The Bone Queen

  “Indeed, I am serious. This morning I’ve given some thought to our obligations, and I cannot see why we are so continually drained by the demands of the Fesse. It isn’t supportable.”

  “You’re talking nonsense,” said Calis. “Of course it is.”

  “If the people of the Fesse want the magery of Bards, they will have to pay. This is my decision.”

  “But they do pay,” said Calis, beginning to lose her temper. “What madness is this? In any case, you have no authority over Bards that isn’t freely granted, and if you’re talking rubbish, you have none at all.”

  Bashar looked briefly nonplussed by Calis’s bluntness. Her eyes blurred and unfocused, as if she were listening to some unheard voice, and then she shook her head and smiled. “Forgive me, Calis. I am perhaps misled by anxiety at our short resources. For now, do as you see fit.”

  Calis studied her warily. “You’re exhausted, Bashar,” she said. “Get some sleep. You’re no good to us if you are not well. And remember, we need healers.”

  “I am not in the least tired. All the same, this question of responsibility must be discussed.”

  “I’ll speak to Norowen myself about the healers, if you are too busy with your own responsibilities,” Calis said crossly, and left, slamming the door behind her.

  Bashar blinked, and paced slowly across the room, back to the window.

  “We must be more careful,” she said. She cocked her head, and was silent for a time, as if she were listening to that silent voice. “Until it is time for an open assault. Soon, soon, but now is not the time.” She turned and studied the sky, where more clouds were gathering. A few vagrant drops were beginning to fall.

  XIX

  THE silence when the rain stopped woke Cadvan just before dawn. Dernhil and Selmana were still asleep, and Dernhil was snoring softly. Early the previous evening, shortly after the scrying, the three younger Bards had rolled themselves up in quilts on pallets in Nelac’s sitting room, insisting that Nelac rest in his own bed. Cadvan had fallen asleep as soon as his eyes closed, dropping into the blankness of utter exhaustion.

  He sat up, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Like all Bards, Cadvan had powers of swift recovery, but the past few days had left a silt of weariness in his body. On the other hand, the new ease in his being since Dernhil had scried him made up for much of the fatigue. But he felt grubby, as if every crevice of his skin were slick with old sweat and dirt. A bath! He couldn’t remember when he had last had one.

  Making a dim magelight, he raided Nelac’s commodious storage room for clean raiment and a drying cloth. He was about to leave the chambers when he remembered that he must not be recognized. He cast a light version of the Pilanel charm, enough to conceal his identity, and then let himself out, bolting the door behind him. This early, the Bardhouse’s occupants were still abed, though he heard movement in the streets outside. He guessed that there must be flooding somewhere. No doubt Nelac would be called upon to help if there were any emergencies, which might cause complications. Well, they could think about that later.

  In the Bardhouse bathing room he turned on the copper taps and shaved as he waited for the stone bath to fill. Then he eased off his clothes and sank with a sigh into the hot water. For a while he simply lay there, letting the heat dissolve the aches and pains in his muscles as the lavender-scented steam rose and cleared his head. It felt like a stolen luxury. It was a stolen luxury: he was breaking his banishment, after all.

  This was an aspect of Barding that he had missed sorely. Bards had developed bathing to an art; not for them a hasty sponging down in a cold river, or breaking the ice in a basin on a winter morning. In Lirigon, water was gathered in a cistern on the hill above the School and cunningly pumped using gravity into every house, where it was heated in copper pipes. The bathing rooms were comfortably furnished, decorated in colours that were meant to induce tranquillity and meditation. Cadvan studied the cranes painted in flight on the opposite wall, and for a few precious minutes he was utterly content.

  He remembered with a start that he shouldn’t linger, scrubbed himself thoroughly and dressed, and returned to Nelac’s chambers not half an hour later. The sun was yet to rise, and the other Bards were still asleep. For a moment he thought mischievously that he should wake them, but relented: there would be time enough later. He drew a screen around Nelac’s table, so the light wouldn’t disturb the sleepers, and idly opened a book. Another luxury he had missed; he had taken none with him to Jouan, just as he had never played music there, as if his banishment meant he had no right to any of the things he had loved as a Bard. The truth was that they had reminded him too painfully of what he had thrown away. More cowardice; it would have been useful to have books in Jouan. He could have used them to teach Hal her letters.

