This Crooked Way

by James Enge

  “I speak and understand this language better than you,” Marh Valone interrupted him. “I use it because most of you understand it. That's Dwarvish law, as you learned from your foster kin under Thrymhaiam. If I had chosen I could have addressed you in Dwarvish, in Brythonic or Latin: in any language you know. No one-face language is difficult for us; our young invent more complicated ones before they lose their quadrilimbs. You can have no vowels-in-harmony, no consonant-rhythms. Each of you has but one mouth, only one! And you are barely able to use that, in song or speech. No, Destroyer, I ask you to repeat what you said simply because I desire to hear you say it again.”

  Morlock calmly repeated, “If you spare our lives, we will spare yours. Blood for blood: that is Dwarvish law as I learned it under Thrymhaiam.”

  Marh Valone lifted all three of his boneless arms, and each of his three mouths emitted a different musical sound. Behind him on the slope many of the warriors and elders mimicked him. The dancing figures in black and white covered their eyes with their palp-clusters and moaned.

  Marh Valone crooked each of his arms at an alarmingly sharp angle and silence fell. “Oh gods-who-hate-us,” he said at last, “I thank you. Oh Ancestors who cast us out and revile us, I thank you. Though we have earned your loathing, though we are sunk and stained with the evil of wandering through these evil lands, you have sent us this gift. We have heard the Destroyer beg for his life, and be refused.”

  “I am a maker,” Morlock said, “not a destroyer, except to defend myself or those of my blood. If you do not choose to harm us, you need fear nothing from me. Your seers will have ways to test these words, as sure as any oath.”

  “No oath sworn to us can ever be binding, Destroyer, as well you know,” Marh Valone said. “We are the accursed. Your lies will not deceive us, either: we are the servants of the Great Lie. It is the Great Lie who tells us all these truths, who guides our visions of the future, who makes us unclean. We know who you are, even if you don't. You are the Destroyer.”

  “Your seers have had some vision?” Morlock guessed. “But the future is not fixed, like the past. The future is the sum of our decisions; we can change our minds in the present and save ourselves in the future.”

  “I tell you again, do not lie. Some parts of the future can be chosen; some come at us like an avalanche, choose what we will. I was a seer and I know this. I have walked in the future and the past, as I know you can. Do you know me, Destroyer? Did you never see me in your dreams? I am your enemy. I have dedicated my life to defeating you so that Valona's horde might be saved.”

  “Waste of a good life,” the crooked man observed.

  “You would think so. The dreams first came to haunt Valona's seers before my second birth. When the host died and I lived, they became darker and more definite. As a warrior I fought to make Valona's horde strong so that we could resist you when you came. As I became a seer at last, I walked through the dreams of terror you sent against us from the future and I made maps of the things-that-would-be so that our elders could guide the horde away from the death you designed for us. But always the shadows of future danger changed: you changed them to defeat our plans! And when I became an elder, I continued to plan for the day you would arrive.”

  “Because I alone truly understood your threat against us, the other elders raised me to be their chief, marh of Valona's horde. Then I set my plans in motion. I purchased human agents in the city to the south. When you corrupted and defeated them, I knew the Destroyer's hour had struck and you were coming to attack us. I sent a troop of warriors to capture you and the agent you had corrupted, but you killed them all. The dreams of our seers grew dark to the point of madness; even now they rave and scream that all is over. But now, at last, it is our fear which is over. We have you! We have you! How does it feel to know that you have failed, Destroyer? How does it feel to know you will be destroyed? Will you say nothing? Is it mute, that one drooling mouth given you by the gods-we-hate?”

  “I have a thing to say, if you will listen.”

  “Say it. I find I have a great hunger to hear you plead and whine and beg.”

  “Once there was a man who knew the future,” Morlock said quietly. “He lived by the sea, and an oracle told him he would drown in saltwater. So he fled inland from the seacoast. When he was crossing a bridge over a river in flood, the arch collapsed and the falling stones carried him down to the water and he drowned there, in a flooded salt lick by the side of the river. His fear drove him to the fate he feared. So it is with you, Marh Valone.”

