Harpist in the Wind

15

The walls rose around him, circled him. Twelve windows opened through midnight blue stone to the restless, murmuring winds. He felt a touch and turned, startled back into his body.

The High One stood before him. He had the wizard’s scarred hands, and the harpist’s fine, worn face. But his eyes were neither the harpist’s nor the wizard’s. They were the falcon’s eyes, fierce, vulnerable, frighteningly powerful. They held Morgon motionless, half-regretting that he had spoken the name that had turned in his mind after all that time to show its dark side. For the first time in his life he had no courage for questions; his mouth was too dry for speaking.

He whispered into the void of the High One’s silence, “I had to find you… I have to understand.”

“You still don’t.” His voice sounded shadowy with winds. Then he bound the awesomeness of his power somewhere within him and became the harpist, quiet, familiar, whom Morgon could question. The moment’s transition bound Morgon’s voice again, for it loosed a conflict of emotion. He tried to control them. But as the High One touched the stars at his side and his back, bringing them irrevocably into shape, his own hands rose, caught the harpist’s arms and stilled him.

“Why?”

The falcon’s eyes held him again; he could not look away. He saw, as if he were reading memories within the dark eyes, the silent, age-old game the High One had played; now with Earth-Masters, now with Ghisteslwchlohm, now with Morgon himself, a ceaseless tapestry of riddles with some threads as old as time and others spun at a step across the threshold into a wizard’s chamber, at a change of expression on the Star-Bearer’s face. His fingers tightened, feeling bone. An Earth-Master moved alone out of the shadows of some great, unfinished war… hid for thousands of years, now a leaf on a rich, matted forest floor of dead leaves, now the brush of sunlight down the flank of a pine. Then, for a thousand years, he took a wizard’s face, and for another thousand, a harpist’s still, secret face, gazing back at the twisted shape of power out of its own expressionless eyes. “Why?” he whispered again, and saw himself in Hed, sitting at the dock end, picking at a harp he could not play, with the shadow of the High One’s harpist flung across him. The sea wind or the High One’s hand bared the stars at his hairline. The harpist saw them, a promise out of a past so old it had buried his name. He could not speak; he spun his silence into riddles…

“But why?” Tears or sweat were burning in his eyes. He brushed at them; his hands locked once more on the High One’s arms, as if to keep his shape. “You could have killed Ghisteslwchlohm with a thought. Instead you served him. You. You gave me to him. Were you his harpist so long you had forgotten your own name?”

The High One moved; Morgon’s own arms were caught in an inflexible grip. “Think. You’re the riddler.”

“I played the game you challenged me to. But I don’t know why—”

“Think. I found you in Hed, innocent, ignorant, oblivious of your own destiny. You couldn’t even harp. Who in this realm was there to wake you to power?”

“The wizards,” he said between his teeth. “You could have stopped the destruction of Lungold. You were there. The wizards could have survived in freedom, trained me for whatever protection you need—”

“No. If I had used power to stop that battle, I would have battled Earth-Masters long before I was ready. They would have destroyed me. Think of their faces. Remember them. The faces of the Earth-Masters you saw in Erlenstar Mountain. I am of them. The children they once loved were buried beneath Isig Mountain. How could you, with all your innocence, have understood them? Their longing and their lawlessness? In all the realm, who was there to teach you that? You wanted a choice. I gave it to you. You could have taken the shape of power you learned from Ghisteslwchlohm: lawless, destructive, loveless. Or you could have swallowed darkness until you shaped it, understood it, and still cried out for something more. When you broke free of Ghisteslwchlohm’s power, why was it me you hunted, instead of him? He took the power of land-law from you. I took your trust, your love. You pursued what you valued most…”

Morgon’s hands opened, closed again. His breath was beginning to rack through him. He caught it, stilled it long enough to shape one final question. “What is it you want of me?”

“Morgon, think.” The even, familiar voice was suddenly gentle, almost inaudible. “You can shape the wild heart of Osterland, you can shape wind. You saw my son, dead and buried in Isig Mountain. You took the stars of your own destiny from him. And in all your power and anger, you found your way here, to name me. You are my land-heir.”

Morgon was silent. He was gripping the High One as if the tower floor had suddenly vanished under him. He heard his own voice, oddly toneless, from a distance. “Your heir.”

“You are the Star-Bearer, the heir foreseen by the dead of Isig, for whom I have been waiting for centuries beyond hope. Where did you think the power you have over land-law sprang from?”

“I didn’t — I wasn’t thinking.” His voice had dropped to a whisper. He thought of Hed, then. “You are giving me — you are giving Hed back to me.”

