the riddler’s gift
first tale of the lifesong
by GREG HAMERTON
Other titles by the same author
Beyond The Invisible
The Fresh Air Site Guide
The Journey
The Riddler’s Gift
First published June 2007
Audiobook Edition August 2007
Digital Edition December 2008
Second Sight May 2010
Publishers
ETERNITY PRESS
London | Cape Town
[email protected]
www.eternitypress.com
Copyright © Greg Hamerton 2008
Greg Hamerton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Digital edition
BIC: FM
ISBN 978-0-9585118-6-5
Greg Hamerton has been trying to cast a successful spell for years, and he thinks he might have finally got it right. He lives in London in a house made for very small people. He is an outdoors enthusiast and when he isn’t writing he enjoys soaring over clouds and getting lost on his paraglider.
The Riddler’s Gift is the first novel in the Lifesong cycle, followed by Second Sight, released in 2010.
Find out more on www.greghamerton.com
PREFACE
There is a song that drifts on the breeze through all the world. Its rhythms are echoed in our breath, the music is caught in our laughter, hidden in our language, woven through our life. Singers reach for the melody, but it is too delicate to hold and too elusive to remember. As the Ages pass, so the Lifesong retreats under the sounds of our time, its potent beauty and danger ever more a mystery.
Few know how the Lifesong has shaped our world, for those who hear its tune would rather sing than write, and to grasp its tale we must go back, far back beyond our brief and incomplete history, to when the world was changing, when Life was shadowed by a mighty legend.
In that most vital era, when the destiny of Humankind was balanced on a blade, the inhabited Earth was known as Oldenworld. Magic was a raw force then, released from the confining code that so tightly binds it today, yet to master that magic required great patience and even more wit; few apprentices became casters, fewer still became masters.
So much power in the hands of so few. Ever has it been the cause of woe. At first those gifted masters wrought works of great beauty in the rising civilisations of Oldenworld. But they became distracted by the powers they had discovered, seeking majesty, seeking mastery. Seeking might.
And so those who had first been hailed as the Wise, the wizards, now fought amongst themselves, determined to prove one lore over another, to justify one vision of magic as superior, all-encompassing and absolute.
The battle for power was fierce. Those wizards who did not fight to prove their lore, fell.
At first the wizards used principles of Dark and Light for their spells. Such an elementary form of magic came to be known as the first axis. After much study the Wise discovered a second axis, but this only intensified the conflict as those who summoned raw Energy now rallied against those who could command solid Matter. The wizards were driven by the escalating violence to find a resolution; Oldenworld could not sustain such a conflict. Their urgency led them to the third and most advanced axis, a lore of Order, a lore that promised ultimate peace.
There was a hidden price to pay. Order demanded perfection. Order demanded knowledge and structure, it demanded control. The wizards could see no danger; they eagerly developed the magic of the third axis, hoping to mold Humankind into ever greater stability. How different the world would be, if wisdom preceded action.
Too late they considered what might develop on the opposite pole of their third axis, too late they noticed the one who had mastered Chaos.
He swung the third axis like a warhammer: Ametheus, the Sorcerer, the Unbinder. The bringer of Ruin. He tore apart their ordered web of control before the wizards had even recognised their common foe; he smashed their College and their future with it. When the wizards gathered again, they numbered only twelve of thirty-three. By the time they had agreed to unify in one Gyre, they numbered only eight. And eight, they found, was too few.
They had failed to prepare for the coming of the tide, and Oldenworld began to change. The entire lowlands north of the great mountains fell to the Sorcerer’s way, one realm after another corrupted by the spreading web of silvered essence, the horror named Wildfire. The people were ravaged with such change they could not recognise their own kinfolk. Beings which should have had no place in the history of Humankind walked the face of the Earth.
The Gyre fought to restore Order, they fought to save the precious networks of commerce and culture, but Ametheus severed the veins of every system and corrupted the blood of every resistant soldier. Such was his hatred for the wizards and their Order.
Those who could, retreated south, to the heartlands, where for a time the Sorcerer’s power could not reach. But all things that slumber, awaken renewed. When his influence began to spread again, the Gyre suspected that Oldenworld faced its doom.
Ametheus. Some said he was mad from the first. Some began to whisper that he was the shadow of another, more ancient evil, for it was true that he reached beyond the knowledge contained in any of the wizard’s lores; he drew his inspiration from a mightier source.
The wizards of the Gyre even began to fear that their own reasoning had become affected by Chaos. They trusted their perfect foundation of knowledge, but they fought amongst themselves, and had begun to serve the Sorcerer’s ends in so doing. They needed a champion to resist the Sorcerer, someone with a special talent, different to their own. Yet such a champion would have to be born in a place where nothing was known of Ametheus, where no trace of his power lurked. And so they conceived of Eyri, the most secret of secrets, a realm to be sheltered from the very essence of Chaos for as long as possible. The wizards chose an unknown region in the southern mountains beyond the heartlands—the furthest territory from Ametheus which lay fertile and populated, and as yet untouched by the scourges to the north.
