The Return of the Sword

by Roger Taylor

  ‘I understand,’ Usche said, though Antyr could see that the topic would arise again sooner or later. Then she frowned and gave the wolves a sidelong look. ‘You said “thoughts”, didn’t you? They can’t pry into my thoughts, can they? Tell what I’m thinking?’

  ‘No,’ Antyr lied confidently, as he always did when this question was asked. All the Serenstad Dream Finders lied about it both routinely and with great conviction. It was the Guild of Dream Finders’ only true secret. No one knew why but there was a strong presumption that the practice had its origins in a violent past.

  Usche looked relieved, if a little suspicious. However, she was prevented from pursuing the matter by the mounting curiosity of her watching colleagues. Everyone in the room was now gathered about them and each newcomer naturally gravitated towards them. They were beginning to ask questions of Antyr.

  Usche stood up and raised her arms for silence uncertainly. Antyr saw why; it was obvious that several of those present were senior to her.

  ‘Can I ask you for a little patience, Brothers? We’ve all got so many questions to ask, but as you know, Antyr has only just arrived after a long journey and, as you also know, he had very little sleep last night. In courtesy we should let him relax and get used to our ways and this place before we start badgering him.’ Her speech ended rather lamely, but, together with a plaintive expression and some hand-wringing, it was enough to disperse most of the spectators. Slowly the hall became as it had been when Antyr first entered, though, from the glances that were continually thrown his way, he knew there was only one topic of conversation.

  He tried to start a new one of his own, indicating the extensive view of the mountains and the plains.

  ‘Are these proper windows or are they mirror stones?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t seen anything so far that’s this big.’

  ‘They’re mirror stones,’ Usche replied casually. ‘All the windows are. The Cadwanen is completely isolated from the outside except for a few entrances, and they’re all well protected.’

  Antyr found the contrast between the seeming openness of the bright hall and the dark claustrophobia of Usche’s statement disturbing.

  ‘Always the fortress, eh?’ he heard himself saying.

  ‘Always the fortress,’ Usche confirmed. She sensed his mood. ‘But at least we’re a fortress of light,’ she said. ‘Like Anderras Darion. We seek knowledge, we disseminate it. We illuminate.’ Suddenly she was excited. ‘Just look around you, Antyr. Every aspect of this place is such an achievement. I shouldn’t imagine you’ve seen a fraction of it yet, but have you met anything that made you feel you were buried deep inside the mountains, or that you were in anything other than an ordinary building, and a fine one at that?’ She answered for him, tapping her temple with her forefinger. ‘No, because the knowledge, the learning that animates everything here has brought even the sunlight and the air into the depths so that we can live like civilized people.’

  ‘You could say that was using your knowledge to deceive, to misrepresent where we really are,’ Antyr retorted, somewhat to his own surprise, rising to the hint of challenge in her voice.

  Usche cocked her head back and a broad smile broke through her earnest expression. ‘What is the function of a window, Antyr?’ she said.

  Antyr opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. ‘To keep the weather out – let the light in – and perhaps the air – and to see what’s happening outside,’ he admitted after a moment’s thought.

  ‘Dear, dear, dear.’ It was Tarrian. ‘Walked into that one, didn’t you? Ask her if there are any children round here for you to argue with – someone more your own weight.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Antyr growled back, adding venomously, ‘Pup.’ It had no effect other than to make both Tarrian and Grayle chuckle.

  Then Usche was standing up in some confusion, as were her friends. ‘We’re late,’ she was saying. ‘That’s Kristabel’s fault, keeping us all talking. She’s no idea what has to be done around here.’ She put her hand on Antyr’s arm. ‘I’m sorry about this, but we’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.’

  Thus abandoned, Antyr found himself once more the focus of much of the attention in the hall. He was about to retreat with a view to continuing his trek when Yatsu and Jaldaric entered. They acknowledged warm greetings from many sources as they came towards him.

  ‘Is there anyone you don’t know here?’ he asked as Yatsu dropped down beside him.

