The Gift

by Alison Croggon

  "Who are you to ask me?" said Maerad pugnaciously. It occurred to her, with a pang of surprise, that she didn't feel afraid—although, she thought in that split second, she ought to be.

  The man looked hard at her, searching her face. He staggered slightly and corrected himself, and then smiled again, as if in apology.

  "I am Cadvan, of the School of Lirigon," he said. "Now, mistress, how do they name you?"

  "Maerad," she said, almost whispering. She felt suddenly at a complete loss, confused by his politeness.

  "Maerad of the Mountains?" the stranger said with a wry smile.

  "Of... of Gilman's fastness," she said haltingly. And then with a rush: "I'm a slave here...."

  "A slave?"

  Steps sounded outside and Lothar's bulk darkened the door. "Where's that milk? What are you doing there; have you lost your wits? Are you looking for the whip? If the butter doesn't turn, we'll know who to blame."

  He was not pleased with her, after her rebuff that morning. But again Maerad caught her breath in shock. Although the stranger stood plain in his sight, Lothar seemed to look right through him.

  "I'm—I'm sorry," she stammered. "The cattle are restless—"

  She sat on her stool and leaned forward to the cow again, who now stood patiently. Lothar watched her while she milked. She willed him to go away. After a short time, she heard his steps leaving and she relaxed a little. She kept milking, because she needed time to gather her thoughts. The stranger still stood there, watching her.

  "Maerad," said the stranger quietly. "I wish you no harm. I am tired, and I need to sleep. That's why I'm here." He passed his hand over his brow, and then leaned against the wall of the byre.

  "He didn't see you," she said blankly, still milking steadily to cover her amazement.

  "No, it is a small thing .. ." he said, almost abstractedly. "A mere glimmerspell. What is interesting is that you saw me." He stared at her again, with that searching, disturbing gaze. Maerad felt suddenly shy before him, as if she were naked, and turned her face aside. She felt his eyes upon her, and then a kind of release as he looked away. Involuntarily she shook herself. She heard him shift and sit down.

  "I wish I were not so tired," he said at last, and then asked, "You were not always a slave?"

  "My mother wasn't a slave," Maerad answered, speaking reluctantly, as if against her will. "Gilman bought her and kept her here, when I was very little. I think he wanted to ransom her, but none came to ransom." She paused, and added flatly, "And then she died." She coiled around to face him, with a flash of anger. "What business is it of yours?" she demanded. "Who are you to ask me?"

  The stranger seemed unperturbed, meeting her gaze calmly.

  "What was your mother's name?"

  "Milana. Milana of Pellinor, Singer of the Gift, Daughter of the First Circle. My father. . ." She stopped milking, and her hands flew to her mouth in astonishment. "Oh!"

  "Oh, indeed," said Cadvan.

  "I mean, my mother was called Milana, that's all I remember. . .." Maerad trailed off in confusion. "She, she died when I was seven years old.... I don't know anything about... about the rest. Did you make me say that?"

  "Make? No, I can't make you say anything. I asked, and the doors of your mind flew open. There is more in that treasury than most people realize. The School of Pellinor," he said, as if to himself. "That was sacked, oh, years ago. It was thought all were killed." He fell silent, and Maerad, shaken, continued milking. What was this man talking about? Was he mazing her, as wild spirits were said to do, bewildering her senses before snaring her? But he did not seem evil.

  "By what right do you come in here and say... and say such things? I could call the Thane's men...." She stuttered to a halt. Somehow she knew she wouldn't call the guards.

  The stranger put his face in his hands and didn't answer her. Maerad glanced at him angrily. She finished milking the cow and turned her loose, bringing in the next one. Cadvan was still sitting, unmoving, in the same position.

  "You can't stay here, if you are of Pellinor," he said at last.

  Maerad looked across at the stranger with a sudden wild hope. Did he mean that he knew some way to free her? But no one could escape from the cot....

  He looked up at her. "Could you—perhaps—spare some milk?"

  Wordlessly she offered him the milk pail. After a long drink, he wiped his mouth and smiled. "A blessing on you, and on your house," he said. Maerad nodded impatiently, brushing off the courtesy. "Will you have to come to the byre again?" he asked. "Today, I mean."

