The Singing

by Alison Croggon

  "I fear it may be so," said Indik. "Though few people agree with me. There is a strange sorcery in some of these attacks that is not one we know of from the Dark. And weathercraft. Unless it is just chance that attacks only happen in thunderstorms." He pulled at his lip again, his scarred face dark with thought. "I guess you are not staying, Cadvan. We could do with one of your abilities here."

  "Maerad and I have other tasks," said Cadvan. "Much as we would stay to help defend this place we love."

  "Yes." Indik looked between the two. "I won't ask," he said. "I will find out, I expect, and I have enough to worry over. Still, I am sorry you can't fight here. If it is the Landrost we face—and that is our best guess—then we have a formidable foe. We won't get any help from Annar, that's for sure. But Innail has always stood on her own." He grinned, his scarred face becoming a savage mask, and Maerad thought what a terrifying warrior Indik would be: there was something in him that loved battle for its very peril, a kind of finely judged recklessness, an utter ruthlessness. He would have no qualms about killing Hulls ...

  "I've a favor to ask," said Cadvan. "We will have to leave Innail soon, and Maerad needs a horse and a sword. Do you have any that would suit?"

  Indik looked sternly at Maerad. "It goes hard to lose a horse," he said. "Imi was a good mount."

  "She didn't die," said Maerad, with a shade of indignation. "She's with the Pilanel in Murask, and we can't get her back right now."

  Indik's eyebrows rose. "You have wandered far in your travels," he said. "And the sword?"

  "Arkan took Irigan when he captured me. I don't know what happened to it." Maerad thought of her sword regretfully; it had been one of her few possessions, and it was precious to her.

  "Arkan? The Winterking?" Indik glanced over to Cadvan for confirmation, plainly flabbergasted, although he covered it quickly. "Well, then. To lose arms when you are captured is only to be expected."

  "Don't be such a dry old stick, Indik," said Maerad teasingly. "I wouldn't just leave my sword in an inn, would I? But I do need a new one. I can't be a wolf all the time."

  "Now you are talking in riddles," said Indik, rubbing his chin and directing a piercing look at Maerad. Suddenly she was conscious that she had been gesturing with her left hand, and that he must have noticed her missing fingers. He had said nothing: Indik was no stranger, after all, to wounds and scars. It was, Maerad realized, the first time she hadn't felt ashamed of it.

  "I am chiefly wondering," said Indik, "what happened to that shy, charming Bard I met last spring. What did you do with her, Cadvan? Who is this bold young warrior?"

  "I'm not sure. I ask myself the same question," said Cadvan, smiling.

  "I'm the same person," Maerad said, lifting her chin. "Maerad of Pellinor, at your service."

  "You're still too thin," said Indik. "But I somehow think that you don't drop your sword anymore."

  With Darsor's freely given advice thrown in, Maerad chose a new horse shortly afterward. Indik had three of the same hardy crossbreed as Imi, two mares and a stallion. As far as Darsor was concerned, the fine-looking bay stallion was out of the question (although Maerad rather regretfully turned her eyes from him). There was also a black mare, and a strawberry roan with a broad blaze down her nose. Maerad examined both of them carefully, under Indik's deceptively casual gaze, and picked the roan. She knew she had chosen well by Indik's barely perceptible nod of approval.

  "That's Keru," said Indik, patting the mare's neck. "She'll carry you far. A little flightier than Imi, but just as tough."

  The mare reached her nose forward and sniffed Maerad's hand.

  Will you carry me? asked Maerad in the Speech.

  You smell good, said Keru. And you're very small. You're a friend of Darsor's?

  Yes, said Maerad. But we will be traveling hard and far and fast.

  Good. I'm bored here. I will bear you. The mare turned away to snatch some straw from a manger, and Maerad missed Imi all over again. She saw at once that Keru was a good, strong horse, and she had been polite, but the companionship Maerad had with Imi would be hard to replace.

  Well, she thought. I suppose we can't befriends all at once.

