Roger Taylor - Valderen

Bildar smiled. ‘An odd word, believe,’ he said. ‘You might as well say that I believe in this table, or the sky, or Edrien here. But yes, I believe it. I believe it because it happens to be so. And it will remain so whether I, or you, believe in it or not.’

Farnor glanced out of the window at the swaying branches. ‘How do you know all this?’ he asked, self-consciously. ‘Do they… talk… to you?’ He cleared his throat, still fearful that he was being made the butt of some joke. ‘Do they… walk about?’ He wiggled his first two fingers in demonstration.

For a moment Bildar’s face clouded angrily, but his voice was level and calm when he spoke. ‘No, of course not,’ he said, with wilful slowness. ‘At least, not in the way that we do.’

‘Then how can they prevent me from leaving?’ Far-nor asked, a hesitant note of triumph in the question.

Bildar, still making a deliberate effort to remain calm, touched his forehead. ‘They can reach into our minds if they wish,’ he said. ‘Make their thoughts yours. What you thought was left, will be right; what north, south; what up, down. And you’ll wander back here. Or wherever they want you to go.’

Farnor, just coming to terms with the idea of a peo-ple that lived in the trees, felt unreality closing about him. Desperately he wanted to laugh and pour scorn on this foolishness, but the old man’s manner forbade it. As did Edrien’s now sober presence. And, unbidden, came the memory of his last joining with the creature. How it was preparing to make its final leap when suddenly, he, the fleeing prey, was no longer there. ‘How can you know all this?’ he asked again, though speaking to reassure himself that he was not in some eerie dream, rather than to elicit an answer.

Bildar relaxed a little. He shrugged. ‘It’s the way we are, Farnor. We all know it. It’s in our blood, in our history, in everything. It’s… obvious.’ He held up a hand to forestall Farnor’s inevitable further questions. ‘But there are some among us who… Hear… what the trees say. They can tell us when a tree may be felled, or branches taken, bark stripped. When a tree may be used as a lodge; when not. Many, many things that we need to know if we’re to stay here in peace with them.’

Farnor looked at him uncertainly, his mood still teetering between scorn and fear. He remembered the word that EmRan had used. ‘Are you a Hearer?’ he asked.

Bildar shook his head. ‘It’s said that all the Valderen are Hearers to some extent, but no, I’m not. Not as we mean it.’ He looked at his hands. ‘I’m just an old journeyman Mender. More at home with flesh and bones and protesting people than bark and sap and the whispering leaves.’ His voice became low and pensive. ‘And the voices that sing in the mind between sleeping and waking.’

Farnor clung to practicalities. ‘Is there someone here who is a Hearer, then?’ he asked. ‘Someone who can…’ He tried to say, ‘ask the trees’, but the words refused to form. ‘… find out whether I can go or not?’ he managed.

Bildar shook his head again. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘Marken was – is – our Hearer, but he’s gone off in search of a quiet place.’

‘When will he be back?’ Farnor persisted.

Bildar shrugged and looked at him sadly. ‘Today, next week, never. We don’t know,’ he replied. ‘That’s the trouble. That’s what’s caused all the stir. It’s not good for a lodge to be without a Hearer.’

Farnor put his hand to his head. He was about to ask why the Hearer had gone, but as it obviously involved him in some way he decided against it. ‘How can I find out what I’m supposed to do, then?’ he asked instead.

Bildar looked at him squarely. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you should just saddle your horse and ride south. See what happens.’

Farnor looked out of the window again. He was shaking inside.

How could he believe all this nonsense? Yet there was no doubt that Bildar and Edrien believed it, and presumably everyone else around here did so as well. As he looked at the sunlit leaves and branches beyond the window, they seemed to take on a menacing, purposeful motion of their own, and he seemed to sense countless eyes peering at him, watching his every movement. And ears listening to him. Listening to the hidden discourses of his mind. Worse, the sensation was not unfamiliar.

He looked away sharply. He must not allow Bildar and Edrien’s strange beliefs, however sincere, to infect him. It would be at best discourteous and at worst perhaps downright dangerous to mock their ideas, but equally it would be madness to allow himself to be drawn into believing them himself. What he needed now was plain, simple common sense.

But even as he reasoned thus, he remembered the distant voices that he himself had heard in the recent past; voices that were full of many emotions, and that seemed to belong to a great family; voices that he knew were from somewhere beyond him, just as surely as was his contact with the creature.

Then he recalled the voices that had urged him to flee from the woods. And that had directed him away from the valley! Had directed him to the north! And in the wake of these exploded the memory of those he had heard as he lay half awake, half asleep, in the root room. Voices that had given him a fearful, giddying, perspec-tive of countless ages gone and yet still present, as they judged him in some way.

‘He can Hear us even now.’ Such depths of meaning resonated in that word, Hear.

‘… never been such a one before.’ Deeply puzzled, awe-stricken, almost.

Dismissive. ‘… but a solitary Mover. And a sapling.’

A sapling!

‘What’s a Mover?’ he asked Bildar sharply.

Bildar started at the unexpectedness of the question, and Farnor heard Edrien catch her breath.

‘Why?’ Bildar asked.

‘What’s a Mover?’ Farnor repeated.

‘Where did you hear the word?’

‘What does it mean?’ Farnor insisted.

There was a short silence in which Farnor and Bildar stared at one another.

‘It’s what they call us.’ The answer came from Edrien.

She echoed Bildar’s question. ‘Where did you hear it?’

Farnor could feel the blood mounting to his face. He blustered. ‘I… I heard it from one… one of the people we met when we were coming here.’

Edrien and Bildar exchanged glances, then Edrien shook her head. ‘It’s not a word we use,’ she said. ‘The only people who’d call us Movers are children in their games, and Hearers, when they’re telling of some particularly significant Hearing.’ She stepped towards Farnor and looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Where did you hear it?’ she demanded.

Farnor was reminded of Marna’s inexorable curios-ity. This, he could contend with… for some time, at least.

He set his jaw. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said defiantly. Edrien’s jaw stiffened in imitation.

‘Leave him, Edrien,’ Bildar’s voice came between them like a protective shield. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

Reluctantly, Edrien stepped away from him, though her eyes did not leave his face. As surreptitiously as he could, Farnor took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself. He shut out of his mind the clamouring implications of what he had just been told. He must get away from this place. There was too much strangeness beneath the seeming normality here. He must get back to the valley. The thought brought an acrid taste to his mouth, and his original resolve flooded through him, oddly warm and reassuring. There was nothing for him anywhere until he had won vengeance for his parents; until he had killed Rannick.

‘I think I’ll do as you suggest, Bildar,’ he said, as soon as he could trust himself to speak without his voice trembling. ‘If someone can take me back to where I was found, I’ll head south and see what happens.’