Riddle-Master Read online

  Praise for the

  Riddle-Master Trilogy

  “It is a rare thing that Patricia McKillip has done, to write a fantasy trilogy good enough to be compared to Tolkien, and yet to have very little that is Tolkienesque about it. Her ‘Riddle-Master’ books are, in fact, very close to true originals and can be compared to The Lord of the Rings only in the broadest sense that they are both set in a magical, created world that is made very real to the reader.”

  —A Reader’s Guide to Fantasy, by Baird Searles,

  Beth Meacham, and Michael Franklin

  “McKillip has created powerful images of a haunting silence, a universe full of secret purposes and terrible possibilities.”

  —The National Observer

  “An intricate plot accented by distinctive writing and evocative imagery.”

  —ALA Booklist

  “Patricia A. McKillip has created a world populated by mysterious harpists, riddle-masters who preserve the ancient wisdoms in Gaelic triad-like questions/strictures, land-heirs magically tied to their native soil, and over-seeing it all, an intriguing entity known only as the High One, who may be many things. I couldn’t put it down.”

  —Katherine Kurtz,

  author of The Chronicles of Deryni

  “Patriia McKillip is far and away the best of the younger fantasy writers. She is a storytelling sorceress, just now coming into her full power.”

  —Peter S. Beagle,

  author of The Last Unicorn

  Ace Books by Patricia A. McKillip

  THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD

  THE SORCERESS AND THE CYGNET

  THE CYGNET AND THE FIREBIRD

  THE BOOK OF ATRIX WOLFE

  WINTER ROSE

  SONG FOR THE BASILISK

  RIDDLE-MASTER: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY

  THE TOWER AT STONY WOOD

  OMBRIA IN SHADOW

  IN THE FORESTS OF SERRE

  ALPHABET OF THORN

  OD MAGIC

  HARROWING THE DRAGON

  SOLSTICE WOOD

  THE BELL AT SEALEY HEAD

  Collected Works

  CYGNET

  Riddle-Master

  The Complete Trilogy

  PATRICIA A. MCKILLIP

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  RIDDLE-MASTER

  Copyright © 1999 by Patricia A. McKillip.

  The Riddle-Master of Hed copyright © 1976 by Patricia A. McKillip.

  Heir of Sea and Fire copyright © 1977 by Patricia A. McKillip.

  Harpist in the Wind copyright © 1979 by Patricia A. McKillip.

  Cover art by Kinuko Y. Craft.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ACE is an imprint of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  ACE and the “A” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  The Riddle-Master of Hed, Del Rey edition published 1976

  Heir of Sea and Fire, Del Rey edition published 1977

  Harpist in the Wind, Del Rey edition published 1979

  Ace trade paperback omnibus edition / March 1999

  ISBN: 978-1-101-66215-1

  Visit our website at

  www.penguin.com

  Introduction

  LONG AGO, WHEN I was very young, and the science fiction and fantasy section of the typical bookstore was about the same length as from my nose to my thumb, I discovered Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Even now, just typing those words onto my computer screen makes a magic spell across time. I remember traveling in those distant lands in the company of hobbits and heroes, the way you remember a journey to a foreign country when you were a child. Then the world was entirely new; there were no comparisons between then and now, between what might have been and what is. Everything was possible; everything was unfamiliar; everything seemed powerful in its strangeness, its potential, its past, its language. I want to write that, I thought, as passionately as anyone else my age and of my generation who had been scribbling fairy tales and Ruritanian romances for years, and who had read everything from Hamlet to The City and the Pillar, and who had never run across anything like that trilogy in her reading life. I only knew that I wanted to go back to the place where I had been in those books, to that land, that richness, that mystery, that story.

  Some twelve years, thousands of pages and many versions later, I finished the Riddle-Master trilogy. Even after so many years, I can find small jewels of inspiration mined from Tolkien’s novels: the riddling, the underground waters and caves, the sense of destiny, prophecy inherent in the myth of the return of the king. Of course those little tinkerings with mallet and pick led me, through those twelve years, to some major mining projects, much shoveling and boring into myths and early poetry, epics and eddas, into the fascinating fool’s gold of The White Goddess, into the rich and strangely unmined possibilities for female heroes, which glittered with color and a wealth of tales for the taking. What I found in Tolkien inspired me to learn; what I learned I put into The Riddle-Master of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire, and Harpist in the Wind.

