The Gift (46 page)

“Why don’t you give him some medhyl?” said Hem.

She took the bottle, and propping Cadvan’s head in her lap, she tipped the bottle between his teeth and wet his mouth with it. Most of it dribbled out of his mouth and down his chin. As she leaned, the jewel around her neck swung forward and touched his face. She shook her head impatiently to get it out of the way, but Hem said, “Look, it’s glowing.”

She looked down and saw that the jewel was bright with a white fire that seemed to burn in its depths. She thought of Silvia, the gentle healer who had given it to her. She wished with all her heart that she was there.

“Try rubbing it against him, or something,” said Hem. “It might be a healstone.”

Maerad laid the stone against Cadvan’s forehead, and then gently rubbed it over his face.
Please,
she said again in her mind,
please wake up.
She wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the increasing light, but it seemed there was a faint flush in Cadvan’s face. Encouraged, she tried again. After a while she was sure it wasn’t a trick of the light; and then, to her joy, Cadvan’s eyelids fluttered open and he looked up into her face.

“Maerad,” he said. Then his eyes fell shut.

“Cadvan?” she said, her voice wavering.

He opened his eyes. “By the Light, my head hurts,” he said. “I suppose that means I’m not dead.” He shut his eyes again. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere on the downs,” said Maerad. “On the other side of the Broken Teeth. Darsor’s gone to look for Imi.” She felt like weeping with relief, but thought she had already wept too much that morning, and therefore bit back her tears. Cadvan was silent, lying with his eyes shut. Then, groaning, he sat up and put his head in his hands.

“Do you want some medhyl?” asked Maerad, offering him the bottle. He took a large sip, and this seemed to ease him; then he turned to his pack, took out a small bottle, and took a sip of that. “Woundwort, and other herbs, to staunch pain,” he said, looking across at Hem and Maerad. Then he felt over his face.

“I see you’ve already salved me,” he said.

“I remembered that you used the salve on me,” said Maerad. “But I didn’t know how to wake you up.” Her voice wobbled again. “But then Hem said this might be a healing stone, so I tried to rub it on you, and then you woke. . . .” She trailed off, willing back her desire to break into tears.

Cadvan looked at her and tried to smile, and then winced. “Well, I am awake now. As awake as I can be. The last thing I remember is being whipped by a Hull, and behind the Hull a wight of the Abyss, and behind the wight a phalanx of wers and more Hulls; and the wight had stilled me, and I could do nothing. It looked very bad. And then I remember a lot of evil dreams.” He shuddered and fell silent. Hem and Maerad exchanged glances and waited.

“I suppose you saved my life again?” Cadvan said at last. “That’s three times now. I’m beginning to wonder how I survived without you.”

“How did you?” said Maerad, beginning to laugh.

“Luck, I suppose,” he said. “Though it could be that life is more dangerous around you. So tell me, Maerad, what did you do?”

Maerad then told them what had happened and Cadvan sat up, his eyes brightening. Hem listened in silence, his face in shadow. When she had finished, Cadvan clasped her hands.

“So you’ve come into the Speech at last!” he said. “And in the nick of time, I may say. Maerad, I never heard of a Bard blasting a wight to pieces. Not a wight of the Abyss. You have some power I know nothing of; think of the Kulag in the woods near Ettinor. And it seems the Dark doesn’t know of it, either.” He sat then awhile, lost in thought.

Maerad and Hem gave him some food and water and he chewed cautiously, trying not to move the skin on his face, and took some sips from the water bottle. “Thinking back, we were ambushed,” he said as he ate. “The Broken Teeth are considered evil, but the place is just a rallying place for wers and they’re easily dealt with. Well, fairly easily. Even Hulls we could have faced. I did not expect to find a wight there, and we all know what happened when I did.” He smiled ruefully. “We didn’t pass through Edinur as unseen as I hoped,” he said. “The Dark has many servants. Unless, of course, there was one who laid a trail for the Dark to follow.” He looked at Hem, and suddenly his face was stern and cold. “Do not think you can lie to me. You cannot. I think, Hem, it is time you told me who you are.”

