The Wide World's End (31 page)

“Only room with a lock,” he explained to Aloê. “So we can lock him in, if need be.”

“Your house doesn't have any
locks
?”

“It has
a
lock. That's more than I usually need, you know. Nothing worth stealing. Except my heart, of course. In with you,” he said to the thain.

They all sat in chairs, the thain with his back to the door so that Chariot's somber light from the eastern windows would fall on his face. And they talked.

The thain's name was Dollon. He was very afraid, and he was only following orders. If they would allow him to send a message to a friend, he would be grateful his whole life long. That was what they got out of him—over and over and over.

“How long do you think your life is likely to be?” asked Jordel impatiently on the tenth repetition of the thain's request.

From below came the sounds of someone entering the house—voices they both knew, calling Jordel's name.

“Come on,” Jordel said to Aloê. They left the room and Jordel locked the door ostentatiously behind him.

By then, Jordel's visitors were climbing the stairs. One was Noreê, Aloê was somewhat relieved to see, and the other was Naevros syr Tol.

Noreê had been alerted by someone at the Well that Aloê had been attacked, and she had trailed her back to Tower Ambrose. There a householder told her that Aloê had captured someone and dragged him away, and in what direction. Deduction told her the rest.

“You mean there were people watching and listening as I fought that . . . that . . . thain?”

“Many. They were discussing it in the street as I passed.”

That gave Aloê an eerie feeling, thinking of all those faces in the dark, watching, doing nothing.

“As for me,” Naevros said, laughing, “I was just coming by to see if Jordel had anything to drink.”

“I
had
something to drink. Then I drank it. A polite guest brings something to drink, Naevros; he does not merely seek to sponge up the drippings of his host's wine cellar.”

“Thanks for the lesson in etiquette, Sir Honorable Jordel of the Cowpies.”

“I think it's ‘Honorable Sir.' Isn't it? What's the correct usage. You're of the gentry, Aloê; you enlighten us.”

“I'll enlighten you with a brick.”

“You hear that, Naevros? That's the sound of true nobility—often imitated, but in the end inimitable. I remember once—”

Noreê asked impatiently, “What are we doing out here if the prisoner is in there?”

“We're giving him the chance to make a mistake,” Jordel explained kindly. “So far he's made only two: failing to kill Aloê the first time, and then getting caught the second time. Now, if he gets away, we can follow him.”

“That's very shrewd, Jordel!” Aloê said.

“I'm shrewder than I look. Please don't point out how easy that would be.”

There was the sound of glass falling into the streets.

“Clod,” Jordel said, shaking his head. “Guardians, shall we . . . ?” He sauntered down the stairway.

Before any of them reached the first storey, there was a heavy blow on the porch roof and the sound of flailing. Something fell into the street outside.

They rushed out into the street. Thain Dollon lay there without moving. His feet had gotten tangled up, and he had fallen from the porch roof to the street onto his neck. There was no question that he was dead.

“Clod!” Jordel repeated, more emphatically.

Aloê felt crushed. It had seemed, for a moment, there was a real chance of getting somewhere in this business. Now there was only one more dead body, one more dead end.

“God Sustainer, I'm tired,” she whispered.

“Stay here with me,” Jordel said quickly, while Naevros was only opening his mouth. “Naevros and Noreê can alert the necrophors and oversee taking the body to a suitable boneyard. Meanwhile we will eat and drink and sleep, and you will have a new idea in the morning. You always do, you know.”

“Thanks, J,” said Aloê gratefully. She'd been dreading the trudge back to Tower Ambrose, its dark emptiness when she arrived there.

Naevros surrendered with a good grace, shrugged, and punched Jordel on the arm. Then he turned to Aloê. With a serious look he said, “Rest. Heal. The Wardlands need your shrewdness at full strength.” Then he embraced her.

“Thanks,” she gasped. She waved farewell to Noreê and went in with Jordel. He fussed over her with wine and fruit and cabbage stuffed with meat and things.

Aloê didn't eat much. She was too tired, and a little nauseated. Naevros had been wearing a rather powerful scent, and it struck her as very unpleasant. It was an oily musky smell—made her think of lumberjacks, and not in a good way.

Then she remembered the scent that had stained the beds in the timber lodges not far from where Earno had died and been murdered.

And then, without really being able to prove anything, she knew or guessed something she would have preferred to never know.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Miracles of St. Danadhar

“Where is Aloê?” Morlock asked in something like a conversational voice.

“She's back in the Wardlands,
harven
,” Deor said gently.

“No,” Morlock said thoughtfully. “No. You're back in the Wardlands. Aloê was taken by the basket-bird. I saw it fly east into the dead lands.”

“That was long ago,
harven
. Don't you remember?”

“Then why am I still in prison? Did I dream all that? Am I dreaming this? Where is Danadhar?”

“You may be dreaming,” Deor said. “You sound like you're dreaming. I wish you'd wake up.”

“I wish it, too,” said Morlock, and closed his bloodshot eyes.

“This could be worse,” Deor remarked to Kelat, “I suppose. Say, if landfish were eating our eyeballs, or something like that.”

“What was that name?” Kelat asked.

“Danadhar. It's someone he met the last time he was through here.”

“The god-speaker.”

“As I understand it, someone else was god-speaker back then. But I don't doubt that this Danadhar is god-speaker now: from Morlock's account, he was very religious. But that's right: you were around here last year, weren't you?”

“Yes, but I didn't see this.”

“Understandable. In one brief stay one can never really see all the things worth seeing in a place. For instance, I spent a goodly amount of time in A Thousand Towers over the part century, but I never had occasion to see the Museum of Lithicated Teratomata or the Treasure-House of Forgotten Elbow-Guards.”

