The Riddle

by Alison Croggon

  As the afternoon wore on, more and more people swelled the crowds along the Elakmirathon. Lamos, the proprietor of the Copper Mermaid, shut his gates so no one else could get in, and still people climbed over the walls. All the balconies and roofs along the waterfront, every available wall and window were festooned with people, all talking and laughing. Despite a cool breeze coming in off the sea, the press of people made it uncomfortably hot. Looking at the crowd, Maerad wondered aloud why nobody was crushed.

  "We're really quite orderly at this time of day, despite appearances," Honas answered, grinning. "The real drinking starts later. During the day, it's all eating. And by then all the crowds will have gone to their own celebrations. We've seldom had any trouble at Midsummer. A few brawls maybe, later. But shhh, it's starting."

  Maerad craned her neck to see. She could hear a huge drum being hit in a solemn, commanding rhythm. Suddenly she saw an enormously fat man with a gilt-and-crimson drum hung around his neck. Where he walked the crowd parted miraculously, although it seemed impossible among those hundreds of people that any space should be available at all, and behind him came the procession.

  First there were tumblers and jugglers, all dressed in bright primary colors. Some of the jugglers were throwing charmed balls that looked like fish or birds with wings of jewels and gold that flashed in the sun, or real stars, or blue and green and red flames. Maerad watched the acrobats with her mouth open: they leaped in impossible tumbling arcs onto each other's shoulders, or walked on their hands or on stilts, or built themselves into human towers made of a dozen people. She clapped her hands with delight.

  After them came a cavalcade of dozens of children—some riding stocky mountain ponies whose saddles and bridles were decorated with feathers and flowers. Maerad thought the ponies, which often walked backward or sideways instead of where they were supposed to go, looked less than enthusiastic about all the fuss. One dumped a tiny girl to the ground. Instead of bursting into tears, she scrambled up, her high headdress of dyed pink feathers sadly broken, whacked the pony on its rump, and swung herself up again to a cheer. All the children were dressed as fantastically as the Thoroldians could manage: dresses with several layers of flounces and lace, shirts and trousers with brilliant brocades, and masks made of feathers, glass, silk, and mirrors. They wore wonderful headdresses nodding with feathers, many of which looked rather unstable. Some had met the same sad fate as the little girl's.

  After the children came a series of floats representing the different guilds of Busk, drawn by gorgeously harnessed horses. There was clearly great competition between the guilds to see who could make the most spectacular float, and each one seemed more extravagant than the last. And last of all came the float for the School of Busk, with a dozen Bards working glimmer-spells so it appeared to be floating in the air on its own. They had created an enchanted summer garden with colorful blooms six times their usual size, and a chorus of exotic birds singing The Song of Making in Thoroldian in unearthly voices. Maerad had known this song since she was a child, when she had been taught it by Mirlad, although he had told her nothing of what it meant. She recognized the melody, and her heart lifted.

  In the middle of the garden grew the Tree of Light, just as Nerili had shown it to Maerad at her first lesson, but much bigger. It was in full flower. Above the Tree appeared to float a huge unhewn crystal, which Cadvan explained was an image of the Mirror of Maras, the stone used in the Rite of Renewal. As the float passed, a sweet perfume drifted up to the applauding Bards.

  "Nerili has surpassed herself this year," said Kabeka, clapping enthusiastically. "That was very well done."

  After the Bards' float there were a few more musicians and tumblers, and then the parade was over. People whistled and cheered for a while, reluctant to leave, and then everyone began to wander off on their own business. In a surprisingly short time the huge crowd had dispersed, and Lamos reopened the gates. The makilon player and drummer began their music again and a few people started to dance.

  Maerad sighed with sheer happiness. "That was the best thing I have ever seen," she said, her eyes shining. "Oh, it was wonderful!"

  "You just want to be an illusioner," said Cadvan, laughing at her.

  "I can think of worse things," she said. "Look how much people enjoy it. And it must be so exciting to be able to make things like that, and to let people see them."

