The Bone Queen

by Alison Croggon

  Selmana frowned. “I suppose that’s why he’s such a boring teacher,” she said. “I have fallen asleep in his classes. Twice.”

  “He is certainly a disappointed man,” said Nelac dryly. “And yet, like so many, he is the major architect of his own unhappiness. Those who have no generosity in their hearts seldom perceive it in others.”

  Dorn greeted Selmana kindly, as an equal, and she immediately warmed to him. She wasn’t so sure of Enkir of Il Arunedh, who was placed opposite her. She could feel Enkir’s power from across the table, stern and austere. He was old, as old as Nelac, thin as straw and tall, his long white hair sweeping back from a broad forehead. She felt abashed as his gaze swept indifferently across her, as if she were of no importance, and settled on Cadvan. A deep disdain flooded through Enkir’s features.

  “I had hoped our paths would never cross again,” he said to Cadvan.

  “Sometimes fate is unkind,” Cadvan answered, his voice as cold as Enkir’s. “For which all of us are sorry.”

  “Shall we put our personal differences aside?” Milana’s voice, sharp and authoritative, cut across the table. “I know you two share little love, but to be frank, that is beside the point. I value both of you, and we need the Knowing that each of you can offer in this present pass.”

  Enkir inclined his head to Milana, acknowledging her rebuke. “My apologies for any impoliteness. But this young man brings with him some bad memories.” Enkir’s eyes were a very pale blue, and as he turned to answer Milana, Selmana thought they were curiously empty. “And if I am not mistaken, these memories are not the finished story that we thought they were, but only the beginning of a struggle that, thanks to this young man’s carelessness and arrogance, we may yet lose.” He turned back to Cadvan. “I do you the courtesy of disbelieving that you serve the Dark,” he said. “But I do not, either, believe that you are worthy of the Light.”

  Cadvan didn’t answer, although Selmana saw how his lips tightened. She thought he would leave the table, but Nelac clasped his shoulder, staying him.

  “I remember being told that I was not worthy of the Light,” Dorn said, breaking the silence. “It is a hard thing. By my reckoning, whatever wrongs Cadvan of Lirigon has committed are accounted by his penitence, and his service since to the Light. Who is to say that Kansabur returned only by his agency? Do you believe the Dark wouldn’t have found a way? Cadvan is unfortunate in being the means. You cannot tell me that the Hull Likod would not have found another, if Cadvan had not served. And who is to say they might have acted differently, had they been in Cadvan’s place? The wiles and stratagems of the Dark can be too obscure even for the wise to perceive.”

  Enkir snorted audibly, but made no reply. “I thank you, Dorn, for those fair words,” said Nelac. “And now the courtesies are done, perhaps I can avail myself of this excellent wine?”

  Milana smiled and filled Nelac’s glass. The housemaster, a Bard called Ilien, brought in several covered serving plates and opened them with a flourish, and a cloud of steam floated up to the ceiling. Selmana’s mouth filled with water: she hadn’t eaten since their brief stop at noon, hours before, and she was ravenous. She recognized few of the dishes, and Dorn named them as he passed them to her. There was mountain trout baked in almond and rose sauce, and mashed neats’ tongues in verjuice and butter and wine, and pork in a sauce of pomegranate and herbs, and spinach with sweet spices. They seemed very exotic to Selmana, used to the less highly flavoured cooking of Lirhan, but she thought they were delicious. She concentrated on eating, while the other Bards talked generally around her.

  When the sweetmeats were brought in, Dorn poured out a light wine, as golden as summer, which he said was a specialty of the vineyards of Pellinor. By now, after the frosty beginning, the Bards had relaxed. Enkir had smiled once or twice and had even deigned to notice Selmana, although he still addressed Cadvan only with the iciest civility.

  “Now, my friends, we have matters to discuss,” said Milana, leaning back in her chair. “Firstly, Enkir, I want you to hear Nelac out on the question of scrying…”

  Enkir’s nostrils pinched white, and the genial effects of the meal seemed to evaporate instantly. “To force me to be scried is a monstrous impertinence, at best,” he said. “There is absolutely no question of my allegiance to the Light. None. You know it, Milana.”

  “No one is suggesting that you be forced,” said Milana. “For my part, I have myself been scried, in this past hour. I wouldn’t ask anything of you that I wouldn’t demand of myself.”

