For all who waited, and especially
for STEVE DONALDSON,
who always called at the right time
for GAIL,
who reminded me of the difference
between logic and grace
and for KATHY,
who waited the longest.
The Star-Bearer and Raederle of An sat on the crown of the highest of the seven towers of Anuin. The white stone fell endlessly away from them, down to the summer-green slope the great house sat on. The city itself spilled away from the slope to the sea. The sky revolved above them, a bright, changeless blue, its expression broken only by the occasional spiral of a hawk. Morgon had not moved for hours. The morning sun had struck his profile on the side of the embrasure he sat in and shifted his shadow without his notice to the other side. He was aware of Raederle only as some portion of the land around him, of the light wind, and the crows sketching gleaming black lines through the green orchards in the distance: something peaceful and remote, whose beauty stirred every once in a while through his thoughts.
His mind was spinning endless threads of conjecture that snarled constantly around his ignorance. Stars, children with faces of stone, the fiery, broken shards of a bowl he had smashed in Astrin’s hut, dead cities, a dark-haired shape-changer, a harpist, all resolved under his probing into answerless riddles. He gazed back at his own life, at the history of the realm, and picked at facts like potshards, trying to piece them together. Nothing fit; nothing held; he was cast constantly out of his memories into the soft summer air.
He moved finally, stiffly as a stone deciding to move, and slid his hands over his eyes. Flickering shapes like ancient beasts without names winged into light behind his eyelids. He cleared his mind again, let images drift and flow into thought until they floundered once again on the shoals of impossibility.
The vast blue sky broke into his vision, and the swirling maze of streets and houses below. He could think no longer; he leaned against his shadow. The silence within the slab of ancient stone eased through him; his thoughts, worn meaningless, became quiet again.
He saw a soft leather shoe then and a flicker of leaf-green cloth. He turned his head and found Raederle sitting cross-legged on the ledge beside him.
He leaned over precariously and drew her against him. He laid his face against her long windblown hair and saw the burning strands beneath his closed eyes. He was silent for a time, holding her tightly, as if he sensed a wind coming that might sweep them out of their high, dangerous resting place.
She stirred a little; her face lifting to kiss him, and his arms loosened reluctantly. “I didn’t realize you were here,” he said, when she let him speak.
“I guessed that, somehow, after the first hour or so. What were you thinking about?”
“Everything.” He nudged a chip of mortar out of a crack and flicked it into the trees below. A handful of crows startled up, complaining. “I keep battering my brains against my past, and I always come to the same conclusion. I don’t know what in Hel’s name I am doing.”
She shifted, drawing her knees up, and leaned back against the stone beside her to face him. Her eyes filled with light, like sea-polished amber, and his throat constricted suddenly, too full of words. “Answering riddles. You told me that that is the only thing you can keep doing, blind and deaf and dumb, and not knowing where you are going.”
“I know.” He searched more mortar out of the crack and threw it so hard he nearly lost his balance. “I know. But I have been here in Anuin with you for seven days, and I can’t find one reason or one riddle to compel me out of this house. Except that if we stay here much longer, we will both die.”
“That’s one,” she said soberly.
“I don’t know why my life is in danger because of three stars on my face. I don’t know where the High One is. I don’t know what the shape-changers are, or how I can help a cairn of children who have turned into stone at the bottom of a mountain. I know of only one place to begin finding answers. And the prospect is hardly appealing.”
“Where?”
“In Ghisteslwchlohm’s mind.”
She stared at him, swallowing, and then frowned down at the sun-warmed stone, “Well.” Her voice shook almost imperceptibly. “I didn’t think we could stay here forever. But, Morgon—”
“You could stay here.”
Her head lifted. With the sun catching in her eyes again, he could not read their expression. But her voice was stiff. “I am not going to leave you. I refused even the wealth of Hel and all the pigs in it for your sake. You are going to have to learn to live with me.”
“It’s difficult enough just trying to live,” he murmured, without thinking, then flushed. But her mouth twitched. He reached across to her, took her hand. “For one silver boar bristle, I would take you to Hed and spend the rest of my life raising plow horses in east Hed.”
“I’ll find you a boar bristle.”
“How do I marry you, in this land?”
“You can’t,” she said calmly, and his hand slackened.
“What?”
“Only the king has the power to bind his heirs in marriage. And my father is not here. So we’ll have to forget about that until he finds the time to return home.”
“But, Raederle—”
She pitched a sliver of mortar across the tail feathers of a passing crow, causing it to veer with a squawk. “But what?” she said darkly.
“I can’t... I can’t walk into your father’s land, trouble the dead as I have, nearly commit murder his hall, then take you away with me to wander through the realm without even marrying you. What in Hel’s name will your father think of me?”
“When he finally meets you, he’ll let you know. What I think, which is more to the point, is that my father has meddled enough with my life. He may have foreseen our meeting, and maybe even our loving, but I don’t think he should have his own way in everything. I’m not going to marry you just because he maybe foresaw that, too, in some dream.”
“Do you think it was that, behind his strange vow about Peven’s Tower?” he asked curiously. “Foreknowledge?”
“You are changing the subject.”
He eyed her a moment, considering the subject and her flushed face. “Well,” he said softly, casting their future to the winds over the dizzying face of the tower, “if you refuse to marry me, I don’t see what I can do about it. And if you choose to come with me—if that is what you really want—I am not going to stop you. I want you too much. But I’m terrified. I think we would have more hope of survival falling head first off this tower. And at least, doing that, we’d know where we were going.”
Her hand lay on the stones between them. She lifted it, touched his face. “You have a name and a destiny. I can only believe that sooner or later you will stumble across some hope.”
“I haven’t seen any so far. Only you. Will you marry me in Hed?”
“No.”
He was silent a little, holding her eyes. “Why?”
She looked away from him quickly; he sensed a sudden, strange turmoil in her. “For many reasons.”
“Raederle—”
“No. And don’t ask me again. And stop looking at me like that.”
“All right,” he said after a moment. He added, “I don’t remember that you were so stubborn.”
“Pig-headed.”
“Pig-headed.”
She looked at him again. Her mouth crooked into a reluctant smile. She shifted close to him, put her arm around his shoulders, and swung her feet over the sheer edge of nothingness. “I love you, Morgon of Hed. When we finally leave this house, where will we go first? Hed?”
“Yes. Hed...” The name touched his heart suddenly, like the word of a spell. “I have no business going home. I simply want to. For a few hours, at night... that might be safe.” He thought of the sea, between them and his home, and his heart chilled. “I can’t take you across the sea.”
“In Hel’s name, why not?” she said.
“It’s far too dangerous.”
“That makes no sense. Lungold is dangerous, and I’m going with you there.”
“That’s different. For one thing, no one I loved ever died in Lungold. Yet. For another thing—”
“Morgon, I am not going to die in the sea. I can probably shape water as well as fire.”
“You don’t know that. Do you?” The thought of her caught in the water as it heaved itself into faces and wet, gleaming forms made his voice rough. “You wouldn’t even have time to learn.”
“Morgon—”
“Raederle, I have been on a ship breaking apart in the sea. I don’t want to risk your life that way.”
“It’s not your risk. It’s mine. For another thing, I have been on ships from Caithnard to Kyrth and back looking for you and nothing ever happened to me.”
“You could stay at Caithnard. For only a few—”
“I am not going to stay at Caithnard,” she said tersely. “I am going with you to Hed. I want to see the land you love. If you had your way, I would be sitting in a farmhouse in Hed shelling beans and waiting for you, just as I have waited for nearly two years.”
“You don’t shell beans.”
“I don’t. Not unless you are beside me helping.”
He saw himself, a lean, shaggy-haired man with a worn, spare face, a great sword at his side and a starred harp at his back, sitting on the porch at Akren with a bowl of beans on his knees. He laughed suddenly. She smiled again, watching him, her argument forgotten.
“You haven’t done that in seven days.”
“No.” He was still, his arm around her, and the smile died slowly in his eyes. He thought of Hed, gripped so defenselessly in the heart of the sea, with not even the illusion of the High One to protect it. He whispered, “I wish I could ring Hed with power, so that nothing of the turmoil of the mainland could touch it and it could stay innocent of fear.”
“Ask Duac. He’ll give you an army.”
“I don’t dare bring an army to Hed. That would be asking for disaster.”
“Take a few wraiths,” she suggested. “Duac would love to be rid of them.”
“Wraiths.” He lifted his eyes from the distant forests to stare at her. “In Hed.”
“They’re invisible. No one would see them to attack them.” Then she shook her head a little at her own words. “What am I thinking? They would upset all the fanners in Hed.”
“Not if the farmers didn’t know they were there.” His hands felt chilled, suddenly, linked around hers. He breathed, “What am I thinking?”
She drew back, searching his eyes. “Are you taking me seriously?”
“I think... I think so.” He did not see her face then, but the faces of the dead, with all their frustrated power. “I could bind them. I understand them... their anger, their desire for revenge, their land-love. They can take that love to Hed and all their longing for war... But your father... how can I wrest something out of the history of An and lead it to danger in Hed? I can’t tamper with the land-law of An like that“
“Duac gave you permission. And for all my father is interested in land-law, he might as well be a wraith himself. But Morgon, what about Eliard?”
“Eliard?”
“I don’t know him, but wouldn’t he... wouldn’t it disturb him maybe a little if you brought an army of the dead to Hed?”
He thought of the land-ruler of Hed, his brother, whose face he barely remembered. “A little,” he said softly. “He must be used to being disturbed by me, even in his sleep, by now. I would bury my own heart under his feet if that would keep him and Hed safe. I would even face an argument with him over this—”
“What will he say?”
“I don’t know... I don’t even know him any more.” The thought pained him, touching unhealed places within him. But he did not let her see that; he only moved reluctantly from their high place. “Come with me. I want to talk to Duac.”
“Take them,” Duac said. “all of them.”
They had found him in the great hall, listening to complaints from farmers and messengers from Lords of An whose lands and lives were in turmoil over the restlessness and bickerings of the dead. When the hall finally cleared and Morgon could speak with him, he listened incredulously.
“You actually want them? But Morgon, they’ll destroy the peace of Hed.”
“No, they won’t. I’ll explain to them why they are there—”
“How? How do you explain anything to dead men who are fighting a centuries-old war in cow pastures and village market places?”
“I’ll simply offer them what they want. Someone to fight. But, Duac, how will I explain to your father?”
“My father?” Duac glanced around the hall, then up at the rafters, and at each of the four corners. “I don’t see him. Anywhere. And when I do see him, he will be so busy explaining himself to the living, he won’t have time to count the heads of the dead. How many do you want?”
“As many as I can bind, of the kings and warriors who had some touch of compassion in them. They’ll need that, to understand Hed. Rood would be able to help me—” He stopped suddenly and an unaccountable flush stained Duac’s face. “Where is Rood? I haven’t seen him for days.”
“He hasn’t been here for days.” Duac cleared his throat. “You weren’t noticing. So I waited until you asked. I sent him to find Deth.”
Morgon was silent. The name flung him back seven days, as though he stood in the same pool of sunlight, his shadow splayed before him on the cracked stone floor. “Deth,” he whispered, and the ambiguity of the name haunted him.
“I gave him instructions to bring the harpist back here; I sent fourteen armed men with him. You let him go, but he still has much to answer for to the land-rulers of the realm. I thought to imprison him here until the Masters at Caithnard could question him. That’s not something I would attempt to do.” He touched Morgon hesitantly. “You would never have known he was here. I’m only surprised Rood has not returned before this.”