  "Yes, indeed," said Cadvan. "Though there are not many places where they love the arts of illusion as much as they do here, and have brought it to such perfection. In most other Schools they are scorned as a minor part of Barding. Perhaps, one day, you will be the finest illusioner of them all. But now, alas, you walk a darker path."

  Maerad felt as if he had poured cold water over her. She wanted to kick Cadvan for reminding her of the shadows that pursued her, even here, and for popping her bubble of delight. She scowled at him, and turned to talk to Honas, and Cadvan looked reflectively into his glass and said nothing. Something was troubling him.

  As the sun slipped lower in the sky, the Bards left the tavern and started to make their way back to the School. The Rite of Renewal took place at moonrise in the center of the School, where the music house, the library, the meeting hall, and Nerili's Bardhouse surrounded a large square. It was paved with pink and white granite in a checkerboard pattern, but otherwise was without decoration. In its exact center was a round white dais.

  The square was full of people, both townsfolk and Bards, but there was a solemnity in this gathering that had been entirely absent from the procession. Maerad sensed the presence of the Bards' collective power as she and Cadvan weaved their way through the crowd toward the dais. It was like a music or a light in her head, but she could never quite find the words to describe it; another sense woke within her and stirred in recognition. These are my people, she thought, and I am glad to be with them.

  Cadvan led Maerad right up to the dais, so they were standing with the Bards of the First and Second Circles and the members of the Chamber of Busk, who nodded gravely in greeting. Maerad couldn't see Nerili anywhere.

  She looked up into the sky where the full moon was just swinging clear of the horizon, casting a still, white light over the gathering.

  Before long she began to hear strains of music—flutes and a lyre—and a hush fell. This was not wild Thoroldian dancing music, but the pure music of Bards. Its complex clarity rang over the crowd, and a listening silence rippled out from the musicians as they came closer. Then Maerad saw Nerili, robed in white, with the white diadem of her status hung from a silver fillet on her forehead, slowly pacing toward the middle of the square. Behind her were three musicians, all Bards of the First Circle, and before her walked Elenxi, with the Mirror of Maras floating before him, guided by his hands. Maerad sensed with a deep thrill that this was no mere glimmerspell, no deception of the eye, but a real magic: a magery of transformation that released the Mirror from the laws of the natural world.

  The small procession stepped solemnly onto the dais, and the three musicians arranged themselves so they faced out: north, south, and east. Elenxi placed the Mirror in the center of the dais, where it remained as if he had put it on an invisible plinth. He stood so he was facing west. Then the music stopped.

  In the sudden silence, Nerili circled the dais with her arms uplifted, her face turned out to the crowd.

  "Welcome, and thrice welcome," she said, her voice reaching effortlessly to those at the back of the crowd. "We are come to the Rite of Renewal."

  Everyone in the square held up their arms in reply and spoke with one voice. "May the Light bless us!"

  "May the Light bless us all, and make true our tongues, and truer our hearts, and truest of all our deeds."

  "May the Light bless us!"

  Now Nerili was standing next to the Mirror, her arms still upraised. She began to glimmer with a silver light, which grew until she was almost as bright as the moon itself. Then, with a startling suddenness, she picked up the Mirror and cast it to the
ground. Even though Maerad had been told of what happened during the rite, she gasped; the stone smashed into a rainbow of shards, with a flash like lightning. It seemed an act of terrible violence against so beautiful a thing.

  "The old year has passed, and is now a thing of memory and dream: of regret and loss and joy, of birth and death, of hope realized and hope disappointed," she said.

  "The old year has gone," came the response.

  "And now the new year is to come, returning to us everything that is ours: our dreams and memories, our regrets and losses and joys, our births and deaths, and our hope."

  "And the new year is to come."

  Nerili began to sing The Song of Making. Maerad had always thought this most Bardic of songs was beautiful, but this was the first time she had heard it in the Speech, invested with its full power, and for the first time she realized what the song really was. The hair stirred on her neck. No instrument supported Nerili's voice; it rang, a full, rich contralto, into the absolute silence of the square.

