Son of Avonar tbod-1

by Carol Berg

  When I woke to watery sunlight and birdsong, it took me a moment to sort out where I was. So many different sleeping accommodations in the past weeks, so many varieties of discomfort. The quiet was disconcerting until I realized it meant only that the storm was past. A small grove of birch trees fronted our refuge, and a breeze rustled the gold-rimmed leaves, sprinkling a last shower of sparkling droplets on the grass. Baglos was snoring, slumped against the rock. D’Natheil’s fire still burned, its fuel not at all diminished. Paulo sat close to the fire, his chin on his knees, his eyes fixed on me intently, as if he were trying to will me awake.

  I stood up from the damp ground and stretched my cramped muscles. Noting the hollow growl in my stomach, I thought I might understand Paulo’s unspoken message. “Are you hungry?”

  He nodded eagerly.

  “Set some stones to hold our pot, and we’ll make something hot. We’ll surprise Baglos.”

  I wrestled with the sodden leather pack attached to my saddle, pulling out pot and provisions. As I filled the pot with water, Paulo was peering idly at the lines and symbols I had drawn in the dirt.

  “Paulo, if you can unravel that little puzzle, I’ll keep your stomach full until you’re twenty,” I said, as I crouched by the fire and set the pot on the three stones the boy had found to hold it.

  “I was never no good at the riddle game,” he said. “Everybody always I said was too stupid to play.”

  I almost poured the water into the fire. “What do you mean—the riddle game?”

  Paulo poked his bare toe at the diagram. “Looks like it. You know.”

  “No, I don’t. Tell me.”

  “Picture tells what riddle has to come first. What one next. Stupid game.”

  I tried to contain my hopes. “I’ve never played. Could you tell me how?”

  “Well, everybody makes up pictures, and one draws the lines in between to tell which picture comes first, which next. This foot means the one who plays first has got to tell a riddle about a foot. And if nobody guesses it right, then the same person gets to tell the next one about… well, whatever that thing is… and then about the face, and so on. If somebody gets it right, then that person gets to tell the next riddle. The one who fools the last, wins. I wasn’t no good at riddling.”

  Riddles… Riddles that would tell us where to go. The Writer’s children had played all sorts of games. He was always telling of them. One of his daughters had a special talent for riddling.

  “Baglos! Baglos, wake up!” I shook the sleeping Dulcé, not caring if I frightened him out of a year of his life.

  “What is it?”

  “Get the journal, Baglos. Hurry! Paulo has solved the mystery.”

  Baglos shook off his sleep and dug deep in his pack to retrieve the book, mumbling to himself. “The boy solved the puzzle? Surely not.”

  I hovered at his shoulder, while Paulo gave me such a look as to say that adults were not quite sensible when they would abandon cooking for the riddle game.

  “It’s a children’s game,” I said, willing Baglos to hurry. “We must find where he writes of his daughter and her talent for riddles. The entry comes only a few days before he drew the diagram. We never had a reason to make the connection.”

  Baglos turned the pages to the familiar one, then leafed backwards until he found the passage I named. In his musical voice, he read the Writer’s words.

  Lilith hath taken herself to riddling, and a clever wit she is at it. Mori and I wonder if it be the girl will show herself a Word Winder or mayhap even a Speaker. I must inquire of Siddhe when next I work the fen country and have her tell me the signs. Mori says that Lilith yet be too young to show her gift, but Jonithe and C’Netha of Isfan were no more than eleven, and C’Netha a Word Winder herself. Regretful, too, would I be, if the need for mentoring were to take my bright Lilith so far from her home, but such is the Way. Mori doth not prod the girls to show, as she doth for Tekko and Garnath. I must admonish her, for the girls must make their way in the world every bit as much as their brothers. Well should Mori know, for were not she the strong woman she is, how ever could I take this endless road that calls me?

  But enough. Lilith riddling. Before I journeyed this day, we sat and played at it. I must record her tally for when she is a Speaker, to prove that she came forth when only ten.

