Riddle-Master

by Patricia A. Mckillip

“Before the Settlement. We have been waiting for you. You woke us.”

  “You woke me. I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know—”

  “You woke us, and we called. You have the stars.” The lean hand moved, touching them. “Three to life, three to the winds, and three to—” He lifted the sword he carried, offered the starred hilt of it to Morgon, “death. That was promised us.”

  He swallowed the word like a bitterness in his mouth; his fingers closed around the blade. “Who promised it to you?”

  “Earth. Wind. The great war destroyed us. So we were promised a man of peace.”

  “I see.” His voice shook. “I see.” He stooped, bringing himself to the boy’s level. “What is your name?”

  The boy was silent a moment, as though he could not answer. The still lines of his face shifted again; he said haltingly, “I was . . . I was Tirnon. My father was Tir, Master of Earth and Wind.”

  “I was Ilona,” a small girl said suddenly. She came to Morgon trustingly, her hair curving like a fall of ice down her shoulders. “My mother was . . . my mother was . . .”

  “Trist,” a boy behind her said. His eyes held Morgon’s as though he read his own name there. “I was Trist. I could take any shape of earth, bird, tree, flower—I knew them. I could shape the vesta, too.”

  “I was Elore,” a slender girl said eagerly. “My mother was Rena—she could speak every language of the earth. She was teaching me the language of the crickets—”

  “I was Kara—”

  They crowded around him, oblivious of the fire, their voices painless, dreaming. He let them talk, watching incredulously the delicate, lifeless faces; then he said abruptly, his voice cutting into theirs, “What happened? Why are you here?”

  There was a silence. Tirnon said simply, “They destroyed us.”

  “Who?”

  “Those from the sea. Edolen. Sec. They destroyed us so that we could not live on earth anymore; we could not master it. My father gave us protection to come here, hidden from the war. We found a dying-place.”

  Morgon was still. He let the torch drop slowly; shadows eased again over the circle of children. He whispered, “I see. What can I do for you?”

  “Free the winds.”

  “Yes. How?”

  “One star will call out of silence the Master of the Winds; one star out of darkness the Master of Darkness; one star out of death the children of the Masters of the Earth. You have called; they have answered.”

  “Who is—”

  “The war is not finished, only silenced for the regathering. You will bear stars of fire and ice to the Ending of the Age of the High One—”

  “But we cannot live without the High One—”

  “This we have been promised. This will be.” The boy seemed no longer to hear his voice, but a voice out of the memory of an age. “You are the Star-Bearer, and you will loose from their order the—”

  He stopped abruptly. Morgon broke the silence. “Go on.”

  Tirnon’s head bent. He gripped Morgon’s wrist suddenly, his voice taut with anguish, “No.”

  Morgon lifted his torch. Beyond the fragile planes of faces, the curve of bone, the shape of slender body, the light caught at a shadow that would not yield. In the rags of darkness a dark head lifted; a woman, her face beautiful, quiet, shy, looked at him and smiled.

  He rose, the stars leaping fiery about him. Tirnon’s head fell on his bent knees; Morgon saw the lines of his body begin to melt together. He turned quickly, pushing through the stone door; it flung him outward and he saw, coming toward him down the trail, carrying lights in the palms of their hands, men of the color and movement of the sea.

  He had a moment of utter panic, until he saw out of the corner of his eye, an opening, a slender side path beside him. He flung the torch as far away from him as possible; it blazed like a star towards his pursuers. Then, feeling for the opening, he slipped blind into an unknown path that at every breath and movement rose against him. He felt his way, his hands sliding over wet, smooth skulls of rock, his face and shoulders beaten against the unexpected outcroppings that formed at every twist. Darkness fashioned the trail, fashioned the mold of stones beneath his hands. Behind him the blackness lay unbroken; ahead it pressed against his eyes. He stopped once, appalled at his blindness, and heard above his harsh breathing the relentless silence of Isig. He blundered on, his hands flayed from scraping across unseen rock, blood from a cut on his face catching like tears in his eyelashes, until the stone gave way beneath his feet and he fell into blackness, his cry drowned in water.

