The Gift (8 page)

Cadvan stood up and squinted at the sun. “We should move on,” he said. “I’ll tell you things in time, Maerad. I was sent here on a secret task, and I am not at liberty to tell you everything. But yes, I was wounded, and no, I couldn’t heal myself. It’s not a wound you can see. I am weaker than I should be, here without protection in the wild.”

“But you can trust me,” said Maerad, beginning to feel angry. “And if you’re in danger, then so am I, if I am traveling with you. So you owe it to me.”

“I owe you nothing, Maerad.” Cadvan’s voice was even, but Maerad saw the flash in his eyes.

“You wouldn’t have got out of the valley without me,” she said. “You said so yourself.”

“Peace!” said Cadvan harshly, and his face closed against her. “Maerad, you are a child. Don’t bother me with all these questions, at least not now. We have a long way to go.”

Maerad was suddenly furious. “And who are you?” She didn’t care that she was shouting, although her voice echoed loudly in the empty land around them. “You turn up out of nowhere in rags and then expect me to believe you’re some kind of grand person from the west, with your talk of Bards and magic? You could just be a tinker full of tricks, for all I know. And then you tell me I’m just a child, go sit in the corner and be quiet. Shut up, Maerad — you’ll find out later! I’m not a child. I’m sixteen summers old!”

“There are more important things than the vanity of a young girl,” Cadvan said coldly. Maerad realized she was standing before him, her fists clenched, trembling with anger. She flushed.

“I’m
not
a child,” she said again, but with less conviction. All at once she felt very childish. Cadvan looked weary, but his eyes were hard. He turned and began to walk away. Maerad paused awhile and then followed him, afraid of being left behind in this eerie silence. He was walking very fast, and she had to run to catch up. When she did, she didn’t draw even with him, but walked just behind. Her temper had ebbed as suddenly as it had appeared, but she didn’t want to apologize.

They walked in stubborn silence for more than two hours. The sun was warm on their backs now, and Maerad was tiring. Cadvan kept the pace fast, and she was by no means used to this punishing trekking, no matter how trained she was for hard labor. She was too proud to ask him to slow down, and gritted her teeth. She was beginning to hate his straight, unbending back, always before her, always unforgiving. There were still hours to go before sunset, when presumably they would stop, although it was quite possible that Cadvan would insist they keep going through the night. She had just swapped one tyrant for another. . . . When they got to this place they were going, Norloch or whatever it was called, maybe she could find her own way through the world; but for the moment she was stuck with him. Sweat trickled down her face. She was thirsty, and Cadvan had the waterbag.

“We’re making good pace,” said Cadvan, turning at last. Maerad scowled at him, and he looked surprised. “Are you still angry? Put anger aside, child. It’s no use.”

“I’m not a child, I said,” said Maerad sullenly. “Stop treating me like an idiot.”

“If you are not a child, don’t behave like one,” Cadvan snapped. He turned to move off, then stopped, sighing, and turned back to her, holding out his hand. “Maerad, this is ridiculous. I’m sorry. I’m used to traveling alone. If I have been less than courteous to you, forgive me. I’m tired, and we have a long way to go unhoused. And this place worries me; I don’t want to be out in the open tonight. Let’s stop this bickering, yes?”

He held out his hand, and slowly Maerad took it and nodded, swallowing. She felt ungracious, hot, and sulky under Cadvan’s grave gaze.

“I need your help,” he said. “Maerad, be sure there are things that I will tell you, when it is the right time, and that I don’t tell you now because I can’t bear to, not because I think little of you. And there are other things I can’t tell you, because I may not.”

“As you like,” said Maerad. Suddenly she didn’t care. Let him have his secrets.

He gestured southward. “I want to get to a place I know before nightfall,” he said. “It’s not a protection, like the Irihel, but it will be safer than the open. It’s still a league or more hence, and the afternoon is half gone. That’s why I hurry.”

“Can I have a drink of water, please, before we start again?” asked Maerad.

He pulled the waterbag out of his pack and handed it to her, drinking some himself. Then they began their trekking again.

Cadvan led them closer to the mountains, and toward nightfall began to steer toward what looked like a spike or a standing stone set high on a small, oddly rounded hill. As they neared it, Maerad saw it was a ruin, bare even of moss, with empty slits for windows. It was getting late; the sun already threw the long shadows of the mountains over them, and Maerad could feel the chill of early dew. The land was now completely silent, and it frightened her; she felt as if the unseen hunt were drawing in, crouching, preparing for attack. She thought she would like it better if she could see what tracked them. This invisible stalking was unnerving.

