The Singing

by Alison Croggon

  "Welcome, my friends," she said. Her voice was low and musical, and her smile was warm. "Welcome and thrice welcome. I am Marajan, and this is my house. But please, sit down. I have hot broth here, which will take the chill from your bones, and when you have finished, there is fresh bread in the oven."

  Hekibel looked dazed, and stumbled as she walked to the bench. Saliman caught her elbow, and she looked up into his face gratefully, trying to smile. Hem suddenly understood that Hekibel knew very little of magery, and that the shock of Marajan's house was for her perhaps as great as any they had suffered in the past days. When they had been in danger, she had been brave and stern, no matter how frightened she had been; but in this peaceful, beautiful place she had lost her bearings and no longer knew what to do. She looked very fragile, her face smudged with weariness and dirt, her hair tangled, her borrowed clothes filthy; and she was staring at Marajan with awe, as if she wished very much that she were better dressed.

  They were given mugs of broth, which warmed them down to their toes. Then Marajan drew the bread from the oven, and laid new butter and good cheese and a pot of dark honey and smoked meats on the table, with bowls of spiced chutneys and jams and other preserves, a jug of ale, and another of fresh springwater. Hem realized that he was ravenous, and ate his fill, passing titbits to Irc; and as soon as he had quelled his hunger, he promptly began to fall asleep at the table.

  Marajan asked no questions of her guests, and quietly made sure that they had everything they wanted. Then she led them to bedchambers upstairs, closing the shutters to keep out the morning sun. Hem didn't bother to wash: he climbed between the sheets gingerly, almost with disbelief, as if the clean, soft bed were a dream that he might wake from at any moment. He was asleep before his head touched the pillow.

  When Hem woke up, he didn't know where he was. He blinked, looking around disbelievingly at a small but comfortable bedchamber. It had plain whitewashed walls that were now striped with golden bars of light that slanted in through the shutters, and by his bed was a scrubbed wooden chest, on which was placed a vase of lilac, its brown tips just now swelling with blue buds. Then memory filtered back: this was Marajan's house, and for the first time since he could remember, he was not in immediate danger. He jumped out of bed and flung open the shutters, and found himself looking out over a green field that slanted down to a stream. White cows grazed peacefully in the lush grass, and a sinking sun threw a rich honeyed light over everything.

  Hem stared in wonder: the contrast with the Desor he knew was almost too much to take in. And then he realized that, for the first time since Maerad had summoned him, he had no sense of her; the urgency had vanished, along with every trace of her presence. He puzzled over this for a while, disturbed.

  Perhaps, he thought, it was because they were in an earlier time. Perhaps neither of them had been born yet...

  Irc flapped up to the windowsill, ruffled his feathers with pleasure, and was about to fly off to explore, when Hem stopped him.

  It's magery, he said. / don't know how the enchantment works. You might fly off into that and never come back.

  It's nicer than where we've been, said Irc, a little sulkily.

  I know, said Hem. Ask Marajan first. You're a nuisance, but I'd hate to lose you, all the same.

  Irc nipped his ear, but stayed. Hem saw that his clothes, cleaned and mended while he slept, were folded neatly on the end of the bed, and he dressed and found his way downstairs to the kitchen, guided by the sound of voices. Saliman, Grigar, and Hekibel were seated around the table, but Marajan was not there. On the table were bread and wine and ale, and the smell coming from the oven suggested another good meal was on the way. Hem sniffed the air in appreciation, and sat down with his companions.

  "This is better, yes?" Grigar smiled across the table, and for the first time Hem smiled openly back. Until now, he hadn't really trusted Grigar—despite Saliman's assurances, he still thought that they might be led into a trap.

  "Yes, it's a wonderful place," said Hem. "But who is Marajan? And if we're in the past, when are we? Irc wants to stretch his wings, but I told him to stay close; I don't want him getting lost."

  "Irc can explore as much as he likes, as long as he is back when we leave," Grigar said. "This house is not on an enchanted island of time, but in its own time. We're the ones who have stepped back. About a hundred years, in fact. This was once what Desor was like. I still find it hard to believe how it has changed."

