The water cleared his head a little. He lay quietly, staring into the darkness, wondering, if he let it fill his mind, whether it would drown him like water. He let it seep slowly into his thoughts until the memories of a long year’s night overwhelmed him and he panicked again, igniting the air with fire. He saw Ghisteslwchlohm’s face briefly; then the wizard’s hand slapped at his flame and it broke into pieces like glass.
He whispered, “For every doorless tower there is a riddle to open the door. You taught me that.”
“There is one door and one riddle here.”
“Death. You don’t believe that. Otherwise you would have let me drown. If the High One isn’t interested in my life or my death, what will you do then?”
“Wait.”
“Wait.” He shifted restlessly, his thoughts speeding feverishly towards some answer. “The shape-changers have been waiting for thousands of years. You named them, the instant before they bound you. What did you see? What could be strong enough to overpower an Earth-Master? Someone who takes the power and law of his existence from every living thing, from earth, fire, water, from wind… The High One was driven out of Erlenstar Mountain by the shape-changers. And you came then and found an empty throne where legend had placed the High One. So you became the High One, playing a game of power while you waited for someone the stone children knew only as the Star-Bearer. You kept watch on places of knowledge and power, gathering the wizards at Lungold, teaching at Caithnard. And one day the son of a Prince of Hed came to Caithnard with the smell of cowdung on his boots and a question on his face. But that wasn’t enough. You’re still waiting. The shape-changers are still waiting. For the High One. You are using me for bait, but he could have found me in here long before this, if he had been interested.”
“He will come.”
“I doubt that. He allowed you to deceive the realm for centuries. He is not interested in the welfare of men or wizards in the realm. He let you strip me of the land-rule, for which I should have killed you. He is not interested in me…” He was silent again, his eyes on the expressionless face of darkness. He said, listening to the silence that gathered and froze in every drop of liquid stone, “What could be powerful enough to destroy the Earth-Masters’ cities? To force the High One himself into hiding? What is as powerful as an Earth-Master?” He was silent again. Then an answer like a glint of fire burning itself into ash moved in the depths of his mind.
He sat up. The air seemed suddenly thin, fiery; he found it hard to breathe. “The shape-changers…” The blade of dryness was back in his throat. He raised his hands to his eyes, gathering darkness to stare into. Voices whispered out of his memory, out of the stones around him: The war is not finished, only silenced for the regathering… Those from the sea. Edolen. Sec. They destroyed us so we could not live on earth any more; we could not master it… The voices of the Earth-Masters’ dead, the children. His hands dropped heavily on the stone floor, but still the darkness pushed against his eyes. He saw the child turn from the leaf it touched in its dreaming, look across a plain, its body tense, waiting. “They could touch a leaf, a mountain, a seed, and know it, become it. That’s what Raederle saw, the power in them she loved. Yet they killed each other, buried their children beneath a mountain to die. They knew all the languages of the earth, all the laws of its shapes and movement. What happened to them? Did they stumble into the shape of something that had no law but power?” His voice was whispering away from him as if out of a dream. “What shape?”
He fell silent abruptly. He was shivering, yet sweating. The smell of water pulled at him mercilessly. He reached out to it again, his throat tormented with thirst His hands halted before they broke the surface. Raederle’s face, dreamlike in its beauty, looked back at him from the still water between his hands. Her long hair flowed away from her face like the sun’s fire. He forgot his thirst. He knelt motionlessly for a long time, gazing down at it, not knowing if it was real or if he had fashioned it out of longing, and not caring. Then a hand struck at it, shattering the image, sending rings of movement shivering to the far edges of the lake.
A murderous, uncontrollable fury swept Morgon to his feet. He wanted to kill Ghisteslwchlohm with his hands, but he could not even see the wizard. A power battered him away again and again. He scarcely felt pain; shapes were reeling faster than language in his mind. He discarded them, searching for the one shape powerful enough to contain his rage. He felt his body fray into shapelessness; a sound filled his mind, deep, harsh, wild, the voices out of the farthest reaches of the backlands. But they were no longer empty. Something shuddered through him, flinging off a light snapping through the air. He felt thoughts groping into his mind, but his own thoughts held no language except a sound like a vibrant, untuned harp string. He felt the fury in him expand, shape itself to all the hollows and forms of the stone chamber. He flung the wizard across the cavern, held him like a leaf before the wind, splayed against the stones.
Then he realized what shape he had taken.
He fell back into his own shape, the wild energy in him suddenly gone. He knelt on the stones, trembling, half-sobbing in fear and amazement. He heard the wizard stumble away from the wall, breathing haltingly, as if his ribs were cracked. As he moved across the cavern, Morgon heard voices all around him, speaking various complex languages of the earth.
He heard the whispering of fire, the shiver of leaves, the howl of a wolf in the lonely, moonlit backlands, the dry riddling of corn leaves. Then, far away, he heard a sound, as if the mountain itself had sighed. He felt the stone shift slightly under him. A sea bird cried harshly. Someone with a hand of tree bark and light flung Morgon onto his back.
He whispered bitterly, feeling the starred sword wrenched from his side, “One riddle and one door.”
But, though he waited in the eye of darkness for the sword to fall, nothing touched him. He was caught suddenly, breathless, in their tension of waiting. Then Raederle’s voice, raised in a Great Shout, shook stones loose from the ceiling and jarred him out of his waiting. “Morgon!”
The sword hummed wildly with the aftermath of the shout. Morgon heard it bounce against the stones. He shouted Raederle’s name involuntarily, in horror, and the floor lurched under him again, shrugging him toward the lake. The sword slid after him. It was still vibrating, a strange high note that stilled as Morgon caught it and sheathed it. There was a sound as if a crystal in one of the walls had cracked.
It sang as it broke: a low, tuned note that shattered its own core. Other crystals began to hum; the ground floor of the mountain rumbled. The great slabs of ceiling stone ground themselves together. Dust and rubble hissed down; half-formed crystals snapped and pounded to pieces on the floor. Languages of bats, dolphins, bees brushed through the chamber. A tension snaked through the air, and Morgon heard Raederle scream. Sobbing a curse, he pulled himself to his feet. The floor grumbled beneath him, then roared. One side of it lifted, fell ponderously onto the other. It flung him into the lake. The whole lake basin, a huge, round bowl carved into solid stone, began to tilt.
He was buried for a few moments in a wave of black water. When he surfaced again, he heard a sound as if the mountain itself, torn apart at its roots, had groaned.
A wind blasted into the stone chamber. It blinded Morgon, drove his own cry back into his throat. It whirled the lake into a black vortex that dragged him down into it. He heard, before he was engulfed, something that was either the ring of blood in his ears or a note like a fine-tuned string at the core of the deep wind’s voice.