Riddle-Master

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “There’s no need to justify yourself to me,” the harpist said mildly. Morgon’s mouth crooked; he touched it absently.

  “I’m sorry. I spent half the morning justifying myself.”

  “For what?”

  His eyes dropped to the rough, iron-bound planks of the pier; he answered the quiet, skilled stranger impulsively. “Do you know how my parents died?”

  “Yes.”

  “My mother wanted to see Caithnard. My father had come two or three times to visit me while I was at the College of Riddle-Masters at Caithnard. That sounds simple, but it was a very courageous thing for him to do: leave Hed, go to a great strange city. The Princes of Hed are rooted to Hed. When I came home a year ago, after spending three years there, I found my father full of stories about what he had seen—the trade-shops, the people from different lands—and when he mentioned a shop with bolts of cloth and furs and dyes from five kingdoms, my mother couldn’t resist going. She loved the feel and colors of fine cloth. So last spring they sailed over with the traders when the spring trading was done. And they never came back. The return ship was lost. They never came back.” He touched a nailhead, traced a circle around it. “There was something I had been wanting to do for a long time. I did it, then. My brother Eliard found out about it this morning. I didn’t tell him at the time because I knew he would be upset. I just told him that I was going to west Hed for a few days, not that I was going across the sea to An.”

  “To An? Why did you—” He stopped. His voice went suddenly thin as a lath. “Morgon of Hed, did you win Peven’s crown?”

  Morgon’s head rose sharply. He said after a moment, “Yes. How—? Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell the King of An—”

  “I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Auber of Aum, one of the descendents of Peven, went to that tower to try to win back the crown of Aum from the dead lord and found the crown gone and Peven pleading to be set free to leave the tower. Auber demanded in vain the name of the man who had taken the crown; Peven said only that he would answer no more riddles. Auber told Mathom, and Mathom, faced with the news that someone had slipped quietly into his land, won a riddle-game men have lost their lives over for centuries, and left as quietly, summoned me from Caithnard and asked me to find that crown. Hed is the last place I expected it to be.”

  “It’s been under my bed,” Morgon said blankly. “The only private place in Akren. I don’t understand. Does Mathom want it back? I don’t need it. I haven’t even looked at it since I brought it home. But I thought Mathom of all people would understand—”

  “The crown is yours by right. Mathom would be the last to contest that.” He paused; there was an expression in his eyes that puzzled Morgon. He added gently, “And yours, if you choose, is Mathom’s daughter, Raederle.”

  Morgon swallowed. He found himself on his feet, looking down at the harpist, and he knelt down, seeing suddenly, instead of the harpist, a pale, high-boned face full of unexpected expressions, shaking itself free of a long, fine mass of red hair.

  He whispered, “Raederle. I know her. Mathom’s son Rood was at the college with me; we were good friends. She used to visit him there. . . . I don’t understand.”

  “The King made a vow at her birth to give her only to the man who took the crown of Aum from Peven.”

  “He made a . . . What a stupid thing for him to do, promising Raederle to any man with enough brains to outwit Peven. He could have been anyone—” He stopped, the blood receding a little beneath his tan. “It was me.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I can’t . . . She can’t marry a farmer. Mathom will never consent.”

  “Mathom follows his own inclinations. I suggest you ask him.”

  Morgon gazed at him. “You mean cross the sea to Anuin, to the king’s court, walk into his great hall in cold blood and ask him?”

  “You walked into Peven’s tower.”

  “That was different. I didn’t have lords from the three portions of An watching me, then.”

  “Morgon, Mathom bound himself to his vow with his own name, and the lords of An, who have lost ancestors, brothers, even sons in that tower, will give you nothing less than honor for your courage and wit. The only question you have to consider at this moment is: Do you want to marry Raederle?”

  He stood up again, desperate with uncertainty, ran his hands through his hair, and the wind, roused from the sea, whipped it straight back from his face. “Raederle.” A pattern of stars high above one brow flamed vividly against his skin. He saw her face again, at a distance, turned back to look at him. “Raederle.”

