The Crow

by Alison Croggon

  Zelika looked up, baffled.

  "Aye, among other things. Our hopes rest on something so slender we are yet to know what it is. It is the sheerest folly, yes? The Nameless would certainly believe so... But it is hope nevertheless, and a hope I cleave to. Because I say to you, Hem: if it were not for Maerad and Cadvan, we would now have no hope at all."

  That afternoon, when they had returned to the Bardhouse and Saliman had gone on to the Ernan, Zelika asked Hem who Maerad and Cadvan were. "What did Saliman mean, back at the Tower?" she asked, with an unusual shyness. She was speaking Annaren, a special dispensation for Hem, since she often refused to, and Hem knew this meant that she really wanted to know. He didn't answer for a time, wondering if he wished to share his sister with this strange, passionate, irritating girl.

  "Don't tell me, then, if you don't trust me," Zelika said at last, shrugging her shoulders. "I don't care."

  Hem felt a stab of contrition; he could see that under her bravado she was hurt.

  "It's not that," he said. "Maerad is my sister and Cadvan is her friend, her mentor, I suppose. He's a great Bard, famous in Annar; he and Saliman are old friends. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tell anyone what they are doing..."

  "Your sister?" Zelika's eyes softened, and she looked at Hem with a new interest. "I didn't know you had a sister."

  "I didn't know, for a long time," said Hem. He suddenly realized that Zelika knew even less about him than he did about her. "You see, I..." He stopped, suddenly nonplussed. He didn't know how to tell Zelika the story of his life, of the slaughter of his family in the sack of Pellinor, of the long, bleak years in the orphanage, his time with the Hulls and his rescue by Maerad and Cadvan. She looked at him inquiringly, and Hem, feeling a strange reluctance, began his tale. He had told his story to very few people, and to no one in Turbansk, since no one here had asked. It stirred up painful feelings he would rather leave sleeping inside him; but Zelika listened intently, without interrupting.

  "I see: you have lost your family, like I have," said Zelika, when his telling stumbled to a halt. "Maybe that's why..."

  "Why what?"

  "Why – when you jumped on me in the street, when I realized you weren't going to hurt me – I thought..."

  Hem waited patiently; Zelika was staring at her hands, twisting her fingers together.

  "It is hard, when you don't have the words!" she said, looking up. "I mean, the first thing I thought was that we had something in common. And that seemed a very strange thing to think, when you were sitting on my chest like a sack of yams." She smiled hesitantly, glancing shyly at Hem. Unexpectedly moved, he smiled back.

  "And what did you mean by... the Treesong, was it?"

  "That's the bit I'm not sure I should tell," said Hem. "Maerad and Cadvan went north, to look for the Treesong. Nobody knows what it is. But you see, Maerad is the Chosen One, and the prophecies say that she will cast down the Nameless One in his next and worst rising. Which is now."

  Zelika's eyes widened in disbelief, and then she started laughing. "Your sister! Cast down the Nameless One!"

  Stung, Hem scowled at the ground. He was sorry now that he had said anything. "That's what Saliman says," he said. "And he says it's our only hope. That's what he meant at the Tower."

  Zelika stared at him, her face serious again. "I'm sorry," she said. "It seems a very strange thing, that one girl should be able to do what all Turbansk and Baladh cannot. I don't think I can believe it."

  Hem shrugged his shoulders. "You don't have to. It's the truth, all the same. Why would Saliman believe it, if it were not?"

  "Maybe he has to," said Zelika. "Maybe if he didn't, he would be in despair."

  Anger flashed in Hem at Zelika's doubt and he glared at her, his fists clenched. "Saliman's no fool," he said. "You should show some respect."

  "I do respect Saliman," she answered, her face shadowed. "It's not that. But Hem, you know, I don't have any hope." She looked up, straight at Hem, and for once her eyes were not veiled. With his Bard-born perception, Hem saw for the first time the true extent of her inner devastation, and he breathed in sharply; it was almost too painful to bear. "I don't have any hope at all. Hope is not why I'm here."

  "What do you want, then?" asked Hem.

  "Revenge," she said flatly. "Revenge and death. There isn't anything else."

