A Guile of Dragons

by James Enge

  “It was in this age that the mandrakes became dragons. Whether by choice—because, for stealth or force, a dragon is the perfect thief—or else by the destiny of their blood, mandrake after mandrake suffered the metamorphosis to dragon. They lost their hands. Their genitals remained but were useless; they could only give birth in death. Their fire burst forth uncontrollably, and the venom in their throats tormented them with eternal thirst. But they were strong: to fight, to steal, to keep. The strongest of them were nearly invulnerable, and they tested that strength in constant combat with each other. In this age their civilization fragmented, but it had not completely fallen: the dwarvish slave-race kept it alive.

  “Then the dragon-plague began to spread among the dwarves. By choice or by the destiny of their blood, slave after slave underwent the metamorphosis and became a fire-breathing serpent. These were either killed or allowed to wander free, but in either case the wealth they produced was lost to their masters. The civilization of the dragons began its final collapse.

  “Then Theornn arose and established a code of laws among the dwarves under him. Instead of greed they were taught hospitality. Instead of rage, justice. Creation, not possession; service, not mastery. The new dwarvish law placed blood above money: it was not to be bought or sold. To shed blood for money, to steal, to lie: these were made unthinkable crimes, punished with swift justice. The love of kin was also fostered, as antidote to selfishness. The dwarves of Theornn were taught to revere their ancestors, who had not undergone the metamorphosis; they came to believe (because Theornn encouraged it) that their ancestors watched over them, and their dearest wish was to join those-who-watch after death.”

  This description of dwarvish law (accurate, in the main) gave Morlock the voice to speak in defense of his harven kin. “Then I say Theornn was a prophet, who brought his people words of life and hope.”

  The silver dwarf behind him laughed, loud and long. “His people?” it said finally. “They were his people—his property. Have you not understood? Theornn was a dragon, the first ruler of Thrymhaiam. He instituted law among the dwarves to protect their value as workers and slaves. For a long age, while the other great dragons of the north could obtain wealth only by stealing it, Theornn’s slaves made him new things of wealth and beauty every day. Until, at last, Theornn’s servants rose up and killed him and his companions while they lay sleeping. So the good righteous dwarves of Thrymhaiam bought their freedom with the murder of their prophet, and the Longest War began with the treachery of a slave!”

  Morlock, spellbound by the terrible revelations, did not have the strength to speak. He hardly had the strength to move. Dimly he remembered his former sense of power, and dimly wondered at the memory. He glanced back at the dwarvish image that had spoken so many words with his voice. Its light was brighter, its features stronger and more noble than ever. He began to understand that power was still passing from himself to the image. And if the image were but an extension of the Dead Cor . . .

  He turned back. The greenish lumen woven through the Dead Cor’s form shone like a lamp. The break at its shoulder had knitted; it seemed to grow brighter as he looked at it. Then he guessed that all this talk, true or false, was simply a ploy to keep him still while the life drained from him. He picked up his feet and ran to the edge of the grave. As he turned away the silver serpentine dwarf vanished like a blown flame and he felt strength well up within him.

  He halted at the grave’s edge. What, he wondered, was the source of the strange bodiless strength sustaining him? Part, indeed, came from within. But that was intensified and added to by the power-focus that lay through the grave itself. Could he use it against the Dead Cor, even destroy his enemy so?

  It seemed unlikely. As he turned, he saw the other standing just beyond reach, waiting. Why should it wait, unless waiting was to its advantage? It would have never brought him here if there were even a chance he might use the focus to destroy it. He guessed that everything he did within the grave caused power to transfer from himself to the dead one. Outside the grave he might die; inside he was certainly doomed, and each long moment he stayed there brought that doom nearer.

  But even the thought of recrossing the threshold was a painful one. Beyond the grave, the Dead Cor seemed even stronger than it was here. The strength the grave-spell provided might be an illusion, but it was a very pleasant illusion. Perhaps he should wait a while. . . .

