Pellinor: The Singing Part 23

DREAMS.

IT was a world neither of darkness nor light, an endless twilight inhabited by dim forms in ceaseless motion. Nothing seemed to hold its shape: there were voices whose edges seemed to glimmer with starlight, faint lullabies and lamentations who stepped out of the silence like young girls, their faces averted. Everywhere there were the marks of hands, as if every surface breathed out the heat of a body that had just touched it. It wasn't possible to see anything clearly, always there were shifting veils of light and shadow drifting and vanishing, and the eye could fix on nothing. The earth seemed no longer solid, but a mist that mingled with the vapors of the air. And everywhere the voices, the wan echoes of the dead ...

Maerad woke with a start, feeling the cold sweat sliding down her back and her forehead. She didn't know if she had cried out; it seemed to her that the echo of her own voice still hung on the night air, but perhaps it was merely a remnant of her dream. She gathered her blanket closely around her and sat up, feeling the wool's roughness against her cheek, the p.r.i.c.kle of the dry gra.s.s, the hard ground against her b.u.t.tocksa"these were tangible things out of the world of solid objects, and their abrasiveness was rea.s.suring.

She stared up, looking to the stars for comfort, as she had so often in her life. Ilion, the morning star, had long since set over the horizon, and the bright litter of the Lukemoi, the path of the dead, arced across the sky. The stars gave her no consolation. A slight wind brushed her hair back and cooled the sweat on her face. Maerad shivered, remembering that those stars marked the bridge between this world and the Gates, beyond which laya"what? n.o.body, not even Ardina, knew the answer to that question. Maerad thought now that the dead did not wander through the groves of the stars, as the Bards sang. No, the Gates opened on darkness, and the dead soul stepped into that darkness and was lost forever. Perhaps, she thought, they step gladly into that darkness. She imagined walking that high path, far above the lamentations of the earth, beyond the sweat and filth and sorrow of human existence, and how her own life might fall regretlessly from her open handsa"all its joy, all its sorrow, all its triumph and defeat. Yes, they might well step gladly and lightly away from the weight of being alive.

If the dead step out into the dark and leave the world behind them, she thought, what are these voices that I cannot stop hearing? They are not the voices of the living.

She clutched her head in her hands; her forehead was burning, aching, but her skin felt as cold as ice. I have been too much out of this world, she thought. And now I am afraid. Something has happened . . .

When Maerad came out of her trance, it was just before dawn. She looked about with wonder, sniffing the clean, cold air that seared her nostrils and stung her cheeks. There was a thick, low ground mist wisping out of the dips and hollows, very white in the early light.

Cadvan was standing with his back to her, staring eastward at the pale hints of dawn that were illuminating the distant, cloudy peaks of the Osidh Elanor. When he turned around, she saw his face was very white, and his eyes glittered when he looked at her, with suspicion or fear or some other emotion she couldn't guess. He asked her if she had found Hem, and Maerad nodded.

"Good," he said. "Then I think we should move from this place. I'll wager my life that every Hull in North Annar will be riding hard for the Hollow Lands right now, and that it will not be long before the Nameless One himself knows that you are herea"that is, if he hasn't heard already. You might as well have lit a beacon, Maerad. Anyone for leagues with the slightest touch of the Gift, down to the simplest village midwife, will have sensed you, and will know that you're here."

Maerad met his eyes, and saw that he spoke the truth. Her lips curled. "Hulls?" she said, tossing back her hair from her face. "What of them?"

Cadvan's face darkened, as if her scorn were directed toward him as well. "I do not like Hulls," he said. "Especially I do not like the thought of many Hulls riding our way, while we camp in the middle of nowhere with no means of defense."

"I have no fear of Hulls," said Maerad. "I'm not going anywhere. Hem is coming here, he is on his way, and I will stay here and wait for him."

"Surely Hem would be able to sense you, wherever you are," said Cadvan. "And if we are to be visited by Hulls or wers or any other servants of the Dark, I would prefer to have walls around me, than not."

"What walls?" said Maerad.

"I was thinking that we could ride to Innail," Cadvan said, glancing at her sideways.

