The Riddle

by Alison Croggon

  She walked quickly, taking a rest at midday, but otherwise moving all day, anxious to reach Murask before the weather changed. She had been lucky: the days were cold and clear, and there had been no rain. She had unpleasant memories of sleeping in the open in bad weather, and here it was colder than she was used to. In the morning when she woke, the world was white with frost, the dews frozen on the leaves, and the little warmth she had managed to generate overnight quickly dissipated as soon as she moved. She was glad of her sheepskins, for otherwise she might have frozen to death.

  The animals she had seen on the plains turned out to be wild herds of a large, shaggy kind of deer. She never came very close to them, as they avoided the road, though once she came upon a small group of about twenty before they scented her and stampeded. There were also groups of wild ponies, of the kind the Pilanel herded: tough and long-haired and wary. Otherwise she saw little creatures like weasels with glossy brown coats, and occasional foxes and hares, and birds: black-and-white terns, which hovered overhead, and enormous flocks of geese and ptarmigans migrating south for the winter, and once a pair of eagles hunting, dropping like stones to the grass and sweeping off with a small luckless animal caught in their talons.

  She saw no other human beings. She didn't feel lonely; being alone was a relief. She didn't think about the incident in the Gwalhain Pass. The terrible dreams she had suffered at Mirka's, in which she endlessly relived the moment of Cadvan's death, had stopped; she was too tired, after walking all day, to dream about anything. She felt empty and dry, as if she would never feel anything again. She concerned herself with the trivial details of each day: making sure each evening that her feet were properly massaged with balm to prevent blisters, eating enough food to keep her going, and keeping alert for any sign of danger. She watched carefully for strange shifts in the wind or weather, which might signal the arrival of a frost creature or stormdog. But the sky remained clear and blue.

  Doing these banal tasks inevitably reminded her of Cadvan. She realized, with a poignancy that pierced even her numbed emotions, that if he hadn't taught her these rudimentary skills, she wouldn't have had a hope of surviving alone in the wild. And this induced other anxieties: even though she was traveling as fast as she could to Murask, she dreaded arriving there. What would she do when she did? Whenever she had met strangers before, Cadvan had been there, to introduce her, or to deal with any difficulties that might have arisen.

  Maerad reflected bitterly that she knew very little of people; for most of her life, her world had been so small, the space of Gilman's Cot, and since then she had learned only of Bards. She couldn't speak the Pilanel language, although Mirka had said there were many Pilanel with the Gift, and being travelers, perhaps most of them spoke some Annaren. Should she just walk in and ask for help? Should she explain who she was or what she was doing, or should she dissemble? She knew nothing of the Pilanel people; even Hem would have been better prepared than she was. She was no good at the disguising charm, which, in any case, wouldn't give her the Pilanel language. She was sure that Cadvan could have passed himself off as a Pilanel if he had wanted to, as sure as she was that she couldn't; he most certainly spoke the language. And Cadvan knew the north well, probably better than any other in Annar—he had traveled its length just before he met her. Maerad had only the faintest memory of the maps she had perused at Gahal's house, and the maps of Zmarkan had been rather empty anyway. There had been no mention that she could recall of the Wise Kindred, or of where such people might live.

  She went on, in truth, because she couldn't think of anything else to do. Becoming a Bard had invested her life with a meaning it had never possessed before; now that meaning had shriveled and vanished, poisoned by her own foolish vanity. Perhaps the only way to restore that meaning was to stay true to her promises to Cadvan, to Nelac, to Nerili, to all those who had shown faith in her, and whom she felt she had so dismally failed.

  When the puzzle of her Elemental nature raised itself, she simply put it aside as something she couldn't solve. She didn't understand her closeness to Ardina: why the Elemental queen called her "daughter" as if she were much closer kin than merely a distant descendant. She didn't know why she had powers that other Bards did not. She didn't understand why she was considered to be so significant—the Fire Lily, the Foretold, the One—and how that matched her feeling that she was, in truth, utterly insignificant, a tiny human being toiling along in the immense world, alone and powerless, of no more importance than any other, and of much less worth than most. Mirka, she reflected, for all her madness and grief, had made a kind of peace with herself. In her unrest and doubt, Maerad envied Mirka; all she knew of peace was the deadness in her heart.

