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

by Greg Hamerton

  The Shadowcaster gave a cry like a jubilant crow. He turned his back to Ashley, stared into the chasm, then clapped his hands. Ashley recognised the red-stained robe and face of a man he had thought dead. Twice dead, counting the bridge he had just crossed. He pressed himself deeper into his place of concealment. He couldn’t breathe.

  Kirjath Arkell shouted curses at the storm. He bobbed on his feet for a while. He recalled his motes, taking them from the bridge he had made. Darkness collected about his shoulders. What was left of the bridge was no more than a glistening structure of ice.

  The Shadowcaster groaned suddenly and twitched as if in spasm. When he regained his composure, he shouted to the wind, then turned on his heel, and strode off towards Ravenscroft, never even glancing toward where Ashley hid.

  Arkell is alive. Arkell is mad.

  Ashley had to wait some time before his heartbeat resumed a steady pace. He couldn’t help thinking of Morgloth, with that Shadowcaster close by.

  Ashley stared at the bridge. He had thought it inadequate before the motes had been withdrawn. Without its binding of Dark, it looked even more fragile and impossibly narrow. And yet, it was the only way to escape from Ravenscroft.

  A ray of sunlight burst through a gap in the clouds as dawn defied the foul gloom for a moment. The bridge sparkled to brilliance. Light flashed from every surface, making it suddenly beautiful. It also caused the first sound to come from the bridge.

  CRACK.

  “Creator give me strength,” Ashley whispered. He backed up as far as he could, trying to shut out the voice that screamed inside his head. If a Shadowcaster could do it, so could he.

  But Arkell was mad.

  He hurled himself over the edge.

  Time slowed. The ice was as clear as glass, and he could see through it into the throat of the chasm, past its sharpened teeth to the foam and rocks far below. It was a view he wished he couldn’t see.

  A white crack ran along underneath him for a while, then shot off to beat him up the sloping distant half of the bridge. He made small noises in his throat. He skidded across a puddle. The water clung to him, slowing his body on the ice. He passed the mid-point with the full strength of terror gripping his heart. The bridge was narrower than his body. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see how it would end.

  I should have waited for another Caster to make a stronger bridge. This is a stupid way to die.

  He knew he was not going to make it, even before he had slid to a halt. There was too much sloping bridge ahead of him. He had not built up enough speed to carry him all the way. He heard the sharp crack of ice, felt the shudder pass underneath his body, and knew the bridge had collapsed. He threw his hands forward, though he knew it was in vain.

  His hands found stone. His grip held. He kicked his legs and flopped like a fish onto a level surface. He opened his eyes, and saw the landing. The remains of the bridge cracked and fell away from where his feet had been. It tumbled, end over end, graceful and glittering, until it smashed to fragments on the rocks.

  The bridge to Ravenscroft was no more.

  The relief was overwhelming. He almost fainted, but he caught himself at the last moment, his head nearly on the cold ground. It would do no good to let fatigue claim him. He was the only Lightgifter who had escaped the vale of Ravenscroft, the only one who knew the truth. He must carry that truth away, no matter how heavy the burden. But for a moment his exhaustion reared like an insurmountable wall.

  Footsteps, or a sudden gust of wind, he had no more than a heartbeat to turn toward the sound before the rock smote his head. Thunder boomed. He lost every sense of the world. The darkness that came upon him was deeper and more silent than the most abandoned passage of Ravenscroft’s Keep.

  33. THE GYRE

  “A committee is a dangerous thing.

  A committee of wizards is insanity.”—Zarost

  Twardy Zarost crouched in the seclusion of the thicket. He watched the path. He was running a risk as it was, leaving the Seeker in her critical state amidst the turmoil. It would make matters far worse if anyone saw him leave Eyri. There would be questions he couldn’t answer even with the most twisted of riddles.

  A robin fluttered onto the path, and hopped closer. It reminded him to scan the sky through the boughs. Apart from driving clouds, it was clear. No doves, no ravens. No further messages from the Gyre, but the one glyph-cloud had sufficed.

