The Gift Page 8

  She sent her mind ahead of her. She heard the rustlings of small wings, and tiny footfalls, like the spoor of birds, and cheeping and high whistles, and the drip of water on stone, and the whisper of blind fish turning lazily in cold pools that had never heard even a rumor of light; but she heard nothing else.

  They stopped for another meal, and then another, and then another. For uncountable hours, they slept on the bare stone: was it a minute they slept, or a whole day? Maerad had no idea. These pauses were the only punctuation in their long walk. Here in the unchanging darkness it was impossible to tell what time it was outside, in the world of color and light. They stopped when they were hungry, or when they were so tired they could walk no farther. They sat down where they were in the passage. It was strange, eating food without being able to see it; somehow it tasted of nothing, as if they were eating ash. They spoke as little as possible, because the echoes were so unnerving. The mountain lion did not eat anything, though sometimes it drank from the little streamlets that ran over their feet, nosing down through the mountain from higher passages.

  At one point their guide stopped suddenly and rumbled. They were so close behind they bumped into him. "He says there's a pit here," whispered Cadvan, and the whispers ran along the walls like sinister laughter. "A good sign, he says: it means we're halfway through. There's a very narrow ledge along one side. Do not stumble! You go first, and I will follow just behind you. Lean into the wall."

  Hesitantly Maerad followed the mountain lion, who continued his steady pacing, and groped her way along the wall. Immediately she felt a draft of cold air and a dizzying sense of appalling depth, so that she almost stumbled. Cadvan hissed something she didn't hear as she regained her balance and leaned against the wall, her heart hammering. Then she caught her breath and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, step by step by step. Passing the abyss seemed to take forever, but at last she felt the updraft cease and knew she was past. She took a few paces farther and stopped, breathing heavily, until Cadvan came up behind her, felt for her hand, and led her on again into the endless darkness.

  Time ceased to have any meaning at all. Maerad felt as if she had been walking through this passage for days, or years, or eons. It was as if their very minds were blindfolded, as if sight and color and shape were dreams of another age. Had she been walking through this darkness for her entire life? Her eyes played constant tricks: little blooms of red and pink and blue opened on her vision, and when she closed her eyes, they didn't go away, but split into other strange, amorphous shapes. They made the darkness seem even more complete.

  When she saw a faint wash of light in the distance, she thought at first it was another illusion. She had ceased long ago to believe in the possibility of an end to the tunnel. She rubbed her eyes, but the light was still there, and then she realized she could see the mountain lion walking in front of them, and turning, could see Cadvan beside her. She felt like crying with relief, or whooping with joy.

  They emerged blinking onto a broad ledge high in the side of the mountain. Maerad flinched, as if she had been hit; the light was blinding, after so long in the darkness. She stood for a time, shading her face, while her eyes adjusted. Finally she looked out and gasped in wonder.

  Before them stretched a vast green land of rolling hills and dark woods, and the red sun sinking in glory through a wrack of golden clouds threw its light over their faces.

  "Behold the beauty of Annar!" said Cadvan. "I thought I would not see it again."

  She saw that tears glinted on his lashes, and she looked away, suddenly acutely conscious that he was still holding her hand. But Cadvan spun her around, laughing. "Maerad! We're almost there!"

  "Norloch?"

  "Oh, no, no, no, that lies many leagues west. No, a bath and a meal! Roast meats! Remember, I promised you!" He let her go and stepped back smiling.

  Infected by Cadvan's joyousness, Maerad smiled back. But Cadvan was already speaking to the mountain lion, bowing low as he did so. The beast bowed his head also, and spoke, and then turned to Maerad and made the same gesture. Maerad instinctively bowed in return. Then the great animal vanished into the tunnel without a backward glance, loping with the same slow, steady pace, and disappeared.

  "There goes a lord among beasts," said Cadvan. "Thus is the best hope oft unlooked for! Even by my best calculations, we had no chance of being in reach of help so soon. It would have been days, else, and even then uncertain—if we ever arrived."

