The Bone Queen

by Alison Croggon

  “I did not seek Bashar’s death,” said Nelac. “I attempted to save her from a fate that you can barely imagine. And yet you will not hear what I have to say. You command I be imprisoned, on no authority but your mistaken appraisal of what has happened here. I wonder that you did not help Bashar earlier. Where were you? Black deeds were done this day and you stood by.”

  Doubt clouded Coglint’s face. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  “Did you not notice that all was not well with Bashar this morning?” said Dernhil. “Where were you both when the Dark entered this house? Were you bewitched?”

  “The Dark stands before me,” said Noram. He stared at Cadvan with contempt.

  “And you brought it here, Nelac,” said Coglint sadly. “Why? What has possessed you?” Anguish was raw in his voice, and Dernhil blinked and looked away.

  Let them take me, said Cadvan into their minds. I am the crime here.

  We would gain nothing if you were imprisoned, and we would lose too much, said Nelac impatiently. I don’t know what has happened in this house, but it seems to me that everyone is ensorcelled. Even if Likod has been cast out of the School, he has set his poison here…

  “Let’s go,” said Dernhil. “I can hear others coming. Cadvan, conceal yourself.” When Cadvan hesitated, he pushed him. “Now, Cadvan.”

  I’ll not make that Pilanel charm here, while others are watching, Cadvan said. Noram was still staring at Cadvan, his eyes hard with hatred, as he vainly attempted to undo Nelac’s fastening charm. If we are to leave, we should leave now.

  Nelac hesitated. If we flee this place, it will confirm their suspicions, he said. Perhaps we should wait…

  Think you that others will believe us, or them? said Dernhil.

  Nelac glanced at Noram, and reached a decision. We must leave, though my heart misgives me, he said. We dare not risk what might happen. He looked Coglint in the eye then, and said in the Speech: “You do not know what harm you do this day, when so much harm has been done. I know you doubt me, but I have never spent myself in the service of the Light more than this morning. I pray you will understand this, before it’s too late.”

  Coglint disdained to answer him, but he looked as if he wanted to spit.

  They left Bashar’s chambers swiftly, casting their hoods over their faces. The house was alive with movement, and they passed unnoticed amid the bustle, wondering at its earlier desertion. Nelac must be right, thought Cadvan: Likod must have ensorcelled the entire Bardhouse.

  They emerged blinking into the daylight. The storm had lifted altogether: a greenish light poured through ragged clouds, touching the buildings with an unearthly hue. Broken branches and torn rubbish littered their path, and everywhere was the sound of trickling water. Lirigon seemed uncannily still, in the numb aftermath of violence.

  They crossed the Inner Circle, expecting any moment to hear alarms and the beginning of pursuit, and at last reached the relative shelter of the streets. Nelac stumbled then and almost fell, as the exhaustion of the past hour struck home. Dernhil and Cadvan supported him between them, hurrying as fast as they could back to Larla’s house. The heaviness in their limbs made this journey seem interminable, almost as hard as when they had pushed through the storm; but at last they reached Larla’s blue front door. As if she had been keeping watch, Larla flung it open almost as soon as they knocked and drew them in, checking up and down the street to ensure that no one saw.

  “Oh my,” she said. “We’re in such trouble now, my dears.”

  XXII

  LARLA’S oaten honey cakes were delicious, even by the standards of Lirigon, where they were a local speciality. While the other Bards fought their way through the storm, Selmana ate five, one after the other, staring broodingly into space. Larla made little attempt at conversation; indeed, the clamour was now so loud it was difficult to talk. Instead, she busied herself with stoking the oven, and began to chop onions and carrots and herbs, throwing them into a glazed pot. Selmana was obscurely comforted by Larla’s unfussed domesticity, but wondered at her blithe confidence that her house would be unharmed. How would Nelac and the others make their way through such a tempest, even with mageshields? A crash near by, audible even over the hammering rain and roaring wind, made her jump: she remembered the old pine up the road, a tree of huge girth, weathered and gnarled by many winters. If it fell on the roof, Larla’s house would be broken open like an egg. Larla looked up and studied the ceiling, frowning briefly. “Missed!” she said brightly, and went back to her chopping.

