The Riddle Read online

  THE RIDDLE

  The Second Book of Pellinor

  Alison Croggon

  One is the singer, hidden from sunlight

  Two is the seeker, fleeing from shadows

  Three is the journey, taken in danger

  Four are the riddles, answered in treesong:

  Earth, fire, water, air Spells you OUT!

  Traditional Annaren nursery rhyme

  Annaren Scrolls, Library of Busk

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  The Riddle continues the translation of the Naraudh Lar-Chane (The Riddle of the Treesong), which I began with the first two books of this classic romance, published as The Naming. The response to The Naming has been most encouraging, and confirms my feeling that this major work of Annaren literature deserves a broader public. It speaks to a modem audience as much as it did to those nameless Annarens, now lost in the mists of time, for whom it was originally written.

  In The Naming we are introduced to Maerad of Pellinor and Cadvan of Lirigon, and learn of Maerad's destiny as the Fated One and her unique Elemental heritage as she comes into her Gift as a Bard. The Riddle picks up from the events at the end of The Naming and, against the darkening background of the coming War of the Treesong, takes us on the second stage of Maerad's quest: that for the Riddle of the Treesong itself.

  In The Riddle the quest moves outside Annar for the first time, and we encounter some of the broad cultural diversity of Edil-Amarandh. For the purposes of this translation, I have taken Annaren, the original language of the text, to be the equivalent of English. For the most part, I translate all Annaren into English, but otherwise have left other languages untranslated, although I hope the context makes their meanings clear.

  The Riddle consists of Books III and V of the Naraudh Lar-Chane. I have preserved the general structure of the narrative, although I have found it necessary, in transposing this text from Annaren to modern English, to take some liberties: in particular, the divisions of books in the translation do not correspond to the divisions in the original text, and some sections have been rearranged or slightly extended. In my defense I will say that I have excised nothing and added little, making only such changes I deemed necessary, within my limited judgment, to give the narrative the immediacy it would have possessed in its own time. I hope the result does not displease. For those who are curious about the complex structures and tropes of the original story, I understand that Mexico's University of Queretaro Press, one of the leading patrons of this exciting field of study, has begun the massive task of preparing a fully annotated Annaren publication of the Naraudh Lar-Chane. Sadly, we will have to wait some time until this major project reaches completion, but such an investment of time and scholarship indicates the deep interest this field is now attracting.

  As a convention, throughout The Riddle, I have used the Speech word Dhillarearen to refer to Named Bards with the Gift who have not been trained in the Schools of Annar, retaining the word Bard to refer specifically to Bards of the Schools. As those familiar with Annaren mores will be aware, people born with the Speech who did not gain their true or secret Bardic Name were unable to come into their full Gift and were considered unfortunate and, in some cases, dangerous individuals. However, there were many Dhillarearen in cultures outside Annar who did gain their true Names by other means, and were therefore able to access their full powers. Their mores and cultural assumptions were often very different from those taught in the Annaren Bardic traditions of the Balance and the Three Arts, and so it seemed useful to make a distinction between the different Dhillarearen in this way.

  As before, I have included appendices with further information on the cultures of Edil-Amarandh, drawn from the ongoing translation of the Annaren Scripts after their spectacular discovery in Morocco in 1991. Annaren studies have grown exponentially since then, and now exist in almost every academic discipline. It is a full-time job simply to keep abreast of the latest discoveries in the field, and while I have attempted to the best of my ability to ensure that the information contained in the appendices is from the most recent scholarship available, I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies that may have resulted from my inadvertently overlooking an important new development. For the amateur reader, however, the definitive studies for those interested in the background of the Naraudh Lar-Chane remain Uncategorical Knowledge: The Three Arts of the Starpeople by Claudia J. Armstrong and Christiane Armongath's authoritative L'Histoire de l'Arbre-chant d'Annar.

