“A tea of linden flower will calm you down, and help your stomach,” she said. “But it will take a little while. Let me know if you feel sick again in good time so I can find a dish. I just scrubbed the floor, you know. It’s such a lovely day, and so it dried easy.”
As Larla’s comfortable chatter washed over her, Selmana began to relax. She wondered if she had imagined the silence. Perhaps she should see a healer and ask for her ears to be examined? For now she was content just to nod in response, to sit and watch Larla as she took some dried flower heads from a tin box and threw them into a pot. She walked with difficulty – a problem with her hip, she told Selmana – but all the same, she moved with an odd grace. Selmana sipped the mild tea slowly. For the first time that day, she felt safe.
“You’re a Bard?” said Larla. Selmana nodded. “Then you’ll know who to see, if you still feel sick.”
“I think it’s gone away now,” said Selmana. “It was very … odd. I couldn’t hear anything at all, all the sound of everything went away…”
“Anything wrong with your ears can make you dizzy. I had a bad cold once and my ears went and I couldn’t stand up without falling over.”
“Yes, maybe it was that. Anyway, it passed quite quickly.”
“You stay here as long as you like. You’re a better colour now. I was watching you, you went white, like all the blood had drained out of your body.”
Selmana felt an impulse to tell Larla everything that had happened, all about the boar and the strange vision the night before and the terrible feeling she had had all day that something was following her, like a cat tracking the scent of a mouse. But Larla might think she had lost her wits. Perhaps she was a bit unbalanced: perhaps the incident at her mother’s farm had thrown her. She was very tired, after all, and that in itself could make you see strange things… She told herself to stop being stupid. She shouldn’t be flinching at shadows. So, after she had finished her tea, she thanked Larla and said she should take her leave.
“Are you sure, kitten?” Larla said. “You’re very welcome to stay here for a while.”
“I’m late for some friends.”
The older woman studied her with a disconcerting shrewdness. Something in her gaze made Selmana wonder if she weren’t a Bard, after all. “I’m half inclined to keep you here a bit longer, for all that you look a little pinker.”
“I’m sure I’m well now,” said Selmana.
Larla patted her hand. “If you’re sure,” she said. “The Light knows, I’m not kidnapping you. Remember I’m here, if need be.”
When the door shut behind her, Selmana almost turned around and went back inside. She looked up at the sky, where a few fluffy clouds floated over the blue. It was still warm, but she felt a sudden chill as a wind sprang up and died away. The weather would change this afternoon. Perhaps she should return to the School after all, she thought: Nelac might have come back. She squared her shoulders and walked down the laneway, breathing out in relief. Everything was normal now.
And then, so swiftly she had no sense of transition, everything was wrong. A crushing sense of impending peril seemed to drop from the sky. The street was the same as before. The light was no different. Yet in the space of a moment she was terrified of something that she couldn’t see and couldn’t hear, but which she knew with every nerve in her body was about to pounce and devour her. Her instincts took over before she could even think, and she bolted, sobbing with panic.
She skidded around the corner into the Street of Potters, and stepped into darkness. The stars were above, distant and bright and still. The plains ran level before her to a dark horizon. There was no sound. She whipped around, expecting to see the laneway behind her, but all she could see was a dim hill rising endlessly, cutting off the stars.
Lirigon had vanished.
XII
NELAC rode into Bural with the sun. Although the moon had long set, the sky had been darkly luminous for hours, dousing the brilliance of the stars and giving enough light to ride by. Only the dawn star, Ilion, shone undimmed: it burned low over the western horizon, bright enough to throw faint shadows in its own right. Nelac and Dernhil moved through a landscape of muted colours; shreds of mist curled about the fetlocks of their horses as they trotted through the meadows of Lirigon Fesse, with the rich smell of autumn leaf mould rising to their nostrils. Just before they arrived in the village, the sun sent its first rays over the edge of the earth, and the grasses, bent with heavy dew, sparkled alive in prisms of fire. Far away in the north the snowy tips of the Osidh Elanor, the Mountains of the Dawn, flared red and pink like the edges of petals.