  He pulled himself back on the raw slab of shore, still clinging without realizing it to the sword, and lay hearing nothing but his breathing like little whimpering sobs. Then, as he began to quiet, he heard a footstep near his face, another’s breathing. His breath stopped. Someone touched him.

  He rolled to his feet abruptly, backed; a voice whispered, “Morgon, watch out. The water—”

  He stopped, his lips caught hard between his teeth, straining to see the pale shadow of a face, but the dark was absolute. Then he recognized the voice.

  “Morgon. It’s me, Bere. I’m coming toward you. Don’t move, or you’ll fall in the water again. I’m coming . . .”

  It took, as he felt the blood pounding in the back of his throat, all the courage he possessed to stay still, let the darkness come to him. A hand touched him again. Then he felt the sword move in his grip and made a sound.

  “It was there. You were right. I knew it. I knew he would have etched the blade. It’s . . . I can’t see that well; I need—” His voice stopped briefly. “What did you do? You cut your hand, carrying it like that.”

  “Bere. I can’t see you. I can’t see anything. There are shape-changers trying to find me—”

  “Is that what they are? I saw them. I hid in the rocks, and you ran past me. Do you want me to leave you here and get—”

  “No. Can you help me find a way back?”

  “I think so. I think if we follow the water it leads toward one of the lower mines. Morgon, I’m glad you came for the sword, but what made you go without telling Danan? And how did you find your way down here? Everyone is looking for you. I went up to talk to you later to see if you’d changed your mind, but you were gone. So I went to Deth’s room, to see if you were there, but you weren’t, and he heard me and woke up. I told him you were gone, and he dressed and woke Danan, and Danan woke the miners. They’re all looking for you. I came ahead. I don’t understand—”

  “If we get back to Danan’s house alive, I’ll explain it to you. I’ll explain anything—”

  “All right. Let me carry the sword for you.” The hand at his wrist tugged him forward. “Be careful: there’s a low overhang to your left. Bend your head.”

  They moved quickly through the darkness, silent but for Bere’s murmured warnings. Morgon, his body tense against unexpected blows, strained to see one faint brush of stone or glimmer of water, but his eyes found no place to rest. He closed them finally, let his body flow after Bere’s. They began to climb; the path wound endlessly upward. The walls moved like living things under his hands, now narrowing, closing until he eased between them sideways, now flowing wide, stretching beyond his reach, then leaping back together again. Finally Bere stopped at some isolated piece of darkness.

  “There are steps here. They lead to the mine shaft. Do you want to rest?”

  “No. Go on.”

  The steps were steep, endless. Morgon, shivering with cold, feeling the blood well and drip over his fingers, began to see shades and flares of color behind his closed eyes. He heard Bere’s sturdy, tired breathing; the boy said finally with a sigh, “All right. We’re at the top.” He stopped so suddenly that Morgon bumped into him. “There’s light in the shaft. It must be Danan! Come on—”

  Morgon opened his eyes. Bere went in front of him through an arch of stones whose walls rippled unexpectedly with wavering light. Bere called softly, “Danan?” And then he pushed back, stumbling against
Morgon, the breath hissing sharply out of his throat. A blade, grey-green, raked across the light, struck his head and he fell, the sword ringing beneath him.

  Morgon stared down at his limp, motionless body, looking oddly small on the harsh stones. Something unwieldy, uncontrollable, shook through him, welled to an explosion of fury behind his eyes. He ducked a sword thrust that bit at him like a silver snake, pulled the harp strap over his neck and dropped it, then reached for the sword beneath Bere. He plunged through the archway, eluding by a hairsbreadth two blades that whistled through the air behind him, caught a third on its way down, brought it up, high upward to a dull ring and blaze of sparks, then loosed it abruptly and slashed sideways. Blood burst like a sun across one shell-colored face. A blaze of fire ripping down his arm, caught his attention; he whirled. A blade drove toward him; he sent it spinning almost contemptuously across the floor with a single, two-handed stroke; then reversed the ponderous circle of the blade’s sweep and the shape-changer, coughing, hunched himself over the line of blood slashing from shoulder to hip. Yet another blade descended at him like a thread of silver that would have split him; he jerked back from it. He brought his sword down like an ax against a stump in a field, and the shape-changer, catching the blade in his shoulder, pulled it out of Morgon’s hands as he fell.

