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Chapter Eighteen
FËARUK THE WHITE
‘Good news,’ said Tirmo. ‘Princess Gauriel has been captured. She’s alive and well and unharmed, though they have put her in a cage. The message came an hour ago.’
‘Splendid!’ said Melohtar. ‘And the good Lammanwe, what brings you here?’
‘Devotion to your interests, my lord, as always. I’m sent by your father and I also bring letters from His Majesty. There’s concern that this…incursion into Fëaruk’s territory may cause some friction.’
‘Really?’ asked Melohtar. ‘Why on earth should it?’
‘Lammanwe’s had to come post-haste,’ said Tirmo. ‘We don’t want the dragon to eat your good lady, now do we? But he listens to lawyers. We mustn’t delay. Your own beasts are tired out, but there are fresh ones ready: let’s discuss it in the carriage, as we go, eh?’ His anxiety was evident. Swin and Melohtar insisted on making a brief visit to the stables in order to say goodbye to the horses and the dogs, but five minutes later the four Men got into the coach together. Melohtar yawned as he sat down on the padded leather seat; he felt tired at his journey’s end. Followed by a fast-marching escort of ten Dwarves, whose Captain now rode on the coach as a postilion, the travellers set off. Lammanwe at once took documents from his case and began to explain about Gauriel, but…
Melohtar swam to wakefulness, up from vague muddy depths of guile and duplicity. He was sitting somewhere: sitting in a bright, half-open space: sitting in a chair: tied to a chair. He could move his legs and his head was quite free, but his arms and body were roped to the chair-arms and chair-back, and the chair was strong, made of metal and fixed to the floor of the cave: the rough artificial stone floor of the cavelike chamber. The side-walls of this chamber consisted of natural rock-layers, greyish-brown and black, that sloped upwards into the overhang, from which descended many fingers of stone, honey-coloured overhead but black where they hung down in a fringe that partly defined the wide mouth of the cave. The floor extended only as far as this cave-mouth, where a fence of iron posts and rails, breast-high, ran along from one side to the other. Having adjusted to the light and the distance, Melohtar’s eyes then took in the view of the steep-sided valley that lay beyond. He deduced that the cave had been made into an observation-post, a balcony about twenty feet above ground level.
A cold breeze was blowing into the cave, stale and polluted, with a greasy, salty sea-heaviness. The breeze rustled some papers on a wooden table that stood to the left of Melohtar’s chair. By turning his head he could see the documents, the round stones weighing them down, an ink-pot, a glass jug and two drinking-glasses. On the other side of the table two men, Tirmo and Lammanwe, were sitting on chairs, watching him. He gave them a brief angry frown, but kept silent, not at once deigning to pay them any attention. He looked outside. A figure came into his sightline, just beyond the edge of the platform: a man: Swin.
Swin staggered a few paces, then straightened up to bend backwards and stretch his arms out wide as if he too had just awakened from long sleep. The sun shone down and lit up his red hair. The fine clothes he had worn for the wedding were now sadly stained, indeed crusted with mud, but his mail-shirt glittered and Heathogrim still swung at his side. He laid hand on hilt as he moved forward again, into the wide space, the floor of the valley. Valley or quarry-pit? The ground was very uneven. In places it had run or congealed into smooth glass – Swin’s foot slipped on one of the shining smears; and there were deep ruts and lesser pits filled with clinkers, dust, melted and broken stone and half-incinerated rubbish of various kinds. Melohtar turned his eyes upwards. No sky was visible, only the uprearing walls of the pit, rough-hewn strata, weathered and fouled with dark stains. Down into the pit, looped and trailed along the slants, scrolls of wire had been unrolled, a strong stiff wire set with barbs, of which the countless loops formed fences and partitions. An impenetrable hedge of this wire, which Melohtar could not see from where he was, had been set below the railings of the balcony; which was no doubt why Swin had at first started to move in the opposite direction. Apart from his small figure, not a single sign of life – no movement, no speck of green – could be seen. Perspectives leaped away as Melohtar took in the huge extent of the space. Opposite – perhaps half a mile away – the wall opened into a vast dark recess, another cave perhaps, but one of unguessable size. As big as the Erumar? Or twice, or five times, or ten times larger?
