The Gift (58 page)

They could hear distorted sounds vibrating through the rock, and once they passed what must have been a thin wall to a room or another passage, because they could hear the mumble of people speaking quite clearly on the other side.

“The pinnacle of Norloch is a maze of these tunnels,” said Cadvan. “Many are used for storage, or for secret passage from one house or Circle to another. I don’t think anyone knows all of them.” Maerad wondered what was happening above their heads, in the citadel. Occasionally she could hear a faint boom, and when she sent out her hearing she could detect the echoes of men’s shouts and the pound of feet on stone, but she could make no sense of what she heard.

The stairway seemed to go on forever, and Maerad’s legs began to ache. The chill set in her bones, and she tired of the darkness and of the low roof of heavy stone, the oppressive sense it gave her of an increasing weight over her head. The constant circling of the corkscrew stairs induced a strange dizziness, always turning the same way inward; she thought that when they reached the bottom, her body would have a permanent bias and she’d never be able to walk straight again. She set her jaw and went on.

When at last the stairs stopped, her knees were trembling and her thighs burned with the unnatural strain of walking so many steps. She halted abruptly, looking at Cadvan.

“I’ve got to rest,” she said. “Just for a little while . . .”

“I’ve no argument with that,” said Cadvan. “I hate stairs.” He put his pack on the ground and sat on it. Here the ground was damp, and a little rivulet of water ran down the edge of the tunnel, which plunged ahead of them through the rock into darkness. Maerad did the same, stretching her legs out in front of her and massaging the muscles. Now she could smell something new; a faint briny scent leavened the dead air.

“We’re almost there,” said Cadvan. “Soon we’ll be out of here.”

They didn’t stop for long. After barely five minutes Cadvan stood up again and heaved his pack onto his back. Maerad followed him down the straight tunnel, which ran very slightly downhill. Now the going was much easier and they moved fast, possessed by a sharpening sense of urgency. They had walked for about fifteen minutes when the smell of brine grew stronger. Maerad saw a very faint glimmer of starlight in the distance, although she couldn’t see the mouth of the tunnel; and then she could hear the crash of waves and, behind it, the ceaseless soughing of the sea. The tunnel became much less like a passage and more like a natural cave; their footsteps were dulled by sand, and the walls narrowed dramatically as they reached the end. They were forced to stoop lower and lower until they were nearly bent double. Then it suddenly ran steeply upward and they climbed the last few feet, scrambling out of a narrow opening onto a tumbled mass of boulders slimy with weed.

A dozen feet below waves scumbled the shoreline, a littoral of black rocks shining, dimly wet. The night was clear and bright, and Maerad breathed in the salt air, relieved to be at last out of the close, dead atmosphere of the passage. The black basalt cliffs of Norloch soared high above, and she saw over the water before them the narrow heads of the harbor, a gap of starlight between lightless walls of stone.

Now it was a matter of picking their way carefully over the rocks, trying not to stumble in the shadows or fall into the pools of saltwater that filled every crevice. It was tedious and time-consuming, but slowly they made their way around the base of the cliff, and soon Maerad could see the great stone quay looming before her. More ominously, she could hear shouts coming over the water, and sounds of armed struggle, and then suddenly she saw a leap of red light. Flames.

“Fighting in the Ninth Circle,” Cadvan murmured in her ear. “I hope Owan still awaits us!”

“Nelac said he’d trust him with his life,” said Maerad, wondering what they would do if Owan had already gone, driven off by whatever was happening in Norloch. They continued their scramble until they were at the base of the quay. Steps jutted out from the side, and silently they crept up. Just before the top Cadvan put his hand out to halt her, and cautiously poked his head over the edge. Then he beckoned her after him, and they crawled over the lip of the quay.

Farther up the wharf knots of people were fighting, grotesquely lit by flames. Three boats moored at the farther curve of the harborside were on fire, and their reflections glittered like blood on the surface of the waves.

“They’re burning the ships!” Cadvan muttered. “Enkir is being thorough.”

Maerad couldn’t see clearly what was happening on the quay, but she could hear swords clashing and terrible shouts and screams. She shut her eyes; it was too like her memory of Pellinor. She couldn’t afford to think of that. Not now.

