The Bone Queen (3 page)

If anyone had survived underground today, they would be the unluckiest of all: until the damps cleared, there was no way in or out of the mine. They would die in the darkness, swiftly of the thickening air or slowly of thirst, beyond hope of rescue. Their last hours would be beyond imagining. After Nils had died, Cadvan had used his Bard sense to try to discover if there were any survivors. He set his ear to the ground and sent his Bard-born hearing as deep as it would go. He heard the groan and sweat of the earth, the slow grinding of the rock, the implacable trickle of water seeping into the mine now that the windlass was broken and could no longer pump the tunnels dry. He heard no human sound, no breath or heartbeat or cry.

He didn’t tell the villagers. At first he thought he must, to save them the torture of illusory hope; but then he uneasily wondered whether he had any right to rob them of even that. The knowledge gave him some small comfort. He was as sure as he could be that no one had survived the accident, only to face the worst death of all, in the dark, alone.

If anyone deserved such a death, he thought, it was Cadvan of Lirigon. And yet he lived and breathed, facing nothing worse than his own nightmares. If any further argument was needed that the world was unjust, he would be the clinching evidence. Cadvan lived on, useless to anyone, while good people whose lives were needed, who were loved and missed, died without reason.

When sleep wouldn’t come, Cadvan found himself obsessively retracing the choices that had led the rising star of the School of Lirigon, the man who had been hailed as the most gifted Bard of his generation, to his present disgrace and exile. In the bitter clarity of hindsight, there were no excuses: his own condemnation was absolute, more unforgiving even than his harshest judges in Lirigon. He had taken every step willingly and recklessly, heedless of those who had warned him… But here his mind flinched. He forced himself to finish the thought: he had been heedless even of she who loved him most, she who had paid the price for his folly as surely as if he had murdered her with his own hands. For such a crime, there was no redemption.

Sometimes, in his weaker moments, he wondered if this pit in which he found himself had been his destiny, a fate that he could not escape. It was a thought he always pushed away, as the cowardly plea of a man who would not face his own actions. All the same, the Dark had been there from the very beginning.

C
ADVAN
had been raised with his four siblings by his father, Nartan, in a small Lirhan village, not far from Lirigon. He didn’t attend the Lirigon School until much later than most children with the Gift. He was an attractive child, clever and quick with his hands; and he knew he was different from his brothers and sisters. He came into the Speech, the inborn tongue of magery that signalled he was a Bard, when he was about five, shortly before he lost his mother, Mertild. His father never quite recovered from the death of his wife, and was frightened of his son’s precocity. He was often harsh with the boy, and when Cadvan’s Gift became evident, he ordered him to tell no one. Even had he wished to, it was impossible for Cadvan to conceal it completely, and soon the whole village knew that he had the Speech.

When Cadvan was nine years old, the Lirigon Bards, as was the custom, came to Nartan’s house to discuss his attendance at the School of Lirigon. Being a Bard was considered an honour in Lirhan; it was not a place where those with the Speech were shunned. Nartan was surly with the Bards, and would not hear of Cadvan attending the School. Perhaps he was reluctant to lose another member of the family, or perhaps he needed the hands of his eldest son to help with the younger children and his cobbling. The Bards told him that to leave a boy with the Gift untrained was asking for trouble, but Nartan turned a deaf ear. They said they would come the following spring and ask again, but Nartan turned his face away and would not speak another word, so they sighed and left.

Cadvan had not been allowed in the room during the visit, but he knew they were talking about him, and he eavesdropped easily enough using his listening. What he heard excited him, and he decided that he wanted to be a Bard more than anything else. His father cuffed him and told him to get on with his work.

After that, Cadvan conceived a great resentment against his father. He began to run wild, leading other children on his escapades. It was nothing very harmful: raiding orchards, throwing stones and other such mischief as occurs to small boys. Because he had the Gift, he could go hidden and speak to animals, which gave him the edge in their pranks. He was stretching his powers, but his use of them was wilful. His behaviour worried his aunt, his mother’s sister Alina, who had a little of the Gift herself and was a perceptive woman; and she spoke again to Nartan, telling him he ought to send the boy to the School.

