Authors: Alison Croggon
“Virtue was ever double-edged.”
“Aye. And how keen is that edge? How do we know one side from the other, when it comes to our own desires? Be sure: what threatens us is not merely a skirmish between Bards and Hulls, Dernhil. It concerns us all, all of us who walk under this sky, all of us who will be born hereafter. I doubt there will be heroes in this story. And I am afraid…”
Dernhil knew Nelac had the gift of foresight, and his heart faltered. Nelac was the steadfast one, the bulwark to whom others turned in their own doubt, and he seldom revealed his inner thoughts. Dernhil was suddenly aware, as the sun lifted over them, how the years lay heavy upon the older Bard: he saw with a new clarity how deeply the lines were scored in his face, the fragility of the bones beneath the aging skin of his hands. For the first time, he wondered how old Nelac was. It had never before occurred to him to ask.
Dernhil cleared his throat. “If each of us plays our part, I can’t see how we cannot find victory,” he said. As he spoke, he felt the hollowness of his words.
“I wonder if there is any such thing as victory in this world.”
Dernhil met Nelac’s eyes, and the younger Bard saw they were full of a bleak light, cold and somehow pitiless. He looked away, shaken, and Nelac urged Cina on. It was a little while before Dernhil followed him.
They found Cadvan in the front room, broodingly watching the landlord, Stefan, as he went about his tasks. He looked up swiftly when the door opened and strode across the room to embrace Nelac. Dernhil suddenly felt awkward, as if he were a stranger at a meeting that ought to be private; it seemed to him that much passed between the two Bards in that brief greeting.
When Cadvan stepped back from the embrace, Dernhil saw that his eyes were bright. To break the moment, Dernhil rubbed his stomach, like a minstrel playing at being hungry, and brightly suggested that they should eat. Nelac cast him an amused glance, well aware of Dernhil’s discomfort, and asked Stefan for a room where they could be private and break their fast. The innkeeper bustled off to prepare the board.
“Did you sleep at all?” Cadvan asked Dernhil. “I woke with the sun, only to find you already gone.”
“I slept badly. No doubt I am unused to the comfort of a bed.”
Cadvan frowned. “I did too, although I was weary to the bone. Strange dreams, although I remember none of them.”
Nelac studied Cadvan’s face. “You seem in good health, my friend, strange dreams or no. Dernhil tells me he found you in a mining settlement.”
“Jouan,” said Cadvan shortly. “I went there to be a cobbler.” It was clear that he didn’t want to talk about his time there, and Nelac didn’t enquire further. Stefan showed them to a small parlour, bringing ale and a platter of breads and cured meats. They made their breakfast, talking idly of nothing in particular. Cadvan was wondering what he was expected to do, now he had made the journey back to Lirigon, but he was hesitant to begin the discussion. He thought that Nelac looked older than when he had last seen him, more strained.
“I suppose we should speak of the matter at hand,” said Nelac, when the table was cleared. “Though I don’t know where to begin.”
“Here and now, I suppose,” said Dernhil. “I had an encounter on our way here that you should know about. I spoke with Ceredin…” He glanced sideways at Cadvan as he told his story, but Cadvan stared down at his hands, betraying no emotion. When Dernhil finished his account, Nelac nodded slowly.
“There has been a strange incident in the Fesse also,” he said. “Perhaps it is a sighting of Kansabur. I think it more likely than not, although I am trying not to leap to conclusions, in case I leap the wrong way.” He paused, gathering his thoughts, and told them of Selmana’s encounter with the boar, and of what he had seen and guessed himself. The Bards listened without interrupting. By the time Nelac finished, Cadvan’s face was white.
“That is all too familiar,” he said. “Remember the shepherd? And those others? Nelac, I searched the library at that time, looking for similar descriptions of possession, and there was not one account of a haunt that matched what happened to those people. I cannot doubt it is Kansabur.”
“Me neither,” said Dernhil. “It chimes too clearly with my own dreams. I am sure that Kansabur escaped the Bards.”
