The Riddle - Alison Croggon [197]
“Well, if you escaped the Ice Palace, why not the Iron Tower?” said Cadvan, smiling.
“I almost didn’t escape,” said Maerad. “I — I almost didn’t want to.”
She hesitated, feeling intensely shy, and then said in rush, “I think I fell in love with the Winterking.” She was glad it was dark, because she knew she had blushed deep red.
Cadvan looked at her for a long moment. “Love is one of the true mysteries,” he said at last. “The truest and the deepest of all. One thing, Maerad: to love is never wrong. It may be disastrous; it may never be possible; it may be the deepest agony. But it is never wrong.”
“He is cruel and ruthless, and he desires power,” whispered Maerad. “But by his own lights he was kind to me. Sometimes I even felt that I understood him. But all the same, I feel — ashamed.”
“I doubt whether the Winterking would have given you the meaning of the runes had he not known that you loved him,” said Cadvan slowly.
“Yes,” said Maerad, looking down. Tears prickled her eyes. “But I think he was right. The Treesong belongs to the Elidhu, not to the Light or to the Dark, and we have to give it back to them. It is not something that the Light should have. But, then, you see, I betrayed him. Although if I had stayed, I would have betrayed everyone else. . . .” She trailed off into silence.
Cadvan leaned forward and brushed Maerad’s hair out of her eyes.
“Look at me, Maerad,” he said. Unwillingly she lifted her eyes to meet his. “I had already begun to think that this is a matter of undoing what Light or Dark should never have done,” he said. “If that is so, then that is what we must do. And you could not complete that quest while you were bound in the Ice Palace. Perhaps you have not betrayed the Winterking, after all. Perhaps you have helped him not to betray himself.”
Maerad nodded. Cadvan gazed at her with a tenderness he had never shown her before.
“Never be ashamed of your love,” he said gently. “The only thing to be ashamed of is denying your love. That is what makes the shadow grow within your heart; that is the darkening of the Light. And we all have many loves.”
“I remembered the other people I love,” said Maerad, her voice rough. “I remembered Hem most of all. And I dreamed of you, even though I thought you were dead. It gave me hope. But it was still almost the worst pain I had ever felt in my life, leaving the Winterking.”
She began to sob, and leaned on Cadvan’s shoulder. He wordlessly stroked her hair, saying nothing, until she had cried herself out and sat up, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.
“I want to find Hem,” she said.
“We’ll start tomorrow,” answered Cadvan, smiling gently. “In my heart, I, too, think we must find him. But right now I feel as tired as ever I have in my life.”
Maerad gave him a wobbly smile. “Tomorrow, then,” she said.
That night, Maerad dreamed she was walking through a green meadow full of wildflowers, with grass almost as high as her knees. She reached a high hedge, and unlatched a gate and passed into an orchard of apple trees. It was early spring, and all of them held a heavy burden of pink-and-white blossoms. Blossoms littered the ground like snow, and among the white-starred grasses nodded daffodils and bluebells and crocuses of many colors.
She wandered through the orchard into a garden just now greening from its winter slumber, and continued over a path of raked white gravel toward a beautiful house. Maerad knew it was her home, although she had never seen such a place before. It was a long, double-storied building of yellow stone, with wide windows that shone in the sunshine.
When she reached the front door, it opened of its own accord, and she passed inside. She entered every room, seeking something, but they were all empty. She ran upstairs, breathless, beginning to feel distressed, flinging open every door in an increasingly desperate search, but no one was there. A panic seized her, and she ran down the stairs and out of the house into the garden, tears falling down her cheeks.
And then she