  Maerad shuddered at the thought of the mountain lion's long walk back home through the black bowels of the mountain. "But I couldn't go through that tunnel again, not if all the wers of the Landrost were after me!" she said.

  "Don't speak so lightly of such things!" said Cadvan swiftly. "You would, if you had to. And we still have to get down off this mountain, and quickly before it grows completely dark."

  A broken, narrow path led off the ledge and wound its way eccentrically downward, curling around ridges and gorges and then suddenly switching back on itself. They were not ten feet away from the ledge when Maerad looked up and realized the passage was completely hidden; even from this distance she doubted that she could find it again. After that she had to concentrate on scrabbling down the mountainside. It was exhausting work, and her hands were already scratched and blistered. She gritted her teeth and ignored her discomforts. Cadvan was again displaying his ability to behave as if he had just arisen from a long, refreshing sleep and was now partaking of a gentle stroll, and if, she thought to herself, he could do it, so could she. Once she slipped and slid more than twenty feet down a rocky slope, landing in a small heap of pebbles and dust at the bottom of a gully. Cadvan leaned over the edge of the ridge, anxiously peering through the dusk, and when he saw her answering wave he grinned and slid down to join her.

  "It's quicker," he said, landing beside her. "But a sight less comfortable." He stood up, brushing himself off, and peered down the gully. "We could follow this, I think," he said. "There's not much farther before we're off the mountain proper. And then a quick march, and then dinner."

  The going after that was not so hard. It was now dark, but it was a clear night, and the swollen moon edged over the horizon, bright enough to cast sharp shadows. For a while they continued in silence.

  "Do you know where we are?" Maerad asked at last. She had a strange feeling that she knew this landscape. Were they, perhaps, near Pellinor?

  "Yes." Cadvan nodded. "We are an hour's fast walk from Innail, the easternmost of the Schools. It was built in the shadow of the Annova some hundreds of years ago now, and is a strong School that has shaped many fine Bards! I can't say how glad I am. Although, of course, we are not there yet. Fortune so far has favored us; this is better than anything I could have planned. I think our trail was lost in the storm, and I think that none will find it. It would have gone ill with us, if we had been forced to travel the way I planned. More than the Landrost watches over that empty realm."

  "And what was that tunnel through the mountain?" Maerad asked, deciding to take advantage of Cadvan's ebullience. "Did you know it was there?"

  "No," Cadvan answered. "I have traveled often over this land in my time, and I have heard neither rumor nor tale of such a place. The nearest pass through the mountains, to my knowledge, was at least sixty leagues south from here, through bad country. I don't know who made that place, or who might have lived there in ages past. A great city, it seemed to me; there were hundreds of rooms, empty and forsaken, carved into the rock. Perhaps the whole mountain is honeycombed with them. I didn't recognize the runes hatched around the door. I wonder who they were, those people! A people of great cunning, they must have been, to pierce the living rock so straightly. There were no bad airs, nor any flaws in that tunneling. Few could do such a thing now."

  Maerad was taken aback by Cadvan's cheerful admission of ignorance; it made the world she had just entered seem even stranger and more perilous. She thought of Gilman's Cot: only a few days ago it had been the com
pass of her entire existence, but to Cadvan it was insignificant, a tiny place in the scheme of things. And now, it seemed, there were things even he knew nothing about. It made her feel very small and unimportant; and she asked no more questions.

  The vegetation began to change; there were groves of pine and birch, and beneath their feet, grasses and herbs. The incline became gentler, and the hills were covered with a springing turf that was a relief to their feet after the shingle and small rocks over which they had been picking their way. Cadvan turned his face southward, with the Osidh Annova rearing up like huge shadows to their left, blades of darkness cutting off the stars. The scents of bruised grasses and flowers, spring honeysuckles and bulbs rose about them, and wild briars snatched at their cloaks. In the dim moonlight the countryside was silvered with mystery, but Maerad felt it was unaccountably familiar and walked on as if in a dream.

  Then Cadvan cried out and pointed, and in the distance Maerad saw a light. "Innail!" he said. "And only three hours after sunset!"

