The Wide World's End

by James Enge

  What I steal is mine. Your mind was mine, not yours, because I could take it. I do not buy or sell.

  “Then I will kill you.”

  Men have killed dragons on occasion, but I have never been one of them.

  “I’m with him,” Deor said impulsively. “You owe the—you owe Kelat some answers. Your agreement with Morlock doesn’t bind me.”

  The dragon looked at Morlock. Morlock said nothing. He glanced at Ambrosia. She shrugged impatiently and pointed out the door of the temple, where Danadhar’s voice could be heard, a lone ship sailing against a storm of shouting.

  What do you want? the dragon said reluctantly. The gold I am leaving for my spellbound servants to bring away. Do you want some of it? Take it.

  Kelat seemed repelled. Deor could understand it. Blood has no price. . . . This grief, this shame was like that.

  “Answer a question,” Deor suggested.

  “Yes!” said Kelat eagerly. “You put a gem in my head to control me. How? Who made it?”

  Old Ambrosius, of course, the dragon said. He, too, broke the Wards, through some knowledge of his own he would not share. I dealt with him through agents and the spellbound—never trusting him, you see. And I was right: all along he was plotting to attack me.

  “Old Ambrosius,” whispered Kelat.

  “Also, Merlin,” Deor observed. “Also, Olvinar. And many another name.”

  “Lightbringer lately, I understand,” Ambrosia said wryly. Morlock looked at her incredulously and she said, “Yes, I thought that would amuse you, brother.”

  This is very warm and cozy, the dragon remarked sourly, and I’m sure it’s very amusing. But those mandrakes outside are preparing to enter and resolve their religious disputes at my expense. They’ll kill you, too, I think: the god-speaker is having trouble talking them out of it. Time to keep your word or break it, young Ambrosius.

  Morlock drew his black, shining blade and descended into the hoard. He waded through the gold until he reached the crystalline device. He paused to examine it and the shining cables passing out of it.

  “This is a very intricate and beautiful device,” he said.

  Yes. Yes. It feels almost like a part of me. There is no chance to bring it along when I leave, I suppose?

  “None. This is only the visible extrusion; it is built all through this temple.”

  The dragon groaned sadly.

  Morlock paused again to pick up a piece of gold. “This metal seems even denser and heavier than gold,” he said to the dragon.

  The dragon said nothing, but opened his many-fanged mouth in a predatory smile.

  “A dead dragon is heavier than lead,” Morlock said. “Do you draw something from the metal that helps you fly?”

  You expect an answer? the dragon said.

  “You’ve given the answer, worm,” Deor muttered under his breath. Morlock, too, seemed pleased with the dragon’s ambiguous response. He nodded and flipped the coin away.

  Morlock approached the dragon’s face. Deor’s fingers and toes curled, as if he were standing on the edge of a precipice or riding a hippogriff through the middle air. But Morlock showed no signs of fear as he came within reach of the dragon’s long, wolf-like jaws. He looked closely at the cables sinking into the dragon’s eyes and earholes.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Rulgân, who only growled in answer.

  This was enough for Morlock. Using his left hand, he gripped the cable coming out of the dragon’s right eye; using his right hand, he cut through the cable with Tyrfing.

  The dragon shrieked.

  Morlock did the same with the other three cables, and each time the dragon shrieked fiery despair and poison smoke like mist filled the temple chamber.

  The ends of the cables were still lodged in the dragon’s head. Morlock gestured at one of them.

  Yes, hissed the dragon.

  Morlock sheathed his sword and took hold of the cable with both hands. He pulled.

  The dragon roared his agony, writhing on his gold bed, pounding the pillars and the floor with his tail, sending fire and smoke throughout the temple chamber. Pillars were destroyed; sections of the roof fell in. Ambrosia, Deor, and Kelat tried to keep to the least dangerous parts of the chamber, their eyes on Morlock in case he needed assistance. He did not pause until the dragon’s eyes and ear holes were free from obstructions.

  The noise from within only increased the noise from without. Now Deor could hear words in the cries. “Kill the God!” “Kill the outsiders before they can kill the God!” “Vengeance and freedom!” The crowd liked that and repeated it a lot: “Vengeance and freedom!”

