The Bone Queen

by Alison Croggon

  Dernhil smiled, sweeping the counters back into their bag. “Not at all,” he said courteously. “I confess, sometimes your – random approach throws up interesting novelties. I suppose we should eat now. But what will we do? I had expected Nelac hours since.”

  “If I weren’t banned from the Schools, we could just ride into Lirigon, and we wouldn’t be stuck here,” said Cadvan.

  “Perhaps Nelac is seeking a stay on your banishment,” said Dernhil lightly.

  “That’s a lost cause, I fear.” Cadvan hesitated, and then spoke in a rush. “You know, Dernhil, it’s a mystery to me what use I could possibly be. It seems to me that I’m an impediment, if anything.”

  “Ceredin insisted you had to be found, remember,” said Dernhil. “And I know it to be true.”

  “But not why?”

  Dernhil heard the trouble in Cadvan’s voice, and answered him gently. “No,” he said. “I don’t know why. The need to find you is the only thing that has been clear to me in this whole mess.”

  Cadvan started to respond, and then stopped himself. There seemed no point in telling Dernhil of the doubts that assailed him. “I hope nothing is wrong in Lirigon,” he said. “It chafes, being forced to wait like this.”

  “It does.” Dernhil met Cadvan’s eyes. “I do fear…” He trailed off into silence.

  “Fear what?”

  Dernhil shrugged, smiling sadly. “That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

  XIV

  SHE knew neither pain nor hunger nor sorrow nor fear. She knew neither love nor delight nor pleasure. She merely was, as if she had always been there, standing on the slope of a grey hill, her feet crushing the ashen grass. She thought she could hear whispers on the very edge of her hearing, as if the air were full of lips. Perhaps they were calling her name. What was her name? She sometimes remembered that she had a name. She must remain hidden, otherwise no one might find her. She was afraid of no one. No one had no face. No one had no name. No one had a name. She had a name. No face a name. No one. Every one. Many and one. She was very afraid now. She stood on the slope where the stars let fall their hard light and strained her eyes, looking for no one. Who was no one? She remembered nothing, no, she remembered no one, she remembered a mouth of nothing, she remembered a devouring breath, but still she remained, surely she was someone, she was not no one, she had a name, her own name, if only she remained hidden from no one…

  Cadvan sat bolt upright, sweat pouring down his face. Impatiently he wiped his forehead with the sheet, and then he set a magelight hovering above his bed.

  He was in his bedroom in the Bural inn. He set the light bobbing about the chamber: there was his pack, there was the casement, slightly open to admit the night air, there was the chest at the end of the bed, there was the candleholder with the half-burned tallow. It was a pleasant room, beamed and whitewashed and comfortably furnished, but it was very small, and there wasn’t much to see. All the same, Cadvan’s scrutiny took some time; he examined each object closely before he moved on to the next, as if he suspected it of being other than it appeared.

  When he had finished his inspection, he pulled his knees up to his chin like a little boy, and hid his face until his breathing had returned to normal and the sweat had dried on his skin.

  At the moment of waking, he had been terrified, although he couldn’t say why. It was as if he were someone else. That was the clearest thing about the nightmare: everything else was jumbled into a confusion of inexplicable horror. He, or she, was lost. Perhaps he, or she, was dead? Perhaps he dreamed of Ceredin, walking the Shadowplains, searching endlessly for the Gates? But surely he would know if Ceredin entered his dreams? He had no sense of her. But he hadn’t dreamed about her, whoever she was; he had been her. Surely it wasn’t Ceredin?

  He judged it must be the chill hours before dawn, but sleep had fled. Cadvan idly thought of waking Dernhil, as he wanted to talk; but then he discarded the idea. The evening before, they had retired late after fruitlessly waiting all day for Nelac, and Cadvan had watched the strain in Dernhil’s face deepening as the hours passed. Perhaps nothing was wrong, perhaps there was a good reason for Nelac’s absence, but it was unlike him not to send a message if he was expected. They had talked distractedly of other things, passing the time, and when it was finally clear that Nelac would not arrive that day, they had gone to bed.

