It was the rule that kept him from killing the listener, only the rule. He had seen too much death to suppose that anyone had a right to life, and he did not believe that the listener would ever do enough good to justify his own life, even to himself. Morlock himself would certainly prefer to be murdered rather than live with an alien darkness poisoning his spirit. And just coincidentally, he found that he hated the listener enough to kill him. Everything pointed in one direction, a river of darkness urging him toward what he really wanted to do anyway…. Only the rule stood in the way: "Keep the bargain. Keep the trust."
Morlock sighed and sheathed his sword. It occurred to him that he was not going to kill anybody at the moment. He would have liked to speak with his harven-father, but Tyrtheorn had been dead these three hundred years.
The listener was silent at last, watching him carefully. There was an air almost of disappointment in the cave. Perhaps the darkness longed to be free of the listener even as he longed to be free of it. What would have happened if Morlock had killed the man in unguarded rage? Would the mouth of darkness have been free to settle on Morlock before he was aware of it? It may, at least, have hoped so, and directed the listener to provoke Morlock to murderous rage. He wondered if he had ever seen the listener behave naturally-had ever seen him act except at the prompting of the darkness that owned him.
"Are you out of ideas?" the listener asked finally.
"No," Morlock said. "I have one more. I think you should leave the hill."
"What?" shouted the listener, in the first voice.
"The darkness under the hill is feeding on you. The farther you get from it, the less easily it can do this; it is bound to this location by a magical trap. I think if you got far enough away, and stayed away long enough, the darkness on your face would be forced to withdraw."
The listener laughed again, more curtly and dismissively than before. "You don't know!" he said in his second voice. "The darkness is …everywhere. If I left it would refuse to teach me any more secrets. But it could …Don't you understand? Darkness is everywhere. It …No one can escape it."
Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. "There is darkness and darkness. I assure you, the one under this hill is quite local."
"You don't know!"
"I do."
"I won't leave!" cried the listener shrilly. "I won't! I won't!"
Morlock looked at him wearily. Something inside him, some intuitive voice of his own, told him that this was the true solution. This was where a great healer, like Illion or Noree, would throw his or her whole weight. They would marshal arguments, talk all night, wear away the listener's reluctance (the source of which was painfully obvious). They would display patience; they would comfort the listener's fears, foster his strengths.
But Morlock knew his own limits. He shrugged again and said, "Then."
"You have no more ideas?"
"Not at the moment."
"Oh." The listener paused, then observed slyly, "Perhaps you should go down and ask the voice in the darkness. It knows more secrets than you can imagine."
"Most people do," Morlock replied absently. He had no great thirst for secret knowledge. He walked out of the cave, saying "Good night" as he passed the listener.
Night had risen long ago. Morlock stood for a moment by the cave entrance and breathed in the strange poison-scented air that lay over the hill. His thoughts were somber. True to his boast, he had already thought of two more ideas. He might close up the passage to the darkness, or simply abduct the listener and carry him far from the hill. They were good enough ideas, but (separately or together) they were obviously doomed to failure.
No scheme to remove the darkness from the listener could be successful without the consent of the listener, and that clearly would not be forthcoming. The listener was wholly subject to the darkness; probably he had bargained with Morlock only because the darkness itself had prompted him to detain Morlock from his journey westward.
Morlock lay down and wrapped himself in his sleeping cloak, hoping some revelation would come in the night. And, in a way, one did.
Morlock awoke when the side of his head struck the edge of a stone surface. He awoke instantly and completely; his eyes gaped wide, hungry for light. There was none. The lightless air was dense and close, woven with subtle sounds: the labored breathing of the listener (who was struggling to haul Morlock by the shoulders), the chirrups of seven-legged mushrooms …They were under the hill. The listener was dragging him down to forcibly put him into the darkness.
He braced his feet and pushed. The listener squawked and went down. Morlock rolled over him and sprang to his feet on the winding stairs. He seized the listener and slammed him against the wall of the pit. It took all his willpower to keep from strangling the life out of the treacherous listener.
"I'm sorry!" the listener squeaked, in his second voice. "It said it would let me go if I gave you to it. It said …It said it wouldn't harm you…."
Then all his willpower was not enough. He found his powerful skilled hands had wrapped themselves around the listener's throat, choking off his protestations as they would soon choke off his life. Morlock trembled in anticipation of the listener's death. It didn't seem like murder. In that instant he thought of the listener's death as a great work of art he would create, by blind impulse out of improvised materials, guided by intuitions born of the embracing darkness.
Darkness?
The murmurs from below had reached an almost deafening crescendo.
He opened his hands and drew in a long calming breath. "No," he said: to the listener, to the voice in the darkness, to himself. "It won't work."
The listener whimpered unintelligibly and fell at his feet.
Morlock stepped over him and climbed the winding stairway out of the pit. The darkness was, indeed, persuasive-now he could attest to that himself. He could hardly believe that his actions were really his own until he stepped out into the open and the light of the three moons sheared away the shadows like a knife.
That was when the answer came to him.
After drawing a bucket of water from the well, Morlock broke the chain and carried the bucket to the top of the hill. He left it there to collect moonlight for the rest of the night.
Walking back down the slope, he numbered the things he'd need: two clay jars, a sheet of sealing wax, a lump of twilight, a rock, a fire.
The fire he could make later; the twilight-shadow he could collect around dawn. He had a wax tablet, for making notes, in his backpack; that would do for a seal. He also had a Perfect Occlusion in his pack: it established a zone that no light could enter or leave, unless the light source was physically carried in or out. (It was a little tricky to set one up so that the inside remained perfectly dark, but of course he didn't mind a little ambient moon light for the project he had in mind.) The stone he could get anywhere; it need have no special properties except a certain shape and size.
He set up the occlusion by the wolfbane-lined hedge, laying it out in a flat space and staking down its seven corners with spikes of native rock. Then he went off to see about jars.
The ones the listener had been using in his living area were irretrievably contaminated and useless for Morlock's purposes. He decided to make his own, and searched out the listener's clay pit. There, to his surprise, he found several clay pots and jars, finished and set out to dry. They were rather weathered (as if the listener had made them some time ago and forgotten about them) but perfectly sound. Morlock trudged with them to the stream and back (there being no spare bucket for the well).
When he returned, long before dawn, the occlusion had established itself. He had found a good stone at the stream, too: about the size of his fist and approximately the same shape, but smooth from long years in the streambed. He dropped it beside the occlusion and climbed the hill to collect the bucket of water, now drenched with implicit moonlight.