She relinquished Hawklan’s hand and placed her own steadily back on top of her stick. ‘Tell me again what he said. Exactly, mind.’
Hawklan repeated his tale.
‘Do these names mean anything to you, Hawklan?’ she asked.
Hawklan shrugged. ‘I keep coming across them in these,’ he said, waving his hand over the books scattered across the table. ‘And in some of the tales on the Gate. Andawyr talked about Sumeral. Called him the Corrup-tor, the Great Enemy… the Enemy of Life.’
Gulda nodded. ‘Didn’t he explain?’
Hawklan shook his head. ‘A little, but we were at-tacked before he could finish.’ Gulda nodded.
The sound of a door closing quietly made Hawklan look up, and Tirilen came quietly into the room carrying food and drink. She walked over the soft carpeting as gently as if it had been a spring meadow and laid a carved tray at Hawklan’s elbow.
Gavor cast his eye approvingly over the wares of-fered. ‘Be enough to spare for a famished avian, won’t there?’ he whispered. Tirilen caught the look on Gulda’s face. ‘Shall I leave?’ she said. Gavor looked up in alarm.
‘No,’ said Gulda. ‘Eat. And stay. You’re his friend. He’ll need you. And to be strong you must also know the truth.’
Gavor began to eat with noisy gusto.
Hawklan picked up a piece of fruit and, toying with it absently, looked at Gulda.
She in turn looked straight into his green eyes. ‘You must trust me, Hawklan, like you trusted this… Andawyr. It was probably because of your trust that he could reach you in his hour of need and give us his message.’
Hawklan found the piercing blue eyes disconcerting. ‘I’ll trust you, Gulda. I feel no hurt in you for all your ferocity. And you’re a focus for these who’re trying to reach me.’
‘Yes,’ said Gulda. ‘Your figures in the mist. I’m afraid they’re a mystery to me. I saw nothing… but you’re a special person and, there’s a lot I don’t know, Hawklan, a lot.’ She paused uncertainly. ‘However, what I do know, you need to know. Your ignorance is pitiful and probably dangerous.’
As it had done in Andawyr’s tent, the word igno-rance raked through Hawklan like an icy wind stirring long-lain leaves.
‘Tell me what you know,’ he said flatly. ‘Perhaps you can thread these happenings together.’
Gulda’s eyes narrowed at his tone, then she lowered them for a while as if she had either not decided exactly what to say or was trying to recall a tale she had not told for many years.
‘Let me speak and then ask your questions, Hawk-lan,’ she said, reluctantly shedding the last obstacle between her tale and its exposition. Hawklan nodded and Gulda began.
‘These people here think of me as just a cantanker-ous old teacher who’s come back to persecute them in their middle age like I did when they were children.’ A smile flitted across her face, like sunshine off a wave. ‘Well,’ she admitted, ‘I am cantankerous, but only because the old is truer than they can imagine. But I haven’t come back to persecute them… although I might.’ Another brief smile. ‘A little, just for old times’ sake.’ Then the smile vanished utterly. ‘No. I’ve come back because something is stirring. Something dark and evil that once spread its stain over the whole world… ’
She stared straight ahead with unfocused eyes for some time before grimacing self-consciously. ‘I’m sorry,’ she went on. ‘It’s so long since I’ve spoken of these things it’s not only difficult to know where to start, I didn’t know how painful it was going to be.’
‘If it distresses you, Gulda… ’ Hawklan began, but she waved him to silence.
‘No, no,’ she said quickly. And then, in an almost offhand manner, ‘Anyway, it’s of no consequence why I came here. I should be old enough by now not to put too much store in my own assessment of my motives, eh? Now I’m here I see my task is to instruct you. Then perhaps I can return to my own problem.’ Apparently satisfied with this conclusion, she sat up briskly and began like a village storyteller.
Chapter 21
‘A long time ago, out of the terrible heat of the Great Searing came four figures. Shining white and brilliant, they walked the cooling world shaping it with their songs and their love into a great celebration of their sheer joy at being.
‘Many shapes it took, for great and endlessly varied was their joy. And when the time was due, they formed it as it is now so that their own creations could create in turn and celebrate their own joy at being.
‘And these four were called the Guardians: Sphaeera, Guardian of the Air and the winds and the sky; Enartion, Guardian of the Oceans and Lakes and all the rivers and streams; Theowart, Guardian of the Earth, its mountains and flatlands, islands and continents; and then, greatest of all, the First Comer, Ethriss, the Guardian of all Living Things.
‘And the Guardians looked at their work and at the Great Harmony of its Song, and were content. And they rested; each fading into his wardship, so that only Ethriss retained his original form, lying atop an unclimbable mountain, hidden from the eyes of men by Sphaeera’s mists.
‘But a fifth figure had come from the heat of the Great Searing, with lesser figures at his heels. And He shone red and baleful and carried an ancient corruption with Him from what had gone before. Brooding in His evil, and detesting the work of the Guardians, but daunted by their power and might, He remained still and silent until they rested. Then He came forth, quietly and with great cunning, for He knew that to wake them would be to court His own destruction. For they would know Him. And He walked among men for many generations, sowing His corruption softly and gently, with sweet words and lying truths, slowly souring the Great Harmony that the Guardians had created.
‘And so beautiful was He that none could see the evil in Him… ’
Gulda stopped her tale abruptly and looked at Hawklan with a strange sad expression on her face. ‘And He was beautiful, Hawklan, so beautiful.’ Hawklan felt a myriad nuances in her voice but they were snatched from him as the momentum of her old tale carried her forward again.
‘And so wise was He that some men forgot the sleep-ing Guardians and took Him for a god and worshipped him, calling Him Sumeral, the Timeless One. And from their worship He drew great power, both in His spirit and in His possession of men’s hearts and minds. And men multiplied and spread across the whole world, and as they did, so His power grew until it rivalled that of the Guardians themselves.’
Again, Gulda stopped, as if recalling some long-forgotten memory. She raised a cautionary finger and spoke in her normal voice.
‘You mustn’t think to judge these people, Hawklan. Sumeral wrought His damage always with reasoned and subtle argument. He narrowed men’s vision, so that they could see only their own needs and desires. And seeing only these, they became discontented. He blunted their awareness of others-not just people, but plants, animals, everything. He made them forget their deep kinship, their reliance on and their need for all other things that were. He made them forget the joy of being, Hawklan, and knowing they’d lost something, people searched even more desperately for something to fill the emptiness He’d created.’
She leaned forward, and tapped her raised finger into the empty air. ‘So more and more He showed them how to satisfy these needs and desires. But each gratification led only to more emptiness and to more desire. And each was always at the cost of some previous treasure for which they now felt nothing. I fancy after twenty years in Orthlund you’ll find this hard to imagine, but animals were slaughtered utterly, forests wasted, mountains blasted, great tracts of land de-stroyed, even the air and the sea became foul with poisons.’
Hawklan lifted his hand to interrupt. At first Gulda had intoned her tale like some village storyteller. Her narrative was similar to many he had read in the past week, and he was prepared to hear old stories retold if that was what she wanted. But what was she saying now? She was right, he could not imagine such extremities, not least because, stripped of her storytelling lilt, the simple words seemed to fall on him like stinging hailstones.