The Riddle

by Alison Croggon

  It wasn't fair. The tale of her life since leaving Gilman's Cot had been of finding what she loved, and almost at once losing it. Closely pursued by the Dark, she and Cadvan had fled Innail, heading for Norloch, the chief center of the Light in Annar. During their journey across Annar, Maerad had at last come into the Speech, the inborn language of the Bards, and had found her full powers. Her abilities were much greater and stranger than those of a normal Bard: she had vanquished a wight, the malign spirit of a dead king from the days of the Great Silence, which was beyond the magery of even the most powerful Bards. She had discovered that part of her strangeness was her Elemental blood, her Elidhu ancestry that led back to Ardina, Queen of the golden realm of Rachida, which lay hidden in the center of the Great Forest. But she was still nowhere near able to control the powers of her Gift.

  When they had at last reached Norloch ...

  Maerad flinched, thinking of the burning citadel they had left behind them only two days earlier. It was in Norloch that she had met Nelac, Cadvan's old teacher, a wise and gentle man who had instated her as a full Bard of the White Flame. The simple ceremony had revealed her Bardic Name, the secret name that was an aspect of her deepest self. It had confirmed that she was, as Cadvan had suspected, the Fated One, prophesied to bring about the downfall of the Nameless One in his darkest rising. Elednor Edil-Amarandh na: the starspeech echoed in her mind, with its cold, inhumanly beautiful music. Yet, for all her innate potencies, Maerad was but a young girl, unschooled and vulnerable: it was a mystery to her how she was to defeat the Nameless One, and it seemed more likely to her than not that she would fail. Prophecies, as Cadvan had once told her, often went awry; her birth was foreseen, but not her choices, and it was through her choices that her destiny would unfold.

  And it was in Norloch that she had last seen her brother. The loss of Hem seemed the cruelest of all. She had found, in Hem, a missing part of herself, and losing him was the old grief all over again, multiplied by new anxieties. When they had fled Norloch, it had been safer to split their paths: Cadvan and Maerad's path lay north, and Saliman took Hem south to his home in Turbansk, there to learn the ways of Barding. But even if Turbansk did not fall, even if Hem survived the coming war, there was no certainty that she would live to see him again. She was pursued by the Dark, and now perhaps by the Light as well: the Bards of Norloch had no doubt put a price on both their heads. Enkir, the First Bard, might have been killed in the battle that raged as they fled Norloch: Maerad hoped with all her heart that he was dead.

  Involuntarily, Maerad's lip curled. A decade ago, Enkir had sold Maerad and her mother, Milana, into slavery. He had betrayed the School of Pellinor, and because of him it had been burned to the ground, its people slain without mercy, its learning and music smashed beyond recall, its beauty quenched forever. Because of Enkir, Maerad had seen her father murdered, and had watched her mother wither away in Gilman's Cot, her power broken. But Enkir was cunning, and very few people knew or suspected his treachery. He was the First Bard in Norloch, the most important in all Annar. Who, not knowing what Maerad knew, would believe that such a man was a traitor? And who would trust the word of a young, untutored girl against the word of a First Bard?

  It had been two days since they had fled Norloch, rescued by Owan d'Aroki in his humble fishing smack. They had slipped unseen out of the harbor, even as the citadel's high towers collapsed in flames and a terrible battle was fought on the quays. Now they ran northwest on a charmed wind, scudding swiftly over the swell. The sea's deep solitude had done much to clear Maerad's mind, although she found it hard to sleep on the boat and suffered recurring bouts of seasickness. But now the weather was fair, and Owan said they should reach Busk, the main town of the Isle of Thorold, within another two days.

  Perhaps, at the end of this brief, uncomfortable voyage, they would be able to rest. She longed for rest as a thirsty man longs for water; every fiber of her being cried out for it. But underneath, Maerad knew that even if they found a haven, it would be temporary at best: nowhere was safe.

  And overriding everything was the need to find the Treesong, although no one really knew what it was.

