Riddle-Master Read online

  He flung up his arms as it struck his face. They cried out together, he and the bird; he stumbled and fell, his hands over his eyes. Morgon reached him first, held him, and saw the blood trickling between the taut fingers covering one eye. There was a crash behind them; wind moaned into the room through the colored, jagged spears of window glass the bird left in its passing.

  Heureu went to Astrin. Murmuring gently, incoherently, he moved Astrin’s fingers from his eye. He drew a sharp breath, and snapped to a white-faced page staring at them in the hall.

  “Get Anoth.”

  Astrin, his head in the crook of Morgon’s shoulder, his eyes closed, said raggedly, “I was going to leave, but I couldn’t. I came back to Morgon’s room to see if you were still there, and as I came down the hall, I saw . . . I saw myself go into the room ahead of me. So I did something I’ve never been able to do before. I threw a call to you through the stones, into your mind—the wizard’s call. I wait—I waited. That was hard to do, but you wanted proof.”

  “I know. Lie still. You’ve done—” He stopped. For a moment nothing of him moved, his breath, his hands, his eyes, while the blood drained slowly from his face. He whispered, “So long ago. That white bird.” He stopped, kneeling hunched over Astrin, and they were silent. He rose abruptly; Rork gripped his shoulder.

  “Heureu.”

  The King pulled away from him, strode down the long, empty hallway. Morgon closed his eyes. The Lady Anoth came, grim and breathless, to bandage Astrin’s eye. Rork helped him up. Relieved of his burden, Morgon stood alone for the moment. He went to the window, touched the broken glass. He saw then, beyond Caerweddin, the stones of the ruined city on King’s Mouth Plain, scattered like the bones of some gigantic, nameless man.

  He dressed, went downstairs to the great hall. Firelight coiled deep in the stars on the face of the harp. He picked it up, slung it by its jewelled strap over his shoulder. He heard a step behind him and turned. The High One’s harpist, his hair web-colored in the hearthlight, reached out, touched the stars.

  He said softly, “I was there when Yrth made this harp. I heard the first song it ever played . . .”

  His hand moved, closed gently on Morgon’s shoulder, and Morgon’s trembling eased. He said, “I want to leave.”

  “I’ll ask the king to put a ship and guards at your disposal. You should be well enough to travel to Hed, if you’re careful.”

  “I’m not going to Hed. I am going to Erlenstar Mountain.” The stars, as he looked down on them, seemed like a reflection of his own face. “I can ignore the threats to my own life. I can deny my curiosity. I can deny that there is in me, somewhere, a man whose name I do not know. But I can’t deny that these stars on my face may be deadly to those I love. So I am going to Erlenstar Mountain to ask the High One why.”

  The harpist was silent; Morgon could not read the expression in his eyes. “Are you going by sea?”

  “No. I want to get there alive.”

  “It’s late in the year for travelling north. It will be a long, lonely, dangerous journey; you’ll be away from Hed for months.”

  “Are you trying to dissuade me?” Morgon asked, surprised.

  The hand at his shoulder tightened faintly. “I haven’t been to Erlenstar Mountain for three years, and, barring instructions from the High One, I would like to go home. May I travel with you?”

  Morgon bowed his head, touched the harp, and stray strings sounded gently, haltingly, as though he were feeling for the beginning of some great song. “Thank you. But will you mind travelling with a man tracked by death?”

  “Not when that man is carrying the harp of the Harpist of Lungold.”

  They left at dawn the next morning, so quietly only Heureu and the half-blind Ymris land-heir knew they had gone. They rode northward through King’s Mouth Plain, their long morning shadows splaying across the massive, patternless stones. A gull, wheeling in the cool air, gave one cry above them, like a challenge, then winged, bright in the clear morning, southward over the line of lean, blue-sailed warships taking the slow tide of the Thul toward the sea.

