Tirilen smiled. ‘Yes. A lot of us are missing Hawklan in one way or another.’
Gavor did not comment. He hopped off her shoulder and started walking up and down the room fretfully. He too was unsettled by the feeling of impending change that seemed to be pervading the castle and the village. Not the changes wrought by the coming of spring, but something more elusive and subtle; something alarm-ing.
He tapped his wooden leg thoughtfully on the floor and mumbled to himself. The strange tinker and his appalling wares. Isloman injured and demented, albeit briefly. Hawklan gone. He, who never went more than a few days walk from the village. Gone on a wild trip across the mountains for no reason that he cared to state. And without him too. And that sword!
Gavor felt the clouds on his horizon. Whatever was happening emanated from that tinker surely? But the change centred around Hawklan; his friend. His friend who had gone on alone. They had never been apart before.
Temperamentally however, Gavor was not given to brooding. He regarded himself as a bird of action when times required, and this was such a time.
‘Rrukkk,’ he said.
Tirilen looked at him coldly. ‘You should eat less,’ she said.
‘I shall ignore that remark, dear girl,’ he replied haughtily. ‘That was just an ejaculation. A punctuation mark in my thoughts as it were. I’ve made up my mind.’
Tirilen was silent.
He continued, slightly discomfited. ‘I’m going after Hawklan. The poor boy’s sure to get lost in those mountains. Especially with the directions Isloman has given him.’
Tirilen’s eyes widened. ‘But he did say he wanted to go alone,’ she said, unconvincingly.
Gavor bent his head. ‘I know. But I can’t leave him. He’s going to need someone. I can feel it in my pinions. He’s so naive.’
Tirilen frowned thoughtfully, and then abruptly stood up and threw the window open. The warm breeze blew her hair about her face.
‘Yes. You’re right,’ she said, extending her arm for him to jump on. ‘Go and find him. Look after him. Watch over him.’
A tear ran down her face as she held her hand out through the window. Gavor left his perch and soared off majestically, his black wings shimmering in the sunlight.
Swooping back, he lay for a moment on the air ris-ing up the tower wall.
‘Don’t cry, dear girl,’ he shouted. ‘Gavor to the res-cue.’
He extended his wooden leg and made feints and thrusts with it as if it were a tiny sword.
‘Oops!’
His antics cost him his balance, and he dropped out of sight suddenly. Tirilen thought she caught a word she was unfamiliar with rising up from below, and then he flapped into view again.
‘And I’ll be able to practice my nightingale impres-sions in some privacy. Away from the scorn that greets me here,’ he said with great dignity.
Tirilen laughed and waved to him, and then wiped her eyes on her sleeve, briefly the little girl she had once been.
As she watched Gavor disappear from view, she could hear him whistling awkwardly, and then clearing his throat and coughing.
Chapter 8
Two days after leaving the village, Hawklan was well into the mountains. As Loman had teased, it was further than he had ever been before, but he felt he was being urged forward rather than being drawn back, which was the feeling he had had in the past whenever he travelled any distance from the Castle.
He was on the line of the River Road, which passed through the village and went straight into the moun-tains. It had ceased to be a road as such, many miles back, and was now only a rough track, though still well formed and quite easy walking.
Coming to the top of a long steep incline, he paused for a moment, and took off his pack. Looking for a suitable place to sit, he turned round and saw spread before him the rolling farmlands and forests of Orthlund. It was an impressive and beautiful sight when seen from Anderras Darion, but here he was much higher and the air was wonderfully clear from a rainstorm earlier in the day.
He had been plodding relentlessly uphill for some considerable time and had not once looked behind. The sudden sight overwhelmed him and the Great Song of Orthlund, rich in spring harmonies, flowed up the valleys and filled him with such joy that tears ran down his sweat-stained face. From somewhere deep inside came the thought that he would fight again to defend such a land, such a people, such a balance and harmony.
The thought was so alien to him, and such a para-dox, that his head drooped and tilted to one side as if he were trying to hear from where it had come. Without realizing it he rested his left hand on the pommel of the black sword. His forehead wrinkled in puzzlement as he mouthed the words, ‘fight again?’
Then he shook himself and wiped his hands over his face, transforming tears and sweat into grimy streaks. He sat down on a rock to look again at the view. He saw from the line of the path ahead that it was unlikely he would see such a view again as he went deeper into the mountains. Idly he took out the black sword and examined it. He knew the sword must be his, and that it must have come from a time before he had wakened so abruptly to find himself walking in the mountains twenty years earlier. But no memory came to prompt him. Not the faintest flicker.
The black blade and hilt shone brilliantly in the bright sunlight, and when he held it up, the device in the hilt flickered and twinkled endlessly. It was so familiar and yet so strange. And what was in its making that rendered the bluff and hearty mason almost speechless and made his taciturn brother eloquent?
Somewhere deep inside he felt an unease-a distant roaring darkness-but it slipped from him as he searched for it. The loss seemed to numb him in some way and he sat unthinking for a long time in the quiet sunlight. Then, slowly, his mood lightened and he stood up and carefully sheathed the sword.
Swinging his pack onto his back he turned away from the view and strode out along the path, which, he noted thankfully, was relatively level for some way. Looking ahead, the snow-covered mountains dominated the scene and he was glad of the advice he had received from Isloman about the route he should take, and how to keep warm should he find himself having to travel at or near the snowline.
Village legend had it that the mountains had been formed when a great god of the earth had driven one country into another to trap a terrible and foul foe. The Orthlundyn took no great interest in old tales, but they had a fund of them to tell their children: tales of heroes and gods battling with great demons and powers of evil. And around their firesides, especially at festival times, for all they were a rational people, they would talk mysteriously about the strange creatures that still existed in the mountains; remnants of times long gone.
Certainly the mountains made at once a heroic and mysterious sight, solid and deep-rooted, and gleaming white in the spring light. Food enough for the dullest imagination, thought Hawklan. Then he remembered Gavor’s remarks about animals, and wondered what he would do if he met one to whom he could not in fact talk-or one that would not listen. His confidence was not now as great as it had been back at the Castle.
Suddenly there was a scuffle and a raucous cry from the rocks to his right. The noise startled him, coming as it did after such a thought and after several hours of almost complete silence.
A small brown bird flew rapidly out of a gap be-tween two yellow-lichened rocks, and with whirring wings hurtled straight towards the mountains. Momen-tarily shaken, Hawklan watched it until it disappeared from sight and then turned to look again at the place from where it had come. A familiar, fruity voice intoned an oath, and Gavor stalked into view on top of the rock.
He looked down at Hawklan.
‘Dear boy,’ he said, in feigned surprise. ‘Do forgive the intrusion, but I was just passing. Got a friend in the area, you know.’
‘Gavor!’ exclaimed Hawklan with some menace in his voice.