The Bone Queen

  Selmana felt an unquestioning faith that the Bone Queen couldn’t find her if Anghar didn’t let her, and she realized that, for the first time in weeks, she felt completely safe. Other questions bubbled up inside her, but in the enchantment of the moment she forgot them all. Nothing mattered except Anghar’s loveliness, the cool touch of her hand.

  I wish I could stay with you for ever, Selmana said.

  You cannot. But be glad, said the girl. I am with you now. In time I will leave, as I must. But all leaving is brief…

  The sunlight through the branches brightened until Selmana blinked in dazzlement, and then Anghar was gone. But somehow Selmana wasn’t so bereft this time, and when she woke up the next day, the burden of loss she had borne since Jouan was less heavy. Travelling was not so hard after that. She didn’t tell the other Bards of her dream. She felt, fiercely, that it was for her alone, and she didn’t want them picking over the secret joy in her heart.

  Now they had at last reached the Fesse of Pellinor, an older desire quickened in Selmana’s breast: her passion for Making. Here lived the lore she loved.

  The valley was beautiful, even in the sombre dress of approaching winter, with its fields ploughed in and the orchards raising bare branches. Selmana realized, with a jolt of surprise, that what she felt was very similar to the yearning that had possessed her when she saw the castle from the white beach, when she ran with Anghar through the stars. She puzzled over this as they trotted down into the valley, cursing that she hadn’t thought to ask Anghar the name of the citadel. Anghar had all but promised that one day she would go there.

  The Fesse was sheltered from the worst of the weather that swept down from the Osidh Elanor by the rocky shoulders of the ridges that rose around the valley, and they passed through many villages on the broad road. Selmana had an odd feeling of familiarity, as if she knew this place well, although she had never seen it before. Of course, she had read of Pellinor, and had seen pictures in books, and Calis had spoken often about it. But that didn’t explain why she felt as if she were coming home.

  Although they had travelled fast, the Bards feared that news from Lirigon may have come before them, and they were cautious. Cadvan was again disguised by the Pilanel charm, and the others rode heavily cloaked. When they reached the School, Nelac would not give their names. The Bard at the gate was taken aback, since this was a basic courtesy, but something in the urgency of these travel-stained visitors struck him and he didn’t argue. Nelac asked to see Milana at once, sending in the Ring of Silur as a token, and they were told to wait by the gate until they had word.

  Word didn’t take long to come back, and clearly the instructions were that they were to be treated with honour. A Bard, who obviously recognized Nelac but was too polite to say so, was sent to be their guide. In a surprisingly short time they had led their weary horses to the stables and seen them settled with warm mashes in thick beds of straw. Nelac insisted they speak to Milana before they did anything else, and they were escorted to her Bardhouse in the Inner Circle.

  As they wound their way through the streets, Selmana began to understand why people spoke of the beauty of Pellinor. For centuries it had attracted the greatest Makers in Annar, and their art was to be seen everywhere: in the many-coloured tessellated pavements that led to shady gardens of evergreen shrubs, or the carved lintels of the stone houses, or the bright enamelled tiles that framed the doorways and windows. She glimpsed a courtyard where a white statue of a woman poured water endlessly from a stone ewer into a fountain, and a garden through a gateway that was filled with red flowers that stood out against the dark earth. Almost every house had a window of stained glass, and as lights bloomed in the dusk, they shone like jewels: she saw a winged horse, and a man robed in crimson, crowned with white lilies, and a green-leaved tree with a circlet of golden blossoms. The Bard lamps that lit the stone streets were shaped like lilies, opening gracefully from stems of black iron. She dawdled behind the other Bards, looking about her in wonder, and had to hurry to catch up lest she become lost.

  She could have wandered these streets for hours, but in all too short a time they reached Milana’s chambers. They thanked the Bard who had escorted them, and he nodded and retired, closing the door behind him. Milana was alone in the room, and she stood as they entered, a short, slender woman with very white skin and raven-black hair that fell loosely about her shoulders almost to her waist.

  “Samandalamë, Nelac, Dernhil,” she said gravely, welcoming them in the Speech. “I do not know these other two?”

