“Nelac,” he said, feeling his voice die on the unmoving air. “Nelac. I am Cadvan. You gave me my Truename. The ceremony was held in the courtyard of your Bardhouse and afterwards we sat in your chambers and drank laradhel and we sang the Song of Making. Do you remember? You named me.”
Nelac remained silent and unresponsive beside him. Cadvan would have wept, except that this was a place too dry for tears. Desperately he turned to face him, taking the old Bard’s face between his hands and staring into his empty eyes.
“Do you not remember me?” he said. “You are the father of my magery. You opened the door so I could be myself at last. If I have closed that door for ever, it is no reflection on the gift you made me. Nelac, you Named me. You said I was black and silver, like the storm cloud that surges out of a still sky. You looked into my darkness and there found my light. I owe you my life. I remember how the star music surged through me, and I became a Bard at last, when you revealed to me who I was. I am Inareskai, Nelac. Do you not remember?”
As he said his own Truename out loud, Cadvan felt an echo of the cold and beautiful star music he had heard in his Instatement, and the light in the Shadowplains shifted. It was if he had shouted in a place of terrible silence: everything around him was aware again, and a shadow was present where there had been nothing before. But at last Nelac stirred. He took Cadvan’s hands and held them between his own.
“Inareskai,” he said.
“Home,” said Cadvan. He could feel the shadow gathering around him, like a predator bunching its muscles to pounce, but he kept his gaze locked on Nelac’s. “We have to go home.” He summoned an image of Nelac’s sitting room in his mind: the only thing he could remember was the red couch, laved with the light of a flickering fire. Everything else was vanishing into vague mist. As the red silk flared in his mind, he felt Nelac’s thought groping towards it in recognition, and knew that their minds had melded.
A terrible pressure was building around them, but Cadvan ignored it: all his remaining will was concentrated on Nelac. And even as he felt the shadow leap, like a giant whip at last releasing its energy, they stepped out of the Shadowplains and opened their eyes on Nelac’s chamber, and good plain daylight roared into Cadvan’s sight.
Dernhil stepped forward and caught Cadvan as he slid to the floor, and helped him back onto the couch. Nelac gasped and stirred, like a man pulled from deep water, and Dernhil began to chafe his hands, looking over his shoulder to Cadvan.
“What happened?”
“I scarcely know. Was I absent for long?”
“No, though it felt like an age.” Dernhil nodded towards the fire, which was just now beginning to catch the wood. “A few minutes, if that.”
Cadvan rose clumsily and knelt beside Dernhil, studying Nelac’s face anxiously; it was ashen, although he was now breathing evenly. Nelac opened his eyes, and focused painfully on Cadvan. At last he spoke, so quietly that Cadvan had to lean close to hear him.
“That was a near thing,” he said.
“It was, my friend. Too near.”
A long silence fell, and gradually Nelac’s colour began to return. He sat up, pushing the two younger Bards away.
“Laradhel, Dernhil,” he said. “There’s some on the table over there. And make mine a large one, eh?”
Dernhil and Cadvan’s eyes met, and they almost grinned. Dernhil busied himself pouring the golden liqueur into three silver goblets, and Cadvan stood up, stretching, and stamped his feet. His whole body felt full of pins and needles. He was shaking so badly he could barely hold the goblet that Dernhil gave him, but he grabbed it between two hands and drank it in a single draught. It went down like smooth fire.
Nelac couldn’t hold the goblet at all, and Dernhil had to help him. “Another, I think,” he said when he had finished, and this time he smiled. “I feel as if this cold will never leave my body.”
“You were here all night, I think,” said Dernhil.
Nelac’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he said nothing until Dernhil had refilled his cup. He drank the next goblet swiftly and leant back on the couch.
“I think I have my wits back, or at least most of them,” he said. “But perhaps not. I could swear that you are not supposed to be here, Cadvan.”
“No, I shouldn’t. But it’s perhaps as well that I am.”
“And no doubt you’re both wondering how I, the most wary of travellers in the land of shadows, could have fallen into a trap that even a Minor Bard should know to avoid?”
“Something like that,” said Dernhil. “Even though I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nelac drew a deep breath. “I’ll try to tell you, but it’s hard…” he said. “It’s like remembering a dream, which vanishes as you awaken. Well. I was looking for Selmana. I saw her, in the distance. She was shining, but it was with a light that was not of that place, and I remember being astonished: she was there in her flesh. It shouldn’t be possible, but there she was.”
“Selmana?” said Cadvan. He sat up, fixing his eyes on Nelac.
“Aye.” Nelac paused for a long moment. “Aye. Selmana disappeared yesterday, and the moment I heard I went cold – this is no ordinary absence… I spoke to Bashar, who was inclined to think nothing of it. That did little to dispel my anxiety. I thought that Selmana might be in the Shadowplains, and so I went there. And there she is.” He shook his head. “Everything we know about the Circles says this is an impossibility. But the Shadowplains are changed in their nature…”
“It is changed,” said Cadvan. “I felt it at once. I have always loathed the Shadowplains, they are not a place where mortals might walk with ease, and never have been. But this time…” He shuddered.
“I could hide myself, that wasn’t so hard,” said Nelac. “What bothers me more is that sense that something has slipped… The usual protections didn’t seem to work, and I couldn’t move through the plains as I have before. I couldn’t reach Selmana. I remember walking and then running, but she never came any closer. And the more I tried to reach her, the harder it became. I felt that I was bleeding to death from some invisible wound, as if my life were leaking out of me.” He faltered, frowning. “And then, I remember nothing. Rags, rubble, ash. Nothing.”
XVII
WHEN Lirigon vanished before her eyes, Selmana was so afraid that she couldn’t move a muscle. She had no idea how long she stood on that dark slope. After an unmeasurable time, she realized that she was hidden from whatever it was that had been tracking her. Bit by bit the paralysing fear began to ebb away. She looked about her. She could almost hear voices, whispers at the very limits of hearing, but she could see no one: the plains seemed to be deserted. It seemed that she had always been there, and always would be there, but this didn’t disturb her. Time meant nothing: she could have been standing there for the merest flicker of a moment, or a year, or a century.
After a time she sensed a presence. It was as if someone had spoken, although she had heard no voice. Cadvan? She looked around uncertainly. Surely it wasn’t Cadvan? And then, as if answering her thought, she saw his form, not quite corporeal, seemingly sculpted out of light. He was looking right through her, but she knew that he was aware of her. She reached out impulsively, her lips forming his name but making no sound, and as she did her sight became deeper, as if their beings merged into a single mind, although it still seemed to Selmana that he stood before her. His form became transparent, an intricate weaving of skin and organs and bone, and through those she saw the play of Cadvan’s thoughts, a shimmer of living colour. And something clambered and clung inside him, a vile, shapeless parasite. Even as she flinched in horror, Cadvan vanished, and she was alone again on the grey slopes, beneath the black sky where the stars never moved.
But now time flooded back, the past and the future filling her endless present, and she remembered who she was. She was Selmana of Lirigon, student of Calis of Eledh, a Maker, an apprentice to the humours of earth and metal and stone. She looked down at her hands in won
der: with these she had already taken iron and silver and had shaped them, and she had written down words in new orders that had different meanings, and she had left the prints of her fingers on skin and clay and rock. She thought of the many small ways her hands had changed the world: they had seemed so insignificant at the time, but each gesture, each touch, each moment of Making, had brought forth a shift. Not always good, she saw now: but not always damage, either. The complexity fascinated her, but it was daunting: she understood that she wasn’t a discrete body, a mind with a boundary of skin, but a shimmering web of actions and relationships that reached further than she had ever imagined. She remembered the First Law of the Balance, which every Minor Bard learned as soon as they entered the School, and now it seemed no longer an abstract rule but a way of being, pregnant with complex meaning.
First, do no harm.
First, do no harm. And yet, nevertheless, and even in the best circumstances, harm was done. How was it possible to know what was harmful and what was not? How did anyone know the far-reaching effects of any action? How was it possible to choose?
Rapt in these contemplations, Selmana forgot where she was. The Shadowplains no longer seemed hostile: the stars were not lifeless, as she had thought, but merely flickered in another state of being. She wasn’t hungry or cold and her body didn’t pain her in any way. She simply was. She could have stayed there for ever in this strange ecstasy, caught out of time, following the glowing threads of her thought.
The grasses bent and the shadow trees wavered. She thought a wind sprang up, but there was no wind in this place. Something was shifting again. Arrested, but still unafraid, she searched for the source of this change. Now the plains were full of figures, of the forms of people. She knew that they hadn’t suddenly appeared: rather, they had been there all the time, but somehow sideways to her sight. Unlike her vision of Cadvan, these were shadows, delicately outlined by starlight. There were so many, she realized with wonder; had they really been around her all the time? And now their voices were clearer, although she couldn’t understand any words.
The dead. Even as the words fell into her mind, a shade stood before her: dark-eyed, dark-haired, slender, her head bowed. Selmana stared at her in wonder.
“Ceredin,” she said. “Are you still here?”
Ceredin nodded and looked up. Their eyes met, and with her wider perception Selmana saw in Ceredin’s face the echoes of everything she would never now become; the wise woman, the great Bard, the mother, the Maker. A terrible grief and anger surged through Selmana; she was suddenly aware of her heart beating in her chest, of cold air inflating her lungs. Ceredin blinked, and looked away.
“I have no sorrow,” said Ceredin. “Pain is for the living, Selmana. The dead are not in pain.”
She laid her hand on Selmana’s. It was a searing agony, as if Ceredin’s hand were fire, and Selmana ripped her arm away with a cry.
“You are strange here,” said Ceredin. “You are what should not be in this place. The Shadow cannot see you, because you are impossible here. And yet if you return to where you are possible, you will be seen and hunted.”
Selmana had forgotten that she had been afraid. She bit her lip. “Why can you see me, then?”
“I can see you, but I am dreaming,” said Ceredin. “I often dream of those I love.” She fell silent. “I find it harder and harder to use the words of the living,” she said at last. “Where I am, I can see past and present and future all at once, like the sea, and in that sea there are many visions. I know less and less which is when and what may happen and what may not. But I am fading. I am becoming a Knowing without a self to Know.”
Selmana listened in stricken silence, her eyes burning with tears. Ceredin met her gaze again, and for a fleeting moment Selmana saw her cousin as she had been in life, vital and ardent and unafraid.
“I think no tears have ever been shed in this dry land,” she said. “Do not weep for me, Selmana. Weep for the living. Weep for what may come if this Shadow is not fought back.”
“But I weep for you, Ceredin. Because I love you.”
Ceredin paused, studying Selmana’s face. “Love is maybe all that remains of me,” she said uncertainly. “You love what I have been. You cannot love what I am.”
“You are all the things you awoke in me, all the memories I have of you, all the things I want to become because of you,” said Selmana, with sudden passion. “Of course I love who you are…”
Ceredin’s form wavered, and for a moment Selmana feared that she would vanish. “Nay, Selmana,” she said. “That is both true and untrue, and that Knowing is part of the sorrow and gladness of the World. But I am not in the World. I have seen and I must say what I have seen, and I say it out of love. But I am no longer anything you can know.
“Listen well, because I cannot stay. We are hunted, we of the wild blood. She hunts us to fix her in the World, for we may have bodies where others do not. The Circles have ruptured and now the laws are changed. The Abyss opens on the Shadowplains, the Shadowplains open on the World, the Empyrean is shut. Be wary! And yet you must trust your selves, you must trust your Knowing. You must be wakeful, always.”
“Ceredin, I don’t understand…”
“She is divided and small in her power, but all her divisions are linked by her will. She wishes to find her way back whole into the World, and she is both more and less powerful than you realize. She answers the will of her master, who will return hereafter. She will scorch a path for his return. But we are not alone in our fear, others move through the Circles, though they remain hidden. They help us, for they have the greatest stake in this. You must remember what I am saying…”
Selmana nodded, numb with dread.
