Ibryen

Chapter 18-1

Chapter 18After a little scrambling over the rocky crest of the dip between the two mountains, the descent into the valley took on the atmosphere almost of a family jaunt. Although on occasions the Traveller seemed to drift off into a reverie, there was a vigour and a sprightliness in his step which, his companions saw by contrast, had been conspicuously absent when he was in the village. The sky began to clear.

Ibryen and Rachyl moved uncertainly at first. It was a valley on the fringe of their domain and the head of it was routinely patrolled, even though it was, for all practical purposes, inaccessible to the Gevethen. ‘There’s no one about,’ the Traveller assured them, though in more carefully measured tones than he had used before. Years of caution when moving through the mountains had taken their toll however, and his reassurance was politely ignored. Only as they moved further down from the ridge did Ibryen and Rachyl begin to feel easier.

‘Keep a careful note of our route,’ Ibryen said, as they began to stride out down a long grassy slope. ‘It’s fine today, but it could be mist and rain when we come back.’

Rachyl acquiesced, but with that air of polite toleration reserved by the young for respected elders who tell them the obvious. Both Ibryen and the Traveller noted it and exchanged knowing looks.

On the whole they did not talk a great deal as they moved along the valley, though at one point Rachyl stopped and gazed round at the enclosing peaks. Not, this time, with the shrewd-eyed warrior gaze that searched into shades and crevices, alert for the subtle wrongness — the movement, the shape, that should not be there — but almost with wonder.

‘Probably no one’s ever been here before,’ she said, speaking softly, as if she were in a holy place.

‘No people,’ the Traveller confirmed. ‘At least not for a very long time. Certainly before ideas like Nesdiryn and Girnlant came into their thinking. Perhaps, as you say, never.’

He stopped and joined her in her study. ‘Who knows. Perhaps some solitary wanderer, with his own joys and burdens has stood right here and felt them come into a different perspective, just like you are. Mountains are very good at doing that. That’s one of the reasons I like them.’

Rachyl did not seem too sure. Ibryen took her arm and gently urged her forward. The last thing that Rachyl needed was a new perspective on her life, especially the last few years. Circumstances had made her a soldier and it was the best thing she could be until the need for soldiering was gone.

‘What are the other reasons?’ Ibryen asked the Traveller, anxious to draw Rachyl back to the present.

‘No people,’ the Traveller replied, slapping his stomach with both hands and then holding them out in a wide embrace. ‘No people and no people.’

Ibryen laughed. ‘I’m sorry if we give you such offence. Shall we walk in our bare feet to preserve the ancient silence?’

‘I’d hear the grass bending under your feet,’ the Traveller laughed in return. ‘Listen!’ he put a hand to his ear. ‘I can hear the voices of the countless tiny creatures that dwell here, the tumbling of Marris’s tiny pebbles on their way to the avalanche, the wind twining around the high peaks and sighing through the tangled gorse, the fluttering wings of nesting birds, the scuttling feet of moles and rabbits and...’

Ibryen and Rachyl were listening spellbound, there was such joy in his voice, when, abruptly, he stopped and tilted his head forward, a hand raised for silence. He turned from side to side intently as if searching for something. Alarmed, both Ibryen and Rachyl quietly reached for their swords and, instinctively turning back to back, began scanning the surrounding slopes. Then the Traveller sagged slightly and his look of concentration became one of resignation.

‘What’s the matter?’ Ibryen whispered, his hand still on his sword. ‘Can you hear someone coming?’

The Traveller held out his thumb and forefinger. ‘Twice now,’ he said. ‘Twice I’d swear I heard the Song.’ Ibryen frowned. ‘Sound Carvers, Count. My ancient kin. But so faint, so far away. The faintest wisps — deep, deep down, beneath the creaking roots of the mountains themselves.’ He gave a little sigh and was himself again. ‘Imagination I suppose,’ he decided. ‘We see what we want to, we hear what we want to. The Sound Carvers are long gone, aren’t they, Count?’ He snapped his fingers and set off walking. ‘Ah, I forgot. You’ve never heard of them, have you?’

