The Gift (50 page)

Nelac’s dining room contained many curious things: a crystal globe carven with strange runes; curious, intricate instruments made perhaps for measuring or observation; and a shelf of big leather-bound books with their titles stamped in gilt on their spines. Parchment scrolls and paper manuscripts were piled high on a table against the wall. On one shelf was a collection of different kinds of stone: crystals of quartz and amethyst, polished agate, jade, and amber. Another held huge exotic seashells with strange spikes and horns, blotched with freckles of brown and pink, and one perfect nautilus, with intricate whorls as delicate as paper. A gilt lamp overhead let fall a gentle light. Maerad thought of Dernhil’s study: this room seemed even more disorderly than his, but in the same way, as if a hidden purpose lay beneath the chaos.

“Forgive the disorganization of my private quarters,” said Nelac, noticing Hem’s glances. “I never seem to have enough space for all my work, and it spills into every room.”

“It doesn’t look disorganized to me,” said Maerad, and then, despite herself, she reddened. She couldn’t rid herself of her reticence in the presence of Nelac, although he didn’t frighten her. He was like no one she had met before, and she felt how far he was beyond her experience; even Ardina had not abashed her so.
Maybe it’s because Ardina was a bit like me,
she thought.
And that’s what she meant by kinship.
But still, she wanted to know what had happened to Cadvan.

“Is Cadvan all right?” she asked, when she finished eating.

Nelac’s eyes were dark and somehow ageless, and the glance he turned on Maerad was almost as deep as Ardina’s. “Cadvan will be well in a short time,” he said. “I had to use all my powers of healing, but I have made whole what was broken in him, as if it were never wounded. That is more than a spell of mending. All that ails him now is exhaustion, and a long rest will heal that.”

“But what was wrong with him?” She gazed at Nelac, the distress rising within her again. “I didn’t know anything was, I mean, beyond being tired, and the whips . . .”

Nelac’s glance was full of gentle understanding, and Maerad looked down at the table. She found his acute perception discomforting.

“Cadvan is a Bard of unusually strong will,” he said kindly, smiling briefly, as if at some far memory. “If he seeks to keep something hidden, it is near impossible to find it out. When you arrived here, he was on the brink of death. He was struck down and broken by an evil will, even as he opened his full power. In a Bard, that is a grievous thing; the greater the Bard, the more grievous. And Cadvan is a very great Bard. Even as the physical wounds healed, he was sickening and wasting away.”

Maerad sat in silence, shocked at the thought of Cadvan dying. She had thought of him as somehow invulnerable.

“I must say that I am full of curiosity,” said Nelac, after a pause. “How is it you were not all killed outright? And who was the wight, I wonder? It’s been many centuries since one was heard of in Annar.”

A trembling overtook Maerad, as the wight’s baleful figure loomed vividly in her memory.

“It said it was called Sardor,” she said.

“Sardor?” Nelac’s face was suddenly grim. “He was chained long ages ago. He once haunted the Broken Teeth in the Edinur Downs, his barrow; but the Bards cleansed it after the Silence, and only his shadow remained. A black memory of former evil, but a memory nevertheless. I guess it was there he assailed you? He was a mighty king once, in the dark times. It is ill news that such an evil walks again in this land.”

“I don’t think it does anymore,” said Maerad faintly, and now her hands were shaking, and a roaring rose in her ears. “I blasted it, and it all burned up and disappeared.”

Nelac and Saliman stared at Maerad in astonishment.

“You
blasted
it?” said Saliman, incredulity straining his voice. He looked across at Nelac, who was staring at Maerad somberly from beneath his heavy brows.

Maerad felt suddenly that she couldn’t bear the Bards’ disbelief, not now, not here, not tonight. She clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking.

“Nobody saw it,” she said. “Cadvan was unconscious. I thought Hem was dead. Nobody saw me do it. But I
did.
You can believe me or not.” She looked up defiantly and caught Nelac’s steady gaze. She held his eye, refusing to be intimidated. At last he stirred, looking away and passing his hand over his brow. To Maerad’s surprise, he looked immensely sad.