  The silence settled ponderously about him. He stared down at the stars, shaken slightly with the last breath of the shape-changer; the hilt was webbed with blood. One of the strange lights, fallen and still burning, lay just beyond the shape-changer’s outstretched hand. Morgon, looking at it, shuddered suddenly, violently. He turned, extinguishing the light with a step, walked forward until he could go no further and pushed his face against the solid black wall of stone.

  THE SLASH DOWN his arm took two weeks to heal, and he had scars striped across the vesta-horns on his left hand from the sword blade. He said nothing when Danan’s miners, their torchlight flaring into the cave, found him, the dead shape-changers, and the great sword with its stars winking like blood-red eyes. He had said nothing, though something moved behind his eyes, when Bere, one hand on his head, a line of blood down his face, stumbled blinking into the light. Walking up through the mines, he had heard Danan’s questions, but did not answer them. He had not walked long when the darkness of the mountain plummetted down at him, the torches growing small, going blue, and cold, and then black.

  He broke the silence finally, lying in his chamber with his arm bound from shoulder to wrist, watching Bere, his square face intent, absolutely content, making sketches of the engravings on the sword. Bere, in response to his request, got Deth and Danan. Morgon told them flatly, precisely, what they wanted to know.

  “Children . . .” Danan whispered. “When Yrth took me there, I saw only stones. How did he know what they were?”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “Yrth? You think he is still alive?”

  “If he is alive, I’ll find him.” He paused briefly, his eyes, indrawn, inaccessible. “There is someone else involved in this game beyond the Founder, the shape-changers, the strange names I was given—Edolen, Sec; someone they called the Master of the Winds. Perhaps they meant the High One.” He looked at Deth. “The High One is also a Wind-Master?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there is a Master of Darkness, who will no doubt reveal himself when he’s ready. The age of the High One is drawing to an end—”

  “But how can that be?” Danan protested. “Our lands will die without the High One.”

  “I don’t know how it can be. But I touched the face of the son of a Wind-Master while he spoke to me, and it was of stone. I think if that is possible, anything is possible, including the destruction of the realm. This is not our war—we didn’t begin it, we can’t end it, we can’t avoid it. There is no choice.”

  Danan drew a breath to speak, but said nothing. Bere’s pen had stopped, his face was turned toward them. Danan’s breath went out of him slowly. “The ending of the age. . . . How can anyone put an end to a mountain? Morgon, you may be wrong. Those who began this war thousands of years ago did not know they would have to reckon with men who will fight for what they love. These shape-changers can be destroyed; you have proved that.”

  “Yes. I have. But they don’t have to fight us. If they destroy the High One, we are doomed.”

  “Then why are they trying to kill you? Why have they been attacking you instead of the High One? It makes no sense.”

  “It does. Every riddle has an answer. When I begin to piece together all the answers to the questions I must ask, then I will have the beginnings of an answer to your question.”

  Danan shook his head. “How can you do it? Not even the wizards could.”

  “I’ll do it. I have no choice.”

  Deth said little; when they left, taking Bere with them, Morgon rose painfully, went to one of the windows. It was dusk; the flanks of the mountain were blue-white, motionless with the coming night. He stood watching the great trees weave into shadows. Nothing moved, not an animal or a snow-weighted branch, while the white head of Isig gradually blurred into the black, starless sky.

  He heard steps on the stairs; the hangings slid apart, and he said without turning, “When should we leave for Erlenstar Mountain?”

  “Morgon—”

  He turned then. “That’s a note I rarely hear in your voice: protest. We’re on the threshold of Erlenstar Mountain, and there are a thousand questions I need answers to—”

  “Erlenstar Mountain is Erlenstar Mountain,” Deth said quietly, “a place where you may or may not find the answers you want. Be patient. The winds that blow down from the northern wastes through Isig Pass are merciless in deep winter.”

