Darke and Tirec stared up at the Ervrin Mallos. Both seemed distressed, but it was Tirec who spoke first.
‘As we’ve moved further from home, communities seem to have grown more primitive, more ignorant, superstitious,’ he said, though his voice contained no judgement. ‘I thought this just more of the same, but it isn’t, is it?’
Darke did not reply for some time. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m finding it hard to accept what I’m feeling.’
‘You think it’s Him, don’t you?’ Tirec forced the words out.
Darke closed his eyes and tightened his mouth, then he nodded slowly. ‘I fear it’s something to do with Him, certainly.’
‘No,’ Tirec said. ‘Face it squarely, like you’ve always taught me. You think it’s Him, returned.’
‘Too hasty a judgement,’ Darke said, too quickly. ‘We were there when He was destroyed.’
‘We were there when His form in this world was destroyed,’ Tirec corrected.
‘Elders’ talk. I don’t know what that means,’ Darke said, his tone suddenly angry. ‘And nor do you.’ Then a look of self-reproach replaced the anger and he sagged a little and laid an apologetic hand on Tirec’s arm. ‘We should both have listened to them more, I suppose. Made an effort to learn.’ He straightened up. ‘Well, let’s do what we’re good at, what we were sent out to do: discover, learn.’
Tirec opened his mouth as if to reply, but made no sound.
‘It’s all we can do,’ Darke said. ‘Though my every instinct’s telling me that we’ve precious little time.’
Then he shivered violently.
‘What do you mean, none of this is real?’ said a vaguely familiar voice. ‘I thought we’d agreed not to debate that any more.’
Vredech opened his eyes. The draining heat of the Meeting Hall was gone and in its place was a gentle evening coolness. In the distance he could see a sky reddened by the vanished sun. A figure moved to one side and, with a cry, Vredech struggled to his feet. The figure hopped away from him in some alarm.
‘I see that my instruction to kill our friend has offended your priestly sensibilities,’ it exclaimed affectedly.
The voice, or rather, the sound, was unmistakable this time. The Whistler was speaking across the mouth-hole of his flute. And they were on the hillside where he had last seen him before waking to the anxious ministrations of House and Skynner.
‘What am I doing here?’ Vredech shouted.
The Whistler arched his body backwards as though under the impact of the words. ‘Not again,’ he exclaimed. ‘Please. Play the game properly.’
Vredech clamped his hands to his head, his thoughts reeling. ‘No,’ he snarled. ‘I won’t have this. I’m in the Haven Meeting House, listening to Cassraw’s ranting sermon, not standing on some dark hillside with a… figment of my imagination. I’ve fainted with the heat, that’s all.’
He fell silent and screwed his eyes tight shut in the hope that when he opened them he would be back standing by Nertha, but he could still hear the Whistler humming thoughtfully in the darkness. There was a slight scuffling which prompted Vredech to open his eyes again. The lean face of the Whistler appeared, scarcely a hand’s span away. His wide, mobile eyes were searching intently. A light had blossomed from something in the palm of his upheld hand – a small lantern, Vredech presumed. Its light was gentle, but almost like daylight in its clarity, for he could see every detail of the Whistler’s face. He resisted the temptation to reach up and touch him to satisfy himself that he was indeed truly there.
‘You’re a strange one, Allyn Vredech,’ the Whistler said. ‘Here we are, talking like civilized people about matters of great import; about the souls of men, and the roots of things evil, even about the flawed fabric of all things, and you start screaming and blathering.’
Vredech’s hands shot out to seize the broad lapel of the Whistler’s tunic.
He heard a soft, ‘Don’t!’ then had a fleeting impression of the black flute appearing between his outstretched arms and, suddenly, though he felt no impact, he was briefly on his knees and then rolling on the grass.
As he righted himself he saw that the Whistler was crouching some way away, watching him as though nothing had happened.
‘You’ve a deal of violence in you for a priest,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to suspect you’ve chosen the wrong vocation.’
‘What do you mean?’ Vredech asked, adding hastily, ‘No, no! I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to get involved in another debate with myself. I’m not here. This isn’t happening. It’s at least two weeks since I left this place.’
‘Left?’ the Whistler said. He was sitting now, playing softly on his flute. The light was dangling from his hand and bobbing happily. ‘What do you mean, left?’
