Riddle-Master

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Har grunted. He rose, the wolf’s head sliding from his knee. “A one-eyed man who can see. . . . Does he see an end to the war?”

  “No. But he told me he is haunted by dreams of Wind Plain, as if some answer lies there. The tower on the plain is still bound by a living force of illusion.”

  “Wind Tower.” The words came out of Morgon unexpectedly, some shard of a riddle the wizard’s words unburied. “I had forgotten. . . .”

  “I tried to climb it once,” Nun said reminiscently.

  Har took his cup to the table for more wine. “So did I.” He asked, as Morgon glanced at him, “Have you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? It’s a riddle. You’re a riddler.”

  He thought back. “The first time I was on Wind Plain with Astrin I lost my memory. There was only one riddle I was interested in answering. The second time . . .” He shifted a little. “I passed through very quickly, at night. I was pursuing a harpist. Nothing could have stopped me.”

  “Then perhaps,” Har said softly, “you should try.”

  “You’re not thinking,” Nun protested. “The plain must be full of Earth-Masters.”

  “I am always thinking,” Har said. A thought startled through Morgon; he moved again without realizing it, and Raederle lifted her face, blinking.

  “It’s bound by illusion . . . no one can reach the top of it. No one works an illusion unless there is something to be hidden, unseen. . . . But what would be hidden for so long at the top of the tower?”

  “The High One,” Raederle suggested sleepily. They gazed at her, Nun with her pipe smoldering in her fingers, Har with his cup halfway to his mouth. “Well,” she added, “that’s the one thing everyone is looking for. And the one place maybe that no one has looked.”

  Har’s eyes went to Morgon. He ran his hand through his hair, his face clearing, easing into wonder. “Maybe. Har, you know I will try. But I always thought the binding of that illusion was some forgotten work of dead Earth-Masters, not . . . not of a living Earth-Master. Wait.” He sat straight, staring ahead of him. “Wind Tower. The name of it . . . the name . . . wind.” They roused suddenly through his memories: the deep wind in Erlenstar Mountain, the tumultuous winds of the wastes, singing to all the notes of his harp. “Wind Tower.”

  “What do you see?”

  “I don’t know . . . a harp strung with wind.” As the winds died in his mind, he realized that he did not know who had asked the question. The vision receded, leaving him with only words and the certainty that they somehow fit together. “The tower. The starred harp. Wind.”

  Har brushed a white weasel off his chair and sat down slowly. “Can you bind the winds as well as land-law?” he asked incredulously.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I see. You haven’t tried, yet.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to begin.” He added, “Once I shaped wind. To kill. That’s all I know I can do.”

  “Well—” He checked, shaking his head. The hall was very still; animals’ eyes glowed among the rushes. Yrth set his cup down with a small, distracting clink as it hit the edge of a tray. Nun guided it for him.

  “Small distances,” he murmured ruefully.

  “I think,” the wolf-king said, “that if I start questioning you, it will be the longest riddle I have ever asked.”

  “You already asked the longest riddle,” Morgon said. “Two years ago, when you saved my life in that blizzard and brought me into your house. I’m still trying to answer it for you.”

  “Two years ago, I gave you the knowledge of the vesta-shape. Now you have come back for knowledge of my land-law. What will you ask of me next?”

  “I don’t know.” He drained his cup and slid his hands around the mouth of it. “Maybe trust.” He set the cup down abruptly, traced the flawless rim with his fingertips. He was exhausted suddenly; he wanted to lay his head on the table among the plates and sleep. He heard the wolf-king rise.

  “Ask me tomorrow.”

  Har touched him. As he dragged his eyes open and stood up to follow the king out of the hall, he found nothing strange in the answer.

  He slept dreamlessly until dawn beside Raederle in the warm, rich chamber Aia had prepared for them. Then, as the sky lightened, vesta slowly crowded into his mind, forming a tight, perfect circle about him so that he could not move, and all their eyes were light, secret, blind. He woke abruptly, murmuring. Raederle groped for him, said something incoherent. He waited until she was quiet again. Then he got up soundlessly and dressed. He could smell one last sweet pine log burning into embers from the silent hall, and he knew, somehow, that Har was still there.