  Restlessly, Cadvan went to the window and flung open the casement as wide as it would go. He leant on the sill, resting his cheek on the frame. It was deep night, well after moonset; although the sky was clear, a haze dimmed even the brighter stars. He breathed in the cool air; below his window a stand of lavender released its fragrance into the night. The scent comforted him. The Shadowplains didn’t smell of anything; you could see and hear them, you could feel the rough stone and the inert coldness of the air, but you could smell nothing. Nothing at all.

  He had often had nightmares about the Shadowplains, since the hunt for Kansabur. This was different. He didn’t know why he had been so afraid. It was as if a roof that he hadn’t even known was there had lifted off his mind, and suddenly all his perceptions were alert and awake. And yet all this new perceptiveness had revealed was a sense of not knowing, an overwhelming terror of something that he couldn’t see and couldn’t name. It was too strange…

  He sat very still for some minutes, gazing out over the dim landscape. Then, as if he had reached a decision, he hastily covered himself with a cloak against the chill, and rapped softly on Dernhil’s door. Dernhil’s room was opposite his, across a narrow corridor. When no one answered, he turned the handle and walked in.

  Dernhil’s chamber was as tiny as Cadvan’s; there was room for a bed, a chest and a small, narrow table by the window. Cadvan sat down heavily, hoping the weight would wake the other Bard, but Dernhil only turned over, muttering something in his sleep. Cadvan shook his shoulder and Dernhil sat up at last, rubbing his eyes.

  “Light’s sake, Cadvan,” he said. “I was fast asleep. What do you want? What time is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cadvan. “It’s the small hours of the night. I need to talk to you.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Drinking? No! Look, I’m sorry to wake you up.”

  “You don’t look sorry,” said Dernhil irritably.

  “I had a terrible dream. And I was this woman, and I didn’t know who I was. And when I woke up, I wasn’t certain if I was really here…”

  Dernhil hid his face in his hands. “Cadvan, you have been drinking. You can’t wake me up in the middle of the night to babble nonsense at me…”

  Cadvan grabbed Dernhil’s shoulder and breathed in his face. “Can you smell anything on my breath?”

  “Garlic,” said Dernhil, screwing up his nose. “All right, I’ll allow you probably haven’t been drinking. But what…”

  “I was afraid. I was in the Shadowplains, Dernhil. And I was as frightened as I’ve ever been.”

  There was a short silence and then Dernhil nodded, his face pale and drawn in the small magelight that bobbed above the Bards. He sat up, shrugging a blanket around his shoulders.

  “In the Shadowplains, you say?”

  Now he had an attentive audience, Cadvan hesitated, wary of the irony in Dernhil’s glance, and then spoke in a rush.

  “I think we’re thinking about Kansabur in the wrong way.”

  “So, what is the right way?”

  Cadvan stared at the ceiling, where the soft bloom of the magelight made criss-cross shadows of the crooked beams.

  “Kansabur is hunting. Yes? She is stalking through the Circles, in the Shadowplains and in the World, seeking to bring herself bodily back into the World. It seems to me that when we made the banishment, she split, like a ball of mercury when you drop it on the floor, and all these parts fled into different corners, hiding from the Light. If she hid herself in a boar, she could be anywhere. Yet why do I have absolutely no sense of her?”

  Impatience flickered in Dernhi
l’s eyes. “Does it matter?”

  “It nags at me. It seems odd that I should have no intuitions about this. At first I thought it was because I am stupid, ungifted in this way. But it is odd, Dernhil. I am too wounded by Kansabur not to have at least some weight in my Knowing… It’s as if I have a scarf drawn over my Bard senses…”

  “Perhaps you put the scarf there yourself. Out of fear, or…”

  “Yes, I wondered that too. But … tonight, I was somebody else, in the Shadowplains. It wasn’t a dream, I was there. And it was as if everything opened in my awareness. It was as if I could only enter my own Knowing through the soul of another.” He glanced at Dernhil, and saw that the other Bard was suddenly intent. “I can’t help wondering if I am already … caught, whether something of Kansabur’s being passed into mine during that long struggle two years ago, and lives yet in my mind.”

  “Like a parasite, you mean?”

  “Yes, like that. Feeding on my thoughts, hiding from me, hiding me from myself.”

  Dernhil sat back, folding his arms, and studied Cadvan closely, as if he were examining him for some flaw.

