The Riddle - Alison Croggon [146]
Maerad’s mother, Milana of Pellinor, stood before her in a tower of glass. Her face was marked with inconsolable grief. In her arms she clasped Hem, not as Maerad had last seen him, but as a baby. Both of them turned to face Maerad, who was outside the tower. There was no door. Maerad was overcome by a longing to join them, to be held again in her mother’s arms. She beat her hands against the glass until they were bloody, but she could not break it; she beat and beat, until she could see the bones of her hands, like broken white twigs in a mess of blood and flesh.
After that dream, Maerad awoke. The world around her seemed to be real. Hem is dead, she thought; the dream told me. He is dead, murdered, like everyone else I have ever loved. The thought brought no tears. She was beyond tears, beyond grief; she was empty of all feeling, a shell as light as a feather. All her body burned with pain, apart from her left hand. Her left hand was almost completely numb.
She was bound; that was no dream. She seemed to be tied to a sled. Slowly she remembered what had happened to her; she remembered Dharin’s death, and the final fight with the Jussacks. She blinked, trying to work out where she was. She was on a sled, being driven over the endless plains of Zmarkan. She had been captured by the Jussacks. Dharin had said they would kill her, but they had not killed her. She wished they had.
All Maerad wanted was to die. Even that had been denied her. She had thought about killing herself once before, after the death of Cadvan, but then the life in her had cried out, had pleaded for its existence. Now even that visceral pleading of the body was gone. The darkness was friendly and warm; it waited for her, a dark pool into which she could slide her body and rest forever, free from grief, free from torment: free, most of all, from her failure.
When the blond face appeared again, she turned away and shut her eyes and mouth, so she could not be given food or drink. Her head was lifted, and water was forced between her lips from a leather bottle. She was too weak to keep her jaw clamped shut, and when the water dribbled into her mouth, she automatically swallowed. She tried to spit out the next mouthful, but could not. She tossed her head from side to side, but someone held her head firmly, so even that protest was thwarted. Some warm soup was forced into her mouth and she nearly choked before she swallowed. I could kill myself by choking, she thought, and the next mouthful of soup she took eagerly, trying to fill her mouth so much that she could not breathe, so that the soup would go into her lungs and drown her, but despite herself she swallowed it. The same thing happened again, until she had finished the bowl.
Then she was left alone. Maerad lay on the jolting sled, tears at last spilling from her eyes. Even her body betrayed her.
Time no longer existed. Life was an unending torment, rushing forward through an endless night, slipping between evil dreams and worse wakings. The Jussacks did not want her to die; they were going to a lot of trouble to make sure that she didn’t. She was fed and even kept clean, no easy task in the harsh conditions. She barely needed to be tied; she was so weak that she could not even lift her arms. Sometimes the wind howled and snowflakes settled on her face, and until someone noticed and she was covered, being unable to brush them away was a worse torment than almost anything else.
When she could feel any emotion, she felt hatred. It was like a cold poison in her soul. Her body’s ills she learned to ignore, except for the times that the pain was so overwhelming it filled her whole mind, so that she felt she would go mad, if she were not mad already. She was racked by fever and chills, almost convulsive enough to break her bindings. But despite this, her body began to heal. After a time, the convulsions stopped, and she was merely tormented by the cold. The Jussacks gave her enough furs to keep her from dying, but not enough to keep her