Riddle-Master

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Yes. He fed me. I don’t understand him. He told me that everything Morgon said about him is true. Everything. I don’t understand him. He left his cloak for me while I was sleeping.”

  Lyra turned abruptly, bent to check the trail Goh had found. She stood again, looking southward. “How long ago did he leave?”

  “Lyra,” Imer said quietly, and Lyra turned to face her. “If you intend to track that harpist through the backlands of the realm, you’ll go alone. It’s time for us all to return to Herun. If we leave quickly enough, we can reach it before Morgon does, and you can ask him your questions. The tale itself will reach Herun before any of us do, I think, and the Morgol will need you.”

  “For what? To guard the borders of Herun against Deth?”

  “It might be,” Goh said soothingly, “that he has some explanation to give only to the Morgol.”

  “No,” Raederle said. “He said he would not go to Herun.”

  They were silent. The wind roused, sweet-smelling, empty, stalking southward like a hunter. Lyra stared down at the cloak in the ashes. She said blankly, “I can believe he betrayed the Star-Bearer if I must, but how can I believe he would betray the Morgol? He loved her.”

  “Let’s go,” Kia urged softly. “Let’s go back to Herun. None of us knows any more what to do. This place is wild and dangerous; we don’t belong here.”

  “I’m going to Herun,” Tristan said abruptly, startling them with her decisiveness. “Wherever that is. If that’s where Morgon is going.”

  “If we sail,” Raederle said, “we might get there before he does. Is Bri—Where is Bri Corbett? He let you come after me alone?”

  “We didn’t exactly stop to ask his permission,” Lyra said. The guards were beginning to mount again. “I brought your horse. The last time I saw Bri Corbett, he was searching the mines with Danan and the miners.”

  Raederle took her reins, mounted stiffly. “For me? Why did they think I would have gone into the mines?”

  “Because Morgon did,” Tristan said, “when he was there.” She pulled herself easily onto the small, shaggy pony the guards had brought for her. Her face was still pinched with worry; she viewed even the genial profile of Isig with a disapproving eye. “That’s what Danan said. I got up near morning to talk to you, because I had a bad dream. And you were gone. There was only that fire, white as a turnip. It frightened me, so I woke Lyra. And she woke the King. Danan told us to stay in the house while he searched the mines. He was also afraid you had been kidnapped. But Lyra said you weren’t.”

  “How did you know?” Raederle asked, surprised.

  The guards had formed a loose, watchful circle around them as they rode back through the trees. Lyra said simply, “Why would you have taken your pack and all the food in the room if you had been kidnapped? It didn’t make sense. So while Danan searched his house, I went into town and found the guards. I left a message for Danan, telling him where we were going. Finding your trail wasn’t difficult; the ground is still soft, and you left pieces of cloth from your skirt on brambles beside the river. But then your horse stepped on one of the threads you dropped and pulled out of Goh’s hold; we spent an hour chasing it. And after we caught it finally, Kia rode over another thread and went off into the brush before anyone saw her. So we spent more time tracking her. After that, I watched for your threads. But it took me awhile to realize why our horses kept stumbling over things that weren’t there, and why there were mountains of brambles along the river that your footprints seemed to disappear into. And then we came to that lake . . .” She paused, giving the memory a moment of fulminous silence. The blood was easing back into Raederle’s face as she listened.

  “I’m sorry it was you. Was—Did it work?”

  “It worked. We spent half an afternoon trying to round one shore of it. It was impossible. It simply didn’t look that big. It just stretched. Finally Goh noticed that there were no signs that you had walked around it, and I realized what it might be. I was so hot and tired I got off my horse and walked straight into it; I didn’t care if I got wet or not. And it vanished. I looked behind me, and saw all the dry ground we had been skirting, making a path around nothing.”

  “She stood in the middle of the water and cursed,” Imer said, with a rare grin. “It looked funny. Then, when we reached the river again, to pick up your trail, and saw that tiny pool, no bigger than a fist, we all cursed. I didn’t know anyone but a wizard could do that with water.”

