The Crow (62 page)

"I'm glad to see you back, Hem," said Saliman at last. "I was very worried when Hared told me what you'd done."

"Ire told me that he wanted to strangle me," said Hem.

Saliman grinned. "That's more or less what he said to me. But I was angry too, Hem. It was a foolhardy thing to do, and risked not only your own life, but our larger struggle as well. But amazingly, aside from exhaustion and a lot of bruises and scrapes, there's not much wrong with you. You were very lucky. From what Ire tells me, you ought to be dead."

Hem didn't answer at first, and when he did, his voice was hoarse. "I know it was mad, but I couldn't leave Zelika behind," he said. "And I didn't find her. I couldn't even rescue her brother. It was all for nothing, in the end."

A troubled expression crossed Saliman's face, and he looked away. Hem almost asked him whether he had news of Zelika, but something stopped his question.

"Whether it was all for nothing remains to be seen," Saliman said. "Ire has told me much of what you've done, and I'm eager to hear more: it seems to me that you have done as much, and maybe more, than any Bard has in our struggle against the Dark. It seems that Hared's guess about the child armies was correct, and that is valuable information. And not one of us has been into Dagra itself, and come out alive."

Hem shuddered, remembering the terrible city. "I never want to go there again," he said. "Never."

"I hope you never have cause to," said Saliman gravely. "Now, Hem, if you are able, I'd like to hear your story. Tell me everything."

Haltingly, Hem began to tell Saliman everything that had happened to him since he and Zelika had left The Pit. It felt like four years, rather than four weeks, he thought in wonder; NalAk-Burat seemed far away, and his time in Turbansk another life altogether. His voice strengthened as he continued, and Saliman sat with his face downcast, nodding when Hem paused, to indicate that he was listening, and occasionally asking a question.

Hem emptied the stones out of his pockets, adding up how many soldiers he had seen on his journey through Den Raven, and told Saliman of his speculations about where he thought they had been going, and he pulled out the parchment that Ire had stolen from the village on their way back.

"The thing is, Ire and me couldn't work out who
won,"
he said. "Imank or Sharma? We thought this might give us a clue; it's some kind of announcement, but I can't read it."

Saliman took the notice with an inscrutable expression, glancing at Hem. The boy sat cross-legged next to him, very thin and pale after his ordeal; great shadows were scored under his eyes, and his face was marked by a sorrow that now, Saliman thought, would never quite vanish. His eyes were bright and intent, and he spoke seriously – a Bard discussing weighty matters with another Bard. But in his rags, with his bruised knees poking through tears in his trousers, he looked very young and vulnerable.

"It's written in the tongue of Den Raven," said Saliman, studying the parchment. "They use the Nelsor script, but they have some extra letters – ah, yes. Well, Hem, I think you are right to think that the Nameless One was not killed. It says here that the rebellion against the high authority of Den Raven has been crushed, and that all rebels will be hunted down and punished. It lists the punishments; I won't translate them."

"So you think that Imank was destroyed?"

"One or the other must have been," said Saliman. "Neither could suffer the other to live. Even so, Imank must have been very sure, to challenge Sharma outright; I expect that sword was Kinharek, a famous sword with an evil reputation, which Imank is known to possess. Imank must have invested it with a new sorcery, to even think that it could destroy Sharma. But it seems from what you say that the Nameless One called up the Shika; and not even Imank's sorcery would be able to withstand them."

"The Shika?" said Hem.

"Those winged creatures which terrified you so, Hem: I'm sure they were Shika. The Nameless One must have been desperate indeed. You did not imagine them, and you were right to be afraid. The Shika are forces from the Abyss: perhaps the most deadly of the uncreatures bound there. I doubt that even Sharma can control them completely."

Hem shuddered as he remembered the unreasoning terror that had consumed him at the sight of them. "I've been afraid many times that I might die," he said at last. "But this was worse than that."

"They feed on souls," said Saliman softly. "Not even death is an escape from the Shika."

Hem stared bleakly at the ground, and then recollected himself. "But Imank must have thought that the Nameless One could be killed," he said, looking up inquiringly at Saliman.

"The Nameless One cannot be killed."

"But Hulls can be."

