Part 14 (2/2)

Gavor had many uncomfortable qualities but pettiness was not one. 'Dear girl,' he said. 'I'd rather have any amount of your abuse than see you wilt like this.'

'What's the matter, Gulda?' Hawklan asked.

She did not answer, but remained with her head lowered for a little while. Then, as though she were a sapling that bowed only while the wind blew, she sat upright. Her face was still white, but it was filled with a stern resolution and dignity that stopped Hawklan speaking further.

She relinquished Hawklan's hand and placed her own steadily back on top of her stick. 'Tell me again what he said. Exactly, mind.'

Hawklan repeated his tale.

'Do these names mean anything to you, Hawklan?' she asked.

Hawklan shrugged. 'I keep coming across them in these,' he said, waving his hand over the books scattered across the table. 'And in some of the tales on the Gate. Andawyr talked about Sumeral. Called him the Corruptor, the Great Enemy . . . the Enemy of Life.'

Gulda nodded. 'Didn't he explain?'

Hawklan shook his head. 'A little, but we were attacked before he could finish.' Gulda nodded.

The sound of a door closing quietly made Hawklan look up, and Tirilen came quietly into the room carrying food and drink. She walked over the soft carpeting as gently as if it had been a spring meadow and laid a carved tray at Hawklan's elbow.

Gavor cast his eye approvingly over the wares offered. 'Be enough to spare for a famished avian, won't there?' he whispered. Tirilen caught the look on Gulda's face. 'Shall I leave?' she said. Gavor looked up in alarm.

'No,' said Gulda. 'Eat. And stay. You're his friend. He'll need you. And to be strong you must also know the truth.'

Gavor began to eat with noisy gusto.

Hawklan picked up a piece of fruit and, toying with it absently, looked at Gulda. She in turn looked straight into his green eyes. 'You must trust me, Hawklan, like you trusted this . . .

Andawyr. It was probably because of your trust that he could reach you in his hour of need and give us his message.'

Hawklan found the piercing blue eyes disconcerting. 'I'll trust you, Gulda. I feel no hurt in you for all your ferocity. And you're a focus for these who're trying to reach me.'

'Yes,' said Gulda. 'Your figures in the mist. I'm afraid they're a mystery to me. I saw nothing . . . but you're a special person and, there's a lot I don't know, Hawklan, a lot.' She paused uncertainly.

'However, what I do know, you need to know. Your ignorance is pitiful and probably dangerous.'

As it had done in Andawyr's tent, the word ignorance raked through Hawklan like an icy wind stirring long-lain leaves.

'Tell me what you know,' he said flatly. 'Perhaps you can thread these happenings together.'

Gulda's eyes narrowed at his tone, then she lowered them for a while as if she had either not decided exactly what to say or was trying to recall a tale she had not told for many years.

'Let me speak and then ask your questions, Hawklan,' she said, reluctantly shedding the last obstacle between her tale and its exposition. Hawklan nodded and Gulda began.

'These people here think of me as just a cantankerous old teacher who's come back to persecute them in their middle age like I did when they were children.' A smile flitted across her face, like suns.h.i.+ne off a wave. 'Well,' she admitted, 'I am cantankerous, but only because the old is truer than they can imagine.

But I haven't come back to persecute them . . . although I might.' Another brief smile. 'A little, just for old times' sake.' Then the smile vanished utterly. 'No. I've come back because something is stirring.

Something dark and evil that once spread its stain over the whole world . . .'

She stared straight ahead with unfocused eyes for some time before grimacing self-consciously. 'I'm sorry,' she went on. 'It's so long since I've spoken of these things it's not only difficult to know where to start, I didn't know how painful it was going to be.'

'If it distresses you, Gulda . . .' Hawklan began, but she waved him to silence.

'No, no,' she said quickly. And then, in an almost offhand manner, 'Anyway, it's of no consequence why I came here. I should be old enough by now not to put too much store in my own a.s.sessment of my motives, eh? Now I'm here I see my task is to instruct you. Then perhaps I can return to my own problem.' Apparently satisfied with this conclusion, she sat up briskly and began like a village storyteller.

Chapter 21.

'A long time ago, out of the terrible heat of the Great Searing came four figures. s.h.i.+ning white and brilliant, they walked the cooling world shaping it with their songs and their love into a great celebration of their sheer joy at being.

'Many shapes it took, for great and endlessly varied was their joy. And when the time was due, they formed it as it is now so that their own creations could create in turn and celebrate their own joy at being.

