Riddle-Master

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “But why? What do you want with such a knowledge of trees and stones?”

  “Power. Danan, the shape-changers are Earth-Masters. I can’t hope to fight them unless—”

  The king’s fingers wound like a tree root around his wrist. “No,” he said, as Ghisteslwchlohm had said, faced with the same knowledge. “Morgon, that’s not possible.”

  “Danan,” he whispered, “I have heard their voices. The languages they spoke. I have seen the power locked behind their eyes. It is possible.”

  Danan’s hand slipped away from him. The king sat down slowly, heavily, on a pile of rock shard. Morgon, looking down at him, wondered suddenly how old he was. His hands, calloused with centuries of work among stones, made a futile gesture. “What do they want?”

  “The High One.”

  Danan stared at him. “They’ll destroy us.” He reached out to Morgon again. “And you. What do they want with you?”

  “I’m their link to the High One. I don’t know how I am bound to him, or why—I only know that because of him I have been driven out of my own land, harried, tormented into power, until now I am driving myself into power. The Earth-Masters’ power seems bound, restrained by something . . . perhaps the High One, which is why they are desperate to find him. When they do, whatever power they unleash against him may destroy us all. He may stay bound forever in his silence; it’s hard for me to risk my life and all your trust for someone who never speaks. But at least if I fight for him, I fight for you.” He paused, his eyes on the flecks of fire catching in the rough, rich walls around him. “I can’t ask you to trust me,” he said softly. “Not when I don’t even trust myself. All I know is where both logic and hunger lead me.”

  He heard the king’s weary sigh in the shadows. “The ending of an age. . . . That’s what you told me the last time you came to this place. Ymris is nearly destroyed. It seems only a matter of time before that war spills into An, into Herun, then north across the realm. I have an army of miners, the Morgol has her guard, the wolf-king . . . has his wolves. But what is that against an army of Earth-Masters coming back into their power? And how can one Prince of Hed, even with whatever knowledge of land-law you have the strength to acquire, fight that?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “How?”

  “Danan, I’ll find a way. It’s either that or die, and I am too stubborn to die.” He sat down beside the king, gazing at the rubble around them. “What happened to this place? I wanted to go into the minds of the dead children, to see into their memories, but there is nothing left of them.”

  Danan shook his head. “I felt it, near the end of summer: a turmoil somewhere in the center of my world. It happened shortly before the shape—the Earth-Masters came here looking for you. I don’t know how this place was destroyed, or by whom . . .”

  “I know,” he whispered. “Wind. The deep wind that shatters stone. . . . The High One destroyed this place.”

  “But why? It was their one final place of peace.”

  “I don’t know. Unless . . . unless he found another place for them, fearing for their peace even here. I don’t know. Maybe somehow I will find him, hold him to some shape that I can understand, and ask him why.”

  “If you can do even that much—only that—you will repay the land-rulers for whatever power you take from the realm. At least we will die knowing why.” He pushed himself up and dropped a hand on Morgon’s shoulder. “I understand what you are doing. You need an Earth-Master’s power to fight Earth-Masters. If you want to take a mountain onto your shoulders, I’ll give you Isig. The High One gives us silence; you give us impossible hope.”

  The king left him alone. Morgon dropped the torch to the ground, watched it burn away into darkness. He stood up, not fighting his blindness, but breathing the mountain-blackness into himself until it seeped into his mind and hollowed all his bones. His thoughts groped into the stone around him, slid through stone passages, channels of air, sluices of slow, black water. He carved the mountain out of its endless night, shaped it to his thoughts. His mind pushed into solid rock, expanded outward through stone, hollows of silence, deep lakes, until earth crusted over the rock and he felt the snow, downward groping of tree roots. His awareness filled the base of the mountain, flowed slowly, relentlessly upward. He touched the minds of blind fish, strange insects living in a changeless world. He became the topaz locked in a stone that a miner was chiseling loose; he hung upside down, staring at nothing in the brain of a bat. His own shape was lost; his bones curved around an ancient silence, rose endlessly upward, heavy with metal and jewels. He could not find his heart. When he probed for it within masses of stone, he sensed another name, another’s heart.

