The Gift (38 page)

She woke to find her cheeks wet and cold with tears. She turned over and looked out of the window into the garden. It was still deep night and the stars blazed in the cold sky, casting shifting shadows on the cool grass, which was gray with dew. The image of her mother burned in her mind, bright and immeasurably far away.
If she was First Bard of Pellinor,
she thought to herself,
why did she not free us? Why couldn’t she run away with me, like Cadvan did?
Maerad couldn’t remember Milana ever mentioning her father, but suddenly she knew with adamant certainty that his death had destroyed her mother. She wondered what it was like to love someone like that, like her mother had loved her father, like Ardina had loved Ardhor. She never would: it was too dangerous. It had killed Milana. And even Maerad hadn’t been enough to save her. Why not? A pain she had never acknowledged opened and flowered in her breast. Why couldn’t
she
have saved her mother? Why did Milana die, so miserable, so broken, in a place so far from the bright world that was her right?

Maerad sat up and stared sadly in front of her, hugging the blankets around her shoulders. She no longer felt sleepy. There were so many things happening to her, and she didn’t know what to think about any of them. Her mind ran restlessly through the events of the past weeks; all she felt was confused. She thought of Silvia, of how deeply she already loved her, of how in that short time at Innail she had been more of a mother to her than anyone.
Except Milana before Pellinor burned,
she loyally added to herself; but the truth was she could scarcely remember Pellinor. And the Elidhu had called her
daughter.
What did that mean? And how could Ardina tell? She looked ordinary, the same as everyone else. What marked her? And what was the flame that killed the Kulag and the Hull? Did it really come from her? Was that why the Hulls were hunting her? A vision of Dernhil suddenly rose vividly before her inner eye, his face alight with enthusiasm, his forefinger on the page of a book. . . . She wondered uneasily what Cadvan and Silvia meant when they spoke so easily of love, of the ways of the heart.
He died because of me,
she thought miserably.
Why? What am I? How am I ever going to know?

She wondered restlessly if they would ever reach Norloch, and if they did, whether it would answer any of her questions. Her feelings about Cadvan were entirely enigmatic. She knew she trusted him as she had trusted no man in her life, except perhaps the father she could barely remember, but she didn’t really understand why. Perhaps it was because Silvia had trusted him too; but inside she knew it was more than that. She remembered how he had first stood before her in the cowbyre, years ago it seemed, though it was only a couple of months: how his face then was gray with exhaustion, vulnerable, and, she thought now, sad. Even then it hadn’t really occurred to her to doubt him. She thought of his stern, mobile face, how driven he seemed, how isolated; but then he would light up with that vivid, warm smile. . . . What was she to him? A tool of the Light, a thing of mysterious power . . . not merely that, surely? What was she doing, fleeing through such perils with this man, to Norloch, a place of which she knew nothing? What if he was wrong? Would he then abandon her?

Feeling restless, she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and got out of bed. She wandered in the darkness to the room where they had eaten, feeling her way slowly along the walls, and then to the front door, which gave silently under her hand. She stepped barefoot out onto the porch. A half moon swung high above her among the stars. A few dark wisps of clouds hurried high above, but she felt no wind. She curled into a cushioned couch that was set there, wrapping the blanket tightly against the chill, and looked up into the sky, greeting the stars as if they were old friends: the swinging belt of Melchar, and the Great Boat, and the single star Ilion, burning like a brilliant crystal low over the horizon. Their wordless beauty eased her anxiety, and she stayed there until, without realizing it, she fell fast asleep; and there Cadvan found her early the next morning, with her hair fallen in cobwebs across her eyes and mouth. If she had been able to see his face, she would have perceived there a tenderness that he had never shown her. He bent over her and gently brushed back the hair from her face. She stirred, mumbling something, and did not wake. He gazed at her for a few more seconds and then he smiled and went indoors, leaving her to wake when the sun rose high enough to strike her face.

Later that morning Farndar, one of the bowmen who had captured them, arrived and told Cadvan he was leaving Rachida again to go south, to the borders of their realm. He spoke with a new respect. “You have the Lady’s favor,” he said to Cadvan. “Strangers are uncommon here. There have been none in my lifetime.”

