Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

Tarrian’s approval rumbled into Antyr’s mind and, dropping his bone noisily, the wolf pushed past him and walked straight over to her.

‘Stop that!’ Antyr snapped silently. But it was too late: Tarrian was standing with his forelegs on the woman’s shoulders, rapturously receiving a brilliant smile and a vigorous caress of his long head. As he dropped down gently, Grayle, leaning against the woman, received the same.

‘Aren’t you both beautiful?’ came the words that Antyr had heard so often when the two wolves chose to act thus. Tarrian replied to Antyr’s rebuke with a malevolent chuckle.

The woman’s accent was noticeably different from Andawyr’s, with an almost musical lilt to it.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Antyr said to her, adding, with a glower at the two wolves, ‘I’m afraid they’re not particularly well disciplined. And usually they don’t like to be touched.’

‘It’s all right,’ the woman said, turning the same smile on him. ‘They’re a delight, aren’t they? Are they yours?’

‘No,’ Antyr replied quickly. ‘They don’t belong to anyone. They’re just my companions. They choose to stay with me.’ The woman gave him a quizzical look.

‘This is Antyr, Usche,’ Andawyr said. He nodded towards the mirror stones. ‘As you probably saw, he arrived with Yatsu and Jaldaric. He’s come a long way and there’s much more than meets the eye to him and his…’ He glanced significantly towards the wolves who were now prowling around the room, sniffing purposefully at each of its occupants in turn but assiduously avoiding any further contact. ‘I’m looking forward to some very interesting discussions with him.’

Usche took Antyr’s offered hand. ‘Anyone who rides with the Goraidin and travels with wolves must necessarily be interesting,’ she said, looking at him keenly. ‘Welcome to the Cadwanen, Antyr, traveller from a distant land, friend to the Goraidin, Yatsu and Jaldaric, and companion to…?’ She looked at the two wolves. ‘Do they have names, your companions?’

‘Tarrian and Grayle.’

‘Companion to Tarrian and Grayle.’ Usche completed her greeting and released his hand.

‘Usche’s a Riddinwr. They can be very fussy about introductions,’ Andawyr said. ‘Think yourself fortunate she didn’t know any of your relations. Meeting someone you know in Riddin can be a very lengthy matter.’

Usche gave him a look of both reproach and threat. ‘And our great leader here, unfortunately, isn’t a Riddinwr – as you’ll realize as soon as you see him on a horse – and thus hasn’t been brought up in the ways of civilized courtesy.’

‘I was just showing Antyr how we protect ourselves here,’ Andawyr said, ignoring the taunt. He swept an arm around the many views being brought into the room. ‘From here, as you can see, we can watch every part of the mountains around us for a considerable distance.’ Quite abruptly a look of pain passed over his face. ‘We always have done, after a fashion,’ he went on softly. ‘But we allowed the Watch to become a mere ritual; a condescending nod to the past. A dreadful lapse. Such arrogance.’ The last words were spoken as though to himself. He straightened up and the mood was gone as quickly as it had come. ‘But now we watch and we watch well,’ he concluded emphatically.

Antyr looked at the views before him. They were a remarkable sight, and even a cursory glance told him that no army or, for that matter, any lone rider could approach the Cadwanen without being seen. But his memories of the mountains were very fresh. ‘What do you do when the mist comes down?’ he blurted out.

His tone provoked some laughter.

‘Which is most of the time. Yes, we know,’ Andawyr conceded. ‘But as with everything else here, there’s…’

‘More than meets the eye? Like me.’ Antyr finished the sentence for him.

‘Yes,’ Andawyr replied with a hint of apology.

‘Anything that moves, we have ways of seeing, or hearing,’ Usche volunteered. ‘Do you know anything about the Power?’

‘He knows of it, I suspect, to his cost, but not about it,’ Andawyr replied on Antyr’s behalf. ‘But we can put that right with a little effort.’ Usche gave a slight bow and took a step backwards.

