Riddle-Master Trilogy

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Raederle turned her head and saw Morgon; she smiled at something in his eyes and left him undisturbed. Lyra caught his attention, then. She was dressed for supper in a light, flowing, fiery robe; her hair was braided and coiled under a net of gold thread. Her face had lost its familiar proud assurance; her eyes seemed older, vulnerable, haunted with the memory of watching guards under her command die at Lungold. She said something to the Morgol that Morgon did not hear. The Morgol answered her simply.

  “No.”

  “I am going to Ymris.” Her dark eyes held the Morgol’s stubbornly, but her argument was quiet “If not with the guard, then at your side.”

  “No.”

  “Mother, I am no longer in your guard. I resigned when I returned home from Lungold, so you can’t expect me to obey you without thinking. Ymris is a terrible battlefield—more terrible than Lungold. I am going—”

  “You are my land-heir,” the Morgol said. Her face was still calm, but Morgon sensed the fear, relentless and chill as the Herun mists, deep in her mind. “I am taking the entire guard out of Herun down to Wind Plain. Goh will command it. You said that you never wanted to pick up another spear, and I was grateful you had made that decision. There is no need for you to fight in Ymris, and every need for you to stay here.”

  “In case you are killed,” Lyra said flatly. “I don’t understand why you are even going, but I will ride at your side—”

  “Lyra—”

  “Mother, this is my decision. Obeying you is no longer a matter of honor. I will do as I choose, and I choose to ride with you.”

  The Morgol’s fingers edged slightly around her cup. She seemed surprised at her own movement. “Well,” she said calmly, “if there is no honor in your actions in this matter, there will be none in mine. You will stay here. One way or another.”

  Lyra’s eyes flickered a little. “Mother,” she protested uncertainly, and the Morgol said:

  “Yes. I am also the Morgol. Herun is in grave danger. If Ymris falls, I want you here to protect it in whatever way you can. If we both died in Ymris, it would be disastrous for Herun.”

  “But why are you going?”

  “Because Har is going,” the Morgol said softly, “and Danan, and Mathom—the land-rulers of the realm—impelled to Ymris to fight for the survival of the realm… or for some even more imperative reason. There is a tangle of riddles at the heart of the realm; I want to see its unraveling. Even at the risk of my life. I want answers.”

  Lyra was silent. Their faces in the soft light were almost indistinguishable in their fine, clean-lined beauty. But the Morgol’s gold eyes hid her thoughts, while Lyra’s were open to every flare of fire and pain.

  “The harpist is dead,” she whispered. “If that is what you are trying to answer.”

  The Morgol’s eyes fell. She stirred after a moment, reached out swiftly to touch Lyra’s cheek. “There are more unsolved questions than that in the realm,” she said, “and nearly all, I think, more important.” But her brows were constricted, as at a sudden, inexplicable pain. “Riddles without answers can be terrible,” she added after a moment “But some are possible to live with. Others… What the Star-Bearer does at Wind Plain will be vital, Yrth thinks.”

  “Does he think you need to be there also? And if Wind Plain is so vital, where is the High One? Why is he ignoring the Star-Bearer and the entire realm?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps Morgon can answer some of—” She lifted her head abruptly and saw him standing quietly in the shadows, his own thoughts waking again in his mind.

  She smiled, holding out her hand in welcome. Yrth shifted a little, seeing, perhaps from her eyes, as Morgon came slowly to the table. Morgon saw him strangely for an instant, as something akin to the mists and monoliths of Herun that his mind could explore and comprehend. Then, as he sat down, the wizard’s face seemed to avert itself from his eyes. He bent his head to the Morgol wordlessly. She said, “Did you find what you came for?”

  “Yes. All I could bear. How long have I been gone?”

  “Nearly two weeks.”

  “Two…” He shaped the word without sound. “So long? Has there been news?”

  “Very little. Traders came from Hlurle for all the arms we could spare, to take them to Caerweddin. I have been watching a mist moving south from Osterland, and finally, today, I realized what it is.”

  “A mist?” He remembered Har’s scarred palm, opening to the red wash of firelight “Vesta? Is Har bringing the vesta to Ymris?”

