Harpist In The Wind trm-3

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Join us when you’re ready, in Iff’s study. We can talk there.”

  “El,” Morgon said softly. “I cannot stay. I did not come to talk.”

  She was silent, riddling, he suspected, though her expression changed very little. She put her hand on his arm. “I have taken all the guards out of the cities and borders; Goh is training them here, to go south, if that is what you need.”

  “No,” he said passionately. “I saw enough of your guards die in Lungold.”

  “Morgon, we must use what strength we have.”

  “There is far more power in Herun than that.” He saw her face change then. He was aware of the wizard behind her, still as a shadow, and he wondered then without hope of an answer whether he gathered power by choice or at the falcon’s luring. “That is what I have come for. I need that.”

  Her fingers closed very tightly on his forearm. “The power of land-law?” she whispered incredulously. He nodded mutely, knowing that the first sign of mistrust in her would scar his heart forever. “You have that power? To take it?”

  “Yes. I need the knowledge of it. I will not touch your mind. I swear it. I went into Har’s mind, with his permission, but you — there are places in your mind where I do not belong.”

  Some thought was growing behind her eyes. Standing so quietly, still gripping him, she could not speak. He felt as if he were changing shape in front of her into something ancient as the world, around which riddles and legends and the colors of night and dawn clung like priceless, forgotten treasures. He wanted to go into her mind then, to find whatever lay in his harsh, confused past to make her see him like that. But she loosed him and said, “Take from my land, and from me, what you need.”

  He stood still, watching her move down the hall, her hand beneath Yrth’s elbow. Servants came, breaking into his thoughts. While they roused the fire and set water and wine to heat, he spoke softly to Raederle.

  “I’ll leave you here. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Neither one of us will be very safe, but at least Yrth and Iff are here, and Yrth — he does want me alive. I know that much.”

  She slid her hand onto his shoulder. Her face was troubled. “Morgon, you bound yourself to him as you flew. I felt it.”

  “I know.” He lifted her hand, held the back of it against his chest “I know,” he repeated. He could not meet her eyes. “He lures me with myself. I told you that if I played with him, I would lose.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Watch over the Morgol. I don’t know what I have brought into her house.”

  “He would never hurt her.”

  “He lied to her and betrayed her once already. Once is enough. If you need me, ask the Morgol where I am. She’ll know.”

  “All right. Morgon…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know…” she answered, as she had several times in the past days. “Only I remember, sometimes, what Yrth said about fire and night being such simple things when you see them clearly. I keep thinking that you don’t know what Yrth is because you never see him, you see only dark memories…”

  “What in Hel’s name do you expect me to see? He’s more than a harpist, more than a wizard. Raederle, I’m trying to see. I’m—”

  She put her hand over his mouth as servants glanced at them. “I know.” She held him suddenly, tightly, and he felt himself trembling. “I didn’t mean to upset you. But — be quiet and listen. I’m trying to think. You don’t understand fire until you forget yourself and become fire. You learned to see in the dark when you became a great mountain whose heart was of darkness. You understood Ghisteslwchlohm by assuming his power. So, maybe the only way you will ever understand the harpist is to let him draw you into his power until you are part of his heart and you begin to see the world out of his eyes…”

  “I may destroy the realm that way.”

  “Maybe. But if he is dangerous, how can you fight him without understanding him? And if he is not dangerous?”

  “If he’s not—” He stopped. The world seemed to shift slightly around him, all of Herun, the mountain kingdoms, the southern lands, the entire realm, adjusting into place under the falcon’s eye. He saw the falcon’s shadow spanning the realm in its powerful, silent flight, felt it fall across his back. The vision lasted a fraction of a moment. Then the shadow became a memory of night and his hands clenched. “He is dangerous,” he whispered. “He always has been. Why am I so bound to him?”

