The Gift

  "So, Hem of Pellinor, or Cai of Pellinor. . . what really is your name?" said Saliman as they walked along.

  "Hem," said Hem firmly. "It's Hem."

  "Did Cadvan find you too? What is going on here?"

  Maerad didn't know how to answer, wondering what Cadvan would want her to say, and Saliman glanced at her and laughed. "It's all right, Maerad, don't feel you have to tell me anything. I'll find out from Cadvan later. But I can't get over it! Two from Pellinor!"

  "And where are you from?" demanded Hem rudely. "Not from around here, I'll bet."

  Saliman seemed to find Hem as amusing as Nelac did. "No, Hem. I'm from Turbansk, to the south."

  "The south!" Hem's face brightened with wonder. "Are you really from the south?"

  Saliman's mouth twitched. "Indeed I am. From the land of pomegranates and monkeys and oranges bigger than your head!"

  This seemed to temporarily silence Hem, whose eyes were now as big as saucers. They went on without speaking until they came to another wide corridor. Saliman opened the first door and poked his head in. "This looks like your room, Maerad. Make yourself at home."

  Maerad's chamber was bigger and higher than her room at Innail, with white stone walls draped with plain blue hangings. The stone floor was warmed by an intricately patterned crimson carpet. A curtained bed was let into the wall, and by the window was a cushioned window seat, on which were laid a rich red dress and other clothes. A fire crackled comfortably in a small grate.

  "The bathroom's down the hallway," explained Saliman. Maerad walked in the door and turned to thank him, but he was already farther down the hall, showing Hem his room. Hem was now chatting away freely; he seemed to like Saliman, or at least was not as awed by him as he was by Nelac. Maerad shut the door quietly, put down her pack, and sat motionless on the window seat. Her hair fell over her face, still damp from the storm, and she flicked it back, watching the rain beat on the black window pane. She would have a bath and change, but first she had to unpack.

  She took out her possessions, leaning her lyre against the chest and placing the small cat and the reed flute on the mantel. As she lifted the flute, the ring wrought of golden lilies flashed in the firelight, and she thought of Ardina, who in her different guises of Elidhu and Queen, had given her both gifts, rustic flute and exquisite ring. She wondered, for the first time, what they might mean. Ardina, she felt sure, had very little to do with the Light; but she was most certainly not evil. She was somehow outside these human laws—free and strange and dangerous—and yet she called Maerad her kin. Feeling unsettled by her thoughts, and too tired to follow them, Maerad put Dernhil's book on a small table, next to a lily-shaped lamp that sat there. For a second she gazed at it sadly, suddenly vividly reminded of Dernhil's serious face, bent over his desk, writing something. Saddened, she turned back to her unpacking. She didn't know what to do with her fighting gear, but when she looked into the chest, she saw there was plenty of room to stow it. The chest contained more soft, warm raiment like that she had worn at Innail, and the wood smelled sweet, imbuing the clothes with its scent.

  She took the crimson dress, which was made of a fine, very soft wool, from the window seat and hurried down the hallway to find the bathroom. No one was there, and she drew a hot bath, pouring generous amounts of oil into the water, and lowered herself in with a feeling of bliss. For a while she allowed herself simply to relax, emptying her mind of everything except the sheer pleasure of the warm water. She thought she had better not dawdle and, long before she was ready, dragged herself out, dressed in the crimson robe, and returned to her room.

  With the tempest raging outside it seemed very cosy and welcoming. After the punishing ride of the past few days she didn't feel like moving at all; she sat by the fire and listened to the storm hurling fistfuls of rain against the window, lighting up its blackness with white flashes of lightning. At last she was at Norloch, but she felt too tired to think, or even to feel any sense of triumph; more than anything else, she felt a strange, persistent unease. Norloch was grand and noble, and that daunted her; on the other hand, she liked Nelac very much. Why, then, this feeling of doubt?

  Saliman led Maerad and a yawning Hem downstairs to Nelac's dining room, where food was set out on a table. Hem was now wearing a plain jerkin of dyed blue wool and blue breeches of heavy cotton, instead of the ragged garments in which he had arrived, but they were too big for him, and he still went barefoot. Clearly he had not bathed.

