The Riddle (17 page)

“Well, that resolves one conundrum about your wild magic,” Cadvan said at last. The rabbit was kicking viciously, making growling noises in its throat. “I think this rabbit was definitely a Hull. Well, what should we do with it? I wouldn’t eat any stew this rabbit was part of.”

“Let it go, maybe,” said Maerad.

“I don’t think so.” Cadvan looked at the creature, which was frothing at the mouth with rage. “It is a vicious thing, but somehow it is still hard to kill it in cold blood, much as it deserves death. Do you think the transformation might wear off, Maerad?”

“I don’t know,” said Maerad. “But turning it back would be hard.” She hiccupped; despite all her efforts, giggles kept rising inside her in giddy waves.

Cadvan made a sharp chop with the edge of his hand at the rabbit’s neck, breaking its spine, and suddenly it hung limp from his hand, its eyes glazed. “We dare not take the risk,” he said. He cast the pathetic corpse to the ground with a gesture of disgust.

Maerad stared at the dead rabbit, suddenly sobered, and Cadvan pulled her to her feet. “That was well done,” he said, searching her face. “Are you all right? Your cheek is bleeding.”

Maerad nodded and brushed away the blood. It was only a small cut. “But what about your arm?” she asked.

Cadvan looked ruefully at his right arm, pulling up his torn and bloodied sleeve. “Not so good, I suspect,” he said. “But nothing really serious.” He held his hand over a nasty slash to stem the bleeding. “I’ll attend to that later. But now we must see to Elenxi.”

Elenxi! In the heat of the battle, Maerad had completely forgotten about him. They walked hastily back to where the old Bard lay, his arms flung out before him.

He had been knocked out and seemed to have suffered nothing worse than a bad bruising. Cadvan laid his hands on the Bard’s forehead briefly and he stirred, groaning, and then sat bolt upright and looked around, sniffing.

“What happened?” he growled. “I smell sorcery.”

“We were attacked by a Hull,” said Maerad, and told him what had happened.

Elenxi was outraged that he had missed the battle, and when Cadvan told him of what had happened to the Hull, he looked at Maerad with amazement. “Is this true? You can do this?” he asked, his eyebrows almost hidden in his hair. Maerad nodded, but Elenxi refused to believe it until they showed him the corpse.

His face froze with incredulity, and then began to shake with laughter. “A rabbit, eh?” he said when he had recovered from his mirth. “I begin to see what Cadvan means about your powers. Perhaps you can do that to all the Hulls, and give the Nameless One an army of rabbits.”

“Mangy rabbits,” said Cadvan dryly. He began to attend to the wound on his arm. Elenxi grunted, and leaned forward to help, cleaning the wound with water, smearing it with a sweet-smelling balm, and binding it with clean cloth. “It bothers me that the Hull should have ambushed us here,” Cadvan said as Elenxi worked. “It knew we were coming this way.”

“I told you there was a spy.” Elenxi’s eyes hardened. “And, alas, we did not find him until too late. But no news will come back from this one. The Idoiravis is the obvious place for an ambush: it is the only land route from north to south. I should have been more careful. I am angry with myself that I did not see this coming.”

“The Hull was well concealed,” Cadvan said. “It was hidden by some ensorcellment.”

Elenxi, who was tying off the bandage on Cadvan’s wound, snorted. “Even so,” he said, “it was an elementary ambush. What disturbs me more is that it had a blackstone.”

“What’s a blackstone?” Maerad asked curiously.

“They are very rare,” said Cadvan. “But, as you saw, they are very difficult to fight. They will absorb all the energy from a strike and then direct it back at the assailant. A blackstone is made from a mineral mined in the south, called albarac; it is worth much more than gold, because it is so difficult to find, and even more difficult to work. Most often it’s used in shields, as very thin plating, because it will deflect and absorb attack. You need a lot of albarac to make a blackstone.”

“And was it using the blackstone to attack me?” Maerad thought of the terrible pains that had afflicted her. “You said something about it having my pattern — what did you mean?”

