The man stood up, but still she did not flee. Hesitantly, ready to turn and run in an instant, she stepped a few paces out into the open and there halted, her heart hammering. The meat smelled delicious, and she put her snout up into the air, tasting it. The man did not seem dangerous. If she walked toward him very slowly, showing that she meant no harm, perhaps he would give her something to eat.
The man watched her closely as she paced toward him, but he did not move. She could not see his face, as it was hooded in a black cloak. Maerad could not sense that he was afraid, and this frightened her a little, but he was not angry either. He was nothing at all: he simply stood and waited.
She was so hungry. Averting her eyes from his to indicate that she meant no harm, she moved closer and closer, halting every few paces. At last they stood only a dozen paces apart.
Samandalame, ursi, said the man in the Speech. His voice was kind and warm. "Welcome, wolf. You look hungry"
Maerad looked up into his face, and recognized him at last.
She couldn't react at all. She simply stared at him, her mind completely blank.
It was Cadvan, and there, coming up behind him warily, staring at her, was Darsor. It was Cadvan's face, his cloak, his sword. He looked tired and worn, and his clothes were more ragged than when she had last seen him, but he was as alive as she was.
Maerad's heart burst with a wild joy, and she bounded toward him, wanting to embrace him, to say she was sorry, to cry, to shake him for making her suffer for so long, all those tears, all that grief and regret, when he hadn't died at all. He leaped backward with a sharp cry, drawing his sword, and Maerad, on the point of running into the blade, had to swerve violently sideways, and tumbled onto the paving stones.
I do not wish to harm you, said Cadvan. His voice was still gentle. You need not kill me for food.
Maerad picked herself up, shocked at his reaction, and belatedly remembered that she was a wolf. To Cadvan it would have seemed that she was attacking him.
She sat down on her haunches and took a deep breath. It was easier this time. She focused deep within herself, sinking through layer after layer until she found the point of transformation. Be Maerad, she thought. Be me.
Next came the moment of awful pain, the feeling of being thrown into a fire, and then Maerad was sitting on the ground in front of Cadvan, looking up into his astonished face, her eyes shining with tears.
"I suppose," said Cadvan after a long silence, "that you would still like some stew?"
Maerad laughed. She threw her pack on the ground, scrambled to her feet, and flung her arms around him. He rocked back on his heels as they embraced for a long moment, and in that embrace much was healed: long weeks of loneliness and grief, endurance and suffering. Maerad had never been so purely happy.
At last they stood apart and studied each other's faces.
"I thought you were dead," said Maerad. "Why aren't you dead?"
"I'll tell you after you've eaten," Cadvan answered. "You're almost as thin as when we first met."
"And what are you doing here?"
"I was waiting for you, of course. I had no idea that you would turn up as a wolf. I should have guessed that Maerad the Unpredictable would not choose something conventional. I hope you will forgive my discourtesy. It was merely a misunderstanding."
Maerad's mouth twitched, and she bowed. "I might forgive you, if the stew tastes as good as it smells. And if your explanations are sufficiently entertaining."
"I doubt they'll measure up to yours." Then Cadvan saw her left hand, and looked stricken. "Maerad! Your hand ..."
Maerad felt obscurely ashamed, and hid it awkwardly in her cloak. "I'll probably not play again," she mumbled. "It doesn't matter. . . ." But Cadvan took her maimed hand in his, and gently traced the terrible scars where her fingers had been shorn away, saying nothing. His face looked immeasurably sad.
"Maerad," he said at last. "I have had much time to think over the past weeks. I am sorry for my unkindness, before we lost each other. I have rued it often and deeply, and often I have wished I could tell you so, and feared that I would never be able to."
"I've regretted many things as well," said Maerad quietly. "But look! We're alive."
Cadvan smiled, and his stern face lightened with sudden joy. "We are," he said. "That you are here seems a miracle beyond hope."
"And Cadvan, I've found the Treesong. Or half of it. It was on my lyre all the time."
