“The Dulcé serve all as our gifts permit.”
“You were surprised when Celine released his message.” He had stumbled out of the room when Dassine’s message was unfolding in our heads.
“I was not told of Dassine’s enchantment—his message, or the locking and unlocking of the Prince’s voice, or this harm to his memory that Master Dassine must have caused as well. Master Exeget did not know of these things, or he would have told me.” Baglos flushed. He took a hurried sip and stowed the silver flask away in his pack. “There are many things I wasn’t told.”
I could sympathize with that. “How could Dassine know me, Baglos? I’ve wondered about it since that day. How did he know to send D’Natheil to me?.”
“I don’t know,” said the Dulcé. “My preparation was so hurried. I heard no mention of a mundane woman. Since his return from the Wastes, Master Dassine had speculated that the Exiles were all dead. He was proven wrong when they opened the Gates, as I have told you. But Master Exeget did not believe we could expect help from the Exiles on this journey. My master knew no one that could help… no one…” His voice trailed off.
“Your master… this Exeget was your master, then. You were his Guide?”
Baglos shifted uneasily, glancing up at D’Natheil, but the Prince was not listening any more. He stood in the opening of the niche with his back to us, staring out into the rain. So the Dulcé answered me as he had been commanded. “I was Master Exeget’s madrisse for eight years. I accompanied him to D’Natheil’s crossing. When Bendal was wounded by the Zhid, Master Exeget commanded me to take the madris with D’Natheil.”
And so Baglos, sworn to obey his linked madrisson, had been given little choice in the matter of this journey.
Water poured from the heavy clouds. Baglos was reluctant to continue his story without the Prince’s attention, and so our conversation moved back to the Writer’s diagram. I didn’t even have to look at the journal any more, but traced the familiar lines and symbols in the damp earth while we considered the land we traveled. Could Pell’s Mound be one of the marks on the diagram? Or the ruined castle or the Glenaven River? Was there significance in the names? Baglos maintained his position that the diagram made no sense as a map. It was discouraging to feel we were on the brink of what we needed to know, yet were no closer to deciphering it than Karon and I had been ten years previous.
My head grew heavy, the warmth and smoke sapping my energy and making it increasingly difficult to think. I had the sleepy impression of the Dulcé snoring, and D’Natheil disappearing through the cleft in the rock, back into the storm. I wondered vaguely if the man ever slept.
When I woke to watery sunlight and birdsong, it took me a moment to sort out where I was. So many different sleeping accommodations in the past weeks, so many varieties of discomfort. The quiet was disconcerting until I realized it meant only that the storm was past. A small grove of birch trees fronted our refuge, and a breeze rustled the gold-rimmed leaves, sprinkling a last shower of sparkling droplets on the grass. Baglos was snoring, slumped against the rock. D’Natheil’s fire still burned, its fuel not at all diminished. Paulo sat close to the fire, his chin on his knees, his eyes fixed on me intently, as if he were trying to will me awake.
I stood up from the damp ground and stretched my cramped muscles. Noting the hollow growl in my stomach, I thought I might understand Paulo’s unspoken message. “Are you hungry?”
He nodded eagerly.
“Set some stones to hold our pot, and we’ll make something hot. We’ll surprise Baglos.”
I wrestled with the sodden leather pack attached to my saddle, pulling out pot and provisions. As I filled the pot with water, Paulo was peering idly at the lines and symbols I had drawn in the dirt.
“Paulo, if you can unravel that little puzzle, I’ll keep your stomach full until you’re twenty,” I said, as I crouched by the fire and set the pot on the three stones the boy had found to hold it.
“I was never no good at the riddle game,” he said. “Everybody always I said was too stupid to play.”
I almost poured the water into the fire. “What do you mean—the riddle game?”
Paulo poked his bare toe at the diagram. “Looks like it. You know.”
“No, I don’t. Tell me.”
“Picture tells what riddle has to come first. What one next. Stupid game.”
I tried to contain my hopes. “I’ve never played. Could you tell me how?”
“Well, everybody makes up pictures, and one draws the lines in between to tell which picture comes first, which next. This foot means the one who plays first has got to tell a riddle about a foot. And if nobody guesses it right, then the same person gets to tell the next one about… well, whatever that thing is… and then about the face, and so on. If somebody gets it right, then that person gets to tell the next riddle. The one who fools the last, wins. I wasn’t no good at riddling.”
Riddles… Riddles that would tell us where to go. The Writer’s children had played all sorts of games. He was always telling of them. One of his daughters had a special talent for riddling.
“Baglos! Baglos, wake up!” I shook the sleeping Dulcé, not caring if I frightened him out of a year of his life.
“What is it?”
“Get the journal, Baglos. Hurry! Paulo has solved the mystery.”
Baglos shook off his sleep and dug deep in his pack to retrieve the book, mumbling to himself. “The boy solved the puzzle? Surely not.”
I hovered at his shoulder, while Paulo gave me such a look as to say that adults were not quite sensible when they would abandon cooking for the riddle game.
“It’s a children’s game,” I said, willing Baglos to hurry. “We must find where he writes of his daughter and her talent for riddles. The entry comes only a few days before he drew the diagram. We never had a reason to make the connection.”
Baglos turned the pages to the familiar one, then leafed backwards until he found the passage I named. In his musical voice, he read the Writer’s words.
Lilith hath taken herself to riddling, and a clever wit she is at it. Mori and I wonder if it be the girl will show herself a Word Winder or mayhap even a Speaker. I must inquire of Siddhe when next I work the fen country and have her tell me the signs. Mori says that Lilith yet be too young to show her gift, but Jonithe and C’Netha of Isfan were no more than eleven, and C’Netha a Word Winder herself. Regretful, too, would I be, if the need for mentoring were to take my bright Lilith so far from her home, but such is the Way. Mori doth not prod the girls to show, as she doth for Tekko and Garnath. I must admonish her, for the girls must make their way in the world every bit as much as their brothers. Well should Mori know, for were not she the strong woman she is, how ever could I take this endless road that calls me?
But enough. Lilith riddling. Before I journeyed this day, we sat and played at it. I must record her tally for when she is a Speaker, to prove that she came forth when only ten.
Karon had not bothered to decipher the little girl’s riddles, thinking the barriers of time, language, and culture would make the task impossible. We had prized the passage for its revelation of the Writer’s life, and his love for his family and his calling, but never had we made the connection with the diagram.
I hung over Baglos’s shoulder and pointed to the page. “Look. You see, he’s added these lines. The pages are so worn, and he was forever adding notes, or marking things out, or changing them. You wouldn’t notice, unless you knew to look. He would always leave space between his text, so he could go back and add things he had forgotten. See how close these lines are, and some were written with a pen having a wider tip. Paulo, you’re marvelous. You’ve really done it.”
There followed a whole page of short puzzles, but I had no trouble picking out the ones that had been added later. There were five of them, just as there were five symbols in the diagram, and a short additional passage written at the same time.