He almost fell off Minna in his amazement. He forgot everything else, even the strange, enchanting music that was filling his Bardic senses and bewildering his mind with its increasing power. He pulled Minna to an abrupt halt and dismounted, standing face-to-face with Cadvan.
Cadvan's face lit up with his sudden, brilliant smile. "Saliman!" he said.
Saliman clasped Cadvan with almost as much emotion as Hem had hugged Maerad, and then stood back and held him at arm's length, struggling for words.
"I don't know whether I ought not to strangle you!" he said at last.
Cadvan laughed. "What a way to greet an old friend!"
Saliman earnestly studied Cadvan's face. "Yes, it is you," he said, his voice hoarse. "Cadvan, I had heard that you were dead. I have been mourning you these past two months. And to find you here, beyond hope, in the middle of the wilderness ..."
Cadvan was suddenly serious. "I am sorry to have given you such grief needlessly, my friend," he said. "For my part, the news from Turbansk made me fear for you, and I have often wondered whether I would see you again."
"There is much—too much—to tell you," said Saliman. He looked around, as if recalling where he was. "And I do not doubt that now we are in great peril. I am sure we are followed by Hulls, a number of Hulls, although perhaps they are not following us, but are drawn to Maerad as moths to a light—her power beams over these hills like a beacon."
"I fear so," said Cadvan. "I can feel them, drawing ever closer. All the same, I suspect they might be the least of our problems. There are powers loose here that I neither know nor understand. But tell me, who is your friend?"
Hekibel had been hanging back awkwardly behind Saliman, holding the reins of the two horses, with Irc perched petulantly on her shoulder. She smiled hesitantly as Saliman took her arm and brought her forward.
"Cadvan, Hekibel, please each meet a dear friend of mine. And Cadvan, this is Irc, a most uncommon crow. But I fear there is no time..."
Cadvan was about to reply, but at that moment all three swung around to look at Hem and Maerad, as if someone had called them. Hekibel cried out, her hand over her mouth.
While they had been talking, Hem and Maerad had parted and were now standing side by side, holding hands. Maerad grasped her lyre in her free hand, and Hem held a small, unbearably bright object in his, which Saliman knew was the tuning fork. They seemed entranced, their faces blank, and both were bright with a shimmering radiance. It was very different from the silvery light of magery: it rippled through them like an unconsuming flame, now the infinite orange and auburn of autumn leaves, now dark as honey, now bright and rich as gold or rubies.
As they watched, brother and sister unclasped their hands. Maerad held her lyre, readying to strike the strings, and Hem bent down with deliberate slowness and struck the tuning fork on a rock.
The tuning fork began to ring with a new sound audible to all ears, not just to those sensitive to magery. At first it was low, like the sounding of a melodious bell, but instead of dying away, the sound gradually grew. Soon it was so loud that it drowned out everything else. Hekibel put her hands over her ears and the horses reared, pulled the reins out of her hands, and bolted away. Irc gave a harsh shriek and flew up into the sky.
What are they doing? said Saliman into Cadvan's mind. By now the ringing was so loud that if he had shouted in Cadvan's ear, he would barely have been able to hear him.
J wish I knew, Cadvan answered. I am afraid that we can do nothing now but watch and hope ...
Just as it seemed that if the sound grew any more intense the stones must begin to crack, it stopped increasing in volume. The fork continued ringing out its single note, a constant, punishing noise, until the three watchers felt that if it continued much longer, they would go mad. And yet still it continued, beyond bearing, with no sign that it would stop.
Hem and Maerad were so still that they seemed not to be breathing: it was as if they were trapped in the enchantment, outside time itself, like flies in amber. Hekibel was staring at them, her face white, her hands still over her ears. She shouted something to Saliman, but he shook his head, unable to understand what she said. She put her mouth close to his ear. "Something's wrong," she shouted. "It's not right."
