The Riddler's Gift: First Tale of the Lifesong (The Tale of the Lifesong)

by Greg Hamerton

  Her mother breathed a sigh of relief, and eased into Hank’s arms once more. She regarded Tabitha with eyes that were tired but clear of pain.

  Little was said for a while. It was good just to be together. When the fire burned low, Tabitha collected more logs. There was no question of her mother travelling that day. Her father went out to gather the sheep, and to stable the headstrong stallion, if it could be found.

  They shared a frugal dinner. Nightfall found them together in the living-room again, beside the companionable fire.

  “Well, it’s good that we’re all here, safe at home,” said Trisha.

  Tabitha felt the room filling with cold, as if the door had swung open and allowed the night to gust into their home. Her truth-sense rebelled at her mother’s words. The foreboding was like ice deep in her heart.

  “We are not safe at home,” she whispered.

  “What is it, treasure? What do you sense?”

  “Something is coming here tonight. Danger.”

  A Shadowcaster. Could it be?

  She couldn’t bear to speak the word, for fear of it ringing true. But in the end, it was worse to hold the statement at bay, and to doubt, than to have the dreadful premonition confirmed.

  Her throat was so dry.

  “A Shadowcaster.”

  True. She knew it.

  Fear coursed through her like a cold poison; her truth-sense was washed away, she would learn no more.

  A Shadowcaster. Lone farms and Lightgifters.

  Something clanged outside.

  It could have been one of the horses kicking against its stall.

  “Mercy! Have I drawn a tail from Fendwarrow?” cried Trisha, rising swiftly on unsteady feet. “Are you sure the danger is here, tonight?”

  Tabitha nodded.

  “We cannot leave, into this storm,” Trisha declared.

  “Then we’ll fight!” boomed Hank, glaring out the window. “Let a Shadowcaster cross the threshold, and he shall feel my fist!”

  The muffled clang sounded outside again. This time she was sure it came from the direction of the barn. It might still be the horse, restless.

  “You don’t understand, my love,” Trisha said in a small voice. “You can’t fight a Shadowcaster. You don’t have a Lightstone, you can’t command the essence. Only I can face this foe. Hank, this is a Shadowcaster, not an ordinary man.”

  Hank spun to face her, his fists clenched tight. “Then tell me how I can help you! I will stand at your side if he threatens your life. If it’s true he’s coming.” He shot Tabitha a glance, but his gaze held no distrust, only a grasping hope that she might recant her pronouncement. He knew Tabitha’s ability well enough.

  “I don’t know how to fight a Shadowcaster,” Trisha answered. “I’ve never faced one before. They always evade us. They are a rumour, hidden in the dark, an unseen predator. But I know they are capable of violent acts.”

  “A blow to the head took you down today. I vouch the same will cripple a Shadowcaster.”

  “Maybe. Oh, Hank, be careful if you do!” Trisha summoned sprites again, and allowed them to pool in her cupped hands. The Light cast a strange illumination on her face, and in it Tabitha saw hollowed eyes and a gaping mouth, vivid and frightening. White as bone, cold as stone.

  Tabitha’s stomach rolled, and she stifled a cry. She couldn’t tell if the vision was the truth, or a nightmare fantasy.

  She stumbled to the large window, and pressed her forehead to the cold glass. The night was dark, thick with dreadful secrets. The fire crackled sullenly in its hearth, its light framed the window with a dull red glow. Off in the distance, Tabitha heard a nightjar screaming its nocturnal sermon. She tried to calm her breathing.

  A face lunged out of the darkness beyond the window. The glass swirled out of focus, the roof and walls and floor spun dull red, but in the centre of the sudden confusion, the attacker’s face was as clear as etched stone. His cold, marbled eyes were grey stained with yellow. She knew those eyes, they pierced Tabitha to the bone. Then he struck the glass with his forearms, and the window exploded.

  Vicious shards splintered over her body. A thousand tiny teeth bit her, she cried out as the many blades cut her legs. The fear was like a wall, so solid that it drove her backwards, reeling. She felt naked and helpless. The window was empty. The Shadowcaster hadn’t jumped into the room as she had first thought. He had vanished.