  “There are hundreds of them, moving across the forests.”

  “They are great fighters,” Yrth said. He sounded weary, disinclined to face an argument, but his voice was patient. “And they will not fear the Ymris winter.”

  “You knew.” His thoughts were jarred out of their calm. “You could have stopped him. The miners, the vesta, the Morgol’s guard—why are you drawing such a vulnerable, unskilled army across the realm? You may be blind, but the rest of us will have to watch the slaughter of men and animals on that battlefield—”

  “Morgon,” the Morgol interrupted gently, “Yrth does not make my decisions for me.”

  “Yrth—” He stopped, sliding his hands over his face, trying to check a futile argument. Yrth rose, drawing Morgon’s eyes again. The wizard moved a little awkwardly through the cushions to the fire. He stood in front of it, his head bowed. Morgon saw his scarred hands close suddenly, knotted with words he could not speak, and he thought of Deth’s hands, twisted with pain in the firelight. He heard an echo, then, out of the still Herun night, of the strange brief peace he had found beside the harpist’s fire, within his silence. All that bound him to the harpist, to the falcon, his longing and his incomprehensible love, overwhelmed him suddenly. As he watched light and shadow search the hard, blind face into shape, he realized he would yield anything: the vesta, the Morgol’s guard, the land-rulers, the entire realm, into the scarred, tormented hands in return for a place in the falcon’s shadow.

  The knowledge brought him to a strange, uneasy calm. His head bowed; he stared down at his dark reflection in the polished stone until Lyra, looking at him, said suddenly, “You must be hungry.” She poured him wine. “I’ll bring you some hot food.” The Morgol watched her cross the room with her lithe, graceful step. She looked tired, more tired than Morgon had ever seen her.

  She said to Morgon, “Miners and vesta and my guard may seem useless in Ymris, but Morgon, the land-rulers are giving of all the strength they possess. There is nothing else we can do.”

  “I know.” His eyes moved to her; he knew her own confused love for a memory. He said abruptly, wanting to give her something of peace in return for all she had given him, “Ghisteslwchlohm said that you had been waiting for Deth near Lungold. Is that true?”

  She looked a little startled at his brusqueness, but she nodded. “I thought he might come to Lungold. It was the only place left for him to go, and I could ask him… Morgon, you and I are both tired, and the harpist is dead. Perhaps we should—”

  “He died—he died for you.”

  She stared at him across the table. “Morgon,” she whispered, warning him, but he shook his head.

  “It is true. Raederle could have told you. Or Yrth—he was there.” The wizard turned light, burned eyes toward him, then, and his voice shook. But he went on, returning the riddle of the harpist’s life to him unanswered, in exchange for nothing. “Ghisteslwchlohm gave Deth a choice between holding either Raederle or you as hostage while he forced me to Erlenstar Mountain. He chose to die instead. He forced Ghisteslwchlohm to kill him. He had no compassion for me… maybe because I could endure without it. But you and Raederle, he simply loved.” He stopped, breathing a little painfully as she dropped her face into her hands. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to—”

  “No.” But she was crying, he could tell, and he cursed himself. Yrth was still watching him; he wondered how the wizard was seeing, since Raederle’s face had disappeared behind her hair. The wizard made a stra
nge gesture, throwing up one open hand to the light, as if he were yielding something to Morgon. He reached out, touched the air at Morgon’s back, and the starred harp leaped out of nothingness into his hands.

  The Morgol’s eyes went to Morgon as the first, sweet notes sounded, but his hands were empty. He was gazing at Yrth, words lumped like ice in his throat. The wizard’s big hands moved with a flawless precision over the strings he had tuned; tones of wind and water answered him. It was the harping out of a long, black night in Erlenstar Mountain, with all its deadly beauty; the harping kings across the realm had heard for centuries. It was the harping of a great wizard who had once been called the Harpist of Lungold, and the Morgol, listening silently, seemed only awed and a little surprised. Then the harpist’s song changed, and the blood ran completely out of her face.