Vredech stood up and walked over to him. Whatever was happening he had to get away from this place, get back to the real world, to the Haven Meeting House, and Nertha, and Cassraw.
‘Two weeks,’ he said, looking down at the cross-legged figure, strangely mobile in the flitting light. ‘Two whole weeks since I was here. People have died in a terrible accident in Troidmallos. The government’s somehow managed to turn a small problem into one large enough to bring it down with who knows what consequences. Another young man’s been murdered. And Cassraw seems to be going quite mad. Will you stop playing that damn thing!’ He reached forward angrily to seize the flute. It hovered momentarily in front of his hand then slipped away before he could grasp it. Drawn inexorably after it, Vredech eventually staggered several paces sideways before he regained his balance. He almost swore.
‘Definitely the wrong vocation,’ the Whistler said over the mouth-hole. He stopped playing and, like an unfolding plant, stood straight up. He held the light out towards Vredech who stared at him uncertainly. ‘You’re a warrior, Allyn,’ he said. ‘Not a priest. Did you know that? You resort to violence very easily.’ His tone was mocking.
‘No, I don’t. Look… I’m not going to discuss it,’ Vredech said, unnerved by the Whistler’s observation.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ the Whistler said. ‘You’re not the first. And there’s not a great deal of difference between a priest and a true warrior. You both care about people after your fashion. Come on.’ He threw the small lantern into the air and, twisting round and round, ran after it as it arced through the darkness. He blew an incongruous trill on the flute with one hand as he caught the lantern with the other.
‘Where?’ Vredech demanded, in spite of himself.
‘There’s a cave over here. Nice and dry. And warm when we get a fire going.’
‘But…’
‘Come on.’
Vredech looked towards the horizon, where a dull purple marked the resting place of the sun. His gaze moved upwards. The sky was full of stars, clear and brilliant, but the patterns they formed were unfamiliar. And there were so many. They were not the stars that shone over Troidmallos.
He stared, at once spellbound and deeply afraid.
‘Come on!’ The Whistler’s voice was distant now. Vredech tore his gaze from the sky and peered into the darkness. The only sign of the Whistler was a light in the distance, jigging to and fro and occasionally soaring into the air.
‘Wait!’ he shouted as he started running after it. The light paused and became brighter. As he ran towards it he recalled the old Madren tales of benighted travellers drawn into the marshes by malevolent sprites with their flaming lanterns.
He was breathing heavily by the time he reached the Whistler.
‘You’ll need to be fitter than that when you take up your new vocation,’ he said.
Vredech ignored the remark. He was fighting back panic and forcing himself to adjust to the reality of this mysterious place once again. It was no dream, of that he was certain. For now he knew that he had touched the dreams of others; had been both himself and the dreamer. And dreams had an insubstantial quality at their heart, like reflections in water. Their realities, however vivid, were shifting and ephemeral. They had no hold on him, no control, for he was not truly there. Here, on the contrary, everything was solid and true – the grass under his feet, the scented evening cool becoming the night’s coldness under the sharp clear sky, his panting breath as he strode out to keep up with the Whistler’s rangy gait.
Then they were walking amongst trees. The touch of the lantern-light turned the leaves and branches overhead into domed ceilings, and the trunks into solid columns. It was as though they were walking through a great cellar.
‘Here we are.’ The Whistler broke into his reverie. A slight slope had carried them up to the entrance to a cave in a rock face that rose sharply out of the ground to mark the end of the trees. He stepped inside and Vredech followed him. The rock walls had a reddish tint to them and, here and there, tiny polished facets bounced the lantern’s light back in greeting. The cave was dry and fresh smelling as if the warm day was still trapped there.
The Whistler took in a deep breath and smacked his stomach vigorously. ‘In such simple things lies true wealth,’ he said. Vredech looked at him sourly. The Whistler returned the gaze, his expression enigmatic. ‘Just a moment,’ he said, ‘and I’ll find some wood for a fire. I won’t be long. I’ll leave the lantern.’
‘I’m not some child, afraid of the dark,’ Vredech snapped.
‘You’re not?’ the Whistler said quietly. ‘I’ll leave it, anyway.’