“I’ve been turning over and over the moments when we thought we had banished her,” said Cadvan. “Do you remember, Nelac? And I can’t stop thinking about that strange – flicker – that happened, just before the Circles closed. But we were so sure, we hunted through the Shadowplains and there was no sign…”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking of that,” said Nelac. “Time doesn’t run in the other Circles as it does in the World, and she could have changed her
when
as well as her
where
, although I have not heard that it is possible to do that, except perhaps for the Elementals… The Shadowplains, as you know, are linked to the World, as a reflection relates to an object – but not exactly, and there are strange distortions… But we were looking for spoor, which is how we tracked her before. And there was no trace of any spoor around that poor beast, nor in the Shadowplains.”
“Then she has found some way to move without leaving traces,” said Cadvan. “She has become something else, other than what she was.”
“That may be so,” said Nelac. “But perhaps her transformation is not quite so radical. I don’t doubt that some kind of change has occurred: perhaps the very pressures we brought to bear upon her permitted Kansabur to discover another aspect of her power. Part of our problem is that we don’t understand how sorcery works. In fact, we understand so little about the Circles that anything we suppose is not much more than a guess.”
“She is certainly not in her full power,” said Cadvan thoughtfully. “If she had been, Selmana could not have resisted her.”
“The clue is from Ceredin,” said Nelac. “
There is a great malice, broken into three and three. Each malice seeks the others.
She divided herself, and so escaped our vigilance and survived. We no longer seek one thing, but many, and those many things leave no trace that we can see.”
“Perhaps she seeks to reunite herself,” said Dernhil. “Perhaps she can only do that in the World, not in the Shadowplains. Perhaps she needs a living body to sustain her. Perhaps she is like a deadly parasite, which needs a host strong enough to contain those different parts of her…”
Nelac was silent for a time. “If that is so, there are very few who could withstand such a parasite without deadly hurt,” he said. “Only the most powerful Bards, perhaps, and perhaps not even them. When we were hunting her, she used living bodies as a hiding place, and she could remain there for only a few days before … well, Cadvan, you remember what happened to them. And now it seems she is reduced to hiding in beasts. If her self is divided, so, it seems, is her power.”
Cadvan had been sitting, half listening, deep in thought. “She never dared before to invade the soul of a Bard,” he said. “It would have been too dangerous, it would have betrayed her presence to us at once. You say that Selmana told you that she felt as if something had called her out that night?”
“Not quite. She did say that she didn’t know why she had gone out of her mother’s house when she was so frightened, and that afterwards it wholly baffled her.”
“Why Selmana?”
“Perhaps because she’s young, and therefore vulnerable. But she’s strong, as she showed when she drove off Kansabur. She’s a Maker by inclination. I’ve been giving her some help with her Reading, and I think she will make a formidable Bard one day.”
“Do you think she is in peril?”
“No more, I think, than any other Bard, if Kansabur is indeed hunting Bards,” said Nelac. “And we cannot be sure that is the case.”
“Selmana is Ceredin’s cousin,” said Cadvan in a low voice. Dernhil’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I would feel – it would be sorely unjust if that family suffered more because of what I’ve done.”
By now the light was broad, and the sunshine outside shone through the latticed windows, glancing off their empty glasses. Cadvan pushed himself back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair.
“So,” he said. “Here I am. Why is my being here so important? Why did Dernhil near kill himself riding through Lirhan to look for me? What shall we do now?”
“That’s precisely what we don’t know,” said Nelac. Cadvan gestured impatiently. “Nay, Cadvan, do not think it has been a waste of effort.”
“I thought you’d know what to do.” The corners of Dernhil’s mouth twitched: Cadvan sounded almost petulant.
“Surely you should know me better than that.” Nelac glanced ironically at Cadvan. “Or did you lay aside all your Knowing when you fled to Jouan? Do not all questions begin in doubt and ignorance?”
Cadvan smiled reluctantly. “Aye. But I have a heavy culpability here, Nelac. I must right the wrong I made.”
Nelac’s brows bristled in a frown, and for the first time his voice was harsh. “You can’t right it, Cadvan. You can’t bring back the dead, or heal the grief of those who miss them, or make the anguish suffered as if it never was.”
Cadvan flushed. “I do know that,” he said. “I know that what is done cannot be undone. I just meant…”
“I know what you meant. But do not overestimate your importance: you did not begin this wrong. It began long before you made your own disastrous choices. And do not think you can end it.”
A swift anger kindled in Cadvan’s eyes. “Then what would you have me do?”
