IN SPRING, THREE THINGS CAME INVARIABLY TO

the house of the King of An: the year's first
shipment of Herun wine, the lords of the Three
Portions for the spring council, and an argument

The spring of the year following the strange dis-
appearance of the Prince of Hed, who had, with the
High One's harpist, vanished like a mist in Isig
Pass, the great house with its seven gates and seven
white towers seemed to be cracking like a seed pod
out of a long, bitter winter of silence and grief. The
season dusted the air with green, set patterns of
light like inlay on the cold stone floors, and roused
restlessness like sap in the deep heart of An, until
Raederie of An, standing in Cyone's garden, which
no one had entered for the six months since her
death, felt that even the dead of An, their bones
plaited with grass root, must be drumming their
fingers in their graves.

She stirred after a while, left the tangle of weeds
and withered things that had not survived the win-
ter, and went back into the King's hall, whose doors
were flung wide to the light. Servants under the eye
of Mathom's steward, were shaking the folds out of

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the lords' banners, hanging them precariously from
the high beams. The lords were due any day, and
the house was in a turmoil preparing to receive
them. Already their gifts had been arriving for her:

a milk-white falcon bred in the wild peaks of Os-
terland from the Lord of Hel; a brooch like a gold
wafer from Map Hwillion, who was too poor to
afford such things; a flute of polished wood inlaid
with silver, which bore no name, and worried Rae-
derle, since whoever had sent it had known what
she would love. She watched the banner of Hel
unrolling, the ancient boar's head with tusks like
black moons on an oak-green field; it rose jerkily
on its hangings to survey the broad hall out of its
small fiery eyes. She gazed back at it, her arms
folded, then turned suddenly and went to find her

father.

She found him in his chambers arguing with his
land-heir. Their voices were low, and they stopped
when she entered, but she saw the faint flush on
Duac's cheekbones. In the pale slashes of his brows
and his sea-colored eyes, he bore the stamp of
Ylon's wild blood, but his patience with Mathom
when everyone else had exhausted theirs was con-
sidered phenomenal. She wondered what Mathom
had said to upset him.

The King turned a dour crow*s eye to her; she
said politely, for bis mood in the mornings was un-
predictable, "I would like to visit Mara Croeg m
Aum for a couple of weeks, with your permission.
I could pack and leave tomorrow. I've been in
Anuin all winter, and I feel—I need to get away."

There was not a flicker of change in his eyes. He
said simply, "No," and turned to pick up his wine

cup.

She stared at bis back, annoyed, and discarded
courtesy like an old shoe. "Well, I'm not going to
stay here and be argued over like a prize cow out

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of Aum. Do you know who sent me a gift? Map
Hwillion- Only yesterday he was laughing at me for
falling out of a pear tree, and now he's got his first
beard and an eight-hundred-year-old house with a
leaky roof. and he thinks he wants to marry me.
You're the one who promised me to the Prince of
Hed; can't you put a stop to all this? Fd rather
listen to the pig herds of Hel during a thunderstorm
than another spring council arguing with you about
what to do with me."

"So would I," Duac murmured. Mathom eyed
them both. His hair had turned iron-grey seemingly
over night; his sorrow over Cyone's death had
limned his face to the bone, but it had neither
tempered nor bittered his disposition.

"What do you want me to tell them,'* he asked,
"other than what I have told them for nineteen
years? I have made a vow, binding beyond life, to
many you to the man winning Peven's game. If
you want to run away and live with Map Hwillion
under his leaky roof, I can't stop you—they know
that."

"I don't want to many Map Hwillion,'* she said,
exasperated. "I would like to marry the Prince of
Hed. Bxcept that I don't know any more who he is,
and no one else knows where he is. I am tired of
waiting; I am tired of this house; I am tired of
listening to the Lord of Hel tell me that I am being
ignored and insulted by the Prince of Hed; I want
to visit Mara Croeg in Aum. and I don't under-
stand how you can refuse such a simple, reason-
able request."

There was a short silence, during which Mathom
considered the wine in his cup. An indefinable ex-
pression came into his face; he set the cup down
and said, "If you like, you can go to Caithnard."

Her lips parted in surprise. "I can? To visit
Rood? Is there a ship—" And then Duac brought

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his hand down flat on the wine table, rattling cups.
"No."

She stared at him, astonished, and he closed his
hand. His eyes were narrowed slightly as he gazed
back at Mathom. "He's asked me to go, but I've
already refused. He wants Rood home."
"Rood? I don't understand."
Mathom moved away from the window suddenly
with an irritated whirl of sleeve. "I might as well
have the entire council in here babbling at me at
once. I want Rood to take a leave from his studies,
come back to Anuin for a while; he'll take that
fact best from either Duac or you."

"You tell him," Duac said inflexibly. Under the
King's eye he yielded, sat down, gripping the arms
of his chair as though he were holding fast to his
patience. "Then will you explain so I can under-
stand? Rood has just taken the Red of Apprentice-
ship; if he stays he'll take the Black at a younger
age than any living Master. He's done fine work
there; he deserves the chance to stay."

"There are more riddles in the world than those
in the locked books behind the walls of that College
in Caithnard."

"Yes. Fve never studied riddle-mastery, but I
have an idea that you can't answer them all at
once. He's doing the best he can. What do you
want him to do? Go lose himself at Erienstar Moun-
tain like the Prince of Hed?"
"No. I want him here."

"For what, in Hel's name? Are you planning to
die or something?"

"Duac," Raederle breathed, but he waited stub-
bornly for the King to answer. She felt, like a live
thing beneath the irritation and obstinacy in them
both, the binding between them beyond all defini-
tion. Then Duac heaved himself to his feet at
Mathom's silence and snapped before he slammed

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the door behind him so hard the stones seemed to
rattle, "By Madir's bones, I wish I could see into
that peatbog you call a mind!"

Raederle sighed. She looked at Mathom, who
seemed in spite of the rich robe he wore, black and
impervious as a wizard's curse in the sunlight. "I'm
beginning to hate spring. I won't ask you to explain
the world to me, just why I can't go visit Mara
Croeg while Cyn Croeg is here at the council."

"Who was Thanet Ross and why did he play a
harp without strings?"

She stood a moment, dredging the answer out of
interminable, half-forgotten hours of riddlery. Then
she turned; she heard his voice again, just before
the door slammed once more, "And stay out of
Hel."

She found Duac in the library, staring out the
window. She joined him, leaning against the win-
dow, looking down at the city that sloped gently
away from the King's house to spill around the rim
of the harbor. Trade-ships were drifting in with the
midmoming tide, their colored sails deflating in the
wind like weary sighs. She saw the white and green
of Danan Isig's ships bringing the marvellous crafts
from Isig Mountain; and a hope stirred in her that
the northern Kingdom had sent news more valuable
than all its beautiful cargo. Duac stirred beside her,
as the peace of the ancient library with its smell
of hide, wax and the iron of old shields returned
the composure to his face. He said softly, "He is
the most pig-headed, arbitrary and exasperating
man in the Three Portions of An."

"I know."

"Something's going on in his head; something's
bubbling behind his eyes like a bad spell ... It
worries me. Because if it came to a choice between
a blind step into a bottomless pit with him and a
walk across the apple orchards with the Lords of

Heir o/ Sea and fire

An at their finest, I would shut my eyes and step.
But what is he thinking?"

"I don't know." She dropped her chin in her
palms. "I don't know why he wants us all home
now. I don't understand him. I asked him why I
couldn't leave, and he asked me why Thanet Ross
played a harp with no strings."

"Who?" Duac looked at her. "How could . . .
Why did he play a harp with no strings?"

"For the same reason he walked backward and
shaved his head instead of his beard. For no reason
except that there was no reason. He was a sad man
and died backward."

"Oh."

"He was walking backward for no reason and
fell in a river. Nobody ever saw him again, but they
assumed he died since there was no reason—"

"All right." Duac protested mildly. "You could
spin that one into yarn."

She smiled. "See what education you missed, not
being destined to marry a riddle-master." Then her
smile faded; she bowed her head, traced a crack
in the old mortar. "I feel as though I'm waiting for
a legend to come down from the north, breaking
out of winter with the spring water . . . Then I re-
member the farmer's son who used to put shells to
my ears so I could hear the sea, and, Duac, that's
when I become afraid for him. He has been gone
so long; there has not been one word from him for
a year, and no one in the realm has beard so much
as a harp-note from the High One's harpist. Surely
the High One would never keep Morgon so long
from his land. I think something must have hap-
pened to them in Isig Pass."

"As far as anyone knows, the land-rule hasn't
passed from Morgon," Duac said comfortingly, but
she only shifted restlessly.

"Then where is he? At least he could get a mes-

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sage to his own land. The traders say that every
time they stop at Tol, Tristan and Eliard are there
at the dock waiting, hoping for news. Even at Isig,
with all they say happened to him, he managed to
write. They say he has scars on his hands like
vesta-homs, and he can take the shape of trees . . ."

Duac glanced down at his own hands as if he
expected to see the withered moons of white homs
in them. "I know . . . The simplest thing to do
would be to go to Erienstar Mountain and ask the
High One where he is. Ifs spring; the Pass should
be clearing. Eliard might do it."

"Leave Hed? He's Morgon's land-heir; they'd
never let him leave."

"Maybe. But they say there's a streak of stub-
bornness long as a witch's nose in the people of
Hed. He might." He leaned over the ledge sud-
denly; his head turned towards a distant, double-
colunm of riders making their way across the
meadows. "Here they come. In full plumage."

'mo is it?"

^

"I can't . . . blue. Blue and. black retinue; that
would be Cyn Croeg. He appears to have met
someone green ..."

"Hel."

**No. Green and cream; very small following.'*

She sighed. "Map Hwillion."

She stood by the window after Duac left to tell
Mathom, watching the riders veer around the nut
orchards, flickering in and out of. the lacework of
black, bare branches. They appeared again at a
comer of the old city wall, to take the main road
through the city. which led twisting and curving
through the market and old high houses and shops
whose windows would be wide open like eyes, full
of watchers. By the time they disappeared through
the gates of the city, she had decided what to do.

Heir of Sea and Fire

THREE DAYS LATER, SHE SAT BESIDE THE PIG-

woman of the Lord of Hel under an oak tree,
weaving grass blades into a net. From all around
her in the placid afternoon came the vast snort
and grumble of the great pig herds of Hel as
they stirred through the tangled roots and shadows
of oak. The pig-woman, whom no one had ever
bothered to name, was smoking a meditative pipe.
She was a tall, bony, nervous woman, with long,
dishevelled grey hair and dark grey eyes; she had
tended the pigs as long as anyone could remember.
They were related, she and Raederle, through the
witch Madir, in some obscure way they were trying
to figure out. The pig'woman's great gift was with
pigs; she was abrupt and shy with people, but the
beautiful, fiery Cyone had inherited Madir's inter-
est in pigs and had become friends with the
taciturn pig-woman. But not even Cyone had dis-
covered what Raederle knew: the odd store of
knowledge that the pig-woman had also inherited
from Madir.

Raederle picked another tough stem of grass,
sent it snaking in and out of the small, square
weave. "Am I doing this right?"

The pig-woman toucned the tight strands and
nodded. "You could carry water in that," she said,
in her plain, rugged voice. "Now, then, I think
King Oen had a pigherder whom Madir might have
been fond of, in Anuin.'*

"I thought she might have been fond of Oen."

The pig-woman looked surprised. "After he built
the tower to trap her? You told me that. Besides, he
had a wife." She waved the words and her pipe
smoke away at once with her hand. "I'm not think-
ing"

"No king I ever heard of married Madir," Rae-
derle said wryly. "Yet somehow the blood got into
the king's line. Let's see: she lived nearly two hun-

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dred years, and there were seven kings. I believe
we can forget Fenel; he was too busy fighting al-
most to father a land-heir, let alone a bastard. I
don't even know if he kept pigs. It is possible," she
, added, struck, "that you are a descendant of a child
of Madir and one of the Kings."

The pig-woman gave a rare chuckle. "Oh, I
doubt it. Me with my bare feet. Madir liked pig-
herders as much as she liked kings."

*That's true." She finished with the grass blade
and pushed the stems close, frowning down at them
absently. "It is also possible that Oen might have
grown fond of Madir after he realized she wasn't
his enemy, but that seems a little scandalous, since
it was through him that Ylon's blood came into the
Kings' line. Oen was furious enough about that."
"Ylon."
"You know that tale."

The pig-woman shook her head. "I know the
name, but no one ever told me the tale."

"Well." She sat back against the tree trunk, the
sun Shimmering in and out of her eyes. Her own
shoes were off; her hair was loose; and there was a
small spider making a bewildered foray up one
strand. She brushed it off without noticing. "It's the
first riddle I ever learned. Oen*s land-heir was not
his own son, but the son of some strange sea-lord,
who came into Oen's bed disguised as the king. Nine
months afterward, Oen's wife bore Ylon, with skin
like foam and eyes like green seaweed. So Oen in his
anger built a tower by the sea for this sea-child, with
orders that he should never come out of it. One
night, fifteen years after his birth, Ylon heard a
strange harping from the sea, and such was his love
of- it, and desire to find its source, that he broke
the bars on his window with his hands and leaped
into the sea and vanished. Ten years later Oen
died, and to his other sons' surprise, the land-

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rule passed to Ylon. Ylon was driven by his own
nature back to claim his heritage. He reigned only
long enough to marry and beget a son who was as
dark and practical as Oen, and then he went back
to the tower Oen had built for him and leaped to his
death on the rocks below." She touched the tiny
net, squared a comer. "It's a sad tale." A frown
strayed into her eyes, absent, puzzled, as if she had
almost remembered something, but not quite.
"Anyway, Ylon's face appears once or twice a cen-
tury, and sometimes his wildness, but never his ter-
rible torment, because no one with his nature has
ever again inherited the land-rule. Which is fortu-
nate."

"That's true." The pig-woman looked down at the
pipe in her hand, which had gone out during her lis-
tening. She tapped it absently against the tree root.
Raederie watched an enormous black sow nudge her
way through the clearing in front of them to loll
panting in the shade.
"It's almost Dis*s time."
The pig-woman nodded. "They'll all be black as

pots, too, sired by Dark Noon."

Raederie spotted the boar responsible, the great
descendant of Hegdis-Noon, rooting among the old
leaves. "Maybe she'll bear one who can talk."

"Maybe. I keep hoping, but the magic, I think,
has gone out of the blood and they are born silent."

"I wish a few of the Lords of An had been bom

silent."

The pig-woman's brows flicked up in sudden

comprehension. "That's it, then."

"What?"

She shifted, shy again. "The spring council. It's
nothing of my business, but I didn't think you had
ridden for three days to find out if we were first or

third cousins."

Raederie smiled. "No. I ran away from home."

10

Heir of Sea and Fire

"You . . . Does your father know where you
are?"

*'I always assume he knows everything." She
reached for another stem of grass. The odd, tenta-
tive frown moved again into her face; she looked up
suddenly to meet the pig-woman's eyes. For a mo-
ment, the direct, grey gaze seemed a stranger's
look, curious, measuring, with the same question in
it that she had barely put words to. Then the pig-
woman's head bowed; she reached down to pick an
acom out of an angle of root and tossed it to the
black sow. Raederie said softly, "Ylon .. ."

"He's why you can do these small things I teach
you so well. He and Madir. And your father with
his mind."

**Maybe. But—" She shook the thought away
and leaned back again to breathe the tranquil air.
"My father could see a shadow in a barrow, but I
wish he didn't have a mouth like a clam. It's good
to be away from that house. It grew so quiet last
winter I thought whatever words we spoke would
freeze solid in the air. I thought that winter would
never end ..."

"It was a bad one. The Lord had to send for feed
from Aum and pay double because Aum itself was
growing short of corn. We lost some of the herd; one
of the great boars, Aloil—"

"Aloil?"

The pig-woman looked suddenly a little flustered.
"Well, Rood mentioned him once, and I thought—
I liked the name."

"You named a boar after a wizard?"

"Was he? I didn't . . . Rood didn't say. Anyway,
he died in spite of all I could do for him, and the
Lord himself even came to help with his own
hands."

Raederle's face softened slightly. "Yes. Thafs
one thing Raith is good with."

II

Heir of Sea and fire

"It's in his blood. But he was upset about—about
Aloil." She glanced at Raederie's handiwork. "You
might want to make it a little wider, but you'll need
to leave a fringe to hold it after you throw it."

Raederle stared down at the tiny net, watching it
grow big then small again in her mind's eye. She
reached for more grass, and felt, as her hand
touched the earth, the steady drum of hoofbeats.
She glanced, startled, toward the trees. "Who is
that? Hasn't Raith left for Anuin yet?"

"No, he's still here. Didn't you—" She stopped as
Raederle rose, cursing succinctly, and the Lord of
Hel and his retinue came into the clearing, scattering

Pig-

Raith brought his mount to a halt in front of Rae-
derle; his men, in pale green and black, drew to a
surprised, disorderly stop. He stared down at her,
his gold brows pulling quickly into a disapproving
frown, and opened his mouth; she said, "You're go-
ing to be late for the council."

"I had to wait for Elieu. Why in Hel's name are
you running around in your stockinged feet in my pig
herds? Where is your escort? Where—"

"Elieu!" Raederle cried to a brown-bearded stran-
ger dismounting from his horse, and his happy smile,
as she ran to hug him, made him once again famil-
iar.

"Did you get the flute I sent to you?'* he asked,

as she gripped his arms; she nodded, laughing.

"You sent it? Did you make it? It was so beau-
tiful it frightened me."

**I wanted to surprise you, not—"

"I didn't recognize you in that beard. You haven't
been out of Isig for three years; it's about time
you—" She checked suddenly, her hold tightening.
"Elieu, did you bring any news of the Prince of

Hed?"

"I'm sorry," he said gently. "No one has seen him.

12

Heir of Sea and fire

I sailed down from Kraal on a trade-ship; it stopped
five times along the way, and I lost count long ago
of how many people I had to tell that to. There is
one thing, though, that I came to tell your father."
He smiled again, touched her face. "You are al-
ways so beautiful. Like An itself. But what are you
doing alone in Raith's pig herds?"

"I came to talk to his pig-woman, who is a very
wise and interesting woman."

"She is?'* Elieu looked at the pig-woman, who
looked down at her feet,

Raith said grimly, "I would have thought you
had outgrown such things. It was foolish of you to
ride alone from Anuin; I'm amazed that your father
—He does know where you are?"

"He has probably made a fairly accurate guess.**

"You mean you—"

"Oh, Raith, if I want to make a fool of myself
that's my business."

"Well, look at you! Your hair looks as though
birds have been nesting in it,"

Her hand rose impulsively to smooth it, then
dropped. "That," she said frostily, "is also my busi-
ness.'*

"It's beneath your dignity to consort with my pig-
woman like some—like some—'*

"Well, Raith, we are related. For all I know she
has as much right in the court at Anuin as I have."

"I didn't know you were related," Elieu said in-
terestedly. "How?"

"Madir. She was a busy woman."

Raith drew a long breath through his nose.
"You," he said ponderously, "need a husband." He
jerked his reins, turning his mount; at his straight,
powerful back and rigorous movements something
desperate, uneasy, touched Raederle. She felt
Elieu's hand on her shoulder.

"Never mind," he said soothingly. "Will you

13

Heir of Sea and Fire

ride back with us? I would love to hear you play

that flute."

"All right." Her shoulders slumped a little. "All
right. If you're there. But first tell me what news
you have to tell my father that brought you all the

way down from Isig."

"Oh." She heard the sudden awe in his voice.
"It's about the Prince—about the Star-Bearer,"

Raederle swallowed. As if the pigs themselves
had recognized the name, there was a lull in their
vigorous snortings. The pig-woman looked up from

her feet. "Well, what?"

"It was something Bere, Danan's grandson, told
me. You must have heard the tale about Morgon,
about the night he took the sword from the secret
places of Isig, the night he killed three shape-
changers with it, saving himself and Bere. Bere and
I were working together, and Bere asked me what
the Barth-Masters were. I told him as much as I
knew, and asked him why. And he told me then
that he had heard Morgon telling Danan and Deth
that in the Cave of the Lost Ones, where no one
had ever gone but Yrth, Morgon found his starred
sword, and it had been given to him by the dead

children of the Earth-Masters."

The pig-woman dropped her pipe. She rose in a
swift, blurred movement that startled Raederle.
The vagueness dropped from her face like a mask,
revealing a strength and sorrow worn into it by a
knowledge of far more than Raitu's pigs. She drew
a breath and shouted, "What?"

The shout cracked like lightning out of the placid
sky. Raederle, flinging her arms futilely over her
ears, heard above her own cry the shrill, terrified
cries of rearing horses, and the breathless, gasping
voices of men struggling to control them. Then
came a sound as unexpected and terrible as the pig-

14

Heir of Sea and Fire

woman's shout: the agonized, outraged protest of
the entire pig herd of Hel.

Raederle opened her eyes. The pig-woman had
vanished, as though she had been blown away by
her shout. The unwieldy, enormous pig herd,
squealing with pain and astonishment, was heaving
to its feet, turning blindly, massing like a great
wave, panic rippling to the far edges of the herd in
the distance. She saw the great boars wheeling,
their eyes closed, the young pigs half-buried in the
heave of bristled backs, the sows, huge with their
unborn, swaying to their feet. The horses, appalled
by the strange clamor and the pigs Jostling against
them, were wrenching out of control. One of them
stepped back onto a small pig, and the double
screech of terror from both animals sounded across
the clearing like a battle hom. Hooves pounding,
voices shrilling and snorting, the pride of Hel for
nine centuries surged forward, dragging men and
horses helplessly with them. Raederle, taking
prompt, undignified shelter up the oak tree, saw
Raith trying desperately to trim his horse and reach
her. But he was swept away with' his retinue, Elieu,
whooping with laughter, bringing up the rear. The
herd ebbed away and vanished into the distant
trees. Raederle, straddling a bough, her head be-
ginning to ache with the aftermath of the shout,
thought of the pigs running along with the Lord of
Hel all the way into the King's council hall in
Anuin, and she laughed until she cried.

She found, riding wearily back into her father's
courtyard at twilight three days later, that some of
the pigs had gotten there before her. The inner
walls were blazoned with the banners of the lords
who had arrived; beneath the banner of Hel, limp
m the evening air, were penned seven exhausted
boars. She had to stop and laugh again, but the
laughter was more subdued as she realized that she

15

Heir of Sea and Fire

had to face Mathom. She wondered, as a groom
ran to take her horse, why, with all the people in
the house, it was so quiet. She went up the steps,
into the open doors of the hall; amid the long lines
of empty tables and the sprawl of chairs, there
were only three people: Elieu, Duac and the King.
She said a little hesitantly as they turned at her

step, "Where is everyone?"

"Out," Mathom said succinctly. "Looking for

you."

"Your whole council?"

"My whole council. They left five days ago; they
are probably scattered, like Raith's pigs, all over
the Three Portions of An. Raith himself was last
seen trying to herd his pigs together in Aum." His
voice was testy, but there was no anger in bis eyes,
only a hiddenness, as if he were contemplating an
entirely different train of thought. "Did it occur to
you that anyone might be worried?"

"If you ask me," Duac murmured into his wine
cup, "it seemed more like a hunting party than a
search party, to see who would bring home the
prize." Something in his face told Raederle that he
and Mathom had been arguing again. He lifted his
head. "You let them go like a cageful of freed
birds. You can control your own lords better than
. that. I've never seen such shambles made of a
council in my life, and you wanted it so. Why?"

Raederle sat down next to Elieu, who gave her
a cup of wine and a smile. Mathom was standing;

he made a rare, impatient gesture at Duac's words.
"Does it occur to you that I might have been wor-
ried?"

"You weren't surprised when you heard she was
gone. You didn't tell me to go after her, did you?
No. You're more interested in sending me to Caith-

nard. While you do what?'*

"Duac!" Mathom snapped, exasperated, and

16

Heir of Sea and Fire

Duac shifted in his chair. The King turned a dour
eye to Raederle. "And I told you to stay out of
Hel. You had a remarkable effect on both Raith's
pigs and my council."

"I'm sorry. But I told you I needed to get out of
this house."

'That badly? Riding precipitously off into Hel
and back without an escort?"

"Yes."

She heard him sigh.

. "How can I command obedience from my land
when I cannot even rule my own household?" The
question was rhetorical, for he exacted over his land
and his house what he chose.

Duac said with dogged, weary patience, "If you
would try explaining yourself for once in your life,
it would make a difference. Even I will obey you.
Try telling me in simple language why you think it
is so imperative for me to bring Rood home. Just
tell me. And I'll go."

"Are you still arguing about that?" Raederle said.
She looked curiously at their''father. "Why do you
want Duac to bring Rood home? Why did you want
me to stay out of Hel, when you know I am as safe
on Raith's lands as in my garden?"

"Either," Mathom said tersely, '*you, Duac, bring
Rood home from Caithnard, or I will send a ship
and a simple command to him. Which do you think
he would prefer?"

"But why—"

"Let him puzzle his own brain about it. He's
trained to answer riddles, and it will give him
something to do."

Duac brought his hands together, linked them
tightly. "All right," he said tautly. "All right. But
Fm no riddler and I like things explained to me.
Until you explain to me precisely why you want
the one who will become my land-heir if you die

17

Heir of Sea and Fire

back here with me, I swear by Madir's bones that
I'll see the wraiths of Hel ride across this thresh-
old before I call Rood back to Anuin."

There was a chilling leap of pure anger in
Mathom's face that startled Raederle. Duac's face
lost nothing of its resolve, but she saw him swallow.
Then his hands pulled apart, lowered to grip the
table edge. He whispered, "You're leaving An."

In the silence, Raederle heard the far, faint bick-
ering of sea gulls. She felt something hard, a word
left in her from the long winter, melt away. It
brought the tears for a moment into her eyes so
that Mathom blurred to a shadow when she looked
at him. "You're going to Erienstar Mountain. To
ask about the Prince of Hed. Please. I would like
to come with you."

"No." But the voice of the shadow was gentle.
Elieu's head was moving slowly from side to side.
He breathed, "Mathom, you can*t. Anyone with
even halt a mind to reason with must realize—"

*tThat what he is contemplating," Duac inter-
rupted. "is hardly a simple journey to Erienstar
Mountain and back." He rose, his chair protesting
against the stones. "Is it?"

"Duac, at a time when the air itself is an ear, I
do not intend to babble my business to the world."

"I am not the world. I am your land-heir. You've
never been surprised once in your life, not when
Morgon won that game with Peven, not even at
Elieu's news of the waking of the children of the
Earth-Masters. Your thoughts are calculated like a
play on a chessboard, but I don't think even you
know exactly who you are playing against. If all
you want to do is to go to Erienstar Mountain, you
would not be sending for Rood. You don't know
where you are going, do you? Or what you will
find, or when you will get back? And you knew
that if the Lords of the Three Portions were here

18

Heir of Sea and Fire

listening to this, there would be an uproar that
would shake the stones loose in the ceiling. You'll
leave me to face the uproar, and you'll sacrifice the
peace of your land for something that is not your
concern but the business of Hed and the High
One."

*The High One." Something harsh, unpleasant
in the King's voice made the name almost unfa-
miliar. "Morgon's own people scarcely know a
world exists beyond Hed, and except for one in-
cident, I would wonder if the High One knows that
Morgon exists."

"Ifs not your concern! You are liable to the High
One for the rule of An, and if you let loose of the
bindings in the Three Portions—"

**I don't need to be reminded of my responsibil-
ities!"

"You can stand there plotting to leave An in-
definitely and tell me that!"

"Is it possible that you can trust me when I
weigh two things in the balance and find one loom-
ing more heavily than a momentary confusion in
An?"

"Momentary confusion!" Duac breathed. "If you
leave An too long, stray too far away from it, you
win throw this land into chaos. If your hold on
tfae things you bind in the Three Portions loosens,
you*U find the dead kings of Hel and Aum laying
siege to Anuin, and Peven himself wandering into
this hall looking for his crown. If you return at all.
And if you vanish, as Morgon did, for some long,
wearisome length of tune, this land will find itself
in a maelstrom of terror."

"Ifs possible," Mathom said. "So far in its long
Jhistory An has had nothing more challenging to
; fight than itself. It can survive itself."

"What worse can happen to it than such a chaos
of living and dead?" He raised bis voice, battering

^                      19

Heir of Sea and fire

in anger and desperation against the King*s impla-
cability. "How can you think of doing this to your
land? You don't have the right! And if you're not
careful, you'll no longer have the land-rule."

Elieu leaned forward, gripped his arm. Raederie
stood up, groping for words to quiet them. Then
she caught sight of a stranger entering the hall,
who had stopped abruptly at Duac's shout. He was
young, plainly dressed in sheepskin and rough
wool. He glanced in wonder at the beautiful hall,
then stared a little at Raederie without realizing it.
The numb, terrible sorrow in his eyes made her
heart stop. She took a step towards him, feeling as
though she were stepping irrevocably out of the
predictable world. Something in her face had
stopped the quarrel. Mathom turned. The stranger
shifted uneasily and cleared his throat.

"I'm—my name is Cannon Master. I farm the
lands of the Prince of Hed. I have a message for
the King of An from—from the Prince of Hed."

"I am Mathom of An."

Raederie took another step forward. "And I am
Raederie," she whispered, while something flut-
tered, trapped like a bird, in the back of her throat.
"Is Morgon ... Who is the Prince of Hed?"

She heard a sound from Mathom. Cannon Mas-
ter looked at her mutely a moment. Then he said
very gently, "Eliard.**

Into their incredulous silence, the King dropped
one word like a stone. "How?"

"No one—no one knows exactly." He stopped
to swallow. "All Eliard knows is that Morgon died
five days ago. We don't know how, or where, only"
that it was under very strange and terrible circum-
stances. Eliard knows that much because he has'
been dreaming about Morgon the past year, feeling.
something—some nameless power weighing into J
Morgon's mind. He couldn't—he couldn't seem to

20

Heir of Sea and Fire

tree himself from it. He didn't even seem to know
himself at the end. We can't begin to guess what it
was. Five days ago, the land-rule passed to Eliard.
We remembered the reason why Morgon had left
Hed in the first place, and we—Eliard decided . . ."
He paused; a faint flush of color came into his
weary face. He said diffidently to Raederie, "I don't
know if you would have chosen to come to Hed.
You would have been—you would have been most
welcome. But we thought it right that you should be
told. I had been once to Caithnard, so I said I'd
come."

"I see." She tried to clear the trembling in her
throat. "Tell him—tell him I would have come. I
would have come."

His head bowed. "Thank you for that."

"A year," Duac whispered. "You knew what
was happening to him. You knew. Why didn't you
tell someone? Why didn't you let us know sooner?"

Cannon Master's hands clenched. He said pain-
fully, "It's what—it's what we ask ourselves now.
We—we just kept hoping. No-one of Hed has ever
asked outside of Hed for help."

"Has there been any word from the High One?"
Elieu asked.

"No. Nothing. But no doubt the High One's
harpist will show up eventually to express the High
One's sorrow over the death of—" He stopped,
swallowing the bitterness from his voice. "I'm sorry.
We can't—we can't even bury him in his own land.
I*m ignorant as a sheep outside of Hed; I hardly
know, stepping out of your house, which direction
to turn to go home. So I have to ask you if, beyond
Hed, such things happen to land-rulers so fre-
quently that not even the High One is moved by
it."

Duac stirred, but Mathom spoke before he
could. "Never," he said flatly. Cannon, drawn by

21

Heir of Sea and Fire

something smoldering in his eyes, took a step to-
ward the King, his voice breaking-
Then what was it? Who killed him? Where, if
the High One himself doesn't care, can we go for
an answer?"

The King of An looked as though he were swal-
lowing a shout that might have blown the windows
out of the room. He said succinctly, "I swear by
the bones of the unconquered Kings of An, that
if I have to bring it back from the dead I will find
you an answer."

Duac dropped his face in one hand. "You've
done it now." Then he shouted, while Cannon
stared at him, amazed, "And if you go wandering
through this realm like a peddlar and that darkness
that killed Morgon snatches you out of time and
place, don't bother troubling me with your dreams
because I won't look for you!"

"Then look to my land," Mathom said softly.
"Duac, there is a thing in this realm that eats the
minds of land-rulers, that is heaving restlessly un-
der the earth with more hatred in it than even in
the bones of the dead of Hel. And when it rouses
at last, there will not be a blade of grass in this land
untouched by it."

He vanished so quickly that Duac started. He
stood staring at the air where Mathom had gone
out like a dark, windblown flame. Cannon said, ap-
palled, "I'm sorry—I'm sorry—I never dreamed—'*

"It wasn't your fault," Elieu said gently. His face
was bloodless. He put a hand on Raederle's wrist;

she looked at him blindly. He added to Duac, "I'll
stay in Hel. 1*11 do what I can."

Duac ran his hands up his face, up through his
hair. "Thank you." He turned to Cannon. "You
can believe him. He'll find out who killed Morgon
and why, and he'll tell you if he has to drag him-

22

Heir of Sea and Fire

self out of a grave to do it. He has swom that, and
he is bound beyond life."

Cannon shuddered. "Things are much simpler in
Hed. Things die when they're dead."

"I wish they did in An."

Raederle, staring out at the darkening sky be-
yond the windows, touched his arm suddenly.
"Duac..."

An old crow swung over the garden on a drift
of wind, then flapped northward over the rooftops
of Anuin. Duac's eyes followed it as though some-
thing in him were bound to the deliberate, unhur-
ried flight. He said wearily, "I hope he doesn't get
himself shot and cooked for dinner."

Cannon looked at him, startled. Raederle, watch-
ing the black wings shirr the blue-grey twilight,
said, "Someone should go to Caithnard to tell
Rood. I'll go." Then she put her hands over her
mouth and began to cry for a young student in the
White of Beginning Mastery who had once put a
shell to her ear so she could hear the sea.

23

2

(^HE REACHED CAITHNARD FOUR DAYS LATER. THE

f^f sea, green and white as Ylon's memory, rolled
i^ her father's ship into the harbor with an exuber-
ant twist of froth, and she disembarked, after it an-
chored, with relief. She stood watching sailors
unload sacks of seed, plowhorses, sheepskins and
wool from the ship next to them; and, farther
down, from a ship trimmed in orange and gold,
strong, shaggy-hooved horses and gilded chests.
Her own horse was brought to her; her father's
ship-master, Bri Corbett, came down finally, issu-
ing reminders to the crew all the way down the
ramp, to escort her to the College. He swivelled an
eye bleak as an oyster at a sailor who was gaping
at Raederle from under a grain sack, and the sailor
shut his mouth. Then he took the reins of their
mounts, began threading a slow path through the
crowded docks.

"There's Joss Merle, down from Osterland, I'll
wager," he said, and pointed out to Raederle a low,
wide-bellied ship with pine-colored sails. "Packed
to the boom with furs. Why he doesn't spin circles
in that tub, I'll never know. And Acre's Halster

24

Heir of Sea and fire

Tull, there, on the other side of the orange ship.
Your pardon. Lady. To a man who was once a
trader, being at Caithnard in spring is like being in
your father's wine cellar with an empty cup; you
don't know where to look first."

She smiled a little and realized, from the stiffness
of her face, how long it had been since she had last
done it. "I like hearing about them," she said po-
litely, knowing her silence during the past days had
worried him. A cluster of young women were chat-
tering at the ramp of the orange and yellow ship in
front of them. Their long, elegant robes wove, glint-
ing, with the air; they seemed to be pointing every
conceivable direction, their faces bright with excite-
ment as they talked, and her smile deepened
slightly. "Whose is the orange ship?"

The ship-master opened his mouth. Then he
closed it again, frowning. "I've never seen it before.
But I would swear ... No. It couldn't be."

"What?"

'The Morgol's guards. She so rarely leaves
Herun."

"Who are?"

"Those young women. Pretty as flowers, but
show one of them the wrong side of your hand
and you'd wind up in the water halfway to Hed."
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Your par-
don."

"Don't talk about crows, either."

"No." Then he shook his head slowly. "A crow.
And I would have sailed him with my own hands,
if need be, clear up the Ose to Erienstar Mountain."

She stepped around a precarious stack of wine
kegs. Her eyes slid suddenly to his face. "Could
you? Take my father's ship all the way up the
Ose?"

"Well. No. There's not a ship in the world that

25

Heir of Sea and fire

could take the Pass, with all its rapids and falls.
But I would have tried, if he'd asked me."

"How far could he have gone by ship?"

"To Kraal, by sea, then up the Winter River to
join with the Ose near Isig. But it's a slow journey
upriver, especially in spring when the snow waters
are making for the sea. And you'd need a shorter
keel than your father's ship has."

"Oh."

"It's a broad, placid river, the Winter, to the
eye, but it can shift ground so much in a year
you'd swear you were sailing a different river. It's
like your father; you never quite know what it's go-
ing to do next." He flushed deeply, but she only
nodded, watching the forest of genially bobbing
masts.

"Devious."

They mounted when they reached the street and
rode through the bustling city, up the road that
wound above the white beaches to the ancient Col-
lege. There were a few students sprawled on the
ground, reading with their chins on their fists; they
did not bother to look up until the ship-master
made the rare gesture of knocking. A student in
the Red with a harried expression on his face swung
open the door and inquired rather abruptly of his
business.

"We have come to see Rood of An."

"Tf I were you, I would try a tavern. The Lost
Sailor, by the wharf, is a good bet, or the King's
Oyster—" He saw Raederle, then, mounted behind
the ship-master, and took a step toward her. "I'm
sorry, Raederle. Will you come in and wait?"

She put a name finally to the lean, red-haired
riddler. "Tes. I remember. You taught me how to
whistle."

