The Gift (54 page)

“So it was
you
who let them in!” she cried hoarsely. “Treacherous fool!” She stretched out her hands again, and a bolt of light hit Enkir. For a second it seemed that he would fall, but he collected himself and stepped slowly toward her, his face suddenly cold.

“No, Milana,” said Enkir, with a cruel smile. “
You
are the fool. All your petty Bard powers are no use against me. I can crush you like an ant.” He leaned forward and hissed savagely. “Your days are done, you Bards, prattling childishly of the Balance and jabbering your witless songs. I have seen the future; I know what it is. Only those with the wit will survive.”

“You’re mad!” Milana gasped. But then Enkir grabbed Maerad, pulling her out of Milana’s grasp so suddenly that her nails raked Maerad’s hand. Maerad screamed: his fingers pinioned her arm like steel. She felt something cold against her neck and screamed again. Enkir held a blade against her throat.

“Tell me where the boy is,” said Enkir. “Or I will cut the girl’s throat.”

“I don’t know,” said Milana desperately. “I don’t know where he is.”

“I’m in a hurry! Don’t play me for a dunce. You know where he is. I know he’s not in Pellinor.” Enkir pressed the blade closer to Maerad’s throat, and she felt it cut her; a trickle of blood tickled down her neck. “Tell me, or the girl dies now.”

Milana stood, white and still, the light within her fading.

“You’ll kill both of us, anyway,” she said coldly, after a long silence. “No. I won’t tell you.”

Maerad looked frantically at Milana. Was she just going to let her die?

Enkir paused, as if momentarily at a loss. Then he started to laugh softly. Maerad’s skin crawled.

“No, Milana, I will not kill you,” he said. “I do not wish to kill the boy either. I’ll let the girl go too. Come, I can be a reasonable man.”

Milana spat on the ground. “That’s what the word of a traitor is worth!”

“Not to kill you would amuse me. That should reassure you. I could even make a few coins out of the deal.” Enkir paused. “And you could have your daughter. Who otherwise will die, slowly, in terrible pain, in front of you.”

“Don’t!” screamed Maerad. “Don’t let him hurt me!”

Milana’s face contorted in an agony of indecision.

“Give her back!” she said suddenly.

“Tell me where the boy is!” He pressed the blade closer, and it cut Maerad again, and she started to weep. She stared desperately at her mother, terrified she wouldn’t tell, that she would let this man kill her.

Milana’s face suddenly crumpled. “He was taken to the Linar Caves. I don’t know if he’s there.” For a second she lost all self-control, and hid her face in her hands.

There was an awful moment of stillness, and then Maerad felt Enkir’s iron grip release, and he pushed her toward her mother. She stumbled over to Milana and clung to her legs, sobbing hysterically.

“See, Milana?” said Enkir quietly, a vicious triumph in his voice. “I keep my word. Now, I wish to see if you have kept yours.”

He strode forward and grabbed Milana’s chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. Maerad looked up in panic. What was he doing to her mother? Enkir’s eyes stabbed red flames, and Milana didn’t seem able to move, staring transfixed at his blazing eyes and shaking all over. Suddenly she collapsed, and all the light went out of her. Maerad stood trembling by Milana, staring dumbstruck at the tall man. He was standing over Milana’s still body, his face shiny with sweat. He ignored Maerad completely, as if she weren’t there.

“That’s the end of you, Milana of Pellinor,” he said, breathing hard. “There’s a lesson in that. How easy it is to break your paltry kind!” He wiped his face with his hand and spat on the ground. “You’ll make a slave, anyway. Not much of a slave.” He kicked Milana’s body, smiling with such malignancy that Maerad hid her face in terror, feeling the roaring in her ears, her world spinning, breaking, spinning . . .

Her cheek was pressed on cold marble, and somebody stroked her brow gently, saying her name. The roaring began to abate, and Maerad stirred.

“She moves,” said the voice. She realized it was Cadvan. Maerad kept her eyes closed, battling to regain herself. She was in the Crystal Hall of Machelinor, she remembered now, at the Council, and at last she knew what had happened to her mother. . . .

Enkir, the First Bard of Norloch! Her whole being clenched in hatred. Treachery, treachery . . .

How could she have forgotten? The torment of the memory was its own answer. It had sunk to the darkest part of her mind. If she had let herself remember that — the merciless breaking of Milana, the malice of Enkir, her own childish terror — she would have gone mad. But now she knew, and she would not go mad. She let her head loll, feigning unconsciousness. How long since she fainted? What now?

