Riddle-Master

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Nothing.”

  “Just stones, silence, and a terrible sense of something lying just beyond eyesight, like a dread in the bottom of your heart. I asked Yrth what it was, but he never told me. Something happened there before the settlement of Isig, long before the coming of men to the realm of the High One.”

  “Perhaps during the wars of the Earth-Masters.”

  “I think there may be a connection. But what, I don’t know; and the High One, if he knows what happened, has never said.”

  Morgon thought of the beautiful, ruined city on Wind Plain, of the glass shards he had uncovered like a hint of an answer in one of the empty, roofless rooms. And suddenly, thinking of it, the terrible dread of a simple answer struck him, and he stopped again in the still, icy dusk, the mountain polished smooth and white as a bone in front of him. He whispered, “Beware the unanswered riddle.”

  “What?”

  “No one knows what destroyed the Earth-Masters. Who could have been more powerful than they were, and what shape that power has taken . . .”

  “It was thousands of years ago,” Danan said. “What could that have to do with us?”

  “Nothing. Perhaps. But we’ve been assuming just that for thousands of years, and the wise man assumes nothing. . . .”

  The mountain-king said wonderingly, “What is it you see ahead of us in the darkness that no one else can?”

  “I don’t know. Something without a name. . . .”

  They reached the dark arch of the gates of Harte just as the snow began to fall again. The yard, with its many forges and workshops, was nearly empty; here and there a red-gold light shown through a half-opened door; the shadow of some craftsman at his work spilled across the threshold. Danan led Morgon across the yard into a hall whose rough walls were filigreed with flickering colors of jewels still embedded in the stone. A stream cut a curved path through the floor; a great firebed suspended above it warmed the stones, fire dancing over the dark water. Miners, craftsmen dressed simply in the colors of the mountain, traders in their rich garb, trappers in fur and leather glanced up as Danan entered, and Morgon shifted instinctively to a line of shadow beyond the torch’s reach.

  Danan said gently, “There’s a quiet room in the east tower where you can wash and rest; come down later when it’s not so crowded. Most of these men will return to Kyrth after supper; they only work here.” He led through a side door out of the hall, up a stairway winding through the core of a wide tower. He added, “This is the tower Yrth stayed in. Talies used to visit him here, and Suth, a couple of times. Suth was a wild one, hair white as snow even when he was young. He frightened the miners, but I saw him once changing into shape after shape to amuse my children.” He stopped on a landing, drew back heavy hangings of white fur in a doorway. “I’ll send someone to make up your fire.” He paused, said a little hesitantly, “If it isn’t asking too much of you, I would love to hear that harp again.”

  Morgon smiled. “No. It’s not asking too much. Thank you. I’m grateful for your kindness.”

  He went into the room, sliding the straps from his shoulder. The walls were hung with fur and tapestry, but the hearth was swept clean and the room was cold. Morgon sat down in a chair beside the hearth. The stones formed a circle of silence about him. He could hear nothing, no laughter from the hall, no wind outside. A loneliness unlike even the loneliness of his path through the unclaimed lands touched him. He closed his eyes, felt weariness deeper than sleep sucking at the core of him. He rose restlessly, pulling away from it. Men came in then, bringing wood, water, wine, food; he watched them build the fire, light torches, set water to heat. When they were gone, he stood for a long time at the fire, staring into it. The water began to hiss; he undressed slowly, washed. He ate something he could not taste, poured wine, sat without drinking it while the night locked like a fist around the tower and the strange dread eddied like a tide deep in his heart.

