"It is that: unanswered, and for all I know it may not need an answer."
Rood's hand cut the air, his sleeve fluttering. "Every riddle has an answer. Hide behind the closed doors in your mind, you stubborn farmer. A hundred years from now students in the White of Beginning Mastery will be scratching their heads trying to remember the name of an obscure Prince of Hed who, like another obscure Prince of Hed, ignored the first and last rule of riddle-mastery. I thought you had more sense."
"All, I want," Morgon said succinctly, "is to go to Anuin, marry Raederle, and then go home and plant grain and make beer and read books. Is that so hard to understand?"
"Yes! Why are you being so obtuse? You of all people?"
"Rood," Master Tel said in his gentle voice, "you know an answer to the stars on his face was sought and never found. What more do you suggest he do?"
"I suggest," Rood said, "he ask the High One,"
There was a little silence. The Master Ohm broke it with a rustle of cloth as he shifted. "The High One would indeed know. However I suspect you will have to provide Morgon with more incentive than pure knowledge before he would make such a long, harsh journey away from his land."
"I don't have to. Sooner or later, he'll be driven there."
Morgon sighed. "I wish you would be reasonable. I want to go to Anuin, not Erlenstar Mountain. I don't want to ask any more riddles; spending a night from twilight to dawn in a tower rotten with cloth and bone, racking my brain for every riddle I ever learned, gave me a distaste for riddle-games."
Rood leaned forward, every trace of mockery gone from his face. "You will take honor from this place, and Master Tel has said you will take the Black today for doing what even the Master Laern died attempting. You will go to Anuin, and the lords of An, and my father and Raederle will give you at least the respect due to you for your knowledge and your courage. But if you accept the Black, it will be a lie; and if you offer the peace of Hed to Raederle, that also will be a lie, a promise you will not keep because there is a question you will not answer, and you will find, like Peven, that it is the one riddle you do not know, not the thousand you do knew, that will destroy you."
"Rood!" Morgon checked, his mouth tight, his hands tight on the arms of his chair. "What are you trying to make of me?"
"A Master—for your own sake. How can you be so blind? How can you so stubbornly, so flagrantly, ignore everything you know is true? How can you let them call you a Master? How can you accept from them the Black of Mastery while you turn a blind eye at truth?"
Morgon felt the blood well into his face. He said tautly, Rood's face suddenly the only face in the still room, "I never wanted the Black. But I do claim some choice in my life. What those stars on my face are, I do not know; and I don't want to know. Is that what you want me to admit? You take the eyes that your father, and Madir, and the shape-changer Ylon gave you and probe your own cold, fearless way into truth, and when you take the Black, I will come and celebrate with you. But all I want is peace."
"Peace," Master Tel said mildly, "was never one of your habits, Rood. We can only judge Morgon according to our standards, and by those he has earned the Black. How else can we honor him?"
Rood stood up. He undid his robe, let it slide to the floor, stood half-naked in the startled gaze of the Masters. "If you give him the Black, I will never wear any robe of Mastery again."
A muscle in Morgon's rigid face jumped. He leaned back in his chair, his stiff fingers opening, and said' icily, "Put your clothes back on, Rood. I have said I didn't want the Black, and I won't take it. It's not the business of a farmer of Hed to master riddles. Besides, what honor would it give me to wear the same robe Laern wore and lost in that tower, and that Peven wears now?"
Rood gathered his robe in one hand, walked to Morgon's chair. He leaned over it, his hands on the arms. His face loomed above Morgon's, spare, bloodless. He whispered, "Please. Think."
He held Morgon's eyes, held the silence in the room with the motionless, taut set of his body until he moved, turned to leave. Then Morgon's own body loosened as though the black gaze had drained out of it. He heard the door close and dropped his face in one hand.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean to say that about Laern. I lost my temper."
"Truth," the Master Ohm murmured, "needs no apology." His mist-colored eyes, unwavering on Morgon's face, held a gleam of curiosity. "Not even a Master assumes he knows everything—except in rare cases, such as Laern's. Will you accept the Black? You surely deserve it, and as Tel says, it is all we have to honor you."
