Patricia McKillip - Harpist In The Wind

He bade Har farewell at dawn the next day; and three crows began the long journey south to Herun. The flight was dreary with rain. The wizard led them with astonishing accuracy across the level rangelands of Osterland and the forests bordering the Ose. They did not change shape again until they had crossed the Winter and the vast no-man’s-land between Osterland and Ymris stretched before them. The rains stilled finally near dusk on the third day of their journey, and with a mutual, almost wordless consent, they dropped to the ground to rest in their own shapes.

“How,” Morgon asked Yrth almost before the wizard had coaxed a tangle of soaked wood into flame, “in Hel’s name are you guiding us? You led us straight to the Winter. And how did you get from Isig to Hed and back in two days?”

Yrth glanced toward his voice. The flame caught between his hands, engulfing the wood, and he drew back. “Instinct,” he said. “You think too much while you fly.”

“Maybe.” He subsided beside the fire. Raederle, breathing deeply of the moist, pine-scented air, was eying the river wistfully.

“Morgon, would you catch a fish? I am so hungry, and I don’t want to change back into a crow-shape to eat — whatever crows eat. If you do that, I’ll look for mushrooms.”

“I smell apples,” Yrth said. He rose, wandering toward a scent. Morgon watched him a little incredulously.

“I don’t smell apples,” he murmured. “And I hardly think at all when I fly.” He rose, then stooped again to kiss Raederle. “Do you smell apples?”

“I smell fish. And more rain. Morgon…” She put her arm on his shoulders suddenly, keeping him down. He watched her grope for words.

“What?”

“I don’t know.” She ran her free hand through her hair. Her eyes were perplexed. “He moves across the earth like a master…”

“I know.”

“I keep wanting — I keep wanting to trust him. Until I remember how he hurt you. Then I became afraid of him, of where he is leading us, and how skillfully… But I forget my fear again so easily.” Her fingers tugged a little absently at his lank hair. “Morgon.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” She rose abruptly, impatient with herself. “I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

She crossed the clearing to explore a pallid cluster of mushrooms. Morgon went to the broad river, waded into the shallows, and stood silently as an old tree stump, watching for fish and trying not to think. He splashed himself twice, while trout skidded through his fingers. Finally, he made his mind a mirror of greyness to match the water and the sky and began to think like a fish.

He caught three trout and gutted them awkwardly, for lack of anything else, with his sword. He turned at last to bring them back to the fire and found Yrth and Raederle watching him. Raederle was smiling. The wizard’s expression was unfathomable. Morgon joined them. He set the fish on a flat stone and cleaned his blade on the grass. He sheathed it once more within an illusion and squatted down by the fire.

“All right,” he said. “Instinct.” He took Raederle’s mushrooms and began stuffing the fish. “But that doesn’t explain your journey to Hed.”

“How far can you travel in a day?”

“Maybe across Ymris. I don’t know. I don’t like moving from moment to moment across distances. It’s exhausting, and I never know whose mind I might accidentally touch.”

“Well,” the wizard said softly, “I was desperate. I didn’t want you to fight your way out of that mind-hold before I returned.”

“I couldn’t have—”

“You have the power. You can see in the dark.” Morgon stared at him wordlessly. Something shivered across his skin. “Is that what it was?” he whispered. “A memory?”

“The darkness of Isig.”

“Or of Erlenstar Mountain.”

“Yes. It was that simple.”

“Simple.” He remembered Har’s plea and breathed soundlessly until the ache and snarl of words in his chest loosened. He wrapped the fish in wet leaves, pushed the stone into the fire. “Nothing is simple.”

The wizard’s fingers traced the curve of a blade of grass to its tip. “Some things are. Night. Fire. A blade of grass. If you place your hand in a flame and think of your pain, you will burn yourself. But if you think only of the flame, or the night, accepting it, without remembering… it becomes very simple.”

“I cannot forget.”

The wizard was silent. By the time the fish began to spatter, the rains had started again. They ate hurriedly and changed shape, flew through the drenching rains to shelter among the trees.

They crossed the Ose a couple of days later and changed shape again on the bank of the swift, wild river. It was late afternoon. Light and shadow dazzled across their faces from the wet, bright sky. They gazed at one another a little bewilderedly, as if surprised by their shapes.

Raederle dropped with a sigh on a fallen log. “I can’t move,” she whispered. “I am so tired of being a crow. I am beginning to forget how to talk.”

“I’ll hunt,” Morgon said. He stood still, intending to move, while weariness ran over him like water.

Yrth said, “I’ll hunt.” He changed shape again, before either of them could answer. A falcon mounted the air, higher and higher, in a fierce, blazing flight into the rain and sunlight, then he levelled finally, began circling.

“How?” Morgon whispered. “How can he hunt blind?” He quelled a sudden impulse to burn a path through the light to the falcon’s side. As he watched, the falcon plummeted down, swift, deadly, into the shadows.

“He is like an Earth-Master,” Raederle said, and an odd chill ran through Morgon. Her words sounded as if they hurt. “They all have that terrible beauty.” They watched the bird lift from the ground, dark in the sudden fading of the light. Something dragged from its talons. She stood up slowly, began gathering wood. “He’ll want a spit.”

Morgon stripped a sapling bough and peeled it as the bird flew back. It left a dead hare beside Raederle’s fire. Yrth stood before them again. For a moment, his eyes seemed unfamiliar, full of the clear, wild air, and the fierce precision of the falcon’s kill. Then they became familiar again. Morgon asked his question in a voice that sounded timbreless, subdued.

“I scented its fear,” the wizard said. He slid a knife from his boot before he sat down. “Will you skin it? That would be a problem for me.”

Morgon set to work wordlessly. Raederle picked up the spit, finished peeling it. She said abruptly, almost shyly, “Can you speak a falcon’s language?”

The blind, powerful face turned toward her. Its sudden gentleness at the sound of her voice stilled Morgon’s knife. “A little of it.”

“Can you teach me? Do we have to fly all the way to Herun as crows?”

“If you wish… I thought, being of An, you might be most comfortable as a crow.”

“No,” she said softly. “I am comfortable now as many things. But it was a kind thought.”

“What have you shaped?”

“Oh… birds, a tree, a salmon, a badger, a deer, a bat, a vesta — I lost count long ago, searching for Morgon.”

“You always found him.”

“So did you.”

Yrth sifted the ground around him absently, for twigs to hold the spit. “Yes…”

“I have shaped a hare, too.”

“Hare is a hawk’s prey. You shape yourself to the laws of earth.”

Morgon tossed skin and offal into the bracken and reached for the spit. “And the laws of the realm?” he asked abruptly. “Are they meaningless to an Earth-Master?”

The wizard was very still. Something of the falcon’s merciless power seemed to stir behind his gaze, until Morgon sensed the recklessness of his challenge. He looked away. Yrth said equivocally, “Not all of them.” Morgon balanced the spit above the fire, turned the hare a couple of times to test it. Then the ambiguity of the wizard’s words struck him. He slid back on his haunches, gazing at Yrth. But Raederle was speaking to him, and the clear note of pain in her voice held him silent.