The Riddle (28 page)

She knew at once it was an Elemental power, as the stormdog had been, but she had no idea what it was. Like the stormdog, it was difficult to fix in the vision, seeming to be made of something not quite substantial; this was like a giant man hewn out of stone and ice, but it flickered with strange fires from its mouth and eyes, and parts of it would vanish when you looked at it, as if it were a cloud. It bore a huge, crude club made of rock, and as Maerad watched, it smashed the road very close to where Cadvan was standing. To Maerad, it seemed that Cadvan and Darsor must be squashed flat by that massive blow, but the weapon rebounded strangely, glancing off to the mountain wall, where it struck showers of blue sparks, and Cadvan still stood, swaying a little. Darsor screamed in defiance.

Maerad was a hair’s breadth from turning and bolting after Imi. Instead she gathered up what little remained of her courage and ran into the circle of light, touching Cadvan briefly on the shoulder to let him know she was there. He nodded without turning, his whole body tense with concentration. It was easier to think within Cadvan’s shield: it kept off the bruising hail, and the noise of the storm was muted a little. Maerad focused her mind to join with Cadvan’s. To her dismay, nothing happened, and before she could gather herself to try again, the creature swung at them with the club. It missed, striking the wall above, and chips of rock showered over them.

Maerad felt once more for Cadvan’s mind, wondering uneasily why she couldn’t join him, and asked silently,
What is it?

A frost creature, an iridugul,
Cadvan answered grimly.
We are unlucky. Or ambushed. I fancy the latter.

So what can we do?

We can’t destroy it. So we have to escape it somehow. I don’t think you can sing a lullaby to this one.

Their conversation took place with the speed of thought. Everything had happened so quickly; it couldn’t have been much more than a few breaths since Cadvan had halted and Imi had run away. Maerad squared her shoulders and attempted again to join her mind with Cadvan’s. This time he flinched, and the White Fire dimmed.

It’s not working,
she said desperately.

Stop, Maerad! It’s hurting me,
he said. Another boulder crashed and splintered on the road beside them, and he strengthened his shield. Close up, Maerad could see his face, pale and grim with exhaustion, the whip scars around his eye suddenly livid, and a terrible pain flowered in her heart.
We shall have to fight separately.

They would be less strong that way, Maerad knew.

Try once more,
said Maerad desperately, as Cadvan sent a bolt of fire straight into the frost creature’s eyes, and it fell back into the void beyond the road, boiling like a storm cloud and roaring with fury.

All right. Now.

This time, Maerad was so anxious for their melding that she knocked Cadvan over. He staggered to his feet, gasping, and Maerad stared at him in bafflement: why could they not meld?

Maerad, it’s like you’re attacking me,
said Cadvan.
If you do that again, you’ll destroy me. We shall have to fight separately. We need to make semblances to confuse it. They are not clever, these creatures.

Maerad shook her head in confusion, but had no time to think, for the iridugul had recovered itself and was now raining blows upon them in a rage. Cadvan was concentrating on keeping his shield intact, and simultaneously working a glimmerspell, a semblance of himself and Darsor, which he could leave behind him for the iridugul to attack.

Maerad cleared her mind, trying to ignore the furious hammerings of the iridugul. First she made another shield that enclosed Cadvan’s, reinforcing it, and then she began to work a glimmerspell. To make even such an easy charm under such attack was difficult, but she concentrated grimly.
I am Maerad of Pellinor,
Elednor Edil-Amarandh na, she said fiercely to herself;
why am I being so stupid?

Maerad’s semblance took a little longer than Cadvan’s, but after what seemed like an eternity, they had created shining replicas of themselves. Cadvan extinguished his magelight and took Darsor’s reins. They waited, choosing their time, before they slipped out of the shield of White Fire and stumbled along the base of the cliff, leaving the iridugul to attack their empty images. The hail pelted into them as soon as they left the protection of the light, but Maerad put her head down and ran with Cadvan as fast as she could, hugging the wall, praying the iridugul was too enraged to notice the tiny figures scrambling along the mountainside like furtive mice. It was now nearly dark.

They had almost reached a hairpin bend in the road, when disaster struck. At the bend was a sheer precipice guarded only by a low stone wall and one of the standing stones, which rose like a black, ominous finger in the seething grayness around them. As they neared it, Maerad disbelievingly watched the standing stone rise up in the air: and suddenly there materialized in front of them not one, but two iriduguls, one holding the standing stone over its head as a weapon.

Cadvan stopped dead, instantly throwing a shield around them, and mounted Darsor, who was foamed with sweat. Maerad looked back desperately; she could see the first iridugul still attacking their semblances, its fury increasing as its club seemed to pass through them without hurt. Three!

Maerad, we’re going to have to blast them and run,
Cadvan said into her mind. And then he noticed, for the first time, that Imi had gone.
Where’s Imi?

She ran off. . . .

Cadvan said nothing, but reached down and pulled her into the saddle behind him. Then, without even pausing for thought, they both sent out bolts of White Fire, aiming for the iriduguls’ eyes, and Cadvan urged on Darsor, who leaped forward in a surge of muscle, making for the bend in the road. Maerad heard the screams of the iridugul, an unbearable noise like the tortured wrenching of stone, and just hung on as Darsor plunged forward. The great horse spun himself around the sharp bend, making Maerad’s neck crack with the violence of the turn, and tore on down the road into the gale, bolting for his life.

