The Singing by Alison Croggon

  At last, in desperation, she decided to step out of hiding and to directly challenge the Landrost. She was useless crouch­ing in the shadows trying to feel out his powers; and perhaps, having already felt the full impact of his force, she could with­stand him this time. She took a deep breath. I, too, am Elidhu, she said to herself. I am wind and rock and water and fire. I am Elidhu and woman and Bard. He is only Elidhu. It felt like empty bravado, but she had nothing else.

  Blindly, Maerad pushed toward the obscene center, the great void that was sucking out the lifeblood of Innail, the warm breath of those she loved—the breath of warriors and children, singers and herders, artisans and farmers and cooks, blacksmiths and swordsmiths, coopers and potters. Its empty greed drew her in, as if she were being sucked inexorably into the black center of a great whirlpool, and she felt herself spin­ning in its force—dizzy, confused, already weaker. It would be so easy, a voice whispered inside her, just to give in, to simply relax into its deathliness. No one would blame her. And she could put down her burden, sink into darkness, know nothing ever again ...

  Beyond conscious thought, something in Maerad began to fight against the terrible compulsion. She thought of all the people who had placed such trust in her, who had no hope with­out her, and with an effort of will she shrank herself into the smallest possible space. At last, she stopped spinning in the force of the Landrost and was still.

  Now Maerad was as tiny as a pebble, as uncrushable as a shard of adamant. Not even the Landrost had the power to crush her. As soon as she knew this, she felt herself become stronger, and where there had been despair ignited a pure, uncontrollable rage, a fury without thought, a fury directed wholly at the Landrost. Now, beyond her conscious will, she felt herself transform and everything that she knew as Maerad, her woman's body, her Bard's mind, even her wolf-self, begin to vanish into her Elidhu being, as if the force of her anger were a consuming flame.

  Now she was a tiny star, unbearably bright, pulsing with raw, immeasurable power, a radiance beyond imagining; she was no longer tiny; she was growing, her power was growing, brighter and brighter; she was no longer herself, not even a mind. She was the power of the sun; nothing could burn her because she was fire itself, the soul of the flame that lived in the core of rock and living things, that tore open the face of the earth, that broke the feet of mountains, that split asunder their arrogance and drove through their fragments like molten breath, until rock ran like rivers of white water, stone trans­formed into living fire itself.

  She-who-had-been-Maerad blazed before the Landrost and at last he saw her, and she felt his pause, his sudden fear. She sensed him transforming himself, bringing his forces to bear on her, gathering all his power into a mighty fist, a hammer of stone, an avalanche that was a whole mountain. But it was too late, the star was already far beyond his power; it blasted the mineral veins of his being with unbearable fire, unbearable light. Even as he turned his mind toward her, the Landrost was collapsing inward upon his own emptiness, all the peaks and valleys and outcrops of his being wavering and crumbling, his cold mind smoldering before the great heat of the star that now seared him with an anguish beyond his imagining. Before he was even aware, before a thought could begin to form, the fire caught, and what remained of the Landrost flared up in a bril­liant arc of flame and spluttered out into darkness.

  VIII

  AFTERMATH

  Elednor Edil-Amarandh .. .na

  The voice sang through the empty cosmos, a vibrating ribbon of cold light.

  Elednor, it whispered, remember your name. Heart of fire, flower of flame, remember your home...

  She-who-had-been-Maerad felt a voice forming in the center of her fury, a voice that wanted to answer, that lifted with a warmth that was not the incandescence of pure rage. Something inside her shaped a mouth. I remember, said the mouth. I remember my home.

  Come, said the voice. Come home with me.

  All at once, memory surged back, and Maerad remembered who she was. She was not a star after all, she was not fire nor fury. She was Maerad. The voice repeated her name, weaving it into a spell, into a chain, pulling her closer. She remembered the voice, and turned herself gladly toward it, her mind twirling like a twig in a gentle current. But as her memory returned, it stabbed her with a sudden anguish, waking Maerad with a shock and pulling her out of the lulling spell. She had bones and skin, and hands and feet, her heart beat in her breast, her eyes were wet with tears. She was a young woman, and she would not be used.

  My home is burned, Maerad said, her voice colder than the voice that called her. I have no home. Do not lie to me, Arkan.

  She felt the Winterking's surprise that she had so easily shaken off his command, and for a long time he said nothing.

  You have grown, Arkan said at last.

  I could destroy you as I destroyed the Landrost, said Maerad. You should fear me, O Winterking. Do not think that I am your toy. I will not come with you.

  She could see him now in the darkness before her, his strong white body globed in blue ripples of light. She studied his beauty bitterly. Their eyes met and Maerad gasped; his gaze was as keen as ice and looked into the very depths of her being.

  You did not destroy the Landrost, said the Winterking. You can­not destroy an Elidhu. And I am stronger than the Landrost. But you have undone him to the very sinews of his being, so that it is almost as if he no longer is. I do fear you, Elednor Edil-Amarandh na. I do not understand what you are. I am no threat to you. I cannot bind you.

  Maerad turned her eyes away. No, she said. You cannot. She knew it was simply a fact. The Winterking held no power over her. Somehow, strangely, it made her feel a little sad.

  I think all the same, my Fire Lily, that you have much to be afraid of, Arkan said. Maerad felt the cold mockery in his words. You have many enemies, of course. The Nameless One is not unlike what you have become; perhaps you ought to think about that. But it seems to me that, most of all, you should be terrified of yourself.

  Then the Winterking was gone, all trace of his presence instantly erased, and Maerad was alone in the formless dark­ness, and the tears on her cheeks felt like ice.

  When Maerad undid the Landrost, the wers, creatures woven out of the tissue of his being, shriveled like dry leaves caught in the updraft of a fire. A couple of soldiers who had been fighting furiously in mortal combat fell over as their sword strokes bit into smoke instead of flesh.

  For the space of several heartbeats, there was a complete silence. Some people stood with their mouths open in astonish­ment, wondering if this was yet another trick of the Landrost's.

  But every man and woman on the walls felt the life surging through their veins as the dreadful weight of the Landrost's presence lifted from their souls, and the cold ebbed away, and they stood in a still and foggy winter night that suddenly was miraculously ordinary.

  On the far wall, Silvia raised her face to the black sky, feeling hot tears coursing down her face, and threw down her sword to embrace Kelia, the short, dark Bard who stood next to her.

  "Maerad did it," whispered Silvia, through harsh, racking sobs. "By the Light, Maerad defeated the Landrost."

  As the defenders of Innail began to realize what had hap­pened, ragged cheers rose around the walls. Many, like Silvia, simply wept. Others dropped blankly to the ground and sat staring into space, stunned by their reprieve.

  Cadvan had felt the surge of energy building within Maerad even as he battled a wer who had made it through the walls and had landed on the palisades, transforming into a brutishly powerful man. This wer was a sorcerer who coun­tered Cadvan's White Fire with dark fire of his own, and Cadvan was hard-pressed. Even as he fought him, he sensed the fury in Maerad, and part of him feared that all of them, friend and foe, would be swept away in the conflagration of her wrath. And then, suddenly, the wer was a wraith of ash that twisted and dissipated in the fog.

  Cadvan knew at once what had happened, and dropped his sword, running to where Maerad lay, crumpled i
n a small, unconscious heap by the far wall. He lifted her anxiously, listen­ing for a heartbeat; at first, there seemed to be nothing, but then he felt her pulse, faint and irregular, and breathed out with relief. His hands began to glow with the silver light of magery, and he passed them over her face, and said her Truename.

  He waited for a long time, but Maerad remained pale and still. Cadvan took a deep breath; he was deathly tired, and he had not much strength for magery. But just as he was about to try again, Maerad's eyelids fluttered open and she looked up into his eyes.