Saliman looked at her in surprise, and then, without any warning, eluding Saliman's grasp as he tried to stop her, Hekibel ran up to Hem and tore the tuning fork out of his hand, holding it tightly in her fist to stop it vibrating; and she began to shake him, shouting at him frantically to wake up. Saliman and Cadvan looked on, frozen with horror: one of the first things Bards were taught was the danger of interrupting a spell in progress.
As soon as Hekibel snatched the tuning fork from Hem's hand, the noise stopped abruptly. The sudden silence was shocking, and at the same time an inexpressible relief. Hem and Maerad stirred, looking in confusion around them as if they had been woken from sleep, and then an expression of rage flickered across Hem's face and he lunged for Hekibel, trying to take back the tuning fork. She jumped backward, holding it away so he couldn't reach it.
"It was wrong, Hem," said Hekibel, her voice steady, her eyes locked on Hem. "There was something wrong."
"How did you know?" asked Maerad. She was trembling again, more violently than before, and as she spoke, her legs crumpled beneath her and she fell to the ground. Hem bent down to help her up and she pressed his arm gratefully but didn't attempt to stand up. She was still holding her lyre, but the light had died out of it and now it seemed just an ordinary wooden instrument. "How did you know it was wrong?"
"I don't know," said Hekibel shakily. She was holding the tuning fork with the tips of her fingers, looking at it as if she didn't quite believe what she had done. "It just felt—not right." She looked at the tuning fork again, and gave it back to Hem. He took it, slipped its chain back over his head, and hid it beneath his clothes.
All this had happened very fast, in the time it took Saliman and Cadvan to join them. Saliman was furious. "Hekibel," he said, his voice icy. "You must never do that to a Bard. Never. Do you understand?"
"No," said Maerad faintly. "Hekibel was quite right. It wasn't doing what it was supposed to. I think the Treesong was trying to make itself whole, but there was something missing, and it didn't work ..."
Saliman paused, taken aback, and before he could speak, Maerad smiled tiredly and reached out her hand. "I suppose we ought to say hello," she said. "It's so good to see you."
The anger died out of Saliman's face, and he smiled back, and embraced her. "And to see you, Maerad. No matter how strange the circumstances."
Unlike Hern, who now showed no sign of power, Maerad still held in her skin an afterglow of the strange, golden illumination that had blazed through her. Subtle ripples of light ran through her veins, and her eyes were still aflame. Cadvan glanced at her, his eyes dark with concern, and squatted beside her.
"What was supposed to happen?" he asked.
Maerad, her head bowed, didn't answer.
"I don't know," said Hem, at last. "I mean, we knew what to do, and then it was—well, it was as if we got stuck."
There was a silence. "Well," said Saliman. "I wish we had some way to navigate this mystery ..."
He stopped, his nostrils flaring, and was swiftly turning his head to look behind him when he froze, as still as if he were carved of stone. A freezing spell, Maerad thought, and inwardly cursed. She looked at her friends, caught out of time in mid gesture: Cadvan standing with an exclamation of fury half formed on his lips; Hem reaching toward Saliman, his brow creased with puzzlement; Hekibel halfway through wiping a stray lock of hair from her face.
Hulls, thought Maerad. In the drama of the past few moments—and it had only been a few moments, if that—the threat of Hulls had dropped out of their minds. And yet they had all known that Hulls were nearby; and now that the strange enchantment of the Treesong was not obliterating all her senses, she could feel their cold, malignant presence.
There were man
y of them—perhaps a dozen, perhaps more. Many more than she had guessed earlier, when she had felt their dim shadows pressing on her mind. She had then reckoned there were three, maybe four. They must have used powerful shielding; because the sorcery of Hulls disrupted the Balance, it was much more difficult for a Hull to shield its power than it was for a Bard. Somehow these Hulls had managed to cast a spell on all of them, except Maerad herself, through Cadvan's wards and walls. And Cadvan would have made powerful charms, complex spells that would not be easy to undo or bypass. That meant, thought Maerad, that among their number were powerful and subtle sorcerers.