  It was a deep, lovely, wordless song that pulled out of the back of Morgon’s memories a dark, misty evening above the Herun marshes, a fire ringed with faces of the Morgol’s guard, Lyra appearing soundlessly out of the night, saying something… He strained to hear her words. Then, looking at the Morgol’s white, numb face as she stared at Yrth, he remembered the song Deth had composed only for her.

  A shudder ran through Morgon. He wondered, as the beautiful harping drew to a close, how the harpist could possibly justify himself to her. His hands slowed, picked a final, gentle chord from the harp, then flattened on the strings to still them. He sat with his head bowed slightly over the harp, his hands resting above the stars. Firelight shivered over him, weaving patterns of light and shadow in the air. Morgon waited for him to speak. He said nothing; he did not move. Moments wore away; still he sat with the silence of trees or earth or the hard, battered face of granite; and Morgon, listening to it, realized that his silence was not the evasion of an answer, but the answer itself.

  He closed his eyes. His heart beat suddenly, painfully, in his throat. He wanted to speak, but he could not. The harpist’s silence circled him with the peace he had found deep in living things all over the realm. It eased through his thoughts, into his heart, so that he could not even think. He only knew that something he had searched for so long and so hopelessly had never, even in his most desperate moments, been far from his side.

  The harpist rose then, his weary, ancient face the wind-swept face of a mountain, the scarred face of the realm. His eyes held the Morgol’s for a long moment, until her face, so white it seemed translucent, shook, and she stared blindly down at the table. Then he moved to Morgon, slipped the harp back onto his shoulder. Morgon felt as from a dream the light, quick movements. He seemed to linger for a moment; his hand touched Morgon’s face very gently. Then, walking toward the fire, he melted into its weave.

  14

  MORGON MOVED THEN, unbound from the silence. He cast with his mind into the night, but everywhere he searched he found only its stillness. He rose. Words seemed gripped in his chest and in his clenched hands, as if he dared not let them go. The Morgol seemed as reluctant to speak. She stirred a little, stiffly, then stilled again, gazing down at a star of candlelight reflected on the table. The blood came back into her face slowly. Watching her expression change, Morgon found his voice.

  “Where did he go?” he whispered. “He spoke to you.”

  “He said—he said that he had just done the only foolish thing in his very long life.” Her hands moved, linked themselves; she frowned down at them, concentrating with an effort. “That he had not intended for you to know him until you had gathered enough power to fight for yourself. He left because he is a danger to you now. He said—other things.” She shook her head slightly, then spoke again. “He said that he had not realized there was a limit to his own endurance.”

  “Wind Plain. He’ll be in Ymris.”

  She raised her eyes then, but she did not argue. “Find him, Morgon. No matter how dangerous it is for both of you. He has been alone long enough.”

  “I will.” He turned, knelt beside Raederle. She was staring into the fire; he brushed at the reflection of a flame on her face. She looked at him. There was something ancient, fierce, only half-human in her eyes, as if she had seen into the High One’s memories. He took her hand. “Come with me.”

  She stood up. He linked their minds, cast far into the Herun night until he touched a stone he remembered on the far side of the marshes. As Lyra entered the hall, bringing his supper, he took one step toward her and vanished.

  They stood together in the mists, seeing nothing but a shadowy whiteness, like a gathering of wraiths. Morgon sent his awareness spiralling outward, out of the mists, through the low hills, far across them, farther than he had ever loosed his mind before. His thoughts anchored in the gnarled heart of a pine. He pulled himself toward it.

  Standing beside it, in the wind-whipped forests between Herun and Ymris, he felt his overtaxed powers suddenly falter. He could barely concentrate; his thoughts seemed shredded by wind. His body, to which he had been paying only sporadic attention, was making imperative demands. He was shivering; he kept remembering the smell of hot meat Lyra had brought him. Pieces of the harpist’s life kept flashing into his mind. He heard the fine, detached voice speaking to kings, to traders, to Ghisteslwchlohm, riddling always, not with his words, but with all he did not say. Then one memory seared through all Morgon’s thoughts, shaking a sound from him. He felt the north wind whittle at his bones.

