The Singing by Alison Croggon

  Cadvan glanced at Indik, his face serious. "What will you have of us?" he asked.

  "At present, I want Maerad to stay in mindtouch with me." Indik looked across at her. "If you could tell me the moment you feel any change, any tensing—as if he prepares to leap— you know the kind of thing. Cadvan, Camphis, I could do with some help with any wers. Malgorn, are there any other Bards to spare?"

  "No," said Malgorn. He paused and listened intently for a few moments. "Silvia is asking for more hands as well. We are spread thin as it is. I've placed all the Bards as evenly as pos­sible around the walls. There is no sign of wers within Innail. Either they fled when the charm was set or they have been killed."

  "We'll have to make do with what we have." Indik's face was expressionless. "I wish I could clearly see what is out there. But all reports seem to indicate that a great force is gathered in that darkness. And Innail is not a fortress, after all. I am glad of the wards; magery will have to make up for what we lack in stone."

  "Do you need me there?" asked Malgorn.

  "I'd rather you stayed out of the fighting," said Indik. "It is hard to keep mindtouch with many people in the midst of battle, and we need one Bard at least in constant contact with everyone. I will send for you if we need you." He nodded at the other Bards, and marched out.

  Maerad glanced quickly over at Cadvan. "I'd like to come with you," she said.

  "Why not?" said Cadvan. "You can keep an eye on the Landrost just as well on the outer wall as here."

  Maerad hesitated, and then, on impulse, drew the blackstone over her head and held it out to Cadvan. He looked at her inquiringly.

  "I don't think I'll use it," she said. "I don't like it. I know it's not from the Dark, but there's . . . there's something about it— and it might be useful to you."

  Cadvan reached out and took it, and held it in his hand, weighing it.

  "They are strange to use, I know," he said. "It's as if they numb the magery inside your skin. But it might be handy, all the same. Are you sure?"

  She nodded; Cadvan stroked the stone's strange surface, which seemed to absorb all light as if it were a hole instead of a solid stone, and put it around his neck.

  They left the keep and climbed a flight of steps to a broad area behind the battlement wall. Here they were directly above the gate, and it was bustling with activity: archers were posted thickly around the battlements and there were knots of grim-faced soldiers, ready to repel any attackers who raised ladders. They had the same contained, disciplined air that Indik pos­sessed, and although there was a tension among them, a palpable sense that the attack would happen at any moment, they were relaxed. Some were playing dice, others were joking with the young boys and girls who stood ready to tip cauldrons of boiling pitch or to throw stones onto the heads of any who threatened the gate itself.

  Maerad was shocked to see children so young up on the battlements; most were no older than Hem. Indik caught her expression.

  "I didn't think children fought in Innail," she said to him.

  "All volunteers," he answered shortly. "We need every hand we can get. These ones know what they face if we lose. Some have already seen their homes destroyed, their families killed."

  Maerad said nothing. It brought home to her, as nothing else had, the violence that had already occurred in the gentle valley of Innail. She felt a deep anger smoldering inside her.

  Here on the battlements, she could see the full strangeness of the weathercharm she had helped to cast. The air was still here, even a little stuffy, but the noise of the wind was very loud. Winter sunlight fell on her shoulders, but only a few spans away was a great shadow in which light faltered and died. Through the gloom, she could make out a boiling mass of figures on the ground before the Innail gates, holding flaring torches that hissed and spat in the rain. She could hear the rhythmic twang of bowstrings, and she realized that archers were picking off any attackers foolhardy enough to venture into bowshot.

  Indik was right: it was very hard to see what the army was doing, or how far back it stretched into the gloom. But there seemed many, many more soldiers than were stationed here at the gates. Maerad wondered if the forces were this thick all the way around the walls, and drew in her breath. She didn't know if it was worse imagining their attackers, or seeing them with her own eyes. On the whole, she thought, it was better to know the worst. But now she was very frightened indeed.

  Remember, said Indik into her mind. I rely on you to keep track of the Landrost. And stay out of bowshot. I don't want any stray arrows putting you out of action.

  Maerad nodded, as if Indik—who was out of sight—could see her, and gathering her wits, moved back from the battlements. Without losing awareness of her present surround­ings, she delicately felt her way back into the net of magery that she had woven with the weatherworkers. She knew the Landrost was in there somewhere, and she could feel his presence more accurately if she let her mind touch his strands, as if he were a spider in the center of his web and she a fly on its outer edges, sensing his presence by subtle vibrations.

  From her post, Maerad could see the outer wall better. Although at first it had seemed chaotic with activity, now she saw there was an order in it. She had little experience of fortifi­cations, but even she could see that compared with Norloch, Innail had minimal defenses. A high stone wall, reinforced with wards woven into the stone to keep out creatures of the Dark, seemed the thinnest tissue against the forces she had seen swirling below.

  Even as she thought this, the clouds before her seemed to explode, and Maerad reeled and almost fell. Before she even knew what was happening, she had automatically drawn her sword, shaking her head to rid herself of a dizziness. It was as if something had struck her head, although nothing had come near her. The air seemed to be full of black, wet, leathery wings. Wers, she thought, in some cold part of her. They've broken through the wards ...

