long before it came under the Guard. Thus no one for millennia had earned the high title of rokhlan . . . except for the five heroes of Southgate, who were all dead now. (To be a rokhlan was frequently a posthumous honor.)
So it was Morlock who (after he had thoroughly doused himself at the washbasin) was seated at the head of the stone table in the watchroom; even Eldest Tyr sat below, on his right hand. He ate the bread and cheese and meat that the watch pressed on him, drank water, and listened glumly as Deor and a few members of the watch retold his exploit of the Coriam Lakes as he had told it to them, along with certain observations of their own.
He seemed particularly crooked and Ambrosian to Earno as he nodded over his half-empty plate. Earno couldn’t even see details; anger, like a dark red cloud haloing the thain, prevented him from seeing Morlock clearly. Morlock shook off his sleepiness or gloom enough to glance at Earno, perhaps hoping to see how his senior was taking in the story. Earno looked away hastily, before their eyes had time to meet. (Had Morlock seen the flash of red light in his eyes? If he had, what could be done to remove him?)
For a time Earno watched Deor tell Morlock’s story. He was too busy with his own thoughts to pay much attention, but he vaguely noted that the young dwarf seemed both proud of and angry at his harven kin.
Only at the end did Morlock himself speak. The watch-dwarves were telling how they had found him at the edge of the lake, “preparing to dive in and cut the collar from the dragon’s throat.”
“Eh, no,” said Morlock. “Spare me that, kinfolk! I was only thinking.”
“Well,” said one of the watch, “but you won’t tell us what you were thinking about.”
“He won’t tell us much of anything,” Deor explained to Tyr and Earno. “When I arrived they were just beginning to worm the dragon story out of him. But he won’t tell us anything about his trip through Haukrull, nor even where he got his change of clothes. We’ve decided there must be some sort of Guardian’s decree against it—”
Earno had been angered by the thought that Morlock had already told the tale of his embassy to his kin. Finding himself wrong, Earno was irrationally angered again, as if this were a new and separate injury. Had it not been for the compulsion to secrecy, to silence, he would have burst forth with angry denunciations. They took form in his mind, like dark red clouds, but he could not free himself of them by speech. He must not speak. He could not. Silence!
The summoner found Tyr looking at him curiously, and he avoided meeting the Eldest’s eye. Tyr noted the action, and it obviously surprised and concerned him. But when he finally spoke he did not refer to it.
“There is a room above this one,” the Eldest said, “where you can hear Morlock’s full report in privacy. I am needed elsewhere, but Deor will remain to learn those things which may immediately affect the safety of the Deep Halls.”
Afraid to do more, Earno nodded stiffly, rose, and left the room. (What did the Eldest know? What did he, at least, suspect? Was he, too, part of the plot? If he was, there might be some way to eliminate him also.) Earno heard Morlock follow him more slowly, and he clenched his teeth.
There was a window in the upper chamber, something Earno was inclined to view as a luxury after days under Thrymhaiam. He seated himself on the stone bench carved out of the wall beneath the window. Looking outward to the east, he saw a dim light reflected on the mountains, although the sky beyond them was still a dark blue. Without returning his gaze to the chamber, he made an imperious gesture at Morlock, indicating that the thain might begin his report.
Morlock, entering behind the summoner, had noted that there were no other chairs. He therefore seated himself on the floor, with his back to the southern wall of the chamber. Having settled himself, he began to speak.
He began by telling of his encounter with Saijok Mahr under the Drowned Arches. Earno was interested, in a distant way, but to Morlock’s amazement he completely discounted the importance of Saijok Mahr’s exile under the mountains.
“The young bulls,” he said, deigning to explain the matter to his thain,