Maerad stood by trying to follow their conversation. The words of the Speech slipped strangely from her memory; she didn’t feel she could learn it, as these people seemed to, in the normal way. Somehow that made her feel even more exiled, as if she were foreign even to herself. At last Farndar turned to her and bowed courteously. She bowed in return, and then he left.

“I wish I could understand these people,” she said to Cadvan after he had gone. “Why can’t I learn the Speech? They’re not all Bards, are they?”

“No,” said Cadvan. “I haven’t yet met one who is. The Dhyllin were the only race that used the Speech as their own language; these people must be a remnant of those folk. In the mouths of those who are not Bards the Speech hasn’t the virtues of Barding. In truth, they speak an odd dialect of it here; but I can still understand them.”

“Then why can’t I learn it?” Maerad sat down, frowning. “I don’t have a problem learning other things. But I forget a word as soon as I hear it. It slips out of my mind.”

“No one understands how the Speech springs in the minds of Bards,” said Cadvan. “But perhaps it’s closed to you, until it arrives of its own accord.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever learn it,” said Maerad.

“You will,” Cadvan said. “It yet sleeps in you.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

Cadvan gazed at her dispassionately and then sat down next to her. “I can always be mistaken,” he said. “But that is for neither you nor I to worry about. We must do what we can, knowing or guessing what we can; and if it is any comfort, my guesses are not often far off the mark. I believe you are the Foretold, and I have good reasons for thinking so; perhaps the best are those that I cannot explain, which link to an inner Knowing of which I am not completely aware. It does not do to be impatient with any part of the Knowing, and most especially of the Speech, which is one of its chief mysteries.”

“You didn’t know about the Elementals,” Maerad said pugnaciously.

“No,” said Cadvan. “I don’t know everything. No one does, and only the foolish seek to.” He searched her face and then said gently, “Don’t sit so glowering and sad, Maerad. It’s hard to be thus picked out, beyond your own choice and will, for a life that makes you separate from others. Even to be a Bard is difficult, if your own people are not Bards; to be the Foretold must be so much the harder. Still, how it opens the strangeness and beauty of the world!”

Maerad said nothing for a while.
I’ve always been separate,
she thought.
That’s not what bothers me.
At last she asked, in a muffled voice: “Was it difficult for you, when you found out you were a Bard?”

Cadvan sighed and looked down. “Yes,” he said. “My people were simple folk. As far as they knew, there had been no Barding in my family. It is often so. My father was, in fact, a cobbler in Lirigon. If need be, I could still make a fine pair of boots! I was the youngest child, and it was hard for them to see me leave them for a world of which they had little understanding. And it was hard when I did not grow old as they did. My parents died when I still felt young. My brothers and sisters died long ago. I couldn’t cure them of old age.”

“But even among Bards, you’re a bit separate,” said Maerad. “I mean, you seem more at home with innkeepers, somehow, and marketers, than in the Schools.”

Cadvan gave her a sharp glance, and then laughed. “It’s odd for me, to be observed,” he said. “I like to think of myself as the eye that looks but goes unseen. Not true, of course. . . . Yes, perhaps part of me wishes that I had been allotted an ordinary life, and had been a cobbler, like my father was. My parents were good people. But it wasn’t my fate! And I don’t regret it, although sometimes it has made me sorrowful.”

“Then why . . .” began Maerad, but Cadvan cut her off.

“I’ll be answering questions all day, at this rate,” he said, standing up. “I think we should go out and look at Rachida. We have the freedom of the city, so Farndar tells me, and I am impatient to see this place. We can’t run away; we’d be utterly lost in the forest, so we might as well take advantage of our stay.”

Maerad had been about to ask him why his Barding had led him to search out the Dark. She remembered the flash of a face that she had seen when he had scried her, and Dernhil’s hint of a tragedy long ago, when Cadvan was young, and she could begin to guess. . . . But on reflection she thought it better she did not ask him. She doubted he would tell her.