  Blood welled up from cuts in her face and scalp, and soaked into the collar of her woollen jacket. She turned, violated, toward her parents.

  Hank’s rage burst. “You will not touch my child!” he roared at the night beyond the shattered window. A cold breeze pushed into the room, rippling the curtain. The Shadowcaster was gone. His explosive appearance had torn the night. His disappearance was unanswered.

  “No!” Hank roared again. He ran to the window, crushing the shattered glass underfoot. He looked capable of tearing down a tree with his bare hands, so angry was he. He cleared the jagged shards from the bottom of the frame with a sweep of his boot, and leapt out into the dark night. The top of the window remained like a fringe of broken teeth. Hank thudded to the ground below.

  Her mother issued a strangled cry after Hank, but he was gone, running away in pursuit. Trisha went to the gaping exit, but then she froze and recoiled. A dark shape suddenly filled the window. The Shadowcaster dropped from the windowsill to the floor, and surged into the room, pushing Trisha backwards with the threat of his presence. His black cloak swirled wide, preventing escape, bringing a wave of terror. Tabitha wanted to scream, but her own fear had clasped its bony hands around her throat. She stood transfixed as the Shadowcaster advanced and her mother retreated across the room in front of her.

  He was taller than her mother by at least a foot. The cowl of his cloak had fallen from his head, exposing a bristling cut of steel-grey hair. His eyes were unflinching, determined, even more cold and merciless than she remembered from her encounter in First Light. His face was a work of pasty stone, except for his bright red lips. He grinned, an expression which suggested impending release, rather than mirth. There was no warmth there, only hunger. A pure black orb dangled on a chain at his throat.

  Tabitha wished she could sink into the floorboards and disappear. His attention was on her mother not upon her, but she knew from his first glance that he had recognised her. He had promised to return, that terrifying day in First Light.

  “Lightgifter, your husband is chasing an illusion, but he will return in a moment. Decide! Meet my demand, and I will not kill him.”

  Trisha met him with a square stance, her sprites gathered around her like a shield of sunlight. But her voice quavered when she said, “What are your demands?”

  “Only one. I will have the Master’s Talisman from you. I will have the Ring.”

  Trisha staggered where she stood.

  Blood stung Tabitha’s eyes. She drew the back of her hand across her eyes, but her hand was bloodied as well, and it only made her tears worse.

  “Ring?” she heard her mother say. “I don’t know of any ring. I am a Lightgifter, not a jeweller.”

  “Gifter, don’t toy with me. You are too weak. The lie is already in your eyes. I know you came to Fendwarrow, and left with the talisman. I have sensed the use of it, yesterday and today. The stench of a new magic is all over this place, in this room! You sang that spell-song today, it stung me again. You’re using the talisman, I know, but the Ring does not belong to you. It is mine! I have come to collect it for the Darkmaster.”

  Tabitha’s vision cleared enough to see her mother’s eyes narrow.

  “I will see it destroyed, before your kind spread your Dark blight any further through Eyri.”

  A faint shout came from outside.

  “Then your husband dies,” the Shadowcaster stated.

  “No!” Trisha cried. “Murder is a High Crime. You will be executed!” It was a desperate powerless threat, and her mother must have known it.

  “The King’s law do
esn’t touch me, you stupid crone. I won’t be found.”

  “The Swordmaster will track you!” Trisha was shaking, trapped halfway between defying the Shadowcaster and fleeing the room to forestall Hank. “You can’t kill and get away with it!”

  “Your faith is charming, but you are wrong,” the Shadowcaster stated. His presence alone made Tabitha weak. It was a wonder that her mother could speak at all, having to hold his eye.

  “My husband has nothing to do with this,” Trisha retorted. “I took the Ring.”

  Tabitha gasped. Defiance in the face of the coercion. The shadows swirled around the black-robed Shadowcaster, and an aura of fear swept through the room. He gathered more motes around his body; a Dark nemesis to face Trisha’s halo of Light.

  Hank Serannon pounded past the window, heading for the front stairs.