His face broke into a pleased smile. "Yes. I was
in the Blue of Partial Beginning, and you were—

26

Heir of Sea and Fire

you . . . Anyway," he added at the ship-master's
expression, "the Masters' library is empty, if you
would care to wait,"

"No, thank you," she said. "I know where the
Lost Sailor is, but where is the King's Oyster?"

"On Cutters Street. You remember; it used to be
the Sea-Witch's Eye."

"Who," Bri Corbett barked, "in Hel's name do
you think you're talking to? How would she know
the name or whereabouts of any inn or tavern in
any city anywhere in this realm?"

"I know," Raederle said with some asperity,
"because every time I come here Rood either has
his nose in a book or a cup. I was hoping this time
it would be a book." She stopped, then, uneasy,
crumpling the reins in her hands. "Has he—have
you heard the news out of Hed?"

"Yes." His head bowed; he repeated softly,
"Yes. A trader brought the news last night. The
College is in a turmoil. I haven't seen Rood since
then, and I've been up all night with the Masters."
She sighed, and his head came. up. "I would help
you look, but I'm due down at the docks to escort
the Morgol to the Colleee."

"It's all right. We'll find him."

"I'll find him," Bri Corbett said with emphasis.
"Please, Lady, the Caithnard taverns are no place
for you."

She turned her horse. "Having a father flying
around in the shape of a crow gives you a certain
disregard for appearances. Besides, I know which
ones are his favorites."

They looked in them all without success. By the
time they had asked a half a dozen of them, they
had an eager following of young students who
knew Rood, and who went through each tavern
with methodical and startling thoroughness. Rae-
derle, watching them through a window as they

27

Heir of Sea and Fire

checked under the tables, murmured in amaze-
ment, "When does he find time to study?"

Bri Corbett took off his hat, fanned his sweat-
ing face with it. "I don't know. Let me take you
back to the ship.'*

"No."

"You're tired. And you must be hungry. And
your father will trim my sails for me if he ever
hears of this. Ill find Rood and bring him to the
ship."

"I want to find mm. I want to talk to him."

The students jostled without their quarry back
out of the inn. One of them called to her, "The
Heart's Hope Inn on Fish-Market Street. We'll try
that."

"Fish-Market Street?"

*The south horn of the harbor. You might,** he
added thoughtfully, "want to wait for us here."

"TO come." she said.

The street, under the hot eye of the afternoon
sun, seemed to shimmer with the smell of fish lying
gutted and glassy-eyed in the market stalls. The
ship-master groaned softly. Raederle. thinking of
the journey they had made from the contemplative
peace of the College through the maze of Caith-
nard to the most noisome street in the city, littered
with assorted fishheads, backbones and spitting
cats, began to laugh weakly.

"Heart's Hope Inn..."

*There it is," Bri Corbett said heavily as the stu-
dents disappeared into it. He seemed almost be-
yond speech. The inn was small, tired, settling on
its hindquarters with age, but beyond its dirty,
mullioned windows there seemed to be an unwar-
ranted, very colorful collage of activity. The ship-
master put his hand on the neck of Raederle's
mount. He looked at her. "No more. I'll take you
back now."

28

Heir of Sea and Fire

She stared wearily at the worn stone threshold
of the inn. "I don't know where else to look.
Maybe the beaches. I want to find him, though.
Sometimes there's one thing worse than knowing
precisely what Rood is thinking, and that's not
knowing what he's thinking."

"I'll find him, I swear it. You—" The inn door
opened abruptly, and he turned his head. One of
the students who had been helping them was pre-
cipitated bodily to the cobble-stones under the nose
of Bri Corbett's horse. He staggered to his feet and
panted, "He's there."

"Rood?" Raederle exclaimed.

"Rood." He touched a comer of his bleeding
mouth with the tip of his tongue and added, "You
should see it. It's awesome."

He flung the door wide and plunged back into a
turmoil of color, a maelstrom of blue, white and
gold that whirled and collided against a flaming
core of red. The ship-master stared at it almost
wistfully. Raederle dropped her face in her hands.
Then she slid tiredly off her horse. A robe of In-
termediate Mastery, minus its wearer, shot out over
her head, drifted to a gold puddle on the stones.
She went to the door, the noise in the tavern
drowning the ship-master's sudden, gargled protest.
Rood was surfacing in his bright, torn robe from
the heaving tangle of bodies.

His face looked meditative, austere, in spite of
the split on one cheekbone, as if he were quietly
studying instead of dodging fists in a tavern brawl.
She watched, fascinated, as a goose, plucked and
headless, flapped across the air above his head and
thumped into a wall. Then she called to him. He
did not hear her, one of his knees occupying the
small of a student's back while he shook another, a
little wiry student in the White, off his arm onto
the outraged inn-keeper- A powerful student in the

29

Heir of Sea and Fire

Gold, with a relentless expression on his face,
caught Rood from behind by the neck and one
wrist, and said politely, "Lord, will you stop before
I take you apart and count your bones?" Rood,
blinking a little at the grip on his neck, moved
abruptly; the student loosed him and sat down
slowly on the wet floor, bent over himself and
gasping. There was a general attack then, from
the small group of students who had come with
Raederle. Raederle, wincing, lost sight of Rood
again; he rose finally near her, breathing deeply,
his hands full of a brawny fisherman who looked
as massive and impervious as the great White Bull
of Aum. Rood's fist, catching him somewhere un-
der his ribs, barely troubled nun. Raederle watched
while he gathered the throat of Rood*s robe in one
great hand, clenched the other and drew it back,
and then- she lifted a wine flagon in her hand, one
that she could not remember picking up, and
brought it down on the head of the bull.

He let go of Rood and sat down bunking in a
shower of wine and glass. She stared down at him,
appalled. Then she looked at Rood, who was star-
ing at her.

His stillness spread through the inn until only
private, fierce struggles in comers still flared. He
was, she saw with surprise, sober as a stone. Faces,
blurred, battle-drunk, were turning towards her all
over the room; the innkeeper, holding two heads
he was about to bang together, was gazing at her,
open-mouthed, and she thought of the dead, sur-
prised fish in the stalls. She dropped the neck of
the flagon; the clink of it breaking sounded frail jn
the silence. She flushed hotly and said to the statue
that was Rood, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to inter-
rupt. But Fve been looking all over Caithnard for
you, and I didn*t want him to hit you before I could
talk to you."

30

Heir of Sea and Fire

He moved finally, to her relief. He turned, lost
his balance briefly, caught it, and said to the inn-
keeper, "Send the bill to my father."

He stepped off the porch with a jar he must
have felt to his teeth, reached for Raederle's horse
and clung to it, his face against the saddlecloth a
moment before he spoke to her. Then he lifted his
head, blinked at her. "You're still here. I didn't
think Fd been drinking. What in Hel's name are
you doing standing in all those fishbones?"

"What in Hel's name do you think I'm doing
here?" she demanded. Her voice, strained, low, let
free finally all the grief, confusion and fear she
felt. "I need you."

He straightened, slid an arm around her shoul-
ders, held her tightly, and said to the ship-master,
who had dropped his head in his hands and was
shaking it, "Thank you. Will you send someone to
take my things out of the College?"

Bri Corbett's head came up. "Everything,
Lord?"

"Everything. Every deaf word and dry wine
stain in that room. Everything." '

He took Raederle to a quiet inn in the heart of
the city. Seated with a flagon of wine in front of
them, he watched her drink in silence, his hands
linked over his own cup. He said finally, softly, "I
don't believe he is dead."

"Then what do you believe? That he was simply
driven mad and lost the land-rule? That's a com-
forting thought. Is that why you were tearing that
inn apart?"

He shifted, his eyes falling. "No." He reached
out, put his hand on her wrist, and her fingers,
molding the metal of her cup, loosened and came
to rest on the table. She whispered, "Rood, that's
the terrible thing I can't get out of my mind. That
while I was waiting, while we were all waiting, safe

31

Heir of Sea and Fire

and secure, thinking he was with the High One, he
was alone with someone who was picking his mind
apart as you would pick apart the petals of a closed
flower. And the High One did nothing."

"I know. One of the traders brought the news
up to the College yesterday. The Masters were
stunned. Morgon unearthed such a vipers' nest of
riddles, and then so inconveniently died without
answering them. Which put the entire problem at
their door, since the College exists to answer the
answerable. The Masters are set face-to-face with
their own strictures. This riddle is literally deadly,
and they began wondering exactly how interested
they are in truth." He took a sip of his wine, looked
at her again. "Do you know what happened?"

"What?"

"Eight old Masters and nine Apprentices argued
all night about who would travel to Erienstar
Mountain to speak to the High One. Every one of
them wanted to go."

She touched the torn sleeve of his robe. "You're
an Apprentice."

"No. I told Master Tel yesterday I was leaving.
Then I—then I went to the beach and sat up all
night, not doing anything, not even thinking. I
came into Caithnard finally and stopped at that inn
for something to eat, and while—while I was eat-
ing, I remembered an argument I had with Morgon
before he left about not facing his own destiny, not
living up to his own standards when all he wanted
to do was make beer and read books. So he went
and found his destiny in some remote comer of the,
realm, driven, by the sound of it, mad as Peven.
So. I decided to take the inn apart. Nail by nail.
And then go and answer the riddles he couldn't
answer."

She gave a little, unsurprised nod. "I thought you

32

Heir of Sea and Fire

might. Well, that's another piece of news I have to
give you."

He touched his cup again, said warily, "What?'*

"Our father left An five days ago to do just that.
He—" She winced as his hands went down sharply
on the table, causing a trader at the next table to
choke on his beer.

"He left An? For how long?"

"He didn't... He swore by the ancient Kings to
find what it was that killed Morgon. That long.
Rood, don't shout."

He swallowed it, rendered himself momentarily
wordless. "The old crow."

"Yes ... He left Duac at Anuin to explain to
the lords. Our father was going to send for you to
help Duac, but he wouldn't say why, and Duac
was furious that he wanted you to abandon your
studies."

"Did Duac send you to bring me home?"

She shook her head. "He didn't even want me to
tell you. He swore that he^ wouldn't send for you
until the wraiths of Hel crossed the threshold at
Anuin."

"He did that?" Rood said with disgusted wonder.
**He's getting as irrational as our father. He would
have let me sit in Caithnard studying for a rank
that suddenly has very little meaning while he tries
to keep order among the living and dead of An. I'd
rather go home and play riddle-games with the
dead kings."

"Will you?"

"What?"

"Go home? It's a—it's a smaller thing to ask of
you than going to Erienstar Mountain, but Duac
will need you. And our father—"

"Is a very capable and subtle old crow . . ." He
was silent, frowning, his thumbnail picking at a
flaw in his cup. He leaned back in his chair finally

33

Heir of Sea and Fire

and sighed. "All right. I can't let Duac face that
alone. At least I can be there to tell him which
dead king is which, it nothing else. There's nothing
I could do in Brienstar Mountain that our father
wouldn't do, and probably do better. I would give
the Black of Mastery to see the world out of his
eyes. But if he gets into trouble, I don't promise
not to look for him."

"Good. Because that's another thing Duac said
he wouldn't do."

His mouth crooked. "Duac seems to have lost
his temper. I can't say that I blame him."

"Rood . . . Have you ever known our father to
be wrong?"

"A hundred times."

"No. Not irritating, frustrating, annoying, incom-
prehensible and exasperating. Just wrong."

"Why?'*

She shrugged slightly. "When he heard about
Morgon—that's the first time in my life I can re-
member seeing him surprised. He—"

"What are you thinking about?" He leaned for-
ward abruptly. "That vow he made to marry you
to Morgon?"

"Yes. I always wondered a little, if it might have
been foreknowledge. I thought maybe that's why
he was so surprised."

She heard him swallow; his eyes, speculative, in-
drawn, reminded her of Mathom. "I don't know.
I wonder. If so—"

**Then Morgon must be alive."

"But where? In what circumstances? And why
in the name of the roots of the world won't the
High One help him? That's the greatest riddle of
them all: the miasma of silence coming out of that
mountain."

"Well, if our father goes there, it won't be so si-
lent." She shook her head wearily. "I don't know.

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Heir of Sea and Fire

I don't know which to hope for. If he is alive, can
you imagine what a stranger he must be even to
himself? And he must—be must wonder why none
of us who loved him tried to help him."

Rood opened his mouth, but the answer he
would have given her seemed to wither on his
tongue. He brought the heels of his hands up to his
eyes. "Yes. Fm tired. If he is alive—"

"Our father will find him. You said you would
help Duac."

"All right. But ... All right." He dropped his
hands, stared into his wine. Then he pushed his
chair back slowly. "We'd better go; I have books
to pack."

She followed him again into the bright, noisy
street. It seemed, for a moment, to be flowing past
her in a marvellous, incomprehensible pattern of
color, and she stopped, blinking. Rood put a hand
on her arm. She realized then that she had nearly
stepped in front of a small, elegant procession. A
woman led it. She sat tall and beautiful on a black
mount, her dark hair braided and jewelled like a
crown on her head, her light, shapeless green coat
of some cloth that seemed to flow like a mist into
the wind. Six young women whom Raederle had
seen at the dock followed her in two lines, their
robes, saddlecloths and reins of rich, vivid colors,
their spears of ash inlaid with silver. One of them,
riding close behind the Morgol, had the same black
hair and fine, clean cast of face. Behind the guard
came eight men on foot carrying two chests painted
and banded with copper and gold; they were fol-
lowed by eight students from the College, riding
according to their ranks and the color of their
robes: scarlet, gold, blue and white. The woman,
riding as serenely through the press as through a
meadow, glanced down suddenly as she passed the
inn; at the brief, vague touch of the gold eyes,

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Heir of Sea and Fire

Raederie felt the odd shock, unfamiliar and deep
within her, of a recognition of power.

Rood breathed beside her, "The Morgol of
Herun..."

He moved so quickly after the procession passed,
gripping her wrist and pulling her, that she nearly
lost her balance. She protested, "Rood!" as he ran
to catch up with it, tugging her past amazed spec-
tators, but he was shouting himself.

"Tes! Tes!" He caught up finally, Raederie
flushed and irritated behind him, with the red-
robed scholar. Tes stared down at him.

"What did you do? Fall face first in an empty
wine bottle?"

Tes, let me take your place. Please.'* He caught
at the reins, but Tes flicked them out of reach.

"Stop that. Do you want us to get out of pace?
Rood, are you drunk?"

"No. I swear it. I'm sober as a dead man. She's
bringing IfFs books; you can see them any time,
but I'm going home tonight—"

"You're what?"

"I have to leave. Please."

"Rood," Tes said helplessly. "I would, but do
you realize what you look like?"

"Change with me. Tes. Please. Please."

Tes sighed. He pulled up sharply, tangling the
line of horsemen behind him, slid off his horse and
pulled wildly at the buttons on his robe. Rood tore
his own robe over his head and thrust himself into
Tes's, while the riders behind them made caustic
remarks about his assertion of sobriety. He leaped
onto Tes*s horse and reached down for Raederie.

"Rood, my horse—"

"Tes can ride it back up. It's the chestnut back
there at the inn; the saddlecloth has her initials on
it. Come up—" She put her foot on bis in the stir-
rup and he pulled her urgently into the saddle in

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Heir of Sea and Fire

front of him, urging the horse into a quick trot to
catch up with the second, receding line of scholars.
He shouted back, "Tes, thank you!"

Raederie, clenching her teeth against the jog of
cobblestones, refrained from comment until he had
brought the small line of riders behind him back
into the sedately moving procession. Then she said,
shifting down from the hard edge of the saddle,

*tDo you have any idea of how ridiculous that must
have looked?'*

**Do you know what we're about to see? Private
books of the wizard Iff, opened. The Morgol
opened them herself. She's donating them to the
College; the Masters have been talking of nothing
else for weeks. Besides, I've always been curious
about her. They say all information passes eventu-
ally through the Morgol's house and that the High
One's harpist loves her."

"Deth?" She mulled over the thought curiously.

*Then I wonder if she knows where he is. No one
else seems to."

"If anyone does, she does.**

Raederie was silent, remembering the strange in-
sight she had glimpsed in the Morgol's eyes, and
her own unexpected recognition of it. They left the
noisy, crowded streets behind them gradually; the
road widened, rising toward the high cliff and the
dark, wind-battered college. The Morgol, glancing
back, set a slower pace uphill for the men carry-
ing the chests. Raederie, looping out over the
ocean, saw Hed partly misted under a blue-grey
spring storm. She wondered suddenly, intensely, as
she had never wondered before, what lay at the
heart of the small, simple island that it had pro-
duced out of its life and history the Star-Bearer.
And then, briefly, it seemed she could see beneath
the rain mists on the island to where a young man
colored and thewed like an oak, was crossing the

37

Heir of Sea and Fire

yard from a barn to a house» his yellow head bent
under the rain.

She moved abruptly, murmuring; Rood put a
hand up to steady her. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. I don't know. Rood—"

"What?"

"Nothing."

One of the guards detached herself then from the
line, rode back towards them. She turned her horse
again to ride beside them in a single, flowing move-
ment of mount and rider that seemed at once con-
trolled and instinctive. She said politely, appraising
them, "The Morgol, who was introduced to the
students at the docks, is interested in knowing who
joined her escort in place of Tes."

"I am Rood of An," Rood said. "This is my
sister, Raederie. And I am—or I was until last
night—an Apprentice at the College."

"Thank you." She paused a little, looking at
Raederie; something young, oddly surprised, broke
through the dark, preoccupied expression in her
eyes. She added unexpectedly, "I am Lyraluthuin.
The daughter of the Morgol."

She cantered back to the head of the procession.
Rood, his eyes on the tall, lithe figure, gave a soft
whistle.

"I wonder if the Morgol needs an escort back to
Herun."

"You're going to Anuin."

**I could go to Anuin by way of Herun . . . She's
coming back."

"The Morgol," Lyra said, rejoining them, "would
like very much to speak with you."

Rood pulled out of line, following her up the hill.
Raederie, sitting half-on and half-off the saddle-
bow, clinging to Rood and the horse's mane as she
jounced, felt slightly silly. But the Morgol, her face

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Heir of Sea and Fire

lighting with a smile, seemed only pleased to see
them.

"So you are Mathom's children," she said. "I
'have always wanted to meet your father. You
joined my escort rather precipitously, and I did not
expect at all to find in it the second most beautiful
woman of An."

"I came to Caithnard to give Rood some news,"
Raederie said simply. The Morgol's smile faded;

she nodded.

"I see. We heard the news only this morning,
when we docked. It was unexpected," She looked
at Rood. "Lyra tells me that you are no longer an
Apprentice at the College. Have you lost faith in
riddle-mastery?"

*'No. Only my patience." His voice sounded
husky; Raederie, glancing at him, found that he
was blushing, as far as she knew, for the first time
in his life.

The Morgol said softly. "Yes. So have I. I have
brought seven of IfTs books and twenty others that
have been collected in the library at the City of
Circles through the centuries to give to the College,
and a piece of news that, like the news from Hed,
should stir even the dust in the Masters' library."

"Seven," Rood breathed. "You opened seven of
Iffs books?"

"No. Only two. The wizard himself, the day that
we left for Caithnard, opened the other five."

Rood wrenched at his reins; Raederie swayed
against him. The guard behind- him broke their
lines abruptly to avoid bumping into him; the men
bearing the chests came to a quick halt, and the
students, who had not been paying attention, reined
into one another, cursing. The Morgol stopped.

"Iff is alive?" He seemed oblivious of the mild
chaos in his wake.

"Yes. He had hidden himself in my guard. He

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Heir of Sea and Fire

had been in the Herun court, in one guise or an-
other, for seven centuries, for he said it was, even
in its earlier days, a place of scholarship. He
said—" Her voice caught; they heard, when she
continued, the rare touch of wonder in it. "He said
he had been the old scholar who helped me to open
those two books. When the scholar died, he be-
came my falconer, and then a guard. But that he
didn't care for. He took his own shape on the day
they say Morgon died."

"Who freed him?" Rood whispered.

"He didn't know."

Raederie put her hands to her mouth, suddenly
no longer seeing the Morgol's face, but the an-
cient, strong-boned face of the pig-woman of Hel,
with the aftermath of a great and terrible darkness
in her eyes.

"Rood." she whispered. "Raith's pig-woman. She
heard some news Elieu brought from Isig about the
Star-Bearer, and she shouted a shout that scattered
the pig herds of Hel like thistledown. Then she
disappeared. She named . . . she named one boar
Aloil."

She heard the draw of his breath. "Nun?"

"Maybe the High One freed them.'"

"The High One." Something in the Morgol's
tone, thoughtful as it was, reminded Raederie of
Mathom. "I don't know why he would have helped
the wizards and not the Star-Bearer, but I am sure,
if that is the case, that he had his reasons." She
glanced down the road, saw the lines in order and
resumed her pace. They had nearly reached the
top of the hill; the grounds, shadowed and gilded
with oak leaves, stretched beyond the road's end.

Rood glanced at the Morgol, asked with unusual
hesitancy, "May I ask you something?"

"Of course, Rood."

"Do you know where the High One's harpist is?'*

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Heir of Sea and Fire

\

The Morgol did not answer for a moment, her
eyes on the bulky, rough-hewn building whose win-
dows and doors were brilliant with color as the stu-
dents crowded to watch her arrival. Then she
looked down at her hands. "No. I have had no
word from him."

The Masters came out, black as crows among
the swirl of red and gold, to meet the Morgol. The
chests were carried up to the library, the books
examined lovingly by the Masters as they listened
with wonder to the Morgol's tale of how she had
opened the two. Raederie glanced at one set on the
broad stand made for it. The black writing looked
pinched and ascetic, but she found unexpectedly,
turning a page, precise, delicate drawings of wild
flowers down the margin. It made her think again
of the pig-woman, smoking her pipe with her bare
feet among the oak roots, and she smiled a little,
wonderingly. Then the one still figure in the room
caught her eye: Lyra, standing by the door in a
habitual stance, her back straight, her feet apart,
as if she were keeping watch over the room. But
her eyes were smudged with a blackness, and she
was seeing nothing.

The room fell silent as the Morgol told the Mas-
ters of the reappearance of the wizard Iff. She
asked Raederie to repeat the tale of the pig-woman,
and Raederie complied, giving them also the star-
tling news that had brought Elieu down from Isig.
That, no one had heard, not even the Morgol, and
there was an outburst of amazement after she fin-
ished. They asked questions in their kind voices
she could not answer; they asked questions among
themselves no one could answer. Then the Morgol
spoke again. What she said Raederie did not hear,
only the silence that was passed like a tangible
tiling from Master to Master, from group to group
in the room until there was not a sound in the room

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Heir of Sea and Fire

except one very old Master's breathing. The
Morgol's expression had not changed; only her eyes
had grown watchful.

"Master Ohm" said a frail, gentle Master whose
name was Tel, "was with us at all times until last
spring, when he journeyed to Lungold for a year of
peaceful study and contemplation. He could have
gone anywhere he wished; he chose the ancient city
of the wizards. His letters to us have been carried
by the traders from Lungold." He paused, his pas-
sionless, experienced eyes on her face. "El, you are
as known and respected for your intelligence and
integrity as is this College; if there is any criticism
you would make of it, don't hesitate to tell us."

"It is the integrity of the College that I question,
Master Tel," the Morgol said softly, "in the person
of Master Ohm, who I doubt you will ever see
within these walls again. And I question the intel-
ligence of us all, myself included. Shortly before I
left Herun, I had a visit from the King of Oster-
land, who came very simply and privately. He
wondered if I had news of Morgon of Hed. He said
he had gone to Isig, but not to Erienstar Mountain,
for the mists and storms were terrible through the
Pass, too terrible even for a vesta. While, he was
with me, he told me something that reinforced sus-
picions that I have had since my last visit here. He
said that Morgon had told him that the last word
the wizard Suth had spoken as he lay dying in
Morgon's arms, was Ohm's name. Ohm. Ghistesl-
wchlohm. The Founder of Lungold, Suth accused
with his last breath.*' She paused, her eyes moving
from face to motionless face. "I asked Har if he
had taken the question to the College, and he
laughed and said that the Masters of Knowledge
could recognize neither the Star-Bearer nor the
Founder of Lungold."

She paused again, but. there was no protest, no

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Heir of Sea and Fire

excuse from the men listening. Her head bowed
slightly. "Master Ohm has been in Lungold since
spring. The High One's harpist has not been seen
since then, and from all accounts, the High One
himself has been silent since then. The death of the
Prince of Hed freed the wizards from the power
held over them. I suggest that the Founder of
Lungold freed the wizards because in killing the
Star-Bearer, he no longer needed to fear their
power or interference. I also suggest that if this
College is to continue to justify its existence, it
should examine, very carefully and very quickly,
the heart of this impossible, imperative tangle of
riddles."

There was a sound like a sigh through the room;

it was the sea wind, searching the walls, like a bird,
to get free. Lyra turned abruptly; the door had
closed behind her before anyone realized she had
moved. The Morgol's eyes flicked to the door, then
back to the Masters, who had begun to speak
again, their voices murmuring, hushed. They be-
gan to group themselves around' the Morgol. Rood
stood with his hands flat on one of the desks, lean-
ing over a book, but his face was bloodless, his
shoulders rigid, and Raederle knew he was not see-
ing it. Raederle took a step towards him. Then she
turned, eased through the Masters to the door and
went out.

She passed students in the hall waiting, eager
and curious, for a glimpse of the books; she
scarcely heard their voices. She barely felt the
wind, grown cool and restless in the early spring
dusk, pulling at her as she walked through the
grounds. She saw Lyra standing beneath a tree at
the cliff's edge, her back to the College. Something
in the taut set of her shoulders, her bowed head,
drew Raederle towards her. As she crossed the

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Heir of Sea and fire

grounds, Lyra's spear lifted, spun a circle of light
in the air, and plunged point down into the earth.

She turned at a rustle of leaf she heard under
the rustle of wind-tossed trees. Raederie stopped.
They looked at one another silently. Then Lyra,
giving shape to the grief and anger in her eyes, said
almost chaUengingly, "I would have gone with him.
I would have protected him with my life."

Raederie's eyes moved away from her to the sea
. . . the sea far below them, the half-moon of har-
bor it had hollowed, the jut of land to the north be-
yond which lay other lands, other harbors. Her
hands closed. "My father's ship is here at Caith-
nard. I can take it as far as Kraal. I want to go to
Erienstar Mountain. Will you help me?"

Lyra's lips parted. Raederie saw a brief flash of
surprise and uncertainty in her face. Then she
gripped her spear, pulled it again out of the earth
and gave a little emphatic nod. "I'll come."

44

3

T~3TX HEN LYRA TOOK THE MORGOL'S GUARDS INTO

ttfl | Caithnard later that evening to look for lodg-
^^^^l. ings» Raederie followed them. She had left, in
front of Rood's horse in the College stable, a small
tangle of bright gold thread she had loosened from
her cuff. Within the tangle, in her mind, she had
placed her name and an image of Rood stepping
on it, or his horse, and then riding without thought
every curve and twist of thread through the streets
of Caithnard until, reaching the end, he would
blink free of the spell and find that neither the ship
Dor the tide had waited for him. He would suspect
her, she knew, but mere would be nothing he could
do but ride back to Anuia, while Bri Corbett, under
the urgings of the Morgol's guard, sailed north.

The guard had not been told. She heard frag-
ments of their conversation, their laughter under
the hollow, restless boom of the sea as she rode
behind them down the hill. It was nearly dark; the
wind dulled her horse's steps, but still she kept, as
Lyra had advised, a distance between her and the
guard. She felt, all the way into Caithnard, the
touch of the Morgol's eyes at her back.

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Heir of Sea and Fire

She caught up with the guard at a quiet side
street near the docks. They were looking a little
bewildered; one girl said, "Lyra, there's nothing but
warehouses here." Lyra, without answering, turned
her head and saw Raederle. Raederle met her
brief, searching gaze, then Lyra looked at the
guard.. Something in her face quieted them. Her
hand tightened and loosened on her spear. Then
she lifted her chin.

"I am leaving tonight for Erienstar Mountain
with Raederle of An. I am doing this without per-
mission from the Morgol; I am deserting the guard.
I couldn't protect the Prince of Hed while he was
alive; all I can do now is find out from the High
One who killed him and where that one is. We're
sailing to Kraal in her father's ship. The ship-
master has not yet been informed. I can't . . . Wait
a minute. I can't ask you to help me. I can't hope
that you would do such a shameful, disgraceful
thing as leaving the Morgol alone, unguarded in a
strange city. I don't know how I can do it. But what
I do know is that we can't steal a ship by our-
selves."

There was a silence when she stopped, but for a
door rattling back and forth somewhere in the
wind. The guards' faces were expressionless. Then
one of them, a girl with a silky blond braid and a
sweet, sunburned face, said fiercely, "Lyra, are you
out of your mind?" She looked at Raederle. "Are
you both out of your minds?"

"No," Raederle said. "There's not a trader in the
realm who would take us, but my father's ship-
master has already half an inclination to go. He
could never be persuaded, but he could be forced.
He respects you, and once he grasps the situation,
I don't think hell argue much."

"But what will the Morgol say? What will your
own people say?"

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"I don't know. I don't care."

The girl shook her head, speechless. "Lyra—"

"Imer, you have three choices. You can leave us
here and go back to the College and inform the
Morgol- You can take us by force back to the Col-
lege, which would greatly exceed your duty and
would offend the people of An, not to mention me.
You can come with us. The Morgol has twenty
guards waiting in Hlurle to escort her back to
Crown City; all she has to do is send word to them,
and they'll Join her at Caithnard. She'll be safe.
What she will say to you, however, if she finds
that you have let me go off by myself to Erienstar
Mountain, I would not like to hear."

Another girl, with a dark, plain face, and the
rough timbre of the Herun hill towns in her voice,
said reasonably, "She'll think we've all deserted."

"Goh, I'll tell her it was my responsibility."

"You can hardly tell her you coerced us all.
Lyra, stop being a fool and go back to the Col-
lege," Imer said.

"No. And if you touch me, I will resign imme-
diately from the guard. You'll have no right to use
force against the land-heir of Herun." She paused,
her eyes moving from face to face. Someone
sighed.

"How far do you think you'll get, with the
Morgol's ship half a day behind you? She'll see
you."

"Then what have you got to worry about? You
know you can't let me go to Erienstar Mountain
by myself."

"Lyra. We are the chosen guard of the Morgol.
We are not thieves. We are not kidnappers."

"Then go back to the College." The contempt
in her voice held them motionless. "You have the
choice. Go back to Herun with the Morgol You
know as much as anyone what the Star-Bearer

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Heir of Sea and Fire

was. You know how he died, while the world went
about minding its own business. If no one demands
answers from the High One about the wizard who
killed him, about the shape-changers, then I think
one day much too soon a hundred guards at Crown
City will not be enough to protect the Morgol from
disaster. If I have to walk to Erienstar Mountain,
I'll do it. Will you help me or not?"

They were silent again, lined against her, Rae-
derle saw, like warriors in a field, their faces shad-
owed, unreadable. Then a small, black-haired girl
with delicate, slanting brows said resignedly, "Well,
if we can't force you to stay, maybe the ship-
master will bring you to your senses. How do you
purpose to steal his ship?"

She told them. There was grumbling, argument
over the method, but it lacked fire; their voices
died away finally. They sat waiting resignedly.
Lyra turned her horse. "All right, then."

They fell into casual position behind her. Rae-
derie, riding beside her, saw in a wash of inn-light,
that Lyra's hands were shaking on the reins. She
frowned down at her own reins a moment, then
reached across to touch Lyra. The dark head
lifted; Lyra said, 'This is the easy part, stealing a
ship."

"It's hardly stealing. It's my father's ship, and
he's in no position to quibble. I don't—there's no
• one in An who will judge me, but you have your
own kind of honor."

"It's all right. It's just that I've trained for seven
years in the Morgol's guard, and in Herun I have
thirty guards under my command. It goes against
all my training to leave the Morgol like this, tak-
ing her guard with me. It's unheard of."
"She'll be safe at the College."
"I know. But what will she think of me?" She
slowed her horse as they came to the end of the

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Heir of Sea and Fire

street and saw the King's ship in the moonlight,
puilmg restlessly at its anchor. There was a light
in the charthouse. They heard a thud from the
deck, and someone said, panting, "That's the last
of Rood's books. If we all don't find ourselves,
along with them, at the bottom of the sea, I'll eat
one, iron bindings and all. I'm going for a quick
cup before we sail."

Lyra glanced behind her; two of the guards dis-
mounted, went soundlessly after him as he strode
whistling down the dock. The others followed her
and Raederie to the ramp of the ship. Raederle,
hearing only the slough of water, the rattle of chain
and her own quiet steps, glanced behind once to
make sure they were still there. She felt, at their
eerie silence, as though she were followed by
ghosts. One slipped away at the top of the ramp
to check the deck of the ship; the other two went
with Lyra to the hold. Raederie waited a few mo-
ments for them to do their work beneath the deck.
Then she entered the chart house, where Bri
Corbett was exchanging gossip and a cup of wine
with a trader. He glanced up, surprised.

"You didn't ride down alone, did you? Did Rood
bring the horses up?"

"No. He's not coming."

"He's not coming? Then what does he want
done with all his things?" He eyed her suspiciously.
"He's not going off somewhere on his own like bis
father, is he?"

"No." She swallowed the dryness from her
mouth. "I am. I'm going to Erienstar Mountain;

you will take me as far as Kraal. If you don't, the
Morgol's ship-master, I'm sure, can be persuaded
to take over the ship."

"What?" Bri Corbett rose, his grey brows lifting
to his hairline. The trader was grinning "Someone
else sail your father's ship? Over my dead and

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Heir of Sea and Fire

buried bones, maybe. You're distraught, child,
come and sit—" Lyra, spear in hand, slid like a
wraith into the light, and he stopped. Raederie
could hear his breathing. The trader stopped grin-
ning. Lyra said, "Most of the crew was below.
Imer and Goh have them under guard. They
weren't taken seriously at first, until one man got
pinned to a ladder with an arrow in his sleeve and
his pant leg—he's not hurt—and Goh shot the
cork out of one of the wine kegs with another.
They're pleading for someone to put the cork back
in."

**That's their ration of wine for the journey,"
Bri Corbett breathed. "Good Herun wine." The
trader had edged to his feet. Lyra's eyes moved
to him and he stilled.

Raederie said, "Two guards followed the man
who left the ship; they will be finding the rest of
your crew. Bri, you wanted to go to Brienstar
Mountain anyway. You said so."

"You were—you weren't taking me seriously 1"
"You might not be serious. I am."

"But your father! He'll curse the teeth out of my
head when he finds out I'm taking his daughter
and the land-heir of Herun on some misbegotten
journey. The Morgol will have Herun up in arms."

"If you don't want to captain the ship, well find
someone who will. There are plenty of men in the
taverns, on t^ie docks, who could be paid to take
your place. If you want, well leave you tied some-
where along with this trader, to assure everyone of
your complete innocence."

"Roust me from my own ship!" His voice
cracked.

"Listen to me, Bri Corbett," she said evenly. "I
lost a friend I loved and a man I might have mar-
ried somewhere between Isig Pass and Erienstar
Mountain. Will you tell me what I have to go

50

Heir of Sea and Fire

home for? More endless silence and waiting at
Anuin? The Lords of the Three Portions bickering
over me while the world cracks apart Hke Mor-
gon's mind? Raith of Hel?"

"I know." His hand went out tp her. "I under-
stand. But you can't—"

"You said you would sail this ship to the High
One's doorstep if my father had asked. Did you
ever think that my father might find himself in the
same danger Morgon was in? Do you want to sail
comfortably back to Anuin and leave him there? H
you force us by some chance off this ship, well go
by other means. Will you want to go to Anuin and
give Duac that news, on top of everything else? I
have questions. I want answers to them. I am go-
ing to Erienstar Mountain, Do you want to sail
this ship for us, or shall I find someone else to do
it?"

Bri Corbett brought his clenched fist down on
the table. He stared at it a moment, red, wordless.
Then his head lifted again slowly; he gazed at Rae-
derie as if she had just come in the door and he
had forgotten why. "You'll need another ship at
Kraal. I told you that."

"I know." Her voice shook slightly at the look
in his eyes.

"I can find you one at Kraal. You'll let me take
it up the Winter?"

"I'd rather ... I'd rather have you than any-
one."

"We don't have supplies enough for Kraal. We'll
have to stop at Caerweddin, maybe, or Hlurle."

"I've never seen Caerweddin."

"It's a beautiful city; Kraal at Isig—lovely
places. I haven't seen them since . . . We'll need
more wine. The crew's a good one, the best I've
ever sailed with, but they worry about essentials."

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"I have some money, and some Jewels. I thought
I might need them."

"You did." He drew a long breath. "You remind
me of someone. Someone devious." The trader
made an inarticulate protest, and Bri's eyes went,
to Lyra. "What,** he inquired respectfully, "would
you like to do with that one? You let him go, and
he'll be pounding at the College door before we
can get out of the harbor."

Lyra considered him. "We could tie him, leave
him on the docks. They'll find him in the morn-
ing.**

"I won't say a word," the trader said, and Bri
laughed.

Raederle said quickly, "Bri, he is the one wit-
ness to the fact that you aren't responsible for this;

will you remember your own reputation?'*

"Lady, either I'm going because half a dozen
half-grown women took over my ship, or because
Fm mad enough to want to take Mathom*s daugh-
ter and the Morgol's land-heir up to the high point
of the world by themselves. Either way, I*m not
left with much m the way of a reputation. You'd
better let me see if my crew's all here; we should
get underway."

They found part of the crew arriving, escorted
up the ramp by two of the Morgol's guards. The
men, at the sight of Bri Corbett, broke into be-
wildered explanations; Bri said calmly, "We're be-
ing kidnapped. You'll be getting extra pay for the
privilege. We're heading north. See who is missing,
and ask the rest of the men in the hold if they
would kindly come up and do their jobs. Tell them
to cork the wine; we'll get more in Ymris, and that
they'll get no sympathy from me if they lay a fin-
ger on the Morgol's guards."

