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

by Greg Hamerton

  Tabitha ran. Her strength waned. She pushed on and on, until her heart pounded frantically in her ears and she was reeling. The snow pulled at her boots with every step she placed inside the wagon-ruts. She ignored her fatigue. She ran over exposed rises, where the cold night wind stole the warmth from her legs, she ran into tunnels of quiet forest where furtive night-creatures watched her.

  Faces flickered across her mind. Mother. Father. The Shadowcaster, with his evil grin. The yellowed eyes which had filled her with terror, frozen her limbs. The fear which had swirled from his shoulders like a cape. Grey eyes, black clouds of ice. He had come for the Ring. It belonged to the Darkmaster. It was not hers to keep.

  Throw it away. Throw it into the forest.

  Maybe he had ways to find it. To cast it away would be a betrayal of her mother’s final wish. She kept it on her finger.

  If the Darkmaster had ways of finding his talisman, he would have found it when it lay in Fendwarrow. Maybe she had a chance to escape with it. Maybe they’d never know.

  She was forced to slow to a jog, then an agonising walk. The trees clustered closer, leaning inwards. The trunks moved from side to side, skittering about the forest floor, circling her, circling. Or was it just the dizzying sensation of movement? Blood pounded in her temples, deafening her to the sounds of the night.

  The Shadowcaster’s words rang clear, as she remembered.

  “I have sensed the use of it, yesterday and today. The stench of a new magic is all over this place, in this room,” he had said.

  She had sung the Lifesong. For the second time. Its magic had woken her mother. Its magic had drawn the Shadowcaster. It was her use of the Ring that had brought him to Phantom Acres.

  She was responsible for what had been drawn onto her parents.

  She was the reason for her parents death.

  The sky tilted at a drunken angle. She lost her balance, and the ground came up to meet the side of her head with a numbing slap. Everything was turning, swirling, spinning. She lay where she had fallen. She didn’t care if she never rose again. She cried until the snow covered her body, until she slipped into a dark unconsciousness, on the High Way of Eyri.

  The Dark spell of Despair claimed its victim.

  7. DARK DREAMS

  “If a dream’s in your head and your eyelids are tight,

  can there be colour, without any light?”—Zarost

  Ashley Logán turned in his bed, pulling the sheets awry.

  He had been having strange dreams for more than a week, ever since the erratic intrusion of extraneous thoughts had begun to plague him. At first the dreams were just visions of a dark, sultry woman, brief fantasies which dispersed like smoke in the wind when he awoke. The groping of his waking mind had only dissolved the vague image when he tried to recall her face. He wasn’t sure whether she had spoken to him or if there had been more. But as the week had passed, the dream recurred, changed, became more intimate. He had begun to develop an appetite for sleep.

  Tonight, the dream was richer than ever. The woman returned, her raven-hair falling about her shoulders and spreading upon her black silk gown. Secrets and wildness smouldered in her eyes. The doorway in the low-roofed building, the strange rune on the door, the smell of cheap smoke, cloying musk, and wine, the muffled sounds of rowdy indulgence elsewhere; all familiar elements of the dream. Yet for the first time, the woman did not close the door before him. She beckoned, and his blood pumped thick and wild in his veins. Her glamour pulled at him. He needed little encouragement. At her throat was a stone of the deepest black. He wondered what it could mean.

  “At last, you find your way to power,” she whispered in his ear. “I am Gabrielle.”

  Gabrielle. The name lingered on his lips.

  “Come, taste your reward.”

  “No,” he heard himself say. A deeper voice, not his own. “I serve the Light.”

  He twisted and turned, then woke with a start.

  It was a shock to find himself in bed. He had been elsewhere. He had felt different. Bigger, taller. Older. The world of the waking took some getting used to.

  The night was cool, and quiet. He pushed his coarse hair out of his face, yawned, and looked toward the high windows.

  The moon peered back at him, saucer-faced. Got you.

  “How many windows do you spy through, Fool Moon?” Ashley muttered, watching the white flares curl around the moon’s whole rim. A pretty picture, framed with a dusting of snow at the base of the glass. It was rare to see the Fool in spring, for the moon was usually hidden in cloud at night, until well into Bloomtide. It was an ill omen to be seen by the Fool after midnight, but there he was, goggle-eyed, and there was naught Ashley could do to pretend otherwise. An old legend anyway, the touch of the Fool, like tales of the Seven Wizards, or the Morgloth. Nothing but empty words used by bards and old wives to scare children.

