I debated over whether or not to post this, considering I have so many unfinished stories here… But the plot has been poking me for months now, and I can't take it anymore. It was either this or break the plots neck.
So, anyways. Reviews are great, and the ones that tell me what I've messed up on are even better. Hopefully this doesn't bore anyone to death… I tend to get very wordy now and then.
Maerad of Pellinor was unable to blink. She was without the ability to look away and, though it was wholly embarrassing, she didn't mind. Her attention was stolen completely, rightly and favorably so.
"Ready?" Cadvan's blue eyes held seriousness, his lips a thin, straight line.
Maerad's head bobbed once, her gaze locked in place, her jaw set with concentration. She didn't trust herself to speak.
Cadvan's hand swept through the air, palm extended downward just above the ground. The motion was one used to polish the surface of a table, with quick, even strokes. He finished quickly and turned to Maerad, raising his eyebrows in a friendly challenge. But she didn't see it. Maerad didn't see anything but the smooth stone before her, and the exceptionally complicated image she clutched in the front of her mind. She took a moment longer, combing over the illustration with painstaking care to notice every detail, before drawing in a deep breath and lifting her hand.
Maerad brought her arm down in the familiar arc, twisting her hand through the air before letting it fall back into her lap. Cadvan watched on in silence. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips, but he fought it deftly, aware as he was of what Maerad's reaction to such an expression would be.
Several minutes passed before Maerad—eyes dry and burning, lips numb from being pressed together—tore her gaze from the ground and looked unsmiling at Cadvan. "Check it," she said, her tight throat making what was supposed to be a request sound more like a command. Both sets of blue eyes immediately returned to the space in front of them.
Cadvan was the one concentrating now, his lips pursed ever so slightly as he examined Maerad's work. The illusionist swallowed hard and began second guessing herself. Her creation was certainly pleasing to look at, and she was fairly satisfied with it—but fairly satisfied had failed her a lot recently. She contemplated her attention to shadow, to shade. Were the rooftops supposed to be such a rusty color? Surely the clouds were wrong—Maerad always found some way to rearrange their pattern into something from her own imagination, and not Cadvan's.
She was about to admit failure when Cadvan moved, looking up to her somberly. "Go ahead," she sighed, nodding her head in permission, "tell me what's wrong with it."
Cadvan regarded her with badly concealed amusement. "What makes you think that anything's wrong with it?"
"There's always something wrong with it." Cadvan glanced away, and Maerad felt a twinge of annoyance when she realized he was smiling. "Tell me," she repeated.
The answer she received was far from what she expected, and she looked over at Cadvan in surprise—uncaring of his smile now—and asked him to repeat himself.
"You got it right," Cadvan conceded with a chuckle. "A perfect depiction the farmlands about Iledh; I couldn't have done it any better myself."
Maerad felt her lips turn up triumphantly. "Really?" she asked, feeling the serious mood of their game drop away. "What do they make their roofs of down there in Iledh? It looks like clay."
"They aren't made of clay, only coated with it. It aids in keeping their houses cool in the summer, and warm in winter." Cadvan proceeded to inform Maerad about the city she'd never visited, telling her about the school there as she moved her hand through the image, making it fade away gradually rather than all at once.
After three full days of illusionary games and impromptu lessons in the guise of conversation, Maerad found herself struggling to follow along with any subject for long. She was tired of the tiny cave they were in, tired of hearing the constant patter of rain on the cliff face outside. This journey had been much anticipated by both parties involved, and now, less than a week after parting from Innail, it had come down to enduring one of the longest rain storms Maerad had ever encountered. Rain pounded heavily against the outside of their cave for hours on end, forming growing puddles just within the opening of the small enclosure. Despite the recent turn of spring, hail and icy gusts of wind fell upon them in the late hours of the day and remained, as if keeping them company, until streaks of pale light in the sky—barely visible behind nebulous clouds—indicated that it was morning.