The two guards looked questioningly at Lyra,
who nodded. "One of you stand at the hatch; the

52

Heir of Sea and Fire

other watch the docks. I want this ship under
guard until it clears the harbor." She added to Bri
Corbett, "I trust you. But I don't know you, and
I'm trained to be careful. So I'll watch you work.
And remember: I've spent more nights than I can
count under the open sky, and I know which stars
point north."

"And I," Bri said, "have seen the Morgol's
guards in training. You'll get no argument from
me."

The crew appeared, disgusted and puzzled, to
be dispatched to their duties under the watchful
eyes of the guard. One last sailor came up the
ramp singing. He eyed the guards with aplomb,
winked at Lyra, and reached down to Imer, who
was kneeling and tying the trader's wrists, lifted
her chin in his hand and kissed her.

She pushed him away, losing her balance, and
the trader, pulling the rope off his hands, caught
her under the chin with his head as he rose. She
sat down heavily on the deck. The trader, tripping
a sailor in his way, dove for the ramp. Something
he scarcely saw, glistening faintly, fell in front of
him as he ran down the ramp. He ignored an ar-
row that cut into the wood a second before his foot
hit it. The sailors crowded curiously to the rail be-
side the guards as they shot. Bri Corbett, shoulder-
ing between Lyra and Raederle, cursed.

"I suppose you shouldn't hit him," he said wist-
fully. Lyra, signalling a halt to the shooting, did
not answer. There was a sudden cry and a splash;

they leaned farther out over the rail. "What ails
the man? Is he hurt?" They heard him cursing as
he splashed in the water, then the drag of a moor-
ing chain as he pulled himself back up. His step
sounded again, quick, steady, and then there was
another splash. "Madir's bones," Bri breathed.
"He can't even see straight. He's coming back to-

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Heir of Sea and fire

ward us. He must be drunk. He could tell the
world I have the Morgol, the King of An and four-
teen wizards aboard, for all anyone would believe
his tale- Is he going in again?" There was a muffled
thud. "No; he fell in a rowboat." He glanced at
Raederle, who had begun to laugh weakly.
"I forgot about the water. Poor man."
Lyra's eyes slid uncertainly to her face. "What
. . . Did you do something? What exactly did you

do?"

She showed them her frayed cuff. "Just a little

thing the pig-woman taught me to do with a
tangled piece of thread..."

The ship got underway finally, slipping like a
dream out of the dark harbor, leaving the scatter-
ing of city lights and the beacons flaring on the
black horns of the land. Lyra, relaxing her guard
when the ship turned unerringly northward and the
west wind hit their cheeks, joined Raederle at the
side- They did not speak for a while; the handful
of lights vanished as the cliffs rose under the stars
to block them. The jagged rim of unknown land
running like a black thread against the sky was the
only thing to be seen. Then Raederle, shivering a
little in the cool night wind, her hands tightening
on the rail, said softly, "It's what I've been wanting
to do for two years, since he lost that crown some-
where around here in the bottom of the sea. But I
couldn't have done it alone. I've never been far-
ther than Caithnard in my life, and the realm
seems enormous." She paused, her eyes on a moon-
lit swirl and dip of froth; she added with simple
pain, "I only wish I had done it sooner."

Lyra's body made a rare, restive movement
against the side. "How could any one of us have
known to go? He was the Star-Bearer; he had a
destiny. Men with destinies have their own protec-
tion. And he was travelling to the High One es-

54

Heir of Sea and fire

corted by the High One's harpist. How could we
have known that not even the High One would
help him? Or help even his own harpist?"

Raederle looked at her shadowed profile. "Deth?
Does the Morgol think he is dead?"

"She doesn't know. She— That was one reason
she came here, to see if the Masters had any
knowledge of what might have happened to him."

"Why didn't she go to Erienstar Mountain?"

"I asked her. She said because the last land-
ruler who had gone to see the High One was never
seen nor heard of again."

Raederle was silent. Something that was not the
wind sent a chill rippling through her. "I always
thought Erienstar Mountain must be the safest, the
most beautiful place in the world."

"So did I." Lyra turned as the small, dark-
haired guard spoke her name. "What, Kia?"

"The ship-master is giving us quarters in the
king's cabin; he says it's the only one big enough
for us all. Do you want a guard during the night?"

Lyra looked at Raederle. It was too dark to see
her face, but Raederle could sense the question on
it. She said slowly, "I would trust him. But why
even tempt him to turn back? Can you stay
awake?"

"In shirts." She turned to Kia again. "One guard
at the helm in two hour shifts until dawn. I'll take
the first watch."

**I*U join you," Raederle said.

She spent most of the two hours trying to teach
Lyra the simple spell she had worked on the trader.
They used a piece of twine the intrigued helmsman
gave them. Lyra, frowning down at it for some
minutes, threw it in the path of a sailor who walked
over it and went serenely about his business.

The helmsman protested. "You'll have us all
overboard," but she shook her head.

55

Heir of Sea and Fire

"I can't do it. I stare and stare at it, but ifs only
a piece of old twine. There's no magic in my
blood."

"Yes, there is," Raederle said. "I felt it. In the
Morgol."

Lyra looked at her curiously. "I've never felt it.
One day, I'll have her power of sight. But it's a
practical thing, nothing tike this. This I don't under-
stand."

"Look at it, in your mind, until it's not twine
anymore but a path, looped and wound and twisted
around itself, that will bind the one who touches it
to its turnings . . . See it. Then put your name to
it."

"How?"

"Know that you are yourself, and the thing is it-
self; that's the binding between you, that knowl-
edge."

Lyra bent over the twine again. She was silent
a long time, while Raederle and the helmsman
watched, then Bri Corbett came out of the chart-
house and Lyra tossed the twine under his boot.

"Where," he demanded of the helmsman, "in
Hel's name are you taking us? Prow first into the
Ymris coast?" He stepped unswervingly to the
wheel and straightened their course. Lyra got to
her feet with a sigh.

"I am myself, and it's an old piece of twine-
That's as far as I can get. What else can you do?"

"Only a few things. Make a net out of grass,
make a bramble stem seem like an impossible
thorn patch, find my way out of Madir's Woods,
where the trees seem to shift from place to
place. . . . Little things. I inherited the powers
from the wizard Madir, and someone—someone
named Ylon. For some reason neither of my broth-
ers could do such things, either. The pig-woman
said magic finds its own outlet. It used to frustrate

56

Heir of Sea and fire

them, though, when we were children, and I could
always find my way out of Madir's Woods and they
never could."

**An must be a strange land. In Herun, there's
very little magic, except what the wizards brought,
long ago."

"In An, the land is restless with it. That's why
it's such a grave thing that my father left his land
indefinitely. Without his control, the magic works
itself loose, and all the dead sdr awake with their
memories."

"What do they do?** Her voice was hushed.

*They remember old feuds, ancient hatreds, bat-
tles, and get impulses to revive them. War between
the Three Portions in early times was a passionate,
tumultuous thing; the old kings and lords died jeal-
ous and angry, many of them, so the land-instinct
in kings grew to bind even the dead, and the spell-
books of those who played with sorcery, like Madir
and Peven ..."
"And Ylon? Who was he?".
Raederle reached down to pick up the twine. She
wound it around her fingers, her brows drawn
slightly as she felt the tangle run deceptively smooth
and even in her hands. "A riddle."

hner came then to relieve Lyra, and she and
Raederle went gratefully to bed. The easy roll of
the ship in the peaceful sea sent Raederle quickly
to sleep. She woke again at dawn, before the sun
rose. She dressed and went on deck. The sea, the
wind, the long line of the Ymris coast were grey
under the dawn sky; the mists along the vast,
empty eastern horizon were beginning to whiten
under the groping sunlight. The last of the guards,
looking bleary at her post, glanced at the sky and
headed for bed. Raederle went to the side feeling
disoriented in the colorless world. She saw a tiny
fishing village, a handful of houses against the

57

Heir of Sea and Fire

bone-colored cliffs, nameless on the strange land;

its minute fleet of boats was inching out of the
dock into open sea. A flock of gulls wheeled crying
overhead, grey and white in the morning, then scat-
tered away southward. She wondered if they were
flying to An. She felt chilly and purposeless and
wondered if she had left her name behind with all
her possessions at Anuin.

The sound of someone being sick over the rail
made her turn. She stared mutely at the unexpected
face, afraid for a moment that she had stolen out
of the harbor a ship full of shape-changers. But no
shape-changer, she decided, would have changed
deliberately into such a miserable young girl. She
waited considerately until the girl wiped her mouth
and sat down in a pallid heap on the deck. Her
eyes closed. Raederle, remembering Rood's agonies
when he sailed, went to find the water bucket. She
half-expected, returning with the dipper, that the
apparition would have vanished, but it was still
there, small and inconspicuous, like a bundle of
old clothes in a corner.

She knelt down, and the girl lifted her head. She
looked, opening her eyes, vaguely outraged, as
though the sea and ship had conspired against her.
Her hand shook as she took the dipper. It was a
lean hand, Raederle saw, strong, brown and cal-
loused, too big, yet, for her slender body. She emp-
tied the dipper, leaned back against the side again.

"Thank you," she whispered. She closed her
eyes. "I have never, in my entire life, felt so utterly
horrible."

"It will pass. Who are you? How did you get
aboard this ship?"

"I came—I came last night. I hid in one of the
rowboats, under the canvas, until—until I couldn't
stand it anymore. The ship was swaying one way,
and the boat was swaying another. I thought I was

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Heir of Sea and Fire

going to die . . .** She swallowed convulsively,
opened her eyes and shut them again quickly. The
few freckles on her face stood out sharply. Some-
thing in the lines of her face, in the graceful de-
termined bones of it, made Raederie's own throat
close suddenly. The girl, taking a gulp of wind,
continued, "I was looking for a place to stay last
night when I heard you talking by the warehouses.
So I just—I Just followed you on board, because
you were going where I want to go."

"Who are you?" Raederle whispered.

"Tristan of Hed."

Raederle sat back on her heels. A memory, brief
and poignant, of Morgon's face, clearer than she
had seen it for years, imposed itself over- Tristan's;

she felt a sharp, familiar ache in the back of her
throat. Tristan looked at her with an oddly wistful
expression; then turned her face quickly, huddling
a little closer into her plain, shapeless cloak. She
moaned as the ship lurched and said between
clenched teeth, "I think I'm going to die. I heard
what the Morgol's land-heir said. You stole the
ship; you didn't tell anyone in your own lands. I
heard the sailors talking last night, about how the
guards forced them to go north, and that—that
they were better off pretending they wanted to go
in the first place, rather than making themselves the
laughing-stock of the realm by protesting. Then
they talked about the High One, and their voices
went softer; I couldn't hear."

"Tristan—"

"H you put me ashore, I'll walk. You said that
yourself, that you'd walk. I had to listen to Eliard
crying m his sleep when he dreamed about Mor-
gon; I would have to go wake him. He said one
night—one night he saw Morgon's face in his
dream, and he cou ... he couldn't recognize him.
He wanted to go then, to Erienstar Mountain, but

59

Heir of Sea and fire

it was dead winter, the worst in Hed for seventy
years, old Tor Oakland said, and they persuaded
him to wait."

"He couldn't have gotten through the Pass."

"That's what Grim Oakland told him. He almost
went anyway. But Cannon Master promised he
would go, too, in spring. So spring came . . ." Her
voice stopped; she sat absolutely still a moment,
looking down at her hands. "Spring came and Mor-
gon died. And all I could see in Eliard's eyes, no
matter what he was doing, was one question: Why?
So I'm going to Erienstar Mountain to find out."

Raederle sighed. The sun had broken through the
mists finally, patterning the deck through the criss-
cross of stays with a web of light. Tristan, under its
warm touch, seemed a shade less waxen; she even
straightened a little without wincing. She added,
"There's nothing you can say that will make me
change my mind."

"It's not me, it's Bri Corbett."

"He took you and Lyra—"

"He knows me, and it's difficult to argue with the
Morgol's guards. But he might balk at taking the
land-heir of Hed, especially if no one knows where
in the world you are. He might turn the ship around
and head straight for Caithnard."

"I wrote Eliard a note. Anyway, the guards
could stop him from turning."

"No. Not in open sea, when there's no one else
we could get to sail the ship."

Tristan glanced painfully at the rowboat slung
beside her. "I could hide again. No one's seen me."

"No. Wait.'* She paused, thinking. "My cabin.
You could stay there. I'll bring you food."

Tristan blanched. "I don't think I'm planning to
eat for a while."

"Can you walk?"

She nodded with an effort. Raederle helped her

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Heir of Sea and Tire

to her feet, with a swift glance around the deck,
and led her down the steps to her own small
chamber. She gave Tristan a little wine, and when
Tristan reeled to the bed at a sudden welter of the
ship, covered her with her cloak. She lay limp, to
the eye scarcely visible or breathing, but Raederle
heard her voice hollow as a voice out of a barrow
as she closed the door, "Thank you ..."

She found Lyra wrapped in a dark, voluminous
cloak at the stem, watching the sun rise. She
greeted Raederle with a rare, impulsive smile as
Raederle joined her.

Raederle said softly, so that the helmsman would
not hear, "We have a problem."

"Bri?"

"No. Tristan of Hed.1*

Lyra stared at her incredulously. She listened
silently, her brows knit, as Raederle explained.

She gave a quick glance at Raederle's cabin, as
though she could see through the walls to the inert
form on the bed, then she said decisively, "We
can't take her."

t*! know."

"The people of Hed have already suffered so
much over Morgon's absence; she's the land-heir of
Hed, and she must be ... How old is she?"

"Thirteen, maybe. She left them a note." She
rubbed her eyes with her fingers. "If we turn back
to Caithnard now, we could talk to Bri until spiders
spun webs on him, and he would never agree to
take us north again."

"If we turn back," Lyra said, "we may find our-
selves face-to-face with the Morgol's ship. But Tris-
tan has got to go back to Hed. Did you tell her
that?"

"No. I wanted time to think. Bri said we would
have to stop for supplies. We could find a trade-
ship to take her back."

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"Would she go?"

"She isn't in any condition to argue at the mo-
ment. She's never been out of Hed in her life; I
doubt if she has any idea of where Erienstar Moun-
tain is. She's probably never even seen a mountain
in her life. But she has—she has all of Morgon's
stubbornness. If we can get her off one ship and
onto another while she's still seasick, then she might
not realize what direction she's going until she
winds up back on her own doorstep. It sounds
heartless, but if she—if anything happened to her
on the way to Erienstar Mountain, I don't think
anyone, in or out of Hed, could bear hearing of it.
The traders will help us."

"Should we tell Bri Corbett?"

-"He would turn back."

"We should turn back," Lyra said objectively,
her eyes on the white scrollwork of waves on the
Ymris coast. She turned her head, looked at Rae-
derle. "It would be hard for me to face the Mor-
gol."

"I am not going back to Anuin," Raederle said
softly. "Tristan may never forgive us, but she'll
have her answers, I swear by the bones of the dead
of An. I swear by the name of the Star-Bearer."

Lyra's head gave a quick, pleading shake.
"Don't," she breathed. "It sounds so final, as if
that is the only thing you will do with your life."

Tristan slept most of the day. In the evening,
Raederle brought her some hot soup; she roused
herself to eat a little, then vanished back under her
cloak when the night winds, coming out of the west
pungent with the smell of turned earth, gave the
ship an energetic roll. She moaned despairingly, but
Bri Corbett, in the chart house, was pleased.

"We'll make it to Caerweddin by midmorning if
this wind holds," he told Raederle when she went
to bid him good-night. "It's a marvellous wind.

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Heir of Sea and Fire

We'll take two hours there for supplies and still out-
run anyone who might be following."

"You'd think," Raederle commented to Lyra
when she went to borrow a blanket, since Tristan
was sleeping on top of hers, "all this was his idea
in the first place." She made herself an unsatisfy-
ing bed on the floor and woke, after a night of
sketchy sleeping, feeling stiff and slightly sick her-
self. She stumbled into the sunlight, taking deep
breaths of the mellow air, and found Bri Corbett
talking to himself at the bow.

"They're not out of Kraal, they're not Ymris
tradeships, too low and sleek," he murmured, lean-
ing out over the rail. Raederle, trying to keep her
hair from being whipped to a wild froth in the
wind, bunked at the half-dozen ships bearing down
at them. They were low. lean, single-masted ships;

their billowing sails were deep blue, edged with a
thin silver scallop. Bri brought one hand down on
the rail with a sharp exclamation. "Madir's bones.
I haven*t seen one of those in ten years, not since
I've been in your father's service. But I didn't hear
a word of it at Caithnard."

"What?"

"War. Those are Ymris war-ships."

Raederle, suddenly awake, stared at the light,
swift fleet. "They just ended a war," she protested
softly to no one. "Hardly a year ago."

"We must have missed trouble by a cat's breath.
Ifs another coastal war; they must be watching for
shiploads of arms."

"Will they stop us?"

"Why should they? Do we look like a trade-
ship?" He stopped then; they stared at one another,
shaken by the same realization.

"No," Raederle said. "We look like the private
ship of the King of An, and we're about as con-
spicuous as a pig in a tree. Suppose they want to

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Heir of Sea and Fire

give us an escort to Caerweddin? How are you go-
ing to explain the presence of the Moreol's guards
on—"

"How am I going to explain? Me? Did I hear
any complaint about the color of my sails when
you overran my ship and demanded I take you
north?"

"How was I to know Ymris would start a war?
You were the one gossiping with that trader; he
didn't mention it? You didn't have to keep so close
to the land; if you had kept more distance between
us and Ymris, we wouldn't be running into the
Ymris King's ships. Or did you know about them?
Were you hoping we'd be stopped?"

"Hagis's beard!" Bri snapped indignantly. "If I
wanted to turn around, there's not a guard trained
yet who could stop me, especially not these—the
only thing they would shoot to harm aboard this
ship are knotholes and corks, I know that. I'm sail-
ing north because I want to—and who in Hel's
name is that?"

He was staring, his face a deep, veined purple,
at Tristan, who had staggered out to throw up over
the rail. Bri, watching, swallowed words, making
little, incredulous noises in his throat. He found his
voice again as Tristan straightened, mist-colored
and sweating.

"Who is that?"

"She's Just a—a stowaway," Raederle said fu-
tilely. "Bri, there's no need to be upset. She'll get
off at Caerweddin—"

"I won't, either," Tristan said slowly but dis-
tinctly. "I'm Tristan of Hed, and Fm not getting
off until we reach Erienstar Mountain."

Bri's lips moved without sound. He seemed to
billow with air like a sail; Raederle, wincing, waited
to bear the brunt of it, but instead he turned and
exploded across the deck to the helmsman, who

64

Heir of Sea and Fire

jumped as if a mast had snapped behind him,
"That's enough! Turn this ship around. I want her
prow in the harbor at Tol so fast she leaves her
reflection in the Ymris water."

The ship wheeled. Tristan clung with tight-
lipped misery to the rail. Lyra, taking the last few
steps to Raederle's side at a slide, saw Tristan and
asked resignedly, "What happened?"

Raederle shook her head helplessly. The fierce
blue of the Ymris sails came between them and the
sun then; she groped for her voice. "Bri."

One of the war-ships, cutting so close she could
taste the fine, sheer edge of its spray, seemed to be
bearing to a single point in their path. "Bri!" She
caught his attention finally as he bellowed at the
sailors. "Bri! The war-shipsi They think we're run-
ning from them!"

"What?" He gave the ship that was tacking to
cut them off an incredulous glare and issued an
order so abruptly his voice cracked. There was an-
other lurch; the ship lost speed, slowed, and as the
Ymris ship matched its pace'they could see the
silver mesh and sword hilts of me men aboard.
Their own ship stopped and sat wallowing. Another
war-ship eased to the windward side; a third
guarded the stem. Bri dropped his head in his
hands. A voice floated over the water; Raederle
turned her head, catching only a few crisp words
from a white-haired man.

Bri, shouting back an acquiescence, said briefly,
heavily, "All right. Head her north again. We've
got a royal escort to Caerweddin."

"Who?"

"Astrin Ymris."

65

4

•^HEY ENTERED THE HARBOR AT CAERWEDDIN

with a war-ship at either side of them. The
" mouth of the river itself was guarded; there
were only a few trade-ships entering, and these
were stopped and searched before they were al-
lowed farther up the broad, slow river to the docks.
Raederle, Tristan, Lyra and the guards stood at
the rail watching the city slide past them. Houses
and shops and winding cobbled streets spilled far
beyond its ancient walls and towers. The King's
own house, on a rise in the center of the city,
seemed a strong and forceful seat of power, with
its massive blocked design and angular towers; but
the carefully chosen colors in the stone made it
oddly beautiful. Raederle thought of the King's
house at Aniun, built to some kind of dream after
the wars had ceased, of shell-white walls and high,
slender towers; it would have been fragile against
the forces that contended against the Ymris King.
Tristan, standing beside her, reviving on the placid
waters, was staring with her mouth open, and Rae-
derle blinked away another memory of a small,
quiet, oak hall, with placid, rain-drenched fields
beyond it.

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Lyra, frowning at the city, said softly to Rae-
derle, as Bri Corbett gave glum orders behind
them, "This is humiliating. They had no right to
take us like this."

"They asked Bri if he were heading for Caer-
weddin, he had to say yes. He was spinning around
in the water so much that he must have looked
suspicious. They probably thought," she added,
"when he ran, that he might have stolen the ship.
Now they are probably getting ready to welcome
my father to Caerweddin. They are going to be
surprised."

"Where are we?" Tristan asked. It was the first
word she had spoken in an hour. "Are we any-
where near Erienstar Mountain?"

Lyra looked at her incredulously. "Haven't you
even seen a map of the realm?"

"No. I never needed to.**

"We are so far from Erienstar Mountain we
might as well be in Caithnard- Which is where we
will be in two days' time anyway—"

"No," Raederle said abruptly. "I'm not going
back.'*

"I'm not either," Tristan said. Lyra met Rae-
derle's eyes above her head.

"All right. But do you have any suggestions?**

"I'm thinking.**

The ship docked alongside of one of the war-
ships; the other, waiting, in a gesture at once cour-
teous and prudent, until Bri sank anchor into the
deep water, then turned and made its way back
toward the sea. The splash of iron, the long rattle
and thump of the anchor chain sounded in the air
like the final word of an argument. They saw, as
the ramp slid down, a small group of men arrive on
horseback, richly dressed and armed. Bri Corbett
went down to meet them. A man in blue livery
carried a blue and silver banner. Raederle, realiz-

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ing what it was, felt the blood pound suddenly
into her face.

"One of them must be the King," she whispered,
and Tristan gave her an appalled look.

"I'm not going down there. Look at my skirt."

*Tristan, you are the land-heir of Hed, and once
they learn that, we could be dressed in leaves and
berries for all they'll realize what we're wearing."

"Should we carry our spears down?" Imer asked
puzzledly. "We would if the Morgol were with us."

Lyra considered the matter blankly. Her mouth
crooked a little. "I believe I have deserted. A spear
in the hand of a dishonored guard isn't an em-
blem but a challenge. However, since this is my
responsibility, you're free to make your own deci-
sion."

Imer sighed. "You know, we could have locked
you in the cabin and told Bri Corbett to turn
around. We talked about it that first night, when
you took the watch. That was one mistake you
made. We made our own decision, then."

"Imer, it's different for me! The Morgol will
have to forgive me eventually, but what will all of
you go home to?"

"If we do get home, bringing you with us," Imer
said calmly, "the Morgol will probably be a lot.
more reasonable than you are. I think she would
rather have us with you than not. The King," she
added a little nervously, looking over Lyra*s shoul-
der, "is coming on board."

Raederle, turning to face him, felt Tristan grip
her wrist. The King looked formidable at first
glance, dark, powerful and grim, with body armor
like the delicate, silvery scales of fish, beneath a
blue-black surcoat whorled with endless silver em-
broidery. The white-haired man of the war-ship
came with him, with his single white eye; his other
eye was sealed shut against something he had seen.

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As they stood together, she felt the binding be-
tween them, like the binding between Duac and
Mathom, and recognized, with a slight shock, the
eccentric land-heir of the Ymris King. His good eye
went suddenly to her face, as though he had sensed
her recognition. The King surveyed them silently
a moment. Then he said with simple, unexpected
kindliness, "I am Heureu Ymris. This is my land-
heir, my brother Astrin. Your ship-master told me
who you are, and that you are travelling together
under peculiar circumstances. He requested a
guard for you past the Ymris coast, since we are at
war, and he wanted no harm to come to such valu-
able passengers. I have seven war-ships preparing
to leave at dawn for Meremont. They will give you
an escort south. Meanwhile, you are very welcome
to my land and my house."

He paused, waiting. Lyra said abruptly, a slight
flush on her face, "Did Bri Corbett tell you that we
took his ship? That we—that I—that none of the
Morgol's guard are acting with her knowledge? I
want you to understand who^you will welcome in-
to your house."

There was a flick of surprise in his eyes, fol-
lowed by another kind of recognition. He said gen-
tly, "Don't you think you were trying to do exactly
what many of us this past year have only thought
of doing? You will honor my house."

They followed him and his land-heir down the
ramp; he introduced them to the High Lords of
Marcher and Tor, the red-haired High Lord of
Umber, while their horses were unloaded. They
mounted, made a weary, slightly bedraggled pro-
cession behind the King. Lyra, riding abreast of
Raederle, her eyes on Heureu Ymris's back, whis-
pered, "Seven war-ships. He's taking no chances
with us. What if you threw a piece of gold thread
in me water in front of them?"

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"I'm thinking," Raederie murmured,

In the King's house, they were given small, light,
richly furnished chambers where they could wash
and rest in private. Raederie, concerned for Tristan
in the great, strange house, watched her ignore
servants and riches, and crawl thankfully into a
bed that did not move. In her own chamber, she
washed the sea spray out of her hair, and, feeling
clean for the first time in days, stood by the open
window combing her hair dry and looking out over
the unfamiliar land. Her eyes wandered down past
the busy maze of streets, picked out the old city
wall, broken here and there by gates and arches
above the streets. The city scattered eventually in-
to farmland and forest, orchards that were soft
mists of color in the distance. Then, her eyes mov-
ing east again to the sea, she saw something that
made her put her comb down, lean out the open
casement.

There was a stonework, enormous and puzzling,
on a cliff not far from the city. It stood like some
half-forgotten memory, or the fragments on a torn
page of ancient, incomplete riddles. The stones she
recognized, beautiful, massive, vivid with color.
The structure itself, bigger than anything any man
would have needed, had been shaken to the ground
seemingly with as much ease as she would have
shaken ripe apples out of a tree. She swallowed
drily, remembering tales her father had made her
learn, remembering something Morgon had men-
tioned briefly in one of his letters, remembering,
above all, the news Elieu had brought from Isig
about the waking, in the soundless deep of the
Mountain, of the children of the Earth-Masters.
Then something beyond all comprehension, a long-
ing, a loneliness, an understanding played in the
dark rim of her mind, bewildering her with its sor-
row and recognition, frightening her with its inten-

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sity, until she could neither bear to look at the
nameless city, nor turn away from it.

A knock sounded softly at her door; she realized
then that she was standing blind, with tears running
down her face. The world, with a physical effort, as
if two great stones locked massively, ponderously
into position, shifted back into familiarity. The
knock came again; she wiped her face with the
back of her hand and went to open it.

The Ymris land-heir, standing in the doorway,
with his alien face and single white eye startled
her for some reason. Then she saw its youngness,
the lines worn in it of pain and patience. He said
quickly, gently, "What is it? I came to talk with
you a little, about the—about Morgon. I can come
back."

She shook her head. "No. Please come in. I was
just—I—" She stopped helplessly, wondering if he
could understand the words she had to use. Some
instinct made her reach out to him, grip him as
though to keep her balance; she said, half-blind
again, "People used to say you lived among the
ruins of another time, that you knew unearthly
things. There are things—there are things I need
to ask."

He stepped into the room, closed the door be-
hind him. "Sit down,** he said, and she sat in one
of the chairs by the cold hearth. He brought her a
cup of wine, then took a chair beside 'her. He
looked, still wearing mail and the King's dark livery
of war, like a warrior, but the slight perplexity in
his face was of no such simple mind.

"You have power," he said abruptly. "Did you
know that?"

"I know—I have a little. But now, I think, there
may be things in me I never—I never knew." She
took a swallow of wine; her voice grew calmer.
"Do you know the riddle of Oen and Ylon?"

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"Yes." Something moved in his good eye. He
said, "Yes," again, softly. "Ylon was a shape-
changer."

She moved slightly, as away from a pain. "His
blood runs in the family of the Kings of An. For
centuries he was little more than a sad tale. But
now, I want—I have to know. He came out of the
sea, like the shape-changer Lyra saw, the one who
nearly killed Morgon—he was of that color and
wildness. Whatever—whatever power I have comes
from Madir. And from Ylon."

He was silent for a long time, contemplating the
riddle she had given him while she sipped wine,
the cup in her bands shaking slightly. He said fi-
nally, groping, "What made you cry?"

"That dead city. It—something in me reached
out and knew ... and knew what it had been."

His good eye moved to her face; his voice
caught. "What was it?"

"I was—I stood in the way. It was like some-
one else's memory in me. It frightened me. I
thought, when I saw you, that you might under-
stand."

"I don't understand either you or Morgon. May-
be you, like him, are an integral piece in some
great puzzle as old and complex as that city on
King's Mouth Plain. All I know of the cities is the
broken things I find, hardly a trace of the Earth-
Masters' passage, Morgon had to grope for his own
power, as you will; what he is now, after—*'

"Wait." Her voice shook again, uncontrollably.
"Wait."

He leaned forward, took the unsteady cup from
her and set it on the floor. Then he took her hands
in his own lean, tense hands. "Surely you don't be-
lieve he is dead."

"Well, what alternative do I have? What's the
dark side to that tossed coin—whether he's alive

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or dead, whether he's dead or his mind is broken
under that terrible power—"

"Who broke whose power? For the first time in
seven centuries the wizards are freed—"

"Because the Star-Bearer is dead! Because the
one who killed him no longer needs to fear their
power."

"Do you believe that? That's what Heureu says,
and Rork Umber. The wizard Aloil had been a
tree on King's Mouth Plain for seven centuries,
until I watched him turn into himself, bewildered
with his freedom. He spoke only briefly to me; he
didn't know why he had been freed; he had never
heard of the Star-Bearer. He had dead white hair
and eyes that had watched his own destruction. I
asked where he would go, and he only laughed an,d
vanished. Then, a few days later, traders brought
the terrible tale out of Hed of Morgon's torment,
of the passing of the land-rule, on the day Aloil
had been freed. I have never believed that Morgon
is dead."

"What . . . Then what^is left of him? He has
lost everything he loved, he has lost his own name.
When Awn—when Awn of An lost his own land-
rule while he was living, he killed himself. He
couldn't—"

"I lived with Morgon when he was nameless
once before. He found his name again in the stars
that he bears. I will not believe he is dead."

"Why?"

"Because that isn't the answer he was looking
for.'*

She stared at him incredulously. "You don't
think he had a choice in the matter?"

"No. He is the Star-Bearer. I think he was des-
tined to live."

"You make that sound more like a doom," she
whispered. He loosed her hands and rdse, went to

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stand at the window where she had been gazing

out at the nameless city.

"Perhaps. But I would never underestimate that
fanner from Hed." He turned suddenly. "Will you
ride with me to King's Mouth Plain, to see the an-
cient city?"

"Now? I thought you had a war to fight."
His unexpected smile wanned his lean face. **I
did, until we saw your ship. You gave me a respite
until dawn, when I lead you and your escort out of
Caerweddin. It's not a safe place, that plain.
Heureu's wife was killed there. No one goes there
now but me, and even I am wary. But you might
find something—a stone, a broken artifact—that
will speak to you."

She rode with him through Caerweddin, up the
steep, rocky slope onto the plain above the sea.
The sea winds sang hollowly across it, trailing be-
tween the huge, still stones that bad rooted deep
into the earth through countless centuries. Raederle,
dismounting, laid her hand on one impulsively; it
was clear, smooth under her palm, shot through
with veins of emerald green.

"It's so beautiful. . . ." She looked at Astrin sud-
denly. 'That's where the stones of your house came
from."

"Yes. Whatever pattern these stones made has
been hopelessly disturbed. The stones were nearly
impossible to move, but the King who took them,
Galil Ymris, was a persistent man.** He bent down
abruptly, searched the long grass and earth in the
crook of two stones and rose again with something
in his hand. He brushed it off: it winked star-blue
in the sunlight. She looked at it as it lay in his
palm.

"What is it?"

"I don't know. A piece of cut glass, a stone. . . .
It's hard to tell sometimes exactly what things are

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Heir of Sea and Fire

here," He dropped it into her own hand, closed her
fingers around it lightly. "You keep it."

She turned it curiously, watched it sparkle. "You
love these great stones, in spite of all their danger."

"Yes. That makes me strange, in Ymris. I would
rather putter among forgotten things like an old
hermit-scholar than take seven war-ships into bat-
tle. But war on the south coasts is an old sore that
festers constantly and never seems to heal. So
Heureu needs me there, even though I try to tell
him I can taste and smell and feel some vital an-
swer in this place. And you. What do you feel
from it?"

She lifted her eyes from the small stone, looked
down the long scattering of stones. The plain was
empty but for the stones, the silver-edged grass and
a single stand of oak, gnarled and twisted by the
sea wind. The cloudless sky curved away from it,
building to an immensity of nothingness. She won-
dered what force could ever draw the stones again
up into it, straining out of the ground, pulled one
onto another, building to some immense, half-
comprehensible purpose that would shine from a
distance with power, beauty and a freedom like the
wind's freedom. But they lay still, gripped to the
earth, dormant. She whispered, "Silence," and the
wind died.

She felt, in that moment, as if the world had
stopped. The grass was motionless in the sunlight;

the shadows of the stones seemed measured and
blocked on the ground. Even the breakers boom-
ing at the cliff's foot were still. Her own breath lay
indrawn in her mouth. Then Astrin touched her,
and she heard the unexpected hiss of his sword
from the scabbard. He pulled her against him,
holding her tightly. She felt, under the cold mesh
of armor, the hard pound of his heart.

There was a sigh out of the core of the world.

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Heir of Sea and fire

A wave that seemed as if it would never stop gath-
ering shook the cliff as it broke and withdrew.
Astrin's arm dropped. She saw his face as she
stepped back; the drawn, hollow look frightened
her. A gull cried, hovering at the cliffs edge, then
disappeared; she saw him shudder. He said briefly,
"I'm terrified. I can't think. Let's go."

They were both silent as they rode down the
slope again towards the lower fields and the busy
north road into the city. As they cut across a field
full of sheep bawling with the indignity of being
shorn, the white, private horror eased away from
Astrin's face. Raederle, glancing at him, felt him
accessible again; she said softly, "What was it? Ev-
erything seemed to stop."

"I don't know. The last time—the last time I felt
it, Eriel Ymris died. I was afraid for you."

"Me?"

"For five years after she died, the King lived
with a shape-changer as his wife."

Raederle closed her eyes. She felt something
build in her suddenly, like a shout she wanted to
loose at nun that would drown even the voices of
the sheep. She clenched her hands, controlling it;

she did not realize she had stopped until he spoke
her name. Then she opened her eyes and said, "At
least he had no land-heir to lock away in a towet
by the sea. Astrin, I think there is something sleep-
ing inside of me, and if I wake it, I will regret it
until the world's end. I have a shape-changer's
blood in me, and something of his power. That's an
awkward thing to have."

His good eye, quiet again, seemed to probe with
detachment to the heart of her riddle. 'Trust your-
self," he suggested, and she drew a deep breath.

'That's like stepping with my eyes shut onto one
of my own tangled threads. You have a comforting
outlook on things."

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Heir of Sea and fire

He gripped her wrist lightly before they started
to ride again. She found, her hand easing open, the
mark of the small stone she held ridged deeply
into her palm.

Lyra came to talk to her when she returned to
the King's house. Raederle was sitting at the win-
dow, looking down at something that sparkled like
a drop of water in her hand. "Have you thought
of a plan yet?" Lyra said.

Raederle, lifting her head, sensed the restlessness
and frustration in her tight, controlled movements,
like the movements of some animal trapped and
tempered into civility. She gathered her thoughts
with an effort.

*'I think Bri Corbett could be persuaded to turn
us north after we leave the river, if we can get
Tristan on her way home. But Lyra, I don't know
what would persuade Astrin Ymris to let us go."

"The decision is ours; it has nothing to do with
Ymris."

"It would be hard to convince either Astrin or
Heureu of that."

Lyra turned abruptly away trom the window,
paced to the empty grate and back. "We could find
another ship. No. They'd only search us, going out
of the harbor." She looked as close as she would
ever come to throwing something that was not a
weapon. Then, glancing down at Raederle, she said
unexpectedly, "What's the matter? You look trou-
bled."

"I am," Raederle said, surprised. Her head bent;

her hand closed again over the stone. "Astrin—
Astrin told me he thinks Morgon is alive."

She heard a word catch in Lyra's throat. Lyra
sat down suddenly next to her, gripping the stone
ledge with her hands. Her face was white; she
found her voice again, pleaded, "What—what
makes him think so?"

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"He said Morgon was looking for answers, and
death wasn't one of them- He said—"

"That would mean he lost the land-rule. That
was his greatest fear. But no one—no one can take
away that instinct but the High One. No one—"
She stopped. Raederle heard the sudden clench of
her teeth. She leaned back wearily, the stone shin-
ing like a tear in her palm. Lyra's voice came
again, unfamiliar, stripped bare of all passion, "I
will kill him for that."

