The Riddle - Alison Croggon [172]
And yet he keeps me prisoner, Maerad thought, averting her eyes. Hypocrite. But underneath her confusion, she knew that the answering leap within her was not commanded by the Winterking.
Maerad was silent for a long time after that, as they wound back through the Ice Palace into the heart of the mountain. She felt at once troubled and confused and strangely exhilarated. She was quite certain that when Arkan spoke of love, he meant something different from what she understood to be human love, and yet she did not know what to do with the desire that suddenly blazed within her, a desire she had never permitted herself to feel before. Some part of her, the Elemental part, she thought, stirred in response. Why now? she cried to herself in exasperation. And yet she lingered, nodding when Arkan pointed out some new beauty of his palace, agonizingly aware of when he took her arm, when he moved closer to her, when his robe brushed hers.
She thought of Cadvan, of Dernhil, of Dharin, of Hem. I cannot stay here, she thought. I must not. . . . At last she took a deep breath.
“I can’t play a Song I cannot read,” she said. “Even if I still had all my fingers. Could you read the runes on my lyre?”
Arkan turned and regarded her thoughtfully. “Will you show them to me?”
Maerad reflected that Arkan could no doubt look at the runes, without her permission, anytime he liked. “I’ll bring my lyre tomorrow,” she said. Whenever tomorrow is, she thought, in this dayless time. “Perhaps you can help me understand them.”
“Perhaps,” said Arkan. “Well, here we are at your chamber. Good morrow, Elednor of Edil-Amarandh.” He bowed, and then his form began to glow with an intense light, which became so bright that Maerad blinked. When she looked again, he was gone.
Back in her chamber, Maerad walked restlessly from one end of the room to the other. The moonstone walls had seemed transparent before, less substantial; now they looked more solid and real. Maerad stared at the glowing walls with despair.
Am I to be betrayed by my own heart? she thought. That is what Arkan wants. At last, she sat down on the bed and picked up her lyre. She began to strum a simple song using the two or three chords that she could play without difficulty. The light changed and she looked up; to her intense relief she saw that the walls had vanished again, revealing her rocky dungeon.
She continued to play, seeking comfort in the music, although the scabs on her left hand broke and began to bleed. She put down the lyre and rummaged about in her pack until she found the healing balm. There was a little left, and she smeared her hand until the stinging was slightly numbed, and then she returned to the lyre. She played a ballad she had sung with Cadvan; the chords were easy if she did not pluck the melody. It was the ballad of Andomian and Beruldh, a short song that introduced a longer lay. Maerad sang the old story of Beruldh’s imprisonment and death in the stronghold of the sorcerer Karak, of the love she had for her brothers, of Andomian’s love for her, with new feeling; it was as if she had never properly sung it before, as if she had never really known what it meant. Perhaps Cadvan had guessed that it somehow foreshadowed her own fate, on that evening so long ago when he had played it in a birch dingle called Irihel, just after they had left Gilman’s Cot. She saw his grave, dark face in her mind’s eye, and realized again with undiminished anguish how much she missed him.
I must leave here soon, or the Winterking will bewilder me utterly, she thought, putting the lyre carefully back into its case. I am Elidhu, and Bard, and Pilanel too — and each part of me pulls in different directions. How am I to work out which is me? Can I ever be whole and true to myself? And how can I leave, anyway? Arkan is so certain that I can’t. Maybe he is right.
Some part of her leaped up in gladness at the thought, but she sternly confronted her feelings, examining them as neutrally as she could, neither judging nor rejecting them. So, she said steadily to herself; I find I desire