  “What do you see tonight?” he whispered again.

  The moon hushed into the room; touching the trunks, the six beds, the sleeping apprentices, but saying nothing. The beds lined the near side of the room, simple mattresses stuffed with straw, laid upon wooden lattices. His companions slept loudly.

  Ashley sighed. He was too awake to catch the dream again. Gabrielle was gone, for tonight. It would be hours before the dawn. Hours he could better spend stalking another mystery.

  Ashley rose stealthily, and padded across the tiles to his trunk. The wood creaked softly when he cracked the lid open. He sneaked a robe over the rim of the chest, and eased the lid back down. He donned the coarse white garment and tied his rope at the waist, using the familiar half-knot that marked him as an apprentice.

  One of the apprentices stirred as Ashley passed, but settled down once more. Ashley tiptoed to the doorway, and slipped into the men’s corridor.

  He was on the ground floor of the tiered Dovecote. Silence was thick throughout the building. Even the south wing, dedicated to the kitchens, scullery, dining hall and common-room was still. The walls of the corridor rose as he progressed towards the Hall of Sky. Murals and runes flickered in the soft sprite-light cast by the widely spaced sconces upon the curved walls. The roof formed an arching tunnel. The floor rose smoothly into the pale brown walls. So much more natural than the modern architecture found in the city of Levin, where sharp boundaries, tilted angles and practical lines were the fashion. The Dovecote had endured many years of change, yet stood as it had been created, and only the smoothness of the stone underfoot hinted at the passage of time.

  A solid oak door sealed the end of the men’s corridor from the Hall of Sky. Ashley knew that the door was barred from the far side, from within the Hall. Once the Rest had been announced every night, the Rector Shamgar himself closed everyone in, and only with the approach of dawn would he open the door again. This was necessary, the Rector didn’t neglect to remind them, to protect the apprentices from the dark powers which swam through the ether at night, evil magic which would lead them astray from their studies.

  Evil magic. Ashley chuckled.

  More likely to prevent the men from swimming through the ether to the women’s quarters, when they should be sleeping.

  To protect the apprentices from being lead astray by dark powers, indeed. He grinned. The barred door had frustrated him for as long as he had been an apprentice, not because he had any woman to go to, but because the door was there. It was a challenge to his inquisitive nature. Even his teachers, full Lightgifters, were restricted to the gender-defined quarters. The women slept on the distant side of the Hall. A similar oak door sealed them in their wing. Celibacy at the Dovecote was not only sworn, it was enforced.

  Ashley backed up a pace to the Light-sconce. The shallow pool of sprites cast no smoke. The small grains of essence flickered with a slow rhythm of dancing waves. The sconces were employed sparingly about the Dovecote at night, just enough to light the passageways. He drew essence to his hand, using the gentle words and pattern of the Summoning that came so easily to his mind now. The
Light formed a small puddle in his palm, warm and familiar.

  I’ll be flayed if I’m caught.

  Outside of training classes, the sprites were strictly reserved for full Lightgifters. Rector Shamgar would be apoplectic if he caught an apprentice summoning his own Light. But then Rector Shamgar was not going to find out. Nobody needed to know. That was why it had to done in the dead of night.

  An organic design was inscribed on the wall beside Ashley, a skull submerged in leaves. Vines twined through the eye sockets, and tangled outwards. A fine work of art, a bit morbid for Ashley’s taste, but nothing more than a design. He had passed it by many a time without a second glance. The design ended in curled roots near the end of the corridor. Just shy of the oak door, the roots wound through runes both ancient and enigmatic. It had been an innocent assignment from Father Onassis which had transformed those runes forever. All the apprentices in the rune class had taken an inscription from somewhere within the Cote to translate. Ashley had chosen the runes at random, yet when he had deciphered them, he had found more than expected.

  A touch of Light begins the way to the—a twisted rune, shaped like two fish with twining tails.

