Pellinor 04: The Singing

by Alison Croggon

  Maerad didn't want to ask what that state was. She had a feeling she wouldn't like the answer.

  "I don't like it much myself," she said, reaching out and taking his hand. "I'm sorry, Cadvan. I really am."

  "I forgive you." Cadvan's face softened, and Maerad saw that his rage had passed. "Just. But please, Maerad, if you're going to do something like that again, at least warn me."

  "I promise. And maybe there's some good in this; at least I've found out that I can't be a bird. I think that maybe a wolfskin is the only form I can take. I could have tried it in some other circumstance and been stuck in between forever." She shuddered at the thought. "I don't know what would have become of me if you hadn't been there."

  It occurred to Maerad as she spoke that in the strange world of the mind, where even she was sometimes baffled and lost, Cadvan always seemed to know where to find her, how to call her back. How did he know? This was the magery of Elementals, not of Bards; Cadvan said often that he knew nothing about these powers. And yet, when the Landrost had thrown her beyond her own Knowing, Cadvan had found her in the infinite vastness and brought her home; and just now he had called her out of the torment of unbeing, and reminded her who she was. She looked at him with a new curiosity: there was much she didn't know about Cadvan.

  "Well, frankly, it's a relief to know there's something you can't do," said Cadvan. He gave her his sudden, brilliant smile. "You look very tired. I'll take first watch tonight."

  Maerad nodded. It was true that she was weary; it was not as bad as the exhaustion that she had suffered in Innail, but it was of the same kind. She wrapped herself in her blanket, trying to find a comfortable place to rest. Briefly, as she always did, she regretted the comfortable bed she had left behind; but she fell asleep almost at once.

  At first she lay in the dreamless slumber of exhaustion, but after a while she began to dream. It was the old nightmares in which Hulls stretched out their bony hands toward her, their eyes glowing like red coals in the darkness. Then she was alone, on a huge, dark plain, with a sense of panic rising in her throat; she could see nothing clearly, but she knew that she was being hunted down, and that she had nowhere to hide. But the dream shifted abruptly to something worse. She was in the middle of a tormenting struggle, and her body was shot through with pain that made her cry out. At the same time, she was chasing someone, someone she loved, who was in terrible danger; she was pursuing him down a long and empty road, unable to cry out a warning. She heard someone calling behind her, and she turned; it was Hem. He was running as fast as he could, but it seemed as if he were standing still. She called his name, but he didn't hear her. He caught up with Maerad and she wanted to touch him, but something forbade her to reach out. Then he passed her and was, impossibly, at once a small figure receding into the distance. As Maerad watched him, an immense grief gathered inside her. She tried to follow him, but her legs were rooted to the ground and she couldn't move. Then there was a blinding light, and she seemed to fall; she did not stop falling, and then someone was shaking her.

  "Maerad." It was Cadvan. "You were having a nightmare."

  "Yes." Maerad sat up, fighting her way out of the dream, and found that she had been weeping and that her blanket was twisted around her. It was the darkest part of the night, and the fire had burned down to embers.

  Cadvan handed her the water bottle, and she took a deep drink. "Were you dreaming of Hem?" he asked. "How did you know?" "You were crying out his name." "Yes ... it was a horrible dream ..." "Was it a foredream?"

  "No," said Maerad, frowning. "No, it was different somehow. And I don't understand it. I don't even know how to describe it to you. It was just one of those—those bad dreams you have."

  Cadvan didn't pry, although he was clearly curious, and Maerad didn't want to talk about it. Shortly afterward she took over her turn at the watch and Cadvan slept. Maerad put some more fuel on the fire to keep it alive and studied Cadvan's face in its dim light. Asleep, he was a man like any other man, vulnerable in his flesh; the powers that in his waking life made him one of the most famous Bards in Annar slumbered too. She smiled, remembering suddenly his pleasure when he haggled over a cheese in a market, or when he swapped weatherlore with the publican of a tavern. He was both more simple and more complex than others thought him: he wore his powers lightly, with an air of self-mockery, and yet she had seen the fierce pride that drove him. He was the least vain person she knew, but among the most arrogant. After all this time, she probably knew him as well as anybody in Edil-Amarandh, and yet he still had the power to surprise her.