  The king watched him as he came into the hall. He stepped quietly past small animals curled asleep beside the hearth and sat down beside Har. The king dropped a hand on his shoulder, held him a moment in a gentle, comfortable silence.

  Then he said, “We’ll need privacy or traders will spread rumors from here to Anuin. They have been flocking to my house lately, asking me questions, asking Nun . . .”

  “There’s the shed in the back,” Morgon suggested, “where you taught me the vesta-shape.”

  “It seems appropriate . . . I’ll wake Hugin; he can tend to our needs.” He smiled a little. “For a while, I thought Hugin might return to the vesta; he became so shy among men. But since Nun came and told him everything she knew about Suth, I think he might turn into a wizard . . .” He was silent, sending a thought, Morgon suspected, through the quiet house. Hugin wandered in a few moments later, blinking sleepily and combing his white hair with his fingers. He stopped short when he saw Morgon. He was big-boned and graceful like the vesta, his deep eyes still shy. He stirred the rushes a little, flushing, looking like a vesta might if it were on the verge of smiling.

  “We need your help,” Har said. Hugin’s head ducked an acquiescence. Then, gazing at Morgon, he found his tongue.

  “Nun said you battled the wizard who killed Suth. That you saved the lives of the Lungold wizards. Did you kill the Founder?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Hugin,” Har murmured. Then he checked himself and looked at Morgon curiously. “Why not? Did you spend all your passion for revenge on that harpist?”

  “Har . . .” His muscles had tensed under Har’s hand. The king frowned suddenly.

  “What is it? Are you wraith-driven? Yrth told me last night how the harpist died.”

  Morgon shook his head wordlessly. “You’re a riddler,” he said abruptly. “You tell me. I need help.”

  Har’s mouth tightened. He rose, telling Hugin, “Bring food, wine, firewood to the shed. And pallets. When Raederle of An wakes, let her know where we are. Bring her.” He added a little impatiently as the boy flushed scarlet, “You’ve talked to her before.”

  “I know.” He was smiling suddenly. Under Har’s quizzical eye, he sobered and began to move. “I’ll bring her. And everything else.”

  They spent that day and the next nine nights together in the smokey, circular shed behind the king’s house. Morgon slept by day. Har, seemingly inexhaustible, kept his court by day. Morgon, pulling out of Har’s mind each dawn, found Raederle beside him, and Hugin, and sometimes Nun, knocking her ashes into the fire. He rarely spoke to them; waking or sleeping, his mind seemed linked to Har’s, forming trees, ravens, snow-covered peaks, all the shapes deep in the wolf-king’s mind that were bound to his awareness. Har gave him everything and demanded nothing during those days. Morgon explored Osterland through him, forming his own binding of awareness with every root, stone, wolf pup, white falcon and vesta in the land. The king was full of odd wizardry, Morgon discovered. He could speak to owls and wolves; he could speak to an iron knife or arrowtip and tell it where to strike. He knew the men and animals of his land as he knew his own family. His land-law extended even into the edges of the northern wastes, where he had raced vesta for miles across a desert of snow. He was shaped by his own law; the power in him tempered Morgon’s heart with ice,
and then with fire, until he seemed one more shape of Har’s brain, or Har a reflection of his own power.

  He broke loose from Har then, rolled onto a pallet, and fell asleep. Like a land-heir, he dreamed Har’s memories. With a restless, furious intensity, his dreams spanned centuries of history, of rare battles, of riddle-games that lasted for days and years. He built Yrye, heard the wizard Suth give him five strange riddles for his keeping, lived among wolves, among the vesta, fathered heirs, dispensed judgment and grew so old he became ageless. Finally, the rich, feverish dreams came to an end; he drew deeply into himself, into a dreamless night. He slept without moving until a name drifted into his mind. Clinging to it, he brought himself back into the world. He blinked awake, found Raederle kneeling beside him.