  “There is no fate,” Marh Valone cried. “That is the lie you told before, and it is true. We have defeated our fate and your hate.”

  “Put aside your fear. I don't hate you, but if you harm me or mine, if you threaten to do so, you will suffer for it. Blood for blood: that is the only law I know.”

  Suddenly the Marh was surrounded by the dancing Khroi in black-and-white rags. They reached out their palp-clusters toward him imploringly, and their triple mouths sang a song Thend did not understand.

  The Marh's eyes widened in anger or surprise. He gestured with all three of his arms, pointing back up the slope. The dancing Khroi grew silent and still; they bowed down and laid their carapaces on the ground before their leader. But they still stretched out their arms imploringly to him.

  “Your presence has poisoned our seers,” he said accusingly to Morlock. “I have gloated over you too long, perhaps. Now, because you are rokhlan, a dragonkiller, the guile of dragons wish to have you for their prize, and as their kharum and as marh of Valona's horde, I grant that wish. You and your property will be taken from here to the Giving Field, where the guile may dispose of you for their sport. The werewolf has also killed a dragon, although by mere treachery and stealth, and he too will be given to the dragons, as, of course, our Lost One must be. This blood will seal the bond between guile and horde. These others will go and give their lives for our future in the Vale of the Mother. At the next gathering we will pray their names to the gods-who-hate-us. I have spoken; let others obey.”

  Morlock asked, “What do you mean ‘seal the bond’? Aren't these dragons your servants? Don't you ride them like animals?”

  The crooked row of dragons erupted in fire and noise. For a while nothing could be heard except their fiery words, meaningless to Thend. He wondered if a fight was going to break out between the dragons and the Khroi then and there, if that was what Morlock was trying to provoke.

  Marh Valone fixed Morlock with one eye and stared at him. Then, when the uproar had gone on for a while, he lifted all three of his arms and called out, with all three of his mouths singing at a different tone, a word Thend did not recognize. It sounded as loud as any dragon from where Thend sat, and the row of angry dragons subsided into something like order. Marh Valone spoke a short sentence in the same language, at a slightly lower tone of voices. Thend turned to see the dragons wordlessly lowering their heads in submission. But all of them were glaring at Morlock's shoulders: he had not deigned to turn and look at them while they were shouting and he did not do so now.

  “That was quite a good try,” Marh Valone said to Morlock confidentially. “Pride is what binds them to us: they are exiles from the greater guiles to the south and east, ashamed to live as solitaries. If you stayed among us for a time you would no doubt find a way to use that pride and turn them against us. But you will die tonight, a free gift from horde to guile, and their pride and gratitude will bind them to us closer than ever.”

  Marh Valone would have turned away then, but another Khroi voice, discordant and clashing, forestalled him. Thend looked and saw standing nearby the Khroi whose carapace was marked, the Khroi he had rescued from the spiders.

  The Marh stopped moving away and looked with one eye, then another, at the marked Khroi as he spoke. (Did the Marh's gesture indicate surprise? Attentiveness? Some emotion a man could never feel? Thend wasn't sure.) A moment of silence followed, and then Marh Valone turned to Thend. “Our Lost One has requ
ested that you also be given to the dragons. It is a sin against our future, but no one has ever done for one of us what you dared to do, and I grant this favor to the Lost One. I will not pray for you to the gods-who-hate-us, and so they may forgive you. I have spoken; let others obey.”

  “No!” shouted Fasra. “Leave him with us!”

  But each of them was firmly held by three of the giant Khroi-guards; there was nothing any of them could do.

  “I'm sorry,” Morlock muttered. “You chose your guide unwisely. Good-bye.”

  The guile of dragons rose into the air and flew away southward like a storm. The noise of their passage made further speech useless, and Thend could have said nothing anyway: that fist of fear was gripping his throat again. He looked at his mother, whom he had loved and feared, and at Roble, the man who was closer to him than his long-dead father, the man he had wished he could be, and all he wanted was to die with them. But the Marh's cruel kindness had denied him even that.