  The Treesong is an ancient word for the Speech, Nelac had told her in Norloch. It signifies that which is beyond words. And it is also a song, supposedly written down when the Bards first appeared in Annar, in which the mystery of the Speech is held. It is long lost. Even in the first days after the Silence, when Bards began to find again much that had vanished, many said that it never existed. Maerad felt it was like being on a quest for moonbeams.

  All this passed through Maerad's mind quicker than it would take to tell, and she sighed heavily, prompting Cadvan to turn and look at her, his eyes suddenly clear and present. Around his left cheek and eye socket curled the marks of three cruel whiplashes, injuries from their battle with a wight. The wounds were still crisscrossed with tiny herringbone stitches, and when Cadvan smiled, as he did now, he winced slightly.

  "Well, Maerad," he said gently. "I suppose you should try to go back to sleep. It's deep night yet, and we still have some hard sailing to do."

  "As if I know anything about sailing," said Maerad. "You know I just get in the way. But maybe I could do some watching for you."

  "We need a lookout," said Cadvan, nodding. "It is wearing, I tell you, sailing so hard with just me and Owan. The sooner we reach Busk, the sooner we can rest."

  The sun rose the following day in a perfectly blue sky. Owan gravely professed himself satisfied with the weather and said they were well on track for the Isle of Thorold.

  With his olive skin, lively face, and gray eyes, Owan looked typically Thoroldian, but he was uncharacteristically taciturn for those loquacious islanders, although it could have been exhaustion. Both he and Cadvan were gray with tiredness. The White Owl was Owan's pride; she might have been only a small fishing vessel, but she was a beauty of her kind, every spar and plank lovingly laid. In her making, each part of her had been embedded with charms, to keep her from upset or to ward away hostile creatures of the deep; she had also a steering spell placed on her so she could, in a limited way, sail herself. Unfortunately, under the stiff wind Cadvan had summoned to the sails, this was too risky, and Owan and Cadvan took turns day and night at the tiller. When Cadvan was too tired to keep the wind, the White Owl sailed on the sea's weather, but he never slept for more than a couple of hours at a time. Maerad had already witnessed Cadvan's powers of endurance, but his stubborn will impressed her anew: his face was haggard and his mouth grim, but he moved with the alertness of a well-rested man.

  Maerad sat in the bow, trying to stay out of the way. She was still disconcerted by how tiny the boat was, a mote in the vastness of the ocean. And she was miserable with seasickness. Cadvan managed to stay it a little, but he was so busy, she felt hesitant to bother him and had decided to suffer it, unless it became unbearable. She hadn't been able to eat for the past day and night, and her emptiness made her feel lightheaded.

  There was, Maerad thought, nothing to see except water: water, water, and more water, and on the northern horizon a darkish blur that might be land or might be a bank of cloud. It frightened her a little: she had spent her childhood among mountains and had never imagined that space could seem so limitless. The White Owl was pitching strangely with the wind, bumping across the tops of the swells, which probably accounted for her nausea, and she gazed with an empty mind across the endless blue-green backs of the waves.

  By midmorning she had entered an almost trancelike state, but toward midafternoon something captured her attention. At first she followed it idly with her eyes: a darker current rippling crossways through the larger patterns of the waves, beyond which the path of their wake spread and dispersed over the surface of the sea. As she watched, it seemed to draw a little nearer. She sat up straighter and leaned forward, squinting, and stared. It was hard to be sure, but it did seem to her that it was a definite trail, and she had an uneasy feeling that it was following their boat. It had
something about it, even at that distance, of a hunting dog on a scent.

  She called Cadvan, and nodding toward Owan, he came over to Maerad. Wordlessly, she pointed down the White Owl's wake, and he leaned forward, shading his eyes.

  "Can you see something?" she asked.

  He shook his head.

  "There's a sort of . . . trail, in the water," said Maerad. "I think it's following us. Just there, by the wake."

  Cadvan finally saw what she was pointing at, and studied it briefly. "Have you been watching it long?" he asked.

  "Awhile. It's hard to tell at this distance, but I think it's drawing closer."

  Cadvan called Owan over. He lashed the tiller and came back to them, and when he saw the dark line in the water, his face tightened.

  "Do you know what it is?" asked Cadvan.