Morgon shook his head. "I want it I do want it. But Rood wants it more than I do; he'll make better use of it than I will, and I would rather he take it. I'm sorry we argued here—I don't know how it got started." "I'll talk to him," Tel promised. "He was being rather unreasonable, and unnecessarily harsh."
"He has his father's vision," Ohm said. Morgon's eyes moved to him after a moment. "You think he was right?"
"In essence. So do you, although you have chosen not to act—as is, according to your rather confused standards, your right. But I suspect a journey to the High One will not be as useless as you think."
"But I want to get married. And why should I trouble whatever destiny Rood thinks I have until it troubles me? I'm not going out hunting a destiny like a strayed cow."
The corner of Master Ohm's lean mouth twitched. "Who was lion of Yrye?"
Morgon sighed noiselessly. "lion was a harpist at the court of Har of Osterland, who ofended Har with a song so terribly that he fled from Har out of fear of death. He went alone to the mountains, taking nothing but his harp, and lived quietly, far from all men, farming and playing his harp. So great was his harping in his loneliness, that it became his voice, and it spoke as he could not, to the animals living around him. Word of it spread from creature to creature until it came one day to the ears of the Wolf of Osterland, Har, as he prowled in that shape through his land. He was drawn by curiosity to the far reaches of his kingdom, and there he found lion, playing at the edge of the world. The wolf sat and listened. And Don, finishing his song and raising his eyes, found the terror he had run from standing on his threshold."
"And the stricture?"
"The man running from death must run first from himself. But I don't see what that has to do with me. I'm not running: I'm simply not interested."
The Master's elusive smile deepened faintly. "Then I wish you the peace of your disinterest, Morgon of Hed," he said softly.
Morgon did not see Rood again, though he searched through the grounds and the cliff above the sea half the afternoon for him. He took supper with the Masters, and found, wandering outside afterward into the dead wind of twilight, the High One's harpist coming up the road.
Deth, stopping, said, "You look troubled." "I can't find Rood. He must have gone down to Caithnard." He ran a hand through his hair in a rare, preoccupied gesture, and set his shoulders against the broadside of an oak. Three stars gleamed below his hairline, muted in the evening. "We had an argument; I'm not even sure now what it was about. I want him with me at Anuin, but it's getting late, and I don't know now if he'll come." "We should board."
"I know. If we miss the tide, they'll sail without us. He's probably drunk in some tavern, wearing nothing but his boots. Maybe he would rather see me take a long journey to the High One than marry Raederle. Maybe he's right. She doesn't belong in Hed, and that's what upset him. Maybe I should go down and get drunk with him and go home. I don't know." He caught the harpist's patient, vaguely mystified expression and sighed. "I'll get my pack."
"I must speak to Master Ohm briefly before we leave. Surely Rood, of all people, would have told you the truth about how he feels toward the marriage."
Morgon shrugged himself away from the tree. "I suppose so," he said moodily. "But I don't see why he has to upset me at a time like this."
He retrieved his pack from the chaos of Rood's room and bade the Masters farewell. The sky darkend slowly as he and the h
arpist took the long road back to the city; on the rough horns of the bay the warning fires had been lit; tiny lights from homes and taverns made random stars against the well of darkness. The tide boomed and slapped against the cliffs, and an evening wind stirred, strengthened, blowing the scent of salt and night. The trade-ship stirred restlessly in the deep water as they boarded; a loosed sail cupped the wind, taut and ghostly under the moon. Morgon, standing at the stern, watched the lights of the harbor ripple across the water and vanish.
"We'll reach Anuin in the afternoon, the wind willing," an affable, red-bearded trader with a weal down the side of his face said to him. "Sleep above or below as it pleases you. With the horses we carry, you may be happier up here in the air. There are plenty of skins from your own sheep to keep you warm."
