Riddle-Master

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  The stars gleamed like eyes in the shadows. He touched the harp, picked it up, feeling the unexpected lightness of it in spite of its size. The fine, ancient scroll and web of gold burned under his fingers. He touched a string, and at the lovely, solitary sound, he smiled. Then a fit of coughing shook him, tearing painfully at his side; he dropped his face in the fur to still the sound.

  A startled voice said behind him, “Morgon.”

  He straightened after a moment, white, exhausted. Eriel Ymris came down the stairs, followed by a girl with a torch. He watched her come to him quietly through the long hall, her unbound hair making her look very young. He said curiously, “Astrin told me you were dead.”

  She stopped. He could not read the expression in her eyes. Then she said composedly, “No. You are.”

  His hands shifted position slightly on the harp. Somewhere, too distant to trouble him, something in him was crying out a warning. He shook his head. “Not yet. Who are you? Are you Madir? No, she’s dead. And she didn’t kill birds. Are you Nun?”

  “Nun is dead, too.” She was watching him without blinking, her eyes fire-flecked. “You don’t go back far enough, Lord. Go back as far as your mind will take you, to the earliest riddle that was asked, and I am older than that.”

  He threw his mind back to his studies, touched riddle after riddle but found her nowhere. He said incredulously, “You don’t exist in the books of the Masters—not even in the books of wizardry that have been opened. Who are you?”

  “The wise man can give a name to his enemy.”

  “The wise man knows he has enemies,” he said a little bitterly. “What is it? Is it the stars? Would it help to tell you that the last thing I want to do is fight you; I simply want to be left alone to rule Hed in peace.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have left your land to begin weaving riddles at Caithnard. The wise man knows his own name. You don’t know my name; you don’t know your own. It’s better for me if you die that way, in ignorance.”

  “But why?” he said bewilderedly, and she took a step toward him. At her side, the young girl turned suddenly into a big, red-haired trader with a weal across his face, who wielded instead of a torch a sword of lean, ash-colored metal. Morgon moved back, felt the wall behind him. He watched the sword rise in a dreamlike slowness. It burned the skin of his throat, and he started.

  “Why?” The blade had drained the sound from his voice. “At least tell me why.”

  “Beware the unanswered riddle.” She looked away from him, nodded at the trader.

  Morgon closed his eyes. He said, “Never underestimate another riddler,” and plucked the lowest string of the harp.

  The sword shattered in midair, and he heard a cry like a faint bird cry. Then all around him came a terrible cacophony of sound as ancient shields lining the far wall burst with hollow, metallic ringing, and their split pieces drummed on the floor. Morgon felt himself drop from a great distance, fall like a shield to the floor, and he buried the noise of his falling in the fur. Voices followed the din and hum of metal, flurried, indistinct.

  Someone tugged at him. “Morgon, get up. Can you get up?” He lifted his head; Rork Umber, dressed in little more than a cloak and a knife belt, helped him up.

  Heureu, staring down at them from the stairs, with Eriel behind him, demanded amazedly, “What is going on? It sounds like a battlefield in here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Morgon said. “I broke your shields.”

  “You did. How in Aloil’s name did you do that?”

  “Like this.” He plucked the string again, and the knife in Rork’s belt, and the pikes of the guards in the doorways snapped. Heureu drew a breath, stunned.

  “Yrth’s harp.”

  “Yes,” Morgon said. “I thought it might be.” His eyes moved to Eriel’s face as she stood behind Heureu, her hands against her mouth. “I thought—I dreamed you were here with me.”

  Her head gave a little, startled shake. “No. I was with Heureu.”

  He nodded. “It was a dream, then.”

  “You’re bleeding,” Rork said suddenly. He turned Morgon toward the light. “How did you get that cut on your throat?”

  Morgon touched it. He began to shake then, and he saw, above Eriel, Astrin’s haggard, bloodless face.