The Gyre wove a powerful shield around Eyri and devised a complex network of rules to ensure that the realm wasn’t tainted from within. They selected a precious talisman of power and set it in place. They chose one member of their circle, the one best suited to sift gold from gravel, and they bade him farewell. Then the seven wizards departed from that precious jagged-rimmed realm.
They tried to forget what they had done, for even a secret held in mind might not be safe from the Sorcerer. They dared not think upon it, and yet they dared not forget it, because without the crucible of Eyri they would face Ametheus without hope.
The battle for Oldenworld continued, and in the years that passed, the Gyre began to understand their foe. They found ways to bring peace to places he had ravaged, they struck blows that shattered his cruel inventions, and they survived, as a pack of wolves survives when facing a bear. Yet before their eyes Oldenworld continued to crumble. So much was lost, so many lives were stamped into the mud of battlefields that should not have been trodden upon, so many people lost their lives to despair.
The wizards of the Gyre grew tired. To assert Order required continuous effort; spreading Chaos took no effort at all. Ametheus surged into the heartlands, his presence pouring
in from both the west and the east. As the beleaguered Gyre fought, their fear grew, for they suspected that the Sorcerer would not stop until he had disrupted everything. He reached for powers that should remain untouched. He would bend the course of Time upon itself until it ruptured. His vision was of all Order ended, replaced by an existence so far from our natural course that nothing precious would remain, not a leaf, not a light, not even the tale of the Lifesong. The Sorcerer reached for the End, and no one could stop him.
The only hope lay in Eyri. And yet, for years, there was only silence from that mountain-rimmed realm.
1. THE GLEE OF GENESIS
“The strength of a song can be marked
by the silence that surrounds it.”—Zarost
The shadows were long. The fading sun rested among the tall western peaks. The forests which carpetted the slopes around the high village had begun to darken, and the wind had a bite to it—a warning there would be snow before winter thawed. The scent of smoke lingered in the lee of the buildings; indoors there would be warm hearths and watchful hounds, but the people would be gone.
Tabitha quickened her pace through the empty streets, worried that she would be late. Her soft boots hardly made a sound on the cobbles, only the fabric of her dress whispered with every step. A curl of hair blew across her face, and she tucked it hurriedly behind her ear.
She knew that she shouldn’t have lingered for so long to practice, but she had been determined to perfect her recital. She had tuned her familiar lyre again and again, but it wouldn’t hold the notes to match her voice, as though the instrument knew of the contest tonight and shuddered under her nervous fingers. She wanted to win a place amongst the three best singers, and so earn a chance to perform in the King’s Challenge. All the villagers of First Light would be at the inn, and a good many visitors besides. She should be there already.
The street held a tense air as if the neighbourhood waited for Tabitha to pass. A building moved, or its shadow shrank against a wall. Her mind was playing tricks with her. She turned away from the imaginary disturbance to take a short-cut, but just as she did so, a toddler tottered into the street up ahead.
He was a lone little figure in a hooded red coat, small between the looming buildings. The child wobbled uncertainly, then turned towards Tabitha. She recognised him, and she guessed that he had only just realised he was lost. Kip was too curious for his own good, and his mother was often too distracted to keep a constant eye on him. His expression showed that his curiosity had once again led him beyond the limit of his bravery.
A tall man rushed from a doorway beside Kip. Although his back was to Tabitha, his black robe seemed to pull the shadows in his wake. He snatched the toddler from the cobbles, and strode off toward a side alley, with Kip’s head protruding from under his arm. Kip gasped like a fish, but didn’t make a sound. Tabitha stared after him, too surprised to move.
A queer shiver ran down her spine; what she was seeing could not be true.
“Hey! Wait!” she shouted. The man threw an angry glance over his shoulder, and disappeared into the shadows of the alley at a run.
“Stop! Child-snatcher!” Tabitha shouted, but the street was empty of help, and the windows dark. She ran for the alley before she could consider the consequences. Her lyre bounced hard against her back on its strap, and she lost a moment securing it under her arm. The alley was gloomy, and the cobbles were slippery underfoot. The man was so fast that only the flutter of his robe showed where he ducked around the corner. He seemed to blend with the shadows.
Kip still hadn’t made a sound. He should be bawling his lungs out.
Tabitha sprinted. Her foot slipped at the corner, and her dress tangled around her legs, causing her to careen wide of the turn. She caught herself against the far wall of the alley. When she gathered her dress and ran again, the child-snatcher was out of sight. The street into which she emerged was empty, but for a broken-down cart which slumped against a wall, and too many shadows.
The sound of running came from her left, and she chose the first break in the buildings to dart that way. The passage opened onto another deserted street, where the last of the sunlight was fading from the roofs. Tabitha slowed to a jog. The little one had to cry out soon, and she would follow that sound.