  Zarost stepped onto the path once again. The easy trail through the farms had given way to a narrow track, where the flowers grew wild and sometimes covered the path completely. Zarost preferred it. Here, the vitality of spring burst through everywhere, in untamed splendour. Even so, the butterfly preferred his coloured cloak to the flowers all around. It flitted and danced in the air, but never strayed far.

  He came to a gentle pass, and began to climb, using his makeshift staff to steady himself on the brittle rock underfoot. The trail became a track, then vanished altogether. It was little wonder that no one ventured into the northern lands beyond Flowerton. River’s End was infamous for the Rimswraith, the vaporous entity who tricked men to believing they could fly only to let them fall to their death.

  Zarost chuckled. It was charming the tales country folk would hold onto. He had worked hard to spread that tale and ensure it became firmly entrenched in the folklore. He liked to have complete privacy at the end of the trail. He tapped his pipe out on the staff.

  “Wicked, wicked Rimswraith,” he whispered.

  He reached the lookout that was River’s End at noon. The rock jutted out from the crest of the cliffs beside the thunderous falls. Here the Storms River escaped from Eyri, tumbling more than three thousand feet to its death within the turbulent haze far below. The air was wet with the vapours left swirling above the liquid thunder. The cliffs were impressive, cut sheer and smooth, offering no possible route down their treacherous sides. River’s End really was the end of the realm. There was no way beyond it for anyone wishing to live and tell the tale.

  Twardy Zarost intended to do both.

  He lit himself another bowl of weed, and chuffed contentedly at his pipe. It was always good to have a smoke before the journey, it calmed the nerves. The prudes in the Gyre always had something to say about smoking, the damage it did to the body and mind. When you were going to use the same body for a very, very long time, you had to be careful what habits you acquired. That was the Gyre’s opinion.

  Zarost blew a smoke ring and watched it climb into the bright sky. The sun had crept past its zenith; he was already late for the meeting. All the more reason for a smoke. He watched the mist curl and twist at the head of the falls—the vapours formed a tree, then it was an eagle, then a beast with arms outstretched. The Rimswraith was on peak form today. He would have to let it trick him, the wicked thing.

  He watched the Shield. It shimmered with power, out in the air beyond the Rimswraith. It was a division invisible to most eyes, a manipulation of space that reflected all of Eyri’s magic inwards and kept what was outside, out. It was a powerful repellant on either side. He could feel its pressure even from where he sat—a grinding, crushing weight, oppressive enough to turn even inquisitive explorers back towards home. So it would always be, so long as the Kingsrim remained to bind the spell, so long as Eyri contained the seed of the Gyre’s hope. The Wizard’s Ring might finally have found purchase, in the protected soil.

  In over four hundred years, no one had learned to balance the first axis of magic. The various Seekers had developed a fair amount of lumen lore, using either Light or Dark, depending on their nature, but the mages were always separated upon the first axis, their spells conflicting, their intentions opposed. The Seekers had always abandoned the Ring when it showed them the path to the other side, or the Ring had grown cold and become impossible to hold when those Seekers had demonstrated no ability to achieve the crossing. Yet it was the path to becoming whole, it was the path to finding the Wizard.

  Now, at last, there was Tabitha. She had much to
learn, true, but she had great potential. He just hoped she didn’t burn out with the intensity of her progress, or become possessed by her treacherous foe.

  He would ask the Gyre for a concession, he decided. There had to be some way of smoothing the way for Tabitha Serannon without compromising the requirement of self-discovery.

  He rose, tucking his pipe into the folds of his robe. It was time to meet the Gyre. He had to be beyond the Shield when he attempted the spell of Transference. He couldn’t risk echoes of that spell lingering inside Eyri, where they could be copied by the Seeker. Her development, as always, had to remain strictly untainted, a function only of what she could discover within Eyri, and within herself.

  She wasn’t ready for the Chaos outside. Not yet.

  Zarost took a deep breath. He could almost hold the staff steady in his hand. He waved the butterfly away—it would have to remain in Eyri—he didn’t want to waste attention on it during the journey. It would not cross the Shield by itself.

  The breeze tugged at his hair.

  He jumped. He fell.