The color stirred back into Morgon’s face. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be in Rood’s boots, trying to bring Deth back to Anuin. That harpist makes his own choices.”
“Maybe.”
“Rood will never bring him back here. You sent him into the chaos of the Three Portions for nothing.”
“Well,” Duac said resignedly, “you know the harpist better than I do. And Rood would have gone after him with or without my asking. He wanted answers too.”
“You don’t question that riddler with a sword. Rood should have known that“ He heard the harsh edge that had crept into his voice then. He turned a little abruptly, out of the light, and sat down at one of the tables.
Duac said helplessly, “I’m sorry. This was something you didn’t need to know.”
“I do need to know. I just didn’t want to think. Not yet“ He spread his hands on the rich gold grain of oak and thought again of Akren, with its sunlit oak walls. “I’m going home.” The words opened his heart, filed him with a sharp, sweet urgency. “Home... Duac, I need ships. Trade-ships.”
“You’re going to take the dead by water?” Raederle said amazedly. “Will they go?”
“How else can they get to Hed?” he asked reasonably. Then he thought a little, staring back at his vague reflection in the polished wood. “I don’t dare take you on the same ship with them. So... we’ll ride together to Caithnard and meet them there. All right?”
“You want to ride back through Hel?”
“We could fly instead,” he suggested, but she shook her head quickly.
“No. I’ll ride.”
He eyed her, struck by an odd note in her voice. “It would be simple for you to take the crow-shape.”
“One crow in the family is enough,” she said darkly, “Morgon, Bri Corbett could find ships for you. And men to sail them.”
“It will cost a small fortune to persuade them,” Morgon said, but Duac only shrugged.
“The dead have already cost a great fortune in the destruction of crops and animals. Morgon, how in Hel’s name will you control them in Hed?”
“They will not want to fight me,” he said simply, and Duac was silent, gazing at him out of clear, sea-colored eyes.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “what you are. Man of Hed, who can control the dead of An... Star-Bearer.”
Morgon looked at him with a curious gratitude. “I might have hated my own name in this hall, but for you.” He stood up, mulling over the problem at hand. “Duac, I need to know names. I could spend days searching the cairns with my mind, but I won’t know who I am rousing. I know many of the names of the Kings of the Three Portions, but I don’t know the lesser dead.”
“I don’t either,” Duac said.
“Well, I know where you can find out,” Raederle sighed. “The place I almost lived in when I was a child. Our father’s library.”
She and Morgon spent the rest of the day and the evening there, among ancient books and dusty parchments, while Duac sent to the docks for Bri Corbett. By midnight, Morgon had tamped down in the deep of his mind endless names of warrior-lords, their sons and far-flung families, and legends of love, blood feuds and land wars that spanned the history of An. He left the house then, walked alone through the still summer night into the fields behind the king’s house, which were the charnel house for the many who had died battling over Anuin. There he began his calling.
He spoke name after name, with the fragments of legend or poetry that he could remember, with his voice and his mind. The dead roused to their names, came out of the orchards and woods, out of the earth itself. Some rode at him with wild, eerie cries, their armor aflame with moonlight over bare bones. Others came silently: dark, grim figures revealing terrible death wounds. They sought to frighten him, but he only watched them out of eyes that had already seen all he needed to fear. They tried to fight him, but he opened his own mind to them, showed them glimpses of his power. He held them through all their challenging, until they stood ranged before him across an entire field, their awe and curiosity forcing them out of their memories to glimpse something of the world they had been loosed into.
Then he explained what he wanted. He did not expect them to understand Hed, but they understood him, his anger and despair and his land-love. They gave him fealty in a ritual as old as An, their moldering blades flashing greyly in the moonlight. Then they seeped slowly back into the night, into the earth, until he summoned them again.
He stood once again in a quiet field, his eyes on one still, dark figure who did not leave. He watched it curiously; then, when it did not move, he touched its mind. His thoughts were filled instantly with the living land-law of An.
His heart pounded sharply against his ribs. The King of An walked slowly toward him, a tall man robed and cowled like a master or a wraith. As he neared, Morgon could see him dimly in the moonlight, his dark brows slashing a tired, bitter face over eyes that were like Rood’s hauntingly familiar. The king stopped in front of him, stood silently surveying him.
He smiled unexpectedly, the bitterness in his eyes yielding to a strange wonder. “I’ve seen you,” he said, “in my dreams. Star-Bearer.”
“Mathom.” His throat was very dry. He bent his head to the king he had summoned out of the night of An. “You must... you must be wondering what I’m doing.”
“No. You made that very clear, as you explained it to the army you raised. You do astounding things so quietly in my land.”
“I asked Duac’s permission.”
“I’m sure Duac was grateful for the suggestion. You’re going to sail with them to Hed? Is that what I heard?”
“I don’t... I was thinking of riding with Raederle to Caithnard and meeting the ships there, but I think perhaps I should sail with the dead. It would make the living men on the ships feel easier, if I am with them.”
“You’re taking Raederle to Hed?”
“She won’t... she won’t listen to reason.”
The king grunted. “Strange woman.” His eyes were as sharp and curious as birds’ eyes, searching beneath Morgon’s words.
Morgon asked him suddenly, “What have you seen of me, in your dreams?”
“Pieces. Fragments. Little that will help you, and much more than is good for me. Long ago, I dreamed that you came out of a tower with a crown in your hand and three stars on your face... but no name. I saw you with a beautiful young woman, whom I knew was my daughter, but still, I never knew who you were. I saw...” He shook his head a little, drawing his gaze back out of some perplexing, dangerous vision.
“What?”
“I am not sure.”
“Mathom.” He felt cold suddenly in the warm summer night. “Be careful. There are things in your mind that could cost you your life.”
“Or my land-law?” His lean hand closed on Morgon’s shoulder. “Perhaps. That is why I rarely explain my thoughts. Come to the house. There will be a minor tempest when I reappear, but if you can sit patiently through that, we will have time to talk afterward.” He took a step, but Morgon did not move. “What is it?”
He swallowed. “There is something I have to tell you. Before I walk into your hall with you. Seven days ago, I walked into it to kill a harpist.”
He heard the king draw a swift breath. “Deth came here.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Somehow I am not surprised.” His voice sounded husky, like a voice out of a barrow. He drew Morgon forward toward the great moonlit house. “Tell me.”
Morgon told him much more than that before they reached the hall. He found himself talking a little about even the past seven days, which were so precious to him he wondered if they had even existed. Mathom said little, only making a faint noise deep in his throat now and then, like a blackbird’s mutter. As they entered the inner courtyard, they saw horses, trembling and sweating, being led to the stables. Their saddlecloths were purple and blue, the colors of the kings household guard. Mathom cursed mildly.
“Rood must be back. Empty-handed, furious, wraithridden, and unwashed.” They entered the hall, which was a blaze of torchlight, and Rood, slumped over a cup of wine, stared at his father. Duac and Raederle were beside him, their heads turning, but he got to his feet first, drowning their voices.
“Where in Hel’s name have you been?”
“Don’t shout at me,” the king said testily. “If you had no more sense than to roam through this chaos searching for that harpist, I have no pity for you.” He switched his gaze to Duac, as Rood, his mouth still open, dropped back into his chair. Duac eyed the king coldly, but his voice was controlled.
“Well. What brought you home? Dropping out of the sky like a bad spell. Surely not distress over the shambles you have made of your land-rule.”
“No,” Mathom said imperturbably, pouring wine. “You and Rood have done very well without me.”
“We have done what very well without you?” Rood asked between his teeth. “Do you realize we are on the verge of war?”
“Yes. And An has armed itself for it in a remarkably short time. Even you have turned, in less than three months, from a scholar into a warrior.”
Rood drew an audible breath to answer. Duac’s hand clamped suddenly down on his wrist, silencing him. “War.” His face had lost color. “With whom?”
“Who else is armed?”
“Ymris?” He repeated it incredulously, “Ymris?”
Mathom swallowed wine. His face looked older than it had under the moonlight, grim and worn with travel. He sat down beside Raederle. “I have seen the war in Ymris,” he said softly. “The rebels hold the coastal lands. It’s a strange, bloody, merciless war, and it is going to exhaust Heureu Ymris’ forces. He can never hope to contain it within his own borders once the people he is fighting decide to take it beyond the borders of Ymris. I suspected that before, but even I could not ask the Three Portions to arm themselves without reason. And to give reason might have precipitated attack.”
“You did that deliberately?” Duac breathed. “You left us so that we would arm ourselves?”
“It was extreme,” Mathom admitted, “but it was effective.” He cast an eye at Rood again, as he opened his mouth and spoke in a subdued voice.
“Where have you been? And are you planning to stay home awhile?”
“Here and there, satisfying my curiosity. And yes, I think I will stay home now. If you can refrain from shouting at me.”
“If you weren’t so pig-headed, I wouldn’t shout.”
Mathom looked skeptical. “You even have a warrior’s hard head. What exactly were you planning to do with Deth if you had caught him?”
There was a short silence. Duac said simply, “I would have sent him to Caithnard eventually, on an armed ship, and let the Masters question him.”
“The College at Caithnard is hardly a court of law.”
Duac looked at him, a rare trace of temper in his eyes. “Then you tell me. What would you have done?
If it had been you instead of me here, watching Morgon... watching Morgon forced to exact his own justice from a man bound to no law in the realm, who betrayed everyone in the realm, what would you have done?”
“Justice,” Mathom said softly. Morgon looked at him, waiting for his answer. He saw in the dark, tired eyes a distant, curious pain. “He is the High One’s Harpist. I would let the High One judge him.”
“Mathom?” Morgon said, wondering suddenly, imperatively, what the king was seeing. But Mathom did not answer him. Raederle was watching him, too; the king touched her hair lightly, but neither of them spoke.
“The High One,” Rood said. The warrior’s harshness had left his voice; the words were a riddle, full of bitterness and despair, a plea for answer. His eyes touched Morgon’s with a familiar twist of self-mockery. “You heard my father. I’m no longer even a riddler. You’ll have to answer that one, Riddle-Master.”
“I will,” he said wearily. “I don’t seem to have any choice.”
“You,” Mathom said, “have stayed here far too long.”
“I know. I couldn’t leave. I’ll leave...” He glanced at Duac. “Tomorrow? Will the ships be ready?”
Duac nodded. “Bri Corbett said they’ll sail on the midnight tide. Actually, he said a great deal more when I told him what you wanted. But he knows men who would sail even a cargo of the dead for gold.”
“Tomorrow,” Mathom murmured. He glanced at Morgon and then at Raederle, who was staring silently at the pooling candle, her face set as for an argument. He seemed to make his own surmises behind his black, fathomless gaze. She lifted her eyes slowly, sensing his thoughts.
“I am going with Morgon, and I am not asking you to marry us. Aren’t you even going to argue?”
He shook his head, sighing. “Argue with Morgon. I’m too old and tired, and all I want from either of you is that somewhere in this troubled realm you find your peace.”
She stared at him. Her face shook suddenly, and she reached out to him, tears burning down her face in the torchlight. “Oh, why were you gone so long?” she whispered, as he held her tightly. “I have needed you.”
He talked with her and with Morgon until the candles buried themselves in their holders and the windows grew pale with dawn. They slept most of the next day, and then, late that evening, when the world was still again, Morgon summoned his army of the dead to the docks at Anuin.
