Content

  The Friendship

  SALIMAN was homesick. It was the kind of sickness that lay heavy in his belly, a slow, grinding ache. He had never been so far from home, and he felt the lack of his kind in the high northern citadel of Norloch. The days were warm – it was summer after all, and in Annar the summers were green and gentle – but his soul was chill. As he walked the First Circle, the high centre of that garrisoned and walled city, it seemed to him, for all its grandeur, to be infused with a strange melancholy.

  Far away in Turbansk, his southern home, it was the month of Hassian, the Lion’s Breath, when the wind roared in from the deserts and laid siege to the city. At this time of year, everyone rose before dawn and hurried to the marketplace to do their business. For the rest of the day the people fought a losing battle against the heat. It was the wind, dry and harsh and merciless, that made it unbearable. No shade protected against the Lion’s Breath, the wind laden with dust from the desert that found its way into the sweltering houses through every crack. Most people tried to sleep until the burning sun dipped over the horizon and delivered some release. Some splashed in the shallows of the Lamarsan Sea, under the shade of the city walls, and others embedded themselves in the dark-shuttered, high-ceilinged coffee houses in the bazaars and spent all day complaining about the weather. How you yearned for the long shadows of evening then, on those endless tawny days.

  But in Hassian, the nights made up for the days’ tormenting tedium. At night the city woke up. The young women painted their lips and eyelids and put on their silks and bangles, and the young men bathed and perfumed themselves and braided their long hair; and all night long they walked along the wide, tree-lined boulevards by the Ernan Palace and flirted and gossiped under the bright lamps of Turbansk and the huge, serene moon. Musicians would crowd into the gardens of the great houses with flutes and dulcimers and harps and odhus until it seemed the very walls of the city pulsed with music. The coffee houses burst with people of all ages, all vibrating with relief from the heat, all charged and excited with the cool of the night. The city quietened after midnight, when at last the heat abated (and most people then slept on the roofs of their houses) although some revellers would dance until dawn. And the fountains played all night in the gardens, bewitching the city with their gentle melodies…

  Saliman, who had only recently been through the rituals of instatement that confirmed him as a Bard, found himself tormented by these memories, which rose inside his body with a vivid sensuality that made him ache with longing. He yearned with all his soul for the music-filled nights of Hassian.

  He had travelled to Norloch from the Suderain because he wanted to continue his studies of the High Arts – the lore of Edil-Amarandh and the deeper mageries – with Nelac of Lirigon, one of the greatest Bards in all Annar. Nelac usually taught at the School of Lirigon, but this year he had bought his students to Norloch, so they could all use its famous library. Saliman had read every scroll of Nelac’s that he could get his hands on, and the beauty of his writings set him afire: he wished to know everything that this deep and plangent mind could teach him, he longed to plumb the secrets of his magery. After much thought, he resolved to ask Nelac if he would take him as a student, and wrote him a long and shyly impassioned letter. The great Bard’s reply made tears start into his eyes, and he remembered its words all his life. Nelac had simply written: “My dear one, if you so desire, and if your heart and your mind draw you to this long and hard and beautiful path, come at once. There is always a place here for souls such as you.”

  The hard thing then was to tell Oslar, his beloved mentor, of his decision. Oslar was beginning to feel the shadows of age close around him, and he had hoped that Saliman, the most innately gifted Healer of his generation, would one day take his place as the Chief Healer of Turbansk. More, he loved this young man, whom he had watched grow from a stripling into the early blossoming of his power. It took Saliman a long time to screw up the courage to tell Oslar that he wanted to leave Turbansk. At last, stumblingly, he told Oslar of his desire, and although the old Bard’s face darkened with sadness, he did not seem surprised. He looked searchingly into Saliman’s face, and then he smiled.