  He always seemed much younger when he was asleep, as if the burdens that he carried in his waking life were lifted from him. I wish it were the same for me, Maerad thought. There's no escape, even in dreams. She didn't want to think about her nightmare; its grief still lay heavy inside her. The only thing she felt certain about was that it had been a dream that was full of death. She cast her mind out into the night, seeking the dim knowledge that told her that Hem was present in the world, but she could find nothing. Although she wouldn't admit it to herself, deep inside she was now very afraid that Hem was dead.

  The next day they picked their way slowly east, staying as close to the edge of the floodwaters as was practical. The water had begun to subside as rapidly as it had risen, leaving behind pools of brown water and a detritus of rubbish: broken branches, the bloated corpses of drowned animals, and everywhere a layer of silt. The horses stepped daintily over the soggy turf, and Darsor refused to walk into the mud. Keru, though less vocal than Darsor, was as stubborn, although Maerad was incandescent with impatience and would have pushed them on back to the West Road, if she had been able to.

  It smells like death, said Darsor, when she argued with him. I will not steep my hooves in death.

  "The horses are right," said Cadvan. "It's dangerous, at least until we're sure it won't rain again; it wouldn't take much for the floods to come back. And it won't be long before this smell gets worse."

  Maerad scowled, and scanned the gray skies, but she made no further protest. There was a definite smell of rot and mold that the floodwaters left behind them, and she had as little desire as the horses to be caught in the floods again. As the day wore on, it seemed the worst of the rains had passed; the clouds brought only a few light showers that passed swiftly. The sun cast a dim, watery light, conspiring with the empty, lonely landscape to fill Maerad's heart with gloom. She had not told Cadvan about her dream, or her anxieties about Hem, feeling almost superstitiously that to talk about it might make it true, but her fears of the night before lay heavy upon her. By evening her impatience had subsided into depression. They made their camp in the shelter of an overhanging rock, not far from one of the stone circles that dotted the Hollow Lands. The red glow of a westering sun sinking through ashy clouds cast an unreal, gloomy light, throwing dark shadows behind the lichened standing stones that loomed nearby, inscrutable but heavy with a long-forgotten significance.

  "We're not going to find Hem in time," Maerad said, as she and Cadvan finished their evening meal.

  Cadvan sighed. "Maerad, what do you mean by in time?" he asked. "I know that our task is urgent. Yet we have all Annar and the Suderain in which to seek him, and no guarantee that he is still alive."

  "He's alive," said Maerad stubbornly.

  Cadvan was silent for a while, staring into the fire. "I came with you from Innail perfectly aware that we didn't know how to find Hem, and hoping that your Knowing would guide us," he said. "But I tell you frankly that, even if he is still alive, I rate our chances of finding Hem very low."

  In her current state of doubt, these were not words that Maerad wanted to hear. She turned her face away from Cadvan, remembering that he was a Truthteller, that he would know if she lied to him.

  "I was thinking about what happened last night," she said at last, to change the subject. "And I thought of one person who might be able to help me."

  Cadvan looked his question.

  "Ar
dina. She gave me those pipes, remember? And she told me that if I ever needed to speak to her, I should use them. I played them once before, and she came to me. Perhaps she could help me now. Perhaps she could teach me how to use my powers."

  Cadvan looked puzzled. "Ardina gave you those pipes?" he said. "I thought it was the Elidhu in the Weywood."

  Maerad remembered that she had never told Cadvan that the wood Elidhu and the Queen Ardina of Rachida were one and the same.

  "The Elemental in the Weywood was Ardina," she said, her eyes averted from Cadvan's. "They are the same. She told me to keep it secret; she said that you wouldn't understand."

  Cadvan was silent for a time as he absorbed what Maerad had said. "I think I know why she wanted it kept secret," he said at last. "Ardina understands enough of Bards to be aware of how deeply they mistrust the Elidhu. And the Elidhu in the Weywood had nothing human about her; she was deeply fey. I would not trust her, as perhaps I might trust Ardina in her human guise. Maerad, these are deep waters, and perilous; I would be wary of calling on the help of the Elidhu. I am not so sure that what they might bring you would be help, or something else."

  "Like what, for instance?" said Maerad, her voice cold. "I trust Ardina."

  "I think it foolhardy to trust her," said Cadvan. "She is Elidhu; she is immortal. She is moved by things that we do not, that we cannot, understand, and in this matter she follows her own ends, which may have very little to do with yours and mine. You've seen the floods, what they have destroyed: that is the power of the Elementals, Maerad. It has no mercy, and no thought; the Dark and the Light mean nothing to it. It simply is."

  "I think the Bards made a big mistake when they stopped talking to the Elementals," said Maerad.

  "I am sure you are right. And alas, now our paths are sundered, and in this time of great need we have less chance of understanding each other. Yes, Maerad, the Treesong is a matter that concerns the Elidhu, and I understand that; but I would give a great deal to know how it concerns them, what their interest is in this matter."

  "The Treesong was theirs, and Nelsor stole it," said Maerad sharply. She was beginning to feel annoyed. "It seems quite straightforward to me."

  "And if we give it back to them—supposing we find out how that is possible—what then of the Speech? Will Bards also have to give back their magery?"

  "No, of course not!"

  "How do you know, Maerad? I, for one, am not so sure. It seems to me that there is a good chance that should we succeed in finding the Treesong, should we release it back to the Elidhu and somehow also destroy the Nameless One, we could lose everything that makes us Bards."

  Maerad was silent with shock. The thought had never occurred to her. "Surely that's not possible?" she said uncertainly. "Bards in Afinil had the Speech before Nelsor wrote down the Treesong..."

  "Aye, they did," said Cadvan, his voice harsh. "But that doesn't mean that the Speech will live in us once we give the Treesong back. Undoing the magery that captured the Treesong is not simply a matter of reversing it. You should know that. And I fear what else might unravel after: it might go back to the very roots of our Knowing and silence our tongues. The truth is that we cannot know what will happen. If you haven't thought of this before, it's time you did. I am prepared to countenance that possibility if it is a choice between that and another Great Silence under the Nameless One; but I do not love the thought. We stand before an abyss. I think that even if we should claim victory in the midst of all this uncertainty, we could still find ourselves with our hands empty. Whatever happens, our world will not be the same after this. This is not a game, Maerad. We risk everything. And we could win, and still lose."

  Maerad stared at the ground, biting her lip. At the back of her mind there had always been the hope that, if everything turned out well, if the Nameless One was defeated, she would simply become a normal Bard, studying the lore of Annar and the Seven Kingdoms somewhere like Innail or perhaps Gent, which had been Dernhil's School. The thought that even their victory could mean the end of Barding, the end of Schools, shook her deeply. Cadvan watched her closely, his face still hard.

  "Given what we risk," he said, "I should hope that we are at least honest with each other. My hope Maerad, and it is a very small hope to place against the darkness that is now engulfing Annar, lies in your love for Hem, and, perhaps, in your love for me, and for others whose kindness you have been grateful for. So if you are leading me on a wild-goose chase, I think you should have the courtesy to tell me."

  Maerad said nothing for a time, pondering Cadvan's words and wondering how to answer. Did he doubt her love for him? Of course she loved him, of course she was grateful for his kindness. She looked past his shoulder and said evasively, "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that if you think, in your Knowing, that Hem is dead, you should tell me."

  Maerad blushed. She should have known that she could not keep her fear secret from Cadvan. "I—I don't think he's dead .. ." she said. "I j-just.. ." She stuttered into silence. "I'm not so sure," she said at last. "I've lost that—contact—before sometimes, but it hasn't meant that he was dead. This might be the same."

  "But you had a nightmare about Hem," said Cadvan flatly.

  "Yes," she whispered. "He might be dead. But I am not sure, and I still think we should look for him."

