The Bone Queen

by Alison Croggon

  She saw how the Bards stood in the impossible place between the Circles, weaving a fabric of light over the breach that opened between them. The gap was horribly visible now, even to her: she wondered that she hadn’t seen it before. It was huge, a rent that bled a deathly vapour of darkness, its spectral edges flapping in unseen winds. She flinched, as from a terrible wound. It was a violence against the World, a wrong. There was a will behind this act, she perceived that clearly. It was a will that saw the obscene damage it would create and was indifferent, that coldly enjoyed the suffering it caused as a confirmation of its power, a will that accounted only itself as the measure of value, that sought to possess and command but never to understand. She gagged, wondering how the other Bards could bear it. She had learned to fear the Dark in the past few weeks, but now she felt more than fear or horror: she shuddered with revulsion and contempt.

  She drew a deep breath, suddenly aware of her cold hands grasping Nelac and Dernhil’s glowing fingers, and wrenched herself out of the vortex of magery. She was supposed to be keeping watch… She sent out the web of her perceptions, her listening and that other awareness, the between sense that Larla had called the Sight. Around her stretched that strange, unnatural silence, as if all sound had been swallowed in the vast, chilly dome of the sky. If anything, the quiet was deeper now: even her blood seemed stilled in her veins. But was there a feeling of watchfulness, of waiting? Was there something there?

  The back of her neck prickled. She turned her head slowly, dreading what she might see. Behind her stood a child, perhaps ten years old. He was staring at her, his face blank but hungry, his hands stretching out towards her. And then, out of nowhere, behind him was an old woman, her dull eyes staring out of her hollow face. A young girl. Three men, all with the heavy shoulders of miners, who looked like brothers. The more she looked, the more there were, as if looking summoned them into view, dozens and then hundreds of people. They seemed as corporeal as the mages beside her, but something told her they were apparitions only. She knew they were dead, but somehow she wasn’t frightened; instead, she was pierced with a sharp, intolerable sorrow. They all seemed so lost. She had seen something of that forlornness in Ceredin’s face.

  She took a deep breath, feeling the icy air knife into her lungs with relief: at least cold was just an ordinary thing. Her neck began to ache from looking over her shoulder and she turned back, facing inside the ring of Bards. The dead were all around them, stretching into the darkness as far as she could see, more than she could possibly count, all of them motionless, their eyes fixed on her, as if they were mutely pleading. She was tempted to interrupt the other Bards, but they had agreed that the signal was to be given if she saw Kansabur, or was in any way imperilled. The dead were uncanny and sorrowful, but she felt no threat from them. She looked for Ceredin, wondering if she were among these sad ranks, but saw no sign of her. She shifted uncomfortably, and blinked, and the dead vanished. Now the darkness was empty again.

  It was strange, being part of a ring of Bards, but not part of their mindmeld. She could see the power building between the other three, but she was outside it. She heard their mingled voices at the margins of her mind, patiently weaving the gaping edges of the rent Circles together, but within that singing she was silent. She felt terribly alone, even though they were hand-linked. The power of magery rippled out of their circle, a beacon in the darkness. Every creature of the Dark for leagues would be aware of them now. And yet she felt no trace of sorcery, nor of the suffocating pall of malice that she associated with the Bone Queen. She would never forget that sense, which was more than physical: it afflicted the mind as the stench of a rotting corpse might affect the body.

  She reminded herself that the other Bards would know if Kansabur walked in the Shadowplains; they would recognize that presence just as she did. Her absence troubled Selmana; for the first time since they had left Jonalan’s tavern, she began to be fearful. She is so close, Ceredin had said. So close… But where was she? Was she hiding herself? Did she tense to strike them down, even now?

  Selmana didn’t need to look to know that the charm of mending was almost complete. The power of the three Bards almost made her feel dizzy; they were drawing on deep magery, funnelling the hidden powers of the world through their bodies as they wove the shimmering tapestry that would close the gaping rent between the Circles.