  The wers landed swiftly, their claws raking the stone and striking sparks, and began to transform almost immediately into man shapes: tall figures with shoulders of brutal strength and black broadswords. Maerad heard, as if from a great dis­tance, Indik shouting orders, and the screaming of the children, and already the clash of weapons. Almost without thinking, she lifted her arms and said the word for White Fire, noroch, and a silver ball shot from her fingertips and caught the nearest wer on its shoulder, as it raised its arm to strike at a Bard. The flame stuck and burned, flaming through its hair, and the wer screeched. The sound went through Maerad's head like a knife. As it writhed on the ground, flames blackening and withering its body, the White Flame leaped to another wer close by, and Maerad saw more wers behind. She stretched out her hand to send more White Fire: but it was already over, and all the wers were dead, either hacked by the Bards and soldiers or burned by the White Flame.

  The orderliness of the outer wall was now splintered into chaos. Maerad saw that one of the children had been killed, and averted her eyes; another body lay limp close by. She rushed over to see if she could help, her heart in her mouth, and turned the body over; it was a Bard she didn't know, and she still breathed. A bruise was already turning purple over her temple.

  "Quick! Over here!" cried a voice at her shoulder, and Maerad turned in surprise. It was Camphis, who laid a hand on the Bard's face, over the bruise, and briefly glowed with magery. Yes, he would be a healer, Maerad thought, drawing back so she wouldn't be in the way. Indik had already arranged Bards in a fighting line, which was just as well, as the attack was almost immediately followed by another. Camphis stayed with the injured Bard until men arrived with a stretcher to carry her away, protecting her even as a wer rose on its haunches and struck out at him with its savage claws. He shore off its head with his sword, and the thing collapsed heavily to the ground. Smoking blood spurted across the stones and over Maerad's feet.

  Maerad had no time to feel disgust: she sent out White Flame, hitting every wer she could see, wondering why other Bards were not following her example. All of them exce
pt

  Cadvan, she saw, were fighting with weapons, not magery. In a very short time—or perhaps the time only seemed short—the wers were again all destroyed. The ground was littered with their foul corpses and smirched with their blood, and one of the cauldrons of pitch had been spilled and a pool of molten tar was spreading slowly over the stones. The stench made her gorge rise. Indik was shouting for men to throw the corpses off the wall, and in twos they flung the heavy bodies over the battlements. And then it happened again. Cadvan was scorch­ing the wers with White Fire as they landed so they flared up like living torches and collapsed, wrecks of burned leather and bone; but still no one else seemed to be using magery.

  Maerad, said Indik into Maerad's mind. Do not forget to track the Landrost. This is meant to distract us ...

  In the confusion, Maerad had forgotten entirely about the Landrost. She hastily began to explore, feeling for his presence. She drew back as far as she could from the fighting, trying not to look: to witness these savage acts was somehow worse than to perform them. Again, the fighting was over quickly, but there were more bodies on the ground this time: a young girl with her neck at an awful, unnatural angle, another Bard whom Maerad saw, after a quick glance, was certainly dead. Then there was a wave of attacks, one after the other, so that Maerad lost count, but this time more Bards could use the White Flame. The chil­dren had scrambled down the steps into shelter after the first couple of attacks, and the soldiers were now fighting steadily. No one else was hurt, but it began to turn into a systematic, sickening slaughter. Some wers, seeing the carnage, swerved back over the wall without even attempting to fight. Maerad concentrated on staying out of the way of the skirmishes, fol­lowing the malevolent pressure that signaled the Landrost, try­ing to feel him without letting him become aware of her.

  Cadvan was suddenly next to her; she hadn't seen him approach, and started in surprise. His face was grim, and splashed with blood, and his sword was black with it, but he seemed unhurt.

  "Out of trouble here?" he asked.

  Maerad nodded abstractedly; she didn't want to lose the thread she was following.

  "I thank you for the blackstone," he said. "You were right: it came in very useful. The Landrost somehow broke the wards and staved off our magery at the same time. The black­stone prevented him from affecting me, but everyone else was disempowered—his little revenge, no doubt, for that weather-charm. Maerad, if you could find out how he did it, it would help us. It costs the Landrost far less to lose ten than for us to lose one."

  Maerad turned to him. "He couldn't block me either," she said. "I told you I didn't need it."

  "I know. Maerad, you are key to this—" "Are these attacks happening all over Innail?" "I don't know. Probably."

  Yes. Indik's voice sounded harshly in Maerad's head: she had forgotten she was in mindtouch with him. We have been hard-pressed. But the wards are remade, and are stronger now. I think they will not try that again.

  For a moment, Maerad panicked: in the intimacy of mind-touching, she could feel the anxiety that Indik otherwise con­cealed, and she knew that Indik was depending on her in their battle with the Landrost. And she was already so weary. If Innail fell, it would be her fault. Cadvan caught the tenor of her thoughts, and took her hand.

