Now Skellar thought of the day when I came to his town, and the miracles the Two Powers worked on my behalf, and how he helped them install me in the temple. So he said, “Yes.”
“You are to report to whom-you-would-call-me,” the presence said.
“I don’t understand,” Skellar said.
The presence seized his mind, broke it open like the seal on a message, and read it.
That was when I noticed what was happening. You cannot always be looking out of every pair of eyes available to you—not when you have as many of them as I do. But the presence now touched the bond that pertained between me and my mandrake.
“Who are you?” the presence said to me, through Skellar.
I took the time I needed to assimilate Skellar’s memories. The presence waited: they have no impatience, these things—no real sense of time.
“I am the one true God of the mandrakes,” I said. “Who are you?”
“You would not understand the-one-you-call-me.”
“Why not?”
“Because you would call the-one-you-would-call-me me.”
“That appears to me to be nonsense, and I require the services of my mandrake.”
It tried to seize control of my will through the bond, but I was ware of it and resisted. We fought much of a day and night in the arena of Skellar’s mind: I watched the shadows change, grow, diminish, change.
In the end it seized Skellar’s mind and dragged it from his body, over the edge of the world and across the bridge that spans the abyss.
I let the bond persist. Why not? Skellar would not be much use anymore, even if he lived, so the knowledge I gained from his suffering would be the last yield I could expect from him.
I can’t tell you how much time passed, since beyond the barrier of the world I found neither sun nor moons nor stars nor anything that I could understand as marking time or change.
There are no people there. I soon understood this. Each of these presences was the same as the other—like different coins, from different places, different writing on them, but all the same, too: stack them one on another and you cannot tell one from the other.
The presence who had taken Skellar and me dragged us to a place where several other presences were. They merged or conferred or something. Now it was the same presence, but more forceful, with more knowledge. They gathered other pieces, apparently at random, and the presence grew.
They did not speak to me anymore. They made patterns of knowledge and they expected me to fit mine into theirs. Perhaps I did! Not much of what I knew would be of interest to them. But I knew that the Wastelands had been freed of the soul-killing power that dwelt there, and that the Two Powers were no longer to be found abroad in the world. Perhaps they know that now, too.
Most of what they knew, I could not understand. But I saw that they were hostile to light, and life, and they had a plot to kill the sun and pass into our world after its death.
I was losing myself in their patterns . . . becoming the kind of nothing that each of them was. I saw with my other eyes that much time had passed, and I broke the bond with Skellar. His mind may still live and suffer there, but I cannot reach it.
That was a generation of men or mandrakes ago. Now we see the sun dying, and the world with it. Is it any wonder that I seek escape?
Morlock stood listening intently, his head bowed, staring past the dragon as if he were looking all the way to the end of the world.
“Then,” he said at last.
The dragon roared in fury that shook the pillars of his temple. Will you speak in whole sentences, you vague, grunting gutworm!
“Not about this,” Morlock said. “Not to you.”
The dragon grumbled into his gold and then said, I care not. Fulfill your word or break it, Ambrosius.
“Wait,” said Kelat, causing Deor and Ambrosia to glance at him in surprise.
The dragon looked at him, a deadly amusement in his fiery eyes. Yes, son of man?
“You stole my mind, when I was last here. I demand . . . I demand compensation.”
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.