  She examined his face suspiciously. "Yes, I am sectioned here today," she said at last. "I'll be milking again in the evening. Why?"

  "Good." He stretched and yawned. "I'll sleep now. We'll talk later—yes, when I am less tired."

  He cast himself down on the hay and was asleep almost instantly. Maerad looked down at him, considering whether to kick him awake and make him answer her questions, or to call the guards after all. But for reasons she couldn't trace, she did neither. Instead, she finished the milking and left him there. She was beaten for the missing milk.

  That day Maerad was so absent-minded, she was lucky to escape a second beating. At her tasks in the milchyard—churning butter or setting the milk in bowls for soured drinks—she scarcely saw what she was doing. At first she didn't know what she felt about the man in the byre. Her mind, practiced at the evasions necessary for survival, skipped over the thought of him; he was, in a way, unthinkable. But every now and then an image of his dark face rose unbidden in her mind, and with it an unsettling feeling she couldn't name: a skin-prickling premonition, not exactly unpleasant, but not quite comfortable either. If she had been a child used to name-day celebrations, she might have likened it to the feeling of anticipating a present, but she knew no such celebrations. At the same time, the blank, impassive mask under which she survived seemed to have disappeared, leaving her exposed and a little frightened. It was as if the stranger had opened a door, long shut in her mind, and a cold fresh wind blew in, waking her from a stupor. Who am I? she wondered, and the question hurt.

  She was used to her own strangeness. It had often been a protection as much as a curse. Because of her blue eyes and black hair, the fair-haired Northerners called her a witch, and she had played the part from an early age, making a virtue of what set her apart. And Maerad did possess the power of cursing: if she glared at someone, they might trip over and fall for no reason, or a beaker might fall from a shelf and break on their head, and once she had blinded a man for three days. She was also especially good with animals, another sign of witchcraft; those she tended grew fat and yielded twice the milk of the others. Most of the slaves feared and avoided her, and Gilman's men. . . well, the Thane's men had also learned to leave her alone.

  Gilman was deeply superstitious and, like all bullies, a devout coward. He believed that if Maerad were murdered, her ghost would drive him to a grisly death: madden him until he ran out into the wolfhunt, perhaps, or skewer him slowly with invisible knives of fire. So Maerad escaped the worst details, which caused comment and petty malice among many of her fellow slaves. Recently this resentment had flared into open violence: a month ago six women had attacked her and tried to drown her in the duck pond. They had almost succeeded, but Gilman had rushed out of the hall, red-faced with panic, and hauled her out of the water. Though Maerad was cuffed for the trouble she had caused, the slaves who tormented her were whipped and given no food for three days. Saved by Gilman! She grinned without humor at the irony. It had stopped the persecution, for the moment—but now no one spoke to her at all, apart from idiots like Lothar.

  If it hadn't been for her music, she might have killed herself, or let the demons in her head taunt her into madness. Or she might have just turned into stone and become like the rest of them, brutalized of all feeling. Her lyre was her one possession, the only thing she still had of her mother. It was small, fitting into the crook of her arms like a baby, a bare wooden instrument with no deco
ration except some indecipherable carvings, but its tone was pure and true. One of her earliest memories was of her mother playing it, plucking the strings and singing to Maerad; she guessed she must have been very young, because her mother had not been sad.

  Maerad could play like a true minstrel; her ear was accurate, and she only had to hear a tune once to repeat it. Mirlad, Gilman's Bard, discovered her talent after her mother died. She was only seven years old then, and he somehow persuaded Gilman to relieve Maerad from morning duties so he could teach her. Mirlad, gruff, taciturn, sometimes cruelly harsh, had been her teacher until she turned thirteen: then Gilman demanded her labor in the fields again. Maerad remembered her misery at that decision, and Mirlad's odd response. "I've taught you everything I know about music," he had said, shrugging indifferently. "Anything else would be a waste here. You can play in the evenings, anyway."