Seven trade-ships were moored under the moonlight carrying light cargoes of fine cloth and spices. Morgon, his mind weltering with names, faces, memories out of the brains of the dead, watched the ranks slowly become half-visible on the shadowy docks. They were mounted, armed, silent, waiting to board. The city was dark behind them; the black fingers of masts in the harbor rose with the swell of the tide to touch the stars and withdrew. The gathering of the dead had been accomplished in a dreamlike silence, under the eyes of Duac and Bri Corbett and the fascinated, terrified skeleton crews on the ships. They were just ready to board when a horse thudded down the dock, breaking Morgon’s concentration. He gazed at Raederle as she dismounted, wondering why she was not still asleep, his mind struggling with her presence as he was drawn back slowly into the night of the living. There was a single dock lamp lit near them; it gave her hair, slipping out of its jewelled pins, a luminous, fiery sheen. He could not see her face well.
“I’m coming with you to Hed,” she said. His hand moved out of the vivid backwash of centuries to turn her face to the light. The annoyance in it cleared his mind.
“We discussed it,” he said. “Not on these ships full of wraiths.”
“You and my father discussed it. You forgot to tell me.”
He ran his wrist across his forehead, realizing he was sweating. Bri Corbett was leaning over the side of the ship near them, an ear to their voices, one eye on the tide. “Lord,” he called softly, “if we don’t leave soon, there’ll be seven ships full of the dead stuck in the harbor until morning.”
“All right.” He stretched to ease the burning knots of tension in his back. Raederle folded her arms; he caught a pin falling out of her hair. “It would be best if you ride up through Hel to meet me in Caithnard.”
“You were going to ride with me. Not sail with wraiths to Hed.”
“I can’t lead an army of the dead by land to Caithnard and load them there at the docks under the eye of every trader—”
“That’s not the point. The point is: However you are going to Hed, I’m going with you. The point is: You were going to sail straight to Hed and leave me waiting for you at Caithnard.”
He stared at her. “I was not,” he said indignantly.
“You would have thought of it,” she said tersely, “halfway there, leaving me safe and foresworn at Caithnard. I have a pack on my horse; I’m ready to leave.”
“No. Not a four day journey by sea with me and the dead of An.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.” His hands were clenched; shadows wedged beneath the bones of his taut face as he gazed at her. The lamplight was exploring her face as he had explored it the past days. Light gathered in her eyes, and he remembered that she had stared into the eyes of a skull and had outfaced dead kings. “No,” he repeated harshly. “I don’t know what trail of power the dead will leave across the water. I don’t know—”
“You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know how safe you will be, even in Hed.”
“Which is why I will not take you on these ships.”
“Which is why I am going with you. At least I am born to understand the sea.”
“And if it tears apart the wood beneath you and scatters planks and spice and the dead into the waves, what will you do? You’ll drown, because no matter what shape I take, I won’t be able to save you, and then what will I do?”
She was silent. The dead ranked behind her seemed to be looking at him with the same distant, implacable expression. He turned suddenly, his hands opening and closing again. He caught the mocking eyes of one of the kings and let his mind grow still. A name stirred shadows of memory behind the dead eyes. The wraith moved after a moment, blurring into air and darkness, and entered the ship.
He lost all sense of time again, as he filled the seven trade-ships with the last of their cargo. Centuries murmured through him, mingling with the slap of water and the sounds of Duac and Raederle talking in some far land. Finally, he reached the end of names and began to see.
The dark, silent vessels were growing restless in the tide. Ship-masters were giving subdued orders, as if they feared their voices might rouse the dead. Men moved as quietly across the decks, among the mooring cables. Raederle and Duac stood alone on the empty dock, silently, watching Morgon. He went to them, feeling a salt wind that had not been there before drying the sweat on his face.
He said to Duac, “Thank you. I don’t know how grateful Eliard is going to be, but it’s the best protection I can think of for Hed, and it will set my mind at ease. Tell Mathom... tell him—” He hesitated, groping. Duac dropped a hand on his shoulder.
“He knows. Just be careful.”
“I will be.” He turned his head, met Raederle’s eyes. She did not move or speak, but she bound him wordless, lost again in memories. He broke their silence as if he were breaking a spell. “I’ll meet you at Caithnard.” He kissed her and turned quickly. He boarded the lead ship. The ramp slid up behind him; Bri Corbett stood beside an open hatch.
He said worriedly as Morgon climbed down the ladder into the listless hold, “You’ll be all right among the dead?”
Morgon nodded without speaking. Bri closed the hatch behind him. He stumbled a little around bolts of cloth and found a place to sit on sacks of spice. He felt the ship ease away from the dock, away from Anuin toward the open sea. He leaned against the side of the hull, heard water spray against the wood. The dead were silent, invisible around him, their minds growing quiescent as they sailed away from their past. Morgon found himself trying to trace their faces suddenly out of the total darkness. He drew his knees up, pushed his face against his arms and listened to the water. A few moments later, he heard the hatch open.
He drew a long, silent breath and loosed it. Lamplight flickered beyond his closed eyes. Someone climbed down the ladder, found a path through the cargo, and sat down beside him. Scents of pepper and ginger wafted up around him. The hatch dropped shut again.
He lifted his head, said to Raederle, who was no more than her breathing and the faint smell of sea air, “Are you planning to argue with me for the rest of our lives?”
“Yes,” she said stiffly.
He dropped his head back against his knees. After a while he drew one arm free, shaped her wrist in the dark, and then her fingers. He gazed back at the night, holding her scarred left hand in both his hands against his heart.
They arrived in Hed four nights later. Six of the trade-ships had turned westward in the channel to wait at Caithnard; Bri took his ship to Tol. Morgon, worn out from listening for disaster, was startled out of a catnap by the hull scudding a little against the dock. He sat up, tense, and heard Bri curse someone amiably. The hatch opened; lamplight blinded him. He smelled earth.
His heart began to pound suddenly. Beside him, Raederle, half-buried in furs, lifted her head sleepily.
“You’re home,” Bri said, smiling behind the light, and Morgon got to his feet, climbed up onto the deck. Tol was a handful of houses scattered beyond the moon-shadow flung by the dark cliffs. The warm, motionless air smelled familiarly of cows and grain.
He hardly realized he had spoken until Bri, dousing the light, answered, “On the lee side of midnight. We got here sooner than I expected.”
A wave curled lazily onto the beach, spread a fretwork of silver as it withdrew. The shore road wound bone-white away from the dock to disappear into the cliff shadow. Morgon picked out the faint line above the cliff where it appeared again, to separate pastures and fields until it stopped at the doorstep of Akren. His hands tightened on the railing; he stared, blind, back at the twisted road that had brought him to Hed on a ship full of the dead, and the shore road to Akren seemed suddenly little more than one more twist into shadows.
Raederle said his name, and his hands loosened. He heard the ramp thud onto the dock. He said to Bri, “I’ll be back before dawn.” He touched the outline of the ship-master’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
He led Raederle off the dock, past the dreaming fishermen’s houses and the worn, beached boats with gulls sleeping on them. He found his way by memory up the shadows to the top of the cliff. The fields flowed smoothly under the moonlight, swirled around hillocks and dips, to converge from every direction around Akren. The night was soundless; listening, he heard the slow, placid breathing of cows and the faint whimper of a dog dreaming. There was a light gleaming at Akren, Morgon thought from the porch, but as they drew closer, he realized it came from within the house. Raederle walked silently beside him, her eyes flickering over field walls, bean rows, half-ripe wheat. She broke her silence finally as they drew near enough to Akren to see the lines of the roof slanting against the stars.
“Such a small house,” she said, surprised. He nodded.
“Smaller than I remember...” His throat was dry, tight. He saw a movement in one hall window, dim in the candlelight, and he wondered who was sitting up so late in the house, alone. Then the smell of damp earth and clinging roots caught at him unexpectedly; memory upon memory sent shoots and hair roots spreading through him of land-law until for one split second he no longer felt his body, and his mind branched dizzyingly through the rootwork of Hed.
He stopped, his breath catching. The figure at the window moved. Blocking the light, it stared out at the night: big, broad-shouldered, faceless. It turned abruptly, flicking across the windows in the hall. The doors of Akren banged open; a dog barked, once. Morgon heard footsteps. They crossed the yard and stopped at the angled shadow of the roof.
“Morgon?” The name sounded in the still ah- like a question. Then it became a shout, setting all the dogs barking as it echoed across the fields. “Morgon!”
Eliard had reached him almost before he could move again. He got an impression of butter-colored hair, shoulders burled with muscles, and a face under moonlight that was startlingly like their father’s. Then Eliard knocked the breath out of him, hugging him, his fists pounding against Morgon’s shoulder blades. “You took your time coming home,” he said. He was crying. Morgon tried to speak, but his throat was too dry; he dropped his burning eyes against Eliard’s massive shoulder.
“You great mountain,” he whispered. “Will you quiet down?”
Eliard pushed him away, started shaking him. “I felt your mind in mine just then, the way I felt it in my dreams when you were in that mountain.” Tears were furrowing down his face. “Morgon, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“Eliard...”
“I knew you were in trouble, but I never did anything—I didn’t know what to do—and then you died, and the land-rule came to me. And now you’re back, and I have everything that belongs to you. Morgon, I swear if there was a way, I would take the land-rule out of myself and give it back to you—” Morgon’s hands locked in a sudden, fierce grip on his arms and he stopped.
“Don’t say that to me again. Ever.” Eliard stared at him wordlessly, and Morgon felt, holding him, that he held all the strength and innocence of Hed. He said more quietly, his fingers tightening on the innocence, “You belong here. And I have needed you to be here taking care of Hed almost more than anything.”
“But Morgon... you belong here. This is your home, you’ve come home—”
“Yes. Until dawn.”
“No!” His fingers clamped on Morgon’s shoulders again. “I don’t know what you’re running from, but I’m not watching you leave again. You stay here; we can fight for you, with pitchforks and harrow teeth. I’ll borrow an army from somebody—”
“Eliard—”
“Shut up! You may have a grip like a bench vise, but you can’t throw me into Tristan’s rosebushes anymore. You’re staying here, where you belong.”
“Eliard, will you stop shouting!” He shook Eliard a little, astonishing him into silence. Then a small whirlwind of Tristan and dogs broke against them, shouting and barking. Tristan leaped at Morgon from a dead run, her arms damped around his neck, her face buried at his collarbone. He kissed what he could find of it, then pushed her away, lifted her face between his hands. He barely recognized it. Something in his expression made her face crumple; she flung her arms around him again. Then she saw Raederle and reached out to her, and the dogs swarmed at Morgon. A couple of lights sparked in the windows of distant farmhouses. Morgon felt a moment’s panic. Then he simply grew still, still as the motionless pour of the road under his feet, the moonlit air. The dogs dropped away from him; Tristan and Raederle stopped talking to look at him. Eliard stood quietly, bound unconsciously to his stillness.
“What’s wrong?” he asked uneasily. Morgon moved after a moment to his side, dropped an arm wearily over his shoulders.
“So much,” he said. “Eliard, I’m putting you in danger just standing here, talking to you. Let’s go in the house at least.”
“All right“ But he did not move, his face turned away from Morgon to where Raederle stood, her face a blur of misty lines and shadows, jewelled pins here and there in her dishevelled hair flecking it with fire. She smiled, and Morgon heard Eliard swallow. “Raederle of An?” he said tentatively, and she nodded.
“Yes.” She held out her hand, and Eliard took it as if it were made of chaff and might blow away. He seemed tongue-tied.
Tristan said proudly, “We sailed all the way to Isig and back, looking for Morgon. Where were you? Where did you—” Her voice faltered suddenly, oddly. “Where did you sail from?”
“Anuin,” Morgon said. He caught the uncertain flicker of her dark eyes and read her thoughts. He said again, tiredly, “Let’s go in the house; you can ask me.”
