HE WOKE WITH a start, his heart pounding, listening for the echo of the voice that had wakened him; it seemed to linger, a strange voice, neither man’s nor woman’s, among the stones. Someone was gripping him, saying his name, someone so familiar that Morgon asked unsurprised, “Did you call me?” Then his hands rose, locked on the harpist’s arms.

“Deth.”

“You were dreaming.”

“Yes.” The tower walls, the fire, the silence were forming around him again. His hands loosened slowly, dropped. The harpist, a dust of snow on his shoulders and hair, slid the harp from his shoulder, leaned it against the wall.

“I chose to wait for you quietly in Kyrth rather than at Harte; Danan wasn’t sure if I was still there, so he didn’t tell you.” The even, undisturbed voice was soothing. “You took much longer than I expected.”

“I got caught in a blizzard.” He straightened, running his hands over his face. “Then I met Har . . .” His head lifted abruptly; he stared at the harpist. “You were waiting for me? You expected—Deth, how long have you been here?”

“Two months.” He took his coat off; snow spattered into the fire. “I left Herun the day after you did, travelled up the Ose, without stopping, to Kyrth. I asked Danan to keep watch for you, told him where to reach me in Kyrth, and then—waited.” He paused a moment. “I was worried.”

Morgon watched his face. He whispered, “I had every intention of returning to Hed. You knew that. You couldn’t have known I would come here, not after two months, not in dead winter.”

“I chose to trust that you would come.”

“Why?”

“Because if you had turned your back on your name, on the riddles you must answer—if you had gone back to Hed alone, unprotected, to accept the death you knew must come—then it wouldn’t have mattered where I went, whether to Erlenstar Mountain or the bottom of the sea. I have lived for a thousand years, and I can recognize the smell of doom.”

Morgon closed his eyes. The word, hanging in the air like a harp note between them, seemed to ease something out of him; his shoulders slumped. “Doom. You see it, too. Deth, I touched the bone of it in Osterland. I killed Suth.”

He heard the harpist’s voice untuned for the first time. “You did what?”

He opened his eyes. “I’m sorry. I mean that he died because of me. Har saved my life in that blizzard, so I gave him a promise, ignoring the fact that it is unwise to promise things blindly to the wolf-king.” He turned a palm upward; the scar shone like a withered moon in the firelight. “I learned the vesta-shape. I ran with the vesta for two months with Suth’s son Hugin, who has white hair and purple eyes. I found Suth behind Grim Mountain, an old vesta with one blind eye that he had lost, riddling. He died there.”

“How?”

Morgon’s hands closed suddenly on the chair arms. “I asked him why he had run from Lungold—I quoted the third stricture of the Founder to him, demanding help when he knew—he knew. . . . He made a choice; he tried to answer me, but he died trying. He pulled me down with him, there at the end of the world where there was nothing but snow and wind and vesta, he died, he was killed, the only wizard seen by men for seven centuries; I was left holding him, holding the last word he ever spoke like a riddle too terrible to answer—”

“What word?”

“Ohm. Ghisteslwchlohm. The Founder of Lungold killed Suth.”

Morgon heard the soft, swift draw of the harpist’s breath. His eyes were hidden, his face oddly still. He said, “I knew Suth.”

“You knew Master Ohm. You knew Ghisteslwchlohm.” His grip was rigid on the wood. “Deth, is Master Ohm the Founder of Lungold?”

“I will take you to Erlenstar Mountain. Then, with permission from the High One, if he does not answer that question for you, I will.”

Morgon nodded. He said more calmly, “I’m wondering how many other wizards are still alive under Ghisteslwchlohm’s power. I’m also wondering why the High One has never acted.”

“Perhaps because his business is the land, not the school of wizards of Lungold. Perhaps he has already begun to act in ways you do not recognize.”

“I hope so.” He took a cup Deth poured for him, swallowed wine. He added after a moment, “Deth, Har gave me five riddles Suth had given him. He suggested I answer them since I had nothing better to do with my life. One of them is: Who will come in the time’s ending and what will he bring? I assume that the Star-Bearer is the one who will come; I have come; I don’t know what it is I will bring; but what troubles me most is not who, or what, but when. The time’s ending. Walking to Harte with Danan I remembered the ruined cities on Wind Plain, on King’s Mouth Plain, and how no one really knows what destroyed the Earth-Masters. It happened long before the Years of Settlement; we assumed because the stones had fallen, the weeds grew between them, that a great, terrible war had come and gone, and nothing more of it existed but the empty stones. We also assumed that the wizards were dead. The one thing I know that could destroy us all is the death of the High One. I’m afraid that whatever destroyed the Earth-Masters before the realm was even formed, has been waiting ever since to challenge the last of the Earth-Masters.”

