Hawklan closed the door behind him gently and, pulling his tunic about him tightly, stepped forward through the crunching snow towards the edge of the wall.
Peering out into the darkness he could see lights in Pedhavin below where those villagers who had not come to the castle were celebrating the Festival.
Then, very softly, as if to greet him, but reluctant to disturb the night stillness, a mellow carillon of bells began to ring out somewhere in the darkness overhead. Hawklan turned and looking up, smiled. No one knew what power rang the bells of Anderras Darion.
A silvery giggle drew his attention down again, and something struck him lightly. Looking down, he saw it was a snowball. Children, he thought as he peered intently into the shadows to seek his assailant. But he could see nothing until a tiny figure came forward a little, a slight, indistinct silhouette.
‘Light be with you, Hawklan,’ said voices all around him.
Hawklan started and then smiled again. ‘And with you, Alphraan,’ he said. ‘Won’t you join our celebra-tion?’
More giggling surrounded him. ‘We have and we are,’ came the reply. ‘It is such a raucous and unholy din, we can hear it in our Heartplace. But it is joyous beyond measure. Thank you. We seem to be ever in your debt.’
Hawklan laughed. ‘I feel no debt and I waive such as you feel there might be,’ he said. ‘That is my Festival gift to you.’
‘You burden us further, Hawklan,’ the voices said, though full of laughter. ‘But as part repayment we shall bring the song from our Heartplace to your Round Dance.’
Hawklan bowed graciously and there was more giggling, but when he looked up, the tiny figure was gone.
Overhead, the bells were continuing their soft caril-lon.
Hawklan stepped back inside again, kicking the snow from his shoes and slapping his arms about himself as the winter cold began to make itself felt.
‘Ah. You’re there,’ said a voice as he closed the door. ‘I wondered where you’d sneaked off to.’
It was Isloman. ‘Come along,’ the carver went on. ‘They’re waiting for you to start the Round Dance.’
Hawklan’s entry into the hall was greeted by loud and ironic cheering which he received with wide open arms. As he strode forward the crowd parted and, reaching the glowing fire, he placed his outstretched hands on the shoulders of his neighbours. They did the same, and very quickly the inner ring of the dance was formed.
Then, like ripples from a pebble thrown into a still pond, further outer rings were formed until almost everyone in the hall was standing holding his neighbour, and waiting.
Hawklan nodded and the lone drummer began the steady beat with which he had begun the celebration. With each beat, the dancers took one step, to form a simple pattern of three in one direction and one back. Adjacent rings moved in opposite directions.
As the pipes and the other drums began to play, the steps became higher, and the foot stamping louder. Sturdily supported by their neighbours, Andawyr, Agreth and the Fyordyn were borne to and fro, though they eschewed the increasingly elaborate steps being executed by some of the Orthlundyn. Once again Arinndier felt the surging power of the Emin Rithid ringing through his mind over the jerking rhythmic tune of the pipes.
They are the same, he realized.
As the dance reached its final stage, the sound of the drums and pipes seemed to change, to swell out and rise up to ring round the vaults of the star-strewn ceiling. Without breaking the step of the dance, Hawklan looked up, and as he did so, a sonorous chorus of voices filled the hall, weaving around and enhancing the pulsing rhythm of the musicians.
And wordless though the chorus seemed to be, it was a great paean of thanksgiving and joy. Mingling somewhere in its depths, beyond simple hearing, Hawklan thought he heard the poignant happy calls of the wolf cubs he had orphaned.
‘Alphraan, Alphraan.’ The word whispered around the hall and rose up to be woven into the texture of the song.
Gulda leaned forward and twining her hands over the top of her stick, rested her chin on them.
She smiled at the happy, colourful spectacle circling the hall.
‘You do not dance, Memsa,’ said a soft voice close by.
‘My heart does, Alphraan,’ she said. ‘My heart does. And so does Anderras Darion’s. Thank you for the gift of your Heartplace.’
‘Ah… ’
‘And light be with you, Sound Carvers,’ she added softly. Then, looking again at the laughing, singing guests moving in concert around the hall, she said, ‘Live well, and light be with you all, my friends.’
Chapter 11
The storm was appalling and had been for several days. The watch boats had long been driven ashore and, shortly after they had returned, the Line on coast watch had given up any pretence at patrolling as the screaming wind sweeping in from the sea had made it difficult for even the horses to keep their feet. Besides, the rain and spray which were being hurled horizontally across the shore were so dense that it was almost impossible to see the next rider, let alone the distant horizon.
Girvan laid his pen on one side and looked around the fisherman’s cottage that was serving as his tempo-rary headquarters. It was echoing with the muffled sounds of the storm raging outside, but it was warm and friendly, though, with its low open-beamed ceiling and enormous clutter of seafaring relics and ornaments, it was very different from the traditional Riddin dwellings he was used to being billeted in. Then again, it only reflected the fisherfolk themselves; they too were warm and friendly, but different; in some ways not Muster people at all, though on the whole they pulled their weight fairly enough. There was always that reserve about them; a quiet, inner strength. Ironically, it made them particularly good with horses, but they didn’t seem to have the relish for the animals that the Riddinvolk normally had.
After his several weeks watching the sea and sharing a little of the lives of these seafolk, Girvan felt he was beginning to understand this stillness. A rider had a partnership with his horse and a knowledge and regard for his land. But the sea was different. True, there was respect and knowledge, but there was also fear… no, not fear… more a dark, deep insight. There could be no partnership of equals between man and sea. It was brutally indifferent to those who rode and harvested it, and its power was awesome. Yet it was this very indifference that gave the seafolk such a grim measure of their true worth.
Girvan glanced covertly at his host and hostess. They were sitting on either side of the wide fireplace which was aglow with clucking radiant stones. The wife was working patiently at a delicate embroidery, while the husband sat sucking on a long-dead pipe, staring into the fire. Strange habit, smoking, Girvan thought. It was no horseman’s habit for sure, yet somehow it added to the fisherman’s aura of calm preoccupation.
As if sensing the Line Leader’s observation, the man spoke, without turning from the fire. ‘This is a bad storm, Girvan Girvasson. It has an unnatural feel to it.’
Girvan sat up and looked at the man intently, notic-ing as he did so that the wife had stopped her sewing. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked simply.
The man did not reply immediately but took his dead pipe from his mouth and stared at it as if for inspiration. He shrugged a little unhappily. ‘It has an unnatural feel to it,’ he repeated. ‘It blows too long, too hard. It has no rhythm… no shape.’ He looked up at the watching Line Leader. ‘It carries the wrong smells,’ he concluded.
Girvan looked down at the note he had just been penning. It was a routine report to Urthryn at Dremark. ‘This pounding storm has an oddly unnatural quality about it,’ he read. He had been on the point of deleting this eccentric and seemingly irrelevant observation, but if this man, with his deep knowledge of the moods of the sea, had sensed something untoward, then he too must be content to let his instincts guide him.