Roger Taylor - Ibryen

He stepped outside into the sunlight. It felt good. He felt good. The others followed him.

‘Perhaps too little sleep and too strange a day,’ Marris offered hesitantly.

Ibryen gave him a sour look and sat down on a grassy bank. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he replied, just managing to keep enough humour in his voice to avoid offence. ‘I’m not some dizzy young girl up dancing too late.’ He closed his eyes in an effort to remember fully what had happened. ‘I recall raising my arm, then something… hit me. No. Something swept me up. Tumbled me over as though I were a leaf in a gale. And there was a great din all around me. Like a rockfall, but louder. Then it was all gone and everything was…’ He left the sentence unfinished.

‘I heard nothing,’ Marris said, into the silence. ‘One moment you were lunging at him, the next you were measuring your length on the ground. Not a sound anywhere. Not even from you as you fell.’

Another thought came to Ibryen. He motioned Marris to sit down beside him. ‘Did anyone see this?’ he said softly and anxiously. Any hint that he was unwell could have a profound effect on morale.

Marris shook his head and replied equally softly. ‘No one saw anything.’ He pointed. ‘We were just over there; those rocks kept us out of sight of most of the village. And once we were satisfied you’d only fainted we got you on your feet and here in seconds.’

‘I didn’t faint,’ Ibryen snarled through clenched teeth, then, ‘We?’

Marris indicated the Traveller. ‘He’s stronger than he looks,’ he said, without amplification. Then he turned sharply to the little man. ‘You say you’ve got keen hearing. Did you hear anything strange when he fell?’

The Traveller looked unhappy. On an impulse, Ibryen held out a hand to countermand Marris’s question. ‘What did you have to do with all this?’ he asked.

‘You’re all right now,’ the Traveller said quickly, though again it was more of an instruction than a question. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Really.’

His evasiveness made him the immediate and intense focus of both men. Ibryen looked thoughtful. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m fine now. No dizziness, no sickness. Not even a headache. It’s as though nothing had happened. In fact, apart from being concerned about what did happen, I feel very well. Almost as if I’d had a long and relaxing sleep. I’ll ask you again, what did you have to do with all this?’

‘He never touched you,’ Marris said to him, but more in the spirit of providing relevant information than pleading in defence of the Traveller, on whom his eyes remained firmly fixed. Under this scrutiny the Traveller folded his arms and began looking up and down and from side to side – anywhere rather than directly at his questioners.

Ibryen recognized the signs and changed tack. ‘I’m truly sorry I tried to hit you,’ he said. ‘It was unforgivable for many reasons, but you struck straight through to the heart of everything we have here and I lashed out. So many unsettling things have happened today I suppose I was on edge – still am, maybe – and your words were too close to something I suspect I don’t want to think about.’

The Traveller’s expression became pained as he listened. Slowly, he looked up at the surrounding peaks, his face full of a poignant longing. He was about to speak when, following yet another impulse, Ibryen said, ‘You’re free to go.’

Marris started but stayed silent, though it was patently an effort. The Traveller sagged, as if he had been struck a telling blow. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said quietly, sitting down between the two men. ‘I always have been. Nothing you could do could keep me here against my will.’ It was a simple statement, quite free from challenge or bombast, but it was too much for Marris.

‘You think you could have escaped from here?’ he said, with some indignation. ‘Past Hynard and Rachyl and a great many more like them scattered on sentry watch all about this region? And every one of them knowing about you and watching you like hunting birds? I think not.’

The Traveller seemed to be gently amused. ‘I didn’t say I could fight my way out of here,’ he said. ‘Heaven forbid.’ He smiled broadly as if suddenly relieved of a burden. ‘Besides, I’m not so old that I can’t think of better things to do with Rachyl than cross swords with her.’

Marris, about to extol further the vigilance and prowess of the Count’s followers, found his mouth dropping open at this unexpected turn in the conversation. Ibryen fared little better. Despite their more pressing concerns, he and Marris exchanged disbelieving glances.

When Ibryen caught his breath, he said, softly and urgently, ‘I’d advise you to keep even a hint of that fancy to yourself, Traveller. Rachyl has a highly developed sense of… maidenly honour.’ Instinctively he looked over his shoulder as though glowering retribution for such thoughts might be standing there.

‘Oh yes,’ the Traveller replied, still smiling. ‘I’m not so inept in my dealings with people that I hadn’t discerned that.’

Marris growled, ‘Don’t change the subject, Traveller. Explain what you meant.’

The Traveller looked surprised. ‘About Rachyl? I’d have thought…’

‘About how you could have left here at any time,’ Marris interrupted sternly, still defensive.

The Traveller looked at the mountains again and his smile faded. ‘There’s nothing to explain,’ he said. ‘I was about to say that I came here of my own free will and that I’d leave similarly, but there are times when I wonder about such things. I fear I’m no freer than you, really. Your Count’s offer of freedom is more binding than his chains.’

Marris looked set to become angry at what he took to be continued evasion. Ibryen interceded.

‘It was a contentious remark – a challenge, if you will,’ he said. ‘An explanation wouldn’t go amiss. And you still haven’t told me what part you played in my… falling over.’

The Traveller looked down at his hands and hummed softly to himself. ‘I was just travelling. As always. It’s strange, I rarely have a destination. I find they’re troublesome – they entangle, they impede, they mar. But I’m not a passer-by, you understand. After what I’d seen and heard in Girnlant… so many years of strangeness, unease… taking almost physical form.’ He paused and hummed a little more. ‘I had to go back to that castle and look at that Gate – read it – study it – learn. Something in me prodded me forward. Held my feet to the path. And led me here. Not halfway to my goal and a strange hint of the Culmadryen in the air draws me down off the ridges.’ He looked at Ibryen intently. ‘And draws a man who perhaps hears beyond, up on to them.’ He stood up quickly, and spoke decisively. ‘This is the message that I heard, hung about with the aura of the Culmadryen, Count. Plain and simple. “Help me. Help me. I am nearly spent”.’

Ibryen’s eyes widened, but Marris grimaced and smacked his hands down on his knees.

‘This is madness,’ he said to Ibryen angrily. ‘I don’t know who he is, or how he got here, but he’s raving. And you’re on the verge of…’ He hesitated and selected his words carefully. ‘… doing something foolish.’ He leaned towards Ibryen, almost pleading. ‘If you try to release him you’ll have a mutiny on your hands.’ He shot a glance at the Traveller. ‘And, your orders or not, someone’ll kill him before he reaches the next valley.’

Ibryen merely nodded in response to this outburst. ‘But he’s not leaving, are you, Traveller? He won’t leave because helping us is a necessary part of his journey. Because he’s found the same trouble here that he found in Girnlant.’