Melohtar faced his two captors. He kept up his silence, refusing to utter the first speech. He saw Tirmo give Lammanwe a cold glance. Lammanwe sighed and brought up his hand to cover a yawn.
‘Well, we owe Your Lordship some apologies,’ he said. ‘First of all, for the drugging. Would Your Lordship care for a glass of water?’
Melohtar’s mouth tasted vile. He nodded. Lammanwe made a sign, and a glass was presented to Melohtar’s lips. He drank, but almost choked when he saw the hand that held the glass. The large nails were bent into strong brown claws, the gnarled skin covered with wiry hairs. Melohtar’s nostrils picked up a very particular smell, the smell of unwashed Dwarf. He realised that he had been smelling this smell for the last two days. He made a great effort of will and was able to swallow the water without retching. Then he exerted his full strength in an attempt to burst his bonds.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lammanwe, ‘but Captain Uglaf behind you has his sword ready. Should Your Lordship succeed in breaking free, he will strike you and disable you. Yes. We apologize for having Your Lordship tied up as well, but there are things that simply have to be told and heard. And furthermore, we can’t allow Your Lordship to make any kind of intervention. More water? As you please… Now, next, the major deception. I’m sorry that Your Lordship has literally been misled. Lady Gauriel isn’t here.’
‘Then where is she?’
‘No-one knows. But the reason for your presence here is that when word reached the Lord of this City, the news of your approach, he decided to take the opportunity of having a personal interview – not with you, but with Mr. Gumasson.’
‘But the dogs – but Sedro,’ Melohtar protested, not yet having taken in the import of the advocate’s last words – ‘they tracked her! They were on her scent all the time!’
‘A puzzling business,’ put in Tirmo, ‘but hardly the point at issue now. Your Lordship has much more serious things to be concerned about. Now, our dragon makes it his business to hear about things. He has his own agents, and a lot of the news I myself report to him. The main point, what you may call the really big mystery, is to do with where this red-headed lad comes from: that, together with a tale of some kind of magic prophecy. We, meaning me and my learned friend here, and my subordinates, and my colleagues of the Guilds, like to think of ourselves as hard-headed, as sensible chaps. We would not be inclined to take any rash action. We would, frankly, dismiss that prophecy-tale as a load of twaddle. But on the other hand our dragon has, ah, you may call it a credulous, even a superstitious streak. And really the prophecy upset him quite badly when he heard about it. And so – in these difficult times of shortages, such as your own department, my lord Surveyor, is well informed of – a conciliatory gesture seemed, well, appropriate. Mr. Gumasson has been led up here – misled – yes, duped, all right? – so that our dragon can take a good look at him and his elvish sword, and decide, for himself, whether or not Mr. Gumasson presents some kind of threat.’
His voice had been growing feebler and hoarser during this speech. He took a gulp of water, and concluded in a firmer tone:
‘Nothing – I mean, nothing illegal will be done. That you may be quite sure of. This learned advocate has come here in haste, for the sole purpose – let me repeat, for the sole purpose – of unravelling the laws, the relevant treaties and so on, for your satisfaction. It’s for you that he’s here, my lord, because you’re an important officer of the Crown, and the King’s son-in-law, and His Majesty wants your continued goodwill. All right. Over to you, Lammanwe.’
Lammanwe did not at once resume his discourse. He looked impassively out at the valley-floor. Swin was now walking briskly back to the balcony. Once he stopped and picked something up, a thin white object. Melohtar noticed many more of these white things, of different sizes, scattered among the stones, the wire and the heaps of rubbish. They were bones, or fragments of bone, and Swin’s face was pale in the sunlight.
‘Is that you, Melohtar?’
‘Swin!’
Swin raised a hand in response.
‘She’s not here,’ Melohtar called.
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry I’ve dragged you all this way for nothing.’
‘It wasn’t nothing.’
