The Riddle (33 page)

She looked around and this time saw a bronze bell hanging to the side, with a thin metal chain dangling from its tongue. She pulled it, and the bell clanged, making her jump; it sounded very loud in this quiet landscape. At first, nothing happened, but after a while a little door she had not seen to the left of the tunnel opened, and a man limped out, saying something in Pilanel. Maerad had never seen a grown man so short. His head was drawn down on his shoulders, and his spine was bent into a hunch, but his shoulders and arms were massive, suggesting enormous strength. She could not understand his speech, and she just stood, holding out the token Mirka had given her, waiting for whatever might come next. The man peered through the bars of the gate, looking straight at Maerad. Then he shrugged, muttering something to himself that sounded like a curse, and limped back into his room, slamming shut the door.

Maerad suddenly realized that she was still under a glimmerspell, and almost laughed. It was no use knocking at a door if no one could see her. Her heart was beating fast, and she waited a little while until she felt calmer. Then, glancing around to make sure no one was nearby to witness her suddenly appearing out of nowhere, she undid the glimmerspell and tried again.

This time the man came out more quickly. He looked annoyed, and Maerad braced herself, but when he spotted her through the bars, he simply stopped, looking surprised. Maerad held out the token, her hand trembling slightly.

“Om ali nel?”
he said.

“My name is Mara. I am Annaren. I bring greeting from — from Mirka à Hadaruk.”

The man studied her in silence for a while and then reached his fingers through the narrow gap between the iron bars to take the token. He looked at it closely, turning it over and over, his face expressionless, and Maerad watched him anxiously. He finally seemed to reach some decision, and took a long iron key from the bunch jangling at his waist and turned it in a lock in the middle of the gate, using both his hands. Then he took another broader key and disappeared inside his room again. Maerad was just beginning to wonder whether he was coming back when he reappeared and with another key turned a lock near the base of the gates. Then he pulled them open, beckoning her inside.

“Come,” he said, speaking in thickly accented Annaren.

Maerad hesitated on the threshold, and then obeyed him. Once she was inside, blinking until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the man repeated the laborious process of locking the gates and, without speaking further, he indicated that she should follow him.

The tunnel through the hill was very large, big enough to accommodate Pilanel caravans. There was no feeling of dampness, as Maerad had expected; the air seemed, if anything, to be warm. It was lined and flagged with roughly dressed stone, and smelled of the burning pitch of the torches that lined its length. She fixed her eyes on the humped back of the gate warden, hurrying to keep up with him. Despite his limp, he walked very quickly. He limped, she realized, because one leg was much shorter than the other, and she found herself wondering who he was and what it was like to be him. She had never seen anyone so misshapen.

The passage had many turns, and it wasn’t long before Maerad had completely lost her sense of direction. After the first three turns, they came to another iron gate, again fastened with three locks, and then, not much farther on, another one. Maerad noticed slits in the walls on either side of the gates, and thought they probably allowed archers to attack any invaders. Murask was obviously well defended against any attack, and Maerad uneasily wondered again how she would be received.

They seemed to walk for ages before Maerad saw daylight, an impossibly bright silver at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps Murask wasn’t inside the hill, after all, she thought with relief; maybe the hill was in fact a very big wall. They emerged at last, and Maerad blinked, dazzled, and looked around in amazement. She was certainly in some kind of town, but she had never seen anything like it.

Murask, the winter gathering place of the southern Pilanel clans, was, as Maerad had guessed, a fortified settlement. It was an artificial hill, built in a time long forgotten, and it reared high over the flat plains and stretched more than a league from end to end. The “wall” was four times as wide as it was high, and was mainly hollow: most of the Pilanel dwellings were actually inside it. In the center, where Maerad had emerged with her strange guide, was a wide, flat space covered with short turf, now white with snow. Unlike the outer walls, the inner walls were all bare, weathered stone, pierced with hundreds of doors and windows. Several Pilanel caravans were drawn up against the wall, their shafts resting on the ground, and Maerad saw a dozen children playing a wild game of tag, who paused when they noticed her and stared in open-mouthed curiosity. There were a few ponies hunched up miserably against the snow, some of the heavy deer Maerad had seen on her way to Murask nuzzling aside the snow to graze on the turf, and a few thin whippetlike mongrels of the kind the Pilanel kept as guard dogs.