“As with us all: we find the tasks that are in front of us, and we deal with them as best we can. For the moment, I don’t know. That doesn’t mean that I won’t know tomorrow. It doesn’t mean there is nothing to be done. But better to be patient now than to act in haste and act wrongly.”
Nelac left Bural in the early afternoon. Although he had told them that he felt clearer for their discussion, and that he would return the following day when they had all had a chance to think, Dernhil and Cadvan were both struggling with a strong sense of anticlimax.
“Nelac’s right, of course,” said Cadvan. “As he always is. But this makes my banishment from the Schools a matter of real tedium. Must I kick my heels in this forsaken inn while we wait for the Light to blaze up like a beacon and show us what must be done?”
Dernhil grinned. Cadvan was slumped back in a chair, unshaven and grumpy, his long legs thrust out before him. “I don’t think that’s quite what Nelac meant,” he said.
Cadvan shot him a withering glance. “Don’t you start being right as well,” he said. “It’s too much to bear.”
“For my part, I need a wash,” said Dernhil. “I didn’t have time this morning. I see that it’s market day in Bural. Maybe we should get out in the sunshine and buy some of the Lirhanese cheese that you’ve been missing so much.”
Cadvan laughed, and they agreed to meet again in half an hour to inspect the sights of Bural. These were few indeed: it was a small village of perhaps three dozen houses, all built with the grey granite and red clay roofs common in the area. There was a meeting hall in the centre of town, and before that was a stone-flagged square dotted with a motley selection of stalls. Mostly they were selling food: hams and pickles, mounds of autumn fruit, fish taken from the Lir River, fresh in its scales or salted or smoked for winter. There was a knife-grinder in one corner, and in another two minstrels plied their trade, for the coins the villagers would throw into their hats. Various pigs and cows tethered by their owners, waiting for buyers, added to the general hubbub.
Cadvan bought a round of cheese, bargaining ruthlessly and with evident pleasure with the seller. After buying a loaf of the white wheaten bread particular to Bural, the Bards retreated to a nearby green, which was deserted aside from a few cows and a group of children playing tag, to make a rough picnic in the warm sunshine.
Dernhil had watched Cadvan curiously at the market: it struck him that Cadvan was at home in a way he had never seen him in the School. It wasn’t simply that Cadvan spoke with the accent of Lirigon, and that Dernhil was instantly recognizable as a stranger; Dernhil was always deferred to as a Bard, although his clothing was plain, but no one seemed to think that Cadvan was anything but another Lirhan farmer.
“You’re a skilful bargainer,” Dernhil said, tearing a chunk from the loaf and topping it liberally with the soft cheese.
“My father taught me. I did most of the buying for the house, and he sorely hated seeing money go to waste.”
“But you like it, too.”
“I think all Lirhanese love bargaining,” said Cadvan. “It’s a game. Usually you both know where you’ll end up. It’s the getting there that counts.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Dernhil. “I confess, I’ve always been one to pay the asking price of anything.”
“Those stallholders would love you,” said Cadvan. “And they’d also despise you as a soft Bard from Gent, raised on silken sheets, who never had to count his coins at the end of the week.”
“Aside from the silken sheets, they’d probably be right,” said Dernhil. He yawned and lay back, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hands. A comfortable silence fell between them.
“When do you think you’ll return to Gent?”
Dernhil sat up. “I’m not sure I should,” he said.
“But surely your task here is done. You brought me back, like a good dog.”
Dernhil spluttered. “Like a good dog! And you, I suppose, are the rabbit I’ve run to ground!”
“I am an excellent rabbit,” said Cadvan, making ears with his hands.
Dernhil studied him. “No, you look nothing like a rabbit. And I, contrary to your outrageous assertions, am not a dog, good or bad.” He turned over on his stomach and starting pulling grass stems from the ground. “Seriously, Cadvan, the truth is that I feel I haven’t finished my part. Although I scarcely know what my part is. And I don’t want to go back to Gent.”
“Why?”
“Mostly, I’m afraid that the nightmares will return. But it’s more than that.”
Cadvan’s face had darkened at the mention of Dernhil’s nightmares, and he didn’t answer him for a while.
“I think you’re right to stay,” he said at last. “But maybe that’s just because I would be grateful for your company. I’d feel quite lonely, else.”