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

by Greg Hamerton

  “But I could not leave any earlier! A gateway had to be closed!” Zarost exclaimed, facing the Spiritist.

  “A gateway,” she repeated.

  “A gateway, to the Morgloth!” Zarost exclaimed.

  She looked distracted. “How many came through?” she asked, though her tone said she didn’t care.

  “All of them, I think, including one of the Greater Morgloth.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sweet mother of all creation! What is wrong with you, Spiritist? The channeller became an open gateway, he was insane.”

  “Yes, if that had not been contained –” She gestured vaguely with one hand, and let it fall to her lap again.

  “—we could have lost all of Eyri,” Zarost finished for her.

  He had expected the Spiritist to be wide-eyed at such an announcement—she could understand the horror of what could have been—but her attention had disengaged from the present once again.

  “We have lost all of Eyri,” the Mentalist explained. “So sad, Riddler. So sad. What happened to the Seeker, the girl? How far did she progress, before you left?”

  “What do you mean we have lost Eyri? It was there, when I left! The Writhe is not upon it yet, is it?” He turned to the Mystery. “Is it? You said seven days, I have returned in six! There must still be time! Where is the Writhe now? Where is it?”

  The Mystery shook her head. “You were wise to save her,” she stated, holding Zarost with her twitching green eyes. “You were foolish to send her back.”

  “Six days was too long, Riddler,” the Senior explained.

  Zarost’s blood ran cold.

  “Whatever you think you have achieved in Eyri is for naught,” the Warlock added. “It shall end, today, Riddler. We have lost the battle.”

  “No! That cannot be!” cried Zarost. “No, oh no, tell me it isn’t true! It isn’t! The Seeker has solved the riddle of the Ring, she sees with the wizard’s eye! We have a ninth wizard, and her lore is the Lifesong. Eyri can not be gone!”

  The Senior closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to his staff. “Ahh. That is too terrible, Riddler!” he croaked. “The fruit of four hundred years! Wasted.”

  “Why do you all speak as if the battle is already lost? I am here, our octad is complete! We can fight the Writhe. Eyri is not yet gone!”

  “No, Eyri is finished, Zarost,” replied the Senior. “The Writhe is upon it. We sensed the moment of your Transference—it was too late for us to come into Eyri to find you, and we thought you were lost to us. You escaped at the last possible moment. You can not return, none of us can, the Writhe has claimed Eyri as its own, it has grown enormous, and it wrangles at the head of the White River, below the falls of River’s End. It is so powerful now that if you tried to Transfer inwards to anywhere in Eyri you would be drawn into the Writhe first. So we cannot reach the ninth wizard, and we cannot save her.”

  “No! How can this be?” he cried. “Why did it move so fast?”

  “It caught us by surprise, Riddler, we lost its track when it dived at Rek. It ate well underground, it gained mass, and travelled more quickly than we expected.”

  “If it is below River’s End, it must be upon the Shield! We must go there, we must go there at once!” shouted Zarost.

  The Warlock looked into him with his angry red eyes. “Do you wish to die?”

  “And do you wish our hope of fighting Chaos to be dead? Do you forget what the Seeker represents?” Zarost cried out. “Why do you think I stayed to fight beside her?”

  “Fight beside her? Did you cast something in Eyri, did you break your oath?” the Cosmologer snapped.

  Her challenge was too direct to be avoided, and it revealed an awkward truth. “Only at the very end, I, ah, demonstrated a spell to her, yes, one she shall come to learn on the path she walks.”

  “How much of your own magic did you release in Eyri?” demanded the Warlock.

  “A guiding hand was all she did need, to avoid the Great Morgloth’s final feed.”

  “Where did you guide her?” asked the Senior tiredly.

  “I took her away with the Transference, and returned her again.”

  “So you did break the Oath!” exclaimed the Cosmologer triumphantly. “We have lost nothing, because the Riddler failed.”

  “Confound you, Riddler, you had me hoping for a while there!” exclaimed the Senior. “You have affected what the apprentice learns with magic of your own! You really did waste your time. Not that it really matters any more,” he ended, the brief hope dimming from his lined face.

