The Riddle and the Rune

by Grace Chetwin

  The rain had stopped temporarily, and a watery sun shone down through dark, bulging clouds. Over Mudge’s objections, Gom put on his own jacket and walked Carrick to the top of the hill.

  As they passed through the gate, Gom turned up his collar. He smiled at himself. He was growing soft, down in the lowlands.

  “You all right, Gom?” Carrick asked, seeing the collar go up.

  Gom nodded. “I grew up in this kind of weather. It’s just that I’ve been ill, I suppose. You don’t mind the rain either.”

  Carrick grinned. “Tinkers get used to it. It’s their way of life.”

  Tinkers, and peddlers... and conjurors, thought Gom.

  “Tell me—” he asked. “That conjuror at the fair— do you know him?”

  “Zamul?” Carrick was not smiling now. “Aye, I know him well enough. I’d as soon as not bad tongue any man, but—” He frowned. “I was most surprised to find him here. I’ve never known him stray from the lakelands, where fools are thick on the ground and a new one is born every minute. He's a trickster, and a rogue, who gives conjury a bad name. Seeing him here made me wonder. There has to be a purpose, which won’t bode well for some poor body. Why do you ask? "

  Gom, much disturbed by Carrick's words, thought quickly what to say. “I wondered how one learned those tricks.”

  Carrick stopped, his frown deepening. “Lad, if you would learn that craft, then find another master. You wouldn't seek an adder's company, would you, knowing of its poisonous fangs? Neither would any wise man get too close to Zamul.” He laughed, as though to soften his words. “My imagination runs away with me. What could Zamul possibly want of you? You’ve neither treasure for him to trick you out of, nor promise of any. Truly, one small question has loosed a torrent of words about your head! Forgive me.”

  “Is Zamul still in the village?” Gom asked him.

  “Not to my knowledge. He left the inn this morning. The noise he made arguing his account with mine host would have awakened the dead. The last I saw him, he was walking down the main street toward the north road. And good riddance, say I, on behalf of Green Vale.” They reached the rise. There, Carrick stopped and held out his hand. “Master Gom, I wish you good journeying, and should we meet again, then shall we have a merry time.”

  Gom took Carrick’s hand and shook it. “Good-bye.” Wistfully, he watched the tinker stride away. He’d have so enjoyed going with Carrick.

  As it was...

  Gom picked up a pebble and aimed for a nearby puddle. The pebble hit its mark with a small splash, and disappeared.

  ... there was the rune.

  He turned back down the hill, thinking of Zamul. Had the conjuror really gone, as Carrick thought, or was he lying in wait somewhere?

  A sudden cloudburst sent Gom scurrying back to the house. When he got inside, Mudge made him change his clothes and sit by the fire.

  Gom stared into the flames, brooding. Carrick had been surprised to find Zamul there. Something was up, the tinker had said, to bring such a one so far out of the way. Not that it concerned Gom, as Carrick thought. You've neither treasure for him to trick you out of, nor promise of any. But Carrick didn’t know about the rune, did he?

  Zamul did, Gom was sure. Yet Zamul was only a conjuror, not a true magical man. He couldn’t have known about the rune by himself.

  Gom put his hands to his brow, thinking of the death’s-head and the bird. If Harga’s riddle weren’t enough, now there was this puzzle to tax him too.

  While Gom moped around the house, debating with himself whether or not to go, he grew stronger. He began to enjoy the rest, to eat more and more of the good food that Mudge set before him, and to relish the comfortable company of her hearth. The fear of Zamul faded, and life began to feel like the good old days when Stig had been alive.

  Mudge made him over a set of Hort’s old clothes, and in these he went with Hort about the farmholding: a large area extending over four hills, on which grazed plump gray sheep and half a dozen sleek brown cows.

  After elevenses one day, Mudge gave Gom a deep wicker basket, and sent him to collect the hen’s eggs from the yard. Gom was glad of the chance to speak with the fowl in their own tongue.

  As he stepped into the first coop, the hens crowded close, their sharp beaks threatening. “What do you want?” Gom shocked them by answering in kind.

  “Mudge’s sent me for eggs,” he said. He raised the basket to show them.