Vredech sat down and leaned back against the rock. I’m in the Haven Meeting House, he kept forcing himself to think, over and over, as if repetition would make it so. The hard rock against his head and back, the lantern-light etching out the lines of the cave, and the distant sound of the Whistler, now playing, now talking to himself, denied this assertion.
Then he was back and, very soon, smoke was crackling from a small heap of twigs at the mouth of the cave. Vredech watched indifferently as the Whistler’s long hands coaxed the smoke into flames and then began to build a fire.
As it flared up, he sat down, apparently satisfied, and motioned Vredech to sit opposite. Vredech did not move.
‘You’re suddenly troubled, night eyes,’ the Whistler said. ‘In the blink of an eye you changed. One moment you were assured and coherent, the next, wild and rambling, even resorting to violence. Markedly more primitive. Interesting, but quite startling.’ He stared into the fire and then up at the smoke rising from it. A solitary spark drifted skywards. He raised the flute to his eye and peered along it at the dwindling speck. ‘I’m intrigued to hear what’s happened. Do you know? Or am I talking to myself after all?’
Vredech looked at him intently. ‘You must tell me something I don’t know,’ he said. ‘So that I can test your reality when I return to… my own world.’
The Whistler’s brow furrowed in puzzlement, then he shook his head. ‘If you hesitate about your own world, how much more so must I?’ he said starkly. ‘I don’t know where it is – indeed, “where”, like “when”, means little to me now. And, of course, I don’t even know if it is, or even if you are, so how can I answer such a question?’
Vredech gritted his teeth. ‘Then, tell me what He will do. This spirit of evil of yours,’ he said, in some exasperation.
The Whistler’s fingers twitched along his flute and he lifted it slightly, then changed his mind. ‘Tell me first why you’re suddenly different,’ he said. ‘You frighten me.’
Vredech raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Ifrightenyou? That seems unlikely. You didn’t have any problem dealing with my violence, as you call it.’
The Whistler made a dismissive gesture. ‘A detail. I took your actions to a consequence different from the one you intended, that’s all. You frighten me because your strangeness, your unsettling complexity, makes me doubt my sanity.’ His eyes narrowed menacingly. ‘It’s occurred to me before that wherever I’m lying asleep, I’m mad. Maybe that’s why I’ve locked myself here, like a child cowering under the blankets. Because here I can be sane. Moving from world to world of my own making, able to reason and think. But since you came, my control of events seems to have slipped away from me. I’m plunged into strange places… places that are between the worlds. And you, black-orbed, haunted and haunting, now rational, now demented, come probing into the very heart of my dream. Bringing your plausibility, your bewildering complexity to twist and bend my thoughts. And bringing Him with you, damn you. All control goes when He comes.’ He levelled a quivering finger at Vredech. ‘If you are real, then what am I? And if you’re not, then why should I have Him return and use such a creation as you to be His harbinger? Why should I test myself so? And if I stare into this boiling pit, if I judge myself mad here as well as mad wherever I truly am, then what is the point of all this?’ He waved an all-encompassing hand. ‘Will it crumble and fall? Will I wake to my true madness? Will I die?’
Vredech flinched away from the pain in the Whistler’s voice but he could do no other than reach out and help; the pastoral demand set his own concerns to one side. He snatched at Nertha’s words. ‘Nothing can withstand that kind of scrutiny, Whistler,’ he said. ‘It’s like a child asking “Why?” after everything you say.’ Then, half to himself, ‘Even healthy flesh becomes diseased if you pick at it long enough.’ He copied the Whistler’s own dismissive gesture. ‘Play your flute. I’ll tell you what happened to me.’
The Whistler moved as if to speak, then turned his gaze back to the fire. Slowly the flute came to his mouth and he began to play the three notes that Vredech had heard at their first meeting. Over and over, each time different, sometimes poignant, lingering, sometimes angry, sometimes full of menacing anticipation. As the Whistler’s music filled the cave, Vredech thought that he could hear other sounds, powerful and disturbing, weaving through the simple notes. He listened intently for a moment, then, quite undramatically, told the absorbed Whistler all that had happened since he had found himself back in his room in the Meeting House.
