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

by Greg Hamerton

  I had the same problem with the Flameburst spell. I wanted to attack the Shadowcaster, but set fire to the whole carriage.

  “I’ve just blown your chance to learn the Flameburst tonight, haven’t I?”

  Ashley didn’t answer.

  “Can’t you get some more from the sconces?”

  “I daren’t take any more tonight, in case the Rector notices the lack in the morning. I’ve already siphoned from both corridor Flicker-spells.”

  The silence was thicker than the darkness between them.

  “Ashley?”

  “mm.”

  “You’re not mad with me, are you?”

  The chuckle she heard set her fears to rest. “I was just wondering what’s going to happen when I teach you the Courier spell. We are going to have feathers all over the sky. No, don’t worry about the sprites.”

  Tabitha heard him rise, and tiptoe toward the door. He cracked it open, and a faint of illumination came in from the corridor beyond.

  “Come, there is nothing more to be done tonight,” he whispered.

  Tabitha followed him until they reached her room.

  “How did you get here?” she asked.

  “My secret,” he answered. “Now go to bed. We’ll meet as soon as I get the chance, so sleep while you can.”

  “Thank you, Ashley. It’s your turn next time.”

  “I know.” His grin was a faint altering of shadows. “That’s why I’ll be back.”

  He padded softly away toward the Hall of Sky. Tabitha strained to follow him with her eyes, but he was outlined against the Hall’s paleness for only a moment, as he slipped through the distant door. A very soft thump and the sound of a bar being shifted into place announced his movements, then the silence was complete. Tabitha tried to guess how he achieved the meeting.

  If he’d been in the Hall of Sky, he could have opened the door to the women’s corridor and left it ajar. But how did he get into the Hall in the first place? Either he had found a way to unlock the bar from within the confines of the men’s corridor, or he had a route that bypassed it entirely.

  When her bed took her weight, it pulled her down into the blankets with merciless hunger. She snuggled into her pillow and accepted the fierce embrace of sleep. She was going to be a Lightgifter, despite what the Rector tried to put in her way.

  * * *

  The kitchen was filled with clamour and steam all morning. There was only one sitting to be prepared for Sundays, and that was the Noonday meal. It was to be a minor feast, and the cook kept Tabitha running to and fro, fetching supplies from the stores, washing, peeling, drawing water, and finally kneading a mountain of dough under attendant clouds of flour. There was a levity to the conversation in the kitchen, the servants bantered with one another, even with the newcomer. Tabitha found herself enjoying the work for once.

  “A whole procession of them, polished down to the buckles on their boots,” said one of the kitchen hands, a solid girl with plaited hair who Tabitha knew only as Val.

  Tabitha’s interest was piqued, but she continued to pound the dough. She knew the cook beside her would be quick to scold; the good mood didn’t reduce the amount of work that needed to be completed before noon.

  “When did the Swords go by, Val?” the cook asked.

  “The little hours o’morning. I was coming up from the waterfront.”

  “You mean coming up from your latest man,” the cook interjected. The wry humour in her tone surprised Tabitha. She had always taken the cook to be as austere as a wrinkled lemon.

  Val giggled. “No rules on Saturday nights for me,” she said.

  The cook grunted. “It’s true, you missed a quiet night in the Dovecote. But the best sleep I’ve had in years.”

  “Where did the Swords go?” Tabitha asked, risking a question in light of the gay mood.

  “Going to clean out Fendwarrow at last, I’ll wager,” replied Val. “Off on the Dwarrow road, ninety, one hundred horses.”

  Tabitha had to ask. “Was the Swordmaster with them?”

  “The Swordmaster, he rode at the head of the squadron, and on his gauntlets were the words stitched ‘beware, sinners, beware!’, and he wore a purple flower in his hair.” Val shot a mocking glance at Tabitha, from across the bread-making table. “I don’t know, luvvy. I was half a league away. Just saw the procession ride. Wish I could bag myself a Sword, one day,” she ended dreamily. “Any one would do. They make a good wage, the King’s men.”

