The Crow (35 page)

He looked up and saw that Zelika was contemplating him with what he felt was an uncomfortably sharp perception. "I don't want to die, either," he mumbled. "But I can't stay here, doing nothing. I'll go mad."

"Help me with the babies, then," said Zelika. "It's time for them to eat."

"That's not what I meant," he said petulantly. But all the same, he followed her to the galley and ladled food out into bowls, puzzling over this new Zelika. She glanced at him as she fed Banu.

"I know what you're thinking," she said.

"Do you?" said Hem, with a touch of belligerence. "You're wondering why I don't want to fight."

"Well, yes..."

"It was the Second Gate. The Gate of Dreams, when we had to remember to get through." Hem nodded.

"I saw the gate to my home, in Baladh. And you know, for a little while I really thought it was there." A longing woke in her voice. "I thought that if I ran through, I would be in Baladh again, with my little brother, Arlian, running up to me so I could pick him up. I thought I could sit with him by the pool of water lilies, and look down at the golden fish. We had a lot of fish, and they were so beautiful..."

Zelika's voice wavered, and she wiped Banu's face briskly before she continued. "I'm not used to magery," she said. "I didn't understand that it would just vanish when I passed through. Saliman explained it all. But, I don't know, after that... I felt a bit different."

Hem thought of the orphanage gate he had passed through in the Gate of Dreams, and then of Saliman's warning that he should choose his memory carefully. Perhaps he had chosen badly. Perhaps he had unwittingly brought into the city of Nal-Ak-Burat something of the anger and despair he had felt in Edinur, just as Zelika had found a fleeting vision of the peace of her lost home. Maybe that was why he felt such a desire to avenge himself against the Dark. But the thought did nothing to dispel his restlessness.

Over the next few days, Hem and Zelika spent their spare time exploring Nal-Ak-Burat. Saliman reluctantly gave them permission, but told them to stay away from the northern and southern Gates, and to be careful – it was easy to get lost, and to end up wandering for hours through a maze of stone. And some places were perilous: there were stairways that wound up great cliffs that, if they had ever had handrails, now lacked them. A careless step could mean a fall of thirty spans or more.

At first they confined their forays to the huge square and its surrounding alleys, which covered a large flat area that made up the heart of the city. It was easy to see why the Bards had chosen their current building – it had obviously been some kind of palace, where many people had lived, and was built to a human scale. The other buildings that flanked the south side of the square, some of them carved deep into the rocky walls, made the children feel like ants. They walked through rooms so high that the ceilings – if they existed at all, for there was little need for roofs underground – vanished into shadow high above their heads, while before them columns marched in unvarying rows, dwindling into the distance.

The walls were most often decorated with murals similar to those they had seen in the entrance room to the palace, and they spent hours examining them. Some, in the inner rooms, were astoundingly well preserved, with colors almost as bright as they must have been when they were first painted. They told inscrutable stories: here a king was bowing to a giant heron, offering the bird what seemed to be a platter of fruit; there a line of men were chained together, being led by the same king in a war chariot, while behind them walked a giant cat plumed with feathers. Another picture showed what seemed to be the same prisoners being killed: a figure in a robe held a long knife, with which he was cutting the throat of one, while the others stood in a row behind him, as if they were next. Hem and Zelika passed by that scene quickly. In the next picture, a man stood with his arms outspread, and leaves grew from his limbs, as if he were transforming into a tree. Fascinated, Hem and Zelika traced the outlines of the runes that interleaved the pictures, wondering what they meant.

"Perhaps that one," said Hem, indicating the tree man, "is an Elidhu. A wood Elidhu. Maerad says they can change their form."

"I thought Bards could change, if they wanted to," said Zelika, looking curiously at Hem.

"No. They can
seem
to change – that's easy."

"Can you do that?" asked Zelika. She had never been very interested in Bardic magery, but her experience at the Gate of Dreams had sparked her curiosity.

