn't a trap. Alev and I had found that out yesterday. And even if it wasn't a trap, Bargainers might have spotted the stray and staked him out, as I had. Then, the stray himself might be dangerous (though he didn't look it). I slowly made my way all around the campsite, assuring myself at every step that there were no Bargainers to compete with me for this stray. The stray himself didn't seem to notice me; he was intent on some carving he was doing with a pointed knife. Finally I stepped into the firelight. The stray looked up at me without surprise. I was wondering what language I should speak to him when he solved the problem by addressing me in a kind of Coranian. "Do you speak for the singing wood?" he asked sleepily. "No." I said, as clearly as I could. Obviously the vagrant was half-enchanted: his disturbingly pale gray eyes seemed to be glowing slightly. "I've come to take you out of the woods." He shook his head. "I will stay here tonight and listen," he said sleepily. "And perhaps. tomorrow night, I will answer. If —" "If you stay here tonight, you will die here tonight. I'm paid to prevent that. Come along with me and I'll take you to the nearest castle." He shook his head again casually and said, "There is a great hunger in these woods, though. Felt it immediately. Something like it only once before. I fell asleep In the middle of a forest fire. I heard a deep golden voice calling to me. I passed from sleep to the rapture of vision, tried to speak with it. But it knew nothing except hunger, an inhuman and utterly destructive hunger. Then I awoke and realized: I had been in talic stranj with the heart of the flames." He laughed fondly at the memory. "Talic stranj, eh?" I said. "I know exactly what you mean. Happens to me all the damn time." This stray was probably crazy or a sorcerer or both. (They go together like shell brisket and earth-apples.) That meant that I would probably have to kill him to get him out. And I'd have to do it fast, before the Bargainers arrived. I covertly loosened my sword in its sheath. He noticed, damn him. He was no longer as sleepy or as stupid as he had first seemed. We stayed that way for a moment, looking at each other, saying nothing. Then the Bargainers hit me from behind, the first thing that I thought was, Bargain it! It is a trap! That flashed through my mind as I fell like a stone, as if I was unconscious (though I wasn't). Three of them stayed to guard me and the rest moved into the circle of firelight. I rolled to my feet (try it in full armor sometime; but I spent my off-months excercising, not soaking up beer in the taverns) and drew my sword. I cut two of throats before they were ready for me; the third turned to meet me, though,his club held high. As we fought, I realized this wasn't a trap. The stray had a long sword with an odd, flashing blade and was fighting the Bargainers as fiercely as I. That was something. But there were so many of them! I killed my third Bargainer easily enough. They're not usually armored and they don't carry weapons to kill, only a long club, like our truncheons, to knock people unconscious. (The Boneless One is said to prefer live victims.) They're best at stealth, and the Enemy helps them there. But right now stealth wasn't on the tablee Bargainers were pouring out of the woods on several sides. I ran into the clearing and was going to charge the Bargainers around the stray when someone called my name. I turned my head and saw what I most wanted to see: Alev limping toward me through the wood. "Roble!" he shouted. "Bargain it! It is a trap! Come this way!" I took three steps without thinking. It was impossible not to. Then I did think. I turned back to the Bargainers and found several of them bearing down on me. I met the club of one with my truncheon and slashed wildly at another with my sword. Then they leapt back and encircled me, beginning a long slow carefully co-ordinated attack certain of victory. They had most of the night, and my attention was divided several ways. They had only to stay out of reach of my sword and wait for my inevitable mistake. I didn't need to glance back into the wood to know Alev was not there, had never been there. His image had been a sending of the Enemy. Over the shoulder of a Bargainer, I saw the stray do something pretty smart: he leaped up and caught hold of a branch with his left hand. Then he lifted himself into the tree as the Bargainers surrounding him swarmed in to grab him. To start with, it's pretty impressive to see a grown man lift himself into a perch using one hand. But, more importantly, it meant he was probably safe now. The Bargainers didn't carry swords or axes or arrows; if they tried to climb up he could probably knock them off as they came. And the forest was so dense he could go from tree to tree if he wanted to escape his pursuers on the ground. Of course, it was also tough luck for me. Even if I had been able to hold off the Bargainers surrounding me, I wouldn't be able to fight the whole crowd. But I had known I was taking a risk coming into the wood. The stray was safe — that was the reason I had taken my risk — but he might not know it. "You're all right!" I shouted at the stray. "Stay up there until dawn and they'll go away!" The stray looked at me, right at me with those gray eyes that pierced spear-points. Then he scanned the clearing, looking at the Bargainers drift away from the tree and toward me. "Stay up there!" I shouted desperately. I was afraid he'd throw his safety away in a futile attempt to assist me. "I'm done! You're not! You can't help me!" He sheathed his sword and braced his back against the tree trunk. I had to duck from a club launched at me by a Bargainer, so I didn't see what happened next. But I heard it. I heard part of it, anyway. It was a sound impossible to hear. but audible just the same. A word, spoken in a human voice, but a word that resonated with power, a bright black hammer of a word. I passed out before the word was finished. When I came to myself I was lying in the clearing. Someone was moving about nearby. I struggled groggily to my feet and reached for a weapon. But there was no need: the only person moving about was the stray. He was binding the hands of the Bargainers, who were strewn unconscious about the clearing. "Good evening," he said, nodding toward me as his hands worked ceaselessly. "You might stand by to clop a few of these fellows on the head, if they start waking up before I can bind them. They should be coming out of it soon." "It?" I said, picking up my truncheon. "I spoke one of the Silent Words. Your helmet shielded you from some of it - you woke up sooner, but these others aren't dead. They're just stunned, as were. I am Morlock Ambrosius, by the way." He glanced directly at me, as if to see whether I recognized the name. I didn't, so I just told him mine in return. Then I added hesitantly, "Um. Strictly speaking, I should kill these Bargainers." "Oh?" Morlock didn't seem surprised — it was hard to read his expression, for a fact — but he didn't seem inclined to cooperate, either. "Or I could herd them to Caroc Castle when they awake. It would be tricky work, but just possible." "What would happen to them there?" "They'd be killed." Morlock shook his head. "I don't know what lies between your people theirs, but I can't stand here while you kill —" he glanced around the clearing "--forty-seven people." "It doesn't appeal to me, either," I grumbled. "Then I'd have to haul them out or burn the bodies... Let's just bind them and leave them. It's not the first rule I've ever broken." Somehow Morlock's face indicated approval without changing expression in the slightest. We bound the rest of the Bargainers (clubbing them into unconsciousness as necessary), Morlock recovered his pack and bedroll from the campsite and we buried the fire in moist earth. I led the way back to the Road. At first I thought that I had reached the wrong part — it's easy to lose your way in the woods after dark, and Liskin and my horse weren't there. But there was some fresh horse-dung on the Road, as if more than one horse had been there for a while recently. And I did recognize the place. "Liskin, you worm," I muttered to myself. "Liskin?" "My partner. I left him holding my horse when I saw your campfire from the Road." I gestured at the horsecrap on the Road. "Some of that's probably his." "So we walk." "Right." I thought about going back for the three bodies of the Bargainers I had killed and decided against it. There was no way we could bring those corpses out without a horse, and if we tried to burn them needle-toothed Bargainers would come like moths out of the wood. Much as I hated to, I'd just have to leave the Enemy a little snack tonight. "You should dump some of that iron," Morlock suggested, gesturing at my armor. "You'll move faster." "I'm used to it. Besides, I can't leave a Rider's armor on the Road — some Bargainer might find it and use it to trick someone." Morlock nodded, and we started down the Road. Morlock kept his eyes on the right side of the Road, I watched the left, and every now and then one of us looked over his shoulder to check the Road behind us. "These Bargainers," Morlock said presently, "they