The Gift (41 page)

“Some choice.” Maerad was picking irritably at tufts of grass and throwing them on the ground, her eyebrows drawn down in a straight, angry line.

“You know it’s the truth.”

“What difference, being a pawn for the Light or a pawn for the Dark?”

There was a short silence.

“There is a great difference,” said Cadvan softly. “One difference is that for the Dark, certainly, you are a pawn. For the Light, you are a free human being, free to make mistakes, to do wrong, even. You are free to choose, whether or not you believe it.”

“Funny idea of freedom.”

“It is the difference between commitment and slavery,” Cadvan said. “Between working for what you hope for and believe in the depths of your heart, and what someone else forces you to do.”

Maerad, who had been a slave and knew that her present life, however difficult, was very different, had nothing to say to that. She didn’t know why she was trying to pick a fight with Cadvan, but he refused to get angry with her and after a while fell silent and stared into the fire. She sat glowering just out of its circle of light, kicking a bit of turf with her toe; and then, because it was Cadvan’s turn to watch, curled up in her blanket and, surprisingly rapidly, went to sleep.

The next day was equally fruitless, although the weather began to clear and at last some sunshine warmed them. Imi’s limp was not so serious, but they went anxiously for fear they would delay its healing. After a while Maerad forgot her black mood in the rhythm of the riding, but the feeling of being watched never left her. She didn’t mention it to Cadvan, but she often felt a prickling on the back of her neck, as if there was a presence behind her, and she would turn sharply, only to find nothing there. She began to feel that the stones were playing tricks, transforming into rocky monsters that stalked her, only to instantly turn back into innocent boulders whenever she looked back. They didn’t ford the Usk until the third day, and then at last they turned their faces south.

Thus began days of toiling through the Valverras. Cadvan guided them by the sun and the stars, and they watched the moon growing thinner until it waned to a nail paring and disappeared, and then witnessed its gradual return. The weather continued to get warmer, although there were days when it was overcast and their journey was made more unpleasant by brief bursts of rain. Each day Imi was less lame, but it made their progress no faster. They could travel at the most ten miles in a day, and it was more than thirty leagues before they struck the Aldern River. The land prohibited swift movement; the ground was uneven and strewn with small rocks, and treacherous with holes that might turn a horse’s leg or even break it, if they went carelessly. The turf was poor, thick with burrs and small thistles, and everywhere grew a creeping plant with small grayish leaves that stank like old fish. If they stepped on it the smell rose up and clogged their throats, and if they camped over it they couldn’t get the stench out of their clothes. Frequently there were small dips or hollows, in which gathered brackish water and swampy plants, and in these sheltered places they camped at nightfall. Sometimes at night, Maerad saw strange lights in the distance, fey blue wisps that shimmered and vanished, only to tauntingly reappear a short distance from where they had been.

“Marsh lights,” Cadvan told her. “Take no notice. And never follow them!”

“Why?” she asked curiously, as they watched them. They were strangely hypnotic.

“They’ll lead you into a bog. Or worse. There are old mounds here, graves of ancient peoples, and not all of them are empty.”

The Valverras eroded the soul in a different way from the Hutmoors, Maerad thought. The Hutmoors were haunted by despair, an endless lamentation. The Valverras felt strangely hostile, and although she never saw anything sinister, the farther they traveled, the jumpier she felt. She began to get a sore neck from constantly looking over her shoulder.

Cadvan resumed Maerad’s lessons, as much to distract them as for any other reason, although they did not take out their instruments; the watching silence of the heaths around them seemed to forbid music. Cadvan also began to train her in swordcraft. Maerad found him a less harsh teacher than Indik. He told her she was an apt pupil; her reflexes were swift, and her accuracy and skill grew with her confidence, so that one day, to his delight, she disarmed him.

“You’re no elegant fighter, but you’re fast, and very strong for your size,” said Cadvan, breathing heavily and picking up his sword. “In a pinch you’d have a chance. Perhaps more than a chance. The thing is not to overestimate what you can manage.”

“And not to be afraid of running away,” said Maerad, smiling.

“It is always smarter not to have to fight at all,” Cadvan said. “But if you must fight, you must know how to defend yourself. You’ll be a warrior yet! Now, let’s start again.”

