the first eleven chapters

1

Morgon of Hed met the High One’s harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season’s exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at the long, nearly deserted tables to forage whatever was left of breakfast. The Prince of Hed, who was recovering slowly from the effects of loading two carts of beer for trading the evening before, ran a reddened eye over the tables and shouted for his sister.

“But, Morgon,” said Harl Stone, one of his farmers, who had a shock of hair grey as a grindstone and a body like a sack of grain. “What about the white bull from An you said you wanted? The wine can wait—“

“What,” Morgon said, “about the grain still in Wyndon Amory’s storage barn in east Hed? Someone has to bring it to Tol for the traders. Why doesn’t anything ever get done around here?”

“We loaded the beer,” his brother Eliard, clear-eyed and malicious reminded him.

“Thank you. Where is Tristan? Tristan!”

“What!” Tristan of Hed said irritably behind him, holding the ends of her dark, unfinished braids in her fists.

“Get the wine now and the bull next spring,” Cannon Master, who had grown up with Morgon, suggested briskly. “We’re sadly low on Herun wine; we’ve barely enough to make it through winter.”

Eliard broke in, gazing at Tristan. “I wish I had nothing better to do than sit around all morning braiding my hair and washing my face in buttermilk.”

“At least I wash. You smell like beer. You all do. And who tracked mud all over the floor?”

They looked down at their feet. A year ago Tristan had been a thin, brown reed of a girl, prone to walking field walls barefoot and whistling through her front teeth. Now she spent much of her time scowling at her face in mirrors and at anyone in range beyond them. She transferred her scowl from Eliard to Morgon.

“What were you bellowing at me for?”

The Prince of Hed closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bellow. I simply want you to clear the tables, lay the cloths, reset them, fill pitchers of milk and wine, have them fix platters of meat, cheese, fruit and vegetables in the kitchen, braid your hair, put your shoes on and get the mud off the floor. The traders are coming.”

“Oh, Morgon ... ” Tristan wailed. Morgon turned to Eliard.

“And you ride to east Hed and tell Wyndon to get his grain to Tol.”

“Oh, Morgon. That’s a day’s ride!”

“I know. So go.”

They stood unmoving, their faces flushed, while Morgon’s farmers looked on in unabashed amusement. They were not alike, the three children of Athol of Hed and Spring Oakland. Tristan, with her flighty black hair and small, triangular face, favored their mother. Eliard, two years younger than Morgon, had Athol’s broad shoulders and big bones, and his fair, feathery hair. Morgon, with his hair and eyes the color of light beer, bore the stamp of their grandmother, whom the old men remembered as a slender, proud woman from south Hed: Lathe Wold’s daughter. She had had a trick of looking at people the way Morgon was gazing at Eliard, remotely, like a fox glancing up from a pile of chicken feathers. Eliard puffed his cheeks like a bellows and sighed.

“If I had a horse from An, I could be there and back again by supper.”

“I’ll go,” said Cannon Master. There was a touch of color on his face.

“I’ll go,” Eliard said.

“No. I want ... I haven’t seen Arin Amory for a while. I’ll go.” He glanced at Morgon.

“I don’t care,” Morgon said. “Just don’t forget why you’re going. Eliard, you help with the loading at Tol. Grim, I’ll need you with me to barter—the last time I did it alone, I nearly traded three plow horses for a harp with no strings.”

“If you get a harp,” Eliard interrupted, “I want a horse from An.”

“And I have to have some cloth from Herun,” Tristan said. “Morgon, I have to have it. Orange cloth. Also I need thin needles and a pair of shoes from Isig, and some silver buttons, and—“

“What,” Morgon demanded, “do you think grows in our fields?”

“I know what grows in our fields. I also know what I’ve been sweeping around under your bed for six months. I think you should either wear it or sell it. The dust is so thick on it you can’t even see the colors of the jewels.”

There was silence, brief and unexpected, in the hall. Tristan stood with her arms folded, the ends of her braids coming undone. Her chin was raised challengingly, but there was a hint of uncertainty in her eyes as she faced Morgon. Eliard’s mouth was open. He closed it with a click of teeth.

“What jewels?”

“It’s a crown,” Tristan said. “I saw one in a picture in a book of Morgon’s. Kings wear them.”

“I know what a crown is.” He looked at Morgon, awed. “What on earth did you trade for that? Half of Hed?”

“I never knew you wanted a crown,” Cannon Master said wonderingly. “Your father never had one. Your grandfather never had one. Your—“

“Cannon,” Morgon said. He raised his hands, dropped the heels of them over his eyes. The blood was high in his face. “Kern had one.”

“Who?”

“Kern of Hed. He would be our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. No. One more great. It was made of silver, with a green jewel in it shaped like a cabbage. He traded it one day for twenty barrels of Herun wine, thereby instigating—“

“Don’t change the subject,” Eliard said sharply. “Where did you get it? Did you trade for it? Or did you ... ” He stopped. Morgon lifted his hands from his eyes.

“Did I what?”

“Nothing. Stop looking at me like that. You’re trying to change the subject again. You traded for it, or you stole it, or you murdered someone for it—“

“Now, then—“ Grim Oakland, Morgon’s portly overseer, said placatingly.

“Or you just found it laying in the corncrib one day, like a dead rat. Which?”

“I did not murder anyone!” Morgon shouted. The clink of pots from the kitchen stopped abruptly. He lowered his voice, went on tartly, “What are you accusing me of?”

“I didn’t—“

“I did not harm anyone to get that crown; I did not trade anything that doesn’t belong to me for it; I did not steal it—“

“I wasn’t—“

“It belongs to me by right. What right, you have not touched on yet. You asked a riddle and tried to answer it; you are wrong four times. If I bumbled through riddles like that, I wouldn’t be here talking to you now. I am going down to welcome the traders at Tol. When you decide to do some work this morning, you might join me.”

He turned. He got as far as the front steps when Eliard, the blood mounting to his face, broke away from the transfixed group, moved across the room with a speed belied by his size, threw his arms around Morgon and brought him off the steps face down in the dirt.

The chickens and geese scattered, squawking indignantly. The farmers, the small boy from Tol, the woman who cooked, and the girl who washed pots jammed the door at once, clucking.

Morgon, groping for the breath the smack of the earth had knocked out of him, lay still while Eliard said between his teeth, “Can’t you answer a simple question? What do you mean you wouldn’t be talking to me now? Morgon, what did you do for that crown? Where did you get it? What did you do? I swear I’ll—“

Morgon lifted his head dizzily. “I got it in a tower.” He twisted suddenly, throwing Eliard off balance into one of Tristan’s rosebushes.

The battle was brief and engrossing. Morgon’s farmers, who until the previous spring had been under Athol’s placid, efficient rule, stared half-shocked, half-grinning as the Prince of Hed was sent rolling across a mud puddle, staggered to his feet, and, head lowered like a bull, launched himself at his brother. Eliard Shook himself free and countered with a swing of his fist that, connecting, sounded in the still air like the distant thunk of ax into wood. Morgon dropped like a sack of grain. Then Eliard fell to his knees beside the prone body and said, aghast, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Morgon, did I hurt you?”

And Tristan, mute and furious, dumped a bucket of milk over their heads.

There was an odd explosion of whimpering from the porch as Cannon Master sat down on a step and buried his face in his knees. Eliard looked down at his muddy, sodden tunic. He brushed futilely at it.

“Now look what you did,” he said plaintively. “Morgon?”

“You squashed my rosebush,” Tristan said. “Look what you did to Morgon in front of everybody.” She sat down beside Morgon on the wet ground. Her face had lost its habitual scowl, She wiped Morgon’s face with her apron. Morgon blinked dazedly, his eyelashes beaded with milk. Eliard sat back on his haunches.

“Morgon, I’m sorry. But don’t think you can evade the issue this way.”

Morgon moved a hand cautiously after a moment, touched his mouth. “What’s--? What was the issue?” he asked huskily.

“Never mind,” Tristan said. “It’s hardly something to brawl about.”

“What is this all over me?”

“Milk.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliard said again. He put a coaxing hand under Morgon’s shoulder, but Morgon shook his head.

“Just let me lie here for a moment. Why did you hit me like that? First you accuse me of murder and then you hit me and pour milk all over me. It’s sour. Sour milk. You poured sour milk all over—“

“I did,” Tristan said. “It was milk for the pigs. You threw Eliard into my rosebush.” She touched Morgon’s mouth again with her apron. “In front of everyone. I’m so humiliated.”

“What did I do?” Morgon said. Eliard sighed, nursing a tender spot over his ribs.

“You made me lose my temper, speaking to me like that. You’re slippery as a fish, but I grasped one thing. Last spring you got a crown you shouldn’t have. You said that if you answered riddles as badly as I do, you wouldn’t be here now. I want to know why. Why?”

Morgon was silent. He sat up after a moment, drawing his knees up, and dropped his head against them.

“Tristan, why did you pick today of all days to bring that up?”

“Go ahead, blame me,” Tristan said without rancor. “Here I am running around with patches at my elbows, and you with pearls and jewels under your bed.”

“You wouldn’t have patches if you’d tell Narly Stone to make you some clothes that fit. You’re growing, that’s all—“

“Will you stop changing the subject!”

Morgon lifted his head. “Stop shouting.” He glanced over Eliard’s shoulder at the row of motionless, fascinated figures, and sighed. He slid his hands over his face, up through his hair. “I won that crown in a riddle-game I played in An with a ghost.”

“Oh.” Eliard’s voice rose again sharply. “A what?”

“The wraith of Peven, Lord of Aum. That crown under my bed is the crown of the Kings of Aum. They were conquered by Oen of An six hundred years ago. Peven is five hundred years old. He lives bound in his tower by Oen and the Kings of An.”

“What did he look like?” Tristan asked. Her voice was hushed. Morgon shrugged slightly; his eyes were hidden from them.

“An old man. An old lord with the answers to a thousand riddles in his eyes. He had a standing wager going that no one could win a riddle-game with him. So I sailed over with the traders and challenged him. He said great lords of Aum, An and Hel—the three portions of An—and even riddle-masters from Caithnard had challenged him to a game, but never a farmer from Hed. I told him I read a lot. Then we played the game. And I won. So I brought the crown home and put it under my bed until I could decide what to do with it. Now, was that worth all the shouting?”

“He forfeited his crown to you when he lost,” Eliard said evenly. “What would you have forfeited if you had lost?”

Morgon felt his split mouth gingerly. His eyes strayed to the fields beyond Eliard’s back. “Well,” he said finally. “You see, I had to win.”

Eliard stood up abruptly. He took two strides away from Morgon, his hands clenched. Then he turned around and came back and squatted down again.

“You fool.”

“Don’t start another fight,” Tristan begged.

“I’m not a fool,” Morgon said. “I won the game, didn’t I?” His face was still, his eyes distant, steady on Eliard’s face. “Kern of Hed, the Prince with the cabbage on his crown—“

“Don’t change—“

“I’m not. Kern of Hed, in addition to being the only Prince of Hed besides me to own a crown, had the dubious fortune of being pursued one day by a Thing without a name. Perhaps it was the effects of Herun wine. The Thing called his name over and over. He ran from it, going into his house of seven rooms and seven doors, and locking each door behind him until he came to the inmost chamber, where he could run no farther. And he heard the sound of one door after another being torn open, and his name called each time. He counted six doors opened, his name called six times. Then, outside the seventh door, his name was called again; but the Thing did not touch the door. He waited in despair for it to enter, but it did not. Then he grew impatient, longing for it to enter, but it did not. Finally he reached out, opened the door himself. The Thing was gone. And he was left to wonder, all the days of his life, what it was that had called out to him.”

He stopped. Eliard said in spite of himself, “Well, what was it?”

“Kern didn’t open the door. That is the only riddle to come out of Hed. The stricture, according to the Riddle-Masters at Caithnard is this: Answer the unanswered riddle. So I do.”

“It’s not your business! Your business is farming, not risking your life in a stupid riddle-game with a ghost for a crown that’s worthless because you keep it hidden under your bed. Did you think of us, then? Did you go before or after they died? Before or after?”

“After,” Tristan said.

Eliard’s fist splashed down in a pool of milk. “I knew it.”

“I came back.”

“Suppose you hadn’t?”

“I came back! Why can’t you try to understand, instead of thinking as though your brains are made of oak. Athol’s son, with his hair and eyes and vision—“

“No!” Tristan said sharply. Eliard’s fist, raised and knotted, halted in midair. Morgon dropped his face again against his knees. Eliard shut his eyes.

“Why do you think I’m so angry?” he whispered.

“I know.”

“Do you? Even—even after six months, I still expect to hear her voice unexpectedly, or see him coming out of the barn, or in from the fields at dusk. And you? How will I know, now, that when you leave Hed, you’ll come back? You could have died in that tower for the sake of a stupid crown and left us watching for the ghost of you, too. Swear you’ll never do anything like that again.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

Morgon raised his head, looked at Eliard. “How can I make one promise to you and another to myself? But I swear this: I will always come back.”

“How can you—“

“I swear it.”

Eliard stared down at the mud. “It’s because he let you go to that college. That’s where your priorities were confused.”

“I suppose so,” Morgon said wearily. He glanced up at the sun. “Half the morning gone, and here we sit in the muck with sour milk drying in our hair. Why did you wait so long to ask me about the crown?” he asked Tristan. “That’s not like you.”

She shrugged a little, her face averted. “I saw your face, the day you came back with it. What are you going to do with it?”

He moved a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know. I suppose I should do something with it.”

“Well, I have a few suggestions.”

“I thought you might.” He stood up stiffly and caught sight of Cannon sitting on the porch. “I thought you were going to east Hed,” he said pointedly.

“I’m going. I’m going.” Cannon said cheerfully. “Wyndon Amory would never have forgiven me if I hadn’t seen the end of this. Have you still got all your teeth?”

“I think so.” The group at the doorway began shifting, breaking up under his gaze. He reached down, pulled Eliard to his feet. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing that isn’t ordinarily the matter when you roll over a rosebush. I don’t know if I have a clean tunic.”

“You do,” Tristan said. “I washed your clothes yesterday. The house is a mess; you—we’re a mess, and the traders are coming, which means all the women will be coming over to look at their wares in our dirty hall. I’ll die of shame.”

“You never used to care,” Eliard commented. “Now you’re always complaining. You used to run around with mud on your feet and dog hair all over your skirt.”

“That,” Tristan said icily, “was when there was someone to take care of the house. Now there isn’t. I do try.” She whirled away, the hens fluttering out of her path. Eliard felt at his stiff hair, sighing.

“My brains are made of oak. If you pump for me, I’ll pump for you.”

They stripped and washed behind the house. Then Eliard went to Grim Oakland’s farm to help load the grain in his storage barn onto carts, and Morgon walked through the stubbled fields to the shore road that led to Tol.

The three trade-ships, their sails furled, had just docked. A ramp boomed down from one of them as Morgon stepped onto the wharf; he watched a horse being led down by a sailor, a beautiful, long-legged mare bred in An, jet black, with a bridle that flashed minute flecks of jewels in the sun. Then traders hailed him from the prow of a ship, and he went to meet them as they disembarked.

They were a vivid group, some dressed in the long, thin, orange and red coats from Herun, others in full robes from An, or the close-fitting, lavishly embroidered tunics from Ymris. They wore rings and chains from Isig, fur-lined caps from Osterland, which they gave away, together with bone-handled knives and copper brooches, to the children clustering shyly to watch. The ships carried, among other things, iron from Isig and Herun wine.

Grim Oakland came a few minutes later, as Morgon was inspecting the wine.

“I’d need a drink, too, after that,” he commented. Morgon started to smile and changed his mind. “Is the gram loaded?”

“Nearly. Harl Stone is bringing the wool and skins down from your barn. You’d be wise to take all the metal they carry.”

Morgon nodded, his eyes straying again to the black horse tethered to the dock rail. A sailor lugged a saddle down from the ship, balanced it on the rail next to the horse. Morgon gestured with his cup.

“Who owns that mare? It looks like someone came with the traders. Or else Eliard traded Akren for her secretly.”

“I don’t know,” Grim said, his red-grey brows peaked. “Lad, it’s none of my business, but you shouldn’t let your private inclinations interfere with the duty you were born to.”

Morgon sipped wine. “They don’t interfere.”

“It would be a grave interference if you were dead.”

He shrugged. “There’s Eliard.”

Grim heaved a sigh. “I told your father not to send you to that school. It addled your thinking. But no. He wouldn’t listen. I told him it was wrong to let you go away from Hed so long; it’s never been done, no good would come of it. And I was right. No good has come. You running off to a strange land, playing riddle-games with—with a man who should have the decency to stay put once he’s dead and buried in the earth. It’s not good. It’s not—it’s not the way a land-ruler of Hed should want to behave. It’s not done.”

Morgon held the cool metal of the cup against his cracked mouth. “Peven couldn’t help wandering around after he was dead. He killed seven of his sons with misused wizardry, and then himself out of sorrow and shame. He couldn’t rest in the ground. He told me that after so many years he had a hard time remembering all his sons’ names. That worried him. I learned their names at Caithnard, so I could tell him. It cheered him up.”

Grim’s face was red as a turkey wattle. “It’s indecent,” he snapped. He moved away, lifted the lid on a chest full of bars of iron, and slammed it shut again. A trader spoke at Morgon’s elbow.

“You are pleased with the wine, Lord?”

Morgon turned, nodding. The trader ported a thin, leaf-green coat from Herun, a cap of white mink, and a harp of black wood slung by a strap of white leather over one shoulder. Morgon said, “Whose horse? Where did you get that harp?”

The trader grinned, sliding it from his shoulder. “Remembering how your lordship likes harps, I found this one for you in An. It was the harp of the harpist of Lord Col of Hel. It is quite old, but see how beautifully preserved.”

Morgon slid his hands down the fine, carved, pieces. He brushed the strings with his fingers, then plucked one softly. “What would I do with all those strings?” he murmured. “There must be over thirty.”

“Do you like it? Keep it with you awhile; play it.”

“I can’t possibly ... ”

The trader silenced him with a flick of hand. “How can you set a value to such a harp? Take it, become acquainted with it; there is no need to make a decision now.” He slipped the strap over Morgon’s head. “If you like it, no doubt we can come to a satisfactory arrangement ... ”

“No doubt.” He caught Grim Oakland’s eye and blushed.

He carried the harp with him to the trade-hall at Tol, where the traders inspected his beer, grain and wool, ate cheese and fruit, and bartered for an hour with him while Grim Oakland stood watchfully at his elbow. Empty carts were brought to the dock then, to load metal, casks of wine, and blocks of salt from the beds above Caithnard. Plow horses to be taken to Herun and An were penned near the dock for loading; the traders began to tally the gram sacks and kegs of beer. Wyndon Amory’s carts lumbered down the coast road, unexpectedly, near noon.

Cannon Master, riding in the back of one, leaped down and said to Morgon, “Wyndon sent them out yesterday; one of them lost a wheel so the drivers fixed it at Sil Wold’s farm and stayed the night. I met them coming. Did they talk you into a harp?”

“Almost. Listen to it.”

“Morgon, you know I’m as musical as a tin bucket. Your mouth looks like a squashed plum.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Morgon pleaded. “Will you and Eliard take the traders to Akren? They’re about finished here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Buy a horse. And a pair of shoes.”

Cannon’s brows rose. “And a harp?”

“Maybe. Yes.”

He chuckled. “Good. I’ll take Eliard away for you.”

Morgon wandered down into the belly of a ship where half a dozen horses from An were stabled for the journey. He studied them while men stacked sacks of grain beyond him in the shadowy hold. A trader found him there; they talked awhile, Morgon running his fingers down the sleek neck of a stallion the color of polished wood. He emerged finally, drawing deep breaths of clean air. Most of the carts were gone; the sailors were drifting toward the trade-hall to eat. The sea nuzzled the ships, swirled white around the massive trunks of pine supporting the docks. He went to the end of the pier and sat down. In the distance, the fishing boats from Tol rose and dipped like ducks in the water; far beyond them, a dark thread along the horizon, lay the vast, sprawling mainland, the realm of the High One.

He set the harp on his knee and played a harvest-song whose brisk, even rhythm kept time to the sweep of a scythe. A fragment of a Ymris ballad teased his memory; he was picking it out haltingly from the strings when a shadow fell over his hands. He looked up.

A man he had never seen before, neither trader nor sailor, stood beside him. He was quietly dressed; the fine cloth and color of his blue-black tunic, the heavy chain of linked, stamped squares of silver on his breast were bewildering. His face was lean, fine-bone, neither young nor old; his hair-was a loose cap of silver.

“Morgon of Hed?”

“Yes.”

“I am Deth, the High One’s harpist.”

Morgon swallowed. He shifted to rise, but the harpist forestalled him, squatting down to look at the harp.

“Uon,” he said, showing Morgon a name half-hidden in a whorl of design. “He was a harpmaker in Hel three centuries ago. There are only five of his harps in existence.”

“The trader said it belonged to the harpist of Lord Col. Did you come—? You must have come with them. Is that your horse? Why didn’t you tell me before that you were here?”

“You were busy; I preferred to wait. The High One instructed me last spring to come to Hed, to express his sorrow over the deaths of Athol and Spring. But I was trapped in Isig by a stubborn winter, delayed in Ymris by a seige of Caerweddin, and requested, just as I was about to embark from Caithnard, in an urgent message from Mathom of An, to get to Anuin. I’m sorry to have come so late.”

“I remember your name,” Morgon said slowly. “My father used to say Deth played at his wedding.” He stopped, listening to his words; a shudder weltered out of him unexpectedly. “I’m sorry. He thought it was funny. He loved your harping. I would like to hear you play.”

The harpist settled himself on the pier and picked up Uon’s harp. “What would you like to hear?”

Morgon felt his mouth pulled awry in spite of himself by a smile. “Play ... let me think. Would you play what I was trying to play?”

“’The Lament for Belu and Bilo.’” Deth tuned a string softly and began the ancient ballad.

Belu so fair was born with the dark

Bilo, the dark; death bound them also.

