by Roger Taylor
But even as the familiar thoughts emerged again, they changed. He did not long for some other calling. He longed for any other calling. Deeply and profoundly. He longed to be free of the burden of his gift, his talent.
The intensity of the feeling made him stop.
‘How are you burdened?’
Tarrian’s voice made Antyr start. ‘I . . . I . . . didn’t know you were . . .’ he began awkwardly.
‘Listening?’ Tarrian finished the sentence. ‘I wasn’t. I was somewhere else. But you called me back.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Antyr said.
‘Nor I,’ Tarrian replied simply, then he began walking again, keeping his usual station several paces ahead of Antyr as is the way with pack leaders.
Antyr’s thoughts reached out to question him, but there was no response; Tarrian was ‘somewhere else’ again.
They continued their walk, each preoccupied with his own thoughts and largely oblivious to both the terrain and the dismal weather. When Antyr finally looked about him he was surprised. He had not realized they had walked so far or so high, though, almost immediately, his legs began to ache.
From where they were, the view could be breathtaking. To the east, the sweep of the city walls down into the rich greens of the valley, and the silver thread of the river Seren winding south through the undulating countryside on its way down to the port of Farlan and the wide ocean. While, to the west, stood the dark, imposing rock-face of the neighbouring valley, a fitting partner to that which formed the western boundary of Serenstad.
Today, however, the winter mist hid not only the horizon but most of the valley. Antyr looked up at the dark bulk of the city’s outer wall rising above him in response to the steepening slope of the rocks. It was solid and grim in the greyness. Last night he had thought it a prison, but now it seemed to assume once more the mantle of protector, standing steadfast and immovable, taking upon itself the anger and hatred of the enemies of the city.
The anger and hatred of enemies. The words resonated around Antyr’s mind.
Enemies. Whose enemies? What enemies?
The questions came unbidden and had an insistence about them that made Antyr frown. He had no interest whatsoever in the complex and convoluted politics of Serenstad and its subject domains, except in so far as he had been obliged to serve in the army when younger to defend its interests or to punish some upstart town or city that was getting above itself.
But the questions hung in his mind, almost defiantly. He looked up at the wall again. It glowered back at him, like a stern matriarch, allowing him no relief.
Why should he be asking himself such questions here, now? It was not as if it were a matter that needed any subtle debate. There was always opposition to Ibris’s rule from one faction or another, but, in its more violent forms, it almost always stemmed from the agitations of the Bethlarii, the citizens of Bethlar, several days’ ride to the north-west.
A severe, warlike people, they had once dominated almost the whole of the land south of the northern mountains and even now they held sway over most of the cities to the north and west.
The problem with the Bethlarii was that they still claimed dominion over the whole land, declaring, perhaps rightly, that they were the direct descendants of the original settlers, the sea peoples who had arrived to drive out the barbarian tribes that had then occupied it.
The Serens, they said, were usurping newcomers, mere merchants and artisans, who should bow the knee before the warrior founders of the land.
But, as every Serens knew, the true hatred of the Bethlarii stemmed from their black, misanthropic bigotry and was in reality for what they saw as the Serens’ easy, hedonistic ways and the fact that the despised merchants and artisans had brought such wealth and power to Serenstad, both from their efforts at home and their trading abroad, that one by one Bethlar’s subject cities had changed their allegiance.
Whatever the truth of the matter, there had always been animosity between the two cities and their allies, sometimes culminating in savage and bitter fighting. The Bethlarii, however, had found that the effete and degenerate Serens could make war well enough when need arose and could also afford to buy a leavening of mercenary soldiers to stiffen their lines and train their people.
It was a point of some dark amusement to the Serens that while the Bethlarii scorned such a practice, they were obliged eventually to resort to it themselves.
Now, however, since Ibris had negotiated the Treaty following the siege of Viernce, an uneasy stability existed in the land. The Serens continued to despise the Bethlarii for their grim military ways, their dismal communal houses, their stone-faced mindless discipline, and their ghastly priesthood with its worship of the warrior god, Ar-Hyrdyn, to the exclusion of all others. And the Bethlarii continued to despise the Serens, ostensibly for what they considered to be their corruption and decadence, but in reality for their continuing and growing economic success and the power that it brought.