“I am giving you the entire realm when I die. You seem to love it, even all its wraiths and thick-skulled farmers and deadly winds—” He stopped, as a sound broke out of Morgon. His face was scored with tears, as riddles wove their pattern strand by gleaming strand around the heart of the tower. His hands loosened; he slid to the High One’s feet and crouched there, his head bowed, his scarred hands closed, held against his heart He could not speak; he did not know what language of light and darkness the falcon who had so ruthlessly fashioned his life would hear. He thought numbly of Hed; it seemed to lay where his heart lay, under his hands. Then the High One knelt in front of him, lifted Morgon’s face between his hands. His eyes were the harpist’s, night-dark, and no longer silent but full of pain.

“Morgon,” he whispered, “I wish you had not been someone I loved so.”

He put his arms around Morgon, held him as fiercely as the falcon had held him. He circled Morgon with his silence, until Morgon felt that his heart and the tower walls and the starred night sky beyond were built not of blood and stone and air, but of the harpist’s stillness. He was still crying noiselessly, afraid to touch the harpist, as if he might somehow change shape again. Something hard and angled, like grief, was pushing into his chest, into his throat, but it was not grief. He said, above its pain, feeling the High One’s pain as one thing he could comprehend, “What happened to your son?”

“He was destroyed in the war. The power was stripped from him. He could no longer live… He gave you the starred sword.”

“And you… you have been alone since then. Without an heir. With only a promise.”

“Yes. I have lived in secret for thousands of years with nothing to hope in but a promise. A dead child’s dream. And then you came. Morgon, I did anything I had to do to keep you alive. Anything. You were all my hope.”

“You are giving me even the wastelands. I loved them. I loved them. And the mists of Herun, the vesta, the backlands… I was afraid, when I realized how much I loved them. I was drawn to every shape, and I couldn’t stop myself from wanting—” The pain broke through his chest like a blade. He drew a harsh, terrible breath. “All I wanted from you was truth. I didn’t know… I didn’t know you would give me everything I have ever loved.”

He could not speak any more. Sobbing wrenched him until he did not know if he could endure his own shape. But the High One held him to it, soothing him with his hands and his voice until Morgon quieted. He still could not speak; he listened to the winds whispering through the tower, to the occasional patter of rain on the stones. His face was bowed against the High One’s shoulder. He was silent, resting in the High One’s silence, until his voice came again, hoarse, weary, calmer.

“I never guessed. You never let me see that far beyond my anger.”

“I didn’t dare let you see too much. Your life was in such danger, and you were so precious to me. I kept you alive any way I could, using myself, using your ignorance, even your hatred. I did not know if you would ever forgive me, but all the hope of the realm lay in you, and I needed you powerful, confused, always searching for me, yet never finding me, though I was always near you…”

“I told… I told Raederle if I came back out of the wastes to play a riddle-game with you that I would lose.”

“No. You startled the truth out of me in Herun. I lost to you, there. I could endure everything from you but your gentleness.” His hand smoothed Morgon’s hair, then dropped to hold him tightly again. “You and the Morgol kept my heart from turning into stone. I was forced to turn everything I had ever said to her into a lie. And you turned it back into truth. You were that generous with someone you hated.”

“All I wanted, even when I hated you most, was some poor, barren, parched excuse to love you. But you only gave me riddles… When I thought Ghisteslwchlohm had killed you, I grieved without knowing why. When I was in the northern wastes, harping to the winds, too tired even to think, it was you who drew me out… You gave me a reason for living.” His hands had opened slowly. He raised one, almost tentatively, to the High One’s shoulder and shifted back a little. Something of his own weariness showed in his eyes, and the endless, terrible patience that had kept him alive so long, alone and unnamed, hunted by his own kind in the world of men. Morgon’s head bowed again after a moment.

“Even I tried to kill you.”

The harpist’s fingers touched his cheekbone, drew the hair back from his eyes. “You kept my enemies from suspecting me very effectively, but Morgon, if you had not stopped yourself that day in Anuin, I don’t know what I would have done. If I had used power to stop you, neither of us would have lived too long afterward. If I had let you kill me, out of despair, because we had brought one another to such an impasse, the power passing into you would have destroyed you. So I gave you a riddle, hoping you would consider that instead.”

“You knew me that well,” he whispered.

