The Crow: The Third Book of Pellinor (Pellinor Series) by Croggon Alison

Author:Croggon, Alison [Croggon, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2010-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

THE next day Hem dragged his Turbanskian armor out of his pack, where it had been carefully put away since their time in the Passage of the Kings. He stared at the dull gold sun on the ceramic breastplate with a sudden piquant sadness, remembering that this gear had been made for the children of Har-Ytan, when they had been his age. He had never met her sons, he realized now; he wondered what kind of people they were. They must be fierce and brave, he thought, with the blood of Har-Ytan in their veins.

And what of the Ernani? Had she lived through the hopeless battle in front of the gates of Turbansk? Hem thought it unlikely. Har-Ytan had not expected to. After all, she had passed on the Ernani’s ruby to her son. She had said she would stand and fall with her city, and then had walked clear-eyed to her death. Hem shivered; there was something about the people of the Suderain, an unwavering purity of purpose, which made him feel small. He saw it most dramatically in Zelika, but Saliman possessed that same determination, if more subtly inflected. Once an action was decided, there was no flinching, no excuses, no regrets. Hem didn’t feel nearly so certain about anything.

He thoughtfully buckled the shortsword to his belt, and, Irc clinging complainingly to his shoulder, went to meet Zelika, whose eyes gleamed with suppressed excitement. Hared was waiting there. He looked the children over sternly and led them out of the palace and through the square to a part of the city they had not seen — a large courtyard surrounded by sinister-looking low buildings, which was only accessible through a locked gate. Here the stone roof of the cave swept down to a mere few spans above their heads. It felt claustrophobic and somehow hostile in a way the rest of Nal-Ak-Burat did not.

Hared’s training was as hard as the children had expected, but everything else about it confounded their expectations. Hem had thought he would concentrate on swordcraft and unarmed combat, and in that first session Hared put Zelika and Hem through their paces. He made them use their weapons instead of wooden substitutes, as Hem was used to in the School in Turbansk, and pressed each of them hard. By the end, Zelika had disarmed Hared, and Hem had resisted being disarmed himself, although Hared told him that, had they really been fighting, he could have killed him, as he’d let down his guard at a crucial moment. But their mentor professed himself satisfied with their levels of skill.

“You can hold your own, mostly,” he said, leaning on his sword and breathing heavily. “Zelika, I’ll even say that you creditably carry on the tradition of your great House. Being small can be an advantage — remember that, if you end up fighting for your life against someone twice your size. But if you are clever, you should not have to fight at all. The most canny warrior is he who never draws his sword.

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