  As they neared Innail, Maerad began to feel nervous. This was a School, and she knew nothing about such places. What would they think of her, turning up with her hair like a mare's nest, stinking and filthy and ignorant? Her apprehension increased as they got closer, and when she saw the outlines of the buildings of Innail emerging, she felt sick with it; proud and noble they seemed to her, towers lit with golden windows that thrust gracefully into the night sky, behind a high wall of smooth white stone that threw back the starlight. Her reluctance increased as Cadvan's step grew more eager, and much sooner than she would have liked they arrived at the tall gates, thick oak stoutly barred with black steel. Cadvan cupped his hands and shouted.

  "Lirean! Lirean noch Dhillareare!"

  A shutter opened high above the gate and a man looked out.

  "Lirean? Ke sammach?"

  "Cadvan Lirigon na, e Maerad Pellinor na!" answered Cadvan, winking at Maerad as he did so. Maerad smiled back uncertainly.

  "Langrea i," said the voice, and the window banged shut.

  "Will they let me in?" asked Maerad.

  "Oh, yes, eventually," said Cadvan. "But they must be careful these days, especially after dark. He goes to tell our names."

  After about five minutes, the shutter opened again, and another man thrust out his head.

  "Cadvan?" he said. "Is that you?"

  "The same," said Cadvan. "Traveling on hard roads, by dark ways, and begging for succor from the Bards of Innail, by the old laws of courtesy."

  "What are you doing in this part of the world?"

  "Malgorn!" Cadvan threw back his head and shouted. "Come down and let us in!"

  "And who of Pellinor? I thought they were all dead! By the Light! But wait, I'll get the gate."

  He banged shut the window, and Cadvan turned to Maerad. "We are safe now," he said.

  "Do you know him?"

  "It's Malgorn. I've known him since childhood, and he was sent here some twenty years ago. They were having trouble in this part of the world and needed someone of his abilities. He is a good man. One of the best."

  Then the gate was flung open and a fair, solidly built man came out, his arms wide. "Cadvan!" he said, and gathered him into a bearlike embrace. "How good to see you! How long is it?"

  "Too long, old friend," said Cadvan. "And I can't say how glad I am to see you!"

  Malgorn stood back, studying his face. "You look somewhat the worse for wear," he said. "I can see there's a tale to this. What have you been doing? But come in, come in."

  "This is Maerad of Pellinor, my fellow traveler," said Cadvan, stepping back to include her. "Maerad, this is my old friend Malgorn, a rogue and a scoundrel, and the worst cardplayer in the Seven Kingdoms. But he has his good points."

  Malgorn, smiling, took her hand and bowed over it, suddenly grave. "I am honored to meet you, Maerad of Pellinor," he said. "I thought none of your School yet lived. It has a place in my heart like no other, and was one of the most beautiful in Annar."

  Maerad looked up into a pair of warm brown eyes and swallowed. She made an awkward little bob, and Malgorn released her hand. He ushered them through the gates and a small cloister and then into the first courtyard of the School of Innail. There Maerad would have stopped and stared in astonishment, had Malgorn's shepherding permitted her. The moonlight fell on well-tended gardens bordered by huge, smooth flags, and in the center a fountain trembled, a glittering veil. Men and women walking through the courtyard looked at them with cool curiosity. Someone was playing a flute somewhere far off in another building, and from another direction Maerad could hear voices joined together in song. Something within her leaped in recognition.

  *

  She had no time to stare, as Malgorn hurried them through curving streets of graceful buildings and across more courtyards to a great stone house with high, narrow windows from which spilled light as yellow as butter. Malgorn flung open the richly chased double doors and strode into the entrance hall, shouting, "Silvia! Silvia! We have guests!" And that was all Maerad saw, before a blackness came rushing over her and she slid to the ground in a dead faint.