Mourn Belu, fine ladies,

Mourn Bilo.

His fingers drew the tale faultlessly from the flashing, close-set strings. Morgon listened motionlessly, his eyes on the smooth, detached face. The skilled hands, the fine voice worn to precision, traced the path of Bilo, helpless in its turbulence, the death he left in his wake, the death that trailed him, that rode behind Belu on his horse, ran at his horse’s side like a hound.

Belu so fair followed the dark

Bilo; death followed them so;

Death cried to Bilo out of Belu’s voice,

to Belu, out of Bilo ...

The long, surfeited sigh of the tide broke the silence of their deaths. Morgon stirred. He put his hand on the dark, carved face of the harp.

“If I could make that sound come out of that harp, I would sell my name for it and go nameless.”

Deth smiled. “That’s too high a price to pay even for one of Uon’s harps. What are the traders asking for it?”

He shrugged. “They’ll take what I’m offering for it.”

“You want it that badly?”

Morgon looked at him. “I would sell my name for it, but not the grain my farmers have scorched their backs harvesting, or the horses they have raised and gentled. What I will offer belongs only to me.”

“There’s no need to justify yourself to me,” the harpist said mildly. Morgon’s mouth crooked; he touched it absently.

“I’m sorry. I spent half the morning justifying myself.”

“For what?”

His eyes dropped to the rough, iron-bound planks of the pier; he answered the quiet, skilled stranger impulsively. “Do you know how my parents died?”

“Yes.”

“My mother wanted to see Caithnard. My father had come two or three times to visit me while I was at the College of Riddle-Masters at Caithnard. That sounds simple, but it was a very courageous thing for him to do: leave Hed, go to a great, strange city. The Princes of Hed are rooted to Hed. When I came home a year ago, after spending three years there, I found my father full of stories about what he had seen—the trade-shops, the people from different lands—and when he mentioned a shop with bolts of cloth and furs and dyes from five kingdoms, my mother couldn’t resist going. She loved the feel and colors of fine cloth. So last spring they sailed over with the traders when the spring trading was done. And they never came back. The return ship was lost. They never came back.” He touched a nailhead, traced a circle around it. “There was something I had been wanting to do for a long time. I did it, then. My brother Eliard found out about it this morning. I didn’t tell him at the time because I knew he would be upset. I just told him that I was going to west Hed for a few days, not that I was going across the sea to An.”

“To An? Why did you—“ He stopped. His voice went suddenly thin as a lath. “Morgon of Hed, did you win Peven’s crown?”

Morgon’s head rose sharply. He said after a moment, “Yes. How—? Yes.”

“You didn’t tell the King of An—“

“I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Auber of Aum, one of the descendents of Peven, went to that tower to try to win back the crown of Aum from the dead lord and found the crown gone and Peven pleading to be set free to leave the tower. Auber demanded in vain the name of the man who had taken the crown; Peven said only that he would answer no more riddles. Auber told Mathom, and Mathom, faced with the news that someone had slipped quietly into his land, won a riddle-game men have lost their lives over for centuries, and left as quietly, summoned me from Caithnard and asked me to find that crown. Hed is the last place I expected it to be.”

“It’s been under my bed,” Morgon said blankly. “The only private place in Akren. I don’t understand. Does Mathom want it back? I don’t need it. I haven’t even looked at it since I brought it home. But I thought Mathom of all people would understand—“

“The crown is yours by right. Mathom would be the last to contest that.” He paused; there was an expression in his eyes that puzzled Morgon. He added gently, “And yours, if you choose, is Mathom’s daughter, Raederle.”

Morgon swallowed. He found himself on his feet, looking down at the harpist, and he knelt down, seeing suddenly, instead of the harpist, a pale, high-boned face full of unexpected expressions, shaking itself free of a long, fine mass of red hair.

He whispered, “Raederle. I know her. Mathom’s son Rood was at the college with me; we were good friends. She used to visit him there ... I don’t understand.”

“The King made a vow at her birth to give her only to the man who took the crown of Aum from Peven.”

“He made a ... What a stupid thing for him to do, promising Raederle to any man with enough brains to outwit Peven. He could have been anyone—“ He stopped, the blood receding a little beneath his tan. “It was me.”

“Yes.”

“But I can’t ... She can’t marry a farmer. Mathom will never consent.”

“Mathom follows his own inclinations. I suggest you ask him.”

Morgon gazed at him. “You mean cross the sea to Anuin, to the king’s court, walk into his great hall in cold blood and ask him?”

“You walked into Peven’s tower.”

“That was different. I didn’t have lords from the three portions of An watching me, then.”

“Morgon, Mathom bound himself to his vow with his own name, and the lords of An, who have lost ancestors, brothers, even sons in that tower, will give you nothing less than honor for your courage and wit. The only question you have to consider at this moment is: Do you want to marry Raederle?”

He stood up again, desperate with uncertainty, ran his hands through his hair, and the wind, roused from the sea, whipped it straight back from his face. “Raederle.” A pattern of stars high above one brow flamed vividly against his skin. He saw her face again, at a distance, turned back to look at him. “Raederle.”

He saw the harpist’s face go suddenly still, as if the wind had snatched in passing its expression and breath. The uncertainty ended in him like a song’s ending.

“Yes.”

2

He sat on a keg of beer on the deck of a trade-ship the next morning, watching the wake widen and measure Hed like a compass. At the foot of the keg lay a pack of clothes Tristan had put together for him, talking all the while so that neither of them was sure what was in it besides the crown. It bulged oddly, as though she had put everything she touched into it, talking. Eliard had said very little. He had left Morgon’s room after a while; Morgon had found him in the shed, pounding out a horseshoe.

He had said, remembering, “I was going to get you a chestnut stallion from An with the crown.”

And Eliard threw the tongs and heated shoe into the water, and, gripping Morgon’s shoulders, had borne him back against the wall, saying, “Don’t think you can bribe me with a horse,” which made no sense to Morgon, or, after a moment, to Eliard. He let go of Morgon, his face falling into easier, perplexed lines.

“I’m sorry. It just frightens me when you leave, now. Will she like it here?”

“I wish I knew.”

Tristan, following him with his cloak over her arm as he prepared to leave, stopped in the middle of the hall, her face strange to him in its sudden vulnerability. She looked around at the plain, polished walls, pulled a chair straight at a table. “Morgon, I hope she can laugh,” she whispered.

The ship scuttled before the wind, Hed grew small, blurred in the distance. The High One’s harpist had come to stand at the railing, his grey cloak snapped behind him like a banner. Morgon’s eyes wandered to his face, unlined, untouched by the sun. A sense of incongruity nudged his mind, of a riddle shaping the silver-white hair, the fine curve of bone.

The harpist turned his head, met Morgon’s eyes.

Morgon asked curiously, “What land are you from?”

“No land. I was born in Lungold.”

“The wizards’ city? Who taught you to harp?”

“Many people. I took my name from the Morgol Cron’s harpist Tirunedeth, who taught me the songs of Herun. I asked him for it before he died.”

“Cron,” Morgon said. “Ylcorcronlth?”

“Yes.”

“He ruled Herun six hundred years ago.”

“I was born,” the harpist said tranquilly, “not long after the founding of Lungold, a thousand years ago.”

Morgon was motionless save for the sway of his body to the sea’s rhythm. Little threads of light wove and broke on the sea beyond the sunlit, detached face. He whispered, “No wonder you harp like that. You’ve had a thousand years to learn the harp-songs of the High One’s realm. You don’t look old. My father looked older when he died. Are you a wizard’s son?” He looked down at his hands then, linked around his knees, and said apologetically, “Forgive me. It’s none of my business. I was just—“

“Curious?” The harpist smiled. “You have an inordinate curiosity for a Prince of Hed.”

“I know. That’s why my father finally sent me to Caithnard—I kept asking questions. He didn’t know how to account for it. But, being a wise, gentle man, he let me go.” He stopped again, rather abruptly, his mouth twitching slightly.

The harpist said, his eyes on the approaching land, “I never knew my own father. I was born without a name in the back streets of Lungold at a time when wizards, kings, even the High One himself passed through the city. Since I have no land-instinct and no gifts for wizardry, I gave up long ago trying to guess who my father was.”

Morgon’s head lifted again. He said speculatively, “Danan Isig was ancient as a tree even then, and Har of Osterland. No one knows when the wizards were born, but if you’re a wizard’s son, there’s no one to claim you now.”

“It’s not important. The wizards are gone; I owe nothing to any living ruler but the High One. In his service I have a name, a place, a freedom of movement and judgment. I am responsible only to him; he values me for my harping and my discretion, both of which are improved by age.” He bent to pick up his harp, slid it over his shoulder. “We’ll dock in a few moments.”

Morgon joined him at the rail. The trade-city Caithnard, with its port, inns and shops, sprawled in a crescent of land between two lands. Ships, their sails bellying the orange and gold colors of Herun traders, were flocking from the north to its docks like birds. On it thrust of cliff forming one horn of the moon-shaped bay stood a dark block of a building whose stone walls formed small chambers Morgon knew well. An image of the spare, mocking face of Raederle’s brother rose in his mind; his hands tightened on the rail.

“Rood. I’ll have to tell him. I wonder if he’s at the College, I haven’t seen him for a year.”

“I talked with him two nights ago when I stayed at the college before crossing to Hed. He had just taken the Gold Robe of Intermediate Mastery.”

“Perhaps he’s gone home for a while, then.” The ship took the last roll and wash of wave as it entered harbor, then slackened speed, the sailors shouting one another as they took in sail. Morgon’s voice thinned. “I wonder what he’ll say ... ”

The sea birds above the still water wove like shuttles in the wind. The docks sliding past them were littered with goods being loaded, unloaded: bolts of cloth, chests, timber, wine, fur, animals. The sailors hailed friends on the dock; traders called to one another.

“Lyle Orn’s ship will leave for Anuin with the tide this evening,” a trader told Deth and Morgon before they disembarked. “You’ll know it by its red and yellow sails. Do you want your horse, Lord?”

“I’ll walk,” Deth said. He added to Morgon, as the gangplank slid down before them. “There is an unanswered riddle on the lists of the Masters at the college: Who won the riddle-game with Peven of Aum?”

Morgon slung his pack to his shoulder. He nodded. “I’ll tell them. Are you going up to the college?”

“In a while.”

“At evening-tide, then, Lords,” the trader reminded them as they descended. They separated on the cobbled street facing the dock, and Morgon, turning left, retraced a path he had known for years. The narrow streets of the city were crowded in the high noon with traders, sailors ashore from different lands, wandering musicians, trappers, students in the bright, voluminous robes of their ranks, richly dressed men and women from An, Ymris, Herun. Morgon, his pack over one shoulder, moved through them without seeing them, oblivious to noise and jostling. The back streets quieted; the road he took wound out of the city, left tavern and trade-shop behind, rose upward above the brilliant sea.

Occasional students passed him, going toward the city, their voices, wrestling with riddles, cheerful, assured. The road angled sharply, then at the end the ground levelled, and the ancient college, built of rough dark stones, massive as a piece of broken cliff itself, stood placidly among the tall, wind-twisted trees.

He knocked at the familiar double doors of thick oak. The porter, a freckled young man in the White Robe of Beginning Mastery opened them, cast a glance over Morgon and his pack, and said portentiously, “Ask and it shall be answered here. If you have some seeking knowledge, you shall be received. The Masters are examining a candidate for the Red of Apprenticeship, and they must not be disturbed except by death or doom. Abandon your name to me.”

“Morgon, Prince of Hed.”

“Oh.” The porter dabbed at the top of his head and smiled. “Come in. I’ll get Master Tel.”

“No, don’t interrupt them.” He stepped in. “Is Rood of An here?”

“Yes; he’s on the third floor, across from the library.” “I’ll take you.”

“I know the way.”

The darkness of the low arched corridors was broken at each end only by wide leaded windows set in walls of stone a foot thick. Rows of closed doors ran down each side of the hall. Morgon found Rood’s name on one, on a wood slat, a crow delicately etched beneath it. He knocked, received an unintelligible answer, and opened the door.

Rood’s bed, taking up a quarter of the small stone room, was piled with clothes, books, and the prince of An. He sat cross-legged in a cloud of newly acquired gold robe, reading a letter, a cup of fragile dyed glass in one hand half-full of wine. He looked up, and at the abrupt, arrogant lift of his head, Morgon felt suddenly, stepping across the threshold, as though he had stepped backward into a memory.

“Morgon.” Rood heaved himself up, walked off the bed, trailing a wake of books behind him. He hugged Morgon, the cup in one hand, the letter in the other. “Join me. I’m celebrating. You are a stranger without your robe. But I forget: you’re a farmer now. Is that why you’re in Caithnard? Did you come over with your grain or wine or something?”

“Beer. We can’t make good wine.”

“How sad.” He gazed at Morgon like a curious crow, his eyes red-rimmed, blurred. “I heard about your parents. The traders were full of it. It made me angry.”

“Why?”

“Because it trapped you in Hed, made a farmer out of you, full of thoughts of eggs and pigs, beer and weather. You’ll never come back here, and I miss you.”

Morgon shifted his pack to the floor. The crown lay hidden in it like a guilty deed. He said softly, “I came ... I have something to tell you, and I don’t know how to tell you.”

Rood loosed Morgon abruptly, turned away. “I don’t want to hear it.” He poured a second cup for Morgon and refilled his own. “I took the Gold two days ago.”

“I know. Congratulations. How long have you been celebrating?”

“I don’t remember.” He held out the cup to Morgon, wine splashing down over his fingers, “I’m one of Mathom’s children, descended from Kale and Oen by way of the witch Madir. Only one man has ever taken the Gold in less time than I have. And he went home to farm.”

“Rood—“

“Have you forgotten everything you learned by now? You used to open riddles like nuts. You should have become a Master. You have a brother, you could have let him take the land-rule.”

“Rood,” Morgon said patiently. “You know that’s impossible. And you know I didn’t come here to take the Black. I never wanted it. What would I have done with it? Prune trees in it?” Rood’s voice snapped back at him with a violence that startled him.

“Answer riddles! You had the gift for it; you had the eyes! You said once you wanted to win that game. Why didn’t you keep your word? You went home to make beer instead, and some man without a name or a face won the two great treasures of An.” He crumpled the letter, held it locked in his fist like a heart. “Who knows what she’s waiting for? A man like Raith of Hel with a face beaten out of gold and a heart like a rotten tooth? Or Thistin of Aum, who’s soft as a baby and too old to climb into bed without help? If she is forced to marry a man like that, I’ll never forgive you or my father. Him because he made such a vow in the first place, and you because you made a promise in this room you did not keep. Ever since you left this place, I made a vow to myself to win that game with Peven, to free Raederle from that fate my father set for her. But I had no chance. I never had even a chance.”

Morgon sat down on a chair beside Rood’s desk. “Stop shouting. Please. Listen—“

“Listen to what? You could not even be faithful to the one rule you held true above all others.” He dropped the letter, reached out abruptly, drew the hair back from Morgon’s brow. “Answer the unanswered riddle.”

Morgon pulled away from him. “Rood! Will you stop babbling and listen to me? It’s hard enough for me to tell you this without you squawking like a drunk crow. Do you think Raederle will mind living on a farm? I have to know.”

“Don’t profane crows; some of my ancestors were crows. Of course Raederle can’t live on a farm. She is the second most beautiful woman in the three portions of An; she can’t live among pigs and—“ He stopped abruptly, still in the middle of the room, his shadow motionless across the stones. Under the weight of his lightless gaze a word jumped in the back of Morgon’s throat. Rood whispered, “Why?”

Morgon bent to his pack, his fingers shaking faintly on the ties. As he drew out the crown, the great center stone, colorless itself, groping wildly at all the colors in the room, snared the gold of Rood’s robe and blazed like a sun. Transfixed in its liquid glare, Rood caught his breath sharply and shouted.

Morgon dropped the crown. He put his face against his knees, his hands over his ears. The wine glass on the desk snapped; the flagon on a tiny table shattered, spilling wine onto the stones. The iron lock on a massive book sprang open; the chamber door slammed shut with a boom.

Cries of outrage down the long corridors followed like an echo. Morgon, the blood pounding in his head, straightened. He whispered, his fingers sliding over his eyes, “It wasn’t necessary to shout. You take the crown to Mathom. I’m going home.” He stood up, and Rood, caught his wrist in a grip that drove to the bone.

“You.”

He stopped. Rood’s hold eased; he reached behind Morgon and turned the key in the door against the indignant pounding on it. His face looked strange, as though the shout had cleared his mind of all but an essential wonder.

He said, his voice catching a little, “Sit down. I can’t. Morgon, why didn’t ... why didn’t you tell me you were going to challenge Peven?”

“I did. I told you two years ago when we had sat up all night asking each other riddles, studying for the Blue of Partial Beginning.”

“But what did you do—leave Hed without telling anyone, leave Caithnard without telling me, move unobtrusively as a doom through my father’s land to face death in that dark tower that stinks in an east wind? You didn’t even tell me that you had won. You could have done that. Any lord of An would have brought it to Anuin with a flourish of shouts and trumpets.”

“I didn’t mean to worry Raederle. I simply didn’t know about your father’s vow. You never told me.”

“Well, what did you expect me to do? I have seen great lords leave Anuin to go to that tower for her sake and never return. Do you think I wanted to give you that kind of incentive? Why did you do it, if not for her, or for the honor of walking into the court at Anuin with that crown? It couldn’t have been pride in your knowledge—you didn’t even tell the Masters.”

Morgon picked up the crown, turned it in his hands. The center stone faced him, striped with the dust and green of his tunic. “Because I had to do it. For no other reason than that. And I didn’t tell anyone simply because it was such a private thing ... and because I didn’t know, coming alive out of that tower at dawn, if I were a great riddle-master or a very great fool” He looked at Rood. “What will Raederle say?”

The corner of Rood’s mouth crooked up suddenly. “I have no idea. Morgon, you caused an uproar in An the like of which has not been experienced since Madir stole the pigherds of Hel and set them loose in the cornfields of Aum. Raederle wrote to me that Raith of Hel promised to abduct her and marry her secretly at her word; that Duac, who has always been as close to our father as his shadow, is furious about the vow and has scarcely spoken three words to him all summer; that the lords of the three portions are angry with him, insisting he break his vow. But it is easier to change the wind with your breath than our father’s incomprehensible mind. Raederle said she has been having terrible dreams about some huge, faceless, nameless stranger riding to Anuin with the crown of Aum on his head, claiming her and taking her away to some rich, loveless land inside some mountain or beneath the sea. My father has sent men all over An searching for the man who took that crown; he sent messengers here to the college; he has asked the traders to ask wherever in the High One’s realm they go. He didn’t think of asking in Hed. I didn’t either. I should have. I should have known it would not be some powerful, nightmarish figure—it would be something even more unexpected. We have been expecting anyone but you.”

Morgon traced a pearl, milky as a child’s tooth, with one finger. “I’ll love her,” he said. “Will that matter?”

“What do you think?”

Morgon reached for his pack restlessly. “I don’t know, and neither do you. I am terrified of the look that will be on her face when she sees the crown of Aum carried into Anuin by me. She’ll have to live at Akren. She’ll have to ... she’ll have to get used to my pigherder, Snog Nutt. He comes for breakfast every morning. Rood, she won’t like it. She was born to the wealth of An, and she’ll be horrified. So will your father.”

“I doubt it,” Rood said calmly. “The lords of An may be, but it would take the doom of the world to horrify my father. For all I know, he saw you seventeen years ago when he made that vow. He has a mind like a morass, no one, not even Duac, knows how deep it is. I don’t know what Raederle will think. I only know that I would not miss seeing this if my death were waiting for me at Anuin. I’m going home for a while; my father is sending a ship for me. Come with me.”

“I’m expected on a trade-ship sailing this evening; I’ll have to tell them. Deth is with me.”

Rood quirked a brow. “He found you. That man could find a pinhole in a mist.” There was a pound at his door; he raised his voice irritably. “Go away! Whatever I broke, I’m sorry!”

“Rood!” It was the frail voice of the Master Tel, raised in unaccustomed severity. “You have broken the locks to Nun’s books of wizardry!”

Rood rose with a sigh and flung open the door. A crowd of angry students behind the old Master raised voices like a cacophony of crows at the sight of him. Rood’s voice battered against them helplessly.

“I know the Great Shout is forbidden, but it’s a thing of impulse rather than premeditation, and I was overwhelmed by impulse. Please shut up!”

They shut up abruptly. Morgon, coming to stand beside Rood with the crown of Aum in his hands, its center stone black as the robe of Mastery Tel wore, met the gaze of the Master without speaking.

Master Tel, the annoyance in his sparse, parchment-colored face melting into astonishment, gathered his voice again, set a riddle to the strain of silence, “Who won the riddle-game with Peven of Aum?”

“I did,” said Morgon.

He told them the tale sitting in the Masters’ library, with its vast ancient collection of books running the length and breadth of the walls. The eight Masters listened quietly, Rood in his gold robe making a brilliant splash among their black robes. No one spoke until he finished, and then Master Tel shifted in his chair and murmured wonderingly, “Kern of Hed.”

“How did you know?” Rood said. “How did you know to ask that one riddle?”

“I didn’t,” Morgon said. “I just asked it once when I was so tired I couldn’t think of anything else to ask. I thought everyone knew that riddle. But when Peven shouted ‘There are no riddles of Hed!’ I knew I had won the game. It wasn’t a Great Shout, but I will hear it in my mind until I die.”

“Kern.” Rood’s mouth twisted into a thin smile. “Since spring the lords of An have been asking two questions only: who is Raederle to marry, and what was the one riddle Peven couldn’t answer? Hagis King of An, my father’s grandfather, died in Peven’s tower for lack of that riddle. The lords of An should have paid more attention to that small island. They will now.”

“Indeed,” Master Ohm, a lean, quiet man whose even voice never changed, said thoughtfully. “Perhaps in the history of the realm too little attention has been paid to Hed. There is still a riddle without an answer. If Peven of Aum had asked you that, with all your great knowledge you might not be here today.”

