by Roger Taylor
The familiar Rannick vanished, to be replaced by this alien figure clothed in his form, who had brought such horror to the valley. ‘Tell Nilsson to take you home,’ he said, as if he had suddenly lost interest. ‘I’ll send him for you tomorrow evening. Be ready then.’
He laid his hand on her cheek affectionately. The interest had returned in full measure. ‘Tomorrow will be a rare night, Marna. A rare night.’ He bent forward and kissed her on the mouth.
His lips were unexpectedly soft and their touch gentle…
* * * *
As he drew further away from Uldaneth and deeper into the trees, Farnor’s darker preoccupations began to hold sway over him again. Increasingly, his anger at the futility of this whole journey was held in check only by his desire to discover more about the power that he apparently possessed. Despite this however, the aura of his surroundings began to impinge on him. The trees were larger than any he had ever seen before: massive in girth and stretching up into a canopy higher by far than he would have believed possible. And although he could see little of the sky, yet the place was remarkably light.
Such part of him as whispered in awe in the pres-ence of such magnificence however, was the merest sigh amid the turbulence of his feelings.
After a while, he stopped and took out his lodespur. ‘Which way do you want me to go?’ he asked sourly.
The silence which had hovered about him for so much of his journey changed in texture. He knew that they were close about him again, though this time the silent presence was different. It was as though some deep bass note were sounding, far below anything that could be heard. It seemed to resonate through his entire body.
‘We do not understand, Far-nor,’ a voice replied. It was at once similar and very different from the voice that had spoken to him before.
A caustic rejoinder began to form in his mind, but instead he said, ‘Uldaneth tells me you are one and many. Perhaps those of you who are many know where they are and where I am. You brought me here to question me, but I wish to question you too, and I wish to speak to those among you who lead.’
Bewilderment washed around him, then he sensed a decision being made.
‘Touch,’ the voice said.
Farnor frowned.
‘Touch,’ the voice repeated a little impatiently. ‘Touch one of the many.’
Farnor shook his head to rid himself of the plethora of complex images that formed in his mind around the word many. The meaning of the instruction, however, was quite clear. He walked to the nearest tree and rested his hand against it.
‘Ah. I have him,’ said a quite distinct voice that he had never heard before. Farnor snatched his hand away, then, a little shamefacedly, replaced it.
‘Stop that, please,’ said the voice crossly. ‘You’re confusing me. You’re not the only one, you know. I’ve got Movers all over me and it’s not easy to tell them apart. Just stay where you are for a moment.’
Farnor did as he was bidden.
‘Hm. Very interesting,’ the voice said after a while. ‘Go across to…’
Farnor could make nothing of the word that fol-lowed, but his gaze was drawn to another tree some distance away.
‘Bye bye,’ the voice said incongruously, as he began to pull his hand away. Farnor found himself mouthing the words in reply and waving his fingers vaguely. He coughed self-consciously and walked over to the other tree. As he touched it, there was a short pause and then he heard another voice say, ‘Ah, yes. Very… unusual.’ It was speaking to someone else, he could tell, even before it said to him, in a brisk, matronly fashion, ‘Go over to…’ and he found himself being once again directed towards another tree nearby.
He travelled for quite some time in this manner, encountering a bewildering range of voices and responses, ranging from kindly affection to irritable brusqueness and including one or two that gave him an impression not dissimilar to what his own usually was on finding that he had trodden in something unpleas-ant.
And between these many encounters was the dis-tant, unheard rumble of the watching silence.
As he walked on, the trees became taller and more massive still and the silence pervading them deeper and more profound. And though he could not see it, he could feel the looming presence of the mountain which he and Uldaneth had stood before when they parted.
‘Is this the place of the most ancient?’ he asked as he laid his hand on the rugged bark of the next tree.
‘You will know,’ came a gentle reply as he was di-rected again to another tree.
He began to walk more slowly. And even the horses seemed to be losing interest in their predominant occupation of grazing whenever Farnor paused. They were gazing around in a subdued manner.
