The Bone Queen (15 page)

“Perhaps the real question is not why it’s impossible to lie in the Speech, but why it
is
possible?” said Gest.

Inghalt always sidestepped these questions, and today was no exception.

“As I said,” replied Inghalt, his voice high with annoyance, “these are not uses of the Speech proper. Our subject today is the Speech proper, as used by Bards who do not stray from the path of the Light…”

“But surely they must be connected, the powers of the Hulls and of Bards?” said Selmana.

“It is a blasphemy to say so, young Bard, and I would thank you not to bring such ideas into my chamber,” said Inghalt. And that was the end of that.

Nelac wouldn’t have told me not to ask that question, thought Selmana. He would have tried to answer it… As Inghalt droned on, her mind drifted. Kansabur had once been a Bard, like all Hulls. She had never really thought about what that meant. She had always been taught that sorcery had nothing to do with magery, but was that the case, really? The question disturbed her: it seemed to grow out of her vision from the previous night as much as it did from Gest’s needling of Inghalt.

Was it Kansabur she had seen on the Shadowplains? She was absolutely sure that it was same …
thing
she had encountered when she had seen the boar. Her mind flinched from the memory; two weeks later, it still made her feel sick. With a Bard’s suspicion of certainty, Nelac refused to give the thing a name, but he clearly strongly suspected that was it was the Bone Queen, however diminished. Did it matter what anyone called it? Was it hunting her? The thought was paralysing, stupefying, and she pushed it away.

When she returned to Nelac’s rooms at noon, he was still absent. She asked around, and found out that a messenger had arrived before sunrise, heavily cloaked, and that Nelac had left with him, riding east. He had left no word on where he was going, or when he might be expected back. Selmana was daunted by this news: he could be gone for days. She wondered for a moment whether it would be worth waiting for him in his rooms, but decided against it. After some hesitation, she found a piece of paper on the work table and wrote Nelac a note, which she left propped against some books.

She was hungry, but her stomach was in such a knot that she thought that if she ate anything she might be sick. She made her way to the dining hall, but none of her friends was there. She remembered belatedly that they had planned to take a basket of breads and cheeses to a meadow a short distance outside the School, to enjoy the autumn sunshine. She thought of joining them, and then discarded the idea, and then changed her mind again. She wanted company more than food.

Slowly she wandered through the streets of Lirigon to the North Gate. The streets were busy with people lured out by the warmth, going about their business or just talking idly, but she felt curiously alone.
But you are not alone.
The thought rose in her mind as if it were said by a voice not her own and she halted so suddenly that a Bard walking behind collided into her. She didn’t respond to his apology, she didn’t even hear him. She was suddenly cold with terror.

She stood, completely still, staring about her. She was in the Street of Potters. There was Aldan’s workshop, with a pile of carefully stacked roof tiles dried for the kiln, and over there, throwing a lump of clay on the wheel, was Inkar. A black and white cat was curled up in an ecstasy of voluptuousness on Inkar’s step, exactly where any customer would step on their way in. Everything was absolutely ordinary. It was exactly as it always was.

Except, Selmana realized with creeping horror, that there was no sound. A child was playing in the road, talking to a toy rabbit, but she opened and closed her mouth and Selmana could hear nothing. The potter’s wheel, which she could see straight in front of her, whirred silently, and when Inkar thumped the treadle with his foot, it was noiseless. When had the world lost its voice? Was it just at that moment, or did the sound ebb out bit by bit, and she hadn’t noticed until now? She stared wildly about her, feeling a pulse throbbing violently in her throat, and a woman took her elbow, mouthing something that Selmana couldn’t hear. Almost beside herself, Selmana snatched back her arm, staring at the woman.

“Are you ill, child?”

And suddenly she could hear the world again. Unable to speak, Selmana shook her head, and she ran to the side of the road and retched. She brought up nothing but bile. The woman followed her, and patted her shoulder.

“You look like you’ve had a nasty turn, little kitten,” she said.

Selmana stood up straight, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Despite everything, she wanted to laugh. Little kitten? She was taller than this woman by at least two handspans. It was difficult to tell how old she was: her face was creased with many friendly wrinkles, and she was very stout. She had on a bright red dress and gold rings hung from her pierced ears.