The stability, however, was dynamic, and within the loose framework of the Treaty there was a constant swirl of plotting and counter-plotting, jostling for this advantage or that, bribing, coercing; individuals, factions, whole cities; both sides manoeuvring to gain more power and influence to protect themselves from the other.
Antyr understood enough of the political realities of the land to know that such matters were beyond rational analysis, and that though he might despair at the folly of it all at times, he had neither the wealth nor the power to change it.
True, like any other Guildsman, he could run for office in the Gythrin-Dy which, with the Sened, advised the Duke, but that seemed to be but the same folly writ small, with dozens of factions shifting and changing allegiances, and treachery and mistrust being the stock in trade.
It was true also that his position of disdain for the political institutions of the city could equally not stand rational analysis while he chose to avoid participating in them, but that was something he avoided considering, along with the majority of the Serens. It was sufficient for him that he pursued his calling, paid his taxes, where unavoidable, and generally conducted himself within the law of the city.
Why then should he find himself wandering the western edge of the city on a damp and dismal day, pondering about its enemies? Yet he was; for the word, enemies, not only persisted in his thoughts but seemed to carry a different meaning, a meaning that hovered at the edges of his awareness like a mysterious shadow which disappeared when stared at directly.
Further reverie, however, was prevented by their arrival at the end of their journey; the western cliffs, the Aphron Dennai, Aphron’s Stairway, named after the tyrannical Duke Aphron whose favourite pastime was to have people hurled over them on to the shattered pinnacles below, until one day the people rebelled and allowed him a closer view of the spectacle.
Possibly climbable by the foolhardy, but not quickly and certainly not by many, the Aphron Dennai formed the city’s most secure boundary.
Tarrian jumped up on to an overhanging rock and peered over the edge. Antyr contented himself with staying a comfortable distance back from it.
The two stood silent for some time, the only intrusion being the faint sounds of distant streams flowing down to the valley below. Then, from above, a throaty croak reached them. Tarrian looked up. Two ravens were circling high above.
‘I knew a raven once,’ he said distantly.
‘What?’ Antyr exclaimed irritably at this seeming irrelevance.
‘Never mind,’ Tarrian replied softly. ‘It was a long time ago. When I was a pup.’
Antyr let out an exasperated sigh. ‘What are we doing here, Tarrian?’ he said. ‘My feet are soaking, and I’m frozen half to death. I need hardly remind you that this was your idea. I’d have been quite happy to stay in the palace.’ He paused, brought to earth briefly. ‘Which reminds me, Aaken never paid us for last night’s work.’
He looked out across the great open cauldron of space that the cliffs bounded, and
then up at the sky.
‘And it’s going to start raining soon, I’ll swear. We’re going to get soaked. And it wouldn’t surprise me to find the palace guards waiting for us when we get back. The Duke did say . . .’
‘For pity’s sake, be quiet.’ Tarrian’s voice was like an axe blow. Antyr was used to stern words from his Companion, but there was a quality in the rebuke that he had never heard before and it left him too stunned to muster an immediate reply.
‘We’ve got worse problems than your footling discomfort and an unpaid fee to contend with,’ Tarrian went on. ‘Or for that matter, even Duke Ibris’s displeasure.’
Under other circumstances, Antyr would have begged to differ on this last point, but Tarrian, alone on the jutting rock, silhouetted against the grey sky, was a creature in complete harmony with his element and he spoke with such command that it might have been the mountain itself speaking.
Antyr opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came.
‘Something’s amiss,’ Tarrian said, using again the words he had used in Ibris’s dream. ‘There was a wrongness in the Duke’s dream. A profound wrongness.’ He paused, then, as if he were speaking something that he had already repeated countless times, ‘There were others there.’
