The Riddle

by Alison Croggon

  "Do you think he might talk to me?" asked Maerad doubtfully. "I can speak their language."

  Ankil gave her a look of such candor that she almost blushed. "I don't know," he said. "But I think it more likely that he would not. And could you climb to the peaks of the Lamedon?"

  Maerad thought of how the heights even here made her dizzy, and shuddered.

  "No," she said.

  "I don't think so either," said Ankil frankly. "It is a challenge even for a skilled climber, and even in summer. And you are so slight—the wind would pick you up and throw you into a crevasse or send you sailing toward Busk."

  "A shame," Cadvan said restlessly. "Though it might be as fruitless as my search through the documents of Old Thorold. How do you find something if you do not know what it is?"

  "I don't know," said Ankil. He was frowning in thought. "But I am thinking that it reminds me of something. Do they tell in Annar of the Split Song?"

  "No," said Cadvan. "The Split Song?"

  "It is a very old story, and not a well-known one." Ankil picked up a boot he had been mending and spat on the leather. "I will tell you if you like. It was told me by an old man when I was a little boy, and I thought it such a strange tale it has stuck with me all these long years." He began to polish the boot carefully, pausing every now and then to admire its sheen; when Ankil told a story, he always started doing something with his hands. Maerad settled herself comfortably. She liked Ankil's stories.

  "Once, long ago, when time was an egg, before there was above and below, or before and behind, or deep or through or wide, there was a Song. There was no voice to sing it, and there was no ear to hear it, and the Song was lonely in the nowhere and nothing that everything was. For what is a Song without a voice and an ear?

  "Now it happened, as you know, that the world was made, and the sky spilled over the nowhere like a bolt of blue silk, and then the stars tumbled over it as if someone had dropped countless gems, and the earth was solid beneath it, rock and iron and fire. And the earth loved the sky, and the sky loved the earth, but they could not touch each other, no matter how they tried. And how they tried! And both began to weep from sorrow, and from the sky came the first rain, and the earth filled up with rivers and seas, and where the rain touched its fire, great steams went up and made the clouds and mists, and out of the clouds and mists were born the Elidhu, the oldest children of time, and then the trees and the silent and still plants of the earth, with their flowers like trumpets and their leaves like lyres. But the Elidhu had neither voices nor ears.

  "Now, the Song said to itself, at last there may be a voice to speak and an ear to hear. So it came out of the nowhere into the now, and slipped into the veins of the Elidhu, as if it were a shoal of minnows slipping into a stream, and each Elidhu felt the Song within it like a shudder of life, and all the sounds of the world burst in on them: the fall of the rain, and the sough of the sea, and the endless sighing of the wind through the green trees. And they opened their mouths in wonder, and so it was the Song leaped out of their mouths, and at last became itself. And the Song was happy for a very long time."

  Ankil put down the boot and picked up another.

  "Well, it happened after a long age that a shadow fell upon the world, and there were great wars and so death entered the world. And there was much suffering for all creatures: the plants and the beasts and the humans and the Elidhu. But the shadow was beaten back, and then there was a long peace. All this time the Song lived in the Elidhu and was happy, although it found that the world was more complex and more sad than it had thought. And so the Song changed, and became more beautiful as it changed, for the shadow and death entered into the Song and made it bright and dark and high and deep. And the voices of the Elidhu lifted in joy, for they loved the beauty of the Song.

  "But it happened that a king arose, and he heard the Song, and he was overborne by longing for its loveliness. He could not sleep and he could not eat for thinking of the Song, and each day that he could not have the Song for himself was to him an eternity of dust. And one day he stole the Song from the Elidhu.

  "But the Elidhu would not let it go, and the Song split in two, with a terrible noise, like the sound of the whole world cracking, and one half went south and one half went north. And when it split, the bright went one way, and the dark went another. And ever since the world has been twain, and the Song has been unhappy."

  There was a long silence, apart from Ankil's brushing.

  "Is that it?" asked Maerad.