  "No," said Owan. "But I can guess." He looked at Cadvan. "And if it is what I'm thinking, then it would be best to outrun it. Can you whistle any stronger wind, do you think?"

  Cadvan grimaced up at the sails. "Perhaps," he said. "How strong is the Owl, Owan? I fear her breaking if the wind blows too hard."

  "Strong enough," said Owan shortly, and went back to the tiller. Cadvan's shoulders sagged, and he sighed, as if he were mentally preparing himself for an effort beyond his strength. He went back to his post near the prow of the boat and lifted his arms, speaking words that were tossed away by the wind so Maerad could not hear them. She knew he was using the Speech, and she felt a prickle in her skin, a resonance of magery. At once, the sails bulged with a new, stiff blast of wind, and the White Owl sprang willingly forward like a horse urged to a gallop that it had, until that moment, restrained within itself. Maerad's neck snapped back with the speed, and she put out her hand to steady herself and looked down the wake toward the ominous track in the sea behind them.

  For a little while it seemed to vanish, and she relaxed, but with the new motion of the craft, her sickness came back, worse than before. She battled with herself, trying to find a stillness within her body that could counterbalance the nausea, and it seemed to work for a moment. But her nausea returned threefold when she looked out over the bow again. Whatever it was had more than matched their new speed; it was now cutting through the White Owl's wake, gaining on them, and two white waves like wings fanned out behind a dark form she could now see breaking the surface of the water.

  She cried out, and Cadvan and Owan looked back. Owan shrugged.

  "You can't whistle up more?" he asked Cadvan flatly.

  Cadvan shook his head.

  "Well, then . . ." Owan stared over the bow, scratching his head. "I'm pretty sure I'm right. I've never seen one so fast, though. And it's behaving strange, for an ondril."

  "What's an ondril?" asked Maerad, trying to sound as casual as Cadvan and Owan. They could have been discussing a slight problem with that evening's meal.

  "A kind of snake, a serpent of the sea," said Cadvan. "I mislike this."

  "It's a mighty big one, if it is," said Owan. "They usually leave fishing craft well alone, unless you're unlucky enough to venture into their territory. But we're going so fast now, we'd have long gone past its borders. Normally an ondril would have just turned around by now and gone back to its place."

  "It has the stink of Enkir about it," said Cadvan.

  "So he lives," said Owan. "I'd believe anything, after what I saw in Norloch. Didn't know Enkir was a sea mage, all the same."

  "He is many things, alas, and few of them good," said Cadvan. "And he draws on powers far beyond his own native abilities. I think he has summoned some creature of the Abyss out of the shadows. I did not think that he was dead; I think this monster proves that he yet moves against us."

  "Well, what can we do?" Maerad stood up, suddenly impatient.

  "We'll have to fight it," said Cadvan. "It's obviously following us. And we're not going to outrun it."

  Maerad looked back. The creature, whatever it was, was gaining fast. Its head, the only part of it that was visible, was a massive black wedge that drove through the water like a spear; even at that distance it looked unimaginably huge. At the thought of being attacked in their flimsy boat in the middle of a great desert of water, Maerad's stomach lurched with fright.

  "I'd let the wind drop if I were you, Cadvan," said Owan, breaking the heavy silence. "No point in using up that energy now."

  "Yes, it's no use having it snapping at our tail," answered Cadvan.

  Instantly the sails slackened, and the White Owl slowed and then halted almost completely. Without the charmed wind, only the lightest of breezes ruffled the waves. Owan spun the boat around, and they looked at the creature driving inexorably toward them.

  "Do you think you could sail straight at it?" Cadvan asked suddenly.

  Owan cocked his head and thought briefly. "Aye, easily enough, if you put a breeze in the sails," he said. "Think you that's a good idea?"

  "I don't," said Maerad violently. "I think it's mad."

  "We may be able to wrest the initiative," said Cadvan. He looked at Maerad and smiled with a sudden sweetness that illuminated and transformed his somber face. "Come, Maerad. It is far better to put away fear than to be driven by it. You know that."

  Yes, I know that, Maerad thought sardonically. But I'm tired of having to be brave when really I'm so terrified I scarce know what to do. She swallowed hard, and then stood and drew her sword.