“I think it’s quite probable,” Deth said quietly. He leaned forward, his face etched with fire, and roused the half-log on the hearth. A flurry of sparks burned in the air like fiery snow.

“Has the High One ever explained the destruction of the cities?”

“Not as far as I know. One of the Masters at Caithnard when I was there said he had made a journey to ask the High One that, since it was one of the unanswered riddles on their lists; the High One simply said that the cities were ancient, empty before he mastered the land-law of the realm.”

“Which is saying either that he doesn’t know, or that he doesn’t choose to tell.”

“It’s unlikely that he doesn’t know.”

“Then why—” He stopped. “Only the High One could explain the High One. So I will have to ask him.”

Deth looked at him. “I have a question of my own,” he said slowly. “I asked it in Herun; you chose not to answer it. But now you wear vesta-scars on your hands, you have spoken your own name, and you are putting your mind to this mystery like a Master. I would like to ask it again.”

Morgon, thinking back, said, “Oh. That.”

“What was it that made you leave Herun to return home?”

“Something Corrig changed into. And the laughter in his eyes when I killed him.” He rose restlessly, went to a window, gazed out at the unrelieved blackness that enclosed Isig.

The harpist said behind him, “What shape?”

“A sword. With three stars on its hilt.” He turned abruptly at the silence. “I have thought about it, and the conclusion I have come to is that no one, not even the High One himself, can force me to claim it.”

“That’s true.” Deth’s voice was changeless, but there was a faint line between his brows. “Did it occur to you to ask yourself where Corrig might have seen it?”

“No. I’m not interested.”

“Morgon. The shape-changers know it belongs to you, that inevitably you will find it, as you found the harp, even though you may not claim it. And when you do, they will be there, waiting.”

In the silence, a pitch-laden branch wailed softly. Morgon moved a little at the sound. He said, “I’m nearly at Erlenstar Mountain—that sword could be anywhere . . .”

“Perhaps. But Danan told me once that Yrth made a sword he showed to no one, centuries before he made the harp. Where he put it, no one knows; only one thing is certain: he said he had buried it beneath the place where he forged it.”

“Where did—” He stopped. He saw the sword again, recognized the master touch in the flawless designs on its blade, the sure, purposeful shaping of the stars. He put a hand to his eyes, asked, though he already knew the answer, “Where was it forged?”

“Here. In Isig Mountain.”

Morgon went down with Deth then, the harp over his shoulder, to talk to Danan. The mountain-king, sitting beside the fire with his children and grandchildren in the quiet hall, looked up with a smile as they entered.

“Come, sit down. Deth, I wasn’t sure if you were still in Kyrth or if you had lost hope and chanced the Pass when I sent for you today. You’ve been so silent. Morgon, this is my daughter Vert, my son Ash, and these—” he paused to lift a small girl tugging herself onto his knee, “—are their children. They all wanted to hear your harping.”

Morgon sat down, a little dazed. A tall, fair man with Danan’s eyes, a slender woman with hair the color of pine bark, and a dozen children of varying shapes were looking at him curiously.

The woman, Vert, said despairingly to him, “I’m sorry, but Bere wanted to come, so all of mine had to come, and where my children go, Ash’s go, so—I hope you don’t mind them.” She put her hand on the shoulder of a young boy with blunt, black hair and her grey eyes. “This is Bere.”

Another black head appeared suddenly at Morgon’s knee: a little girl hardly big enough to walk. She stared up at him, then, going unsteady on her feet, clutched at him drunkenly. She grinned toothlessly at him as he slid his hand down her back to steady her, and his mouth twitched. Ash said, “That one belongs to Vert: Suny. My wife is in Caithnard, and Vert’s husband, who is a trader, is making a winter run to Anuin, so we put them all together for the time being. I don’t know how we’ll ever get them sorted out again.”

Morgon, his fingers rubbing up and down between Suny’s shoulder blades as she gripped his knee, looked up suddenly. “You all came to hear me play?”

