The emissary had brought weapons with him to vaporize this house and all it contained; ancient devices, partly discovered, partly remade, that would make it impossible for flesh to live on this ground for a very long time. He stood looking at Alicia’s body for a long moment. The machine that had protected her had been left without instructions. It clicked and hummed as though troubled. He took a flame weapon from his clothing and burned the inside of the device, crisped it, broke the wires, the linkages, wrecked it. Whatever else he did, this must be done first, this thing must be disabled. He would not wait, not even while he and his remaining men took time to check through the monstrous house. Both the machine and the woman’s body would vaporize, along with everything else, but he would not gamble on their getting it done before the creature came back.
They spread out, working their way upward room by room, floor by floor. They had newly created tools that helped them find hollows, secret rooms, all the places where the books were hidden. They had known there had to be books. He and his fellows scanned them rapidly, looking for particular things, particular subjects. He took those that would be useful, including a few that were extraordinarily interesting. The others he tossed about so that they, too, would be destroyed atom by atom. They were obscene in their love of pain, in their gloating over death.
In the deepest vault of all they found something stranger than anything they had found before, and they left the ways to it open, so that this, too, would be totally destroyed.
When they had gathered the things they intended to save, the emissary set the devices carefully, calling his remaining companions to help him from time to time, to double-check, to be quite sure. They few and the rest of the embassy staff, who had already begun the journey to Merhaven, were the only Tingawans left in Norland. They had stayed out of the conflict, for this duty had to be done and they could not risk being killed before it was done. If the monster hadn’t gone away, they would have had to use other devices from outside the Old Dark House, devices that might not have been as effective. The creature had gone, so they could do this part of the job right, do it as they had been trying to do for generations.
When they had finished, they went swiftly southward along a hilly road, toward the Lake of the Clouds. From a hilltop, they watched the bulbous cloud of fire and smoke that rose on a stem of flame above the heart of Altamont. They had allowed for the light evening breeze, which would spread the dust only so far as the ancient tunnels, the old shafts, the elevators, the towers. The dust would not reach farther than that, but that far it would reach. No one would go there again. He had brought pigeons with him to carry messages to the abbey, warning them away from Altamont, warning the world away from Altamont, warning them about the Old Dark Man, warning the world about the Old Dark Man. Without his coffin, his womb, his preserving container, he would not live long, but the terrible truth was he need not live long to do great damage. One day was too long. A year would be an eternity of destruction.
In the morning, they began the trek south and east where they planned to meet the other embassy staff on the road. They would all leave Norland together. They would not leave until they had consulted with the clan Do-Lok. There might still be things left to do here in Norland.
On the ship, life soon settled into a routine. Blue slept at night; the wolves prowled. First thing in the morning all four-legged passengers came out on deck to empty themselves in a designated place and have the resultant mess hosed overboard with the water that was pumped from the bilges. Precious Wind and Abasio then saw to their feeding: oats and hay for Blue, meat—often fish—for the wolves. While he ate, Blue leaned against the rail and thought of the trail he had traveled on the way to Woldsgard, thus keeping his mind off waves, water, and the fact that if he did not think of something else he would be seasick. Meantime, the wolves prowled around the ship if they needed additional exercise, after which they retreated to their den, where they lay about in snoring piles until evening came, when the whole process was repeated. By the tenth day, the sailors—who had very slowly grown accustomed to wolves—commented that there were no more rats on the ship. Precious Wind thought this unfortunate, since hunting rats had given the wolves something to do, and restless wolves would likely be discontented.
Remembering hiding-and-finding games she had played as a child, she hit upon the idea of hiding bits of dried meat about the ship for the wolves to find at night, and the sailors offered to do the hiding for her, in the holds, mostly. She allowed this, warning them that what a wolf could smell, a wolf would get at, one way or the other, and it would not be a good idea to bury the bait in places they did not want wolves to dig their way to. She also conducted races between various pairs and offered for discussion the idea of giving each member of the pack a name. The resultant discussions passed many hours for both men and wolves as names suggested by wolves were often impossible for humans to replicate; names suggested by humans were often unpleasant to wolven ears.
“Captain,” she asked when she began to run
