Morlock considered for a moment, then held out his hands, empty and palm down, over Fyndh’s hands without making contact.

Fyndh smiled and withdrew his hands. “Vyrn is an idiot. He inherited most of his money and made the rest by loaning it at interest. My father was a shoemaker, and I worked my way through the army from the lowest rank. We see the world differently—and I think I see it not so differently from you.”

Morlock nodded, waited.

Fyndh continued, “My friends among the makers speak highly of you. I’m sorry we never got a chance to drink together. If you and your companions succeed in what you are about, you will always have friends in the Endless Empire. If not—well, we will remember you with honor until the sun goes out.”

Morlock nodded and said, “Good fortune, Master Fyndh.”

“To you and yours,” Fyndh said. He said goodbye to each of the companions as they passed, and led his troops in a cheer as they walked out the gate and up into the pale light of the sun.

Ambrosia fell into step beside Morlock. “Fyndh will be their next Lorvadh, I think. I hope. Vyrn will never be a friend to the Vraids or the Wardlands now.”

Morlock had nothing to say to that, and so said nothing. The rough, snow-stained terrain of the Dolich Kund was before them, and the sun stood dying in the sky above. It was a long, bitter road to the end of the world.

CHAPTER TWO

Fire, Gods, and a Stranger

That night they camped just past the crest of the Dolich Kund. It was a cold night: an ice-edged wind beneath searingly bright stars and Horseman, the only moon in the sky, standing somber and low in the east.

They made a fire, of course, and partial occlusions to block the wind, but Kelat was obviously down-hearted. He was possibly comparing his bed last night to the long series of cold campsites in his future.

That was bad, not just for Kelat but for all of them. Morale was important on a long journey with a small company, as the three elder companions knew well. Deor looked several times at Kelat’s glum face and then finally said to Morlock, “Do the thing with the fire.”

Kelat looked up, instead of down, which was a start. Morlock obligingly reached into the heart of the fire and drew forth a handful of live coals.

As Kelat watched with an open mouth, Morlock juggled the bright burning coals with his fingertips. Deor watched, too, with a knowing grin: he never got tired of this trick. Ambrosia, however, was watching Kelat’s open admiration with an envious sideways glance. Eventually she reached into the fire and began juggling coals as well.

Now Kelat was looking from Ambrosius to Ambrosia with unfeigned and delighted wonder.

Ambrosia looked Morlock in the eye and lifted an inquiring eyebrow. He nodded. She tossed him a coal and he tossed one back in the air, and from then on they wove a complex tracery of red light, juggling some coals and playing catch with others, until they began to fade, and Kelat’s amazement grew cooler and more familiar.

He eagerly asked how they had done it, and wondered if he could learn it, too, and Ambrosia and Deor explained to him about the blood of Ambrose and their immunity from fire. In the end he was almost as downcast as he had been before, although he kept stealing glances at Ambrosia’s hands.

Morlock pulled some glowgems from a pocket in his sleeve. They weren’t as bright or as satisfyingly fiery as live coals, but he thought they might serve a purpose here. He tossed one to Kelat. The Vraid was startled, but caught it instinctively. Morlock showed him how to juggle it, and guided him through the steps of adding a second glowgem. He caught on quickly, not dropping them too often, and Morlock left him to practice juggling under Deor’s watchful and amused eye.

Ambrosia gestured to him and they walked together into the dark beyond the range of the fire or the hearing of their two companions.

“You’re corrupting my princeling,” Ambrosia remarked drily.

“Oh?”

“Oh, yes. Soon he’ll care about loyalty, and honesty, and wonder, and then what kind of king will he make, hey?”

Morlock grunted. “A good one?”

“Unlikely. Morality is different for kings, Morlock, than for the people they rule.”

“Eh.” Morlock knew little about kings, or being ruled, so he couldn’t say this was untrue.

“That’s easy for you to say. Too easy, as I have often told you before.”

“Eh.”

“Be that way, then! I suppose I have other Uthars to choose from. I could bear to fuck this one, though, and that’s not nothing.”

Morlock somehow disliked discussing sex with his sister, and he hadn’t realized that’s what they were doing. He considered long and hard and said, “Oh?”

“Yes, it’s part of my deal with Lathmar the Old. I will pick the next King of the Vraids and mate with him.”

“Hm.”

“Yes, yes, I see what you mean, I suppose. But it’s a way to wield power among the Vraids in a way that they understand.”

“Is that important?”

“Not if the world ends, Morlock. If the world doesn’t end, then yes, it is important. When I was a girl, growing up in that horrible little house in the woods with Merlin, I swore I’d visit every place in the world and conquer the places that seemed interesting. The Vraids will do the conquering part if I play the game right. And I usually do.”

“I know.”

Ambrosia laughed and put a hand on his arm. “I suppose I wouldn’t find you so irritating if your opinion wasn’t so important to me.”

Morlock’s opinion was that world conquest was a sad waste of talents as extraordinary as Ambrosia’s, but he had never told her that and never would. Something about her upbringing had scarred her, shaped her, focused her on this quest for power. It wasn’t for Morlock to reshape her. That wasn’t his kind of making.

Before them was the dark, river-scarred, densely forested northern plain. He gestured at it and said, “What’s our route north, you think?”

“We should avoid the twin cities, Aflraun and Narkunden,” Ambrosia said. “I recommend a detour to the west. In time we’ll come upon the Bay of Bitter Water. If it’s navigable, maybe we can travel by water for a while.”

Morlock grunted with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

“You can build a boat, I suppose? With Deor’s help?”

“Yes. But I would prefer not to.”

Ambrosia laughed politely at this. Then she remembered something—possibly their arrival at Grarby. “Hm,” she said thoughtfully. “Hm. Well, even so, it might be safer than land. The plains near the werewolf city are dangerous indeed, and they’ll be getting hungry, too.”

Morlock thought about the deep, cold waves of the Bitter Water and felt a certain chill that did not come from the frosty air.

They talked for a while longer of the road ahead and then returned to the campsite to turn in.

Day followed night, and then more days and nights. They walked and walked. They gave Narkunden a wide berth, following Ambrosia’s advice. The sun was a pale, white disc that a man might look at without any particular pain. The weather grew colder, a wintry sort of summer.

As they walked north, they met many animals fleeing south: white foxes and wolves, rabbits and preems, birds of every kind. And there were bears, deadly white bears mad with fear or hunger, killing recklessly among the other animals and perfectly willing to eat the four travelers.

Kelat killed one bear that charged them. They stopped to butcher it and skin it: they might need the meat or the fur on the long road ahead. Afterward they tried to fend the beasts off without killing them, but both Ambrosia and Deor had bear blood on their hands before another call passed.

Many of the days went by without incident that Morlock would afterward recall, but then came a day when they ran into creatures more dangerous than a bear.