It was a relief to Maeneb not to have Eled up in front of her this time. She was fond of Eled and grieved for his state; but she also found his close presence irritating to the point of pain, and a distraction from her foremost task of listening.
This was nothing to do with Eled’s character, she knew. It was the same with everyone. They were all too noisy and too near. Even her riding partner Tiburé talked far too much. This travelling in close company, albeit only with a few others, was difficult; Maeneb would have much preferred to ride alone.
At least now, on the far side of the Thore, she was a little ahead of the rest so that she could listen for her route without much interference. Around her stretched the unremarkable landscape of spindly trees, their thin branches netted together, and tall clumps of common weeds disappearing into shrouding mist. Unremarkable to look at… but these were the borderlands of Farwithiel, where nothing could be taken for granted.
She reined in her horse Shoda, and closed her eyes, feeling for the Farwth. Surely the Farwth must be aware of the Riders’ presence now that they had crossed the Thore. But she heard and felt nothing of its will.
That did not mean to say that its will was not active. The signals were there, even if intended for the Wardens. As a half-Warden herself, she could detect them. Opening her eyes again she concentrated on listening to the land.
“We need to avoid that beech copse to our left,” she reported.
“Really?” queried Tiburé behind her. “I thought we came straight through it last time. That was less than a month ago. How can it have changed so fast?”
“It has,” said Maeneb obstinately.
And as they passed to the right of the clump of trees Parthenal said quietly, “There are two stonemen in there, lying dead. What could have killed them?”
“We won’t stop to find out,” said Tiburé, who had Eled on her horse in front of her.
“Poisonous vines, perhaps,” said Maeneb. That was one of the methods the Farwth used to keep out unwanted strangers from its land.
Another method lay a little further on. She felt its presence before she saw it. Possibly, by making the trap so plain to her, the Farwth was allowing them to enter…
Or maybe it was warning her off. She would not find out for a while which one it was.
“Avoid those bushes,” she said. “Those are not ordinary thorns.”
“Poisonous, again?” asked Parthenal.
“I’m not sure. But there is a threat around them.”
“I feel nothing,” said Tiburé. “Would the Farwth let us merely barge on into them, if you were not here with us?”
“I don’t know,” said Maeneb. “Stop talking, please.”
Her words were addressed only to Tiburé and Parthenal. Since they had left the banks of the Thore, Rothir had not spoken. He had the air of a man stunned and trying to work out what had stunned him. Maeneb could hear his thoughts moving round and round in ever-widening circles. What those thoughts were, she could not guess.
The woman Yaretkoro was up in front of him, drooping and semi-conscious in the saddle. Now and then she sighed and leaned back against Rothir. She did not speak; but Maeneb could hear her too, a faint whisper somewhere far away.
Yet not as far away as Eled. She had the feeling that a part of Eled had departed permanently, and it saddened her. As she looked back, the two injured passengers were like ill-matched twins, each with a leg stuck out at a strange angle. And one of those was her fault.
Looking away again, Maeneb concentrated on the path ahead. She had already failed her companions on the cliff top by the Thore: she must not fail them here. The weight of responsibility was like a heavy rope around her neck. Miss anything now and it would tighten.
“Here we turn towards the hill,” she said, seeing a fork in the rough trail.
“Really? We went the other way last time,” said Tiburé.
“Really,” said Maeneb, trying not to mind. Tiburé had the right to ask. But she had to trust that the Farwth would not try to mislead her – not treat them like that stoneman whom she now saw from the corner of her eye, impaled on a cluster of sharp reeds. He was long dead; very long, to judge by his appearance, and she assumed the reeds had grown through him since his death. She hoped so, at any rate.
“He’s got a lot of stones,” Tiburé muttered. Although the skin was largely gone from the yellow skull, the stones remained. “At least twelve.”
“High rank,” suggested Parthenal.
“Hmph,” said Rothir. In front of him Yaret stirred and sighed.
“It really does not help me if you talk,” said Maeneb, and the others once again fell silent. They passed the small tree-covered hill, so unremarkable apart from the dead man. Flies buzzed around his head; bees shot through the warm air on their errands; warblers sang to each other unseen in the bushes.