  No sentiment could have pleased Deor’s dwarvish heart more, except that he feared that he and his would be caught up in that wave of vengeance.

  Rulgân rose up on his back legs, towering over Morlock. Deor rushed to stand by him, in case Rulgân attacked, and he heard Kelat and Ambrosia wading through gold in his wake.

  But Rulgân didn’t attack. He put his narrow, winged back against the cracked roof of the temple and pushed; the roof split apart, showering timber, stone, and mortar. The sky was open to him now: he could escape his erstwhile worshippers.

  Coated with dust and grit, he was pale, like the ghost of a dragon. He looked down in fury and contempt at the four travellers at his feet.

  But he roared, If I let them kill you, who’ll save the world? He reached down and scooped them up, Ambrosia and Morlock in one clawed foot, Deor and Kelat in the other. He lifted them over his fuming head and leapt straight up into the sky.

  Deor was utterly aghast. He watched with horror as the dragon’s wings unfolded like sails and then beat back to drive them deeper into the sky. The fire-scarred town below spun dizzily in the dark, fell away below and behind. The stars were gone. The moons were gone. There was nothing but the stench of the dragon and Kelat’s terrified face, which Deor proceeded to vomit onto. He would have been ashamed indeed, except that Kelat vomited more or less simultaneously.

  “This is the worst!” Deor kept telling himself. “Nothing on this terrible journey will ever get worse than this!”

  Half of the dark dragon-lit world began to grow gray. That part was the sky, Deor guessed. The still-dark part the ground. But sometimes it was above, sometimes below, as the dragon spun crazily through the air. The horizon ahead of them had rough, saw-tooth edges: mountains.

  They were falling. They were falling. They were falling.

  The dragon stalled in the air, just above the ground, and released them from his claws. He flew away into the still-dark east without another word.

  They lay on the slope without moving for a while. Deor heard someone retching and was dimly glad that he was done with all that. Then his body was trying to vomit even though there was nothing left for his belly to give but stinking bitterness.

  As they lay there, a storm walked south from the mountains. The snowflakes began to fall thick about them as the day’s light struggled to be seen in the west. They would have to move soon or freeze to death.

  It was the first of Harps, the first full day of summer.

  PART THREE

  A Cold Summer

  Some say the world will end in fire,

  Some say in ice.

  From what I’ve tasted of desire

  I hold with those who favor fire.

  But if it had to perish twice,

  I think I know enough of hate

  To say that for destruction ice

  Is also great

  And would suffice.

  —Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Endless Empire

  A dwarf in a hat as bright as the sun was standing over Morlock. His red beard was braided with gold, and there was gold and silver work in all his scarlet-colored clothes. Even his boots were gilded. Of more immediate interest was the spear in his hand, its point made of mundane but effective steel.

  “Shouldn’t sleep here,” the dwarf said in harshly accented Ontilian.


  “Praise the Day, watcher,” Morlock replied in Dwarvish. “I am Morlock Ambrosius, also called syr Theorn, harven coruthen to the Elder of the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam.” They were clearly at the foot of the Dolich Kund, “the River of Gold”—the only safe pass between the lands north and south of the Blackthorn/Whitethorn Range. It also marked the division between the Blackthorn and the Whitethorn Mountains. The dwarves of the Endless Empire, under the Blackthorn Range, never entered the Whitethorns for reasons that they did not explain. But they did recognize kinship with the dwarves under Thrymhaiam. It was not beyond belief that they could hope for help here.

  “Oh,” said the dwarf. He rubbed the tip of his nose with the butt of his spear, handling the heavy weapon as lightly as if it were a pen. “Still shouldn’t sleep here. Other Ilk known to die in the mountains.”

  “Thanks,” Morlock said briefly. He stood up and turned his back on the spear-carrier, partly to return discourtesy for discourtesy, but primarily to check on the well-being of his comrades.

