The Crow

by Alison Croggon

  They set off down the gorge. There was no path, and the ground was rocky and uneven with the tumbled detritus of the earthquake, so their going was slow. A smell of crushed thyme rose as the air cooled in the evening, and through the branches of the trees above, Hem could see the twinkle of white stars.

  Hem felt as if he were drinking in the peace through his skin. He remembered his journey with Saliman through the tranquil mountains of the Osidh Am. That seemed so long ago now; when he thought of himself then, it was like thinking about a stranger. So many things had happened to him since: he had found Ire; he had met Oslar, and had found that he was himself a healer; he had spoken to the King of the Birds and driven off the deathcrows from Turbansk; he had seen Har-Ytan, the Ernani of the city; and someone had written a song about him. And he had seen more death and suffering than he wanted to think about.

  He felt as if he didn't know the edges of himself anymore. He was taller, maybe a hand taller, than he had been when he arrived in Turbansk, which had made him uncharacteristically clumsy, knocking things over because he couldn't judge any­more how long his arms and legs were. He no longer felt like a boy of twelve years. His voice was breaking, and he had noticed also that the hair on his body was getting thicker and darker. All this was disconcerting enough, but on the inside, it was even worse: all the unseen parts of him had changed out of recognition. His time in the Healing Houses had taught him more than how to bind limbs and mend torn skin; he had learned how to be patient with those in pain, how to read another person's needs without speaking. But the changes inside him were more than those skills could account for.

  Even thinking like this was new: Hem had never been par­ticularly introspective. His brutal childhood had taught him always to look mistrustfully in front of him, to react to whatever his present situation was, without reflection or regret. But now, as he followed Saliman and Soron through the darkness of the trees, thoughts seemed to drift up of their own accord. For weeks he had hardly had time to do anything except sleep, eat, and work, and it was as if a host of thoughts had lined up in his mind and were now demanding his attention.

  For one thing, he hadn't had a nightmare for several days now. For almost as long as he could remember, he had suffered from nightmares every night. He had thought that they had dis­appeared because he was so tired and slept too deeply to remember any dreams. But it could be, he thought blackly, that what he had been facing every day in Turbansk was actually worse than his nightmares. Maybe, Hem thought, I'm not so afraid anymore – or at least, not so afraid of the things that used to frighten me.

  But in another way, he knew he was more afraid than he had ever been. He was afraid for those he loved, afraid for Maerad and Zelika and Saliman; but he was also afraid for the world. It sounded foolish, put that way, but it was true. He had seen the forces of the Dark outside Turbansk, their ruthlessness and destructiveness, and now he could imagine them everywhere. The memory of the deathcrows, their deep wrongness, still made him shudder: what if the whole world were like that, poisoned by the same sickness?

  He studied Saliman's back, a span or so in front of him, as the Bard steadily made his way through the shadowy under­growth. His gait betrayed nothing of the weariness that must have been afflicting him; like Cadvan, who could push himself past the limits of exhaustion, Saliman seemed to be made of iron. In contrast, Soron's shoulders betrayed his tiredness, and he sometimes stumbled. And yet Saliman had been fighting for hours, before he led them through the caves.

  Hem thought of what Saliman had said earlier: I fight not because I love war or joy in arms, but because I must. Saliman might be a great warrior, but he did not like war. Like Hem, he was a healer. Maybe that was the real reason they had liked each other on sight.

  When Hem had first met Saliman, in Nelac's rooms in Norloch, he had seemed like a figure out of his daydreams. Hem had no memory of his own father, and for as long as he could remember, lying on his meager pallet in the orphanage, he had dreamed of having a father who was like Saliman: heroic, handsome, witty... So when Saliman had offered to bring him to Turbansk, it had seemed as if his dreams were coming true; even if it meant that he had to leave his sister, he was gaining someone who could be, in some way, the father he had never had. But, Hem thought now, Saliman is not my father, and he has never pretended that he is. I never had the chance to know my father; I know only that he is dead. And I don't really know Saliman very well at all.

