Part 17 (2/2)

Hawklan started. Gulda's voice was like the closing of a steel trap. Then, more gently, 'I won't come with you, Hawklan. I'm afraid this burden is yours alone. I'm not . . . strong enough yet. Too long doing too little.'

Hawklan tried to pursue the matter further but Gulda waved his questions to silence. 'Just you remember that this man's dangerous,' she said, her face still averted. 'Unbelievably dangerous. He's not what he seems. Be very careful.Very careful. You'll need your every resource. There's no limit to his treachery, his cunning, and his knowledge of ancient skills.' After Hawklan had left, Gulda seemed intent on making up for doing too little for too long and, to Loman, she seemed to fill the Castle as much as all the other visitors put together. She took charge of all the new arrivals, told them in detail what had happened, what was happening, and why. She worked with Loman and the other Morlider veterans on training programmes and co-ordinated their work to minimize duplication of effort. Then, continuing the work she had begun at the first meeting of the Elders, she ruthlessly graded the arrivals to ensure that they received the most appropriate training. Loman was impressed, not only with her tireless efficiency, but with what he considered to be a totally uncharacteristic diplomacy.

For his own part, he found himself studying ancient volumes on military tactics and strategy, his earlier repugnance being grudgingly replaced by satisfaction at the acquisition of new knowledge. He began walking about the Castle, looking at it with a new eye, seeing features in its design and location that added to his appreciation of its original creators something he would not have thought possible only weeks earlier. He studied weaponry also, but here with the relentless eye of a Master Craftsman. And he was pleased to the point of smugness when he found that while he could not equal the craftsmans.h.i.+p of most of the weapons from the Armoury, he was satisfied that he could improve their design.

Not that his studying allowed him to escape the rigours of his own training programmes, and in the early days he was frequently to be found discreetly seeking the ministrations of his daughter. Ma.s.sively strong he might be, but his flexibility and agility left a great deal to be desired, and his striving to attain the standards set by younger and more pliable souls resulted in his acquiring a great many unusual pains.

Tirilen was sympathetic and helpful, but she lacked the detachment she possessed with her other charges.

'You giggling and saying ”Poor old soul” isn't helping,' he was obliged to say on more than one occasion. 'Yes, Papa,' she would smirk, driving her fingers into his ribs.

Like everyone else, Tirilen was kept busy by the changed circ.u.mstances in the Castle. Her long blonde hair was invariably swept back and held by a simple ribbon, and her white robe was replaced by a practical gra.s.s-green one, though its lapel was still adorned by Gavor's black feather. b.u.mps, bruises, cuts, scratches, sprains, fractures, aches and pains of every kind paraded in front of her daily, borne with varying degrees of dignity and stoicism, but the more she treated the more she glowed. The worried and the anxious she delegated to Gulda's tender mercies, rightly judging her better suited for dealing with such problems. 'No mithered middle-aged farmer is going to take any notice of me, is he?' she declared.

Not that she was without concerns herself. She knew her father was ever alert in the Armoury for some glittering black relic of Ethriss, and that the absence of the bow and sword in which he had seen such perfection disturbed him in some subtle fas.h.i.+on which was totally beyond her ability to reach.

Following her own advice, she finally confided in Gulda.

'Don't be afraid,' said the old woman. 'You're Orthlundyn. You understand really. Your father's waking, like many others round here. Just the touch of those weapons has taught him so much. Look.'

She clumped around her spartan room and returned with a long black arrow which she held up for Tirilen's inspection. 'This was only your father's first attempt. The ones Hawklan took with him were better yet.'

Tirilen knew enough about her father's work to know that the arrow, for all its simplicity, was probably better than anything he had ever made before, but the bright barbed killing points brought confusion toher face.

Gulda put an arm around her shoulder. 'The quality of his craft is a measure of a man's striving for greater understanding. In this understanding, terrible needs are sometimes seen, Tirilen. Needs which will destroy if they aren't faced and answered. Your father's work answers them in his way. This . . .' she tapped the arrow gently, 'is an act of faith by him. Faith in the rightness of the truth he sees. Faith in Hawklan as the man who can use this bitter gift wisely to answer those needs that he alone can see.'

'I don't understand,' said Tirilen.

Unexpectedly, Gulda embraced her. 'I doubt any of us do,' she said. 'At the end of our reasoning there's only trust and faith.'