Nartan was a stubborn man, and he said he would not agree to his first-born going away. Alina told him he was a fool and was breeding problems for himself, but he wouldn’t listen. The truth was that Nartan burned with a greedy love for his son, a love that he could not admit even to himself, and he could not face letting him go. It was often said that Cadvan was very like his mother.

One day, when Cadvan was about ten, a stranger came to the village on a black horse. He was tall and severe-looking, and he was dressed in rich clothes. He went straight to the cobbler’s house, demanding that a strap on his horse’s bridle be fixed at once. Nartan was not at home, so Cadvan took the job. Cadvan saw that the stranger’s horse was ill-treated; its mouth was bleeding. This angered him, and he spoke to the man without respect.

“If you were more gentle with your hands,” he said, “the strap would not be broken.”

The stranger told the boy to hold his tongue, and then examined him more closely. What he saw interested him, and he asked his name. Concentrating on mending the bridle, Cadvan answered sullenly, not liking to be questioned. Finally, the stranger asked him if he had the Speech. Cadvan looked up swiftly, and took a long time to answer. At last he nodded.

“Why are you not at the School?” asked the stranger.

“My father will not let me.”

The stranger heard the resentment in the boy’s voice, and smiled to himself. He picked up a pebble from the ground and tossed it in his hand.

“How might I make this pebble fly, boy?” he said.

Cadvan shrugged. “Throw it,” he said.

“Aye. Or give it wings.” As Cadvan watched, the pebble turned into a butterfly and flew away.

Cadvan knew that illusions were the least of charms. “It’s a trick,” he said scornfully. “I haven’t time for silly games.”

The stranger laughed. “My name is Likod,” he said. “I will be back.” Then he mounted his horse and rode away. Cadvan stood in the road and watched him until he was out of sight.

The meeting disturbed him. He didn’t like the stranger, and he liked even less the way he treated his horse; yet there was a fascination about him too that made him deeply attractive. For the next few weeks he waited for Likod to return, but he did not; and after a while Cadvan decided that he hadn’t meant what he said. The conversation had made him curious, and he began to experiment more widely with the simpler enchantments – glimmerspells and other mageries of illusion.

Time passed, and Cadvan grew into a handsome boy. Every spring the Bards of Lirigon would ride to speak with his father, and every year his father spurned their offer. And every year the boy grew wilder.

It was around this time that the Bards of Lirigon began to be concerned about some disturbing, if small, incidents; and one of these happened to Cadvan. There were stories that shapeshifting wers had been seen in the wild lands near the Osidh Elanor, and rumours even of Hulls, the Black Bards who had traded their Names for eternal life, who had not been seen in Annar since the Great Silence. Also at this time, the raids of the Jussack clans pushed the Pilanel people out of their traditional summer grazing lands in the Arkiadera, and the chief of the Pilanel came south over the Osidh Elanor and asked the Lirhan Bards and Thane for permission to graze their herds in the northern Rilnik Plains.

Cadvan knew little of these things, although of course he heard gossip. Sometimes he would sit with his father at the inn and listen restlessly while the greybeards spoke darkly of bad portents. At such times, he would yearn to be at the School of Lirigon, because then, as he thought, he would learn great mageries, and would fight these evil things and be the hero he was meant to be. But he knew better than to mention his wish to his father. Sometimes he thought of running away to Lirigon, but despite his fierce desire, he could not abandon his father. And so he learned the trade of cobbling, and frittered away his spare hours thinking up new pranks to amuse himself and his companions. And all the time, a deep bitterness was nursing itself inside him.

One day, five years later, the stranger did return. Cadvan was working outside the house and he saw him riding through the village, looking neither right nor left. He stood up and watched the rider. The man glanced sideways at Cadvan as he passed the house, and pulled up his horse.

“Still here then, boy?” he said, with a touch of scorn.

Cadvan flushed and looked away.

The stranger dismounted and stared at Cadvan. “You’ll be a man soon,” he said. “And yet you still let your father tie you to his house? The world is big, my boy. You don’t belong here.”

He said no more than what Cadvan already thought, but the boy’s face darkened at the man’s mockery of his father. “I am with my own people,” he said angrily. “Who are you, to speak thus to me?”