She slid her hand into his free hand, walked with him, without speaking, to Akren.
She went down to the kitchens to find food for them, while Eliard lit torches and brushed a tangle of harness off the benches so they could sit.
He stood looking down at Morgon, kicking the bench moodily, then said abruptly, “Tell me so I can understand. Why you can’t stay. Where do you have to get to so badly now?”
“I don’t know. Nowhere. Anywhere but where I am. It’s death to stand still.”
Eliard scarred the bench with his boot. “Why?” he said explosively, and Morgon drew his hands over his face, murmuring.
“I’m trying to find out,” he said. “Answer the unanswered—” He broke off at the expression on Eliard’s face. “I know. If I had stayed home in the first place instead of going to Caithnard, I wouldn’t be sitting here in the middle of the night wanting to hold dawn back with my hands and afraid to tell you what cargo I brought with me to Hed.”
Eliard sat down slowly, blinking a little. “What?” Tristan came back up the stairs then with a huge tray full of beer, milk, fresh bread and fruit, the cold remains of a roast goose, butter and cheese. She balanced it on a stool between them. Morgon shifted; she sat down beside him and poured beer. She handed a cup to Raederle, who tasted it tentatively. Morgon watched her pour; her face had grown leaner, the graceful, sturdy bones more pronounced.
She was scowling at the head on the beer, waiting for it to subside before she finished pouring. Her eyes flicked at him, then dropped, and he said softly, “I found Deth at Anuin. I didn’t kill him.”
The breath went out of her soundlessly. She rested the beer pitcher on one knee, the cup on the other, and looked at Morgon finally. “I didn’t want to ask.”
He reached out, touched her face; he saw her eyes follow the white vesta-scars on his palm as he dropped his hand again. Eliard stirred.
“It’s none of my business,” he said huskily. “But you only tracked him clear across the realm.” An odd hope touched his face. “Was he... did he explain—”
“He explained nothing.” He took the beer from Tristan and drank; he felt blood ease back into his face. He added, more quietly, “I followed Deth through An and caught up with him at Anuin twelve days ago. I stood before him in the king’s hall and explained to him that I was going to kill him. Then I raised my sword with both hands to do just that, while he stood without moving, watching it rise.” He checked. Eliard’s face was rigid.
“And then what?”
“Then...” He searched for words, pulled back into memory. “I didn’t kill him. There’s an ancient riddle from Ymris: Who were Belu and Bilo, and how were they bound? Two Ymris princes who were born at the same moment, and whose deaths, it was foretold, would occur at the same moment. They grew to hate each other, but they were so bound that one could not kill the other without destroying himself.”
Eliard was eyeing him strangely. “A riddle did that? It kept you from killing him?”
Morgon sat back. For a moment he sipped beer without speaking, wondering if anything he had done in his life had ever made sense to Eliard. Then Eliard leaned forward, gripped his wrist gently.
“You told me once my brains were made of oak. Maybe so. But I’m glad you didn’t kill him. I would have understood why, if you had. But I wouldn’t have been certain, ever again, of what you might or might not do.” He loosed Morgon and handed him a goose leg. “Eat.”
Morgon looked at him. He said softly, “You have the makings of a fine riddler.”
Eliard snorted, flushing. “You wouldn’t catch me dead at Caithnard. Eat.” He cut thin slices of bread and meat and cheese for Raederle and gave them to her. Meeting her eyes at last as she smiled, he found his tongue finally.
“Are you... are you married?”
She shook her head over a bite. “No.”
“Then what—have you come to wait here?” He looked a little incredulous, but his voice was warm. “You would be very welcome.”
“No.” She was talking to Eliard, but she seemed, to Morgon, to be answering his own hopes. “I am doing no more waiting.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Eliard said, bewildered. “Where will you live?” His eyes moved to Morgon. “What are you going to do? When you leave at dawn? Do you have any idea?”
He nodded. “A vague idea, I need help. And I need answers. According to rumor, the last of the wizards are gathering at Lungold to challenge Ghisteslwchlohm. From the wizards, I can get help. From the Founder, I can get some answers.”
Eliard stared at him. He heaved himself to his feet suddenly. “Why didn’t you just ask him while you were at Erlenstar Mountain? It would have saved you the bother of going to Lungold. You’re going to ask him questions. Morgon, I swear a cork in a beer keg has more sense than you do. What’s he going to do? Stand there politely and answer them?”
“What do you want me to do?” Morgon stood, unexpectedly, his voice fierce, anguished, wondering if he was arguing with Eliard or with the implacable obtuseness of the island that suddenly held no more place for him, “Sit here, let him come knocking at your door to find me? Will you open your eyes and see me instead of the wraith of some memory you have of me? I am branded with stars on my face, with vesta-scars on my hands. I can take nearly any shape that has a word to name it. I have fought, I have killed, I intend to kill again. I have a name older than this realm, and I have no home except in memory. I asked a riddle two years ago, and now I am trapped in a maze of riddles, hardly knowing how to begin to find my way out. The heart of that maze is war. Look beyond Hed for once in your life. Try drinking some fear along with that beer. This realm is on the verge of war. There is no protection for Hed.”
“War. What are you talking about? There’s some fighting in Ymris, but Ymris is always at war.”
“Do you have any idea who Heureu Ymris is fighting?”
“No.”
“Neither does he. Eliard, I saw the rebel army as I passed through Ymris. There are men in it who have already died, who are still fighting, with their bodies possessed by nothing human. If they choose to attack Hed, what protection do you have against them?”
Eliard made a sound in his throat. “The High One,” he said. Then the blood ran completely out of his face. “Morgon,” he whispered, and Morgon’s bands clenched.
“Yes. I have been called a man of peace by dead children, but I think I’ve brought nothing but chaos. Eliard, at Anuin I talked with Duac about some way to protect Hed. He offered to send men and warships.”
“Is that what you brought?”
He said steadily, “The trade-ship at Tol that brought us carried, along with regular cargo, armed kings and lords, great warriors of the Three Portions—” Eliard’s fingers closed slowly on his arm.
“Kings?”
“They understand land-love, and they understand war. They won’t understand Hed, but they’ll fight for it. They are—”
“You brought wraiths of An to Hed?” Eliard whispered. “They’re at Tol?”
“There are six more ships at Caithnard, waiting—”
“Morgon of Hed, are you out of your mind!” His fingers bit to the bone of Morgon’s arm, and Morgon tensed. But Eliard swung away from him abruptly. His fist fell like a mallet on the tray, sending food and crockery flying, except for the milk pitcher, which Tristan had just lifted. She sat hugging it against her, white, while Eliard shouted.
“Morgon, I’ve heard tales of the chaos in An! How animals are run to death at night and the crops rot in the fields because no one dares harvest. And you want me to take that into my land! How can you ask that of me?”
“Eliard, I don’t have to ask!” Their eyes locked. Morgon continued relentlessly, watching himself change shape in Eliard’s eyes, sensing something precious, elusive, slipping farther and farther away from him. “If I wanted the land-rule of Hed, I could take it back. When Ghisteslwchlohm took it from me, piece by piece, I realized that the power of land-law has structure and definition, and I know to the last hair root on a hop vine the structure of the land-law of Hed. If I wanted to force this on you, I could, just as I learned to force the ancient dead of the Three Portions to come here—”
Eliard, backed against the hearthstones, breathing through his mouth, shuddered suddenly. “What are you?”
“I don’t know.” His voice shook uncontrollably. “It’s time you asked.”
There was a moment’s silence: the peaceful, unbroken voice of the night of Hed. Then Eliard shrugged himself away from the hearth, stepped past Morgon, kicking shards out of the way. He leaned over a table, his hands flat on it, his head bowed. He said, his voice muffled a little, “Morgon, they’re dead.”
Morgon dropped his forearm against the mantel, leaned his face on it. “Then they have that advantage over the living in a battle.”
“Couldn’t you have just brought a living army? It would have been simpler.”
“The moment you bring armed men to this island, you’ll ask for attack. And you’ll get it.”
“Are you sure? Are you so sure they’ll dare attack Hed? You might be seeing things that aren’t there.”
“I might be.” His words seemed lost against the worn stones. “I’m not sure, anymore, of anything. I’m just afraid for everything I love. Do you know the one simple, vital thing I could never learn from Ghisteslwchlohm in Erlenstar Mountain? How to see in the dark.”
Eliard turned. He was crying again as he pulled Morgon away from the stones. “I’m sorry. Morgon, I may yell at you, but if you pulled the land-rule out of me by the roots, I would still trust you blindly. Will you stay here? Will you please stay? Let the wizards come to you. Let Ghisteslwchlohm come. You’ll just be killed if you leave Hed again.”
“No. I won’t die.” He crooked an arm around Eliard’s neck, hugged him tightly. “I’m too curious. The dead won’t trouble your farmers. I swear it. You will scarcely notice them. They are bound to me. I showed them something of the history and peace of Hed, and they are sworn to defend that peace.”
“You bound them.”
“Mathom loosed his own hold over them, otherwise I would never have considered it.”
“How do you bind dead Kings of An?”
“I see out of their eyes. I understand them. Maybe too well.”
Eliard eyed him. “You’re a wizard,” he said, but Morgon shook his head.
“No wizard but Ghisteslwchlohm ever touched land-law. I’m simply powerful and desperate.” He looked down at Raederle. Inured as she was to the occasional uproar in her father’s house, her eyes held a strained, haunted expression. Tristan was staring silently into the milk pitcher. Morgon touched her dark hair; her face lifted, colorless, frozen.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come home and start a battle.”
“It’s all right,” she said after a moment. “At least that’s one familiar thing you can still do.” She put the milk pitcher down and got to her feet. “I’ll get a broom.”
“I will.”
That brought the flash of a smile into her eyes. “All right. You can sweep. I’ll get more food.” She touched his scarred palm hesitantly. “Then tell me how you change shape.”
He told them after he swept up the mess, and he watched Eliard’s face fill with an incredulous wonder as he explained how it felt to become a tree. He racked his brain for other things to tell them that might help them forget for a moment the terrible side of his journey. He talked about racing across the northlands in vesta-shape, when the world was nothing but wind and snow and stars. He told them of the marvellous beauty of Isig Pass and of the wolf-king’s court, with its wild animals wandering in and out, and of the mists and sudden stones and marshes of Herun. And for a little while, he forgot his own torment as he found in himself an unexpected love of the wild, harsh, and beautiful places of the realm. He forgot the time, too, until he saw the moon beginning its descent, peering into the top of one of the windows. He broke off abruptly, saw apprehension replace the smile in Eliard’s eyes.
“I forgot about the dead.”
Eliard controlled a reply visibly. “It’s not dawn, yet. The moon hasn’t even set.”
“I know. But the ships will come to Tol one by one from Caithnard, when I give the word. I want them away from Hed completely before I leave. Don’t worry. You won’t see the dead, but you should be there when they enter Hed.”
Eliard rose reluctantly. His face was chalky under his tan. “You’ll be with me?”
“Yes.”
They all went back down the road to Tol that lay bare as a blade between the dark fields of corn. Morgon, walking beside Raederle, his fingers linked in hers, felt the tension still in her and the weariness of the long, dangerous voyage. She sensed his thoughts and smiled at him as they neared Tol.
“I left one pig-headed family for another...”
The moon, three-quarters full, seemed angled, as if it were peering down at Tol. Across the black channel were two flaming, slitted eyes: the warning fires on the horns of the Caithnard harbor. Nets hung in silvery webs on the sand; water licked against the small moored boats as they walked down the dock.