  The Shadowcaster smiled, a disheartening exposure of his discoloured teeth. “Good. Now save your husband, dear woman, and give it to me.” The Shadowcaster stretched out his hand. He looked calm, poised, deadly. He had meant everything he had said.

  The force of compulsion was thick in the air. Tabitha wanted to cry out and plead for mercy. It was all she could do to be silent, for her mother’s sake.

  The front door slammed, and a moment later, the heavy curtain of the living room doorway was ripped aside. Hank stormed toward the Shadowcaster, crossing the room in an instant. He nearly flew through the air, arms outstretched to tackle his opponent to the ground.

  He knew nothing of the Shadowcaster’s terms.

  The Shadowcaster was almost negligent in his defence. He jumped aside, his cloak billowing, and slapped an open hand to Hank’s neck. A black stain remained where he touched. The Shadowcaster whispered, a sound like dead reeds in a breeze. The stain on Hank’s skin became a snakelike coil, a glistening black band.

  Hank was on his feet in an instant. His eyes smouldered with fury. He charged the Shadowcaster again, but took only two steps, then faltered. He clutched at his throat, his face darkening, his eyes bulging. The black collar drew tight, a writhing noose of motes. Tabitha stood rooted in horror as her father dropped to his knees in front of the Shadowcaster, and then fell, thrashing on the floorboards.

  Sprites arced from Trisha’s hand toward Hank, but the Shadowcaster deflected them and speared Hank’s body with another scourge of motes.

  “Freeze,” said the Shadowcaster, raising one hand with a flourish.

  Hank jerked hard, once, and was still.

  “What have you done to my husband?” Trisha cried. She threw sprites toward him again, and again they were turned aside, wasted.

  “He’ll live, if you behave. You have little time.” The Shadowcaster turned his palm upward, and whispered again. A wisp of darkness settled there, pooling like oil.

  “Yes, Dark essence,” the Shadowcaster stated, “so much more power than the Light, as I’m sure you have observed.” He pushed Hank’s inert body with his foot. “There is a word I could speak to release him, but nothing will help him if it is spoken too late. Best you hurry with that ring, woman.” He gazed nonchalantly at Trisha, as if he had all the time in the world.

  Her mother fled the room.

  Tabitha was shocked. Surely her mother had the ring in the pocket of her cloak? Why did she run from the room? Why had she left Tabitha alone?

  The Shadowcaster stepped closer. “Hullo, pretty. You have saved me time, by being here for me.”

  “The Swordmaster will find you,” she stammered. She understood why her mother had called upon his name. In the face of such despair, she needed something to hope for.

  He dismissed her threat with a smirk, spread both hands, and whispered his summoning. The Shadowcaster seemed to grow darker, his cloak reached further around him, a swirling fabric of black satin, or motes of Dark essence. The cruel wind became colder. The chill night seeped into her bones.

  Tabitha retreated, until the wall struck her firmly from behind. She was beside the fireplace, but even the fire was affected by the chill, and it smouldered weakly, barely able to glow, let alone offer warmth.

  Blood trickled from her cuts. Her pulse was still racing, but like a mouse caught in the open, she was too scared to move lest it caused the predator to pounce, too scared to utter a squeak lest it betray her. She was captured by the terror which pooled like lead in her feet. She pressed herself back against the wooden panelling beside the hearth, and wished her father would move, or that her mother would return to save her.

  The Shadowcaster’s gaze pinned her to the wall as if it were the point of a blade. A cold, terrible blade. He gestured toward her, throwing some of the blackness that surrounded him in her direction.

  Dark essence!

  It cut through her waist, denying her all feeling of her body below. Vitality leached from her limbs, painful at first, then less so. A numbing cold overwhelmed her body.

  “Despair,” she heard the Shadowcaster say.

  The blood stopped flowing from her wounds. It didn’t matter, really. She was going to die. Even her terror became a numb, distant compulsion. She was too weak to fight, too small and powerless. Better to give in. The peace of black silence filled her mind, the allure of endless sleep. She began to slip further into the void, and the sound of an icy wind filled her ears. Blowing, howling, whispering. She was surrounded by the darkest night.

  “No!” her mother cried.

