"I don't like Hulls," said Hem thickly. He was struggling against a creeping horror; vivid memories rose in his mind's eye of the Hulls in Edinur, the Hulls at Sjug'hakar Im. "I'm pretty useless here, to be honest."
He took Hekibel's hand, and pulled her away from the other Bards. She said nothing. At first she seemed to resist him, as if she were fixed to the spot, dazed with terror, but she allowed Hem to lead her to the rough shelter of rock where Maerad and Cadvan had made their home for the past week, and as soon as they were inside, she crouched on the ground, her arms wrapped around herself.
"Hulls are horrible," said Hem, trying to smile to reassure her. "But if Maerad says we will be all right, we are in no danger."
Hekibel looked up at him, but said nothing. The naked fear in her face made Hem kneel down next to her and take her hands in both of his. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was for the trouble he had caused her, but the words died in his mouth. Hekibel looked up and met his eyes and then she put her arms around him, and he could feel the trembling of her body. Hekibel, he remembered, had not been near Hulls before, although she had seen their work; and perhaps, not having the defenses of Bards, she was more vulnerable to the desolation they wrought in the spirit.
Maerad followed her brother's departure, and then turned back to face the Hulls, Saliman and Cadvan on either side of her.
"So, Maerad," said Saliman, with a sardonic smile. "How do you propose we defend ourselves? I confess, I cannot see anything but a fearsome battle before us."
"There are none but those we see," said Maerad absently. She was concentrating all her attention in front of her. "They cannot get another spell through the wards—I think they have been trying. And perhaps they do not know that that first spell has been broken. They do not seem anxious."
"No," said Cadvan, peering through the dusk. "My walls aren't giving them much trouble—they are breaking them as they ride. My wards are still strong, so far as I can see; they shouldn't be able to tell what is happening here. I would give much, all the same, to know how they slid that spell past my magery. It hurts my pride."
"If that is the worst hurt you suffer this night, my friend, I will not pity you," said Saliman.
"Shhh." Maerad glanced at the Bards sternly, and turned back to the Hulls. Saliman cocked an ironic eyebrow over her head at Cadvan, who almost smiled.
Maerad was waiting for the Hulls to come close enough so that she could be sure of destroying all of them at once. Her contempt for them lay like nausea in her stomach; at this moment she felt no pity, no stirrings of conscience, no division of her will. She had no doubt that the Hulls planned to murder her brother and her friends, and to take her captive. They deserved no mercy.
Suddenly, as if they had appeared out of nowhere, the Hulls were visible to the naked eye. They must have broken through one of Cadvan's shields, which had also stripped them of the sorcery that hitherto had concealed them. At the same moment that they became visible, the Hulls sighted their prey, and they drew together and quickened their pace.
Maerad drew in her breath. They seemed much closer now that she could see them, and she felt the Bards beside her flinch at the force of the malignant wills that were now focused upon them with deadly intent. From here she could see the red light that burned in the shadows of their hoods, and the bony hands that held the reins of their horses; and she also saw that the steeds they rode were not living horses, but beasts of carrion, held together and driven by the wills of those who rode them. For the first time she felt horror creep into her heart.
The Hulls were riding now in a semicircle, and she knew that the most powerful sorcerers were in the middle, like the keystones of an arch. Clearly, when they came close enough, they planned to encircle their camp so there would be no chance to escape. They rode arrogantly, sure of their success, and Maerad's lip curled.
She closed her eyes, and sought the Hulls in the shadow world. They were easy to find: they wavered before her, insubstantial forms like fumes of poisonous smoke. They were not aware of her. Hulls could not enter the planes where she now moved.
Slowly, Maerad drew in a deep breath. It was a breath that no living human could take: she inhaled the icy mists that hung over the mountains, the wild briny gales of the sea, the mild spring breezes that wandered over the Hollow Lands, river winds and summer storms and the high still air that stood beneath the stars, drawing them into the very depth of her being. And then, pursing her lips as if she were about to play a pipe, she blew it out at the smoky forms of the Hulls.
