On the final morning of the
holiday, Korm crept from his cramped cabinet, through the silent space of the
early morning hall, and eased his way through the entrance of the office. With
the school mostly abandoned, there was really no need to be so stealthy, but
something about the hour seemed to forbid noise. He closed the door and made
his way through the dim chamber to where the banked fire glowed dimly on the
hearth.
He grabbed some sticks of
kindling and thrust them down through the ashes into the live embers beneath.
He crouched watching for a few moments until he was sure the wood had caught
fire, then creaked back to his feet, satisfied. When Master Belmok came back
this afternoon, the chambers would be nice and toasty. In the meantime, the
young Morg would be quite comfortable in the last hours of his imaginary way of
life.
He looked around the room in
the growing light of the fire, thinking about which book to shuffle through in
the early hours of the day before he could expect the old Morg's return. His
eyes snagged on a bundle of old brown rags piled on one of the visitors'
chairs. That hadn't been there when he'd left last night.
Then he remembered that he'd
requested some of the groundskeepers be sent to touch up the pocked and
crumbling plaster along the walls. They had obviously dumped these tarps off
last night in preparation of a day's work. He frowned at the thought about the
infringement on his last moments of free time, and stumped over in irritation
to throw the pile to the floor. It certainly shouldn't have been left on the
furniture, anyway.
He put his hands on the pile
of rags, and to his shock it burst into startling, struggling life. He jumped
back in consternation, gasping, and watched as the growling bundle thrust out
arms and legs and finally tossed back a folded hood to reveal a round white
head with a short scruffy beard. Two blazing blue eyes glared at him in angry
confusion.
"You're a Man!"
Korm barked.
"Last time I checked,
son," the other said crossly. The old man stretched out his scrawny brown
limbs and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, looking around. He focused on the
young Morg and seemed to suddenly realize where he was. He smiled wanly and
leapt out of the chair.
"Where's Belmok?"
he asked casually, scratching his head and stretching his ropy neck. "I
need to ask him a couple favors right quick."
"Grand Master
Belmok is visiting his family for the holiday. He'll be returning
shortly," Korm answered, frost in his voice. He'd recovered a bit from his
surprise, and now was feeling on his dignity. This wolfish old beggar in
tattered dun robes was treating Master Belmok, his chambers, and by extension
all of Tronduhon Library School in far too familiar a manner. "Perhaps
you'd like to go wait somewhere until he comes back?"
"No, I'd like to catch
him pretty quick when he arrives. But you go on then, whatever you're doing
here. Don't mind me." He settled back down in the chair.
Korm edged his way over to
the desk, eyeing the tattered figure as he went. He pulled a book, almost at
random, from a passing shelf. He sat down and lit the ornate reading lamp. He
started to read, glancing up every now and then at his unwanted visitor, who
waved cheerily back.
The random text proved to be
in old bardic Morgish, and he soon found his mind more engaged with puzzling
out the sense of it than on the old man sitting quietly across the room. Korm
began muttering the lines aloud, trying to untangle the meaning and murmuring
with pleasure when he hit on a solution. But finally he came on a word that
completely stumped him.
"Abirmokon," he
grumbled. "What is 'abirmokon'?"
"It means 'he awakens
the flame.'"
Korm looked up in
astonishment, then annoyance. He had forgotten the grimy beggar slouched across
from him while he was lost in the wonders of the elder tongue. He slammed the
book shut. To think that this impertinent wanderer should listen in and think to
offer his rigamarole suggestions to a real scholar! To make it worse, his
answer seemed to make a sort of sense in the context of the writing. The old
man smiled at him.
"Are you sure you would
rather not come back later, when the Grand Master will more likely be
returned?" the young Morg asked through clenched teeth.
"No, this is
fine," the old man said. "Though I wouldn't mind a bit of breakfast
while I wait."
"Well you can't eat in
here," Korm snapped. "School rules. You'll have to go to the
refectory and ask them to give you something there." He smiled, suddenly
crafty, struck by a thought. He rose and walked over to the chair. "In fact,
I'll take you myself. It's a big place, you might get lost."