  The sun rose and broadened and the other Bards woke and took themselves to the bathing room and discussed breakfast. Cadvan remained absorbed in his book behind the screen, waiting until they were ready to convene about how best to approach the Circle about what they knew. Lirigon’s dawn chorus was especially loud; the School’s birdlife was celebrating the end of the rainstorm. For once, Cadvan felt at peace; the thought of his exile didn’t chafe him today. Even if he could never enter Lirigon again, he could read and play music and enjoy the pleasure of clean clothes on freshly bathed skin. Barding wasn’t everything. It wasn’t even mostly everything.

  Then, quite suddenly, his head jerked up from his book. He sent out his Bard senses, questing. He couldn’t say what had alerted him: an instinct of peril, of violent intrusion. He put the book down and stood up, peering over the screen.

  “Do you feel that?” he said.

  Dernhil, who was folding away his bedclothes, glanced at him oddly, and then smiled. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “You should warn me before you change your face, Cadvan…”

  “Something’s wrong. Really wrong.”

  “I don’t sense anything,” Dernhil said, after a pause. “What is it?”

  Cadvan shook his head. “Something’s happened, something … violent. And now…”

  “Kansabur?”

  “I don’t know.” Cadvan lifted the screen and put it back where it belonged, frowning. “I’m so tired, Dernhil, of chasing shadows, this constant, formless … not knowing. I begin to long for a monster that just turns up, like in the tales, all horns and fangs and breathing fire, and all we have to do is to chop it to bits.”

  Dernhil smiled. “Be careful what you wish for.”

  “At least we’d know what we’re up against. All this stuff inside our heads. How do we tell what is us and what is not?”

  Dernhil didn’t answer for a time, as he carefully stowed the bedclothes in a carved chest. Then he turned to Cadvan. “Maybe that’s the real question,” he said soberly. “We can’t tell, for certain. There is no real division. Even if we cast out what is driven into us, we are left with ourselves. If we can do good, we can do evil. If we are Bards, we can be Hulls, too: that possibility stirs inside us, as a condition of our being Bards at all. Perhaps the Light and the Dark, they are not so different…”

  “That is bleak indeed,” said Cadvan. “And best not said to most Bards.”

  “Aye,” said Dernhil. “But I confess, it’s a thought that haunts me. After all, as we know from our first lessons, the Dark was made by human beings: and so was the Light. And so both reflect our failings…”

  The door opened, and Selmana entered, her hair wet from bathing. She stared at Cadvan. “Who are you?” she said.

  “Selmana, meet Cadvan,” said Dernhil. “He can change his face, which you must admit is useful.”

  “A glimmerspell?” said Selmana. “But…”

  “No, something else. I’ll explain later,” said Cadvan. “Is Nelac about, Selmana?”

  “He went to arrange breakfast,” she said doubtfully, looking from one Bard to the other. “What’s wrong?”

  “Something has happened in the School.”

  Selmana paused, as Dernh
il had earlier, sending out her Bard senses. “I don’t feel anything … wrong,” she said.

  “I don’t know why you can’t feel it,” said Cadvan. “Pain. It’s like pain. I’m not imagining it.”

  “Maybe,” she said slowly. “But there is always someone in pain, maybe you are just picking up on something ordinary. Something that isn’t a threat, I mean.”

  Cadvan thought, and shook his head. “No, whatever has happened is linked to the Dark,” he said. “We have to speak to Bashar.”

  “But you heard what Nelac said last night. She might think we’re imagining things.”

  “Given what you and Nelac have to say? Surely that would make anyone sit up and take notice.” Cadvan began to walk about the room, agitatedly running his hands through his hair, until footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and he turned in relief.