  If the Swords had ridden out, Tabitha knew that Garyll would be with them. Their preparations for battle must be complete, the march on Ravenscroft had begun. She envisioned Garyll fighting in a pit filled with Morgloth, manic Shadowcasters all around, throwing spells of despair and darkness at the beleaguered Swordmaster and his men.

  A sharp prod in the ribs accompanied the cook’s scolding voice. “The bread’s not going to bake of its own accord!”

  Tabitha shook herself and set to work. The mountain of dough had to be separated into twenty hills. The fire beneath the ovens needed stoking. And when that was done, there was butter to churn from milk, oranges to squeeze, loaves to tend, and salt to break.

  Yet nothing could distract her mind’s eye from following a procession of Swords along the imaginary shore of Amberlake, to Fendwarrow and beyond. She was scolded three times before Noontime. It began to feel like a normal day in the kitchens again.

  * * *

  Sweeping the men’s corridor, she had discovered, was best done when the half-knots were training outside, for the teachers would accompany them, and only a scribe or similar Gifter would wander by from time to time. She could get most of the dust out of the corridor and through the Hall’s east door before the trample of many feet would render the task impossible.

  The door which sealed the end of the corridor at night was the same as the one on the women’s side of the Hall—thick, ironbound oak, crafted to seal tightly against the doorjamb. A heavy bar with a pin was used to hold the door in place. There was no way she could conceive of getting through such a door from within the corridor once it was closed. No blade would be able to lift the bar, the pin would prevent that. Yet Ashley Logán had found a way. The search for an answer to the puzzle helped to pass the time.

  She checked all the rooms for secret passageways as she swept them, but each cubicle yielded the same simple structure—beds, chests, high windows, four solid walls, and a doorway each. There was nothing unusual about the bathrooms either. She began to wonder if Ashley had hidden in the Hall of Sky all night just to be able to make their illicit meeting. It was a possibility, but the risk was enormous. She knew it was the Rector himself who came down into the Hall to open the doors in the morning, and he would surely be aware of someone in the Hall when he closed for the Evencall. There wasn’t really anywhere to hide. There had to be a way around the door.

  It was when Tabitha decided to search along the walls for any irregularities that the Ring began to augment her vision. She was straining to see something in the worked stone when she noticed footprints. All along the men’s corridor were ghostly trails of footprints, a trampled confusion of many feet. She swept her broom over the nearest marks, but they remained, a faint glistening disturbance on the pale stone floor.

  The Ring was warm, and she knew that she was using its power, so she guessed it was something peculiar about the Ring, an extension of its clarity. The footprints hadn’t been visible to her when she had been sweeping, yet now that she ranged out with her senses, they came into vision. She walked a way down the corridor, then looked to where her own feet had passed. Overlaid on the fading patterns beneath, were brighter prints matching her own.

  The many prints below had to be traces of traffic, of the Gifters and half-knots who had emerged from their beds that morning, or walked to their rooms during the day. The Ring was allowing her to see the delicate imprints of their presence.

  There was one set of footprints that deviated from the common traffic routes. Someone had s
tood close to the wall near the oak door, beside a design of engraved ivy leaves. Once she was standing in that place, her sharpened gaze found the faintest of cracks running through the wall, a hairline imperfection that scribed the outline of a door.

  She was suddenly certain that the footprints belonged to Ashley Logán. She had found his secret access.

  * * *

  Mistress Wyniss gave Tabitha Wednesday afternoon off, and for the first time since her arrival in the Cote she wanted to play her lyre. The lift in her heart, to be awarded free time after the seemingly endless grind of labour, was enough to sing about.

  Then Ashley found her, and showed her the sprites saved from his training session. All thoughts of singing fell by the wayside. Ashley seemed nervous to talk to her in the open. He led her to his private place, high in the wall of the Dovecote. The climb was scary, but the alcove, when they reached it, proved to be secure.

