The Singing (43 page)

Maerad slid off Darsor and ripped off the scarf. She stared about her, startled, as if she had been woken from sleep. "He's right," she said. Hem looked at her in surprise. Her voice was clear and certain, ringing out over the emptiness, and it seemed to him as if something spoke through her. "It's the right place. It is Afinil. This is where the Song was trapped and made into a thing that could be stolen and used for ill. This is where it all began. This is where it must end, for good or ill, under the same moon that blessed its beginning."

"If it was Afinil, that swamp was once a lake famous for its clear waters," said Cadvan, after a short silence. "No doubt the Nameless One broke all the towers and used them to fill up the lake."

Saliman swallowed. "I have sometimes dreamed of Afinil," he said. "I walked through the vineyards and orchards of the Dhyllin. And I saw the white spires of Afinil reflected in the water, and heard the music that echoed through her fair halls, and in my dreams I have touched the beautiful things that were made here. But there is nothing left. Nothing. I read somewhere that Sharma's true greatness was in his pettiness. I'm not sure that I really understood what that meant until this moment."

"Aye," said Cadvan. "Of all that great citadel, nothing remains. Not even the shadow of a ruin of what was said to be the most beautiful city on the face of the earth. It is a kind of greatness, I suppose, to hate with so much thoroughness." He suddenly sounded immensely tired. "And this will be the fate of all the great cities of Annar, if he has his way."

Hem understood that Cadvan was wondering about the fate of Lirigon, and his thoughts turned to Irc. Although he knew that Irc was too far away, he sent out an impulsive summoning. He hadn't really expected Irc to answer, but when no answer came, he felt a stab of sorrow. He would have liked to speak once more with his friend.

"We must wait for moonrise," said Maerad. She took her lyre from her pack, tucking it under her arm, and walked a small distance away from them to the edge of the swamp. There she stood alone, her hair flying back from her face, staring out over the swamp, and Hem knew, with a sudden prescience, that she did not see the same bleak landscape that he did. Perhaps, he thought, she was looking at the mere as once it was, when it was surrounded by lush gardens and the towers of Afinil rose high above its tranquil surface. Cadvan was rubbing down Darsor a short distance away, but his eyes were fixed on Maerad. His face was dark with sadness, but he made no attempt to speak to her, and neither did Hem.

Hem sighed, and went over to help Saliman and Hekibel, who were beginning to set up a camp in the lee of a low ridge of rock that would protect them a little from the merciless wind. Whatever doom awaited them, they might as well have a hot meal first.

TRAVELING through the Hutmoors had been for Maerad the worst torment she had ever known. Where her companions glimpsed the shades that haunted this landscape's melancholy present, Maerad saw a bitterly vivid past. With her inner eye she perceived woodlands, vineyards, fields, and towns that had long vanished from the face of the world. She saw what the Hutmoors had been two thousand years before, when it was called the Firman Plains, and the Usk had been the Findol River, famous for its clear waters, beloved by dye makers and vintners.

In the space of a single day she saw all the beauty that had been there, and its irrevocable destruction. She saw the Nameless One's victory over the armies of Lirion and Imbral and she saw the massacre that followed, when the Dhyllin people were cut down in their thousands—man, woman, and child—as Sharma's army wreaked his vengeance on Imbral. As soon as she saw a village standing in the sunlight amid fields of plenty, she knew that she would next witness flame set in corn and vine and home. If she saw a child, she would also see its death; if she saw people gathered in a town square or village common, she knew she would see their merciless slaughter.

The blindfold had helped a little; it protected her outer sight, but the visions rose also in her mind's eye. It seemed to Maerad that she experienced each death as if it were her own father or mother or child or brother or sister who was killed, as if Sharma's soldiers cut down her closest kin, her dearest loves. She couldn't find any way to hide from the grief and terror of each death, and it happened over and over and over again. She saw cruelty beyond imagining, atrocity on a scale that she could not comprehend, fear and despair and sorrow that were beyond the capacity of words to describe. She thought she was going mad.

The visions didn't stop until they reached Afinil. When she took off her blindfold, she glimpsed for a brief moment Afinil's graceful towers, its gardens of blossoming trees; and then the city dissolved before her eyes, as if it were made of mist, and vanished utterly. She stood on the solid ground, staring over the rocky moors, and she realized with a relief beyond measure that she had been released from the terrible past. At that moment, the sedges and mosses and reeds of the swamp seemed beautiful beyond anything she had ever seen: these simple living things humbly offered up their colors and smells and forms without asking anything of her, content merely to grow and live and die.

Then she knew that the dead had asked her for justice, that she had been shown the crimes of the past because they cried out for restitution. As she stared over the swamp, she felt that the lament of the Hutmoors had entered her body and changed it, and she realized that she would never be the same again.

