Andawyr nodded.
Isloman blew out an anxious breath. ‘It sings a bad song. If we must go this way we mustn’t linger.’
Andawyr did not reply. ‘Hawklan,’ he said. ‘What do you feel here?’
Hawklan walked slowly along the tunnel for a little way. The sensations came and went, still evading his full perception tantalizingly, but nevertheless, they were unmistakable. Here was the corruption he had seen jigging a demented marionette on a tinker’s hand at Pedhavin; the corruption he had seen in the aura that surrounded Oklar at Vakloss, and Creost and Dar Hastuin on the battlefield in Riddin.
‘Him,’ he said softly.
Chapter 25
The Fyordyn had turned out to welcome the Orthlundyn army with no small enthusiasm, but that was a mere fraction of the welcome they afforded to their Queen when she returned with her baby son.
The weather was the sourest-faced guest present at her reception, choosing to assail the crowd with a cold blustery wind laced with occasional flurries of icy rain, but it could not prevail against so well entrenched an opponent as the genuine pleasure of the Fyordyn.
The city streets were alive with milling crowds, all waving flags and coloured ribbons. Weaving amongst them were lines of High Guards, once again in the formal uniforms of their Lords, and charged with the task of gently maintaining some semblance of order. From the houses and buildings hung all manner of buntings and other colourful decorations, swaying and dancing joyously in the peevish wind.
‘The City looks as if it were in the middle of the Spring Festival,’ Arinndier said, as he looked out from one of the Palace towers.
Darek joined him and stood for a moment surveying the scene. ‘It is,’ he said, smiling a little. ‘It’s the start of the rebirth of our country. The people see it more clearly than we do.’
Arinndier raised a mocking eyebrow at his stern friend’s unwonted lyricism, but Darek’s smile faded. ‘Let’s hope the coming frost is not too much for us all,’ he said.
Sylvriss herself wept unashamedly at times as she rode through the cheering crowds with Eldric at her side, and her son wrapped snug and warm in the traditional shoulder sling of the Muster women.
Her tears, however, were for the most part tears of happiness and they were shared by many others in the crowd. Only when she saw the unrepaired remains of the damage wrought by Oklar did her face become pained, yet even then her anger enhanced rather than diminished her radiance.
Your smile lights the whole city, Dilrap thought, as he stood at the Palace Gate with the official welcoming party. Looking at the noisy crowd, he remembered others that had thronged the streets over the past months; the expectant crowd waiting for Eldric to call Dan-Tor to an accounting; the appalling, near-hysterical crowds that had gathered in the smoke-stained glare of blazing torches, to roar and cheer at Dan-Tor’s bellowed lies and his violent hammering music; and, most tragic of all, the crowd that he had not seen, the crowd that had followed the Orthlundyn, Hawklan, to be crushed by the wrath of the revealed Uhriel.
And were these the same people? he thought, look-ing round at the upturned faces. The greater part of them must be, he concluded. How could it be otherwise? There were not so many people in the City that crowds of this size could be materially different. Curiosity and concern had taken the people to Eldric’s accounting; fear had goaded them to Dan-Tor’s harangues-and worse, darker, traits, he knew; had not he himself, with all his knowledge, responded to Dan-Tor’s strutting martial theatre? And finally, self-righteous anger had drawn them after Hawklan on his fateful journey.
The crowd was a fearsome creature with a strange will of its own; capable of any extremity and quite beyond the control of its members…
‘What a wonderful day, Dilrap. I’m so excited. It’ll be so marvellous to have her back-and a baby too.’
Alaynor was responsible for all the female servants and officers in the Palace and her gleeful voice cut across Dilrap’s darkening reverie. He turned to her with an indulgent smile only to find that her unbridled enthusiasm was immediately infectious and that he too was now one of the crowd.
Later, the Queen made a quieter, sadder, pilgrimage around the Palace, holding her child tight to her and facing the dreadful impact of familiar, once shared, objects and places. It was a journey she had made many times in her heart since she had fled the Palace and she wept very little, but her face was pale and drawn when at last she came into the small meeting hall.
It was ablaze with torches and colourful decora-tions, but her few guests fell silent as she entered. She looked at them in silence for a moment and then the strain eased from her face and she smiled warmly.
‘I apologize if I’m not wholly myself,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid that my return to the palace and particularly to our old rooms, was more… taxing… than I’d envisaged. The potency of even the smallest item in evoking memories is not to be underestimated.’
She motioned them all to sit down, and then placed herself in the seat that Rgoric used to occupy.
As the scraping and shuffling of chairs faded, Sylvriss became the focus of all the watching eyes. When she spoke, her voice was strong and resolute.
‘We’ve much to do, my friends, so I’ll remove one obstacle immediately if you’ll allow,’ she said. Then, without waiting for this permission, ‘I know of your feelings for my husband. But I’ll not have any of you burdened with my special grief for him. It’s an emotion you’ve all experienced in your time and it’s one that must run its course, as you know. Over the coming days and weeks, I shall be easing your burdens by attending to many matters of state, both in connection with the rebuilding of Fyorlund and the prosecution of the war against the architect of this horror. My husband’s name will occur frequently as will reminders of his more misguided deeds.’ She looked round the table. ‘I’d rather you discussed such matters simply and openly than have you dithering about uneasily in misplaced concern for my feelings. There is neither the need nor the time for such amongst friends.’ She looked across at Loman and Gulda. ‘And I count you both among my friends even though we’ve only met this day.’
Both of them nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Now,’ she went on. ‘To business… ’
Loman chuckled as, later, he and Gulda walked out into the chilly night and through the partly rebuilt archway of the Palace gate. ‘I do believe you were impressed, Memsa,’ he said.
Without breaking her relentless stride, Gulda gave him a sideways look.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She reminds me of someone I once knew-a long time ago.’
As was not infrequently the case, her tone prevented any further questioning.
‘She’s clever, capable, and savagely vengeful,’ Gulda went on.
Loman turned sharply. ‘Vengeful?’ he said disbeliev-ingly. ‘Never! Even without having heard Isloman eulogizing her I can tell she hasn’t got a vengeful bone in her body. Besides, vengeance isn’t a woman’s way.’
Gulda stopped abruptly and her stick swung up to block Loman’s path. He lurched forward a little over this seemingly immovable obstacle, and looked at her apprehensively. However, her face bore an expression that betrayed emotions far deeper than petulant annoyance, and there was no hint of any reproach against him.
‘Neither you nor any man can have the slightest notion of Sylvriss’s pain,’ she said. ‘True, you can probably understand her hatred for her husband’s murderers. Perhaps you can even understand the pain of her grinding impotence at having to stand idly by for almost all her adult life while her lover was slowly degraded and destroyed. But such emotions are nothing against her real hatred. What has fired Sylvriss is her silent defiance of the Uhriel, Oklar. It has given her a sight she does not even know of, but which guides her every act.’
Loman’s eyes narrowed. Was there a hint of uncer-tainty in Gulda’s voice? He remembered how Sylvriss had stared searchingly at her when they had first met, and how Gulda had failed to hold the gentle brown-eyed gaze.