  “I do not question your allegiance any more than I do mine,” said Nelac. “I question none here. And yet even I was forced to dig this thing out of me, and I did not know it was there. I am almost certain that Bashar was similarly afflicted, and that this is why the Dark could destroy her. How can we risk such a breach in our protection?”

  Enkir began to say something, and then seemed to think better of it. “Some are stronger than others,” he said. “I sense no diminution in my Knowing, as you described. I feel no blurring of my power. I see absolutely no need for scrying. After all, Calis escaped this blight, yes? And I assume that you did, Milana?” Milana nodded. “It seems that only the weaker among us were afflicted.”

  “It had nothing to do with weakness,” said Cadvan, his eyes kindling with anger. “It occurs to me that those who suffered this were closest to the centre of the mending. Me, and Nelac, and Bashar. And, as I recall, you…”

  Again Enkir snorted. Selmana, watching, thought that she disliked him very much. She wondered why the other Bards treated him with such respect. He was certainly a powerful mage, but she decided, looking covertly between Nelac and Enkir, that Nelac was the stronger. Where Enkir crackled with magery, Nelac’s power sat within him, a glow that had no need to show itself. She reminded herself that good people were not always nice.

  “No one here is saying that you should be forced into a scrying,” Milana was saying. “We are not the Dark. But I wish you would consider it, Enkir. It would be wise to do it, rather than to be sorry later.”

  “I am offended that you trust my self-knowledge so little,” said Enkir. “As I told you, I feel no sense of unease in any of my powers, such as others here have described. I would tell you if I did, and if it were so, I would submit to be scried, however distasteful I find the idea.”

  “There is no need for offence,” said Dorn quietly. “And none is intended.”

  There was a short silence, and then Milana said, “I would rather be certain. But I will defer to your judgement on this, Enkir. You have earned our trust, and I don’t doubt your Knowing is as you say.”

  Enkir nodded, mollified. The discussion was dropped, and instead turned to Selmana. She had had little part in the conversation over dinner, partly from shyness and partly from hunger.

  “Selmana, Minor Bard,” said Milana. “You are a puzzle indeed. What is your part in all this?”

  The gaze of the Bards turned thoughtfully on her. Selmana stared back, refusing to drop her eyes. She wasn’t some kind of curious object, to be prodded and examined.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Things just started happening to me. I didn’t ask for it to happen.”

  “But why would the Dark be interested in you?” said Enkir. She felt the flash of his perception needling her mind and shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “You have no especial Gift, it seems to me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Dorn. “She is clearly a Maker of great promise. But she also has the Sight. That may be dismissed by the Bards of Annar, but among the Dhillarearën of my people, those who have the Sight are honoured.”

  Enkir leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped. “My understanding is that it’s little more than a primitive intuition, cruder by far than the perceptions of Barding,” he said. “It’s a virtue, is it not, of village witches?”

  Selmana thought of Larla, whom Enkir would think of no account, and bit back a retort. “Ceredin had the Sight too,” she said. �
��And she said the Bone Queen needed our blood to come fully into this World.”

  “Selmana indeed has unique abilities,” said Nelac. “My understanding is that the Speech and the Sight seldom co-exist in the same person, and yet they do in Selmana and, it seems, they did in Ceredin. You are also forgetting Selmana’s ability to step bodily between the Circles. I never heard of anyone who could do such a thing.”

  “The Elidhu are said to be able to do this,” said Enkir, his eyebrows bristling. “I’ll be frank: the tale of this young Bard’s dealings with an Elidhu disturbs me greatly. Long have we feared the return of the Elidhu to Annar. It seems to me another deep stratagem of the Dark.”

  “Whoever she was, she had nothing to do with the Dark, and she wasn’t treacherous,” said Selmana. “She rescued me.” She sounded sulky, even to her own ears, like a child being rebuked by her elders, impotent against their more articulate judgements. Enkir was wrong, wrong. She thought, with a pang of guilt, that perhaps she ought to tell the Bards about her dream on the road to Pellinor, but again she rebelled at the thought. She would not expose Anghar to the cold eyes of Enkir.

