Riddle-Master Read online

  “But what did you do—leave Hed without telling anyone, leave Caithnard without telling me, move unobtrusively as a doom through my father’s land to face death in that dark tower that stinks in an east wind? You didn’t even tell me that you had won. You could have done that. Any lord of An would have brought it to Anuin with a flourish of shouts and trumpets.”

  “I didn’t mean to worry Raederle. I simply didn’t know about your father’s vow. You never told me.”

  “Well, what did you expect me to do? I have seen great lords leave Anuin to go to that tower for her sake and never return. Do you think I wanted to give you that kind of incentive? Why did you do it, if not for her, or for the honor of walking into the court at Anuin with that crown? It couldn’t have been pride in your knowledge—you didn’t even tell the Masters.”

  Morgon picked up the crown, turned it in his hands. The center stone faced him, striped with the dust and green of his tunic. “Because I had to do it. For no other reason than that. And I didn’t tell anyone simply because it was such a private thing . . . and because I didn’t know, coming alive out of that tower at dawn, if I were a great riddle-master or a very great fool.” He looked at Rood. “What will Raederle say?”

  The corner of Rood’s mouth crooked up suddenly. “I have no idea. Morgon, you caused an uproar in An the like of which has not been experienced since Madir stole the pigherds of Hel and set them loose in the cornfields of Aum. Raederle wrote to me that Raith of Hel promised to abduct her and marry her secretly at her word; that Duac, who has always been as close to our father as his shadow, is furious about the vow and has scarcely spoken three words to him all summer; that the lords of the three portions are angry with him, insisting he break his vow. But it is easier to change the wind with your breath than our father’s incomprehensible mind. Raederle said she has been having terrible dreams about some huge, faceless, nameless stranger riding to Anuin with the crown of Aum on his head, claiming her and taking her away to some rich, loveless land inside some mountain or beneath the sea. My father has sent men all over An searching for the man who took that crown; he sent messengers here to the college; he has asked the traders to ask wherever in the High One’s realm they go. He didn’t think of asking in Hed. I didn’t either. I should have. I should have known it would not be some powerful, nightmarish figure—it would be something even more unexpected. We have been expecting anyone but you.”

  Morgon traced a pearl, milky as a child’s tooth, with one finger. “I’ll love her,” he said. “Will that matter?”

  “What do you think?”

  Morgon reached for his pack restlessly. “I don’t know, and neither do you. I am terrified of the look that will be on her face when she sees the crown of Aum carried into Anuin by me. She’ll have to live at Akren. She’ll have to . . . she’ll have to get used to my pigherder, Snog Nutt. He comes for breakfast every morning. Rood, she won’t like it. She was born to the wealth of An, and she’ll be horrified. So will your father.”

  “I doubt it,” Rood said calmly. “The lords of An may be, but it would take the doom of the world to horrify my father. For all I know, he saw you seventeen years ago when he made that vow. He has a mind like a morass, no one, not even Duac, knows how deep it is. I don’t know what Raederle will think. I only know that I would not miss seeing this if my death were waiting for me at Anuin. I’m going home for a while; my father is sending a ship for me. Come with me.”

  “I’m expected on a trade-ship sailing this evening; I’ll have to tell them. Deth is with me.”

  Rood quirked a brow. “He found you. That man could find a pinhole in a mist.” There was a pound at his door; he raised his voice irritably. “Go away! Whatever I broke, I’m sorry!”

  “Rood!” It was the frail voice of the Master Tel, raised in unaccustomed severity. “You have broken the locks to Nun’s books of wizardry!”

  Rood rose with a sigh and flung open the door. A crowd of angry students behind the old Master raised voices like a cacophony of crows at the sight of him. Rood’s voice battered against them helplessly.

  “I know the Great Shout is forbidden, but it’s a thing of impulse rather than premeditation, and I was overwhelmed by impulse. Please shut up!”

  They shut up abruptly. Morgon, coming to stand beside Rood with the crown of Aum in his hands, its center stone black as the robe Master Tel wore, met the gaze of the Master without speaking.