'And these four were called the Guardians: Sphaeera, Guardian of the Air and the winds and the sky; Enartion, Guardian of the Oceans and Lakes and all the rivers and streams; Theowart, Guardian of theEarth, its mountains and flatlands, islands and continents; and then, greatest of all, the First Comer, Ethriss, the Guardian of all Living Things.

'And the Guardians looked at their work and at the Great Harmony of its Song, and were content. And they rested; each fading into his wards.h.i.+p, so that only Ethriss retained his original form, lying atop an unclimbable mountain, hidden from the eyes of men by Sphaeera's mists.

'But a fifth figure had come from the heat of the Great Searing, with lesser figures at his heels. And He shone red and baleful and carried an ancient corruption with Him from what had gone before. Brooding in His evil, and detesting the work of the Guardians, but daunted by their power and might, He remained still and silent until they rested. Then He came forth, quietly and with great cunning, for He knew that to wake them would be to court His own destruction. For they would know Him. And He walked among men for many generations, sowing His corruption softly and gently, with sweet words and lying truths, slowly souring the Great Harmony that the Guardians had created.

'And so beautiful was He that none could see the evil in Him . . .'

Gulda stopped her tale abruptly and looked at Hawklan with a strange sad expression on her face. 'And He was beautiful, Hawklan, so beautiful.' Hawklan felt a myriad nuances in her voice but they were s.n.a.t.c.hed from him as the momentum of her old tale carried her forward again.

'And so wise was He that some men forgot the sleeping Guardians and took Him for a G.o.d and wors.h.i.+pped him, calling Him Sumeral, the Timeless One. And from their wors.h.i.+p He drew great power, both in His spirit and in His possession of men's hearts and minds. And men multiplied and spread across the whole world, and as they did, so His power grew until it rivalled that of the Guardians themselves.'

Again, Gulda stopped, as if recalling some long-forgotten memory. She raised a cautionary finger and spoke in her normal voice.

'You mustn't think to judge these people, Hawklan. Sumeral wrought His damage always with reasoned and subtle argument. He narrowed men's vision, so that they could see only their own needs and desires.

And seeing only these, they became discontented. He blunted their awareness of others not just people, but plants, animals, everything. He made them forget their deep kins.h.i.+p, their reliance on and their need for all other things that were. He made them forget the joy of being, Hawklan, and knowing they'd lost something, people searched even more desperately for something to fill the emptiness He'd created.'

She leaned forward, and tapped her raised finger into the empty air. 'So more and more He showed them how to satisfy these needs and desires. But each gratification led only to more emptiness and to more desire. And each was always at the cost of some previous treasure for which they now felt nothing.

I fancy after twenty years in Orthlund you'll find this hard to imagine, but animals were slaughtered utterly, forests wasted, mountains blasted, great tracts of land destroyed, even the air and the sea became foul with poisons.'

Hawklan lifted his hand to interrupt. At first Gulda had intoned her tale like some village storyteller. Her narrative was similar to many he had read in the past week, and he was prepared to hear old stories retold if that was what she wanted. But what was she saying now? She was right, he could not imagine such extremities, not least because, stripped of her storytelling lilt, the simple words seemed to fall on him like stinging hailstones.

'Gulda, I don't understand,' he said, his perplexity showing openly. 'You're telling us an old fairy tale asif we were children . . .' He stopped abruptly as he saw the expression on her face. It was not the angry irritation or stern reproof that such a comment might have been expected to invoke, but a terrible lonely sadness, as from an aching pain too deep to be reached by any solace. His eyes opened almost in horror as the healer in him touched on the edge of this torment, and a realization dawned on him. Gulda saw it, and nodded her head slowly.

'Yes, Hawklan,' she said. 'You see correctly. This is no child's tale. It's the truth. I tell it like an old fireside lay because any other way needs my mind and my heart, and the pain of memory is too much for me.' Tears formed in her eyes but no convulsion shook her mouth or face.

Hawklan's mind washed to and fro like a pebble at the edge of a storm-tossed lake. For a moment he actually became dizzy and he put his hands to his temples to steady himself. Something was shaking his entire being. Here was this silly old woman telling him fairy tales, just as Andawyr had, when he needed answers to his many questions. He cursed himself for his weakness in hoping for so much from this strange creature. And yet . . . And yet . . . she believed what she was saying, that was obvious. And . . .

he believed it, too, even though reason railed against it. But . . .?

'How can you know it's true?' he asked at last.

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