by James Enge
“Let’s ex-duce it. If we cure him perhaps we can send a message—”
“Cure him? How do you propose to do that?”
Deor was surprised. “Why—as Earno himself cured me. As I cured Vendas.”
“Is Vendas cured?”
Deor was silent. He had looked in on Vendas that morning.
“I’ve thought on this, Deortheorn,” the Eldest said. “I have thought too much, maybe. Why did Earno’s suspicions take the form they did? Plainly: because, before the spell was placed, they had already taken this form. Before Earno arrived at Thrymhaiam he suspected Morlock of treason.”
“But why?”
“Morlock is an Ambrosius. He is Merlin’s ruthen son and only heir. You are young, Deor—almost as young as Morlock. You do not remember Merlin. But I do. When Merlin finished his apprenticeship with Bleys, there were few in the world who could teach him anything. Those few were the master makers of the Seven Clans. Long he dwelt here under Thrymhaiam, and many times he returned here thereafter to learn and to teach. I came to know him well. And Morlock is Merlin reborn—at least, no one could look at the one without constantly being reminded of the other. So it must have been with Earno.”
“But—”
“Let me finish, Deortheorn. Morlock is now rokhlan, a dragonkiller”—he used the Wardic word—“and for some reason this infuriates Earno, that an Ambrosius should be acclaimed as a dragonkiller. Deep within his memory, too deep for me to read the matter clearly, dragonkilling and Merlin’s exile are closely linked. Earno sees himself always as vocate and dragonkiller, Ambrosius always as summoner, traitor, and exile. But now we have an Ambrosius who is also a dragonkiller, and may one day be a vocate.”
“I don’t understand,” said Deor. “Morlock is not Merlin. And no matter what Morlock achieves, Earno is still rokhlan and summoner.”
“It is deeper than reason, Deor. Morlock and Merlin are both Ambrosius. And it is as if Ambrosius the exile has returned and is taking over parts of Earno’s life. That is how he sees it, at any rate. That is why I say dragonkiller, and not rokhlan—that is the word Earno uses in his own mind; he is besieged by it, barricaded behind it, imprisoned in it. Thus he has identified himself from his first youth—as the dragonkiller. But now he must confront another, claiming the same title. If he does not prove his claim to it once again, and repeat his old achievement of exiling Ambrosius, then Ambrosius may complete his theft of Earno’s life by exiling and supplanting a summoner—Earno himself.”
“Nonsense.”
“Madness,” the Eldest corrected. “Like Ven’s, an induced one. I think that, before the spell took effect, Earno’s deeper feelings were under control; he was willing to treat Morlock at least fairly, though by no means generously. But now the spell has changed his mind. Who can say his sick belief, the madness infesting his mind, will vanish when the spell is loosed? Who can say that it will ever vanish? Its roots are very deep.”
Deor was silent for a time. The problem seemed insoluble. But the Eldest had called him here for a reason.
“What command has been placed on Earno?” he asked Tyr.
“None, so far as I can tell. But it seems that his own latent compulsion about proving himself the sole dragonkiller has taken the place of an external command, fixing the spell in place. He insists on being allowed to go to Haukrull and challenge the master of the guile.”
“Oh. Oh. I see,” said Deor, for he did at last, and looked away.
“I was certain you would," the Eldest said. “Yes, it is a fearful crime. Earno is a summoner, rokhlan, and, more importantly, our guest. We cannot simply send him under the mountains to die. But Morlock is our harven kin, entrusted to us by his ruthen mother and father. We must defend him and we will.”
“One of us must go with Earno, then.”
“Yes. As squire, and guide, and also to ensure that he does go. Thus those-who-watch will see that we are no more sparing of ourselves than we are with Earno. Perhaps that will earn us forgiveness.”
Deor doubted this. But he did not otherwise disagree.
