Guile of Dragons, A

by James Enge

  Listen!

  She did not even bother to respond.

  Very well. It really doesn’t matter. I am Merlin Ambrosius.

  Astonishment caused her to relax her effort. What is . . . this?

  He replied, You are where you were. But I have imposed my fetch, the talic projection of my self, upon yours. You can move and speak as you like, but these actions will not affect your body until I release you.

  She was bemused by the implications. I had no idea such a thing was possible.

  She felt his pride in his skill, received an impression (like a quick glance down a long, dimly lit corridor) of the long process of invention, driven by purpose. Knowing that it is, you will soon be able to practice it—

  She interposed: That is not my desire.

  —or defend against it, he added placatingly, irritatingly. I have told you much worth knowing already. All I ask in return is that you listen a little longer.

  Her rejection was more than verbal. No! I do not intend to join you in exile. She was reasonably intrigued, but she was not inclined to sit at Merlin’s feet. She exerted her will, the will of Noreê.

  You think to discourage me, the voice in the flames said. But I have tried to address two other persons in this way, one of them more than once, and failed. You hear me and respond; that is victory in itself. I will speak. You will not be able to ignore what I say.

  Already she could not; she sensed a danger to the Guard. Whom have you talked to? she demanded.

  Merlin laughed. She heard nothing but felt his amusement with painful directness. In a timeless time, he replied, I reached the summoner Earno several times. He was not willing to perceive my identity—there is a weakness in that man, Noreê; you should see to it—but he received my warning, more or less. I have also tried to communicate with my son. However—it proved to be insurmountably difficult.

  From what Noreê knew of Morlock, this did not strike her as unlikely.

  I have been in Tychar, the master of all makers continued, at the Place of the Two Powers.

  Noreê mocked him, hoping to lessen his control: So you have progressed from atheist to pagan, Ambrosius?

  Merlin was difficult to irritate, though. They really exist, Noreê. Read it in my mind. But I am no devotee of theirs; you will read that, too. I will open my memory to you presently. They offered me the kingship of the Wardlands—

  —which you accepted. Mock him, she thought. Weaken his hold on her.

  I refused! I come to tell you that the danger to the Guard . . . is very great, very near. I’m growing weary. Your awareness is powerful, difficult to contain in this way. . . . The Two Powers would destroy the Wardlands; their agents are now in the North. . . .

  Why does this concern you? Noreê demanded coldly.

  I am still a Guardian of the Wardlands! Merlin replied, defiant. What I did, I did to maintain the Guard, not destroy it! Spare yourself the effort; I sense your disbelief more pungently that you could express it. He paused, then continued, Believe what you like: that I am corrupt, and seek only power. Even so, especially so, I would not seek to rule over a conquered realm as the viceroy of Torlan and Zahkaar.

  Almost unwillingly, and nonverbally (the mental equivalent of a nod) Noreê acknowledged the likelihood of this.

  I am nearly exhausted, Merlin admitted. I am going to open my understanding to you now. Brace yourself. It encompasses many deaths. . . .

  After the last toast (the traditional “Maintain the Guard!”) had been drunk at supper, Aloê was guided back to her rooms by Illion. She was glad to have a guide. Three Hills was by no means a maze, but it was a large and rambling house, built differently than any she had seen.

  “It’s dwarvish work,” he said, when she asked him about it. “This is the third house my family has had at Three Hills. The first collapsed in a year of heavy rains, and the second was destroyed by lightning. So the head of the family hired the dwarves of Thrymhaiam to build a house that would last.”

  “It must have been expensive.”

  “The cost was not so great as some other difficulties,” he said, smiling. “The north was not then under the Guard, and the Graith was quite suspicious of Three Hills and its family for a time. And the dwarves are difficult workmen: too brilliant to be guided, too proud to explain.”

