The Riddle (47 page)

“You are here, in the palace of the master. And my name is Gima, young fish. Oh, you were a sick girl when you came in.” She clicked her tongue, as Mirka had done. “The frost bit your fingers off, silly girl. But now you are getting better, no? Soon you will be well enough to meet him.”

“Do you mean the Winterking?” asked Maerad.

“I don’t know who that is,” said the woman cheerfully. “Maybe someone calls him that. Here, he is just the master.”

Maerad gave up; her stomach was growling, and it seemed that Gima had no intention of telling her anything useful. “Will you come back?” she asked as the woman left.

“Soon, soon . . .” She lifted the hanging, and was gone.

Maerad devoured the meal ravenously. She had been starving. She pushed the bowl aside, feeling more substantial than before. Perhaps she could think about walking a bit. She massaged her legs, which looked thin and wasted, and then thought that she ought to get dressed. She had just decided to unpack her spare clothes, filthy as they were, when Gima came in again, bearing a long robe lined with white fur, a rich crimson dress and fine woolen leggings, and some finely embroidered felt shoes.

“I will wash these for you,” she said, gathering Maerad’s clothes up and slinging them over her arm. “These are for you, as ordered by the master.”

“But who is he?” asked Maerad, irritated. “And where am I?”

Gima simply chuckled and patted her head. “Don’t you worry about that, little fish. Just get dressed, and then maybe we will take you to him, eh?” She took the tray and disappeared.

Maerad shrugged. It would be better to put on clean clothes. And if she were to see the master, whoever he was, it would be better to be finely dressed. She put on the dress and robe, stood up, and tried walking from one end of the room to the other. Her legs were not so bad; maybe she had just been hungry.

As if Gima had been waiting, she entered the room almost immediately. “Good,” she said cheerfully. “You are dressed. Well, come along.”

Maerad, whose only thought had been to get out of the chamber and to see where she was, immediately felt rebellious. “Where?” she snapped. “Why won’t you answer? Are you stupid?” She used a Jussack word for “stupid” that she knew was particularly insulting, but Gima didn’t even blink.

“Oh, you are so full of questions. Silly, silly girl. Come, come.” She chivvied and coaxed Maerad as if she were a particularly slow child, and Maerad found she was following Gima along the white corridors. She was suspicious of everything in this strange place, and inclined to be hostile rather than not, but she was also consumed by curiosity.

The corridor turned into a wider passage. This was also vaulted, and was higher than the other, and every now and then they passed underneath an arch of black iron, with architraves wrought skillfully into strange geometric shapes, not one the same as the next. They were curiously beautiful. Before long, Maerad and Gima had reached a big double-leafed door.

Here Gima paused, her composure slipping; Maerad noted with interest that her face was suddenly pale. Then she took a deep breath and pushed the door. It opened silently under her hand, and they passed inside.

The room reminded Maerad of nothing so much as Ardina’s hall in Rachida, only instead of silvered wood, the walls and ceiling were made of iron and white, translucent stone. The high ceiling was supported by black beams of iron that were wrought into the same abstract shapes Maerad had seen in the corridors. The walls were covered by tapestries, rich in shape and colors, but without figures that Maerad could make out; they seemed like the sun dazzling on snow and breaking into all its colors, or the strange hallucinatory shapes she had seen in the glacier. In the center was a rectangular pool carved out of the translucent stone, and there the light was brightest: a cold, beautiful light that evenly illuminated the room, so there were no dark corners. At the far end was a low dais, and on the dais was a high black throne, which was utterly plain, and two low stools. On the throne sat a man. He watched Maerad and Gima in their slow progress across the hall.

Strangely, Gima’s fear made Maerad feel less afraid. She straightened her back as they walked, so she should not seem deferential, and as they neared the throne she met the man’s eyes.