  "We'll have to get you clothes that fit, eh, Hem? And some shoes," said Saliman, inspecting him. Hem looked up, surprised; he was pleased enough to be dressed warmly, and Maerad had the impression that he had never owned any shoes. "And I shall introduce you to a bath, as well."

  "Not for me," said Hem, shaking his head vigorously. "I'm fine as I am."

  "You're probably quite a different color under that dirt," Maerad said reflectively.

  "Yes, white as the driven snow," said Saliman mock seriously. "His hair is probably blond."

  Hem hunched his shoulders and walked on ahead without answering. Maerad looked laughingly across at Saliman. "You've a challenging task ahead, if you really want to clean him up," she said.

  "I am undaunted," said Saliman, throwing back his head heroically. "Not even Hem cows Saliman of Turbansk!"

  Cadvan was not at dinner; Nelac said he had gone to bed. Maerad was very hungry, but black waves of exhaustion kept breaking over her; she felt that if she didn't lie down soon, she would simply pass out at the table. Hem ate ravenously, and he couldn't hide his look of disbelief when he was offered a second helping. When he tentatively asked for more and wasn't refused, his incredulity became comical. He consumed, Maerad thought, an unfeasible amount of food: he would probably be sick. He ate at least four times the amount Maerad did, in the time it took her to finish a single plate.

  While they ate, neither Saliman nor Nelac asked them about their adventures. Saliman told them tales of his homeland; his strong, slender musician's hands sketched pictures in the air, his teeth flashing white as he laughed. Hem sat enraptured, chewing noisily, his head full of images of golden-roofed towers and fruit markets and silk stalls and strange, exotic animals. He couldn't keep his eyes off Saliman, and when the Bard intercepted his stares and smiled he blushed furiously and looked around the room instead.

  Nelac's dining room contained many curious things: a crystal globe carven with strange runes; curious, intricate instruments made perhaps for measuring or observation; and a shelf of big leather-bound books with their titles stamped in gilt on their spines. Parchment scrolls and paper manuscripts were piled high on a table against the wall. On one shelf was a collection of different kinds of stone: crystals of quartz and amethyst, polished agate, jade, and amber. Another held huge exotic seashells with strange spikes and horns, blotched with freckles of brown and pink, and one perfect nautilus, with intricate whorls as delicate as paper. A gilt lamp overhead let fall a gentle light. Maerad thought of Dernhil's study: this room seemed even more disorderly than his, but in the same way, as if a hidden purpose lay beneath the chaos.

  "Forgive the disorganization of my private quarters," said Nelac, noticing Hem's glances. "I never seem to have enough space for all my work, and it spills into every room."

  "It doesn't look disorganized to me," said Maerad, and then, despite herself, she reddened. She couldn't rid herself of her reticence in the presence of Nelac, although he didn't frighten her. He was like no one she had met before, and she felt how far he was beyond her experience; even Ardina had not abashed her so. Maybe it's because Ardina was a bit like me, she thought. And that's what she meant by kinship. But still, she wanted to know what had happened to Cadvan.

  "Is Cadvan all right?" she asked, when she finished eating.

  Nelac's eyes were dark and somehow ageless, and the glance he turned on Maerad was almost as deep as Ardina's. "Cadvan will be well in a short time," he said. "I had to use all my powers of healing, but I have made whole what was broken in him,
as if it were never wounded. That is more than a spell of mending. All that ails him now is exhaustion, and a long rest will heal that."

  "But what was wrong with him?" She gazed at Nelac, the distress rising within her again. "I didn't know anything was, I mean, beyond being tired, and the whips ..."

  Nelac's glance was full of gentle understanding, and Maerad looked down at the table. She found his acute perception discomforting.

