The Gift (35 page)

Maerad glanced across at Cadvan; his eyes were remote and sad, as if he gazed upon a living memory. Recollections from her childhood, vague as smoke, seemed to stir in her mind as Cadvan spoke.

“The Usk then was a great river called the Findol, famous for the purity and beauty of its waters; in the songs it is said the river ran red for days, and was blocked with bloated corpses that so sullied the waters that none could drink from them. Then it was named Usk, meaning tears in the tongue of Imbral. All the great cities of Imbral and Lirion were laid waste, and their people slaughtered without mercy. The citadel of Afinil was cast down and its power broken, and now even its site has been forgotten. In the Great Silence that followed the victory of the Nameless, a darkness that lasted nigh a thousand years, every sign that remained of the Dhyllin was destroyed. The Nameless especially hated that fair people for their defiance of his power and their courage against him, even in defeat. And now their voices sound no more in Annar, and their cities are forgotten as if they had never been. They are a fair dream remembered by the Bards, but few others.

“How the land was despoiled, I know not: little has grown here for nearly two thousand years. And although the evil has been washed away since Maninaë cast out the Nameless and broke his throne nine hundred years ago, still the earth is hurt. It will be many lifetimes before it is green and wholesome again.”

Cadvan stopped speaking, and Maerad sat in silence for some while, caught in the sorrow of the story. As if her mind reflected the images in Cadvan’s, there flashed on her inner eye the vision of a beautiful city cast down, its walls in smoking ruins, its towers broken, and all around it the terrible evidence of a great slaughter. She would not have thought the landscape could seem more desolate than it had before; but the recollection of all it had once held made it all the more empty. She wondered again if she heard the sounds of thin voices sobbing, and she shivered.

“Were Andomian and Beruldh of the Dhyllin people?” she asked at last.

“Yes, they were from Lirion, which is where the House of Karn traces back its long line,” said Cadvan. “And their story is from some time before the Great Silence, when the war against the Nameless was still a matter of skirmishes and battles, and he had then only despoiled the realm of Indurain, marching up along the mountains to startle the people from their sleep and slaughter them.” His voice was harsher now. “Even then, there were those who did not expect him to cross all of southern Annar and even the Aleph River and besiege the proud realms of Lirion and Imbral. Just as now there are those who say his return is impossible, and that the days of the Silence are just a matter of legend and dim history.”

Maerad thought of other songs she knew. “Then who was the Ice Witch?” she asked. “Was that before the Nameless?”

“Maerad, I know I’m supposed to be your teacher,” said Cadvan tiredly. “But surely I deserve a rest now and then!”

“No!” said Maerad sternly. “You volunteered, now fulfill your duty.”

Cadvan laughed quietly and poked the fire. “You’re a hard taskmaster. But it helps to pass the time,” he said, looking around. “I’m tired. But I’ll take the first watch; sleep is far from me tonight.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “Well, the dominion of the Ice Witch was so long ago that the songs reveal little, and there are few of them. It was the Age of the Elementals, when humans were but new in the world. The Ice Witch, the Winterking, who some call Arkan, came from the north and brought with him the storm dogs and armies of hail and snow, and the whole of Annar was covered with ice, down even as far as the Suderain. The Kulags were his creations. The world was a different shape then, although the river Lir still runs as it did then, my home river in the kingdom of Lirhan, once Lirion, in the far north. The Elementals made war with Arkan, and their wars were grievous, and men and women crept into the shadows of the rocks to escape their fury, and many died. Afterward the coastline was changed, and some lands sank forever beneath the waves. But that was long before the Nameless, and even the Ice Witch was the slave of a greater power, as is the Nameless One.” He shivered suddenly. “I would rather teach you this beside a warm fire in a pleasant room in one of the Schools than out here in the wilds, where the darkness is all too close. Another time, Maerad?”

Maerad nodded; she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that the wind was crying, like a lost child, and an intolerable melancholy was growing within her. But as Cadvan’s voice stopped, so the empty night seemed to creep closer to them. Before Maerad curled up in her blanket to sleep, they spoke together for a while, merely to keep the darkness at bay, of things such as cobbling, and minstrelsy, and cooking.