  They reached Aloê’s door, and Illion bid her good night. Aloê went inside and took a heavy cloak from her pack. Footsteps approached her door outside, then halted. Aloê returned to the door and stood, listening. The pace had not been Naevros’, and she did not think it had been Illion’s.

  She opened the door. Jordel was standing, indecisively, in the hall outside.

  “Thea,” said Aloê pointedly, “is not here.”

  Jordel laughed. “If she were, I wouldn’t be.”

  Aloê finally realized how things stood. “That’s not true,” she noted. “You broke into our conversation before supper.”

  “You’re right. ‘Wherever you go, I’ll follow, in—’”

  “You will not,” said Aloê, alarmed.

  “I’m just quoting a poem which—”

  “I’m not.”

  He looked at her appraisingly. “Is there something between you and Naevros, then? He said there wasn’t. But you talk like a married woman, as if you didn’t have to give a reason to say no—”

  Stung, she cried out, “You forget yourself! I need no reasons! If I did there would be plenty in the thousand men like you I’ve known—”

  Jordel smiled angrily. “Really, Aloê, what a confession—”

  She would not be interrupted, went on shouting “—thousands like you, gentry of the estates, with rings on their fingers, swarming like flies around the women on Dancing Days, with kisses and compliments and sugarstick cruelty . . .” Anger choked off her speech.

  Jordel was still smiling tensely. “Did you realize I have no name?”

  “Nonsense.”

  “No, no name at all, at least no surname. I am Jordel, my brother is Baran, and that is that. Our mother was a peasant, you see, and so, by aristocratic tradition, our father might have been anybody. So we have no surname. If I had been born on one of your estates in the south, I never would have been allowed to come to your Dancing Day . . . except to serve the food, or mix the wine, or help the gentry into their gilded dungcarts after a hard night’s prancing—”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean that you forget yourself. I was not born on an estate (thanks, Creator!) and you are not heir to one. I am a peasant still, I suppose. But I didn’t become the rest of the things that I am by being indirect, or overmodest.”

  “I don’t care about that,” she said impatiently. “Be clever. Be . . . proud of your humble origins. But leave me alone. No. Say nothing. Go!”

  Jordel shrugged and went, with an infuriatingly loose-limbed stride that spoke loud his absolute unconcern. Aloê threw the cloak she held over her shoulders and ran off to meet Naevros. He was not in the entry hall. She ran by without waiting for him. She ran into the darkness outside, toward the steeper hills north of the Three. She ran until she no longer had a thought in her head or a feeling in her heart. She did not return to the house until long after every person inside it was asleep.

  The next morning, Aloê awoke late with the morning sun shining through the western window. She arose and washed in a tense unmeditative calm. She went down to the dining hall in the same spirit, deliberately not thinking.

  She met Naevros in the corridor leading to the dining hall. They greeted each other without words; neither did they touch. The rapport between them was tense, intimate, eternal. What had happened last night . . . what had, in fact, not happened . . . that changed nothing. She was relieved. In a way, anyway, she was relieved. They went toward the open hall, together, without touching.

  All the other Guardians except Noreê were there. They rose in greeting. Naevros and Aloê took places at the table.

  It was a strange meal, almost silent, but not uncommunica
tive. Aloê sat next to Thea and took something from her hands to pass to Jordel. Thea did not quite smile as their eyes met—but Jordel nodded to her, quite amiably. Then, glancing around the table, taking in expressions, Aloê guessed that there was little she had said or done in the past half-day that was not known to everyone present.

  For a moment she was almost horrified. She was accustomed to thinking of her life and her actions as her own, her property—not shared goods, like well water or open fields. Then something opened up within her, like a fist unclenching.

  As she sat there among the warm domestic smells—the slices of ham, the warm bread, the steam from the great clay teapot at the center of the table—she felt it wasn’t such a terrible thing to have part of her life belong to others. Her friendship with Naevros was indestructible; she knew that now. Thea, who might have been merely a rival, was now also a friend. Jordel, mindful of his rejection, might be less of a predator and more of a man for a time. Baran, at least, had been roundly entertained. And Illion—

  Looking up, she met Illion’s eye as he raised his bowl of tea. She had the sense that her own knowledge was being embraced by his. The world would never be perfect. But it could be better than it was, if the best gave their best for it. She raised her own bowl to acknowledge his toast.