“Only one may go,” Tyr said. “As Eldest that is my word. The Longest War has come again to Thrymhaiam, and no one must be permitted to simply throw his life away. Beyond that, I must consider who may claim the right or obligation to go—”
“I claim both,” Deor said desperately. He turned again to face the Eldest, who seemed as grimly determined as himself.
“The choice surely falls between you and me,” the Eldest replied. “I saw that at once. We will settle the question now, for Earno must be permitted to depart before the sun returns.”
He held out his fist and opened the fingers of his hand. On his broad gray palm lay a golden coin. “Shield or skull?” the Eldest asked. “You choose and I will throw.”
There were times when Aloê, thain-attendant to the vocate Naevros syr Tol, didn’t approve of the world. With all due respect to Creator, Sustainer, and King, she was inclined to view the world as a botched job—something that barely limped along because the best gave their best to make it work. Without any self-consciousness, she counted herself among one of those best who made sacrifices, and sometimes she wondered whether the world was worth the trouble.
At its best, Aloê had to admit, the world was very good indeed. A fair day’s sailing, for instance. Or even sailing through a storm—there was a fine narrow excitement to that. Sailing was the way the rest of the world should be but rarely was. Conditions varied infinitely; no two days, no two stretches of water were really the same. But the principles of action never varied, though actions themselves had to suit the infinite variety of actual environments.
But, though parts of life were like this, life as a whole was different. Storms in life were usually inner storms—as if the principles of action were in constant flux, though the environment itself never varied. Life was always a bother, and no one really understood. . . .
The rough open bareness of her surroundings was depressing her, she guessed. Talk about an unchanging environment: you couldn’t get a more monotonous landscape than the Long Plain of Westhold—outside a painting by Zavell, maybe. And, unlike a painting, the plain went on and on, day’s ride after day’s ride. . . .
Determination gave her, if not a way out, then a way to cope. She kept riding north, through the immense harvested fields of Westhold. Their rough blankness gave solid form to her mood. Her thoughts were like crows, finding some invisible sustenance in the bleak emptiness. Still, she rode on. She had a task; she would perform it, even if it meant leaving her beloved Southhold, and even the comparative civilization of A Thousand Towers, and passing into the far north, where the people were as squat and pale (and approximately as talkative) as mushrooms.
A village broke the blank emptiness of the horizon. Gratefully she spurred her horse toward it. The low walls of its houses, rising about her, were a welcome shelter from the blankness of the sky, the bare dead prospect of the empty fields.
There was a market in progress. She stopped at the tavern and bought a cup of wine. Having drunk this, she left her horse in front of the tavern and wandered through the market.
She stood for a while before a storyteller, listening to a version of First Merlin’s Song. The crowd seemed to take it all pretty seriously: Merlin planting the banefire hedges around the Dead Corain. And if they were already dead, Aloê wondered, what was the fuss about? She had grown up on the southern coast and was inclined to think of First Merlin’s as an inferior grade of ghost story. She was quite fond of Second and Third Merlin’s—they were more her sort of story. And she thought Merlin’s portrait (in the Hall of Guardians at New Moorhope) was a masterwork: crooked and cultivated, intelligent and imperious, Merlin had been the epitome of a Guardian. The black cloak, betokening exile, which hung beside the painting simply added the air of danger inevitable in any high prospect.
Without taking her eyes off the storyteller, she began to feel unsheltered, as if she were out on the Long Plain again. Turning to go, she f
ound a group of townspeople were gaping at her in something like amazement. A compliment, in its way, but somehow she was not flattered. One dark-haired pale-skinned heavy woman, standing close to her, was staring at her dark golden hair and darker skin with a dim astonished longing that was not even envy. She smiled at the woman, but suddenly, jarringly (it was the world again, the botched discordant world) she wondered what it would be like to be this woman: incontestably ugly, probably poor, scratching out a living in these dim gigantic plains.
Realizing that, with these thoughts, her expression had changed, Aloê smiled again at the woman and walked past her, leaving the crowd with a careful slowness. When she reached her horse she mounted and rode off northward.
