The Gift (33 page)

“Shouldn’t we leave now?” she asked.

“We could, but I doubt it would profit us much,” said Cadvan. “Our guise will last until sundown tomorrow. The Ettinor Bards don’t know what they’re looking for; at the moment they still seek Cadvan.”

“Can we trust the innkeeper?” Maerad stood up and walked around the room. “Couldn’t the Bards find out from him that we’re here, even if he doesn’t want to say?”

“It depends how suspicious they are. I think they’ll be looking in many directions; there’s no special reason why we should be here. I wish I knew what was happening in Innail. . . . There is danger, but I don’t fancy entering the wild with short sleep; we’ll have enough of that later. I think we must take this risk.”

But Maerad leaped to another question. “What about Dringold? Won’t he be in danger, if he’s covering for us?”

“You’re full of anxieties tonight,” said Cadvan, frowning. “I think Dringold has enough guile to handle the questions of the Ettinor Bards. Remember their arrogance. It is very easy to underestimate a common innkeeper if you think yourself above him. If we stay quiet tonight and leave tomorrow, they should be safe. But I will make a charm of protection before we leave, to make sure.”

Cadvan’s answers allayed Maerad’s fears a little, but she lay awake long that night, unable to rid herself of the menacing image of the Hulls; and when finally she slept, her dreams were full of black horsemen reaching toward her with pale, bony hands.

Maerad woke in the blackness before dawn to the sound of rain drumming on the roof, and she sighed. Reluctantly she dragged herself out of her warm bed and dressed, shivering in the cold. Especially cold seemed the mail as she dragged it on over her clothes, and she shuddered: it was like putting on a shirt of ice. She and Cadvan made a hasty breakfast, standing up in the kitchen with Dringold and his wife. Rose shyly pressed on them some cold meat pastries for their lunch; she argued briefly with Cadvan about paying for his services for the boy, but he refused point-blank to take anything. Just before they left, Cadvan stretched out his hands before the couple, muttering some brief words; Maerad saw them blink, and then they turned to their work as if Cadvan and Maerad were not there.

“They will remember only what fits Dringold’s story,” explained Cadvan in the stables as they led out the horses. “Bards usually know when someone is dissembling.”

“Wouldn’t a Bard sense the charm?” asked Maerad.

“Only if he scried them,” said Cadvan. “If they are scried, neither I nor anyone else can help them. But I doubt either Bard or Hull would deign to do such a thing. I hope not, for their sake.”

He sat still on Darsor for a moment, listening; but he neither heard nor sensed anything in the night, and led them out into the cobbled streets of Fort. A rainy blackness covered them, and Maerad shivered. The full moon westered slowly in long bands of dark clouds, but gave little light. She looked back at the windows of the inn, glowing golden and welcoming through the darkness, and thought of the little family they had left. The idea of such gentle people in the hands of Hulls did not bear imagining.

The sun was beginning to tinge the horizon with dull reds and ochers as they passed through villages and towns to the border of the Ettinor Fesse. By the time the rain stopped and the sun climbed over the horizon, shedding a cheerless light over the damp landscape, they were riding through a less-inhabited region, dotted only with solitary farms. After a couple of hours the road wound into a wood. There they slowed down and trotted through the dripping trees, hearing only the sound of birdsong and the dull clop of the horses’ hooves.

Maerad was daydreaming, musing abstractedly on some of the things she had seen and heard in the past few weeks. None of her thoughts led anywhere, and she let them drift through her mind, one after the other, as unformed images: the Elidhu in the Weywood; Cadvan still and silent, astride Darsor; the minstrels frozen in the marketplace in Fort; Silvia’s merry face, graven with sadness; Dernhil . . .