The Whistler seemed to be more at ease when Vredech eventually fell silent. He stopped playing though his head was moving from side to side and he was waving the flute delicately as if he, too, were hearing music other than his own. He looked back into the cave. ‘The Sound Carvers lived in caves,’ he said. ‘Deep, winding, unbelievable caves, full of marvels you could scarcely imagine. I come and play in places like this from time to time, just in case they’re here and might want to remember their old pupil. I sometimes think I hear them.’
He gave a pensive sigh. Then his eyes widened lecherously. ‘I like the sound of your sister,’ he said. ‘Quite a woman. I wouldn’t mind…’
Vredech’s fist tightened and his jaw came out. The Whistler’s hands rose in rapid surrender. ‘Sorry,’ he said, his voice full of mock abjectness. And, as suddenly, his manner was earnest and concerned.
‘You spin an excellent tale, but I’ve heard it before. Chaos and confusion in public, blood and terror in private. His hallmarks, night eyes. His hallmarks. Your friend must be a most apt host to have brought this about so quickly.’
Being swept along by the panic-stricken crowd, and learning of the murder of the young men had shaken Vredech, but the implication that Cassraw had something to do with either of them shook him even more.
‘No!’ he protested heatedly. ‘No. You’ve no right to assume that Cassraw was involved in the murders. Or the panic. You can’t possibly think…’
‘I can think what I want, Priest,’ the Whistler interrupted. There was an unpleasant edge to his voice.
Vredech retreated a little. ‘I meant…’
‘You meant that you knew what I should and should not think,’ the Whistler said, suddenly very angry. ‘That’s the way it is with religions and priests. They give you the authority to walk the easy way, to wallow in ignorance and bigotry and call it divine revelation – anything rather than admit that perhaps everything is not simple, that people might have to make their own judgements, think for themselves, delve into the wonders that are all around us, discover, learn, search out their own destinies, go to hell in their own way. You look down from your lofty pinnacles, with your god at your elbow, and inflict every conceivable kind of cruelty on anyone who has the temerity to ask, “Are you sure?”’ He kicked the fire savagely, sending up a spiralling cloud of sparks. ‘Ye gods, I hate the lot of you.’
So vitriolic was the outburst that Vredech was stunned into silence. A flood of indignant replies piled up so chaotically in his mind that he could not give them voice.
‘That’s unjust,’ he managed after a long silence, and with a softness that surprised him.
The Whistler made no acknowledgement, but began playing again; a bitter, hard-edged marching tune with a driving rhythm which he tapped out with one foot so heavily that Vredech could feel the vibration through the ground beneath his own feet. It rose into a shriek and stopped without resolution, though the Whistler’s foot continued tapping, and a vague echo of the tune pulsed softly out of his pursed lips.
‘And all this business in your… Troidmallos… happened, between this and this.’ He snapped his fingers twice as he spoke.
Vredech was taken aback by the sudden return to their previous conversation. Despite the gentleness of his first response, he was still burning with a desire to engage in angry debate about his religion, but a certain regret in the Whistler’s manner prevented him. He could not resist one shaft, however.
‘You wanted to know, seeker after knowledge,’ he said icily. ‘And I told you. So spare me any more of your scorn.’
The Whistler’s foot stopped tapping and he slouched forward. Vredech deduced that that was as close to an argument as he was going to get and he remained silent.
When the Whistler spoke, his voice was quite calm. ‘Do as I told you a few minutes ago,’ he gave a rueful smile, ‘or a few weeks ago, as you’d have it. Go to this friend of yours, this Cassraw, and kill him. Do it now, while you still can, and before any more innocent blood is spilt.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Vredech replied viciously. ‘Canol Madreth is a civilized country. We have laws about such minor matters as random murder, not to mention procedures for properly determining guilt. And anyway, we don’t execute people no matter what their crime. And, not least, there’s the fact that I couldn’t even contemplate such an act.’ The unspent anger at the assault on his vocation spilled out. ‘If you can’t say anything sensible, shut up.’
