‘No!’ Derwyn’s tone was unequivocal. ‘I know what you’re going to say. We’ve no facts. Angwen teases me for my hunter’s intuition, but that’s all it is, teasing. She accepts its reality. It’s fed us often enough.’ He patted his stomach noisily. ‘But it’s here, Marken,’ he said. ‘Just as sure as this rain’s dripping down my neck. I sense things with more than my ears and my eyes and my nose. As do we all, if we but care to listen. Every part of me takes in something and pays heed to it. And it builds up, until…’ He tapped his stomach with a solitary finger this time. ‘… I know. I know where a deer has passed, and how long ago. I know there’s a boar in that bush, and a pheasant in that one. And when the weather’s going to break. I know, Marken.’ He tapped his head. ‘I use this too, you know that, but in some things it’s a poor laggard. It has to stumble on behind. And I know that bad things are hovering in the air, and that what we do will make a difference to them.’
Marken shrugged in a gesture of resignation. ‘I can’t argue with you. I do things that you don’t understand, and I’ve seen you do things that I don’t understand, many times. We just trust one another. But where does that leave us? And why the anger about EmRan’s little piece of political trickery.’ He offered Derwyn a reproachful look. ‘It’s not the first time he’s done it. To be honest, I’d have thought you’d have seen it coming.’
Derwyn grimaced. ‘You’re right,’ he replied. ‘I was a bit naive. I just presumed that because I’d felt the events moving around Farnor, everyone else would have.’
‘EmRan wouldn’t feel a log rolling over him,’ Marken retorted caustically.
Derwyn smiled and gave a brief chuckle, but his face became grim again almost immediately. A gust of wind and a sudden splattering of heavy raindrops released from the leaves above sent the two men scurrying forward.
‘Be that as it may,’ Derwyn said, as they walked on, ‘I can’t let this decision stand. It’s too serious. We must take Farnor’s advice.’
Marken stopped and turned towards him. ‘That would mean taking this to a full Congress meeting,’ he said. ‘And they’d be very reluctant to overturn a nine-to-three decision.’ He stepped closer. ‘You were right before when you said I was still floating in the air after that Hearing I had with Farnor. I can’t help it. But I do know that the joy of experiencing the Hearing and the actual message it contained are two different things. I’m with you. I agree with your concerns…’ He tapped his head and his stomach. ‘… however you’ve come by them. But the whole feeling of the lodge is as EmRan said. Let’s all have a good gossip about this strange outsider, but let’s get back to our comfortable, familiar ways while we’re doing it. Head in a hollow tree it might be, but people prefer that to even considering that there might be a very unpleasant reality underlying it all. You couple that with the nine to three vote, and you having nothing… tangible… to offer, and EmRan will almost certainly win. And you can rest assured that he’ll make the most of the fact that it was you who brought Farnor here. You could find your position as Second in jeopardy. And that would be serious.’
Derwyn’s face was unreadable. ‘Maybe EmRan should have the job,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I don’t seem to be reading affairs particularly well at the moment.’
Marken made a disparaging noise. ‘You’re reading them too well,’ he said. ‘And you’re reading them faster than everyone else, that’s all. Don’t reproach yourself.’ He reached out and, taking Derwyn’s arms, shook him. ‘Come on,’ he said earnestly. ‘You know you can’t defy the Congress. It’s far too risky. Besides, the Congress is too slow to cope with what’s happening now. And you need to know what’s happening now. Just think of another way to get what you want.’
Derwyn looked at him solemnly for some time, then nodded slowly. ‘I suppose you want me to thank you for telling me the obvious, don’t you?’ he said, tapping his foot in a grassy puddle and watching the ripples flow from it.
‘Of course,’ Marken said, smiling.
The two set off again, Derwyn with his head lowered pensively. After a little while he straightened up. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘if you’ve no pressing business at the moment, I’d like to invite you to a small, private hunting trip I was thinking of making in the near future. I’ll probably ask Melarn, too. He’s a personable enough young man, and he’ll come in handy if there’s any heavy work to be done.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ Marken replied casually. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been hunting, and I could do with a change after all this activity. Sharpen up my Forest lore. Where were you thinking of going?’
Derwyn affected a small debate with himself. ‘No-where special,’ he decided. ‘South, probably.’
Chapter 12
Farnor was glad that he had chosen to ride on alone; it allowed him to give full rein to the dark and bloody thoughts that festered deep within him. For the most part these manifested themselves as a burning resent-ment at being compelled to head north instead of being allowed to return to his home, though his resolve to learn the secrets of his power from the trees held them in check to some degree. His senses drew in the sights and sounds of the Forest around him, and the rich and varied woodland odours, but his inner vision, focused as it was, almost totally, on his ultimate goal, forbade him any indulgence, and he saw none of the profound beauty of the place nor felt any of its great peacefulness.
Only when the demands of his body or of circum-stances drove him to such simple practical tasks as eating and sleeping and tending the horses, did he become the son of Garren and Katrin Yarrance once again. Not that he was aware of any such transition. Indeed, he approached such tasks with the same ill grace that he pursued his entire journey. But during their execution – making a small sunstone fire to cook his food, washing himself in a noisy stream, making and unmaking his camp, feeding the horses and checking their hooves and harness – a calmness came over him, and an occasional glimmer of light reached through to him. Just as the awful momentum of recent events carried him along relentlessly, so the quieter, but far greater, momentum of his entire life and upbringing could not help but assert itself from time to time. The touch of the familiar objects that he brought with him reached deep down into him, as too, did the uncondi-tional kindness that he had received from the Valderen. Such strange people, he pondered in his quieter moments, yet with so much in common with his own kind, with their care and concern for one another.
Not that he suffered many such quiet moments. Indeed, the unexpected similarities between the Valderen and his own people would often be the goad to the memory that prodded into wakefulness his grim vision of his future.
He was aware that the trees were ‘keeping their distance’ from him. There was none of the constant low murmur that Marken had referred to. Instead there was a deep, wilful silence. Were they watching him? Listening to him? Or were they simply afraid of him? He suspected that it was all three, and that, too, did little to improve his disposition.
He did however, reach out to them from time to time. As the dominant reason for his undertaking this journey was to discover more about the power that he apparently possessed, and as they were the ones who seemed to understand it, it was essential that he learn about them. His first approach was naively simple. Lying in the dry, warm darkness of the small tent that he had erected, he closed his eyes and shouted into the silence of his mind. ‘Hello!’
Silence.
‘Hello! I’m Farnor Yarrance. I’m here because the trees around Derwyn’s lodge sent me. I’m to go north to the central mountains, to meet your most ancient.’ Then, inspirationally, he told the truth. ‘I need to know about you, and them, if I’m to understand what’s happening.’
The quality of the silence shifted.
‘I’m not Valderen,’ he went on, probing. ‘They call me an outsider. I know nothing of you. Nothing at all. Or of the power I’m supposed to possess. Speak to me, please.’