Enge James

The Red Worm's Way

Fair of face, full of pride,

Sit ye down by a dead man's side.

Ye sang songs a' the day:

Sit down at night in the red worm's way.

Swinburne, A Lyke-Wake Song

Morlock was sober when the coin winked at him, but that wasn't his fault. Towns were scattered thinly through the masterless lands east of the Narrow Sea, and he'd been walking and sleeping in the open air for weeks since he'd had his last drink. The town he finally arrived at looked promising. All the shops were shut down; all the people were in the streets wearing wreaths; the whole town seemed to be gearing up for a party. If you can't get a drink in a place like that, Morlock reasoned keenly with himself, why the hell not?

It was what he was still asking himself more than an hour after hitting town. If there were any taverns in the place they were locked up, the same as the rest of the shops. He ended up wandering after a crowd singing various slightly discordant songs; he followed them out to a large field at the edge of the town which seemed to serve as a sort of fairground. Here Morlock hoped he would find some agreeable person with a cask, selling or giving away strong drink of some type  wine, or beer, or hard cider at least.

But there wasn't. There were a number of more or less amateur performances; there were clowns and jugglers and singers; there were farm animals of various remarkable sizes or abilities; there were vendors selling a surprising variety of foodstuffs conveniently impaled on sticks. But Morlock, wandering among the singing, laughing crowd, concluded that, whatever was elevating their spirits, it wasn't liquor of any sort he could recognize.

"What good are you, then?" he muttered to the town as a whole, and made his way through the field with the intention of getting as far away as he could just as fast as he was able. A town with no drinking was no town for him.

"Sir!" a woman cried as he shouldered past. "You are a stranger here!"

"Yes," he said, and would have gone on, but she grabbed him by the arm.

"You can help me!" she said urgently.

"Maybe," he conceded gruffly. "I probably won't, though."

"My husband has just died."

Morlock turned to look at her for the first time. She wore a wreath, like her fellow-townspeople, but it was black and trailed widow's weeds. Her face was stained with fresh tears and the tracks of old ones. Morlock had recently lost his own wife, although not by any process as benign and peaceful as death, which was one of many reasons he currently preferred drinking to thinking. This widow's apparent grief at the loss of her husband angered him obscurely. But it also caught his attention.

"So?" he said.

"There is no one to sit the wake with him tonight. Our town Loukios, as you see, is on holiday. If you could"

"Sit it yourself. Or cremate him: that way you won't have to worry about burying him alive."

"Please, sir. Please. He is dead. That is not in doubt. And I cannot sit the wake, or I surely would. His body must lie one night in state before it is buried, and someone must sit with it to protect it from . . . someone must sit with it."

"To protect it from Strigae?" Morlock said coolly "You've a cult of corpse-eating witches hereabouts is that it? In that case, if I were you, I'd get the body underground before dark."

"Our laws don't permit that."

"Change them. Or break them."

"Please," she said desperately. "Please. I can pay you! I can pay you with gold, with good solid gold!" And she held out a fistful of gold coins.

Morlock's interest in gold was slight indeed; he made it by the boxful whenever he needed some, which was not often. But, as a maker of things, he had once had some interest in coins. He glanced instinctively at the discs in her hands.

They were of a type new to him. Each design was different, and some were horrible  he could see headless corpses and hanged men on a few of the gold cartwheels she held out to him. The coins might be solid and perhaps they were gold, but he doubted they were good in any generally accepted meaning of the word. They stank of evil magic.

He was about to say as much when one of the coins, showing what appeared to be a crow or raven wearing a crown, winked at him. It could have been a trick of the light, but he didn't think so.

"What will you take for that one?" he asked, pointing at the crow-coin.

Guile entered the eyes of the grieving woman. "That is an especially valuable one, sir. They say the Crow King will do any service for the person who holds this coin."

Morlock grunted skeptically and said, "How much for it?"

"I am not selling these coins, sir. I'm offering them to pay for a service. You cannot buy this coin; you may earn it."

"By keeping the Strigae from chewing up your husband's corpse tonight."

"Please do not speak so disrespectfully of the Sisters of the Red Worm (I summon them not!). But that's the general idea."

Morlock thought idly about knocking her down, taking the coin and running away with it. But his conversation with the woman had drawn a crowd of interested listeners; he doubted he would get away clean. Besides, stealing magical gold often had unintended consequences. On the other hand, he could just say No and walk away. But it occurred to him that he wasn't going to do that.

"All right," he said. "Keep the others; I just want that coin with the crow."

"I'll give it to you tomorrow morning."

"If I keep your husband's corpse intact."