  Hem told Irc he could explore, with stern instructions that he was to return at once when he was called, and went out into the cobbled yard. Irc leaped up joyously into the luminous twilit sky. He wouldn't be long, Hem reflected, as it was almost time for dinner. He watched him for a time, absorbing the gentle sounds of evening: the faint clink of cowbells, the comfortable squabbles of birds settling down to rest, the faint soughing of the trees. The peacefulness slowly filled him up, and he sighed with a profound, undirected happiness.

  He looked across the field and saw Marajan walking toward him, carrying an iron bucket. She was dressed for farm-work: her hair was gathered in an untidy bun on her neck, and her dress was tucked up around her thighs, revealing heavy boots. She smiled when she saw Hem.

  "Your crow looks happy," she said when she reached him. "Did you sleep well, Hem? You look rested."

  "Yes," said Hem, with feeling. He was slightly tongue-tied around Marajan. Her grave beauty and the frank, generous clarity of her gaze made him feel shy. She seemed almost the most Bardic person he had ever met, and in his short life, he had met some of the greatest Bards in Edil-Amarandh.

  "I am glad," said Marajan. "I can see the marks of deep wounds in you, and griefs beyond your years. You have trodden a dark path, and I fear that it will be darker still. If I could, young healer, I would bid you stay with me until all your hurts were healed. But, alas, I cannot ask that. You are of your own time, and cannot step out of the flow of years for very long. Even here, you can stay but a day and a night."

  Hem stared at her in wonder. "Who are you?" he blurted out. "Are you a Bard? I mean ..." He spluttered and blushed, feeling that he had been discourteous.

  "I am a Bard, yes. But not quite like other Bards, as perhaps you are not." She was silent for a time, staring out over the fields. "I have seen you in dreams, Hem, and also your sister. Perhaps I prepared this space for you, knowing that you would need a haven when the darkness crept over Annar."

  Hem looked at her in astonishment. Marajan smiled again, and Hem perceived the sadness graven in her beauty, deepening her luminous glance as the coming night enriched the colors of twilight. "It would not be surprising. I am your mother's mother's sister. The Elemental blood runs strong in Pellinor, and to some of us are given the gift of visions, which can seem as much a curse as a blessing. In your time, I am already beyond the Gates of Death, and it is a true gift to see you, brief though this meeting must be . . . but come, it is almost supper-time, and there is much to speak of, before you must return to your own time. And I should hate to burn the meat."

  Hem followed Marajan indoors, his head whirling: Marajan was his grandmother's sister? He felt a pang of loss to think that she was dead in his time. She seemed not at all ghostly, but rather one of the most alive people he had ever met. He wondered if Saliman knew that she was one of the House of Karn, and if he was aware of her Elemental powers; surely it was her Elemental gift that permitted her to make a doorway through time.

  After a leisurely and merry dinner, they talked long into the night. Grigar told them that he was part of a group of Bards that worked secretly against the Nameless One in Annar. Their network was extensive, stretching from the Suderain to Lirigon, and it included all the Seven Kingdoms. They were in contact with Hared at Nal-Ak-Burat, although Grigar told them that communication was becoming more difficult by the day.

  "Annar becomes more and more like a prison," he said. "You were lucky you struck no trouble, coming up the West Road; frankly, I am surprise
d. There is civil war almost everywhere. The recreant Enkir has declared war on what he calls the rebel Schools, and even now marches on Eledh. Arnocen and II Arunedh know they are next, and are ready for war. The Black Army lays siege on Til Amon, and if they fall, all Lanorial lies open to Enkir and the Nameless One. Lirion and Culain have mustered their soldiers."

  "It is a bleak picture you paint, my friend," said Saliman.

  "Aye," said Grigar. "And I fear it will soon be bleaker. Everywhere we are beaten back, by deceit or treachery or arms. The only good news is the victory in Innail: I heard that the School beat back a fierce attack from the mountains, through the coming of a great mage who destroyed the Landrost. They call her the Maid of Innail, a mere girl, or so they say. I find that hard to credit; but from what I hear, the victory is real."

  "Maerad!" said Hem excitedly. "It must be Maerad!"