"We'd be no safer there than here," said Maerad. "In any case, you are probably safer with me than with any other person in Edil-Amarandh." She smiled, meeting Cadvan's eye, and she saw him blench, as if he had glimpsed something that raised the hair on his scalp with horror.

"Maerad," he said, very softly, so that she had to lean forward to hear his voice above the sound of the wind that soughed over the hills. "Maerad, I think you must remember what the Winterking said to you. I say this not only for my sake. Beware, Maerad."

Her gaze faltered, and she looked away.

"I cannot beware, Cadvan," she said at last, her voice as soft as his. "It's too late for that now. But I am afraid that I have made you fear me, and that hurts my heart."

There was a long silence. "I am afraid, Maerad," said Cadvan. "I'm afraid of what I see in you, and of the storm that is gathering beyond these hills and that will soon break over our heads. I should be mad not to be afraid."

"I'm not afraid anymore, even though I don't know what will happen." Maerad's voice dropped to a whisper. "Or perhaps I am so afraid that I no longer feel it. I know there are so many things to fear, but Cadvan, please, don't be afraid of me."

Cadvan, who had been brooding and staring at his hands, looked up and met her eyes again. This time he smiled, and to Maerad's astonishment his expression was unguarded and joyous, a reckless smile that gave her a vivid glimpse of the wild, fearless young man he once had been. Maerad's heart leaped in her breast.

"A pact then," he said. "I promise not to fear you, and you promise not to squash me like a beetle by mistake while you're busy pulverizing Hulls. You're right. It's too late for fear."

"There is a storm coming," said Maerad. "And we must ride it."

"I'm not sure I packed the right kind of saddle."

"It's too big for saddles, and it has an evil eye," said Maerad, smiling. "It's either bareback and hanging on by the mane, or be trampled."

After that, there was no more talk of moving on. The days were long, cold, and wearisome, but they both kept themselves busy. Cadvan scouted around their area and found a site close by that he said was more defensible, and they moved their belongings and the horses there. They patched their rough shelter with turf to keep out the wind, and made a proper hearth.

Maerad spent most of the day scanning the horizon, in between furious bursts of activity. Cadvan filled in the days by preparing defenses of magery. He set awareness in stones in a radius around their camp, so they would have early warning of anyone's approach. He spent hours working on his sword, laying it on the ground and charming the tempered metal with new mageries, and when there was nothing more to do, he did the same with Maerad's sword Eled. He set wards and scored a line into the ground with a flint knife, making a wall of magery that wers could not pa.s.s, and as she watched him at his labor, Maerad remembered the first time she had seen him do this, the night they had taken refuge in a ruined tower, pursued by the Landrost's wers. The memory was distant, as if it had happened to someone else.

At times she thought that barely a single night had pa.s.sed since she had called Hem. More often it seemed to her that she had been in this one place since the beginning of time, that she had already been here when the forgotten people who lived here had so laboriously raised their stone circles to be their inscrutable witnesses, and that she had watched as they faded forever into the dim mists of forgetting.

Sometimes, Maerad felt that she knew these stones like she knew her own skin. She had watched the slow, patient, weathering of the years; she had noted each shade of light, moonlight and starlight, the many moods of the sun and the seasons, and how they changed the colors of the rock through an infinity of huesa"from deep purple to b.l.o.o.d.y red, from rich yellow to a delicate blue-gray. She had watched as the bright lichens spread over their flaking faces. She had been there in the mild days of summer, when wild bees wove their slumberous song through the flowering heathers, and in the numberless harsh winters that threw down bolts of freezing rain and filled their veins with ice and split them open. She was almost rock herself.

When these fits took her, she could be silent for hours on end. Cadvan would speak to her and she did not hear him: and yet she was not absent, but rather more intensely present than she felt she had ever been. At last something would shake her out of ita"perhaps Keru might come up and nuzzle her, wanting some company, or Cadvan might touch her hand, trying to wake her from an enchantment he did not understand, and Maerad would jump, as if she were surprised, and smile vaguely. Then she would try to haul herself back into ordinary things with some task: grooming Keru or Darsor perhaps, so their coats shone, or mending every tear in her clothing, or polishing her boots, or gathering firewood.

