A Guile of Dragons (40 page)

The dragon was after him before he could take three steps. But his fourth stride hurtled him over the threshold of a tunnel too narrow for the dragon to follow him. When Saijok reached the tunnel entrance a moment later he made the mistake of thrusting his head into it. He realized his mistake before he wasted more time throwing fire down the tunnel. But before he was able to withdraw his snout and reach blindly up the passage Morlock had fled beyond the reach of his claws.

Morlock heard them clash against the ceiling, walls, and floor of the corridor behind him. Then, without further display, the dragon was gone. Morlock ran on through the absolute darkness that reigns under the mountains. Visions were born in his blind eyes, as if his mind were struggling to blot out the dark with lies. He paid them no heed but ran on. Somewhere ahead, somewhere above, there was light and free air.

There was a cool draft in the passageway. He kept his face against it, moving upward. This led him on a fairly straight path through the tangling passages. Many of those off to his left seemed to have been ruined; he could tell they were closed by the echoes that rebounded to him as he passed, by the dead pockets of air within their entrances. But mostly he ran without thinking: there was no need for it.

Cries came from the mouths of various passages as he ran by them, the echoes of the master dragon roaring in pain and rage. Morlock never doubted that the other knew by heart what seemed to be his only route for escape and was hurtling toward the exit by those tunnels that were large enough to let him pass. But there were few such in the Runhaiar, Morlock knew, and those seemed to be carrying his enemy south and downward as Morlock ran north and east and upward. Then for a long time there was silence, except for himself and the sphere of echoes surrounding him in the dark.

Presently he saw a crooked line of light before him: grayish gold leavening the darkness at the end of the tunnel. He had been running for so long, he found he could not increase his speed. But he did not permit it to lessen as he entered the zone of shadows at the tunnel's end.

He jumped through the jagged mouth of the tunnel, and open space and light and cold air swirled about him. He landed on a hillside of gold pieces gleaming with expelled venom. His feet went out from under him and he fell.

Rising to his feet he knew he must be in the den of the master dragon. Of course: Saijok had moved the hoard from Vild's seat in the valley to his own cave. Morlock ran a cold eye over the hoard. It was not paltry, but it was nothing to content a dragon. Haukrull was fairly wealthy, as the oldest settlement of Other Ilk in the north. But its accumulated wealth (added to much that must have been stolen in Ranga í Rayal) did not compare with the fame of Thrymhaiam. And Morlock knew that the fame of Thrymhaiam fell short of the facts.

The thought nagged at him, when he wished to think of nothing. Across the echoing treasure-filled cave was a blindingly bright hole: the gate of the dragon's den, which he had seen from the outside. To his right, as he faced the gate, was the dark mouth of a vast tunnel, from which a fountain of cool steam was rising. With the steam, troubling echoes rose into the light. They grew slightly louder as he listened. Saijok Mahr was approaching.

Without willing it, he backed away from the cavernous tunnel. He tripped over something and fell on a pile of jewels, as sharp as humbler stones. He rolled over and saw what had caused him to fall.

It was a body. It was Tyr's body. It was not dead. And it was not alone.

They lay in a ragged row, like a rack of silver spears he saw beyond them in the imperfectly ordered hoard. He knew them all. Beyond Tyr, who wore the gray cape of a thain, was Earno. Next to him was Lernaion, like a gray-etched ebony statue in that place, pregnant with violence. Beyond Lernaion was a member of his faction: Rild of the Third Stone, a vocate from Easthold. Beyond him were more vocates, and a line of thains beyond them. He did not need to lift the lids of any of their eyes to know they were in dragonspell: he could see the blood-bright circles of their enchanted eyes through the thin translucent skin of their eyelids. This was the fate Almeijn had died to escape.

From the cave behind him, Morlock heard the sudden full-throated roar of Saijok Mahr.

Plunging into action, Morlock seized Earno and Tyr by their collars and began to haul them toward the bright gate. It stood with its threshold slightly above his line of sight. When he had dragged the two bodies up the glittering slope that led to the gate, he stood still for a moment to catch his breath.

As he paused, he heard something. He heard it not above the other sounds around him—the rattle of coins falling back down the slope, the repeated roar of the approaching dragon, the sound of his own labored breathing in the venom-laden air—but below these, on the level of the wind that hissed by the gateposts outside. The sound was directionless, dim, irregular in rhythm. He had heard it only once before, but that made it all the more impossible to mistake.

Beyond the curtain of light, there were dragons breathing.

Morlock retreated hastily down the slope, drawing the bodies of Tyr and Earno behind him. Of course: when the hoard had been moved to the new master's den, the guile must have followed it. They were in attendance outside. Plainly they would not hesitate to destroy anyone who stumbled into their midst, attempting to make off with any part of the hoard.

He wondered whether he should drag the spellbound captives into the tunnel from which he had come. Saijok would not be able to reach them there (though how they would ultimately escape Morlock could not imagine). But he had no sooner thought this when he knew it was impossible. He could hear Saijok approaching, like a storm rising out of the earth. He would be here in moments. Morlock could save two of the captives, perhaps, and himself.

Lernaion and Earno should be saved, he supposed. But, given this miraculous opportunity, he had no intention of leaving Tyr to die while saving the summoners. The safety of the Wardlands and his loyalty as a Guardian dictated that he sacrifice his
ruthen
blood, but there were deeper loyalties—and, besides, would the realm really be safer with Earno in charge of its defense? He had been willful and strange, lately. Lernaion, too, had been tested against the dragons and failed. And father Tyr was wise: he knew the enemy from within.

This thought, bearing the knowledge of the dwarf's kinship with dragons, threw a shadow of repugnance. Why save any of them? he wondered, looking down at them sleeping like lizards on a sunsweep of gold coins. In that instant, if he could have saved them all by lifting a finger they all would have died, each one. Except Tyr.

