A Guile of Dragons (12 page)

When Earno descended to the main hall of the Arbiter's house, he found the Arbiter herself awaiting him. They greeted each other, and then she spoke.

“I sent my servants to recover your packs, but I'm afraid they were carried off by the crowd. They can probably be recovered, given a few days.”

“That's unfortunate. My business is urgent.”

“So your thain informed me. I have taken the liberty of preparing two of my finest horses for you and your thain. Please do me the honor of accepting them, for you
and
your companion.” The emphasis in her last phrase was oddly insistent.

“I do so; thank you.” Earno wondered about the flourishes; in the Westhold no high-minded host would think twice about giving an honored guest a horse. But perhaps they were more valuable here. “That is . . . Thank you very much. When our packs are recovered, please send them on to Thrymhaiam.”

“It will be done,” said the Arbiter, with an air of concluding some sort of deal.

They walked together to the front door of the house. Morlock was standing in the street outside; not far away two horses were tethered, already saddled. Morlock looked at the Arbiter warily. With almost equal wariness, Earno noted an Arbiter's servant on either side of the door. Set to keep Morlock from entering?

“Ride well, Morlock syr Theorn,” said the Arbiter pleasantly. “And good fortune to you, Summoner Earno.”

Morlock looked once at Earno and then away. He walked over to the horses, untethered one, and mounted it. When Earno had done the same Morlock rode off down the street, looking neither right nor left until the settlement was far behind them.

Later that day, after hours of silence, Earno asked, “What's wrong?”

Morlock shook his head, but answered, saying, “The Arbiter will look on these horses as a binding settlement—for my beating. Horses are valuable in the north.”

“And so?” Earno said sharply, thinking of the conversation he had overheard. “Were you thinking of revenge?”

“
No.
That is the point.”

“It's one I don't understand.”

“Dwarves do not accept wergild. It is not our way. Injuries . . . you revenge them or forgive them. You do not accept payment for them.”

Earno had heard differently of dwarves, but kept silent. It was, however, as if Morlock had read his mind.

“When you go through life with people saying of you . . . that you would buy and sell everything . . . you become careful of what you will buy or sell.”

“We need the horses,” Earno said.

Morlock nodded.

Earno thought of saying that they could send the horses back from Thrymhaiam. But he was not sure they would not need them still. He said impatiently, “What would you have of me?”

Morlock replied, “Do not speak of this at Thrymhaiam. They will have to know, but let them know from me.”

“Very well,” said Earno, who was prepared to concern himself with other matters.

Among these were the location of Lernaion and the present condition of the Wards. Since he had word of Lernaion's well-being as recently as a half-month ago, long after his concern had begun, he gave his thoughts mostly to the Wards. They had always been difficult to set around the North; that was why Lernaion had come north with a company of thains and vocates to assist him. Since Merlin's exile, Lernaion was the member of the Graith most skilled in protective magic such as the Wards. If Lernaion was in difficulties, it was something to be concerned about. And Earno's concern now had a name: Merlin.

Who else but Merlin could defeat, or even hamper, Lernaion in an exercise of this sort of power? And now Earno had reason to believe that Merlin was again a presence to be feared in the north.

The summoner shook his head. It was not unheard-of that one determined person, moving alone, might make it through the Wards and return to the Wardlands. This was rarely a matter of great concern. One person could hardly be a danger to the Guard, living in secret. If they revealed themselves, then the Graith dealt with them. Most exiles who made their way back did not reveal themselves: instead they took up private lives in the lands. Some in the Graith (Illion, for instance) argued that, by doing so, they had renounced the unrestricted ambition that had earned them (or their ancestors) exile, and so deserved pardon. The Summoner of the City, Lernaion, held a stricter view: that exile was a permanent and irrevocable sentence, not to be suspended or ameliorated in any case. Otherwise, said Lernaion, the First Decree would cease to carry any weight, since the exile that it mandated was the only punishment the Graith could inflict (except in the case of armed invasion, which it was the Graith's purpose to prevent).

Earno was inclined to take the stricter view himself; otherwise the fertile disorder of the unruled realm would slump into chaos. But there could be no disagreement about a consciously malefic intruder such as Merlin. His action in disrupting the Wards (if, Earno reminded himself faintly, he had actually done so) proved his malice, and his danger. And, Earno added thoughtfully, it underlined the potential threat of all the individual exiles that had returned to the Wardlands.

