The Crow (11 page)

Hem cursed inwardly, and felt even sorrier he had taken pity on Zelika. He should, he thought, have left the girl in the street where he had found her.

* * * *

The following day Saliman took Hem and Zelika with him on his daily inspection of the city, telling them they should see for themselves how Turbansk would be defended. Hem was at once pleased to go and jealous that Zelika was also invited, for it diluted his delight in Saliman's company. Perhaps Zelika sensed this, for she remained almost completely silent, although her eyes glowed with savage pleasure when she examined the fortifications. The inspection took most of the morning, even though they went in haste on horseback from post to post, as Saliman wanted to report to Har-Ytan and the First Bard by noon.

Turbansk was protected by two high walls, the inner higher by six spans than the outer. They stood about thirty spans distant from each other, and were connected by wooden bridges, which could be drawn back if necessary. The walls were topped with zigzag crenellations and behind the zigzags ran walkways connecting the many towers built along the walls. These were now manned by a light guard, but once the alarm was raised the towers would be bristling with archers and artillery. The huge West and North Gates, the weakest parts of the wall, were the most heavily fortified, with high towers either side and above. Before the outer wall was a deep moat, now filled with fire-hardened stakes that rose up to a palisade the height of a man, which itself drew up to the blank stone barrier of the first wall.

When Hem had first ridden into Turbansk, the space between the walls had been filled with flowering gardens and lawns. These had been ruthlessly uprooted and the entire area planted instead with stakes. All the towers had been strengthened and faced with iron to protect them, Saliman said, from fire missiles. Hem blinked at the transformation; it was as if the city had been stripped to its bones.

At Turbansk Harbor the fortifications had also been strengthened, the harbor's encircling walls built higher and also faced with iron. The harbor entrance was protected by a huge spiked chain, each link the size of a man, which could be raised or lowered from a mechanism within the harbor towers. The harborside was the only place where the strange suspension of activity did not exist: although ranks of ships lay at the long quays, the shipwrights were still building more, and it hummed with industry.

"Haven't we enough ships?" asked Hem, looking with wonder at the activity: to his eye there seemed already enough ships to carry the whole population of Turbansk. Saliman paused and turned back; he had been about to stride off to speak to the harbor captain.

"We have a great fleet, yes," he said. "Yet I judge we need more ships, and we will build as many as we have wood and time for. Just as in the armories, Hem – if you go there – the smiths still work all day. If Turbansk falls, the only escape for most will be through the harbor: we have to protect those who flee and keep the passage open. So, you see, the task does not end, even after we are besieged. But all the major work is done."

It was indeed a mighty navy: there were scores of small fire-ships, to be sent under sails filled with mage winds against an invading fleet, and rows of fighting triremes with three layers of decks for rowers, large triangular sails, and wicked-looking rams at their front to hole and sink enemy ships. There were other, larger ships being built; Saliman said these were to carry people and goods, should the city fall. But Hem felt heartened: it seemed to him impossible that Turbansk could be taken, with such strength at its command.

Lastly Saliman took them to the watch at the top of the Red Tower, from which they could see over the walls to the Fesse of Turbansk. This sobered Hem considerably. When he had last seen the Fesse, it had been a tilled country of gentle and luxuriant beauty, filled with groves of dates and olives and green crops and gardens. Now he looked out upon what seemed to be wasteland: most of the trees had been cut down, and the crops harvested or burned. The empty villages and hamlets looked completely desolate. No one moved in this bleak landscape, apart from a lone messenger riding the Bard Road east to the II Dara Wall.

Saliman noticed his expression, and smiled with grim compassion.

"You are shocked, Hem?" he said.

Hem nodded, unable for the moment to reply.

"Not the least of the grievous costs of war are what we are forced to do to ourselves, in order to survive," said Saliman. He looked thoughtfully at Zelika, who did not seem nearly as shocked as Hem. "I assure you, Zimek would look yet more grim than this, and remember that Baladh now lies in rubble. We sacrifice much, in the hope that by doing so we buy enough time for victory."

Hem looked at Saliman, a catch in his throat. "Do you mean, to give Maerad time to find the Treesong, and fulfill the prophecy?" he said.

Zelika looked up, baffled.

"Aye, among other things. Our hopes rest on something so slender we are yet to know what it is. It is the sheerest folly, yes? The Nameless would certainly believe so... But it is hope nevertheless, and a hope I cleave to. Because I say to you, Hem: if it were not for Maerad and Cadvan, we would now have no hope at all."

That afternoon, when they had returned to the Bardhouse and Saliman had gone on to the Ernan, Zelika asked Hem who Maerad and Cadvan were. "What did Saliman mean, back at the Tower?" she asked, with an unusual shyness. She was speaking Annaren, a special dispensation for Hem, since she often refused to, and Hem knew this meant that she really wanted to know. He didn't answer for a time, wondering if he wished to share his sister with this strange, passionate, irritating girl.

"Don't tell me, then, if you don't trust me," Zelika said at last, shrugging her shoulders. "I don't care."

Hem felt a stab of contrition; he could see that under her bravado she was hurt.