“No. You constantly surprised me… from the very first I am as old as the stones on this plain. The great cities the Earth-Masters built were shattered by a war that no man could have survived. It was born out of a kind of innocence. We held so much power, and yet we did not understand the implications of power. That’s why, even if you hated me for it, I wanted you to understand Ghisteslwchlohm and how he destroyed himself. We lived so peacefully once, in these great cities. They were open to every change of wind. Our faces changed with every season; we took knowledge from all things: from the silence of the backlands to the burning ice sweeping across the northern wastes. We did not realize, until it was too late, that the power inherent in every stone, every movement of water, holds both existence and destruction.” He paused, no longer seeing Morgon, tasting a bitter word. “The woman you know as Eriel was the first of us to begin to gather power. And I was the first to see the implications of power… that paradox that tempers wizardry and compelled the study of riddlery. So, I made a choice, and began binding all earth-shapes to me by their own laws, permitting nothing to disturb that law. But I had to fight to keep the land-law, and we learned what war is then. The realm as you know it would not have lasted two days in the force of those battles. We razed our own cities. We destroyed one another. We destroyed our children, drew the power even out of them. I had already learned to master the winds, which was the only thing that saved me. I was able to bind the power of the last of the Earth-Masters so they could use little beyond the power they were born to. I swept them into the sea while the earth slowly healed itself. I buried our children, then. The Earth-Masters broke out of the sea eventually, but they could not break free of my hold over them. And they could never find me, because the winds hid me, always…

“But I am very old, and I cannot hold them much longer. They know that. I was old even when I became a wizard named Yrth so that I could fashion the harp and the sword that my heir would need. Ghisteslwchlohm learned of the Star-Bearer from the dead of Isig, and he became one more enemy lured by the promise of enormous power. He thought that if he controlled the Star-Bearer, he could assimilate the power the Star-Bearer would inherit and become the High One in more than name. It would have killed him, but I did not bother explaining that to him. When I realized he was waiting for you, I watched him — in Lungold, and later in Erlenstar Mountain. I took the shape of a harpist who had died during the destruction and entered his service. I wanted no harm to come to you without my consent. When I found you at last, sitting on the dock at Tol, oblivious of your own destiny, content to rule Hed, with a harp in your hands you could barely play and the crown of the Kings of Aum under your bed, I realized that the last thing I had been expecting after all those endless, lonely centuries was someone I might love…” He paused again, his face blurred into pale, silvery fines by Morgon’s tears. “Hed. No wonder that land shaped the Star-Bearer out of itself, a loving Prince of Hed, ruler of ignorant, stubborn farmers who believed in nothing but the High One…”

“I am hardly more than that now… ignorant and thick-skulled. Have I destroyed us both by coming here to find you?”

“No. This is the one place no one would expect us to be. But we have little time left. You crossed Ymris without touching the land-law.”

Morgon dropped his hands. “I didn’t dare,” he said. “And all I could think of was you. I had to find you before the Earth-Masters found me.”

“I know. I left you in a perilous situation. But you found me, and I hold the land-law of Ymris. You’ll need it. Ymris is a seat of great power. I want you to take the knowledge from my mind. Don’t worry,” he added, at Morgon’s expression. “I will only give you that knowledge, nothing that you cannot bear, yet. Sit down.”

Morgon slid back slowly onto the stones. The rain had begun again, blown on the wind through the openings in the chamber, but he was not cold. The harpist’s face was changing; his worn, troubled expression had eased into an ageless peace as he contemplated his realm. Morgon looked at him, drawing hungrily from his peace until he was enveloped in stillness and the High One’s touch seemed to lay upon his heart. He heard the deep, shadowy voice again, the falcon’s voice.

“Ymris… I was born here on Wind Plain. Listen to its power beneath the rain, beneath the cries of the dead. It is like you, a fierce and loving land. Be still and listen to it…”

He grew still, so still he could hear the grass bending beneath the weight of the rain and the ancient names from early centuries that had been spoken there. And then he became the grass.

He drew himself out of Ymris slowly, his heart thundering to its long and bloody history, his body shaped to its green fields, wild shores, strange, brooding forests. He felt old as the earliest stone hewn out of Erlenstar Mountain to rest on the earth, and he knew far more than he had ever cared to know of the devastation the recent war had loosed across Ruhn. He sensed great untapped power in Ymris that he had winced away from, as if a sea or a mountain had loomed before him that his mind simply could not encompass. But it held odd moments of quiet; a still, secret lake mirroring many things; strange stones that had once been made to speak; forests haunted with pure black animals so shy they died if men looked upon them; acres of oak woods on the western borders whose trees remembered the first vague passage of men into Ymris. These, he treasured. The High One had given him no more of his mind than the awareness of Ymris; the power he had feared in the falcon’s eyes was still leashed when he looked into them again.

It was dawn, of some day, and Raederle was beside him. He made a surprised noise. “How did you get up here?”

“I flew.”

The answer was so simple it seemed meaningless for a moment. “So did I.”