  “Eggs!” they squawked indignantly, getting over their surprise. “Night and day we work hard laying, and all for nothing. That woman takes them all!”

  Sympathizing, Gom set down the basket and squatted down among them.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “For every five I take, I’ll leave one in the straw. Deal?”

  There was a squawking, and a clucking, and a scratching, and a shaking of bright red combs, then they shouted all at once: “Deal!”

  With that, Gom gathered up white and brown and speckled eggs, some still warm and sticky with tiny feathers clinging to them, wispy scraps of down. Every sixth one he carefully laid back in the straw.

  “Funny,” Mudge said, as Gom stepped back into the house. “They made such a noise that I nearly came to rescue you. Then they all went quiet. Whatever happened?”

  “Oh, we just passed the time of day,” Gom replied, handing over the basket. Mudge laughed, not remotely guessing that he spoke the truth. “I really enjoyed that,” he added. “May I do it again?”

  “You’re a funny lad,” she said. “ ’Tis a thankless job that makes a body sneeze. As far as I’m concerned, you may do it every day from now on.”

  Hort was out, gone up the hillside, Mudge said, to inspect dry walls.

  Left to himself, Gom investigated the barn. Just inside were scattered wood bits, remnants of the winter logpile.

  Gom picked them over until he found the piece he wanted. A silvered, weathered piece, well seasoned. He ran his hands over it, feeling the grain. Here, it would be just right for a gray goose’s outstretched neck, here, the knotty bit was perfect for the head. And here, where it widened, would be the wings as the bird poised to fly.

  Yes, it would do well. He reached automatically for his knife. Not on him, of course. Muttering, he went into the house.

  Mudge let him have a couple of old kitchen blades, which he sharpened until they were bright and keen as new. A little more scavenging and he’d collected an old whetstone, a rasp, and some sand, to rub the wood clean and fetch up the grain. He worked away in the warm afternoon sun, doing his best just as though Stig were watching over him.

  By the end of the afternoon, the bird was already taking shape. He traced the flare of the wings with his fingertips. Stig would surely have been proud.

  “My,” Hort said, crossing the yard. “That’s a goose you’re making, just like you said. What a clever lad you are.”

  Gom put the carving things away, went with Hort to watch him clear a ditch, then, the shadows lengthening, he helped Hort bring in the cows. It would have been much easier to do it alone, for he’d simply have asked them to follow him, but he couldn’t, not in Hort’s hearing, so he did as the man did, switching a stick about, and whistling, and hupping, just as the farmers in Clack. A clumsy and awkward process, he thought, this working with animals without using their tongue.

  To Gom’s great delight, Hort even let him try his hand at milking, though by the time he’d half-filled a pail his fingers were too sore to pull more. He looked down at his hands. Strange. He’d been carving wood all afternoon without their once feeling tired. Evidently strength from one skill didn’t always help a body in another!

  Midway through that night, Gom awoke to rain driving hard against the skylight. Hort was bending over him, his finger to his lips.

  "Come on, lad," he whispered. “I need your help.”

  Gom got dressed, threw on Hort’s spare raincape, and followed him out into the storm. They crossed the yard, went out the gate and up the hill, each carrying a lanter
n.

  “There,” Hort cried, pointing.

  Halfway up the dark hillside huddled the darker mass of a ewe.

  Gom squatted with Hort and watched the birth of a spring lamb.

  "Here, Gom," Hort said, as the lamb emerged under the driving rain, “hold up your cape until we’ve got it on its feet.”

  Hort no sooner had the newborn upright, when the ewe got up and began to wander away.

  "Quick," Hort said, pulling the ewe down again. “Put the lamb to her while her scent is on it.”

  Gom picked up the little wet thing and moved it around to the ewe’s belly, where it began to suck noisily.

  They moved on.

  Gom almost fell over the next ewe.

  “Dead,” Hort shouted over the noise of the storm. Beside her, a little lamb bleated piteously. “We must find it another dam to suckle or it will foller!” Hort handed Gom his lantern, picked up the lamb, and strode off through the dark.

  Gom hurried after him, swinging the lanterns to light the way, the rain streaming off his face and down inside his clothes.