Ash nodded. “Please. If you don’t mind. That harp and the making of it are legends in Isig. When I heard you were here with it, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to bring all the craftsmen in Kyrth with me to see it, but my father restrained me.”

Morgon untied the harp case. Suny tugged the case strings curiously out of his fingers; Bere whispered, “Suny—” She ignored him; he stepped to Morgon’s side, lifted her up patiently and held her. Morgon, aware of the curious, expectant faces watching him, said futiley, “I haven’t played in two months.” No one answered. The stars, as he uncovered the harp, pulled it free of the case, caught fire; the white moons seemed rimmed with it as the flame’s reflection travelled a liquid path down the silver inlay. He touched a string; the note sounded in the silence, pure, sweet, hesitant as a question; he heard someone loose a breath.

Ash’s hand moved involuntarily toward the stars, dropped. He breathed, “Who did the inlay?”

“Zec of Hicon, in Herun—I can’t remember his full name,” Danan said. “He was trained by Sol. Yrth designed the patterns.”

“And Sol cut those stars. May I see them?” he pleaded, and Morgon passed the harp to him. Something small, formless had bloomed in the back of his mind at Ash’s words; he could not trace it. Bere peered over Ash’s head, his lips parted as Ash studied the harp; Suny, reaching wildly for a gleaming harp string, startled him and he straightened, shifting his hold of her.

Vert begged, “Ash, stop counting the facets on the stones; I want to hear it.”

Ash handed it reluctantly back to Morgon. Morgon took it as reluctantly, and Vert, her eyes softening with sudden understanding, said, “Play something you love. Play something from Hed.”

Morgon righted the harp on his knee. His fingers strayed over the strings aimlessly a moment, then wandered into the gentle, sad chords of a ballad. The rich, beautiful tones only he could sound reassured him; even the simple love-ballad he had heard a hundred times took on an ancient dignity. As he played, he began to smell oak burning in the fire before him, saw the light around him wash over the walls of Akren. The song woke a peace in him that he knew instinctively was in Hed that night: a stillness of land dormant under snow, of animals dreaming placidly in warm places. The peace touched his face, easing, for the moment, the tension and weariness out of it. Then two things pieced together in the back of his mind, effortlessly, inarguably, and he stopped, his fingers motionless on the harp strings.

There was a small, inarticulate protest. Then he heard Deth’s voice out of the shadows where he had seated himself, away from the children, “What is it?”

“Sol. He wasn’t killed by traders because he was too frightened to hide from them in the Cave of the Lost Ones. He was killed—as my parents were killed, as the Morgol Dhairrhuwyth was killed—by shape-changers. He had gone into the cave and come out again to die on the threshold because of what he had seen. And what he saw in there was Yrth’s starred sword.”

They were still, even the children, their faces turned to him, unblinking. Then Vert shivered as though a cold wind had touched her, and Ash, all the joy of the harp faded from his face said, “What sword?”

Morgon looked at Danan. The king’s lips were parted; he seemed struggling back toward a memory. “That sword . . . I remember. Yrth forged it in secret; he said he had buried it. I never saw it; no one did. That was so long ago, before Sol was born, when we were just opening the upper mines. I never thought about it. But how could you possibly know where it is? Or what it looks like? Or that Sol was killed because of it?”

Morgon’s fingers moved from the strings to clasp the wood; his eyes fell to it as though the neat sweep of strings ordered his thoughts. “I know a sword exists with three stars on it, exactly like the stars on this harp; I know the shape-changers have seen it, too. My parents were drowned crossing from Caithnard to Hed bringing this harp to me. The Morgol Dhairrhuwyth was killed travelling through Isig Pass to answer a riddle about three stars. The wizard Suth was killed in Osterland a week ago because he knew too much about those stars and tried to tell me—” Ash’s hand reached out to stop him.

“Suth was killed—Suth?”

“Yes.”

“But how? Who killed him? I thought he was dead.”

Morgon’s hands shifted a little. His eyes met Deth’s briefly. “That is something I will ask the High One. I think Yrth hid that sword there in the cave of the Lost Ones because he knew it was one place no one would go. And I think Sol was killed not by traders but by either the shape-changers, or—by whoever killed Suth, because he knew too much about those stars. I don’t know your mountain, Danan, but I know that a man trying to escape death doesn’t run toward it.”

