The Gift

by Alison Croggon

  As they rode farther south and the relief of moving freely at last wore off, Maerad began to realize that all was not well in Edinur. Sometimes they passed through villages that had a sense of melancholy emptiness, as if no one now lived there, though she thought at first it was simply that everyone slept. Then on the second night they rode through a hamlet in which every second house had been burned to the ground. It looked as if it had been the site of a battle. Dismal drifts of ash eddied through the charred skeletons of the buildings, and the smell of burning still hung in the air, although the fires had been long cold. Packs of dogs, half mad with hunger, scavenged among the ruins and set up a volley of barks and howls when they saw the horses, snapping at their heels until Cadvan warded them off with a few words of the Speech. They passed as quickly as they could through the ruins, galloping at last into the sweet night air of the open meadows.

  "What happened to the people?" asked Maerad. "Was there a war here?"

  "Of a kind," said Cadvan. "Of a kind." He seemed disinclined to explain further, as if his heart were too heavy for speaking, and Maerad, feeling the increasing sense of despair that seemed to gather in the very air around them, did not press him further.

  Through the shadows Maerad had seen the symptoms of a land sorely troubled. By day it would have been clearer. Cadvan had not told her, but the townspeople he had met had told him that Edinur was afflicted with the White Sickness; and this, more than his fear of encountering Hulls, was the chief reason they traveled by night and spoke with no one. The ruined houses were those in which the illness had set itself. They had been burned by their neighbors in fear, to scorch out the disease, or by their surviving inhabitants, fearful to touch or bury the corpses inside, or even by those diseased, in their final madness and despair.

  The White Sickness had entered Annar only some twenty years before, first appearing in the south. There seemed no pattern to it: the disease would flare in a region and wipe out many of its inhabitants in a brief but terrible holocaust, and then disappear altogether for years until it sprang up again elsewhere. It was becoming more common, and Cadvan thought privately it was an illness brought by the Hulls, who used it to weaken the strength of Annar. Those most prone to catch it were the young and strong, and sometimes in a town in which the sickness had raged, none were left alive between the ages of eighteen and thirty. All those afflicted by the White Sickness withered away in fever and madness. It was so called because, as the disease overtook the sufferers, their sight became misted over as if with cataracts that silvered the entire iris. In those far gone, their eyes were terrible sightless balls set in ravaged faces. The chances of surviving the illness were very small, and most of those who did were afterward blinded, unless the sufferer was lucky enough to be treated by a great healer. And there were very few healers of any kind in Edinur, even though Norloch was only a few days' ride away.

  Hem kept his own counsel. He seemed content to ride with them, though his eyes flashed with fear when Cadvan mentioned Norloch. Cadvan and Maerad both noted this and tacitly kept a close eye on him; they did not want him to run off while they were distracted, making camp perhaps or looking for a spring to fill their water bottles. Maerad especially didn't want him to flee; she had begun to feel that Hem somehow belonged to her. As Silvia filled the gaping hole left by her mother's death, so Hem replaced her dead brother, Cai. Cadvan pitied the boy—who sat so silently within the circle of his own arms each day, his head bowed in inscrutable reflections or memories—and when he spoke to him, he addressed him gently. But he found out no more about Hem's childhood, and by dawn each day was too tired to probe; he was pushing the pace hard, anxious to reach Norloch as soon as he could. When Maerad slept, she always took the boy in her arms as she lay down. Hem never objected, and was less restless cuddled against Maerad, as if her touch reprieved him from his nightmares.

  When he was keeping watch, Cadvan often turned to contemplate his two charges: the fair-skinned and the dark, their black hair mingling in the grass, two waifs of the Light, brought together by a destiny that was impossible to guess. Although they were both very different, there was something about Maerad and Hem that was kin, and a wordless understanding had arisen between them. It wasn't only that they were orphans and had been forced to survive alone in worlds where no one cared whether they lived or died, nor was it simply the marking of the Gift.

  Their kinship reinforced Maerad's youth; as they lay together, it was clear that the child had not altogether left her face. Looking at their sleeping forms, a sadness would gather in Cadvan's eyes and his face became tender and abstracted, as if he saw simultaneously some other vision now far off, or gone forever: a memory of his vanished childhood perhaps, when he slept in innocence with his own brothers and sisters and knew nothing of Hulls, or hardship, or grief.

