The Riddle - Alison Croggon [84]
She bitterly regretted her killing of Ilar of Desor, and she also felt contrite about her words to Cadvan that night. But both were equally impossible to undo. Her contrition was somewhat tempered by a certain resentment at Cadvan’s withdrawal, which felt like a punishment. She was too proud to ask for forgiveness, although she would have welcomed any softening from him. And underneath, Maerad was simply afraid: afraid of her quest; afraid of whoever pursued them; afraid, perhaps most of all, of herself.
Their ride was uneventful, except that the mountains grew slowly closer and closer and the plains lifted into highlands, growing hillier and colder. The weather held, each day dawning into clear skies in which rode huge clouds, purple beneath and gold and white above, but the sun now held little warmth and the chill of the fading year was palpable.
Cadvan had reckoned it would take about a week to ride to the Osidh Elanor. The Elanor was one of the two major ranges of Edil-Amarandh, supposed to have been formed in the devastating Wars of the Elementals many eons before, and it was by far the highest. There were only two ways through: the Gwalhain Pass, which the southern clans of the Pilanel used in their migrations from their winter fastnesses in Zmarkan to their summer grazing grounds in West Lirhan, and the Loden Pass farther east, just north of Pellinor. The Gwalhain Pass had been Gahal’s main objection to their plans to travel by land: he argued that if anyone knew Maerad and Cadvan were heading north, they would simply have to wait there and ambush them.
“We shall have to count on their not knowing,” Cadvan had said at the time. But the closer they drew to the mountains, the greater seemed their risk. Maerad’s murder of the Bard had increased their danger sevenfold: it would be widely known by now that they had been in the north of Annar, although Cadvan considered that the Bards would think it most likely that they were heading for his home School of Lirigon. The Light may well be already hunting them through West Lirhan, and it was not unlikely that others might guess they intended to go to Zmarkan; the Dark had been one step ahead of them all along.
THE mountains seemed to emerge from their swathe of distance all at once, as if the leagues of hazy air that had held them at bay, making them seem mere pictures and not real things at all, had suddenly drawn themselves up like veils and vanished. From the foot of the mountains, riding eastward along the Osidh Elanor, it was as if the eye could not take in such vastness. From here Maerad could see only the lesser peaks, and even they looked grim and forbidding. They dwarfed the Lamedon, and even the mountains of the Osidh Annova, where she had spent her childhood in slavery, and she couldn’t see the heights that rose behind them at all.
All the tracks that trailed through the Rilnik Plains here converged into a single broader road, riven with many deep ruts and marked regularly on each side by standing stones, which threw long shadows forward as the day dipped to evening. The road traveled east along the foot of the Elanor, gradually climbing its lower slopes. It wasn’t long before their way fell into the shadow cast by the steep ridges that towered above, and a deep chill settled over them despite their fast pace. Maerad shivered and drew her cloak closer about her shoulders; it was time now to take out the fleeces they had carried with them since Thorold. Cadvan rode ahead, his shoulders hunched against the cold, unspeaking and driven as he had been for the past week. It grew dark early, but they pushed on: Cadvan wanted to reach the Gate of the Gwalhain Pass by the end of their ride that day. It was a clear night, and the light from the crescent moon and the stars was enough to see by, if they went slowly. There was no wind, but the air crackled with frost.
At last they pulled up to camp. Even in the darkness,