Morgon met his eyes. They were mist-colored, calm as his voice. He said, “Without an answer and a stricture, it would have been disqualified.”

“And if Peven had held the answer?”

“How could he? Master Ohm, you helped us search a whole winter the first year I came here for an answer to that riddle. Peven took his knowledge from books of wizardry that had belonged to Madir, and before that to the Lungold wizards. And in all their writings, which you have here, no mention is made of three stars. I don’t know where to look for an answer. And I don’t ... it’s far from my mind these days.”

Rood stirred. “And this is the man who put his life in the balance with his knowledge. Beware the unanswered riddle.”

“It is that: unanswered, and for all I know it may not need an answer.”

Rood’s hand cut the air, his sleeve fluttering. “Every riddle has an answer. Hide behind the closed doors in your mind, you stubborn farmer. A hundred years from now students in the White of Beginning Mastery will be scratching their heads trying to remember the name of an obscure Prince of Hed who, like another obscure Prince of Hed, ignored the first and last rule of riddle-mastery. I thought you had more sense.”

“All I want,” Morgon said succinctly, “is to go to Anuin, marry Raederle, and then go home and plant grain and make beer and read books. Is that so hard to understand?”

“Yes! Why are you being so obtuse? You of all people?”

“Rood,” Master Tel said in his gentle voice, “you know an answer to the stars on his face was sought and never found. What more do you suggest he do?”

“I suggest,” Rood said, “he ask the High One.”

There was a little silence. The Master Ohm broke it with a rustle of cloth as he shifted. “The High One would indeed know. However I suspect you will have to provide Morgon with more incentive than pure knowledge before he would make such a long, harsh journey away from his land.”

“I don’t have to. Sooner or later, he’ll be driven there.”

Morgon sighed. “I wish you would be reasonable. I want to go to Anuin, not Erlenstar Mountain. I don’t want to ask any more riddles; spending a night from twilight to dawn in a tower rotten with cloth and bone, racking my brain for every riddle I ever learned, gave me a distaste for riddle-games.”

Rood leaned forward, every trace of mockery gone from his face. “You will take honor from this place, and Master Tel has said you will take the Black today for doing what even the Master Laern died attempting. You will go to Anuin, and the lords of An, and my father and Raederle will give you at least the respect due to you for your knowledge and your courage. But if you accept the Black, it will be a lie; and if you offer the peace of Hed to Raederle, that also will be a lie, a promise you will not keep because there is a question you will not answer, and you will find, like Peven, that it is the one riddle you do not know, not the thousand you do knew, that will destroy you.”

“Rood!” Morgon checked, his mouth tight, his hands tight on the arms of his chair. “What are you trying to make of me?”

“A Master—for your own sake. How can you be so blind? How can you so stubbornly, so flagrantly, ignore everything you know is true? How can you let them call you a Master? How can you accept from them the Black of Mastery while you turn a blind eye at truth?”

Morgon felt the blood well into his face. He said tautly, Rood’s face suddenly the only face in the still room, “I never wanted the Black. But I do claim some choice in my life. What those stars on my face are, I do not know; and I don’t want to know. Is that what you want me to admit? You take the eyes that your father, and Madir, and the shape-changer Ylon gave you and probe your own cold, fearless way into truth, and when you take the Black, I will come and celebrate with you. But all I want is peace.”

“Peace,” Master Tel said mildly, “was never one of your habits, Rood. We can only judge Morgon according to our standards, and by those he has earned the Black. How else can we honor him?”

Rood stood up. He undid his robe, let it slide to the floor, stood half-naked in the startled gaze of the Masters. “If you give him the Black, I will never wear any robe of Mastery again.”

A muscle in Morgon’s rigid face jumped. He leaned back in his chair, his stiff fingers opening, and said icily, “Put your clothes back on, Rood. I have said I didn’t want the Black, and I won’t take it. It’s not the business of a farmer of Hed to master riddles. Besides, what honor would it give me to wear the same robe Laern wore and lost in that tower, and that Peven wears now?”

Rood gathered his robe in one hand, walked to Morgon’s chair. He leaned over it, his hands on the arms. His face loomed above Morgon’s, spare, bloodless. He whispered, “Please. Think.”

He held Morgon’s eyes, held the silence in the room with the motionless, taut set of his body until he moved, turned to leave. Then Morgon’s own body loosened as though the black gaze had drained out of it. He heard the door close and dropped his face in one hand.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to say that about Laern. I lost my temper.”

“Truth,” the Master Ohm murmured, “needs no apology.” His mist-colored eyes, unwavering on Morgon’s face, held a gleam of curiosity. “Not even a Master assumes he knows everything—except in rare cases, such as Laern’s. Will you accept the Black? You surely deserve it, and as Tel says, it is all we have to honor you.”

Morgon shook his head. “I want it. I do want it. But Rood wants it more than I do; he’ll make better use of it than I will, and I would rather he take it. I’m sorry we argued here—I don’t know how it got started.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Tel promised. “He was being rather unreasonable, and unnecessarily harsh.”

“He has his father’s vision,” Ohm said. Morgon’s eyes moved to him after a moment.

“You think he was right?”

“In essence. So do you, although you have chosen not to act—as is, according to your rather confused standards, your right. But I suspect a journey to the High One will not be as useless as you think.”

“But I want to get married. And why should I trouble whatever destiny Rood thinks I have until it troubles me? I’m not going out hunting a destiny like a strayed cow.”

The corner of Master Ohm’s lean mouth twitched. “Who was Ilon of Yrye?”

Morgon sighed noiselessly. “Ilon was a harpist at the court of Har of Osterland, who offended Har with a song so terrible that he fled from Har out of fear of death. He went alone to the mountains, taking nothing but his harp, and lived quietly, far from all men, farming and playing his harp. So great was his harping in his loneliness, that it became his voice, and it spoke as he could not, to the animals living around him. Word of it spread from creature to creature until it came one day to the ears of the Wolf of Osterland, Har, as he prowled in that shape through his land. He was drawn by curiosity to the far reaches of his kingdom, and there he found Ilon, playing at the edge of the world. The wolf sat and listened. And Ilon, finishing his song and raising his eyes, found the terror he had run from standing on his threshold.”

“And the stricture?”

“The man running from death must run first from himself. But I don’t see what that has to do with me. I’m not running: I’m simply not interested.”

The Master’s elusive smile deepened faintly. “Then I wish you the peace of your disinterest, Morgon of Hed,” he said softly.

Morgon did not see Rood again, though he searched through the grounds and the cliff above the sea half the afternoon for him. He took supper with the Masters, and found, wandering outside afterward into the dead wind of twilight, the High One’s harpist coming up the road.

Deth, stopping, said, “You look troubled.”

“I can’t find Rood. He must have gone down to Caithnard.” He ran a hand through his hair in a rare, preoccupied gesture, and set his shoulders against the broadside of an oak. Three stars gleamed below his hairline, muted in the evening. “We had an argument; I’m not even sure now what it was about. I want him with me at Anuin, but it’s getting late, and I don’t know now if he’ll come.”

“We should board.”

“I know. If we miss the tide, they’ll sail without us. He’s probably drunk in some tavern, wearing nothing but his boots. Maybe he would rather see me take a long journey to the High One than marry Raederle. Maybe he’s right. She doesn’t belong in Hed, and that’s what upset him. Maybe I should go down and get drunk with him and go home. I don’t know.” He caught the harpist’s patient, vaguely mystified expression and sighed. “I’ll get my pack.”

“I must speak to Master Ohm briefly before we leave. Surely Rood, of all people, would have told you the truth about how he feels toward the marriage.”

Morgon shrugged himself away from the tree. “I suppose so,” he said moodily. “But I don’t see why he has to upset me at a time like this.”

He retrieved his pack from the chaos of Rood’s room and bade the Masters farewell. The sky darkened slowly as he and the harpist took the long road back to the city; on the rough horns of the bay the warning fires had been lit; tiny lights from homes and taverns made random stars against the well of darkness. The tide boomed and slapped against the cliffs, and an evening wind stirred, strengthened, blowing the scent of salt and night. The trade-ship stirred restlessly in the deep water as they boarded; a loosed sail cupped the wind, taut and ghostly under the moon. Morgon, standing at the stern, watched the lights of the harbor ripple across the water and vanish.

“We’ll reach Anuin in the afternoon, the wind willing,” an affable, red-bearded trader with a weal down the side of his face said to him. “Sleep above or below as it pleases you. With the horses we carry, you may be happier up here in the air. There are plenty of skins from your own sheep to keep you warm.”

“Thank you,” Morgon said. Sitting on a great spool of cable, his arms resting on the rail, he watched the white wake furl to the turn of the silent helmsman’s tiller. His thoughts slid to Rood; he traced the threads of their argument to its roots, puzzled over it, retraced it again. The wind carried voices of the handful of sailors manning the ship, a snatch of traders’ discussion of the goods they carried. The masts groaned with the weight of wind; the ship, heavy with cargo, neatly balanced, cut with an easy roll from bow to stern through the waves. Morgon, the east wind numbing his cheek, lulled by the creak and dip of the vessel, put his head on his arms and closed his eyes. He was asleep when the ship shuddered as though the twelve winds had seized it at once, and, startling awake, he heard the furious, unchecked thump of the tiller.

He stood up, a call dying in his throat, for the deck behind him was empty. The ship, its sails full-blown to the harsh wind, reeled, throwing him back against the rail. He caught his balance desperately. The chart-house, where the traders had been lamp-lit as they pored over their papers, was dark. The wind, whimpering, drove hard into the sails, and the ship rolled, giving Morgon a sudden glimpse of white froth. He straightened slowly with it, his teeth set hard, feeling the prick of sweat on his back even in the cold spray.

He saw the hatch to the hold open reluctantly against the wind, recognized the web-colored hair in the moonlight. He made his way toward it in a lull of wind, clinging to whatever stay and spare corner he passed. He had to shout twice to make himself heard.

“What are they doing down there?”

“There’s no one in the hold,” Deth said. Morgon, staring at him, made no sense of the words.

“What?”

Deth, sitting in the open hatchway, put a hand on Morgon’s arm. At the touch, and his quick, silent glance across the decks, Morgon felt his throat suddenly constrict

“Deth—“

“Yes.” The harpist shifted the harp slightly on his shoulder. His brows were drawn hard.

“Deth, where are the traders and sailors? They can’t have just—just vanished like pieces of foam. They ... Where are they? Did they fall overboard?”

“If they did, they put up enough sail before they left to take us with them.”

“We can take it down.”

“I think,” Deth said, “we won’t have time.” The ship flung them both, as he spoke, backward in a strange, rigid movement. The animals screamed in terror; the deck itself seemed to strain beneath them, as though it were being pulled apart. A rope snapped above Morgon’s head, slashing across the deck; wood groaned and buckled around them. He felt his voice tear out of him.

“We’re not moving! In open sea, we’re not moving!”

There was a rush of water beneath him, bubbling through the open hold; the ship sagged on its side. Deth caught Morgon as he slid helplessly across the deck; a wave breaking against the low side drenched them both, and he gagged on the cold, bitter water. He managed to stand, clinging with one hand to Deth’s wrist, and flung his arms around the mast, tangling his fingers in the rigging. His face close to the harpist’s, his feet sliding to the tilt of the deck, he shouted hoarsely,

“Who were they?”

If the harpist gave him an answer, he did not hear it. Deth’s figure blurred in the sweep of a wave; the mast snapped with a jar Morgon felt to his bones, and the striped canvas weighted with rigging and yard slapped him loose from his hold and swept him into the sea.

3

He woke, flung like a rag amid a harvest of dry kelp, his face in the sand, his mouth full of sand. He lifted his face; a bone-white beach strewn with seaweed and bleached driftwood blurred under one eye; his other eye was blind. He dropped his head, his eye closing again, and someone on his blind side touched him.

He started. Hands tugged at him, rolled him onto his back. He stared into a wild white cat’s ice-blue eyes. Its ears were flattened. A voice said warningly, “Xel.”

Morgon tried to speak, but made only the strange, harsh noise that a crow might make.

The voice said, “Who are you? What happened to you?”

He tried to answer. His voice would not shape the words. He realized, as he struggled with it, that there were no words in him anywhere to shape answers.

“Who are you?”

He closed his eyes. A silence spun like a vortex in his head, drawing him deeper and deeper into darkness.

He woke again tasting cool water. He reached for it blindly, drank until the crust of salt in his mouth dissolved, then lay back, the empty cup rolling from his hands. He opened his good eye again a moment later.

A young man with lank white hair and white eyes knelt beside him on the dirt floor of a small house. The threads of the voluminous, richly embroidered robe he wore were picked and frayed; the skin was stretched taut, hollow across his strange, proud face.

He said as Morgon blinked up at him, “Who are you? Can you speak now?”

Morgon opened his mouth. Like a small wave receding, something he had once known slipped quietly, silently away from him. The breath exploded out of him suddenly, violently; he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Be careful.” The man pulled his hands from his face. “It looks as though you hit your head on something; blood and sand are caked over your eye.” He washed it gently. “So you can’t remember your name. Did you fall off a ship in that storm last night? Are you of Ymris? Of Anuin? Of Isig? Are you a trader? Are you of Hed? Of Lungold? Are you a fisher from Loor?” He shook his head in puzzlement at Morgon’s silence. “You are mute and inexplicable as the hollow gold balls I dig up on Wind Plain. Can you see now?” Morgon nodded, and the man sat back on his haunches, frowning down at Morgon’s face as though it held a name in it somewhere. His frown deepened suddenly; he reached out and brushed at the hair plastered dry with salt against Morgon’s forehead. His voice caught. “Three stars.”

Morgon lifted his hand to touch them. The man said softly, incredulously, “You don’t remember even that. You came out of the sea with three stars on your face, with no name and no voice, like a portent out of the past ... ” He stopped as Morgon’s hand fell to his wrist, gripped it, and Morgon made the grunt of a question. “Oh. I am Astrin Ymris.” Then he added formally, almost bitterly, “I am the brother and land-heir of Heureu, King of Ymris.” He slid an arm under Morgon’s shoulders. “If you’ll sit, I’ll give you some dry clothes.”

He pulled the torn, wet tunic off Morgon, washed the drying sand from his body, and helped him into a long, hooded robe of rich dark cloth. He fetched wood, stirred up the embers under a cauldron of soup; by the time it had heated, Morgon had fallen asleep.

He woke at dusk. The tiny house was empty; he sat up, looking around him. It had little furniture: a bench, a large table cluttered with odd objects, a high stool, the pallet Morgon had slept on. Tools leaned against the doorway: a pick, a hammer, a chisel, a brush; dirt clung to them. Morgon rose, went to the open door. Across the threshold a great, wind-blown plain swept westward as far as he could see. Not far from the house, dark, shapeless stoneworks rose, blurred in the fading light. To the south lay, like a boundary line between lands, the dark line of a vast forest. The wind, running in from the sea, spoke a hollow, restless language. It smelled of salt and night, and for a moment, listening to it, some memory reeled into his mind of darkness, water, cold, wild wind, and he gripped the door posts to keep from falling. But it passed, and he found no word for it.

He turned. Strange things lay on Astrin’s broad table. He touched them curiously. There were pieces of broken, beautifully dyed glass, of gold, shards of finely painted pottery, a few links of heavy copper chain, a broken flute of wood and gold. A color caught his eye; he reached for it. It was a cut jewel the size of his palm, and through it flowed, as he turned it, all the colors of the sea.

He heard a step and looked up. Astrin, Xel at his side, came in, dropped a heavy, stained bag by the hearth.

He said, stirring the fire. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I found that at the foot of Wind Tower. No trader I showed it to could give me the name for that stone, so I took it to Isig, to Danan Isig himself. He said that never in his mountain had he seen such a jewel, nor did he know anyone beside himself and his son, who could have cut it so flawlessly. He gave me Xel out of friendship. I had nothing to give him, but he said I had given him a mystery, which is sometimes a precious thing.” He checked the pot above the flames, then reached for the bag and a knife hanging by the fire. “Xel caught two hare; I’ll cook them for supper ... ” He looked up as Morgon touched his arm. He let Morgon take the knife from him. “Can you skin them?” Morgon nodded. “You know you can do that. Can you remember anything else about yourself? Think. Try to—“ He stopped at the helpless, tormented expression on Morgon’s face, gripped Morgon’s arm briefly. “Never mind. It will come back to you.”

They ate supper by firelight, the door closed against a sudden drenching rain. Astrin ate quietly, the white huntress Xel curled at his feet; he seemed to have settled back into a habit of silence, his thoughts indrawn, until he finished. Then he opened the door a moment to the driving rain, closed it, and the cat lifted its head with a yowl. Astrin’s movements became restless as he touched books and did not open them, set shards of glass together that did not fit and dropped them, his face expressionless as though he were listening to something beyond the rain. Morgon, seated at the hearth, his head aching and the cut over his eye pressed against cool stones, watched him. Astrin’s prowling brought him finally in front of Morgon; he gazed down at Morgon out of his white, secret eyes until Morgon looked away.

Astrin sat down with a sigh beside him. He said abruptly, “You are as secret as Wind Tower. I’ve been here five years in exile from Caerweddin. I speak to Xel, to an old man I buy fish from in Loor, to occasional traders, and to Rork, High Lord of Umber, who visits me every few months. By day I go digging out of curiosity in the great ruined city of the Earth-Masters on Wind Plain. By night, I dig in other directions, sometimes in books of wizardry I’ve learned to open, sometimes out there in the darkness above Loor, by the sea. I take Xel with me, and we watch something that is building on the shores of Ymris under night cover, something for which there is no name ... But I can’t go tonight; the tide will be rough in this wind, and Xel hates the rain.” He paused a moment. “Your eyes look at me as though you understand everything I’m saying. I wish I knew your name. I wish ... ” His voice trailed away; his eyes stayed, speculative, on Morgon’s face.

He rose as suddenly as he had sat down, and took from his shelves a heavy book with a name on it stamped in gold: Aloil. It was locked with two apparently seamless bindings of iron. He touched them, murmuring a word, and they opened. Morgon went to his side; he looked up. “Do you know who Aloil was?” Morgon shook his head. Then his eyes widened a little as he remembered, but Astrin continued, “Most people have forgotten. He was the wizard in service to the Kings of Ymris for nine hundred years before he went to Lungold, then vanished along with the entire school of wizards seven hundred years ago. I bought the book from a trader; it took me two years to learn the word to open it. Part of the poetry Aloil wrote was to the wizard Nun, in service to Hel. I tried her name to open the book, but that didn’t work. Then I remembered the name of her favorite pig out of all the pig herds of Hel: the speaking pig, Hegdis-Noon—and that name opened the book.” He set the heavy book on the table, pored through it.

“Somewhere in here is the spell that made the stone talk on King’s Mouth Plain. Do you know that tale? Aloil was furious with Galil Ymris because the king refused to follow Aloil’s advice during a seige of Caerweddin, and as a result Aloil’s tower was burned. So Aloil made a stone in the plain above Caerweddin speak for eight days and nights in such a loud voice that men as far as Umber and Meremont heard it, and the stone recited all Galil’s secret, very bad attempts at writing poetry. From that the plain got its name.” He glanced up to see Morgon’s smile. He straightened. “I haven’t talked so much in a month. Xel can’t laugh. You make me remember I’m human. I forget that sometimes, except when Rork Umber is here, and then I remember, all too well, who I am.” He looked down, turned a page. “Here it is. Now if I can read his handwriting ... ” He was silent a few moments, while Morgon read over his shoulder and the candlelight spattered over the page. Astrin turned to him finally. He held Morgon gently by the arms and said slowly, “I think if this spell can make a stone speak, it may make you speak. I haven’t done much mind-work; I’ve gone into Xel’s mind, and once into Rork’s, with his permission. If you are afraid, I won’t do this. But perhaps if I go deep enough, I can find your name. Do you want me to try?”

Morgon’s hands touched his mouth. He nodded, his eyes holding Astrin’s, and Astrin drew a breath. “All right. Sit down. Sit quietly. The first step is to become as the stone ... ”

Morgon sat down on the stool. Astrin, standing across from him, grew still, a dark shape in the flickering light. Morgon felt an odd shifting in the room, as if another vision of the same room had superimposed itself over his own, and refocussed slightly. Odd pieces of thought rose in his mind: the plain he had looked at, Xel’s face, the skins he had hung to dry. Then there was nothing but a long darkness and a withdrawal.

Astrin moved, the fire reflected strangely in his eyes. He whispered, “There was nothing. It is as though you have no name. I couldn’t reach the place where you have your name and your past hidden from yourself. It’s deep, deep ... ” He stopped as Morgon rose. His hands closed tight on Astrin’s arms; he shook Astrin a little, imperatively, and Astrin said, “I’ll try. But I’ve never met a man so hidden from himself. There must be other spells; I’ll look. But I don’t know why you care so much. It must be the essence of peace, having no name, no memory ... All right. I’ll keep looking. Be patient.”

Morgon heard him stirring at sunrise the next day and got up. The rain had stopped; the clouds hung broken above Wind Plain. They ate a breakfast of cold hare, wine and bread, then, carrying Astrin’s tools, Xel following, they walked across the plain to the ancient, ruined city.

It was a maze of broken columns, fallen walls, rooms without roofs, steps leading nowhere, arches shaken to the ground, all built of smooth, massive squares of brilliant stone all shades of red, green, gold, blue, grey, black, streaked and glittering with other colors melting through them. A wide street of gold-white stone, grass thrusting up between its sections, began at the eastern edge of the city, parted it, and stopped at the foot of the one whole building in the city: a tower whose levels spiraled upward from a sprawling black base to a small, round, deep-blue chamber high at the top. Morgon, walking down the center street at Astrin’s side, stopped abruptly to stare at it.

