Loman sniffed, and applied his foot to a bellows pump, making the furnace roar contentedly. The radiant stones turned quickly from red to yellow and in their waxing light Loman smiled faintly. Gulda’s eyes narrowed.
‘What in the world do you want singers for, Memsa?’ Loman shouted.
Gulda craned forward crossly to hear him.
‘Don’t answer my question with another one, young Loman,’ she shouted. ‘And stop that noise.’
As asked, Loman stopped pumping abruptly, leav-ing the forge suddenly silent. Gulda, however, continued at full volume for a moment. ‘Just tell me… ’ Loman looked at her innocently as the rest of her reply slid through an involuntary and incongruous diminuendo to a whispered conclusion, ‘… if you’ve any children round here who can sing well.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Try Otaff,’ he whispered back, before she could recover fully. ‘He looks after the Festivals. Usually manages to wring some semblance of a tune out of the raucous little devils, though don’t ask me where he finds the patience. Not our strong point really, singing,’ he added pleasantly.
Then, smiling, he turned away from her and began rattling noisily through the metallic clutter littering a nearby work-bench. Gulda eyed his back suspiciously, then, muttering something to herself, turned and clumped towards the door.
She paused at the door as if to say something, but Loman was seemingly engrossed in some task and she thought better of it.
As she closed it behind her, Loman smiled to him-self broadly.
‘Not in here, Memsa,’ he said, pumping the bellows mightily and placing a strip of metal on the glowing stones. ‘You might own the rest of the world, but there are more tricks to smithing than just shaping metal.’
Although Loman had rightly anticipated Gulda in saying that they must seek out the Alphraan, that had effec-tively been the end of his contribution. Apart from wandering vaguely through the mountains, shouting, as one might search for a lost child, he had no other inspiration as to how it should be done, and he knew better than to voice such a proposal in front of Gulda. If these… people… existed, they’d been in the moun-tains for unknown generations and wherever they lived was hidden well beyond chance finding.
Gulda, however, had been little wiser than he, and their discussion into ways and means had soon foundered. ‘Is there anything in the book that might help?’ he had suggested eventually.
Gulda had pouted thoughtfully. ‘I’ll have another look, but I doubt it,’ she had said. And that had been that, for the time being.
Then, just a couple of days ago, stepping through the wicket in the Great Gate, Loman had glanced round to see a group of apprentices anxiously holding the bottoms of three long ladders. His first reaction had been to deliver an instant and severe rebuke for what he presumed to be some prank or other, but his eye had been drawn inexorably upwards, both by the sloping ladders, and by the intensity of gathered apprentices.
At the top, stepping resolutely from ladder to lad-der, was Gulda. She was apparently examining some of the carvings on the Great Gate. Loman’s mouth fell open.
Recovering himself, he walked across to the group. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded sternly. Startled, two of the boys spun round. Loman looked skywards. ‘Don’t let go of the ladder, young men,’ he said quietly. ‘Memsa will not be pleased.’
Unequivocal confirmation of this observation floated down from above, followed by, ‘Loman, get yourself up here and look at this.’
A titter threatened to bloom out of the gathered apprentices but it shrivelled instantly under Loman’s baleful gaze.
He examined the feet of the three ladders. They were well founded on the hard ground. ‘There’s nothing to fasten them to up there, sir, so we tied them together at the top and middle,’ one of the apprentices volunteered.
As every student knows, nothing softens the heart of a teacher like a lesson learned. ‘Well done,’ Loman said with a smile, placing his foot on the first rung.
When he reached the top, however, he was less san-guine. He was not too disturbed by heights, but looking down the vertiginous perspective of the Gate, he could not forbear asking the obvious question of his neighbour. ‘Memsa, what are you doing up here?’
As usual, however, Gulda ignored the question. ‘Can’t you climb a ladder without rocking it so much?’ she said, then pointing to a section of carving, ‘Look, here. This took some finding. For a raven, Gavor must have eyes like a hawk. Look, it’s very interesting. Most informative.’
Loman looked closely at the area she was marking out with a long finger. It was quite small and, like the rest of the Gate, beautifully carved. However the symbolism of the carving that filigreed the Gate was both compact and intricate, and few could read it quickly or easily. ‘It’ll take a little time to work through this,’ he said.
‘No matter,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the gist of it. Enough to think about for now. Mark it out and get a casting for me. I’d like to study it more carefully.’
‘Yes, Memsa,’ Loman replied automatically, still peering intently at the carving. A small cloud moved in front of the sun, briefly throwing the Gate into hazy shadow. The carving in front of Loman danced into a new tale. He smiled appreciatively. ‘A casting won’t catch any of this, Memsa,’ he said, waving his hand over the changing scene. ‘It’ll barely catch all the first-degree work.’ He turned to her, but she was gone.
Looking down he saw her black form briskly de-scending down one of the ladders. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ came her voice. ‘It’ll get enough for what we need.’
Seemingly it had, for after receiving the casting and nodding a cursory approval, Gulda had disappeared from view for a day or so, to reappear abruptly in Loman’s forge with her inquiry about singers.
Since Gulda’s return Loman had learned a lesson he had never mastered as a child. He knew now that information could be obtained from Gulda best by watching and listening. Direct questioning not infre-quently left him feeling he was trying to catch hold of autumn mist.
Thus when, after directing her towards Otaff, he saw her returning later that day shepherding three young boys, he joined the little procession without comment. Gulda nodded brusquely to him, but said nothing.
Eventually he found himself sitting in a room with Gulda seated incongruously at a small keyboard instrument. There were countless such rooms all over the Castle and, looking round it, Loman had to admit to himself that he had probably not been in that particular one half a dozen times in his entire stewardship.
‘When was this tuned last?’ she asked Loman, mov-ing her hands lightly over the keys as if dusting them.
He was obliged to shrug vaguely. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he admitted. ‘No one to my knowledge has ever played it seriously. Tirilen used to pound on it when she was small. It’s unlikely it’s ever been tuned.’
Gulda played a series of chords. The instrument’s tone was mellow and singing. Apparently satisfied and looking more than a little surprised, she struck a single note. ‘Boys, how’s this for pitch?’ she asked, inclining her head enquiringly towards them. They all nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Fascinating. Still in perfect tune after all this time. Such craftsmen.’
She looked sadly thoughtful for a moment, then turned to the three boys and smiled. The expression carried Loman back immediately to the time when he had been her pupil. When she smiled like that, they were in for an exciting day’s learning. No one could teach like Gulda, when the mood took her. Sunny days and that smile meant new wonders to be seen and heard. Such a magical time. Unexpectedly he felt his stomach tightening in anticipation and he had a suspicion that this emotion was showing on his face also. He turned away casually and tried to scowl out of the window, but old happy ties would not allow him.
In the end he was to sit for over an hour, basking in warm memories of his own childhood, as he watched and listened to Gulda teaching again. At this distance he was willing to forgive the less harmonious lessons he had also had from her.