by James Enge
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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Knife
The next day they stopped at a large farm on the bank of the Whitewell to get the supplies they would need in their trip over the mountains. Morlock knew the people well; he often stopped there for provisions when he took the road home. Usually he only needed food, though. Now he wanted heavy clothes for the summoner and himself, food for both, and some kind of weapon. He was no good with a bow, and swords are
useless, unless you expect to run into a duelist. An axe would have been best: good for defense, and useful, too. Morlock never felt that it was trouble for nothing when he carried an axe over the mountains. The farmer only had one, though, and was unwilling to part with it. Morlock settled at last for a knife. Decent metal, but terrible work: his fingers itched for the tools and time to set it right. But the time, at least, he didn’t have; the summoner had stamped away from the haggling with unconcealed impatience.
There was a problem with the farmer, too. He had assumed that Morlock would stay and work for the knife, as he usually did for his provisions. “The horses are more than enough for the clothes and food,” he explained. “But the knife is different. Metal’s scarce. On this side of the mountains, I mean.”
Morlock understood. “I’ll bring you a knife from Thrymhaiam.”
“Bring two.”
“One,” Morlock said flatly. They could do without the knife, if need be.
The farmer saw it in his face. “A real working knife, now,” he insisted, conceding the point. “None of these silver showpieces.”
Morlock stood. “Northern steel. From my hand or my father’s.”
“I don’t want better.” The farmer stood and they struck hands. Then they went to make packs for the provisions.
Fifteen days later the two Guardians were high in the Whitethorns, at the source of the Whitewell. This was a hot spring, running out of a steep snow-clad mountainside. The banks of the stream were anything but white: black mud, gray stone—even green with life at spots. But it was striking to see water running in the deep snow of the high mountains.
“This is rather high in the mountains for a hot spring, isn’t it?” Earno asked the thain.
Morlock shrugged. “Northhold is new.” It seemed to be a proverb.
“When will we get through the mountains?”
The thain glanced at him in surprise. “It’s mostly mountains, in the ‘Hold.”
“But not like this.”
“No. In . . . Dwarvish we call the Whitethorns ‘the Walls.’ Or maybe ‘the Shields’; Dwarvish doesn’t distinguish. We are in South Wall, now, a low part. You could almost cart goods along the Whitewell.”
Earno felt differently. But he was no mountaineer.
Morlock led the way up a nearby ridge and pointed. “Look.”
Earno was already looking. For long days the horizon had been narrowing—deeply oppressive to him, who had grown up on the wide plains of Westhold and spent much of his life upon the sea. The nearest mountains had become the limit of vision, and although these were gigantic Earno had begun to feel as if he were spending day after day in the same frigid closed room.
But now, between two nearby mountains, there was a break in the horizon. He could see deep into the north, many days’ travel: hills and smaller mountains, blue with distance, some topped already with snow, like still white flames in blue smoke.
“Those low hills you see before us,” Morlock was saying, “extend over to the west, past what we can see. Beyond them, ahead of us, you see a group of snow-covered peaks.”
“Yes.”
“That is Thrymhaiam, home of the Seven Clans.”
“Then we go through the hills.”
“No. It is not a good idea to travel through the gravehills.”
“Ah. The Dead Corain. Now I shall see their graves.”
“You see them now. If it were night you would see the banefires.”
“They still burn, then?”
“Yes. We will see them as we travel west around the hills. It will take more than one night.”
“Why don’t we turn east? I can see the end of the hills; it must be the shorter way.”
After a moment Morlock said, “We might do so, if you wish. There is a settlement of the Other Ilk that way.”
The phrase “Other Ilk” struck Earno strangely. He wondered what it meant, but he felt he should know. Then at last, he dragged up the memory, from when he was trading with many nations in the unguarded lands: it was an expression dwarves used to refer to non-dwarves. Earno was of the Other Ilk—as was Morlock himself, really.
“We must go east,” Earno said. He was thinking that he might hear some news of Lernaion that way. “I’m sorry,” he added. He never cared to overrule a subordinate, unless it was necessary.
The thain nodded. “The Hill of Storms is near there,” he observed, almost conversationally.
This caught Earno’s interest. “Why would they settle there?” he asked as they began to descend the ridge’s far side, “these . . . Other Ilk?”
“It is only a colony, really, from Ranga í Rayal, a settlement beyond Thrymhaiam to the north. Ranga has good farmland, but they don’t have as much metal as they’d like. There are rich deposits near the gravehills, though, so they established a mine there.”
“Couldn’t they trade for the metal?”
