A Guile of Dragons (27 page)

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

Control

V
en was restless. He didn't like the bed. He felt exposed there, unprotected. He got up and tried the metal door of his cell. It was still locked. That no longer bothered him; he was used to it. But now he began to want a lock on his own side—he had no way to keep anyone out.

He went back to bed. If he crouched down behind it he would see whoever came in before they saw him. He tried it once and immediately felt safer.

Suddenly he saw a stone bottle that had been filled with water. It was lying in the far corner of the room. It occurred to him that, if he happened to fall asleep, even for a moment, someone could unlock the door and take the bottle, without him even knowing. The event was quite clear in his mind—it was just the sort of thing they
would
do. He imagined himself sleeping, the opening door, a long arm appearing in the door, hand outstretched like a snake's hood as it fell toward the bottle . . .
his
bottle. The thought pained him inexpressibly. He envisioned the event again and again, gnawing the ends of his fingers in vexation and fear.

Finally he could stand it no more. They had pushed him too far. Choosing his moment carefully, he leapt over the barricade and dashed to the corner. He snatched up the bottle and plunged back over the barricade. Safe! Even if they had seen him it was too late to act. If they came at him now he would bite them, as he had the other time. He had seized the moment and its fruit was his. They must be frustrated indeed, knowing the bottle was now his, never to be theirs.

He added the bottle to his little pile of possessions. There was a ring, a wax tablet and stylus, the buckles from his belt and boots (polished to an unsatisfyingly dull gloss). It was not so much, he thought sadly, looking at them, but it was a start. The bottle was a significant addition.

The florid words and complex theologies that had been impressed upon his memory were fading. They would have stayed vivid and clear only if he had put them to use. But even now he could remember some of them.

He muttered, “Asserted unities generate their opposites, resulting in dualities of opposition. Unbalanced trinities degenerate into dualities of opposition. Trinities can only be balanced by opposing trinities, resulting in effective dualities of opposition. In this way we can see that duality of opposition is the fundamental principle of existence. There is no unity; there is only duality.”

He licked his lips (he was so thirsty!) and thought about gold.

Morlock was vomiting outside the High Gates when Tyrtheorn and Earno arrived. Deor was already there, perched on a rock safely out of the way.

“I don't think you're really trying, Morlock,” he was saying sardonically. “There! That was better!”

Morlock retched again; the splashing sound that followed was painfully clear in the dark quiet of predawn. He spat, coughed, spat again. He shuddered violently a few times. Then, after remaining still for a moment, he said carefully, “Thank you.”

“Bah. Don't be so polite. Get that venom out of you.”

Morlock cleared his throat and spat. “I need something to drink,” he said.

They both stood up, and that was when they saw the Eldest and the summoner standing in the gateway.

“Morlock's been doctoring himself,” Deor said, breaking the embarrassed silence. He jumped down from the rock and ran past Tyr and Earno. There was a cask of beer in the watchroom off the corridor within. Deor drew a couple of mugs, exchanged a few words with the dwarves on watch, and walked back.

“. . . that you knew this treatment for venom,” Earno was saying.

Morlock nodded. “They taught us at the Lonetower. The Kaeniar use a venom like that of the dragons—Ah, Deor. Thanks.” Morlock took one of the mugs and turned toward the darkness. He could be heard gargling a mouthful of beer, then rinsing out his mouth with the rest of the mugful. He turned back to them. Deor silently handed him the second mug, accepting the empty one in exchange.

“The worst part of it was eating,” said Morlock, after a long pull on the mug. “I had to give the purge something to work on, you see.” He drank again.

“Morlock, you're making me sick,” Deor complained.

“Oh. I'm out of beer.”

“I thought you were going to drink it, not water your chin with it!” Deor exploded. “I could roll the cask out here if you feel the urge to wash your hair.”

“Um. No, thanks. I am beginning to be hungry, though.”

“That's really revolting!” Deor exclaimed. “How can you talk about food after . . . What about a decent interval?”

“Three days is interval enough,” muttered Morlock.

“I agree,” Tyr said. “Deor, you can wait decently out here. Come within, Rokhlan; I think I hear the watch making breakfast.”

“There's only one
rokhlan
here,” Morlock said, as he followed his
harven
father into the High Gate. “The sentinel-dragon killed itself—”

“Athru rokhleni! Rokhleni! Ath! Ath!”
It was the watch of the High Gates, calling into the corridor from the watchroom.

“Kinfolk,” said Tyr, “I understand that there are two opinions about Morlock's title—”

A chorus of shouts interrupted him, Dwarvish and Wardic mixing together.

Deor was following Earno through the gateway. “Canyon keep it!” the young dwarf swore. “Don't let Morlock tell the story. ‘I was just standing there, and this dragon—'”

The members of the watch came out and gathered them into the watch-room. Earno felt as if he had stumbled into a family celebration—a family he did not know, but had mistaken him for one of its own. They called him Rokhlan and seated him at the third place of honor, on the Eldest's right hand, as they sat down to listen to the story of Morlock's victory.

