A Guile of Dragons (26 page)

He expected every moment the occasion he could not plan for. A dragon would appear on the horizon, a cloud of dark smoke in the clean afternoon air; it would see him and stoop like a hawk. He imagined it a thousand ways as he ran and walked toward his lengthening shadow. He refused to imagine what would happen next. After all, he would have to face it soon enough. But he couldn't prevent the images of danger from rising unbidden in his mind.

Consequently he felt a strange sort of apprehension as he, at the end of the day, began to approach the ragged edge of the high fields. Something was wrong; he should not have gotten this far. Not only was he still alive, the dragons had not even seen him.

He looked longingly at the High Gates, just across the narrow valley. They gleamed red-gold against the already blue-black western sky. A gradual slope lifted upon his right hand; he knew that the footpath down to the lakes began on the other side. The temptation was to dash up the slope and down the path beyond. His body, which had run this far, was unwilling to keep still. He attempted to placate it with a mouthful of water, only to find his water bottle was dry. Yet he forced himself to stand under the slope and think the matter through.

Since the dragons knew the refugees must pass this way, they would have put a guard in the valley itself. This would enable them to keep an eye on activity in the High Gates at the same time. He crept cautiously up to the edge of the cliff, soil giving way to bare stone beneath his feet. He looked up and down the valley. Nowhere in its cool dimness did he see the sign of a dragon. There was no fire, no smoke, no tang of venom in the air.

Trying to ponder the matter coldly, Morlock felt his heart rising within him. It would be just that easy after all. He would scramble down the steep footpath, cross the narrow valley, and climb up to the High Gates. In an hour he would be home. Perhaps he should try to catch a fish. It was a small enough risk, after all that he had run, and what a joke it would be when he handed it solemnly to the watch-dwarves in the High Gates. Against his will he smiled and looked up the slope he would climb to reach the path downward. There was a sharp crag just beyond, picturesque in the red evening light. Memorable. He didn't actually remember it, but he had never seen it from this angle, in this fiery light. It looked like . . . It looked as if . . .

Morlock threw himself on the ground, just barely out of sight of the hulking brown dragon perched on the cliff. He found himself trembling. It was perched directly over the footpath leading down the cliff, its color blending in with the native rock. Fortunately Morlock had seen its head move as it glanced back along the valley. He wondered if it had seen him. He wondered what he should do.

He saw a white dragon-lungful of cool steam puff upward in the air. After some long moments, another followed. The shadows had risen in the meantime so that the second appeared dark blue at first. But even when it reached the zone of sunlight it seemed darker, heavier, smokier than the first breath.

What was happening? Was the dragon waking up after a long period of sleep or inactivity? (Did dragons sleep? Heroes in the old songs who depended on this invariably came to a bad end.) Would now be the best time to dart down the footpath? He discarded that thought immediately. The best time for that, if there was one, had now passed. The dragon, no matter how sluggish, would simply reach down and pluck him like a mouse off the cliff.

He could jump. The idea sprang into his awareness fully formed. Coldly, he considered it. The dragon would certainly see him. But it was the quickest way down the cliff face, without question. If he lived, perhaps he would be able to make his way into Helgrind. He had an idea the chasm, at its deepest, was too narrow for a dragon's wingspan—probably the only reason Almeijn had reached Thrymhaiam before she died. He could ask for no more. And some of the very deepest of the Coriam Lakes came right up to the foot of the cliff. It was possible, distinctly possible. But it was not a very dwarvish thing to do: few among the dwarves claimed any skill at watercraft. He found himself struggling against the idea.

He looked up and saw the puffs of steam had become a continuous trail of black smoke, forming a venomous cloud overhead in the rising dusk. Then he knew the merits of his idea were not a matter of debate. Either the dragon had already seen him, in which case it was preparing to come get him, or it would soon take flight for other reasons. But as soon as it took to the air it would see him and kill him. To jump was his only chance. He would take it, or lie still to await death.

He took it. He leapt to his feet and turned sharply left, away from the dragon, running along the ragged edge of the cliff. His eye caught the dark glitter of water below him just as the dragon roared; it had seen him at last. His feet skittered instinctively toward the edge when the dragon roared, but he drew them back and ran on along the verge. The water below was still too far from the cliff.

