Antyr opened his mouth to cry out at the apparition, a mixture of nightmarish fantasies and wild fears of palace conspiracies flooding into his mind.
At the same time, his mind involuntarily cried out to his Companion. ‘Tarrian!'
There was no reply.
He tried to sit up, but some force restrained him. More thoughts of palace conspiracies swirled around him. The food had been drugged. He had been taken silently to some Lord's torture chamber to have the secrets of the Duke's dream torn from him …
No. This couldn't be true. There was the law. He was a Guildsman. He couldn't be arrested without warrant like some ruffian from the Moras, but …
… power and wealth were power and wealth.
He dragged his scattering thoughts back to the dark figure above him.
The lamp swung from side to side as if it were being shaken by an unsteady breeze, but it did not illuminate its holder. Indeed it seemed to obscure the figure, almost to make it darker in some way.
And were there other shadows at its back?
Antyr felt a hand reaching out towards him.
He tried to cry out again, to demand of this strange visitor, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ But no sound came.
Though his voice was bound, however, his mind remained free. ‘Tarrian, Tarrian,’ he cried out desperately. The figure hesitated and inclined its head to one side as if catching an unexpected sound. But still there was only silence.
Then Antyr became aware of a strange quality in the silence. It was absolute. That the figure made no sound was frightening in itself, but worse than that was the silence in his mind. There was nothing except his own increasingly frantic thoughts. Nothing. No sign of those faint stirrings that had marked the constant presence of Tarrian for as long as he could remember, even when they had been far apart. A chill gripped him. Such a silence could only mean that Tarrian was dead.
But how? he thought, before even shock could take hold. Despite his long life among humans, Tarrian retained fully all his natural faculties; he was wild, cautious and suspicious to his very heart. It couldn't be that he would be killed without at least a desperate cry. Was it perhaps some subtle poison in the food? A swift, unexpected sword stroke? Antyr recalled Ciarll Feranc reaching readily for his knife. And the city was not short of men and women skilled in killing.
The feeling of loneliness was fearful and appalling, and Antyr felt a terrible cry of fear and grief forming inside him. But the cry could find no release and he began to tremble as it grew and grew.
The swaying lamp began to shake as if in sympathy, and the watching figure seemed to merge hesitantly into the shadows behind.
Antyr felt the unseen hand withdraw and in some way he knew he was no longer the focus of attention. The shadows shifted uneasily. Then deep inside him, in answer to his silent cry, he heard a faint sound like the frantic scrabbling of a tiny insect. And for the briefest instant he saw, somewhere, a tiny distant light, motionless and calm like the evening star. It too was moving and flickering, like bright sunshine on distant armour.
The image was gone almost before he could register it, but like some alchemist's trickery, its brief appearance irresistibly transformed the whole in the instant, and Antyr's grief and fear was suddenly transmuted into a boiling anger while his trembling body began to tear him free from whatever power held him.
The figure seemed to make a final effort to reach him, lurching forward sharply like a striking snake, but the shadows were drawing it away and the strange scrabbling was growing louder and more frenzied.
Then it seemed to him that for a moment he was at the heart of a great battlefield, one hand clutching a torn and bloodstained standard, the other a hacked and battered sword.
'To me! To me!'
His voice filled all that was, echoing and echoing, and with a final exhalation of loathing and hatred, the shadows were gone.
'Where were you? Where were you?’ Tarrian's voice crashed over him, frantic and desperate. ‘Where did you go?'
Antyr found himself still on the bed but staring now into the wolf's eyes, bright yellow and feral as if he had been dream-searching.
'What …?’ he muttered, bewildered.
'Where did you go? What happened?’ Tarrian repeated the questions, seizing Antyr's shirt in his mouth and shaking him violently. ‘Are you all right …?
Antyr reached out and put his arms about the wolf's neck both to stop him and for needed solace. He could feel the powerful animal trembling, as he himself had trembled. And, he realized, he had never known his Companion so distraught, so out of control.
'I don't know,’ he managed to say as slowly he recognized the palace room and remembered the events of the evening.
'Don't know? Don't know! Ye gods, man…’ Tarrian's voice showed his relief, but was still full of a barely controlled hysteria.