  On the fourth day in Edinur they camped again in a dell, sheltering under some trees. They were now passing through a less-populous region, where the southern edge of Edinur petered out into uninhabited downs. They saw the black shapes of houses less often on the brows of hills, and the hamlets were more widely spaced. This was a relief to Maerad; those they did pass through oppressed her spirits. The downs continued for ten leagues or so before the great Vale of Norloch, which stretched from the Aleph, the widest river in all Annar. The city stood proudly on the coast, looming high over the fertile deltas of the Aleph, which split into many broad streams at its estuary and ran into Mithrad Bay through waterlands thickly overgrown with mangroves. The next night's ride would take them onto the downs and, all being well, they would ride into Norloch Vale at dawn the following day.

  Cadvan did not explain this to Maerad, afraid that Hem would run off if he knew they were so close to Norloch. Hem seemed to regard anything to do with Bards with the deepest dread. But Maerad knew that they drew close to the end of their long journey, and her fear began to dominate her excitement. If Innail had been daunting to her, coming from slavery and petty tyranny, Norloch, the high city of Barding, was even more so, no matter what she had learned in the past three months.

  When they set off the next evening, the wind shifted. The clear summer weather seemed to be turning and a chill wind began to blow from the west, bringing clouds hurrying into the sky. The moon rose huge and swollen on the horizon, swathed in dark rags of cloud. Cadvan sniffed the air and wrapped his cloak around him, clasping it so it covered Hem, and Darsor stamped at the ground restlessly with his forefeet.

  "It will be a hard night," said Cadvan. "The farther we get, the better." He stood silent for a while, sending his listening out into the night; then, satisfied he heard nothing sinister, he urged Darsor on, and the great black horse sprang forward, and Imi followed.

  A couple of hours later it began to drizzle, but the rain didn't impede them and the riding kept them warm. Maerad didn't draw her hood over her head; she enjoyed the smack of the cold wind in her face and her hair streaming behind her as they rode at speed. Now they were well onto the downs and no longer passed any houses. Sometimes on the crests of hills Maerad saw the shapes of single standing stones pushing up into the sky like ominous fingers, but otherwise the downs rushed past like a black ocean rolling with dark waves. The moon crept higher and hid altogether under the clouds, and they saw only the faint glimmer of the road in front of them, pushing broad and straight through the undulating emptiness. Maerad began to feel that she was not moving at all, but rather that she sat on Imi still as a carven statue, and the downs whirled past her in a great rush of wind.

  They didn't speak. Around them seemed to crouch a listening silence that forbade chatter. Maerad shivered: the cold was beginning to bite, and she drew her hood over her and huddled her cloak more tightly around her. She could feel that her period was imminent, and this made the cold less easy to bear; her body felt strangely fragile, as if she were made of glass. Cadvan was now pushing them faster. It rained again, a heavier shower, and then the moon emerged from hiding so the road shone silver before them, a path of wet m
oonlight that stretched endlessly into the distance between the dim shoulders of the hills.

  At the darkest hour of the night, Maerad saw that the road cleft through a high down, so it ran narrowly between two tall shoulders of stone and plunged into shadow. At the entrance of the cleft, on the top of each shoulder, stood a standing stone. They rose like two broken fangs, seeming to form a gate with no lintel. As they approached, Cadvan slowed down and drew level with Maerad. She saw Hem's pale face poking out of Cadvan's cloak, his eyes dark and sleepless.

  "They call these the Broken Teeth," Cadvan said. "It is an evil place, and there is no time to ride around it. Better to ride through in daylight, though even then it is grim enough. As always, we choose between bad chances. Be wary, and keep your hand on your sword, and your mind quick and clear."

  As they approached the gate Maerad felt her loathing increase, and her hair prickled. Cadvan stopped altogether and listened; Maerad listened with him, and could hear only the wind.

  "I think the Teeth are held against us," said Cadvan quietly. "We come to an ill choice: to dare whatever awaits us, or to await it here." He drew Arnost and the blade rang faintly in the silence. Maerad hesitated, and then took the hilt of Irigan and held its weight in her hand. She heard the words of her swordmaster Indik echo sardonically in her mind: hope you're lucky. She didn't feel very lucky.