  She smiled down at him. “I wanted to find out if you were alive or dead.” She touched his hand; his fingers closed around hers. “You can move.”

  He sat up slowly. The shed was empty; he could hear the winds outside trying to pick apart the roof. He tried to speak; his voice would not come for a moment. “How long—how long did I sleep?”

  “Har said over two thousand years.”

  “Is he that old?” He stared at nothing a little, then leaned over to kiss her. “Is it day or night?”

  “It’s noon. You’ve slept nearly two days. I missed you. I only had Hugin to talk to most of the time.”

  “Who?”

  Her smile deepened. “Do you remember my name?”

  He nodded. “You are a two-thousand-year-old woman named Raederle.” He sat quietly, holding her hand, putting the world into shape around him. He stood up finally; she slid an arm around him to steady him. The wind snatched the door out of his hand as he opened it. The first flakes of winter snow swirled and vanished in the winds. They shattered the silence in his mind, whipped over him, persistent, icy, shaping him back out of his dreams. He ran across the yard with Raederle, into the warmth of the king’s dark house.

  Har came to him that evening as he lay beside the fire in his chamber. He was remembering and slowly absorbing the knowledge he had taken. Raederle had left him alone, deep in his thoughts. Har, entering, brought him out of himself. Their eyes met across the fire in a peaceful, wordless recognition. Then Har sat down, and Morgon straightened, shifting logs with his hands until the drowsing fire woke.

  “I have come,” Har said softly, “for what you owe me.”

  “I owe you everything.” He waited. The fire slowly blurred in front of him; he was lost to himself again, this time among his own memories.

  The king worked through them a little randomly, not sure what he would find. Very early in his exploring, he loosed Morgon in utter astonishment.

  “You struck an old, blind wizard?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t kill him.”

  The king’s eyes blazed with a glacial light. He seemed about to speak; instead he caught the thread of Morgon’s memories again. He wove backwards and forwards, from Trader’s Road to Lungold and Erlenstar Mountain, and the weeks Morgon had spent in the wastes, harping to the winds. He watched the harpist die; he listened to Yrth speaking to Morgon and to Danan in Isig; he listened to Raederle giving Morgon a riddle that drew him back out of the dead land, once again among the living. Then, he loosed Morgon abruptly and prowled the chamber like a wolf.

  “Deth.”

  The name chilled Morgon unexpectedly, as though Har had turned the impossible into truth with a word. The king paced to his side and stopped moving finally. He stared down into the fire. Morgon dropped his face against his forearms wearily.

  “I don’t know what to do. He holds more power than anyone else in this realm. You felt that mind-hold—”

  “He has always held your mind.”

  “I know. And I can’t fight him. I can’t. You saw how he drew me on Trader’s Road . . . with nothing. With a harp he could barely play. I went to him. . . . At Anuin I couldn’t kill him. I didn’t even want to. More than anything, I wanted a reason not to. He gave me one. I thought he had walked out of my life forever, since I left him no place in the realm to harp. I left him one place. He harped to me. He betrayed me again, and I saw him die. But he didn’t die. He only replaced one mask with another. He made the sword I nearly killed him with. He threw me to Ghisteslwchlohm like a bone, and he rescued me from Earth-Masters on the same day. I don’t understand him. I can’t challenge him. I have no proof, and he would twist his way out of any accusation. His power frightens me. I don’t know what he is. He gives me silence like the silence out of trees . . .” His voice trailed away. He found himself listening to Har’s silence.

  He raised his head. The king was still gazing into the fire, but it seemed to Morgon that he was watching it from the distance of many centuries. He was very still; he did not seem to be breathing. His face looked harsher than Morgon had ever seen it, as if the lines had been riven into it by the icy, merciless winds that scarred his land.

  “Morgon,” he whispered, “be careful.” It was, Morgon realized slowly, not a warning but a plea. The king dropped to his haunches, held Morgon’s shoulders very gently, as if he were grasping something elusive, intangible, that was beginning to shape itself under his hands.

