explain something to the flames. He felt he should explain, but he couldn’t think of what. And every now and then the flames would suggest something but when he eagerly began to respond dismissed his statement imperiously.
Morlock!
“Morlock is dead, I think. He was dying when I last saw him—” He felt a sharp stabbing relief that Morlock’s problems were not his own.
Merlin!
“There is no Merlin.”
Ambrosius!
“From the Unspoken tongues—the surname of a famous family of Eastholders—now extinct.”
Syr Theorn!
He knew this name of course. Theornn, in Dwarvish legend, was the eponymous ancestor of the group of clans that excavated and still inhabited Thrymhaiam. It was an easy question to answer; he could have answered without shame. But he didn’t answer. The thought of Thrymhaiam suffused him with guilt. Earno was at Thrymhaiam, and he had failed to deliver his challenge. Worse than failed: had chosen not to. Indeed for reasons that seemed good. But that made it worse than ever: who was he to disregard the commands of the Dragonkiller? He was a worthless thain. Or was that Morlock? Surely it was Morlock who had done that? Still, obscurely, he felt responsible, as if he ought to explain for Morlock who was, after all, surely dead now.
“Earno . . .”
He was cut off by a burst of wordless anger, more painful than Vild’s fire, dissolving his fragmented sense of identity. What was Earno to him? That fool. He had tried to warn him, but it had done no good ever since that summons to Tychar—
Shocked by the alien thoughts coursing through his mind (but were they alien? this anger had a familiar feel to it) he was most troubled by the fact that he could not remember the summons to Tychar. The very thought of it was charged with importance, but he did not remember it. He tried to remember and met resistance. He brushed this aside and seized the relevant memories. They rushed down on him, like an avalanche through the bright unburning flames.
. . . because she was useless: there was a madness in her from her mother.
He went in underneath the trees, the densely intertwined boughs with their sparse blue-black leaves covering his white mantle with darkness. That made him think (again!) of the day Nimue had betrayed him to Earno. Much had begun and ended on that day!
For a long time he walked north through the winterwood. From the slope of the rugged ground and occasional glimpses of the dim horizon in clearings, he knew he was coming closer to the Blackthorn Range.
Finally he came to a clearing where the sky was not visible, only a high dome of dimly glowing white mist. A lake of the same lay before him. He sat down at the edge of the clearing, resting his crooked shoulders against an only slightly more crooked tree trunk. He found his thoughts turning not to Faith, or Ambrosia, or even Nimue, but to his son who—there came a part he did not wish to remember, that he refused to remember.
His legs gave way and he fell to his knees before the Two Powers.
“Our war makes the world that you know,” said the white Presence on the black throne. (Torlan? Or Zahkaar?) “Your disbelief is as irrelevant as your belief would be. Our existences do not require your belief.”
“Our power can, however, in some measure descend to yourself,” said the black Presence on the white throne. (Zahkaar? Or Torlan?) “Only that power, believe in it or not, can give you victory over your enemies in the Wardlands.”
“Your enemies,” he replied absently, pondering the spell that bound him. It emanated from a place between the two thrones, shifting back and forth as the Powers exerted their tension on each other. His Sight could trace the spells’ invisible patterns in the stale air. His staff was with him, and his crystalline focus was bound up in a corner of his cloak. He could break the spell. But he waited. The two voices spoke on, in careful inimical alternation.
“We require your consent,” asserted one, and paused.
“To consent, you will require proof,” said the other.
He found himself able to rise. He did so more slowly than was necessary, leaning heavily on his staff. When he had risen he put his hand under his cloak, as if to press against his heart. He wheezed loudly. His fingers closed on the cold smooth surface of his focus.
“Go back as you came. Go back.”
“Go back.”
He turned and went slowly—not exactly as he