  There was no rim to the recess, but it formed what could have been a balcony for the window set deeper in the stone, and as such was tall and wide enough for the two of them to sit a comfortable distance apart. Iron bars sealed the window, and the room beyond was small and mostly gloomy bare stone. They were high enough to be on the third floor of the Cote, but if the Rector had ever used the room behind the bars, Tabitha reckoned it hadn’t been during the last five years. The chamber smelled faintly of cobwebs and disuse.

  The view was worth the climb. A silken tree hid the grounds below behind rustling white leaves. The green western horizon from Fynn’s Tooth to the Great Forest was visible through the uppermost boughs. Bright towers of cloud filled the sky. To the right, the roofs of Levin dropped away steeply, to reveal the snaking foam of the Storms River in the distance, as it wended its way through coloured spring fields. It was such a clear day, she could even see the haze of River’s End, where the mighty falls threw moisture to the air at the northern rim of Eyri.

  The thrill of vertigo gnawed at her stomach, heightening her awareness of the splendour—it was a perfect day to set her first dove to flight. But she just couldn’t seem to master the Courier spell.

  “But it tickles!” she squealed, the essence falling from her hands.

  “Shh,” urged Ashley. “We’re hidden from sight up here, but not from sound.” The sprites collected around his hand when he summoned them.

  “You have to keep the flow going through the pattern,” Ashley pointed out.

  “It’s got to flow?”

  “Yes, it’s like a river contained by the pattern. Look.” He wove the sprites into an egg-shaped basket of Light threads, and spoke the words to activate the Courier. The sprites swelled to the shape of a neat little dove, which fluttered its wings a few times before settling on his hand.

  “Find Tabitha Serannon,” he whispered into its ear. “Tell her it’s Ashley’s turn with the Flameburst now.”

  Ashley’s dove hopped over the stone to Tabitha.

  “Alight, messenger, and deliver your word,” she said, offering her hand as a perch. The Courier flew up to her palm, and exploded into sprites once more. The Light essence was slightly dulled, but there was still ample to work with.

  “It’s Ashley’s turn with the Flameburst now,” echoed the soft message of the Courier. He grinned at her. “Show me the pattern again, I must have missed something the first time.”

  The technique of shaping the essence into a spell fundamental had become easier with practice. The Lightstone at her neck seemed to have something to do with it, for when she copied Ashley’s mannerism of lifting the sprites to the stone, the pattern she intended formed faster. The clearer she could recall the pattern in her mind, the clearer it formed in her hands. It was focusing the spell on a target that was the complicated part for Tabitha. She dared not risk another episode of wide focus with a spell, particularly this spell. So she just brought the sprites into the pattern of the Flameburst, and held them there for Ashley to study.

  “Bejiggered if it isn’t the most intricate pattern I’ve ever tried to copy,” he said, staring at the convoluted threads of Light in Tabitha’s hand. “How do you remember it all?”

  She hadn’t really thought about it much. She had seen the spell in her mother’s scroll. She had used it once. She remembered it.

  When Ashley attempted to cast the Flameburst spell, it resulted in a widening circle of sparks, which flared briefly and went out. The sprites fell to the stone between them, a duller shade of Light.

  “Bugger.”

  “No worse than my Courier,” whispered Tabitha.

  Ashley tried three more times. Tabitha felt the heat of the last one against her face, but the flames were still no bigger than fireflies.

  “How did you ever learn this spell so quickly?” Ashley asked.

  “I—”

  She couldn’t tell Ashley about the Ring. It was a secret too strange.

  “I’ve got a good memory,” she offered.

  She wished Twardy Zarost were around to ask. Although his answers were as crooked as a stick, he was the only one who knew something about the Ring. It seemed to be playing an ever greater part in her life.

  Suddenly, she realised her error with the Courier spell. She had been confusing Ashley’s pattern and her memories of the one her mother had used. The older memories were imperfect, made up of her childhood recollections of vague patterns in the sprites, seen when she had not worn the Lightstone or the Ring. She discarded those, and was left with the clear pattern Ashley had offered.

