James Enge - This Crooked Way

Suddenly the Marh was surrounded by the dancing Khroi in black-andwhite rags. They reached out their palp-clusters toward him imploringly, and their triple mouths sang a song Thend did not understand.

The Math's eyes widened in anger or surprise. He gestured with all three of his arms, pointing back up the slope. The dancing Khroi grew silent and still; they bowed down and laid their carapaces on the ground before their leader. But they still stretched out their arms imploringly to him.

"Your presence has poisoned our seers," he said accusingly to Morlock. "I have gloated over you too long, perhaps. Now, because you are rokhlan, a dragonkiller, the guile of dragons wish to have you for their prize, and as their kharum and as math of Valona's horde, I grant that wish. You and your property will be taken from here to the Giving Field, where the guile may dispose of you for their sport. The werewolf has also killed a dragon, although by mere treachery and stealth, and he too will be given to the dragons, as, of course, our Lost One must be. This blood will seal the bond between guile and horde. These others will go and give their lives for our future in the Vale of the Mother. At the next gathering we will pray their names to the godswho-hate-us. I have spoken; let others obey."

Morlock asked, "What do you mean `seal the bond'? Aren't these dragons your servants? Don't you ride them like animals?"

The crooked row of dragons erupted in fire and noise. For a while nothing could be heard except their fiery words, meaningless to Thend. He wondered if a fight was going to break out between the dragons and the Khroi then and there, if that was what Morlock was trying to provoke.

Marh Valone fixed Morlock with one eye and stared at him. Then, when the uproar had gone on for a while, he lifted all three of his arms and called out, with all three of his mouths singing at a different tone, a word Thend did not recognize. It sounded as loud as any dragon from where Thend sat, and the row of angry dragons subsided into something like order. Marh Valone spoke a short sentence in the same language, at a slightly lower tone of voices. Thend turned to see the dragons wordlessly lowering their heads in submission. But all of them were glaring at Morlock's shoulders: he had not deigned to turn and look at them while they were shouting and he did not do so now.

"That was quite a good try," Marh Valone said to Morlock confidentially. "Pride is what binds them to us: they are exiles from the greater guiles to the south and east, ashamed to live as solitaries. If you stayed among us for a time you would no doubt find a way to use that pride and turn them against us. But you will die tonight, a free gift from horde to guile, and their pride and gratitude will bind them to us closer than ever."

Marh Valone would have turned away then, but another Khroi voice, discordant and clashing, forestalled him. Thend looked and saw standing nearby the Khroi whose carapace was marked, the Khroi he had rescued from the spiders.

The Marh stopped moving away and looked with one eye, then another, at the marked Khroi as he spoke. (Did the Math's gesture indicate surprise? Attentiveness? Some emotion a man could never feel? Thend wasn't sure.) A moment of silence followed, and then Marh Valone turned to Thend. "Our Lost One has requested that you also be given to the dragons. It is a sin against our future, but no one has ever done for one of us what you dared to do, and I grant this favor to the Lost One. I will not pray for you to the godswho-hate-us, and so they may forgive you. I have spoken; let others obey."

"No!" shouted Fasra. "Leave him with us!"

But each of them was firmly held by three of the giant Khroi-guards; there was nothing any of them could do.

"I'm sorry," Morlock muttered. "You chose your guide unwisely. Good-bye."

The guile of dragons rose into the air and flew away southward like a storm. The noise of their passage made further speech useless, and Thend could have said nothing anyway: that fist of fear was gripping his throat again. He looked at his mother, whom he had loved and feared, and at Roble, the man who was closer to him than his long-dead father, the man he had wished he could be, and all he wanted was to die with them. But the Marh's cruel kindness had denied him even that.

The others watched without words as Thend and Morlock were dragged away. The werewolf was picked up and carried, too, and the Khroi that Thend had saved, "the Lost One" as Marh Valone had called him, walked slowly alongside them.

"Why is it a favor to be given to the dragons?" Thend called to Morlock after they had been dragged for a while. (The dragons had long gone on ahead and they could hear each other now.) "Won't they-?"

"They'll kill us and eat us," Morlock said. "The others will die too, as hosts for the Khroi young, in the Vale of the Mother. It is slower, more painful, more horrible."

"And this is all your fault somehow?"

"No!" said Morlock.

Thend wished he could say something to comfort the crooked man. Not that there was anything to say. So he said nothing.

Suddenly they were surrounded by a faster-moving group. Thend had a crazy hope that the others had gotten away and come to rescue them-but it was only the dancing Khroi in black-and-white rags. They spoke to the gigantic Khroi guards in birdlike harmonious voices, and the guards (looking nervously at each other) stopped dragging the captives along.

The dancing Khroi stretched out their arms imploringly and sang at Morlock, just as they had to the Khroic marh before, but this time Thend could understand them, as they sang in the language Thend thought of as Coranian.

"Spare us," the Khroi sang, "spare us, Destroyer. You are a seer, like ourselves, although you do not walk always in the tal-realm as we do. Spare us, have mercy on us, do not destroy us, and we will not pray for you to the godswho-hate-us and they may forgive you."

"I will spare you," Morlock agreed, "if you spare me and my friends. I will give mercy for mercy, blood for blood."

"We cannot spare you," the Khroic seers sang. "The warriors act; we advise; the Sisters and the elders, led by the Math, decide. His word is our law; we cannot break it. But only your word is your law. You can spare us, even if we destroy you. Please, please, let us kill you in peace."

"Is it horde law for you to plead with prisoners like this?" Morlock said. "Did you not defy the math's command to return to your place on the slope? You pick and choose the laws you will obey. You choose the destruction before you, just as he does. Spare me and my friends or I will destroy you. Blood for blood: that is my law."

The Khroic seers put their palp-clusters over their eyes and moaned. The gigantic guards took this as a sign that the interview was over and they dragged Morlock and Thend onward.

"How can you destroy them?" Thend called when the wailing seers had passed out of earshot.

"Why would I want to?" Morlock replied glumly. "Death is their dream, not mine. If only I could understand why! I took care to not explore this journey with visions, for I knew the Khroi had seers and one seer's vision can encompass another's. I wanted to pass under their notice, but they were waiting for me all along. It is strange……

Presently they came to a wide flat area where a dozen or so posts of maijarra wood had been driven deeply into the stony ground: the Giving Field. A faded blue dragon was waiting there. The claw had been severed from his right forelimb and the fresh wound was still oozing blood or pus that smoked sullenly on the ground. His dim red eyes watched glumly as the Khroi guards lifted up their prisoners and hung them from hooks driven into the maijarra wood high above the ground. The Khroi whom Thend had saved from the spiders was bound and hung there, too. Then, without ceremony, the guards left them alone with the dragon.