  "Cadvan," she said, and then her eyes shut again. Her voice was so faint, he could barely hear her.

  Cadvan said nothing, and just stroked her face. Maerad slowly sat up. Her eyes glittered wide and dark in the torch­light, and her wet cheeks glistened.

  "Cadvan," she said again. "I did it. I unmade him. Oh, I have never been so tired."

  "I know you did," said Cadvan. "I was about to be skew­ered by a monstrous thug of a wer when it just shriveled into dust before my eyes. You saved my life, again. How many times is that now?"

  Maerad smiled wanly. "Four, I think," she said.

  "I owe you a wine."

  Maerad smiled again. "A glass of laradhel would be lovely," she said, and then she fainted dead away. Cadvan gath­ered her slight body up into his arms and carried her down­stairs to the healers, jealously refusing all offers of help, even though he was stumbling with weariness. When she next opened her eyes, Maerad was tucked into a proper Innail bed, between clean linen sheets, and outside her window a songbird trilled joyously in the glorious light of day.

  While Maerad slept, the people of Innail had begun the task of healing their hurts. The sun rose, burning away the fog to reveal the trampled and churned grasses outside the walls and the storm damage everywhere in Innail. Aside from the black circles where their fires had been, and the litter of splin­tered siege ladders and discarded objects like broken tools or water bottles, there was no sign of the mountain men. They had slipped away under the cover of darkness when they saw that the Landrost had been defeated. Without his power behind them, they had no chance of winning a fight against the Bards of Innail, or even of entering the School against the wards still placed in the walls.

  Malgorn ordered some soldiers to scour the surrounding countryside on horseback, to make sure that they were indeed gone. He suspected that without the Landrost's protection they would have problems returning over the mountains, and might cause havoc instead among the hamlets and small towns in the Fesse. The soldiers returned, having followed their trail to the foothills of the Osidh Annova without a single sighting. Perhaps the destruction of the Landrost had struck them with a mortal terror of the Bards.

  The people of Innail laid out and counted their dead. These were not as many as had seemed likely in the darkest hours of the night, but there were still many houses of grief that day: by evening, 126 men, women, and children lay cold in the Great Hall, draped in the dark red mantles that honored their deaths in defense of their homes, the tall candles of mourning burning steadily at their feet. A slow line of people passed through the hall, their heads bowed, to do them remembrance, as a Bard on the dais played the Song of Ending on a lyre. After two days of mourning they would be buried, each body taken by those who loved them and interred in the crypts by the eastern wall of Innail.

  Many more were injured and lay in the houses of healing, cared for by the Bards. After the Landrost had fallen, Silvia had stripped off her armor and had rushed there almost right away, working on the injured until Malgorn had ordered her to rest. Malgorn himself was almost dead on his feet, but before he col­lapsed into his own bed, he organized work parties among the farmhands, herders, and others who had not been involved in

  the worst of the fighting, to clear away the mess of battle: the cauldrons of pitch, the blood-soiled rushes and sand. They did not have to clear away the corpses of wers, as these had all crumbled into dust.

  The streets of Innail filled with people going about their business. They bought food at the markets, embraced their chil­dren, and baked their dinners as if this day were an ordinary day like every other; but in their faces, in the gentleness with which they greeted one another, was the tacit knowledge that things might have been very different. Life for every person in Innail seemed very rich that day.

  Maerad slept until midafternoon, unaware of the great labor that was going on around her. When she woke, she lay with her eyes closed, remembering the horrors of the night before. She was so weary she felt she could not lift her arms.

  Finally she opened her eyes, blinking at the pale winter sunlight that fell through her casement. She didn't recognize the room she was in: she was in the Healing House and lay in a simple wooden bed, in a room by herself. The walls were painted in a pale blue wash, and her sheets smelled of lemon, and a bird was singing outside her window. She listened to its warbling for a long time.

