A Guile of Dragons (15 page)

Deor was at once impressed and defensive. “Yes, but he has no practical skills. You remember what a thumphead he was about—I mean, when he was our tutor for gemstones.”

Morlock shrugged. “I think he cares more about metal or crystal within living rock than any use they might be put to.”

“It's lunacy.”

“He knows a great deal.”

“But he makes no use of it,” Deor insisted.

Morlock nodded slowly. “I asked him about the Ranga blaze. He thinks it was the Fire . . . that is, vulcanism,” he added, glancing at Earno. It was only then that Earno realized that they were speaking Wardic, and even censoring their use of it, for his benefit alone.

“Ranga has no Fire, Morlock,” Elder Tyr said, forestalling a reply from Deor.

“Naeth thinks that might be changing.”

“Naeth wants it to change,” Tyr replied. “It would suit his notions. But I have been listening to the land for months, and I have heard no Fire in Ranga.”

Earno found Morlock's presence disconcerting. He resembled his father, his
ruthen
father, greatly just then: with his crooked shoulders and his crooked smile, a crooked kind of confidence among people he knew. Earno thought about his notion that Merlin was the cause of the northern troubles and was intuitively convinced of its truth. Old Tyr would shelter him at Thrymhaiam, certainly, and perhaps there were others in the north who would do the same. The summoner had been fitting the details he knew into a consistent pattern, and he found it worked admirably.

The second course, roasted fungi stuffed with some sort of diced meat, was brought in. When he resumed his train of thought he felt himself feverish and distracted, with a strange ache inside his head. Something was wrong. He could lie to himself or face it: something was wrong.

He stared out of the windows, trying to lose his thoughts in the magnificent view. But there were more lights in the room now, many of them torches, and he could see little except reflections of himself and the rest of the company in the dark glassy surface.

“. . . it was not the summoner Lernaion who bothered our Eldest,” Deor was saying mischievously. “No: it was those splendiferous thains.”

Vetr grunted. “One spoke dozen languages. Not ours, though.”

Morlock was looking uncomfortable. “They're senior thains. Seniority gives privileges in the Guardians, just as it does in the Seven Clans. Is this news? Thains' Northtower is on our very border.”

“Well, you didn't see them,” Deor replied. “They weren't much like those peasants in Northtower. How they whined. Roughing it in the newest hold!”

“Their fingers were as soft as feathers,” one dwarf recalled with amazement.

“One had a tear in his silken cloak,” another dwarf recalled. “Didn't want it mended—that'd make an ugly seam, he said. He wondered if we could get him another.”

“Another tear?” said Deor. “Easy enough!”

There was laughter. Part of it was real amusement; part of it was local or racial prejudice. But part of it was anger. Morlock's ragged and burned cape would linger in the clans' memory alongside that torn silken cloak. Earno thought of Tyr's words to him earlier:
May my son never be like them! But still. . .

“It's no great honor to be a senior thain,” Earno found himself saying, into a silence that formed around his words. “It is honorable enough, and perhaps very comfortable. But the real honor is to be elected vocate. Younger thains have that honor more often, and with some reason.” He paused, concerned that he had said too much or not enough.

But it wasn't so. The dwarves were nodding solemnly. Apparently something he had said had checked their anger without giving them the impression that he had personally elected Morlock to the rank of vocate.

Which would be far from the case. For, if Earno's deductions were correct, he would soon be sending their
harven
kinsman into exile. He felt anxiety suddenly descend on him again, and his head ached. He looked at the windows again, almost yearningly, longing for solitude and escape. But all he could see was the red light of the torches glittering on black surfaces. Watching them, he swiftly became dizzy; he felt that he was seeing two levels of reality at once, as in a Sight. There was no Sight, no revelation. Yet the illusion continued.

He heard Tyr speaking in his ear. “Summoner Earno, is anything wrong?”

“Do you see anything outside?” he responded tensely. “In the chasm?”

Everyone stood and looked out the windows. They glanced at each other, but Earno found the dwarvish expressions (including Morlock's) unreadable.

“Extinguish the lights!” the Eldest commanded, and it was done.

There was red light glowing diffusely in the thick blue clouds of Helgrind chasm. The light moved and dimmed and brightened, flowing like water. Presently it could be seen that there were many brighter parts of the light, as intensely red-gold as separate flames or coals in the murkily glowing clouds.

“The Fire?” Deor demanded of no one in particular.

“No,” said the Eldest Tyr firmly. “Not as you mean.”

They waited.

The dragons broke through the clouds in groups of three, casting distorted shadows behind them by their own light. There were perhaps a dozen groups. Most of them soared steeply out of the range of sight, but three dragons flew directly to the windows of the High Hall of the East. One roosted directly before the windows (the mountain shook beneath them) and peered within: smoke and fire trailing from his jaws, his bright scales shedding red light at their edges, his slotted eyes as red and gold as molten metal.

Eldest Tyr moved to take a coldlight and lit it. Then he walked to the windows so that the dragon could see him clearly.

The Eldest spoke. “I know you,” he said quietly. “I know you and I deny you. In the first days of the father of my father's father my kith defeated you and drove you from this land. You have come again. You will be killed again. Let all of you come, all our ancient enemies together. Let them come to steal our homes and the things our skill has made. Let the Longest War flare up again in every mountain valley, in every cave beneath the earth. These mountains have stood and will stand. If we cannot live within them we will die beneath them. We will
deny
you our homes, and the things our skill has made!”