"Oh no. Not at all. If you stay on watch through the night I'll give you the coin, even if the Unnamed Ones violate poor Thelyphron. But . . ."

"But?"

"Our law says that whatever parts are missing from a dead body after a vigil must be made up by the watcher."

"So that if poor Thelyphron's nose is missing in the morning, he will be buried with mine? Likewise liver, testicles etc.?"

"Yes. That's only fair, wouldn't you say?"

Morlock considered the question briefly. "No. Where do I stand, or sit, this wake?"

There was a brief patter of applause as those who had been watching with disinterested interest turned away. Morlock felt almost as if this he had been performing in a playlet for the entertainment of the fairgoers. He hoped the feeling was mistaken. The widow led him through the crowd to a little hut set in the field a little distance away from the fairgrounds. There were still plenty of people around, though, laughing and singing.

"How late does your festival last?" Morlock asked.

"Oh, all night. Until noon tomorrow, in fact."

Morlock felt relieved, and it must have shown, because the widow said earnestly, "You must not think that."

"What?"

"That the Sisters of the Red Worm would be . . . repelled by . . . by the festival." Some of the nearby townspeople turned to look at them with obvious and not obviously friendly interest. "Quick, let us go in," she said and hurried through the low door into the corpse-house.

Inside the corpse-house there was, of course, a corpse, lying in fine garments atop a stone table.

"The dearly departed Thelyphron, I guess?" Morlock said.

"Yes," the widow replied gently, averting her eyes.

Morlock glanced at her and said, a little less roughly, "I am sorry. To me this is a different sort of problem, but I will try not to offend your grief."

She nodded, her face still averted. "I am glad to treat this as a... problem. Something that needs, and has, a solution."

As opposed to grief and death, Morlock supposed, which had none. He nodded.

"I was going to say..."

"About the Strigae," he prompted.

"About the Blessed Sisterhood (I name them not!). They... There are many of them among the townspeople."

"Oh?"

"Yes. In the day, they walk even as we do. In the night . . . They will surely come tonight, in some numbers. The people nearby"

"Will be Strigae themselves."

"They may be those whom we do not name. They may not be. But we do not . . . we do not . . ."

"No one will intervene against the Strigae."

"It's too dangerous. The Gentle Sisters (who hear me not; who see me not) will not harm us if we let them be. And they are so powerful that we couldn't stop them even if we tried."

Morlock grunted. "You could leave. Strigae tend to be pretty territorial."

The widow nodded slowly. "But this is my home. It is the only place I know."

Morlock knew many places, but he could never go again to the place he considered home. He shrugged his crooked shoulders and turned away to inspect the walls, floor and ceiling of the corpse-house. There were many cracks in the mortar that had been hastily patched. Several sections of roof were loose; Morlock could swing them back like shutters on a skylight. There were brown streaky stains on the wall that were probably blood. The floor was beaten earth with a definite slope from north to south; several rat holes had been plugged with plaster. The place stank like the devil, but that's what you'd expect from a corpse-house.

"You don't think I will make it, do you?" he said to the widow.

"I hope you will," she said earnestly. "If, during the night, you have to flee the. . . flee here, I will understand."

"Will you understand so far as to pay me the crow-coin?"

Her jaw tightened. "No. I'm sorry."

"Me, too." He shook his head. "I will need a couple of barrels of water."

"What?"

"I'll need a couple of barrels of water."

"You"

"Need a couple of barrels of water. Soon, if both Thelyphron and I are to make it through the night intact."

"It's just  I thought you were going to say something else, I suppose. I will get you what you need. I doubt you will want to eat in here. But do you want anything to drink, besides water? A mug of beer or wine?"

Morlock shrugged. If someone had had the decency to offer him a drink an hour or two ago, he'd be well on his way to oblivion by now. And likely to wake up with his nose and ears chewed off by a Striga. "No," he said. "I never drink while I'm working."

"You are a man of principle."

"Hmph," Morlock said dryly, in a double sense, and turned back to inspect the wall.

* * *

Morlock was almost done digging his channel around the walls of the corpse house when the widow returned with two barrels of water. The barrels were carried in, one at a time, by a burly young man the widow introduced as her son, Zatchlas.

"I am called Myrrhina," the widow added, and glanced significantly at Morlock.

He didn't like the way she'd put that. It was almost as if her real name was something else, and she had reason to keep it secret. Sorcerers did that sometimes. "My name is Morlock," he said flatly.

"Oh," Myrrhina said distantly. "What in the world is that you're working on?"