  They paced slowly toward the gate. Imi snorted, trembling beneath Maerad as they drew under the black shadow of the hill. As they passed the standing stones, it was as if a scarf were tied over Maerad's eyes; she could see nothing in front of her, not even the dark shape of Cadvan and Darsor. She took a deep breath to contain her fear and paced on steadily. Gradually her eyes adjusted and she could see dim shapes, shadows among shadows. All around her she could feel an evil watchfulness, as if she were a mouse creeping past a cat that waited, still and malevolent, for it to come within reach of its claws. The cleft was charged with the desolate horror she had first felt in the battle with the wers of the Landrost; but it was worse, much worse.

  Maerad listened in an agony of alertness, but could hear nothing except an oppressive silence. The walls rose higher on either side, and their hoofbeats echoed dully, as if sound itself were afraid and cowered against the stone.

  When the attack came, it was swift and without warning.

  There was a sudden flash, but it seemed to be a flash of darkness rather than light, a rush of black energy that came at once from above and before them. Instantly there was an answering stab of light from Cadvan, intolerably brilliant in that dark place; and for a second Maerad saw that before them the road boiled with shadows, wolf shadows whose eyes gleamed red with malice. In their midst stood a tall form, cloaked and high-helmed, and behind it were cloaked and hooded riders, with the pack swirling around the knees of their horses. They roiled back before the blast of light, and Cadvan, now shining with a white fire, lifted his sword high. Darsor reared and screamed, beating the air before him with his hooves. In that moment Imi, who had stood frozen with terror, sprang sideways and reared, and Maerad fell to the ground. She heard Imi bolting back along the road. Maerad scrambled back against the side of the rock wall, panting with fear.

  Cadvan never brought down his sword. Although he still blazed with a pure, unconsuming fire, he sat motionless on Darsor, transfixed, and with a thrill of terror Maerad realized he was unable to move. The dark shape moved toward him; and, as it approached, Maerad saw that its face was not dark, but glimmered with a fell light that illuminated nothing except itself.

  It was not a Hull, but something older, more chill, more

  deadly.

  Maerad shrank into the rock, panic-stricken. This thing was infinitely more menacing than the Kulag, which was merely monstrous. She was acutely conscious of an evil intelligence, a vicious will. She felt its awareness brooding on Cadvan, gathering all its might to strike him down. Her mind reeled and she cringed, almost fainting, overwhelmed by a sense of enmity and malevolent pride, tempered over countless years to a sheer, focused point: immeasurably bitter, immeasurably cruel, colder than any ice.

  It was a wight, summoned from the Abyss. Its face had the livid hue of something that had been long dead, and in its face were no eyes, only empty holes opening to impenetrable darkness. And yet it seemed to see. A stench of the grave breathed through the cleft, cold and foul. Maerad heard Hem give a little gasp.

  It moved close to Cadvan, level with his eyes, although he was on horseback. It stopped and spoke with a deathly voice, and as it spoke a loathing came so thickly over Maerad she thought she would be sick.

  "Who disturbs the sleep of Sardor?" it asked, and then it laughed, and its laughter was more terrible than its voice. "What miscreants dare enter my chamber, thinking in their folly and vanity that I lie in chains?"

  Behind it the horsemen moved in closer, and Maerad saw they were Hulls. There were five of them. They kept the wers behind them, whipping them back with cruel thongs, so they yelped and howled.

  "I think I know," said a Hull, mockingly. "It is the great Cadvan of Lirigon. I hear he has been riding around the countryside as he pleases, snapping his fingers at our Master, for he believes he is a great Bard, and may flout even the authority of the Great One. He has ridden so in his arrogance for years; but alas, he cannot be allowed to continue."

  "Nay," said another. "And now he hath stolen something of mine. There is no end to his insolence. Well, might we ask why the great Cadvan, Norloch's pampered darling, keeps such company? He has fallen very low in the world, methinks."

  At this, all the Hulls laughed, but the tall one stood motionless and did not laugh.