  After that conversation, Hem felt a new closeness to Zelika, although that didn't mean that he found her any less annoying. As a teacher, she lived up to all his expectations; she was by far the most merciless he had yet endured. Saliman had instructed him, with an unusual sternness, that he was to work hard at his Suderain, and it was only his respect for Saliman that stopped him from rebelling, although it went hard for him.

  Zelika took her pact with Saliman very seriously. They had lessons every morning, and the rest of the time Zelika would not permit Hem to speak anything but Suderain. She was very pedantic; she would make him repeat a word again and again until he said it absolutely correctly, which could go on indefinitely, and drilled him in the endless declensions of nouns and conjugations of verbs until he thought his head would burst.

  Then she would solemnly make him sit down and have a "conversation" with her. Hem found this part of the lesson more irritating than almost anything else, because it seemed ridiculous and false, and he could never think of anything to say. He began to amuse himself by talking the most absurd nonsense he could think of, and then by creatively abusing Zelika.

  When she chose to exercise it, Zelika had admirable self-control; she limited herself for the most part to correcting his grammar and pronunciation. But she did slap him once, bursting into a storm of tears, when he called her a "skinny cat." Hem was puzzled: it was by no means the worst thing he had said to her. It was a long time before he found out that it was the insult her brothers had used, when they wished to tease her.

  Ire was bored by the lessons, and provided some entertainment by flapping onto Zelika's head and trying to pull out her hair, or creeping underneath her chair and pecking her feet at inappropriate times. When he disgraced himself by soiling one of her sandals, which she subsequently put on, he was banished altogether. Hem was very regretful, especially after the sandal incident, which amused him vastly; but he did learn much more quickly if Ire was not there.

  In fact, although he did not admit it to Zelika, Hem was grateful for the distraction; the lessons relieved his boredom and dissipated the fear that otherwise filled his thoughts. He never regretted that he hadn't left with the other students, but this didn't stop him from feeling a deepening trepidation. Sometimes, as much as he dreaded its arrival, Hem wished the Black Army would hurry up, just to break the mounting suspense that filled Turbansk with a strange, dreadful anticipation. It seemed as if the whole city trembled, holding its breath, on the edge of doom.

  V

  THE WALL OF IL DARA

  Hem dreamed. He was at the top of the Red Tower and Maerad was standing next to him. They both looked over the Turbansk Fesse, but in his dream vision he could see much farther: he saw past the mountains of the Osidh Am to Norloch, and across the whole of Annar. Tiny figures marched in ranks along the Bard Roads, and columns of smoke rose over all the landscape, and he knew, with a chill in his heart, that Annar was at war. With dread he looked east, toward Den Raven, and everywhere was devastation, grove and field and village and city burned and ruined. Then it seemed that the clouds of distance lifted away, like fog in the morning sun, and very clearly he saw the citadel of Dagra in miniature, standing by the shores of a lake of black still water. Gripped in the vision, Hem shuddered: he didn't want to look anymore, but he could not stop.

  The city of Dagra was arranged in a half circle parody of the Annaren Schools, with straight roads connected by circular avenues radiating from a central tower. It sprawled from the feet of high, stony mountains the color of dried blood. The main streets were lined by tall, blank-faced towers of stone, and behind them, in a tangle of small streets and alleyways, wa
s a chaos of dwellings and workhouses, grim buildings with small slit windows, flat-roofed and often many-storied, bulging oddly where extra rooms had been added on to the original structure.

  Nothing green grew there, to soften the rock and dust, and no waters flowed save a meager, dark river running into the black lake. Figures swarmed in the streets. Unwillingly Hem's eyes traveled up the radiating streets to their hub: he knew that at the center was the Iron Tower, the fortress of the Nameless One. Its grim battlemented shadow stretched over the sad city beneath its feet, and even its shadow filled him with a loathing so strong that his gorge rose. But some will forced him to look, and at last he lifted his eyes and saw.