They had traveled in this way for about a week when one day they saw a thin line of smoke rising on the horizon far in front of them. It puzzled Cadvan.

“Unless I am very much off in my reckoning, we are still at least two days from the Aldern,” he said. “I know of no settlements this side of the river, and it’s not yet dry enough for wildfire, which sometimes sweeps these parts.”

“Perhaps others travel in the waste, like us,” said Maerad.

“Perhaps,” said Cadvan. He altered their course slightly east, and that night they lit no fire and kept more careful watch. The next day they saw the smoke again briefly at lunchtime, a little closer, and as dusk began to descend it rose again to their right, perhaps three miles away.

“Whoever they are, they’re not hiding,” said Maerad.

“Anyone who is in this waste is hiding,” Cadvan replied. “Why else are we here? No doubt they think there is no one to see them.”

That night they camped in a deep hollow, in the shelter of two huge rocks that leaned together at a rough angle, making a natural roof. Maerad was on the first watch and sat at the edge of the dell, looking out over the silent hills and the stars burning over them. She was very tired, but she was well used to fighting her weariness, and to pass the time sent her mind out over the wastes, wondering if she could hear anything of the other fugitives in the Valverras. She heard nothing. Over everything was a huge silence, save for the wind stirring the grass stems and whining over the stones, but an undefinable sense of dread began to plague her. She shifted on the hard ground; it was becoming very cold, and the dew was falling, and her legs cramped with stiffness.

Three hours after sundown the half-moon rose and cast a chilly light over the landscape. Maerad was thinking that it was time to wake Cadvan, when she heard something. Immediately she sharpened her mind and sent it out to follow the noise; it was barely distinguishable from the wind, but she thought she heard the sound of men shouting, and perhaps a child crying. It grew louder, and she listened, unable to move, her hair bristling on her skin. Then she heard screaming — a woman’s scream, she thought — and the faint clash of metal, and more shouts.

Quite suddenly, Maerad had an overpowering sensation of suffocation, as if she were enclosed in a very small space like a coffin, and her sight went dark. An unreasoning terror possessed her, as if her life were directly threatened, now, by something malign that sought her, which was a mere arm’s length away. . . . And behind the terror there was another feeling, much harder to define, a mixture of despair and longing and intense tenderness, which seemed to well up from the deepest levels of her memory.

The scream grew higher and higher and then stopped, and there was nothing more. Maerad found she was cowering against the ground, her hands over her eyes, her heart pounding. She sat up, breathing hard to regain her composure. Gradually her sight came back, and she found she was staring at the hard, bright stars over the empty, broken landscape. She listened, frightened, for some minutes, straining for any sound that might tell her what had happened, but the silence seemed if anything deeper than before.

She woke Cadvan and told him what she had heard. Immediately he put his ear to the ground. He lay there so long she thought he had fallen asleep again; but at last he sat up.

“There are horses,” he said. “A number, eight or ten perhaps, maybe five miles away, and they are drawing away from us. They are not in a hurry. I can hear nothing else.”

“But what’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Cadvan. “We can be sure it is nothing good.”

Maerad felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over her and she realized she was shaking. The terror of the scream still echoed in her mind. Cadvan studied her face and said, “Sleep now, Maerad. We can in any case find out nothing until the morning.”

She stumbled to the bottom of the hollow and lay down, looking at the roof of stone over her. A little moonlight glimmered grayly on the rocks at the edge of the hollow, but otherwise all was in blackness. After a while she sank into a restless sleep troubled by vague, disquieting dreams.

She opened her eyes as the sun rose. Cadvan hadn’t roused her for the third watch, letting her sleep through the night. She sat up, immediately awake, and saw him preparing breakfast a few feet away. The horses stamped sleepily in the hollow, cropping what grasses they could find, and their breath steamed in the early air.

“Cadvan, what are we going to do?” she asked, coming toward him.

“Do?” he said. “What do you mean?”

“We have to find out what happened. Those, those people . . . someone was hurt.”

“There is no fire this morning,” said Cadvan. “And I think there will not be. I heard nothing else all night.”

They ate their breakfast in silence, each deep in thought.