  She turned to Cadvan, wanting to share her wonder, and was brought up short. Cadvan's face was tight with anxiety. She looked back at Nerili. She couldn't see anything wrong, but now she watched with closer attention. Perhaps, although Maerad had never seen the Rite before, she could sense something that ought not to be there: a heaviness, a prickling shadow that was not at first perceptible.

  Nerili continued to sing The Song of Making, and with each stanza she grew brighter until the power she was exerting began to make Maerad's head buzz. Very gradually the shards of the broken Mirror began to lift from the ground and floated in the air. Maerad drew in her breath. Slowly, slowly, every fragment of the Mirror began to come to the center of the dais, and as Nerili reached the final stanza of the song, all the broken pieces joined together, each fitting into its original place. But it was still not whole; it was still only a cracked stone.

  Nerili put her hands over the Mirror and her power increased yet again. Light blazed from her hands and her face, making her seem insubstantial, no longer human. Suddenly, so quickly Maerad couldn't see when it happened, the Mirror was whole again: not mended, but remade as if it had never been shattered. There was no sound: it was as if hundreds of people held their breath.

  Nerili drooped, as if she were suddenly weary, and most of the light went out of her. But now the crystal was blazing with radiance, the brightest thing in the square, throwing strange black shadows back over the crowd. She straightened herself with a visible effort, and placing her hands on the crystal she looked within it. Maerad couldn't see her face, but after a short time she saw her shoulders tense, and her hands clench, so the knuckles went white. Then it was as if somebody had cut all the strings in her body, and she slipped to the ground in a faint.

  Before Maerad knew what had happened, Cadvan had bounded onto the dais next to the Mirror of Maras and was looking within it himself. No one else had moved; each person present was frozen, as if possessed by sudden dread. Maerad glanced swiftly behind her and saw hundreds of faces all weirdly stamped with the same shock. She looked back at Cadvan: he was now brilliant with magery, his incandescent hands holding the blazing Mirror. She felt the force of his power with amazement; she had never before seen Cadvan like this: unleashed, undimmed by injury. And gradually an image began to form in the air above him, a luminous semblance of the Tree of Light. It was the same Tree and yet it looked different from the one Nerili had shown Maerad: the light it shed was a rich gold rather than silver, its blossoms subtly ruddier, the fruit a deeper gold.

  A gasp came from the square, as hundreds of people let out their breath.

  "Behold the new year, renewed and given back to you!" cried Cadvan.

  "Behold the new year!"

  The response came back, and the ceremony was over, but from the crowd came only a few ragged cheers. Cadvan took the Mirror of Maras and gave it to Elenxi, and the musicians began to play. Solemnly, in the reverse order in which they had come, they stepped off the dais and through the crowd. As soon as they had left the dais and the music started to fade into the distance, Cadvan stooped to Nerili, who was beginning to stir, and Maerad and several other Bards rushed to help him.

  Nerili opened her eyes and looked up at Cadvan. Her face was white as paper, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. "I failed to make the Tree," she whispered. "I have failed you all. The Rite has failed."

  "No, the Tree has been made," Cadvan said, stroking her hair back from her face. "The year has been renewed. The Rite did not fail."

  "No, no, you don't understand." Nerili seemed on the verge of bursting into tears, which was grievous to see in one so self-controlled. "I saw ... the Tree ..."

  "Don't say now," said Cadvan in an urgent whisper. "Later. The Tree has been made. All is as it should be."

  Nerili grasped Cadvan's hand hard, examining his face with a desperate intensity. "It has been made? How?"

  "I made it," he said.

  She let go his hand, bowed her head, and said nothing more. Cadvan helped her up and led her through the square, the crowd silently parting to make way for them. The Bards of the First Circle and Maerad followed them to the Bardhouse, unspeaking, and as they left, Maerad heard people beginning to emerge from their shocked silence, to murmur, and then to talk.