‘You’ve got to meet the dragon next,’ called Melohtar, ‘then we can go back. He just wants to see you. They say you’ll be all right!’ He shouted: ‘No harm done!’
‘Yes. He’s coming.’
‘What?’
‘He’s coming! I hear him!’
Smoke was emerging from the cave-mouth opposite; and something was becoming visible in the darkness beyond. Words can hardly express what Melohtar felt as the black-nostrilled snout poked forward, high up, into the air. It was silver-sheened and ridged with spikes of white horn. Then came the whole enormous head, wavering from side to side as it probed through the air. The long lower jaw fell open, just once, to reveal the black and fiery lane of the tongue, and the terrific teeth, the mouth grinning bestially as the jaw descended from the hinge. The nostrils jetted forth a blast of smoke, and the onlookers heard the roar. Then appeared the snake-like length of the neck, also fortified with white spines, the expanses, folds and crevices of its lead-coloured hide acquiring a silvery oily sheen as they emerged into the sunlight. And with a scraping rumble and vibration the clawed feet lifted and slid forward over the ground, at each descent raising a cloud of dust and flying fragments. Now the shoulders were coming into view; still almost the whole length of the body was hidden: truly it cannot be doubted, as Melohtar says, that this Dragon, Fëaruk the White, is the mightiest that has ever been seen in Midyard, far surpassing all true and legendary worms of old.
‘Take heart, Swin! Shield and blessing of Dru!’
Those words were the last that Melohtar spoke to his friend. Swin waved as if in farewell, then turned to face the dragon. He drew Heathogrim, set the point on the ground and rested both his hands on the hilt. From behind he looked strong and tall, undaunted and – oddly enough – rather more real than the baleful monstrosity that was still coming into view beyond him. Beyond the grey shoulders the spikes continued along the ridge of the backbone. The upper part of the torso was white, a glossier white that darkened, lower down, through patterns and diamonds of glittering wrinkles, to the ash-grey and charcoal of the belly, also veined with lines of brilliant silver. The high thorny elbows emerged, and then the beginnings of the unbelievable wings. How can such a creature still manage to fly? It is to be hoped that we never find out, Melohtar says. Another black belch was blasted from the smutty nostrils. Black flakes like soft snowflakes were floating down all round the valley-floor. Then with sudden speed the head swooped down towards Swin and the three watchers. It was shaped like a snake’s head, apart from the snout, the tall grey ears ending in black tufts, and the huge ruff of spines and streamers that frilled out behind them. Down through the air it suddenly glided, to come to a halt just a few yards away from Swin, still slowly weaving from side to side in mid-air.
Swin took a half-step back, not moving his sword, and bowed over it. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Or, as we say in my country, Hail, O Almightiness.’
A vast pulsation or ripple seemed to convulse the chest, then to travel up the long neck and issue from the snout in sooty flares of flame. Fëaruk was laughing. But his eyes, his pale glazed black-bloodshot eyes with their vertical, dead-black, silver-rimmed slits, remained blank and expressionless.
‘Hi,’ he said, the hot foul gust of his breath ruffling Swin’s clothes and hair.
‘Mighty Lord Fëaruk, I am told that you desire to see me.’
The head remained where it was, but the dragon took a step nearer, moving his limbs one at a time in a series of earth-shaking scrapes and crunches. ‘Yeaaaah,’ he said – a slow fiery exhalation. ‘Welcome.’ His voice was deeper than distant thunder, and yet close. ‘Good of you to come. I desire the answer to a certain riddle. Do me the favour of holding up your sword.’
‘This is Heathogrim,’ said Swin gravely as he did so.
The head inched forward, the metallic irises sliding, narrowing and focussing on the blade. Melohtar had the very definite impression that Fëaruk was registering and recording every detail of the weapon, and in doing so comparing it with all the other swords that he had ever seen.
‘What a disappointment,’ came the words at last. ‘It’s not an elvish blade after all. Something’s gone wrong with the riddle. Unless you have some other words for me?’
‘Well, no, Your Almightiness. It’s just a dwarvish blade. As I have already told a lot of people.’
