The Morgol stopped in front of a large, light room, with rugs and hangings of gold, ivory, and rich brown. She said to Morgon and Raederle, “My servants will bring what you need to make you comfortable. There will be guards stationed throughout the house.
Join us when you’re ready, in Iff’s study. We can talk there.”
“El,” Morgon said softly. “I cannot stay. I did not come to talk.”
She was silent, riddling, he suspected, though her expression changed very little. She put her hand on his arm. “I have taken all the guards out of the cities and borders; Goh is training them here, to go south, if that is what you need.”
“No,” he said passionately. “I saw enough of your guards die in Lungold.”
“Morgon, we must use what strength we have.”
“There is far more power in Herun than that.” He saw her face change then. He was aware of the wizard behind her, still as a shadow, and he wondered then without hope of an answer whether he gathered power by choice or at the falcon’s luring. “That is what I have come for. I need that.”
Her fingers closed very tightly on his forearm. “The power of land-law?” she whispered incredulously. He nodded mutely, knowing that the first sign of mistrust in her would scar his heart forever. “You have that power? To take it?”
“Yes. I need the knowledge of it. I will not touch your mind. I swear it. I went into Har’s mind, with his permission, but you — there are places in your mind where I do not belong.”
Some thought was growing behind her eyes. Standing so quietly, still gripping him, she could not speak. He felt as if he were changing shape in front of her into something ancient as the world, around which riddles and legends and the colors of night and dawn clung like priceless, forgotten treasures. He wanted to go into her mind then, to find whatever lay in his harsh, confused past to make her see him like that. But she loosed him and said, “Take from my land, and from me, what you need.”
He stood still, watching her move down the hall, her hand beneath Yrth’s elbow. Servants came, breaking into his thoughts. While they roused the fire and set water and wine to heat, he spoke softly to Raederle.
“I’ll leave you here. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Neither one of us will be very safe, but at least Yrth and Iff are here, and Yrth — he does want me alive. I know that much.”
She slid her hand onto his shoulder. Her face was troubled. “Morgon, you bound yourself to him as you flew. I felt it.”
“I know.” He lifted her hand, held the back of it against his chest “I know,” he repeated. He could not meet her eyes. “He lures me with myself. I told you that if I played with him, I would lose.”
“Maybe.”
“Watch over the Morgol. I don’t know what I have brought into her house.”
“He would never hurt her.”
“He lied to her and betrayed her once already. Once is enough. If you need me, ask the Morgol where I am. She’ll know.”
“All right. Morgon…”
“What?”
“I don’t know…” she answered, as she had several times in the past days. “Only I remember, sometimes, what Yrth said about fire and night being such simple things when you see them clearly. I keep thinking that you don’t know what Yrth is because you never see him, you see only dark memories…”
“What in Hel’s name do you expect me to see? He’s more than a harpist, more than a wizard. Raederle, I’m trying to see. I’m—”
She put her hand over his mouth as servants glanced at them. “I know.” She held him suddenly, tightly, and he felt himself trembling. “I didn’t mean to upset you. But — be quiet and listen. I’m trying to think. You don’t understand fire until you forget yourself and become fire. You learned to see in the dark when you became a great mountain whose heart was of darkness. You understood Ghisteslwchlohm by assuming his power. So, maybe the only way you will ever understand the harpist is to let him draw you into his power until you are part of his heart and you begin to see the world out of his eyes…”
“I may destroy the realm that way.”
“Maybe. But if he is dangerous, how can you fight him without understanding him? And if he is not dangerous?”
“If he’s not—” He stopped. The world seemed to shift slightly around him, all of Herun, the mountain kingdoms, the southern lands, the entire realm, adjusting into place under the falcon’s eye. He saw the falcon’s shadow spanning the realm in its powerful, silent flight, felt it fall across his back. The vision lasted a fraction of a moment. Then the shadow became a memory of night and his hands clenched. “He is dangerous,” he whispered. “He always has been. Why am I so bound to him?”
He left the City of Circles that evening and spent days and nights he did not count, hidden from the world and almost from himself, within the land-law of Herun. He drifted shapelessly in the mists, seeped down into the still, dangerous marshlands, and felt the morning frost silver his face as it hardened over mud and reeds and tough marsh grasses. He cried a marsh bird’s lonely cry and stared at the stars out of an expressionless slab of stone. He roamed through the low hills, linking his mind to rocks, trees, rivulets, searching into the rich mines of iron and copper and precious stones the hills kept enclosed within themselves. He spun tendrils of thought into a vast web across the dormant fields and lush, misty pastureland, linking himself to the stubble of dead roots, frozen furrows, and tangled grasses the sheep fed on. The gentleness of the land reminded him of Hed, but there was a dark, restless force in it that had reared up in the shapes of tors and monoliths. He drifted very close to the Morgol’s mind, as he explored it; he sensed that her watchfulness and intelligence had been born out of need, the heritage of a land whose marshes and sudden mists made it very dangerous to those who had settled it. There was mystery in its strange stones, and richness within its hills; the minds of the Morgols had shaped themselves also to those things. As Morgon drew deep into its law, he felt his own mind grow almost peaceful, bound by necessity to a fine clarity of awareness and vision. Finally, when he began to see as the Morgol saw, into things and beyond them, he returned to the City of Circles.
He came back as he had left: as quietly as a piece of ground mist wandering in from the still, cold Herun night. He followed the sound of the Mongol’s voice as he took his own shape once again. He found himself standing in firelight and shadow in her small, elegant hall. The Morgol was speaking to Yrth as he appeared; he felt still linked to the calmness of her mind. He made no effort to break the link, at rest in her peacefulness. Lyra was sitting beside her; Raederle had shifted closer to the fire. They had been at supper, but only their cups and flagons of wine remained of it.
Raederle turned her head and saw Morgon; she smiled at something in his eyes and left him undisturbed. Lyra caught his attention, then. She was dressed for supper in a light, flowing, fiery robe; her hair was braided and coiled under a net of gold thread. Her face had lost its familiar proud assurance; her eyes seemed older, vulnerable, haunted with the memory of watching guards under her command die at Lungold. She said something to the Morgol that Morgon did not hear. The Morgol answered her simply.
“No.”
“I am going to Ymris.” Her dark eyes held the Morgol’s stubbornly, but her argument was quiet “If not with the guard, then at your side.”
“No.”
“Mother, I am no longer in your guard. I resigned when I returned home from Lungold, so you can’t expect me to obey you without thinking. Ymris is a terrible battlefield — more terrible than Lungold. I am going—”
“You are my land-heir,” the Morgol said. Her face was still calm, but Morgon sensed the fear, relentless and chill as the Herun mists, deep in her mind. “I am taking the entire guard out of Herun down to Wind Plain. Goh will command it. You said that you never wanted to pick up another spear, and I was grateful you had made that decision. There is no need for you to fight in Ymris, and every need for you to stay here.”