A Guile of Dragons (37 page)

Morlock stole a horse from the Arbiter's stables and rode it at a cruel pace back to Thrymhaiam. Stealing was nothing to him, now—he knew why the dwarves feared it. Cruelty was nothing to him, now—he knew who had taught them to refrain. He would ride up and tell them,
I stole this horse. Take it.
He would . . . He would . . .

He was furious. How they had lied to him, all his life, teaching him a way to live but not telling him the evil that lay behind it. They were just like Merlin.
Harven
Tyr was no better than
ruthen
Merlin. In fact, he was worse. There had been a boldness, an openness to Merlin's evil. He was what he was and he didn't try to pretend virtue. Tyr was otherwise: timid, crawling in his cave, speaking wise words of caution, while all the time there was a serpent in him, rearing to strike.

He reached the ruins of Southgate well before noon. He dismounted the horse and challenged the watch in Dwarvish. “Take me to the Eldest!” he said. “Wherever he is, there I will go.”

They sent a guide with him. It was past noon before they reached a chamber that was sealed in white wax: the sign of the Elders' assembly. Outside the door stood no guard; by dwarvish custom the chamber stood inviolate until the seal was broken from within.

Morlock laughed bitterly. Dwarvish custom! What was it to him, an Ambrosius? With a defiant glance at his guide, who was openmouthed with astonishment, he lifted the Ambrosian shield and crushed the wax seal. Then he opened the door and entered, a shout of furious defiance ready on his tongue.

Faces looked at him in surprise, seven blunt bearded faces. They were the Elders of the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam, the heirs of the dragon Theornn. In the center should have been Tyr, their chief, as Eldest of the eldest clan. There was no better place for the inevitable confrontation. He would tell them all, tell them he knew everything, tell them he knew what they were at last.

But Tyr was not present. Vetr sat in his place.

“I beg your pardon, Elder Brother,” said Morlock. He had no quarrel with Vetr. “I have words for Tyr. Some fool told me he was here.”

Vetr rose to his feet. “He is not. You had better tell your words to me.”

Morlock shook his head. “No. Where is he?”

“You have not understood, Brother. He is
not.
Your guide brought you, I guess, where you asked to go. Old Father Tyr has gone with the summoner Earno to his last combat. I am the Eldest of Theorn Clan.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Under the Mountains

T
he nest that Vendas had fashioned out of his ruined bed was beginning to rot. This had something to do with the fluid being secreted under the scales that now covered his skin. A number of his guards had tried to buy the bed from him, as that was the only way he would even discuss parting with it. But he kept raising the price. Finally one of the guards brought in a small sum of gold, supposing the captive would, as the proverb had it, prefer real gold to talked-about jewels. But Vendas had simply killed him and taken his money. Now the guards sat their watches in pairs, wore armor, and did not talk to the prisoner.

He was unconscious when Vyrlaeth, the snakelike master of healing, brought Deor and Morlock in to view him. Smoke trailed from his distended nostrils.

“He's been asleep now for two days,” Vyrlaeth told Morlock. “See how long and sharp his head is getting? We think the jaws will open up there, at the top of his head.”

“What about his face?”

“Perhaps it will just wear away. He will never have wings. But: you see how low his shoulders are getting? Perhaps his legs and arms will fuse into his body and he will become a fire-breathing serpent. There are such in Tychar, they say. It's most interesting. I almost wish we had more like Ven to study.”

“It is terrible to see.” Morlock's tone was distant, as if he were remembering something.

“I've seen nothing worse,” Deor agreed, scowling at Vyrlaeth. “Nor had Eldest Tyr; he told me as much.” Deor paused, then added impulsively, “We are all like Ven, these days.”

Morlock looked at him without expression. “What do you mean?”

Deor knew well enough what he meant, but it was difficult to say. Ven represented to him everything that had changed when the dragons came. The familiar had become strange, then horrible, without ceasing to be familiar. He stood there, talking to Morlock, as he had countless times before. But it was different—he could not speak freely, and Morlock seemed to have the same problem. Conversation had a tendency to flicker and go out. It was not because they could not think of anything to say—who cared for silence then? No: it was because they were thinking constantly of what they could not say.

When Tyr had lost (or won) the coin toss, this moment became inevitable. Someday Morlock would return to Thrymhaiam. It was the lot of one of his
harven
kin to go with Earno, to protect Morlock from exile. It was the lot of the other to stay behind and tell him the truth of these events, when he was ready to hear it. “Yours is the harder task, Deortheorn,” said the Eldest, after the coin chose him. Deor had not believed it, and still did not. But it was hard enough. He knew that he could not tell Morlock the whole truth in his present strange mood. (What had he seen on Tunglskin? What had the Dead Cor, perhaps, told him?) But Deor refused to lie to him; that would do no one any good. So they ended up suffering through long silences—like this one.

“Never mind!” he said impatiently, brushing the matter away.

Morlock nodded. He, too, had something too dangerous to say. He was thinking how, in his insane anger, he had been ready to taunt Tyr with the twisted serpentine skeleton he had seen on Tunglskin. But he was not angry now. He felt only an emptiness that was not even grief or guilt. “I wish Old Father Tyr had not gone,” he said.

Deor shrugged. “You'll get no argument from me. Vetr is a good enough fellow, but no one can pretend we ever saw eye to eye.”