Nelac pulled up his mare, Cina, and flung back the hood of his cloak. For a time they stood unmoving in the golden light, man and horse, while the disc of the sun edged over the horizon. Dernhil stopped beside him, and looked enquiringly.
“Such beauty, Dernhil,’ he said quietly, in the Speech. “And yet – I can’t say why – it fills me with so much grief.” He paused. “It wasn’t always so. Once, I found consolation in this…”
Dernhil opened his mouth to speak and hesitated, unsure what to say. In the Speech, Nelac’s words had a deeper resonance, which stirred the sorrow in his own soul.
Nelac glanced across at him and smiled. “No doubt this is the sadness of an old man, who feels his death pressing on his heels. Death is a mystery and a bafflement to us all! But once I thought this beauty and plenty would outlast me and mine. And the thought that it might not, that all this shimmering life might waver and die and never return – that is a sorrow, Dernhil, that I know not how to encompass.”
“Even the mountains must be worn down to dust one day,” said Dernhil. “And even the sun burn out its furnace…”
Nelac was silent. “Yes, all things must pass,” he said at last. “But the dreams that haunt you, the fear that rises inside me… Ends and beginnings were always the warp and weft of the world’s fabric. But this fear is different, Dernhil. To poison the Light, to burn the living world, to break the very axis of the Balance: how is that possible? And yet I feel it is, in my deepest being.”
“Need it be so?” said Dernhil.
“Nay,” said Nelac. “It need not. But we are so small… Those like the Bone Queen do not care, and so they are stronger: life is merely something in their way, which can be trampled or brushed aside. We cannot do that, we must stop to take care, and so we are hampered by the very things that matter to us most… Yet even the Nameless One, when he drowned all Annar in the Great Silence, did not destroy the Balance because he wanted to be evil. It was just what followed…”
Hyeradh stamped impatiently. We are almost back to the stable, she complained. And it’s cold. And I did not complain when you put the saddle on so early, although I would have liked to stay in the warm.
Dernhil leant forward, patting her neck. I am very grateful, he said silently in the Speech. And I will make you a mash when we return.
Nelac smiled, and gravely apologised to the mare, who snorted scornfully. But for the moment he did not urge on Cina, who remained silent and unmoving, her ears pricked alertly. He glanced over at Dernhil, and spoke in Annaren. “I’m sorry, my friend, for burdening you with my doubt. Despair is a bitter counsel, and the surest defeat of all.”
“We must know what we face,” said Dernhil. “It may be that we cannot stem what I have seen. And even if it is so, even if there is no hope, it is no reason not to struggle.”
“So the wise have always claimed,” said Nelac, gathering up his reins. “Although they fail to record adequately how difficult it is. And I wonder, Dernhil. Perhaps we will banish this threat now, but the real peril lives inside each of us – the lust to possess what cannot be owned, the desire to defeat death by denying life to others, the indifference that consumes us in our own ambitions, reckoning nothing of those unknown others who might pay the price for it. Each of us knows this, each of us carries this seed inside us…”
Dernhil was taken aback by Nelac’s mood: a deep
bitterness ran beneath his words. “But surely you have never chosen against the Balance, surely you have always worked for the Light,” he said awkwardly, trying to feel his way.
Nelac glanced across at Dernhil, his eyebrows drawn into a frown. “Don’t mistake me for something inhuman, Dernhil. I feel these things, and must recognize them as mine. And sometimes I understand that what is best in me is also the worst.”
“Virtue was ever double-edged.”
“Aye. And how keen is that edge? How do we know one side from the other, when it comes to our own desires? Be sure: what threatens us is not merely a skirmish between Bards and Hulls, Dernhil. It concerns us all, all of us who walk under this sky, all of us who will be born hereafter. I doubt there will be heroes in this story. And I am afraid…”
Dernhil knew Nelac had the gift of foresight, and his heart faltered. Nelac was the steadfast one, the bulwark to whom others turned in their own doubt, and he seldom revealed his inner thoughts. Dernhil was suddenly aware, as the sun lifted over them, how the years lay heavy upon the older Bard: he saw with a new clarity how deeply the lines were scored in his face, the fragility of the bones beneath the aging skin of his hands. For the first time, he wondered how old Nelac was. It had never before occurred to him to ask.
Dernhil cleared his throat. “If each of us plays our part, I can’t see how we cannot find victory,” he said. As he spoke, he felt the hollowness of his words.
“I wonder if there is any such thing as victory in this world.”
Dernhil met Nelac’s eyes, and the younger Bard saw they were full of a bleak light, cold and somehow pitiless. He looked away, shaken, and Nelac urged Cina on. It was a little while before Dernhil followed him.
They found Cadvan in the front room, broodingly watching the landlord, Stefan, as he went about his tasks. He looked up swiftly when the door opened and strode across the room to embrace Nelac. Dernhil suddenly felt awkward, as if he were a stranger at a meeting that ought to be private; it seemed to him that much passed between the two Bards in that brief greeting.
When Cadvan stepped back from the embrace, Dernhil saw that his eyes were bright. To break the moment, Dernhil rubbed his stomach, like a minstrel playing at being hungry, and brightly suggested that they should eat. Nelac cast him an amused glance, well aware of Dernhil’s discomfort, and asked Stefan for a room where they could be private and break their fast. The innkeeper bustled off to prepare the board.
“Did you sleep at all?” Cadvan asked Dernhil. “I woke with the sun, only to find you already gone.”
“I slept badly. No doubt I am unused to the comfort of a bed.”
Cadvan frowned. “I did too, although I was weary to the bone. Strange dreams, although I remember none of them.”
Nelac studied Cadvan’s face. “You seem in good health, my friend, strange dreams or no. Dernhil tells me he found you in a mining settlement.”
“Jouan,” said Cadvan shortly. “I went there to be a cobbler.” It was clear that he didn’t want to talk about his time there, and Nelac didn’t enquire further. Stefan showed them to a small parlour, bringing ale and a platter of breads and cured meats. They made their breakfast, talking idly of nothing in particular. Cadvan was wondering what he was expected to do, now he had made the journey back to Lirigon, but he was hesitant to begin the discussion. He thought that Nelac looked older than when he had last seen him, more strained.
“I suppose we should speak of the matter at hand,” said Nelac, when the table was cleared. “Though I don’t know where to begin.”
“Here and now, I suppose,” said Dernhil. “I had an encounter on our way here that you should know about. I spoke with Ceredin…” He glanced sideways at Cadvan as he told his story, but Cadvan stared down at his hands, betraying no emotion. When Dernhil finished his account, Nelac nodded slowly.
“There has been a strange incident in the Fesse also,” he said. “Perhaps it is a sighting of Kansabur. I think it more likely than not, although I am trying not to leap to conclusions, in case I leap the wrong way.” He paused, gathering his thoughts, and told them of Selmana’s encounter with the boar, and of what he had seen and guessed himself. The Bards listened without interrupting. By the time Nelac finished, Cadvan’s face was white.
“That is all too familiar,” he said. “Remember the shepherd? And those others? Nelac, I searched the library at that time, looking for similar descriptions of possession, and there was not one account of a haunt that matched what happened to those people. I cannot doubt it is Kansabur.”
“Me neither,” said Dernhil. “It chimes too clearly with my own dreams. I am sure that Kansabur escaped the Bards.”
“I’ve been turning over and over the moments when we thought we had banished her,” said Cadvan. “Do you remember, Nelac? And I can’t stop thinking about that strange – flicker – that happened, just before the Circles closed. But we were so sure, we hunted through the Shadowplains and there was no sign…”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking of that,” said Nelac. “Time doesn’t run in the other Circles as it does in the World, and she could have changed her when as well as her where, although I have not heard that it is possible to do that, except perhaps for the Elementals… The Shadowplains, as you know, are linked to the World, as a reflection relates to an object – but not exactly, and there are strange distortions… But we were looking for spoor, which is how we tracked her before. And there was no trace of any spoor around that poor beast, nor in the Shadowplains.”
“Then she has found some way to move without leaving traces,” said Cadvan. “She has become something else, other than what she was.”
“That may be so,” said Nelac. “But perhaps her transformation is not quite so radical. I don’t doubt that some kind of change has occurred: perhaps the very pressures we brought to bear upon her permitted Kansabur to discover another aspect of her power. Part of our problem is that we don’t understand how sorcery works. In fact, we understand so little about the Circles that anything we suppose is not much more than a guess.”
“She is certainly not in her full power,” said Cadvan thoughtfully. “If she had been, Selmana could not have resisted her.”
“The clue is from Ceredin,” said Nelac. “There is a great malice, broken into three and three. Each malice seeks the others. She divided herself, and so escaped our vigilance and survived. We no longer seek one thing, but many, and those many things leave no trace that we can see.”
“Perhaps she seeks to reunite herself,” said Dernhil. “Perhaps she can only do that in the World, not in the Shadowplains. Perhaps she needs a living body to sustain her. Perhaps she is like a deadly parasite, which needs a host strong enough to contain those different parts of her…”
Nelac was silent for a time. “If that is so, there are very few who could withstand such a parasite without deadly hurt,” he said. “Only the most powerful Bards, perhaps, and perhaps not even them. When we were hunting her, she used living bodies as a hiding place, and she could remain there for only a few days before … well, Cadvan, you remember what happened to them. And now it seems she is reduced to hiding in beasts. If her self is divided, so, it seems, is her power.”
Cadvan had been sitting, half listening, deep in thought. “She never dared before to invade the soul of a Bard,” he said. “It would have been too dangerous, it would have betrayed her presence to us at once. You say that Selmana told you that she felt as if something had called her out that night?”
“Not quite. She did say that she didn’t know why she had gone out of her mother’s house when she was so frightened, and that afterwards it wholly baffled her.”
“Why Selmana?”
“Perhaps because she’s young, and therefore vulnerable. But she’s strong, as she showed when she drove off Kansabur. She’s a Maker by inclination. I’ve been giving her some help with her Reading, and I think she will make a formidable Bard one day.”
“Do you think she is in peril?”
??
?No more, I think, than any other Bard, if Kansabur is indeed hunting Bards,” said Nelac. “And we cannot be sure that is the case.”
“Selmana is Ceredin’s cousin,” said Cadvan in a low voice. Dernhil’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I would feel – it would be sorely unjust if that family suffered more because of what I’ve done.”
By now the light was broad, and the sunshine outside shone through the latticed windows, glancing off their empty glasses. Cadvan pushed himself back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair.
“So,” he said. “Here I am. Why is my being here so important? Why did Dernhil near kill himself riding through Lirhan to look for me? What shall we do now?”
“That’s precisely what we don’t know,” said Nelac. Cadvan gestured impatiently. “Nay, Cadvan, do not think it has been a waste of effort.”
“I thought you’d know what to do.” The corners of Dernhil’s mouth twitched: Cadvan sounded almost petulant.
“Surely you should know me better than that.” Nelac glanced ironically at Cadvan. “Or did you lay aside all your Knowing when you fled to Jouan? Do not all questions begin in doubt and ignorance?”
Cadvan smiled reluctantly. “Aye. But I have a heavy culpability here, Nelac. I must right the wrong I made.”
Nelac’s brows bristled in a frown, and for the first time his voice was harsh. “You can’t right it, Cadvan. You can’t bring back the dead, or heal the grief of those who miss them, or make the anguish suffered as if it never was.”
Cadvan flushed. “I do know that,” he said. “I know that what is done cannot be undone. I just meant…”
“I know what you meant. But do not overestimate your importance: you did not begin this wrong. It began long before you made your own disastrous choices. And do not think you can end it.”
A swift anger kindled in Cadvan’s eyes. “Then what would you have me do?”
“As with us all: we find the tasks that are in front of us, and we deal with them as best we can. For the moment, I don’t know. That doesn’t mean that I won’t know tomorrow. It doesn’t mean there is nothing to be done. But better to be patient now than to act in haste and act wrongly.”