  “Do not be injured by our questioning,” said Milana gently. “I realize it must be painful. We have to look hard at what we know, in order to think what to do.” She smiled, her eyes full of understanding, and Selmana swallowed and nodded, a little comforted. She felt hot and ungracious in the gaze of all these sober Bards.

  Enkir was still frowning. “There is too much that is not of the Light for my liking,” he said. “Too much is unknown. We do not know what agencies these powers effect. The Elidhu are lawless and untamed, and they do not love the Light.”

  “Perhaps there is reason for that,” said Dorn. “That doesn’t make the Elidhu the servants of evil. Perhaps we need to widen our thought, and think again about what we assume. There is no ban against the Elidhu in the Paur Libridha.”

  “It is foolish to believe that the Light holds the sum of all knowledge,” said Dernhil. “There are many kinds of Knowing.”

  “The Light is the highest Knowing, taking the best of knowledge and sifting out that which misleads us into shadows,” said Enkir sharply. “That is beyond argument. It is what we were bound to, when we were all instated as Bards.” Nelac glanced at him, as if he would take issue, but said nothing. “In any case, perhaps we take too much notice of the fancy of one who, after all, is little more than a child.”

  “It wasn’t a fancy!” said Selmana hotly. She almost added, And I’m not a child! but it sounded petty. To someone of Enkir’s age, two centuries or more, she could be nothing else. Yet Nelac, who was at least as old as Enkir, had never scorned her because she was young.

  “If it were a mere fancy,” said Nelac mildly, “it doesn’t explain how Selmana vanished, nor how she was momently woven into the charm of mending, nor how she could be seen in both the Shadowplains and the World at once, before she disappeared.”

  There was a short silence, and then Milana spoke. “It seems clear to me that Enkir is correct in this, that there are other wills at work here, besides the Dark and the Light,” she said. “And we know that the Bone Queen’s reign wounded many more than just Bards. Perhaps, Enkir, she is remembered and feared by others, who might aid us against her. I agree with Dernhil: we dismiss other Knowings at our peril.”

  “If that is so, how should we best use her?” Enkir studied Selmana speculatively, and she suddenly felt cold. “I am reluctant to employ such powers in crisis, not knowing what they are.”

  “We do not use anyone in our struggles,” said Milana, an edge to her voice. “That is not our way.”

  “Kansabur, even diminished, is a formidable foe,” said Enkir. “And what of Likod? I do not doubt that he is a Hull. Surely it is clear that this is part of a much larger plan? It’s true we need help wherever we can find it. Even, it seems, if it must be stolen from the Dark itself. If Cadvan hadn’t known the spell that Likod was bringing down on Lirigon, even now it would be in ruins, laid waste by the Shika. And it was sorcery that struck down Kansabur in Jouan.”

  “I cannot think that is good,” said Cadvan, leaning forward, his face troubled.

  To Selmana’s surprise, Enkir laughed. “The Dark, worsted by its own tools!” he said. “If the thought burdens you, Cadvan, then you are rightly punished. Those who deal with the Dark will bear the scar always. Each spell you have spoken will have stained your magery. This is why the doom is exile. I think it is a just doom.”

  “Perhaps it is,” said Cadvan. “And perhaps I am simply a sacrifice on the altar of your purity.”

  “Mercy is not the aim of the Light,” said Enkir.

  “What is, then?” said Nelac softly.

  “Justice.”

  “Yet wisdom is the meeting of justice and compassion,” said Nelac. “Be not so quick to dismiss the claims of mercy.”

  Enkir met Nelac’s gaze, and it seemed to Selmana that they wrestled in thought, although neither of them moved or spoke. At last Enkir put up his hands and looked away. “I have no desire to quarrel with you, Nelac. Of course all judgements of the Light are complex. That isn’t my point. I respect Milana’s decision to welcome Cadvan, and even see her reasons, although I disagree. For all that, we are no clearer about what we should do next.”

  “What’s clear to me is that we must banish the Bone Queen,” said Milana. “And now, rather than later.”

  “Easily said,” said Cadvan. “But not so easily done. We have already failed once.”