live in the wood?" "Yes." "Why are you at war with them?" "They serve the Enemy who lives in the wood, the Boneless One. They take us, when they can, to feed it. We kill them, when we can, to prevent that." I gnawed my lip. "I should have done something about those damn Bargainers. I don't know why it made a difference that there were so many. They'd've taken forty seven of us and bragged about it afterwards." "Probably," Morlock agreed flatly. I glanced at him, but his eyes were scanning the roadside. He seemed neither skeptical nor surprised to find people preying on each other the way the Bargainers did on us. He seemed to be a pretty reasonable person. I wanted to ask him why he's been talking so crazily when I first spoke to him, but I didn't want to insult him. "What's talic stranj?" I asked, eventually. His grim face twisted in a one-sided grin. "You're wondering whether I'm crazy or not." There didn't seem to be any point in denying it. "Yes." "Some people who are crazy can't stay in their own heads. They keep drifting into other people's, or abroad in the world. Have you ever known anyone like that?" "No. I haven't known that many crazy people." "There can't be too many people like that in these woods. Your Whisperer —" "He's not mine." "— he would eat them, I think. But I was trained by such a person to ascend to the rapture of vision and see all three phases of the world." "Uh huh. Three phases?" I was getting nervous again. Walking through woods thick with Bargainers, with the Enemy lurking unseen, was bad enough; I didn't feel like adding a crazy Coranian to the mix. He shrugged his wry shoulders and said, "Hear me out and decide if I'm crazy. There are matter and spirit, yes? The things we see and feel and touch, and - minds that lie behind them." "OK. Say there are." "But how does dead matter impinge on a living mind? How does a living mind make dead matter respond?" "You tell me." "Through the middle phase: tal. Tal is the medium through which the spirit realm takes action in the world of matter, and the medium through which matter affects the spirit." "So ghosts..." "Not just ghosts. People. Squirrels. Dogs. Bugs. Any entity that can take vol:1- tional action in the material world is a fusion of three bodies: material, talic spiritual. Physical death occurs when tal is no longer able to unite matter - spirit. In rapture I can ascend from material perception to talic perception. - at least a glimpse of the spiritual realm beyond." "Hm. Not my department." He laughed, surprising me. "Yes it is." He waved his hand at the road. "You collect dead bodies —" "When someone doesn't run off with my horse." "— and people in the woods. Why?" "So that the Enemy won't eat them. What's good for him is bad for us." "What do you suppose the Enemy eats?" "You're telling me you know?" "I do know. I sensed its specific hunger when I was in rapture. It feeds on tal. The tal of living beings, men and women, when it can. A living consciousness is haloed in tal. But the dead still possess tal, which will fade over time, like the heat of a dead body." "And it can live on this?" "Yes. It would have some harmful effects, over time, but a person with certain skills could prolong his life indefinitely by absorbing the tal of others. It's the of magic Coranians have always been good at." Coranians. He said it like it didn't include him. That set me back. He pale-skinned, like a Coranian himself; he spoke Coranian like it was his native language. "Aren't you a Coranian?" I asked. "You speak the language." "I share the language," he said, not as if he were angry or embarrassed, stating a fact. "But my people didn't call it Coranian. You must know some Coranians yourself." "They pretty much run Four Castles. The Four Barons and the gentry are all white-skinned Coranians." "Hm." "They live a long time," I added. "Three hundred years, or so some of them claim." "Hm." "You don't think —?" I began. The Silent Word hit me again, like before but worse. It was like being buried in a bright avalanche of silence. I found myself sprawled on the ground and go: up shaking my head. "Look, I was just asking," I said stiffly. "You didn't have to pound my head with your magic word." But Morlock was climbing to his feet as well. "I didn't," he said, a little unsteadily. "I think —" It struck again, a dark inhuman voice shouting the silent word through the trees. We rose from the ground a while later and looked at each other. Morlock dropped his backpack on the ground and began to paw through it frantically. We both lost consciousness several times as the voice in the woods shouted the Silent Word at us. But finally, as I watched him with a certain disinterest — I was getting a little groggy; it was like taking repeated punches to the head — he pulled something shiny out of the pack and put it to his lips. It was a pennywhistle or a pipe or some other kind of cut-rate flute. He began to play a little tune on it just as the Silent Word rang again out of the woods. I staggered a little but didn't fall. There was some sort of magic in the pipe's music that masked the stunning force of the Silent Word. Using his right hand to finger the pipe as he continued to play, he reached down and slid one strap of his pack over his left shoulder. Then he switched hands and put the strap over his right shoulder. "Your pack's open," I said. "I'll —" He paused playing for a moment and said, "Have to get moving. Rats." This last bit meant less than a Bargainer's promise to me, but I could see how it was a good idea to get moving. We walked westward, toward Caroc town. Presently, I got to thinking, though. The pipe made magical music — what was the magic for? Just to cover up the magic of the Silent Word? I didn't think so. Rats, Morlock had said. It couldn't really be to-- I turned around and walked backwards, keeping up with Morlock step for step. He was right: it would have been a bad idea to stop and tie up his pack while the music was playing. Because it was drawing rats out of the wood. There were hundreds already, creeping along behind us — the road was dark with them. I looked at Morlock; he met my eye and shrugged without pausing the music. I swung around and walked forwards. Obviously, there was no point in speak-mg — and, frankly, I was glad of that. Sure, I was grateful that his magic pipe was keeping me from going unconscious every other moment. I was grateful his magic word had saved me from the Bargainers. He had obviously thought it safe to use, as the Bargainers would no more be able to hear the word or remember it than I had. It would affect any man or woman that way, no doubt. But the Whisperer in the Woods, the Boneless One, was not a man or a woman. It had heard the Silent Word and was learning how to use it. If it learned how to use it against townfolk without striking the Bargainers as well, even the s of town and castle wouldn't protect us: walls mean nothing if there is no one ding on guard behind them. The long war between the Castles and the Enemy might be over at last, thanks to Morlock. And me. I should have left him to the Bargainers, I thought over and over again as we trudged toward Caroc. That was the bitterest pill of all, because it meant, in spite of everything, that Liskin had been right. Dawn came about an hour before we reached the edge of Caroc town. I toldMorlock he could stop playing — the Enemy was never active during the day. He blew a final shrieking blast on the pipe, very unlike the tripping persuasive music that had drawn the rats, and they fled in all directions. I didn't have my hillconch with me — it was hooked to my horse's saddle —but I shouted the ritual restoring law to the road and the woods. Morlock listened with interest as he stored his pipe in an odd pocket in one of his sleeves and tied up his pack. Then we walked on to the town. I was not surprised to learn, when we reached Caroc, that I had been horribly killed by Bargainers in the woods and Liskin, though striving valiantly to save me, had been forced to flee with my horse, for the safety of the Four Castles and, indeed, all humankind. The sad news reached me through Besk, who was waiting for me at the edge of town with a mug of beer and a piece of cheese. While I ate the cheese and drank the beer (I offered Morlock the first shot at both; he waved them away. but it looked to me like he really wanted the beer), Besk told us about how Liskin rode into the town before dawn reporting the terrible things he had seen. A small crowd had gathered around by this time, enjoying the prospect of man hearing about his own death. I could have said a lot of things, but what I did say was "That Bargaining little weasel. Besk, Morlock. Morlock, Besk." Besk's pale brown face went blank and then, for the first time, he straight at the stray I had recovered from the lawless woods. "Morlock Ambrosius?" Besk asked. Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. Besk seemed to accept this as an answer; he nodded solemnly and said. "As a maker of sorts, I honor you, of course. As a Coranian of sorts, I've been taught to hate you. But I could never take that stuff as seriously as I should, I'm afraid. You'd better leave him at my place, Roble, before you go to report. The Barons won't treat him well." "Can't," I said flatly. I was a little surprised that Besk had heard of Morlock. but not very: Coranians are supposed to get more news from the wide world than the rest of us, and what they get they share at their Mysteries. (Besk had the wrong ancestors to ever be a full Initiate of one of the Inner Circles. But he, unlike me, had some of the right ancestors, so he could be a member of one of the Outer Circles.) I didn't know what Morlock had done to get on the wrong side of the Coranians or when he had done it; frankly, I didn't care. Something more important than him or me had come up, and now was not the time to hand in a false or, should I say, Liskinized report. I'd never cared for the Baron of Caroc (who struck me as a stiff) but he needed to hear the truth from me now, including whatever Morlock could tell him about the Silent Words. To my surprise, Morlock agreed. I thanked Besk for the breakfast (or is it supper when you've been awake all night?), left him among the crowd and trudged toward the castle. "Besk is a good man," I said, after we'd walked awhile in silence. "He seems so," Morlock replied. "But..." "But what?" "There was something a little strange about him." I should have been offended, but I knew what he meant. I shrugged and we went on without speaking. The audience hall of the Baron of Caroc was full of rubberneckers and armed guards when I ushered Morlock in. The atmosphere was festive but unpleasant_ It was like some creepy Coranian religious holiday (although there were almost as many brown faces as white ones in the audience hall). I conducted Morlock up the hall to the throne where the Baron sat, ramrod straight. "Sir," I said, a little embarrassed (I don't usually have to run my mouth with so many people listening), "I bring you news from the woods. And —" "I know about your prisoner, Liskin," the Baron said. "Don't worry: you'll have your reward." "The name's Roble," I snapped, my embarrassment vanishing in annoyance. It was just like Liskin to cop the credit for my "prisoner," after abandoning us both in the woods.) "Someone's been feeding you false reports. Sir. And I don't know what you guys have against Morlock, here, but there's something more important going on in the woods." "Nothing is more important than the capture of one of our enemies from the old time," the Baron said, gloatingly. "But I suppose you will deny your identity, enemy?" he said, speaking directly to Morlock. Morlock shrugged indifferently, much as he had when Besk asked his name. From the old time: how old was Morlock? Did they really hate him personally, or was it someone he was descended from? "Why is he still armed?" the Baron demanded. "You — Riskin — Loble — whatever your name is. Take his sword. Take his backpack. Take anything he has on his person." "Including his tin whistle?" I said sarcastically, but my heart was falling. I didn't like where this was going. The Baron had goons to lock people up and search them; that's not what the Riders are for, and I was annoyed the Baron was talking to me like one of his jailors. But I couldn't just stand here while they made plans to carve Morlock up, either. He'd saved my life when he could have let me die. I didn't figure I owed any loyalty to the Baron. The people who lived in Four Castles came first, I figured, especially the people I cared about, then people I owed something to (like Morlock). The Baron of Caroc wasn't on either list. No. what bothered me was what would happen when I refused. He'd just call in his goons and I might end up in a cell right next to Morlock. That wouldn't do anyone any good. But I didn't like the idea of knuckling under, either. Just when the situation was bad, Morlock made it worse by drawing his sword. A gasp went around the crowded audience chamber. Ifs a crime to draw a weapon in the presence of any of the Barons, of course, except in their defense. But that wasn't what shocked the crowd; at least I don't think so. It was the blade itself. They were all staring at it with their mouths open. I admit it was weird. I hadn't had a chance to look at the blade before, when Morlock was fighting the Bargainers. The blade was like a long pointed slab of black basalt with veins of white crystal running through it. It seemed as if the white parts began to move, like white flames flickering against a black background. Morlock almost seemed to flicker a little bit, too, and his gray eyes actually seemed to glow. He closed his eyes and I could see the light of his irises shining eerily through the thin skin of his eyelids. His movements were sluggish, almost sleepy. It reminded me of how he had been when I first saw him. He was going into the rapture state, I suddenly realized. Why? the sort of magic Coranians have always been good at... he'd said, right before the Silent Word struck us both down. He'd meant the kind of magic that preserved physical life by devouring someone else's ... no, their tal. It was just what the Enemy did. I'd wondered then if the Enemy might once have been a Coraniar though I didn't have a chance to ask the question. Did Morlock think the Enemy might be here — not in the woods but in Four Castles? Could he use his altered vision in the rapture state to find out? The Baron was shouting for someone to take his sword. I didn't move to obey; if Morlock was doing what I thought he was, I wanted to know the answer at least as much as he did. Eventually, though, three soldiers wearing the Baron's surcoat approached. The light in Morlock's eyes died; the light in the sword faded. I was wondering whether to intervene when he opened his eyes and peaceably surrendered the sword, hilt-first, to one of the guards (who seemed reluctant to touch it). He shrugged off his backpack and handed it to the second guard (who grabbed it with two hands and grunted a little; it seemed to be pretty heavy). He nodded politely to the third guard. Then he kicked him in the crotch, knocked him down and ran past him. I was as startled as anyone. I'd figured Morlock was going to surrender and plead for the Baron's mercy. Not a shrewd move, necessarily, yet one where I could. lend my assistance without ending up in the slammer. But before I knew it the crooked man was up on the dais, struggling with the Baron, with both of his hands on the Baron's left arm. Morlock wrenched the arm suddenly; there was an indescribable sound, like a moist crackle, and he had torn the arm from the Baron's body. But there was no blood. And something dark dangled and writhed at the Baron's side, where his arm had been, like muscles with no bone or skin. The guards had dumped Morlock's sword and backpack and (except for the one still rolling around on the floor with pain) were going to the Baron's rescue But this stopped them. Like everyone else they stood gaping at the scene out on the dais. Morlock stripped the severed arm of its sleeve and rapped it against the back of the throne. It was hard, chitinous, like a shell. He presented the torn end to those standing agape in the hall; we could see that it was hollow. The Baron Caroc wasn't human — just a sort of land-crab that looked human... "Is your enemy the Boneless One who lives in the woods?" Morlock aske "What of a boneless one who walks among you — misdirects your efforts — eats your lives —?" He took the Baron (who was striking at him with one remaining clawlike by the armless shoulder. He tore the shoulder in two different directions and Baron's torso came apart. Morlock tipped him forward and something oozed out of the gaping tear in the chest, like the soft boneless body of an overcooked snail. It fell on the dais steps and slid down a few, leaving a gleaming trail of behind it. It had human eyes, though. And its shapeless mouth screamed in the Baron's voice as Morlock stepped forward to crush it. The crowd's horror burst into panic. I wasn't the first person to rush for ' door, but I wasn't the last, either. Pretty soon we were all charging toward wide doors of the audience hall, forcing our way out, yelling our heads off. Th- crowd spun me around as I went through the door and I caught a glimpse of Morlock, calmly shouldering his backpack, his sword back in his hand, the Baron a red smear on the dais steps behind him. He met my eye and saluted me gravely with the sword. Then the crowd pushed me out through the door and I lost sight of him. The morning was warm; I was tired; my armor was heavy. It took me a long time to get from the Castle to the Riders Lodge, where I shed my armor, with the help one of the duty squires. I kept the sword, because I'd bought it with my own money, and I didn't expect to be back. I went from the Rider's Lodge to my house. It was mine, technically, but older sons, Stador and Bann (already journeymen in their trades), were actually living there these days. Business is thin for any young man starting out, so I was paying for most of their groceries as well. Thend, the youngest, lived with Besk as his apprentice. Snador and Bann, thank the Strange Gods (or whoever really runs the universe), were at home instead of work. "We heard you were dead," Stador explained, embracing me, "and then