  Larla was right: waiting was hard. Selmana could feel panic fluttering in her stomach, a dread that ran through her blood like a low-grade fever, but she tried to ignore it. She had no reason to be afraid, she told herself. She was sheltering like a mouse in its cosy burrow, her nose twitching with alarm. The image almost made her smile; she couldn’t think of anyone less mouse-like than herself. She had overtopped her mother when she was seven years old, and by the time she was thirteen she was as tall as her father, and almost as strong. She reached for another honey cake and munched it slowly, thinking of her childhood.

  She hadn’t known she was a Bard until quite late, at around ten years old, and it had come as a relief, illuminating the difference within her that until then had slept merely as strangeness. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t wanted to smith metal. She had haunted her father’s forge as soon as she could walk. At first her father had tolerated her, calling her his little assistant and permitting her to pump the huge bellows she could barely reach, blowing the forge coals to white heat. He had even taught her some simple techniques, and she had learned the deep pleasure of shaping metal. She had loved the musical ring of the swinging hammer, how flakes of hot iron flew in bright sparks around her, the power of her hands.

  But when she grew older he had forbidden her to come to the forge, saying that it was no job for a girl. When she had pointed out that Rabla in the next village was a smith, and a good one, he had mumbled into his beard. It was fine for Rabla, but not for his own daughter, and that was that. His ban cast her into profound misery. Her mother argued that smithing was an honourable job, for both man or woman, but her father was implacable. Perhaps, her mother had said as she comforted her, if she’d had sisters, he might have let her have her head … but Selmana was the only girl in the family. In her impotent rages, Selmana thought it was only just that neither of her brothers shared her passion for smithing: both of them followed their mother, and became farmers.

  But when the Speech opened inside her, her life opened too. Now she could learn everything she desired, now no one could tell her that her passion was wrong because she was a girl. Even her father was proud to have a Bard in the family, and they had reconciled their differences before he died. She missed him sorely, but that at least was a comfort. Until Ceredin had been killed, Selmana had been wholly happy: her life had work and meaning and purpose. She had heard talk of the Dark, but it had no connection with her life: it was a force that belonged in history books or in distant places she would never visit.

  And now… She drew in a deep breath. Now the ground had opened beneath her feet, revealing depths that she hadn’t imagined. Now the familiar world was turned inside out and she saw through different eyes. The change had happened so fast she could scarcely keep up with herself. She knew now that the Dark wasn’t the opposite of the Light, nor even its absence, but something much more disturbing: a seed that lived in the very heart of the Light. No wonder Inghalt refused even to discuss the idea: it shifted the sure ground of Barding to a landscape of doubt and peril. She was certain that Nelac, accounted as one of the wisest scholars of the Way of the Heart in all Annar, had known this all along.

  Maybe that’s why he argued that Cadvan should not be exiled, she thought. Perhaps Cadvan understood the Dark better than anyone else. She stared at her hands, calloused and scarred by her work. With these hands, she could choose to dominate the lives of others, to treat them as things; or she could
create the possibility of delight and love, she could nourish the promise that lay within every mind. She shuddered with the weight of the responsibility: it was curled into every moment of her life, every tiny gesture, every trivial choice. How could anyone live with that?

  There was another crash, closer this time, and she started out of her abstraction. Larla, who was by the stove stirring her pot of stew, met her eyes and shrugged.

  “Aren’t you worried?” Selmana had to shout to make herself heard.

  Larla gave the stew a final stir and put a lid on it, settling close to Selmana so she could hear. “Time enough to worry when the roof blows off,” she said. “I believe it won’t, but there will be many houseless people at the end of this. And worse, maybe, if Nelac can’t do what he must.”

  Again Selmana wondered who Larla was. She wasn’t a Bard, but she had something of a Bard’s aura. Larla caught the question in her eyes, and laughed. “I have the Sight,” she said. “It is a Gift, if not the Gift of Bards. I don’t know what you are taught there in the halls of learning, and I know there are Bards who have contempt for such as I am. But Nelac never did.”

