Riddle-Master

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “You have the gift for shape-changing. Shaping a tree is much easier than shaping the vesta. You must simply learn to be still. You know what kind of stillness is in a stone, or a handful of earth.”

  “I knew once.”

  “You know, deep in you.” Danan looked up at the sky, then glanced at the bustling, preoccupied workers around him. “It’s easy to be still on a day like this. Come. No one will miss us for a while.”

  Morgon followed him out of Harte, down the winding, quiet road, then into the forests high above Kyrth. Their footprints broke deep into the powdery snow; they brushed pine branches heavy with it, shook soft snow flurries loose that bared webs of wet, dark fir. They walked silently until, turning, they could not see the road, or Kyrth below it, or Harte, only the dark, motionless trees. They stood there listening. The clouds, softly shaped by the wind, rested on the silence; trees were molded to a stillness that formed the whorls of their bark, curve of branch, the heavy, downward sweep of their needles and pinnacle of tip. A hawk floated in the silence, barely rippling it, dove deep into it and vanished. Morgon, after a long while, turned to Danan, feeling suddenly alone, and found beside him a great pine, still and dreaming above Isig.

  He did not move. The chill from his motionlessness began to trouble him, then passed as the silence became a tangible thing measuring his breath, his heartbeat, seeping into his thoughts, his bones until he felt hollowed, a shell of winter stillness. The trees circling him seemed to enclose a warmth like the stone houses at Kyrth, against the winter. Listening, he heard suddenly the hum of their veins, drawing life from deep beneath the snow, beneath the hard earth. He felt himself rooted, locked into the rhythms of the mountain; his own rhythms drained away from him, lost beyond memory in the silence that shaped him. Wordless knowledge moved through him, of slow measureless age, of fierce winds borne beyond breaking point, of seasons beginning, ending, of a patient, unhurried waiting for something that lay deeper than roots, that lay sleeping in the earth deeper than the core of Isig, something on the verge of waking . . .

  The stillness passed. He moved, felt an odd stiffness as though his face were being formed out of bark, his fingers dwindling from fingers of twig. His breath, which he had not noticed for a while, went out of him in a quick, white flash.

  Danan said, his voice measured to the unhurried rhythm of the silence, “When you have a moment, practice so you can fade in a thought from man to tree. Sometimes I forget to change back. I watch the mountains fade into twilight and the stars push through the darkness like jewels pushing through stone, and forget myself until Bere comes calling for me, or I hear the movements of Isig beneath me and remember who I am. It’s a restful, comfortable thing to be. When I’m too tired to live any longer, I will walk as far as I can up Isig, then stop and become a tree. If this path you take becomes unbearable, you can simply disappear for a while, and no wizard or shape-changer on earth will find you until you are ready.”

  “Thank you.” His voice startled him as though he had forgotten he possessed one.

  “You have great power. You took to that as easily as one of my own children.”

  “It was simple. So simple it seems strange that I never tried it before.” He walked beside Danan, following their broken trail back to the road, still feeling the placid winter stillness. Danan’s voice, with its own inner peace, scarcely disturbed it.

  “I remember once when I was young spending an entire winter as a tree, to see what it was like. I scarcely felt the time passing. Grania sent the miners looking for me; she came herself, too, but I never noticed her, any more than she noticed me. You can survive terrible storms in that shape, if you need to, on your way to Erlenstar Mountain; even the vesta tire, after a while, running against the wind.”

  “I’ll survive. But what about Deth? Is he a shape-changer?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never asked him.” His face wrinkled a little in thought. “I’ve always suspected he has greater gifts than harping and tact, and yet I can’t imagine seeing him turn into a tree. It doesn’t sound like something he would do.”

  Morgon looked at him. “What gifts do you suspect?”

  “Nothing in particular; I just wouldn’t be very surprised by anything he could do. There is a silence in him that as often as I have talked with him, he has never broken. You probably know him better than anyone.”

  “No. I know that silence. . . . Sometimes I think it’s simply a silence of living, then at other times, it changes into a silence of waiting.”

  Danan nodded. “Yes. But waiting for what?”