The dragon roared again, and this time its breath took fire. The cool blue dusk was transfigured into a nightmare by the bloodred light. Morlock heard its wings whistling in the air and looked over his shoulder as he ran. The dragon was lifting itself off the stone ledge. Then the ground disappeared from under his own feet. His mouth formed an involuntary shout of surprise, but he hit the ground before his lungs could issue it. He had fallen only about an arm's length; so he found as he rolled to his feet. But he had wasted time. The dragon was approaching. He saw water below him. He jumped out from the cliff with all his strength.

He fell for four hundred years, light as a leaf in the evening air. That was how it seemed, anyway. As he turned, falling, he saw the heavy bat-winged dragon sweep over and turn downward in a steep controlled fall. It roared a third time, and the light spread like burning oil across the dark water below. Morlock believed the dragon was gaining on him, driving itself downward with its wings. The glittering waterscape vaulted upward and struck him like a field of stone.

Morlock arced through the dark water, struggling to make progress toward the surface and the shore. Then the dragon plunged into the lake, and the dark water became redly opalescent with fire and turbulence.

He felt a powerful current drawing him backward and down as the water went dark again. He fought the water savagely, hating it. It was the water keeping him from the air he needed so painfully, the water that was pushing him back toward the dragon. And in the middle of his struggle to hold his breath he realized he was tormentingly thirsty. It became a terrible temptation to open his lips and let the killing water in. He clenched his teeth. His feet touched something solid and he kicked off upward, finally breaking the surface. Expecting the dragon's abysslike jaws to open up beneath him at any moment, he swam over the center of the turbulence and fought his way to shore.

With almost the last of his strength he drew himself up on the rock ledge bordering the lake and crawled into the surrounding brush. He lay there for a few moments gasping, then crawled out and tried hopelessly to take his bearings for the Helgrind. He had fallen to the ground and was struggling back to his knees when he realized the dragon had not followed him out of the water. He looked back and saw that the turbulence in the lake was slowly clearing. At its center a dark shape lay still.

The serpentine shape was sinking out of sight in the once-blue water. A heavy layer of fog diffused the light of the major moons—which, in any case, would have only lit up the surface of the lake, now greasy with expelled venom.

That gave Morlock, perched on the stone ledge above the water, his first clue as to what had happened. The dragon had been thirsty. That was all! With the heat of its body and the venom secreted in its mouth or throat, a dragon must nearly always be thirsty. When it landed in the water after its sleep, it automatically began to drink. Perhaps, at first, it was only trying to draw him back into its jaws. In any case, it had been unable to stop drinking. It gorged itself on water until it drowned, until the fire in its heart was quenched.

Morlock, his own thirst still burning in his throat, thought of his own struggle to hold his breath and was faintly sickened. The feeling was not dispelled by the voices of his
harven
kin, the watch of the High Gates, as they ran down the mountainside crying, “
Rokhlan! Rokhlan!
Dragonkiller! Dragonkiller!”

That night Earno dreamed of his victory.

Kellander Rukh again flew in the sky, his ruin surrounding him like a smoky many-winged halo. Earno again stood on the deck of the
Stonebreaker.
He heard the death-cries of the captain below. He saw the mainmast in flames, the crew abandoning ship on every side. Everything was as it had been.

Except that, when Earno stood forth in pride and despair to cry out his own challenge to the master dragon, his voice broke and he found he could not speak. The dragon paused, called out his name in a mocking voice, and fell like a golden thunderbolt. The dream was over.

He awoke in darkness, in the grip of the same ominous feeling that had dogged him since midsummer. He realized that little Shoy, his new guide, was at his bedside, calling out his name.

Shoy told him that it was after midnight and that Morlock had returned from Haukrull. There was some confusion at first, as Shoy kept referring to Morlock as “the Dragonkiller.”

PART FOUR

A
GAINST
E
VERYTHING

Now I have a friend, for instance—why, goodness gracious, gentlemen, he is also a friend of yours, and indeed, whose friend is he not? In undertaking any business this gentleman at once explains in high-sounding and clear language how he intends to act in accordance with the laws of truth and reason. And not only that. He will talk to you, passionately and vehemently, all about real and normal human interests; he will scornfully reproach the shortsighted fools for not understanding their own interests, nor the real meaning of virtue and—exactly a quarter of an hour later, without any sudden or external cause, but just because of some inner impulse which is stronger than any of his own interests, he will do something quite different, that is to say, he will do something that is exactly contrary to what he has been saying himself: against laws of reason and against his own interests, in short, against everything.

—Dostoevsky,
Notes from the Underground