The Bone Queen (39 page)

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 staggered 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.

And yet, there was even an end to this. So gradually that she at first didn’t notice, the speed gentled: she was no longer plunging like a stone, but like a leaf or a feather twirling in a current, and then at last she was still. There was no ground to hold her, no sense of above or beneath: she was suspended. And she realized that it wasn’t water or wind that had rushed her along, but a torrent of stars. She stared, awestruck: she had never seen anything so beautiful. She had thought the stars were white, but they burned with colours that she had never seen before, gathering in spirals and clouds of intricate fire, infinitely various, infinitely complex. There was no limit to her sight: the more she looked, the more she could see. She thought she could stay for ever, looking into the vastness; she would never tire of the boundless beauty that now burned around her. And she was part of this beauty, one flame among these countless fires, so tiny that the least of these mighty orbs could destroy her in less than a moment. Yet, strangely, the thought didn’t daunt her: at the same time as she recognized her insignificance, she knew that she was as complex and intricate as the dance she saw unfolding before her, that she was forged of the same fires.

And then it seemed to her that the stars shifted their dance, and began to arrange themselves into a pattern, a form outlined in light. It reminded her of the star maps that she had sometimes studied in the library in Lirigon, which named the constellations, but here there were no lines to join the stars into a figure of an archer or a bear: the stars themselves made the form. She saw before her a woman crowned with emerald and ruby stars, clad in a silver robe that pulsed and flickered, her long golden hair streaming into the void.

Dearest one,
said a voice, impossibly.
You have come too far. Come. It is time to go home.

Selmana stared at her in wonder.
Who are you?
she asked.

The woman laughed, and reached out a giant hand.
I have many names,
she said.
I have forgotten most of them.
And she clasped Selmana’s hand. A cold thrill went through Selmana’s being, a clear pulse of joy. And the woman was no longer a vast, dazzling queen of the heavens, but a girl like Selmana, clad in a white dress, wearing a coronet of leaves and red flowers, and her hand was warm and alive.

Come,
she said again.
You must go home.

I want to go home with you,
said Selmana.

My home is not yours,
said the girl.
In time you may come there. But now is not your time.

She began to run, pulling Selmana, and gladness leapt in Selmana’s breast and she ran with her. The further they ran, the faster they raced, until the stars were streaming past them in cascades of white fire. And then it seemed to Selmana that they were running along a white beach with the sea sobbing beside them, and in the distance on a cliff she saw high gates shining, before a lofty castle with banners of silver and blue that fluttered in a keen wind. Selmana knew that she wanted to enter those gates, more than anything she had desired in her life, and she pulled on the girl’s hand to change their direction, picking up their pace yet again. But the gates never came any closer.

No, dear one, this is not your time,
said the girl.

Is that your home?
said Selmana. She wasn’t out of breath at all, although they were running with such speed that the ground rolled beneath them in a blur and her hair streamed straight behind her.

I have many homes,
said the girl. And now they were no longer beside the sea, but on dark plains, and the gates and the castle had vanished, and to their right the white peaks of mountains shone like knives in the starlight.

No!
cried Selmana, tugging the girl’s hand.
Let’s go back!
But the girl said nothing, and pulled her along through the rushing night. They were slowing now, and Selmana began to feel the weight of her body dragging her down. She saw a track winding through tangled grasslands, and the outlines of houses, and she recognized the place. And then she tripped over a grassy tussock and there was the shock of earth under her feet, and they stopped. They were just outside Jouan.

The girl turned to face her, still holding her hand, and Selmana saw that her eyes were not human eyes, but slotted, like a cat’s.

You are home now,
she said.
You must do what you must do.

Please don’t go,
said Selmana.
Take me with you. Please.

I cannot,
said the girl.
Even if I could, I would not. Now is not the time. Come, don’t be sad. We will meet again.

She smiled and leant forward and kissed Selmana’s cheek, and it felt like ice and fire at once. And then Selmana’s hand was empty, and the girl was gone. The night was just the night. The fierce joy that had winged Selmana’s body flickered and died, leaving her ashen. She thought her heart would break with loss.

She stood for a long time, listening to the ordinary night noises. A wind sprang up, and she saw that the sky was clouding over. The half-moon sailed in the west, letting fall a dim light. She smelled rain. It was deep night, but she didn’t know which night it was. Was it the same night she had left behind her, an aeon ago? With an effort, she wrenched her mind from the desolation that overwhelmed her, remembering what had happened before she met the wild girl.

Kansabur. Where was Kansabur? Where were the other Bards? She had forgotten all about them. She brushed her hair out of her eyes, and realized her cheeks were wet with tears. Dully, almost without thought, she walked to the tavern. The door was shut, but a yellow light lined the edges of the window shutters. She raised her hand and knocked.