The Naming (38 page)

_XIX

HEM

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.

"Hem," Cadvan said, and his voice was no longer stern. "I don't suppose you have any of these stones with you?"

Hem reluctantly took out the little bag he kept around his neck and fumbled with the drawstring. Out tumbled three polished black stones carved with grinning, malicious faces, and a tarnished silver trinket. "I thought," he stammered, "that I could sell them at the market, like Sharn said he was going to, and then I could go south. There were other stones, but the Hulls must have taken them back." He looked at the objects in his hand, and gave the stones to Cadvan. "The medallion is mine," he said, with an odd defiance, as if he thought he wouldn't be believed. "I didn't steal that." He closed his fist tightly over it.

Cadvan took the stones and rolled them in his hand, laughing softly. "Oh, Hem, Hem, Hem," he said. "You do not know what these are. Yes, you might be able to sell them at a market, but only to those who know how to use them."

"What are they?" asked Maerad curiously.

"They're warestones. The Hulls must have left them there in case anyone came back to the caravan. Probably they thought you would, Hem. I doubt they would have believed their luck when we turned up. They're useless now; there's no power left in them. I think last night you blasted everything of the Dark within miles, Maerad. But I tell you, Hem, that if we had gone through Edinur in broad daylight with trumpets and heralds proclaiming our presence, it still would not have been as useful to the Hulls as having these little spies traveling with us. Everything we spoke of, everything we did, was open to the Hulls, as long as these stones were with us; and they knew exactly where we were, and who we were, and where we were
going. They set a nice trap for us, and this time Cadvan of Lirigon was not to escape." He threw the stones one by one far into the downs.

Maerad thought back uneasily to their conversations over the past few days. "We haven't talked much about anything lately," she said uncertainly.

"No," said Cadvan. "Fortunately. Well, Hem, all's well that ends well, but it almost ended very badly. Almost in disaster."

Hem looked down, and his cheeks flushed. Cadvan patted his shoulder. "I forgive you for almost getting us killed, or worse," he said. He tried to smile, and winced with pain. "But remember: the things of the Dark are best left alone. They are made only for evil reasons." Hem nodded, swallowing, and there was a pause. "Do you mind if I have a look at that medallion?"

Hem reluctantly handed the object over to Cadvan, and he examined it closely. Maerad peered curiously at it; it was so tarnished it was almost black, with a design she couldn't make out on one side and some script on the other. She looked questioningly up at Cadvan, and saw his face go still with shock. He glanced swiftly across at Maerad with an odd expression, and then looked down at the medallion again. He turned it over and over in his hands, saying nothing.

"What?" demanded Maerad, after the silence had lengthened unbearably. Hem was watching them both with a mixture of bafflement and fear.

Cadvan didn't respond at first. "Maerad," he said at last. "Do you remember your father very well?"

Maerad was taken aback by the question. "No, not really," she said. "A little. Why?"

"Do you remember what he looked like?" Cadvan was gazing at her with a strange intensity, and she flicked obediently through her memories, wondering what was bothering him.

"He, he was tall. And he had long black hair. I think he had gray eyes, or blue eyes, 1 can't remember. . . ." She pushed her hair out of her face and stared around her at the empty downs. Her blood was beginning to pound with a painful sense of expectation. "Why?"

"Did you know Dorn was of the Pilanel?"

"Of the Pilanel? No, I. . ." She looked back at Cadvan and then at Hem, her heart constricting.

Cadvan was still looking at her with that strange intensity. "Maerad, did you
see
Cai being killed?"

"Everyone was killed," she said, beginning to feel panicky. "Everyone except me and Milana."

"But you didn't actually see Cai murdered?"

"Nnnno. . . ." Maerad's hands twisted painfully together. "No, I didn't actually
see
him ... killed...."

Cadvan handed her the medallion.

She held it in her palm and rubbed her fingers over it. It didn't seem to be anything special at first; it was so dirty. But as she looked more closely, she saw it bore an intricate design of a flower: a lily. An arum lily. The same lily, even the same design, as on her brooch.

"It's the lily of Pellinor, Maerad," Cadvan said softly. "This is an ancient thing, an heirloom. The signs of the Schools have not been made as medallions like this for some five hundred years."

Maerad turned the medallion over. On the back was writing in the Nelsor script, but in her agitation she couldn't read it.

"What does it say?" she whispered.

"It says:
Ardrost Kami. Minelm le carae."

"The House of Karn. Minelm made me."
Maerad sat back on her heels, her face blank. "The House of Karn."

"Can I have it back?" Hem reached out his hand. "You've finished now? It's mine."