  ‘Oh yes. There are always lots of new faces and lots of gossip in this place,’ Yatsu replied. He looked at Antyr and laughed. ‘You’ve the look of a week-old novice. Come on, own up. How badly did you get lost?’

  ‘I get enough abuse off these two without you adding to it,’ Antyr said, nudging Tarrian with his foot. ‘This is a very confusing place. And it doesn’t help that I can’t understand any of these symbols written up everywhere.’

  He recounted the details of his day’s walking, concluding with his encounter with Kristabel.

  ‘You’re privileged,’ Jaldaric told him. ‘They’re delightful creatures, felcis, but they do have a habit of treating people as if we’re rather slow-witted pets.’ He looked around the hall. ‘And they regard this place as just an extension to their own system of tunnels and burrows – an extension they graciously allow us to use.’

  ‘And Kristabel’s very fussy about who she takes a shine to,’ Yatsu added.

  ‘I thought at first that someone was playing a joke on me.’

  ‘I can see that a felci would be a surprise to you, for all you’re used to talking to your wolves.’

  ‘How do they get in here? Usche told me there are only a few well-guarded entrances to the place.’

  This amused the two men. ‘You’ve hit on one of the many mysteries that surround the felcis,’ Yatsu said. ‘And one of Andawyr’s greatest banes.’ He laughed. ‘He gets so frustrated. They just come and go as they please and no one’s ever found out how they do it. They seem to be immune to the Power in some way.

  ‘I imagine someone’s asked them?’ Antyr said, striking for the obvious.

  ‘Oh yes, many times,’ Yatsu said, still laughing. ‘But to no avail. All they ever say is we’re too young to understand.’

  ‘That’s odd, she said I was old – or part of me was.’

  He had half expected more laughter from Yatsu at this but, instead, the Goraidin pursed his lips appreciatively. ‘Interesting. Felcis know a great many things that we don’t, for sure. I can’t hazard what she meant but it could well be significant. I’d mention it to Andawyr if I were you.’

  ‘She said she was going to do that anyway. She seemed very amused about it.’

  ‘They laugh a lot, felcis.’

  Antyr was hesitant about his next remark. ‘I noticed that she had very powerful-looking claws and teeth. It occurred to me that she could be quite fierce. Are they dangerous?’

  ‘Very,’ Yatsu said simply. ‘But not gratuitously so. They’re not like people, they’re like most other animals. If you want to see how dangerous they are, you have to provoke them – and at some considerable length, I might add. But then you take the consequences.’ He drew a finger across his throat. ‘On the whole they prefer to cut you down with a caustic comment rather than anything else, but those claws can open you from top to bottom and those teeth can snap your thickest bones like twigs.’ As was often the case when he spoke on such matters, Yatsu’s matter-of-fact delivery added a vividness to what he was saying that many a storyteller would have envied. Antyr winced. ‘They’re mountain creatures,’ Yatsu went on. ‘Their claws are designed for burrowing through the rock, and designed very well. And they can eat rocks with those teeth, though I’ve a feeling they only do it to watch us cringe at the noise it makes.’

  ‘You seem very impressed by them.’

  ‘I am. As will you be when you get to know them a little better. And if Kristabel’s taken an interest in you, you probably will.’

  ‘It’s all very strange. Insofar as
I ever thought about it, I don’t know what I imagined this place was going to be like. Probably something similar to one of our Serenstad Learning Houses. Dignified if rather decrepit buildings peopled by dignified if rather decrepit sages, droning on about the same things they’ve been droning on about for years. Certainly I didn’t expect this bizarre mixture of siege thinking and open inquiry. Nor this convoluted maze of passages and rooms peopled by the likes of Andawyr and Oslang and strange talking creatures who call me old and eat rocks.’

  ‘Well, I suppose if you put it like that, it is rather unusual. You’ll soon get used to it.’

  Antyr suddenly felt light-hearted. ‘Yes, I think I will,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’m quite looking forward to it.’

  * * * *

  Andawyr’s study presented a scene very different from the one Antyr had seen the previous night. There was tumbled confusion on some of the shelves, several drawers hung open with documents spilling from them, and the various tables were all littered with books and papers – as was the floor.

