Part 18 (1/2)

”Perhaps Dernhil knew there was no time. He had foresight . . .” Cadvan sighed and looked away. ”But he was ever one who looked clearly into his own heart. That is the beauty of his poems. Would that all of us were so lucid.” He fell silent, following his own thoughts.

”But I've learned how to hate, too,” said Maerad. ”I thought I hated Gilman, back when I was little, but I only despised him. I hate Enkir. I hate the Nameless One. I hate them for everything they've destroyed. For destroying my life, and Hem's life.” She looked again at her maimed hand. ”I just don't know where it stops. When you think about it, are the Light and the Dark so different? Why is it right to hate sometimes and not at other times? Why is it right to destroy this creature, and not that one?”

”It is never right. Sometimes, Maerad, there is no right thing...”

”Well, I do not like the world that makes it so.” Maerad clenched her hands under her cloak. ”And I will never like it.” She took a deep breath. ”You know what Ardina meant, Cadvan, as well as I do. She was saying that I have to embrace that hatred and that darkness and thata”murderousnessa” inside me, if I'm to understand myself, if I want to know how to use those powers. The strange thing is, I thought I had embraced them. But when I think about it...”

Cadvan listened alertly, his eyes dark, as if he knew what Maerad was about to say and wanted to stop her saying it.

”When I think about it, I know I've been too afraid of that hatred to really feel it. You know, after I destroyed those Hulls, the first time, I was so frightened of what I had done. But underneath that, I was so excited, I felta”well, it was something like a kind ofa”even like happiness, exhilaration, something like that. I think that feeling frightened me more than what I had done.”

”What are you saying, Maerad?” said Cadvan tensely.

”Cadvan, you know what I'm saying.” Maerad looked at him with despair. ”Please, please, don't pretend that you don't know what I'm saying. You, of all people ...”

”I think you're saying that you want to open the darkness within you.”

”Yes.” Maerad held up her hand to stop Cadvan's objections. ”I know what you're going to say, Cadvan. I know it. I know all the arguments.”

”Maerad, that seems to me a grievous misunderstandinga” you can't mean it.” Cadvan was very pale. ”Yes, I of all people know that exhilaration you speak of. And I of all people also know its cost. It destroyed my youth, Maerad, and killed one I loved more than life itself. And I fear that if you turn this way, you become even as the Nameless One himself. Perhaps worse. No, Maerad, I do not permit this.”

”It's not a question of whether you permit me or not,” said Maerad stiffly.

”Then I beg you, Maerad. I beg you by the long friends.h.i.+p between us. Do not go that way. If you choose this path, I can only foresee doom. For all of us, not only for yourself.”

”But if I can use these powers properly, if I can enter my full strength, I might be able to find Hem,” said Maerad. ”And you're right, Cadvan, we don't have much chance of finding him otherwise. Maybe no chance at all.”

Cadvan said nothing for a long time. He stood up and walked out into the night, and Maerad could hear him moving around in the darkness, and then talking quietly to the horses. Maerad sensed the turbulence in his mind, and it grieved her; at the same time, she felt she had no choice but to do as Ardina had suggested, and she knew that she would attempt to wake her full powers whether Cadvan approved or not. But she would greatly prefer it if she had his support. The memory of her idle experiment the night before was still fresh in her mind; she didn't want any repeat of that torment.

And most of all, despite the growing determination within hera”which amounted to a certainty that she had no choice, that she had to try or fail utterly in her questa”she was desperately afraid. She didn't want to make the attempt alone. She needed Cadvan.

At last Cadvan came back to the circle of firelight, and sat cross-legged next to Maerad. ”I understand that you feel you must do this thing,” he said. ”And I cannot say that I think it is right. But I also know that I can't stop you, and that you will do it anyway, whatever I say. So.” He stared at the ground, his face dark and troubled, and Maerad held her breath. ”My one request is that you wait a day. Don't attempt whatever it is you think you should do until you've slept on it. I will not abandon you, Maerad; it's too late for me to turn away. And I will do my best to help you, even though you plan to do what I think you should not, even though I fear the ruin of all our enterprise in this venture. I will do this, out of the love that I bear you. For no other reason. May I be forgiven under the justice of the Light.”

Maerad was overwhelmed with relief. She hadn't understood until that moment how much she had feared that Cadvan would abandon her. Unable to speak, she reached out and took Cadvan's hand. He clasped her small white hand in both of his and looked down at it, earnestly examining the broken, dirty nails, the calluses, the small white scars that marked her skin.