"A ditch," Morlock said, descending to technicality. He nodded at the barrels being lugged into the corpse house by the sweating, rather softly muscled Zatchlas. "Strigae cannot cross running water, you know."

"Er, yes. But surely the water will not run uphill?"

Morlock shrugged and said, "Can you get me a lantern or some candles? There's nothing here and I'll need light for my watch."

"Of course. Zatchlas will bring them, won't you, dear?"

From the expression on his heavy features, Zatchlas seemed aggrieved rather than grieving, and he rolled his eyes at his mother's request. But he gruffly admitted he'd be passing that way later.

"Good luck to you, Morlock," Myrrhina whispered as they left.

"Do not spend that coin," he replied, and turned back to his digging. By the time Zatchlas returned, perhaps a half hour before sunset, the channel was complete, the mirror-gates were set at the high and low point of the stream, and he was pouring in the water from one of the barrels.

He felt Zatchlas' heavy presence behind him as he poured, but said nothing until Zatchlas said, "You really think that will work?"

"It might," Morlock replied, and stood the barrel upright.

The water ran down the channel and through the mirror gate. From there it turned upward, along the square lines of the corpse-house, until it reached the upper mirror-gate. When it passed through that it turned downward once more. The corpse-house was now a fortress against Strigae, defended by its odd rectangular river-moat.

"Magic!" Zatchlas whispered.

Morlock shrugged. He never knew what to say to that. "Anyone can do it, if they know how," he said this time. "That's the trick; knowing how."

"How is it done?" Zatchlas asked.

"The mirror convinces the water that gravity works differently on either side of the gate; the water behaves accordingly."

"You can't convince soulless matter of something that's not true."

Morlock shrugged. "Water isn't quite soulless, not the way a rock is (and even then it depends on the rock). Water is also quite gullible, in small amounts."

"I can't believe it!"

"You I'm not trying to convince. Did you bring the lamp?"

"Eh? Oh, I have a bundle of candles here. Wax candles, not tallow. Mother said you would know why."

Morlock did. Tallow candles were made from the fat of dead animals, and were relatively easy to infect with hostile magic. He'd have felt better if his employer were unaware of this.

"And this," Zatchlas said with some relish, handing over that candles, and a large covered mug.

"What's 'this'?" Morlock demanded.

"A long drink of wine. It'll be a pretty cold night; mother thought it might help."

Morlock snorted, but accepted both the candles and the wine-cup.

"I will stop by sometime after dark," Zatchlas added. "Not as a relief, you understand."

"Yes."

"Just to see how you are doing."

"Thanks."

Zatchlas left and Morlock was left glaring at the wine cup.

* * *

Morlock hadn't always been a drunk  everybody has to start somewhere. But by now he was a fairly experienced one. He didn't think a single cup of wine, no matter how tall, was going to incapacitate him. But he knew that something started when he began to drink; he switched from one mind, almost, to another. That, of course, was the point: his undrunk mind was a burden to him and drink was an escape. But undrunk Morlock, as annoying as he was in some ways, was more a more reliable person than drunk Morlock. Drunk Morlock forgot things; drunk Morlock wandered away from tasks; drunk Morlock reacted to potential dangers too slowly and ineffectively. If he was going to do what he had set out to do, he'd have to be sober.

On the other hand, did he have to do what he'd set out to do? He'd come into this town for a drink. Now he had one. Why not drink it and go? The widow had even said she'd understand if he didn't stay through the night. She might even understand if he didn't stay until nightfall. And if she didn't, so what? He need never come this way again.

He wouldnt get that crow-coin, though, unless the successfully complete the corpse-watch. And to do that, he'd have to be sober.

One the other hand, one drink of wine wouldn't knock him flat. Really, it would just settle his mind. The thing was distracting him; he never should have accepted it. But since he had, he might as well drink it down and get it over with. The sooner he did it, the sooner the effects would pass. If he wanted to be sober through the night, he really should drink it now. Now. Right now.

Morlock reached toward the wine cup and deliberately knocked it off its perch on the corner of the corpse table. It sprayed its contents on the packed-earth floor and rolled under the corpse table.

"So much for that," he said, "and," he added, to drunk Morlock, "so much for you."

In fact, drunk Morlock and undrunk Morlock hated each other. Someday one of them would destroy the other, Morlock reflected. He wondered which one would win.

By then the sun had set. He lit the first of many candles, putting it on the end of the empty overturned water barrel, and settled down to wait for what the night would bring.

* * *

The red fire of torches and bonfires wounded the darkness beyond the corpse-house door. Morlock often heard laughter and voices, not so very far away. He could never catch what anyone was saying, but it all sounded merry enough.

