The Wide World's End (13 page)

Morlock weighed his options and at length said, “Yes.” He stepped off the dais and went to stand by Bleys.

Deor came over and stood on the other side of the old summoner.

“Well, well,” said Bleys in a genial whisper that was audible through the whole room. “A scion of Theornn on each side of me. I almost feel one of the clan.”

Neither Morlock nor Deor rose to the bait, but Naevros made a throat-clearing sound of disgust and walked past the other vocates, nearly shouldering Lernaion out of his way. He walked down the steps of the dais and went to stand next to Morlock.

“I stood with Morlock in the North and I stand with him now!” Naevros shouted up at Lernaion, who was staring coldly down at them.

“We see that,” Lernaion said evenly, and turned away.

Morlock felt his face grow hot. The tangle of emotions between him and Aloê and Naevros was more than he could easily understand. But Naevros' good opinion had always meant a great deal to him, even before he had known who Aloê was. He pounded Naevros on the arm and said nothing; there was nothing he could have said.

Bleys looked as if he wanted to say something; his mouth was working as if he had just discovered it contained a live scorpion. But in the end he, too, was silent.

They watched as Illion and Noreê led the stranger Kelat to the Witness Stone.

Morlock had been present at a handful of such events, including one that had preceded his birth, when his mother Nimue Viviana had stood on the Witness Stone. They always filled him with a certain dread. But he did not like standing aside while Aloê went into rapture without him. If there was danger, he felt they should share it. But he had made his choice and would stand by it.

Aloê noted the passing of Illion and Kelat only vaguely. Her thoughts were focused inward, preparing her mind for rapport. The union involved would be superficial, but she did not want her anger against Morlock spilling out into the minds of her peers; it wasn't their business. She wrapped her private thoughts in a cloak of solitude and hid them deep within her.

Her insight told her that her peers were ready for rapport. She took the first, shallowest step into vision.

She was one-yet-separate with laughing Jordel, bitter Noreê, angry Gyrla, frightened Rild . . . all of them, all of them were there with her. She did not sense the stranger, though—could catch no echo of Kelat in all the voices in her head.

The rapport was odd. Fiery. The talic world was blood-bright, smoke-dark. Something was wrong. Something was wrong and it was her. She heard her voice speak the words of the dragon and knew her will was lost.

Morlock watched the faces of his peers change from wakeful purpose to sleepy emptiness. Then they changed again. Jaws clenched, fists closed and opened in unison all around the table.

“Something's gone wrong,” he said to Bleys.

“Yes,” said the summoner, without any of his carefully artificial grandfatherly warmth.

“It's like dragonspell,” whispered Deor. “Look at their eyes! You can see the redness through their lids.”

Dragonspell was notoriously infectious. “Deortheorn, get every thain out of the chamber instantly,” Morlock said. “You had better go as well, Naevros.”

“I have a talisman against binding spells,” Naevros observed. “But I'll help Deor with his herding while you seers discuss . . . whatever this is.”

Bleys and Morlock waited while Deor cleared the room and the great doors of the chamber were closed and barred from the outside.

“Well, Vocate,” Bleys said. “What shall we do?”

“I don't know,” Morlock admitted. “Tea from
maijarra
leaf will unfix a dragonspell, but first we must break the rapport somehow.”

“Difficult,” Bleys said, “without entering into it. Dangerous if we do: we may end up captives ourselves.”

“Kelat must be the source,” said Morlock. “But I looked him in the eyes this morning, and I would swear he was not spellbound.”

“Odd, though,” Bleys said. “Did you talk with him? I did once. Something not there. Or maybe there was something there that didn't belong. . . .”

The Dragon spoke.

Each of the Guardians standing at the long table, and Kelat as well, opened their mouths and spoke in an ill-tuned chorus, “Greetings, Guardians! I thank you and your colleagues for stepping into the trap I so carefully prepared. I am Rulgân the Kinslayer, also called Silverfoot. My plan is to steal something from you if I can, deal with you if I must.”

“An honest thief,” remarked Bleys, with a return of his habitual irony.

“Of course!” the many-throated monster replied. “How I had hoped that you, Master Bleys, or you, young Ambrosius, would be among my captives. But I am foiled at every turn, I see.” Dozens of throats barked in unison: the dragon was laughing.

“You might not have found us so easy to master, o son of fire and envy,” Bleys replied.

“You would have thrown open the door and welcomed me in!” disputed the dragon through the mouths of the vocates. “That was the genius of my plan.”

“What do you want?” Morlock asked.

“Morlock Ambrosius, you are a practical man! I did not understand that at one time. And so I dismissed you. And then I hated you, for reasons we both know. And later I scorned you. But now I know that you were right all along: choose what you want, and give all else to get it! For me, for a long time, that one thing was knowledge. I paid much for it, as you know—mutilated and staked to the floor in that temple of the Gray Folk. But it was nothing to see all that I saw, through so many different eyes—hear what I heard through so many different ears. And to act! To murder! To love! To steal! To save! To die in triumph, and yet slink away in terror to survive! I have lived so many different lives, drunk deeply of so many wells of sin and truth. The price was nothing. It was nothing.”

