A caustic rejoinder began to form in his mind, but instead he said, ‘Uldaneth tells me you are one and many. Perhaps those of you who are many know where they are and where I am. You brought me here to question me, but I wish to question you too, and I wish to speak to those among you who lead.’
Bewilderment washed around him, then he sensed a decision being made.
‘Touch,’ the voice said.
Farnor frowned.
‘Touch,’ the voice repeated a little impatiently. ‘Touch one of the many.’
Farnor shook his head to rid himself of the plethora of complex images that formed in his mind around the word many. The meaning of the instruction, however, was quite clear. He walked to the nearest tree and rested his hand against it.
‘Ah. I have him,’ said a quite distinct voice that he had never heard before. Farnor snatched his hand away, then, a little shamefacedly, replaced it.
‘Stop that, please,’ said the voice crossly. ‘You’re confusing me. You’re not the only one, you know. I’ve got Movers all over me and it’s not easy to tell them apart. Just stay where you are for a moment.’
Farnor did as he was bidden.
‘Hm. Very interesting,’ the voice said after a while. ‘Go across to…’
Farnor could make nothing of the word that fol-lowed, but his gaze was drawn to another tree some distance away.
‘Bye bye,’ the voice said incongruously, as he began to pull his hand away. Farnor found himself mouthing the words in reply and waving his fingers vaguely. He coughed self-consciously and walked over to the other tree. As he touched it, there was a short pause and then he heard another voice say, ‘Ah, yes. Very… unusual.’ It was speaking to someone else, he could tell, even before it said to him, in a brisk, matronly fashion, ‘Go over to…’ and he found himself being once again directed towards another tree nearby.
He travelled for quite some time in this manner, encountering a bewildering range of voices and responses, ranging from kindly affection to irritable brusqueness and including one or two that gave him an impression not dissimilar to what his own usually was on finding that he had trodden in something unpleas-ant.
And between these many encounters was the dis-tant, unheard rumble of the watching silence.
As he walked on, the trees became taller and more massive still and the silence pervading them deeper and more profound. And though he could not see it, he could feel the looming presence of the mountain which he and Uldaneth had stood before when they parted.
‘Is this the place of the most ancient?’ he asked as he laid his hand on the rugged bark of the next tree.
‘You will know,’ came a gentle reply as he was di-rected again to another tree.
He began to walk more slowly. And even the horses seemed to be losing interest in their predominant occupation of grazing whenever Farnor paused. They were gazing around in a subdued manner.
The light was still remarkably good for all that he could scarcely see any sign of the sky even when he looked directly upwards. But it was growing dimmer; he was walking through a deepening gloaming. The long, straight trunks of the trees soared upwards, their size and height overawing him almost completely and robbing him of all sense of scale. Even the smallest were far larger than the largest he had seen at Derwyn’s lodge. He began to imagine that he was walking through a great building; one that had been built by an ancient and wise people to celebrate some truth too profound to be expressed in mere words. Lichens and climbers patterned the trunks, and long, tumbling strands of mosses hung down motionless like venerable beards. It was as though no wind had ever reached in to disturb this deep calm. The soft sound of his footfalls and those of the horses on the ancient litter seemed almost like a desecration.
When he spoke in the silence of his mind to the trees that were guiding him, he felt as though he were whispering. Eventually he stopped and gazed around. I am so small, he thought. My concerns are so trivial.
But even as these thoughts formed, his inner anger, held at bay by his encounters with the trees that had guided him here, bubbled to the surface. He had allowed himself to be brought here to learn about the power that he possessed so that he could return home and kill Rannick; avenge his slaughtered parents. He must not allow anything to distract him further from this.
‘You are not ready, Far-nor.’
The voice, familiar yet unfamiliar, clear and sono-rous in his mind, made Farnor start. There was judgement in it. ‘Ready for what?’ he demanded vehemently.
‘For whatever it is you desire.’
Farnor’s lip curled angrily. ‘And what might that be, pray?’ he asked, acidly.
The silence around him filled with distress and concern. ‘We are not as you are, Farnor. We touch such as you only a little, and we understand still less. We are more apart than we are together, by far. Always the greater part of you will be beyond us, as the greater part of us will be beyond you. And what you desire lies deep, deep within you. Close to the heart of what it is to be a Mover.’
The words filled Farnor’s mind with such subtle meanings that he involuntarily lifted his hands to his head. ‘If you do not know what my desire is, how do you know that I’m not ready for it?’ he managed to ask after the confusion had passed.
‘Because you are dangerous,’ came the unhesitant reply.
‘So I’ve been told,’ Farnor said. ‘But I threaten no one here, nor ever have. I wanted to leave, and you brought me on this journey against my will under threat of… assault.’
Farnor suddenly felt as though he were peering down some dizzying height, as he had in Marken’s room. There was a slightly apologetic note in the voice when it spoke again. ‘You awaken memories from the times when the sires of the sires of these…’ Homes? Bodies? ‘… were but saplings themselves. Not since then has a Mover moved so freely amongst our worlds. And they too possessed the power…’
Fear and consternation broke around Farnor, though it was not his own. It stopped abruptly.
‘Tell me about this power,’ Farnor said, as ingenu-ously as he could manage.
‘The power is.’
Farnor plunged on. ‘But I don’t understand. I know that I… see… feel… things that others don’t, but I feel no power within myself. Nor can I control these feelings.’
‘You have strange minds, you Movers. So layered, so devious, so much torn within themselves. And so separate.’
Farnor scowled. ‘Such as you can see of us,’ he re-torted sharply, and somewhat to his own surprise.
There was a faint hint of realization in the voice. ‘True,’ it conceded.
‘The power,’ Farnor reminded his questioner.
‘The power is, Far-nor. As the sky is. As the earth is. As all things are. It is in the fabric of all things.’ The voice became awed, fearful almost. ‘And such as can wield it as you can reach through and beyond, and into the worlds between the worlds. Drawing from them…’
The voice faded – in horror, Farnor thought, and his mind filled with images of intrusion and unfettered, unbalanced disorder, carrying terrible destruction in its wake. They were shadows of what he had felt as he had charged across the fields to his burning home, and when he had been an apparently passive witness to Rannick’s fiery demonstration before Gryss and the others in the castle courtyard.
‘Those who came before, in the most ancient of times, both wrought and mended such damage, both rent and sealed the fabric.’
‘Why?’ Farnor asked.
‘It lay beyond us then, Far-nor, as it does still. They warred. Like your desire, it lies deep within the heart of what it is to be a Mover.’
Farnor felt his anger stirring again. ‘Why did you bring me here? If you knew enough to know that I possessed this… power… then you must have known that I was no danger to you…’
‘You are a danger to all things, Far-nor.’ The voice crushed his protest ruthlessly. ‘Know this. Within even your short span we had felt the presence of a great disturbance. Now we learn that the unthinkable had happened. The Great Evil had wakened again, though this time It was ringed and hedged by stern foes and seemingly defeated before It could spread forth.’ Momentarily the voice faltered, as if it were gathering resources with which to tell its tale. ‘Yet tremors of It reverberate still. Its defeat is perhaps questionable. And it was beyond a doubt a seed of the Great Evil that pursued you here…’