The Riddle (Pellinor #2)

by Alison Croggon

Cadvan had listened to her without interrupting, his face downcast, his expression unreadable. “I’m sorry I’ve made you feel more lonely,” he said. “I don’t need your understanding,” she answered harshly. “I’ve learned how to get along without that.”

“Maerad, this is more important for you than anyone else,” said Cadvan at last. “And I am saying it because I care for you. If you do not understand this, my heart forebodes disaster.” “I understand enough,” said Maerad in a muffled voice. “I understand that I’m on my own. Well, that’s no different from how it’s always been.” “You’re not alone,” said Cadvan, but this time, she did not answer him.

Their quest was an idiotic waste of time, a chase for wild geese, based on a couple of random guesses and some mumbled pieces of lore. And she would probably die for it.

“I just want to get out of this place.” Maerad looked despairingly up at Cadvan, her eyes ringed by deep shadows, and, for a moment, she saw an expression in his eyes she had never seen before, an unguarded tenderness. But it vanished at once, and she thought she must have imagined it. “So do I. But not at the price of my life.”

I am Maerad of Pellinor, Elednor Edil-Amarandh na, she said fiercely to herself; why am I being so stupid?

There was no chance Cadvan and Darsor had escaped. Buried beneath those mountains of rubble, she understood with an agony as clear and sharp as a fresh wound, were those she loved as much as her own life. Maerad covered her face with her hands, stunned and disbelieving. Cadvan and Darsor were dead. It couldn’t be true; it must be some awful nightmare. She slid down the mountain wall, hiding her face. It could not be true, and yet it was. In a paroxysm of grief she beat her forehead against the mountainside until it bled and fell insensible onto the frozen stone.

Perhaps I’m paralyzed, she thought, or maybe I’m dead. The thought was strangely comforting, and she lay in the darkness for a long time, without memory or thought.

As she tasted the full bitterness of her self-accusation, Maerad considered whether to throw herself off the side of the mountain. It would be a just punishment, she thought coldly. Such a creature as she had no reason to live. Such a creature as she deserved no friends, if she failed to protect them.

She ought to make a lament for Cadvan and Darsor and Imi. That was what Bards did. And she was still a Bard, even if she had betrayed her calling. She thought briefly of her lyre, but she knew her hands were too numb to play it. And some other part of her thought she was unworthy to touch her lyre, as if she had renounced her right to that most precious of her possessions.

She had loved Cadvan, and he had loved her, and, she knew now, with an unassuageable bitterness, that she had misunderstood that love. He was her first friend, the first who had seen her for who she was; he had rescued her from slavery and petty tyranny and shown her the world of Barding, a world of loveliness and humanity she had not known was possible.

Now that he was gone forever, it was as if, for the first time, she could see him clearly: imperfect, driven, haunted, stern, divided within himself; but also true, honest, generous, strong, and gentle. He had been, all at once, her father and her teacher and her friend. Her grieving love welled through the pure, haunting notes, filling the desolate mountainside with inconsolable yearning for everything she had lost. Her tears spilled down her face and froze on the pipes and on her fingers. Maerad, lost in the music, did not notice she was crying.

“Are you dying, my daughter?” Ardina asked. “I think you have put all your life into your music. I wish I had asked you to play before; I have heard no such music since the days of Afinil. But even then, only the Elidhu could play with such wildness and such skill and such sadness.”

Ah, my dear daughter, there is no remedy for love or grief. They persist beyond all boundaries.”

I live here now, and wait for death to come and visit me. But, instead, I find you. What does that mean, eh?”

If I could have saved my darlings by lifting the mountains with my naked hands, I would have done it. But I could not.”

It was as if, at some level below speech, there were two Maerads, and she could recognize neither of them, and worse, they were at war. The only way she could resolve this inner conflict was to think of continuing her journey.

“It is too big a thing for this house.” Mirka’s face was gray with dread. “It has seen too much grief. Aiee, it has seen the rending of the world; the moon is black inside it. Put it away!” She covered her eyes with her hands and started chanting something in Pilanel, her jaw trembling.

There was little other sound: for the first time in her life Maerad was completely alone, with no other human being in call. It was a strange feeling, but liberating; for some curious reason it made her feel less lonely.

It was said that the dead walked that road on their way to the Gates. She wondered if Cadvan lingered there, watching for her even as he made his way to the Groves of Shadow. The thought brought her no comfort. No, she thought; Cadvan was long gone. She was alone.