But there was nothing to hear—only the wind moaned through the eaves.
Her stomach knotted tight. She tried to ignore her mounting dread, and peered alongside every building.
What kind of man steals a child?
A smudge of red caught her eye, but when she turned her head, there was nothing there. She tiptoed between the buildings and into a short dead-end street. A jumble of crates occupied the wedge of two converging warehouse walls.
Then she caught sight of a little face behind a latticed crate-side; a panicked prisoner within the discarded cage. Kip’s face was screwed up, his body shook, but although it was clear that he was crying, he still made no sound. Tabitha looked nervously around. The doorways nearby were empty, the doors closed deep in the shadows.
The strange dark man was gone.
Relief made her legs weak. The black-robed abductor had been more than just a stranger; the way the shadows had clung to his shape, his swift movement, like a predator, stalking. He had preyed upon a child! She hoped that she would never see him again.
“Oh, Kip, it’s all right, it’s all right!” she called out, making her way to him. She tipped the crate aside, and reached for the little adventurer.
A sudden, cold gust crept up her skirts. The street darkened at her back, and she realised she was not alone.
“Hullo, pretty.”
Something sharp pressed against her ribs, and a dry hand caught her neck. “Not a word, or you’ll feel my knife in your heart. I care nothing for your life.”
It was not the words which made her weak, it was the certainty in the declaration. I care nothing for your life—she knew he meant it, she could feel his ugly menacing spirit. She clutched Kip close, and tried to resist shaking. The man’s touch was cold, so cold. He bent his cowled head close to her. One glance at his face and she turned quickly away. Cold, grey eyes watched her, marbled orbs with yellow-stained whites, eyes devoid of mercy. Her shivering became impossible to control.
“The Master could use you as well,” he said. “Walk with me a while.” It was a mocking invitation. The pressure of his knife compelled her to turn. She lifted Kip to her chest to keep ahead of their captor.
He forced a quick pace toward the outskirts of the village. He moved to her side, with an arm around her shoulder, as if to pretend there was nothing unusual about their procession. Tabitha didn’t dare break from his hold, his grip was cruel, the blade was too close against her, the tip cold and sharp where it had pierced her clothes and found skin. The darkness seemed to follow them, as if the shadows thickened when they passed.
Something shot low over their heads, a dark winged shape born upon a whistle of wind. The man snaked his arm around Tabitha’s throat, and brought her to such an abrupt halt that she almost lost her grip on Kip. Her lyre pressed painfully under her arm, but it was the knife she suddenly felt the worst. She tried to arch her back away from the pain. She prayed he wasn’t about to sink the blade home.
A raven croaked at them from a rooftop, then heaved itself into the air. The man didn’t move; he watched its flight, then cursed when it croaked again.
“You’ve led someone to me, bitch.” He gripped Tabitha by her hair, pulled her hard against his chest. “I’ll be back for you.” It was not a threat, it was a statement—he believed it. Tabitha believed it. As he released her, his cloak must have brushed over her eyes, for a sudden darkness passed across her vision. Tabitha wondered if she was about to faint.
“You’ll say nothing to give me away,” he said, his stale breath close. “Silence!”
She gagged against a sudden cold in her chest, and coughed. The knife at her back was gone. Her vision cleared.
She didn’t dare turn until sh
e was sure of her balance, in case he was still there, in case the sound of fleeing footsteps was just a fantasy. She clutched Kip tight. He was warm, but his body still shook with his silent cries.
The footsteps came back, a pounding, heavy tread. Tabitha didn’t bother to check where he was, she just ran.
“Stop!” boomed a man behind her. “Stop, in the name of the King!”
She fled down the street, but something in the commanding voice made her glance over her shoulder.
The figure who charged after her was not the black-robed man after all. A Sword, one of the King’s soldiers, all muscle and burnished steel, raced up the street. Not just any Sword, she realised, as she came to an abrupt halt. The powerful man in the blue cloak of office was unmistakable. Glavenor, the Swordmaster of Eyri. She could not have imagined a more welcome sight. The highest law in the land had arrived.
The Swordmaster wasted no time in catching up to her. He halted close enough that Tabitha could smell the freshness of his oiled leather, see the reflections in his armour. His expression was fierce.
“Where are you taking that child?” he demanded. He reached for Kip, and she pulled back in reflex. She searched his face in alarm, and began to answer his question, but found that she could not speak. She formed the words; nothing came out.
The Swordmaster gripped her wrist.
“Someone called out the alarm for a child-snatcher, and here I find the child. Explain yourself, young lady.”
Tabitha choked on her panic. She had lost her voice. When she cleared her throat and tried again, nothing more than a wheeze passed her lips.
“Come with me,” said the Swordmaster. “I’ll see this child returned to its mother. Then you and I shall have a chat.”
The Riddler's Gift: First Tale of the Lifesong (The Tale of the Lifesong) Page 1