  XXXIII

  MILANA climbed the stone stairway that wound inside the walls of the Singing Hall and stepped out onto the arched walkway that ran beneath its vast copper dome. She huddled her cloak close against the cold and took a deep breath. She often came here when her thoughts were restless. From this height she could look over the Pellinor valley as it stretched back to the embrace of the mountains, which loomed black and shrouded on the horizon. She could see the yellow trembling lights of villages and farms, small and isolated on the valley flanks and gathering in clusters along the dim grey ribbon of the River Pel. Silently she named each village: Pilan, Sher, Westban, Ashkin…

  She had walked the paths of this valley all her long life. She had been to every village, to visit friends, or to learn some new detail of crafting; to teach children their letters, or to heal sickness, or to arbitrate disputes. She had made the spring blessing of increase, when Bards sang the Tree of Light into the dawn sky, lifting its white branches so they swelled with golden blossoms that opened and let fall their glowing petals onto the dark earth of the fields and woods. She had danced the funeral rites in every village square, to comfort the lost soul and set its feet on its journey across the Long Path of Stars to the Gates. She had broken bread in these houses, and shared their joys and sorrows. She was Pellinor’s First Bard and that was her duty and her love. No one in this valley went hungry, and no one needing succour or seeking knowledge was turned away. That was the Way of the Light, as Milana had known and lived it all her life.

  Tonight she was deeply troubled. The arrival of the Bards hadn’t surprised her; after the news from Lirigon, she had expected that they might seek refuge in Pellinor. But she felt it as an echo of doom, as one step closer towards the dark end that Dorn had seen in his dreams. She couldn’t shake the sorrow this loosened in her breast; even if they staved back the evil now, even if they succeeded in banishing the Bone Queen utterly from the bright margins of the World, Pellinor would fall and all its beauty would be lost for ever. It seemed to Milana that the decision she made now spelled out the first words of that sorrowful tale. And yet, no matter how deeply she searched her conscience, she could see no other choice. To turn her face away from a darkening of the Light out of a cowardly fear for her own skin would be a greater wrong still.

  Night deepened over Pellinor. One by one, the lights in the valley went out. From where she stood, her listening open, Milana could hear a rising wind rustling through the meadows, the cough of a fox, a plover
calling. The cold, clear skies of the past two days closed in, and a heavy cloud rolled down into the valley, blotting out the stars. She watched, her brow creasing. Were there deeper shadows there than the pure darkness of night? The cloud muffled sound as it flowed towards the School, blurring her listening, but she thought she heard a faint howl that belonged to no creature that she knew. She stood for a long time, alert and wary, but she heard nothing more, and at last she shivered, feeling the cold seep through her cloak, and made her way to her bedchamber.

  Cadvan of Lirigon. Cadvan woke and lay a while in bed, studying the ceiling of his room, which was painted with a pattern of birds in flight. All of them were birds that lived in the Fesse of Pellinor: ducks, ospreys, eagles and hawks, pigeons and owls, warblers and blackbirds and finches, and many others. He idly identified the different species, reflecting that the Bard who had painted this room had clearly been a passionate observer as well as a painter of rare skill: each kind was meticulously depicted in every detail. He could name almost all of them.

  He thought then of his own name. Cadvan of Lirigon. When Milana had spoken his Bard name the day before, Cadvan’s heart had jolted in his breast: he had never thought to hear himself addressed in that way ever again. For the past few years he had been Cadvan, formerly of Lirigon, or merely Cadvan, of Nowhere: a disgraced exile, marred by the Dark. But Milana had broken the ban of the First Circle of Lirigon, first by welcoming him into her School as a Bard, and then by giving him back his title. She had spoken clearly and deliberately, and there had been a magery in her words, as if she uttered his Truename. All Bards understood the power of naming, but Cadvan had never felt it so intimately. With those words, Milana had restored him as a Bard of the Light.

  And here he lay, in a comfortable bed with sheets of finely woven linen, in a room made beautiful by some gifted artist of Pellinor, as if he had never been banished, as if he were not outlawed. Milana had coolly undone that shame. He knew that she did so because of Nelac’s trust in him, but he was fiercely grateful. It had helped him to bear Enkir’s needling the evening before, and stilled his tongue when he would have taken foolish exception. He and Enkir had never liked each other. Cadvan couldn’t help but respect him, as a deep scholar and a mage of rare power. He wondered if it was impossible that Kansabur had hidden something of herself in Enkir. Nothing was impossible, if even Nelac had taken that hurt … and yet, thinking over it as fairly as he could, Cadvan thought it was very unlikely.