  Perhaps Ceredin was wrong, she thought. Perhaps the Bone Queen is not here. Perhaps it is simply that this break makes everything seem close, when it is not, because it twists and distorts the matter of the Circles. Time and space are not the same in the Shadowplains as they are here. She could feel the inexorable weight that the torn place exerted, like a whirlpool that stretches and distorts the water around it. It was getting hard to judge where she was, it was hard to know who she was.

  I am Selmana, Bard of Lirigon, she said fiercely to herself, I walk on this earth as myself, I am no other thing. But the force was bearing down on her: as the mingled light of magery wound itself around the gap, the vortex became more violent. She felt herself leaning towards the whirling centre, helplessly drawn, as if she were a branch trembling at the edge of a waterfall, held from tipping over the brink only by a crumbling bank, by some chance of the raging torrent that had swirled her to a boiling flood of darkness that fell down and down and down, endlessly beneath her. What held her? Was it a hand, or was it stone? She couldn’t tell any more. It was slipping, her hand was slipping, she scrabbled desperately, blind with panic. And then she fell.

  XXX

  CADVAN could patch a broken kettle or a worn boot with a word when he was seven years old. Patching was the least of mageries, as easy as making illusions. It was sometimes a useful skill, but the result was never as good as crafting: after a few days the charm would evaporate, usually leaving the object more tattered than before. A mending charm required a more profound magery, and was beyond the untaught skill of a child, however talented: the aim was to make the object whole, as if it had never been broken.

  The first time Cadvan had used that charm, it was to mend an old jug that belonged to Ceredin. It was fine glassware from Lanorial, a gift from Ceredin’s mother. He had knocked it over one night, gesticulating too wildly during one of the gatherings they sometimes had, when the young Bards would drink wine and argue about everything under the sun, from music to herblore, the proper way to make cheese, the greatest poet of the Light, the best composition for inks… Cadvan was remorseful at his carelessness and had offered to mend it. Even with a simple object, the charm was much more difficult than he had imagined.

  The next time had been to close the rift between the Abyss and the World that the Bards themselves had opened, when they sought to banish Kansabur back to the Abyss. It was essentially the same charm, but amplified through the power of six Bards and many times more complex. Making the magery while attempting to keep Kansabur chained was a torment. Cadvan remembered the hunt and defeat of the Bone Queen as pure anguish; he had lain ill for days afterwards. And for all the anguish, they had failed.

  At the time, although he said nothing, Cadvan had thought there was something of sorcery in the spells used to open the rift. Even in the mending charm, which undid the earlier charm that opened the Circles, there were rhymes and echoes that reminded him of spells he had encountered with Likod. Now, weaving the charm with Nelac and Dernhil, he felt these echoes again, and more strongly. This time the magery was different: the wound between the Circles hadn’t been cut by Bards, who worked with the precision of surgeons, seeking to make as little disturbance as possible. This rift had been torn open crudely, wreaking damage widely around it. No wonder the Jouains were suffering from bad dreams; it was such a serious breach that Cadvan thought it likely that the rumours of the dead walking at night were more than the imaginings of frightened villagers.

  As the mindmelded Bards felt gingerly about the torn edges, which furled vaporously through the threshold between the Shadowplains and the World, Cadvan fought against
an overwhelming feeling of revulsion. He had hoped, despite Ceredin’s warning, that this flaw between the Circles was a natural distortion, which might as naturally close over. The cosmos was full of ruptures: it was well known that in certain places there were fault lines. The Pilanel had told him that the shamans in the icy vastnesses of the far north called such places fountains of truth, thinking of them as akin to the hot springs that burst through rock with healing waters. They tended these places, using secret charms to keep them open for their visions and prophecies. But this rift was a wanton, deliberate violence.

