we need it most—this would be to hand the dragons their victory. They watch us, even now. They understand the choices before us. So must we, also. It is all or nothing. Either we rebuild the gate as it ought to have been, or we seal the southern corridors and carry on the Longest War with our backs to a solid wall.”
“Seal the corridors!” Vetr was truly dismayed.
“Yes. All or nothing, Vetrtheorn. The Longest War has returned—they have returned: to plunder, to kill, to destroy. That is the nature of dragons. Very well: it is our nature to defend, to build, to make. To remember and forget. The more they are dragons, the more we must be dwarves.”
“Akhram hav!” Vetr said thoughtfully. “It will be done.”
“It will be yours to do,” the Eldest replied. “I misdoubt I shall see the Seven Clans at peace again.” He turned back to the others and said, “Your pardon, Summoner and my kin. Yours, especially, Morlock. I should have remembered you were never taught how to stand a death-vigil over rokhleni. It was thought a rather obscure ritual, even when I was young.”
“No offense, yedhra harven. I hope it is obscure again before I am old.”
“Who can say, Morlocktheorn? The hero labors to slay monsters, that heroism will become unnecessary. The thinker labors to systemize thought, that thinking will become unnecessary. The worker labors to amass treasure, that work will become unnecessary. Softness, stupidity, and sloth inevitably follow; have any of the three really benefited their children? Yet we work and work and work. . . .”
Morlock shrugged; even in the darkness Earno sensed his discomfort. “Surely there are other monsters to slay . . . other thoughts to think . . .”
“And other treasures to amass? Yes. That last thought smacks of greed, of course. And we both know scholars, as greedy of knowledge as a miser is of coins. In my old age have I grown greedy of monsters, unwilling to turn away from the darkness in which I see myself most clearly?”
“For our sake, yedhra—I hope not.”
“My mother’s shadow! I am well-answered of my earlier rebuke—Morlock, you have chided me twice.”
“I meant no harm, yedhra harven; all this is strange to me, like an epic of the Longest War.” He gestured abruptly at the dead unbearded dwarf. “But surely that is—”
“Whoever she may be, Morlock, it would be unwise to say the name. That, too, is part of the vigil. To say their names would be to call them back from their journey to those-who-watch; that would be dangerous for them and for us. We watch until sunrise. When the gate in the west opens they can depart the world as the sun enters and take their places among those-who-watch.”
Earno recognized the name of the ancestral almost-gods who, in dwarvish belief, mediated between the Creator and Creation. The notion had always struck him as primitive before. Now he did not know what to think.
Meanwhile Morlock, like Vetr before him, had glanced up at the dark fire-written mountainside above them. The Eldest understood the impulsive motion. “A rokhlan’s vigil is stood where he has fallen,” the ancient dwarf said flatly. “In any case, my place is here, to direct the work. Necessary business does not defile the vigil. Go, now, Vetr; send the message to the gate-leaders and the Elders of the Lesser Clans.”
The Eldest’s eldest son bowed and vanished into the darkness and the dust clouds drifting from the wreckage of the gate.
Morlock knelt down by the fallen dwarves and looked long at each one of their beardless faces. In the midst of his contemplation he glanced up and said to the Eldest, who was gazing fixedly at him, “Is this fitting?”
“Certainly,” the ancient dwarf replied. “Look on them. Remember their deeds, good and bad, and, in your own heart, praise their names. After the Praising of Day we will bury them”—and he gestured with the point of his long spear—“there, where the old gate opened up.”
Morlock nodded, then glanced sharply down at one of the fallen.
Earno, following Morlock’s eye, saw that one of the dwarves lay beside a battered shield . . . the one bearing the Ambrosian hawk and thorns.
“Yes,” said the Eldest, who had apparently been waiting for Morlock to notice this, “she seized it at the dragon’s first approach and bore it through the whole battle. She won the honor of rokhlan under its protection. Let none say the Ambrosii have brought bad luck to Thrymhaiam!”
Morlock did