“I nearly killed him.” He was almost awed at his own blundering. “I tracked the High One all the way across the realm to kill him.” Then a sharp, familiar pain bore into his heart. “He left me in Ghisteslwchlohm’s hands. He could have killed the Founder with half a word. Instead, he harped. No wonder I never recognized him.”
“Morgon, it’s cold.” Raederle put her arm around him; even her hair felt chill against his face. He tried to clear his mind, but the winds wept into it, and he saw the harpist’s face again, staring blindly at the sky.
“He was a Master…”
“Morgon.” He felt her mind grope into his. He let it come, surprised. The sense of her quieted him; her own thoughts were very clear. He drew apart from her, looked through the darkness into her face.
“You were never that angry for my sake.”
“Oh, Morgon.” She held him again. “You said it yourself: you endure, like the hard things of the realm. He needed you that way, so he left you to Ghisteslwchlohm. I’m saying it badly…” she protested, as his muscles tensed. “You learned to survive. Do you think it was easy for him? Harping for centuries in Ghisteslwchlohm’s service, waiting for the Star-Bearer?”
“No,” he said after a moment, thinking of the harpist’s broken hands. “He used himself as mercilessly as he used me. But for what?”
“Find him. Ask him.”
“I can’t even move,” he whispered. Her mind touched his again; he let his thoughts rest finally in her tentative hold. He waited patiently while she worked, exploring across distance. She touched him finally. He moved without knowing where he was going, and he began to understand the patience and trust he had demanded of her. They did not go very far, he sensed, but he waited wearily, gratefully, while she found her way step by step across the forests. By dawn, they had reached the north border of Ymris. And there, as the red sun of storms and ill winds rose in the east, they rested.
They flew over Marcher as carrion crows. The rough, hilly borderland seemed quiet; but in the late afternoon, the crows spied a band of armed men guarding a line of trade-carts lumbering toward Caerweddin. Morgon veered down toward them. He caught one of the warrior’s mind as he landed on the road, to avoid being attacked when he changed shape. He drew the sword out of its sheath of air, held the stars up as the man stared at him. They flared uneasily in the grey light.
“Morgon of Hed,” the warrior breathed. He was a grizzled, scarred veteran; his eyes, shadowed and bloodshot, had gazed across the dawn and deadly twilight of many fields. He halted the train of cars behind him and dismounted. The men behind were silent.
“I need to find Yrth,” Morgon said, “Or Aloil. Or Astrin Ymris.”
The man touched the stars on his upraised sword with a curious gesture, almost a ritual of fealty. Then he blinked as a gor-crow landed on Morgon’s shoulder. He said, “I am Lien Marcher, cousin of the High Lord of Marcher. I don’t know Yrth. Astrin Ymris is in Caerweddin; he could tell you where Aloil is. I’m taking arms and supplies to Caerweddin, for whatever good they’ll do there. If I were you, Star-Lord, I would not show an eyelash in this doomed land. Let alone three stars.”
“I’ve come to fight,” Morgon said. The land whispered to him, then, of law, legends, the ancient dead beneath his feet, and his own body seemed to yearn toward the shape of it. The man’s eyes ran over his lean face, the rich, worn tunic that seemed mildly absurd in those dangerous, wintry hills.
“Hed,” he said. A sudden, amazed smile broke through the despair in his eyes. “Well. We’ve tried everything else. I would offer to take you with me, Lord, but I think you’re safer on your own. There is only one man Astrin might want to see more than you, but I wouldn’t want to lay any bets on that.”
“Heureu. He’s still missing.”
The man nodded wearily. “Somewhere in the realm between the dead and the living. Not even the wizard can find him. I think—”
“I can find him,” Morgon said abruptly. The man was silent, the smile in his eyes wiped away by a naked, unbearable hope.
“Can you? Not even Astrin can, and his dreams are full of Heureu’s thoughts. Lord, what — what are you, that you can stand there shivering in the cold and have me believing in your power? I survived the carnage on Wind Plain. Some nights when I wake from my own dreams, I wish I had died there.” He shook his head; his hand moved to Morgon again, then dropped without touching him. “Go, now. Take your stars out of eyesight. Find your way safely to Caerweddin. Lord, hurry.”
The crows flew eastward. They passed other long convoys of supply-carts and strings of horses; they rested in the eaves of great houses, whose yards were choked with smoke and the din of forges. The brilliant colors of battle livery and the dark, sweating flanks of plow horses flickered through the smoke, as men gathered to march to Caerweddin. There were young boys among them, and the rough, weathered faces of shepherds, farmers, smiths, even traders, receiving a crude, desperate introduction to arms before they joined the forces at Caerweddin. The sight spurred the crows onward. They followed the Thul as it ran toward the sea, cutting a dark path through the dying fields.
They reached Caerweddin at sunset; the sky was shredded like a brilliant banner by the harsh winds. The whole of the city was ringed by a thousand fires, as if it were besieged by its own forces. But the harbor was clear; trade-ships from Isig and Anuin were homing toward it on the evening tide. The beautiful house of the Ymris kings, built of the shards of an Earth-Masters’ city, burned like a jewel in the last light. The crows dropped down into the shadows just outside its closed gates. They changed shape in the empty street.
They did not speak as they looked at one another. Morgon drew Raederle against him, wondering if his own eyes were as stunned with weariness. He touched her mind; then, searching into the heart of the king’s house, he found Astrin’s mind.
He appeared in front of the Ymris land-heir as he sat alone in a small council chamber. He had been working; maps, messages, supply lists were strewn all over his desk. But the room was nearly in darkness, and he had not bothered to light candles. He was staring ahead of him into the fire, his face harrowed, colorless. Morgon and Raederle, stepping out of the street into the blur of light and shadow, did not even startle him. He gazed at them a moment as if they had no more substance than his hope. Then his expression changed; he stood up, his chair falling behind him with a crash. “Where have you been?”
There was a realm of relief, compassion, and exasperation in the question. Morgon, casting a glance at his past with an eye as probing as the single, wintry eye of the Ymris prince, said simply, “Answering riddles.”
Astrin rounded his desk and eased Raederle into a chair. He gave her wine and the numbness began to wear out of her face. Astrin, half-kneeling beside her, looked up at Morgon incredulously.
“Where did you come from? I have been thinking about you and Heureu — you and Heureu. You’re thin as an awl, but in one piece. You look — if ever I’ve seen a man who looks like a weapon, you do. There is a quiet thunder of power all over this room. Where did you get it?”
“All over the realm.” He poured himself wine and sat.
“Can you save Ymris?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know. I need to find Yrth.”