He was an Elidhu: he had the same unsettling inhuman eyes that Ardina had, with their catlike pupil, but while Ardina’s eyes were yellow, his were a very pale blue. His hair was black and long, and braided into two plaits that fell onto his breast. He was bareheaded, dressed in a light blue tunic richly embroidered with silver, with a long cloak of midnight blue springing back from his shoulders. On his naked arms were bracelets of silver and iron, intricately worked and set with white gems. His skin was absolutely white, but his pallor gave no sense of weakness: he looked strong and muscular, and as Maerad neared him, she sensed, with a shiver, his keen vitality. Like Ardina, he seemed ageless, neither young nor old: his face was unlined, like that of a young king in the first flowering of his manhood, but his gaze was ancient.

When they reached the foot of the dais, Gima prostrated herself, tugging on Maerad’s arm to indicate that she should do the same. Maerad had no intention of doing any such thing and shook off Gima’s hand. She stood and looked at the man, her face expressionless.
So, I meet you at last, my enemy,
she said to herself.
And I have nothing left except my pride, but you cannot take that away from me.
For surely this was Arkan, the Winterking, the author of her sorrows: murderer of Cadvan and Dharin, of Darsor and Imi, ally of the Nameless One, evil tyrant of the north. He stared back at her, unblinking. Then he waved his hand.

“Out, Gima,” he said in Jussack. His voice was deep and gentle, and Maerad, who had been expecting a harsh command, was surprised. “Leave us.”

Gima scuttled backward on her hands and knees before she stood up and backed out of the room, almost falling into the pool. Maerad turned and watched her with astonishment: why didn’t she turn around, so she could see where she was going? Finally, the old woman reached the door and slipped out.

Maerad turned back to face the Winterking and found he was regarding her with something like amusement. Despite herself, she almost smiled. This piqued her pride, and she decided to show nothing. She met his eyes as coolly as she could manage and schooled herself to wait.

“Welcome to you, Elednor of Edil-Amarandh,” said the Winterking, now speaking in the Elidhu tongue. Maerad started; how did he know her Truename? “At last you have arrived, and I see what shape it is that so disrupts the stars.”

He paused, perhaps waiting for Maerad to speak. She said nothing.

“It would be better if you sat down, instead of standing there,” he said. “Come, sit beside me.”

Maerad shook her head, and he sighed, as if he were a patient king dealing with one of the more querulous of his ministers. “As you wish, then,” he said.

“I wish to leave here,” said Maerad, looking up again and defiantly meeting his eyes. Like Ardina’s, his gaze was unsettling, disturbing hidden depths within her. “Would you say ‘as you wish’ to that?”

“Why do you want to leave? Do you not think my palace beautiful? Does your chamber displease you? Is the food inadequate? I agree, Gima is a little tiresome, but she is also kind. I can find you another servant. My desire is to please you.”

“You murdered my friends. My cousin.” A hot feeling spread in the pit of Maerad’s stomach, a deep anger. “Why should I wish to remain in the same house as my enemy?”

Arkan let his gaze rest on Maerad’s face. Something in her flinched, and she looked away. “I am sorry for the sins of my servants. I can punish them if you like,” he said. “I was not pleased with the state in which you were delivered to me: I could see you had been ill treated. But how else could I bring you here?”

“You could have asked me,” said Maerad hotly. “Instead of attacking me in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of — of thugs.”

“I shall punish them for you,” said Arkan indifferently. “If it makes you feel any better.”

“Not Nim,” said Maerad. “He was kind to me. If I’m alive at all, it’s thanks to him.” Her legs had started trembling with weakness, and she swayed slightly. “Punish Amusk. He’s an evil man.”

“I do not understand what you mean by evil,” said Arkan. “It seems to me that when humans make war, they say: this is good; this is evil. But the good and the evil often seem the same to me.”

“They’re not,” began Maerad passionately, and then thought of Enkir of Norloch, and of her own murder of the Bard from Lirigon, and bit her lip. “I mean, people do good things and evil things, but . . .” She stuttered to a halt, confused and dismayed; this was not at all how she had imagined her meeting with the Winterking.

“Are you so sure you can tell the difference?” said Arkan.