Bri Corbett, hanging over the ship’s railing, called down softly, “Now?”
“Now,” Morgon said, and Eliard muttered between his teeth.
“I wish you knew what you were doing.” Then the ramp slid down off the empty deck, and he stepped back, so close to the dock edge he nearly fell off. Morgon felt his mind again.
The stubbornness, the inflexibility that lay near the heart of Hed seemed to slam like a bar across the end of the ramp. It clenched around Morgon’s thoughts; he eased through it, filling Eliard’s mind with images, rich, brilliant, and erratic, that he had gleaned from the history of the Three Portions out of the minds of the dead. Slowly, as Eliard’s mind opened, something emptied out of the ship, absorbed itself into Hed.
Eliard shivered suddenly.
“They’re quiet,” he said, surprised. Morgon’s hand closed above his elbow.
“Bri will leave for Caithnard now and send the next ship. There are six more. Bri will bring the last one himself, and Raederle and I will leave on that one.”
“No—”
“I’ll come back.”
Eliard was silent. From the ship came the groan of rope and wood, and Bri Corbett’s low, precise orders. The ship eased away from the dockside, its dark canvas stretched full to catch the frail wind. It moved, huge, black, soundless through the moon-spangled water into the night, leaving a shimmering wake that curled away and slowly disappeared.
Eliard said, watching it, “You will never come back to stay.”
Six more ships came as slowly, as silently through the night. Once, just before the moon set, Morgon saw shadows flung across the water of armed, crowned figures. The moon sank, shrivelled and weary, into the stars; the last ship moored at the dockside. Tristan was leaning against Morgon, shifting from one foot to another; he held her to keep her warm. Raederle was blurred against the starlit water; her face was a dark profile between the warning fires. Morgon’s eyes moved to the ship. The dead were leaving it; the dark maw of its hold would remain open to take him away from Hed. His mind tangled suddenly with a thousand things he wanted to say to Eliard, but none of them had the power to dispel that ship. Finally, he realized, they were alone again on the dock; the dead were dispersed into Hed, and there was nothing left for him to do but leave. He turned to Eliard. The sky was growing very dark in the final, interminable hour before dawn. A low wind moaned among the breakers. He could not see Eliard’s face, only sense his massiveness and the vague mass of land behind him. He said softly, his heart aching, the image of the land drenched gold under the summer sun in his mind’s eye, “I’ll find a way back to Hed. Somehow. Somewhere.”
Eliard, reaching into the darkness, touched his face with a gentleness that had been their father’s. Tristan was still clinging to him; Morgon held her tightly, kissed the top of her hair. Then he stepped back, stood suddenly alone in the night feeling the wood shiver under his feet in the roiling water.
He turned, found his way blindly up the ship’s ramp, back down into the black hull.
The ship found a quiet berth in the Caithnard harbor near dawn. Morgon heard the anchor splash in still water and saw through the lattice of the hatch covers squares of pearl-grey sky. Raederle was asleep. He looked at her a moment with an odd mixture of weariness and peace, as if he had brought some great treasure safely out of danger. Then he sagged down on the spice sacks and went to sleep. The clamor on the docks at midmorning, the stifling noon heat in the hold hardly troubled his dreams. He woke finally at late afternoon and found Raederle watching him, covered with floating spangles of sunlight.
He sat up slowly, trying to remember where he was. She said, “Caithnard.” Her arms were crooked around her knees; her cheek was crosshatched with weave from the sacking. Her eyes held an odd expression he had to puzzle over, until he realized that it was simply fear. His throat made a dry, questioning sound. She answered him softly.
“Now what?”
He leaned back against the side, gripped her wrist lightly a moment, then rubbed his eyes. “Bri Corbett said he would find horses for us. You’ll have to take the pins out of your hair.”
“What? Morgon, are you still asleep?”
“No.” His eyes fell to her feet “And look at your shoes.”
She looked. “What’s the matter with them?”
“They’re beautiful. So are you. Can you change shape?”
“Into what?” she asked bewilderedly. “A hoary old hag?”
“No. You have a shape-changer’s blood in you; you should be able to—”
The expression in her eyes, of fear, torment, loathing, stopped him. She said distinctly, “No.”
He drew breath, fully awake, cursing himself silently. The long road sweeping across the realm, straight towards the setting sun, touched him, too, then, with an edge of panic. He was silent, trying to think, but the stale air in the hold seemed to fill his brain with chaff. He said, “We’ll be on the road to Lungold for a long time, if we ride. I thought to keep the horses just until I could teach you some shape.”
“You change shape. I’ll ride.”
“Raederle, look at yourself,” he said helplessly. “Traders from all over the realm will be on that road. They haven’t seen me for over a year, but they’ll recognize you, and they won’t have to ask who the man beside you is.”
“So.” She kicked her shoes off, pulled the pins out of her hair and shook it down her back. “Find me another pair of shoes.”
He looked at her wordlessly as she sat in a billow of wrinkled, richly embroidered cloth, the fine, dishevelled mass of her hair framing a high-boned face that, even tired and white, looked like something out of an ancient ballad. He sighed, pushing himself up.
“All right. Wait for me.”
Her voice checked him briefly as he climbed the ladder. “This time.”
He spoke to Bri Corbett, who had been waiting patiently all day for them to wake. The horses Bri had found were on the dock; there were some supplies packed on them. They were placid, heavy-hooved farmhorses, restless at being tethered so long. Bri, as the fact and implications of the long journey began filling his mind, gave Morgon varied, impassioned arguments, to which he responded patiently. Bri ended by offering to come with them. Morgon said wearily, “Only if you can change shape.”
Bri gave up. He left the ship, returned an hour later with a bundle of clothes, which he tossed down the hatch to Morgon. Raederle examined them expressionlessly, then put them on. There was a dark skirt, a linen shift, and a shapeless over-tunic that went to her knees. The boots were of soft leather, good but plain. She coiled her hair up under the crown of a broad-brimmed straw hat. She stood still resignedly for Morgon’s inspection.
He said, “Pull the hat brim down.”
She gave it a wrench. “Stop laughing at me.”
“I’m not,” he said soberly. “Wait till you see what you have to ride.”
“You aren’t exactly inconspicuous. You may be dressed like a poor farmer, but you walk like a land-ruler, and your eyes could quarry stone.”
“Watch,” he said. He let himself grow still, his thoughts shaping themselves to his surroundings: wood, pitch, the vague murmur of water and indistinct rumblings of the harbor. His name seemed to flow away from him into the heat. His face held no discernible expression; for a moment his eyes were vague, blank as the summer sky.
“If you aren’t aware of yourself, few people will be aware of you. That’s one of a hundred ways I kept myself alive crossing the realm.”
She looked startled. “I almost couldn’t recognize you. Is it illusion?”
“Very little of it; It’s survival.”
She was silent. He saw the conflict of her thoughts in her face. She turned away without speaking and climbed up the ladder to the deck.
The sun was burning into night at the far edge of the realm as they bade farewell to Bri and began to ride. Great shadows from masts and piled cargo loomed in their path across the docks. The city, a haze of late light and shadow, seemed suddenly unfamiliar to Morgon, as if, on the verge of taking a strange road, he became a stranger to himself. He led Raederle through the twists of streets, past shops and taverns he had known once, toward the west edge of the city, down one cobbled street that widened as it left the city, wore out of its cobblestones, widened again, rutted with centuries of cartwheels, widened again and ran ahead of them through hundreds of miles of no-man’s-land, until it angled northward at the edge of the known realm towards Lungold.
They stopped their horses, looking down it. Tangled shadows of oak faded as the sun set; the road lay tired, grey, and endless in the dusk. The oak fanned over their heads, branches nearly joined across the road. They looked weary, their leaves dulled with a patina of dust kicked up by the cartwheels. The evening was very quiet; the late traffic had already wound its way into the city. The forests blurred grey in the distance, and then dark. From the greyness an owl woke and sang a riddle.
They began to ride again. The sky turned black, and the moon rose, spilling a milky light through the forest. They rode the moon high, until their shadows rode beneath them on a tangle of black leaves. Then Morgon found the leaves blurring together into one vast darkness under his eyes. He reined; Raederle stopped beside him.
There was the sound of water not far away. Morgon, his face coated with a mask of dust, said tiredly, “I remember. I crossed a river, coming south out of Wind Plain. It must follow the road.” He turned his horse off the road. “We can camp there.”
They found it not far from the road, a shallow streak of silver in the moonlight. Raederle sank down at the foot of a tree while Morgon unsaddled the horses and let them drink. He brought their packs and blankets to a clear space among the fern. Then he sat down beside Raederle, dropped his head in his arms.
“I’m not used to riding, either,” he said. She took her hat off, rested her head against him.
“A plow horse,” she murmured. She fell asleep where she sat. Morgon put his arm around her. For a while he stayed awake, listening. But he heard only the secret noises of hunting animals, the breath of owl’s wings, and as the moon set, his eyes closed.
They woke to the blaze of the summer sun and the tortured groan of cartwheels. By the time they had eaten, washed, and made their way back to the road, it was filled with carts, traders on horseback with their packs, farmers taking produce or animals from outlying farms into Caithnard, men and women with retinues and packhorses making the long journey, for indiscernible reasons, across the realm to Lungold. Morgon and Raederle eased their horses into the slow, rhythmic pace that would wear the monotonous, six-weeks journey to its ending. Riding in traffic varying between pigs and rich lords, they were not conspicuous. Morgon discouraged traders’ idle conversation, responding grumpily to their overtures. Once he startled Raederle by cursing a rich merchant who commented on her face. The man looked angry a moment, his hand tightening on his riding crop; then, glancing at Morgon’s patched boots and the sweat beading his dusty face, he laughed, nodded to Raederle, and passed on. Raederle rode in silence, her head bowed, her reins bunched in one fist. Morgon, wondering what she was thinking, reached across and touched her lightly. She looked at him, her face filmed with dust and weariness.
He said softly, “This is your choice.”
She met his eyes without answering. She sighed finally, and her grip on the reins loosened. “Do you know the ninety-nine curses the witch Madir set on a man for stealing one of her pigs?”
“No.”
“I’ll teach you. In six weeks you might run out of curses.”
“Raederle—”
“Stop asking me to be reasonable.”
“I didn’t ask you!”
’’You asked me with your eyes.”
He swept a hand through his hair. “You are so unreasonable sometimes that you remind me of me. Teach me the ninety-nine curses. I’ll have something to think about while I m eating road dust all the way to Lungold.”
She was silent again, her face hidden under the shadow of her hat brim. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The merchant frightened me. He might have hurt you. I know I am a danger to you, but I didn’t realize it before. But Morgon, I can’t... I can’t—”
“So. Run from your shadow. Maybe you’ll succeed better than I did.” Her face turned away from him. He rode without speaking, watching the sun burn across bands of metal on wine barrels ahead of them. He put a hand over his eyes finally, to shut out the hot flare of light. “Raederle,” he said in the darkness, “I don’t care. Not for myself. If there is a way to keep you safely with me, I’ll find it. You are real, beside me. I can touch you. I can love you. For a year, in that mountain, I never touched anyone. There is nothing I can see ahead of me that I could love. Even the children who named me are dead. If you had chosen to wait for me in Anuin, I would be wondering what the wait would be worth for either of us. But you’re with me, and you drag my thoughts out of a hopeless future always back to this moment, back to you—so that I can find some perverse contentment even in swallowing road dust.” He looked at her. “Teach me the ninety-nine curses.”
“I can’t.” He could barely hear her voice. “You made me forget how to curse.”