  “I don’t know,” Morgon said softly. “I want to know.”

  They reached the road. A cart rattled over it filled with skins from trappers in Kyrth. The driver, recognizing them, slowed his horses, and they hoisted themselves onto the tail. Danan said, leaning back against the skins, “I’ve been curious about Deth since the day he walked into my court one winter, seven hundred years ago, and asked to be taught the ancient songs of Isig in exchange for his harping. He looked much the same as he does now, and his harping . . . even then, it was unearthly.”

  Morgon turned his head slowly. “Seven hundred years ago?”

  “Yes. I remember it was just a few years after I heard about the wizards’ disappearance.”

  “I thought—” He stopped. A cartwheel jogged over a hidden stone in the dark rutted snow. “Then he wasn’t in Isig when Yrth made my harp?”

  “No,” Danan said surprisedly. “How could he have been? Yrth made the harp about a hundred years before the founding of Lungold, and Lungold is where Deth was born.”

  Morgon swallowed something in the back of his throat. Snow began to fall again lightly, aimlessly; he looked up at the blank sky with a sudden, desperate impatience. “It’s beginning all over again!”

  “No. Couldn’t you feel it, deep in the earth? The ending . . .”

  Morgon sat alone in his chamber that evening without moving, his eyes on the fire. The circle of stones, the circle of the night surrounded him with a familiar implacable silence. He held the harp in his hands but he did not play it; his fingers traced slowly, endlessly, the angles and facets of the stars. He heard Deth’s step finally; the shift of the hangings, and he lifted his head, caught the harpist’s eyes as he entered, sent the swift, tentative probe of thought past the blurring, fathomless eyes.

  He felt a brief sensation of surprise, as though, opening the door of some strange, solitary tower, he had stepped into his own house. Then something snapped back into his own mind like a blaze of white fire; shocked, blinded, he stumbled to his feet, the harp clattering on the floor. He heard nothing for a moment, saw nothing, and then, as the brilliant haze receded behind his eyes, he heard Deth’s voice.

  “Morgon—I’m sorry. Sit down.”

  Morgon lifted his head from his hands finally, blinking; flecks of color swam across the room. He took a step, bumped into the wine table; Deth eased him back to his chair.

  He whispered, “What was that?”

  “A variation of the Great Shout. Morgon, I had forgotten the mind-work you learned from Har; you startled me.” He poured wine, held it out. Morgon, his hands closed, rigid, the vibrations of the shout moving like a tide in his head, opened one hand stiffly to take it. He stood up again unsteadily, sent the cup flying across the room, wine splashing out of it, to crack against the wall.

  He faced the harpist, asked reasonably, “Why did you lie to me about being in Isig when Yrth made his harp? Danan said it was made before you were born.”

  There was no surprise, just a flash of understanding in the harpist’s eyes. His head bent slightly; he poured more wine and took a sip. He sat down, cradling the cup in his hands.

  “Do you think I lied to you?”

  Morgon was silent. He said almost surprised, “No. Are you a wizard?”

  “No. I am the High One’s harpist.”

  “Then will you explain why you said you were in Isig a hundred years before you were born?”r />
  “Do you want a half-truth or truth?”

  “Truth.”

  “Then you will have to trust me.” His voice was suddenly softer than the fire sounds, melting into the silence within the stones. “Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope. Trust me.”

  Morgon closed his eyes. He sat down, leaned his aching head back. “Did you learn that at Lungold?”

  “It was one of the few things I could learn. I was caught accidentally in a mind-shout of the wizard Talies once, when he lost his temper. He taught it to me, in apology.”

  “Will you teach it to me?”

  “Now?”

  “No. I can barely think now, let alone shout. Do you use it often?”

  “No. It can be dangerous. I simply felt another mind entering mine and reacted. There are simpler ways to disengage; if I had realized it was you, I would never have hurt you.” He paused. “I came in to tell you that the High One has set his name into every rock and tree in Isig Pass; the lands beyond Isig are his, and he can feel every footfall like a heartbeat. He will allow no one but us through. Danan suggests we leave when the ice on the Ose begins to break. That should be soon; the weather is turning.”