'Please, Tarrian. I'm all right. I don't know what happened. Just give me a moment to gather my wits,’ Antyr said, tightening his hold on his friend. ‘Just a moment.'
Tarrian lay still briefly, then wriggled free and jumped down on to the floor.
Antyr struggled upright until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. A rectangle of dim grey light indicated a window he had not noticed when he first entered the room, and indicated also that it was dawn, or later. He sat motionless some time with his head resting in his hands, then he looked up and stared into the watching wolf's eyes.
'I need a drink,’ he said.
Tarrian's anger overwhelmed him. ‘It's probably the drink that did this, you jackass,’ he thundered. ‘Eroded such enfeebled discipline as you have and left you defenceless against…’ He stopped for a moment, unable to finish the sentence. ‘In all the time I was with your father I never met anything like this-never! And your father ventured into regions where many others wouldn't go, I can tell you.'
Despite himself, Antyr responded in kind. ‘I don't want to know,’ he shouted out loud. ‘All this is madness. What am I doing wandering about other people's dreams? Scrutinizing their fantasies like some quack priest peering into entrails. Hell knows what phantoms I've let into my own mind. I've had enough. I wash my hands of it all before I lose my mind. I'm…'
'Going into the country. Get myself a simple job on a farm somewhere, tending vines, cutting corn.’ Tarrian completed his plaint for him with blistering scorn. ‘Somewhere where there's peace and calm. Somewhere where I can get my throat cut by bandits…'
'Damn you, dog,’ Antyr said through clenched teeth. ‘Go back to your pack.'
A silence came between the two protagonists, such as can only exist between two old friends; sour and bitterly unpleasant.
Tarrian lay down and rested his head on his front paws. His eyes were still brilliant and fixed resolutely on the Dream Finder. Antyr swung his legs back up on to the bed and lay down again to avoid the gaze.
'Tell me what happened,’ Tarrian said simply, after a moment.
Antyr shook his head. He was about to swear at the wolf, but the brief explosion had been cathartic. ‘I don't know,’ he said resignedly. A spasm shook him and he wrapped his arms about himself. ‘I don't know. But it was terrifying. We were apart. Truly apart. As if you'd been … killed. And there was someone here. A figure … with a lamp … and shadows at his back. Watching, waiting … trying to reach me … I…'
His voice faded and the silence descended again. Gradually the sounds of the awakening palace began to seep softly into the room.
He looked up and met Tarrian's gaze. ‘It was like a dream,’ he said, his voice flat but fearful.
Tarrian did not reply, but his concern and denial flooded into Antyr's mind. Dream Finders did not dream; could not dream, seemingly. Yet despite this response there was doubt also.
'You were gone … somewhere,’ he said eventually. ‘Your body was here, but your Dreamself was gone. Gone as if it had never existed. And all ways were closed to me. Like when your father died.'
The wolf's very quietness brought chills of fear to Antyr again.
'Do you really think I've brought this on myself,’ he asked, almost plaintively.
This time there was confusion in Tarrian's response: the habitual anger that inevitably arose when Antyr's indiscipline was discussed, and a newer, deeper anxiety; a sense of the need to set old matters aside and to both give and receive companionship in the face of some unknown threat.
'I don't know,’ Tarrian concluded soberly. ‘Let the daylight in and then tell me exactly what happened … what you saw and felt.'
Antyr was surprised how unsteady he felt as he walked to the window to draw back the curtain. Nevertheless he was mildly expectant. He had a vague impression that behind it would lie some splendid view of the city, the palace being a high and dominating building. Instead, however, he found himself overlooking a small, enclosed chasm of walls, gloomy and lichen-streaked in the grey morning light that filtered down from a ragged skyline high above. Looking down, he saw a paved yard littered with random and ill-repaired outbuildings, their roofs shiny with the morning's dampness.
A small piece of the Moras district in the very heart of Ibris's palace, he thought wryly. The light, however, brought with it some optimism.
'Well, at least the fog's gone,’ he said as he turned away from the window. ‘And we've survived to greet another day.'
It was a phrase he had not used since he was last in the army. Tarrian, however, was indifferent. ‘Tell,’ he demanded.
It took Antyr only a few minutes to relate the events he had experienced but he found that the daylight did little to mitigate the deep alarm which he had felt and which was on the fringe of returning even as he recounted the tale.
