Dawn came that day behind a dense curtain of cloud, and they kept the fire alive until the very moment they had to break camp. They walked slowly, picking a careful path across the trackless plain: the day could not have been darker without being night. The wind was bitter, but they would have to grow used to it, and worse yet.

“Is the sun dying at last?” Kelat asked.

Morlock shrugged, and no one else even did that. There was no way to answer this.

“We have been passing that tree for half an hour,” Deor remarked presently.

That was different. All four travelers stopped and looked closely at the tree, black against the blue gloaming.

“I don’t think it’s a dryad-beast stalking us,” Ambrosia observed presently.

“What’s that?” Deor snapped. “And why not?”

“Dryad-beasts hide in a cocoon that looks like a tree and prey on passersby,” Ambrosia said.

“Canyon keep them. Why are you sure it’s not one?”

“I’m not sure. But my insight doesn’t sense the talic imprint of an animal. It’s more like. . . . What would you say, Morlock?”

“A god.”

“Hell and damnation!”

“Possibly. I remember . . . I remember something like this in Kaen. It was an avatar of their god of death.”

A female figure wrapped in darkness stepped out from the open air. She carried a long, bright sword in her right hand.

Morlock drew Tyrfing.

“Are you crazy?” hissed Ambrosia.

“I am Morlock Ambrosius,” said the crooked man. “I will not die without a struggle, even if a god of death has come for me.”

“Very noble. But we might try talking first.”

“She has not come to talk.”

The deathgod stepped closer. Her face was not easy to look at, but her scar-like mouth seemed to twist in a smile.

Then a new door opened in the air and another god stepped out. This figure also seemed female. Her garb was bright where Death’s was dark. Her body seemed dark where Death’s was pale. Her smile was equally grim, and she carried an equally bright sword in her left hand.

She held up her right hand and a mouth appeared in the dark palm.

“Stand back, sister,” said the pale mouth in the dark hand. Morlock did not hear the words with his ears; they stabbed through him. He saw the others bending over in agony around him.

Death held up her pale left hand. A mouth manifested there. Its dark lips replied, “Justice, there is a time for all things to end. This is that time. It is my time.”

“All times are mine,” Justice replied. “Your power overmatches theirs, and this offends me.”

“Justice, my beloved sister, you are among the weakest of all the Strange Gods, as I am the strongest. Do you think you can stand against me?”

“Yes.”

“Then prepare yourself. But these mortals will die from witnessing our battle just as surely as they would from my blade. Look how they cower when we signify to each other!”

“I am not alone,” Justice signified.

Morlock strove to stand straight when he understood Death’s remark about cowering. As he did, he saw that the barren field had sprouted a shadowy crop of gods.

A door opened in the air and Morlock fell through it. He fell to ground on a narrow paved street, and Tyrfing clattered on the stones beside him.

“Are you all right?” he heard a voice saying.

Morlock looked up to see a balding, ruddy-faced stranger standing over him. Beyond him was a graystone building, rather out of place in a street full of dark wooden houses. The stranger was standing in the open door of the building, above which was a symbol of a counterweight stone on a pair of empty scales.

Morlock thought about the stranger’s question and said, “Yes.”

“A man of few words? All right. Here.” The stranger offered him a hand to get up, but Morlock was already rising, Tyrfing in his right hand.

Morlock looked around. “Where am I?”

“Narkunden,” said the stranger. “Never been here? You haven’t missed much. They’re talking about abandoning the town if the next winter is as bad as the last one.”

Morlock grunted. “Think it will be?” he asked.

“It’ll be worse. I’d bet a nickel on it, which is as much as I ever bet on anything. But they won’t abandon the town.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not like things are better down south. If the sun is dying. . . . Some things you can’t fix by running away from them.”

“How do you fix them?”

“Um. Let me rephrase. Some things can’t be fixed.”

Morlock grunted again. “Is there a bar or a wineshop nearby? I need a drink.”

“No one needs a drink, unless they’re a drunk. Are you a drunk?”

Morlock shrugged. “If I were, would I admit it?”

“You might. Drunks come in all the types of people there are: proud, ashamed, defiant, apologetic, you name it. But I’m not inclined to help a drunk find another drink. There’s some of it in my family. You understand.”

“I’m not a drunk.”

“Excellent. Perhaps you’ll join me in a mug or two of wine? I usually partake around this hour.”

The stranger stepped back through the dark doorway behind him and motioned for Morlock to follow.

The stranger didn’t look dangerous. After a moment’s thought, Morlock sheathed his sword and stepped through the doorway.

The interior of the stranger’s house was an image of chaos: books and stones and papers and dust lying around in heaps. On one of the stone heaps was a jumble of bronze pieces that looked like parts of a skull. The room was lit, not by a lamp but by a kind of window set into the wall. But there had been no window on the wall outside, and this window showed no scene that could be local. It showed a green field in early summer or late spring; there was a large maple tree with some ropes hanging from it. Morlock would have liked to know how the window was made.

The stranger was busying himself in a cupboard and he brought back a couple of mugs filled with reddish fluid that smelled like it might be wine.

“Not very good,” the stranger said ruefully. “But the best you’ll find in town, I’m afraid. Any grapes they’ve managed to grow recently they kept for eating.”

Morlock raised the mug and said, “I’m Morlock Ambrosius, by the way.”

“Are you?” The stranger’s vague blue eyes focused on him. “Interesting!”

“What’s your name?” Morlock asked.

“Don’t you know it?”

“No. Have we met?”

“I can’t remember. You can’t remember all the people you’ve met, can you? I expect someday you’ll forget you’ve met me today.”

“We have not met yet. Formally, that is.”

“What? Oh, my name. I suppose you could call me Angustus. Some people do, around here.”

Morlock nodded. He was used to people who travelled under pseudonyms, although he tended not to trust them. On the other hand, this fellow had more or less admitted the name was not his own. Maybe that showed he was honest after all.

“Are you a maker, Angustus?”

“No. No. No. Not really. No. I’ve never thought of myself that way. Although I suppose I am, sort of. But I teach at the local lyceum, at least on a temporary basis. I know a good many curious things, although it’s not clear that they’ll be any use when the sun goes dark. Of course. . . .”

“What will?”

“Exactly. Nunc est bibendum!” Angustus lifted his mug in salute to Morlock and took a drink. Morlock did the same. The wine was pretty bad, but better than nothing.

“That was Latin, wasn’t it?” Morlock asked Angustus, after they had been drinking in silence for a while.

“It was indeed. Loquerisne Latine?”

“A little. One of my fathers made me learn it.”

“Well, I commend him for it. There’s not much call for it on the northern plains, I’m afraid. I teach logic, rhetoric, geometry, Old Ontilian—whatever they’ll pay me for.”

“There’s a living in that?”

“I don’t remember saying so. Now if I could teach people how to play venchball I’d have it made. The venchball trainers eat custard every night, as the saying goes. The stadia are crowded on game days, and on other days everyone seems to be talking about the next game or the last one.”