  Master Tel, the annoyance in his sparse, parchment-colored face melting into astonishment, gathered his voice again, set a riddle to the strain of silence, “Who won the riddle-game with Peven of Aum?”

  “I did,” said Morgon.

  He told them the tale sitting in the Masters’ library, with its vast ancient collection of books running the length and breadth of the walls. The eight Masters listened quietly, Rood in his gold robe making a brilliant splash among their black robes. No one spoke until he finished, and then Master Tel shifted in his chair and murmured wonderingly, “Kern of Hed.”

  “How did you know?” Rood said. “How did you know to ask that one riddle?”

  “I didn’t,” Morgon said. “I just asked it once when I was so tired I couldn’t think of anything else to ask. I thought everyone knew that riddle. But when Peven shouted ‘There are no riddles of Hed!’ I knew I had won the game. It wasn’t a Great Shout, but I will hear it in my mind until I die.”

  “Kern.” Rood’s mouth twisted into a thin smile. “Since spring the lords of An have been asking two questions only: who is Raederle to marry, and what was the one riddle Peven couldn’t answer? Hagis King of An, my father’s grandfather, died in Peven’s tower for lack of that riddle. The lords of An should have paid more attention to that small island. They will now.”

  “Indeed,” Master Ohm, a lean, quiet man whose even voice never changed, said thoughtfully. “Perhaps in the history of the realm too little attention has been paid to Hed. There is still a riddle without an answer. If Peven of Aum had asked you that, with all your great knowledge you might not be here today.”

  Morgon met his eyes. They were mist-colored, calm as his voice. He said, “Without an answer and a stricture, it would have been disqualified.”

  “And if Peven had held the answer?”

  “How could he? Master Ohm, you helped us search a whole winter the first year I came here for an answer to that riddle. Peven took his knowledge from books of wizardry that had belonged to Madir, and before that to the Lungold wizards. And in all their writings, which you have here, no mention is made of three stars. I don’t know where to look for an answer. And I don’t . . . it’s far from my mind these days.”

  Rood stirred. “And this is the man who put his life in the balance with his knowledge. Beware the unanswered riddle.”

  “It is that: unanswered, and for all I know it may not need an answer.”

  Rood’s hand cut the air, his sleeve fluttering. “Every riddle has an answer. Hide behind the closed doors in your mind, you stubborn farmer. A hundred years from now students in the White of Beginning Mastery will be scratching their heads trying to remember the name of an obscure Prince of Hed who, like another obscure Prince of Hed, ignored the first and last rule of riddle-mastery. I thought you had more sense.”

  “All I want,” Morgon said succinctly, “is to go to Anuin, marry Raederle, and then go home and plant grain and make beer and read books. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “Yes! Why are you being so obtuse? You of all people?”

  “Rood,” Master Tel said in his gentle voice, “you know an answer to the stars on his face was sought and never found. What more do you suggest he do?”

  “I suggest,” Rood said, “he ask the High One.”

  There was a little silence. The Master Ohm broke it with a rustle of cloth as he shifted. “The High One would indeed know. However I suspect you will have to provide Morgon with more incentive than pure knowledge before he would make such a long, harsh journey away from his land.”

&nb
sp; “I don’t have to. Sooner or later, he’ll be driven there.”

  Morgon sighed. “I wish you would be reasonable. I want to go to Anuin, not Erlenstar Mountain. I don’t want to ask any more riddles; spending a night from twilight to dawn in a tower rotten with cloth and bone, racking my brain for every riddle I ever learned, gave me a distaste for riddle-games.”

  Rood leaned forward, every trace of mockery gone from his face. “You will take honor from this place, and Master Tel has said you will take the Black today for doing what even the Master Laern died attempting. You will go to Anuin, and the lords of An, and my father and Raederle will give you at least the respect due to you for your knowledge and your courage. But if you accept the Black, it will be a lie; and if you offer the peace of Hed to Raederle, that also will be a lie, a promise you will not keep because there is a question you will not answer, and you will find, like Peven, that it is the one riddle you do not know, not the thousand you do know, that will destroy you.”