"Thank you," Morgon said. Sitting on a great spool of cable, his arms resting on the rail, he watched the white wake furl to the turn of the silent helmsman's tiller. His thoughts slid to Rood; he traced the threads of their argument to its roots, puzzled over it, retraced it again. The wind carried voices of the handful of sailors manning the ship, a snatch of traders' discussion of the goods they carried. The masts groaned with the weight of wind; the ship, heavy with cargo, neatly balanced, cut with an easy roll from bow to stern through the waves. Morgon, the east wind numbing his cheek, lulled by the creak and dip of the vessel, put his head on his arms and closed his eyes. He was asleep when the ship shuddered as though the twelve winds had seized it at once, and, startling awake, he heard the furious, unchecked thump of the tiller.
He stood up, a call dying in his throat, for the deck behind him was empty. The ship, its sails full-blown to the harsh wind, reeled, throwing him back against the rail. He caught his balance desperately. The chart-house, where the traders had been lamp-lit as they pored over their papers, was dark. The wind, whimpering, drove hard into the sails, and the ship rolled, giving Morgon a sudden glimpse of white froth. He straightened slowly with it, his teeth set hard, feeling the prick of sweat on his back even in the cold spray.
He saw the hatch to the hold open reluctantly against the wind, recognized the web-colored hair in the moonlight. He made his way toward it in a lull of wind, clinging to whatever stay and spare corner he passed. He had to shout twice to make himself heard.
"What are they doing down there?"
"There's no one in the hold," Deth said. Morgon, staring at him, made no sense of the words.
"What?"
Deth, sitting in the open hatchway, put a hand on Morgon's arm. At the touch, and his quick, silent glance across the decks, Morgon felt his throat suddenly constrict
"Deth—"
"Yes." The harpist shifted the harp slightly on his shoulder. His brows were drawn hard.
"Deth, where are the traders and sailors? They can't have just—just vanished like pieces of foam. They... Where are they? Did they fall overboard?"
"If they did, they put up enough sail before they left to take us with them."
"We can take it down."
"I think," Deth said, "we won't have time." The ship flung them both, as he spoke, backward in a strange, rigid movement. The animals screamed in terror; the deck itself seemed to strain beneath them, as though it were being pulled apart. A rope snapped above Morgon's head, slashing across the deck; wood groaned and buckled around them. He felt his voice tear out of him.
"We're not moving! In open sea, we're not moving!"
There was a rush of water beneath him, bubbling through the open hold; the ship sagged on its side. Deth caught Morgon as he slid helplessly across the deck; a wave breaking against the low side drenched them both, and he gagged on the cold, bitter water. He managed to stand, clinging with one hand to Deth's wrist, and flung his arms around the mast, tangling his fingers in the rigging. His face close to the harpist's, his feet sliding to the tilt of the deck, he shouted hoarsely,
"Who were they?"
If the harpist gave him an answer, he did not hear it. Deth's figure blurred in the sweep of a wave; the mast snapped with a jar Morgon felt to his bones, and the striped canvas weighted with rigging and yard slapped him loose from his hold and swept him into the sea.
HE WOKE, FLUNG LIKE A RAG AMID A HARVEST OF dry kelp, his face in the sand, his mouth full of sand. He lifted his face; a bone-white beach strewn with seaweed and bleached driftwood blurred under one eye; his other eye was blind. He dropped his head, his eye closing again, and someone on his blind side touched him.
He started. Hands tugged at him, rolled him onto his back. He stared into a wild white cat's ice-blue eyes. Its ears were flattened. A voice said warningly, "Xel."
Morgon tried to speak, but made only the strange, harsh noise that a crow might make.
The voice said, "Who are you? What happened to you?"
He tried to answer. His voice would not shape the words. He realized, as he struggled with it, that there were no words in him anywhere to shape answers.
"Who are you?"
He closed his eyes. A silence spun like a vortex in his head, drawing him deeper and deeper into darkness.
He woke again tasting cool water. He reached for it blindly, drank until the crust of salt in his mouth dissolved, then lay back, the empty cup rolling from his hands. He opened his good eye again a moment later.