  Cadvan nodded, lifted his arms, and spoke. "Il sammachel Estate de . . . I summon you, Wind of the West..." Hearing the Speech used in its full power always sent a thrill down Maerad's spine, as if she had stepped into a fresh mountain spring from the morning of the world. For a moment she forgot their peril, feeling only the irresistible tug of Cadvan's command, and she turned to face him. He glimmered faintly with a silvery light.

  The sails bulged and the White Owl creaked as she leaned into the wind, and Owan guided the boat back down her wake, toward the black thing that now made its own huge wake as it swept toward them. The speed with which they rushed toward each other was dizzying.

  Cadvan turned to Maerad, his hair whipping his face. "I think this creature does not expect us to rush it," he said. He drew his sword, Arnost, and it glimmered with a pale fire. "Perhaps we will catch it unawares. Look to your Gift, Maerad."

  Maerad held up Irigan, her own sword, and an answering light blazed up from its hilt.

  "Owan, I'll make a fastening charm so you are not thrown out if the monster hits the Owl," Cadvan said. "Stay your course until the last moment, then turn north—sharp as you are able. Maerad and I will attempt the rest."

  Owan nodded, his face unreadable.

  "You do the fastening, too, Maerad," Cadvan continued. "Be alert. I have not encountered one of these creatures before. The eyes are vulnerable; hit there first. And it is said that under the carapace of the head there is a soft spot, just where the skull meets the neck. Watch for it! And may the Light protect us!"

  Maerad nodded fiercely, clutching her blade. There was no time for fear: the monster was so close that she could see its head scything through the waves, a fearsome wedge-shaped thing, bigger than their boat, greenish black and spotted with yellow-and-green weeds and parasites, with two huge, pale, unblinking eyes and a wide lipless mouth. It stank like brackish, stagnant water. As their tiny craft neared it, the mouth opened to reveal a nightmare of fangs, rows behind rows of snaggled yellowish teeth, like a cave of knives.

  Maerad thought they were going to plunge into that dark gullet, to be shredded and crushed. For a crucial moment she was too terrified to move. Beside her, Cadvan lashed forward with his sword, and a bolt of white light sprang from the blade and hit the fearsome head. Maerad saw one eye go out like a quenched lamp, suddenly clouded with black blood, and then, just as she thought they would surely be swallowed, the sail swung around and the White Owl darted past the horrific mouth, which snapped shut on nothing with a crash, drenching them with seawater.

  The boat was bobbing wildly, but Cadvan leane
d forward, his sword raised, and Maerad scanned the side of the monster with furious concentration. Suddenly she saw it, where the carapace of the skull left a gap, revealing darker, unscaled skin. She was filled suddenly with a passionate hatred: she remembered Enkir's pitiless eyes, his cold voice that had condemned her to slavery. She struck out with her blade, crying aloud words that seemed to come into her mind without volition: "Takarmerne, nachadam kul del Be cursed, monster of the Dark!"

  Two bolts of fire arced from the boat: one bounced off the hard scales of the creature's long body and vanished, sizzling into the waves, but the other clove deep into the unmailed skin. The sea boiled as the ondril thrashed violently and roared, a deafening noise that raised all the hairs on Maerad's skin. For a while she saw nothing but a white chaos of spray. She heard Cadvan shouting "Back!," fearing they would be swamped, and felt the boat move under Owan's sure handling.

  When she could see again, they were a safe distance from the ondril. For the first time, Maerad could see how big it really was: its thick, scaled body stretched back for hundreds of spans, coiling and uncoiling in spasms of fury and agony that sent up geysers of spray A black cloud of blood boiled out into the sea, reaching even to their boat, and Cadvan called Owan to draw back still farther.

  "Have we killed it?" Maerad asked.

  "I doubt it," said Cadvan. "It may give up and go to lick its wounds. But I think we dare not count on that. I think it more likely that it will come for us now in a fury of revenge, and we will be most imperiled if it dives and comes up from beneath. I think we will need to blind it, at least."

  He turned to Owan, and Owan simply nodded. "Best be quick, I reckon," he said. "Before it works out where we are."