Maerad closed her eyes, wishing that her body would stop shaking. After days of inaction, it seemed that now things would not stop happening. Then she slowly stood up and looked westward, down the slope along which she had watched Hem and Saliman and Hekibel ride only a short time earlier.
The Hulls were cloaked by sorcery, but she could perceive them as clearly as if she could see them with her eyes. The sun had now sunk, the last of its light ebbing orange over the western horizon. The evening sky arched huge and luminous over the empty land, which swept down from her feet in rich hues of purple, and the first white stars were already beginning to appear above. Maerad looked over the darkening land before her and was struck for the first time by its lonely beauty.
The Hulls were riding toward her in a line, each abreast of the other, and they seemed to Maerad not like darkness, not like light, but like an absence of both. They were an emptiness riding toward her over the innocent earth—not at all like the terrifying nothing that she had encountered when she had fought the Landrost, but a malign, conscious, deliberate sterility.
A vast contempt rose within her. The Landrost, for all his violent intent, was a power she could respect. What she perceived in the Hulls was, more than anything, a corrosive pettiness, a smallness of being that had made them shrink from the generosity of life and choose instead the emptiness of control, of mere dominance.
She counted them. There were fourteen Hulls riding with slow deliberation toward the campsite. She guessed that Cadvan's wards were slowing them down; otherwise they would already have attacked.
She stood and waited, feeling no urgency. Her body seemed to be stronger, her limbs were no longer shaking so badly. Then she glanced at her friends, and her conscience smote her. If she was not afraid, they felt no such assurance. Hekibel's eyes, the only part of her that could express anything, revealed sheer terror.
"Have no fear," Maerad said aloud, and she made a strange gesture with her hands, not even deigning to speak. At once the spell was broken, and all four of them slumped with relief at being released from their horrible suspension.
"I thank you, Maerad," said Cadvan, rubbing his neck. "That was a nasty moment. Surprised by Hulls! I could spit!"
"There are fourteen," said Maerad. "They ride slowly. I am guessing they are hampered by your magery but, all the same, they cast that spell through all your wards."
Hekibel drew a sharp breath. "Fourteen?" she said in a small voice.
"If they can break wards that Cadvan set, there must be a mighty power there." Saliman drew his sword and eyed it coldly. "They will not harm us," said Maerad. "They cannot."
Saliman stared at Maerad with amazement, and then glanced quickly at Cadvan, who gave him a slight nod. He cleared his throat. "Well, even so, I think that maybe Hekibel and Hem can perhaps get out of the way."
"I don't like Hulls," said Hem thickly. He was struggling against a creeping horror; vivid memories rose in his mind's eye of the Hulls in Edinur, the Hulls at Sjug'hakar Im. "I'm pretty useless here, to be honest."
He took Hekibel's hand, and pulled her away from the other Bards. She said nothing. At first she seemed to resist him, as if she were fixed to the spot, dazed with terror, but she allowed Hem to lead her to the rough shelter of rock where Maerad and Cadvan had made their home for the past week, and as soon as they were inside, she crouched on the ground, her arms wrapped around herself.
"Hulls are horrible," said Hem, trying to smile to reassure her. "But if Maerad says we will be all right, we are in no danger."
Hekibel looked up at him, but said nothing. The naked fear in her face made Hem kneel down next to her and take her hands in both of his. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was for the trouble he had caused her, but the words died in his mouth. Hekibel looked up and met his eyes and then she put her arms around him, and he could feel the trembling of her body. Hekibel, he remembered, had not been near Hulls before, although she had seen their work; and perhaps, not having the defenses of Bards, she was more vulnerable to the desolation they wrought in the spirit.
Maerad followed her brother's departure, and then turned back to face the Hulls, Saliman and Cadvan on either side of her.
"So, Maerad," said Saliman, with a sardonic smile. "How do you propose we defend ourselves? I confess, I cannot see anything but a fearsome battle before us."
