The Crow (7 page)

By the time the first survivors arrived, the evacuation of Turbansk was all but complete. Those students at the School younger than seventeen were among the first to leave for Amdridh, many with loud protests; among the loudest were Chyafa's, who resented it mightily when he heard that Hem alone, among all the children his age, was to stay behind for the defense of the city. Hem enjoyed a sweet feeling of revenge when he saw Chyafa's gaze turned upon him with rancorous envy, but he found he did not feel the need, this time, to rise to his sneers. Hem merely smiled at his enemy and said nothing, and saw with satisfaction that it made him even more annoyed.

For days there was a stream of wagons and carriages and horses on the western road, carrying supplies and precious goods – the rarest of the irreplaceable scripts from the Library, treasures from the Turbansk palaces, the chief riches of every household – and all those who were not needed to defend the city. There were many grievous farewells; families were divided, fearing they would never meet again – parents from children, husbands from wives, brothers from sisters; lovers and old friends were parted. Hem witnessed many such despairing partings in the streets of Turbansk, and counted himself the luckier for staying.

And so Turbansk changed: there were few children playing in the streets, and then none, and the adults who made their ways through the city were solemn and preoccupied. Saliman's Bardhouse seemed empty, as only a few people remained there; he had been mentor mostly to younger students. Hem's chamber no longer echoed with the faint sounds of conversation and music and laughter, which usually filtered through from the many rooms. He was unsettled by the quiet; it brought home what was happening in the city and sparked a growing sense of foreboding.

And as the stream of people pouring out of Turbansk toward the west dwindled and then ceased, others came in from the east and filled the empty houses, pausing briefly before they too – those who were not too ill or exhausted to move, or who were not staying to defend Turbansk – took the long road west. Now there were also people from the villages and hamlets of the Balkir Plains between Turbansk and Baladh, fleeing from the advancing armies. The forces of the Nameless One were burning everything in their path – house and vine and orchard – and a faint black smudge was visible on the eastern horizon, turning the sunrise the color of blood.

The Healing Houses were not large enough to house all the wounded from Baladh, and so the empty School was used as well, and Bards in white robes moved between rows of beds in the cloisters where only days before students had run and shouted and laughed. Hem was asked to help the healers, and he threw himself into the work with goodwill. Even Ire was pressed into service, and when he was not on his usual perch on Hem's shoulder, flapped around the buildings bearing scribbled notes or messages.

Hem saw a lot of grim sights. There were many people, including a dozen Baladh children, with terrible burns that had not been attended to properly in their flight, and they suffered excruciating pain. The healers used a strong drug distilled from poppies and exerted all their Bardic arts to dull their agonies; but many of them died.

When Hem first saw the shocking burns, on a tiny girl who could not have been more than three years old, he thought his heart would burst with anger. She did not cry, but held hard to her mother, staring at her with black eyes full of a mute, unanswerable appeal. Even when she died, beyond the help of even the greatest healers of Turbansk, she still held on to her mother, and the woman's hand had to be gently untangled from the dead fingers, which grasped as tightly as a vice. It was then that Hem asked Oslar, the chief healer, what had happened to the burned children.

Oslar was an old man even by Bardic reckoning, his hair very white and his skin very black, and his strong face was lined with a deep and patient sadness. Hem reflected that he must have seen a lot of suffering in his long life. "She was caught by one of the worst weapons of the Dark," he said. "It was the dogsoldiers."

Hem had heard of dogsoldiers, but up until then they had been just a word.

"What are they?" he asked, although he knew that Oslar was needed elsewhere and did not have time to answer his questions.

"They are not human, and I do not know if they ever were," said the old Bard, speaking plainly and looking him in the eye, as one adult to another. "They are creatures of flesh and metal and fire, made by some foul sorcery in the forges of Den Raven, and they do not know what mercy is. They have heads like dogs with muzzles of blue metal. Their very bodies are weapons, from which they shoot a liquid fire. It sticks to flesh and eats into it. It's the strange fire, how it sticks, that makes the burns so bad."