There was silence, except for the weave and rustle of flames and a sigh from one of the children asleep on the floor. It was broken unexpectedly by Vert.

“That’s what always puzzled me,” she said slowly. “Why Sol did run down that way when he knew the mountain so well he could vanish like a dream in passageways no one else could see. You remember, Ash, when we were small—”

“There’s one way to find out,” Ash said abruptly. He was on his feet; Danan’s swift, immediate, “No!” overran Morgon’s.

The mountain-king said succinctly, “That, I forbid. I will not lose another land-heir.” Ash faced him a moment without moving, his mouth set; then the stubbornness went out of his face. He sat down; Danan added wearily, “Besides, what good would that do us?”

“The sword, if it’s there, belongs to Morgon. He’ll want it—”

“I don’t want it,” Morgon said.

“But if it belongs to you . . .” Ash said, “if Yrth made it for you—”

“I don’t recall being asked if I wanted a sword. Or a destiny. All I want is to get to Erlenstar Mountain without being killed—which is another reason I’m not interested in going down to that cave. And, being, incidently, the Prince of Hed, I don’t want to go armed before the High One.”

Ash opened his mouth, and closed it. Danan whispered, “Suth . . .” A baby began to wail, a thin, sad sound; Vert started.

“Under your chair,” Ash said. “Kes.” He glanced around at the uneasy, uncomprehending faces. “We’d better put them to bed.” He retrieved a blinking, bewildered baby from the thick fur at his feet, heaved it like a sack to his shoulder.

Danan said as he rose, “Ash.”

Their eyes met again. Ash said gently, “You have my promise. But I think it’s time that cave was opened. I didn’t know there was a deathtrap in the heart of Isig.” He added to Morgon before he turned to go, “Thank you for playing.”

Morgon watched him leave, a child in each arm. The group faded away beyond the light. He looked down at the harp; a twist of bitterness rose in his throat. He stirred, slid the harp mechanically back into the case.

A soft conversation between Deth and Danan checked as he rose; the mountain-king said, “Morgon, Sol—no matter who killed him—has been dead three hundred years. Is there any way I can help you? If you want that sword, I have a small army of miners.”

“No.” His face was taut, white in the firelight. “Let me argue with my fate a little longer. I have been protesting from Caithnard to Isig, though, and it hasn’t done much good.”

“I would drain the gold from the veins of Isig to help you.”

“I know.”

“When I walked with you this afternoon, I didn’t realize you bore the vesta-scars. That’s a rare thing to see on any man, above all a man of Hed. It must be a marvellous thing to run with the vesta.”

“It is.” His voice loosened a little at the memory of the calm, endless snow, the silence lying always beneath the wind. Then he saw Suth’s face, felt the hands pulling at him as he knelt in the snow, and his face turned sharply; the memories faded.

Danan said gently, “Is that how you plan to get through the Pass?”

“I planned it that way, thinking I would be alone. Now—” He glanced questioningly at Deth.

The harpist said, “It will be difficult for me, but not impossible.”

“Can we leave tomorrow?”

“If you wish. But Morgon, I think you should rest here a day or two. Travelling through Isig Pass in mid-winter will be tiring even for a vesta, and I suspect you ran your strength dry in Osterland.”

“No. I can’t wait. I can’t.”

“Then we’ll leave. But get some sleep.”

He nodded, then said, his head bowed, to Danan, “I’m sorry.”

“For what, Morgon? For stirring my centuries-old grief?”

“That, too. But I’m sorry I couldn’t play this harp for you the way it cries out to be played.”

“You will.”

Morgon took the tower steps slowly, feeling the harp whose weight he had never noticed, dragging at his back. He wondered, as he rounded the final curve, if Yrth had walked up the stairs every night to the top of the tower, or if he had practiced the enviable art of displacement, moving from point to point in the wink of an eye. He reached the landing, drew back the hangings, and found someone standing in front of his fire.

It was Vert’s son, Bere. He said without preamble as Morgon jumped, “I’ll take you to the cave of the Lost Ones.”

Morgon eyed him without answering. The boy was young, perhaps ten or eleven, with broad shoulders and a grave, placid face. He was unembarrassed by Morgon’s scrutiny; Morgon stepped in finally, letting the hangings fall closed behind them. He shrugged the harp from his shoulder, set it down.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been there.”