Astrin said, “Wind Tower. No man has ever been to the top of it—no wizard either. Aloil tried; he walked up its stairs for seven days and seven nights and never reached the end of them. I’ve tried, many times. I think at the top of that tower there must lie the answer to questions so old we’ve forgotten to ask them. Who were the Earth-Masters? What terrible thing happened to them that destroyed them and their cities? I play like a child among the bones of it, finding a fine stone here, a broken plate there, hoping that one day find a key to the mystery of it, the beginning of an answer ... I took a chip off these great stones also to Danan Isig; he said he knew of no place in the High One’s realm where they quarried such stone.” He touched Morgon briefly, to get his eyes. “I’ll be there, in that chamber without a roof. Join me when you wish.”

Morgon, left to his own in the hollow, singing city, wandered through the roofless halls and wall-less chambers, between piles of broken stones rooted deep to the earth by long grass. The winds sped past like wild horses, pouring through empty rooms, thundering down the street to spiral the tower and moan through its secret chamber. Morgon, following them, drawn to the huge, bright structure, put one hand flat on its blue-black wall, one foot on its first step. The gold steps curved away from him; the winds pushed at him like children, tumbled past him. He turned away after a moment, went to find Astrin.

He worked all day at Astrin’s side, digging quietly in a little room whose floor was sunk beneath the earth, crumbling the earth in his hands, searching it for bits of metal, glass, pottery. Once, his hands full of the moist black earth, he caught the strong, good smell of it, and something leaped in him, longing, responding. He made a sound without knowing it. Astrin looked up.

“What is it? Did you find something?”

He dropped the earth and shook his head, feeling tears behind his throat and not knowing why.

Walking home at dusk, their finds carefully wrapped in old cloth, Astrin said to him, “You are so patient here. Perhaps you belong here, working among these forgotten things, in silence. And you accept my strange ways so unquestioningly, as though you can’t remember how men do live with one another ... ” He paused a moment, then went on slowly, as if remembering himself, “I haven’t always been alone. I grew up in Caerweddin, with Heureu, and the sons of our father’s High Lords, in the beautiful, noisey house Galil Ymris made out of the Earth-Master’s stones. Heureu and I were close then, like shadows of each other. That was before we quarrelled.” He shrugged the words away as Morgon looked at him. “It makes no difference here. I’ll never go back to Caerweddin, and Heureu will never come here. I had just forgotten that once I wasn’t alone. You forget easily.”

He left Morgon that night after supper. Morgon, brushing dirt off pieces of pottery they had found, waited patiently. The wind rose hours after sunset; he grew uneasy, feeling them pull at the joints of the small house, heave at it as if to uproot it. He opened the door aimlessly once to look for Astrin; the wind tore it from his grip, sent it crashing back and fought with him, face-to-face, as he edged it closed.

When the wind died finally, a silence dropped like thin fingers of moonlight across Wind Plain. The tower rose out of broken stone, whole and solitary, yielding nothing to the moon’s eye. Morgon added wood to the fire, made a torch of an oak branch, and went outside. He heard heavy breathing suddenly from the side of the house, an odd, dragging step. He turned and saw Astrin hunched against the wall of the house.

He said, as Morgon put out his torch underfoot and went to help him, “I’m all right.” His face was mist-colored in the light from the window; he flung an arm around Morgon heavily, and together they stumbled across the threshold, Astrin sat down on the pallet. His hands were scratched raw; his hair was tangled with sea spray. He held his right hand against his side and would not move it, until Morgon, watching the dark stain bloom under his fingers, made a harsh noise of protest. Astrin’s head dropped back on the pallet; his hand slid down. He whispered as Morgon ripped a seam open, “Don’t. I’m short of clothes. He saw me first, but I killed him. Then he fell in the sea, and I had to dive for him among the rocks and tide, or they would have found him. I buried him in the sand. They won’t find him there. He was made ... He was shaped out of seaweed and foam and wet pearl, and the sword was of darkness and silver water. It bit me and flew away like a bird. If Xel hadn’t warned me, I would be dead. If I hadn’t turned ... ” He flinched as Morgon touched his side with a wet cloth. Then he was silent, his teeth locked, his eyes closed, while Morgon washed the shallow wound gently, closed it and bound it with strips from his dry robe. He heated wine; Astrin drank it and his shivering stopped. He lay back again. “Thank you. Xel—thank you. If Xel comes back, let her in.”

He slept motionlessly, exhausted, waking only once near dawn, when Xel came whining to the door, and Morgon sleepless by the fire, rose to open it for the wet, bedraggled huntress.

Astrin said little of the incident the next day. He moved stiffly, with a tight, sour expression that eased only when his eyes fell on Morgon’s mute, worried face. They spent the day indoors, Astrin prowling through wizards’ books like an animal scenting, and Morgon trying to wash and mend Astrin’s robe while questions he could not ask struggled like trapped birds in the back of his throat.

Astrin came out of his grim thoughts, finally, near sunset. He closed a book with a sigh, its iron bonds locking automatically, and said, staring out at the plain, “I should tell Heureu.” Then his hand snapped down flat on the book and closed. He whispered, “No. Let him see with his own eyes. The land is his business. Let him put his own name to this. He drove me out of Caerweddin five years ago for speaking the truth; why should I go back?”

Morgon, watching from the hearth as he struggled with needle and seam, made a questioning sound. Astrin, a hand to his side, turned to add wood to the fire for their evening meal. He paused a moment, to drop one hand on Morgon’s shoulder. “I am glad you were here last night. If there is anything I can possibly do for you, I will do it.”

He did not go out again at night for a while. Morgon worked at his side during the days, digging in the city; in the long, quiet evenings he would try to piece together shards of pottery, of glass, while Astrin searched through his books. Sometimes they hunted with Xel in the wild oak forest just south of them, which stretched from the sea far west beyond the limits of Ymris.

Once Astrin said, as they walked through the gentle, constant fall of dead oak leaves, “I should take you to Caithnard. It’s just a day’s journey south of these woods. Perhaps someone knows you there.” But Morgon only looked at him blankly, as if Caithnard lay in some strange land at the bottom of the sea, and Astrin did not mention it again.

Morgon found a few days later a cache of lovely red and purple glass in a corner of the chamber they were working in. He took the fragments to Astrin’s house, brushed off the dirt and puzzled over them. It rained heavily the next day; they could not go out. The small house smelled damp, and the fire smoked. Xel prowled restlessly, wailing complaints every now and then to Astrin, who sat murmuring over a spell-book he could not open. Morgon, some rough paste Astrin had made in front of him, began to fit together, piece by piece, the shards of glass.

He looked up as Astrin said irritably, “Xel, be quiet. I’ve run out of words. Yrth was the most powerful of the wizards after the Founder, and he locked his books too well.”

Morgon opened his mouth, made a small sound, a puzzled look on his face. He turned abruptly, found a half-burned twig in the fire and blew it out. He wrote on the tabletop in ash, “You need his harp.”

Astrin, watching, slid rather abruptly off the stool. He stood looking over Morgon’s shoulder. “I need his what? Your handwriting is as difficult as Aloil’s. Oh. Harp.” His hand closed on Morgon’s shoulder. “Yes. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps he did lock the book with a series of notes from the harp he made—or with the one low string that is said to shatter weapons. But where would I find it? Do you know where it is?”

Morgon shook his head. Then he dropped the twig, staring down at it as if it had been writing of its own volition. He turned his head after a moment, met Astrin’s eyes. Astrin opened one of Aloil’s spell-books abruptly, pushed a quill into Morgon’s hand. “Who paid for his shape with the scars on his hands and to whom?”

Morgon began to write slowly down the margins of one of Aloil’s spells. When he had finished the answer to the ancient Osterland riddle and begun the stricture, Astrin’s voice broke from him in a little hiss.

“You studied at Caithnard. No man without a voice studies at that college—I know; I spent a year there myself. Can you remember it? Can you remember anything of it?”

Morgon stared back at him. He rose as if to go at once, the bench overturning behind him; Astrin caught him as he reached the door.

“Wait. It’s nearly dusk. I’ll go with you to Caithnard tomorrow, if you’ll wait. There are some questions I want to ask the Masters myself.”

They rose before dawn the next morning, to the soft drizzle of rain batting against the roof. It cleared before sunrise; they left Xel sleeping beside the fire and headed south across the wet, grassy plain toward the border of Ymris. The sun rose behind rain clouds drifting like ships above the grey sea. The wind shivered through the trees, plucked the last few wet leaves as they entered the woods, heading for the great traders’ road that ran the length of Ymris and beyond, connecting the ancient city of Lungold to Caithnard.

“We should reach the road by noon,” Astrin said. Morgon, the hem of his long robe drenched with dew, his eyes on the numberless trees as though he could see through them to a city he did not know, made an absent, answering noise. Crows flicked black through the distant branches; their harsh voices echoed back at him, mocking. He heard voices; a couple of traders, laughing, startled a tree full of birds as they rode through the early morning, their packs bulging. They came abreast of Morgon and Astrin; one of them stopped, bowing his head courteously.

“Lord Astrin. You’re a ways from home.” He turned, slipping his pack-strings loose. “I have a message from Mathom of An to Heureu Ymris concerning—I believe—the man who won Peven’s crown. As a matter of fact, I have messages for half the land-rulers of the realm. I was going to stop by your house and put it into your care.”

Astrin’s white brows closed. “You know I haven’t seen Heureu for five years,” he said rather coldly. The trader, a big, red-haired man with a scar down the side of his face, lifted a brow.

“Oh? You see, the difficulty is I’m taking ship from Meremont, so I will not be going to Caerweddin.” He reached into his pack. “I would ask you to take him this message.”

The silver of a blade soared in an arc out of the pack, flashed with a whistle down at Astrin. The trader’s horse startled, and the sword blade, skimming past Astrin’s face, shirred the sleeve of Morgon’s out-flung arm. He leaped forward after the first stunned, incredulous moment, caught the trader’s wrist before it could lift again; the second trader, whirling his mount behind Morgon, brought the edge of his own blade down, high under Morgon’s uplifted arm.

The blade tangled a little in the dark, heavy cloth. Morgon, the breath and sound knocked out of him by the blow, heard Astrin groan, then, for a moment, heard nothing. An odd quietness rose in his mind, a sense of something green, familiar, that smelled not unlike the wet, crushed grass; it faded away before he could name it, but not before he knew it held his name. Then he found himself swaying on his knees, breathing heavily, his lips caught between his teeth, blinking away something he thought was blood but was only the rain beginning again.

A horse, bare backed, galloped away into the trees; Astrin, a bloodstained sword in one hand, was unbuckling the saddle from the other. He wrenched it off, led the horse by the bit over to Morgon. There was a smear of blood across his face; the traders lay sprawling beside their packs and saddles.

He said, his own breath fast, “Can you stand? Where are you hurt?” He saw the black stain spreading down under Morgon’s arm and winced. “Let me see.”

Morgon shook his head, holding the arm clamped to his side with his hand. He struggled to his feet, swallowing sound after sound that would have set the crows mocking; Astrin got a firm grip on his good arm. His face, always colorless, seemed grey in the rain.

“Can you make it back to the house?”

He nodded and managed to make it as far as the edge of the plain.

He woke again as Astrin, dismounting behind him, pulled him gently down from the horse and into the house. He kicked the door shut with his foot as Xel, scenting them at the door, streaked out. Morgon collapsed on the pallet; Astrin, taking a skinning knife to the robe, managed despite Morgon’s mute argument, to find the wound that began in the soft skin of the armpit and slanted down to lay three ribs bare.

Astrin made a sound in his throat. There was a knock on the door then; he whirled, reaching in a single, skilled movement for the sword by the pallet, and rising. He flung the door open; the point of the bloody sword came to rest on the breastbone of a trader who said, “Lord ... ” and then became uncharacteristically inarticulate.

“What?”

The trader, a broad man in a flowing Herun coat, black-bearded, kindly-faced, backed a step. “I have a message from ... ” He stopped again as the sword, shivering in Astrin’s grip, rose from his breast to his throat. He finished in a whisper, “Rork Umber. Lord, you know me—“

“I know.” Morgon, lifting his head with an effort, saw the skin stretched waxen across Astrin’s face. “That’s why if you turn now, and go very quickly, I might let you leave this place alive.”

“But, Lord ... ” His eyes broke from Astrin’s face in helpless curiosity, met Morgon’s, and Morgon saw the flash of his own name in the dark, astonished eyes. He made an eager, questioning noise; the trader drew a breath. “That’s what happened to him? He can’t talk—“

“Go!” The harsh, desperate edge in Astrin’s voice startled even Morgon. The trader, his face white under his beard, held his ground stubbornly.

“But the High One’s harpist is in Caerweddin, looking—“

“I have just killed two traders, and by the High One’s name, I swear I will kill a third if you don’t get off my doorstep!”

The trader disappeared from the doorway; Astrin watched until the sound of hooves died. Then, his hands shaking, he leaned the sword against the doorpost and knelt beside Morgon again.

“All right,” he whispered. “Lie still. I’ll do what I can.”

He was forced to leave Morgon at the end of two days, to get help from an old fisherman’s wife at Loor, who picked the herbs for him he needed and watched Morgon while he slept and hunted. After five days, the old woman went back home with chips of the Earth-Masters’ gold in her hand; and Morgon, too weak to walk, could at least sit up and drink hot soup.

Astrin, worn himself with short nights and worry, said, after half a day of silence, as though he had resolved something in his own mind, “All right. You can’t stay here; I don’t dare take you to Caithnard or Caerweddin. I’ll take you to Umber, and Rork can send for Deth. I need help.”

He did not leave Morgon alone after that. As Morgon became stronger, they spent hours painstakingly piecing together the fragments of red and purple glass that Morgon had found; it began to take the shape of a fragile bowl, beautifully dyed, the red streaks becoming figures moving around the sides in the pattern of some ancient tale. Excited by it, Morgon, his pen scratching across Aloil’s spells, talked Astrin into searching for the remaining pieces. They spent a day in the ruined city, found three more pieces and returned to meet the fisherman’s wife on Astrin’s doorstep. She had brought them a basket of fresh fish; she harried Morgon back into bed, scolded Astrin, and cooked supper for them.

The next morning they finished the bowl. Astrin placed the final pieces carefully, Morgon hovering at his shoulder, scarcely breathing. The red figures became whole, moving through the misty purple in some strange action. Astrin, trying to decipher it without touching the bowl as the paste dried, gave an impatient murmur as someone knocked on the door. Then his face tightened. He reached for the sword, held it loosely as he opened the door. He said, “Rork!” and then nothing more.

Three men came past Astrin into the house. They wore silver-white mail under long, heavy, beautifully embroidered coats; swords were slung on jewelled belts at their hips.

The black-bearded trader whom Astrin had driven from his door said, looking at Morgon, “There he is. The Prince of Hed. Look at him. He’s hurt, he can’t speak. He doesn’t even know me, and I bought grain and sheep from him five weeks ago; I knew his father.” Morgon stood up slowly. Other men entered: a tall, richly dressed, red-haired man with a harried expression on his face; another guard; a pale-haired harpist. Morgon looked for Astrin’s face in the confusion of faces, found in it the same incredulous horror he saw in the strangers’ eyes.

Astrin breathed, “Rork, it’s not possible. I found him tossed up by the sea—he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t ... ”

The eyes of the High Lord of Umber met the harpist’s, received affirmation; he said wearily, “He’s the Prince of Hed.” He ran a hand through his bright hair, sighing. “You had him. Deth has been looking for him for five weeks, and this trader finally brought some tale to the King at Caerweddin that you had gone mad and killed two traders, wounded the Prince of Hed, kept him imprisoned, somehow—through a spell, I suppose—stole his voice. Can you imagine what Heureu thinks? There’s a strange rebellion building in Meremont and Tor, among the coastal lords, that not even the High Lords can account for. We’re bidden to arms for the second time in a year, and on top of that the land-heir of Ymris is accused of murder and imprisoning a land-ruler. The King sent armed men to take you if you resist; the High One sent his harpist to place you under the doom if you try to escape, and I came ... I came to listen to you.”

Astrin put a hand over his eyes. Morgon, his eyes moving bewilderedly from one face to another, hearing a name that belonged to him yet had no meaning, made another sound. The trader sucked a breath.

“Listen to him. Five weeks ago he could talk. When I saw him, he was lying there making noises, with the blood pouring out of his side, and Lord Astrin standing at the door with blood on his sword, threatening to kill me. It’s all right,” he added soothingly to Morgon. “You’re safe now.”

Morgon drew a breath. The sound he wanted to make was cut short before it came; instead he lifted the bowl they had put together so patiently and smashed it against the table. He had their attention then, but as they stared at him, startled, he could not speak. He sat down again, his hands sliding over his mouth.

Astrin took a step toward him, stopped. He said to Rork, “He can’t ride all that way to Caerweddin; his wound is barely healed. Rork surely you don’t believe—I found him washed up on the beach, nameless, voiceless—You can’t believe I would harm him.”

“I don’t,” Rork said. “But how did he get hurt?”

“I was taking him to Caithnard, to see if the Masters recognized him. We met two traders who tried to kill us both. So I killed them. And then this one came, knocking on my door when I had just brought the Prince of Hed in, hardly knowing if he were dead or alive. Can you blame me for being something less than hospitable?”

The trader took off his cap and passed a hand through his hair. “No,” he admitted. “But Lord, you might have listened to me. Who were these traders? There hasn’t been a renegade trader in fifty years. We see to that. It’s bad for business.”

“I have no idea who they were. I left the bodies in the woods, not far from the edge, as you would go straight south from here to reach the trade-road.”

Rork nodded briefly to the guards. “Find them. Take the trader with you.” He added, as they left, “You’d better pack. I brought two mounts and a packhorse from Umber.”

“Rork.” The white eyes were pleading. “Is it necessary? I’ve told you what happened; the Prince of Hed can’t speak, but he can write, and he’ll bear witness for me before you and the High One’s harpist. I have no wish to see Heureu; I have nothing to answer for.”

Rork sighed. “I will have, if I don’t bring you back with me. Half the High Lords of Ymris gathered at Caerweddin heard this tale, and they want an answer to it. You have white hair and white eyes, you meddle with ancient stones and books of wizardry; no one has seen you at Caerweddin in five years, and for all anyone knows it’s entirely possible that you have gone mad and done exactly what the trader said you did.”

“They’ll believe you.”

“Not necessarily.”

“They’ll believe the High One’s harpist.”

Rork sat down on the stool, rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “Astrin. Please. Go back to Caerweddin.”

“For what?”

Rork’s shoulders slumped. The High One’s harpist said then, his voice quiet, even, “It’s not that simple. You are under the doom of the High One, and if you choose not to answer to Heureu Ymris, you will answer to the High One.”

Astrin’s hands went down flat on the table among the glass shards. “For what?” He held the harpist’s eyes. “The High One must have known the Prince of Hed was here. What can he possibly hold me accountable for?”

“I cannot answer for the High One. I can only give you that warning, as I have been instructed. The doom for disobedience is death.”

Astrin looked down at the splinters of glass between his hands. He sat down slowly. Then he reached out, touched Morgon. “Your name is Morgon. No one told you.” He added wearily to Rork, “I’ll have to pack my books; will you help me?”

The guards and the trader returned an hour later. The trader, an odd expression on his face, replied only vaguely to Rork’s questions.

“Did you recognize them?”

“One of them, yes. I think. But ... ”

“Do you know his name? Can you attest to his identity?”

“Well. Yes. I think. But ... ” He shook his head, his face strained. He had not dismounted, as though he wanted to stay no longer than necessary in the lonely, wild corner of Ymris. Rork turned, seized with the same impatience.

“Let’s go. We have to reach Umber by nightfall. And—“ He glanced up as a stray tear of rain caught his eyes, “It’s going to be a weary ride to Caerweddin.”

Xel, too wild to live at Caerweddin, sat on the doorstep as they left, watching them curiously. They rode eastward across the plain, while the clouds darkened behind the ancient, ruined city, and wind passed like some lost, invisible army across the grass. The rain held miraculously until early evening, when they crossed a river at the northern edge of the plain and caught a road that led through the rough hills and green woods of Umber to Rork’s house.

They spent the night there, in the great house built of red and brown stones from the hills, in whose vast hall all the lesser lords of Umber seemed to be gathered at once. Morgon, knowing only the silence of Astrin’s house, was uneasy among the men whose voices rumbled like the sea with talk of war, the women who treated him with a fine, bewildering courtesy and spoke to him of a land he did not know. Only Astrin’s face, closed and aloof to the strangeness, reassured him; and the harpist, playing at the supper’s end, wove a sound within the dark, fire-washed stones that was like the wind-haunted peace Morgon remembered. At night, alone in a chamber big as Astrin’s house, he lay awake listening to the hollow wind, groping blindly for his name.

They left Umber at dawn, rode through a morning mist that coiled and pearled on black, bare orchards. The mist resolved into a rain that stayed with them all the way up the long road from Umber to Caerweddin. Morgon, riding hunched against it, felt the damp collect in his bones, like a mildew. He bore it absently, vaguely aware of Astrin’s concern, something drawing his thoughts forward, an odd pull out of the darkness of his ignorance. Finally, racked by a nagging cough as he rode, he felt the half-healed wound in his side scored as with fire, and he reined sharply. The High One’s harpist put a hand on his shoulder. Looking at the still, austere face, Morgon drew a sudden breath, but the moment’s strange recognition wavered and passed. Astrin, riding back to them, his face taut, unapproachable, said briefly, “We’re almost there.”

The ancient house of the Ymris Kings stood near the sea on the mouth of the Thul River, which ran eastward across Ymris from one of the seven Lungold Lakes. Trade ships were anchored in its deep waters; a fleet of ships with the scarlet and gold sails of Ymris were docked at the mouth of the river like colorful birds. As they rode across the bridge, a messenger, sighting them, turned hurriedly into the open gates of a sprawling stone wall. Beyond it, on a hill, stood the house that Galil Ymris had built, its proud face and wings and towers alive with beautiful patterns of color formed by the brilliant stones of the Earth-Masters.

They rode through the gates, up the gentle incline of a cobbled road. Thick oak doors in the mouth of a second wall were opened for them: they entered a courtyard where serving men took their horses as they dismounted and flung heavy fur cloaks over their shoulders. They went in silence across the wide yard, the rain gusting against their faces.

