Guile of Dragons, A

by James Enge

He fell for four hundred years, light as a leaf in the evening air. That was how it seemed, anyway. As he turned, falling, he saw the heavy bat-winged dragon sweep over and turn downward in a steep controlled fall. It roared a third time, and the light spread like burning oil across the dark water below. Morlock believed the dragon was gaining on him, driving itself downward with its wings. The glittering waterscape vaulted upward and struck him like a field of stone.

  Morlock arced through the dark water, struggling to make progress toward the surface and the shore. Then the dragon plunged into the lake, and the dark water became redly opalescent with fire and turbulence.

  He felt a powerful current drawing him backward and down as the water went dark again. He fought the water savagely, hating it. It was the water keeping him from the air he needed so painfully, the water that was pushing him back toward the dragon. And in the middle of his struggle to hold his breath he realized he was tormentingly thirsty. It became a terrible temptation to open his lips and let the killing water in. He clenched his teeth. His feet touched something solid and he kicked off upward, finally breaking the surface. Expecting the dragon’s abysslike jaws to open up beneath him at any moment, he swam over the center of the turbulence and fought his way to shore.

  With almost the last of his strength he drew himself up on the rock ledge bordering the lake and crawled into the surrounding brush. He lay there for a few moments gasping, then crawled out and tried hopelessly to take his bearings for the Helgrind. He had fallen to the ground and was struggling back to his knees when he realized the dragon had not followed him out of the water. He looked back and saw that the turbulence in the lake was slowly clearing. At its center a dark shape lay still.

  The serpentine shape was sinking out of sight in the once-blue water. A heavy layer of fog diffused the light of the major moons—which, in any case, would have only lit up the surface of the lake, now greasy with expelled venom.

  That gave Morlock, perched on the stone ledge above the water, his first clue as to what had happened. The dragon had been thirsty. That was all! With the heat of its body and the venom secreted in its mouth or throat, a dragon must nearly always be thirsty. When it landed in the water after its sleep, it automatically began to drink. Perhaps, at first, it was only trying to draw him back into its jaws. In any case, it had been unable to stop drinking. It gorged itself on water until it drowned, until the fire in its heart was quenched.

  Morlock, his own thirst still burning in his throat, thought of his own struggle to hold his breath and was faintly sickened. The feeling was not dispelled by the voices of his harven kin, the watch of the High Gates, as they ran down the mountainside crying, “Rokhlan! Rokhlan! Dragonkiller! Dragonkiller!”

  That night Earno dreamed of his victory.

  Kellander Rukh again flew in the sky, his ruin surrounding him like a smoky many-winged halo. Earno again stood on the deck of the Stonebreaker. He heard the death-cries of the captain below. He saw the mainmast in flames, the crew abandoning ship on every side. Everything was as it had been.

  Except that, when Earno stood forth in pride and despair to cry out his own challenge to the master dragon, his voice broke and he found he could not speak. The dragon paused, called out his name in a mocking voice, and fell like a golden thunderbolt. The dream was over.

  He awoke in darkness, in the grip of the same ominous feeling that had dogged him since midsummer. He realized that little Shoy, his new guide, was at his bedside, calling out his name.

  Shoy told him that it was after midnight and that Morlock had returned from Haukrull. There was some confusion at first, as Shoy kept referring to Morlock as “the Dragonkiller.”

  PART FOUR

  AGAINST EVERYTHING

  Now I have a friend, for instance—why, goodness gracious, gentlemen, he is also a friend of yours, and indeed, whose friend is he not? In undertaking any business this gentleman at once explains in high-sounding and clear language how he intends to act in accordance with the laws of truth and reason. And not only that. He will talk to you, passionately and vehemently, all about real and normal human interests; he will scornfully reproach the shortsighted fools for not understanding their own interests, nor the real meaning of virtue and—exactly a quarter of an hour later, without any sudden or external cause, but just because of some inner impulse which is stronger than any of his own interests, he will do something quite different, that is to say, he will do something that is exactly contrary to what he has been saying himself: against laws of reason and against his own interests, in short, against everything.