  Ambrosia was sitting up, looking on with sour amusement. She returned his nod. Deor was in a bad way, and Kelat was worse, both of them splashed with each other’s vomit. It was an evil gray-green in the cold, snowy morning’s light—and that was good: it must have carried a good deal of dragon venom out of their systems.

  “Any maijarra leaf in your pack?” Morlock asked his sister.

  “No.”

  “Eh.”

  “Can you expand on that, Morlock?”

  “Tea from maijarra leaves protects against venom.”

  “Oh. I see what you mean. We must have inhaled a good deal of the stuff. No wonder I’m feeling woozy!”

  “Yes.” Morlock looked around. His pack was missing. Well, not missing exactly: he had left it on the floor in Rulgân’s former temple. It was a mild nuisance, at worst, although he was sorry to lose the books he had brought with him from the Wardlands. He had also brought some maijarra leaves, knowing that they would confront Rulgân.

  He eased Deor’s pack off his shoulders. The eye among the fastenings recognized him and undid themselves when he spoke to them. Inside the pack was a great many things—too many, in Morlock’s judgment. But there was a bundle of simples, including maijarra leaf.

  “We’ll need fire—somewhere out of the wind.” He glanced around and pointed at a hollow free from snow.

  “Right,” Ambrosia agreed. “You take Deor; I’ll carry Kelat.”

  They hustled their unconscious companions over to the hollow. Ambrosia set up an Imperfect Occlusion overhead while Morlock made a fire out of some scrub bushes. The dwarf with the sun-bright hat followed them and watched what they did carefully but didn’t interfere.

  Presently Morlock and Ambrosia were sipping tea from sheckware mugs. They had wrapped their unconscious comrades in their cloaks and put them near the fire so that they would not be in danger from the cold.

  Morlock said nothing through all of this, and Ambrosia very little. Her red-rimmed eyes met his and she smiled furiously.

  Morlock looked at the spear-carrier, who seemed to shiver within his finery, and he said, “Join us. If your watch permits.”

  Eagerly, the dwarf laid aside his spear and sat down at the little fire. “Thanks, bold strangers!” he said. “I thought you merely victims of dragonspell or some other such truck, but now I see how wrong I was. What were your names again? You are called Ambrosius?”

  Morlock nodded. “Among other things.” He sipped his tea. The maijarra decoction was metallic and unpleasant, and in large quantities it was itself a poison. But he wasn’t drinking it for pleasure. Also, it was warm.

  The watch-dwarf looked at Ambrosia, who volunteered nothing and did not look at him. After a few moments he said to Morlock, “Any kinship to the Regent of the Vraids, then?”

  “I am Ambrosia Viviana,” said Morlock’s sister in a voice colder than the white wind.

  The dwarf squawked and leapt to his feet. He ran off upslope into the storm, leaving his spear behind.

  “Ha,” Ambrosia said, and drank her tea.

  Presently the watch-dwarf returned. With him was a company of dwarves, also resplendent in scarlet and gold. In their midst was one who seemed to be half a head taller, but in fact was teetering along on boots with thick soles.

  “Great Regent and true ruler of the Vraids,” said the tall one, bowing as low as he dared from his perch and doffing his bright hat, “Lady Ambrosia Viviana, welcome again to the Endless Empire! Won’t you come under with us and share a few words and a dish of hot mushrooms? The Lorvadh of the Year hurries hither to greet you.”

  “We’re comfortable here,” Ambrosia said, as indifferent to the dwarves’ belated courtesy as to the truth. “The Lorvadh may come out here, if he chooses.”

  Morlock was not comfortable, and he suspected his sister was less so. But no doubt she had her reasons. He pulled some dried fish from Deor’s pack and handed a piece of it to Ambrosia. She made a face, then bit a chunk off and chewed it like jerky.

  The commander stuttered for a while, but as he managed to say nothing that was obviously a word, there was no occasion to answer him. He staggered off atop his stilty shoes and left his company bemused behind him. After some whispered discussion, they formed up in lines and stood with their spears upright, like an honor guard.

  The dark day was approaching noon and the snow had stopped when a lone figure approached, wrapped in a cloak of blue and gold, a circlet of electrum on his head.