Oslar looked across at the other beds in that room, with their small victims, and Hem swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. "Now, Hem, I have work to do. Excuse me." Oslar nodded courteously, and Hem followed him with his eyes as he moved slowly from bed to bed. Hem knew the old Bard had slept very little in the past two nights, and yet he showed no sign of weariness.

He was grateful that his question had been answered, although the answer did not comfort him. Oslar, he thought, was a very great man. Then he felt surprised at himself: he didn't usually think things like that.

As Hem ran around the School of Turbansk, bearing potions from the herbalists or new dressings from the weavers, bringing a beaker of water to a woman too weak from childbed to walk, or holding a broken arm for binding, his anger smoldered and grew bright. He hated what had been done so wantonly to these people with every fiber in his being. He was no stranger to rage, but for the first time his feeling was tempered by compassion, and he discovered a patience within himself that he had not known he possessed.

Perhaps it was the example of Oslar and the other healers, including his mentor Urbika, who had stayed with most of the other Bards and was herself a gifted healer. Even if he made a mistake, which was seldom, they never spoke a sharp word to him, no matter how little they had slept, or how overworked they were. And so Hem learned, in those few days, how to listen to the ill, how to anticipate their needs, how to run fast in soft shoes so he made no loud noises that might disturb those who slept. Before the scale of the suffering before him, his previous complaints seemed petty and insignificant. He was too busy, in any case, to worry much about himself; his day was filled from dawn to dusk with countless tasks and errands, and Oslar himself began to teach him some charms of healing for the less serious cases. He was so tired by nightfall that, for the first time since he had been in Turbansk, he was not troubled by nightmares.

When Saliman told him one evening that the Bards were praising his work, and that Oslar had said that few minor Bards in his experience had shown such innate talent as Hem in the arts of caring for the sick, Hem accepted the praise, which was hard earned, with a new humility.

"Don't be offended if I say that I am surprised; I thought you would be too impatient for this work," said Saliman, with a smile, which for Hem was ample reward for every hour he had spent in the Healing House. "Perhaps you will be a healer when you are grown. Every Bard has to find out how their Gift best expresses itself; for some, it is a hard road. But I think you might be lucky. Healing is one of the highest callings; and there is always need for healers, even in times of peace."

Hem pondered Saliman's words in silence. He could imagine himself as a healer. Perhaps one day he could be as good as Oslar.

"You'd have to work on your scripting, though," said Saliman, interrupting his reverie. "Imagine, say, if the herbalist made a love potion instead of a laxative because he couldn't read your instructions. The trouble you could cause!"

Hem grinned; Saliman was constantly nagging him to work on his writing, which was nearly illegible. Perhaps now he could see the point.

They were eating a quick meal before Saliman went out again to continue the endless work of preparing Turbansk for an assault. The food was plain, but tasty: freshwater fish from the Lamarsan Sea baked with dates, and a mash of pulses. Outside Saliman's rooms, birds burbled in the trees as they settled to their evening roosts, and a cool breeze brushed Hem's cheek. It was very peaceful. Hem suddenly wished, with a furious longing, that he could have come to Turbansk in ordinary times.

Saliman had just told him of the first attacks on Turbansk, by raider ships sailing from the mouth of the Niken River across the Lamarsan Sea, and Hem had seen soldiers in the eating halls, on their way to harry the Black Fleets, or returning exhausted and grim-faced. No raider ships had yet reached Turbansk, and, Saliman told him, none would: the harbor defenses were stout. But the raiders drew off Turbansk's strength, wearying their forces even before the main assault; and after the fall of Baladh, Saliman feared that a fleet of stolen ships would set out from Baladh Harbor to launch a major attack.

Because of the war, Saliman had not even had time to take Hem, as he had promised, to see the Lamar Falls in the Lamarsan Caves, the sacred heart of the Light in Turbansk, which he had said were one of the wonders of the world. If times had been different, perhaps they could have ridden there with Maerad... but Hem quickly shut off his thoughts about his sister: they were too painful.

"Will there ever be peace again?" he asked, a little sadly.

"Of course there will be." Saliman leaned back and closed his eyes, and Hem could see how weary he actually was. The skin under his eyes was purple, as if it were bruised, and his face was drawn. Hem wondered how long it was since Saliman had slept; he was willing to warrant it was more than two days. "If not in my lifetime or yours, then in someone else's."

