The Crow (34 page)

Saliman whistled. "And from Nuk Caves?"

"Another six killed. Munira saw them blasted before she got away. But we are being hunted like vermin."

Saliman stared down at the table. "I suppose you have considered whether there is an informant in our midst."

"Aye." Hem couldn't see Hared's face, but his tone sent chills down his back. He would not like to be the traitor Hared uncovered, he thought; there would be no mercy. "But I trust all those in Nal-Ak-Burat, at least."

Despite himself, Hem was listening hard, and now Hared looked up at him. He busied himself with his breakfast, trying to look as if he had not been eavesdropping.

"Good morrow, lad," said Hared. "Saliman has told me of some of your adventures. We have seen those deathcrows, but only far off. We need someone with birdlore here: our chief birdmaster was killed only two days ago."

Scarlet, Hem nodded. "I like birds," he blurted out.

"Don't mind Hared," said Saliman. He seemed to be amused by Hem's awkwardness, which only made the boy feel more embarrassed. "He is as tough and twisted as an old olive tree, but you could not have a better man at your back in a tight spot."

"Oh. I'm sure," said Hem. An awkward silence fell, and he spooned up the rest of his dohl as quickly as he could.

"The dogsoldiers don't seem to be able to smell children," said Hared thoughtfully. "Our soldiers have noticed that much. And young Hem seems a smart lad. Perhaps the boy could spy for us. I have been wondering about those child armies – "

"Hem will do no such thing," said Saliman sharply. "Do not think of it, Hared. He has not the skills."

"Skill can be taught."

Hem looked up into Hared's cold gaze, his heart quickening.

"I wouldn't mind doing something like that," he said slowly. "I would like to do something. Zelika would, too. I mean, if you think I could help..."

"I
do not wish you to walk into harm's way, Hem," said Saliman.

"There's nowhere out of harm's way," Hem answered bitterly. "Except here, maybe. And I can't live underground for the rest of my life." Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a longing to feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, to breathe wind that smelled of grass and trees, rather than the cold, unchanging air of underground. "I haven't seen the sunlight for so long."

Saliman looked displeased, but said nothing further, and the conversation moved on to other topics. Hem, feeling a little more at ease now that Hared wasn't treating him as a potential traitor, furtively took the opportunity to study him. He found the Bard both fascinating and repellent; there was something in his face, a pitilessness edging to cruelty, that chilled him. It was difficult to work out Saliman's attitude toward him; he clearly trusted him, but Hem thought that he did not regard him as a friend.

Hem learned that the network of caves beneath Savitir extended through Nazar almost to Den Raven, and were used by the Bards to gain information that was sent on to trusted Bards in Annar, or used to mount minor attacks on the Black Army behind their front lines. A resistance was gathering shape even as the Nameless One consolidated his power in the Suderain.

"Our only power is in knowledge," Hared explained. "We are not many, but among our numbers we count some of the most skillful Bards in Edil-Amarandh; we may lose now, but we struggle so there is hope for the future. We are entering an age like the Great Silence, when the Nameless One held sway over all our world, and the Light was kept in just such places as these. All the same, our recent losses hit hard."

Saliman nodded abstractedly. "There are many levels to this struggle," he said. "Remember Maerad's foredream, Hem? The voice that spoke to her out of the Shadow, and said:
I live in every human heart?"
He shot a piercing glance at Hared. "The time has come for every person to choose where they place their faith: and that choosing may be more difficult than it seems."

"What do you mean?" asked Hem, bewildered by the sudden change of tack.

"It may be a question of whether to use the weapons of the Dark in order to worst the Dark, or whether it is better to be defeated, with all that defeat means."

"Your riddles are meaningless, my friend," growled Hared. "This is the problem with most Bards. It's so easy to debate right and wrong, while our house collapses around us. I do not think in such terms."

"I know that, Hared," said Saliman softly. "Our situation is desperate indeed: I understand that as well as you do. But how can we say that we fight for the Light, if we show ourselves no better than the Dark?"

Hared's lips tightened into a thin, unforgiving line, and an expression of mortal offense flashed over his face. In the accompanying silence, Hem looked from Bard to Bard, feeling suddenly alarmed. For a moment the tension that flared between them made him wonder if knives would be drawn. They seemed to be arguing, but he had no idea what about: perhaps earlier, before he came into the room, they had been debating some tactic of which Saliman deeply disapproved.

Hared laughed, and the moment passed as if it had never been. "You ask difficult questions," he said. "I suppose that is your special gift. I respect you for it, Saliman. But I tell you, there are times when choice is beyond us, and we must do what we must."

Saliman smiled, but with an underlying grimness. "There is always a choice, my friend," he said heavily. "There is always a choice."