  “He said you’re old friends,” said Selmana, her curiosity piqued.

  “Aye, kitten. Old lovers, as it happens, and then deep friends. That was long, long ago, although I suppose it wasn’t so long ago for Nelac, Bards being what they are. I often wonder what time means to them.”

  Selmana politely hid her surprise, but it didn’t escape Larla’s shrewd gaze. “I was never pretty, but I had a charm all my own,” she said. “As do you, my love. You’ll never be beautiful in the way of your cousin, but there are many kinds of beauty.”

  Selmana blushed, discomforted by Larla’s direct gaze, and changed the subject. “So if you have the Sight, maybe you know if Nelac will return?”

  “There are things I can’t see,” Larla said, and for a moment Selmana saw how anxious she really was. “There are knots that must untie themselves as they will.”

  A new blast of wind drowned out her words as she spoke. Dernhil was right, Selmana thought; there was more to this tempest than the accidental weather of the world. The creeping dread, briefly forgotten, returned worse than before. There was an afternoon to get through, and then the night: and if the others weren’t back by morning, she was ordered to ride, by herself, all the way to Pellinor. She pushed the thought away, twisting the ring on her finger. They would come back. They must.

  Larla was clearly someone who always liked to be busy. She pulled a pile of yarn from a basket underneath the table and began to roll a thread into a ball, inviting Selmana to help. The rhythm of the work was comforting. Selmana had no idea if it was still morning, or how long it was since the other Bards had left the house. Time seemed to have stopped altogether; she had the odd feeling that she’d always been in this warm, colourful haven, winding yarn in calm yellow lamplight, while the unreal storm howled over their heads.

  Then, for no reason that Selmana could see, Larla’s head jerked up, snapping to attention. For the first time that day she looked frightened. “Is something wrong?” asked Selmana.

  Larla couldn’t hear what she said, but she caught Selmana’s meaning and nodded, her face tight. She leaned forward and spoke into Selmana’s ear, so close that her whiskers tickled. “Listen,” she said. “Listen so I can see.”

  Selmana had kept her listening closed because of the cacophony; to open it was to be bruised and battered. Cautiously she sent out her senses, questing for clues, her blood pulsing loudly in her ears. Everywhere was the deafening noise of wrongness, but she couldn’t discover why Larla was suddenly so agitated; everything seemed the same as before. She shook her head.

  “Something is opening, kitten. Something I don’t understand. A door is opening, and behind it is something terrible, something that waits to devour us…”

  Selmana stared at her stupidly. “I don’t know what…”

  “Not in the storm,” said Larla impatiently. “It’s not in the storm. Don’t listen to that. Beyond it. Beyond the World. Outside everything.”

  With intense relief, Selmana shut her listening against the tumult outside. She wants me to listen in another way, she thought. But how? And then, as if something clicked, she understood. Of course there was another way. She had always known, without quite being aware of it. It was a way of looking between… She closed her eyes and concentrated, attempting to unfocus her mind; and there, on the edge of things, she sensed a cold and terrifying presence, a broken flutter like wings of delirium. She snapped open her eyes, staring at Larla.

  “That’s it, my kitten. What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Try and see. It is closer, it is closer all the time… Something is calling it in…”

  The last thing Selmana wanted to do was to look closely at whatever it was she had glimpsed, but she obediently tried again. This time it was clearer, but the sense of horror that filled her was almost intolerable. It wasn’t so much a presence as an absence, a consciousness that was so beyond her knowledge that she couldn’t comprehend it. She screamed without knowing that she screamed. Even at this distance, it was an affliction like madness. There were huge wings, or something like wings, which beat in a rhythm that had nothing to do with the pulse of warm blood. She tried to snap her mind closed but somehow she couldn’t, and she met Larla’s eyes, pleading to be released. But Larla wasn’t looking at her: she was staring, fear naked in her face, at something beyond Selmana. Selmana turned to look and saw nothing: and then terror obliterated everything else. The next thing she knew, she was curled in a ball underneath the table, her head wrapped in her arms, and Larla was pulling her arm, trying to drag her out.