‘And of course none of ’em would believe you, eh? I do understand. People are so silly. Well, quite a good blade, but it shouldn’t be difficult to take care of. Keep holding it up, nice and steady…’
Even before Fëaruk had finished talking the watchers had seen the black nostrils pucker, compact themselves and shrink to small muzzle-like protuberances; from these, with no build-up, no warning at all, was projected a double blast of thin bluish-white flame. By the word ‘steady’ the two fiery lines had converged on Swin’s sword. At once both Heathogrim and the hand that held it were white, refulgent, surrounded by flaring golden vapour. There was a billow of orange fire. Swin’s hair was burned off, his face scorched. He stared at the blackened stump that was all that remained of his right fore-arm. Sword and hand had ceased to exist.
There was another tremendous crunch. The dragon’s left foot, equipped with four steel-grey claws, slid forward. ‘Now, mannikin,’ continued the terrible voice, ‘if you will give me due honour – immediately go down on your knees in the dust, and worship me, and thank me for your life, and promise never to oppose me in anything – I will let you go. And what is more, I may help you to all that your heart desires.’
Swin stood firm, perhaps trembling a little. He held out his stump uncertainly, as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Yet he replied without doubt or hesitation. He began speaking in a clear voice, and with easy contempt, and as he continued his voice became clearer and clearer until the questions were like a distillation of pure and absolute scorn:
‘You despicable worm! Gluttonous, poisonous, slime-shitting, self-buggering, own-spawn-swallowing scum-brood of Hell! What’s the point of you? What can you hope for? When you’ve finished gorging and wanking yourself on your gold-bed, what in the world remains beyond your own vile self? Can there be aught other? What, Fëaruk, do you truly desire?’
The reeking head came up closer, the grin became more contemptuous. Swin’s ghostly reflection flitted back and forth within the mirror-black glaze of a huge eye-slit. ‘What do I desire? That’s far too easy a riddle, O Eofor, Red Boar, resolute scion of Kedral.’ Swiftly, playfully, two of the great claw-blades flicked forward, closed round Swin’s legs and clicked together like shears, severing both legs at mid-thigh. He tumbled forward into a half-buried tangle of the barbed wire. He raised himself up on his lacerated left arm. ‘My first desire,’ said the scorching voice, ‘is play, sport, which I get too little of. Sit up, Eofor Guma’s son.’
Swin went on with his defiance, shouting all the crudest insults he could think of, while two claws came round his body and lifted him up to sit on a tangle of barbed wire and human bones. Blood was cascading forth from the two round cut-off ends of his legs, with their concentric rings of red, pink and white. With obscene delicacy a second pair of claws slid forward into the space between the stumps. Fëaruk was now resting on his elbows, his head close and low, his neck raised in a stupendous arch. He breathed out a great cloud of black smoke.
‘I desire dominion!’
Swin coughed and retched. His disfigured face was grey. His mouth opened wide as the points of the lower claws clipped into his groin. It seemed that that moment was his first experience of agony.
‘And more and more gold to lie on, and cunning things to delight in, and beautiful things to be mine forever!’
The dragon’s voice was getting louder now, and angrier. Another slash, and there was Swin’s left arm fallen from the shoulder, with yet more blood spraying and jetting forth from the arteries.
‘I desire the kingdoms of the world!’
Then the middle claw dug into Swin’s breast and sliced downward. It tore through chain-mail, clothes and skin, so as to slit the belly all the way down to the torn and vacant crotch.
‘And the power! And the glory!’
Swin looked down stupidly. The coils of his entrails were falling out of his belly. But the jets of his blood were slackening. His head slumped and he fell over on one side.
‘For ever and ever!’ Fëaruk’s voice had risen to a tremendous pitch, a scream that had also the depth of a bellowing roar. The cruel shears reached forward and cut for the last time, removing Swin’s head from his body.
‘Amen! Say it, you midgets, you mortals in there! I’ve been insulted! I’m not used to insult and disrespect! Say it, Tirmo, or I’ll melt you and roast them in your fat!’
