Morlock stayed on, enjoying the hospitality of the Endless Empire only long enough to make a new nose for Uthar Kelat.
The young prince was resistant to the idea at first, but Ambrosia insisted. “My friend,” she said, “if you had lost your nose bravely in battle, it would be one thing. But your kinsmen will be cunning enough to sniff out a nose lost to frostbite—a fool’s injury, or so those who have never seen the deep north might think it. No, you’ll wear your nice nose and like it, my friend, or we will never be married.”
Kelat’s noseless face was torn with mixed emotions. “If I marry you, do I have to be the next King of the Vraids?”
“Not exactly. You get to be, which is somewhat different.”
Uthar Kelat was unconvinced, but he consented to wear a nose.
Morlock had made a wooden leg or two in his time, but replacing a facial feature required developing new skills. He got quite good at creating lifelike noses out of wax, but the problem was that none of them looked really convincing against the mobility of Kelat’s face. But the master makers of the deep halls under the Blackthorns put their heads together with Morlock, and together they developed a nose of wax and fungus, with pseudo-muscles woven of spider silk. Morlock sealed the pseudo-muscles to the real muscles of Kelat’s face, and wove the scarred edge of Kelat’s skin together with the false nose. The result was a masterpiece of making, its greatness revealed by the fact that no one would ever be able to tell it was made at all, unless they already knew.
“That’s your wedding gift,” Ambrosia said when they parted company. “Don’t bring anything else.”
“Bring it where?” asked Morlock, confused.
“To the wedding, brother. I didn’t get to go to yours, but you will be at mine. Give me about a year to set it up—that should be enough time.”
Morlock’s wedding had been a dinner at which he and Aloê had told their friends they were married, but he knew they did things differently in the unguarded lands, especially royal families. He nodded, hugged his sister, and turned away.
Kelat was waiting to shake his arm in the Vraidish fashion. “Thanks,” Kelat said.
“Watch out on hot days,” Morlock said. “I don’t think the wax will melt, but. . . .”
“Oh,” Kelat raised his hand to his face. “I’d forgotten about that. Thanks for that, too, then.”
“What else?”
Kelat threw up his hands in exasperation. “You figure it out! When you do, remember I said it. Good fortune, Morlock.”
“And to you and yours,” said the crooked man, and turned away toward the crooked, high horizon.
He crossed the Dolich Kund and then struck westward through the foothills of the Whitethorns. It was a meandering path, but it suited him. There was fruit and game, and the early autumn weather was warm and golden. He even came upon a hill town that had people dwelling there, although he made a long detour around it.
He came to the Gap of Lone from its northern edge, and one afternoon, as he was about to turn from the rough hills into the flat plain of the Maze, his eye caught a searing glint of something polished or crystalline atop a nearby hill.
It was odd. No one dwelt here. No one built here. But the thing that he saw didn’t look natural. He was tempted to go look more closely at it. The longing to go home tugged him in the other direction. But home had waited a long time already, and he was still a vocate to the Graith of Guardians: they would want to know if someone was settling in these slopes, so near to the Wardlands.
He climbed the hill.
The thing at the top was an oblong box made of crystalline stones. Inside the box was a body. He recognized it long before he reached the top of the hill. It was, or had been, Naevros syr Tol.
Naevros lay, as if sleeping, encased in the stone. The sunlight made the crystal glow, reminding Morlock of the armor his avatar had worn when they fought beyond the wide world’s end. The body was dressed with Naevros’ customary elegance, but his cloak was not the red cloak of a vocate. It was the black cloak of an exile, separated from the Wardlands by the First Decree.
Morlock stood there for a long time, gazing on his friend and enemy. He had no words to say, no prayers for the dead. He remembered the murder of Earno and his hands clenched. Then he remembered long hours of talking, laughing, drinking, fencing. He would say no curses either. Naevros was dead and, it seemed, exiled; the thing was done.
He turned to go.
Noreê stood below him on the slope. There was a black cloak in her hands, a red cloak on her shoulders. She looked at him without anger, almost with pity. “He meant something to you—didn’t he?” she asked wistfully.
“Yes.”
“And to me. He isn’t dead, you know. But his spirit is gone.”
Morlock thought back to the burning valley beyond the edge of the world. “He’s dead.”
Noreê looked away. “They put him out here,” she said, “because the body still breathes, once a day or so. They put a black cloak on him because they said. . . . Well, he earned it.”
“And worse.”
“But Bleys is still summoner, and Lernaion. There is no justice, only defense.”
Morlock waited.
“I cast a mantia that told me you might come this way,” Noreê said. “I . . . I used a path-magic to draw you here, too. I wanted to be the one to tell you, and I wanted to tell you here. Now . . . it’s not as I imagined it. But never mind.”
She turned to face Morlock and held out the black cloak toward him. “The Graith sends you this.”
He took it by reflex, looked at it uncomprehendingly. It was cut just like a vocate’s cloak, but it was black, not red. It was the cloak of exile.
He raised his eyes and looked into hers. “They can’t,” he said.
“They did.”
“I have a right to defend myself.”
“You have no rights in the Wardlands. You are an exile. Three vocates died during your duel with Naevros, did you know that? Many were hurt. All were frightened, and frightened people are easy to lead. . . .”
He ran past her down the slope.
“Don’t go back!” she called after him. “I don’t say it as. . . . Don’t go back! Don’t try to go back!”
He ignored her. He ran with long, even strides down the slope until he reached the plain of the Maze. He felt the talic resistance before him, felt with his insight the shifting path that would lead him, by slow gradual steps, toward the other side.
He ignored it and walked straight against the talic wall of the Maze. It was difficult, but there was a fierce satisfaction in taking each step. He was in a mood to fight something; the Maze would do. When he reached the other side they could kill him or treat with him. But he was determined to lay his defense before the Graith. Someone, someone would listen to him.
Alarm bells were ringing in the Gray Tower over the Gap of Lone; he could hear them from afar. He saw Guardians in three colors of cloak standing at the tower’s base. In his fierce battle with the power of the Maze, he didn’t bother to identify any of them. He would see them face-to-face soon enough. He held the black cloak aloft in a gesture of defiance for them all to see.
He was about a thousand paces from the end of the Maze when his left leg suddenly went out from under him. He fell into the dark, golden grass of the plain and didn’t understand what had happened until flame began to smolder around him. Then he realized: someone had shot him.
It must be a gravebolt, to strike from such a distance. It had passed through his left thigh; the wound was deep, but it had not severed the great artery of the leg.
His Ambrosial blood was spreading fire in the dry grass of the plain. The gravebolt, too, was burning. But before it was consumed, he saw the runic rose carved on the shaft.