Riddle-Master

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “I don’t know.” His throat ached. “I’ll find you an answer.”

  “You will.” His voice changed then, wonderingly. “You will, Riddle-Master. You do not promise hope.”

  “No. Truth. If I can find it.”

  There was a silence. Nun’s pipe had gone out. Her lips were parted a little, as if she were watching something blurred, uncertain begin to take shape before her. “Almost,” she whispered, “you make me hope. But in Hel’s name, for what?” Then she stirred out of her thoughts and touched the rent in Morgon’s tunic, shifting it to examine the clean scar beneath. “You had some trouble along the road. You didn’t get that in crow-shape.”

  “No.” He stopped, reluctant to continue, but they were waiting for an answer. He said softly, bitterly, to the floor, “I followed Deth’s harping one night and walked straight into another betrayal.” There was not a sound around him. “Ghisteslwchlohm was looking for me along Trader’s Road. And he found me. He trapped Raederle, so that I could not use power against him. He was going to take me back to Erlenstar Mountain. But the shape-changers found us all. I escaped from them”—he touched the scar on his face—“by that much. I hid under illusion and escaped. I haven’t seen any of them since we began to fly. Maybe they all killed each other. Somehow I doubt it.” He added, feeling their silence like a spell, compelling him, drawing words from him, “The High One killed his harpist.” He shook his head a little, pulling back from their silence, unable to give them more. He heard Iff draw breath, felt the wizard’s skilled, quieting touch.

  Talies said abruptly, “Where was Yrth during all this?”

  Morgon’s eyes moved from a splinter of bone on the floor. “Yrth.”

  “He was with you on Trader’s Road.”

  “No one was—” He stopped. A hint of night air found its way past illusion, shivered through the chamber; the light fluttered like something trapped. “No one was with us.” Then he remembered the Great Shout out of nowhere, and the mysterious, motionless figure watching him in the night. He whispered incredulously, “Yrth?”

  They looked at one another. Nun said, “He left Lungold to find you, give you what help he could. You never saw him?”

  “Once—I might have, when I needed help. It must have been Yrth. He never told me. He may have lost me when we began to fly.” He paused, thinking back. “There was one moment, after the horse struck me, when I could barely hold my own illusion. The shape-changers could have killed me then. They should have. I expected it. But nothing touched me. . . . He may have been there, to save my life in that moment. But if he stayed there after I escaped—”

  “He would have let us know, surely,” Nun said, “if he needed help.” She passed the back of a workworn hand over her brow worriedly. “But where is he, I wonder. An old man wandering up and down Trader’s Road looking for you no doubt, along with the Founder and shape-changers. . . .”

  “He should have told me. If he needed help, I could have fought for him; that’s what I came for.”

  “You could have lost your life for his sake, too. No.” She seemed to be answering her own doubt. “He’ll come in his own time. Maybe he stayed to bury the harpist. Yrth taught him harp songs once, here in this college.” She was silent again, while Morgon watched two battered faces of the dead against the far wall shift closer and closer together. He closed his eyes before they merged. He heard the crow cry from a distance; a painful grip on his shoulder kept him from falling. He opened his eyes to meet the hawk’s stare and felt the sudden, cold sweat that had broken out on his face.

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  “With reason.” Iff loosened his hold. His face was seamed with a network of hair-fine lines. “There is venison on a spit in the kitchens—the only room left with four walls and a roof. We have been sleeping down here, but there are pallets beside the hearth. There will be a guard outside the door, watching the grounds.”

  “A guard?”

  “One of the Morgol’s guards. They provide for us, out of the Morgol’s courtesy.”

  “Is the Morgol still here?”

  “No. She resisted every argument we gave her to go home, until suddenly about two weeks ago, without explanation she went back to Herun.” He raised his hand, pulled a torch out of air and darkness. “Come, I’ll show you the way.”

  Morgon followed him silently back through his illusion, through the broken rooms, down another winding flight of stone steps into the kitchens. The smell of meat cooling over the embers made even his bones feel hollow. He sat down at the long, half-charred table, while Iff found a knife and some chipped goblets.

  “There is wine, bread, cheese, fruit—the guards keep us well-supplied.” He paused, then smoothed a feather on the crow’s wing. “Morgon,” he said softly, “I have no idea what the dawn will bring. But if you had not chosen to come here, we would be facing certain death. Whatever blind hope kept us alive for seven centuries must have been rooted in you. You may be afraid to hope, but I am not.” His hand rested briefly against Morgon’s scarred cheek. “Thank you for coming.” He straightened. “I’ll leave you here; we work through the night and rarely sleep. If you need us, call.”

  He tossed his torch into the hearth and left. Morgon stared down at the table, at the still shadow of the crow on the wood. He stirred finally, said its name. It seemed about to change shape; its wings lifted to fly down from his shoulder. Then the outer door to the kitchens opened abruptly. The guard entered: a young, dark-haired woman so familiar yet unfamiliar that Morgon could only stare at her. She stopped dead, halfway across the room, staring at him without blinking. He saw her swallow.

  “Morgon?”

