A Guile of Dragons (9 page)

Earno returned home and gathered some things together. Just as he was mounting his horse to depart, a young woman wearing the gray cape of a thain rode up and handed him a message.

It was unsigned, but written in Illion's tall, tangled script. It said only:
Morlock syr Theorn, thain, guarding at the Lonetower in the Gap of Lone. He served me well as guide in the north, five years ago. He has also walked some of the unguarded lands, including Kaen
.

“My regards to Illion,” Earno said curtly to the thain, who was waiting for a response. “I find his advice good.”

“When isn't it?” she replied brashly.

He waved her away and rode off down the street.

“The Road,” as an Easthold proverb boasts, “runs.” It links A Thousand Towers with the densely populated manors and port-cities of the south; it penetrates the Hrithaens to communicate with Westhold; it spans the long arc of Easthold, north to south.

The Road runs—but not forever. Earno came to its northernmost point as darkness was falling on the thirteenth day of the month of Bayring. The stone paving simply came to an end without so much as a signpost or a milestone. But, Earno reflected, a signpost was hardly necessary. Travellers who came this far north surely knew where they were going . . . or didn't care where they went.

There was an inn at the end of the road, but Earno didn't enter it. The Lonetower was only a short ride north of here. But he dismounted to give his horse and himself some rest.

Chariot, the first moon, was standing halfway down toward the eastern horizon. In a month and a half it would set and the first month of the new year would begin: Cymbals, named for the characteristic instrument of the Winter Feast. The second moon, Horseman, whose rising and setting marked the months, would rise again on the first night of Borderer, the last month, to finally set on the last night of the year. Now Earno watched the western horizon for the rise of Trumpeter, the third moon. It, too, would set on the last night of the year, but it was faster as well as smaller than its two companions: it would cross the sky three times before then.

Now it rose, fiercely radiant as it ascended from the west. Small though it was, it shed twice as much light as somber Chariot, sinking in the east. Earno watched Trumpeter clear the horizon (crooked with the Hrithaen peaks), then remounted his horse and rode on through the dim blue landscape. Not much later he arrived at the Lonetower in the Gap of Lone.

A sentinel in the gray cape of a thain greeted him at the gate of the tower, taking in his white mantle of office. “Hail Summoner . . . Earno?” he said, somewhat tentatively, peering in the light of the moons.

Without dismounting, Earno nodded in acknowledgement. He said, “Hail in turn to you, Thain. Bring Thain Morlock to me.”

“What for? Has he done something?” demanded the sentinel, with undisguised eagerness.

Earno frowned. “Bring him to me.”

“Beg your pardon, sir.” The sentinel was embarrassed.

“Don't call me ‘sir.' You have my pardon. Bring Morlock to me.”

“Beg your pardon, s—Summoner Earno. He is on patrol.” The sentinel gestured vaguely east.

Earno turned his eyes to the moonlight-colored gap. This was a flat grassy plain set between two mountain ranges: the Grartan, marching southward, and the Whitethorns (second only to the high Hrithaens) running from west to east. Looking at the Gap of Lone one always felt the unnaturalness of it, as if someone had pressed flat the region where the mountains ranges joined, or as if the plain had somehow stayed as it was while the bordering regions crumpled upward into mountains.

“Which post?” Earno asked. “The Grartan? Or the Whitethorn side?”

“Neither, sir,” said the sentinel, forgetting himself. “He's in the Maze itself.” He gestured again at the colorless open plain of grass.

In that case, Earno knew, he might be hours or days in returning to the Lonetower, and it would be fruitless to go out seeking him. Earno considered lodging at the Lonetower, imagined dozens of gray-caped thains goggling at him and calling him “sir,” and rejected the idea. “When Morlock returns, send him to me at the inn by the end of the road. You know it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have him bring two horses,” Earno added, and rode away.

The next day, about noon, the landlord came to his room and told him that the Thain Morlock was awaiting him in the courtyard of the inn. Earno donned his mantle and gathered up his belongings.

The thains were the third and lowest class of Guardian, more candidates to the Graith than Guardians proper. Unlike vocates who could (if they chose) jealously guard their independence, or the summoners, who had powerful prerogatives and influence, thains were obliged to obey their seniors in the Graith, even senior thains. Their life resembled the military castes of the unguarded lands—but not too closely. Their discipline was to prepare them for radical independence, not unthinking obedience.