Morlock found it easy to stay alert, though. There was an odd tension in the air, as if someone had spoken, paused, and soon would speak again.

There were rats scuttling around the corpse-house. Morlock kept circling around the corpse-table, prepared to catch them if he could. But they were wary, and he couldn't even seem to find where their hole was. But as long as none of them got to the body, he supposed he didn't care.

Glancing up from his rat-hunt, he saw the red worms.

They were coming through the patchy walls of the corpse-house  hundreds of them, on every side except the wall with the door. Morlock watched without doing anything. Strigae must be pressed up all around the outside walls of the corpse-house; they far outnumbered him. Either his precautions would work or they wouldn't; if not, he needed to know now so that he could get out soon.

The worms were a grayish red, the color of a rather unhealthy human tongue. But they were long and thin, and each one terminated in a little tongueless mouth with needle-sharp teeth. They wove their way through cracks in the wall, and extended into the empty air beyond the wall . . . and were foiled. When they came to the air over the little channel of running water they began to twitch and shudder. They could go no further. One by one they withdrew; the water had defeated them.

Morlock saluted his departing enemies with a rude gesture, but he didn't imagine this was the end of his troubles. He continued with his rat patrol, kicking away any of the vermin that seemed to be trying to climb the sheer legs of the corpse table.

Eventually he heard a thumping on the ragged roof. It was what he had expected  Strigae could not cross running water, but they could use a bridge to cross above it. The wood of the roof would shield them from the effects of the purifying stream until they had crossed. Perhaps he should have pulled the roof off the corpse-house, as he had thought of doing. But the roof served as a protection against arrows or spears or rocks  or any kind of throwing weapon. Just because the Strigae could use magic didn't mean they had to and, once he was dead or unconscious, they could figure out a way to defeat the stream. It would be easy enough just to slap a board across it; crossing over so close to the running water might prove difficult but, with a corpse to chew on the other side, they would no doubt find a way to do it.

Morlock got up on the corpse table, crouching under the low roof, with one foot planted on either side of the dead man. He waited until something thumped gently on a loose patch of the roof, just over his head. He punched it solidly; the patch flew up and whatever was on it flew squawking away and thumped, less gently, on another part of the roof.

"Get off there!" he shouted. "If you don't get off the roof, I'll pull it down, and you with it. Then you will be in here. Within the sacred boundary of the stream. With me."

The thumping hastily retreated to the edge of the roof. There was the sound of whispering outside the corpse-house for a while, and then silence fell. When Morlock was fairly confident they were gone, he got down from the corpse-table and resumed his rat patrol.

* * *

Morlock was lighting a new candle from the sputtering corpse of an old one when he felt someone was looking at him. He glanced up and saw Zatchlas standing in the open doorway.

"Good evening," Morlock said, oddly relieved. "I'd offer you some wine, but I didn't save any."

Zatchlas gave him an unreadable look, then said, "Well, I'm not much of a drinker. It's a good evening for you, anyway. I saw a cloud of Strigae around the place and thought you were done for. But now they all seem to have gone."

"They will be back, I suppose."

"Almost certainly. But it is amazing you have lasted this long."

"Thanks."

"Nothing personal. Many of us are rooting for you, you know."

"Not enough to intervene and help me, I suppose?"

"Not directly," Zatchlas said, a little shamefacedly.

Morlock shrugged; he wasn't surprised.

"Besides, it would spoil the bets."

"You're betting on whether I make it through the night?" Morlock asked, intrigued.

"Some of us are," Zatchlas said. "So we could not interfere, even if we dared, you see? The bets would be off."

"Don't worry about it," Morlock said. It embarrassed him to see the bulky young man justifying himself.

"But. . . well, a few of us. We thought we might walk by here a few times, when the Strigae are not about. Just to see how you are doing."

"Thanks."

"It's all right. I'm sorry we cannot do more."

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders again. He hadn't expected anything, so he wasn't disappointed.

"It's just . . . I thought you should know." Zatchlas seemed to be having trouble coming to the point.

"What is it?"

"I think the Strigae left something behind them. It's propped up against that wall, and it seems to be moving. I didn't want to get too close to it . . ."

"Wise choice."

"But I thought you should know about it," Zatchlas concluded.

"Thanks." This sounded bad, Morlock reflected. If they had left some sort of device to topple the wall inward, he'd have to do something about it. The fallen wall might serve as a bridge for the Strigae to cross the stream. Quite apart from what falling stones might do to his skull, if he was caught in the collapse. "I'll have to have a look at it," he decided.

