This Crooked Way

by James Enge

  Morlock's internal struggle was intense, but brief. What decided for him, in the end, was the rule of fair bargaining that had been taught him in childhood by the dwarvish clan who fostered him. “A bargain is more than words,” his harven-father, Tyrtheorn, used to say. “A bargain is a trust. Keep the bargain. Keep the trust.”

  It was the rule that kept him from killing the listener, only the rule. He had seen too much death to suppose that anyone had a right to life, and he did not believe that the listener would ever do enough good to justify his own life, even to himself. Morlock himself would certainly prefer to be murdered rather than live with an alien darkness poisoning his spirit. And just coincidentally, he found that he hated the listener enough to kill him. Everything pointed in one direction, a river of darkness urging him toward what he really wanted to do anyway…. Only the rule stood in the way: “Keep the bargain. Keep the trust.”

  Morlock sighed and sheathed his sword. It occurred to him that he was not going to kill anybody at the moment. He would have liked to speak with his harven-father, but Tyrtheorn had been dead these three hundred years.

  The listener was silent at last, watching him carefully. There was an air almost of disappointment in the cave. Perhaps the darkness longed to be free of the listener even as he longed to be free of it. What would have happened if Morlock had killed the man in unguarded rage? Would the mouth of darkness have been free to settle on Morlock before he was aware of it? It may, at least, have hoped so, and directed the listener to provoke Morlock to murderous rage. He wondered if he had ever seen the listener behave naturally—had ever seen him act except at the prompting of the darkness that owned him.

  “Are you out of ideas?” the listener asked finally.

  “No,” Morlock said. “I have one more. I think you should leave the hill.”

  “What?” shouted the listener, in the first voice.

  “The darkness under the hill is feeding on you. The farther you get from it, the less easily it can do this; it is bound to this location by a magical trap. I think if you got far enough away, and stayed away long enough, the darkness on your face would be forced to withdraw.”

  The listener laughed again, more curtly and dismissively than before. “You don't know!” he said in his second voice. “The darkness is…everywhere. If I left it would refuse to teach me any more secrets. But it could…Don't you understand? Darkness is everywhere. It…No one can escape it.”

  Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. “There is darkness and darkness. I assure you, the one under this hill is quite local.”

  “You don't know!”

  “I do.”

  “I won't leave!” cried the listener shrilly. “I won't! I won't!”

  Morlock looked at him wearily. Something inside him, some intuitive voice of his own, told him that this was the true solution. This was where a great healer, like Illion or Noreê, would throw his or her whole weight. They would marshal arguments, talk all night, wear away the listener's reluctance (the source of which was painfully obvious). They would display patience; they would comfort the listener's fears, foster his strengths.

  But Morlock knew his own limits. He shrugged again and said, “Then.”

  “You have no more ideas?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Oh.” The listener paused, then observed slyly, “Perhaps you should go down and ask the voice in the darkness. It knows more secrets than you can imagine.”

  “Most people do,” Morlock replied absently. He had no great thirst for secret knowledge. He walked out of the cave, saying “Good night” as he passed the listener.

  Night had risen long ago. Morlock stood for a moment by the cave entrance and breathed in the strange poison-scented air that lay over the hill. His thoughts were somber. True to his boast, he had already thought of two more ideas. He might close up the passage to the darkness, or simply abduct the listener and carry him far from the hill. They were good enough ideas, but (separately or together) they were obviously doomed to failure.

  No scheme to remove the darkness from the listener could be successful without the consent of the listener, and that clearly would not be forthcoming. The listener was wholly subject to the darkness; probably he had bargained with Morlock only because the darkness itself had prompted him to detain Morlock from his journey westward.

  Morlock lay down and wrapped himself in his sleeping cloak, hoping some revelation would come in the night. And, in a way, one did.