  Tabitha was vaguely aware of a warm presence in front of her. Tabitha’s blurred vision began to clear again. There was an intense light before her which blocked her from the Shadowcaster.

  She heard a wracking cough from the floor where Hank had lain.

  A sudden rush of warmth and light washed through her.

  She recognised the words of her mother’s Healall spell. The rush of Light restored her, but left her confused and strangely pained.

  “You never intended a trade,” her mother accused the Shadowcaster. “You intend to take the Ring, and to deny our witness by death!”

  There was something waving behind Trisha’s back, twisting backwards and forwards in Trisha’s hand. Tabitha’s vision was still playing tricks with her, and her mother’s back became a smeary aura of light for a while, like paints mixed by a child. She blinked. Everything came into focus. She saw the words scrawled on her mother’s white kerchief.

  Take this. Run.

  Hasty letters, written with rough charcoal on the white weave. Her mother’s body shielded Tabitha and the kerchief from the Shadowcaster.

  She knew what was contained in the folded fabric.

  For a second, she couldn’t find any strength to move. Her mother was going to fight the Shadowcaster. She would only want Tabitha to flee if she expected extreme danger. Or failure. Her mother was wreathed in sprites—she must have summoned all she could have during her brief absence.

  Oh Mother, is it worth so much to you, to deny him the Ring?

  Then Trisha spoke the words that helped her to understand.

  “I know your face, you cretin! She described you in detail. My sister is scarred, part of her will never heal. You will pay for your evil, if it is the last thing I do.” Sprites left her hands in a twinned blast of Light, aimed at both the Shadowcaster and the still figure on the floor.

  Everything was tilting, sliding, slipping, the world was falling inwards to crush Tabitha. There was a terrible note of finality to her mother’s threat. She saw her father recover with a sudden jerk. He leapt from the floor, taking the Shadowcaster’s legs out from under him. Her moment was now, or not at all.

  She took the kerchief from her mother’s hand, and ran. The five strides to the door took forever.

  A cold blast followed her into the room on the other side. She crashed into the kitchen table, scattering pots and glasses. Then she was through the back door, and stumbling, tripping, running out into the night.

  She fled.

  The moon seeped through a hole in the stacked clouds overhead, and everything was bathed in its ghostly li
ght for a moment. She passed the solitary silken tree which stood sighing in the wind. The chimes jangled an agitated dirge. The worn path through the high meadow was hard beneath her feet.

  Panic fuelled her legs; her terror found release. She tried not to think of her parent’s plight, only the simple command. Take this. Run. Trees flicked by.

  An image of her father assaulted her. He was swamped in Dark essence and clutching at his throat.

  How can they fight him? How long will Mother stand?

  Tears streamed from her cheeks as she ran. The wind whistled through the trees, and buffeted her with hard gusts. The path was steep. A heavy raindrop stung her face, then another. She hardly noticed them. Her mind spun with the crazy shards of the scene she had left behind. A cavernous nausea yawned in her belly. She was a traitor, running away. Yet her mother had demanded she run. Her mother was fighting for her life, fighting to give her time.

  What good will time be, if Mother fails?

  Her thoughts tortured her, leaving an angry poison in her blood that roared like a wild thing above the pounding of her heart.

  She reached the forest just as the hail began to fall. The trees shielded her, but it became much darker, for the moon was hidden again. Pine needles softened her footfalls. Her heart ached with every running step.

  She reached the junction on the High Way and turned right, towards First Light. She laboured for breath. The road was wide, worn by the decades of travellers.

  Tabitha pushed herself to the limit of her stride, not caring if her heart burst from exertion. The pain and fear and chaos of uncertainty churned within, driving her panic to an ever higher pitch.

  The earth blurred underfoot. The forest was filled with moist, groping darkness. The roar of water pulsed through the air, and the undergrowth grew thick along the sides of the road. A river came out of the mountains to her left, rushing under a broad, arched bridge and away downhill. Tabitha ran out across the River of Falls, and the hail stung her without remorse. Her footfalls thudded on the slippery planking. The wood was worn and slick. She was high over the rushing water, and moonlight swirled wetly in its currents, gleaming through the spaces in the dark bridge.