Blood of Ambrose by James Enge

Author:James Enge [Enge, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Fantasy, Fiction, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781591027362
Google: iVXdOwAACAAJ
Amazon: 1591027365
Publisher: Pyr
Published: 2009-05-05T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5IXTEEN

Reunions

he leaves of the tree clenched like fists, growing inward. The branches hunched like shoulders, shrinking into the trunk, growing more slender with each moment. The bark, too, grew less dark, less dense; the moss on its side melted away like green snow in the spring sunlight. The sphere of crystal in Morlock's hands sang with a tone only he could hear, grew warm with a heat only he could feel, glowed with a light only he could see.

"A moment," he called to the black horse lodged in the branches. "A moment more."

The ungrowing tree had descended to saplinghood, bent almost double with the weight of the horse upon it. When the horse's hooves reached the ground, Morlock said (in the Westhold dialect all horses seemed to understand), "Now: stand." The horse's hooves firm on the ground, he stood still. His blood stained the pale green-gold leaves of the tree beneath him.

Morlock ceased the ungrowing of the tree until he was sure that the horse's entrails, lacking the support of the tree, would not gush onto the earth. When he saw that they would not, he wondered why not. In fact-

"Why aren't you dead?" he demanded of the horse, who merely looked at him with silvery patient eyes and said nothing.

It would be worth knowing the answer to his question, Morlock reflected, but unless the horse actually did speak he doubted he would ever learn it. Passing by the fact that Morlock had last seen this horse (if it was this horse) hurtling into the sky years ago, he had (according to the evidence) fallen out of the sky among the branches of this tree, and he had been there (according to the reports) something like a month. The horse was not unscathed by these unusual adventures, but neither was he dead from impalement, hunger, or thirst.

Morlock's first thought, seeing him perched in the top branches of the ancient tree, had been that the horse was an illusion, set there by some sorcerer as a prank-or a trap. He had spent nearly a day in vision, testing the phenomenon with all the powers of Sight, before he approached within a bowshot.

His insight had told him that the horse was real, which did not, of course, preclude the possibility of a prank or a trap. But it meant that he could not simply walk away.

Morlock returned to ungrowing the tree and reduced it to the point where the horse could walk freely away. He called to the horse ("Velox!"), which approached him without suspicion. He knelt down and examined the horse's belly. There was only a superficial wound; it had been bleeding freely, but when Morlock looked at it the surface was a thick gleaming clot. There was no other wound-but there had been: looking for them, Morlock found a network of scars on the horse's belly.

"What are you, then?" he demanded, rising. "Horse, or something elsesome immortal come to earth in horse form?" Again, the horse looked at him with wide silvery eyes and said nothing.

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