The dreams had begun the day after the summoning. It was as if a wall in her mind had cracked, and through this crack she could hear the voices of the dead. And the more aware she became of them, the wider the crack seemed; she felt as if she were gradually filling up with these lost voices, as if they were seeping into her consciousness through a slow leak. Every night she seemed to wander deeper into a dreamland in which she could find no bearing.

As the surge of power ebbed from her being, her fearlessness had ebbed as well. Now, although she did not admit it to Cadvan, she felt small and vulnerable, and she was afraid of her magery, and would not use it, even to try to contact Hem again. Cadvan sensed her fragility, and treated her gently. Although he wondered anxiously whether it was certain that Hem was journeying toward them, he did not urge her to attempt to mindtouch him, or to use any of her powers. He watched her as she sat by the edge of their camp, staring westward, as if Hem might at any moment step out of the distant horizon, and his face was often shadowed with anxiety and pity.

This strange period of suspension, when time seemed to have stopped, felt to Cadvan like a release, a slow taking of breath before some unimaginable struggle. He did not know what to expect; he didn't know whether he had made a good decision, or the most terrible mistake of his life. He only knew that he could not have chosen otherwise. For the first time since Maerad had known him, he had put aside his harsh self-judgment, and there was a peace in his expression that had not been there before. If it was mixed with sadness, Maerad noticed that Cadvan seemed more lighthearted than he had ever been, and she turned to his lightness as a flower turns its face to the sun, and tried not to see the shadows that gathered behind her.

It was eight days since she had summoned Hem. She and Cadvan hadn't spoken of that night. It wasn't that either of them wished to avoid the subject, but more that neither of them had the words, and they both obscurely felt that to speak about it without being able to express precisely what they meant was somehow perilous.

At sunset on the eighth day, Maerad saw two hors.e.m.e.n climbing the long, slow rise to their camp from the west. She had been sitting all day on a low, flat rock, lost in a trance, listening to the quickening of the earth beneath her feet as it wakened to springtime, her eyes fixed on the horizon. She often played her lyre as she watched, and she held it now, her maimed hand straying idly over its strings. She played no particular melody, but the constant gentle fall of the notes soothed her. When she saw the riders, she leaped to her feet with a cry.

Cadvan had been setting snares for rabbits and so was a little distance away, but he ran over to Maerad at once.

"It's Hem!" she said, pointing. She was trembling all over. "At last!"

Cadvan shaded his eyes with his hands and looked. The riders were far away, and he could tell nothing about them; but they carried with them a sense of hidden power that caused him grave misgivings.

"Are you certain it's Hem?" he said at last, turning toward her. "I am not sure that they are not Hulls. I have felt the shadows of the Dark stepping in my mind these past few days, and I fear they draw ever closer."

"I'm sure it's Hem," Maerad said.

"Have you made certain?" asked Cadvan. "Have you spoken to him?"

The light in Maerad's face went out. "No," she whispered, and turned her face away.

"I think," said Cadvan, an edge in his voice, "that it would be as well to make sure, before these people, whoever they are, come close enough to cause us harm."

"Buta"" Maerad lifted her hands and dropped them helplessly. She didn't know how to tell Cadvan about how she feared the voices seeping into her dreams, how she was afraid that every time she used her power, she opened the breach in her mind that gave them entrance.

"Maerad, if you have the power, use it. Or are we just going to wait for anyone to come here and strike us dead, because you refuse to pick up the sword at your feet? Did you not tell me that you had no fear of Hulls?"

Maerad pressed her lips together and made no answer. Cadvan stared at her, his eyes darkening with anger.

"The last thing I expected was that the price of opening your powers would be that you would lose your courage," he said, after a long silence. "Or perhaps it is simply that the Dark now has a means to enter your mind and so disables you with fear. I do not know, Maerad, and I am too angry to care."

"You don't understand," said Maerad, stung. "Youa""

"Of course I don't understand. How could I understand? But it seems to me that I am the biggest fool in Annar, and that my enemies must be laughing up their sleeves."