  “My dear one,” said the Bard, and Saliman started, as it was the same endearment Nelac had used in his letter. “I have taught you for many years, and in that time I could hardly have failed to see how the White Flame burns in you. I regret, you will never know how much I regret, that you are so unfairly gifted: seldom do Bards show aptitude for more than one of the Three Arts, and there is always need for Healers as great as you will be one day. Do not be troubled: it is a joy to me that Nelac of Lirigon offers to teach you. You deserve no less. And I know you will come home.”

  This eased Saliman’s heart, and he replied to Nelac’s letter, saying that he would travel as soon as he could, and began to make preparations for his departure. But as he did he realized, with an intensity he hadn’t experienced before, how much he loved Turbansk. It was early spring, and in the golden light that fell over the pale red stone of its buildings and illuminated the myriad greens and bright flowers of its gardens, the city had never seemed to him more beautiful. As he became more excited about his departure, his regret at leaving swelled inside him. When he said farewell to his family and, last of all, to Oslar, he thought his heart would break. But he shouldered his pack, and began the long journey northward out of the city gates.

  In Norloch, he was lonelier than he had ever been on his solitary and peaceful journey. Nelac was everything he had expected, and more; but he could not study with him every hour of the day. Nelac’s Bardhouse, with its high, dark ceilings, tapestried walls and marble-floored hallways, had a lofty grandeur strange to one used to the sensual splendours of the architecture of Turbansk, and even Saliman’s private chamber, for all its comfort, oppressed him. He missed the spare beauty of the whitewashed walls of his room in the School of Turbansk, with its grilled windows that threw shadows in the shape of flowers over the polished wooden floor, and its few bits of simple but well-made furniture.

  Nelac taught a dozen students: young men and women who, like Saliman, had been drawn to him to continue their studies of the High Arts and who lived in the Bardhouse, as was the custom. None were children; he did not teach novices. They were friendly and pleasant, but Saliman felt shy in their company: they formed a close-knit group, with its own jokes and language, that he didn’t know how to enter.

  At the centre of the group was a young Bard who, like Nelac, was from Lirigon. Saliman met Cadvan of Lirigon when he came to Nelac’s private rooms on his first day in Norloch. Cadvan, who had clearly been deep in conversation with Nelac, frowned at Saliman’s entrance, annoyed by the interruption, and left swiftly. Saliman was taken aback by Cadvan’s brusqueness, a kind of rudeness he had not encountered before, and after that he regarded him with mistrust. Over the following weeks, he saw that Cadvan was clearly a Bard of great native power and ambition, and it was said of him that he was sure to be First Bard of all Annar one day. But Saliman thought him arrogant and selfish, and wondered at the admiration he inspired in others. Saliman held himself apart from the other students and, although no one was hostile, he was left to his own devices. Cadvan himself treated the southern Bard with a distant courtesy: but Saliman, who quickly showed himself to be among the most talented of Nelac’s students, felt the prickles of an unspoken rivalry.

  Saliman kept his thoughts to himself and bent his mind to study. Nelac was a gifted teacher, both rigorous and generous, and Saliman’s respect for the subtlety and profundity of Nelac’s powers increased as his studies deepened. In his spare time, he most often found himself in the taverns in the Lower Circles, where sometimes he met traders from the Suderain and was able to speak his own language and hear news from home. The other students would have been surprised to see him then: Saliman’s natural gregariousness was seldom evident in the Upper Circles, and they thought him taciturn and dour. So it was for some weeks, and Saliman saw no reason for things to change. He planned to finish his studies with Nelac as soon as possible, perhaps within the next year, and return home.

  His homesickness never lessened. For the first time in his life, Saliman was conscious of the blackness of his skin: in those days, few Bards travelled to Norloch from the south, and he was the only Bard of the Suderain in the entire First Circle. Saliman now thought he knew why. The stern Librarians looked at him askance when he entered the huge Library of Norloch, and at first he wandered through its labyrinths, staring at the confusion of scrolls on the endless shelves, too hesitant to ask for help. It was nothing anybody said, more what he felt was left unsaid: the way eyes would follow him as he walked through the street, only to flicker away when he swung his gaze to meet them, or the cool courtesy of many of the Norloch Bards, who greeted him with fine words because of his Bard’s robes but conveyed a sense, all the same, that they did so under sufferance.

