The Singing

Excerpt

Maerad and Cadvan had decided to press northeast, since they preferred to stay away from the refugees, and soon found themselves separated from the others by an ever-widening lake. In the end, they were driven past the edges of the Weywood to the eastern edge of the Hollow Lands before they escaped the rising waters.

When the floods stopped spreading, they looked back over a massive brown lake, punctuated by trees or ridges of higher ground that had now become islands. Some of these temporary islets were crowded by unlikely menageries of goats and cows and foxes and sodden rabbits. There was no sign of people; they were now far beyond the inhabited lowlands. No chance of another tavern for miles, Maerad thought gloomily.

“We should have followed the farmers,” said Maerad, after she and Cadvan had finished their meal. “Then we’d be closer to Desor. Nobody would have noticed us in that chaos.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Cadvan answered. He was leaning back against the rock wall, his eyes shadowed in the firelight, his legs stretched out in front of him, rubbing his boots with a mixture of tallow and oil. “But it’s hard to say whether we would be better off if we had.”

“We’re running out of time,” said Maerad.

Cadvan gave her a sharp glance. “I know, Maerad. Even I can feel that. But unless you can access some hitherto unknown power that can transport us over several leagues of water — not, I confess, that I rule that out entirely — I fear we are stuck here.”

“You mean, sprout wings or something?”

“Is it so strange? You can become a wolf, after all. Perhaps you could shape-shift into another animal. Not that that would help me, unless you became a giant bird, like those that are said to live in the southern deserts and lay eggs as big as a man.”

A silence fell between them, and Maerad took the tallow and attended to her own boots. She hunched her cloak around her as she rubbed the leather, pondering what Cadvan had said. She knew he had meant it as a joke, but was it possible that she could do something to get them across the floods? She had sometimes wondered if she could assume the shapes of other animals but had been afraid to try. She was even more afraid now; she had avoided her Elemental powers ever since the battle at Innail, and had been reluctant to use magery, even the simplest of glimmerspells. But maybe Cadvan had a point: if she could be a wolf, why not a bird?

She pondered for a while longer, remembering all the different kinds of birds she had seen, and then, on an impulse, she attempted a transformation. She was curious to see if she could do it, and in part she was impelled by mischief: she wanted to see the expression on Cadvan’s face when he suddenly found himself sitting next to a hawk. Sinking into the inner space where all her selves fell away — seeking that point where transformation was possible — was easy for her now. This time, instead of seeking her wolf shape, she commanded herself: Be hawk!

At first she thought she had succeeded: there was that moment of pure agony that always came with the transformation, before her new shape coalesced out of the protean self she had become. But this time the anguish did not stop; it was as if she were being consumed by a terrible flame. She screamed, but she had no mouth with which to scream; she was racked with anguish through her whole being and couldn’t even cry for help.

She had no way of knowing how long this agony lasted, although it felt as if it went on forever, as if she would always be racked by this torment. Then a blessed coolness fell on her, like starlight, like bells tolling across a landscape of snow, and the fire dimmed; the coolness was her Name, Elednor, shaping her into her known self, and as she heard the Name she had a mouth again, and eyes, and skin.