The Riddle - Alison Croggon [5]
Maerad flinched, thinking of the burning citadel they had left behind them only two days earlier. It was in Norloch that she had met Nelac, Cadvan’s old teacher, a wise and gentle man who had instated her as a full Bard of the White Flame. The simple ceremony had revealed her Bardic Name, the secret name that was an aspect of her deepest self. It had confirmed that she was, as Cadvan had suspected, the Fated One, prophesied to bring about the downfall of the Nameless One in his darkest rising. Elednor Edil-Amarandh na: the starspeech echoed in her mind, with its cold, inhumanly beautiful music. Yet, for all her innate potencies, Maerad was but a young girl, unschooled and vulnerable: it was a mystery to her how she was to defeat the Nameless One, and it seemed more likely to her than not that she would fail. Prophecies, as Cadvan had once told her, often went awry; her birth was foreseen, but not her choices, and it was through her choices that her destiny would unfold.
And it was in Norloch that she had last seen her brother. The loss of Hem seemed the cruelest of all. She had found, in Hem, a missing part of herself, and losing him was the old grief all over again, multiplied by new anxieties. When they had fled Norloch, it had been safer to split their paths: Cadvan and Maerad’s path lay north, and Saliman took Hem south to his home in Turbansk, there to learn the ways of Barding. But even if Turbansk did not fall, even if Hem survived the coming war, there was no certainty that she would live to see him again. She was pursued by the Dark, and now perhaps by the Light as well: the Bards of Norloch had no doubt put a price on both their heads. Enkir, the First Bard, might have been killed in the battle that raged as they fled Norloch: Maerad hoped with all her heart that he was dead.
Involuntarily, Maerad’s lip curled. A decade ago, Enkir had sold Maerad and her mother, Milana, into slavery. He had betrayed the School of Pellinor, and because of him it had been burned to the ground, its people slain without mercy, its learning and music smashed beyond recall, its beauty quenched forever. Because of Enkir, Maerad had seen her father murdered, and had watched her mother wither away in Gilman’s Cot, her power broken. But Enkir was cunning, and very few people knew or suspected his treachery. He was the First Bard in Norloch, the most important in all Annar. Who, not knowing what Maerad knew, would believe that such a man was a traitor? And who would trust the word of a young, untutored girl against the word of a First Bard?
It had been two days since they had fled Norloch, rescued by Owan d’Aroki in his humble fishing smack. They had slipped unseen out of the harbor, even as the citadel’s high towers collapsed in flames and a terrible battle was fought on the quays. Now they ran northwest on a charmed wind, scudding swiftly over the swell. The sea’s deep solitude had done much to clear Maerad’s mind, although she found it hard to sleep on the boat and suffered recurring bouts of seasickness. But now the weather was fair, and Owan said they should reach Busk, the main town of the Isle of Thorold, within another two days.
Perhaps, at the end of this brief, uncomfortable voyage, they would be able to rest. She longed for rest as a thirsty man longs for water; every fiber of her being cried out for it. But underneath, Maerad knew that even if they found a haven, it would be temporary at best: nowhere was safe.
And overriding everything was the need to find the Treesong, although no one really knew what it was.
The Treesong is an ancient word for the Speech, Nelac had told her in Norloch. It signifies that which is beyond words. And it is also a song, supposedly written down when the Bards first appeared in Annar, in which the mystery of the Speech is held. It is long lost. Even in the first days after the Silence, when Bards began to find again much that had vanished, many said that it never existed. Maerad felt it was like being on a quest for moonbeams.
All this passed through Maerad’s mind quicker