The Riddle - Alison Croggon [108]
The gate itself was huge, as high as four men, and made of thick iron bars through which Maerad could see a dark tunnel lit with torches. Behind the bars stood two leaves of a stout wooden door. It was unadorned, and it somehow gave the impression of immense age. It seemed older than anything Maerad had seen at the Bard Schools; maybe it was as old as the standing stones she had seen in the Hollow Lands in Annar. Maerad swallowed, momentarily daunted. The gate was shut, and she could see no one nearby to open it. Experimentally, she set her hand to one of the bars and pushed. As she expected, it was locked.
She looked around and this time saw a bronze bell hanging to the side, with a thin metal chain dangling from its tongue. She pulled it, and the bell clanged, making her jump; it sounded very loud in this quiet landscape. At first, nothing happened, but after a while a little door she had not seen to the left of the tunnel opened, and a man limped out, saying something in Pilanel. Maerad had never seen a grown man so short. His head was drawn down on his shoulders, and his spine was bent into a hunch, but his shoulders and arms were massive, suggesting enormous strength. She could not understand his speech, and she just stood, holding out the token Mirka had given her, waiting for whatever might come next. The man peered through the bars of the gate, looking straight at Maerad. Then he shrugged, muttering something to himself that sounded like a curse, and limped back into his room, slamming shut the door.
Maerad suddenly realized that she was still under a glimmerspell, and almost laughed. It was no use knocking at a door if no one could see her. Her heart was beating fast, and she waited a little while until she felt calmer. Then, glancing around to make sure no one was nearby to witness her suddenly appearing out of nowhere, she undid the glimmerspell and tried again.
This time the man came out more quickly. He looked annoyed, and Maerad braced herself, but when he spotted her through the bars, he simply stopped, looking surprised. Maerad held out the token, her hand trembling slightly.
“Om ali nel?” he said.
“My name is Mara. I am Annaren. I bring greeting from — from Mirka à Hadaruk.”
The man studied her in silence for a while and then reached his fingers through the narrow gap between the iron bars to take the token. He looked at it closely, turning it over and over, his face expressionless, and Maerad watched him anxiously. He finally seemed to reach some decision, and took a long iron key from the bunch jangling at his waist and turned it in a lock in the middle of the gate, using both his hands. Then he took another broader key and disappeared inside his room again. Maerad was just beginning to wonder whether he was coming back when he reappeared and with another key turned a lock near the base of the gates. Then he pulled them open, beckoning her inside.
“Come,” he said, speaking in thickly accented Annaren.
Maerad hesitated on the threshold, and then obeyed him. Once she was inside, blinking until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the man repeated the laborious process of locking the gates and, without speaking further, he indicated that she should follow him.
The tunnel through the hill was very large, big enough to accommodate Pilanel caravans. There was no feeling of dampness, as Maerad had expected; the air seemed, if anything, to be warm. It was lined and flagged with roughly dressed stone, and smelled of the burning pitch of the torches that lined its length. She fixed her eyes on the humped back of the gate warden, hurrying to keep up with him. Despite his limp, he walked very quickly. He limped, she