The old man looked at him
and grinned.
"Well, that's mighty
kind of you, young fellow," he drawled. "Mighty kind." He stood
up and drew in close, taking Korm's hand and squeezing it tightly. The odor
wafting from his robes was musty and rank, as if he had been trudging for weeks
and miles through the wilderness. The Morg's flat nostrils flared snuffling at
the smell.
"Perhaps you would like
to visit the water rooms before eating," he suggested, trying not to
breathe too deeply.
"Well, that's a good
idea," the other laughed, wheezing, and slapped the young Morg's shoulder.
"Now that you mention it, I've got to pee like a racehorse."
The old man followed the
young scholar into the quiet hallways, the arched corridors echoing with the
shuffle of his robes and the slapping of his loose sandals. Though Korm darted
his eyes around desperately as they passed room after room, his plan to relieve
himself of his unwanted visitor by handing him over to a passing lector was
constantly foiled. Every spare staff member seemed to have disappeared for the
holiday. At last they reached a green-painted iron-bound door in the bowels of
the school.
"Here you go," the
young Morg said, standing in front of it and pointing dejectedly at the sign.
"Baths and bogs."
The old man laughed.
"Maybe you better come
in and show me which is which."
Korm turned on him in
outrage.
"Oh, now see here! You
can't be that stupid..."
The old man grinned like a
wolf and uttered a few flat words. For a snip of time, Korm thought he was
being mocked in some foreign tongue. But a flash of light coming from the door
at his back distracted him, and he turned in alarm.
"What...? Is the place
on fire?" Instinctively he reached out to the door handle and barged
stumbling through, skidded to a stop, and stood frozen, his muzzle gaping in
wonder. The old vagabond stepped in behind him, quietly shutting the door.
Instead of the low, dim,
dripping rooms that he had been expecting, Korm found himself taking dazed,
hesitant steps over a white marble floor into a vast, bewildering space. The
room, if it was a room, was colossal; the walls, if they were walls, seemed to
bow inward, reaching dimly to an unseen point in the hazy purple-blue heights.
A kind of bright twilight with no definable source hung about everything. Korm
could sense the curve of the wall or fence where the door was set falling away
behind, but he paid no thought to it. He was drawn to the mesmerizing spectacle
before him.
In the center of the chamber
or courtyard was a vast pool, almost a lake, set round with a massively carved
curb of stone. In the center of the pool, rising in a thick, turbulent column,
taller even than the Sun Tower in Morg City, was a pillar of water, that rose
and fell heavily without spray or splash, just a low rumble like distant
thunder as it raised itself up and poured itself back down into the pellucid
water below, which received it again with hardly a ripple. Playing on top of
that pillar, slowly but continually spinning in the roll of water, danced a
huge translucent green globe.
Korm approached the cascade
reverently, entranced, eyes wide, stopping only when he finally placed his arms
outspread on the stony coping surrounding the water's edge. He gazed up, up, up
at the globe, turning ponderously but ceaselessly, looking heavier than a
mountain, then had to let his eyes fall, dizzy at the fearful weight held
poised so delicately above him. But when his gaze had focused downward, his
stomach tied itself into an instant knot.
There was no bottom to the
pool, no slow incline, no rippling play of light on a floor, however deep. Just
the depths, down, down, ever deeper, until it seemed more profound than the sky
above, if sky it was. Korm thought he saw, past the lowest darkness of its
abysses, the distant glimmer of stars, as if the world had been turned
upside-down and he was suspended, somehow, over a chasm of sky that could suck
him into its profundity as inexorably as any vast and heaving sea. To his
horror he found himself helplessly leaning over, unable in his vertigo to stop
himself from plunging forward headfirst into the waters.
A rough brown hand clamped
on his shoulder and pulled him back.
"The Fountain of
Forever," the old man said quietly.
Korm turned back, panting,
eyes rolling, and gaped at the man.