The light was still remarkably good for all that he could scarcely see any sign of the sky even when he looked directly upwards. But it was growing dimmer; he was walking through a deepening gloaming. The long, straight trunks of the trees soared upwards, their size and height overawing him almost completely and robbing him of all sense of scale. Even the smallest were far larger than the largest he had seen at Derwyn’s lodge. He began to imagine that he was walking through a great building; one that had been built by an ancient and wise people to celebrate some truth too profound to be expressed in mere words. Lichens and climbers patterned the trunks, and long, tumbling strands of mosses hung down motionless like venerable beards. It was as though no wind had ever reached in to disturb this deep calm. The soft sound of his footfalls and those of the horses on the ancient litter seemed almost like a desecration.
When he spoke in the silence of his mind to the trees that were guiding him, he felt as though he were whispering. Eventually he stopped and gazed around. I am so small, he thought. My concerns are so trivial.
But even as these thoughts formed, his inner anger, held at bay by his encounters with the trees that had guided him here, bubbled to the surface. He had allowed himself to be brought here to learn about the power that he possessed so that he could return home and kill Rannick; avenge his slaughtered parents. He must not allow anything to distract him further from this.
‘You are not ready, Far-nor.’
The voice, familiar yet unfamiliar, clear and sono-rous in his mind, made Farnor start. There was judgement in it. ‘Ready for what?’ he demanded vehemently.
‘For whatever it is you desire.’
Farnor’s lip curled angrily. ‘And what might that be, pray?’ he asked, acidly.
The silence around him filled with distress and concern. ‘We are not as you are, Farnor. We touch such as you only a little, and we understand still less. We are more apart than we are together, by far. Always the greater part of you will be beyond us, as the greater part of us will be beyond you. And what you desire lies deep, deep within you. Close to the heart of what it is to be a Mover.’
The words filled Farnor’s mind with such subtle meanings that he involuntarily lifted his hands to his head. ‘If you do not know what my desire is, how do you know that I’m not ready for it?’ he managed to ask after the confusion had passed.
‘Because you are dangerous,’ came the unhesitant reply.
‘So I’ve been told,’ Farnor said. ‘But I threaten no one here, nor ever have. I wanted to leave, and you brought me on this journey against my will under threat of… assault.’
Farnor suddenly felt as though he were peering down some dizzying height, as he had in Marken’s room. There was a slightly apologetic note in the voice when it spoke again. ‘You awaken memories from the times when the sires of the sires of these…’ Homes? Bodies? ‘… were but saplings themselves. Not since then has a Mover moved so freely amongst our worlds. And they too possessed the power…’
Fear and consternation broke around Farnor, though it was not his own. It stopped abruptly.
‘Tell me about this power,’ Farnor said, as ingenu-ously as he could manage.
‘The power is.’
Farnor plunged on. ‘But I don’t understand. I know that I… see… feel… things
that others don’t, but I feel no power within myself. Nor can I control these feelings.’
‘You have strange minds, you Movers. So layered, so devious, so much torn within themselves. And so separate.’
Farnor scowled. ‘Such as you can see of us,’ he re-torted sharply, and somewhat to his own surprise.
There was a faint hint of realization in the voice. ‘True,’ it conceded.
‘The power,’ Farnor reminded his questioner.
‘The power is, Far-nor. As the sky is. As the earth is. As all things are. It is in the fabric of all things.’ The voice became awed, fearful almost. ‘And such as can wield it as you can reach through and beyond, and into the worlds between the worlds. Drawing from them…’
The voice faded – in horror, Farnor thought, and his mind filled with images of intrusion and unfettered, unbalanced disorder, carrying terrible destruction in its wake. They were shadows of what he had felt as he had charged across the fields to his burning home, and when he had been an apparently passive witness to Rannick’s fiery demonstration before Gryss and the others in the castle courtyard.
‘Those who came before, in the most ancient of times, both wrought and mended such damage, both rent and sealed the fabric.’
‘Why?’ Farnor asked.