  He left the City of Circles that evening and spent days and nights he did not count, hidden from the world and almost from himself, within the land-law of Herun. He drifted shapelessly in the mists, seeped down into the still, dangerous marshlands, and felt the morning frost silver his face as it hardened over mud and reeds and tough marsh grasses. He cried a marsh bird’s lonely cry and stared at the stars out of an expressionless slab of stone. He roamed through the low hills, linking his mind to rocks, trees, rivulets, searching into the rich mines of iron and copper and precious stones the hills kept enclosed within themselves. He spun tendrils of thought into a vast web across the dormant fields and lush, misty pastureland, linking himself to the stubble of dead roots, frozen furrows, and tangled grasses the sheep fed on. The gentleness of the land reminded him of Hed, but there was a dark, restless force in it that had reared up in the shapes of tors and monoliths. He drifted very close to the Morgol’s mind, as he explored it; he sensed that her watchfulness and intelligence had been born out of need, the heritage of a land whose marshes and sudden mists made it very dangerous to those who had settled it. There was mystery in its strange stones, and richness within its hills; the minds of the Morgols had shaped themselves also to those things. As Morgon drew deep into its law, he felt his own mind grow almost peaceful, bound by necessity to a fine clarity of awareness and vision. Finally, when he began to see as the Morgol saw, into things and beyond them, he returned to the City of Circles.

  He came back as he had left: as quietly as a piece of ground mist wandering in from the still, cold Herun night. He followed the sound of the Mongol’s voice as he took his own shape once again. He found himself standing in firelight and shadow in her small, elegant hall. The Morgol was speaking to Yrth as he appeared; he felt still linked to the calmness of her mind. He made no effort to break the link, at rest in her peacefulness. Lyra was sitting beside her; Raederle had shifted closer to the fire. They had been at supper, but only their cups and flagons of wine remained of it.

  Raederle turned her head and saw Morgon; she smiled at something in his eyes and left him undisturbed. Lyra caught his attention, then. She was dressed for supper in a light, flowing, fiery robe; her hair was braided and coiled under a net of gold thread. Her face had lost its familiar proud assurance; her eyes seemed older, vulnerable, haunted with the memory of watching guards under her command die at Lungold. She said something to the Morgol that Morgon did not hear. The Morgol answered her simply.

  “No.”

  “I am going to Ymris.” Her dark eyes held the Morgol’s stubbornly, but her argument was quiet “If not with the guard, then at your side.”

  “No.”

  “Mother, I am no longer in your guard. I resigned when I returned home from Lungold, so you can’t expect me to obey you without thinking. Ymris is a terrible battlefield — more terrible than Lungold. I am going—”

  “You are my land-heir,” the Morgol said. Her face was still calm, but Morgon sensed the fear, relentless and chill as the Herun mists, deep in her mind. “I am taking the entire guard out of Herun down to Wind Plain. Goh will command it. You said that you never wanted to pick up another spear, and I was grateful you had made that decision. There is no need for you to fight in Ymris, and every need for you to stay here.”

  “In case you are killed,” Lyra said flatly. “I don’t understand why you are even going, but I will ride at your side—”

  “Lyra—”

  “Mother, this is my decision. Obeying you is no longer a matter of honor. I will do as I choose, and I
choose to ride with you.”

  The Morgol’s fingers edged slightly around her cup. She seemed surprised at her own movement. “Well,” she said calmly, “if there is no honor in your actions in this matter, there will be none in mine. You will stay here. One way or another.”

  Lyra’s eyes flickered a little. “Mother,” she protested uncertainly, and the Morgol said:

  “Yes. I am also the Morgol. Herun is in grave danger. If Ymris falls, I want you here to protect it in whatever way you can. If we both died in Ymris, it would be disastrous for Herun.”

  “But why are you going?”

  “Because Har is going,” the Morgol said softly, “and Danan, and Mathom — the land-rulers of the realm — impelled to Ymris to fight for the survival of the realm… or for some even more imperative reason. There is a tangle of riddles at the heart of the realm; I want to see its unravelling. Even at the risk of my life. I want answers.”

  Lyra was silent Their faces in the soft light were almost indistinguishable in their fine, clean-lined beauty. But the Morgol’s gold eyes hid her thoughts, while Lyra’s were open to every flare of fire and pain.

  “The harpist is dead,” she whispered. “If that is what you are trying to answer.”