She was jolted out of her contemplations by a strange noise, a whirring sound like a large bee, and a
thock,
as if something hit wood. She had time to reflect that she had heard such a sound before and knew she didn’t like it, when she heard it again; and then she felt as if she had been punched in the back, and was flung forward on her saddle. Without command the horses plunged into a mad gallop, and Cadvan was shouting, “Down! Arrows! Lay your head down!
Down!
”

She obeyed instinctively, hiding her head against Imi’s neck, and hung on desperately as Imi bolted wildly, trying to keep up with Darsor. She realized she must have been hit by an arrow, and was grateful for her mail, so reluctantly donned that morning. She dared look back once and saw nothing through the trees; the road had already wound in a loop and hidden their attackers. The horses slowed down to a canter, and then, as they reached a place where a large rocky shelf butted out of the woods, Cadvan halted them with a signal of his hand, his face grave and alert. He led them to the rock, and they stood there, their backs to the stony wall, which stretched upward for about twenty feet with a slight overhang. Maerad could hear the sound of horsemen pursuing them, approaching both along the road and through the trees, cutting through the loop of the road.

“We cannot race on wildly, with such pursuit,” said Cadvan. “We will have to stand here. I think there are not many, two or three.”

“Who are they?” asked Maerad fearfully.

“I don’t know,” said Cadvan. “Bards, I guess, who noticed us in one of the villages. There is only one road through this part of the Fesse. I have been careless, as I should not have been. I thought the rain would cover us. At least here they cannot come from behind.”

Maerad gulped and sat unmoving on Imi, feeling for her sword, and stared at the bend in the road until her eyes started to water. Cadvan waited patiently, as still as stone. It seemed that their pursuers would never come, but nevertheless, sooner than she liked, a figure came trotting around the bend, and then another. They bore arrows set to the bow, and were cloaked in black.

“Hulls,” muttered Cadvan, and Maerad heard the sharp intake of his breath.

The Hulls did not see them at first and looked around into the trees, going slowly now as they hunted. Another horseman came over the rise through the woods and joined them. Then the foremost looked up and sighted them and laughed, waving its fellows over. They let down their bows and trotted at their leisure toward them. Maerad began to feel terror screwing up inside her like a vice, and her heart pounded painfully.

When they were about thirty yards away, Cadvan shouted indignantly, in the accent of northern Annar: “What were you shooting for? You could have killed us. I’m going to complain to the authorities, I am.”

The leading Hull halted. “We are the authorities,” it said, and its voice could have been the voice of a dead man. The hair rose on Maerad’s neck. “You could go squeaking, little man, like a ghost on the wind, for all the good it might do you. No man may set foot in these woods, by order of the Bards.”

“I don’t know about any law,” said Cadvan. The two Hulls behind put their arrows to the string, and Maerad looked desperately at Cadvan, whose face was expressionless. “I can go into the woods if I want, without being chased by Bards and murdered, like as not.”

“Death is the price of insolence,” said the Hull. “But we will be merciful, and give you a choice. You can come with us, and try the justice of Ettinor.” It laughed again, and the Hulls moved closer to them.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Cadvan. “Just on my own business, is all. I’m not doing no harm.”

“Everything here is our business,” said the leading Hull. It laughed and lifted its bow. “But your time of choice is over.”

It loosed an arrow straight at Cadvan, and Maerad’s heart almost failed her. Before she knew what had happened, the arrow had exploded in flame and fell to smoldering ashes on the ground before them. Immediately the semblance of the cobbler and his son dropped from Cadvan and Maerad.

Cadvan seemed to Maerad taller and more lordly, his face stern and grim, and he was illumined by a strange light. The Hulls stopped in surprise, and in that second Cadvan stretched his hands out before him and a bolt of white flame arced from his fingers to the heart of the leading Hull. It made a strangled noise and fell from its horse to the ground. At that, one of the other two Hulls spurred on its horse and charged them. Cadvan lifted his hands again, crying out as he did so, and there was a blast of light. The Hull fell, and both riderless horses bolted wildly off through the trees.

The third Hull still hung back, and Maerad saw that it lifted its arms and a strange darkness formed between them faster than the eye could grasp, a form of mist and shadow; and as Cadvan flung the second Hull from its horse, this form raced onward, furious as a striking snake, straight toward Cadvan. Maerad cried out in terror, but just as the shadow reached Cadvan it writhed and boiled and dissipated into the air. Instantly Cadvan loosed a bolt of light toward the third Hull, and it struck; but the Hull simply swayed on its horse and did not fall. It then stood up in its stirrups, raising its arms. Even at that distance Maerad could see the deathly expression on its face.

