The Riddler's Gift: First Tale of the Lifesong (The Tale of the Lifesong)

by Greg Hamerton

  Yet there it was. The ball of argent fire hurtled downward. Closer, closer, until Twardy was sure it had come too low. Horse shied, and tossed her head in her traces.

  The essence of Chaos, the wildfire of Ametheus, like a tangle of silver snakes all fighting to be the first to find their prey. Zarost remembered when he had first seen such a mark in the sky.

  Kinsfall, or Kings Meet as it was known in that time, had been a beautiful city, the centre of the gracious Three Kingdoms of Oldenworld. Set on the northern limit of the long shadow of the mighty Winterblade range, King’s Meet had been a fair place to live, so mild in winter the snow never touched the smoothed brownstone streets, so mellow in summer you could smell the distant Sailor’s Sea almost every afternoon as the cooling breeze swept across the golden Moral plains. Twardy Zarost had loved the place almost as soon as he had arrived as a young pilgrim from Kaskanzr. He had sought solace from the disastrous end of his family, anything to keep the visions of blood and blades from returning to his mind, and so he had traced along the strengthening network of magic, from Kaskanzr through Koraman, into Moral, and to the origin at King’s Meet.

  There he found what he was seeking, for not only did the respected rulers convene here for regular sessions in the Royal Halls, but so did the Wise, those men and women of the secret lore, although their meeting place was far less public. The College was where the most important decisions were made, some said it was the heart of Moral Kingdom. It was a tall cluster of artfully angled buildings that were set on the slopes of Northing Torr so as to catch the sun with their gold-veined walls. And it was here that the acolytes came from all of Oldenworld to complete their quest for knowledge, for it was written upon bound pages and sealed parchments and even engraved on the delicate chromed-steel leaf, every study and practice of the Five Lores known, and all collected in the Loreward, the learning available for those who could prove themselves worthy, those who could unriddle the riddles. Some even said the forbidden Sixth Lore, that of Chaos, was written of too, but Zarost had seen little evidence of it in his years of sneaking around the shadowed halls. Perhaps that was their failing, Zarost thought. Perhaps they really had needed the rude words of Chaos in their sacrosanct library, at least to prepare for the threat such thinking posed to their precious Order, if for nothing else. Ah, they had been ill-prepared for Chaos when it had come.

  Ametheus struck like a hunter. That conflagration of silver threads fell upon the College first, and twisted through the walls as if they were made of butter and the threads were of hot steel.

  Zarost was on his way to the College, he was returning a book nobody knew that he had, the book of Transformation and Restitution; he was not a block shy of the College doors. The air was sweet with the scent of summer, it had been a quiet night, a soft night, a lover’s night. He still remembered it, the bright flash. The priceless book falling from his hands to the street.

  A roar hammered his cheeks as it passed away from the College. The angled roofs and walls disintegrated, and Zarost knew that within its hallowed bowels, slabs of heavy stone dropped on the collected people. The tale of their defence was carried out by few survivors. A few Matter-masters bonded the blocks into new forms at once, but they could not repel the fall of loose debris. Some Energy-adepts tried to repel the momentum of ruin with an uncontrolled burst of fine essence, but they killed themselves and their colleagues in their desperation as the raw energy tore apart the bonds of everything nearby. A young novice threw up a wall of dark motes, though what she had been trying to achieve using such an elementary spell of the first axis Zarost had never guessed. Some traces of wizard’s advanced Order-spells escaped from the College before the silver dust-cloud billowed out from its basement, but their efforts were wasted. Fighting alone they could not triumph. Even on that first day, Ametheus wielded power the equal of two wizards acting in unison, or even three.

  The rest of the collegiates were students, not even sensitive enough to recognise the danger before it swept through them. They tasted the wildfire, it infected their lungs and bodies as it sought through the passageways and halls.

  Screams rose from within the crumbling ruins. The silver magic had done more than turn stone to grey sand. Zarost cursed himself for a lily-livered coward, but his traitorous feet backed away. Only later did he learn how wise his instinct had been.