The Whistler did not respond to Vredech’s anger. Instead, his voice remained calm. ‘That’s still the most sensible advice I can give you, though I can see it’s unlikely to be accepted. One of the problems for so-called civilized peoples is that they’ve usually forgotten the darkness from which they came, and have little or no resistance to it when others, less civilized, bring it down upon them. Barbarians have swept away golden temples and glittering cities, time after time after time. And the ignorant have yoked the learned, time after time after time.’ He picked up a few pieces of wood and began repairing the damage his kick had done to the fire. ‘You know what the dominant response is, of people so conquered?’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow and, for the first time since his diatribe about religion, he looked at Vredech.
Vredech shook his head hesitantly, his anger fading and uncertain now.
‘Astonishment,’ the Whistler said, turning back to the fire. ‘It’s bubbling under the surface in you, right now.’
There was a long silence. Untypically, the Whistler sat very still, his flute lying idle across his knees. Vredech watched him. The scene, with its soft lantern-light and gently moving firelight, looked like a picture in a book. For a moment, he felt that if he reached out, he would turn over a page and find himself reading some old tale.
Vaguely, he felt powers about him, contending for him, trying to draw him away. But he needed to speak further with this strange individual.
‘Answer my first question then,’ he said quietly. ‘What will happen? What will this evil spirit of yours do?’
The Whistler did not seem to hear. Then, as Vredech was about to repeat the question, he said, ‘What will happen is up to you, I suspect. No – Iknow it will be up to you. You are near the heart. You’re a pivot. A tiny thing about which great things will turn.’ He looked sharply at Vredech, angular and alert again. ‘These things I’ve seen. As to when, or where…’ he shrugged, then pursed his lips and began whistling.
The sound filled the cave instantly, sharp-edged and penetrating. Vredech felt it wrapping around him, cutting through him. Without being aware of any transition he was standing on a high vantage. There was a naturalness about the change that left him unsurprised, but it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. It was a town, though bigger by far than Troidmallos, spreading out in every direction as far as he could see. Bigger even than one of the Tirfelden cities that his father had once taken him to as a child. And, also unlike Troidmallos, with its winding sloping streets and rows of stepped houses, it was flat. Born and reared amongst mountains, Vredech found the perspective unsettling. Far more unsettling though, was the realization that the whole city seemed to have been destroyed. The view immediately around him was jagged with shattered walls and blackened timbers and, in the distance, great fires raged, hurling flames and dense black smoke into a mocking blue sky.
Then, from whatever eyrie he was perched in, Vredech began to make out movement in the streets below. He needed no telling to identify it, it was hanging in the Whistler’s eerie music that was still all about him. The movement was that of people, fleeing. Women, children, old men – the young and the less young were already dead, the music told him. Then there was more movement. Horsemen! A surging tide of them flowing black and relentless in pursuit through the crowded streets, riding over the panic-stricken survivors, crushing them, hacking them down. But this was no battle. That had already been won. This was a hunting, a revelling sport, part of the reward for that winning. The music continued, twining together laughter and screams in an unholy harmony, telling him that of those who did not die here, some would be kept for further, more leisurely sport later, others would be bound and broken in slavery, while the seemingly most lucky, those who would escape, would serve as the bearers of hideous tales to begin the destruction of the next city even before the enemy had set spur towards it. He tried to turn his head away, but it was held firm. Nor would his eyes close. For a brief, terrible instant he was sucked down into the crowd to become once again part of a suffocating, screaming throng, though this time the cries around him were foreign and strange. The terror, however, needed no language.
Then blood filled his vision. Filled his world. Choking…
The Whistler was looking at him inquiringly. ‘There are many such songs,’ he said.
Vredech drew in an agonizing breath. He held out a hand, at once restraining and denying. ‘It cannot be,’ he gasped. ‘Not in Canol Madreth.’
The Whistler was playing his flute again, the angry march he had played before, though now it was soft and distant. ‘I told you – astonishment. You’ll be gaping in disbelief at the sword that kills you, thinking, “this cannot be”.’ He levelled the flute at him. The sudden silence in the cave was more startling than if there had been a thunderclap. ‘Everywhere. Anywhere. Such a fate is always waiting for those who forget the darkness in their nature,’ the Whistler intoned. ‘Learn it now, or you’ll be taught it again.’
‘What can I do?’ Vredech asked.
‘I’ve told you once and you won’t do it.’