“Yes. They get most of their metal from us—that is, from the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam. And we get food from them. But it’s good to have a choice, you see. So the Rangans develop mines where they can. And Thrymhaiam trades with others for food. Your people, for one.”
“My people?” Earno was surprised.
“Westholders. They are great sea-goers, the people of Westhold. The trading ships come as far north as the Broken Coast, and beyond.”
“I once worked on a trading ship,” Earno observed.
“Yes, I know: the Stonebreaker, to the unguarded lands. They still sing that story on the ships. A guile of dragons attacked the convoy, and you killed the master dragon, Kellander Rukh, in single combat.”
Earno looked at him and smiled. “A sailor’s first skill is lying, you know. They learn it before they tie their first knot.”
Morlock smiled a little, too, but said seriously, “You can tell when they’re lying. They’re too proud to lie about you, or Illion.”
“Well . . . Your line, too, is very famous,” Earno said generously.
Morlock paused, then said, “It’s true. Naevros syr Tol carries a blade from Thrymhaiam, and would never use another. They say he’s the best swordsman under the Guard.”
“The Hill of Storms—That was a great victory of your father’s, wasn’t it?” Earno insisted.
Morlock said nothing. He shifted the pack on his crooked shoulders and continued to lead the way down.
“Can it be you don’t know the story?” Earno asked, following him. He thought it strange that Morlock could tell a tale of his father’s greatest enemy, Earno himself, but none about his father. Had they failed to tell him about the heritage of the Ambrosii at Thrymhaiam? As much as Earno hated Merlin, this seemed wrong. He continued, “It was before the Northhold came under the Guard. The peoples of the north appealed to the Graith for aid against the Coranians, who were invading them. Merlin was a vocate, then, and when the Graith refused to act as a body he went alone over the mountains and fought the Dead Cor on the Hill of Storms. He defeated him with his own accursed blade, the sword-scepter Gryregaest—”
“I know all that!” shouted Morlock furiously.
They did not speak again for the rest of that day.
Presently Earno decided that he had made a mistake. Morlock must hate him for what he had done to Merlin. And Earno, for the first time, realized he felt guilty because of that. He had injured Morlock terribly, without knowing or intending it, years ago. He would do the same thing today, if it were needed to maintain the Guard. But he felt guilty all the same. And he wanted Morlock to forgive him for what he had done. He saw now that he had been trying to ingratiate himself with the thain—he, the Summoner of the Inner Lands!—so that he would be forgiven. And Morlock had dismissed him with contempt.
And rightly so. The boy had earned his hatred. It had been ungenerous of Earno to try and take that from him, too. He would not try again.
The next day they walked into the mining settlement after dark, just as the banefires on the crown of the Hill of Storms began to burn. The hill stood h
igh, dark and threatening over the settlement, and the intense blue fire obscuring its height cast no radiance into the town. You could sometimes see shapes moving in the banefire light, but as Morlock had told Earno the night before, it was not a good idea to look for them deliberately. “Because then the voices may follow,” he muttered, when pressed for an explanation, and Earno did not ask further.
Without saying what he expected, he had stood guard all night with the knife in his hand. Though obviously exhausted, he had pressed the march all the next day, trying to reach the settlement before another nightfall. Now that they were finally there, Earno noticed, he did not look noticeably relieved. But what he felt was his business.
“Is there a head man?” Earno asked the thain.
“There will be an Arbiter of the Peace. Her house is the high one, at the end of the street.”
“Very well. Stay here and watch over the packs.” Earno supposed it might have been useful to have the thain with him at the meeting. But he was tired of Morlock’s sullen company.
“A moment,” Morlock said, and fumbled at his belt. “Take this, please.”
Earno found the knife in his hands. The extent of Morlock’s dwarvish prejudice struck him speechless. Did he really think that a village Arbiter would attack the Summoner of the Inner Lands? Or that Earno Dragonkiller lacked his own methods of protecting himself? After a long look at the impassive thain, Earno placed the knife under his white mantle and silently walked away to the Arbiter’s house.
The Arbiter was a tall woman, her hair as dark as Morlock’s, her skin nearly as pale. There was nothing crooked or dwarvish about her, though. (Earno had begun to fear that everyone was like that in the north.) There was nothing hidden about her, either. Earno was announced while she was sitting over the remains of her dinner, and she leapt up to greet the summoner. By that time Earno had entered the room, and the Arbiter suddenly stopped and stared. Obviously she had been expecting his peer, but Earno (with his red-gray beard and stocky build) cut quite a different figure from the dark-skinned knifelike Lernaion. The Arbiter laughed, confessed her surprise, and led her guest to the seat of honor as the remains of her meal were borne away.