The Gift

by Alison Croggon

  Memory after memory of Gilman's Cot, numbing exhaustion and boredom and pain, the humiliations of the riots and beatings, playing with Mirlad when she was a child, and listening to his dour teaching. . . Her mother, and an old woman, blue-eyed, holding her, and a garden full of sweet-scented flowers ... Singing and music and laughter in a great hall filled with men and women and children in fine clothes and lit with great branches of candles . . . Her mother clutching her in terror and sickness and grief, lurching in a wagon ... A small table, piled high with fruit... Her mother holding a small baby, her brother Cai, who was chortling and reaching for a red flower. . . Her mother's despair and her mother dying. Her mother yellowed and wasted on a pallet, her lips cracked and ulcerated, her voice a whisper, brushing back her hair and saying, "Maerad, be strong. Be strong...." And the death rattle ... Crows wheeling in a dark sky, and men shouting, and terrible screams, a man she knew was her father felled with a blow from a mace, falling among many bodies, and a high tower burning in the night and a shout as the roof caved in, sending forth a leap of flame ...

  An intolerable anguish possessed Maerad, beyond even the grief she had felt at her mother's death; it was as if all the pain she had ever experienced gathered into a white-hot node in the center of her mind. It grew and grew, a distressing coruscation of her whole being, until she could no longer bear it. Beyond her conscious will, she screamed No! and burst into a storm of scalding tears.

  She was aware of nothing else for some time. After a while, she realized she was on the ground, weeping on Cadvan's shoulder, and he was stroking her hair. Her sobs subsided at last and she sat back, thrusting Cadvan away and rubbing the back of her hand over her eyes.

  Cadvan looked pale and distressed. "Maerad, I am truly sorry," he said. "I am very, very sorry."

  She wasn't sure if he was sorry for the scrying, or for what the scrying had revealed. She felt limp, and the beginnings of a slight headache pulsed behind her brow. She hid her face in her hands.

  "It did hurt," she said in a muffled voice.

  "I shouldn't have asked," Cadvan said, after a silence. "For all your power, you are not much more than a child, and even the great find scrying a hard thing. I was in such doubt, whether you were a spirit of the Dark, sent to trick me."

  "Me trick you?" Maerad looked up in surprise. Cadvan grinned at her crookedly

  "You have the consolation that I have paid for my doubt. The cry you sent out threw me over to those trees. I was lucky my neck wasn't broken!"

  "I did that?" She stared at him, her mouth open in astonishment.

  "Indeed you did. But it wasn't your fault." He grimaced, rubbing his head, and Maerad saw there was a mark on his forehead. "You need to learn how to control your power."

  "You'll have a bump there," she said.

  "Yes, I will."

  "Is it all right, then?"

  "What?"

  "I mean, it's all right?"

  "Oh, yes." Cadvan answered her almost distractedly. "There is no Darkness in you, if that's what you mean; I know that, even though I couldn't finish the scrying. If there were, I would have found different walls and different kinds of refusals." He looked at her oddly—almost, she thought, shyly. "It's a strange business, scrying. I haven't done it very often. But I can tell you, Maerad, that I have not scried one with so much anguish as you. I shan't do it again in a hurry, and you almost scried me instead!" He shook his head, and they both sat unspeaking for some time. Maerad's headache ebbed away. She felt dazed and emptied; but there was also a strange sense of relief, as if she had been lanced of a large abscess.

  Abruptly Cadvan stood up and brushed himself off. He seemed possessed by a new decisiveness, as if the doubts that had troubled him earlier had now been resolved. "We must leave here," he said. "The sun is already high, and we have a long way to go."

  Maerad squinted up at him. "Where are we going?"

  "I think I must take you to Norloch. But that is a long way from here. First we must find food, and maybe some horses."

  He stood in the middle of the dingle and bowed to the trees signaling to Maerad to do the same. She scrambled to her feet. "We must thank the trees for their hospitality," he said. "They have been good to us." Then he picked up his pack and walked out of the dingle.

