Aaren gave a little smile and nodded an acknowl-edgement to Marna. Then she flicked an inquiring glance towards one of the knives visible in Marna’s belt. ‘Everything?’ her eyes inquired. Marna gave a slight, fearful, shake of her head. No, not everything. Not that she was a murderer. Aaren understood.
‘So we had, sir,’ she said, turning back to Gryss. ‘But matters have…’
Gryss wrapped his other hand about both of hers. ‘Please don’t call me sir,’ he said. ‘I feel old enough as it is. Just call me Gryss, like everyone else.’
Aaren’s smile broadened, but, if anything, it high-lighted the strain on her face. ‘As you wish,’ she said.
Gryss released her. ‘We’re none of us fighters… Aaren… but we’ll help you if we can,’ he said.
Aaren looked back towards the castle as she spoke. ‘Marna was right,’ she began. ‘We were going to wait for Rannick to make one of his lone trips to the north. But circumstances have changed. Nilsson and almost all of the troop have moved out and are setting up a work camp in the woods.’
‘A work camp?’ Marna echoed, puzzled.
Aaren nodded. ‘They’re felling trees.’ She gesticu-lated vaguely. ‘Almost certainly it’s for the equipment and machinery that they’ll need as an army on the move. It means that they’re getting ready to move out on a major expedition.’
‘And you want to get Rannick before they start?’ Marna interjected excitedly.
‘Yes,’ Aaren replied coldly. ‘But mainly we want to kill him while we can.’
Her blunt, but casual use of the word, kill, cut through Marna’s momentary exhilaration. The proprie-torial glow she had felt in presenting this strange woman to Gryss evaporated, and she was brought back brutally to her damp look-out post and the cruel circumstances of the valley.
‘What do you mean?’ Gryss asked unhappily.
Aaren hesitated. ‘We have some experience of the power that Rannick uses,’ she said eventually. ‘A great deal, unfortunately. Having seen what we’ve seen these last couple of nights, and… felt… what we’ve felt, we think that Rannick may be reaching a stage where his skill will render him almost invulnerable to a normal physical assault.’
She looked into Gryss’s openly doubting face. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Marna’s told me what you’ve seen yourself: the wind that was guarding the castle yard, the fire that he conjured out of nothingness. We think that by now he’s probably passed far beyond such tricks. And the greater his skill becomes, the faster it will grow.’ She paused, as if she did not want to continue. ‘Soon, he’ll be scarcely human, and beyond anything we might be able to do to him.’ She turned to Marna. ‘I think you’ve got some measure of this in that he didn’t come looking for you particularly hard after you rejected him.’
Marna tried to meet her gaze with studied indiffer-ence, but she had to turn away from the pain in it. ‘I was… surprised,’ she conceded uncomfortably. ‘He was all too… human… when I parted from him.’ She felt herself colouring at the memory of Rannick’s last gentle kiss and the promise that had lain behind it. ‘But he was like two people when he drew that strange fire out of nowhere.’
Aaren turned to Gryss again. ‘If he reaches that stage, then nothing – nothing in this land – can stop him. And by the time we could marshal resources against him, his power, his following, and his conquests would be a hundred times what they are now.’
Gryss shook his head in bewilderment. ‘I can’t begin to take all this in.’ He wanted to ask why all this should be happening to him, to the valley. Why Rannick? Why now? Why…? But he had asked the questions many times and he knew that, for all her knowledge, this woman would have no answers for him. ‘Just tell me what you want us to do,’ he said, clinging to the simplicity of practicalities.
‘What we have to do, Gryss, is kill him as quickly as possible,’ Aaren said starkly. ‘We can’t risk waiting until he decides to come out on his own. There’s no saying when that might be.’ She hesitated, then, ‘We’re going to try and get into the castle tonight. While most of the men are away. And…’
‘Do you have to kill him?’ Gryss interrupted. His voice was as full of judgement as it was question. In spite of all that had happened, he had known Rannick all his life and he found Aaren’s quiet purposefulness deeply disturbing.