  “I’ve stood in those winds before and not even felt them.”

  “I know. But if you step into that winter before you are strong enough to bear it, you will not live two days beyond Kyrth.”

  “I’ll survive,” Morgon said savagely. “That’s what I’m best at—surviving by any means, any method. I have great gifts, unusual in a Prince of Hed. Did you see the miners’ faces when they walked into that cave and found us all? With all the traders in this house, how long will it be, do you think, before that tale reaches Hed? Not only am I adept at killing, I have a sword with my name on it to do it with, given to me by a stone-faced child, given to him by a wizard who forged it assuming that the man whose name it bore would accept his own destiny. I am trapped. If there is nothing I can do but what I am meant to do, then I will do it, now, as quickly as possible. There is not a breath of wind. If I leave tonight, I could reach Erlenstar Mountain in three days.”

  “Five,” Deth said. “Even the vesta sleep.” He moved to the fire, reached for wood. His face, lit as the flames leaped up, revealed hollows and hair-thin lines that had not been there before. “How far could you run with a crippled leg?”

  “Do you suggest I wait here to be killed?”

  “The shape-changers moved against you here and lost. With Danan’s house guarded, the sword taken, the answers the stone-faced children gave you inaccessible, they may prefer to wait for your move.”

  “And if I don’t move?”

  “You will. You know that.”

  “I know,” he whispered. He whirled abruptly away from the window. “How can you be so calm? You are never afraid; you are never surprised. You have lived for a thousand years, and you took the Black of Mastery—how much of all this did you come to expect? You were the one to give me my name in Herun.” He saw the startled, almost imperceptible wariness in the harpist’s eyes, and he felt his mind turn on the question awkwardly, like an old mill groaning into movement. “What did you expect from me? That having put my mind to this game, I would leave anything or anyone unquestioned? You knew Suth—did he give you the riddles he learned of those stars? You knew Yrth; you said you were in Isig when he made my harp. Did he tell you what he had seen in the cave of the Lost Ones? You were born in Lungold: were you there when the School of Wizards was a
bandoned? Did you study there yourself?”

  Deth straightened, meeting Morgon’s eyes. “I am not a Lungold wizard. I have never served any man but the High One. I studied awhile at the School of Wizards because I found myself growing old without aging, and I thought perhaps my father had been a wizard. I had no great gifts for wizardry so I left—that is the extent of my acquaintance with the Lungold wizards. I searched for you five weeks in Ymris; I waited two months for you in Kyrth without touching my harp, in case someone realized who I was and who I must be waiting for; I searched Isig Mountain with Danan’s miners for you: I saw your face when they found you. Do you think that if there is something I could do for you, I would not do it?”

  “Yes.” There was a sharp, brittle silence before either of them moved. Morgon reached methodically for the sword Bere had been sketching by the fire, swung it in a wide, blazing half-circle, smashed it in a snap of blue sparks against the stone wall. It gave a deep, flawless, bell-like protest before he dropped it, and he said bitterly, hunched over his stinging hands, “You could answer my questions.”

  He broke his seclusion in the tower finally, went out into the craftsmen’s yard a few days later. His arm was nearly healed; a half-forgotten strength was returning to him. He stood in the broken snow smelling the metal-smiths’ fires. The world seemed becalmed under a still, grey-white sky. Danan spoke his name; he turned. The mountain-king, enveloped in fur, put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m glad to see you better.”

  He nodded. “It’s good to be out. Where is Deth?”

  “He rode into Kyrth this morning with Ash. They’ll be back at sundown. Morgon, I have been thinking . . . I wanted to give you something that might help you; I racked my brains trying to think what, when it occurred to me that there are times in your journey that you might simply want to disappear from enemies, from friends, from the world, to rest awhile, to think. . . . There’s nothing less obvious than a tree in a forest.”

  “A tree.” Something in his mind quickened. “Danan, can you teach me that?”