‘They never saw the snake among the leaves.’
Now the Riddler was among them. His motley dripping with the rank brine of the tunnel, he crawled from the water, still singing under his breath the final refrain of his song, almost chanting it, over and over.
‘Mark well my words, by supper’s end, mark well my words, by supper’s end, mark well, mark well –’
The Professor’s chin dropped to his chest. He seemed for a time lost in his tale, disordered by his own memory. Black water began to lick the slope of stone on which the little group was sitting, rising ever nearer. It pooled around the Riddler’s feet where he stood, hunched, behind the Professor, his white hair slick and flat against the taut line of his skull, his waterlogged motley sagging under its own weight, and only the hairy crests of his brows truly visible. His gaunt form seemed to partake of the bones around him, and Fitz had for a moment the impression that the Riddler was nothing but bones and skin, only the mummy of a man – and he shivered.
‘One summer, my children, the conqueror rode north with his armies. He had heard of his brother’s famous society, of this instrument of theirs, and came to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps he was jealous of his brother. Perhaps he was spoiling for more worlds to conquer. The Society sat in congress before his embassy, he throned amongst them, and sang a great song of their fellowship, a hymn of the creation of the world. Gardens seemed that afternoon to grow out of the air; rivers while they sang poured through their halls, and life grew spontaneous in the fatty waves; silver and gold, mined from the light that swept across the storeyed hall, dropped in ingots to the floor and strewed the company with dazzling. The conqueror, if he had not been jealous already, conceived in his heart a violent appetite for the jewel of the Society, for the Great Loom on which they wove their thread of heaven. It seemed to him a prize greater than any plunder or spoil he had ever desired, or got, and he would not rest until it lay within his grasp – or, at least, until he had wrested it from his brother. Before the evening fell upon that evil day, he wrecked the Society’s temple, soiled the great library, ripped down and trampled its gardens, and drove every member of the fellowship into exile. They fled to a mountain wasteland, while the conqueror – abetted by certain traitors in his brother’s company – seized the Loom, along with the Society’s only record of the principles of its construction.’
‘I’ll gnaw your flesh to naught, to naught, to naught, I’ll gnaw your flesh to naught,’ sang the Riddler quietly, and he danced to his music in the water, causing little ripples to splash on the stone. The water reached almost to the Professor’s cloak.
‘The younger brother, the storyteller, knew that this calamity was in some sense his own fault. The rest of the Society had hidden themselves in the Mountain, but he alone came down and rejoined the world, determined to bring his brother to his senses, or to account. He hoped to repossess the Loom, to refound the paradise his brother’s greed had destroyed.
‘His pilgrimage was long and arduous. On foot he journeyed through his brother’s kingdoms, as wide almost as the world was wide, seeking audience with his brother’s captains, his governors, the members of his council, and the great families joined to him by treaty, by alliance and by marriage. Using his voice to plead and persuade, and spinning music of such melody that even the deaf delighted to share his table, he gathered to his cause a thousand captains and princes. When he reached his brother’s capital, a city he had never known, so opulent in its luxury and power that he doubted whether he still walked the earth, he carried his petition to the king and humbly supplicated him to return what he had stolen, or else to face the displeasure and – he did not doubt – the judgement of the gods.’
‘To naught, to naught, to naught, to naught, to naught,’ the Riddler chanted and sang, on and on as the Professor told his tale, all the while his voice lilting and falling, crazed, musical, like bells and glass and water.
‘The conqueror laughed. Listen to the wind and the water, my children, moving in the dark caves, rolling down the tunnels around us, and you may hear the song of his laughter even now. It is the laughter of the void, of emptiness, of an insatiable hunger. Before his brother’s eyes he commanded the Great Loom to be carried into his judgement chamber, and there broken up with axes. His servant and a man of his inner council set it ablaze, the fire filling the whole of the palace with smoke and horror. Through it all, he laughed. The storyteller had thought himself prepared for the worst, and in his hubris, then, he sought to call to his aid the thousand captains and princes who, in their wisdom and judgement, had subscribed to his petition. But the king his brother was informed of this conspiracy and – calling for his personal guard – he dispatched orders for the arrest of every one of the conspirators. Still he laughed. Only his brother, among all those, he permitted to go free, so that he might both see