"What do you mean?" said Maerad. "It's nota"it's not the Dark I'm afraid ofa""

"Then what do you fear?" said Cadvan, whirling around and taking her chin in his hand, so she was forced to look straight into his eyes. "By the Light, Maerad, what is it that you fear, if not the Dark? Do you know what the Dark is doing in this land at this very moment? Do you not feel it closing in, like a huge jaw, preparing to crush us all?"

Maerad blinked. "You're hurting me," she said.

Cadvan took a deep breath and let go, although he held her gaze. He looked no less angry.

"Tell me, Maerad. Please tell me. What is it?"

"I think . . . it's the dead," Maerad whispered. "I can hear the dead. They're coming into my dreams, more and more, and I hear them all the time. I don't know who they are."

Cadvan's eyes widened in astonishment, and he stepped back, looking over toward the riders, and then back to Maerad. "The dead?" he said. "The dead frighten you? What dead?"

Maerad's jaw wobbled, and she brushed her eyes roughly with the back of her hand. "They don't threaten me. But I can't stop it. Ever since I..." She wiped her eyes again. "And if I use my powers again, I know it's only going to get worse."

Cadvan studied her face intently, and the anger ebbed from his expression. "I will say to you, Maerad, what you said to me eight days ago. It is already too late. Neither of us knew what would happen when you decided to invoke your full Elemental powers. Cowering beneath the forces you have unleashed will not make them go away. It is probably the worst thing you can do."

Maerad nodded miserably. "I justa"can't," she said. "I know it's weak, Cadvan. I'm ashamed. I just can't."

Cadvan nodded, his face expressionless, and then he turned westward and gazed at the riders, standing very still. A faint silvery shimmer illuminated his form, and Maerad knew that he was attempting to feel them out. The light faded, and he stood long in thought.

"Whoever is coming our way is shielded," he said at last. "Hull or Bard, I cannot tell. And there is with them something very powerful, Maerad. I don't know what it is, but I feel a great foreboding. Something of great might approaches us, and I cannot tell what it is. Can you feel nothing?"

Maerad met Cadvan's eyes. "It's Hem," she said. "I told you."

"How do you know?"

"I just know. Do you think that I wouldn't know my own brother?"

"But you will not attempt to speak to him? Not even that? I know you have closed yourself to all magery over the past days, Maerad, and I understanda"as much as I cana"the fear that makes you do so; but I say to you, now is not the time. And I fear that it is your hope and not your Knowing that speaks now."

Maerad had no answer to Cadvan's doubt. It was, she knew, quite reasonable, and his premonition that Hulls were coming their way was probably accurate, although she herself felt no sense of their presence. As Cadvan had said, she had closed her mind to magery, and her powers slumbered behind strong barriers that she would not let down. And in fact, aside from a conviction that grew the longer she watched the approaching figures, she had no reason to think that one of the two riders approaching them was Hem. Even so, at that moment, nothing Cadvan could say and do would have made Maerad open her powers; and he knew it.

Cadvan loosened his sword, and mentally began to check the wards he had placed about their camp to see if they remained strong. Maerad was not wearing her sword, and he told her to arm herself. She almost refused, but caught the look in his eye and decided that it was not worth arguing the point. She left her lyre leaning on the stone as she went back to their camp.

When she came back, Cadvan seemed to have forgotten their argument.

"Maerad, do you hear that sound?" he asked.

"What sound?" asked Maerad. She looked around her, as if it were a visible thing.

"It's likea"a low humming. It began a short time ago, and I can't tell where it's coming from. And it has a taste of power about it. I like this not at all."

Her attention caught, Maerad c.o.c.ked her head and listened. "I hear nothing but the wind blowing and the stones growing beneath our feet and the cry of birds," she said.

"Beneath that," said Cadvan. "Do you not hear it?" He was beginning to sound impatient, and Maerad tried again. Again she heard nothing.

"I think," said Cadvan, "you will need your Bard hearing."

Maerad opened her mouth to object, but then she thought that perhaps her hearing was the least of her Bard senses, and that it mightn't do any harm just to listen a little, very quickly. And then at least she would know what Cadvan was talking about. Very cautiously, she cast her hearing out, not even attempting to reach to any distance.