But he coaxed them from her later, to while away the long afternoon. She taught him sixty-four curses before twilight fell, a varied, detailed list that covered the pig thief from hair to toenails, and eventually transformed him into a boar. They left the road then, found the river fifty yards from it. There were no inns or villages nearby, so the travellers moving at the same pace down the long road were camped all around them. The evening was full of distant laughter, music, the smell of wood burning, meat roasting. Morgon went upriver a way, caught fish with his hands. He cleaned them, stuffed them with wild onions, and brought them back to their camp. Raederle had bathed and started a fire; she sat beside it, combing her wet hair. Seeing her in the circle of her light, stepping into it himself and watching her lower her comb and smile, he felt ninety-nine curses at his own ungentleness march into his throat. She saw it in his face, her expression changing as he knelt beside her. He set the fish, wrapped in leaves, at her feet like an offering. Her fingers traced his cheekbone and his mouth.
He whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“For what? Being right? What did you bring me?” She opened a leaf wonderingly. “Fish.” He cursed himself again, silently. She lifted his face in her hands and kissed him again and again, until the dust and weariness of the day vanished from his mind, and the long road burned like a streak of light among his memories.
Later, after they had eaten, they lay watching the fire, and she taught him the rest of the curses. They had transformed the legendary thief into a boar, all but for his ears and eyeteeth and ankles, the last three curses, when a slow, tentative harping rippled across the night, mingling with the river’s murmuring. Morgon, listening to it, did not realize Raederle was speaking to him until she put her hand on his shoulder. He jumped.
“Morgon.”
He rose abruptly, stood at the edge of the firelight, staring into the night. His eyes grew accustomed to the moonlight; he saw random fires lighting the great, tormented faces of oak. The air was still, the voices and music frail in the silence. He quelled a sudden, imperative impulse to snap the harp strings with a thought, let peace fall again over the night.
Raederle said behind him, “You never harp.”
He did not answer. The harping ceased after a while; he drew a slow breath and moved again. He turned to find Raederle sitting beside the fire, watching him. She said nothing until he dropped down beside her. Then she said again, “You never harp,”
“I can’t harp here. Not on this road.”
“Not on the road, not on that ship when you did nothing for four days—”
“Someone might have heard it.”
“Not in Hed, not in Anuin, where you were safe—”
“I’m never safe.”
“Morgon,” she breathed incredulously. “When are you going to learn to use that harp? It holds your name, maybe your destiny; it’s the most beautiful harp in the realm, and you have never even shown it to me.”
He looked at her finally. “I’ll learn to play it again when you learn to change shape.” He lay back. He did not see what she did to the fire, but it vanished abruptly, as if the night had dropped on it like a stone.
He slept uneasily, always aware of her turning beside him. He woke once, wanting to shake her awake, explain, argue with her, but her face, remote in the moonlight, stopped him. He turned, pushed one arm against his eyes, and fell asleep again. He woke again abruptly, for no reason, though something he had heard or sensed, a fragment of a dream before be woke, told him there was reason. He saw the moon drifting deeper into the night. Then something rose before him, blotting out the moon.
He shouted. A hand came down over his mouth. He kicked out and heard an anguished grunt. He rolled to his feet. Something smacked against his face, spun him jarringly into a tree trunk. He heard Raederle cry out in pain and fear, and he snapped a streak of fire into the embers.
The light flared over half a dozen burly figures dressed like traders. One of them held Raederle’s wrists; she looked frightened, bewildered in the sudden light. The horses were stirring, nickering, shadows moving about them, untethering them. Morgon moved toward them quickly. An elbow slammed into his ribs; he hunched over himself, muttering the fifty-ninth curse with the last rag of his breath. The thief gripping him, wrenching him straight, shouted hoarsely in shock and shambled away in the trees. The man behind Raederle dropped her wrists with a sudden gasp. She whirled, touching him, and his beard flamed. Morgon got a glimpse of his face before he dove toward the river. The horses were beginning to panic. He caught at their minds, fed them a bond of moonlit stillness until they stood rock still, oblivious to the men pulling at them. They were cursing ineffectually. One of them mounted, kicked furiously at the horse, but it did not even quiver. Morgon nicked a silent shout through his mind, and the man fell backwards off the horse. The others scattered, then turned on him again, furious and uneasy. He cleared his mind for another shout, picked up threads of their thoughts. Then something came at him from behind, the man out of the river, drove into his back and knocked him to the ground. He twisted as he hit the earth, then froze.
The face was the same, yet not the same. The eyes he knew, but from another place, another struggle. Memory fought against his sight. The face was heavy, wet, the beard singed, but the eyes were too still, too calculating. A boot drove into Morgon’s shoulder from behind. He rolled belatedly. Something ripped across the back of his skull, or across his mind, he was not sure which. Then a Great Shout broke like a thunderclap over them all. He put his face in the bracken and clung to a rocking earth, holding his binding over the horses like the one firm point in the world.
The shout echoed away slowly. He lifted his head. They were alone again; the horses stood placidly, undisturbed by the turmoil of voices and squealing animals in the darkness around them. Raederle dropped down beside him, her brows pinched in pain.
He said, “Did they hurt you?”
“No.” She touched his cheek, and he winced. “That shout did. From a man of Hed, that was a marvellous shout.”
He stared at her, frozen again. “You shouted.”
“I didn’t shout,” she whispered. “You did.”
“I didn’t.” He sat up, then settled his skull into place with his hands. “Who in Hel’s name shouted?”
She shivered suddenly, her eyes moving through the night. “Someone watching, maybe still watching... How strange. Morgon, were they only men wanting to steal our horses?”
“I don’t know.” He searched the back of his head with his fingers. “I don’t know. They were men trying to steal our horses, yes, which was why it was so hard for me to fight them. There were too many to fight, but they were too harmless to kill. And I didn’t want to use much power, to attract attention.”
“You gave that one man boar bristles all over his body.”
Morgon’s hand slid to his ribs. “He earned it,” he said dourly. “But that last man coming out of the water—”
“The one whose beard I set on fire.”
“I don’t know.” He pushed his hands over his eyes, trying to remember. “That’s what I don’t know. If the man coming back out of the river was the same one who ran into it.”
“Morgan,” she whispered.
“He might have used power; I’m not sure. I don’t know. Maybe I was just seeing what I expected to see.”
“If it was a shape-changer, why didn’t he try to kill you?”
“Maybe he was unsure of me. They haven’t seen me since I disappeared into Erlenstar Mountain. I was that careful, crossing the realm. They wouldn’t expect me to be riding a plow horse in broad daylight down Trader’s Road.”
“But if he suspected—Morgon, you were using power over the horses.”
“It was a simple binding of silence, peace; he wouldn’t have suspected that.”
“He wouldn’t have run from a Great Shout, either. Would he? Unless he left for help. Morgon—” She was trying suddenly to tug him to his feet. “What are we doing sitting here? Waiting for another attack, this time maybe from shape-changers?”
He pulled his arm away from her. “Don’t do that; I’m sore.”
“Would you rather be dead?”
“No.” He brooded a moment, his eyes on the swift, shadowy flow of the river. A thought ran through his mind, chilling him. “Wind Plain. It lies just north of us... where Heureu Ymris is fighting his war against men and half-men... there might be an army of shape-changers across the river.”
“Let’s go. Now.”
“We would only attract attention, riding in the middle of the night. We can move our camp. Then I want to look for whoever it was that shouted.”
They shifted their horses and gear as quietly as they could, away from the river and closer to a cluster of traders’ carts. Then Morgon left Raederle, to search the night for a stranger.
Raederle argued, not wanting him to go alone; he said patiently, “Can you walk across dry leaves so gently they don’t stir? Can you stand so still animals pass you without noticing you? Besides, someone has to guard the horses.”
“What if those men return?”
“What if they do? I’ve seen what you can do to a wraith.”
She sat down under a tree, muttering something. He hesitated, for she looked powerless and vulnerable.
He shaped his sword, keeping the stars hidden under his hand, and laid it in front of her. It disappeared again; he told her softly, “It’s there if you need it, bound under illusion. If you have to touch it, I’ll know.”
He turned, slipped soundlessly into the silence between the trees.
The forest had quieted again after the shout. He drifted from camp to camp around them, looking for someone still awake. But travellers were sleeping peacefully in carts or tents, or curled under blankets beside their firebeds. The moon cast a grey-black haze over the world; trees and bracken were fragmented oddly with chips and streaks of shadow. There was not a breath of wind. Single sprays of leaves, a coil of bramble etched black in the light seemed whittled out of silence. The oak stood as still. He put his hand on one, slid his mind beneath its bark, and sensed its ancient, gnarled dreaming. He moved towards the river, skirted their old camp. Nothing moved. Listening through the river’s voice, his mind gathering its various tones, defining and discarding them one by one, he heard no human voices. He went farther down the river, making little more noise than his own controlled breathing. He eased into the surface he walked on, adjusting his thoughts to the frail weight of leaves, the tension in a dry twig. The sky darkened slowly, until he could scarcely see, and he knew he should turn back. But he lingered at the river’s edge, facing Wind Plain, listening as if he could hear the shards of battle noises in the broken dreams of Heureu’s army.
He turned finally, began to move back upriver. He took three soundless steps and stopped with an animal’s fluid shift from movement into stillness. Someone was standing among the trees with no discernible face or coloring, a broad half-shadow, half-faded, as Morgon was, into the night. Morgon waited, but the shadow did not move. Eventually, as he hovered between decisions on the river bank, it simply merged into the night. Morgon, his mouth dry, and blood beating hollowly into his thoughts, formed himself around a curve of air and flew, with an owl’s silence, a night hunter’s vision, back through the trees to the camp.
He startled Raederle, changing shape in front of her. She reached for the sword; he stilled her, squatting down and taking her hand. He whispered, “Raederle.”
“You’re frightened,” she breathed.
“I don’t know. I still don’t know. We’ll have to be very careful.” He settled beside her, shaped the sword, and held it loosely. He put his other arm around her. “You sleep, I’ll watch.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. I’ll wake you before sunrise. We’ll have to be careful.”
“How?” she asked helplessly, “if they know where to find you: somewhere on Trader’s Road, riding to Lungold?” He did not answer her. He shifted, holding her more closely; she leaned her head against him. He thought, listening to her breathing, that she had fallen asleep. But she spoke after a long silence, and he knew that she, too, had been staring into the night “All right,” she said tightly. “Teach me to change shape.”
He tried to teach her when she woke at dawn. The sun had not yet risen; the forest was cool, silent around them. She listened quietly while he explained the essential simplicity of it, while he woke and snared a falcon from the high trees. The falcon complained piercingly on his wrist; it was hungry and wanted to hunt. He quieted it patiently with his mind. Then he saw the dark, haunted expression that had crept into Raederle’s eyes, and he tossed the falcon free.
“You can’t shape-change unless you want to.”
“I want to,” she protested.
“No, you don’t.”
“Morgon...”
He turned, picked up a saddle and heaved it onto one of the horses. He said, pulling the cinch tight, “It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right,” she said angrily. “You didn’t even try. I asked you to teach me, and you said you would. I’m trying to keep us safe.” She moved to stand in front of him as he lifted the other saddle. “Morgon.”
“It’s all right,” he said soothingly, trying to believe it. “I’ll think of something.”
