A Guile of Dragons (23 page)

“I just might do that,” Deor said. “How has he been?”

“Just nothing. For seven days nothing. He'll die soon, of thirst if nothing else.”

It would be ironic if someone dying slowly of thirst were to suddenly drown. That was Deor's chief concern about his plan. He bid Orn good night and sat down on the stool.

When the sound of Orn's footfalls had died away in the corridor outside, Deor stood and went to the bed where Ven lay.

As he unstoppered the bottle he wondered what he ought to do. He supposed he should pull back Ven's lips and hold his nose, pouring the liquid between his teeth. The problem was that this would almost certainly result in him breathing it in. He had come to cure Ven, not kill him.

The thought re-formed itself in his mind, and at last he knew his own intent. He had indeed come to cure Ven—or kill him. Ven was the only, albeit unwilling, agent of the dragons under Thrymhaiam. Reclaiming him, or killing him if it happened that way, would be an act of revenge, the first act of a revenge that would become famous.

True, Ven was essentially innocent. But it was part of the ethic of revenge to make the innocent suffer. This was something Morlock had never understood. The logic of revenge requires an insane and unbearable punishment for the most sane and thinkable offense. It makes the next offense less thinkable and besides . . . it was simply necessary.

Ven's eyes opened. It was shocking, not only because he had been unconscious for seven days, but because of the eyes themselves. They were red. The “blacks” fairly glowed a deep fiery red, dimly coloring the once-gray irises. Even the whites were bright and bloodshot.

“You,” Ven croaked.

Deor wondered what had caused him to finally stir. Perhaps only now had he realized he was not alone. Perhaps he had suddenly given up resisting the dragonspell. Perhaps he had been told to wait just this long before awaking. It didn't matter.

“You,” Ven croaked. “You will be the first. I bring a song without words. I bring the Consolation of the Two Powers—”

Deor deftly put the neck of the bottle between Ven's teeth and held his patient's nose. The subsequent gargling explosion was indeed a song without words.

Left leg. Left leg. The left leg: you will have it . . .

Not as it was. Not. Where is Vild now? This is no victory—

You are a tonguer and a Softclaw. I sold you the left leg for twenty.

Morlock lay in the ruined house, listening to two dragons track him down. They had heard his cry and were coming for him. They were searching already, apparently, even before his involuntary shouts. A trophy of the Guardian whom the master was unable to spellbind would be a valuable and sought-after possession in the guile, or so Morlock gathered from eavesdropping on the dragons. Vild had been forced to three challenges in succession after Morlock's embassy.

Like old Ambrosius in Aflraun,
said one. This stray comment struck Morlock like a fist. For a moment the gathering strength of his sanity vanished in a flood of anxiety and self-hatred.

Yet Vild is still crowing like a rooster on a dung heap,
the other dragon grumbled in reply.

The two fell silent for a moment. Morlock found that he could indeed hear a dragon roaring repeatedly in triumph. That could mean only one thing: Vild had won his duels and killed each one of his self-styled rivals in combat. The fact hung in Morlock's awareness for a moment without carrying any weight. Then he realized: those dragons had rebelled because of
his
words. They were three dragons who would fly no more to Thrymhaiam to plunder and kill his
harven
kin. How many more might be drawn down the same path?

Then Morlock knew he had found a weapon to destroy the guile. Crazed or not, his mind held the secret of victory against the invaders. He must return to Thrymhaiam, so that wiser minds could put his knowledge to use.

He listened to the two dragons (apparently there were only two) approach from the north to the sound of crushing and splintering wood. (There must be other buildings nearby, then. Perhaps the house had been part of an outlying farm.) Their search went slowly. Morlock guessed that, like most serpents, they heard poorly. Their fiery venom-laden breath would also prevent them from having much of a sense of smell. But Morlock did not doubt they must have unusually clear eyesight, in day or night. That was what he must guard himself against.

Keeping his own ears attentive, he rolled over and crept on his hands and knees past blackened and fallen timbers to the collapsed doorway of the building. Cautiously he peered out.

Beyond the broken doorway he saw the hundred fires of the guile of dragons, with Vild Kharum above them on the hoard nestled into the side of a mountain. The master dragon was still roaring in triumph. Morlock could see several smoking heaps before the hoard, from which the light was fading. The scene was perhaps five hundred paces distant to the southwest.

Morlock pulled back until they were out of sight. He was confused. He had clearly heard the two dragons approaching from the north. Regardless of that he himself was north and somewhat east of the ruin. This was bad. He had hoped to make his way through the ruins of Haukrull town to the Pilgrim's Gate of the Runhaiar, and from there go to Thrymhaiam easily enough. Now that was obviously impossible; he could not hope to creep past the guile without any of its members noticing him. He would have to head north and try crossing the Haukr range overland, by way of the Thains' Northtower.

He looked out again. He didn't think he would have survived if he were thrown this far by Vild's fiery blast; the fall would have killed him. Probably he had fallen some distance away and crawled instinctively toward cover. It was strange that he didn't remember, while he did “remember” things that surely never happened to him. Yet between fire, blows to the head, and poison he was lucky not to be worse off than he was.