  As always, a work such as this translation owes much to the contributions of others, many of whom I am unable to name here. Above all, I need to thank my husband, Daniel Keene, who contributed his proofreading skills yet again and bore with patient good humor the myriad inconveniences of living with a translator obsessed with such a longterm project. My children, Joshua, Zoe, and Ben, demonstrated a similar grace. I also owe thanks to Richard, Jan, Nicholas, and Veryan Croggon, who read the rough drafts with attention and enthusiasm and whose encouragement has meant a great deal. My thanks are also due to Suzanne Wilson and Chris Kloet for their excellent counsel on all aspects of the text. Last, I wish to record my gratitude to Professor Patrick Insole of the Department of Ancient Languages at the University of Leeds, who has been unfailingly generous with his expertise on the Treesong and most kindly permitted me to publish parts of his monograph on the subject in the appendices.

  Alison Croggon Melbourne, Australia

  A NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

  MOST Annaren proper nouns derive from the Speech, and generally share its pronunciation. In words of three or more syllables, the stress is usually laid on the second syllable: in words of two syllables (such as lembel, invisible) stress is always on the first. There are some exceptions in proper names; the names Pellinor and Annar, for example, are pronounced with the stress on the first syllable.

  Spellings are mainly phonetic.

  a—as in flat; ar rhymes with bar.

  ae—a long i sound, as in ice. Maerad is pronounced MY-rad.

  ae—two syllables pronounced separately, to sound eye-ee. Maninae is pronounced man-IN-eye-ee.

  ai—rhymes with hay. Innail rhymes with nail.

  au—ow. Raur rhymes with sour.

  e—as in get. Always pronounced at the end of a word: for example, remane, to walk, has three syllables. Sometimes this is indicated with e, which also indicates that the stress of the word lies on the e (for example, ile, we, is sometimes pronounced almost with the i sound lost).

  ea—the two vowel sounds are pronounced separately, to make the sound ay-uh. Inasfrea, to walk, thus sounds: in-ASS-fray-uh.

  eu—oi sound, as in boy.

  i—as in hit.

  ia—two vowels pronounced separately, as in the name Ian.

  y—uh sound, as in much.

  c—always a hard c, as in crust, not as in circle.

  ch—soft, as in the German ach or loch, not as in church.

  dh—a consonantal sound halfway between a hard d and a hard th, as in the, not thought. There is no equivalent in English; it is best approximated by hard th. Medhyl can be said METH'l.

  s—always soft, as in soft, not as in noise.

  Note: Den Raven does not derive from the Speech, but from the southern tongues. It is pronounced don RAH-ven.

  Thorold

  Do not twine garlands of myrtle for my forehead

  Nor pluck sweet roses to adorn me

  Make me a crown of somber violets

  For I am dying

  The sweet lips of the maidens of Busk

  And the flashing feet of dancing goatherds

  Will neper again quicken my desire

  For I am dying

  Come to me merciful Meripon

  In your ebony chariot drawn by swallows

  From th
e dim halls beyond the Gates

  For I am dying

  I kiss the peaks of Lamedon with my eyes

  And the white arms of the passionate sea

  Which loves this beautiful island that I love

  For I am dying

  The Song of Theokas, Library of Busk

  Chapter I

  PURSUIT

  MAERAD was a being of the upper regions of air, bodiless and free, without self or memory or name. She gazed at the landscape beneath her, fascinated. For a long time she didn't even recognize it as a landscape; it looked like a strange and awesome painting. For as far as she could see, there stretched a huge red expanse covered with ripples, like sand under water, but these ripples, she began to understand, must be enormous. She was very high up and she could see very far, and there were no clouds at all, only a tiny shadow moving over the earth, which she realized after a while was her own. She seemed to be flying with some purpose in a particular direction, although she couldn't remember what the purpose was. After a while, the land changed: the red ripples ran up against a ridge of purple rock and stopped, and she was passing over mountains whose shadows stretched long and sharp behind them. On the other side of the range ran tracks like rivers, lighter veins spreading in delicate fans, but she could see no water in them. The colors of the earth changed to subtle purples and dull greens that signaled vegetation. In the far distance she could see a whiteness that seemed to gather light to itself: it looked like a lake. But a lake of salt, she thought with surprise, not water....