“I know where it is. I got lost once, exploring. I kept going deeper and deeper into the mountain, partly because I kept taking the wrong turnings and partly because I decided as long as I really was lost I might as well see what was down there.”

“Weren’t you afraid?”

“No. I was hungry. I knew Danan or Ash would find me. I can see in the dark; that’s from my mother. So we could go very quietly without light—except in the cave, you’ll need one there.”

“Why are you so anxious to go there?”

The boy took a step toward him, his brows crooked slightly. “I want to see that sword. I’ve never seen anything like that harp. Elieu of Hel, the brother of Raith, Lord of Hel, came here two years ago; he is beginning to do work a little like that—the inlay, the designs—but I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as the work on that harp. I want to see what kind of work Yrth did with the sword. Danan makes swords for lords and kings in An and Ymris, they’re very beautiful. I’m training with Ash and Elieu; and Ash says I will be a master craftsman some day. So I have to learn everything I can.”

Morgon sat down. He smiled suddenly at the square-shouldered, peaceful artist. “It sounds very reasonable. But you heard what I told Danan about Sol.”

“Yes. But I know everyone in this house; no one would try to kill you. And if we went very quietly, no one would even know. You wouldn’t have to take the sword—you could just wait at the door for me. Inside, I mean, because—” His mouth set wryly. “I am a little afraid to go in there alone. And you’re the only other person I know who would go with me.”

The smile faded from Morgon’s eyes; he rose abruptly, restlessly. “No. You’re wrong. I won’t go with you. I gave my reasons to Danan, and you heard them.”

Bere was silent a moment, his eyes searching Morgon’s face. “I heard them. But, Morgon, this is—this is important. Please. We could just go, quickly, and then just come back—”

“Like Sol came back?”

Bere’s shoulders twitched a little. “That was a long time ago—”

“No.” He saw the sudden despair in the boy’s eyes. “Please. Listen. I have been half a step ahead of death since I left Hed. The people trying to kill me are shape-changers; they may be the miners or the traders who ate with you at Danan’s table tonight. They may be here waiting, thinking I will do just that: claim Yrth’s sword, and if you and I are caught in the cave by them, they will kill us both. I have too much regard for both my intelligence and my life to be trapped like that.”

Bere shook his head, as if shaking Morgon’s words away. He took another step forward; the firelight left his face shadowed, pleading. “It’s not right just leaving it there, just ignoring it. It belongs to you, it’s yours by right, and if it’s anything like the harp, no other lord in the realm will have a more beautiful sword.”

“I hate swords.”

“It’s not the sword,” Bere said patiently. “It’s the craft. It’s the art. I’ll keep it if you don’t want it.”

“Bere—”

“It’s not right that I can’t see it.” He paused. “Then I’ll have to go alone.”

Morgon reached the boy with one quick step, gripped the square, implacable shoulders. “I can’t stop you,” he said softly. “But I will ask you to wait until I’ve left Isig, because when they find you dead in that cave, I don’t want to see Danan’s face.”

Bere’s head bowed, his shoulders slumped under Morgon’s hold; he turned away. “I thought you’d understand,” he said, his back to Morgon. “I thought you’d understand what it is to have to do something.”

He left. Morgon turned after a moment, wearily. He added wood to the fire and lay down. For a long time, watching the flames, feeling the exhaustion settling into his bones, he could not sleep. Finally he drifted into a darkness where odd images began to form and break like deep slow bubbles from a cauldron.

He saw the high, dark walls of inner Isig, veined with torchlight: silver, gold, iron black; saw, in the secret parts of the mountain, uncut jewels, crystals of fire and ice, mid-night-blue, smokey-yellow cracking through their husks of stone. Arched trails, high passageways wandered through webs of shadow. Rocks thrust downward from ceilings vaulted and lost in blackness, formed by the slow sculpture of forgotten ages. He stood in a silence that had its own voice. He followed like a breath of wind the slow, imperceptible movements of dark streams, thin as glass, that deepened, then hewed through hidden chasms and spilled into vast, measureless lakes, where tiny nameless things lived in a colorless world. At the end of one river he found himself in a chamber of milk-white blue-veined stone. Three steps led upward out of a pool of water to a dais on which two long cases of beaten gold and white jewels stood glittering beneath a torch. A sadness touched him for the dead of Isig: Sol, and Grania, Danan’s wife; he stepped into the pool, reached out to a casket. It opened unexpectedly, from within. A face, blurred, unrecognizable, neither man’s nor woman’s, looked up at him and said his name: Star-Bearer.