  He saw the harpist’s face go suddenly still, as if the wind had snatched in passing its expression and breath. The uncertainty ended in him like a song’s ending.

  “Yes.”

  HE SAT ON a keg of beer on the deck of a trade-ship the next morning, watching the wake widen and measure Hed like a compass. At the foot of the keg lay a pack of clothes Tristan had put together for him, talking all the while so that neither of them was sure what was in it besides the crown. It bulged oddly, as though she had put everything she touched into it, talking. Eliard had said very little. He had left Morgon’s room after a while; Morgon had found him in the shed, pounding out a horseshoe.

  He had said, remembering, “I was going to get you a chestnut stallion from An with the crown.”

  And Eliard threw the tongs and heated shoe into the water, and, gripping Morgon’s shoulders, had borne him back against the wall, saying, “Don’t think you can bribe me with a horse,” which made no sense to Morgon, or, after a moment, to Eliard. He let go of Morgon, his face falling into easier, perplexed lines.

  “I’m sorry. It just frightens me when you leave, now. Will she like it here?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Tristan, following him with his cloak over her arm as he prepared to leave, stopped in the middle of the hall, her face strange to him in its sudden vulnerability. She looked around at the plain, polished walls, pulled a chair straight at a table. “Morgon, I hope she can laugh,” she whispered.

  The ship scuttled before the wind; Hed grew small, blurred in the distance. The High One’s harpist had come to stand at the railing; his grey cloak snapped behind him like a banner. Morgon’s eyes wandered to his face, unlined, untouched by the sun. A sense of incongruity nudged his mind, of a riddle shaping the silver-white hair, the fine curve of bone.

  The harpist turned his head, met Morgon’s eyes.

  Morgon asked curiously, “What land are you from?”

  “No land. I was born in Lungold.”

  “The wizards’ city? Who taught you to harp?”

  “Many people. I took my name from the Morgol Cron’s harpist Tirunedeth, who taught me the songs of Herun. I asked him for it before he died.”

  “Cron,” Morgon said. “Ylcorcronlth?”

  “Yes.”

  “He ruled Herun six hundred years ago.”

  “I was born,” the harpist said tranquilly, “not long after the founding of Lungold, a thousand years ago.”

  Morgon was motionless save for the sway of his body to the sea’s rhythm. Little threads of light wove and broke on the sea beyond the sunlit, detached face. He whispered, “No wonder you harp like that. You’ve had a thousand years to learn the harp-songs of the High One’s realm. You don’t look old. My father looked older when he died. Are you a wizard’s son?” He looked down at his hands then, linked around his knees, and said apologetically, “Forgive me. It’s none of my business. I was just—”

  “Curious?” The harpist smiled. “You have an inordinate curiosity for a Prince of Hed.”

  “I know. That’s why my father finally sent me to Caithnard—I kept asking questions. He didn’t know how to account for it. But, being a wise, gentle man, he let me go.” He stopped again, rather abruptly, his mouth twitching slightly.

  The harpist, his eyes on the approaching land said, “I never knew my own father.
I was born without a name in the back streets of Lungold at a time when wizards, kings, even the High One himself passed through the city. Since I have no land-instinct and no gifts for wizardry, I gave up long ago trying to guess who my father was.”

  Morgon’s head lifted again. He said speculatively, “Danan Isig was ancient as a tree even then, and Har of Osterland. No one knows when the wizards were born, but if you’re a wizard’s son, there’s no one to claim you now.”

  “It’s not important. The wizards are gone; I owe nothing to any living ruler but the High One. In his service I have a name, a place, a freedom of movement and judgment. I am responsible only to him; he values me for my harping and my discretion, both of which are improved by age.” He bent to pick up his harp, slid it over his shoulder. “We’ll dock in a few moments.”

  Morgon joined him at the rail. The trade-city Caithnard, with its port, inns and shops, sprawled in a crescent of land between two lands. Ships, their sails bellying the orange and gold colors of Herun traders, were flocking from the north to its docks like birds. On a thrust of cliff forming one horn of the moon-shaped bay stood a dark block of a building whose stone walls and small chambers Morgon knew well. An image of the spare, mocking face of Raederle’s brother rose in his mind; his hands tightened on the rail.

