He heard Derwyn’s voice, very gentle. ‘Sheathe your knife, Farnor. This is not a place of weapons, and you’ve made your case far more eloquently than I or anyone else could have done.’ He patted him on the shoulder, then leaned back in his chair of office and looked at EmRan, who was sitting, grim-faced and motionless. ‘This was as Bildar told it to me also,’ he said. ‘And my daughter. Your conduct needs more explanation than does this young man’s. I think that in a quieter moment, EmRan, you might consider apologizing to our guest, and to our Mender, and to my daughter, for your reckless intrusion this morning.’ Then, despite an obvious effort, his anger showed again. ‘What possessed you to do such a thing? And then to blame someone for defending their hearth – indeed, defending someone else’s hearth?’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘For what you did you could have been cut down on the spot and no reproach to anyone. We must forgive Farnor for drawing a weapon in this place, he can’t be expected to know our ways, but perhaps it’s fortunate, EmRan, that his people don’t maintain the tradition of the Threshold Sword, or this might have been your wake tonight instead of a Congress meeting.’
Silence descended on the gathering.
‘Who else wishes to speak?’ Derwyn said quietly, after what seemed to Farnor to have been an intermina-ble interval.
‘I do.’
Derwyn started violently and turned in his seat to look for the speaker. Farnor followed his gaze. A pathway was opening through the crowd and a frail-looking figure was walking along it. A murmur rose from the crowd to fill the Synehal like a great wind howling through the trees. Gradually Farnor began to hear a coherent pattern in the sound. ‘Marken!’ Derwyn’s voice crystallized it. He stood up. Farnor joined him and the two stood side by side to watch the Hearer’s progress. Hands came out to support the old man, but he waved them aside. Derwyn left the podium and moved down the sloping platform to greet him, his face full of both relief and inquiry, although, ‘You look tired,’ was all he could think of to say as he reached him.
Marken nodded. ‘Nothing that a little sleep won’t mend,’ he said. He did not alter his pace, however, and Derwyn found himself being almost dragged along by the old man whose eyes were fixed on Farnor, now standing alone at the top of the slope, silhouetted against the bright lights.
Still contending with his own tumbling emotions at this unexpected return, Derwyn said, inadequately, ‘Have you anything to say to the Congress?’
Marken cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the crowd, and his intense expression gave way to a brief, wry smile. ‘Quite an outbreak of public-spiritedness,’ he said with heavy irony as they reached Farnor. ‘But no. I’ve nothing to say at the moment. However, I do have a lot to say to this young man.’ He seemed anxious to begin.
Derwyn, easier now, pulled a wry face. ‘You’d better say something, or we’ll be here all night,’ he said, knowingly.
Marken looked again at the crowd and then nodded. He went straight to the chair that Derwyn had been sitting in and spoke immediately. ‘You don’t need a Hearer to tell you that strange things are happening,’ he began. ‘Stranger than any of us have ever known. I left yesterday because I felt within me a need – a great lack – a profound confusion. I thought that somewhere there would be a place where I could perhaps still my mind and find some clarity. However, as you may suppose by my early return, I found no such place. And I found no answers. But I did find some of the questions that I need to ask.’ He held his hand out towards Farnor. ‘I must speak with this young man alone, in friendship and mutual inquiry, for he has been overwhelmed by events far stranger than any that we have experienced, and he’s in need of our help. Go back to your lodges knowing that, and also that at the worst he is not our enemy.’ He paused and bowed his head for a moment. Then he nodded. ‘As I learn, so shall I speak.’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Go back to your lodges. Pursue your ordinary lives, for in them is the wisdom that will sustain us.’
Questions came from all sides. Marken stepped away from the chair and Derwyn took his place. He held up his hands. ‘We came here to talk about the angry drawing of a weapon and to discuss the unexpected loss of our Hearer. The first one has been dealt with, in my view, and the other has been resolved by our Hearer’s equally unexpected return. There might well be plenty to talk about, but there’s nothing here that now requires any communal debate.’ As he spoke, the Synehal carried his voice over the hubbub, but when he had finished and was turning to leave, the questions returned with as much force as before. He allowed himself a little anger. ‘Having been away for a whole day, Marken returns to find the lodge like a chicken house with a fox in it. Much we’ve learned from him over the years, it seems.’ Pausing, he looked around at his audience, and gradually the noise faded. ‘Then he tells us that he has no answers. So why do we ask him questions? We look to our Hearer for advice. He’s given it to us – go back to our lodges, pursue our ordinary lives. What he learns he’ll tell us about.’ He smiled. ‘Having been so anxious for him to return, let’s be glad he’s back and let’s follow his advice.’ Taking advantage of the ensuing, if some-what stunned, silence, he formally closed the Congress and moved away from the podium.
His authority prevailed and the crowd started to break up immediately, though the Synehal filled with the muffled rumble of the still-repeated questions as neighbour turned to neighbour. Derwyn watched them, his smile gone. The relief at the return of the Hearer was almost palpable, but so too was the uncertainty that the arrival of Farnor and the departure of Marken had provoked. He had tried to seize on the first and dismiss the second light-heartedly, but he knew that he had not been totally successful.
As he looked round for Marken, several of the peo-ple who had been sitting on the tiered seats began to head towards him.
Marken in the meantime had been standing by Far-nor, having taken his elbow in the powerful grip that Farnor was beginning to recognize as normal amongst these people. He looked at the old Hearer, though even as he did so, he realized that he could not have guessed how old he actually was. For although Marken had the demeanour of an old man, and greying brown hair, there was, nonetheless, an oddly youthful cast about his features and, particularly, his eyes, which managed to shine through even his manifest tiredness.
Marken guided him down the slope of the platform. ‘The Synehal isn’t the place for the conversation that we must have,’ he said very softly. ‘We’ll go to Derwyn’s.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for him?’ Farnor asked, some-what bewildered by Marken’s urgency. Marken glanced back. Derwyn was engaged in what appeared to be a heated conversation with several men and women. Marken chuckled softly. ‘Derwyn’s a good Second,’ he said. ‘But he never could finish a meeting properly. A brisk manner and swift legs is what you need, and Derwyn’s always been too polite.’
Before Farnor could offer any protest, he was being propelled through the dispersing crowd. Unlike their behaviour at his entrance however, the crowd did not open before Marken, but tended rather to close around him as greetings were shouted to him, and hands came out to grasp his arms and pat him on the back. Some-what to his surprise, Farnor, too, now found himself subjected to similar treatment, though he noticed that most of the people who took his arms tended to be looking at his hair. It was thus some time before they were able to walk on unhindered. ‘Can we slow down a little?’ Farnor asked. My legs have done more walking and climbing these last two days than in a month at home.’
Distressingly, he felt a frisson of bitter anger follow-ing in the wake of his casual reference to home, but Marken dispelled it with an immediate, if rather absent-minded, reply. ‘Oh, yes, of course. Forgive me, I wasn’t thinking. There’s such a lot I need to talk about with you.’