She didn’t have much time to look around, as her guide was hurrying to a large building in the very center of the space. It was built of gray granite and rose three stories high, the highest story completely covered with a thick, steep thatch of river reeds, which overhung the walls by at least a dozen paces. Its front wall was faced with some kind of plaster or stucco, and was brightly painted, like the Pilanel caravans, in geometric patterns.

Her guide walked up to a double-leafed door and rang a bell very like the one at the front gate. A tall man appeared swiftly, and the two had a long conversation. Her guide handed over Mirka’s token, and he too examined it carefully, glancing at Maerad from underneath his eyebrows as he did so. Finally he nodded, and the gate warden, without a glance at Maerad, turned and went back to his post, his keys jangling at his waist.

The second man gazed at Maerad without speaking for what seemed a very long time. Maerad endured his examination, trying to appear harmless and polite, surreptitiously examining him in return. He had dark skin like Hem’s, the color of dark honey. His eyes, under thick black brows, were unreadable as deep water, and his face was stern and lean. Maerad saw also that he was a
Dhillarearën.

“You are Annaren?” he said at last. He had only a faint accent.

“Yes,” said Maerad, relieved that he spoke her native tongue. “My name is Mara. I seek your help, and must speak with the chief of your clan.”

“That you shall do, as do all strangers who enter this Howe. But in these days of distrust, we do not let many into our haven. We do so now only because of this token. I would like to know how you came by such a thing.”

“It was given me by Mirka à Hadaruk,” said Maerad, taking a deep breath. “She sends greeting.”

The man looked directly into her face. “Mirka à Hadaruk has been dead many long years,” he said. Maerad’s heart skipped a beat, and she looked down, discomforted.

“Perhaps the woman who gave it to me used Mirka’s name without cause, although I do not know why she would do so,” she said at last. “She is very old. But she is not dead, unless she has died since I last saw her, two weeks ago.”

There was a silence, and the man nodded. “Perhaps there is another story to be told,” he said. “I judge that you do not seek to mislead me. You may enter.”

He opened the door and beckoned Maerad in. Before she stepped inside, she hesitated.

“It is only courtesy to ask your name, so I may thank the one who invites me,” she said.

“My name is Dorn à Hadaruk,” he said.

“Dorn à Hadaruk?” Maerad said, taken aback. Dorn? Her father’s name?
That’s a common enough name among the Pilani,
Mirka had told her. . . . And he had the same last name as Mirka.

“Mirka is my mother’s mother,” he said, his dark eyes expressionless. “So you see, the question of her life and death holds a certain interest for me.”

“I see.” Maerad was silent for a while, thinking of the mad old woman who had been so kind to her. She had spoken of her daughter, and of her daughter’s death; she had never spoken of living grandchildren. She wondered if Mirka knew she had a grandson, or if she thought he was dead, just as he thought she was. Then she realized Dorn was waiting patiently, holding the door open. She tried to smile. “I thank you, Dorn à Hadaruk,” she said, and followed him into the house.

Dorn took her through a wide, dark passageway, which led, surprisingly, into a huge room that Maerad thought must have taken up the bulk of the house. Its height reached up the three stories to the roof, and at each level ran a gallery, off which Maerad could see other rooms. At the other end was a fireplace big enough to fit a whole tree, surrounded by a mantel carved with geometric Pilanel designs; inside it was burning some kind of fuel Maerad did not recognize, a kind of peat, which threw off a huge heat and gave a pleasant, earthy smell. Otherwise, the hall was lined with polished cedar wood, covered in some places with hangings whose brightness had faded with age.