  Mirka had told her that Murask was a week to ten days' walk away from the mountains. Maerad kept careful count of the days, watching the slender moon waxing each night, and after seven days began to look around for signs of the settlement. The Arkiadera stretched away before and behind her, the huge range of the Osidh Elanor now merely a purple smudge on the horizon, the only sign that she had traveled any distance at all. She began to worry about her food supply, which would last only a couple of weeks. If Mirka was mistaken in her reckoning, or if she was going in completely the wrong direction, she would soon be in serious difficulty.

  On the tenth day of her trek, Maerad at last began to see signs of other human beings; in the distance she would occasionally see a Pilanel caravan or sole herders with horses. She began to think hopefully that she was indeed on the correct road and had not been, as she had feared, simply wandering into the heart of the plains.

  She kept herself unseen—out of caution, she told herself, but it was also shyness. If she had been heading to a School, she might not have felt so nervous. She wished, not for the first time, that she were not so ignorant. She often fingered the token that Mirka had given her, wondering what it meant and if it would help her, as the old woman had promised.

  On the thirteenth day, she saw a smudge of smoke rising before her and guessed that she was at last close to Murask. Encouraged, she sped up, and by nightfall it was in clear view: still a few leagues off, but unmistakably a settlement of many people, since the smoke from numerous fires rose into the sky.

  She was puzzled because she couldn't see any buildings, only what appeared to be a low hill.

  She could have continued and reached Murask just after dark, but she decided against that, feeling unprepared. Instead she made camp again by the river, planning to arrive early the next day. Despite her weariness, she slept badly; the moon was now at the full and burned brilliantly in the frozen sky, throwing sharp black shadows over the sedges. Looking at it through the tangled branches of the withies, Maerad shivered; it was a powerful moon, dragging up feelings she had thought dead, but they were distorted and unrecognizable, turning strange faces toward her. I no longer know who I am, she thought; I never really knew in the first place. A terrible desolation seized her heart, and she lay on her back, shivering with cold, unable to find any comfort in either her body or her mind.

  She woke when it was still dark from troubled dreams that she did not remember. There had been no frost, but she was drenched with a freezing, heavy dew, and the gray world around her seemed bleak and empty. She sniffed the air; the wind was changing, bringing a colder blast from the north, and the sky was heavy with yellowish clouds. She ate her humble breakfast hastily, watching the massing clouds, and then washed briefly in the river's freezing water: as always when there was a full moon, her period had arrived, and she longed to take a bath. She cursed the timing; she felt more fragile than usual, as if she were made of glass, and now more than ever she needed to be strong. She tried to comb her hair, but it was so tangled after days of sleeping in the open that she almost broke the comb, and she gave up. At last, finding no other reason to procrastinate, but with a heavy reluctance, she began to walk to Murask.

  The closer she came to the settlement, the more it puzzled her. It did not look like a town at all
. Now she frequently passed grazing herds of ponies, attended by herders in bright Zmarkan jackets, but she could see no caravans. The green hill grew bigger and bigger as she approached it; it was the only high ground in these huge, flat plains. She began to realize that Murask must be inside the hill. She grew more and more apprehensive, and part of her played with the idea of just turning around and walking away. Where to? she thought despairingly. You have no choice—if they don't let you in here, you'll freeze to death. As if in answer to her thoughts, a few stray flakes of snow started whirling idly from the sky. She put her head down, postponing all further speculation, and concentrated on walking.

  She arrived at the gate to Murask by midmorning. The countryside around her was already white with a thin layer of snow, and she stamped her feet to keep them warm as she stood before the gate, wondering what to do next. Above her loomed the hill, rising higher than two pine trees end to end, and almost as steep as a wall. Close up, it was obvious this was no natural mound, although it was covered with a short green turf that made it seem part of the plains, and hazels and small willows and thornbushes hugged its base.

