‘There’s an old tune I’m trying to remember,’ she began, confidingly, to the boys. ‘Something like this.’ And with wilful awkwardness she poked inaccurately at the keyboard with one finger.
Loman recognized the tune immediately and was about to call out its name but his wiser nature silenced him. ‘We know it, we know it,’ the boys cried. ‘It’s the snowman’s song.’ One of them reached past her and, tongue protruding slightly, played the tune cautiously, self-consciously displaying the use of all five fingers.
‘I’ve not been learning long,’ he apologized when he had finished, but Gulda was fulsome in her praise.
Then she had them singing it. When Loman quietly left the room, the sound of the three voices was ringing like a silver bell in his head, the tune was leaking out intermittently through his gruff tenor, and its bouncing complicated rhythm was breaking his steady stride.
For many days the sound of the singing echoed round the Castle, ringing faintly along its endless corridors and carried by strange resonances through halls vast and small, far distant from the small room where Gulda was weaving her special magic. Coming across it unexpectedly from time to time, Loman would stop and listen. It seemed almost as if the Castle itself was singing.
As the days passed, however, Loman noted a change in Gulda. She was quieter, less forthright, than usual. Finally his resolve to ask no direct questions slipped. ‘What are you doing, Memsa?’ he asked. ‘Even my stone ears can tell those boys are singing beautifully. Why are you doing it and why is it disturbing you?’
Gulda sat down and rested her chin on her stick. She gazed into an unfocused distance for a long time, apparently not having heard the question. Loman once again had the feeling of mist slipping through his fingers when, very softly, she said, ‘Of all Ethriss’s gifts, music alone speaks directly to the soul. So many memories, so long, I… ’ Her voice trailed away into another silence. Then, abruptly, ‘I think we’re ready now.’
‘Ready?’ he risked.
‘Get yourself and two of your people ready for a trip into the mountains,’ she said. ‘Starting tomorrow. Fully armed. I’ll be coming as well, with the three boys.’
Loman raised his eyebrows. ‘Why?’ he asked, bluntly.
Unexpectedly, Gulda looked doubtful, though her voice was firm enough. ‘We have to contact the Alphraan,’ she said. ‘At best they’re hampering our training, at worst they may seek us out and destroy us for bringing war back into their domain.’
Loman made to speak, but Gulda continued. ‘Be-sides, they’re in as great a danger as we are, and we need to be allies if not friends. They need to be told the truth. They’ll have to make the old choices that we’ve had to make, sooner or later, whether they like it or not. They’ll not be able to use their singing against an army. Least of all, His army.’
With the exception of Gulda, the entire party sat down gratefully on the damp rocks.
‘This is the place?’ she asked.
Loman nodded. ‘We’ve been training all around here, except when we’ve needed to go up above the snowline,’ he said, pointing to white peaks rising above them from adjacent valleys. ‘This is about the centre of the area we’ve been using most of the time. But our problems haven’t been localized. They’ve occurred everywhere we’ve been.’
Gulda looked round reflectively. They were three days from Anderras Darion, and the plains of Orthlund were long behind them. Now they were standing on the wide jagged summit of a mountain that commanded an expansive view of nearby crags and valleys. A precipi-tous cliff face dropped away from them on one side, curving round in two sweeping ridges to join the peak to its lesser neighbours, as if it were resting its broad arms on them. In every direction mountains marched to the horizons. Loman and his chosen companions, Athyr, a veteran of the Morlider War, and Yrain, had anticipated a comparatively leisurely stroll as escort to an old woman and three young children. However, Gulda had confounded them by setting a relentless pace from the very start.
‘How does she do it?’ Athyr whispered as Loman waited by him while he re-fastened his boots. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but she doesn’t even seem to be hurrying.’
Loman shook his head. ‘I’ve stopped thinking about it,’ he said. ‘I’ll be surprised when she does something I expect. Don’t worry. She’ll stop when the children get tired.’
That indeed proved to be the case, but the pause was only to allow the three adults to pick up the three children.
‘Look on it as full pack training,’ she said, chuckling. ‘You’ve had plenty of time to rest these last few days, and I want these boys in good voice when we arrive.’
However, although the final ascent to their present position had involved no climbing, it had been long and steep, and even Gulda had relented. It served as little consolation to the three adults when the boys ran ahead and scurried up the slope well ahead of them, closely followed by Gulda.
As they all rested, Gulda prowled round the summit. After a little while she poked her stick into a small grassy knoll. ‘Here will do,’ she said. ‘Put your weapons here.’
Athyr and Yrain looked at Loman in surprise. ‘What for?’ Loman asked. ‘What are you intending to do?’
‘I’m intending to contact the Alphraan, or at least try to,’ she replied.
Loman glanced round to ensure that the children were occupied. ‘If they’re here, then they may have killed four of our people already,’ he said softly. ‘Do you seriously want us to face them unarmed?’
‘I don’t think they’ve attacked anyone so far,’ Gulda replied, equally softly. ‘I think they’ve just tried to chase people away. We have to take a chance. If we come conspicuously disarmed then they’ll perhaps be more inclined to see us as peaceful.’
‘And the children?’ Loman asked.
‘Whatever happens, they won’t harm them, that I’m sure of,’ Gulda said. ‘Do as I ask.’
Reluctantly, Loman unbuckled his sword belt and nodded to the others to do the same. Taking the collected weapons, he laid the belt knives in the middle of the knoll that Gulda had indicated and arranged the three swords in a neat pyramid over them.
Gulda watched the process with interest.
‘Now the rest,’ she said, when Loman had stood back, apparently satisfied. Loman’s look of innocence barely reached his face before it retreated in disarray and he nodded again to the others resignedly.
Gulda walked around the resultant armoury of knives and other small fighting devices that Loman laid under the three swords, then she looked intently at Yrain.
‘All of them, young lady,’ she said eventually. Yrain held her gaze for a moment, then reached down and pulled another knife out of her boot. Standing up she offered it hilt first to Gulda who took it and laid it with the others.
As Yrain sat down again, she dislodged a large stone. It came to rest near her hand.
Gulda walked over to her and placed her stick on the stone. Yrain smiled up at her, pleasantly.
‘No,’ Gulda said. ‘I commend your thinking and your technique, Yrain,’ she said. ‘And your caring. It’s to your credit that you’ve learned so much so quickly. But no.’ Her stick flicked the stone out of reach. ‘If you want to become a true warrior you must understand that true defence doesn’t lie in your knowledge of how to use weapons but in your knowledge of when to use them.’
She crouched low before the seated woman and looked into her eyes intently. ‘Very occasionally in your life, you may have to fight. Very occasionally, you may have to run away. Mostly however, you’ll have to watch, listen, talk, and above all, learn and understand. While you lean on your weapons or your technique you’ll cloud your mind. You’ll neither see, hear, nor explain, and you’ll certainly never understand. You’ll need both weapons and technique increasingly, and increasingly they’ll fail you.’