Harpist In The Wind trm-3

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  He waited. The harpist was motionless again; even the crooked bones in his hands seemed brittle. The wizard’s voice whipped at him and he flinched. “Choose!”

  Raederle’s hands slid over her mouth. “Deth, I’ll go,” she whispered. “I’ll follow Morgon anyway, or I will be foresworn.”

  The harpist did not speak. He moved finally, very slowly toward them, his eyes on Ghisteslwchlohm’s face. He stopped a pace away from him and drew breath to speak. Then, in a swift, fluid movement, the back of his crippled hand cracked across the Founder’s face.

  Ghisteslwchlohm stepped back, his fingers driving to the bone on Morgon’s arm, but he could not have moved. The harpist slid to his knees, hunched over the newly broken bones in his hand. He lifted his face, white, bruised with agony, asking nothing. For a moment Ghisteslwchlohm looked down at him silently, and Morgon saw in his eyes what might have been the broken memories of many centuries. Then his own hand rose. A lash of fire caught the harpist across the eyes, flung him backward across the bracken, where he lay still, staring blindly at the sun.

  The wizard held Morgon with his hand and his eyes, until Morgon realized slowly that he was shaken with a dry, tearless sobbing and his muscles were locked to attack. The wizard touched his eyes briefly, as if the streak of fire torn out of his mind had given him a headache. “Why in Hel’s name,” he demanded, “are you wasting grief on him? Look at me. Look at me!”

  “I don’t know!” Morgon shouted back at him. He saw more fire snap through the air, across the harpist’s body. It touched the dark harp and flamed. The air wailed with snapping strings. Raederle shimmered suddenly into sheer fire; the wizard pulled her relentlessly back into shape with his mind. She was still half-fire, and Morgon was struggling with an impulse of power that would have doomed her, when something in him froze. He whirled. Watching curiously among the trees were a dozen men. Their horses were the color of night, their garments all the wet, rippling colors of the sea.

  “The world,” one of them commented in the sudden silence, “is not a safe place for harpists.” He bent his head to Morgon. “Star-Bearer.” His pale, expressionless face seemed to flow a little with the breeze. From him came the smell of brine. “Ylon’s child.” His lucent eyes went to Ghisteslwchlohm. “High One.”

  Morgon stared at them. His mind, spinning through possibilities of action, went suddenly blank. They had no weapons; their black mounts were stone still, but any movement, he sensed, a shift of light, a bird call on the wrong note, could spring a merciless attack. They seemed suspended from motion, as on a breath of silence between two waves; whether by curiosity or simple uncertainty, he did not know. He felt Ghisteslwchlohm’s hand grip his shoulder and was reassured oddly by the fact that the wizard wanted him alive.

  The shape-changer who had spoken answered his question with a soft, equivocal mockery, “For thousands of years we have been waiting to meet the High One.”

  Morgon heard the wizard draw breath. “So. You are the spawn of the seas of Ymris and An—”

  “No. We are not of the sea. We have shaped ourselves to its harping. You are careless of your harpist.”

  “The harpist is my business.”

  “He served you well. We watched him through the centuries, doing your bidding, wearing your mask, waiting… as we waited, long before you set foot on this earth of the High One’s, Ghisteslwchlohm. Where is the High One?” His horse snaked forward soundlessly, like a shadow, stopped three paces from Morgon. He resisted an impulse to step backward. The Founder’s voice, tired, impatient, made him marvel.

  “I am not interested in riddle-games. Or in a fight. You take your shapes out of dead men and seaweed; you breathe, you harp and you die — that is all I know or care to know about you. Back your mount or you will be riding a pile of kelp.”

  The shape-changer backed it a step without a shift of muscle. His eyes caught light like water; for an instant they seemed to smile. “Master Ohm,” he said, “do you know the riddle of the man who opened his door at midnight and found not the black sky filling his doorway but the black, black eye of some creature who stretched beyond him to measureless dimension? Look at us again. Then go, quietly, leaving the Star-Bearer and our kinswoman.”

  “You look,” the Founder said brusquely. Morgon, still in his hold, was jolted by the strength that poured out of him: energy that slapped at the shape-changers, flattened an oak in its way and sent frightened birds screaming into the air. The silent thunder of the fire streaked towards their minds; Morgon felt it, but as at a distance, for the wizard had shielded his mind. When the trees had splintered and settled, the shape-changers slowly reappeared out of the flock of birds that had startled into the air. Their number had doubled, for half of them had been the motionless horses. They took their previous shapes leisurely, while Ghisteslwchlohm watched, puzzled, Morgon sensed, about the extent of their power. His grip had slackened. A twig in a bush rustled slightly, for no discernible reason, and the shape-changers attacked.