  His eyes closed again. For a while he ran with the vesta on the surface of his dreams, until he found himself floundering in the snow in his own shape as they melted away in the distance. Then, the loneliness poignant, unbearable, he traversed space and time with a wizard’s skill, found himself at Akren. Eliard and Grim Oakland were talking in front of the fire; he went towards them eagerly, said Eliard’s name. Eliard turned, and at the blankness in his eyes Morgon saw himself suddenly, his hair lank, his face drawn, the vesta scars vivid on his hands. He said his name. Eliard, shaking his head, said bewilderedly, You must be mistaken. Morgon isn’t a vesta. Morgon turned to Tristan, who was holding some pointless, rambling discussion with Snog Nutt. She smiled at him eagerly, hopefully, but the hope died quickly and an uneasiness came into her eyes. Snog Nutt said sorrowfully, He said he would fix my leaking roof, before the rain, but he went away and he never did, and he hasn’t come. He found himself abruptly at Caithnard, pounding on a door; Rood, flinging it open with a whirl of black sleeve, said irritably, You’re too late. Anyway, she’s the second most beautiful woman in An; she can’t marry a vesta. Turning, Morgon saw one of the Masters walking down the hall. He ran to catch up. The bowed, hooded head lifted finally at his pleadings; Master Ohm’s eyes met his, grave, reproachful, and he stopped, appalled. The Master walked away from him without speaking; he said over and over without response, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  He found himself on Wind Plain. It was dark; the sea lay heaving, blue-green with unearthly lights on a moonless night. Isig Mountain seemed so close that he could see the light from Danan’s house. Something was gathering itself in the darkness; he could not tell whether it was the wind or the sea; he only knew that an enormity was building itself, huge, nameless, inexorable, sucking into itself all strength, all laws and patterns, all songs, riddles, histories, to explode them into chaos on Wind Plain. He began to run desperately for shelter while the winds howled and the sea half a mile away raised waves so high the spray lashed across his face. He headed for the light of Danan’s house. He realized slowly, as he ran, that Harte was broken, empty as an Earth-Masters’ city, and that the bone-white light came from deep within Isig. He stopped. A voice split through the mountain out of a cave whose green marble door had not been opened for centuries, cut through the growling, bickering of wind and sea, and said his name.

  “Star-Bearer.”

  HE WOKE WITH a start, his heart pounding, listening for the echo of the voice that had wakened him; it seemed to linger, a strange voice, neither man’s nor woman’s, among the stones. Someone was gripping him, saying his name, someone so familiar that Morgon asked unsurprised, “Did you call me?” Then his hands rose, locked on the harpist’s arms.

  “Deth.”

  “You were dreaming.”

  “Yes.” The tower walls, the fire, the silence were forming around him again. His hands loosened slowly, dropped. The harpist, a dust of snow on his shoulders and hair, slid the harp from his shoulder, leaned it against the wall.

  “I chose to wait for you quietly in Kyrth rather than at Harte; Danan wasn’t sure if I was still there, so he didn’t tell you.” The even, undisturbed voice was soothing. “You took much longer than I expected.”

  “I got caught in a blizzard.” He straightened, running his hands over his face. “Then I met Har . . .” His head lifted abruptly; he stared at the harpist. “You were waiting for me? You expected—Deth, how long have you been here?”

  “Two months.” He took his coat off; snow spattered into the fire. “I left Herun the day after you did, travelled up the Ose, without stopping, to Kyrth. I asked Danan to keep watch for you, told him where to reach me in Kyrth, and then—waited.” He paused a moment. “I was worried.”

  Morgon watched his face. He whispered, “I had every intention of returning to Hed. You knew that. You couldn’t have known I would come here, not after two months, not in dead winter.”

  “I chose to trust that you would come.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you had turned your back on your name, on
the riddles you must answer—if you had gone back to Hed alone, unprotected, to accept the death you knew must come—then it wouldn’t have mattered where I went, whether to Erlenstar Mountain or the bottom of the sea. I have lived for a thousand years, and I can recognize the smell of doom.”

  Morgon closed his eyes. The word, hanging in the air like a harp note between them, seemed to ease something out of him; his shoulders slumped. “Doom. You see it, too. Deth, I touched the bone of it in Osterland. I killed Suth.”

  He heard the harpist’s voice untuned for the first time. “You did what?”

