The Riddle and the Rune

by Grace Chetwin

  With a slight scratching sound, Acorn darted down the tree to sit at his feet. The hole in the oak was snug, and small, and unoccupied. Maybe, Acorn said pointedly, they could have a last supper together, a sort of housewarming.

  “With pleasure,” Gom said. He set down a chunk of bread before the squirrel who ate quickly, and waited for more.

  “You’re very kind,” Acorn said. “And wise, too, for it never hurts to make a friend.”

  Gom smiled at his companion’s patent flattery. But he took Acorn’s hint that he might need help one day quite seriously. Many times on Windy Mountain small creatures had helped Gom—even helped to save his life on occasion, just as he’d helped them in return whenever he could. It was hardly likely that this squirrel would be of any service to him, though, for at dawn Gom would be on his way again. Still, he gave Acorn more of his precious bread. Then, thinking to give the squirrel a special treat, he opened the bag of sunflower seeds. Inside the bag was a little bundle wrapped in cotton. Curious, Gom unfolded it, and into his palm rolled four silver pieces.

  He spread them out, tears pricking somewhere back of his nose.

  Hort and Mudge had known he’d not accept money, and so they’d hidden it there—and he knew why. That couple were even now sitting at their supper table, thinking him securely settled in the Bragget inn for the night.

  He rewrapped the coins, feeling uncomfortable. Those two kind folk had little enough money to go wasting on him. He slipped the bundle in his pocket, then on second thought, put it back in the satchel, on its own.

  He looked up to find Acorn staring fixedly at the sunflower seeds. Gom shook out a handful, only too glad to share his food as he and Stig had always done.

  As they ate, darkness fell. Overhead, branch and creeper wafted gently in the wind, and through them twinkled a tiny star or two. Acorn, swallowing his last seed, bade Gom good night, and ran up the tree.

  Gom sat for a while longer, looking up into the waving creepers, enjoying the dark, the sounds around him: some last sleepy bird calls, the chirp of crickets. A family of raccoons went by, on their way out to take supper. Reassured, Gom leaned back and closed his eyes contentedly. Even though he was without bed or shelter, it was good to be among trees again.

  He reached for the rune, and, on touching it, thought he felt a faint vibration. He sat up eagerly, put the rune to his ear. Nothing. Not to worry, he told himself, encouraged. He really had felt something, he was sure: a tiny, promising sign of reawakening.

  Run, run, Acorn cried. You're sitting in a trap! The squirrel flagged him with a quivering tail, and fled down inside the oak. As Acorn disappeared, the tangled creepers overhead came alive and began to writhe like a skein of adders. Before Gom could move, they slithered over his arms, his chest, pinning him down among the tree roots. Then, still curling in and out, they meshed into a living net, enclosing him.

  A large hand grasped the mouth of the net, hoisted it into the air, and hung him from an overhead branch.

  “Help!” Gom shouted. "Let me down!”

  The death's-head stared in on him, two dark eye sockets set in a bone-white skull. As Gom stared back at it, the skull grew brighter, and brighter, exploding into silver light, filling him with terror.

  Gom squeezed his eyes shut against sunlight flashing on his face down through the branches overhead. He stayed quite still for a moment, caught up in the horror of his nightmare. He tried to sit up, but found with a shock that he couldn’t. He pushed out with his hands to feel rough mesh all about him, hemming him in.

  He opened his eyes in alarm. He was doubled up, knees to chin, suspended high above the ground, in a net of the sort that the Clack farmers sometimes used to capture live quail. He went still as a wild thing caught in a snare. Had he somehow fallen asleep by one of these traps and gotten caught up in it? If so, then he must call the farmer out.

  Gom took a deep breath to shout, but before he could let it go, he caught sight of a figure sitting against the trunk of the tree below him.

  His breath held. He knew those bright green breeches, and the black velvet hat with the bright red plume waving above it.

  He reached for his mother’s rune, and cried out then.

  For his neck was bare.

  Chapter Eight

  "OHO! You’re just in time to say good-bye.” Zamul sprang up, popping a last morsel of food into his mouth and batting crumbs off his hands with obvious satisfaction. “I’m so glad we had a chance to make magic together after all. ’’ The conjuror put a hand to his ear, drew out the rune with a great flourish, and held it up by the thong.