"Of course I can!" said Hem, slightly indignantly. Glimmer-spells were the least of enchantments, and even though he had paid small attention at the School of Turbansk, he could do illusions. He thought for a moment, then looked down at his hands. As Zelika watched, she gasped: green tendrils shot out of the ends of his fingers, and out of his arms and legs. As she watched, Hem burst into leaf before her eyes.

"I didn't know you could do that," said Zelika, with a new respect in her voice.

Hem lifted his hands, and the leaves vanished. "Any Bard can," he said dismissively. "The only problem is, it doesn't work on other Bards, unless they agree, of course. Or Hulls. So you can't fool Bard eyes."

"Well, maybe the tree man is a Bard."

"Maybe. Some kind of Bardic people lived here, for sure. This place is stiff with magery; you can feel it everywhere. It's woven into the very walls. But it's strange. You can feel it's very old, and it's like those pictures – you can't read it."

"Might it be dangerous, do you think?" asked Zelika in a low voice. "They killed people. And who were the dead, in the First Gate?"

Hem remembered the First Gate with a shudder. "All magery can be dangerous," he said, after a pause. "That's why Bards go on and on about the Balance. You don't have to be a Hull to do things that you might regret. But I'm not sure Bards could use this magic; it's too strange. Maybe if we could read the runes, they might explain something. I wonder what this place was for?"

They looked around at the massive chamber. It was impossible to guess its use; maybe it had been some kind of throne room, or a meeting place for the people of the city. At one end there was a dais, raised the height of a man above the rest of the room; but like everything else, it revealed nothing, resonant with a massive significance that no one now could understand.

"Maybe it was a temple of some kind," said Zelika.

"A temple?" Hem looked inquiringly at Zelika; such things were unknown in Annar.

"A place where people came to worship their gods."

"You mean, like Elidhu? But people don't worship Elidhu..." began Hem.

"In some places, people make shrines," said Zelika. "And they pray to their gods for help, if they need something."

Hem looked confused. "Why don't they ask a Bard for a charm, then?" he asked. "That's what people usually do. When Bards are around, that is."

"It's not like that. They believe in their gods, and they worship them. It's kind of... how they explain the world. And how they work out good and bad."

"Do you know anyone who does this?" asked Hem, astonished.

Zelika looked at him slyly. "It's not so strange. Don't Bards worship the Light?"

"Well, they... they don't exactly
worship
it," said Hem carefully. "It's more about the Balance, and things like that – about how you act." He shook his head; this conversation made him feel slightly dizzy. "Do you know anyone who does it?"

"I knew some who worshipped the Light, in Baladh," said Zelika.

"But that doesn't make any sense. How can you worship the Light? It's not there to be worshipped."

"They did, all the same. Just because it doesn't make any sense to you doesn't mean that it didn't make any sense to
them.
Bards don't know everything."

"They don't say they do," said Hem hotly. "No one does."

"Well, then."

Ire nibbled Hem's ear to calm him down. Zelika was getting annoyed, and Ire still had vivid memories of what happened when Zelika became angry. So they dropped the subject by mutual consent, and walked from one end of the huge hall to another, Hem's magelight seeming small and fragile in the echoing darkness. It took them a long time. The stone flags of the floor were covered with a fine layer of sandy dust, which their feet kicked into the air, so their mouths became dry and gritty. The place possessed a melancholy grandeur that became more oppressive the farther they went.

"I wonder who the people were who lived here?" said Zelika, as they stared at the dais. They had thought of climbing up, but there were no steps; and they both felt that they were somehow intruding, and were eager to leave.

"I don't know," said Hem. "But they're all dead now. I wonder if the place misses them?"

Zelika didn't answer. Thoughtfully they retraced their steps, and went back to the palace, where it was a relief to see homely firelight and to hear the hubbub of ordinary conversation.

