The Gift

by Alison Croggon

  It came to within a hundred yards of where they sat, and stopped. Maerad could hear its breathing, a rattling inhalation, and a horrible sound of slavering. She and Cadvan sat absolutely still, caught in breathless suspense. Then the creature lunged forward, away from the glade, and it was as if the blood rushed suddenly in a flood through all of Maerad's veins, and she went limp with relief. They listened as it trampled through the forest, the noise receding farther and farther away from them until they could hear it no more.

  "What was that?" she whispered, when the night noises of the forest began to reassert themselves over the unsettling silence.

  "I don't know," said Cadvan. "A goromant, maybe; it sounded like one."

  "A goromant?

  "A great beast with a tail like a scorpion's and armor plating. They hunt by scent, and are very hard to kill. We were lucky we were in this Bardhome; it protects us."

  "Was it... was it sent by the Dark, do you think?"

  Cadvan squinted at her through the darkness of the night. "No, I think not, Maerad. There are many creatures born out of an older power than the Nameless. And in ancient forests like these they yet live, survivors of an ancient malice. Though it's true they may be used by the Nameless."

  "Then how do you know it wasn't sent?"

  Cadvan had no answer to that, and simply replied that he would keep watch. Shaken, Maerad lay down again. It was a long time before she went back to sleep.

  They rose at dawn the next day and continued through the Weywood. In the peace that now surrounded them, the incident overnight seemed like a strange dream. But Cadvan pointed out the track of the beast's passage: clawed footprints in the soft mud by a stream, and freshly broken saplings and branches. The prints were very deep, and Maerad shuddered at the weight they implied; it must have been monstrous.

  Dewlings hung from each twig, sparkling in the shafts of sunlight that penetrated the canopy above the track. Looking to each side, Maerad saw the trees were here more thickly grown, wrapping the forest in shadow. Sometimes in the distance she saw a vagrant patch of sun where a great oak had crashed to the ground and lay twined with ivies and mistletoe, or where gray outcrops of granite rose suddenly out of the forest floor. The ground was thick with patches of bracken, pushing out of the copper wreckage of winter its mild green fronds, and near the track flourished all sorts of plants: celandines and bluebells, ground ivy, clumps of nightshade and hemlock, thickets of nettles and briars. Cadvan identified them as they rode, once dismounting to pluck the modest star-shaped green flower of the oneberry. "Also it is called moonwort or true love, and by Bards, martagon," he told her. "Each flower bears a single red-black berry later in the year, which if powdered has virtues against poison. And some say it has other virtues beside, and if taken as a tea, it gives rise to marvelous dreams."

  The track was heavily strewn with rotting leaves, which dampened the sound of their hoofbeats, and was punctuated by frequent stony fords from the many streams that crossed it. They were now deep in the Weywood, heading north. As the day drew on Maerad began to feel oppressed by the silence, and she and Cadvan spoke less and less frequently. She thought often of the great beast they had heard the night before; there was no sign of any such creature now. The only sound she could hear in the forest was birdsong, but the birds remained hidden in the branches. Once she thought she saw the red form of a deer disappearing, swift as thought, between the trees, but it was so brief it could have been a trick of her eye; otherwise she saw no living thing.

  Cadvan was turning over in his mind the best route to Norloch. He had turned from the West Road into the cover of the woods as soon as possible, and already they were diverted from their most direct course. He now debated with himself the opposing virtues of discretion and speed. The straightest way was also the most perilous, but to tarry had dangers also. He was deeply disturbed by Maerad's revelation of the night before, and in his dilemma wished he could be certain of the truth of Dernhil's death. He had to decide which way would best suit them, whether to follow the roads to Norloch or to push across wilder country away from habitations. Either route had virtues and risks. He didn't need to make up his mind until they left the Weywood, some days ahead, but then that choice was irrevocable.

