She looked about the Hall, her face white. “All of you, except the First Circle: go to the walls and help the Thane’s watchers. Keep the ward strong where it is attacked. Wers can die on cold steel, but they bring fear with them. They could win their way into the School without a stroke in its defence, if terror makes our defenders flee…”
The Hall seemed to empty almost at once, in a flurry of Bards reaching for cloaks and swords and setting mageshields. When the great doors opened, the sound of the storm swept loudly across the Hall, the pounding rain amplified by its high walls. Outside was black, as if it were night, and the Bards were swallowed at once in the darkness. There were only a dozen people left in the centre of the Singing Hall, their faces wan in the edgeless light of the lamps. The doors swung shut on the rain and it seemed suddenly very quiet. The only sound was Dorn’s strange chant.
Milana, her stern face suddenly breaking, threw her arms about his neck. “Dorn,” she said. “Dorn. Please.”
He made no sign that he heard. Now the strange circular chant echoed around the dome and it began to sound as if came from many throats. All the watching Bards shielded themselves. Milana let Dorn go and turned to hide her face. The chant was reaching a climax, but still none of them felt any prickle of sorcery.
“Selmana,” said Dernhil. “What do you see?”
“I don’t know,” she said. Her eyes were still fixed on Dorn’s face, as if she were unable to turn away. “You have to stop him.”
As she spoke, Dorn’s chant rose to a sudden scream, and then ceased. He slumped in his chair and would have fallen to the ground if Nelac had not grasped him. Then he stirred and groaned, and Milana started towards him. He raised his eyes to her face and fainted.
Selmana, released from his sightless gaze, looked about her fearfully. At first everything seemed as it was before. Then she thought the lamps were flickering at the edge of her sight, although when she looked straight at them they were steady, and the floor beneath her feet felt soft and spongy. She thought she might be sick.
“He’s not dead,” said Milana, crouched beside Dorn, her fingers on his wrist. “But what has happened to him?” She looked at Nelac, her mouth wavering. “I’m afraid, Nelac.”
“Indeed, you should be afraid,” said a voice behind them. “You have good reason.”
Cadvan whirled around so fast he almost fell over. In front of the great doors of the Singing Hall stood Likod. He was dressed as a Bard, in tunic and cloak, but he was in black from head to foot and wore no sign.
“Ah, Cadvan. Of Lirigon, I believe, although this seems uncertain of late.” Likod laughed and walked easily towards the Bards. At once every Bard present attacked him with white fire. Such an assault should have destroyed him at once, but the white fire gathered about his head, surrounding him in a blinding halo. Likod didn’t even break the rhythm of his steps. His eyes were fixed on Cadvan, who hadn’t moved a muscle.
“You can’t touch me,” said Likod. “I don’t doubt you believe that you crushed us in Lirigon. That you thought you found the means to destroy our Queen. How wrong you are. You haven’t seen a single finger of our strength.” His head thrust forward on his shoulders, like a snake’s. “And now you will suffer, Bard,” he hissed. “Traitor. Thrice traitor.”
Cadvan’s hand went to his hip, as if it searched for a sword hilt; but he hadn’t carried a sword since he was exiled from Lirigon. The Pellinor Bards were still attacking Likod, and the air was hot and bright with the crackle of magery, but still Likod walked towards them, smiling. Selmana stepped behind Dernhil, hoping that she wouldn’t catch the Hull’s eye. She felt dull with terror, as if she were watching everything that happened through thick glass. She heard, in the back of her mind, Milana’s silent command to her Bards: Stop. Wait. Watch. He is not shielded. Their arms fell, all together, and they stood silently, warily.
“He isn’t here,” someone said flatly. Selmana thought it was Kenran. “That’s just a seeming.”
“Yes,” said Likod. “And, no. Your friend Dorn has opened a little place where I might stand. He has been very helpful.” He sent out a sudden deafening blast of sorcery that made the Bards, all heavily shielded, sway where they stood. “I can hurt you,” he said. “But you cannot injure me.”