  “Lady Ambrosia!” said the newcomer. “I ran here like a rabbit as soon as I heard you were passing though the Dolich Kund. Won’t you—won’t you please come under with me? I can offer you a steambath, mushrooms, beer, conversation, or simply a decent bed to rest on for a night.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Ambrosia. “We’re rather in a hurry. What do you think, Morlock? Lorvadh Vyrn, this is my brother, Morlock Ambrosius, master of all makers and the deadliest blade in the universal world.”

  “Save one,” Morlock pointed out.

  “Honored,” said the Lorvadh briefly to Morlock. “I’m sure our makers will be glad to receive you among the work levels.”

  Ambrosia frowned.

  “Or rather—really—since you are the brother of our ally and friend the Lady Ambrosia—I cannot do enough for you, but I promise I will try. Won’t you come in? I’m afraid the weather will make you unwell.”

  “Eh.”

  “My brother will be pleased to accept your invitation,” Ambrosia said, rising. “And so, I suppose, must I be. Have your people bring along our baggage and our friends, won’t you? Treat them kindly; the one is a king’s son, the other a trusted counsellor of the Elder of Theorn Clan.”

  She and the Lorvadh walked off together side by side.

  Morlock got to his feet. He saw the first watch-dwarf at his side, stooping to recover his spear.

  “What’s a Lorvadh?” Morlock asked him.

  “A kind of king, I guess,” the watcher said. “The Greater Fifteen elect one of their number to rule through the year.”

  “Hm.” Morlock stooped and picked up Deor and put him over one shoulder. Then he hefted Kelat over the other. He walked off after Ambrosia with slow, short steps.

  It was undignified, perhaps. But he would not leave his friends to be carried by strangers. They could bring the mere stuff: in Morlock’s sense of the fitness of things, that was all right.

  But he felt no kinship for them, harven or ruthen.

  They stayed only a brief time in the Endless Empire under the Blackthorns. But that first day they needed baths, and food, and rest, and they got it. Ambrosia spent much of her time talking with the Lorvadh and the others of the Greater Fifteen, so the three males were often left to their own devices.

  Morlock spent some time roaming the lower levels with Deor and Kelat in tow. Makers occupied a warren just above miners, and neither type of dwarf was often seen on the higher levels where the mercators and soldiers dwelled am
ong the halls of feasting.

  The makers were interested to meet Morlock, and he had some interesting conversations among them. But they had nothing to tell about the threat to the sun, or the world at large: many of them had not seen the light of the sun since they were children.

  They did feel that makers should stick together, though, and they saw to it that Morlock had winter gear and supplies for the long trip north. He also made, with their help, a new stabbing spear to replace the one that Kelat had adopted. In return, he drew a few multidimensional maps for their use in creating gems, which they viewed with suspicion and interest, and they had a boisterous beery supper in which Morlock drank the masters of making and their chief apprentices under the table, even though he didn’t particularly like beer.

  His head was still aching the next morning when someone awakened him with a friendly pitcher of water thrown in his face.

  He jumped up, snorting, and looked around to see who he should strangle. His bleary eyes focused on his sister, Ambrosia, calmly putting an empty pitcher aside on a table.

  “If you’re not too busy hobnobbing with the servants, brother,” she said, “the Lorvadh and his councillors would like to meet you.”

  “Eh.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Morlock took his time: shaved, bathed, ate, and dressed himself in new clothes the “servants” had made for him. But he was still angry about the remark when Ambrosia led him up a long flight of stairs to the Council Hall under three-peaked Jyrhyrning.

  There he found Kelat talking with the Lorvadh, and fourteen other dwarves dressed resplendently in a rainbow of glittering colors. There was a great table of stained pinewood with an oaken throne at one end. There were a few dwarves dressed in drab clothing sitting on stools in a shadowy end of the hall. They clutched books in their hands with arcane astronomical symbols painted on the covers. The hall was high enough in the mountain to have decent windows. These had been well made some considerable time ago, but the casings had cracked in more recent years, with the repairs done hastily and (to Morlock’s practiced eye) badly. These blunders were partly hidden by velvet bunting.