“What are you doing down there, Riddle,” I demanded. “Burrowing like a grole? Have you lost something? Or found it?” Even as I said it, I realized that the hole he was in was probably the same hole I had fallen into some several seasons ago when I had found the Gamesmen of Barish and the book Windlow called the Onomasticon. I gave him my hand to help him out, and he blinked at me as he brushed dust from his coat.
“I thought for a time we might have found some valuables left here by my grandfather,” he babbled. “All the inhabitants of the place fled, leaving everything. There was great loss of life, a flood, a great wind…”
“What exactly are you looking for?” I asked him, all polite interest and bland lack of concern. “Would it help to raise up the dead here and ask them?” Aha, I thought. If you do not want me to know what you are doing here, then you will not accept this offer.
And also aha, said a quiet voice in my head. If Riddle had wanted you to raise up the dead in this place without knowing what you were doing, might he not have arranged for you to be put into that strange cap the Invigilator carried? Hmmm? Chance gave me a look, and I turned away as Riddle shook his head and fussed and said no, no, the only one who had known was his grandfather and his grandfather was said to have died elsewhere, and besides, he doubted a Gamesman could raise Immutable dead. I nodded my acceptance of this while privately thinking that I could do it if I chose. Whatever it was that made them immune to Talents, I wagered it went away when they died.
I shook my head for the benefit of those standing about. “It is probably just as well, Riddle. The longer they are dead, the less they remember of life. They hunger for life more the older they are, but they remember less. How long ago was the destruction?”
He thought some eighty years. His father had been a young man at the time.
“Well, you have waited a good time to seek what was lost,” I said, all kindness and concern. “A good long time.”
He mumbled something. I think the sense of it was that if he had known earlier what was lost, he would have come earlier to look for it. And this told me much. Riddle had lately learned something new. So. I was not of a mind to hang about making the man sweat. There would be better ways to find out. Besides, I was without Talent in this company and had only one man to stand beside me. It could be less dangerous to be elsewhere. I gave Riddle my hand and bade him farewell, putting the Invigilator in his care.
“He will dig for you, if you put the shovel in his hand,” I said. “And if any Gamesmen come here who seem to know him, I would be grateful if you would send word to the Bright Demesne.” I did not want Riddle to think I suspected him of anything. In truth, I still did not know that I did suspect him of anything. All I could believe was that Chance was wiser than I, and that I would be wiser¾far wiser¾to be more careful. If only I had remembered that later.
We rode away without talking, both of us preoccupied with our own thoughts. After a time I turned to Chance and said, “I don’t necessarily believe it.”
“Well, don’t then,” he said. “But it’d be smart to act as though you do.”
“You know what he was looking for back there.” I made it a statement, not a question.
“For those things you found, I guess. I notice you didn’t offer them to him.”
“The thing I noticed was that he said his grandfather left them there. How came his grandfather by them? And why did Riddle not know of them until recently? For I will bet my lost fur cloak that he did not.”
Chance shrugged, mumbled to himself. Finally, “Would anyone else among those Immutables know? Or is it only Riddle who knows? What about his family?”