Antyr began to shake his head as if to scatter Tarrian’s words before they reached him. ‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ he said petulantly. ‘I don’t want to discuss it. There was nothing wrong. It was just our imagination. I was tired and shaken and not at my best – being marched through the streets at that time – and under escort. And don’t forget, we . . . I . . . have never seen the dreams of a man like that. He’s a great leader, a warlord, a statesman. His dreams are bound to be unusual. We misunderstood, that’s all. How could there be anyone else in a dream? Let’s get back home . . . get warm . . . perhaps go to the palace . . . get our fee . . . and . . .’
Tarrian ignored him, as if he were just another babbling stream.
‘There were others there,’ he said again, more surely. ‘Others with . . . skills . . . that I can’t begin to understand. Skills that brought them looking for you and that snatched you away from my protection . . .’
His voice tailed off into bewilderment.
‘Tarrian, stop this!’ Antyr’s mind was beginning to reel. ‘I’ve told you, I don’t want to discuss any of this. It was a long, strange day and . . .’ He waved his hands in submissive concession. ‘Perhaps you’re right . . . in fact you are right . . . I’ve been drinking too much, not attending to my affairs properly. It’s just caught up with us, that’s all. I’ll really get to grips with things when we get back this time. Honestly. Start looking after myself better . . . getting us some steady clients . . .’
‘Antyr!’ Again Tarrian’s voice abruptly stopped the Dream Finder’s increasingly frantic rambling. ‘Stop it. Stop it, for pity’s sake. I’m trying to think. Trying to make some sense of what’s happened . . . what’s happening. I’m frightened. I need your help, I don’t need a recital of your well-worn promises to improve yourself.’
Suddenly, the all-too-human reproaches with which Tarrian was filling Antyr’s mind were gone, and the wolf threw back his head and howled.
Antyr listened, wide-eyed and fearful. The song rose and fell and though Antyr understood none of it, he felt its poignant intensity.
When it was finished, Tarrian was silent for a long time, his head bowed. From out of the greyness before them came no reply.
‘You see,’ he said eventually. ‘My pack is gone. Gone to other hills, to other valleys. My mates have other sires. My cubs too are grown and gone. Do you think you’re alone in your desire to be other than you are? Do you think I’d tolerate this life, this appalling stench of humanity, if I had a choice?’
Antyr winced at the bitterness and anger in Tarrian’s voice. The words ‘I’m sorry’ formed in his mind but he did not speak them. They would have seemed like a wilful insult in the face of Tarrian’s distress.
Instead he walked out on to the overhanging rock and sat down beside him.
‘No one binds you, old friend,’ he said gently.
‘You bind me, Dream Finder,’ the wolf replied. ‘You bind me. As did your father before you. Through none of our own choosing, we bind each other. It’s the nature of our calling, and it’s beyond our changing. I understand your pain. I really do, your pain is mine. But it comes only from your struggle to avoid the truth and will stop only when you accept it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Antyr said after a long silence.
‘Yes, you do,’ Tarrian replied. ‘You understand more than you realize.’ His voice softened. ‘Perhaps your pain is partly my fault. Perhaps I tried to make you into the Dream Finder that your father was when I should have stood and watched you more carefully. Guided you more subtly. Not tried to force you into the ancient ways of our craft just because that was the way it had always been done. Perhaps I stood in the light that I was supposed to show you.’
Antyr shook his head. The spirit of Tarrian’s song still seemed to possess him. He reached out to console the animal in some way. ‘No. You did as my father bid you, and you did it well. I’m what I made myself, not what you made. If it’s me that binds you, then I release you. Go back to your own kind where you’ll be happy. I’m no true Dream Finder nor have I any wish to be.’
Even as he tried to speak the words sincerely, he heard their falseness.
Tarrian turned and looked at him.
‘You have no choice,’ he said. ‘You are a Dream Finder. What I’ve never told you is that you have an ability far beyond any I’ve ever known. Even your father would have been dwarfed by you.’
Antyr turned away from the compassion and pain that filled the wolf’s thoughts.
Tarrian continued. ‘I think that’s why I get so angry with you. I doubt my ability to guide you as I should. I’m frightened I might be either a spectator, impotently watching you destroy yourself, or your inadvertent destroyer.’