  He opened his eyes. “I’m sorry. I mean that he died because of me. Har saved my life in that blizzard, so I gave him a promise, ignoring the fact that it is unwise to promise things blindly to the wolf-king.” He turned a palm upward; the scar shone like a withered moon in the firelight. “I learned the vesta-shape. I ran with the vesta for two months with Suth’s son Hugin, who has white hair and purple eyes. I found Suth behind Grim Mountain, an old vesta with one blind eye that he had lost, riddling. He died there.”

  “How?”

  Morgon’s hands closed suddenly on the chair arms. “I asked him why he had run from Lungold—I quoted the third stricture of the Founder to him, demanding help when he knew—he knew. . . . He made a choice; he tried to answer me, but he died trying. He pulled me down with him, there at the end of the world where there was nothing but snow and wind and vesta, he died, he was killed, the only wizard seen by men for seven centuries; I was left holding him, holding the last word he ever spoke like a riddle too terrible to answer—”

  “What word?”

  “Ohm. Ghisteslwchlohm. The Founder of Lungold killed Suth.”

  Morgon heard the soft, swift draw of the harpist’s breath. His eyes were hidden, his face oddly still. He said, “I knew Suth.”

  “You knew Master Ohm. You knew Ghisteslwchlohm.” His grip was rigid on the wood. “Deth, is Master Ohm the Founder of Lungold?”

  “I will take you to Erlenstar Mountain. Then, with permission from the High One, if he does not answer that question for you, I will.”

  Morgon nodded. He said more calmly, “I’m wondering how many other wizards are still alive under Ghisteslwchlohm’s power. I’m also wondering why the High One has never acted.”

  “Perhaps because his business is the land, not the school of wizards of Lungold. Perhaps he has already begun to act in ways you do not recognize.”

  “I hope so.” He took a cup Deth poured for him, swallowed wine. He added after a moment, “Deth, Har gave me five riddles Suth had given him. He suggested I answer them since I had nothing better to do with my life. One of them is: Who will come in the time’s ending and what will he bring? I assume that the Star-Bearer is the one who will come; I have come; I don’t know what it is I will bring; but what troubles me most is not who, or what, but when. The time’s ending. Walking to Harte with Danan I remembered the ruined cities on Wind Plain, on King’s Mouth Plain, and how no one really knows what destroyed the Earth-Masters. It happened long before the Years of Settlement; we assumed because the stones had fallen, the weeds grew between them, that a great, terrible war had come and gone, and nothing more of it existed but the empty stones. We also assumed that the wizards were dead. The one thing I know that could destroy us all is the death of the High One. I’m afraid that whatever destroyed the Earth-Masters before the realm was even formed, has been waiting ever since to challenge the last of the Earth-Masters.”

  “I think it’s quite probable,” Deth said quietly. He leaned forward, his face etched with fire, and roused the half-log on the hearth. A flurry of sparks burned in the air like fiery snow.

  “Has the High One ever explained the destruction of the cities?”

  “Not as far as I know. One of the Masters at Caithnard when I was there said he had made a journey to ask the High One that, since it was one of the unanswered riddles on their lists; the High One simply said that the cities were ancient, empty before he mastered the land-law of the realm.”

  “Which is saying either that he doesn’t know, or that he doesn’t choose to tell.”

  “It’s unlikely that he doesn’t know.”

  “Then why—” He stopped. “Only the High One could explain the High One. So I will have to ask him.”

  Deth looked at him. “I have a question of my own,” he said slowly. “I asked it in Herun; you chose not to answer it. But now you wear vesta-scars on your hands, you have spoken your own name, and you are putting your mind to this mystery like a Master. I would like to ask it again.”

  Morgon, thinking back, said, “Oh. That.”

  “What was it that made you leave Herun to return home?”

  “Something Corrig changed into. And the laughter in his eyes when I killed him.” He rose restlessly, went to a window, gazed out at the unrelieved blackness that enclosed Isig.

  The harpist said behind him, “What shape?”

  “A sword. With three stars on its hilt.” He turned abruptly at the silence. “I have thought about it, and the conclusion I have come to is that no one, not even the High One himself, can force me to claim it.”

