The Riddle (Pellinor #2)

by Alison Croggon

Prophecies, as Cadvan had once told her, often went awry; her birth was foreseen, but not her choices, and it was through her choices that her destiny would unfold.

Maerad felt it was like being on a quest for moonbeams.

But I’m tired of having to be brave when really I’m so terrified I scarce know what to do.

The only good thing about being frightened half to death, she thought, is that it makes me forget all about being seasick.

The sunlight struck off the droplets in little prisms, and its murmurous music sank into her hypnotically, as if it were a song of which she almost understood the words.

“There are many riddles in this tale,” said Cadvan. “But I have no doubt that Maerad is the greatest of them all. None of us knows what she might be capable of.”

Whenever Bards had mentioned the Way of the Heart to her, it had filled her with an unreasoning fear. She had spent her childhood protecting herself from the violent men of Gilman’s Cot, and that was certainly part of it, but at a deeper level was some kind of foreboding, a sense of darkness that wrapped itself around the part of her that might love, as if to love might extinguish her. It seemed too full of risk, and she already risked too much, simply by being who she was.

A hunger she had been barely aware of flowered painfully inside her. Music!

She ached: oh, how she ached. Her soul was like one big bruise.

She had all these new names — once she had been only Maerad, then she was Maerad of Pellinor, and now she was Elednor of Edil-Amarandh, the Fire Lily come to resist the Dark — but what did they really mean?

But more than that, she seemed to have an innate knowledge of Barding, which her teachers merely had to reawaken. They all commented privately on this to Cadvan; they found her aptitude a little unnerving.

“There is no single truth,” Nerili explained. “But all these truths, woven together, might give us a picture of what is true. That is why it’s important to know all the different stories. We can never see all the sky at once.”

“Love is never easy,” said Nerili. “We begin by loving the things we can, according to our stature. But it is not long before we find that what we love is other than ourselves, and that our love is no protection against being wounded. Do we then seek to dominate what we love, to make it bend to our will, to stop it from hurting us, even though to do so is to betray love? And that is only where the difficulty begins.”

“Magery, even the slightest, calls on the deepest parts of ourselves,” Nerili said at last, releasing her hand. “And often that is painful. It is the pain of being in the world, where so much that is fair passes into death and forgetfulness. But if we are to know joy, we must embrace that pain. You cannot have one without the other.”

I wonder how other Schools have fared this Midsummer. Do they enter a broken year, unrenewed, unblessed by the Tree of Light?”

“Darkness lives in each of us,” said Cadvan. “But we are all creatures of choice. We can turn to embrace it — as Enkir has, as the Nameless One himself did all those centuries ago — or we can resist, even if that resistance seems futile.

My whole life is just one long farewell, Maerad thought. I begin to make friends and then I must leave, probably never to see them again.

“They breed special goats here, because the mountains are so steep,” said Cadvan. “On one side their legs are shorter than the other, so they can graze more comfortably.” “How strange,” said Maerad. “Poor things! What happens when they have to turn around? Wouldn’t that be a bit difficult for them?” “Well, they breed different goats for different hills — right-legged goats to move one way, and left-legged —” Elenxi snorted with laughter, and Maerad realized she’d been taken in. “Oh, that’s not fair! It might have been true,” she said. “And there I was believing you.”

At these times, the things that troubled her seemed far away and unimportant: all that mattered was the hum of the bees and the chirp of birdsong, the way the sun gleamed on the edge of a blue wildflower, the distant bleat and clink of grazing goats.

There was no voice to sing it, and there was no ear to hear it, and the Song was lonely in the nowhere and nothing that everything was. For what is a Song without a voice and an ear?

And they opened their mouths in wonder, and so it was the Song leaped out of their mouths, and at last became itself. And the Song was happy for a very long time.”

All this time the Song lived in the Elidhu and was happy, although it found that the world was more complex and more sad than it had thought. And so the Song changed, and became more beautiful as it changed, for the shadow and death entered into the Song and made it bright and dark and high and deep. And the voices of the Elidhu lifted in joy, for they loved the beauty of the Song.

But now, instead of quailing before her future, a part of Maerad leaped to meet it with exhilaration and a bittersweet gladness that they were beginning at last.

Hello, my friend, she said in her mind, and then laughed at herself; who did she think she was, talking to a star?

Maerad looked up at him questioningly; they knew each other well enough by now not to need to speak. Cadvan looked out over the sea for a moment and then back toward her. “You looked exactly like the Queen Ardina,” he said. “It took me by surprise.” The unexpectedness of his comment made Maerad laugh. “But she has silver hair,” she said. “Your hair looked silver in the moonlight,” said Cadvan, smiling in return. “So it is not as ridiculous as it might sound.” “And she is beautiful,” said Maerad, more softly. “Yes,” said Cadvan. “She is.” There was a short pause; Maerad felt strangely abashed. “Well, then, I suppose I ought to thank you.”

