‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, with a very deliberate calmness in his voice. ‘I think I Heard most of what was said, and I know it’s serious, and even desperate for you, but…’ He tapped his hands on the arms of his chair until he gained control of himself again. ‘But… to Hear like that. I can scarcely believe it. What happened the other day was almost unbelievable, but this…’
He shook his head.
His own mind whirling, Farnor watched him si-lently, growing increasingly irritated by his apparently unquenchable exhilaration. Then a smell reached him. He wrinkled his nose and said peevishly, ‘Your soup’s boiling over.’
Marken’s rapture vanished. He swore and dashed unceremoniously into the other room. There was a considerable clattering and hissing accompanied by yet more swearing, but eventually Marken emerged bearing a steaming bowl and more chunks of bread.
‘Here,’ he said, dropping both bowl and bread on to the table, and blowing on his singed fingers. ‘Eat.’
‘For pity’s sake, I can’t eat now,’ Farnor said, exas-perated.
Marken levelled a finger at him. ‘Just eat,’ he com-manded, with unexpected force. ‘While I think. Whatever happens, you’re going to need your strength.’
Farnor’s appetite and his wiser nature bowed to Marken’s authority and he did as he was told. The soup was very hot, and for the next few minutes, the tumbling confusion in his mind receded as, under Marken’s stern supervision, he struggled to eat without burning himself.
‘You’ve made it clear enough what you want to do,’ Marken said, as Farnor spooned up the last of the soup. ‘But what are you going to do?’
Farnor looked at him over the top of the bowl. Marken’s food glowed through him, vying with his inner confusion for mastery of his mood. ‘Do I have a choice?’ he asked.
‘Always,’ Marken replied.
Farnor thought of the times when his mind had reached out to touch the creature, unbidden. And of the wind in the courtyard that had crashed the wicket door shut on his arm. And of Nilsson, casually beating him, tossing him to and fro as if he had been nothing more than some disobedient dog. He shook his head in denial. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not always.’ Then he banged his clenched fist on the arm of the chair in frustration. ‘If only I knew more about these things! About what they can do about… oh, anything! Or, for that matter, what I can do, that makes them so nervous of me.’
‘I can’t help you,’ Marken said, with some regret. ‘It’s generally thought that they can reach into the mind and turn it to whatever ends they wish. Our old stories are full of such tales. And there’s no doubt that outsiders tend to wander about only in the fringes and then leave. They rarely come in deep, and they never set up home.’
Farnor looked at him. ‘And what will you do?’ he asked. ‘You and Derwyn and the others?’
‘Nothing’s changed there. We’ll help you to travel whichever way you choose insofar as we’re able,’ Marken replied without hesitation.
‘But?’ Farnor prompted, catching at the doubt in his voice.
‘But if they’re opposing you, I don’t know what value we’d be to you,’ Marken said flatly.
Rage rose up in Farnor again, bringing with it im-ages of his slaughtered parents and the triumphant faces of Rannick and Nilsson. He felt like a caged animal.
He would not be restrained thus!
Yet, what could he do?
Then, like a crafty wheedling child, an unexpected and dark thought came to him. A small, baleful light to illuminate his position. He could, after all, choose, as Marken had said. The trees – the Forest – understood this power of his that so disturbed them while he could neither understand nor control it. Thus they were the only ones from whom he could learn about it. The logic was inexorable. He must do as they wished, but he would study them as they studied him, and secretly ferret knowledge about the power from them. And once he had that, could they then restrain him? And could Rannick and the creature stand against him?
The long-cherished image of Rannick, dead at his feet, returned. More than ever before, now, he must cling to that to sustain him through whatever was about to follow. It would be his lodestar; his guiding light. While he held fast to that, nothing, nothing, could truly stand in the way of his bringing it about.
‘I’ll do as they ask,’ he said, smiling slightly. ‘I’ll go to these mountains and do whatever they wish. It’s not what I want to do, but it seems it’ll cause a great many difficulties for everyone if I try to leave.’
Marken’s eyes widened at this abrupt change and he looked at him uncertainly. Then he nodded slowly. ‘It’s probably the wisest decision,’ he said.
‘Will you help me?’ Farnor asked, working up some enthusiasm for this new idea. ‘Show me the way? Tell me where I can get food and supplies?’
‘Of course,’ Marken replied, relief showing on his face. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to find someone who could act as a guide for you.’ He hesitated. ‘At least for most of the journey, anyway.’
Farnor looked at him questioningly. ‘Most of it?’ he asked.
Marken looked a little uneasy. ‘The place they refer to near the central mountains is very special to them. No people live there, nor even go there to hunt, to gather fruits, barks, anything.’
‘Why not? Is it dangerous?’ Farnor asked in some alarm, seeing his new scheme foundering already.
Marken shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that it’s their place. There are many such that they keep to themselves, but that place above all is their most precious, revered. There might be dangers, I suppose, to someone who wasn’t invited.’ His face brightened. ‘But that obviously doesn’t apply to you, does it?’
His intentions righted again, Farnor pondered Marken’s offer. A guide would be very useful; he knew nothing of this land and very little of its people. Yet perhaps, too, a guide would hinder him if he was to discover the nature of his power and then use it to escape.
‘I’ll think about it,’ Farnor replied. ‘I don’t know whether I want company or not.’
‘As you wish,’ Marken said.
A noisy, uncontrollable yawn seized Farnor. He clamped his hand to his mouth, guiltily, as the spasm finished. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, colouring.
Marken smiled indulgently. ‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘And it’s been a long day, not to say a long two days. Almost a lifetime in fact. I think we’ll both find our thoughts clearer after a good night’s rest.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll take you back to Derwyn’s if you want,’ he said, adding rhetorically, ‘I presume you can’t find your way back on your own, yet?’
As they stepped outside, the contrast between Marken’s small and tidily functional room with its wholly masculine ambience, and the vast cool space above the tree tops struck Farnor forcefully. The stars strewn across the sky were dimmed by the brightness of the glittering sea of sunstones beneath, but they were still brilliant, and Farnor felt as though he were floating high in the night sky, calm and at peace.
On the city in the clouds, he thought, as the memory of one of Yonas’s tales came back to him. For a moment it seemed to him that the perspective he had of himself, now, here, had a rightness about it by which he should measure all his future actions. He dashed the thought aside. It was heretical. His future actions were already determined. Or at least, the end to which they must lead him. ‘What is the Great Evil?’ he heard himself asking.
Marken stared out into the night. ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s not something I’ve ever Heard before. It had a bad feeling to it.’
Farnor nodded. Bad feeling was a substantial under-statement for the sensations that had hung about the phrase.
Marken turned to him, his face hidden in the shadow of an overhanging branch, save for the light of the sunstones reflecting in his eyes. ‘I think you know something of it already. I know you haven’t fully told us why and by whom – or what – you were pursued here, and I won’t press you, much as I’d like to. That’s your choice. But understand this; there has been some great disturbance somewhere, several years ago. Something that’s unsettled the entire Forest. It’s true it only began to dawn on me yesterday but I’ve been seeing it more and more clearly with each minute that passes – just in the new perspective I have of what I’ve Heard over the years and independent of what we’ve Heard tonight. But you’re caught up in it, Farnor. Perhaps we all are. It’s not something we’re going to be able to avoid.’