  “I can’t,” she sobbed. “I can’t stop it.”

  “I’m sorry, kitten, I wanted to see and I couldn’t by myself,” said Larla. “Come out, there is nothing here. Oh, that was a bad mistake. I’m so sorry. Come out now, come out.”

  Gently, as if she were a frightened animal, Larla coaxed Selmana out from underneath the table, and at last she stood in the kitchen, staring wildly around her, shaking from head to foot. Selmana was surprised that she could see the kitchen at all: her inner eye told her that everything was pitch-black, and in that blackness was a shadow darker even than that, which now seemed to beat with the rhythm of her own heart. She no longer knew who she was, the boundaries of her skin dissolved and she bled into the darkness, and the darkness was her. The only mooring was Larla’s warm, living hand: it was the one solid point in a universe that spun around her. Selmana held on as if she were drowning.

  “She’s here,” Selmana said. “I can feel her here. I can’t keep her away, oh, Larla, what will I do, what will I do?”

  “Don’t let go, my dear. The wings have gone away, I think the door is closed.”

  “It’s not the wings.” Selmana could scarcely speak through her chattering teeth. “It’s not the wings. It’s her. She’s here. She’s me. She wants me…”

  Larla put her arms tightly around her. “No, my lovely, you are you. She has no part in you. She has no right to you. She wants to trick you, yes, she does, but it’s only trickery… She’s gone now, she’s not here. Come, my kitten. You are here, not there. I’m sorry I asked, I was so afraid, but it’s all right now. Come, my love…”

  “I opened to see and I saw her and I can’t stop seeing her and she wants to eat me alive,” said Selmana, through choking sobs. “I can’t stop her. She’s here now, she’s here and everywhere…”

  Larla kept talking, a soft, gentle monologue as she stroked Selmana’s hair. And gradually, so slowly that at first it was scarcely perceptible, the horror that had opened within Selmana began to dispel. She became aware of her body again, warm and real in the soft yellow lamplight of Larla’s kitchen. She felt the tears on her cheeks and her hair tangled over her face and the bruises on her knees from when she had thrown herself underneath the table. And then, quite suddenly, a shutter within her blink
ed and closed, and the terrible sense of unbeing was gone, and she was just herself.

  She unclenched her hands, becoming conscious that she was holding Larla hard enough to hurt, and stood up straight, wiping her hair out of her eyes. She realized, with embarrassment, that she had wet herself in her terror.

  “I’ll get some cloths and dry clothes,” said Larla. “We’ll have to clean you up now. I’m so, so sorry, that was something I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t know. Sometimes I am just a silly old woman…”

  “It’s gone,” said Selmana, wonder in her voice. “I thought it would never go, that I was going to be like that for ever…”

  Larla stroked her cheek and kissed her. “I told you it was trickery,” she said. “We’ll talk about it later. It’s too close now.” Then she smiled and cocked her head. “Listen.”

  At first Selmana didn’t understand, and then she realized that it was quiet. Larla unlatched the shutters and threw them back and daylight flooded into the room. Selmana blinked.

  “Blessed peace,” said Larla. “I thought I’d go deaf with all that hammering. We’ll see the other Bards soon, I expect. They’ve done what they had to do. So let’s get you respectable.”

  XXIII

  GLAD of something concrete to do, Selmana washed herself and changed into the woollen breeches and thick silk underclothes she had stowed in her pack. She rinsed out her soiled clothes, fending off Larla, who insisted that she should do it. After some argument, Larla gave her a wooden tub and heated some water, and had to be content with instructing Selmana on how best to scrub woollens. Selmana listened with half an ear, squeezing the fabric until the water ran clean, and hung her clothes in Larla’s tiny paved courtyard. Larla tutted over her plants, sadly shredded and bruised by the storm, and began to sweep up the litter, a sludge of grey, unmelted hail and torn branches and leaves. Selmana looked up at the clearing sky, feeling the clean wind like a blessing.