Patricia McKillip: Harpist In The Wind

Later, after they had eaten, they lay watching the fire, and she taught him the rest of the curses. They had transformed the legendary thief into a boar, all but for his ears and eyeteeth and ankles, the last three curses, when a slow, tentative harping rippled across the night, mingling with the river’s murmuring. Morgon, listening to it, did not realize Raederle was speaking to him until she put her hand on his shoulder. He jumped.

“Morgon.”

He rose abruptly, stood at the edge of the firelight, staring into the night. His eyes grew accustomed to the moonlight; he saw random fires lighting the great, tormented faces of oak. The air was still, the voices and music frail in the silence. He quelled a sudden, imperative impulse to snap the harp strings with a thought, let peace fall again over the night.

Raederle said behind him, “You never harp.”

He did not answer. The harping ceased after a while; he drew a slow breath and moved again. He turned to find Raederle sitting beside the fire, watching him. She said nothing until he dropped down beside her. Then she said again, “You never harp,”

“I can’t harp here. Not on this road.”

“Not on the road, not on that ship when you did nothing for four days—”

“Someone might have heard it.”

“Not in Hed, not in Anuin, where you were safe—”

“I’m never safe.”

“Morgon,” she breathed incredulously. “When are you going to learn to use that harp? It holds your name, maybe your destiny; it’s the most beautiful harp in the realm, and you have never even shown it to me.”

He looked at her finally. “I’ll learn to play it again when you learn to change shape.” He lay back. He did not see what she did to the fire, but it vanished abruptly, as if the night had dropped on it like a stone.

He slept uneasily, always aware of her turning beside him. He woke once, wanting to shake her awake, explain, argue with her, but her face, remote in the moonlight, stopped him. He turned, pushed one arm against his eyes, and fell asleep again. He woke again abruptly, for no reason, though something he had heard or sensed, a fragment of a dream before be woke, told him there was reason. He saw the moon drifting deeper into the night. Then something rose before him, blotting out the moon.

He shouted. A hand came down over his mouth. He kicked out and heard an anguished grunt. He rolled to his feet. Something smacked against his face, spun him jarringly into a tree trunk. He heard Raederle cry out in pain and fear, and he snapped a streak of fire into the embers.

The light flared over half a dozen burly figures dressed like traders. One of them held Raederle’s wrists; she looked frightened, bewildered in the sudden light. The horses were stirring, nickering, shadows moving about them, untethering them. Morgon moved toward them quickly. An elbow slammed into his ribs; he hunched over himself, muttering the fifty-ninth curse with the last rag of his breath. The thief gripping him, wrenching him straight, shouted hoarsely in shock and shambled away in the trees. The man behind Raederle dropped her wrists with a sudden gasp. She whirled, touching him, and his beard flamed. Morgon got a glimpse of his face before he dove toward the river. The horses were beginning to panic. He caught at their minds, fed them a bond of moonlit stillness until they stood rock still, oblivious to the men pulling at them. They were cursing ineffectually. One of them mounted, kicked furiously at the horse, but it did not even quiver. Morgon nicked a silent shout through his mind, and the man fell backwards off the horse. The others scattered, then turned on him again, furious and uneasy. He cleared his mind for another shout, picked up threads of their thoughts. Then something came at him from behind, the man out of the river, drove into his back and knocked him to the ground. He twisted as he hit the earth, then froze.

The face was the same, yet not the same. The eyes he knew, but from another place, another struggle. Memory fought against his sight. The face was heavy, wet, the beard singed, but the eyes were too still, too calculating. A boot drove into Morgon’s shoulder from behind. He rolled belatedly. Something ripped across the back of his skull, or across his mind, he was not sure which. Then a Great Shout broke like a thunderclap over them all. He put his face in the bracken and clung to a rocking earth, holding his binding over the horses like the one firm point in the world.

The shout echoed away slowly. He lifted his head. They were alone again; the horses stood placidly, undisturbed by the turmoil of voices and squealing animals in the darkness around them. Raederle dropped down beside him, her brows pinched in pain.

He said, “Did they hurt you?”

“No.” She touched his cheek, and he winced. “That shout did. From a man of Hed, that was a marvellous shout.”

He stared at her, frozen again. “You shouted.”

“I didn’t shout,” she whispered. “You did.”

“I didn’t.” He sat up, then settled his skull into place with his hands. “Who in Hel’s name shouted?”

She shivered suddenly, her eyes moving through the night. “Someone watching, maybe still watching… How strange. Morgon, were they only men wanting to steal our horses?”

“I don’t know.” He searched the back of his head with his fingers. “I don’t know. They were men trying to steal our horses, yes, which was why it was so hard for me to fight them. There were too many to fight, but they were too harmless to kill. And I didn’t want to use much power, to attract attention.”

“You gave that one man boar bristles all over his body.”

Morgon’s hand slid to his ribs. “He earned it,” he said dourly. “But that last man coming out of the water—”

“The one whose beard I set on fire.”

“I don’t know.” He pushed his hands over his eyes, trying to remember. “That’s what I don’t know. If the man coming back out of the river was the same one who ran into it.”

“Morgan,” she whispered.

“He might have used power; I’m not sure. I don’t know. Maybe I was just seeing what I expected to see.”

“If it was a shape-changer, why didn’t he try to kill you?”

“Maybe he was unsure of me. They haven’t seen me since I disappeared into Erlenstar Mountain. I was that careful, crossing the realm. They wouldn’t expect me to be riding a plow horse in broad daylight down Trader’s Road.”

“But if he suspected — Morgon, you were using power over the horses.”

“It was a simple binding of silence, peace; he wouldn’t have suspected that.”

“He wouldn’t have run from a Great Shout, either. Would he? Unless he left for help. Morgon—” She was trying suddenly to tug him to his feet. “What are we doing sitting here? Waiting for another attack, this time maybe from shape-changers?”

He pulled his arm away from her. “Don’t do that; I’m sore.”

“Would you rather be dead?”

“No.” He brooded a moment, his eyes on the swift, shadowy flow of the river. A thought ran through his mind, chilling him. “Wind Plain. It lies just north of us… where Heureu Ymris is fighting his war against men and half-men… there might be an army of shape-changers across the river.”

“Let’s go. Now.”

“We would only attract attention, riding in the middle of the night. We can move our camp. Then I want to look for whoever it was that shouted.”

They shifted their horses and gear as quietly as they could, away from the river and closer to a cluster of traders’ carts. Then Morgon left Raederle, to search the night for a stranger.

Raederle argued, not wanting him to go alone; he said patiently, “Can you walk across dry leaves so gently they don’t stir? Can you stand so still animals pass you without noticing you? Besides, someone has to guard the horses.”