On the morning of the fifth day on the Hutmoors they reached its western edge. The land suddenly fell sharply some hundreds of feet before them, as if a monstrous knife had sheared it away. The river plunged down in a long waterfall, plashing into several rocky pools on its way down the cliff. A great forest stretched far beyond the horizon, lapping up to the edge of the cliff, and they looked down on the crowns of trees, which looked from their height like little sprouts in a vegetable garden.

Maerad gazed wordlessly out over the forest. She could see no way down the cliff. She glanced inquiringly at Cadvan.

“What now?” she said. “Do we grow wings and fly? And then, how do we get through that forest?”

“I don’t know,” said Cadvan, unperturbed. Maerad cast him a look of dislike; for a brief second she felt like pushing him off the cliff. They had come all this way, through such lean country, only for Cadvan to tell her he didn’t know what to do next? “I can’t grow us wings,” Cadvan continued. “So there’s only one thing we can do. We can ride north until we find a way down.” He waved his hand out over the void. “This is the Great Forest, the
Cilicader
in the Speech. If we want to remain hidden, it is as good a place in all Annar to be.”

“Did you know there was a cliff here?” asked Maerad.

“Yes,” said Cadvan. “This is the Imbral Cut. It once marked the western border of that realm. I don’t know if it has a more recent name.”

Maerad sighed impatiently. An impatience akin to panic had been growing on her since the night before, not only because of the grimness of the Hutmoors, and she begrudged every hour they spent that morning wandering along the edge searching fruitlessly for a path.

They stopped at midday for lunch, and Cadvan, as he munched the tough biscuit, looked warily around.

“Listen,” he said.

Maerad cocked an ear. “I hear nothing,” she said.

“Neither do I,” said Cadvan.

Maerad realized with a shock that there was no birdsong. She thought back, but couldn’t remember when she had stopped hearing it.

“I like this not at all,” said Cadvan. “Pray we find a path before nightfall. Perhaps at last someone has spotted us.”

“Who? A ghost?” said Maerad lightly; but her heart misgave her. She remembered how the land had silenced around them near the Landrost, when the wers had been pursuing them.

After that they listened as well as looked, but the silence continued. The cliff was now bending westward, and she thought it seemed less high, although still impassable with horses. Then Cadvan gave a shout and pointed forward. A little way ahead there had been a rockfall, and a huge slice of the cliff had slid down into the forest, leaving behind it a rocky slope down which it looked possible to pick a path.

“It will be dangerous,” said Cadvan. “But we might be able to make our way down, if we take care. We’ll have to lead the horses.”

Maerad didn’t like the sound of “might.” She looked dubiously down the slope, which still looked far too steep to walk down. Then she scanned the cliff farther northward. For as far as she could see there was no path more likely than this one, and the sun was already climbing down in the west.

“I suppose it will have to do,” she said. “We’ve got to get off the moors. Hulls on one side, a broken neck on the other. What’s the difference?”

“Not Hulls, I think,” said Cadvan. “And who is to say the forest will be any better? But at least we will be less easy to spot. Well, hesitating on the edge of anything never made it any easier. Don’t follow me too closely, in case one of us falls.” He dismounted and stroked Darsor’s nose. “Courage, brave one,” he said, and led the stallion to the cliff edge.

Darsor looked as dubious as Maerad felt, and followed Cadvan with reluctance, his tail jammed between his back legs. Maerad sighed and dismounted, and led Imi to the edge, trying not to look down. Imi balked and would not even begin the descent. At last Cadvan climbed back up and whispered to her in the Speech, and only then would she follow, climbing down crabwise with her ears pressed flat against her skull, snorting violently each time her hooves slipped.

Slowly and painfully they picked their way, foot by foot, down the steep slope. Every time one of the horses slipped, or Maerad stood on a rock that tilted under her weight, she thought they would go crashing down to the trees hundreds of feet below; in her mind’s eye she could see Imi with a crushed leg, or Darsor with a broken back, thrashing helplessly at the bottom. She pushed these images aside with an effort of will and concentrated her mind solely on the present: this step, this next step. She tried not to look down, or, after a while, up; either dizzied her. After an hour her hands were bleeding from falls and she felt utterly spent. She risked a look down and to her surprise the forest was much nearer; what was even more heartening was that not far beneath them the gradient of the slope lessened dramatically, as a huge pile of scree swept against the cliff like the detritus from a giant tide. She pressed on then with less dread, and at last, after what seemed an endless age scrabbling among the rocks, constantly afraid that a horse might strain a tendon or break a fetlock or worse, they made it safely to the bottom of the cliff.