Malgorn jumped forward with a yell and thrust a deadly stroke at the Hull. Silver flames flickered on his sword. Likod made no move to evade or defend himself, and the blow should have hewn him in two; but it was as if the blade passed through water. When it touched Likod, the white fire died on Malgorn’s weapon and he cried out. It fell from his grasp, and Malgorn wrung his hands, bending over in agony. Two other Bards, who had followed Malgorn, halted and stared in sudden doubt.
Likod had almost reached the group. He stopped in front of them, and made a swift gesture. All the Bards who were holding swords dropped them, a cold clatter of metal on the flagstones.
“Begone, foul slave of the Dark.” Milana’s voice rang coldly about the Hall, and with it a silver web of fire leapt from the floor, surrounding Likod. It burned with an intensity that made the Bards step back hastily. “You have no place here.” The web brightened, throwing sharp shadows on the walls, distorted and bloated. Selmana knew at once that it was woven by both Milana and Enkir, and hope sparked in her breast. One by one, she heard other Bards entering the mindmeld, and the web grew so dazzling that she couldn’t look at it. Its power made her gasp. Slowly, inch by inch, it forced Likod back, away from the group of Bards, and the web began to shrink inwards, as she had seen Dernhil and Cadvan use it against the shapeless shadow of Kansabur. Her hands clenched so hard her nails made red crescents in her palm.
Then Likod spoke and the bright web vanished, like a tiny flame stamped out by a boot. The Bards in the mindmeld reeled with the shock. A plume of darkness coiled out of Likod’s mouth, splitting into tendrils that wound themselves about each Bard with a rapidity that defeated the eye.
“I told you that you couldn’t injure me,” said Likod. “You Bards, you should listen! But that was ever the weakness of the Light, in your arrogance, making your little Schools and prating of love and justice. You were ever deaf.” He laughed softly, watching the horror of the Bards as they realized they couldn’t move a finger: even through their mageshields, Likod had frozen them where they stood. “Have you run through all your tricks now? It’s time you saw mine.”
He crooked a finger, and as if he were a puppet, Dorn shakily stood, his eyes turned up, his head lolling. “Tell them, Dorn, great Bard of the Pilanel.”
“There is no power but the Dark,” said Dorn. He spoke thickly, as if his tongue wouldn’t move properly in his mouth, and his voice was so hoarse it wasn’t recognizable as his. “There is only the Dark in all the World. There is only the Dark in all the Circles. There is no other law.”
“Well said,” said Likod. “This is the new order, which all of you will obey.”
Milana twisted, as if she struggled against strong cables that bound her, and then she spat on the floor. “That for your new order,” she said, her eyes glittering. “It is no law of mine.”
“It is now,” said Likod. His eyes blazed with a sudden red light, and Milana’s body jerked. “Do not think I couldn’t throttle you from where I stand.”
Cadvan felt the spell wrapped around his bones, a command that stilled his muscles and made his breath catch in his chest. He struggled against it until the sweat ran into his eyes, but it made no difference. His thoughts were slow and thick. The power that held them now was outside his Knowing: it slid around his will, and he could find no fulcrum from which to push back, no way of resisting it.
A hot despair rose in his chest. How was it possible that Likod held them so, a dozen Bards, all in their full power? He saw the same bafflement in Enkir, who stood before him, frozen like the rest of them, impotent against the gloating Hull. Enkir stared at Likod, his face frozen with contempt and loathing. He didn’t seem at all afraid, but his eyes were cold with an icy hatred.
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Likod lounged casually against a table. “Now, my friends,” he said. “We come to the nub of it. I expect you will all enjoy helping me. Your magery has its uses, even in this new realm… And it will take all your power.” He laughed again. “Mind you, I don’t need to teach Cadvan this one. He can lead you.”
Likod made a swift pass with his hands, and all the Bards turned to face him, even Dorn, whose head still rolled loosely on his shoulders. Slowly, like automatons, they lifted their arms, and then, as if in a stupor, against the will of their minds and bodies, they began to chant in chorus.
Cadvan felt the bitter, metallic taste of sorcery on his tongue. He tried to clamp shut his jaws until his resistance cramped his muscles in an intolerable agony, but still he kept speaking, the foul invocation issuing out of his mouth like vomit. His body would no longer obey him. He felt an awful shame, a humiliation that was deeper and more painful than any he had ever known: how could his magery, his most intimate power, be so forced?