‘It lay beyond us then, Far-nor, as it does still. They warred. Like your desire, it lies deep within the heart of what it is to be a Mover.’
Farnor felt his anger stirring again. ‘Why did you bring me here? If you knew enough to know that I possessed this… power… then you must have known that I was no danger to you…’
‘You are a danger to all things, Far-nor.’ The voice crushed his protest ruthlessly. ‘Know this. Within even your short span we had felt the presence of a great disturbance. Now we learn that the unthinkable had happened. The Great Evil had wakened again, though this time It was ringed and hedged by stern foes and seemingly defeated before It could spread forth.’ Momentarily the voice faltered, as if it were gathering resources with which to tell its tale. ‘Yet tremors of It reverberate still. Its defeat is perhaps questionable. And it was beyond a doubt a seed of the Great Evil that pursued you here…’
‘I’ve heard all this,’ Farnor interrupted. ‘Why don’t you answer my question?’
There was irritation in the reply. ‘It cost us dear to lead your pursuer astray, Far-nor. It had great power.’ The tone softened. ‘But we had touched you before, and were… intrigued… by such an unusual Hearer. And we had sensed no more evil in you than in most Movers. We protected you out of both curiosity and concern, and perhaps for reasons that are beyond us. But when you were amongst us, we felt your power growing, and we came to fear the darkness that we knew lay at your heart.’ It concluded starkly, ‘We were afraid.’
Farnor looked round at the great trees surrounding him.
‘I mean you no harm,’ he said simply. ‘I wish only to be away from here.’
‘No. You wish for more than that, though there is great pain and confusion in you. Yet you have the power, and while there is the darkness in you that lies beyond us, we cannot know the truth of your wishing.’
There was a long silence.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ Farnor asked again.
There was another long silence. Farnor felt a debate going on about him, then, ‘You are to remain here, Far-nor.’
‘What!’
‘You are to remain here.’
‘I heard that. What do you mean?’
‘You are to remain amongst us until we know whether you are what you seem, or a more subtle seed of the Great Evil come to strike at us from within.’
Part of Farnor wanted to reassure, to help, to co-operate, but a black wave of rage rose to submerge it.
‘No!’ he cried out, both in his mind and out loud. The two horses started, and somewhere a bird fluttered away in alarm. ‘Why won’t you listen to me? Why won’t you believe me?’
‘We have decided.’
‘You can’t do this. I won’t allow it.’ Farnor turned round and round, crouching, as if expecting human assailants to appear suddenly from amongst the vast trunks.
‘We do not wish to oppose you, Far-nor. But we have no choice. If you are Its spawn, then we must hold you as best we can, no matter what the cost.’ There was fear in the voice, but a greater proportion of grim determi-nation.
Farnor saw the trees about him begin to shimmer and change. ‘Get out of my head!’ he roared. Desperately he seized the reins of his horse, swung himself up into the saddle, and drove his heels into the horse’s flanks. The animal trembled, but did not move. He swore and kicked it again. Still it did not move.
Farnor snarled and dismounted. Looking around, he saw that his vision was clear again. But he could feel dispute all about him; restraint and tolerance mingling with fear and the need for desperate and swift action.
‘Move, damn you!’ he screamed at the horse, but it looked at him helplessly. With an oath he struck it viciously across the head, but still it did not move. ‘Damn you all!’ he screamed at the top of his voice. ‘Damn you all! I will not be opposed.’
Then, it seemed to him that all the trees were bow-ing over and reaching down to him. He started to run.
Chapter 16
‘With your permission, I’ll escort you back to your home, ma’am,’ Nilsson said very politely as Marna emerged unsteadily from the spiral staircase that led down from Rannick’s eyrie. As he spoke, he casually brushed his forefinger across his lips, and, with an incongruously paternal gesture, touched a wisp of her hair that was being disturbed by a draught from somewhere.
Then he cast a significant glance up the stairs.