‘Amen! Amen, amen!’ they all cried in terror, even Melohtar, as the monstrous head plunged down in a tempest of flame. Fiery breath rushed into the cave.
‘PRAISE ME!’
‘Amen, mighty Lord Fëaruk!’ they wailed desperately, Tirmo and Lammanwe throwing themselves out of their chairs and prostrating themselves on the floor. ‘Glorious Master! Mighty invincible Dragon! Magnificent, wonderful, everlasting, eternal! Have mercy on us, O Almighty One!’
‘Humph!’ this last was a more voluminous but milder breath, mainly of black smoke. The head turned sideways on. ‘Are you Lord Melohtar? Is that you? Nod your head if you can’t speak… Now let that be a lesson to them in Vinya-Ruminas! You tell them! No more pretenders! No more silly swords and prophecies!’
‘Very good, Your Almightiness,’ Melohtar said between sick gulps.
‘And you’d better get your people busy, my lord Surveyor, because I’m feeling thirsty all the time now: you must find drink for me soon!’
‘Yes, Your Almightiness.’
‘Anyway, you have leave to bury the bits of your friend, if that matters. Pick a spot you like the look of. I’m not uncivilised if I’m treated right! That’s all. Bye-bye for now.’
‘Bye-bye,’ they replied, waving like shocked helpless children. Slowly and with many more astounding movements the dragon turned his huge length round. At last the barbed tail was seen disappearing into the darkness. The remains of Swin’s body lay steaming, half cooked, little more than another pile of meaningless rubbish.
Though able to describe every particular of his friend’s horrible death, Melohtar cannot so well recall the hours that followed. He had to wait while Tirmo and Lammanwe recovered from their own terror. Wine was brought. He was not set free from his bonds. Before he might depart and go to tend the body, he had to hear a full account of the beautiful legality of Swin’s killing. After Lammanwe’s lengthy briefing the pale and sweating Worm-warden insisted that Melohtar prove his acceptance and comprehension of it all by regurgitating an account of Swin’s standing as an alien in Thandor, of the secret protocols of the Treaty of Lhygost that dealt with the relation of the Code of Olostur to the dragon’s own customary law, and the various precedents that clarified the present case. Melohtar thought of questions to ask, such as, Are you two not implicitly guilty, having contrived to bring him here by guile? or, What about all those bones? How many others have, with equal legality, met such ends? But he felt too sick and too disheartened to utter any remonstrances. Also for the moment it seemed wiser to assume the co-operative, unaffronted pose that was being required. He was invited to lunch, but he could not think of eating. At last the Dwarf untied him, led him from the cave, conducted him down a long passage and some narrow, rock-hewn stairs, and showed him out through a steel door that was hidden in the depths of a cleft in the quarry-wall. Melohtar ran out into the dreadful pit. There came a roaring noise in his ears, and his sight was darkened, and he fell down on Swin’s body.
He revived. Weeping, he collected the limbs of his friend, and arranged them in place, and lifted up the poor head, and gazed upon the burnt features. Weeping, he gathered up the smallest, most pitiable fragments. But now came an unexpected difficulty. The sun had moved, the shadows had changed and the cracks, clefts and fissures were very many. He could not find the one from which he had emerged. He called and shouted, but no-one came to the balcony. It seemed that there was nobody within hearing. He could not climb up to it; besides all the wire, the wall of the platform was smooth and vertical below the railing.
In his heart, however, he welcomed this delay. If he must now stay with his friend and hold a wake for him all night long, why, that was what his heart desired to do, that was his own true need. The sun went down in a murky sky; the smokes of Lhygost continued to rise up high above; the shadows crept out of the rocks, and the skulls that lay scattered around grinned at him coldly. All night long he sat and mourned for his friend.