The King’s hall, built of smooth, dark, glittering stones, held a fire that ran half the length of the inner wall. They were drawn to the fire like moths, shuddering and dripping, unaware of the men falling silent, motionless around them. A quick step on the stones made them turn.

Heureu Ymris, lean, big boned, his dark hair speckled with rain, bent his head courteously to Morgon and said, “You are welcome to my house. I met your father not too long ago. Rork, Deth, I am in your debt. Astrin—“ He stopped then, as though the word he had spoken was strange or bitter to his mouth. Astrin’s face was closed as surely as one of Yrth’s books; his white eyes were expressionless. He looked placeless in the rich hall, with his colorless face and worn robe. Morgon, suddenly possessed of a father he did not know, wished futilely, desperately, that he and Astrin were back where they belonged, in the small house by the sea fitting pieces of glass shard together. He glanced around at the silent, watching strangers in the hall. Something snagged his eye then, down the long hall, something that flamed across the distance, turning his face toward it like a touch.

A sound came out of him. In the shifting torchlight, a great harp stood on a table. It was of beautiful, ancient design, with gold twisted into pale, polished wood inlaid with moons and quarter moons of ivory or bone. Down the face of it, among full moons, inset in gold, were three flawless blood-red stars.

Morgon went toward them, feeling as though his voice and name and thoughts had been stripped from him a second time. There was nothing in the room but those flaming stars and his movement toward them. He reached them, touched them. His fingers moved from them to trace the fine network of gold buried deep in the wood. He ran his hand across the strings, and at the rich, sweet sounds that followed, a love of that harp filled him, overpowering all care, all memory of the past, dark weeks. He turned, looked back at the silent group behind him. The harpist’s quiet face rippled a little in the firelight. Morgon took a step toward him.

“Deth.”

4

No one moved. Morgon, feeling a world slip easily, familiarly into place as though he were waking from a dream, gave a second look at the massive, ancient walls of the house, at the strangers watching him, jewelled, double-linked chains of rank flashing on their breasts. His eyes went back to the harpist. “Eliard ... ”

“I went to Hed to tell him—somehow—that you might have drowned; he said you must be still alive since the land-rule had not passed to him. So I searched for you from Caithnard to Caerweddin.”

“How did you--?” He stopped, remembering the empty ship sagging on its side, the screaming horses. “How did we both survive?”

“Survive what?” Astrin said. Morgon gazed at him without seeing him.

“We were sailing to An at night. I was taking the crown of Peven of Aum to Anuin. The crew just vanished. We went down in a storm.”

“The crew did what?” Rork demanded.

“They vanished. The sailors, the traders, in open sea ... In the middle of a storm, the ship just stopped and sank, with all its grain and animals.” He stopped again, feeling the whip of the wet, mad winds, remembering someone who was himself and yet not himself lying half-drowned on the sand, nameless, voiceless. He reached out to touch the harp. Then, staring down at the stars burning under his hand like the stars on his face, he said sharply, amazed, “Where in the world did this come from?”

“Some fisherman found it last spring,” Heureu Ymris said, “not far from where you and Astrin were staying. It had washed up on the beach. He brought it here because he thought it was bewitched. No one could play it.”

“No one?”

“No one. The strings were mute until you touched them.”

Morgon moved his hand away from it. He saw the awed expression in Heureu’s eyes repeating itself in Astrin’s as they looked at him, and he felt again, for a moment, a stranger to himself. He turned away from the harp, walked back to the fire. He stopped in front of Astrin; their eyes met in a little, familiar silence. Morgon said softly, “Thank you.”

Astrin smiled for the first time since Morgon had met him. Then he looked over Morgon’s shoulder at Heureu. “Is that sufficient? Or do you still intend to bring me to judgment for trying to murder a land-ruler?”

Heureu drew a breath. “Yes.” His face, set with the same stubbornness, was a dark reflection of Astrin’s. “I will, if you try to walk out of this hall without giving me any explanations of why you killed two traders, and threatened to kill a third when he saw the Prince of Hed wounded in your house. There have been enough unfounded rumors spreading through Ymris about you; I will not have something like this added to them.”

“Why should I explain? Will you believe me? Ask the Prince of Hed. What would you have done with me if he hadn’t found his voice?”

Heureu’s own voice rose in exasperation. “What do you think I would have done? While you’ve been at the other end of Ymris digging up potshards, Meroc Tor has been arming half the coastal lands of Ymris. He attacked Meremont yesterday. You would be dead by now if I hadn’t sent Rork and Deth to get you out of that hut you’ve been clinging to like a barnacle.”

“You sent—?”

“What do you think I am? Do you think I believe every tale I hear about you—including the one that you go out in animal-shape every night and scare cattle?”

“I do what?”

“You are the land-heir of Ymris, and you are my brother whom I grew up with. I’m tired of sending messengers to Umber every three months to find out from Rork if you are alive or dead. I have a war on my hands that I don’t understand and I need you. I need your skill and your mind. And I need to know this: who were those traders that tried to kill you and the Prince of Hed? Were they men of Ymris?”

Astrin shook his head. He looked dazed. “I have no idea. We were ... I was taking him to Caithnard to see if the Masters knew him when we were attacked. He was wounded; I killed the traders. I don’t believe they were traders.”

“They weren’t,” the trader who had come with them said glumly; and Morgon said, suddenly, “Wait. I remember. The red-haired man—the one who spoke to us. He was on the ship.”

Heureu looked at them bewilderedly. “I don’t understand.” Astrin turned to the trader.

“You knew him.”

The trader nodded. His face was white, unhappy in the firelight. “I knew him. I’ve looked at that face I saw in the woods night and day, tried to tell myself that the death in it was playing tricks on me. But I can’t. There was the same front tooth gone, the same scar he got when a loading cable snapped and bit him in the face—it was Jarl Aker; from Osterland.”

“Why would he attack the Prince of Hed?” Heureu asked.

“He wouldn’t He didn’t. He’s been dead for two years.”

Heureu said sharply, “That’s not possible.”

“It’s possible,” Astrin said grimly. He was silent, struggling a little with himself while Heureu watched. “Meroc Tor’s rebels aren’t the only men arming themselves in Ymris.”

“What do you mean?”

Astrin glanced at the curious, expectant faces of the gathering in the hall. “I would rather tell you privately. That way if you don’t—“ He stopped abruptly, A woman had joined Heureu quietly; her dark, shy eyes, flicking over the group, lingered a little on Morgon’s face, then moved to Astrin’s.

She said, her brows crooked, her voice soft in the murmurings of the fire, “Astrin, I’m glad you’ve come back. Will you stay now?”

Astrin’s hands closed at his sides, his eyes going to Heureu’s face. There was a mute, brittle struggle between them; the Ymris King, without moving, seemed to shift closer to the woman.

He said to Morgon, “This is my wife, Eriel.”

“You don’t favor your father,” she commented interestedly. Then the blood burned into her face. “I’m sorry—I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s all right,” Morgon said gently. The firelight brushed like soft wings over her face, her dark hair. Her brows crooked again, troubled.

“You don’t look well. Heureu—“

The Ymris King stirred. “I’m sorry. You could all do with some dry clothes and food; you’ve had a rough ride. Astrin, will you stay? The only thing I ask is that if you ever speak of that matter that came between us five years ago, you give me unshakable, absolute proof. You’ve been away from Caerweddin long enough; there’s no one I need more now.”

Astrin’s head bowed. His hands in his frayed sleeves were still closed. He said softly, “Yes.”

An hour later, Morgon, washed, shorn of five weeks’ growth of hair, the edge taken off his hunger, surveyed the fur-covered bed in his chamber and lay down without undressing. There was a knock on his door in what seemed only a moment later; he sat up, blinking. The room, except for the low fire, was dark. The stone walls seemed to move and settle around him as he rose; he could not find the door. He considered the problem, murmured the stricture of an ancient riddle from An:

“See with your heart what your eyes cannot, and you will find the door that is not.”

The door opened abruptly in front of him, light flaring in from the hall. “Morgon.”

The harpist’s face and silver hair were oddly blurred with torchlight. Morgon said with an odd sense of relief, “Deth. I couldn’t find the door. For a moment I thought I was in Peven’s tower. Or the tower Oen of An built to trap Madir. I just remembered that I promised Snog Nutt I would fix his roof before the rains start. He’s so addled he won’t think of telling Eliard; he’ll sit there all winter with the rain dripping down his neck.”

The harpist put a hand on his arm. His brows were drawn. “Are you ill?”

“I don’t think so, no. Grim Oakland thinks I should get another pigherder, but Snog would die of uselessness if I took his pigs away from him. I’d better go home and fix his roof.” He started as a shadow loomed across the threshold.

Astrin, unfamiliar in a short, close-fitting coat, his hair neatly trimmed, said brusquely to Deth, “I have to talk to you. Both of you. Please.” He took a torch from the hall; the shadows flitted away in the room, sat hunched in corners, behind furniture.

Astrin closed the door behind them, turned to Morgon, “You have got to leave this house.”

Morgon sat down on the clothes chest. “I know. I was just telling Deth.” He found himself shivering suddenly, uncontrollably; and moved to the fire that Deth was rousing.

Astrin, prowling through the room like Xel, demanded of Deth, “Did Heureu tell you why we quarrelled five years ago?”

“No. Astrin—“

“Please. Listen to me. I know you can’t act, you can’t help me, but at least you can listen. I left Caerweddin the day Heureu married Eriel.”

An image of the shy, fragile face, richly colored with firelight, rose in Morgon’s mind. He said sympathetically, “Were you in love with her, too?”

“Eriel Meremont died five years ago on King’s Mouth Plain.”

Morgon closed his eyes. The harpist, kneeling with his hands full of wood, was so still not even the light trembled on the chain across his breast. He said, his voice changeless as ever, “Do you have proof?”

“Of course not. If I had proof, would that woman who calls herself Eriel Meremont still be married to Heureu?”

“Then who is married to Heureu?”

“I don’t know.” He sat down finally beside the fire. “The day before the wedding, I rode with Eriel to King’s Mouth Plain. She was tired of the preparations and wanted a few moments of peace, and she asked me to go with her. We were close; we had known each other since we were children, but there was nothing more than deep friendship between us. We rode to the ruined city on the plain and separated. She went to sit on one of the broken walls to watch the sea, and I just walked through the city, wondering as always what force had scattered the stones like leaves on the grass. At one moment, as I walked, everything grew suddenly very quiet: the sea, the wind. I looked up. I saw a white bird flying above me against the blue sky. It was very beautiful, and I remember thinking that the silence must be like the still eye of a maelstrom. Then I heard a wave break, and the wind rise. I heard a strange cry; I thought the bird had made it. Then I saw Eriel ride past me without looking back or speaking. I called to her to wait, but she didn’t look back. I went to get my horse, and when I passed the rock she had been sitting on, I saw a white bird lying dead on it. It was still warm, still bleeding. I held it in my hands, and felt sorrow and terror overwhelm me as I remembered the silence, and the cry of the bird and Eriel riding away from me without looking back. I buried the bird there among the ancient stones above the sea. That night I told Heureu what I had seen. We ended up shouting at each other, and I swore as long as he was married to that woman I would never return to Caerweddin, I think Rork Umber is the only man to whom Heureu told the truth about why I left. He never told Eriel, but she must know. I only began to realize what she must be as I watched the army being gathered, ships built, arms unloaded at night from Isig and Anuin ... I’ve seen, late at night, what Meroc Tor has not: that part of this army he has formed is not human. And that woman is of this nameless, powerful people.” He paused, his eyes moved from Deth’s face to Morgon’s. “I decided to stay at Caerweddin for one reason only: to find proof of what she is. I don’t know what you are, Morgon. They gave you a name in my house, but I’ve never heard of a Prince of Hed winning a riddle-game with death, playing an ancient harp made only for him by someone, sometime, who put the touch of a destiny on that harp’s face.”

Morgon leaned back in his chair. He said wearily, “I can’t use a harp to fix Snog Nutt’s roof.”

“What?”

“I’ve never heard that a destiny is of any use at all to a Prince of Hed. I’m sorry Heureu married the wrong woman, but that’s his business. She’s beautiful, and he loves her, so I don’t see why you’re upset. I was on my way to Anuin to get married myself when I nearly got killed. Logically it would seem that someone wants to kill me, but that’s their business; I don’t want to be bothered trying to figure out why. I’m not stupid; once I start asking questions—even one question: What are three stars—I’ll begin a riddle-game I don’t think I’ll want to finish. I don’t want to know. I want to go home, fix Snog Nutt’s roof, and go to bed.”

Astrin gazed at him a moment, then turned to Deth. “Who is Snog Nutt?”

“His pigherder.”

Astrin reached out, touched Morgon’s face. “You may as well have died in that woods for all the good four days’ riding in the rain has done you. I’d row you back to Hed and patch your pigherder’s roof myself if I thought you could even walk out of this room and stay alive. I’m afraid for your life in this house, especially now since you found that harp so conveniently here, under the eyes of Eriel Ymris. Deth, you nearly lost your own life because of those people; who does the High One say they are?”

“The High One, beyond saving my life and doubtlessly Morgon’s, for his own reasons, has said absolutely nothing to me. I had to find out for myself whether Morgon was alive, and where he was. It was unexpected, but the High One follows his own inclinations.” He settled a log on the fire and stood up. Lines had formed, faint, taut, down the sides of his mouth. He added, “You know I can do nothing without his instructions. I cannot in any way offend the King of Ymris, since I act in the High One’s name.”

“I know. You’ll notice I haven’t asked you if you believe me or not. But do you have any suggestions?”

Deth glanced at Morgon. “I suggest you send for the King’s physician.”

“Deth—“

“There is nothing either one of us can do but wait. And watch. As ill as Morgon is, he should not be left alone.”

Something eased in the lean, colorless face. He rose abruptly. “I’ll get Rork to help us watch. He may not believe me, but he knows me well enough to be uneasy about this.”

The King’s physician, the Lady Anoth, an elderly, comforting, dry-voiced woman took one look at Morgon, and, ignoring his arguments, gave him something that whirled him into a drugged sleep. He woke hours later, light-headed, restless. Astrin, who had stayed to keep watch over him, had fallen asleep by the fire, exhausted. Morgon eyed him a moment, wanting to talk, then decided to let him sleep. His thoughts strayed to the harp in the hall; he heard again the light, rich voice of it, felt the taut, perfectly tuned strings under his fingers. A thought occurred to him then, a question underlying the agelessness, the magic behind the harp. He rose a little unsteadily, wrapped himself in fur from the bed, and left the room soundlessly. The hallway was empty, quiet; the torchlight flared over the private faces of closed doors. With an odd certainty, he found his way down a stairway that led to the great hall.

The stars gleamed like eyes in the shadows. He touched the harp, picked it up, feeling the unexpected lightness of it in spite of its size. The fine, ancient scroll and web of gold burned under his fingers. He touched a string, and at the lovely, solitary sound, he smiled. Then a fit of coughing shook him, tearing painfully at his side; he dropped his face in the fur to still the sound.

A startled voice said behind him, “Morgon.”

He straightened after a moment, white, exhausted. Eriel Ymris came down the stairs, followed by a girl with a torch. He watched her come to him quietly through the long hall, her unbound hair making her look very young. He said curiously, “Astrin told me you were dead.”

She stopped. He could not read the expression in her eyes. Then she said composedly, “No. You are.”

His hands shifted position slightly on the harp.

Somewhere, too distant to trouble him, something in him was crying out a warning. He shook his head. “Not yet. Who are you? Are you Madir? No, she’s dead. And she didn’t kill birds. Are you Nun?”

“Nun is dead, too.” She was watching him without blinking, her eyes fire-flecked. “You don’t go back far enough, Lord. Go back as far as your mind will take you, to the earliest riddle that was asked, and I am older than that.”

He threw his mind back to his studies, touched riddle after riddle but found her nowhere. He said incredulously, “You don’t exist in the books of the Masters—not even in the books of wizardry that have been opened. Who are you?”

“The wise man can give a name to his enemy.”

“The wise man knows he has enemies,” he said a little bitterly. “What is it? Is it the stars? Would it help to tell you that the last thing I want to do is fight you; I simply want to be left alone to rule Hed in peace.”

“Then you shouldn’t have left your land to begin weaving riddles at Caithnard. The wise man knows his own name. You don’t know my name; you don’t know your own. It’s better for me if you die that way, in ignorance.”

“But why?” he said bewilderedly, and she took a step toward him. At her side, the young girl turned suddenly into a big, red-haired trader with a weal across his face, who wielded instead of a torch a sword of lean, ash-colored metal. Morgon moved back, felt the wall behind him. He watched the sword rise in a dreamlike slowness. It burned the skin of his throat, and he started.

“Why?” The blade had drained the sound from his voice. “At least tell me why.”

“Beware the unanswered riddle.” She looked away from him, nodded at the trader.

Morgon closed his eyes. He said, “Never underestimate another riddler,” and plucked the lowest string of the harp.

The sword shattered in midair, and he heard a cry like a faint bird cry. Then all around him came a terrible cacophony of sound as ancient shields lining the far wall burst with hollow, metallic ringing, and their split pieces drummed on the floor. Morgon felt himself drop from a great distance, fall like a shield to the floor, and he buried the noise of his falling in the fur. Voices followed the din and hum of metal, flurried, indistinct.

Someone tugged at him. “Morgon, get up. Can you get up?” He lifted his head; Rork Umber, dressed in little more than a cloak and a knife belt, helped him up.

Heureu, staring down at them from the stairs, with Eriel behind him, demanded amazedly, “What is going on? It sounds like a battlefield in here.”

“I’m sorry,” Morgon said. “I broke your shields.”

“You did. How in Aloil’s name did you do that?”

“Like this.” He plucked the string again, and the knife in Rork’s belt, and the pikes of the guards in the doorways snapped. Heureu drew a breath, stunned.

“Yrth’s harp.”

“Yes,” Morgon said. “I thought it might be.” His eyes moved to Eriel’s face as she stood behind Heureu, her hands against her mouth. “I thought—I dreamed you were here with me.”

Her head gave a little, startled shake. “No. I was with Heureu.”

He nodded. “It was a dream, then.”

“You’re bleeding,” Rork said suddenly. He turned Morgon toward the light “How did you get that cut on your throat?”

Morgon touched it. He began to shake then, and he saw, above Eriel, Astrin’s haggard, bloodless face.

Drugged again, he dreamed of ships tossing in a wild, black sea, decks empty, sails ripped to ribbons; of a beautiful, black-haired woman who tried to kill him by playing the lowest string on a starred harp, and who wept when he shouted at her; of a riddle-game weaving through his dreams that never ended, with a man whose face he never saw, who asked riddle after riddle, demanding answers, yet never answered any himself. Snog Nutt appeared from somewhere, waiting patiently with rainwater falling down his neck for the game to end, but it was interminable. Finally the strange riddler turned into Tristan, who told him to go home. He found himself in Hed, walking through the wet fields at dusk, smelling the earth. Just as he reached the open doors of his house, he woke.

The room with its beautiful patterned walls of blue and black stone was filled with a grey afternoon light. Someone sitting by the fire bent over to settle a falling log. Morgon recognized the lean, outstretched hand, the loose, silver hair.

He said, “Deth.”

The harpist rose. His face was hollowed, faintly lined with weariness; his voice, calm as always, held no trace of it. “How do you feel?”

“Alive.” He stirred and said reluctantly, “Deth, I have a problem. I may have been dreaming, but I think Heureu’s wife tried to kill me.”

Deth was silent. In a rich, dark, full-sleeved robe he looked a little like a Caithnard Master, his face honed from years of study. Then he touched his eyes briefly with his fingers and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Tell me.”

Morgon told him. The rain he had heard now and again in his dreaming began to tap softly against the wide windows; he listened to it a moment when he had finished, then added, “I can’t figure out who she might be. She has no place in the tales and riddles of the kingdoms ... just as the stars have no place. I can’t accuse her; I have no proof, and she would just look at me out of her shy eyes and not know what on earth I was talking about. So I think I should leave this place quickly.”

“Morgon, you have been lying ill for two days since you were found in that hall. Assuming you have the strength to leave this room, what would you do?”

Morgon’s mouth crooked. “I’m going to go home. The wise man does not shake a hornet’s nest to see what’s buzzing in it. I’ve left Hed without a land-ruler for six weeks; I want to see Eliard and Tristan again. I’m accountable to the High One for the name I was born with in Hed, not for some strange identity I seem to have beyond Hed.” He paused; the rain changed, began battering hard at the glass. His eyes strayed to it. “I am curious,” he admitted. “But this is one riddle-game I have sense enough to stay out of. The High One can play it.”

“The High One is not the one being challenged.”

“It’s his realm; I’m not responsible for the power games in Ymris.”

“You may be if the stars on your face set them in motion.”

Morgon looked at him. His mouth drew taut; he turned restlessly, wincing a little, the shadows of pain and exhaustion in his face deepening. Deth dropped a hand on his arm. “Rest,” he said gently. “If you choose, when you’re well enough to leave, to go back to Hed, unless the High One gives me other instructions, I’ll travel with you. If you disappear again between Hed and Ymris, I would only have to search for you.”

“Thank you. I don’t understand, though, why the High One left you ignorant of where I was. Did you ask him?”

“I’m a harpist, not a wizard to throw my mind from here to Erlenstar Mountain. He comes into my mind at will; I cannot go into his.”

“Well, he must have known you were searching for me. Why didn’t he tell you?”

“I can only guess. The High One’s mind is the great web of the minds of those in his realm. He weaves to his own ends, threading back and forth between action and action to make a pattern, which is why his reactions to events are often unexpected. Five years ago, Heureu Ymris married, and Astrin Ymris left Caerweddin carrying a fact like a stone in him. Perhaps the High One used you to bring Astrin and his fact back to Caerweddin to face Heureu.”

“If that’s true, then he knows what she is.” He stopped. “No. He could have acted when Heureu married, that would have been simpler. Her children will be the land-heirs of Ymris; if she were that powerful, that lawless, surely the High One would have acted then. Astrin must be wrong. I must have been dreaming, that night. And yet ... ” He shook his head, his hand sliding over his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m glad all this is none of my business.”