  That night they stayed at another Derenhel, again planted around a rock face in which there was a cave, and this time with a pool in the center of the dingle. They kept watch in shifts, but they heard nothing sinister. The following evening they made camp under a huge oak near the track, again keeping watch. They lit no fire, for Cadvan would do nothing to arouse attention in the forest, and Maerad slept uneasily, feeling unprotected. She was beginning to find the forest's stillness unnerving.

  As they traveled, Cadvan passed the time by teaching her more of the Knowing and the mysteries of the Speech, of the histories of the Seven Kingdoms and the realm of Annar, of the behavior of wild birds, and the properties of plants. He told her the different legends about the appearance on the continent of the Bards, called in the Speech of the Starpeople the Dhillareare, and how none were agreed on their origins; and sometimes he recited lays from the time of the Great Silence about the desperate battles of the Light against the Nameless One. He explained how the Light in that time retreated to the outer reaches, now called the Seven Kingdoms—Culain, Ileadh, Thorold, Lanorial, Amdridh, Suderain, and Lirhan—and was almost driven from Annar altogether. They did not mention Hulls at all.

  Most evenings they drew out their lyres and played together. Maerad learned in these days how to listen anew to the songs she knew already by heart, and to understand them in a different way: not simply as stories made to lull away the tedium of winter evenings, but as enactments in which the ancient secrets of the Knowing were brought into the present and made real. After the shock of Dernhil's death, and all the events that had preceded it—everything that had happened since she met Cadvan in the cot—she was grateful for this peace. She wished they were merely journeying, and had no urgent quest; she pushed away thoughts of being the Chosen One, the Fated, all those important words that seemed to have nothing to do with her.

  On their third day in the forest Maerad felt the sense of oppression increase, as if they were being watched. Cadvan appeared unperturbed, so she said nothing. They made camp under a tree that night; again there was no fire, and as she huddled miserably in the cold on the verge of an uncomfortable sleep, she started awake with the feeling that she had tripped and was falling into deep water. Her eyes opened on another pair of eyes, gleaming yellow like a cat's, looking straight into hers from less than ten feet away. She sat up in alarm, but they immediately vanished; and when Cadvan asked her what was wrong, she said she thought she had seen an owl, or some other animal.

  She was beginning to tire of the Weywood, and longed for a breeze on her face and the clear sight of stars or the sun. For the first time since they had left Innail she yearned for a bath; her skin felt sticky and filthy, and she remembered with regret the sweet-smelling oils in Silvia's house. The next morning she saddled Imi discontentedly.

  "How long have we got in these forsaken woods?" she asked Cadvan. "Or do they just go on forever?"

  "Not forever," said Cadvan. "I would rather be unseen, and the Weywood is an excellent place for hiding, but I know what you mean." He grimaced, buckling up Darsor's girth strap, and swung up into the saddle. "Another two days, and we'll be in plain sight of the sky again."

  Maerad's feeling of unease grew again throughout the day, and she began to itch to leave the forest and wished Cadvan would pick up his pace. Now she was beginning to feel sure that something was watching them, although she could never see anything. If she looked over her shoulder, she sometimes felt a figure had just flicked out of sight; or she saw movements in her peripheral vision that might have been leaves moving in the wind, had there been any wind to move them. Were they pursued? And if so, by what? By late afternoon she was jumping every time one of the horses stood on a twig.

  Then she thought she heard s
omething, a voice that seemed to dance on the boundaries of hearing, so at first she wasn't sure if it was a voice at all; perhaps it was the wind fluting through branches, or the far cry of a bird. It would sound, and then vanish before she could grasp it, and then sound again, all the time seeming nearer. She began to feel afraid and glanced across at Cadvan, willing him to mention it. But he continued on, saying nothing. At last, unable to contain her agitation, she said: "Cadvan, do you hear something?"

  "You can hear our fellow traveler?" He turned to her and smiled. "Not all ears can hear that song."

  "What is it?"

