A Maerad and Cadvan songfic, based on the song Give Me A Sign by Breaking Benjamin. Cadvan tries to be there for Maerad in The Singing, while she fights to fulfil her destiny. I have messed with the order of events a little…mostly Cadvan's POV. And please bear in mind that this might not be exactly canon-it's just things I imagine could have happened in between various incidents we read in the book.
Give Me A Sign
Dead star shine
Light up the sky
I'm all out of breath
My walls are closing in
Cadvan felt…broken. Broken by helplessness.
He was sitting curled on the cold earth, arms wrapped loosely around his knees. Above, the moon gleamed, bright and cold and mocking, hanging white like a fruit from a vast and eternal tree flowered by the impartial stars. The fire flickered gently before him, spitting and hissing like a caged cat, but he was oblivious to it. His attention was fixed on the slender figure who stood straight and still a short distance away, out of the little pool of firelight, alone in a moonbeam like a spirit from another world.
They had come so far, been through so much. They had given their all. Both knew what it was like to face the blankness of death with a triumphant smile, because nothing mattered any more. And both knew what it was like for that wild angry emptiness to suddenly be filled once more, like blood rushing back into an open wound with dizzying speed. Losing Maerad had been like…like losing a part of himself. Those dark days, convinced she was dead…struggling out from the Gwalhain Pass, fighting just to believe that there was a chance, that this fierce, shy, eager, wonderful girl he had called friend, student and…now…maybe more…could have survived. And despite what Ardina had told him, he had never expected to actually find Maerad at Pellinor. He had, deep down, given up hope.
It was only realising what it would be like to lose her that he had begun to acknowledge that perhaps he did think of her as more than just a friend, or student.
And seeing her at Innail…it was hard to believe that she was even human. She faced so immense and terrifying a destiny, and all he could do was watch her struggle to bear a burden far too great for any single human being-and yet a burden she had shouldered with an ultimate courage he admired more than she could ever know.
And yet he was helpless to ever truly protect her. He could only stand at her side and defend her when she was weakened, hold out a hand, a hand that too often failed, because he was angry and troubled and afraid and human, and not enough. And as he watched her standing there alone against the night, the world seemed to close in on him like a vice, trapping him.
Days go by
Give me a sign
Come back to the end
The shepherd of the damned
"They're everywhere, Cadvan," she confessed, a note of hopelessness in her voice. "I can't…I can't escape…I don't know what they want." Her face turned up to him, eyes still obscured by Hekibel's red scarf-she looked blind, and vulnerable, and so young it hurt him. He wanted to reach out and brush her long black hair out of her face, to hold her as he had when she had collapsed after the battle at Innail, to know that, for now at least, he could protect her. Saliman and Hekibel sat a short distance away, conferring in low voices, while Hem was feeding the horses.
"The dead?" he asked quietly, to confirm, with his customary reserve that, as it so often did, belied utterly the turmoil of emotion within. She nodded. "Since Hem and me united the halves of the Treesong. They're…everywhere…" Suddenly she smiled, gratefully. "Thank you for letting me ride with you. I couldn't've…"
"You don't have to thank me," he replied. "I wish I could do more for you, Maerad."
"It scares me," she confessed in a small voice. "I don't understand…what's happening, or how I can…" Suddenly she looked away. "But you do more than you know for me, Cadvan."
"Just know that I'm here for you," he said with an odd, sudden urgency, watching the firelight flicker off her white face. "No matter what the dead want with you, I'm here."
Her head lifted, attentive as if she was listening to some far-off music that only she could hear. Maybe, he thought, she was. It would make sense.
"They want me to right the wrongs dealt them," she said absently. "They want justice. From me."
Daylight dies
Blackout the sky
Does anyone care?
Is anybody there?
"Maerad." No reply. Only the darkness and the whispering of the wind. As always.
He was a Bard of great power and experience-he should know better than to be scared by a trance like this. Bards often entered states almost like comas to perform the largest workings-it was not so surprising that Maerad should have done the same. Certainly the magery she was making use of was far greater, more terrifying and darker than anything he had known before, and certainly she meant more to him than anyone else he had seen enter one-
Night had fallen long ago, swathing the entire world in shadow, and Cadvan knelt alone in the wilderness beside Maerad's motionless body. Her eyes were wide open and sightless; she barely seemed to be breathing. Sometimes she spoke whispered, harsh words-"Hem. Hem, come to me." She was calling to her brother, wherever in all Edil-Amarandh he was. And while it terrified him, he understood. Deep down, he had to believe that what she was doing was necessary, that her instinct was the best guide they had, fallible and unreliable and human though as it was…
"Maerad," he called softly again, though he knew she would not wake, that he must not try and wake her. He just wanted her to know that he was there, that he was waiting for her. "Maerad, hear me. Please, come back to me. Please don't lose yourself in this."