  The Iron Tower was founded on the roots of the Osidh Dagra, the Dagra Mountains, and loomed over the surrounding plains. It seemed taller than any tower that Hem had seen, taller even than Norloch, and was wreathed in spirals of noxious vapors, staining the sun's rays so they fell lividly onto the city beneath. Buttressed by massive iron wings, it towered from a wide base of rugged basalt stained red by iron oxides, battlement rising within battlement, wall within wall, up to a single high watchtower. Whereas Norloch was crowned by the Machelinor, the Tower of the Living Flame whose crystal pinnacle could be seen from far out at sea, the Iron Tower was surmounted by a huge blade, which flashed a searing greenish white when it caught the diseased light.

  It struck Hem that the Iron Tower and Norloch were somehow the same, and the thought bit his heart with a painful horror.

  Maerad's voice shattered the vision, and suddenly he was alone with her again. They were no longer standing on the Red Tower, but in a garden he did not recognize. It is so, she said in the Speech. Dark and Light are both reflections of the human heart.

  She looked on him sadly, and Hem, filled with a helpless love he had no words for, leaned forward to embrace her, not only for his comfort, but to allay the sorrow he saw in her face. But as he reached out, he saw hooded figures behind her shoulder, and cried out: three Hulls stretched forward, their white bony hands clutching for Maerad, a red light in their eyes. And where his hands should have touched Maerad, they closed on air: she had vanished, and with her the three Hulls and the garden, and Hem was alone in a dark place, sobbing on a stone floor.

  He woke with a start, the tears still wet on his cheeks, and stared sightlessly ahead, sitting up in his bed. Starlight from the casement shimmered faintly in his chamber. The dream was still vivid within him, filling him with a strange despair that was almost like tenderness; it hadn't been like his usual nightmares of terror and suffocation, and he had never dreamed of his sister before. Although the dread it had inspired in him still lingered, it faded before his thoughts of Maerad. Now she stood clearly in his mind's eye – he saw her direct blue gaze, her black hair falling in stray wisps over her white face, how her expression had softened when she had looked at him – and for the first time Hem felt the full pain of his sister's absence. Missing her was an anguish he did not admit fully into his waking life; but now, in the deep of night, it broke open his heart, a raw wound beyond healing.

  Ire, who was on his usual perch on Hem's chair, woke at the sound of Hem's weeping and cawed sleepily, and then flapped over to the bed. He stood on the pillow by Hem's cheek, his white feathers catching the faint starlight, and cocked his head to peer at him with one eye. Hem put out his hand and scratched Ire's neck, and gently the bird came close and crouched next to the boy's trembling body, snuggling into his chest like a cat. Hem kept stroking the bird's white feathers, feeling them crisp and cool under his fingers, and Ire's warm creaturely weight, so light but so intensely present, gradually comforted him. At last Hem drifted back to sleep, and Ire stayed with him on the bed, his head tucked under his wing.

  * * * *

  One morning a couple of weeks after Zelika's arrival, Saliman announced he would be going away.

  "How long for?" asked Hem, with dismay. He had thought that Saliman would be in Turbansk until the attack.

  "As long as need calls me," said Saliman. "I am summoned to the Wall of II Dara, where many evil things happen as we speak."

  "Will you be fighting?" asked Hem, clutched by a sudden fear. What if Saliman did not come back?

  "I do not go to fight, although there is a fierce battle there," said Saliman. "Do not be afraid for me. All the same, it is worth taking thought of what to do if I do not return. If I am not back in three days, you and Zelika should take ship out of the harbor while you still can. I have spoken to the harbor captain, Nerab: he will know you, and there will be ships leaving."

  Hem stared miserably at Saliman, whose words did nothing to comfort him. "Can't I come with you?"

  "Nay, Hem," said Saliman. "Oslar asks again for your help in the Healing Houses. Many wounded came in last night from the battle at II Dara, and he is hard pressed. For the moment, you are needed here."

  "Why did you want me to stay here, then, if I'm not to go with you?" said Hem passionately. "I don't want to stay behind – "

  "I'm not leaving Turbansk," said Zelika, her eyebrows drawn into a stubborn line.