As they walked up the hill, slipping a little on the smooth turf, she asked what the ruin was.

“It used to be a guardhouse,” answered Cadvan. “Nothing else stands here but this. We did well to make it by now.”

“What did it guard?” asked Maerad.

“A great city,” Cadvan said. “Its name is now long forgotten. Before the Silence this was a rich and populous country. The Nameless razed even the memory of this place. He took all its palaces and gardens down stone by stone, save this tower. Perhaps it had a use for him.”

They passed under a thick granite lintel into the roofless ruin. It had been a small tower, about fourteen feet square, and once a stair had led to a lookout high above. For the most part the walls, made of huge stones cunningly fitted together without cement of any kind, still stood high — although the roof had collapsed and the stairs and floors had long rotted, leaving the marks of fireplaces high on the walls where rooms once had been. There was only one doorway, and the slit windows were set high up in the walls. Cadvan threw down his pack.

“We have but little time, and we must use it well, if we are to survive the night,” he said. “Fire is our hope. We need wood, quickly, before it grows dark.”

They left the tower and went wood-gathering. Around the base of the hill grew some thorn trees, and two had been uprooted in a winter storm. “Dry, perfect firewood,” Cadvan said. “I think there will be enough here.” Maerad had opened her mouth to ask how they were to chop firewood with their bare hands when Cadvan drew a sword from beneath his cloak. “Forgive me, Arnost, for putting you to such usage!” he said, and began to hack the deadwood as easily as if he were cutting bread.

“I didn’t know you had a sword,” said Maerad. “I never saw it before!” Suddenly she felt almost lighthearted, as if they were preparing a bonfire for a party.

“There is much you don’t know about me,” Cadvan said. “Pray that you get the chance to find it out! Now hurry!”

Catching Cadvan’s urgency, Maerad dragged bundles of branches up the hill, and soon, after he had split the trees, he helped her. It was difficult work, as she kept slipping on the turf. Before long they had a high pile of firewood inside the old guardhouse. Cadvan eyed it critically. “It will do,” he said. “It will have to. It is almost dark. Gather some more branches while there’s time. I have something else to do.”

He drew a small, curiously shaped dagger and began to score a deep line around the base of the hill, and as she lugged more firewood to the guardhouse, Maerad could hear him chanting words in the Speech in a low, rhythmical monotone. When he had circled the whole hill, he stood still and lifted his arms up to the sky. Again he seemed to be illuminated by a strange light, and for a second Maerad saw a ring of white flame leap around the tower; but then she blinked, and it was gone, and she thought it must have been a trick of the vanishing light.

She went inside the guardhouse. The pile of wood was high, and the sun was just now slipping over the horizon. Inside, it was almost completely dark.

Cadvan joined her and immediately knelt down and made a small pile of kindling by the door. Then, stretching out his hand with his two forefingers stiffened, he said: “
Noroch!
” A tiny white flame lit on the kindling and spread, and he tended it, building the fire swiftly until Maerad was forced to stand by the opposite wall because of the heat.

“It’s a bit like saying, ‘Here we are,’ ” she said. “Don’t you think?”

“And you think they don’t know we’re here?”

“What happens when it’s dark?”

“In the dark the wers hold their power,” said Cadvan. “They will fear this fire. They cannot break the stone. I don’t believe they will break the barrier I have made. We have, I think, enough wood to last until morning. Now, Maerad, I know this is not a good time to ask you, but can you fight with a knife?”

Maerad did, in fact, own a dagger she had stolen from one of the Thane’s men and kept secretly in her belt next to her skin. “I can try,” she said. “I’ve never really fought with one.” She showed Cadvan the dagger and he examined it swiftly.

“It’s of rough make, but serviceable, and your size,” he said. “If you are attacked, go for the eyes, if you can, and remember to hold it firm in your fist, like this, so it will drive in. I’ll have to give you lessons in swordcraft when we are in a less tight spot.”

Maerad felt her stomach tighten. “What will attack us?” she asked. What use was a knife against shadows?