“Do you truly remember?” said Ceredin fiercely.
“I remember,” said Selmana. “I promise I remember.”
Ceredin reached forward and grasped Selmana’s hand again, and this time she did not let go. Selmana screamed, held in a vice of pain, and the flame spread through her whole body until it was beyond bearing, until she lost consciousness of everything except her physical agony. And then, quite suddenly, the pain was gone as if it had never been, and she was kneeling in the Street of Potters in the dim light of afternoon, and it was raining.
Selmana scrambled to her feet, bewildered. All the houses were shuttered against the rain, which beat down heavily in great cold sheets, drenching her instantly. She hunched her cloak around her and wiped the streaming water out of her eyes, trying to order her thoughts. She no longer felt as if she were being stalked by some unseen presence, but she had no doubt that it would be searching for her. Her one thought was to speak to Nelac. She ran blindly through the streets of Lirigon, her head bowed against the downpour. The streets were deserted: the rain was heavier every moment, and the sky was darkening, and lamps flared in the houses she passed as if it were nightfall.
A passing student glanced at her as she stood in the hallway of the Bardhouse, catching her breath and dripping water on the floor, and she hunched her shoulder, turning away. At first there was no answer when she knocked on Nelac’s door and she bit her lip in frustration. Who else could help her, if Nelac was not here? Where could she go? She beat her fists on the door again, wondering what she should do. Should she speak to Bashar? But Bashar scarcely knew who she was. And then, to her intense relief, she heard someone inside answer, a voice that was familiar but that she couldn’t at once place.
“Who is there?”
“It’s me, Selmana,” she said. “I have to talk to Nelac. Is he there?”
“Selmana?” She heard the man’s astonishment. There was a brief pause, and then a bolt was drawn and the door opened to reveal Dernhil. He took one look at her and pulled her into the room.
“It’s not fit for man nor beast out there,” he said, as he bolted the door behind her. “Come in and warm yourself.”
“I—” Selmana saw Cadvan, standing at Nelac’s shoulder staring at her, and stopped in astonishment. What was
Cadvan doing in Lirigon?
“Selmana,” said Nelac, coming forward to embrace her. “By the Light, this is beyond hope! I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you. But first, let’s get you dry. You are soaked to the skin!”
Shortly afterwards, Selmana was ensconced on a couch, warmly wrapped in a spare robe of Nelac’s. She wanted to cry with relief: this room was real and ordinary, full of solid, everyday objects, a haven against the storm outside and the chaos of her thoughts.
“Oh, Nelac,” she said. “I’ve had such a strange day. I don’t know how to tell you what happened. I scarce understand it myself. Did you get the note I left this morning?”
“I did, Selmana,” said Nelac. “And I have been searching for you ever since. But, my dear, you left it two days ago.”
“Two days?” Selmana faltered. “Is it really two days?”
Nelac nodded. “I think you have been in the Shadowplains, am I right? At least, I saw you there, or thought I did. Time is not the same there as it is here.”
“You were there too? But I didn’t see you…” She paused, and turned to Cadvan. “I did see Cadvan, though. I could see right into you, as if you were made out of glass…” She looked away, troubled.
“What did you see?” asked Cadvan, after a silence.
“I don’t know how to say it,” she said slowly. She thought of Ceredin, and anger surged through her. “You shouldn’t be here. Why are you here? This all happened because of you, and you are black inside, Cadvan, you are rotten, an evil eats at your soul, and you should be banished.”
Cadvan flinched and looked away, but made no answer.
“I think I know what you saw, Selmana,” said Dernhil gently. “I saw it too. A parasite of a kind, maybe? I struggled with it last night, and it is cast out. It was a hard battle, and I am still weary from it. But I swear to you, by the Light, that I know everything there is to know about Cadvan, the good and the ill. And for all his many faults, that horror is now gone.”