At the bottom of the hill a browsing deer looked up in mild alarm, before skipping away into the mist. Their progress was hardly secret. Indeed there was no way it could be secret from the Farwth.
“Stop,” said Tiburé suddenly. “It’s Eled again.” Maeneb had expected it for a mile now; she had felt Eled’s mind drifting, floating away – where to, she did not know.
They lifted down the injured pair to lie beneath a group of undersized oaks. None of the trees here on Farwithiel’s fringe were large; not like further in. The pattern of trees seemed to change every time Maeneb visited Farwithiel – which was more often than the rest of the Riders, but not as often as perhaps might have been expected, given that her father lived here in the shade of the Farwth.
But her father had never given her much incentive to visit. He was always mildly pleased when she arrived, and did not invite her back.
Of course, she told herself, it was not for him to say. Even as a Warden of Farwithiel he had not that power; it was for the Farwth to decide who came here and who left alive.
After a few minutes Eled revived enough to be propped up against a frail tree that was only a quarter the width of his back. He looked up at the rustling leaves not very far above his head.
“Nice,” he said dreamily. “Where are we?”
“Farwithiel.”
“Oh, yes. I knew that. Will we stay?”
“Some of us will,” said Rothir. Maeneb thought there was a catch in his deep voice. But he looked exactly the same as always: stern and slightly fearsome. Yaret lay beside him, curled up on the grass like a sleeping child. The woollen dressing round her lower leg was entirely bloodstained now, with no hint of a green check visible.
“The Farwth has allowed us in unhindered so far,” said Tiburé. “Have you agreed anything with it?”
This galled Maeneb. Tiburé ought to know that the Farwth could not be addressed as one might petition a human lord or overseer. One could say things, certainly, and the Farwth would hear them; but might then just shut them out. The Farwth did not answer questions – not from her, at any rate.
“There has been no communication,” she said stiffly.
“The fact that we have been allowed this far is hopeful, but no guarantee of anything,” put in Parthenal. He understood more fully than Tiburé did, thought Maeneb, and she was grateful. Parthenal in general understood her better than the other Riders did; and he was never caustic to her, as he sometimes was to them.
Yaret uncurled herself. Although she had appeared to be asleep, Maeneb saw that she was staring from her prone position at a clump of flowers nearby, as if she were puzzled by them. They were only some kind of ragwort, Maeneb thought, nothing out of the ordinary. Yaret said several words in her own language, like an incantation, and kept staring. Maeneb suspected that she was hallucinating.
“What do you see?” Rothir asked her quietly. At first Yaret did not appear to have heard. But then she answered in a murmur.
“Lin.”
Definitely hallucinating, decided Maeneb. Lins did not exist. Probably. Certainly she had never seen or heard one. All the same she felt a faint stab of apprehension in case there was something present that she was failing to detect. Just as she should have detected those stonemen back by the Thore.
Rothir felt Yaret’s forehead. “You’re hot,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Bit strange,” said Yaret. Her voice was blurred. Her gaze kept wandering to things that were not there.
“Let’s move on,” said Tiburé briskly.
Nobody else was brisk. That was an effect of crossing the borders of Farwithiel: it slowed you down. It sharpened some instincts and blunted others – amongst them, the desire for speed. Even Rothir was almost languid as he lifted Yaret back up into the saddle.
But now Yaret seemed wider awake despite her feebleness and fever. She turned her head to look about her as they passed through the scrub, which now gradually increased in size and strength until it was true woodland.
The mists thickened. They could still see as far as they needed to but through a fine pale film. Yaret stared and stared as if she were endeavouring to penetrate the veil; at times Maeneb heard her mutter. Then she leant against Rothir and closed her eyes again.
No-one else spoke. The horses snuffed and snorted: twigs cracked beneath their feet, and birds’ alarms rose in short-lived protest as they passed. Maeneb guided Shoda steadily through the woodland. Tomorrow it would become a greater forest.
Now the mist was darkening; it must be evening, although she had lost all sense of time when finally she halted in a large open glade. She had the feeling that the trees had only just moved aside, to make a space especially for them. But that was ridiculous. Even the Farwth could not do that.
Don’t judge of what I can and cannot do.