“That is more difficult to explain.” Cadvan drew his sword and began to examine the blade as he spoke; it bore some new notches, and he frowned. “Well, as you know, every Bard’s magery has an individual flavor, a signature. This is sometimes called a pattern. If another Bard can trace that pattern, it is almost like knowing your Truename; fortunately for all of us, it is very difficult, nay, almost impossible to do. But if you have a blackstone, and can control it — which is not easy to do either — it is possible to see a Bard’s pattern from a strike.”

“I don’t quite understand,” said Maerad, frowning.

“I am concerned that the Hull had a blackstone at all,” said Elenxi. “And it claimed to be of Norloch. Perhaps there is a secret store of them there, being handed out to Hulls. We have to hope that the Dark is not making them. Did you find the stone?”

“We didn’t look,” said Maerad. “Perhaps it was changed with the Hull.”

“Maybe, but we should look anyway,” said Elenxi.

Cadvan sheathed his sword. “The blackstone explains why a single Hull would attack three Bards such as us.”

“If we find it, it will be a great prize,” said Elenxi.

The Bards returned to the thicket of trees and searched the ground painstakingly. It wasn’t long before Maerad let out a cry and lifted a strange object in her hands, waving to the others. They came over to her, and examined it curiously.

The blackstone was large enough to fill her palm. It was ringed with a band of silver, wrought in an intricate design of flames wreathing around each other, and was attached to a silver chain. The stone itself was blank of all carving, and very strange; looking at it was not like looking at an object at all, but rather like looking at a hole, an absence of light. It was curious to touch; Maerad felt as if her fingers slipped over it, unable quite to register whether it was cool or hot, rough or smooth. Cadvan took it and looked at it closely, and let out his breath in relief.

“Well, it is certainly a blackstone of Norloch, and not fashioned by the Dark,” he said. “No stone of the Dark would use the White Flame. But why would a Hull have such a thing?”

“My guess,” said Elenxi grimly, “is that Enkir strongly suspects that you are in Thorold. And, if so, any fool would know that you had a good chance of traveling this way, if you wished to leave; you could not leave Busk unwitnessed.”

Maerad shivered; it meant pursuit was at their very heels.

“I think you ought to keep this, Maerad,” said Cadvan unexpectedly, handing the blackstone back to her. “It could be of use, I think. And it was won in fair fight. I’ll teach you how to use it.”

Maerad smiled and put the blackstone in her pack. Cadvan squinted up at the sky; the sun was now well past its zenith. “It’s time we moved on, if we wish to be out of here by nightfall. But first we have to find Elenxi’s horse; I don’t think mine can bear both of us.”

The horse hadn’t run far after its initial panic, and they soon found it, calmly munching on some sour grass. They then pressed swiftly on their way, all of them alert in case of further attacks. As they cantered through the gorge, the silence between them was broken by occasional deep chuckles from Elenxi. “A rabbit! Brilliant, Maerad. Brilliant!”

They reached Nisa without further incident three days later. Once they came out of the Idoiravis, the countryside before them was flat for many leagues, stretching over the high northern plateau of Thorold before it plunged steeply down toward the coast. This was rich farming country, with many thick forests of larch, beech, and pine interspersed with a patchwork of fields sown with wheat or rye, the heads beginning to turn golden in the sun, or meadows where grazed herds of sheep or goats, or the dark greens of vineyards and olive groves.

Impelled by an increasing sense of urgency, they pushed their horses hard, reaching the edge of the plateau by the end of the second day. Here the land tipped precipitously down toward the sea. From then on, the going was slower; they had to pick their way carefully along steep, narrow tracks winding through the tangles of myrtles and acacias that grew luxuriantly around tumuli of pink granite boulders and mazes of small, noisy streams.

Nisa was a fishing village that hugged a tiny harbor carved into the rose-colored cliffs. To reach it, they had to leave their horses at a nearby village and descend on foot by a path cut into the rock. From there they looked down on the red-tiled roofs of about three dozen houses clustered in a single row against the cliff walls. Maerad, contemplating the blue expanse of the sea, reflected that she was getting better at dealing with heights; she didn’t feel nearly so dizzy.

