The Bone Queen

by Alison Croggon

  Nelac left Bural in the early afternoon. Although he had told them that he felt clearer for their discussion, and that he would return the following day when they had all had a chance to think, Dernhil and Cadvan were both struggling with a strong sense of anticlimax.

  “Nelac’s right, of course,” said Cadvan. “As he always is. But this makes my banishment from the Schools a matter of real tedium. Must I kick my heels in this forsaken inn while we wait for the Light to blaze up like a beacon and show us what must be done?”

  Dernhil grinned. Cadvan was slumped back in a chair, unshaven and grumpy, his long legs thrust out before him. “I don’t think that’s quite what Nelac meant,” he said.

  Cadvan shot him a withering glance. “Don’t you start being right as well,” he said. “It’s too much to bear.”

  “For my part, I need a wash,” said Dernhil. “I didn’t have time this morning. I see that it’s market day in Bural. Maybe we should get out in the sunshine and buy some of the Lirhanese cheese that you’ve been missing so much.”

  Cadvan laughed, and they agreed to meet again in half an hour to inspect the sights of Bural. These were few indeed: it was a small village of perhaps three dozen houses, all built with the grey granite and red clay roofs common in the area. There was a meeting hall in the centre of town, and before that was a stone-flagged square dotted with a motley selection of stalls. Mostly they were selling food: hams and pickles, mounds of autumn fruit, fish taken from the Lir River, fresh in its scales or salted or smoked for winter. There was a knife-grinder in one corner, and in another two minstrels plied their trade, for the coins the villagers would throw into their hats. Various pigs and cows tethered by their owners, waiting for buyers, added to the general hubbub.

  Cadvan bought a round of cheese, bargaining ruthlessly and with evident pleasure with the seller. After buying a loaf of the white wheaten bread particular to Bural, the Bards retreated to a nearby green, which was deserted aside from a few cows and a group of children playing tag, to make a rough picnic in the warm sunshine.

  Dernhil had watched Cadvan curiously at the market: it struck him that Cadvan was at home in a way he had never seen him in the School. It wasn’t simply that Cadvan spoke with the accent of Lirigon, and that Dernhil was instantly recognizable as a stranger; Dernhil was always deferred to as a Bard, although his clothing was plain, but no one seemed to think that Cadvan was anything but another Lirhan farmer.

  “You’re a skilful bargainer,” Dernhil said, tearing a chunk from the loaf and topping it liberally with the soft cheese.

  “My father taught me. I did most of the buying for the house, and he sorely hated seeing money go to waste.”

  “But you like it, too.”

  “I think all Lirhanese love bargaining,” said Cadvan. “It’s a game. Usually you both know where you’ll end up. It’s the getting there that counts.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Dernhil. “I confess, I’ve always been one to pay the asking price of anything.”

  “Those stallholders would love you,” said Cadvan. “And they’d also despise you as a soft Bard from Gent, raised on silken sheets, who never had to count his coins at the end of the week.”

  “Aside from the silken sheets, they’d probably be right,” said Dernhil. He yawned and lay back, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hands. A comfortable silence fell between them.

  “When do you think you’ll return to Gent?”

  Dernhil sat up. “I’m not sure I should,” he said.

  “But surely your task here is done. You brought me back, like a good dog.”

  Dernhil spluttered. “Like a good dog! And you, I suppose, are the rabbit I’ve run to ground!”

  “I am an excellent rabbit,” said Cadvan, making ears with his hands.

  Dernhil studied him. “No, you look nothing like a rabbit. And I, contrary to your outrageous assertions, am not a dog, good or bad.” He turned over on his stomach and starting pulling grass stems from the ground. “Seriously, Cadvan, the truth is that I feel I haven’t finished my part. Although I scarcely know what my part is. And I don’t want to go back to Gent.”

  “Why?”

  “Mostly, I’m afraid that the nightmares will return. But it’s more than that.”

  Cadvan’s face had darkened at the mention of Dernhil’s nightmares, and he didn’t answer him for a while.

  “I think you’re right to stay,” he said at last. “But maybe that’s just because I would be grateful for your company. I’d feel quite lonely, else.”