“You climbed the stairs. I flew to the top.”

His face looked so blank with surprise that she smiled. “Morgon, the High One let me come in. Otherwise I would have flown around the tower squawking all night.”

He grunted and linked his fingers into hers. She was very tired, he sensed, and her smile faded quickly, leaving something disturbing in her eyes. The High One was standing beside one of the windows. The blue-black stone was rimed with the first light; against the sky the harpist’s face looked weary, the skin drawn taut, colorless against the bones. But the eyes were Yrth’s, light-filled, secret. Morgon looked at him for a long time without moving, still enmeshed in his peace, until the changeless, familiar face seemed to meld with the pale silver of the morning. The High One turned then to meet his eyes.

He drew Morgon to his side without a gesture, only his simple wordless desire. Morgon loosed Raederle’s hand and rose stiffly. He crossed the room. The High One put a hand on his shoulder.

Morgon said, “I couldn’t take it all.”

“Morgon, the power you sensed is in the Earth-Masters’ dead: those who died fighting at my side on this plain. The power will be there when you need it.”

Something in Morgon, deep beneath his peace, lifted its muzzle like a blind hound in the dark, scenting at the High One’s words. “And the harp, and the sword?” He kept his voice tranquil. “I barely understand the power in them.”

“They will find uses for themselves. Look.”

There was a white mist of vesta along the plain, beneath the low, lumbering cloud. Morgon gazed down at them incredulously, then leaned his face against the cool stone. “When did they get here?”

“Last night.”

“Where is Astrin’s army?”

“Half of it was trapped between Tor and Umber, but the vanguard made it through, clearing a path for the vesta and the Morgol’s guard and Danan’s miners. They are behind the vesta.” He read Morgon’s thoughts; his hand tightened slightly. “I did not bring them here to fight.”

“Then why?” he whispered.

“You will need them. You and I must end this war quickly. That is what you were born to do.”

“How?”

The High One was silent. Behind his tranquil, indrawn gaze, Morgon sensed a weariness beyond belief, and a more familiar patience: the harpist’s waiting for Morgon’s understanding, perhaps, or for something beyond his understanding. He said finally, very gently, “The Prince of Hed and his farmers have gathered on the south border with Mathom’s army. If you need to keep them alive, you’ll find a way.”

Morgon whirled. He crossed the chamber, hung out a south window, as if he could see among the leafless oaks a grim battery of farmers with rakes and hoes and scythes. His heart swelled with sudden pain and fear that sent tears to his eyes. “He left Hed. Eliard turned his farmers into warriors and left Hed. What is it? The end of the world?”

“He came to fight for you. And for his own land.”

“No.” He turned again, his hands clenched, but not in anger. “He came because you wanted him, That’s why the Morgol came, and Har — you drew them, the way you draw me, with a touch of wind at the heart, a mystery. What is it? What is it that you aren’t telling me?”

“I have given you my name.”

Morgon was silent. It began to snow lightly, big, random flakes scattered on the wind. They caught on his hands, burned before they vanished. He shuddered suddenly and found that he had no inclination left for questions. Raederle had turned away from them both. She looked oddly isolated in the center of the small chamber. Morgon went to her side; her head lifted as he joined her, but her face turned away from him to the High One.

He came to her, as if she had drawn him, the way he drew Morgon. He smoothed a strand of her windblown hair away from her face. “Raederle, it is time for you to leave.”

She shook her head. “No.” Her voice was very quiet. “I am half Earth-Master. You will have at least one of your kind fighting for you after all these centuries. I will not leave either of you.”

“You are in the eye of danger.”

“I chose to come. To be with those I love.”

He was silent; for a moment he was only the harpist, ageless, indrawn, lonely. “You,” he said softly, “I never expected. So powerful, so beautiful, and so loving. You are like one of our children, growing into power before our war.” He lifted her hand and kissed it, then opened it to the small angular scar on her palm. “There are twelve winds,” he said to Morgon. “Bound, controlled, they are more precise and terrible than any weapon or wizard’s power in the realm. Unbound, they could destroy the realm. They are also my eyes and ears, for they shape all things, hear all words and movements, and they are everywhere… That jewel that Raederle held was cut and faceted by winds. I did that one day when I was playing with them, long before I ever used them in our war. The memory of that was mirrored in the stone.”

“Why are you telling me?” His voice jerked a little. “I can’t hold the winds.”

“No. Not yet. Don’t be concerned, yet.” He put his arm around Morgon’s shoulders, held him easily again within his stillness. “Listen. You can hear the voices of all the winds of the realm in this chamber. Listen to my mind.”

