The Gift

by Alison Croggon

  "We'll walk, then," she said, turning her face toward the broken path.

  At her back, behind the cot, reared the Landrost, its tip stained red by the setting sun, its massive bulk throwing all the valley into shadow.

  Chapter II

  THE LANDROST

  THEY had not gone half a mile when Maerad heard the long halloo of the hunting horn and the bay of Gilman's hounds. Her heart constricted. Before long the gates of the cot flung open and three of the Thane's men emerged, shouting, roughly horsed, and the hounds poured after them, loping in the low light. Noses down, they cast around for a scent, the bloodlust already a fire in their eyes. Maerad fought a rising fear and unconsciously shrank toward Cadvan. He glanced at her swiftly.

  "Maerad, they cannot harm us," he said softly. "The men cannot see us."

  She nodded and trudged on, trying to contain herself. Suddenly another bay went up—the hounds had found their scent and were running. The horsemen followed, spurring on their mounts. Cadvan was still walking steadily.

  "But the hounds can see us," whispered Maerad hoarsely. "The hounds can see us, and ..."

  "They won't harm us," said Cadvan. "They're savage beasts, but innocent. They serve no dark purpose. Have faith."

  The hounds were nearing them swiftly. As they drew close, Cadvan stopped and wheeled around. He raised his arms, and to Maerad it seemed that suddenly a light was gathered about him, or within him, although she could see no source.

  "Lemmach!" he said.

  The leading hound stopped dead in its tracks, so the dog behind it tumbled over its feet. The pack wheeled around and stopped.

  "Lemmach ni ardrost!"

  The lead dog came up to Cadvan and whiffled around his knees. Cadvan stroked its nose. "Ni ardrost," he said again, gently, and the dogs each sniffed him and then, as if they had just gone for a drink at a pond, trotted casually back to the riders.

  Maerad stood stock still, her face a cipher. "What did you do?"

  "I told them to stop and asked them to go home," said Cadvan. "And being friendly beasts, they obligingly did so. They'll not hunt us now, no matter what their masters do. They obey older laws."

  At her back, Maerad could hear the riders cursing the dogs, and their yelps as they whipped them. She realized she was trembling. A massive exhaustion swept over her, and she stumbled. Cadvan caught her elbow in quick concern.

  "I'm sorry to drive you, Maerad, but we cannot rest here tonight," he said. "Gilman's hounds are no danger to us, but other things are. This is an unwholesome place. And already it grows dark."

  Maerad shrugged off Cadvan's hand. Other things? she thought. What other things? All the recent rumors of wers and other creatures of the night crowded uncomfortably in her mind.

  "I'm all right," she said sullenly.

  "It is safest if we keep moving," said Cadvan.

  The night had a cold edge, but this early it was still mild and clear. They walked for some time in silence, and as Maerad began to get her second wind, they started talking. Maerad asked Cadvan what he was doing in Gilman's Cot, but he evaded the answer, instead asking about her life there, and whether she had earlier memories, from Pellinor. She could tell him little on that point.

  "Fragments," she said. "A man—I think it was my father— a handsome man, tall, with long, black hair, laughing. A chair with beautiful carvings with a strange-colored light falling on it from a high window. A few scraps of music. I thought that I dreamed it."

  "It's no dream. The Schools are places of high learning and much beauty," said Cadvan sadly, as if he spoke of something loved that was vanishing. "The Lore is upheld, and the Light shines over all who dwell there. But now their power wanes, and darkness reaches into Annar."

  "What are the Schools?" asked Maerad, feeling ignorant and coarse. "Is that where you learned those spells?"

  He glanced at her, and to her confusion he laughed. "Maerad, it is so strange to me that one of the Gift should know nothing at all of the Schools."

  "The Gift?" said Maerad. She looked down the valley; a long way before her, she could see the stars glimmering between the spurs where it ended, opening out onto the wide world, of which she knew nothing. She suddenly felt more alone than she ever had in her life; and she was so tired, more tired than she had ever been. A ball of grief rose in her throat, and she couldn't speak.