  Fabric whipped and snapped in the rush of air. Zarost arched his back and splayed his arms. His legs stabilised him, and he angled away from the cliffs. It gave one a much longer ride if you avoided the cliffs.

  An adrenalin-charged grin stretched across his face. Yes, if one didn’t angle away, the cliffs came up rather faster than expected. If one put a limb out at the wrong angle, everything would spin out of control too. The cliff-face flickered by. He carefully extended the hand that held the staff, and it pulled his body in a lazy spin to that side. The sun slid past, then the cliffs, the waterfall, then blue sky again.

  The movement was exhilarating. He extended his other arm, which reversed the turn. His grin widened. Even here, in a wild fall through the sky, there was balance and pattern.

  The Shield came and went, an excruciating resistance that pulled at his body and his mind, intensifying, demanding return. His speed and intent carried him through, into the clear air beyond.

  The ground was coming up. Still, there should be time for his favourite. Head down, and the speed built up until the world was a roar in his ears, rushing up to meet him, bending the horizon outward.

  The ground was coming up. He was sure he could squeeze in just one more. He’d always wanted to know what would happen if you put your feet down and raised your arms over your head. It would be like walking on air.

  The whip of fabric was instantaneous. If his grey robe hadn’t been fastened at the waist with stout cord, he would have lost it entirely. That might have been better. As it was, the robe flapped around his head, tangling in the fire-coloured cloak which thrashed there already. He couldn’t see a thing. He scrabbled at the air, guiding himself hopelessly into a blurring, whizzing tumble of legs, arms and curses. He lost his pipe, and his pouch of weed.

  Damn and set fire to it!

  The ground was coming up.

  Zarost set his alarm aside, and focused on his spell. He hoped that he’d have time to complete the words. He became aware of his body. He sent his consciousness outwards, into the air around him, and accepted that too. He was a part of the air, it flowed through him, thus the air was a part of him. The air that was the Riddler touched the cliffs, the waterfall, the ground below, and so that was part of him as well. Wider, further, faster, outward. The edges of the lands below, across the oceans, over the world.

  Ground coming up! a little voice of alarm warned.

  The edge of the sky. The moon. The planets. The stars. Past galaxies and galaxies, outwards past the darkest strangeness of growing universes his awareness streaked, a sphere of Being, reaching in all directions. He reached the boundary of endless existence, which wasn’t really a boundary at all.

  Infinity.

  He accepted it as part of himself, and disappeared. For no one could be spread across infinity, and still exist in one place. It was the paradox that drove the Transference. One Being spread across infinity was more than just thinly spread. It was nothing at all.

  He knew there would be an implosion when air filled the space that his body had occupied, but nobody would hear it. The roar of the falls would thunder on, where the ambered waters of Eyri were thrown upon the silvered pool hidden below the mists at the base of River’s End. The clash between the traces of Order within Eyri’s water and the Chaos essence it met in the tainted land would cause the water to boil and writhe and roar as if the water had been thrown on a fire.

  Zarost was gone.

  It was a queer experience, as always. No one could remain for long in the infinity without losing their mind. It was too much to cope with. Having no form, yet having awareness. He was everywhere, without being anywhere.

  The Transference was only completed when he chose one particular point in his infinite attention and concentrated upon it. He had a single destination in mind; the council chambers within the Gyre Sanctuary. He focused on the lone building in the desert, a construction of gold-veined stonewood and dark-coppered magemetal, its scalloped roofs scaled in shimmering green and shielded beneath a complicated web of clear essence, in a place far beyond Eyri—deep in the southern lands of Oldenworld, a region which had no appeal to the Sorcerer, and was beyond his reach.

  Zarost chose an entrance point in the chambers that would be visible to everyone. He chuckled. It was always hot in the desert, too hot. What he had in mind would help to keep him cool through the meeting. Besides, it would be a fine prank if he could make the dour Wizards jump.