  Karon had not bothered to decipher the little girl’s riddles, thinking the barriers of time, language, and culture would make the task impossible. We had prized the passage for its revelation of the Writer’s life, and his love for his family and his calling, but never had we made the connection with the diagram.

  I hung over Baglos’s shoulder and pointed to the page. “Look. You see, he’s added these lines. The pages are so worn, and he was forever adding notes, or marking things out, or changing them. You wouldn’t notice, unless you knew to look. He would always leave space between his text, so he could go back and add things he had forgotten. See how close these lines are, and some were written with a pen having a wider tip. Paulo, you’re marvelous. You’ve really done it.”

  There followed a whole page of short puzzles, but I had no trouble picking out the ones that had been added later. There were five of them, just as there were five symbols in the diagram, and a short additional passage written at the same time.

  It is the lesser brother’s portion that brings the greatest wealth, and the lesser passage that finds its destination.

  Though he cannot see it, the hunter knows his prey, for it speaks to his heart whether he turns right or left.

  When the wall births the flood, it is wiser to be the rabbit than the fish or the goat.

  A journey begins on the road that never sleeps and whose travelers have no feet.

  When one ascends the ancient face that weeps, one sees that it brings forth the fruits of youth from its decrepit pores.

  Is the child not a marvel? The day will come when men will cry out the name of our race, and it is my Lilith that will shine in their memory.

  “So we might solve these puzzles to find our way?” said Baglos.

  “The Writer says that this diagram is his map to the stronghold. Paulo says that the pictures in the riddle game tell the player what the riddle must be about, and the lines between tell the order in which to solve them. So if we can match the riddles with the pictures in the diagram we should have a list of clues to get us to the stronghold. Then we just have to solve the riddles. First, the one about the foot.”

  “A journey begins on the road that never sleeps and whose travelers have no feet.” Baglos crinkled his face as if seeing only part of the words might make them clearer. “That is the only one of the texts that talks about a foot. I hope you’re skilled at solving riddles, for this is as big a mystery to me as the other.”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve done my share. I’ve been told I’m very good at riddles. But I never played as a child, never this way.”

  Paulo sat by the fire, mournfully watching the pot boil dry, his hopes for supper drifting away on the vapors, not even a good smell left behind. “Here is our hero starving,” I said, “and I’ve promised to fill his stomach until he’s twenty.”

  “I will take on that duty proudly,” said Baglos. “The most excellent ferocious boy will not starve!”

  While Baglos stirred up the pot, I wandered out past the birch grove seeking D’Natheil to tell him the good news. But the Prince was nowhere in sight, and the chestnut stallion was gone. By the time we ate the hot porridge and packed up everything again, D’Natheil had not yet returned. Excitement faded into concern as the afternoon hours waned. Baglos began to fidget. I told myself that D’Natheil was scouting ahead, finding the direction to take us back to the road, perhaps solving the mystery of Yennet.

  I tried to concentrate on the riddles, but as the pale sun faded and night crept over the downs, I feared that something terrible had happened. And when D’Natheil’s fire went out, I was convinced that the Heir of D’Arnath was not coming back.

  CHAPTE
R 29

  I was confounded. Be rational, Seri, I told myself. Don’t panic. I stood outside the cleft in the rock and listened, but only the cry of a hunting owl interrupted the soft rustling of birch leaves in the moonless night. Alternatives. Think.

  Had he been taken by the Zhid? If so, he was most likely dead by now—or victim to whatever they planned for him—and it didn’t matter what we did. I looked down at the cold ashes of his fire. A last spark flared bright orange, then dulled to gray. That alternative was unacceptable.

  What else then? Had he been injured in some ordinary mishap—a fall, an accident, bandits? If so, we’d not help him by hiding in the crevice of a rock. The rain had stopped about the same time as he had disappeared. As soon as there was daylight, we could follow his tracks.

  Could he have decided that companions were unnecessary? That didn’t seem likely. He had welcomed my help, expressed confidence in me, and he valued Baglos. Why would he leave us behind?