“I don't mean the jail,” Kelat explained patiently. “I was in a cell for a while last year—not this one—while they figured out what to do with me. I mean
this
.” Kelat pointed at something on the wall.

It was some kind of memorial—an engraved plaque, riveted into the wall. Deor couldn't read all of it—the text was partly runic, partly ideogrammatic. But there was a word that might have been the name
Danadhar
, and another that was probably
Ambrosius
, and an ideogram that almost certainly represented
ruthen
.

“Hm!” Deor said eventually. “Well seen, my friend. This must be the very cell Morlock was imprisoned in all those many years ago. That means he's not as crazy as he sounds. And the event seems to be important to these Gray Folk—probably because Danadhar himself became important.”

Kelat looked at him for a moment and said, “Yes, he is important. Do you mean Morlock is really more than a hundred years old?”

“Oh, yes. A hundred thirty—or twenty—a hundred and forty? Something like that. He was a horrible child, really—always blowing things up and terrifying people and saying the strangest things. Wonderful days, those were.”

“Then you—”

“I'm about the same age as he—a tad older, it may be. I'd have to look at the nest records to be sure. Haven't worn as well, obviously.”

“And Ambrosia?”

“She's a few years younger—she and her sister—whom I gather you haven't met.”

“No. She has never been among the Vraidish tribes.”

“I doubt that very much, but it doesn't surprise me you haven't seen her. She—ah—she keeps to herself.”

Kelat brooded over this for a few moments, then said, “Danadhar I have met. He is very old, even as the Gray Folk count the years. And they live longer than men.”

“Well—there's your father.”

“Everyone knows that Ambrosia's magic is what keeps him alive. Some say it is what made him a fool.”

“Um. Possibly. Longevity spells exist, you see, but they have unfortunate transformative effects; one never knows quite how one will come out, but it's very rarely for the better. That's why Those-Who-Know tend not to use them on themselves.”

“How were Morlock and Ambrosia transformed? How were you? You're not crazy.”

“Well, we haven't, eh, been transformed. Or maybe we have. It's part of living in the Wardlands. The land sustains you, strengthens your life. And that strength can be carried on to your offspring, which is why Ambrosia has it . . . although not in the degree Morlock has. She may age faster than he does, as the centuries pass. I know he's worried about that.”

“Then she will grow old and die, just like everyone else.”

“She will, but not just like everyone else. She doesn't seem to do anything like everyone else, I don't know if you've noticed.”

“Yes, I had noticed that.”

Deor looked sharply at the young man. He knew more about the mating practices of men and women than he did when he was a young dwarf, and he did not even need to guess that the young man was in love with Ambrosia Viviana. Fortunately, it was not his business. But he hoped that Ambrosia would deal gently with the young fool; Deor rather liked him.

There were shouts in the corridor outside—they seemed to be coming from the other cells. “Ware plague!” the prisoners were shouting, and “Call the god-speaker!” and many other things that Deor could not quite understand.

Kelat peered curiously out the narrow barred window of the cell. Deor walked over to stand next to him then grabbed a bar of the window to lift himself high enough to look out.

One of the excantors was lying supine on the corridor floor outside. He was writing sinuously, and smoke was trailing from his snout. It seemed to be lengthening a bit.

“Poor fellow,” Deor remarked to Kelat. “It's the dragon sickness.”

“What causes it?” asked Kelat, staring in fascination at the slowly transforming mandrake.

“Greed. Anger. Cruelty.” Deor sighed. “You Other Ilk can indulge in these to your heart's content. If we do it we risk losing our hands—our kin—everything that we are.”

Kelat looked at Deor's hand, gripping the bar, then at Deor's face, and nodded.

Now there was someone else in the corridor, and the prisoners began to cheer. “God-speaker! Danadhar! Save us from the plague! Save us from the Dragon!”

It was an elderly male of the Gray Folk, wearing a kilt made of weeds. He hastened to the fallen excantor and knelt down beside him.

Deor had been bitten by someone undergoing the dragon-change, once, and he called out in Wardic, “Hey, watch out there, cousin!” Then, realizing that would do no good, he said the same thing in Dwarvish: “
Vuf! Thekhma-dhi, ruthen!
”

The elderly Gray One looked up at the sound of Deor's voice. His long, terrible mouth gave a gray-toothed grin that may have been meant as friendly. Then he turned back to the suffering excantor.

The god-speaker put a long-fingered, gray-clawed hand gently on each side of the excantor's slowly lengthening face. “The choice is yours,” Danadhar said, so quietly Deor could hardly hear him. “Remember that there is a choice. Will you be as you are? Will you be as you could be? Will you become what you hate?”

“I can't believe in your God!” the excantor screamed.

“What difference does that make? Belief. If I believe a stone is a mushroom, does that mean I won't break my teeth eating it? Believe or don't believe. What will you do? What will you be? What do you want?”

“There is no God. Not your God. Not any god. Not really.”

“Then, for you, there is no God. So what? What will you do? What will you be? What do you want?”

“I want to kill,” whispered the excantor. “I want to steal. I want to lie.”

“Yes! Yes!” said the god-speaker eagerly. “So do I. But especially to kill! How I long to run down the streets of our city, my claws dripping with fiery blood, gnashing fragments of green-gray flesh in my fangs. How I would kill, in my rage and greed! What evil glory there would be in that! I saw your daughters outside.”

“Be quiet!” shrieked the excantor.

“They are there, and would be easy to kill. Shall we kill them together, you and I? I will if you will.”