“It’ll be easier to show you than to explain. Won’t you come up to my workroom?”

They went together to the stairway. Merlin went to some effort to make himself agreeable, asking after her sister and how her experiment with the Vraids was working out, and other matters that he probably didn’t care about at all.

The stairs and floorboards were made of wood, but the walls were not. It was as if the interior of the house was built to stand independently inside an already existing structure. The outer walls were like gigantic cables laid over each other. They were hard as stone, cold and somewhat oily to the touch, and their surfaces were scaled.

“First fish-beast—now snake-beast?” she speculated. But Merlin was rattling away about something and didn’t seem to hear her.

The second floor was broken into a number of rooms joined by open arches. In the room where the stairway ascended, there was nothing but a three-legged table, about waist high. On it stood a fabric tent, something like a tea-cozy, but much larger.

“What’s that?” asked Ambrosia.

“Ah!” said Merlin delightedly. “That is the task at hand! Let me show you.” And he undid some fastenings and pulled the tent aside.

Standing on the table was a sort of egg made out of crystal. Inside the crystal were woman-shaped shadows, and a lurking flame, and a brain floating in the midst of it. Still attached to the brain by the optic nerve was a pair of eyes, bright gray like Morlock’s. They searched around the room and fixed on Ambrosia in something like recognition.

“You remember your mother, my dear?” said Merlin pleasantly. “Though perhaps you haven’t seen her lately.”

Ambrosia would have fled back down the stairs, but they were gone. Snakelike arms unfolded from the walls and held her fast.

“She’s getting very old,” Merlin said apologetically. “Her people were exiled from the Wardlands so long ago, you see, and of course they interbred with the peoples they found themselves among. Well, before your mother reached sixty, less than sixty years old, mind you, she was really quite decrepit. I’ve tried many ways to extend her life without damaging her selfhood. My thought coming here was to implant her brain and the rest of her awareness in Rulgân’s body. For various technical reasons, involving your brother and that gem he managed to implant in the beast, I have reason to believe the graft would be successful.

“But I could never get at Rulgân, you see. I bribed him with little favors—a gem that would transmit his awareness, and a spell to smash the Wards over the Gap of Lone, and a tribe of lifestealers to distract the Graith from his messenger. But Rulgân would never admit me into his presence, although he was weak enough to let me settle in this town. And he was aware of my intent at the last, and he raised up his believers against me. I’ve tried to fight them with a legion of unbelievers, but with a striking lack of permanent success. And it’s getting late, and the world is dying, and I’m not sure I could do this type of lifemaking in another world where the laws of nature are different.

“And here you came—a gift from God Creator, if I believed in any such ridiculous myth. I think your body will sustain your mother’s life for some centuries to come. Of course, that does mean we will be deprived of your charming company more or less forever. But I’m sure that’s a sacrifice you’d be willing to make, if you could be brought to understand what it means to me and, of course, for your mother.”

His blue eyes, colder than a winter’s sky, were on her as he spoke. She had known him all her life. He had raised her and her sister until she had run away from home. She knew how he talked, and she could translate what he said into what he meant.

What he meant was, I am going to core you like an apple and put this thing inside your corpse. And there is nothing you can do about it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dead Ends

The healer sewing up the side of Aloê’s neck was Master Snide, whose actual name turned out to be Cromber. She was surprised to find him an efficient and capable healer.

“Struck from long distance?” he asked at one point.

“Yes. I could only just hear the tone of the songbow.”

“And your cloak was drawn over your head? Possibly saved your life.” Cromber shook his head. “These gravebolts are well-named. They’ll be giving the necrophors more work than they will us.”

“I was glad to have one at Tunglskin, against the Khnauronts.”

“I suppose.”

“How long will you be?”

“I’m done. Stay and rest a bit, though. You lost some blood getting here. I’ll make you some redleaf tea.”

She had bled a good deal while searching for the would-be assassin in the shadowy street. But they had taken to their heels after their unlucky shot. No matter: she had the gravebolt. She thought she could find the songbow it matched. Raudhfax had brought her to the Well of Healing before she passed out.

Cromber brought two cups of tea: redleaf for her and blackroot for himself. They drank in amiable silence.

“How did your Wordweave game go the other night?” Aloê asked.

“Horrible,” he admitted. “I’m a bad player, and a bad loser.”

Aloê nodded. “This I understand. I hate to lose.”

Cromber wanted her to stay in the Well overnight, but she wouldn’t. It was that “hate to lose” thing. She felt she had lost a point and wanted to even the score.

She left Raudhfax at the Well and walked toward Tower Ambrose, sneaking through alleys when she could, sliding along in deep shadows when she must take a broader way.

Her thinking was this: the would-be killer would try again. The place she was most likely to go was Tower Ambrose. The assassin would wait for her somewhere near there.

Tower Ambrose was on a bluff, and it could not be approached from the south. The place she had been attacked was to the east. She stalked the person stalking her in the shadows of the River Road east of Ambrose.

The wind was high that night, and its noise covered a multitude of sounds. That was good for her, so that she could move safely in the dark. But it was bad, also: it meant that her assassin could hide from her.

She came to a halt near the place she considered optimal for her own assassination. It was near enough to Tower Ambrose that the shooter could attack someone coming from two or three different sidestreets and then escape down two or three others if need be. Yes—if they were going to try again, it would be somewhere near here. She climbed up the side of a house she knew was empty and sat on the roof in the shadow of a dormer.

She sat still for a long time. She thought of it like fishing with her hands: you had to be still, let the fish become calm and brave. Then strike when they were unaware.

The wind changed, grew quieter. The stars spun in the sky above her. Some of the lights in the city northward faded as the night got older: people were going to bed—some people.

She waited.

A man wandered by, singing a song about drunken unicorns. He got stuck on the chorus and kept repeating it. Aloê heard him saying the same line for part of an hour as he staggered slowly up the River Road.

She waited.

Dawn was not near. But the danger that she would fall asleep in her perch was near.

She thought of something she might try.

She smiled and drew the gravebolt from her cloak, one side of its gore stained black with her blood.

The gravebolt would sound as it was released from the songbow. Were they in a kind of talic stranj, entangled in being?

She rapped the gravebolt against the edge of the roof.

Up the street, she heard the faint chime of a songbow.

She was on her feet in an instant, running across the roof and leaping to the next house over, swinging down a drainpipe.