"Where--?" he
stammered. "Where--? How did we--?"
The other swept his arm,
pointing back behind them, in a gesture of introduction.
"The Domain of
Doors," he said matter-of-factly.
Korm squinted back at the
way he had come. Had he really walked that far? Back behind them was the wall
or fence he had walked from through the door. It curved around until it was
lost at either end behind the falling waters. Could that be right? The dimensions
of this place seemed to be playing tricks on his eyes. He rubbed his hands over
his face, then pulled them down, tugging his beard to try to center himself. He
looked up with a clearer gaze and got another jolt of realization.
The wall behind him, the
wall that stretched out of sight to either side, was entirely made up of doors,
linked only by short brambly trees growing between them. There were wooden
doors, and iron doors, and doors of stone, bound in brass or steel or simply
hanging on a leather hinge, some so tall and wide an Ogre might walk through
with ease, and some so low a hound might have to stoop to pass in. A dizzying
array. And Korm had no idea, looking panicked at the multitude, where the one
he had entered by was.
"The thing about the
Domain of Doors," the scruffy man said, scratching his beard thoughtfully,
"is you really got to pay attention where you came in from. These doors go
all over everywhere in Ortha, and some of them beyond, they say. Walk through
the wrong one, and you might end up in a dungeon somewhere, with some real
nasty folks wanting to ask you some real nasty questions."
"You seem to know a lot
about it," Korm said, turning on him. "What do you think we should
do?"
"Eh." The old man
shrugged, as if he had no idea and was leaving it up to him.
It should be simple, Korm
thought, turning away. Just walk back the way I came. Go back through the door
to Tronduhon Library School, back into a place where things make sense. Simple.
He sighted a path to take, and strode decisively forward, the brown-robed
figure flapping carelessly after him in his wake.
To his dismay, they came to
a halt in front of a battered wooden door with brass bolts. Some crude runes
chipped into it declared it to be of Ghamen make.
"It's a funny thing
about setting out from the inner rim of a wheel to the outer wheel. The
smallest deviation from the path increases exponentially the further you
travel."
Korm looked over at the man
with one eye.
"That's a brilliant
observation," the Morg said sarcastically. "What should I do, go back
and start again?"
"That would be a recipe
for disaster, I think."
"Then I'll just walk
along the wall till I find the door."
"Ah, but which
way?"
Korm looked again at the
wall. He looked left. He looked right. Either way seemed to curve off into a
haze. He looked at the old man in frustration.
"Well, what do you want
to do?" he asked angrily. "How do you know all about it, anyway? Who
the hell are you?"
"I want to go to the
right here, because I've been keeping my eye on the door since we first came
in," the old man said calmly. "I know all about it because I brought
us here by a spell. I happen to be a wizard, and my name," he bowed
slightly "is Dunwolf, Dunwolf of Rhavenglast." He paused. "You
may have heard of me."
"Dunwolf?" Korm
boggled.
"Yes."
"The wizard?"
"Yes."
"That's
impossible!" the Morg burst out. "He lived five hundred years
ago!"
"One of the
side-effects of using magic - or having magic use you - is long life. It's not
always the kindest of powers." The old man hitched himself up and began
moving to the right. "After the journey I've been on, I feel every day of
those years. Right now I want a good breakfast. But first, I do need that
bog-stool. To go in this place ... it just wouldn't be right."
"Yes, about this
place," Korm said, floundering after him indignantly. "All right
you're a wizard, all right maybe you’re even Dunwolf himself, but what do you
mean by bringing me to this ... this terrible place?" he finished in consternation.
"Shake you up a bit,
teach you a lesson. You seemed a little on the smug side to me." The old
man chuckled as he strode along. "Thought you could get me booted out,
just like that. Let me tell you, lad, the world and the people in it are not
only more than you know, they're more than anyone can know, even an old wizard.
Don't be so quick to judge."
"Now you're being the
quick one to judge." Korm's muzzle kinked in a wry grin. "I've been
about as far from smug as I could be for a whole season."