  He did not disturb that name bound into every fragment of the mountain. Slowly, as hours he never measured passed, he touched every level of the mountain, groping steadily upward through mine-shafts, through granite, through caves, like Danan’s secret thoughts, luminous with their own beauty. The hours turned into days he did not count. His mind, rooted to the ground floor of Isig, shaped to all its rifts and channels, broke through finally to peaks buried under the first winter snows.

  He felt ponderous with mountain. His awareness spanned the length and bulk of it. In some minute corner of the darkness far beneath him, his body lay like a fragment of rock on the floor of the mountain. He seemed to gaze down at it, not knowing how to draw the immensity of his thoughts back into it. Finally, wearily, something in him like an inner eye simply closed, and his mind melted into darkness.

  He woke once more as hands came out of darkness, turned him over. He said, before he even opened his eyes, “All right. I learned the land-law of Isig. With one twist of thought I could hold the land-rule. Is that what you’ll ask of me next?”

  “Morgon.”

  He opened his eyes. At first he thought dawn had come into the mountain, for the walls around him and Yrth’s worn, blind face seemed darkly luminous. Then he whispered, “I can see.”

  “You swallowed a mountain. Can you stand?” The big hands hauled him to his feet without waiting for his answer. “You might try trusting me a little. You’ve tried everything else. Take one step.”

  He started to speak, but the wizard’s mind filled his with an image of a small firelit chamber in a tower. He stepped into it and saw Raederle rise, trail fire with her as she came to meet him. He reached out to her; she seemed to come endlessly toward him, dissolving into fire when he finally touched her.

  He woke to hear her playing softly on a flute one of the craftsmen had given her. She stopped, smiling as he looked at her, but she looked weary and pale. He sat up, waited for a mountain to shift into place in his head. Then he kissed her.

  “You must be tired of waiting for me to wake up.”

  “It would be nice to talk to you,” she said wistfully. “Either you’re asleep or you vanish. Yrth was here most of the day. I read to him out of old spell books.”

  “That was kind of you.”

  “Morgon, he asked me to. I wanted so badly to question him, but I couldn’t. There seemed suddenly nothing to question . . . until he left. I think I’ll study wizardry. They knew more odd, petty spells than even witches. Do you know what you’re doing? Other than half-killing yourself?”

  “I’m doing what you told me to do. I’m playing a riddle-game.” He got to his feet, suddenly ravenously hungry, but found only wine. He gulped a cup, while she went to the door, spoke to one of the miners guarding them. He poured more wine and said when she came back, “I told you I would do whatever he wanted me to do. I always have.” She looked at him silently. He added simply, “I don’t know. Maybe I have already lost. I’ll go to Osterland and request that same thing from Har. Knowledge of his land-law. And then to Herun, if I am still alive. And then to Ymris. . . .”

  “There are Earth-Masters all over Ymris.”

  “By that time, I will begin to think like an Earth-Master. And maybe by then the High One will reach out of his silence and either doom
me for touching his power, or explain to me what in Hel’s name I’m doing.” He finished the second cup of wine, then said to her suddenly, intensely, “There is nothing I can trust but the strictures of riddlery. The wise man knows his own name. My name is one of power. So I reach out to it. Does that seem wrong to you? It frightens me. But still I reach. . . .”

  She seemed as uncertain as he felt, but she only said calmly, “If it ever seems wrong, I’ll be there to tell you.”

  He spoke with Yrth and Danan in the king’s hall late that night. Everyone had gone to bed. They sat close to the hearth; Morgon, watching the old, rugged faces of king and wizard as the fire washed over them, sensed the love of the great mountain in them both. He had shaped the harp at Yrth’s request. The wizard’s hands moved from string to string, listening to their tones. But he did not play it.

  “I must leave for Osterland soon,” Morgon said to Danan, “to ask of Har what I asked of you.”

  Danan looked at Yrth. “Are you going with him?”

  The wizard nodded. His light eyes touched Morgon’s as if by accident. “How are you planning to get there?” he asked.

  “We’ll fly, probably. You know the crow-shape.”