  Hem had admired Saliman with the idealistic passion a young boy might feel for a mighty captain, but now it dawned on him that Saliman was both less and more than he had imagined. For all his courage and strength and ability, Saliman the Bard was also a man, and ordinary like other men: he was as prone to doubt and error and pain as anyone else. He was himself, as Hem was himself, and he existed outside anybody's desires and expectations.

  As these thoughts passed through his mind, Hem realized that he loved Saliman more than he knew, and differently than he had thought. The realization pained him; it was as if he were giving up some cherished dream, and turning instead to face a strange and challenging reality.

  Saliman was right: the caves weren't as bad as those they had negotiated the night before. They could walk through them without having to stoop, and the walls did not drip with water. Even so, they were bad enough: certainly Ire thought so. Hem very quickly lost any sense of time. Their journey seemed to go on forever and ever.

  No one spoke unless it was necessary, and the only sound was the harsh echo of their breathing and the scuffle of their feet on the ground. Hem began to feel he had always been in these caves – blinking in the yellow lamplight, breathing the stale, cold air – and that he would always be there. He felt there had never been anything else: the sky, the trees, the wind, the colors of flowers were all lovely visions he had merely dreamed.

  The entrance had been hidden by a spell; until Saliman revealed it with a word, it had looked like blank rock. They had entered it silently, braced for a long sojourn below ground; Saliman warned them that these caves would take them much farther from Turbansk. Ire, as Hem had expected, objected violently; it was probably the sternest test of loyalty he had faced. The boy had spoken to him quietly, and at last Ire, shiver­ing, had agreed to come. He clung to Hem's shoulder, hiding his head in Hem's hair, and refused to move off, even though the farther they went, the heavier Ire seemed to become. And Hem's pack, bulging with his fighting gear, was heavy enough.

  They stopped for a meal, slept on the stone floor, then rose and went on; they stopped and ate and walked and ate and slept. Every now and then they would strike underground streams, from which they could refresh their water bags. The Caves of Lamarsan... Hem thought of how, months before in Norloch, he had been promised the sight of the Hallows, where the caves opened onto the Sea of Lamarsan. It was the center of the Light in Turbansk. Saliman had said the Hallows were one of the wonders of Edil-Amarandh and had spoken of the way the waters of the Lamar River trickled in a waterfall into the Sacred Pool, and sparkled like a curtain of pearls in the moon­light. And yet, when Hem finally had seen the caves, it was not light he found, but impenetrable darkness. It was his bad luck, he thought, that he had been forced to see their other side. Perhaps he would never see the Caves of Light that Saliman had spoken of; perhaps they had been destroyed, as Turbansk must have been destroyed, by Juriken's summoning of the earthquake.

  On some profound level, Hem could not understand that Turbansk must lie in ruins. It was as if it were too big an idea to imagine. How could those high, proud walls have fallen? How could the Ernan be merely broken walls and rubble, overrun by the Black Army? It didn't seem possible; somewhere deep inside himself he couldn't believe it, although his rational mind told him that was what had happened. When he tried to visualize Turbansk, a strange, dulled grief rose inside him. He would probably never know what had happened to the people he had cared for with such diligence in the Houses of Healing; perhaps they had managed to escape, but equally their ships might
have foundered and sunk to the bottom of the Lamarsan Sea.

  And among all the many things that had been lost in the chaos of war, among the broken toys and burned homes, the families divided forever, the lives snuffed out – among all these things that Hem couldn't grasp in his tired mind because there were too many of them, too many tragedies, too many losses, too many tears – among all these things, a young girl called Amira would never know that her father, Boran, the coffee seller, had thought of her as he was dying.

  As he wandered through the dark maze, this caused Hem more grief than anything else. It was a task he had taken upon himself, a bitter gift with which he had been entrusted. When he had promised to tell Amira of Boran's last words, Hem had not known how he could pass the message on. Even so, he had believed that somehow, someday, he would be able to find the girl and tell her about her father. But now he understood the futility of his hope. How could he find her now? Perhaps Amira, too, was dead; how would he ever know? His promise, made with such passion, such sorrow, was one he could never keep. A great bitterness swelled in Hem's chest, so strong he felt as if he might be sick. He set his jaw, drove the memory of Boran from his mind, and focused on making his feet move, one foot in front of the other, again and again, through the endless, flickering shadows.

