“Wait,” Morgon’s voice shook on the word. “Are you saying — are you suggesting the High One’s heir was buried in that tomb?”
“It seems possible, doesn’t it?” Fat spattered in the blaze, and he turned the hare again. “Perhaps it was the young boy who told me of the stars I must put on a harp and a sword for someone who would come out of remote centuries to claim them…”
“But why?” Raederle whispered, still intent on her question. “Why?”
“You saw the falcon’s flight… its beauty and its deadliness. If such power were bound to no law, that power and the lust for it would become so terrible—”
“I wanted it. That power.”
The hard, ancient face melted again to its surprising gentleness. Yrth touched her, as he had touched the grass blade. “Then take it.”
He let his hand fall. Raederle’s head bent; Morgon could not see her face. He reached out to move her hair. She rose abruptly, turning away from him. He watched her walk through the trees, her hands gripping her arms as if she were chilled. His throat burned suddenly, for no coherent reason, except that the wizard had touched her, and she had left him.
“You left me nothing…” he whispered.
“Morgon—”
He stood up, followed Raederle into the gathering mists, leaving the falcon to its kill.
They flew through the next few days sometimes as crows, sometimes as falcons when the skies cleared. Two of the falcons cried to one another, in their piercing voices; the third, hearing them, was silent. They hunted in falcon-shape; slept and woke glaring at the pallid sun out of dear, wild eyes. When it rained, they flew as crows, plodding steadily through the drenched air. The trees flowed endlessly beneath them; they might have been flying again and again over the same point in space. But as the rains battered at them and vanished and the sun peered like a wraith through the clouds, a blur across the horizon ahead of them slowly hardened into a distant ring of hills breaking out of the forest.
The sun came out abruptly for a few moments before it drifted into night. Light glanced across the land, out of silver veins of rivers, and lakes dropped like small coin on the green earth. The falcons were flying wearily, in a staggered line that stretched over half a mile. The second one, bewitched, seemingly, by the light, shot suddenly ahead, in and out of sun and shadow, in a straight, exuberant flight towards their destination. Its excitement shook Morgon out of his monotonous rhythm. He picked up speed, soared past the lead falcon to catch up with the dark bolt hurtling hrough the sky. He had not realized Raederle could fly so fast. He streamed down currents of the north wind, but still the falcon kept its distance. He pushed toward it until he felt he had left his shape behind and was nothing more than a love of speed swept forward on the crest of light. He gained on the falcon slowly, until he saw its wingspan and the darkness of its underside and realized it was Yrth.
He kept his speed, wanting then, with all the energy in him, to overtake the falcon in the pride of its power and pass it. He sprinted toward it with all his strength, until the wind seemed to burn past him and through him. The forest heaved like a sea beneath him. Inch by inch, be closed the distance between them, until he was the falcon’s shadow in the blazing sky. And then he was beside it, matching its speed, his wings moving to its rhythm. He could not pass it.He tore through air and light until he had to loose even his furious desire, like ballast, to keep his speed. It would not let him pass, but it lured him even faster, until all his thoughts and a shadow over his heart were ripped away and he felt if he went one heartbeat faster, he would burnnto wind.
He gave a cry as he fell away from the falcon’s side, down toward the gentle hills below. He could hardly move his wings; he let the air currents toss him from one to another until he touched the ground. He changed shape. The long grass spun up to meet him. He burrowed against the earth, his arms outstretched, clinging to it, until the terrible pounding of his heart eased and he began breathing air again instead of fire. He rolled slowly onto his back and stood up. The falcon was hovering above him. He watched it motionlessly, until the wild glimpse into his own power broke over him again. His hand rose in longing toward the falcon. It fell toward him like a stone. He let it come. It landed on his shoulder, clung there, its blind eyes hooded. He was still in its fierce grip, caught in its power and its pride.
Three falcons slept that night on the Herun hills. Three crows flew through the wet mists at dawn, above villages and rocky grazing land, where swirling winds revealed here and there a gnarled tree, or the sudden thrust of a monolith. The mists melted into rain that drizzled over them all the way to the City of Circles.
For once, the Morgol had not seen them coming. But the wizard Iff was waiting for them patiently in the courtyard, and the Morgol joined him there, looking curious, as the three black, wet birds lighted in front of her house. She stared at them, amazed, after they had changed shape.
“Morgon…” As she took his thin, worn face gently between her hands, he realized who it was that he had brought with him into her house.
Yrth was standing quietly; he seemed preoccupied, as though he had linked himself to all their eyes and had to sort through a confusion of images. The Morgol pushed Raederle’s wet hair back from her face.
“You have become the great riddle of An,” she said, and Raederle looked away from her quickly, down at the ground. But the Morgol lifted her face and kissed her, smiling. Then she turned to the wizards.
Iff put his hand on Yrth’s shoulder, said in his tranquil voice, “El, this is Yrth; I don’t think you have met.”
“No.” She bent her head. “You honor my house, Star-Maker. Come in, out of the rain. Usually I can see who is crossing my hills and prepare for my guests; but I did not pay any attention to three tired crows.” She put her hand lightly on Yrth’s arm to guide him. “Where have you come from?”
“Isig and Osterland,” the wizard said. His voice sounded huskier than usual. Guards in the rich maze of corridors gazed without a change of stance at the visitors, but their eyes were startled, conjecturing. Morgon, watching Yrth’s back as he walked beside the Morgol, his head angled toward her voice, realized slowly that Iff had dropped back and was speaking to him.
“The news of the attack on Hed reached us only a few days after it happened — word of it passed that swiftly through the realm. It caused great fear. Most of the people have left Caithnard, but where can they go? Ymris? An, which Mathom will leave nearly defenseless when he brings his army north? Lungold? That city is still recovering from its own terror. There is no place for anyone to go.”
“Have the Masters left Caithnard?” Raederle asked.
The wizard shook his head. “No. They refuse to leave.” He sounded mildly exasperated. “The Morgol asked me to go to them, see if they needed help, ships to move themselves and their books. They said that perhaps the strictures of wizardry held the secret of eluding death, but the strictures of riddlery hold that it is unwise to turn your back on death, since turning, you will only find it once more in front of you. I asked them to be practical. They suggested that answers, rather than ships, might help them most. I told them they might die there. They asked me if death is the most terrible thing. And at that point, I began to understand riddlery a little. But I had no skill to riddle with them.”
“The wise man,” Morgon said, “pursues a riddle inflexibly as a miser pursues a coin rolling towards a crack in a floorboard.”
“Apparently. Can you do anything? They seemed to me something very fragile and very precious to the realm…”
The fault smile in his eyes died. “Only one thing. Give them what they want.”