Word by word, the spell wove itself in front of his eyes. A vortex of darkness began to open above the Bards, a whirlpool of energy that spun faster and faster as the chant continued. Inside it a shadow began to thicken and take shape, bit by bit coalescing into a form that Cadvan knew all too well. He couldn’t stop it. None of them could stop it. Instead they poured their own power into it, giving it strength and vitality, feeling its pulse quicken in the shudder of their own blood, feeling its living structure knit together and flow into bone and sinew, finding a mortal shape for its immortal flesh. And then the whirlpool stilled and Kansabur stepped out under the great dome of the Singing Hall, suspended high in the air as if she trod solid ground. The sound of steel on steel rang cold and heavy in the silent Hall as she drew her black blade from its scabbard and thrust it high. And the Bone Queen threw back her head and howled with triumph.
XXXV
SELMANA was so frightened that her muscles didn’t seem to belong to her; she thought at first that Likod had bewitched her as well. She watched helplessly as the Bards were turned to puppets before her eyes. She stood at the back of the group, hidden from Likod’s direct gaze, her knees shaking, tears running unnoticed down her face. She knew what Likod planned to do; she could feel his intent in his every gesture.
She only understood that Likod’s spell hadn’t touched her when the other Bards began to mouth the summoning. She saw how they resisted, how their faces writhed against the will that drove them, how they gagged against the sorcery that filled their mouths. She wriggled her fingers and they obeyed her. She now dared not move in case Likod saw that she was outside his bewitchment. She wondered that he didn’t sense her, outside the black meld that held the other Bards in its intolerable prison.
She knew that they were summoning Kansabur. She could smell her presence, toxic and alien, even before her shadow began to clot and grow in the vortex of sorcery. I could escape, she thought to herself. If she steps here, I could step elsewhere, and I would be safe…
Then she looked at Dernhil in front of her, his hands clenched at his sides, and she realized that even if she could, she wouldn’t choose to escape. If Kansabur came, Pellinor would be laid waste. And then Annar would fall before the tyranny of the Dark. Where would she escape to? And yet how could she, all on her own, outface Likod and Kansabur?
Desperately she tried to gather her thoughts. Anghar. Surely, if she could step between the stars as a queen of the sky, the Elidhu had a power greater than Likod, stronger than the Bone Queen? Selmana shut her eyes and called, sending out all her desire, all her love, all her despair. But no answer came back, no slender girl with the power of stars in her hands. The spell droned on, gathering and weaving itself, until her ears were buzzing with the force of it. Selmana wanted to weep with anger. She was abandoned, alone before the might and malice of the Dark. She felt the Bone Queen’s presence thickening in the room and her terror almost choked her. She would be seen. She would be taken.
When the Bone Queen stepped out above the Bards, it seemed to Selmana that the stone walls wavered, and her sight blurred as if everything solid had become swift currents of water, a tide that sought to drag her away. The anger in Selmana turned to fury: so Anghar thought only to rescue her, when she should be here, beside her, fighting to save Pellinor. She set her jaw, clutching the edge of a table until her knuckles were white and her nails broke against the wood, bracing every fibre of her being against the surge that broke around her. To her amazement, it worked: the Singing Hall focused again in her vision, as if a pool struck into ripples became gradually still and then clear. The force ebbed away. She could see Kansabur. But Kansabur had not seen her.
The Bone Queen stood impossibly on air, her black armour glinting in the Bard lamps, smooth and polished, like the armour of an ant or a beetle, spiked at shoulder and hip. Perhaps it wasn’t iron or steel at all, but some metal Selmana knew nothing of. The helmed head turned slowly, surveying the Singing Hall, and then Kansabur slashed down with her sword, rending the air with a sound that tore through Selmana’s ears. Somehow Selmana knew that the blade’s keen edge cut through more than she could see, shearing through the invisible boundaries between the Circles. She felt it in the nerves of her teeth, in the void that opened in her stomach. The lamps in the Hall flickered and went out completely, leaving the chamber in dim shadow. The only light came from Likod and the Bone Queen, a pitiless radiance that streamed out of their bodies, but which illuminated nothing.
