The Riddle - Alison Croggon [85]
They camped a little way from the entrance, which looked too black and ominous to turn their backs on, next to a small thicket of dwarf birches. They lit no fire, fearing it would be seen even in such lonely country, and the horses stamped disconsolately, snorting and whickering as they grazed on the grasses on either side of the road. After a poor dinner of hard biscuit and dried fruits and nuts, eaten in silence, Maerad took first watch, pulling her blanket out of her pack to protect her from the heavy dew that was already falling. She leaned against a granite rock and stared down the road away from the mountains, toward Annar. The lands fell away below them, somber and wide under the veil of darkness, with the occasional gleam of silver where a river or a pond lay. It all looked huge and empty.
She felt as if she were taking one deep breath before she dived. Through Cadvan’s silence, Maerad discerned his anxiety about their journey through the pass, and it made her feel even more nervous. And there was nothing to alleviate her fear, not even the casual banter of companionship; since the killing of Ilar, she felt as if Cadvan had abandoned her. A wave of loneliness swept over her, a fierce longing. Was there anyone in this vast empty world who cared for her, just as she was, for herself? Anyone who thought of her simply as a fellow human being, and not as some symbol burdened by a destiny she barely understood? Hem, the one person who loved her simply because she was Maerad, was probably already dead, slaughtered in the ruins of Turbansk.
She reached out with her mind, trying to touch, as she often could, that obscure sense that told her Hem was alive. She felt nothing, nothing at all, and a part of her went numb with despair.
Well, she knew about darkness now. She stared out bitterly into the night.
They broke their fast the next day in the gray light before dawn, barely able to see each other through a thick fog that had descended in the dark hours, and entered the pass soon afterward. Here, in this deep defile, no sunlight entered: the chill was permanent. The road narrowed dramatically, becoming just wide enough for a caravan, and leaped steeply upward. Every league or so, a bay was carved into the rock of the mountain, Maerad supposed to permit caravans to pass each other if they met face-to-face, for there was no room for more than one. The rock face leaped up sheer on either side of them, with every now and then a tiny stream tumbling down in miniature waterfalls and running away in a little channel carved into the side of the road. In that dim, cold light grew only mosses and bearded lichens, trailing dull greens and yellows down the scabbed face of the rock. Sunlight was visible only long after dawn as a thin strip of light dizzyingly far above them. Not even snow could fall here in the hardest winters. They pressed on, slowed to a walk because of the steepness of the climb and because the road was slick with ice, keeping their hearing alert for any sign of ambush or other travelers.
They paused for a dismal meal, Maerad already feeling heartily sick of the gloom of the defile. It was late afternoon when they suddenly emerged from the mountainside into daylight again. The light flooded their eyes, and they stopped, but it wasn’t only the light that made Maerad pause. Inside the Gate, they had climbed up into the heart of the Osidh Elanor, and now they could see across the snowfields and mountain peaks that stretched for leagues before them. Not ten paces before her the road turned sharply left, and only a low wall stood between her and a vast, cold emptiness of air.
The Gwalhain