  He nodded to Selmana, who stood pale in front of him on the opposite side of their ring, and began to concentrate on weaving the charm. He kept part of his mind watchful and separate, letting the weight of the magery fall on Nelac and Dernhil. He had argued most forcefully against Selmana’s proposal that she stand out to lure Kansabur, and although they had taken every precaution they could imagine, he was still worried. He remembered Kansabur’s strength: even if she were diminished, they didn’t know how weakened she was. What if she took Selmana, despite everything they had done? If Selmana held the secret to Kansabur regaining her full power, wasn’t it the deepest folly even to consider what they were planning to do now? He was surprised that Nelac even considered it; he was astonished that he supported Selmana. In the end Cadvan had given way with great reluctance, insisting that they should set the strongest shields they could make.

  It was always impossible to track the passage of time while making a powerful charm: what could seem like the work of hours could take only a few moments. Cadvan kept his eye on the moon; by the time they had almost completed the weaving, it had scarcely moved in its journey across the sky. Together the Bards traced the rent edges, outlining them with light, drawing them together, closer and closer. The smaller the rupture became, the more difficult it was to hold. Their magery blazed into the night, but there was no sign of Kansabur, neither in the Shadowplains nor in the World.

  Cadvan saw Selmana turn her head and look behind her, staring fascinatedly at the empty darkness, and almost stepped out of the charm to ask her what she saw; but she made no move to alert them. It was hard to keep all these double awarenesses in balance: Cadvan was poised on the edge of the Shadowplains and the World, both inside the mindmeld and apart from it. He began to feel the strain as the charm intensified, and clenched his jaw, fighting to keep everything in focus.

  Then, with a jolt of disbelief, he saw Selmana in the mindmeld, where she shouldn’t be: where, by now, she couldn’t be. Nelac and Dernhil were deep in the charm, preparing to set the key that would lock it whole, and betrayed no sign that they had seen her. She was somehow part of the mending, a shining form woven into the magery. Then she seemed to twist herself out of the charm and he fleetingly saw two of her, as if in a mirror: one in the World, the other in the Shadowplains.

  Stop! Cadvan cried out into their minds. Ware Selmana! The other two Bards instantly paused, teetering agonisedly on the very edge of the culmination of the mending. A blade of sorcery came out of nowhere, cleaving the charm in two. Nelac and Dernhil swayed with the shock of it, even under the shields they had made against this chance, and turned towards Selmana, clutching her hands as if she were being swept away by a mighty wind, although the night was absolutely still: and then the ring of Bards broke and the mindmeld shattered. Selmana vanished before their eyes. In her place, towering over the three Bards, stood Kansabur, the Bone Queen.

  They saw her as the Iron Tyrant of Lir, the revenant Cadvan had summoned to the Inkadh Grove. She was helmed and armoured in black, and the metal gleamed smooth, like the wing casing of a beetle. The skull sigil of her reign blazed crimson on her breastplate, and a black broadsword swung in her hands. Red flames licked its length, streaming into the night. Cadvan knew that blade: it was Thuruk, forged of sorcery in Dagra, some said by the Nameless One himself. It was the weapon that had killed Ceredin.

  There was no time even to think. Dernhil and Nelac, reeling from the breaking of the charm, stood momentarily stunned. As Kansabur swung her blade to shatter their mageshield, Cadvan loosed a bolt of white fire at her chest, exposed by her sweeping blow. It was driven by all his rage and despair and grief, everything he had suffered since the Dark had riven his life. The white fire drove home: Kansabur stumbled back at the force of it, and the black blade shivered, and silver fire flickered among the red.

  It gave Nelac and Dernhil a crucial moment to recover and to draw back their magery from the mending charm. The mageshield shimmered, briefly visible as a veil of light around them as power flowed into it, and Cadvan felt the mindmeld snap open again, Dernhil and Nelac’s strength flowing into his. Kansabur leapt forward into the space between them, directing a brutal slash at Cadvan. He stepped back, and Thuruk whipped past his face. He briefly met Kansabur’s eyes, which burned behind the slits in her visor. It was as if a beam of hatred lanced into his soul. His own hatred surged forward to meet it in a blast of magery, with a sudden vicious gladness. He needed no sword. Kansabur could not hate him more than he hated her.

