They stood quietly and eyed each other for a time in silence as their respective allies took themselves off to safer distances. The young woman spoke up when the herald started to move off. “No. We need some closer witnesses.” She suggested that a few meagre servants–the wine-bearer and herald, court fool, the peasants and sweepers and fetchers–these folks might stay upon the hilltop and bear witness. That seemed good to him. After all, even his elderly sweepers and the wine-boys were sworn to protect the prince’s life. If a challenge should go badly, a few servants getting in the way would likely give him time enough to retreat.
“And what should the challenge be?” he said at last, once the last of the knights and ghosts had moved away from the throne. “You have issued the challenge, so it would be for me to pick the trial. Though, I’ve a mind to be generous. If you allow me to make the first move, so to speak, I might allow you to pick the nature of the challenge, if you will?”
She considered this and nodded. “A challenge by wits then.”
That pleased him. Even without her horse she was potentially a formidable fighter. She seethed with shadow-magic. And that sword she carried was trouble all by itself. Yes. Things might be turning in his favour.
A contest of the wit suited him very much.
He would have suggested something like that himself. Inwardly, he was starting to smile. He was already at an advantage in this. She suggested the very sort of contest he would have wanted, and he would now take the first action in it. “And so the stakes then. I will state mine. If you lose, you will give yourself over to me willingly and submit to the rites that will bind your soul as one of my white ladies.” An unpleasant smile played on his face. “I typically have only milkmaids and chargirls to pick from… but a sorceress and a warrior-lady, that would make for a more potent wraith.”
If that shocked her, she did not show it. She considered it only a moment and nodded. “And if I win you will give over to me the piece of horn with the old writing you keep on your person. It is a small and petty thing no doubt. An old curio of an elder age.” Now a smile spread on her features. “It shouldn’t bother you to part with it.”
His hands clenched involuntarily. Fingers again darted under his cloak, seeking out the place where the fragment of the old great spell was stowed. “How do you–?” But he stopped himself. “Yes. Very well. I have stated my desire. You have stated yours.” He swallowed hard. “So be it.” He tensed the muscles in his jaw and glared. “After all, it is a petty thing,” he muttered. “Yes. Very well.” Now, he had to consider what sort of contest of wit to put to her. “What are the rules of victory then?”
She looked momentarily surprised as if she hadn’t considered this. Her nonchalance worried him. She was so certain of victory that she she hadn’t even considered how to win? After a shrug she said, “Um. The first to pose three puzzles that the other cannot answer?”
“That will do. Puzzles generally, or riddles in particular?”
“Puzzles generally. Three unanswered… or,” she added, “until death, whichever comes first.”
He couldn’t fathom how a puzzle might be lethal, but he nodded all the same. “Or until death. Now. Allow me to think. A puzzle that may be solved by wit. Ah. Here is one. Fool… Fool! Fool! Come here.”
A fat, lumbering, dull-eyed fool waddled out of the crowd of low servants. The prince’s fool was a physical performer, not a verbal one: he barely ever spoke two words together, and he didn’t change his habit now. He stared dumbly out of the squinting eyes in his broad, sweaty face. Hair was plastered all over his brow and his crimson outfit flapped in the cold wind.
“Fool. Take three goblets and a jug of wine and go to our lady challenger. Fill the goblets and put them before her.”
The fool did this, and then went to creep away, but Athairdrost growled at him. “You are still needed. Stay beside her.” Rearranging himself to try and regain a little of his regal composure, he said, “Three goblets of wine are before you. You will give these to my Fool and he will juggle them. You will return to me three goblets full of wine. If even a single drop of wine is spilled during the juggling, you will have lost this particular challenge of wits.”
She looked at the goblets and at the fool. “Are you a very good juggler?” she asked.
The fool shook his head mopishly, like a child caught stealing apples and trying to deny it.
Athairdrost leaned back, smiling.
“It doesn’t seem possible,” snapped the woman. “You can’t pose puzzles that cannot be solved.”
He smiled. “Oh, this can be solved. If a puzzle is a thing that can be solved by wit, then this can is a fair and reasonable puzzle.”
A dark, furrowed frown crossed her face. She stared at the goblets for what stretched out into a minute and two and three.
“Do you give up? Sand pours through the glasses of time. Trickle. Trickle. Trickle.”
“No. Give me time.”
“Pouring through,” he said. “Pouring through.” There was no hourglass of course. He was simply enjoying tormenting her.
“Pouring,” she mouthed. “Ah. I think I do have the answer. She knelt down by the goblets and picked one up. You said that I was to give the goblets to your fool to juggle, but you didn’t say they had to be full of wine, did you? And you said that I had to return three full goblets to you, but you didn’t say it had to be the same wine as is in them now, did you?”
She had worked it out then. “No,” he conceded. “I was ambiguous on certain points.”
She carefully emptied the goblets back into the jug, wiped them clean, and gave them to the Fool. He juggled them badly, just as Athairdrost had expected he would, even dropping one. When he was done, she took them back, refilled them, and told the Fool to take them back to Athairdrost. The Fool trudged miserably up the slope to Athairdrost, and presented the goblets. The prince looked down at them, and moved an arm in an arc, backhanding them out of the Fool’s grip. The Fool yelped and cowered, covering his face. Athairdrost gave him a kick, which sent him scurrying off, crying and snivelling.
After settling himself down, plastering on a smile, and adjusting the heavy cloak around his shoulders, he said, “And now your challenge.”