  Indik gave her a sword that he had forged himself. "It was supposed to be for a young woman in Tinagel," he said. "She will have to wait a few days longer; she has not your urgency. It is well made: I laid charms in every tempering. Make sure you are less careless with this one." He drew it from its light leather scabbard and handed the hilt to Maerad; she tested the balance, feeling it light and apt to her hand.

  "Thank you, Indik. I'll take good care of it, I promise."

  "What will you name it?" asked Cadvan.

  Maerad examined the sword. It was beautiful, with a straight, short blade of blue steel and a silver hilt shaped like a leaf and cunningly enameled with green. "Eled, I think," she said after a while. "Lily. It is a lily, like me."

  "Eled is a good name. It was meant for you, I think, although I did not know that when I made it." Maerad looked up and met Indik's eyes, and saw there the well-guarded gentleness that burned like a quiet flame inside him. "May you bear it to good fortune."

  Maerad felt the blessing in his words. Indik said things sometimes that resonated through her being; if he wasn't a Truthteller like Cadvan, he was very nearly one. She realized afresh how much she liked this ugly, harsh, honest man.

  "I hope so," she said fervently. "For all our sakes."

  After they left Indik, Cadvan went off on some business of his own and Maerad made her way to the center of the School, bending her steps to the Library. She wanted to visit Dernhil's rooms. Dernhil of Gent was a Bard—a great poet, Cadvan had said—who had taught her how to read and write, opening up the world of books to her astonished pleasure and delight. She was still very slow at both—-she had not had much time to practice in the past year—and the hunger to learn more ached inside her; but Dernhil's promise that he would teach her all the lore of Annar and the Seven Kingdoms would never now be kept. He had died last spring, when Hulls had secretly entered Innail in search of Maerad. The small illuminated book of poems Dernhil had given her was one of her most treasured possessions; she kept it in her pack, wrapped in oilskin.

  She remembered the way through the maze of corridors without difficulty, nodding to the Bards she passed, and halted outside the familiar door, suddenly feeling a little foolish. What if someone was in there? She hadn't asked anyone's permission to come, and it wasn't as if it were Dernhil's room any longer. She knocked hesitantly and, when no one answered, slowly pushed open the door.

  She had expected to find the room changed, filled perhaps with the belongings of another Bard. And it was different, but not for that reason. What had once been a cheerful room, full of clutter and work and warm light, was now empty and forlorn and cold. The air smelled musty and stale, as if the room had not been opened for a long time. Dernhil's furniture—a huge wooden desk and two chairs covered in azure silk—was still there, but the books that had filled the shelves were gone, leaving behind a litter of dusty oddments. A chill winter sun shone through the casement, casting a silver light over the dusty desk and chairs. Clearly no one used the room now.

  Maerad entered the chamber and shut the door behind her, filled with a sudden and overwhelming sense of bereavement. It was as if she hadn't really believed Dernhil was dead until this moment. Some secret part of her had still thought that he was really waiting here at work in his room, that she would knock on the door and he would glance up to greet her with that quick, ironic smile and clear a space for her on the chair beside his.

  He died in this room, Maerad thought. That's probably why no one took it over. She wandered around the room, looking at the shelves, and found a broken pen she remembered Dernhil using, lying forgotten against the wall. She picked it up and closed her fist around it; she would keep it with Dernhil's book, and the beautiful pen he had given her for her own use, as a memento. Then she walked over to th
e desk and sat down. The desk that she remembered as scarcely visible under a clutter of books, writing materials, parchments, and scrolls was completely bare, covered in a thin layer of dust. Into her mind, unbidden, came the chant Cadvan had sung for Dernhil, after they had heard the news of his death:

  Where has he gone? His chamber is empty And bright are the tears in the high halls of Oron

  Where once he stepped lightly, singing deep secrets Out of the heart-vault and into the open ...

  I didn't know him long enough, Maerad thought, to feel this sad. But even as she thought this, she knew it to be nonsense, a denial of a deeper knowing. I know he loved you, Cadvan had told her, long ago it seemed now, in another life. He was one of those who can see clearly into another's soul, and his feelings were true. Such things have little to do with brevity of meeting.