She didn’t understand why she was considered to be so significant — the Fire Lily, the Foretold, the One — and how that matched her feeling that she was, in truth, utterly insignificant, a tiny human being toiling along in the immense world, alone and powerless, of no more importance than any other, and of much less worth than most.

her. I no longer know who I am, she thought; I never really knew in the first place. A terrible desolation seized her heart, and she lay on her back, shivering with cold, unable to find any comfort in either her body or her mind.

“It is she,” she said in the Speech. “The Chosen has arrived at last.”

“It has long been known that the Riddle would begin its answer here. Our songs do not lie, and the past years have brought all the signs. It was time. Besides, your destiny is written in your face.”

The painted animals were abstracted in a way that caught Maerad’s attention: there was no mistaking what they were, but the artist had made no attempt to make them appear real, and their forms owed much to the geometric patterns with which the Pilanel adorned their clothes and caravans.

“You are very young,” said Sirkana. “I know,” said Maerad despairingly. Everyone said that; perhaps she looked even younger than she was. “But I have traveled far, nevertheless, to be here. I have a doom laid on me, a doom that concerns us all, and I seek your help.”

“I am the One. The Foretold among Bards.” It was the first time Maerad had claimed this title before others, and she sat up straighter. I am the One, she thought, and I have to stop behaving as if I am not. “If that is what you mean by the Chosen, then you are correct. It is said that I will defeat the Nameless One in his next rising.” She looked down at her hands, suddenly an abashed young girl again. “The only problem is, I don’t know how. Or why it is me.” She finished in a whisper, not daring to look up. She heard Vul clear his throat.

She missed the wooden cat she had given Mirka, but even its absence was part of the tally of her life.

“Life is hard, no? And full of sorrow. The Pilani dance in defiance of death and grief and hardship. They choose to burn before the darkness, rather than to gutter out like a dim flame.”

“Well, you are right, life is no respecter of youth or age. It will pour its troubles equally over all.”

“Not all wolf. Part wolf, and half wild still. Like all wild things, they must be treated with respect.”

The warmth that flooded into Maerad’s breast when Sirkana said she trusted her surprised her. She blinked, feeling her eyes prickle. It seemed the first time that anyone had said such a thing to her, and since the killing of the Bard in the Rilnik Plains, and Cadvan’s death in the Gwalhain Pass, she had not even trusted herself. She turned away to hide her emotion.

“It is hard to bear such a burden as you bear, even for one much older than you. You are very young. We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward.”

It was as if the two of them were connected by an invisible filament, immeasurably fine and delicate, which vibrated with his presence in the world.

“Fears don’t always make sense,”

Now, perhaps, she might find some answers. The only problem was, she wasn’t at all sure that she knew the right questions.

every time she thought she was beginning to understand the world, some other aspect would open and reveal a new ignorance.

Here, she thought, all is water, ice, fire, stone, and air; the anguish of human beings seems trivial beside such huge, elemental forces. She felt a great peace descend on her heart.

“It was like the voices of the stars.”

“Because they are beautiful does not mean that they are not perilous,” said Dharin. “But I, too, am glad.”

“First was dark, and the darkness Was all mass and all dimension, although without touch And the darkness was all colors and all forms, although without sight And the darkness was all music and all sound, although without hearing And it was all perfumes, and all tastes, sour and bitter and sweet But it knew not itself. And the darkness thought, and it thought without mind And the thought became mind and the thought quickened And the thought was Light.”

“Daughter of the Voice, every human being in the world lies. Some know they are lying and some do not. I think you do not know you are a liar. But still you are a liar.”

“If I don’t know I’m a liar, then how can I tell the truth?” asked Maerad. “Exactly,” said Inka-Reb.

The thought brought no tears. She was beyond tears, beyond grief; she was empty of all feeling, a shell as light as a feather.

For a moment, they were like children playing a game in which, for a short time, they could hide from a cruel adult world.

I will not die a slave, she said to herself. I have earned that much.

I must be dead, she thought again. But I don’t feel dead. Unless the dead can feel exhausted . . . and why wouldn’t they?

So, I meet you at last, my enemy, she said to herself. And I have nothing left except my pride, but you cannot take that away from me.

“It seems to me that when humans make war, they say: this is good; this is evil. But the good and the evil often seem the same to me.”

Perhaps the sorcery also works on feelings, she thought, so terror seems like love.