There, Cadvan had summoned a revenant from the Abyss. And not just any revenant: in his arrogance, he had called the Bone Queen, Kansabur herself. She had ruled over Lir, as Lirhan was then called, during the Great Silence, when the Nameless One had held sway over all Annar. Even after all these centuries, the Bone Queen was still remembered in Lirhan with a shudder of dread, as a name to frighten small children, an evil shadow that haunted the folklore. Bards had longer memories, and knew what Kansabur’s terror really meant.
Cadvan had told Nelac this much, but neither Dernhil nor Cadvan willingly spoke of what had happened that night. Cadvan had unleashed a monstrous spirit: the revenant had proved much stronger than Cadvan had imagined, and Kansabur had broken his control. When the other two Bards added their power in an attempt to banish it, they were brutally cut down.
The Bards of Lirigon had felt the jolt in the Balance the moment that Cadvan uttered the summoning, and had raced to the Grove: but it was too late. Nelac closed his eyes, remembering what they had found there. The trees, blasted with magefire, were still smouldering, giving a ghastly light, and the air was thick and sour with the burnt smell of sorcery. The three young Bards lay in a welter of blood. Dernhil was barely alive: he had suffered a deep wound from his shoulder to his thigh. Ceredin had been slashed almost in two. Cadvan had suffered no physical hurt: he was found unconscious, splashed with the blood of his companions, his eyes wide in stark horror. The revenant had vanished. It had taken more than a year to track the spirit, and to banish it back to the Abyss had taken all the powers of the First Circle. It was done at last: but the harm it had caused, that night and afterwards, could not be undone.
Bleakly, as he relived those terrible times, Nelac wondered again if there could be pardon for such a crime. Even with all the love he bore Cadvan, he found it hard to forgive him. Yet could one wrong be answered by another? Banishing Cadvan’s gifts was to double the loss to Barding. But there was something else, some other reason that plucked at his deeper Knowing. It was an instinct that had yet to grow a mouth, a shadow that remained stubbornly without form. Again he groped towards it in his mind, demanding that it show itself, and again it vanished before him, mocking his fears.
How often, he thought, are one’s convictions decided by trivial preference, rather than by a true desire for justice? He felt unusually troubled. Finally, he reached a decision and made his way to the guest quarters, to find Milana of Pellinor. He had need of counsel.
“Well, that was dispiriting,” Milana said, as she poured him another wine. “I had thought better of my fellow Bards. Well, maybe not Noram. Right now I would gladly mince that man and feed him to the pigs.”
“How did the vote run?”
“Me, you, Calis. Everyone else voted for exile for life, and it is confirmed by Bashar. I think it’s shameful.”
Although he had expected the decision, Nelac felt a stab of sorrow. He was silent for a time, studying the slender Bard who sat opposite him, her long black hair swinging across her downcast face, her startling blue eyes averted from his.
“My heart tells me this is a bad decision,” he said at last. “And yet I scarcely know why, aside from my love of Cadvan. Tell me, why did you speak for clemency?”
Milana gave him a candid look. “For the same reasons as you did, I imagine. You heard my argument. I don’t know Cadvan as you do, but in the hunt for Kansabur I perceived his soul, and I know the Light is true in him. Bards should not be so swift to condemn…”
“Noram was one of those who resented Cadvan,” said Nelac. “He often mocked his pedantry. But other arguments, such as Bashar’s … they’re not so easily dismissed.” Those, he thought, were sober judgements from Bards who had thought long and deeply on the question. After all, Cadvan was by no means generally disliked. If he was arrogant, he was also generous: his gift for mockery had always been directed towards Bards who puffed their self-importance, or who used their status to diminish those they considered beneath them.
“You are troubled, my friend,” said Milana. “This is about more than the harsh punishment of an errant Bard, is it not?”
“Milana, there is a shadow. A shadow pressing my mind. And yet I can’t name it, I don’t know what it means. I wonder if it is merely my sadness…”
“Perhaps you perceive a dimming of the Light,” said Milana. “Our colleagues have been less than wise, and have permitted the desire for revenge to overcome their desire for justice. That is what I will carry home tomorrow. But…”
“But?”
