The Bone Queen

by Alison Croggon

  “What do you make of this sky, Coglint?” asked Nelac.

  “It is remarkable,” he answered. “I’ve read of such clouds, but I’ve never seen them with my own eyes; they are very rare. They’ve formed very swiftly, over the past half-hour.”

  “What weather do they tell?” asked Selmana.

  Coglint glanced at her indifferently, dismissing her as a Minor Bard. “The records are not clear,” he said. “Sometimes, as I understand, they simply disappear.”

  “I think these will not vanish,” said Nelac.

  “It’s hard to say,” said Coglint. “But they are certainly still increasing.”

  “The wind increases too, and swiftly. I prophesy a storm,” said Nelac.

  “Surely not.” Coglint looked irritated. “There’s no sign of that in my readings. More rain, I think, but hardly on the scale we’ve seen in the past day.”

  “A storm beyond imagining,” said Nelac. “I hope you’ve warned the School to batten down.”

  “Bashar has issued the appropriate notices,” said Coglint. He started fiddling with his instruments. “If you’ll forgive me…”

  Nelac nodded, and the Bards passed on.

  “Why did you say there would be a storm beyond imagining?” said Selmana. She was afraid now.

  He looked back at her and laughed. “Partly because Coglint annoys me,” he said. “He is good at weatherlore, but apt to think he is the only Bard who knows anything about it. But also because I fear it might be true. I smell something in the wind. A will directs it.”

  “This wrong, it is thickening here,” said Selmana. “Could it be that Likod has entered the First Bardhouse? Surely that isn’t possible, Nelac?” The thought appalled her; she began to feel as if a hollow were opening in her stomach.

  “There are wards here that would destroy any emissary of the Dark the moment they set their hands to the door,” said Nelac. “But I don’t know what is possible any more.”

  They passed into the Bardhouse with no further speech. As she watched Nelac stating his errand to Bashar’s housemistress, Selmana began to wish fiercely that she had not come. She had no business here with the high Bards. But the others had insisted she go with Nelac, to tell Bashar her tale in her own words.

  They knocked on Bashar’s door, and her musical voice told them to enter. The First Bard was seated by the broad arched window at the far end of the chamber. The room was unlit, so it was thrown into a strange gloom, and she appeared to them as a silhouette against the light. At her elbow were the remains of breakfast and an unfinished glass of tea.

  “Good morning, Nelac,” she said.

  “This is Selmana, Minor Bard of Lirigon,” said Nelac, bringing her forward. “She has something of importance to tell you.”

  “You know very well that we are busy today,” said Bashar. “I wonder that you waste my time.”

  “If it weren’t important, I would not be here,” said Nelac. Selmana heard the edge in his voice and quailed inwardly. If Bashar wouldn’t listen to Nelac, what chance was there that she would listen to a mere Minor Bard?

  Nelac paused, to permit Bashar to invite them to sit down, but she simply waited for Nelac to speak. Selmana was feeling more and more awkward; after her first glance, Bashar hadn’t looked at her once since they entered the chamber. Nelac began to tell of Selmana’s vanishing into the Shadowplains, and of his own almost disastrous search for her, when Bashar interrupted him.

  “You demand my time, Nelac. I have no time, and especially not for wild tales such as this.” Contempt flickered across Bashar’s face, and Selmana felt Nelac tense beside her. “I’ve been courteous with your fears and imaginings. But who do you bring with you? This is Selmana, you say? A Minor Bard?”

  Selmana felt her cheeks redden as Bashar gestured towards her, and wished more than ever that she had not come. The First Bard’s scorn was palpable.

  “You came to me two days ago in a panic, claiming that this student had disappeared in mysterious circumstances. I told you not to be concerned. And here she is, safe and well! What story has she told you? Perhaps she covers some shameful escapade. I would not be so trusting of children’s tales, Nelac.”

  Selmana glanced anxiously at Nelac, who stood very still for a few moments, as if he were striving with himself.

  “I would argue that in my time I have earned the right to be heard, even by the First Bard, in the midst of her most important affairs,” he said quietly. He was looking intently at Bashar, and he thought he saw in her face a fleeting uncertainty, a sudden pained hesitation; but it passed so swiftly he couldn’t be sure.

