Patricia McKillip - Harpist In The Wind

He broke loose from Har then, rolled onto a pallet, and fell asleep. Like a land-heir, he dreamed Har’s memories. With a restless, furious intensity, his dreams spanned centuries of history, of rare battles, of riddle-games that lasted for days and years. Be built Yrye, heard the wizard Suth give him five strange riddles for his keeping, lived among wolves, among the vesta, fathered heirs, dispensed judgment and grew so old he became ageless. Finally, the rich, feverish dreams came to an end; he drew deeply into himself, into a dreamless night. He slept without moving until a name drifted into his mind. Clinging to it, he brought himself back into the world. He blinked awake, found Raederle kneeling beside him.

She smiled down at him. “I wanted to find out if you were alive or dead.” She touched his hand; his fingers closed around hers. “You can move.”

He sat up slowly. The shed was empty; he could hear the winds outside trying to pick apart the roof. He tried to speak; his voice would not come for a moment. “How long — how long did I sleep?”

“Har said over two thousand years.”

“Is he that old?” He stared at nothing a little, then leaned over to kiss her. “Is it day or night?”

“It’s noon. You’ve slept nearly two days. I missed you. I only had Hugin to talk to most of the time.”

“Who?”

Her smile deepened. “Do you remember my name?”

He nodded. “You are a two-thousand-year-old woman named Raederle.” He sat quietly, holding her hand, putting the world into shape around him. He stood up finally; she slid an arm around him to steady him. The wind snatched the door out of his hand as he opened it. The first flakes of winter snow swirled and vanished in the winds. They shattered the silence in his mind, whipped over him, persistent, icy, shaping him back out of his dreams. He ran across the yard with Raederle, into the warmth of the king’s dark house.

Har came to him that evening as he lay beside the fire in his chamber. He was remembering and slowly absorbing the knowledge he had taken. Raederle had left him alone, deep in his thoughts. Har, entering, brought him out of himself. Their eyes met across the fire in a peaceful, wordless recognition. Then Har sat down, and Morgon straightened, shifting logs with his hands until the drowsing fire woke.

“I have come,” Har said softly, “for what you owe me.”

“I owe you everything.” He waited. The fire slowly blurred in front of him; he was lost to himself again, this time among his own memories.

The king worked through them a little randomly, not sure what he would find. Very early in his exploring, he loosed Morgan in utter astonishment. “You struck an old, blind wizard?”

“Yes. I couldn’t kill him.”

The king’s eyes blazed with a glacial light. He seemed about to speak; instead he caught the thread of Morgon’s memories again. He wove backwards and forwards, from Trader’s Road to Lungold and Erlenstar Mountain, and the weeks Morgon had spent in the wastes, harping to the winds. He watched the harpist die; he listened to Yrth speaking to Morgon and to Danan in Isig; he listened to Raederle giving Morgon a riddle that drew him back out of the dead land, once again among the living. Then, he loosed Morgon abruptly and prowled the chamber like a wolf. “Deth.”

The name chilled Morgon unexpectedly, as though Har had turned the impossible into truth with a word. The king paced to his side and stopped moving finally. He stared down into the fire. Morgon dropped his face against his forearms wearily.

“I don’t know what to do. He holds more power than anyone else in this realm. You felt that mind-hold—”

“He has always held your mind.”

“I know. And I can’t fight him. I can’t. You saw how he drew me on Trader’s Road… with nothing. With a harp he could barely play. I went to him… At Anuin I couldn’t kill him. I didn’t even want to. More than anything, I wanted a reason not to. He gave me one. I thought he had walked out of my life forever, since I left him no place in the realm to harp. I left him one place. He harped to me. He betrayed me again, and I saw him die. But he didn’t die. He only replaced one mask with another. He made the sword I nearly killed him with. He threw me to Ghisteslwchlohm like a bone, and he rescued me from Earth-Masters on the same day. I don’t understand him. I can’t challenge him. I have no proof, and he would twist his way out of any accusation. His power frightens me. I don’t know what he is. He gives me silence like the silence out of trees…” His voice trailed away. He found himself listening to Har’s silence.

He raised his head. The king was still gazing into the fire, but it seemed to Morgon that he was watching it from the distance of many centuries. He was very still; he did not seem to be breathing. His face looked harsher than Morgon had ever seen it, as if the lines had been riven into it by the icy, merciless winds that scarred his land.

“Morgon,” he whispered, “be careful.” It was, Morgon realized slowly, not a warning but a plea. The king dropped to his haunches, held Morgon’s shoulders very gently, as if he were grasping something elusive, intangible, that was beginning to shape itself under his hands.

“Har.”

The king shook away his question. He held Morgon’s eyes with an odd intensity, gazing through him into the heart of his confusion. “Let the harpist name himself…”

The wolf-king gave him no more answers than that. Something else lay hidden behind Har’s eyes that he would not speak of. Morgon sensed it in him and so did Yrth, who asked, the evening before they left Yrye, “Har, what are you thinking? I can hear something beneath all your words.”

They were sitting beside the fire. The winds were whistling across the roof, dragging shreds of smoke up through the opening. Har looked at the wizard across the flames. His face was still honed hard, ancient, by whatever he had seen. But his voice, when he spoke to the wizard, held only its familiar, dry affection.

“It’s nothing for you to concern yourself about.”

“Why can’t I believe that?” Yrth murmured. “Here in this hall, where you have riddled your way through centuries to truth?”

“Trust me,” Har said. The wizard’s eyes sought toward him through their private darkness.

“You’re going to Ymris.”

“No,” Morgon said abruptly. He had stopped fighting Yrth; he trod warily in the wizard’s presence, as in the presence of some powerful, unpredictable animal. But the wizard’s words, which seemed to lie somewhere between a statement and a command, startled a protest out of him. “Har, what can you do in Ymris besides get yourself killed?”

“I have no intention,” Har said, “of dying in Ymris.” He opened a palm to the fire, revealing withered crescents of power; the wordless gesture haunted Morgon.

“Then what do you intend?”

“I’ll give you one answer for another.”

“Har, this is no game!”

“Isn’t it? What lies at the top of a tower of winds?”

“I don’t know. When I know, I’ll come back here and tell you. If you’ll be patient.”

“I have no more patience,” Har said. He got up, pacing restlessly; his steps brought him to the side of the wizard’s chair. He picked up a couple of small logs and knelt to position them on the fire. “If you die,” he said, “it will hardly matter where I am. Will it?”

Morgon was silent. Yrth leaned forward, resting one hand on Har’s shoulder for balance, and caught a bit of flaming kindling as it rolled toward them. He tossed it back onto the fire. “It will be difficult to get through to Wind Tower. But I think Astrin’s army will make it possible.” He loosed Har, brushed ash from his hands, and the king rose. Morgon, watching his grim face, swallowed arguments until there was nothing left in his mind but a fierce, private resolve.