‘I thought… ’ Gulda began.
‘You knew,’ Hawklan insisted, before she could continue.
Gulda lowered her eyes.
‘You reproach me,’ she said into the firelight.
‘Should I not?’ Hawklan replied.
Gulda was silent for a long time, then, ‘You had Ethriss’s sword and bow, arrows as good as could be made in this time, a fine horse, a stalwart friend… ’
‘Yes, you let Isloman go too,’ Hawklan interrupted. ‘Two men against an elemental force.’
Gulda looked up, her face scornful. ‘Don’t whine, Hawklan,’ she said. Her anger carried through into her voice all the more powerfully because it was command-ing in tone and quite free of the rasping irritation that normally laced her more severe rebukes. ‘Oklar is no elemental force, he’s a mortal man as you are. A flawed mortal man, corrupted by being given too great a power, as perhaps you might have been had you stood too close to Sumeral with your whingeing begging bowl of desires.’
Hawklan’s eyes narrowed in response to Gulda’s biting anger. ‘Don’t quibble, Memsa,’ he said, almost savagely. ‘You understand my meaning well enough. You knew who he was and you let me-us-go without any warning.’
Gulda turned her face towards the glowing stones again.
‘And you’d have me explain?’ she said. There was a strange helplessness in her voice.
Hawklan stared at her, his anger fading. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’d have you explain that and many other things as well. Who you are? How you come to be here? How you know so many things about this Castle, about wars and armies? The list is long.’
Gulda nodded slowly but did not speak for some time. When she did, her voice was quiet.
‘I am what I am, Hawklan,’ she said simply. ‘And I am here because of what I was.’ She looked at him. ‘As are you. As are we all. And how I came to know what I know, you don’t need to know.’
‘Gulda!’ Hawklan made no effort to the keep the exasperation out of his voice.
She held his gaze. ‘Had I told you that Dan-Tor, that dancing twisting tinker who came to torment your little village with his corrupt wares, was Oklar the Uhriel, Sumeral’s first and greatest servant, with power to lift up whole mountain ranges or hurl them beneath the ocean, would you have believed me? And would you have done anything other than go and see for yourself in your doubts? And Isloman with you?’
Hawklan did not reply.
Gulda continued, ‘And had you believed me, would you still have done anything other?’
Hawklan lowered his eyes. ‘Damn you,’ he said after a long silence.
‘We had choice and no choice, Hawklan,’ Gulda said softly. ‘Both of us were free to walk away, but both of us were bound to our paths. It was ever thus for people such as you and I, people with the wit to see. And it ever will be.’
A faint reproach still flickered in Hawklan’s voice. ‘Perhaps had we known, we mightn’t have confronted him so recklessly,’ he said.
Gulda turned back to the softly whispering stones. Idly she prodded them with her stick, making a small flurry of cached sunlight spark upwards. Unexpectedly, she chuckled.
‘What would you have done to meet such a foe, assassin?’ she said mockingly. ‘Crept into his room at night to smother him or stab him? Bribed the Palace servants to poison his food?’
Hawklan frowned uncertainly.
‘No,’ Gulda went on. ‘You’d still have had to see first. Then having seen and decided, I suspect you’d have shot an arrow into his malevolent heart, wouldn’t you?’
Despite himself, Hawklan smiled ruefully at this cruelly perceptive analysis.
‘I was no different, Hawklan.’ Abruptly Gulda was explaining. ‘I could see no other way than to wait and see what would be. I could not face him myself… not yet. I was a spectator whether I wished it or not. All I could do was arm you with weapons of some worth, and have faith in the resources I saw within you.’
‘And had we died?’
‘You didn’t,’ Gulda’s reply was immediate.
‘But… ’
‘You didn’t,’ she repeated.
‘We might have!’ Hawklan insisted through her denial.
‘You might indeed,’ Gulda replied passionately. ‘But you still know I could have done nothing about it. I knew that you had to see him for what he truly was, and both my heart and my head told me that even if I could have given you a measure of the man-which I couldn’t, as you know now, he’s beyond description-it would have hindered you more than helped you. Clouded your vision with fear. Marred the true strength that only your… innocence… could take you to.’
Gulda turned again to her contemplation of the radiant stones. Hawklan leaned back into the comfort of his chair and looked at her stern profile, red in the firelight.
‘You were so certain of the outcome?’ he said after a while.
Gulda smiled ruefully. ‘Certain?’ she said. ‘Cer-tainty’s a rare luxury, Hawklan. The butterfly beats its wings and stirs the dust, which moves the grain, which moves the pebble, which… ’
‘Moves the stone, the rock, the boulder, etc., etc., and down comes the mountain.’ Hawklan finished the child’s lay impatiently, though as he did so, the memory returned to him of colourful wings stretching luxuri-ously on the toe of his boot as he had sat shocked and bewildered in the spring sunshine after he and Isloman had fled from Jaldaric’s doomed patrol. He recalled that the butterfly too had fled at the approach of a shadow.
Gulda’s voice returned him to the present again. ‘I went as far as my reason and my intuition could go, Hawklan,’ she was saying. ‘After that all I had was faith and hope.’
‘Faith and hope in what?’ Hawklan asked.
Gulda shook her head and, after a moment, began to smile broadly. ‘Just faith and hope that my reason and my intuition were right.’ Her smile abruptly turned into a ringing laugh that rose to fill the room. ‘Have you finished my trial, judge?’ she said, turning to Hawklan, still laughing. ‘Me, who gave you Ethriss’s bow and made Loman forge those splendid arrows for it? Me, who you would have brushed aside if I’d fallen weeping at your knees imploring you not to go. Me who, above all, told you to be careful.’
She drew out her last words and, despite himself, Hawklan fell victim to her mirth.
Yet even as he began to smile, the thought came to him that he had done right to make Gulda release her doubts and fears; she would be less impaired now. It was a cold and sudden thought, and as such thoughts had done before, it repelled him, for all its truth. I had the same need, for the same reason, he thought in hasty mitigation of this unwonted harshness.
Gulda’s laughter gradually subsided and she took out a kerchief and began to wipe her eyes. ‘Who knows what butterfly blew us all here, Hawklan?’ she said, still chuckling. ‘And who knows where it’ll blow us next. Let’s take some joy in the fact that what happened, happened as it did and that Oklar’s hand is stayed for the moment. And that you and Isloman and all the others are alive, and unhurt, and wiser, and here.’
Abruptly she jerked her chair nearer to Hawklan and, reaching forward, seized his wrists affectionately. Once again Hawklan was surprised by her grip. It did not crush or hurt, but he knew that it was more powerful even than Loman’s or Isloman’s.
‘Now I must interrogate you,’ she said, releasing him, but still staring at him intently. ‘What has Oklar’s touch taught you, key-bearer?’
Hawklan turned away from her gaze. ‘His touch on Fyorlund and its people taught me that there’s no end to his corruption; it’s unfettered, without restraint of any kind,’ he said. ‘It taught me that I must seek him out again, and his Master, and… destroy… them both, and the others, wherever they be.’
‘Has Hawklan the warrior slain Hawklan the healer then?’ Gulda demanded.
Hawklan looked at her, unsure of her tone.
‘There’s no warrior in this room, unless it’s you, swordswoman,’ he said after a moment.
Gulda looked at him enigmatically and, sitting back in her chair, placed her stick across her knees.
Confused by his own strange remark, Hawklan glanced awkwardly round the darkened room, his huge shadow seeming to turn to listen to him.