  “I drink to the Guard,” said her host, half smiling. “May it be maintained forever!”

  “Maintain the Guard!” they said together, raising their drinks. It was the seal of their common intimacy.

  “There is no Guard,” said a cold clear voice.

  In the doorway stood Noreê. Her iron-gray hair was wildly disordered. Her skin was as pale as old ice. Her blue eyes held the suffering look of someone called from rapture. But her face was calm and sane.

  “There is no Guard,” she repeated to the thunderstruck Guardians. “A guile of dragons has broken through the Wards and invaded the north. The summoner Lernaion and his companions are all killed or taken captive. The summoner Earno is bound in dragonspell. Whole valleys of the Guarded have been laid waste, and the citadel of Thrymhaiam is under siege. There is no Guard in the north. The Guard is not maintained!”

  As the other Guardians stood up and cried out their disbelief and dismay, Illion drank off his toast and put down the bowl. He frowned thoughtfully. Aloê, seeing this, wondered what he was thinking.

  In fact, he was thinking of Morlock. But just then he said nothing.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tunglskin

  The red light of late afternoon was falling on Tunglskin, the Hill of Storms. Morlock struck a final blow at the planking before him. The wood splintered and fell; a wide breach had been opened in the wooden wall surrounding the hill. He turned away and walked over to the tree where he had left the horse. He untied the reins he had knotted around a low branch.

  He looked the horse in the eye. There had never been any affection between them. But he had never mistreated the horse, nor did he do so now. “Go home,” he said, and added a word of Westhold dialect, resonant with power. The horse turned and ran along the wooden wall toward the Rangan outpost.

  Morlock climbed through the breach in the wall and walked a little way up the slope. He sat down on a convenient rock and waited.

  It was not long before the Arbiter and one of her servants appeared at the break in the fence. They peered through and immediately saw Morlock on the hill. Having given them, in his own way, fair warning, he stood and walked up the slope. Presently he heard the sound of hammers on wood, sealing him in like a corpse in a coffin. He walked on.

  He came across an ascending stairway of stone steps set into the Hill. They were very weathered; a path had been worn down through the middle of each step, as if many feet had passed there. The carvings on them were difficult to discern in the failing light, but Morlock knew better than to examine Coranian carvings too closely at dusk. There were stories about that. There were stories about everything, here.

  The stair passed by a cave. The cheerful light of a fire was flickering across the threshold, incongruous against the dark hillside. Morlock clenched his teeth and stood indecisively in the dusk. He had heard about this place. . . . Finally he left the stairway and entered the cave.

  Inside, Merlin rose to greet him.

  It was a Merlin a thousand years younger than Morlock’s father, without even a gray streak in his black hair and beard. It was a Merlin who wore the red cloak of a vocate on his crooked shoulders, the black-and-white shield of Ambrosius on his arm (the same shield, barring a millennium of aging and of careful repair, slung now across Morlock’s shoulder). It was a Merlin who was not yet known as the master of all makers, one who was yet establishing his first reputation as a hero.

  “I do not know you,” said Merlin Ambrosius. “But I knew you would come here.” He smiled. “I take it for granted that you know me.”

  There was arrogance in that smile—a measured arrogance. The smile and the statement claimed nothing, after all, but the truth. Morlock had heard of Merlin.

  “Sit down, if you wish. Warm yourself at the fire. You’ll welcome the memory, soon enough.”

  Morlock remained standing. The image of Merlin sat down on the opposite side of the fire and continued to speak.