  Nelac entered bearing a tray of freshly baked pastries and laid them on the table, glancing sideways at Cadvan. “That disguise is disconcerting, my friend. You are hungry? This was the best I could do, I’m afraid; Ithan is beside himself feeding messengers from the Fesse asking for help with the flooding.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem?” said Selmana, turning to Cadvan. “Maybe there are people hurt, and…”

  “I keep telling you, it’s not like that.”

  “Let’s break our fast,” said Nelac equably. “And then you can explain to me what is troubling you.”

  Cadvan glanced impatiently at the other Bards, and then shrugged and joined them at the table. The sweet smell of the pastries reminded him that he had woken early and was, after all, very hungry. For a while they ate in silence.

  “It stinks of sorcery,” said Cadvan abruptly. “But it’s not the Bone Queen. And it’s here, now.”

  Nelac contemplated his half-eaten roll. “I see,” he said. “I am not doubting you, Cadvan. Yet I am certain that I would know if the Dark had invaded the School. More than walls protect Lirigon; there are wards woven into the very stone.”

  “Kansabur was tracking Selmana in the streets of Lirigon,” said Cadvan. “Selmana saw the Shadowplains through the windows of her Bardhouse. Perhaps there are ways through the wards that we don’t know about.”

  “And you still sense this peril?”

  “Yes. For a while it was just getting worse and worse, and it almost made me sick. Now it’s like an aching tooth that’s just lying quiet.” He lifted his hands in frustration. “I wish you could feel it. I can’t ignore it.”

  Nelac finished eating, and brushed the crumbs from his hands, calmly studying Cadvan. “One of the things that seems to be happening at present is that none of us knows anything in common,” he said. “Each of us dreams and fears in solitude and understanding between us is riven. We are each alone with what we know. This isn’t how Barding works; we know best when we know together, when our understanding is held in common.”

  “Perhaps we could try melding our minds,” said Dernhil.

  “But you can only do that when you cast a charm,” said Selmana. She looked around the table, suddenly uncertain. “Or maybe that’s not true. But that’s what Calis says.”

  “It’s certainly the easiest way, Selmana. Not the only way. Then let us cast a small charm,” said Nelac. “It needn’t be significant. The saying for clear contemplation suggests itself? Do you have that one, Selmana?”

  She nodded; it was a spell often used by students on the brink of a test. The Bards linked hands and said the necessary words, bending their thought to the weaving of the charm. As soon as Cadvan began to glow with magery, his disguise fell away, and she felt relieved; his altered appearance made her uneasy, and gave her a little shock every time she looked at him. Bards shouldn’t be able to hide themselves, she thought. Somehow it wasn’t right.

  Bards had many ways of linking their thought. Scrying was the deepest and most profound, the complete entering of another’s mind; at the other end of the spectrum was a lightly sensed web of relationship, as Nelac had of his students. Melding was more formal, the mutual permission to share their powers to strengthen magery. The last time Cadvan had done this was almost two years before, in the terrible hunt for Kansabur. He turned his thoughts from the memory; this time, the making was graceful and full of light, a gentle coming together. Quite suddenly, almost as if a lock clicked over, he was one of four minds, and the music of the charm became subtler and stronger, as many fingers of light doubled and tripled its simple patterns.

  And then, with relief, as their powers entwined and strengthened and a pool of clarity opened between them, Cadvan knew that the others felt the dark pressure that was troubling him. Selmana gasped out loud. As the other Bards recognized it, Cadvan’s sense of its presence amplified and became clearer, coalescing from a vague shadow into a specific memory. A man who sawed at the mouth of his horse so that it champed on a foam of blood. A man who had attempted to trap him in a foul web of sorcery. A man who had shown him the forbidden books, sneering at his Bardic hesitation as weakness.

  I know who it is, he said, into the minds of the others, and he showed them the image of his memory and told them a name.

  “Likod!” said Dernhil out loud, breaking the charm in his astonishment. He turned to Cadvan. “That is Likod? You are sure it’s that same man?”

  “That same Hull, I think,” said Nelac. “And you’re right: here in the School, and hidden. And it has broken something.”

  “Or someone,” said Selmana. “It has broken someone.”

  Nelac shot her a sharp look from beneath his bristling eyebrows. “Yes. Or someone.”

