Morlock approached the dragon’s face. Deor’s fingers and toes curled, as if he were standing on the edge of a precipice or riding a hippogriff through the middle air. But Morlock showed no signs of fear as he came within reach of the dragon’s long, wolf-like jaws. He looked closely at the cables sinking into the dragon’s eyes and earholes.
“Are you ready?” he asked Rulgân, who only growled in answer.
This was enough for Morlock. Using his left hand, he gripped the cable coming out of the dragon’s right eye; using his right hand, he cut through the cable with Tyrfing.
The dragon shrieked.
Morlock did the same with the other three cables, and each time the dragon shrieked fiery despair and poison smoke like mist filled the temple chamber.
The ends of the cables were still lodged in the dragon’s head. Morlock gestured at one of them.
Yes, hissed the dragon.
Morlock sheathed his sword and took hold of the cable with both hands. He pulled.
The dragon roared his agony, writhing on his gold bed, pounding the pillars and the floor with his tail, sending fire and smoke throughout the temple chamber. Pillars were destroyed; sections of the roof fell in. Ambrosia, Deor, and Kelat tried to keep to the least dangerous parts of the chamber, their eyes on Morlock in case he needed assistance. He did not pause until the dragon’s eyes and ear holes were free from obstructions.
The noise from within only increased the noise from without. Now Deor could hear words in the cries. “Kill the God!” “Kill the outsiders before they can kill the God!” “Vengeance and freedom!” The crowd liked that and repeated it a lot: “Vengeance and freedom!”
No sentiment could have pleased Deor’s dwarvish heart more, except that he feared that he and his would be caught up in that wave of vengeance.
Rulgân rose up on his back legs, towering over Morlock. Deor rushed to stand by him, in case Rulgân attacked, and he heard Kelat and Ambrosia wading through gold in his wake.
But Rulgân didn’t attack. He put his narrow, winged back against the cracked roof of the temple and pushed; the roof split apart, showering timber, stone, and mortar. The sky was open to him now: he could escape his erstwhile worshippers.
Coated with dust and grit, he was pale, like the ghost of a dragon. He looked down in fury and contempt at the four travellers at his feet.
But he roared, If I let them kill you, who’ll save the world? He reached down and scooped them up, Ambrosia and Morlock in one clawed foot, Deor and Kelat in the other. He lifted them over his fuming head and leapt straight up into the sky.
Deor was utterly aghast. He watched with horror as the dragon’s wings unfolded like sails and then beat back to drive them deeper into the sky. The fire-scarred town below spun dizzily in the dark, fell away below and behind. The stars were gone. The moons were gone. There was nothing but the stench of the dragon and Kelat’s terrified face, which Deor proceeded to vomit onto. He would have been ashamed indeed, except that Kelat vomited more or less simultaneously.
“This is the worst!” Deor kept telling himself. “Nothing on this terrible journey will ever get worse than this!”
Half of the dark dragon-lit world began to grow gray. That part was the sky, Deor guessed. The still-dark part the ground. But sometimes it was above, sometimes below, as the dragon spun crazily through the air. The horizon ahead of them had rough, saw-tooth edges: mountains.
They were falling. They were falling. They were falling.
The dragon stalled in the air, just above the ground, and released them from his claws. He flew away into the still-dark east without another word.
They lay on the slope without moving for a while. Deor heard someone retching and was dimly glad that he was done with all that. Then his body was trying to vomit even though there was nothing left for his belly to give but stinking bitterness.
As they lay there, a storm walked south from the mountains. The snowflakes began to fall thick about them as the day’s light struggled to be seen in the west. They would have to move soon or freeze to death.
It was the first of Harps, the first full day of summer.
PART THREE
A Cold Summer
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
—Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”
CHAPTER ONE
Endless Empire
A dwarf in a hat as bright as the sun was standing over Morlock. His red beard was braided with gold, and there was gold and silver work in all his scarlet-colored clothes. Even his boots were gilded. Of more immediate interest was the spear in his hand, its point made of mundane but effective steel.
“Shouldn’t sleep here,” the dwarf said in harshly accented Ontilian.
“Praise the Day, watcher,” Morlock replied in Dwarvish. “I am Morlock Ambrosius, also called syr Theorn, harven coruthen to the Elder of the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam.” They were clearly at the foot of the Dolich Kund, “the River of Gold”—the only safe pass between the lands north and south of the Blackthorn/Whitethorn Range. It also marked the division between the Blackthorn and the Whitethorn Mountains. The dwarves of the Endless Empire, under the Blackthorn Range, never entered the Whitethorns for reasons that they did not explain. But they did recognize kinship with the dwarves under Thrymhaiam. It was not beyond belief that they could hope for help here.
“Oh,” said the dwarf. He rubbed the tip of his nose with the butt of his spear, handling the heavy weapon as lightly as if it were a pen. “Still shouldn’t sleep here. Other Ilk known to die in the mountains.”
“Thanks,” Morlock said briefly. He stood up and turned his back on the spear-carrier, partly to return discourtesy for discourtesy, but primarily to check on the well-being of his comrades.
Ambrosia was sitting up, looking on with sour amusement. She returned his nod. Deor was in a bad way, and Kelat was worse, both of them splashed with each other’s vomit. It was an evil gray-green in the cold, snowy morning’s light—and that was good: it must have carried a good deal of dragon venom out of their systems.
“Any maijarra leaf in your pack?” Morlock asked his sister.
“No.”
“Eh.”
“Can you expand on that, Morlock?”
“Tea from maijarra leaves protects against venom.”
“Oh. I see what you mean. We must have inhaled a good deal of the stuff. No wonder I’m feeling woozy!”
“Yes.” Morlock looked around. His pack was missing. Well, not missing exactly: he had left it on the floor in Rulgân’s former temple. It was a mild nuisance, at worst, although he was sorry to lose the books he had brought with him from the Wardlands. He had also brought some maijarra leaves, knowing that they would confront Rulgân.
He eased Deor’s pack off his shoulders. The eye among the fastenings recognized him and undid themselves when he spoke to them. Inside the pack was a great many things—too many, in Morlock’s judgment. But there was a bundle of simples, including maijarra leaf.
“We’ll need fire—somewhere out of the wind.” He glanced around and pointed at a hollow free from snow.
“Right,” Ambrosia agreed. “You take Deor; I’ll carry Kelat.”
They hustled their unconscious companions over to the hollow. Ambrosia set up an Imperfect Occlusion overhead while Morlock made a fire out of some scrub bushes. The dwarf with the sun-bright hat followed them and watched what they did carefully but didn’t interfere.
Presently Morlock and Ambrosia were sipping tea from sheckware mugs. They had wrapped their unconscious comrades in their cloaks and put them near the fire so that they would not be in danger from the cold.