  Drugged again, he dreamed of ships tossing in a wild, black sea, decks empty, sails ripped to ribbons; of a beautiful, black-haired woman who tried to kill him by playing the lowest string on a starred harp, and who wept when he shouted at her; of a riddle-game weaving through his dreams that never ended, with a man whose face he never saw, who asked riddle after riddle, demanding answers, yet never answered any himself. Snog Nutt appeared from somewhere, waiting patiently, with rainwater falling down his neck, for the game to end, but it was interminable. Finally the strange riddler turned into Tristan, who told him to go home. He found himself in Hed, walking through the wet fields at dusk, smelling the earth. Just as he reached the open doors of his house, he woke.

  The room with its beautiful patterned walls of blue and black stone was filled with a grey afternoon light. Someone sitting by the fire bent over to settle a falling log. Morgon recognized the lean, outstretched hand, the loose, silver hair.

  He said, “Deth.”

  The harpist rose. His face was hollowed, faintly lined with weariness; his voice, calm as always, held no trace of it. “How do you feel?”

  “Alive.” He stirred and said reluctantly, “Deth, I have a problem. I may have been dreaming, but I think Heureu’s wife tried to kill me.”

  Deth was silent. In a rich, dark, full-sleeved robe he looked a little like a Caithnard Master, his face honed from years of study. Then he touched his eyes briefly with his fingers and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Tell me.”

  Morgon told him. The rain he had heard now and again in his dreaming began to tap softly against the wide windows; he listened to it a moment when he had finished, then added, “I can’t figure out who she might be. She has no place in the tales and riddles of the kingdom . . . just as the stars have no place. I can’t accuse her; I have no proof, and she would just look at me out of her shy eyes and not know what on earth I was talking about. So I think I should leave this place quickly.”

  “Morgon, you have been lying ill for two days since you were found in that hall. Assuming you have the strength to leave this room, what would you do?”

  Morgon’s mouth crooked. “I’m going to go home. The wise man does not shake a hornet’s nest to see what’s buzzing in it. I’ve left Hed without a land-ruler for six weeks; I want to see Eliard and Tristan again. I’m accountable to the High One for the name I was born with in Hed, not for some strange identity I seem to have beyond Hed.” He paused; the rain changed, began battering hard at the glass. His eyes strayed to it. “I am curious,” he admitted. “But this is one riddle-game I have sense enough to stay out of. The High One can play it.”

  “The High One is not the one being challenged.”

  “It’s his realm; I’m not responsible for the power games in Ymris.”

  “You may be if the stars on your face set them in motion.”

  Morgon looked at him. His mouth drew taut; he turned restlessly, wincing a little, the shadows of pain and exhaustion in his face deepening. Deth dropped a hand on his arm. “Rest,” he said gently. “If you choose, when you’re well enough to leave, to go back to Hed, unless the High One gives me other instructions, I’ll travel with you. If you disappear again between Hed and Ymris, I would only have to search for you.”

  “Thank you. I don’t understand, though, why the High One left you ignorant of where I was. Did you ask him?”

  “I’m a harpist, not a wizard to throw my mind from here to Erlenstar Mountain. He comes into my mind at will; I cannot go into his.”

  “Well, he must have known you were searching for me. Why didn’t he tell you?”

  “I can only guess. The High One’s mind is the great web of the minds of those in his realm.
He weaves to his own ends, threading back and forth between action and action to make a pattern, which is why his reactions to events are often unexpected. Five years ago, Heureu Ymris married, and Astrin Ymris left Caerweddin carrying a fact like a stone in him. Perhaps the High One used you to bring Astrin and his fact back to Caerweddin to face Heureu.”

  “If that’s true, then he knows what she is.” He stopped. “No. He could have acted when Heureu married, that would have been simpler. Her children will be the land-heirs of Ymris; if she were that powerful, that lawless, surely the High One would have acted then. Astrin must be wrong. I must have been dreaming, that night. And yet . . .” He shook his head, his hand sliding over his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m glad all this is none of my business.”