  In the midst of the disorder was its architect.

  Sitting sideways in a deep, well-upholstered chair, his legs thrown over one arm, Andawyr was massaging the remains of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. In his other hand was a piece of paper covered with symbols. From time to time he glanced at it.

  Oslang was sitting at one of the tables, stiff and upright and staring blankly ahead. One finger was tapping out an indeterminate rhythm on the table.

  The paper slithered from Andawyr’s hand to follow an oscillating pathway down to the floor where it gracefully settled on top of many others.

  ‘We’re going nowhere,’ he said, swinging his legs off the arm of the chair and standing up. He began pacing. The papers rattled about his feet like dead leaves. ‘Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere.’

  ‘You’re being impatient again,’ Oslang said. He gestured across the tables. ‘We’ve plenty of information, it’s only a matter of . . .’

  ‘There’s too much information,’ Andawyr interrupted irritably.

  ‘If you’ll allow me to finish,’ Oslang said sternly. ‘We’ve plenty of information, it’s only a matter of working through it methodically, painstakingly. Ordering it . . .’

  ‘We’ve been doing that all day, and we’re going nowhere!’ Andawyr insisted.

  ‘This is our first look. We can get the others to help shortly. I think there’s a pattern emerging.’

  ‘No, there isn’t. Not unless you count randomly increasing confusion as a pattern.’

  As Oslang prepared to reply, the door opened and Kristabel entered. She gazed around the room for a moment and then looked at Andawyr.

  ‘It’s a great pity that your nobility of both intellect and soul doesn’t manifest itself more conspicuously in the more mundane matters of this world, Cadwanwr,’ she said with some distaste.

  ‘I can do without any of your mother-hen lectures today, thank you, Kristabel,’ Andawyr retorted. ‘What do you want? Can’t you see we’re busy?’

  ‘Ah. Charming as ever. And such a contrast to the gentleman I’ve just met. The new one the pups brought in – you know – the old one – the Dream Finder. Leapt to Usche’s defence as though she might actually need it. Such a happy instinct. Being with the pups has helped, I suppose, but I wonder how long it’ll be before he falls under your disorderly influence.’

  ‘Kristabel, what are you talking about?’

  The felci jumped up on to the table and, humming to herself, began nosing through the papers.

  ‘Still going the long way round, eh? Ploughing your interminable furrow and marking the way with your arcane symbols.’

  Catching a signal from Oslang, Andawyr made a noticeable effort not to respond to this taunt. He forced a conciliatory note into his voice.

  ‘Kristabel, we do have a problem that needs our immediate attention.’

  The felci stopped her inspection and sat back on her haunches. ‘Yes, you do, don’t you? I heard all about it.’ She scratched her stomach. ‘I think you’re going to have more. I wish Dar was back. He has a surer touch than I do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Andawyr asked, concerned by the felci’s sudden and unusual seriousness.

  ‘I don’t know. The Song’s disturbed. All the ways feel cloudy and dangerous. It’s like a storm brewing. A bad one. Things are coming together that shouldn’t. Old things. Deep things.’ She flicked some of the papers to one side. ‘This won’t be enough, I fear. Another way will have to be found.’

  She gave a low doleful whistle, then jumped down from the table. When she reached the doorway she stopped and turned.

  ‘You should take the Dream Finder to Anderras Darion, Andawyr. It’s a stronger place than this. Take him now. Don’t delay.’

  Chapter 11

  The sun was setting. Farnor Yarrance leaned on the gate and gazed at the reddening sky streaked with thin lines of cloud that were slowly turning from grey to black. Marna and the others had been gone less than a week but it was as though they had been gone for years. It had been his firm intention when he said good-bye to them to put the dreadful events of the past weeks behind him once and for all, and begin the rest of his life; a life that would have been a continuation of what it had been before the arrival of Nilsson and his men and the murder of his parents; a life that he knew they would have wanted for him and indeed that he wanted for himself.