  That left only the uncomfortable speculation that he had abandoned his mission altogether. Since the day of the fire he had carried the burden of two worlds on his shoulders, with very little to aid him. No memory. No understanding of himself. Asked to risk his life and what remained of his reason for a world he could not remember, for duty and loyalty he could not feel. Celine had said there was no person inside him. What must it be like to live with such emptiness? Many people would run away from such a burden. Yet even that could not be the whole of it, for when I’d managed to involve him in the investigation, he was willing, and he’d done what he could to keep us safe on our way.

  The night passed slowly. Boiling clouds laced with pink and green lightning erased the midnight stars and doused us with a quick frenzy of rain. Even after I turned the watch over to Paulo in the midnight hour, I could not sleep. I stood by the entrance to the cleft, my damp blanket wrapped about my shoulders, and I fretted over the muddy hoofprints that would now be washed away.

  Morning arrived. As I feared, the nighttime rain had erased any trace of D’Natheil’s passing. A quick survey in the dawn light revealed that our refuge helped form the base of a grassy knob that dominated the rolling sea of grass and rocks—the mysterious Pell’s Mound, I guessed, a matter that might have been of some interest were not our immediate concerns so critical. Karon had believed the hill to be a tribal holy place from which our ancestors—my ancestors—had worshipped the mountains. Indeed the peaks of the Dorian Wall loomed large, as if they had used the cover of the storm to creep up on us. And somewhere in the desolate country between the Wall and Pell’s Mound lay the Glenaven River and the village of Yennet, once known as Tryglevie.

  I could see no hint of D’Natheil’s fate, no evidence of a mishap, no place that looked more worth searching than another. Baglos suggested that the three of us ride in different directions for an hour, then circle right and return to Pell’s Mound by mid-morning. He sounded hopeless as he had not since he’d been reunited with his master. “The treacherous liars have taken him,” he said. “They’ll destroy him, shed his blood on the Bridge… Avonar is lost.”

  My search was fruitless. I saw more grassy undulations, one little different from the other, and more granite monoliths protruding from the damp earth as if the roots of the mountains were beginning to sprout. When we came together again at Pell’s Mound, it took no words to share the result. Baglos led us silently to the road. We would go on to Yennet. If D’Natheil were able and willing, he would meet us there.

  As the last of the morning haze burned away, we reached the outlying ruins of a dying village, piles of rubble that had once been neatly laid stone fences or low-roofed dwellings snug enough to hold back the bitter winter that would howl down from the Dorian Wall. The road was a sticky bog, with protruding islands of rock so exasperating to negotiate that we dismounted and led the horses rather than risk their injury in some unseen hole. What structures still remained in the village proper were cracked, crumbled, and overgrown with weeds. A pig rooted hungrily in the mud. The place was a squalid contrast to the mountain vista that lay so close behind it, as if set there solely to demonstrate that the works of man were but a corruption of the works of nature.

  A hollow-cheeked man peered out of the door of a crumbling house. When I greeted him, he clucked to a dog that cowered between his legs and slammed the door. A little further along the way, a woman stood in the middle of a rock-bordered garden, watching our approach, three ragged children clinging to her skirts. Her garden, while not lush, was better tended than anything in sight. A slight move of her hand had the children scattering into the cluster of stone houses and broken walls.

  I called out to her from a good distance. “Health and prosperity be yours this day, goodwife; may your hold flourish.”

  “And your road be smooth,” said the woman. Her wispy braids were streaked with gray, her face lined, though she could well be younger than I. Her bare arms were ridged with sinew, and she gripped a rusty hoe, but did not lean on it.

  “We’re travelers from Montevial,” I said.

  “We see few strangers in Yennet. Why would you come here?”

  The air was crisp and sweet, the sky a deep and brilliant blue behind the sheer white peaks. “To pay homage to the beauties of nature,” I said, unable to think of any more plausible answer.

  To my surprise, the woman nodded solemnly. “‘Tis the only reason to be sure. The Wall is worth a day’s rising.”

  “Have you seen any other strangers about today? One of our company was separated from us in the storm. A young man of… some thirty years he appears. Tall. Clean-shaven. Blue eyes; light hair. Strongly made and riding a spirited chestnut of sixteen hands.”