"There are none but those we see," said Maerad absently. She was concentrating all her attention in front of her. "They cannot get another spell through the wards—I think they have been trying. And perhaps they do not know that that first spell has been broken. They do not seem anxious."
"No," said Cadvan, peering through the dusk. "My walls aren't giving them much trouble—they are breaking them as they ride. My wards are still strong, so far as I can see; they shouldn't be able to tell what is happening here. I would give much, all the same, to know how they slid that spell past my magery. It hurts my pride."
"If that is the worst hurt you suffer this night, my friend, I will not pity you," said Saliman.
"Shhh." Maerad glanced at the Bards sternly, and turned back to the Hulls. Saliman cocked an ironic eyebrow over her head at Cadvan, who almost smiled.
Maerad was waiting for the Hulls to come close enough so that she could be sure of destroying all of them at once. Her contempt for them lay like nausea in her stomach; at this moment she felt no pity, no stirrings of conscience, no division of her will. She had no doubt that the Hulls planned to murder her brother and her friends, and to take her captive. They deserved no mercy.
Suddenly, as if they had appeared out of nowhere, the Hulls were visible to the naked eye. They must have broken through one of Cadvan's shields, which had also stripped them of the sorcery that hitherto had concealed them. At the same moment that they became visible, the Hulls sighted their prey, and they drew together and quickened their pace.
Maerad drew in her breath. They seemed much closer now that she could see them, and she felt the Bards beside her flinch at the force of the malignant wills that were now focused upon them with deadly intent. From here she could see the red light that burned in the shadows of their hoods, and the bony hands that held the reins of their horses; and she also saw that the steeds they rode were not living horses, but beasts of carrion, held together and driven by the wills of those who rode them. For the first time she felt horror creep into her heart.
The Hulls were riding now in a semicircle, and she knew that the most powerful sorcerers were in the middle, like the keystones of an arch. Clearly, when they came close enough, they planned to encircle their camp so there would be no chance to escape. They rode arrogantly, sure of their success, and Maerad's lip curled.
She closed her eyes, and sought the Hulls in the shadow world. They were easy to find: they wavered before her, insubstantial forms like fumes of poisonous smoke. They were not aware of her. Hulls could not enter the planes where she now moved.
Slowly, Maerad drew in a deep breath. It was a breath that no living human could take: she inhaled the icy mists that hung over the mountains, the wild briny gales of the sea, the mild spring breezes that wandered over the Hollow Lands, river winds and summer storms and the high still air that stood beneath the stars, drawing them into the very depth of her being. And then, pursing her lips as if she were about to play a pipe, she blew it out at the smoky forms of the Hulls.
There w
as a brief, panicked turbulence as the Hulls attempted to resist the force of Maerad's breath, but in this place they were powerless. In moments the wisping vapors that were their souls dissipated and vanished, and it was as if they had never been.
Maerad opened her eyes, and the Hulls were gone. In their places were fourteen small piles of bone and cloth, and then, wafting toward them on the mild breeze, a faint stench of rotting meat. She smiled.
Saliman was speechless, his mouth open with shock. Cadvan cleared his throat, attempted to speak, and stuttered into silence. He cleared his throat again.
"By the Light," he said, when he had mastered himself. "I think that beats the singing a lullaby to a stormdog for simplicity and economy, Maerad. But I wish I had known that you simply had to blow at Hulls to get rid of them. It would have saved me a few scars."
"The night is clean again." Maerad turned to the Bards, her eyes glittering. The pallor of her face was now relieved by red flushes of fever high on her cheekbones.
"That's not possible," Saliman said slowly. "I am not sure, much as I loathe Hulls, that I want to see the like again. I—" He broke off, shaking his head, and sheathed his sword. He gave Maerad a straight look. "I think, Maerad, you are the greatest peril I have ever encountered."
Alison Croggon - [Pellinor 04] Page 36
