“The saddles are for your convenience, and they are a great concession. I must ask you to take them off and discard them when the hippogriffs have taken you as far as they choose.”

“We’ll take them off and destroy them,” said Morlock, loud enough for the hippogriffs to hear. He hoped they understood Wardic.

“Good! They call themselves ‘the Free People’ and they much despise anything that can be tamed.”

Morlock nodded.

“Goodbye then!” said Naevros. “Good luck! Send word when you can!” He embraced him again.

Sundra and Keluaê also stepped forward to embrace . . . Deor, of whom they were extremely fond. They shook hands with Morlock, and Teyn held up his hands when Morlock turned to say goodbye to him and his Guildmen.

“There are no words of parting between us, Ambrosius,” Teyn said. “We are always together. Good luck on your quest. Your luck will be the world’s luck, I think.”

Morlock nodded and turned away. With Deor’s help, he lifted Kelat across a hippogriff’s saddle and bound him there. Deor and he each mounted a hippogriff.

They stayed there without moving, waiting for something, some sign.

“My friend,” said Morlock, “bear me where you will, as far as you will.”

The hippogriff leapt into the air and the others followed, their wings booming like storm winds on the chill evening air. They turned toward the red moons lowering in the east and flew away.

So Vocate Morlock Ambrosius left the Wardlands on the wings of a hippogriff and the winds of the world, never to return.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Needle of Sunlight

The hippogriffs landed them among the foothills of the eastern Whitethorns in the hour before dawn. They had stayed to watch with their star-silver eyes while Morlock kindled a fire and burned the saddles. Once the saddles were largely embers they unfolded their wings and took to the sky again, black shadows against the cold gray sky of morning. Neither Morlock nor Deor ever heard them make a sound with their mouths. Nor did Kelat, but he didn’t seem to be hearing anything: he was still unconscious.

“That,” said Deor, “was the worst thing you have ever done to me. But at least I know now that nothing can ever be worse. No method of travel could possibly be more hellish than flying those speechless beasts over half the chaos-begotten world.”

Morlock thought it was reckless to make suppositions of this sort, given that their journey had hardly begun. What he said aloud, however, was, “Eh.”

“That’s easy for you to say. Too easy, if we come right down to it, harven.”

“Eh.”

“Have it your way. What are you going to do with our friend here?”

“I am going to stab him through the eye with a needle of sunlight.”

“Well, I suppose you feel that’s—Is that some kind of metaphor?”

“No.”

“Why are you going to do such a ridiculous thing?”

“When I was staying at New Moorhope after—it was some years ago—”

“Yes, harven, I remember it. Go on.”

“The healers there woke a woman from a coma this way.”

“Urrrr. All right. What if it doesn’t work? He’s not much good to us as he is. In fact, he’ll die if he doesn’t wake up eventually. Unless you can think of a way to get water and nourishment into his veins while he sleeps.”

Morlock grunted.

“I wish you would expand on that, Morlock.”

“Eh. It’s a solvable problem. But it doesn’t solve our problem. We might let him die, and try to extract knowledge from the dead brain, or we might extract his brain from his body before it dies and try to bespeak it in some way.”

“Well, well. Let’s make this sun-needle thing work, then.”

“Yes.”

Morlock set up an immaterial shell of impulse foci around the fire, making it into an impromptu furnace. Deor found a deposit of sandstone and quarried some to bring back. Using some tongs he happened to have in his backpack (unlike Morlock, he did not believe in travelling light), he placed the fragments in the invisible furnace to begin the glass-making process.

By then, Morlock was deep in rapture, lying like a dead man next to Tyrfing, the crystalline blade glowing black-on-white and white-on-black.

“If you don’t mind,” Deor said to Morlock, “I’m going to have a nap. We may be up all night again.”

Morlock said nothing, but Deor didn’t expect it. He went and wrapped himself in his bedroll and dreamed for five solid hours about flying in the dark over the Wardlands. It was like a nightmare, only he was never afraid.

He awoke in midmorning. Kelat was still unconscious, and his breathing seemed shallower than it ought to be.

“Brains,” said Deor disgustedly, and went over to the invisible forge.

The sandstone was now a globe of dark molten glass with a skewer of golden light in its heart. Morlock was still in deep rapture, keeping the glass hot and guiding the harvest of sunlight.

Deor made an early lunch of grilled sausage, softtack bread, and stromroot sauce. He brooded while he ate: there must be something he could do while Morlock did the real work.

Deor was not the master of all makers; this he knew. He was a plausible seller of goods, a skilled juggler, a good fighter, a decent cook and storyteller, and all these things were valued by his people. But he was not much of a maker, and this was the thing they (and he) valued most.

But he guessed that Morlock’s needle of sunlight would be a precarious instrument to wield in colder lights: moonlight and starlight. If this attempt were going to work—and he very much wanted it to work (“Brains!”)—then Morlock would need a Zone of Perfect Occlusion. Deor set about establishing one near to the invisible furnace.

The Perfect Occlusion is an immaterial barrier that does not allow light to pass. To Deor’s mind, it ought to have been reflective, but a well-formed occlusion looks like a space where there simply is no light. The geometry of the Occlusion puts the light elsewhere.

Deor was no champion at multidimensional geometry, but he had developed a trial-and-error method that worked, given enough time. With no one to talk to, no books to read, and nothing else to do, he had plenty of time. By the time the sun had passed its midpoint and the chilly spring day was at its closest approach to warmth, he stood in triumph next to a stable Occlusion—a half-globe of darkness six paces in diameter. Six of Deor’s paces, admittedly—about three or four of Morlock’s rather oversized strides. That should be big enough.

He was revisiting his decision to bring food instead of books when he remembered that Morlock had tucked a few volumes into his pack. Deor snuck over to look at them.

One was in a language that Deor didn’t read or recognize. One was a book of mathematical philosophy. One was a book of stories about monsters; it wasn’t clear whether the stories were true or not. Rather discontentedly, he settled down on a comfortable rock with the book of monsters and read for a time.

As the red, cold sun sank nearer the eastern horizon, Morlock rose to his feet. Deor looked up and saw that Morlock was still in the rapture of vision. He plunged his glowing sword into the dark orb of molten glass.

The sword faded. The light behind Morlock’s closed lids also faded, and he opened his eyes.

Deor tossed the monster book into Morlock’s open pack and said, “Over here, harven.”

“See it,” Morlock croaked. “Thank you. Bring Kelat, eh?”

“Shouldn’t you rest? If—”

“Time is short. Hurry.”

Deor grabbed the nigh-lifeless form of Kelat and dragged him by the collar into the Zone of Perfect Occlusion.

Morlock had already entered. The globe of glass was cooling unevenly; in the light cast by the narrow spiralling blaze of sunlight in the globe’s core, Deor could see cracks opening in the surface of the globe.