  —Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Control

  Ven was restless. He didn’t like the bed. He felt exposed there, unprotected. He got up and tried the metal door of his cell. It was still locked. That no longer bothered him; he was used to it. But now he began to want a lock on his own side—he had no way to keep anyone out.

  He went back to bed. If he crouched down behind it he would see whoever came in before they saw him. He tried it once and immediately felt safer.

  Suddenly he saw a stone bottle that had been filled with water. It was lying in the far corner of the room. It occurred to him that, if he happened to fall asleep, even for a moment, someone could unlock the door and take the bottle, without him even knowing. The event was quite clear in his mind—it was just the sort of thing they would do. He imagined himself sleeping, the opening door, a long arm appearing in the door, hand outstretched like a snake’s hood as it fell toward the bottle . . . his bottle. The thought pained him inexpressibly. He envisioned the event again and again, gnawing the ends of his fingers in vexation and fear.

  Finally he could stand it no more. They had pushed him too far. Choosing his moment carefully, he leapt over the barricade and dashed to the corner. He snatched up the bottle and plunged back over the barricade. Safe! Even if they had seen him it was too late to act. If they came at him now he would bite them, as he had the other time. He had seized the moment and its fruit was his. They must be frustrated indeed, knowing the bottle was now his, never to be theirs.

  He added the bottle to his little pile of possessions. There was a ring, a wax tablet and stylus, the buckles from his belt and boots (polished to an unsatisfyingly dull gloss). It was not so much, he thought sadly, looking at them, but it was a start. The bottle was a significant addition.

  The florid words and complex theologies that had been impressed upon his memory were fading. They would have stayed vivid and clear only if he had put them to use. But even now he could remember some of them.

  He muttered, “Asserted unities generate their opposites, resulting in dualities of opposition. Unbalanced trinities degenerate into dualities of opposition. Trinities can only be balanced by opposing trinities, resulting in effective dualities of opposition. In this way we can see that duality of opposition is the fundamental principle of existence. There is no unity; there is only duality.”

  He licked his lips (he was so thirsty!) and thought about gold.

  Morlock was vomiting outside the High Gates when Tyrtheorn and Earno arrived. Deor was already there, perched on a rock safely out of the way.

  “I don’t think you’re really trying, Morlock,” he was saying sardonically. “There! That was better!”

  Morlock retched again; the splashing sound that followed was painfully clear in the dark quiet of predawn. He spat, coughed, spat again. He shuddered violently a few times. Then, after remaining still for a moment, he said carefully, “Thank you.”

  “Bah. Don’t be so polite. Get that venom out of you.”

  Morlock cleared his throat and spat. “I need something to drink,” he said.

  They both stood up, and that was when they saw the Eldest and the summoner standing in the gateway.

  “Morlock’s been doctoring himself,” Deor said, breaking the embarrassed silence. He jumped down from the rock and ran past Tyr and Earno. There was a cask of beer in the watchroom off th
e corridor within. Deor drew a couple of mugs, exchanged a few words with the dwarves on watch, and walked back.

  “. . . that you knew this treatment for venom,” Earno was saying.

  Morlock nodded. “They taught us at the Lonetower. The Kaeniar use a venom like that of the dragons—Ah, Deor. Thanks.” Morlock took one of the mugs and turned toward the darkness. He could be heard gargling a mouthful of beer, then rinsing out his mouth with the rest of the mugful. He turned back to them. Deor silently handed him the second mug, accepting the empty one in exchange.

  “The worst part of it was eating,” said Morlock, after a long pull on the mug. “I had to give the purge something to work on, you see.” He drank again.

  “Morlock, you’re making me sick,” Deor complained.

  “Oh. I’m out of beer.”

  “I thought you were going to drink it, not water your chin with it!” Deor exploded. “I could roll the cask out here if you feel the urge to wash your hair.”

  “Um. No, thanks. I am beginning to be hungry, though.”

  “That’s really revolting!” Deor exclaimed. “How can you talk about food after . . . What about a decent interval?”

