The Riddle - Alison Croggon [95]
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and played.
She played for Darsor and Imi, her friends, who had been with her through so much. She played for their beauty as they ran free on the Rilnik Plains, racing and kicking and nipping each other, the wind blowing out their manes in ripples of sable and burnished silver, while she and Cadvan ate the evening meal. She played for their simple, undemanding companionship, for Imi’s nose leaning on her shoulder, whickering softly to comfort her, for the wordless comfort of her sympathy. She played for Darsor’s dour humor, his endurance, and his plain, steadfast loyalty. And, last of all, so that it might not go utterly unremarked even if she died where she stood, Maerad played for Darsor’s heroic attempt to rescue them from the landslide, for his shining, unbroken spirit and his great heart that had never quailed nor admitted defeat, even in the face of total disaster.
She finished, her eyes still shut, and bowed her head for a few moments of silence. Then she lifted her pipes again and played for Cadvan.
She had loved Cadvan, and he had loved her, and, she knew now, with an unassuageable bitterness, that she had misunderstood that love. He was her first friend, the first who had seen her for who she was; he had rescued her from slavery and petty tyranny and shown her the world of Barding, a world of loveliness and humanity she had not known was possible. She remembered her first sight of his shadowed face, exhausted and sad, in the cowbyre in Gilman’s Cot, and how she had trusted him, and had continued to trust him despite all the conflicts between them. She remembered the hours of his teaching, how freely he had given her the gifts within himself, how patiently he had revealed the secrets and wonders of the world to her astonished eyes. She remembered the brilliance of his rare smile, when the fountain of his joy spilled over and illuminated everything around him.
Now that he was gone forever, it was as if, for the first time, she could see him clearly: imperfect, driven, haunted, stern, divided within himself; but also true, honest, generous, strong, and gentle. He had been, all at once, her father and her teacher and her friend. Her grieving love welled through the pure, haunting notes, filling the desolate mountainside with inconsolable yearning for everything she had lost. Her tears spilled down her face and froze on the pipes and on her fingers. Maerad, lost in the music, did not notice she was crying.
At last, she finished. She let the notes die away into silence, and remained still for a long time, her head bowed, her eyes shut. Then she painfully took the pipes from her lips; in her long playing they had frozen there, and they pulled away the skin. She felt a little warm blood run down her chin and freeze. She straightened herself and opened her eyes.
For a moment, Maerad thought the moon itself was standing on the mountainside. She blinked in dazzlement. The bare rock of the road and the wall behind her shone like burnished silver, and behind every blazing boulder and pebble stood a black shadow. Before her stood Ardina, but she appeared neither as a wild Elidhu of the woods, shimmering naked in a bower of branches, nor as the agelessly beautiful Queen of Rachida. Maerad saw her as the songs described her, as Cadvan had sung of her once, long ago: the enchanting daughter of the moon, a being spun of sheer moonbeams, beautiful and evanescent.
Maerad was past astonishment. She thought she must be dreaming, or suffering a fantastic vision, as people were said to do sometimes in the extremity before death, and she gazed at Ardina as if it were completely natural that she should be there.
The Elidhu was suspended slightly above the ground, unmoving save for her hair, which stirred in a wind that Maerad could not feel. She seemed to be waiting for Maerad to speak. At last, as the vision did not disappear, Maerad bowed, but the movement was too much for her, and she slid