The Hull began to chant in an even voice. To Maerad the words he used seemed unaccountably familiar; then, with a shock, even in that extremity, she realized she had heard something like them before, in the nightmare of her foredream. A drop of sweat trickled down her back like a finger of ice, and she felt her hands shaking as they held the reins.

Cadvan stretched out his arms, and a white bolt struck the Hull again, but this time it had no effect at all. Maerad watched the Hull, her mouth dry, like a bird trapped in the fascination of terror before the snake that gathers itself to strike and kill.

Slowly it seemed, as a nightmare is slow, but with a frightening swiftness, another blackness began to form between the arms of the Hull, as if shadow coagulated and grew there; but this one was less formless than the first. Cadvan sat on Darsor, who stood unmoved. Maerad glanced swiftly toward him and saw that he was utterly still, although the strange light within him grew in intensity. Then her eyes were drawn back irresistibly to the Hull.

Above it, stretching into the trees, loomed a terrifying form, made of shadow and yet appearing as solid as the trees around it. It looked like a giant man, but misshapen and ugly. Green fire crackled around its brow and its eyes burned with a cold light; it beat dark wings that stretched for many spans, like those of a huge bat, and it bore a black sword that was licked by livid flames. It opened its mouth and breathed a plume of fire, and the flame was cold, deathly cold.

Maerad began to feel dizzy and clutched desperately at Imi’s mane as if she were drowning. What was it? It was crude and mindless, like a figure out of a child’s nightmare, but its immensity seemed to obliterate the whole world.

Cadvan swayed in his saddle and passed his hand over his eyes. “A Kulag,” he said wearily.

He drew his sword, and a white fire flickered along it, answering the flames of the Kulag. Thus they stood for a long second, man and monster, and then the Hull cried out and his arms flung upward, and the hideous thing spread out its wings and dived toward them, letting out an eldritch scream that froze Maerad’s blood.

Darsor lifted his head and neighed in defiance, rearing on his hind legs and beating the air with his hooves. There was a blinding flash, and Maerad saw Cadvan’s sword raised, brighter than the heart of the sun, gleaming small as a needle against the mighty darkness annihilating the daylight.

Maerad screamed and cast up her hands. She thought a great sheet of flame sprang up before her eyes, white and blue and intolerably bright. There was a crash, as if a vast tree had fallen, dragging in ruin all its companions; and then blackness blotted out her vision, and she knew no more.

SHE came to a short while later and found Cadvan kneeling beside her on the ground, his hand on her brow, his face tight with anxiety. She sat up, shaking her head, and looked around her. Darsor and Imi stood quietly beside them, and ordinary daylight filtered through the trees. She wondered briefly if she had suffered some strange fit or hallucination; but then she looked up and saw the branches above them were blackened and withered as if a great fire had touched them. Before them on the track she saw the black heaps of the three Hulls, and the corpse of a horse.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Cadvan. “Are you all right?”

Maerad rubbed her head, nodding.

“What happened?” she asked again. “Are we safe?”

Cadvan smiled grimly. “For the moment,” he said. “All the Hulls are dead.” He swung his hand toward the crumpled heaps on the path, averting his eyes in distaste. “I don’t know what happened to the Kulag. It vanished when it was cast down.”

“What was it?”

“One of the Hulls was a powerful sorcerer,” he said. “I don’t know what it was doing here. I dare not speculate at what is happening in the School of Ettinor at the present.” He grimaced. “That was the last Hull, and it strove with me mightily as soon as it perceived my power. I began to doubt I could prevail against it.” He paused. “And then it summoned a Kulag. Only the greatest sorcerers can command such creatures; they are from the age of the First Evil, from the days of the Wars of the Elementals. They were banished to the Abyss, beyond the circle of the world, long ago. They carry a power more ancient than that of the Dark.”