He snarled wordlessly at Ulugarriu, who seemed taken aback.
"At times I forget you're not a werewolf," they said. "But that's because you're so much like a werewolf."
He turned to leave.
"Wait!" Ulugarriu said. "Look at the visualization I've been simmering in my bowl of dreams. This will matter to you. I promise you it will."
They led him down the long workroom to the broad-rimmed bowl of dreams, in its own wooden stand near the door where Morlock had first entered.
"Look! "
Morlock looked. He saw the insectlike instrument of the Strange Gods, sprawling across the northern plain. It was black lined with red fire. The land beyond it was brown and dead.
"What does it do?" Morlock asked.
"Ah! You are interested! I call it the Ice-Binder. It seems to eat cold."
"Eh."
"Oh, ghost. Not that again."
"Cold is merely the absence of heat."
"That's what I used to think, and I still think it. But apparently, heat can also be treated as the absence of cold."
"Hm."
"How I shall miss your lively conversation when you're gone!"
Morlock knew that two contradictory scholia might sometimes be used to explain and account for the same phenomena, and he even knew some math to describe such situations, but he was not interested in augmenting Ulugarriu's already considerable powers, so he said nothing.
"So this thing will gradually make this area unlivable, is that it?"
"Yes, except for the gradually part. I've been holding it off for yearsusing various dodges. It acts like it's alive, but it doesn't really seem to be. It certainly doesn't think. So I've used phantom cold waves and other tricks to slow its progress. But now it's about to sweep over the city."
"How are we seeing this? This is not a vision."
"You don't tell, but you ask, ask, ask. All right; I don't mind. The Strange Gods don't have anything like your Sight, either, but they do have what they call visualization. They gather information throughout their sphere and use it to create understanding of things as they are, or were, or will be. Their minds are not limited by physical constraints; they can use the whole world to think in, or remember. I can't, but I found that I can gather information through mantic spells to create images of things-as-they-may-be."
"May be? Sounds uncertain."
"That's what you get when you look at anything, youngster: something that may be there."
Morlock tapped the rim of the bowl of dreams, sending ripples through the visualization. "This, itself, is interesting. But I still don't care what happens to Wuruyaaria."
"No? Look there! A band of warriors, led by the new First Singer, has come north to investigate the Ice-Binder. They're trapped on the hill there. They're fighting so that some of them can get out."
Morlock didn't even glance at the image. "They will die, or live. It makes no difference to me."
"No?" Ulugarriu's russet eyebrows lifted in wonder. "Well, I made a promise to you earlier. I'm not withdrawing it-what was that?"
"You tell me."
"They made some sort of hole in the Ice-Binder. Not enough to do any lasting harm, and now they're dead, as you say, but it's more than I've been able to do. If we could find out what they used-"
"I am dying, Ulugarriu. Even if I wanted to help you, I would be of no help to you."
"Yes, but you need not die. I could-we could. That would be the first matter of business, you see. I would take your word you would help me. Then I, of course, could help you."
"You can cure the ghost sickness."
"Well. In a word. Yes."
"Because you caused it."
"Well, I. May have. Unintentionally."
"What were your intentions?"
"To make you more pliable, of course. That was the whole purpose in getting you into the Vargulleion. That fathead Wurnafenglu said he could break anybody. But you wouldn't be broken. You wouldn't cooperate in any way. I admired you for that, still do, but it was inconvenient. The Strange Gods had sent you north on some mission that was disrupting all visualizations-even they were complaining about it, if you can believe it, selfcentered brachs. I thought if I could get you working for me, you know, things might be fine after all."
"You planted that spike in my head. And it was meant to do this. To do this to me." He waved his ghostly hand in Ulugarriu's alarmed face.
"No! Really, I mean that. The spike was just a precautionary measure. I had no idea it would be in that long, or that it would make you suffer so. I was glad to take it out, so glad. But I couldn't have you-have you. Sort of running around with your full Sight, seeing through things and me and things. I just couldn't. So after I took the spike out I. Well, I did something else, didn't I? I let you have some of your Sight, and you weren't insane anymore, though you will never be what I would consider wholly sane either. The ghost. The ghost illness. Well, that wasn't meant to happen. I think I know why it's happening, and I can stop it. If you'll promise to help me."
"Would Hlupnafenglu have gone the same way?"
"No. He had another problem. He couldn't stand his memories of being the Red Shadow. When I met him in Apetown he was going to kill himself. I experimented on him with the electrum spike. It did make him pliable and freed him from the burden of memories."
"And made him an idiot."
"A cheerful idiot is not to be despised, not by creatures like us, my friend. It was you who gave him his memories back. Without those, he might have been happy."
"Did you kill him?"
"He killed himself."
"That was how you made it look. You killed him."
"I'll swear to you on binding oaths, I did not kill him. As Liudhleeo, I persuaded him to leave me alone for a time, and then I planted the headless Liudhleeo-simulacrum, stole Tyrfing, and fled. He must have killed himself after he found the body. He bore a heavy burden of guilt, you know."
"No," Morlock said bitterly. "No, I didn't know."
He turned away.
Ulugarriu sighed. "Wait," they said to his back. "Ambrosius, listen. The way down to the underworld is easy. The dark door lies open night and day. But to retrace your steps and escape again to the upper air-for that you'll work. For that you'll suffer."
"Drop dead."
"You're nearer that than I am, old friend."
Morlock did not answer. His cloak and other gear were on the stool where he had first sat down to rest. He donned them, sheathed his sword, and walked out of Ulugarriu's house.
He passed swiftly through the asphodel fields, lest Ulugarriu try to talk to him through any of those masks, and was nearly running by the time he reached the shining bridge over the river of fire.
On the far side, the red unicorn had resumed its place at the bridgehead. Now it was pawing at something on the ground. Morlock could hardly see it in the glare from the bridge's light, but as he came closer he thought it was the dark splintered remains of the cold-light he had thrown away earlier.
He felt through the pockets in his cloak and shirt to see how many coldlights he had left. The unicorn looked up and saw him on the bridge. It casually moved aside to let him pass: apparently it only guarded against people trying to enter-if, in fact, that was what it had been doing before. Perhaps it had only wanted to destroy the hated light, and now it had.
Morlock sidled past the uninterested unicorn. He had a thought on how to get that horn.
Morlock found an upright stone a little under his height. He draped his cloak over the stone. Standing behind the stone and resting his head atop it, he inched his arm under the cloak and pulled a cold-light from one of its pockets. Holding it behind the cloak, he tapped it lightly against the stone to activate it.
At the sound, faint even to Morlock, the red unicorn became completely alert. It stared straight at Morlock with its slotted red eyes.
Morlock shifted his stance a little and pushed the light out from beyond the cloak.
The unicorn lowered its horn and charged, in a single silken motion. Through each odd writhing gallop, neither like a horse nor a goat, the long spiraling horn was aimed straight at the same point; it never wavered.