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upward and obscuring the stars. When at last they had stopped, Hem had passed the night in despair, sure that Maerad and Cadvan must be dead. Saliman had consoled him, saying that they were sure to have escaped, that there were secret passages that even Enkir did not know. Hem just swallowed and hoped. Beneath his boundless faith in Maerad's abilities was a dreadful fear that he would never see her again.
    He didn't fully understand what had happened in Norloch, but Saliman explained that Enkir, the First Bard, and therefore the most important Bard in Annar, had revealed himself as a traitor against the Light. Moreover, Enkir had destroyed Hem's family: it was Enkir who had overseen the sack of Pellinor ten years before, when Hem's father had been murdered and his mother and Maerad sold into slavery. Hem himself had been kidnapped by the Black Bards, the Hulls, under Enkir's orders, and put into an orphanage in Edinur: a miserable prison where he had lived most of his short life with the other unwanted children.
    Many of Hem's nightmares were about the orphanage; he would dream that he was still there, in a dank, pitch-black room crammed with children of all ages lying three or four to each stinking pallet, freezing cold in winter and sweltering in summer. It was never quiet: children whimpered and muttered and screamed all night, even in their sleep. Babies were put in with the rest of the children, and very few of them survived, although the older children tried to care for them. Hem had many memories of small blue corpses being taken out in the mornings. Sometimes what the children did to each other was worse than the neglect and careless brutality of the adults who ran the place: there was a vicious hierarchy among the orphans, reinforced by beatings and taunts, and any weakness was quickly identified and exploited. There was never enough food, and the children often sickened and died from the illnesses that raged rapidly through the crowded buildings. Only the tough survived; and luckily Hem was tough.
    He had been taken out of the orphanage by a Hull, who brought him to a fine house where, for the first time he could remember, Hem slept in clean sheets and had enough to eat. But he was still afraid: the people in the house were sinister and cold, and he found out later they were all Hulls. They had tried to make him become a Hull like them, tempting him with their immortality. They showed him that Hulls did not die: even if stabbed through the heart, a Hull would stand up again, smiling, the wound instantly closed over. But an instinct in Hem rebelled against their persuasions, which although softly spoken, with fair and reasonable words, caused icy chills to run down his spine.
    Finally, at the dark of the moon, the Hulls tried to make Hem a Black Bard by force. Although he did his best to forget it, he remembered that night with a horrible clarity and it, too, figured in his nightmares. The Hulls had ordered him to kill a boy called Mark, whom he knew from the orphanage. When he had refused, despite their worst threats, they killed the child themselves, forcing Hem to watch, and burned his body in an ensorcelled fire. Hem was then locked in his room without food and left alone, too frightened even to sob in the darkness.
    The next day the Hulls had been out on some foul errand, and by chance Hem was rescued by two Pilanel men who were robbing the house. The Pilanel had been kind to him, taking him as one of their own because of his olive skin and Pilanel features; but the Hulls had tracked them down in the wilderness and mercilessly slaughtered the family who had cared for him. Hem, hidden in the Pilanel caravan, had heard everything.
    That was something else he had nightmares about.
    After he had lain for hours in his cramped hiding place, too terrified to venture out, Maerad and Cadvan had found him. He had then discovered that not all Bards were Hulls, as he had thought. Finding that he had a sister – someone who