  “Rood!” Morgon checked, his mouth tight, his hands tight on the arms of his chair. “What are you trying to make of me? What is it you are trying to make of me?”

  “A Master—for your own sake. How can you be so blind? How can you so stubbornly, so flagrantly, ignore everything you know is true? How can you let them call you a Master? How can you accept from them the Black of Mastery while you turn a blind eye at truth?”

  Morgon felt the blood well into his face. He said tautly, Rood’s face suddenly the only face in the still room, “I never wanted the Black. But I do claim some choice in my life. What those stars on my face are, I do not know; and I don’t want to know. Is that what you want me to admit? You take the eyes that your father, and Madir, and the shape-changer Ylon gave you and probe your own cold, fearless way into truth, and when you take the Black, I will come and celebrate with you. But all I want is peace.”

  “Peace,” Master Tel said mildly, “was never one of your habits, Rood. We can only judge Morgon according to our standards, and by those he has earned the Black. How else can we honor him?”

  Rood stood up. He undid his robe, let it slide to the floor, stood half-naked in the startled gaze of the Masters. “If you give him the Black, I will never wear any robe of Mastery again.”

  A muscle in Morgon’s rigid face jumped. He leaned back in his chair, his stiff fingers opening, and said icily, “Put your clothes back on, Rood. I have said I didn’t want the Black, and I won’t take it. It’s not the business of a farmer of Hed to master riddles. Besides, what honor would it give me to wear the same robe Laern wore and lost in that tower, and that Peven wears now?”

  Rood gathered his robe in one hand, walked to Morgon’s chair. He leaned over it, his hands on the arms. His face loomed above Morgon’s, spare, bloodless. He whispered, “Please. Think.”

  He held Morgon’s eyes, held the silence in the room with the motionless, taut set of his body until he moved, turned to leave. Then Morgon’s own body loosened as though the black gaze had drained out of it. He heard the door close and dropped his face in one hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to say that about Laern. I lost my temper.”

  “Truth,” the Master Ohm murmured, “needs no apology.” His mist-colored eyes, unwavering on Morgon’s face, held a gleam of curiosity. “Not even a Master assumes he knows everything—except in rare cases, such as Laern’s. Will you accept the Black? You surely deserve it, and as Tel says, it is all we have to honor you.”

  Morgon shook his head. “I want it. I do want it. But Rood wants it more than I do; he’ll make better use of it than I will, and I would rather he take it. I’m sorry we argued here—I don’t know how it got started.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Tel promised. “He was being rather unreasonable, and unnecessarily harsh.”

  “He has his father’s vision,” Ohm said. Morgon’s eyes moved to him after a moment.

  “You think he was right?”

  “In essence. So do you, although you have chosen not to act—as is, according to your rather confused standards, your right. But I suspect a journey to the High One will not be as useless as you think.”

  “But I want to get married. And why should I trouble whatever destiny Rood thinks I have until it troubles me? I’m not going out hunting a destiny like a strayed cow.”

  The corner of Master Ohm’s lean mouth twitched. “Who was Ilon of Yrye?”

  Morgon sighed noiselessly. “Ilon was a harpist at the court of Har of Osterland, who offended Har with a song so terribly that he fled from Har out of fear of death. He went alone to the mountains, taking nothing but his harp, and lived quietly, far from all men, farming and playing his harp. So great was his harping in his loneliness, that it became his voice, and it spoke as he could not, to the animals living around him. Word of it spread from creature to creature until it came one day to the ears of the Wolf of Osterland, Har, as he prowled in that shape through his land. He was drawn by curiosity to the far reaches of his kingdom, and there he found Ilon, playing at the edge of the world. The wolf sat and listened. And Ilon, finishing his song and raising his eyes, found the terror he had run from standing on his threshold.”

  “And the stricture?”

  “The man running from death must run first from himself. But I don’t see what that has to do with me. I’m not running: I’m simply not interested.”

  The Master’s elusive smile deepened faintly. “Then I wish you the peace of your disinterest, Morgon of Hed,” he said softly.