  The King’s physician checked him, forbade him to set one foot on the floor, and gave him a hot, heady mixture of wine and herbs at evening that slid him into a dreamless sleep. He woke only once, sometime in the middle of the night, to find Rork Umber reading by the fire. The High Lord’s bright hair blurred against the flames as Morgon’s eyes closed and he slept again.

  Heureu and Eriel came to see him the next afternoon. Astrin, who had relieved Rork, stood at the broad windows, overlooking the city; Morgon saw the eyes of the king and his land-heir meet a moment, expressionlessly. Then Heureu pulled chairs to the bedside and sat down.

  He said tiredly, “Morgon, Anoth ordered me not to disturb you, but I must. Meroc Tor has laid siege to the High Lord of Meremont; I am leaving in two days with a force from Ruhn, Caerweddin and Umber to break it. I have had word that there is a fleet of warships on the coasts of Meremont ready to set sail for Caerweddin if Meremont falls. If those ships succeed in reaching Caerweddin, you’re liable to be trapped here indefinitely. For your own safety, I think you should be moved north, to the house of the High Lord of Marcher.”

  Morgon did not answer for a moment. He said slowly, “Heureu, I am grateful for the care you’ve given me, and for your kindness. But I would rather not go any farther from Hed than I am now. Can you spare a ship to send me home?”

  The dark, troubled face eased a little. “I can. But I thought you might object to going home by sea. I can send you in one of my own trade-ships, under guard. I know my own traders well; I’ve sailed with them.”

  “You have?”

  “To Anuin, Caithnard, even Kraal . . .” He smiled reminiscently. “That was when I was younger, and my father was still alive. Astrin went to Caithnard to study, but I chose to learn about the world beyond Ymris in a different way. I loved it, but since I took the land-rule, I have rarely left Ymris.”

  “Is that when you met my father? On one of your journeys?”

  Heureu shook his head. “I met your parents last spring, when Eriel and I visited Caithnard.”

  “Last spring.” He drew a breath. “You saw them then. I had no idea.”

  “You couldn’t have,” Eriel said softly, and Astrin, at the window, turned. Her soft brows were crooked a little anxiously, but she continued, “We met when—when Heureu bumped into your mother, Spring, on a crowded street and broke a glass bowl she was carrying. She started crying. I think she was frightened of all the people and the noise. And your father tried to get her to stop—we all tried—but she wouldn’t come out from behind her hands. So we just talked for a while. We told each other our names, and your father began to tell us about you, how you went to college there. He was very proud of you. And, of course, your mother came out then, because we were talking about her child.” She smiled quickly at the memory; then her brows drew together again, and her eyes dropped from his gaze. “We had supper together and talked into the night. Your mother . . . I had—I had a child that died a few months before that, and I was never able to speak about it to anyone until that night, to her. So when we returned to Caerweddin and heard what happened to them, I felt . . . I was deeply grieved.”

  Morgon’s lips parted as he watched her. His eyes flicked once to Astrin, but the white eyes were unreadable. Heureu’s hand touched hers, closed over it. He said gently, “Morgon, your father said something that I remembered suddenly last night. He told me he had bought a harp for you, a very beautiful, odd-looking harp he thought you’d like. He had paid almost nothing for it, to some wandering Lungold trader because it was cursed, it didn’t play. He said no sensible man believed in curses. I asked him how you would be able to play it, then, and he just smiled and said he thought you could. He didn’t show it to me because it was packed on the ship. I realized last night that your father must have known you could play that harp because it had your stars on its face.”

  Morgon tried to speak; his voice would not come. He rose suddenly, unsteadily, stood staring into the fire, oblivious to everything but one terrible thought. “Is that what happened? Someone saw those stars and made a death-ship for them, whose crew vanished, left them alone, helpless, with the ship tearing apart around them, not knowing, not understanding why? Is that how they died? Is that—” He turned abruptly saw the wine in its glass flagon by the fire, the cups of glass and gold, and he swept them in a single, furious movement off the table to smash against the stones. The broken shards beaded with red wine on the floor brought him back to himself. He said, his face bloodless, drawn, “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t . . . I keep breaking things.”

