He came back as he had left: as quietly as a piece of ground mist wandering in from the still, cold Herun night. He followed the sound of the Mongol’s voice as he took his own shape once again. He found himself standing in firelight and shadow in her small, elegant hall. The Morgol was speaking to Yrth as he appeared; he felt still linked to the calmness of her mind. He made no effort to break the link, at rest in her peacefulness. Lyra was sitting beside her; Raederle had shifted closer to the fire. They had been at supper, but only their cups and flagons of wine remained of it.
Raederle turned her head and saw Morgon; she smiled at something in his eyes and left him undisturbed. Lyra caught his attention, then. She was dressed for supper in a light, flowing, fiery robe; her hair was braided and coiled under a net of gold thread. Her face had lost its familiar proud assurance; her eyes seemed older, vulnerable, haunted with the memory of watching guards under her command die at Lungold. She said something to the Morgol that Morgon did not hear. The Morgol answered her simply.
“No.”
“I am going to Ymris.” Her dark eyes held the Morgol’s stubbornly, but her argument was quiet “If not with the guard, then at your side.”
“No.”
“Mother, I am no longer in your guard. I resigned when I returned home from Lungold, so you can’t expect me to obey you without thinking. Ymris is a terrible battlefield — more terrible than Lungold. I am going—”
“You are my land-heir,” the Morgol said. Her face was still calm, but Morgon sensed the fear, relentless and chill as the Herun mists, deep in her mind. “I am taking the entire guard out of Herun down to Wind Plain. Goh will command it. You said that you never wanted to pick up another spear, and I was grateful you had made that decision. There is no need for you to fight in Ymris, and every need for you to stay here.”
“In case you are killed,” Lyra said flatly. “I don’t understand why you are even going, but I will ride at your side—”
“Lyra—”
“Mother, this is my decision. Obeying you is no longer a matter of honor. I will do as I choose, and I choose to ride with you.”
The Morgol’s fingers edged slightly around her cup. She seemed surprised at her own movement. “Well,” she said calmly, “if there is no honor in your actions in this matter, there will be none in mine. You will stay here. One way or another.”
Lyra’s eyes flickered a little. “Mother,” she protested uncertainly, and the Morgol said:
“Yes. I am also the Morgol. Herun is in grave danger. If Ymris falls, I want you here to protect it in whatever way you can. If we both died in Ymris, it would be disastrous for Herun.”
“But why are you going?”
“Because Har is going,” the Morgol said softly, “and Danan, and Mathom — the land-rulers of the realm — impelled to Ymris to fight for the survival of the realm… or for some even more imperative reason. There is a tangle of riddles at the heart of the realm; I want to see its unravelling. Even at the risk of my life. I want answers.”
Lyra was silent Their faces in the soft light were almost indistinguishable in their fine, clean-lined beauty. But the Morgol’s gold eyes hid her thoughts, while Lyra’s were open to every flare of fire and pain.
“The harpist is dead,” she whispered. “If that is what you are trying to answer.”
The Morgol’s eyes fell. She stirred after a moment, reached out swiftly to touch Lyra’s cheek. “There are more unsolved questions than that in the realm,” she said, “and nearly all, I think, more important.” But her brows were constricted, as at a sudden, inexplicable pain. “Riddles without answers can be terrible,” she added after a moment “But some are possible to live with. Others… What the Star-Bearer does at Wind Plain will be vital, Yrth thinks.”
“Does he think you need to be there also? And if Wind Plain is so vital, where is the High One? Why is he ignoring the Star-Bearer and the entire realm?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps Morgon can answer some of—” She lifted her head abruptly and saw him standing quietly in the shadows, his own thoughts waking again in his mind.
She smiled, holding out her hand in welcome. Yrth shifted a little, seeing, perhaps from her eyes, as Morgon came slowly to the table. Morgon saw him strangely for an instant, as something akin to the mists and monoliths of Herun that his mind could explore and comprehend. Then, as he sat down, the wizard’s face seemed to avert itself from his eyes. He bent his head to the Morgol wordlessly. She said, “Did you find what you came for?”
“Yes. All I could bear. How long have I been gone?”
“Nearly two weeks.”
“Two…” He shaped the word without sound. “So long? Has there been news?”
“Very little. Traders came from Hlurle for all the arms we could spare, to take them to Caerweddin. I have been watching a mist moving south from Osterland, and finally, today, I realized what it is.”
“A mist?” He remembered Har’s scarred palm, opening to the red wash of firelight “Vesta? Is Har bringing the vesta to Ymris?”
“There are hundreds of them, moving across the forests.”
“They are great fighters,” Yrth said. He sounded weary, disinclined to face an argument, but his voice was patient. “And they will not fear the Ymris winter.”
“You knew.” His thoughts were jarred out of their calm. “You could have stopped him. The miners, the vesta, the Morgol’s guard — why are you drawing such a vulnerable, unskilled army across the realm? You may be blind, but the rest of us will have to watch the slaughter of men and animals on that battlefield—”
“Morgon,” the Morgol interrupted gently, “Yrth does not make my decisions for me.”
“Yrth—” He stopped, sliding his hands over his face, trying to check a futile argument. Yrth rose, drawing Morgon’s eyes again. The wizard moved a little awkwardly through the cushions to the fire. He stood in front of it, his head bowed. Morgon saw his scarred hands close suddenly, knotted with words he could not speak, and he thought of Deth’s hands, twisted with pain in the firelight. He heard an echo, then, out of the still Herun night, of the strange brief peace he had found beside the harpist’s fire, within his silence. All that bound him to the harpist, to the falcon, his longing and his incomprehensible love, overwhelmed him suddenly. As he watched light and shadow search the hard, blind face into shape, he realized he would yield anything: the vesta, the Morgol’s guard, the land-rulers, the entire realm, into the scarred, tormented hands in return for a place in the falcon’s shadow.
The knowledge brought him to a strange, uneasy calm. His head bowed; he stared down at his dark reflection in the polished stone until Lyra, looking at him, said suddenly, “You must be hungry.” She poured him wine. “I’ll bring you some hot food.” The Morgol watched her cross the room with her lithe, graceful step. She looked tired, more tired than Morgon had ever seen her.
She said to Morgon, “Miners and vesta and my guard may seem useless in Ymris, but Morgon, the land-rulers are giving of all the strength they possess. There is nothing else we can do.”
“I know.” His eyes moved to her; he knew her own confused love for a memory. He said abruptly, wanting to give her something of peace in return for all she had given him, “Ghisteslwchlohm said that you had been waiting for Deth near Lungold. Is that true?”
She looked a little startled at his brusqueness, but she nodded. “I thought he might come to Lungold. It was the only place left for him to go, and I could ask him… Morgon, you and I are both tired, and the harpist is dead. Perhaps we should—”
“He died — he died for you.”
She stared at him across the table. “Morgon,” she whispered, warning him, but he shook his head.
“It is true. Raederle could have told you. Or Yrth — he was there.” The wizard turned light, burned eyes toward him, then, and his voice shook. But he went on, returning the riddle of the harpist’s life to him unanswered, in exchange for nothing. “Ghisteslwchlohm gave Deth a choice between holding either Raederle or you as hostage while he forced me to Erlenstar Mountain. He chose to die instead. He forced Ghisteslwchlohm to kill him. He had no compassion for me… maybe because I could endure without it. But you and Raederle, he simply loved.” He stopped, breathing a little painfully as she dropped her face into her hands. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to—”