”I swear, Maerad, that I have never said anything in my life that was harder to say.” He looked up and smiled at her, a broken smile that made Maerad's heart contract with pain.

”Everything is difficult,” she whispered. ”Maybe that's something else that I've learned.”

After breaking their fast the following day, Maerad and Cadvan discussed whether to move on or to stay where they were. Maerad thought it figured little where they were: for the past couple of days they had been moving east along the northern edge of the floods, without attempting to venture southward over the lands where the waters had subsided.

The floods had left a layer of silt over everything, along with a litter of broken branches tangled with dead gra.s.ses, and embedded in the mud there were the bloated bodies of animals. Over everything hung the sweet, disgusting stench of rotting flesh: for all its chilliness, Maerad was glad for the freshening wind from the eastern mountains, which stopped the odor of decay from becoming overwhelming. It also lifted the mist that had obscured their view for the past few days, and they could see far over the lowlands. Before them stretched a melancholy swamp, dotted with muddy pools that were rapidly turning stagnant. The most st.u.r.dy trees had survived, but many had been snapped off at the trunk by the violence of the waters, and the gra.s.ses that weren't covered in silt were flattened and yellowed by the water. For all her impatience, Maerad sympathized with the horses' refusal to venture into the wreckage of the flood. Cadvan said that if the weather continued clear, especially with the drying wind, it would be safe to move south within a couple of days. Darsor kept studiously silent on the subject.

They decided, in the end, to find a place that offered more shelter than the overhanging rock that had been their roof the night before. Cadvan also wanted to find a site that was defensible and that gave them a view of the surrounding area, in case Maerad's exercise of power attracted unwelcome notice. In this part of Annar there was no chance of finding a Bardhome, but they thought that perhaps they might discover, among the strange rock formations of the Hollow Lands, something like the rocky shelter that they had discovered the day before last.

It was some time before they discovered what they were looking for. On top of a low hill, a tumulus of huge stones formed a natural cave big enough to house the two Bards, and to the side there was even a kind of porch where the horses could be out of the wind. They stopped here, although it was only just after midday, and set up camp, gathering a high pile of the sagebrush that grew thickly around this area to use as fuel. It was dry and easy to light, and it made a fragrant smoke; but it burned quickly. The sky was still overcast, but the clouds were high and held no smell of rain. The wind had risen during the morning, and seemed to have grown colder; it was a relief to be out of its punis.h.i.+ng chill. As the homely light of their fire flickered over the gray stone walls, Maerad felt almost cheerful.

”So what do you plan to do?” said Cadvan, after they had finished eating their noonday meal.

Maerad glanced at him in surprise; it was unlike Cadvan to be so forthright. ”I don't know,” she said. ”I've been wondering all morning. It's not like anything I've tried to do before, because, in a way, I'm not trying to do anything. I mean, when I've done things before, either it just happened because I was frightened or angry, or because I needed to make something happen. Like when I first turned into a wolf, it was because Ardina told me to do it, and I just thought of what I wanted to happen and went from there; and fighting the Landrost was kind of the same, only more difficult, and all I thought about was how to stop him killing my friends. But this isn't like that. I want to be able to use all my powers, and I know that I have to finda”to find the whole of mea”but how do you do that? I mean, it's no good just wis.h.i.+ng...”

She paused, and then directed a sharp glance at Cadvan. ”In a way, I don't know why the idea upsets you so much,” she said. ”Doesn't the Balance talk about the Dark and Light within you? Haven't you said often that you cannot perceive the Light without the Darkness? And surely that's what I want to do?”

Cadvan looked taken aback. ”Yes, you're right,” he said. ”And there is a Balance to be found. But there is a darkness in you, Maerad, that makes me wary; it is not of a kind that I have felt before. I have tried to speak of it to you.” A shadow pa.s.sed over his face as he recalled their worst quarrel, a breach that had almost ended in both their deaths. ”I fear that in that darkness, there is no Balance. Or, perhaps, that there is not any kind of Balance as Bards understand it.”

”Perhaps the Knowing of the Bards doesn't cover everything there is to know,” said Maerad.

”Barding does not pretend to hold all knowledge,” said Cadvan, his voice hard. Maerad looked away. ”All the same, do not think to hold the Elementals as all-wise, Maerad, merely because they have Knowing that we do not.”

Maerad thought of the cold, arrogant face of Enkir. ”Some Bards do believe that their Knowing is above any other kind,” she said.