"It's not that," he said. "Maerad is my sister and Cadvan is her friend, her mentor, I suppose. He's a great Bard, famous in Annar; he and Saliman are old friends. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tell anyone what they are doing..."

"Your sister?" Zelika's eyes softened, and she looked at Hem with a new interest. "I didn't know you had a sister."

"I didn't know, for a long time," said Hem. He suddenly realized that Zelika knew even less about him than he did about her. "You see, I..." He stopped, suddenly nonplussed. He didn't know how to tell Zelika the story of his life, of the slaughter of his family in the sack of Pellinor, of the long, bleak years in the orphanage, his time with the Hulls and his rescue by Maerad and Cadvan. She looked at him inquiringly, and Hem, feeling a strange reluctance, began his tale. He had told his story to very few people, and to no one in Turbansk, since no one here had asked. It stirred up painful feelings he would rather leave sleeping inside him; but Zelika listened intently, without interrupting.

"I see: you have lost your family, like I have," said Zelika, when his telling stumbled to a halt. "Maybe that's why..."

"Why what?"

"Why – when you jumped on me in the street, when I realized you weren't going to hurt me – I thought..."

Hem waited patiently; Zelika was staring at her hands, twisting her fingers together.

"It is hard, when you don't have the words!" she said, looking up. "I mean, the first thing I thought was that we had something in common. And that seemed a very strange thing to think, when you were sitting on my chest like a sack of yams." She smiled hesitantly, glancing shyly at Hem. Unexpectedly moved, he smiled back.

"And what did you mean by... the Treesong, was it?"

"That's the bit I'm not sure I should tell," said Hem. "Maerad and Cadvan went north, to look for the Treesong. Nobody knows what it is. But you see, Maerad is the Chosen One, and the prophecies say that she will cast down the Nameless One in his next and worst rising. Which is now."

Zelika's eyes widened in disbelief, and then she started laughing. "Your sister! Cast down the Nameless One!"

Stung, Hem scowled at the ground. He was sorry now that he had said anything. "That's what Saliman says," he said. "And he says it's our only hope. That's what he meant at the Tower."

Zelika stared at him, her face serious again. "I'm sorry," she said. "It seems a very strange thing, that one girl should be able to do what all Turbansk and Baladh cannot. I don't think I can believe it."

Hem shrugged his shoulders. "You don't have to. It's the truth, all the same. Why would Saliman believe it, if it were not?"

"Maybe he has to," said Zelika. "Maybe if he didn't, he would be in despair."

Anger flashed in Hem at Zelika's doubt and he glared at her, his fists clenched. "Saliman's no fool," he said. "You should show some respect."

"I do respect Saliman," she answered, her face shadowed. "It's not that. But Hem, you know, I don't have any hope." She looked up, straight at Hem, and for once her eyes were not veiled. With his Bard-born perception, Hem saw for the first time the true extent of her inner devastation, and he breathed in sharply; it was almost too painful to bear. "I don't have any hope at all. Hope is not why I'm here."

"What do you want, then?" asked Hem.

"Revenge," she said flatly. "Revenge and death. There isn't anything else."

After that conversation, Hem felt a new closeness to Zelika, although that didn't mean that he found her any less annoying. As a teacher, she lived up to all his expectations; she was by far the most merciless he had yet endured. Saliman had instructed him, with an unusual sternness, that he was to work hard at his Suderain, and it was only his respect for Saliman that stopped him from rebelling, although it went hard for him.

Zelika took her pact with Saliman very seriously. They had lessons every morning, and the rest of the time Zelika would not permit Hem to speak anything but Suderain. She was very pedantic; she would make him repeat a word again and again until he said it absolutely correctly, which could go on indefinitely, and drilled him in the endless declensions of nouns and conjugations of verbs until he thought his head would burst.

Then she would solemnly make him sit down and have a "conversation" with her. Hem found this part of the lesson more irritating than almost anything else, because it seemed ridiculous and false, and he could never think of anything to say. He began to amuse himself by talking the most absurd nonsense he could think of, and then by creatively abusing Zelika.

When she chose to exercise it, Zelika had admirable self-control; she limited herself for the most part to correcting his grammar and pronunciation. But she did slap him once, bursting into a storm of tears, when he called her a "skinny cat." Hem was puzzled: it was by no means the worst thing he had said to her. It was a long time before he found out that it was the insult her brothers had used, when they wished to tease her.

Ire was bored by the lessons, and provided some entertainment by flapping onto Zelika's head and trying to pull out her hair, or creeping underneath her chair and pecking her feet at inappropriate times. When he disgraced himself by soiling one of her sandals, which she subsequently put on, he was banished altogether. Hem was very regretful, especially after the sandal incident, which amused him vastly; but he did learn much more quickly if Ire was not there.

In fact, although he did not admit it to Zelika, Hem was grateful for the distraction; the lessons relieved his boredom and dissipated the fear that otherwise filled his thoughts. He never regretted that he hadn't left with the other students, but this didn't stop him from feeling a deepening trepidation. Sometimes, as much as he dreaded its arrival, Hem wished the Black Army would hurry up, just to break the mounting suspense that filled Turbansk with a strange, dreadful anticipation. It seemed as if the whole city trembled, holding its breath, on the edge of doom.

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