  “Three crows above the dead fields of Osterland . . .” He plucked a string softly. “Nun is in Yrye, with the wolf-king. She came here while you were sleeping, bringing news. She had been in the Three Portions, helping Talies search for you. Mathom of An is gathering a great army of the living and dead to help the Ymris forces. He says he is not going to sit waiting for the inevitable.”

  Danan straightened. “He is.” He leaned forward, his blunt hands joined. “I’m thinking of arming the miners with sword, ax, pick—every weapon we possess—and taking them south. I have shiploads of arms and armor in Kyrth and Kraal bound for Ymris. I could bring an army with them.”

  “You . . .” Morgon said. His voice caught. “You can’t leave Isig.”

  “I’ve never done it,” the king admitted. “But I am not going to let you battle alone. And if Ymris falls, so will Isig, eventually. Ymris is the stronghold of the realm.”

  “But, Danan, you aren’t a fighter.”

  “Neither are you,” Danan said inarguably.

  “How are you going to battle Earth-Masters with picks?”

  “We did it here. We’ll do it in Ymris. You have only one thing to do, it seems. Find the High One before they can.”

  “I’m trying. I touched every binding of land-law in Isig, and he didn’t seem to care. It’s as though I might be doing exactly what he wants.” His words echoed oddly through his mind. But Yrth interrupted his thoughts, reaching a little randomly for his wine. Morgon handed it to him before he spilled it. “You aren’t using our eyes.”

  “No. Sometimes I see more clearly in the dark. My mind reaches out to shape the world around me, but judging small distances is not so easy . . .” He gave the starred harp back to Morgon. “Even after all these years, I can still remember what mountain stream, what murmur of fire, what bird cry I pitched each note to . . .”

  “I would like to hear you play it,” Morgon said. The wizard shook his head imperturbably.

  “No, you wouldn’t. I play very badly these days, as Danan could tell you.” He turned toward Danan. “If you leave at all for Ymris, you should leave soon. You’ll be warring on the threshold of winter, and there may be no time when you will be needed more. Ymris warriors dislike battling in snow, but the Earth-Masters would not even notice it. They and the weather will be merciless adversaries.”

  “Well,” Danan said after a silence, “either I fight them in the Ymris winter, or I fight them in my own house. I’ll begin gathering men and ships tomorrow. I’ll leave Ash here. He won’t like it, but he is my land-heir, and it would be senseless to risk both our lives in Ymris.”

  “He’ll want to go in your place,” Yrth said.

  “I know.” His voice was calm, but Morgon sensed the strength in him, the obdurate power of stone that would thunder into movement perhaps once during its existence. “He’ll stay. I’m old, and if I die . . . the great, weathered, ancient trees are the ones that do the most damage as they fall.”

  Morgon’s hands closed tightly on the arms of his chair. “Danan,” he pleaded, “don’t go. There is no need for you to risk your life. You are rooted in our minds to the first years of the realm. If you die, something of hope in us all will die.”

  “There is need. I am fighting for all things precious to me. Isig. All the lives within it, bound to this mountain’s life. You.”

  “All right,” he whispered. “All right. I will find the High One if I have to shake power from his mind until he reaches out of his secret place to stop me.”

  He talked to Raederle for a long time that night after he left the king’s hall. He lay at her side on the soft furs beside the fire. She listened silently while he told her of his intentions and Danan’s war plans and the news that Nun had brought to Isig about her father. She said, twisting tufts of sheep pelt into knots, “I wonder if the roof of Anuin fell in with all the shouting there must have been over that decision.”

  “He wouldn’t have made it unless he thought war was inevitable.”

  “No. He saw that war coming long ago, out of his crow’s eyes . . .” She sighed, wrenching at the wool. “I suppose Rood will be at one side and Duac at the other, arguing all the way to Ymris.” She stopped, her eyes on the fire, and he saw the sudden longing in her face. He touched her cheek.

  “Raederle. Do you want to go home for a while and see them? You could be there in a few days, flying, and then meet me somewhere—Herun, perhaps.”

  “No.”

  “I dragged you down Trader’s Road in the dust and heat; I harried you until you changed shape; I put you into Ghisteslwchlohm’s hands; and then I left you facing Earth-Masters by yourself while I ran—”

  “Morgon.”