Cadvan gave her a long look, his eyes dark. "That is great news," he said soberly. "But I should have been as glad to see you if you had not found it."
At first, Maerad wondered why Cadvan was not more joyous at her news, but then she remembered how she had accused him of using her as a tool of the Light. The memory hurt, and she could think of no words to assuage it.
"You have paid a great price for that knowledge," said Cadvan gently. He stroked her maimed hand once more and let it go. "We have much to tell each other. But even the best stories go better after eating."
"Yes," said Maerad. "But I must speak to Darsor first." She walked up to the great black horse and put her arms around his neck. He nuzzled her shoulder.
Welcome, Maerad, he said. It was the first time that Darsor had ever said her name. I always said you were a great mage.
Maerad kissed his nose. Finding friends I thought were dead is better than any amount of greatness, she said.
Many mages would disagree with you, he answered.
Maybe that's why they're not great, said Maerad, kissing his nose again.
Darsor whinnied with equine laughter and returned to his own meal.
Cadvan and Maerad ate the rabbit stew together, falling easily back into their old companionship. And then they talked for hours, huddled by the fire as the skies cleared above them and the shadows lengthened into evening. The white stars came out one by one in the black wintry sky, and still they talked.
The first thing Maerad wanted to know was how Cadvan had survived the landslide. "We were lucky," he said. "The road ran into a tunnel through the mountainside. Darsor ran in as the mountain collapsed, but it was a near thing."
Maerad was silent for a time, reliving the terrible moment when she thought she had seen Cadvan and Darsor die. "Why couldn't I see it?" she asked at last. "If I had known—if I had had even a little hope ..." She thought of how things might have been different, and then considered whether, if they had been, she would know what she now did.
"It was dark," said Cadvan. "Darsor saw it after you fell off; that's what he was racing for. I didn't even know it was there until we were inside."
They had waited until the landslide had subsided and the iriduguls had vanished, and then had ridden to the other end of the tunnel. Leaving Darsor to wait on the other side, Cadvan had climbed over the mountain to get back to the road where they had fought the iriduguls, which took him until dawn the following day. He had found the road entirely blocked by the landslide, and no sign at all of Maerad.
"I thought you had been crushed beneath the rocks, or taken by the iriduguls," he said. "I have never felt such blackness. All seemed vain. I went back along the pass a league or so and ran into several caravans of Pilanel, who were heading north to Murask. They had Imi with them; she had run back along the road in a panic and literally crashed into them."
Maerad cried out gladly. "Where is she?"
"She had bruised herself, but nothing worse. I don't know how she didn't bolt off the side of the mountain that night, but it seems luck was with her, too. And she is, after all, of mountain stock. She is still with the Pilanel; they are kindly people and will care for her. She was heartbroken that you were lost and did not wish to come with me.
"The Pilanel had not seen you, and I did not think you would have gone back that way, although you might have passed them easily with a glimmerspell. I didn't know whether to search, or whether it was useless, and if I was to search, where should I look first? I told the Pilanel about the blocked road, and they decided to clea
r it. They had strong men and tools, but unless they had more hands, they thought it would take two weeks to dig out that rock."
"So what did you do?" asked Maerad.
"I could not afford to wait so long, and, in the end, Darsor decided me. I could not leave him, and he was on the other side of the tunnel. I climbed back over the mountain and we talked for a long time. Darsor is a wise animal: he said that he did not believe you were dead, though he could not tell me why he thought so, and that if you were alive, you were either taken by the Winterking or would continue the quest. So we continued over the pass into Zmarkan, looking always for signs of you. But we found nothing."
"So why did I not see you at Murask?" asked Maerad. "I arrived there—oh—four weeks afterward. Surely they would have told me."
"Because you seemed to have vanished into thin air, I thought it more likely that if you were alive, you had been captured," said Cadvan. "I decided to go to Arkan-da first."
Cadvan had ridden hard over the Arkiadera Plains, reaching Lake Zmark in less than a week. There he had disguised himself as a Jussack and journeyed through the Jussack settlements dotted around the lake until he reached Ursk, the major Jussack town, which nestled at the foot of the Trukuch Range forty leagues west of Arkan-da.