Suddenly, impulsively, Earno began to hope that Merlin had returned, and had done some terrible crime. Then Earno could face him again. And if he defeated the exile and brought him before the Graith . . . It would be a great deed. It would silence many of his critics among the vocates. And it would help settle a more vigorous policy toward returned exiles; this would win him new influence with his peers, Bleys and Lernaion.

Perhaps roving bands of thains could be set up, to investigate rumors of returnees. They had similar things in the unguarded lands, Earno knew. It would be childish naiveté to forego them here under the Guard, where they were most needed.

Then perhaps something could be done about intensifying the Wards themselves, to choke off the slow permeation of returning exiles. Then the seacoasts would be the only way for outsiders to enter the Wardlands.

Slowly, and in great detail, he began to review methods of tightening the Guard along the coasts.

As they rode on in silence, the shame of having his injuries bought and sold by others faded from Morlock's mind. The unstained familiar wonder of his homeland stole over him. Wherever he looked he saw the narrow horizon pierced by mountain peaks like pale thorns. The sky above was chill and blue, with storm clouds approaching from the west. The slopes they rode among were rolling and green with life, in sharp glorious disharmony with the steep dead gravehills on their left.

He saw that the blue-gold autumn flowers were already dying, and that a blackiron maijarra tree was already in its darkest bloom. Both of these things meant a long winter and an early one. And it had been unseasonably cold every night since they had entered the Whitethorns; the passes would soon be closed.

He looked back up at the clouds to see if they brought snow, guessed that they did, but kept on looking. The sky of the Northhold fascinated him. Half-filled with clouds, it seemed deeper and higher than when it was clear. You could measure it then with your eyes, finding it immeasurable. While clear it was just a narrow water-blue dome; when covered with storm clouds (vast, whirling, mountain-sized shapes) you could see how much space the sky enfolded. And, glimpsing a field of blue between parted clouds, you knew its distance was more than you could know.

Morlock exhaled slowly and only then realized he had been holding his breath. He lowered his gaze to the horizon and saw with surprise what looked like smoke over the mountains east of Thrymhaiam.

Earno returned to himself when he heard someone speaking to horses. Shaking loose from a consideration of possible harbor defenses for the southern coast, he realized that the voice had been Morlock's. For a moment he had thought himself back in Westhold.

“That is western dialect,” he said, when the horses had turned in the required direction.

“Yes,” said Morlock. “The horses understand it, though they have never been west of Kirach Starn. Illion taught me it, when I was guiding him in the north.”

“Ah, Illion.” Earno had thought about Illion a good deal in the last half-month or so, and his possible motives in saddling him with this particular guide. “You know him well?”

“He commended me to the Graith. Otherwise . . . I would not be a Guardian.”

Earno wished he were not. The Graith would be unlikely to banish one of the Guarded for harboring his exiled father; a Guardian was another matter. But Earno did not mention this, of course. Impulsively he asked, “What do you think of the Other Ilk—the Rangans, for instance?”

Morlock considered. “The Rangans have many good metalworkers,” he said, “but . . .”

“Yes?”

“They don't build well.” Morlock's expression was unreadable.

The summoner shook his head irritably and resumed his distant thoughts.

He became conscious of the outer world again when the horses left the path for a stone road. He looked at the thain.

“We are very near to Thrymhaiam now,” Morlock remarked. “Look!”

Earno, looking, saw a cluster of snow-topped mountains blotting out the horizon to the north. The stone path led directly into them through the steepening hills. To the right he saw a higher range of mountains, proceeding from the southeast to the north beyond Thrymhaiam. “Is Ranga beyond those?” he asked the thain.

“No,” Morlock replied. “Those we call the Haukr. There is a very ancient settlement in one of the valleys beyond, called Haukrull. The Thains' Northtower is north of there. Ranga is beyond Thrymhaiam to the north and west; we cannot see it.”

“I have been in mountains before,” Earno remarked, “but none like these.”

“Yes. Northhold is new. They say the Wards are responsible, raising the mountains along the southern border, before we came under the Guard, and disturbing the lands beyond. Now the Wards are on the northern border, and the lands are being disturbed again.”

“It sounds a dangerous place to live,” Earno remarked.