Free The Wide World's End by James Enge Page B

Deor half led, half carried her up the long slope to the sleephouse. Then he was tucking her into bed beside the still-snoring Morlock.
    â€œI’m off in the morning with Earno,” he whispered. “If I don’t see you then, I’ll see you in A Thousand Towers. Be well, and good fortune to you, harven .”
    â€œ Harven ,” she muttered, and then he was gone. She wished she had sent a word of goodbye to Earno. She regretted it when she awoke alone, long after noon, and knew they must be gone. She regretted it still more when she realized later that she would never speak to Earno again.

C HAPTER T HREE
    Death of a Summoner
    Ten days before he was murdered, Summoner Earno woke with a dry throat and a guilty conscience. The sun was rising over the high Hrithaens to the west. He had told Deor to wake him when the stars spun around to midnight so that he could watch over their charges through part of the darkness. But here it was, deep into day, and he was just waking up.
    He shook off his bedroll and leaped to his feet to see Deor standing beside him.
    â€œDon’t trouble yourself, Rokhlan !” the dwarf said soothingly. “I and the sentinel mannikins watched through the night. The Khnauronts have been fed, and I was just about to make a little breakfast for myself.”
    â€œYou should have woken me, my friend. You need rest, too.”
    â€œYes, but I can sleep while I walk.”
    â€œYou—” Earno peered at the dwarvish thain. “In fact? That’s not just an expression?”
    â€œIn fact. Not day after day, but occasionally I should be able give you a full night’s rest. You looked like you needed it last night.”
    â€œThanks. I did.”
    Deor’s notion of breakfast always involved hard-boiled eggs and sausage tarts, when they could be procured. Eggs were difficult meat to transport on a walking tour such as theirs, but Deor had packed away a surprising number of sausage tarts in a box lined with a kind of preservative gel. Earno found the tarts inedible when they were fresh, much less when one had to brush off fragments of salty gel. But there was tea and flatbread and broth to be had; they met Earno’s modest needs for the present. He thought longingly of a cookhouse near his home in A Thousand Towers: he promised himself a month straight of suppers there when he got home (a promise he would not be able to keep).
    Earno did not know he was about to be murdered. He avoided casting mantias or other kinds of foretelling because he was aware of the danger of causal loops, with a prediction effecting itself through his own reaction to the prediction.
    But he had not risen to the level of Summoner of the Outer Lands without attaining some depth of insight. And what insight he had was making him restless, very restless, indeed, as if time were running out—for himself, for the people he cared about, for the whole world. And his reason confirmed what his insight was whispering.
    He thought of something he could do, something he should have done before leaving the Northhold: warn Morlock of a particular danger. He could write a letter and give it to Deor. That way, even if something happened. . . . He didn’t finish the thought. That, too, might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    As he herded the pitifully few surviving Khnauronts southward, he composed the letter in his mind. The Khnauronts were completely passive, willing to go anywhere they were directed, and the wardlet woven around them kept them from wandering off the Road. They had a halfmonth left to travel, he guessed, but the Road was clear and straight. He sounded judicious phrases through his mind until he was satisfied with them. When it was time to call a halt for the night, the letter was done: all that remained was to put the words down on paper, and he did that by coldlight during the first watch. By the time he woke Deor for the second watch, the letter was written in