The Riddle - Alison Croggon [86]
The pass was cut into the living rock, zigzagging back and forth across the mountains and sometimes even tunneling through the mountainside. From where she stood, blinking in the bright sunlight, Maerad could see the Osidh Elanor stretching before her far into the distance, white peak after white peak, blinding in the unreal clarity of the sunlight, with the gray scar of the road gleaming along its flanks. Across the valley in front she saw forests of spruce and fir, their greens sharp against the snow; below them was a sheer wall of rock on which no snow or soil could find purchase, and which dropped to a depth she could not measure. She could see a pair of mountain eagles circling lazily upward from beneath their feet. She caught her breath.
Her first feeling was awe. None of the mountains she had seen had prepared her for this endless panorama. Her next was a sinking feeling akin to nausea: the cliffs above and below the road were vast, and any careless footstep could spell doom. The road wound on for leagues and leagues; they would be in this maze of mountains for days.
“It’s only ten leagues to Zmarkan from here as the eagle flies,” said Cadvan, making her jump: he hadn’t spoken all day. “But it is thrice that by the pass. And we cannot go swiftly here. May the weather hold!”
“Do you think it will?” Maerad said. She squinted up at the sky. It was mild and clear, without a cloud in sight.
“The weather in the Elanor is treacherous,” said Cadvan. “It shifts without warning; last time I went through this pass, a fog came over me, swift as a racing horse. It was so thick I couldn’t see farther than my nose and had to feel my way like a blind man. A storm in these mountains is beyond description.”
“Perhaps we will be lucky,” said Maerad.
“Perhaps.” Cadvan gathered up his reins. “If it were only the weather, I would not be so worried. If the Winterking can send a stormdog as far south as Thorold, then here will hardly be a challenge. And I do not think, Maerad, that even you could sing more than one such creature to sleep. Not in their own lands.”
He smiled crookedly at Maerad, and she looked back uncertainly. This was the most Cadvan had spoken to her in a week. Did this mean he had forgiven her? She didn’t feel like forgiving him so easily, as if she were a puppy to be seduced by a pat.
“With any luck, we won’t have to find out,” she said, more coldly than she had intended. Cadvan’s face was suddenly expressionless again, and she kicked herself. If he shouted at her, it would be easier, or if they could laugh together, but there was nothing, it seemed, to laugh at. Cadvan was so often beyond her, withdrawing into some inaccessible place within himself, but now it seemed as if nothing would heal the breach. Perhaps it was partly that in some secret place within herself, she didn’t want to, that she feared their closeness. She dismissed that thought as ridiculous; Cadvan’s withdrawal made her so miserable, how could she want it? How she wished he had not looked at her as he had on the voyage from Thorold; everything since then had just gone wrong.
Cadvan urged Darsor into a walk, and they started their slow, interminable journey.
Maerad was suspended between delight at the astounding vistas that opened up before her and a constant anxiety about the dizzying depths and heights that seemed to wait only a few steps from her feet. The road was lonely; they saw no living things except the eagles and occasionally, in the distance, the