Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

‘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.’

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.