  The Morgol’s eyes fell. She stirred after a moment, reached out swiftly to touch Lyra’s cheek. “There are more unsolved questions than that in the realm,” she said, “and nearly all, I think, more important.” But her brows were constricted, as at a sudden, inexplicable pain. “Riddles without answers can be terrible,” she added after a moment “But some are possible to live with. Others… What the Star-Bearer does at Wind Plain will be vital, Yrth thinks.”

  “Does he think you need to be there also? And if Wind Plain is so vital, where is the High One? Why is he ignoring the Star-Bearer and the entire realm?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps Morgon can answer some of—” She lifted her head abruptly and saw him standing quietly in the shadows, his own thoughts waking again in his mind.

  She smiled, holding out her hand in welcome. Yrth shifted a little, seeing, perhaps from her eyes, as Morgon came slowly to the table. Morgon saw him strangely for an instant, as something akin to the mists and monoliths of Herun that his mind could explore and comprehend. Then, as he sat down, the wizard’s face seemed to avert itself from his eyes. He bent his head to the Morgol wordlessly. She said, “Did you find what you came for?”

  “Yes. All I could bear. How long have I been gone?”

  “Nearly two weeks.”

  “Two…” He shaped the word without sound. “So long? Has there been news?”

  “Very little. Traders came from Hlurle for all the arms we could spare, to take them to Caerweddin. I have been watching a mist moving south from Osterland, and finally, today, I realized what it is.”

  “A mist?” He remembered Har’s scarred palm, opening to the red wash of firelight “Vesta? Is Har bringing the vesta to Ymris?”

  “There are hundreds of them, moving across the forests.”

  “They are great fighters,” Yrth said. He sounded weary, disinclined to face an argument, but his voice was patient. “And they will not fear the Ymris winter.”

  “You knew.” His thoughts were jarred out of their calm. “You could have stopped him. The miners, the vesta, the Morgol’s guard — why are you drawing such a vulnerable, unskilled army across the realm? You may be blind, but the rest of us will have to watch the slaughter of men and animals on that battlefield—”

  “Morgon,” the Morgol interrupted gently, “Yrth does not make my decisions for me.”

  “Yrth—” He stopped, sliding his hands over his face, trying to check a futile argument. Yrth rose, drawing Morgon’s eyes again. The wizard moved a little awkwardly through the cushions to the fire. He stood in front of it, his head bowed. Morgon saw his scarred hands close suddenly, knotted with words he could not speak, and he thought of Deth’s hands, twisted with pain in the firelight. He heard an echo, then, out of the still Herun night, of the strange brief peace he had found beside the harpist’s fire, within his silence. All that bound him to the harpist, to the falcon, his longing and his incomprehensible love, overwhelmed him suddenly. As he watched light and shadow search the hard, blind face into shape, he realized he would yield anything: the vesta, the Morgol’s guard, the land-rulers, the entire realm, into the scarred, tormented hands in return for a place in the falcon’s shadow.

  The knowledge brought him to a strange, uneasy calm. His head bowed; he stared down at his dark reflection in the polished stone until Lyra, looking at him, said suddenly, “You must be hungry.” She poured him wine. “I’ll bring you some hot food.” The Morgol watched her cross the room with her lithe, graceful step. She looked tired, more tired than Morgon had ever seen her.

  She said to Morgon, “Miners and vesta and my guard may seem useless in Ymris, but Morgon, the land-rulers are giving of all the strength they possess. There is nothing else we can do.”

  “I know.” His eyes moved to her; he knew her own confused love for a memory. He said abruptly, wanting to give her something of peace in return for all she had given him, “Ghisteslwchlohm said that you had been waiting for Deth near Lungold. Is that true?”

  She looked a little startled at his brusqueness, but she nodded. “I thought he might come to Lungold. It was the only place left for him to go, and I could ask him… Morgon, you and I are both tired, and the harpist is dead. Perhaps we should—”

  “He died — he died for you.”

  She stared at him across the table. “Morgon,” she whispered, warning him, but he shook his head.

