The Riddle - Alison Croggon [37]
Which loves this beautiful island that I love
For I am dying . . .”
When she went to bed, Maerad snuggled into the sheepskins against the surprisingly sharp cold, the lament still ringing in her head, and its meld of love and sorrow echoed all night through her dreams.
The following morning, they picked up their packs and left Velissos with many warm farewells. Elenxi led them up a path even more vertiginous than those they had already traveled, winding its way around tumuli of granite and along sharp ridges. They were so high up now that it was cool, although the sky was clear and blue, and the air held a special freshness, as if they were the first to breathe it. Very often, little mountain streams leaped down the slopes, some no wider than a step, pouring in miniature waterfalls into pools full of shiny pebbles. Maerad tasted the water: it was so cold it numbed her lips.
“It’s fresh from the snowline of the Lamedon,” said Cadvan, nodding upward to the bare stony pinnacles that stretched above them.
Maerad watched a pair of eagles circling so high up they could hardly be seen. She didn’t look down for very long or very often, because the height made her feel a little dizzy.
“It must be harsh here in winter,” she said.
“It is,” Elenxi said. “Winter is when the herders come in, the goats and sheep are shut up in their sheds, and we eat the sweet stored apples and grain and tell long stories by the fires. And then the storms howl about our heads! The weather here is like the people: fierce and unpredictable.” He grinned.
It was very tiring, climbing these slopes. No wonder the Velissos people were so strong, Maerad thought. You needed muscles of iron just to walk around. After three hours they paused for a meal, and then pressed on. Maerad’s thighs were beginning to ache badly, and she was glad of the walking stick Elenxi had cut for her from a thorn tree. At last, they reached one of the meadows that were scattered over the mountains, like emerald liquor in cups of stone. This one was much bigger than most of them, and at its end was a stone house surrounded by three wooden huts and a small garden. Goats wandered the grass, their bells clinking lazily as they cropped, but otherwise there was no one to be seen.
Maerad flopped down and lay on her back, squinting at the blue sky through the nodding grasses and wildflowers. “Leave me here,” she said. “Oh, my poor legs!”
“What, complaining so after a mere leisurely stroll?” said Elenxi, lifting his eyebrows. “If you’re to be an honorary Thoroldian, you’ll have to do better than that.”
“Mercy!” said Maerad. “I’m not sure I have the strength to be Thoroldian. You’re all made of wire.”
Elenxi dragged her up, and they made their way across the meadow to the stone house. Goats came up to them and butted them curiously, their tails wagging comically. Maerad looked into their strange yellow eyes, but didn’t try to talk to them. She was sure she’d have plenty of time later.
As they neared the house, a man as big as Elenxi came out, his arms spread wide. “Welcome, my brother!” he said, enfolding Elenxi in an embrace and kissing him on both cheeks and then turning to the other two. “I am Ankil. And you are Cadvan and Maerad? I am glad to meet you at last, Cadvan; welcome, Maerad. Nerili has told me much about both of you. Come in, come in. I have wine, I have water, I have food. Come in and rest yourselves.”
Maerad studied Ankil with an intensifying curiosity. He was very like Elenxi, but what puzzled her more was her conviction that he was a Bard. He had about him something of the subtle glow by which Bards could recognize each other, although in his case it had an evanescence that made her feel unsure; it was strangely different in him. And, in any case, what was a Bard doing up in the mountains herding goats?
The house was surrounded by a small version of the wide porticos obligatory in Thorold, and there was set a table and a single chair. Ankil went into the house and returned with three stools. “Guests are not frequent here,” he said cheerfully. “So you must