“It certainly worked.” Cadvan gave Maerad an inscrutable glance. “I would never have thought of stormdogs as innocent before, I must say. I shall have to contemplate this new wisdom.”

I am again, but none shall find my dwelling, for I live in every human heart.”

“Warn me of what?” Gahal looked her in the eye with a strange earnestness. “That is what I have no words for, young Bard. There is something in you that I do not understand, and I fear it.”

But she knew already of the forces ranged against Turbansk, and her arguments seemed futile, the empty words given to calm a child’s terror, when the speaker knows there is no hope against the darkness drawing in around them.

“You have yet to know your heart, young Bard. Be vigilant! There are perils that have nothing to do with arms and weapons.”

It is not true that suffering is good for the soul. Too much, and even the strongest will break.”

This is our future, she thought blackly, this ruined world, in which everything we love is poisoned or slaughtered.

“Maerad, our world is full of sorrow and evil,” he said. “But there is also beauty and light and love. You must remember that.” He looked earnestly into her face, but Maerad couldn’t meet his eyes. She turned aside, thrusting away his hand.

Maerad bit down on her loneliness, as if it were a caustic seed, with an almost perverse pleasure. She felt herself hardening, felt tempered by this punishing ride. I am stronger, she thought. And I will be stronger still.

She reacted with blind fury, without thought. She gathered up all the power she felt within her and directed it at the Bard in a bolt of White Fire. Ilar simply collapsed and slithered off her horse, which skittered sideways in alarm. She fell to the ground, motionless and completely white, the only sign of injury a small, black burn in the middle of her forehead. In that instant, Maerad knew she was dead.

So, she was a murderer now, although she had only sought to protect them. Cadvan had himself killed Bards: yet he had forgiven himself more easily than he seemed to forgive her.

She fiercely regretted killing Ilar, but she felt she did not deserve Cadvan’s anger. Her shame mingled with resentment at his lack of understanding. She did not deserve Cadvan’s absolute censure. She had not meant to kill; it had just come out of her, in the same way as when she had destroyed the wight. He had not been so keen to judge her then. She pushed down her knowledge that, at the instant of the blow, she had wanted to utterly destroy the Bard.

She now felt nothing at all: neither grief nor regret nor anger. She was just too exhausted.

Your power is frightening, Maerad. Misused, it is a monstrous power.”

Deep inside, she understood the enormity of what she had done, but she couldn’t face it, and it could not be undone.

“I’m not a monster. I made a mistake. You made a mistake, too, didn’t you? But nobody calls you a monster.”

Maerad stirred at the urgency in his voice, but said nothing. If she broke now, she would break into pieces. She did not want to break. She felt herself hard and stern, and something in her rejoiced at her resistance.

And underneath, Maerad was simply afraid: afraid of her quest; afraid of whoever pursued them; afraid, perhaps most of all, of herself.

And there was nothing to alleviate her fear, not even the casual banter of companionship; since the killing of Ilar, she felt as if Cadvan had abandoned her. A wave of loneliness swept over her, a fierce longing. Was there anyone in this vast empty world who cared for her, just as she was, for herself? Anyone who thought of her simply as a fellow human being, and not as some symbol burdened by a destiny she barely understood?

She felt nothing, nothing at all, and a part of her went numb with despair. Well, she knew about darkness now. She stared out bitterly into the night.

If he shouted at her, it would be easier, or if they could laugh together, but there was nothing, it seemed, to laugh at. Cadvan was so often beyond her, withdrawing into some inaccessible place within himself, but now it seemed as if nothing would heal the breach. Perhaps it was partly that in some secret place within herself, she didn’t want to, that she feared their closeness.

“Maerad, I don’t want to talk about that incident, not now. What I am trying to talk about is much more difficult. I think you need to understand what is moving within you.”

“If you hadn’t been punishing me these past few days, treating me like I was beneath your notice, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so dark.” All Maerad’s resentment welled up inside her; she wanted to hit him. “You’ve made me feel like a piece of offal or something. Well, I’m sorry for what I did. But that doesn’t mean that you can treat me like —” “Maerad, Maerad . . .” Cadvan stood up and took both her hands in his. She withdrew them roughly and turned away. “Maerad, I was not punishing you. I did not know what to say. I needed to think.”

“We all have darknesses within us,” said Cadvan. “And we all have to learn how to deal with them. You more than anyone. But we have to recognize what they are first.”