  “Rood. I’ll have to tell him. I wonder if he’s at the college. I haven’t seen him for a year.”

  “I talked with him two nights ago when I stayed at the college before crossing to Hed. He had just taken the Gold Robe of Intermediate Mastery.”

  “Perhaps he’s gone home for a while, then.” The ship took the last roll and wash of wave as it entered the harbor, then slackened speed, the sailors shouting to one another as they took in sail. Morgon’s voice thinned. “I wonder what he’ll say . . .”

  The sea birds above the still water wove like shuttles in the wind. The docks sliding past them were littered with goods being loaded, unloaded: bolts of cloth, chests, timber, wine, fur, animals. The sailors hailed friends on the dock; traders called to one another.

  “Lyle Orn’s ship will leave for Anuin with the tide this evening,” a trader told Deth and Morgon before they disembarked. “You’ll know it by its red and yellow sails. Do you want your horse, Lord?”

  “I’ll walk,” Deth said. He added to Morgon, as the gangplank slid down before them. “There is an unanswered riddle on the lists of the Masters at the college: Who won the riddle-game with Peven of Aum?”

  Morgon slung his pack to his shoulder. He nodded. “I’ll tell them. Are you going up to the college?”

  “In a while.”

  “At evening-tide, then, Lords,” the trader reminded them as they descended. They separated on the cobbled street facing the dock, and Morgon, turning left, retraced a path he had known for years. The narrow streets of the city were crowded in the high noon with traders, sailors ashore from different lands, wandering musicians, trappers, students in the bright, voluminous robes of their ranks, richly dressed men and women from An, Ymris, Herun. Morgon, his pack over one shoulder, moved through them without seeing them, oblivious to noise and jostling. The back streets quieted; the road he took wound out of the city, left tavern and trade-shop behind, rose upward above the brilliant sea.

  Occasional students passed him, going toward the city, their voices, wrestling with riddles, cheerful, assured. The road angled sharply, then at the end the ground levelled, and the ancient college, built of rough dark stones, massive as a piece of broken cliff itself, stood placidly among the tall, wind-twisted trees.

  He knocked at the familiar double doors of thick oak. The porter, a freckled young man in the White Robe of Beginning Mastery opened them, cast a glance over Morgon and his pack, and said portentiously, “Ask and it shall be answered here. If you have come seeking knowledge, you shall be received. The Masters are examining a candidate for the Red of Apprenticeship, and they must not be disturbed except by death or doom. Abandon your name to me.”

  “Morgon, Prince of Hed.”

  “Oh.” The porter dabbed at the top of his head and smiled. “Come in. I’ll get Master Tel.”

  “No, don’t interrupt them.” He stepped in. “Is Rood of An here?”

  “Yes; he’s on the third floor, across from the library. I’ll take you.”

  “I know the way.”

  The darkness of the low arched corridors was broken at each end only by wide leaded windows set in walls of stone a foot thick. Rows of closed doors ran down each side of the hall. Morgon found Rood’s name on one, on a wood slat, a crow delicately etched beneath it. He knocked, received an unintelligible answer, and opened the door.

  Rood’s bed, taking up a quarter of the small stone room, was piled with clothes, books, and the prince of An. He sat cross-legged in a cloud of newly acquired gold robe, reading a letter, a cup of fragile dyed glass in one hand half-full of wine. He looked up, and at the abrupt, arrogant lift of his head, Morgon felt suddenly, stepping across the threshold, as though he had stepped backward into a memory.

  “Morgon.” Rood heaved himself up, walked off the bed, trailing a wake of books behind him. He hugged Morgon, the cup in one hand, the letter in the other. “Join me. I’m celebrating. You are a stranger without your robe. But I forget: you’re a farmer now. Is that why you’re in Caithnard? Did you come over with your grain or wine or something?”

  “Beer. We can’t make good wine.”