In general thains did not impress Earno; this Morlock was no exception. The summoner had expected him to be a dwarf. (The Theorn were a dwarvish clan.) He was not, though. He was of middle height for a man; his hair was dark and tangled; his skin was grayish—or perhaps it only seemed so, since all of his clothes, not just his cape, were gray in color, down to his unpolished boots. His eyes were an alarmingly pale shade of gray also. There was something awkward about him—the set of his shoulders, maybe. The expression on his face was sullen and dull.

“Thain Morlock,” said Earno, greeting him pleasantly, “I am the summoner Earno.”

“I know,” said the thain, after a long pause.

Earno looked at him sharply. Was he being insolent? Earno had spent half his life as the officer of a merchant ship, and he had an ingrained dislike for insolence. “I'm told you're a northerner,” he continued more briskly.

Morlock stared at him. “I was fostered by Theorn clan,” he said slowly.

Becoming impatient, Earno said, “I wish to go north. What road do you recommend?”

Again a pause. “That depends,” Morlock said.

“On what?”

“On where you intend to arrive.”

Earno was about to reply harshly to this when he realized that the question had not occurred to him before. To him the north was almost entirely unknown, and Lernaion's location within it was entirely unknown.

“How would you go?” he asked, trying to be less insistent.

Morlock shrugged. “When I go I travel to Thrymhaiam, my clan-home. Or to Northtower—thains' tower east of there. Same route. So. Along the Whitewell—river with its source in the ‘Thorns. Then. Down past the gravehills. Ah. A network of valleys, you have to know them, leads to Thrymhaiam. From Thrymhaiam you can travel all around by . . . tunnels. Except to the west. The Fire is too hot there. . . . I mean, the mountains, they're volcanic.” His hands clenched suddenly, and apparently involuntarily.

Finding this broken recital deeply irritating, Earno interrupted. “Very well. You will guide me to Thrymhaiam.”

Morlock nodded. He looked apprehensively at Earno's pack.

Noting this, “We leave immediately,” Earno said.

The thain nodded again and turned to his horse. He mounted with deliberate speed. Earno saw a cloud of dust shake loose from his clothes, and realized they were not, in fact, gray (except for the thain's cape), but had been coated thick with dust.

Feeling his face grow hot, Earno realized what had happened. The thain had returned from his patrol and had been instantly dispatched by his overzealous seniors. Possibly he had not slept in days; he had brought no pack. Earno knew he should tell the thain to dismount, to get some rest, at least to wash off and find some of the things he would need before they set out.

He did not. He mounted the horse the thain had brought for him. Then Morlock led the way across the courtyard and across the Road, west and north, toward the Whitethorns.

Something bothered Earno all that day. It was Morlock's name. Somehow, it was known to him, but he couldn't summon the memory.

It occurred to him while he was sleeping, and he awoke at once. He sat up in the darkness, pulling his mantle around him. The embers of the campfire still cast a dim glow over the area. He saw the outline of Morlock's shape, sprawled in a pile of leaves. Behind him he dimly heard the roar of the Whitewell River.

He got up and took a few hot coals in a metal cup. He walked over to where Morlock lay and dropped them among the leaves.

Almost immediately, fire leapt up and spread through the dry leaves. Presently the light woke Morlock. His cold gray eyes opened, and they looked through the flames at Earno. A long eerie moment passed, and then Morlock set to beating out the flames with his bare hands. In a few moments they were extinguished.

“You've burnt my cape,” Morlock observed shortly.

“But not
you.”

“No,” Morlock admitted, “not me.”

“Then you are Morlock
Ambrosius
—the son of the exile.” All the Ambrosii had it, this immunity from fire.

“No.”

“You deny it, do you?” It was what Earno had waited for. Once before an Ambrosius had called him a liar to his face . . .

“No,” Morlock said flatly. “Merlin was my father. But I was fostered with Theorn clan when my parents went into exile. My name is Morlock syr Theorn.”

Earno was taken aback. Something of the matter was lodged in his memory, confirming Morlock's story. He had supposed that Morlock had become a Guardian under false pretenses, that there was some sort of plot. . . . Now he saw that there was no plot. Abruptly (he was a person of abrupt emotions, though he struggled against them) he felt sorry for the young thain, glaring up at him from a bed of ashes.

“You know I exiled your father—” Earno began.

“It was the Graith of Guardians that exiled Merlin!” the thain said harshly, as if he were offended.

Again Earno was taken aback. “You are right,” he said. “I misspoke.” He had forgotten what he was going to say.

Morlock shrugged and stood up.

Earno turned away and went back to his sleeping cloak. As he fell asleep he heard Morlock gathering a new bed of dry leaves.