  The small black stone dangled, swinging like a pendulum, marking the next few stricken moments, while Zamul waited, watching Gom expectantly.

  At last Gom found his voice. “Magic? Cheap, swindling, thieving trickery, you mean.” He tried to sound scornful, but fear cracked his voice. Horvin, Gom’s brother, had once snatched the rune from him and had come to grief within moments of taking it. Nothing bad seemed to be happening to Zamul. Why? Was the rune’s strange deadness the reason? If so, thought Gom soberly, he had only himself to blame.

  “Trickery, you call it?” Zamul sounded amused. “Perhaps it is, but soon, little man, I’ll make magic of quite a different kind, after I’ve delivered this.” He twirled the rune around by its thong, so fast that it looked like a dark gray circle.

  “Delivered it where?” Gom stared down at the dark circle, transfixed.

  “Now wouldn’t that be telling?” Zamul caught up the

  stone in his fist, then bending down, he retrieved a large pack lying alongside Gom’s and shouldered it. “Good day, Master Gom. Oh, and thanks for the extra supplies.” Zamul took up Gom’s satchel and shouldered it, too. Then, swinging the rune jauntily, he began to walk off. “Wait!” Gom eyed the rune in anguish.

  Zamul paused, half-turning.

  “You might at least let me down!”

  “So that you can trot after me, little man? Not likely.” “But I’ll starve to death.”

  Zamul grinned up at him. “You think I’d let you do that? I, who could have slit your throat while you slept? No. There’s a croft a mile over the hill. The farmer’s sure to be along this way, some time before fall, anyway. He’ll fetch you down—if there’s anything left of you by then.” Chuckling, Zamul strode off through the trees.

  “Wait!” Gom shouted again at Zamul’s retreating back. “Who sent you?”

  There was no reply.

  Gom took a deep breath and shouted, really loudly this time. “Help! Help me, somebody!”

  With a flurry of wings and loud protest, a lone pheasant started from the coppice. That was all. If farmer lived about as Zamul had said, he was too far off to hear.

  Remembering Acorn, Gom began to chatter urgently, then stopped. That was the worst he could do. Distress calls only warned squirrels to lie low and stay away until danger was past.

  He pressed his lips tightly together. He thought of the creek back home on Windy Mountain, and became as old Leadbelly squatting on a lily pad, unmoving save for his fat green sides going in and out with his breath, his eyes swiveling as a damsel fly came closer, closer in the still quiet. He saw himself sitting there, the fly darting to and fro, zigzagging nearer, tempting him to move, and he resisting, waiting for the right moment...

  Around him leaves rustled softly, and out in the field the lapwings flapped over rising wheat.

  Gom tried to think who else might help him, a creature with friendly teeth who could climb. One of the raccoons? They’d be asleep by now. Which left Acorn.

  Oh, what a situation he was in! But it only served him right, Gom thought, twisting his fingers in growing anxiety. He remembered the rune’s faint stirring. The little stone had tried to warn him, even though he didn’t deserve it, and what had he done? Carelessly allowed himself to fell asleep!

  Gom recalled his bad dream of the night before. No, not all dream, and not all the night before. Some of it had in fact happened, and onl
y minutes since. He really was caught in a net and hanging from an oak.

  And the adders?

  You wouldn’t seek an adder’s company... Carrick had said about Zamul.

  Gom’s own mind had been trying to warn him of danger, turning creeper into adder, even as Zamul was hoisting him up.

  What of the skull?

  That had been on Zamul’s bracelet, as Gom would guess, remembering its silvery shine. The bracelet connecting the conjuror with the death’s-head of Gom’s vision and the skull-bird back on the plain. Zamul’s master. Hadn’t Zamul boasted that he’d be practicing “magic of a different sort” after delivering the rune? The skull had sent the conjuror after him, as it had sent that great gray bird.

  Where was the skull—or whatever power had manifested it—now? And what did it want with the rune? Power? To harm Harga in some way?

  Or both?

  Oh how could he have let himself get so taken! Forgetting his resolve, he began to struggle desperately, setting the net bouncing, and the leafy branches creaking above him.