His body still reacting to the scenes he had just witnessed, and his mind reacting to the manner in which he had witnessed them, Vredech could not give voice to his returned anger. He shook his head despairingly and snatched at a thread of reasoning for support. ‘Your advice aside, Whistler, allow me a moment. If you are a figment of my imagination then perhaps I’m on the way to madness. But if I murder my friend at your suggesting, then I am truly insane, isn’t that so?’
The Whistler made no reply for a moment, then he said, ‘And ifyou are a figment ofmy imagination, I’d still like to know why I’m taxing myself with such a problematic individual, with his inconvenient moral dilemmas.’
Vredech’s thoughts started to reel as once again he groped for some anchor that would hold sufficiently for him to determine the reality of what was happening. Something inspired him. ‘Perhaps you value our debate,’ he said.
The Whistler laughed. The sound echoed joyously around the cave but it jarred on Vredech’s ears. ‘You may well be right, in some perverse fashion,’ the Whistler said. ‘But I’m afraid I’ve no advice for you, other than what I’ve already given you.’ He became serious again. ‘If you choose not to follow it, then…’ He shrugged. ‘But if you want to stop Him rising once again to power, and devastating your land and its people, then His death is the only thing that will achieve this.’ He turned away sharply, and Vredech felt a great wave of sadness pass over him. ‘If you kill Him now, then perhaps it will go badly for you. But if you kill Him later, it will have already gone badly for many others.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid it’s usually so.’
‘But…’
‘You have your answer, Priest. If you won’t kill Him, then you’ll have to watch events unfold and respond accordingly. Public chaos and death, you say, has already begun. Private blood-letting and terror you have, too.’ He drew in a hissing breath and his hands curled painfully about the flute, as if he had accidentally struck a newly-healed sore. ‘They are related, trust me. And be warned. You defend your friend, understandably, I suppose, but he’s not your friend any more. He is His. Body, and what’s left of his soul. I’ve told you, he’s an apt vessel – very apt. The events you’ll be watching may well move with great speed. Disbelief and astonishment are luxuries you haven’t the time to afford.’ He became suddenly pensive. ‘Apt,’ he murmured to himself, as if the word had set unexpected thoughts in train. ‘There’s a quality about these things, like…’ He frowned as he struggled for the words, then lifted the flute and began playing random notes, very slowly, with his head cocked on one side, listening intently. ‘Like this,’ he said eventually, blowing a single note. As he lowered the flute, the note returned out of the darkness at the back of the cave and hovered briefly before fading. ‘An echoing, a resonance. There’s a quality in some of this rock that’s in deep harmony with this note. It responds when touched in the right way.’ He played the note again, and held up a hand for silence as it returned once more. ‘So it is with Him. But infinitely more subtle.’ He pressed his thumb and forefinger together. ‘Who responds just so to His song, builds a way for Him. Large or small, wide or narrow, it will be His way. And He will not relinquish it. He builds ever. And there are many ways in which He can come. Ways of the mind, the spirit, the heart, the flesh.’ He snapped his fingers and pointed at Vredech. ‘Don’t let this friend of yours build anything,’ he said urgently. ‘No monuments, no palaces. Nothing.’
Vredech made to speak, but the Whistler was continuing. ‘Right place, right moment, right… qualities… prayer, adulation, terror – and such a place, with its shapes and deep and locking geometries can draw Him down on you like lightning down a tree, and the consequences of that bear no thinking about.’
The awful conviction in the Whistler’s voice made Vredech shiver. As if in response, the wood that the Whistler had thrown on the fire suddenly burst into flames. The surge of warmth struck him full in the face.
‘Allyn! Allyn!’
Nertha’s anxious voice pierced the clinging heat as several arms seized him and held him upright.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m just…’
A roar rose from the congregation, its awful weight crushing him once more. For a moment he was fully in two places. Sitting in the Whistler’s cave torn with doubt, and standing in the Haven Meeting House, sustained by unknown hands and full of fear.
Nertha’s emphatic voice was saying, ‘No you’re not.’ Then she was shouting, her voice cutting through even Cassraw’s frantic rhetoric. ‘Clear a way at the back, sick man coming through.’ And before Vredech could speak, he was twisting and turning, being passed from hand to hand through the crowd that stood between him and the door, Nertha controlling the proceedings like a sheep dog herding her flock.
