The Riddle - Alison Croggon [135]
In the distance Maerad could hear a strange barking, which echoed through the deep silence that surrounded them. The dogs pricked up their ears, but subsided when Dharin told them to be quiet.
“What is it?” asked Maerad.
“Seals, I expect,” said Dharin. “There must be a seal ground not far from here. Well, that is good news; I will ask the Wise Kindred if I may hunt here. I need more meat for the dogs.”
The traditional Pilanel telling of the northern journey included the courtesies expected of strangers who visited the Wise Kindred. Dharin now instructed Maerad in the Pilanel tellings of the northern peoples, and she listened gravely.
“You must understand,” he said seriously, “that those we call the Wise Kindred are only one of many peoples who live in the cold north. The Pilanel tell of at least twenty different peoples on the coast of Hramask, from Orun to Lebinusk, and there are probably more. And you must not think that one group is the same as the next: they have different customs and they speak different languages. The Wise Kindred are understood to be the oldest of all. Their name for themselves, Inaruskosani, means ‘those who first walked on the earth.’”
Maerad nodded humbly, reflecting, not for the first time, how little she knew of Edil-Amarandh and its peoples. They were more various than she had ever supposed; every time she thought she was beginning to understand the world, some other aspect would open and reveal a new ignorance.
Dharin talked on softly, enumerating the different names of the peoples of the north and what he knew of their customs. The different peoples very seldom fought among each other; Dharin said it was because their lives were so harsh that they had no time for war.
There was, he said, a common language called Lirunik, which was used by the northern Pilanel clans and the various peoples of the far north when they needed to speak to each other. Dharin had spoken this language since he was a child, as his father had been a great trader, and he would act as interpreter.
After a while, silence fell upon them, and they just sat, listening to the sleeping grunts of the dogs and the distant coughs of the seal colony. A waxing moon let fall its chilly light over the endless white sea. To the south, Maerad could see a red glow on the horizon, where the fiery mountains of the Irik-Ol poured out the molten heart of the earth. Here, she thought, all is water, ice, fire, stone, and air; the anguish of human beings seems trivial beside such huge, elemental forces. She felt a great peace descend on her heart.
They had sat thus for some time when Maerad felt a tingling in her skin, and at the same time became conscious of a strange noise that she couldn’t locate. It sounded at first like a very distant whistling, then like the ringing of countless tiny silver bells. The noise reminded her of the voice that had spoken her Truename, Elednor, when she had been instated as a Bard. It grew in intensity, sounding now like ringing, now like a hissing of water or wind, now like a faint crackling, and she turned to Dharin, a question on her lips. But Dharin had turned around, facing north, and was staring at the sky. Maerad followed his gaze and gasped.
The entire northern horizon, from east to west, was alight with curtains of quivering green light. As Maerad watched, her mouth open, the curtains shimmered and parted, revealing yet more luminous veils, which themselves vanished and reappeared in a stately dance. The colors glimmered through the entire spectrum of green, from the palest spring yellow to a deep emerald shot through with glorious purples. Awe fell over them, and they watched for an unguessable time, enraptured, until at last the dance began to flicker, and then slowly dimmed and went out.
Maerad sighed with pure happiness. “What are they?” she asked, turning to Dharin.
“We call them the heavenly dancers,” he said. “Some say the lights come from the realm of the dead.”
“From beyond the