Read Online The Wide World's End by James Enge - Free Book Online Page A

she has lost that. . . .”
    â€œWe must try.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWho . . . ?”
    â€œWho do you think?” Morlock asked impatiently. “Who will die if she doesn’t live? I know you two love her also. But it’s not the same.”
    â€œThen!”
    Aloê felt two pairs of hard, blunt, dwarvish hands lift her out of bed. As she stood, waveringly, on her own feet—not sure she wanted to stand, not willing to say she was unwilling—someone put something into her hand.
    She looked at it uncomprehendingly. If Morlock had made this, it was not up to his usual standards. A spiderweb of silvery seams covered its surface, as if it had been shattered and repaired. It was a wand, about the length of her forearm, but not as heavy as it should have been. The end pointed away from her had a sort of clawed mouth. . . .
    It was one of the lifetaking wands.
    She looked up to see Morlock standing in front of her. He had a knife if his hand. When her eyes met his, he slashed his bare forearm with the knife and fiery blood sprang forth.
    The two shadows struggling within her struggled no longer. Finally, they agreed on something. She learned then that grief is not only love; it is also hate—hate for whatever lives when the loved one is dead. The longing to live and the longing to punish everything alive had found something to agree on.
    The lifetaking wand sang in her hand and she knew the evil ecstasy of stealing someone else’s life.
    She cried out, in delight and horror, and Morlock fell to the ground in a shower of burning blood.
    As she came wholly alive she realized what she was doing and she threw the wand from her as hard as she could.
    She ran to Morlock where he had fallen and knelt beside him. He was breathing at least, but his eyes were clenched shut and his breathing was broken by croaking sounds, as if he were choking on phlegm.
    She ripped a piece of cloth off his shirt and carefully bound up the gaping wound in his arm. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to tend to his injuries, so she managed to do it without burning herself. She put her hand on his face and waited for him to stop choking.
    His breathing grew more even. His eyes opened and looked into hers.
    â€œThat was stupid,” she said.
    He coughed once, twice, and sat up. “Worked,” he said.
    â€œYou could have died.”
    He looked at her with those luminous gray eyes and said nothing.
    â€œSorry to interrupt this tender moment,” Deor said gruffly, holding out his cape, “but this is fireproof. And you’re dripping fire all over the place. And we are surrounded by pine trees.”
    Morlock smiled with half his face and took the cape, wrapping it around his wounded arm.
    â€œSo,” she said, remembering words that had come to her through the gray fog of despair and grief, “you brought me to Thrymhaiam?”
    â€œYes,” said Morlock. “Our harven -kin insisted. In fact—”
    He stood. She looked up at him astonished as he reached down and picked her up. He carried her in his unwounded arm out the door of the little hut and into the thin golden light of the ailing sun.
    They stood on a steep slope on the western side of Thrymhaiam. The valley below was full of folk—mandrakes, dwarves, men and women, all waiting there, waiting for something.
    Morlock lifted Aloê up and held her triumphantly over his head in the thin sunshine. “Put me down, you champion idiot!” she shouted.
    The crowds below roared. It was like a storm at sea; it went on and on; there was no stopping it.
    Aloê was amazed. Why did it mean so much to them? Was she, as a person, so important to them? Had she come to stand, in their minds, for all their dead and wounded, and their triumph in her healing was a way to overcome their grief? Was it because she was Morlock’s mate?
    She didn’t like that thought. But she remembered a