  THEY JOURNEYED SLOWLY through Ymris, as Morgon fought the last stages of his illness, avoiding the great houses of the Ymris lords, taking shelter after an easy day’s riding in small villages that blossomed at the crux of a patchwork of field, or in the curve of a river. Deth paid for their shelter with his harping. Morgon, nursing a cold in miserable silence, sipping hot broth the women made for him, watched weary farmers and unruly children settle quietly to the sound of Deth’s beautiful, intricate harping, his fine, skilled voice. They were given without hesitation any song, ballad, dance they asked for; and occasionally someone would bring out his own harp, a harp that had been passed down for generations, and recite a curious history of it, or play a variation of a song that Deth could invariably repeat after listening once. Morgon, his eyes on the ageless face bent slightly above the polished oak harp, felt the familiar nudge of a question in the back of his mind.

  In the rocky fields and low border hills of Marcher, where villages and farms were rare on the rough land, they found themselves camping for the first time in the open. They stopped beside a narrow stream under a stand of three oaks. The late sun in the clear, dark-blue sky glanced off the red faces of rocks pushing up in the soil, and turned the hill grass gold. Morgon, coaxing a young fire, paused a moment and looked around him. The rough, undulating land flowed toward old, worn hills that seemed in their bald, smooth lines like old men sleeping. He said wonderingly, “I’ve never seen such lonely land.”

  Deth, unpacking their store of bread, cheese, wine and the apples and nuts one villager had given them, smiled. “Wait until you reach Isig Pass. This is gentle country.”

  “It’s immense. If I had travelled this long in a straight line across Hed, I would have been walking on the ocean bottom a week ago.” He added a branch to the fire, watched the flames eat across the dry leaves. The dull ache and weariness of fever had dropped away from him finally, leaving him clear-headed and curious, enjoying the cool wind and the colors. Deth handed him the wineskin; he took a mouthful. The fire, rousing, shimmered in the clean air like some rich, strange cloth; Morgon, catching a reflection of it in his memories, said slowly, “I should write to Raederle.”

  He had not spoken her name since they had left Caithnard. The colors of the memory resolved into long, flighty, fiery hair, hands flashing with gold and amber, amber-colored eyes. He tossed another branch on the fire and felt the harpist’s eyes on his face. He sat back against a tree, reached for the wine again.

  “And Eliard. The traders will probably tell him enough to worry him grey-haired before any letter of mine reaches him. If I get killed on this journey, he’ll never forgive me.”

  “If we skirt Herun, you may not be able to send letters until we reach Osterland.”

  “I should have thought of writing before.” He passed the wineskin to the harpist and sliced a wedge of cheese; his eyes strayed again to the fire. “After our father died, we grew so close that sometimes we dream the same dreams. . . . I was that close to my father as his land-heir. I felt him die. I didn’t know how or why or where; I simply knew, at that moment, that he was dying. And then that he was dead, and the land-rule had passed to me. For a moment I saw every leaf, every new-planted seed, every root in Hed . . . I was every leaf, every new-planted seed. . . .” He leaned forward, reached for the bread. “I don’t know why I’m talking about that. You must have heard it a hundred times.”

  “The passage of the land-rule? No. From what little I have heard, though, the passing isn’t so gentle in other lands. Mathom of An told me some of the various bindings that demand constant attention from the land-rulers of An: the binding of the spell-books of Madir, the binding of the ancient, rebellious lords of Hel in their graves, the binding of Peven in his tower.”

  “Rood told me that. I wonder if Mathom has set Peven free now that I have the crown. Or rather,” he added ruefully, “now that Peven’s crown i
s at the bottom of the sea.”

  “I doubt it. The kings’ bindings are not broken lightly. Nor are their vows.”

  Morgon, tearing a chunk of bread from the loaf, felt a light flush burn his face. He looked at the harpist, said a little shyly, “I believe that. But I could never ask Raederle to marry me if she had no other reason than Mathom’s vow to accept me. It’s her choice, not Mathom’s, and she may not choose to live in Hed. But if there’s a chance, then I just want to write and tell her that I will come, eventually, in case—if she wants to wait.” He took a bite of bread and cheese, asked rather abruptly, “How long will it take us to get to Erlenstar Mountain?”

  “If we reach Isig Mountain before winter, it will take perhaps six weeks. If the snow gets to Isig before us, we may have to stay there until spring.”

  “Would it be faster to go around Herun to the west and up through the wilderness lands to Erlenstar without going through the Pass?”