The hail had set in again—as predicted by both weary travelers—hours earlier, moments after the final sheen of muted sunlight had disappeared over the western horizon. In defense against the numbing wind, Cadvan had lit a fire. It was the smallest of fires, hardly large enough for Maerad to warm both her hands at the same time, but it took up all the space they were willing to part with. There was barely room enough for one person to lie down curled up in the cave, let alone both of them together.
In the evenings, and also for most of the morning and afternoon, Maerad sat with her leg pressed against Cadvan's, the two of them practically sharing the same lap. Maerad wasn't adverse to the nearness of him; she had, after all, spent the greater portion of her days and nights in Innail without his presence so close at hand. But she was becoming frustrated with what had come to be a very monumental complication in their plans.
Take the Loden Pass from Annar to Zmarkan—how simple it sounded! What wasn't expected was the sudden shift in weather—from fair to dismal—as they crossed over the mountains crest and began their decent into Zmarkan. The storm that hampered them had come from nowhere, forming unforeseen directly over the mountain tops, advancing from gentle rain to a heavy downpour in less time than it took for Maerad and Cadvan to find shelter. The tiny alcove set within two protruding, jagged stones had seemed like the finest of inns when they stumbled upon it three days passed, drenched and shivering.
Maerad glanced at Cadvan, barely comprehending his description of the gardens and courtyards in Iledh over the steady drumming of water against stone. Cadvan, who had that morning looked to her with a kind, yet cautious smile and proposed that the Winter King recognized her presence in his domain and was merely sending them a welcome message.
Maerad had reacted as if he'd told her a joke. She then ignored him for several hours, falling deep into consideration, wondering if Cadvan's observation held any possible truth. It didn't seem possible that Arkan would bother expending so much energy and attention to her; she'd felt that their last meeting—brief though it might have been—had meant a conclusion to her confusing acquaintanceship with the Elidhu. There had been a sort of finality, she'd thought, in the way that Arkan had regarded her that night.
Over four years had passed since Maerad last found herself in the company of an Elemental. She'd given them their song back, and in return they had given her silence. Silence in the absence of their conviviality, and silence within Maerad herself, when she reached for that part of herself that had once been there, but was now unattainable. Of course, not even complete silence had kept apprehension from creeping up in her thoughts as she plotted the journey from her chambers in Innail. It wasn't without unease that she purposefully brought herself and Cadvan into the Winter King's realm. Maerad had weighed the facts over and over and, after bringing Cadvan's opinions into the debate, had determined that what risks there might be were worth taking for her cause.
They weren't traveling just to travel; though Maerad had begun to feel confined within the walls of the school after staying for so long, she had devised this trip with specific intentions in mind. The Loden Pass was an unforgiving path, narrow more often than not and bordered by sheer cliffs that made Maerad's breath catch in her throat when she stepped too near. It was more easily taken with four paws than with two feet or four hoofs, but that option was no longer available to her. She wouldn't have crossed it willingly for leisure, but she would for the Jussack boy called Nim.
"How long can it possibly go on?" Maerad demanded irritably the next morning. Another night had elapsed and the sun had yet again ascended behind a bleak curtain of clouds. Maerad, who had been awoken by a particularly deafening roll of thunder, was fighting a losing battle against the crestfallen sensation that rose in her chest. The prospect of a fourth day holed up in the mountainside made her heart sink in disappointment.
Cadvan ducked back inside at the sound of Maerad's voice. Behind him, Darsor and Keru munched miserably on a sparse pile of oats. They were kept dry by a moisture resistant charm of Cadvan's invocation. Keeping the animals safe from the weather was accomplishable and easy, but conjuring up extra feed was another thing entirely.
"The mountains here aren't prone to lasting rainstorms this time of year," he replied dismally. "This is an abnormality, which makes it impossible to judge."
Maerad huffed moodily and yanked on her blanket, saving the corner before it dipped into the puddle by Cadvan's feet. Her hair felt like it was all tangled and piled atop her head. She'd slept restlessly, waking every time lightning flashed and carved silver streaks along the backs of her eyelids. Her right arm hurt from where she'd accidentally scrapped it on the sharp inner wall of the cave at some point in the night. She was truly beginning to despise that small space.
