by James Enge
He had to leave the city. He was weary of this obsession, weary of avoiding her, weary of being destroyed by exaltation and despair when he failed to avoid her. . . . God Creator knew how long it would last, whether it would ever go away.
It had not always been like this. When they had first met she seemed beautiful to him—the way a precious stone is beautiful. When he saw her again in the Northhold, she had troubled him deeply. And now whenever he saw her, heard her voice in the chamber of the Graith, heard someone mention her name, he went blind, paralyzed by longing; the bright world faded to the luster of her dark golden hair. . . .
He had to leave the city. Right away, before the Station was over. If anything would help, being away would help. He strode down the slope, consciously following her, and entered the house.
As he searched the crowded hall for Illion, he felt someone touch his sleeve. Turning, he saw his white-mantled senior in the Graith of Guardians, Summoner Earno.
“Morlock, my friend,” said the stocky red-bearded summoner, when they had greeted each other, “have you had enough of the entertainment?”
“I was just seeking Illion to say good-bye.”
“He’s upstairs, waiting to talk with us both. Come with me, if you will.”
Morlock would and did. They went together to the broad stone stair leading upward; Earno led him to a small room overlooking the street. Within were Illion and the other two Summoners: Lernaion, Summoner of the City, and Bleys, Summoner of the Outer Lands.
“Is this a meeting of the High Council?” Morlock said, a little sharply, naming the graith-within-the-Graith that was the Three Summoners.
“You are a stickler for formalities, Morlock Ambrosius,” Lernaion remarked. (He was a Southholder as she was; his skin was dark as varnished wood, in stark contrast with the white mantle of his rank.) “That’s well: if your father had been more that way he might still be among us. But this is nothing so formal. Nor are any of us trying to woo you for their respective factions—Illion’s presence is proof of that, I hope.”
Bleys’ mouth issued a warm musical hum of distaste. His hairless wrinkled head, oddly like a turtle’s against the high hump the white mantle made on his bent uneven shoulders, turned to Morlock. “You want to know why you’re here, I guess. Well, it’s your own damned fault—you and your father’s. I disagree with my peer, by the way. Merlin was born with a penchant for trouble, and no power in the worlds could have kept him in the Graith longer than he was. You seem to have inherited that penchant for trouble, young Ambrosius, and we intend to use it and you, as we use everything, to maintain the safety of the Wardlands.”
“Eh.” Morlock glanced at Illion, then Earno. “I have no objection to being used,” he said slowly, “for that purpose. But I, of course, will be the user.”
“Formalities,” muttered the oldest Summoner, and drew his head back among the folds of his mantle.
“Facts, rather,” Earno said. “Morlock, we brought you here not to browbeat you, but to ask you a favor. For the safety of the Wardlands, as Bleys correctly has said.”
“What favor?” Morlock demanded bluntly.
“We want you to leave the city—soon, before the Station ends. What was that?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“It is the Two Powers. You remember . . .”
And that was just it: Morlock did remember. He saw at once why the Summoners had turned to him. A few years past, during the invasion of dragons in the Northhold, Morlock had briefly come into rapport with his natural father, Merlin—and had somehow acquired a memory of Merlin’s about a confrontation with the Two Powers in Tychar.
“ . . . the dragon invasion was a gambit of the Two Powers,” Earno was saying. “That, now, is clear. We cannot suppose that, having failed in their first attempt, they will leave our realm in peace. The missionaries they are sending to displace the gods of Kaen may be the advance force for a new attack against us.”
Morlock grunted. “I’ll just dash out and destroy them, shall I?”
“Calm down, boy,” Bleys snapped. “We just want you to go to Anhi and ask a few questions. If we intended anything like a confrontation with the Two Powers we would send a serious challenger—Noreê or Illion himself. Killing a stray dragon is no particular—”
“Then Illion and Noreê will not go,” Morlock interrupted. He looked at Illion, whose grin told him his guess was correct.
