The Riddle (24 page)

These were hard sights to bear, and Maerad and Cadvan spoke less and less as the day wore on, tacitly agreeing to get out of Edinur altogether before they made camp that night. As dusk deepened, they reached the junction where the Bard Road from Ileadh met the North Road and turned toward the Valverras.

Maerad remembered this stretch of the road, which cut through copses of beech and larch trees before it ran up a high ridge. Now, as day was retreating, they saw no one else on the road; this was a relief, as those they had met had been so desperate. On the other side of the ridge fell a wide valley of bare turf, with the Aldern River threading through its center. The North Road plunged down the steep slope, leaped over the river on an arched stone bridge, and then turned sharply west, running alongside the river to skirt the Valverras Waste, a wide expanse of tumbled hills and bogs topped with granite tumuli.

However dour the landscape before them, Maerad felt a vast relief as they left Edinur behind. They cantered down the valley and crossed the Edinur Bridge, turning west along the North Road. They trotted on while the full moon rose, swollen and yellow, until they found a grove of old willows in which they would be hidden. As she tiredly dismounted and unsaddled Imi, leaving her to graze while Cadvan prepared a meal, Maerad felt so depressed she could hardly speak. The memory of her foredream of Turbansk rose inside her, and she couldn’t push away its horror, nor the trembling in her heart when she thought of Hem. She had not told Cadvan of her dream, because she couldn’t bear to give it voice. This is our future, she thought blackly, this ruined world, in which everything we love is poisoned or slaughtered.

Cadvan glanced at her across the fire. “It is hard, seeing people in such straits, and being unable to help,” he said as he stirred a hot porridge of oats and dried meat.

Maerad paused. “It reminds me of Gilman’s Cot,” she said. “Those faces. I thought I had left that behind. But it seems to be everywhere.”

They ate their dinner in silence. When they had cleaned up, Maerad stared moodily up at the sky. The moon was an ominous orange glare between dark bars of cloud. There were no stars tonight. Her body was chill and would not warm no matter how close she sat to the fire. Her period had begun that day, but she felt more drained than even that could explain.

“We are unlucky,” said Cadvan. “I think the weather is going to break.”

“Just as soon as we enter the wild. Luck is in short supply around here,” Maerad said, and then, to her surprise, found herself crumpling into tears. She turned away, but Cadvan had already moved close to her, and he took her hand.

“Maerad, our world is full of sorrow and evil,” he said. “But there is also beauty and light and love. You must remember that.” He looked earnestly into her face, but Maerad couldn’t meet his eyes. She turned aside, thrusting away his hand.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said bitterly. “There are things you don’t know, Cadvan. You don’t know what it’s like to be me.”

“No, I cannot know that,” he said gently. “Nor can you know what it is like to be me.”

“I don’t care what it’s like to be you,” Maerad said, suddenly possessed by a desire to hurt Cadvan, who was always so reasonable, always so fair. “That’s got nothing to do with what I’m talking about.”

Cadvan sat silently, his faced shadowed. Maerad lifted her eyes, still burning with tears, to his face, but he did not meet her gaze. She looked away, through the willows into the darkness beyond. Her heart was full of an anger and pain she could not express, even to herself, but she did not want Cadvan’s compassion. It made things worse: it raised a fear within her, over which she had no control. She couldn’t tell if she had hurt him or if he was just thoughtful.

“I am sorry,” he said at last.

Maerad nodded, accepting his apology, but did not offer one of her own. She was taking first watch, so a little while later Cadvan rolled himself into his blanket and fell asleep.

AFTER that night, the constraint between Cadvan and Maerad became a constant thing. They traveled as had now become habit, and superficially things seemed much as they always had; they joked, and talked in the evenings, although they did not bring out their lyres. Cadvan taught Maerad how to use the blackstone, which had lain forgotten in her pack since Thorold, and Maerad developed some skill with it although it was tricky to use, as difficult to bend to the will as it was to sight or to touch. But even the brief resumption of Cadvan’s teaching role could not quite drive away the shadow that now lay between them, the more powerful because it remained unspoken.