  Every instant he watched, though, the Dead Cor’s image grew clearer and brighter upon its object. It had a face now. Morlock did not wish to see that face. He turned and crossed the threshold, feeling the lightless weight of his flesh descend on him; the black-and-white flames wrapping him vanished.

  The Dead Cor was upon him at once, all light extinguished, a corrupt deadly weight heavier than stone. The monochrome shield of Ambrose glinted mockingly on its shoulder. His strength began to fail as the sharp fleshless hands forced him back toward the banefire. He tried to dig in his feet, but the ground crumbled beneath them and he was forced closer and closer to the zone of deadly light.

  At the brink he finally caught his feet on a ridge of stone and turned. They struggled with the banefire burning at their side. Morlock saw the wild torn outline of his enemy, black against the blue blaze of the undying fire his father had set. The Dead Cor raised the dead weight of its arms and struck him repeatedly on the face. He saw the shield of Ambrose fly up and down on its shoulder, like a single wing, as he vainly tried to protect his head.

  Groggily, Morlock realized he was about to lose consciousness and, with it, his life. With the last of his strength he seized his enemy by the bare bone of its arms and they fell together into the banefire.

  The cold lightning-bright agony of the blue flames lanced through him. But he held, like death itself, his enemy by its arms. He dragged it farther back, toward the coldest heart of the flames. For endless freezing moments it fought him, the fire, the corruption in its own flesh.

  Suddenly there was darkness. The undying flames were dead. Morlock cried out involuntarily in pain and fear. He had never seen anything as terrifying as that empty dark. He was alone; his hands were empty. His father’s spell was broken, and that could only mean the Dead Cor was free.

  Dazed with pain and fear he turned back and forth in the darkness, seeking to face his death as it came to him. It was not until he looked down and saw the skeleton and the shield of Ambrose, gleaming in the moonlight, at his feet that he realized the truth. He was the victor; Gryregaest, the sword-scepter, the prize of Tunglskin, was his.

  That morning a storm came out of the mountains by way of the Hill of Storms. The snow rode bitter winds from the Whitethorn slopes; the storm struck lightning like sparks from the flinty gray hills. The Arbiter of the Peace waited it out stoically, standing inside Morlock’s breach in the wooden wall, which she had reopened last night in the hour when the banefire failed.

  It shocked her servants when she broke the wall. They had taken it, she guessed, as an act of despair. They thought, clearly, that it pleased her to make her final stand against the ancient horror at such a place.

  In a way, of course, they were right. Things might end that way. But she did not feel they would. There was something else in the air. It went with the storm, with the clean cold winds the storm brought, with the sudden shocking light of thunderbolts in the snow.

  The snow now covered the crooked black hill like a veil. As she waited for dawn in the storm, she wondered at the mysterious beauty of the hated hill in the rising light. The storm broke just before dawn, when there was still a dark blue brightness to the clearing sky.

  In dawn’s light Tunglskin was more beautiful yet: a crooked white outline against the straight high peaks beyond. For long moments the Arbiter simply looked at it, then had to look away.

  Not long after dawn the watchers’ horns began to sound. The first one sounded not twenty paces from her. Looking to the top of the hill, she saw that a figure was indeed making its way down the slope. She raised
her own horn and sounded it, silencing the watchers. She sounded it again with a different call, telling her servants to stay at their posts at the base of the hill. Then she picked five to accompany her and began to climb toward the descending figure.

  It was Morlock. They met about halfway up the hill. His face was like a muddy footprint in a field of snow.

  He clearly had been through a mortal combat. There were black blisters and deepening bruises on his face. But beyond these he had a lost tormented look. The Arbiter heard her servants muttering ominously at her back, and not without cause; she had seen corpses dead from banefire that looked less damaged than Morlock did now. Nevertheless she was tolerably sure this was the man himself, not merely a new avatar for the Dead Cor. He carried the shield of Ambrose on his arm—and who but Morlock would look so dismayed at a legendary victory?

  “Thain Morlock,” she said, “what’s wrong?”