The King’s physician checked him, forbade him to set one foot on the floor, and gave him a hot, heady mixture of wine and herbs at evening that slid him into a dreamless sleep. He woke only once, sometime in the middle of the night, to find Rork Umber reading by the fire. The High Lord’s bright hair blurred against the flames as Morgon’s eyes closed and he slept again.

Heureu and Eriel came to see him the next afternoon. Astrin, who had relieved Rork, stood at the broad windows overlooking the city; Morgon saw the eyes of the king and his land-heir meet a moment, expressionlessly. Then Heureu pulled chairs to the bedside and sat down.

He said tiredly, “Morgon, Anoth ordered me not to disturb you, but I must. Meroc Tor has laid seige to the High Lord of Meremont; I am leaving in two days with a force from Ruhn, Caerweddin and Umber to break it. I have had word that there is a fleet of warships on the coasts of Meremont ready to set sail for Caerweddin if Meremont falls. If those ships succeed in reaching Caerweddin, you’re liable to be trapped here indefinitely. For your own safety, I think you should be moved north, to the house of the High Lord of Marcher.”

Morgon did not answer for a moment. He said slowly, “Heureu, I am grateful for the care you’ve given me, and for your kindness. But I would rather not go any farther from Hed than I am now. Can you spare a ship to send me home?”

The dark, troubled face eased a little. “I can. But I thought you might object to going home by sea. I can send you in one of my own trade-ships, under guard. I know my own traders well; I’ve sailed with them.”

“You have?”

“To Anuin, Caithnard, even Kraal ... ” He smiled reminiscently. “That was when I was younger, and my father was still alive. Astrin went to Caithnard to study, but I chose to learn about the world beyond Ymris in a different way. I loved it, but since I took the land-rule, I have rarely left Ymris.”

“Is that when you met my father? On one of your journeys?”

Heureu shook his head. “I met your parents last spring, when Eriel and I visited Caithnard.”

“Last spring.” He drew a breath. “You saw them then. I had no idea.”

“You couldn’t have,” Eriel said softly, and Astrin, at the window, turned. Her soft brows were crooked a little anxiously, but she continued, “We met when—when Heureu bumped into your mother, Spring, on a crowded street and broke a glass bowl she was carrying. She started crying. I think she was frightened of all the people and the noise. And your father tried to get her to stop—we all tried—but she wouldn’t come out from behind her hands. So we just talked for a while. We told each other our names, and your father began to tell us about you, how you went to college there. He was very proud of you. And, of course, your mother came out then, because we were talking about her child.” She smiled quickly at the memory; then her brows drew together again, and her eyes dropped from his gaze. “We had supper together and talked into the night. Your mother ... I had—I had a child that died a few months before that, and I was never able to speak about it to anyone until that night, to her. So when we returned to Caerweddin and heard what happened to them, I felt ... I was deeply grieved.”

Morgon’s lips parted as he watched her. His eyes flicked once to Astrin, but the white eyes were unreadable. Heureu’s hand touched hers, closed over it. He said gently, “Morgon, your father said something that I remembered suddenly last night. He told me he had bought a harp for you, a very beautiful, odd-looking harp he thought you’d like. He had paid almost nothing for it, to some wandering Lungold trader because it was cursed, it didn’t play. He said no sensible man believed in curses. I asked him how you would be able to play it, then, and he just smiled and said he thought you could. He didn’t show it to me because it was packed on the ship. I realized last night that your father must have known you could play that harp because it had your stars on its face.”

Morgon tried to speak; his voice would not come. He rose suddenly, unsteadily, stood staring into the fire, oblivious to everything but one terrible thought. “Is that what happened? Someone saw those stars and made a death-ship for them, whose crew vanished, left them alone, helpless, with the ship tearing apart around them, not knowing, not understanding why? Is that how they died? Is that—“ He turned abruptly, saw the wine in its glass flagon by the fire, the cups of glass and gold, and he swept them in a single, furious movement off the table to smash against the stones. The broken shards beaded with red wine on the floor brought him back to himself. He said, his face bloodless, drawn, “I’m sorry ... I didn’t ... I keep breaking things.”

Heureu had risen. He gripped Morgon firmly; his voice sounded distant, then returned, full. “I should have thought a little—I should have thought. Lie down before you hurt yourself. I’ll get Anoth.”

Morgon, scarcely hearing them leave, pushed his face tightly against the crook of his arm, felt tears burn like seawater in his eyes.

He woke later, slowly, to the sound of low intense voices: Astrin’s and Heureu’s. The muted anger in the King’s voice broke the web of his dark dreaming like a cold wind.

“Do you think I’m witless, Astrin? I don’t have to ask where to find you or Rork Umber, or even the High One’s harpist, even at midnight. What Deth does is the High One’s business, but if you and Rork spent as much time concerning yourself with the problems at hand as you do exhausting yourselves guarding against an illusion in this room, I would feel easier about the fate of Caerweddin.”

Astrin’s voice came back at him, cold, edged. “There are more illusions in this land than the woman you married. Anyone could come in here wearing a face so familiar none of us would think to see beneath it—“

“What do you want me to do? Mistrust every man and woman in my house? Is that what moved you to the far corner of Ymris—such terrible mistrust? I’ve seen the way you look at her, talk to her. What is it? Is it her unborn children you are jealous of? Do you want the land-rule that badly? I’ve heard that rumour too, but I’ve never come close to believing it before.”

Astrin stared at him, silent, motionless, his colorless face like a mask. Then something broke in it; he turned away. He whispered, “I can take anything from you but that. I’m going back to Wind Plain. That woman nearly killed the Prince of Hed in your hall three nights ago; I’m not staying to watch her succeed. You watch; you married her.”

He left Heureu gazing at the open, empty doorway. Morgon saw the first, faint uncertainty in just eyes before he followed.

Morgon shifted restlessly. The irresolvable quarrel, the hopeless questioning, the black, heavy thought of his parents’ deaths loomed like a growth in his mind. He tried to get up, yielded, and fell back into a half-sleep. He woke with a startled murmur as the door opened again. Astrin came to his side.

Morgon said huskily, “I keep dreaming of that bowl I broke: the figures are moving around it in some strange pattern, a riddle I am on the verge of answering when it shatters, and with it all the answers to all the riddles in the world shatter. Why did you come back? I wouldn’t blame you if you had left.”

Astrin did not answer. Instead, with brief, methodical movements, he pulled the furs off Morgon, bundled them in his arms, and pushed them with all his strength against Morgon’s face.

The fur in Morgon’s mouth stifled his startled cry. The heavy weight of it melted around him, forced into his dry mouth, his eyes. He gripped the hands that held it down, struggled to pull them apart to move from the bed while the blood snapped and sang in his ears, and the darkness seemed to eddy him in huge, ponderous circles.

Then he found air again, a clean edge of it, and knelt on the floor, his voice sobbing, rattling like pebbles as he breathed. Next to the fire, Heureu, his hands twisted in the shoulders of Astrin’s robe, held the man against the wall, while Rork Umber’s sword lay like a lick of flame against his breast.

Morgon pulled himself up. Heureu and Rork were gazing incredulously at the mute, white-eyed figure. Rork was whispering, as if he had no breath or speech, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe—“

A movement in the doorway caught Morgon’s eye. He tried to speak; his voice, bruised, trapped, made for one last time a harsh, desperate bird-cry that turned their uncomprehending faces towards him.

“Heureu.”

The King whirled. Astrin stood in the doorway. For a moment neither he nor Heureu moved; then expression came into Heureu’s eyes. He said, “Be careful, I haven’t got your gift for seeing. If I get you confused, I’ll never understand this.”

Rork said sharply, “Heureu!”

The figure beneath his sword was fading. It drifted like smoke beyond their eyes into the air, until suddenly it was gone and a white bird shot through the air towards Astrin.

He flung up his arms as it struck his face. They cried out together, he and the bird; he stumbled and fell, his hands over his eyes. Morgon reached him first, held him, and saw the blood trickling between the taut fingers covering one eye. There was a crash behind them; wind moaned into the room through the colored, jagged spears of window glass the bird left in its passing.

Heureu went to Astrin. Murmuring gently, incoherently, he moved Astrin’s fingers from his eye. He drew a sharp breath, and snapped to a white-faced page staring at them in the hall,

“Get Anoth.”

Astrin, his head in the crook of Morgon’s shoulder, his eyes closed, said raggedly, “I was going to leave, but I couldn’t. I came back to Morgon’s room to see if you were still there, and as I came down the hall, I saw ... I saw myself go into the room ahead of me. So I did something I’ve never been able to do before. I threw a call to you through the stones, into your mind—the wizard’s call. I wait—I waited. That was hard to do, but you wanted proof.”

“I know. Lie still. You’ve done—“ He stopped. For a moment nothing of him moved, his breath, his hands, his eyes, while the blood drained slowly from his face. He whispered, “So long ago. That white bird.” He stopped, kneeling hunched over Astrin, and they were silent. He rose abruptly; Rork gripped his shoulder.

“Heureu.”

The King pulled away from him, strode down the long, empty hallway. Morgon closed his eyes. The Lady Anoth came, grim and breathless, to bandage Astrin’s eye. Rork helped him up. Relieved of his burden, Morgon stood alone for the moment He went to the window, touched the broken glass. He saw then, beyond Caerweddin, the stones of the ruined city on King’s Mouth Plain, scattered like the bones of some gigantic, nameless man.

He dressed, went downstairs to the great hall. Firelight coiled deep in the stars on the face of the harp. He picked it up, slung it by its jewelled strap over his shoulder. He heard a step behind him and turned. The High One’s harpist, his hair web-colored in the hearthlight, reached out, touched the stars.

He said softly, “I was there when Yrth made this harp. I heard the first song it ever played ... ”

His hand moved, closed gently on Morgon’s shoulder, and Morgon’s trembling eased. He said, “I want to leave.”

“I’ll ask the king to put a ship and guards at your disposal. You should be well enough to travel to Hed, if you’re careful.”

“I’m not going to Hed. I am going to Erlenstar Mountain.” The stars, as he looked down on them, seemed like a reflection of his own face. “I can ignore the threats to my own life. I can deny my curiosity. I can deny that there is in me, somewhere, a man whose name I do not know. But I can’t deny that these stars on my face may be deadly to those I love. So I am going to Erlenstar Mountain to ask the High One why.”

The harpist was silent; Morgon could not read the expression in his eyes. “Are you going by sea?”

“No. I want to get there alive.”

“It’s late in the year for travelling north. It will be a long, lonely, dangerous journey; you’ll be away from Hed for months.”

“Are you trying to dissuade me?” Morgon asked, surprised.

The hand at his shoulder tightened faintly. “I haven’t been to Erlenstar Mountain for three years, and, barring instructions from the High One, I would like to go home. May I travel with you?”

Morgon bowed his head, touched the harp, and stray strings sounded gently, haltingly, as though he were feeling for the beginning of some great song. “Thank you. But will you mind travelling with a man tracked by death?”

“Not when that man is carrying the harp of the Harpist of Lungold.”

They left at dawn the next morning, so quietly only Heureu and the half-blind Ymris land-heir knew they had gone. They rode northward through King’s Mouth Plain, their long morning shadows splaying across the massive, patternless stones. A gull, wheeling in the cool air, gave one cry above them, like a challenge, then winged, bright in the clear morning, southward over the line of lean, blue-sailed warships taking the slow tide of the Thul toward the sea.

5

They journeyed slowly through Ymris, as Morgon fought the last stages of his illness, avoiding the great houses of the Ymris lords, taking shelter after an easy day’s riding in small villages that blossomed at the crux of a patchwork of field, or in the curve of a river. Deth paid for their shelter with his harping. Morgon, nursing a cold in miserable silence, sipping hot broth the women made for him, watched weary farmers and unruly children settle quietly to the sound of Deth’s beautiful, intricate harping, his fine, skilled voice. They were given without hesitation any song, ballad, dance they asked for; and occasionally someone would bring out his own harp, a harp that had been passed down for generations, and recite a curious history of it, or play a variation of a song that Deth could invariably repeat after listening once. Morgon, his eyes on the ageless face bent slightly above the polished oak harp, felt the familiar nudge of a question in the back of his mind.

In the rocky fields and low border hills of Marcher, where villages and farms were rare on the rough land, they found themselves camping for the first time in the open. They stopped beside a narrow stream under a stand of three oaks. The late sun in the clear, dark-blue sky glanced off the red faces of rocks pushing up in the soil, and turned the hill grass gold. Morgon, coaxing a young fire, paused a moment and looked around him. The rough, undulating land flowed toward old, worn hills that seemed in their bald, smooth lines like old men sleeping. He said wonderingly, “I’ve never seen such lonely land.”

Deth, unpacking their store of bread, cheese, wine and the apples and nuts one villager had given them, smiled. “Wait until you reach Isig Pass. This is gentle country.”

“It’s immense. If I had travelled this long in a straight line across Hed, I would have been walking on the ocean bottom a week ago.” He added a branch to the fire, watched the flames eat across the dry leaves. The dull ache and weariness of fever had dropped away from him finally, leaving him clear-headed and curious, enjoying the cool wind and the colors. Deth handed him the wineskin; he took a mouthful. The fire, rousing, shimmered in the clean air like some rich, strange cloth; Morgon, catching a reflection of it in his memories, said slowly, “I should write to Raederle.”

He had not spoken her name since they had left Caithnard. The colors of the memory resolved into long, flighty, fiery hair, hands flashing with gold and amber, amber-colored eyes. He tossed another branch on the fire and felt the harpist’s eyes on his face. He sat back against a tree, reached for the wine again.

“And Eliard. The traders will probably tell him enough to worry him grey-haired before any letter of mine reaches him. If I get killed on this journey, he’ll never forgive me.”

“If we skirt Herun, you may not be able to send letters until we reach Osterland.”

“I should have thought of writing before.” He passed the wineskin to the harpist and sliced a wedge of cheese; his eyes strayed again to the fire. “After our father died, we grew so close that sometimes we dream the same dreams ... I was that close to my father as his land-heir. I felt him die. I didn’t know how or why or where; I simply knew, at that moment, that he was dying. And then that he was dead, and the land-rule had passed to me. For a moment I saw every leaf, every seed, every root in Hed ... I was every leaf, every new-planted seed ... ” He leaned forward, reached for the bread. “I don’t know why I’m talking about that. You must have heard it a hundred times.”

“The passage of the land-rule? No. From what little I have heard, though, the passing isn’t so gentle in other lands. Mathom of An told me some of the various bindings that demand constant attention from the land-rulers of An: the binding of the spell-books of Madir, the binding of the ancient, rebellious lords of Hel in their graves, the binding of Peven in his tower.”

“Rood told me that. I wonder if Mathom has set Peven free now that I have the crown. Or rather,” he added ruefully, “now that Peven’s crown is at the bottom of the sea.”

“I doubt it. The kings’ bindings are not broken lightly. Nor are their vows.”

Morgon, tearing a chunk of bread from the loaf, felt a light flush burn his face. He looked at the harpist, said a little shyly, “I believe that. But I could never ask Raederle to marry me if she had no other reason than Mathom’s vow to accept me. It’s her choice, not Mathom’s, and she may not choose to live in Hed. But if there’s a chance, then I just want to write and tell her that I will come, eventually, in case—if she wants to wait.” He took a bite of bread and cheese, asked rather abruptly, “How long will it take us to get to Erlenstar Mountain?”

“If we reach Isig Mountain before winter, it will take perhaps six weeks. If the snow gets to Isig before us, we may have to stay there until spring.”

“Would it be faster to go around Herun to the west and up through the wilderness lands to Erlenstar without going through the Pass?”

“Through the back door of Erlenstar? You would have to be part wolf to survive the backlands in this season. I’ve taken that way only a few times in my life, and never this late in the year.”

Morgon tilted his head back against the tree. “It occurred to me a couple of days ago,” he said “when I started to think again, that if you weren’t with me, I would not have the slightest idea what direction to go next. You move through this land as though you’ve been across it a thousand times.”

“I may have. I’ve lost count.” He fed the fire, the eager flames flicking in his quiet eyes. The sun had gone down; the grey wind set the dry leaves chattering above them in some unknown tongue.

Morgon asked suddenly, “How long have you been in the High One’s service?”

“When Tirunedeth died, I left Herun, and the High One called me to Erlenstar Mountain.”

“Six hundred years ... What did you do before that?”

“Harped, travelled ... ” He fell silent, his eyes on the fire; then he added almost reluctantly, “I studied awhile at Caithnard. But I didn’t want to teach, so I left after taking the Black.”

Morgon, raising the wineskin to his mouth, lowered it without drinking. “I had no idea you were a Master. What was your name, then?” As the question left his tongue, he felt the blood burn again in his face, and he said quickly, “Forgive me. I forget that some things I want to know are none of my business.”

“Morgon—“ He stopped. They ate in silence awhile, then Deth reached for his harp, uncased it. He ran a thumb softly across the strings. “Have you tried to play that harp of yours yet?”

Morgon smiled. “No. I’m afraid of it”

“Try.”

Morgon took the harp out of the soft leather case Heureu had given him for it. The burning net of gold, the bone-white moons and polished wood held him wordless a moment with their beauty. Deth plucked the high string on his harp; Morgon echoed it softly, his own string perfectly pitched. Deth took him slowly down the gleaming run of strings, and he found note after note precisely tuned. Only twice the sounds jarred slightly, and each time Deth stopped to tune his own harp.

He said, as Morgon’s fingers moved to the low note, “I don’t have a string to tune that to.”

Morgon moved his hand quickly. The sky was black above them; the wind had stilled. The firelight traced the groins and arches of the dark, twisted branches sheltering them. He said wonderingly, “How can it still be in tune after all these years, even after it was washed up from the sea?”

“Yrth bound the pitch into those strings with his voice. There is no harp more beautiful in the High One’s realm.”

“And neither you nor I can play it.” His eyes moved to Deth’s harp, its pale, carved pieces burnished in the firelight. It was adorned with neither metal nor jewels, but the oak pieces were finely scrolled on all sides with delicate carving. “Did you make your harp?”

Deth smiled, surprised. “Yes.” He traced a line of carving, and something in his face opened unexpectedly. “I made it when I was young, by my standards, after years of playing on various harps. I shaped its pieces out of Ymris oak beside night fires in far, lonely places where I heard no man’s voice but my own. I carved on each piece the shapes of leaves, flowers, birds I saw in my wanderings. In An, I searched three months for strings for it. I found them finally, sold my horse for them. They were strung to the broken harp of Ustin of Aum, who died of sorrow over the conquering of Aum. Its strings were tuned to his sorrow, and its wood was split like his heart. I strung my harp with them, matching note for note in the restringing. And then I retuned them to my joy.”

Morgon drew a breath. His head bowed suddenly, his face hidden from the harpist. He was silent for a long time, while Deth waited, stirring the fire now and then, the sparks shooting upward like stars. He lifted his head finally.

“Why did Yrth put the stars on this harp?”

“He made it for you.”

Morgon’s head gave a swift, single shake. “No one could have known of me. No one.”

“Perhaps,” Deth said quietly. “But when I saw you in Hed, I thought of that harp; and the stars on it and the stars on your face fit together like a riddle and its answer.”

“Then who ... ” He stopped again, his voice unsteady. He leaned back, his face blurring in the shadows. “I can’t ignore all this and I can’t understand it, though I’ve been trying very hard to do both. I’m a riddle-master. Why am I so terribly ignorant? Why did Yrth never mention the stars in his works? Who is behind me, trailing me in the dark, and where does she come from? If these stars signalled such a reaction from such strange, powerful people, why were the wizards themselves ignorant of both the stars and the people? I spent one entire winter with Master Ohm at Caithnard, looking for a reference to the stars in the history, poetry, legends and songs of the realm. Yrth himself, writing about the making of that harp at Isig, never mentioned the stars. Yet my parents are dead, Astrin lost an eye, and I’ve been nearly killed three times because of them. There’s so little sense to this, sometimes I think I’m trying to understand a dream, except that no dream could be so deadly. Deth, I am afraid even to begin to untangle this.”

Deth put a branch on the fire, and a wave of light etched Morgon’s face out of the shadows. “Who was Sol of Isig and why did he die?”

Morgon turned his face away. “Sol was the son of Danan Isig. He was pursued through the mines of Isig Mountain one day by traders who wanted to steal from him a priceless jewel. He came to the stone door at the bottom of Isig, beyond which lay dread and sorrow older even than Isig. He could not bring himself to open that door, which no man had ever opened, for fear of what might lie in the darkness beyond it. So his enemies found him in his indecision, and there he died.”

“And the stricture?”

“Turn forward into the unknown, rather than backward toward death.” He was silent again, his eyes hidden. He righted the harp; his fingers moved over the strings, picked out the melody of a gentle ballad of Hed.

Deth, listening, said, “’The Love of Hover and Bird’ ... Can you sing it?”

“All eighteen verses. But I can’t play it on this—“

“Watch.” He positioned his own harp. “When you open your mind and hands and heart to the knowing of a thing, there is no room in you for fear.”

He taught Morgon chords and key changes on the great harp; they played late into the night, sending harp-notes like flurries of birds into the darkness.

They spent one more night in Ymris, then crossed the worn hills and turned eastward, skirting the low mountains, beyond which lay the plains and tors of Herun. The autumn rains began again, monotonous, persistent, and they rode silently through the wilderness between the lands, hunched into voluminous, hooded cloaks, their harps trussed in leather, tucked beneath them. They slept in what dry places they could find in shallow caves of rock, beneath thick groves of trees, their fires wavering reluctantly in wind and rain. Deth, when the rains slackened, played songs Morgon had never heard before, from Isig, Herun, Osterland, from the court of the High One. He would try to follow Deth’s playing on his own harp, his notes lagging, faltering, then suddenly meeting Deth’s, matching them, and the voices of the two harps would meld for a moment, tuned and beautiful, until he lost himself again and stopped, frustrated, bringing a smile to Deth’s face. And somehow the sound of their harping reached the ears of the Morgol at the court deep in Herun.