"Who?"

"Ghisteslwchlohm."

Raederie's lips parted and closed. She waited for
the chill that the strange voice had roused in her
to subside, then she said carefully, "You'll have to
find him first. That may be difficult."

"I'll find him. Morgon will know where he is."

"Lyra—" Lyra's face turned toward her, and the
words of prudence caught in Raederie's throat. She
looked down. "First we have to get out of

Caerweddm,"

The dark, unfamiliar thing eased out of Lyra.
She said anxiously, "Don't tell Tristan what you
told me. It's too uncertain."

"I won't"

"Isn't there something you can do for us? We
can't turn back now. Not now. Make a wind blow
the war-ships away, make them see an illusion of us

going south—"

"What do you think I am? A wizard? I don't
think even Madir could do those things." A bead
of sunlight caught in the strange stone; she straight-
ened suddenly. **Wait." She held it up between
forefinger and thumb, catching the sun's rays, Lyra
blinked as the light slid over her eyes.

"What? What is that?"

"It's a stone Astrin found on King's Mouth Plain,
in the city of the Earth-Masters. He gave it to me."

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Heir of Sea and Fire

**What are you going to do with it?" Her eyes
narrowed again as the bright light touched them,
and Raederle lowered it.

"It flashes like a mirror ... All I learned from
the pig-woman is concerned with illusion, small
things out of proportion: the handful of water
seeming a pool, the twig a great fallen log, the
single bramble stem an impassible tangle. If I could
—if I could blind the war-ships with this, make it
blaze like a sun in their eyes, they couldn't see us
turn north, they wouldn't be able to outrun us."

"With that? It's no bigger than a thumbnail. Be-
sides," she added uneasily, "how do you know
what it is? You know a handful of water is a hand-
ful of water. But you don't know what this was
meant for, so how will you know exactly what it
might become?"

"H you don't want me to try it, I won't. It's a
decision that will affect us all. It's also the only
thing I can think of."

"You're the one who has to work with it. How
do you know what name the Earth-Masters might
have put to it? I'm not afraid for us or the ship, but
it's your mind—"

"Did I," Raederle interrupted, "offer you ad-
vice?"

**No," Lyra said reluctantly. "But I know what
I'm doing."

"Yes. You're going to get killed by a wizard. Am
I arguing?"

"No. But—" She sighed. "All right. Now all we
have to do is tell Bri Corbett where he's going so
that he'll know to get supplies. And we have to
send Tristan home. Can you think of any possible
way to do that?"

They both thought- An hour later, Lyra slipped
unostensibly out of the King's house, went down to
the docks to inform Bri that he was heading north

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again, and Raederle went to the King's hall to talk
to Heureu Ymris.

She found him in the midst of his lords, discuss-
ing the situation in Meremont. When he saw her
hesitating at the doorway of the great hall, he came
to her. Meeting his clear, direct gaze, she knew that
she and Lyra had been right: he would be less
difficult to deceive than Astrin, and she was re-
lieved that Astrin was not with him. He said, "Is
there something you need? Something I can help

you with?"

She nodded. "Could I talk to you a moment?"

"Of course."

"Could you—is it possible for you to spare one
of your war-ships to take Tristan home? Bri Corbett
will have to stop at Caithnard to let Lyra off and
pick up my brother. Tristan is unreasonably deter-
mined to get to Erienstar Mountain, and if she can
find a way to get off Bri's ship at Caithnard, she'll
do it. She'll head north, either on a tradeship or on
foot, and either way she is liable to find herself in
the middle of your war."

His dark brows knit. "She sounds stubborn. Like

Morgon."

"Yes. And if she—if anything happened to her,
too, it would be devastating to the people of Hed.
Bri could take her to Hed before he brings us to
Caithnard, but in those waters he must pass over,
Athol and Spring of Hed were drowned, and Mor-
gon was nearly killed. I would feel easier if she had
a little more protection than a few guards and sail-
ors."

He drew a quick, silent breath. "I hadn*t thought

of that. Only five of the war-ships are carrying a
great many arms and men; two are more lightly
manned patrols watching for shiploads of arms. I
can spare one to take her back. If I could, I would
send those war-ships with you all the way to

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Caithnard. I have never seen such a valuable as-
sortment of people on such a misguided, ill-
considered journey in my life."

She flushed a little. "I know. It was wrong of us
to take Tristan even this far."

"Tristan! What about you and the Morgol's
land-heir?"

"That's different—"

"How, in Yrth's name?"

"We at least know there's a world between Hed
and the High One."

"Yes," he said grimly. "And it's no place for any
of you, these days. I made sure your ship-master
understood that, too. I don't know what possessed
him to leave the Caithnard harbor with you."

"It wasn't his fault. We didn't give him any
choice."

"How much duress could you possibly have put
him under? The Morgol's guards are skilled, but
hardly unreasonable. And you might as easily have
met worse than my war-ships off the Ymris coast.
There are times when I believe I am fighting only
my own rebels, but at other times, the entire war
seems to change shape under my eyes, and I real-
ize that I am not even sure myself how far it will
extend, or if I can contain it. Small as it is yet, it
has terrifying potential. Bri Corbett could not have
chosen a worse time to sail with you so close to
Meremont.*'

"He didn't know about the war—"

"If he had been carrying your father on that
ship, he would have made it his business to know.
I reminded him of that, also. As for Astrin taking
you today to King's Mouth Plain—that was utter
stupidity." He stopped. She saw the light glance
white off his cheekbones before he lifted his hands
to his eyes, held them there a moment. She looked
down, swallowing.

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"I suppose you told him that."
"Yes. He seemed to agree with me. This is no
time for people of intelligence, like Astrin, you and
Bri Corbett, to forget how to think." He put a hand
on her shoulder then, and his voice softened. "I un-
derstand what you were trying to do. I understand
why. But leave it for those who are more capable."

She checked an answer and bent her head,
yielding him tacitly the last word. She said with
real gratitude, "Thank you for the ship. Will you
tell Tristan in the morning?"

"I'll escort her personally on board."
Raederie saw Lyra again later in the hall as they
were going to supper. Lyra said softly, "Bri argued,
but I swore to him on what's left of my honor that
he would not have to try to outrun the war-ships.
He didn't like it, but he remembered what you did
with that piece of thread. He said whatever you do
tomorrow had better be effective, because he won't
dare face Heureu Ymris again if it isn't."

Raederie felt her face bum slightly at a mem-
ory. "Neither will I," she murmured. Tristan came
out of her room then, bewildered and a little fright-
ened, as if she had just wakened. Her face eased
at the sight of them; at the trust in her eyes, Rae-
derie felt a pang of guilt. She said, "Are you hun-
gry? We're going down to the King's hall to eat."

"In front of people?" She brushed hopelessly at
her wrinkled skirt. Then she stopped, looked
around her at the beautifully patterned walls glis-
tening with torchlight, the old shields of bronze
and silver hung on them, the ancient, jeweled
weapons. She whispered, "Morgon was in this
house," and her shoulders straightened as she fol-
lowed them to the hall.

THEY WERE WAKENED BEFORE DAWN THE NEXT

morning. Bundled in rich, warm cloaks Heureu
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Heir of Sea and Fire

gave them, they rode with him, Astrin, the High
Lords of Umber and Tor and three hundred armed
men through the quiet streets of Caerweddin. They
saw windows opening here and there, or the spill
of light 'from a door as a face peered out at the
quick, silent march of warriors. At the docks, the
dark masts loomed out of a pearl-colored mist over
the water; the voices, the footsteps in the dawn
seemed muted, disembodied. The men broke out
of their lines, began to board. Bri Corbett, coming
down the ramp, gave Raederie one grim, harassed
glance before he took her horse up. The Morgol's
guards followed him up with their horses.

Raederie waited a moment, to hear Heureu say
to Tristan, "I'm sending you home with Astrin in
one of the warships. You'll be safe with him, well-
protected by the men with him. It's a fast ship;

you'll be home quickly."

Raederie, watching, could not tell for a moment
who looked more surprised, Tristan or Astrin.
Then Tristan, her mouth opening to protest, saw
Raederie listening and an indignant realization
leaped into her eyes. Astrin said before she could
speak, "That's over two days there and a day back
to Meremont—you'll need that ship to watch the
coast."

"I can spare it that long. If the rebels have sent
for arms, they'll come down most likely from the
north, and I can try to stop them at Caerweddin."

"Arms," Astrin argued, "are not all we're
watching for." Then his eyes moved slowly from
Heureu's face to Raederie's. "Who requested that
ship?"

"I made the decision," Heureu said crisply, and
at his tone, Tristan, who had opened her mouth
again, closed it abruptly.

Astrin gazed at Raederie, his brows puckered in
suspicion and perplexity. He said briefly to Heureu,




s   83

Heir of Sea and Fire

"All right. I'll send you word from Meremont
when I return."

"Thank you." His fingers closed a moment on
Astrin's arm. "Be careful."

Raederie boarded. She went to the stem, heard
Bri's voice giving oddly colorless orders behind her.
The first of the war-ships began to drift like some
dark bird to the middle of the river; as it moved
the mist began to swirl and fray over the quiet
grey water, and the first sunlight broke on the high
walls of the King's house.

Lyra came to stand beside Raederie. Neither of
them spoke. The ship bearing Tristan slid along-
side them, and Raederie saw Astrin's face, with its
spare lines and ghostly coloring, as he watched the
rest of the war-ships ease into position behind
him. Bri Corbett, with his slower, heavier vessel,
went last, in the wake of the staggered line. In their
own wake came the sun.

It bumed the troth behind them. Bri said softly
to the helmsman, "Be ready to turn her at half a
word. If those ships slow and close around us in
open sea, we might as well take off our boots and
wade to Kraal. And that's what I intend to do if
they give chase and stop us. Astrin Ymris would
singe one ear off me with his tongue and Heureu
the other, and I could carry what's left of my repu-
tation back to Anuin with me in a boot with a hole

in it."

"Don't worry,*' Raederie murmured. The stone
flashed like a king's jewel in her hand. "Bri, I'll
need to float this behind us or it will blind us all.
Do you have a piece of wood or something?"

"I'll find one." The placid sigh of the morning
tide caught their ears; he turned his head. The first
ship was already slipping into the open sea. He
said again, nervously as the salt wind teased at

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their sails, "I'll find one. You do whatever it is
you're doing."

Raederie bent her head, looked down at the
stone. It dazzled like a piece of sun-shot ice, light
leaping from plane to plane of its intricately cut
sides. She wondered what it had been, saw it in
her mind's eye as a jewel in a ring, the center eye
of a crown, the pommel of a knife, perhaps, that
darkened in times of danger. But did the Earth-
Masters ever use such things? Had it belonged to
them or to some fine lady in the Ymris court who
dropped it as she rode or to some trader who
bought it in Isig, then lost it, flickering out of his
pack as he crossed King's Mouth Plain? If it could
blaze like a tiny star in her hand at the sun's touch,
she knew the illusion of it would ignite the sea, and
no ship would see to pass through it, even if it
dared. But what was it?

The light played gently in her mind, dispersing
old night-shadows, pettinesses, the little, nagging
memories of dreams. Her thoughts strayed to the
great plain where it had been. found, the massive
stones on it like monuments to a field of ancient
dead. She saw the morning sunlight sparkle in the
veins of color on one stone, gather in a tiny fleck
of silver in a comer of it. She watched that minute
light in her mind, kindled it slowly with the sun-
light caught in the stone she held. It began to glow
softly in her palm. She fed the light in her mind; it
spilled across the ageless stones, dispersing their
shadows; she felt the warmth of the light in her
hand, on her face. The light began to engulf the
stones in her mind, arch across the clear sky until
it dazzled white; she heard as from another time,
a soft exclamation from Bri Corbett. The twin
lights drew from one another: the light in her
hand, the light in her mind. There was a flurry of
words, cries, faint and meaningless behind her.

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The ship reeled, jolting her; she reached out to
catch her balance, and the light at her face burned
her eyes.

"All right," Bri said breathlessly. "All right.
You've got it. Put it down—it'll float on this." His
own eyes were nearly shut, wincing against it.

She let him guide her hand, heard the stone
clink into the small wooden bowl he held. Sailors
let it over the side in a net as if they were lower-
ing the sun into the sea. The gentle waves danced
it away. She followed it with her mind, watching
the white light shape into facet after facet in her
mind, harden with lines and surfaces, until her
whole mind seemed a single Jewel, and looking into
it, she began to sense its purpose.

She saw someone stand, as she stood, holding
the Jewel. He was in the middle of a plain in some
land, in some age, and as the stone winked in his
palm all movement around him, beyond the rim of
her mind, began to flow towards its center. She had
never seen him before, but she felt suddenly that
his next gesture, a line of bone in his face if he
turned, would give her his name. She waited curi-
ously for that moment, watching him as he watched
the stone, lost in the timeless moment of his exist-
ence. And then she felt a stranger's mind in her
own, waiting with her.

Its curiosity was desperate, dangerous. She tried
to pull away from it, frightened, but the startling,
unfamiliar awareness of someone else's mind
would not leave her. She sensed its attention on the
nameless stranger whose next movement, the bend
of his head, the spread of his fingers, would give
her his identity. A terror, helpless and irrational,
grew in her at the thought of that recognition, of
yielding whatever name he held to the dark, power-
ful mind bent on discovering it. She struggled to
disperse the image in her mind before he moved.

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But the strange power held her; she could neither
change the image nor dispel it, as though her
mind's eye were gazing, lidless, into the core of an
incomprehensible mystery. Then a hand whipped,
swift, hard, across her face; she pulled back, flinch-
ing against a strong grip.

The ship, scudding in the wind, boomed across
a wave, and she blinked the spray out of her eyes.
Lyra, holding her tightly, whispered, 'Tin sorry.
I'm sorry. But you were screaming." The light had
gone; the King's war-ships were circling one an-
other bewilderedly far behind them. Bri, his face
colorless as he looked at her, breathed, "Shall I
take you back? Say the word, and I'll turn back."

"No. It's all right." Lyra loosed her slowly; Rae-
derie said again, the back of her hand over her
mouth, "Ifs all right, now, Bri."

"What was it?" Lyra said. *<What was that
stone?"

"I don't know." She felt the aftermath of the
strange mind again, demanding, insistent; she shud-
dered. "I almost knew something—"

•*What?"

"I don't know! Something important to someone.
But I don't know what, I don't know why—" She
shook her head hopelessly. "It was like a dream, so
important then, and now it's—it makes no sense.
All I know is that there were twelve."

•Twelve what?"

"Twelve sides to that stone. Like a compass."
She saw Bri Corbetfs bewildered expression. "I
know. It makes no sense."

"But what in Hel's name made you scream like
that?" he demanded.

She remembered the powerful, relentless mind
that had trapped her own in its curiosity, and knew
that though he would turn back to face even the
war-ships again if she told him of it, there would

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be no place in the realm where she could be truly
safe from it. She said softly, "It was something of
power, that stone. I should have used a simpler
thing. I'm going to rest awhile."

She did not come out of her cabin again until
evening. She went to the side, then, stood watching
stars bum like distant reflections of her mind-work.
Something made her turn her head suddenly. She
saw, swaying comfortably to the ship's motion,
Tristan of Hed, standing like a figurehead at the
prow.

88




^f RISTAN WOULD NOT SPEAK TO ANYONE FOR TWO

days. Bri Corbett, torn between taking her back
" and avoiding at all costs the hoodwinked escort
and the one-eyed Ymris prince, spent a day curs-
ing, then yielded to Tristan's mute, reproachful de-
termination and sailed north on his own indecision.
They left, at the end of those^two days, the Ymris
coastline behind them. The unsettled forests, the
long stretch of barren hills between Herun and the
sea were all they saw for a while, and gradually
they began to relax. The wind was brisk; Bri
Corbett, his face cheerful and ruddy under the
constant sun, kept the sailors jumping. The guards,
unused to idleness, practiced knife throwing at a
target on the wall of the chart house. When a sud-
den roll of the ship caused a wild throw that nearly
sliced a cable in two, Bri put a halt to that. They
took up fishing instead, with long lines trailing from
the stem. Sailors, watching as they bent over the
rail, remembered the dead thwick of knife blade
into the chart house wall and approached with
caution.

Raederie, after futile attempts to soothe Tristan,

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who stood aloof and quiet, looking northward like
a dark reminder of their purpose, gave up and left
her alone. She stayed quiet herself, reading Rood's
books or playing the flute she had brought from
Anuin, that Elieu of Hel had made for her. One
afternoon she sat on the deck with it and played
songs and court dances of An and plaintive ballads
that Cyone had taught her years before. She wan'
dered into a sad, simple air she could not recall
the name of and found, when she finished, that
Tristan had turned away from the rail and was
watching her.

"That was from Hed," she said abruptly. Rae-
derle rested the flute on her knees, remembering.

"Deth taught it to me."

Tristan, wavering, moved away from the rail fi-
nally, sat down beside her on the warm deck. Her
face was expressionless; she did not speak.

Raederle, her eyes on the flute, said softly,
"Please try to understand. When the news of Mor-
gon's death came, it was not only Hed that suf-
fered a loss, but people all over the realm who had
helped him, who loved him and worried about
him. Lyra and Bri and I were simply trying to
spare the realm, your own people especially, more
fear and worry about you. Hed seems a very spe-
cial and vulnerable place these days. We didn't
mean to hurt you, but we didn't want, if anything
had happened to you, to be hurt again ourselves."

Tristan was silent. She lifted her head slowly,
leaned back against the side. "Nothing's going to
happen to me." She looked at Raederle a moment,
asked a little shyly, "Would you have married
Morgon?"

Raederle's mouth crooked. "I waited two years
for him to come to Anuin and ask me."

"I wish he had. He never was very sensible."
She gathered her knees up, rested her chin on

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them, brooding. "I heard the traders say he could
change shape into an animal. That frightened
Eliard. Can you do that?"

"Change shape? No." Her hands tightened
slightly on the flute. "No."

"And then they said—they said last spring he
had found a starred sword and killed with it. That
didn't sound like him."

"No."

"But Grim Oakland said if someone were trying
to kill him, he couldn't just stand there and let
them. I can understand that; it's reasonable, but
. . . after that, with someone else making a harp
and a sword for him that were his because of the
stars on his face, he didn't seem to belong to Hed
any more. It seemed he couldn't come back and
do the simple things he had always done—feed the
pigs, argue with Eliard, make beer in the cellar. It
seemed he had already left us forever, because we
didn't really know him any more."

"I know,'* Raederle whispered. "I felt that way,
too."

"So—in that way—it wasn't so hard when he
died. What was hard was knowing . . . was know-
ing what he was going through before he died and
not being able to—not—" Her voice shook; she
pressed her mouth tightly against one arm. Rae-
derle tilted her head back against the side, her
eyes on the shadow the boom cut across the deck.

"Tristan. In An, the passage of the land-rule is
a complex and startling thing, they say, like sud-
denly growing an extra eye to see in the dark or an
ear to hear things beneath the earth ... Is it that
way in Hed?"

"It didn't seem that way." Her voice steadied as
she mulled over the question. "Eliard was out in
the fields when it happened. He just said he felt
that suddenly everything—the leaves and animals,

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the rivers, the seedlings—everything suddenly
made sense. He knew what they were and why they
did what they did. He tried to explain it to me. I
said everything must have made sense before, most
things do anyway, but he said it was different. He
could see everything very clearly, and what he
couldn't see he felt. He couldn't explain it very
well."

"Did he feel Morgon die?"

"No. He—" Her voice stopped. Her hands
shifted, tightened on her knees; she went on in a
whisper, "Eliard said Morgon must have forgotten
even who he was when he died, because of that."

Raederle winced. She put her hand on Tristan's
taut arm. "I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to be cruel; I
was just—"

"Curious. Like Morgon."

"No!" The pain in her own voice made Tristan
lift her head, look at her surprisedly.

She was silent again, studying Raederle almost
as though she had never seen her before. She said,
"There's something I've always wondered, in the
back of my mind, from the first time I heard about
you."
"What?"

"Who is the most beautiful woman in An?" She
flushed a little at Raederle's sudden smile, but there
was a shy, answering smile in her eyes. "I was al-
ways curious."

"The most beautiful woman in An is Map
Hwillion's sister, Mara, who married the lord Cyn
Croeg of Aum. She is called the Flower of An."
"What are you called?"
• "Just the second most beautiful woman."
"I've never seen anyone more beautiful than
you. When Morgon first told us about you, I was
frightened. I didn't think you could live in Hed, in

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our house. But now ... I don't know. I wish—
I wish things had turned out differently.*'

"So do I," Raederle said softly. "And now, will
you tell me something? How in the world did you
manage to get off that war-ship and onto this one
without anyone, Astrin, Heureu, Bri or all those
warriors seeing you?"

Tristan smiled. "I just followed the King onto
the war-ship and then followed him off again. No-
body expected to see me where I wasn't supposed
to be, and so they didn't. It was simple."

They passed HIurle at nieht. Bri Corbett, with
thought of another cask of Herun wine, suggested
a brief stop there until Lyra reminded him of the
twenty guards waiting at Hurie to escort the
Morgol back to Herun. He abandoned the idea
hastily and stopped instead farther up the coast, at
the mouth of the turbulent Ose, where they took a
quick, welcome respite from the sea. The town
there was small, full of fishermen and traopers
who brought their furs twice a year from the wil-
derness to sell to the traders^ Bri boueht wine, all
the fresh eggs he could find and replenished their
water supply. Lyra, Raederle and Tristan left let-
ters for the traders to take south. No one recog-
nized them, but they departed in a wake of
curiosity that the letters, astonishingly addressed,
did nothing to abate.

Three days later, at midmoming, they reached
Kraal.

The city straddling Winter River was rough-
hewn out of the stones and timber of Osteriand.
Beyond it, they caught their first close glimpse of
the wild land, shaggy with pine, and of the distant
blue-white mist of mountains. The harbor was full
of trade-ships, barges with their pleaming upright
lines of oars, riverboats making their slow way up
the deep, green waters.

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Heir of Sea and Fire

Bri, maneuvering carefully through the crowd,
seemed to be calculating every shiver of wood un-
der his feet, every wrinkle that appeared in the
sails. He took the wheel from the helmsman once;

Raederle heard him say, "That current must be
dragging the barnacles off the hull. I've never seen
the water so high. It must have been a terrible
winter through the Pass ..."

He found a berth unexpectedly in the crowded
docks; the sight of the blue and purple sails of the
King of An and the ship's incongruous passengers
caused brisk and audible speculation among the
shrewd-eyed traders. The women were all rec-
ognized as they stood at the rails, before the ship
was fully secured to the moorings. Tristan's mouth
dropped as she heard her own name, coupled with
an unflattering query of the state of Bri Corbett's
mind, shouted across the water from a neighboring
ship.

Bri ignored it, but the bum on his face seemed
to deepen. He said to Raederle as the ramp slid
down, "You'll get no peace in this city, but at
least you've got a good escort if you want to leave
the ship. ril try to get a barge and oarsmen; it'll be
slow, and it will cost. But if we wait for the snow
water to abate and a halfway decent wind to sail
up, we may find the Morgol herself joining us. And
that would really give these calk-brained, rattle-
jawed gossip-peddlars, who are about to lose their
teeth, something to talk about."

He managed with an energy that came, Raederle
suspected, from a dread of glimpsing among the
river traffic that taut, brilliant sail of an Ymris
war-ship, to secure by evening a barge, a crew and
supplies. She, Lyra, Tristan and the guards re-
turned after a hectic afternoon among curious
traders, trappers and Osterland farmers, to find
their horses and gear being transferred onto the

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barge. They boarded the flat, inelegant vessel,
found room almost on top of one another to sleep.
The barge, lifting to the shift of the tide at some
black hour of the morning, left Kraal behind as
they slept.

The trip upriver was long, tedious and grim. The
waters had flooded villages and farms as they
spilled down from the Ose. They were withdraw-
ing slowly, leaving in their wake gnarled, sodden,
uprooted trees, dead animals, fields of silt and
mud. Bri had to stop frequently, cursing, to loosen
snags of roots, branches and broken furniture that
got in their way. Once, an oarsman, pushing them
away from a dark, tangled mound, freed some-
thing that stared at the sun out of a dead-white,
shapeless face a moment before the current whirled
it away. Raederle, her throat closing, heard Tris-
tan's gasp. The waters themselves in the con-
stant flickering shadows of trees, seemed lifeless,
grey as they flowed down from the High One's
threshold. After a week of glimpsing, between the
trees, men clearing pieces of barn and carcasses of
farm animals out of their fields, and watching
nameless things lift to eye level out of the deep
water at the stir of an oar, even the guards began
to look haggard. Lyra whispered once to Raederle,
"Did it come like this down from Erienstar Moun-
tain? This frightens me."

At the fork, where the Winter River broke away
from the Ose, the waters cleared finally with the
brisk, blue-white current. Bri anchored at the fork,
for the barge could go no farther, unloaded their
gear and sent the barge back down the silent, shad-
owed river.

Tristan, watching it disappear into the trees,
murmured, "I don't care if I have to walk home; I
am not going on that river again." Then she turned,
lifting her head to see the green face of Isig Moun"

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Heir of Sea and fire

tain rising like a sentinel before the Pass. They
seemed to be surrounded by mountains, the great
mountain at whose roots the Osterland King lived,
and the cold, distant peaks beyond the dead north-
ern wastes. The morning sun was blazing above
the head of Erienstar Mountain, still glittering with
unmelted snow. The light seemed to fashion the
shadows, valleys, granite peaks that formed the
Pass into the walls of some beautiful house lying
open to the world.

Bri, his tongue full of names and tales he had
not spoken for years, led them on horseback up the
final stretch of river before the Pass. The bright,
warm winds coming out of the backlands of the
realm drove to the back of their memories the grey,
dragging river behind them, and the secret, unex-
pected things dredged from its depths.

They found lodgings for a night in a tiny town
that lay under the shadow of Isig. The next after-
noon, they reached Kyrth, and saw at last the gran-
ite pillars honed by the Ose that were the threshold
of Isig Pass. The sunlight seemed to leap goatlike
from peak to peak; the air crackled white with the
smell of melting ice. They had paused at a curve of
road that led on one hand to Kyrth, on the other
across a bridge to Isig- Raederle lifted her head.
The ancient trees about them rose endlessly, face
merging into face up the mountain, until they
blurred together against the sky. Nearly hidden in
them was a house with dark, rough walls and tow-
ers, windows that seemed faceted like jewels with
color. Ribbons of smoke were coming up from
within the walls; on the road a cart wheeled in and
out of the trees toward it. The arch of its gates,
massive and formidable as the gateway into the
Pass, opened to the heart of the mountain.

"You'll need supplies," Bri Corbett said, and

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Raederle brought her thoughts out of the trees with
an effort.

"For what?" she asked a little wearily. His sad-
dle creaked as he turned to gesture towards the
Pass. Lyra nodded.

"He's right. We can hunt and fish along the way,
but we need some food, more blankets, a horse
for Tristan." Her voice sounded tired, too, oddly
timbreless in the hush of the mountains, "There
will be no place for us to stay until we reach
Erienstar Mountain."

"Does the High One know we're coming?"
Tristan asked abruptly, and they all glanced invol-
untarily at the Pass.

"I suppose so," Raederle said after a moment.
"He must. I hadn't thought about it."

Bri, looking a little nervous, cleared his throat.
"You're going just like that through the Pass."

"We can't sail and we can't fly; have you got any
better suggestions?"

"I do. I suggest you tell someone your intentions
before you ride headlong into^what was a death trap
for the Prince of Hed. You might inform Danan Isig
you're in his land and about to go through the Pass.
If we don't come back out, at least someone in the
realm will know where we vanished."

Raederle looked again up at the enormous house
of the King, ageless and placid under the vibrant
sky. "I don't intend to vanish," she murmured. "I
can't believe we're here. That's the great tomb
of the Earth-Master's children, the place where the
stars were shaped and set into a destiny older than
the realm itself . . ." She felt Tristan stir behind her;

saw, in her shadow on the ground, the mute shake
of her head.

"This couldn't have anything to do with Morgon!"
she burst out, startling them. "He never knew any-
thing about land like this. You could drop Hed like

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a button in it and never see it. How could—how
could something have reached that far, across moun-
tains and rivers and the sea, to Hed, to put those
stars on his face?"

"No one knows that," Lyra said with unexpected
gentleness. "That's why we're here. To ask the High
One." She looked at Raederle, her brows raised
questioningly. "Should we tell Danan?"

"He might argue. I'm in no mood to argue. That*s
a house with only one door, and none of us knows
what Danan Isig is like. Why should we trouble him
with things he can't do anything about anyway?" She
heard Bri's sigh and added, "You could stay in Kyrth
while we go through the Pass. Then, if we don't re-
turn, at least you'll know." His answer was brief and
pithy; she raised her brows. "Well, if that's the way
you feel about it..."

Lyra turned her horse toward Kyrth. "We'll send
a message to Danan."

Bri tossed his objections into the air with his
hands. "A message," he said morosely- "With this
town crammed to. the high beams with traders, the
gossip will reach him before any message does."

Reaching the small city, they found his estima-
tions of the traders' skills well-founded. The city
curved to one side of the Ose, its harbor full of
river-boats and barges heavily laden with furs, met-
als, weapons, fine plate, cups, jewels from Danan's
house, straining against their moorings to follow the
flood waters. Lyra dispatched three of the guards to
find a horse for Tristan, and the others to buy what
food and cooking pots they might need. She found
in a smelly tanners' street, hides for them to sleep
on, and in a cloth shop, fur-lined blankets. Contrary
to Bri's expectations, they were rarely recognized,
but in a city whose merchants, traders and crafts-
men had been immobilized through a long, harsh
winter into boredom, their faces caused much cheer-

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ful comment. Bri, growling ineffectually, was recog-
nized himself, and crossed the street while Raederle
paid for the blankets, to speak to a friend in a tav-
ern doorway. They lingered a little in the clothshop
examining the beautiful furs and strange, thick
wools. Tristan hovered wistfully near a bolt of pale
green wool until a grim, wild expression appeared
suddenly on her face and she bought enough for
three skirts. Then, laden to the chin with bundles,
they stepped back into the street and looked for Bri
Corbett.

"He must have gone in the tavern," Raederle
said, and added a little irritably, for her feet hurt
and she could have used a cup of wine, "He might
have waited for us." She saw then, above the small
tavern, the dark, endless rise of granite cliff and the
Pass, itself, blazing with a glacial light as the last
rays of the sun struck peak after icy peak. She took
a breath of the lucent air, touched with a chill of
fear at the awesome sight, and wondered for the
first time since she had left An, if she had the cour-
age to come face-to-face witn the High One.

The light faded as they watched; shadows slipped
after it, patching the Pass with purple and grey.
Only one mountain, far in the distance, still burned
white in some angle of light. The sun passed finally
beyond the limits of the world, and the great flanks
and peaks of the mountain turned to a smooth, bar-
ren whiteness, like the moon. Then Lyra moved
slightly, and Raederle remembered she was there.

"Was that Erienstar?" Lyra whispered.

"I don't know." She saw Bri Corbett come out of
the tavern, then cross the street. His face looked
oddly somber; he seemed as he reached them and
stood looking at them, at a loss for words. His face
was sweating a little in the cool air; he took his cap
off, ran his fingers through his hair, and replaced it.

Then he said for some reason to Tristan, "We're

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going to Isig Mountain, now, to talk to Danan Isig."

"Bri, what's wrong?" Raederie asked quickly. "Is
there—is it something in the Pass?"

"You're not going through the Pass. You're going
home."

"What?"

"I'm taking you home tomorrow; there's a keel-
boat going down the Ose—*'

"Bri," Lyra said levelly. "You are not taking any-
one as far as the end of the street without an ex-
planation."

"You'll get enough of one, I think, from Danan."
He bent unexpectedly, put his hands on Tristan's
shoulders, and the familiar, stubborn expression on
her face wavered slightly. He lifted one hand,
groped for his hat again, and knocked it into the
street. He said softly, "Tristan . . ." and Raederle's
hand slid suddenly over her mouth.

Tristan said warily, "What?"

"I don't... I don't know how to tell you."

The blood blanched out of her face. She stared
back at Bri and whispered, "Just tell me. Is it Eli-
ard?"

"No. Oh, no. It's Morgon. He's been seen in Isig,
and, three days ago, in the King's court in Oster-
land. He's alive."

Lyra's fingers locked in a rigid, painful grip
above Raederle's elbow. Tristan's head bent, her
hair brushing over her face. She stood so quietly
they did not realize she was crying until her breath
caught with a terrible sound in her throat, and Bri
put his arms around her.

Raederie whispered, "Bri?" and his face turned to
her.

"Danan Isig himself gave word to the traders- He
can tell you. The trader I spoke to said—other
things. You should hear them from Danan."

"All right," she said numbly. "All right." She

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took Tristan's cloth from her as Bri led them toward
the horses. But she turned to see the dark, startled
expression in Lyra's eyes and, beyond her, the dark-
ness moving down the Pass in the wake of the sil-
very Ose.

They found two of the guards before they left the
city. Lyra asked them briefly to find lodgings in
Kyrth; they accepted the situation without com-
ment, but their faces were puzzled. The four fol-
lowed the road across the bridge up the face of the
mountain, which had settled into a shadowy, inward
silence that the beat of their horse's hooves on the
dead pine needles never penetrated. The road's end
ran beneath the stone archway into Danan's court-
yard. The many workshops, kilns and forges all
seemed quiet, but as they rode through the dark-
ened yard, one of the workshop doors opened sud-
denly. Torchlight flared out of it; a young boy,
gazing at the metalwork in his hands, stepped under
the nose of Bri's horse.

Bri reined sharply as the horse startled; the boy,
glancing up in surprise, put an apologetic hand on
the horse's neck and it quieted. He blinked at them,
a broad-shouldered boy with black, blunt hair and
placid eyes, "Everyone's eating," he said. "May I
tell Danan who has come, and will you eat with
us?"

"You wouldn't be Rawl IIet's son, would you?"
Bri asked a little grufflv. "With that hair?"

The boy nodded. "I'm Bere."

**I am Bri Corbett. ship-master of Mathom of
An. I used to sail with your father, when I was a
trader. This is Mathom's daughter, Raederie of An;

the Morgol's land-heir, Lyra; and this is Tristan of
Hed."

Bere's eyes moved slowly from face to face. He
made a sudden, uncharacteristic movement, as
though he had quelled an impulse to run shouting

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for Danan. Instead he said, "He's just in the hall.
I'll get him—" He stopped speaking abruptly, a
jump of excitement in his voice, and went to Tris-
tan's side. He held her stirrup carefully for her; she
gazed down at his bent head in amazement a mo-
ment before she dismounted. Then he yielded and
ran across the dark yard, flung the hall doors open
to a blare of light and noise, and they heard his
voice ringing above it: "Danan! Danan!" Bri, see-
ing the puzzled look on Tristan's face, explained
softly, "Your brother saved his life."

The King of Isig followed Bere out. He was a
big, broad man whose ash-colored hair glinted with
traces of gold- His face was brown and scarred like
tree bark, touched with an imperturbable calm that
seemed on the verge of being troubled as he looked
at them.

"You are most welcome to Isig," he said. "Bere,
take their horses. I'm amazed that the three of you
travelled so far together, and yet I've heard not a
word of your coming."

"We were on our way to Erienstar Mountain,"
Raederle said. "We didn't give anyone word or our
leaving. We were buying supplies in Kyrth when
Bri—when Bri gave us a piece of news that we
could scarcely believe. So we came here to ask you
about it. About Morgon."

She felt the King's eyes study her face in the
shadows a moment, and she remembered then that
he could see in the dark. He said, "Come in." and
they followed him into the vast inner hall. A weave
of fire and darkness hung like shifting tapestries on
the walls of solid stone. The cheerful voices of
miners and craftsmen seemed fragmented, muted
in the sheer silence of stone. Water wound in flam-
ing, curved sluices cut through the floor, trailed
lightly into darkness; torchlight spattered across
raw jewels thrusting out of the walls. Danan

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stopped only to give a murmured instruction to a
servant, then led them up a side staircase that spi-
ralled through the core of a stone tower. He
stopped at a doorway, drew back hangings of pure
white fur.

"Sit down," he urged them, as they entered.
They found places on the chairs and cushions cov-
ered with fur and skins. "You look worn and hun-
gry; food will be brought up, and I'll tell you while
you eat what I can."

Tristan, her face quiet again, bewildered with
wonder, said suddenly to Danan, "You were the one
who taught him how to turn into a tree."

He smiled. "Yes."

"That sounded so strange in Hed. Eliard couldn't
understand how Morgon did it. He used to stop and
stare up at the apple trees; he said he didn't know
what Morgon did with—with his hair, and how
could be breathe—Eliard." Her hands tightened
on the arms of her chair; they saw the flash of joy
in her eyes that was constantly tempered by a
wariness. "Is he all right? fs Morgon all right?"

"He seemed so.'*

"But I don't understand," she said almost plead-
ingly. "He lost the land-rule. How can he be alive?
And if he's alive, how can he be all right?"

Danan opened his mouth, closed it again as ser-
vants entered with great trays of food and wine,
bowls of water. He waited while the fire was laid
against the cool mountain evening, and they had
washed and begun to eat a little. Then he said
gently, as though he were telling a story to one of
his grandchildren, "A week ago, walking across my
empty yard at twilight, I found someone coming
towards me, someone who seemed to shape him-
self, as he moved, out of the twilight, the ember
smoke, the night shadows, someone I never again
thought to see in this world. . . . When I first rec~

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ognized Morgon, I felt for a moment as though he
had just left my house and come back, he looked
that familiar. Then, when I brought him into the
light, I saw how he was worn to the bone, as if be
had been bumed from within by some thought,
and how his hair was touched, here and there, with
white. He talked to me far into the night, telling
me many things, and yet it seemea that there was
always some dark core of memory he would not
open to me. He said that he knew he had lost the
land-rule and asked for news of Hed, but I could
tell him almost nothing. He asked me to give word
to the traders that he was alive, so that you would
know."

