They had camped early that day, for they were both exhausted. Morgon left Raederle washing her hair in the river and walked half a mile to an inn they had passed to buy a few supplies and pick up news. The inn was crowded with travellers: traders exchanging gossip; impoverished musicians playing every instrument but a harp for the price of a meal; merchants; farmers; families who looked as if they had fled from their homes, carrying all their possessions on their backs.
The air was heavy with wine-whetted rumors. Morgon, picking a rich, heavy voice at random from a far table, followed it as though he were following an instrument’s voice. “Twenty years,” the man said. “For twenty years I lived across from it. I sold fine cloth and furs from all parts of the realm in my shop, and I never saw so much as a shadow out of place in the ruins of the ancient school. Then, late one night while I was checking my accounts, I saw lights here and there in the broken windows. No man ever walks across those grounds, not even for the wealth of it: the place reeks of disaster. So that was enough for me. I took every bolt of cloth out of that shop, left messages for my buyers to bring what they had for me to Caithnard, and I fled. If there is going to be another wizard’s war in that city, I intend to be on the other side of the realm.”
“In Caithnard?” another merchant answered incredulously. “With half the Ymris coastline to the north plagued with war? At least Lungold has wizards in it. Caithnard has nothing but fishwives and scholars. There’s as much defense in a dead fish as in a book. I’ve left Caithnard. I’m heading for the backlands; I might come out again in fifty years.”
Morgon let the voices fade back into the noise. He found the innkeeper hovering at his shoulder. “Lord?” he said briskly, and Morgon ordered beer. It was from Hed, and it washed a hundred miles of road dust down his throat. He dipped sporadically into other conversations; one word from a sour-looking trader caught his attention.
“It’s that cursed war in Ymris. Half the farmers in Ruhn had their horses drafted into war — the descendants of Ruhn battle horses bred to the plow. The king is holding his own on Wind Plain, but he’s paying a bloody price for stalemate. His warriors buy what horses they are offered — so do the farmers. No one asks any more where the horses come from. I’ve had an armed guard around my wagon teams every night since I left Caithnard.”
Morgon set down an empty glass, worried suddenly about Raederle alone with their horses. A trader beside him asked a friendly question; he grunted a reply. He was about to leave when his own name caught his ear.
“Morgon of Hed? I heard a rumor that he was in Caithnard, disguised as a student. He vanished before the Masters even recognized him.”
Morgon glanced around. A group of musicians had congregated around a jug of wine they were sharing. “He was in Anuin,” a piper said, wiping spit out of his instrument. He looked at the silent faces around him. “You haven’t heard that tale? He caught up with the High One’s harpist finally in Anuin, in the king’s own hall—”
“The High One’s harpist,” a gangling young man with a collection of small drums hanging about him said bitterly. “And what was the High One doing through all this? A man loses his land-rule, betrayed in the High One’s name by a harpist who lied to every king in the realm, and the High One won’t lift a finger — if he has one — to give him justice.”
“If you ask me,” a singer said abruptly, “the High One is nothing more than a lie. Invented by the Founder of Lungold.”
There was a short silence. The singer blinked a little nervously at his own words, as if the High One might be standing at his shoulder sipping beer and listening. Another singer growled, “Nobody asked. Shut up, all of you. I want to hear what happened at Anuin.”
Morgon turned abruptly. A hand stopped him. The trader who had spoken to him said slowly, perplexedly, “I know you. Your name hangs at the edge of my memory, I know it… Something to do with rain…”
Morgon recognized him: the trader he had talked to long ago on a rainy autumn day in Hlurle, after he had ridden out of the Herun hills. He said brusquely, “I don’t know what in Hel’s name you’re talking about. It hasn’t rained for weeks. Do you want to keep your hand, or do I take it with me?”
“Lords, Lords,” the innkeeper murmured. “No violence in my inn.” The trader took two beers off his tray, set one down hi front of Morgon. “No offense.” He was still puzzled, searching Morgon’s face. “Talk with me a little. I haven’t been home to Kraal in months, and I need some idle—”
Morgon jerked out of his hold. His elbow hit the beer, splashing it across the table into the lap of a horse trader, who rose, cursing. Something in Morgon’s face, of power or despair, quelled his first impulse. “That’s no way to treat fine beer,” he said darkly. “Or the offer of it. How have you managed to live as long as you have, picking quarrels out of thin air?”
“I mind my own business,” Morgon said curtly. He tossed a coin on the table and went back into the dusk. His own rudeness lay like a bad taste in his mouth. Memories stirred up by the singers hovered in the back of his mind; light gathering on his sword blade, the harpist’s face turning upward to meet it. He walked quickly through the trees, cursing the length of the road, the dust on it, the stars on his face, and all the shadows of memory he could not outrun.
He nearly walked through their camp before he recognized it. He stopped, bewildered. Raederle and both the horses were gone. For a second he wondered if something he had done had offended her so badly that she decided to ride both horses back to Anuin. The packs and saddles lay where he had left them; there was no sign of a struggle, no flurries of dead leaves or singed oakroots. Then he heard her call him and saw her stumbling across a shallow section of the river.
There were tears on her face. “Morgon, I was beside the river getting water when two men rode past me. They nearly ran me down. I was so furious I didn’t even realize they were riding our horses until they reached the far side. So I—”
“You ran after them?” he said incredulously. “I thought they might slow down, through the trees. But they started to gallop. I’m sorry.”
“They’ll get a good price for them in Ymris,” Morgon said grimly.
“Morgon, they’re not a mile away. You could get them back easily.”
He hesitated, looking at her angry, tired face. Then he turned away from her, picked up their food pack. “Heureu’s army needs them more than we do.”
He felt her sudden silence at his back like something tangible. He opened the pack and cursed himself again, realizing he had forgotten to buy their supplies.
She said softly, “Are you telling me we are going to walk all the way to Lungold?”
“If you want” His fingers were shaking slightly on the pack ties.
He heard her move finally. She went back down to the river to get their water skin. She said when she returned, her voice inflectionless, “Did you bring wine?”
“I forgot it. I forgot everything.” He turned then, blazing into argument before she could speak. “And I can’t go back. Not without getting into a tavern brawl.”
“Did I ask you to? I wasn’t even going to ask.” She dropped down beside the fire, tossed a twig in it. “I lost the horses, you forgot the food. You didn’t blame me.” She dropped her face suddenly against her knees. “Morgon,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I will crawl to Lungold before I change shape.”
He stood gazing down at her. He turned, paced a half-circle around the fire, and stared into the gnarled, haggard eye of a tree bole. He tilted his face against it, felt it gazing into him, at all the twisted origins of his own power. For a moment doubt bit into him, that he was wrong to demand such a thing of her, that even his own power, wrested out of himself by such dark circumstances, was suspect. The uncertainty died slowly, leaving, as always, the one thing he grasped with any certainty: the fragile, imperative structure of riddlery.