  The others watched without words as Thend and Morlock were dragged away. The werewolf was picked up and carried, too, and the Khroi that Thend had saved, “the Lost One” as Marh Valone had called him, walked slowly alongside them.

  “Why is it a favor to be given to the dragons?” Thend called to Morlock after they had been dragged for a while. (The dragons had long gone on ahead and they could hear each other now.) “Won't they—?”

  “They'll kill us and eat us,” Morlock said. “The others will die too, as hosts for the Khroi young, in the Vale of the Mother. It is slower, more painful, more horrible.”

  “And this is all your fault somehow?”

  “No!” said Morlock.

  Thend wished he could say something to comfort the crooked man. Not that there was anything to say. So he said nothing.

  Suddenly they were surrounded by a faster-moving group. Thend had a crazy hope that the others had gotten away and come to rescue them—but it was only the dancing Khroi in black-and-white rags. They spoke to the gigantic Khroi guards in birdlike harmonious voices, and the guards (looking nervously at each other) stopped dragging the captives along.

  The dancing Khroi stretched out their arms imploringly and sang at Morlock, just as they had to the Khroic marh before, but this time Thend could understand them, as they sang in the language Thend thought of as Coranian.

  “Spare us,” the Khroi sang, “spare us, Destroyer. You are a seer, like ourselves, although you do not walk always in the tal-realm as we do. Spare us, have mercy on us, do not destroy us, and we will not pray for you to the gods-who-hate-us and they may forgive you.”

  “I will spare you,” Morlock agreed, “if you spare me and my friends. I will give mercy for mercy, blood for blood.”

  “We cannot spare you,” the Khroic seers sang. “The warriors act; we advise; the Sisters and the elders, led by the Marh, decide. His word is our law; we cannot break it. But only your word is your law. You can spare us, even if we destroy you. Please, please, let us kill you in peace.”

  “Is it horde law for you to plead with prisoners like this?” Morlock said. “Did you not defy the marh's command to return to your place on the slope? You pick and choose the laws you will obey. You choose the destruction before you, just as he does. Spare me and my friends or I will destroy you. Blood for blood: that is my law.”

  The Khroic seers put their palp-clusters over their eyes and moaned. The gigantic guards took this as a sign that the interview was over and they dragged Morlock and Thend onward.

  “How can you destroy them?” Thend called when the wailing seers had passed out of earshot.

  “Why would I want to?” Morlock replied glumly. “Death is their dream, not mine. If only I could understand why! I took care to not explore this journey with visions, for I knew the Khroi had seers and one seer's vision can encompass another's. I wanted to pass under their notice, but they were waiting for me all along. It is strange….”

  Presently they came to a wide flat area where a dozen or so posts of maijarra wood had been driven deeply into the stony ground: the Giving Field. A faded blue dragon was waiting there. The claw had been severed from his right forelimb and the fresh wound was still oozing blood or pus that smoked sullenly on the ground. His dim red eyes watched glumly as the Khroi guards lifted up their prisoners and hung them from hooks driven into the maijarra wood high above the ground. The Khroi whom Thend had saved from the spiders was bound and hung there, too. Then, without ceremony, the guards left them alone with the dragon.

  “Is this it?” Thend called over to Morlock. The prisoners were hung in a line, with Thend and Morlock on either end. The werewolf was next to Morlock and the Khroi was next to Thend.

  “No,” Morlock said. “I suppose the dragons are settling which one of them gets which one of us, along with our stuff.” At this, Thend noticed that their packs and weapons had been brought along by the guards and left off to the side of the Giving Field.

  There was a long period while Thend wondered how the dragons would decide these important issues. A fight? A contest? A vote? Some combination of these? Should he hope that it would take a long time or no time at all?

  Meanwhile Morlock was looking at the leather thong binding his hands, at the packs, at the Dragon who watched him grimly without ever looking away.

  “Do you think you can unhook yourself from that thing?” Thend called over.

  “No,” said the crooked man. “Not with our friend watching. And listening.”

  This last was a mild rebuke, Thend realized. The dragon was not an animal; it might be able to understand them. If Thend had a good idea, he should probably keep it to himself and hope that Morlock had it, too. Unfortunately, Thend had no more ideas, good or bad.