Zatchlas stood away from the doorway to allow Morlock through. As Morlock stepped across the stream, Zatchlas drew himself up in alarm and glanced around, gesturing at Morlock to stop.

The gesture turned into a fist and hit Morlock in the face. The dark world grew a little darker for a while. When Morlock came to himself he was lying across the stream with his head almost under the corpse table. Looming large, like actors on a stage, he saw three rats eating one of their comrades, who was asleep in a pool of wine next to the tipped-over wine cup. The sleeping rat whined and snored but did not otherwise protest as his mates fed on him.

There was some great weight oppressing Morlock. His ribs grated on each other and creaked. Whistling voices spoke words he didn't understand, then he heard Zatchlas saying, "I am being careful."

The weight oppressing Morlock shifted, and shifted again. Morlock sluggishly realized that Zatchlas must be using his fallen body as a bridge to cross the stream. That meant Zatchlas was a Striga, or an ally of the Strigae.

Zatchlas grunted and the weight on Morlock's body increased. Zatchlas now carried the dead body of Thelyphron  straight out of the blessed boundary of the stream, where the Strigae could feast on it in peace.

Morlock seized the fallen wine cup, as the most available weapon, and surged to his feet, throwing Zatchlas a sprawl on the ground outside the corpse-house, the dead body of his father atop him. With surprising lightness, he leapt to his feet and ran off again, hauling the body with him toward the lights and the laughter of the fair.

Morlock ran after him into the carnival night.

* * *

Zatchlas was burdened with the dead body, but Morlock had been knocked almost unconscious. Zatchlas had almost reached the fairground before Morlock caught up with him. Several groups of people stood nearby, talking and laughing, in apparent indifference to what was happening before them. Morlock likewise ignored them and punched the bulky young man savagely on the right side of his fat sweating neck. Zatchlas went down.

Morlock bent over and seized the dead body with one hand, tossing it across his shoulder. (Fortunately, the dear departed Thelyphron has been rather elderly, and had died after some wasting disease had left his frame frail and thin.) Morlock turned to run back to the corpse-house, but Zatchlas managed to grasp him by one ankle, and this time it was Morlock who hit the earth with a corpse atop him.

He pushed the body off him and kicked up with both feet as Zatchlas' silhouette, dark and featureless against the nearby fair lights, approached. Morlock's double kick made contact with something under Zatchlas' loose robe that issued a tiny scream; Zatchlas screamed, too, a second later, in eerie harmony. Morlock leapt to his feet and smashed the wine-cup across Zatchlas' face. Amazingly, there was still some wine in it; Morlock saw the spray. Zatchlas screamed again, staggering back, clutching at his eyes.

His robe had fallen open. Morlock saw that, beneath it, he was naked. But things were attached to his pale sweaty skin: dark things with glittering green eyes. They had toothy mouths, each of them issuing dozens of grayish tongues, like red worms. Strigae. Dozens of Strigae hang by their tongues from Zatchlas' body.

Morlock felt rather than saw the approach of more townsmen. He looked up to see the groups from the fair converging on him. They were still talking and laughing and he still could not understand them. But now he saw why. There were no heads on their shoulders. Each of their necks ended abruptly in a pair of dry soft protuberances vaguely like lips. These moved as air passed through the open neck and they produced vague word-like murmurs which were not words. Their hands clenched and unclenched as they murmured and laughed and advanced Morlock.

He scooped up dead Thelyphron's frail body again and ran back to the corpse house as fast as he could. He threw the body through the doorway, to land asprawl on the corpse table, and leaped across the protecting stream.

The water level was low  no doubt much of it splashing out when he fell into it. The wine cup had proven a useful tool in need, so Morlock carefully set it down on the overturned empty barrel, next to the lit candle and the stubs of its dead predecessors. Then, from the full barrel, he dumped water into the stream until it ran full again.

He shouted out the open doorway: "Morlock: three; Strigae: zero. Try it again, you corpse-chewing bastards!"

He figured they would try something again, and he had a better chance of repelling it if they acted hastily and recklessly. He straightened Thelyphron's body out on the corpse table. If that jaunt didn't wake Thelyphron up, he reflected, nothing would.

"I'd like a drink," he reflected aloud, and glanced ruefully at the wine cup.

Amazingly, miraculously, magically it was full. His impulses betrayed him; Morlock had the cup in his hands and was drinking before he'd decided to do so.

The wine was gone in an instant. Strong, not very good, with an oddly bitter metallic taste to it. That didn't matter. Morlock wasn't a connoisseur of wines; he was a drunk. He drank it all, and didn't waste a drop.