  “You have come here, drawn by stories—I might even say legends. You have come here to better my deed. When I made certain choices I knew you, and others like you, would come; to you, I guess, my work here seems incomplete. So I have remained here, in simulacrum, to assure you that the deed is not incomplete, and to warn you against meddling with my work.”

  Merlin smiled engagingly. “Those are harsh words for a proud champion. I don’t speak them lightly. They are the best advice I can give to someone I consider my peer.”

  “Get on with it!” Morlock muttered, embarrassed and angry.

  “I will explain,” the image continued. “We stand (or sit) in part of the tomb of the Great Cor, now known as the Dead Cor. He, like his successors, had a means of prolonging his physical life far beyond its natural term. By feeding on the tal of sacrificial victims he strengthened his own grip on life when it was failing him, preserving life in his body even when that body began to decay.

  “In fact, he never died. But the time came when he could no longer act as monarch over the unruly sorcerer-nobles of his kingdom; he required all his power simply to sustain the burden of his own life. Finally he was deposed and his successor did him the honor of burying him alive within this hill, which was then north of the border of the Wardlands. For you must know that the Coranians were descended from exiles, and like all exiles they hungered to return to the Wardlands.”

  Morlock nodded reflexively. His mother had been descended from Coranian exiles; it was one of the two reasons he knew more than he wanted about Coranians.

  “The practice became a custom,” Merlin’s simulacrum continued. “When a Cor grew too feeble to rule he was taken here and a hill raised over him, in imitation of this one, now called the Hill of Storms (although its Dwarvish name is Tunglskin). But none of the Corain were wholly dead. In time, as their numbers grew, the Dead Cor found he could exert control over, and draw power from, the lingering tal of his successors and inferiors.

  “That was a grim time. You have heard of it, or you would not be here. The Dead Cor asserted his mastery over the reigning Cor, who (after a few trials of power) proved willing to be led. The dwarves of Thrymhaiam found their land invaded by the Coranians, who looked to it as the staging ground for an invasion of the very Wardlands. The Eldest of Theorn Clan appealed to the Graith of Guardians to make common cause against the Coranian exiles. The Graith paused, deliberated, and chose to do nothing. I did none of these.

  “I will not retell my deeds in the north; you have heard of them, or you would not be here. But I will say a thing to you: my choice was single; I could not have done other than I did. It was not in me to counter the massed sorcery of millennia of the Dead Corain. But I could separate them from each other and from their living
successors. This I did, by planting a hedge of banefire around every living corpse that ever carried the sword-scepter Gryregaest. As long as they cling to life, the banefires—a spell I wove into the network of power that bound the Corain together and which they cannot cross—will burn about them. Nor can they reach through the fire to work their influence on others, except at a very low level. And they cannot league with each other, as they did before the north came under the Guard. If left to themselves they will lose their strength and collapse in final physical death.

  “But others can go to them. That is the real danger. It gives them continuing sources of strength, to refresh their failing tal. It gives them new physical forms, when their own utterly give way to time. It gives them news of the great world beyond their open graves. It gives them a kind of hope. For as long as they persist the likelihood increases that some force will be able to quench the banefires and set them free, for some reason of its own.

  “If you are victorious here, this night, your victory will add nothing to the safety of the Wardlands. But your defeat will hasten its destruction. Make the right choice while you still can. Go back; prove yourself in places where you are truly needed. Do not disturb the dead—lest you join them.”

  Then Merlin stood and looked Morlock in the eye. In the next instant the fire disappeared and Merlin with it. A wind blew through the cave.

  “You’re wrong,” Merlin’s son said to the darkness still inscribed with his image, flickering and fading as Morlock’s eyes grew used to the dark. “A thousand years, and the Dead Cor is as powerful as ever. And there are powers moving in the land you never expected to return. Besides, I need the sword you left behind. And I think I can do what you chose not to do.”

  The darkness did not answer; the spell had exhausted itself, until another traveller came.

  Night had completely risen outside. Morlock left the cave behind him and went up the dark stone way.