The mention of Dan-Tor galvanized the man, and he turned towards the door. As he did so Hreldar let out a gasping cry and sat up, his hand to his throat as if choking.
‘Wait,’ cried Darek to the departing guard. ‘He’s having some kind of a fit. He must have air. He’s choking to death.’
Again the man faltered, caught between Eldric and Darek’s commands and the apparent distress of Hreldar.
‘Quickly, man,’ said Arinndier, striding over to help Darek with the gasping Hreldar. Eldric gave the guard an imperative flick of the head to propel him away from the door and over to the struggling trio. ‘Hurry, he’s heavy. I’ll get the other guards.’ And before the guard had time to consider what was happening, he stepped out into the passage.
It was no frightened, struggling old man who walked through that door, it was a battle-tried and determined Lord who had clung to old ways and old disciplines when others around him were drifting into idleness and hedonism. He knew he could have only a few minutes’ freedom at the most and in that time he had to gather as much information as he could about their location.
The passage was unfamiliar but he allowed himself no time for disappointment. To his right it ended in an old and very solid door. He ran to it and lifting the heavy latch pulled it urgently. The door opened surprisingly easily and almost threw him off balance. He noted that though it was old, the hinges and the latch had all recently been greased. This must have been sealed for years, he thought. Who’s opened it now and why? Then he dismissed the question for future consideration and peered through the doorway. A spiralling flight of steps disappeared down into the darkness.
‘Guards,’ he shouted loudly for the benefit of the guard in the room. His voice sank dully into the dark stairwell in front of him. Faint noises and a dank unpleasant smell rose up to meet him. He wrinkled his nose in distaste and closed the door.
Two figures appeared along the passage. Eldric ran towards them, crying out, ‘Guards, guards, come quickly,’ before they could speak. Babbling loudly about Hreldar’s fit he ushered them urgently towards his cell. Arinndier and the first guard were manoeuvring the now almost dead-weight Hreldar through the door and Darek was flitting around looking concerned.
‘He must have air quickly,’ said Darek. ‘I’ve seen him in these attacks before. It’s the confinement, it happened in… ’
‘No,’ interrupted Arinndier angrily, hitching Hreldar’s arm around his shoulder. ‘He’s been poi-soned.’ And he glowered at the guards. ‘We’ll find out who’s responsible for this, have no fear.’
Good, Arin, thought Eldric. That’ll start rumours flying.
‘Which way, man?’ he snapped at the nearby guard. The man pointed vaguely up the passage. Eldric knew they had only seconds now before the guards took control so, unhooking Hreldar’s arm from Arinndier, he unceremoniously thrust Hreldar into the arms of the two guards and started urging the whole group along the passage towards the first junction.
When they reached it, the first guard found his tongue. ‘Pris… Lords,’ he said. ‘We’ll look after the Lord Hreldar now. You must return to your… room.’
Eldric gave Hreldar a concerned look and then, with heavy reluctance, turned back down the passage. Arinndier caught his quick gesture and joined him. Darek picked up a hand signal. ‘Let me go with him,’ he said to the guard. ‘I’ve seen these attacks before.’
The guard looked at Eldric as if for guidance, but Eldric, now backing slowly and dutifully towards the cell, shrugged as if to disown responsibility for every-thing that would happen from here on.
‘Very well,’ said the guard, and he nodded to his companions.
Eldric and Arinndier turned and entered their cell quickly, both anxious that the guard should not see the triumph on their faces.
Chapter 20
Hawklan pushed the books away from him and rubbed his eyes with his forefingers. ‘Learn your lore,’ Gulda had said, in her capacity as self-appointed adviser, adding in her inimitable manner, ‘There’s no point in you asking me any questions until you know what you’re talking about.’ She had marched Hawklan straight to the Castle’s massive Library and he had looked in dismay at the endless rows and stacks of books and scrolls. It was not a room he was overly familiar with.
‘Where in pity’s name do I start?’ he had asked plaintively, forgetting the nature of his companion until too late.
‘Good grief, man!’ had come the explosion. ‘Any-where.’ And the stick had banged on a desk prior to being waved round her head at the circular tiers of book-lined balconies looming over them. Then, uncharacteristically showing a little pity, she had gone straight to a shelf and picked out a large red-bound tome. She studied the title pensively and a small spasm of pain passed briefly across her face.
‘A fine writer,’ she said with a strained casualness. ‘This will do to start with.’ And she dropped the book on a nearby table with a dull thud. ‘Read it carefully.’
It occurred to Hawklan to ask her how she knew her way round the Castle so well, but, before he could speak, she was stumping her way out of the Library with the parting shot, ‘Very carefully now. There’ll be questions later.’
Now, a week later, Hawklan was more weary and stiff than he had ever been in his entire life. His head whirled with myths and stories, epic sagas, tales of heroism and cowardice, of loves lost and won, of terrible armies and evil warlords, and of the great heroes who conquered them, peoples enslaved and peoples freed, lands cursed and lands blessed. And then the histories, vague and uncertain, so that for most of the time he could not tell whether the myths derived from the histories or the histories from the myths, so alike were they, and so unlikely, so alien to everything he had known-or could remember. More than once, in some despair, he had pushed them all aside and sat glowering at the rows of shelves waiting so patiently. But not too long. Memsa Gulda was well acquainted with the idle and shiftless ways of men, and set him a merciless pace.
‘I’ll make that tangled piece of string you call a mind work again, young man, have no fear,’ she said repeat-edly and pitilessly.
He could not help but begin to like her though. On the one occasion when his patience had reached its limit, and to his considerable surprise, he had felt sorely tempted to use his fist on the old crone, she was through his guard and into a soft spot like an assassin.
‘I know it’s hard for you, Hawklan,’ she said gently. ‘And you must get resentful at times, but these are a fine people, perhaps still the finest in the world. They wouldn’t have turned to you even though the Castle has chosen you if they hadn’t felt some deeper purpose. We must both persist. They’re worth our best efforts.’ And that was that. End of rebellion.
Gavor was an amazing help, with a tremendous fund of information drawn from his long study of the Great Gate and the many carvings and pictures that filled the Castle. He shared most of Hawklan’s long vigils in the Library, flicking over pages with his wooden leg, and occasionally asking Hawklan to lift down another volume. Never having studied before, Hawklan had found to his own surprise that he was a quick and retentive reader. Gavor, however, was even quicker.
‘How did you learn to read so quickly, Gavor?’ he asked eventually, after watching him intermittently for several days.
‘Dear boy,’ was the reply. ‘I study the Gate.’
‘Well?’
‘The well, dear boy,’ Gavor began patiently, ‘is that I’m not a humming bird. I can’t hover. I have to read things on my way past. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to sit here and read without fear of crash landing.’
Not everything was harmonious, however, a certain tension having developed between Gavor and Gulda. Somewhat injudiciously she referred to Gavor as a ‘damned crow’, to which Gavor responded by saying that if she shortened her nose by a stride or two, she’d be passing fair-for a pelican.
Fortunately, before this theme could be developed further, others valiantly intervened to patch up a makeshift peace, and now the two maintained a stony truce, generally avoiding each other and eyeing one another suspiciously when circumstances dictated that they co-operate in helping Hawklan.