The Riddle - Alison Croggon [170]
The passageway was as deserted as the rest of the palace had been, so no one stopped her from stepping outside. The air was freezing, but very still. And the relief of knowing what the time was, the delight of seeing the stars, of walking on snow, made her eyes prickle with tears.
The sky was clear, the stars scattered in hard brilliance over a deep-blue field. She squinted through the darkness. Before her glimmered a long, snow-covered slope, running between two sheer rock walls, which met farther down to form the high black arch. She was as sure as she could be that the arch was the one she remembered passing beneath when she had arrived at Arkan-da. But she did not remember seeing any palace beyond it, or anything at all, apart from more mountains. She looked behind her, and saw that no palace stood at her back: she stood at the open mouth of a large cave, and above her stretched the sheer cliff of a mountainside. Beyond the arch a path continued a little way before it ran into a road that curled itself around the side of the mountain. One way went north and one south, but which was which?
Suddenly the silence was rent by the howling of a wolf. Maerad started, remembering the wolves in Inka-Reb’s cave and the wolves she thought she had seen as she was carried across Zmarkan by the Jussacks. In her mind’s eye she saw again Claw’s savage beauty. She realized she wasn’t afraid of dogs anymore, maybe not even of wolves. And then, with a pang, she thought: They are free, and they sing their own song. She listened until the eerie ululations died away into the stillness of the night.
Maerad stood there as long as she could bear the cold, breathing in the fresh air with a sense of exhilaration. Her escape from the Ice Palace now seemed possible: she had found a way. She sighed in pure happiness.
“The mountains are very beautiful, are they not, Elednor of Edil-Amarandh?” said the Winterking, at her shoulder.
Maerad jumped with shock and turned around. Arkan was standing just behind her.
“You were thinking, no doubt, how easy it would be to walk out of Arkan-da,” he said.
Maerad saw no point in dissembling. “What would stop me?” she said. “The road is just over there.”
“You could try,” said Arkan easily. “I think you would find it interesting. If you watched that arch long enough, you would see that not even birds fly over it.”
“I remember coming under that arch,” said Maerad. “But nothing more. And I would probably freeze to death out here before anyone found me, if I swooned again.”
“Do not fear,” said Arkan. “I always know where you are.”
Maerad felt uneasily that this was true, and that Arkan had followed her meanderings around his palace that day.
“I would like to come out here again,” she said. “I am happy to see the stars and to breathe the wind. I find it hard to live without windows. I miss the sky.”
“There is no harm in that,” said Arkan. “And how did you find my palace?”
“It is very beautiful,” said Maerad truthfully. “But odd. I didn’t see a single person all day. Gima said hundreds of people live here, but I didn’t see anybody.”
“Does that disconcert you? They have been told to avoid you, for fear that you may be frightened. But you are shivering; perhaps we can go back inside.” Arkan turned, courteously offering Maerad his arm as if they stood in a hall in Annar, about to enter a feast, rather than on the bleak side of a mountain. She hesitated, and then took his arm, feeling a numbing chill in her hand as she did so, and they walked back inside. Immediately it was warmer, and Maerad looked along the ice white walls with their rows of iron pillars. Beautiful, she thought, but very stark; everything here is ice and iron. Perhaps the Winterking can imagine nothing else.
“I was