  “Indeed you have, dearest of friends and colleagues,” said Bashar. “But this? Childish fancies and fears, Nelac. There is work to do, and you waste your time in nonsense about the Dark?”

  “Nelac said nothing about the Dark,” said Selmana abruptly. She was shocked by Bashar’s dismissiveness, and felt anger stirring inside her.

  Bashar turned and looked thoughtfully at her. “You must be the latest of Nelac’s little ducklings,” she said. “He has shown poor judgement of late in choosing his favourites.” She returned her gaze to Nelac. “My friend, I swear by the Light, if you do not collect your thoughts and put your powers where they are needed, action must be taken, however reluctantly. Your championing of that scion of the Dark, Cadvan, has not gone unnoticed. There are many who speak of their disturbance and doubt. We begin to wonder where your true loyalties lie. Do not forget what happens to those who betray the Light.”

  The threat was naked in Bashar’s voice. Nelac looked warningly at Selmana, who had opened her mouth to speak, and bowed.

  “Such discourtesy unbecomes you, my lady,” he said. “I would remind you that there has never been need nor reason to question my commitment to the Light. My apologies for our intrusion. We won’t disturb you further.”

  “Report to Norowen,” said Bashar, nodding in dismissal. “You are slated for duties. Perhaps your student might actually be of some use there.” She returned to her contemplation of the sky, and the two Bards left in silence.

  Outside the Bardhouse, Nelac took a deep breath. His expression was unreadable, but he seemed suddenly older. They walked across the Inner Circle in silence, wrapping their cloaks against the wind. Selmana looked around uneasily: it was already a gale, and the sky seemed more sinister every moment.

  “I didn’t know the First Bard was so…” Selmana trailed off and looked at Nelac. She smarted with humiliation, but felt more the lack of respect that had been shown to Nelac.

  “That was not the First Bard,” said Nelac shortly.

  “What do you mean?” Selmana went cold, as if all the blood in her body had ceased to move. She thought she could begin to guess what Nelac meant.

  “I think that Likod has scried her by force,” said Nelac, after a pause. “The Dark can do such things. And if scrying is done against a Bard’s will, the mind can be broken, and the body can become a puppet to be used at will. It happened often during the Wars of the Silence, according to the records. But no Bard would do that, surely. Only a Hull would do such a thing…”

  Selmana felt sick at the thought of such violation. “So you think that Likod is definitely a Hull?”

  “There has always been rumour of Hulls who survived the defeat of their master,” said Nelac. “If Likod is a Hull, he must be newly made. Even though the Nameless One can offer them immortality, he cannot prevent their bodies from aging. Likod is not even old. And only the Nameless One can create Hulls.”

  Selmana shuddered and thought about what she had been taught about Hulls. She had read of them in old tales out of the Great Silence when the Nameless One had ruled all Annar, forcing the Light out to the Seven Kingdoms, where it remained defiant through the long years of tyranny. That Hulls should be in Lirigon seemed impossible; they were part of a distant past that was long over, that belonged only in dusty, half-forgotten books and children’s tales.

  “But how could a Hull enter the Sch
ool?”

  “I wish I knew.” Nelac sighed heavily. “It seems likely to me that Bashar, like Cadvan and I, had something of Kansabur hidden in her soul. And perhaps that opened a gateway, a chink in her protection, which meant she couldn’t resist Likod, for all her native power. But that doesn’t explain how he could have passed the wards, unless Bashar herself took them down. Perhaps he can step through the Circles, from Shadow to the World, in ways we don’t understand, and so bypass them.”

  “Will Bashar be all right?” said Selmana, in a small voice.

  Nelac halted, turning to face her, and Selmana was startled by the grief she saw standing in his eyes. “No,” he said, his voice harsh. “If I am right in my guess, and I think I am, there is no returning from what has been done to her. The Hull might be expelled from her mind, but even if she survives that, she will be forever after broken and diminished. Sometimes Hulls do this to Bards for no reason except their own amusement, to laugh at their torment.” His voice broke and he was silent for a time. “Bashar was a great Bard, wise and just. A true friend, through all our differences. To think of what has happened to her is beyond bearing.”

