The Riddle - Alison Croggon [176]
“I do not desire a slave,” he said at last.
“I am not a slave,” said Maerad.
Arkan glanced at her swiftly. “Forgive me, if I made you afraid,” he said. “I am not used to dealing with mortals, and perhaps I am impatient.”
Maerad nodded very slightly.
“Come, sit with me. We will forget this ever happened.” He turned back and offered his arm, and Maerad smiled wanly, taking it hesitantly. She shivered at his touch: now it burned her like ice.
“I see,” he said, “that you brought your lyre.”
“As I said I would,” said Maerad. “I don’t know how to read the runes.”
They didn’t speak again until they were seated. Maerad already felt exhausted: she knew she must deceive Arkan if she were to escape, but the only way she could deceive him was by revealing the truth. The problem with the truth, she thought despairingly, is that it is true. She stared at his mouth, noticing its cruel sensuality. To kiss him, she thought, would be like kissing a river; I would faint and drown. She dug her nails into her palms, trying to stop the dizziness that his closeness induced in her, trying to keep her mind clear and alert.
It was no use thinking like this.
She handed him her lyre with a strange reluctance; it was as if she were giving him her heart. But it is mine, cried a voice inside her; it belongs to no one else. His fingers closed on it covetously, and she felt his grasp on her most loved possession as a deep pain, and momentarily shut her eyes.
He must not know I feel like this, she thought.
She opened her eyes and smiled.
“Can you read the runes?” she asked.
Arkan stroked his fingers lightly over the carvings, and Maerad shivered. “Yes,” he said. “I can read them. Shall I tell them to you?”
She didn’t trust herself to speak, and just nodded.
“I remember when these runes were made, many many wanings of ice ago.” Arkan’s voice was suddenly tender, and Maerad looked at him in surprise. He was far away, in some memory of his own. “They should never have been made,” he said. “But they were. That was the first ill.”
“Did the Nameless One make them?” ventured Maerad, looking at the strange carved forms. They seemed too beautiful to have been made by him.
Arkan’s eyes were suddenly opaque and private. “Nelsor himself made these runes. He was told the Song, and its potency and beauty amazed him. And secretly he made the runes, so he could have it for his own. He was always the greatest of the Bards; no other had the power to do such a thing. Nor the audacity. He captured the Song of the Elidhu, and now it sleeps within these runes.”
“Who told him the Song?” asked Maerad, but Arkan gave no sign that he heard her. He brushed the ancient wood with both his hands, and then shut his eyes and touched the first of the ten runes with his forefinger.
“These runes embody many things,” said Arkan. “That was Nelsor’s genius: he saw how the Song’s powers might be captured, like a flower in ice. This is his greatest work. He did not know that it would lead to such disaster.”
Maerad looked at her lyre, and then back to Arkan. In her little time at the Schools, she had learned how letters held meaning and how they could be magical, but Arkan seemed to be talking of something more.
“There are three dimensions to each rune,” Arkan went on. Triple-tongued, thought Maerad, with a sudden clutch of excitement.
The Winterking opened his eyes and looked at Maerad intently. “This first rune is Arda, the first of the moons. It is the new moon, and it is the fir tree. And it is also this stave: I am the dew on every hill.”
Maerad blinked in confusion, and then nodded. If she did not understand, she could at least remember. “So,” said Arkan. “First the moons.” He shut his eyes again, and read each rune with his fingers. “This is the rune Arda. This the rune Onn. This the rune Ura. This the rune Iadh. This the rune Eadha. The new moon, the waxing moon, the full moon, the waning moon, the dark moon.”
Maerad stared at the runes, and then looked up at Arkan.