  “No, she was already a wizard!” Zarost objected. “She walked the path of apprenticeship impeccably! She has balanced the light and dark of the first axis. She sings the Lifesong, by the sun and stars, she sings like Ethea! You can’t deny her right to wear the Wizard’s Ring. She is everything we hoped for!”

  At this news an electric interest ran through the Gyre. The Spiritist held a hand to her mouth. The Senior’s eyes were alight once more. “So we do have a ninth!” he said.

  “We must save her! If we cannot reach her, then we must face the Writhe.”

  The Warlock slammed his fist into his palm. “By the blood of the scythe! How do you propose we do that, Riddler? Look at us. You can see we have tried, we haven’t slept since you saw us last, we have cast every pattern we can devise against it, and nothing slows its course! We tried to divert the Writhe with a mighty windstorm, mightier even than the winds that ran across the west of Huntersland when Ametheus sought to drown their city of Highbough in sand. Trees were ripped from the ground, boulders flew before that wind, but the Writhe carried on, unperturbed. As soon as our stormwind ceased, the waters of the Linner Lake were sucked up even though it was five leagues from the shore. As the Writhe passed further south from Jho, the woven road between Koom and Rek was stripped from the soil. We tried to bind the people of Rek into one mind with a spell of Fortitude, so that they might resist the Writhe’s pull by drawing strength from each other, but the Lûk in that down were reamed out like termites from rotten wood. We shifted our attention far ahead of it, to the southern border of the Lûk’s Six Sided land, where the willow-camps are placed beside the White River at the edge of the Evernon Forest. Around the willow-camps we wove a shield similar to that which shelters Eyri, albeit smaller, but the camp was scoured out as if we had not been there. The white-willows went up like frantic ghosts, despite being fortified with seventh-level Forbidding spells and their roots being bound in stone. We watched it eat across the wastes like a toppled whirlwind—even the Chaos in the wildfire did nothing to change the worm. No, Riddler, we have fought hard, and for too long. Don’t make us watch any more, don’t force us to see our Eyri fall. Join us quietly in our grieving, if you would, but don’t expect us to fight, for we are already beaten. There is no way to oppose this faceless foe. Everything we feed it only makes it stronger.”

  The Warlock had epitomized their problem. They always thought in terms of what had been learned before, seldom of what could be devised with what was known. They really did need a Riddler in their circle, to put the pieces of the puzzle together. It was time to reveal his solution. He rose to take the floor.

  “What if we feed it nothing?” he said.

  “Don’t play your games with us,” growled the Warlock. “I’ll rip your clever head off.”

  “Nothingness,” Zarost said quickly. “A gap in space and time, a hole where the fabric of the tapestry was stretched until it separated. The seven of you have tried and tried, but every time you give it something. What if we gave it Nothing?”

  “Impossible!” the Cosmologer objected. “That would be Chaos, Riddler! What kind of ordered Universe has a hole in it?”

  He offered her the rind of a smile. “Not true, Cosmologer, not true, I don’t believe you have thought it through. It would be a temporary change, the Nothingness would disappear as soon as the Writhe was defeated. The overall Order would be maintained—it would be improved, for the Writhe would be gon
e.”

  “I don’t understand,” said the Mystery. “How can Nothing be of any use?”

  “I see it so: the Writhe gains speed as it gathers flesh and feed, it rolls upon the movement in its mouth. If it were to be fed a space, with a great enough face, it would pass into that void; there would be nothing to continue its current with. It would be like a wave encountering a headland; the wave could not continue in the sheltered water beyond, if it were not connected.”

  Now they were listening. Almost all of them.

  “Would you wake up the Lorewarden, Spiritist?”

  He waited while the balding man chewed the air, spluttered and finally opened his eyes. “Hhrr. Hhere here,” the Lorewarden said. But he promptly fell asleep again, and had to be nudged by the Spiritist until he had risen from his seat to avoid her prodding. “Go on, go on,” he muttered to Zarost, “I’ve been here all the time.”