He bowed his head, the cool shadowy breeze ruffling his hair and cloak. "Maerad…"
Take this life
Empty inside
I'm already dead
I'll rise to fall again
"It's like seeing into another world," Maerad said quietly. "But you know what the worst thing is? It's not seeing them, it's feeling like I'm already one of them."
He took her hand in his, instinctively. He had only come across to try and make her return to their camp and finally eat something-she stood on a high rise, fists clenched at her sides, her long hair blowing slightly in the wind, staring away into the dark sky, at the stars.
"The dead," she said softly. "I can't see any more. I only see what used to be…what could be. I see you dead. Hem. Saliman." Her voice was empty, a little bleak, forlorn. She felt that nobody could help her. Maybe she was right-that just did not mean that he would not try with all his strength.
"When we reach Afinil things will change," he returned, earnestly, quietly. "You just have to fight it a little longer."
"I don't have to try any more," she whispered. "It's like…it's as if doing this, seeing this, fighting this, has become my whole life. I can barely focus on anything else. It's not a fight any more. It's just what has to be. I could die here and it would be just what had to happen, part of the pattern. It all fits together and I'm starting to see…"
"That's enough." He was surprised at the anger in his own voice. "You can't talk of dying, Maerad. Do you understand? You have to think about living."
"But what does it matter?" she said gently, turning to look up at him, her blue eyes shining with a light fearfully akin to starlight itself. "I think I will die, Cadvan. I think that the dead will take me with them. I don't think I will survive the Singing."
"You will," he said fiercely. "I swear to you, Maerad, you will survive. I will not let you die."
"You can't control it," she pointed out. "No-one can. I'll just fight till the end, and then maybe I'll fall off into another world, and maybe I won't. But I'm not giving up, Cadvan. Nothing else matters right now but this. I'm not giving up. I'm just…seeing my own destiny ahead, and there's so much death in it I don't see how I'll be able to climb out alive."
God help me, I've come undone
Out of the light of the sun
Maerad was so slight, so fragile as Cadvan lifted her down from Darsor's back he feared that if he let go she would simply disintegrate. She was lost in her own world, barely conscious of her surroundings at all…he had tried to drag her back, but it was as if she was dreaming. He hated seeing her blindfolded-it felt as if they were keeping her prisoner within her own mind, the blackness of her sight. He set her on the ground and she looked up blindly, reaching out a thin hand to him. He took it impulsively, kneeling beside her.
"Maerad?"
"Cadvan-" she whispered. "They're a part of me-so many…so many dying…I can't…I can't get away…" Her voice caught in a sob.
Trapped in a nightmare. That was what her life had become-a wave of intense tenderness washed through him as he contemplated her, huddled on the ground, unable even to look upon the horrors of her world any longer, this brave, brave young girl who was only seventeen years old, who had never known peace or safety, who had never once given up. Now so broken and lost in her own personal darkness. He put his arms around her, holding her briefly close to him in wordless comfort, feeling her heart beat like a caged bird against his chest, knowing that she was far beyond his reach.
I can feel you falling away
No longer the lost
No longer the same
He saw her standing there against the endless black night, surrounded by a faint, almost tangible nimbus of light, as if she had become a fallen star herself. Above her the sky wheeled and swooped, and she was at once far more magnificent and far tinier, vulnerable, dwarfed and one with the immensity of the universe. He had never seen her like this before-he no longer understood her, barely even knew her. He only knew that what she had to face was like nothing he could imagine, and that he could never, never help her. Never save her. She had moved too far beyond him and it was difficult to believe that she would ever make it back.
And I can see you starting to break
I'll keep you alive
If you show me the way
"Maerad, please," Cadvan said quietly. He was crouched over her where she lay motionless, eyes wide open in the darkness. "Can't you talk to me? Can't you let me help you?"
"No-one can help me," she whispered, her voice almost inaudible, and she looked up, turning her face though that long strands of black hair fell across it like scars made of shadows. "Cadvan, no-one can save me."
"That's not true," he returned fiercely. He had been on watch when he had seen her lying awake and unresponsive, maybe staring into another world, as she had so often since she had begun seeing the dead. And he had not been able to keep himself from trying to speak to her.
She sat up suddenly-the bones of her face protruded against the skin and she looked skeletal, ghostly, childlike and traumatised. "I hate seeing them," she said with a sudden vehemence. "I don't know why it's me, Cadvan. I don't want to be the One. I don't want any of this…I want out. But I can't. My whole soul was made for this and it hurts, Cadvan. It hurts." A single tear trickled from her eye, cutting a long narrow rivulet through the dust on her cheek. Impulsively he reached out and put his arms around her, feeling her head press into his shoulder, her heart beating. A half-stifled sob shuddered her body-she was so broken and he had no idea what he could say that could ever comfort her.