  "Cadvan is a Bard of unusually strong will," he said kindly, smiling briefly, as if at some far memory. "If he seeks to keep something hidden, it is near impossible to find it out. When you arrived here, he was on the brink of death. He was struck down and broken by an evil will, even as he opened his full power. In a Bard, that is a grievous thing; the greater the Bard, the more grievous. And Cadvan is a very great Bard. Even as the physical wounds healed, he was sickening and wasting away."

  Maerad sat in silence, shocked at the thought of Cadvan dying. She had thought of him as somehow invulnerable.

  "I must say that I am full of curiosity," said Nelac, after a pause. "How is it you were not all killed outright? And who was the wight, I wonder? It's been many centuries since one was heard of in Annar."

  A trembling overtook Maerad, as the wight's baleful figure loomed vividly in her memory.

  "It said it was called Sardor," she said.

  "Sardor?" Nelac's face was suddenly grim. "He was chained long ages ago. He once haunted the Broken Teeth in the Edinur Downs, his barrow; but the Bards cleansed it after the Silence, and only his shadow remained. A black memory of former evil, but a memory nevertheless. I guess it was there he assailed you? He was a mighty king once, in the dark times. It is ill news that such an evil walks again in this land."

  "I don't think it does anymore," said Maerad faintly, and now her hands were shaking, and a roaring rose in her ears. "I blasted it, and it all burned up and disappeared."

  Nelac and Saliman stared at Maerad in astonishment.

  "You blasted it?" said Saliman, incredulity straining his voice. He looked across at Nelac, who was staring at Maerad somberly from beneath his heavy brows.

  Maerad felt suddenly that she couldn't bear the Bards' disbelief, not now, not here, not tonight. She clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking.

  "Nobody saw it," she said. "Cadvan was unconscious. I thought Hem was dead. Nobody saw me do it. But I did. You can believe me or not." She looked up defiantly and caught Nelac's steady gaze. She held his eye, refusing to be intimidated. At last he stirred, looking away and passing his hand over his brow. To Maerad's surprise, he looked immensely sad.

  "I believe you," he said.

  Chapter XXI

  A COUNCIL OF FRIENDS

  FOR what seemed a long time, Maerad floated through the mists and fogs of dream: nonsensical images rose up before her of a citadel like Norloch, but tiny and enclosed in glass like a child's bauble, and trees walking toward the sea, and Hem eating a supernaturally large bunch of grapes. But suddenly she gasped in her sleep; a Hull appeared before her and reached out its hand toward her wrist. It clasped her, and she could not move or speak. Then the Hull vanished and she dreamed, as she had long ago in Innail, that she was taken up like a bird over the realm of Annar. In the distance a sinking sun touched the eastern mountains and the battlements of a great city in the west, a city she knew now was Norloch; the Aleph River ran through its center, a snake of molten gold. Again a dark mist crept over the land and she heard lamenting; and then the voice cried, "Look to the north." She felt a rising panic as a dissolving shadow sought her; and then, as before, with the sickly dread of nightmare, came the dead voice. She understood, with a numbing sense of shock, that it was using the Speech, but the Speech subtly turned and distorted so that it was no longer a language of high beauty, but evil and empty, its potency inverted. "I am again," said the voice, "but none shall find my dwelling, for I live in every human heart." It started to laugh, and the laughter hurt her; and then, twisting and turning in her bed, Maerad escaped the tentacles of the nightmare and woke up. She sat up in bed, trembling all over, and looked around her. Her room was still and peaceful. A little faint light came through the casement and illuminated the room with silver. She looked around, reassuring herself; there was her lyre, there her book, there was the pipe the Elidhu had given her ...

  As she sat in bed, trying unsuccessfully to rid herself of an overwhelming feeling of dread, there was a quiet knock on her door. Maerad almost leaped out of her skin.

  "Maerad?" It was Hem.

  "Yes?"

  Hem's pale, sleep-tousled head peeked around the door.

  "Maerad, can I sleep with you? I'm getting bad dreams. . . . The room's so big and dark...."

  Maerad nodded, and wordlessly Hem crept into bed with her. She lay down, putting her arms around his thin, bony body. He was snoring within seconds, and it wasn't long before Maerad too slid back into a black, dreamless sleep.