  Raederle’s hand closed suddenly over its secret. “I’ve never done it before.” The words sounded unconvincing to her ears. She felt oddly ashamed, as though, like Deth, she held a stranger’s face to the world. The calm, ancient face of Isig rose over them, friendly in the morning light, its raw peaks gentled. She said with sudden surprise, “I didn’t get very far, did I?”

  “You came far enough,” Lyra said.

  They reached Isig again at noon the next day. Bri Corbett, grim and voluble with relief, took one look at Raederle, stayed long enough to hear Lyra’s tale, then departed to find a boat at Kyrth. Raederle said very little, either to Danan or Bri; she was grateful that the mountain-king refrained from questioning her. He only said gently, with a perception that startled her, “Isig is my home; the home of my mind, and still, after so many years, it is capable of surprising me. Whatever you are gripping to yourself in secret, remember this: Isig holds great beauty and great sorrow, and I could not desire anything less for it, than that it yields always, unsparingly, the truth of itself.”

  Bri returned that evening, having wheedled places for them all, their horses and gear, on two keelboats packed and readied to leave for Kraal at dawn. The thought of another journey down the Winter made them all uneasy, but it was, when they finally got underway, not so terrible as before. The floodwaters had abated; the fresh, blue waters of the upper Ose pushed down it, clearing the silt and untangling the snags. The boats ran quickly on the crest of the high water; they could see, as the banks flowed past them, the Osterland farmers pounding the walls of their barns and pens back together again. The piquant air skimmed above the water, rippling it like the touch of birds’ wings; the warm sun glinted off the metal hinges of the cargo chests, burned in flecks of spray on the ropes.

  Raederle, scarcely seeing at all as she stood day after day at the rail, was unaware of her own disturbing silence. The evening before they were due to reach Kraal, she stood in the shadowy twilight under the lacework of many trees, and realized, only after the leaves had blurred into darkness, that Lyra was standing beside her. She started slightly.

  Lyra, the weak light from the chart house rippling over her face, said softly, “If Morgon has already passed through Crown City when we get there, what will you do?”

  “I don’t know. Follow him.”

  “Will you go home?”

  “No.” There was a finality in her voice that surprised her. Lyra frowned down at the dark water, her proud, clean-lined face like a lovely profile on a coin. Raederle, looking at her, realized with helpless longing, the assuredness in it, the absolute certainty of place.

  “How can you say that?” Lyra asked. “How can you not go home? That’s where you belong, the one place.”

  “For you, maybe. You could never belong anywhere but in Herun.”

  “But you are of An! You are almost a legend of An, even in Herun. Where else could you go? You are of the magic of An, of the line of its kings; where . . . What did the woman say to you that is terrible enough to keep you away from your own home?”

  Raederle was silent, her hands tightening on the rail. Lyra waited; when Raederle did not answer, she went on, “You have scarcely spoken to anyone since we found you in the forest. You have been holding something in your left hand since then. Something—that hurts you. I probably wouldn’t understand it. I’m not good with incomprehensible things, like magic and riddling. But if there is something I can fight for you, I will fight it. If there is something I can do for you, I will do it. I swear that, on my honor—
” Raederle’s face turned abruptly toward her at the word, and she stopped.

  Raederle whispered, “I’ve never thought about honor in my life. Perhaps it’s because no one has ever questioned it in me, or in any of my family. But I wonder if that’s what’s bothering me. I would have little of it left to me in An.”

  “Why?” Lyra breathed incredulously. Raederle’s hand slid away from the rail, turned upward, open to the light.

  Lyra stared down at the small, angular pattern on her palm. “What is that?”

  “It’s the mark of that stone. The one I blinded the warships with. It came out when I held the fire—”

  “You—she forced you to put your hand in the fire?”

  “No. No one forced me. I simply reached out and gathered it in my hand. I knew I could do it, so I did it.”

  “You have that power?” Her voice was small with wonder. “It’s like a wizard’s power. But why are you so troubled? Is it something that the mark on your hand means?”