  Morgon did not see Rood again, though he searched through the grounds and the cliff above the sea half the afternoon for him. He took supper with the Masters, and found, wandering outside afterward into the dead wind of twilight, the High One’s harpist coming up the road.

  Deth, stopping, said, “You look troubled.”

  “I can’t find Rood. He must have gone down to Caithnard.” He ran a hand through his hair in a rare, preoccupied gesture, and set his shoulders against the broadside of an oak. Three stars gleamed below his hairline, muted in the evening. “We had an argument; I’m not even sure now what it was about. I want him with me at Anuin, but it’s getting late, and I don’t know now if he’ll come.”

  “We should board.”

  “I know. If we miss the tide, they’ll sail without us. He’s probably drunk in some tavern, wearing nothing but his boots. Maybe he would rather see me take a long journey to the High One than marry Raederle. Maybe he’s right. She doesn’t belong in Hed, and that’s what upset him. Maybe I should go down and get drunk with him and go home. I don’t know.” He caught the harpist’s patient, vaguely mystified expression and sighed. “I’ll get my pack.”

  “I must speak to Master Ohm briefly before we leave. Surely Rood, of all people, would have told you the truth about how he feels toward the marriage.”

  Morgon shrugged himself away from the tree. “I suppose so,” he said moodily. “But I don’t see why he has to upset me at a time like this.”

  He retrieved his pack from the chaos of Rood’s room and bade the Masters farewell. The sky darkened slowly as he and the harpist took the long road back to the city; on the rough horns of the bay the warning fires had been lit; tiny lights from homes and taverns made random stars against the well of darkness. The tide boomed and slapped against the cliffs, and an evening wind stirred, strengthened, blowing the scent of salt and night. The trade-ship stirred restlessly in the deep water as they boarded; a loosed sail cupped the wind, taut and ghostly under the moon. Morgon, standing at the stern, watched the lights of the harbor ripple across the water and vanish.

  “We’ll reach Anuin in the afternoon, the wind willing,” an affable, red-bearded trader with a weal down the side of his face said to him. “Sleep above or below as it pleases you. With the horses we carry, you may be happier up here in the air. There are plenty of skins from your own sheep to keep you warm.”

  “Thank you,” Morgon said. Sitting on a great spool of cable, his arms re
sting on the rail, he watched the white wake furl to the turn of the silent helmsman’s tiller. His thoughts slid to Rood; he traced the threads of their argument to its roots, puzzled over it, retraced it again. The wind carried voices of the handful of sailors manning the ship, a snatch of traders’ discussion of the goods they carried. The masts groaned with the weight of wind; the ship, heavy with cargo, neatly balanced, cut with an easy roll from bow to stern through the waves. Morgon, the east wind numbing his cheek, lulled by the creak and dip of the vessel, put his head on his arms and closed his eyes. He was asleep when the ship shuddered as though the twelve winds had seized it at once, and, startling awake, he heard the furious, unchecked thump of the tiller.

  He stood up, a call dying in his throat, for the deck behind him was empty. The ship, its sails full-blown to the harsh wind, reeled, throwing him back against the rail. He caught his balance desperately. The chart-house, where the traders had been lamp-lit as they pored over their papers, was dark. The wind, whimpering, drove hard into the sails, and the ship rolled, giving Morgon a sudden glimpse of white froth. He straightened slowly with it, his teeth set hard, feeling the prick of sweat on his back even in the cold spray.

  He saw the hatch to the hold open reluctantly against the wind, recognized the web-colored hair in the moonlight. He made his way toward it in a lull of wind, clinging to whatever stay and spare corner he passed. He had to shout twice to make himself heard.

  “What are they doing down there?”

  “There’s no one in the hold,” Deth said. Morgon, staring at him, made no sense of the words.

  “What?”

  Deth, sitting in the open hatchway, put a hand on Morgon’s arm. At the touch, and his quick, silent glance across the decks, Morgon felt his throat suddenly constrict.

  “Deth—”

  “Yes.” The harpist shifted the harp slightly on his shoulder. His brows were drawn hard.

  “Deth, where are the traders and sailors? They can’t have just—just vanished like pieces of foam. They . . . Where are they? Did they fall overboard?”