“The writings of the Lungold wizards — those that were not destroyed here — formed the base of riddlery.” He added, sensing a sudden question in Aloil’s mind, “Part of your work is at Caithnard, and the rest in the king’s library at Caerweddin. Astrin Ymris had most of your poetry.”

“Poetry.” The wizard swept a knotted hand through his hair. “It should have been destroyed here. It was worth little more than that. You come bearing memories into this place, tales of a realm that we will not live to see again. We came here to kill Ghisteslwchlohm or die.”

“I didn’t,” Morgon said softly. “I came to ask the Founder some questions.”

The wizard’s inward gaze seemed to pull itself out of memory, turn toward him. “Questions!”

“It’s proper,” Nun said soothingly. “He is a riddle-master.”

“What has riddlery to do with this?”

“Well.” Then her teeth clamped back down on her pipe, and she sent up a stream of little, perturbed puffs without answering.

Iff asked practically, “Do you have the strength?”

“To kill him? Yes. To hold his mind and get what knowledge I need… I must. I’ll find the power. He is no use to me dead. But I can’t fight shape-changers at the same time. And I am not sure how powerful they are.”

“You do complicate matters,” Nun murmured. “We came here for such a simple purpose…”

“I need you alive.”

“Well. It’s nice to be needed. Look around you.” The firelight seemed to follow her hand as she gestured. “There were twenty-nine wizards and over two hundred men and women of talent studying here seven centuries ago. Of those, we are burying two hundred and twenty-four. Twenty-three, not counting Suth. And you know how he died. You have walked through this place. It is a great cairn of wizardry. There is power still in the ancient bones, which is why we are burying them, so centuries from now the small witches and sorcerors of the realm will not come hunting thighbones and fingerbones for their spells. The dead of Lungold deserve some peace. I know you broke Ghisteslwchlohm’s power to free us. But when you pursued that harpist instead of him, you gave him time to strengthen his powers. Are you so sure now that you can hold back a second destruction?”

“No. I am certain of nothing. Not even my own name, so I move from riddle to riddle. Ghisteslwchlohm built and destroyed Lungold because of these stars.” He slid his hair back. “They drove me out of Hed into his hands — and I would have stayed in Hed forever, content to make beer and breed plow horses, never knowing you were alive, or that the High One in Erlenstar Mountain was a lie. I need to know what these stars are. Why Ghisteslwchlohm was not afraid of the High One. Why he wants me alive, powerful yet trapped. What power he is watching me stumble into. If I kill him, the realm will be rid of him, but I will still have questions no one will ever answer — like a starving man possessing gold in a land where gold has no value. Do you understand?” he asked Aloil suddenly, and saw in the burled shoulders, the hard, scrolled face, the great, twisted tree he had been for seven centuries on King’s Mouth Plain.

“I understand,” the wizard said softly, “where I have been for seven hundred years. Ask him your questions. Then, if you die, or if you let him escape, I will kill him or die. You understand revenge. As for the stars on your face… I do not know how to begin to place any hope in them. I don’t understand all your actions. If we survive to walk out of Lungold alive, I will find a need to understand them… especially the power and impulse that made you tamper with the land-law of An. But for now… you freed us, you dredged our names out of memory, you found your way down here to stand with us among our dead… you are a young, tired prince of Hed, with a blood-stained tunic and a crow on your shoulder, and a power behind your eyes straight out of Ghisteslwchlohm’s heart. Was it because of you that I spent seven centuries as an oak, staring into the sea wind? What freedom or doom have you brought us back to?”

“I don’t know.” His throat ached. “I’ll find you an answer.”

“You will.” His voice changed then, wonderingly. “You will, Riddle-Master. You do not promise hope.”

“No. Truth. If I can find it.”

There was a silence. Nun’s pipe had gone out. Her lips were parted a little, as if she were watching something blurred, uncertain begin to take shape before her. “Almost,” she whispered, “you make me hope. But in Hel’s name, for what?” Then she stirred out of her thoughts and touched the rent in Morgon’s tunic, shifting it to examine the clean scar beneath. “You had some trouble along the road. You didn’t get that in crow-shape.”

“No.” He stopped, reluctant to continue, but they were waiting for an answer. He said softly, bitterly, to the floor, “I followed Deth’s harping one night and walked straight into another betrayal.” There was not a sound around him. “Ghisteslwchlohm was looking for me along Trader’s Road. And he found me. He trapped Raederle, so that I could not use power against him. He was going to take me back to Erlenstar Mountain. But the shape-changers found us all. I escaped from them” — he touched the scar on his face — “by that much. I hid under illusion and escaped. I haven’t seen any of them since we began to fly. Maybe they all killed each other. Somehow I doubt it.” He added, feeling their silence like a spell, compelling him, drawing words from hurt, “The High One killed his harpist.” He shook his head a little, pulling back from their silence, unable to give them more. He heard Iff draw breath, felt the wizard’s skilled, quieting touch.

Talies said abruptly, “Where was Yrth during all this?” Morgon’s eyes moved from a splinter of bone on the floor. “Yrth.”

“He was with you on Trader’s Road.”

“No one was—” He stopped. A hint of night air found its way past illusion, shivered through the chamber; the light fluttered like something trapped. “No one was with us.” Then he remembered the Great Shout out of nowhere, and the mysterious, motionless figure watching him in the night. He whispered incredulously, “Yrth?”

They looked at one another. Nun said, “He left Lungold to find you, give you what help he could. You never saw him?”

“Once — I might have, when I needed help. It must have been Yrth. He never told me. He may have lost me when we began to fly.” He paused, thinking back. “There was one moment, after the horse struck me, when I could barely hold my own illusion. The shape-changers could have killed me then. They should have. I expected it. But nothing touched me… He may have been there, to save my life in that moment. But if he stayed there after I escaped—”

“He would have let us know, surely,” Nun said, “if he needed help.” She passed the back of a workworn hand over her brow worriedly. “But where is he, I wonder. An old man wandering up and down Trader’s Road looking for you no doubt, along with the Founder and shape-changers…”

“He should have told me. If he needed help, I could have fought for him; that’s what I came for.”

“You could have lost your life for his sake, too. No.” She seemed to be answering her own doubt. “He’ll come in his own tune. Maybe he stayed to bury the harpist. Yrth taught him harp songs once, here in this college.” She was silent again, while Morgon watched two battered faces of the dead against the far wall shift closer and closer together. He closed his eyes before they merged. He heard the crow cry from a distance; a painful grip on his shoulder kept him from falling. He opened his eyes to meet the hawk’s stare and felt the sudden, cold sweat that had broken out on his face.

“I’m tired,” he said.

“With reason.” Iff loosened his hold. His face was seamed with a network of hair-fine lines. “There is venison on a spit in the kitchens — the only room left with four walls and a root. We have been sleeping down here, but there are pallets beside the hearth. There will be a guard outside the door, watching the grounds.”