There was a brief, panicked turbulence as the Hulls attempted to resist the force of Maerad's breath, but in this place they were powerless. In moments the wisping vapors that were their souls dissipated and vanished, and it was as if they had never been.
Maerad opened her eyes, and the Hulls were gone. In their places were fourteen small piles of bone and cloth, and then, wafting toward them on the mild breeze, a faint stench of rotting meat. She smiled.
Saliman was speechless, his mouth open with shock. Cadvan cleared his throat, attempted to speak, and stuttered into silence. He cleared his throat again.
"By the Light," he said, when he had mastered himself. "I think that beats the singing a lullaby to a stormdog for simplicity and economy, Maerad. But I wish I had known that you simply had to blow at Hulls to get rid of them. It would have saved me a few scars."
"The night is clean again." Maerad turned to the Bards, her eyes glittering. The pallor of her face was now relieved by red flushes of fever high on her cheekbones.
"That's not possible," Saliman said slowly. "I am not sure, much as I loathe Hulls, that I want to see the like again. I—" He broke off, shaking his head, and sheathed his sword. He gave Maerad a straight look. "I think, Maerad, you are the greatest peril I have ever encountered."
"Not to you," she said. "Not to anyone I love."
"A lightning strike or a tempest does not distinguish between friend and foe," said Saliman.
Maerad eyes blazed with anger. "Mistrust me if you will," she said.
"Think not that I mistrust you," said Saliman gently. "Anyone who witnesses what you have just done and claims they are not afraid of that power is either a liar or a fool. And for all my faults, I am neither of those."
Maerad met his eyes for a long moment, and her face softened. Impulsively she flung her arms around Saliman's neck and kissed his cheek, and then without saying anything more, she turned back to the camp. She wanted to talk to Hem.
That night, freed for the moment of the fear of pursuit, they made a large fire and sat long in talk as a ripening moon rose into a clear spring sky. Outside the circle of firelight it was a cold night, but none of them felt the chill. Cadvan made a stew of rabbit flavored with wild sage and thyme and, aside from the grim stories they all had to tell, it was a merry gathering.
The horses, with the exception of Darsor, had panicked and run off, but were swiftly tracked down with Darsor's help, and now were exchanging equine gossip as they casually cropped the turf nearby. Irc had returned cautiously after the confrontation with the Hulls, his feathers still stiff with alarm, and had been formally introduced to Maerad and Cadvan. He wanted to dislike Maerad—he was a jealous bird, and he regarded Hem as his own special possession—but when she greeted him respectfully and offered him some food, he allowed himself to be charmed, and even hopped onto her forearm, a special sign of trust.
Hem had been shocked when he saw Maerad's hand, and at first he tried to avoid looking at it, as the sight pained him. Maerad herself was no longer self-conscious about her missing fingers and gestured as freely as she had before her hand was maimed; and gradually Hem became more used to her injury and didn't feel a stab in his heart every time he glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye. They sat very close to each other, and joked and squabbled as if they were any brother and sister meeting again after a long parting. Except, thought Cadvan, for the magery that still flickered subtly under Maerad's skin, sur
rounding her form with a faint, ever-changing nimbus of golden light. She remained pale and feverish, her eyes unnaturally bright, and Cadvan noticed with concern that she ate very little, and only when pressed. She gave most of her meal to Irc.
Everyone agreed they could not stay where they were, but no one knew where they ought to go. Innail, their nearest haven, was quite likely to be under attack again from the forces gathered in Desor, and traveling in that direction would very likely bring an unwelcome encounter with the army. The closest
Schools were Desor and Ettinor, but none of them had any inclination to travel that way. Maerad remained silent, staring into the fire. Irc had crept onto her lap and was crooning as she idly stroked his neck, and Hem was beginning to nod with sleep.
"The main question," said Cadvan, "is the Treesong. If we understood what happened today, perhaps we could decide what we should do."
