This Crooked Way by James Enge

fodder.
    He beat down the flames with his hands and heaved earth over the fuming coals. He sat down some distance away from the pair and bound up his wounded arm as he waited for them to awaken.
    Morlock kept thinking he should get about his own business. But the scavengers were still out there in the darkness watching what he would do. He waited, thinking long, slow thoughts to pass the time. Twice he roused himself to kill several large carnivorous beetles the size and temperament of snapping turtles who were approaching him hungrily. He tossed the dead beetles out into the wood, where the catbirds devoured them.
    Finally the woman stirred. A long yawn broke off in a gasp as she sat suddenly up.
    “Vren,” she said, in the lingua franca of the Ontilian Empire, “the fire has gone out!”
    “Not exactly ‘gone out,’” Morlock observed, in the same language. “I extinguished it.”
    Now both man and woman were standing. “Who are you?” the woman demanded. “Where are you?”
    “I am a traveller,” Morlock said cautiously. He rarely gave his name, south of the Whitethorn Range. “I am somewhat behind you and off to one side, as you can tell from my voice. Passing by, I noticed your fire and found you overcome with its fumes.”
    “Oh,” said the woman. “Are the trees poisonous, too?”
    “Yes. You will find all life in Tychar inimical to you.”
    “Including yourself?” she shot back.
    “Possibly,” Morlock admitted. “There are some strange things about you two. How did you happen to fell, section, and burn one of these trees without noticing its nature?”
    “We tell you nothing,” Vren said sullenly.
    “Be quiet, Vren,” the woman said without heat. “We had the kembril do it, traveller. We had a spell, and we spoke it, and the kembril came. It brought us fire and food, as we commanded. The food was good, at least. The fire was…local.”
    Morlock did not recognize the word kembril , but he thought he understood the gist of the story. “You are sorcerers, then?”
    “We are thieves, mostly,” the woman said frankly. “(Be quiet, Vren! He saved our lives.) But we steal magic by choice. We are going to rob a sorcerer who lives in the winterwood. Maybe then we'll be sorcerers, with a little practice.”
    “There is a sorcerer in the wood?”
    “Yes,” said the woman reverently, “the greatest and evillest in the world: Morlock Ambrosius himself. He has settled in Tychar.”
    “Hmph,” said Morlock, glad of the darkness. “This is news to me.”
    “Well,” said the woman complacently, “few know of it. We were lucky enough to rob one of his sorcerous correspondents in Sarkunden, our hometown. We thought…well, for such as us it is the opportunity of a lifetime. We have a map.”
    Morlock had expected nothing else, except an offer to join their quest. That was forthcoming in another moment; he accepted with a thoughtful glumness that seemed to surprise his new companions.
    The two thieves, Urla and Vren, went back to sleep, trusting as children, after Morlock offered to stand guard for the rest of the night. Or perhaps they were not so childlike, Morlock reflected: he had already had his chance to rob or kill them; they had more reason to trust him than he did to trust them, which was why he had taken the watch.
    They walked all the next day and into the next night, avoiding death narrowly on a number of occasions. Each time, however, the catbird scavengers fed well on the corpses of their attackers. Morlock believed they had come to look on him as their patron predator. He found this annoying; there was nothing he could do about it, though.
    That night they slept in shifts. Morlock took the last watch—something of a risk, perhaps. He had come to trust his companions, although he had occasion to think them somewhat timorous.
    And he needed sleep. It had been long since he had woken up, south of the forest, to find himself robbed. His arm wound was infected and the poison in his