As the dragon spoke through the mouths of their colleagues and friends, Morlock and Bleys by unspoken consent began to sidle toward the Witness Stone and Kelat.

When the dragon paused, Morlock said quietly, “I congratulate you.”

“I know that you do. You said something like that when you saw me in my temple, and I thought you were amusing yourself at my expense. Later, when I knew so many truths, I realized the truth of this. The greed for knowledge is greater than the greed for gold, or any mere thing.”

“Greed is greed,” Morlock said indifferently.

“So the dwarves taught you; so I taught the mandrakes, as their god. I know how to tell truths, Morlock, and also lies cunningly fashioned like truth.”

“I see that you have assimilated a broad range of literary classics.”

“You two-eyed fool, the world has been my library! I have read deeply in it. I see what you are doing now, by the way, and I let it continue only because it will do no good. But let me show you something. Yes, let me show you something.”

Every other Guardian standing at the table reached up with both hands and began to choke himself or herself.

Aloê was one of them. Morlock saw her slim hands grip her long, graceful throat and squeeze. He repressed several conflicting impulses and said, “Rulgân! Do not anger us past the point of reason. You offered a deal.”

The brown hands relaxed their grip, fell down at Aloê's side. The same was true of the other vocates.

“I wanted you to know,” the dragon said, through Aloê's mouth alone, “that
I
know what your pearl is. Yes, and I know exactly what lengths you will go to defend it—defend her. No, candidly, I do not want to anger you beyond reason.”

All the dragon-possessed Guardians spoke in their unlovely chorus, “But I have the power to take it from you, your pearl of great price. You will deal with me because you must. Or you will tolerate my theft because you must.”

“What are we talking about?” Morlock said. “What is it you want?”

“I thought it was knowledge,” the dragon said slowly through the many mouths. “If it were, I would have had it by now, and moved on to certain experiments I have often thought to try. . . .”

“Knowledge of what?” Morlock asked. Bleys' eyes were glowing. The old seer had entered visionary rapture. Morlock hoped his conversation would distract the dragon from whatever Bleys was attempting.

“I wish to travel on the Sea of Worlds,” the dragon said in a crowd of voices.

“To gain more knowledge?”

“To continue my life! Has it escaped your notice, young Ambrosius, that this world is dying, this vast case for your so-small, so-precious pearl? I wish to flee, but I cannot. You could, but you do not.”

“I haven't given up hope.”

“You don't know what I know! But you could. Do you follow me? I offer my knowledge for my escape, the lives of these people you care about for my own life.”

“That is your deal? Why don't you just take the knowledge you crave?”

“I hoped I could,” the dragon's stolen voices said ruefully. “But I see from one, and then another, that what is really needed is skill: the skill of piloting through the shifting currents of the Sea of Worlds. Perhaps even a talent. Knowledge may be stolen, but skill must be acquired and talent is inborn. No, I will need someone to pilot me to a better world, a world with more life in it, if I am to live forever.”

“You plan to live forever?”

“How else can I know everything that can be known?”

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. “You can't!”

“You certainly won't. This world is doomed and I know who is killing its sun. That is the knowledge I propose to trade to you, Guardians. In return I want safe passage to a fresher world. I will self-bind not to harm my pilot, whomever you choose for the task.”

The pale glow in Bleys' eyes faded. He met Morlock's eye, glanced down to Morlock's sword, then inclined his head slightly toward Kelat.

For a wordless communication, Bleys' meaning was fairly clear. He wanted Morlock to kill Kelat. That would break the chains binding the Guardians at Station.

This was a reasonable plan—in fact, a fairly obvious one. Morlock was not inclined to kill someone on Bleys' mere say-so, however. He ascended into vision himself—the slightest step into the visionary world, with barely a thin permeable veil between his awareness and the world of matter.

He saw the Guardians at Station, a coronet of souls writhing in fierce, brilliant agony. Intertwined with their spirits was another coronet of fiery thorns. That passed through each of the Guardians at Station and returned back to its source: the stranger Kelat.

He heard a dim thought, like a voice speaking in a distant room: Bleys was right—killing Kelat would break the ring and free the Guardians. But. . . .

Morlock's body did not move, but his awareness focused on Kelat and the Witness Stone. The coronet of fire passed out of Kelat and through the Guardians and through Kelat again, like a great wheel. But there was a smaller spiked wheel of flames that passed between a fiery locus in Kelat's brain, through his arms, into the Witness Stone, and out of the Stone into Kelat's other arm.

Morlock's mechanically inclined imagination saw them as meshing gears of fire. Break either one, the device would be powerless. . . .

He drew Tyrfing. With the blade to focus his power, he could move a little, even in deeper rapture than this. He approached the Witness Stone.

Rulgân shouted out threats and promises through the many mouths he had in thrall, but Morlock did not heed them, could not really hear them: he felt their vibrations in the coronet of fire.

He dropped out of visionary rapture. He swung his sword and struck his target: the Witness Stone.

“No, you fool!” screamed Bleys when, too late, he realized Morlock's intent.

The Stone shattered. The Guardians cried out in many voices—not their own, but not all one any longer.

“I am broken in pieces!” shrieked Noreê.

“Your pearl will dissolve in the wine of death, fool!” snarled Illion.