  "I did not hear that name," said Grigar. "But who is Maerad?"

  "Maerad of Pellinor. My sister."

  "It could indeed be true," said Saliman. "Maerad has a Gift like no other I have perceived. Although"—and here he nodded toward Marajan—"I must say, Marajan has something of the same light about her."

  Marajan smiled. "You are perceptive, Saliman of Turbansk," she said. "I, too, am of the House of Karn."

  Saliman looked amazed, and bowed his head. "I confess, almost nothing about the House of Karn surprises me anymore," he said. "If Hem grew wings and danced about in the sky with Irc, I would merely blink. Well, perhaps Hem and I should explain our quest. We are presently seeking Hem's sister, Maerad, who we believe is the Foretold who is to defeat the Dark in its present rising. We know she isn't far away, somewhere in the Hollow Lands. She summoned Hem some days ago, and we have been following that summoning ever since. That is how we happened across Grigar."

  Saliman then briefly related their tale: how Cadvan of Lirigon had stumbled across Maerad when she was a slave on the other side of the Osidh Elanor; how he had brought her to Innail and thence to Norloch; how they found Hem on their journey; how Hem had journeyed with Saliman to Turbansk, while Maerad and Cadvan traveled north to seek the Riddle of the Treesong. Then he told of the fall of Turbansk, and of Hem's journey into the heart of Den Raven, into Dagra itself, and of how he had found there, as if by chance, a tuning fork that the Nameless One himself had worn about his neck.

  "There are strange runes graven on this fork," said Saliman. "And I have never seen the like, save on the Dhyllic lyre that Maerad bears, which is an heirloom of her house. We know, because the Elidhu Nyanar told Hem that these runes are deeply bound to the Treesong."

  When Saliman finished, there was a long silence as his listeners absorbed what he had said. Hekibel had listened intently, seated very close to Saliman, casting an occasional glance, a mixture of amazement and pity and awe, at Hem. She looked much less strained than the night before, but there was a crease in the middle of her brow. This was the first she had heard of the true purpose of Hem and Saliman's quest; she had followed them on trust, because she had nowhere else to go, and now found herself tangled in events beyond her ken. Hem wondered what she was thinking.

  Grigar had followed the conversation closely. "The Foretold? The Treesong?" he said. "My friends, we are in deep waters indeed ... I take it, then, that you cannot bear the news of this army to Innail, as I had hoped. Yet it is urgent that they know of it. I am sure that Innail is to be the first conquest."

  "Not at this moment," said Saliman. "Although it hurts my heart to say so."

  Grigar bowed his head in thought. "Perhaps I should put away my role as a common man of Desor, and travel there myself. Desor is becoming more perilous for me, in any case; and perhaps after the death of Hrunsar, and my failure to track you, it would be sensible to leave. I have seen people blinded for less. And Innail must be warned."

  "You will find a kinder place there than here," said Saliman. "My soul is darkened by what I have seen in Desor, my friend."

  Grigar sighed. "Aye," he said. "Yet, even if it is full of serpents, it hurts to leave my home. I am loath to go."

  "I think you must leave Desor," said Marajan. "In any case, you must make your choice soon, before the sun rises. Your hours in my house grow short: the door of time, alas, opens only briefly."

  They quickly discussed their plans. Grigar told them the Hollow Lands were a day's ride from the house, and that this part of the Fesse was now deserted, and had but light guard. If they traveled under a glimveil, they should not attract notice.

  "What of you, Hekibel?" asked Saliman. "What do you wish to do?"

  "I will come with you," she said, without hesitation. "If, that is, you will have me."

  "I only fear that meeting Hem and me has already cost you too much." Saliman paused. "As you said yesterday, aside from the horses, everyone you traveled with is now dead. I feel the weight and sorrow of that, and I am afraid that if you continue with us, it may cost you your own life."

  Hekibel sat up straight and looked Saliman in the eye. "Yes, I have thought of all that," she said. "How could I not? But Saliman, it is already too late for me. I think I must see this through to the end, for good or ill."

  "If you wished, you could travel with me to Innail," said Grigar.

