The Gift by Alison Croggon Page B

farther we go, but here we are still too close.
    “He does not easily countenance escape from his claws. I think he sends out the wers, and that is why it is quiet. Their shadows track us, although they can do nothing while the sun still shines. Only in the dark can they take their forms. It will be a bad night.”
    He was silent for some time. His words seemed to magnify the stillness around them, and Maerad again looked around her uneasily. The landscape seemed peaceful and unthreatening, but some more subtle sense told her otherwise. Her skin began to creep with an indefinable dread.
    “Maerad,” said Cadvan at last. “I think I should have left you, rather than draw you into my own danger. I didn’t think enough, when I stumbled across you in that cot. I was too astonished, and too weary. And now it is too late to turn back.”
    “No,” said Maerad warmly. She thought of the suffocating despair of Gilman’s Cot. At least here, now, she could breathe freely. “No, you were right to ask me to leave. I would rather die than stay there.”
    “Well, you might die,” said Cadvan.
    “At least I won’t die a slave,” Maerad answered.
Proud words,
she thought, but she meant them.
    Cadvan pushed the pace and they walked in silence, wrapped in their own thoughts.
    Maerad still couldn’t quite believe she had escaped the cot. Every now and then she caught herself thinking idly that she should be performing some task — weeding the fields or churning butter or spinning the rough wool that made all their clothes — and then she would catch herself, with a tiny shock: perhaps she would never have to do any of those things again. Even with the increasing sense of watchfulness, a feeling that the very stones were spying on them, the present moment overwhelmed her. She couldn’t imagine anything more amazing than the mere fact of her freedom. Where she was going, or why, were questions she couldn’t even contemplate. And this Cadvan — who was he? Why did she have this strange feeling she could trust him? She knew nothing about him. She had never trusted a man before, save Mirlad, and even that trust had taken years to establish. Why start now?
    They stopped for the midday meal beside one of the many streamlets that ran down from the mountains. Maerad’s ankle was beginning to swell, and she eased it out from the boot and held it in her hands, massaging the muscles.
    “It hurts?” asked Cadvan. “Let me see.” He took her foot in his hands and gently turned it. “It’s a little swollen. Nothing very bad. Now, breathe in.” He pressed his hand hard over her ankle and Maerad gasped with pain; then she gasped again, because the swelling and pain had vanished.
    “It’s gone!” she said. “Are you a healer as well?”
    “All Bards are healers,” said Cadvan softly, still holding her foot. “You should have shown me before.” He smiled at her, and Maerad felt suddenly uneasy and withdrew her foot abruptly, wriggling her toes in relief.
    “What’s happening?” she asked. “I mean, there’s so much I don’t understand. Maybe I could help?” She looked up at him from under her tangled hair. “You said you were wounded, but I can’t see any wounds on you. Did you heal yourself too?”
    Cadvan stood up and squinted at the sun. “We should move on,” he said. “I’ll tell you things in time, Maerad. I was sent here on a secret task, and I am not at liberty to tell you everything. But yes, I was wounded, and no, I couldn’t heal myself. It’s not a wound you can see. I am weaker than I should be, here without protection in the wild.”
    “But you can trust me,” said Maerad, beginning to feel angry. “And if you’re in danger, then so am I, if I am traveling with you. So you owe it to me.”
    “I owe you nothing, Maerad.” Cadvan’s voice was even, but Maerad saw the flash in his eyes.
    “You wouldn’t have got out of the valley without me,” she said. “You said so yourself.”
    “Peace!”