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Only humans lie, because they think that language can give them another reality. And then out of their lies they make that reality.
Could you pick the smallest pebble out of a stream and tell me the truth of it? Could you tell me its story of long eons of water and wind and ice and fire? No, to you it would be just a pebble, resting in your hand, of note only because you had picked it up. But that is not its truth.”
think you are a liar because you think you know what is true. You think you feel what is true. But you do not yet know what you do feel and what you do know. You desire and do not take; you love and are too afraid to feel your love; you conceal your vanity and pettiness from yourself; you are afraid to look into your soul and see what you are. That is why you are a liar.”
Yes, we are frail, thought Maerad, but within that frailty is such strength and such beauty, such love. . . . Surely it is not all for nothing? Surely it means something, even should the dark overwhelm us utterly?
I am free, Maerad thought. I am here, imprisoned, but at last I am free.
She realized she wasn’t afraid of dogs anymore, maybe not even of wolves. And then, with a pang, she thought: They are free, and they sing their own song.
“Love,” said Arkan at last. “Love is what is needed to make the Song. Love is why the darkness blossomed into light. Love is why the Earth spoke and became Elidhu.”
I am Elidhu, and Bard, and Pilanel too — and each part of me pulls in different directions. How am I to work out which is me? Can I ever be whole and true to myself? And how can I leave, anyway?
If I am Elemental, I am a wild thing, not to be caged or bound: I am like the wolves in the mountains, and must sing my own song.
Remember. Triple-tongued is triple-named.
Three tongues: Human, Bard, Elidhu. Three names. She must have three names. Maerad, Elednor . . . and another, which even she did not know. A deeper Truename.
“You are the Fire Lily,” said the Winterking softly. “And I am the Ice King. Does fire melt ice? Or ice put out fire? Or may they come together, fire and ice, neither melted nor quenched?”
The problem with the truth, she thought despairingly, is that it is true.
To kiss him, she thought, would be like kissing a river; I would faint and drown.
“They are time written down,”
“Do you think anything can be alive, when it is cloven in half?”
My enemy, she thought bitterly: my own heart.
Become wolf, it said again. Or you will be a tame dog forever.
Without hurry, as if she had done it a thousand times, she focused deep within herself, sinking through layers — slave, Bard, Pilanel, Maerad, Elednor, woman — deeper and deeper, until she came to a place where all the skins fell away and she had no name at all,
Be wolf, she thought; be my heart, my hunger. Be my freedom.
The Winterking is right; I am a traitor. Not to him; to myself. But how can I be true to myself when all my selves have different truths?
That is the choice of your heart. And remember, daughter, it is for no one else to say the wrongness or rightness of what you do. I would not have helped you to escape from his stronghold if you had not wished it, even though your presence there was not something I would want. Not even I can see all ends, but I have been in this world long enough to know that a choice forced is no choice and breeds slow ills, even were it done for the highest reasons.
I sorrow to leave you, she said. Henceforth my heart will be dark. I thank you for your guidance and protection.
Maerad laughed. She threw her pack on the ground, scrambled to her feet, and flung her arms around him. He rocked back on his heels as they embraced for a long moment, and in that embrace much was healed: long weeks of loneliness and grief, endurance and suffering. Maerad had never been so purely happy.
“Maerad,” he said at last. “I have had much time to think over the past weeks. I am sorry for my unkindness, before we lost each other. I have rued it often and deeply, and often I have wished I could tell you so, and feared that I would never be able to.” “I’ve regretted many things as well,” said Maerad quietly. “But look! We’re alive.”
“We are all many,” he said. “But most of us don’t have the privilege of understanding that as clearly as you do. It is hard to know oneself, but until we do, we cannot know why we act as we do. It’s a lifetime’s quest, and it never ends.”
“Love is one of the true mysteries,” he said at last. “The truest and the deepest of all. One thing, Maerad: to love is never wrong. It may be disastrous; it may never be possible; it may be the deepest agony. But it is never wrong.”
“Never be ashamed of your love,” he said gently. “The only thing to be ashamed of is denying your love. That is what makes the shadow grow within your heart; that is the darkening of the Light. And we all have many loves.”