Maerad didn’t really know how this had happened. She still trusted Cadvan as she always had, but she couldn’t resist whatever it was within her that rebuffed him. And the less able she was to speak to Cadvan, the harder it became to find a way back to their earlier friendship. Cadvan, reserved at the best of times, was now mostly silent. She resented this as well, feeling guiltily that it was her fault, and at the same time feeling that his silence was being used as a weapon against her.

They pushed the horses as hard as they could, although after days of fast riding, an unremitting fatigue was settling deep in their bones. The weather had turned, and often they beat on through driving gales, their hoods pulled down over their faces, the rain pelting straight into their eyes, and their camps were cold and cheerless. The horses had lost the glossy condition they had gained in Gent, and began to look lean. But an obscure sense of urgency pushed them all on past their limits. They began with the dawn, and if the moon, which was now just pass full, let down enough light to illuminate their way, they often continued until well after dusk. It took them only two days to ride more than twenty leagues to the Caln Marish, where the road turned north again, and another three to reach the Usk River, thirty leagues farther on.

Maerad remembered that it had taken them more than ten days to travel the same distance, from the Usk to the Aldern, when they had ridden over the Valverras two months before. She was glad of the North Road, for all its cheerlessness. It stretched before them, a white unvarying course running straight to the horizon. The road was less well tended here, and in places it had almost completely crumbled, but despite that, it was, for the most part, in surprisingly good repair. On their right stretched the rocky wolds of the Valverras, and on the left the Caln Marish, with the same rattling stands of black reeds that they had seen before they entered Edinur. Many birds lived there, flying in great whirling flocks over their heads during the day or piping plaintively at night out of the still ponds and bogs. Maerad often saw eerie lights on both the Valverras and the marshes when she watched at night, but she knew better than to follow them; Cadvan had told her some of the stories of those misled by the fenlights. When the wind blew from the marshes, a foul reek of rotting vegetation tainted the air.

In all those days, they saw absolutely no one; this was not a well-traveled road. Most of the time neither Cadvan nor Maerad spoke, except to the horses, and the great silence around them seemed amplified by the clatter of the horses’ hooves on the road. Maerad bit down on her loneliness, as if it were a caustic seed, with an almost perverse pleasure. She felt herself hardening, felt tempered by this punishing ride. I am stronger, she thought. And I will be stronger still.

They crossed the Usk, which ran loudly over the shallow pebbles of the ford, and continued north through country less bleak, if no less lonely. They were now in the far north of Annar, in the region known as Predan. Most of the northern parts of Annar were at best sparsely inhabited, and the North Road passed through some of the loneliest parts of Edil-Amarandh.

After the unrelieved flatness of the past week, it was a balm to look on purple hills forested with black stands of pine, or to see slopes tangled with briars just now swelling their rosehips, or sloe and elder letting their faint fragrances into the air, or to ride through woods of beech and larch and hornbeam that were losing their greens to the coppers and golds of autumn. The gales stopped, giving way to days of rainless but somber clouds, and the weather grew steadily colder. At night, despite her physical fatigue, Maerad slept restlessly, unable to escape the frost that nipped her feet and hands.

At noon on the third day after crossing the Usk, they came to a fork in the road, leading westward to Culain and east to Lirhan. They were not planning to go to Lirigon, Cadvan’s School, but to continue until they struck the Lir River. At that point there was a ford, which they would cross into Lirhan. They did not resume their guises as messengers, despite the increased risk of meetings on the road: it was simply too exhausting, and they were both worn down after the past three weeks. And they had seen no travelers for days now.