  “Three days is interval enough,” muttered Morlock.

  “I agree,” Tyr said. “Deor, you can wait decently out here. Come within, Rokhlan; I think I hear the watch making breakfast.”

  “There’s only one rokhlan here,” Morlock said, as he followed his harven father into the High Gate. “The sentinel-dragon killed itself—”

  “Athru rokhleni! Rokhleni! Ath! Ath!” It was the watch of the High Gates, calling into the corridor from the watchroom.

  “Kinfolk,” said Tyr, “I understand that there are two opinions about Morlock’s title—”

  A chorus of shouts interrupted him, Dwarvish and Wardic mixing together.

  Deor was following Earno through the gateway. “Canyon keep it!” the young dwarf swore. “Don’t let Morlock tell the story. ‘I was just standing there, and this dragon—’”

  The members of the watch came out and gathered them into the watch-room. Earno felt as if he had stumbled into a family celebration—a family he did not know, but had mistaken him for one of its own. They called him Rokhlan and seated him at the third place of honor, on the Eldest’s right hand, as they sat down to listen to the story of Morlock’s victory.

  It was a great thing, in the north, to be a dragonkiller. The Eldest had explained it to Earno as they had travelled north to the High Gates. It went back to the Longest War (as so many things did) that had been fought between dragon and dwarf in these mountains. But the last dragon had been banished from the north long before it came under the Guard. Thus no one for millennia had earned the high title of rokhlan . . . except for the five heroes of Southgate, who were all dead now. (To be a rokhlan was frequently a posthumous honor.)

  So it was Morlock who (after he had thoroughly doused himself at the washbasin) was seated at the head of the stone table in the watchroom; even Eldest Tyr sat below, on his right hand. He ate the bread and cheese and meat that the watch pressed on him, drank water, and listened glumly as Deor and a few members of the watch retold his exploit of the Coriam Lakes as he had told it to them, along with certain observations of their own.

  He seemed particularly crooked and Ambrosian to Earno as he nodded over his half-empty plate. Earno couldn’t even see details; anger, like a dark red cloud haloing the thain, prevented him from seeing Morlock clearly. Morlock shook off his sleepiness or gloom enough to glance at Earno, perhaps hoping to see how his senior was taking in the story. Earno looked away hastily, before their eyes had time to meet. (Had Morlock seen the flash of red light in his eyes? If he had, what could be done to remove him?)

  For a time Earno watched Deor tell Morlock’s story. He was too busy with his own thoughts to pay much attention, but he vaguely noted that the young dwarf seemed both proud of and angry at his harven kin.

  Only at the end did Morlock himself speak. The watch-dwarves were telling how they had found him at the edge of the lake, “preparing to dive in and cut the collar from the dragon’s throat.”

  “Eh, no,” said Morlock. “Spare me that, kinfolk! I was only thinking.”

  “Well,” said one of the watch, “but you won’t tell us what you were thinking about.”

  “He won’t tell us much of anything,” Deor explained to Tyr and Earno. “When I arrived they were just beginning to worm the dragon story out of him. But he won’t tell us anything about his trip through Haukrull, nor even where he got his change of clothes. We’ve decided there must be some sort of Guardian’s decree against it—”

  Earno had been angered by the thought that Morlock had already told the tale of his embassy to his kin. Finding himself wrong, Earno was irrationally angered again, as if this were a new and separate injury. Had it not been for the compulsion to secrecy, to silence, he would have burst forth with angry denunciations. They took form in his mind, like dark red clouds, but he could not free himself of them by speech. He must not speak. He could not. Silence!

  The summoner found Tyr looking at him curiously, and he avoided meeting the Eldest’s eye. Tyr noted the action, and it obviously surprised and concerned him. But when he finally spoke he did not refer to it.

  “There is a room above this one,” the Eldest said, “where you can hear Morlock’s full report in privacy. I am needed elsewhere, but Deor will remain to learn those things which may immediately affect the safety of the Deep Halls.”