Morlock wondered a little that he still revered his
harven
father, when he knew every dwarf's blood was as poisonous as his own. Dwarves too had betrayed, murdered, rebelled. It was odd to look on Eldest Tyr, the authority he had admired all his life, and know him for a rebel, the desperate and crafty leader of an ancient rebellion. No wonder they called it the Longest War! It would never be over.

As he stood over the singed and torn sleepers, his hands stained with the dragon's venom and his own blood, his heart ached to be at peace with itself. He hated the shame that burned him, worse than fire, the guilt he suffered that was not his own. He wished he could be free of it, be washed clean of it. But there was nothing in the world that could free him of it: he was who he was. Whether he called himself Ambrosius or syr Theorn he was still Morlock. The guilt was not his, yet somehow he shared the burden.

But he could rebel. The current of his blood might carry him toward evil, but he could fight it. Then he knew that Tyr was truly his father, as much as Merlin was. As the dwarf had fought to keep faith with a destiny beyond his blood, so Morlock would. He was Morlock Ambrosius: he would deny it no longer. But in his heart he was Morlock syr Theorn, and he swore he would keep faith with everything that meant or could mean. And then he knew what he must do—what he would do.

He no longer felt inclined to move any of the Guardians, even Tyr, to safety. Had they sought safety for themselves? Besides, there was no time. Saijok Mahr's angry light was already leavening the cavernous tunnel's darkness. But he reached down, grabbed the flawed gem, and broke the pendant chain around Tyr's neck.

This emblem of shame and peril had hung about Tyr's neck since Morlock had been a boy. Now perhaps it would be of some use. If he could break the unstable pattern at its core and release an endothermia, he might use it as a weapon against the dragon. His craft might yet slay the guile master.

Leaving the captives, he hurled himself toward the row of spears. Seizing the longest, he ran on to the base of the golden hill. The cavern above it was already red-gold with reflected light. The roar of the dragon was like a barrage of thunder. Yet he had time to think, a little time. A moment, at most, to think and act.

He summoned a vision and ascended into the lowest realm of rapture. In the undreaming state of vision he directly apprehended the ur-shapes he had blindly woven into the gem's core long ago, precariously balancing the energies of that-which-utters-heat and that-which-devours-heat: a red dragon and a blue-black dragon devouring each other in the gem's heart.

He lifted the flawed stone with the black-and-white flames of his tal-hand, letting the hand of his fleshly body fall quiescent to his side. Then he slew the red dragon in the stone, releasing the blue shock of endothermic reaction.

He fit the now-gaping flaw in the stone into the point of a silver spear and banished the vision.

The spear was shuddering in his hands as if it were lodged in the heart of a wounded angry beast. He gripped it with both hands and waited in a haze of bitter blue air for the advent of his enemy.

The light in the cave-mouth before him brightened unbearably; he could hear the beat of the storm-swift dragon's wings; he could hear nothing else. Yet he watched and wondered, pointless thoughts oppressing him as he awaited the fate he had chosen. The dragon did not appear.

Then he was there, but Morlock never saw him, only the blast of fire and venom that swept down from the tunnel mouth. He longed to raise the Ambrosian shield, to protect his eyes and mouth from the venom and the heat. But he could not do that and also achieve what he had set himself here to do. He felt the angle at which the flames struck him changing rapidly. Then the zone of flames was passing from him as he stood half-crouched under the onslaught.

Desperately he straightened and leapt back into the sheath of flames, holding the spear and its zone of bitter frost between him and the dragon. He hurled the shaking spear with all his strength upward, seeking only to strike the heart of the fire, the source of the dark light blinding him. The flames and the frost passed from him as the dragon flew roaring overhead, and he fell to his knees in the smoke, blind for long moments from tears and poison.

He heard the dragon land on the far side of the cave. He groped on the cave floor for some sort of weapon, but found none. As his eyesight returned and the bank of fumes over him slowly dispersed, he saw Saijok Mahr glaring at him menacingly with one eye. There was not even the mark of a spear on the dragon.

Saijok Mahr roared. There were words in it, but Morlock could not make them out. He lurched defiantly to his feet. He thought of shouting in response, but could think of nothing to say. He contented himself with raising the Ambrosian shield high. Fire and venom had stained the black battered shield, but the silver falcon and thorns still glittered against the dark field.

Maddeningly, his mind would not give up. He kept thinking of wild and unworkable expedients for the moment when the dragon struck to kill. It was pointless and it lacked dignity. If some of them had been more likely . . .

The dragon's throat exploded in a jet of fire and ice.

The dragon spread its wings and began to fall forward through a cloud of flame and steam. Saijok continued to fall headfirst down to the hoard. The ground shook when he struck.

The master dragon lay among the gold and jewels, writhing feebly. The explosion had nearly severed his neck in two; from the wide gaping wound, fire-bright blood flowed in a torrent. And something else gleamed there, red and silver, drenched in burning draconic blood.

Morlock watched in weary triumph. The single eye of his enemy turned in the motionless head and fixed on him. The look of malice and suffering on the dragon's face moved Morlock with unexpected pity. He did not avoid the eye as it focused to fire-bright clarity. This last futile effort exhausted the dragon. The eye went dark, and the jaws issued a final stream of black smoke into the dense cloudy air of the cave. For long moments Morlock continued to stare at the motionless dragon until even the blood ceased to flow. Saijok Mahr was dead. Morlock was
rokhlan
indeed, at last.

He went to assure himself the dragon was dead and the endothermia quenched, as it seemed to be. He found what had been the wounded gemstone and the silver spear lodged in the wreckage of the dead dragon's neck.