  Then everything shifted. She was no longer in the sky, but standing on what seemed to be the spine of a high ridge of bare rock that dropped sheer before her. She looked over a wide plain that stretched to the horizon. The soil was still a strange red orange, but this land was nothing like the one she had flown over: it seemed blasted, poisoned, although she could not say how. As far as she could see, there were rows and rows of tents, interspersed with large open spaces where masses of figures performed some kind of drill. A red sun sent low, level rays over the plain, casting black shadows back from the tents. Somehow the figures didn't seem human: they marched with a strange unchanging rhythm that cast a chill over her heart.

  Maerad had never seen an army before, and the sight shocked her: so many thousands, uncountable thousands, anonymous as ants, gathered for the sole aim of injury and death. She turned away, suddenly sickened with dread, and saw behind her, on the other side of the ridge, a white, bare expanse. The sun struck up from it, hurting her eyes as savagely as if someone had stabbed her. She cried out, clutching her face, and stumbled and fell. Her body now heavy and corporeal, fell with the ominous slowness of a dream: down, down, down, toward the cruel rocks below.

  Maerad woke, gasping for breath, and sat bolt upright. This was an unwise thing to do, as she was sleeping in a hammock slung below the deck of a small fishing smack called the White Owl. The hammock swung dangerously and then, as she flailed for balance in the pitch dark, tipped her out onto the floor. Still trapped in her dream, Maerad screamed, putting out her hands to break her fall, and hit the wooden floorboards.

  She lay still, breathing hard, as above her a trapdoor was flung open and someone came stumbling down the steps. Maerad could see his form silhouetted against a patch of stars, and then a soft light bloomed in the darkness, illuminating a tall, dark-haired man who moved easily with the motion of the boat.

  "Maerad? Are you all right?"

  Maerad sat up, rubbing her head. "Cadvan," she said with relief. "Oh, I had a terrible dream. I'm sorry, did I cry out?"

  "Cry out? It sounded as if a Hull were in here, at least."

  Maerad managed a wan smile. "No Hulls," she said. "Not yet."

  Cadvan helped her up, and Maerad groped her way to a bench along the walls of the tiny cabin and sat down. Her hands were trembling.

  "Bad dreams?" said Cadvan, looking at her intently. "It is little wonder you should have nightmares, after what we've been through."

  Maerad felt his unasked question. "I think it was a foredream," she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "But I don't understand what it was about. It was horrible." Foredreams, in Maerad's experience, were always horrible.

  "Tell me, then." Cadvan sat next to her on the bench.

  Maerad haltingly told him of the dream. Put into words, it didn't sound so awful: the worst thing about it was the feeling of despair and horror it had inspired within her. Cadvan listened gravely, without interrupting, and when she finished, there was a short pause.

  "What you describe sounds to me like the deserts south of Den Raven," he said. "And perhaps your dreaming semblance stood on the peaks of the Kulkilhirien, the Cruel Mountains above the Plains of Dust, where the Nameless One was said to have marshaled his forces in the days before the Great Silence."

  "Was it a vision, maybe, of the past?" Maerad looked earnestly at Cadvan, and he met her eyes.

  "It is possible that you might dream of the past," he said. "Foredreams come from beyond the Gates, where time is not as it seems on this earth. But I think it more likely you saw the armies of the Dark as they are now, massing in the south for an attack on Turbansk."

  Maerad drew in her breath sharply, and thought of her brother, Hem, now riding to Turbansk with their friend Saliman.

  "I hope that I dreamed of something else," she said. "It was an evil thing I saw. The soldiers looked—they didn't seem to be human beings."

