Nurgnatz rolled to his feet and started sputtering. "You burned a great hole in my warts! It'll take a century to regrow them the way they were! And then the others will be that much longer! I'll never be the same again!"
Morlock shrugged (somehow expressing total indifference to Nurgnatz's wart-care regimen) and backed away slowly. The golden sword followed, making occasional cuts at him, which he met without counterattacks. It was obviously difficult for him to restrain his swordsman's impulses to attack, but he seemed to be playing a waiting game as he disappeared into the darkness beyond the cave, followed by the golden sword.
Nurgnatz growled impatiently, and then began to whistle. Rhabia found that the headless bear holding her was starting to move toward the cave entrance.
"Morlock, look out!" she called. "We're coming for you!" That didn't sound quite right. "I mean-"
"Understood," Morlock's laconic reply came from the darkness outside.
The headless bear carried her out of the cave and past the whistling gnome.
The snowstorm had ceased, but some of the drifts would be hip-deep on a tall man. Morlock was not especially tall, and he was hobbled by chains on his legs.
The sky above was clear. Somber Chariot glared over the eastern horizon, but there was another light in the sky, a dim gray light. By it, Rhabia caught sight of Morlock, floundering away from an attack by the golden sword. He caught each slash of the golden sword on the edge of his, but all the time he retreated, step by hobbled step backward.
The whistling commands of the gnome drove the headless bear to run a great circle and dash at Morlock from the side. The crooked man hopped out of the way, but the chains tangling his legs caused him to fall.
Rhabia thought the fight was over. But the golden sword didn't know how to attack something lying on the ground.
Nurgnatz realized this belatedly and issued a whistling command that sent the headless bear back toward Morlock, no doubt to stomp him as he lay struggling in the snow. But by then Morlock had rolled to his feet and was hobbling backward again, deflecting slashes from the golden sword.
Rhabia was getting dizzy trying to follow the fight from her moving vantage point in the grip of the headless bear. But at least it was a little lighter now, and easier to see things.
The gnome was beginning to whistle a command to the headless bear again when Morlock called out, "I underestimated you, Nurgnatz."
The gnome broke off his whistle to respond, "Of course! Ugly people like you always assume that we beautiful people succeed by beauty alone. We could, of course. At least I could. But my other virtues drive me to omniform excellence. Yes, omniform excellence," he repeated, pleased with the phrase. He rounded his yellowish gray lips to whistle again.
"`Omniform excellence!' Morlock said, dodging back from a cut by the golden blade. "What is that, exactly?"
"Excellence in every form, you stupid, ugly crooked man!" squeaked the gnome angrily.
"Tell me, since you must know," Morlock said, backing away again so that Nurgnatz had to shamble forward to hear him, "are the forms of excellence infinite in number?"
Nurgnatz held forth for some time on the different types of excellence. He summed up his disquisition some considerable time later with the modest suggestion that there was in essence one true type of excellence, the state of being Nurgnatz, but that this one excellence had a potentially infinite number of Nurgnatzian attributes.
"Ah," said Morlock. "Light begins to dawn."
"Yes, of course," Nurgnatz said querulously. "I should think by now you would understand-"
"I meant literally," Morlock observed.
Nurgnatz gaped at him for a moment, then swung around to see the brightness imminent at the top of a nearby hill. The silver light of Chariot had given way to the reddish gray of dawn. Nurgnatz wasted no time screaming but bounded instantly toward his cave.
But the snow was very deep, the ambient light already in the air was stiffening his gnomish limbs, and Morlock had retreated very far from the cave entrance. Nurgnatz was only halfway between Morlock and Rhabia, yet in the grip of the long-unmoving headless bear, when the tide of golden light swept up and left him a still gray statue of a terrified, fire-scarred gnome.
The golden sword fell and was buried in the snow, its activating spell cancelled by the death of its caster.
Rhabia also fell to the ground, dropped by the headless bear. It went down on all fours and wandered away, past the stone image of its former master, into the snowthick woods beyond.
Rhabia climbed to her feet and went to meet Morlock, already hobbling toward her through the drifts of snow. His face was gray with weariness in the gold light of morning. Maybe he was immune from fire and had flammable blood, like all those crazy legends said. But for the first time, as she looked at him, he looked as if he might really be centuries old-and feeling every second of it.
"Better get those chains off you," she said gruffly. This damn maternal instinct of hers kicked in at the weirdest times.
"There are some tools in my pack," he said.
She sniffed. "That's what we risked death for? A hammer and chisel?"
He turned to spear her with his searching gray eyes. "You risked death to help me, when you could have walked away. I won't forget it."
"Ah." She waved her wounded hand in dismissal. "It evens out. I lost my bonus from Thyrb, but I bet I can sell that gnome statue for ten times what Thyrb was going to pay me. So the debt runs the other way, really. I at least owe you a decent breakfast when we get to town."
"I don't think-"
Her maternal instinct didn't have to put up with anyone thinking at her. "Listen, pal," she cut in. "I've had a long day and night of men who think the damn world revolves around them. So you will eat your damn breakfast and thank me nicely for it afterward."
There was some more negotiation on this point, but in the end she had her way. And it was after that memorable breakfast that Morlock offered her a job that bid fair to free her from Thyrb and his ilk forever.
XV
INTERLUDE: HOUR THE STORY ENDS
THE MERIT OF AN ACTION IS IN FINISHING IT TO THE END.
It was the last day of the season of Motherdeath, and new Valona's egg-sac had fully grown in. That day they had a rare daylight implanting. The Sisters watched as the males of the tribe wove their dance about young Valona, fertilizing her eggs, reverencing her and the life she represented. Then she implanted her first eggs in old Valona. The first eggs of a Khroi mother were supposed to be very lucky, and those implanted in an old mother doubly lucky. So good days were obviously in store for the horde. Gathenavalona tried to be happy, and she was a little.
After the ceremonies and the afternoon feast, Gathenavalona went to the Mother's Nest. She found Marh Valone waiting outside.
"Why are you here, Gathenavalona?" he asked. His harmonies implied it was not a rhetorical question.
"You knew I would be, it seems," she replied.
He gestured expectancy.
She gestured compliance and said, "I promised to tell her the whole tale of Motherdeath, back when she was only Dhyrvalona. I wish to keep my promise." Her harmonies vibrated with determination. She would fight, if need be, to keep her word.
"That is a good story," Marh Valone said earnestly. "It is the story of the change that began and has not yet ended. The realization that the gods may not hate us, that our own actions can harm us or save us. The Khroi slept for centuries in dreams of the gods' hatred. Now we have begun to wake up. You can be a part of that new day, Gathenavalona."