Earno wondered if the dwarf was in rapport with the dragon somehow or whether he spoke for his people's benefit or for other reasons. But it was as if the dragon understood him. He rose up on his hind legs and roared flame down on the bank of windows.

Earno flinched (was it the mountain, or the deck of
Stonebreaker
shuddering beneath him?) but the Eldest stood motionless as the wave of fire broke like water on the slabs of dwarvish crystal. The sound of all three dragons roaring penetrated dimly into the hall.

“Father,” said Morlock, after some moments,
“yedhra harven coruthen
, the Deep Halls are under attack. You must lead your people.”

Tyr turned to him quickly, as if startled, but there was no surprise on his face. “Morlocktheorn, you are right. I have been wondering why . . . But that does not matter, not yet.” He turned to his other sons and spoke to each of them briefly in Dwarvish.

Earno stood motionless, not daring to move or think, lest he make some new error. He was the chief Guardian here. But he had no authority over anyone save Morlock. And he wondered if Morlock would obey his commands, rather than Tyr's, and if it would be right to do so. He had foreseen so much! Somehow, visions had come to him, warning him of this danger. But foreknowledge had been wasted by folly. He waited, not thinking, not moving, and the red light moved about him like a sea of blood.

The dragons began to batter the mountainside with their tails; the stone walls and floor shuddered with the repeated attacks, and the mountain above them rumbled disturbingly. Tyr still stood, defiantly, before the windows, issuing commands to his kith.

Earno felt a touch on his sleeve and moved instinctively toward it. Morlock was there, his expression at once concerned and eager. The summoner felt it was unusual for the thain to be so unguarded, and it would have been interesting to watch if he were not so reluctant to meet Morlock's eye.

“Summoner Earno,” said the thain, presenting to him a very young beardless dwarf, “this is Olla, a messenger stationed at the Helgrind Gate, that faces the Runhaiar . . . the tunnels which pass under the Haukr.”

Earno nodded.

“She says that an hour ago a woman crawled over the threshold out of the Helgrind and collapsed. She was wearing a vocate's cloak.”

Earno nodded again. As moments passed he realized painfully that he must also speak and move.

“Lead me to her, then.”

The sound of the dragons' attack faded like thunder as they descended under the mountain.

It took much less than an hour to descend to the Helgrind Gate. Arriving there they found the vocate still lying on a bed of rags before the great cave of the Helgrind Gate. The portcullis was down. The dwarf guards beside it were armored and carried long spears with metal shafts.

Morlock greeted them in Dwarvish, and they responded in kind. He spoke with them for a few moments and then, seeing that Earno had made no move toward the vocate, went and knelt by her.

“Vocate Almeijn,” he said to her, and she started.

“Who are you?” she demanded thinly. She moved her head as she spoke, and only then did Earno recognize her. Her gray hair was stained and torn, and there were venom burns on her face and hands.

“Morlock syr Theorn, a thain. I must know what happened to you and your company.”

“Yes. You must tell the Graith . . . I can't. I'm dying. I can't. I won't. I won't. God Sustainer, I'm so hungry!”

“They'll bring food. They should have done so already.”

“No.” Her throat clenched visibly, the neck muscles moving like fingers beneath her slack wrinkled skin. “No! It doesn't matter. Listen! There are dragons!”

“I know,” Morlock said patiently. “How many?”

“How many?
How many?
How do I know how many? But they are a guile together; they have a master. . . . I saw him. . . . The sky was full of fire. I ran. Crawled . . . underground. Lost in the tunnels. So hungry. But there was water.”

“What happened to Summoner Lernaion?” Morlock asked gently.

“He was fey. A dead man! So proud, so . . . wise. I told him, before we left the tunnels. I told him about my dream. I told him I was afraid of the sky.
He
said . . . about old people, eager to be buried. It was clever. It was cruel. But he was tired of being underground. I'm not
angry
anymore. But when we came out into the light . . . I was still angry. I could taste the smoke, the tang of venom in the air. I should have said. . . . I didn't say anything. Waited for them to notice. They were fey. They didn't notice.

“Then we came over the rise. The town was there, all ashen, with bodies burning in the streets. No dragons. But that feeling. Then we looked up. There they were on the mountain, watching us. They leapt up into the air. So many! Like birds in the winter. You see them in the Southhold. Blackbirds. In troops. And they fly together and turn all at once, the light flashing on their black wings and bodies. Then they all roared and the sky was red and the air stank of poison. I was too afraid to move. We were all afraid.

“Then one fell out of the guile-in-flight, dropped like a hawk, stalled over us, stretching out his claws. Roared. Like red fog, the poison and the fire. I saw the collar about his neck, the sign of the master, like in
Earno's Song.
The guile master: that was too much. I ran. Not back. Two tried that; he burned them, breathed right on them. Aside. Away in the valley. He didn't care. Hunt me down later. I thought so too. Found a cave, crawled inside. Kept on crawling. It went on and on . . . Into the tunnels. I. I. No. No. No! The Graith . . . yes, of course. Tell
them.
The summoner.
I won't! I won't!
The summoner. Oh, yes. Yes. I will. But I failed. . . .”