  Her musicianship compounded her isolation, but it was another reason Gilman tolerated her: Mirlad had died some two years before, although perhaps only Maerad mourned his passing, and she was now the only person in the cot with the skill to play at the riots. She played for herself, privately, whenever she could, and those snatched moments were the only consolation of her degraded life.

  Milana. My mother. How long since I thought of you? You braided my hair each night, even if your hands shook with tiredness, and you played me pretty tunes when I felt sad or when someone beat me, and kissed me, just there, on my forehead.. . . Maerad's mind flinched from the memory of her mother's death, how she had sickened, wasted by fever and pain and grief. She had died, that was all, and after that Maerad was alone.

  For as long as she could remember, Maerad had dreamed of escaping Gilman's Cot. But year after year passed and brought only the knowledge that escape was impossible. Hope had ebbed little by little, until, though Maerad did not know it, she wore the same sad beauty that she remembered of her mother. Now, this Cadvan—she said the name to herself, privately— had appeared out of nowhere, as if walls and guards and dogs did not exist.

  As the day wore on, she turned over the morning's conversation with an increasing impatience. Sometimes she convinced herself that she had dreamed the stranger, that he was an illusion of her exhaustion, a shadowy projection of the longing that burned within. She had thought hope was dead inside her, but now she realized that it merely slumbered, like ash-gray embers that held yet a glowing heart, which the merest breath might fan into flame.

  The hours dragged, but at last it was evening. Just before she went to the byre, prompted by a sudden impulse, Maerad slipped back to her quarters and took her lyre from where she kept it, wrapped in sacking under her pallet.

  Cadvan was still there, lying on his back in the byre, his hands folded behind his head, apparently studying the ceiling. He was not so gray-faced now, although there were still dark circles under his eyes. He smiled at Maerad when she entered, but when he saw the fresh welts on her legs from the beating earlier that day, his smile faded. She looked back at him expressionlessly, waiting for him to speak. He sighed and stood up.

  "Well, Maerad, I've had a little time to think," he said. "This is a foul, noisome place; the animals are better treated than the people here. That is unjust enough." He paused. "Do you wish to leave?"

  Maerad almost laughed. The cot was guarded day and night, and the guards were vigilant. Some slaves had tried to escape, but all her life Maerad had heard of none who succeeded, although she had seen many savage beatings and a man torn to pieces by Gilman's hounds. It was enough to gainsay the attempt.

  "Leave this place?"

  "Seriously, Maerad."

  "I've dreamed of nothing else these long years," she said. "It's impossible. Why do you think I'm still here?"

  "Nothing is impossible." Cadvan paused and looked down at the ground. "You could leave with me. But I am in a little dilemma as to what to do; it would be most unwise to take you with me. I am flying from danger into danger, and I do not have my full strength."

  Maerad's heart dropped with disappointment. She hadn't realized, despite her frank scepticism, the resilience of her hope. But Cadvan continued.

  "Neither could I leave you here, if you are indeed Milana's daughter, and you indeed wish to leave. Perhaps I could come back when I was stronger; but I have duties I can't abandon, and I would not be free of them for months. And my heart tells me ..." He fell silent again, looking at the ground, as if he were weighing a difficult decision.

  "I must leave now. If you want to come with me, you may. Leaving will be a simple matter. Other things will not be so simple, but we will have to take them as they come."

  Maerad was suddenly breathless and could make no reply

  "Yes?" the stranger said. "Or no?"

  "Why are you asking me this?" she said. "It's impossible! Are you tricking me?"

  Cadvan merely looked at her without answering. She stared back at him stubbornly, refusing to lower her eyes.

  "There come few times in a person's life where there is a clear choice," said Cadvan at last. "The difference between one person and another is how they meet that choice." There was a short silence, and then he gestured impatiently. "I have no time. I have made my offer. You can stay or leave as you wish. I am asking what you want. If you don't know, it is no concern of mine." He brushed some straw from his cloak and turned to leave the byre.

  A feeling akin to panic surged through Maerad. For a second she felt as if she were drowning again: only this time there would be no hand to haul her out onto the bank.

  "Wait!" she called out. "Wait."

  Cadvan turned again to face her.

  "I'll come," she said.