  A riddled answer. Zarost smiled, the Lorewarden was more lucid than he appeared to be. “It would be an eighth-level weave, it would need all of us. We shall begin with a singular point, we shall anchor to that place, and then we move apart, each of us drawing that same anchored point in eight directions, and so we shall have the corners of Nothingness gripped in our hands. We shall form a cube, or rather there will be a cube in the Nothingness between our eight positions. The Writhe shall draw itself onwards, its own hunger shall defeat it. It shall eat nothing, and so become nothing.”

  “We need to be ahead of the Writhe to do this? You mean to Transfer into its course, and remain there as it advances upon us? Are you mad?” demanded the Warlock.

  “No, Riddler, no,” said the Mentalist, “not after what happened to the Warlock in Kah. It will draw us into the maw, we shall not escape!”

  “If you think of escape, then surely are you thinking of failure. There will be no Writhe to escape from, we shall bear its deathstroke into its jaws.”

  The Mentalist was not convinced. “But what if we are not strong enough to hold apart? Why can’t we cast our spell from afar, and see what happens!”

  “Because it is not a spell which can be projected, we are the corners of an Unweaving. We cannot project Nothing through the pool,” answered Zarost. “We must be there, at the Shield.”

  “NO!” cried the Cosmologer. “No! It is folly! Eight, to save one? The ninth wizard is not so precious. If we are all consumed, then who shall fight Ametheus? Who shall be left to resist?”

  “Yet if we don’t fight him now, will we fight him later? Will we be able to?”

  The Lorewarden raised a heavy hand. “I am too tired to calculate the permutations,” he said, “but I feel there is a good chance this might work. This is a cunning plan. The odds might be in our favour.”

  “And the evens as well,” added Zarost.

  “I’ll not risk my hide to a chance!” boomed the Warlock. “We must know it will work, and we don’t.”

  “But this is the moment to defeat it,” announced the Mystery. “We cannot wait until Eyri is consumed. How great will the Writhe be after drawing Eyri’s Shield into its spin? We have but one chance for this to work, and it is now!”

  “I don’t cast my spells on chance either!” objected the Spiritist.

  “We face an escalating spell, there is no time to delay, certainty is a luxury we cannot afford!” the Senior asserted.

  “Chaos!” screeched the Cosmologer. “You would bring Chaos into being! I won’t let you.”

  The Senior stamped the end of his staff upon the floor. “Wizards!” he shouted. “The Riddler is right. We have a means to save the ninth wizard, and we must use it. This is a test of the Gyre’s strength. Let us be strong enough to meet an eighth-level spell, let us be wise enough to cast our own.”

  “Then I want to call a vote!” objected the Cosmologer. “We—”

  “There shall be no vote! As the Senior I overrule your objection, and yours, Warlock. We unite in this. We unite! The Gyre will face the Writhe with Nothing. Prepare yourself, and join upon my finger for our Transferance. We must save the ninth wizard, we must save Eyri.” He stood with his right forefinger raised, waiting upon them, his magesilk vestment shimmering with resplendent viridian patterns. “If the Nothingness is contained by the strict pattern of our positions, it shall be an Order spell. Come and join your power with mine. We face it now!”

  Zarost lived for moments like these, when the power of one wizard rose from dormancy to rush through everything. The Senior’s might filled the room and infused them all. The Lorewarden shed the worst of his fatigue. The Mystery’s twitching calmed. The Mentalist’s hair even rose off his shoulders a bit.

  Zarost strode to join the Senior. The Gyre was a strange organisation; they could spend days discussing trivialities, but when it came to important issues, they could find direction in a flash. He reached into his pocket, retrieved a flattened piece of bristly fabric, and slapped the brim against his wrist. The hat popped into shape. He spun it into the air, and caught it upon his bald dome. It sat lower than usual on his head, but the brim was tight. He was ready to face their nemesis.

  The Cosmologer came to them last. There were fresh tears in her eyes. “Blast you, Riddler! You are dirty, devious and despicable. I hope you are right.”

  “Hold onto your corner, whatever happens,” he said to her. “If one of our positions is lost, we might allow some of the Writhe to escape the trap. The worm must find Nothing, it must not find us.”

  “I am terrified by it,” she admitted in a hollow voice. “It has more power than I.”