  At last Maerad heard Cadvan speak, although he still did not move. "I may have fallen low in my time," he said thickly. He sounded as if he were speaking under water, but as he spoke his voice gathered strength. "But my memory differs from thine. Methinks I fell lowest when I knew thee, Likud, once of Culain, and that now I move so far beyond thee thy muddy imagination cannot reach there."

  The Hull hissed and flinched, as if Cadvan had hurt him. "You will regret that, Cadvan of Lirigon," he said, with a malice that made Maerad's skin crawl. "I will make plenty of time for regretting."

  The light within Cadvan grew brighter and brighter, but still he did not move. Maerad, pressed against the stone as if she wished it would swallow her up, willed him to move, begged in her mind, in a panic; but he sat arrested, his sword arm high, and Darsor stood as if he were carved of stone.

  "I will have my own thing back," said the Hull called Likud, and rode up to Cadvan. Maerad saw Hem twisting in Cadvan's frozen arms, but he was locked there and could not escape; and then, with a desperate contortion of his body, he wriggled out and fell off the horse. Scrambling to his feet, he fled down the road and casually the Hull lifted its hand and sent a bolt of darkness after him, hitting him in the back so the boy stumbled and fell, and then lay still.

  "The rats are easily dealt with," said the Hull contemptuously. "But the King Rat? Well, that is a different question." He lifted the whip and struck Cadvan viciously across the face. Cadvan swayed in his saddle, a livid welt rising on his cheek. Arnost fell from his hand and clanged on the stone road.

  "Such spawn of filth should be dealt with at leisure, think you not, friends? What is sufficient punishment for this renegade, this murderer, this treacherous spy? Do you think we have forgotten, Cadvan, how eagerly you studied the secrets of the Dark? Think you that such treachery will be easily answered? The torment of a single night alone is not enough. No." The Hull moved closer to Cadvan, his eyes gleaming with cold hatred, and spat into his face. "Not a single night, but countless nights of agony, until the mind is flayed into madness and can bear itself no longer and cries alone in the darkness, forbidden the Gate forever. And even that is not sufficient." He struck Cadvan again savagely across the face, and the light within him dimmed. He struck him again, the thongs whistling and cracking as they hit, and Cadvan's light went out utterly, and he fell sense
less to the ground. And then the Hulls loosed the wolfwers and they leaped forward with chilling howls.

  Maerad watched helplessly, cowering in the shadows, numb with horror and despair. She saw Cadvan fall from Darsor and, with the sickly inevitability of nightmare, the arc of his fall seemed to take hours; at last he hit the ground and lay still at Darsor's feet, his face glimmering palely in the darkness, streaked with blood. And as he fell, she seemed to see another sight: her father also falling, his head staved by a mace, and behind him the towers of Pellinor collapsing into a roaring torrent of flames.

  With that a great grief and despair rushed into her. Now there's only me, she thought. What can I do? Cadvan was unconscious or perhaps even dead, and Hem lay dead behind her. And now her own death stood before her. Desperate and alone, she stood up with tears running unnoticed down her face; and as she stood, she saw with a vision other than sight that the wers were leaping toward Cadvan and Darsor and would be on them in a moment. Suddenly the torrent of grief became an all-consuming anger, and as if her anger tore aside a veil, a new awareness blazed inside her. Despite her extremity, she was possessed by a fierce, wild joy. Her blood sang through her veins like a silver fire. At last she understood her power, and she knew, with a clarity like that of a dream, what she had to do. She stretched out both her hands and shouted: "Noroch!"

  The road lit up instantly with white flames, throwing the faces of the Hulls into ghastly relief, and there was a chaos of howling and yammering from the wers. All the wers were ablaze, with white fire running along their backs and lapping down their sides, and they snapped and howled like mad things and bolted away from the flames. The Hulls' horses reared and screamed in terror and backed along the road, away from where Cadvan lay. The Hulls sawed viciously on the reins, so bloody foam dripped from the animals' mouths, and they fought the horses back toward Maerad. They peered into the blackness behind the flames, trying to find the source of the fire, but Maerad was small against the stone wall, hidden among the wild shadows thrown out by the inferno. Before they could catch sight of her, she sent out a great sheet of white flame, knocking all the Hulls and their horses down.