  He stood up. “Lyra.” She had grown; her body was tall and supple in the short, dark tunic. Her face in the shadows was half the child’s he remembered and half the Morgol’s. She could not seem to move. So he went to her. As he neared, he saw her hand shift on her spear; he paused midstep and said, “It’s me.”

  “I know.” She swallowed again, her eyes still startled, very dark. “How did . . . how did you come into the city? No one saw you.”

  “You have a guard on the walls?”

  She gave a little jerky nod. “There’s no other defense in the city. The Morgol sent for us.”

  “You. Her land-heir.”

  Her chin came up slightly in a gesture he remembered. “There is something I stayed here to do.” Then, slowly, she came toward him, her expression changing in the wash of the firelight. She put her arms around him, her face bowed hard against his shoulder. He heard her spear clatter to the floor behind him. He held her tightly; something of her clear, proud mind brushing like a good wind through his mind. She loosed him finally, stepping back to look at him again. Her dark brows puckered at his scars.

  “You should have had a guard along Trader’s Road. I went with Raederle, searching for you last spring, but you were always a step ahead of us.”

  “I know.”

  “No wonder the guards didn’t recognize you. You look—you look like—” She seemed to see the crow for the first time, motionless, watching from under his hair. “That’s—is that Mathom?”

  “Is he here?”

  “He was, for a while. So was Har, but the wizards sent them both home.”

  His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Har?” he said incredulously. “In Hel’s name, why did he come?”

  “To help you. He stayed with the Morgol in her camp outside of Lungold until the wizards persuaded him to leave.”

  “Are they so sure he went? Have they checked the mind of every blue-eyed wolf around Lungold?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Lyra, there are shape-changers coming. They know they can find me here.”

  She was silent; he watched her calculate. “The Morgol had us bring a supply of weapons for the traders; there were very few in the city. But the traders—Morgon, they’re not fighters. The wall will crumble like old bread under attack. There are two hundred guards . . .” Her brow
s creased again, helplessly, and she looked suddenly young. “Do you know what they are? The shape-changers?”

  “No.” Something unfamiliar was building behind her eyes: the first hint of fear he had ever seen in her. He said, more harshly than he intended to, “Why?”

  “Have you heard the news from Ymris?”

  “No.”

  She drew breath. “Heureu Ymris lost Wind Plain. In a single afternoon. For months he held the rebel army back, at the edge of the plain. The Lords of Umber and Marcher had gathered an army to push the rebels back into the sea. It would have reached Wind Plain within two days. But suddenly an army greater than anything anyone knew existed swarmed out of Meremont and Tor across Wind Plain. Men who survived said they found themselves fighting—fighting men they swore they had already killed. The king’s army was devastated. A trader was caught in the battlefield selling horses. He fled with the survivors into Rhun, and then into Lungold. He said—he said the plain was a nightmare of unburied dead. And Heureu Ymris has not been seen anywhere in Ymris since that day.”

  Morgon’s lips moved soundlessly. “Is he dead?”

  “Astrin Ymris says no. But even he can’t find the king. Morgon, if I must fight shape-changers with two hundred guards, I will. But if you could just tell me what we are fighting? . . .”

  “I don’t know.” He felt the crow’s claws through his tunic. “We’ll take this battle out of the city. I didn’t come here to destroy Lungold a second time. I’ll give the shape-changers no reason to fight here.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Into the forest, up a mountain—anywhere, as long as it’s not here.”

  “I’m coming,” she said.

  “No. Absolutely—”

  “The guards can stay here in the city, in case they are needed. But I am coming with you. It’s a matter of honor.”

  He looked at her silently, his eyes narrowed. She met them calmly. “What did you do?” he asked. “Did you take a vow?”

  “No. I don’t take vows. I make decisions. This one I made in Caerweddin, when I learned that you had lost the land-rule of Hed and you were still alive. I remembered, when you spoke of Hed in Herun, how much the land-rule meant to you. This time, you will have a guard.”

  “Lyra. I have a guard. Five wizards.”

  “And me.”

  “No. You are the land-heir of Herun. I have no intention of taking your body back to Crown City to give it to the Morgol.”

  She slipped out of his hold with a swift, light twist that left his hands gripping air. She swept her spear from the floor, held it upright beside her, standing at easy attention. “Morgon,” she said softly, “I have made a decision. You fight with wizardry; I fight with a spear. It’s the only way I know how. Either I fight here, or one day I will be forced to fight in Herun itself. When you meet Ghisteslwchlohm again, I will be there.” She turned, then remembered what she had come in for. She took an ancient torch out of its socket and dipped it into the fire. “I’m going to check the grounds. Then I’ll come back and guard you until dawn.”

  “Lyra,” he said wearily, “please just go home.”

  “No, I’m simply doing what I am trained to do. And so,” she added without a suspicion of irony, “are you.” Then her eyes moved to the crow. “Is that something I should know to guard?”

  He hesitated. The crow sat like a black thought on his shoulder, absolutely motionless. “No,” he said finally. “Nothing will harm it. I swear that by my life.”

  Her dark eyes widened suddenly, going back to it. She said softly, puzzled, after a moment, “Once we were friends.”

