The Riddle - Alison Croggon [128]
The glare thrown up from the bright sunlight was dazzling, and remembering Dharin’s strictures about blindness, Maerad drew her hood over her face so her eyes were shaded. The icy wind blew into her face, stinging her skin, and her heart rose in sudden exhilaration. She turned to Dharin.
“This is wonderful!” she said.
He grinned down at her. “I told you,” he said. “There is no better way to travel. Who needs roads?”
They continued all day, heading in a northwesterly direction. Every now and then the dogs would get their traces tangled, and Dharin would stop and sort them out. It was a chance for Maerad to get out and stretch her legs, before she climbed back into her seat.
After a while, the motion of the sled lulled her asleep. She dreamed she was in a ship of bone, sailing across a sea of ice; it seemed she was looking for another dream, but she couldn’t remember what it was. High above her in the sky hung bright curtains of light, and she reached up her hands to touch them. They were very cold, sending an icy thrill through her whole body, and afterward her fingers fell off her hands. She looked at her fingerless hands with neither surprise nor horror, thinking to herself that she didn’t need fingers to play music, but then someone who was both present and absent, someone with Cadvan’s voice, said, “Nonsense!” and she woke up with a start.
The sun had moved across the sky in its low trajectory along the horizon, but the landscape looked no different.
“It’s easy for some,” said Dharin.
Maerad sat up, rubbing her eyes. “It’s very warm and comfortable, with all those furs you put here,” she said. She looked at the dogs, who were running as swiftly now as they had when they had first started. “How do the dogs still run so fast?”
“They are very strong. And they are eager.”
When the sun was close to the horizon, they stopped for the night. Dharin unharnessed the dogs and fed them, while Maerad prepared a meal from their stores. Then Dharin put up the tent, an ingenious device made of springy canes of willow wood and well-oiled skins. When it was unfolded, it miraculously snapped open to make a small two-man tent with a firm, waterproof floor. At the front of the tent were long flaps of skin which could be lashed to the sled itself, at its uncovered end, anchoring the tent to the ground. It made two different quarters: a very small space where Maerad and Dharin could sit and eat, warming themselves by the stove, and the sled, where they slept. Maerad was enchanted by it, and made Dharin open and close it a few times, just to see it spring up; and Dharin, who had made the tent, was quite happy to oblige her. To Maerad, who had been used to sleeping in the open in all sorts of weather, a tent was a luxury, but Dharin laughed when she said this, and commented that in the north shelter was no luxury, but a necessity, if she did not want to become a human ice block.
They both ate their evening meal sitting outside on the toe of the sled, watching the sun sink over the plains, a burning globe of fire in an orange sky that cast a deep golden light over the snow.
“It’s beautiful,” said Maerad dreamily.
“It is,” said Dharin. “Perilously beautiful. When we get past Tlon, we begin to reach the real winter land. That is lovely beyond description, and deadly.”
“Have you been there before?” asked Maerad.
“Once. I travel far; it irks me to be shut up all winter, which is the best time to travel, although I like to be in Murask for the midwinter festival. I first went to Tlon when I was ten, with my father. He traded furs and other things with the northern clans. He was a great driver.”
“Is he dead now, then?” Maerad squinted across at Dharin, examining his face.
“Yes. He did not return, five years ago now. I was eighteen and already a man. It was a great grief to my mother. She joined another clan, and now goes south each year. She has not been able to return this year. I hoped to see her before I left, but I could not.”
“And do you have brothers and sisters?” asked Maerad.
“No. There were