  “That was unsubtle,” said Cadvan back in Nelac’s chambers, after Nelac had reported their visit. “One would think that the Dark would have more guile.”

  “The Dark has its own blindnesses,” said Nelac. “They cannot imagine that others should have desires different from their own, and they only desire power. Likod believes a First Bard would wear her authority as tyranny, because that is what he would do.”

  “Had Likod been cleverer, he would not have cut you off with such impatience,” said Dernhil.

  “The Dark was ever arrogant in its cruelty,” said Cadvan. “I should know.”

  “For my part, I’m surprised by how little concerned he was to conceal his hostility,” said Nelac. “But do not underestimate his cunning. Perhaps he thinks to provoke us into making an unwary accusation against Bashar, which he can then use to discredit me.”

  “We should not stay in your rooms,” said Cadvan.

  “I think that Likod believes we are presently thwarted. We can do little in the School without Bashar’s help. All the same, I agree it would be wise to go elsewhere.”

  “Will Bashar survive this?” said Dernhil.

  “Perhaps,” said Nelac. “Some Bards did. But the records say that they were never the same afterwards. We must do what we can to help her, but I fear it is already too late.”

  There was a bleak silence.

  “Now,” said Nelac. “We should prepare ourselves.” He took a key ring from his belt and led them to the general storeroom in his Bardhouse. Selmana’s eyes opened wide in wonder: here was kept anything Bards might conceivably need to do their work. Neatly stacked on shelves that went to the ceiling were spare instruments, reeds and strings for flutes and lyres, stacks of fine paper and bundles of pens, a small armoury of weapons, including short swords and the slender bows Bards preferred, shields and light armour, and astrolabes and other delicate instruments. Nelac looked at the other Bards and chose swiftly, throwing them practical travelling clothes: breeches, jerkins and stout boots, the thickly woven cloaks of sheep’s wool that were a particular craft in Lirhan, and some packs and saddlebags. “Take these,” he said. “There are other sizes, if these don’t fit.”

  They retired to his living room and changed. Selmana, who was shy, used the screen for privacy. Then Nelac took their Bard clothes and folded them away for laundering, and they packed their bags: kits for horse care, travelling victuals such as pulses, nuts and dried fruits, goose grease for their boots, a flask of medhyl each, flints for lighting fires, soap and salt, and other things they would need for a long journey.

  “Are we going away?” asked Selmana uneasily.

  “Not yet,” said Nelac. “And perhaps not at all. But we may have to flee Lirigon.”

  Selmana swallowed hard and looked at the heavy pack at her feet. She felt very uncertain and inexperienced next to these sober-faced Bards. She had never been outside the Fesse of Lirigon in her life. “So what do we do now?”

  “Now?” said Cadvan. He was back in disguise, but he smiled, and she saw fleetingly through the dour face of the Lirhanese farmer a glimpse of Cadvan, mercurial and joyously reckless. “Now we hunt down the Hull. And we destroy it.”

  “It?”

  “Bards don’t permit Hulls the dignity of sex,” said Dernhil gravely.

  There was a brief silence, and then Selmana burst into snorting laughter. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, gasping as she tried to control herself, conscious of a hysterical edge in her voice. “But that sounded so funny.”

  But Cadvan was laughing too. “It’s true,” he said. “They have no sex. When they reject death, Hulls reject the life of their flesh. It no longer matters to them. And so the bodies of others don’t matter to them either: they become only objects for them to use at their will. They are not man nor woman nor any other of the five sexes. And they do not love.”

  “So why do we always speak of the Nameless One as if he is a man?” she asked. “And why do we say Kansabur is she? Aren’t they Hulls? Or are they special Hulls?”