  "Yes," said Ankil, nodding. "That is it."

  Cadvan was sitting up straight and alert, his face eager. "Ankil, I've never heard that story before," he said. "But the Song—the Song of the Elementals—surely it's the Treesong?"

  "Well, it still doesn't tell us what it is," said Maerad.

  "No, maybe not . . . but the story obviously refers to the

  Wars of the Elementals, and then to a king. ... It has to be the

  Nameless One. Sharma, the king from the south." His brows

  knotted. "And I think it is talking about the Spell of Binding he

  made, to banish death and to cast out his Name. Maybe he split

  the Treesong"

  "Well, you've said for a while that you thought the spell had to do with the Knowing of the Elidhu," said Maerad. "Maybe you're right. But how do you find a song? Was it written down?"

  "I don't know. It could be that's what the story means by the Song being stolen, that it was written down instead of living in the Elidhu. It's all so vague." Cadvan thumped the table in frustration.

  The three fell into a reflective silence, watching the old moon swinging above the mountain pastures, and Maerad became aware of the sounds of the crickets singing in the grass, and the sleepy nighttime coughs of the goats.

  "Do you know what they call the Nameless One in some places in Thorold?" asked Ankil thoughtfully, breaking the silence.

  "What?" Cadvan turned to him.

  "The Half Made."

  "The Half Made. The Split Song." Cadvan looked down at his hands. "It has to be connected, surely?"

  "Perhaps." Ankil had finished polishing his boots and placed them neatly side by side next to his chair. "Well, for what it's worth from an old goatherd, I think it as likely as not."

  Chapter VI

  THE LION OF STONE

  OVER the following weeks, life continued its slow routine. Maerad woke early every morning, refreshed, and walked to the window to look out over the highlands of Thorold. She loved her simple bedroom, devoid of the luxuries of Innail or Busk, but with other beauties those chambers could not match. Every morning, the early air came fresh and unbreathed through her casement, smelling faintly of grass and carrying the gentle chimes of the goats' bells as they grazed, and no mural could match her view. She felt the deep weariness that had lingered since she left Norloch dissipate and finally disappear. The shadows vanished from beneath her eyes, and her skin glowed with health.

  The view was different every morning: sometimes the valleys were wreathed in mist, so that it seemed as if she were looking out over a huge white sea with green islands of high ground rising abruptly through it, bathed in golden sunlight; sometimes the whole countryside, all the way to the sea, possessed a preternatural clarity, so colors seemed saturated and every edge was hard and unmistakable; sometimes it was wrapped in a mauve haze, so you couldn't see the sea at all, and the landscape was soft and blurred, muted and almost ghostly. After a light breakfast, Maerad plunged into her work with Cadvan. They started her studies in Ankil's kitchen, working intensely until midmorning, when Cadvan would call a break. At these times, Maerad would usually go for a solitary walk toward the mountains that soared above Ankil's meadow, grim rocky peaks draped with snow. Highest of all was the Lamedon, its sheer precipices, even in midsummer, often shrouded with mist; then, falling away in the range, were the triple peaks of the Okinlos; the harsh naked walls of the Indserek, so steep no snow could cling there; and the sharp summit of the Kyrno
s, which looked as narrow as a blade. The shoulders of many other mountains slouched behind these high peaks, forming the central range of the Thoroldian mountains. Some mornings it was hazy and, to Maerad's astonishment, the mountains would disappear altogether, as if nothing were there at all, or they hung like ghosts in the sky, visible only in faint outlines, and you could see them only if you peered carefully, knowing they were there.

  It was a peaceful time, despite the worries that beset both Maerad and Cadvan. Maerad felt as if she were gathering strength for a struggle to come, although she didn't know what that struggle would be. She bent her concentration fiercely to learning: by now she had mastered the alphabetic Nelsor script, and was able to write and read quite creditably, and was making inroads into learning the Ladhen runes. These were numerous, a complex system of thousands of signs that changed meaning by subtle additions and deletions from a vocabulary of a few hundred images. They were written as strokes that could be just as easily carved as written in ink. It was a little like learning a code and had all a code's fascination. Bards used it to communicate secret knowledge to each other, scratching the runes on trees or stones when other communications were not possible.