  Cadvan looked at her bundled lyre. "Is there anything you must fetch?" Maerad shook her head. "Well, that is good. We'll go now, then."

  "Now? What about the cows?" And indeed, they were lowing, asking her to relieve them of their burden of milk.

  "Someone else will milk them tonight," said Cadvan. "I do not think Gilman will let his beasts suffer; they are too valuable. Now, quickly. Come here."

  Maerad approached him warily, and he made her stand square in front of him. He put his hands on her shoulders and spoke. The words sent a thrill through Maerad; it was like plunging into cold, fresh water from a spring welling from the morning of the world.

  "Larnea il oseanna, lembel Maerad inasfrea!" He dropped his hands. "Turn the eyes of men from Maerad so she may walk unseen,' is roughly what I have said," he explained. "Now no man could see you, though you stood a span from his nose. The virtue will not work on objects, if you drop them. So keep your bundle close! Now, we must scale the walls."

  He picked up a pack Maerad had not noticed and walked toward the low door. As he did so, Maerad was assailed by panic once again. Somehow she already felt her decision was irrevocable, yet she didn't know what it was she had decided: why trust this man? She knew nothing of him. But her doubts were overwhelmed by a fierce longing, as if all her desires for freedom, crushed by hopelessness for so many years, came back in a single urgent wave. It can't be worse than here, she thought, because here I'm certain to die, and out there—who knows? She took a deep breath and followed Cadvan out of the byre.

  "We must hurry," he said. "No speaking. I cannot make us unheard as well."

  They left the byre and made for the south wall. Maerad found it hard not to flinch in the open squares, where the Thane's men stood lounging against the walls, toying with their weapons; it was difficult to believe in her invisibility when she felt so visible.

  Their way led them straight past the Great Hall. The chained dogs looked up and sniffed in greeting as they passed, but the men looked through them.

  She kept close behind Cadvan, tiptoeing despite herself, until they came to the least-guarded section of the outer walls. The wall itself was not hard to climb; Maerad had often considered the logistics. Impossible, however, under the vigilance of the guards, whose sight covered every inch of the wall and who knew their lives were forfeit if anyone left. Ca
dvan set his foot on the wall, and Maerad helplessly showed him her sacking-wrapped lyre, which she could not sling on her back. He stopped thoughtfully, took it, and stowed it in his bag. Then they started again. When they reached the top, Cadvan paused, looking each way for the guards who patrolled the way. Choosing his time carefully, he took Maerad by the arm and pushed her across the narrow path, and then together they went down the other side.

  As they did, Maerad heard the bell ring—once, twice, thrice—before it began a long, urgent peal. It was the signal for an escape. She started, feeling horribly exposed. Lothar must have discovered her absence already, but it was very quick—no doubt he wanted revenge for her slight this morning, and she would be whipped for sparking an alarm. A commotion rose in the cot. She half scrambled, half fell down the wall, beating Cadvan to the ground.

  "Now you make the pace!" he said, laughing. "I thought I'd never get you out of there!"

  "They'll send the dogs after us!" whispered Maerad, panting with fear. "There's no escaping Gilman's hounds. They'll track a stag for a week and they can tear a grown man to pieces in a minute!"

  "Dogs are easy to deal with," said Cadvan. "Don't be afraid, Maerad. If dogs are the worst we have to face, we will be fortunate. But now we must move on. See the end of this valley? I want to be well clear of this before the night is over. Our doom tonight is, I am afraid, a long walk. Then we'll rest."

  Maerad looked down the valley where she had been imprisoned most of her short life. The ground swept away before her, a constant, steady decline of boulders and mountain rubble covered with sparse scrub and the odd tree bent against the harsh winds that swept down from the mountains, the Osidh Annova, eastern border of the Inner Kingdom. A rudimentary track wandered down the center of the valley, strewn here and there with stones from some landslide.

  She suddenly felt very small and frightened. She looked at the man who stood at her elbow, and swallowed. His face was dark and closed; the great dogs that figured in her nightmares, with their yelping bays and their long, loping gait, were but small trouble to him. No doubt he knew far worse. He now seemed remote, charged with some hidden power she only sensed. She didn't want to seem foolish before such a man. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath.