The Naming by Alison Croggon

if you had to. And we still have to get down off this mountain, and quickly before it grows completely dark."
    A broken, narrow path led off the ledge and wound its way eccentrically downward, curling around ridges and gorges and then suddenly switching back on itself. They were not ten feet away from the ledge when Maerad looked up and realized the passage was completely hidden; even from this distance she doubted that she could find it again. After that she had to concentrate on scrabbling down the mountainside. It was exhausting work, and her hands were already scratched and blistered. She gritted her teeth and ignored her discomforts. Cadvan was again displaying his ability to behave as if he had just arisen from a long, refreshing sleep and was now partaking of a gentle stroll, and if, she thought to herself, he could do it, so could she. Once she slipped and slid more than twenty feet down a rocky slope, landing in a small heap of pebbles and dust at the bottom of a gully. Cadvan leaned over the edge of the ridge, anxiously peering through the dusk, and when he saw her answering wave he grinned and slid down to join her.

"It's quicker," he said, landing beside her. "But a sight less comfortable." He stood up, brushing himself off, and peered down the gully. "We could follow this, I think," he said. "There's not much farther before we're off the mountain proper. And then a quick march, and then dinner."
    The going after that was not so hard. It was now dark, but it was a clear night, and the swollen moon edged over the horizon, bright enough to cast sharp shadows. For a while they continued in silence.
    "Do you know where we are?" Maerad asked at last. She had a strange feeling that she knew this landscape. Were they, perhaps, near Pellinor?
    "Yes." Cadvan nodded. "We are an hour's fast walk from Innail, the easternmost of the Schools. It was built in the shadow of the Annova some hundreds of years ago now, and is a strong School that has shaped many fine Bards! I can't say how glad I am. Although, of course, we are not there yet. Fortune so far has favored us; this is better than anything I could have planned. I think our trail was lost in the storm, and I think that none will find it. It would have gone ill with us, if we had been forced to travel the way I planned. More than the Landrost watches over that empty realm."
    "And what was that tunnel through the mountain?" Maerad asked, deciding to take advantage of Cadvan's ebullience. "Did you know it was there?"
    "No," Cadvan answered. "I have traveled often over this land in my time, and I have heard neither rumor nor tale of such a place. The nearest pass through the mountains, to my knowledge, was at least sixty leagues south from here, through bad country. I don't know who made that place, or who might have lived there in ages past. A great city, it seemed to me; there were hundreds of rooms, empty and forsaken, carved into the rock. Perhaps the whole mountain is honeycombed with them. Ididn't recognize the runes hatched around the door. I wonder who they were, those people! A people of great cunning, they must have been, to pierce the living rock so straightly. There were no bad airs, nor any flaws in that tunneling. Few could do such a thing now."
    Maerad was taken aback by Cadvan's cheerful admission of ignorance; it made the world she had just entered seem even stranger and more perilous. She thought of Gilman's Cot: only a few days ago it had been the compass of her entire existence, but to Cadvan it was insignificant, a tiny place in the scheme of things. And now, it seemed, there were things even he knew nothing about. It made her feel very small and unimportant; and she asked no more questions.
    The vegetation began to change; there were groves of pine and birch, and beneath their feet, grasses and herbs. The incline became gentler, and the hills were covered with a springing turf that was a relief to their feet after the shingle and small rocks over which