“They both refused to go,” Lernaion acknowledged. “We respect their reasons.”
“No doubt we would, if we knew what they were,” Bleys remarked drily. “But it’s no great matter. You, young Ambrosius, can do the job. It’s only a mission to ask a few questions in Anhi, to learn more of the Two Powers than we now know. You are just insolent, bad-tempered, and childish enough for that. Further, whoever goes will have to deal with your father; that’s in the cards, as the modern slang expression is. He may be favorably disposed to the mission or not. If not, you have as much a chance against him as anyone in the Graith, though I don’t envy you those particular odds.”
“Why won’t you go, Illion?” Morlock asked the older vocate.
“I think it’s your job, Morlock,” the other replied. “If you will not go—and only you can judge the rightness of that—I would appeal to Bleys himself. Whoever goes will go sooner or later between the paws of the Two Powers. Only one person we know has done so and escaped: Merlin. So we need to send someone as much like Merlin as possible.”
“That’s poor reasoning. I am both like and unlike Merlin. I am my mother’s son as well—and my harven father’s.”
“Yet you cannot see yourself. I say my reasoning is sound. The choice is yours, though.”
“But what am I choosing? What do you ask me to do?”
“Find out what they want!” shouted Bleys. “We sit here, across the Narrow Sea and behind our hedge of mountains, and bother no one. Yet the Powers have sent their agents across the world to destroy us, and may be about to do so again. Why? It makes no sense.”
“It may never make sense,” Lernaion said quietly. “Evil exists; malice exists. Yet the truth is, we know very little of the Powers, compared to deadly enemies we have faced in the past. We need to know more before we can act. Morlock, go; find out what you can; and come back.”
Morlock raised his eyes to find Earno’s on him. “I have gone on such a mission before,” he said to the summoner frankly.
Earno flushed, but did not flinch. “All the more reason to send you now.”
“I will go,” Morlock remarked thoughtfully. “I should leave tomorrow if—”
They protested with one voice, telling him that “the ship” would not be ready tomorrow.
“What ship?” he asked suspiciously.
“The ship that will carry you to Kaen, to the Anhikh marches, to the Sea of Stones on the borders of Tychar if need be,” said Lernaion. “You were not thinking of walking, were you?”
Morlock was thinking about walking. He always had bad luck when travelling by sea, and anyway was prone to seasickness. He shrugged, rather than say any of this.
“And while you circumnavigate the world on foot,” Bleys remarked cheerily, “the Two Powers will rip the Wardlands open like a bag of oranges and suck them dry.”
Morlock sullenly acknowledged the advisability of sea travel.
“We’ve a fair ship and a decent crew of seagoing thains,” Lernaion remarked. “But we’re still provisioning, and looking for a vocate competent to command at sea. Now that we have your answer, we will approach Baran or Jordel, again: they have both travelled as shipmasters to the wilderness of worlds.”
Morlock grunted. The prospect of being shipmates for an indefinite time with Jordel, who loathed him, was not attractive. But he could at least hope that the converse prospect would make Jordel reluctant to join the cruise. In any case, he would not withdraw his word now.
He stood. “Then.”
“When our chosen captain tells us the ship is ready, we will sen
d you word,” Earno said.
Illion rose as well. “Summoners, stay as long as you like. But I’m a shameful host, and should attend to my remaining guests.” He and Morlock left together.
Jordel was not one of the world’s great listeners, but he was listening tonight with great interest. His friend Aloê, sitting cross-legged on his refectory table, was raging with great detail, at high volume, and with a striking command of vulgar rhetoric against their mutual friend Naevros. That sort of thing is always interesting. Moreover, he had once had romantic designs on Aloê but had been balked by what seemed to be a relationship with Naevros. Yet, apparently, they were not in a relationship. Still, somehow they were. The matter perplexed him, and he welcomed the chance to understand it further (though he had long since given up the idea of Aloê as even a temporary bed-partner).