  “I see no sign of that,” he said at last. “It seems to me that your darkness is all your own.”

  Cadvan flushed. “I don’t mean that,” he said, his voice rough. “By now, you should know me well enough… I do not seek to evade my own acts.”

  Dernhil said nothing. His expression was neutral, watchful.

  “I thought,” said Cadvan, “that you might scry me.”

  At this, Dernhil’s eyebrows shot up. “No, Cadvan, surely…”

  “I’d ask Nelac, but he’s not here. And there’s no one else I would trust…”

  “You mean, now?”

  “Once you’re properly awake,” said Cadvan.

  “Scry you? Now?”

  Cadvan knew that what he was asking of Dernhil was outrageous, and so he saw no point in apologising for it. Scrying was the most intimate of acts, and was difficult and traumatic for both the scryer and the scried. Cadvan was asking Dernhil to look into his mind, to enter his very soul; he would expose his most private memories, his most painful and humiliating experiences, his most vulnerable hopes and joys.

  “I think that if I am right, and Kansabur has left something of her essence in my being, scrying will expose it,” he said. “That, perhaps, the hunter can become the hunted. There might be a spoor, some kind of trace…” He looked up. “Of course, it might be nothing.”

  “I’d rather you wanted to make love,” said Dernhil, smiling crookedly. “That was my first thought, when you barged in here. I could easily refuse that.”

  “It’s a much lesser question,” said Cadvan gravely. Then he gave Dernhil a sharp look. “Would you really refuse me?”

  “Probably.” Dernhil’s eyes brimmed with sudden laughter. “Honestly, Cadvan, have you no grace? What a thing to ask!”

  Cadvan’s rare smile leapt in his face. “It occurs to me that I might love you well enough.”

  Dernhil looked briefly astonished. “And to think that all these years I thought you hated me!” he said lightly.

  “You know I don’t hate you,” said Cadvan. “I think you know I never did. Nor you me. And you, maybe more than anyone else I know, understand that there are many kinds of love.” He gestured impatiently. “That’s not what I’m asking, anyway.”

  “I know.” Dernhil met his gaze darkly. “Only you would demand such a thing, in the middle of the night, from me, of all people!”

  “Yes,” said Cadvan, a soft mockery in his voice. “From you, of all people!”

  Dernhil looked down at his hands and was silent for a time, thinking. Cadvan waited patiently, watching him. When Dernhil looked up, his face was open, and a smile lurked at the back of his eyes.

  “Perhaps I love you enough to scry you, Cadvan,” he said. “And that is a great deal more than you deserve.”

  “Have you scried someone before?”

  “Yes, once. It was horrible.”

  “I haven’t. I just have the words of the charm. I don’t know what it’s like.” Cadvan hesitated and then spoke in a rush. “It’s a feeling, no more, a sense in my Knowing,” he said. “Not an idle feeling, or I wouldn’t ask; but it may all be for nothing.”

  “I understand that,” said Dernhil.

  “You … will have to forgive me.”

  Dernhil met his gaze levelly. “I understand that, too,” he said.

  Dernhil refused to scry Cadvan while he was still half asleep, and Cadvan refused to wait until morning. In the end, Cadvan ventured downstairs to the empty kitchen to make Dernhil a tea that would help wakefulness. It took him some time to find the right ingredients, but a search of Stefan’s pantry turned up some dried milk-vetch and red medlar berries, which he steeped together in a kettle, and drew off into a clay mug. As an afterthought, he sweetened it with a generous spoonful of honey.

  By the time he returned Dernhil had dressed himself, and had lit the candle on the table underneath his window; but he had also fallen asleep again. Cadvan shook him brusquely and he sat up, blinking, and drank the tea, grimacing at its sweetness.

  “I think you need not have added the honey,” he said.

  “I thought it might make it more palatable.”

  “One day, when all this is over, I’ll redirect you to the herbals you have clearly forgotten.” Dernhil handed the mug to Cadvan. “Well. I am as alert as can be expected, I suppose. Shall we do this thing here?”

  “Do we need to stand? Do we need more room?”

  “I don’t think it matters. I mean, you’re supposed to be able to breathe openly.”