  “I’ve seen no one like. Mayhap he took the road to Vanesta or got turned about and is halfway to Montevial once more. You’d best be after him.” The woman’s fingers shifted on her hoe.

  “Perhaps.” No other villagers had made an appearance. I saw only one other person, a slim young man sitting on a fence far down the road. Tales said that untaxed grain often found its way into Valleor through the foothills of the Dorian Wall. Smugglers were rightly shy of company. “Is there somewhere in your village where we could stay the night? We hope our friend will make his way here.”

  The woman’s glance darted toward her house. “I don’t know. We’re but poor sheepherders. Most everyone is out with the flocks.”

  From the corner of my eye I caught a movement in the shadowed doorway. I stood my ground. No use to run. To move my hand toward the knife beneath my skirt was to invite unfortunate consequences. “We have our own provisions. We just need a roof and a dry floor. I promise you we’re interested in naught but finding our friend.”

  “But—”

  A body separated itself from the shadows. “What Marika is trying not to say is that she has already sheltered a refugee from the storm. One who asked her to be discreet.”

  “Sheriff!”

  Graeme Rowan looked about cautiously before approaching me. His left temple was mottled purple and green, swollen and marked by an ugly scab. In the center of his forehead was a faint gray smudge of earth. His god had sent him on another journey because of me.

  How do you apologize to a man you despise? Honor demanded it, but my back bristled. Why couldn’t it be enough that we hadn’t killed him? “Sheriff, I—”

  “Madam, I’d be grateful if we could leave off any talk of my profession. I’ve had to swear on my life that I am not here as a representative of the law. Perhaps that vow might ease your own worry.”

  My cheeks felt like a smith’s furnace. “I’m glad to see we did no lasting damage.”

  It was his turn to be surprised.

  “How did you find us here?” I said.

  “It was my impression that you found me, but for the sake of avoiding an argument so early in our meeting, I’ll tell you again, I have a new friend who is very good at tracking.”

  “But it’s not Pere Giano?”

  Rowan’s quiet explosion
of laughter was as unstudied as his manner. “Is that what you think? That I—? Holy Annadis, you believe that the one you’ve scorned for ten years as the willful scourge of a corrupt law—a man happy to murder children to prove his worth—is in league with these vile, sorcerous… whatever they are? How in perdition did you come to that fancy?”

  I did not share his good humor. “Perhaps we could sit down and discuss this, rather than interrupting this good woman’s work.”

  Paulo had sidled up to the sheriff with a crooked grin. “I’ll show this young renegade where to put your horses,” said Rowan, tugging at the boy’s unkempt hair. “Perhaps then we might have a word.”

  Marika, appearing relieved at the amiable result of our confrontation, invited us inside. A large, well-swept hearth, its chimney blackened by countless years of burning fir and tar bush branches, was the heart of the single room. In the center of the floor stood a thick table and six stools. A pile of sheepskins in one corner were the family bedding, and two grain bins in another corner served for the pantry. A basket held a spindle and a pile of brown wool. A few pegs and a wooden shelf along one wall held the sum of their material wealth that was not sheep: five cups that Marika set out on her table, a chipped flask with a narrow neck that likely contained oil, some wooden bowls, and a few tins, one of which held dried herbs that the woman spooned sparingly into the cups before pouring hot water from the blackened pot hanging over her coals. An ax with a splinted handle hung by the fireplace along with a coiled rope, a fishing net, and two pair of snowshoes. This made my cottage look like a palace.

  “You are very kind to have us, Marika.”

  “It’s good to see a new face, perhaps to hear news of the world.” A red-cheeked boy carried a crock to the table and then sped back outdoors. Marika spooned milk into the heavy cups.

  “Not much news worth hearing, I’m afraid. War or the fruits of war.”

  “The tales we hear say mayhap our life is not so bad as one might think,” said Marika, handing cups to Baglos and me, while pausing over the third and peering out the door. Her boy had joined the other children who stood in an admiring circle around Paulo, treating him with the awe due a bold adventurer, rather than Donkey, the stupid boy with the twisted leg.