that you weren't —" "I need you to go to Besk's, right now," I interrupted. "Take whatever you would if you were never coming back. Because you're not. We're leaving Four Castles." "Why?" Stador wanted to know. It was a reasonable question, but what was a reasonable answer? A stray I brought back from the woods killed the Baron of Caroc. The Baron of Caroc had no bones. The Whisperer in the Woods knows one of the Silent Words. None of it sounded reasonable to me. "Your mother," I said slowly, "if she were alive, would certainly wish it. Is that enough? Will you wait for the rest?" "Sure," they said agreeably, and each of them got a small bundle of stuff. I sent them on ahead to Besk's to get Thend started. "If I don't follow in an hour,"" I said, "start without me. Don't come back here; go west, into the woods. I'll follow as soon as I can." There were some tools I needed to gather if we were going to rough it in the woods until we got to the lands beyond. I found a lump of beeswax, as well, set aside to make candles, and brought it with. I thought it might afford us some protection against the magic Morlock had unknowingly given to the Enemy in the woods. There was someone pounding on the front door by the time I was done, so I went out through a window in the back of the house and ran away up the alley. I heard someone following me almost immediately, but I ran on for a stretch, hoping to tire them out. Finally, I heard whoever it was gaining on me, so I halted and turned, my face friendly, my hand near my sword. It was Morlock. My face fell, but my hand dropped away from my sword. "I can't tell you," I said, as he ground to a halt beside me, "how not glad I am to see you." Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders, his white face impassive. Maybe he was used to that kind of reaction. I could understand that, if he screwed up other people's lives as swiftly and as thoroughly as he had screwed up mine. "You're leaving Caroc," he said, gesturing at my bundle. "Perhaps the entire, er--?"" "Four Castles, yes," I said. "I'm getting my sister's boys out of here, too. Somehow I don't figure my prospects in the Riders are what they were yesterday. What with me causing the Baron's death and all." Morlock looked at me quizzically. "Would you want a career in the Riders," he asked, "knowing what you know now?" "What do I know?" I said. I started walking again; I had to get to Besk's. Morlock fell in beside me. "So the Baron had a hard shell and no bones. It didn't mean he was a bad person." "He certainly seemed like a pleasant fellow," Morlock replied solemnly, "for the little while I knew him." I glared at him for a second, then had to turn away; I didn't want him to see me smile. "Roble," he said to my back, "I need some help." "Well, you certainly came to the right place," I said, turning toward him renewed anger. "You certainly have a store of credit with me. There's nothing I wouldn't do for the man who wrecked my life." "You've been cattle for these things," Morlock said, his face less impassive. his voice carrying an edge. "You and everyone you've ever known. Does that content you? Is it the life you'd wish for your sister's children? For your own?" "I don't have any." "Why not?" "Because I don't want —" I bit my sentence off. I didn't want the Boneless One in the woods to eat my children, the way it had eaten Fasra, and Naeli, and count- less others. I didn't want them to live in fear of the woods, the Bargainers, the Riders, the dark. I didn't want them to live the life I'd lived. "OK," I conceded gruffly, "maybe it wasn't such a great life. It was the one I had. Now, for taking it from me, you want me to —" "I want you to help me destroy the enemy in the woods." "What's it to you?" I demanded. "You can walk away from here and come back." He shook his head. "When I was taught the Silent Words I swore never to their secret to someone who would use them for harm. Now, inadvertently, I have. There is only one way to redeem my word: to kill the thing that lives in the wood I may not be able to do it alone. Will you help?" "Urk." I thought about it — for about half a second. It was a chance to kill the thing that had killed Naeli. "All right. But I want to send my nephews on their way first, in case it doesn't work out. I don't want the Barons or whatever those things are after them." I paused for a moment, then asked, "What are they?" "The Barons?" Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. "I'm not sure. At first I thought they might be segments of the Boneless One. But the Baron didn't know the Silent Word, or he would have used it to stop me from shelling him. Perhaps they were once Coranians, who fed on the Boneless One for so long that they became like it —" "What do you mean?" I demanded. "Fed on it how?" "That's how your society works, Roble. The aristocracy, the Coranians, meet in the Circles, and they are fed tal by the Boneless One. That's what gives them their extended lives." "I thought all Coranians lived long lives." "Not centuries-long lives. For that they need aid, some life-source beyond their own. This they get from the Boneless One — life-sustaining tal skimmed from his victims, or fresh corpses from the wood or the Road, and transmitted through foci of power hidden in their places of ceremony. In return, of course. they see that the Boneless One gets regular meals." "They Bargained with the Enemy." "Essentially," Morlock agreed. I guessed he hadn't heard my capital letters. Bargain was the ultimate sin among my people, but that wouldn't mean anything to Morlock. I walked in silence for awhile, absorbing what he'd said. "Are you telling me," I said finally, "that the Enemy could attack us in the day as easily as the nights? "I'm certain your Enemy could act during the day It simply chose not to. The herd could not be culled too often or too deeply; there always ha dto be enough stock to ensure a supply of meal sin the futre. Hence the Riders, and other thing sto keep the people of Four Castles thriling, even though a steady stream Of individual persons were sacrificed. During the Day, you thrived. At night, your Enemy fed." It was as if I were listening to someone breaking the law, knowing that it would never be unbroken again. My whole life had been turned inside out: I thought I'd been fighting the Enemy, and all the while I'd just been guarding its herd. I glared at Morlock. To him, this was all just a puzzle, and not an especially challenging one. "You figured this out pretty quickly," I said trying (and failing) not to sound hostile. "When you've lived as long as I have you've seen most things more than once. The hive-cities of the Anhikh, south of here, are not so very different. But when I ascended to rapture in the Baron's hall I could read the threads of tal-contact between the Coranians in the hall and the thing in the woods, with a great dark locus in the Baron. I saw his true form then, too, hiding within its shell." "So what's the secret of your long life?" I demanded. "Something similar?" Morlock looked away. I'd finally gotten under his skin somehow. "No," he said finally. "I was born in... a hidden land, far from here. Things are different there. I can never go there now. But whatever life I have is my own, not stolen from someone else." I believed him, for some reason. Maybe because he seemed to have the usual complement of human bones. Which prompted me to ask, "Why does consuming someone else's tal make you boneless?" "I'm not sure," he said. "My sister thinks there are two kinds of tal, one which unites spirit to flesh, and another which joins spirit to bone. The flesh-tat would easier to extract while the victim is still alive. But if you consumed only flesh tal then your flesh would continue to live, but your bones would wither and die over time." This was a disturbing thought, but what really shocked me was his casual mention of his sister. When I thought about it I realized there was no reason he couldn't have a sister. But he hadn't seemed that human to me. We came to Besk's smithy, marked with a golden anvil painted on the door. I leapt up the stairs and entered without knocking; Morlock followed me in. Besk wasn't there, but the boys were sitting in the middle of the shop with bundles beside them. They rose to their feet and stared at Morlock. "Stador. Bann. Thend. This is Morlock Ambrosius." Morlock and the boys nodded at each other civilly. But then Thend said, "He looks like a Coranian." "I'm not," Morlock said seriously. He's really not," I confirmed. "They hate his guts; believe me." I pulled the of beeswax out of my bag. "Listen, Morlock, I was thinking —" "An excellent idea," he said, nodding. "Think there's enough wax here to stop all these big ugly ears?" Morlock grinned one-sidedly. "Just barely. But I should tell them something the way westward before we plug our ears. You might do well to hear it, Perhaps we should bolt the door so we are not interrupted." "No." I was thinking that Besk would return; I didn't want to lock him out of his own place. Also, there was a question I wanted to ask him, outside of the boys-hearing. "You go back into the smithy and I'll hold the fort here. You can tell me about it later, if —" we live, I would have finished, but I noticed the boys staring at me with wide eyes "— it seems necessary." Morlock nodded, and Thend led the way back to the smithy. "Why do we have to have our ears plugged?" Bann asked. "The Enemy has a new magic," Morlock answered seriously. "Wax in your ears will protect you from it." The door shut behind him, cutting off his voice. I leaned back against the shop counter and waited. I suppose it was a long: time, but it didn't seem so; I had a lot to think about. Presently I heard slow footfalls coming up the stairs; the door opened and Besk stepped through. He didn't seem surprised or pleased to see me. "Roble." "Besk. Does the Enemy feed you?" Besk's face, not the cheeriest I'd ever seen it, fell even further. "I don't know, he said at last. "There is life in the Silver Stones; in a certain ritual of Mysteries, we can share in it, be strengthened by it. I... I don't know where the life comes from." "Did you ever ask? Do the Inner Circles know?" "I don't know what they know," he said, but his eyes would not meet mine. "So you ate Naeli," I said. "And Fasra. You and the other white-faces in the Circles." He put his hand to his pale brown forehead, as if to check its color, and said haltingly, "I... I don't know. How would I know, if it were... if it were true? No, Roble, listen." I nodded and motioned for him to continue. "I learned something at the Mysteries, this morning. It's bad news from Rendel's, I'm afraid. Alev died this morning just after dawn." Bring the stray out, Alev had screamed after the trap had closed on both his legs. I'm done. But I'd pried the jaws of the trap open and brought him out. I couldn't leave him there to die, but now he was dead anyway. I couldn't conceive of it: Alev had been my partner for four years. I could imagine not being a Rider, not living in Four Castles, my own death. But I couldn't picture a world where Alev was dead. There was another thing I didn't understand. "Besk," I said, "how did you hear this? There hasn't been time for a Baronial courier to ride from Rendel's to here since dawn. And no one would send a courier just to report a Rider's death, anyway." "It's one of the secrets," Besk said slowly, "But I think you should know. Yes. It's necessary that you know. There is an interconsciousness in each Circle. We share things... Not wills. Each man makes his own choices. But knowledge. We know what the others know." "Not sure I'd care for that," I said. "We get used to it. It can be useful. I knew what happened at the Baron's court this morning because many of my Circle were there. But other knowledge came later..." "What do you mean?" "It seemed like knowledge. It seemed so real. We learned that Morlock had used magic to delude the crowd, that you had helped him, that together you murdered the Baron. I didn't believe it, even though... I don't believe it. But the Circles are looking for you now." "If — Are you telling them where I am?" "I would not have betrayed you by choice, Roble. Believe me. But the moment I sw you, they knew." A shape flew between Besk and me — a dark green bird whose form would not quite come into focus, as if it were wrapped in a dark mist. It flew around Besk's head three times. With the first pass his eyes closed; with the second his head slumped; after the third he fell to the ground. The green bird flew back to where it came from: the door of the smithy. Morlock, standing there, caught it in a glass ss bottle and closed the bottle with a stopper. "What is that?" I asked. "Sleep," Morlock said. "Let's go." I looked down at the unconscious face of the old man I had loved and trusted. I found I loved and trusted him still. I would have liked to tell him so, at least once, but you can't have everything you want. If I were Liskin, I'd say it was one of the Rules. Ass it was, we grabbed our stuff, plugged our ears and got out of there, running up the Road westward past the end of town. I never saw Besk, or Liskin, or Castles ever again. But I dream about them sometimes. The Road ends at the western edge of Caroc town, which is the westernmost settlement of Four Castles, but we ran on into the woods. They are tame just there, by the town, and we kept on moving as fast as we could. If there were pursuers behind us we never heard them, thanks to our beeswax earplugs. We held a hard pace, going just south of due west, at Morlock's insistence. "We don't want to end up in Tychar," he said, when I asked him about it. (We unplugged one of our ears, so we could confer about our course.) "It's a place." "I never heard of it," I admitted. "You wouldn't have got any travellers from that direction. People who go into winterwood seldom survive to tell about it." "Why don't we head due south, then?" Morlock walked awhile in silence. "We might do so," he said finally. "It would be lesss dangerous. But we would end up in the Anhikh Komos of cities." "Kömos?" "The word means 'parade' or 'dance' or something like that. I suppose you translate it as 'alliance.' But there is a leader, the Komarkh, who has an something like that of the Ontilian Emperor." I was going to ask why it would be so bad to end up there, when I remembered something Morlock had said earlier, about the Anhikh cities being like Four Castles. It was worth some risk to avoid being caught in another web like we were leaving behind us. We replugged our ears and went on. An hour or two later, I had the oddest feeling — as if a voice that had been whispering at me all my life had just fallen silent. I stopped dead and looked at the otthers: they clearly felt it, too. Morlock dropped his pack and pulled from it a short shovel with a pointed blade. He walked back and forth over the ground we had just passed a few times, then started to dig down. For a sorcerer, he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. I had a shovel among my things, so I pulled it out and started to dig as well. All of us unplugged our ears (we knew we were at the limit of the Enemy's influence) and we dug in shifts. It took a couple hours to lay bare a trench only six feet long and four deep; the soil was interwoven with tree roots, living and dead, and we were cutting through wood as often as we were digging in dirt. Nor did we know exactly what we were looking for. But we had no doubt when we actually found it. At first it looked like a heavy cable, thicker than a man's arm — the kind they use in the mines. Then it seemed more like a monstrous earthworm: it rippled as we looked at it in the afternoon sun. It passed from one end of the trench to the other. "No doubt," Morlock said, "it runs all around Four Castles and the neighboring woods. This is the anchor of the Boneless One's influence." "You knew it would be here," I said. "I guessed something like it would be. The Boneless One is extremely powerful; its influence pervades the woods and even the towns. It must emit impulses in waves, constantly exerting itself. But even so, the influence would intense at its center and increasingly vague and slight everywhere else until talic waves dissipated in the wide world... unless there were some sort of wavebreak or wall which would rebound the waves back into the wood." "So if we put a hole in the wall —" "— its influence leaks away. Most of Four Castles, at any rate, will be free of it; I don't know about the Bargainers." "Let's cut it, then," I said. Morlock started to speak, hesitated, shrugged his crooked shoulders. He picked up his sharp swordlike shovel and dug it into the wormlike cable, twisting and pushing until the thing was completely severed. Some blackish green fluid like blood poured out and began to fill the narrow trench. "Yecch," said Thend (speaking for all of us, I'd say). The torn ends writhed for a bit, and then pressed against each other like two ragged mouths in a passionate kiss. Presently the ragged ends began to merge. "We need to take out a bigger section," I guessed. Morlock nodded. He cut again with his shovel while I dug into the wormlike cable in the middle of the trench. When both cuts were through, we put the blades under the severed and suddenly still section of worm-cable and tossed out of the trench. Morlock looked bleakly at his ragged shoes, drenched with sticky cold worm blood. "I really need new shoes," he remarked. "Look!" I said. The two ragged ends of worm-cable stretched and thinned and crawled toward each other over the gap of bare mud. They met and began to merge. "Bargain the thing," I muttered. "We need to take a bigger section." "I think so," Morlock said. "Roble, look at this." He gestured at the section of worm cable we had tossed out of the trench. It lay still, turning gray in the green-gold light of afternoon. "So? It's dead — hey!" "Yes. If we cut the thing at two widely separate points — might not the stretch between die? We would want them to be widely separated. We want as big a hole as we can make in the Boneless One's wall." "It might work." "And if it doesn't, we can try something else. I think the time has come to go different paths. Do you think you can find the border line by yourself? I might be able to fashion you a detector." I closed my eyes and stepped from one side of the trench to the