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.”