  Maerad opened her eyes. All she could see was an expanse of white, and across it danced a golden ripple of light. She watched it, fascinated, for what felt like a long time, and slowly realized she was looking at a ceiling. She must be in Innail, she thought; but the ceilings there were stone, not white. Then suddenly everything rushed back, and she sat up abruptly.

  Hem was sitting in the corner, eating a bread roll.

  "You sleep like an old dog," he said. "I've been waiting ages and ages for you to wake up. I've been up for hours."

  "What's the time?" Maerad pushed her fingers through her hair.

  "Three hours after noon." Hem took another bite of his roll. "You snore too."

  "How's Cadvan?" Maerad swung her legs out of bed, looking for her clothes.

  "I don't know." Hem shrugged. "He's probably asleep like you."

  "Go away so I can get dressed."

  "All right." Hem shrugged again. "There's food downstairs if you want any. I have to come back and show you; Saliman's worried that you might get lost." Maerad threw her pillow at him, and he ducked out of the room.

  After she was dressed, Maerad went to her window and looked out. The day was clear and beautiful, as if the sky had been scoured clean by the previous night's storm. She could see over the rooftops of the lower Circles, right down to the Carmallachen and beyond, over the Vale of Norloch, and she was admiring the view when suddenly she remembered, with a shock that went right through her body, her dream of the night before. It struck her with a wave of nausea that started at her toes and went all the way to the top of her head, and she clutched at the table, feeling dizzy and sick. It was a somber Maerad who joined Hem ten minutes later and wended her way downstairs.

  Cadvan and Saliman were already in Nelac's sitting room, deep in conversation. They looked up when Maerad and Hem entered. Cadvan was still very pale, with deep shadows haunting his face: the whiplashes, covered with tiny herringbone stitches, stood out vividly on his skin, and his black eye was now spectacularly fading in a blaze of sunset colors. But the deathliness that had so troubled Maerad the previous night was gone.

  "Good morning," said Cadvan. "Or I should say afternoon. I'm but lately up myself!"

  "Hello," said Maerad. She was so relieved to see Cadvan looking almost normal that tears started in her eyes. She blinked them away and looked toward the dining room. "Hem said there was food."

  "Hem and food!" Saliman rolled his eyes. "I've never seen a human being eat so much. I don't think he's stopped chewing since he got out of bed!"

  "I'm hungry," said Hem. "What's wrong with that?" He disappeared into the dining room.

  "How are you feeling?" Maerad asked shyly. Cadvan smiled at her for the first time in days.

  "Very fine, my young Bard," he said. "Apart from a few itchy stitches. I'm sure I look worse than I feel, for a change. Go and get something to eat. Nelac's going to come soon; he's doing some lessons at the moment. We all need to talk."

  Maerad ate her breakfast—with Hem, who unashamedly explained that she needed some company—and re
turned to the sitting room, where Cadvan and Saliman were talking of Saliman's journey to Norloch.

  "Not quite so eventful as your traveling," Saliman said, glancing at Cadvan's wounded face. "I saw no wights. But three Hulls attacked me at the crossroads, and although I drove them off, they killed my mare, Dima. I still mourn her. She has borne me these past seven years. I didn't expect such dangers in the heart of Annar! So it took me longer to get here than I wished. I bought another horse, but it was not so fine as mine, as I was pressed and in no position to bargain."

  As he spoke, Nelac returned. The sunlight streamed through the large windows, and he pulled them open to let in the fresh air. Maerad looked out; she saw a bower of bright blossoms spilling over an emerald green lawn, and gasped in delight.

  "My blooms survived the storm, mostly," said Nelac from behind her. "But not the windflowers, alas! The merest breath will dislodge their petals; and they were so beautiful this year."

  She turned to Nelac, smiling, and suddenly her shyness of him fell away. Rather than his nobility, she perceived his gentleness, and beneath that the sadness that seemed a quality of all Bards and that confused her at times, because so often it modulated without warning into joy. He was, she realized suddenly, very similar to Cadvan; and then she remembered they both came from the same School.