The Riddle - Alison Croggon [78]
“We are unlucky,” said Cadvan. “I think the weather is going to break.”
“Just as soon as we enter the wild. Luck is in short supply around here,” Maerad said, and then, to her surprise, found herself crumpling into tears. She turned away, but Cadvan had already moved close to her, and he took her hand.
“Maerad, our world is full of sorrow and evil,” he said. “But there is also beauty and light and love. You must remember that.” He looked earnestly into her face, but Maerad couldn’t meet his eyes. She turned aside, thrusting away his hand.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said bitterly. “There are things you don’t know, Cadvan. You don’t know what it’s like to be me.”
“No, I cannot know that,” he said gently. “Nor can you know what it is like to be me.”
“I don’t care what it’s like to be you,” Maerad said, suddenly possessed by a desire to hurt Cadvan, who was always so reasonable, always so fair. “That’s got nothing to do with what I’m talking about.”
Cadvan sat silently, his faced shadowed. Maerad lifted her eyes, still burning with tears, to his face, but he did not meet her gaze. She looked away, through the willows into the darkness beyond. Her heart was full of an anger and pain she could not express, even to herself, but she did not want Cadvan’s compassion. It made things worse: it raised a fear within her, over which she had no control. She couldn’t tell if she had hurt him or if he was just thoughtful.
“I am sorry,” he said at last.
Maerad nodded, accepting his apology, but did not offer one of her own. She was taking first watch, so a little while later Cadvan rolled himself into his blanket and fell asleep.
AFTER that night, the constraint between Cadvan and Maerad became a constant thing. They traveled as had now become habit, and superficially things seemed much as they always had; they joked, and talked in the evenings, although they did not bring out their lyres. Cadvan taught Maerad how to use the blackstone, which had lain forgotten in her pack since Thorold, and Maerad developed some skill with it although it was tricky to use, as difficult to bend to the will as it was to sight or to touch. But even the brief resumption of Cadvan’s teaching role could not quite drive away the shadow that now lay between them, the more powerful because it remained unspoken.
Maerad didn’t really know how this had happened. She still trusted Cadvan as she always had, but she couldn’t resist whatever it was within her that rebuffed him. And the less able she was to speak to Cadvan, the harder it became to find a way back to their earlier friendship. Cadvan, reserved at the best of times, was now mostly silent. She resented this as well, feeling guiltily that it was her fault, and at the same time feeling that his silence was being used as a weapon against her.
They pushed the horses as hard as they could, although after days of fast riding, an unremitting fatigue was settling deep in their bones. The weather had turned, and often they beat on through driving gales, their hoods pulled down over their faces, the rain pelting straight into their eyes, and their camps were cold and cheerless. The horses had lost the glossy condition they had gained in Gent, and began to look lean. But an obscure sense of urgency pushed them all on past their limits. They began with the dawn, and if the moon, which was now just pass full, let down enough light to illuminate their way, they often continued until well after dusk. It took them only two days to ride more than twenty leagues to the Caln Marish, where the road turned north again, and another three to reach the Usk River, thirty leagues farther on.
Maerad remembered that it had taken them more than ten days to travel the same distance, from the Usk to the Aldern, when they had ridden over the Valverras two months before. She was glad of the North Road, for all its cheerlessness. It stretched before them, a white unvarying course running straight to the horizon. The road was less well tended here, and in places it had almost completely