Hawklan shook his head. ‘Gulda, I don’t understand you. How do you know these things?’ Then partly to himself, ‘I don’t understand any of this. All these strange and awful happenings. What do you know about them?’
The dark hood turned towards him, and there was a long deep watchful silence. Then suddenly, ‘Here, catch.’ And with a flick of her wrist she sent the sword spinning towards him. Without thinking, his hand went out and caught it solidly. A strange humming vibration came from the blade.
Gulda chuckled. ‘You understand more than you know, healer. I wonder who you are? We’ll have to talk later.’
Unsteadily, Hawklan put the sword back in its scab-bard. He wanted to talk now. He had an accumulation of questions that more than accounted for twenty years of indifference, but she was off, clumping along the road towards the village.
He sighed resignedly. Patience, Hawklan, he thought. Patience. There’ll be plenty of time when we reach the Castle. But, as that very thought came to him, he sensed that time was becoming more scarce, and that the meeting of the elders, and whoever else would be there, would be the last chance he would have to draw on the collected wisdom of Orthlund. After that, he could see only vague images of dispersion and scatter-ing; even breaking.
Chapter 15
As at all the other villages, the people of Pedhavin came out to meet them in straggling groups before they reached the village proper. Greetings were genuine and warm, but concern lined almost every face, and Hawklan noted again that everyone gravitated first to Isloman to hear his brief account of what had happened.
Gulda, too, created quite a stir, being obviously acquainted with many of Isloman’s generation, and Hawklan was amused to see so many grown men looking sheepish after some encounter with her. Her cross voice echoed through the village and she did a great deal of poking and prodding with her stick, both at carvings and people. A clumping, black, stooped figure stalking around the village, she looked like part of their shadow lore come to life, thought Hawklan.
Tirilen almost charmed her. Hawklan detected a more pervasive quiet in Tirilen’s manner, and felt both glad and sorry. The responsibility of being the village’s healer in his absence had subtly altered the villagers’ attitude towards her, but the new, deeper quietness came mainly from within Tirilen herself. It was like a flower starting a summer-long blooming after the turbulence of spring. Though bewildered and hurt by the news of what had happened, Tirilen also showed the strange relieved acceptance that the other Orthlundyn had shown and she faced Gulda’s scowling inspection with a manner that was at once both pleasant and unyielding and which provoked an entirely new range of grunts from the old woman. Some, to Hawklan’s ear, seemed quite complimentary.
Loman, however, fared less well; he appeared con-siderably less than enthusiastic about Gulda’s return. Hawklan gained the distinct impression that the great barrel-chested man was hiding behind his daughter’s skirts, but Gulda winkled him out and transfixed him against a wall with both stick and blue-eyed gaze, while her face reflected a memory’s journeying through the years. Then her eyes narrowed as a destination was reached.
‘Young Loman, isn’t it?’ she proclaimed. Loman coughed slightly, nodded, and went red. Gulda pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes further. The stick tapped him twice on the chest. ‘I’ll be watching you more carefully this time, young man,’ she said.
That was all. Loman cleared his throat and looked vaguely into the distance. Gulda cast another look at Tirilen who was trying not to smile at her father’s discomfiture.
‘Hrmph. You take after your mother, child,’ said the old woman, turning and walking away.
It was Gulda who led the procession up the steep winding road to the Castle. This time Hawklan did offer her the saddle, although her pace had not slackened. The stick twitched menacingly.
‘Are you trying to make a fool of me, young man?’ came the unhesitating reply. Hawklan declined to answer, knowing by now when his foot was on quick-sand and when a further step would leave him in inextricable distress. He walked quietly by her side, discreetly listening to her mutterings and snorts.
Many of the others continued to ride, but none felt inclined to pass Gulda.
Gavor gazed groggily down at the approaching group from far above in a cosy cranny high in the eaves of one of the towers. The front tip of the distant, shuffling snake gave him trouble. Closing one eye, and concentrating hard, he still failed to make the two black images merge into one. He looked reproachfully at his ‘friend’ snoring contentedly in the dusty sunlight and muttered something about abstinence, then he wriggled cautiously to try to straighten out some troublesome feathers. His companion’s eye opened.
‘Gavor,’ said a soft voice, carrying a quite unmistak-able implication.
Gavor affected to ignore the request and squinted gamely down the dizzying perspective of the tower.
‘Gavor.’ More urgently.
Gavor debated with himself. Should he fly down and greet Hawklan or should he…?
‘Gavor…
Then again, in his present condition he’d probably not remember how to fly before he hit the ground. He looked round.
‘You really care for these spurs, do you…?
There were many halls in Anderras Darion that could have accommodated the group which Gulda and Hawklan led in through the Great Gate, but Hawklan chose one of the courtyards. Ostensibly it was because the day was too fine to sit talking inside, even in the airy chambers of Anderras Darion, but in his heart he wanted an open sky and bright daylight to witness what was to be said. Time enough later for confinement and flickering shadows. This matter would not be resolved at one sitting.
Loman used his office as Castellan to make some semblance of a dignified escape from Gulda’s scrutiny and soon apprentices were walking among the visitors with food and drink, galvanized as much by curiosity as by the unusual zealousness of their master.
Gulda dropped herself unceremoniously on to a large stone slab in the middle of the courtyard and, leaning forward until it looked as if she were going to tumble off, dropped her chin on to her two long hands which were folded over the top of her stick.
‘I’ll be listening,’ she said to Hawklan, then her eyes closed. The Orthlundyn were a patient people, and Hawklan and Isloman had not been plied with questions after they had announced that all would be discussed fully in due course. But now, fed and a little rested, their concern and curiosity started to bubble out like water from a spring. Twice Hawklan raised his arms to try to quell the mounting hubbub, but to no avail. Then he noticed one of Gulda’s long fingers start tapping the back of her other hand impatiently. Better I chastise them than you, he thought.
‘Enough,’ he shouted, his voice ringing round the courtyard and soaring up to the rooftops from where it bounced up into the sky.
High above, a scruffy black bundle tumbled out of a niche in the eaves of one of the taller towers.
‘Enough,’ shouted Hawklan again, jumping on to the stone slab beside Gulda. ‘Sit down, everyone, please, sit down. Isloman and I will tell you what’s happened, then we can all decide what to do.’
There was a note in his voice that forbade any re-monstrance and the crowd fell silent.
‘Sit down, my friends,’ he repeated more gently. ‘We’ve bad things to talk about as you know, and I suspect I’ve as many questions as you.’
A few minutes later, everyone seemed to have found somewhere to sit or lie, either on the chairs and benches that the apprentices had brought out, or on the soft lawns around the courtyard. Hawklan jumped to the ground and sat down next to the hunched black form of Gulda. He looked over the waiting faces.