Maeneb froze. It was apparent that nobody else had heard. The voice had been in her head only: speaking in no language she could name, yet its meaning was quite clear. It was nothing like the muddled, whispering human voices that she was used to listening for. It was like wind calling through immense branches. A deep echo. A mighty resonance.
She gazed at the ground and made silent apologies. And then she made pleas that they might be admitted, and would not simply find themselves leaving the far edge of the forest with nothing gained and much time lost.
But the Farwth was now silent.
“We may as well stop here for the night,” said Tiburé. The presence of the glade seemed to indicate to Maeneb that they were allowed that much. In any case the others were already unloading the horses and setting out the bedrolls.
Tiburé administered a few meagre drops of ethlon to each invalid to dull their pains and wake them up enough to eat. Maeneb busied herself with the food so that she would not have to help the helpless. It was Rothir who assisted Eled behind a tree so that he could pee, and Parthenal who carried Yaret into the bushes, with Tiburé on hand to help, so that she could do the same. Maeneb could not endure all these bodily functions. Her own were bad enough.
As for what the others called love – she didn’t even care to think about it. Why would anyone want to get so horribly close to another human being? Yet she sensed that they all wanted to, at times, in different degrees. Especially Parthenal, whose thoughts often veered that way, as she could tell from their colour. Thankfully she could not discern their content. And Tiburé was almost as bad.
Not for the first time, Maeneb wondered if her own aversion to human closeness was an inheritance from her father. Yet her father was a human, if a strange one. And her mother…
Well, it was hardly an inheritance from her. Maeneb knew that she was nothing like her mother, a fiercely self-willed Rider. Thirty years ago, Daneb had been one of a company from Caervonn who had visited the Farwth. She had come away pregnant. There had been no question of a marriage: for the Wardens would not leave Farwithiel, nor would they permit outsiders to stay – not permanently, anyway.
So Maeneb had seen her father for the first time when she was eighteen and already in exile from Caervonn, along with the rest of Huldarion’s people. During the infrequent meetings of father and daughter since then, they had grown no closer. To her he seemed an aged, distant man and her mother’s choice grew even more mysterious.
Maeneb felt herself to be quite different to the Wardens. But she heard the voices of the land: and the Farwth spoke to her, as it did to the Wardens; sometimes heard by all, sometimes by her alone. She supposed it ought to be a reason to be proud. It felt more like a burden.
Parthenal was carrying Yaret back into the glade. When he placed her gently on the ground, her face was grey.
“Yed, galeth,” she said huskily.
“Is that Bandiran?” he asked. “What does it mean?”
A pause. “Thank you, brother,” Yaret whispered.
“Thank you, donkey,” said Parthenal. He looked taken aback.
“And what does Har en thoni mean?” asked Rothir.
It was Yaret’s turn to look faintly startled. “Why? Where…?”
“You said it earlier.”
“Did I? Means… Keep me here.” Her voice was fading.
“We’ll do our best to keep you here,” said Parthenal. “She’s still too hot. Tiburé? Can she have more ethlon?”
“No,” said Tiburé decidedly. “Neither can Eled. It’s too addictive.”
“The Wardens will be able to provide their own remedies and medicines,” Maeneb assured them.
“If they’re allowed to,” Rothir said. “Do you have any indication of that yet?”
“The Farwth has already let us come this far,” Tiburé pointed out.
“As Parthenal said earlier, that means nothing. We are not yet properly inside Farwithiel. It may wish simply to observe us,” Maeneb said sharply. The uncertainty made her edgy.
Rothir bowed his head where he sat beneath a leafy branch. His thoughts concentrated themselves. Maeneb had the impression that he was praying.
“The Farwth is not a god,” she told him. “Do not think of it as one.”
He raised his head sharply. “Don’t worry. I don’t.” He stood up again and went to dole food into a dish for Eled.
Then they all ate, and helped the sick to eat, and tried to sleep beneath the gently hushing trees in a pattern that was becoming painfully familiar. At least they did not need to set a sentry here, thought Maeneb, as she began to build up the mental barrier that she would need in order to sleep properly. Too often lately she’d had to leave it down and her sleep had been broken frequently by stray voices in consequence.
But tonight she would shut all external voices out, and allow herself to fall deep into restful sleep. For tomorrow she would fall deeper into another kind of dream: into Farwithiel.