  She left him. He went to the fire, but thoughts lay hard, knotted in his belly, and he could not eat. He stilled the fire, sent it back into the embers. Then he lay down on one of the pallets, his face on his forearm, turned to look at the crow. It rested beside him on the stones. He reached out with his free hand, smoothed its feathers again and again.

  “I will never teach you another shape,” he whispered. “Raederle, what happened on Wind Plain has nothing to do with you. Nothing.” He stroked it, talking to it, arguing, pleading without response until his eyes closed and he melted finally into its darkness.

  Dawn broke into his dreams as the door swung open and shut with a bang. He startled up, his heart pounding, and saw the young, surprised face of a strange guard. She bent her head courteously.

  “I’m sorry, Lord.” She heaved a bucket of water and an earthen jar of fresh milk onto the table. “I didn’t see you sleeping there.”

  “Where is Lyra?”

  “On the north wall, overlooking the lake. There is a small army of some kind coming across the backlands. Goh rode out to check it.” He got to his feet, murmuring. She added, “Lyra told me to ask you if you could come.”

  “I’ll come.” Nun, in a cloud of pipe smoke, drifted into the corner of his eye, and he started again. She put a soothing hand on his shoulder.

  “You’ll go where?”

  “Some kind of an army is coming; maybe help, maybe not.” He scooped water onto his face from the bucket and poured milk into a cracked goblet and drained it. Then his head swung back to the pallet he had been sleeping on. “Where—?” He took a step toward it, his eyes running frantically over the iron and brass pots on the wall, over the smoky roof beams. “Where in Hel’s name . . .” He dropped to his knees, searched the trestles under the table, then the wood-box, and even the ashes on the grate. He straightened, still on his knees, stared, white, up at Nun. “She left me.”

  “Raederle?”

  “She’s gone. She wouldn’t even talk to me. She flew away and left me.” He got to his feet, slumped against the chimney stones. “It was that news out of Ymris. About the shape-changers.”

  “Shape-changers.” Her voice sounded flat. “That’s what was troubling her then? Her own power?”

  He nodded. “She’s afraid . . .” His hand dropped soundlessly against the stones. “I’ve got to find her. She’s foresworn—and the ghost of Ylon is already troubling her.”

  Nun cursed the dead king with a pigherder’s fluency. Then she put her fingers to her eyes. “No,” she said tiredly, “I’ll find her. Maybe she will talk to me. She used to. You see what that army is. I wish Yrth would come; he worries me. But I don’t dare call either him or Raederle; my call might find its way straight into the Founder’s mind. Now. Let me think. If I were a princess of An with a shape-changer’s power, flying around like a crow, where would I go—”

  “I know where I would go,” Morgon murmured. “But she hates beer.”

  He went on foot through the city toward the docks, looking for a crow as he walked. The fishing-boats were all out on the broad lake, but there were other small craft, mining barges and flat-bottomed trading-vessels nosing out of the docks full of cargo to peddle among the trappers and herdsmen around the lake. He saw no crows on any of the masts. He found Lyra, finally, standing at a piece of sagging parapet to one side of a gate. Much of the north wall seemed to be underwater, supporting the docks; the rest was little more than broad, arched gates, with fish stalls set up against the wall between them. Morgon, ignoring the glassy-eyed stare of a fishwife, vanished in front of her and appeared at Lyra’s side. She only blinked a little when she saw him, as if she had grown used to the unpredictable movements of wizards. She pointed east of the lake, and he saw tiny flecks of light in the distant forest.

  “Can you see what it is?” she asked.

  “I’ll try.” He caught the mind of a hawk circling the trees outside of the city. The noise of the city rumbled away to the back of his mind until he heard only the lazy morning breeze and the piercing cry of another hawk in the distance who had missed its kill. The hawk’s circles grew wider under his prodding; he had a slow, sweeping vision of pine, hot sunlight on dried needles that slipped into shadows, through underbrush, then out into the light again onto hot, bare rock, where lizards under the hawk-shadow startled into crevices. The hawk-brain sorted every sound, e
very vague slink of shadow through the bracken. He urged it farther east, making a broad spiral of its circles. Finally, it swung across a line of warriors picking their way through the trees. He made the hawk return to the line again and again, until finally a movement in the full light below snapped its attention, and as it flung itself eastward, he shirred himself from its mind.

  He slid down against the parapet. The sun struck him at an odd angle, much higher than he expected.

  “They look like Ymris warriors,” he said tiredly, “who have spent days crossing the backlands. They were unshorn, and their horses were balky. They didn’t smell of the sea. They smelled of sweat.”

  Lyra studied him, her hands at her hips. “Should I trust them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe Goh can tell. I gave her orders to watch them and listen to them and then to speak to them if she thought it wise. She has good sense.”

  “I’m sorry.” He pulled himself to his feet. “I think they’re men, but I am in no mood to trust anyone.”

  “Are you going to leave the city?”

  “I don’t know. Yrth is still missing, and now Raederle is gone. If I leave, she won’t know where I am. If you sight nothing more dangerous, we can wait a little. If they are Ymris warriors, they can deploy themselves around this travesty of a defense wall and everyone here will feel much easier.”