  By her bed was a jug of water and a cup, and next to that a little hand bell. She was very thirsty, but she wondered if she had the strength to lift the jug. At last, with a great deal of effort, she sat up. For the moment that was all that she could do, and she sat where she was, leaning against her pillow, frightened by her body's weakness, longing for the water.

  At that moment Silvia entered. Her face brightened when she saw Maerad was awake, and she came over to the bed and embraced her lightly, as if she were an eggshell that might break if touched too carelessly.

  "Maerad," she said, kissing her on the forehead. "You should have rung the bell—that's what it's for. How are you feeling?"

  "I'm very thirsty," said Maerad, looking longingly at the jug.

  Silvia laughed. "That's easily remedied." She poured Maerad a cup, and held it so it would not spill as she drank. The water was delicious, with a faint herbed tang. Maerad gulped down two cupfuls and finally sat back, wiping her mouth with her hand.

  "That's better," she said. "I can't remember being so thirsty. It was as if I'd had nothing to drink for days and days."

  Silvia sat on the edge of the bed and took Maerad's hand, looking thoughtfully into her face. "You seem surprisingly well, for someone who was busy destroying a powerful Elidhu last night," she said. "In fact, you're only a little pale. I'm astounded."

  "I'm very tired," said Maerad. "So, so tired. But I don't think anything's broken."

  "If you are tired, you should sleep," said Silvia. "The water will help; it has properties to promote healing rest." She leaned forward and kissed Maerad again on the forehead. "My dear, sleep as long as you need. I will keep the well-wishers from your door; half of Innail has been here already, wanting to give you their thanks. The other half will probably arrive tomorrow. We owe you our lives."

  Maerad felt a strange sorrow welling up inside her. "Nobody owes me anything," she whispered. "Nothing at all. I owe everything to Innail."

  "My dear, we'll argue the point tomorrow," said Silvia. She settled Maerad back down beneath the coverlet, stroking her brow, and Maerad felt weariness washing over her, a great wave that rolled her into the warm darkness. In a moment she was asleep.

  Silvia sat on the bed for a while watching Maerad, her brow creased and troubled. Then she sighed heavily, and stood up and left the room.

  It was a week before Maerad found the strength to remain out of bed for a whole day. All the same, she nagged to be released from the Healing House; she felt uncomfortable lan­guishing there among others who were much more badly wounded than she was. After a stern examination, Silvia cau­tiously agreed that there seemed nothing wrong beyond extreme exhaustion and permitted Maerad to move back to Silvia and Malgorn's Bardhouse, to the chamber that she thought of as her room.

  Here, where she had first discovered what it meant to be a Bard, Maerad lay in bed and obediently ate the meals that were brought to her, listening to the gentle voice of the fountain out­side. From her bed she could see the top branches of a plum tree. The tips of its fingers were just beginning to redden wit
h the promise of blossom, reminding her that it was almost a whole year since she had first come to Innail.

  On the second day after the battle, Maerad had insisted on going to the Great Hall to pay her respects to the dead, and had got her way only after a heated argument with both Cadvan and Silvia, who were worried that she might collapse.

  "I don't care," said Maerad stubbornly, her mouth set in a determined line. "If I get tired, I can just rest. It's not very far. I'll go by myself, if you don't help me."

  Finally, Cadvan had sighed and agreed, even to her insis­tence that she walk; Maerad claimed it was foolish to ride such a short distance. Silvia wrapped her in a thick felt cloak, and with Cadvan supporting her arm, Maerad had made her way to the Great Hall. Although it wasn't far, it took them a long time to get there; Maerad had to stop every few yards to rest, and by the time they arrived, her entire body was trembling with strain. There was a long line of mourners filing through the hall, but when they saw who had arrived, a rumor swept around the crowd and people started craning their necks to see her. Those nearest stepped back to make way for her, and some bowed or even fell to their knees. Many people looked simply awed. Perhaps because Cadvan was looking so fiercely protective, no one dared to approach and speak to her.