other and back gain. The whispering returned, then vanished again. "I can do it," I said. "It's obvious where the border is." "Then I'll travel north and east along the border for a day or so. You travel ast the same length of time. This time tomorrow, we'll cut the worm, whereeve rwe are on the border. If we're right, the wall will be broken and the the dominion of the Boneless One will be over." It was another night without sleep, but I could handle that. There was a trickier issue at hand. I turned to the boys, who were staring solemnly at us. I call them boys, but two of them were almost men. All of them were used to fending for thhemselves, working long and hard, sticking by each other. I hated to send them alone into the wilderness, but I wanted them away from this in case something went wrong. "Boys," I said, "Morlock is right: we part ways here. I want you to go on west and south for a day's journey. Wait there for three days. If neither Morlock nor I come to meet you there, I want you to head west to —" I looked at Morlock. "Sarkunden," he said. "There's a man there who owes me a favor. I gave Stador a map and a letter of introduction." "Good. Don't wait longer for us and don't come back; we'll catch up to you." "What if you don't?" Stador said matter-of-factly. "Then make your mother proud. I'm proud of you already." I hugged each one of them as Morlock stood away, repacking his shovel. "Then," Morlock said, waving to us all in farewell. "See you back here in two days," I said, although I knew how doubtful that was, and, in fact, it didn't work out that way. In a few moments we were headed in three different directions. I tried to not look after the boys, but it was hard. There was worse stuff, both earlier and later, but for me that night-walk was the most nightmiarish part in the whole business. I kept seeing Naeli in the woods, walking on the Enemy's side of the invisible wall. The Naeli-thing kept trying to signal me, but I was wearing my wax earplugs and looked away whenever I saw her. It bothered me, partly because I figured it must mean that the Enemy knew where I was, and what I was trying to do. But mostly it bothered me the way the thought of Naeli always bothered me: the way I had failed her and Fasra when they needed me most. Toward dawn the Boneless One gave up; or, anyway, I stopped seeing her. I was tempted to lay down and rest when day came, but I forced myself to go on at a steady clip during the day. When I judged it something later than midafternoon I stoped walking and started digging. I knew, before I was fairly well along, that the Enemy knew I was there and was worried. Because the Naeli-thing appeared again. Although I was standing on the far side of the invisable wall to do my digging, she triped to approach me. I swung at her with the shovel and she backed away. I saw her lips move. She seemd to be saying, They are coming; they are coing. Run, Roble, Run. "Drop dead," I replied and resumed my digging, working as fast as I could. Presently the Naeli-thing disappeared into the woods. I didn't doubt she had been telling the truth, in a way. The Enemy probably was sending Bargainers to stop me. I had to finish before they got there. I did, but only just. I had exposed and severed an eight foot long section of the gigantic worm Morlock had called the anchor of the Boneless One's influence. The two frayed ends struggled desperately to meet and reunify, flopping about in the trench sloppy with muddy worm blood. But they couldn't extend so far. Then they stopped struggling and the wounds at their ends closed like mouths. They seemed to be healing even as I watched. I saw this with a mixture of disgust and ruefulness. The eight-foot section - the worm I had removed was incontestably dead. But the two ends of the worm were clearly alive. Perhaps longer segments of the worm could live independently. If so, the task Morlock and I had set ourselves was doomed to failure. I was exhausted and depressed: all this work for nothing? When I raised my head at last I saw them standing there: at least a dozen Bargainers, grinning at me with their needle-like teeth. I raised the shovel — I'd left my sword with my pack, some distance away in the woods — and backed away. They stepped forward to follow... and stopped suddenly. I laughed. "You can't come further, can you?" I said. "You've hit the wall. You're bound within the Boneless One's shell!" I laughed again. Suddenly the situation seemed hilarious. But of course I was very tired. A big shaggy man, who may have been the leader, stepped back from the wall. He pressed his hand against a medallion hanging around his neck. Then he nodded as if he had received instructions and stepped across the trench, the gap in the Boneless One's anchor-worm. His face twisted in surprise as he stood there, on the free side of the trench. "You didn't expect that, did you?" I said to him. "The voice has stopped. It can't run you anymore. You're free, if you want to be." The shaggy man looked at me for a moment, seeming to waver, then glanced back at the other Bargainers, watching him solemnly from the other side of the trench. When he turned back to me, his face was resolute. He couldn't lose face before his followers. He leaped forward, lashing out with his truncheon. I did my best to ward him off with the shovel, but I'd been halfway to unconsciousness before these guys showed up. Pretty soon his truncheon connected with my head and finished the job. I didn't really wake up until we came to the Bargainer village; at least, I didn't completely wake up. I remember hanging like fresh game from a pole carried by two burly Bargainers, and I remember seeing Naeli or the Naeli-thing again and again, but there are many lightless patches. When I came fully to myself I was or my own feet, being dragged along a narrow lane between high houses with narrow windows through which many eyes, some of them human, were peering. There were times everyone fell to the ground, as if worshipping, and trhey dragged me down with them. I was too groggy to understand what was happening or make my escape at these times. Besides, my hands were bound and hobbled. They took me to a great open area in the center of the village and bound me to a stake. In the middle of the open area was a tree, tall and twisted like an oak. At the foot of the tree was a mouthlike opening. No one had to explain to me what would happen next. I was past swearing. if there were, in some fireproof lexicon, any word sulphurous enough to express my anger and dismay at the thought of being fed alive to the Boneless One, I would have used it. It didn't cheer me at all to see a familiar, crook-shouldered figure slumping at a stake similar to my own on the other side of the clearing. They had got Morlock, What was it he'd said? If this doesn't work, we'll try something else. "Hey!" I shouted. "Let's try something else! I don't think this is working!" I don't suppose he heard me, if his earplugs were still in place; anyway, he gave no sign of it. I leaned back against my stake and tried to ready my mind for death. But some part of me wouldn't give up, and when a young silver-haired Bargainer girl, ten or eleven years old, came toward me with a knife in her hand. I feigned indifference, putting all my weight on the ropes that bound me to the stake. When she came within range I kicked out with my hobbled feet, knocking her over and sending the knife spinning from her hand. This proved to be wasted effort, though, as a group of young men immediately surrounded me, slashing at my bonds. As soon as I was free they dragged me away; I stopped resisting when I realized that it was really away: away from the clearing, the tree, the mouthlike hole in the ground. Then I recognized them: my nephews, Naeli's boys, Stador, Bann and Thend. "What the hell are you doing here?" I shouted, uselessly. We all still had wax plugging our ears. They grinned recklessly and shrugged as they ran. How mad was I, really? Not at all — as long as we got away. They turned aside into one of the narrow houses, one with shutters drawn over slitlike windows. I followed them in, and, turning around, I saw the Bargainer behind us. Suddenly I feared a Bargainer's trap. But the door slammed shut and strong arms held mine prisoner as someone took the wax from my ears. "Calm down, Roble," Stador said, his voice uncomfortably loud. He obviously still had wax in his ears. "We're safe, here, but we don't have much time." " We sure as hell don't; that little Bargainer wench is in here!" I shouted. Someone lit a lamp. I turned and saw the Bargainer girl holding the light. There was a pained expression on her beautiful dark face. "Don't you know me, uncle Roble?" the Bargainer girl said. "I'm Fasra." I was still gaping, speechless, when the door of the house opened again and Naeli slipped in, slamming it shut immediately. She pulled two waxen plugs from her ears (using only her left hand; her right arm hung strangely limp) and grinned a needle-toothed grin at me. "Roble, my dear, maybe you'll listen to me at last, eh? I feel like I've been chasin you all around the Whisperer's Wood. Man, if you were as smart as you are tough, you'd really be dangerous." I