  Onassis interpreted the closing rune as ‘the heart’, rendering the message benign. Ashley found an older meaning in the Dovecote texts. The twisted rune was sometimes used to name a place called the Inner Sanctum, a place of the most valued secrets from the founding days of the Dovecote, when the Sage had lived.

  The Inner Sanctum. He kept that discovery to himself, and searched elsewhere in the Dovecote.

  The secret of the heart lies beneath the earth, carved on the base of the steps of the East-door.

  The abundant wisdom of the heart, a step beyond Death’s door, written in one of the oldest books in the Study.

  In the middle of the song is the heart, inscribed along the edge of the Scribbillarre in the Hall.

  All clues to the Inner Sanctum, the most secret of hidden secrets. Yet if it was a place, hidden, there had to be a door. Either that, or he was chasing a whim.

  Ashley ran his free hand over the stonework. There was nothing but the vines and skull scored into the walls. No latch, no handle, no hollow section in the wall, nothing. Just smooth, hard brown stone.

  He brought his other hand up, tipping the sprites against the wall. They spread in a puff of radiance, rolling outwards from the point of impact like dust from a stamped foot. Light sparkled down the curved masonry to rest at Ashley’s feet. He didn’t notice the wasted sprites. He watched the wall, transfixed. A luminous line had appeared, a faint vertical. It wouldn’t have been visible in the brightness of day. Where the sprites had found the hairline crack in the stone, they remained, caught in the engraved vines beside the skull.

  Ashley beamed. He had known it was here somewhere. He summoned the sprites from the floor, and repeated the throw. The line in the stone grew. As he worked, an outline formed, running up from the floor to form an arch before descending again. A doorway in the stone. In the instant that he completed the radiant outline, the wall in front of him swung silently away, into the gloom beyond the corridor.

  A touch of Light begins the way to the Inner Sanctum.

  Ashley’s breath quickened. He could see nothing in the gloom. He summoned another handful of sprites from the sconce on the far wall. He muttered the familiar words of a Flicker over the sprites, binding them into the same dancing form they had held in the sconce. Holding his hand high, he entered the door.

  Strange objects leaned towards him; unmoving, yet crowding him with furry heads or tails. The way wasn’t clear, his foot struck something with a loud metal clang. He bit his lip, praying that no one would be alerted by the sound.

  A bucket! Damn fool. He recognised the place. It was an alcove off the Hall of Sky, where cleaning equipment was stored. Brooms, brushes, mops and buckets poked their way into the circle of light created by his Flicker. He’d spent many an afternoon with one or other of the implements, working off a transgression. Ashley tiptoed through the tangle of objects, and emerged from the alcove.

  It was disappointing to find himself in such a familiar place, though he should have expected it. Where else could the door have gone to, placed where it was? It bypassed the barred oak door, but didn’t lead anywhere exciting. He walked quietly across the Hall of Sky. Maybe there was another clue he hadn’t yet discovered.

  He paused, taking in the grandeur. The Hall looked different at night, but there was certainly no ‘swirling evil’ as the apprentices had been warned. The Hall was huge, the vaulted ceiling three stories above the floor. The Fool Moon caught him again with its baleful glare, through the high dome of glass that formed the apex of the vaulted Hall.

  The crystal wonder of the Source dominated the Hall. The Source towered on its white marble dais, over twice Ashley’s height; a perfect, ghostly obelisk. The moonlight filtered through its surface and formed spidery lines that twisted and turned at random, as if currents swirled in the heart of the Source. Reflected moonlight shifted in restless patterns against the curving stairways and across the marble floor. Inscriptions and symbols patterned the floor, stretching the knowledge of the Scribbillarre to the bluestone channel that rimmed the Hall. It was said that the entire lore of the Lightgifters was encoded in that floor, though Ashley knew that some of the more recent developments had not been added—such forbidden spells were omitted from the apprentice syllabus as well. The Rector wouldn’t allow the ‘defilement of our heritage with perversions’, as he saw it.

  Ashley wandered onto the Scribillarre, holding his Flicker high. He scanned the runes of the floor. There had to be another clue, a hint to where the true door to the Inner Sanctum could be. Lines, sigils, patterns and words spread out at his feet. Nowhere could he see the twisted rune of the Heart.