  “And then, after you came into your own power and followed me all the way across the backlands into Erlenstar Mountain, I walked off into the wastes and left you without a word, so you had to search for me through half the northlands. Then you lead me home, and I hardly even talk to you. How in Hel’s name can you stand me by this time?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know. I wonder sometimes, too. Then you touch my face with your scarred hand and read my mind. Your eyes know me. That’s why I keep following you all over the realm, barefoot or half-frozen, cursing the sun or the wind, or myself because I have no more sense than to love a man who does not even possess a bed I can crawl into at night. And sometimes I curse you because you have spoken my name in a way that no other man in the realm will speak it, and I will listen for that until I die. So,” she added, as he gazed down at her mutely, “how can I leave you?”

  He dropped his face against hers, so that their brows and cheekbones touched, and he looked deeply into a single, amber eye. He watched it smile. She put her arms around him, kissed the hollow of his throat, and then his heart. Then she slid her hand between their mouths. He murmured a protest into her palm. She said, “I want to talk.”

  He sat up, breathing deeply, and tossed another log on the fire. “All right.”

  “Morgon, what will you do if that wizard with his harpist’s hands betrays you again? If you find the High One for him, and then realize too late that he has a mind more devious than Ghisteslwchlohm’s?”

  “I already know he has.” He was silent, brooding, his arms around his knees. “I’ve thought of that again and again. Did you see him use power in Lungold?”

  “Yes. He was protecting the traders as they fought.”

  “Then he is not an Earth-Master; their power is bound.”

  “He is a wizard.”

  “Or something else we have no name for . . . that’s what I’m afraid of.” He stirred a little. “He didn’t even try to dissuade Danan from bringing the miners to Ymris. They aren’t warriors; they’ll be slaughtered. And Danan has no business dying on the battlefield. He said once he wanted
to become a tree, under the sun and stars, when it was time for him to die. Still, he and Yrth have known each other for many centuries. Maybe Yrth knew it was futile to argue with a stone.”

  “If it is Yrth. Are you even sure of that?”

  “Yes. He made certain I knew that. He played my harp.”

  She was silent, her fingers trailing up and down his backbone. “Well,” she said softly, “then maybe you can trust him.”

  “I have tried,” he whispered. Her hand stilled. He lay back down beside her, listening to the pine keen as it burned. He put his wrist over his eyes. “I’m going to fail. I could never win an argument with him. I couldn’t even kill him. All I can do is wait until he names himself, and by then it may be too late . . .”

  She said something after a moment. What it was he did not hear, for something without definition in the dark of his mind had stirred. It felt at first like a mind-touch he could not stop. So he explored it, and it became a sound. His lips parted; the breath came quick, dry out of him. The sound heaved into a bellow, like the bellow of the sea smashing docks and beached boats and fishermen’s houses, then riding high, piling up and over a cliff to tear at fields, topple trees, roar darkly through the night, drowning screams of men and animals. He was on his feet without knowing it, echoing the cry he heard in the mind of the land-ruler of Hed.

  “No!”

  He heard a tangle of voices. He could not see in the whirling black flood. His body seemed veined with land-law. He felt the terrible wave whirled back, sucking with it broken sacks of grain, sheep and pigs, beer barrels, the broken walls of barns and houses, fenceposts, soup cauldrons, harrows, children screaming in the dark. Someone gripped him, crying his name over and over. Fear, despair, helpless anger washed through him, his own and Eliard’s. A mind caught at his mind, but he was bound to Hed, a thousand miles away. Then a hand snapped painfully across his face, rocking him back, out of his vision.

  He found himself staring into Yrth’s blind eyes. A hot, furious sense of the wizard’s incomprehensible injustice swept through him so strongly he could not even speak. He doubled his fist and swung. Yrth was far heavier than he expected: the blow wrenched his bones from wrist to shoulder, and split his knuckles, as if he had struck stone or wood. Yrth, looking vaguely surprised, wavered in the air before he might have fallen and then vanished. He reappeared a moment later and sat down on the rim of the firebed, cupping a bleeding cheekbone.