The Riddle - Alison Croggon [76]
Maerad thought of Hem and his tales of the Edinur orphanages in which he had been dumped as a small child, and shuddered.
“Where would they take them, then?” asked Cadvan gently.
The woman spat again. “It’s for their armies, if you ask me,” she said. “I’ve seen them marching through here, with all their rabble, and some of those soldiers are no higher than your breast.”
“Armies?” began Maerad anxiously, but Cadvan silenced her with a look.
“Excuse us, goodwife,” he said. “We did not mean to alarm you.” He dismounted and walked toward her. She backed away nervously, but didn’t resist when he took her hand. “Be of good cheer. What is your name?”
“My name?” She spoke as if her name were a thing long forgotten. “My name is . . . Ikabil.”
Cadvan leaned forward and kissed her on both cheeks, murmuring something Maerad could not hear. “Farewell, Ikabil. Go well, with the Light in your heart.” He returned to Darsor and remounted.
A look of amazement came into Ikabil’s eyes, and she stood very still. Then she smiled, and Maerad saw, instead of a harridan exhausted and brutalized by long suffering, the gentle and strong woman she had been. A new peace had flooded into her face. She bowed wordlessly, stroking the toddler’s head. He still clung to her skirts, hiding his face, but he had stopped grizzling.
“We should go now,” said Cadvan to Maerad, and she swung onto Imi. The woman raised her hand.
“May the Light shine on your path,” she said shyly.
The Bards lifted their hands in reply and trotted through the hamlet. They rode on for some time in silence.
“What did you say to that woman?” Maerad asked at last.
“Say? Oh, I just said some words of healing,” said Cadvan, jerking out of a deep reverie. “She was a good woman, in great pain. It is not true that suffering is good for the soul. Too much, and even the strongest will break.”
“What happened there? Was it the White Sickness?”
“Yes. It is a terrible thing, Maerad, and it is all through Edinur. There are few healers who can deal with it.”
Maerad had heard people speak of the White Sickness in Busk; Cadvan had not spoken of it to her when they had ridden through Edinur two months beforehand, though even then, through the shadows of night, she had seen its scars.
“It appeared in Annar only two decades ago,” Cadvan said. “Myself, I think it was brewed in Dén Raven by the Nameless One, to kill the strong and to break the spirits of those who survive. You’ve seen the results. Those who are most likely to die from it are the young and strong. If you catch it, you first go blind, and then you go mad. Those houses were probably burned by those dying of it. Either that, or their neighbors, in terror of catching the illness.”
Maerad listened, her heart contracting. “Why is it called the White Sickness?”
“It’s because of the silver cloud that covers the eyes of those who suffer it.” Cadvan shook his head. “It is a terrible thing, Maerad, to see one who has this disease. Their eyeballs are white and sightless, and their bodies burn with a wasting fever that devours their very flesh. Unless they are lucky enough to be tended by a great healer — a healer like Nelac — they will be blind for the rest of their lives. If they live at all.”
There was a sober silence. “I wonder what she meant by children being stolen for the armies,” said Maerad. “Orphanages are just where people put children who have nowhere else to go, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know,” said Cadvan grimly. “I haven’t heard of child thieves, either. But children are cheap labor; perhaps they are stolen to be slaves. I can barely credit that they are kidnapped to be soldiers, but times are so evil that perhaps even that is possible. The orphanages are bad enough — squalid, stinking prisons of despair. Well, you heard Hem speak of them. Such is the legacy of the retreat of Barding. Once such children were valued and cared for. It would not be surprising, in this diseased land, if there were a trade