  "Please forgive me, Maerad," Cadvan said. "I do not mean to tease your ignorance. Perhaps more tutored, you would now be dead, and your lack of knowledge has protected you from the sight of those who would otherwise have done you harm." He smiled at her, and Maerad, not quite understanding him, smiled wanly back. "Perhaps I should turn Loresinger for a while?" he said. "Tonight we could have an introductory lesson. It will pass the time."

  "All right, then," said Maerad, glancing across at the shadowy man beside her. "Tell me about the Gift."

  They had a long way to go, but they were making good time, despite boulders and loose stones that constantly threatened to turn an ankle. The last traces of daylight were retreating from the mountains, and it was the dark interval before moonrise. Her legs felt heavy and sore with tiredness, but talking took her mind off her discomfort.

  "Where to begin?" said Cadvan. "What is the Gift? How to answer that, when nobody really knows?" He paused, as if gathering his thoughts. "Well, those of the Gift are like to the Loresingers of Afinil. All Bards are of the Gift, and it means they have certain powers and abilities. The most important is the Speech." He paused. "Bards do not learn the Speech, but are born with it already living within them. In the mouths of those with the Gift, the Speech holds an innate power; it is the source of our Knowing and much of our might. Those with the Gift also live for three spans of a normal life: I am already an old man by normal reckonings, although you would not think so, perhaps."

  "An old man?" said Maerad, looking dubiously at Cadvan. He did not look old to her, she had already guessed his age to be about thirty-five years. She wondered briefly if he was making it up, but then she thought of how he had made her invisible.

  "Not old in the measure of Bards," said Cadvan, smiling, "but old enough. A long life is a double-edged privilege, believe me. But there are other signs; Bards know other Bards, which is how I knew you. This morning I thought for a second my powers had wholly failed me, when you challenged me." He clutched his breast. "My heart stopped! But then I saw your eyes...."

  Maerad glanced at him, again uncertain of what he meant, or whether she should laugh. She noticed that as he spoke Cadvan was constantly alert, but in ways she didn't recognize. He never looked around or behind him, but seemed to be innerly attuned to something she couldn't hear, as if inside him flowed a music that, at times, demanded intense attention. It felt a bit odd, as if he were only half there.

  "There is much you should know about Bards and the Light," said Cadvan. "To have the Gift, and to be ignorant of what it means, can be a terrible thing." He began to speak in an oddly formal tone, almost a chant, which at first nearly made her smile. She had a swift unbidden vision of a stone hall with high windows, and of many people seated in a circle, their heads bowed in concentration. The vision vanished, and she looked around her at the empty night and the gloomy shadows of the mountainside; but Cadvan's voice continued steadily in the darkness.

  "Know then, Maerad, that in Annar and the Seven Kingdoms the Bards are charged with the keeping of the Light. The centers of Knowing are the Schools, but it was not always so. Many lives of men ago, the center of the Lore was Afinil, Citadel of Song, built when the first Loresingers came to Annar. Some say a terrible cold drove them from their home, and others that they sailed here on great ships from a foundered land, and still others say they simply appeared here among other humans; whatever the truth, our origin is lost in legend. However they came, Bards appeared in Annar, bringing with them the remnants of an ancient Knowing from the very dawn of the world: the Gift of the Speech, and Reading and Making and Tending, the skills and knowledge known as the Arts of th
e Light. And here was built the great city of Afinil, which was the center of the Knowing in the ancient days.

  "Many songs tell of its unmatched beauty, of the unwalled towers that rose like lilies beside the mere, beside the pure face of blessed water. And within this citadel dwelt the Loresingers, all those who loved and tended the beauty of the world. The Speech was on all tongues, and all met with understanding."

  Cadvan's voice shifted subtly into a chant. Maerad's heart quickened; she couldn't remember the last time she had heard a new song. Even in her surprised pleasure, the musician in her noted coldly that Cadvan possessed a very good baritone.

