The Riddle - Alison Croggon [174]
If I were a gambler, she thought, I would not hazard anything on me.
Perversely, the thought cheered her, and she turned to walk back to the cave mouth, the door of the Ice Palace, half dreading, half hoping that she would find the Winterking waiting behind her. No one was there, but a prickle of presentiment made her look back again.
High on a slope beyond the arch there stood a huge white wolf, staring at her with yellow eyes.
Maerad stared back. The wolf did not seem to be threatening, but it looked as if it were waiting for something. For me? she thought, and almost laughed.
Yes, said the wolf into her mind. I am waiting for you.
Maerad was struck speechless with surprise, and merely stared.
Do not speak, said the wolf. You will be heard. Listen. Remember. Triple-tongued is triple-named.
The wolf loped off without waiting for a reaction, vanishing swiftly over the slope, and Maerad shook her head. It had left no footprints: the snow where it had been was utterly unmarked. Was it another illusion? Or some kind of wer? Or was it simply that she was losing her mind?
It is, thought Maerad, quite possible that I am going mad.
Triple-tongued is triple-named.
She stopped dead, realizing what the wolf meant.
Three tongues: Human, Bard, Elidhu. Three names. She must have three names. Maerad, Elednor . . . and another, which even she did not know. A deeper Truename.
The Winterking did not know her third name.
She wandered back to her chamber without meeting anyone. She found Gima waiting for her in agitation. “The master waits for you — he waits for you,” she hissed. “Where have you been?”
“He knew where I was,” said Maerad calmly. But she did not feel composed; standing outside, her attempt to escape had been a certain thing, something she had decided. But the thought of seeing Arkan made a void open in the pit of her stomach.
“Come, come, come,” said Gima, on the verge of panic. “Come; there is no time; he is impatient.”
“There’s no hurry,” said Maerad. While Gima fumed impotently, Maerad picked up her lyre and looked slowly around the room to check if there was anything else she needed, although she knew there was not. “I’m ready now.”
Deliberately slowing her pace, she followed Gima, who hurried down the corridors, turning at each corner and hissing for Maerad to catch up, to hurry. But Maerad refused to walk any faster. I shall come in my own time, she thought. He cannot make me run.
The corridors darkened as they neared the throne room, and Gima hesitated, trembling. Maerad took pity on her. “It’s all right,” she said. “I know the way.”
“You must go there,” said Gima. “He is waiting. He must not wait.”
He can wait, thought Maerad. “I will go straight there,” she said. “Do not fear.”
She walked on, leaving Gima standing where she was, clasping and unclasping her hands, daring neither to walk with her nor to go back. The light in the walls was like stormlight, bright and angry, not the soft illumination she had become used to. She reached the double doors of the throne room and paused, swallowing hard. She could feel the Winterking’s wrath: the iron door seemed to pulse with it. Slowly she pushed it open, and walked in.
The hall seemed bigger, stretching back with a strangely distorted perspective, and from the pool poured a livid illumination that threw strange lights on the ceiling. The dais was in shadow: all she could see was a dark, ominous form. Maerad’s nerve almost failed her, but she took a deep breath and straightened her back. Slowly she walked into the center of the room.
“Elednor of Edil-Amarandh,” said the Winterking. Maerad flinched; when he said her name, it hurt her like a whip. “You arrive at last.”
Maerad stared at the shadow, and gradually the darkness lifted from the dais. The Winterking stood before his throne, dressed in robes of a blue so dark they might have been black. About his brow was a crown of flickering blue lightnings, and his eyes blazed green