Milana didn’t respond for a time. She stood up and walked to the window, staring out with her back turned to Nelac. “There is a deeper Knowing at work here, my friend,” she said at last. “I too feel it. And I don’t understand why our friends are so blind to this. I feel a peril among us, that bears upon this decision. Is it fear, you think, that makes them so unwilling to listen?”
“Fear, certainly. Nothing more, I hope. But I have not before sat in such a debate, where the arguments of the Light had so little purchase.”
“I can tell you that Pellinor would not have made such a judgement.” Milana turned around, and Nelac saw how anger still flickered in her eyes, a blue flame. “It goes hard when the First Bard is against you, and I have never felt Bashar was more misled. Cadvan is Lirhanese, and not in my jurisdiction, so I do not have the weight. I could understand his exile from Lirigon … but for life? From every School? I know it sounds petty, but I resent being bound by this ruling. Had I the authority, I’d admit him to Pellinor, but that choice is taken from me.”
“What is this deeper Knowing you speak of?”
“I fear for Pellinor. I couldn’t speak of this at the Council, for I couldn’t shape the connection.” She paused. “You may not know that Dorn has foredreams,” she said abruptly. Nelac lifted his eyebrows in surprise; he knew Dorn, Milana’s helpmate, a Pilanel Bard.
“No, I didn’t know,” he said.
“We don’t speak of them to others, as a rule,” she said. “But he dreamed before I left for Lirigon. It was a terrible dream, and he wouldn’t tell me the whole: but among other visions, he said he saw Pellinor burned and sacked. And afterwards he said, do not permit Cadvan to be sent away, for our children will need him…” She looked down at her hands. “Dorn and I have no children,” she said. “It was a strange thing to say. And yet I knew, with all the foresight given me, that it was true.”
“Perhaps he meant all children,” said Nelac.
Milana shook her head. “Maybe I should have spoken of this. I regret now that I didn’t. But it likely would have made no difference. Foredreams are rightly distrusted: how do we know they are not merely phantoms of sleep? And if they are true, how often do they set feet on the very path they prophesy? But when the vote was cast, Nelac, a dismal weight fell across my heart, as if our future had narrowed. I felt it was the first footstep towards doom.”
VI
TWO weeks after the First Circle confirmed Cadvan of Lirigon’s formal banishment as a Bard of Annar, Dernhil of Gent abruptly pulled up his horse on the road to Lirigon, causing a farmer who was driving a cartful of hay hard behind almost to run into him. The farmer cursed him roundly, and Dernhil started and apologised, moving to the side of the road. The farmer, slightly mollified, drove past, staring at the Bard. As he reported later to his wife, Dernhil seemed like a man stunned: he remained by the road, his horse prancing impatiently beneath him, until the farmer passed the next bend and could no longer see him. “White as a sheet, he was,” he said. “Didn’t know if he was coming or going. He might still be standing there, for all I know.” He sniffed, before dismissing the mystery. “Bards!”
Dernhil was oblivious to the farmer’s curiosity. He had pulled up his mare, Hyeradh, when he rode over a hill and saw, for the first time in more than a year, the red-tiled roofs of the School of Lirigon in the valley below. The sight swept a wave of nausea through his whole body, bathing him in a cold sweat. All the terror and grief of that nigh
t in the Inkadh Grove seemed to possess him: for an endless moment it was as if he were back there, standing in the shadows of the pines as Cadvan woke the dead, as Ceredin ran towards him, crying out in dismay and horror… Dernhil was shocked by how even the distant sight of the School brought those memories back; it was as sharp as if it had happened yesterday, instead of two years before. He wondered if he could bear to return.
At last, prompted by his mount’s increasing skittishness, Dernhil urged her on towards Lirigon. Infected by his mood, Hyeradh began to shy at things she would normally never notice: tree stumps, stray chickens, children playing. When a dog barked suddenly from behind a wall, Dernhil was nearly thrown off, forcing him to gather his scattered wits. But that last mile of road to Lirigon was harder than he could have ever imagined: he felt as if he were forcing himself, step by step, back into a nightmare.