  Maerad lingered briefly before they left the shelter of the birches, for a last glimpse of the early sunlight shafting through the spring leaves. She thought the grove was the most beautiful place she had ever seen. The light scattered itself in silver and gold glints over the ground, and the intricate shadows of the branches danced with the gleams over the soft grasses, which rippled gently in the spring breeze. Thank you, she said silently, and bowed, feeling the ceremony strangely appropriate: the birches seemed more alive than most trees. For a moment she almost felt they were about to speak back to her, and they seemed to rustle a little sadly, as if they were friends waving farewell.

  Chapter IV

  BATTLE WITH THE WERS

  WHY is it so quiet?" Maerad asked. "Is it always like this around here?"

  "No, it's not. I don't like it," Cadvan said. "There are birds, very high up. I can't see what they are. Perhaps they watch us. It's like the quiet before a storm, but there will be no storm tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps. No, it's something else."

  "Can you guess what it might be?"

  "Yes. But I might be wrong. What I guess is that the Landrost has sent his messengers out, and that the hunt is on. I have only seen crows today; all other birds are in hiding."

  "The hunt?" said Maerad, faltering. She realized Cadvan was correct about the crows; she had seen no other birds all day.

  They were steering southeast, with the mountains on their right and the forest on their left. The sky was clear and cold, a high pale blue, and all through the morning the sun scarcely warmed them. All around them the earth was alive with the pale green of early spring; snowdrops and jonquils pushed through the tangled herbs and grasses, and marjoram and wild mint released sharp fragrances as they bruised beneath their feet. Low thorny trees and scruffy clumps of pines grew in the lees of the hills, bent by the winds, surrounded by tangles of gorse and bramble. Everywhere crept a pale blue flower shaped like a star, which Cadvan said was called aelorgalen. "Dawnflower, in the Speech," Cadvan explained. "It only grows this far north." Maerad tried repeating the name, but found that her tongue stumbled over it, and afterward she couldn't remember it at all.

  It was a beautiful countryside, but Maerad thought it curiously lonely. Their footsteps sounded loudly in the emptiness; they seemed to be the only things moving as far as the eye could see. There was no sign of habitation anywhere, although strange grass-covered ridges and mounds, which seemed too regular to be natural, constantly threatened to trip them up; perhaps they were remains of buildings long vanished. And she saw few animals—only some rabbits running in the distance, but that was all.

  "I thought the Landrost was just a mountain," she said, looking back at its high, snow-tipped peak. "You talk as if it were a man.... And what's the hunt?"

  "The Landrost is a power, yes, a person.... The mountain is merely his dwelling. But he is not a man, and never was."

  "Like the Nameless One?" said Maerad.

  "Not so powerful as him, although the Nameless was once a man. The Landrost is but one of his slaves. I will not speak his name here, although I know it." Cadvan paused, and Maerad noticed again the exhaustion on his face: it was, she saw, a deep exhaustion born of long struggle and pain. "He captured me, and held me in his fastness, deep in the mountain. I saw things there that he would rather I did not know, because in his pride he thought to make me tremble before I died. But I escaped, and his vengefulness is deadly, and we are not beyond his reach, not yet. I only just held him back in the valley, with your help; he would have brought the mountain down on us, else. His power wanes the farther we go, but here we are still too close.

  "He does not easily countenance escape from his claws. I think he sends out the wers, and that is
why it is quiet. Their shadows track us, although they can do nothing while the sun still shines. Only in the dark can they take their forms. It will be a bad night."

  He was silent for some time. His words seemed to magnify the stillness around them, and Maerad again looked around her uneasily. The landscape seemed peaceful and unthreatening, but some more subtle sense told her otherwise. Her skin began to creep with an indefinable dread.

  "Maerad," said Cadvan at last. "I think I should have left you, rather than draw you into my own danger. I didn't think enough, when I stumbled across you in that cot. I was too astonished, and too weary. And now it is too late to turn back."

