He lifted her face between his hands. He was feeling the wind suddenly, scoring all his bones with rime. “What are you telling me?”

“I don’t know. But how many blind harpists who cannot harp can there be in the world?”

He took a breath of wind; it burned through him like cold fire. “He’s dead.”

“Then he’s challenging you out of his grave. Yrth harped to me that night so that I would carry the riddle of his harping to you, wherever in the realm you were.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. But I know that he wants to find you. And that if he was a harpist named Deth who travelled with you, as Yrth did, down Trader’s Road, then he spun riddles so secretly, so skillfully, that he blinded even Ghisteslwchlohm. And even you — the Riddle-Master of Hed. I think maybe you should name him. Because he is playing his own silent, deadly game, and he may be the only one in this realm who knows exactly what he is doing.”

“Who in Hel’s name is he?” He was shivering suddenly, uncontrollably. “Deth took the Black of Mastery at Caithnard. He was a riddler. He knew my name before I did. I suspected once that he might be a Lungold wizard. I asked him.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he was the High One’s harpist. So I asked him what he was doing in Isig while Yrth made my harp, a hundred years before he was born. He told me to trust him. Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope. And then he betrayed me.” He drew her against him, but the wind ran between them like a knife. “It’s cold. It was never this cold before.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What does he want? Is he an Earth-Master, playing his own solitary game for power? Does he want me alive or dead? Does he want the High One alive or dead?”

“I don’t know. You’re the riddler. He’s challenging you. Ask him.”

He was silent, remembering the harpist on Trader’s Road who had drawn him without a word, with only a halting, crippled harping out of the night into Ghisteslwchlohm’s hands. He whispered, “He knows me too well. I think whatever he wants, he will get.” A gust struck them, smelling like snow, gnawing icily at his face and hands. It drove him to his feet, breathless, bundled, full of a sudden, helpless longing for hope. When he could see again, he found that Raederle had already changed shape. A vesta shod and crowned with gold gazed at him out of deep purple eyes. He caressed it; its warm breath nuzzled at his hands. He rested his brow against the bone between its eyes. “All right,” he said with very little irony, “I will play a riddle-game with Deth. Which way is Isig?”

She led him there by sunlight and starlight, south across the wastes, and then eastward down the mountains of the pass until at the second dawn he saw the green face of Isig Mountain rising beyond the Ose. They reached the king’s house at dusk, on a wild, grey autumn day. The high peaks were already capped with snow; the great pines around Harte sang in the north wind. The travellers changed out of vesta-shape when they reached Kyrth and walked the winding mountain road to Harte. The gates were barred and guarded, but the miners, armed with great broadswords tempered in Danan’s forge fires, recognized them and let them in.

Danan and Vert and half a dozen children left their supper to meet them as they entered the house. Danan, robed in fur against the cold, gave them a bear’s bulky embrace and sent children and servants alike scurrying to see their comfort. But, gauging their weariness, he asked only one question.

“I was in the wastes,” Morgon said. “Harping. Raederle found me.” The strangeness of the answer did not occur to him then. He added, remembering, “Before that, I was a tree beside the Ose.” He watched a smile break into the king’s eyes.

“What did I tell you?” Danan murmured. “I told you no one would find you in that shape.” He drew them toward the stairs leading up into the east tower. “I have a thousand questions, but I am a patient old tree, and they can wait until morning. Yrth is in this tower; you’ll be safe near him.”

A question nagged at Morgon as they wound up the stairs, until he realized what it was. “Danan, I have never seen your house guarded. Did the shape-changers come here looking for me?”

The king’s hands knotted. “They came,” he said grimly. “I lost a quarter of my miners. I would have lost more if Yrth had not been here to fight with us.” Morgon had stopped. The king opened a hand, drew him forward. “We grieved enough for them. If we only knew what they are, what they want…” He sensed something in Morgon. His troubled eyes drew relentlessly at the truth. “You know.”

Morgon did not answer. Danan did not press him, but the lines in his face ran suddenly deep.

He left them in a tower room whose walls and floor and furniture were draped with fur. The air was chilly, but Raederle lit a fire and servants came soon, bringing food, wine, more firewood, warm, rich clothes. Bere followed with a cauldron of steaming water. As he hoisted it onto a hook above the firebed, he smiled at Morgon, his eyes full of questions, but he swallowed them all with an effort. Morgon ridded himself of a well-worn tunic, matted sheepskin, and what dirt the harsh winds had not scoured from his body. Clean, fed, dressed in soft fur and velvet, he sat beside the fire and thought back with amazement on what he had done.

“I left you,” he said to Raederle. “I can understand almost everything but that. I wandered out of the world and left you…”

“You were tired,” she said drowsily. “You said so. Maybe you just needed to think.” She was stretched out beside him on the ankle-deep skins; she sounded warmed by fire and wine, and almost asleep. “Or maybe you needed a place to begin to harp…”

Her voice trailed away into a dream; she left him behind. He drew blankets over her, sat for a while without moving, watching light and shadows pursue one another across her weary face. The winds boomed and broke against the tower like sea waves. They held the echo of a note that haunted his memories. He reached automatically for his harp, then remembered he could not play that note in the king’s house without disrupting its fragile peace.

He played others softly, fragments of ballads wandering into patternless echoes of the winds. His fingers stopped after a while. He sat plucking one note over and over, soundlessly, while a face formed and vanished constantly in the flames. He stood up finally, listening. The house seemed still around him, with only a distant murmuring of voices here and there within its walls. He moved quietly past Raederle, past the guards outside the door, whom he made oblivious to his leaving. He went up the stairs to a doorway hung with white furs that yielded beneath them a strip of light. He parted them gently, walked into semi-darkness and stopped.

The wizard was napping, an old man nodding in a chair beside a fire, his scarred hands lying open on his knees. He looked taller than Morgon remembered, broad-shouldered yet lean beneath the long, dark robe he wore. As Morgon watched him, he woke, opening light, unstartled eyes. He bent down, sighing, groped for wood and positioned it carefully, feeling with his fingers through the lagging flames. They sprang up, lighting a rock-hard face, weathered like a tree stump with age. He seemed to realize suddenly that he was not alone; for an instant his body went motionless as stone. Morgon felt an almost imperceptible touch in his mind. The wizard stirred again, blinking.

“Morgon?” His voice was deep, resonant, yet husky, full of hidden things, like the voice of a deep well. “Come in. Or are you in?”

Morgon moved after a moment “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said softly. Yrth shook his head.

“I heard your harping a while ago. But I didn’t expect to talk to you until morning. Danan told me that Raederle found you in the northern wastes. Were you pursued? Is that why you hid there?”