"Is he coming home?" Tristan asked abruptly.
Danan nodded.

"Eventually, but ... he told me he was using
every shade of power he had learned just to stay
alive—"

Lyra leaned forward. **What do you mean
beamed*? Ghisteslwchlohm taught him things?"

"Well, in a way. Inadvertently." Then his brows
pulled together. "Now, how did you know that?
Who it was that had trapped Morgon?"

"My mother guessed. Ghisteslwchlohm had also
been one of the Masters at Caithnard when Mor-
gon studied there."

"Yes. He told me that." They saw something
harden in the peaceful eyes. "You see, apparently
the Founder of Lungold was looking for something
in Morgon's mind, some piece of knowledge, and in
probing every memory, every thought, burning
away at the deep, private places of it, he opened
his own mind and Morgon saw his vast reserves of
power. That's how he broke free of Ghistesl-
wchlohm at last, by drawing from the wizard's
mind the knowledge of his strengths and weak-
nesses, using his own power against him. He said,

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near the end, at times he did not know which mind
belonged to whom, especially after the wizard
stripped out of him all instinct for the land-rule.
But at the moment he attacked finally, he re-
membered his name, and knew that in the long,
black, terrible year he had grown stronger than
even the Founder of Lungold ..."

"What about the High One?" Raederle said.
Something had happened in the room, she felt; the
solid stones circling the firelight, the mountains sur-
rounding the tower and the house seemed oddly
fragile; the light itself a whim of the darkness
crouched at the rim of the world. Tristan's head
was bent, her face hidden behind her hair; Rae-
derle knew she was crying soundlessly. She felt
something beginning to break in her own throat,
and she clenched her hands against it. "What . . .
Why didn't the High One help him?"

Danan drew a deep breath. "Morgon didn't tell
me, but from things he did say, I think I know."

"And Deth? The High One's harpist?" Lyra
whispered. "Did Ghisteslwchfohm kill him?"

"No," Danan said, and at the tone in his voice
even Tristan lifted her head. "As far as I know
he's alive. That was one thing Morgon said he
wanted to do before he went back to Hed. Deth
betrayed Morgon, led him straight into Ghistesl-
wchlohm's hands, and Morgon intends to kill him."

Tristan put her hands over her mouth. Lyra
broke a silence brittle as glass, rising, stumbling
into her chair as she turned. She walked straight
across the room until a window intruded itself in
her path, and she lifted both hands, laid them flat
against it. Bri Corbett breathed something inaudi-
ble. Raederle felt the tears break loose in spite of
the tight grip of her hands; she said, struggling at
least to control her voices, "That doesn't sound like
either one of them."

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"No," Danan Isig said, and again she heard the
hardness in his voice. "The stars on Morgon's face
were of some thought born in this mountain, the
stars on his sword and his harp cut here a thousand
years before he was born. We're touching the edge
of doom, and it may be that the most we can hope
for is an understanding of it. I have chosen to place
whatever hope I have in those stars and in that
Star-Bearer from Hed. For that reason I have com-
plied with his request that I no longer welcome the
High One's harpist into my house or allow him to
set foot across the boundaries of my land. I have
given this warning to my own people and to the
traders to spread."

Lyra turned. Her face was bloodless, tearless.
"Where is he? Morgon?"

"He told me he was going to Yrye, to talk to
Har. He is being tracked by shape-changers; he
moves painstakingly from place to place, taking
shape after shape out of fear. As soon as he-left
my doorstep at midnight he was gone—a brush of
ash, a small night animal—I don't know what he
became." He was silent a moment, then added
wearily, "I told him to forget about Deth. that the
wizards would kill him eventually, that he had
greater powers in the world to contend with; but
he told me that sometimes, as he lay sleepless in
that place, his mind drained, exhausted from Ghis-
teslwchlohm's probing, clinging to despair like a
hard rock because that was the only thing he knew
belonged to him, he could hear Detb piecing to-
gether new songs on his harp .... Ghis-
teslwchlohm, the shape-changers, he can in some
measure understand, but Deth he cannot. He has
been hurt deeply, he is very bitter ..."

"I thought you said he was all right," Tristan
whispered. She lifted her head. "Which way is
Yrye?"

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"Oh, no," Bri Corbett said emphatically. '•No.
Besides, he's left Yrye, by now, surely. Not one
step farther north are any of you going. We're sail-
ing straight back down the Winter to the sea, and
then home. AH of you. Something in this smells
like a hold full of rotten fish."

There was a short silence. Tristan's eyes were
hidden, but Raederle saw the set, stubborn line of
her jaw. Lyra's back was an inflexible, unspoken
argument. Bri took his own sounding of the silence
and looked satisfied.

Raederle said quickly before anyone could disil-
lusion him, "Danan, my father left An over a
month ago in the shape of a crow, to find out who
killed the Star-Bearer. Have you seen or beard
anything of him? I think he was heading for Erien-
star Mountain; he might have passed this way."

"A crow."

"Well, he—he is something of a shape-changer."

Danan's brows pulled together. "No. I'm sorry.
Did he go directly there?"

"I don't know. It's always^been difficult to know
what he's going to do. But why? Surely Ghis-
teslwchlohm wouldn't be anywhere near the Pass,
now." A memory came to her then, of the silent
grey waters of the Winter coming down from the
Pass, churning faceless, shapeless forms of death
up from its shadows. Something caught at her
voice; she whispered, "Danan, I don't understand.
If Deth has been with Ghisteslwchlohm all this
year, why didn't the High One warn us, himself,
about him? If I told you that we intended to leave
tomorrow, go through the Pass to Erienstar Moun-
tain to talk to the High One, what advice would
you give us?"

She saw his hand lift in a little, quieting gesture.
"Go home," he said gently. But he would not meet
her eyes. "Let Bri Corbett take you home."

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She sat late that night, thinkine, after they had
finished talking, and Danan*s daughter, Vert, had
taken them to small, quiet rooms in the tower to
sleep in. The thick stones were chilly; the moun-
tain had not fully emerged into spring, and she had
lit a small fire laid in the hearth. She gazed into
the restless flames, her arms around her knees. The
fire flickered like thoughts in her eyes. Out of it
rose fragments of knowledge she had; she wove
them back and forth into one shapelessness after
another. Somewhere far beneath her, she knew.
hardened forever into memory, were the dead chil-
dren of the Earth-Masters; the fire shivering over
her hands might have drawn their faces out of their
private blackness, but never warmed them. The
stars that had grown in that same darkness, that
had been brought to light and given their own pat-
tern in Danan's house, would have burned like
questions in the flame, but of their own place in a
greater pattern they offered little answer. The
thought of them lit her mind like the blue-white
stone Astrin had given her; she saw again the
strange face always on the verge of turning towards
her, moving into identity. Another face shifted into
her mind: the private, austere face of a harpist who
had placed her uncertain finders on her first flute,
who had, with his flawless harping and vigilant
mind, been the emi^rv of the H10^ 0"° for cen-
turies. The face had been a mask; the friend who
had led Morgon out of Hed, down the last stens to
near-destruction, had been for centuries a stranger.

She shifted; the flames broke apart and rejoined.
Things did not match, nothing seemed logical.
Ylon leaped in her mind, at the sea's harping the
sea he came out of had given her and Mathom
gifts of power; it had nearly given Morgon his
death. Something in her had wept with a memory
at the sight of the ruined city at King's Mouth

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Plain; something in her had wrenched at her mind
for the dangerous knowledge in the core of the
small blue stone. Morgon had ridden towards the
High One's house, and the High One's harpist had
twisted his path into horror. A wizard had ripped
from his mind the right he had been bom with;

the land-law, which no one but the High One could
alter, and the High One had done nothing. She
closed her eyes, feeling the prick of sweat at her
hairline. Deth had acted in the High One's name
for five centuries; he had been given nothing less,
in those centuries, than absolute trust. Following
some private pattern of his own, in an unprece-
dented. inconceivable act, he had conspired to de-
stroy a land-ruler. The High One had occasionally,
in early days, dispensed doom for the simple in-
tention. Why had he not acted against this man
who had betrayed him as well as the Star-Bearer?
Why had the High One not acted against Ghis-
teslwchlohm? Why . . . She opened her eyes, the
fire flaring painfully at her widened pupils, and
she bunked, seeing the room "washed in flame. Why
had Ghisteslwchlohm, who had' the whole of the
backlands of the realm to hide in, and who should
have felt the need to hide, kept Morgon so close
to Erienstar Mountain? Why, when Deth had
harped to himself that long year while Morgon
clung to the despair that was his life, had the High
One never heard that harping? Or had he?

She stumbled to her feet, away from the hot
flames, away from an answer, impossible, appal-
ling, on the verge of language in her mind. The
hangings moved aside so quietly in the doorway
that their movement seemed almost an illusion of
the fire. She thought, barely seeing a dark-haired
woman in the half-light, that it was Lyra. Then,
staring into the dark, quiet eyes of the woman,
something settled into place deep within her, like a

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stone falling to a ponderous silence on the ground
floor of Isig Mountain.

She whispered, scarcely realizing she spoke, "I

thought so."

110

6

^HE PELT HER MIND INVADED, PROBED SKILL-

fully. This time, when the image in the stone
reappeared, drawn out of memory, with the elu-
sive, unfamiliar face, she did not struggle. She
waited as the woman was waiting, for the move-
ment, the turn of the head towards her that would
name that face, put a name also to its irrevocable
doom. But he seemed frozen in her last glimpse of
him; the invisible rush towards him was caught,
stilled in motion. The image faded finally; the
woman drew out other memories, bright, random
scenes from Raederie's past. She saw herself as a
child again, talking to the pigs while Cyone talked
to the pig-woman; running through Madir's woods
effortlessly recognizing tree and the illusion of tree
while Duac and Rood shouted in frustration be-
hind her; arguing with Matbon over the endless
riddles he had her learn while the summer sun lay
on the stones at her feet like an immutable golden
disc. The woman lingered long over her relation-
ship with the pig-woman, the small magic things the
pig-woman taught her; Mathom's marriage plans for
her seemed to intrigue the woman also, as well as

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his imperturbable stubbornness against the opposi-
tion he faced from the lords of An, from Duac, from
Cyone, from Raederle herself when she understood
at last what he had done. A dark, weary tower in
Aum rose unbidden in her mind, an isolated shadow
in an oak wood; the woman loosed her at that point,
and Raederle felt that for the first time, she was
surprised.

"You went there. To Peven's tower."

Raederle nodded. The fire had coiled down into
the embers; she was trembling as much from weari-
ness as from the chill. The woman seemed to hover,
mothlike, on the edge of the faint light. She glanced
at the fire, and it sprang alive, lean and white, etch-
ing the quiet, delicate face again out of the dark-
ness.

"I had to. I had to know what price my father
had set to my name before I was ever bom. So I
went there. I couldn't go in, though. It was a long
time ago; I was afraid . . ." She shook her head
slightly, bringing her own thoughts back from the
memory. She faced the woman again across the
strange fire; the white flame twisted and burned in
the depths of the still eyes. "Who are you? Some-
thi"" 'n me knows vou."

"Ylon." The flame curved into something of a
sm'^- "We are kinswomen, you and I."

"I know." Her voice sounded dry, hollow; her
heart ws beating its own hollow place within her.
"You have had many kinsmen in the line of the
K^n^s pf An But w1-"! »re you?"

The woman sat beside the hearth; she lifted one
hand to the flame in a gesture at once b'-a'it'ful
and cb'l'-'l'^e, then said, "I am a shape-ch"n"er.
I killed Eriel Ymris and took her shape; I half-
bl1"^ A"tr'n Ymrs; I came very close to k''ling
the Star-Bearer, although it was not his death I was

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interested in. Then. I am not interested in yours, if
you are wondering."

"I was," Raederle whispered. "What—what is it
you are interested in?"

"The answer to a riddle."

"What riddle?"

"You'll see it yourself, soon enough." She was
silent, her eyes on the fire, her hands still in her
lap, until Raederle*s own eyes went to the flame,
and she groped for the chair behind her. "It's a
riddle old as the crevices of old tree roots, as the
silence molding the groins of inner Isig, as the
stone faces of the dead children. It is essential, as
wind or fire. Time means nothing to me, only the
long moment between the asking of that riddle and
its answer. You nearly gave it to me, on that ship,
but you broke the binding between you and the
stone in spite of me. That surprised me."

"I didn't—I couldn*t break it- I remember. Lyra
hit me. You. That was you in my mind. And the
riddle: You need to put a name to that face?"

"Yes."

"And then—and then what? What will hap-
pen?"

"You are something of a riddler. Why should I
play your game for you?"

"It's not a game! You are playing with our lives!"

"Your lives mean nothing to me," the woman
said dispassionately. "The Star-Bearer and I are
looking for answers to the same questions: he kills
when he needs to; our methods are no different. I
need to find the Star-Bearer. He has grown very
powerful and very elusive. I thought of using you
or Tristan as bait to trap him, but I will let him
make his own path awhile. I think I can see where
it's leading him."

"He wants to kill Deth," Raederle said numbly.

"It won't be the first great harpist he has killed.

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Heir of Sea and fire

But he dare not turn his attention from Ghistesl-
wchlohm too long, either. Morgon or the wizards
must kill the Founder. The wizards themselves, from
the way they are secretly moving towards Lungold,
have a revenge of their own to satisfy. They will no
doubt destroy one another, which will not matter;

they've scarcely been alive for seven centuries." She
caught the expression on Raederle's face, the words
she swallowed, and smiled. "Nun? I watched her at
Lungold, the powerful, the beautiful. She would
hardly call herding pigs and making grass nets
living."

"What would you call what you're doing?"

"Waiting." She was silent a moment, her unper-
turbed eyes on Raederle's face. "Are you curious
about yourself? Of the extent of your own powers?
They are considerable."

"No."

"I have been honest with you.*'

Raederle's hands loosened on the arms of her
chair. Her head bowed; she felt again, at the
woman's words, the odd sense of kinship, if not
trust, an inescapable understanding. She said softly,
the despair settling through her again, "Ylon's
blood has been in my family for generations; no
one, however troubled by it, ever realized that he
was anything more than the son of a sea legend,
just another inexplicable shape of the magic of An.
Now I know what his father was. One of you. That
gives me some kinship with you. But nothing else,
nothing of your compassionlessness, your destruc-
tiveness—"

"Only our power." She shifted forward slightly.
"Ylon's father and I tried to do the same thing: to
disturb the land-rule of An and Ymris by giving
their kings heirs of mixed blood and twisted in-
stinct. It was for a purpose, and it failed. The land
saw to its own. Only Ylon bore the torment of

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land-rule; his power dissipated in his descendants,
grew unused, dormant. Except in you. One day,
perhaps, you could put a name to that power, and
that name would surprise you. But you will not live
that long. You only know of Ylon's sadness. But
have you ever wondered, if we are so terrible, what
made him break out of his prison to return to us?"

"No," Raederle whispered.

"Not compassion, but passion . . ." Something in
her voice opened then, like a flick of light in the
deep of Isig opening a vein of unexpected richness
to view, and she stopped. She reached down,
touched the white fire with one hand, drew it softly
into a glistening spider's web, a polished bone, a
scattering of stars, a moon-white chambered shell,
shape weaving into shape, falling from her hand, a
handful of blazing flowers, a net knotted and glint-
ing as with seawater, a harp with thin, glistening
strings. Raederle, watching, felt a hunger stir in her,
a longing to possess the knowledge of the fire, the
fire itself. The woman's face had grown oblivious of
her, intent on her work; if-seemed touched with
wonder itself at each fiery, beautiful shape. She let
the fire fall at last like drops of water or tears back
into the bed. "I take my power, as you take yours,
from the heart of things, in a recognition of each
thing. From the inward curve of a grass blade,
from the pearl troubling as a secret deed in the
oyster shell, from the scent of trees. Is that so un-
familiar to you?"

"No." Her voice seemed to come from a dis-
tance, somewhere beyond the small room, the shad-
owed stones. The woman continued softly,

"You can know it; the essence of fire. You have
the power. To recognize it, to hold it, shape it, even
to become fire, to melt into its great beauty, bound
to no man's laws. You are skilled with illusion; you
have played with a dream of the sun's fire. Now

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work with fire itself. See it. Understand it. Not with
your eyes or your mind, but with the power in you
to know and accept, without fear, without question,
the thing as itself. Lift your hand. Hold it out.
Touch the fire."

Raederie's hand moved slowly. For a moment the
shifting, bone-white, lawless thing before her that
she had known all her life yet never known, seemed,
as it wove in and out of the darkness, a child's rid-
dle. She reached out to it tentatively, curiously.
Then she realized that, in reaching towards it, she
was turning away from her own name—the familiar
heritage in An that had defined her from her birth
—towards a heritage that held no peace, a name
that no one knew. Her hand, curved to the flame,
closed abruptly. She felt the heat, the fire's barrier,
then, and drew back from it quickly. Her voice
broke from her.

"No."

"You can, when you choose. When you lose your
fear of the source of your power."

"And then what?" She brought her eyes away
from her hand with an effort. "Why are you telling
me that? Why do you care?"

Something moved minutely in the planes of the
face, as though far away, in the darkness, the door
of a thought had closed. "For no reason. I was
curious. About you, about your father's vow bind-
ing you to the Star-Bearer. Was that foreknowl-
edge?"

"I don't know."

"The Star-Bearer, I expected, but not you. Will
you tell him, or will you let him guess, if you ever
see him again, that you are kin to those trying to
destroy him? If you ever bear him children, will
you tell him whose blood -they carry?"

Raederle swallowed. Her throat felt dry, her
skin stretched taut and dry as parchment across her

1X6

Heir of Sea and fire

face. She had to swallow again before her voice
would come. "He' is a riddle-master. He won't need
to be told." She found herself on her feet then,
with the hollow in her growing deep, unbearable.
She turned blindly away from the woman. "So he'll
win me with one riddle and lose me with another,"
she added, hardly realizing what she was saying.
"Is that any of your business?"

"Why else am I here? You are afraid to touch
Ylon's power; then remember his longing."

The hopeless sorrow struck like a tide, welled
through Raederle until she saw nothing, heard noth-
ing, felt nothing but the grief and longing that had
filled her at the sight of King's Mouth Plain. But
she could not escape from it; her own sorrow was
woven to it. She smelled then the bitter smell of the
sea, dried kelp, iron rusted with the incessant spray
that Ylon must have smelled; heard the hollow
boom of the tide against the foundation stones of his
tower, the suck of it bearing back from the green,
pointed teeth of rocks below him. She heard the
lament of sea birds wheelings aimlessly to the wind.
Then she heard out of a world'beyond eyesight, a
world beyond hope, a harping tuned to her grief,
playing back, in sympathy, her own lament. It was
a fragile harping, almost lost in the brush of rain
over the sea, on the flow and ebb of the tide. She
found herself straining to hear it, moving towards
it, straining, until her hands touched cold glass, as
Ylon's hands would have touched the iron bars over
his window. She blinked away the harping, the sea;

it receded slowly. The woman's voices receded with
it.

"We are all tuned to that harping. Morgon killed
the harpist, Ylon's father. So where, in a world of
such unexpected shape, will you put your cer-
tainty?"

The silence at her leaving was like the full,

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Heir of Sea and Firf

charged silence before a storm. Raederle, still stand-
ing at the window, took one step towards the door-
way. But Lyra could give her no help, perhaps not
even understanding. She heard a sound break out of
her, shiver across the silence, and she held it back
with her hands. A face slipped into her thoughts: a
stranger's face now, worn, bitter, troubled, itself.
Morgon could not help her, either, but he had
weathered truth, and he could face, with her, one
more thing. Her hands had begun to move before
she realized it, emptying the clothes from her pack,
scattering the fruit, nuts and sweetmeats on the wine
table into it, pushing on top of them a soft skin lying
across one of the chairs, buckling the pack again.
She threw her cloak over her shoulders and went
silently out of the room, leaving behind her like a
message the white, twisting flame.

She could not find the stables in the dark, so she
walked out of the King's yard, down the mountain
road in the thin moonlight to the Ose. She remem-
bered from Bri's maps, how the Ose ran southward
a little, curving around the foothills behind Isig; she
could follow it until it began to turn east. Morgon
would be heading south, down from Osterland,
carrying his tale to Heron, she guessed; or was he,
like the wizards, on his way to Lungold? It did not
matter; he would have to go south, and with his
wizard's mind alert to danger, perhaps he would
sense her travelling alone and on foot in the back-
lands and investigate.

She found an old cart trail, rutted and overgrown,
running along the side of the river, and she followed
it. At first, fleeing the King's house, her grieving had
seemed to make her invisible, impervious to weari-
ness, cold, fear. But the swift, insistent voice of the
Ose brought her out of her thoughts, shivering into
the dark. The moon patched the road with shad-
ows, the voice of the river hid other voices, sounds

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Heir of Sea and Psre

she was not certain she heard, rustling that may or
may not have come from behind her. The ancient
pines with their calm, wrinkled faces, Danan's face,
gave her comfort. She heard the crash and snarl of
animals once, near her, and stopped short, then
realized that she did not really care what might hap-
pen to her, and probably, neither did they. The
river dragged the sound of their quarrel away. She
walked on until the cart road ended abruptly in a
clump of brambles, and the moon began to set. She
unpacked the skin, lay down and covered herself.
She slept, exhausted and heard in her dreams a
harping above the constant movement of the Ose.

She woke at sunrise; her eyes burned at the
touch of the sun. She splashed water from the
river on her face and drank it, then ate a little
food from her pack. Her bones ached; her muscles
protested at every movement until she began to
walk again and forgot about them. Making her
own path down the river did not seem difficult; she
skirted bramble patches, climbed over rocks when
the banks rose steeply above it, gathered her torn
skirts to wade when the bank was impassible,
washed her bruised, scratched hands in the river
and felt the sun beat down on her face. She ignored
the time passing, intent on nothing but her own
movement until it came to her, slowly and forcibly,
that she was being followed.

She stopped then. All the weariness and ache of
her body caught up with her, draining through her
until she swayed, balanced on a rock in the river.
She bent, drank water, and looked behind her
again. Nothing moved through the lazy hot noon
hour, and yet she sensed movement, her name in
someone's mind. She drank again, wiped her mouth
on her sleeve, and began to work out of it a piece
of silver thread.

She left several of them in her trail, intricately

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wound and tangled. She drew long grass blades
together and knotted them; they looked fragile to
the eye, but to a man or a horse tripping over them,
they would seem strong as taut rope. She poised
wayward stems of brambles over her path, seeing,
in her mind's eye, the formidable prickly clumps
they would seem to anyone else. In one place she
dug a fist-sized hole, lined it with leaves, and then
filled it with water she carried in her hands. It
stared back at the blue sky like an eye, a round,
unobtrusive pool that could stretch like a dream in-
to a wide, impassible lake.

The nagging following began to be less urgent;

she guessed that it had met with some of her traps.
She slowed a little herself, then. It was late after-
noon; the sun hovered above the tips of the pine.
A little wind shivered through them, the cool eve-
ning wind, rousing. It carried a loneliness in its
wake, the loneliness of the backlands. She glimpsed
then the long succession of days and nights ahead of
her, the lonely trek through the unsettled lands,
nearly impossible for one weaponless, on foot. But
behind her lay Isig Pass with its dark secret; in An
there was no one, not even her father, to give her a
measure of understanding. She could only hope
that her blind need would stumble onto its own
source of comfort. She shivered a little, not at the
wind, but at the empty rustle of its passing, and
went on. The sun set, drawing fingers of light
tl'-iugh the trees; the twil'ght lay in an unearthly
silence over the world. Still she moved, without
thinking, without stopping to eat, without realizing
that she walked on the thin line of exhaustion. The
moon rose; her constant tripping over things she
cou'd not see in the dark began to slow her. She
fell once, seemingly for no reason, and was sur-
prised when she found it difficult to rise. She fell
again, a few paces later, with the same surprise.

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Heir of Sea and Fire

She felt blood trickle down her knee and put her
hand in a patch of nettles as she rose. She stood
nursing her hand under one arm, wondering why
her body was shaking, for the night was not very
cold. Then she saw, like a dream of hope, the
warm, slender dance of flame within the trees. She
went towards it with one name in her mind. Reach-
ing it finally, she found in the circle of its light the
High One's harpist.

For a moment, standing at the edge of the light,
she saw only that it was not Morgon. He was
sitting back against a rock beside the fire, his face
bent; she saw only his silver-white hair. Then he
turned his head and looked at her.

She heard his breath catch. "Raederle?"
She took a step backward, and he moved
abruptly, as if to rise and stop her before she
vanished again into the darkness. Then he checked
himself, leaned back deliberately against the rock.
There was an expression on his face she had never
seen before, that kept her lingering at the light. He
gestured to the fire, the hare spftted over it.

"You look tired; sit down awhile." He turned
the spit; a breath of hot meat came to her. His
hair was ragged; his face looked worn, lined, oddly
open. His voice, musical and edged with irony, had
not changed.

She whispered, "Morgon said that you—that you
harped while he lay half-dead in Ghisteslwchlohm's
power."

She saw the muscles in his face tighten. He
reached out, edged a broken branch into the fire-
"It's true. I will reap my reward for that harping.
But meanwhile, will you have some supper? I am
doomed; you are hungry. One has very little to do
with the other, so there is no reason for you not to
eat with me."

She took another step, this time towards him.

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Though he watched her, his expression did not
change, and she took another. He took a cup from
his pack, filled it with wine from a skin. She came
close finally, held out her hands to the blaze. They
hurt her; she turned and saw the cuts on them from
brambles, the white blisters from the nettles. His
voice came again. "I have water . . ." It faded.
She glanced down at him, watched him pour water
from another skin into a bowl. His fingers shook
slightly as he corked the skin; he did not speak
again. She sat finally, washed the dirt and dried
blood from her hands. He passed her wine, bread
and meat in the same silence, sipped wine slowly
while she ate.

Then he said, his voice sliding so evenly into the
silence that it did not startle her, "Morgon, I ex-
pected to find in the night at my fire*s edge, or
any one of five wizards, but hardly the second most
beautiful woman of the Three Portions of An."

She glanced down at herself absently. "I don*t
think I'm that any more." A pang of sorrow caught
at her throat as she swallowed; she put the food
down and whispered. "Even I have changed shape.
Even you."

"I have always been myself."

She looked at the fine, elusive face, with its un-
familiar shadow of mockery. She asked then, for
both the question and the answer seemed imper-
sonal, remote, "And the High One? Whom have
you harped to for so many centuries?"

He leaned forward almost abruptly to stir the
lagging fire. "You know to ask the question; you
know the answer. The past is the past. I have no
future."

Her throat burned. t<Why? Why did you betray
the Star-Bearer?"

"Is it a riddle-game? 1*11 give answer for answer."

'*No. No games."

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They were silent again. She sipped her wine,
felt, coming alive'all through her, little aches and
throbbings from cuts, pulled muscles, bruises. He
filled her cup again when she finished. She broke
the silence, easy in his presence for some reason,
as though they sat together in the same black hol-
low of sorrow. "He already killed one harpist."

"What?"

"Morgon." She moved a little, shifting away from
the longing the name gave her. "Ylon's father. Mor-
gon killed Ylon's father."

"Ylon," he said tonelessly, and she lifted her
head, met his eyes. Then he laughed, his hands
linked hard around his cup. "So. That sent you into
the night. And you think, in the midst of this chaos,
that it matters?"

"It matters! I have inherited a shape-changer's
power—I can feel it! If I reached out and touched
the fire, I could hold it in the palm of my hand.
Look . . ." Something: the wine, his indifference,
her hopelessness, made her reckless. She stretched
out her hand, held it curved in a motionless caress
to the heat and curve of a flame. The reflection of it
flickered in Deth's eyes; its light lay cradled in the
lines and hollows of the stone he leaned against,
traced the roots of ancient trees into untangling.
She let the reflection ease through her thoughts,
followed every shift of color and movement, every
fade and mysterious renewal out of nothingness. It
was of an alien fabric that ate darkness and never
died. Its language was older than men. It was a
shape-changer; it groped for the shape of her mind
as she watched it, filled her eyes so that she saw a
single leaf fall in a liquid, burning tear through the
darkness to the ground. And deep within her,
rousing out of a dormant, lawless heritage came the
fiery, answering leap of understanding. The lucent,
wordless knowledge of fire filled her; the soft rus-

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Heir of Sea and Fire

tlings became a language, the incessant weave a
purpose, its color the color of the world, of her
mind. She touched a flame then, let it lay in her
hand like a flower. "Look," she said breathlessly,
and closed her hand over it, extinguishing it, before
the wonder in her broke the binding between them,
separating them, and it hurt her. The night fell
around her again, as the tiny flame died. She saw
Deth's face, motionless, unreadable, his lips parted.

"Another riddle," he whispered.

She nibbed her palm against her knee, for in
spite of her care it hurt a little. A breath of reason,
like the cool air off the northern peaks brushed her
mind; she shivered, and said slowly, remembering,
"She wanted me to hold the fire, her fire..."

"Who?"

"The woman. The dark woman who had been
Eriel Ymris for five years. She came to me to tell
me we were km, which I had already guessed."

"Mathom trained you well," he commented, "to
be a riddle-master's wife."

"You were a Master. You told him that once.
Am I so good with riddles? What do they lead to
but betrayal and sorrow? Look at you. You not
only betrayed Morgon, but my father and everyone
in this realm who trusted you- And look at me.
What lord of An would bother to draw enough
breath to ask for me, if he knew who claimed kin-
ship with me?"

"You are running from yourself, and I am run-
ning from death. So much for the tenets of riddle-
mastery. Only a man with a brain and heart
implacable as the jewels in Isig could bear adher-
ing to them. I made my decision five centuries ago
about the values of riddles, when Ghisteslwchlohm
asked me to Erienstar Mountain. I thought nothing
in the realm could break his power. But I was
wrong. He broke himself against the rigid tenets of

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Heir of Sea and Fire

the Star-Bearer's life and fled, leaving me alone
unprotected, harpless—"

"Where is your harp?" she asked, surprised.

"I don't know. Still in Erienstar Mountain, I as-
sume. I don't dare harp now. That was the
only other thing Morgon heard, besides Ghistesl-
wchlohm's voice, for a year."

She flinched, wanting to run from him then, but
her body would not move. She cried out at him,
"Your harping was a gift to Kings!" He did not
answer; his cup rose, flashed again in the firelight.
When he spoke finally, his voice seemed shaded,
like the fire's voice.

"I've played and lost to a Master; he'll take his
vengeance. But I regret the loss of my harp."

"As Morgon must regret the loss of his land-
rule?" Her own voice shook. "I'm curious about
that. How could Ghisteslwchlohm rip that from
him—the instinct for the land-law that is known
only to Morgon and the High One? What piece of
knowledge did the Founder expect to find beneath
the knowledge of when the barley would begin to
sprout or what trees in his orchard had a disease
eating secretly at their hearts?"

"It's done. Can you let—"

"How can I? Did you think you were betraying
only Morgon? You taught me 'The Love of Hover
and Bird' on the flute when I was nine. You stood
behind me and held my fingers down on the right
notes while I played. But that hardly matters, com-
pared to what the land-rulers of the realm will feel
when they realize what honor they have given to
the harpist of the Founder of Lungold. You hurt
Lyra badly enough, but what will the Morgol, her-
self, think when Morgon's tale reaches her? You—"
She stopped. He had not moved; he was sitting as
she had first seen him, with his head bent, one hand
on his bent knee, the cup cradled in it. Something

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had happened to her, in her anger. She lifted her
head, smelled the fine, chill, pine-scented air off
Isig, felt the night that lay over her like its shadow.
She sat at a tiny fire, lost in that vast blackness, her
dress torn, her hair tangled and dirty, her face
scratched, probably so haggard no Lord of An
would recognize her. She had just put her hand in
the fire and held it; something of its clarity seemed
to bum in her mind. She whispered, "Say my
name."

"Raederle."

Her own head bent. She sat quietly awhile, feel-
ing the name in her like a heartbeat. She drew
breath at last, loosed it. "Yes. That woman nearly
made me forget. I ran from Isig in the middle of the
night to look for Morgon somewhere in the back-
lands. It seems unlikely, doesn't it, that 1*11 find him
that way."

"A little."

"And no one in Danan*s house knows if I am
alive or dead. That seems inconsiderate. I forgot
that, having Ylon's power, I still have my own
name. That's a very great power, that alone. The
power to see ..."

"Yes." He lifted his head finally, lifted the cup
to drink again, but instead put it down with a curi-
ous care on the ground. He sat back, his face
thrown clear in the light; the mockery in it had
gone. She drew her knees together, huddling against
herself, and he said, "You're cold. Take my cloak."

"No."

His mouth crooked slightly, but he said only,
"Whafis Lyra doing in Isig Mountain?"

"We came to ask the High One questions—
Lyra, Tristan of Hed, and I—but Danan told us
that Morgon was alive, and he advised against go-
ing through the Pass. It took me hours to think why.
And it has taken this long—a day and two nights

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Heir of Sea ayd Fire

—to think of another question. But there's no one
to ask, except Morgon, and you."

"You would trust me with a question?"

She nodded a little wearily. "I don't understand
you any more; your face changes shape every time
I look at you, now a stranger, now the face of a
memory . . . But whoever you are, you still know
as much, if not more, as anyone else about what is
happening in the realm. If Ghisteslwchlohm took
the High One's place at Erienstar Mountain, then
where is the High One? Someone still holds order
in the realm."

"True." He was silent, an odd tautness to his
mouth. "I asked Ghisteslwchlohm that five centu-
ries ago. He couldn't answer me. So I lost interest.
Now, with my own death inevitable, I am still not
very interested, any more than the High One,
where he is, seems remotely interested in any prob-
lems in the realm beyond land-law."

"Perhaps he never existed. Perhaps he's a legend
spun out of the mystery of the ruined cities, passed
through the ages until Cftiisteslwchlohm took the
shape of it..."

*'A legend like YIon? Legends have a grim way
of twisting into truth."

"Then why did he never stop you from harping
in his name? He must have known."

"I don't know. No doubt he has reasons.
Whether he or Morgon dooms me, it makes little
difference; the result will be the same."

"There's nowhere you can go?" she asked, sur-
prising both herself and him. He shook his head.

"Morgon will close the realm to me. Even Herun.
I will not go there, in any event. I was al-
ready driven out of Osterland, three nights ago,
crossing the Ose. The wolfking spoke to his wolves
... A pack found me camping on his land, a re-
mote comer of it. They did not touch me, but they

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let me know I was not welcome. When word
reaches Ymns, it will be the same. And An . . .
The Star-Bearer will drive me where he wants me.
I saw the hollow he made of the High One's house
when he finally broke free—it seemed as if Erien-
star Mountain itself was too small to hold him. He
paused, in passing, to wrench the strings out of my
harp. His judgment of me I don't contest, but , . .
that was one thing in my life I did well."

"No," she whispered. "You did many things well.
Dangerously well. There wasn't a man, woman or
child in the realm who didn't trust you: you did
that well. So well that I am still sitting beside you,
talking to you, even though you hurt someone I
love past bearing, I don't know why."

"Don't you? It's simply that, alone in the back-
lands under a sky black as the pit of a dead king^s
eye, we have nothing left but our honesty. And our
names. There is great richness in yours," he added
almost lightly, "but not even hope in mine."

She fell asleep soon afterwards beside his fire,
while he sat quietly drinking wine and feeding the
fire. When she woke in the morning, he was gone.
She heard rustlings in the brush, voices; she shifted
painfully, freeing an arm to push back the covering
over her. Then she checked. She sat up abruptly,
staring down at her hand, in which the fire had
burned like an extension of herself the night before.
On her palm, scored white, were the twelve sides
and delicate inner lines of the stone Astrin had
given her on King's Mouth Plain.

128

YRA, TRISTAN AND THE GUARDS RODE OUT OF

/the trees, then, into the tiny clearing where
Rflp-^rle sat. Lvrq rpined sha''"1" it the sight

of her, dismounted without a word. She looked di-
shevelled herself, worn and tired. She went to
Raederie, knelt beside her. She opened her mouth
to say something, but wordt failed her. She opened
her hand instead, dropped between them three
tangled, dirty pieces of thread.

Raederie stared down at them, touched them.
^hat was you behind me," she whispered. She
straightened, pushing hair out of her eyes. The
guards were dismounting. Tristan, still on her horse,
was staring at Raederie, wide-eyed and frightened.
She slid to the ground abruptly, came to Raederie's
side.

"Are you all right?" Her voice was sharp with
worry. "Are you all right?" She brushed pieces of
pine needle and bark out of Raederie's hair gently.
"Did anyone hurt you?"

"Who were you running from?" Lyra asked.
"Was it a shape-changer?"

"Yes.'*

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"What happened? I was just across the hall; I
couldn't sleep. I didn't even hear you leave. I didn't
hear—" She stopped abruptly, as at a memory.
Raederle pushed wearily at the cloak that had been
covering her; it was hot, heavy in the bright morn-
ing. She drew her knees up, dropping her face
against them, feeling a complaint from every bone
at the simple movements. The others were silent;

she could feel their waiting, so she said haltingly
after a moment,

"It was—one of the shape-changers came to my
room, spoke to me. After she left, I wanted—I
wanted to find Morgon very badly, to talk to him.
I was not thinking very clearly. I left Danan's
house, walked in the night until the moon set. Then
I slept awhile and walked again, until—until I came
here. I'm sorry about the traps.*'

"What did she say? What could she have said to
make you run like that?"

