Antyr looked at the views before him. They were a remarkable sight, and even a cursory glance told him that no army or, for that matter, any lone rider could approach the Cadwanen without being seen. But his memories of the mountains were very fresh. ‘What do you do when the mist comes down?’ he blurted out.
His tone provoked some laughter.
‘Which is most of the time. Yes, we know,’ Andawyr conceded. ‘But as with everything else here, there’s…’
‘More than meets the eye? Like me.’ Antyr finished the sentence for him.
‘Yes,’ Andawyr replied with a hint of apology.
‘Anything that moves, we have ways of seeing, or hearing,’ Usche volunteered. ‘Do you know anything about the Power?’
‘He knows of it, I suspect, to his cost, but not about it,’ Andawyr replied on Antyr’s behalf. ‘But we can put that right with a little effort.’ Usche gave a slight bow and took a step backwards.
Antyr pointed to the symbols surrounding the Mirror Stones. ‘As you seem to be so well protected against assaults by armies and the like, I presume these and all those littered about the place use this Power to protect you against anyone who could use it against you.’
Andawyr gave him an appreciative look. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said.
A fleeting recollection of his fateful confrontation with the blind man flitted through Antyr’s mind, leaving, as ever, tantalizing hints of all that he had then known and now forgotten. ‘A web, you called it. Then the Power pervades this entire place?’
Andawyr’s face took on the expression of a parent asked a too-penetrating question that time and circumstance, perhaps even ability, did not allow him to answer as he would have wished.
‘The Power pervades everything, Antyr,’ he replied, rather hastily. ‘Itis everything. I’ll explain what I can later. We both of us have a lot to talk about and there’s no urgency.’ He became brisk. ‘Usche, are you free to come with us now?’
The woman hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes, my duty spell here finished a few minutes ago, I was just discussing something.’
‘Well, if your discussion can safely be left, would you come with us, please?’
‘Of course.’
She picked up a book and some papers from the table and followed them. Tarrian and Grayle recovered their dropped bones and acted as her escort.
A short walk brought them back to the room from which they had set out. Yatsu and Jaldaric were still there. Both of them were writing. Antyr was conspicuously surprised. He greeted them with an exaggerated and apologetic shrug. ‘I’ve been doing my best,’ he said. ‘Doing what you told me. Taking careful note of where I’ve been in case I might have to return that way. But this place is so bewildering. I could’ve sworn we’d been walking away from here all the time. Not to mention, on the whole, moving upwards.’
‘No nose at all,’ Tarrian muttered disdainfully as he flopped down noisily underneath the large window and began gnawing his bone again. Grayle joined him.
‘You’re a bitter disappointment to us,’ Yatsu said, shaking his head with mock reproach as he returned to his writing.
Andawyr intervened. ‘No small part of your confusion is wilfully built into the design of the Cadwanen, Antyr. If you were to study it carefully, you’d find that, amongst other things, it’s extremely defensible by conventional means should the need arise. In many ways it has the qualities of an elaborate board game, except that any enemy who managed to gain access would know neither the shape nor the layout of the board, nor the number, positions and strengths of any of the pieces. And they certainly wouldn’t know the rules. We’re protected inside and out against every assault we’ve been able to envisage.’ He rubbed his hands gleefully. Antyr’s response, however, was a weak smile.
Though he had known Andawyr for less than a day the man’s manner was such that he felt it had been much longer. He had to remind himself that this rather scruffy little individual was the leader of the Cadwanol and presumably responsible for the running of this enormous place. Further, from what he had been told by Yatsu and Jaldaric, Andawyr was highly respected not only by the Cadwanwr themselves but by all those who held authority in neighbouring lands. And, too, it seemed he possessed great personal courage.