  “That’s true.” Deth’s voice was changeless, but there was a faint line between his brows. “Did it occur to you to ask yourself where Corrig might have seen it?”

  “No. I’m not interested.”

  “Morgon. The shape-changers know it belongs to you, that inevitably you will find it, as you found the harp, even though you may not claim it. And when you do, they will be there, waiting.”

  In the silence, a pitch-laden branch wailed softly. Morgon moved a little at the sound. He said, “I’m nearly at Erlenstar Mountain—that sword could be anywhere . . .”

  “Perhaps. But Danan told me once that Yrth made a sword he showed to no one, centuries before he made the harp. Where he put it, no one knows; only one thing is certain: he said he had buried it beneath the place where he forged it.”

  “Where did—” He stopped. He saw the sword again, recognized the master touch in the flawless designs on its blade, the sure, purposeful shaping of the stars. He put a hand to his eyes, asked, though he already knew the answer, “Where was it forged?”

  “Here. In Isig Mountain.”

  Morgon went down with Deth then, the harp over his shoulder, to talk to Danan. The mountain-king, sitting beside the fire with his children and grandchildren in the quiet hall, looked up with a smile as they entered.

  “Come, sit down. Deth, I wasn’t sure if you were still in Kyrth or if you had lost hope and chanced the Pass when I sent for you today. You’ve been so silent. Morgon, this is my daughter Vert, my son Ash, and these—” he paused to lift a small girl tugging herself onto his knee, “—are their children. They all wanted to hear your harping.”

  Morgon sat down, a little dazed. A tall, fair man with Danan’s eyes, a slender woman with hair the color of pine bark, and a dozen children of varying shapes were looking at him curiously.

  The woman, Vert, said despairingly to him, “I’m sorry, but Bere wanted to come, so all of mine had to come, and where my children go, Ash’s go, so—I hope you don’t mind them.” She put her hand on the shoulder of a young boy with blunt, black hair and her grey eyes. “This is Bere.”

  Another black head appeared suddenly at Morgon’s knee: a little girl hardly big enough to walk. She stared up at him, then, going unsteady on her feet, clutched at him drunkenly. She grinned toothlessly at him as he slid his hand down her back to steady her, and his mouth twitched. Ash said, “That one belongs to Vert: Suny. My wife is in Caithnard, and Vert’s husband, who is a trader, is making a winter run to Anuin, so we put them all together for the time being. I don’t know how we’ll ever get them sorted out again.”

  Morgon, his fingers rubbing up and down between Suny’s shoulder blades as she gripped his knee, looked up suddenly. “You all came to hear me play?”

  Ash nodded. “Please. If you don’t mind. That harp and the making of it are lege
nds in Isig. When I heard you were here with it, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to bring all the craftsmen in Kyrth with me to see it, but my father restrained me.”

  Morgon untied the harp case. Suny tugged the case strings curiously out of his fingers; Bere whispered, “Suny—” She ignored him; he stepped to Morgon’s side, lifted her up patiently and held her. Morgon, aware of the curious, expectant faces watching him, said futiley, “I haven’t played in two months.” No one answered. The stars, as he uncovered the harp, pulled it free of the case, caught fire; the white moons seemed rimmed with it as the flame’s reflection travelled a liquid path down the silver inlay. He touched a string; the note sounded in the silence, pure, sweet, hesitant as a question; he heard someone loose a breath.

  Ash’s hand moved involuntarily toward the stars, dropped. He breathed, “Who did the inlay?”

  “Zec of Hicon, in Herun—I can’t remember his full name,” Danan said. “He was trained by Sol. Yrth designed the patterns.”

  “And Sol cut those stars. May I see them?” he pleaded, and Morgon passed the harp to him. Something small, formless had bloomed in the back of his mind at Ash’s words; he could not trace it. Bere peered over Ash’s head, his lips parted as Ash studied the harp; Suny, reaching wildly for a gleaming harp string, startled him and he straightened, shifting his hold of her.