I cannot make justice, Maerad thought. I cannot undo these acts as if they never happened. Revenge is empty: it will not raise the towers nor bring the massacred children back to life; it will not make the gardens blossom again nor take the poison from the land. The dead ask for more than anyone can give them.

All the same, she thought, if I can destroy the Nameless One, I will.

She stood for a long time, feeling the weight of her lyre in the crook of her arm and the cold wind biting her face, and she studied the tiny white flowers of a creeping plant that flourished in the marshy hollows before her. She felt the shadows gathering as evening fell, and she heard the sounds of her companions as they cooked their meal. A great peace entered her spirit.

She could feel the brooding presence of the Nameless One gathering about her, searching for her as the choking blackness had sought her in her nightmares. She knew that the marsh birds cowered beneath the grasses, the cries in their throats silenced with animal fear as the shadow of a great predator darkened the sky above them. After riding through the Hutmoors, Maerad felt outraged that he dared to send his mind back to the scene of such crimes. With a mixture of arrogance and disgust, she turned her mind away from him. She knew that he hadn't found her yet. He sensed her uneasily, and he sought a way into her mind, but he had not yet discovered where she stood. Whatever happened, he would not steal this small moment of peace from her. Perhaps, she thought, it would be her last moment as herself.

But as the shadows lengthened, a soft, melodious voice wound itself into her mind. She had never heard a voice of such bewitching beauty, and despite herself she opened her mind to listen.

Elednor,
said the voice.
Elednor, at last I have found you whom I have sought long, through fire and shadow, this other part of myself...

With a thrill of fear, Maerad looked about her, but she could see no sign of any semblance.

Who are you?
she asked.

I
am your other self,
said the voice.
The other whom you have always desired to be. I am the end of all your longing, all your searching, all your dreams.

This woke all of Maerad's perverse stubbornness, and the voice's enchantment wavered.
That's no answer,
she said, her voice like a whiplash. She felt the other flinch. J
think that you are Sharma.

If I am, what I say is no less true. Consult your heart, Elednor, Elednor Edil-Amarandh na, and see if what your heart tells you is not true. After all, here we can speak as equals.

Disgust rose in Maerad's throat so that she nearly gagged.
Equals?
she said.
I think not. I would never do what you have done. I would never ... How dare you speak to me. How dare you come here, after everything that you've done.

The voice was silent for a time, and then it laughed, and its laughter was warm and intimate in her ear, so that Maerad recoiled.

My dear one,
it said.
You are very young, hut you have killed without mercy, because it was necessary. Do not pretend to me that you have not. Do not pretend that you are better than you are. You have caused suffering and grief and pain. It is the price of power, is it not? Why should you think that I have acted any differently from you? I have lived longer than you. I have tasted the joy and terror and price of power. So it is, always. Do you think your noble friends are any better than I am? Do not tell me that you have not thought these things yourself. You, of all people, are not stupid.

Maerad tried to close her mind against the voice, but it insinuated itself through all her defenses, and she could not but listen. And now doubt rose inside her; she had indeed thought these things. She bit her lip. And the voice continued—soft, persuasive, its melody a tormenting pleasure that she could not resist.

Now I have found you, I can at last ask you: why do you seek to destroy our powers? You do not understand what it is that you do. Elednor, Elednor, you are misled. There is another way...

Each time Sharma said her Name, the enchantment deepened, although Maerad struggled against it. She looked around again; it was strange talking to someone she could not see, not in her inner vision nor before her naked eye. But Sharma kept himself hidden.

What other way?
she asked unwillingly.

You are misled by those who claim they are your friends. They envy your power and wish to destroy it. But Elednor, you are mistaken. You are the One. In you the Treesong is made whole. This— sickness—you see around you is but the sickness of the Split Song. If we take this power wholly for ourselves, we can remake the whole world. You and I, Elednor: King and Queen of all creation. We can make the world a perfumed garden; the rivers will flow with milk and honey. We can mend all hurts and right all wrongs. It is this that you throw away, Elednor, if you release the Treesong. You will lose everything if you do this; and having known the possibility of such power, how could you live? It will be a stale life, Elednor Edil-Amarandh na, if you turn away from your destiny, a dull life, knowing the shining that could have been you.

Beneath the beauty of Sharma's voice, Maerad could feel the anguish that inhabited him, an endless anguish that filled her with pity. Sharma was right: he was not a whole creature, and his crimes and cruelty grew out of the agony of the wound that was his being. She saw herself as Queen of Edil-Amarandh, stern and just and immortal, as beautiful as Ardina, as stern as Arkan, more powerful than both. She would rule over a world in which there would be no sadness, no injustice, no ugliness. If she had this power, did she have the right to relinquish it? Perhaps she had been mistaken all along . . . even Cadvan admitted that he didn't know all ends, and perhaps this was the true reading of the prophecy, the true new age of the world.