The dwarves on guard looked at each other nervously after this comment. “Deor!” said Vyrlaeth warningly.

Deor's impatience boiled over again. “Come along; let's get out of here and breathe some air.”

In the corridor outside he resumed, “Nevertheless, Tyr had his reasons for going. I don't think you're . . . considering everything.”

“Have I ever?”

“Quit that moaning. Think like one of us. You've brought more honor to Thrymhaiam in three days than I will in my whole life. That's not worthless.”

“It is, though. Honor is no use to dead dwarves.”

“Those-who-watch are ‘dead dwarves.' You never understood about honor. A dwarf would never say that.”

“Then.”

“A very stupid dwarf might. You see, I correct myself. You do the same. Why else did Tyr go under the mountains? He went for honor.”

Deor held his breath as he waited for Morlock to speak. He had privately resolved to tell Morlock the whole truth if he even seemed to ask about it. This situation was intolerable.

But Morlock said only, “I understand.”

As they walked down the corridor Deor felt a kind of disappointment. He didn't know what Morlock knew, or thought he knew. But it could be nothing like the truth that Deor knew. Perhaps he should go on and speak out anyway. But the moment had passed.

As he walked next to Morlock he thought of how the crime he had committed along with Tyr was destroying them. Those-who-watch were already exacting their punishment.

Suddenly he thought of a way to say something. He said, “About Vendas . . .”

“Yes?”

“What I meant—Ven was no one out of the ordinary. All of us have felt what he must feel: arrogance that ends in the abasement of greed, anger that clouds even self-interest. We are taught from birth to overcome these things. That is what the customs are for; that is what hospitality means. The fact that we need them proves that the other things are there. They are always there. Ven's shame is Tyr's, and mine.”

Morlock nodded, and then he said an odd thing, in an odd tone of voice, “Regin and Fafnir were brothers.” It wasn't clear that he even intended for Deor to hear him, and when he met his kin's astonished eye he added, “And what's yours is mine. We are kin,
harven coruthen
.”

“
Hmph.
I'll
try to keep it in mind.”

Morlock smiled, and they walked together in silence. But it was an easier silence. Morlock no longer seemed so troubled; he seemed to have made a decision of some kind. Not until later did Deor realize what it was.

The names Regin and Fafnir stuck in Deor's mind; he wondered what Morlock's murmured comment meant, but somehow was reluctant to track him down and ask him. Deor himself talked a good deal more than he was aware of, and he was sometimes embarrassed when someone asked him what he was talking about.

Late that night, he was leaving his workroom and ran into Vyrlaeth, outside the Chambers of Healing.

“Listen, Vyrlaeth,” he said, on impulse, “have you ever heard of Regin and Fafnir?”

Vyrlaeth's long gray lips twisted in humorous chagrin. “Not before this afternoon, when I heard Morlock mention them to you.”

“Oh, then—Hey! Were you spying on us?”

“Naturally, naturally,” said the beardless shameless dwarf. “Morlock is an interesting study; I have often found him so. More interesting than Vendas, in some specific ways.”

“Eh,” said Deor—at a loss, and not for the first time, by the healer's frosty interest in his fellow beings.

“I consulted a few onomastica this evening, after my late rounds,” Vyrlaeth continued, noting Deor's dismay with cold amused eyes. “Would you like to know what I learned?”

“Naturally, naturally.”

Vyrlaeth nodded to acknowledge Deor's mimicry and said, “The names come from an ancient Coranian legend of dragonkilling. The story has attached to several heroes in Laent and elsewhere. But the tale tells of two monsters: a gifted maker named Regin and a great seer named Fafnir. They were brothers, and their father was rich, but the treasure was cursed. The father died because of the curse, and Fafnir stole the treasure. He turned into a dragon, the better to defend his stolen hoard. Regin recruits a hero to slay the dragon, offering to split the treasure. But he secretly plans to betray the hero and murder him, once the dragon is slain. The hero is warned in the nick of time, you'll be glad to hear, and kills both brothers, so getting the treasure for himself. I suppose it's a happy ending, of a sort.”

“Urr.” This was giving Deor a lot to think about. “What happens to the hero?”

“Nothing good. Heroes don't live happily ever after in these sorts of stories. Do you know what this means, Deor?”

“I'm pretty sure Morlock has figured out that dragons and dwarves are akin, at least. I was trying to tell him that myself, by showing him what Vendas had become.”

“Too late, I think. I warned Old Father Tyr not to hide this knowledge from Morlock—if it came to him too late, it might destroy the trust that should obtain between
harven
kin. But I think Old Father Tyr was ashamed, and saw little reason to mention something so shameful and so unlikely to be relevant. Or so it would have seemed before this year.”

Deor wished that Vyrlaeth would shut up. He had some thinking to do, and the snakelike healer's babbling wasn't helping him do it.

“It will be interesting to see what Morlock's behavior will be once he begins to assimilate this new knowledge,” the healer remarked.

“I suppose so.” Deor realized he had not seen Morlock for hours. He wondered idly where his
harven
kin was. Then he did not wonder; he knew.

He turned away from Vyrlaeth and ran all the way to the Helgrind Gate. By the time he had reached there a group of kin-councillors (Vetr's counsellors, that is, among whom Deor was conspicuously not included) were milling around the guards. At their center was Vetr himself, speaking to the senior dwarf in the watch.