The Riddle - Alison Croggon [204]
There is a lot of speculation in the Naraudh Lar-Chanë about Elemental magic: unlike the magery of Bards, which depended crucially on the Speech, it seemed to be unrelated to language. Elemental magic depended rather on influencing the material nature of things, a type of magic considered among Bards to be the chief of the mysteries, and the most difficult and dangerous to practice. It is also, clearly, an emotional, rather than an intellectual, magic, although Bards would consider this a puzzling and false division. These differences, which remain mysterious, go some way to explaining the amazement among Bards at Maerad’s powers, which operated outside the arenas of most Bardic skills and gifts, as well as their distrust of them.
Ardina
Ardina was by far the most celebrated of the Elementals among the Restoration Bards. Her love for Ardhor, the first King of Lirion, with whom she forged the decisive alliance that helped to defeat Arkan the Ice Witch, the Winterking, at the end of the Elemental Wars, was a favorite subject of Bardic song.11 In those tales, she is also associated with spring, and is a symbol of fertility. She is often represented, like the goddess Isis, crowned with the horned or full moon, and Annaren women would call on her help in childbirth or for difficulties with menstruation. She was regarded as one of the most powerful of all the Elidhu; it seems that her status as an earthly incarnation of the moon meant she was not restricted to place in the way that even Arkan, the Winterking, appeared to be, and she seemed to be able to appear in various physical or dream guises in any place in Edil-Amarandh.
During the Great Silence, Ardina disappears from Bardic history until the Naraudh Lar-Chanë, and the discovery of the people of Rachida, the only descendents of the Dhyllin people remaining in Annar.12 She is, in many ways, a baffling figure, presented at once as a figure of ancient legend from the Age of the Elementals and the Dawn Age; as the wise and great Queen of Rachida, the secret realm in the midst of the Great Forest described in Book II of the Naraudh Lar-Chanë; and as a “wild and fey” Elidhu, separate from and somewhat mocking of trivial human affairs.
Ardina is described by the Bard Menellin in Afinil thus: “The Daughter of the Moon, Ardin Ilya Na, often comes to our halls, to sing and to speak with us, and her radiance outshines our humble lights as the Moon outshines the Stars. But it seemeth to me that her beauty is made infinitely more piquant by her sadness; for although it may be an impertinence to observe so, when she looks upon the beauty of the halls, and the flower of Manhood which gathereth here, she is reminded of her lost love, the King Ardhor, and her joy is tempered thereby. She steps among us sometimes as a great Queen, arrayed in raiment of pearls and silver; and at other times as a slender young girl dressed in the simplest robes of white, which falleth from her figure in flowing motions, and seem themselves to be woven of Light. But at all times her beauty is of the kind which pierceth the heart. It is said among Bards that she will join her love in the deathless glades beyond the Gates, and although that would be a glad day for her, whose love is as immortal as her flesh, it would be a day of great loss for us, who are so ennobled and delighted by her presence.”13
Arkan
Arkan, known also as the Ice Witch, the Ice King, or the Winterking, gets bad press from the Restoration Bards. “When he took on human form, he was evil incarnate,” wrote Piron of Il-Arunedh in N562, in a not untypical description. “He was treacherous and slippery as a cold snake. His skin was