  “Through the back door of Erlenstar? You would have to be part wolf to survive the backlands in this season. I’ve taken that way only a few times in my life, and never this late in the year.”

  Morgon tilted his head back against the tree. “It occurred to me a couple of days ago,” he said, “when I started to think again, that if you weren’t with me, I would not have the slightest idea what direction to go next. You move through this land as though you’ve been across it a thousand times.”

  “I may have. I’ve lost count.” He fed the fire, the eager flames flicking in his quiet eyes. The sun had gone down; the grey wind set the dry leaves chattering above them in some unknown tongue.

  Morgon asked suddenly, “How long have you been in the High One’s service?”

  “When Tirunedeth died, I left Herun, and the High One called me to Erlenstar Mountain.”

  “Six hundred years. . . . What did you do before that?”

  “Harped, travelled. . . .” He fell silent, his eyes on the fire; then he added almost reluctantly, “I studied awhile at Caithnard. But I didn’t want to teach, so I left after taking the Black.”

  Morgon, raising the wineskin to his mouth, lowered it without drinking. “I had no idea you were a Master. What was your name, then?” As the question left his tongue, he felt the blood burn again in his face, and he said quickly, “Forgive me. I forget that some things I want to know are none of my business.”

  “Morgon—” He stopped. They ate in silence awhile, then Deth reached for his harp, uncased it. He ran a thumb softly across the strings. “Have you tried to play that harp of yours yet?”

  Morgon smiled. “No. I’m afraid of it.”

  “Try.”

  Morgon took the harp out of the soft leather case Heureu had given him for it. The burning net of gold, the bone-white moons and polished wood held him wordless a moment with their beauty. Deth plucked the high string on his harp; Morgon echoed it softly, his own string perfectly pitched. Deth took him slowly down the gleaming run of strings, and he found note after note precisely tuned. Only twice the sounds jarred slightly, and each time Deth stopped to tune his own harp.

  He said, as Morgon’s fingers moved to the low note, “I don’t have a string to tune that to.”

  Morgon moved his hand quickly. The sky was black above them; the wind had stilled. The firelight traced the groins and arches of the dark, twisted branches sheltering them. He said wonderingly, “How can it still be in tune after all these years, even after it was washed up from the sea?”

  “Yrth bound the pitch into those strings with his voice. There is no harp more beautiful in the High One’s realm.”

  “And neither you nor I can play it.” His eyes moved to Deth’s harp, its pale, carved pieces burnished in the firelight. It was adorned with neither metal nor jewels, but the oak pieces were finely scrolled on all sides with delicate carving. “Did you make your harp?”

  Deth smiled, surprised. “Yes.” He traced a line of carving, and something in his face opened unexpectedly. “I made it when I was young, by my standards, after years of playing on various harps. I shaped its pieces out of Ymris oak beside night fires in far, lonely places where I heard no man’s voice but my own. I carved on each piece the shapes of leaves, flowers, birds I saw in my wanderings. In An, I searched three months for strings for it. I found them finally; sold my horse for them. They were strung to the broken harp of Ustin of Aum, who died of sorrow over the conquering of Aum. Its strings were tuned to his sorrow, and its wood was split like his heart. I strung my harp with them, matching note for note in the restringing. And then I returned them to my joy.”

  Morgon drew a breath. His head bowed suddenly, his face hidden from the harpist. He was silent for a long time, while Deth waited, stirring the fire now and then, the sparks shooting upward like stars. He lifted his head finally.

  “Why did Yrth put the stars on this harp?”

  “He made it for you.”

  Morgon’s head gave a swift, single shake. “No one could have known of me. No one.”

  “Perhaps,” Deth said quietly. “But when I saw you in Hed, I thought of that harp; and the stars on it and the stars on your face fit together like a riddle and its answer.”