  "Dashed into darkness, deeper than heartgrief,

  All voices mourn thee, high and humble,

  Treespeech and beastspeech, manspeech and bard,

  All voices mourn thee, fruit of the dawn,

  Flower of ice enchanting the sunlight,

  Shadow of moonbeam woven from marble,

  Throat of the morning where all voices mingled.

  In Afinil, O Afinil!

  Thy dreams are lost, thy music still,

  The briars creep where thy towers were

  And the stars are dark in the shadowmere.

  "So it is remembered in song as an ache, a memory of something lovely, now lost forever. The story of its loss is an evil one. But you must know it, if you are to understand the Bards. For the gifts of the Light, alas, were its own undoing."

  Maerad stumbled again and this time fell, scrambling up immediately. Cadvan stopped. "Are you all right?" he said.

  "Yes," she snapped, embarrassed, pressing her hands together where she had grazed them on the rock.

  Cadvan looked at her sharply. "You haven't rested, and after a heavy day's work, no doubt," he said. "We must press on; but perhaps we can stop for a little while now, to go all the faster afterward." He sat down on the ground, just where he was, and gratefully Maerad sat down next to him. Her legs were shaking. Cadvan opened his pack and drew out a bottle. "This helps weariness," he said. He drank some, then offered it to Maerad. It tasted like water, but with a faint hint of herbs. A fiery tingling rushed through her body, and some of her exhaustion immediately lifted. In the sudden quiet, the valley felt oppressively silent, and when Cadvan began to speak again, Maerad almost jumped.

  "Afinil, as I said, fell in part because of its generosity. In the south there arose a king who feared to die like ordinary men and sought instead endless life, freed from the doom of the world's circle. He envied the powers of the Light and desired them for his own. Masking his intent, he approached the gentle Bards of Afinil and asked for tutelage, and harboring no suspicion in their hearts, gladly they gave it to him. He was an apt pupil and in time became more powerful in the ways of Speech, more subtle in the Lore, more skilled in the arts of Making and Unmaking, than any before him. When he was satisfied he had learned enough, he returned to his own land in the south, the kingdom of Den Raven.

  "The intention of the knowledge of Light is to make fair, to make grow, to keep the sacred Balance. But this king bent this knowledge to his own purpose. His first wrong was to cast off his Name."

  "How can you cast off your name?" asked Maerad, fascinated and puzzled. "What did they call him, then?"

  Cadvan laughed. "He still has a usename, this sorcerer, though it is seldom said. He is usually called the Nameless. Every Bard has a secret Name," he continued. "You do not know my Name. You do not even yet know yours. A Bard's Name is given at enstatement, when you come into your powers: it is, if you like, your true Name in the Speech. It says who you are. To cast it off is to reject yourself."

  "But that's impossible!" Maerad objected. "How can you not be who you are?"

  "Alas, it's not impossible at all," replied Cadvan. "The king rejected his Name, because then he could also reject death. But with the gift of death, he cast away also the knowledge of those who die, and found his heart was empty, a pain sharper than any that he had known. For he was not of the immortals, and had not the right to deathlessness. He looked out on the world, and his eye was dark. He sought then the dominion of all on the earth and the destruction of all that rebuked him with its beauty, and he challenged the Law of the Balance, and overthrew it. And then, with massed armies and Black Sorcerers—those corrupt Bards that we call Hulls—he marched on the lovely citadel of Afinil, and cast down its fair towers and darkened the mere, so the moon no longer bathed there and the stars fled its lifeless face. Then began the Great Silence, when the Song was no longer heard in the wide lands of Annar.

  "That was not the total of his evil, but it was among the most grievous. Many things then were lost to the world, beyond restoration."

  Cadvan sighed. Maerad listened in silence, overwhelmed with wonder, not only at the tale, but at the sweet tautness the names began to awaken within her: Afinil, Loresinger, the Light. They recalled much of the scent and sound of her mother, her voice as she plucked the lyre, the dark fall of her hair as she kissed her, and other memories that she could not trace. She sighed also, and looked around them. They were now more than halfway down the valley, and the stars were massed above them, bright around a moon waxing to the full. She picked out the Five Gemmed Daughters, swinging high over them in their ceaseless dance. Ilion was now sunk beneath the horizon.