Ibryen wanted to question the Traveller about these strange ancestors, but the little man was gathering speed and was already some way ahead. For a moment he was inclined to call after him, but decided against it. His interest was little more than idle curiosity; he had nothing to offer the man in what was plainly a disturbing, if not distressing matter. Rachyl was starting to stride out with a view to catching up with him, but Ibryen motioned to her to slow down. There was a quality in the Traveller’s posture that said he wished to be alone for a while.

When they eventually caught up with him, he was sitting on a rock, swinging his feet, and seemed to have recovered from whatever had unsettled him. Ibryen met his concerns head on.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘You seemed upset before. That’s why we left you to walk on.’

The Traveller smiled broadly and gave an airy wave. ‘A touch of nostalgia, a whimsy, a mishearing — it happens when one reaches too far. I should know better. But I thank you for your thoughtfulness. It’s very pleasant to be reminded that not all people are braying oafs.’ He looked at Rachyl. ‘And that some of them are quite lovely.’

Ibryen responded as he had before when the Traveller had offered Rachyl his heavy-handed compliments — he started in alarm. He also prepared to move quickly, this particular compliment having been uttered to Rachyl’s face. Any man in the village foolish enough to speak thus would soon have measured his length on the ground, nursing a bruised jaw, or worse. Somewhat to Ibryen’s surprise however, Rachyl merely levelled a finger at the little man and said, ‘Stop that!’ like a matriarchal schoolteacher. The Traveller drew in a sharp breath and patted his heart in a gesture of mock pain. Rachyl turned away, and became apparently engrossed in adjusting a strap on her pack. Ibryen eyed her carefully. He could swear she was blushing. The hearty companion in him laughed and jibed, but the leader of his people grieved that his cousin’s life had been so needlessly distorted. Images of the life she should have led burst upon him. He allowed them no sway, and they passed leaving only a dull ache behind, but, without fanfare or declamation, his long-formed resolution to destroy the cause of this pointless and painful destruction reforged itself even as he laid the distress aside.

Rachyl finished fiddling with her pack and drew a hand across her flushed forehead as if she were hot. ‘Why are you helping us when you’d prefer to be without us?’ she asked the Traveller without warning, though there was no reproach in her voice.

The Traveller jumped down from the rock and set off again. The others followed him. ‘I told you before. I’m as much like you as I’m unlike you. Knowing what I know, I can’t walk away and expect my life to be unsullied by the neglect.’ Suddenly he was walking quickly and waving his arms. His voice rose. ‘The average folly of the average individual brings enough inadvertent pain into this world, but that’s part of our lot. Somehow, we need it. But wilful sources of evil like your Gevethen...’ He growled ferociously and clenched his fist. It was not the comic sight it should have been from so small a figure and both Ibryen and Rachyl winced at the passion in his words. ‘...should be rooted out and destroyed utterly. They are diseased.’ He twisted his foot as he spoke, as though crushing something under his heel.

No one spoke for some while after this. Nothing but time could follow such a declaration and each was content to let the sunlit valley open before them as they walked along over the yielding mountain turf. Eventually, as they moved steadily downwards, the many streams tumbling from the slopes on either side merged into a single energetic and noisy flow and the vegetation began to thicken. They stopped for a rest by the bubbling river. It was becoming warmer and the breeze had dropped, and from where they were sitting they could see the river twisting, white and silver, down into a forest which spread across the entire valley floor.

Ibryen frowned as he looked at the way ahead. ‘That’s going to present problems,’ he said.

‘It’s going to offer food and shelter. And warmth if we need it,’ the Traveller said, as to an ungrateful pupil.

