The Gift (37 page)

They were told they could wash if they wished, and were shown another room in which were laid basins of water and fresh towels and clean clothes. Maerad, ravenous after their missed lunch, was relieved when they returned to the first room to find breads and cold meats on the table. The food tasted strange to her tongue, herbed with fennel and horseradish and a strange kind of mint, but it was fresh and delicious.

“What is this place?” she asked Cadvan as she ate. “I don’t think they mean us any harm, at any rate not now.”

“No evil place, at least,” Cadvan answered. “Yet it has a strange feeling. It’s steeped in some powerful enchantment.”

Yes, it does feel strange,
mused Maerad, looking out through the casement to the courtyard. It was as if they had been transported back in time, or even taken out of time itself. All sense of urgency had vanished. She settled back into the cushions, content for the moment to do nothing at all but eat and rest.

Shortly afterward Farndar came back and took them to a large hall in the center of the house. The ceiling rose high, supported by many beams carved ingeniously into writhen shapes of branches and leaves. The walls were of the same silver wood made to look smooth and jointless, hung with richly colored tapestries woven in the semblance of a woodland. In the center was a shallow pool blooming with white and yellow lilies. A light radiated from the water, illuminating the hall with a soft, golden effulgence like the sun of early spring.

At the far end was a dais on which was placed a single chair, carved simply out of a polished black wood that Maerad thought at first was stone, and in the chair sat a tall woman. She was robed in white, and her hair fell freely down her shoulders almost to her feet, like a river of silver. Her face seemed at once young and infinitely ancient, as if she were the painted image of a queen who had reigned in ages long past which, by some enchantment, lived; and her glance pierced Maerad with a strange thrill, as if she had stepped into a cold river. She bore no circlet or jewel or staff of authority, yet Maerad knew at once she was a queen of great power.

Farndar led them before the woman and bowed his head and spoke. She nodded, and then turned to face them.

“Welcome to the city of Rachida,” she said, and her voice was as musical as water. “Few from the outside world have ever gazed on this place and lived.”

To Maerad’s relief, she spoke in the tongue of Annar, strangely accented but still understandable. “I have been told your names, and that you are of Annar; and indeed you are fortunate that Cadvan of Lirigon knows the Speech, for otherwise he would surely be dead. But we seek not to kill needlessly; and so you are brought here to know my edict.”

“I will tell you willingly of us, Lady of Rachida,” said Cadvan, bowing. “But it seems a lack of courtesy not to know who I am addressing, and who reigns over this enchanted place.”

“You wish to know who I am?” The woman seemed to ripple with amusement, although she did not laugh. “I am called many things. To my people I am the Star of Evening, and the Song of Morning, and the Sap That Feedeth the Tree of Life; and once I was called the Child of the Moon, and the Jewel of Lirion, and many other names. I have wandered beyond the Gates to the Meadows of Shade and returned whole, and so am encumbered with a doom alone of all my kind, and am also called the Alone. What is a name?”

Maerad, glancing at Cadvan, saw that he was struck speechless with amazement. He bowed low.

“Lady,” he said, when he had recovered his composure. “Do I have the honor, then, of addressing the one known among Bards as the Queen Ardina?”

She gazed at him, and Cadvan held her glance for a long time before he looked down and aside. “I see you are one of deep lore, and one whom the Speech inhabits, rather than one who learns it tongue-wise,” said the Lady. “Such are rare in my realm.” She paused. “I did not think my name was still spoken in the wider world.”

“Your beauty is still sung in the Halls of the Bards of Annar and the Seven Kingdoms,” said Cadvan. “But the songs do you scant justice. They say also that you passed long ago to the vales of the stars, and dwell there yet; and so I am abashed, meeting here one I thought I would never meet, no matter how far and long I wandered in this world.”

