silence, saying, “This man is a thain and a Guardian of these lands. He came north from the Easthold with me and knew nothing of your troubles. That he was selling the food we would need on our journey I will not believe; your own accounts give you the lie. You have also accused yourselves of assaulting the inviolable person of a Guardian. The penalty for that is exile.”
“How could we know?” demanded one of the townsmen.
Sternly, Earno pointed at the thain’s gray cape of office. With irritation he noted that it was soiled, torn, and even burned—hardly recognizable, even in the lamplit hallway. His gesture was ruined.
“Go now,” the Arbiter said to her people. “And keep the peace!”
Without further dispute, they went.
The thain was carried to the dining hall and laid on the bare table. Wine was sent for. The summoner and the Arbiter looked at his wounds, but these were hardly more than scrapes and bruises. It was surprising he was still unconscious.
“It is a bad time,” the Arbiter was saying. “They are just barely hungry. But they are, well—farm people, used to feasting when fall comes. And a month with nothing from Ranga, no message, even . . . They’re frightened.”
Earno said nothing. He cleaned and bound the more serious of the cuts, then stepped aside to wait for the thain to regain consciousness.
“The . . . He’s well-known around here, of course,” the Arbiter continued. “He . . . well, you can understand the wor—the dwarves being the way they are. But it’s a little grotesque to see . . . well, another kind of person act that way. A little unnerving . . .”
Earno motioned her to silence. Morlock had begun to stir, and then suddenly his eyes opened. But he was not awake. Earno, even standing some distance away, was amazed at the intense clarity of his gray eyes, the pupils contracted almost to invisibility. Himself a master of Seeing, he recognized the rapture of vision.
In a voice taut with urgency Morlock cried out, “Regin and Fafnir were brothers!” He laughed aloud, an ugly sound. Then he fell silent.
“Those names—” the Arbiter began, but again Earno waved her silent.
Quietly, so as not to interrupt the vision, Earno prompted Morlock, “Tell your tale. What news of Regin and Fafnir?”
But the spell was broken. Morlock regained consciousness. Watching the wakeful expression settle down on his face, Earno thought of a series of gauze curtains descending before a light. When the last one descended, the light disappeared. His face sullen and suspicious, Morlock sat up.
“What was your vision?” asked the summoner.
“I don’t remember,” said the thain.
Then Morlock and the Arbiter eyed each other coldly. Earno, watching them, decided that prejudice was a knife with two edges.
Thinking this, he suddenly remembered the knife hidden under his cloak. He thought of Morlock confronting the angry mob on the dark street, and for the first time realized why Morlock had surrendered the blade. That, too, was like a spell breaking.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Settlement
The two Guardians slept that night in rooms of the Arbiter’s house. Earno’s room faced the Hill of Storms, and he did not sleep well. Though the shutter was closed, he could still see the eerie blue light of banefire around the edge of the window. When he finally fell asleep he dreamed of that stormy Station of the Graith when he had convicted Merlin of impairing the Guard, and in doing so had defied almost every Guardian in the Graith, including his patron Lernaion. But in the dream, as he made his accusation, Earno saw that Merlin wore the cape of a thain, ragged and singed. He was also holding the accursed sword-scepter Gryregaest in his hands. Suddenly, nothing Earno said seemed to mean anything, but he could not stop talking, making the same speech he had made a generation ago. (He had not forgotten a word of that speech, nor would he ever.) Finally, Ambrosius cast the sword onto the Witness Stone standing between them; the blade shattered like black glass, and Earno’s dream with it.
It was just before dawn when he awoke. There was still a blue light seeping through the shuttered window, but it was the natural gray-blue of gloaming. He went to the window, unbarred it, and opened the shutter. Then he sat on the sill and drank in the electric air of those mountains.
The Hill of Storms frowned upon the settlement. Earno could pick out few details of the surface. But in silhouette against