  Cadvan was very pleased with her progress in magery; she was beginning to have the skill to control her Bardic powers, although he warned her that he could not teach her how to use powers of which he knew nothing. He called them her Elemental powers, to distinguish them from her innate Bardic Gift, although Maerad argued that the two were intertwined. "And why," she asked him one morning, "are they not more commonly understood? Ankil himself said there are many tales of Elemental blood here in Thorold. Why does no one know about these things?"

  Cadvan looked at her thoughtfully. "Maerad, quite frankly, I do not know. I have never heard of such powers as you have. And you are probably quite right that they are deeply linked with Bardic potencies. But you must remember that you are the Fated One, and perhaps in you these different gifts have fused in a new way."

  Maerad thought about it for a while. "Well, it feels to me that the more I can use the Bardic powers, the better I can access the others."

  "I don't know how you destroyed the Kulag or the wight in Annar," Cadvan said. "That is something outside the abilities of Bards. And I don't know how to teach you—that's something you'll have to learn by trial and error. But we should at least attempt to see if they are controllable. It would be perilous to test you only when your life is in danger."

  They started with some cautious exercises, outside in a neighboring meadow so that Maerad could not unintentionally damage Ankil's house. At first, Maerad could not focus her powers at all, although she had now enough sensitivity to tell whether or not she was using them. It was fiddly, delicate work, and sometimes intensely frustrating. She thought it was a little like trying to work out how to wiggle her ears: first she had to identify these unused muscles with her conscious mind, and then learn how to command them.

  Bardic powers were rational, aided by visualization and will and guided by the Speech, but the Elemental powers were altogether different; they were quicker than thought and seemed primarily intuitive. They flowed out of Maerad's emotional state, although they, too, could be guided by strength of will. They found out early that her powers were of no use in the arts of illusion; after a few unsuccessful experiments, Cadvan speculated that maybe when the Elidhu created illusions, they worked with substance rather than tricks of the eye.

  "You mean that Ardina was changing herself completely?" asked Maerad curiously. "I mean, when she vanished in the meeting hall, say."

  "Yes, I think so," said Cadvan thoughtfully. "Look, let's try." He made the glimmerspell passes and then glanced around, settling on a rock jutting out of the ground nearby. "Now, I can make this look like a lion." The rock suddenly stirred, and there was a mountain lion, blinking sleepily in the sun. It yawned, showing its long, yellowing fangs, and then vanished into rock again. "But it changes nothing about the rock, only how you see it. Now, just see if you can change the rock yourself, without using a glimmerspell."

  Maerad shut her eyes in order to help her concentrate, sought the place in her mind where the Elemental powers slept, and willed the rock to become a lion.

  After a while she opened her eyes, but nothing had happened.

  "Try again," said Cadvan encouragingly.

  "I don't think it's going to work," she said. "Maybe you can't do this sort of thing."

  Cadvan shrugged. "Probably not," he said. "But try anyway."

  Maerad sighed and shut her eyes again. Irritated by her failure, this time she made her feeling of command more insistent. She thought of the mountain lion she had once seen in Annar, its heat, its shaggy coat, its feline stink, its hugeness. She concentrated until her mind began to buzz.

  Suddenly there was a deafening crack of rock splitting. She opened her eyes in alarm. A huge lion stood where the rock had been, its mouth opened to roar, its tail thrashing. Its eyes were red with anger, as if it had absorbed and magnified the irritation Maerad had been feeling when she had accessed her powers.

  "By the Light!" Cadvan jumped up and moved cautiously backward, his hands outstretched before him. "Ilader, andhasea," he said soothingly, and the red light dimmed in the lion's eyes, and it yawned. "Ilader. Ilader." The beast gradually drooped, as it was overborne with a great weariness, and then quite suddenly curled itself up like a domestic cat, nose to tail, and went to sleep.

