As Deor raved, Morlock was already opening the stable doors. Reluctantly, Deor assisted in saddling a couple of herbivorous beasts, a horse named Nimber for Morlock and a pony named Trundle for Deor. They cantered west along the River Road southwest for a while, then took the Vintners’ Way due west. The road was unlit except by Chariot and Trumpeter, both red and gloomy over the western horizon: it was the last day of the month of Marrying. But the way was clear and they travelled steadily until Tower Ambrose was lost among the thicket of towers reaching into the starlit sky.

Vintners’ Way ran west into mountain country, and they followed it through the ruinous western wall of the city into the neighborhoods beyond as far as the nightmare-painted streets of Fungustown.

“I never like coming here at night,” Deor whispered. “Or in twilight. Or in the daytime.”

Morlock grunted.

The only building lit up in Fungustown was the lockhouse. It had been a block of apartments when it was built. Noreê and her attendant-thains had not changed the walls at all, but simply put the prisoners in the windowless basement.

Morlock reined in Nimber two streets away from the lockhouse, or tried to. The horse didn’t seem to want to stop, so in the end he simply undid the bindings on his pack and jumped off with it. Deor, with an undeniable degree of smugness, brought Trundle to a halt. He was about to give Morlock a demonstration of how to secure his steed with reins to a lampless lamp post, but before he got a chance to speak Trundle shook loose and followed Nimber up the dark street.

“Where did you get those ridiculous beasts?” he asked Morlock.

“Borrowed them from Illion,” said the other quietly.

The horses, Westhold bred and trained, had enough sense to get home. Deor shrugged and decided not to worry about them. He was a little worried about how they would tackle the next stage of the journey, but at least it wouldn’t be on horseback.

They soft-footed up the street but turned before they reached the crossroad that would bring them to the front of the lockhouse. They snuck up the street behind it and approached the house from the rear.

It was too much to hope for that the back of the house would be completely unguarded. But, in fact, there were only two thains there, and they were less than attentive. Their spears were standing against the wall of a nearby house, and they sat on the curb playing dice in the pale glow of a coldlight.

“Three crosses,” said the shorter of the two, a woman seemingly. “That’s twenty-one to you.” She handed the dice and cup to her watchmate.

He took them and shook them and said, “I don’t like this duty.”

“I don’t enjoy looking at your face, either.”

“It’s nothing to do with that. You said no grudges, Krida.”

“So I did. Are you going to roll, or just make knuckly music all night long?”

“Rolling.” The dice clattered onto the streetstones and grew still. “Night and day. Top that, wench.”

“I topped your mother,” said Thain Krida, accepting the dice cup and dice.

“Who hasn’t? Shake ‘em up, Guardian.”

Krida rattled the dice in the cup and threw. “Spider-face. Chaos in shiny nuggets! Go again?”

“Sure. Why not? For another meat pie?”

“I’m tired of buying you meat pies. How about a bowl of red cream?”

“Sure. You go first: loser’s privilege. I’ll tell you what it is with this duty, Krida.”

Krida, shaking the dice cup, guessed, “No, let me guess. Nightmares from the evil walls? Stink from the prisoners? Guilt from profiting by your watchmate’s bad luck?”

“No. It’s this: I joined the Graith to keep the Wardlands safe. But now we have a prison. What’s next? Tax collecting? Treason trials? We get to genuflect before some self-styled king and laugh at his stupid jokes?”

“Throwing,” said Krida flatly. After the dice skittered to a halt she said, “A snake and a bird. Not so bad.”

“But you’re not saying anything, so I guess you think I’m a bung-biter.”

“I do think you’re a bung-biter, but that’s not why.”

“Answer me straight or keep the dice and play against yourself.”

She handed him the dice and the cup, and she said, “I don’t know, Garol. I don’t like guarding a prison, either, but no one said it was permanent. Noreê says that a king is what she’s trying to prevent—those Ambrosiuses.”

“Doesn’t she seem a little crazy to you on the subject?”

“You didn’t know Old Ambrosius? I guess not. Listen, if Noreê, who walked against the Dark Seven, is scared of that guy, there’s reason for it. He had reason to hate Earno, and now Earno is dead, dropped dead, murdered in the middle of the Wardlands in the sight of three Guardians, and no one knows who did it! That tells you who did it. Old Ambrosius, or maybe the young one.”

“Ah.”

“They say he was there. I don’t like all this stuff. Dwarves and mandrakes and God Sustainer knows what else walking around the place like they belonged here. I remember when this was a free country for people—just people, not every weird shtutt that wandered over the mountains. It started to get bad when the Northhold came under the Guard. And who was responsible for that?”

“The Graith.”

“Who really? It was that Old Ambrosius.”

“You weren’t even born back then. What do you know about it?”

“I hear things. You would, too, Garol, if you bothered to listen.”

“All I know is, I didn’t sign on to be a prison guard.”

Krida groaned. “Shut up and roll.”

Standing in the shadows, Morlock mimed tossing something. Deor would have preferred a clearer clue, but he nodded and gestured at his eyes. Morlock nodded and closed his eyes.

Deor crouched and groped on the ground for a suitable rock. It took him a while to find one, but when he did he tapped Morlock on the elbow to let him know it was almost time to act, and then he threw the rock as hard as he could at the watch-thains’ coldlight.

The glass shattered and the light went out. Deor saw the two goggling at each other in the glow of the dispersing lightwater.

Morlock brushed by him, running up the alley in his soft shoes, his eyes still tightly closed. A man’s eyes would not adjust as quickly to darkness as Deor’s did, but the dwarf thought his harven-kin was overdoing the caution a bit. He followed him into the fray.

There was a scramble under the wall of the lockhouse as the guard-thains tried to find their spears in the dark. They hadn’t yet thought to call for help, then Morlock and Deor were on them.

Morlock seemed to be throttling Garol, which to Deor’s mind was a little extreme. The attack also wasn’t really an option for Deor, as Krida was an armlength or so taller than him.

He set his feet and punched her as hard as he could in the stomach. But his aim was a little off and his stone-hard fist fell on her pubic bone. She bent over, gasping for air, and he hit her hard under the chin when it came into reach. She rolled unconscious on the street next to the dice and cup. Morlock lowered Garol there beside her—still breathing, Deor was glad to see, but quite unaware of the world.

Morlock took a wedged digging tool from a pocket in his sleeve and Deor did the same. They went to work on the base of the wall.

The first inch or so was painted stucco; after that they started getting into the dried fungus. Deor wondered whether they should cut breathing masks for themselves from their cloaks, but Morlock didn’t even seem to consider it, so he didn’t bother to make the suggestion. The nightmares were not physical; they were just trapped in the dried flesh of the fungus, like an old man’s soul in a dying body.

The feeling of dread that he had dreaded came over Deor with startling suddenness. For a dwarf, digging is usually a happy occasion, but this was not like digging through honest dirt and rock. The outer layers of fungus were oddly crispy, like mummified human flesh. The core of the wall was harder, less layered, like ancient dried-out bone. Deor knew that he was lying there next to Morlock digging through a wall. But at the same time he felt that he was digging into a gigantic skull. Soon they would break through and confront the gigantic carnivorous maggots that had devoured the giant’s brain and were ravenous for new flesh.