HEM’S head was bent, and Maerad saw his cheeks burned with shame or humiliation.

“I don’t think Hem would have —” she began, but Cadvan cut her off.

“Neither you nor I know anything about Hem,” he said. “Now I would like to know. And I would like to know the truth.”

Hem sat silently, his head still bowed. Maerad looked at him with pity and then turned away.

“Speak!” said Cadvan harshly.

“I ran away from the Black Bards,” said Hem, so quietly Maerad could hardly hear him.

“I know that,” said Cadvan impatiently. “What I want to know is what you were doing with them. And why they were hunting you. I want to know who you are.”

Hem’s story emerged haltingly, bit by bit. He was, as he had said, an orphan, and until two months before had lived in an orphanage in Imrath, the major town in Edinur. He said little about his life there, but Cadvan’s face grew even more grim. He knew these places; there children whom no one cared for were taken, and kept in filthy conditions. If they were crippled or simple or weak, they were not given enough food, and usually died of some illness brought on by their starveling condition. When they were old enough to work, they were farmed out as laborers for a fee paid to the orphanage, or sold as slaves. Once children with no family to care for them had been looked after by Bards, but in places where Barding had retreated these small stinking prisons had sprung up to deal with orphans; and now, because of the White Sickness, there were many such children.

As Hem spoke on, Cadvan’s questioning gradually became less stern. Hem told them that when he was two years old, he had been brought there on horseback by a man dressed in a black cloak. That was the only thing he knew about himself. He knew nothing of his life before the orphanage; but he had comforted himself with the thought that perhaps he was the son of a prince or a great lord, and one day the cloaked man would return and claim him. He was a proud child and would not admit to his sufferings, but as he spoke, Maerad saw opening before her a vista of bitter, loveless days and lonely nights full of fear, and her heart was wrung with pity.

The Speech had come to him when he was ten years old. A cat had hissed at him when he tried to steal its food. “What did it say?” asked Maerad curiously, and Hem replied: “She said I was a pile of mouse dung, and that she would scratch my eyes out when I was asleep.” He ran away and hid, frightened, but afterward he became used to it and started to speak to the birds, who were the most friendly to him. They told him of lands far away in the south where the sun shone warmly all day and the trees were heavy with marvelous sweet fruits. Hem dreamed of going to these magical places, and he thought that when he was old enough to be hired out to a farm, he would run away. He no longer dreamed of the horseman returning for him; he dismissed that as a childish fancy of his infancy. Others noticed him talking to the birds and began to call him a witch; and there was talk of drowning him, of binding him with heavy rocks and throwing him in the river, as happened to others who had the Speech. So he was forced to hide, and he spoke to the birds less often, because it was hard to find privacy in the orphanage, and he became more lonely.

Then one day he had been called to Malik, the cold-eyed woman who ran the orphanage, and standing next to her was a man hooded and cloaked in black. It was Hem’s old daydream, but he was frightened and drew back against the wall, because the man’s hands were white and bony and he could not see his face. But Malik was not afraid, and treated the man like a lord. She smiled at Hem for the first time he could remember.

“Hem,” she’d said. “This is your uncle. He has returned at last from the far lands, and he claims you for his own. You’re a lucky boy.”

Hem looked up, but he could not see past the hood.

“Get your things, boy,” said Malik. “You’re going home now.”

Hem had nothing to get, so he had stood silently before the two adults, nervously shifting from foot to foot. Then he was taken on a horse to the house of Laraman, the mayor of Imrath. It was a grand house, the grandest in Imrath, and for a while Hem was happy, because he thought his daydreams were coming true. For the first time in his life he had enough to eat and a comfortable bed to sleep in and he wasn’t beaten.