  There was a wave of black pelt, soundless, shell-black hooves rolling toward them so fast that Morgon barely had time to react. He worked an illusion of nothingness over himself that he suspected only Raederle noticed; she gasped when he gripped her wrist. Something struck him: a horse’s hoof, or the hilt of a shadowy blade, and he wavered an instant in and out of visibility. He felt his muscles tense for a death blow. But nothing touched him, only wind, for a few broken moments. He flung his mind forward, miles ahead along the road, where a trader driving a wagon-load of cloth was whistling away his boredom. He filled Raederle’s mind with the same awareness and gripping her hard, pulled her forward into it.

  A moment later he was lying with her at the bottom of the big covered cart, bleeding onto a bolt of embroidered linen.

  6

  Raederle was sobbing. He tried to quiet her, gathering her to him as he listened, but she could not stop. He heard beneath her weeping the grind of wheels in the dust and the driver’s whistling, muffled by the bolts of cloth piled behind him and the canvas covering the wagon. The road was quiet; he heard no sounds of disturbance behind them. His head was aching; he leaned it against the linen. His eyes closed. A darkness thundered soundlessly toward him again. Then a cartwheel banged into a pothole, jarring him, and Raederle twisted out of his hold and sat up. She pushed her hair out of her eyes.

  “Morgon, he came for me at night, and I was barefoot — I couldn’t even run. I thought it was you. I don’t even have shoes on. What in Hel’s name was that harpist doing? I don’t understand him. I don’t—” She stopped suddenly, staring at him, as if he were a shape-changer she had found beside her. She put one hand over her mouth, and touched his face with the other. “Morgon…”

  He put his hand to his forehead, looked at the blood on his fingers, and made a surprised sound. The side of his face, from temple to jaw, was burning. His shoulder hurt; his tunic fell apart when he touched it. A raw, wide gash, like the scrape of a sharp hoof, continued from his face to his shoulder and halfway down his chest.

  He straightened slowly, looking at the bloodstains he had left on the floor of the wagon, on the trader’s fine cloth. He shuddered suddenly, violently, and pushed his face against his knees.

  “I walked straight into that one.” He began to curse himself, vividly and methodically, until he heard her rise. He caught her wrist, pulled her down again. “No.”

  “Will you let go of me? I’m going to tell the trader to stop. If you don’t let go, I’ll shout.”

  “No. Raederle, listen. Will you listen! We are only a few miles west of where we were captured. The shape-changers will search for us. So will Ghisteslwchlohm, if he isn’t dead. We have to outrun them.”

  “I don’t even have shoes on! And if you tell me to change shape, I will curse you.” Then she touched his cheek again, swallowing. “Morgon, can you stop crying?”

  “Haven’t I stopped?”

  “No.” Her own eyes filled again. “You look like a wraith out of Hel. Plea
se let the trader help you.”

  “No.” The wagon jerked to a stop suddenly, and he groaned. He got to his feet unsteadily, drew her up. The trader’s startled face peered back at them between the falls of his canvas.

  “What in the name of the wolf-king’s eyes are you doing back there?” He shifted the curtains so the light fell on them. “Look at the mess you made on that embroidered cloth! Do you realize how much that costs? And that white velvet…”

  Morgon heard Raederle draw breath to respond. He gripped her hand and sent his mind forward, like an anchor flung on its line across water, disappearing into the shallows to fall to a resting place. He found a quiet, sunlit portion of the road ahead of them, with only a musician on it singing to himself as he rode toward Lungold. Holding Raederle’s mind, halting her in mid-sentence, Morgon stepped toward the singing.

  They stood in the road only a minute, while the singer moved obliviously away from them. The unexpected light spun around Morgon dizzily. Raederle was struggling against his mind-hold with a startling intensity. She was angry, he sensed, and beneath that, panicked. She could break his hold, he knew suddenly as he glimpsed the vast resource of power in her, but she was too frightened to control her thoughts. His thoughts, shapeless, open, soared over the road again, touched the minds of horses, a hawk, crows feeding around a dead campfire. A farmer’s son, leaving his heritage behind him, riding an ancient plow horse to seek his fortune in Lungold, anchored Morgon’s mind again. He stepped forward. As they stood in the dust raised by the plow horse, Morgon heard his own harsh, exhausted breathing. Something slapped painfully across his mind, and he nearly fought back at it until be realized it was Raederle’s mind-shout. He stilled both their minds and searched far down the road.

  A smith who travelled from village to village along the road, shoeing horses and patching cauldrons, sat half-asleep in his cart, dreaming idly of beer. Morgon, dreaming his dream, followed him through the hot morning. Raederle was oddly still. He wanted to speak to her then, desperately, but he did not dare break his concentration. He threw his mind open again, until he heard traders laughing. He let his mind fill with their laughter until it was next to him among the trees. Then his sense of Raederle’s mind drained out of him. He groped for it, startled, but touched only the vague thoughts of trees or animals. He could not find her with his mind. His concentration broken, he saw her standing in front of him.

  She was breathing quickly, silently, staring at him, her body tensed to shout or strike or cry. He said, his face so stiff he could hardly speak, “Once more. Please. The river.”

  She nodded, after a moment. He touched her hand, and then her mind. He felt through the sunlight for cool minds: fish, water birds, river animals. The river appeared before them; they stood on the bank in a soft grassy clearing among the ferns.

  He let go of Raederle, fell to his hands and knees and drank. The water’s voice soothed the sear of the sun across his mind. He looked up at Raederle and tried to speak. He could not see her. He slumped down, laid his face in the river and fell asleep.

  He woke again in the middle of the night, found Raederle sitting beside him, watching him by the gentle light of her fire. They gazed at one another for a long time without speaking, as if they were looking out of their memories. Then Raederle touched his face. Her face was drawn; there was an expression in her eyes that he had never seen before.

  An odd sorrow caught at his throat He whispered, “I’m sorry. I was desperate.”

  “It’s all right.” She checked the bandages across his chest; he recognized strips of her shift. “I found herbs the pig-woman — I mean Nun — taught me to use on wounded pigs. I hope they work on you.”

  He caught her hands, folded them between his fingers. “Please. Say it.”

  “I don’t know what to say. No one ever controlled my mind before. I was so angry with you, all I wanted to do was break free of you and go back to Anuin. Then… I broke free. And I stayed with you because you understand… you understand power. So do the shape-changers who called me kinswoman, but you I trust.” She was silent; he waited, seeing her oddly, feverishly in the firelight, the tangled mass of her hair like harvested kelp, her skin pale as shell, her expressions changing like light changing over the sea. Her face twisted away from him suddenly. “Stop seeing me like that!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, “You looked so beautiful. Do you realize what kind of power it takes to break one of my bindings?”

  “Yes. A shape-changer’s power. That’s what I have.”

  He was silent, staring at her. A light, chill shudder ran through him. “They have that much power.” He sat up abruptly, scarcely noticing the drag of pain down his shoulder. “Why don’t they use it? They never use it. They should have killed me long ago. In Herun, the shape-changer Corrig could have killed me as I slept; instead he only harped. He challenged me to kill him. In Isig — three shape-changers could not kill one farmer-prince of Hed who had never used a sword in his life? What in Hel’s name are they? What do they want of me? What does Ghisteslwchlohm want?”

  “Do you think they killed him?”

  “I don’t know. He would have had sense enough to run. I’m surprised we didn’t find him in the wagon with us.”

  “They’ll look for you in Lungold.”

  “I know.” He slid his palms over his face. “I know. Maybe with the wizards’ help, I can draw them away from the city. I’ve got to get there quickly. I’ve got to—”

  “I know.” She drew a deep breath and loosed it wearily. “Morgon, teach me the crow-shape. At least it’s a shape of the Kings of An. And it’s faster than walking barefoot.”

  He lifted his head. He lay back down after a moment, drew her down with him, searching for some way to speak at once all the thoughts crowding into his head. He said finally, “I’ll learn to harp,” and he felt her smile against his breast. Then all his thoughts froze into a single memory of a halting harping out of the dark. He did not realize he was crying again until he lifted his hand to touch his eyes. Raederle was silent, holding him gently. He said, after a long time, when her fire had died down, “I sat with Deth in the night not because I was hoping to understand him, but because he drew me there, he wanted me there. And he didn’t keep me there with his harping or his words, but something powerful enough to bind me across all my anger. I came because he wanted me. He wanted me, so I came. Do you understand that?”