  “Thend,” Morlock said presently, “I'm sorry.”

  Thend was embarrassed. He should never have blamed Morlock, even as a stupid joke. “It's all right,” he said. “I know it's not really your fault.”

  “Not about that,” Morlock said, but he didn't say what he was apologizing about. Which meant he couldn't. Which meant it was an Idea. And he was apologizing because it might end up getting Thend killed, even if it got Morlock free.

  Thend thought carefully about his response. He didn't want to die, but if Morlock got away maybe there was something he could do to save Thend's family. That was tough luck for Thend, of course, but it wasn't like his chances looked good at the moment anyway. He couldn't say anything to discourage Morlock from whatever crazy plan he'd come up with, and he couldn't say anything to suggest to the dragon that there was a crazy plan.

  “It's still all right,” Thend said at last. “I understand.” And he hoped

  Morlock had understood him as well as he had understood Morlock. (If he had.)

  Morlock said something, but not to Thend and not anything Thend understood. He looked straight into the dragon's dimly burning eyes and said it: in Dragonish, Thend guessed, or some language the dragon understood.

  Thend was right. What Morlock said was, “Hey, Smoky! What's taking your masters so long?”

  The dragon snarled, a long low rumbling, like stones grinding together under the earth, and said, “I have no master but Marh Valone, kharum of my guile.”

  “You actually answer to that insect?” Morlock asked. “He told you to stay here and keep your murky eyes on us?”

  “No!” the dragon snapped. After some long bitter moments of silence he added, “My guile-mates asked me to wait here and watch you.”

  “Oh,” said Morlock distantly. “I see. I think.”

  The dragon lashed his tail in a catlike gesture of irritation and looked with glowing disfavor at Morlock.

  “It is a position of considerable trust,” the dragon insisted.

  “I'm sure they can trust you, Smoky,” the crooked man replied generously. “I'm sure you'd never even think of taking something that was theirs.”

  There were several barbs to this insult: that the dragon wouldn't have the courage or cunning to steal from his gui
le-mates, that the prizes were unequivocally theirs not his, and “Smoky,” which implied that the dragon's fire was not as bright and hot as a dragon's fire should be.

  “Don't call me ‘Smoky’!” the dragon snarled.

  “Do you prefer ‘Three-Claw’?” the hanging man asked, with an appearance of civility. “Your leg might grow back in time, but I see that you're a dragon of, well, of a certain age and perhaps you don't expect to live much—”

  “My name is Gjyrning,” the dragon hissed. “Use it when you address me or die.”

  “I'll die anyway,” Morlock pointed out. “But I'm not worried: you can be…trusted. Remember, Smoky?”

  The dragon smiled—not a gesture of amusement or friendliness in a dragon—and said nothing. Venomous dark smoke leaked out between the terrible green-black teeth.

  “Gjyrning…Gjyrning…” the crooked man said, as if thinking aloud. “Doesn't that mean ‘puff of lightly warm steam’? I seem to remember—”

  The dragon barked, “It means ‘mourning—suffering—death’!”

  “So you knew how your career would end from the beginning,” the crooked man said, almost as if he were impressed. “I wish more dragons would pick suitable names. I captured a dragon once outside of Thrymhaiam whose name meant, so he claimed, ‘World-shaking-conflagration-of-eternal-flames,’ but his fire wasn't hot enough to kindle dry leaves. It was too much trouble to kill him, so I gave him to the Elder of Theorn Clan as a gift. The dwarves used him as a beast of burden. They could ‘trust' him, too, because every time he tried to steal something they would beat him with sticks and he'd squeak out some smoke at either end. He soon learned his place. They called him Squeaky. That's a fine name for an elderly blue dragon whose fire is not as hot as he thinks it is, don't you think?”

  Gjyrning, an elderly blue dragon whose fire was not as hot as it had been, lumbered across the open field, his jaws streaming fire and smoke. But his stump was clearly troubling him; he kept putting his weight on it, as if the right claw-foot were there, and stumbling. He halted about twenty (human) paces from the stakes and visibly brought himself under control.