All eyes turned toward Maerad.
"I don't understand it, either," she said slowly. "It's difficult to explain, even to myself..."
"Can you guess what was wrong?" asked Saliman.
"Something was missing." Maerad paused, as if she were trying to listen to an inner voice, and then shook her head. "But I don't know what it was ..."
"Hekibel, you knew that it wasn't running true," said Saliman. Hekibel, who had been almost as silent as Maerad during this discussion, looked up. "I am wondering how you knew, and whether that same knowing might tell us something?"
"I know nothing of magery," said Hekibel, her voice low.
"Saliman and I are not considered beginners in the Arts," said Cadvan. "And yet we had no inkling of any trouble."
"Perhaps Hekibel felt it because she has no training, and we were hampered by what we expected, instead of looking at what was in front of our noses," said Saliman. "It is not Bardic magery, after all, and it moves in other ways. Simpler ways, perhaps."
"I suppose, for me, it was a bit like a scene in a play where somebody has forgotten the lines, or the scenery is wrong, or a player is missing, or something like that," said Hekibel. "But, well, worse. In a play, you're just pretending that people die, but I thought that if it went on much longer, Hem and Maerad would really be killed."
Maerad looked up, startled. "Not killed," she said. "Worse, maybe . . ." There was a silence as the others waited for her to explain what she meant. She started to speak, and then stopped, biting her lip.
"It's difficult to talk about," Maerad said at last. "I don't have the right words; they don't fit, somehow. I mean, as you know, it often happens in magery that if the—if the circumstance is right, then the action follows. And so, when the lyre and the tuning fork were close together, it was as if the Treesong woke up and—became something, almost as if there were another person there." She frowned with concentration. "And the Treesong was there, it wanted to be whole, and that wanting was all there was, and it just got more and more unbearable because whatever it wanted couldn't happen. And there was nothing else in the whole world except that wanting. And if Hekibel hadn't made the Treesong sleep again, Hem and I would have been trapped in that wanting, with no way out of it." She lifted her hands in frustration. "I can't say it properly," she said.
"What does it want?" said Cadvan.
"To be whole. To be free. To be alive." She remembered, with a sudden stab of pain, the Winterking's bitterness when he had told her the meanings of the runes on her lyre in his cold throne room in Arkan-da. "Arkan said—he said the runes were dead, that Nelsor had trapped the power of the Treesong within them, like a flower in ice. He said they were a song, and I had to play them. And when I said I didn't know the music, he said"— she swallowed, recalling his icy rage, the strange mix of fear and desire that Arkan had invoked within her—"he said, Do you think anything can be alive, when it is cloven in half?"
Hem sat up, his eyes shining. "I'm the music," he said. "That's what Nyanar meant." Maerad looked at him inquiringly, and he explained. "Nyanar was an Elidhu I spoke to, in the Suderain. He was ... I don't know how to describe how he was." Hem paused, remembering. "He told me there were two foretold. One for the singing and one for the music." Hem slumped and looking broodingly at the ground. "Only the music didn't happen. I know what the music sounds like. I mean, I know what it feels like. But it didn't feel like that at all today..."
"Arkan also said that the Song could only be sung with love." The high flush on Maerad's cheeks brightened, as if she were making a shameful confession. "And that love can't be stolen or feigned, that it can only be given." She paused. "I don't know what that means, either."
"These are deep riddles," Cadvan said, half smiling. "All the same, I think that whatever was missing today, it was not love."
"Perhaps we have to go back to the beginning? I mean, where all this began?" said Hekibel hesitantly.
Maerad stared at her. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I think so... but nobody knows when the Treesong was first sung. There's that story Ankil told us, about the Split Song ..."
"Ah yes," said Cadvan. "So the Song came out of the nowhere into the now, and slipped into the veins of the Elidhu, as if it were a shoal of minnows slipping into a stream, and each Elidhu felt the Song within it like a shudder of life, and all the sounds of the world burst in on them: the fall of the rain, and the sough of the sea, and the endless sighing of the wind through the green trees. And they opened their mouths in wonder, and so it was the Song leaped out of their mouths, and at last became itself."
