11

He slept for two days in the king’s house, waking only once to eat, and another time to see Raederle sitting beside him, waiting patiently for him to wake up. He linked his fingers into hers, smiling a little, then rolled over and went back to sleep. He woke finally, clear-headed, at evening. He was alone. From the faint chaos of voices and crockery that seeped into his listening, he knew that the household was at supper, and Raederle was probably with Danan. He washed and drank some wine, still listening. Beneath the noises of the house, he heard the vast, dark, ageless silence forming the hollows and mazes within Isig Mountain.

He stood linked to the silence until it formed channels in his mind. Then, impulsively, he left the tower, went unobtrusively to the hall, where only Raederle and Bere noticed him, falling quiet amid the noise to watch his passage. He followed the path of a dream then, through the empty upper shafts. He took a torch from the wall at the mouth of a dark tunnel; as he entered it, the walls blazed around him with fiery, uncut jewels. He moved unhesitantly through his memory, down a honeycomb of passageways, along the sides of shallow streams and deep crevices, through unmined caves shimmering with gold, moving deeper and deeper into the immensity of darkness and stone until he seemed to breathe its stillness and age into his bones. At last he sensed something older, even, than the great mountain. The path he followed dwindled into crumbled stone. The torch fire washed over a deep green slab of a door that had opened once before to the sound of his name. There he stopped incredulously.

The ground floor was littered with the shards of broken rock. The door to the Earth-Masters’ dead was split open; half of it had fallen ponderously back into the cave. The tomb itself was choked with great chunks of jewelled ceiling stone; the walls had shrugged themselves together, hiding whatever was left of the strange pale stones within.

He picked his way to the door, but he could not enter. He crooked one arm on the door, leaned his face against it. He let his thoughts flow into the stone, seep through marble, amethyst, and gold until he touched something like the remnant of a half-forgotten dream. He explored farther; he found no names, only a sense of something that had once lived.

He stood for a long time, leaning against the door without moving. After a while, he knew why he had come down into the mountain, and he felt the blood beat through him, quick, cold, as it had the first time he had brought himself to that threshold of his destiny. He became aware, as he had never been before, of the mountain settled over his head, and of the king within it, his ancient mind shaped to its mazes, holding all its peace and all its power. His thoughts moved once again, slowly, into the door, until he touched at the core of the stone, the sense of Danan’s mind, shaped to that tiny fragment of mountain, bound to it. He let his brain become stone, rich, worn, ponderous. He drew all knowledge of it into himself, of its great strength, its inmost colors, its most fragile point where he might have shattered it with a thought. The knowledge became a binding, a part of himself, deep in his own mind. Then, searching within the stone, he found once more the wordless awareness, the law that bound king to stone, land-ruler to every portion of his kingdom. He encompassed that awareness, broke it, and the stone held no name but his own.

He let his own awareness of the binding dwindle into some dark cave deep in his mind. He straightened slowly, sweating in the cool air. His torch was out; he touched it, lit it again. Turning, he found Danan in front of him, massive and still as Isig, his face expressionless as a rock.

Morgon’s muscles tensed involuntarily. He wondered for a second if there was any language in him to explain what he was doing to a rock, before the slow, ponderous weight of Danan’s anger roused stones from their sleep to bury him beside the children’s tomb. Then he saw the king’s broad fist unclench.

“Morgon.” His voice was breathless with astonishment. “It was you who drew me down here. What are you doing?” He touched Morgon when he could not answer. “You’re frightened. What are you doing that you need to fear me?”

Morgon moved after a moment. His body felt drained, cumbersome as stone. “Learning your land-law.” He leaned back against the damp wall behind him, his face uplifted, vulnerable to Danan’s searching.

“Where did you get such power? From Ghisteslwchlohm?”

“No.” He repeated the word suddenly, passionately, “No. I would die before I did that to you. I will never go into your mind—”

“You are in it. Isig is my brain, my heart—”

“I won’t break your bindings again. I swear it. I will simply form my own.”

“But why? What do you want with such a knowledge of trees and stones?”

“Power. Danan, the shape-changers are Earth-Masters. I can’t hope to fight them unless—”

The king’s fingers wound like a tree root around his wrist. “No,” he said, as Ghisteslwchlohm had said, faced with the same knowledge. “Morgon, that’s not possible.”

“Danan,” he whispered, “I have heard their voices. The languages they spoke. I have seen the power locked behind their eyes. It is possible.”

Danan’s hand slipped away from him. The king sat down slowly, heavily, on a pile of rock shard. Morgon, looking down at him, wondered suddenly how old he was. His hands, calloused with centuries of work among stones, made a futile gesture. “What do they want?”

“The High One.”

Danan stared at him. “They’ll destroy us.” He reached out to Morgon again. “And you. What do they want with you?”

“I’m their link to the High One. I don’t know how I am bound to him, or why — I only know that because of him I have been driven out of my own land, harried, tormented into power, until now I am driving myself into power. The Earth-Masters’ power seems bound, restrained by something… perhaps the High One, which is why they are so desperate to find him. When they do, whatever power they unleash against him may destroy us all. He may stay bound forever in his silence; it’s hard for me to risk my life and all your trust for someone who never speaks. But at least if I fight for him, I fight for you.” He paused, his eyes on the flecks of fire catching in the rough, rich walls around him. “I can’t ask you to trust me,” he said softly. “Not when I don’t even trust myself. All I know is where both logic and hunger lead me.”

He heard the king’s weary sigh in the shadows. “The ending of an age… That’s what you told me the last time you came to this place. Ymris is nearly destroyed. It seems only a matter of time before that war spills into An, into Herun, then north across the realm. I have an army of miners, the Morgol has her guard, the wolf-king… has his wolves. But what is that against an army of Earth-Masters coming back into their power? And how can one Prince of Hed, even with whatever knowledge of land-law you have the strength to acquire, fight that?”

“I’ll find a way.”

“How?”

“Danan, I’ll find a way. It’s either that or die, and I am too stubborn to die.” He sat down beside the king, gazing at the rubble around them. “What happened to this place? I wanted to go into the minds of the dead children, to see into their memories, but there is nothing left of them.”

Danan shook his head. “I felt it, near the end of summer: a turmoil somewhere in the center of my world. It happened shortly before the shape — the Earth-Masters came here looking for you. I don’t know how this place was destroyed, or by whom…”

“I know,” he whispered. “Wind. The deep wind that shatters stone… The High One destroyed this place.”

“But why? It was their one final place of peace.”

“I don’t know. Unless… unless he found another place for them, fearing for their peace even here. I don’t know. Maybe somehow I will find him, hold him to some shape that I can understand, and ask him why.”