The Riddle Read Online Free PDF

the small ones guarding the harbor; the grander buildings were simply broader and built with higher roofs.
    For all its impressive architecture, the School was as lively as the lower town. It was now midafternoon, when, as Maerad would discover later, Thoroldians put the business of the day aside for pleasanter pursuits. The streets themselves were deserted; the sun was really too hot for going out. As they walked through the School, Maerad saw that some of the wide, shady porticos were populated with Bards. Like everyone else in Busk, they all seemed to be involved in lively conversations and disputes. They looked up curiously when Cadvan and Maerad passed, and some waved a greeting. Cadvan smiled back.
    Maerad stopped shyly, lingering outside one of the houses, burning with curiosity. The Bards lounged in comfortable wicker chairs arranged around low wooden tables, most of which were laden with platters of fruit and carafes of wine and water. She watched a woman, who was sprawled in a chair, declaiming a poem to a small group of Bards. They listened intently until she finished and then broke into a furious argument. The woman, who was tall and heavy-boned, with a bright scarf wound about her head and long green earrings, stood up and argued back fiercely, finally throwing her arms up in the air in frustration and cuffing her most vocal critic, to the cheers of half the table.
    The Bards alarmed Maerad more than the townsfolk; she was not, after all, a Thoroldian, and could be expected to be different. But in the School she was a Bard: one of them. She could not imagine being comfortable among such people.
    Maerad looked sideways at Cadvan. “Are the Bards of Busk always so loud?” she asked.
    Cadvan gave her an amused glance. “Pretty much, Maerad. But it’s more lively than Norloch, don’t you think?”
    “Well, yes,” she answered feelingly, thinking of the stern Bards she had met there. “But, you know, they seem just as frightening, in a different way.”
    “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “In a way, you’re a Thoroldian yourself.”
    “I am?” Maerad turned to him open-mouthed.
    “Of course you are. I told you,” he said with the edge of impatience he always had when he had to repeat himself, even if it was something he had only mentioned in passing two months before. “The House of Karn fled to Thorold during the Great Silence. Thorold was always one of the most independent of the Seven Kingdoms, and was a chief point of resistance to the Nameless One. I suppose it’s eight hundred years or so since last your family was here, so you can be excused for feeling a little strange. But the Thoroldians are true bastions of the Light. The only real problem will be keeping up with their consumption of wine. I don’t know how they do it.”
    As they were speaking, they stopped in front of a house and turned in to the porch. Maerad was blinded in the sudden shade, and Cadvan led her blinking through two large bronze double doors into a huge atrium flagged with marble. Orange and lemon trees and flowers were planted in big glazed pots, giving off a delicious perfume, and jasmine climbed around the slim columns. In the center, in the middle of an intricate mosaic of birds and flowers, played a fountain. Maerad relaxed in the coolness and looked around. The atrium seemed to be deserted.
    Cadvan rang a brass hand bell that stood on a small plinth, and then sat down on a wooden bench and stretched out his legs.
    “Someone will come in a moment,” he said. “Sit down.”
    “It’s lovely,” said Maerad. She sat next to him, content to do nothing. She felt again how tired and grimy she was, and how much she longed to wear clean clothes and to sleep in a proper bed. Was it only yesterday they had driven off the ondril? It seemed like last year.
    “Do you think we could stay here awhile?” she asked.
    “That is my plan,” said Cadvan. “I’m tired of travel myself. And Busk has a very good library, one