"Hold that
thought," the other said. They had stopped in front of a door. Korm
recognized the dark green paint and bronze fixtures of the school bog. The old
man tapped the wood three times in a triangular pattern and pulled it open. As
it swung wide, the young Morg felt great relief to see the familiar hallways of
the school on the other side again. He stepped through eagerly.
The old man pulled it to,
and almost immediately threw it open again, to reveal the unmistakable sounds
and odors of the gurgling washroom. He sprinted in and slammed the door behind
him, leaving Korm to blink alone in the plain light of day.
Afterwards they walked
together to the refectory, the young Morg as if he had just awoken from a
dream, the old man simply talking cheerfully about what he felt like for
breakfast. They made it to the long hall crowded with tables and benches, and
Korm automatically arranged for their meal. When it arrived, he sat silently
while his white-bearded guest shoveled down eggs and toast and sugared gruel,
chased by several cups of strong sweet hot mocha. Every now and then the young
Morg opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it, baffled, shaking
his head.
They walked back to the
Grand Master's chambers through the returning stream of students, who were
beginning to wind their way again through the channels of the school. Korm
lifted the latch and led the way into the office. To his surprise, Belmok
lifted his pursed lips and squinnied eye up from his desk as he entered.
"There you are,
boy," he barked. "I thought you'd at least be on hand when I ...
Dunwolf, old man!" His eyes sprang wide, dropping his ocular to his chest
where it bounced on its ribbon. He heaved himself up from his chair and stamped
ponderously over in delight, and took the wizard's hand. "What a surprise
to see you here!"
"Greetings, Grand
Master," the old man grinned, vigorously returning Belmok's grip. "I
have a few questions I thought you might be able to answer for me, my friend.
Your new famulus here was just helping me grab some refreshment while we waited
for your arrival. Wandering's a hungry business, you know, and I have to take
meals where I can get them."
"Of course, of course.
Korm's a good lad," Belmok said. He laid his knobby claw heavily on the
boy's shoulder. The young Morg seemed to sink beneath it. Wedged between the
two towering elders he felt like he was standing in the bottom of a ditch.
"Inspired me, in fact, to start trying to complete work on my old 'Notes
on the Morg Migrations.' Might actually finish it before I die, now. Sit down,
let me pour us some Lorelied."
Belmok lumbered over to the
barrel in the back of the room, and Dunwolf sat in the chair between the
fireplace and the desk. Korm, unsure what to do, hovered between them.
"He's in a bit of a
pickle at the moment," the old Morg said as he twisted the tap. "Been
here for five months already, doesn't have a subject for his master. Shame,
too, because I think he has good potential." He handed Korm a cup with a
wink. "Don't let it go to your head, lad."
"Really," Dunwolf
said, accepting his own cup thoughtfully. He looked at Belmok.
"Talented?"
"He put my
papers in order." Belmok bent to pour his drink.
Dunwolf whistled. He twirled
the wine and took a sip.
"You know," he
said slowly. "I may have the solution to both our dilemmas. I was going to
ask you to delve into this, Belmok, but if you're working on something else
again ..." He looked up at Korm. "Tell me, lad, have you ever heard
of ... the Goldfire?"
Belmok went still, then
slowly raised himself up straight, watching. Korm bent his head, staring into
his drink, thinking deeply.
"The Goldfire? The
Goldfire... yes, a talisman of some kind, I believe. Lost during the reign of
Tarth. What about it?"
"I need someone, a hell
of a good scholar, to look into its history, and trace down where it could be
now. I think we may need it again pretty damn soon."
"Well, I
suppose...," Korm started.
Belmok barked in jubilation,
making the others jump. The fat old Morg sat down his cup, crossed his arms
over his chest and bowed his head. Then he looked up and, elbows at his sides,
spread his arms palms upward in triumph.
"I call Morlakor
Shyreen to witness," he crowed, "And you, too, wizard, that neither I
nor any Morg has given him this idea, neither by deed or word or prompting
aforethought. Come, come here, boy." The old Morg turned and took a box from
the shelf behind him.