“I don’t know yet,” said Cadvan. “But remember, although they are of the Dark, they can be killed. Their worst weapon is fear. Hold back the fear with everything you have. And only fight if you are attacked. Otherwise, leave any fighting to me.”

He drew his sword, and the faint ringing sound echoed off the stone around them. The fire snapped and cracked, throwing strange shadows over the ancient walls, leaping up into the abyss above them. Maerad could see no sky through the roof, only an impenetrable darkness. Cadvan stretched, and then reached for his pack. “But for now, I am ravenous!” he said. He tossed Maerad a biscuit and some nuts and fruit, and they ate, their backs to the walls, their feet stretched out to the fire, their faces glowing in the heat. Maerad could hear the silence of the empty land around them, stretching for miles beyond the friendly popping of the firewood. It bore down on her, like a weight. And then, the sound she feared: a long, drawn-out howl. She almost dropped her biscuit with fright, but Cadvan appeared unmoved.

“The sun has set,” he said.

“Wolfwers?” she whispered.

“Yes, for the meantime. The hunt is starting. They will take a little time to work out what to do about the barrier. It’s white fire. The Dark cannot pass it without breaking its power, and that will not be easy. You should get some sleep.”

The howl came again, and then was answered.

“Sleep? Now?”

“Why not? I will watch.” Cadvan turned and grinned at her. “Be assured I won’t let you miss any fireworks. Remember: fear is their worst weapon.”

Maerad obediently lay down and closed her eyes. She tried to act as if she were not afraid; she tried to relax, but it was difficult, out in the wild, on a broken stone floor, with wers sent by some black magician howling for her blood. . . . She ached all over with weariness after the hard walk that day, and the fire was so warm. But her body sang with tension, and would not let her sleep. After a while she stopped trying and sat up, drawing closer to Cadvan, who nodded but said nothing.

The Bard sat very still beside her, carefully feeding the fire. His face relaxed; he might have been asleep, apart from the watchfulness of his eyes. His sword lay drawn by his feet.

The wers were circling the hill. Maerad and Cadvan could hear their feet padding around and around, trying to find a way past the barrier. Maerad listened hard and counted maybe twenty. Every now and then one would stop and howl, a long ululation that froze the blood, a sound of utter desolation born out of long years of horror and emptiness. The cries hit Maerad in the pit of her stomach. They seemed to her the very sound of unlife, of creatures neither dead nor alive, but caught in a tormenting void between, condemned to envy and hate everything that took joy in existence. She shuddered with nausea. Cadvan continued to feed the fire, apparently unmoved. Then they heard the wers bunch together, and Cadvan reached for his sword. “They’re going to rush the barrier,” he whispered.

Maerad’s pulse was hammering in her ears; she clutched her dagger until her knuckles were white. She listened to the heavy thunder of the wers’ paws, and their breath, and the collisions as they hurled themselves forward; but the barrier held, and they were repulsed, howling. Cadvan relaxed and sat back.

“First game to us,” he said to Maerad. She saw the flash of his grin through the leaping shadows.

The wers’ assault on the barrier lasted for more than an hour; they threw themselves again and again at the enchantment, or tried to break it with their claws and teeth. Cadvan and Maerad sat in silence the entire time. Cadvan’s barrier held well; they were not strong enough to break it, and he wanted them to tire themselves in useless assault. He hoped that they would hurl themselves against it all night. Then they stopped their rushing, and he heard one wer, the leader, he guessed, begin to howl; but it was a different howl this time, a thin, almost human wail, with words in it. It started low and quiet, but as time went by, it grew louder and more insistent.

“The wer leader is making a counterspell,” Cadvan said. “We’re unlucky. It’s rare for a wer to know sorceries.”

Maerad met his eyes, fear clutching her afresh. “What does that mean?”

“Either my spell is good, or it is not. There is nothing we can do except wait to see if it holds.”

Cadvan picked up his sword and waited, tense. Maerad felt the power outside build. It gathered at the weakest part of the barrier, the join; like an evil black blade it tried to force itself into Cadvan’s mind. He fought back, his jaw set, the sweat starting on his forehead, and Maerad watched him with mounting anxiety. The voice built to a crescendo, an unbearable pitch of sound, and then suddenly came a noiseless explosion, a burst of black light, and Cadvan rocked back against the wall with a grimace of pain. But the barrier still held. The wers could not enter.