  "They sound like dogsoldiers to me," said Cadvan. "They are not creatures born as others are; they are forged of metal and flesh by some ill art in the mighty armories of Den Raven. They are invested with a strange parody of life, so they seem to have will and intelligence."

  Maerad's heart constricted with fear for her brother: so young, so damaged, so lately found and lost again. For an instant, she saw his face vividly before her, with its mixture of arrogance and mischief and vulnerability and, behind that, a bitter desolation she did not quite understand, but which pierced her heart with pity.

  She had, by the strangest of chances—although Cadvan said it was not chance at all—discovered Hem in the middle of the wilderness. She had long thought him dead, slaughtered as a baby during the sack of Pellinor. He was now a gangly twelve-year-old boy, dark-skinned like their father, and unlike Maerad, whose skin was very white; but they both shared the same dark hair and intense blue eyes.

  She had felt bonded to Hem even before she knew who he was. For most of her sixteen years Maerad had been unbearably lonely, and when she had found Hem—silent, terror-stricken, and even more destitute than she had been—her starved soul had flowered toward him: she loved him fiercely, protectively, with all her passion. The thought of the army she had seen in her dream marching on Turbansk, marching on her brother, filled her with black dismay.

  It was a strong spirit designed to ward off chills on cold nights at sea, and Maerad gulped it gratefully, feeling the liquor sear a path down her gullet. She coughed and then sat up straight, feeling more substantial.

  "If my dream is true, it is a very great army," she said at last. "Turbansk will be hard pressed."

  "It is ill news, and not only for Turbansk," said Cadvan. "But even that vast force is only one piece in the great stratagem the Nameless One is now unleashing. And you, Maerad, are as significant to him as that huge army. Maybe more so. Everything turns on you."

  Maerad bowed her head, oppressed beyond measure by Cadvan's words. On me? she thought bitterly. And yet she knew it was true.

  She pressed her hands together to stop their trembling, and glanced at Cadvan as he sat down again beside her, his face somber and abstracted with thought.

  Their first meeting came vividly into her mind. It had been a mere three months before, but to Maerad it felt like a lifetime. She had been milking a cow in Gilman's Cot, the grim northern settlement where, for most of her short life, she had been a slave. He had stood silently before her, amazed and disconcerted that she could see through his charm of invisibility.

 
; It had been a morning like any other, notable only for being the Springturn when winter, in theory at least, began to retreat from the mountains. Then, as now, his face had been shadowed with exhaustion and anxiety and—Maerad thought—an indefinable sadness. Despite everything—despite his being a stranger, despite her fear of men, learned from the violence of life in the cot—she had trusted him at once. She still didn't really know why; it went too deep for words.

  It was Cadvan who had revealed to her who she was, and he had helped to unravel some of the history of her family. With her mother, Milana, Maerad had been captured and sold as a very small child after the sack of Pellinor, the School where she had been born. It was Cadvan who helped her escape from the misery of slavery, who had told her of her Gift and opened up to her the world of Bards. He had taken her to the School of Innail, and for the first time in her conscious life she had found a place where she felt at home. A sudden sharp ache constricted Maerad's throat as she thought of Silvia, who had become like a mother to her in the short time they had known each other; and then of Dernhil, who had loved her. Despite that love she had spurned him, and when Dernhil had been killed by Hulls—the Black Bards who were servants of the Nameless One—she had mourned both his absence and a vanished possibility that she would always regret.

  She wished fiercely that she had been able to stay in Innail— loved as you should be, Dernhil had said to her—and that she could have spent a quiet life learning the Bardic Arts of Reading, Tending, and Making. She would have liked nothing better in the world than to learn the scripts of Annar and decipher their immense riches of poetry and history and thought, or to study herblore and healing and the ways of animals, to observe the rites of the seasons and keep the Knowing of the Light, as Bards had done for centuries before her. Instead, she was on a tiny boat in the middle of a dark sea, hundreds of leagues from the gentle haven of Innail, fleeing from darkness into darkness, her future more uncertain than it had ever been.