After the discomforts and perils of their journey, Rachida was a welcome haven. They spent their days resting and eating, or walking through the town. During the day they noticed that the sky seemed to be veiled by a golden mist, and a strange sense that they walked through a time that was at once present and yet irredeemably distant began to grow on them. Cadvan believed Rachida was gripped by a powerful concealment charm created by Ardina. It was a place of rare beauty; every object, from pots and bowls to children’s toys to fabrics, was remarkable for its fineness. The Rachidans ate from fine glazed clayware, with perhaps a single detail of a flower or a snake or a bird, and dressed in garments subtly dyed and exquisitely cut. Even a meal was presented like a work of art.

The people of Rachida were friendly and generous, and Cadvan and Maerad had no trouble in making friends. They were invited to eat at many houses and were shown many marvelous things: a rowan tree, true to every detail, carved from a single piece of alabaster, and a necklace of many intricately carven links made from a single piece of deer bone, and a robe of silk, dyed all the colors of the sunset spilling on a river, woven from a single thread. The Rachidans delighted in such feats of skill and cunning, but in their delight was no sense of greed. Cadvan and Maerad refused the offers of many precious things, given simply because they admired them, with the plea that they could not carry them home. Even so, more than a few turned up in their house.

If they didn’t eat with others, food was brought to their house by a young man called Idris. Unusual for a Rachidan, he was very curious about the world beyond Rachida, which no one he knew had ever seen. Despite their isolation, most people they met had little interest in anything that lay beyond their borders. They called Rachida the Navel of the World, and believed their city held everything they could rightly want. Idris listened intently to Cadvan’s tales of far cities, his eyes glowing. But when Cadvan asked him if he desired to travel, he simply shook his head. “I don’t want to,” he said. “What treasure could I find richer than this?” Maerad and Cadvan both saw his point; but after a couple of days they began to chafe at the delay. They had still not had word from the Lady Ardina.

“I’ve never been in a place so withdrawn from the world!” Cadvan said, after Idris had left. “I begin to wonder if we will be allowed to leave. Perhaps the price of trespass here is that we must stay; and we cannot.”

Maerad counted back and figured it was just over two months since she had first met Cadvan, which made it now late April or early May.
So short a time!
she thought to herself in astonishment. Her time in Gilman’s Cot seemed like another life altogether, an evil memory dulled by distance, and even her stay in Innail seemed an age before. And here they were, caught like flies in amber outside time itself. She looked out through the window to the fountain, which plashed softly in the warm air. The room was utterly peaceful, but she felt no answering peace within herself. She didn’t belong here.

“I hope not,” she said. “It’s time we left.”

On the seventh day they were again summoned to the Nirhel. This time they made their way unaccompanied to the great house. When they entered the hall the Queen Ardina awaited them, seated in her black chair.

Maerad blinked. She had already forgotten the impact of Ardina’s beauty, the potency of her glance. This time Ardina’s hair was braided in a long silver twist wound with pearls, and she wore a plain silver circlet in which was set a single moonstone.

“Cadvan of Lirigon and Maerad of Pellinor,” said the Lady, standing to greet them. “I trust you are rested, and have tasted the hospitality of my city?”

“Our thanks, Queen Ardina,” Cadvan answered. “We are indeed rested. And we have been shown much courtesy and have seen many beautiful things. Rachida is a place of marvels, in which a sore heart might rest content.”

Ardina indicated they should sit down.

“Rachida is truly named the Navel of the World,” she said. “But the sight of these marvels comes at a price. The law of Rachida is that none who wander here might leave. So we preserve in secrecy the purity of this place, which otherwise might be injured by the evils of the outside world.”

Maerad drew in her breath. This was what Cadvan had feared. She stared at the Lady, seeing there an immovable will; she was beautiful, yes, as fine alabaster welling with imprisoned moonlight, but stern and implacable as adamant.

Cadvan seemed unshaken. “I guessed as much. And yet I ask that the law be set aside for Maerad and me. If we were only concerned with ourselves, it would be no punishment for us to while away our lives here among your generous and open-hearted people. But we are not merely concerned with ourselves. We carry with us a deadly doom that concerns each of us alive in this time: and we cannot tarry here. If you forbid us to go, we should have to leave against your will.”