Morning came, acrid, dewless. Red light shone on the walls and ramparts that rose from the top of the cliffs, high above the entrance to the dragon’s lair. Melohtar walked up and down for a little while, minding the wire, easing his cold limbs. Again he shouted and called, and still nobody came. What was he to do? He did not wish, nor had he the time, nor had he the necessary tools to dig a grave where his friend lay. He recalled that Lhygost is at the extreme end of a cape, and that the sea must be near. He might try to find it. And his circumstances were pointing more and more clearly to the great cavern-recess, the entry to Fëaruk’s tunnel. He wondered if that might not prove to be his own path to freedom. How else would he ever get out of the pit? He seemed to have been completely forgotten. At last he determined to carry the body to the tunnel.
He was not lacking in strength, and would no doubt have been able to shoulder the sad burden – lightened, as it was, by being drained of blood – but the task of carrying all the pieces together, as a single load, defeated him. He fumbled at the gruesome task, trying to secure them in a bundle with his belt and cloak, but they were slimy and chilly and always they fell apart. Finally he settled on a two-stage method of progression, carrying the torso in his arms for a hundred yards and then going back to fetch the other pieces in a bundle. He wept from his sore and sleepless eyes as he made the lonely, stumbling, back-and-forth journeys. He drew near to the cave-mouth. The dragon-stench grew stronger and stronger at every step, drying his mouth, disturbing his stomach and oppressing his spirit; but he entered the cavern and trudged forward.
Soon, while still in the light, he came to a fork. One immense passage led upward and sideways, the other onward. Through the latter came repeated whispers and faint echoes, the sound of waves. He went on into the darkness, cautiously rounded a bend and at last saw a glimmer of daylight ahead. The sea-tunnel sloped gently downward, and the floor became muddy and pebbly, and the cave-vault drew down closer. He pressed on, still fetching and returning, and after another bend saw the further cave-mouth. A fresher sea-breeze blew towards him. But the way was barred by the strong square grid of a portcullis.
He reached the exit and sat down in light-headed despair, resolving to die with his friend. He fell asleep. Waking up, he deduced that the purpose of this sea-gate was much more likely to be to keep trespassers out, than to prevent escapes. At once he took in the interior bolts, the stout ropes, the case that contained the winding-gear, the wheel, the wedges and the long-handled iron mallets. He unbolted the portcullis and set himself to raise it. The task was all but impossible, but by straining an inch at a time, and repeatedly wedging the wheel, he was able to lift the gate high enough to allow space for himself to slide under, and to pull Swin’s remains after him.
The waters were gloomy in the morning light. A few gulls squawked sadly in the sky; the horizon was dull. He had come out into a long beach of muddy shingle. The mud was black and foul, and a thick black tide-mark lay over the rocks. Perhaps this place, somewhere around here, would serve for Swin’s burial. Melohtar walked through stiff crackling grass-stems and mounds of rotting seaweed, prospecting for a likely spot. He saw the bottom end of a rock stairway, which his eyes then followed all the way up the cliffside. It wound back and forth as far as the outskirts of the city, where a few of the many chimneys were visible, sending out their endless trails of smoke, affronting the patience of the sky. Melohtar shook his head and walked on. Something was sticking up amongst the rocks. Approaching it, he saw part of the stern of a boat – relic of some fisherman, no doubt, from the days before the worm had polluted the great bay. Most of the hull was below the rippled surface of the mud. An old legend came to Melohtar’s mind: the death and funeral and funeral-boat of Targil, Prince of Atalantis, founder of Athenor before the Age of Wizards. Targil’s lords had sent him off to sea after his death, back to the drowned kingdom. But this mud-filled vessel would be too rotten to serve Swin in the same way. Probably. Melohtar squatted down on a flat stone and started scraping at the mud with his hands. The timbers, as far as he could feel them, were smooth; he rapped them with his knuckles and they sounded firm. A squawk came to his ears. The gulls were circling over Swin’s body. Melohtar made the two necessary trips to bring him over to the boat.
After a while he succeeded in uncovering the whole of the uppermost side. Strangely, it had not rotted at all. He worked on, becoming more and more involved with his muddy task, scraping up the stinking handfuls and throwing them away. Water kept oozing into the hole he had made, but the lower side was becoming clear. At last, kneeling on the firm rock and steadying himself with one hand, he was able to reach down, hook his fingers underneath and give a strong heave. Nothing happened. He heaved again, until his shoulder-sinews were cracking, his heart bursting; and with a deep noisy gurgle, a swirl and an inpouring of filthy water, and a belching waft of putrescence, the boat came free. It had a high prow, carved in the likeness of a bird’s head, with an out-thrust beak.