‘Not pressing needs at the moment,’ Ibryen rebutted. ‘I was thinking about our progress. It’s so easy to get lost in dense woodland.’

The Traveller chuckled. ‘How can you get lost when you don’t know where you’re going?’

‘You know what I meant,’ Ibryen said crossly. ‘In trees like that we could travel in circles for hours, if not days, without realizing it. And marking the track’s going to be laborious, to say the least.’

The Traveller tapped the side of his nose. ‘I follow this,’ he said. ‘It rarely goes round in circles.’

Ibryen’s eyes narrowed.

‘I thought you followed your ears,’ Rachyl intervened caustically, then to Ibryen, ‘As for going round in circles, why the sudden concern? I’ve no idea what you’ve been following but you seem happy enough with it so far, so you might as well carry on doing the same. And I’ll just carry on doing what I’ve been doing — following the two of you. However...’ She looked from one to the other significantly, then waved a small book at them. ‘...at our great leader’s behest, I’m having to write this lot down, as well as mark the track, and I’m with him; I’ve no desire to plunge into a forest that could reach from here to your precious Girnlant unless it’s absolutely necessary. Are you both sure we’re going the right way — whatever that is?’

The small outburst silenced the two men for a moment.

‘Your kin,’ the Traveller said to Ibryen eventually, with a disclaiming wave and a humorous challenge in his eyes.

Ibryen smiled and shook his head in resignation. ‘It is the way,’ he said to Rachyl, looking down towards the forest. ‘But whatever’s reaching out is changing. It’s getting weaker, but it’s getting clearer as well. And it seems to be pulling the whole of me in some way. It’s different. It’s going beyond.’

The Traveller was serious now. ‘It’s not easy so close to this river, but what I can hear still is just weaker, nothing else, no other changes. That’s the second time you’ve said that. What do you mean?’

Ibryen gave a pained shrug. ‘I don’t know. I’ve told you before, the whole thing is beyond any words I can find. It’s as though the... call... is beginning to come from some other place — or part of it is. And...’

He hesitated.

‘And?’ the Traveller prompted.

Ibryen blew two noisy breaths as if to force the words out. ‘And it’s as though part of me... the part that’s hearing this call... is somewhere else as well.’

Rachyl’s face became anxious. Survivor of scores of savage encounters, and heroine of many a daring raid on the Gevethen’s forces, she felt as though she were beginning to slide down a perilous slope at the end of which lay a terrible drop as she listened to her cousin and leader struggling so futilely with his strange inner vision. The Traveller reached out and touched them both. He spoke to Rachyl first.

‘When you’re lying in ambush, silent and still in the darkness for endless, aching hours, strange images flicker past your eyes, strange sounds buzz and clatter in your ears. Sometimes up becomes down and down up. But you’ve learned that it’s only your body, your own weaker nature, rebelling against the dictates of your will. You don’t confuse it with that feeling which brings you fully alert and says “danger”, do you? Yet when you feel this, you’ve heard nothing, seen nothing. You’ve no idea what mysterious reaches of time and distance this feeling comes to you across.’ Rachyl watched him uncertainly but intently. ‘So it is with your cousin. He’s as lost at the moment as you were on your first night attacks. He needs the assurance, the support, that someone probably gave you once, but there’s no one here can do it except us. You with your loyalty and affection, me with my limited knowledge.’ His grip tightened about her shoulder. ‘And you have a touch of this gift yourself I’m certain. Deep inside you understand. You can bear him when he leans on you. And I’ve heard of this thing often enough, and from intellects sceptical enough, to know that it exists — this ability, this gift, to reach into places which our hands and ears and eyes and all our common sense tell us cannot be. Song forbid that we should be so arrogant as to think that what we can’t sense or imagine doesn’t exist! We, who can’t even see what the owl sees, hear what the bat hears. We, who can’t burrow beneath the ground, fly over the peaks or even move over the land faster than the merest trot without all manner of clanking devices to help us.’