The next day, just after they had paused for their midday meal, the road entered one of the many beech woods that dotted this part of Annar. The beeches were ancient and stately, their branches meeting over the middle of the road, which was littered with the first copper leaves of autumn, muffling their hoofbeats. The sun was out, and golden rays pierced the interlaced branches overhead, casting a vagrant warmth about their shoulders. Despite her gloom, Maerad’s spirits lifted, and she sniffed the smell of the loam and the woods with pleasure, momentarily distracted, relaxing into her deep exhaustion. Cadvan too seemed similarly lulled. So it was that they did not see the Bards until it was too late.

There were two, a man and a woman, riding at a leisurely pace toward Culain. Cadvan saw them first, and turned back to Maerad.

“Bards!” he hissed.

Maerad looked up, jolted out of her reverie and stared down the road with a sinking heart.

“We have to do the courtesies, or they will become suspicious,” Cadvan said. “By the Light, I hope neither of them knows me. Cover your face, and shield yourself.”

Maerad did as Cadvan bid, mentally hiding the glow by which Bards identified each other, and drew her hood over her face. They slowed to a fast walk as they approached the other riders. Maerad loosened her sword in its sheath.

Cadvan put up his right hand, palm outward, in the traditional gesture of greeting, hoping that it would be sufficient and they could pass without comment. Maerad did likewise, looking out of the corner of her eye at the strangers; she saw with a sinking heart that the man wore a brooch that identified him as a Bard of Lirigon, while the other was of some School she did not know.

“Greetings, travelers,” said the man, and then he drew up his horse in surprise. “Cadvan!” he said.

“Nay,” said Cadvan, quickening his pace to pass them swiftly and making an odd gesture with his other hand. “You mistake yourself.”

“It is Cadvan of Lirigon,” said the woman, warding off Cadvan’s charm. “Don’t try to trick me with your wiles, Cadvan, lately of Lirigon; I’ve known you since you were a stripling.” She turned to her companion. “It’s the outlaws for certain, Namaridh. It was said Cadvan was traveling with a young woman.”

The other Bard drew his sword, at the same time casting a freezing spell. Maerad and Cadvan both glanced it aside, but Darsor and Imi stopped fast in their tracks as if they were made of wood. Maerad struggled to undo the charm, but it held fast. There was a short, almost embarrassed silence.

“I mislike this, Cadvan,” said Namaridh, looking at both of them apologetically. “It’s not that I feel any enmity toward you. It breaks my heart that a man such as yourself has seen fit to betray the Light. But you will have to come with us. You are declared outlaw in this land, and you have no right to enter here. That is the law.”

“My friend, you are wrong,” said Cadvan. “I have not betrayed the Light.”

“Some of us have longer memories, Bard,” said the woman coldly. “I remember your little skirmish with the Dark. I would not trust such a man again. I never understood why you were not banned forever from all Schools. Well, the folly of that has become very clear now.”

“It is not so, Ilar of Desor,” said Cadvan calmly. “I would no more betray the Light than you. You do not know the full story of what is happening in this land. And I say to you that you cannot make us come with you and that it would be inadvisable to try. Let us pass.”

“No one here has betrayed the Light, except those who cravenly obey the evil edicts of Norloch,” added Maerad fiercely. “If you attack us, you are but a slave of the Nameless One.”

“So speak all traitors, with tongues made slick by lies,” said the woman contemptuously. “Take them, Namaridh. We can bind them and bring them back to Lirigon, to face what they deserve.”

Cadvan signaled Maerad to be silent, but Namaridh had dismounted and now moved to take Darsor’s reins. At the same moment, Maerad and Cadvan threw off the freezing spell from their horses, and Darsor and Imi reared back. But before she could collect herself, Maerad was hit with a stunning blast of light from Ilar that nearly knocked her off Imi.

She reacted with blind fury, without thought. She gathered up all the power she felt within her and directed it at the Bard in a bolt of White Fire. Ilar simply collapsed and slithered off her horse, which skittered sideways in alarm. She fell to the ground, motionless and completely white, the only sign of injury a small, black burn in the middle of her forehead. In that instant, Maerad knew she was dead.