Korm walked over in a daze.
Dunwolf looked bemused. Belmok unlatched the box, put back the lid, and pulled
out the long unreeling length of a red sash of History. He folded it so that it
lay cradled between his hands and presented it to the stunned young student.
"Well, take it, take
it, tie it on," he commanded. Korm took it with trembling fingers and
looped it gingerly around his waist. For a moment he felt the strong fabric
girding his middle. Then suddenly, decisively, he cinched it in a tight knot,
and looked up, grinning fiercely, as if challenging the world to try to take it
from him.
"Excellent,
excellent," Belmok chortled. "I've had a room held for you, a real
scholar's chamber. You can begin your proper studies tomorrow! Ah, you'll need
this book...and this one...and this..."
As the fat old Morg went
shambling around the rooms, disarranging his newly immaculate shelves and
gathering volumes, Dunwolf rose quietly and walked over to where Korm stood
beaming, quaffing his Lorelied in triumph. He put his hand on the young Morg's shoulder
and patted it.
"Congratulations,
Master Korm," he said in a low voice. "But don't forget the Goldfire.
Start on it quickly, now rather than later. I have the feeling that in the
close future we in the South will have need of it, quite badly, quite soon."
The old wizard turned to the
Grand Master and started following him around the room.
"Now I have a couple
more questions, Belmok...," he began.
Late that night saw Korm
moved from his little closet to a properly appointed chamber, with a real bed,
shelves for his books, and a bottomless supply of ink and paper from the school
stock. Already, as he had moved to and from Belmok's office, his red sash was
catching eyes and getting whispers about the new protégé of the Grand Master.
He sat down at his desk, a
heavy tome before him, and pen and paper ready for notes to the side. As a
finishing touch, he lit the little brass lamp and put the old stuffed owl on
the ledge above him. He cocked an eye up to where it stared solemnly down at
him. He tangled his beard with his black claws.
"Well, Lord
Fluffy," he said, "Let's get started."
Notes
Belmok (alternate names that I
considered: Balmog, Bermog, Brogg, Bermoq – ‘Lose your bow, mok?’) went on to
star in his own tale, Eye of Darkness, and appears as a guest star in Korm
and the Lost Library. Belmok in fact became one of my favorite Morg
characters. I rate him almost as highly as the more traditional Roth and Korm.
It was in this story that I first started developing the Morg academic
color tradition, with the color of one’s tunic declaring your area of study and
one’s sash indicating one’s level. I have a whole chart about it; I am
not sure that I am always correct on this between stories. Academic Levels:
First Master (big frog in little pond), Great Master (big frog in big pond),
High Master (big fish in big pond), Grand Master (the eel who could eat all the
fish and frogs; prestigiously speaking). Grand Master Emeritus (could dine on
eel pie). Academic Politics Are So Vicious Because the Stakes Are So Small.
Dunwolf has been a part of the Ortha mythos from the beginning. John made
up the name, in a line-up of fantasy characters: Dunwolf the Old. He had as
much Obi-wan Kenobi DNA as Gandalf DNA.
The Domain of Doors enters the mythos in this tale. I had Roth mention the
Domain in the short story Come Together, where he says Korm talked to
him about it. It plays a big part in Shutting the Door (previously
published here) in which you will find a lot more about Dunwolf and notes about
the background of the Domain and its creation. The Domain existed almost as
long as Ortha has; I worked hard at retrofitting it into the Goldfire
narrative.
I made up the word "abirmokon" from a combination of elements
from an old list of Morgish words I had drawn up ages ago.
Korm wore his horrible hairy hat for decades, as a kind of penance and a
check to pride. When it finally fell apart and he threw it away, he found to
his consternation that his students had rescued it as a relic, ensconced it in
the school museum, and presented him with a new hat made exactly to the old
pattern.
Korm shares my own penchant for owls; Lord Fluffy is a tribute to
that. 
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