She did not speak to him for hours. They rode quickly through the early morning, until the easier pace of the traffic made them conspicuous. The road seemed full of animals: sheep, pigs, young white bullocks being driven from isolated farms to Caithnard. They blocked traffic and made the horses skittish. Traders’ carts were irritatingly slow; farmers’ wagons full of turnips and cabbages careened at a slow, drunken pace in front of them at odd moments. The noon heat pounded the road into a dry powder that they breathed and swallowed. The noise and smell of animals seemed inescapable. Raederle’s hair, limp with dust and sweat, kept sliding down, clinging to her face. She stopped her horse once, stuck her hat between her teeth, wound her hair into a knot in the plain view of an old woman driving a pig to market, and jammed her hat back on her head. Morgon, looking at her, checked a comment. Her silence began to wear at him subtly, like the heat and the constant interruptions of their pace. He searched back, wondering if he had been wrong, wondering if she wanted him to speak or keep quiet, wondering if she regretted ever setting foot out of Anuin. He envisioned the journey without her; he would have been halfway across Ymris, taking a crow’s path to Lungold, a silent night flight across the backlands to a strange city, to face Ghisteslwchlohm again. Her silence began to build stone by stone around his memories, forming a night smelling of limestone, broken only by the faint, faroff trickle of water running away from him.
He blinked away the darkness, saw the world again, dust and bedraggled green, sun thumping rhythmically off brass kettles on a peddlar’s cart He wiped sweat off his face. Raederle chipped at the wall of her own silence stiffly.
“What did I do wrong? I was just listening to you.”
He said wearily, “You said yes with your voice and no with your mind. Your mind does the work.”
She was silent again, frowning at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re sorry I came with you.”
He wrenched at his reins. “Will you stop? You’re twisting my heart. It’s you who are sorry.”
She stopped her own horse; he saw the sudden despair in her face. They looked at one another, bewildered, frustrated. A mule brayed behind them, and they were riding again, suddenly, in the familiar, sweltering silence, with no way out of it, seemingly, like a tower without a door.
Then Morgon stopped both their horses abruptly, led them off the road to drink. The noise dwindled; the air was clear and gentle with bird calls. He knelt at the river’s edge and drank of the cold, swift water, then splashed it over his face and hair. Raederle stood beside him, her reflection stiff even in the rippling water. He sank back on his heels, gazing at its blurred lines and colors. He turned his head slowly, looked up at her face.
How long he gazed at her, he did not know, only that her face suddenly shook, and she knelt beside nun, holding him. “How can you look at me like that?”
“I was just remembering,” he said. Her hat fell off; he stroked her hair. “I thought about you so often in the past two years. Now all I have to do is turn my head to find you beside me. It still surprises me sometimes, like a piece of wizardry I’m not used to doing.”
“Morgon, what are we going to do? I’m afraid—I’m so afraid of that power I have.”
“Trust yourself.”
“I can’t. You saw what I did with it at Anuin. I was hardly even myself, then; I was the shadow of another heritage—one that is trying to destroy you.”
He gathered her tightly. “You touched me into shape,” he whispered. He held her quietly a long time. Then he said tentatively, “Can you stand it if I tell you a riddle?”
She shifted to look at him, smiling a little. “Maybe.”
“There was a woman of Herun, a hill woman named Arya, who collected animals. One day she found a tiny black beast she couldn’t name. She brought it into her house, fed it, cared for it. And it grew. And it grew. Until all her other animals fled from the house, and it lived alone with her, dark, enormous, nameless, stalking her from room to room while she lived in terror, unfree, not knowing what to do with it, not daring to challenge it—”
Her hand lifted, came down over his mouth. She dropped her head against him; he felt her heartbeat. She whispered finally, “All right. What did she do?”
“What will you do?”
He listened for her answer, but if she gave him one, the river carried it away before he heard it.
The road was quieter when they returned to it. Late shadows striped it; the sun was hovering in the grip of oak boughs. The dust had settled; most of the carts were well ahead of them. Morgon felt a touch of uneasiness at their isolation. He said nothing to Raederle, but he was relieved when, an hour later, they caught up with most of the traders. Their carts and horses were outside of an inn, an ancient building big as a barn, with stables and a smithy attached to it. From the sound of the laughter rumbling from it, it was well-stocked and its business was good. Morgon led the horses to the trough outside the stable. He longed for beer, but he was wary of showing himself in the inn. The shadows faded on the road as they went back to it; dusk hung like a wraith ahead of them.
They rode into it. The birds stilled; their horses made the only noise on the empty road. A couple of times, Morgon passed gatherings of horse traders camped around vast fires, their livestock penned and guarded for the night. He might have been safe in their vicinity, but he was seized by a sudden reluctance to stop. The voices faded behind them; they pushed deeper into the twilight. Raederle was uneasy, he sensed, but he could not stop. She reached across, touched him finally, and he looked at her. Her face was turned back toward the road behind them, and he reined sharply.
A group of horsemen a mile or so behind them dipped down into a hollow of road. The twilight blurred them as they appeared again, riding no more quickly than the late hour justified. Morgon watched them for a moment, his lips parted. He shook his head wordlessly, answering a question in Raederle’s mind.
“I don’t know...” He turned his horse abruptly off the road into the trees.
They followed the river until it was almost too dark to see. Then they made a camp without a fire, eating bread and dried meat for supper. The river was deep and slow where they stopped, barely murmuring. Morgon could hear clearly through the night; the horsemen never passed them. His thoughts drifted back to the silent figure he had seen among the trees, to the mysterious shout that had come so aptly out of nowhere. He drew his sword then, soundlessly.
Raederle said, “Morgon, you were awake most of last night. I’ll watch.”
“I’m used to it,” he said. But he gave her the sword and stretched out on a blanket. He did not sleep; he lay listening, watching patterns of stars slowly shift across the night. He heard again the faint, hesitant harping coming out of the blackness like a mockery of his memories.
He sat up incredulously. He could see no campfires among the trees; he heard no voices, only the awkward harping. The strings were finely tuned; the harp gave a gentle, mellow tone, but the harpist tripped continually over his notes. Morgon linked his fingers over his eyes.
“Who in Hel’s name...” He rolled to his feet abruptly.
Raederle said softly, “Morgon, there are other harpists in the world.”
“He’s playing in the dark.”
“How do you know it’s a man? Maybe it’s a woman, or a young boy with his first harp, travelling alone to Lungold. If you want to destroy all the harps in the world, you’d better start with the one at your back, because that’s the one that will never give you peace.” He did not answer. She added equivocally to his silence, “Can you bear it if I tell you a riddle?”
He turned, found the dim, moon-struck lines of her, the blade glittering faintly in her hands. “No,” he said. He sat down beside her after a while, his mind worn from straining for the notes of a familiar Ymris ballad the harpist kept missing. “I wish,” he muttered savagely, “I could be haunted by a better harpist.” He took the sword from her. “I’ll watch.”
“Don’t leave me,” she pleaded, reading his mind. He sighed.
“All right.” He angled the sword on his knees, stared down at it while the high moon tempered it to cold fire, until at last the harping stopped and he could think again.
The next night, and the next, and the next, Morgon heard the harping. It came at odd hours of the night, usually when he sat awake listening. He heard it at the far edges of his awareness; Raederle slept undisturbed by it. Sometimes he heard it in his dreams and it woke him, numb and sweating, blinking out of a dream of darkness into darkness, both haunted by the same inescapable harping. He searched for the harpist one night, but he only got lost among the trees. Returning wearily near dawn in the shape of a wolf, he scared the horses, and Raederle flung a circle of fire around them and herself that nearly singed his pelt. They discussed matters furiously for a few moments, until the sight of their weary, flushed, bedraggled faces made them both break into laughter.
The longer they rode, the longer the road seemed to stretch itself, mile after mile through changeless forest. Morgon’s mind milled constantly through scraps of conversations, expressions on faces they passed, noises ahead and behind them, the occasional mute imagery behind the eyes of a bird flying overhead. He grew preoccupied, trying to see ahead and behind them at the same tune, watching for harpists, for horse thieves, for shape-changers. He scarcely heard Raederle when she spoke. When she stopped speaking to him altogether once, he did not realize it for hours. As they grew farther from Caithnard, the traffic lessened; they had isolated miles, now and then, of silence. But the heat was constant, and every stranger appearing behind them after a quiet mile looked suspicious. Except for the harping, though, their nights were peaceful. On the day that Morgon finally began to feel secure, they lost their horses.
They had camped early that day, for they were both exhausted. Morgon left Raederle washing her hair in the river and walked half a mile to an inn they had passed to buy a few supplies and pick up news. The inn was crowded with travellers: traders exchanging gossip; impoverished musicians playing every instrument but a harp for the price of a meal; merchants; farmers; families who looked as if they had fled from their homes, carrying all their possessions on their backs.
The air was heavy with wine-whetted rumors. Morgon, picking a rich, heavy voice at random from a far table, followed it as though he were following an instrument’s voice. “Twenty years,” the man said. “For twenty years I lived across from it. I sold fine cloth and furs from all parts of the realm in my shop, and I never saw so much as a shadow out of place in the ruins of the ancient school. Then, late one night while I was checking my accounts, I saw lights here and there in the broken windows. No man ever walks across those grounds, not even for the wealth of it: the place reeks of disaster. So that was enough for me. I took every bolt of cloth out of that shop, left messages for my buyers to bring what they had for me to Caithnard, and I fled. If there is going to be another wizard’s war in that city, I intend to be on the other side of the realm.”
“In Caithnard?” another merchant answered incredulously. “With half the Ymris coastline to the north plagued with war? At least Lungold has wizards in it. Caithnard has nothing but fishwives and scholars. There’s as much defense in a dead fish as in a book. I’ve left Caithnard. I’m heading for the backlands; I might come out again in fifty years.”
Morgon let the voices fade back into the noise. He found the innkeeper hovering at his shoulder. “Lord?” he said briskly, and Morgon ordered beer. It was from Hed, and it washed a hundred miles of road dust down his throat. He dipped sporadically into other conversations; one word from a sour-looking trader caught his attention.
“It’s that cursed war in Ymris. Half the farmers in Ruhn had their horses drafted into war—the descendants of Ruhn battle horses bred to the plow. The king is holding his own on Wind Plain, but he’s paying a bloody price for stalemate. His warriors buy what horses they are offered—so do the farmers. No one asks any more where the horses come from. I’ve had an armed guard around my wagon teams every night since I left Caithnard.”
Morgon set down an empty glass, worried suddenly about Raederle alone with their horses. A trader beside him asked a friendly question; he grunted a reply. He was about to leave when his own name caught his ear.
“Morgon of Hed? I heard a rumor that he was in Caithnard, disguised as a student. He vanished before the Masters even recognized him.”
Morgon glanced around. A group of musicians had congregated around a jug of wine they were sharing. “He was in Anuin,” a piper said, wiping spit out of his instrument. He looked at the silent faces around him. “You haven’t heard that tale? He caught up with the High One’s harpist finally in Anuin, in the king’s own hall—”
“The High One’s harpist,” a gangling young man with a collection of small drums hanging about him said bitterly. “And what was the High One doing through all this? A man loses his land-rule, betrayed in the High One’s name by a harpist who lied to every king in the realm, and the High One won’t lift a finger—if he has one—to give him justice.”
“If you ask me,” a singer said abruptly, “the High One is nothing more than a lie. Invented by the Founder of Lungold.”
There was a short silence. The singer blinked a little nervously at his own words, as if the High One might be standing at his shoulder sipping beer and listening. Another singer growled, “Nobody asked. Shut up, all of you. I want to hear what happened at Anuin.”
Morgon turned abruptly. A hand stopped him. The trader who had spoken to him said slowly, perplexedly, “I know you. Your name hangs at the edge of my memory, I know it... Something to do with rain...”