'Well?’ he asked when he had finished.
Tarrian had been silent during the telling, and now he offered no observations.
'Let's leave,’ he said, standing up and stretching luxuriously. ‘Let's get out into the country for a while. We both need to think.'
Antyr hesitated. ‘Do you think we should?’ he said. ‘The Duke said we shouldn't leave the city.'
Tarrian was dismissive. ‘He meant travelling abroad,’ he said. ‘As if we ever did. He won't mind us wandering the countryside for an hour or so.'
Antyr was unconvinced. ‘I don't know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should tell someone.'
'Open the door, for pity's sake,’ Tarrian said testily. ‘After what's happened-whatever it was-I need room to move, and air to breathe. And you need … something … I don't know what. Exercise probably. Come on, no one's going to be bothered about us and we'll be back before noon.'
Antyr bowed to his friend's insistence and cautiously opened the door. He had half expected to find a guard standing there and was uncertain whether to feel relieved or disappointed to find the corridor deserted.
'I told you no one would be bothered,’ Tarrian declared in offhand triumph. ‘Come on.'
Antyr, however, had no idea where he was or how to go about finding his way out.
'You should pay more attention,’ Tarrian said impatiently. ‘It's this way. Just follow your nose.'
They had no difficulty in leaving the palace. Tarrian guided them unerringly through a bewildering maze of corridors, hallways and staircases, and such people as they met paid them little heed, seeming intent on tasks of their own. Indeed, as they passed through the palace gate, some of the guards acknowledged them. Their escort from the previous night, Antyr presumed.
The weather was cold and damp, with a residual taint of the night's fog still lingering, making the grey sunless sky yellowish. The streets too bore the glistening signs of the fog and were virtually deserted except for the Torchlighters’ apprentices dutifully extinguishing the public torches. A forest of ragged black pillars of smoke rose up like slender supports to the greyness above.
Tarrian trotted on relentlessly through the waking city, occasionally stopping to wait for Antyr, but making his impatience quite clear.
Eventually they reached the great Norstseren Gate. As it was still early in the day, the main gate was closed except for a wicket just large enough to admit a horse. This had been opened to allow in those travellers who had been benighted outside. Later in the day there would be carts and caravans and innumerable travellers arriving and leaving, and both leaves of the gate would be thrown wide in welcome.
'Tarrian taking you for some exercise,’ guffawed one of the guards, echoing the wolf's own comment, as they passed through the wicket into the shelter of the broad arch of the gate. Antyr gave a self-conscious shrug, disoriented for the moment by the surge of disapproval that came up from Tarrian.
'One of your drinking cronies, I suppose,’ he said scornfully.
The guard came over to them and gave Antyr a look of knowing confidentiality. ‘Make sure you see the Exactor,’ he said softly through barely moving lips. ‘He's new and a real son of a whore. He'd Gate Tax his mother for the mud she brought back on her shoes.’ He terminated the advice with a broad wink.
Antyr nodded his thanks, at the same time throwing a small jibe at Tarrian. ‘You see. My cronies sometimes prove useful. You'd be less than pleased if I'd to spend half the day proving you were mine when we came back, wouldn't you?'
'Yours?’ Tarrian replied with withering disdain. ‘You people are unbelievable.’ Then, despite his preoccupation, a small flood of righteous, very human, anger burst out. ‘And you're as stupid as you're barbarous. Exactors! Who in their right mind would pay taxes to pay for wars to make more money to pay more taxes …?’ The brief diatribe ended in an incoherent snarl.
Antyr grunted. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said dismissively, walking across to the small enclosure that housed the Gate Exactor. ‘You're right. You've said it all before and your logic's impeccable. I know exactly where we fit into your scheme of things. In the meantime, a little less philosophy and a little more pragmatism, please. Just make sure this one remembers you for when we come back if you want to get home before sunset.'
Their short, familiar skirmish ended, the two became trusted conspirators again and Tarrian bounded into the enclosure.
Antyr, several paces behind, heard the startled cry from within and as he stepped through the door he beamed his friendliest smile.
Tarrian had his feet on the collecting table and was leaning forward and panting dubiously into the face of a wide-eyed official who was sitting motionless, his red cap of office incongruously askew.