  The little dove formed perfectly in her hand, a delicate creature of Light.

  “I did it!” she exclaimed. She lofted her hands, ready to throw the dove into the freedom of air.

  “Wait! It has to have a target!”

  She brought her hand back just in time. She whispered into the Courier’s ear. It flew a brief circle, decided on Ashley, and dissolved when he accepted it.

  “If you hadn’t done that,” he explained, “the poor thing would have flown all around Eyri, looking for nobody. We’d have lost those sprites until they faded completely to clear essence.”

  A distant voice echoed from within the volume of the Dovecote, a plaintive, repetitive call. Ashley scuttled to his feet. “That’s the crier for the end of break, I’ve got to go back to class.” He stood at the rim of the alcove, in preparation for climbing down. “You’re welcome to stay up here and practice on your Couriers. Just send them to yourself, and they’ll do a short hop before dissolving.”

  “When shall we meet again?” she asked.

  “Try to find me when you get time off in the day.” He lowered himself over the edge, and found the first foothold to balance upon.

  “Why not at night?”

  “I’m worried about sounds carrying in the quiet. I tried to come to you once, since last time, but the door to the women’s corridor had a new wedge closing it, one that would have made a noise releasing. I think the Rector suspects something. Do you realise the kind of trouble we’ll get into if we’re caught?”

  “Why don’t you just use the door in the ivy-pattern?” she asked.

  Ashley looked thunderstruck.

  “How did you find out about that?”

  “I’ve got a sharp eye,” she said, slowly.

  Ashley smiled, broad and deep. “You are proving to be quite an exceptional ghost. I fear we shall all look like novices when you become a Gifter.”

  “How does the door open?”

  He pulled himself up to the alcove again. “So you found it without knowing how to open it, without using the sprites?”

  She nodded. He looked impressed.

  “It opens with the Light. If you throw the sprites at that section in the wall, they cling to the outline of the door. But there’s nothing there to see with the naked eye.”

  “There’s one on the women’s side as well.”

  “Then we can meet!” he exclaimed. He considered something for a moment. His eyes were a sparkling blue.

  “Can you keep a secret?”


  Tabitha nodded.

  “There’s a place I’ve been trying to find, another doorway. I have seen clues to it all over the Dovecote, but can’t find the access. It is called the Inner Sanctum, and no one speaks of it, I don’t think anyone else knows about it, but I know it must be there. It might be marked with this sign.” He summoned the sprites from where they lay on the alcove floor, and created a pattern in his hands with them.

  A curving, double rune, like two fish with overlapping tails. Tabitha recognised it at once. The symbol was carved on her lyre.

  “It’s called the Heart,” he explained. “But I believe it also stands for the Inner Sanctum, where the secrets of the Sage are rumoured to be kept. Somewhere in the Dovecote there might be a door leading to the Heart, used in the old times. Maybe you can find it.”

  “I’ll try,” she said uncertainly. If nobody knew about the Inner Sanctum, then there would be no recent footprints leading to it. It would be difficult for her to find.

  “Don’t tell anyone about it,” he added. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered the crier’s call long past, he scuttled downwards.

  “Take the essence to the channel in the Hall of Sky when you’re finished,” he called up to her. “That’s where all the other pale sprites are left. Try not to drain all the Light out of it, or it won’t listen to your summoning. They get recharged with the Morningsong.”

  He reached the ground, waved discreetly, and jogged off to find the class of half-knots which had surely begun already.

  A hidden place called the Heart, marked by the double-rune. That Yzell had carved the same rune into her lyre was intriguing. She picked the lyre up, and ran her fingers over the engraving. It was evidently an old rune, long forgotten. How old? she wondered.

  She practised the Courier spell, drawing the essence into the fundamental pattern, refining it, then setting the bird to flight. Despite Ashley’s caution, she failed to exercise sufficient restraint. One moment she was molding the glowing essence into a Courier, the next it dissolved in her hands, clear, empty essence, all the Light spent.