Maerad looked at him, at his strange blue eyes, which seemed lit with a cold laughter, and straightened her back. Her legs were trembling badly now.

“Yes,” she said. “I can tell the difference. People are both good and bad. But there are those who choose only to have power. And they are evil.”

“Your friend Cadvan of Lirigon. He is a powerful Bard and has worked all his life to be a man of power. Is he then evil?”

The unexpected mention of Cadvan pierced Maerad like a dart, and she gasped. “How do you dare speak of Cadvan to me!” she said. “When you —” She swayed again; the pain in her legs was almost unbearable now. “He never chose to have power. I mean, over other people. Everything he did was for the Light.” She clenched her hands, trying to impose her will on her body and feeling once again with a shock the absence of her fingers.

“Ah, the Light.” Arkan’s voice was expressionless. “But what is the Light without the Dark? It cannot be. And the Dark was first.”

“That darkness was a different dark,” said Maerad. “It was the night; it was innocent. . . .” She drew in a shuddering breath, and there was a short silence.

“You are just out of your bed,” said Arkan. “I think you ought to sit down.” He again indicated the stool next to his throne. Maerad stubbornly shook her head, and almost immediately her legs bent involuntarily beneath her and she stumbled forward, and found herself kneeling in front of Arkan, clutching the dais. Humiliated, she pulled herself up.

“It would be more prideful to sit than to kneel,” said Arkan dryly.

Maerad sat on the floor where she was. “I’ll sit here then,” she said.

“As you will.” Arkan suddenly looked bored. “Well, Elednor of Edil-Amarandh, I did not bring you here to debate the virtues or otherwise of this and that.”

“Why did you, then?” Maerad looked up, anger stirring again inside her. “I didn’t choose to come here. And I want to go.”

“Go where, Elednor of Edil-Amarandh? Back into the snow, to give it your other fingers? The snow is always hungry.”

“I — I have things I must do,” Maerad answered. An overwhelming desolation swept over her. I want to go home, she thought, but I have no home to go to. An image of Hem, turning toward her with his vivid, mischievous smile, leaped into her mind, and a piercing sense of how much she missed him filled her whole body. She didn’t want to sit any longer on the floor of this throne room, being toyed with by the Winterking.

“What things? I suppose you have business with my old acquaintance Sharma. You would be the merest morsel to him, I fear.” Arkan laughed, and Maerad felt a shiver run down her back. Sharma, the Nameless One. “There is much you do not understand. No, I brought you here because I wish to talk to you. We have much to talk about, you and I.”

“Do we?” Maerad stood up; her legs were shaky, but she could stand. “I think not, Winterking. What could you have to say to me that could possibly interest me? Why don’t you just kill me? It would probably solve a lot of problems for your old acquaintance Sharma.” She spat the words out, and turned to go.

“My old acquaintance, my old enemy,” said Arkan softly. “Sharma threw me to the dogs of the Light; he betrayed me. He was once not without charm, for a human. He deceived many, who now remember only that he deceived me and choose not to remember that they too were fooled. He betrayed all Elidhu.”

Maerad stopped, her spine tingling, but did not turn around.

“He stole something precious from us,” said Arkan. “But he could only use its half; and the other half is in your keeping.”

Maerad involuntarily spun around and stared at the Winterking in wonder.

“I want my Song back,” said Arkan.

There was a long silence.

“How do I know it’s your Song?” said Maerad coldly. “It might equally be Ardina’s Song. Ardina, who is your enemy.”

“Ardina is not my enemy. The Song is of us both.”

“I don’t believe anything you say.” Maerad turned and walked from the throne room, not looking behind her, and she felt the room momentarily darken, as if she had finally succeeded in disturbing Arkan’s calm. But he did not call her back.

She met Gima by the door. For once, the old woman didn’t say anything; she seemed awed and shaken. She led Maerad back in silence to her chamber. Once there, Maerad sank gratefully onto the bed. She had managed to stay upright on the walk back, but it had taken all the will she possessed.

One to me,
she said to her lyre.
Twenty to him, but one to me.