“He knows. Just be careful.”

“I will be.” He turned his head, met Raederle’s eyes. She did not move or speak, but she bound him wordless, lost again in memories. He broke their silence as if he were breaking a spell. “I’ll meet you at Caithnard.” He kissed her and turned quickly. He boarded the lead ship. The ramp slid up behind him; Bri Corbett stood beside an open hatch.

He said worriedly as Morgon climbed down the ladder into the listless hold, “You’ll be all right among the dead?”

Morgon nodded without speaking. Bri closed the hatch behind him. He stumbled a little around bolts of cloth and found a place to sit on sacks of spice. He felt the ship ease away from the dock, away from Anuin toward the open sea. He leaned against the side of the hull, heard water spray against the wood. The dead were silent, invisible around him, their minds growing quiescent as they sailed away from their past. Morgon found himself trying to trace their faces suddenly out of the total darkness. He drew his knees up, pushed his face against his arms and listened to the water. A few moments later, he heard the hatch open.

He drew a long, silent breath and loosed it. Lamplight flickered beyond his closed eyes. Someone climbed down the ladder, found a path through the cargo, and sat down beside him. Scents of pepper and ginger wafted up around him. The hatch dropped shut again.

He lifted his head, said to Raederle, who was no more than her breathing and the faint smell of sea air, “Are you planning to argue with me for the rest of our lives?”

“Yes,” she said stiffly.

He dropped his head back against his knees. After a while he drew one arm free, shaped her wrist in the dark, and then her fingers. He gazed back at the night, holding her scarred left hand in both his hands against his heart.

They arrived in Hed four nights later. Six of the trade-ships had turned westward in the channel to wait at Caithnard; Bri took his ship to Tol. Morgon, worn out from listening for disaster, was startled out of a catnap by the hull scudding a little against the dock. He sat up, tense, and heard Bri curse someone amiably. The hatch opened; lamplight blinded him. He smelled earth.

His heart began to pound suddenly. Beside him, Raederle, half-buried in furs, lifted her head sleepily.

“You’re home,” Bri said, smiling behind the light, and Morgon got to his feet, climbed up onto the deck. Tol was a handful of houses scattered beyond the moon-shadow flung by the dark cliffs. The warm, motionless air smelled familiarly of cows and grain.

He hardly realized he had spoken until Bri, dousing the light, answered, “On the lee side of midnight. We got here sooner than I expected.”

A wave curled lazily onto the beach, spread a fretwork of silver as it withdrew. The shore road wound bone-white away from the dock to disappear into the cliff shadow. Morgon picked out the faint line above the cliff where it appeared again, to separate pastures and fields until it stopped at the doorstep of Akren. His hands tightened on the railing; he stared, blind, back at the twisted road that had brought him to Hed on a ship full of the dead, and the shore road to Akren seemed suddenly little more than one more twist into shadows.

Raederle said his name, and his hands loosened. He heard the ramp thud onto the dock. He said to Bri, “I’ll be back before dawn.” He touched the outline of the ship-master’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

He led Raederle off the dock, past the dreaming fishermen’s houses and the worn, beached boats with gulls sleeping on them. He found his way by memory up the shadows to the top of the cliff. The fields flowed smoothly under the moonlight, swirled around hillocks and dips, to converge from every direction around Akren. The night was soundless; listening, he heard the slow, placid breathing of cows and the faint whimper of a dog dreaming. There was a light gleaming at Akren, Morgon thought from the porch, but as they drew closer, he realized it came from within the house. Raederle walked silently beside him, her eyes flickering over field walls, bean rows, half-ripe wheat. She broke her silence finally as they drew near enough to Akren to see the lines of the roof slanting against the stars.

“Such a small house,” she said, surprised. He nodded.

“Smaller than I remember…” His throat was dry, tight. He saw a movement in one hall window, dim in the candlelight, and he wondered who was sitting up so late in the house, alone. Then the smell of damp earth and clinging roots caught at him unexpectedly; memory upon memory sent shoots and hair roots spreading through him of land-law until for one split second he no longer felt his body, and his mind branched dizzyingly through the rootwork of Hed.

He stopped, his breath catching. The figure at the window moved. Blocking the light, it stared out at the night: big, broad-shouldered, faceless. It turned abruptly, flicking across the windows in the hall. The doors of Akren banged open; a dog barked, once. Morgon heard footsteps. They crossed the yard and stopped at the angled shadow of the roof.

“Morgon?” The name sounded in the still ah- like a question. Then it became a shout, setting all the dogs barking as it echoed across the fields. “Morgon!”

Eliard had reached him almost before he could move again. He got an impression of butter-colored hair, shoulders burled with muscles, and a face under moonlight that was startlingly like their father’s. Then Eliard knocked the breath out of him, hugging him, his fists pounding against Morgon’s shoulder blades. “You took your time coming home,” he said. He was crying. Morgon tried to speak, but his throat was too dry; he dropped his burning eyes against Eliard’s massive shoulder.

“You great mountain,” he whispered. “Will you quiet down?”

Eliard pushed him away, started shaking him. “I felt your mind in mine just then, the way I felt it in my dreams when you were in that mountain.” Tears were furrowing down his face. “Morgon, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“Eliard…”

“I knew you were in trouble, but I never did anything — I didn’t know what to do — and then you died, and the land-rule came to me. And now you’re back, and I have everything that belongs to you. Morgon, I swear if there was a way, I would take the land-rule out of myself and give it back to you—” Morgon’s hands locked in a sudden, fierce grip on his arms and he stopped.

“Don’t say that to me again. Ever.” Eliard stared at him wordlessly, and Morgon felt, holding him, that he held all the strength and innocence of Hed. He said more quietly, his fingers tightening on the innocence, “You belong here. And I have needed you to be here taking care of Hed almost more than anything.”

“But Morgon… you belong here. This is your home, you’ve come home—”

“Yes. Until dawn.”

“No!” His fingers clamped on Morgon’s shoulders again. “I don’t know what you’re running from, but I’m not watching you leave again. You stay here; we can fight for you, with pitchforks and harrow teeth. I’ll borrow an army from somebody—”

“Eliard—”

“Shut up! You may have a grip like a bench vise, but you can’t throw me into Tristan’s rosebushes anymore. You’re staying here, where you belong.”

“Eliard, will you stop shouting!” He shook Eliard a little, astonishing him into silence. Then a small whirlwind of Tristan and dogs broke against them, shouting and barking. Tristan leaped at Morgon from a dead run, her arms damped around his neck, her face buried at his collarbone. He kissed what he could find of it, then pushed her away, lifted her face between his hands. He barely recognized it. Something in his expression made her face crumple; she flung her arms around him again. Then she saw Raederle and reached out to her, and the dogs swarmed at Morgon. A couple of lights sparked in the windows of distant farmhouses. Morgon felt a moment’s panic. Then he simply grew still, still as the motionless pour of the road under his feet, the moonlit air. The dogs dropped away from him; Tristan and Raederle stopped talking to look at him. Eliard stood quietly, bound unconsciously to his stillness.