  “Har.”

  The king shook away his question. He held Morgon’s eyes with an odd intensity, gazing through him into the heart of his confusion. “Let the harpist name himself . . .”

  THE WOLF-KING GAVE him no more answers than that. Something else lay hidden behind Har’s eyes that he would not speak of. Morgon sensed it in him and so did Yrth, who asked, the evening before they left Yrye, “Har, what are you thinking? I can hear something beneath all your words.”

  They were sitting beside the fire. The winds were whistling across the roof, dragging shreds of smoke up through the opening. Har looked at the wizard across the flames. His face was still honed hard, ancient, by whatever he had seen. But his voice, when he spoke to the wizard, held only its familiar, dry affection.

  “It’s nothing for you to concern yourself about.”

  “Why can’t I believe that?” Yrth murmured. “Here in this hall, where you have riddled your way through centuries to truth?”

  “Trust me,” Har said. The wizard’s eyes sought toward him through their private darkness.

  “You’re going to Ymris.”

  “No,” Morgon said abruptly. He had stopped fighting Yrth; he trod warily in the wizard’s presence, as in the presence of some powerful, unpredictable animal. But the wizard’s words, which seemed to lie somewhere between a statement and a command, startled a protest out of him. “Har, what can you do in Ymris besides get yourself killed?”

  “I have no intention,” Har said, “of dying in Ymris.” He opened a palm to the fire, revealing withered crescents of power; the wordless gesture haunted Morgon.

  “Then what do you intend?”

  “I’ll give you one answer for another.”

  “Har, this is no game!”

  “Isn’t it? What lies at the top of a tower of winds?”

  “I don’t know. When I know, I’ll come back here and tell you. If you’ll be patient.”

  “I have no more patience,” Har said. He got up, pacing restlessly; his steps brought him to the side of the wizard’s chair. He picked up a couple of small logs and knelt to position them on the fire. “If you die,” he said, “it will hardly matter where I am. Will it?”

  Morgon was silent. Yrth leaned forward, resting one hand on Har’s shoulder for balance, and caught a bit of flaming kindling as it rolled toward them. He tossed it back onto the fire. “It will be difficult to get through to Wind Tower. But I think Astrin’s army will make it possible.” He loosed Har, brushed ash from his hands, and the king rose. Morgon, watching his grim face, swallowed arguments until there was nothing left in his mind but a fierce, private resolve.

  He bade Har farewell at dawn the next day; and three crows began the long journey south to Herun. The flight was dreary with rain. The wizard led them with as
tonishing accuracy across the level rangelands of Osterland and the forests bordering the Ose. They did not change shape again until they had crossed the Winter and the vast no-man’s-land between Osterland and Ymris stretched before them. The rains stilled finally near dusk on the third day of their journey, and with a mutual, almost wordless consent, they dropped to the ground to rest in their own shapes.

  “How,” Morgon asked Yrth almost before the wizard had coaxed a tangle of soaked wood into flame, “in Hel’s name are you guiding us? You led us straight to the Winter. And how did you get from Isig to Hed and back in two days?”

  Yrth glanced toward his voice. The flame caught between his hands, engulfing the wood, and he drew back. “Instinct,” he said. “You think too much while you fly.”

  “Maybe.” He subsided beside the fire. Raederle, breathing deeply of the moist, pine-scented air, was eyeing the river wistfully.

  “Morgon, would you catch a fish? I am so hungry, and I don’t want to change back into a crow-shape to eat—whatever crows eat. If you do that, I’ll look for mushrooms.”

  “I smell apples,” Yrth said. He rose, wandering toward a scent. Morgon watched him a little incredulously.

  “I don’t smell apples,” he murmured. “And I hardly think at all when I fly.” He rose, then stooped again to kiss Raederle. “Do you smell apples?”

  “I smell fish. And more rain. Morgon . . .” She put her arm on his shoulders suddenly, keeping him down. He watched her grope for words.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” She ran her free hand through her hair. Her eyes were perplexed. “He moves across the earth like a master . . .”