  Saliman led them unfalteringly through the maze of stone, and Hem wondered how often the Bard had been through these same caves. He remembered Saliman's many absences from Turbansk, how he said he had been to Den Raven itself. Maybe he had used these very passages. Perhaps these paths wound all the way to the Iron Tower.

  After several meals, Hem stopped thinking altogether; it took all his mental energy just to keep going. Sleep was merely a blank interruption in the endless tunnels, which Hem began to hate. Soron's lamp eventually burned out, and they continued with magelights, which were steadier but fainter than the yellow lamplight. Increasingly, the four humans moved as if through a dream. Ire remained almost completely silent. He would take his share at mealtimes, since not even the skyless darkness could depress his bottomless appetite, but his normal ebullience had completely vanished. Like all of them, he simply endured.

  At last Saliman stopped before a rocky wall, on which, Hem saw, were inscribed some runes in a style he could not recognize. He watched passively, expecting that Saliman was counting his way through his memories, remembering where their next turn­ing would be; but instead Saliman raised his arm, and the light of magery glowed around him.

  "Lirean!" he said, and suddenly the wall was not there.

  Before them stood a wide-arched entrance, and behind that opened a huge cavern, its far end lit by a solitary torch. Saliman turned to his companions, and smiled.

  "We are here, at last," he said.

  "Where are we?" asked Zelika, looking confused.

  "We have come to the entrance of Nal-Ak-Burat," said Saliman. "This was once an ancient city that was made beneath the desert so long ago that the people who made it are now for­gotten. But the city is not entirely forgotten; some use it even now. Come. Stay close to me as we cross the cavern."

  They followed Saliman silently through the arch and into the wide cavern, and walked across flags of dressed stone toward the torch that flickered on its other side. The cavern was so high that its ceiling vanished in the darkness, and on either side of them they could not see the walls.

  It felt strangely unsettling, after an unmeasured time in the small confines of the caves, to be in so wide a space; but as they walked on, Hem began to think his sense of disquiet was to do with more than the sudden emptiness around them. Zelika glanced at Hem, her eyes wide and dark with unspoken appre­hension, and Hem felt a shiver run down his spine, as if cold, unseen fingers were touching his neck. Saliman and Soron marched steadily before them, over the level ground; the small magelight drifted in front of them, casting a circle of silver light, and Hem squared his shoulders and trudged on.

  The silence around their footsteps was so intense it seemed to have its own quality. Was there such a thing as a loud silence? Hem began to feel a chill dread, although he didn't know why. There was nothing, he told himself, to be afraid of; but all the same, he felt fear creeping through his scalp, down his back, raising all the hairs on his head. Halfway across the expanse Zelika reached out and took his hand, and he gripped her fin­gers tightly, taking comfort in her touch.

  As they neared the torch, they saw it was placed in a bracket next to what seemed to be a door carved out of stone. Hem eyed the torch narrowly: it didn't seem to burn with any ordi­nary flame. It was a little like the lights the Bards used in Norloch, but its light was sulphurously yellow. Saliman put his hand on the door, muttering beneath his breath, and it swung wide open. Then he shepherded the rest of them inside, and they felt the heavy door swing shut behind them, with scarcely a sound. The magelight was extinguished as the door shut, leaving them in complete darkness.

  "A magelight, Soron, if you will," said Saliman, his voice steady and strong. There was a slight pause, and then a silver light grew and bloomed near Soron. In that bloodless light, Hem thought they all looked like ghosts.

  "Why did the light go out?" asked Hem, his voice wavering. "Did you do that on purpose?"

  "I did not," said Soron.

  "Then why did it go out?" Magelights should not go out, thought Hem, unless the Bard intends it so. Someone put it out. He could feel his pulse running jerkily through his body, and a cold sweat on his brow.