Still, although he enjoyed the vivid and brutal word-portraits she painted of Naevros’ last fifteen lovers, somehow when she ran out of steam and started to take a few pauses to pull at her drink, he still didn’t understand the situation any better than before. Did she herself want Naevros or not? If not, what did it matter to her what he did with his penis? If she did, why didn’t she reach out, grab him by his well-tailored collar, and drag him off to the nearest patch of shrubbery? It was clear to Jordel, anyway, that she could do so any time she chose.
Jordel swirled his drink thoughtfully. Maybe she didn’t choose to be a member of any parade that consisted of such lovelights as the Honorable Ulvana (who was not really so bad, Jordel felt, when she wasn’t trying so hard). There was something to that. And maybe that was part of it. But it wasn’t all of it.
In the several years Jordel had known Aloê, as thain and now as vocate, Jordel had never seen her with anyone who could be described as her lover—not even in the hand-holding, eye-gazing, poetry-writing sense. She walked alone. She had friends; she had colleagues; she had this thing, whatever it was, with Naevros. That was all. Maybe there was someone waiting for her back home in the Southhold, but Jordel doubted it. She never went there—rarely even spoke of her family.
This thing with Naevros. If it was not the center of the matter, it was close. It was what was hurting her now. Jordel had no great reputation for wisdom, but he could see things as they were, and he saw that she could neither bear to put down this torch she was carrying for Naevros nor stand to carry it any longer. He wished he could do something for her. There wasn’t much he could do but listen to her, so listen he did, although he was not one of the world’s great listeners.
Eventually, after a somber sip of Lyrmlok (the sweetest, clearest, bubbliest wine in Jordel’s none-too-extensive cellar), she said, “I should just get out. Out of the city. Out of the Wardlands. I’m no good here. How can I even stand at Station tomorrow with all those people looking at me and snickering about me?”
“It’s Naevros and his bimbo they’ll be snickering about. Or ought to be.”
“People never do what they ought to do. Do you, J?”
“No. But I am unique.”
“Everyone is. That’s what makes them all the same. No, I need out.”
Jordel listened with decreasing interest to Aloê’s various plans for escaping from the city until the Station was concluded.
“Listen,” he said reluctantly, when she had run through three of these. “I was offered a job by the Summoners. I was going to take it: it sounds interesting, which is more than I can say for the opinions of my fellow guardians at this Station. Still, if you want to get out of the city, maybe you should take it instead. You’d be commanding a ship bound for the unguarded lands . . .”
Bleys sat alone in an otherwise empty room on the third floor of Illion’s city house. He was waiting for the party to die away before he departed. For certain reasons, he did not choose to be seen in public these days. Eventually the scandal would die down, but for the time being he lived a solitary life—which he was inclined to prefer in any case.
Now, though, his pleasing solitude was punctured by Noreê, who appeared, a white shadow in a dark doorway, to glare silently at him.
“What is it you want, my dear?” he said as warmly as he could, although he disliked her and knew full well what she wanted.
“Is he going?” the pale bitter vocate demanded.
“Of course he is, my dear. We had only to appeal to his selflessness and prod his ego. The young are so pitiably malleable. The Guardians who go with him, of course, really deserve our pity, but that’s their lookout. If they wanted to avoid danger they should not have joined the Graith.”
“Jordel is the choice of a captain, I think. I will miss him.”
“I will not.”
“You are very happy with the night’s work, are you, Bleys?”
“So should you be, my dear. We want the same thing.”
“But we don’t want it for the same reason.”
“If you ever reach my advanced age, my dear, you will have learned to accept results and let motives look after themselves.”
She turned and left without a word.
That night she sent a message to the Two Powers by magical means.
In part it said, We are sending Ambrosius out of the Wards to you. Destroy him, if you like, and leave the Wardlands in peace.
She had little hope that the Two Powers would leave the Wardlands alone. But she did very much hope that they would dispose of the Ambrosii, once and for all.
And then, at last, she slept. It had been a long day, but a good one. She hoped tomorrow would be as good.