  Morlock awoke when the side of his head struck the edge of a stone surface. He awoke instantly and completely; his eyes gaped wide, hungry for light. There was none. The lightless air was dense and close, woven with subtle sounds: the labored breathing of the listener (who was struggling to haul Morlock by the shoulders), the chirrups of seven-legged mushrooms…They were under the hill. The listener was dragging him down to forcibly put him into the darkness.

  He braced his feet and pushed. The listener squawked and went down. Morlock rolled over him and sprang to his feet on the winding stairs. He seized the listener and slammed him against the wall of the pit. It took all his willpower to keep from strangling the life out of the treacherous listener.

  “I'm sorry!” the listener squeaked, in his second voice. “It said it would let me go if I gave you to it. It said…It said it wouldn't harm you….”

  Then all his willpower was not enough. He found his powerful skilled hands had wrapped themselves around the listener's throat, choking off his protestations as they would soon choke off his life. Morlock trembled in anticipation of the listener's death. It didn't seem like murder. In that instant he thought of the listener's death as a great work of art he would create, by blind impulse out of improvised materials, guided by intuitions born of the embracing darkness.

  Darkness?

  The murmurs from below had reached an almost deafening crescendo.

  He opened his hands and drew in a long calming breath. “No,” he said: to the listener, to the voice in the darkness, to himself. “It won't work.”

  The listener whimpered unintelligibly and fell at his feet.

  Morlock stepped over him and climbed the winding stairway out of the pit. The darkness was, indeed, persuasive—now he could attest to that himself. He could hardly believe that his actions were really his own until he stepped out into the open and the light of the three moons sheared away the shadows like a knife.

  That was when the answer came to him.

  After drawing a bucket of water from the well, Morlock broke the chain and carried the bucket to the top of the hill. He left it there to collect moonlight for the rest of the night.

  Walking back down the slope, he numbered the things he'd need: two clay jars, a sheet of sealing wax, a lump of twilight, a rock, a fire.

  The fire he could make later; the twilight-shadow he could collect around dawn. He had a wax tablet, for making notes, in his backpack; that would do for a seal. He also had a Perfect Occlusion in his pack: it established a zone that no light could enter or leave, unless the light source was physically carried in or out. (It was a little tricky to set one up so that the inside remained perfectly dark, but of course he didn't mind a little ambient moonlight for the project he had in mind.) The stone he could get anywhere; it need have no special properties except a certain shape and size.

  He set up the occlusion by the wolfbane-lined hedge, laying it out in a flat space and staking down its seven corners with spikes of native rock. Then he went off to see about jars.

  The ones the listener had been using in his living area were irretrievably contaminated and useless for Morlock's purposes. He decided to make his own, and searched out the listener's clay pit. There, to his surprise, he found several clay pots and jars, finished and set out to dry. They were rather weathered (as if the listener had made them some time ago and forgotten about them) but perfectly sound. Morlock trudged with them to the stream and back (there being no spare bucket for the well).

  When he returned, long
before dawn, the occlusion had established itself. He had found a good stone at the stream, too: about the size of his fist and approximately the same shape, but smooth from long years in the streambed. He dropped it beside the occlusion and climbed the hill to collect the bucket of water, now drenched with implicit moonlight.

  He covered the bucket with the wax tablet (he had nothing else that would do), brought it down, and set it by the occlusion. Then he dug a pit in the turf and started a fire. Once the fire was going well, he planted three stones around it and settled the bucket on them, over the fire.

  Morlock watched the bucket closely, waiting for the water to boil. Once it did, steam would upset the cover and that was bad. Moonlight would escape and, worse, firelight might enter. Fire destroys moonlight whenever they make contact, as does any light (except starlight, the most fragile and subtle of lights).

  As intently as he watched, he almost missed the moment. The bucket, after muttering and shaking itself from the heat, suddenly grew quiet. A moment later, a puff of boiling steam shot forth from between the metal rim and the melting wax of the tablet. It was irradiated by a bolt of white-hot moonlight. Morlock slapped the tablet down against the bucket rim and snatched the bucket from the fire with his free hand. (It was hot, but it took a considerable fire to annoy Morlock; that was the destiny of his blood.) He leapt into the zone of Perfect Occlusion.