Dernhil hadn’t sent ahead to inform the School of his arrival. Norowen, who was at the gate, recognized his tall, slender figure with a cry of surprise and ran towards him. “Dernhil! By the Light, how lovely to see you. What are you doing here?”
He dismounted and returned her embrace. Norowen was one of the healers who had cared for him in the dark months of his illness, and they had become good friends; but glad as he was to see her, she too brought back dark memories. Was every association in Lirigon to be tainted with horror? He forced himself to smile, and replied lightly that he had a fancy to visit Nelac.
Norowen stood back, holding his shoulders and examining his face. “You look pale,” she said. “It’s a long journey from Gent, Dernhil. Are you recovered enough?” Seeing a flicker of irritation in his eyes, she let him go. “Now, don’t be annoyed with me. You know you were my first concern for a long time, and I don’t care to see my handiwork treated lightly.”
At this, Dernhil laughed, and some of the strain vanished from his eyes. “And surely I was one of your worst patients!” he said. He clasped her hands and kissed her cheek. “It’s good to see you again, Norowen. But I must see Nelac, and I had no chance of making him come to Gent. Look, I have to stable Hyeradh now, but perhaps we can eat together tomorrow? I’m not planning to ride out straight away.”
Norowen nodded, and watched with a frown as he led his horse away. He still walked with a slight limp, and there was a shadow in his brown eyes, which had used to be brimful of merriment. She wondered if that shadow would ever vanish: it seemed to her that Dernhil’s mobile, expressive face now was set hard against an inner pain. Perhaps it never would go away entirely: Dernhil would never be able to unsee what he had seen, and he would bear the scar from the Bone Queen’s wound until the end of his days. She sighed, and returned to her interrupted errand.
Dernhil made his formal visit to the First Bard, Bashar, who was too courteous to ask him his business or to refer to his last visit. Perceiving her guest’s weariness, she welcomed him warmly, but she didn’t keep him long. Then Dernhil was shown to his guest chamber, and was able to unpack his bag and wash off the grime of his journey. He saw with relief that the pleasant room he was assigned was in a different part of the house from that he knew.
Clean and freshly clothed, he threw himself on his bed and closed his eyes, feeling exhaustion sweep over him. He had by no means travelled hard since he left Gent, making the journey in easy stages, but his endurance was not what it had been.
Nothing was what it had been. When he pictured himself before the events in the Inkadh Grove, he no longer recognized the Bard he was: that man was a stranger, carefree and heedless, no more reckoning of danger than a child. Now he saw death everywhere, a dark pulse in everything living. The world was a different place, and he moved through it as a different person.
He rested only for a short while, then swept his long legs off the bed and stood up slowly, wincing. He went to the casement and looked out joylessly at the darkening day. From here, on the second floor, he could see over the inner courtyard of the Bardhouse, where a herb garden was planted between paths of grey stone that were now blackened with rain. The sun was obscured by heavy clouds that hung low over the School, draining even the red roof tiles of colour. He felt cold and comfortless, although a fire burned brightly in the hearth behind him. Then he shook himself, as if he could shoulder off his black mood, and went to find Nelac.
Nelac was, as Dernhil had hoped, in his rooms. He answered the door with a faint frown of irritation, which cleared as soon as he recognized Dernhil.
“I’m sorry for the interruption,” said Dernhil, looking over Nelac’s shoulder into the room, where a young Bard was staring at him from a table covered with books and paper. “Shall I come back later? I just wanted to see if you were free.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” said Nelac, drawing him inside. “Selmana and I were just about to finish.” He directed a glance of amusement over at Selmana, who had shut the biggest of the volumes with a loud bang. “I’m giving her some help with the Reading. I suspect that Selmana wishes that it were true that you could absorb knowledge from books by sleeping on them; but, alas, the only way to do so is by reading them.”
“If I slept on the Aximidiaë, I’d have the biggest crick in my neck and I would never walk straight for the rest of my life,” said Selmana.