On a gray misty morning, before the rising sun had cleared the ragged high horizon to the west, Morlock went down the bluff from Tower Ambrose to the edge of the River Ruleijn: the Banestone on a chain around his neck, a bag in one hand, and a long silvery throwing spear in the other.
A flatboat was waiting for him there on the water, a movable wooden bridge running from the bank to the boat. He walked along it with cautious speed, so it seemed to him.
The opinion was not shared by others. “Can’t you hurry up?” one of the oarsman called. “We’re in a hurry! We have to get this vocate to her ship while the current runs true in the Narrow Sea!”
“The ship won’t be going anywhere without me,” Morlock replied.
“True enough!” called one of the boat’s passengers. “This gentleman is also a vocate and rokhlan of renown.”
Morlock glared through the gloaming shadows at the cheerful speaker. “I thought you were still asleep, Deor.”
“And miss the chance to say farewell to my harven-kin Morlock and my new-friend Aloê? By no means. I’d lose years of sleep rather than miss this chance.”
Aloê was sitting beside Deor on the passenger bench in the middle of the boat. She looked at him with more than a little puzzlement. She clearly didn’t understand why the dwarf was so amused. Morlock, who understood full well, chose to ignore him. He muttered, “Good day, Vocate,” sat down on the deck with his back against the deck shack, and closed his eyes.
It was not exactly a pose. True, he had practiced saying those three words to say to her—practiced them over and over until he could say them without thinking, as if it were no great matter. He had planned on pretending to nap if his nerve failed him when he saw her eyes (as it had). But he was indeed tired—unbelievably tired, bone tired. He did not really sleep, but his mind wandered far away as he sat on the deck and listened to their voices, the slap of the oars on the water, the morning birds calling through the mist on the waterside.
Presently he felt a tentative touch on his elbow. He opened his eyes to see Deor crouching beside him in the light of rising day. “Sun’s rising,” the dwarf said, and then looked at Morlock uncertainly.
It was the custom of Morlock’s harven-kin to praise the day at the rising of the sun. Morlock rarely did so these days. But he was not going to stand aside from harven Deor while the dwarf prayed in the presence of Other Ilk.
He stood, stretched, and nodded at Deor. As one they turned westward a
nd, facing the bright light rising over the crooked high horizon, sang the most common Praising of Day.
Heolor charn vehernam choran harwellanclef;
wull wyrma daelu herial hatathclef;
feng fernanclef modblind vemarthal morwe;
Rokh Rokhlanclef hull veheoloral morwe.
Dal sar drangan an immryrend ek aplam,
dal sar deoran an kyrrend knylloram.
Varthendunidh onkwel varthal veroldme ankwellandh;
Hurranidhclef Haldanidhclef Heorridhclef awlim hendonnin.1
Morlock felt Aloê’s eyes on him as he sang, but he didn’t look toward her. This was a ritual: he could get through it because he had done so countless times before. He would find other ways to do what he had to do in her presence. The golden veil threatened to descend, but he ignored it.
A few of the boatmen seemed to think it was an entertainment and stomped their feet in applause. Others looked thoughtful, others bored. Aloê’s golden eyes held a cool measuring look as Morlock incautiously met them.
The golden veil descended before his vision; blood roared in his ears. He knew she was saying something, but couldn’t be sure what it was. He bowed his head in acknowledgement when she seemed to be done, but was unable to respond because he hadn’t heard what she’d said. That made him angry—not at her, but himself. How useless it was to stand here, like a lump on one of the boards of this badly made deck, and say nothing.
“We should talk about our mission,” he said abruptly. It was one of the things he knew he would have to say to her, so he had practiced saying it also. He could say it. He had said it. He felt a disproportionate sense of triumph at the tiny victory, like a man who was learning to walk again after a long illness.
“. . . talk about that here?” she was saying, when he belatedly attended to her response. He had surprised her by saying something unexpected. Somehow this was a cooling, calming thought.