watched Trumpeter clear the horizon (crooked with the Hrithaen peaks), then remounted his horse and rode on through the dim blue landscape. Not much later he arrived at the Lonetower in the Gap of Lone.
A sentinel in the gray cape of a thain greeted him at the gate of the tower, taking in his white mantle of office. “Hail Summoner . . . Earno?” he said, somewhat tentatively, peering in the light of the moons.
Without dismounting, Earno nodded in acknowledgement. He said, “Hail in turn to you, Thain. Bring Thain Morlock to me.”
“What for? Has he done something?” demanded the sentinel, with undisguised eagerness.
Earno frowned. “Bring him to me.”
“Beg your pardon, sir.” The sentinel was embarrassed.
“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ You have my pardon. Bring Morlock to me.”
“Beg your pardon, s—Summoner Earno. He is on patrol.” The sentinel gestured vaguely east.
Earno turned his eyes to the moonlight-colored gap. This was a flat grassy plain set between two mountain ranges: the Grartan, marching southward, and the Whitethorns (second only to the high Hrithaens) running from west to east. Looking at the Gap of Lone one always felt the unnaturalness of it, as if someone had pressed flat the region where the mountains ranges joined, or as if the plain had somehow stayed as it was while the bordering regions crumpled upward into mountains.
“Which post?” Earno asked. “The Grartan? Or the Whitethorn side?”
“Neither, sir,” said the sentinel, forgetting himself. “He’s in the Maze itself.” He gestured again at the colorless open plain of grass.
In that case, Earno knew, he might be hours or days in returning to the Lonetower, and it would be fruitless to go out seeking him. Earno considered lodging at the Lonetower, imagined dozens of gray-caped thains goggling at him and calling him “sir,” and rejected the idea. “When Morlock returns, send him to me at the inn by the end of the road. You know it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have him bring two horses,” Earno added, and rode away.
The next day, about noon, the landlord came to his room and told him that the Thain Morlock was awaiting him in the courtyard of the inn. Earno donned his mantle and gathered up his belongings.
The thains were the third and lowest class of Guardian, more candidates to the Graith than Guardians proper. Unlike vocates who could (if they chose) jealously guard their independence, or the summoners, who had powerful prerogatives and influence, thains were obliged to obey their seniors in the Graith, even senior thains. Their life resembled the military castes of the unguarded lands—but not too closely. Their discipline was to prepare them for radical independence, not unthinking obedience.
In general thains did not impress Earno; this Morlock was no exception. The summoner had expected him to be a dwarf. (The Theorn were a dwarvish clan.) He was not, though. He was of middle height for a man; his hair was dark and tangled; his skin was grayish—or perhaps it only seemed so, since all of his clothes, not just his cape, were gray in color, down to his unpolished boots. His eyes were an alarmingly pale shade of gray also. There was something awkward about him—the set of his shoulders, maybe. The expression on his face was sullen and dull.
“Thain Morlock,” said Earno, greeting him pleasantly, “I am the summoner Earno.”
“I know,” said the thain, after a long pause.
Earno looked at him sharply. Was he being insolent? Earno had spent half his life as the officer of a merchant ship, and he had an ingrained dislike for insolence. “I’m told you’re a northerner,” he continued more briskly.
Morlock stared at him. “I was fostered by Theorn clan,” he said slowly.
Becoming impatient, Earno said, “I wish to go north. What road do you recommend?”
Again a pause. “That depends,” Morlock said.
“On what?”
“On where you intend to arrive.”
Earno was about to reply harshly to this when he realized that the question had not occurred to him before. To him the north was almost entirely unknown, and Lernaion’s location within it was entirely unknown.
“How would you go?” he asked, trying to be less insistent.
Morlock shrugged. “When I go I travel to Thrymhaiam, my clan-home. Or to Northtower—thains’ tower east of there. Same route. So. Along the Whitewell—river with its source in the ‘Thorns. Then. Down past the gravehills. Ah. A network of valleys, you have to know them, leads to Thrymhaiam. From Thrymhaiam you can travel all around by . . . tunnels. Except to the west. The Fire is too hot there. . . . I