Farnor stopped abruptly. Marken continued for a few paces before he realized that he was alone. He turned round, his face questioning.
‘I don’t mind talking with you,’ Farnor said defen-sively. ‘But I’m leaving tomorrow morning at dawn, come what may. Now you’re back, there’s even less reason for me to stay.’
Marken looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Whatever you want, Farnor. Whatever you want.’
Farnor looked at him suspiciously. The old man’s acquiescence had been a little too easy for comfort. But it also left him nothing to argue about.
‘Just so that you understand,’ he said, awkwardly.
Marken pursed his lips and nodded sagely. ‘Of course,’ he said again. ‘Of course.’
Derwyn caught up with them eventually. He had been running and was panting a little. Marken chuckled. ‘Trouble getting away again?’ he said, maliciously.
‘Shut up,’ Derwyn replied testily. Marken’s chuckle became a laugh.
They walked along in silence for a while, Marken continuing to acknowledge the hails of passers-by but resolutely declining to slow down, Derwyn and Farnor following like sheep.
For the first time that night Farnor looked round at the trees festooned with glittering sunstone lights, their great leafy canopies magically lit from within, long dust-laden shadows of people moving about the walkways flitting through the branches like silent night birds. As he gazed upwards he began to walk more and more slowly until finally he stopped. ‘This is beautiful,’ he said simply.
Marken and Derwyn stopped abruptly and turned to stare at him. Then his gaze drew theirs inexorably upwards to peer into their familiar domain. They stood in silence for a long time, then both of them said simultaneously, ‘Yes, it is.’
‘We should look at it more often,’ Derwyn added, setting off again. ‘Much more often.’
They completed their journey at a much slower pace.
When they reached Derwyn’s lodge, Farnor slumped heavily into a chair and blew out a rueful breath as he massaged his legs.
‘I need to speak to Farnor alone,’ Marken said to Derwyn just as he too was about to sit down. Derwyn cast a longing look at his chair and then a reproachful one at Marken.
‘And I need to talk to you alone before you leave,’ he said, purposefully. He glanced upwards. ‘I’ll be skyside with Angwen if you want me.’
As Derwyn closed the door, Marken drew up a chair and sat down opposite Farnor. He leaned towards him earnestly. ‘I heard your tale to the Congress, Farnor,’ he said. ‘And I heard the lies in it.’ His eyes widened determinedly before Farnor could begin to mouth any denial. ‘I can understand why, but tell me none.’ He brought his face close to Farnor’s. ‘Tell me nothing but the truth as you know it. It may be that your life hangs by the finest of threads.’
Chapter 9
Farnor tried to tear himself away from Marken’s brown-eyed gaze, but found that he could not. For a moment he felt as though the walls of the room were closing in to bind him to this place forever. He took a deep breath to still the panic he could begin to feel rising within him.
Marken leaned back in his chair and watched him carefully, as though trying to gauge the effect of his words. After a moment, he seemed satisfied. He held up his hand to forbid any speech. ‘I’m sorry to be so brutal, Farnor,’ he said. ‘But my problem is that I sit here looking at you and I see an ordinary young man. A little unusual looking by our lights, but an ordinary young man nevertheless. And, to be honest, someone who’s not a little lost and alone, at that. Yet I know that, in some way, you’re the centre of an upheaval the like of which I’ve never known. I can hardly describe to you the turmoil I was in when we found you.’ He put his hands to his temples. ‘So much going on. So many Hearings. Such vividness. Such intensity. I felt battered and numbed.’ He looked intently into Farnor’s eyes. ‘You must realize, Farnor, that a Hearer’s a poor vessel for the tasks he has to undertake. Most ordinary people imagine that we literally hear voices in our heads saying, “Do this. Don’t do that. This will be all right, that won’t,” and so on. But it isn’t so. We Hear voices true enough, but they’re vague and distant and garbled. And also they’re much more than voices. Such words as can be made out are laden with countless layers of subtle meaning. You understand what I mean, don’t you?’
Despite himself, Farnor nodded.
Marken continued. ‘And we often find ourselves on the fringes of what appears to be some… debate… argument… what you will, so that it’s difficult to know what we’re supposed to be Hearing, and for whose benefit. And even when we receive the answer to a question we’ve asked, it frequently has an almost casual, offhand quality about it, and its interpretation is invariably debatable.’ His manner became more resolute. ‘But the call to seek you out had no such vagueness. It was as clear as a frosty winter sky. It actually came into my dreams and woke me. Never, never, in all my years, have I known such a thing.’ He drove his fist into his open palm. ‘And the shock of it seems to have given me – a new insight, a clarity of vision. It’s made me see clearly for the first time things that have been under my nose for years.’ He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
‘I see now, Farnor, that there’s been an unease in the Hearings for a long time,’ he went on. ‘Several years, in fact. As if something had happened somewhere that had unsettled the entire Forest. It was slight, and subtle, but it was there nevertheless, except that I didn’t have the wit to see it until yesterday. And even then I couldn’t truly believe it at first. That’s what drove me out to try to find somewhere where I could perhaps order my thoughts, see some kind of a pattern in events. But I wasn’t allowed to. As I walked, there was a hubbub all about me, washing to and fro. Then, for the second time, I was spoken to directly.’ He looked away from Farnor and shook his head, as if in disbelief. ‘It was more unnerving awake than when I was asleep. This voice – or perhaps several voices, I couldn’t really tell – coming to me from a great distance. As though someone was shouting from the far end of a great echoing cave, or through a blustering wind…’
He paused, and Farnor intruded anxiously, making to stand up. ‘I don’t know what all this is about,’ he said. ‘All this nonsense about…’
Marken’s hand seized his and prevented him from rising. ‘Stop that,’ the old man said powerfully. ‘I’m not Derwyn and the others to be fobbed off with your foolish protests. And I told you to tell me no lies.’
Farnor tried to speak again, but Marken’s look for-bade him. ‘Listen to me, young man,’ he said. ‘I’m not so old that I don’t see a long, interesting and useful life ahead of me still. But I’m old enough to be very disinclined to waste any of that time dealing with the crass stupidity of the young. Now be quiet until I tell you to speak.’
Farnor wilted a little under the unexpected force of Marken’s manner.
‘They spoke to me, Farnor,’ Marken went on. ‘Spoke to me directly.’ A look of wonder came into his eyes. ‘For all the strangeness of it, it was magical. Such depth, such meaning, such clarity. It was like the fulfilment of my every dream.’ As suddenly as it had appeared however, the wonder faded and his face became grim and regretful. ‘But that was the experience, for me, as a Hearer. The content of what they told me, though, held no magic. It was simple and blunt. Although they helped you, they fear you. They fear some power that you have, and some darkness within you. They told me to tell you that you’re to go to the central mountains to stand amongst the most ancient of them so that you can be questioned and a decision made about your fate.’
Farnor felt panic rising in him again. Wide-eyed, he looked towards the window. A carved wooden shutter sealed out the night and the great, twisted labyrinth of swaying branches that lay beyond, but it seemed to Farnor that even now those branches were stretching towards him; innumerable, many-fingered hands reaching for him. His head began to fill with the noise of his own breathing, shallow and raucous, but through it he felt that he could hear purposeful scratchings and tappings at the glass on the far side of the shutter.