“I believe you,” he said.

FOR what seemed a long time, Maerad floated through the mists and fogs of dream: nonsensical images rose up before her of a citadel like Norloch, but tiny and enclosed in glass like a child’s bauble, and trees walking toward the sea, and Hem eating a supernaturally large bunch of grapes. But suddenly she gasped in her sleep; a Hull appeared before her and reached out its hand toward her wrist. It clasped her, and she could not move or speak. Then the Hull vanished and she dreamed, as she had long ago in Innail, that she was taken up like a bird over the realm of Annar. In the distance a sinking sun touched the eastern mountains and the battlements of a great city in the west, a city she knew now was Norloch; the Aleph River ran through its center, a snake of molten gold. Again a dark mist crept over the land and she heard lamenting; and then the voice cried, “Look to the north.” She felt a rising panic as a dissolving shadow sought her; and then, as before, with the sickly dread of nightmare, came the dead voice. She understood, with a numbing sense of shock, that it was using the Speech, but the Speech subtly turned and distorted so that it was no longer a language of high beauty, but evil and empty, its potency inverted. “I am again,” said the voice, “but none shall find my dwelling, for I live in every human heart.” It started to laugh, and the laughter hurt her; and then, twisting and turning in her bed, Maerad escaped the tentacles of the nightmare and woke up. She sat up in bed, trembling all over, and looked around her. Her room was still and peaceful. A little faint light came through the casement and illuminated the room with silver. She looked around, reassuring herself; there was her lyre, there her book, there was the pipe the Elidhu had given her . . .

As she sat in bed, trying unsuccessfully to rid herself of an overwhelming feeling of dread, there was a quiet knock on her door. Maerad almost leaped out of her skin.

“Maerad?” It was Hem.

“Yes?”

Hem’s pale, sleep-tousled head peeked around the door.

“Maerad, can I sleep with you? I’m getting bad dreams. . . . The room’s so big and dark. . . .”

Maerad nodded, and wordlessly Hem crept into bed with her. She lay down, putting her arms around his thin, bony body. He was snoring within seconds, and it wasn’t long before Maerad too slid back into a black, dreamless sleep.

Maerad opened her eyes. All she could see was an expanse of white, and across it danced a golden ripple of light. She watched it, fascinated, for what felt like a long time, and slowly realized she was looking at a ceiling. She must be in Innail, she thought; but the ceilings there were stone, not white. Then suddenly everything rushed back, and she sat up abruptly.

Hem was sitting in the corner, eating a bread roll.

“You sleep like an old dog,” he said. “I’ve been waiting ages and ages for you to wake up. I’ve been up for hours.”

“What’s the time?” Maerad pushed her fingers through her hair.

“Three hours after noon.” Hem took another bite of his roll. “You snore too.”

“How’s Cadvan?” Maerad swung her legs out of bed, looking for her clothes.

“I don’t know.” Hem shrugged. “He’s probably asleep like you.”

“Go away so I can get dressed.”

“All right.” Hem shrugged again. “There’s food downstairs if you want any. I have to come back and show you; Saliman’s worried that you might get lost.” Maerad threw her pillow at him, and he ducked out of the room.

After she was dressed, Maerad went to her window and looked out. The day was clear and beautiful, as if the sky had been scoured clean by the previous night’s storm. She could see over the rooftops of the lower Circles, right down to the Carmallachen and beyond, over the Vale of Norloch, and she was admiring the view when suddenly she remembered, with a shock that went right through her body, her dream of the night before. It struck her with a wave of nausea that started at her toes and went all the way to the top of her head, and she clutched at the table, feeling dizzy and sick. It was a somber Maerad who joined Hem ten minutes later and wended her way downstairs.

Cadvan and Saliman were already in Nelac’s sitting room, deep in conversation. They looked up when Maerad and Hem entered. Cadvan was still very pale, with deep shadows haunting his face: the whiplashes, covered with tiny herringbone stitches, stood out vividly on his skin, and his black eye was now spectacularly fading in a blaze of sunset colors. But the deathliness that had so troubled Maerad the previous night was gone.