They were hidden in the shadow of a large bollard, and, for the moment, unperceived. Nearby a number of boats clinked softly at their moorings. Crouching, Cadvan scanned them, his face anxious. Which one was theirs? They all looked deserted. Not far away, but too far for Maerad’s comfort, was one with red sails, but they couldn’t see its name from where they were.

“I think that must be the one.” Cadvan nodded toward the boat. “Maerad, you can make a glimmerspell now, yes? Make yourself invisible. We don’t want to be spotted. I can’t see any Bards, though it’s hard to tell in this chaos.” Maerad concentrated her mind for a moment; she had never done this before, but it was easy. Cadvan lifted his eyebrow, and she nodded; and then they both stood up and ran.

They were almost at the boat, close enough to see a flying owl painted in white on its sails and the gangplank shifting on the stone, when there was a shout. A Bard had seen them.

“Halt!” A tall man bearing a mace and a fiery torch came running up to them. “Halt! Who goes there? None are allowed on these wharves, by order of the First Bard!”

They were still too far away from the boat to risk a dash. Maerad heard Cadvan curse under his breath. The glimmerspell would not deceive a Bard, but perhaps there was still some hope of disguise. He turned to the man, his hand under his cloak on the hilt of his sword. “Mercy, sir!” he whined, in an accent Maerad didn’t know. “Me and my boy are trying not to get ourselves killed.” His hood shadowed his face, and Maerad shrugged hers farther over her head.

“You should have been off the quay an hour ago.” Two other men were running up behind him.

“We didn’t know,” said Cadvan. “We were trapped. . . .”

“They’re Bards,” said a voice from behind the first. The man thrust the torch closer toward them, peering into Cadvan’s face. Maerad moved behind him, trying to conceal herself in its flickering shadows.

“Bards, sir?” said Cadvan.

“Get Enkir,” said the voice. “I think it’s them.” The third man ran off.

It was clearly too late for concealment. The two remaining Bards strode forward to grab them, shouting for help. Cadvan swept out his sword, Arnost, and they jumped back. The first man dropped his torch and took his mace in both hands.

In that split second Maerad looked around desperately. Dozens of soldiers seemed to be on the quay fighting, but she couldn’t see who was fighting whom. More soldiers were running up to them. She saw the white blur of a face peep through the railings of the boat and instantly disappear. Owan. He hadn’t abandoned them. Without thinking, she drew her own sword and stood shoulder to shoulder with Cadvan, and they moved back to a bollard, standing against it. The water glimmered blackly behind them.

“You would kill me, Gast?” said Cadvan to the first man. The edge of Arnost gleamed dangerously. “I’d think again, if I were you.”

“Silence, traitor!” Gast cried. “Death is your doom now.” He lifted his mace and lunged toward them. Cadvan and Maerad leaped aside and the blow fell on the bollard, striking sparks. Another blade flashed and Gast fell to the ground, blood running darkly from his neck and mouth. He convulsed and then did not move. Maerad stared for a heartbeat, appalled at this swift death, but someone else swung at her with a sword. She parried the blow and leaped toward Cadvan, who pushed the soldier back brutally and then, with his left hand, flung up a sudden wall of white flame around them. The soldiers vanished behind it, and Maerad and Cadvan were enclosed in a blazing semicircle.

Cadvan turned to her, his face lit weirdly by the fire, the whiplashes livid on his white skin. “It’s only thirty feet to the boat,” he said. “Our only hope now is to fight our way there, and we can’t do that with swords; there are too many of them. If we both hold a wall around us, we might make it.”

Maerad nodded, breathing in gasps. Beyond the silver flames she could hear the shouting of many soldiers. She took Cadvan’s hand, joining her mind to his, and the flames leaped up, brilliant and cold. Then, step by step, she and Cadvan began to move along the edge of the quay toward the boat. They had not gone three paces when she began to feel the pressure of a counterspell; the flames thinned and lowered, and she could see the dim shapes of soldiers beyond them. She pressed harder, and the flames leaped up again.

“There are more than two Bards out there,” said Cadvan. Sweat was beginning to break out on his forehead. “I can sense five at least. I think we can make it, Maerad. Hold fast.”

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, they moved toward the boat. Maerad felt her whole body burning with the strain. She dared a look over her shoulder, and the fishing boat still bobbed serenely in the water, apparently deserted. Twenty feet, ten feet: they were almost there. Her head throbbed with the pressure of keeping up the wall, but they would make it.

