A Guile of Dragons (18 page)

C
HAPTER
T
EN

The Deep Roads

I
n the utter blindness beneath a mountain's roots, Morlock paused to consider his way.

He had left Thrymhaiam two days ago, an hour after sunlight touched her western slopes. He had gone alone through the Helgrind Gate. It was dark as he crossed the narrow, terribly deep chasm of the Helgrind. But the mist carried only the clean rocky smell of mountain water; there was no taint of venom in it. He reached the high unbarred entrance to the Runhaiar easily, although it was impossible to see in the darkness and fog; his feet knew the way across the shallow Helgrind stream. As a youth he had lived for more than a year beyond the Haukr, working at the Seven Clans' trading house there. He'd often travelled between Haukrull and Thrymhaiam. That had been a fine and troubling time for Morlock. He wondered what Haukrull looked like now. Almeijn's words returned to him as he walked through the resounding darkness:
The town was there, all ashen,
with bodies burning in the streets. . . .

Almeijn. At the thought of her he stopped moving. He had long ago learned to walk in the dark of the Runhaiar without fear, and his reflexes had found the Pilgrims' Way to Haukrull almost without seeking it. But they had played him false after all. He had an idea about Almeijn, and to pursue it he must take a different route through the darkness. He had to find not the familiar road that the Guardians must have taken to Haukrull, but the mysterious path on which Almeijn had returned alone.

As he stopped he realized he did not know exactly where he was. If he gave it some thought he might have reasoned it out (he had not been moving wholly unconsciously), but there was no need. He walked back to the last junction of tunnels he'd passed, trailing his right hand along the wall a little higher than his shoulders. Presently he found what he wanted: a pattern of warmth and coolness inscribed in the smooth stone. He moved his hands over the pattern, and as he did the pattern took shape in his mind. The shapes were not precisely intelligible, an apparently arbitrary mixture of abstract swirls and slanting lines. There was a similar pattern in every tunnel at every junction in the sprawling extent of the Runhaiar. They had obviously been placed by the Runhaiar's builders as signposts. Although they recorded no known language, experienced guides could make some sense of them.

Morlock could not read the signs as well as some of his
harven
kin, but he was no novice. The pattern under his hands told him clearly that the High Arches (a major landmark on the Pilgrims' Way to Haukrull) were at the far end of the tunnel where he stood. It also told him that the Drowned Arches (a vast, partly underwater chamber) were to the south of him. Morlock had never been to the Drowned Arches, but it was the only place in the Runhaiar where water ran. He guessed that Almeijn's path had led there, or near there. She'd said,
There was water.

He stepped out of the tunnel; the echoes of his footsteps and the motion of the air told him he was in a junction-chamber between three or more tunnels. He turned to the one immediately on his left. Stepping inside it, he breathed deeply. He'd hoped that the air would be moister or warmer than normal. It was the usual air of the Deep Roads, though: dry, cool, stale. But the way led south and (he found, advancing a few steps) downward. He walked onward into the dark.

Much later, Morlock paused in an open area between tunnels. He regretted now that he had never visited the Drowned Arches; he felt lost in the darkness. The patterns on the walls were strange; he could not tell if he had come too far or not far enough. If he had taken a wrong turn he doubted he could even retrace his steps. Certainly he had never even heard of a place like this.

He cleared his throat and called out, to judge the chamber's size. On impulse he used his clan name. “Theorn!” There was no echo.

He took three steps and called out again. He waited a few seconds and called out a third time. Finally he heard an answering
Theorn!
, but with so strange and muffled a sound he didn't know what to make of it.

Walking farther he reached the wall of the chamber. He reached out and touched it; the stone was crusted with dry filth. Morlock drew his fingers along the surface vertically, tracing out a flat arcing rib carved out of the stone wall. Less than a hand's-breadth away on either side his hands encountered others. This was like the walls of the High Arches, except that those were clean. . . . Moving his hands vertically along the wall he found a level, higher than his head, where the filth ceased. It was an old water line. Plainly, he stood in what had been the Drowned Arches.

“There was water,” said Morlock, consciously echoing Almeijn as he walked about the chamber. “Where is it now?”

The floor of the chamber (which seemed to be oval) angled sharply down toward its the long end.

Where did it go?
asked the echo.

The water must have sunk down the angling floor as it receded. Perhaps there was a passage down that way, through which Almeijn might have passed. But Morlock doubted there was any water; he'd sensed no moisture in the air from the moment he'd entered. In fact . . .

Morlock crouched down and put his hands on the floor. It was coarsely textured and clean, free from watery filth. He guessed that he stood on some vast stone lid, and that the true floor of the chamber lay below. Its angle suggested that it had been lowered from the upper wall by means of its weight. If dwarves had built it there would have been a counterweight system to draw it back into the wall as needed. Morlock leapt toward the upper wall to investigate.