  Elenxi and the three other Bards of the First Circle who had participated in the Rite of Renewal were already in Nerili's sitting room when the rest of them entered. They looked almost as ashen as Nerili herself. Cadvan poured the First Bard a glass of the golden liquor laradhel, which she gulped down, her hands trembling on the glass. Her head was still bowed, as if she were unable to look anyone in the eye. All in the room watched her with silent concern. At last, she gave herself a little shake and sat up, looking straight at Elenxi, her eyes dark with grief and shame. She looked utterly exhausted.

  "I am undone," she said. "I have failed my place as First Bard. You must elect another."

  "No!" said Elenxi and several others. "No," he continued. "I was there. I felt it. It was not that you failed."

  "If Cadvan of Lirigon had not been there, the Tree of Light would not have been renewed," she said, a flat deadness in her voice. "I had not the strength."

  "Not to remake the Mirror and the Tree as well," said Cadvan. "There were other forces at work." He shook his head. "I felt it, too, Neri. It took everything I had to make the Tree, and I doubt that I could have made the Mirror as well."

  There was a long silence.

  "I saw ... I saw something terrible," said Nerili. "In the Mirror."

  "Please say," said Kabeka gently. "Please tell us what you saw."

  Nerili drew a long, shuddering breath. "I was so tired. I have never had such a struggle to renew the Mirror; it was as if all the fragments were pushing apart, resisting me, as if it wanted to remain broken. So when it was remade, I looked into it, and I felt I had spent all my power. I was weak." She said this with a kind of contempt. "So ... I looked. And at first it seemed to be as it should be. The sapling sprouted and grew as it always does, brightly and with joy, and my heart lifted. It grew to its full height and began to put forth buds. But then . . ." She shut her eyes, and began to speak in a whisper. "Then I felt a terrible sense of wrong; it was like a dagger slipped between my ribs. I cannot explain it. As I watched, a sickness began to spread from the roots of the Tree. A terrible poison, it seemed, that ran up the trunk. About the whole Tree was a stench of corruption. I watched the leaves and blossoms wither and fall, and leave the naked trunk bleached and lightless, and then even that rotted before my eyes, and nothing remained, nothing, except a vile smoke, a vapor of darkness ..."

  She began to shake all over, and Cadvan wordlessly poured her another glass of laradhel. Maerad looked around at the half dozen Bards in the room. They were all pale, and some also reached for the laradhel. She realized that, unlike them, she was not shocked, that what Nerili described was already somehow familiar to her, and she felt suddenly appalled at herself. She met Cadvan's eye
, and knew that he was not shocked either. Both of them were more familiar with the Dark than any of the Bards here.

  "How did you know, Cadvan?" Maerad asked, breaking the silence. "You knew, before it happened. How did you know?"

  "I didn't know what was going to happen," he said. "But I knew something was wrong. I could feel it. I have felt it all day, as if the wind were blighted, as if the moon were out of her course. When Nerili began The Song of Making, it grew stronger and stronger—a sense of ill working against the song."

  "I felt it, too," said Elenxi grimly. The three musicians nodded. "When I added my strength to Nerili's, it was like a poison seeped into me."

  "The worst thing was ..." Nerili said even more quietly, as if her voice would fade altogether. "The worst thing was, that the poison seemed to come from within me. All the blackness from within my own soul." And now she did begin to weep.

  The Bards seemed helpless in their consternation, but Maerad felt a sudden wash of empathy. She knew too well what it felt like to suspect a darkness within herself. Nerili took a deep breath, steeling herself, and then sat up, dashing the tears from her eyes impatiently.

  "Oh, I am like a child," she said. "It is such a shock, such a terrible thing. But the Tree was made, after all, and so it is not a disaster. Not yet. But I fear the next Rite. I fear that I will not be able to do it on my own." She looked about the room with a restoration of her normal authority. "I think that perhaps you ought to consider instating a new First Bard. We cannot risk this again."

  "Nerili," said Kabeka softly. "None of us is as powerful as you are. How would another Bard fare any better? And perhaps we would fare worse. Perhaps we would be unable to make the Mirror, let alone the Tree."