'We'll be back before sunset,’ Antyr said heartily. ‘No goods in or out.’ The Exactor's eyes flicked an appeal for rescue which Antyr wilfully misconstrued as an acknowledgement and, with a friendly wave, he turned and left. Tarrian stopped panting and, craning forward a little further, abruptly licked the Exactor's face wetly, before dropping back on to the floor and following Antyr.
Outside the Norstseren Gate, Antyr and Tarrian made their way through the tents and temporary dwellings that were always clustered there. Known as ‘The Village’ by the residents of Serenstad, this strange, ever-changing community consisted of all manner of people drawn from all manner of distant places by the fame and splendour of Ibris's city. Merchants, scholars, entertainers, travellers, seekers after fame and fortune, seekers after anonymity; all were there from time to time.
It was often a colourful and exciting place, but today the cold dampness of the morning following on the night's dank fog gave the place a sodden, down-at-heel appearance and such gaudy signs as there were looked glumly futile while streams of pennants and buntings hung listless and unmoving like some weary fisherman's unsold catch.
For a little while, Antyr and Tarrian walked on in the self-satisfied glow of the small mischief they had wrought on the Gate Exactor, but the only signs of life they encountered were four dour-faced riders, and as the mournful atmosphere of the Village gradually weighed in upon them, the strange events of the night soon rose to dominate their thoughts again.
'Where are we going, Tarrian?’ Antyr asked eventually, some time after they had left the Village.
Tarrian started from some silent reverie. ‘Er … west,’ he said absently, as if he had only just thought about it.
'West,’ Antyr echoed neutrally. ‘To the cliffs, I suppose?'
There was another pause before Tarrian replied vaguely, ‘Yes … yes.'
Serenstad was built by the river Seren in a lush and fertile valley, but the practical difficulties of building in the soft valley soil and the incessant need to maintain defences against many enemies had led successive rulers to expand the city up the side of the valley until, in the west, it had reached a ridge which dropped away sharply in precipitous cliffs and afforded the city at least one boundary that needed little or no defence.
Antyr offered no comment. There was little point. Tarrian needed to walk, needed to think, needed to do whatever it was a wolf did when it was burdened with human follies and happenings that ran contrary to everything it had ever known. It would be a long walk, and steep at the end, where the city's walls began to dwindle as they merged into the rising rocks.
Antyr felt reluctance dragging at his feet like soft dune sand as his long-held doubts about his calling surfaced again. What was he doing searching the Duke's dreams? Keeping the company of the likes of Aaken Uhr Candessa and Ciarll Feranc? And what was he doing, following Tarrian on some chilly and pointless ramble around the city? He knew that Tarrian was not listening to his thoughts but, fearing the wolf's acid responses, he tried to dismiss his fears and the longings he had for some other, less … bizarre, calling.
But even as the familiar thoughts emerged again, they changed. He did not long for some other calling. He longed for any other calling. Deeply and profoundly. He longed to be free of the burden of his gift, his talent.
The intensity of the feeling made him stop.
'How are you burdened?'
Tarrian's voice made Antyr start. ‘I … I … didn't know you were…’ he began awkwardly.
'Listening?’ Tarrian finished the sentence. ‘I wasn't. I was somewhere else. But you called me back.'
'I don't understand,’ Antyr said.
'Nor I,’ Tarrian replied simply, then he began walking again, keeping his usual station several paces ahead of Antyr as is the way with pack leaders.
Antyr's thoughts reached out to question him, but there was no response; Tarrian was ‘somewhere else’ again.
They continued their walk, each preoccupied with his own thoughts and largely oblivious to both the terrain and the dismal weather. When Antyr finally looked about him he was surprised. He had not realized they had walked so far or so high, though, almost immediately, his legs began to ache.
From where they were, the view could be breathtaking. To the east, the sweep of the city walls down into the rich greens of the valley, and the silver thread of the river Seren winding south through the undulating countryside on its way down to the port of Farlan and the wide ocean. While, to the west, stood the dark, imposing rock-face of the neighbouring valley, a fitting partner to that which formed the western boundary of Serenstad.
Today, however, the winter mist hid not only the horizon but most of the valley. Antyr looked up at the dark bulk of the city's outer wall rising above him in response to the steepening slope of the rocks. It was solid and grim in the greyness. Last night he had thought it a prison, but now it seemed to assume once more the mantle of protector, standing steadfast and immovable, taking upon itself the anger and hatred of the enemies of the city.
The anger and hatred of enemies. The words resonated around Antyr's mind.
Enemies. Whose enemies? What enemies?
The questions came unbidden and had an insistence about them that made Antyr frown. He had no interest whatsoever in the complex and convoluted politics of Serenstad and its subject domains, except in so far as he had been obliged to serve in the army when younger to defend its interests or to punish some upstart town or city that was getting above itself.
But the questions hung in his mind, almost defiantly. He looked up at the wall again. It glowered back at him, like a stern matriarch, allowing him no relief.
Why should he be asking himself such questions here, now? It was not as if it were a matter that needed any subtle debate. There was always opposition to Ibris's rule from one faction or another, but, in its more violent forms, it almost always stemmed from the agitations of the Bethlarii, the citizens of Bethlar, several days’ ride to the north-west.
A severe, warlike people, they had once dominated almost the whole of the land south of the northern mountains and even now they held sway over most of the cities to the north and west.
The problem with the Bethlarii was that they still claimed dominion over the whole land, declaring, perhaps rightly, that they were the direct descendants of the original settlers, the sea peoples who had arrived to drive out the barbarian tribes that had then occupied it.
The Serens, they said, were usurping newcomers, mere merchants and artisans, who should bow the knee before the warrior founders of the land.
But, as every Serens knew, the true hatred of the Bethlarii stemmed from their black, misanthropic bigotry and was in reality for what they saw as the Serens’ easy, hedonistic ways and the fact that the despised merchants and artisans had brought such wealth and power to Serenstad, both from their efforts at home and their trading abroad, that one by one Bethlar's subject cities had changed their allegiance.
Whatever the truth of the matter, there had always been animosity between the two cities and their allies, sometimes culminating in savage and bitter fighting. The Bethlarii, however, had found that the effete and degenerate Serens could make war well enough when need arose and could also afford to buy a leavening of mercenary soldiers to stiffen their lines and train their people.
It was a point of some dark amusement to the Serens that while the Bethlarii scorned such a practice, they were obliged eventually to resort to it themselves.
Now, however, since Ibris had negotiated the Treaty following the siege of Viernce, an uneasy stability existed in the land. The Serens continued to despise the Bethlarii for their grim military ways, their dismal communal houses, their stone-faced mindless discipline, and their ghastly priesthood with its worship of the warrior god, Ar-Hyrdyn, to the exclusion of all others. And the Bethlarii continued to despise the Serens, ostensibly for what they considered to be their corruption and decadence, but in reality for their continuing and growing economic success and the power that it brought.
The stability, however, was dynamic, and within the loose framework of the Treaty there was a constant swirl of plotting and counter-plotting, jostling for this advantage or that, bribing, coercing; individuals, factions, whole cities; both sides manoeuvring to gain more power and influence to protect themselves from the other.
Antyr understood enough of the political realities of the land to know that such matters were beyond rational analysis, and that though he might despair at the folly of it all at times, he had neither the wealth nor the power to change it.
True, like any other Guildsman, he could run for office in the Gythrin-Dy which, with the Sened, advised the Duke, but that seemed to be but the same folly writ small, with dozens of factions shifting and changing allegiances, and treachery and mistrust being the stock in trade.
It was true also that his position of disdain for the political institutions of the city could equally not stand rational analysis while he chose to avoid participating in them, but that was something he avoided considering, along with the majority of the Serens. It was sufficient for him that he pursued his calling, paid his taxes, where unavoidable, and generally conducted himself within the law of the city.
Why then should he find himself wandering the western edge of the city on a damp and dismal day, pondering about its enemies? Yet he was; for the word, enemies, not only persisted in his thoughts but seemed to carry a different meaning, a meaning that hovered at the edges of his awareness like a mysterious shadow which disappeared when stared at directly.
Further reverie, however, was prevented by their arrival at the end of their journey; the western cliffs, the Aphron Dennai, Aphron's Stairway, named after the tyrannical Duke Aphron whose favourite pastime was to have people hurled over them on to the shattered pinnacles below, until one day the people rebelled and allowed him a closer view of the spectacle.