  “Then who . . .” He stopped again, his voice unsteady. He leaned back, his face blurring in the shadows. “I can’t ignore all this and I can’t understand it, though I’ve been trying very hard to do both. I’m a riddle-master. Why am I so terribly ignorant? Why did Yrth never mention the stars in his works? Who is behind me, trailing me in the dark, and where does she come from? If these stars signalled such a reaction from such strange, powerful people, why were the wizards themselves ignorant of both the stars and the people? I spent one entire winter with Master Ohm at Caithnard, looking for a reference to the stars in the history, poetry, legends and songs of the realm. Yrth himself, writing about the making of that harp at Isig, never mentioned the stars. Yet my parents are dead, Astrin lost an eye, and I’ve been nearly killed three times because of them. There’s so little sense to this, sometimes I think I’m trying to understand a dream, except that no dream could be so deadly. Deth, I am afraid even to begin to untangle this.”

  Deth put a branch on the fire, and a wave of light etched Morgon’s face out of the shadows. “Who was Sol of Isig and why did he die?”

  Morgon turned his face away. “Sol was the son of Danan Isig. He was pursued through the mines of Isig Mountain one day by traders who wanted to steal from him a priceless jewel. He came to the stone door at the bottom of Isig, beyond which lay dread and sorrow older even than Isig. He could not bring himself to open that door, which no man had ever opened, for fear of what might lie in the darkness beyond it. So his enemies found him in his indecision, and there he died.”

  “And the stricture?”

  “Turn forward into the unknown, rather than backward toward death.” He was silent again, his eyes hidden. He righted the harp; his fingers moved over the strings, picked out the melody of a gentle ballad of Hed.

  Deth, listening, said, “‘The Love of Hover and Bird’ . . . Can you sing it?”

  “All eighteen verses. But I can’t play it on this—”

  “Watch.” He positioned his own harp. “When you open your mind and hands and heart to the knowing of a thing, there is no room in you for fear.”

  He taught Morgon chords and key changes on the great harp; they played late into the night, sending harp-notes like flurries of birds into the darkness.

  They spent one more night in Ymris, then crossed the worn hills and turned eastward, skirting the low mountains, beyond which lay the plains and tors of Herun. The autumn rains began again, monotonous, persistent, and they rode silently through the wilderness between the lands, hunched into voluminous, hooded cloaks, their harps trussed in leather, tucked beneath them. They slept in what dry places they could find in shallow caves of rock, beneath thick groves of trees, their fires wavering reluctantly in wind and rain. Deth, when the rains slackened, played songs Morgon had never heard before,
from Isig, Herun, Osterland, from the court of the High One. He would try to follow Deth’s playing on his own harp, his notes lagging, faltering, then suddenly meeting Deth’s, matching them, and the voices of the two harps would meld for a moment, tuned and beautiful, until he lost himself again and stopped, frustrated, bringing a smile to Deth’s face. And somehow the sound of their harping reached the ears of the Morgol at the court deep in Herun.

  They rode long one day through wet, rocky land. They camped late in the evening, too tired to do more than build a small fire when the rain drizzled to a stop, eat, and stretch out in their damp bedrolls to sleep. Morgon, restless on the rough ground, woke every now and then to grope at a stone beneath him. He dreamed of mile upon mile of lonely land, the rain drumming on it unceasingly and he heard beneath the drumming the slower beat of hooves. Shifting, he felt the hard nudge of a rock underneath him, and opened his eyes. In the faint, orange wash of embers, he saw a face looming over Deth, a spearhead stopped above his heart.

  Morgon, his mouth dry, reached for a stone the size of his fist, raised himself abruptly and threw it. He heard a thump and a gasp, and the face vanished. Deth woke with a start. He sat up, looking at Morgon, but before he could speak, a rock shot with fine accuracy out of the darkness, smacked against the arm Morgon was leaning on, and he dropped.

  A voice said irritably, “Do we have to throw rocks at each other like children?”

  Deth said, “Lyra.”

  Morgon raised his head. A girl of fourteen or fifteen stepped to their fire, stirred the embers until they caught, and tossed a handful of twigs on it. Her heavy, loose coat was the color of flame; her dark hair was drawn back from her face, coiled in a thick braid on the crown of her head. Finished, she straightened, holding one arm as though it pained her. In the other hand she held a light spear of ash and silver. Morgon sat up. Her eyes flicked to his face and the spear shifted swiftly to him.

  “Are you done?”