  Dernhil met his eyes, and then looked away, disconcerted by Cadvan’s frankness. Clearing his throat, he said: “Well, I’ll certainly stay for the meantime.”

  “Good,” said Cadvan. He sat up, brushing crumbs from his jerkin, and sniffed the air. “The wind is going to change,” he said. “It’ll rain later.”

  As Cadvan had predicted, the wind that afternoon shifted north, running down from the Osidh Elanor heavy with rain, dragging a hint of ice in its wake. Gusts sprang up abruptly, sweeping over the grass in starts like invisible animals and thrashing the trees. They made it back to the cosy parlour of The Fat Hen just before the rain began.

  Dernhil stared gloomily out of the window as the first big, slow drops intensified into a violent downpour. “It’s so dark, you’d think it were nightfall!” he said. “I doubt that Nelac will make it here tomorrow, if it keeps on like this.”

  “Who knows?” said Cadvan. He flung himself on a settle by a newly lit fire. “The weather changed quick enough, that’s for sure. Who’s to say it won’t turn again?”

  “Is it always this unsettled in Lirigon? I don’t remember it being this volatile…”

  Cadvan shrugged. “It’s autumn,” he said. “We often get storms before the snow.”

  Dernhil didn’t answer. Cadvan watched him as he stood in the window embrasure, the grey, changing light playing over his expressive face. The rain was beginning to lighten; the silver-edged clouds in the west suggested that the sun might even come out again.

  “I wish it weren’t autumn,” Cadvan said. “Something tells me that we’ll be travelling before long. In the cold and the rain.”

  “Do you think so?” said Dernhil, looking up. “But where, my friend? And why? If we’re running on the hunting grounds of the Shadowplains, we might as well enter them from here as anywhere…”

  “Just a feeling. Different doors lead to different places.”

  “I’m a bit weary of feelings,” said Dernhil, with sudden venom.

  “They’re all we have to go on, it seems,” said Cadvan. “Or almost all, anyway.”

  Stefan, the innkeeper, entered the room, looking harassed, and told them that the rainstorm had come on so quickly he hadn’t had time to get all his chickens under shelter. These were Redfarthings, a breed famous for the quality of its meat and eggs, and were Stefan’s pride and joy (as well as notable additions to his menu). He feared that at least two of them were missing. “I wish the rain would lighten up, so I could find them,” he said. “They’ll be off their laying for days, after all this.”

  “They probably found shelter of their own,” said Dernhil soothingly. “Even in such a sudden shower as this.”

  Stefan suddenly recalled the Bards were guests and asked if they would like some ale, or wine, or perhaps a laradhel, of which he kept an excellent vintage in his cellars. They plumped for laradhel, and Stefan returned swiftly with a bottle and two glasses on a tray. He peered doubtfully through the window.

  “I think I can check the hens now,” he said.

  “Good luck,” said Cadvan, smiling. “I’m sure they will be fine. Redfarthings are far from a feather-brained breed.”

  “Feather-brained! No, indeed not!” Stefan looked briefly outraged at the thought, and then nodded anxiously and departed. There was a short silence after he had left, and then both Dernhil and Cadvan began to laugh.

  “I wouldn’t mock Stefan for anything in the world,” said Dernhil. �
��And he has a way with a pie that would make him sought after in the high halls of Gent. But he – he does sometimes look very like one of his chickens…”

  Cadvan poured two tiny glasses of laradhel, and handed one to Dernhil. “I’m sure we’ll hear if there is any disaster.”

  “Aye.” Dernhil raised his glass, smiling. “Here’s to Stefan’s Redfarthings!”

  XIII

  ALONE in his bedchamber that night, Cadvan sat for a long time in the window seat, looking out over Bural. Now the storm had passed the sky was clear, save for a few wisps of cloud hurrying past, and the night chorus of frogs and crickets floated up in the still air. It was deeply peaceful, and for a while he allowed himself to sink into that peace, ignoring the black depression that pushed at the edges of his mind, building up like a flood at a dam.

  When Dernhil had first told him of his belief that the Bone Queen still walked in Lirigon, Cadvan had thought it likely a result of Dernhil’s trauma, a fear rather than a reality. Even Dernhil’s encounter with Ceredin had left a space for reservation: something was wrong, that was not in dispute, but whether that wrong was caused by Kansabur, or was due to some other evil, had seemed to Cadvan uncertain. But Nelac’s tale of Selmana and the boar, and especially of the being that had attempted to invade her body, had removed all doubt from his mind. Nelac might counsel caution, fearing to leap to hasty judgement, but, like Dernhil, Cadvan now felt no doubt at all.

  How comforting that doubt had been. Cadvan’s lip curled with contempt: in some corner of his mind there had lurked a cowardly hope that, whatever this wrong was, it wasn’t his fault. Now it was clear that the business he had thought was over, his penance set, was not finished at all. Were such acts as his ever complete, could he ever atone for them? He thought of the long nights in which he had gone over his actions again and again, wishing with a hopeless passion that it were possible to go back. Even Bards can’t change the flow of time, he thought. One lesson of the Balance was that an act, whether it was for good or ill, was irrevocable: one could heal, perhaps, but one could not undo.

  These thoughts were as familiar as his own smell, and Cadvan was so sick of them, so tired of how easily his mind settled into the relentless tread of self-blame. Coming home to Lirigon, to the scene of his crime, was a mixed blessing: at first, to be back in familiar surroundings, among people who spoke with his accent and whose ways he understood, had been an unexpected joy; but it also reminded him heavily of why he had left. He thought of his brothers and sisters and, painfully, of his father, but then his thoughts flinched away; he hoped he would not see them. If he remained in Bural, on the other side of the Lirigon Fesse, it was unlikely. No one here had even recognized him.

  Nelac had been right to rebuke him: it was only one step from self-blame to self-pity, a cancerous vanity. He surely knew better than that. And yet his hopelessness stemmed in part from feeling useless. Whether or not what was happening now was his fault was really immaterial: that was his private pain, and not the business of anyone else. If he could be of help in fighting the evil that stirred in Lirigon, he might perhaps feel a little better. But what help could he possibly offer?

  Even though he was no longer a Bard of the School of Lirigon, no edict could take away his native powers: they still lived within him, and whether they were welcome or no, he laid them in the service of the Light. What little good he could do, he would do with a will, with every breath in his body. Nelac and Dernhil seemed determined that he was needed, but to Cadvan this was a mystery. Privately he thought it a mistake. He remembered again Ceredin’s words: Cadvan is hidden from himself, there is a shadow within him. Through Cadvan the rift has opened. The malice burned through him, and through him finds its shapes. It didn’t mean that he was in any way necessary: it simply meant that he had caused this present crisis. Worse, Ceredin’s words implied that he was blind to himself. Culpable and stupid…

  More than anything, he was disturbed by the idea that he was hidden from himself. It chimed with a vague sense that he couldn’t see properly, that his Knowing was somehow muffled or numbed, but he couldn’t identify it. That deeper, inarticulate sense was silent. He hadn’t really noticed it before, assuming any lack of perception was part of his woundedness, a scar, but now he began to wonder. He searched his inner Knowing for some intuition, some clue about what they might do next, but there wasn’t a single flicker. He gestured impatiently; he could be no help in this quest. It was more likely that he would be a hindrance, a stumbling idiot.

  The blackness rolled in, with all its demons. There was nothing he could do, no act of will that could keep it at bay: it was like trying to stop breathing. For a long time he stared out of the window, absolutely motionless: he saw and heard nothing at all, conscious only of the anguish that corroded his soul. It was intolerable, and he had no defence against it. The only way out, an option he had coldly considered and just as coldly rejected, was to kill himself. After these spells, he would tell himself that they were the price he had to pay for being alive when so many others were dead, that it was the punishment he so richly deserved. But while he was in the grip of this black flood, he knew it meant nothing at all, neither punishment nor salvation. This was the wound he had dealt himself, ulcerous and ugly: it was the truth of his soul, riven by his own hands. It wasn’t madness, as he sometimes thought; it was the worst sort of sanity. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he could survive it. But he always survived. Somehow that seemed the worst thing of all.

