The Crow Read Free

breath, as if trying to expel his morbid thoughts. There was Saliman, of course. Saliman was everything Hem would have liked to be himself: tall, handsome, strong, generous, brave, funny... Hem had adored him, with a passion akin to hero-worship, from the first time he had seen him. It had seemed like a miracle when Saliman had offered to be his guardian and to bring him to Turbansk, the great city of the south, to go to School there and learn how to be a Bard.
    Since he had first gained the Speech and had been able to speak to birds, Hem had dreamed of coming to the south, where – the birds had told him – grew trees full of bright fruits as big as his own head. And now, here he was. He lived in a grand Bardhouse with Saliman, and had as much to eat as he wanted, and dressed in fine clothes, rather than the rags he had been used to. But although he now sat in a tree surrounded by the sweet fruit he had once dreamed of, happiness seemed as far beyond him as ever.
    For one thing, coming to Turbansk had meant that he had to part from Maerad. The unfairness of this struck deep, although even at his most surly Hem knew it wasn't anyone's fault. And he had found that he didn't like the School much. He wasn't used to having to sit still and concentrate, and he took the criticisms of his mentors badly, however kindly they were given. They also insisted on calling him Cai, which was the name he had been given as a baby, before he had been kidnapped by Hulls and placed in the orphanage where he had spent most of his childhood. He constantly forgot that it was his name, so he kept getting into trouble for ignoring his teachers, when really he hadn't realized they were speaking to him.
    Hem brooded on the injustice of the Bards for a while, unconsciously plucking and eating another mango. It wasn't his fault that he didn't know anything. Nobody seemed to understand how hard reading and writing were for him, and when he stumbled over a word the scornful looks of the seven-year-olds with whom he did scripting classes scorched his pride.
    But the core of Hem's discontent was that he was lonely. Saliman, the only person in Turbansk he trusted, was often away, or occupied with Bard business. And these days Saliman was usually preoccupied, even when they did have time to speak together. Hem was the only northern child in the School, and his pale olive face stood out among the black-skinned Turbansk children, who thought him rough and strange. He was already a veteran of several fights, and now they avoided him because he fought dirtily: he had no qualms about gouging eyes or pulling hair or biting. He didn't speak the Suderain language, which limited his communications to the Speech, and (Hem considered with chagrin, throwing the huge mango stone so it rattled through the leaves) it was impossible to lie in the Speech; it twisted your words around. It was proving to be a real nuisance. Though, luckily perhaps, it also meant the other students did not understand his Annaren curses and insults.
    He thought of a class the day before, when he had been so bored he felt dizzy. Forgetting to stop himself, he had yawned uninhibitedly. The mentor Urbika, who was chanting in the Speech the First Song of Making, paused midline and fixed Hem with a piercing eye. It was a look comprised of irony, irritation, and compassion in equal parts, but Hem was oblivious to its subtleties. He was too busy picking sulkily at his sandals.
    "Minor Bard Cai, do the great mysteries of the Making bore you, perchance?" she inquired. The other children tittered, and turned to stare at Hem, who only slowly realized that Urbika was speaking to him. He looked up, and saw that the whole class was staring at him, bubbling with suppressed mirth.
    "Er, yes – I mean, no, yes, it does," he said, suddenly flustered, and burning with humiliation. Urbika had given him a long look, silenced the class with another, and said nothing more about it; but Hem brooded over that trivial