She reached Three Hills at sunset. There really were hills—she had begun to fear that the maps lied, that the plain went on forever. In fact, though the three hills for which the estate were named stood somewhat apart, there were more hills beyond them and, farther yet, mountains piercing the horizon like pale thorns.
Turning back to bid an angry good-bye to the plains she saw that the overcast sky was breaking up: there were long stretches of mysterious blue among the rough gray pinnacles of cloud. Looking east, she saw the clouds part there, admitting the last rays of sunlight into the world. The light struck red and purplish blue tints off the undersides of the broken clouds, deepening in contrast the narrow blue canyons of empty sky. As light fell on the yellow-gray fields, transmuting them in an instant to coarse bristling gold, she felt a sudden pang of guilt, as if the plains were a person she had somehow misjudged. She turned away and rode on.
Riding up among the Three Hills, she saw what she supposed was the manor house built up to and into the side of one of the hills, the one farthest north and west. Descending from the house along an unpaved path was a coarsely dressed workman. She reined in close to him and said, “Greetings, good tenant. Can you guide me to the lord of the manor?”
“Not.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not a tenant. Don’t have your tenant-farming in this part of Westhold. Anyway, my family owns this place.” The man’s voice was brisk, but agreeable.
Aloê happened to know that the family which owned Three Hills currently consisted of Illion, whom she knew, and his brother Lorion. So this must be the master of the manor whom she had addressed so cavalierly. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Doesn’t bother me. Some of the workers bridle at the term—just so you know.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and was instantly angry at herself for the inane repetition. She was relieved when he matter-of-factly ignored it.
“You’re looking for Naevros, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“We knew you were coming, of course. Glad to see you. The stables are over there.” He nodded pleasantly and walked away.
“Thank you,” she said, somewhat at a loss. She had thought he was about to tell her where Naevros was. But she could find out by herself, no doubt, and it made sense to stable her horse.
The abrupt lasting twilight of the Wardlands had risen by the time she had reached a large outbuilding beyond the southeast hill. She guessed it might be a stable. But half the walls were down and no horses were visible. The gray shapes of some workmen stood aside in a group.
The workmen were discussing whether they should bring lights and continue the job or leave it as it was until morning.
Aloê had a gift of breaking graciously into conversations. She had a way with clients and tenants generally. She practiced both of these to a fine pitch on her family’s estate in the Southhold. Her family was an important one on the southern coast, and she had grown up under the halo of power. It was a pity, she had often thought dispassionately, that the estate would never come to her, except under the most disastrous circumstances. (There were two sisters and a brother between her and the primacy.) She really had the best knack in the family for exercising power for the general good. But it was fair, too, that capable scions of a noble house go out "into the waters of the world" (as her family said). Better that than to stay at home, become a threadbare member of the gentry, watching one’s descendants fade into the client class.
“Gentlemen,” she said to the workers (the word came somewhat stickily to her tongue, but she would not make the mistake of calling them tenants; for all she knew she was addressing half the gentry of the Westhold), “I had heard there was stabling in this direction.”
There was a pause, then one of the workers said, “Why? Is your horse pregnant?”
“Shouldn’t be riding a pregnant horse,” another commented.
“I’m not,” she replied icily. For a moment she thought they were making some sort of coarse joke.
“Souther!” said one of them. “Look at her seat! Never mind it, Thain; let your horse run free. There’s water and fodder, brookways, and the night rider’s between here and Hunting Wood. We’ll call her for you when you’re needing.”
“Will you?” she said, a kind of challenge in her voice. She knew it was senseless, but she could not help it. She hated riding, and she didn’t like the Westholder’s comment about how she sat in the saddle, if that’s what it had been.
One of them held her stirrup as she dismounted. His clothes were encrusted with dirt and manure, and he was sweating considerably more than her horse. She was about to turn away when she noticed with quiet horror that he was Naevros syr Tol.