  “It is true. Raederle could have told you. Or Yrth — he was there.” The wizard turned light, burned eyes toward him, then, and his voice shook. But he went on, returning the riddle of the harpist’s life to him unanswered, in exchange for nothing. “Ghisteslwchlohm gave Deth a choice between holding either Raederle or you as hostage while he forced me to Erlenstar Mountain. He chose to die instead. He forced Ghisteslwchlohm to kill him. He had no compassion for me… maybe because I could endure without it. But you and Raederle, he simply loved.” He stopped, breathing a little painfully as she dropped her face into her hands. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to—”

  “No.” But she was crying, he could tell, and he cursed himself. Yrth was still watching him; he wondered how the wizard was seeing, since Raederle’s face had disappeared behind her hair. The wizard made a strange gesture, throwing up one open hand to the light, as if he were yielding something to Morgon. He reached out, touched the air at Morgon’s back, and the starred harp leaped out of nothingness into his hands.

  The Morgol’s eyes went to Morgon as the first, sweet notes sounded, but his hands were empty. He was gazing at Yrth, words lumped like ice in his throat. The wizard’s big hands moved with a flawless precision over the strings he had tuned; tones of wind and water answered him. It was the harping out of a long, black night in Erlenstar Mountain, with all its deadly beauty; the harping kings across the realm had heard for centuries. It was the harping of a great wizard who had once been called the Harpist of Lungold, and the Morgol, listening silently, seemed only awed and a little surprised. Then the harpist’s song changed, and the blood ran completely out of her face.

  It was a deep, lovely, wordless song that pulled out of the back of Morgon’s memories a dark, misty evening above the Herun marshes, a fire ringed with faces of the Morgol’s guard, Lyra appearing soundlessly out of the night, saying something… He strained to hear her words. Then, looking at the Morgol’s white, numb face as she stared at Yrth, he remembered the song Deth had composed only for her.

  A shudder ran through Morgon. He wondered, as the beautiful harping drew to a close, how the harpist could possibly justify himself to her. His hands slowed, picked a final, gentle chord from the harp, then flattened on the strings to still them. He sat with his head bowed slightly over the harp, his hands resting above the stars. Firelight shivered over him, weaving patterns
of light and shadow in the air. Morgon waited for him to speak. He said nothing; he did not move. Moments wore away; still he sat with the silence of trees or earth or the hard, battered face of granite; and Morgon, listening to it, realized that his silence was not the evasion of an answer, but the answer itself.

  He closed his eyes. His heart beat suddenly, painfully, in his throat. He wanted to speak, but he could not. The harpist’s silence circled him with the peace he had found deep in living things all over the realm. It eased through his thoughts, into his heart, so that he could not even think. He only knew that something he had searched for so long and so hopelessly had never, even in his most desperate moments, been far from his side.

  The harpist rose then, his weary, ancient face the wind-swept face of a mountain, the scarred face of the realm. His eyes held the Morgol’s for a long moment, until her face, so white it seemed translucent, shook, and she stared blindly down at the table. Then he moved to Morgon, slipped the harp back onto his shoulder. Morgon felt as from a dream the light, quick movements. He seemed to linger for a moment; his hand touched Morgon’s face very gently. Then, walking toward the fire, he melted into its weave.

  14

  Morgon moved then, unbound from the silence. He cast with his mind into the night, but everywhere he searched he found only its stillness. He rose. Words seemed gripped in his chest and in his clenched hands, as if he dared not let them go. The Morgol seemed as reluctant to speak. She stirred a little, stiffly, then stilled again, gazing down at a star of candlelight reflected on the table. The blood came back into her face slowly. Watching her expression change, Morgon found his voice.

  “Where did he go?” he whispered. “He spoke to you.”

  “He said — he said that he had just done the only foolish thing in his very long life.” Her hands moved, linked themselves; she frowned down at them, concentrating with an effort. “That he had not intended for you to know him until you had gathered enough power to fight for yourself. He left because he is a danger to you now. He said — other things.” She shook her head slightly, then spoke again. “He said that he had not realized there was a limit to his own endurance.”