Possibly climbable by the foolhardy, but not quickly and certainly not by many, the Aphron Dennai formed the city's most secure boundary.
Tarrian jumped up on to an overhanging rock and peered over the edge. Antyr contented himself with staying a comfortable distance back from it.
The two stood silent for some time, the only intrusion being the faint sounds of distant streams flowing down to the valley below. Then, from above, a throaty croak reached them. Tarrian looked up. Two ravens were circling high above.
'I knew a raven once,’ he said distantly.
'What?’ Antyr exclaimed irritably at this seeming irrelevance.
'Never mind,’ Tarrian replied softly. ‘It was a long time ago. When I was a pup.'
Antyr let out an exasperated sigh. ‘What are we doing here, Tarrian?’ he said. ‘My feet are soaking, and I'm frozen half to death. I need hardly remind you that this was your idea. I'd have been quite happy to stay in the palace.’ He paused, brought to earth briefly. ‘Which reminds me, Aaken never paid us for last night's work.'
He looked out across the great open cauldron of space that the cliffs bounded, and then up at the sky.
'And it's going to start raining soon, I'll swear. We're going to get soaked. And it wouldn't surprise me to find the palace guards waiting for us when we get back. The Duke did say…'
'For pity's sake, be quiet.’ Tarrian's voice was like an axe blow. Antyr was used to stern words from his Companion, but there was a quality in the rebuke that he had never heard before and it left him too stunned to muster an immediate reply.
'We've got worse problems than your footling discomfort and an unpaid fee to contend with,’ Tarrian went on. ‘Or for that matter, even Duke Ibris's displeasure.'
Under other circumstances, Antyr would have begged to differ on this last point, but Tarrian, alone on the jutting rock, silhouetted against the grey sky, was a creature in complete harmony with his element and he spoke with such command that it might have been the mountain itself speaking.
Antyr opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came.
'Something's amiss,’ Tarrian said, using again the words he had used in Ibris's dream. ‘There was a wrongness in the Duke's dream. A profound wrongness.’ He paused, then, as if he were speaking something that he had already repeated countless times, ‘There were others there.'
Antyr began to shake his head as if to scatter Tarrian's words before they reached him. ‘I don't want to discuss it,’ he said petulantly. ‘I don't want to discuss it. There was nothing wrong. It was just our imagination. I was tired and shaken and not at my best-being marched through the streets at that time-and under escort. And don't forget, we … I … have never seen the dreams of a man like that. He's a great leader, a warlord, a statesman. His dreams are bound to be unusual. We misunderstood, that's all. How could there be anyone else in a dream? Let's get back home … get warm … perhaps go to the palace … get our fee … and…'
Tarrian ignored him, as if he were just another babbling stream.
'There were others there,’ he said again, more surely. ‘Others with … skills … that I can't begin to understand. Skills that brought them looking for you and that snatched you away from my protection…'
His voice tailed off into bewilderment.
'Tarrian, stop this!’ Antyr's mind was beginning to reel. ‘I've told you, I don't want to discuss any of this. It was a long, strange day and…’ He waved his hands in submissive concession. ‘Perhaps you're right … in fact you are right … I've been drinking too much, not attending to my affairs properly. It's just caught up with us, that's all. I'll really get to grips with things when we get back this time. Honestly. Start looking after myself better … getting us some steady clients…'
'Antyr!’ Again Tarrian's voice abruptly stopped the Dream Finder's increasingly frantic rambling. ‘Stop it. Stop it, for pity's sake. I'm trying to think. Trying to make some sense of what's happened … what's happening. I'm frightened. I need your help, I don't need a recital of your well-worn promises to improve yourself.'
Suddenly, the all-too-human reproaches with which Tarrian was filling Antyr's mind were gone, and the wolf threw back his head and howled.
Antyr listened, wide-eyed and fearful. The song rose and fell and though Antyr understood none of it, he felt its poignant intensity.
When it was finished, Tarrian was silent for a long time, his head bowed. From out of the greyness before them came no reply.
'You see,’ he said eventually. ‘My pack is gone. Gone to other hills, to other valleys. My mates have other sires. My cubs too are grown and gone. Do you think you're alone in your desire to be other than you are? Do you think I'd tolerate this life, this appalling stench of humanity, if I had a choice?'