  I can’t say, though I’ve been asked, that the Riddle-Master trilogy was the work I’ve cherished most, or that it is closest to my heart. It certainly was then; but this is not then, this is now. It is, and will always be, closest to my childhood’s heart, the heart of whoever that young woman was who wrote those novels. She taught me magic, and the love of storytelling, which are two things that do not die unless you let them. Beyond that, I won’t speak for her. She chose this story, which I could not write now any more than I could wear her improbable clothes. But now and then I still catch glimpses of that land that once she traveled, across hundreds of miles of binder paper, and I think, as if it were a true country: I have been there. I remember.

  The Riddle-Master of Hed

  For CAROL

  the first eleven chapters

  Harpist in the Wind

  For all who waited, and especially

  for STEVE DONALDSON,

  who always called at the right time

  for G
AIL,

  who reminded me of the difference

  between logic and grace

  and for KATHY,

  who waited the longest.

  MAP BY KATHY MCKILLIP

  Notes on people and places may be found on page 573

  Table of Contents

  The Riddle-Master of Hed

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Heir of Sea and Fire

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Harpist in the Wind

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  People and Places

  The

  Riddle-Master

  of Hed

  MORGON OF HED met the High One’s harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season’s exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at the long, nearly deserted tables to forage whatever was left of breakfast. The Prince of Hed, who was recovering slowly from the effects of loading two carts of beer for trading the evening before, ran a reddened eye over the tables and shouted for his sister.

  “But, Morgon,” said Harl Stone, one of his farmers, who had a shock of hair grey as a grindstone and a body like a sack of grain. “What about the white bull from An you said you wanted? The wine can wait—”

  “What,” Morgon said, “about the grain still in Wyndon Amory’s storage barn in east Hed? Someone has to bring it to Tol for the traders. Why doesn’t anything ever get done around here?”

  “We loaded the beer,” his brother Eliard, clear-eyed and malicious reminded him.

  “Thank you. Where is Tristan? Tristan!”

  “What!” Tristan of Hed said irritably behind him, holding the ends of her dark, unfinished braids in her fists.

  “Get the wine now and the bull next spring,” Cannon Master, who had grown up with Morgon, suggested briskly. “We’re sadly low on Herun wine; we’ve barely enough to make it through winter.”

  Eliard broke in, gazing at Tristan. “I wish I had nothing better to do than sit around all morning braiding my hair and washing my face in buttermilk.”

  “At least I wash. You smell like beer. You all do. And who tracked mud all over the floor?”

  They looked down at their feet. A year ago Tristan had been a thin, brown reed of a girl, prone to walking field walls barefoot and whistling through her front teeth. Now she spent much of her time scowling at her face in mirrors and at anyone in range beyond them. She transferred her scowl from Eliard to Morgon.

  “What were you bellowing at me for?”

  The Prince of Hed closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bellow. I simply want you to clear the tables, lay the cloths, reset them, fill pitchers of milk and wine, have them fix platters of meat, cheese, fruit and vegetables in the kitchen, braid your hair, put your shoes on and get the mud off the floor. The traders are coming.”

  “Oh, Morgon . . .” Tristan wailed. Morgon turned to Eliard.

  “And you ride to east Hed and tell Wyndon to get his grain to Tol.”

  “Oh, Morgon. That’s a day’s ride!”

  “I know. So go.”

  They stood unmoving, their faces flushed, while Morgon’s farmers looked on in unabashed amusement. They were not alike, the three children of Athol of Hed and Spring Oakland. Tristan, with her flighty black hair and small, triangular face, favored their mother. Eliard, two years younger than Morgon, had Athol’s broad shoulders and big bones, and his fair, feathery hair. Morgon, with his hair and eyes the color of light beer, bore the stamp of their grandmother, whom the old men remembered as a slender, proud woman from south Hed: Lathe Wold’s daughter. She had had a trick of looking at people the way Morgon was gazing at Eliard, remotely, like a fox glancing up from a pile of chicken feathers. Eliard puffed his cheeks like a bellows and sighed.

  “If I had a horse from An, I could be there and back again by supper.”

  “I’ll go,” said Cannon Master. There was a touch of color in his face.

  “I’ll go,” Eliard said.

  “No, I want . . . I haven’t seen Arin Amory for a while. I’ll go.” He glanced at Morgon.

  “I don’t care,” Morgon said. “Just don’t forget why you’re going. Eliard, you help with the loading at Tol. Grim, I’ll need you with me to barter—the last time I did it alone, I nearly traded three plow horses for a harp with no strings.”

