“I just ran.”
“Well, are you — are you planning to come back?”
“For what?”
She was silent. The fire flickered wildly in front of her, weaving itself into the wind. She stilled it again, her eyes never leaving his face. She moved abruptly to his side and held him tightly, her face against the shaggy fur at his shoulder.
“I could learn to live in the wastes, I guess,” she whispered. “It’s so cold here, and nothing grows… but the winds and your harping are beautiful.”
His head bowed. He put his arm around her, drawing her hood back so that he could feel her cheek against his. Something touched his heart, an ache of cold that he finally felt, or a painful stirring of warmth.
“You heard the voices of the shape-changers in Erlenstar Mountain,” he said haltingly. “You know what they are. They know all languages. They are Earth-Masters, still at war, after thousands of years, with the High One. And I am bait for their traps. That’s why they never kill me. They want him. If they destroy him, they will destroy the realm. If they cannot find me, perhaps they will not find him.” She started to speak, but he went on, his voice thawing, harsher, “You know what I did in that mountain. I was angry enough to murder, and I shaped myself into wind to do it. There is no place in the realm for anyone of such power. What will I do with it? I’m the Star-Bearer. A promise made by the dead to fight a war older than the names of the kingdoms. I was born with power that leaves me nameless in my own world… and with all the terrible longing to use it.”
“So you came here to the wastes, where you would have no reason to use it”
“Yes.”
She slid a hand beneath his hood, her fingers brushing his brow and his scarred cheekbone. “Morgon,” she said softly, “I think if you wanted to use it, you would. If you found a reason. You gave me a reason to use my own power, at Lungold and across the back-lands. I love you, and I will fight for you. Or sit here with you in the wastes until you drift into snow. If the need of the land-rulers, all those who love you, can’t stir you from this place, what can? What hurt you in the dark at Erlenstar Mountain?”
He was silent. The winds roared out of the night, a vast chaos converging upon a single point of light. They had no faces, no language he could understand. He whispered, gazing at them, “The High One cannot speak my name, any more than a slab of granite can. We are bound in some way, I know. He values my life, but he does not even know what it is. I am the Star-Bearer. He will give me my life. But nothing else. No hope, no justice, no compassion. Those words belong to men. Here in the wastes, I am threatening no one. I am keeping myself safe, the High One safe, and the realm untroubled by a power too dangerous to use.”
“The realm is troubled. The land-rulers put more hope in you than they do in the High One. You they can talk to.”
“If I made myself into a weapon for Earth-Masters to battle with, not even you would recognize me.”
“Maybe. You told me a riddle once, when I was afraid of my own power. About the Herun woman Arya, who brought a dark, frightening animal she could not name into her house. You never told me how it ended.”
He stirred a little. “She died of fear.”
“And the animal? What was it?”
“No one knew. It wailed for seven days and seven nights at her grave, in a voice so full of love and grief that no one who heard it could sleep or eat. And then it died, too.”
She lifted her head, her lips parted, and he remembered a moment out of a dead past: he sat in a small stone chamber at Caithnard, studying riddles and feeling his heart twist with joy and terror and sorrow to their unexpected turnings. He added, “It has nothing to do with me.”
“I suppose not. You would know.”
He was silent again. He shifted so that her head lay in the crook of his shoulder, and his arms circled her. He laid his cheek against his hair. “I’m tired,” he said simply. “I have answered too many riddles. The Earth-Masters began a war before history, a war that killed their own children. If I could fight them, I would, for the sake of the realm; but I think I would only kill myself and the High One. So I’m doing the only thing that makes any sense to me. Nothing.”
She did not answer for a long time. He held her quietly, watching the fire spark a silvery wash across her cloak. She said slowly, “Morgon, there is one more riddle maybe you should answer. You stripped all illusions from Ghisteslwchlohm; you named the shape-changers; you woke the High One out of his silence. But there is one more thing you have not named, and it will not die…” Her voice shook into silence. He felt suddenly, through all the bulky fur between them, the beat of her heart.
“What?” The word was a whisper she could not have heard, but she answered him.
“In Lungold, I talked to Yrth in crow-shape. So I did not know then that he is blind. I went to Isig, searching for you, and I found him there. His eyes are the color of water burned by light. He told me that Ghisteslwchlohm had blinded him during the destruction of Lungold. And I didn’t question that. He is a big, gentle, ancient man, and Danan’s grandchildren followed him all over the mountain while he was searching for you among the stones and trees. One evening Bere brought a harp he had made to the hall and asked Yrth to play it. He laughed a little and said that though he had been known once as the Harpist of Lungold, he hadn’t touched a harp for seven centuries. But he played a little… And, Morgon, I knew that harping. It was the same awkward, tentative harping that haunted you down Trader’s Road and drew you into Ghisteslwchlohm’s power.”
He lifted her face between his hands. He was feeling the wind suddenly, scoring all his bones with rime. “What are you telling me?”
“I don’t know. But how many blind harpists who cannot harp can there be in the world?”
He took a breath of wind; it burned through him like cold fire. “He’s dead.”
“Then he’s challenging you out of his grave. Yrth harped to me that night so that I would carry the riddle of his harping to you, wherever in the realm you were.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But I know that he wants to find you. And that if he was a harpist named Deth who travelled with you, as Yrth did, down Trader’s Road, then he spun riddles so secretly, so skillfully, that he blinded even Ghisteslwchlohm. And even you — the Riddle-Master of Hed. I think maybe you should name him. Because he is playing his own silent, deadly game, and he may be the only one in this realm who knows exactly what he is doing.”
“Who in Hel’s name is he?” He was shivering suddenly, uncontrollably. “Deth took the Black of Mastery at Caithnard. He was a riddler. He knew my name before I did. I suspected once that he might be a Lungold wizard. I asked him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he was the High One’s harpist. So I asked him what he was doing in Isig while Yrth made my harp, a hundred years before he was born. He told me to trust him. Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope. And then he betrayed me.” He drew her against him, but the wind ran between them like a knife. “It’s cold. It was never this cold before.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What does he want? Is he an Earth-Master, playing his own solitary game for power? Does he want me alive or dead? Does he want the High One alive or dead?”
“I don’t know. You’re the riddler. He’s challenging you. Ask him.”
He was silent, remembering the harpist on Trader’s Road who had drawn him without a word, with only a halting, crippled harping out of the night into Ghisteslwchlohm’s hands. He whispered, “He knows me too well. I think whatever he wants, he will get.” A gust struck them, smelling like snow, gnawing icily at his face and hands. It drove him to his feet, breathless, bundled, full of a sudden, helpless longing for hope. When he could see again, he found that Raederle had already changed shape. A vesta shod and crowned with gold gazed at him out of deep purple eyes. He caressed it; its warm breath nuzzled at his hands. He rested his brow against the bone between its eyes. “All right,” he said with very little irony, “I will play a riddle-game with Deth. Which way is Isig?”