Eventually the distant towers of Anderras Darion came into view and, in spite of himself, Hawklan began to find it increasingly difficult to maintain the leisurely pace that the older people needed.
Gavor found it quite impossible and, as the party prepared to leave Tulhavin, the last village before Pedhavin, he appeared, meticulously groomed and carrying a particularly obnoxious morsel in his beak.
‘I’ll tell them you’re coming,’ he spluttered out of the side of his beak, then, as if an afterthought, ‘Then I’d better see my friends. They’ll be missing me.’
Shaking his head as he watched the black shape dwindle urgently into the distance, Hawklan turned to Isloman. ‘I’ll be glad to see familiar faces around me again,’ he said. ‘And familiar things.’
Isloman nodded and looked at his hands. ‘Yes. I’ve been too long away from my rock. All this has awakened too many old memories.’
Hawklan looked at him seriously. ‘I’ve no idea what’s going to happen, Isloman, but I’m certain that we’ll only get a brief respite at the Castle. I fear there’s more than old memories being awakened and my heart tells me we’re on the verge of journeyings and events that’ll offer us no rest in the future.’
Isloman leaned forward and patted his horse’s head with his great gentle hand. ‘I know,’ he said. Then, enigmatically, ‘Everyone knows.’
Hawklan did not reply.
‘We still have to seek out this Dan-Tor,’ continued Isloman. ‘And I can’t avoid the feeling that when we do it’ll only be the beginning of more trouble.’
‘Rrisss awake.’
The voice sounded distant in Hawklan’s head, whis-pering with an unrelenting urgency. He turned sharply to Isloman.
‘What did you say?’
Isloman shrugged. ‘I said it’ll probably be the be-ginning of more trouble.’
Hawklan shook his head irritably. ‘No, no. After that.’
‘Nothing,’ said Isloman.
‘Thriss… ’came the voice again-or voices. There was a quality in the sound that could brook no delay. It was the same sound he had heard in his dream in the mountains and it drew him irresistibly. He stood in his stirrups and looked around desperately.
‘There it is again,’ he said, steadying Serian, who had become restless under him.
‘I heard nothing,’ said Isloman. ‘It’s the wind in the trees.’
‘Sssss… ’ again, but fainter, as if carried away by the wind, or as if the caller were tiring.
‘There,’ cried Hawklan excitedly. ‘Right there.’ He pointed. ‘Right ahead of us. Over the hill.’
Isloman watched his friend’s agitation in amaze-ment. He was about to say that he could hear nothing when Hawklan bent down over his horse’s head.
‘Now, Muster horse, let me see you gallop,’ he said, and with a shake of his proud head, Serian leapt forward.
Momentarily dumbfounded, Isloman stared after the thundering horse now rapidly receding into the distance with its rider’s cloak flying wildly behind him. Then, coming suddenly to his senses, he shouted to the group to wait until he returned, and urging his horse forward, he set off at full gallop after his friend.
Chapter 14
Serian carried Hawklan to the top of the hill effortlessly. There, Hawklan reined him to a halt and looked along the road ahead. In the distance the towers of Anderras Darion shone in the morning light like great jewels crystallized in the ancient mountains, but the road in front of him dipped down into a wooded hollow untouched by the sun, and isolated tree tops protruded through a thick mist like saplings and shrubs in the snow.
Hawklan felt a surging excitement.
‘Ethriss. Awaken,’ came the voice, or was it voices? Strong at first, seeming almost to echo from the distant towers, but fading rapidly.
‘No!’ roared Hawklan at the top of his voice. ‘No!’ And driving his knees into the horse he urged him forward at full gallop down into the mist.
As soon as they entered, however, the horse slowed to a cautious walking pace and the dripping silence of the woodland mist folded round them. As the cold dampness struck through him, some impulse made Hawklan draw his sword.
It felt strange in his hand-powerful and alive-as if leading him. He looked at the hilt. The two intertwined strands at its heart seemed to be catching a light from somewhere and were glinting brilliantly, threading an infinite way through the myriad stars that surrounded them.
‘Ethriss, awaken.’ The voice was faint and weak, but a flicker of light seemed to run along the strands in response.
A soft movement in the air thinned the mist briefly and, shimmering in the distance, Hawklan saw four indistinct figures. He leapt down from his horse and ran forward along the road, the sound of his footsteps dying flatly in the greyness. The mist sighed silently back again and the figures were obscured, but Hawklan ran on.
‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘Wait!’ Then he halted suddenly as a dark hooded figure emerged through the mist a little way head.
‘Wait for what?’ it asked in a sharp, cross voice. A woman’s voice.
Hawklan ignored the question and ran up to her. ‘Where are the others?’ he asked.
‘Others? What others, young man?’
‘They were with you. Three of them. They were call-ing out to me.’
The woman’s head tilted to one side quizzically. Hawklan ran a few steps forward into the mist, looking desperately from side to side in a vain attempt to see through it and swinging his sword wildly as if to cut a pathway. A sense of loss was rising in him. He ran in another direction.
‘There’s no one here, young man, as you can see. I’m on my own.’ The woman’s voice showed marked impatience. Hawklan stopped his pacing, his face pained.
‘But I saw them,’ he said quietly. ‘And I heard them. They were here with you. Standing behind you.’
The woman flicked her hood back revealing a face as cross as her voice. It was an oddly striking face; one that drew the eye, though not beautiful. Its predominant feature was a long pointed nose overhanging a tight-lipped mouth and buttressing a determined forehead. From under the shade of this, two piercing blue eyes peered out. Judging from her stooped posture and the support she took from a stick, she was old, but Hawklan could not have guessed her age. Her gaze was remark-able.
‘Three you say?’ she asked. Hawklan nodded. She gave a non-committal grunt and stared at him relent-lessly.
‘You a bandit?’ she demanded after a moment. The suddenness of this eccentric question nonplussed Hawklan and his mouth opened and closed vaguely.
‘No,’ he managed eventually and rather weakly.
‘What’s that then?’ she asked, bringing her stick up and pointing to his sword.
‘A sword,’ he replied helplessly.
She took a purposeful step towards him. ‘Do you always address a lady with a sword in your hand?’
Hawklan felt his face redden, and clumsily he put the sword back into its scabbard with a mumbled apology.
‘Should think so too,’ snorted the woman. ‘Charging out of the mist shouting and yelling and waving your sword-looking for people who aren’t there. Frighten a defenceless old woman to death you could.’
Hawklan was beginning to think this was most unlikely, but he kept his own counsel. He gazed round again, but he knew that the three other figures would not be there. They had been round this woman whether she knew it or not, but they were gone now, that was beyond doubt. A vision of a great glowing answer to the questions that plagued him had opened before him, he knew, but it had slipped away as easily as the mist through the leaves of the trees. Now in place of this vision, he was standing in a dank, foggy dell, talking to a cantankerous old woman he had never seen before and who could quite legitimately reproach him for his conduct.