  "No," said Maerad warmly. She thought of the suffocating despair of Gilman's Cot. At least here, now, she could breathe freely. "No, you were right to ask me to leave. I would rather die than stay there."

  "Well, you might die," said Cadvan.

  "At least I won't die a slave," Maerad answered. Proud words, she thought, but she meant them.

  Cadvan pushed the pace and they walked in silence, wrapped in their own thoughts.

  Maerad still couldn't quite believe she had escaped the cot. Every now and then she caught herself thinking idly that she should be performing some task—weeding the fields or churning butter or spinning the rough wool that made all their clothes—and then she would catch herself, with a tiny shock: perhaps she would never have to do any of those things again. Even with the increasing sense of watchfulness, a feeling that the very stones were spying on them, the present moment overwhelmed her. She couldn't imagine anything more amazing than the mere fact of her freedom. Where she was going, or why, were questions she couldn't even contemplate. And this Cadvan—who was he? Why did she have this strange feeling she could trust him? She knew nothing about him. She had never trusted a man before, save Mirlad, and even that trust had taken years to establish. Why start now?

  They stopped for the midday meal beside one of the many streamlets that ran down from the mountains. Maerad's ankle was beginning to swell, and she eased it out from the boot and held it in her hands, massaging the muscles.

  "It hurts?" asked Cadvan. "Let me see." He took her foot in his hands and gently turned it. "It's a little swollen. Nothing very bad. Now, breathe in." He pressed his hand hard over her ankle and Maerad gasped with pain; then she gasped again, because the swelling and pain had vanished.

  "It's gone!" she said. "Are you a healer as well?"

  "All Bards are healers," said Cadvan softly, still holding her foot. "You should have shown me before." He smiled at her, and Maerad felt suddenly uneasy and withdrew her foot abruptly, wriggling her toes in relief.

  "What's happening?" she asked. "I mean, there's so much I don't understand. Maybe I could help?" She looked up at him from under her tangled hair. "You said you were wounded, but I can't see any wounds on you. Did you heal yourself too?"

  Cadvan stood up and squinted at the sun. "We should move on," he said. "I'll tell you things in time, Maerad. I was sent here on a secret task, and I am not at liberty to tell you everything. But yes, I was wounded, and no, I couldn't heal myself. It's not a wound you can see. I am weaker than I should be, here without protection in the wild."

  "But you can trust me," said Maerad, beginning to feel angry. "And if you're in danger, then so am I, if I am traveling with you. So you owe it to me."

  "I owe you nothing, Maerad." Cadvan's voice was even, but Maerad saw the flash in his eyes.

  "You wouldn't have got out of the valley without me," she said. "You said so yourself."

  "Peace!" said Cadvan harshly, and his face closed against her. "Maerad, you are a child. Don't bother me with all these questions, at least not now. We have a long way to go."

  Maerad was suddenly furious. "And who are you?" She didn't care that she was shouting, although her voice echoed loudly in the empty land around them. "You turn up out of nowhere in rags and then expect me to believe you're some kind of grand person from the west, with your talk of Bards and magic? You could just be a tinker full of tricks, for all I know. And then you tell me I'm just a child, go sit in the corner and be quiet. Shut up, Maerad—you'll find out later! I'm not a child. I'm sixteen summers old!"

  "There are more important things than the vanity of a young girl," Cadvan said coldly. Maerad realized she was standing before him, her fists clenched, trembling with anger. She flushed.

  "I'm not a child," she said again, but with less conviction. All at once she felt very childish. Cadvan looked weary, but his eyes were hard. He turned and began to walk away. Maerad paused awhile and then followed him, afraid of being left behind in this eerie silence. He was walking very fast, and she had to run to catch up. When she did, she didn't draw even with him, but walked just behind. Her temper had ebbed as suddenly as it had appeared, but she didn't want to apologize.