"I'm here, Maerad," he murmured at last, into the cold fabric of her cloak. "I'm here and I will not leave you. I'll save you. I promise. If you just let me."
And the words he longed to say burned his throat as he held her shivering thin body-You are my everything. I care for you-so much, Maerad. Come back to me. I am here. Just let me help you. Let me save you…you may be the One, the Foretold, the Fire Lily, the saviour of us all. But you're Maerad too, and I just want to save you. Inside, somehow, that's all I want.
Forever and ever the scars will remain
I'm falling apart
Leave me here forever in the dark
Maerad lay quietly, curled against the icy ground, bracing herself. She was not asleep-she had not slept for days. But they could not be far from Afinil now-she knew it, somehow. And she needed to gather her courage for the immensity of the fight ahead-she did not even know what it would entail, whether she would survive it, but she knew that it would take everything she had. She wanted to be ready.
She would not allow them to see her pain, to see-again, now-the weakness of the one they all relied on. All those loved ones who had died-her parents, Dernhil, Dharin, others-and those who had survived-Cadvan, Hem, Silvia-this was what they had all fought for. They needed her to be strong. She had no notion of what might happen when the Treesong was united-she knew only that if it should come to a decision, she would save Hem before anything else.
She did not want to die. But everything she had fought and wept and killed for, months of toil and pain and breaking-it was all to be concluded in one final cataclysm, at Afinil, and she would not give in now, would not show any fear or weakness. Her own private darkness and nightmare was her own to conquer, and there was no-one who could help her-no-one who should, not even Cadvan who tried so hard to support her, though he knew less than even she did of this entire cycle.
She was alone, and she needed to be though she hated it. She had to be ready, when the time came, that was all that mattered.
She would not break. Against the Dark, where no-one, not even Hem, could truly help her, she would not break.
Give me a sign
There's something buried in the words
Cadvan saw her fall-felt the song that had pulsed through the air around him fade. He barely stopped to realise that the Singing was ended, that the Treesong was whole again-he knew only that Maerad had fallen, her lyre clattering to the ground beside her, and that Hem had dropped on his shaky legs beside her, shaking his sister desperately, in panic. And Cadvan was running towards them, knowing with a horrific clutching of the heart why Hem was weeping so wildly, that he could not rouse her, that she was gone-that after all this, she was gone.
He shouted, wildly, the boy's name. "Hem! Is she-" The words caught-he could not speak. He felt Saliman take his arm as if to steady him, but he did not need help. It was Maerad who should never have had to suffer for this sorry world's brokenness, and who lay there so still and curled and white on the ground with her desperate brother, whom he had to reach.
Who he could not believe was gone.
Give me a sign
Your tears are adding to the floods…
In that instant that she sat up and flung her arms around Hem Cadvan felt a wild joy such as he had never known pulsing through him, like a tidal wave taking his breath away. She was alive. She was alive. She was gloriously, unbelievably, invincibly alive, and he stumbled forwards, barely able to walk through the hum of vivid exhilaration and love blossoming through his body, his own personal Song. As she turned from Hem, surveying the world of the Treesong as if with new eyes, dazed and white, but somehow smiling, he reached her at last and gathered her in his arms, pulling her to her feet, almost lifting her off the ground, cradling her close and desperate against his free-beating heart, and finally, finally, he was kissing her. She was Ceredin reborn, she was Maerad in all her unique wonder, she was his everything. Truly his own Chosen One. And he loved her more than anything in this universe or the next. He was weeping with joy and yet he felt no shame for it-his tears mingled with her own of relief and love, so that he could not be sure whose were whose. It made no difference in this sudden, perfect unity. It was over-and they were both alive, and free, and together.
It was over.
Forever and ever the scars will remain…
But as Cadvan walked the midnight streets of Innail with Maerad at his side and the promise of their bright future like a shooting star engulfing his consciousness, he did not care about such scars of the past. Perhaps they would never truly heal-but right now they needed no more tears, no more pain. Right now the world was at peace.
"The scars will remain," he mused aloud, as if reciting the words of some ancient song, though he knew not where they came from. "The scars will remain, but we will stand forever against them, Maerad, against the Dark. Forever."
The End
It's the first story I've written for Pellinor, so a bit of an experiment based on the epic song and the idea that Maerad kind of was the 'shepherd of the damned' during The Singing…I hope you like it! I'm going to post another Pellinor story soon, though about a made-up character I think, so if you want to you could check it out…Please, please leave me a review, whether it's good or bad I will really value whatever you say to me.
'May the Light watch over your path…'
Anna