  Cadvan bowed, undoing the disguising charm, and to Selmana’s surprise Milana laughed. “Ah, Cadvan,” she said. “I might have known. So you have mastered Pilanel magic? Not many Bards of Annar can do that. I salute you.”

  “The Pilanel own a complex lore, my lady. But I suspect it’s more that many Bards of Annar do not care to master it.”

  “I think you are right,” said Milana. “But even I, who have no such incuriosity, have never got my tongue around that charm, although I have the best and dearest of teachers.”

  Selmana remembered then that Milana’s consort was a Pilanel Bard, a man called Dorn who had arrived from the north many years ago. But now Milana was turning to greet her. Selmana felt clumsy as she took the First Bard’s delicate hand: she towered over her. She felt Milana’s power as soon as she touched her, an electric thrill that ran up her arm and made the hairs stand up on her neck.

  “Selmana of Lirigon, my lady,” she said. “I am but a student…”

  “A Maker, I think?”

  Selmana nodded, suddenly shy. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve long wanted to come to Pellinor, to learn from you.”

  Milana’s eyes were a profound blue, and they seemed to look deep into Selmana’s being. She shifted uncomfortably under that clear gaze, feeling exposed. “A Maker of rare talent, I see. Welcome to Pellinor! But sadly, I think that is not why you are here, although I hope you may study with me hereafter. Come, sit down. Nelac, you have news, though I fear it isn’t good. We will be private as long as you need.”

  Nelac met Milana’s eyes. “Have you had word from Lirigon, my lady?”

  “Yes,” said Milana. “I know something of what has passed there. Bird news is swift, if partial. I am told that Cadvan, formerly of Lirigon, Nelac of Lirigon and Dernhil of Gent are abjured as traitors to the Light, accused of the murder of the First Bard.” She glanced again at Selmana. “I have heard nothing of Selmana, Minor Bard, and I am the more curious…”

  A heavy silence fell. “Bashar is dead, then?” said Nelac, his voice harsh.

  “Alas, it is so. Did you not know? It is a heavy loss. Though I don’t believe that any of you could be responsible for it, nor that our friend Cadvan of Lirigon is any kind of servant of the Dark. It’s clearly absurd.”

  Selmana felt a rush of relief at Milana’s brusque dismissal of the accusations of treachery. She glanced at Cadvan: she saw the same relief reflected there, and something else, something more complex. Milana had given him his proper title, as a Bard of Lirigon, and it had clearly taken him by surprise. For a moment, before he hid his feeling, his face was open and it seemed that he might weep. Looking away swiftly, Selmana thought she might begin to understand why Ceredin loved him. She had thought it was because Cadvan was handsome and gifted and charismatic, one of the great Bards of his generation, but it wasn’t that at all…

  Nelac told Milana of what had happened in Lirigon and Jouan, speaking swiftly and clearly. She listened intently, without interrupting. When he talked about how Kansabur had hunted Selmana, she shot the young Bard a speculative look and nodded.

  “You know that Enkir is here,” she said, when Nelac had finished speaking. “We should tell him this: he should permit himself to be scried, if there is any peril that he too houses a fragment of Kansabur, as you two did. But for now, you are my guests. You should bathe and eat and rest: come here in an hour and dine with me, when I have had a chance to think over this.” She rose and smiled. ?
??Have no fear in Pellinor: you need not be hidden among my folk. Lirigon holds no authority over us, and will not, so long as it remains so misled.”

  Selmana knew that outside Annar – in the Seven Kingdoms, or in the Suderain, where the ancient city of Turbansk was raised long before the Great Silence – Schools followed their own design. But in Annar, every School had been built on the same principle: it was a wheel of eleven concentric circles, linked by straight roads. These all led to the wide hub of the Inner Circle, an open space that was flanked by the library, the Singing Hall and the Bardhouses of the First Circle.

  Pellinor, with its slate roofs and white stone halls, its verdigrised copper domes and coloured pavements, was very different from the red tiles and grey granite of Lirigon, but Selmana had no trouble finding her way to the common bathing rooms, which were exactly where she expected them to be. To her discomfiture, when she entered she discovered that the bath was communal. It was a large room, tiled in many colours to the ceiling, and in the centre was a steaming rectangular pool. There was a ledge inside the pool where half a dozen people already sat, up to their necks in water, gossiping idly.