"That's beautiful," said Hekibel, listening intently.
Saliman was staring at his hands, his mobile face thoughtful. "I think what might have been missing was the right place," he said. "It would only make sense. The Elidhu are creatures of place, after all. But then, where would that place be? The
Winterking's mountain? Or perhaps somewhere like Nal-Ak-Burat, where Hem saw Nyanar?"
Maerad shook her head, and Cadvan spoke. "That's unlikely, I think," he said. "From what Maerad has told me, the Song doesn't belong to any one Elidhu."
"Well, then, where it first appeared in Edil-Amarandh," said Saliman. "Wherever that might be."
"It's not the Treesong we should be thinking about, but the runes," said Maerad softly. "And the runes were made in Afinil, by Nelsor himself, in the deep of time."
"If it is a matter of undoing what has been wrongly done, then the place of the doing is the proper place," said Cadvan. He sounded as if he were quoting something, and Saliman looked up and unexpectedly laughed.
"Menellin's Rules," he said. "Learned by rote by every Minor Bard in Annar. How many times I wished, as I chanted them over and over again in the learning halls and watched the sun playing outside, that he hadn't written so many! But yes, perhaps it will do to remember our first lessons."
Maerad was staring fixedly into the fire, her eyes shining.
"Afinil is the place," she said. As she spoke, it seemed to those who listened that echoes gathered around her words, as if many voices spoke behind hers. "We must journey to Afinil for the singing. Under the sign of Ura, by ash, alder, and willow, in the season of renewal..."
There was a blank silence.
"That is all very fine," said Cadvan at last. "But Afinil no longer exists. The Nameless One loathed that city above all others and scoured it from the face of the earth. Even its ruins were ground into dust and scattered on the sixteen winds. And no one living can tell where once it stood."
Chapter XIX
THE DANCE OF THE DEAD
THAT night, Maerad didn't sleep. She lay on her back, her eyes open, staring at the blackness of the rough stone above her and listening to the gentle breathing of her companions. Hem stirred restlessly in his sleep and began to snore, and she smiled at the sound, thinking of the times when she had held him in her arms and stilled his nightmares. It seemed so long ago, in another lifetime. That was before she had even known that he was her brother. Though something inside her had known the first moment she saw him, cowering in the wrecke
d caravan in the middle of the Valverras.
Hem was much changed since then. It wasn't only that he had grown at least two handspans and was now taller than Maerad by a head. He had always been thin, but his face had lost the softness of childhood, and his body had the ranginess of a young colt, at once awkward and graceful. It was possible now to see clearly the young man he would soon be.
To have found Hem at last was a deep happiness that lay, like a glowing coal, in the middle of her being, and she warmed herself against it like a shivering child. Beyond that one simple thing, all was uncertain. After her reunion with Hem, what she remembered most vividly when she thought about the previous day was the flash of fear in Saliman's face when she had destroyed the Hulls. Cadvan had promised not to be afraid of her, and yet even he could not entirely conceal his own anxiety. But what were her powers? Even now, she felt she had little understanding of these forces that moved through her: she was a vessel, nothing more. The Treesong had its own imperative, and she was merely its instrument, for good or ill. The thought filled her with an aching emptiness.
It's strange, she thought. The more powerful I become, the less choice I seem to have about anything. She felt as if she were fixed on the rim of a great wheel, which was turning slowly toward the singing of the Treesong. No force on earth could stop its inevitable revolution; and yet she didn't know what would happen, what might begin or end with the undoing of Nelsor's magery. Beyond the act of the singing, everything was blank.
I might die, she thought. Hem might die. Everything I love might be swept away. Cadvan and Saliman know that, yet still they stand by me. They do not think of turning back, although they do not know what they will meet at the end. They must be allowed their fear, if they are so brave in the face of it. Am I as brave as that? Why do I feel so lonely?
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