Free The Bone Queen by Alison Croggon

his eyes with his hand. “Night after night, Nelac. Night after night I see all green and living things destroyed, all beauty laid to waste, everything I love trampled to dust. I’ve wondered if I am going mad. Sometimes I think I am. And behind all that, I keep thinking of what Ceredin said: we have to find Cadvan, we have to bring him back.”
    Nelac looked shaken. “Is there more?” he said.
    “Yes. Perhaps this will make you doubt me…” Dernhil took a deep breath. “These are too easily explained as the residue of anguish or fear, but I am certain they are not. I have dreams in which the Bone Queen still walks in Annar. I see her in Norloch, on a throne in the Crystal Hall of Machelinor. The Crystal Hall looks just as it did when I last saw it, but in my dreams it is now a place of loathing and horror. I have seen her in Lirigon and Pellinor, too. In all these visions, she sees me and mocks me. And I am sure, in my deepest being, that Kansabur was not banished back to the Abyss, as we thought she was, and I think she walks on this plane.”
    Dernhil looked at Nelac directly. “I told a couple of Bards in Gent of this, but they just think I am suffering a disease of the nerves, and, with the greatest kindness, suggested I should stop work for a while. Seront gave me a herbal decoction that meant I slept so deeply I didn’t dream at all; but it turned me into a dull, witless idiot and I stopped taking it … and then the dreams came back. At last I decided to come here and consult you. As soon as I left Gent, they stopped plaguing me, so that was something…” He hesitated, and then asked: “What think you, Nelac? Is it that I am going mad?”
    Nelac was silent for a time, and then answered slowly, picking his words with care. “I might be tempted to think, like the Bards of Gent, that you describe the images of a wounded mind,” he said. “It would be the simplest and most obvious explanation.” Dernhil bit his lip, and looked away. “But I cannot say that to you. No, I don’t think you are going mad.”
    Dernhil held his eyes for a long moment. “You don’t know what a comfort it is, to hear you say that,” he said.
    “It is cruel to say so but, my friend, I would prefer to think you were ill. A wounded mind might be healed, with time and care. The other possibility is too terrible.” He drained his glass. “I think that Ceredin did visit you. Such things are known to happen and, more, young Selmana, a relation of Ceredin’s, told me a startlingly similar story… And you are not the only Bard to suffer such dreams. But more, you give voice to something – some pressure, some dread – that has been growing in my own mind over the past months. It presses not only on me; Milana of Pellinor speaks of it as well. Perhaps I don’t have the sensitivity you have, Dernhil, to allow me to hear it. Or perhaps your very woundedness has opened a breach in your being that means that you can see these things more clearly.”
    “I have wondered if they were foredreams,” said Dernhil. “But it seemed – presumptuous to take on the mantel of prophecy.”
    Both the Bards lapsed into silence, following their own thoughts.
    “We argued long for Cadvan to be reinstated,” said Nelac at last. “But we lost.”
    “If it weren’t for these dreams,” said Dernhil, “I might have agreed with those who argued against you.”
    “You misrepresent yourself. You yourself told the First Circle that he should not be exiled.”
    “Perhaps I said so because I thought it was right to do so,” said Dernhil. “I can’t like him, but I have never been more certain of a man’s remorse and desire to atone for what he has done. But maybe I didn’t mean it. Maybe all I wanted was revenge after all.”
    “For all that, you acted as you did, and it is our actions that speak in this world.” Nelac stood up and stretched. “Dernhil, I’m glad you came here. I want to think further on all of this. But I’m an old