Chapter 25.

Loman stopped abruptly as he strode out along the broad curving corridor. 'What's the rush, man?' he muttered to himself. 'What's the rush?' There was so much to do these days. But he didn't have to do it all at full tilt, did he?

Satisfied with his own answer he prescribed himself a brief pause in the sun-laden air and, sitting down on a low window-sill, he leaned back against the warm stone and closed his eyes.

Anderras Darion had become the focus of Orthlund. People were coming to it from all over the country.

Yet there was ample room for them all. Loman wondered again what kind of people had built such a place, and why, and how many it once might have held. It seemed as though it could hold the entire population of Orthlund and still feel s.p.a.cious and empty. For all his familiarity with it, Anderras Darion was indeed a mysterious and wonderful place.

In all his years as Castellan, scarcely a day had pa.s.sed when he did not find some new wonder.

Sometimes it would be tiny a small carving or piece of metalwork, some exquisite miniature. At others it had been unbelievably large. Several times he had found entire chambers, and the feeling was always with him that there were many still to be found. In fact, the feeling was almost that they were hiding from him playfully.

Now, the presence of so many other people seemed to be accelerating this rate of discovery. There was a liveliness about the place that he had never known before. Voices, laughing, earnest, loud and secretive, whispered and rattled along corridors that for many years had known only the occasional soft footstep, until they floated expansively into empty halls and up into hidden crannies and crevices to fade into the Castle's ancient calm. The Castle soaked up the many new sounds like the sands of the parched southlands soaked up rain and, like a great creature waking cell by cell, it seemed to take them as nourishment and trans.m.u.ted them into a low background harmony note to underscore its song of welcome to the newcomers.

For all the dark purpose of the visitors, the Castle forbade gloom. Time enough for that should the skills they were learning ever be needed, then perhaps memories of the happy sounds of Anderras Darion might carry them through when all else failed.

Loman smiled to himself and opened his eyes. Standing up he stepped up on to the low windowsill and looked out of the tall narrow window down to a courtyard, dotted with lawns and flower beds and the strangely comfortable stone benches that were a characteristic feature of much of the Castle's outdoor furniture. Two liveried apprentices scurried past, intent on some errand and unaware of his watchful gaze. He was pleased with his apprentices. In his hastier moments he normally categorized them as insensitive little devils, but the new atmosphere seemed to have reached even them now.

He took in the rest of the scene playing before him. a.s.siduously avoiding the lawns, a small group of younger children were pursuing each other in an elaborate chase game that he remembered vaguely from his own childhood. One or two figures sat isolated on the benches and lawns reading with varying degrees of attentiveness, while an equal number just lay about idly in the suns.h.i.+ne, books discarded. In the far corner, Gulda was holding court to a group of older men and women. He regretted he could not hear what she was saying, because even though he still carried a substantial residue of his childhood terror of the woman, he had come to admire and enjoy her great expositions.

They were liable to happen at any time and anywhere and when she started a small crowd invariably gathered to stand enthralled. He watched her now for several minutes talking apparently without pausing for breath, hands and arms flying expressively from one gesture to the next, an occasional thrust with her stick for emphasis, and her great nose wafting through the air like the sail of a tacking yacht as her head moved rapidly from side to side scanning her audience for the telltale signs of blankness in the eyes.

Loman had ceased to ponder about Gulda's nature, as he had Hawklan's many years earlier. Not a topic could be raised but what she knew something of it. And she worked tirelessly. Ferreting through the Library, unearthing the most remarkable old books on military lore, organizing the newcomers, organizing those leaving, organizing him!

And she never seemed to sleep.

Once Loman had met her walking slowly down a long moonlit corridor deep in the dark hours of the night. He had been poring over some old books and, having neglected the time, was hurrying to his quarters to catch a little sleep before rousing his apprentices.

'Memsa, can't you sleep? You'll be exhausted,' he said anxiously.

Gulda started a little, then continued her slow pace, acknowledging his concern with a nod that brought her hood forward and threw her face into shade. Loman did not have the skills of his brother but he was Pedhavin-born and shadow lore was in his blood. He saw what she had intended to hide. A look of despairing loneliness that almost made him step back.

Instead he stepped forward.