“Long ago I hid from the world, passing from the memory of Annar,” said Ardina dreamily. “But I did not leave this world. I may not.” A shadow passed over her face, briefly as a bird’s wing eclipses the sun. “But come; it is dull to speak of me. I wish to know who you are, and why you are here.” She turned to Farndar and addressed him, and he brought them two chairs and a small table with drinks, and then left them with the Queen.

The Lady questioned Cadvan about his direction, and why he was in the east of the Great Forest. He told her of their journey and of their intention to go to Norloch, but did not mention the reason for it. Ardina seemed satisfied with his answers. She asked for news of the realm of Annar with a distant curiosity, as if they spoke of something that had nothing to do with her, but was quaint, like travelers’ tales of distant regions. “I have heard there is a new fear abroad,” she said indifferently. “For news comes even here. But this has as little to do with us, as we with it.”

For a long time Maerad sat bored, kicking her ankles against the legs of the chair and wishing she could be dismissed if she was going to be so ignored. At last the Lady turned to her, and said: “Now I wish to speak to Maerad of Pellinor. For I perceive that she is one of my kindred, and I am curious to know from whence she came; for in the Darkness much that I loved was extinguished beyond the hope of the hither realm.”

Maerad looked up, jolted out of her boredom, and met Ardina’s eye. She was, Maerad realized, perplexingly like the Elidhu: her face had a similar wildness, although the regard she turned on her was gentle and thoughtful. With a shock, Maerad realized that Ardina’s eyes were not human. They were the same as the Elidhu’s: within the white was a golden iris with a pupil like a cat’s eye. Again she felt as if she were plunged into cold water, and a strange shiver went all the way down her spine.

“I am the daughter of Milana of the First Circle of Pellinor,” she said, with a kind of defiant pride. “How could we be kin?”

“By the strangest of chance, if chance you call it,” said Ardina softly. “Often what you humans call chance is instead the workings of a deeper pattern, which the casual eye cannot easily perceive. In the past I have seen you with my inner dreaming, which does not lie. But in such dreaming it is often hard to know what is seen: whether it is the future, or the past, or something that only may be. In you I know my own blood. But there is more. . . .”

Maerad felt goose bumps rising on her skin, and the grip of a strange dread. What did she mean? She couldn’t meet the Queen’s strange gaze, and she stared down at her feet, deeply unsettled.

There was a pause and then Ardina stood up, as if thinking better of what she was about to say. “I tire you, importuning you with my questions,” she said. “Go then in peace, and rest, and savor the delights of my realm; and when you are rested, we will meet again and talk further. And then you shall know my mind.”

Cadvan and Maerad both stood and bowed their heads. It seemed a golden light increased around Ardina, growing brighter and brighter until they were forced to blink; and in that moment the Queen vanished, and the chair stood empty before them, and the beautiful room was suddenly desolate with her absence.

Wordlessly they left the hall. Farndar was waiting for them by the door, and he took them to a house not far from the Nirimor, which he said was theirs to use as they liked, and he left them there. The house was arranged around a central courtyard and surrounded by a wide porch, furnished in the same style as the Nirhel. The floors were polished wood, well covered against the cold with rich rugs, and little braziers of iron warmed each room. A meal and wine were set out on a low table in the main room. There was a walled lawn where Farndar said the horses might stay, for they had no stables. Afterward the horses walked freely through the streets of Rachida, where they were given sweets and carrots by the children, and caused much wonder.

By now it was twilight. Both Cadvan and Maerad felt strangely exhausted after their interview with the Lady Ardina, as if they had sat long in talk and been questioned deeply, although in truth their interview had lasted less than an hour.

“This is the strangest of many strange things that have happened to me,” said Cadvan as he poured them some wine. “The Lady Ardina! Now legends come to life and walk the earth!”