  The gate itself was huge, as high as four men, and made of thick iron bars through which Maerad could see a dark tunnel lit with torches. Behind the bars stood two leaves of a stout wooden door. It was unadorned, and it somehow gave the impression of immense age. It seemed older than anything Maerad had seen at the Bard Schools; maybe it was as old as the standing stones she had seen in the Hollow Lands in Annar. Maerad swallowed, momentarily daunted. The gate was shut, and she could see no one nearby to open it. Experimentally, she set her hand to one of the bars and pushed. As she expected, it was locked.

  She looked around and this time saw a bronze bell hanging to the side, with a thin metal chain dangling from its tongue. She pulled it, and the bell clanged, making her jump; it sounded very loud in this quiet landscape. At first, nothing happened, but after a while a little door she had not seen to the left of the tunnel opened, and a man limped out, saying something in Pilanel. Maerad had never seen a grown man so short. His head was drawn down on his shoulders, and his spine was bent into a hunch, but his shoulders and arms were massive, suggesting enormous strength. She could not understand his speech, and she just stood, holding out the token Mirka had given her, waiting for whatever might come next. The man peered through the bars of the gate, looking straight at Maerad. Then he shrugged, muttering something to himself that sounded like a curse, and limped back into his room, slamming shut the door.

  Maerad suddenly realized that she was still under a glimmerspell, and almost laughed. It was no use knocking at a door if no one could see her. Her heart was beating fast, and she waited a little while until she felt calmer. Then, glancing around to make sure no one was nearby to witness her suddenly appearing out of nowhere, she undid the glimmerspell and tried again.

  This time the man came out more quickly. He looked annoyed, and Maerad braced herself, but when he spotted her through the bars, he simply stopped, looking surprised. Maerad held out the token, her hand trembling slightly.

  "Om ali nel?" he said.

  "My name is Mara. I am Annaren. I bring greeting from— from Mirka a Hadaruk."

  The man studied her in silence for a while and then reached his fingers through the narrow gap between the iron bars to take the token. He looked at it closely, turning it over and over, his face expressionless, and Maerad watched him anxiously. He finally seemed to reach some decision, and took a long iron key from the bunch jangling at his waist and turned it in a lock in the middle of the gate, using both his hands. Then he took another broader key and disappeared inside his room again. Maerad was just beginning to wonder whether he was coming back when he reappeared and with another key turned a lock near the base of the gates. Then he pulled them open, beckoning her inside.

  "Come," he said, speaking in thickly accented Annaren.

  Maerad hesitated on the threshold, and then obeyed him. Once she was inside, blinking until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the man repeated the laborious process of locking the gates and, without speaking further, he indicated that she should follow him.

  The tunnel through the hill was very large, big enough to accommodate Pilanel caravans. There was no feeling of dampness, as Maerad had expected; the air seemed, if anything, to be warm. It was lined and flagged with roughly dressed stone, and smelled of the burning pitch of the torches that lined its length. She fixed her eyes on the humped back of the gate warden, hurrying to keep up with him. Despite his limp, he walked very quickly. He limped, she realized, because one leg was much shorter than the other, and she found herself wondering who he was and what it was like to be him. She had never seen anyone so misshapen.

  The passage had many turns, and it wasn't long before Maerad had completely lost her sense of direction. After the first three turns, they came to another iron gate, again fastened with three locks, and then, not much farther on, another one. Maerad noticed slits in the walls on either side of the gates, and thought they probably allowed archers to attack any invaders. Murask was obviously well defended against any attack, and Maerad uneasily wondered again how she would be received.

  They seemed to walk for ages before Maerad saw daylight, an impossibly bright silver at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps Murask wasn't inside the hill, after all, she thought with relief; maybe the hill was in fact a very big wall. They emerged at last, and Maerad blinked, dazzled, and looked around in amazement. She was certainly in some kind of town, but she had never seen anything like it.