  She sprang back to avoid his blow, only to find she was trapped. The mageshield no longer protected the Bards: now it enclosed Kansabur in a net of white fire, stronger than steel, colder than the stars. She stood up straight, very still, and then she leant on her sword and laughed at them.

  Treacherous scum, she said, in the Black Speech. Do you really think your pathetic chains can hold me? Oh, how I will enjoy your torment, when the mighty dungeons of Lir are rebuilt…

  She flung up her hand and spoke a summons, and as the words fell from her mouth, it seemed to the Bards that a stream of smoke also issued forth, winding out in a cloud that seeped through the mageshield, toxic and foul. And the night was no longer empty. Behind and before him Cadvan saw the shadowy dead, pouring in all their endless legions through the breach between the Circles, and dread shook his heart.

  Now, said Nelac to Cadvan. Now. She’s right that we cannot hold her.

  And out of his hatred, Cadvan spoke the Curse of Harm, one of the bitterest spells he had learned from Likod. It gathered strength as he spoke, foul and disgusting on his tongue, but given life and force by the fury that roiled through his whole being. The summoning died on Kansabur’s lips and the dead legions faded and vanished. The Bone Queen shrank back, writhing against the agony of the spell. The more Kansabur twisted in pain, the more merciless Cadvan’s power: here was his revenge, for every wound the Dark had dealt him, for each loss, for each grief. Kansabur began to lose her human form: her outline blurred as if smudged by smoke, and then suddenly, as if she inwardly collapsed, all that was inside the cage of magefire was a mess of darkness, pulsing and squirming against itself like the many larvae of some obscene insect.

  Released from the spell, Cadvan stumbled forward and fell onto his knees, sobbing with exhaustion. Nelac and Dernhil now struck, winding the magefire inwards, ever smaller. The shadow within fought desperately, resisting them with every vestige of its power, and even as they drew the net tight, a blast of sorcery tore it open and a boiling plume of shadow burst out, briefly obscuring the sky above them. And then it was gone, and the night was clean and silent.

  Dernhil and Nelac slumped against each other, breathing hard.

  “Selmana,” said Dernhil. “Where is she? What happened?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Nelac. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. “That was a hard thing.” He knelt beside Cadvan, and embraced him. “My friend, be glad. If we didn’t destroy Kansabur, she is surely diminished.”

  Cadvan met his eyes, and Nelac flinched at the bitterness he saw there. Then Cadvan blinked, angrily brushing away the sweat and tears that ran down his face. “Aye,” he whispered. “I would be a fearsome Hull. The Light did well to banish me.”

  Nelac kissed his brow. “You are a child of the Light,” he said. “I have no doubt in you.”

  “I was glad to speak that curse,” said Cadvan. “Think about that.” He rose and sta
ggered a short distance, and then fell onto his knees again and retched. The other Bards watched him in silence. At last he turned back.

  “What now?” he said. “Should we remake the mending, or should we seek Selmana first?”

  Dernhil hesitated. “We must make the charm.”

  “But what if it locks her out?”

  “Selmana can step between this plane and that without need for a gateway,” said Dernhil. “Last time, she came back without our seeking her.”

  “It was Ceredin who sent her back, remember.”

  Nelac put up his hand to silence them and shut his eyes, questing for Selmana’s presence. Cadvan cried out in protest, but Dernhil stopped him with a look. They watched anxiously until Nelac opened his eyes again, only a short time later. He swayed and almost fell.

  “She is not in the Shadowplains. Nor is Kansabur. They are utterly empty,” he said. “I think we cannot find her. I would wager my life that she is hidden from Kansabur.” He sighed and knuckled his eyes like a little boy. “By the Light, I am weary to death, and my whole body feels like a bruise. But let’s do the task before us first.”

  The descent seemed endless. As she tumbled over the lip of the World, Selmana thought her body dissolved, as if she became part of everything that was falling. She shut her eyes against the terror of the speed of it, but it made no difference at all. Perhaps she no longer had eyes or eyelids, perhaps all that was left of her was this awareness, this depth that yawned above and beneath her, an impossible gulf in which the only direction was down, in which time no longer existed.