'Gulda,' he said gently. 'You do too much. Perhaps Tirilen can help you. She's no Hawklan, but . . .'

In response to his gentleness, a soft smile appeared in the shade of the hood and she laid a hand on his arm. 'What would I do with sleep, Loman?' she asked distantly. 'There's nowhere for Gulda to hide, least of all in sleep, where memories run unfettered.' Then she walked slowly past him.

He had watched the stooped black form retreating down the moon-shadowed corridor. In the glistening light her shape became so black and dense that it looked like the entrance to a long dark tunnel and, for an instant, he had the feeling of long interminable years stretching back endlessly from this brief time of his to times and peoples unimaginable. 'Nowhere for Gulda to hide', had floated back to him as she slowly merged with the distant shadows. He had swayed slightly as if he had woken suddenly to find himself exposed on a great height, his stomach fluttering with vertigo. The sun now streaming through into the deep embrasure of the window could not illuminate that haunting memory and Loman stepped away from the courtyard scene thoughtfully. There could be no understanding someone like Gulda. Nor anything gained from wondering who she was or why she was now here. Shaking off his reverie he strode out again. He needed to think, but not about this. Hawklan's last message had been the one he had feared most of all.

Such was the impetus given by Gulda, Loman and the Morlider veterans, and such was the natural adaptability of the Orthlundyn, that within weeks of Hawklan's leaving the many vague ideas that had started the enterprise had settled into familiar routines, and offshoots had begun to branch out. Already the more capable trainees were returning to their villages to start preliminary training locally in order to spare the limited time of the Castle's instructors and to minimize the disruption of ordinary village life.

They would also survey their own districts to note features of tactical value should conflict develop.

'This is vital,' Gulda emphasized. 'Real strength can only come from firm and tenacious roots. And you,'

she swung her stick around the a.s.sembled instructors, 'will bring all this information together as soon as possible so that we here will have a complete and detailed picture of the whole country.'

Loman's feet took him upward and outwards until he found himself on the Castle wall looking out across the rolling landscape. He was tired and stiff; though not unpleasantly so. For all her impudence, his daughter had eased the more excruciating pains very effectively.

He stretched ma.s.sively, drawing the fresh summer air into his barrel chest and closing his eyes to feel the sun on his craggy face. Hawklan had been right. The Orthlundyn, himself included, he realized, strove naturally for perfection and, while it gave them a profound satisfaction to do well, much of it was only because it was a step to something better. Perhaps only an outlander could see that in us, he thought.

In truth though, he could not have imagined that so much could have been achieved so quickly. Few had expressed serious reservations about what was being done. The evil that had come into their land had awakened some long-dormant spirit in the Orthlundyn and, while they regretted the need, they took to their new studies with the same thoroughness that typified all their acts. Their weakness, Loman knew, was that few of them were battle-hardened. Combat was not an extension of training, it was profoundly different. But, for all that, a tool was being formed which could do fine service if the need arose. He frowned anxiously at the thought as if the very thinking of it might fulfil it. He patted the stone in front of him with his powerful hand almost superst.i.tiously. Then he turned his eyes northwards towards Fyorlund.

The string of riders established as a message line for Hawklan and Isloman had been used frequently as part of various training exercises and Loman knew that the two men had made steady and uneventful progress, and that they in turn knew of the progress that had been made at the Castle.

Then had come Hawklan's last message before they disappeared into the mountainous approaches to Fyorlund. 'Well done. Now select your finest and train them beyond their limits, for special needs.'

It was a message he had feared Hawklan's reason would lead him to eventually: the formation of an elite corps. He had a.s.siduously avoided mentioning such an idea to Hawklan because in it were enshrined all the painful and irreconcilable paradoxes of the wilful use of violence. Further, he and Loman had both served with such a group: the Goraidin. The only non-Fyordyn ever to do so. It had been a difficult experience, at once enriching and impoveris.h.i.+ng, and he had little desire to relive it.

Even now, so many years later, he would wake occasionally in the night, s.h.i.+vering, full of the nightmare of that first meeting. Their small unit had been scattered by a surprise night attack and he and Isloman had spent days wandering through the snow-covered terrain trying to find out where they were and what exactly had happened. Then the weather turned and the two brothers found themselves clinging to one another in mortal fear. Everything disappeared into a horrifying glaring whiteness that burned into their eyes.

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