stared at her teeth, filed to a carnivore grin, and knew this was no illusion. Because the Boneless One only shows you what you want to see, and I didn't want to see this. "You Bargained," I said flatly. Naeli looked surprised and offended. "Of course I did! How else could I save Fasra? What did you think I was going to do?" "I didn't think you'd Bargain." Now she was just scornful. "There's no difference between us and them," she said coldly. "It's just what side you happen to be on." This chilled me, because by "us" I knew she meant the Bargainers and by "them" she meant everyone in Four Castles: Besk, Alev, me. I wanted to argue with her, but I couldn't. Wasn't that why I was leaving? Anyway, there never was a time I could get the better of Naeli in an argument. "I'm not on either side, anymore, I guess," I said. "That's why I want you to take Fasra and get out of here," Naeli said hasto;u/ "She's not bound to the Whisperer yet — they wait until after puberty to do that — but they'll bind her soon. Take her away with you and the boys." "Why can't you come?" I asked. "The Whisperer has put a compulsion on me," she said, touching her chest. I saw, underneath her tunic, the outline of a medallion. "That was why I couldn't free you from the stake myself. I could only speak to you when he wasn't noticing me. "And he isn't now?" Naeli shook his head. "He hasn't often noticed me in the past day or so. It's almost as if there were two Whisperers now; the village is at war with itself the Soundless Sound strikes often and often." "Can't you —" "I can't leave the woods while the compulsion binds me," she said, touching the medallion under her tunic again. "Is that medallion the source of the compulsion?" I asked. "Yes." I approached her and looked at the cord securing the medallion around neck. There seemed to be nothing unusual about it. "Why don't you take it off?" I asked. "I can't; that's part of the compulsion." "Why don't you ask someone to take it off you?" "I can't; that's part of the compulsion." "If I take it off you, will you or I or anyone here be harmed?" "No." I reached out and took the cord with each hand and snapped it. The medallion dropped to the ground through Naeli's tunic. She turned and kissed me. I couldn't repress a shudder (I thought I could feel the razor teeth through her lips) but she didn't seem to notice, or perhaps didn't care. "Now we can go together," she said, fierce and happy — strangely like the Naeli I once knew. Naeli's boys chimed in, and Fasra, too. Stador explained how Naeli had met them in the woods and brought them to rescue me from the stake, which the compulsion prevented her from doing herself. "They believed I was really me, anyway," Naeli said wryly. I shrugged. "The Boneless One sent false images of you to me every night I rode through the lawless hours. I'd be long dead if I trusted everything I saw in woods." Naeli nodded slowly. "It's hard to say what the Whisperer knows... but he may have known I was thinking of you. I've been trying to figure out a way to get Fasra away from the Bargainers almost since we came here." "So what's the plan now, or are we improvising?" "A little of both," Naeli admitted, with her terrifying smile. "We'll be safe here from the Others; all of the fighting between Bargainers has been in the street the Soundless Sound can't reach us here, either. We'll wait until they send the stranger down to the Whisperer, and then we can escape while they're occupied." "Tough luck on the stranger," I observed. Naeeli shrugged. She must have seen many people go that route, perhaps some she had known herself. For me it was different. We always tried to bring the stray out, Alev and I. And only then (it wasn't my brightest day) did I realize who "the stranger" was. It was my stray. Morlock. Somehow the idea of Morlock and the idea of Alev were bound up together. I thought of Alev, his legs broken in the trap; I thought of Morlock down that mouthlike hole. "Naeli," I said slowly. "Alev is dead." "Who is Alev?" said this stranger who was my sister. I shook my head. "Never mind. I have to bring the stray out, if I can. You guys get away in the disturbance. Boys, wait for me a day at the meeting place we set; If I don't come, go on as planned." I plugged my ears, shutting out their protestations and goodbyes, and ran out of the house, leaving the door open behind me. Morlock's stake was empty and there was a crowd of people standing around the base of the crooked tree. It was possible I was already too late. I scooped up knife I had kicked out of Fasra's hand and ran across the clearing. I plunged into the crowd, slashing with the knife in one hand and striking out randomly with my other fist. I was like a lit candle applied to wood shavings; soon the Bargainers were all fighting with each other desperately. Some used only their right hand; their left swung useless at their sides. Others used only their left hand; their right seemed to be disabled. The left-handed struck only the right-handed and versa. I was careful to use both hands, baffling the Bargainers, who turned me to attack the enemies they knew: each other. I made it all the way to the center of the crowd, where Morlock, his lower body out of sight, was scrabbling desperately at the lip of the mouthlike hole, trying to pull himself out. His mouth was gagged and each of his wrists was looped with a braided cord, as if they had been bound together. I left the knife in a nearby Bargainer and bent down to grab with both hands at one of Morlock's arms. Morlock's mouth was moving; it looked as if he was shouting some sort of warning. But the plugs in my ears kept me from hearing him, and the gag in his mouth kept me from reading his lips. The ground crumbled under my feet. We fell with several Bargainers into the gaping earth. My death grip on Morlock's arm saved me. When we had fallen several feet we jerked to a halt. Looking up through the shadows and the clots of dirt falling from ragged edge of the hole, I saw Morlock had caught hold of a tree root. He didn't manage to hang on to it, but it slowed us down. He caught the next one and held it, but it bent ominously under our joint weight. There was another root protruding from the hole wall, not so far off, and I managed to pull myself onto it. Both of us were so out of breath that talking would have been out of the question, even if we didn't have our ears plugged. While regaining my wind, I looked around at the questionable situation in which we found ourselves. We were about midway down the gullet of earth, between the hole in the surface (still mouthlike, but more of a spreading grin now), and the bellylike chamber at the bottom. There was light coming from both directions — from the above; from a purplish luminescence that seemed to come from a sort of moss that grew thickly on the curving walls of the chamber below. Immediately under us was a pile of human bones, naked and fleshless with the fluted marks of chewing all over them. Scattered around the floor were various Bargainers, flopping around like birds caught in a net. One or two were motionless, perhaps impaled on the sharp broken bones that were scattered over the floor of the chamber. And there was something else. It was hard to tell exactly what it was. It looked like two bladders of unequal size, half-filled with some sort of fluid, connected t: each other by a thickish cord. One of the bladders was about as long as a man's arm; the other was less than half that long, and not as broad. There seemed to be some sort of hair or fur on part of the smaller bladder. It was alive. It moved about the bone-paved floor by rolling, and as it rolled I could see it had some appendages — not arms and legs, really, but just floppy little things where arms and legs might be, or might once have been. I couldn't tell what sex it was, or if it had one, but I began to realize that some of the features on the less hairy side of the smaller bladder constituted a face. There was a slack half-open mouth, crusted with filth from the floor, above it a floppy boneless nose, two ear-flaps protruding from the surface of the bladder and two dark glaring eyes. And across it all was a scar or seam, a dark purplish mark dividing the face almost in half. It passed between the eyes, to the left of the nose, and over the mouth, apparently sealing the lips together at the mouth where it crossed them, so it was almost as if the thing had two mouths. The Boneless One (I didn't doubt that's what I was looking at) rolled over to one of the fallen Bargainers, a man who was struggling to regain his feet. Its two mouths pressed against his arm, as if in a kiss. The life went out of him in a moment and he fell dead to the ground. After a while it rolled away, or started to, then paused. The appendages on one side of the body flapped uselessly. It was almost as if they were trying to hit the other side of the Boneless One's body. Finally the Boneless One rolled away toward another fallen Bargainer, a woman who was twitching limply, apparently unable to get up. This time it looked as if one side of the Boneless One's face was trying to keep the other side from making contact with the victim. Again the