  Water was still bubbling through the semi-liquid surface of the wax tablet, but no light accompanied it. Morlock took the wax tablet away and was pleased to see a considerable mass of cooling but still white-hot moonlight slumped in the bottom of the bucket. It looked almost dense enough to work it with his fingers.

  Morlock, of course, did not risk this. He set the bucket down, sat down himself, and, clasping his hands, summoned the rapture of vision.

  He reached out with the monochrome flames of his tal-self and worked the white-hot cooling moonlight into a sheet. Then he creased the sheet and folded it. He creased it again and folded it. And again and again: more than thirty times, until the sheet had become a long, thin dense strip of moonlight, narrowing to a point. It was still malleable, the hot orange color of a setting moon. In a perfect world he would have preferred to reheat it, but Morlock was a realist. He picked up the strip of moonlight and plunged it into a jar of cool water, where its radiance instantly became a brittle wintry blue.

  Leaving it there, Morlock drew Tyrfing and stepped out of the Perfect Occlusion. The time was just before dawn. Morlock cut himself a suitable lump of twilight shadow from the hill's silhouette just before the sun rose on the opposite horizon. Quickly hiding the shadow under his cloak to protect it from daylight, Morlock sheathed Tyrfing and dismissed the rapture.

  The weight of the world fell across his crooked shoulders. He had been in the visionary state for hours. And the worst of it was, he knew he had many hours to go before he could sleep.

  When Morlock lifted his head he saw the listener standing not far away. The darkness, once symmetrical, now seemed to be sending out shoots or pseudopods into the right side of the listener's face. His nose had wholly disappeared, and this (along with the pinched fleshless character of his visible features) gave his face a skull-like appearance—not even a whole skull: a skull drenched in quicklime so that part of it was eaten away. The listener, Morlock guessed, hadn't long to live.

  “Didn't you hear me?” the listener's second voice was demanding. He sounded peevish, like a sick weary child.

  “No,” Morlock admitted.

  “I said that…I'm sorry about last night. The darkness…that is, the voice explained—”

  Morlock waved him to silence. “Tell me later,” he said. “I'm busy.” He turned away and walked back to the Perfect Occlusion, bright blue in reflection of the morning sky. Glancing back, he found the listener had followed him.

  “What is that?” the listener asked, eyeing the occlusion.

  “Part of what I'm doing.”

  “Is it…?” the listener said, both eager and anxious, “Is it…another idea?”

  “I'll tell you if it works,” Morlock replied sharply.

  The listener's less-than-half-face looked hurt. Morlock was angry at the listener for being so oppressively weak, but he was also angry at himself for giving way to his irritation.

  “Look,” he said finally, “you seem tired. Why don't you go to sleep?”

  The listener nodded slowly, with his skull-like less-than-a-face. He turned away and stumbled wearily up the hill.

  Morlock stepped into the Perfect Occlusion, now lit within by brittle blue light. He drew the chunk of twilight from under his cloak and the strip of moonlight from the jar of cool water. He spent the rest of the day sharpening its edge on the lump of shadow.

  Just after sunset, Morlock carried two jars of water up to the listener's cave. One was hot—just off the fire, in fact. One was cold, just drawn from the well (with the restored bucket and chain). Under one arm was the wax tablet.

  The listener was still sleeping. Morlock put the two jars of water by the listener's pallet and dropped the wax tablet in the hot water to soften it. Then he returned to the Perfect Occlusion.

  When he reentered the cave, he held the blade of moonlight in his right hand, the stone in the left. Dropping the stone next to the jars, he lifted the shining insubstantial blade and cut open the listener's chest.

  He could hardly see the listener's heart, tangled about as it was with tendrils of invading darkness. The heart is the source or entry point of human tal; it would naturally be the focus of the darkness' attack, but would hold out until the end.