  “I know. I felt it. Danan taught me the tree-shape this afternoon.” He rose to pick up his wine cup from across the room. He added, pouring wine, “I trust you, with my name and my life. But my life has been torn out of my control, shaped to the answering of riddles. You have given me one tonight; I will answer it.”

  “That,” the harpist said simply, “is why I gave it to you.”

  A few days later, going up Isig alone to practice shape-changing, Morgon caught again the current of stillness and found in it an unexpected tap of warmth rising deep from the earth, spreading through vein and joint of branch until, himself again, he felt it still in the tips of his fingers, the roots of his hair. A wind breathed across Isig; he looked into it and smelled the earth of Hed.

  He found Deth with Danan, talking to one of the craftsmen in the yard. Danan, glancing up as he came to them, smiled and reached into an inner pocket in his cloak. “Morgon, one of the traders came in from Kraal today—they start coming like birds at the beginning of spring. He brought a letter for you.”

  “From Hed?”

  “No. He said he’s been carrying it for four months, from Anuin.”

  “Anuin . . .” Morgon whispered. He pulled his gloves off, broke the seal quickly. He read silently; the men watched him. The soft south wind that had touched him in the mountains rustled the paper in his hands. He did not look up immediately when he was finished; he was trying to remember a face that time and distance had worn into a lovely blur of colors. He raised his head finally.

  “She wants to see me.” The faces in front of him were, for a moment, indistinguishable. “She told me to stay off ships, coming home. She said to come home.”

  He heard the boom and crack of the Ose that night in his dreams and woke to the sound. By morning, webs of broken ice had formed on it like filigree; two days later the river, dark and swollen with melting snow, spun wedges of ice huge as carts past Kyrth, heading eastward toward the sea. The traders began packing their wares at Harte, bound for Kraal and the sea. Danan gave Morgon a packhorse and a sweet-tempered, shaggy-hooved mare bred in Herun. He gave Deth a chain of gold and emerald for his playing during the long, quiet evenings. At dawn one morning, the mountain-king, his two children, and Bere came out to bid farewell to Morgon and Deth. As the sun rose in a blaze of blue, cloudless sky above Isig, they rode through Kyrth, down the little-travelled road that led through Isig Pass to Erlenstar Mountain.

  Bare granite peaks glittered around them as the rising sun pushed slabs of light inch by inch down the mountainsides. The road, kept clear three seasons of the year by men who worked for the High One, was rough with fallen stones, trees snapped by wind and snow. It wound beside a river, rose upward to the rim and edge of mountains. Great falls unlocked by the gentle, persistent south wind, murmured in hidden places among the trees, or glittered in frozen silver outpourings high between the peaks. In the silence, the sound of hoof on bare rock snapped in the air like iron.

  They spent the first night camped beside the river. Above them the sky, deep flaming blue during the day, began to stain with night. Their fire flickered back at the huge stars like a reflection. The river lazed beside them, deep and slow; they were silent until Morgon, washing a pot and cups in the river, heard out of the immense darkness a blaze of harp song that ran quick and fiery as the sunlit waters of a falls. He listened, crouched by the river until he felt his hands burn with cold. He went back to the fire. Deth softened the song to match the river’s murmur, his face and the polished lines of the harp drawn clear by the fire. Morgon added wood to the fire. The harping stopped; he made a sound of protest.

  “My hands are cold,” Deth said. “I’m sorry.” He reached for the harp case. Morgon, leaning back against a fallen log, gazed back at the cold, aloof faces of stars caught in the webs of pine needles.

  “How long will it take us?”

  “In good weather it takes ten days. If this weather holds, it shouldn’t take us much longer.”

  “It’s beautiful. It’s more beautiful than any land I’ve seen in my life.” His eyes moved to the harpist’s face, half-hidden under his arm as he lay beside the fire. The quiet mystery of him began to nag at Morgon again. He put aside his questions with an effort and said instead, “You were going to teach me the mind-shout. Can you teach me the Great Shout, too?”

