The Riddle - Alison Croggon [29]
“Yes, indeed,” said Cadvan. “Though there are not many places where they love the arts of illusion as much as they do here, and have brought it to such perfection. In most other Schools they are scorned as a minor part of Barding. Perhaps, one day, you will be the finest illusioner of them all. But now, alas, you walk a darker path.”
Maerad felt as if he had poured cold water over her. She wanted to kick Cadvan for reminding her of the shadows that pursued her, even here, and for popping her bubble of delight. She scowled at him, and turned to talk to Honas, and Cadvan looked reflectively into his glass and said nothing. Something was troubling him.
As the sun slipped lower in the sky, the Bards left the tavern and started to make their way back to the School. The Rite of Renewal took place at moonrise in the center of the School, where the music house, the library, the meeting hall, and Nerili’s Bardhouse surrounded a large square. It was paved with pink and white granite in a checkerboard pattern, but otherwise was without decoration. In its exact center was a round white dais.
The square was full of people, both townsfolk and Bards, but there was a solemnity in this gathering that had been entirely absent from the procession. Maerad sensed the presence of the Bards’ collective power as she and Cadvan weaved their way through the crowd toward the dais. It was like a music or a light in her head, but she could never quite find the words to describe it; another sense woke within her and stirred in recognition. These are my people, she thought, and I am glad to be with them.
Cadvan led Maerad right up to the dais, so they were standing with the Bards of the First and Second Circles and the members of the Chamber of Busk, who nodded gravely in greeting. Maerad couldn’t see Nerili anywhere.
She looked up into the sky, where the full moon was just swinging clear of the horizon, casting a still, white light over the gathering.
Before long she began to hear strains of music — flutes and a lyre — and a hush fell. This was not wild Thoroldian dancing music, but the pure music of Bards. Its complex clarity rang over the crowd, and a listening silence rippled out from the musicians as they came closer. Then Maerad saw Nerili, robed in white, with the white diadem of her status hung from a silver fillet on her forehead, slowly pacing toward the middle of the square. Behind her were three musicians, all Bards of the First Circle, and before her walked Elenxi, with the Mirror of Maras floating before him, guided by his hands. Maerad sensed with a deep thrill that this was no mere glimmerspell, no deception of the eye, but a real magic: a magery of transformation that released the Mirror from the laws of the natural world.
The small procession stepped solemnly onto the dais, and the three musicians arranged themselves so they faced out: north, south, and east. Elenxi placed the Mirror in the center of the dais, where it remained as if he had put it on an invisible plinth. He stood so he was facing west. Then the music stopped.
In the sudden silence, Nerili circled the dais with her arms uplifted, her face turned out to the crowd.
“Welcome, and thrice welcome,” she said, her voice reaching effortlessly to those at the back of the crowd. “We are come to the Rite of Renewal.”
Everyone in the square held up their arms in reply and spoke with one voice. “May the Light bless us!”
“May the Light bless us all, and make true our tongues, and truer our hearts, and truest of all our deeds.”
“May the Light bless us!”
Now Nerili was standing next to the Mirror, her arms still upraised. She began to glimmer with a silver light, which grew until she was almost as bright as the moon itself. Then, with a startling suddenness, she picked up the Mirror and cast it to the ground. Even though Maerad had been told of what happened during the rite, she gasped; the stone smashed into a rainbow of shards, with a flash like lightning. It seemed an act of