  After some discussion, the two Bards sat cross-legged on the bed facing each other. Cadvan suddenly felt sick with apprehension, and swallowed convulsively.

  “Are you certain?” said Dernhil.

  Cadvan nodded tensely, and Dernhil placed his hands on Cadvan’s shoulders, instructing Cadvan to do the same.

  “Now,” said Dernhil, looking into his eyes. “Empty your mind. Expect nothing. There is nothing to expect. Fear nothing. There is nothing to fear…” He breathed in deeply, and then repeated the same words in the Speech, speaking rapidly in a low voice, before he began the incantation.

  As the syllables of the Speech fell into his mind, Cadvan sensed a pallid light increasing behind his eyes. At first he flinched, and it dimmed; but the syllables of the Speech stilled him, falling gently into his awareness, and his mind opened and the light entered him, blooming more richly until it was like the golden radiance of a late summer afternoon, a honeyed flood building in his mind with an insistent pressure, opening its forgotten places. He was an infant, staring at a moth lying, perfectly whole and perfectly dead, on a stone-flagged floor; he was a five-year-old child, persuading an angry dog not to bite him, in its own language; he was a young boy, watching his aunt wash her hair in the kitchen, swinging back her head so her hair and the water flying from it made a silver arc; he was running from an orchard he had plundered of apricots, laughing; he was watching his father at work, admiring the skill of his weathered hands as he shaped the sole of a boot; he was leaning forward to kiss Ceredin for the first time, and her hair brushed against his cheek…

  The flood of memories increased, overwhelming him. It was as if his entire life were happening at once in a single, endless moment, a vortex of texture and colour and smell and sound and feeling in which he had no foothold, so he was tumbled in himself, as helpless as a single leaf in a tornado. Now he couldn’t flinch away, even if he wanted to; and a darkness was growing in the vortex, an angry eye of pain. There was no protection here: his nerves were raw and unsheathed, and he felt everything again, more bitter than rue: the sour taste of disappointment and malice, the white-hot agony of rage, the desperate chill of grief and loneliness; and still the memories gathered force, whirling him powerlessly through them, the scars of love and hope, of delight and anguish, of humiliation and pride and terror, of everything that made him who he w
as.

  It was unendurable, he was sure he would break, and still it wasn’t the worst; the worst yet lay hidden within him, and he was afraid he couldn’t bear it, the black flood that must now erupt and erase everything. But there was no black flood, no undifferentiated sweep of despair and emptiness. It was all bitterly clear, each single moment vivid in its detail. The sweet, heavy perfume of hunaf flowers, the trees of the Inkadh Grove, every twig outlined against the heavily starred sky, the metal taste of the Black Speech on his tongue, the grim dead queen wrenching aside his circle of power and reaching towards him with her arms of bone, the blue-edged scythe of sorcery, the black sword sweeping in a deadly arc, Ceredin falling voiceless to the ground, a red flood erupting from her throat, her belly. He screamed in his mind, but there was no sound. And still the memories crowded the moment, layer upon layer upon layer, in this place where there was no time; the haunted Shadowplains, the tormented shepherd, Hal crouched in the corner of his kitchen in Jouan, frowning as she pummelled dried herbs in a stone mortar, Nelac embracing him as he stood for the first time after his illness…

  And there, in a corner in this place of no corners, something else. Something like a stench that yet had a strange solidity; something that, in all this whirl of Cadvan, was not-Cadvan. In the fountain of himself, a malignant intelligence, formless and winding like vapour, but present, ever more present, scrabbling to hide itself from the inexorable light that poured through Cadvan’s being. Cadvan was aware of a wave of disgust, as if his soul were retching. He could feel this thing tightening within him, as if it were some shelled creature closing its claws on his most sensitive skin, hundreds of little claws, each one needle-sharp and toxic, piercing him. And still the light grew larger and brighter, so that nothing might hide; and as the creature became more visible, so it gained solidity, its claws tightening and lengthening, driving deeper into him, until a red mist of torment obscured everything. Suddenly, bright and brief and vivid, he saw Dernhil, haloed with magery, speaking words that Cadvan could no longer understand, and a terrible pressure wrenched him, as if he were being ripped in two, and he thought he was going to die. And then he remembered nothing.