It was sound: unrotted: seaworthy. ‘How providential that is,’ Melohtar said to himself.
Providential?
Then came, with a shock like a great hammer-blow, his first anger. His heart seemed to stop beating. A red mist covered his eyesight and a boiling blood-tide coursed through every member of his body. Bedabbled from head to foot with the noisome mud, he raised clenched fists above his head and gave a wordless cry, a howl that rose and died into a sobbing scream. Again and again he howled aloud, abandoning himself to his hopeless rage, madly throwing himself down in the water and hitting down with his fists, into the mud and the stones, again and again, until his knuckles were raw, and two or three fingers broken, and the fury had given way to the tears of a calmer despair. Providential! Providential! What kind of Providence could it be that had sent that senseless but self-fulfilling prophecy? What kind of deity was Dru, the careful arranger of that sequence of accurate predictions – tree, wolf, dog, boar, worm – and accomplisher of predestined betrayal? What wantonness, what spiteful humour could it not but be, that had made the prophecy itself become the goad for the dragon’s anxiety, the lever for poor Swin’s destruction? Who was Dru? What was Dru? Either nothing, or less than nothing, some strange rudimentary spirit of infantile malice. ‘Despicable’ – Swin had dared to call Fëaruk that, and to his face. Even so, and with more profound condemnation, did Melohtar despise his own former beliefs. Of faith in Dru, of the justice of Dru, of respect for Dru, there could never again be the least word said. Faith, respect and trust lay shattered among the filthy rocks. Melohtar raised his eyes to the horizon. No: not there either. Nothing lay beyond that leaden bar. Nothing: a despicable nothingness.
Trying to spare his hurt hands, Melohtar dragged out the boat and scoured it as clean as he could. He then stripped off his own clothes and washed himself in the cold grey water. Ceremoniously, one piece at a time, he brought Swin’s pieces to the boat. He set them decently together, and combed the red hair, and kissed the cold forehead. Heathogrim was no more, nor were there trophies of vanquished foes to lay beneath Swin’s feet, but Melohtar placed Swin’s harp in the boat, and covered up the cruel severances with his own cloak. The eyes he bound with a strip of cloth, thinking to protect them from the beaks of sea-birds. Then, pushing the funeral boat before him, he waded into the water. ‘Farewell,’ he said aloud: no prayer or blessing could he utter, no other words he said or thought. He pushed the boat out. It began to glide away. He waded back to the shore.
He stood there for a long time, forgetting his wet clothes, ignoring the breezes that chilled his body and disregarding the pain of his hands. The boat departed, waning to a dark spot, dwindling and disappearing in the grey light. Wretchedly the waves splashed and tugged at the grating, rattling pebbles. The sea took Eofor, called Swin Gumasson, and he was not seen again in Garholt, nor in the City of his ancestors.
At length Melohtar turned to the steps. He began the long climb up to the fuming, thundering city.
So now, my lord, the work that you requested is complete; be you the judge of it. All I have written, I have written to your honour, and to Swin’s, and Clemo’s, and Egwise Proudfoot’s. This manuscript is offered with renewed thanks for my lord Ostendil’s hospitality and protection, for your own liberality, for the freedom of your library and for the doctoring that saved my life.
The tale is far from complete, yet perhaps these glimpses will assist Your Lordship, at some future time, towards the discernment of fuller truth. Next month I set out with Fortinbras Dyer on a new undertaking: the quest of the Witch of the South, as recommended to him by Calendis. If spared from death, in the perils that doubtless await us, I shall hope to prolong this tale with a second instalment, which, should it make the least appeal to Your Lordship’s indulgent curiosity, will be as promptly and as gladly offered by
Your Lordship’s most humble, most obedient servant,
ALDRED SHERLING
This is the end of Book One.
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