"I really must pay more attention to fifth-dimensional gravity effects," remarked Merlin coolly, as he threw the hatch shut.
"But-" said the surviving thug.
"Ware!" shouted Merlin.
Morlock had exited another hatch in the wall and was coming toward us, bloody sword in hand.
"Five down," I said to the last thug. "Two to go."
"Shut up!" he groaned.
Fiery blood was dripping from one of Morlock's hands, but somehow that only made him seem more sinister as he limped toward us.
"I don't want this," the thug said to Morlock in a pleading tone. "I never wanted this. They never told me I would have to do this."
"Then put your sword down," Morlock rasped. "Do it now."
"You do and you'll face my wrath," Merlin called.
"Mother of stones," the thug hissed, "how I hate you both!" He raised his sword and leaped at Morlock. The crooked man flipped burning blood in his eyes. The thug clawed at his face and Morlock stabbed him through the chest. Moments later he was dead on the corridor floor.
"You used to gather a better group of swordsmen," Morlock remarked.
"I was in a hurry," Merlin replied. "Anyway," the thrifty necromancer added as he drew something from his left sleeve, "at least I don't have to pay them now."
He threw the thing in his hand-it looked a little like a stick-and said something. I didn't quite hear it, but I felt the shock: it had to be the activating word of a magic spell. Then the stick didn't look like a stick anymore: instead it was something like a narrow silver bird with a long sharp beak. It flew under Morlock's guard and through his side, appearing on the far side scattering fire and blood from its razor-sharp feathers.
Morlock gasped. Maybe I'm going to sound stupid here, but: that was shocking to me. I'd seen all sorts of things happen to Morlock in the time I'd known him, but I'd never heard him make a sound like that. Worse, the thing spun about in midair and came back at him through the fiery cloud that had begun to envelope him. He tried to block it with his sword, but it spun low and passed through his right leg. He sobbed with pain, but managed to catch the thing between his sword and the floor. He snapped it somehow-I could hardly see him because of the wall of fire rising from his blood on the floorboards-and it seemed to go dark, just a stick again, a broken one now. Then he slumped to his knees, and bloody fire rose like a curtain in front of him.
I turned to look at Merlin. There was a sad contemplative look on the old man's face. But he was taking another of these flying sticks from his other sleeve. He was going to throw it. There was nothing Morlock would be able to do about it, even if he was still conscious. (It was hard to tell. I couldn't see much of him.) This one would kill him for sure. Merlin raised the stick to throw it.
I moved at the same time, and as he let go the stick and started to say the magic word to activate its deadly spell, I punched him in the throat.
His face rippled, as if I were seeing it reflected in troubled water. His dark blue eyes looked at me with shock and an unspoken accusation. (Mirrorkisser! He couldn't believe everyone wasn't on his side, somehow.) The silvery thing fell back toward him as I jumped away. It didn't look like a stick, or a bird. Instead it was more like a long narrow-lipped mouth full of narrow pointy little teeth-a Bargainer's mouth. Breaking the spell as Merlin uttered it had caused the weapon to recoil on the old man somehow. It was more than I had planned, but I admit I felt a certain satisfaction as the mouth-thing landed on Merlin's neck and chest and began to gnaw at him.
I turned away toward Morlock and was horrified to see how much worse he was, now supine on the burning floor in a pool of his own burning blood. Then the floorboards gave way and he fell from sight.
I jumped after him. It was the stupidest thing I'd ever done-I think it holds the record to this day, in fact. What if we'd ended up in a hallway like the one that had killed Merlin's penultimate thug? I would have ended up in a red smear next to Morlock, that's all. But in the moment of emergency I had some crazy idea I could help-grab him before he fell too far. (And maybe I just wanted out of that horrible one-turn trap, even if it killed me.)
We fell, but not with the deadly speed that had killed Merlin's unwary thug. It was more the way snow falls: we drifted amid glowing debris down a long shaft with dark walls. At the bottom was a floor with a door set into it.
The door was locked with one of Morlock's own devices. The crystalline eye looked at him and released the hold its long bronze fingers had on the door.
"Go through," Morlock whispered through the ember-lit darkness. It was the first clear sign I had that he was still alive.
I kicked aside some burning debris and swung the door open wide.
The street outside the crooked house beckoned to me. Only the ground fell away at right angles to the threshold of the door. It looked as if I were about to fall straight through a hole into the moonlit sky. A wave of vertigo swept over me.
"Hurry," hissed the bleeding, burning, crooked man.
I sat down on the threshold of the doorway and swung my legs into it. Gravity on the far side grabbed them and dragged them toward the ground. I inched my way out and found myself on my back, staring upward at the sky.
I rolled aside as Morlock jumped out the door and landed on his feet. He landed with a pronounced wobble and started staggering down the street, no less wobbly as he went, still trailing gouts of burning blood.
I hopped to my feet and caught up with him. "Hey, wait a moment," I said, reaching out for him.
"Keep away," he snarled. "Don't wait. Move. Merlin. After us."
"Morlock, he has to be dead. Did you see what that thing was doing to him?"
"Unlikely!" That was all he said. He actually pulled a needle and thread out of his pockets and started sewing himself up as he hobbled along. It was pretty horrible, but just stumbling along watching was even worse, so I said, "Can I help?"
"No. Blood. Burn you."
"Your clothes don't burn," I pointed out.
"Dephlogistonated."
"Deef-what does that mean?"
"My clothes don't burn."
"Have you got some gloves that have been dephloginated, or whatever you call it?"
He didn't stop walking (if you could call it that) or using the needle to sew up the terrible gash in his side. But his face became more thoughtful, less a mask of pain. "Hm," he said at last. "Dephlogistonated gloves. Excellent idea, really."
"Then you have some?"
"No." The pain clamped down on his features again.
When he was done sewing up his side he settled on a curb for a moment to wrap bandages torn from his cloak around his wounded leg.
"Morlock," I said, as he rose to move again, "we have to talk."
He grimaced. "No doubt. Walk, too. I go south."
"Back through the Kirach Kund?" I said. "Is that where you sent them? You-"
"Can't go meet them!" he interrupted.
I relaxed a little. That was the hardest part of the conversation I'd anticipated: telling Morlock we had come to a parting of ways. Then I thought a little about what he'd said.
"Do you mean you can't, or I can't?" I asked.
"I can't," he said. "You shouldn't. Think it through."
I would have much preferred that he explain it to me: both because he knew more than I did, and so that I could argue with him. But getting words out of Morlock was like uprooting tree stumps, even at the best of timeswhich this wasn't.
Anyway, I could see what he meant clearly enough. If Merlin had some way of tracing us or following us, we would lead him straight to Roble and the children. Then we'd be back in the same situation: all of us at risk because of this duel between Morlock and Merlin.