  They emerged from the swelling ash like a plague. Cords of movement flickered across the first one’s skin, a tattered web of Chaos feasting upon living flesh. Zarost recognised her, a pretty novice from Orenland, or she had been pretty, once. Where the Chaos touched, her body changed, bursting with the growths of a rampant cancer. Eyes formed all down her cheeks and upon her throat, lidless eyes, mucuos-rimmed and wet like a layer of fish eggs and glue within her skin. The eyes twitched, searching in conflicting ways, and the woman ran, screaming, off the raised arm of stone beside the stairs. It was a mercy that she broke her neck—she did not have to see what came behind her.

  Nightmare shapes crowded through the smoke issuing from the door. A figure with a bull’s horned head tore at the collar of its tunic until it had split the tight fabric from its thickening neck. Its hands grew leathery and black-nailed. It bayed, and gripped the nearest body roughly by the hair. The bull-headed freak bayed again, and bit into the throat of its captive.

  One of them ran, a blurred figure, but it tripped and broke upon the upper level, and washed down the stairs as a greenish grey spill, nothing more. An old wizard, one of the founders of the College, was casting Order-spells upon himself, but to no avail. His legs joined at the knees, then at the ankles, then he seemed stuck to the ground. The bull-headed murderer closed on him, as other creatures flocked by. Zarost couldn’t watch any more.

  But Ametheus was not yet done with the capital of the ordered kingdoms of Oldenworld.

  The second and the third wildfire strike came, and Zarost’s eyes burned with the visions of King’s Meet. Those beautiful buildings crumpled and fell, the fair streets became rivers of malignant ash, but the worst was to watch the people set upon, innocents and nobles, good people all, taken by the new terror, the magic that forced change, the magic that warped the living and loosened the structure of things that stood still, magic that slipped through the patterns of any known defence and left the survivors to become insane at their own transformation.

  The Sorcerer had reached into the heart of a civilisation and as near as ripped out its life. The College was buried in wildfire, and no one dared to ever disturb the remains after that day. People ran, Zarost ran, feeling an awful weight of loss in his gut, for the sacred Loreward had been destroyed with the College. His chance to become Wise was gone—without the books, there was little hope for him to study any further knowledge to advance in ability. Little hope for him, or anyone else.

  In that judgement alone, he had been wrong. He had learned a thing or two in the long years which had passed since then, the most important being to trust his own ability to reason things out, to unriddle the riddle.

  So he sat atop his cart on that puddled road in Eyri, with Horse straining at her traces, and the willows dripping, and he watched the approaching wildfire, and he thought.

  The Sorcerer had no reason to concentrate anything vigorous upon Eyri; nothing more than the random sparks that his network threw off everywhere in Oldenworld. The Gyre believed that Ametheus was still fooled by the Shield, and his attention was in his own realm, in the Lowlands. When Zarost had last seen the Gyre, they had been all aflutter about a spell far worse than wildfire. There had been rumours, from Thren Fernigan, or somewhere equally distant in the Oldenworld Lowlands, just rumours and broken accounts, of a crushing empty worm of ruin, a horror they had no name for, a fatal spell beyond the Gyre’s ken which tore through earth and air and flesh alike, writhing through all life, wrangling death in its wake. Zarost hadn’t shared the Gyre’s concern; no spell endured forever, especially the knots woven under the erratic hand of the Sorcerer. That magical invention wo
uld run up against the vast bulwark of the Winterblade range. It didn’t concern him, his task was in Eyri, and he had told them so. The Gyre had allowed him to return to the blessed realm, if only because their need for his success in Eyri was more urgent than ever.

  They were wrong about the rumoured worm of ruin, Zarost thought. It would never cross the Heartlands. It would never reach Eyri.

  Yet Chaos-magic streaked down at him. By the burning crow! it was too close. He clutched his hat.

  The falling star exploded. An expanding ring of angry silver flame tore through the sky, heading for the horizon.

  Zarost sighed with relief. Just an ordinary wildfire strike. There would be devastation, true, but the realm of Eyri was protected. The Shield had held. Outside in Oldenworld, the bright silver fire would wound the earth, the mountains, the forests and wastelands, marking a huge circle beyond the borders of the realm with the freakish touch of Chaos.