Then the short, buffeting journey was over. The stifling heat and gloom of the Meeting House gave way to the warmth and light of the summer sun. The supporting hands became an arm wrapped about his shoulders and a single hand firmly grasping his elbow.
‘I’m not doing too well lately, am I?’ Vredech said wearily as Nertha led him around to the side of the Meeting House, away from the crowd momentarily distracted from Cassraw’s sermon.
‘Hush,’ she said, at once gentle and businesslike. ‘Sit down here in the shade and rest a moment.’ Even as she was speaking, she was skilfully manoeuvring him on to the base of a wide recess in the wall. Then she was looking into his face, prising his eyelids back. He pushed her hand away.
‘I’m all right,’ he insisted. ‘It was just the heat.’
Nertha was shaking her head. ‘No, it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘I thought it was at first. It was the obvious thing.’ Her hands avoided his and touched his face and forehead, then the pulse in his neck. ‘You’re agitated, but you don’t feel like someone who was just about to faint. And you’ve recovered too quickly.’
‘Do you need any help?’ The question came from one of a pair of Cassraw’s Knights who had helped open the crowd for Nertha; they had followed in her determined wake as she had led Vredech away.
‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I am a physician. It’s nothing serious.’
‘It’s the power of Brother Cassraw’s great message,’ the young man confided. ‘It moves people in many different ways.’
‘I’m sure,’ Nertha replied caustically, though the sarcasm was lost on the listeners.
She turned and dismissed them with a smile of reassurance, then bent forward and gazed intently into Vredech’s eyes. Her hands came up to examine them again. ‘Stop that,’ he said, seizing her wrists. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, Nertha. I can see perfectly.’ He pointed.
‘Look, there’s the Ervrin Mallos.’
Nertha was patient. ‘Being able to see a mountain doesn’t really constitute a test of good eyesight, Brother brother,’ she said, smiling slightly at his indignation as he glowered back at her.
He pointed again. ‘Then there’s the gate to Cassraw’s private garden, and Dowinne’s precious fruit trees. There’s a street lantern that someone’s forgotten to turn off. There’s those yellow flowers, what’re they called?’ He snapped his fingers.
‘Sun’s eyes.’ Nertha answered for him. ‘All right, your eyesight’s fine, then.’ But she was still looking into his eyes. ‘It just seemed to me that they looked very strange as you began to lose consciousness just now. Almost as if their entire orbs… went black.’ She hesitated, then said awkwardly, ‘Or rather, filled with darkness. It gave me quite a fright.’
Night eyes, night eyes. The Whistler’s words rang in Vredech’s ears. And he remembered, too, the brief impression he had had when he looked in the mirror after his first encounter with the Whistler. The same fear possessed him now as it had then, but under Nertha’s searching gaze he kept his face immobile. ‘It was dark and crowded in there,’ he said flatly. ‘Lots of shadows.’
He saw Nertha controlling her own face as a shrewd-eyed look of suspicion rapidly came and went.
‘Dark,’ he confirmed. ‘And confused. And you’d be shocked, seeing me passing out like that.’
Now the indignation was Nertha’s. ‘I’m not shocked at the sight of people falling over,’ she said, her brow furrowing. ‘I’ll have you know, I’ve seen…’ She stopped as Vredech smiled up at her. Then he found he was looking at her mouth. His hand moved of its own volition, wanting to reach out and touch. And his chest tightened. Nertha’s eyes seemed to widen and she moved her face a little closer to his.
Vredech forced his hand to be still and, stiff-faced, yanked his eyes away. ‘Anyway, whatever happened in there, I’m fine now,’ he said briskly, though he felt himself colouring. ‘Perhaps I’m still a little tired from being awake all the other night. Let’s get away from here. We’ve more serious things to talk about now than my feeling a little dizzy in that crowd.’
Uncharacteristically, Nertha stammered. ‘Yes… yes. You seem to be well enough now.’ She looked around. Even from where she was standing, she could see the edge of the crowd which was gathered at the front of the Meeting House. And she could hear the hubbub inside. She shivered.
‘Goose walking over your grave?’ Vredech said, standing up.
Nertha grimaced. ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘Just Cassraw. Come on?’