“Perhaps she hit her head on the floor?” Saliman’s voice was close by. She couldn’t have been out for long, then. Perhaps a few seconds. She waited until her mind was a little clearer, and then moved, groaning.

Somebody slipped a hand under her head and lifted it. She fluttered her eyes open and saw Cadvan’s face close to hers. He held a goblet filled with water. “Drink this,” he said. She sipped obediently, and then sat up.

“I . . . I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.” The sense of power that had so dizzied her before was still there, but now it no longer muddled her mind. She felt completely lucid, her mind clearer perhaps than it had ever been. Her first thought was that she could not let Enkir know that she recognized him. It would probably make no difference; he was no doubt signing her death warrant in his head right now. Her name was enough for that.

Slowly she got to her feet, and then turned to the table of Bards and bowed. She saw Nelac to her left, staring at her in concern.

“I ask the Bards of the First Circle and you, Enkir, First Bard, to forgive my weakness,” she said. “I was overwhelmed by the honor of being here.” Her voice was steady and certain, and Cadvan glanced at her with surprise.

“Then please sit down,” snapped Enkir. She met his eyes, veiling her expression with polite humility; he stared at her coldly. She realized that he could do nothing to her here, in front of all the First Circle, without revealing his treachery. She took her place at the table, between Saliman and Cadvan, and the Council began.

Saliman spoke first, telling of increasing pressures in the Suderain: continual harassment from the forces of the Black Sorcerer Imank in Dén Raven, which was increasing in both frequency and power.

“We are now hard beset, and if we fall, then all Annar lies open to the Black Army,” he said. “So the Circle of Turbansk sent me to ask for help. I have traveled north and east in Annar since this winter, and I think now that help cannot come. Your borders are already threatened. Yet still I ask.” He nodded and sat down.

“We will consider this,” said Enkir. “Thank you, Saliman of Turbansk. And now, Cadvan of Lirigon. We hear that you come bearing news from the north.” He glanced at Maerad as he said this, and despite her resolve, she shivered.

Cadvan spoke first of his capture and subsequent escape from the Landrost. “It is very clear to me now,” he concluded. “From what I saw in the Landrost’s throne room, I am certain that the Nameless One has indeed returned and that the recent troubles of Annar do, as some of us have feared, stem from his stratagems.”

An audible stir went around the table.

“I remain to be convinced,” said Enkir, staring at Cadvan with dislike. Maerad looked between the two Bards: surely they were somehow alike? A dreadful doubt began to stir within her; she struggled with some memory, something the Hulls had said. . . .

“But of course there are many of the lesser Dark who would like us to believe such a thing. You admit yourself you were weakened, and I question your judgment. How can you be so sure that you are not misled, Cadvan of Lirigon?”

“If I am indeed a Truthteller, then what I saw in the throne room was true,” Cadvan answered. “But tell me, Enkir of Norloch,”— and here Maerad caught a flash of mockery in his eyes —“what makes you so certain that he will
not
return? Has not the Lore always spoken of that as a certainty?”

“The Lore is open to many interpretations, as well you know, Cadvan of Lirigon,” answered Enkir. “I counsel caution on this subject.”

“Hulls ride openly in Annar, the Schools are threatened or corrupted, we are beset from all sides: evil fears, long chained, are awoken in this land, and you counsel caution!” said Cadvan heatedly.

“What do you mean?” asked another Bard. “Saliman spoke of Hulls. . . .”

“I have not finished my tale, Tared,” Cadvan replied. “I beg you, bear with me. Before I journeyed down the Empty Realm to the east of the Annova and was captured by the Landrost, I went, as I was instructed, north to Zmarkan. I traveled there from west to east, and I heard many rumors of unrest and travail. Many people, and not all of them fools, say that a black power has awoken there, an ancient power. I followed the rumors to their source, as far north as I could go. There, in the wastes, a shadow is spreading. I saw from afar the peaks of its fortress, and I felt its deadly breath. I can think only one thing: the renegade Elidhu, the Ice Witch, the Winterking himself, is now woken from his long sleep, and seeks to reestablish his sway over the north.”

There was an astonished silence.

“Surely this cannot be!” said a short Bard on Cadvan’s right. “The Winterking was banished beyond the circles of the world, long, long ago.” He shook his head.

