"It will be a relief. A great relief."
"Why are the others not manifest, yet? Were we not to meet at this space-time locus?"
"They are here, Justice, but you cannot see them." Death unfolded a piece of space-time and said, "Look."
The Strange Gods were all present. Even Wisdom was there, or at least the shell of Wisdom. Justice knew from his manifestation that he was dead, had long been dead.
Each of the gods, except Death, was bound in a web of otherness that Justice saw, but did not understand.
"What is this, Death?" she asked.
"This is the plan," said Death. "I have labored over it for thousands of years. Each of you is trapped (yes, you, too, justice) in a talic web of my weaving. Each thread of the web is woven to a cluster of human lives. And if you move to break that thread, the lives will be affected in a way inimical to your nature. See poor War there, I caught him first, while he was enjoying the riots after Rokhlenu's death. If he tries to free himself in time, the Anhikh Komos will make peace with the Ontilian Empire. If he tries to free himself in space, the Mupuvlokhu tribes in northern Qajqapca will lay down their arms and unite. If he tries to take effective action without freeing himself, other things inimical to his nature will happen."
"Why? Why are you doing this?"
"So that I can kill you. If gods take action inimical to their nature, their manifestation becomes more loosely associated with their nature. If that separation becomes permanent, death will occur."
"I know that. I know that. I am asking you why."
"So that death will occur. I act according to my nature, and my nature is Death. You are mortal, and my task has been to reap your lives. You have been cunning. You have used power and magic and skill and patience. You have evaded me for long ages, but you could not escape me. I am Death."
"You weren't always Death. We were sisters once."
"We were once, but we are not now. All your symbols, all your dreams and hopes, all that you were and were not and wished to be, all this is nothing to me. Stop your signifying, justice. I am Death, and I always have the last word. "
Chapter Thirty-two: Last Words
On the second night of the ninth month, the month Morlock called Tohrt, he took the nexus holding his choir of flames and carried it to the bone-dry grassy slope to the east. He set the nexus down and broke it open.
"Run free," he said. "Live and die as flames do, my friends. You need not leave the nexus, but I may not return to feed you anymore."
They were young, as flame-choirs go, and eager to escape and explore the world outside. Long branches of flame were already spreading across the dead dry hillside as he walked away. He did not look back; he'd said harder goodbyes than this, lately.
Horseman was a bright white eye in the western sky. Ulugarriu was impatiently waiting in their wingset by the door of his cave. It was time to go avenge Rokhlenu or die as well as he had.
The ballista Morlock had built was a relatively light weapon, if a powerful one, to start with. After Morlock had leached forth its phlogiston and covered it with weight-defying scales harvested from the unfinished wingsets, it was approximately as heavy as a happy thought.
For Ulugarriu, the thought was a rather grim one at the moment, though: resting on the firing slot were two hooked and flanged spears made from deadsilver.
"I can come back for these," Morlock said, noting the look of dread that Ulugarriu was giving the spears.
"No," said Ulugarriu. "We'd best do this all at once."
The werewolf maker took a long look at the rising moon, took a long breath, and knotted the lift ropes to the harness of their wingset. Morlock had been doing the same, and he met their eye. "Ready?" he asked, and they nodded.
The two makers gripped their wings and launched from the earth. The ballista came after them, dragged by the ropes.
They had practiced this a number of times, but it was different nowbecause of the silver spears, weighing down the ballista-and because this wasn't practice.
They flew straight up at first, into the hot blue night. When they were well above the level of the city and Mount Dhaarnaiarnon, Morlock called out, "Now!" and they levelled off, heading north.
Ulugarriu could already see the thing. At least there was a smoky red line of fire there that became clearer and clearer as they approached.
There were citizens abroad on the mesas of Wuruyaaria, but not as many as you would expect on a moonlit night. Ulugarriu wished they were down there, wearing the night shape, singing and causing trouble.
They felt an awkward tug on the load-bearing ropes. It almost pulled them off course. Looking around for the answer, Ulugarriu saw that Morlock was veering to the right, toward the high mesa of Wuruklendon.
"What are you doing?" Ulugarriu screamed.
He called back something about something and the Stone Tree.
"Don't care!" they screamed back. "North!"
He got the eh expression on his face: they just bet he was muttering it to himself. But he bent his course northward until there was a little slack on the load-ropes.
The dark shoulder of the volcano was below them now, with the moonclock and its one luminous eye rivaling the rising moon to their left.
Then the beast was below them, a red-black border burning from west to east.
It was a stupid sluggish burning worm that was poisoning Ulugarriu's world, and they hated it. They wished they knew how it worked.
The turbulent wind carried them up, upward, up-an intense updraft caused by the heat of the Ice-Binder. The air was pretty hot, but not hot enough to ignite the phlogiston-imbued metal scales-that was Ulugarriu's deepest dread about this business.
Then they were past the updraft and trending downward.
"There!" Morlock shouted.
Ulugarriu saw it: a small hill just north of the Ice-Binder. It was dark and lifeless as everything the Ice-Binder left in its wake.
They turned, in fairly good order, and glided down to perch on the hilltop; the ballista dropped down on the hillside below them.
They unhitched their load ropes and fetched the ballista. They set it up on the slope, about two hundred paces from the undulating red-black side of the Ice-Binder.
Morlock bound one of the lightweight coils of rope to one end of one of the deadsilver spears. He pushed the spear (harpoon, really) into the firing slot from the front, and then dropped the coil on the ground where it could run free.
"What if you miss?" Ulugarriu said stupidly. "We should have brought more than two shots."
Any other male Ulugarriu had ever known would have said, I never miss, or something equally fatuous. Morlock simply tapped the rope bound to the end of the spear. Of course: they could simply drag the spear back and try again.
It was only then that Ulugarriu realized how terrified they were of this. They definitely weren't thinking clearly.
Morlock cranked up the ballista, took several sightings, adjusted the height and position of the ballista, and said, "Watch out."
Ulugarriu was already well away, so Morlock released the firing bolt; the ballista kicked like an angry donkey and the deadsilver spear was gone, trailing the rope after it into the night. After a moment, though, the rope stopped. Ulugarriu looked up and saw a faint blue light around the side of the Ice-Binder. Soon this was obscured by dark tendrils rising from the IceBinder itself.
"Clean hit," Morlock said. "I think the hook is in place."
"It works," Ulugarriu said wonderingly. "It feeds on itself."
"It doesn't feed," Morlock disagreed.
With deliberate speed, he performed the same set of actions for the second deadsilver spear, firing a little further east this time, so that the ropes wouldn't get tangled.
"West or east?" Morlock asked.
"West," Ulugarriu said, with dry lips. They went and bound the rope from the first harpoon to the harness of their wingset.
Morlock was doing the same with the rope for the other spear.