  “Morgon, you loved him,” she whispered. “That was the binding.”

  He was silent again, thinking back to the still, shadowed face beyond the flame, listening to the harpist’s silence until he could almost hear the sound of riddles spun like spider’s web in the darkness in a vast, secret game that made his death itself a riddle. Finally some herb Raederle had laid against his cheek breathed across his mind and he slept again.

  He taught her the crow-shape the next morning when they woke at dawn. He went into her mind, found deep in it crow-images, tales of them, memories she scarcely knew were there: her father’s unreadable crow-black eyes, crows among the oak trees surrounding Raith’s pigherds, crows flying through the history of An, carrion-eaters, message-bearers, cairn-guardians, their voices full of mockery, bitter warnings, poetry.

  “Where did they all come from?” she murmured, amazed.

  “They are of the land-law of An. The power and heart of An. Nothing more.”

  He called a sleepy crow out of one of the trees around them; it landed on his wrist. “Can you go into my mind? See behind my eyes, into my thoughts?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Try. It won’t be hard for you.” He opened his mind to the crow-mind, drew its brain-workings into his own, until he saw his blurred, nameless face out of its eyes. He heard movements, precise and isolated as flute notes, under dead leaves, under oak roots. He began to understand its language. It gave a squawk, more curious than impatient. His mind filled then with a sense of Raederle, as if she were within him, touching him gently, filling him
like light. His throat ached with wonder. For a moment the three minds drew from one another, fearlessly, tentatively. Then the crow cried; its wings soared blackly over Morgon’s vision. He was left alone in his mind, groping for something that had gone out of him. A crow fluttered up, landed on his shoulder. He looked into its eyes.

  He smiled slowly. The crow, its wings beating awkwardly, swooped to a high branch. It missed its perch landing. Then it caught itself, and the fine balance of instinct and knowledge within it wavered. The crow became Raederle, dodging leaves as she changed shape.

  She looked down at Morgon, breathless and astonished. “Stop laughing. Morgon, I flew. Now, how in Hel’s name do I get down?”

  “Fly.”

  “I’ve forgotten how!”

  He flew up beside her, one wing stiff with his half-healed wound. He changed shape again. The branch creaked a warning under his weight, and she gasped. “We’ll fall in the river! Morgon, it’s breaking—” She fluttered up again with a squawk. Morgon joined her. They streaked the sunrise with black, soared high above the woods until they saw the hundreds of miles of endless forest and the great road hewn through it, crossing the realm. They rose until traders’ wagons were only tiny lumbering insects crawling down a ribbon of dust. They dropped slowly, spiralling together, their wings beating the same slow rhythm, winding lesser and lesser rings through the sunlight until they traced one last black circle above the river. They landed among ferns on the bank, changed shape. They gazed at one another wordlessly in the morning. Raederle whispered,

  “Your eyes are full of wings.”

  “Your eyes are full of the sun.”

  They flew in crow-shape for the next two weeks. The silent golden oak forest melted away at the edge of the backlands. The road turned, pushed northward through rich, dark forests of pine whose silence seemed undisturbed by the passage of centuries. It wound up dry rocky hills pounded the color of brass by the noon sun, bridged chasms through which silvery veins of water-flowing down from the Lungold Lakes flashed and roared against sheer walls of stone. Trees blurred endlessly together in the crows’ vision, ebbed toward a faint blue mist of mountains bordering the remote western edges of the backlands. By day the sun fired the sky a flawless, metallic blue. The night shook stars from one horizon to another, down to the rim of the world. The voices of the back-lands, of land and stone and ancient untamed wind, were too loud for sound. Beneath them lay a silence implacable as granite. Morgon felt it as he flew; he breathed it into his bones, sensed its strange, cold touch in his heart. He would grope away from it at first, reach into Raederle’s mind to share a vague, inarticulate language. Then the silence wore slowly into the rhythm of his flight and finally into a song. At last, when he scarcely remembered his own language and knew Raederle only as a dark, wind-sculpted shape, he saw the interminable trees part before them. In the distance, the great city founded by Ghisteslwchlohm sprawled against the shores of the first of the Lungold Lakes, glinting of copper and bronze and gold under the last rays of the sun.