useless appendages struggled, each set lashing out at the opposite side of the shapeless body. When the woman saw the monster beside her and began to edge away across the bonestrewn floor, screaming, the Boneless One gave up its pointless struggle against itself and rolled quickly over, locking its lips on the woman's left leg. She stopped moving instantly; her face became calm; her eyes closed. Her life was gone. her tal consumed. The Enemy moved on toward the next body. It was weird but I thought I knew what was happening when the Boneless One fought itself. I figured that we had done it, Morlock and I. If he had cut the anchor-worm as I did, it must have divided the Boneless One's influence into two unequal halves. In doing so, we had somehow divided the Boneless One itself, as if there were no difference between the Boneless One and the space where - influence ran. So now there were two Boneless Ones sharing the same body. Each obviously each resented the other. I sort of hoped they would figure out some way to kill each other, but I didn't figure it would happen within the next few minutes Maybe, I thought, we should just drop down into the pit, seize some broken bones for weapons and try to poke the thing to death. It seemed like someone would have tried that, during the centuries the Boneless One had been eating human lives in this pit. But maybe they fell so far and hit so hard that they were stunned and the Boneless One got them before they could recover. Then again, maybe that skin wouldn't be so easy to poke through. It could roll over the carpet of shattered bones without apparently taking any harm at all, not even a scratch. That brownish, pinkish, grayish surface was probably harder than leather. It would take more than a broken bone to chew a hole in it... Chew. I looked again at the bones. They had been gnawed; the toothmarks were clearly visible, even in the wretched purplish light. By what? If the Boneless One was truly boneless, it wouldn't have teeth. Besides, why should it gnaw flesh if it lived on the tal which sustained life itself? Rats. There must be rats down there. Maybe a lot of rats. The rats would come in and clean up the meat after the Boneless One had drained the life. So why hadn't they appeared yet? The Boneless One finished a third victim and paused, in mid-careen toward a fourth. Its right pair of leathery lips wrinkled, as if it were saying something. The left pair of lips twisted in response, and my nerves were struck with the muted sound of the Silent Word. Then the left pair of lips seemed to say something, and the right pair of lips responded with the Silent Word. Was there something happening up above — some battle between the Bargainers controlled by the two warring segments of the Boneless One? Maybe. Or maybe each side had called out to a cleanup crew of rats, and the other side had knocked them out. Because they were each afraid. Afraid of rats under the other's control... or under no control. Rats! Morlock could summon the rats, if he only had his magic pipe with him. realized he probably did: when I had last seen it he had been tucking it in his sleeve... I looked toward Morlock, trying to catch his eye. He was hanging on to a root with hiss left hand, stripping the gag away from his mouth with his right hand. He stared bemusedly at the Boneless One as it drained the life from a fourth victim. I shouted, but he didn't hear me. I grabbed a clump of earth from the side of the pit and tossed it at him. Then he turned toward me, his eyebrows raised as if in inquiry. "RATS!" I shouted. But either he didn't hear me (or couldn't read my lips) or he didn't see what I was driving at. Desperately, I tapped my left arm with my right hand, and then mimed playing a flute with my right hand. All this activity caused my grip on the root to loosen and I almost fell. But by the time I had gained my perch. Morlock was laughing (not at my acrobatics, I hope) and drawing the pipe from his sleeve-pocket. He put the pipe in his mouth and began to play. I couldn't hear it, exactly, but somehow the feel of it penetrated the wax earplugs, almost like the Silent Word. as a squeaky, spiky, chittering tune, it went on and on, never repeating but s omehow always the same. The rats began to appear, rising like a dark tide from the ground. The Boneless One seemed to try to halt them with the Silent Word, but its magic was masked by the endless chittering song from Morlock's pipe. The Boneless One tried to eat the lives of the rats as they approached. Many died, but there were always more behind. The dark tide rose over the swollen shapeless form of the Boneless One and covered it. The mindless whisper I always heard within me rose to an almost audible shriek and fell silent at last. The rats moved on to the other bodies scattered around the floor, leaving behind a bloody stain on the bone carpet and else. The Boneless One was dead. Morlock's pipe stuttered and shrieked. The living rats fled in terror. Morlock pocketed the pipe and tentatively unplugged one ear. Both of my ears were already clear. The air was free of Silent Words; my mind was free of demonic whispers. "Good idea about the rats," Morlock said laconically. "I never liked rats before," I said, "but now I do. When I settle down, I'm going to keep tame ones, like birds." Morlock grunted and climbed back up onto the root. "Up or down?" he asked. I looked down at the bone-carpeted belly-like chamber, scattered with half-eaten motionless Bargainers. I looked upward to the light. "Up," I said, and we went up. We hadn't been at it long before Naeli's voice called down to us from the ight, followed by a rope. I swarmed up it and Morlock followed. Naeli had tied it to the twisted tree standing above the mouthlike hole. the boys and Fasra were standing uneasily, with knives and clubs in their hands, at the edge of the hole. Further off, a ragged halo of Bargainers stood, glaring at us as we emerged from the pit. "Let's get going," Naeli said to me crisply. "Some of these people don't seem to like what we're doing." "I thought they'd scatter as soon as the Boneless One was dead," I muttered. "Some did. But most of these guys were Bargainers because they wanted to be and they suspect you of killing their god." "That was Morlock," I said, gesturing at the bedraggled, crooked figure and emerging from the hole. "Roble's idea. We'll call it a mutual effort," he said. His gray gaze crossed Naeli's dark one; it was like swords clashing. "Man, were you a lot of trouble," Naeli said. "I thought you were going to get us all killed. Morlock? I'm Naeli. This is Fasra. I guess you know my boys. Let's get out of here." Morlock shook his head. "You go on," he said. "I have to find Tyrfing." "A friend of yours?" demanded Naeli. "My sword." "Oh, that thing. The Whisperer had us bury it outside of town. I'll show you where it is." She turned and charged straight toward the crowd. We followed in a wedge behind. The Bargainers split up and ran as we approached, and soon we were out of town. We heard the Bargainers, although we didn't see them gathering nearby in the woods as we dug down to recover Morlock's sword. So a soon as we had it we started moving westward as fast as our feet could take us. That was days ago. We discussed going back to Four Castles, bu: re 7. - t idea. Naeli, with her filed teeth, would be an outcast there. And the thought of living among Coranians, who had fed on human lives to extend their own, was repugnant to me. Perhaps one of the three remaining Barons would pick up where the Boneless One had left off; perhaps they had already been stomped to bits by someone following Morlock's lead. Maybe Liskin would be the new power in Four Castles; he was already pretty boneless. It didn't matter. Four Castles was already a little unreal to me, like somewhere you've read about in a book. It wasn't my place anymore. I don't have a place, at the moment; these days I have people instead. Each day we move a little further west than I've ever been, camping at sunset. Wight. It's night, as I write this, but no one is sleeping. The boys and Fasra are swapping stories at the fire. Morlock is peering about inside Naeli's mouth; he says he can carve supplements for Naeli's teeth, so that she will have a slightly less wolflike smile. I'm sitting here writing, not saying much — speaking aloud maybe one word for every thousand I scribble down. In a way, I think I miss the wordless whispering I have always heard in my head. It helped show me what I was by being what I was not: I was the enemy of the Enemy. But not now: in the last week or so, I helped kill a Baron. the Enemy that lived in the woods and (with them) my whole way of life. But here I am, somehow still alive. I don't feel like speaking much until I This figure out who I am, now that the Enemy is dead. much I know. I will not live three hundred years. But, however long I live, I will wear no one else's uniform. I will swear loyalty to one person at a time. However long I live, my life will belong to me, and to those I know and care about. Except for that rule of love, all my hours are lawless now. It's s late; we had all better get some sleep. New lands, and new lives, tomorrow.