They left through Cassraw’s private garden to avoid the crowd, and rode for some time without speaking. To Vredech, the implications of Cassraw’s wild sermon left so many questions that it seemed impossible to start a rational conversation. And his mind was filling again with frantic thoughts about his mysterious transportation to the Whistler and his world, and all that that implied for his sanity.
Nertha had no such problems. She was silent partly because she could see that Vredech needed a little time to recover himself, but mainly because she was thinking. It puzzled her that, though he had unquestionably been on the verge of fainting, Vredech had subsequently shown none of the symptoms of someone overcome by the heat. And the memory of his eyes disturbed her. It had only been a fleeting glance, but she had seen what she had seen, surely?
‘Tell me what happened back there, Allyn,’ she said bluntly.
‘Nothing,’ Vredech said vaguely, after a long hesitation.
Nertha glanced at him. ‘It was only yesterday you said you’d tell me about everything that happened to you. You volunteered it, I didn’t wring it out of you. And you promised. “Keep an open mind – as never before” I think you said. And I said I would. So don’t give me “nothing”.’ She weighted the words with full family reproach.
‘You’ll think I’m truly mad if I tell you,’ Vredech said eventually, and very uncomfortably.
Nertha’s reaction was unexpected and tangential, as the Whistler’s had been in response to a similar remark. ‘Never mind what you think I’ll think,’ she said with brutal sharpness. ‘And don’t ever presume to know what I’m thinking. Just concern yourself with what I say and do, and I’ll give you the same courtesy.’
The abruptness and power of the response jerked Vredech out of his own circling anxieties, and he gaped at her.
‘Well?’ she concluded forcefully.
Vredech still hesitated. Then he looked up at the Ervrin Mallos. ‘What can you see at the top of the mountain?’ he asked.
Nertha’s expression was impatient, but she followed his gaze. After staring for a moment, she screwed up her eyes and craned forward a little. ‘There seems to be some kind of heat haze, I suppose,’ she said, settling back into her saddle.
‘It’s no heat haze,’ Vredech said with some certainty. ‘It’s not the kind of day for a heat haze, and have you ever seen one isolated at the top of a mountain?’
Nertha looked up again and shrugged. ‘If it’s not a heat haze then it’s something else to do with the weather,’ she said indifferently. ‘But whatever it is, it’s not hazy enough to prevent me from seeing what you’re up to, so just tell me what happened to you in the Meeting Hall.’
Vredech looked openly relieved. ‘I’m glad you can see it, though,’ he said. ‘I think it’s been there for some time now.’ Then, before Nertha could speak again, he began telling her of his encounter with the Whistler.
She was silent when he finished. ‘I said you’d think I was mad,’ he said, watching her carefully.
‘And I told you not to worry about what I was thinking,’ Nertha replied tartly. ‘You wanted me to keep an open mind, and I will, no matter how hard it is.’ She looked at him, her face confused yet determined. ‘I can do it while I’m sure you’re telling everything that’s happening. We must trust one another. And in that context, I’ll be honest. I’d think you were mad indeed if you’d suddenly awoken with the intention of killing Cassraw.’
Vredech looked at her helplessly. ‘What’s happening, Nertha? What can I do?’
Nertha replied instantly. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘But whoever and wherever the Whistler is, whether he’s something your mind’s made up for some reason, or whether he truly does lie in some strange other world, he’s doing you no harm so far. Cling to that, Allyn. Cling to that. He’s doing you no harm. And while you talk about him, I don’t think he will.’
She reined her horse to a halt and stared around, her hands tapping the horse’s neck in frustration. ‘I know it seems a lifetime now, but a couple of days ago, if you recall, we said we’d ride and talk. I’d tell you how the old place has changed. We’d go out into the country.’ Her eyes drifted towards the summit of the Ervrin Mallos, just visible above the rooftops. ‘I think we should do that now,’ she said, suddenly determined. ‘Let’s weary ourselves with good honest exercise and go to the heart of this business at the same time.’ Her eyes were alive and challenging. ‘Are you with me?’ she asked, as if they had been children daring one another into mischief again. ‘Let’s take this devil by the tail. There’s time before night. Up to the top of the mountain.’
Before Vredech could answer, she had swung her horse about and was galloping away.