Morgon opened his mind to the High One’s silence. The vague, incoherent murmurings outside the walls were refracted through the High One’s mind into all the pure, beautiful tones on the starred harp. The harping filled Morgon’s heart with soft, light summer winds, and the deep, wild winds that he loved; the slow, rich measures matched the beat of his blood. He wanted suddenly to hold the harping and the harpist within that moment until the white winter sky broke apart once more to light.

The harping stilled. He could not speak; he did not want the High One to move. But the arm around his shoulders shifted; the High One gripped him gently, facing him.

“Now,” he said, “we have a battle on our bands. I want you to find Heureu Ymris. This time, I’ll warn you: when you touch his mind, you will spring a trap set for you. The Earth-Masters will know where you are and that the High One is with you. You will ignite war again on Wind Plain. They have little mind-power of their own — I keep that bound; but they hold Ghisteslwchlohm’s mind, and they may use his powers of wizardry to try to hurt you. I’ll break any bindings he forges.”

Morgon turned his head, looked at Raederle. Her eyes told him what he already knew: that nothing he could say or do could make her leave them. He bent his head again, in silent acquiescence to her and to the High One. Then he let his awareness venture beyond the silence into the damp earth around the tower. He touched a single blade of grass, let his mind shape it from hair roots to tip. Rooted also within the structure of land-law in Heureu’s mind, it became his link with the King of Ymris.

He sensed a constant, nagging pain, a turmoil of helpless anger and despair, and heard a distant, hollow drag and ebb of the sea. He had learned every shape of cliff and stone boring out of the shores, and he recognized the strip of Meremont coast. He smelled wet wood and ashes; the king lay in a half-burned fisher’s hut on the beach, no more than a mile or two from Wind Plain.

He started to glance up, to speak. Then the sea flooded over him, spilled through all his thoughts. He seemed to stare down a long, dark passageway into Ghisteslwchlohm’s alien, gold-flecked eyes.

He felt the startled recognition in the bound mind. Then a mind-hold raked at him, and the wizard’s eyes burned into him, searching for him. The mind-hold was broken; he reeled back away from it. The High One gripped his shoulder, holding him still. He started to speak again, but the falcon’s eyes stopped him.

He waited, shaken suddenly by the pounding of his heart. Raederle, bound to the same waiting, seemed remote again, belonging to another portion of the world. He wanted desperately to speak, to break the silence that held them all motionless as if they were carved of stone. But he seemed spellbound, choiceless, an extension of the High One’s will. A movement streaked the air, and then another. The dark, delicately beautiful Earth-Master, whom Morgon knew as Eriel, stood before them, and beside her, Ghisteslwchlohm.

For a moment, the High One checked the power gathered against him. There was astonishment and awe in the woman’s eyes as she recognized the harpist. The wizard, face to face with the High One, whom he had been searching for so long, nearly broke the hold over his mind. A faint smile touched the falcon’s eyes, icy as the heart of the northern wastes.

“Even death, Master Ohm,” he said, “is a riddle.”

A rage blackened Ghisteslwchlohm’s eyes. Something spun Morgon across the chamber. He struck the dark wall; it gave under him, and he fell into a luminous, blue-black mist of illusion. He heard Raederle’s cry, and then a crow streaked across his vision. He caught at it, but it fluttered away between his hands. A mind gripped his mind. The binding was instantly broken. A power he did not feel flashed at him and was swallowed. He saw Ghisteslwchlohm’s face again, blurred in the strange light He felt a wrench at his side, and he cried out, though he did not know what had been taken from him. Then he turned on his back and saw the starred sword in Ghisteslwchlohm’s hands, rising endlessly upward, gathering shadow and light, until the stars burst with fire and darkness above Morgon. He could not move; the stars drew his eyes, his thoughts. He watched them reach their apex and halt, then blur into their descent toward him. Then he saw the harpist again, standing beneath their fall, as quietly as he had stood in the king’s hall at Anuin.

A cry tore through Morgon. The sword fell with a terrible speed, struck the High One. It drove into his heart, then snapped in Ghisteslwchlohm’s hands. Morgon, freed to move at last, caught him as he fell. He could not breathe; a blade of grief was thrusting into his own heart. The High One gripped his arms; his hands were the harpist’s crippled hands, the wizard’s scarred hands. He struggled to speak; his face blurred from one shape to another under Morgon’s tears. Morgon pulled him closer, feeling something build in him, like a shout of fury and agony, but the High One was already beginning to vanish. He reached up with a hand shaped of red stone or fire, touched the stars on Morgon’s face.

He whispered Morgon’s name. His hand slid down over Morgon’s heart. “Free the winds.”