He stood up. “Lyra.” She had grown; her body was tall and supple in the short, dark tunic. Her face in the shadows was half the child’s he remembered and half the Morgol’s. She could not seem to move. So he went to her. As he neared, he saw her hand shift on her spear; he paused midstep and said, “It’s me.”
“I know.” She swallowed again, her eyes still startled, very dark. “How did… how did you come into the city? No one saw you.”
“You have a guard on the walls?”
She gave a little jerky nod. “There’s no other defense in the city. The Morgol sent for us.”
“You. Her land-heir.”
Her chin came up slightly in a gesture he remembered. “There is something I stayed here to do.” Then, slowly, she came toward him, her expression changing in the wash of the firelight. She put her arms around him, her face bowed hard against his shoulder. He heard her spear clatter to the floor behind him. He held her tightly; something of her clear, proud mind brushing like a good wind through his mind. She loosed him finally, stepping back to look at him again. Her dark brows puckered at his scars.
“You should have had a guard along Trader’s Road. I went with Raederle, searching for you last spring, but you were always a step ahead of us.”
“I know.”
“No wonder the guards didn’t recognize you. You look — you look like—” She seemed to see the crow for the first time, motionless, watching from under his hair. “That’s — is that Mathom?”
“Is he here?”
“He was, for a while. So was Har, but the wizards sent them both home.”
His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Har?” he said incredulously. “In Hel’s name, why did he come?”
“To help you. He stayed with the Morgol in her camp outside of Lungold until the wizards persuaded him to leave.”
“Are they so sure he went? Have they checked the mind of every blue-eyed wolf around Lungold?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lyra, there are shape-changers coming. They know they can find me here.”
She was silent; he watched her calculate. “The Morgol had us bring a supply of weapons for the traders; there were very few in the city. But the traders — Morgon, they’re not fighters. The wall will crumble like old bread under attack. There are two hundred guards…” Her brows creased again, helplessly, and she looked suddenly young. “Do you know what they are? The shape-changers?”
“No.” Something unfamiliar was building behind her eyes: the first hint of fear he had ever seen in her. He said, more harshly than he intended to, “Why?”
“Have you heard the news from Ymris?”
“No.”
She drew breath. “Heureu Ymris lost Wind Plain. In a single afternoon. For months he held the rebel army back, at the edge of the plain. The Lords of Umber and Marcher had gathered an army to push the rebels back into the sea. It would have reached Wind Plain within two days. But suddenly an army greater than anything anyone knew existed swarmed out of Meremont and Tor across Wind Plain. Men who survived said they found themselves fighting — fighting men they swore they had already killed. The king’s army was devastated. A trader was caught in the battlefield selling horses. He fled with the survivors into Rhun, and then into Lungold. He said — he said the plain was a nightmare of unburied dead. And Heureu Ymris has not been seen anywhere in Ymris since that day.”
Morgon’s lips moved soundlessly. “Is he dead?”
“Astrin Ymris says no. But even he can’t find the king. Morgon, if I must fight shape-changers with two hundred guards, I will. But if you could just tell me what we are fighting…?”
“I don’t know.” He felt the crow’s claws through his tunic. “We’ll take this battle out of the city. I didn’t come here to destroy Lungold a second time. I’ll give the shape-changers no reason to fight here.”
“Where will you go?”
“Into the forest, up a mountain — anywhere, as long as it’s not here.”
“I’m coming,” she said.
“No. Absolutely—”
“The guard can stay here in the city, in case they are needed. But I am coming with you. It’s a matter of honor.”
He looked at her silently, his eyes narrowed. She met them calmly. “What did you do?” he asked. “Did you take a vow?”
“No. I don’t take vows. I make decisions. This one I made in Caerweddin, when I learned that you had lost the land-rule of Hed and you were still alive. I remembered, when you spoke of Hed in Herun, how much the land-rule meant to you. This time, you will have a guard.”
“Lyra, I have a guard. Five wizards.”
“And me.”
“No. You are the land-heir of Herun. I have no intention of taking your body back to Crown City to give it to the Morgol.”
She slipped out of his hold with a swift, light twist that left his hands gripping air. She swept her spear from the floor, held it upright beside her, standing at easy attention. “Morgon,” she said softly, “I have made a decision. You fight with wizardry; I fight with a spear. It’s the only way I know how. Either I fight here, or one day I will be forced to fight in Herun itself. When you meet Ghisteslwchlohm again, I will be there.” She turned, then remembered what she had come in for. She took an ancient torch out of its socket and dipped it into the fire. “I’m going to check the grounds. Then I’ll come back and guard you until dawn.”
“Lyra,” he said wearily, “please just go home.”
“No, I’m simply doing what I am trained to do. And so,” she added without a suspicion of irony, “are you.” Then her eyes moved back to the crow. “Is that something I should know to guard?”
He hesitated. The crow sat like a black thought on his shoulder, absolutely motionless. “No,” he said finally. “Nothing will harm it. I swear that by my life.” Her dark eyes widened suddenly, going back to it.
She said softly, puzzled, after a moment, “Once we were friends.”
She left him. He went to the fire, but thoughts lay hard, knotted in his belly, and he could not eat. He stilled the fire, sent it back into the embers. Then he lay down on one of the pallets, his face on his forearm, turned to look at the crow. It rested beside him on the stones. He reached out with his free hand, smoothed its feathers again and again.
“I will never teach you another shape,” he whispered. “Raederle, what happened on Wind Plain has nothing to do with you. Nothing.” He stroked it, talking to it, arguing, pleading without response until his eyes closed and he melted finally into its darkness.
Dawn broke into his dreams as the door swung open and shut with a bang. He startled up, his heart pounding, and saw the young, surprised face pf a strange guard. She bent her head courteously.
“I’m sorry, Lord.” She heaved a bucket of water and an earthen jar of fresh milk onto the table. “I didn’t see you sleeping there.”
“Where is Lyra?”
“On the north wall, overlooking the lake. There is a small army of some kind coming across the back-lands. Goh rode out to check it.” He got to his feet, murmuring. She added, “Lyra told me to ask you if you could come.”
“I’ll come.” Nun, in a cloud of pipe smoke, drifted into the corner of his eye, and he started again. She put a soothing hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll go where?”
“Some kind of an army is coming; maybe help, maybe not.” He scooped water onto his face from the bucket and poured milk into a cracked goblet and drained it. Then his head swung back to the pallet he had been sleeping on. “Where — ?” He took a step toward it, his eyes running frantically over the iron and brass pots on the wall, over the smoky roof beams. “Where in Hel’s name…” He dropped to his knees, searched the trestles under the table, then the wood-box, and even the ashes on the grate. He straightened, still on his knees, stared, white, up at Nun. “She left me.”
“Raederle?”
“She’s gone. She wouldn’t even talk to me. She flew away and left me.” He got to his feet, slumped against the chimney stones. “It was that news out of Ymris. About the shape-changers.”