  Why had the wildfire struck just then?

  He had spoken the forbidden name out loud, and the Sorcerer had answered.

  No, it had to be coincidence! For if it was not coincidence, there was a small breach in the Shield, a crack in the continuum. If there was such a breach, then it would be possible for something to slip in, through the crack, just as his careless words might have slipped out and summoned Chaos.

  He would have to watch his tongue.

  He stuck it out. The pink tip waggled at him. He put it away again.

  It would be best to say nothing to the Gyre of Wizards about such undecided matters. The star had burst, just as it should, and that was the end of that.

  He flicked the reins. He shouldn’t have wished for wildfire in the first place.

  But if the dust of Chaos ever did fall in Eyri, he would wish it to fall upon Cabal of Ravenscroft first. The Darkmaster clutched onto a wealth beyond his due; it would be fitting to see him turned into a horned and bitter toad.

  3. THE WIZARD’S RING

  “If something is used, but never owned,

  can it ever be stolen?”—Zarost

  The Darkmaster watched the circle of silver fire explode across the firmament.

  He would have been within his darkened room at the Crowbar in Fendwarrow, but something had urged him to come outdoors, to squint into the bright sky. A tension lurked in the air, a feeling he knew only too well, but seldom had to endure—the sensation of being watched.

  He was the one who did the watching in Eyri. He was the one who should send a chill down the spine as his Morrigán birds passed overhead. He was the one to cause men to glance nervously at their own shadows. They didn’t call him the Darkmaster for nothing; he was a genius in the art of inducing fear.

  “I don’t wish to be watched,” he said to the air, his voice a dry hiss. No doubt the lurker was one of his own Shadowcasters, experimenting with the Morrigán spell. He would find the culprit, and the discipline would be swift. Nobody was allowed to track Cabal of Ravenscroft; nobody dared.

  Then he had noticed the falling star, and realised that he had been mistaken. The weight of its impending presence was the problem. A starburst always made him feel small, and he hated it. The ring of silver fire ripped across the sky. As usual, there was no threat to it, yet it unsettled him. He sneered at the bright flare in disgust, and turned on his heel.

  The death of a star was pointless, especially so because he could not benefit from it. He wondered why one never saw the fragments of the explosion descend from the sky. Maybe they were too fine to be noticed.

  Yet then he did see the stardust. A fine sprinkling, not more than a pinch of salt, settled on his shoulder, staining the black robe with a delicate trace of silver. He brushed the dust with his hand. It disappeared under his fingers.

  Cabal was touched by something wild and weird, something—he struggled to find the right word for it. A shift of power, difference, change, a moment in another world. Then it was gone, and everything was the same as it had been before. The sky was winter blue, the day too bright.

  He shrugged off the strange mood. He should not have emerged today at all.

  Fendwarrens scuttled away from him along the narrow street. No one liked to encounter the Darkmaster, especially when the sun was high. If a person was visited by the Darkmaster during the day, they would die in their sleep that night. Cabal ensured that the warning was often repeated, and that it yielded results from time to time.

  Fear was a wonderful armour to wear.

  As Cabal reached for the door, something fell to the ground with a tinkling like a dropped coin. A small coin, a hammered blackmetal, no doubt. He didn’t bother to search for it; he had enough wealth to buy the village and its people. He threw the door aside, and strode into the dimness of the inn.

  The Crowbar—Fendwarrow’s finest and only place of ill repute. He had a good understanding with the owner, Mukwallis. Cabal made sure the innkeeper’s shady activities were kept shady, concealed in ways only his art with the Dark essence could provide. Whenever the Swords followed a trail, the things they searched for disappeared, and people didn’t speak. Jurrum, stolen goods, whores and weapons—they were all here, in Fendwarrow, right under the noses of the tinpot Swords. Even the air within the Crowbar held a perfume of debauchery, thick with cheap pipe-smoke, cloying musk, and wine.

  Not a few competitors had come and gone over the years, but they always found misfortune wrapping about their ankles like thorn-weed. In return, the Crowbar paid its dues. By night, people came there for one thing alone. Such folk were ripe for the picking; a taste of the Dark power was all they needed. Soon he would have claimed enough of them to complete his designs. Then the rebellion would begin.