"I've never missed sunlight so terribly," she grumbled, perhaps being overdramatic. Both her and Cadvan's pasts were speckled with a variety of unpleasant situations. A bit of rain seemed insignificant when compared with the other, more life threatening scenarios; but Maerad—at that point of time—would have preferred a run in with half a dozen hulls to another day in the cave.
Cadvan laughed darkly, instantly drawing Maerad's full attention. She watched as he shook his head, his expression a mixture of amusement and consternation. He leaned against a smooth patch of wall just within the entrance, not meeting her gaze as he said, "you may want to take that back. We'll both be yearning for dry weather like never before if this doesn't blow over sometime this morning."
Maerad frowned down at her blanket, knowing exactly where Cadvan's thoughts were. They hadn't brought enough supplies to spend a half a week in one place. No one else would be attempting to take the Pass in such weather; the two of them were as well as alone with their horses, with nowhere to attain more feed for the animals, or even a decent quantity of fresh water.
Rainstorm or not, they were going to have to move on.
Outside the cave entrance, the sky was a moving sea of grey and black, darker in some places than others but altogether ominous in appearance. Maerad scowled furiously at the clouds, as though her intentness stood a chance of chasing away what was there. She didn't really expect any results, and the storm didn't disappoint her.
Bad news delivered, Cadvan went back out to speak with the horses, giving Maerad space to eat and prepare for their impending departure. The wind howled audibly through the opening in his absence. The sound was uneven, rising and falling as though the breeze had to catch its breath; it made Maerad feel like the storm was laughing at them.
Rather than sitting around and cursing the storm, which is what she longed to do, Maerad stood reluctantly and began packing their things. They didn't have much out, just the blankets, their damp clothes Maerad had been reluctant to throw straight into a pack, the horse's oats, and a small measure of food. The food she kept out until last, putting it away only after taking out a considerable chunk of bread and a few slices of dried fruit for her breakfast. Cadvan returned and took the packs outside to the horses while she ate.
It was still early morning when they put on their cloaks. Thunder rumbled overhead and rain pelted fiercely against the mountain side. The sounds rang in Maerad's ears, making her teeth grit together as she pulled up her hood and tucked her hair beneath the woolen material. It wouldn't keep her dry for long.
As if he could hear the despondent undertone of her thoughts, Cadvan reached out to touch her shoulder, squeezing gently. She looked at him, soaking up the warmth in his sincere gaze, surprising herself when she actually did feel less frozen.
"We'll take turns calming the wind. Rain isn't so terrible in itself, but the wind…" he trailed off, his look of encouragement faltering. He regained composure almost immediately and assured her that they would be fine as long as they didn't rush or behave rashly, but his hesitance was not lost on Maerad.
"It's better than being blown off the side of the mountain." It was his argument from long before, when they had traveled along the same range of mountains, only in another place and for entirely other reasons. If her memory served her correctly, and she was quite sure that it did, Cadvan had also mentioned something about her body never being found. He was not speaking so bleakly now, but Maerad couldn't halt the shiver of dread that ran up her spine at the recollection.
While she was inwardly uncertain, outwardly she returned Cadvan's sympathetic smile with one of her own and inclined her hand towards the cave entrance. "After you," she said.
One corner of Cadvan's mouth turned up in a crooked smirk and he dropped his hand from her shoulder; it slid down her arm, his fingertips scarcely grazing her skin, and stopped upon reaching her own hand. His warm palm met her cooler one, and Maerad laced her fingers through his almost without thinking. "We'll go together," he said, regarding her with an expression that had little to do with the storm or their circumstances, and much more to do with his hand around hers.
Maerad nodded, completely agreeable, if not a little dazed. The only shivers she felt now were of the pleasant variety. When she stepped out into the storm, it was with a lightened heart and a full reserve of confidence. Cadvan was always capable of bringing out the part of her that was needed for the occasion; and Maerad was assured that as long as he was there for her to hold on to, she could go anywhere, do anything.