  "Maerad, yes, much is hoped of you," he said. "But like all of us, you can only do your best, and no one will blame you if even that is not enough. We all have our parts to play in this, and our own responsibilities." Cadvan grimaced. "We are all tired. And it is not as if the wards were completely ineffective even though they were breached. It cost the wers to break them; they used a large part of their native powers, and were slower and less deadly when they next attacked us. The Landrost is sending them to be slaughtered. I suspect there will not be many more of these attacks."

  "Indik thinks he won't try that again," said Maerad.

  "Well, then. We have won at least some respite."

  "What next, then?" Maerad studied the scene before her: already the wers' bodies had been flung over the walls, the wounded fighters taken to the healers, and reeds and sand scat­tered over the blood that smeared the stone. For the moment, everything seemed orderly again, although all swords were drawn, and the defenders were wary, prepared for assault at any moment.

  "I don't know," said Cadvan. "The Light grant us strength to meet it."

  In the other part of her mind, Maerad tensed: she was now very close to the Landrost, and she could feel him brooding. She sensed a miasma of doubt coloring his presence, a bafflement: he had met resistance where he had thought to find none. Shifting cautiously, Maerad attempted to move closer to his thoughts. No, he was nothing like the Winterking, who was subtle and complex as well as powerful. The Landrost was a creature who thought only in crude patterns of power, seeking to overwhelm like a landslide. And yes, there was great and frightening power in these forces, but surely, also, a weakness. A landslide could only go in one direction, after all.

  She froze. She had become too absorbed in her contempla­tion, and the Landrost had become aware of her. Just as she could read him, her mind could be open to his. For a vital moment, she was too terrified to move. The Landrost lashed out

  with a blast of energy, and she felt the shock of it go through her, a malevolent pulse of chill darkness that left her numb and stu­pid. In that moment, the Landrost perceived her. As if she could see a reflection of herself in another's eye, she glimpsed for the briefest moment how he saw her: a glowing figure in the dark­ness, very small and very bright, pulsing with an unknowable power. Now she was trapped in his gaze, as if his perception pinned her beneath a crushing weight; she could neither move nor think. She felt his astonishment give way to a gloating tri­umph, and she felt his mind flex. The Landrost would squash her flat as if she were a beetle, and there was nothing she could do. Panicking, she struggled in his grip, but he held her fast.

  From very far away, at the edges of her mind, she heard a voice. She was so frightened that she didn't recognize who it was; her whole being was infused with darkness and impo­tence.

  Elednor Edil-Amarandh na, said the voice. It was cold too, colder than the Landrost, and glittered with an icy brilliance. This creature is nothing compared to you. Are you really so weak? Is the pebble really less than the mountain? And, bizarrely, it laughed. Its laughter was like ice falling on her skin, cutting her open, waking her from the impotence of nightmare.

  There was no time to think. The pressure was unbearable, and already the Landrost was blotting out her whole being: only the smallest light remained of herself. With her failing conscious­ness, she latched fiercely onto the idea of the pebble: in the land­slide, a pebble would not be destroyed. She stopped resisting the Landrost and let herself sink into the darkness, hard and round and small and herself. The wave of blackness tossed her an immeasurable distance, through realms of vacant space where stars rolled in their inscrutable dance, through clouds of blinding colors more vast than she could even imagine, where time itself was squeezed and stretched by colossal forces. She was lost, lost... but still she arced through her trajectory, a tiny star.

  She didn't know anymore who or where she was; everything went through her, faster and faster. And then, quite suddenly, time seemed to start again, and someone called her name. Blindly she reached toward it, to whoever knew her and called her. At last she rolled to a halt, dizzy and breathless. She was a body of flesh and blood and bone, and she could hear her own breathing. She gasped, feeling the air rush into her lungs, a hard surface pressing against her legs, something soft around her. Someone was stroking her face and saying her name.

  She opened her eyes and found herself looking straight into Cadvan's eyes. He repeated her name again, a question in his voice, and she nodded, still stunned.

  "Are you all right?" He was pale, with deep shadows under his eyes, and the scar around his eye stood out lividly against his skin.

  "No," said Maerad. She waited until the dizziness began to dissipate, and then pushed
Cadvan away and was sick. Wordlessly he handed her a cloth and she wiped her mouth, and then he gave her some medhyl. Maerad took a long draft and sat down next to him, her back against the wall.

  "He saw me," she said at last. "The Landrost. He almost destroyed me."

  Cadvan nodded, his face expressionless.

  She twisted around so she could look Cadvan in the face. "Was it you who laughed at me?"

  Cadvan looked puzzled. "No, my dear. I could not laugh at you in such a place. I called you home. You were so very far away."

  "Someone laughed at me. He saved my life, just as I thought I was going to be crushed. No, it wasn't your voice ..." Maerad frowned and took another sip of the medhyl. Her heart was no longer pounding so painfully. "I wonder who it was. It was a cold voice, very cold ..."

  She gasped: of course she knew who it was. The knowledge gave her the feeling that she was standing on a very high cliff. She wanted to be sick again, but at the same time she felt as if she were full of light, a strange, thrilling buoyancy.

  "Was it the Winterking?" asked Cadvan, after a long silence.

  Maerad nodded. "Yes," she said. "Yes. It was."

  V