By the fire, on a carved wooden chair, sat a tall woman. Although her hair hung in two simple plaits on either side of her face, and her robe, a rich purple-red, was plain and unadorned, Maerad sensed in her an aura of unchallengeable authority. And with a shiver of recognition, she understood that the woman was a very powerful Bard. She fixed her dark eyes on Maerad as she paced slowly across the room behind Dorn, her feet echoing on the wooden floorboards.

To Maerad’s exaggerated perceptions, it seemed to take a very long time to traverse that room. She was conscious always of the woman’s eyes upon her as she approached; it made her back prickle. At last, she stood in front of the chair, and the woman rose and turned her eyes to Dorn, who spoke in Annaren, out of courtesy to Maerad.

“Sirkana à Triberi, Headwoman of the Southern Clans,” he said. “I present to you a traveler, who comes here bearing a Pilani token of urgency and trust, and the greetings of Mirka à Hadaruk, who she says is alive. The traveler is Annaren, and gives her name as Mara.”

Maerad bowed, feeling very short. Standing up, Sirkana towered over her; she was taller than most men. “Thank you for greeting me, Sirkana à Triberi,” Maerad said, as formally as she could manage. “I have traveled far to see you.”

Instead of answering, Sirkana bent down so she could look straight into Maerad’s face. Maerad’s first instinct was to hide, but she blinked and bore the scrutiny. After a long pause, the headwoman straightened herself.

“It is she,” she said in the Speech. “The Chosen has arrived at last.”

DORN glanced at Maerad with a sudden amazement, and she became agonizingly aware of her filthy appearance.

“You are certain?” he said, answering in the same tongue, and Maerad gave him a swift look. The two Pilanel were staring at her solemnly, and she felt that she ought to say something.

“I am sorry to come before you in such disarray,” she said at last, using the Speech. “I mean no disrespect.”

“I mean none either,” said the woman. “I have waited for you for a long time.”

In her confusion, Maerad forgot her formality. “For me?” she asked. “How did you know I would come here?”

“It is said in the lore,” said Sirkana, as if that explained everything. “It has long been known that the Riddle would begin its answer here. Our songs do not lie, and the past years have brought all the signs. It was time. Besides, your destiny is written in your face.”

Maerad was speechless, and felt herself blushing.

Sirkana laughed at her discomfiture. “Your destiny is not visible to everyone,” she said. “Only to those gifted with both Sight and Voice. And there are not many of those. Only myself, perhaps. Well, you have traveled far, and must be footsore and hungry. You may stay in my house; there is room aplenty. Come, we will talk more later.”

She snapped her fingers, and a woman Maerad hadn’t noticed stepped out of the shadows under the galleries. Sirkana spoke to her rapidly in Pilanel, and the woman nodded and then beckoned Maerad out of the hall. Maerad followed her, puzzled by both her interview and her swift dismissal. She felt as if she had stepped into the middle of a conversation she was expected to understand, and was left gaping like a fish, trying to catch up.

At least she was warm, for the first time in days. And maybe she could have a proper wash.

Maerad was taken to a small chamber that led off the highest gallery. The woman who took her there spoke no Annaren, but with gestures they managed some communication: Maerad found out that her name was Zara, and Zara, who was clearly a practical woman, established that, yes, Maerad would like to wash herself, and also would like something to eat. She disappeared, and Maerad finally put down the pack she had carried for two weeks from the Osidh Elanor. She rubbed her shoulders, and sighed.

She felt too tired to unpack; now that she had arrived, it was as if a leaden weight of weariness had settled on her shoulders. She yawned hugely and looked around the chamber. It was comfortable and snug, being just near the chimney of the fire downstairs, and like the main hall was entirely paneled in wood, here painted with murals of wolves and foxes and owls in a snow-covered forest of spruce. The painted animals were abstracted in a way that caught Maerad’s attention: there was no mistaking what they were, but the artist had made no attempt to make them appear real, and their forms owed much to the geometric patterns with which the Pilanel adorned their clothes and caravans. There was a narrow bed, draped with furs, and a stool and a tall, plain cedar chest, but no other furniture.