They rode long one day through wet, rocky land. They camped late in the evening, too tired to do more than build a small fire when the rain drizzled to a stop, eat, and stretch out in their damp bedrolls to sleep. Morgon, restless on the rough ground, woke every now and then to grope at a stone beneath him. He dreamed of mile upon mile of lonely land, the rain drumming on it unceasingly, and he heard beneath the drumming the slower beat of hooves. Shifting, he felt the hard nudge of a rock underneath him, and opened his eyes. In the faint, orange wash of embers, he saw a face looming over Deth, a spearhead stopped above his heart.

Morgon, his mouth dry, reached for a stone the size of his fist, raised himself abruptly and threw it. He heard a thump and a gasp, and the face vanished. Deth woke with a start. He sat up, looking at Morgon, but before he could speak a rock, shot with fine accuracy out of the darkness, smacked against the arm Morgon was leaning on, and he dropped.

A voice said irritably, “Do we have to throw rocks at each other like children?”

Deth said, “Lyra.”

Morgon raised his head. A girl of fourteen or fifteen stepped to their fire, stirred the embers until they caught, and tossed a handful of twigs on it. Her heavy, loose coat was the color of flame; her dark hair was drawn back from her face, coiled in a thick braid on the crown of her head. Finished, she straightened, holding one arm as though it pained her. In the other hand she held a light spear of ash and silver. Morgon sat up. Her eyes flicked to his face and the spear shifted swiftly to him.

“Are you done?”

Morgon demanded, “Who are you?”

“I am Lyraluthuin, daughter of the Morgol of Herun. You are Morgon, Prince of Hed. We are instructed to bring you to the Morgol.”

“In the middle of the night?” Then he said, “We?”

She lifted an arm suddenly, and like a ring of color out of the darkness other young women in long, bright, richly woven coats surrounded their camp, spearpoints forming a jagged, glittering circle. Morgon, rubbing his arm, eyed them darkly. His eyes flicked to Deth in a sudden, urgent question. Deth shook his head.

“No. If this were a trap set by Eriel, you would be dead by now.”

“I don’t know who Eriel is,” Lyra said. Her voice had lost its annoyance; it was light, assured. “And this is not a trap. It’s a request.”

“You have a strange way of making a request,” Morgon commented. “I would like the honor of meeting the Morgol of Herun, but I dare not take the time now. We must reach Isig Mountain before the snow starts.”

“I see. Would you like to ride into Crown City as befits a ruler, or would you rather ride slung over your saddle like a sack of grain?”

Morgon stared at her. “What kind of a welcome is that? If the Morgol ever came to Hed, she would never be welcomed with—“

“Rocks? You attacked me first.”

“You were standing over Deth with a spear in your hand! Should I have stopped to ask why?”

“You should have known I wouldn’t touch the High One’s harpist. Please rise and saddle your horse.”

Morgon lay back, folding his arms. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said firmly, “except back to sleep.”

“It’s not the middle of the night,” Lyra said calmly. “It’s nearly dawn.” In a swift movement, she thrust her spear across him and picked up his harp by the strap. He caught at it rising; the spearhead swooped away from him with its burden. She tilted the spear, let the harp slide down it to her shoulder. “The Morgol warned me of that harp. You could have broken our spears if you had been thinking. Now that you’ve gotten up, please saddle your horse.”

Morgon drew an outraged breath, then saw somewhere in the clear look she gave him, a suppressed smile that reminded him oddly of Tristan. The anger left his face, but he sat down again on the bare ground and said, “No. I haven’t time to go to Herun.”

“Then you will be—“

“And if you take me bound into the City of Circles, the traders will have the tale all over the realm by spring, and I will complain first to the Morgol, and then to the High One.”

She was silent for a breath; then her chin went up. “I am of the chosen guard of the Morgol, and I have a duty to perform. You will come, one way or another.”

“No.”

“Lyra,” Deth said. There was an overtone of amusement in his voice, and his words seemed almost perfunctory. “We must get to Isig before winter. We have no time for delay.”

She bowed her head respectfully. “I do not seek to delay you. I didn’t even want to wake you. But the Morgol requires the Prince of Hed.”

“The Prince of Hed requires the High One.”

“I have a duty—“

“Your duty does not preclude the respectful treatment of land-rulers.”

“Respectful or not,” Morgon said, “I’m not going. Why are you discussing the matter with her? Tell her. She’ll listen to you. She’s a child, and we can’t be bothered with children’s games.”

Lyra surveyed him composedly. “No one who knows me calls me that. I said you would come one way or another. The Morgol has questions she would like to ask you about the stars on your face and that harp. She has seen it before. I would have told you sooner, but I lost my temper when you threw that rock.”

Morgon looked up at her. “Where?” he said. “Where did she see it?”

“She’ll tell you. There is also a riddle I am to give you when we have crossed the mountains and the marshes, and Crown City is in our sight. She says it holds your name.”

In the wash of the single flame, the blood ran suddenly out of Morgon’s face. He rose. “I’ll come.”

Riding from dawn to sunset, they followed Lyra through a little-travelled pass in the low, ancient mountains, and camped on the other side of them the next night. Morgon, wrapped in his cloak by the fire, sat watching the chill, misty breath of the marshes ease toward them up the mountain. Deth, his hands seemingly innured to the cold, played a lovely, wordless song that danced into Morgon’s thoughts, drawing him out of them until he yielded and listened.

He said when it ended, “What was that? It was beautiful.”

Deth smiled. “I never gave it a name.” He sat a moment in silence, then reached for the harp case. Lyra, appearing without a sound in their circle of firelight, begged, “Don’t stop. Everyone is listening. That was the song you composed for the Morgol.”

Morgon looked at the harpist, amazed. Deth said, “Yes,” his fingers moving lightly down the strings, sliding into a new weave. Lyra took Morgon’s harp from her shoulder and set it down beside him.

“I meant to give you this earlier.” She sat down, held out her hands to the fire. The light gave her young face rich, rounded shadings; Morgon’s eyes were drawn to it He said abruptly, “Do you always wait outside the borders of Herun to abduct land-rulers passing by?”

“I didn’t abduct you,” she said imperturbably. “You chose to come. And—“ she went on as he drew breath to expostulate, “I usually lead traders through the marshes. Visitors from other lands are rare, and when they come, sometimes they don’t know enough to wait for me, and they fall in the marshes or get lost. Also, I protect the Morgol when she travels beyond Herun, and carry out whatever other duties she gives me. I’m skilled with a knife, a bow, and a spear; and the last man who underestimated my skill is dead.”

“You killed him?”

“He forced me to. He was going to rob traders under my protection, and when I warned him to stop he ignored me, which was not wise. He was going to kill one of the traders, so I killed him.”

“Why does the Morgol let you travel unattended, if such things happen to you?”

“I am in her guard, and I am expected to take care of myself. And you: why are you travelling unarmed as a child through the High One’s realm?”

“I have the harp,” he reminded her stiffly, but she shook her head.

“It’s no use to you in its case. There are other enemies besides me in the out-lands: wild men who prey on traders beyond the boundaries of king’s laws, exiles—you should arm yourself.”

“I’m a farmer, not a warrior.”

“There’s not a man in the High One’s realm who would dare touch Deth. But you—“

“I can take care of myself. Thank you.”

Her brows flicked up. She said kindly, “I’m only trying to give you the benefit of my experience. No doubt Deth can take care of you if there’s trouble.”

Deth’s voice trailed into his harping. “The Prince of Hed is remarkably adept at surviving ... Hed is a land renowned for its peace, a concept often difficult to understand.”

“The Prince of Hed,” Lyra said, “is no longer in Hed.”

Morgon looked at her distantly across the fire. “An animal doesn’t change its skin or its instincts because it travels out of one land into another.”

She disregarded his argument and said helpfully, “I could teach you to throw a spear. It’s simple. It might be useful to you. You had good aim with that rock.”

“That’s a good enough weapon for me. I might kill someone with a spear.”

“That’s what it’s for.”

He sighed. “Think of it from a farmer’s point of view. You don’t uproot cornstalks, do you, before the corn is ripe? Or cut down a tree full of young green-pears? So why should you cut short a man’s life in the mist of his actions, his mind’s work—“

“Traders,” Lyra said, “don’t get killed by pear trees.”

“That’s not the point. If you take a man’s life, he has nothing. You can strip him of his land, his rank, his thoughts, his name, but if you take his life, he has nothing. Not even hope.”

She listened quietly, the light moving in her dark eyes. “And if there is a choice between your life and his, which one would you choose?”

“My life, of course.” Then he thought about it and winced a little. “I think.”

She loosed a breath, “It’s unreasonable.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “I suppose so. But if I ever killed anyone, how would I tell Eliard? Or Grim Oakland?”

“Who is Eliard? Who is Grim Oakland?”

“Grim is my overseer. Eliard is my brother, my land-heir.”

“Oh, you have a brother? I always wanted one. But I have no one except cousins, and the guard, which is like a family of sisters. Do you have a sister?”

“Yes. Tristan.”

“What is she like?”

“Oh, a little younger than you. Dark, like you. A little like you except that she doesn’t annoy me as much.”

To his surprise, she laughed. “I did, didn’t I? I wondered when you would stop being angry with me.” She got to her feet in a single, lithe movement. “I think the Morgol may not be very pleased with me either, but I’m not generally polite to people who surprise me, as you did.”

“How will the Morgol know?”

“She knows.” She bent her dark head to them. “Thank you for your playing, Deth. Good night. We will ride at dawn.”

She stepped out of the firelight, faded into the night so quietly they could not hear a single footstep. Morgon reached for his bedroll. The mist from the marshes had come upon them and the night was damp and chill as a knife’s edge. He put another branch on the fire and lay close to it. A thought struck him as he watched the flames, and he gave a short, mirthless laugh.

“If I were skilled in arms, I might have thrown a spear at her this morning instead of a rock. And she wants to teach me.”

The next morning, he saw Herun, a small land ringed with mountains, fill like a bowl with dawn. Morning mists fell as they reached the flat lands, and great peaks of rock rose through them like curious faces. Low plains of grass, wind-twisted trees, and ground that sucked at their horse’s hooves appeared and disappeared in the whorls of mist. Now and then Lyra stopped until the shifting mists revealed some landmark that showed her the path.

Morgon, accustomed to land that was predictable underfoot, rode unconcerned until Lyra, stopping a moment for him to catch up to her, said, “These are the great Herun marshes. Crown City lies on the other side of them. The path through them is a gift from the Morgol, which few people know. So if you must enter or leave Herun quickly, go north across the mountains rather than this way. Many people in a hurry have vanished here without a trace.”

Morgon looked with sudden interest at the ground his horse walked on. “I’m glad you told me.”

The mists rolled away eventually, baring a blue sky without a cloud, vibrant against the wet green plains. Stone houses, small villages rose on the crests of the undulating plain, huddled at the feet of stone peaks that rose without preface from the ground. In the distance, a road stroked the plain white here and there in its twistings. A smudge detatched itself from the horizon smoky with mountains, and began to take shape. A pattern of stonework gleamed against the earth: a vast circle of red, upright stones like flaming sentinels around a black oval house. As they neared, a river spilling from the northern mountains rose to their view, split blue through the plain and ran into the heart of the stonework.

“Crown City,” Lyra said. “It is also known as the City of Circles.” She stopped her horse; and the guard behind her stopped.

Morgon said, his eyes on the distant stones, “I’ve heard of that city. What are the seven circles of Herun and who built them? Rhu, the fourth Morgol, structured the city, planning a circle for each of eight riddles his curiosity set to him and he answered. His journey to answer the eighth riddle killed him. What that riddle was no one knows.”

“The Morgol knows,” Lyra said. Her voice drew Morgon’s eyes from the city. He felt something jump deep within him. She went on, holding his eyes. “The riddle that killed Rhu is the one I am to give you now from the Morgol: Who is the Star-Bearer, and what will he loose that is bound?”

Morgon’s breath stopped. He shook his head once, his mouth shaping a word without sound. Then he shouted it at her, startling her: “No!”

He wrenched his horse around, kicked it, and it leaped forward. The grassy plain blurred beneath him. He bent low in the saddle, heading toward the marshlands innocently smooth under the sun, and the low mountains beyond. He did not hear the hooves behind him until a flick of color drew his eyes sideways. His face set, rigid, he urged his horse forward, the earth pounding beneath him, but the black horse stayed with him like a shadow, neither slowing nor speeding while he raced toward the line where the earth locked with the sky. He felt his horse falter suddenly, its speed slacken, and then Deth reached across for his reins, brought him jolting to a stop.

He said, his breathing quick, “Morgon—“

Morgon jerked his reins free from Deth’s hold and backed his horse a step. He said, his voice shaking, “I’m going home. I don’t have to go any farther with this. I have a choice.”

Deth’s hand went out toward him quickly, as though to soothe a frightened animal. “Yes. You have a choice. But you will never reach Hed riding blind through the Herun marshes. If you want to go back to Hed, I’ll take you. But Morgon, think a little first. You are trained to think. I can lead you through the marshes, but then what will you do? Will you go back through Ymris? Or by the sea from Osterland?”

“I’ll skirt Ymris and go to Lungold—I’ll take the traderoad to Caithnard—I’ll disguise myself as a trader—“

“And if you reach Hed by some thread of chance, then what? You will be bound nameless on that island for the rest of your life.”

“You don’t understand!” His eyes were startled, like an animal’s at bay. “My life has been shaped before me—shaped for me by something—someone who has seen my actions before I even see a reason for them. How could Yrth have seen me hundreds of years ago to make this harp for me? Who saw me two thousand years ago to set the riddle to my life that killed the Morgol Rhu? I am being forced into some pattern of action I can’t see, I can’t control—given a name I do not want—I have the right of choice! I was born to rule Hed, and that is where I belong—that is my name and my place.”

“Morgon, you may see yourself as the Prince of Hed, but there are others seeking answers to those same questions you ask, and they will give you this name: Star-Bearer, and there will be no peace for them until you are dead. They will never let you live peacefully in Hed. They will follow you there. Will you open the doors of Hed to Eriel? To those that killed Athol, and tried to kill you? What mercy will they have for your farmers, for your toothless pigherder? If you go back to Hed now, death will ride behind you, beside you, and you will find it waiting for you beyond the open doors of your house.”

“Then I won’t go to Hed.” His face struggled against itself; he turned it away from Deth. “I’ll go to Caithnard, to take the Black, and teach—“

“Teach what? The riddles that are no truth to you, nothing more than ancient tales spun at twilight—“

“That’s not true!”

“What of Astrin? Heureu? They are bound also to the riddle of your life; they need your clear vision, your courage—“

“I have none! Not for this! Death at least I have seen; I can look at it and give it a name, but this—this path that is building before me—I can’t even see! I don’t know who I am, what I was born to do. In Hed, at least I have a name!”

Deth’s voice quieted. He had crossed the distance Morgon held between them; his hand gripped Morgon’s forearm gently. “There is a name for you beyond Hed. Morgon, what use are the riddles and strictures of Caithnard, if not for this? You are Sol of Isig, caught up by fear between death and a door that has been closed for thousands of years. If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done. You may not have courage or trust or understanding or the will to do it, but you know what must be done. You can’t turn back. There is no answer behind you. You fear what you cannot name. So look at it and find a name for it. Turn your face forward and learn. Do what must be done.”

The winds breathed down the long plain, broke against them, turning the grass silver. Behind them, like a cluster of bright flowers, the guard of the Morgol waited.

Morgon’s fingers crushed his reins and looked at them. He lifted his head slowly, “It’s not your business, as the High One’s harpist, to give me such advice. Or do you speak to me as one who can wear by right the Black of Mastery? No riddle-master at Caithnard ever gave me that name, Star-Bearer; they never knew it existed. Yet you accept it as though you expected it. What hope that no one else but you has ever seen, what riddle, are you seeing in me?” The harpist, his eyes falling suddenly from Morgon’s, did not answer. Morgon’s voice rose, “I ask you this: Who was Ingris of Osterland and why did he die?”

Deth shifted his hand on Morgon’s arm. There was an odd expression on his face. He said after a moment, “Ingris of Osterland angered Har, the King of Osterland one night when he appeared as an old man at Ingris’s door, and Ingris refused to take him in. So the wolf-King put this curse on him: that if the next stranger who came to Ingris’s house did not give his name, then Ingris would die. And the first stranger who came after Har left was—a certain harpist. That harpist gave Ingris everything he asked for: songs, tales, the loan of his harp, the history of his travellings—everything but the name Ingris wanted to hear, though Ingris demanded it in despair. But the harpist could give him only one word, each time Ingris asked for his name, and that word, as Ingris heard it, was Death. So in fear of Har, and in despair of the curse, he felt his heart stop and he died.” He paused.

Morgon, his face growing quiet as he listened, said haltingly, “I never thought ... You could have given Ingris your name. Your true name. The stricture is: Give what others require of you for their lives.”

“Morgon, there were things I could not give Ingris, and things I cannot give you now. But I swear this: if you finish this harsh journey to Erlenstar Mountain, I will give you anything you ask of me. I will give you my life.”

“Why?” he whispered.

“Because you bear three stars.”

Morgon was silent. Then he shook his head a little. “I will never have the right to ask that.”

“The choice will be mine. Have you thought that the stricture also applies to you? You must give what others require of you.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then, like Ingris, you will die.”

Morgon’s eyes dropped. He sat motionless but for the winds that thrummed like harp notes about him, plucked at his hair, his cloak. He turned his horse finally, rode slowly back to the guard, who, accepting his return in silence, proceeded to the City of Circles.

6

Morgol of Herun welcomed them into her courtyard. She was a tall woman with blue-black hair drawn back from her face, falling without a ripple against her loose robe of leaf-green cloth. Her house was a vast oval of black stone. Water from the river flowing beneath it fanned over stone fountains in her yard, formed tiny streams and pools where fish dipped like red and green and gold flames beneath the tracery of shadows from the trees. The Morgol went to Deth’s side as he dismounted, smiling at him. They were of a height, and her eyes were luminous gold.

“I didn’t mean for Lyra to disturb you,” she said. “I hope you are not inconvenienced.”

An answering smile tugged at his mouth. There was a tone in his voice Morgon had never heard before. “El, you knew I would go where the Prince of Hed chose to go.”

“Now, how could I have known that? Your path has always been your own. But I’m glad you chose to come. I dream of your harping.”

She walked with him to Morgon, as silent women took their horses out of the yard, and others carried their gear into the house. Her strange eyes melted over him. She held out her hand to him. “I am Elrhiarhodan, the Morgol of Herun. You may call me El. I am very glad you’ve come.”

He bent his head to her, aware suddenly of his travel-stained clothes and unkempt hair. “You gave me no choice.”

“No,” she said gently, “I did not. You look very tired. For some reason I expected you to be older, or I would have waited to tell you that riddle myself, instead of frightening you with it like that.” She turned her head to greet Lyra. “Thank you for bringing the Prince of Hed to me. But was it necessary to throw a rock at him?”

A smile touched Lyra’s eyes at Morgon’s amazement. She said gravely, “Mother, the Prince of Hed threw a rock at me first, and I lost my temper. Also, I said things which were—not entirely diplomatic. But I don’t think he’s angry with me any more. He doesn’t seem to be any kind of a warrior.”

“No, but he had good aim, and if he had been armed, you would be dead, which I would not like at all. The people of Hed do not, as a habit, take arms against others, a laudable restraint. It was perhaps not wise to enter their camp in the dark; you must learn to avoid misunderstandings. But you brought them here safely, and for that I thank you. Now get some food, my child, and some sleep.” Lyra left them, and the Morgol tucked her fingers into the crook of Deth’s arm. “She has grown since you saw her last. But then you have not come to Herun in some time. Come in.”

She led them into her house, through its doors of silver and pale wood. Within, the arched corridors wandered, seemingly without plan, from one room to another; the rooms, with delicate cloth tapestries, strange plants, rich woods and finely wrought metals, followed one another like treasure boxes. The Morgol stopped finally in a room warm with hangings of orange and gold, and bade them rest on soft, enormous cushions covered with white wool. She left them.

Morgon, drowning muscle by weary muscle in sheepskin, closed his eyes and whispered, “I can’t remember the last time I touched a bed ... Does she go into our minds?”

“The Morgol has the gift of sight. Herun is a small, very rich land; the morgols have developed their sight since the Years of Settlement, when an army from north Ymris attacked Herun with an eye to its mines. Herun is ringed with mountains; the Morgols learned to see through them. I thought you knew that”

“I didn’t realize their sight was that good. She startled me.” Then he fell asleep, not even waking when, moments later, servants entered with trays of food and wine and all their gear.

He woke hours later to find Deth gone. He washed and dressed himself in the light, loose robe of orange and gold cloth the Morgol had left for him. She had given him also a knife of milky metal sheathed in bone, which he let lie. A servant led him to a broad room white from floor to ceiling. The guards in their bright robes chattered at one end of it on cushions around a firebed, with trays of steaming dishes on low tables before them. Deth, Lyra and the Morgol sat at a table of polished white stone, the silver cups and plate in front of them sparkling with amethyst The Morgol, in a robe of silver and white, her hair braided and bound, beckoned to Morgon, smiling. Lyra shifted to give him a place beside her. She served him from dishes of hot spiced meats, seasoned fruits and vegetables, cheeses and wines. Deth, to one side of the Morgol, sat harping softly. He drew a song to a close, then, very lightly, played a phrase from the song he had composed for her.

Her face turned toward him as though he had spoken her name; she smiled and said, “I have made you harp long enough. Sit beside me and eat.”

Deth put his harp down and joined her. He was dressed in a coat silver-white as his hair; a chain of silver and tiny, fire-white stones hung on his breast.

Morgon, watching their close faces as the Morgol served him, was drawn out of his preoccupation by Lyra, who said, “Your food is getting cold. He didn’t tell you then?”