Gradually the light of sorcery died away, leaving its sour, metallic aftertaste staining the air. All that was left was a dreary, damaged reality, the beginning of the end of Pellinor. The Bards would be slaughtered, Selmana among them. The Singing Hall would be taken apart, stone by stone. The beauty of Pellinor would die, never to be seen again. Selmana saw it all in the arrogance of the Bone Queen, in that sweeping triumphal glance about the Hall, in the malice and unchallengeable power of her stance, and she wept silently, ignored and insignificant among the ensorcelled Bards.
The Bone Queen took off her knived helm, holding it lightly in her fingers as if it were a mere trinket, and turned her terrible gaze on Likod. For the first time, Selmana saw Kansabur’s face. She almost cried out, but managed to stifle herself in time, biting her lip so it bled. Bones held no horrors for Selmana: she had seen human skulls, white and polished in the anatomy rooms of the healing house in Lirigon. They were simply the remains of someone who had once lived, and now was dead. She had sometimes admired the strange mineral beauty of skulls, the intricate curves and pits where skin and sinew had grown, and had wondered what thoughts and memories and desires they had once housed.
This was different. All that was left of Kansabur’s face was a skull, but it was a living skull, with a yellow parchment of skin stretched over its bones. Thin strands of red hair were looped and knotted over her cranium in an elaborate fashion Selmana had seen in portraits from centuries before. Around the twisted sinews of her throat was a torc of polished white metal, set with a huge ruby that burned in the dim light. The worst was her eyes: they opened on an abyss that seemed to suck all light into it. They devoured everything they saw.
“Well done, slave,” said Kansabur. It was the Speech, but not as Selmana knew it: she could understand the words, but they stabbed her, the light and truth of them extinguished, their power inverted. In their hour of triumph, the Hulls had released the sorcery that shielded them. The strange unreality of their flesh, that sense of them being both here and not here, had gone: they had both stepped wholly into the World, out of the place between the Circles that had protected them from the magery of some of the greatest Bards of Annar.
Likod brought his arms up in a gesture of supplication. “Welcome at last, my queen,” he said. He seemed much smaller now, his stature diminished against the Bone Queen. Selmana thought she saw fear in his eyes. “This is merely the first of the offerings I make on your altar.” He swept his arms out to indicate the Bards and snickered. “How easily they fell in the en
d, after all the vanities of their defiance. But perhaps you should show mercy: all of them lent their voices to your summoning.”
“Mercy?” Kansabur laughed. “Yes, they shall be shown mercy. They deserve death, each one of them, but perhaps I will not give them what they deserve. They shall be shown how life may be an endless torment. They will be shown the shape of their pitiful souls.”
“But first, they must set the seal and confirm this spell. Where is the young Bard of the Sight?” Likod crooked his finger and Milana tottered forward out of the group of Bards and stood before him. “I think you can tell us, lady of Pellinor. You will fetch her from where you have hidden her, and then you will draw your sword and spill her blood. Yours alone is the honour. And you will know, for the rest of your miserable life, that it was your hands that made the final binding and blessed the endless reign of the Black Queen.”
Selmana realized, with a thrill of terror, that Likod had no idea that she was in the Singing Hall. How could he not know? She saw Milana’s hands twitch. Her body was shaking in its chains of sorcery, as she struggled in vain against the spell that held her in thrall. Selmana looked at the other Bards, all of them, from Dernhil to Cadvan to Enkir, helpless and shamed in their ensorcelment, and the rage that lay underneath her fear erupted to the surface. Everything was already lost: she had nothing further to lose. She had no hope left, but perhaps she could injure the Hulls before she was killed. She drew in a harsh sob of breath, bracing herself, and loosed a bolt of magery at Kansabur, aiming at her terrible eyes. Then, so quickly that it was almost simultaneous, she set another at Likod.
They weren’t very powerful attacks, but they took the Hulls wholly by surprise. Likod was knocked sideways, and the Bone Queen cried out and fell in a great sweep out of the air, landing heavily on the floor. Her sword, Thuruk, clattered onto the stones and skidded away from her hand. Selmana saw that this time the white fire had burned Likod: the side of his face was charred and white flame fastened on his clothes. The stink of burning hair floated through the hall.
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