  They walked in stubborn silence for more than two hours. The sun was warm on their backs now, and Maerad was tiring. Cadvan kept the pace fast, and she was by no means used to this punishing trekking, no matter how trained she was for hard labor. She was too proud to ask him to slow down, and gritted her teeth. She was beginning to hate his straight, unbending back, always before her, always unforgiving. There were still hours to go before sunset, when presumably they would stop, although it was quite possible that Cadvan would insist they keep going through the night. She had just swapped one tyrant for another.... When they got to this place they were going, Norloch or whatever it was called, maybe she could find her own way through the world; but for the moment she was stuck with him. Sweat trickled down her face. She was thirsty, and Cadvan had the waterbag.

  "We're making good pace," said Cadvan, turning at last. Maerad scowled at him, and he looked surprised. "Are you still angry? Put anger aside, child. It's no use."

  "I'm not a child, I said," said Maerad sullenly. "Stop treating me like an idiot."

  "If you are not a child, don't behave like one," Cadvan snapped. He turned to move off, then stopped, sighing, and turned back to her, holding out his hand. "Maerad, this is ridiculous. I'm sorry. I'm used to traveling alone. If I have been less than courteous to you, forgive me. I'm tired, and we have a long way to go unhoused. And this place worries me; I don't want to be out in the open tonight. Let's stop this bickering, yes?"

  He held out his hand, and slowly Maerad took it and nodded, swallowing. She felt ungracious, hot, and sulky under Cadvan's grave gaze.

  "I need your help," he said. "Maerad, be sure there are things that I will tell you, when it is the right time, and that I don't tell you now because I can't bear to, not because I think little of you. And there are other things I can't tell you, because I may not."

  "As you like," said Maerad. Suddenly she didn't care. Let him have his secrets.

  He gestured southward. "I want to get to a place I know before nightfall," he said. "It's not a protection, like the Irihel, but it will be safer than the open. It's still a league or more hence, and the afternoon is half gone. That's why I hurry."

  "Can I have a drink of water, please, before we start again?" asked Maerad.

  He pulled the waterbag out of his pack and handed it to her, drinking some himself. Then they began their trekking again.

  Cadvan led them closer to the mountains, and toward nightfall began to steer toward what looked like a spike or a standing stone set high on a small, oddly rounded hill. As they neared it, Maerad saw it was a ruin, bare even of moss, with empty slits for windows. It was getting late; the sun already threw the long shadows of the mountains over them, and Maerad could feel the chill of early dew. The land was now completely silent, and it frightened her; she felt as if the unseen hunt was drawing in, crouching, preparing for attack. She thought she would like it better if she could see what tracked them. This invisible stalking was unnerving.

  As they walked up the hill, slipping a little on the smooth turf, she asked what the ruin was.

  "It used to be a guardhouse," answered Cadvan. "Nothing else stands here but this. We did well
to make it by now."

  "What did it guard?" asked Maerad.

  "A great city," Cadvan said. "Its name is now long forgotten. Before the Silence this was a rich and populous country. The Nameless razed even the memory of this place. He took all its palaces and gardens down stone by stone, save this tower. Perhaps it had a use for him."

  They passed under a thick granite lintel into the roofless ruin. It had been a small tower, about fourteen feet square, and once a stair had led to a lookout high above. For the most part the walls, made of huge stones cunningly fitted together without cement of any kind, still stood high—although the roof had collapsed and the stairs and floors had long rotted, leaving the marks of fireplaces high on the walls where rooms once had been. There was only one doorway, and the slit windows were set high up in the walls. Cadvan threw down his pack.

  "We have but little time, and we must use it well, if we are to survive the night," he said. "Fire is our hope. We need wood, quickly, before it grows dark."

  They left the tower and went wood-gathering. Around the base of the hill grew some thorn trees, and two had been uprooted in a winter storm. "Dry, perfect firewood," Cadvan said. "I think there will be enough here." Maerad had opened her mouth to ask how they were to chop firewood with their bare hands when Cadvan drew a sword from beneath his cloak. "Forgive me, Arnost, for putting you to such usage!" he said, and began to hack the deadwood as easily as if he were cutting bread.