Raederle lifted her head. "Lyra, I can't talk
about it now," she whispered. "I want to tell you,
but not now."

"All right." She swallowed. "It's all right Can
you get up?"

"Yes." Lyra helped her stand; Tristan reached
for the cloak, bundled it in her arms, gazing anx-
iously over it.

Raederle glanced around. There seemed to be
no trace of Deth; he had passed in and out of the
night like a dream, but one of the guards, Goh,
casting about with a methodical eye, said, "There
was a horseman here.'* She gazed southward as if
she were watching his passage. "He went that way.
The horse might have been bred in An, from the
size of the hoof. It's no plow horse, or Ymris war
horse."

"Was it your father?" Lyra asked a little incred-
ulously. Raederle shook her head. Then she seemed

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Heir of Sea and Fire

to see for the first time the heavy, rich, blue-black
cloak in Tristan's arms. Her teeth clenched; she
took the cloak from Tristan, flung it into the ashes
of the fire bed, seeing across from it as she did so,
the harpist's face changing to every shift of firelight.
Her hands locked on her arms; she said, her voice
steady again, "It was Deth."

"Deth," Lyra breathed, and Raederle saw the
touch of longing in her face. "He was here? Did
you speak to him?"

"Yes. He fed me. I don't understand him. He
told me that everything Morgon said about him is
true. Everything. I don't understand him. He left
his cloak for me while I was sleeping.**

Lyra turned abruptly, bent to check the trail Goh
had found. She stood again, looking southward.
"How long ago did he leave?"

"Lyra," Imer said quietly, and Lyra turned to
face her. "If you intend to track that harpist
through the backlands of the realm, you'll go alone.
It's time for us all to return to Herun. If we leave
quickly enough, we can reach it before Morgon
does, and you can ask him your questions. The tale
itself will reach Herun before any of us do, I think,
and the Morgol will need you."

"For what? To guard the borders of Herun
against Deth?"

"It might be," Goh said soothingly, "that he has
some explanation to give only to the Morgol."

"No," Raederle said. "He said he would not go to
Herun."

They were silent. The wind roused, sweet-
smelling, empty, stalking southward like a hunter.
Lyra stared down at the cloak in the ashes. She
said blankly, "I can believe he betrayed the Star-
Bearer if I must, but how can I believe he would
betray the Morgol? He loved her."

"Let's go," Kia urged softly. "Let's go back to

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Heir of Sea and Fire

Herun. None of us knows any more what to do.
This place is wild and dangerous; we don't belong

here."

"I'm going to Rerun,'* Tristan said abruptly,
startling them with her decisiveness. "Wherever
that is. If that's where Morgon is going."

"If we sail," Raederle said, "we might get there
before he does. Is Bri— Where is Bri Corbett? He
let you come after me alone?"

"We didn't exactly stop to ask his permission,"
Lyra said. The guards were beginning to mount
a pain. "T brought your horse. The last time ^ saw
Bri Corbett, he was searching the mines with Danan
and the miners."

Raederle took her reins, mounted stiffly. "For
me? Why did they think I would have gone into
the mines?"

"Because Morgon did," Tristan said, "when he
was there." She pulled herself easily onto the small,
shaeey ponv the guards had brought for her. Her
face was still pinched with worry; she viewed even
the genial profile of Isig with a disapproving eye.
"That's what Danan said. I got up near morning to
talk to you, because I had had a bad dream. And
you were gone. There was only that fire, white as
a turnip. It frightened me, so I woke Lyra- And she
woke the King. Danan told us to stay in the house
while he searched the mines. He was also afraid
you had been kidnapped. But Lyra said you
weren't."

"How did you know?" Raederle asked, surprised.

The guards had formed a loose, watchful circle
around them as they rode back through the trees.
Lyra said simply, "Why would you have taken your
pack and all the food in the room if you had been
kidnapped? It didn't make sense. So while Danan
searched his house, I went into town and found the
guards. I left a message for Danan, telling him

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where we were going. Finding your trail wasn*t dif-
ficult; the ground is still soft, and you left pieces of
cloth from your skirt on brambles beside the river.
But then your horse stepped on one of the threads
you dropped and pulled out of GOD'S hold; we spent
an hour chasing it. And after we caught it finally,
Kia rode over another thread and went off into the
brush before anyone saw her. So we spent more
time tracking her. After that, I watched for your
threads. But it took me awhile to realize why our
horses kept stumbling over things that weren't
there, and why there were mountains of brambles
along the river that your footprints seemed to dis-
appear into. And then we came to that lake . . ."
She paused, giving the memory a moment of ful-
minous silence. The blood was easing back into
Raederle's face as she listened.

"I'm sorry it was you. Was—Did it work?"

"It worked. We spent half an afternoon trying to
round one shore of it- It was impossible. It simply
didn't look that big. It just stretched. Finally Goh
noticed that there were no signs that you had
walked around it, and I realized what it might be.
I was so hot and tired I got off my horse and
walked straight into it; I didn't care if I got wet or
not. And it vanished. I looked behind me. and saw
all the dry ground we had been skirting, making a
path around nothing."

"She stood in the middle of the water and
cursed," Imer said, with a rare grin. "It looked
funny. Then, when we reached the river again, to
pick up your trail, and saw that tiny pool, no big-
ger than a fist, we all cursed. I didn't know any-
one but a wizard could do that with water."

Raerderie's hand closed suddenly over its secret.
"I've never done it before." The words sounded
unconvincing to her ears. She felt oddly ashamed,
as though, like Deth, she held a stranger's face to

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the world. The calm, ancient face of Isig rose over
them, friendly in the morning light, its raw peaks
gentled. She said with sudden surprise, "I didn't
get very far, did I?"

"You came far enough," Lyra said.

They reached Isig again at noon the next day.
Bri Corbett, grim and voluble with relief, took one
look at Raederle, stayed long enough to hear Lyra's
tale, then departed to find a boat at Kyrth.
Raederle said very little, either to Danan or Bri;

she was grateful that the mountain-king refrained
from questioning her. He only said gently, with a
perception that startled her, "Isig is my home; the
home of my mind, and still, after so many years, it
is capable of surprising me. Whatever you are grip-
ping to yourself in secret, remember this: Isig holds
great beauty and great sorrow, and I could not de-
sire anything less for it, than that it yields always,
unsparingly, the truth of itself."

Bri returned that evening, having wheedled
places for them all, their horses and gear, on two
keelboats packed and readied to leave for Kraal at
dawn. The thought of another journey down the
Winter made them all uneasy, but it was, when they
finally got underway, not so terrible as before. The
floodwaters had abated; the fresh, blue waters of
the upper Ose pushed down it, clearing the silt and
untangling the snags. The boats ran quickly on the
crest of the high water; they could see, as the banks
flowed past them, the Osterland farmers pounding
the walls of their barns and pens back together
again. The piquant air skimmed above the water,
rippling it like the touch of birds' wings; the warm
sun glinted off the metal hinges of the cargo chests,
bumed in flecks of spray on the ropes.

Raederle, scarcely seeing at all as she stood day
after day at the rail, was unaware of her own dis-
turbing silence. The evening before they were due

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to reach Kraal, she stood in the shadowy twilight
under the lacework of many trees, and realized
only after the leaves had blurred into darkness, that
Lyra was standing beside her. She started slightly.

Lyra, the weak light from the chart house rip-
pling over her face, said softly, "If Morgon has al-
ready passed through Crown City when we get
there, what will you do?"

'*! don't know. Follow him."

"Will you go home?"

"No." There was a finality in her voice that sur-
prised her. Lyra frowned down at the dark water,
her proud, clean-lined face like a lovely profile on
a coin. Raederle, looking at her, realized with help-
less longing, the assuredness in it, the absolute cer-
tainty of place.

"How can you say that?" Lyra asked. "How can
you not go home? That's where you belong, the one
place."

"For you, maybe. You could never belong any-
where but in Herun."

"But you are of An! You-are almost a legend of
An, even in Herun. Where else" could you go? You
are of the magic of An, of the line of its kings;

where . . . What did that woman say to you that
is terrible enough to keep you away from your own
home?"

Raederie was silent, her hands tightening on the
rail. Lyra waited; when Raederle did not answer,
she went on, "You have scarcely spoken to anyone
since we found you in the forest. You have been
holding something in your left hand since then.
Something—that hurts you. I probably wouldn't
understand it. I'm not good with incomprehensible
things, like magic and riddling. But if there is some-
thing I can fight for you, I will fight it. If there is
something I can do for you, I will do it. I swear
that, on my honor—" Raederie's face turned

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abruptly toward her at the word, and she stopped.

Raederle whispered, "I've never thought about
honor in my life. Perhaps it's because no one has
ever questioned it in me, or in any of my family.
But I wonder if that's whafs bothering me. I would
have little of it left to me in An."

"Why?" Lyra breathed incredulously. Raederle's
hand slid away from the rail, turned upward, open
to the light.

Lyra stared down at the small, angular pattern
on her palm. "What is that?"

"It's the mark of that stone. The one I blinded
the warships with. It came out when I held the
fire—"

"You—she forced you to put your hand in the
fire?"

"No. No one forced me. I simply reached out
and gathered it in my hand. I knew I could do it,
so I did it."

"You have that power?" Her voice was small
with wonder. "It's like a wizard's power. But why
are you so troubled? Is it something that the mark
on your hand means?"

"No. I hardly know what that means. But I do
know where the power has come from, and it's not
from any witch of An or any Lungold wizard. It's
from Ylon, who was once King of An, a son of a
queen of An and a shapechanger. His blood runs
in the family of An, I have his power. His father
was the harpist who tried to kill Morgon in your

house."

Lyra gazed at her, wordless. The chart house
light flicked out suddenly, leaving their faces
in darkness; someone lit the lamps at the bow.
Raederle, her face turning back to the water, heard
Lyra start to say something and then stop. A few
minutes later, still leaning against the rail at
Raederie's side, she started again and stopped.

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Raederle waited for her to leave, but she did not
move. Half an hour later, when they were both be-
ginning to shiver in the nightbreeze, Lyra drew an-
other breath and found words finally.

"I don't care," she said softly, fiercely. "You are
who you are, and I know you. What I said
still stands; I have sworn it, the same promise I
would have given to Morgon if he hadn't been so
stubborn. It's your own honor, not the lack of it,
that is keeping you out of An. And if I don't care,
why should Morgon? Remember who the source of
half his p°wer is. Now let's go below before
we freeze."

They reached Kraal almost before the morning
mists had lifted above the sea. The boats docked;

their passengers disembarked with relief, stood
watching the cargo being unloaded while Bri'went
to find Mathom's ship and sailors to load their gear
again. Kia murmured wearily to no one, "If I never
set foot on a ship again in my life, I will be happy.
If I never see a body of water larger than the
Morgol's fish pools ..."     '-

Bri came back with the sailors and led them to
the long, regal ship swaying in its berth. After the
barge and keelboats, it looked expansive and com-
fortable; they boarded gratefully. Bri, with one eye
to the tide, barked orders contentedly from the
bow, as the sailors secured what supplies they
needed, stabled the horses, brought the gear from
the keelboats and loaded it all again. Finally the
long anchor chain came rattling out of the sea; the
ship was loosed from its moorings, and the stately
blue and purple sails of An billowed proudly above
the river traffic.

Ten days later they docked at Hlurle. The
Morgol's guards were there to meet them.

Lyra, coming down the ramp with the five guards
behind her, stopped at the sight of the quiet, armed

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gathering on the dock. One of the guards, a tall,
grey-eyed girl, said softly, "Lyra—"

Lyra shook her head. She lifted her spear, held
it out in her open hands, quiescent and unthreaten-
ing, like an offering. Raederie, following, heard her
say simply, "Will you carry my spear through
Herun for me, Trika, and give it for me to
the Morgol? I will resign when I get to Crown
City"
"I can't."

Lyra looked at her silently, at the still faces of
the fourteen guards 'behind Trika. She shifted
slightly. "Why? Did the Morgol give you other or-
ders? What does she want of me?"

Trika's hand rose, touched the spear briefly and
fell. Behind Lyra, the five guards were lined, mo-
tionless, across the ramp, listening. "Lyra." She
paused, choosing words carefully. "You have
twenty witnesses to the fact that you were willing,
for the sake of the honor of the MorgoFs guards,
to ride unarmed into Herun. However, I think you
had better keep your spear awhile. The Morgol is
not in Herun.*'

"Where is she? Surely she isn't still at Caith-
nard?"

"No. She came back from Caithnard over a
month ago, took six of us with her back to Crown
City, and told the rest of us to wait for you here.
Yesterday, Feya came back with the news that she
had—that she was no longer in Herun."

"Well, if she isn't in Herun, where did she go?"
"No one knows. She just left."
Lyra brought her spear down to rest with a little
thump at her side. She lifted her head, picked out
a lithe, red-haired guard with her eyes. "Feya, what
do you mean she left?"

"She left, Lyra. One night she was there having

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supper with us, and the next morning she was
gone."

"She must have told someone where she was go-
ing. She never does things like that. Did she take
servants, baggage, any guards at all?"

"She took her horse."

"Her horse? That's all?**

"We spent the day questioning everyone in the
house. That's all she took. Not even a packhorse."

"Why didn't anyone see her leave? What were
you all guarding, anyway?"

"Well, Lyra,'* someone said reasonably, "she
knows the changes of our watch as well as any of
us, and no one would ever question her movements
in her own house."

Lyra was silent. She moved off the ramp, out of
the way of the curious sailors beginning to unload
their gear. Raederie, watching her, thought of the
calm, beautiful face of the Morgol as she rode up
the hill to the College, the gold eyes turning watch-
ful as the Masters gathered around her. A question
slid into her mind; Lyra, her brows crooking to-
gether. asked it abruptly, "Hafi Morgon of Hed
spoken to her?"

Feya nodded. "He came so quietly no one saw
him but the Morgol; he left just as quietly, except
—except that—nothing was very peaceful in Herun
after his leaving."

"She gave orders?" Her voice was level. Beside
Raederie, Tristan sat down heavily at the foot of
the ramp, dropped her face into her hands. Feya
nodded again, swallowing.

"She gave orders that the northern and western
borders were to be guarded against the High One's
harpist, that no one in Herun should give him lodg-
ings or aid of any kind, and that anyone seeing him
in Herun should tell either the guards or the
Morgol. And she told us why. She sent messengers

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to all parts of Herun to tell people. And then she
left."

Lyra's gaze moved from her, past the worn, grey
clutter of warehouse roofs lining the docks, to the
border hills touched to a transient, delicate green
under the late spring sun. She whispered, "Deth."

Trika cleared her throat. "We thought she might
have gone to look for him. Lyra, I don't—none of
us understand how he could have done the terrible
thing the Star-Bearer accused him of; how he could
have lied to the Morgol. It doesn't seem possible.
How could—how could he not love the Morgol?"

"Maybe he does," Lyra said slowly. She caught
Raederie's quick glance and added defensively,
"She judged him like Danan, like Har: with-
out even listening to him, without giving him the
right to self-defense that she would give to the sim-
plest man from the Herun marsh towns."

"I don't understand him either," Raederle said
steadily. "But he admitted his guilt when I talked
to him. And he offered no defense. He had none."

"It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone,
even Morgon, that perhaps Ghisteslwchlohm held
Deth in his power, as he held the wizards, and
forced him to bring Morgon to him instead of to
the High One."

"Lyra, Ghisteslwchlohm is—" She stopped, felt
the sluice of the sea wind between them like an
impossible distance. She sensed their waiting, and
finished wearily, "You're saying that the Founder
is more powerful than the High One, forcing his
harpist against his will. And if there is one thing I
believe about Deth, it is that no one, maybe not
even the High One, could force him to do some-
thing he did not choose to do."

"Then you've condemned him, too," Lyra said
flatly.

"He condemned himself! Do you think I want to

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believe it, either? He lied to everyone, he betrayed
the Star-Bearer, the Morgol and the High One.
And he put his cloak over me so that I wouldn't be
cold while I slept, that night in the backlands.
That's all I know." She met Lyra's dark, brooding
gaze helplessly. "Ask him. That's what you want.
isn't it? Find him and ask him. You know where
he is: in the backlands, heading toward Lungold.
And you know that must be where the Morgol is
going."

Lyra was silent. She dropped down on the ramp
beside Tristan, yielding to a weary, vulnerable
uncertainty.

Goh said simply after a moment, **We have no
instructions from the Morgol to stay in Herun. No
one should travel in the backlands alone."

"I wonder if she looked beyond Herun and saw
him alone . . ." She took a breath impulsively, as
though to give an order, then closed her mouth
abruptly.

Trika said soberly, **Lyra, none of us knows
what to do; we have no orders. It would be a relief
to us all if you postponed resigning for a while."

"All right. Saddle your horses and let's go to
Crown City. No matter how secretly she rode out
of Herun, even the Morgol must have left some
kind of trail."

The guards dispersed. Raederle sat down beside
Lyra. They were silent as a sailor tramped down
the ramp, leading Lyra's horse and whistling softly.

Lyra, her spear slanted on her knees, said sud-
denly to Raederle, "Do you think I'm right in fol-
lowing her?"

Raederle nodded. She remembered the worn,
familiar face of the harpist, etched in the firelight
with an unfamiliar mockery as he drank, the light
irony in his voice that had never been there before.
She whispered, "Yes. She'll need you."

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"What will you do? Will you come?**
"No. I'll sail back to Caithnard with Bri. H
Morgon is heading south, he might go there."
Lyra glanced at her. "He'll go to An."
"Maybe."

"And then where will he go? Lnngold?"
"I don't know. Wherever Deth is, I suppose."
On the other side of Lyra, Tristan lifted her
head. "Do you think," she said with unexpected
bitterness, "that he'll come to Hed before that?
Or is he planning to kill Deth and then go home
and tell everyone about it?"

They looked at her. Her eyes were heavy with
unshed tears; her mouth was pinched taut. She
added after a moment, staring down at the bolt
heads in the planks, "If he wouldn't move so fast,
if I could just catch up with him, maybe I could
persuade him to come home. But how can I do
that if he won't stay still?"

"Hell go home eventually," Raederle said. ^
can't believe he's changed so much he doesn't care
about Hed any more."

"He's changed. Once he was the land-ruler of
Hed, and he would rather have killed himself than
someone else. Now—"

"Tristan, he has been hurt, probably more deeply
than any of us could know ..."

She nodded a little jerkily. "I can understand
that with my head. People have killed other people
in Hed, out of anger or jealousy, but not—not like
that. Not tracking someone like a hunter, driving
him to one certain place to be killed. It's—what
someone else would do. But not Morgon. And if—
if it happens, and afterwards he goes back to Hed,
how will we recognize each other any more?"

They were silent. A sailor carrying a keg of
wine across his shoulders shook the ramp with his
slow, heavy, persistent steps. Behind them, Bri

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Corbett shouted something, lost like a sea gull's
cry in the wind. Raederle stirred.

"He'll know that." she said softly. "Deep in
him. That he has every justification to do this ex-
cept one. That the only man who might condemn
him for it would be himself. Maybe you should
trust him a little. Go home and wait and trust
him."

There was another step behind them. Bri
Corbett said, looking down at them, "That is the
most rational thing I've heard this entire journey.
Who's for horneT*

"Caithnard," Raederle said, and he sighed.

**Well, it's dose enough for a start. Maybe I can
look for work there, if your father decides he
doesn't want to see my face in An after this. But if
I can just get you and this ship together back into
the harbor at Anum, he can curse the hair off my
head and HI still be content."

Lyra stood up. She hugged Bri suddenly, up-
setting his hat with her spearhead. "Thank you.
Tell Mathom it was my fault.**

He straightened his hat, his face flushed, smiling.
**I doubt if he'd be impressed."

"Have you heard any news of him here?" Rae-
derle asked. "Is he back home?"

"No one seems to know. But—*' He stopped, his
brows tugging together, and she nodded.

"It's been nearly two months. He doesn't have a
vow to fulfill anymore, since Morgon is alive, and
he won't have a house to return to if he doesn't get
himself back to An before it rouses." The guards
rounded the dock side, in two straight lines. Kia,
holding Lyra's horse, brought it over to her. Rae-
derle and Tristan stood up, and Lyra gave them
her quick, taut embrace.

"Good-bye. Go home." She held Raederie's eyes

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a moment before she loosed her and repeated
softly, "Go home."

She turned, mounted, and gave them a spear-
bearer's salute, her spear flaring upward like a
silver torch. Then she wheeled her horse, took her
place beside Trika at the head of the lines, and
led me guards out of the Hlurle docks without
looking back, Raederle watched her until the last
guard disappeared behind the warehouses. Then
she turned almost aimlessly and saw the empty
ramp before her. She went up slowly, found Bri
and Tristan watching the flicker of spears "in the
distance. Bri sighed.

"It's going to be a quiet Journey without some-
one using the boom for target practice. We'll finish
getting supplies here and sail a straight run past
Ymris to Caithnard. Making," he added grimly,
"the widest possible detour around Ymris. I would
rather see the King of An himself off my bowsprit
than Astrin Ymris."

They saw neither on the long journey to Caith-
nard, only an occasional trade-ship making its own
prudent path around the troubled Ymris coast.
Sometimes the ships drew near to exchange news,
for tales of the errant ship out of An had spread
from one end of the realm to the other. The news
was always the same: war in Ymris had spread up
into Tor and east Umber; no one knew where
Morgon was; no one had heard anything of Matnom
of An; and one startling piece of news from
Caithnard: the ancient College of Riddle-Masters
had sent away its students and closed its doors.

The long journey ended finally as the weary ship
took the lolling afternoon tide into the Caithnard
harbor. There were cheers and various remarks
from the dockside as the dark sails wrinkled and
slumped on the mast and Bri eased the ship into its
berth. Bri ignored the noise with patience tempered

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by experience, and said to Raederle, "We're taking
in a little water; she'll need repairs and supplies be-
fore we continue to Anuin. It will be a day or two,
maybe. Do you want me to find you lodgings in the
city?"

"It doesn't matter." She gathered her thoughts
with an effort. "Yes. Please. I'll need my horse.'*

"All right."

Tristan cleared her throat. "And I'll need mine."

"You will." He eyed her. "For what? Riding
across the water to Hed?**

"I'm not going to Hed, I've decided." She bore
up steadily under his flat gaze. "I'm going to that
city—the wizards' city. Lungold. I know where it
is; I've looked on your maps. The road leads
straight out of—"

"Hegdis-Noon's curved eyeteeth, girl, have you
got a sensible bone anywhere in you?" Bri ex-
ploded. "That's a six-weeks journey through no-
man's land. It's only because I have a hold
weeping bilge water that I didn't take you straight
to Tol. Lungold! With De5i and Morgon headed
there, the Founder and who knows how many wiz-
ards coming like wraiths out of the barrows of Hel,
that city is going to fall apart like a worm-eaten
hull."

"I don't care. I—"

"You—"

They both stopped, as Tristan, her eyes moving
past Bri, took a step backward. Raederle turned. A
young man with a dark, tired, vaguely familiar
face had come up the ramp. Something in his plain
dress, his hesitant entry onto Bri's ship, stirred a
memory in her mind. His eyes went to her face as
she moved, and then, beyond her, to Tristan.

He stopped, closing his eyes, and sighed. Then
he said, "Tristan, will you please come home be-
fore Eliard leaves Hed to look for you."

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Something of the mutinous, trapped expression
in her eyes faded. "He wouldn't."

"He would. He will. A trader coming down from
Kraal spotted this ship at Hlurle and said you
were coming south. Eliard was ready to leave then,
but we—I won a wrestling match with him, and
he said if I came back without you, he*d leave
Hed. He's worn to the bone with worry, and his
temper is short as a hen's nose. There's no living
on the same island with him. drunk or sober."

"Cannon, I want to come home, but—"

Cannon Master shifted his stance on the deck.
*'Let me put it this way. I have asked you politely,
and I will ask you again. The third time, I won't
ask."

Tristan gazed at him, her chin lifted. Bri Corbett
allowed a slow smile of pure contentment to spread
over his face. Tristan opened her mouth to retort;

then, under the weight of Cannon's implacable,
harassed gaze, changed tactics visibly.

"Cannon, I know where Morgon is, or where
he's going to be. If you'll just wait, just tell Eliard
to wait—"

"Tell him. I told him it was a fine morning once
and be threw a bucket of slops at me. Face one
thing, Tristan: when Morgon wants to come home,
he'll come. Without help from any of us. Just as he
managed to survive. I'm sure, by now, he ap-
preciates the fact that you cared enough to try td
find out what happened to him."

"You could come with me—"

"It takes all my courage just to stand here with
that bottomless water between me and Hed. If you
want him to come home, then go back yourself. In
the High One's name, give him something he loves
to come home to.'*

Tristan was silent, while the water murmured
against the hull and the lean black shadow of the

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mast lay like a bar at her feet. She said finally, "All
right," and took a step forward. She stopped. "I'll
go home and tell Eliard I'm all right. But I don't
promise to stay. I don't promise that." She took
another step, then turned to Raederle and held her
tightly. "Be careful," she said softly. "And if you
see Morgon, tell him . . . Just tell him that. And
tell him to come home."

She loosed Raederle, went slowly to Cannon's
side. He dropped a hand down her hair, drew her
against him, and after a moment she slid an arm
around his waist Raederle watched them go down
the ramp, make their way through the hectic, dis-
orderly docks. A longing for Anuin wrenched at
her, for Duac, and Elieu of Hel, for Rood with his
crow-sharp eyes, for the sounds and smells of An,
sun-spiced oak and the whisper, deep in the earth,
of the endless fabric of history.

Bri Corbett said gently behind her, "Don't be
sad. You'll smell the wind of your own home in a
week."

"Will I?" She looked down and saw the white
brand on her palm that had nothing to do with An.
Then sensing the worry in him, she added more
lightly, "I need to get off this ship, I think. Will
you ask them to bring my horse up?"

"If you'll wait, I'll escort you."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "I'll be all right.
I want to be alone for a while."

She rode through the docks, down the busy mer-
chants' streets of the city, and if anyone troubled
her, she did not notice. The fading afternoon drew
a net of shadows across her path as she turned onto
the silent road that led up to the College. She real-
ized she had seen no students that day, with their
bright robes and restless minds, anywhere m Caith-
nard. There were none on the road. She took the

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final wind to the top and saw the empty sweep of
the College grounds.

She stopped. The dark, ancient stones with their
blank windows seemed to house a hollowness, a
betrayal of truth as bitter and terrible as the be-
trayal at Erienstar Mountain. The shadow of that
mountain had swept across the realm into the
hearts of the Masters, until they found the greatest
deceit within their own walls. They could send the
students away, but she knew that though they
might question themselves, they would never ques-
tion the constant, essential weave and patterning
of Riddle-Mastery.

She dismounted at the door and knocked. No
one came, so she opened it. The narrow hall was
empty, dark. She walked down it slowly, glimpsing
through the long line of open doors each small
chamber that had once held bed, books and end-
less games over guttering candles. There was no
one downstairs. She took the broad stone stairs to
the second floor and found more lines of open
doors, the rooms holding no more in them than an
expressionless block of sky. She came finally to the
door of the Masters' library. It was closed.

She opened it. Eight Masters and a King, in-
terrupting their quiet discussion, turned to her,

startled. The King's eyes, ancient, ice-blue, burned

as he looked at her with sudden curiosity.
One of the Masters rose. He said gently, "Rfie-

derle of An. Is there some way we can help you?"
"I hope so," she whispered, "because I have no

place else to go."

148

8

^HE TOLD THEM, SITTING IN THEIR GENTLE, IM-

partial silence, of the shape-changer, who had
come to her in Danan's house, and of her flight
out of Isig Mountain. She told them of the stone
Astrin had found on King's Mouth Plain and
showed them the mark of it on her palm. She told
them how she had held fire m the empty hollow of
night in the backlands, while the wine cup of the
High One's harpist flashed and fell in its light. She
told them, knowing they knew it, but telling them
by right of sorrow and heritage, the tale of Ylon,
born out of An and the formless sea, and she saw
in their eyes the gathering of the threads of rid-
diery. When she finished, dusk had crept in to the
room, blurring the silent, dark-robed figures, old
parchment and priceless, gold-hinged manuscripts.
One of the Masters lit a candle. The flame gave
her the patient, weary working of lines on his face,
and beyond him, the spare, ungentle face of the
Osteriand King. The Master said simply, "We are
all questioning ourselves these days."

<1! know. I know how imperatively. You have
not closed your doors only because you accepted

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Heir of Sea and fire

the Founder of Lungold as a Master here. I know
who was there to meet Morgon when Deth brought
him to Erienstar Mountain."

The taper the Master held dipped toward a wick
and halted. "You know that, too."

"I guessed. And later, Deth—Deth told me it
was so."

"He seems to have spared you very little," Har
said. His voice sounded dry, impersonal, but she
saw in his face a hint of the anger and confusion
the harpist had loosed into the realm.

**I was not asking to be spared. I wanted truth. I
want it now, so I came here. It's a place to start
from. I can't go back to An with this. If my father
were there, maybe I could. But I can't go back and
pretend to Duac and Rood and the Lords of An
that I belong to An as surely as the roots of trees
and the old barrows of Kings. I have power, and I
am afraid of it. I don't know—I don't know what I
might loose in myself without meaning to. I don't
know, any more, where I belong. I don't know
what to do."

"Ignorance," the wolf-king murmured, *^s
deadly."

Master Tel shifted, his worn robe rustling in the
hush. "You both came for answers; we have few
to give you. Sometimes, however, the turn of a
question becomes an answer; and we do have
many questions. Above all: one regarding the
shape-changers. They appeared almost without
warning at the moment the Star-Bearer began re-
alizing his destiny. They knew his name before he
did; they knew of the sword bearing his stars deep
in the grave of the Earth-Masters' children at Isig.
They are old, older than the first weave of history
and riddlery, originless, unnamed. They must be
named. Only then will you know the origins of
your own power."

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"What else do I need to know about them, ex-
cept that they have tried to destroy the King's
lines in An and Ymris, that they blinded Astrin,
they almost killed Morgon, they have no mercy, no
pity, no love. They gave Ylon his life, then drove
him to his death. They have no compassion even
for their own—" She stopped, then, remembering
the voice of the shape-changer striking its unex-
pected, puzzling timbre of richness.

One of the Masters said softly, "You have
touched an incongruity?"

"Not compassion, but passion . . ." she whispered.
"The shape-changer answered me with that. And
then she wove her fire into such beauty that I hun-
gered for her power. And she asked me what had
driven Ylon back to them, if they were so terrible.
She made me hear the harping Ylon heard, made
me understand his longing. Then she told me Mor-
gon had killed the harpist." She paused in their si-
lence, the practiced stillness of old men, the heart
of patience. "She handed me that riddle." Her
voice was toneless. "That inCoagruity. Like Deth's
kindness, which maybe was only habit, and . . .
maybe not. I don't know. Nothing—the High One,
this College, good or evil—seems to keep its own
shape any more. That's why I wanted Morgon,
then, so badly. At least he knows his own name.
And a man who can name himself can see to name
other things."

Their faces under the restless candlelight seemed
molded out of shadow and memory, they sat so
quietly when her voice faded.

At last Master Tel said gently, "Things are
themselves. We twist the shapes of them. Your
own name lies within you still, a riddle. The High
One, whoever he is, is still the High One, though
Ghisteslwchlohm has worn his name like a mask."

"And the High One's harpist is what?" Har

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asked. Master Tel was silent a moment, with-
drawing into a memory.

"He studied here, also, centuries ago ... I would
not have believed a man who took the Black could
have so betrayed the disciplines of riddle-mastery."

"Morgon intends to kill him," Har said brusquely,
and the Master's eyes lifted again, startled.
"I had not heard . . ."

"Is that a betrayal of riddle-mastery? The wise
man does not pursue his own shadow. There are
no instincts of his own land-law in him to stay his
hand; there is not one land-ruler, including the
Morgol, who will not comply with his wishes- We
give him understanding; we bar the gates to our
kingdoms as he requests. And we wait for his
final betrayal: self-betrayal." His implacable gaze
moved from face to face like a challenge. "The
Master is master of himself. Morgon has absolute
freedom of this realm. He has no longer the re-
straints of land-law. The High One is nowhere in
evidence except in the evidence of his existence.
Morgon has bound himself, so far, to his destiny
by the tenets of riddle-mastery. He also has enor-
mous, untested power. Is there a riddle on the
master lists that permits the wise man to revenge?"

"Judgment," one of the Masters murmured, but
his eyes were troubled. "Who else is permitted to
judge and condemn this man who has betrayed the
entire realm for centuries?"
"The High One."
"In lieu of the High One—"
"The Star-Bearer?" He twisted their silence like
a harp string, then broke it. "The man who .wrested
his power from Ghisteslwchlohm because no one,
not even the High One, gave him any help? He is
bitter, self-sufficient, and by his actions he is ques-
tioning even the elusive restraints of riddle-mastery.
But I doubt if he sees even that in himself, because

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wherever he looks there is Deth. His destiny is to
answer riddles. Not destroy them."

Something eased in Raederie's mind. She said
softly, "Did you tell him that?'*

"I tried."

"You complied with his wishes. Deth said he was
driven out of Osteriand by your wolves."

"I had no desire to find even the shape of Deth's
footprint in my land." He paused; his voice lost its
harshness. "When I saw the Star-Bearer, I would
have given him the scars off my hands. He said
very little about Deth or even about Ghistesl-
wchlohm, but he said .. . enough. Later, as I began
to realize what he was doing, how far from himself
he seemed to have grown, the implications of his
actions haunted me. He was always so stub-
born ..."

"Is he coming to Caithnard?"

"No. He asked me to take his tale and his rid-
dles to the Masters, who in their wisdom would
decide whether or not the realm could bear the
truth about the one we have" called the High One
for so long."

'That's why you shut your doors," she said sud-
denly to Master Tel, and he nodded, with the first
trace of weariness she had ever seen in him.

"How can we call ourselves Masters?" he asked
simply. "We have withdrawn into ourselves not out
of horror, but out of a need to reconstruct the pat-
terns we have called truth. In the very fabric of
the realm, its settlement, histories, tales, wars,
poetry, its riddles—if there is an answer there, a
shape of truth that holds to itself, we will find it. If
the tenets of riddle-mastery themselves are invalid,
we will find that, too. The Master of Hed, in his
actions, will tell us that."

"He found his way out of that dark tower in
Aum .. .*' she murmured. Har shifted.

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"Do you think he can find his way out of an-
other tower, another deadly game? This time, he
has what he always wanted: choice. The power to
make his own rules for the game."

She thought of the cold, sagging tower in Aum,
rising like a solitary riddle itself among the gold-
green oak, and saw a young man, simply dressed,
stand in front of the worm-eaten door in the sun-
light a long time before he moved. Then he lifted
a hand, pushed the door open, and disappeared,
leaving the soft air and the sunlight behind him.
She looked at Har, feeling as though he had asked
her a riddle and something vital hung balanced on
her simple answer. She said, "Yes," and knew that
the answer had come from someplace beyond all
uncertainty and confusion, beyond logic.

He was silent a moment, studying her. Then he
said, his voice gentle as the mill of snow through
the still, misty air of his land, "Morgon told me once
that he sat alone in an old inn at Hlurle, midway on
his journey to Erienstar Mountain, and waited for a
ship to take him back to Hed. That was one point
when he felt he had a choice about the matter of
his destiny. But one thing stopped him from going
home: the knowledge that he could never ask you
to come to Hed if he could not give you the truth
of his own name, of himself. So he finished his
journey. When I saw him come into my house not
long ago, as simply as any traveller seeking Shelter
in my house from the night, I did not at first see
the Star-Bearer. I saw only the terrible, relentless
patience in a man's eyes: the patience born out of
absolute loneliness. He went into a dark tower of
truth for you. Do you have the courage to give him
your own name?"

Her hands closed tightly, one clenched over the
pattern of angles on her palm. She felt something
in her that had been knotted like a fist ease open

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slowly. She nodded, not trusting her voice, and her
hand opened, glinting with secret knowledge in the
candlelight. "Yes," she said then. "Whatever I
have of Ylon's power, I swear by my name, I
will twist it beyond possibility into something of
value. Where is he?"

"Coming through Ymris, undoubtedly, on his
way to Anuin, and then to Lungold, since that
seems to be where he is forcing Deth to go."

"And then where? After that, where? He will
not be able to go back to Hed."

"No. Not if he kills the harpist. There would be
no peace for him in Hed. I don't know. Where
does a man go to escape from himself? I'll ask him
that when I see him in Lungold."

"You're going there—"

He nodded. "I thought he might need one friend
in Luneold."

"Please, I want to come with you."

She saw the unspoken protest in the Masters'
faces. The wolf-king nicked a thin brow. "How
far will you go to escape from yourself? Lungold?
And then where? How far can -a tree escape from
its roots?"

"I'm not trying to—M She stopped then, not
looking at him.

He said softly, "Go home."

"Har," Master Tel said somberly, "that is ad-
vice you might well give yourself. That city is no
place even for you. The wizards will seek Ghistesl-
wchlohm there; the Star-Bearer will seek Deth; and
if the shape-changers gather there also, not a living
thing in that city will be safe."

"I know," Har said, and the smile deepened
faintly in his eyes. "There were traders in Kraal
when I passed through it, who asked me where I
thought the wizards had gone when they vanished.
They were men who used both eyes to see out of,

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and they could look across half the realm to won-
der if they wanted to risk their lives trading in a
doomed city. Traders, like animals, have an in-
stinct for danger."

"So do you," Master Tel said, with some severity,
"but without the instinct to avoid it."