  He stared at her blankly, and when he answered it seemed no answer. “It’s dark,” he muttered. “Broken and dark.”

  “But it’s not dark now,” she said. “The sun has risen. Look! All around. Light.”

  He looked at her in astonishment and shook his head.

  “How fares the Dead Cor?” she asked.

  He laughed, and for a moment she looked away. But she found she must look back; his unhappiness fascinated her.

  “Regin and Fafnir were brothers!” He shouted it in her face and rushed by.

  She nodded to herself. She remembered Morlock crying this aloud in trance some days ago. Whatever it meant (and she had no idea; the names were gibberish to her, perhaps some wormhugger thing), this was surely the other side of Morlock’s vision.

  Some of her servants would have gone after Morlock, but she stopped them. If he had destroyed the Dead Cor, he would make short work of them, or so she guessed. And, if he hadn’t, she would need them here.

  At the summit they found the Dead Cor’s grave still open to the sky, as if it were midnight instead of newest day. The veil of snow was humped in strange shapes within the grave, and the Arbiter forbid her people to enter there, lest they be snared by some lingering spell. She commanded them to sweep the rest of the area clear, hoping to find the remains of the Dead Cor.

  Not long afterward one of her servants called her to the Broken Altar.

  “He left the sword,” the servant told her.

  “Gryregaest?” she said. “I wonder why.” She looked down on the sword-scepter, glittering like graven ice on the dark stone surface of the altar. The blade’s surface was bright, but there was none of that inner light the songs spoke of. There was no trace of snow on stone or sword.

  “It’s broken,” the servant answered. “Look!”

  With courage too reckless to be called commendable, he reached down and pressed the edge of the blade with his thumb. Then she saw that what she had thought to be a design engraved on the crystalline sword was in fact a pattern of fracture lines. The sword had been shattered, then the pieces put together like a puzzle. The sword was useless; it wasn’t even a sword.

  “Odd they don’t mention it in the songs,” the servant said.

  “Maybe they will in the next one,” the Arbiter replied. “Look, Bren, collect the pieces and tend to them. They’ll be wanting every last sliver in Thrymhaiam or I don’t know dwarves.”

  At that point another one of the servants cried out that the Dead Cor had been found in the banefire circle. She went over to take charge of burning its bones.

  Morlock stole a horse from the Arbiter’s stables and rode it at a cruel pace back to Thrymhaiam. Stealing was nothing to him, now—he knew why the dwarves feared it. Cruelty was nothing to him, now—he knew who had taught them to refrain. He would ride up and tell them, I stole this horse. Take it. He would . . . He would . . .

  He was furious. How they had lied to him, all his life, teaching him a way to live but not telling him the evil that lay behind it. They were just like Merlin. Harven Tyr was no better than ruthen Merlin. In fact, he was worse. There had been a boldness, an openness to Merlin’s evil. He was what he was and he didn’t try to pretend virtue. Tyr was otherwise: timid, crawling in his cave, speaking wise words of caution, while all the time there was a serpent in him, rearing to strike.

  He reached the ruins of Southgate well before noon. He dismounted the horse and challenged the watch in Dwarvish. “Take me to the Eldest!” he said. “Wherever he is, there I will go.”

  They sent a guide with him. It was past noon before they reached a chamber that was sealed in white wax: the sign of the Elders’ assembly. Outside the door stood no guard; by dwarvish custom the chamber stood inviolate until the seal was broken from within.

  Morlock laughed bitterly. Dwarvish custom! What was it to him, an Ambrosius? With a defiant glance at his guide, who was openmouthed with astonishment, he lifted the Ambrosian shield and crushed the wax seal. Then he opened the door and entered, a shout of furious defiance ready on his tongue.

  Faces looked at him in surprise, seven blunt bearded faces. They were the Elders of the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam, the heirs of the dragon Theornn. In the center should have been Tyr, their chief, as Eldest of the eldest clan. There was no better place for the inevitable confrontation. He would tell them all, tell them he knew everything, tell them he knew what they were at last.