  This was very different from Lirigon, where bathing was a private business. Selmana turned to leave, stricken with embarrassment, but an attendant stepped up and greeted her courteously, handing her a silver basin of hot water, a cake of soap and a drying cloth of soft wool. Selmana thanked her awkwardly, and looked around covertly at the others there to see what she should do with them. It seemed she had to clean herself before she went into the bath. Around the walls were open cubicles with wooden benches where people scrubbed themselves and washed their hair, before walking naked to the pool, in full view of everyone else. Selmana walked to an empty cubicle, doing her best to look unconcerned. She could feel herself blushing with self-consciousness, although no one took any notice of her as she hurried to the pool and lowered herself quickly into the steaming, fragrant water, choosing the corner furthest from the other bathers.

  But the water was so delicious! Its healing warmth leached into her sore muscles. She sighed and leaned her head back, shutting her eyes, letting her legs float up, weightless and free. Then it occurred to her that her three companions would want to bathe too. The thought dragged her out of the pool much more quickly than she would have liked and sent her scurrying back to her chamber. She didn’t feel able to confront Nelac and Cadvan and Dernhil naked, even after a fortnight of travelling together: it would be altogether too awkward.

  Back in her room, Selmana thought that the familiarities of Pellinor were as disconcerting as the differences. They made her think she knew her way about, only to find herself tripped up by strangeness. She dressed herself in the clean clothes laid out for her, and then sank back on her bed with a sigh. It was a truism that every School differed from the others. Far to the south, in the Suderain, Turbansk was a city of red towers and brazen halls, where scholars studied the stars; Il Arunedh was famed for its vineyards and terraced flower gardens, which stretched their perfumed lengths down the side of the mountain that embraced the School; Gent in the forested kingdom of Ileadh was a city of singers, and Dernhil was only one of many poets who came from there. But she had somehow thought, even so, that Pellinor would simply be a more beautiful version of Lirigon.

  It was good to be alone. Since they had left Jouan, she had had little time to think: she had been too cold, or too tired, or too sad. She let her mind wander, remembering, as she did in all her idle moments, the girl who had brought her back from the stars. She thought of how Milana had nodded when Nelac told her of Selmana’s Gift of Sight, and of how Kansabur was hunting her. Did Milana know something that Nelac didn’t? Perhaps she could tell Milana what had happened: perhaps Milana might understand, as the other Bards did not, her certainty that Anghar intended her no ill. Perhaps she might understand how it was she loved her. Did she dare to confess to her? Even as she thought it, she discarded the idea. It would hurt to see the shadows of mistrust on Milana’s face…

  Her musings were interrupted by a knock on the door, and she started, realizing that she had almost fallen asleep. Cadvan waited outside, as he had promised; they had planned to meet Nelac and Dernhil, and to walk together to Milana’s Bardhouse for dinner. She blinked: Cadvan was dressed as a Bard, in a tunic and leggings of fine blue wool, a cloak of dark crimson pinned at his shoulder with a silver brooch in the shape of a four-pointed star: the sign of Lirigon. She hadn’t seen him in Bard raiment for a long time, and she had forgotten how handsome he was.

  “I didn’t see you at the baths, Selmana,” said Cadvan, as they walked to Milana’s chambers. “But you look very clean.”

  She blushed and glanced sideways at him, suspecting that he was teasing her. “I am very efficient at my ablutions,” she said primly.

  “It occurred to me that I should have warned you,” said Cadvan. “In Lirigon it is different, no? Here bathing is a social thing.”

  Selmana laughed. “It was a bit of a shock,” she said. “But I suppose, if ever I am to live here, I will have to get used to seeing Bards with no clothes on.”

  She saw a mischievous sparkle in Cadvan’s eye and suspected he was about to say something outrageous, but to her relief he thought better of it. “You get used to it quickly,” he said. “But if you want the baths all to yourself, just before noon is a very quiet time.”