It was a great thing, in the north, to be a dragonkiller. The Eldest had explained it to Earno as they had travelled north to the High Gates. It went back to the Longest War (as so many things did) that had been fought between dragon and dwarf in these mountains. But the last dragon had been banished from the north long before it came under the Guard. Thus no one for millennia had earned the high title of
rokhlan
. . . except for the five heroes of Southgate, who were all dead now. (To be a
rokhlan
was frequently a posthumous honor.)

So it was Morlock who (after he had thoroughly doused himself at the washbasin) was seated at the head of the stone table in the watchroom; even Eldest Tyr sat below, on his right hand. He ate the bread and cheese and meat that the watch pressed on him, drank water, and listened glumly as Deor and a few members of the watch retold his exploit of the Coriam Lakes as he had told it to them, along with certain observations of their own.

He seemed particularly crooked and Ambrosian to Earno as he nodded over his half-empty plate. Earno couldn't even see details; anger, like a dark red cloud haloing the thain, prevented him from seeing Morlock clearly. Morlock shook off his sleepiness or gloom enough to glance at Earno, perhaps hoping to see how his senior was taking in the story. Earno looked away hastily, before their eyes had time to meet. (Had Morlock seen the flash of red light in his eyes? If he had, what could be done to remove him?)

For a time Earno watched Deor tell Morlock's story. He was too busy with his own thoughts to pay much attention, but he vaguely noted that the young dwarf seemed both proud of and angry at his
harven
kin.

Only at the end did Morlock himself speak. The watch-dwarves were telling how they had found him at the edge of the lake, “preparing to dive in and cut the collar from the dragon's throat.”

“Eh, no,” said Morlock. “Spare me that, kinfolk! I was only thinking.”

“Well,” said one of the watch, “but you won't tell us what you were thinking about.”

“He won't tell us much of anything,” Deor explained to Tyr and Earno. “When I arrived they were just beginning to worm the dragon story out of him. But he won't tell us anything about his trip through Haukrull, nor even where he got his change of clothes. We've decided there must be some sort of Guardian's decree against it—”

Earno had been angered by the thought that Morlock had already told the tale of his embassy to his kin. Finding himself wrong, Earno was irrationally angered again, as if this were a new and separate injury. Had it not been for the compulsion to secrecy, to silence, he would have burst forth with angry denunciations. They took form in his mind, like dark red clouds, but he could not free himself of them by speech. He must not speak. He could not.
Silence!

The summoner found Tyr looking at him curiously, and he avoided meeting the Eldest's eye. Tyr noted the action, and it obviously surprised and concerned him. But when he finally spoke he did not refer to it.

“There is a room above this one,” the Eldest said, “where you can hear Morlock's full report in privacy. I am needed elsewhere, but Deor will remain to learn those things which may immediately affect the safety of the Deep Halls.”

Afraid to do more, Earno nodded stiffly, rose, and left the room. (What did the Eldest know? What did he, at least, suspect? Was he, too, part of the plot? If he was, there might be some way to eliminate him also.) Earno heard Morlock follow him more slowly, and he clenched his teeth.

There was a window in the upper chamber, something Earno was inclined to view as a luxury after days under Thrymhaiam. He seated himself on the stone bench carved out of the wall beneath the window. Looking outward to the east, he saw a dim light reflected on the mountains, although the sky beyond them was still a dark blue. Without returning his gaze to the chamber, he made an imperious gesture at Morlock, indicating that the thain might begin his report.

Morlock, entering behind the summoner, had noted that there were no other chairs. He therefore seated himself on the floor, with his back to the southern wall of the chamber. Having settled himself, he began to speak.

He began by telling of his encounter with Saijok Mahr under the Drowned Arches. Earno was interested, in a distant way, but to Morlock's amazement he completely discounted the importance of Saijok Mahr's exile under the mountains.

“The young bulls,” he said, deigning to explain the matter to his thain, “often go into temporary exile after an unsuccessful challenge to the master, if they survive the duel. Eventually they return to the guile. Any idea of independent action during their exile—it's simply out of the question.”

This was so imperceptive and unexpected a remark that Morlock found himself unable to continue his tale. After a few moments of silence, Earno glanced at him briefly (there was something strange, even serpentine, about that swift look) and said, “This clashes with some idea of your own, I take it.”

“Yes,” Morlock replied. “The guile . . . if it is a guile . . . There is nothing typical about it. They are all . . . All of them are masters in the Blackthorn Range. And Saijok, he . . . it . . . It is not merely a discontent, but one of the two great masters of the Blackthorn Range who were chosen by . . . by the Two Powers to . . . lead this . . .” He was unsure whether to call it an invasion or a raid. He felt the halting, unconvincing nature of his speech very clearly and wanted to use the precisely correct word.

Earno said stiffly, “These are but speculations of Vendas.”

Vendas? Vendas? Was that a title of Merlin's? Morlock wondered. He now dreaded trying to explain the source of his knowledge about the Two Powers. How could he explain it, when he didn't understand it? But surely Vendas was a Dwarvish name; Das was one of the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam. “Beg pardon, Summoner,” he said, “but I know nothing of Vendas.”

“Vendas who was spellbound. Surely your kinsman Deor told you.”

Morlock shook his head, forbearing to comment that Deor was not a man.