Laraman treated him coldly, but tolerated him in the house, as long as he didn’t have to speak to him. He was the most important man in Edinur and treated the region as his private fiefdom, exerting heavy taxes and harsh laws. It seemed the five black-cloaked men were his servants, although Hem thought Laraman feared them and that it was more likely that they told him what to do.

“They told me they were Black Bards, and that I could be a Black Bard too,” said Hem. “They said they were the most powerful of all the Bards, and that if I were one of them I would never die, and I would be a great lord. One day one of them stabbed the other right through with his sword, and the one who was stabbed stood up as if nothing had happened. They asked me if I had the witchspeak, but I said I didn’t, and I never told them. They seemed happy enough with that, but then . . .”

Hem had been talking freely; it was as if, once he started, it was a relief to unburden himself. But now he stopped, and his face crumpled, and he looked very young and vulnerable.

“Then?” said Cadvan sternly.

“They wanted me to begin my lessons.”

There was a long pause while Hem stared at the ground. Then he began to speak in a monotone.

“They woke me in the middle of the night. It was a dark night, the last dark moon, two weeks ago. They took me downstairs to the courtyard outside. There was a fire there, but it was a funny color; it had green flames, and the flames burned straight up and they didn’t flicker. And one of the Bards had a, had a . . .”

He stopped again, and Cadvan said, more gently: “Call them not Bards, Hem. They are not Bards. They are merely Hulls.”

“He had a little boy. I knew him; it was Mark, from the orphanage. He was younger than me, but sometimes we played together.” He sniffed. “I liked him.” He paused again. “He was crying and twisting in the man’s arms, and he had no clothes on. And they gave me a black knife, and told me to kill him.”

There was a short, shocked silence. At last Maerad asked, almost in a whisper: “And did you?”

“They tried to make me,” said Hem. “They said they would beat me, and they said I would have nothing to eat and be locked in my room. And then they laughed at me, and it was horrible, and they said they would stab me instead, and they put the knife to my throat. But, but . . . I couldn’t. And then they . . . no, no, I can’t say.” He hid his face in his hands. “They killed him. It was horrible. And then they said next time, unless I did it, it would be me.” Hem was crying now, and the tears ran down his face, making little rivulets in the dirt. Maerad and Cadvan waited, and after a while he stopped crying, although his chest still made little jumps and hiccups.

“They locked me in my room. And I didn’t have anything to eat that day, nor the next day. And then the next day the Bar — the Hulls and everyone went out, and someone robbed the house. It was Sharn. And he found me in my room, and he took me away with him.”

“What else did he steal?” asked Cadvan.

“Oh, money, and some things he could sell. Stones.”

“What kind of stones?”

“Precious stones that he could sell. He said he would hide until the fuss died down, and then he would go south and sell them at the markets and make his fortune. And I thought that was good, and that I would go south with them, and maybe find the places that the birds talked about. And that’s why we were in the Valverras.” He paused, and his face creased again with sorrow. “They were kind to me. They said I was one of their own.”

Cadvan now took the boy’s chin in his hand, as he had once before, and Hem looked up straightly into his eyes. After a long time, Cadvan smiled; and Maerad relaxed with sudden relief. She was sure Hem was not lying this time.

“Why didn’t the Hulls find you, when they attacked the Pilanel?” asked Maerad.

Hem shuddered. “I heard them coming from far off,” he said. “I knew they were coming to the camp. I told Sharn, but he told me I was being stupid and imagining things. So then I hid, and the Pilanel thought I had run away into the wastes; and then the, the Hulls came. . . .” He trailed off, and his face was haunted with black memory. “I heard everything,” he said, whispering. “They wanted to know where I was, and Sharn said they had sold me, then he said I’d run away; and then they, they killed the baby and tortured them, and Sharn kept screaming I had run away. But I think the Hulls did it for, for fun. And they said they would find me anyway, and they laughed and rode off.”

The three sat silently for a while, and Maerad thought of the pitiful bodies they had seen, and then tried not to think of them.