  As if the voice were aware they were listening, it at once carried a new clarity. Maerad began to hear words, although they seemed abstracted, as if they were forms moving beneath the shifting surfaces of water. Then it seemed to her that a focus shifted, as it sometimes does when you gaze into a pool, so that where you had seen only the sunlit edges of ripples dazzling the face of the water, now you see clearly in its depths the still form of a trout stippled with red and gold, its fins waving lazily in the lazy currents. With a slight shock Maerad realized she could understand the words:

  "Soft as a river is to the sleeping swan

  Cold as the moonlight fainting on a stone

  Deep as the deathless moss on the singing tree

  I am this, and this, and this

  Fleet as an unseen star in the dwindling glade

  Old as the hidden root that feeds the world

  Hard as the light that blinds the living eye

  I am this, and this, and this"

  Imi and Darsor stopped and put up their heads, neighing. Maerad sat still, gripped by the enchantment of the song, which was utterly strange and seemed to echo within her head, rather than be heard. She wasn't aware of Cadvan's swift concern, or that he dismounted and went to Imi, holding the reins and reaching up to grasp Maerad's hands.

  It seemed then to Maerad that the woods darkened around them, and there appeared from between the trees a wavering silvery illumination, like light from beneath water, and within the shifting light a figure.

  "Hail, daughter," said the figure to Maerad. "I have been watching thee."

  Maerad stared back in amazement. The figure was a woman, who would have been naked except for the strange impression she gave of being dressed in light, as if the bright silvery waves covered rather than revealed her. Maerad looked into her eyes, and they were the same yellow eyes that had startled her the night before. She had the wildest face she had ever seen, inhuman and fey, amoral and beautiful as a flower.

  "Why?" stammered Maerad. "Why have you been watching me?"

  The figure laughed. "How often does one of my kin come this way? I thought perhaps you were coming to greet me, and make music in the old way. But I see you are with one of these dolts, these humans." She laughed again, and Maerad felt a shiver of ice run down her spine. She shook herself and looked down; Cadvan was staring up at her, but it was as if she looked at him through a veil.

  "What do you want of me?" she asked.

  "I know thee," said the figure. "I will not hinder thee." She came closer to Maerad, and it seemed that she stepped on the air and stood before her, globed in the aqueous light. "I do not hinder my children." She took Maerad's chin in her hand and lifted it, so they gazed eye to eye. "I loved thy forefather many an age ago, and his head rested on my breast, and such pleasure was a wonder to me."

  She let Maerad go and stretched sensuously, like a cat, reaching her arms up into the trees. "But like all mortals, he aged and died. I forgot him. And then I heard your voice, and it sounded like his, and I remembered. So I followed thee, and saw; you are my kin."

  Maerad was silent.

  "Is he your lover, this human? Forget them, they die like the reeds. Come with me to your own kingdom."

  Maerad felt a stab of fear. Was she going to be magicked away? "No," she said, more loudly than she intended.

  "No?" The figure shrugged and then smiled. "I understand love. I too loved once. But listen, I'll give thee this. Perhaps you will weary of humans; they soil the world, and poison the root of things." She handed Maerad a little flute made out of a reed. "Play on it, and I'll hear thee."

  Maerad blinked, and in that instant the figure was gone and all was as it had been, except that she now held the little reed flute in her hand. She looked down. Cadvan was holding Imi's bridle, staring speechlessly up at her. She shook her head, trying to free herself of the strangeness of what had just happened, and laughed.

  "What was that?" she said shakily.

  "What was what?" said Cadvan urgently. "Tell me, Maerad, what happened?"

  "Who was she?"

  "She is an Elemental Spirit, an Elidhu. What did she say to you?"

  "Couldn't you hear?" asked Maerad in astonishment.

  "I could hear her, but no human alive speaks their language. If they want to speak to human beings, which is seldom, they will use our tongue, or perhaps the Speech. Maerad, you spoke a language I do not know when you spoke with her."

  Maerad sat very still, digesting this information. "I did?"

  "Yes, you did." Cadvan sounded agitated. "I didn't know if you had been bewitched."

  "No," said Maerad slowly. "No, I don't think so. She said, 'I will not hinder thee.'" She then recounted their odd conversation, omitting the Elidhu's comments about Cadvan, and he began to look less worried, if not less stunned. He took the little flute and inspected it thoughtfully.