  “The Nameless One is not a Hull,” said Nelac, who had been listening, smiling faintly, as he checked over his pack to ensure he hadn’t forgotten anything. “No one knows what spell he used to bind his spirit within the World, but he has kept it for himself alone. And the Bone Queen? Well, she was a Hull, but the rumour is that she was also something more: it is said she reached into the Abyss and took the Shika, the Terror of the Abyss, into her being, and that is the source of her dread. I don’t know if that is true. But when she ruled over the Realm of Lir, she took a queenly form, dire and beautiful to those without the eyes of Bards. Bards, of course, saw her otherwise. So in Lirhan, we call her she. You should know already that Bards are not always consistent.” He stood up and looked at the others. “Well, are we ready?”

  “I am,” said Dernhil. “But I confess that I have no idea what you plan to do.”

  “We should shield ourselves, so Likod can’t track our magery. And for now we need a place to conceal ourselves within Lirigon, where we won’t be easily found. I am thinking of your friend Larla, Selmana.”

  “Larla?” Selmana turned in astonishment, remembering the kind, fat woman who had helped her in the Street of Potters.

  “She is not a Bard, and so Likod will not even think of her,” said Nelac. “She has powers beyond magery. And she is also an old friend of mine.” He hefted his pack, grimacing. “Let’s leave. The skies will open soon.”

  The rain began in earnest just before they reached the Street of Potters, following one of the major streets that ran, like spokes from the hub of a wheel, out of the Inner Circle. The strange clouds covered the entire sky, hanging very low above them, almost as if they might brush the red roofs of Lirigon. There was no thunder or lightning, just a heavy downpour driven almost sideways by the wind, which was still rising. The Lirhan cloaks, woven of wool cunningly waterproofed, kept out the rain, but within minutes they were splashing through deep puddles. Even the boots, made with the best Lirhanese cobbling, as Cadvan had pointed out, were not enough to keep Selmana’s feet dry: she stepped unwarily into a small river rushing down the street and the water overtopped them.

  Nelac led them unerringly to Larla’s blue door. They crowded into her little porch, trying to escape the rain, and water streamed from their hoods onto the scrubbed threshold. Larla answered the door swiftly, almost, Selmana thought, as if she had been waiting for them, and spoke over Nelac’s greeting.

  “Come in, come in,” she said. “It’s wild out there.” She fussed around as they entered, taking their cloaks and hanging them in her entrance hall, where they dripped lugubriously onto the floor, pointing to a storeroom where they could stow their packs and urging them to take off their boots and dry them by her fire. “Now, come into the kitchen. Lucky I’m on high ground here, and my house is nice and low, it’
s the high houses next door that’ll catch the wind, you mark my words. There’ll be no flooding in my street. But look at your boots, Nelac! Wet feet run up to wet noses, and the last thing you want is a cold!”

  Dernhil caught Cadvan’s eye and they both grinned; they had never seen their mentor treated so cavalierly. Selmana sniffed: something was baking, warm and homely and sweet.

  Larla asked them for no explanation; she didn’t seem in the least surprised to have four Bards turn up at her door. She seated them at a big table in her kitchen, chatting brightly as she poured tea from a pot that might have been made for their arrival.

  “I’m glad to see you, young kitten,” she said to Selmana, as she handed the cups around. “I was that worried about you, when I heard you’d gone missing.”

  “So were we all,” said Nelac. He leaned back in his chair and regarded Larla with open amusement. “Am I right to assume that we were not unexpected?”

  Larla returned his gaze innocently, with her eyebrows raised. “Why would you say that?”

  “Perhaps you are awaiting other guests,” he said, indicating the kettle. “I trust we’re not inconveniencing you?”

  “No, no, not at all. Yes, of course I was expecting you. I saw you in my basin, as sure as sure, as I was washing my small clothes. Though I wasn’t very certain of the time, and it is just good chance that you turned up when I was taking the weight off my feet and making a brew.”

  “Good chance is what we’ve been short of lately,” said Cadvan. “It’s very welcome.”

  Larla cast him a narrow look. “I think I know you, young man,” she said. “Though I cannot call your face to mind.”

  “Perhaps you do,” said Nelac, smiling. “This is Cadvan, once of Lirigon, in other guise.” Larla’s eyebrows shot up, but she made no comment. “For now, Larla, I’m curious. What do you make of what is happening here, in Lirigon? Because it seems to me that you might understand something that we do not.”