“I’m sorry,” Selmana said. “Yes, I suddenly felt very sick, I don’t know why.”

“I’m Larla,” said the woman. “My house isn’t far, perhaps you should have a drink of tea and a rest… You might need a healer.”

“Maybe it would be good just to sit down,” said Selmana, with a rush of gratitude. “I don’t know what happened then… But I feel all right now, really…”

“Come along then,” said Larla, taking her arm and guiding her down a laneway to a house that was at the back of one of the potteries. The wall was covered by a vine that even now was turning to the vivid colours of autumn, and the door was painted blue. Larla sat her down in a kitchen that was full of bright objects – red and blue clay pots, polished copper pans – and swung a kettle onto the hob.

“A tea of linden flower will calm you down, and help your stomach,” she said. “But it will take a little while. Let me know if you feel sick again in good time so I can find a dish. I just scrubbed the floor, you know. It’s such a lovely day, and so it dried easy.”

As Larla’s comfortable chatter washed over her, Selmana began to relax. She wondered if she had imagined the silence. Perhaps she should see a healer and ask for her ears to be examined? For now she was content just to nod in response, to sit and watch Larla as she took some dried flower heads from a tin box and threw them into a pot. She walked with difficulty – a problem with her hip, she told Selmana – but all the same, she moved with an odd grace. Selmana sipped the mild tea slowly. For the first time that day, she felt safe.

“You’re a Bard?” said Larla. Selmana nodded. “Then you’ll know who to see, if you still feel sick.”

“I think it’s gone away now,” said Selmana. “It was very … odd. I couldn’t hear anything at all, all the sound of everything went away…”

“Anything wrong with your ears can make you dizzy. I had a bad cold once and my ears went and I couldn’t stand up without falling over.”

“Yes, maybe it was that. Anyway, it passed quite quickly.”

“You stay here as long as you like. You’re a better colour now. I was watching you, you went white, like all the blood had drained out of your body.”

Selmana felt an impulse to tell Larla everything that had happened, all about the boar and the strange vision the night before and the terrible feeling she had had all day that something was following her, like a cat tracking the scent of a mouse. But Larla might think she had lost her wits. Perhaps she was a bit unbalanced: perhaps the incident at her mother’s farm had thrown her. She was very tired, after all, and that in itself could make you see strange things… She told herself to stop being stupid. She shouldn’t be flinching at shadows. So, after she had finished her tea, she thanked Larla and said she should take her leave.

“Are you sure, kitten?” Larla said. “You’re very welcome to stay here for a while.”

“I’m late for some friends.”

The older woman studied her with a disconcerting shrewdness. Something in her gaze made Selmana wonder if she weren’t a Bard, after all. “I’m half inclined to keep you here a bit longer, for all that you look a little pinker.”

“I’m sure I’m well now,” said Selmana.

Larla patted her hand. “If you’re sure,” she said. “The Light knows, I’m not kidnapping you. Remember I’m here, if need be.”

When the door shut behind her, Selmana almost turned around and went back inside. She looked up at the sky, where a few fluffy clouds floated over the blue. It was still warm, but she felt a sudden chill as a wind sprang up and died away. The weather would change this afternoon. Perhaps she should return to the School after all, she thought: Nelac might have come back. She squared her shoulders and walked down the laneway, breathing out in relief. Everything was normal now.

And then, so swiftly she had no sense of transition, everything was wrong. A crushing sense of impending peril seemed to drop from the sky. The street was the same as before. The light was no different. Yet in the space of a moment she was terrified of something that she couldn’t see and couldn’t hear, but which she knew with every nerve in her body was about to pounce and devour her. Her instincts took over before she could even think, and she bolted, sobbing with panic.

She skidded around the corner into the Street of Potters, and stepped into darkness. The stars were above, distant and bright and still. The plains ran level before her to a dark horizon. There was no sound. She whipped around, expecting to see the laneway behind her, but all she could see was a dim hill rising endlessly, cutting off the stars.

Lirigon had vanished.

N
ELAC
rode into Bural with the sun. Although the moon had long set, the sky had been darkly luminous for hours, dousing the brilliance of the stars and giving enough light to ride by. Only the dawn star, Ilion, shone undimmed: it burned low over the western horizon, bright enough to throw faint shadows in its own right. Nelac and Dernhil moved through a landscape of muted colours; shreds of mist curled about the fetlocks of their horses as they trotted through the meadows of Lirigon Fesse, with the rich smell of autumn leaf mould rising to their nostrils. Just before they arrived in the village, the sun sent its first rays over the edge of the earth, and the grasses, bent with heavy dew, sparkled alive in prisms of fire. Far away in the north the snowy tips of the Osidh Elanor, the Mountains of the Dawn, flared red and pink like the edges of petals.

Nelac pulled up his mare, Cina, and flung back the hood of his cloak. For a time they stood unmoving in the golden light, man and horse, while the disc of the sun edged over the horizon. Dernhil stopped beside him, and looked enquiringly.

“Such beauty, Dernhil,’ he said quietly, in the Speech. “And yet – I can’t say why – it fills me with so much grief.” He paused. “It wasn’t always so. Once, I found consolation in this…”

Dernhil opened his mouth to speak and hesitated, unsure what to say. In the Speech, Nelac’s words had a deeper resonance, which stirred the sorrow in his own soul.

Nelac glanced across at him and smiled. “No doubt this is the sadness of an old man, who feels his death pressing on his heels. Death is a mystery and a bafflement to us all! But once I thought this beauty and plenty would outlast me and mine. And the thought that it might not, that all this shimmering life might waver and die and never return – that is a sorrow, Dernhil, that I know not how to encompass.”

“Even the mountains must be worn down to dust one day,” said Dernhil. “And even the sun burn out its furnace…”

Nelac was silent. “Yes, all things must pass,” he said at last. “But the dreams that haunt you, the fear that rises inside me… Ends and beginnings were always the warp and weft of the world’s fabric. But this fear is different, Dernhil. To poison the Light, to burn the living world, to break the very axis of the Balance: how is that possible? And yet I feel it is, in my deepest being.”

“Need it be so?” said Dernhil.

“Nay,” said Nelac. “It need not. But we are so small… Those like the Bone Queen do not care, and so they are stronger: life is merely something in their way, which can be trampled or brushed aside. We cannot do that, we must stop to take care, and so we are hampered by the very things that matter to us most… Yet even the Nameless One, when he drowned all Annar in the Great Silence, did not destroy the Balance because he wanted to be evil. It was just what followed…”

Hyeradh stamped impatiently.
We are almost back to the stable
, she complained.
And it’s cold. And I did not complain when you put the saddle on so early, although I would have liked to stay in the warm.

Dernhil leant forward, patting her neck.
I am very grateful
, he said silently in the Speech.
And I will make you a mash when we return
.

Nelac smiled, and gravely apologised to the mare, who snorted scornfully. But for the moment he did not urge on Cina, who remained silent and unmoving, her ears pricked alertly. He glanced over at Dernhil, and spoke in Annaren. “I’m sorry, my friend, for burdening you with my doubt. Despair is a bitter counsel, and the surest defeat of all.”

“We must know what we face,” said Dernhil. “It may be that we cannot stem what I have seen. And even if it is so, even if there is no hope, it is no reason not to struggle.”

“So the wise have always claimed,” said Nelac, gathering up his reins. “Although they fail to record adequately how difficult it is. And I wonder, Dernhil. Perhaps we will banish this threat now, but the real peril lives inside each of us – the lust to possess what cannot be owned, the desire to defeat death by denying life to others, the indifference that consumes us in our own ambitions, reckoning nothing of those unknown others who might pay the price for it. Each of us knows this, each of us carries this seed inside us…”

Dernhil was taken aback by Nelac’s mood: a deep bitterness ran beneath his words. “But surely you have never chosen against the Balance, surely you have always worked for the Light,” he said awkwardly, trying to feel his way.

Nelac glanced across at Dernhil, his eyebrows drawn into a frown. “Don’t mistake me for something inhuman, Dernhil. I feel these things, and must recognize them as mine. And sometimes I understand that what is best in me is also the worst.”