Morgon recognized him: the trader he had talked to long ago on a rainy autumn day in Hlurle, after he had ridden out of the Herun hills. He said brusquely, “I don’t know what in Hel’s name you’re talking about. It hasn’t rained for weeks. Do you want to keep your hand, or do I take it with me?”
“Lords, Lords,” the innkeeper murmured. “No violence in my inn.” The trader took two beers off his tray, set one down hi front of Morgon. “No offense.” He was still puzzled, searching Morgon’s face. “Talk with me a little. I haven’t been home to Kraal in months, and I need some idle—”
Morgon jerked out of his hold. His elbow hit the beer, splashing it across the table into the lap of a horse trader, who rose, cursing. Something in Morgon’s face, of power or despair, quelled his first impulse. “That’s no way to treat fine beer,” he said darkly. “Or the offer of it. How have you managed to live as long as you have, picking quarrels out of thin air?”
“I mind my own business,” Morgon said curtly. He tossed a coin on the table and went back into the dusk. His own rudeness lay like a bad taste in his mouth. Memories stirred up by the singers hovered in the back of his mind; light gathering on his sword blade, the harpist’s face turning upward to meet it. He walked quickly through the trees, cursing the length of the road, the dust on it, the stars on his face, and all the shadows of memory he could not outrun.
He nearly walked through their camp before he recognized it. He stopped, bewildered. Raederle and both the horses were gone. For a second he wondered if something he had done had offended her so badly that she decided to ride both horses back to Anuin. The packs and saddles lay where he had left them; there was no sign of a struggle, no flurries of dead leaves or singed oakroots. Then he heard her call him and saw her stumbling across a shallow section of the river.
There were tears on her face. “Morgon, I was beside the river getting water when two men rode past me. They nearly ran me down. I was so furious I didn’t even realize they were riding our horses until they reached the far side. So I—”
“You ran after them?” he said incredulously. “I thought they might slow down, through the trees. But they started to gallop. I’m sorry.”
“They’ll get a good price for them in Ymris,” Morgon said grimly.
“Morgon, they’re not a mile away. You could get them back easily.”
He hesitated, looking at her angry, tired face. Then he turned away from her, picked up their food pack. “Heureu’s army needs them more than we do.”
He felt her sudden silence at his back like something tangible. He opened the pack and cursed himself again, realizing he had forgotten to buy their supplies.
She said softly, “Are you telling me we are going to walk all the way to Lungold?”
“If you want“ His fingers were shaking slightly on the pack ties.
He heard her move finally. She went back down to the river to get their water skin. She said when she returned, her voice inflectionless, “Did you bring wine?”
“I forgot it. I forgot everything.” He turned then, blazing into argument before she could speak. “And I can’t go back. Not without getting into a tavern brawl.”
“Did I ask you to? I wasn’t even going to ask.” She dropped down beside the fire, tossed a twig in it. “I lost the horses, you forgot the food. You didn’t blame me.” She dropped her face suddenly against her knees. “Morgon,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I will crawl to Lungold before I change shape.”
He stood gazing down at her. He turned, paced a half-circle around the fire, and stared into the gnarled, haggard eye of a tree bole. He tilted his face against it, felt it gazing into him, at all the twisted origins of his own power. For a moment doubt bit into him, that he was wrong to demand such a thing of her, that even his own power, wrested out of himself by such dark circumstances, was suspect. The uncertainty died slowly, leaving, as always, the one thing he grasped with any certainty: the fragile, imperative structure of riddlery.
“You can’t run from yourself.”
“You are running. Maybe not from yourself, but from the riddle at your back that you never face.”
He lifted his head wearily, looked at her. He moved after a moment, stirred the lagging fire. “I’ll catch some fish. Tomorrow morning, I’ll go back to the inn, get what we need. Maybe I can sell the saddles there. We can use the money. It’s a long walk to Lungold.”
They scarcely spoke at all the next day. The summer heat poured down at them, even when they walked among the trees beside the road. Morgon carried both their packs. He had not realized until then how heavy they were. The straps wore at his shoulders as their quarrelling chafed at his mind. Raederle offered to carry one, but he refused with something kin to anger, and she did not suggest it again. At noon, they ate with their feet in the river. The cold water soothed them, and they spoke a little. The road in the afternoon was fairly quiet; they could hear the creak of cartwheels long before the carts came into view. But the heat was intense, almost unbearable. Finally they gave up, trudged along the rough river bank until twilight.
They found a place to camp, then. Morgon left Raederle sitting with her feet in the river and went hunting in falcon-shape. He killed a hare dreaming in the last rays of the sun on a meadow. Returning, he found Raederle where he had left her. He cleaned the hare, hung it on a spit of green wood above the fire. He watched Raederle; she sat staring down at the water, not moving. He said her name finally.
She got up, stumbling a little on the bank. She joined him slowly, sitting down close to the fire, drawing her damp skirt tightly under her feet in the firelight, he took a good look at her, forgetting to turn the spit. Her face was very still; there were tiny lines of pain under her eyes. He drew a sudden breath; her eyes met his, holding a clear and definite warning. But the worry in him blazed out in spite of her.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in that much pain? Let me see your feet.”
“Leave me alone!” The fierceness in her voice startled him. She was huddled over herself. “I told you I would walk to Lungold, and I will.”
“How?” He stood up, anger at himself beating in his throat. “I’ll find a horse for you.”
“With what? We couldn’t sell the saddles.”
“I’ll change into one. You can ride on my back.”
“No.” Her voice was shaken with the same, strange anger. “You will not. I’m not going to ride you all the way to Lungold. I said I will walk.”
“You can hardly walk ten feet!”
“I’ll do it anyway. If you don’t turn the spit, you’ll burn our supper.”
He did not move; she leaned forward and turned it herself. Her hand was trembling. As the lights and shadows melted over her, he wondered suddenly if he knew her at all. He pleaded, “Raederle, what in Hel’s name will you do? You can’t walk like that. You won’t ride; you won’t change shape. Do you want to go back to Anuin?”
“No.” Her voice flinched on the word, as if he had hurt her. “Maybe I’m no good with riddles, but I do keep vows.”
“How much of your honor can you place in Ylon’s name when you give him and his heritage nothing but hatred?”
She bent again, to turn the spit, he thought, but instead she grasped a handful of fire. “He was King of An, once. There is some honor in that.” Her voice was shaking badly. She shaped a wedge of fire, spun thread-thin strings down from it through her fingers. “I swore in his name I would never let you leave me.” He realized suddenly what she was making. She finished it, held it out to him: a harp made of fire, eating at the darkness around her hand. “You’re the riddler. If you have such faith in riddles, you show me. You can’t even face your own hatred, and you give me riddles to answer. There’s a name for a man like you.”
“Fool,” he said without touching the harp. He watched the light leap soundlessly down the strings. “At least I know my name.”
“You are the Star-Bearer. Why can’t you leave me alone to make my own choices? What I am doesn’t matter.”
He stared at her over the flaming harp. Something he said or thought without realizing it snapped the harp to pieces in her hand. He reached across the fire, gripped her shoulders, and pulled her to her feet.
“How can you say that to me? What in Hel’s name are you afraid of?”
“Morgon—”
“You’re not going to change shape into something neither of us will recognize!”
“Morgon.” She was shaking him suddenly, trying to make him see. “Do I have to say it? I’m not running from something I hate, but something I want. The power of that bastard heritage. I want it. The power eating across Ymris, trying to destroy the realm and you—I am drawn to it. Bound to it. And I love you. The riddler. The Master. The man who must fight everything of that heritage. You keep asking me for things you will only hate.”
He whispered, “No.”
“The land-rulers, the wizards at Lungold—how can I face them? How can I tell them I am kin to your enemies? How will they ever trust me? How can I trust myself, wanting such terrible power—”
“Raederle.” He lifted one hand stiffly, touched her face, brushing at the fire and tears on it, trying to see clearly. But the uneasy shadows loomed across it, molding her out of flame and darkness, someone he had not quite seen before and could not quite see now. Something was eluding him, vanishing as he touched it. “I never asked anything from you but truth.”
“You never knew what you were asking—”
“I never do know. I just ask.” The fire was shaping itself between them into the answer his mind grasped at. He saw it suddenly, and he saw her again, at the same time, the woman men had died for in Peven’s tower, who had shaped her mind to fire, who loved him and argued with him and was drawn to a power that might destroy him. For a moment pieces of the riddle struggled against each other in his mind. Then they slid together, and he saw the faces of shape-changers he knew: Eriel, the harpist Corrig, whom he had killed, the shape-changers in Isig he had killed. A chill of fear and wonder brushed through him. “If you see... if you see something of value in them,” he whispered, “then what in Hel’s name are they?”
She was silent, gripping him, her face gone still, fiery with tears. “I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I didn’t. There’s nothing of value in their power.”
“Yes, there is. You sense it in you. That’s what you want.”
“Morgon—”
“Either you change shape in my mind, or they change shape. You, I know.”
She let go of him slowly. She was uncertain. He held her, wondering what words would make her trust him. Slowly he realized what argument she would hear.
He loosed her and touched the harp into shape at his back. It filled his hands like a memory. He sat down while she watched him at the edge of the fire, not moving, not speaking. The stars on the harp’s face, enigmatic, answerless, met his gaze. Then he turned it and began to play. For a while he thought of little but her, a shadowy figure at the edge of the light, drawn to his harping. His fingers remembered rhythms, patterns, drew hesitant fragments of song out of a year of silence. The ancient, flawless voice of the harp, responsive to his power, touched him again with unexpected wonder. She drew closer to him as he played, until step by step she had reached his side. She stood still again. With the fire behind her, he could not see her face.
A harpist echoed him in the shadows of his memory. The more he played to drown the memory, the more it haunted him: a distant, skilled, beautiful harping, coming from beyond blackness, beyond the smell of water that went nowhere and had gone nowhere for thousands of years. The fire beyond Raederle grew small, a point of light that went farther and farther away from him, until the blackness came down over his eyes like a hand. A voice startled him, echoing over stones, fading away into harsh cadences. He never saw the face. Reaching out in the darkness, he touched only stone. The voice was always unexpected, no matter how hard he listened for a footstep. He grew to listen constantly, lying on stone, his muscles tensed with waiting. With the voice came mind-work he could not fight, pain when he fought with his fists, endless questions he would not answer out of a desperate fury, until suddenly his fury turned to terror as he felt the fragile, complex instincts for land-law begin to die in him. He heard his own voice answering, rising a little, answering, rising, no longer able to answer... He heard harping.
His hands had stopped. The bones of his face ached against the harpwood. Raederle sat close to him, her arm around his shoulders. The harping still sounded raggedly through his mind. He stirred stiffly away from it. It would not stop. Raederle’s head turned; he realized, the blood shocking through him, that she was healing it, too.
Then he recognized the familiar, hesitant harping. He stood up, his face white, frozen, and caught a brand out of the fire. Raederle said his name; he could not answer. She tried to follow him, barefoot, limping through the bracken, but he would not wait. He tracked the harpist through the trees, across the road to the other side, where he startled a trader sleeping under his cart; through brambles and underbrush, while the harping grew louder and seemed to circle him. The torch, flaring over dead leaves, lit a figure finally, sitting under a tree, bowed over his harp. Morgon stopped, breathing jerkily, words, questions, curses piling into his throat. The harpist lifted his face slowly to the light.
Morgon’s breath stopped. There was not a sound anywhere in the black night beyond the torchlight The harpist, staring back at Morgon, still played softly, awkwardly, his hands gnarled like oak root, twisted beyond all use.