  "I used to make pipes like this when I was a child," he said, and handed it back to her. "But this is of some reed that is strange to me." He looked at Maerad with a new curiosity, not untinged, she felt, by amazement. "There were rumors that there was Elemental blood in the House of Karn. I never believed them. Clearly I was wrong." He shook his head, as if he were trying to clear his thoughts. "What does this mean? It's strange, very strange...."

  Maerad looked back at him blankly, still feeling as if she were resurfacing from deep water. Cadvan made as if he was about to ask her another question, but stopped himself abruptly. Instead he handed her the reins and returned to Darsor and remounted. "We should press on," he said. "There's a Bardhome a league or so from here. There we'll talk further."

  At the Bardhome they unsaddled and loosed the horses, and then, as had already become routine, lit a fire in the cavern and prepared a meal. Cadvan seemed distracted and Maerad kept silent, although she burned with questions. When they had finished eating, Cadvan stretched out his legs and leaned back against the cave wall, and Maerad studied him in the firelight. He looked tired; deep furrows ran from nose to mouth, and his eyes were hooded. In such moments he seemed a stranger to her—a dark, withdrawn man, his face lined with thought, toughened and weathered by a life of which she had no knowledge. She waited, and eventually, as the evening darkened, he emerged from himself and looked up at her, smiling.

  "Forgive me," he said. "What happened today was wholly unexpected. I had no idea...." He shook his head. "I knew you were full of surprises, Maerad, but this surprises even me."

  "It surprises me too," said Maerad. "How can I speak to the Elidhu and yet not know the Speech?"

  "I don't know," said Cadvan. "Banding is an ancient knowledge. But there is a Knowing more ancient, as ancient as the waters and the trees and the earth, and much of this is unknown to us, or but dimly guessed. This is the Knowing from which the Barding grows, the root. They are not the same. Barding is the concern of humankind, but these Elidhu walked the earth before we did." He paused, and then continued. "To have the blood of Elementals is, among Bards, not quite considered to be a good thing," he said. "If it was in the House of Karn, it is no wonder it was kept secret."

  "Why?" asked Maerad. "She was not evil."

  "No, not evil," said Cadvan. "But neither can they be relied on in the human world. You spoke to the Elidhu; would you trust her? The things of the Wild are not as us; they are apt to forget what we must remember, and turn like fire in a trice from benign to deadly."

&n
bsp; Maerad was silent, staring into the flames. "And what is the House of Karn?"

  Cadvan looked up at her swiftly and then looked down. "It is your House, your family," he said. "Some Bards, perhaps about half of them, come from families in which Barding has never been known—I am one of those—others do not. The House of Karn is an ancient family of Bards. They were at the founding of Pellinor, and before that at Lirion in the north, and throughout the Silence their line continued unbroken far in the west, on the Isle of Thorold. Lanorgil the Seer was of that family. Andomian and Beruldh, whose story you have sung so often, are your distant ancestors. Milana, your mother, was the daughter of a great heritage of Barding. As are you."

  "Me?" Maerad was more staggered by this news than by the encounter with the Elidhu. Suddenly the tragic story of Andomian took on a new immediacy. It's my story, she thought: my history. She imagined Andomian dying in the dungeons of the sorcerer Karak, alone and desperate, after rescuing her brothers from slavery, and shuddered. "Why haven't you told me this before?" she said.

  Cadvan was silent. "Usted mentioned your heritage at the Council in Innail, but apart from that it hasn't come up," he said at last. "And perhaps I do not trust the idea of inherited Barding. There are those who are not worthy of their ancestry, and who are proud beyond their ability or right."

  They didn't speak for some time, each following their own thoughts. Maerad thought she sensed a new distance in Cadvan, a retreat from the intimacy that had begun to grow between them, and this grieved her. It wasn't her fault, she thought, that she came from such a family; she had never chosen it, just as she had not chosen to be a slave throughout her childhood. She was still who she was, whatever rags of history she dragged behind her. But then Cadvan stirred.