A young man with lank white hair and white eyes knelt beside him on the dirt floor of a small house. The threads of the voluminous, richly embroidered robe he wore were picked and frayed; the skin was stretched taut, hollow across his strange, proud face.
He said as Morgon blinked up at him, "Who are you? Can you speak now?"
Morgon opened his mouth. Like a small wave receding, something he had once known slipped quietly, silently away from him. The breath exploded out of him suddenly, violently; he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.
"Be careful." The man pulled his hands from his face. "It looks as though you hit your head on something; blood and sand are caked over your eye." He washed it gently. "So you can't remember your name. Did you fall off a ship in that storm last night? Are you of Ymris? Of Anuin? Of Isig? Are you a trader? Are you of Hed? Of Lungold? Are you a fisher from Loor?" He shook his head in puzzlement at Morgon's silence. "You are mute and inexplicable as the hollow gold balls I dig up on Wind Plain. Can you see now?" Morgon nodded, and the man sat back on his haunches, frowning down at Morgon's face as though it held a name in it somewhere. His frown deepened suddenly; he reached out and brushed at the hair plastered dry with salt against Morgon's forehead. His voice caught. "Three stars."
Morgon lifted his hand to touch them. The man said softly, incredulously, "You don't remember even that. You came out of the sea with three stars on your face, with no name and no voice, like a portent out of the past..." He stopped as Morgon's hand fell to his wrist, gripped it, and Morgon made the grunt of a question. "Oh. I am Astrin Ymris." Then he added formally, almost bitterly, "I am the brother and land-heir of Heureu, King of Ymris." He slid an arm under Morgon's shoulders. "If you'll sit, I'll give you some dry clothes."
He pulled the torn, wet tunic off Morgon, washed the drying sand from his body, and helped him into a long, hooded robe of rich dark cloth. He fetched wood, stirred up the embers under a cauldron of soup; by the time it had heated, Morgon had fallen asleep.
He woke at dusk. The tiny house was empty; he sat up, looking around him. It had little furniture: a bench, a large table cluttered with odd objects, a high stool, the pallet Morgon had slept on. Tools leaned against the doorway: a pick, a hammer, a chisel, a brush; dirt clung to them. Morgon rose, went to the open door. Across the threshold a great, wind-blown plain swept westward as far as he could see. Not far from the house, dark, shapeless stoneworks rose, blurred in the fading light. To the south lay, like a boundary line between lands, the dark line of a vast forest. The wind, running in from the sea, spoke a hollow, restless language. It smelled of salt and night, and for a moment, listening to it, some memory reeled into his mind of darkness, water, cold, wild
wind, and he gripped the door posts to keep from falling. But it passed, and he found no word for it.
He turned. Strange things lay on Astrin's broad table. He touched them curiously. There were pieces of broken, beautifully dyed glass, of gold, shards of finely painted pottery, a few links of heavy copper chain, a broken flute of wood and gold. A color caught his eye; he reached for it. It was a cut jewel the size of his palm, and through it flowed, as he turned it, all the colors of the sea.
He heard a step and looked up. Astrin, Xel at his side, came in, dropped a heavy, stained bag by the hearth.
He said, stirring the fire. "It's beautiful, isn't it. I found that at the foot of Wind Tower. No trader I showed it to could give me the name for that stone, so I took it to Isig, to Danan Isig himself. He said that never in his mountain had he seen such a jewel, nor did he know anyone beside himself and his son, who could have cut it so flawlessly. He gave me Xel out of friendship. I had nothing to give him, but he said I had given him a mystery, which is sometimes a precious thing." He checked the pot above the flames, then reached for the bag and a knife hanging by the fire. "Xel caught two hare; I'll cook them for supper..." He looked up as Morgon touched his arm. He let Morgon take the knife from him. "Can you skin them?" Morgon nodded. "You know you can do that. Can you remember anything else about yourself? Think. Try to—" He stopped at the helpless, tormented expression on Morgon's faee, gripped Morgon's arm briefly. "Never mind. It will come back to you."
Riddle Master of Hed Page 4