Away from the square they found smaller buildings that had clearly once been homes. These were of much humbler dimensions, often built one on top of the other and linked by precarious stairways cut into the rock. Many of them lacked roofs – not because they had fallen in, but because they had never been there in the first place. This seemed strange, until they remembered that it never rained in Nal-Ak-Burat. The eating and sleeping rooms were small and all were roofed, Hem supposed, to keep the warmth in. They found hearths still black with ashes that had been cold for countless years, and in these places they found other signs that human beings had lived there – crumbling bones; the remains of some long-since-eaten meal; clay pots decorated with patterns pressed in by a stick; or iron pots so pitted with rust they fell to pieces as soon as they were touched. In one house they discovered a wooden chest, painted with strange designs; and when they opened it, they saw that it contained cloths of embroidered crimson silk. Zelika gasped with wonder: but even as they stared, the silks, preserved in the airless chest, lost color and crumbled, leaving behind only dust that exhaled an elusive perfume, the remains, perhaps, of frankincense or nard that had once impregnated the cloth.

The more they saw of the city, the more mysterious it became. Its riddles multiplied under their fascinated eyes: the stories told by the murals, which they could only guess at, or the strange objects they sometimes found, the uses of which had vanished with the people who made them. But perhaps what made it most mysterious were the intimate belongings they sometimes found in the houses: an intricately carved ivory hair comb, pitted with age, worn perhaps by some beauty of the city; or a little horse on wheels carved of hardwood, which must have been the toy of a child. Here they had lain in darkness, lost perhaps in the final abandonment of Nal-Ak-Burat – maybe a child had cried for her toy, maybe a woman had frowned when she found her favorite comb was missing. Why had they left? Were they driven out by some plague? Or did the city's people tire of never feeling the wind on their cheeks and, hungering for sunshine, turn their backs on their marvelous city of stone and climb out, blinking, into the light?

That night (the Bards still divided the time between day and night, despite the unchanging darkness, using a water clock to measure the hours) they gathered as usual in the palace for the evening meal. The Bards took turns cooking, and tonight Soron, with Hem's help, prepared the meal. He grumbled as he kneaded dough for the flat bread, which would be cooked in the bottom of the oven.

"I could do with some greens, my boy," he said. "But it seems supplies of fresh foodstuffs are rather depleted at the moment."

Hem, who was always grateful to get anything to eat – his days of hunger were, after all, not far behind him, and his future was anything but certain – looked up in surprise.

"But it all smells delicious," he said. "Anyway, I'm amazed they can bring any food in at all. But I suppose the other way in doesn't have a Gate of Water."

Soron glanced at him humorously. "I'll wager it doesn't. And thank the Light for that, else I'd have to stay here forever. But I tell you, someone has prepared well here for thin times – back in the storerooms there are more grains and dried fruits and pickled foods than I have ever seen in one place, and stacks of dried and salted fish, and even sides of cured deer. All packed into barrels or hung, neat and dry, so it won't spoil. And as wide a range of spices as in the Ernan's kitchens, and a cellar of wines to rival those of the Bards of Turbansk – typical Bards! Well, this is the perfect place to store things, I'll say: dry and cool and dark, like a giant cellar. I'm not ungrateful; but I do hunger for fresh meat and vegetables, all the same."

Hem suddenly thought of a delicious salad of herbs he had eaten once in Turbansk, and for a moment he stopped slicing the dried fish that Soron was preparing for a stew. His mouth filled with water; he could almost taste it.

"Greens would be good," he said. "But more than that, I'd like to see the sun."

"Aye," Soron answered. "But who knows what is happening up there, Hem, while we skulk down here?"

Hem fell silent. He knew Bards here had ways of gathering news. Hared was much better informed about what was happening in Annar than the Bards had been in Turbansk where, as he had said, even bird messengers had trouble getting past the besieging army. But he remembered that Soron did not know what had happened to Jelika, the woman he loved, who was supposed to be with them, but had been torn away by war. Perhaps, Hem thought, he would never know; such things happened. Soron never mentioned Jelika, and most of the time seemed the same kind and patient man he had been in Turbansk; but sometimes, as now, Hem perceived the deep sadness that lived inside him.

It was, Hem thought, a bit like how he missed Maerad. He, too, had no way of knowing that she was still alive; and perhaps he would never see her again. She might have died on her quest, and he would never know. The thought hurt, so he pushed it aside and concentrated on cutting the dried fish, which was tricky, even with a sharp knife.