The Bone Queen (42 page)

Dorn still spoke with an accent, and occasionally formed his sentences oddly, but when he arrived at Pellinor two decades before he had scarcely any Annaren, and was forced to use the Speech in every communication with other Bards. Inghalt, who taught the ways of the Speech to the Minor Bards in Lirigon, had been in Pellinor at that time, and he and some others had protested at his admission, even after Dorn demonstrated his mastery of several Bardic charms.

“Inghalt said that even if Dorn had the Speech, it was corrupted by the primitive magic of the Pilanel,” Nelac had told her. “He argued that only those of correct Speech should be admitted into the secrets of Barding. But Milana laughed at Inghalt, and told him that no Barding ought to be secret. She asked him how he knew which Speech was correct and which was not, and he had no answer. So Dorn was admitted into the School. And he has become a formidable scholar of the Reading, and is a member of the First Circle. Inghalt left Pellinor, swearing never to return, and he still bears no fondness for Milana, the more so as Dorn became more distinguished. When she and Dorn declared their troth, he said the First Bard was a slut who had permitted lust to overcome her love for the Light.”

The story had shocked Selmana, not least because of the disrespect towards a First Bard. “But why would he hate Dorn, just because he is from a different people?” she had asked.

Nelac shrugged. “Perhaps he fears him,” he said. “Many Bards distrust the Pilanel people, for no good reason that I can understand. The Speech, alas, is no guarantee of wisdom. Bards can have power, and be respected for that, and yet have little insight.”

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.”