  “How sad.” He gazed at Morgon like a curious crow, his eyes red-rimmed, blurred. “I heard about your parents. The traders were full of it. It made me angry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it trapped you in Hed, made a farmer out of you, full of thoughts of eggs and pigs, beer and weather. You’ll never come back here, and I miss you.”

  Morgon shifted his pack to the floor. The crown lay hidden in it like a guilty deed. He said softly, “I came . . . I have something to tell you, and I don’t know how to tell you.”

  Rood loosed Morgon abruptly, turned away. “I don’t want to hear it.” He poured a second cup for Morgon and refilled his own. “I took the Gold two days ago.”

  “I know. Congratulations. How long have you been celebrating?”

  “I don’t remember.” He held out the cup to Morgon, wine splashing down over his fingers. “I’m one of Mathom’s children, descended from Kale and Oen by way of the witch Madir. Only one man has ever taken the Gold in less time than I have. And he went home to farm.”

  “Rood—”

  “Have you forgotten everything you learned by now? You used to open riddles like nuts. You should have become a Master. You have a brother, you could have let him take the land-rule.”

  “Rood,” Morgon said patiently. “You know that’s impossible. And you know I didn’t come here to take the Black. I never wanted it. What would I have done with it? Prune trees in it?” Rood’s voice snapped back at him with a violence that startled him.

  “Answer riddles! You had the gift for it; you had the eyes! You said once you wanted to win that game. Why didn’t you keep your word? You went home to make beer instead, and some man without a name or a face won the two great treasures of An.” He crumpled the letter, held it locked in his fist like a heart. “Who knows what she’s waiting for? A man like Raith of Hel with a face beaten out of gold and a heart like a rotten tooth? Or Thistin of Aum, who’s soft as a baby and too old to climb into bed without help? If she is forced to marry a man like that, I’ll never forgive you or my father. Him because he made such a vow in the first place, and you because you made a promise in this room you did not keep. Ever since you left this place, I made a vow to myself to win that game with Peven, to free Raederle from that fate my father set for her. But I had no chance. I never had even a chance.”

  Morgon sat down on a chair beside Rood’s desk. “Stop shouting. Please. Listen—”

  “Listen to what? You could not even be faithful to the one rule you held true above all others.” He dropped the letter, reached out abruptly, dre
w the hair back from Morgon’s brow. “Answer the unanswered riddle.”

  Morgon pulled away from him. “Rood! Will you stop babbling and listen to me? It’s hard enough for me to tell you this without you squawking like a drunk crow. Do you think Raederle will mind living on a farm? I have to know.”

  “Don’t profane crows; some of my ancestors were crows. Of course Raederle can’t live on a farm. She is the second most beautiful woman in the three portions of An; she can’t live among pigs and—” He stopped abruptly, still in the middle of the room, his shadow motionless across the stones. Under the weight of his lightless gaze a word jumped in the back of Morgon’s throat. Rood whispered, “Why?”

  Morgon bent to his pack, his fingers shaking faintly on the ties. As he drew out the crown, the great center stone, colorless itself, groping wildly at all the colors in the room, snared the gold of Rood’s robe and blazed like a sun. Transfixed in its liquid glare, Rood caught his breath sharply and shouted.

  Morgon dropped the crown. He put his face against his knees, his hands over his ears. The wine glass on the desk snapped; the flagon on a tiny table shattered, spilling wine onto the stones. The iron lock on a massive book sprang open; the chamber door slammed shut with a boom.

  Cries of outrage down the long corridors followed like an echo. Morgon, the blood pounding in his head, straightened. He whispered, his fingers sliding over his eyes, “It wasn’t necessary to shout. You take the crown to Mathom. I’m going home.” He stood up, and Rood caught his wrist in a grip that drove to the bone.

  “You.”

  He stopped. Rood’s hold eased; he reached behind Morgon and turned the key in the door against the indignant pounding on it. His face looked strange, as though the shout had cleared his mind of all but an essential wonder.

  He said, his voice catching a little, “Sit down. I can’t. Morgon, why didn’t . . . why didn’t you tell me you were going to challenge Peven?”

  “I did. I told you two years ago when we had sat up all night asking each other riddles, studying for the Blue of Partial Beginning.”