"Where do you suggest we go to be safe in a
doomed realm? And when, in the void between a
riddle and its answer, was there ever anything
but danger?"

Master Tel shook his head. He yielded the argu-
ment finally when he realized it had become one-
sided. They rose then for supper, cooked for them
by a handful of students who had no other family
but the Masters, no home but the College. They
spent the rest of the evening in the library, while
Raederle and the wolf-king listened, discussing the
possible origins of the shape-changers, the implica-
tions of the stone found on King's Mouth Plain, and
the strange face within it.

"The High One?" Master Tel suggested at one
point, and Raederie's throat closed in a nameless
fear. "Is it possible they could be so interested in
finding him?"

"Why should they be any more interested in the
High One than he is in them?"

"Perhaps the High One is hiding from them,"
someone else suggested. Har, sitting so quietly in
the shadows Raederle had almost forgotten him,
lifted his head suddenly, but he said nothing. One
of the other Masters picked up the weave of the
thought.

"If the High One lived in fear of them, why
wouldn't Ghisteslwchlohm? The law of the High
One in the realm has been untroubled; he seems
oblivious of them, rather than frightened. And yet
... he is an Earth-Master; Morgon's stars are in-
extricably bound to the earlier doom of the Earth-
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Masters and their children; it seems incredible that
he has made no response to this threat to his
realm."

"What precisely is the threat? What are the ex-
tent of their powers? What are their origins? Who
are they? What do they want? What does
Ghisteslwchlohm want? Where is the High One?"

The questions spun into a haze like torch smoke
in the room; massive books were drawn from
the shelves, pored over, left lying with wax from the
candles pooling in their margins. Raederle saw
the various unlockings of wizards' books, heard the
names or phrases that opened the seamless bind-
ings of iron or brass or gold; saw the black, hurried
writing that never faded, the blank pages that re-
vealed their writings like an eye slowly opening to
the touch of water, or fire, or a line of irrelevant
poetry. Finally the broad tables were hidden be-
^neath books, dusty rolls of parchment, and gut-
tered candles; and unanswered riddles seemed to
be burning on the wicks, lying in the shadows of
the chair-backs and bookshelves. The Masters fell
silent. Raederle, struggling with weariness, thought
she could still hear their voices or their thoughts
converging and separating, questioning, discarding,
beyond the silence. Then Har rose a little stiffly,
went to one of the books lying open and turned a
page. "There is an old tale nagging at my mind
that may not be worth considering: one out of
Ymris, in Aloil's collection of legends, I think,
with a suggestion of shape-changing in it..."

Raederle stood up, feeling the fraying tendrils
of thought stir and eddy around her. The Masters'
faces seemed remote, vaguely surprised as she
moved. She said apologetically, "I'm half-asleep."

"I'm sorry," Master Tel said. He put a gentle
hand on her arm, led her to the door. "One of the
students had the forethought and kindness to go to

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the docks and tell your ship-master you were here;

he brought your pack back with him. There will be
a room prepared somewhere; I'm not sure—"

He opened the door, and a young student loung-
ing beside the wall, reading, straightened abruptly
and closed his book. He had a lean, dark, hook-
nosed face, and a shy smile, with which he greeted
Raederle. He still wore the robe of his rank: Be-
ginning Mastery; the long sleeves were stained at
the hems as though he had helped cook supper in
it. He ducked his head after he gave her the smile
and said diffidently to the floor, "We made a bed
for you near the Masters* chambers. I brought your

thinss."

"Thank you." She said good-night to Master Tel
and followed the young student through the'quiet
halls. He said nothing more, his head still bent,
the flush of shyness in his cheeks. He led her into
one of the small, bare chambers. Her pack lay on
the bed; pitchers of water and wine stood on a
tiny table under a branch of burning candles. The
windows, inset deeply in the rough stone, were
open to the dark, salty air billowing up over the
cliff's edge. She said, "Thank you," again and went
to look out, though she could see nothing but the
old moon with a lost star drifting between its horns.
She heard the student take an uncertain step behind

her.

"The sheets are rough . . .'* Then he closed the

door and said, "Raederie."

Her blood froze in her veins.

In the soft, shifting light of the candles, his face
was a blur of spare lines and shadows. He was
taller than she remembered; the stained white
robe that had not changed with his shape-changing
was puckered and strained across his shoulders. A
wind shift stirred the candlelight, pulled the flames

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toward him and she saw his eyes. She put her
hands to her mouth.

"Morgon?" Her voice jumped uncontrollably.
Neither of them moved; a solid slab of air seemed
wedged like stone between them. He looked at her
out of eyes that had stared endlessly into the black,
inner hollows of Erienstar Mountain, into the rifts
and hollows of a wizard's brain. Then she moved
forward, through the stone, touched and held
something that seemed ageless, like the wind or
night, of every shape and no shape, as worn as a
pebble runnelled with water, tossed for an eon at
the bottom of a mountain. He moved slightly, and
the knowledge of his own shape returned to her
hands. She felt his hand, light as a breath, stir her
hair. Then they were apart again, though she did
not know which one of them had moved.

"I would have come to you at Anuin, but you
were here." His voice sounded deep, harrowed,
over-used. He moved finally, sat down on the bed.
She stared at him wordlessly. He met her eyes, and
his face, a stranger's face, lean^ hard-boned, still,
shaded into a sudden, haunting gentleness. "I
didn't mean to frighten you.**

"You didn't." Her own voice sounded remote in
her ears, as though it were the wind beside her
speaking. She sat down beside him. "I've been
looking for you."

"I know. I heard."

"I didn't think . . . Har said you weren't coming
here."

"I saw your father's ship off the coasts of Ymris.
I thought, since Tristan was with you, it might stop
here. So I came."

"She might still be here; Cannon Master came
for her, but—"

"They've gone to Hed.**

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Heir of Sea and Fire

The finality in his voice made her study him a
moment. "You don't want to see her."
"Not yet."
"She asked me, if I saw you, to tell you this:

be careful."
He was silent, still meeting her eyes. He had,

she realized slowly, a gift for silence. When he
chose, it seemed to ebb out of him, the worn si-
lence of old trees or stones lying motionless for
years. It was measured to his breathing, in his
motionless, scarred hands. He moved abruptly,
soundlessly, and it flowed with him as he turned,
stood where she had been, gazing out the window.
She wondered briefly if he could see Hed in the

night,                                                          y

"I heard tales of your journey," he said.       %-
"Tristan, Lyra and you together on Mathom's       j
ship stealing by night out of Caithnard, blindme       ..}
seven Ymris war-ships with a light like a small
sun, taking a slow barge up the floodwaters of the       ,;

Winter to the doorstep of the High One to ask him       ^
a question . . . And you tell me to be careful. What       ,|,
was that light that blinded even Astrin? It gave rise,       't-
among the traders, to marvellous speculation. Even       y*
I was curious."                                         "\

She started to answer him, then stopped. "What      .•C
conclusions did you come to?'*                          ^.

He turned, came back to her side again, "That       ^
it was something you did, probably. I remembered       ^
you could do small things ..."                          "'
"Morgon—"                                        ,
"Wait. I'll want to tell you now that—no matter
what else has happened or will happen—it mat-
tered to me that while I was coming down from
Isig, you were making that journey. I heard your
name, now and then, as I moved, Lyra's, Tristan's,
like small, distant lights, unexpectedly.'*

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"She wanted to see you so badly. Couldn't you
have—"

"Not yet."

"Then when?" she said helplessly. "After you've
killed Deth? Morgon, that will be one harpist too
many."

His face did not change, but his eyes slid away
from her, towards some memory. "Corrig?" He
added after a moment, "I had forgotten him."

She swallowed, feeling as though the simple
statement had set the slab of distance between
them again. He assumed his stillness like a shield,
impervious and impenetrable; she wondered if it
hid a total stranger or someone as familiar to her
as his name. He seemed, looking at her, to read
her thoughts. He reached across the distance,
touched her briefly. Then another memory, shape-
less, terrible, welled through the stillness into his
eyes; he turned his face slightly until it faded. He
said softly, "I should have waited to see you, too.
But I just—I wanted to look at something very
beautiful. The legend of An.^The great treasure of
the Three Portions. To know that you still exist. I
needed that."

His fingers brushed her again, as though she
were something fragile as a moth wing- She closed
her eyes, brought the heels of her hands against
them and whispered, "Oh, Morgon. What in Hel's
name do you think I'm doing in this College?" She
let her hands fall and wondered if, behind the ar-
mor of his solitude, she had at last got his atten-
tion. "I would be that for you, if I could," she
cried. *T would be mute, beautiful, changeless as
the earth of An for you. I would be your memory,
without age, always innocent, always waiting in
the King's white house at Anuin—I would do that
for you and for no other man in the realm. But it
would be a lie, and I will do anything but lie to

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Heir of Sea and Fire

you—I swear that. A riddle is a tale so familiar
you no longer see it; it's simply there, like the air
you breathe, the ancient names of Kings echoing
in the comers of your house, the sunlight in the
comer of your eye; until one day you look at it
and something shapeless, voiceless in you opens
a third eye and sees it as you have never seen it
before. Then you are left with the knowledge of
the nameless question in you, and the tale that is
no longer meaningless but the one thing in the
world that has meaning any more." She stopped
for breath; his hand had closed without gentleness,
around her wrist. His face was familiar finally,

questioning, uncertain.
"'What riddle? You came here, to this place,

with a riddle?"

"Where else could I go? My father was gone; I
tried to find you and I couldn't. You should have
known there was nothing in the world that would
not change—"

"What riddle?"

"You're the Master here; do I have to tell even

you?"

His hand tightened. "No,** he said, and applied
himself in silence to one final game within those
walls. She waited, her own mind working the rid-
dle with him, setting her name against her life,
against the history of An, following strand after
strand of thought that led nowhere, until at last he
touched one possibility that built evenly onto an-
other and onto another. She felt his fingers shift.
Then his head lifted slowly, until he met her eyes
again and she wished that the College would dis-
solve into the sea.

"Ylon." He let the word wear away into another
silence. "I never saw it. It was always there . . ."
He loosed her abruptly, rose and spat an ancient
curse on a single tone into the shadows. It pat-

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teraed the glass in the window with cracks like a
spider's web. "They touched even you."

She stared numbly at the place where his hand
had been. She rose to leave, not knowing where in
the world she could go. He caught her in one step,
turned her to face him.

"Do you think I care?" he demanded incredu-
lously. "Do you think that? Who am I to judge
you? I am so blind with hatred I can't even see my
own land or the people I loved once. I'm hunting
a man who never carried weapons in his life, to
kill him while he stands facing me, against the
advice of every land-ruler I have spoken to. What
have you ever done in your life to make me have
anything but respect for you?"

"I've never done anything in my life."

"You gave me truth."

She was silent, in the hard grip of his hands,
seeing his face beyond its husk of stillness—bitter,
vulnerable, lawless—the brand of stars on his fore-
head beneath his dishevelled hair. Her own hands
lifted, closed on his arms. She whispered, "Morgon,
be careful."

"Of what? For what? Do you know who was
there in Erienstar Mountain to meet me that day
Deth brought me there?"

"Yes. I guessed."

"The Founder of Lungold has been sitting at the
apex of the world for centuries, dispensing justice
in the name of the High One. Where can I go to de-
mand Justice? That harpist is landless, bound to no
King's law; the High One seems oblivious to both
our fates. Will anyone care if I kill him? In Ymris,
in An itself, no one would question it—"

"No one will ever question anything you do! You
are your own law, your own justice! Danan, Har,
Heureu, the Morgol—they will give you everything
you ask for the sake of your name, and the truth you

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have borne alone; but Morgon, if you create your
own law, where will any of us go, if we ever need
to, to demand retribution from you?"

He gazed down at her; she saw the flick of uncer-
tainty in his eyes. Then his head shook, slowly, stub-
bornly. "Just one thing. Just this one thing. Someone
will kill him eventually—a wizard, perhaps Ghistesi-
wchlohm himself. And I have the right.'*

"Morgon—"

His hands tightened painfully. He was no longer
seeing her but some black, private horror in his
memory. She saw the sweat bead at his hairline, the
muscles jump in his rigid face. He whispered, "While
Ghisteslwchlohm was in my mind, nothing else ex-
isted. But at times when he ... when he left me
and I found myself still alive, lying in the dark,
empty caverns of Brienstar, I could hear Deth play-
ing. Sometimes he played songs from Hed. He gave
me something to live for."

She closed her eyes. The harpist's elusive face rose
in her mind, blurred away; she felt the hard, twisted
knot of Morgon's bewildered rage and the harpist's
deceit like an unending, unanswerable riddle that
no stricture could justify, and no Master in his quiet
library could unravel. His torment ached in her; his
loneliness seemed a vast hollow into which words
would drop and disappear like pebbles. She under-
stood then how his briefest word had closed court
after court, kingdom after kingdom as he made his
difficult, secret path through the realm. She whis-
pered Har's words, "I would give you the scars off
my hands." His hold loosened finally. He looked
down at her a long time before he spoke.

"But you will not allow me that one right.'*

She shook her head; her voice came with effort.
"You'll kill him, but even dead he'll eat at your
heart until you understand him."

His hands dropped. He turned away from her,

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went again to the window. He touched the glass he
had cracked, then turned again abruptly. She could
barely see his face in the shadows; his voice sounded
rough.

"I have to leave. I don't know when I will see you
again."

"Where are you going?"

"Anuin. To speak to Duac. I'll be gone before
you ever reach it. It's best that way, for both of us.
If Ghisteslwchlohm ever realized how he could use
you, I would be helpless; I would give him my heart
with both my hands if he asked."

"And then where?"

"To find Deth. And then, I don't—" He checked
abruptly. The silence eddied about him again as he
stood listening; he seemed to blur at the edge of the
candlelight. She listened, heard nothing but the night
wind among the shivering names, the wordless rid-
dling of the sea. She took a step toward him.

"Is it Ghisteslwchlohm?" Her voice was muted to
his stillness. He did not answer, and she could not
tell if he had heard her. A fear beat suddenly in the
back of her throat; she whispered, "Morgon." His
face turned towards her then. She heard the sudden,
dry catch of his breath. But he did not move until
she went to him. Then he gathered her slowly, wea-
rily into his silence, his face dropping against her
hair.

"I have to go. I'll come to you at Anuin. For
judgment."

"No—"

He shook his head slightly, stilling her. She felt, as
her hands slid away from him, the strange, almost
formless tension of air where he might have slung a
sword beneath his robe. He said something she
could not hear, his voice matching the wind's mur-
mur. She saw a flame-streaked shadow and then a
memory.

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She undressed, lay awake for a long time before
she finally fell into a troubled sleep. She woke hours
later, stared, startled, into the darkness. Thoughts
were crowding into her mind, a tumultuous cross-
weave of names, longings, memories, anger, a spat-
tering cauldron of events, urges, inarticulate voices.
She sat up, wondering what shape-changer's mind
she had become embroiled in, but there was an odd
recognition in her that had nothing to do with them,
that turned her face unerringly towards An, as if she
could see it through the blank stone walls and the
night. She felt her heart begin to pound. Roots
tugged at her; her heritage of grass-molded barrows,
rotting towers, kings' names, wars and legends,
pulling her towards a chaos the earth, left lawless
too long, was slowly unleashing. She stood up, her
hands sliding over her mouth, realizing two things at
once. The whole of An was rousing at last. And the
Star-Bearer's path would lead him straight into Hel.

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'i.

9

^Y/HE RODE OUT OF CAITHNARD AT DAWN, STOOD A

f^y day and a half later in the vast oak forest border-
/^^ ing Hel, straining, as she had never done before,
, to unlock all the power and awareness in her mind.
She had already sensed, as she came through the
forest, the almost imperceptible movement of some-
one ahead of her, his need like^a faint, indistinguish-
able scent, for swiftness, for secrecy. And at night,
sleepless and aware, she had glimpsed for one terri-
fying moment, like the shape of some enormous
beast rising against the moonlight, a relentless,
powerful, enraged mind focussed to a single thought
of destruction.

She wondered, as she stood looking over Hallard
Blackdawn's lands, what shape Morgon was taking
through them. The pastures, sloping gently towards
the river that ran beside the Lord's house, looked
quiet enough, but there was not an animal on them.
She could hear hounds baying in the distance,
wild, hoarse keening that never seemed to stop.
There were no men working in the fields behind
the house, and she was not surprised. That comer of
Hel had been the last battlefield in the half-

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forgotten wars between Hel and An; it had held its
own in an endless series of fierce, desperate battles
until Oen of An, sweeping through Aum six centu-
ries earlier, had almost contemptuously smashed the
last stronghold of resistance and beheaded the last of
the Kings of Hel, who had taken refuge there. The
land had always been uneasy with legend; the turn
of a plow could still unearth an ancient sword eaten
to the core with age or the shaft of a broken, spear
banded with rings of gold. In so many. centuries,
King Fair of Hel, bereft of his head, had had much
leisure to ponder his grievances, and, loosed at last
from the earth, he would have wasted little time
gathering himself out of Hallard's fields. The chaos
of voices Raederle had heard two nights earlier had
faded into a frightening stillness: the dead were un-
bound, aware, and plotting.

She saw, as she rode across Hallard's upper pas-
tures, a group of riders swing out of the woods into a
meadow across her path. She reined, her heart
pounding, then recognized the broad, black-haired
figure of Hallard Blackdawn towering above his
men. They were armed, but lightly; there was a sug-
gestion of futility in their bare heads and the short
swords at their sides. She sensed, unexpectedly, their
exasperation and uncertainty. Hallard's head turned
as she sat watching; she could not see his eyes, but
she felt the startled leap in his mind of her name.

She lifted the reins in her hands hesitantly as he
galloped up to her. She had no desire to argue with
him, but she needed news- So she did not move, and
he pulled up in front of her, big-boned, dark, sweat-
ing in the hot, silent afternoon. He groped for words
a moment, then said explosively, "Someone should
flay that ship-master. After taking you to Isig and
back, he let you ride unescorted from Caithnard into
this? Have you had news of your father?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. Is it bad?"

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"Bad." He closed his eyes. "Those hounds have
been at it for two solid days. Half my livestock is
missing; my wheat fields look as though they've
been harrowed by millwheels, and the ancient bar-
rows in the south fields have been flattened to the
ground by nothing human." He opened his eyes
again; they were red-veined with lack of sleep. "I
don't know what it's like in the rest of An. I sent a
messenger to east Aum yesterday, to Cyn Croeg. He
couldn't even get across the border. He came back
babbling of whispering trees. I sent another to
Anuin; I don't know if he'll make it. And if he does,
what can Duac do? What can you do against the
dead?'* He waited, pleading for an answer, then
shook his head. "Curse your father," he said bluntly.
"Hell have to fight Oen's wars over again if he isn't
careful. I'd wrest kingship from the land myself, if I
could think how."

"Well," she said, "maybe that's what they want.
The dead kings. Have you seen any of them?"

"No. But I know they're out there. Thinking." He
brooded at the strip of woods along the pastures.
"What in Hel's name would they-want with my cat-
tle? The teeth of these kings are scattered all over
my fields. King Farr's skull has been grinning above
the hearth in the great hall for centuries; what is he
going to eat with?"

Her eyes slid from the unstirred woods back to his
face. "His skull?" An idea flickered in the back of
her mind. Hallard nodded tiredly.

"Supposedly. Some dauntless rebel stole his head
from Oen, the tale goes, after Oen crowned it and
stuck it on a spearhead in his kitchen-midden. Years
later it found its way back here, with the crown
cut and melded again to fit bare bone. Mag Black-
dawn, whose father had died in that war, was still
angry enough to nail it like a battle emblem, crown
and all, above his hearthfire. After so many cen-

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tunes the gold has worn into the bone; you can't
keep one without the other. That's why I don't un-
derstand,'* he added at a tangent. "Why they're
troubling my lands; they're my ancestors."

"There were lords of An killed here, too," she
suggested. "Maybe they were the ones in your wheat
fields. Hallard, I want that skull."

"You what?"

"Farr's skull. I want it."

He stared at her. She saw, gazing back at him, the
faint struggle in him as he tried to shift her back to
her place in his known world. "What for?"

"Just give it to me."

"In Hel's name, what for?" he shouted, then
stopped and closed his eyes again. "I'm sorry.
You're starting to sound like your father; he has a
gift for making me shout. Now. Let's both try to be

rational—"

"I was never less interested in being rational in
my life. I want that skull. I want you to go into your
great hall and take it off your wall without damaging
it and wrap it in velvet and give it to me at your—"

"Velvet!" he exploded. "Are you mad?"

She thought about it for a split second and
shouted back at him. "Maybe! But not so I would
care! Yes, velvet! Would you want to look at your
own skull on a piece of sacking?"

His horse jerked, as though he had pulled it in-
voluntarily back from her. His lips parted; she heard
his quick breathing as he struggled for words. Then
he reached out slowly, put his hand on her forearm.
"Raederle." He spoke her name like a reminder to
them both. "What are you going to do with it?"

She swallowed, her own mouth going dry as she
contemplated her intentions. "Hallard, the Star-
Bearer is crossing your land—"

His voice rose again incredulously. "Now?"

She nodded. "And behind him—behind me, fol-

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lowing him, is something . . . maybe the Founder of
Lungold. I can't protect Morgon from him, but
maybe I can keep the dead of An from betraying
his presence—"

"With a skull?"

"Will you keep your voice down!"

He rubbed his face with his hands. "Madir's
bones. The Star-Bearer can take care of himself."

"Even he might be a little pressed by the Founder
and the unbound forces of An all at once." Her voice
steadied. "He is going to Anuin; I want to see that he
gets there. If—"

"No."

"If you don't—"

"No." His head was shaking slowly back and
forth. "No."

"Hallard." She held his eyes. "H you don't give
me that skull now, I will lay a curse on your thresh-
old that no friend will ever cross it, on the high gates
and posterns and stable doors that they will never
close again, on the torches in your house that they
will never bum, on your hea'rth stones that no one
standing under Fair's hollow eyes will ever feel
warm. This I swear by my name. If you don't give
me that skull I will rouse the dead of An, myself, on
your land in the name of the King of An and ride
with them into war on your fields against the ancient
Kings of Hel. This I swear by my name. If you
don't—"

"All right!"

His cry echoed, furious and desperate, across his
lands. His face was patched white under his tan; he
stared at her, breathing hard, while blackbirds
startled up from the trees behind them and his men
shifted their mounts uneasily in the distance. "All
right," he whispered. "Why not? The whole of An is
in chaos, why shouldn't you ride around with a dead
king's skull in your hands? But, woman, I hope you

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know what you're doing. Because if you are harmed,
you will lay a curse of grief and guilt across my
threshold, and until I die no fire in my hearth will
ever be great enough to warm me." He wheeled his
horse without waiting for her to answer; she fol-
lowed him down through his fields, across the river
to his gates, feeling the frightened blood pounding in
her ears like footsteps.

She waited, still mounted, while he went inside.
She could see through the open gates the empty
yard. Not even the forge fire was lit; there were no
stray animals, no children shouting in the comers,
only the incessant, invisible baying of hounds. Hal-
lard reappeared shortly, a round object gathered in
the folds of a length of rich, red velvet. He handed it
to her wordlessly; she opened the velvet, caught a
glimpse of white bone with gold melting into it and
said, "There's one more thing I want."

"What if it's not his head?" He watched her.
"Legends are spun around so many lies—"

"It had better be," she whispered. "I need a neck-
lace of glass beads. Can you find one for me?"

"Glass beads." He covered his eyes with his fin-
gers and groaned like the hounds. Then he flung up
his hands and turned again. He was gone longer this
time; the expression on ha face when he came back
was, if possible, more harassed. He dangled a small,
sparkling circle of round, clear beads in front of her;

a simple necklace that a trader might have given
away to a young girl or a hard-worked farmer's wife.
"They'll look fine rattling among Farr's bones."
Then, as she reached down to take it, he grasped her
wrist again. "Please," he whispered. "I gave you the
skull. Now come into my house, out of danger. I
can't let you ride through Hel. It's quiet now, but
when night falls, there's not a man who will stir
beyond his barred doors; you'll be alone out there in
the darkness with the name you bear and all the

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twisted hatred of the old lords of Hel. All the small
powers you have inherited will not be enough to
help you. Please—"

She pulled loose of him, backed her horse.
"Then I'll have to test the powers of another heri-
tage, If I don't come back, it will not matter."

"Raederle!"

She felt the sound of her own name spin out over
his lands, echo in the deep woods and places of se-
cret gatherings. She rode swiftly away from his
house before he could follow her. She went down-
river to his southern fields, where the young wheat
lay whipped and churned and the ancient graves of
Hallard's ancestors, once smooth green swellings
whose doors had sunk waist-deep in the earth, were
smashed like eggs. She reined in front of them.
Through the dark crumbled soil and the broken
foundation stones she could see the pale glint of rich
arms no living man dared touch. She lifted her head.
The woods were motionless; the summer sky
stretched endlessly over An, cloudless and peaceful,
except toward the west where the blue gathered to a
dark, intense line above the oak. She turned her
horse again, looked out over the empty, whispering
fields. She said softly into the wind, "Parr, I have
your head. If you want it, to lie with your bones un-
der the earth of Hel, then come and get it."

She spent the rest of the afternoon gathering wood
on the edge of the trees above the barrows. As the
sun went down she lit a fire and unwrapped the
skull from its velvet coverings. It was discolored
with age and soot; the gold banding its wide brow
was riveted to the bone. The teeth, she noted, were
intact in the tightly clenched jaws; the deep eyepits
and wide, jutting cheekbone gave her a hint of the
king whose head had stared, furious and unsubmis-
sive, over Oen's midden. The firelight rippled the
shadows in the eye sockets, and her mouth dried.

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She spread the bright cloth, laid the skull on top of
it Then she drew the necklace of glass beads out of
her pocket, bound an image in her mind to them
with her name. She dropped them into the fire. All
around her, enclosing the skull, the firewood and
her uneasy mount, rose a luminous circle of huge,
fiery moons.

At moonrise, she heard the cattle in HaIIard's
bam begin to bawl Dogs in the small farms beyond
the trees set up a constant chorus of shrill, startled
barking. Something that was not the wind sighed
through the oak, and Raederie*s shoulders hunched
as it passed over her head. Her horse, lying beside
her, scrambled to its feet, trembling. She tried to
speak to it soothingly, but the words stuck in her
throat. There was a great crashing in the distant
trees; animals lying quiet until then, began to stir
and flee before it. A stag running blind, reared and
belled as it came suddenly upon the strange, fiery
circle, wrenched itself around and shot towards the
open fields. Small deer, foxes, weasels roused in the
night, bounded silently, desperately past her, pur-
sued by the rending of branches and underbrush,
and a weird, unearthly bellow that shattered again
and again through the trees. Raederle, shuddering,
her hands icy, her thoughts scattering like blown
chaff, added branch after branch to the fire until the
beads swam red with flame. She stopped herself
from burning all the wood at once by sheer will, and
stood, her hands over her mouth to keep her heart
from leaping free, waiting for the nightmare to
emerge from the dark.

It came in the shape of the great White Bull of
Aum The enormous animal, whom Cyn Croeg loved
as Raith of Hel loved his pig herds, loomed out of
the night towards her flames, pricked and driven by
riders whose mounts, yellow, rust, black, were lean,
rangey, evil-eyed. Their heads snaking sideways,

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they nipped at the bull as they ran. The bull, flecked
with blood and sweat, his flat, burly face maddened
and terrified, swung past Raederle's circle so closely
she could see his rimmed eyes and smell the musk
of his fear. The riders swarmed about him as he
turned, ignoring her, except the last who, turning a
grinning face her direction, showed her the seam of
the scar across his face that ended in a white, with-
ered eye.

All sounds around her seemed to dwindle to one
point inside her head; she wondered, dimly, if she
was going to faint. The groan of the bull in the dis-
tance made her open her eyes again. She saw it,
gigantic and ash-colored under the moonlight, blun-
dering with its horns lowered across Hallard's fields.
The riders, their arms flickering a bluish-silver like
lightning, seemed mercilessly intent upon driving it
into HaIIard's closed gates. There they would leave
it, she knew in a sudden, temble flash of insight, like
a gift at HaIIard's doorway, a dead weight of bull for
him to explain somehow to the Lord of Aum. She
wondered, in that split second, how Raith's pigs were
faring. Then her horse screamecf behind her and she
whirled, gasping, to face the wraith of King Parr of
Hel.

He was, as she imagined him, a big, powerful man
with a wide slab of a face hard as a slammed gate.
His beard and long hair were copper; he wore rings
of hard metal at every knuckle, and his sword, rising
above one of the glass moons, was broad at the base
as the length of his hand. He wasted no time with
words; the sword, cutting down into the thin air of
illusion, nearly wrenched him on his horse. He
straightened, tried to ride his horse through it, but
the animal balked with a squeal of pain and cast a
furious eye at him. He reined it back to try to leap;

Raederle, reaching for the skull, held it above the
flames.

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"I'll drop it," she warned breathlessly. "And then
I will take it, black with ash, to Anuin and throw it
back in the midden."

"You will not live," he said. The voice was in her
mind; she saw then the ragged, scarlet weal at his
throat. He cursed her in his hoarse, hollow voice,
thoroughly and methodically, from head to foot, in
language she had never heard any man use.

Her face was burning when he finished; she
dangled the skull by one finger in an eye socket over
the flames and said tersely, "Do you want this or
not? Shall I use it for kindling?"

"You'll bum up your wood by dawn,'* the impla-
cable voice said. "I'll take it then.*'

"You'll never take it." Her own voice, colored
with anger, sounded with a dead certainty that she
almost felt. "Believe that. Your bones he rotting in
the fields of a man whose allegiance is sworn to An,
and only you remember what shinbones and
snapped neckbone belong to you. If you had this
crown, it might give you the dignity of remembrance,
but you'll never take it from me. If I choose, I'll give

it to you. For a price."

"I bargain with no man. I submit to no man. Least
of all to a woman spawned out of the Kings of An."

"I am spawned out of worse than that. I will give
you your skull for one price only. If you refuse me
once, I will destroy it. I want an escort of Kings
through Hel and into Anuin for one man—"

"Anuin!" The word reverberated painfully in her
own skull and she winced. "I will never—"

"I will ask only once. The man is a stranger to
An, a shape-changer. He is moving in fear of his life
through An, and I want him hidden and protected.
Following him is the greatest wizard of the realm;

he'll try to stop you, but you will not submit. If the
man is harmed on the way to Anuin by this wizard,
your crowned skull is forfeit." She paused, added

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Heir of Sea and Fire

temperately, "Whatever else you do on your journey
through An will be your own business, as long as he
is protected. I'll give you the skull in the house of the
Kings of An.*'

He was silent. She realized suddenly that the
night had grown very quiet; even Haggard Black-
dawn's hounds were still. She wondered if they were
all dead- Then she wondered, almost idly, what
Duac would say when he found the wraiths of the
Kings of Hel in his house. Fan's voice seeped into
her thoughts.

"And after?"

"After?"

"After we reach Anuin? What demands, what re-
strictions will you place on us in your own house?"

She drew breath, and found no more courage left
in her for demands. "If the man is safe, none. If you
have kept him safe. But I want an escort of Kings of
Hel only, not a gathering of the army of the dead."

There was another long silence. She dragged a
branch onto the fire, saw the flick of calculation in
his eyes. Then he said unexpectedly, "Who is this
man?"

"If you don't know his name, no one can take it
from you. You know the shapes of Hel: trees, ani-
mals, the earth; you are of them, rooted with them.
Find the stranger whose outward shape is of An,
whose core is of nothing of An."

"If he is nothing of An, then what is he to you?"

"What do you think?" she asked wearily. "When
I'm sitting here alone for his sake in the roused night
of Hel bargaining with a dead king over his skull?"

"You're a fool."

"Maybe. But you're bargaining, too."

"I do not bargain. An deprived me of my crown,
and An will give it back to me. One way or another.
I'll give you my answer at dawn. If your fire goes

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out before then, beware. I will show you no more
mercy than Oen of An showed to me."

He settled himself to wait, his face, baleful and
unblinking, rising out of the darkness above the
fiery beads. She wanted to scream at him suddenly
that she had nothing to do with his feuds or his
death, that he had been dead for centuries and his
vengeance was a matter insignificant in the turmoil
of events beyond An. But his brain was alive only
in the past, and the long centuries must have seemed
to him the passing of a single night over Hel. She sat
down in front of the fire, her mouth papery. She
wondered if, when dawn came, he intended to kill
her or to barter with Duac over her as she had bar-
tered over his skull. Hallard Blackdawn's house,
with all its windows lit at that hour, across two fields
and the river, seemed as far away as a dream. As
she gazed at it helplessly, the din began again in the
fields, a new sound this time: the chilling clash of
weapons in a night battle in Hallard's cow pasture.
The hounds bayed the danger hoarsely, impera-
tively, like battle boms. The eyes of the King met
hers over the illusion of fire, relentless, assured. She
looked down from him to the fire and saw the small,
blazing circle, the core of the illusion, the glass beads
cracking slowly in the tempering of the fire.

The cries faded to a comer of her mind. She
-heard the snap of wood, the sibilant language of the
flames. She opened her hand, touched an angle of
flame and watched the reflection of it in her mind. It
groped for her shape as she held it in her mind and
her hand; she kept her own thoughts mute, tapped a
silence deeply within her mind which it slowly
moved and gathered. She let it gather for a long
time, sitting motionless as the ancient trees around
her, her hand uplifted, open to the flame that traced
constantly the twelve-sided figure on her palm.
Then a shadow flowed over her mind, quenching

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the fire in it: another mind spanning the night,
drawing into its vortex a comprehension of the liv-
ing and dead of An. It passed like great, dark wings
blocking the moon and brought her back, shivering
and defenseless, into the night. She closed her hand
quickly over the small flame and looked up to see
the first hint of expression in Farr*s eyes.

"What was that?" His voice rasped jarringly in
her head.

She felt his mind unexpectedly and knew that she
was beginning to startle him, too. She said, "That is
what you will protect the Star-—the stranger from."

"That?"

"That." She added after a moment, "He'll blot out
your wraith like a candle if he realizes what you are
doing and nothing wilt be left of you but your bones
and a memory. Do you want your skull so badly
now?"

"I want it," he said grimly. "Either here or at
Anuin, Witch. Take your choice."

"I'm not a witch,"

"What are you, then, with your eyes full of fire?"

She thought about it. Then she said simply, "I am
nameless," while something too bitter for sorrow
touched the back of her mouth. She turned again to
the fire, added more wood to it, followed the wild
flight of each spark to its vanishing point. She
cupped the fire again, this time in both hands, and
began slowly to shape it.

She was interrupted many times during the end-
less night: by the run of Hallard Blackdawn's stolen
cattle, bawling in terror across his wheat fields; by
the gathering of armed men around Fair as he
waited, and his bellow of fury in her mind when they
laughed at him; by the flurry of sword play that fol-
lowed. She lifted her head once and saw only his
bare bones on his horse, blurred with fire; another
time, she saw his head like a helm in the crook of his

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arm, his expression changeless while her eyes groped
for shape above the stump of his neck. Near dawn,
when the moon set, she had forgotten him, forgotten
everything. She had drawn the flames into a hundred
varied shapes, flowers that opened then melted
away, fiery birds that took wing from her hand. She
had forgotten even her own shape; her hands, weav-
ing in and out of the fire, seemed one more shape of
it. Something undefined, unexpected, was happen-
ing in her mind. Glimpses of power, knowledge, elu-
sive as the fire, passed before her mind's eye, as
though she had wakened within her memories of her
heritage. Faces, shadows stretching beyond her
knowledge formed and vanished under her probing;

strange plants, sea languages whispered just beyond
her hearing. A void in the depth of the sea, or at the
heart of the world, cut a hollow through her mind;

she gazed into it fearlessly, curiously, too lost within
her work to wonder whose black thought it was. She
kindled a distant star of fire even in that barren
waste. She felt then, as it stirred, that it was no void,
but a tangle of memory and power on the verge of

definition.
That knowledge sent her groping urgently for the

simpler chaos of An. She came to rest like a weary
traveller within herself. The dawn mists lay over
Hallard's fields; the ash-colored morning hung amid
the trees without a sound to welcome it. All that re-
mained of her night fire was the charred stubble of
branches. She stirred stiffly, sleepily, then saw the
hand out of the comer of her eye, reaching for the

skull.

She set it blazing with an illusion of fire from her

mind; Farr flinched back. She picked up the skull
and rose, stood facing him. He whispered, "You are

made of fire..."

She felt it in her fingers, running beneath the skin,
in the roots of her hair. She said, her voice cracking

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with tiredness, "Have you made up your mind?
You'll never find Oen here; his bones lie in the
Field of Kings outside of Anuin. If you can survive
the journey, you can take your revenge there."

"Do you betray your own family?"

"Will you give me an answer?" she cried, stung;

and he was silent, struggling. She felt his yielding
before he spoke, and she whispered, "Swear by your
name. Swear by the crown of the Kings of Hel. That
neither you nor anyone else will touch me or this
skull until you have crossed the threshold at Anuin."

"I swear it."

"That you will gather the kings as you journey
across Hel, to find and protect the shape of the stran-
ger travelling to Anuin, against all living, against all
dead."

"I swear it."

"That you will tell no one but the Kings of Hel
what you are sworn to do."

"I swear it. By my name, in the name of the
Kings of Hel and by this crown."

He looked, dismounted in the dawn light with the
taste of submission in his mouth, almost alive. She
drew a soundless breath and loosed it. "All right. I
swear in my father's name and in the name of the
man you will escort, that when I see him in the
King's house at Anuin, I will give you your skull and
ask nothing further from you. All binding between
us will end. The only other thing I ask is that you let
me know when you find him."

