“That was long ago, harven. Don’t you remember?”

“Then why am I still in prison? Did I dream all that? Am I dreaming this? Where is Danadhar?”

“You may be dreaming,” Deor said. “You sound like you’re dreaming. I wish you’d wake up.”

“I wish it, too,” said Morlock, and closed his bloodshot eyes.

“This could be worse,” Deor remarked to Kelat, “I suppose. Say, if landfish were eating our eyeballs, or something like that.”

“What was that name?” Kelat asked.

“Danadhar. It’s someone he met the last time he was through here.”

“The god-speaker.”

“As I understand it, someone else was god-speaker back then. But I don’t doubt that this Danadhar is god-speaker now: from Morlock’s account, he was very religious. But that’s right: you were around here last year, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but I didn’t see this.”

“Understandable. In one brief stay one can never really see all the things worth seeing in a place. For instance, I spent a goodly amount of time in A Thousand Towers over the part century, but I never had occasion to see the Museum of Lithicated Teratomata or the Treasure-House of Forgotten Elbow-Guards.”

“I don’t mean the jail,” Kelat explained patiently. “I was in a cell for a while last year—not this one—while they figured out what to do with me. I mean this.” Kelat pointed at something on the wall.

It was some kind of memorial—an engraved plaque, riveted into the wall. Deor couldn’t read all of it—the text was partly runic, partly ideogrammatic. But there was a word that might have been the name Danadhar, and another that was probably Ambrosius, and an ideogram that almost certainly represented ruthen.

“Hm!” Deor said eventually. “Well seen, my friend. This must be the very cell Morlock was imprisoned in all those many years ago. That means he’s not as crazy as he sounds. And the event seems to be important to these Gray Folk—probably because Danadhar himself became important.”

Kelat looked at him for a moment and said, “Yes, he is important. Do you mean Morlock is really more than a hundred years old?”

“Oh, yes. A hundred thirty—or twenty—a hundred and forty? Something like that. He was a horrible child, really—always blowing things up and terrifying people and saying the strangest things. Wonderful days, those were.”

“Then you—”

“I’m about the same age as he—a tad older, it may be. I’d have to look at the nest records to be sure. Haven’t worn as well, obviously.”

“And Ambrosia?”

“She’s a few years younger—she and her sister—whom I gather you haven’t met.”

“No. She has never been among the Vraidish tribes.”

“I doubt that very much, but it doesn’t surprise me you haven’t seen her. She—ah—she keeps to herself.”

Kelat brooded over this for a few moments, then said, “Danadhar I have met. He is very old, even as the Gray Folk count the years. And they live longer than men.”

“Well—there’s your father.”

“Everyone knows that Ambrosia’s magic is what keeps him alive. Some say it is what made him a fool.”

“Um. Possibly. Longevity spells exist, you see, but they have unfortunate transformative effects; one never knows quite how one will come out, but it’s very rarely for the better. That’s why Those-Who-Know tend not to use them on themselves.”

“How were Morlock and Ambrosia transformed? How were you? You’re not crazy.”

“Well, we haven’t, eh, been transformed. Or maybe we have. It’s part of living in the Wardlands. The land sustains you, strengthens your life. And that strength can be carried on to your offspring, which is why Ambrosia has it . . . although not in the degree Morlock has. She may age faster than he does, as the centuries pass. I know he’s worried about that.”

“Then she will grow old and die, just like everyone else.”

“She will, but not just like everyone else. She doesn’t seem to do anything like everyone else, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

“Yes, I had noticed that.”

Deor looked sharply at the young man. He knew more about the mating practices of men and women than he did when he was a young dwarf, and he did not even need to guess that the young man was in love with Ambrosia Viviana. Fortunately, it was not his business. But he hoped that Ambrosia would deal gently with the young fool; Deor rather liked him.

There were shouts in the corridor outside—they seemed to be coming from the other cells. “Ware plague!” the prisoners were shouting, and “Call the god-speaker!” and many other things that Deor could not quite understand.

Kelat peered curiously out the narrow barred window of the cell. Deor walked over to stand next to him then grabbed a bar of the window to lift himself high enough to look out.

One of the excantors was lying supine on the corridor floor outside. He was writing sinuously, and smoke was trailing from his snout. It seemed to be lengthening a bit.

“Poor fellow,” Deor remarked to Kelat. “It’s the dragon sickness.”

“What causes it?” asked Kelat, staring in fascination at the slowly transforming mandrake.

“Greed. Anger. Cruelty.” Deor sighed. “You Other Ilk can indulge in these to your heart’s content. If we do it we risk losing our hands—our kin—everything that we are.”

Kelat looked at Deor’s hand, gripping the bar, then at Deor’s face, and nodded.

Now there was someone else in the corridor, and the prisoners began to cheer. “God-speaker! Danadhar! Save us from the plague! Save us from the Dragon!”

It was an elderly male of the Gray Folk, wearing a kilt made of weeds. He hastened to the fallen excantor and knelt down beside him.

Deor had been bitten by someone undergoing the dragon-change, once, and he called out in Wardic, “Hey, watch out there, cousin!” Then, realizing that would do no good, he said the same thing in Dwarvish: “Vuf! Thekhma-dhi, ruthen!”

The elderly Gray One looked up at the sound of Deor’s voice. His long, terrible mouth gave a gray-toothed grin that may have been meant as friendly. Then he turned back to the suffering excantor.

The god-speaker put a long-fingered, gray-clawed hand gently on each side of the excantor’s slowly lengthening face. “The choice is yours,” Danadhar said, so quietly Deor could hardly hear him. “Remember that there is a choice. Will you be as you are? Will you be as you could be? Will you become what you hate?”

“I can’t believe in your God!” the excantor screamed.

“What difference does that make? Belief. If I believe a stone is a mushroom, does that mean I won’t break my teeth eating it? Believe or don’t believe. What will you do? What will you be? What do you want?”

“There is no God. Not your God. Not any god. Not really.”

“Then, for you, there is no God. So what? What will you do? What will you be? What do you want?”

“I want to kill,” whispered the excantor. “I want to steal. I want to lie.”

“Yes! Yes!” said the god-speaker eagerly. “So do I. But especially to kill! How I long to run down the streets of our city, my claws dripping with fiery blood, gnashing fragments of green-gray flesh in my fangs. How I would kill, in my rage and greed! What evil glory there would be in that! I saw your daughters outside.”

“Be quiet!” shrieked the excantor.

“They are there, and would be easy to kill. Shall we kill them together, you and I? I will if you will.”

“Be quiet,” begged the excantor.

“If you go down that long, fiery path, you will have many things, but quiet will not be one of them. Nor will daughters or mates. You will be alone, in the dark, on your hoard, listening to yourself until your fire goes out.”

“I can’t believe in your way. I can’t believe in your God.”

“As if I asked you to! Belief. If the God exists, he needs your belief no more than the rain does, or the sea, or trees, or anything that is real. If he is not, he needs your belief no more than does up-downness or dark-lightness or anything that is unreal. You do the God no favors by believing in him. You do yourself no favors. Whom are you looking to please with this belief? Me? I am the one who just offered to help you kill your children.”