"The Jussacks have been under the sway of a black sorcerer, a minion of the Winterking, for twenty years now," he said. Maerad thought of Amusk and shuddered.
"I think he is now dead," she said. Cadvan shot her a surprised glance. "He was killed by wolves," she said. "I'll tell you in a moment." Cadvan nodded and continued his story.
"Ursk was an evil place to be; in the hall of their chieftain some Jussacks tried to rob me. They suffered for their pains; after that, they were afraid of me, but even so they would not or could not tell me anything of a young girl called Maerad of Pellinor.
"I went then to Arkan-da, and wasted many fruitless days trying to find a way into his stronghold. But in my searching, I had no rumor of you. I was sure that I must know if you were there, even through the Winterking's warding of his stronghold, and at last I thought I must have made the wrong guess, and that perhaps I would find news of you in Murask. The snow had begun early, and it took a little longer to retrace my steps across the Arkiadera; otherwise I might have caught up with you. I reached Murask three days after you had left with Dharin. I planned to follow, but Sirkana told me there was no team of dogs faster than Dharin's, and so I decided to await your return."
Maerad and Dharin had been expected back after four weeks, and after five Cadvan began to be anxious. After six weeks, frantic with worry, he went to Sirkana to beg the use of a sled to trace Maerad's path north, but she would not permit it.
"She said, I have already paid the price for your quest, twice over," said Cadvan. "I will sacrifice nothing more. My heart failed me, because I knew then that something must have gone badly wrong. She told me that she had foreknown that Dharin would die on his journey north. She knew nothing of what would happen to you.
"I wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled for permitting you to leave Murask when she knew already that your journey was doomed. But she said to me: It was the right decision, although it broke my heart. I loved Dharin as my own son, as dearly as my own brother, who also died for the Light. There was no other way that the One could know what she needs to know. And, after that, I could not rebuke her."
Maerad thought of Sirkana's stern, beautiful face. She was amazed by her strength; she could not imagine making the same decision. And she thought sadly again of Dharin, her cousin, his lifeblood spilled onto the snow.
"I still did not know what had happened to you, or where you were, and Sirkana said she knew nothing beyond what she had told me," said Cadvan. "I had no idea where, in that wide empty land, I could begin to search for you. I was in great despair. But that night I dreamed of Ardina."
Maerad sat up attentively. "Ardina?" she said. "I have seen much of her."
"That does not surprise me. I think there is much at stake for Ardina in this whole question of the Treesong," said Cadvan, giving Maerad a penetrating glance. "She appeared to me as the Moonchild, and she said: If all goes well, seek the Lily in her birthplace on Midwinter Day." He stretched out his legs and sighed. "I didn't much like that phrase, if all goes well," he said wryly. "But I had no better plan. She could only have meant Pellinor. So I made the journey with Darsor back along the Murask Road and through the Gwalhain Pass, which was cold and long, and difficult with the snow, but this time not especially perilous, apart from the danger of freezing to death. And then I rode hard across Lirhan to Pellinor, dreading to miss Midwinter Day. I arrived here yesterday, and this morning I caught a rabbit and thought I would make a stew. And so you find me."
They sat ruminatively for a time, staring across the ruined Circle of Pellinor. Then Cadvan stirred and said, "Well, you have heard my story. But I'm sure yours is more interesting."
Maerad told him the whole tale of what had happened since their separation in the Gwalhain. Cadvan listened attentively, his face downcast, and did not interrupt once. By the time Maerad had finished talking, the crescent moon was high in the sky and a heavy dew was beginning to fall. It was very cold: there would be a frost that night. He put more wood on the fire, and it flared up, a column of sparks and flame, into the still night.