"Yes, you can kill Hulls: but only with magery or sorcery. Neither age nor sickness nor ordinary hurts will end their lives. But the Nameless One, Hem, is not a Hull. Some other great spell binds him to this world. And it seems to me that spell has something to do with the Elementals. It is not Bardic magery."

"Do you think it's to do with the Treesong? And that's why Maerad has to find it?"

"It seems very likely. I am not sure how. But the Elidhu Nyanar seems to think it is a question that concerns you as closely as it does Maerad. He said the song was chained, which makes me think that the Nameless has used it for his own ends."

Hem thought of Nyanar, of the strange, wild music that had entered and changed him, of the help he had given him. He doubted he could have survived the snouts without it.
At last, out of the foretimes, you come,
Nyanar had said.
To unchain the song...

Oddly, the thought reminded him of the trinket Ire had brought back from the Iron Tower.

"Did Ire tell you he stole something in Dagra?"

Saliman's eyes sparkled. "He did," he said. "He's quite anxious about it. Now that you're both safe, he wants it back. But I am myself anxious to see it, for quite different reasons."

"I don't know what to think about it," said Hem. "It's not even precious; it's just made out of brass." He pulled the chain over his head and handed it to Saliman. "It must have belonged to Imank or Sharma."

Saliman took the chain and weighed it in his hand.

"It's a little tuning fork," he said, examining it with intense interest. "The kind you might use for a harp. And it has runes engraved on it." He was silent for a long time as he looked carefully at each of the markings. "Hem, do you recognize these runes at all?"

"No, I've never seen anything like them."

"You have, you know." He gave the fork a last inspection, and handed it back to Hem. "These are very like the runes on Maerad's lyre."

Hem's mouth dropped open in astonishment. "Are you sure?"

"I'm quite sure. They are very distinctive. I wonder..." Saliman gazed into an abstract distance, lost in thought.

"I've wondered, over the past few months, if the Treesong might not have something to do with those runes? And why not? Maerad's lyre is Dhyllic ware, after all, and was made a very long time ago, when the Treesong perhaps was not forgotten as it is now."

"But Maerad's gone all the way north to find it," said Hem blankly.

"Aye, that she has... but there is a riddle here, Hem. Nobody knows what these runes are – they could be anything. But it seems more than a coincidence that the same runes would be on this thing, stolen from the Iron Tower, and on the lyre that belongs to the Chosen. Perhaps they might belong together."

Hem thought distractedly. It made sense, but it also made things very confusing. If they knew what the Treesong was, they might be able to begin to work it out, but the whole thing seemed like a baffling puzzle.

"Remember what the Elidhu said to you?" said Saliman thoughtfully. "Two are foretold, brother and sister, not one:
One for the singing and one for the music.
And now you have found a tuning fork. Well, I don't understand: but I have always suspected there was a part you had to play in this, as important as Maerad's. In any case, whatever it means, it seems very clear that we have to find Maerad and her lyre. And the sooner, the better."

Hem's heart leaped at the thought of Maerad; but at the same time he realized, with a wrenching feeling of desolation, that searching for Maerad would mean finally abandoning any hope of finding Zelika. With that thought, he was overwhelmed by a sense of crushing failure.

"But I'll have to leave Zelika," he said, in a low voice. "And I'll never know what happened to her."

Saliman looked up sharply. He paused for a time, and then came over to Hem and put his arm around his shoulder.

"Hem," he said, very gently. "Zelika is dead."

Hem went white, and bit his lip very hard. "No," he said. "How do you know? She might have escaped. I never found her in the camp – "

"She's dead, Hem. I found her body yesterday, when I was searching through the trees around the camp. It was definitely Zelika. I don't think she even made it into Sjug'hakar Im."

Hem was silent. He stared ahead, his jaw set.

"You know what she was like," Saliman continued softly. "She was afraid of nothing. She must have tried to escape when they captured her, and was killed then. She was in a grave covered with branches, on the other side of Sjug'hakar Im, and with her were the bodies of two other children. They had taken her sword, but she still wore her armor. I gave her a proper burial, not far from here."

Hem's jaw began to wobble, and he bent his head to his chest. "Do you – do you think that she suffered?" he whispered.