  “No. I hardly know what that means. But I do know where the power has come from, and it’s not from any witch of An or any Lungold wizard. It’s from Ylon, who was once King of An, a son of a queen of An and shape-changer. His blood runs in the family of An. I have his power. His father was the harpist who tried to kill Morgon in your house.”

  Lyra gazed at her, wordless. The chart house light flicked out suddenly, leaving their faces in darkness; someone lit the lamps at the bow. Raederle, her face turning back to the water, heard Lyra start to say something and then stop. A few minutes later, still leaning against the rail at Raederle’s side, she started again and stopped. Raederle waited for her to leave, but she did not move. Half an hour later, when they were both beginning to shiver in the nightbreeze, Lyra drew another breath and found words finally.

  “I don’t care,” she said softly, fiercely. “You are who you are, and I know you. What I said still stands; I have sworn it, the same promise I would have given to Morgon if he hadn’t been so stubborn. It’s your own honor, not the lack of it, that is keeping you out of An. And if I don’t care, why should Morgon? Remember who the source of half his power is. Now let’s go below before we freeze.”

  They reached Kraal almost before the morning mists had lifted above the sea. The boats docked; their passengers disembarked with relief, stood watching the cargo being unloaded while Bri went to find Mathom’s ship and sailors to load their gear again. Kia murmured wearily to no one, “If I never set foot on a ship again in my life, I will be happy. If I never see a body of water larger than the Morgol’s fish pools . . .”

  Bri came back with the sailors and led them to the long, regal ship swaying in its berth. After the barge and keelboats, it looked expansive and comfortable; they boarded gratefully. Bri, with one eye to the tide, barked orders contentedly from the bow, as the sailors secured what supplies they needed, stabled the horses, brought the gear from the keelboats and loaded it all again. Finally the long anchor chain came rattling out of the sea; the ship was loosed from its moorings, and the stately blue and purple sails of An billowed proudly above the river traffic.

  Ten days later they docked at Hlurle. The Morgol’s guards were there to meet them.

  Lyra, coming down the ramp with the five guards behind her, stopped at the sight of the quiet, armed gathering on the dock. One of the guards, a tall, grey-eyed girl, said softly, “Lyra—”

  Lyra shook her head. She lifted her spear, held it out in her open hands, quiescent and unthreatening, like an offering. Raederle, following, heard her say simply, “Will you carry my spear through Herun for me, Trika, and give it for me to the Morgol? I will resign when I get to Crown City.”

  “I can’t.”

  Lyra looked at her silently, at the still faces of the fourteen guards behind Trika. She shifted slightly. “Why? Did the Morgol give you other orders? What does she want of me?”

  Trika’s hand rose, touched the spear briefly and fell. Behind Lyra, the five guards were lined, motionless, across the ramp, listening. “Lyra.” She paused, choosing words carefully. “You have twenty witnesses to the fact that you were willing, for the sake of the honor of the Morgol’s guards, to ride unarmed into Herun. However, I think you had better keep your spear awhile. The Morgol is not in Herun.”

  “Where is she? Surely she isn’t still at Caithnard?”

  “No. She came back from Caithnard over a month ago, took six of us with her back to Crown City, and told the rest of us to wait for you here. Yesterday, Feya came back with the news that she had—that she was no longer in Herun.”

  “Well, if she isn’t in Herun, where did she go?”

  “No one knows. She just left.”

  Lyra brought her spear down to rest with a little thump at her side. She lifted her head, picked out a lithe, red-haired guard with her eyes. “Feya, what do you mean she left?”

  “She left, Lyra. One night she was there having supper with us, and the next morning she was gone.”

  “She must have told someone where she was going. She never does things like that. Did she take servants, baggage, any guards at all?”

  “She took her horse.”

  “Her horse? That’s all?”

  “We spent the day questioning everyone in the house. That’s all she took. Not even a packhorse.”

  “Why didn’t anyone see her leave? What were you all guarding, anyway?”

  “Well, Lyra,” someone said reasonably, “she knows the changes of our watch as well as any of us, and no one would ever question her movements in her own house.”