Yet as he had walked about the Cadwanen with him, Antyr had had no sense of Andawyr’s exalted status. Indeed, there seemed to be very little sense of hierarchy in the whole place. People had accosted Andawyr as they might a friend in the street, and addressed him directly by name, without any formal salute or title – even Ar-Billan, whom Antyr now took to be a Novice. And Andawyr had answered in like vein, openly and straightforwardly. Antyr himself found that he was treating him as a friend of long standing. The word ‘openness’ seemed to typify everything he had seen and heard. Not only with Andawyr, but in the place itself. Open and airy, it was like a building in which all the windows and doors had been opened so that sunlight and spring breezes could drift through. And the few people he had met seemed to be as willing to listen as they were to speak. Yet there was a paradox, too. The place wasnot open: it was an intricate network of caves buried deep within and beneath the mountains; the people must have their ordered places and responsibilities, and the precautions taken to protect the place far outweighed anything he had ever known in his own apparently much more violent society. They disturbed him.
Andawyr stopped rubbing his hands and looked at him closely. ‘You find our concerns for our safety obsessive?’ he said shrewdly.
Antyr hesitated for some time before Andawyr’s manner again drew a frank, albeit reluctant response from him.
‘Intense, certainly. They feel somehow out of place in what I’d taken to be primarily a teaching Order. My admittedly limited dealings with the powerful in my own society showed me how such things can come about, and how they darken people’s lives; the constant looking over the shoulder, searching into shadows for fear of ambush. But that was in connection with gaining and keeping political power. People who for various reasons didn’t aspire to those heights – or depths – scholars, tradesmen, ordinary people – weren’t constantly worrying about enemies.’
Jaldaric caught Yatsu’s eye, then cleared his throat conspicuously.
‘Well, all right,’ Antyr added, flustered. ‘I did feel the need to take one or two lessons in swordwork, I’ll admit. But that was because…’
‘Because Serenstad was a violent place,’ Jaldaric said with an emphatic jab of his finger, though not without some humour. He addressed Andawyr authoritatively in the same vein. ‘It was frightening just walking the streets there. Not like Vakloss or…’
Andawyr rescued Antyr. ‘Leave him alone,’ he said sternly. ‘You survived, didn’t you? And I suspect he’s much further away from his home here than you ever were in his land. Get on with your letter.’ He pulled a chair up to the window and, resting his elbows on the broad sill, cupped his head in his hands and stared out at the view.
‘I understand what you mean, Antyr,’ he said. ‘But I think the key to your uncertainty about us lies in the word “worrying”. The point is, we don’t worry – well, not excessively, anyway. We think, we assess, we act. We adjust our ways of living as needs demand, changing things if we can, coping with them if we can’t. And once that’s done, there’s little else that can be done, save be aware. That’s what anyone should do if they don’t want their life to slip by unnoticed.’ He gave Antyr a significant sidelong look but, still seeing that his guest was uneasy, he turned back to the view and pressed on. ‘Our history – both ancient and all too recent – tells us quite clearly that there are dark forces in the world; forces that are actively malevolent, that delight in destruction. And, as a Teaching Order…’ He gave an amused grunt. ‘Or perhaps I should say, a Learning Order, we take an interest in the nature of such forces as we do in many other things. What are they, for example? Where do they come from? Are they something inherent in nature itself or just in our nature? Are they in some way necessary for us if we’re to move forward – whatever forward might mean? Have we created them, or are they something inflicted on us from outside, something that came from beyond the Great Searing when all things are said to have begun? Or are they some combination of all these?’ He shrugged. ‘We’ve plenty of ideas, as you might expect, but no indisputable answers. Indeed, it may well be that they’re questions that are unanswerable in principle, but even discovering that for sure will teach us a great deal.’ He turned to Antyr and smiled. ‘Still, knowing what we know, we’d be foolish souls indeed to ignore the dangers that are offered. And knowing that, the steps we take to protect ourselves no more dominate our lives than do any other simple everyday precautions. It’s hardly burdensome to take care walking around the back of a horse, to dowse a camp-fire properly, to put on a warm coat when the weather threatens, is it?’