Antyr winced at the bitterness and anger in Tarrian's voice. The words ‘I'm sorry’ formed in his mind but he did not speak them. They would have seemed like a wilful insult in the face of Tarrian's distress.
Instead he walked out on to the overhanging rock and sat down beside him.
'No one binds you, old friend,’ he said gently.
'You bind me, Dream Finder,’ the wolf replied. ‘You bind me. As did your father before you. Through none of our own choosing, we bind each other. It's the nature of our calling, and it's beyond our changing. I understand your pain. I really do, your pain is mine. But it comes only from your struggle to avoid the truth and will stop only when you accept it.'
'I don't understand,’ Antyr said after a long silence.
'Yes, you do,’ Tarrian replied. ‘You understand more than you realize.’ His voice softened. ‘Perhaps your pain is partly my fault. Perhaps I tried to make you into the Dream Finder that your father was when I should have stood and watched you more carefully. Guided you more subtly. Not tried to force you into the ancient ways of our craft just because that was the way it had always been done. Perhaps I stood in the light that I was supposed to show you.'
Antyr shook his head. The spirit of Tarrian's song still seemed to possess him. He reached out to console the animal in some way. ‘No. You did as my father bid you, and you did it well. I'm what I made myself, not what you made. If it's me that binds you, then I release you. Go back to your own kind where you'll be happy. I'm no true Dream Finder nor have I any wish to be.'
Even as he tried to speak the words sincerely, he heard their falseness.
Tarrian turned and looked at him.
'You have no choice,’ he said. ‘You are a Dream Finder. What I've never told you is that you have an ability far beyond any I've ever known. Even your father would have been dwarfed by you.'
Antyr turned away from the compassion and pain that filled the wolf's thoughts.
Tarrian continued. ‘I think that's why I get so angry with you. I doubt my ability to guide you as I should. I'm frightened I might be either a spectator, impotently watching you destroy yourself, or your inadvertent destroyer.'
Antyr shook his head slowly, but Tarrian's will would allow him no denial.
'Why are you saying these things?’ he managed eventually.
'Because I don't know what else to do,’ Tarrian replied unexpectedly. ‘Something's wrong. You know it as well as I do. Something … someone … assailed the Duke last night, and then assailed you. You must begin to accept what you are and stop trying to be something else or…'
'Or what?'
'Or we will be doomed, destroyed, and others with us. They will come again. You stand between them and the Duke.'
'They? Who …?’ Antyr made a last attempt to escape. ‘How can you know this?’ Antyr asked angrily.
'I know it the way you know it, but you won't listen to yourself,’ Tarrian replied softly, then he stood up and began walking back down the rocks. ‘Antyr, you didn't stand solid in that pike wall against the Bethlarii cavalry, shield to shield with your fellows, by pretending you were somewhere else. You saw your enemy for who they were and you faced them squarely. This is no different. An enemy you won't face will outflank and encircle you, and then crush you utterly.'
'But…'
'I need to run,’ Tarrian said, his voice still quiet, but almost desperate. ‘Go home. Wait for me. I'll be back later.'
And then he was gone, his dark bobbing form soon lost amid the scattered rocks. His voice sounded distantly in Antyr's mind. ‘You have two enemies, Antyr. Yourself and whoever is trying to destroy the Duke. Take up your spear and shield against both. Defend yourself. I'll be with you.'
Antyr stood up and stared after him. Tarrian's words had carried him back to that fearful battlefield; the stomach-wrenching waiting as the enemy marched to and fro, manoeuvring and feinting, then the screaming terror when the thundering charge came, when only each instant existed and all you had to do was hold-hold at any cost-for yourself, for all the others around you.
'Hold your ground and you're safe,’ had been the constant cry in training. ‘Ever see a horse daft enough to run on to a pike?’ Uncertain laughter. ‘And after that, it's just men. Ugly, I'll admit, but I can see uglier standing here. Remember your drills, keep together. And be angry not frightened. They started this. They're the enemy.'
Antyr shivered violently, though whether from fear or cold he could not have said. He had been frightened-and angry. And he had held. And survived. Faced the enemy, steel for steel, arrow for arrow. Faced them and prevailed.
Face the enemy.
He shivered again, then folding his damp cloak about him he set off down the rocks towards the pathway that would take him back to the Norstseren Gate.