“We have to see if there’s anything we can do,” Maerad said at last. “Maybe we can help.”

Cadvan squinted up at the sky. “I think we will not,” he said. “We would lose half the morning at least, finding the camp. And we know nothing of these people, or why they were attacked. They may have squabbled among themselves. Perhaps, to my mind most likely, they were a camp of bandits, and we might walk into a hornets’ nest. We can ill afford any trouble.”

“Maybe not,” said Maerad rebelliously. “But we still have to go and see. Maybe someone’s still there. Maybe someone is hurt.” Maerad shuddered as she remembered the night before. She couldn’t articulate to Cadvan why she had to find the camp; she just knew, with an iron certainty, that she must. Some echo of the strange longing she had felt in the midst of the terror still reverberated within her, like the aftertones of a bell: but a bell that, instead of ringing to silence, swelled louder and louder, until it drowned out all other sound.

“I told you, I heard nothing all night. I think any who yet lived have long gone. There is no hoofbeat or footfall for miles around.”

“All the more reason to check,” said Maerad. “If no one is there, there is no risk.”

Cadvan looked at her steadily.

“Yet I think we will not. The risk is too great, Maerad.”

“I heard a woman screaming,” Maerad said.

“I think nothing is alive within miles of us,” Cadvan said. “And if there is, what can we do? Strap them to the saddlebags? Maerad, I say we cannot do this; it will do no good, and may do harm.”

“And I say we must.” Maerad squatted on the ground, chewing the hard biscuit. “What did you say to me when you cured that little boy? ‘Sometimes there are choices that lead to ill, but that nevertheless have to be made.’ That’s what I feel.”

Cadvan let out his breath impatiently. “Maerad, I know what you are saying. But I cannot permit this risk. It’s too great.”

“What risk?” Maerad stared at him steadily, and Cadvan looked down at his hands, and at first did not answer her.

“Maerad, the air here is thick with evil. Have you thought that spirits might have tricked you, and made you hear what has not happened, to draw you into a trap?”

“It was real.” Maerad knew that with certainty.

“Still, I counsel against this. I sense a great danger if you go.”

Maerad stood up. “So I’ll go on my own,” she said.

“You will not.” Cadvan also stood up, and she saw his rare anger. “Mark me well, Maerad. If I have to tie you to Imi, I will.”

“Then you’ll have to carry me screaming all the way to Norloch,” said Maerad. She had now lost her temper, but her voice was low and dangerous. “And I’ll never, ever forgive you. All this talk about choice. It’s talk, just talk. We do what
you
say, when
you
want. Well, I say now what
I
want. And I don’t care what you say, because you’re
wrong.
”

She started to saddle Imi, her hands shaking with rage and her eyes so blind with tears she could scarcely fasten the buckles. Cadvan stood motionless and watched her.

“Maerad,” he said.

Her back was turned, and she didn’t answer.

“Maerad, I’m sorry. I still counsel against this; I feel a great foreboding. But I was wrong to speak against your heart. I will come with you. I will say only that we cannot look for longer than one day. We have lost too many days as it is; I feel it in my heart. Time is running out.”

Maerad paused and nodded, and then continued to saddle Imi. She didn’t feel able to speak to him, although the gust of fury had passed. Now she just felt very tired and despondent. She didn’t know why she felt such a compulsion to investigate the noise she had heard the night before, but it was overwhelming.

Together they mounted the horses and began the slow job of picking their way to where they had seen the smoke rising. They had nothing to guide them except their memory of where it had been, and there were no landmarks. After a few hours Maerad began to feel the hopelessness of the task of finding a small camp in all this waste; they could easily have passed it, in one of the many hollows, and they could wander around in circles for hours, searching fruitlessly in the wrong direction. She felt more and more uneasy and startled at any sound, infecting Imi with her edginess, but she set her jaw and kept looking. Cadvan said nothing at all.

Maerad was on the point of giving up altogether when Cadvan called out and pointed. She looked over her shoulder to the left and saw two unpainted wooden caravans a few hundred yards away, pushed against the shelter of one of the great tors of rock. One was tipped on its side, and the other was half collapsed. There was no sign of life. They dismounted and walked slowly toward them, Maerad with a sudden deep reluctance.