The Riddle - Alison Croggon [43]
“Well, you’ve said for a while that you thought the spell had to do with the Knowing of the Elidhu,” said Maerad. “Maybe you’re right. But how do you find a song? Was it written down?”
“I don’t know. It could be that’s what the story means by the Song being stolen, that it was written down instead of living in the Elidhu. It’s all so vague.” Cadvan thumped the table in frustration.
The three fell into a reflective silence, watching the old moon swinging above the mountain pastures, and Maerad became aware of the sounds of the crickets singing in the grass, and the sleepy nighttime coughs of the goats.
“Do you know what they call the Nameless One in some places in Thorold?” asked Ankil thoughtfully, breaking the silence.
“What?” Cadvan turned to him.
“The Half Made.”
“The Half Made. The Split Song.” Cadvan looked down at his hands. “It has to be connected, surely?”
“Perhaps.” Ankil had finished polishing his boots and placed them neatly side by side next to his chair. “Well, for what it’s worth from an old goatherd, I think it as likely as not.”
OVER the following weeks, life continued its slow routine. Maerad woke early every morning, refreshed, and walked to the window to look out over the highlands of Thorold. She loved her simple bedroom, devoid of the luxuries of Innail or Busk, but with other beauties those chambers could not match. Every morning, the early air came fresh and unbreathed through her casement, smelling faintly of grass and carrying the gentle chimes of the goats’ bells as they grazed, and no mural could match her view. She felt the deep weariness that had lingered since she left Norloch dissipate and finally disappear. The shadows vanished from beneath her eyes, and her skin glowed with health.
The view was different every morning: sometimes the valleys were wreathed in mist, so that it seemed as if she were looking out over a huge white sea with green islands of high ground rising abruptly through it, bathed in golden sunlight; sometimes the whole countryside, all the way to the sea, possessed a preternatural clarity, so colors seemed saturated and every edge was hard and unmistakable; sometimes it was wrapped in a mauve haze, so you couldn’t see the sea at all, and the landscape was soft and blurred, muted and almost ghostly.
After a light breakfast, Maerad plunged into her work with Cadvan. They started her studies in Ankil’s kitchen, working intensely until midmorning, when Cadvan would call a break. At these times, Maerad would usually go for a solitary walk toward the mountains that soared above Ankil’s meadow, grim rocky peaks draped with snow. Highest of all was the Lamedon, its sheer precipices, even in midsummer, often shrouded with mist; then, falling away in the range, were the triple peaks of the Okinlos; the harsh naked walls of the Indserek, so steep no snow could cling there; and the sharp summit of the Kyrnos, which looked as narrow as a blade. The shoulders of many other mountains slouched behind these high peaks, forming the central range of the Thoroldian mountains. Some mornings it was hazy and, to Maerad’s astonishment, the mountains would disappear altogether, as if nothing were there at all, or they hung like ghosts in the sky, visible only in faint outlines, and you could see them only if you peered carefully, knowing they were there.
It was a peaceful time, despite the worries that beset both Maerad and Cadvan. Maerad felt as if she were gathering strength for a struggle to come, although she didn’t know what that struggle would be. She bent her concentration fiercely to learning: by now she had mastered the alphabetic Nelsor script, and was able to write and read quite creditably, and was making inroads into learning the Ladhen runes. These were numerous, a complex system of thousands of signs that changed meaning by subtle additions and deletions from a vocabulary of a few hundred images. They were written as strokes that could be just as easily carved as written in ink. It was a little