The Riddle - Alison Croggon [13]
Then she took out a number of objects, which she placed carefully about the room, for they too were precious to her. She unpacked a reed flute, given to her by an Elidhu in the Weywood, who Maerad alone knew was also the Queen Ardina of Rachida, and who had, in her other incarnation, given Maerad the exquisitely wrought golden ring that she wore on her third finger; and a black wooden cat that might have been carved as a toy for a child, retrieved from the sacked caravan the day they had found her brother, Hem. Last, she unwrapped from bound oilskin a small but beautifully illuminated book of poems given to her by Dernhil of Gent. She looked at it sadly. She had not had much time to read it, and reading was, in any case, a slow business for her, but she knew most of the poems in it by heart. Dernhil’s death still weighed on her heavily, a regret and a grief.
She shook her head, clearing her thoughts, then picked a golden pear out of the bowl on the table and stepped outside. All the rooms on this side of the house had doors that opened onto the garden. The shadows were now beginning to lengthen and a fresh breeze had sprung up, smelling faintly of brine. Maerad walked barefoot onto the cool grass and sat on the ground in the shade of a trellis overgrown with pale-yellow roses. She ate the pear slowly, letting its sweet juice fill her mouth, her head entirely empty of thought, utterly content. Somewhere a bird burbled unseen in the bushes, but otherwise all was quiet.
As night fell and the lamps were lit, Cadvan knocked on Maerad’s door and they wended their way through the Bardhouse to the private quarters of Nerili, First Bard of Busk. Nerili’s rooms were on the other side of the Bardhouse, and they had to pass through the atrium again on their way there. Maerad dawdled through it, feeling that she would rather sit there all evening than meet any Thoroldian Bard, let alone the most important Bard in the School. The fountain bubbled peacefully in the twilight, murmuring its endless song, as the white stars opened above it in a deep blue sky.
They left the atrium and entered a labyrinth of corridors, turning again and again until Maerad had completely lost her sense of direction. The Bardhouse was enormous. But Cadvan led her unerringly, and at last they stood outside a tall door faced with bronze like the front door of the house, and knocked. It opened, and a slim woman stood in the doorway and greeted them, smiling.
“Cadvan of Lirigon! It is long since your path has led this way.”
“Too long,” said Cadvan. “But, alas, such has been my fate.”
“I regret that the charms of Busk could not draw you here more often,” said Nerili. There was a sharpness in her tone that made Maerad look again, but now the woman was smiling and stretching her hand toward Maerad. Cadvan cleared his throat and introduced her.
Nerili of Busk was not quite what Maerad had expected. She seemed too young to be a First Bard, although among Bards age was always difficult to guess. Maerad thought she looked about thirty-five years old, which given the triple life span of Bards meant she was perhaps seventy or eighty. She was not much taller than Maerad, but her authority and grace, and the challenging glance she gave Cadvan as they entered, gave her an illusory stature. She was strikingly beautiful, with the gray eyes, black hair, and olive skin of a Thoroldian, and her gray silk dress fell softly about her, shimmering like a waterfall. Her hair was piled up on her head and held in place by silver