He found himself in an abrupt shift back in his own chamber, dressing again, while a voice murmuring out of the corridors of Isig called to him, low and insistent as a child’s call in the night. He turned to go, then checked, slid the harp over his shoulder. He moved without sound down the empty tower stairs, through the hall where the vast fire had dwindled. He found without faltering the doors of the stone archway beyond the hall that opened into the mountain itself, to the wet, cool shaft that led downward into the mines. Instinctively, without question, he found his way through the main corridors, down passages and stairways, into the mine shaft below. He took a torch from the wall there. A split in the solid rock at the end of the shaft loomed before him; the call trailed out of it and he followed without question. The path beyond was unlit, worn with age. The half-formed heads of growing rock thrust upward underfoot, slippery with the endless drip of water. The ceiling loomed down at him so suddenly he was forced to bend beneath it, then shot upward into impossible heights while the walls nudged against him and he carried the torch high over his head to ease himself through. The silence hung ponderous as the swell of rock overhead; he smelled, in his dream, the faint, clean, acrid scent of liquid stone.

He had no sense of time, of weariness, of cold; only the vague drift of shadows, the endless, complex pattern of passages he followed with an odd certainty. He wound deeper and deeper into the mountain, his torch burning steadily, untouched by wind; sometimes he could see the reflection of it in a pool far beneath the thin ledge he walked. The trails began to level finally; the stones closed about him, edging down from the ceiling, together at the sides. The stones were broken around him, as from some ancient inner turmoil. He had to step over some of them that had shaken free like great teeth from the ceiling. The trail stopped abruptly at a closed door.

He stood looking at it, his shadow splayed behind him on the wall. Someone said his name; he reached out to open it. Then, as though he had reached through the surface of his dream, he shuddered and woke himself. He was standing in front of the door to the cave of the Lost Ones.

He blinked senselessly at it, recognizing the polished green stone teared with black, shot with fire from his torch. Then, as the chill he had not felt in his dream began to seep through his clothes, and he realized the enormous mass of rock, silence, darkness sitting above his head, he took a step backward, a sound beginning to build in his throat. He whirled abruptly; found a darkness that his torch, beating a minute, jagged circle of light about him, could not begin to unravel. His breath hissed out of him; he ran a few steps forward, stumbled over a broken rock and brought himself up short against the wet wall of rock. He remembered then the endless, chaotic path he had taken in his dream. He swallowed drily, his blood panicked through him, the sound still building in his throat.

Then he heard the voice of his dream, the voice that had led him out of Danan’s house, down through the maze of the mountain:

“Star-Bearer.”

It came from behind the door, a strange voice, clean, timbreless. The sound stilled the panic in him; he saw clearly as though with a third eye the implications of danger beyond the door, and the implications of a knowledge beyond hope. He stood for a long time, shivering every once in a while from the cold, his eyes on the door, weighing probability against possibility. Thousands of years old, unweathered, originless, the door yielded no answer to his waiting. Finally, he laid one hand flat on the smooth stone. The door swung at his gentle touch to a crack of darkness. He eased forward, torchlight flaring off walls massed with undiscovered beds and veins of jewels. Someone stepped into the light, and he stopped.

He drew a soft, shaking breath. A hand, the bones of it blurred, tapered, touched him, as Suth had done, feeling the reality of him. He whispered, his eyes on the still, molded face, “You are a child.”

The pale head lifted, the eyes star-white, met his. “We are the children.” The voice was the same, a child’s clear, dreaming voice.

“The children?”

“We are all the children. The children of the Earth-Masters.”

His lips moved, forming a word without shape. Something that was no longer panic began to grow heavy, unwieldy, in his throat and chest. A vague, gleaming boy’s face moved a little under his eyes. He reached out to it suddenly, found it unyielding to his touch.

“We have become stone in the stone. Earth mastered us.”

He lifted the torch. Around him, light, vague figures of children were rising out of the shadows, gazing at him curiously, without fear, as though he were something they had dreamed. Faces the light traced were as delicate, molded stone.

“How long—how long have you been here?”

“Since the war.”

“The war?”