“What? No.” He took a bite of seasoned mushrooms. “At least not in words. I guessed from that song. I don’t know why I’m surprised. No wonder he allowed you to take us into Herun.”

She nodded. “He wanted to come, but of course the choice was yours.”

“Was it? How did the Morgol know the one thing that would have brought me into Herun?”

Lyra smiled. “You are a riddle-master. She said you would answer to a riddle like a hound to scent.”

“How did she know that?”

“When Mathom of An was searching for the man who had taken Peven’s crown, his messengers came even to Herun with the tale. So, being curious, she made it her business to find out who had it.”

“But so few people knew—Deth, Rood of An, the Masters—“

“And the traders who took you from Hed to Caithnard. The Morgol has a talent for finding things out.”

“Yes.” He moved his cup an inch on the table, frowned down at it a moment. Then he turned to the Morgol, waiting while she spoke with Deth until she paused, and he said, “El.” Her coin-colored eyes came to his face. He drew a breath. “How did you know that riddle you gave me? It is listed nowhere in the books of the Masters, and it should have been.”

“Should it, Morgon? It seems to be such a dangerous riddle, that only one man should try to answer it. What would the Masters have done with it?”

“They would have searched for the answer. That’s their business. Riddles are often dangerous, but an unanswered riddle may be deadly.”

“True, as Dhairrhuwyth found—which seems the more reason for keeping it private.”

“No,” he said, “ignorance is deadly. Please. Where did you find it? I have—I have had to come to Herun to find my name. Why?”

Her eyes dropped, hidden from him a moment. She said slowly, “I found the riddle years ago in an ancient book the Morgol Rhu left as the record of his travellings. The book had been word-locked by the wizard Iff of the Unpronounceable Name, who was in the service to Herun at the time. I had a little difficulty opening the book. Iff had bound it with his name.”

“And you pronounced it?”

“Yes. A wise old scholar at my court suggested that perhaps Iff’s name should be sung as well as pronounced, and he spent many long hours with me trying to find the notes that belonged with the syllables of Iff’s name. Finally, by sheer accident, I sang the name on the right tones, pronouncing it correctly, and unlocked the book. The last entry the Morgol had made in it was the riddle that he left Herun to answer: the riddle of the Star-Bearer. He wrote that he was going to Erlenstar Mountain. Danan found his body and sent it home from Isig. The scholar who helped me is dead, and I—with little more reason than instinct—kept the riddle to myself.”

“Why?”

“Oh ... because it is dangerous; because I had heard from the traders of a child growing up with three stars on his face in Hed; and because I asked a Master at Caithnard what he knew of three stars and he said he had never heard anything about them, and that Master’s name was Ohm.”

“Master Ohm?” he said startled. “He taught me. Why did his name stop you?”

“It was a small thing, but it set my mind on a train of thought ... I took his name to be a shortening of a Herun name. Ghisteslwchlohm.”

Morgon stared at her. His face lost color. “Ghisteslwchlohm. Who was the Founder of Lungold, and what are the nine strictures of his teachings? But he died. Seven hundred years ago when the wizards disappeared from Lungold.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But I wonder ... ” She stirred herself out of her thoughts, touched his wrist “I’m disturbing your supper with my idle conjectures. But you know, a strange thing happened that I have always wondered about. I have good vision; I can see through anything I choose, though I don’t generally choose to see through the people I’m talking to: it tends to be distracting. But while I was with Ohm in the Masters Library, at one point he had turned to look for a book on his shelves, and as he put his hand on it, I looked through him automatically to see the title. But I couldn’t see through him. I could see through the walls of the college, through the cliff and into the sea—but my vision could not pass through Ohm.”

Morgon swallowed a tasteless mouthful. “Are you saying--?” His voice caught. “What are you saying?”

“Well, it took me months to put pieces together, since, like you, I would rather have complete faith in the integrity of the Masters of Caithnard. But now, especially since you have come and I can put that riddle to a name and a face, I tend to think that perhaps the Master Ohm is Ghisteslwchlohm, the Founder of the School of Wizards at Lungold, and that he destroyed Lungold.”

Morgon made an inarticulate sound in the back of his throat. Lyra protested weakly, “Mother, it’s very hard to eat when you say things like that. Why would he have destroyed Lungold after going through all the trouble to found it?”

“Why did he found the College a thousand years ago?”

Lyra shrugged a little. “To teach the wizards. He was the most powerful wizard in the High One’s realm, and the other wizards were half-wild, undisciplined; they were unable to use their powers to the full extent. So why would Ohm have tried to teach them to be more powerful if all he wanted to do was destroy their power?”

“Did he gather them there to teach them?” the Morgol said, “or to control them?”

Morgon found his voice again. He said softly, his hands gripping the rough edge of the stone table, “What evidence? On what evidence do you base your conclusions?”

The Morgol drew a breath. The food was growing cold in front of them all. Deth sat quietly listening, his head bent; Morgon could not see his face. Laughter drifted toward them occasionally from the lower tables; the fire in the bed probed to the heart of a log with soft, silken rustlings. “On evidence of an ignorance I do not like,” she said. She held his eyes. “Why could the Masters tell you nothing of the stars on your face?”

“Because in their studies no mention was made of them.”

“Why?”

“Because—the tales of the kingdoms, then: songs and poetry have never mentioned them. The wizards’ books that the Masters took from Lungold, which form the basis of their knowledge, say nothing of them.”

“Why?”

He was silent, groping for a plausible answer. Then his face changed. He whispered, “Iff, at least, knew what riddle Rhu was trying to answer. He must have known. He talks about Rhu and his searchings in the books the Masters have opened at Caithnard; he listed every riddle Rhu went to answer except that one—“

“Why?”

“I don’t ... I don’t know why. Are you saying that Ohm—Ghisteslwchlohm—brought them together to control their knowledge, to teach them only what he wanted them to know? That matters concerning the stars are things he kept them ignorant of—or perhaps even took from their minds?”

“I think it is possible. I think from what I have learned about you from Deth today, that it’s quite probable.”

“But why? For what possible purpose would he have done that?”

“I don’t know. Yet.” She continued softly, “Suppose you were a wizard restless with power, drawn to Lungold by the powers of Ohm and his promises of great skill and knowledge. You placed your name in his mind; with your trust in his skill, your absolute faith in his teachings, you did without question whatever he asked of you, and in return he channelled your own energies into powers you scarcely dreamed you had. And then suppose, one day, somehow, you realized that this wizard, whose mind could control yours so skillfully, was false to his teachings, false to you, false to every man, king, scholar, farmer, that he had ever served. What would you do if you found that he had dangerous plans and terrible purposes that you could not even guess at, and that the very foundations of his teachings were a lie? What would you do?”

Morgon was silent He looked down, watched his hands close on the table into fists, as though they belonged to someone else. He whispered, “Ohm.” Then his head gave a quick shake and he said, “I would run. I would run until no one, man or wizard, could find me. And then I would begin to think.”

“I would kill him,” Lyra said simply. Morgon’s hands opened.

“Would you? With what? He would vanish like a mist before your spear touched him. You can’t solve riddles by killing people.”

“Then if this Master Ohm is Ghisteslwchlohm, what are you going to do about him? You’ll have to do something.”

“Why me? The High One can deal with him—and the fact that he hasn’t is a good proof that Master Ohm is not the Founder of Lungold.”

Deth raised his head. “I recall you used that same argument at Caerweddin.”

Morgon sighed. He said reluctantly. “It fits, I suppose, but I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that either Ohm or Ghisteslwchlohm are evil, although that might explain the strange, sudden disappearance of the wizards and the tales of the violence of their leaving. But Ohm—I lived with him for three years. He never ... he treated me with great kindness. It makes no sense.”

The Morgol looked at him thoughtfully. “It doesn’t, no. All this reminds me of a riddle from An, I believe. Re of Aum.”

“Who was Re of Aum?” Lyra asked, and the Morgol, at Morgon’s silence, answered imperturbably, “Re of Aum offended the Lord of Hel once and became so frightened that he had a great wall built around his house in fear of revenge. He hired a stranger to build it, who promised him a wall no man could destroy or climb, either by force or wizardry. The wall was built; the stranger took his pay; and Re at last felt secure. One day, when he decided that the Lord of Hel had realized the futility of revenge, he decided to venture out of his lands. And then he travelled around his wall three times but found no gate to let him out. And slowly he realized that the Lord of Hel himself had built that wall.” She paused. “I’ve forgotten the stricture.”

“Never let a stranger build walls around you,” Lyra guessed. “Then Ghisteslwchlohm built his wall of ignorance in Caithnard as well as Lungold, which is why Morgon does not know who he is. It’s very complicated. I prefer problems I can throw spears at.”

“What about Eriel?” Morgon said abruptly. “Has Deth told you about her?”

“Yes,” the Morgol said. “But that, I think, is a completely different problem. If Ohm wanted you dead, he could easily have killed you while you were a student. He didn’t react to the stars on your face the way those—those nameless people do.”

“That woman,” Morgon said, “has a name.”

“Do you know it?”

“No. I have never heard of anyone like her. And I’m more frightened of her hidden name than I am of a man whose name I know.”

“Perhaps Ohm hid her name, too,” Lyra said. She shifted uneasily. “Morgon, I think you should let me teach you to defend yourself. Deth, tell him.”

“It’s not my business to argue with the Prince of Hed,” Deth said mildly.

“You argued with him this afternoon.”

“I didn’t argue. I simply pointed out the illogic of his arguments.”

“Oh. Well, why doesn’t the High One do something. It’s his business. There is a strange people on his coasts, trying to kill the Prince of Hed—we could fight them. Ymris has an army; the people of An bear arms; from Kraal to Anuin, the High One could gather an army. I don’t understand why he doesn’t.”

“Osterland could arm itself,” Morgon said; “Ymris, Anuin, even Caithnard, but those people could wash over Hed like a seawave, and it would be barren in a day. There must be a better way to fight them.”

“Arm Hed.”

Morgon’s cup came down with a little clink on the table. “Hed?”

“Why not? I think you should at least warn them.”

“How? The fishermen of Tol go out every morning, and the only thing they have ever found in the sea is fish. I’m not even sure the farmers of Hed believe anything exists beyond Hed, and the High One. Of all the six kingdoms, Hed is the only one the wizards never sought service in—there wasn’t anything for them to do. The wizard Talies visited it once and said it was uninhabitable: it was without history, without poetry, and utterly without interest. The peace of Hed is passed like the land-rule, from ruler to ruler; it is bound into the earth of Hed, and it is the High One’s business, not mine, to break that peace.”

“But—“ Lyra said stubbornly.

“If I ever carried a weapon into Hed and told the people of Hed to arm themselves, they would look at me as though I were a stranger—and that is what I would be: a stranger in my own land, the weapon like a disease that would wither all the living roots of Hed. And if I did it without the High One’s sanction, he could take the land-rule from me.”

Lyra’s dark brows crooked above her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said again. “Ymris is always fighting within itself; An and Aum and Hel have had terrible wars in the past. The old lords of Herun have battled each other; why is Hed so different? Why should the High One care if it’s armed or not?”

“It just evolved that way. It made its own laws in the Years of Settlement, and the laws grew to bind the Princes of Hed. It had nothing anyone would have fought for: no wealth, no great stretches of land, no seat of power or mystery, just good farm land and good weather, in a land so small not even the Kings of An in their years of conquering, were tempted by it. Men found the rulers they wanted to keep the peace, and their instinct for peace dove deep into the land like a seed. It’s in my blood. To change that in me, I would have to change my name ... ”

Lyra was silent, her dark eyes on Morgon’s face as he drank. He felt, as he put his cup down again, the light touch of her hand on his shoulder. “Well, then, since you won’t protect yourself, I’ll come with you and guard you,” she said. “There’s no one in the Morgol’s guard who could do that better than I could—no one in all Herun.” She looked across him to El, “May I have your permission?”

“No,” Morgon said.

“Do you doubt my skill?” She picked up her knife, poised the blade between finger and thumb. “Do you see that rope at the far end of the room holding the torch?”

“Lyra, please do not set the room on fire,” the Morgol murmured.

“Mother, I’m trying to show him—“

“I believe you,” Morgon said. He turned to take the hand holding the knife in his hands. Her fingers were lean and warm, stirring a little, like a bird in his hold, and something he had half-forgotten in the long, rough weeks touched him unexpectedly. He kept his voice steady, gentle with an effort. “Thank you. But if you were hurt or killed trying to defend me, I would never forgive myself as long as I lived. My only hope is travelling as quickly and quietly as possible; doing that, I will be safe.”

He saw the doubt in her eyes, but she said only, putting the knife down, “Well, in this house I will guard you. And even you can’t argue with that.”

Deth played for the Morgol after they finished supper—sweet, wordless songs from the ancient court of An, ballads from Ymris and Osterland. The room was hushed when he finished, empty but for the four of them; the candles were burned low in their holders. The Morgol rose reluctantly.

“It’s late,” she said. “Go replenish your supplies so that you won’t have to stop in Osterland, if you’ll tell me what you need in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Deth said, slipping the harp strap over his shoulder. He looked at her a moment in silence, and she smiled. He added softly, “I want to stay. I will come back.”

“I know.”

She led them back through the wandering maze of corridors to their room. Water and wine, soft blankets had been left for them; the fire burned steadily, sending out a clean, elusive scent.

Morgon said before El turned to go; “May I leave some letters with you for the traders? My brother has no idea where I am.”

“Of course. I’ll have paper and ink brought to you. And may I ask something of you? May I see your harp?”

He took it out of the case for her. She turned it in her hands, touching the stars and the fine tracery of gold, the white moons. “Yes,” she said softly. “I thought I recognized it. Deth told me some time ago about Yrth’s harp, and when a trader brought this harp into my house last year, I was sure Yrth must have made it—it was a spell-bound harp, with its mute strings. I wanted so badly to buy it, but it was not for sale. The trader said it was promised to a man in Caithnard.”

“What man?”

“He didn’t say. Why? Morgon, what did I say to trouble you?”

He drew a breath. “Well, you see, my father—I think my father bought it in Caithnard for me last spring, before he died. So if you could remember what the trader looked like, or find out his name—“

“I see.” Her hand closed gently on his arm. “I see. Yes, I will get his name for you. Good night.”

Lyra, in a short, dark tunic, took her place at the doorway as the Morgol left, her straight back to them, her spear motionless, upright in her hand. A servant brought paper, pens, ink and wax; Morgon sat down in front of the fire. He stared into it, the ink drying on his pen, for a long time; he murmured once, “What am I going to say to her?” And slowly he began to write.

Finished finally with Raederle’s letter, he wrote a brief note to Eliard, sealed it, and lay back against the cushions, watching the flames meld and separate, half-aware of Deth’s quiet movements as he sorted and checked their gear. He lifted his head finally, looked at the harpist.

“Deth ... did you know Ghisteslwchlohm?” Deth’s hands stilled. They moved again after a moment, loosening a knot in a bedroll. He said without looking up, “I spoke to him only twice, very briefly. He was a distant, awesome figure in Lungold, then, in the years before the wizards’ disappearance.”

“Did it ever occur to you that Master Ohm might be the Founder of Lungold?”

“There was no evidence of it that would have made such a thought occur to me.”

Morgon reached out to add wood to the fire; shadows falling in webs and tapestries from the ceiling, shifted and settled. He murmured, “I wonder why the Morgol couldn’t see through Ohm. I don’t know what land he’s from; it may be that he was born, like Rood, with some witchery in his blood ... I never thought to ask where he was born. He was simply Master Ohm, and it seemed he had been at Caithnard forever. If El told him she thought he was Ghisteslwchlohm, he would probably laugh ... except I’ve never seen him laugh. It happened so long ago, the destruction of Lungold; the wizards have been silent as death since then. None of them could possibly be alive.” His voice trailed away. He turned on his side, his eyes closing. A little while later he heard Deth begin to harp gently, dreamily, and he drifted asleep to the sound,

He woke to the song of a different harpist. The harping wove through him like a net, the slow, deep beat measured to the sluggish, jarring beat of his blood, the swift, wild high notes ripping at the fabric of his thoughts like tiny, panicked birds. He tried to move but something weighed on his hands, his chest. He opened his mouth to call for Deth; the sound that came out of him was again the squawk of the black crow.

He opened his eyes and found he had dreamed them open. He opened them again and saw nothing but the dark behind his eyelids. A terror rose in his throat, sending the birds in his mind into a frenzy. He reached out of himself as though he were swimming through deep, heavy swells of darkness and sleep, straining himself toward awareness. And finally he heard the harpist’s voice and saw between his lashes the faint, fiery eyes of embers.

The voice was husky, rich, and word by word it bound him with a nightmare.

Withering your voice, as the

roots of your land are withering.

Slow your hearth-blood

slow as the dragging waters,

the rivers of Hed.

Tangling are your thoughts

as the yellow vines are tangling,

drying, snapping underfoot.

Withering the life of you

as the late corn is withering ...

Morgon opened his eyes. The darkness and the red, panting embers whirled around him until the darkness rose about his face like a tide, and the fire seemed tiny, far away. In the well of night he saw Hed drifting like a broken ship in the sea; he heard the vine leaves whispering drily, felt in his veins the rivers slowing, thickening, draining dry, their beds cracking to the harpist’s weave. He made a harsh, incredulous noise, and saw the harpist finally, beyond the fire, his harp made of strange bones and polished shell, his face lost in shadows. The face seemed to lift a little at Morgon’s voice; he caught a flick of fire-scorched gold.

Dry, dust dry, the earth

the earth of you, land-ruler

lord of the dying. Parching the fields

of your body, moaning the wind

of your last word

across the waste of them,

the wasteland of Hed.

A tide seemed to be draining back from the dark, broken land, drawing the last of the river waters with it, drawing the stream-waters out of Hed, leaving the coasts bare, leaving a wasteland of shell and sand around Hed as it drained back to the black edges of the world. Morgon, feeling the dry, cold earth, the life of Hed draining away with the sea, fading away from him, drew a breath. He shouted with his last strength a protest that was no word but a bird cry against the impossibility of the harp song. The squawk brought him back to himself, as though his body, fraying into darkness, had pulled itself together again. He got to his feet, shaking, so weak he tripped over the hem of his long robe and fell near the fire. He picked up, before he rose again, handfuls of hot ash, chips of dead wood and flung them at the harpist. The harpist, his face jerking away from them, rose. His eyes in the dim light were pale, flecked with gold. He laughed, and the heel of his hand slammed upward against Morgon’s chin. Morgon’s head snapped back; he fell to his knees, dizzy, choking, at the harpist’s feet. His fingers slid through harp strings sending a fault cacophony of sound into the darkness. The harpist’s own harp, whistling down, brushed past Morgon’s head as he moved and broke into pieces against his collarbone.

He cried out at the sharp, sickening snap of bone. Through the sweat and haze in his eyes, he saw Lyra standing motionless in the doorway, her back to him as if he were silent as a dream behind her. The hurt, unreasoning anger in him cleared his head a little. Still kneeling, he threw himself against the harpist, lunging with his good shoulder, knocking him off-balance against the heavy cushions. Then, his fingers tangled in the harp strap, he flung the harp in his hand out, arching toward the harpist. It crashed with a spattering of notes, and Morgon heard a faint, involuntary gasp.

He flung himself onto the shadowed figure. The harpist struggled beneath him; in the faint light from the hall Morgon saw blood streaking down his face. A knife seemingly made from air blurred towards Morgon; he caught desperately at the harpist’s wrist; the harpist’s other hand closed with a hawk’s grip on Morgon’s broken shoulder.

He groaned, the blood drained out of his face, the harpist darkening in his sight. And then he felt the shifting shape of the man he held, the fraying of form beneath him. His teeth clenched, he held onto the figure with his good hand as though he were holding onto his name.

He lost count of the brief, desperately struggling shapes he gripped. He smelled wood, the musk of animal fur, felt feathers beat against his hand, a marsh-slime ooze ponderously through his hold. He held the great, shaggy hoof of a horse whose effort to rear pulled him to his knees; a salmon slick and panicked, who nearly flipped out of his hold; a mountain cat who whirled in fury to slash at him. He held animals so old they had no names; he recognized them with wonder from their descriptions in ancient books. He held a great stone from one of the Earth-Masters’ cities that almost crushed his hand; he held a butterfly so beautiful he nearly let it free rather than harm its wings. He held a harp string whose sound pierced his ears until he became the sound itself. And the sound he held turned into a sword.

He held the blade of it, silver-white, half as long as himself; strange whorls of design wound down the blade, delicately etched, snagging the light from the scattered embers. The hilt was of copper and gold. Set in gold, fire sparkling in their cores, were three stars.

His grip loosened. The dry, whistling breath in his throat stopped until there was no sound in the room. Then, with a sudden, furious cry, he flung the sword away from him, across the floor, where it spun on the stones of the doorway, startling Lyra.

She picked it up and whirled, but it came alive in her grasp and she dropped it again, backing away from it into the hall. She gave a shout; there was a flurry of voices down the hall. The sword vanished; in its place stood the master of the shapes.

He moved swiftly, turning toward Morgon; Lyra’s spear, thrown a fraction of a second late, skimmed past him and ripped through one of the cushions beside Morgon. Morgon, still on his knees, watched the figure breaking through the web of shadows, the hair weaving into darkness, the face sparse, shell-colored, the eyes heavy-lidded, blue-green, gleaming with their own light. The body was fluid, blurred, the colors of foam, the colors of the sea; he moved without noise, his strange garments shifting lights the colors of wet seaweed, of set shell. As he came, inexorable as tide, Morgon sensed an enormous, undefined power, restless and un-fathomed like the sea, impersonal as the light behind the eyes fixed on his face.

Lyra’s cry jarred him as if out of a dream, “The spear! Morgon! The spear by your hand. Throw it!”

He reached for it.

There was a movement in the sea-colored eyes like a distant, faint flick of a smile. Morgon rose, backed slowly, holding the spear with both hands between them. He heard Lyra’s desperate cry, “Morgon!” His hands began to shake; the smile deepened in the strange eyes. With the sob of a rare Ymris curse that tore out of him, Morgon drew back his arm and threw.