  Acorn appeared outside his hole, tail bushed out, and twitching.

  “If you don’t watch out, you’ll bring this whole house down! Whatever’s going on?” The squirrel turned about, peering warily above and below.

  “Will you please get me out of here?” Gom called.

  Acorn ran down the tree trunk, and, clinging by his hind legs, he hung upside down, nose to the net, whiskers quivering. “Will I get breakfast?”

  “Breakfast?” Gom’s outraged cry sent Acorn scurrying back out of range. “Zamul took everything I have! Hey— didn’t you say that we were friends? Come back here!” he shouted, but the squirrel had vanished.

  Gom cursed himself for his quick, sharp tongue. He wriggled about, trying to squeeze his hands through the meshing, to reach the rope that bound the net to the tree branch.

  “That won’t get you far!”

  Acorn was back, hanging upside down once more, his tail curled around the neck of the net like a furry collar.

  “Go away,” Gom snapped. “If you won’t help, don’t hinder. Some friend you’ve turned out to be!”

  “I only went to see if it was safe,” Acorn said. “You shouldn’t blame folk for being—careful.” The squirrel, sounding hurt, nevertheless began to gnaw at the meshing.

  Gom watched, his anger, his resentment, giving place to shame at having judged Acorn so rashly.

  Six, seven, eight strands of the netting broke and Gom could push his head through the hole. A few more, and Gom’s shoulders followed. A few more still and Gom was able to squirm out and up onto the branch, leaving the remains of the net dangling like an empty cocoon.

  “Thanks, Acorn,” he said.

  “Pray don’t mention it,” the squirrel replied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to breakfast. Do you know—there are acorns everywhere! They’re not exactly fresh, of course, but they’re still good eating.” With a twist of his gray furry body, Acorn ran down the tree trunk and looped away through the undergrowth.

  Gom followed him to the ground, and searching anxiously for his staff, found it lying behind the grandfather oak.

  Dusting it down, Gom wondered how to find Zamul. How long had the man been gone? It seemed like hours. He went to the edge of the coppice and looked out.

  Wind blew upon him, ruffling his hair. Where to now, young one?

  “Maybe you could tell me that,” Gom said. “There was a man in that coppice a little while back—”

  The one who raised you to a higher station in life? Wind sniggered. Don't get so huffy, Wind went on, as Gom scowled. He's going directly northward, I know, for I've had such fun trying to blow him back my way. I'm off south, you see, to visit cousin Zephyr for a while.

  Northward. That certainly made sense. Wind was always icy when he blew from there. He thought of the vision of the death’s-head back on the plain. Of its paralyzing cold. Yes. Zamul might very well have gone that way. Remembering Hort, Gom took his bearings. The sun rose in the east, so Hort said. Gom turned to face it, picturing himself back in the farmyard, looking out over the dairy roof. If that was east... Gom took a quarter turn to his left to face Hort’s front gate... then there was north, just as Wind had said.

  North, he thought, with a tiny prick of excitement. So his two omens hadn’t been so wrong after all! His excitement died. Wasn’t he getting ahead of himself? Solve the riddle, the sparrow had told him, and Harga will come. It had sounded simple enough. But now with the rune gone, the last thing he wanted was to solve it, and the last person he wanted to see was his mother. Whatever would she say if she knew? If this were his “path of experience,” he was treading it backward!

  He gazed at the northern horizon, a low, wavy rim of hills. The rune had gone that way. And not only the rune, he thought grimly. So had the pack Mudge had given him, full of good things, including his father’s old green water bottle. And precious silver pieces. It hurt to think of Hort and Mudge’s hard-earned money in that rogue’s pocket. Thank goodness, Gom patted his own jacket pocket, that he still had Carrick’s map.

  He gripped the staff and moved off, but after a few steps he pulled up short. There he went, rushing off again without thinking. Hadn’t Stig always cautioned him not to go anywhere without preparation, no matter how much haste he was in? “Your very life may depend on it one day,” his father had insisted, how many times?

  Gom turned back to the coppice thoughtfully. When he caught up with Zamul, how would he get back the rune? Wait his chance and knock Zamul senseless with the staff? Gom tested it against his palm. It was certainly heavy enough, and Gom did have the knack of adding weight to it.