“Who is she?” asked Maerad. Cadvan said nothing at first, seeming lost in thought; and then he pulled his lyre out of his pack, and began, almost randomly, to strike a few chords. After a while they modulated into a melody, and his voice rose in song:

“So, long ago, sang the Bard Tulkan, in the tongue of his own country,” said Cadvan, laying down his lyre. “It’s a difficult measure to render in our speech; I’ve done my best, but this is only a shadow of the song. It tells of the birth of Ardina, the Moonchild, before the world was changed forever in the Wars of the Elementals, and of her love for Ardhor, who was a mortal king. She rescued him from the trammels of the Ice Witch, who cursed him when he would not do his bidding and froze him deep in the mountains for many years. The full tale is long and sad.” Cadvan poured himself more wine.

Maerad listened, enraptured; now she thought she understood something of Cadvan’s awe. “Are there many songs about her?” she asked.

“Yes, very many,” he answered. “It is one of the great tales. Yet Ardina passed out of our knowing an age ago. The world tonight is a different place for me.” He shook his head. “To think I have gazed on her living face! But I wonder what she meant, when she spoke of her doom. The Lady Ardina was one of the Elementals, and she alone of all her kind attempted to die as a mortal and to follow her lover through the Gates. The songs say that they walked together past the Meadows of Shade to the Starry Groves that overlook this world, and there at last they could be together as they wished. But it seems the songs are wrong.”

Cadvan was silent then for a long time, pensively sipping his wine, and Maerad, content to say nothing, contemplated him curiously. He seemed wrapped in some fair memory that nevertheless filled him with deep melancholy. She could see now what he must have been like as a young Bard, as Dernhil had remembered him, and it stirred within her an obscure feeling that was like pain. At last Cadvan sighed and looked across at Maerad.

“No power, not even love, can overcome the ban against Return, save that binding chosen by the Nameless One,” he said, smiling sadly. “Alas! The world is cruel. More wine?”

Maerad proffered her cup. “I wonder what the Lady Ardina was going to say to me,” she said.

“I wonder too,” said Cadvan. “There are mysteries here beyond my power to understand. And you, Maerad, not the least of them!” He lifted his cup to her and drank.

“Well, I’m a sore puzzlement to myself,” she answered ironically. She leaned forward and poured herself another drink. It was a light golden wine, but surprisingly strong, and she felt it going to her head. She wanted suddenly to break this aura of enchantment; Cadvan’s odd mood disturbed her. “For all that, it all seems a bit, well, a bit
remote
to me. If she has little to do with us, we have little to do with her. We still have to get out of this forest; we can’t stay here, however beautiful it is. How will we find a way out from here?”

“I don’t know,” said Cadvan, frowning. “I am full of doubts and fears; wise she is, but perilous, this Lady of Rachida, and I fear she will prove as stern as the very mountains. She does not care for the travails of our world. Although,” he added, “it occurs to me that perhaps many things that have been long sundered from each other may now have cause to look beyond their borders.” He stretched and yawned lazily, and drained his wine. “At least we’ll sleep safely tonight, as we haven’t since leaving Innail.”

Shortly afterward they retired to their chambers, where they found couches heaped high with blankets woven from a soft cloth they did not recognize. The night was mild, so Maerad kept her window open, pulling back the paper screens. She went to sleep laved by scented breezes from the garden, where water from a small channel trickled in a little fall, down into a stone pool. Its gentle voice ran underneath her dreams all night.

For the first time since she could remember, Maerad dreamed of her mother. Not as she had last seen her, twisted with illness, crippled by anguish and despair, her light extinguished; but tall and proud and strong, as she barely remembered her. In the dream she had stood in a high crystal tower playing her lyre, and, as she played, birds of fabulous colors — sapphire, gold, emerald, crimson — flew out of her lyre and circled her in a graceful dance. Maerad ran up to the tower wall, calling for her mother; but there was no door in the tower, although she searched and searched. She came close to the glass and called her —“Mamma, Mamma,”— but her voice was small and pathetic; her mother did not hear her and kept playing, absorbed by the music. Maerad beat her fists on the hard, cold walls until her hands were bruised and bleeding, but still Milana would not turn to look at her, and at last Maerad sank to the ground, exhausted. “How could she abandon me?” she sobbed to herself. “How could she forget?”