  Maerad was sitting with her mouth open.

  "Well, that proved something, I suppose," said Cadvan, glancing at Maerad and running his hands through his hair. "Though why I suggested a lion I'll never know. Next time, make a rabbit. I think you had better turn it back into a rock."

  "I don't know how," said Maerad.

  "What do you mean? You just turned a rock into a lion; you must be able to turn it back."

  Maerad struggled to articulate what she meant. "I think it's a different thing, returning something to what it was. I have to do something else," she said. "It's not just the same thing backward."

  "Well, we have to do something," said Cadvan. "I don't think Ankil will appreciate having a mountain lion preying on his flocks."

  Maerad took a deep breath, cleared her thoughts, and sought inside her mind for the right thing to do. The first transformation had completely drained her. She focused on the lion and thought of the rock as it had originally been. She flexed her mind, but it hurt this time, as if she were pressing too hard, and when she stopped, she was trembling with effort. The lion was still there, fast asleep.

  Cadvan swore, and, walking up to the lion, stooped down and rubbed it behind its ears.

  "Well, it's definitely a real lion," he said, returning to Maerad. "Not some trick. I've bound it with a sleep spell, so it will not wake for some hours. We can try again later." He shook his head. "I didn't really think you could do something like that. More fool me: I should know better by now than to underestimate you. I wonder if you really turned the rock into a lion, or if you've called a lion from somewhere and now, where the lion was, is a rock. And maybe a very surprised deer. But you'd better work out how to reverse this one."

  "Easier said than done," said Maerad, looking up at him sardonically from underneath her hair. "I really don't know how to do it. I almost felt how, just before, but I'm so tired. Maybe I can try again later."

  Maerad had a nap, and after a few attempts later on that afternoon, she did succeed in restoring the rock to its proper rockness. But they didn't try transformation again after that; it was rather unnerving. And every time she passed by the rock, Maerad gave it a wide berth, as if it might suddenly turn into a lion again.

  They had been at Ankil's for almost a month when, one afternoon after lessons, idling in front of her favorite view, Maerad saw two small figures making their way up the steep path toward the meadow. She was almost sure one of them was Elenxi: he towered over his companion. She squinted, trying to see more clearly, and went to the cheese shed to warn Anki
l of the imminent visitors.

  Ankil looked up from the board, where he was wrapping curds in muslin. "Elenxi? Then he is a little earlier than I expected," he said. "Well, I am almost finished here. Ask Cadvan to put out a table and chairs on the porch. I shall not be long."

  As the visitors climbed into the meadow, it became clear that the tall figure was indeed Elenxi, and that the other was Nerili. Maerad ran forward to greet them, and they walked toward the welcoming shade of Ankil's porch, wiping the sweat from their brows.

  "Good morrow, Granddaughter," said Ankil, kissing Nerili's cheek. "It is long since I saw you here."

  "All too long, Grandfather," said Nerili, smiling. "I have missed you." Maerad had a sudden incongruous vision of Nerili as a five-year-old child, sitting on Ankil's knee.

  They sat down around his table, which was already laden with pickles and bread and cheese and carafes of wine and water.

  "Water first!" said Elenxi, his eyes sparkling. "It is thirsty work to visit you, brother. And, then, when my thirst is slaked, we will have your fine red wine."

  "You have no shame," Ankil said solemnly. "Surely you don't visit me only for the wine?"

  "I can't imagine why else I would bother to climb this path," Elenxi answered. "It's a sore trial for an old man."

  The talk bubbled along cordially until the visitors had recovered from their climb. Then Nerili looked soberly around the table, and a silence fell over the company. To Maerad, Nerili seemed sterner than when they had last met, as if she had been through some inner struggle.

  "You will know, friends, that despite the excellence of the wine, we have come here to speak of other things," Nerili said. "I decided to come personally because I wished to speak to Cadvan and Maerad before they left."