"It is not safe to leave the hill!" stated the listener in the first voice's harshest tones.

Morlock put the jar of drugged water down like a gavel, ending the discussion. "I'm going to find water," he told the listener. "I should be back by nightfall. Good day."

The listener gave vent to a chirping protest, not unlike one of his own mushrooms. Morlock paid it no heed, pausing only to gather the empty water bottles from his pack before walking down the hill.

Morlock found a clear mountain stream running northward about a hundred paces east of the listener's hill. He filled his water bottles, washed himself thoroughly, and sat down to a light breakfast of water, flatbread, and dried meat, not materially different from the forty-odd breakfasts that had preceded it.

This, he reflected gloomily, was not his sort of task. The subtleties of deep healing were beyond him, and they were clearly what was needed here. Oh, he knew enough of the art to keep himself in one piece during his dangerous and mostly solitary wanderings through the unguarded lands. But a higher kind of healer was called for, here: an Illion, a Noree, a Merlin. (He considered consulting Nimue, or at least as much of her as was available. But he was reluctant to loose her impulse-cloud anywhere near that hungry darkness under the hill.) Anyway, what would they have told him, if they had been there to advise him? Walk away! Yes, he was sure of it. They would have known that Morlock, for all his intelligence about things and ideas, saw people in fairly simple terms, and they would have told him that this was not simple.

Now that he had committed himself to something that was probably beyond him, he felt he understood something of the complexities. The problem? A darkness on a man's face. The solution? Remove it. Very easy. Except ...

Except: the man had cooperated in the placing of the darkness. It partook of his life and grew, entwined itself through him, became part of him. It was not a sort of blemish on his face that could be removed; it was rooted in the man's consenting soul. The listener might object to the darkness' propensity to spread, but he did not object to the darkness itself, to its nature, to its presence in him. Perhaps he could not; perhaps the choice, once made, was irrevocable.

Morlock shook his head. That sort of thinking was useless. He would not accomplish his task by moaning about how difficult it was.

He thought about the darkness infesting the man, about what it was. A sort of mouth, really, feeding upon the listener's vitality. It would steal the man's tal and therefore drain off his physical energy (although the thing in the pit needed only the former). In that case, there must be a "throat"-a channel to carry the stolen tal down the darkness in the pit. It should have been visible when Morlock had ascended to tal-rapture, and perhaps it had been, but he had not thought to look for it. That, at least, was an error he could correct.

Errors ... The listener believed, or said, that the darkness was a natural part of the underworld, older than time. But Morlock had been raised, quite literally, underground, and he knew different. He knew, too, from his violent rapport with the darkness last night that it was not sessile in nature, nor was it native to the hill.

I have lasted longer than many listeners, the listener had said. This was possibly true, but it implied he could not last much longer. And: It told nze you were coming. How had it known that? Why had it told the listener?

In the old days, before it was trapped, it had been able to travel from place to place to find its victims. Now it had to lure them into coming to it. Had the darkness selected Morlock as the listener's successor? He could always refuse to be seduced by the voice in the darkness ... but its ability to persuade was proven by its survival for such an unthinkable length of time in such a Creator-forsaken wasteland. It would be safest simply to leave, to walk away, to make his given word into a lie.

Morlock gloomily eyed the mouth of his water bottle, but found no answer there.

He returned to the hill from the south, just for the change. There, at the base of the hill, just inside the wolfbane hedge, he found the listener's well.

Moved by curiosity, he lowered the metal bucket by its chain into the well and drew up some water. It was clear and cold; Morlock's intuition detected no spiritual taint. He took some in his hand and prepared to taste it.

"It's poisoned!" he heard the listener's first voice say. He looked up and saw the other standing on the hillside above him.

"How do you know?"

"The darkness told me."

Morlock shrugged and tasted the water. It had the faint metallic tang of the best well water.

"If you have no ideas," the listener suggested brightly (in the second voice), "you could go down and consult the voice in the dark."

"I have two ideas," Morlock said sharply. It was true, although he had been unaware of it until that moment. That was the way his mind worked.

The listener's half-face fell, as if he were disappointed. "But suppose they don't work?" he asked.

"Then I will think of two more," said Morlock Ambrosius, and drank the water in his hand.

Creation takes place in a sacred silence or an untamed ecstatic cacophony. It needn't be solitary, but those present tend to be initiates: creators, or a.s.sisting the creation, if only with their attention.

Healing was different, Morlock had found, and he didn't like it.

"What is that?" asked the listener, in the shrillest weakest tones of his second voice.

"It is a focus of power," Morlock said curtly.

They were in the living area of the listener's cave. The listener eyed the focus fearfully and said, "It looks like a sword."

Morlock refrained from replying; the focus obviously was a sword, its blade a crystalline black interwoven with veins of white.

"Is that Tyrfing?" the listener asked. "Doesn't it have a curse on it?"

"That's a story," was Morlock's careful reply. It was true, and sounded like a denial.

"Couldn't you have killed the werewolves with that?" the listener asked, a little less hysterically.

"I was intending to," Morlock said, "when I ran into your hedge of wolfbane. It seemed like a lucky chance at the time." He paused, then continued more slowly, "Like any focus, Tyrfing can be used as a weapon. But the psychic penalty of using a focus to destroy a life is ... extreme. It amounts to experiencing your opponent's death yourself. I would take many a risk before I chose to do that."

Before the listener could ask another question Morlock summoned the rapture of vision. The listener's physical form vanished behind a screen of dim green flames, themselves obscured and interwoven with the alien darkness. Morlock looked down at his tal-pattern of black-and-white flames. Concentrating, he forced himself to reach out and take hold of the sword, Tyrfing.

Tyrfing's dark crystalline blade became alive with Morlock's distinctive tal-pattern: a black fire seen through white branches.