Antyr shook his head slowly, but Tarrian’s will would allow him no denial.
‘Why are you saying these things?’ he managed eventually.
‘Because I don’t know what else to do,’ Tarrian replied unexpectedly. ‘Something’s wrong. You know it as well as I do. Something . . . someone . . . assailed the Duke last night, and then assailed you. You must begin to accept what you are and stop trying to be something else or . . .’
‘Or what?’
‘Or we will be doomed, destroyed, and others with us. They will come again. You stand between them and the Duke.’
‘They? Who . . .?’ Antyr made a last attempt to escape. ‘How can you know this?’ Antyr asked angrily.
‘I know it the way you know it, but you won’t listen to yourself,’ Tarrian replied softly, then he stood up and began walking back down the rocks. ‘Antyr, you didn’t stand solid in that pike wall against the Bethlarii cavalry, shield to shield with your fellows, by pretending you were somewhere else. You saw your enemy for who they were and you faced them squarely. This is no different. An enemy you won’t face will outflank and encircle you, and then crush you utterly.’
‘But . . .’
‘I need to run,’ Tarrian said, his voice still quiet, but almost desperate. ‘Go home. Wait for me. I’ll be back later.’
And then he was gone, his dark bobbing form soon lost amid the scattered rocks. His voice sounded distantly in Antyr’s mind. ‘You have two enemies, Antyr. Yourself and whoever is trying to destroy the Duke. Take up your spear and shield against both. Defend yourself. I’ll be with you.’
Antyr stood up and stared after him. Tarrian’s words had carried him back to that fearful battlefield; the stomach-wrenching waiting as the enemy marched to and fro, manoeuvring and feinting, then the screaming terror when the thundering charge came, when only each instant existed and all you had to do was hold – hold at any cost – for yourself, for all the others around you.
‘Hold your ground and you’re safe,’ had been th
e constant cry in training. ‘Ever see a horse daft enough to run on to a pike?’ Uncertain laughter. ‘And after that, it’s just men. Ugly, I’ll admit, but I can see uglier standing here. Remember your drills, keep together. And be angry not frightened. They started this. They’re the enemy.’
Antyr shivered violently, though whether from fear or cold he could not have said. He had been frightened – and angry. And he had held. And survived. Faced the enemy, steel for steel, arrow for arrow. Faced them and prevailed.
Face the enemy.
He shivered again, then folding his damp cloak about him he set off down the rocks towards the pathway that would take him back to the Norstseren Gate.
Chapter 6
Nefron examined herself thoughtfully in the mirror. Her long black hair was as full as ever, and pulled back just enough to display the elegant bone structure of her face. Her complexion was unblemished and, though pale, was not pallid. A lingering touch from her long hands confirmed that her skin was as soft as it looked. She nodded in approval. Though she affected to despise such vanities, Nefron was well pleased with her appearance. It would serve her well as a weapon for some time to come yet.
In fact, she decided, her narrow, finely drawn face was in many ways more handsome than it had been those – what was it? – thirty-six years ago, when she had married Ibris.
Sixteen years old she had been then. And beautiful. But with a blandness about her, a naivety. She was a foolish consort for a powerful, worldly man almost twice her age. A wiser man would have passed her by. Now both she and her face were far more interesting.
The memory of her early self made her lip curl into a withering sneer. What Nefron never truly saw in her mirror was that sneer and the fine lines about her eyes that highlighted their searching, scheming gaze.
Turning from her inspection she looked again at the letter lying on the table. The arrival of a letter was an unusual event for Nefron as she gained most of her information by word of mouth. It was a necessary discipline for her, developed over many years. Written messages could be lost, forged, copied, held in evidence against her. They had little to commend them. There were, however, one or two of her most trusted ‘allies’, as she called her spies, who could not safely seek her ear at any time and for whom the coded letter was the only way. This was one such. Her sneer became a mildly triumphant smile. It was always a source of satisfaction to her when one of her eyes and ears in Ibris’s palace brought her something that the Duke wished to be kept secret.