Hem, depressed by Saliman's reply, didn't answer, and Saliman opened one eye and stared at him. "Forgive me, Hem; I should not jest. I am so weary, and the storm has not even hit."

"You must rest," said Hem sternly, with his new authority as a healer.

Saliman smiled wanly. "We will be ready soon," he said. "Then I will rest. For a short time."

Over the next few days the black smudge of smoke in the east grew closer and the Healing Houses began to empty. All the sick were to leave Turbansk, even the worst injured, although Hem saw the anxiety on the healers' faces as the patients were placed on the special litters that were to transport them. He knew they should not be moved, but he also understood that it was impossible for them to stay in Turbansk. Many healers went with them, to care for them on their long journey to Car Amdridh, although Oslar and Urbika were among those who stayed behind, and, very suddenly, there was little for Hem to do. He spent a day in the Bardhouse, bored and lonely but too depressed to go out, feeling a sense of doom growing inside him. His patience seemed to have disappeared with his work at the Healing Houses, and he was even irritable with Ire. That evening he asked if he could go with Saliman the next day "Perhaps I could help?" he said. "Ire was really useful in the Healing Houses, too..."

Saliman studied Hem's face. "It might be as boring as anything you are doing here," he said. "But yes, I should have thought of it myself. It is a little gloomy waiting alone for war to break over your head. Of course you can come."

So the next day Hem became Saliman's shadow, as he had in his first week in Turbansk, except this time the slender boy had a white bird on his shoulder. The Bards and captains and city consuls did not object, if they seldom took notice of him, and the sick panic that had begun to stir in Hem's stomach eased back slightly. When he looked into the faces of the men and women who talked so earnestly, at their determination and strength, he did not see how they would be defeated.

As a member of the First Circle of Bards, one of the ruling bodies of Turbansk, Saliman was in charge of many aspects of the city's defense, and by the end of the day Hem began to understand why Saliman had been so tired. That day he went to several different meetings at the School and the Ernan – the great palace that stretched gracefully under the shadow of the Red Tower – listening to reports from scouts and the captains who had been attacking the raiders on the Lamarsan Sea with fire boats, and conferring with the other leaders of Turbansk to coordinate strategy. If any of them thought it odd that Hem was present, they didn't say so.

Hem hadn't been inside the Ernan before, and was awed. Most of its riches had been stripped and sent away to Car Amdridh, but it still possessed a breathtaking grandeur that surpassed even Norloch. Norloch was a high citadel built into the living rock above the Norloch Harbor, tower above tower of white stone topped by the Crystal Hall of Machelinor, and it spoke of majesty and authority. The Ernan was not a tower but an ancient palace, and it was built for pleasure. It had been added to and changed by successive rulers over countless centuries until it was the largest single building in the city surrounded by wide gardens planted with perfumed trees and rare flowers.

The palace spiraled inside high walls of stone, room after graceful room connected by archways or doors wrought of brass or iron in intricate grilles. The floors were of polished marble or mosaics of glazed tiles, depicting abstract patterns of flowers or stars. The rooms opened onto countless courtyards, each different: one contained nothing but white sand, raked into patterns, with black stones placed carefully upon it to induce contemplation; another held a fountain and a lawn of a pungent herb that refreshed the mind when it was walked upon; yet another was full of roses of every color, spilling in artful disarray onto marble paving. Some chambers had large windows that opened onto wide terraces, from which the sun could be watched as it set across the Lamarsan Sea.

Hem walked through the endless maze of the palace, hearing his heels echo on the floors, his mouth open. He had thought the School of Turbansk grand, but this made the School seem austere. Saliman saw his expression and chuckled.

"We give our rulers the same name as their dwelling," he said. "For the people of Turbansk, both palace and ruler embody the greatness of our city; and, perhaps, its folly. Some Ernani have taken this role too literally; the Bards and the people had to relieve one of his rule, when he became too expensive to maintain. And so we have this great palace, one of the glorious treasures of Edil-Amarandh."