  The speed of appearance from a Transference was determined by the speed of disappearance, in much the same way a ripple returned from the walls of a concentric pool. The faster the ripple travelled outward, the faster it returned, to converge in the wizard at his destination. Zarost knew that most of the Gyre members would have needed ten or even fifteen minutes to stretch their awareness to the boundary, and thus would have arrived in the Sanctuary as a hazy disturbance which thickened over the minutes, giving all who were present time to anticipate the arrival. It was safe, and considered good manners, to appear gently and slowly. But you appeared as you disappeared.

  Zarost fell through the air, his robe flapping about his ears. His appearance in the chamber was instantaneous, and he plunged toward the pool that he’d known would be there, the pool which held the liquid augury, placed in the centre of the circle of wizards. He broke the surface with a mighty splash, big enough to wet them all. Then he was under the cold water, and fighting to control his laughter, so that he wouldn’t swallow a mouthful or the entire pool.

  When he bobbed to the surface, he was met with stony silence. The Wizards were still in their places around the pool. Six of them were soaked, the seventh one sat with her feet drawn up under her body, clear of the floor. The Mystery had been warned by her intuition. Not so, the others.

  Zarost shook with laughter. Only the Mystery smiled. He tried not to cry for the other members of the Gyre.

  By the giblets of a foul fowl, they are a mirthless bunch!

  Nonetheless, they were the Gyre, and powerful wizards all. He should behave! That thought only made his laughter worse. The six soggy wizards rose from their bench as one, their faces stern.

  He paddled hastily to the edge of the pool. A good Riddler he may be, but he would be hard-pressed to survive their combined wrath. He knew the strengths of each member intimately; the calm perceptive Mystery, the intense and shock-haired Mentalist, the bitter forceful Cosmologer, the gentle-faced but deep-reaching Spiritist, the sober strict Lorewarden, the dangerous Warlock and the shrewd Senior. Each had power enough to crisp his hide, in their own way.

  Together they were almost as mighty as the Sorcerer Ametheus.

  He straightened to meet the tirade. Their hostile glares pinned him in his place.

  “How dare you!” screeched the Cosmologer, finding her tongue at last. “This is the Gyre’s Sanctuary! We are wizards here!” Stating the obvious in high-pitched tones was her contribution to most affairs, Zaros
t reflected.

  “By the cursed Pillar, Riddler, you should be struck from the Gyre for that!” exclaimed the Mentalist. His streaked hair was a fright, as usual.

  “The image! You cod, you’ve made us lose the image!” exclaimed the sweet-voiced Spiritist. She looked worried, which was strange. She had sworn at him, which was even stranger. Zarost began to consider that his prank might have been ill-placed.

  “Work on it, bring it back for us!” commanded the greying Senior, the one who led the debates in the Gyre, so chosen because of his experience and composure. “We can’t afford to lose its position!” He looked flustered, Zarost realised. Something was wrong, the atmosphere was too tense. He looked from one face to the next—they were rat-eyed, lean-cheeked, tired. Drawn lips and pale faces. They were under a strain he’d never seen before.

  The largest of the men present balled his fists. “What if someone had been in the space you Transferred to, Riddler? Such speed is reckless!” The Greater Warlock, a loud man who always took himself too seriously.

  Zarost decided not to answer him. The Warlock wanted to fight. What was the matter with all of them?

  The young Mentalist was the first of those who had been angered to recover his humour. “Ah, Riddler, we’re a little tightly strung. It was a good joke, at a bad time. A very bad time.” He backed away towards his seat. “Maybe later you can tell us how you entered so quickly.”

  Zarost smiled, but the Cosmologer waved an angry finger at him. “There was nothing funny about it!” she exclaimed. “Get aside, Wizards, get back to your places! We must recover what this silverspawn has destroyed!”

  “Oh, calm down, Cosmologer,” said a cool voice from the bench. “He’s the Riddler, not a scion of the Sorcerer. He’s part of our Gyre, and we need his strange ways in our octad whether you wish so or not,” said the Mystery. She was the one who had laughed at his entrance. “Welcome, though not well come, Riddler. You have been absent for so long I think many of us have forgotten how to be joyous.” Despite her short, unruly hair, she wore an aura of dark elegance. Zarost acknowledged her support with a nod. Her green eyes were twinkling still.