The Riddle - Alison Croggon [79]
In all those days, they saw absolutely no one; this was not a well-traveled road. Most of the time neither Cadvan nor Maerad spoke, except to the horses, and the great silence around them seemed amplified by the clatter of the horses’ hooves on the road. Maerad bit down on her loneliness, as if it were a caustic seed, with an almost perverse pleasure. She felt herself hardening, felt tempered by this punishing ride. I am stronger, she thought. And I will be stronger still.
They crossed the Usk, which ran loudly over the shallow pebbles of the ford, and continued north through country less bleak, if no less lonely. They were now in the far north of Annar, in the region known as Predan. Most of the northern parts of Annar were at best sparsely inhabited, and the North Road passed through some of the loneliest parts of Edil-Amarandh.
After the unrelieved flatness of the past week, it was a balm to look on purple hills forested with black stands of pine, or to see slopes tangled with briars just now swelling their rosehips, or sloe and elder letting their faint fragrances into the air, or to ride through woods of beech and larch and hornbeam that were losing their greens to the coppers and golds of autumn. The gales stopped, giving way to days of rainless but somber clouds, and the weather grew steadily colder. At night, despite her physical fatigue, Maerad slept restlessly, unable to escape the frost that nipped her feet and hands.
At noon on the third day after crossing the Usk, they came to a fork in the road, leading westward to Culain and east to Lirhan. They were not planning to go to Lirigon, Cadvan’s School, but to continue until they struck the Lir River. At that point there was a ford, which they would cross into Lirhan. They did not resume their guises as messengers, despite the increased risk of meetings on the road: it was simply too exhausting, and they were both worn down after the past three weeks. And they had seen no travelers for days now.
The next day, just after they had paused for their midday meal, the road entered one of the many beech woods that dotted this part of Annar. The beeches were ancient and stately, their branches meeting over the middle of the road, which was littered with the first copper leaves of autumn, muffling their hoofbeats. The sun was out, and golden rays pierced the interlaced branches overhead, casting a vagrant warmth about their shoulders. Despite her gloom, Maerad’s spirits lifted, and she sniffed the smell of the loam and the woods with pleasure, momentarily distracted, relaxing into her deep exhaustion. Cadvan too seemed similarly lulled. So it was that they did not see the Bards until it was too late.
There were two, a man and a woman, riding at a leisurely pace toward Culain. Cadvan saw them first, and turned back to Maerad.
“Bards!” he hissed.
Maerad looked up, jolted out of her reverie and stared down the road with a sinking heart.
“We have to do the courtesies, or they will become suspicious,” Cadvan said. “By the Light, I hope neither of them knows me. Cover your face, and shield yourself.”
Maerad did as Cadvan bid, mentally hiding the glow by which Bards identified each other, and drew her hood over her face. They slowed to a fast walk as they approached the other riders. Maerad loosened her sword in its sheath.
Cadvan put up his right hand, palm outward,