  “I nearly killed him.” He was almost awed at his own blundering. “I tracked the High One all the way across the realm to kill him.” Then a sharp, familiar pain bore into his heart. “He left me in Ghisteslwchlohm’s hands. He could have killed the Founder with half a word. Instead, he harped. No wonder I never recognized him.”

  “Morgon, it’s cold.” Raederle put her arm around him; even her hair felt chill against his face. He tried to clear his mind, but the winds wept into it, and he saw the harpist’s face again, staring blindly at the sky.

  “He was a Master…”

  “Morgon.” He felt her mind grope into his. He let it come, surprised. The sense of her quieted him; her own thoughts were very clear. He drew apart from her, looked through the darkness into her face.

  “You were never that angry for my sake.”

  “Oh, Morgon.” She held him again. “You said it yourself: you endure, like the hard things of the realm. He needed you that way, so he left you to Ghisteslwchlohm. I’m saying it badly…” she protested, as his muscles tensed. “You learned to survive. Do you think it was easy for him? Harping for centuries in Ghisteslwchlohm’s service, waiting for the Star-Bearer?”

  “No,” he said after a moment, thinking of the harpist’s broken hands. “He used himself as mercilessly as he used me. But for what?”

  “Find him. Ask him.”

  “I can’t even move,” he whispered. Her mind touched his again; he let his thoughts rest finally in her tentative hold. He waited patiently while she worked, exploring across distance. She touched him finally. He moved without knowing where he was going, and he began to understand the patience and trust he had demanded of her. They did not go very far, he sensed, but he waited wearily, gratefully, while she found her way step by step across the forests. By dawn, they had reached the north border of Ymris. And there, as the red sun of storms and ill winds rose in the east, they rested.

  They flew over Marcher as carrion crows. The rough, hilly borderland seemed quiet; but in the late afternoon, the crows spied a band of armed men guarding a line of trade-carts lumbering toward Caerweddin. Morgon veered down toward them. He caught one of the warrior’s mind as he landed on the road, to avoid being attacked when he changed shape. He drew the sword out of its sheath of air, held the stars up as the man stared at him. They flared uneasily in the grey light.

  “Morgon of Hed,” the warrior breathed. He was a grizzled, scarred veteran; his eyes, shadowed and bloodshot, had gazed across the dawn and deadly twilight of many fields. He halted the train of cars behind him and dismounted. The men behind were silent.

  “I
need to find Yrth,” Morgon said, “Or Aloil. Or Astrin Ymris.”

  The man touched the stars on his upraised sword with a curious gesture, almost a ritual of fealty. Then he blinked as a gor-crow landed on Morgon’s shoulder. He said, “I am Lien Marcher, cousin of the High Lord of Marcher. I don’t know Yrth. Astrin Ymris is in Caerweddin; he could tell you where Aloil is. I’m taking arms and supplies to Caerweddin, for whatever good they’ll do there. If I were you, Star-Lord, I would not show an eyelash in this doomed land. Let alone three stars.”

  “I’ve come to fight,” Morgon said. The land whispered to him, then, of law, legends, the ancient dead beneath his feet, and his own body seemed to yearn toward the shape of it. The man’s eyes ran over his lean face, the rich, worn tunic that seemed mildly absurd in those dangerous, wintry hills.

  “Hed,” he said. A sudden, amazed smile broke through the despair in his eyes. “Well. We’ve tried everything else. I would offer to take you with me, Lord, but I think you’re safer on your own. There is only one man Astrin might want to see more than you, but I wouldn’t want to lay any bets on that.”

  “Heureu. He’s still missing.”

  The man nodded wearily. “Somewhere in the realm between the dead and the living. Not even the wizard can find him. I think—”

  “I can find him,” Morgon said abruptly. The man was silent, the smile in his eyes wiped away by a naked, unbearable hope.

  “Can you? Not even Astrin can, and his dreams are full of Heureu’s thoughts. Lord, what—what are you, that you can stand there shivering in the cold and have me believing in your power? I survived the carnage on Wind Plain. Some nights when I wake from my own dreams, I wish I had died there.” He shook his head; his hand moved to Morgon again, then dropped without touching him. “Go, now. Take your stars out of eyesight. Find your way safely to Caerweddin. Lord, hurry.”