At least there was only one cup, he thought, as he lowered it from his wet lips and set it down next to the candle. He studied it and saw thу cup was full again. He reached for it, then stopped.

All right, there it was. Myrrhina had sent him a magical cup that would refill whenever it was set down. A generous thing to do; she probably hadn't realized he was a drunk. It did mean she knew a little magic, but he had already suspected as much. The night was already well advanced  perhaps the Strigae were discouraged and wouldn't attack any more . . .

He drank the cup dry again, then set it down and watched it refill.

Morlock was not yet drunk; unquestionably, he would be soon. Drunk Morlock very nearly had the upper hand, and there didn't seem to be anything to be done about that now.

He decided he would do a rat patrol, one circuit of the corpse table for every drink. That would slow down the process some, and perhaps he and Thelyphron would make it to sunrise relatively intact.

Morlock took a quick trip around the corpse table in record time; there didn't seem to be any rats trying to climb the table. Perhaps they were all asleep, or discouraged. Or drunk. Morlock chuckled a bit at that thought as he drank his third cup, wasting some of the wine. He supposed one could get used to the brackish metallic aftertaste.

Morlock's trip around the corpse table went a little slower this time. It was really odd that there were no rats; he remembered seeing them earlier.

He peered under the table and saw some rats there, the same ones he had seen after Zatchlas had struck him. The one who had been sleeping was now dead, great troughs of raw flesh opened up in his sides. Beside him lay his three comrades, sleeping beside him, their bloodstained mouths yawning open, their snores making their whiskers quiver. It was really almost touching, the three rats wearily resting beside their fallen comrade. It would have been, of course, if they hadn't eaten him alive, but still. . .

Morlock wondered why they were tired, so tired  almost as tired as he was. As if they really were discouraged. Or drunk.

Or drugged.

Morlock swore violently and staggered to the doorway. He shoved a finger into the back corner of his mouth and leaned forward. Soon he was vomiting like a fountain, striving not to drip anything into the protective stream which would defile it into the protective stream. Striving successfully, too: he was an experienced vomiter.

When his belly was emptied of the drugged wine, Morlock leaned wearily against the doorpost and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

He had no idea what was in the drugged wine, but it had to be pretty potent: the cannibal rats must have passed out simply from eating their drugged comrade. He didn't think the drug itself would be fatal to him, as no doubt the Strigae looked forward to chewing his flesh in addition to Thelyphron's. But he had to come to grips with the fact that he might pass out soon. Indeed, he already felt it might be more than he could do to stand away from the doorpost.

They were watching him of course; they had watched him from the start. Perhaps Myrrhina was one of them; perhaps she wasn't. It suddenly occurred to him that Zatchlas had brought the wine. Perhaps she had not sent it at all. In any case, they had seen him drink the wine; they had seen him vomit. When he passed out they would see that, too, and come for Thelyphron. And for him.

Unless they couldn't see. He nodded, then regretted doing that  his head his head were half-full of some warm dark fluid, and moving it made the fluid slosh about. He nearly passed out then, but pulled himself together.

Morlock pushed the doorpost away and stood as straight as he could. Unhurriedly, trying to make it look less labored than it was, he crossed over to where the candle was burning on the upended barrel.

He stared at it and tried to think clearly. He might not have much time, perhaps not more than a few seconds. The top of the upended barrel was full of melted wax and wick-stumps. If he failed to snuff the candle properly, if he just tipped it over, it might burn for hours, giving the Strigae ample opportunity to see him.

Morlock picked the candle up, turned around, and tossed it out the open doorway. Then his legs gave way and he slumped down by the upended barrel in the darkness.

* * *

Morlock first became aware that he had closed his eyes from the sensation of a faint light falling on the lids. His eyes gaped open. Morning? Am I intact? Is there anything of me left?

It didn't seem to be morning. The light was flickering, dim and bluish-- unlike dawn, or torches. Through the fitful light, he saw a cloud of red worms descending from the ceiling toward Thelyphron's corpse.

Morlock surged to his feet, screaming, "Get out! I'm still in here, corpse-chewers!" He leaped onto the corpse-table and, although a wave of darkness passed before his eyes, he managed to keep his footing and his consciousness. He pounded on the ceiling and shouted wordlessly.

The red worms withdrew slowly. But nothing moved up on the roof. He heard faint whispers. They were waiting. They knew he couldn't last much longer.

Morlock glanced desperately out the doorway, hoping to see some sign of approaching dawn. He didn't, but what he did see caught his full interest.

His vomit was burning.

Morlock carefully stepped down from the corpse table and walked over to the door. He had not been mistaken. The candle he had thrown out had landed at the edge of the pool of vomit on the path outside, and now a flickering blue flame ran across the top of the greasy fluid.