  Innail

  Glad was the world, and golden the greenwood

  In dawndays of Ulnar, unstained and undarkened

  When strode Mercan Goldhand singing in sunlight,

  Lord of a proud people, fearless and prescient,

  Singers of Maldan, matchless in magecraft,

  But master of all was Mercan the Maker:

  Deepest in lore among lordly Loresingers,

  Arestor's firstling, the archmage of artists,

  Tongued with the star speech, speller of seasons,

  Singing the spring on Lir's silver waters.

  Long were the days then, and bright laughter lingered

  Long in the halls where the high people harkened,

  Lost now in legend, lamented by Loremen

  Reckoning ruins to raise the remembering.

  Great grew the houses, gilded with glory

  Over the mere where the melt waters murmured.

  High then the heart-home, where held Mercan hearth-feast,

  Golden the light on the lost land of Lirion.

  From Mercan's Quest

  Chapter VI

  A BLUE DRESS

  MAERAD opened her eyes and blinked away the black spots. Her head was humming, and it was a few seconds before her vision focused and she could see where she was. Someone had lifted her onto a chair, and Cadvan was leaning toward her, holding a small glass full of a golden liquid.

  "Drink," he said. She had never touched glass before, and she took it gingerly as if it would shatter; it was cool and light against her fingers. The drink went down her throat like a smooth flame, burning her palate, and she choked as an aftertaste glowed in her mouth like a soft explosion of fruit. Warmth thrilled through her body all the way down to her toes, and for a second she wondered if she was about to be sick. Even feeling as she was, she couldn't have stood the humiliation; but then it passed.

  "Another," said Cadvan.

  "What is it?" she asked. Despite its initial sting, the liquor was as different from the harsh voka that Gilman's men drank as anything she could imagine.

  "It's laradhel, a specialty of the house," said Cadvan, grinning. "Distilled out of selected herbs and fruits, especially apricots, yes, Malgorn?" He lifted an inquiring eyebrow at Malgorn, who nodded. "By this particular connoisseur of the table, no less. Malgorn has a great interest in the arts of brewing and distilling, for pleasure as well as medicine."

  She drank again, and didn't choke this time. Sip by sip she finished the glass, and handed it back to Cadvan. She felt less dizzy now, if a little lightheaded, and she looked around the room.

  She was in a chamber that, to her confused perceptions, seemed like a vision or something from a dream. It was high-ceilinged and gracefully proportioned, with a carved mantel on one wall where a fire flickered in the grate. From the ceiling hung a silver lamp shaped like a lily, which diff
used a gentle light. The walls were pale yellow, and the ceiling and carved cornices were painted with a pattern of stylized lilies and ivy leaves stenciled in black and subtly colored. Comfortable wooden chairs, heaped high with dark red cushions, were arranged around a huge fireplace, and musical instruments of all kinds were stacked casually against the walls and furniture. There was a big carved shelf of leather-bound books on the wall opposite, and one, with fine black writing illuminated with gold-leafed pictures, was open on a table. She blinked again in wonder.

  "She's white as a ghost," said Malgorn. "What have you been doing with this child, Cadvan? Where did you find her?"

  "I'm not a child," said Maerad, more sulkily than she intended. "I mean, I'm sixteen summers old!" Then she blushed, feeling graceless, and fell silent.

  "She's certainly not a child," said Cadvan, smiling mischievously at Maerad. "She faced twenty wers with only a stick in her hand. But I can't blame her for fainting when she met you!"

  Malgorn laughed, and then looked speculatively at Maerad. "Twenty wers, eh? Looks at the moment like twenty moths would be too much for her! That must be worth a song or two."

  "Not on my own!" Maerad protested, struggling to sit up. "Cadvan's exaggerating!"

  A woman entered the room, carrying a tray. "Is she conscious? Thank the Light for that." She put the tray on a small table and bustled over to Maerad, holding out her hand. "Hello, Maerad, I am Silvia. I have the bad luck to be married to Malgorn here, and so have to put up with his nonsense all the time." She smiled, and Maerad smiled back. She thought she had never seen such a beautiful face: kind and merry and wise, all at the same time. "Come, let's leave these two to their own devices," she said. "We'll get you cleaned up. And get some food into you! You're so thin! Has Cadvan been starving you?"