“You know my name,” said the man. “Unless you are more stupid than I thought.”

Cadvan wanted to deny it, but he did know his name. “Likod,” he said, unwillingly.

Likod looked pleased. “So you have some wit. Or some memory,” he said. “You have the Gift: from here I can see it is in you in no small measure. Why haven’t the Bards of Lirigon taken you to where you should be? They betray their duty. Your training is no business of your father’s.”

Cadvan had no answer, because he had sometimes wondered the same thing. But Bards will not teach children with the Gift if their parents do not permit it.

“Come with me,” said Likod. “I have something to show you. Your father is away from home, he will not know.”

Cadvan wondered how Likod knew his father was out. Then he said, “I have to finish mending this boot. You can come back later, if you want.”

Likod made to move away, but Cadvan would not go anywhere until he had finished his task. He bent his head down and concentrated on his work, ignoring the stranger. When he finished, Likod was still waiting for him.

Cadvan met his eyes and shrugged, as if he didn’t care. He slowly put away his tools, and stood up to follow the stranger.

Likod led him out of the village and a short distance into a beech wood. It was high summer, and the light shone bravely on the leaves, but where Likod walked it seemed that a shadow followed him and the birdsong sank into silence. Cadvan felt fear settle inside him, and he began to feel sorry that he had come. But despite his doubts, he kept on following.

At last Likod stopped in a small clearing. He turned and smiled at Cadvan.

“Now,” he said. “I will show you something you have never seen before.”

He gestured and spoke some words that Cadvan didn’t understand, and between them there began to gather a darkness, as if Likod were making a hole in the air. Cadvan now was very afraid and wanted to cry out, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he could make no sound, and his feet were rooted to the ground. He was no longer aware of the woods or the sunshine around him: he could only watch the shadow gathering before his eyes.

The blackness thickened and roiled, and he heard a noise like rushing wind or water. And then, to his astonishment, Cadvan saw a picture form before his eyes: and the picture moved and was alive. It was of a glittering city, with graceful walls and towers, which stood by a great mere so still that stars were reflected on its surface. The city was built of white stone that shone as if it were carved of moonlight. It seemed to Cadvan that he entered the city and walked around inside it like a ghost, and that he peered through casements and saw men and women in fine robes speaking together, or making beautiful things; but none of them saw him.

The vision passed, and Cadvan came to, as if out of a swoon. Likod let down his arms, and the darkness disappeared. Cadvan stared at him with amazement.

“What is that place?” he asked.

“It is a place that is no longer,” said Likod. “By my art, you glimpsed the ancient citadel of Afinil, which has been gone for many lives of men. Is that not wonderful?”

“Aye,” said Cadvan, caught in enchantment. He hungered to see more. “What else can you show me?”

As Cadvan had suspected, Likod’s aims were not benevolent. He was pleased that he had enraptured the boy, because he did not want him to be fearful. He had seen that Cadvan had a rare and untrained talent, and he wished to bind him, so the boy would be his slave.

Now that Cadvan was no longer wary of him, Likod lifted his arms again and put forth his power. But this time the spell was different, and Cadvan didn’t like it; he felt that chains of smoke were winding around his thoughts, and he felt the stranger’s voice inside his head, as if Likod’s thoughts were his own. He thought that he would die from the black pressure in his mind.

Now Cadvan showed his native power, because he looked Likod in the eye, and, untrained as he was, he resisted the spell that would have imprisoned him. When Likod felt his powers so directly challenged, he was shaken; and he tried then to capture him by force, and abduct him on his horse. Even at fifteen, Cadvan was stronger than Likod, and he punched him in the face and knocked him over, and found in his panic such magery to strike him senseless. Then he stole Likod’s horse and bolted away as fast as he could.

He didn’t go home. Instead he rode to the School of Lirigon, which was more than a league away, and he didn’t stop until he clattered into the courtyard and almost fell off the sweating horse. Nelac of Lirigon himself came running out to see what the disturbance was, and took the sobbing boy into his house and calmed him down. Nelac then rode to Cadvan’s village and spoke for a long time to Nartan: and after that, Cadvan entered the School, and no more was said about cobbling.