  “If you get a harp,” Eliard interrupted, “I want a horse from An.”

  “And I have to have some cloth from Herun,” Tristan said. “Morgon, I have to have it. Orange cloth. Also I need thin needles and a pair of shoes from Isig, and some silver buttons, and—”

  “What,” Morgon demanded, “do you think grows in our fields?”

  “I know what grows in our fields. I also know what I’ve been sweeping around under your bed for six months. I think you should either wear it or sell it. The dust is so thick on it you can’t even see the colors of the jewels.”

  There was silence, brief and unexpected, in the hall. Tristan stood with her arms folded, the ends of her braids coming undone. Her chin was raised challengingly, but there was a hint of uncertainty in her eyes as she faced Morgon. Eliard’s mouth was open. He closed it with a click of teeth.

  “What jewels?”

  “It’s a crown,” Tristan said. “I saw one in a picture in a book of Morgon’s. Kings wear them.”

  “I know what a crown is.” He looked at Morgon, awed. “What on earth did you trade for that? Half of Hed?”

  “I never knew you wanted a crown,” Cannon Master said wonderingly. “Your father never had one. Your grandfather never had one. Your—”

  “Cannon,” Morgon said. He raised his hands, dropped the heels of them over his eyes. The blood was high in his face. “Kern had one.”

  “Who?”

  “Kern of Hed. He would be our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. No. One more great. It was made of silver, with a green jewel in it shaped like a cabbage. He traded it one day for twenty barrels of Herun wine, thereby instigating—”

  “Don’t change the subject,” Eliard said sharply. “Where did you get it? Did you trade for it? Or did you . . .” He stopped. Morgon lifted his hands from his eyes.

  “Did I what?”

  “Nothing. Stop looking at me like that. You’re trying to change the subject again. You traded for it, or you stole it, or you murdered someone for it—”

  “Now, then—” Grim Oakland, Morgon’s portly overseer, said placatingly.

  “Or you just found it lying in the corncrib one day, like a dead rat. Which?”

  “I did not murder anyone!” Morgon shouted. The clink of pots from the kitchen stopped abruptly. He lowered his voice, went on tartly, “What are you accusing me of?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I did not harm anyone to get that crown; I did not trade anything that doesn’t belong to me for it; I did not steal it—”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “It belongs to me by right. What right, you have not touched on yet. You asked a riddle and tried to answer it; you are wrong four times. If I bumbled through riddles like that, I wouldn’t be here talking to you now. I am going down to welcome the traders at
Tol. When you decide to do some work this morning, you might join me.”

  He turned. He got as far as the front steps when Eliard, the blood mounting to his face, broke away from the transfixed group, moved across the room with a speed belied by his size, threw his arms around Morgon and brought him off the steps face down in the dirt.

  The chickens and geese scattered, squawking indignantly. The farmers, the small boy from Tol, the woman who cooked, and the girl who washed pots jammed the door at once, clucking.

  Morgon, groping for the breath the smack of the earth had knocked out of him, lay still while Eliard said between his teeth, “Can’t you answer a simple question? What do you mean you wouldn’t be talking to me now? Morgon, what did you do for that crown? Where did you get it? What did you do? I swear I’ll—”

  Morgon lifted his head dizzily. “I got it in a tower.” He twisted suddenly, throwing Eliard off balance into one of Tristan’s rosebushes.

  The battle was brief and engrossing. Morgon’s farmers, who until the previous spring had been under Athol’s placid, efficient rule, stared half-shocked, half-grinning as the Prince of Hed was sent rolling across a mud puddle, staggered to his feet, and, head lowered like a bull, launched himself at his brother. Eliard shook himself free and countered with a swing of his fist that, connecting, sounded in the still air like the distant thunk of ax into wood. Morgon dropped like a sack of grain.

  Then Eliard fell to his knees beside the prone body and said, aghast, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Morgon, did I hurt you?”

  And Tristan, mute and furious, dumped a bucket of milk over their heads.

  There was an odd explosion of whimpering from the porch as Cannon Master sat down on a step and buried his face in his knees. Eliard looked down at his muddy, sodden tunic. He brushed futilely at it.

  “Now look what you did,” he said plaintively. “Morgon?”

  “You squashed my rosebush,” Tristan said. “Look what you did to Morgon in front of everybody.” She sat down beside Morgon on the wet ground. Her face had lost its habitual scowl. She wiped Morgon’s face with her apron. Morgon blinked dazedly, his eyelashes beaded with milk. Eliard sat back on his haunches.