  Cadvan stood up. "We should move on," he said. Maerad scrambled to her feet, and they began again the slow trudge down the valley. Maerad felt her exhaustion beginning to return, but she forced herself on, and Cadvan returned to his lesson.

  "The story of the downfall of the Nameless One is long and hard and desperate, and many parts of that tale never returned from darkness," he continued. "Suffice to say that he was at last defeated. After his fall, the Bards made the Schools, which keep and teach the Knowing of the Light throughout Annar and the Seven Kingdoms. The center of all high knowledge is now Norloch, a fair place of gardens and high halls and learning. But in one way it differs from Afinil: for Norloch is walled and provision is made for a great garrison, and the innocence that was the downfall of Afinil will not be its weakness again. And this perhaps is the greatest loss caused by the Nameless, although some argue it is not so, and that in its greatness Norloch surpasses even the ancient citadel."

  "Have you been there?" asked Maerad, when he said no more.

  "Yes," said Cadvan. "Many times. For I am no longer part of any School, and travel between them as I must. The Light once more is under attack. And Bards now are sent on dangerous and secret ways to spy out the tracks of the Dark, rather than singing the leaves of spring in the old ways and bringing increase."

  "Was that why you were near Gilman's Cot?" asked Maerad.

  A shadow of pain passed over Cadvan's face. "It is a little close to speak of that," he said. He was silent then for a long time.

  In the quiet Maerad again felt the oppressiveness of their surroundings. It was now some three hours since sunset, and the moonlight illuminated the sheer edges of the mountains with a white dew, casting the ravines into impenetrable shadow. In the distance she thought she heard faint howls and shrieks. She thought also that Cadvan's face held traces of some great strain, although his voice had betrayed nothing.

  Maerad remembered his exhaustion only that morning, and that he had said he was wounded. She saw no sign of a wound.

  At last she ventured another question. "Do you think that I might be a Bard?"

  "Didn't you hear anything I told you?" said Cadvan shortly. Maerad cast him a glance of dislike. Her feet were beginning to throb with pain, and she marched on in silence, wondering if they would ever leave this cursed valley. Cadvan halted then and gasped, and Maerad saw that sweat stood out on his forehead.

  "Maerad," he said. "I must ask your patience. I contest the will of the spirit of this place, which would not have us leave here. It bears down on me, and it gets worse the farther we go."

  After a short time he walked on again, but more slowly, as if he were pushing through deep water. Maerad saw with anxiety they still ha
d a long way to go before they passed out of the valley She could feel nothing herself, apart from an increasing sense of dread. She didn't dare to speak. It was difficult walking, as now they picked their way through broken boulders and piles of scree slipped from the sides of the mountain, and at times the track almost vanished altogether. Her boots were ragged, and her feet felt bruised and sore. And, for the first time that night, the cold began to trouble her. It seemed to creep into the marrow of her bones, forming crystals in her joints that made it hard to move. She gradually descended into a dull nightmare of exhaustion, and finally was concentrating only on putting one foot in front of the other. The mouth of the valley drew closer and closer, but as they neared it, so the cold increased and Cadvan's steps became slower.

  At last he stopped altogether. Now sweat ran in runnels down his face, and the edges of his mouth trembled. "Maerad," he said hoarsely. "I must rest, just briefly." He collapsed slowly to the ground.

  Instinctively Maerad reached out and clasped his hand.

  All at once she felt it: a cold, cruel will that crushed her mind like a vice. She dropped his hand as if the touch scorched her.

  "What is it?" she whispered.

  Cadvan looked at her in amazement.

  "You can feel it?" he said.

  "Something," she said, wincing. "Something horrible ..."

  "Take my hand again," he said. Maerad looked at him fearfully and flinched away. When she had touched Cadvan, it was as if her mind had been invaded by a malignant consciousness, implacable and terrifying.