  Lyra was silent. She moved off the ramp, out of the way of the curious sailors beginning to unload their gear. Raederle, watching her, thought of the calm, beautiful face of the Morgol as she rode up the hill to the College, the gold eyes turning watchful as the Masters gathered around her. A question slid into her mind; Lyra, her brows crooking together, asked it abruptly, “Has Morgon of Hed spoken to her?”

  Feya nodded. “He came so quietly no one saw him but the Morgol; he left just as quietly, except—except that—nothing was very peaceful in Herun after his leaving.”

  “She gave orders?” Her voice was level. Beside Raederle, Tristan sat down heavily at the foot of the ramp, dropped her face into her hands. Feya nodded again, swallowing.

  “She gave orders that the northern and western borders were to be guarded against the High One’s harpist, that no one in Herun should give him lodgings or aid of any kind, and that anyone seeing him in Herun should tell either the guards or the Morgol. And she told us why. She sent messengers to all parts of Herun to tell people. And then she left.”

  Lyra’s gaze moved from her, past the worn, grey clutter of warehouse roofs lining the docks, to the border hills touched to a transient, delicate green under the late spring sun. She whispered, “Deth.”

  Trika cleared her throat. “We thought she might have gone to look for him. Lyra, I don’t—none of us understand how he could have done the terrible thing the Star-Bearer accused him of; how he could have lied to the Morgol. It doesn’t seem possible. How could—how could he not love the Morgol?”

  “Maybe he does,” Lyra said slowly. She caught Raederle’s quick glance and added defensively, “She judged him like Danan, like Har: without even listening to him, without giving him the right to self-defense that she would give to the simplest man from the Herun marsh towns.”

  “I don’t understand him either,” Raederle said steadily. “But he admitted his guilt when I talked to him. And he offered no defense. He had none.”

  “It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone, even Morgon, that perhaps Ghisteslwchlohm held Deth in his power, as he held the wizards, and forced him to bring Morgon to him instead of to the High One.”

  “Lyra, Ghisteslwchlohm is—” She stopped, felt the sluice of the sea wind between them like an impossible distance. She sensed their waiting, and finished wearily, “You’re saying that the Founder is more powerful than the High One, forcing his harpist against his wi
ll. And if there is one thing I believe about Deth, it is that no one, maybe not even the High One, could force him to do something he did not choose to do.”

  “Then you’ve condemned him, too,” Lyra said flatly.

  “He condemned himself! Do you think I want to believe it, either? He lied to everyone, he betrayed the Star-Bearer, the Morgol and the High One. And he put his cloak over me so that I wouldn’t be cold while I slept, that night in the backlands. That’s all I know.” She met Lyra’s dark, brooding gaze helplessly. “Ask him. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Find him and ask him. You know where he is: in the backlands, heading toward Lungold. And you know that must be where the Morgol is going.”

  Lyra was silent. She dropped down on the ramp beside Tristan, yielding to a weary, vulnerable uncertainty.

  Goh said simply after a moment, “We have no instructions from the Morgol to stay in Herun. No one should travel in the backlands alone.”

  “I wonder if she looked beyond Herun and saw him alone . . .” She took a breath impulsively, as though to give an order, then closed her mouth abruptly.

  Trika said soberly, “Lyra, none of us knows what to do; we have no orders. It would be a relief to us all if you postponed resigning for a while.”

  “All right. Saddle your horses and let’s go to Crown City. No matter how secretly she rode out of Herun, even the Morgol must have left some kind of trail.”

  The guards dispersed. Raederle sat down beside Lyra. They were silent as a sailor tramped down the ramp, leading Lyra’s horse and whistling softly.

  Lyra, her spear slanted on her knees, said suddenly to Raederle, “Do you think I’m right in following her?”

  Raederle nodded. She remembered the worn, familiar face of the harpist, etched in the firelight with an unfamiliar mockery as he drank, the light irony in his voice that had never been there before. She whispered, “Yes. She’ll need you.”

  “What will you do? Will you come?”

  “No. I’ll sail back to Caithnard with Bri. If Morgon is heading south, he might go there.”