  Afraid to do more, Earno nodded stiffly, rose, and left the room. (What did the Eldest know? What did he, at least, suspect? Was he, too, part of the plot? If he was, there might be some way to eliminate him also.) Earno heard Morlock follow him more slowly, and he clenched his teeth.

  There was a window in the upper chamber, something Earno was inclined to view as a luxury after days under Thrymhaiam. He seated himself on the stone bench carved out of the wall beneath the window. Looking outward to the east, he saw a dim light reflected on the mountains, although the sky beyond them was still a dark blue. Without returning his gaze to the chamber, he made an imperious gesture at Morlock, indicating that the thain might begin his report.

  Morlock, entering behind the summoner, had noted that there were no other chairs. He therefore seated himself on the floor, with his back to the southern wall of the chamber. Having settled himself, he began to speak.

  He began by telling of his encounter with Saijok Mahr under the Drowned Arches. Earno was interested, in a distant way, but to Morlock’s amazement he completely discounted the importance of Saijok Mahr’s exile under the mountains.

  “The young bulls,” he said, deigning to explain the matter to his thain, “often go into temporary exile after an unsuccessful challenge to the master, if they survive the duel. Eventually they return to the guile. Any idea of independent action during their exile—it’s simply out of the question.”

  This was so imperceptive and unexpected a remark that Morlock found himself unable to continue his tale. After a few moments of silence, Earno glanced at him briefly (there was something strange, even serpentine, about that swift look) and said, “This clashes with some idea of your own, I take it.”

  “Yes,” Morlock replied. “The guile . . . if it is a guile . . . There is nothing typical about it. They are all . . . All of them are masters in the Blackthorn Range. And Saijok, he . . . it . . . It is not merely a discontent, but one of the two great masters of the Blackthorn Range who were chosen by . . . by the Two Powers to . . . lead this . . .” He was unsure whether to call it an invasion or a raid. He felt the halting, unconvincing nature of his speech very clearly and wanted to use the precisely correct word.

  Earno said stiffly, “These are but speculations of Vendas.”

  Vendas? Vendas? Was that a title of Merlin’s? Morlock wondered. He now dreaded trying to explain the source of his knowledge about the Two Powers. How could he explain it, when he didn’t understand it? But surely Vendas was a
Dwarvish name; Das was one of the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam. “Beg pardon, Summoner,” he said, “but I know nothing of Vendas.”

  “Vendas who was spellbound. Surely your kinsman Deor told you.”

  Morlock shook his head, forbearing to comment that Deor was not a man.

  “Vendas,” Earno said with an odd intonation in his voice, “was one of those left spellbound after the first attack on Thrymhaiam. Some days later, when Vendas failed to improve, Deor (for reasons he does not explain) attempted a very dangerous experiment, forcing Vendas to drink . . . an infusion of certain herbs. The spell was ultimately loosed, but its aftereffects appear to be permanent.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll explain. The dragon who bound Vendas filled his mind with . . . preachings about the Two Powers, as you call them. He was commanded to be a missionary for them in the Wardlands, and promised great rewards if he was successful. He can think of nothing but obeying those commands.”

  “Then the spell is not loosed.”

  “You are unsubtle. There is no spell. But he remembers the vision of the power and the rewards that were to be his. That vision obsesses him. He will do anything to obtain those rewards, not because the spell lingers, but because the spell-that-was fit too thoroughly well into a flaw in his character. The pressure on that flaw has broken his mind, and his will is no longer his own.”

  Morlock pondered this in silence.

  “So you see,” Earno continued, finally, “there is no reason, no matter what your . . . kinsmen may believe, to suppose that the Two Powers, as you call them, have any real existence. The dragons have simply attempted to use that religion—which is common in areas south of the Blackthorns—for purposes of their own.”

  He went on for some time in this way. Morlock ceased listening almost immediately. To his mind, the story of Vendas confirmed his “memories” linking the dragons with the Two Powers. But he saw that Earno would resist the idea, if he mentioned that odd visionary experience in Haukrull. Still . . . perhaps he ought to try. . . .