"No." Hem looked straight into Saliman's eyes to be sure that he was telling the truth. "No, Hem, she didn't suffer. I'm sure she died quickly."

"So I did all that for nothing." Hem swore savagely and smashed his knuckled fist into the ground. "For nothing. For nothing. For
nothing."
Each time he spoke he hit the ground again, his knuckles bleeding, but he did not feel any pain.

"No, not for nothing, Hem, my dear Hem." Saliman took Hem's bleeding hand between his, and then embraced him tightly. "But you could not save Zelika, nor any of those children. You were so brave, even to try."

A pain beyond anything he had ever felt seemed to be burning Hem from the inside. He couldn't believe that Zelika was dead, although he knew it was true. He had known, underneath, that she must be dead ever since he had found Nisrah in Dagra, but he hadn't been able to face it. And everything he had risked, all that he had suffered, had changed nothing: not for Zelika, not for Nisrah, not for the half-mad children in the Blind House, not for any of the snouts enslaved in Sjug'hakar Im. Their lives were all destroyed forever, and nothing could make it any better. He didn't want to live in a world where things like that happened.

Hem began to cry helplessly against Saliman's chest, and Saliman just held his shuddering body, stroking his wet face, and said nothing.

A long time later, Hem stood up and walked blindly away from the fire. Saliman watched him go without trying to stop him. For a while Hem didn't know where he was walking. He felt completely empty, as if he would never feel anything ever again.

He wandered first to the place where he had buried his things, before he had entered Sjug'hakar Im. He undid the ward, and dug them out. Very little of the food was worth salvaging. With a shudder he threw away the sword he had used as a snout, and strapped the Turbansk scabbard around his waist. He picked up his spare clothes and his leather armor; he would take off the Sjug'hakar Im clothes later and throw them away. He wanted to wear nothing that connected him to the snouts.

He took up the cloth bag that contained his silver medallion, the lily token of Pellinor that was his only link to his heritage, to his lost family. He tipped it out of the bag and fingered it; it was his oldest possession, and was precious to him. Then he put it back in the bag and hung it around his neck, with the brass tuning fork. Lastly he picked up his Turbansk brooch. He sat back on his heels, studying it closely.

It was unstained by its burial, and its gold rays sparkled in the sun. Slowly and deliberately, he pinned it to his cloak. Now he was a Bard again.

Saliman had told him where he had placed Zelika, and after a while Hem started to make his way toward her grave. She was buried at the foot of an almond tree, on a low hill that looked over the Nazar Plains, and Saliman had put a large boulder to mark the place. Hem sat down by the grave and thought about the wild girl he had known and loved for so brief a time. She was too vivid, too alive, to be there under the soil. He thought, too, of Nisrah, whom he had last seen clutched by the bony hand of a Hull in the midst of ruin, screaming at him with his face distorted by hatred.

In many ways, Zelika's death had been merciful. But Hem would never be reconciled to the unjustness of it.

The sun was beginning to go down when Ire came looking for him. He landed on Hem's shoulder, and wiped his beak on his hair, but he didn't make any of his usual clever remarks. Hem scratched Ire's neck, grateful for the crow's silent sympathy. Then he sighed heavily and stood up, taking one last look at the grave.

"Good-bye, Zelika," he said out loud. "I was going to marry you, you know, when we grew up. It won't happen now. Maybe it wouldn't have happened anyway. But I want you to know that." He stood silent for a time with his head bowed, and then whispered, "May the Light keep you."

He turned and walked steadily toward Saliman's camp, without looking back.

Saliman had damped the fire down during the day, and when Hem returned they both busied themselves with giving it fuel and preparing the evening meal. Neither of them spoke much at first, but after dinner they began to discuss their plans. They were to leave the following morning, to meet Hared and Soron, who were awaiting them at The Pit. Saliman and Soron had returned from their mission in Den Raven a few days earlier, and Saliman had insisted on coming to Sjug'hakar instead of Hared.

"If you did return," he said, with a twisted smile, "I thought that perhaps it would be better that I met you, rather than Hared. He is still furious that you disobeyed him, and I thought that if you had survived, you would be better met with love than anger."