Her voice was very soothing, and as she spoke she gently moved her hand on his shoulder. The jagged, vivid edges of the awareness to which he had just returned began to fade, and drowsiness began to seep over him. He struggled for a moment to keep his anger alive, but it slipped away from him. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said weakly, his head starting to droop. Then, somehow, he was on his feet, being guided back to his tent, and gentle hands were pulling a blanket up around his neck. A remnant of his true character rose to the surface through the mounting weariness. ‘But where are you going to sleep?’ he mumbled. ‘And the fire? The trees don’t like the fire…’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Uldaneth said. ‘Or them. I’ll tend the fire. They know that.’ As she walked away from the sleeping figure she spoke softly to herself. ‘And what would I do with sleep?’
Curious images floated through Farnor’s dreams; if dreams they were. Images that were vague and unde-fined, but full of calmness: a softly stirring treescape, or was it a motionless lake, echoing faithfully the sunlit mountains and sky above; or the campfire gently glowing…
The calmness went deeper and deeper, yet always beneath it, as if deliberately hiding, lay something else. Something that festered and brooded, dark and ominous. Something that waited…
‘Strange…’
A murmuring drifted out of the nothingness. A tale was being told. A tale of a great and ancient evil arisen again, and defeated again.
Realization. Then denial. A voice, or voices, jumbled and distant. ‘But it is here…’
Silence. Despair? Resignation?
‘It would seem so…’
‘And the sapling? The Mover?’ Doubt.
‘His power is great… But wild.’
Certainty. And fear.
‘Can you help?’
‘It may be but an echo. Pebbles after the avalanche.’
‘But you have been drawn here, too.’
Reluctance.
‘He cannot have returned again so soon, surely. But…’
Doubt.
‘I belong elsewhere. Most urgently. You know this.’
Acceptance.
‘But the sapling?’
Silence.
‘He is sound…’
‘You doubt.’
‘We are all flawed. I sense his choices, but he alone can choose.’
‘But…?’
‘He alone. This, too, you know.’
A red and golden light danced and fluttered in front of Farnor’s eyes, until it gradually became the campfire. A huddled figure was silhouetted, night dark, in front of it. ‘Uldaneth’ he said softly.
The darkness shifted slightly. ‘Go back to sleep, Farnor. Have no fear, I’ll tend the fire.’ The voice, full of resonances that assured and supported, weighed down his eyes, and returned him to the darkness.
And the voices.
‘Then I must judge him?’
Dark humour. ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’
Bewilderment. ‘But…?’
‘He will choose. That is beyond doubt. And who can say which falling leaf will tilt him hither or thither? And what are we in the path of that which his forebears have led him along?’
‘But…?’
‘Teach, old ones. As I do. Teach and trust. Bring light into the darkness of his ignorance. We should be wise enough to know the limits of our wisdom.’
Resignation.
Silence. Long and deep.
The following morning Farnor felt as though a smile were suffusing him as he woke. On the instant he was wide awake, and profoundly rested. Out of recently acquired habit however, he moved very cautiously, but though his many aches and pains were still there, they were much easier.
He turned towards the open mouth of his tent. A watery dawn light filled the small clearing and there were grey wisps of mist lingering here and there. The sound of horns, distant and faint, floated to him. Uldaneth was sitting as she had been the previous night in front of the dully smoking fire. She was quite motionless. Farnor sat up, suddenly alarmed, nearly bringing the tent down about him. ‘Are you all right?’ he called out anxiously, scrambling hurriedly out of the tent.
Before he reached her, however, he saw that his concern was unfounded. The fire was barely smoking because it was glowing hot, and Uldaneth was pushing some slices of hissing meat about a metal dish, her long nose wrinkling in distaste.
Farnor smiled. ‘Shall I do that?’ he asked, bending down beside her. ‘You seem to be having some trouble.’
Uldaneth gave him a narrow-eyed look and then relinquished the task to him. A few minutes – and two burnt fingers – later, Farnor was eating his unexpected breakfast, having wedged the slices of meat between two unevenly hacked slices of the bread that still remained from the supplies that Derwyn had given him. ‘It’s a bit stale now, but it’s edible,’ he said, speaking with his mouth full. ‘Are you sure you don’t want any?’ He held out his bulky sandwich.
Uldaneth edged away slightly and shook her head. ‘I’ve eaten,’ she said.
Farnor looked at her uncertainly and then contin-ued eating. ‘I thought I heard you talking last night,’ he said, between mouthfuls.
Uldaneth’s eyes fixed on his. They were blue and piercing. ‘Quite possibly,’ she replied acidly. ‘I fre-quently talk to myself. It’s often the only intelligent audience I can find.’
Farnor turned away from her gaze. She was a strange one, this old woman. He was convinced that she had sat by the fire all night without sleeping and that, despite her protestations, she had not eaten this morning; apart from the meat, nothing had been taken from his supplies, and she did not seem to have a pack of her own. And when she moved, she did not really move like an old woman. A twinge as he adjusted his position reminded him too that on their first meeting she had effortlessly defended herself against an extremely violent attack.
He wanted to ask her about all these things, but something told him that it would be either foolish or impertinent. And too, he realized that he did not want to enter into a cross-examination that might lead her to question him further about the creature. He did not know why he had told her what he had the previous night, and he did not know why she had not pursued it, but he was grateful.
‘You teach the Valderen?’ he asked eventually.
Uldaneth nodded slowly. ‘Their young,’ she said. ‘They teach the parents.’
‘Tell me about the trees,’ Farnor said, somewhat to his own surprise.
Uldaneth tilted her head a little as she looked at him, as if she were listening for some distant sound. ‘Tell me the history of the world,’ she mimicked, raising her eyebrows in gentle mockery.
‘Tell me about the trees,’ Farnor asked again, un-abashed. ‘As you seem to know, I… talk… to them. I Hear them. But there’s so much I don’t understand about them.’
‘Nor ever will, other than slightly,’ Uldaneth said, looking at the trees around them. ‘Nor they us. We are too different. You’d understand a bird or a fish more easily.’
Farnor persisted. ‘I’ve never spoken to a bird or a fish,’ he said. ‘Let alone have one give me orders or call me ignorant. But if you’ve lived with the Valderen you must know more about the trees than I do.’ Urgency filled him. He leaned forward. ‘You said you’d spoken to Marken, didn’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’ll know that I’ve things to do elsewhere, and that these hold me here.’ He waved a hand at the surrounding trees, his mood becoming angry.
‘Against your will?’
Farnor shrugged awkwardly. ‘They say they’re afraid of me because I possess some strange power, and they’ll oppose me if I try to leave. Yet when I talk with them, I get so many confusing impressions. Sometimes they’re like children, at others they’re stern, even fierce. Sometimes there’s one, always the same one, somehow, and sometimes there’s many. And they seem to have so little idea of place and distance.’
Uldaneth sniffed, then stood up. ‘Break camp,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk as we walk.’
Farnor’s eyes widened. ‘You’ll come with me?’ he asked hopefully, the prospect of company on his journey suddenly shining through his anger like a bright ray of sunlight through the Forest canopy.
‘Our paths lie together a little way,’ Uldaneth re-plied. ‘I’ll tell you what I can, but I too have important matters to be dealt with elsewhere.’