  Heureu had risen. He gripped Morgon firmly; his voice sounded distant, then returned, full. “I should have thought a little—I should have thought. Lie down before you hurt yourself. I’ll get Anoth.”

  Morgon, scarcely hearing them leave, pushed his face tightly against the crook of his arm, felt tears burn like seawater in his eyes.

  He woke later, slowly, to the sound of low intense voices: Astrin’s and Heureu’s. The muted anger in the King’s voice broke the web of his dark dreaming like a cold wind.

  “Do you think I’m witless, Astrin? I don’t have to ask where to find you or Rork Umber, or even the High One’s harpist, even at midnight. What Deth does is the High One’s business, but if you and Rork spent as much time concerning yourself with the problems at hand as you do exhausting yourselves guarding against an illusion in this room, I would feel easier about the fate of Caerweddin.”

  Astrin’s voice came back at him, cold, edged. “There are more illusions in this land than the woman you married. Anyone could come in here wearing a face so familiar none of us would think to see beneath it—”

  “What do you want me to do? Mistrust every man and woman in my house? Is that what moved you to the far corner of Ymris—such terrible mistrust? I’ve seen the way you look at her, talk to her. What is it? Is it her unborn children you are jealous of? Do you want the land-rule that badly? I’ve heard that rumor too, but I’ve never come close to believing it before.”

  Astrin stared at him, silent, motionless, his colorless face like a mask. Then something broke in it; he turned away. He whispered, “I can take anything from you but that. I’m going back to Wind Plain. That woman nearly killed the Prince of Hed in your hall three nights ago; I’m not staying to watch her succeed. You watch; you married her.”

  He left Heureu gazing at the open, empty doorway. Morgon saw the first, faint uncertainty in his eyes before he followed.

  Morgon shifted restlessly. The irresolvable quarrel, the hopeless questioning, the black, heavy thought of his parents’ deaths loomed like a growth in his mind. He tried to get up, yielded, and fell back into a half-sleep. He woke with a startled murmur as the door opened again. Astrin came to his side.

  Morgon said huskily, “I keep dreaming of that bowl I broke: the figures are moving around it in some strange pattern, a riddle I am on the verge of answering when it shatters, and with it all the answers to all the riddles in the world shatter. Why did you come back? I wouldn’t blame you if you had left.”

  Astrin did not answer. Instead, with brief, methodical movements, he pulled the furs off Morgon, bundled them in his arms, and pushed them with all his strength against Morgon’s face.

&nbs
p; The fur in Morgon’s face stifled his startled cry. The heavy weight of it melted around him, forced into his dry mouth, his eyes. He gripped the hands that held it down, struggled to pull them apart to move from the bed while the blood snapped and sang in his ears, and the darkness seemed to eddy him in huge, ponderous circles.

  Then he found air again, a clean edge of it, and knelt on the floor, his voice sobbing, rattling like pebbles as he breathed. Next to the fire, Heureu, his hands twisted in the shoulders of Astrin’s robe, had the man against the wall, while Rork Umber’s sword lay like a lick of flame against his breast.

  Morgon pulled himself up. Heureu and Rork were gazing incredulously at the mute, white-eyed figure. Rork was whispering, as if he had no breath for speech, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe—”

  A movement in the doorway caught Morgon’s eye. He tried to speak; his voice, bruised, trapped, made for one last time a harsh, desperate bird-cry that turned their uncomprehending faces towards him.

  “Heureu.”

  The King whirled. Astrin stood in the doorway. For a moment neither he nor Heureu moved; then expression came into Heureu’s eyes. He said, “Be careful. I haven’t got your gift for seeing. If I get you confused, I’ll never understand this.”

  Rork said sharply, “Heureu!”

  The figure beneath his sword was fading. It drifted like smoke beyond their eyes into the air, until suddenly it was gone and a white bird shot through the air towards Astrin.