Momentarily however, Aaren’s emotions broke through on to her face. Gryss started back at the mixture of anger, fear and desperation he read there. ‘Yes,’ she said, through clenched teeth, as she struggled to control herself. ‘The power corrupts and will tolerate no restraint. It’s him or us.’ She waved a hand across the rain-swept valley. ‘All of us. All of you. And beyond. Be under no illusions about that.’
‘But…’
‘No buts, Gryss,’ Aaren said, angrily wiping a tear from her eye. ‘Knowing what we know, we’ve no choice. While he can still be stopped by such as us, we have to try. If we fail – then…’ She stopped and let out a nervous breath. ‘The future you have now will probably be unchanged.’ She looked at Marna. ‘But we’ll leave you with messages to carry to the king… in case…’
Gryss closed his eyes. Arguments tumbled through his head. And questions; still so many questions. And Aaren’s doubts were contagious. But there was one certainty, above alclass="underline" he must not betray the valley and its people again. The memory came to him of the cruelly slaughtered bodies of Garren and Katrin Yarrance. There lay the future as sure as it was the past. And Farnor, wherever he might be now. And all the pain that had come to his friends, his charges. And could he accept the responsibility of this being repeated over and over?
He remembered Farnor fingering the simple iron ring that swung from its chain by his door. A memento of his youth, of times and places far away. A memento finely and skilfully carved with lines of warriors, waiting.
For what, did not matter. They were a people pre-pared.
He opened his eyes and looked at Aaren. She was one such, surely. Armed with knowledge to see what had to be done, and perhaps the skill to do it. And there was Marna too; Marna Harlenkind; made by circumstance into a grim-faced fugitive, with knives in her belt.
And they were both waiting. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.
‘Is none of this familiar to you?’ Derwyn asked, trying to keep the incredulity from his voice.
Farnor shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘All the Forest north of the castle was unfamiliar, and when I came through here, it was at some speed and for most of the way with my eyes closed.’ This answer, uttered with exaggerated self-deprecation, caused a little more laughter than it should have done, reflecting the growing nervousness of the Valderen as they moved steadily into what they kept referring to as the fringe.
‘The trees are… smaller… more compact… less happy,’ Derwyn had explained uncertainly, when Farnor had asked what they meant.
‘They look fine to me,’ Farnor replied, a little defen-sively. ‘But I don’t suppose I’ve got your eye for such things. I’ve always thought that all trees were fascinat-ing.’
Derwyn beamed. ‘Your eye’s fine, Farnor. And so are your trees,’ he said, without patronizing. ‘They’re just different.’ He looked at Farnor archly. ‘And you’ve probably got Valderen blood in your veins somewhere. Perhaps there used to be a lot more movement between the valley and the Forest once upon a time.’ And he had laughed.
But it had been a different sound to that which greeted the admission that Farnor just made. Indeed, everything about the group seemed to be different now. Farnor had the impression that they were riding into a deepening darkness. In part, this was actually true: the weather was overcast and gloomy, and the enclosing mountains made their shading presence felt even when they could not be seen through the canopy. Sunset would come earlier and dawn later. But also, he sensed an inner darkness beginning to pervade the group; a darkness that brought the riders closer together and made them even more silent than usual.
It came from the trees, he was sure. ‘Everyone Hears a little,’ he remembered someone saying, and they would not have to Hear much to be affected by the fear and uncertainty that was quivering through the trees all around them. He himself was having to exert a continu-ous effort to keep the din from his mind. As if sensing his concerns, Marken came alongside him. ‘It’s dreadful, isn’t it?’ he whispered. ‘I’ve never Heard anything like it. It’s bad enough during a fire, but at least then they seem to understand in some way, seem to be able to cope. Here, it’s like a mindless panic. What can we do?’