Morlock knew what it was to concentrate the spirit of wine many times, to make a more intoxicating  and flammable  beverage. Perhaps that was what had been done to the wine from the magic cup. Or perhaps the drug in the wine was highly flammable. If it is strong enough to make my vomit burn, how much will it burn without being diluted?

And he had an unlimited supply of it.

Morlock staggered to the barrel to get a fresh candle and the magic wine cup. He staggered back to the doorway and bent down to light his candle from the flickering blue flame. He climbed back up on the corpse table and, holding the wine cup and candle in one hand, he punched a hole through the roof with his other.

Morlock stood up, with his head and arms passing through the hole in the roof to the open air. The light of the candle revealed the Strigae scattered about the patchy roof. They look like owls, with great wing-like folds of gray hair on either side of their bodies. But rather than raptor claws, each had a single soft foot, like a snail. And no heads. Instead, two greenish eyes glowing near the top of each body and wide toothy mouth grimacing mid-torso, the multi-branched red worms of their tongues hissing like snakes. The Strigae retreated out of his reach, but no farther.

"Good night, ladies," cried Morlock, "good night, good night." He doused the roof and the nearer Strigae with cupfuls of drugged wine  then he touched it off with the candle.

Flame leapt from the roof up into the cloudy sky. The Strigae screamed like screech owls and retreated, off the edge of the roof and out of his sight.

The wet wood of the roof burned for an hour before it caved in. By that time the edge of the sky was gray with dawn.

* * *

The world was full of dim gray light when Myrrhina appeared, running from the fairgrounds to the corpse-house, her lips and face as gray as the sky.

She saw Morlock standing by the door and paused.

"I'm all right," he said, answering her unasked question.

"And my Thelyphron?" she whispered.

He nodded toward the corpse-house door. Glancing in, she saw the corpse was intact and gasped. "But the roof is gone!" she said. "You must have"

"It was a rough night," he said. "Over now. I'll take the crow-coin."

"I do not have it with me," she admitted shame-facedly, looking oddly like her son.

"Oh?" he said. But it was the way he said it.

"I will pay you, though. Indeed I will, Sir Morlock! I'll swear any binding oath you ask."

"I'm just asking for the coin."

"I can't get it for you now. The funeral will be soon. The procession will be here shortly. Will you come to my house after the funeral?"

He looked at her for a few moments. Finally he nodded. "I will give you until then."

She flushed and bowed her head gratefully. "Thank you, Sir Morlock! And now, if you wouldn't mind, the procession will be here shortly, and I would like a few last moments alone with Thelyphron."

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders and nodded indifferently. He'd pulled the mirror-gates at dawn, and the stream was settling into a muddy puddle. He helped the fastidious Myrrhina across the threshold and turned away to give her privacy. He wandered off for a few steps and kept his back toward the corpse-house. Presently he heard her come out.

He turned in time to see her smiling at him with her red mouth. Then she turned away and hurried toward the fairground, where the funeral procession was already forming up.

He stared after her thoughtfully. A few moments with Thelyphron had certainly put the roses back into her lips. Her cheeks had seemed fuller, too.

A dark suspicion stabbed him through the heart. He rushed back into the corpse-house.

Thelyphron's nose had been eaten away, along with large stretches of his cheeks and chin. The red cavities of gnawed flesh glared out at Morlock, in contrast with the waxy white flesh around them.

Myrrhina, Morlock realized, but why? Why go through this rigmarole if she was a Striga herself? Or had it been a Striga disguised as Myrrhina?

It didn't matter. They had won. And he thought he could hear the funeral procession approaching. If they caught him here they would mutilate him, as Thelyphron had been mutilated. And if he ran, Myrrhina would never pay him the crow-coin, and it would all be for nothing.

He slumped down in despair by the overturned barrel, where the last of his candles was guttering in a pool of its own white wax.

* * *

Morlock waited on the steps of Myrrhina's house at noon when she and Zatchlas returned from Thelyphron's funeral. Zatchlas drew up short when he saw him, but Myrrhina did not seem surprised.

"Sir Morlock, good day," she carolled. "I suppose you have come for your coin."

"Yes."

"Zatchlas, perhaps you have something to do around town? Sir Morlock and I have a few things to discuss."

Zatchlas turned on his heel and walked away.

"Poor boy," said Myrrhina warmly, reaching into a pocket for her house key. Morlock, glancing down, saw that her pocket had a number of interesting things in it, including Thelyphron's nose. "You set him back badly with the Sisterhood last night."