  Prior to Marna leaving he had thought that this must be the way ahead of him. It was still the way he wanted and many of the old normalities of his life had already begun to close about him protectively: the demands of the farm, the bustling help of his friends and neighbours, all familiar, comforting. But before she and the others had been gone a day he began to see that it was not to be. It was not that something had changed. It was that everything had changed. Everything about him, everything about the village. Nothing was truly as familiar and comforting as it had been, nor ever could be again.

  So many things had come together in so short a time and so fatefully. Nilsson’s men seizing the village after being mistaken for the king’s tithe gatherers. Marna’s flight to seek help from the capital and meeting instead Yengar, Olvric, Jenna and Yrain, four soldiers from a distant land who had been relentlessly pursuing Nilsson and his men so that they could be brought to justice for past crimes. The encounter between Rannick and the creature from the caves, which had turned the surly and ill-tempered farm labourer’s strange natural gift into a murderous power and given him control over others while feeding his own bitter and uncontrollable nature; a nature that had led him to murder Farnor’s parents. Then had come Farnor’s desperate flight into the Great Forest, the home of the tree-dwelling Valderen, and the discovery of his own mysterious gift, the gift that, amongst other things, enabled him to touch the will of the ancient trees of the Great Forest and that he sensed he had not yet begun to measure. Even now, so far from the Forest, he could hear the whispering of the nearby trees and know that they were watching him and would do so wherever the will of the Forest could reach. For though he had won their trust, as far as any human – any Mover – could, he knew that they too had no true measure of him and that it troubled them.

  And finally there had been the terrifying conclusion. So much fear and pain of every kind. The villagers driven to attack the castle, the brief but bloody battle between Nilsson’s men and the Valderen, and Farnor returning to face the crazed Rannick and his grim familiar.

  Farnor closed his eyes. This last was burned into his mind. The bruising and stiffness from his fight with the creature were easing, but he must surely remember for ever the hauntingly beautiful worlds that lay beyond this one: worlds which Rannick, or the creature, or both, had somehow torn a way into and which drew Rannick to his death as, in his lust for yet more power, he had reached ever deeper into them.

  Farnor was trembling. His mouth was dry and his brow was damp when he opened his eyes again. It was always so when he thought about what had happened. And he coul
d not avoid thinking about it – over and over. Sometimes, for no reason that he could understand, it seemed he was actually back in the heart of those desperate moments again. He held out his hand as he had then, vainly reaching out to save Rannick while at the same time sealing the rent that had been torn between the worlds.

  His hand returned to the top rail of the gate and he gripped it tightly.

  What was he? How had he done such a thing?

  He shied away from the questions.

  Looking down he saw the old timber, weathered and polished smooth with years of usage. The sight and the touch of it were deeply ingrained in him, yet even this was different now. The last few days, the days he had intended would be a beginning, had had a quality so unreal about them as to be almost that of nightmare. Every least task, tasks he had performed for years, had felt false and empty. All the things that should have enabled him to gather together the threads of his old life had instead seemed to conspire to tear him apart.

  The questions returned but this time he did not shy away from them.

  He squeezed the rail affectionately, as if absolving it from blame for his dark mood. He had no choice, he knew now. It was not possible that he could become Farmer Yarrance in the stead of his murdered father. It was not possible to bring back what had gone, nor any part of it.

  What was it his father used to say? ‘Celebrate what you have while you have it. It helps when it’s gone.’ A remark that, notwithstanding his father’s deeply optimistic disposition, he had thought rather gloomy at the time but that, like most parental remarks, had largely passed over him anyway. Now he suspected he was perhaps beginning to understand. He had always felt a contentedness – a stillness – in his father, underneath his everyday moods in the face of the daily exigencies of farm life. And there had been something similar in the four who had come in pursuit of Nilsson, though people more different from his father it would have been difficult for him to imagine. Yengar, straightforward and, when all was over, quite genial. Olvric, quiet but unsettling. And the two women who had made such an impression on Marna. Even now Farnor found it difficult to accept all the stories he had been told about the way Jenna and Yrain rode and fought.