  All too brief, all the same. When we parted, there was promise of so many things, of deep friendship, of learning; and now all that promise is frozen in the past, like those strange animals I saw deep in the glacier. ... Is that what I am really mourning? All the conversations we never had, the books you will never read to me, the lovers we will never be. If you kissed me now, would I hit you?

  In her mind's eye, Maerad could see Dernhil as vividly as if he stood before her. He was tall and slender, his brown hair falling carelessly over his forehead, his expression intelligent, mobile, amused. He was, she realized, very handsome. She hadn't really noticed that when they had met. No, she thought, I would not hit him now.

  What would you say to me if we met now? Would you say, like Indik, What happened to the shy, charming Bard I met last spring? Would you still want to kiss me? I have changed so much. But I am still Maerad ...

  "I wanted to tell you—" she said, and jumped, because she had spoken aloud. But who would hear her? She dug her nails into her palms to stop herself from crying. It was important that she say at last what she wanted to say, even if there was no one there to hear it.

  "I wanted to tell you that your poem saved me when I was captured by the Winterking and held in his palace," she said. I read your poem, and it reminded me of everyone I love.

  Including you. It reminded me of why we are fighting so hard. It reminded me how much beauty there is . . ." Maerad stared down at her hands lying on the desk, one whole, the other maimed, and bit her lip. "How much beauty there is in the world, and why it matters. It reminded me that even if we die, it doesn't mean that everything we do is useless. That even though you are dead, you are still speaking to me. I hear your voice every time I read your poems."

  She paused, taking in a long breath. "But it made me feel sadder than ever, Dernhil. Reading your poems is not the same as talking to you. My cousin Dharin will never come back. I'll never see my mother or my father again, no matter how much I want to. Maybe all of us will die in this battle. And I know I'm just talking to empty space; I know you are not here. I think that perhaps, somewhere, in some other place where time is different, you might hear what I say and smile, and that comforts me a little. I know that's a stupid thought, but I think it all the same. Maybe it's not so stupid. I don't know ... I just wish, with all my heart, that you were here and that I could talk to you and tell you these things."

  Maerad fell silent and sat for a long time at the desk, with her head in her hands. Finally she stood up and went to the door, turning for a last look at Dernhil's empty room. "Farewell, my friend," she whispered, and closed the door behind her.

  When she returned to her room, Maerad emptied her pack and laid out all her possessions on her bed. As a slave, she hadn't owned anything beyond the clothes she wore and her lyre, and she still felt a faint disbelief at her comparative riches, even if they could all be put into one bag. The objects laid out on her bed were like a tangible diary of her life.

  Most precious of all was her lyre, lying snugly inside the leather case that Cadvan had given her. She put Dernhil's book next to it, and then her new sword, Eled. There were oddments like her kit for the horses, and a water bottle, and a flask of medhyl, the herbed drink that Bards used to ward off weariness when traveling. There were her spare clothes, now newly washed and folded. Some of her possessions were gifts that she wore: the white stone that hung from a slender chain around her neck, a present from Silvia; the exquisite golden ring that the Elidhu Queen Ardina had given her, which she wore on her right hand; also from Ardina a rustic reed flute; a small fish carved of ivory, a gift from the Wise Kindred, whom she had visited far in the north, seeking knowledge of the Treesong from their wise man, Inka-Reb. She put next to that the blackstone she had taken from a Hull in Thorold. The blackstone was a strange object made of albarac, a mineral valued among Bards because it could deflect or absorb magery. She stroked the stone's surface with her fingertip: it was more like the absence of something than an object, neither cold nor warm, rough nor smooth. It was attached to a silver chain, but she felt there was something uncanny about it, and she never wore it. She wondered if she would ever use it.

  There were things that were missing, because she had given them away: a little wooden cat that she had given to Mirka, the old woman who had cared for her in the mountains when she had nearly died; and the silver brooch with the arum lilies, the sign of the School of Pellinor, that she had given to Nim, a young man who had been one of her Jussack captors, and who had been kind to her. That had been a princely gift: the brooch had been given to her by Oron herself. But, somehow, Maerad was sure that Oron would have understood: Innail was a School that set great, unspoken store on kindness.