  A boot scuffed on stone, high above, somewhere in the Dovecote. His stomach clenched.

  Ashley ran light-footed for the alcove and the stone door. He hoped desperately that the spiral of the staircase hid him from the boot-scuffer. His pulse raced. He forced himself to slow down as he picked his way through the mops and buckets.

  Then he was through. He pulled roughly on the stone door behind him.

  The door rushed toward him. Too hard, he cursed himself. It was going to make a boom when it slammed. At least it would be closed. He could run, and be out of sight of whoever came.

  He flinched, but there was no boom as stone struck stone. The door sealed with a soft suck, and the Light essence that had marked its rim showered to the floor. The stonework was smooth under Ashley’s hand, except for the faint score-marks of the complex roots and vines. Ashley scooped up the sprites and ran for his bedroom, dumping the Light essence into a sconce along the way.

  Safe, by the skin of my teeth.

  He heard the bar on the door at the far end of the corridor being removed behind him. He ducked into his room. Then he was in bed, with the blanket pulled high over his robe, and his heart pounding.

  The Moon peeped over the rim of the high windows, almost gone from view. He hoped the Fool would keep his silence about what he’d seen.

  Footsteps approached down the corridor. Ashley was sure someone stood at the door for a moment, though he was too afraid to open his eyes. He tried to breathe in long, slow breaths.

  All was quiet.

  8. THREE MORNINGS

  “Every morning is the death of night.”—Zarost

  The sun lorded high in the morning sky. It was screeching, a harsh, piercing shriek like the sound of a pig being slaughtered. No, it was a shrill hiss, like green wood put to the flame. Or a child, hoarse from crying for long hours. The sound bored into Kirjath’s headache. The sound was worse than the brilliance of the sun. On and on, relentless, the screech screwed into his tender head.

  “Shatter that sun till it falls!” he cursed. Kirjath squinted, and winced. The sun was glaring directly at him. His eyes watered, and he searched for his cowl which usually hung behind his neck. His hands fo
und nothing, apart from the ruined burnt fabric of his tattered robe. Burnt cotton, and pain. A boiling pain, which began in his fingers and ran over his entire body, pooling in awkward places; his hands, his back, his legs. And his head, by the cursed light of the shattered sun, his head! He touched his crown, and drew a sharp breath as his sore fingers touched a lumpy, sticky surface of ruin. There was no hair, only the charred crepuscular scalp, though his fingers yielded little feeling themselves.

  “Skraaaaak!” screeched the sun once more.

  “Shut up!” answered Kirjath, his mind reeling. He had been burnt badly, burnt like a bloody sacrificial lamb. How had it happened? He turned his hands over before his eyes. The left was an angry red, with fat digits which preferred to stick straight out, blistered and swollen like sausages. His right was worse, the fingers crisp and black, yet there was no pain in them, no feeling at all. That worried him more than pain would have. There should be pain, at least. His right hand reminded him of a spider, a wounded spider with three of its eight spindly legs torn off, leaving only the five useless digits.

  “Skraaaaak!”

  It was not the sun. Something lower, sitting on a pole. A dark shape … he closed his eyes, then tried again, squinting against the bright day and the blinding white patches of snow.

  “Skraaaaak!”

  A raven sat on the burnt remains of a fence-post, eyeing him with a mocking tilt to its head. Kirjath uttered a string of curses that would have turned an Amberlake fisherman green.

  A messenger bird from Ravenscroft. Ah, by the cursed scut of a hoary goat!

  No one rivalled the Darkmaster in the art of creating an ugly Morrigán. The only message he had ever received from the Darkmaster was a summons.

  Kirjath swore again. What he needed was rest and healing, not bloody frantic travel, to run back to Ravenscroft like a wayward hound. He was still trying to collect his scattered wits. But the Darkmaster brooked no mercy; when a Shadowcaster was summoned, that Shadowcaster was expected in Ravenscroft. No excuse had ever spared a Caster from the lash of Cabal’s wrath. You were summoned. You went. Immediately, unquestioning, subservient. It angered Kirjath more than anything else—he was treated like a servant, when he was Kirjath Arkell. However, if he wanted to work the magic of the Dark essence, he was forced to bow to the Darkmaster. There was no other way.