But as she thought of Cadvan, she remembered vividly the shape and warmth of his body in her arms, the dull thud of his heartbeat, the solid presence that had kept her from madness on the terrible journey through the Hutmoors. And then she remembered Saliman and Nelac, Nerili and Ardina, Dernhil and Dharin, all her friends who had placed such faith in her, who had suffered so much, and had even died, so that she might come to this place. And she thought of her mother and her lonely death, and her father, cut down in the sack of Pellinor, and of Hem, her brother, taken by Hulls as a baby.

Your friends will understand in the end,
said Sharma, sensing her thoughts.
They, too, will see the wisdom and justice of your decision, and they will bow before you. And if they do not see that, they will have no power to resist you. Why do you think they fear you? They fear you rightly. You are no longer a child, at the whim of your elders. Put your lyre down, Elednor, Elednor Edil-Amarandh na. Give your lyre to me, and step into your true destiny, blissful queen of all creation. Let the true age of justice begin!

justice?
said Maerad, with a sudden biting scorn. She clutched her lyre close to her breast.
What do you know of justice?
The pretty visions vanished, and she remembered the corpses that had choked the Findol River so that its waters were poisoned, and the slaughtered children of the Firman Plains. And at the same time, she knew that Sharma did not know her other Name, the Elidhu Name that lay deep within her and that even Maerad herself did not know; and she understood, with a sudden glad knowledge, that without her third Name he could not utterly bewilder her. Nor could he harm her, any more than she could harm him, while she did not open her powers. The bewitchment of the voice fell instantly away; she saw his enchantment as a cheap trick, and wondered why she had ever listened.

The bile rose in her throat, and she spat on the ground.
Get away from me, traitor!
she said.
I am not your fool, to be flattered and threatened. Go!

She felt his surprise and then his impotent fury, and all sense of the voice vanished. But now Maerad was wary, and she lifted a great shield so that he could not strike her or her companions. And for the first time since she had arrived at Afinil, she began to feel afraid: Sharma could not touch her now, but when she began the Singing, she would be open in her powers, and vulnerable. She felt the force of his cold anger gathering about her in the deepening shadows, and she knew that he, too, was afraid of her, and that like any cornered, desperate beast, he was most dangerous when most afraid.

Hem felt a little better after eating. Although the stew of dried meat and pulses was hardly tasty fare, it was warm and wholesome, and gave him some ballast, staving off the nausea that ran in waves through his body.

As the sun sank in the sky, he found himself becoming uneasily aware of the tuning fork; it vibrated against his skin, as if it were a live thing. Since the Hollow Lands, he had forgotten it; the fork had just been a lump of metal that nestled next to the cloth bag he always wore around his neck. Now he remembered that this object had hung for millennia about the neck of the Nameless One himself, that it had been made by Nelsor in this very place; that the tiny, mysterious runes scored on its dull surface held the secret of the Treesong, and perhaps the key to the binding spell that placed the Nameless One among the immortals and gave him his powers ...

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Hem tried to unthink it. After speaking to Saliman, he had been quite sure that the presence that was darkening his mind, that filled his steps with loathing and prompted the wracking nausea in his stomach was the Nameless One. He couldn't escape the conviction that it was unlucky even to think about him; but it was very difficult to think of anything else. Involuntarily he looked over his shoulder toward the south, as if he could see Sharma riding toward them on a giant black horse that breathed fire through its nostrils, with an army of wers and Hulls at his heel.

All he saw was the bleak expanse of the Hutmoors, darkening under the shadows of evening. It was utterly lifeless: no birds swooped in the sky to catch late insects; no wild deer skittered nervously in the wind; not a vole, not a rabbit, not a mouse, not even the fleeting shadows of the dead, stirred at the edge of his vision. The wind moaned through the reeds and sedges of the marsh but he could hear nothing else: no marsh birds piping, no curlew calling its forlorn cry. A great stillness lay over the landscape like a paralyzing dread.

He won't arrive on a horse, Hem thought, scorning himself for his fancy. His body is in Dagra. But Saliman is right: he hunts us down. He knows we want to destroy him. He is coming closer and closer. Maybe he even hears my thoughts, and they draw him here.

He glanced toward Maerad. While they had cooked and eaten their meal, Maerad had stood unmoving at the edge of the marsh, a tiny figure under the great bowl of the sky. The distress and pain that she had suffered as they traversed the Hutmoors seemed no longer to trouble her; if anything, her expression was serene. To Hem it seemed that her small figure held such power that she was vast: her shadow seemed to stream back from the westering sun like the brooding darkness of a mountain. For the first time, Hem felt a tremor of fear of her. Maerad was now beyond his understanding, beyond any homely call of kindred. He no longer knew who she was.