  "I thank you," Hekibel said. "But I think my path leads elsewhere."

  Hem studied Hekibel curiously; he thought that overnight there was a change in her. She looked pale and somehow very fragile, but something had hardened in her expression, a determination he hadn't seen before. He wanted to tell her how brave he thought she was, but somehow the words wouldn't come out.

  "Well, then," said Grigar. "I myself will travel through the Weywood. I hope the spirits of the wood will permit me free entrance." He looked inquiringly at Marajan, who nodded gravely.

  "I think the woods will not be hostile," she said. "As for you three, you must journey as swiftly as you may. In your time, the hours darken, although whether the world turns to endless night, or will find beyond hope a new dawn, I cannot tell. But all my love goes with you. Especially with you, young healer. There will be much need of healing, after."

  Hem met Marajan's lucid gaze, and his heart swelled with sudden, unlooked-for love. He didn't know what to say, but it didn't matter. He knew that Marajan read his deepest longings, and she understood and blessed them all.

  THE DEAD

  A/as/ Alas! The dead have come,

  The newborn babe, the withered king,

  And pale Bards whose empty hands No blessings bring.

  Poor shades, no hearth can warm them now.

  They walk beneath the roofless skies Forlorn and lost, and all men dread

  Their fading cries.

  Death has robbed their limbs of love

  And starved their gentle flesh to bone:

  At last beneath the starless sky Each stands alone.

  They pluck at me, in my dark mind

  Like burning rain their voices fall, And who can count their legion ranks

  Or name them all?

  From The Elidhu Canticles, Horvadh of Gent

  Chapter XVII

  DREAMS

  IT was a world neither of darkness nor light, an endless twilight inhabited by dim forms in ceaseless motion. Nothing seemed to hold its shape: there were voices whose edges seemed to glimmer with starlight, faint lullabies and lamentations who stepped out of the silence like young girls, their faces averted. Everywhere there were the marks of hands, as if every surface breathed out the heat of a body that had just touched it. It wasn't possible to see anything clearly, always there were shifting veils of light and shadow drifting and vanishing, and the eye could fix on nothing. The earth seemed no longer solid, but a mist that mingled with the vapors of the air. And everywhere the voices, the wan echoes of the dead ...

  Maerad woke with a start, feeling the cold sweat sliding down her back and her forehead. She didn't know if she had cried out; it seemed to her that the echo of her own voice sti
ll hung on the night air, but perhaps it was merely a remnant of her dream. She gathered her blanket closely around her and sat up, feeling the wool's roughness against her cheek, the prickle of the dry grass, the hard ground against her buttocks—these were tangible things out of the world of solid objects, and their abrasiveness was reassuring.

  She stared up, looking to the stars for comfort, as she had so often in her life. Ilion, the morning star, had long since set over the horizon, and the bright litter of the Lukemoi, the path of the dead, arced across the sky. The stars gave her no consolation. A slight wind brushed her hair back and cooled the sweat on her face. Maerad shivered, remembering that those stars marked the bridge between this world and the Gates, beyond which lay—what? Nobody, not even Ardina, knew the answer to that question. Maerad thought now that the dead did not wander through the groves of the stars, as the Bards sang. No, the Gates opened on darkness, and the dead soul stepped into that darkness and was lost forever. Perhaps, she thought, they step gladly into that darkness. She imagined walking that high path, far above the lamentations of the earth, beyond the sweat and filth and sorrow of human existence, and how her own life might fall regretlessly from her open hands—all its joy, all its sorrow, all its triumph and defeat. Yes, they might well step gladly and lightly away from the weight of being alive.

  If the dead step out into the dark and leave the world behind them, she thought, what are these voices that I cannot stop hearing? They are not the voices of the living.

  She clutched her head in her hands; her forehead was burning, aching, but her skin felt as cold as ice. I have been too much out of this world, she thought. And now I am afraid. Something has happened . . .

  When Maerad came out of her trance, it was just before dawn. She looked about with wonder, sniffing the clean, cold air that seared her nostrils and stung her cheeks. There was a thick, low ground mist wisping out of the dips and hollows, very white in the early light.