  It was not the same in the Lower Circles. Norloch was, after all, a port town, a centre of trade as well as the garrisoned centre of the Light in Annar, where the greatest mages gathered and taught the Lore of the Bards. Into the city flowed silk and oil from Thorold, rye from Ileadh, wine and coffee from the Suderain, furs from the northern coast. Tongues from every part of Edil-Amarandh could be heard at the port, and nobody blinked at dark skin. Saliman felt that the nine walled Circles of Norloch became progressively colder as he wound his way in through the gates until, when he entered the First Circle, the highest and inmost core, where the famed crystal Tower of Machelinor rose three hundred spans over the broad meads of the Carmallachen, all colour and warmth had been leached away. Only the anarech trees, dark-leaved and graceful against the white stone, lent a vivid life to the grand streets: they were now in full flower, and their crimson blooms fell on the stone paving like huge drops of blood. Here was the heart of the White Flame, the central mystery of the Light in Annar; and Saliman thought it keen and pitiless, like the light that gleamed on the blade of a sword.

  One day, as summer began to turn to autumn, Saliman was in the Library of Norloch searching for a particular poem from which Nelac had quoted earlier that day during a long discussion about the Balance. The poem was by a famous Turbanskian Bard, Lorica, and Saliman had the feeling that Nelac had spoken it especially for him. He couldn’t get the lines out of his head:

  In my heart’s burning quarter

  There is a courtyard, silent, cool,

  Where my soul waits for me.

  Though I am lost, though I wander

  The streets of a strange city,

  There my soul waits for me.

  I see my face in that still pool

  Where the bright fish flicker

  Through and through me,

  And the leaves of spring quiver

  As they yearn towards the sky

  Through and through me.

  Saliman had finally, with some difficulty, tracked down a scroll of Lorica’s poems, and was rolling it out at the reading table, when he became aware that someone was reading over his shoulder. Irritated, he turned round. It was Lamkil, a student whom he knew by sight. He had a thin, clever face and hair so blond it was almost white.

  “Why are you looking at that rubbish?” said Lamkil. “It’s a waste of time.”

  He was smiling, but his eyes, a very pale blue with white lashes, were cold and contemptuous.

  “I read where my heart leads me,” Saliman answered shortly.

  “Not only by a woman,” said Lamkil. “But a dark-skinned woman.” He perched himself on the table, pushing the scroll carelessly aside, and stared down insolently at Saliman. “Dark-skinned,” he repeated. “Have you never thought that the Dark especially favours those of its own colour?” He smiled again, his face a mask of politeness. “The Nameless One himself was of your race. Surely the skin of the Dark is a mark of the Dark. I myself wonder why we have these writings in our Library. Such people can only poison the Light.”

  Saliman was stunned, as if he had been bludgeoned, and did not react at all. Lamkil nodded as if they had been exchanging pleasantries, and casually sauntered away. As Saliman watched his retreating back, he was consumed by a choking, murderous rage. Blind to everything else, he sprang to his feet and lifted his hands, the power boiling through his veins, to hurl a death-curse. But before he could utter the fatal words, somebody grasped his forearm.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” said Cadvan. “At least, not here.”

  Saliman found himself looking into another pair of blue eyes; but these were steady and serious. Next to Cadvan stood another of Nelac’s students, Ceredin, who was watching Lamkil’s exit from the Library with open disgust.

  “I’d give him boils. Or piles,” she said, turning to Saliman. “It’s all a lackspittle like Lamkil deserves.”

  Saliman stood very still, teetering on the edge of his fury. His heart was hammering in his chest, and he realized that he had broken out into a sweat. His anger slowly ebbed away, leaving a trail of bitterness. He shook Cadvan’s hand off his arm, and stared at the two Bards. Both were blue-eyed and pale-skinned, and he felt a sudden weariness and disgust with all these arrogant northern Bards.