“Good morning,” said Cadvan. “Or I should say afternoon. I’m but lately up myself!”

“Hello,” said Maerad. She was so relieved to see Cadvan looking almost normal that tears started in her eyes. She blinked them away and looked toward the dining room. “Hem said there was food.”

“Hem and food!” Saliman rolled his eyes. “I’ve never seen a human being eat so much. I don’t think he’s stopped chewing since he got out of bed!”

“I’m hungry,” said Hem. “What’s wrong with that?” He disappeared into the dining room.

“How are you feeling?” Maerad asked shyly. Cadvan smiled at her for the first time in days.

“Very fine, my young Bard,” he said. “Apart from a few itchy stitches. I’m sure I look worse than I feel, for a change. Go and get something to eat. Nelac’s going to come soon; he’s doing some lessons at the moment. We all need to talk.”

Maerad ate her breakfast — with Hem, who unashamedly explained that she needed some company — and returned to the sitting room, where Cadvan and Saliman were talking of Saliman’s journey to Norloch.

“Not quite so eventful as your traveling,” Saliman said, glancing at Cadvan’s wounded face. “I saw no wights. But three Hulls attacked me at the crossroads, and although I drove them off, they killed my mare, Dima. I still mourn her. She has borne me these past seven years. I didn’t expect such dangers in the heart of Annar! So it took me longer to get here than I wished. I bought another horse, but it was not so fine as mine, as I was pressed and in no position to bargain.”

As he spoke, Nelac returned. The sunlight streamed through the large windows, and he pulled them open to let in the fresh air. Maerad looked out; she saw a bower of bright blossoms spilling over an emerald green lawn, and gasped in delight.

“My blooms survived the storm, mostly,” said Nelac from behind her. “But not the windflowers, alas! The merest breath will dislodge their petals; and they were so beautiful this year.”

She turned to Nelac, smiling, and suddenly her shyness of him fell away. Rather than his nobility, she perceived his gentleness, and beneath that the sadness that seemed a quality of all Bards and that confused her at times, because so often it modulated without warning into joy. He was, she realized suddenly, very similar to Cadvan; and then she remembered they both came from the same School.

The Bards then talked for some time. Hem sat on the floor, listening and nibbling morsels of food, which he occasionally vanished into the next room to replenish. He seemed to be afraid that all the food would disappear in the next hour if he didn’t immediately consume it. Nelac and Saliman sat on the big chairs beside the unlit fireplace, and Maerad sat next to Cadvan on the couch by the painted wall, with Hem near her feet.

Cadvan told Nelac of his discovery of Maerad in Gilman’s Cot, their flight from Innail, and of Dernhil’s death at the hands of Hulls, which Nelac already knew of from Saliman. Saliman shook his head sadly. “Dernhil is a grievous loss,” he said. “And so strange! All Innail was in mourning when I left; Silvia was inconsolable.” Maerad’s heart jumped at the mention of Silvia, and she saw her face in her mind’s eye, darkened with sorrow. “Why would Hulls attack Dernhil?” said Saliman. “Is it revenge, perhaps, Cadvan? Or think you it’s to do with Maerad?”

“Both, perhaps,” said Cadvan grimly. He then related their encounters with the Hulls and the Kulag, and lastly their ambush by the wight. Because of his promise to Ardina, he didn’t mention Rachida. Hem listened in silence, chewing thoughtfully. Neither Nelac nor Saliman interrupted; they listened intently, their faces grave. Sometimes Saliman looked over at Maerad with an expression of wonder on his face.

“The Kulag is strange enough,” he said, when Cadvan finished his tale. “But to destroy a wight!”

“We don’t know that it was destroyed,” said Nelac. “Though it does sound as if it were. I’ve never heard of a Bard doing more than banishing a wight to the Abyss.”

“And even that takes a strong will,” added Cadvan. “Yes, there is something here that we don’t quite understand.” They all looked at Maerad.

“Then why couldn’t you banish it?” she asked Cadvan. “Everyone says that you are a great Bard.”