”Aye,” said Cadvan, catching her thought. ”But those Bards do not observe the Balance, Maerad. Their minds are all too literal, and brook no contradiction. But we could argue of the Balance all day, and still get no closer to the truth. I return to my earlier question: what do you plan to do?”

Maerad drew her cloak around her and leaned closer to the fire, feeling its healing warmth on her wind-chapped cheeks. ”I will try to see if I am bigger,” she said. ”I was thinkinga”when I change into wolfskin, I go inside, deeper and deeper and deeper, until I have no Name at all. And when I fought with the Landrost, I went out, further and further and further, until I was so far away I no longer knew who I was, or even what I was.”

She sat back on her heels and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

”So I thought, what if I do neither of these things, but try to stay where I am, and see if I can become more? I mean, perhaps when I go in or out, I am like a spear, a narrow thing, so I can pierce through all those layers of being. But perhaps I need to bea”well, something like a lake. Something broad as well as deep and high.” She looked up, frowning with concentration, and when she met Cadvan's intent gaze, her brow cleared and she suddenly laughed. ”I suppose I've just talked a mountain of nonsense!”

Cadvan did not smile. ”It might not be the most common of sense,” he said. ”But I do not think you speak nonsense, Maerad of Pellinor.”

Cadvan insisted that Maerad be prepared for her experiment, although he said that she would probably sense best what she should do. He had decided to cast a glimveil over their camp, in case the release of magery attracted unwelcome attention; although he thought privately that if Maerad did succeed in unlocking her full powers, no charm he could make could possibly contain or conceal them.

Maerad pondered for a short time, and then washed her face and hands in rainwater collected in a pool on the rocks nearby. As she did, she remembered vividly the preparation she had made for her meeting with Inka-Reb, the powerful Dhillarearen in the far north to whom she had journeyed with her cousin Dharin in search of the Treesong. She had not thought about Inka-Reb much since; her life had been full of so many things, and that meeting had been strange and disturbing. She saw his bulky, huge figure clearly in her mind's eye, naked, smeared with ash and fat, squatting by the fire in his cave, and she remembered the wolves who surrounded hima” the same wolves who had later accepted her as one of their own. Inka-Reb had an inner power that awed her. Perhaps if anyone could teach her how to come fully into her Gift, he could; but even if she struggled all the way north again, she guessed that he would probably refuse. In this matter, she was on her own. She thought that perhaps Inka-Reb might not disapprove of what she was trying to do. He was, after all, contemptuous of both the Dark and the Light.

When she returned from was.h.i.+ng herself, she suggested that she and Cadvan bring out their lyres, which lay, untouched since Innail, in their packs. He looked at her in surprise, but brought out his lyre without further comment. Maerad held hers in the crook of her arm, gazing thoughtfully at the inscrutable runes that decorated its plain wood. She knew what they were now; they were the runes of the Treesong, its power captured and written down by the great Afinil Bard Nelsor, in the days of the Dhyllin. But she still didn't know how to make them sing, how to release them back to the Elidhu.

”I thought,” said Maerad, clearing her throat, ”I thought that we could sing ”The Song of Making.'”

Cadvan looked pleased, but only said, ”Your wish is my command.”

Maerad felt unaccountably nervous, as if she were performing in front of a hall of critical Bards, instead of in the empty wilderness. She held her lyre in her hands, and let the magery rise within her until she was surrounded by a nimbus of light, and her left hand was whole again. She nodded to Cadvan, and struck the opening chords.

They sang in close harmony, Cadvan's baritone and Maerad's pure, husky voice filling their shelter, and Maerad felt all her sorrow and anxieties lift and dissolve in the sheer beauty of the music.

”First was dark, and the darkness Was all ma.s.s 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, was the Light in darkness, And where Light fell, there was its shadow, And the shadow moved and a dark eye opened ...”

It was the first song Maerad had chosen to sing in her daylong preparation to meet Inka-Reb. She had been taught this song when she was a child, and had heard it many times in the past year; and every time she heard it, it showed her new, more complex meanings. As she sang the opening stanzas, she realized how deeply it chimed with her recent thoughts. I need, she thought, my own dark eye to open ...

As the final chords died on the air, she bowed her head and let the light of magery die out of her, and both she and Cadvan were silent for a long time. Finally Maerad lifted her head and looked Cadvan straight in the eye.

”I will begin now,” she said.

Cadvan nodded. He did not seem in the least afraid, but he looked very sad, as if he were bidding Maerad farewell as she left on a long journey.