Effortlessly Gulda raised the arm he was gripping and closed her book. The unexpected ease and power of the movement caused Loman to lose his balance slightly.
‘Sit down, Loman,’ Gulda said, indicating the empty seat by her side. Loman did as he was bidden.
Gulda picked up her stick and, folding her hands over the top of it, rested her chin on them. ‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘Your analysis was good. Cleared my own thoughts on the matter considerably. You’re improving. Something is amiss. I’ve only vague suspicions about what it might be, but if I’m right I’m far from clear what it means, or what we can do about it.’ Her face looked pained, and Loman waited silently.
Gulda sat motionless for a long time and one of the birds made a tentative return.
She eyed it narrowly.
‘Do you remember Hawklan telling us about the birds that followed him to the Gretmearc?’ she contin-ued. Loman remembered too well. The kidnapping of Tirilen and all the subsequent events had been distress-ing enough, but at least they were understandable to some degree in human terms. Hawklan’s tale of his journey to and from the Gretmearc on the other hand, with its sinister watching birds and its strange people with inexplicable and violent powers, had been profoundly disturbing, and he was reluctant to dwell on its implications.
The bird hopped towards him. He froze. ‘That’s not one, is it?’ he said nervously.
Gulda gave a small jovial snort, and the bird flew off quickly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. I think those eyes have been hooded for the time being. But do you remember about the one that Hawklan carried into Andawyr’s tent?’
Loman screwed up his face in concentration. Pushed into the back of his mind, it all seemed so long ago. ‘Gavor killed it, didn’t he?’ he offered eventually. ‘Or stunned it, or… ’
As he spoke, he remembered the tale of Gavor and the bird falling from the sky and the two strange shadows in the mist. But it was too late.
‘Really, Loman,’ Gulda said crossly, her fingers twitching around the top of her stick. ‘How can you train your own Goraidin if you don’t listen to what you’re being told. Some things you only get told once.’
Loman winced and hastily raised his hands in apol-ogy. ‘Elflings,’ he said helpfully.
‘Alphraan,’ Gulda corrected wearily. She turned and stared up at the surrounding peaks, solid and comfort-ing in the bright sunlight. After a moment she turned back to Loman, apologetic. ‘Still,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t rebuke you. I gave the incident precious little heed myself until recently.’
‘I’m sorry, Memsa,’ Loman said. ‘I really don’t know what you mean. If I remember, it was Gavor who thought he saw two figures, and went rambling on about them singing. Hawklan wasn’t too sure what he’d seen. And I’ve never even heard of little people living in the mountains hereabouts. Anyway, what would they have to do with the problems we’ve been having?’
Gulda stood up. ‘Come along,’ she said, nudging Loman’s foot with her stick. ‘I’ve forgotten what little I ever knew about the Alphraan. We’d both better go to the library and see what we can find out.’
Loman had no desire to go prowling round the li-brary with Gulda, prone as she was to become distracted. ‘Didn’t Gavor say there were tales about these little people on the Gate?’ he suggested.
Gulda’s stick swung up to point at him. ‘Which I can doubtless read dangling from the top of a ladder, eh?’ she said caustically. ‘Come along. Stop wasting time.’
Loman, however, found it hard to believe that Gulda’s ladder climbing days were over. His feet were burning and his legs were aching, but she seemed to be unaf-fected by the slow and seemingly endlessly trek round and round the tiered circular balconies of the library as she made him accompany her on her search for some elusive guidance.
Book after book she discarded, and when finally she separated two large, beautifully bound books to retrieve a small, nondescript-looking volume, he was well into the stage of shuffling and stamping his feet like a waiting carthorse.
‘This looks as if it might be useful,’ she said, exam-ining the spine. ‘This fellow was much respected in his day. A good writer. And very accurate.’
Loman looked over her shoulder but the author’s name meant nothing to him. ‘It looks very old,’ he said. Gulda did not reply, but set off for a nearby table.
Loman frowned as Gulda opened the book. She answered his question before he could ask it. ‘That’s the ancient Fyordyn language, young Loman,’ she said. ‘I doubt there’s many can read it these days, and even fewer speak it properly.’
‘Can you?’ he asked. Gulda snapped her fingers and indicated the chair next to her. ‘This might take a little time,’ she said. Loman sat down with some relief.
As Gulda read, Loman relaxed and looked around the library. It was alive with people from all over Orthlund, drawn there by Loman’s bidding to prepare for war. They were moving busily hither and thither, though their movement was so silent that it reminded him of autumn leaves blowing in a gentle breeze.
On every tier and across the main floor far below, people could also be seen bent over books and docu-ments. Some were writing earnestly, sheltered by books piled high around them like redoubts. Some were thoughtfully perusing maps and scrolls, others were sat high on mobile ladders or crouched low, moving frog-like as they searched the floor-level shelves. One or two were asleep.
Loman smiled to himself. Despite the slumberers, the scene reminded him again of the sense of awakening that seemed to pervade the country, a sense that he felt most vividly in this wonderful Castle so arbitrarily given to his charge that dark wintry night some twenty years ago. He gazed upward towards the higher tiers towering above. What knowledge must be here? What people had gathered it together thus? What must this place have been like once when its population matched its scale?
Gulda muttered and clucked to herself softly as she read, her head bouncing gently to some soundless rhythm and her mouth forming silent words. The performance drew Loman’s attention and he watched her for some time in mild surprise; Gulda usually sat motionless when she read.
‘What is it?’ he ventured after a while.
Rather to his surprise, she smiled and answered him immediately. Even more to his surprise, she answered in a strange language, although he thought he detected fleeting overtones of the High Guards’ battle language. He gaped, and, surprised herself by this reaction, she mirrored his expression until realization dawned.
‘I’m sorry, Loman,’ she said. ‘I was so engrossed. I’d forgotten how fine a writer he was. And it’s such a beautiful language.’ Her face became thoughtful. ‘I wonder if any of the Fyordyn can still speak it,’ she said.
‘Memsa,’ Loman prompted her gently with a glance at the book.
Gulda nodded, and with a little sigh, returned to the present. ‘It’s a poem,’ she said.
‘A poem,’ Loman echoed, rather more coldly than he had intended.
Gulda eyed him. ‘An epic, historical poem,’ she added sternly. ‘It’s a record of an old oral tradition, and it’s probably the nearest thing we’ve got to an accurate source for information about the Alphraan.’
Loman jabbed a finger out into the void of the li-brary and whispered heatedly. ‘You’ve just spent a considerable time rejecting endless books of history and reference. What’s so special about this… poem, that you couldn’t find in them?’ He braced himself for a blistering reply.
Gulda, however, let the comment pass. ‘If you search those books diligently, Loman,’ she said, ‘you’ll find most of them refer back to such works as this for their commentaries on the Alphraan. Those that don’t quote their sources are patently worthless.’ She looked at the small book. ‘There may be better than this, but it’s unlikely, and we haven’t the time to search anymore.’
There was a hint of urgency in her tone that again surprised Loman. ‘Whatever you say, Memsa,’ he said. ‘But I’m still utterly lost. What have you found?’