It was already dark there; behind the trees the sun was low in the sky, and the cliff threw a deep shadow over them, although high up Maerad could see where the sun’s light struck against the cliff face. The forest came right to the edge, a chaotic tangle of vegetation. Cadvan led them a little way in under the trees, and Maerad looked around in despair. How were they going to pass through this snarl of trees and undergrowth? In places it was an impenetrable wall of briars and brambles higher than their heads, and everywhere, rotting in the dim light, were the fallen corpses of trees, overgrown with moss and creepers. She saw no path. Cadvan was already sitting down on a log, breathing heavily.

“Well, we’re well out of that,” he said. “Whatever that was. But I think eyes would have marked where we left the Hutmoors, and we can’t stay here tonight. We’ll have to go back south, toward the Usk.”

“Won’t they guess that’s where we’re going?” asked Maerad; but she quibbled no further. The alternative was to get totally lost in the bewildering woods. It added up to no choice at all.

After a very short rest they started the exhausting task of battling through the undergrowth. They kept the cliff to their left, fearing that if they moved farther away they might lose their direction entirely. This was difficult, as their way was often impeded by narrow gullies filled with brambles and dead and broken branches, and sometimes they had to wander many hundreds of yards out of their way before they could find a way to cross and then retrace their steps along its other side. Once Imi stumbled crossing a gully and gashed her leg on a stick, high up near her chest. By the time dusk began to draw in, they still had not found the Usk. Maerad was uncomfortably conscious of the rustle of creatures in the leaves above them. Sometimes she saw dark shapes in the branches or the small paired lamps of yellow eyes.

“We have to stop soon, or we’ll get lost,” she said, wondering uncomfortably what creatures haunted the nights in this wild forest.

As if he heard her thoughts, Cadvan turned and spoke. “Look to your sword, Mistress Maerad. There are strange beasts in these parts.”

“More goromants?” she asked, with a lightness she didn’t feel.

“This is as old as the Weywood; parts of this forest are supposed to have been here since the first foundations of this land were laid, long before the Wars of the Elementals,” Cadvan answered. “And as in the Weywood, creatures survived here when the kingdoms of Lirion and Imbral drove back the woods. It remained untouched by the Silence, but it was not always so broad. Since the Silence it has stretched almost as far as Lirhan, and far to the west. Many things might live here beyond the knowledge of the Nameless himself: more ancient, and with a malice more profound.”

Maerad reflected briefly that it might have been less dangerous to take the open highway to Norloch, even in the face of the Hulls, but kept her thoughts to herself. Nevertheless Cadvan caught the tenor of them and gave her a piercing glance.

“Better to face that which has no particular reason to notice us, than to run in broad daylight before foes whose first desire is to hunt us down,” he said. “Or so runs my reasoning. May it prove to be sound!” He looked around impatiently. “Darkness will fall soon,” he said. “The days are short in this forest! I think tonight we will have to stay by the cliff; if we have our backs to the rock, at least we can’t be attacked from behind.”

Before the light failed entirely they found a suitable place. At one point the cliff drove slightly in, making a hollow that was not quite a cave, but offered at least some shelter. The horses stood glumly by; they were thirsty, and apart from a brackish puddle, Cadvan had not been able to find water for them all day. They were not cheered even by Cadvan’s whispering, although Imi relaxed a little when he attended to her cut and eased it with a salve. They passed an uncomfortable, if uneventful, night, and found the next day that they had been only two hours from the Usk, which fell into a wide pool as it splashed down from the Hutmoors. The horses waded in, drinking deeply, and Cadvan and Maerad refilled their water bottles gratefully.

“Now at last we are back where we were two days ago, only several hundred feet lower,” said Cadvan, squinting up the length of the waterfall, which arched gracefully down in several steps, spraying the sunlight into trembling rainbows. “We’ve lost a lot of time. And if the forest continues to be so difficult to move through, we will lose much more, and we have not enough food to last more than three weeks. I can hunt, at a pinch, but it takes time and energy; and speed is our friend, not this endless delay. I was told the forest was not impassable and that you could ride a horse here, at need; but perhaps the western end was spoken of. At any rate, we can’t stray far from the river.”