"Does your map of the future tell you that?"
"As a matter of fact, it does. Not that I needed it. Yours were the actions I had trouble predicting."
"And you never did."
"Oh, of course I did. I hoped you'd do the sensible thing, but I rather thought you wouldn't. Shall I outline it for you? Morlock made those simulacra and you sent your family and him away somewhere-possibly with someone you came to know in Narkunden. If necessary, I'll look into that. You told them you'd catch up with them later, after decoying me off their trail. When they were safely away, you summoned me. You have no intention of ever seeing them again and are quite prepared to die. Is that about it?"
He was exactly correct, so I told him he was wrong.
He ignored me. "You don't really know Morlock, though, it seems. Once the family is well away, or on its way, he'll be back."
"Why?"
"Are you being modest? The oldest reason in the world."
I laughed.
"You may overestimate the number of women who have looked on him without some mixture of fear and disgust."
"Who says I don't?"
Merlin looked at me almost sadly. "I'm being honest with you. Why can't you be honest with me?"
I really think he thought I was being unfair. He admitted to causing the death of one of my sons, and was willing to kill everyone I cared about as a secondary effect of his schemes. But I disappointed him because I wasn't more forthcoming about who might or might not have been the recipient of my girlish laughter. Death and justice, what a mirror-kisser he was.
In the uncomfortable silence that stretched out between us, we suddenly heard, faint and far off, the harsh sound of men screaming in the last extremity of pain or fear.
"He's here," Merlin said in a businesslike tone. "Fesco-"
He never finished. There was an earthquake, or something-the floor started to shift under our feet. The ground was pretty lively in Four Castles; we lived just south of the Burning Range and we were always suffering earthquakes. (My husband died in one, when a quake collapsed the mine he was working in.) So I knew what I had to do: get out.
But as I turned on my heel and the floor writhed like a snake beneath me, I saw the door at the end of the hall slide out of sight. Then the shaking threw me off my feet: we were all of us tossed in a heap, including the guy who had been on the ceiling, and I had to concentrate on not getting impaled by their drawn blades.
I was successful, but a couple of them weren't. When the rest of us shook loose from each other and stood up, two of Merlin's thugs didn't. One was Fesco: he was coughing up blood and seemed unlikely to be doing much else for the rest of the time he had left. The other was the guy who had been on the ceiling: he had fallen straight on somebody's sword. He wasn't moving at all.
"Two down," I said. "Five to go."
Merlin glanced at me sharply, and then his withered face bent in a sneer. "You're an optimist, young woman. Still, it was clever of him to build this toy to trap me with. The ingenuity of its making is relatively trivial, you understand; one expects that of him. It's his cunning use of it that really impresses me. He's learning, old as he is. If he had Ambrosia's unsparing ruthlessness or Hope's steady devotion, he might really become dangerous someday."
He looked up and down the Mystery Zone. The hallway had changed shape. It was now longer, with a sharp turn at either end.
"Two of you," Merlin said, "lead off. The other two, follow. Let's see what the other side of this place looks like."
The four surviving thugs (Fesco had stopped breathing) all looked as if they had to think once or twice before deciding to accept Merlin's orders. But they did, falling into place without a word to him or each other, and we moved up the corridor. When they reached the turn, one of the lead thugs shouted, "They're down there!" and ran on ahead around the turn.
We heard boots thundering up the corridor behind us.
"Penned in!" Merlin hissed. "Can he have brought allies?" He grabbed my arm and hustled me around the bend.
Allies. I was terrified that this meant Roble and my children-what other allies did Morlock have? I glimpsed back as Merlin dragged me around the turn in the hallway. There were armed men approaching up the hallway behind usnot anyone related to me, I thanked the Strange Gods: the sweating frightened faces were pale as fish-bellies. They did seem a little familiar, though.
Merlin stopped as soon as he had dragged me around the bend. He turned around. There were sounds of fighting from both ends of the corridor. I looked down and saw the lead thugs fighting with someone just around the bend. Turning back, I saw our rearguard thugs fighting with someone just around the corner.
"Stop it!" shouted Merlin. "Stop it, you idiots! You'll kill each other!"
All the fighting stopped. I saw two bodies lying on the corridor floor ahead of us. They looked awfully familiar also: one of them was certainly Fesco.
"There's only one turn in the corridor," Merlin muttered. "It's bent back on itself. Then-wait a moment-
He didn't have a moment. A hatch opened in the ceiling in the middle of the hallway and Morlock dropped out of it. He held a sword in one hand, not Tyrfing, and a dagger in the other. He raised the sword to guard as his boots struck the floor. The hatch shut by itself; you couldn't even see a line where its edges were.
The four surviving thugs figured they knew what to do. The two behind us rushed past to engage Morlock. So did the two at the other end of the corridor.
"Wait!" shouted Merlin. "Oh, hell and damnation. There they go."
Morlock turned sidewise and dodged down the corridor. He threw the dagger, and one of the thugs caught it in his left eye, stumbled, fell, and was motionless. Meanwhile, Morlock was efficiently passing his sword through the other thug's midsection. He ran on down the corridor (we could hear his footfalls growing closer around the corner behind us) with the remaining two thugs in close pursuit. Suddenly he swerved to one side and scrabbled at the right-hand wall. Another hatch opened up and he dove inside. It swung shut behind him and disappeared. There was some smoke hanging in the air.
"Wonderful! Excellent!" shouted Merlin. He turned about and, passing by me, stepped around the corner. He simultaneously appeared at the far end of the corridor. He looked up at me and said, "Join me, won't you, Naeli?"
I didn't take the same route he did, because it bothered me, but walked straight down past dead Fesco and the other cold thug beside him, the still living thug trying desperately to staunch the bleeding in his abdomen, the motionless thug with the dagger in his eye.
"Four down," I said. "Three to go."
"Oh, shut up and have a look at this!" Merlin said impatiently.
This was a trail of fire guttering along the corridor. It disappeared next to the wall where Morlock had disappeared.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Blood!" Merlin crowed. "The blood of an Ambrosius. One of our men must have wounded him."
"Your men," I said.
"Have it your way, you fool," Merlin said tersely. He turned toward the wall and gently felt about with his hands, so long and clever, so much like Morlock's, but even paler and acrawl with stark blue veins.
"Got it!" he whispered, and the hatch swung open.
We all crowded forward to look.
Through the hatch there was a narrow side corridor. No door was visible and the hallway dead-ended in a blank wall, but there was a window on the left-hand wall through which part of a moon and some stars were visible.
"That's our exit, I think," Merlin said smugly.
The two thugs tried to shoulder through, but Merlin stopped them. "No! One ahead, one behind. He may have many ways in and out of this corridor. We must still be vigilant."
The thugs argued for a while who should go first; then they decided to flip a coin for it. The winner smiled, tossed the coin to the loser, and stepped through the hatch.
It all happened in a moment, but here's what I think I saw.
As he stepped through the hatch he stumbled. As he fell face forward, his hair and beard suddenly streamed out in front of him. His nose even got longer, pointing upward, and his face seemed to slide upward on his skull. He made a small quacking sound of surprise and then he fell, straight up the hallway, and hit the blank wall at the end of the short hallway so hard that he splashed, like a bag full of red jelly.