  The end was dreadfully near. The listener's insides were rotten with darkness. Morlock clenched his teeth and reached through the tendrils of darkness until his fingers closed on the breathing fist-sized heart. He drew it out between the pale slats of the listener's ribs.

  The listener stopped breathing.

  Morlock moved with cautious speed. Until now the only danger had been that the listener would wake up. Now it was possible he never would. Morlock literally held the man's life in his hands.

  He placed the heart in the jar of cold water. It quickly sank to the bottom, heavy with unshed blood and tal, pulsing futilely like a fish without fins. Water ran over the rim. He drew the wax tablet from the hot water and pressed it over the mouth of the cold jar, sealing the heart inside.

  Now he picked up the fist-sized stone and (bending aside the pale ribs) placed it on the heart's dark pedestal.

  The listener drew a long shuddering breath.

  Morlock carefully folded back the listener's flesh, and it rejoined seamlessly. The filthy robe, too, healed like the second skin it was.

  The listener choked out something in his sleep. Morlock couldn't tell what it was. He gathered up the jars and carried them away, along with the shining insubstantial blade.

  Morlock was eating flatbread and dried meat, sitting between his fire and the Perfect Occlusion, when the listener came down the hill.

  “Good evening,” Morlock said. “How are you?”

  “I feel strange,” the listener said, in a rather hollow version of the second voice.

  “Would you like some bread and meat?”

  The listener shook his head impatiently. “Food is horrible,” he declared, in a slightly tinny version of the imperious first voice. “Flesh is nasty. Life is unclean.”

  Morlock was in no position to disagree. He ate some more meat instead.

  “Something has changed,” the listener said insistently.

  Morlock said nothing. He wasn't ready to tell the truth, and would not lie.

  “I'll go ask the voice in the darkness,” said the listener.

  “If you do,” Morlock replied, “it will kill you.”

  The listener looked at him for a moment, a single eye peering out of a mostly eaten face. He turned away and walked up the hill. Morlock watched him go into the cave and disappear. Then he followed the other, going up the hill and entering the listener's living
quarters.

  He was alone; the listener had gone on down the pit where the voice whispered in the darkness.

  Morlock sat down and waited.

  The night passed quickly. Morlock dozed on and off. The listener did not return until just before sunrise.

  Morlock heard some scrabbling in the passage at the back of the cave. He looked over and saw the listener's hand clenching and unclenching on the threshold.

  Morlock leaped to his feet and ran over. He drew the listener out of the passage and carried him over to the pallet.

  Darkness had spread across the listener's face and throat, leaving only one frightened blue eye. His body jerked convulsively; he seemed only to control his right arm. The skin on his other arm was sallow, with poisonously dark veins woven into the slack muscle.

  Morlock understood, of course. In fact, he had been expecting this. The darkness had devoured all of the listener's tal…or at least enough of it that he could no longer control his own body, or even make it breathe.

  Pity bit Morlock like a snake. He knelt down by the convulsing listener and took his living hand. The listener turned his remaining eye to look at him. But Morlock could say no word of comfort. What was there to say?

  The listener screamed. It came out as a mere gasp, since his vocal cords no longer knew how to respond, but Morlock understood. Some moments later, the listener's fingers relaxed in the nervelessness of death. Morlock let them go and the hand fell to the ground with a conclusive thud.

  Immediately the darkness began to rise from the listener's corpse. Tendril after tendril lifted, forming a complex drifting cloud in midair. Morlock stood up and watched it warily, prepared to draw Tyrfing if it moved toward him. But it didn't. When the last tendril lifted from the listener's corpse, the whole cloud drifted slowly, almost reluctantly, into the passage leading to the pit. It merged with the mundane darkness there and disappeared.

  Morlock nodded. Without its anchor in the listener's psyche the darkness was dragged back to its trap under the hill.