But it was insane to put it like that, with a hundred dragons between him and safety. He could go the other way, over the mountains . . . except that his clothes were singed rags, he had no food, and there were two dragons between him and the mountains, waiting for him to raise his head.

He shook his head and tried to think. That last was the real problem. It wasn't the hundred dragons burning the fields of Haukrull, or the fact that he would freeze or starve in the mountains, should he ever get there. It was the two dragons lumbering about outside. The problem was insoluble, but
that
was it; the others would only matter in the unlikely event that he solved this first one. He was safe from them.

A wild thought occurred to him. If the situation had been less desperate he would have ignored it. But he had no time to reason with his wiser self. The two dragons were approaching the ruin where he was hiding.

Morlock slipped out of the wrecked doorway, crouching down by the crumpled wall. He hoped none of the dragons still in the assembled guile could see him. Then he spoke, in a penetrating yet directionless tone. (A thainish skill. But he was a worthless thain.) He spoke in a twisted Dwarvish that he hoped would pass for the dragons' own language.

“Only one can take the trophy,” he said.

Their soft shuddering footfalls ceased. Neither spoke. Morlock knew they were trying to judge his location with their indistinct hearing. They were terribly close; he could smell their fire. But he knew they would not act on what he had said so far.

He spoke again. “Buying and selling—
bargaining
like Softclaws.” (He wondered what a Softclaw was.)

One snarled, a terrifying sound: like a tree splintering in a storm. But neither one did anything else.

Morlock gave it up. His device was too obvious. No doubt the two would quarrel—over his bones. In the meantime he could do nothing that would cause them to fight each other.

He could only try, then, to make them think he was somewhere else. He picked up a charred rafter-end and hurled it at a nearby building. (Had the dragons already been there? he wondered too late.)

The ploy was instantly disastrous. The two dragons' radiant eyes spotted the flying fragment before it reached the top of its arc. One, with a happy roar, leapt into the air, hurling himself into Morlock's vision like a fiery star leaving the zone of eclipse. The other struck directly through the building, shrugging aside the charred beams like a cloud of ash.

In desperation Morlock turned and fled. The flying dragon knocked him off his feet as it landed. He went down spinning and saw its long narrow head lunge forward for the kill. It snapped once, prematurely, and the other was upon it, fitting fiery jaws about its neck.

Fire outlined the serpentine figures as they struggled. Morlock, dazed though he was, understood that this was his chance; there would be no other. He rolled to his feet and ran upslope.

In the bleak light of Chariot and Horseman, he could see a dark swathe cut out of the glittering mountainside before him. That had to be the maijarra forest that spilled over the valley's northwest edge. It had to be.

He heard a dragon die under the claws of its rival. His time, too, was nearly at an end. As he closed on the forest his eyes began to pick out details from the general darkness. The trees looked like withered oaks: the boughs were twisted, ash-strewn, leafless, though this was the maijarra's growing season. He kept on running, but he had no real hope now. He heard the roar of the victor dragon as it took to the air. Gasping in the thin air he wished that his course was not uphill; years of living in the south had softened his lungs.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the sky, half-covered with clouds, lit up by a fountain of red stars, increasingly many of them, stark and brilliant against the blue-black night. Alerted by the struggling dragons' roars, the guile was rising to join the hunt. And, shedding bright smoke as it flew, the victor dragon hurtled down toward him.

He ran under the eaves of the forest, and the boughs threw a sheltering cloak of darkness over him. The sensation was pleasant but brief. The descending dragon roared, and the darkness rolled back. In the red light Morlock saw his shadow caught in an endless distorted web. He ran over the heavy roots and red-barred shadows, dodging tree trunks as he went. The dragon was over his head, above the branches. It was among the branches. It was upon him. It roared, and the blast, though less powerful than Vild's, threw him headfirst against a tree. Dazed and unable to move he lay beneath the clouds of steam and venom, awaiting death.

It did not come. When he was able, he raised his head and looked back. The dragon was struggling, suspended between heaven and earth like a character in the old songs. It was trapped in the dense web of branches—branches that did not burst into flame around it.

Maijarra! They were all around him. Fire had withered their leaves and flowers, but maijarra wood did not burn, even in the deep furnaces of the dwarves.

Morlock got to his feet. He watched the dragon writhe among the branches. Then he turned away. The maijarra forest stretched for miles into the mountains. If he lost himself in it the guile would be unlikely to find him. It seemed altogether likely that he would live long enough to starve or die of cold in the mountains.

He laughed out loud and ran uphill, deeper into the woods and darkness.

It snowed heavily that night, dimming but not altogether silencing the sounds of the pursuing dragons. The snow was, perhaps, lucky for Morlock. If it weren't snowing, he might have been tempted to sleep no matter how cold it seemed. But the discomfort of the wet flakes in the cold air forced him to recognize that sleep would be pleasantly fatal.

Although the trees protected him from the wind, the seemingly endless night was cold indeed. It was an achingly long time since he had eaten, also, and for long moments he found he must stand shivering convulsively, in a senseless outburst of misdirected energy. But when he was able he kept moving over the slush-covered root-crossed ground.