Few seers could move their bodies once they had summoned the rapture of vision, but Morlock had trained himself to it. And once he took up Tyrfing, whose nature reflected and amplified his own ability, he could move without difficulty.

Stand by the door! he said to the listener, who started, and then backed carefully away to the cave entrance.

As soon as he looked for it, Morlock saw the dark umbilical cord extending from the clot of darkness infecting the listener. The other end disappeared into the pa.s.sage leading to the darkness under the hill.

Morlock was pleased. So far his guess had proven right. The colony of darkness infecting the listener was sending nourishment of a spectral kind back to the darkness imprisoned underground.

The cord did not recede from him as he approached; he wondered whether it could perceive him. There was probably a limit to how much it could move, at any rate. The hill and its cave were woven with magic intended to bind the darkness and make it helpless.

Morlock lifted his blazing sword and severed the connecting darkness.

He was successful, but the success was momentary. As he watched, the two severed ends of the dark cord, wriggling like snakes, lifted up and rejoined seamlessly above his sword. He swung the blade again; the cord of darkness again parted and re-formed almost instantly.

Morlock turned away and shook off the rapture like an irritating acquaintance. The world of matter and energy loomed up; the world of the spirit receded. The black-and-white flames sank down; Tyrfing became a blade of black, white-veined crystal. Glancing over, he saw the listener had taken on his mundane appearance also.

The listener's mouth was wide open, his visible eye was closed, his halfface clenched in the grip of a powerful emotion. His body was shaking. In the confusion and weariness that follows rapture, Morlock did not immediately understand what was happening. He speculated gloomily that this attempt had been as pointlessly agonizing to the listener as the last one.

Then, slowly, he understood. The listener was laughing-in relief, uncontrollable amus.e.m.e.nt, contempt.

Morlock reflected that he was holding a sword. The listener had none, was quite unprepared. A single swift motion of his arm and the listener's laughter would be quelled forever. And it would fulfill his agreement: he would sever the listener from his darkness and his life in one gesture. Simple, elegant, direct. Morlock could bury the body and be on his way, all promises kept.

Morlock's internal struggle was intense, but brief. What decided for him, in the end, was the rule of fair bargaining that had been taught him in childhood by the dwarvish clan who fostered him. "A bargain is more than words," his harven-father, Tyrtheorn, used to say. "A bargain is a trust. Keep the bargain. Keep the trust."

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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

He covered the bucket with the wax tablet (he had nothing else that would do), brought it down, and set it by the occlusion. Then he dug a pit in the turf and started a fire. Once the fire was going well, he planted three stones around it and settled the bucket on them, over the fire.

Morlock watched the bucket closely, waiting for the water to boil. Once it did, steam would upset the cover and that was bad. Moonlight would escape and, worse, firelight might enter. Fire destroys moonlight whenever they make contact, as does any light (except starlight, the most fragile and subtle of lights).

As intently as he watched, he almost missed the moment. The bucket, after muttering and shaking itself from the heat, suddenly grew quiet. A moment later, a puff of boiling steam shot forth from between the metal rim and the melting wax of the tablet. It was irradiated by a bolt of white-hot moonlight. Morlock slapped the tablet down against the bucket rim and s.n.a.t.c.hed the bucket from the fire with his free hand. (It was hot, but it took a considerable fire to annoy Morlock; that was the destiny of his blood.) He leapt into the zone of Perfect Occlusion.

Water was still bubbling through the semiliquid surface of the wax tablet, but no light accompanied it. Morlock took the wax tablet away and was pleased to see a considerable ma.s.s of cooling but still white-hot moonlight slumped in the bottom of the bucket. It looked almost dense enough to work it with his fingers.

Morlock, of course, did not risk this. He set the bucket down, sat down himself, and, clasping his hands, summoned the rapture of vision.

He reached out with the monochrome flames of his tal-self and worked the white-hot cooling moonlight into a sheet. Then he creased the sheet and folded it. He creased it again and folded it. And again and again: more than thirty times, until the sheet had become a long, thin dense strip of moonlight, narrowing to a point. It was still malleable, the hot orange color of a setting moon. In a perfect world he would have preferred to reheat it, but Morlock was a realist. He picked up the strip of moonlight and plunged it into a jar of cool water, where its radiance instantly became a brittle wintry blue.

Leaving it there, Morlock drew Tyrfing and stepped out of the Perfect Occlusion. The time was just before dawn. Morlock cut himself a suitable lump of twilight shadow from the hill's silhouette just before the sun rose on the opposite horizon. Quickly hiding the shadow under his cloak to protect it from daylight, Morlock sheathed Tyrfing and dismissed the rapture.

The weight of the world fell across his crooked shoulders. He had been in the visionary state for hours. And the worst of it was, he knew he had many hours to go before he could sleep.

When Morlock lifted his head he saw the listener standing not far away. The darkness, once symmetrical, now seemed to be sending out shoots or pseudopods into the right side of the listener's face. His nose had wholly disappeared, and this (along with the pinched fleshless character of his visible features) gave his face a skull-like appearance-not even a whole skull: a skull drenched in quicklime so that part of it was eaten away. The listener, Morlock guessed, hadn't long to live.

"Didn't you hear me?" the listener's second voice was demanding. He sounded peevish, like a sick weary child.

"No," Morlock admitted.

"I said that ... I'm sorry about last night. The darkness ... that is, the voice explained-"

Morlock waved him to silence. "Tell me later," he said. "I'm busy." He turned away and walked back to the Perfect Occlusion, bright blue in reflection of the morning sky. Glancing back, he found the listener had followed him.

"What is that?" the listener asked, eyeing the occlusion.

"Part of what I'm doing."

"Is it ... ?" the listener said, both eager and anxious, "Is it ... another idea?"