“Before the Settlement. We have been waiting for you. You woke us.”

“You woke me. I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know—”

“You woke us, and we called. You have the stars.” The lean hand moved, touching them. “Three to life, three to the winds, and three to—” He lifted the sword he carried, offered the starred hilt of it to Morgon, “death. That was promised us.”

He swallowed the word like a bitterness in his mouth; his fingers closed around the blade. “Who promised it to you?”

“Earth. Wind. The great war destroyed us. So we were promised a man of peace.”

“I see.” His voice shook. “I see.” He stooped, bringing himself to the boy’s level. “What is your name?”

The boy was silent a moment, as though he could not answer. The still lines of his face shifted again; he said haltingly, “I was . . . I was Tirnon. My father was Tir, Master of Earth and Wind.”

“I was Ilona,” a small girl said suddenly. She came to Morgon trustingly, her hair curving like a fall of ice down her shoulders. “My mother was . . . my mother was . . .”

“Trist,” a boy behind her said. His eyes held Morgon’s as though he read his own name there. “I was Trist. I could take any shape of earth, bird, tree, flower—I knew them. I could shape the vesta, too.”

“I was Elore,” a slender girl said eagerly. “My mother was Rena—she could speak every language of the earth. She was teaching me the language of the crickets—”

“I was Kara—”

They crowded around him, oblivious of the fire, their voices painless, dreaming. He let them talk, watching incredulously the delicate, lifeless faces; then he said abruptly, his voice cutting into theirs, “What happened? Why are you here?”

There was a silence. Tirnon said simply, “They destroyed us.”

“Who?”

“Those from the sea. Edolen. Sec. They destroyed us so that we could not live on earth anymore; we could not master it. My father gave us protection to come here, hidden from the war. We found a dying-place.”

Morgon was still. He let the torch drop slowly; shadows eased again over the circle of children. He whispered, “I see. What can I do for you?”

“Free the winds.”

“Yes. How?”

“One star will call out of silence the Master of the Winds; one star out of darkness the Master of Darkness; one star out of death the children of the Masters of the Earth. You have called; they have answered.”

“Who is—”

“The war is not finished, only silenced for the regathering. You will bear stars of fire and ice to the Ending of the Age of the High One—”

“But we cannot live without the High One—”

“This we have been promised. This will be.” The boy seemed no longer to hear his voice, but a voice out of the memory of an age. “You are the Star-Bearer, and you will loose from their order the—”

He stopped abruptly. Morgon broke the silence. “Go on.”

Tirnon’s head bent. He gripped Morgon’s wrist suddenly, his voice taut with anguish, “No.”

Morgon lifted his torch. Beyond the fragile planes of faces, the curve of bone, the shape of slender body, the light caught at a shadow that would not yield. In the rags of darkness a dark head lifted; a woman, her face beautiful, quiet, shy, looked at him and smiled.

He rose, the stars leaping fiery about him. Tirnon’s head fell on his bent knees; Morgon saw the lines of his body begin to melt together. He turned quickly, pushing through the stone door; it flung him outward and he saw, coming toward him down the trail, carrying lights in the palms of their hands, men of the color and movement of the sea.

He had a moment of utter panic, until he saw out of the corner of his eye, an opening, a slender side path beside him. He flung the torch as far away from him as possible; it blazed like a star towards his pursuers. Then, feeling for the opening, he slipped blind into an unknown path that at every breath and movement rose against him. He felt his way, his hands sliding over wet, smooth skulls of rock, his face and shoulders beaten against the unexpected outcroppings that formed at every twist. Darkness fashioned the trail, fashioned the mold of stones beneath his hands. Behind him the blackness lay unbroken; ahead it pressed against his eyes. He stopped once, appalled at his blindness, and heard above his harsh breathing the relentless silence of Isig. He blundered on, his hands flayed from scraping across unseen rock, blood from a cut on his face catching like tears in his eyelashes, until the stone gave way beneath his feet and he fell into blackness, his cry drowned in water.

He pulled himself back on the raw slab of shore, still clinging without realizing it to the sword, and lay hearing nothing but his breathing like little whimpering sobs. Then, as he began to quiet, he heard a footstep near his face, another’s breathing. His breath stopped. Someone touched him.