  No, he thought, setting the staff upright again. Striking down a man in cold blood would be wrong. Stig had always taught him to shun violence. Only once had Gom seen Stig raise his hand to any man, and that had been in the heat of saving their lives. Furthermore, bad as Zamul was, he'd not killed Gom when he’d had the chance, but only caught him in a net.

  Gom ran back into the coppice.

  A few minutes later he reemerged, rolling the damaged net into a tight bundle, and tying it with the rope that Zamul had used to suspend it from the oak branch. Zamul, fancying himself the hunter, had gloated over his catch. A mistake, which the man might yet regret. For now the hunter was the hunted, and with luck—maybe the catcher would be hoist in his own trap!

  The net tucked securely under his arm, Gom called farewell to Acorn, and leaning once more into Wind, hurried north.

  After an hour's travel over the ever-rolling hills, Gom made out a ragged, misty band along the horizon: mountains, high ones, higher than any he'd ever seen in his life.

  Another hour, and the ground was rising sharply and becoming rocky and uneven. Not easy territory for Zamul, it seemed, for Gom caught up to the man so soon that he almost fell over him.

  The lakelander was sitting on the ground, opening Gom's pack.

  Gom dodged behind a pile of rocks to take a better look. Only just in time as Zamul’s head came up. Had the man heard him? Seen him, perhaps?

  Several minutes went by before Gom dared peek out again.

  The conjuror was eating an apple. One of Mudge’s apples, by the look of it. Gom’s belly rumbled.

  Stig’s green glass bottle and two small bundles lay untouched beside Gom’s pack: the bag of sunflower seeds, and another, wrapped in butter muslin. Gom’s mouth twisted wryly. Zamul had no taste for Mudge’s waybread, it seemed. The regular bread, the cheese, and the honey cake, however, were gone.

  As Gom eyed the remains of his rations, the conjuror set down the apple and, taking the rune from his pocket, examined it closely. Surely—it wasn’t vibrating for Zamul? He watched his mother’s stone dangling idly from the conjuror’s fingers, wanting to rush out and snatch it back. But he didn’t. Coward, he thought in disgust.

  To Gom’s surprise, Zamul suddenly leapt up onto a nearby boulder, his hands raised.

  “Ladies and gentlemen.
”

  Gom blinked and looked around. The conjuror appeared to be addressing empty space.

  Zamul bowed low to his imaginary audience, then raised his hand high above his head, the little stone flashing in the bright sunlight. Enclosing it in his fist, he turned around three times, then opened out his hand.

  Gom caught his breath. The rune was gone, and in its place was Mudge’s apple!

  Zamul bowed right and left, displaying the apple above the heads of his unseen audience. Gom still didn’t breathe.

  With a laugh, Zamul clapped his hands together over the apple. When they parted again, the fruit was gone, and there was Harga’s rune!

  Gom let out his breath. Conjury! So vain the man was, he thought angrily, watching Zamul preen himself and turn about to acknowledge his imaginary crowd. If only Gom had a few of those tricks, he’d soon whisk the stone out of Zamul’s hand.

  But he hadn’t.

  Zamul spoke up.

  “You see before you a stone of priceless worth. Ah, you may well laugh; but I speak true. This stone, unprepossessing as it looks, contains magic of the highest quality. How do I know, you say?” Zamul puffed out his chest. “My master told me so, and he”—the conjuror leaned forward and dramatically lowered his voice—“will be the most powerful being in all Ulm, once he has this.” Zamul held the rune up by its thong, then twirled the thong around his fingers, winding it up until the stone rested on his palm.

  Watching him, Gom was minded again of his brother Horvin, who’d snatched the rune from him so long ago. Horvin had been arrogant like that, and overweaning. A blustering bully. And a coward, when pressed. Gom frowned. Zamul was also a coward, come to think. The way the big man had backed down from Hort and gone off to sulk. And squeamish. Why, Zamul had taken Gom asleep, and without hurting a hair on his head. He wouldn’t anymore likely offer Gom physical harm now, would he? Gom felt a touch of hope. Perhaps there was a chance after all of face-to-face victory. He sighed. Not really. Zamul might be a coward, but so was he, and much the smaller of the two!