Patricia McKillip - Harpist In The Wind

“Yes.”

They all went back down the road to Tol that lay bare as a blade between the dark fields of corn. Morgon, walking beside Raederle, his fingers linked in hers, felt the tension still in her and the weariness of the long, dangerous voyage. She sensed his thoughts and smiled at him as they neared Tol.

“I left one pig-headed family for another…”

The moon, three-quarters full, seemed angled, as if it were peering down at Tol. Across the black channel were two flaming, slitted eyes: the warning fires on the horns of the Caithnard harbor. Nets hung in silvery webs on the sand; water licked against the small moored boats as they walked down the dock.

Bri Corbett, hanging over the ship’s railing, called down softly, “Now?”

“Now,” Morgon said, and Eliard muttered between his teeth.

“I wish you knew what you were doing.” Then the ramp slid down off the empty deck, and he stepped back, so close to the dock edge he nearly fell off. Morgon felt his mind again.

The stubbornness, the inflexibility that lay near the heart of Hed seemed to slam like a bar across the end of the ramp. It clenched around Morgon’s thoughts; he eased through it, filling Eliard’s mind with images, rich, brilliant, and erratic, that he had gleaned from the history of the Three Portions out of the minds of the dead. Slowly, as Eliard’s mind opened, something emptied out of the ship, absorbed itself into Hed.

Eliard shivered suddenly.

“They’re quiet,” he said, surprised. Morgon’s hand closed above his elbow.

“Bri will leave for Caithnard now and send the next ship. There are six more. Bri will bring the last one himself, and Raederle and I will leave on that one.”

“No—”

“I’ll come back.”

Eliard was silent. From the ship came the groan of rope and wood, and Bri Corbett’s low, precise orders. The ship eased away from the dockside, its dark canvas stretched full to catch the frail wind. It moved, huge, black, soundless through the moon-spangled water into the night, leaving a shimmering wake that curled away and slowly disappeared.

Eliard said, watching it, “You will never come back to stay.”

Six more ships came as slowly, as silently through the night. Once, just before the moon set, Morgon saw shadows flung across the water of armed, crowned figures. The moon sank, shrivelled and weary, into the stars; the last ship moored at the dockside. Tristan was leaning against Morgon, shifting from one foot to another; he held her to keep her warm. Raederle was blurred against the starlit water; her face was a dark profile between the warning fires. Morgon’s eyes moved to the ship. The dead were leaving it; the dark maw of its hold would remain open to take him away from Hed. His mind tangled suddenly with a thousand things he wanted to say to Eliard, but none of them had the power to dispel that ship. Finally, he realized, they were alone again on the dock; the dead were dispersed into Hed, and there was nothing left for him to do but leave. He turned to Eliard. The sky was growing very dark in the final, interminable hour before dawn. A low wind moaned among the breakers. He could not see Eliard’s face, only sense his massiveness and the vague mass of land behind him. He said softly, his heart aching, the image of the land drenched gold under the summer sun in his mind’s eye, “I’ll find a way back to Hed. Somehow. Somewhere.”

Eliard, reaching into the darkness, touched his face with a gentleness that had been their father’s. Tristan was still clinging to him; Morgon held her tightly, kissed the top of her hair. Then he stepped back, stood suddenly alone in the night feeling the wood shiver under his feet in the roiling water.

He turned, found his way blindly up the ship’s ramp, back down into the black hull.

The ship found a quiet berth in the Caithnard harbor near dawn. Morgon heard the anchor splash in still water and saw through the lattice of the hatch covers squares of pearl-grey sky. Raederle was asleep. He looked at her a moment with an odd mixture of weariness and peace, as if he had brought some great treasure safely out of danger. Then he sagged down on the spice sacks and went to sleep. The clamor on the docks at midmorning, the stifling noon heat in the hold hardly troubled his dreams. He woke finally at late afternoon and found Raederle watching him, covered with floating spangles of sunlight.

He sat up slowly, trying to remember where he was. She said, “Caithnard.” Her arms were crooked around her knees; her cheek was crosshatched with weave from the sacking. Her eyes held an odd expression he had to puzzle over, until he realized that it was simply fear. His throat made a dry, questioning sound. She answered him softly.

“Now what?”

He leaned back against the side, gripped her wrist lightly a moment, then rubbed his eyes. “Bri Corbett said he would find horses for us. You’ll have to take the pins out of your hair.”

“What? Morgon, are you still asleep?”

“No.” His eyes fell to her feet “And look at your shoes.”

She looked. “What’s the matter with them?”

“They’re beautiful. So are you. Can you change shape?”

“Into what?” she asked bewilderedly. “A hoary old hag?”

“No. You have a shape-changer’s blood in you; you should be able to—”

The expression in her eyes, of fear, torment, loathing, stopped him. She said distinctly, “No.”

He drew breath, fully awake, cursing himself silently. The long road sweeping across the realm, straight towards the setting sun, touched him, too, then, with an edge of panic. He was silent, trying to think, but the stale air in the hold seemed to fill his brain with chaff. He said, “We’ll be on the road to Lungold for a long time, if we ride. I thought to keep the horses just until I could teach you some shape.”

“You change shape. I’ll ride.”

“Raederle, look at yourself,” he said helplessly. “Traders from all over the realm will be on that road. They haven’t seen me for over a year, but they’ll recognize you, and they won’t have to ask who the man beside you is.”

“So.” She kicked her shoes off, pulled the pins out of her hair and shook it down her back. “Find me another pair of shoes.”

He looked at her wordlessly as she sat in a billow of wrinkled, richly embroidered cloth, the fine, dishevelled mass of her hair framing a high-boned face that, even tired and white, looked like something out of an ancient ballad. He sighed, pushing himself up.

“All right. Wait for me.”

Her voice checked him briefly as he climbed the ladder. “This time.”

He spoke to Bri Corbett, who had been waiting patiently all day for them to wake. The horses Bri had found were on the dock; there were some supplies packed on them. They were placid, heavy-hooved farmhorses, restless at being tethered so long. Bri, as the fact and implications of the long journey began filling his mind, gave Morgon varied, impassioned arguments, to which he responded patiently. Bri ended by offering to come with them. Morgon said wearily, “Only if you can change shape.”

Bri gave up. He left the ship, returned an hour later with a bundle of clothes, which he tossed down the hatch to Morgon. Raederle examined them expressionlessly, then put them on. There was a dark skirt, a linen shift, and a shapeless over-tunic that went to her knees. The boots were of soft leather, good but plain. She coiled her hair up under the crown of a broad-brimmed straw hat. She stood still resignedly for Morgon’s inspection.

He said, “Pull the hat brim down.”

She gave it a wrench. “Stop laughing at me.”

“I’m not,” he said soberly. “Wait till you see what you have to ride.”