He gave a brief nod. His eyes met the black, hol-
low, mocking gaze of the skull. Then he turned and
mounted. He looked down at her a moment before
he left, and she saw the disbelief in his eyes. Then
he rode away, noiseless as a drift of leaves beneath
the trees.

She met, as she herself rode out of the woods,
Hallard Blackdawn and his men venturing out to

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count the dead cattle in the lower fields. He stared
at her; his voice, when he found it finally, was
strengthless.

"Gen's right hand. Is it you or a ghost?"
"I don't know. Is Cyn Croeg's bull dead?'*
"They ran the life out of it ... Come to the
house." His eyes, the shock wearing away from
them, held a strange expression: half-solicitous,
half-awed. His hand rose hesitantly, touched her.
"Come in. You look—you look—"

"I know. But I can't. I'm going to Anuin."
"Now? Wait, I'll give you an escort.'*
"I have one." She watched his eyes fall to the
skull riding the pommel of her saddle; he swallowed.
"Did he come for it?"

She smiled slightly. "He came. We did some bar-
gaining—"

"Oen's right—-" He shuddered unashamedly. "No
one ever bargained with Farr. For what? The safety
of Anuin?"

She drew breath. "Well, no. Not exactly." She
took the necklace out of her pocket and gave it to
him. "Thank you. I couldn't have survived without
it."

Glancing back once, as she reached down to open
a field gate, she saw him standing motionlessly be-
side a dead bullock, still staring at the worthless
handful of cracked, fired beads.

She crossed the length of Hel as far as Raith's
lands with a growing, invisible escort of Kings. She
felt them around her, groped for their minds until
they gave her their names: Acor, third King of Hel,
who had brought through force and persuasion the
last of the bickering lords under his control; Ohroe
the Cursed, who had seen seven of his nine sons fall
one after another in seven consecutive battles be-
tween Hel and An; Nemir of the Pigs, who had
spoken the language of both men and pigs, who had

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bred the boar Hegdis-Noon and had as his pigherder
the witch Madir; Evem the Falconer, who trained
hawks for battle against men; and others, all Kings,
as Farr had sworn, who joined him, the last of the
Kings, in his journey to the stronghold of the Kings
of An. She rarely saw them; she felt them range be-
fore and behind her, their minds Joining in a network
of thought, legend, plots, remembrances of Hel dur-
ing their lives, after their deaths. They were stifl
bound to the earth of An, more than even they real-
ized; their minds slid easily in and out of different
shapes that their bones had become entwined with:

roots, leaves, insects, the small bodies of animals. It
was through this deep. wordless knowledge of An,
Raederie knew, that they recognized the Star-Bearer,
the man whose shape would hold none of the es-
sence of An.

They had found him swiftly. Farr broke his silence
to tell her that; she did not ask what shape he had
taken. The Kings surrounded him loosely as he
moved: the hart, perhaps, that bounded in terror
across a moonlit field at their presence; the bird
startled into flight; the fieldmouse scuttling through
broken shafts of hay. She guessed that he dared not
keep one shape long, but she was surprised that the
Kings never once lost track of him. They were a
decoy to the powerful mind she glimpsed occasion-
ally as it groped over the land. No man of An, and
certainly no stranger, could have passed among them
unnoticed; the wizard, she guessed, must search ev-
ery man they did meet. She was surprised also that
he did not threaten her as she rode alone through the
troubled land; perhaps he thought, seeing (he skull
on her saddle, watching her sleep at nights in the
woods impervious to the tumult around her, that she
was mad.

She avoided people, so she had no news of the ex-
tent of the trouble, but she saw, again and again,

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empty fields at midday, barns and stables locked
and guarded, lords travelling with armed retinues
towards Anuin. Their tempers, she knew, must be
worn thin by the constant harassment; they would,
in time, turn their houses into small, armed for-
tresses, draw into themselves and soon trust no man,
living or dead. The mistrust and the anger against
the absent King of An would fester into open war, a
great battleground of living and dead, that not even
Mathom would be able to control. And she, bringing
the Kings of Hel into Anuin, might precipitate it.

She thought much about that, lying sleepless at
night with the skull beside her. She tried to prepare
for it, exploring her powers, but she had little experi-
ence to guide her- She was dimly aware of what she
might be able to do, of powers intangible as shadows
in her mind, powers she could not yet quite grasp
and control. She would do what she could at Anuin;

Morgon, if he could risk it, would help. Perhaps
Mathom would return; perhaps the Kings would re-
treat from Anuin without an army behind them. Per-
haps she could find something else to barter with.
She hoped Duac, in some small measure, would un-
derstand. But she doubted it.

She reached Anuin nine days after she had left
Hallard's land. The Kings had begun to appear be-
fore they entered the gates, riding in a grim, amazing
escort about the man they guarded. The streets of
the city seemed fairly untroubled; there were quite
a few people out staring, uneasy and astonished, at
the group of riders with their nervous, wicked
mounts, their crowned heads, armbands and
brooches of gold, their arms and rich clothes span-
ning nearly the entire history of the land. Among
them, cloaked and hooded in the warm day, rode the
man they had been guarding. He seemed resigned to
his unearthly escort; he rode without a glance at it,
slowly and steadily through the streets of Anuin, up

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the gentle slope to the house of the King. The gates
were open; they rode unchallenged into the yard.
They dismounted, to the confusion of the grooms,
who had no intention, even under the weight of
Farr's hot gaze, of taking their horses. Raederle,
riding alone into the gates behind them, saw them
follow the cloaked figure up the steps to the hall. The
expression in the grooms' faces as they hesitated
around her made her realize that they thought she,
too, might be a wraith. Then one came forward un-
certainly to hold her reins and stirrup as she dis-
mounted. She took the skull from the pommel,
carried it with her into the hall.

She found Duac alone in the hall, staring, speech-
less, at the collection of Kings. His mouth was open;

as she entered, his eyes flicked to her and she heard
it click closed. The blood ran out of his face, leaving
it the color of Farr*s skull. She wondered, as she
went towards the hooded man, why he did not turn
and speak to her. He turned then, as though he had
felt her thoughts, and she found her own mouth
dropped open. The man the Kings had followed
and guarded through Hel had not been Morgon but
Deth.

185

10

Or^HE STOPPED SHORT, STARING AT HIM IN UTTER

^y disbelief. The skin was strained taut, blanched
l"^ against the bones of his face: he looked, haunted
for nine days by the wraiths of Hel, as though he
had not slept much. She breathed, "You." She
looked at Farr, who was running a calculating eye
over the beams and comers of the house. Duac,
who had begun to move, finally, was coming to-
wards her carefully through the assortment of
Kings. They were standing silently, expectantly,
their strange shields scrolled with nameless animals
deflecting flat, burning fields of light from the win-
dows. Her heart began to hammer suddenly. She
found her voice again, and Farr's head turned
sharply as she spoke, "What are you doing here? I
left you in the backlands going to Lungold."

The familiar, even voice sounded frayed, almost
tight. "I had no desire to meet the Morgol or her
guards in the backlands. I sailed down the Cwill
to Hlurle, and found passage on a ship to Caith-
nard. There are not many places in the realm left
open to me."

"So you came here?"

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"It is one last place."

"Here." She drew breath and shouted at him in
sudden, furious despair, halting Duac mid-pace,
"You came here, and because of you I have let all
the Kings of Hel into this house!" She heard the
hollow rasp of Fair's question in her brain, and she
turned on him. "You brought the wrong man! He
isn't even a shape-changer!"

"We found him in that shape, and he chose to
keep it," Farr answered, in his surprise momentar-
ily defensive. "He was the only stranger moving se-
cretly through Hel."

"He couldn't have been! What kind of a poor
bargain was it that you kept? You would have had
to search all the back streets and docksides of the
realm to find a man I wanted less to see."

"I kept the vows I swore." She could tell by
Duac's expression that the harsh, unearthly voice
was rebounding also in his mind. "The skull is
mine. The binding is finished."                  9

"No." She backed a step from him, her fingers
locked tightly around the lidless gaze and grin of
the skull. "You left the man you swore to guard
somewhere in Hel, to be harried by the dead, to
be discovered by—"

"There was no one else!" She saw even Deth
wince slightly at his exasperated shout. He stepped
towards her, his eyes dark smoldering. "Woman,
you are bound by your name to your own vow, to
the bargain that brought me across this threshold
where Oen carried that skull and my last curse
with it and throned me king of his midden. If
you don't give me that skull, I swear by—"

"You will swear nothing." She gathered light
from the shields, kindled it in her mind, and laid
it like a yellow bar in front of him. "And you will
not touch me."

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"Can you control us all, Witch?" he asked
grimly. "Try."

"Wait," Duac said abruptly. He held a hand,
palm outward, in the air, as Farr's baleful gaze
swung at him. "Wait." The -authority of despera-
tion in his voice held Fair momentarily at bay.
Duac stepped cautiously past the light on the floor,
reached Raederie and put his hands on her shoul-
ders. She saw, looking up at him, Ylon's face
briefly, the pale, angled brows, the eyes uneasy
with color. Her shoulders flinched slightly at the
sudden human touch, when she had spoken to
nothing human for nine days, and she saw the an-
guish break into his eyes. He whispered, "What
have you done to yourself? And to this house?"

She wanted, gazing back at him, to spread the
whole tangled tale out for him, to make him un-
derstand why her hair hung lank and dirty to her
waist, why she was arguing with a dead king. over
his skull and could seemingly shape pure air into
flame. But in the face of Fair's anger she dared
yield nothing. She said stiffly, "We made a bar-
gain, Fair and I—*'

"Farr." His lips shaped the word almost with-
out sound, and she nodded, swallowing drily.

"I made Hallard BIackdawn give me his skull.
I sat up aU night during the rousing of Hel, cir-
cled by fire, working with fire, and by dawn I had
the power to bargain. The Star-Bearer was coming
through Hel to Anuin; Farr swore to gather Kings
to protect him in exchange for the skull. He swore
by his own name and the names of the Kings of
Hel. But he didn't keep his part of the bargain.
He didn't even try to find a shape-changer; he sim-
ply guarded the first stranger who he found travel-
ling across Hel—*'

"The stranger made no objection." The cold

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Hetr of Sea and Fire

voice of Evern the Falconer cut across her words.
"He was being hunted. He used our protection."

"Of course he was hunted! He—" Then the real-
ization slapped at her, of the true extent of the
danger she had brought into her house. She whis-
pered, her fingers icy against the bone in her hands,
"Duac—" But his eyes had flicked away from her
face to the harpist.

"Why did you come here? The Star-Bearer has
not reached Anuin yet, but you must have known
the traders would bring his tale."

"I thought your father might have returned."

"What," Duac inquired more in wonder than
anger, "in Hel's name would you expect my father
to say to you?"

"Very little." He stood with a haunting, familiar
quiescence, but there was a preoccupation in his
face, as though he were listening for something be-
yond their hearing. Raederie touched Duac's arm.

"Duac." Her voice shook. "Duac. I am bringing
more than the Kings of He] into Anuin."

He closed his eyes, breather something. "What
now? You vanished two months ago from Caith-
nard, took our father's ship and left Rood to ride
home alone without the faintest idea of where you
were. Now you appear out of nowhere, with as
much warning, accompanied by the Kings of Hel,
an outlawed harpist and a crowned skull. The walls
of this house could cave in on my head next and I
doubt if I'd be surprised." He paused a moment;

his hold tightened. "Are you all right?"

She shook her head, still whispering. "No. Oh,
no. Duac, I was trying to guard Morgon against
Ghisteslwchlohm."

"Ghisfeslwchlohm?"

"He is—he followed Defh through Hel."

The expression died on his face. His eyes went
beyond her to Deth, and then he lifted his hands

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Heir of Sea and Fire

carefully off her shoulders as though he were lift-
ing stones. "All right." There was no hope in his
voice. "Maybe we can—"

The harpist's voice, sprung taut, interrupted him.
"The Founder is nowhere in An."

"I felt him!" Raederle cried. "He was behind
you at the gates of Anuin. I felt his mind searching
all the comers of Hel; he would break through my
mind like a black wind, and I could feel his hatred,
his rage—"

"That is not the Founder.'*

"Then who—" She stopped. The men, living
and dead, seemed motionless as figures on a chess-
board around her. She shook her head slowly,
mute again, while the bone strained under her grip.

The harpist said with unexpected intensity, "I
would never have chosen this place. But you
didn't give me a choice."

"Morgon?" she whispered. She remembered then
his quick, silent departure from Caithnard, the
lawless mind that had found her, yet never threat-
ened her. "I brought you here so he could kill
you?" His face, hopeless, exhausted, gave her his
answer. Something between a shout and a sob of
grief and confusion welled through her. She stared
at Deth, breathing tightly, feeling the hot swell of
tears behind her eyes. "There are things not worth
killing. Curse us all for this: you for making him
what he has become; him for not seeing what he
has become; and me for bringing you nearly face-
to-face. You will destroy him even with your death.
There's the door, open. Find a ship out of
Anuin—"

"To where?"

"Anywhere! To the bottom of the sea, if no-
where else. Go harp with Ylon's bones, I don't care.
Just go, so far he'll forget your name and your
memory. Go—"

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Heir of Sea and Fire

"It's too late." His voice was almost gentle.
"You have brought me into your house."

She heard a step behind her and whirled. But it
was Rood, flushed and dishevelled from riding,
coming precipitously into the hall. He cast a crow-
colored eye at the assembly of wraiths pulled out
of their graves by a dream of revenge, armed as
no King of An had armed himself for centuries.
He stopped short; Raederle saw, even as his face
whitened, the gleam of recognition in his eyes.
Then Ohroe the Cursed, standing near him, whose
face was seamed red from temple to jaw with
his death wound, gripped the neck of Rood's tunic
and wrenched him backward. His arm, heavy
with chain mail, locked tightly around Rood's
throat; a knife flashed in his other hand; the
point of it pricked Rood's own temple. He said
succinctly, "Now. Let us bargain again." Raederle's
terrified, furious rill of thought blazed white-hot
across the knife blade and leaped into Ohroe's
eyes. He gasped, dropping the knife. Rood's elbow
slamming into the mailed nbs seemed to have no
effect, but the arm around his'throat loosened as
Ohroe lifted his hand to his head. Rood slipped
free, pausing as he crossed the hall only to pull off
the wall an ancient blade that had hung there since
Hagis's death. He joined Duac who said tersely,
"Will you put that sword down? The last thing I
want is a pitched battle in this house."

The Kings seemed to be shifting together with-
out sound. Among them, the harpist, his head
lowered slightly as though his attention were fo-
cussed on nothing of the movement around him,
was conspicuous in his stillness, and Rood made a
sound in his throat. He took a firmer grip on the
sword hilt and said, "Tell them that. At least when
we're wraiths ourselves, we can fight on our own
terms. Who brought them here? Deth?"

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Heir of Sea and fire

"Raederie."

Rood's head turned sharply. He saw Raederie,
then, standing a little behind Duac. His eyes went
from her worn face to the skull in her hands, and
the sword tip struck the floor with a clink. She
saw a shudder rack through him.

"Raederie? I saw you and I didn't even recog-
nize you . . ." He flung the sword on the stones
and went to her. He reached out to her as Duac
had, but his hands dropped before he touched her.
He gazed at her, and she saw that, deep in him.
something dormant, unfamiliar to him. was strug-
gling with the sense of her power. He whispered,
"What happened to you? What happens to people
who try to make that journey to Erienstar Moun-
tain?"

She swallowed, lifted one hand away from the
skull to touch him. "Rood—"

"Where did you get such power? Ifs like noth-
ing you ever had before."

"I always had it—"

"From what? I look at you now, and I don't
even know who you are!"

"You know me," she whispered, her throat burn-
ing- "I am of An ..."

"Rood," Duac said. His voice held an odd, flat
tone of apprehension that pulled Rood's eyes from
Raederie's face. Duac was staring at the doorway;

he groped behind him for Rood. "Rood. That.
Who is that? Tell me it's not who I think it is—"

Rood swung around. Crossing the threshold,
soundless, shadowless, on a great black mount
whose eyes were the color of the eyes of Fair's
skull, rode a man with a single blood-red Jewel
on the circle of gold on his head. He was dark,
sinewy, powerful; the hilts of his knife and sword
were of braided gold; the rich coat over his mail
was embroidered with the ancient emblem of An:

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Heir of Sea and fire

an oak holding a bolt of black lightning in its
green boughs. He left a following on the threshold
that must have come out of the fields and orchards
around Anuin. Beyond them, through the open
doors, Raederie could see Duac's own guards and
unarmed servants struggling to get through. They
might as well have struggled against a stone wall.
The effect of the crowned man on the wraiths in
the hall was immediate: every sword in the room
was drawn. Farr moved forward, his flat, expres-
sionless face livid above the cut on his neck,
the huge blade raised in his hand. The dead King's
eyes, ignoring Fair, moving slowly over the gath-
ering, touched Duac. The black horse stopped.

"Oen."

Rood's voice drew the King's attention to him
briefly, then his gaze returned to Duac. His head
bent slightly, he said, his voice temperless yet in-
flexible, "Peace be on the living in this house, and
may no dishonor come into it. To those wi^h
honor." He paused, his eyes^still on Duac's face as
he recognized the ageless instinct in him for land-
law, together with something else. He gave a short
laugh that held little amusement- "You have a face
out of the sea. But your own father is more for-
tunate. You bear little more of my land-heir than
his memory . . ."

Duac, looking harrowed, found his voice finally.
"Peace—" The word shook, and he swallowed.
"Will you bring peace wtth you into this house and
leave it behind when you go."

"I cannot. I have sworn a vow. Beyond death."
Duac's eyes closed, his lips moving in a succinct,
inaudible curse. Oen's face turned finally to Farr;

their eyes met across the room for the first time
outside of their dreams in six centuries. "I swore
that as long as the Kings ruled Anuin, Fan- of Hel
would rule the king's midden."

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Heir of Sea and Tire

"And I have swom," Fan- rasped, "that I
would not close my eyes in my grave until those
ruling Anuin were lying in theirs."

Oen's brow flicked upward. "You lost your head
once before. I heard that a woman of Anuin car-
ried your skull out of Hel, back to this house and
to her shame opened the doors of this house to
the dead of Hel. I have come to cleanse it of the
smell of the midden." He glanced at Raederie.
"Give me the skull."

She stood dumbfounded at the contempt in his
voice, in his eyes, the dark, calculating eyes that
had watched a tower with iron bars at its windows
being built for his land-heir beside the sea. "You,"
she whispered, "bringing empty words into this
house, what did you ever know of peace? You
small-minded man, content m your battles, you
left a riddle behind you in Anuin when you died
that was far more than just a sea-colored face.
You want to fight with Fan- over this skull like
dogs over a bone. You think I betrayed my house:

what do you know of betrayal? You have roused
yourself for revenge: what do you know of re-
venge? You think you saw the last of Ylon's strange
powers when you walled him m his tower so effi-
ciently with such little understanding, such little
compassion. You should have known that you can-
not bind a sorrow or an anger. You have waited
six centuries for a battle with Fan". Well, before
you raise your sword in this hall, you will have to
fight me."

She stripped light from the shields, from the
armbands and jewelled crowns, from the flagstones,
blazed a circle on the stones around Oen. She
looked for a single source of fire in the room, but
there was not even a candle lit. So she contented
herself with drawing it out of her memory, the
shapeless, flickering element she had mastered un-

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Heir of Sea and Fire

der Farr's ominous gaze. She laid the illusion of it
around the illusions of the dead. She opened her
hand and showed them how she could shape with it,
drawing it high into the air, sending it spattering
like waves breaking against her will. She circled
them with it, as she had been forced by them to
circle herself, watched them close together away
from it. She burnished the shields with flame, saw
them drop, soundless as flowers, to the floor. She
ringed the crowns with it, watched the Kings send
them spinning, wheels of flaming metal, into the
air. She heard the voices, faraway, indistinct,
birds' voices, the fragmented voice of the sea. Then
she heard the sea itself.

The sound of it wove in and out of her shap-
ing. She recognized the slow break and drag of it;

the hollow wind moaning through broken iron
bars. The harping was ended; the tower was
empty. She drew her attention back to Oen; half-
blind with the thought of fire, she saw him only
as a shadow, hunched a little on his horse. And
a fury that did not belong to her but to his roused
land-heir began gathering m her like one enormous
wave that might have torn the tower out of the
rocks by its roots and flung it into the sea.

The fury gave her dark insight into odd powers.
It whispered to her how to crack a solid flag-
stone in two, how to turn the thin, black rift into
a yawning illusion of emptiness that would drain
the wraith of Oen, nameless, memoryless, into it.
It showed" her how to bind the windows and
doors of her own house, lock the living and dead
in it; how to create the illusion of one door in it
opening constantly to an illusion of freedom. It
showed her how to separate the hopeless essence
of sorrow she felt from the sea, the wind, the
memory of the harping, to work it into the stones
and shadows of the house so that no one in it

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would ever laugh. She felt her own sorrow and
anger stirred, as she had kindled the light, mixed
with an older agony and rage against Oen until
she could barely tell them apart; she could barely
remember that Oen was to her simply a memory
of An, and not the living, terrible, merciless figure
of Ylon's memory.

She felt herself lost, drowning in the force of
another's hatred. She struggled against it, blind,
terrified, not knowing how to break free of the
determined impulse to destruction aimed against
Oen. Her terror gave way to a helpless anger; she
was bound, as Oen had bound Ylon, by hatred,
by compassionlessness, and by misunderstanding.
She realized, before she destroyed Oen, before
sue loosed something alien to the very land-law of
An into the house of its kings, that she had to
force the wraith of Ylon, roused in her, to see
clearly for the first time, the heritage they both
shared, and the King who had been simply a man
bound to its patterns.

One by one, with impossible effort, she drew
the faces of the Kings out of the firelight. She
wrested out of the dark void of rage and sorrow,
names for them, histories, spoke their names as,
weaponless, crownless, mute, they faced her again
across the hall: Acor, Ohroe, cursed with sorrow
for his sons, Nemir who spoke pig-language, Farr
who had done her bidding for the sake of a six-
hundred-year-old skull, Evern who had died with
his falcons, defending his home. The fire dwin-
dled away around them, became sunlight on the
flagstones. She saw the High One's harpist again
among the Kings. She saw Oen. He was no longer
on his horse, but standing beside it. His face was
bowed against its back. She saw then the black,
Jagged break from end to end in the flagstone at
his feet.

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Heir of Sea and Fire

She said his name. The naming seemed to shift
him to perspective: the frightened wraith of a
dead man who had once been, centuries ago, a
King of An. The hatred in her roused only weakly
against him, against the power of her seeing. It
roused again, then drained away like a spent wave.
It left her free, gazing at the broken stone, won-
dering what name she would bear for the rest of
her life in that hall.

She found herself trembling so badly she could
hardly stand. Rood, beside her, lifted his hand to
hold her, but he seemed to have no strength either;

he could not touch her. She saw Duac staring at the
flagstone. He turned his head slowly, looked at her.
A sob burned in her throat, for he had no name for
her either. Her power had left her placeless, had
left her nothing. Her eyes fell away from him to a
strip of darkness at her feet between them. She real-
ized slowly that the darkness was a shadow that
stretched across the floor in a hall full of shadowless
dead.

She turned. The Star-Bearer stood at the thresh-
old. He was alone; Oen*s following had vanished.
He was watching her; she knew from the expres-
sion in his eyes, how much he had seen. As she
gazed at him helplessly, he said softly, "Raederle."
It was no warning, no judgment, simply her name,
and she could have wept at the recognition in it.

He moved, finally, across the threshold. Plainly
clothed, seemingly unarmed, he walked almost un-
obtrusively among the silent Kings, and yet one
by one he drew their attention to him. The dark
twisting of pain, hatred and power that had trailed
them all into Anuin was no longer the awesome
shadow of wizardry, but something they all recog-
nized. Morgon's eyes, moving from face to face,
found Deth's. He stopped; Raederle, her mind,
open, vulnerable, felt the memories shock through

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him to his core. He began to walk again, slowly;

the Kings shifted without sound, away from the
harpist. Deth, his head bent, seemed to be lis-
tening to the final steps of the long journey that
had begun for them both at Erienstar Mountain.
When Morgon reached him, he lifted his face, the
lines on it etched mercilessly in the sunlight.

He said evenly, "What strictures of justice did
you take at Erienstar Mountain out of the brain
of the High One?"

Morgon's hand lifted, cracked across the harp-
ist's face in a furious, back-handed blow that
made even Farr blink. The harpist recovered his
balance with an effort.

Morgon said, his voice husked with pain, "I
learned enough. From both of you. I am not in-
terested in an argument over justice. I am inter-
ested in killing you. But because we are in a
King's hall, and your blood will stain his floor,
it would seem courteous to explain why I am spill-
ing it. I got tired of your harping."

"It broke the silence,'*

"Is there nothing in this world that will break
your silence?" His words bounced shapelessly back
and forth in the high comers. "I must have done
enough screaming in that mountain to shatter any
silence but yours. You were well-trained -by the
Founder. There's nothing of you I can touch- Ex-
cept your life. And even that I wonder if you
value."

"Yes. I value it."

"You would never beg for it. I begged for death
from Ghisteslwchlohm; he ignored me. That was
his mistake. But he was wise enough to run. You
should have started running that day you led me
into that mountain. You aren't a fool. You might
have known the Star-Bearer could survive what the
Prince of Hed could not. Yet you stayed and

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played me songs of Hed until I wept in my dreams.
I could have broken your harp strings with a
thought."

"You did. Several times."

"And you did not have the sense to run."

There seemed, in the absolute silence of the
hall, an odd illusion of privacy about them both.
The Kings, their faces battle-weary and mn-
nelled with bitterness, looked as engrossed as if
they were watching a segment of their own lives.
Duac, she could tell, was still struggling with the
idea of the Founder in Erienstar Mountain; Rood
had stopped struggling. His face was drained of
all expression. He watched, swallowing now and
then the shout or the tears gathering in his throat.

The harpist, pausing a little before he spoke,
said, "No. I am a fool. Perhaps I gambled that
you might pursue the master and ignore the ser-
vant. Or that even then, you might have held, as
you could not hold the land-rule, something of the
tenets of riddle-mastery."

Morgon's hands closed, but he kept them stiH.
*CWhat have the sterile tenets of an empty Col-
lege to do with either my life or your death?"

"Perhaps nothing. It was a passing thought. Like
my harping. An abstract question that a man with
a sword at his side rarely pauses to contemplate.
The implications of action."

"Words."

"Perhaps."

"You're a Master—what stricture was strong
enough to keep you adhering to the tenets of
riddle-mastery? The first stricture of the Founder
of Lungold: the language of truth is the language
of power—truth of name, truth of essence. You
found the essence of betrayal more to your taste.
Who are you to judge me if I find the name of

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revenge, murder, justice—what name you want to
put to it—more to my liking?"

"Who is anyone to judge you? You are the
Star-Bearer. As you hounded me across Hel, Rae-
derle mistook you for Ghisteslwchlohm."

She saw him flinch. Rood, the breath scraping
in his throat, whispered, "Morgon, T swear, tenets
or no tenets, if you don't kill him, I will."

"It is, as I said, an abstract question. Rood's
idea of justice makes much more sense." Deth's
voice sounded dry, tired, finished.

Morgon, an agony breaking into his face,
screamed at him in a voice that must have rever-
berated through the black caverns of Erienstar
Mountain, "What is it you want of me?" He
touched the air at his side, and the great starred
sword startled into shape. It lifted, blurred in his
hands. Raederle knew that she would see them
locked forever that way: the harpist unarmed, un-
moved, his head lifting to the rise of the sword
as it cut upward through the sunlight, the pow-
erful gathering of Morgon's muscles as he swung
the blade in a double-handed stroke that broughx
it to balance at the apex of its ascent. Then the
harpist's eyes fell to Morgon's face. He whis-
pered, "They were promised a man of peace."

The sword, hovering oddly, knotted strands of
light from the windows. The harpist stood under
the raw edge of its shadow with a familiar still-
ness that seemed suddenly, to Raederle, in its im-
plications, more terrible than anything she had
seen either in herself or in Morgon. A sound
broke out of her, a protest against the glimpse of
that patience, and she felt Duac's hand pull at her.
But she could not move. Light shivered abruptly
down the blade. The sword fell, crashed with a
spattering of blue sparks against the floor. The

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hilt, rebounding, came to rest with the stars face
down on the stones.

There was not a sound in the room but Mor-
gon's breathing, shuddering uncontrollably through
him. He faced the harpist, his hands clenched at
his sides; he did not move or speak. The harpist,
gazing back at him, stirred a little. The blood
came suddenly back into his face. His lips moved
as though he were about to speak, but the word
faltered against Morgon's unrelenting silence. He
took a step backward, as in question. Then his
head bowed. He turned, his own hands closed,
walked swiftly and quietly through the motionless
Kings, out of the hall, his head, unhooded, still
bent under the weight of the sun.

Morgon stared, unseeing, at the assembly of liv-
ing and dead. The unresolved, explosive turmoil
in him hung like a dangerous spell over the room.
Raederle, standing beside Rood and Duac, unable
to move in the threat of it, wondered what word
would bring Morgon*s thoughts back from the
black, inescapable caverns of stone, and the blind
corner of truth into which the harpist had led him.
He seemed, recognizing none of them, a stranger,
dangerous with power; but as she waited for what-
ever shape that power would take, she realized
slowly that it had just shaped itself, and that he
had given them his name. She spoke it softly, al-
most hesitantly, knowing and not knowing the man
to whom it belonged.

"Star-Bearer."

His eyes went to her; the silence ebbed away
between his fingers as they loosened. The expres-
sion welling back into his face drew her toward
him across the hall. She heard Rood start to speak
behind her; his voice broke on a harsh, dry sob
and Duac murmured something. She stood before

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the Star-Bearer, brought him with a touch out of
the grip of his memories.

She whispered, "Who were promised a man of
peace?"

He shuddered then, reached out to her. She put
her arms around him, resting the skull on his
shoulder like a warning against any interruption.

"The children . .."

She felt a tremor of awe run through her. "The
Earth-Masters' children?"

"The children of stone, in that black cave . . .'*
His hold of her tightened- "He gave me that
choice. And I thought he was defenseless. I should
have—I should have remembered what deadly
weapons he could forge out of words."
"Who is he? That harpist?"
"I don't know. But I do know this: I want him
named." He was silent then, for a long while, his
face hidden against her. He moved finally, said
something she could not hear; she drew back a
little. He felt the bone against his face. He reached
up, took the skull. He traced an eye socket with
his thumb, then looked at her. His voice, worn
raw, was calmer.

"I watched you, that night on Hallard Black-
dawn's lands. I was near you every night as you
moved through An. No one, living or dead, would
have touched you. But you never needed my
help."

"I felt you near," she whispered. "But I thought
—I thought you were—"
"I know."

"Well, then—well, then, what did you think I
was trying to do?" Her voice rose. "Did you think
I was trying to protect Deth?"

"That's exactly what you were doing."
She stared at him wordlessly, thinking of all she
had done during those strange, interminable days.

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She burst out, "But you still stayed with me, to
protect me?" He nodded. "Morgon, I told you
what I am; you could see what dark power I
was waking in me—you knew its origins. You
knew I am kin to those shape-changers who tried
to kill you, you thought I was-helping the man who
had betrayed you—Why in Hel's name did you trust
me?"

His hands, circling the gold crown on the skull,
closed on the worn metal with sudden strength,
"I don't know- Because I chose to. Then, and for-
ever. Is that how long you intend to carry this
skull around?"

She shook her head, mute again, and held out
her hand for it, to give it back to Farr. The little,
angular, blonde-colored pattern on her palm
shone clear in the light; Morgon's hand dropped
abruptly to her wrist.

"What is that?"

She resisted the impulse to close her fingers
over it. "It came—it came out the first time I held
fire. I used a stone from King's Mouth Plain to
elude the Ymris war-ships, with an illusion of light.
While I was bound to it, looking into it, I saw a
man holding it, as though I were looking into a
memory. I almost—I was always just on the verge
of knowing him. Then I felt one of the shape-
changers in my mind, wanting his name, and the
bidding was broken. The stone is lost, but ... the
pattern of it burned into my hand."

His hand loosened, lay with a curious gentle-
ness on her wrist. She looked up at him; the fear
in his face chilled her heart. He put his arms around
her again with the same gentleness, as if she might
drift away from him like a mist and only blind hope
could keep her there.

The rasp of metal on the stones made them
both turn. Duac, who had picked the starred sword

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up off the floor, said apprehensively to Morgon,
"What is it? On her hand?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I only know
that for a year Ghisteslwchlohm searched my mind
for a piece of knowledge, went again and again
through every moment of my life looking for one
certain face, one name. That might have been it."

"Whose name?" Duac asked. Raederle, horror
shooting through her, dropped her face against
Morgon's shoulder.

"He never bothered to tell me."

"If they want the stone, they can find it them-
selves," Raederle said numbly. He had not an-
swered Duac's question, but he would answer her,
later. "No one—the shape-changer could learn
nothing from me. It's in the sea with Peven*s
crown . . ." She lifted her head suddenly, said to
Duac, "I believe our father knew. About the High
One. And about—probably about me."

"I wouldn't doubt it." Then he added wearily,
"I think he was born knowing everything. Except
how to find his way home.**

"Is he in trouble?" Morgon asked. Duac looked
at him surprisedly a moment. Then he shook his
head.

"I don't-—I don't think so. I don't feel it.'*

"Then I know where he might have gone. I'll
find him."

Rood crossed the hall to join them. His face
was tear-stained; it held the familiar, austere ex-
pression that he carried with him into his studies
and his battles. He said softly to Morgon, "I'll help
you."

"Rood—"

"He's my father. You are the greatest Master
in this realm. And I am an Apprentice. And may
I be buried next to Fan- in Hel if I watch you

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walk out of this hall the same way you walked
into it: alone."

"He won't," Raederle said.

Duac protested, his voice lowering. "You can't
leave me alone with all these Kings, Rood. I don't
even know half their names. Those in this hall
may have been subdued for a little while, but for
how long? Aum will rise, and west Hel; there are
about five people in An who might not panic,
and you and I are among them."

"I am?"

"No wraith," Morgon said shortly, "will enter
this house again." He weighed the skull in his
hand, as they watched him, then tossed it across
the room to Farr. The King caught it soundlessly,
vaguely startled, as if he had forgotten whose it
was. Morgon surveyed the still, ghostly assembly.
He said, to them, "Do you want a war? Ill give
you one. A war of desperation, for the earth
itself. If you lose it, you may drift like sorrow
from one end of the realm to another without
finding a place to rest. What honor—if the dead
are concerned with honor—can you take running
Cyn Croeg's bull to death?"

"There's revenge," Fair suggested pointedly.

"Yes. There's that. But I will seal this house
against you stone by stone if I must. I will do
what you force me to do. And I am not con-
cerned with honor, either." He paused, then added
slowly, "Or with the bindings and unbindings of
the dead of An."

"You have no such power over the dead of An,"
Oen said abruptly. It was a question. Something
hard as the ground floor of Erienstar Mountain
surfaced in Morgon's eyes.

"I learned," he said, "from a master. You can
.fight your private, meaningless battles into obliv-
ion. Or you can fight those who gave Oen his land-

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heir, and who will destroy Anuin, Hel, the earth
that binds you, if you let them. And that," he
added, "should appeal to you both."

Even the Falconer asked, "How much choice
do we have?"

"I don't know. Maybe none." His hands closed
suddenly; he whispered, "I swear by my name that
if I can, I will give you a choice."

There was silence again, from the living and
the dead. Morgon turned almost reluctantly to
Duac, a question in his eyes that Duac, his in-
stincts channelled to the heartbeat of An, under-
stood.

He said brusquely, "Do what you want in this
land. Ask what you need from me. I'm no Master,
but I can grasp the essentials of what you have
said and done in this house. I can't begin to un-
derstand- I don't know how you could have any
power over the land-law of An. You and my fa-
ther, when you find him, can argue over that later.
All I know is that there is an instinct in me to
trust you blindly. Beyond reason, and beyond
hope.**

He lifted the sword in his hands, held it out to
Morgon. The stars kindled the sunlight to an un-
expected beauty. Morgon, staring at Duac, did
not move. He started to speak, but no words
came. He turned suddenly toward the empty thresh-
old; Raederle, watching him, wondered what he
was seeing beyond the courtyard, beyond the walls
of Anuin. His hand closed finally on the stars; he
took the sword from Duac.

"Thank you." They saw then in his face the
faint, troubled dawning of curiosity, and a mem-
ory that seemed to hold no pain. He lifted his other
hand, touched Raederle's face and she smiled. He
said hesitantly, "I have nothing to offer you. Not
'even Peven's crown. Not even peace. But can you

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bear waiting for me a little longer? I wish I knew
how long. I need to go to Hed awhile, and then to
Lungold. I'll try to—I'll try—"

Her smile faded. "Morgon of Hed," she said
evenly, "if you take one step across that threshold
without me, I will lay a curse on your next step
and your next until no matter where you go your
path will lead you back to me."-

"Raederie—"

"I can do it. Do you want to watch me?"

He was silent, struggling between his longing
and his fear for her. He said abruptly, "No. All
right. Will you wait for me in Hed? I think I can
get us both safely that far."

"No."

"Then will you—"

"No."

"All right; then—"

"No."

"Then will you come with me?" he whispered.
"Because I could not bear to leave you."

She put her arms around him, wondering, as she
did so, what strange, perilous future she had
bargained for. She said only, as his arms circled
her, not in gentleness this time, but in a fierce
and terrified determination, "That's good. Because
I swear by Ylon's name you never will.'*

HEIR OF SEA AND FIRE is the second of three
books about Morgon, Raederle, the world they
live in and the end of an age.

THE RIDDLE-MASTER OF HED is the first.
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