Maerad heard the splintering of rock as the standing stone crashed into the road at their heels, and somehow Darsor sped up, his hooves skidding on the icy stones. Then suddenly an iridugul was before them, bringing down a fist like a massive rock on the cliff above them, and there was a rumbling as if the whole side of the mountain was collapsing. Maerad looked up, and with a sick horror saw a landslide of snow and boulders moving with a ghastly slowness toward them. She instinctively covered her eyes, forgetting for that moment everything except her fear of death. Darsor reared, and she fell off onto the road and rolled, coming to rest at the very edge of the precipice. She scrambled up in time to see Cadvan, his face glimmering pale, turn in shock and call her name, trying to pull up, but Darsor’s reckless pace was unstoppable. She saw the greathearted horse plunge on through the gathering shadows, still globed in Cadvan’s shield of White Fire, trying with his last desperate strength to beat the inexorable rockfall. She instinctively ran the other way, away from the pebbles that were just beginning to trickle down the slope, and then turned to watch, pushing her soaked hair out of her eyes, her chest heaving in great sobs of breath.

Darsor and Cadvan raced along the cliff side. It was too far to the next bend; they would never make it.

Just as they vanished in the gloom, the entire side of the mountain slid onto the road with a terrible sound like thunder that just rolled on and on and on, and the ground beneath Maerad shook and trembled so she was nearly flung off the road. Icy sludge and pebbles struck her face. The edge of the rockfall was only a body-length away, and she crawled toward the cliff face, sobbing with terror. When the noise stopped, she looked up. Where the road had been was just an impassable blankness of rock and ice, and the iridugul had vanished.

There was no chance Cadvan and Darsor had escaped. Buried beneath those mountains of rubble, she understood with an agony as clear and sharp as a fresh wound, were those she loved as much as her own life. Maerad covered her face with her hands, stunned and disbelieving. Cadvan and Darsor were dead. It couldn’t be true; it must be some awful nightmare. She slid down the mountain wall, hiding her face. It could not be true, and yet it was. In a paroxysm of grief she beat her forehead against the mountainside until it bled and fell insensible onto the frozen stone.

WHEN Maerad opened her eyes, it was so dark she thought she had gone blind. She tried to sit up, but her body wouldn’t obey her. Perhaps I’m paralyzed, she thought, or maybe I’m dead. The thought was strangely comforting, and she lay in the darkness for a long time, without memory or thought. After a while, a sharp rock pressing into her cheek became irritatingly uncomfortable and she tried to move again. This time she was able to shift her head, and as she did, sensation flooded back into her body. She hurt all over, as if she had been beaten with sticks from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, and she was wet through and freezing. Groaning, she managed to crawl up, and sat with her back to the cliff wall, holding her head, her body shuddering with violent, uncontrollable tremors.

As she sat there, memory crept back, first one image and then another. She did not search for it; something within her pulled back from the terrible realization of what had happened to her. But randomly, inexorably, images floated into her mind. Finally, with a numbing feeling of shock, she remembered the terrible sight of Cadvan and Darsor engulfed by the landslide. She stared blindly into the darkness, her eyes dry.

This time she really was alone. All her complaints and resentments of the past days seemed so trivial now. This was the disaster Cadvan had tried to warn her of, and she had brushed off his warnings, sure and arrogant in her power. And her power had failed her. She hadn’t been able to meld with Cadvan, as a Bard should, and she hadn’t been able to work her Elemental powers either. She had cowered abjectly in the middle of herself, and she had failed. As she remembered what had happened, she was almost glad of the physical pain; compared to her mental anguish, it was a relief.

Cadvan and Darsor’s deaths were her fault. And Imi, she thought, had been killed in her panicked flight, or worse, lay with broken legs on some inaccessible slope, dying a slow and terrible death of thirst and starvation.

As she tasted the full bitterness of her self-accusation, Maerad considered whether to throw herself off the side of the mountain. It would be a just punishment, she thought coldly. Such a creature as she had no reason to live. Such a creature as she deserved no friends, if she failed to protect them.

Gradually the darkness became less absolute, and she could see the outlines of the road glimmering against the lighter darkness of the sky, and the huge black mass of rocks close beside her that entombed Cadvan and Darsor. She looked up and saw a blur of silver above the black blades of the mountain range where the moon, now at her full, hid behind a bank of clouds.

Maerad’s face itched with blood, and she clumsily tried to wipe her eyes with her gloves, which were rimed with frost. I need something to drink, she thought, and some of the generalized pain in her body identified itself as an overpowering thirst. Her lips were parched and cracked. Oh, I’m so thirsty and so hungry, she thought. But there’s nothing to drink and no food. . . .

She sat unmoving, sunk in hopelessness, and it was only when she shifted to ease the aches in her body that she remembered that she still wore her pack. In a sudden panic of haste, she fumbled it off her shoulders and started trying to open it, but her fingers were so numb they kept slipping off the fastenings. Eventually she got the pack open and found a water bottle, of which she took a long draft, and the medhyl, which brought a little fire into her chilled veins, and then she unwrapped some of the dried biscuit. She ate only a little of that, because it hurt to chew. Her lips felt as if they were on fire.

She felt restored enough to make a tiny magelight, and with its help searched through the bag until she found some balm, which she put on her lips and then smeared over her face, slightly easing the stinging pain. Briefly she touched the reed pipes the Elidhu had given her. For an instant, the light greens of early spring woodlands filled her mind, and she remembered Ardina as she had first appeared to her, in the forests of the Weywood, long, long ago it seemed, in another life. A bar of a song floated into Maerad’s mind.