“You wouldn’t want to climb up here after a few glasses of wine,” she said as they negotiated one particularly sharp bend.

“I believe many do exactly that,” said Elenxi. “And some have even lived to tell the tale.”

“You’d fall right on someone’s house!” Maerad risked another glance downward. No, it was not so bad, though it was better if she didn’t look at all.

Compared to the hive of activity in Busk, Nisa appeared deserted. They arrived when all the boats were out on the sea and everyone else was having their midafternoon break. Apart from rows of seagulls perched on the rooftops, the only visible living thing was a gray tabby cat curled up in a coil of rope. Maerad looked along the stone quay and spotted the familiar red sail of the
White Owl
bobbing in the water. But there was no sign of Owan, either above or below decks.

“I suppose Owan would be at the tavern,” said Maerad, stooping to scratch the cat’s head as they walked back toward the main road.

“That would be right,” said Elenxi. “I was just thinking it was time for some wine myself.”

They found Owan stretching out his long legs under a wooden table in the back garden of the tavern; he had a palpable air of well-being. When the travelers entered, he gave a cry of welcome and came forward to embrace them. They called for wine and food and joined him at his table.

Owan had been sailing around the island on the same errand as Elenxi, bringing the news of Norloch’s ultimatum to the coastal villages and warning them to ready their defenses in case of war. “They watch for the signal, and are vigilant,” he said. “And each has messenger birds to send to Busk if they are attacked. All is well.”

“But you don’t have an army.” Maerad suddenly realized this fact, and involuntarily said it out loud.

“No, not as such,” said Elenxi. “We don’t need one. All our people know how to fight, and it is hard to defeat an entire population. In this land there is no place for open battle, and Thoroldians fight by other means. When the Nameless One attacked Thorold before the Silence, a great fog came down from the mountains. The entire army was lost.”

“What happened to them?” asked Maerad, fascinated.

“No one knows. Our people hid in the places they know, and when the fog lifted, there was no sign of the army. Some said they had wandered, lost and misled by phantoms, until they fell off a cliff into the sea, others that they were led into a great ravine in the mountains, which closed over them. But it is certainly true that they vanished without trace.”

Maerad shuddered as an image passed over her inner vision of terrified soldiers running raggedly through a merciless, impenetrable whiteness. “Was it the Lamedon?” she asked. “Or was it the Bards?”

“It was not the Bards,” said Elenxi. “But it is said that Limod, the leader of Thorold at that time, went and begged the Lamedon himself for help when he heard that a great army was on its way. The Lamedon might not be interested in human wars, but perhaps the thought of invasion offended him. In some tales, although not all, it is said that the Lamedon was Limod’s father.”

Maerad fell silent as the talk moved on to other topics. Elenxi’s story disturbed her, although she could not say why. The question of her Elidhu heritage always filled her with discomfort. Ankil had balked at the suggestion that she speak to the Lamedon, despite his unquestioning acceptance that she had Elemental blood, and she thought again of the curious look he had given her when the plan was suggested, and wondered what he had seen that made him doubt her. Was it weakness? Or something else, which was beyond her knowledge? A vague foreboding weighed upon her spirits; there was so much about herself that she didn’t understand. She was glad of the distraction when Owan said they would leave on that evening’s tide.

IT was a beautiful summer evening, the final light lingering in faint streaks of pink and purple on the rippling surface of the dark sea, as they slipped out of Nisa harbor. Elenxi stood on the quay, his hand raised in farewell and blessing, and Maerad, who had little to do with the sailing of the boat, stood in the stern facing him as Owan’s craft surged on the outgoing tide. Elenxi glimmered faintly in the shadows, a blur of light that steadily grew smaller and smaller. Above him stretched the dark cliffs that surrounded Nisa, and above them the white stars opened in a clear sky.