"You are both Strigae," Morlock said flatly.

"Well," Myrrhina said, as she unlocked the door and led the way in, "I am, and he aspires to be. We are mostly Strigae in this town. We fly at night and walk during the day, you see."

"I don't," Morlock said, following her. "If you are a Striga, why didn't you just bite Thelyphron's nose off yesterday and have done with it?"

"Oh! That would be against the rules. The family of a dead person don't have a chance at him until at least a night has passed after his death."

"Hm."

"Oh, it may seem cruel," Myrrhina continued, leading Morlock into an inner room with a strongbox. "But, otherwise, as soon as a family member died, his own family would chew him down to the bone, and no one else would ever get a mouthful. So this is really fairer. Don't you see?"

"No," Morlock admitted. "Yesterday you seemed genuinely concerned about Thelyphron."

"I was. I am. We meant a great deal to each other. But: he's dead. And you can't imagine how useful a dead man's nose is in certain kinds of binding magic. Or how rare it is around here. I thought I'd just risk biting it off, since you gave me the opportunity. Although it was a bit of a wrench: I'd have been the first widow in fifty years to bury her husband intact. What a mark of status that is in the Sisterhood! Although, as far as anyone else in town knows, that's exactly what happened." She put a brown hand over her red mouth to hide a slightly hysterical laugh. When she had calmed herself, she lowered the hand again and said, "Morlock, may I ask you a question?"

"You have not paid me my coin yet."

She opened the strongbox with her door key, reached inside it and drew out the crow-coin. She flipped it over to Morlock who snapped it out of the air and tucked it in his own pocket.

"Your question?"

"How did you do it? I sat through the entire funeral, staring at Thelyphron's nose on his face and fingering it in my pocket. No one else realized, I think. Of course, they knew they hadn't mutilated him. If I hadn't bitten the nose off personally I would have been sure Thelyphron's corpse was intact. How did you do it?"

"Wax."

"Wax?"

"Candle wax. I happened to notice the wax of the candles was exactly the same color as Thelyphron's skin. I had a good deal of it from all the candles I had burned. So I modelled patches for Thelyphron's face out of the melted candle wax."

"It is a good thing we buried him before the sun got warm, then. Still, the likeness was superb, and you couldn't have had much time. You really are a gifted maker of things, Morlock."

"Thanks."

"You do not like me much, do you?"

"Not today. Yesterday you were all right, I guess."

"Well, I am still most grateful. I could do a good deal for you, besides just giving you that coin."

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders.

"Of course, the Crow King will give you a wish," she said earnestly. "But only one, and he'll do his best to cheat you. I would never cheat you, Morlock."

"You want me to watch your corpse after your death, is that it?"

She laughed harshly. "I am afraid it wouldn't do much good." She pulled her nose off and showed it to Morlock. "When I was a teenager, my best friend died. I couldn't bear the thought of her being mutilated, so I agreed to sit the vigil. They got more of me than my nose. . . But I've shocked you," the noseless woman said gently.

Morlock shrugged impatiently. "I see that you are good at seeming. It goes with the life you lead. As for me, I am what I am."

"Goodbye, then, Morlock."

Morlock turned away and left the house. He took the shortest road out of the town. When he had come to open country, he took the coin out of his pocket.

The crow-like bird with the crown on its head still adorned the golden coin. Its eye looked at Morlock expectantly.

Glancing around, he saw that the fields about him were black with crows. Hundreds of crows, thousands.

Morlock took the coin in both hands and said a word, known to those-who-know. He cracked the coin like an egg and out of it flew a full-sized (in fact, rather large) black crow.

The golden shell faded until it resembled the fingernails of a dead man. Morlock dropped it and ground it into the dust.

Looking up he saw the great black bird he had released standing in the field in front of him. It wore no crown, but there was no mistaking its regal quality; the other crows stood around their king in ragged concentric circles: murder upon murder of crows in attendance on their newly released king.

Morlock met the king's black inquisitive eye and said, "Still here? I'd think you would want to stretch your wings."

The Crow King cawed a question.

"No, I don't want anything," Morlock said. "A crow did me a favor once; now he's dead. This is my repayment."

The Crow King cawed again, more imperiously.

"That's up to you," said Morlock dismissively.

The great crow looked at him for a few moments, then hopped up into the air and flew off. The air was full of crow-wings for a while, and then they were all gone, the murders flying in different directions, dark clouds disappearing in distant skies.

Morlock walked off into the empty lands. He thought he was alone, but many eyes  Striga-green and crow-black  watched him as he went his way.

Content

Enge James The Red Worm's Way