  But Tyr was not present. Vetr sat in his place.

  “I beg your pardon, Elder Brother,” said Morlock. He had no quarrel with Vetr. “I have words for Tyr. Some fool told me he was here.”

  Vetr rose to his feet. “He is not. You had better tell your words to me.”

  Morlock shook his head. “No. Where is he?”

  “You have not understood, Brother. He is not. Your guide brought you, I guess, where you asked to go. Old Father Tyr has gone with the summoner Earno to his last combat. I am the Eldest of Theorn Clan.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Under the Mountains

  The nest that Vendas had fashioned out of his ruined bed was beginning to rot. This had something to do with the fluid being secreted under the scales that now covered his skin. A number of his guards had tried to buy the bed from him, as that was the only way he would even discuss parting with it. But he kept raising the price. Finally one of the guards brought in a small sum of gold, supposing the captive would, as the proverb had it, prefer real gold to talked-about jewels. But Vendas had simply killed him and taken his money. Now the guards sat their watches in pairs, wore armor, and did not talk to the prisoner.

  He was unconscious when Vyrlaeth, the snakelike master of healing, brought Deor and Morlock in to view him. Smoke trailed from his distended nostrils.

  “He’s been asleep now for two days,” Vyrlaeth told Morlock. “See how long and sharp his head is getting? We think the jaws will open up there, at the top of his head.”

  “What about his face?”

  “Perhaps it will just wear away. He will never have wings. But: you see how low his shoulders are getting? Perhaps his legs and arms will fuse into his body and he will become a fire-breathing serpent. There are such in Tychar, they say. It’s most interesting. I almost wish we had more like Ven to study.”

  “It is terrible to see.” Morlock’s tone was distant, as if he were remembering something.

  “I’ve seen nothing worse,” Deor agreed, scowling at Vyrlaeth. “Nor had Eldest Tyr; he told me as much.” Deor paused, then added impulsively, “We are all like Ven, these days.”

  Morlock looked at him without expression. “What do you mean?”

  Deor knew well enough what he meant, but it was difficult to say. Ven represented to him everything that had changed when the dragons came. The familiar had become strange, then horrible, without ceasing to be familiar. He stood there, talking to Morlock, as he had countless times before. But it was different—he could not speak freely, and Morlock seemed to have the same problem. Conversation had a tendency to flicker and go out. It was not because they could not think of anything to sa
y—who cared for silence then? No: it was because they were thinking constantly of what they could not say.

  When Tyr had lost (or won) the coin toss, this moment became inevitable. Someday Morlock would return to Thrymhaiam. It was the lot of one of his harven kin to go with Earno, to protect Morlock from exile. It was the lot of the other to stay behind and tell him the truth of these events, when he was ready to hear it. “Yours is the harder task, Deortheorn,” said the Eldest, after the coin chose him. Deor had not believed it, and still did not. But it was hard enough. He knew that he could not tell Morlock the whole truth in his present strange mood. (What had he seen on Tunglskin? What had the Dead Cor, perhaps, told him?) But Deor refused to lie to him; that would do no one any good. So they ended up suffering through long silences—like this one.

  “Never mind!” he said impatiently, brushing the matter away.

  Morlock nodded. He, too, had something too dangerous to say. He was thinking how, in his insane anger, he had been ready to taunt Tyr with the twisted serpentine skeleton he had seen on Tunglskin. But he was not angry now. He felt only an emptiness that was not even grief or guilt. “I wish Old Father Tyr had not gone,” he said.

  Deor shrugged. “You’ll get no argument from me. Vetr is a good enough fellow, but no one can pretend we ever saw eye to eye.”

  The dwarves on guard looked at each other nervously after this comment. “Deor!” said Vyrlaeth warningly.

  Deor’s impatience boiled over again. “Come along; let’s get out of here and breathe some air.”

  In the corridor outside he resumed, “Nevertheless, Tyr had his reasons for going. I don’t think you’re . . . considering everything.”

  “Have I ever?”