  Deth lifted his arm, slid it beneath his head. His face looked open, for once, peaceful. “The Great Shout of the body is unteachable; you simply have to be inspired.” He paused, added thoughtfully, “The last time I heard it was at the marriage between Mathom of An and Cyone, Raederle’s mother. Cyone shouted a shout that harvested an entire crop of half-ripe nuts and snapped all the harp strings in the hall. Luckily I heard it from a mile away; I was the only harpist able to play that day.”

  Morgon gave a grunt of laughter. “What was she shouting about?”

  “Mathom never told anyone.”

  “I wonder if Raederle could do that.”

  “Probably. It was a formidable shout. The body-shout is uncontrollable and very personal; the mind-shout will be more useful to you. It’s a gathering in one quick moment all the energy in your mind, concentrated into one sound. Wizards used it to call one another in different kingdoms, if they had to. Both shouts may be used in defense, although the body-shout is unwieldy. If you are unusually moved, however, it is very effective. The mind-shout is generally the more dangerous: if you shout with full force into the mind of a man sitting close to you, he may lose consciousness. So be very careful with it. Try it. Call my name.”

  “I’m afraid to.”

  “I’ll stop you if it’s too strong. It takes time to learn to gather force. Concentrate.”

  Morgon stilled his mind. The fire smudged before his eyes, thinning into the darkness. The face opposite him became nameless as a tree or a stone. Then he slid past the shell of the face and let his thoughts blaze suddenly with Deth’s name. His concentration shattered, he saw the face and the fire and the ghosts of trees form again before him.

  Deth said patiently, “Morgon, you sounded as though you were on the other side of a mountain. Try again.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing—”

  “Say my name, as you would naturally, using your mind-voice. Then shout it.”

  He tried again. This time, forgetting Har’s teaching, thrown back against himself, he heard the shout futile in his own mind. He cleared his mind, tried again, and produced a full concentration of inner sound, which seemed to build and explode like a bubble in a cauldron. He winced.

  “I’m sorry—did I hurt you?”

  Deth smiled. “That was a little better. Try again.”

  He tried again. By the time the moon rose, he had exhausted his ability to concentrate. Deth sat up, reached for wood.

  “You ar
e trying to produce an illusion of sound without sound. It’s not easy, but if you can exchange thoughts with a man, you should be able to shout at him.”

  “What am I doing wrong?”

  “Perhaps you’re being too cautious. Think of the Great Shouters of An: Cyone of An; Lord Col of Hel and the witch Madir, whose shouting-feud over the land-right to an oak forest their pigs fed in is legendary; Kale, first King of An, who scattered an enormous army from Aum by his shout of despair over its numbers. Forget you are Morgon of Hed and that I am a harpist named Deth. Somewhere deep in you is a wealth of power you are not using. Tap it, and you might make the beginnings of a mind-shout that doesn’t sound as if it’s coming out of the bottom of a well.”

  Morgon sighed. He tried to clear his mind, but like leaves there came drifting through it the bright images of Col and Madir throwing shouts at each other that cracked in the blue sky of An like lightning; of Cyone, dressed in purple and gold on her wedding day shouting an immense, mysterious shout of legendary result; of Kale, his face lost in the shadows of faded centuries, shouting with utter despair the hopelessness of his first battle. And Morgon, moved oddly by the tale, shouted Kale’s shout and felt it snap away from him clean as an arrow into the eye of a beast.

  Deth’s face drifted before him again, frozen still above the fire.

  Morgon said, feeling oddly peaceful, “Was it better?”

  Deth did not answer for a moment. Then he said cautiously, “Yes.”

  Morgon straightened. “Did I hurt you?”

  “A little.”

  “You should have—why didn’t you stop me?”

  “I was too surprised.” He drew a deep breath. “Yes. That was much better.”

  The next day the river dropped away from them as they rode, the path rising high above it, tracing the mountainside, the white slope melting downward to halt at the blue-white water. For a while they lost sight of it, riding through the trees. Morgon, watching the slow procession of ancient trees, thought of Danan, and the mountain-king’s face seemed to look back at him out of aged, wrinkled bark. Midafternoon brought them back to the cliff edge, where they saw again the brilliant, impatient river and the mountains shrugging off their coats of winter snow.