As soon as she did, she regretted it. What Cadvan heard as a low hum was for Maerad an unendurable droning sound, a long, single note that made every bone in her body resonate in sympathy Even her teeth seemed to rattle in her head. In a panic, she tried to close her Bard ears, but now the vibration was like a wedge keeping her senses open, and she could not, no matter how she tried. She cried out in pain and stumbled forward, and Cadvan caught her before she fell, and lowered her to the ground. Then she saw that her lyre was glowing with an inner illumination, a glow that was like the rich, various light of a summer day.

She picked up her lyre and clutched it as if she were drowning. At once the droning was not nearly so unbearable; it became a low hum, which still vibrated through her body as if she were an instrument herself, but it no longer hurt her. Her panic abated, and she realized that the lyre, too, was resonating, and then that the humming came from the lyre itself. And the light was growing stronger as she watched, until the lyre was blazing in her hands.

"What's happening?" asked Cadvan. He had drawn his sword and was himself luminous with shielded magery.

"I don't know," said Maerad, looking up at him. "It's never done anything like this before. Perhaps it's waking up. Looka" the runes..."

The Treesong runes were burning, as if the bright wood were inlaid with ruby fire. For a moment they both forgot everything but the lyre and stared, lost in astonishment.

"It's beautiful," Maerad said in wonder. "I've never seen anything so beautiful..."

Cadvan had told her almost as soon as they had met that her lyre was no ordinary instrument. It was Dhyllic ware, fashioned in Afinil and crafted with skills of magery now long forgotten. And Inka-Reb, the wise man of the north, had laughed at her for not knowing that the Treesong she had traveled the length of Edil-Amarandh to find was written on it. The Winterking had revealed the meanings of the runes, and had told her that the lyre had been made in Afinil by Nelsor himself, one of the greatest Bards of all. Maerad had known all this, but for her it was still the lyre her mother had given her, the humble companion of her lonely childhood. Now, perhaps for the first time, she began to understand what it really was.

"Are you all right now?" said Cadvan, dragging his eyes away from the blazing lyre.

Maerad nodded.

"Because the riders will be here soon. And I still cannot tell, for all my striving, what manner of people they are. It looks to me as if one of the horses has two people on its back. And it occurs to me also that if any Hulls are nearby, they will be p.r.i.c.king up their ears and hurrying this way also."

Maerad nodded again. Now that she had permitted her magery to flow within her again, she was wondering why she had been so frightened for the past week. It was as if she had been crouching in a small hole, her hands over her face, refusing to look at the sunlight that blazed above her.

"I'm sorry about before," she said, and she looked up at Cadvan. "I'll try to speak to Hem now."

She stared at the distant riders. They were closer now, and she saw that Cadvan was right: one horse bore two riders. She bent her head and concentrated.

Hem, she said. Are you there?

Maerad? Hem answered at once, and the naked joy in his voice made tears well in her eyes. We're close, aren't we?

Yes, you're close. We can see you. Overwhelmed by emotion, Maerad couldn't speak for a moment. You're very close. Oh, Hem! I've missed you so much. I thought I might never see you again.

But here we are! She could hear that Hem was laughing with sheer delight. We can't see you yet, but even Saliman can feel you now. We think there are some Hulls nearby. We can't see where, but they'll be riding your way for certain. Saliman? Is Saliman with you?

Yes. And Hekibel and Irc. Friends. We've come so far to find you! But Maerad, something really strange is happening. I have this tuning fork and it's making an incredible humming and I think the Treesong is beginning to do somethinga"I don't know what. I can hardly hear you over the noise.

It's happening here too, said Maerad. My lyre is all lit up.

It must be the Treesong. I've got the other halfa" Hem's excited voice began to fragment, and Maerad lost the mindtouch. She bit her lip in frustration, and was about to report to Cadvan what Hem had told her, when Hem's voice cut back in. It's glowing as wella"the runes are like fire!

I can't hear you, said Maerad.

Hem swore and then she lost him again. The humming was growing, not in loudness but in intensity, so that it filled her whole mind, and it was difficult to be conscious of anything else. Maerad thought it was no longer a single note, but more like a constant, fascinating melody, the logic of which she could not catch. With difficulty, she wrenched her mind away from it, and turned to Cadvan.