Then, with a dreadful suddenness, the flames vanished. Maerad reeled with the shock; it was as if they had been stamped out by a giant foot. Cadvan clutched her hand, dashing the sweat out of his eyes, and threw out another force of resistance to buy them a few precious seconds. Maerad blinked, trying to see. There were the red blurs of torches and a boiling mass of dark shapes, but in front of them was something else, a new power that had not been there before.

“Enkir,” said Cadvan, gasping. “It’s Enkir! He feels like a wight!”

Like a wight,
thought Maerad with the rapidity of fear,
but not like a wight
: this power had not the horror of the grave, but the same living malice she had felt in the Crystal Hall. She could see Enkir’s figure barely fifteen feet away, no bigger than any of the soldiers who milled around him; but a power gathered around him like an abominable shadow, so that he seemed to loom gigantically above them, hideous and terrifying. The soldiers were now scattering, cowering before him, but Maerad was barely aware of them.

Cadvan’s resistance was fading and she felt, like a savage blow to her face, the force of Enkir’s will, cruel and implacable. She crushed Cadvan’s hand in hers and sent out a bolt of fire in panic, wishing fiercely that she knew how to harness the powers she undoubtedly possessed.

Enkir merely put up his hand, and the bolt shot up into the sky.

Maerad suddenly remembered what Indik had said to her in Innail, it seemed years ago now. “Intelligence is the key. You’re not strong enough to be stupid.
Think!
” She gulped and steadied herself.

Enkir now stood still, and the black waves beating against them eased a little. He raised his arms, building a terrible force of darkness around him. Maerad perceived, with a sense that came from deep in her mind, that he was drawing on something outside himself. She felt her ears beginning to pop. He was going to crush them both with a single blow.

With a jolt to her stomach she realized the contemptuousness of the gesture; it was the same contempt with which he had destroyed her mother. She glanced swiftly at Cadvan, and he caught her thought. He nodded imperceptibly. They twisted their hands together, waiting grimly for endless seconds while the force built up to an almost unbearable pressure. The air vibrated with a sound like the screech of tormented metal.

Then Enkir released his blow. Together, Maerad and Cadvan flung up a shield at that precise moment, a shield like a blazing mirror. For the briefest instant it hung brilliantly in the air before them, and then Enkir’s bolt hit it like a hammer. The shield exploded in fiery shards of dazzling colors and Cadvan and Maerad both staggered back, teetering on the very edge of the quay.

But the bolt didn’t reach them; it rebounded back and hit Enkir. Gasping, Maerad recovered and sent a volley of lightning to follow it. The jagged flashes lit up the scene on the quay for a series of brief moments, as if they were unmoving images imprinted by fire on her sight. One man close by had dropped both his sword and his shield and had fallen to his knees, covering his eyes with his hands in a gesture of despair or horror. Others were fighting with a kind of madness, as if they were possessed. There were at least four bodies lying outstretched on the ground, utterly still; but Maerad could see no sign of Enkir.

Then she and Cadvan turned and ran for their lives the last few feet to the gangplank and onto the boat.

Owan was laid out flat on the deck, his hands over his ears. He started up when they jumped in, but when he saw who they were he came forward to greet them. Cadvan was already pulling the gangplank in behind him.

“You took your time,” Owan said.

“Quickly!” gasped Maerad. Owan went to the bows with seeming unhurriedness, although he was actually moving very fast, and unmoored the boat.

“A little help would be appreciated with the wind,” he said laconically over his shoulder.

Cadvan stared at him for a second before he grasped what he meant. Then he lifted his arms and spoke. Maerad was still wondering what Owan had asked for when she heard a whisper of air, gathering in strength to a stiff breeze, and the sails flapped and bellied out. The boat began to draw steadily away from the quay.

Quicker, quicker, please be quicker,
thought Maerad, but it seemed that Owan would not be hurried. After a short time they were clear of the other craft. Owan signaled to Cadvan, and the wind in the sails grew stronger, and they began to speed over the waves toward the headlands of the harbor.

Maerad looked back to the quay. She couldn’t see what was happening, but she could feel now that Enkir was no longer there; that awful presence was gone. Had they killed him? She couldn’t tell. The blast that Enkir had meant for them had thrown the whole scene into utter confusion. There was a loud hubbub, and still it seemed the soldiers were fighting each other. No one had yet noticed the tiny boat stealing out of the harbor.