“Shall we have you pitch in, Aloê?” he said pleasantly. “I think we have a spare shovel here, somewhere.” He had noted and understood her reaction, of course; their tense rapport could be embarrassingly intense at times.
But she was nothing if not game. “Sharpen the blade, Vocate, and lead me to it.” She had long declined to learn sword-fighting from him; it was a sore point between them at one time.
A chorus of protests arose from the other workers. Men from the west and east were narrow-minded about working with women as equals. To keep her from carrying out her threat they decided to quit work for the day. That suited Aloê well enough: she was tired from riding and she hated dirt. But she insisted on tending to her horse herself, while the Westholders stood about and shuffled their feet; she carried the saddle up to the house, also. Naevros reached for the bridle, and she handed it to him without a thought.
She wanted to tell him about the business she had completed for him in A Thousand Towers. He had originally planned to stay in the great city for two or three calls of Trumpeter after the Station was dismissed, but for some reason had changed his mind and rushed off with Illion and Noreê to Three Hills instead. He had left Aloê, with virtually no guidance, to finish his affairs in the city. This sort of situation, which arose quite rarely, was termed by thains “carrying the cloak” of the vocate in question. It was supposed to be a mark of respect and trust—in fact, only a step away from receiving one’s own red cloak and a place to stand at Station. The whole business had been challenging and exciting, and there were some things she felt she had carried off rather neatly.
Yet she couldn’t speak. After the immensity of the harvested plains, walking among the gray heavy movements of workmen in the blue dusk, her thoughts had a hollow ring to them. She imagined speaking them aloud and shook her head impatiently. No. It galled her that all she had done for the past month seemed trivial among a group of men with sweat drying on their faces. She knew the feeling would pass, though. The time was not right, that was all. Restless, she stepped forward lightly, leaving Naevros a step or two behind.
Noreê was dreaming in the Healing Wood.
She sat beneath a maple that had lost almost half its leaves. They lay beneath it, a blood-bright carpet exactly the color of her cloak. Sitting with her back to the trunk, she looked on the fallen leaves as a flat reflection, in golden dying grass, of the real tree. Buried among them, then, would be an image of herself, Noreê. To that reflective Noreê the ground would be a kind of sky: troubled but beautiful with green and stretches of gold and black-brown veins of
storm cloud. The ground beneath the reflective Noreê, though, would be a bright blue, faulted by the red-flecked branch-roots of the tree. She could survey the sky as if it were bounded earth, or let her gaze penetrate deeply into it.
A long time later there were deep piles of white leaves gathering on the bright blue ground. They blew into bright-veined gray drifts, and more collected about them. They piled higher and deeper/lower. Concentrating on them, but not really concentrating at all, reflective and actual Noreê vanished in the unconscious apprehension of the purity of the broken silence, the absolute emptiness of the air surrounding them.
At some indefinable point there was a release. There was no division of Noreê into reflective and actual. She was one. Her soul remained where it was, resident always of itself. Her body remained where it was, beneath the wondrous beauty of the dying tree. But her tal, the link between them, the agency by which the spirit works on the body and the medium by which the body communicates with the spirit, was set free. There was no separation. Their union persisted, soul/tal/body—metaphysical triangle circumscribing physical life, but it extended through space. Unburdened of the need to consciously control her body, Noreê’s mind leapt directly into the sky, through the window of her own tal.
The sensation of visionary flight, if it can be called sensation, is difficult to describe. Often, in memory, the flight becomes wholly visual, random bits of colorless data striking light like sparks in the sensorium, whereas they were of a different order of perception in experience. As an adept, Noreê found it best to interpret the flight in a way that would not overwhelm her in the explosion of lines and colors that the mind generates to give form to an incomprehensible experience. She concentrated rather on the perception of motion—a partly visual, partly tactile sense. There were other senses involved, too: in the profoundest flight of her vision she could bend her awareness downward to hear the sap flowing in the veins of a tree, and the slow persistent thoughts that guided its growth.