  “Over here, lad! Put them lanterns down!”

  Hort handed Gom the motherless lamb and stooped over another ewe who had just given birth. Hort stood up her newborn, set it to suckle.

  “Now, Gom.”

  Reaching for the orphan, Hort rubbed it in the ewe’s strong birth scent, then stood it to her belly also. A moment’s anxious wait while the ewe sniffed the newcomer, then she licked it, and let it in.

  Hort straightened up in relief.

  “Whew. That were a close ’un, Gom. Another hour and it’d have been too late to bond them. There’s three more around here, as I guess. Are you willing?”

  Gom nodded, regardless of the rain streaming over them. He worked away beside Hort, driven by the urgency of their task.

  It was almost dawn when they finished. They birthed not three, but seven more lambs that night. And thanks to Gom, Hort said gratefully, every one with a dam to suckle it. Gom fell onto his cot exhausted and slept until late morning.

  His first thought on waking was of Harga. Harga, who’d left the day he was bom. Too soon for a bonding.

  There was only Mandrik’s word for it that Harga ever wanted to see her youngest son again.

  And the riddle? The vision of the bear and the sparrow was fading fast. Maybe that had been but a dream, a kind of wish-fulfillment, after all.

  After that, he went about the farm every day, helping Hort, watching the lambs grow stronger, nurtured by their mothers’ milk and warmth.

  Every morning, he collected Mudge’s eggs, and soon he was carrying three baskets.

  Mudge was delighted—but puzzled.

  “Eh, lad,” she said. “Them hens’s taken to laying themselves silly. How do you do it?”

  “Secret,” he said. “Something I learned in Clack. Tell you one day.”

  Each night, he’d sit by the hearth, just as he used to do with Stig, carving away at the goose. After he had finished the carving, he polished its beak smooth with the sand, then oiled it all over until the wood fairly glowed. It was perfect, down to the last quill and feather.

  Gom found a small slate slab in the yard to mount it on.

  As he walked back to the house, Wind screeched, Haven’t you been here long enough? You look recovered to me. When are you moving on? It whipped the last fading blossoms off the trees and scattered them in Gom’s face, reminding Gom how late in spring it was.

  “Soon,” Gom said. “Soon.”

  How soon? Wind demanded.

  Without answering, Gom walked on, all the way to the farmhouse door.

  Coward! Wind shouted, slamming the door shut almost on Gom’s heels.

  What does Wind know? Gom asked himself, and set about fixing the carving firmly to its base.

  After supper, he stood it on the mantelshelf for Hort and Mudge.

  “Eh, lad, you’ve caught it exceeding well,” Hort said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up one fine morning to find it flown away!”

  Mudge tapped the stone base. “Don’t worry, Hort. Gom has it bedded down real safe.” Abruptly, she turned away. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I find that terrible sad.”

  That night Gom came suddenly awake. He’d been dreaming, about what he couldn’t remember, but he must have been weeping, for his face was wet. He lay staring up into the dark.

  Coward! Wind had called him. Not fair, not fair, he thought. And not true. Restlessly, he turned onto his side and as he turned, his hand caught in the rune’s leather thong. For nigh on two weeks now he’d ignored that stone, neither touching it, nor even thinking of it. It was almost as though it had melted from around his neck and disappeared. How honored and excited Gom had been to learn that Harga was the greatest wizard in Ulm. But now he felt only bitterness. What use was he to her, or she to him?

  Here in this house for the first time he was enjoying true motherly care, the sort of care his nine brothers and sisters had taken for granted every day of their childhood down in Clack. And it was good to have Mudge fuss over him, cook his meals and wash his clothes. So why, he thought, as he had a hundred times since the fair, should he now go running out to goodness knows where after a stranger who’d abandoned him on the day of his birth?

  On an impulse he took off the rune and flung it into the darkness. It landed with a clatter and slid across the floor.

  For a moment he lay rigid, feeling guilty, and not a little afraid, half-expecting something bad to happen.

  But nothing did.

  With a defiant shrug, he turned over and went to sleep.