  A long silence stretched out between them. Maerad stole a wary glance at Cadvan; he was staring into the fire, his face closed.

  "Do you not trust me?" she said at last. "Is that it?" "Why should I trust you?" he said, turning to face her.

  Maerad felt her temper rising inside her, but tried to keep it leashed; at the same time as she smarted at the injustice of what Cadvan had said to her, and the deeper hurt of his mistrust, she remembered the terrible fight they had had before the disaster in the Gwalhain Pass, when she was sure that he had been killed. She didn't wish for another such breach to open between them.

  "I don't have to tell you every thought that passes through my head," she said, her voice even. "What gives you the right to demand that?"

  "The right I have is the faith I have placed in you, risking my very life to follow your Knowing," Cadvan said. "Would you not agree?"

  There was another long, uncomfortable silence. It was true that Cadvan had risked his life, and more. Yet Maerad felt more and more irritated; this side of Cadvan, his ability to turn, without notice, into an implacable, unforgiving judge, annoyed her beyond measure, and it was deeply wounding. What made it worse was that there was a grain of truth in what he said. But it was partial only, she thought, it was not the whole truth.

  "I think you are wrong about Ardina," she said at last. She stared at Cadvan defiantly, and he met her gaze. "I have seen more of her than you have. Yes, she is an Elidhu; but just because the Elidhu are dangerous, or have their own concerns apart from ours, doesn't mean that they are evil. I need help, and I think Ardina can help me. It's not as if you can." Her last sentence sounded more spiteful than she meant, and she bit her lip.

  "Perhaps you are right in this," Cadvan said, his face expressionless. "I have no way of judging one way or another." He paused, and then added, "I'm sorry for what I said before. Words said in haste or anger can be harsher than their true intent."

  Maerad nodded, accepting the apology. Then she took up her pack and, her fingers trembling, she searched through it for the reed pipes Ardina had given her. She inspected them closely; it occurred to her that she did not know how to play them with her damaged hand. She thought of summoning her magery, to create fingers of light, but for reasons she could not explain, discarded the idea: they were humble pipes, and she should play them humbly. Cadvan watched her curiously, but said nothing.

  "I might as well try now," she said. "Though I'm not sure what tunes I can play anymore ..."

  She stood, feeling that it would be somehow disrespectful to summon Ardina while she was sitting down, and gave the pipes an experimental blow. The high, fleeting notes evoked a vivid image of a beau
tiful, deserted landscape: long banks of reeds perhaps, by a wide lake, where curlews called in the evening. It had been a long time since she had played any pipes, and she frowned as she missed a note. She glanced swiftly at Cadvan, as if reassuring herself that he was there; although she wouldn't have admitted it, she felt nervous about this summoning, especially after the near disaster of the previous night. She took a deep breath, and began to play a simple melody, a child's tuning, improvising around her missing fingers.

  For what seemed like a long time, nothing happened. The reedy notes floated out into the darkening evening, plaintive and lonely. Maerad began to lose herself in the fascination of making music; even with her maimed hand, she could find a range of expressiveness that pleased her, and she began to experiment. Then she felt the back of her neck prickle, as if someone were watching her, and she whirled around, letting the pipes drop from her lips.

  Greetings, Elednor Edil-Amarandh na, said Ardina.

  Maerad forgot, every time, the stunning impact of Ardina's beauty. The Elidhu stood on the grass a short distance away, in

  her guise as the grave Queen of Rachida. She wore a simple white dress that fell shimmering about her body as if it were woven of moonlight. A moonstone suspended from a silver fillet hung on her forehead, and about her waist was a silver chain, and her long unbound hair fell like a silver waterfall down her slender back. She turned her yellow eyes, with their inhuman slotted pupils, upon Maerad, and the glance went deep. Maerad bowed breathlessly, unable to speak. Darsor and Keru, grazing nearby, whinnied in welcome; Maerad thought it sounded oddly as if they were welcoming a dear friend. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Cadvan scramble to his feet and bow; Ardina turned and acknowledged his homage with a nod. And to you, Cadvan of Lirigon, greetings.