  Saliman sighed. "Hem, Zelika, that is my order and my desire, and it is only if I do not return. I will not argue." Hem returned Saliman's stern, dark gaze with a despairing anger, his heart burning. "You stayed here, Hem, because my Knowing told me that there is a part you must play in this story, although I do not perceive what it is. It does not do for a Bard to go against his Knowing, even if it seems grievously mistaken: that is one lesson I have learned in a long and sometimes dangerous life. But if I am not here, there will be no one to guide you. Fate has many forkings, and some are darker than you are able yet to understand. And I must tell you clearly, as clearly as I can, that if I do not return from II Dara, my foresight tells me that your remaining in Turbansk would do great damage to the Light, and to Maerad: and therefore I order you to leave."

  "How could I harm Maerad?" asked Hem, bewildered and hurt. He had thought Saliman let him stay because he loved him, but now it seemed he spoke of a colder decision.

  "That has not been vouchsafed to me." Saliman's face softened, and he leaned forward, lifting up Hem's chin so he was forced to look into his eyes. "Hem," he said softly in the Speech. "Be sure I love you, more I expect than you know. It cost me dear to allow you to stay here, with all the forces of the Black Army marching on this city: I desire your death as little as my own."

  Hem was taken by surprise. He was still fragile after the previous night's dream, and only just stopped himself from bursting into tears. Saliman had never said anything so openly to him, and much as Hem longed for Saliman's love, it also bruised him. And it made him feel more afraid that Saliman might not return: perhaps it was a kind of farewell.

  Zelika had been listening impatiently; she did not understand what Saliman had just said. "That doesn't count for me," she said fiercely. "I won't leave. You'd have to tie me up and put me in a barrel to get me on that ship."

  "Nevertheless," said Saliman calmly, in a tone that brooked no argument, "if I do not return from II Dara, you will leave Turbansk."

  Zelika folded her lips into a tight line, and said nothing more. Hem glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering what she would do. He doubted whether anyone could make Zelika do anything.

  * * * *

  Hem and Zelika forewent their lesson. Saliman left for II Dara shortly after the morning meal, and he farewelled the children in the garden. Hem waited for him, looking around with new eyes at this garden he had come to love. It seemed almost unbearably frail, as if it could be swept away in the next moment, and this vision made the colors more clear, the outlines sharper, its beauty more poignant. Although the day was already beginning to heat up, the garden was still cool, and would stay cool until evening; it was well shaded, with many glossy broad-leafed trees and flowering vines. Birds and some little golden monkeys chattered in the trees. In the center, surrounded by white marble paving, was a pool, wherein swam many golden fish, their fins turning lazily unde
r the water crocus. There were several benches around the garden, which would normally have been full of young students, either talking or studying, but now, except for Hem and Zelika, the garden was empty and its beauty was touched with melancholy. Hem didn't feel like talking, and waited by the pool, staring gloomily into the clear water.

  Before long Saliman entered the garden, in the full arms of the mounted Sun Guard of Turbansk. He wore a corslet of hardened ceramic scales enameled in blue, and his arms were protected by blue-stained leather vambraces. On his breast, and on the gold helm he carried under his arm, were emblazoned the golden-sun symbol of Turbansk, and his braided hair was drawn back from his face with leather thongs. A shortsword was bound to his hip, and a bow lay across his back, and he carried a round shield, lined with albarac to drive off sorcery, on which was etched a rising golden serpent, the symbol of his family. Over all he wore a crimson cloak of linen.

  The armor made Saliman seem like a stranger. Hem stood up, wiping his suddenly sweaty hands on his tunic, feeling shy.

  Saliman took Hem's hand wordlessly, and Hem looked down at the dark, graceful fingers clasped around his and felt a lump rising in his throat.

  "I plan to be back the day after tomorrow," said Saliman. "If I do not return by the end of the third day, swear to me that you will do as I ask, and leave Turbansk."

  "But you will be back," Hem said vehemently.

  "I plan to be," said Saliman, and smiled. It was the smile Hem most loved, the smile that heralded a joke or an amusing story. For a moment Saliman looked as if he had not a care in the world. "So do not fear for me too much; I am tougher than I look! I say these things in case of mischance – for mischance may always happen in war – not because I believe it will happen. Remember that."

  Hem nodded, fighting back tears.

  "So swear you will do what I ask, if by chance things go ill."