Antyr pointed to the symbols surrounding the Mirror Stones. ‘As you seem to be so well protected against assaults by armies and the like, I presume these and all those littered about the place use this Power to protect you against anyone who could use it against you.’

Andawyr gave him an appreciative look. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said.

A fleeting recollection of his fateful confrontation with the blind man flitted through Antyr’s mind, leaving, as ever, tantalizing hints of all that he had then known and now forgotten. ‘A web, you called it. Then the Power pervades this entire place?’

Andawyr’s face took on the expression of a parent asked a too-penetrating question that time and circumstance, perhaps even ability, did not allow him to answer as he would have wished.

‘The Power pervades everything, Antyr,’ he replied, rather hastily. ‘It is everything. I’ll explain what I can later. We both of us have a lot to talk about and there’s no urgency.’ He became brisk. ‘Usche, are you free to come with us now?’

The woman hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes, my duty spell here finished a few minutes ago, I was just discussing something.’

‘Well, if your discussion can safely be left, would you come with us, please?’

‘Of course.’

She picked up a book and some papers from the table and followed them. Tarrian and Grayle recovered their dropped bones and acted as her escort.

A short walk brought them back to the room from which they had set out. Yatsu and Jaldaric were still there. Both of them were writing. Antyr was conspicuously surprised. He greeted them with an exaggerated and apologetic shrug. ‘I’ve been doing my best,’ he said. ‘Doing what you told me. Taking careful note of where I’ve been in case I might have to return that way. But this place is so bewildering. I could’ve sworn we’d been walking away from here all the time. Not to mention, on the whole, moving upwards.’

‘No nose at all,’ Tarrian muttered disdainfully as he flopped down noisily underneath the large window and began gnawing his bone again. Grayle joined him.

‘You’re a bitter disappointment to us,’ Yatsu said, shaking his head with mock reproach as he returned to his writing.

Andawyr intervened. ‘No small part of your confusion is wilfully built into the design of the Cadwanen, Antyr. If you were to study it carefully, you’d find that, amongst other things, it’s extremely defensible by conventional means should the need arise. In many ways it has the qualities of an elaborate board game, except that any enemy who managed to gain access would know neither the shape nor the layout of the board, nor the number, positions and strengths of any of the pieces. And they certainly wouldn’t know the rules. We’re protected inside and out against every assault we’ve been able to envisage.’ He rubbed his hands gleefully. Antyr’s response, however, was a weak smile.

Though he had known Andawyr for less than a day the man’s manner was such that he felt it had been much longer. He had to remind himself that this rather scruffy little individual was the leader of the Cadwanol and presumably responsible for the running of this enormous place. Further, from what he had been told by Yatsu and Jaldaric, Andawyr was highly respected not only by the Cadwanwr themselves but by all those who held authority in neighbouring lands. And, too, it seemed he possessed great personal courage.

Yet as he had walked about the Cadwanen with him, Antyr had had no sense of Andawyr’s exalted status. Indeed, there seemed to be very little sense of hierarchy in the whole place. People had accosted Andawyr as they might a friend in the street, and addressed him directly by name, without any formal salute or title – even Ar-Billan, whom Antyr now took to be a Novice. And Andawyr had answered in like vein, openly and straightforwardly. Antyr himself found that he was treating him as a friend of long standing. The word ‘openness’ seemed to typify everything he had seen and heard. Not only with Andawyr, but in the place itself. Open and airy, it was like a building in which all the windows and doors had been opened so that sunlight and spring breezes could drift through. And the few people he had met seemed to be as willing to listen as they were to speak. Yet there was a paradox, too. The place was not open: it was an intricate network of caves buried deep within and beneath the mountains; the people must have their ordered places and responsibilities, and the precautions taken to protect the place far outweighed anything he had ever known in his own apparently much more violent society. They disturbed him.