Dernhil laughed. “So you are a Maker,” he said. “If only Poryphia had thought to write in proper Annaren, instead of the language of her own time!”
“And if only everything she said were not so important!” Selmana was gathering up her notes. “Maybe when I grow up I’ll translate it, so that other poor Bards don’t have to suffer as I do.”
“That is a fine ambition,” said Nelac. “Do you know Dernhil of Gent? Dernhil, this is a stray student of mine, Selmana.”
Selmana shook Dernhil’s hand. “I knew that I recognized your face!” she said. “I couldn’t quite place it, but of course I saw you when you were last here.” She seemed about to say something else, but checked herself, blushing, and glanced at Nelac. “I’ll leave now, I see you want to talk. I’ll come again next week, yes? You don’t know how glad I am of your help…”
“But of course,” said Nelac. As he showed her out, Dernhil stood by the fire, looking around Nelac’s sitting room. Oddly, this time its familiarity was reassuring. Like most Bard quarters, it blended an attention to beauty with comfortable disorder; but what he felt most of all was Nelac’s calming presence. He sat down on the couch and stretched his legs out towards the fire.
“Can I offer you a wine?” said Nelac. “I was planning to eat here later, and you’re welcome to join me, if you’re not too tired…”
“Is it that obvious?” said Dernhil.
“Only to eyes that know you well.”
Dernhil smiled ruefully. “You’re too courteous,” he said. “I’m sure I look as bad as I feel. But yes to both wine and dinner, although I fear I might fall asleep on your most comfortable couch. I was hoping we’d have time to talk properly today.”
Nelac handed Dernhil a glass and sat down, examining him gravely.
“I can’t but wonder what brought you here,” he said. “I didn’t think to see you in Lirigon again.”
“I can’t pretend that it wasn’t – hard – to come back,” said Dernhil. “When I came over Veanhar Hill and first saw the School, I almost turned around and went home. I swear, Nelac, just that glimpse brought it back; it was like it happened all over again. I didn’t expect that.” He took a long gulp of wine. “But I had to see you. I’ve been longing to talk to you this past month, you don’t know how much. There was no one else I could think of speaking to.” His voice cracked, and he stopped.
Nelac leaned forward and gently patted Dernhil’s shoulder. “My friend, be easy. You are here now, and there is plenty of time. But perhaps I am not so astonished that you are here after all.”
Dernhil, who had been staring into the fire, looked up swiftly. “Is it the dreams with you too?” he asked.
“Dreams? No, not dreams,” said Nelac. “I have reasons to worry.??
? He waved his hand impatiently. “I’m right in thinking, though, that this has to do with Cadvan?”
“Yes. Yes, it has, but I don’t know why. But, yes, we have to find Cadvan, wherever he has gone. If he’s dead, then … well, I don’t know what we will do.”
“I would know if Cadvan had died,” said Nelac. His eyes unfocused, and for a few moments he seemed to be seeing into a far distance. “No,” he said at last. “He’s not dead: but he is far away, in thought as well as in body.” There was a short silence, and then Nelac noticed Dernhil’s empty glass, and refilled it. “But we will talk of this later. For now, my friend, I want to hear how things are in Gent.”
Nelac kept the conversation to trifles until after they had eaten dinner, when most of the strain had left Dernhil’s face. He knew Dernhil as the most private of people: he wasn’t given to showing his deeper feelings, even to his closest friends, preferring to hide behind a mask of levity. It was one of the things that had enraged Cadvan, who read Dernhil’s lightness as a studied insult.
Had Cadvan been in his right mind and disposed to be fair, Nelac reflected, he might have considered that, for all his apparent confidence, Dernhil was very shy. He might also have read Dernhil’s poems with more attention: they contained all the feeling and thought that Cadvan claimed was missing in Dernhil’s character. But Cadvan had not been in his right mind.
Nelac studied the young Bard in front of him. Deep shadows were carved under his eyes, and even now he gave off a sense of inner tension barely held in check. When he had first arrived at Nelac’s door, he had seemed to be at a breaking point. At least now the brittleness that had so disturbed Nelac had subsided.