  "Don't be afraid," said Saliman. "Stay steady. We have done well: we have passed the first gate."

  "The first?" said Zelika. She had walked for days through the darkness without one sign of complaint or fear, but now her voice trembled.

  "Aye. That was the Gate of the Dead. Now there are two more."

  "Oh." Zelika swallowed hard, but said nothing further. "The Gate of the Dead?" Hem's voice was higher than he wished. "I thought – it felt as if someone were there. I thought..." He faltered into silence.

  "It is said the dead of the city guard this gate," said Soron. "And that they do not permit any with evil intent to pass."

  Hem didn't want to know any more; he had a sudden creep­ing memory of feeling that he was being touched by cold fingers. "So, what's the next one?"

  "This is the second. The Gate of Dreams."

  Hem looked around. It didn't look like a gate at all, but the last one hadn't looked like a gate, either. It was a short passage of stone that led to a dead end. The walls and ceiling were cov­ered with intricate carvings, but they were not, when he squinted at them, carvings of anything he could recognize. They looked like the same strange runes that had been carved over the entrance to the great cavern. He could feel, in the prick­ling of his skin, that the air was thick with magery; but it was somehow unlike the magery of Bards.

  "So, how do we get through the Gate of Dreams?" he asked warily.

  "We dream," said Saliman. Hem stared back at him with blank incomprehension. Saliman smiled, in a way Hem had not seen him smile for a long time, with a spark of pure fun. "We dream of a gate."

  Zelika's eyebrows were drawn together in a black line. "We dream of a gate?" she repeated fiercely. "That is nonsense."

  "Nevertheless, that is what each of us must do. Dream of a gate. Preferably, a gate you love."

  Zelika drew in a sudden, sharp breath, as if something had hurt her. Saliman glanced at her.

  "I warn you all: now we must be careful. Nothing will harm us here, save what we bring with us. So have a care of what you dream. Now," Saliman closed his eyes, "I remember, when I was a small boy, and like you, Hem, loved sweet fruits: sometimes I was allowed to go and stay with my grandmother. My grand­mother lived in a house about twenty leagues from Turbansk, past the Jiela Hills. It was a little white stone house enclosed by a whitewashed stone wall, and around it were groves of almond and cherry trees, and a great stand of date palms.

  "My grandmother was a famous gardener, and in her pri­vate garden she grew many aromatic plants for the h
erbalists and perfumers. There were frankincense trees, with their strange fleshy branches and fragrant sap, and galbanum and spikenard and camphor; and at the feet of the trees grew narcissi and geraniums and roses. I loved nothing better than to enter that garden of perfumes, to gather the white tears of the sap of galbanum, or to lie on the flagstones by the pond and close my eyes and let the scents drift over me."

  Saliman's warm voice resonated through the stone passage, and the others listened, enchanted by the lovely vision. Hem could see the house and garden vividly with his inner eye, as if it stood before him.

  "The gate to that garden was wrought of black iron," said Saliman. "It was shaped to fit the archway, and through its grille you could see the trees and flowers, and the breeze would bring you faint wafts of perfume. The iron was fashioned as little six-sided flowers, each fitting ingeniously into the other, and it was never locked. When you pushed it with your hand, it groaned faintly, and swung open. And then, you stepped through into my grandmother's garden."

  There was a short silence, and Saliman lifted his head and stared toward the end of the passage. For the briefest moment it seemed to Hem that a white wall glimmered there, and a wrought-iron gate, and through it a sifting vision of sunlight and green leaves, which vanished to bare stone.

  "Soron, you go last, and guide these children," said Saliman. "Remember what I have said. Each of us must make our own gate." Then he walked to the end of the passage, and seemed to pass straight through the blank wall.

  Hem blinked and Zelika gasped. Soron looked at the chil­dren. He had hardly spoken at all in their long wending through the caves, and now it seemed to Hem that he had changed: there was a toughness in his voice that the boy had not heard before.