"Perhaps the most astounding thing is your third name," Cadvan said at last. He studied Maerad as if he were looking at her for the first time. "Triple-tongued, triple-named ... it is a great strength, Maerad. There is still some power in knowing your Bard Name, clearly, since the Jussack sorcerer and the Winterking could use it so blackly against you, but I suspect that if you knew your Elemental Name, your Bard Name would cease to hold that power."
"It's a bit confusing," Maerad said. "There seem to be so many of me."
Cadvan smiled. "We are all many," he said. "But most of us don't have the privilege of understanding that as clearly as you do. It is hard to know oneself, but until we do, we cannot know why we act as we do. It's a lifetime's quest, and it never ends."
Maerad stared at Cadvan, who was broodily poking the fire again. He seemed not to be speaking of her, but of himself.
"And the Treesong was on your lyre," Cadvan said. "I wonder that we never thought of that possibility."
"How could we know?" said Maerad. "Even Nelac could not read the runes."
"True." Cadvan stared into the fire. "I thought the runes were most likely the name and the story of the Dhyllic craftsman who made it. But now it is likely your lyre was made by Nelsor himself. The greatest of all Bards. And from what you say, it seems that Nelsor and the Winterking were lovers."
Maerad turned away from Cadvan, hiding her face. It was difficult for her to think of Arkan, and the thought that he had loved a Bard struck a hollow place inside her breast.
"I didn't know what to think of the Winterking," she said at last. "He's neither good nor evil. He has no great love for the Light, but I do not think that he gives his loyalty to the Dark; he spoke of the Nameless One with disgust and said that he had been betrayed by him."
"He is a powerful Elidhu," said Cadvan thoughtfully "I think you are right; he would not consent to be enslaved, like the Landrost. I wonder what part Ardina plays in all this."
"I don't know," said Maerad. She stared out into the night; there were many forces at play, and she could not follow them. A silence fell, and to break it, Maerad went to her pack and took out her lyre.
"I'll read the Treesong to you," she said. "Arkan said it was dead, that the runes had no music. I don't really understand what he meant by that, but he told me these meanings." She went through them one by one, stroking each rune as she named it. As she did so, she remembered the Winterking's face as he had taught her the runes, and a sharp pain went through her. She did not regret leaving the Ice Palace, but she wondered if she would ever be free of the memory of Arkan.
"It is beautiful," said Cadvan when she had finished. "Well, Maerad, we've come
a long way. Though I do not doubt there is much more to the Song than these runes. And we know also that the Nameless One seeks you, not just because he fears that somehow you will cause his overthrow, but because he needs you. As much as he needs the other half of the Song."
"Arkan said that I was the player," said Maerad softly. "But I do not know how to play music that I have never heard."
"No. Well, some things begin to make sense, but they only raise more questions," Cadvan said. "If the Nameless One has the other runes, I doubt it will be easy to get them back. And Annar grows ever more dangerous: war comes near, and not only from the south."
"Civil war?" asked Maerad.
"I have no doubt of it. But not only that. If Turbansk falls, things will go ill with Annar." Cadvan stretched, grimacing. "Though it could be that the chaos of war might make it easier for us to slip through the nets of both the Light and the Dark."
"I suppose now we storm the Iron Tower or something," said Maerad. "But we can think on that tomorrow."
"Well, if you escaped the Ice Palace, why not the Iron Tower?" said Cadvan, smiling.
"I almost didn't escape," said Maerad. "I—I almost didn't want to."
She hesitated, feeling intensely shy, and then said in rush, "I think I fell in love with the Winterking." She was glad it was dark, because she knew she had blushed deep red.
Cadvan looked at her for a long moment. "Love is one of the true mysteries," he said at last. "The truest and the deepest of all. One thing, Maerad: to love is never wrong. It may be disastrous; it may never be possible; it may be the deepest agony. But it is never wrong."
"He is cruel and ruthless, and he desires power," whispered Maerad. "But by his own lights he was kind to me. Sometimes I even felt that I understood him. But all the same, I feel— ashamed."
"I doubt whether the Winterking would have given you the meaning of the runes had he not known that you loved him," said Cadvan slowly.
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