  He slipped off the main corridor into a curtained alcove. He knocked twice, then once, upon the narrow door to the Long Room. A shifty-eyed man with many jowls cracked the door open, then welcomed him into the deeper gloom. The man’s mottled green robe matched his nature.

  “Mukwallis,” whispered Cabal, by way of greeting. “Is the Lightgifter dealing?”

  The innkeeper nodded, then mimed a number with his fat fingers. One-Ten.

  Cabal raised a questioning eyebrow. Mukwallis indicated a point in the wall. The Long Room was narrow, and ran the length of the building. It had been a closely-guarded secret, but nobody kept secrets from the Darkmaster for long. From here, he could spy on every guest of the inn.

  Cabal stepped quietly up to the knothole Mukwallis had indicated. The view was of a finely-trimmed bedroom. Two figures were engaged in discussion—a middle-aged Lightgifter with a pepper-brown tonsure, and Cabal’s tall Shadowcaster, Kirjath Arkell.

  Arkell had been showing too much ambition of late, a sign that his usefulness might be coming to an end. Cabal expected his Shadowcasters to abduct new recruits for the cause, but not in a village where the Swordmaster of Eyri was patrolling, and not where the Dark essence was so thin on the ground. Arkell had no patience, no sense of restraint—he was reckless. It was not the time to reveal themselves to the Sword. The rumours and fears of the Shadowcasters needed a while longer to spread through the realm, before the people would be ripe for conquest. Something would have to be done about Arkell.

  Cabal recognised the Gifter whom Arkell dealt with as a minor Father of the Dovecote, named Onassis. It was good to know everything about everybody, especially those with a weakness. Once Onassis had tasted the intoxicating pleasures of jurrum, he had fallen very rapidly into Cabal’s hands.

  The Gifter commanded a hazy cloud of sprites, and produced more from his heavy travel-bag. A copious quantity of Light essence, allocated for healing the villagers of Fendwarrow, no doubt. Amazing how much essence that particular task had used up over the years.

  Cabal cracked his knuckles. The missions of mercy to Fendwarrow were often a ruse. Onassis was a regular trader. The Father chanted away to his sprites, and they collected in a pool of Light on the bed. Gradually, the Gifter formed the pattern of the Turning, a twisted circle. Arkell wove a trail of motes
to join the Father’s sprites.

  Cabal felt a surge of pride as he watched the Turning spell engage, and the sparkling sprites became cold black motes, just like Arkell’s. It was a masterful design. It was his design. With the Turning, came the Dark, and with the Dark, a world of possibilities, his to exploit. The Gifter and Arkell chanted together, guiding the essence in unison from the one extreme to the other, until all was given to the Dark.

  A pity he had not solved the riddle of charging the essence himself, the way the Gifters could in their Dovecote. He always had to rely on a trade—a willing Gifter, bearing the gift of fresh sprites, and a counterpart from the Dark, to work the spell of the Turning. Then the Gifter had to be paid, in whatever currency they preferred.

  No matter. Willing Gifters were not as hard to find as they liked to believe. And in time, all of them would be his servants.

  The Gifter collected his payment from Arkell. Cabal counted out the jurrum leaves as they were dealt to Onassis. Fifteen. He had given Arkell twenty, expressly for the Lightgifter.

  So, the Shadowcaster was lining his own pocket. He had expected it, the way Arkell’s eyes were so yellowed of late.

  Cabal placed a silver into Mukwallis’s sweaty palm as he left. As always, the information gained in the Long Room was worth the coin exchanged. Cabal chuckled. It was the toad’s own protection money he had used to pay him with. They struck a good trade, Mukwallis and he.

  Arkell’s jurrum addiction could be used to Cabal’s advantage. The leaves that found their way into the Shadowcaster’s pocket would be especially potent in future. A man ‘juiced’ on jurrum could become fearless beyond reason, prepared to take a suicidal risk. He would be useful against the Lightgifters, especially against the stubborn ones who refused to be turned.