It was then that Marna realized that the persistent draught that had been ruffling her hair and causing the lanterns along the unnervingly steep stairs to flicker was more than it seemed. It was a lingering touch from her would-be lord and lover. Or, if she understood Nilsson correctly, was it perhaps a spy?
Whatever the truth, its irksome, spider’s-web touch was still with her when she emerged into the now torchlit courtyard.
‘See, you made the sparks fly, girl,’ came the same lecherous voice that had addressed her earlier. Even as she turned to look at the speaker she saw Nilsson’s arm snapping out. There was a dull, ground-shaking thud and a rasping gasp of air and the culprit went staggering backwards until he crashed into a wall and slithered to the floor.
Marna looked up at Nilsson to thank him, but his finger surreptitiously touched his lips again and then flicked towards the waiting horse. The incident swept Marna’s dominant concerns to one side for a moment. Nilsson’s swift, yet almost casual, dispatch of the offender had struck deeply into her. Disturbingly, it had a quality about it not dissimilar to one she had often seen in her father as he practised his craft; a complete ease and effortlessness and yet an overwhelming focus of intent. She had learned something important, something she had known all her life, but she was nor sure what.
They were some way from the castle before the faint breeze that was playing about them faded away. She felt Nilsson relax, though he gave no outward sign. After that, their silence became almost companionable.
A little way from her home, Marna asked to be put down. ‘I need to walk for a while,’ she told him. ‘You’re to come for me tomorrow evening, he said.’
Nilsson nodded, but she could not see his expres-sion in the darkness. Then he brought his horse around and gently urged it forward. Marna stood looking after him until his dark silhouette merged into the night.
‘Are you all right, Marna?’ The anxious voice star-tled her. A lantern was uncovered to reveal her father. ‘I’ve been waiting and waiting,’ he said. ‘Wondering what to do. I didn’t know whether to stay here. Or dash up to the castle. I didn’t…’
‘I’m all right, Father,’ Marna said quickly, taking his arm and squeezing it reassuringly. ‘Nothing happened. Nothing happened.’
Questions began to tumble out of Harlen. ‘What did
he want you for? What did he say? What did he do? Why…?’
As they walked back towards the cottage, Marna told her father what had happened, though she said nothing about her own unexpectedly ambivalent feelings. Harlen gradually became less agitated, but as she told of Nilsson’s intended visit the following evening to take her to the castle permanently, he froze.
‘No!’ he hissed into the darkness. I’ll cut Rannick’s throat sooner.’
Marna’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘Father, no, please,’ she said, shaking his arm anxiously. ‘Whatever happens, promise me you’ll do nothing foolish. He is so powerful. He can do such – strange things. You mustn’t even try to approach him.’
Harlen was silent.
‘Promise me,’ Marna demanded, suddenly stern. ‘I’m not a child. I’ll find a way of dealing with… whatever happens… somehow. But it’ll be important to me to know that you’re still here, safe. And the cottage. Please don’t do anything. He’ll kill you without giving it a moment’s thought, I’m sure. Just like he did Garren and Katrin.’
Again Harlen did not reply, but Marna heard him taking a deep unsteady breath. Only when they reached the cottage and stepped into its familiar lighted heart did she see that his face was drawn and his eyes were gleaming wet. She could not meet his gaze.
‘I was so afraid for you,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I nearly attacked that… Nilsson… when he said what he’d come for. Then you were there, standing between us, so calm. And I thought, what good would that do? He might be dead, but the valley would be sealed, his men would be everywhere. And where could we run to? You’d be taken anyway. Then, you were riding off with him. I couldn’t move. I felt so useless, so…’ His voice faded away. ‘I’m sorry, Marna,’ he finished weakly.
Pity overwhelmed her and she put her arms around him. ‘Don’t be, don’t be, you couldn’t have done anything,’ she said, fighting back tears. ‘You’ve always looked after me, and you’ve brought me up to look after myself as well. We’ll manage between us, somehow. All that’s really important now is to stay alive. We’ve seen enough of what Rannick can do to know we can’t deal with him like a normal person. There has to be another way. And we’ll only find it if we keep watching and listening.’