  “I feel very … untravelled,” she said. “Everything is stranger than I expected, somehow. But as soon as I saw Pellinor, I felt it was my home… Maybe that’s the strangest thing. I was never here before.”

  “It is the greatest School of Making in Annar,” said Cadvan. “You feel a tug of kinship, perhaps. Home is more than a birthplace. And sometimes a birthplace cannot be a home.”

  “But where you’re born is always home,” she said. “Maybe you can have different kinds of home.”

  “And maybe you can have none,” he said. Selmana didn’t know how to answer the bleakness she saw suddenly in his eyes. But now they had met the others, and walked together across the Inner Circle, chatting idly. Selmana braced herself for the ordeal of dining with the First Bard. She was very nervous; there would be important Bards there, she was sure, and she would probably knock over some exquisite glassware, or spill a plate on the floor, or say something stupid in her embarrassment. Dernhil caught her eye and smiled reassuringly as they entered Milana’s dining room, where the Bards already seated at the table rose to greet them.

  Selmana caught her breath at the beauty of the room. In the centre was a circular table of a wood so dark it was almost black, inlaid with curving patterns in mother of pearl, which she recognized as charms for good appetite and fellowship. The walls were hung with plain hangings of gold, and above them on the ceiling was a painting of fruits and flowers. Bard lamps shaped like lilies filled the room with a warm light.

  Selmana thought that Milana’s face was drawn, as if she concealed a deep weariness, and she wondered briefly what had happened in the last hour to carve the shadows under her eyes. To her relief, there were only two other Bards present: Dorn of Pellinor and Enkir of Il Arunedh. Dorn was tall and black-haired, with the dark skin and eyes of the Pilanel people, and wore a neatly trimmed beard. Selmana studied him curiously as she was introduced, although she tried not to stare. Nelac had told her a little of Dorn’s history during one of their long, rambling conversations.

  There were rules all Minor Bards learned as children, which were taught by rote as unbending rules of the Light. Selmana had chanted the Twelve Codes in the classroom from her first day in Lirigon. They were listed in the Paur Libridha, written by Maninaë when he founded the Schools of Annar to defend the Light against the return of the Great Silence. The First Code was that all who wished to learn must be taught. Some restricted this law to include only Bards, but Nelac had told Selmana that it meant anybody, whether they had the Speech or not: the knowledge of the Schools was for everyone, not just for the few. Some Bards, Nelac had said, sought to restric
t this law even further, claiming that only Annaren Bards should be taught Annaren lore. He had then told her of the debate that had broken out when the young Dorn had knocked proudly on the gates of Pellinor, demanding as a Dhillarearën that he be taught the lore of the Bards.

  Dorn still spoke with an accent, and occasionally formed his sentences oddly, but when he arrived at Pellinor two decades before he had scarcely any Annaren, and was forced to use the Speech in every communication with other Bards. Inghalt, who taught the ways of the Speech to the Minor Bards in Lirigon, had been in Pellinor at that time, and he and some others had protested at his admission, even after Dorn demonstrated his mastery of several Bardic charms.

  “Inghalt said that even if Dorn had the Speech, it was corrupted by the primitive magic of the Pilanel,” Nelac had told her. “He argued that only those of correct Speech should be admitted into the secrets of Barding. But Milana laughed at Inghalt, and told him that no Barding ought to be secret. She asked him how he knew which Speech was correct and which was not, and he had no answer. So Dorn was admitted into the School. And he has become a formidable scholar of the Reading, and is a member of the First Circle. Inghalt left Pellinor, swearing never to return, and he still bears no fondness for Milana, the more so as Dorn became more distinguished. When she and Dorn declared their troth, he said the First Bard was a slut who had permitted lust to overcome her love for the Light.”

  The story had shocked Selmana, not least because of the disrespect towards a First Bard. “But why would he hate Dorn, just because he is from a different people?” she had asked.

  Nelac shrugged. “Perhaps he fears him,” he said. “Many Bards distrust the Pilanel people, for no good reason that I can understand. The Speech, alas, is no guarantee of wisdom. Bards can have power, and be respected for that, and yet have little insight.”