The Riddle and the Rune by Grace Chetwin

Author:Grace Chetwin
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: http://www.archive.org/details/riddlerune00chet
Publisher: Laurel-Leaf Fantasy
Published: 1990-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

HARGA? Gom scrambled to his feet. Ganash knew Harga? And thought himself to be looking at her! Why, thought Gom, I must really be like her, just as Stig had always said.

“Harga!” Ganash cried—this time in a voice none too friendly. His great tail rose from the cavern floor, lashing slowly from side to side.

Gom drew back. “I’m not Harga,” he said. “I’m her son.”

Ganash’s nostrils flared, his green eyes blazed. “None of your old tricks!” he roared angrily. “Oh, how could you be so cruel, pretending that you couldn’t help me, and I in terror for my life? I declare, your humor has grown too strong, even for me!”

“Won’t you listen?” Gom cried. “Ganash: I—am— Harga’s—son!”

“Son?” Ganash leaned closer until Gom could smell the sweet watery smell of his breath, could see the wet spiky lashes rimming the luminous green eyes. “Son, you say?” For a moment, he looked uncertain. Then the anger was back. “No! No mere boy could do what you did today, not even Harga’s son.”

“Quite right,” Gom agreed, his eyes on the sharp claws starting from Ganash’s outspread hands. “I didn’t break the deathsleep, or the sealstone’s spell. This did.” He held up the rune by its thong.

"Ah!” Ganash exclaimed, but he made no effort to touch it. Instead, he put his face close to it, waving his head to and fro on the end of his snakelike neck. Then, to Gom’s astonishment, he laughed. “I do believe,” he cried, “it’s the very stone I gave Harga from my treasury, as a parting gift for teaching me to speak the human tongue. For her wizard’s stone, she said, she being new to the calling. It was so many years ago, and she a tiny young thing, just like you now. Amphory, they call it. She chose it above my finest diamonds and emeralds and rubies.” Ganash turned and waved a hand back to the shining stones piled outside the cave mouth.

Gom stared in surprise. Those stones belonged to Ganash?

“Amphory is so rare that few ordinary folk have even heard of it. Nor would they want it if they had, it being so plain, so Harga said. And yet there are those, she told me, who’d kill for it. ‘The quintessential wizard’s stone, ’ she called it. I certainly never thought to see it again. Yet here it is—” He broke off in alarm. “Harga’s not come to grief?”

"Oh, no,” Gom said. "At least I hope not. I haven’t met her yet, you see. She left me and my father the day I was born—and this rune on top of my blanket. For me to mind for her, as Father used to say. Now he’s dead, and here I am, taking it to her.” Gom eyed the stone. “All the years I’ve worn this, I’ve seen scarcely any magic, until this day.”

How strange and wonderful, thought Gom. This gift to Harga from Ganash, returning to save its giver.

“Mmmm.” Ganash bent closer, his nose practically on the tiny thing.

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