He rolled to his feet abruptly, backed; a voice whispered, “Morgon, watch out. The water—”

He stopped, his lips caught hard between his teeth, straining to see the pale shadow of a face, but the dark was absolute. Then he recognized the voice.

“Morgon. It’s me, Bere. I’m coming toward you. Don’t move, or you’ll fall in the water again. I’m coming . . .”

It took, as he felt the blood pounding in the back of his throat, all the courage he possessed to stay still, let the darkness come to him. A hand touched him again. Then he felt the sword move in his grip and made a sound.

“It was there. You were right. I knew it. I knew he would have etched the blade. It’s . . . I can’t see that well; I need—” His voice stopped briefly. “What did you do? You cut your hand, carrying it like that.”

“Bere. I can’t see you. I can’t see anything. There are shape-changers trying to find me—”

“Is that what they are? I saw them. I hid in the rocks, and you ran past me. Do you want me to leave you here and get—”

“No. Can you help me find a way back?”

“I think so. I think if we follow the water it leads toward one of the lower mines. Morgon, I’m glad you came for the sword, but what made you go without telling Danan? And how did you find your way down here? Everyone is looking for you. I went up to talk to you later to see if you’d changed your mind, but you were gone. So I went to Deth’s room, to see if you were there, but you weren’t, and he heard me and woke up. I told him you were gone, and he dressed and woke Danan, and Danan woke the miners. They’re all looking for you. I came ahead. I don’t understand—”

“If we get back to Danan’s house alive, I’ll explain it to you. I’ll explain anything—”

“All right. Let me carry the sword for you.” The hand at his wrist tugged him forward. “Be careful: there’s a low overhang to your left. Bend your head.”

They moved quickly through the darkness, silent but for Bere’s murmured warnings. Morgon, his body tense against unexpected blows, strained to see one faint brush of stone or glimmer of water, but his eyes found no place to rest. He closed them finally, let his body flow after Bere’s. They began to climb; the path wound endlessly upward. The walls moved like living things under his hands, now narrowing, closing until he eased between them sideways, now flowing wide, stretching beyond his reach, then leaping back together again. Finally Bere stopped at some isolated piece of darkness.

“There are steps here. They lead to the mine shaft. Do you want to rest?”

“No. Go on.”

The steps were steep, endless. Morgon, shivering with cold, feeling the blood well and drip over his fingers, began to see shades and flares of color behind his closed eyes. He heard Bere’s sturdy, tired breathing; the boy said finally with a sigh, “All right. We’re at the top.” He stopped so suddenly that Morgon bumped into him. “There’s light in the shaft. It must be Danan! Come on—”

Morgon opened his eyes. Bere went in front of him through an arch of stones whose walls rippled unexpectedly with wavering light. Bere called softly, “Danan?” And then he pushed back, stumbling against Morgon, the breath hissing sharply out of his throat. A blade, grey-green, raked across the light, struck his head and he fell, the sword ringing beneath him.

Morgon stared down at his limp, motionless body, looking oddly small on the harsh stones. Something unwieldy, uncontrollable, shook through him, welled to an explosion of fury behind his eyes. He ducked a sword thrust that bit at him like a silver snake, pulled the harp strap over his neck and dropped it, then reached for the sword beneath Bere. He plunged through the archway, eluding by a hairsbreadth two blades that whistled through the air behind him, caught a third on its way down, brought it up, high upward to a dull ring and blaze of sparks, then loosed it abruptly and slashed sideways. Blood burst like a sun across one shell-colored face. A blaze of fire ripping down his arm, caught his attention; he whirled. A blade drove toward him; he sent it spinning almost contemptuously across the floor with a single, two-handed stroke; then reversed the ponderous circle of the blade’s sweep and the shape-changer, coughing, hunched himself over the line of blood slashing from shoulder to hip. Yet another blade descended at him like a thread of silver that would have split him; he jerked back from it. He brought his sword down like an ax against a stump in a field, and the shape-changer, catching the blade in his shoulder, pulled it out of Morgon’s hands as he fell.

The silence settled ponderously about him. He stared down at the stars, shaken slightly with the last breath of the shape-changer; the hilt was webbed with blood. One of the strange lights, fallen and still burning, lay just beyond the shape-changer’s outstretched hand. Morgon, looking at it, shuddered suddenly, violently. He turned, extinguishing the light with a step, walked forward until he could go no further and pushed his face against the solid black wall of stone.