  “Did you not know that dark skin is a sign of evil?” he said grimly. “Be careful, lest you be sullied.”

  Cadvan opened his mouth to answer, but Ceredin cut sharply across him. “That’s strange,” she said. “I’ve been told that nothing corrupts the purity of the Light more deeply than the work of a woman.”

  “Such arguments are ignorant and misled,” said Cadvan confidently. “And best ignored.”

  Involuntarily, Ceredin and Saliman exchanged a swift, sceptical glance. Then Saliman picked up the scroll of Lorica’s poems.

  “I think I will read this in my own chamber,” he said, and left.

  Saliman hurried back to the Bardhouse, avoiding the eyes of passers-by. He thought he could now read the meaning of the cold courtesies he endured in Norloch, and he couldn’t bear it: it was wrong, wrong, it went against everything he had ever been taught. He felt as if a horrifying abyss had opened beneath his feet. In the entrance hall he met Nelac, who greeted him and then looked at him hard.

  “Something is wrong,” said Nelac. “What is it?”

  Saliman stood in the hallway, clutching the scroll to his breast, and couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Come into my rooms,” Nelac said gently. “It is not too early for a little wine.”

  Numbly, Saliman followed Nelac into his sitting room. It was a sharp contrast to the gloom of the hallway: light poured through open doors that led out to a courtyard garden, now full of blossoming flowers, and one wall was colourfully painted with a mural of a woodland inhabited by marvellous beasts and birds. The room itself was comfortably littered with a mess of scrolls, musical instruments and strange objects: curious shells and crystals, and tiny figurines carved of ivory or alabaster. Saliman sat on a couch and watched as the old Bard carefully poured a ruby wine into two delicately blown glasses, and handed one to him.

  “Now,” said Nelac, sitting down. “What happened?”

  “I – I almost killed a Bard today.”

  Nelac’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing, waiting patiently for Saliman to continue. Saliman sipped his wine, wondering how to begin, and haltingly explained how he had gone to the Library to find Lorica’s poems. Soon the words began to pour out: what Lamkil had said and the despair that it woke in Saliman’s heart, his shame over his uncontrollable fury, his loneliness in Norloch, the coldness he felt here, his homesickness. Nelac listened without interrupting, frowning slightly with concentration.

  “Maybe,” said Saliman, tasting the bitterness in his mouth, “I should just go home.”

  “I think that would be a mistake. Although I cannot blame you for wanting to.”

  The two Bards sat in silence. Saliman listened to the birds chirping outside in the garden, feeling a peace grow inside him that he had not felt since he had arrived in Norloch.

  “My dear one,” Nelac said at last. “I am sorry beyond words that you have encountered such malice. And I fear you are right that it signals more than petty divisiveness and jealousies… Did you know that I have been criticized by some, because I have eight apprentices who are women? And they also say that I should not accept Bards from poor families, that Norloch, being the high centre of the Light in Annar, should only take students from the great Houses.”

  “But in the Paur Libridha…”

  “Aye, in the laws that Maninaë set down, it is said that since the Gift may appear in any person, whether they be rich or poor, whether they be man or woman, then the Light must be blind to difference, and teach every child granted the Gift: for to leave a spark of the Light untended in any diminishes us all.” His deep gaze rested on Saliman, with a gleam of ironic amusement. “These same critics who whisper about my teaching women – or Turbanskians – cannot explain why my students become the greatest Bards in Annar and the Seven Kingdoms. The answer is simple: I look for the Gift, and not for anything else. There are many different flowers in the gardens of the Light, and in my eyes they are all beautiful.”

  Nelac poured them both another wine. “Lately there are those who argue that in some people, the Light is purer than in others. I have thought long on the reasons for this, and I believe it stems from a flaw in the thinking of the Bards. Bards have ever defined themselves by what they are not, as much as by what they are. Even the Light defines itself against the Dark. But remember the First Song, the Song of Making?

  “First was Dark…

  And the darkness thought and it thought without mind,

  And the thought became mind and the thought quickened

 

1 2