Soon his hands met what they were seeking: a recess in the upper wall almost as broad as himself, which contained a heavy block of stone with a horizontal bar carved out of it. The stone was angled sharply back, away from Morlock. As he ran his fingers over the block in the dark (very carefully, so as to avoid tripping the mechanism) he guessed that the work had been done in haste, but not recently. There was no weathering in the underground corridors of the Runhaiar, of course, but Morlock guessed that long ages had passed since the crumbling surface of the stone had been severed from its native rock.

The design of the lever was so familiar that it made Morlock remember the claims that the dwarves had built the Runhaiar, in the age before the Longest War began. Tyr did not believe the claims (never saying why), and Tyr knew more of his kith's history than anyone. Yet here was this lever, like many Morlock had seen in Thrymhaiam. But if dwarves had made such a lever to draw back a floor, they certainly would have also made a ledge for the person operating the lever to stand on while the floor moved. Here there was none.

He shrugged. Probably the floor did not recede entirely. He readied himself to shift his footing as the floor drew back up and pulled the heavy stone bar toward himself.

The floor vanished beneath his feet as the massive slab of stone roared its way down into the mountain's roots. Only Morlock's reflexes saved him from death—the primitive instinct of a cave-dweller and a stoneworker who is always mindful of the danger in a precariously balanced rock. As soon as he felt his footing give way he let go the stone bar and reached out frantically, as he fell, for the gap out of which the slab had descended. He just caught the ledge with his right hand as he fell past it; the weight of his body hung from four fingers as his feet swung far to the right. He threw his head to the right as well, and the heavy lever-stone hardly grazed his left shoulder as it swung ruinously down. He heard it carried high again, as he desperately halted the swing of his body by applying his boots and his free hand against the slick, ribbed wall. Clenching his teeth he felt the breath of the stone's passage as it swung down again, drawn by its own weight. It continued to swing back and forth for some time as the grating roar of the descending slab died away in the half-darkness.

And it was a
half-
darkness, not the absolute blindness he had become accustomed to. In that instant, as his footing gave way, his whole world had changed. Hot steaming air surrounded him; the wall he clung to was slick with moisture; from somewhere beneath him there was a dim source of reddish light. As he hung there gasping he heard the echo speak.

Come down, then, come down. You must come down.

It was no illusion. He could smell the poison in the air, reminding him of Almeijn's stained hair and haunting spell-lit eyes. The voice kept on speaking, calling him downward, inviting him to enter the den of a dragon.

You cannot go back. There is no other way for you, now. Come forward. Come now.

Morlock took in his surroundings. What the rumbling insidious voice said was untrue. He could go back. He saw that the ledge ran back under a tunnel entrance. . . . It must be the tunnel by which he had entered the Arches. He could edge around, hand over hand, and climb up there—go back the way he had come.

But he had not come here simply to
go back.
He'd guessed that at least one dragon from the guile had been stationed in the Runhaiar. He was only a thain; he had been sent to carry a message and to gather news. He could go back; he would not.

He looked, then, for ways to go down. The wall was sheer, except for the carven ribs. The drop to some kind of surface was something under twice Morlock's own height. It gleamed wetly, but the light was dim and the surface seemed dark and motionless; he could not tell if it was water or wet stone. His skin crawled at the thought he might plunge over his head into water that had been stagnant underground for centuries. But it was the only way. He braced his feet for a solid fall, but took a deep breath as if he were diving; then he let his aching fingers relax.

The breath proved unnecessary. The surface splashed as he struck it, but the water was only a foot or two in depth. Morlock slumped against the wall for a few moments, taking deep breaths of the moist sickening air. Then he started as he felt a drop of cool water touch his face. He heard others fall in the water around him. When he concentrated he could see drops falling, red streaks against darkness in the dim light.

Rain under the mountains! He guessed that the cold walls and ceiling of the Arches were sweating in the hot moist air and that the drops were returning as rain. Not so wonderful, when you thought about it. But it still seemed wonderful as he watched it fall. Rain under the mountains. It was like a portent.

Slowly, reluctantly, he directed his eyes toward the source of the dim light. It was a ragged hole in the wall of living rock, which seemed almost to have been gnawed. Its threshold was concealed under the black water. Beyond it lay the source of the red light, the heat, the poisonous reek that troubled this once peacefully dead place. It spoke to him as he hesitated.

Come forward. Come now. I command you.

He had already decided to go forward. But suddenly the dread of a dragonspell came over him. Would he even know if one took hold of him? Almeijn apparently had never known.

He moved forward. He had been sent; he had already decided. (But was this how it had happened to Almeijn?) He moved toward the rough circle of dim red light.