XIV

T
HE
S
KYLESS
C
ITY

It was some time before Hem breathed open air again. By then, living underground seemed almost normal; even Ire had regained his usual insouciance, and had become a favorite of the Bards at Nal-Ak-Burat, despite the almost immediate resumption of his bad habit of thieving bright objects.

Within a day, Hem had met everyone in the small community that based themselves in the underground city. There were about sixteen Bards, as well as the six small children, who were kept there, as Zelika had said, because there was nowhere else to go. The children were mainly cared for by a Bard called Nimikera of Jerr-Niken, a silent woman who had been injured in some recent incident; the top of a vicious, barely healed scar was visible on her neck, running down toward her breast, and she walked with a bad limp.

The Bards in Nal-Ak-Burat were only a small part of a network working behind the lines of the Black Army; most of them hid in the honeycomb of caves that ran beneath Savitir and Nazar. Saliman told Hem that their true number was kept secret; only the leaders – the five Bards they had met on their first encounter – knew the true extent of the resistance. This was to protect the network if any were captured by Imank's forces.

"There is a chance that Hulls could scry them against their will, and find everything they know," Saliman explained. "So it is politic that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, lest we lose both."

Hem had been scried during his short stay in Norloch, voluntarily opening his mind to that of another Bard's. The thought of such an invasion, made without permission, made him shudder. "But what if Hared or someone were captured?" he asked. "Wouldn't the same thing happen?"

"Do you remember how Dernhil killed himself, rather than be scried by Hulls and betray Maerad?" said Saliman. "That is the last defense. And Hared or any of the other Bards would do exactly that, if they were captured. But still, it is easier to keep a secret if you don't know it in the first place."

Hared had again raised the question of Hem working for the Bards, and Hem, both excited and daunted by the prospect, had talked it over with Zelika. Initially, to his surprise, she was dubious.

"I don't know, Hem," she said. "What could we do? Perhaps it is better to do as Saliman says, and to stay out of danger."

Hem was so taken aback by Zelika's change of heart that he didn't know what to say. "But you want to fight the Black Army, don't you? Don't you want revenge for your family? To help the Light? You're the one who went to join the attack in Turbansk, not me – "

Zelika avoided Hem's eye as she answered. "Yes, I did," she said. "And I learned my lesson. I am probably more use here, helping with the babies." Even as they spoke, she was dandling Banu on her lap.

"But Hared says this is a way we might help," said Hem.

"And what does Saliman say?"

Hem was silent. Saliman was against the idea, and angry with Hared for speaking to Hem about it without his consent; as Zelika knew very well, it had been a subject of contentious argument between the Bards. "But if we can help..." said Hem, waving his arms around with frustration. "If we could do something – Hared says we can help in ways that others can't."

Zelika put Banu down and looked soberly at Hem, her head on one side.

"That may well be true, but I don't trust Hared," she said. "I mean, it's not like he's a traitor or anything. It's just that he doesn't care about us; if we died, he would think it perfectly fine as long as he got the information he wanted. And even Hared admits it's dangerous work."

"But there's nowhere that's not dangerous – " Hem began to argue, but Zelika interrupted.

"Hem, I don't feel anymore that I want to die. Saliman wouldn't get so cross about it if he thought we would be all right. And it's not as if he exactly coddles us. After all, he let us stay in Turbansk, which was hardly safe."

"Yes, I know." Hem pushed his fingers through his hair. He didn't understand why he was so attracted to the idea of helping the Bards in their perilous work against the Black Army. He just knew that when Hared had suggested the idea, his heart had jumped in his breast with a mixture of fear and excitement. Somehow, he felt he could do this work, and do it well. He was tired of feeling useless in the struggle against the Dark.

But aside from that, a deep anger had begun to smolder inside him. He thought of how the Dark had blighted his life, almost from the moment he had been born; how the School that should have been his home had been burned to the ground, his family captured and slaughtered; and how he had been kidnapped by Hulls and put in the orphanage. His childhood had been stolen by the Nameless One, as surely as if he had burned the School and murdered his father with his own hands. And now his second home, Turbansk, lay in ruins like the first. He had no prospect of any other, apart from refuges like Nal-Ak-Burat.

Nightmares had begun to torment him again. He would wake in his small room gasping and drenched in sweat, fending off half-remembered visions of the ceremony the Hulls had held to turn him into one of them, when they had ordered him to murder another boy from the orphanage called Mark. Hem hadn't known him well, but he quite liked him. His anguished, terrified, despairing face haunted Hem's waking hours. This was the Dark, he thought. This was its essence: the terror that stamped the faces of the innocent, the wanton cruelty that joyed in this terror, the horrifying indifference. He hated it with all his heart; and he wanted to do what he could to defeat it.