The Riddle - Alison Croggon [96]
“Are you dying, my daughter?” Ardina asked. “I think you have put all your life into your music. I wish I had asked you to play before; I have heard no such music since the days of Afinil. But even then, only the Elidhu could play with such wildness and such skill and such sadness.”
Maerad tried to speak, but her throat was so parched she couldn’t make anything beyond a croak. She just nodded, swallowing. Yes, she was dying.
“I think you did not mean to call me.” Ardina laughed, her head to one side. “You forget what I said: that if you needed me, you should play the pipes I gave you. But you had another desire, I think.”
Maerad did not answer, but a fresh tear rolled down her cheek, and Ardina sighed. “I warned you once, about love. Mortals die like the reeds, and then within the world’s circle is only absence. Ah, my dear daughter, there is no remedy for love or grief. They persist beyond all boundaries.”
Ardina’s words pierced Maerad to the quick. She bowed her head to hide her face and saw that she still clutched the pipes in her hands. With a dogged deliberateness she put them back in her pack, and then lifted her pack onto her lap and clutched it, almost as if she were drowning. She could scarcely feel it with her numbed hands, but it was solid and real, and obscurely comforting. Ardina watched her closely, but without impatience.
“Do you choose to die?” she asked, almost disinterestedly. “For I will not interfere with any choice of yours. I know what it is to desire death, and to be refused it. But if you do not choose death, I will help you. It pains me to see such suffering in thee, daughter.” With that intimate address, some of the despair that had frozen Maerad’s heart melted, and she met Ardina’s gaze. The fey, yellow eyes of the Elidhu were soft with compassion.
For the barest moment, Maerad hesitated. It would be so easy to die, to renounce all her struggles and suffering, to escape the terrible grief that racked her spirit. But something within her refused to choose death; it would come to her eventually whether she chose or not, but an inner voice stubbornly cried out: not now. Slowly she said in a cracked voice, so quiet it could hardly be heard, “No, I don’t want to die.”
Ardina leaned over her and kissed her forehead. From her cold lips blossomed a delicious glow that coursed through all Maerad’s body, as if she were falling into a divinely comfortable bed and all her hurts were healed. She looked up into Ardina’s wild face, and it seemed as if the entire world vanished into a golden mist: only the brilliant, unsettling eyes, eyes as yellow as topaz or citrine, burned in her mind like two lights of haven, as she drifted into the blessed shades of sleep.
MAERAD didn’t want to open her eyes. She didn’t know where she was; she knew she hurt all over and that she had a bad headache. She was lying on something soft, and the air around her was warm. In her nostrils was a strong smell of woodsmoke laced with fish.
She lay very still, listening. She heard the sounds of someone moving around, and then a faint metallic clang, and the gentle pop of a burning fire. Gingerly she touched what was covering her: it was soft and warm, some kind of fur.
She heard someone moving toward her and tensed as a hand stroked her forehead. Involuntarily she opened her eyes. She looked into a cracked, ancient face, and a pair of very pale-blue, watery eyes.
“Om toki nel?” said the face. Maerad looked back without speaking, and the mouth, a cave of wrinkles, opened in a smile, revealing a few blackened teeth. “Na, na, ek lada.” The face nodded. “Na, na.”
“What?” said Maerad. Her voice came out as a croak. “Who are you?”
But the figure had turned to shuffle back to the fire, which