  She studied her possessions for a while, and then, one by one, put them back in her pack with the pen she had taken from Dernhil's chamber, wondering if she would ever have a room of her own in which to keep them. Innail was the first place, in almost a year of traveling, to which she had returned. Cadvan and she would be off any day now, and perhaps she would never see it again. She felt as if she had been traveling forever. Perhaps, when all this was finished, if she survived it, she could begin to make a home ...

  She pushed that thought away. If she followed it, she would end up wallowing in self-pity. Tonight, she knew, Malgorn and Silvia had invited some other Bards from the First Circle for a meal, and she should bathe first. Maerad's habit was to have a bath whenever it was possible; sometimes in Innail she bathed twice a day, to make up for the months of scrappy washes in cold streams when she was traveling. Sighing, she stood and made her way to the bathroom.

  That evening, it was a merry night in the Bardhouse. No one spoke of the troubles in Innail, putting them aside for the moment. Maerad noticed that the Bards, perhaps warned by Silvia that Maerad could no longer play her lyre, had not taken out their instruments after the meal, as was their custom.

  "I can play my lyre," she said firmly. "If you don't mind me glowing."

  Indik glanced at her with something like approval, as she drew her lyre out of its case. She paused to gather her power, and as her magery began softly to illuminate the room, she looked down and saw her hand was whole, a hand of tight. Silvia smiled with joyous surprise, and took down her own lyre from the wall, and the other Bards disappeared briefly to get their instruments. They began with an instrumental piece in a minor key, beautiful and melancholy, and then Cadvan and Maerad sang the duet of Andomian and Beruldh, which they had sung when they had first met. The other Bards listened in absorbed silence and burst into applause when they both finished.

  The Bards made music together long into the night, and Maerad felt something in her fill up, as if she had been starving. Music, she thought, is like meat and drink for the soul, a necessity. For these few enchanted hours, she felt entirely happy.

  Music, Cadvan had once said to her, is my home.

  Waking late the next day, Maerad felt stronger than she had in a long time. Her life might be hard and full of sadness, but she counted herself lucky; it had also granted her moments that she would not have missed for the world. She lounged lazily, feeling no hurry to rise.
Life would be tough again soon enough, so why not enjoy a comfortable bed while she could?

  Eventually, after her ritual bath, she made her way downstairs to break her fast. She grabbed a pastry from the kitchen and ate in the corner, where she was out of the way. Normally, Silvia would have been in the kitchen at that time, but she was out again; she was kept busy looking after the flood of people who were seeking refuge in Innail from the attacks in the valley. Then, at a loose end, Maerad began to look for Cadvan. Although nothing had been said between them, she knew that they would be leaving soon—perhaps the next day. Against her desire to stay in Innail was an even stronger sense of urgency; somehow she knew that time was running short.

  Although he had said little, Malgorn had clearly thought Maerad was mad when she announced that she was looking for Hem, who could be anywhere in Edil-Amarandh, if he was alive at all. And Maerad couldn't pretend that she didn't have her own doubts. On the other hand, she had journeyed across the frozen wastes of the north in her quest for the Treesong, with little more than hints to guide her; she felt more confident now of her own intuition. Cadvan's trust in her Knowing was comforting.

  It was raining, with a hint of sleet: winter was back with a vengeance. Maerad wrapped her cloak tightly around her and hurried head-down through the rain-lashed streets to the stables, where she guessed Cadvan was most likely to be. She guessed right: he was sitting on a feed bin, deep in conversation with Darsor. He looked up as Maerad entered and smiled.

  "Darsor was just letting me know that he rather likes the idea of a warm stable on a day like this," he said. "Good weather, all the same, for those who wish to travel unnoticed."

  "It was raining last time we left." Maerad sat down next to Cadvan, and let Darsor nuzzle her neck in greeting before he attended to a mash of oats Cadvan had made for him. The great black horse looked none the worse for his recent travels, his muscles rippling beneath his rough winter coat.