“It cannot be, Caragal, and yet it is so,” said Cadvan, turning to face him. “Just as some say the Nameless cannot return, and yet he does.”

Caragal nodded sadly. “The Flame ever darkens,” he said. “I cannot argue that.”

“Now,” said Cadvan, “we come to the nub of this tale. For it seems to me certain, as I have said, that all the signs we have traced in the past years are, as we feared, the mark of the Nameless as he prepares his most deadly assault against the Light. And worse, that he has made alliance with the Winterking. I suspect that the Nameless himself brought him back.”

“There are many kinds of shadow,” said Enkir mockingly. “We must not leap in fear to the worst conclusions.”

“I am convinced of his return,” said Cadvan. “And I think if we do not move now, then we are lost.”

“Move where?” Enkir smiled. Maerad thought it as cold as the glimmer of winterlight over frost. “Always you were impulsive, Cadvan of Lirigon, and apt to leap where the more wise might pause and see an abyss.”

“Do you claim that I lie?” said Cadvan. He seemed calm, almost serene, but Maerad sensed an overwhelming anger rising within him. There was a tense pause, and then Enkir smiled again.

“I would not have the temerity to say any such thing,” he answered smoothly. “I say only that what you suggest is unlikely in the extreme. The Winterking, the Nameless: such figures are shadows from a child’s tale of fear. I think, for all your well-meaning enthusiasm, that you are mistaken, Cadvan of Lirigon.”

The insult was clear, and Maerad saw a faint flush in Cadvan’s cheek. He took Enkir’s eye and held it, and it seemed the two wrestled together, although neither moved. Maerad held her breath. They
were
alike. She could not say how. Her heart hammered painfully in her breast. At the last, it was the older Bard who desisted and looked down.

“Your arrogance will be your downfall, Cadvan of Lirigon,” he said, and his voice was icy with rage. “It takes no Seer to prophesy that.”

There was another uncomfortable silence. The Nine seemed all to be inspecting their fingernails, except for Nelac, whose face betrayed exasperation: whether with Cadvan or with Enkir, Maerad could not tell. At length, Caragal stirred. “I think, Enkir, we should give some credence to this. I myself am disturbed by the movements of Hulls.”

“There is more,” said Cadvan. “I have yet to tell the bulk of my tale, and the news of most importance.”

Maerad looked at him with a silent plea, willing Cadvan to stop, to say nothing of his suspicions that she was the Foretold, not to betray her to Enkir. Mistaking it for nerves, he smiled at her reassuringly, and then plunged into the tale of their adventures. Maerad’s heart shrank, colder and colder, as he spoke. She saw Enkir shooting glances at her, and each glance was deadly. How could Cadvan not know?

Suddenly, with a blinding shock at her own folly, she remembered what had been nagging her earlier. Cadvan had known one of the Hulls who attacked them in the Broken Teeth on the Edinur Downs. Likud. That was his name. What had he said?
Think we have forgotten, Cadvan, how eagerly you studied the secrets of the Dark?

Maerad stopped listening and sank into a black reverie. Was Cadvan a traitor as well? Her soul felt as if it were dying within her, but she bleakly followed her thoughts. Treachery was what had killed her mother; if she wasn’t careful, it could be the cause of her own death as well. Maybe Cadvan and Enkir were rivals in the service of the Dark; maybe that was the real source of the enmity between them. And if so, she was trapped, a trophy to be bartered between them, until such time as she was no longer useful.

She suddenly felt unutterably lonely, more lonely than even in the worst days at Gilman’s Cot. She was on her own now. As she had always been, since her mother was murdered:
murdered twice,
she thought bitterly,
once by Enkir, and once by Gilman.
No, she had Hem, at least she had Hem. Now she had to find Hem and get out of Norloch, out of Enkir’s clutches. Could she trust Cadvan? She always had; but perhaps the friendship he had shown her had all been sham, a pretense to lull her into his power. How well did she know him, really?

But now Enkir was speaking, his voice sharp with disbelief. Or was it rage? “And you are asking us to believe that this girl, who not three months ago was a mere slave, this girl, whom you admit freely can barely read, who has not the fortitude even to walk into the Crystal Hall without fainting, is the One who was Foretold?”

“I have told you the evidence,” said Cadvan calmly. “It is compelling, and I think at least we have to say that it is likely. At the very least, we must instate her, so we can be sure whether it is so or not.”