  It passed, as it always did. Cadvan raised his head and realized with a small shock that he was still sitting in the window seat. The air coming in the window was chill, and his muscles were stiff and sore: he shivered as he closed the casement, and stood up slowly and dizzily. He had no idea how much time had gone by. The worst of it, he thought bleakly, was that it felt as if he were trapped there for ever, that this lightless sea of pain was the whole of his reality. It was like a fever that slept in his blood, flaring now and then into crisis, and it left him exhausted and drained. His first thought was that he would dearly love a drink, but the inn was wrapped in sleep: the only way to find one would be to steal downstairs and raid Stefan’s cellar. He felt too weary to make the attempt, and instead lay down and wrapped himself up tight in the blankets in an attempt to generate some bodily warmth. He lay staring into the darkness, feeling the beat of his heart as it slowed in his chest, the rasp of his breathing, the surge of blood in his ears.

  Both Dernhil and Cadvan rose early the following day, expecting a visit from Nelac. They breakfasted in the front room, neither inclined to talk, and then settled down to wait. Dernhil moved awkwardly, as if his old wounds were paining him, and Cadvan’s face showed the marks of sleeplessness, but although each noted the signs of a restless night in the other, neither mentioned it. They debated briefly whether to take the air, and decided against it: Nelac might arrive at any moment. In any case, the morning was heavily overcast, with bursts of showers, and neither felt like venturing outside.

  “It’s not bad enough to forbid a journey, and I’m sure Nelac won’t be long,” said Dernhil, squinting at the clouds through the inn’s front window. “But I confess I’d rather stay inside. I’m sure I saw a gis board in the other room yesterday. Perhaps I could challenge you to a game, while we wait?”

  Gis was a complex game of strategy beloved of Bards, usually played on a hexagonal board with black and white counters. Cadvan shrugged. “I’ve never been especially good at it,” he said. “But I’m sure you’d relish another chance to defeat me.”

  Dernhil bit his lip at this reference to their ill-fated poetry duel: but Cadvan had spoken without malice, and he decided to ignore it. He left the room in search of the game, and returned in triumph with a wooden board and a soft leather bag.

  “It sorely needed a dust,” he said. “I think Stefan’s guests are not over-keen on gis. And it took him a little time to remember where the counters might be. He fears some may be lost, in which case we’ll have to play the simp
ler game.”

  Cadvan cast him an ironic glance: he hadn’t missed the gleam in Dernhil’s eyes. Some Bards were fanatical about gis, and wrote long tomes about the theory of the game. It could be played in several variants: the most complicated version gave each player ninety-six counters, and could last for days.

  “I was speaking truth when I said I have little talent for gis,” he said. “I fear you’ll be forced to play with two dozen counters, whether there is a full complement or no.”

  “I never heard of a Bard who couldn’t play gis,” said Dernhil.

  “Oh, I didn’t say I couldn’t play it,” said Cadvan. “But I fear its higher applications have always escaped me.”

  Dernhil grinned. “Twenty-four it is, then,” he said. “Though I warn you that some authorities claim that this version is actually more difficult.”

  They drew their chairs to the hearth and put the board on a low table between them, chatting idly as they placed the counters. The first game was over swiftly, with Dernhil beating Cadvan easily; they began another, but this time Cadvan, his competitive spirit fired, played more seriously. Cadvan lost that game too, and they started another. Slowly the hours passed, with no sign of Nelac.

  After Stefan interrupted their game, asking whether they would be interested in a noon meal, Cadvan sat back in his chair impatiently, running his hands through his hair.

  “It’s not like Nelac not to keep an appointment,” he said.

  Dernhil glanced up, and then placed a counter slowly on the board, taking away two of Cadvan’s. “I win,” he said.

  Momentarily distracted, Cadvan leaned forward and studied the board. “You win? How?”

  “You can’t possibly beat me from your position,” said Dernhil.

  “Surely not!” Cadvan picked up a piece and hesitated, seeing the truth of Dernhil’s statement. “I see. Well, I am beaten roundly. Three out of three. I expect you could wish for a hardier opponent.”