  Chapter Six

  BRILLIANT sunshine shafted down through the little skylight, dappling the pantry’s whitewashed walls, bouncing on Gom’s eyelids, waking him up. He rose with a will, ate a huge breakfast, and went out onto the pasture with Hort to mend dry rock wall. Wind was cold and choppy, gusting in his face, at his back, butting him impatiently as the cows at milking time.

  After elevenses, Hort led Gom around to the back of the barn where he’d stacked a pile of fallen tree limbs, victims of the past winter’s gales. From the barn he brought out a large axe with a handle tall as Gom.

  “You’re the son of a woodcutter,” Hort said grinning. “Let’s see you swing this.”

  Gom took the axe handle, felt its smoothness. He lifted it, hefted it. Not so well balanced as Stig’s. And the blade was blunt and rusted. Frowning, he handed it back.

  “This axe needs sharpening,” he said. “Mudge couldn’t slice butter with it.”

  Hort laughed delightedly. “You’re right. Let’s see... there was a grindstone around here somewheres...”

  A short while later, Gom swung the new-shining blade and cleft a stout oak branch in two, releasing a strong and fragrant scent that brought back sharp memories of times gone by. A glade back up on Windy Mountain. A tidy stack of logs ready for loading into the cart. Stig leaning on his axe as Gom picked up stray branches for kindling.

  “What’s wrong, lad? That thing too much for you?” Hort’s brown eyes twinkled.

  Gom stared down at the brightness of the new-exposed wood grain.

  In Wood is kernel's secret essence known,

  And purpose comes to light.

  He ran a finger down the oak grain as if searching out its secret.

  “Lad? Lad, are you feeling all right?”

  Gom looked up to find Hort’s hand on his arm. “Yes, yes. I was only thinking.” He swung back the axe again and brought it down full force on the wood a second time, splitting off another log.

  Hort whistled in admiration.

  Gom swung again. And again. And as he swung, his muscles stirred to life, his body took up the old familiar movement patterns. It felt good, to be chopping wood once more. Faster and faster neat logs replaced untidy branches. Hort stacked them in the barn, marveling.

  “My, that was no idle claim of yourn,” Hort said, as Gom cleaned and oiled the axe. “I wouldn’t have looked for s
uch strength in a boy. How do you do it? With magic?”

  Gom smiled a little. “It’s neither magic, nor just strength.”

  “Well, I couldn’t have done thus,” Hort said. “And I’m a great big man.”

  “You’re also a sheep farmer,” Gom told him. “And not a woodcutter. You have your tricks, and we have ours. See.”

  Gom took the axe again and swung it back behind him and up over his head. “You swing the axe up, so. Then when you bring it down, you must pull in the handle toward you, tucking your elbows into your ribs, real sharp, like so.” Gom brought the axe over and down with a thwack that made Hort jump. “This way, the axe-head’s own weight works for you, as well as your arms, saving your strength quite well. Here, you try, Hort.”

  Gom handed Hort the axe.

  Hort tried once, twice, several times to do as Gom had done but it was a while before he began to get the knack.

  “My,” he said, “it makes it easier all right. But,” he added, putting the axe away, “it’s fair tricky pulling that blade in close like that. One slip and a man could lose his toes!”

  Gom walked back to the house in silence, his hands in his pockets, too minded of his father to trust himself to speak.

  “You should a’ seen him,” Hort said at supper. “I nearly came to get you, Mudge, but then you might’ve made the lad stop. My, he were that strong, with his arms going up and down, reg’lar as the pump in the yard. How do you do it, lad, I said. It must be magic. Not so, he said. ’Tis more an art, like sheep farming. And he shows me how. All these years I’ve been chopping that wood stack all wrong. No wonder I’ve allus pulled my back.”

  “Art or no, it still takes muscle. You didn’t let him strain hisself, Hort?”

  “No, my gal, I did not. Now, lad, tell us something about them other folk where you come from,” Hort said, trying as usual to avert Mudge’s fussing. “Tell us what they’re like and how they live.”

  Gom told them. Of Bok, the butcher, of Maister Craw, the greengrocer, of Pinkie, the blacksmith, and of Winker, the host of The Wild Green Man. Of the rows of small, neat houses with their small, neat gardens. Of daily life and festivals when Maister Sproggins played his bagpipes to make the townsfolk dance.