  Murask, the winter gathering place of the southern Pilanel clans, was, as Maerad had guessed, a fortified settlement. It was an artificial hill, built in a time long forgotten, and it reared high over the flat plains and stretched more than a league from end to end. The "wall" was four times as wide as it was high, and was mainly hollow: most of the Pilanel dwellings were actually inside it. In the center, where Maerad had emerged with her strange guide, was a wide, flat space covered with short turf, now white with snow. Unlike the outer walls, the inner walls were all bare, weathered stone, pierced with hundreds of doors and windows. Several Pilanel caravans were drawn up against the wall, their shafts resting on the ground, and Maerad saw a dozen children playing a wild game of tag, who paused when they noticed her and stared in open-mouthed curiosity. There were a few ponies hunched up miserably against the snow, some of the heavy deer Maerad had seen on her way to Murask nuzzling aside the snow to graze on the turf, and a few thin whippetlike mongrels of the kind the Pilanel kept as guard dogs.

  She didn't have much time to look around, as her guide was hurrying to a large building in the very center of the space. It was built of gray granite and rose three stories high, the highest story completely covered with a thick, steep thatch of river reeds, which overhung the walls by at least a dozen paces. Its front wall was faced with some kind of plaster or stucco, and was brightly painted, like the Pilanel caravans, in geometric patterns.

  Her guide walked up to a double-leafed door and rang a bell very like the one at the front gate. A tall man appeared swiftly, and the two had a long conversation. Her guide handed over Mirka's token, and he too examined it carefully, glancing at Maerad from underneath his eyebrows as he did so. Finally he nodded, and the gate warden, without a glance at Maerad, turned and went back to his post, his keys jangling at his waist.

  The second man gazed at Maerad without speaking for what seemed a very long time. Maerad endured his examination, trying to appear harmless and polite, surreptitiously examining him in return. He had dark skin like Hem's, the color of dark honey. His eyes, under thick black brows, were unreadable as deep water, and his face was stern and lean. Maerad saw also that he was a Dhillarearen.

  "You are Annaren?" he said at last. He had only a faint accent.

  "Yes," said Maerad, relieved that he spoke her native tongue. "My name is Mara. I seek your help, and must speak with the chief of your clan."

  "That you shall do, as do all strangers
who enter this Howe. But in these days of distrust, we do not let many into our haven. We do so now only because of this token. I would like to know how you came by such a thing."

  "It was given me by Mirka a Hadaruk," said Maerad, taking a deep breath. "She sends greeting."

  The man looked directly into her face. "Mirka a Hadaruk has been dead many long years," he said. Maerad's heart skipped a beat, and she looked down, discomforted.

  "Perhaps the woman who gave it to me used Mirka's name without cause, although I do not know why she would do so," she said at last. "She is very old. But she is not dead, unless she has died since I last saw her, two weeks ago."

  There was a silence, and the man nodded. "Perhaps there is another story to be told," he said. "I judge that you do not seek to mislead me. You may enter."

  He opened the door and beckoned Maerad in. Before she stepped inside, she hesitated.

  "It is only courtesy to ask your name, so I may thank the one who invites me," she said.

  "My name is Dorn a Hadaruk," he said.

  "Dorn a Hadaruk?" Maerad said, taken aback. Dorn? Her father's name? That's a common enough name among the Pilani, Mirka had told her.... And he had the same last name as Mirka.

  "Mirka is my mother's mother," he said, his dark eyes expressionless. "So you see, the question of her life and death holds a certain interest for me."

  "I see." Maerad was silent for a while, thinking of the mad old woman who had been so kind to her. She had spoken of her daughter, and of her daughter's death; she had never spoken of living grandchildren. She wondered if Mirka knew she had a grandson, or if she thought he was dead, just as he thought she was. Then she realized Dorn was waiting patiently, holding the door open. She tried to smile. "I thank you, Dorn a Hadaruk," she said, and followed him into the house.