Farnor ignored the reproach in her voice and dragged the saddlebags into the room that she had indicated. As he checked the contents, Derwyn entered and sat down. He watched Farnor silently, but Farnor avoided his gaze until, satisfied that nothing had been lost from the bags, he had painstakingly refastened them and had no alternative but to look at him.
‘Everything is there that you need?’ Derwyn asked.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Farnor replied, adding self-consciously, for want of something to say, ‘I think I was lucky not to lose them, the way I was riding.’
Derwyn nodded, understandingly, and then glanced out of the window. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m obstructing you in any way, Farnor. You’ve made your wishes quite clear. But it is late in the day, and it’ll be dark before we even reach the place where we found you. I don’t know how good a tracker you are, but frankly I think you’re going to find it very hard to find your original tracks in the dark, and there seems to be little point in you camping out there.’ Farnor looked at him in silence. Derwyn continued. ‘Also, that region is not one that any of us are familiar with and, to be honest, I’m not too anxious to be travelling over it at night. We’ll take you right away, if you insist, but would it really disturb your plans to postpone your journey for a few hours and leave say, at dawn?’
Farnor looked out of the window. The light suffus-ing the trees was now that of a bright sun, low in the sky, leeching the colour from everything that it touched and etching long, dark, wavering shadows through the mote-filled air. Derwyn’s request was too reasonable, and too reasonably put, to be denied. Besides, memories of the creature reaching out to him through the night were beginning to hover about him. ‘I didn’t realize I’d slept so late,’ he replied weakly. ‘And I would prefer to travel in the daylight – if you don’t mind me staying here another night.’
Derwyn smiled in a fatherly way and stood up. ‘No, we don’t mind, Farnor,’ he said.
Farnor patted his saddlebags comfortingly, uncer-tain what he should do next. ‘And anyway, you have your Council meeting tonight, haven’t you?’ he said, to fill the silence.
Derwyn took a sudden deep breath, and muttered something under his breath that Farnor did not quite catch, but which he took to be an oath. Then, with a hasty ‘excuse me’, Derwyn left hurriedly. Farnor heard his footsteps resounding through the lodge accompa-nied by a great deal of agitated shouting, until finally it ended in a ripple of female laughter and the slam of a door.
Angwen was still laughing when she came into the room. ‘It’s a good thing you reminded him, Farnor,’ she said. ‘There’d have been real uproar after what he said at the stables if he hadn’t summoned the meeting after all.’ Then she rubbed her arms and moved over to the open window. As Edrien had in his room that morning, Angwen casually touched something by the window.
This time, two glazed panels swung silently into the opening. What struck Farnor most forcefully however, was not the silence and seeming efficiency of whatever mechanism worked the windows, but the fact that the room seemed to become brighter, as if the windows were gathering more sunlight than had come through the open window and were scattering it into the room. There were so many fascinating things about these people…
‘I think you’re wise to leave your journey until the morning,’ Angwen said, breaking into his thoughts. ‘Night tracking’s so difficult, even when you’re used to it. Do your people do much hunting?’
‘No, no,’ Farnor stammered. Somehow, this strangely beautiful woman disconcerted him pro-foundly. ‘We’re farmers. We catch the odd rabbit for the pot now and then, and perhaps a fox or a wild dog if they’ve been worrying the sheep.’ Unbidden, the memory of the motley gathering in the farmyard came to him, with Gryss sternly forbidding the carrying of bows, and Marna slipping through Gryss’s guard so that she could accompany them. Then, other memories threatened to come in the wake of these; the now childish-seeming excitement at passing for the first time beyond the bounds of the valley as he had always known it; of looking up giddily at the clouds moving over the swaying castle walls; his strange contact with the creature…
Suddenly agitated, he turned away from Angwen’s gaze and twitched his hand nervously over his mouth as if wiping it.
‘I’m sorry,’ Angwen said. ‘Does it bring back too many painful memories to talk about your people?’
Farnor’s hands fretted a little more before they set-tled on his knees. ‘No,’ he lied, then, smiling uncertainly, ‘A goose walked over my grave, that’s all.’
Angwen clapped her hands. ‘We say just the same,’ she said, laughing. ‘How strange.’
Her laughter seemed to fill Farnor just as it filled the room, and he felt a great easing. ‘What’s going to happen at this Council meeting tonight?’ he heard himself asking.
‘The Congress meeting?’ Angwen corrected. She gave another rich laugh. ‘If Derwyn manages to notify everyone, it’ll be full of talk about you, Farnor. Talk, talk and more talk. All about the grim, black-haired outsider on his grim, black horse; the strange intruder who’s cost us our Hearer.’
Farnor grimaced and self-consciously ran his hand through his hair. ‘Does no one round here have black hair?’ he asked.
Angwen shook her head. ‘No one,’ she confirmed. ‘And, unfortunately, it’s a colour that’s always given to the invaders and the evil mages in our legends.’ She smiled broadly.
‘You don’t seem to be very concerned about it,’ Farnor said.
Angwen laughed again. ‘We’re a civilized, rational people, Farnor,’ she said. ‘We love our legends and our stories – and our history, as far as we know it – but we don’t confuse myth and reality any more than you do, I should imagine. You were just an injured man, a faller, plain and simple. You needed help, and we gave it to you.’
‘But I’ve caused you problems, nevertheless,’ Farnor said. ‘You’ve lost your Hearer because of me.’
Angwen wrinkled her nose a little as she pondered this remark.
‘We haven’t lost him, Farnor,’ she said, looking at him seriously. ‘He’s gone to find a quiet place for himself. It’ll all resolve itself. They’ll provide.’ She leaned forward, her expression uncertain now. ‘Edrien’s told me how talking about the trees upset you so much,’ she said, watching him carefully. ‘I’ve tried to imagine what it’s been like for you, finding yourself here in this strange place all of a sudden. But I can’t really. I know we’re only people like your own, but so many of our ways, our ideas, our thoughts, must be so different that I can’t begin to put myself truly in your place.’ She reached out and took his hand. ‘All I can do is perhaps put you in our place a little,’ she went on. Brown eyes held Farnor. ‘Remember this above alclass="underline" that nothing is to be feared. It is only to be understood.’
Farnor started. Hadn’t Gryss said something like that? But memories of the creature close behind him bubbled into his mind to dismiss the recollection, and he could do nothing but challenge the assertion. ‘Nothing is to be feared?’ he echoed disbelievingly.
Angwen released his hand and smiled. ‘That’s the ideal to be striven for,’ she said. ‘But none of us is perfect.’ She laughed, and then quite abruptly became serious again. ‘But think about it, Farnor. Fear is important to us. It galvanizes us at times of danger, and helps us to survive. But constant fear is not to be borne. It’s an oppression and it has to be opposed. And to understand what causes the fear is to learn its strengths and weaknesses. And to learn how to avoid it, or perhaps even overthrow it.’
Farnor tilted his head on one side. ‘You talk like a soldier out of one of Yonas’s tales,’ he said.
‘Yonas?’ Angwen queried.
‘He’s a Teller,’ Farnor replied, his face brightening. ‘He’s one of the few people who come from over the – from outside the valley. He travels all over, telling his stories in return for food and shelter.’