  A peremptory knock on the door, followed by someone rattling the handle, made him rise from his seat. It was Calis. “Why is your door bolted?” she said impatiently, when he opened it.

  “Sometimes a Bard desires a little privacy,” said Nelac dryly. Calis was the only Bard he knew who would barge into someone else’s rooms without the courtesy of waiting for permission.

  “Well, are you going to invite me in?”

  “I’d rather not,” said Nelac, forbidding questions with a glance. “How can I help you?”

  Calis looked as if she were about to argue and then thought better of it. “I need healers to help in the villages.”

  “But do you need me?” said Nelac. “I have other urgencies this morning…”

  “I’m taking some Makers with me to the lakeside villages, and thought you could come with me. There’s no huge emergency, but we are told there are injuries. One unlucky death, I believe, and the family needs the rites. Norowen is going north to Lepolan, but I could do with a healer.”

  “What about Gerant?” said Nelac, naming Norowen’s assistant at the healing house. “He would deal as well as I could. Better, even.”

  Calis gave Nelac a measuring look. “This isn’t like you, Nelac,” she said. “I was sure you would come.”

  “Floods aren’t the only thing we must deal with today,” said Nelac.

  Catching something in his tone, Calis hesitated. “I wish you would tell me what is of greater importance today,” she said. “Coglint says there will be more rain, and we must restore what we can before it arrives, and ensure that there is no illness later. I like this weather not at all. Bashar is in a fey mood and is no help at all this morning. And now you…”

  Nelac took her hands.

  “Calis, my friend, go and do what you must do. If you love me, let it be known that this morning I am busy with other duties.”

  Calis met his eyes and was silent. “I will, my friend,” she said at last. “You disquiet me. I wish that you would take me into your confidence. But now there is no time.”

  “Trust me, Calis,” said Nelac.

  “I do,” she said, with sudden seriousness. “I always have. I’ll return later, when our tasks are done. I think we must talk.”

  She took her leave, and Nelac bolted the door behind her.

  “We can’t just stay holed up in here, like rabbits hiding from a fox,” said Selmana. “What??
?s the point of that?”

  “Indeed we can’t,” said Nelac. He was frowning. “I think we should visit Bashar.”

  XX

  AFTER a day locked indoors, Selmana was tired of confinement. At the same time, Nelac’s chambers had been a haven from the strangeness of the past days. She felt the difference as soon as she stepped into the street: her senses were now rawly open, and a feeling of deep unease washed over her, as if the ground were no longer solid, the sky a mere illusion that might at any moment dissolve. Perhaps Nelac had woven extra wards about his rooms, she thought. To protect him from invasion? Or to keep things in, maybe? Perhaps to protect the rest of the School from his own work?

  She glanced across at Nelac, who paced beside her, his face closed in thought, thinking that she knew very little about him. He was a powerful mage, everyone knew that, but Selmana was suddenly aware of what that meant. Once physically strong, he was now at the cusp of old age, his hair almost white, his hands beginning to knot and darken. He seemed perilous to her, a font of energies that pulsed with capacities that she could barely guess, potent and hard-willed and beyond her predictions. She perceived, with a shiver of clarity, that Nelac possessed powers that could lay waste to everything she knew. If he should choose, she thought. But he does not choose…

  Nelac smiled, as if he read her thoughts. “It’s a strange sky up there,” he said. “I would almost prefer to stay indoors, even though it was beginning to feel as if we were caged.”

  Selmana glanced at the clouds. Nelac was right; she had never seen clouds like that before. They loured in strange formations that covered the entire north sky, a raft of lumps that hung dark and ominous, like huge grapes, or the egg sacs of some gigantic insect.

  “Perhaps they’ll hatch some monster,” she said.

  Lirigon was busy; people were sweeping up rubbish or checking their homes for damage, talking in small groups or hurrying on errands. Bashar’s chambers and the meeting hall were a short distance away, on the other side of the Inner Circle, which was the hub of the School. In the middle of the space, with a notebook propped on his knee, they met Coglint, who greeted Nelac with a brusque nod.