  She brought her shaking finger to the tower of seven nonetheless. The brown chamber spun around them with their combined empowered essence. Zarost took a last breath of the dry desert air. He closed his eyes.

  “We are one. Let us pray we have enough strength together,” said the Senior.

  They reached for infinity. They Transferred together.

  * * *

  They were at the pool at the head of the White River, just beyond the northern boundary of Eyri’s Shield. They stood with their backs to the great cliff below River’s End, and they faced an advancing wall of Chaos. The world churned in the sky. A terrible wind howled at them, an immense hollow moan punctuated with the clacking of debris, backed by continuous rolling thunder. The dark and boiling clouds which grew ahead of the Writhe were ripped inwards at their trailing edge as the air was sucked into the choking hunger of its mouth. Silver lightning tore across the gloom in jagged forks. Amber rain stung their backs, and when Zarost looked back he saw that the falls were bent at their base. The water never reached the ground, it was sucked horizontally towards the Writhe. Some of the smaller rocks were coming by too. The boulders would be next.

  They were dragged towards the Writhe at once, dragged though they dug their heels into the barren dirt. This was wildfire land, the wastes caused by the centuries of Chaos spilled from Eyri’s Shield. The grey soil was dead, but safe. The silvered seams within it were not.

  “Hold together!” shouted the Senior. “Anchor to this point.”

  Zarost concentrated on his fingertip, and watched the air grow bright as they claimed the same position. But they slipped towards the Writhe nonetheless, space bent inwards like stretched dough.

  “Now, work the spell of Centrifuge, throw us outwards, and hard,” the Senior commanded.

  “We won’t get far enough!” cried the Cosmologer. “We can’t spin that fast!”

  “Turn us!”

  The Warlock began the Centrifuge pattern, being the most adept at second-axis spells, particularly matter-magic. They turned upon the tower of fingers in their centre, turned around the axis of the single point they held. The Writhe dragged them faster over the grey soil. Zarost combined his essence with the Warlock’s pattern, as did the others, and the world became a blur as they gained speed around their centre. Their track towards the Writhe began to increase, and yet they had not separated the point as Zarost had hoped. An immense force bound the point together, a force of n
ature which resisted their attempt to split the fabric of space. Their fingers were bound together. Zarost could see nothing of the Writhe now, they were spinning so fast upon their own spell that he had to shut his eyes tight to prevent them from flying out of his head. He groaned against the force of his own inertia, and the horrible tension in his arm.

  The Mystery cried out with sudden inspiration, “Release yourselves from the Gyre. We must do this as individuals, or we shall stay bonded.”

  Zarost withdrew from the union of minds. The point split.

  He was thrown like a hammer, far into the air, across the turbulent face of the Writhe, outwards to the edge of the overhanging clouds. A great rend followed him, drawn by his hand, a black emptiness, as if the day around him was a picture painted on the lit canvas of a tent, and he tore it now to reveal the vacant night beyond. He used all of his intent to hold onto the bright fire of the leading point, which still resisted their manipulation fiercely. The others had separated with just as much energy, tearing the gap of Nothingness between them. It was going to be a race now, between those who had been thrown up high falling to the ground, or the Writhe reaching the edge of the void they held open for it.

  The Writhe drew them in ever faster. Being in the air was a blessing at first, because there was nothing to hit, and since he could not resist the inwards current, he moved at the same speed as the airborne debris. The four on the ground had it hard. They had been thrown to the sides by the Centrifuge spell, now they raced over the earth again through lifting soil and rocks and Chaos-dust. The Mentalist lost command of his warding spell, and hit a boulder. The Mystery was downed by a flying tree. Two corners of the Nothingness flapped free, and the void became more like a stretched pyramid than a cube.

  Zarost passed the jutting cloud and fell through air thick with moisture, stone chips, and electricity. He hoped that the outer material orbiting the maw was not the governing pattern of the Writhe. The six of them were falling inwards now, ever faster. If they could just hold their void open over the inner vortex, the Writhe should end. He threw a spell of Repulsion against all of the five conscious Gyre members in turn, and felt similar spells buffet him, but the Writhe was beating them. They were drawing closer to each other as they sped into the gloom of its wreckage-filled throat.