The Riddle - Alison Croggon [191]
Maerad chose the barn closest to her ditch and stood for a time outside the door, sniffing until she was sure there were no humans inside. Then, very carefully, she unlatched it with her teeth and crept inside. Just near the door were several sleeping fowl. She managed to kill one, breaking its neck with a quick snap, before the others awoke and started squawking in panic, waking the other animals. Outside, a dog started barking. Maerad grabbed the corpse, slipped out of the barn, and fled. A man emerged, shouting and waving a pitchfork, but by then Maerad was well away.
She felt better after eating the chicken, which was fat and juicy, although when she had finished it, she wished that she had had time to kill another; it had taken the edge off her hunger, but not its substance. Then she curled up in the hollow made by the roots of an ancient willow and slept soundly.
She woke early the next day and continued her journey south under an overcast sky. She had no clear idea of what she was to do; her only thought was to travel as quickly as she could, to find her way to Turbansk, to track down Hem. She saw no more hamlets; this part of Annar was sparsely inhabited, although sometimes she saw abandoned houses, their doors hanging drunkenly from broken hinges, their shutters flapping in the wind.
All morning a fine, freezing rain had turned the snow into a muddy sludge and added to the air of melancholy that filled the countryside. Maerad welcomed the rain; she wondered how long it had been since she had heard its gentle murmur, how long since she had been traveling through frozen lands. It seemed forever.
She began to have a strange feeling that she knew where she was, as if she had already visited this land in a dream. It was then she realized that she must be close to Pellinor, the School in which she had been born. This must be the Fesse of Pellinor. It had once been a thickly inhabited region, but it was now abandoned and empty, the only sign of what it had been the sad remains of houses she passed more and more frequently.
Maerad had not been to Pellinor since she was a small child, since the terrible day that it had been sacked and burned to the ground and she and her mother had been taken into slavery. She was suddenly consumed with an overwhelming desire to see her birthplace, ruined and dismal though it must be. Perhaps, in the place where her mother had been First Bard, in the home where her mother and father had loved each other and had their children, some inspiration might come to her and she might know what to do next.
She knew the School was nestled against the mountains, so keeping the Osidh Annova to her left, she ran on through the desolate winter countryside. It was a relief to have some concrete aim, and she pressed on swiftly now, keeping alert for any sign of the School. The rain stopped, leaving swags of dark clouds that promised more.
Just before noon she found the ruins. She came over a rise thickly wooded with leafless beech and larch, and saw a broken stone wall less than half a league before her. Behind the wall rose the remains of what had been a high tower and several other buildings.
Maerad paused, suddenly hesitant. It looked even more wretched than she had expected. But her desire to see Pellinor overrode her doubts, and at last she loped down the hill toward the broken archway, which had been the gate of the School.
Almost as soon as she passed beyond the wall, Maerad was sorry she had come, but she also could not leave, as if to do so hurriedly, without looking properly, would indicate disrespect or a lack of courage. The walls rose around her, most of them tumbled and broken, covered with brown, leafless creepers that the wind rattled against the stone. The stone in many places was still blackened by fire, and amid the tumble of wreckage, now covered with a winter detritus of dead weeds, she could see charred beams and broken doors and pieces of brightly colored glass. The stone roads were broken and clogged with dead grasses, but unless a wall had collapsed into