Yaret was trying to remember everything. Although the tiredness was starting to creep over her again, yet still she tried to notice every gesture, every look and word; because in moments of sudden startling lucidity, she was aware that she was about to lose the Riders from her life and that it was a loss that would be difficult to bear. She already felt a strange sorrow in the anticipation.
For what had she ever lost in her previous life? Her parents; but she had been too young to have much memory of them. Although she remembered her grief for her lost father, the man himself was no more than a tall smiling shadow. She had lost her lover Dalko, a year ago and more, but that had been by choice. At some point she would lose her grandparents, but she assumed it would not be for several years yet.
And now she had lost a part of her body. Even a foot seemed a smaller loss than that of the new intensity that had lately flooded through her life. Ever since she had found Eled bleeding and unconscious on the Darkburn Loft, subsequent events had imprinted themselves with force upon her mind. She seemed to have been living in a heightened state where everything mattered. Everything glowed: luminous, sharp and memorable.
That was the side-effect of danger, Yaret thought. It took over, it made sure you paid attention. Otherwise you died. And she had so nearly died.
But she had not died, because of the Riders: because of Rothir and Parthenal especially. She had merely lost a foot. It could have been far worse. That was surely a small price to pay for life; although somewhere inside her was an ache that mourned for that lost limb. She repressed it firmly.
Harder to repress was the ache of knowledge that the four Riders would be leaving soon, tomorrow at first light. The doorway into that bright if sometimes terrifying world of quest and risk and battle, which had been briefly opened to her, would close again. It felt like an abandonment although she knew that it was not.
She was still weak, Yaret told herself. Walen’s medicine had, for the moment, removed the pain and fever and restored her to alertness, but she had been warned that the weakness would remain for a considerable time. There would be a long wait before she could hope to get back to her old life – or as much of it as she could manage. So it was no wonder if she felt a little wretched. The important thing was not to show it.
Once Maeneb had revealed her news from the Farwth, Parthenal had been all for riding off that very afternoon. Handsome of face, strong of body, decisive in his speech, he seemed to her to epitomise the perfect warrior. Or one type of warrior at least. He spoke in an eloquent, persuasive mixture of Standard and Vonnish which her over-active brain quickly untangled: he was desperate, it seemed, to get after the enemy, hating the idea of lounging around in Farwithiel when his task lay elsewhere.
Tiburé dissuaded him. Or, rather, she had the final say in the decision.
“We all need the rest,” she said, “especially Rothir. And the horses need the rest too after their double duty. An extra night here will make them fresher and faster tomorrow. We also need to gather provisions: that can’t be done in ten minutes.”
And then there followed a debate about where they should go once they had re-crossed the Thore. Should they pursue the stonemen to assess their movements, or go back to the place called Thield? At that point the discussion moved over entirely into Vonnish, even on Rothir’s part. Yaret felt herself estranged from them. She leaned against the ribbed wall of the tree and closed her eyes.
Then she heard another voice. It was not a Rider, nor a Warden. It was clear and resonant inside her head: but maybe it was a result of the drugs, for she could not tell if the words it spoke were Standard or Vonnish. It spoke only meaning, like a voice within a dream.
Yet within the meaning one word was distinct. It was a word she did not know. The voice spoke the same thing twice, and then fell silent.
“Oh,” she said. “What?”
The others stopped their discussion to look round at her.
“What?” said Rothir.
“I heard someone. But it might have been the medicine.”
“It was the Farwth,” Maeneb said. “I heard it too. It said, Look for the – something.”
“Look for the skeln,” said Yaret.
“Skeln?” repeated Tiburé.
“I’m sure of it,” said Yaret. “But I don’t know what a skeln is.”
“Neither do I,” said Maeneb. “I shall ask the Farwth.” Her face took on a look of concentration. Yaret wondered if she also ought to ask the Farwth, but she did not know how.
Skeln? The word meant nothing to her. For some reason she thought of her tough old grandmother Thuli, back home in the long low room that was both kitchen and parlour. She was rummaging in a cupboard with her back to Yaret.
“Gramma,” she said silently, “what is a skeln?”
In her mind’s eye her grandmother straightened up and turned to look at her. She was folding a cloth in her gnarled hands. She put her head on one side like a small, brown, distracted bird.
“Oh, dear,” said Gramma, “have I not told you that before? One of Madeo’s. I sung it to you, surely.” And she disappeared.
“It’s in a song by Madeo,” Yaret said aloud.
“Is it? I heard nothing from the Farwth,” said Maeneb, sounding deflated.
“Neither did I. But I remembered – I’m sure it’s somewhere in a song. I just have to work out which one.”
“So what is a skeln?” asked Tiburé. “A person or an object?
“I don’t know yet.”
Tiburé stood up, brushing down her breeches. “Well, you need to think about it,” she said sternly. “Work it out as quickly as you can. I’m going to see the Wardens about loading our provisions.”
Parthenal glanced at Yaret as if he wanted to laugh. “You’d better start singing,” he advised.
“Singing?” she said, and looked at Rothir, whose opinion mattered more to her than Parthenal’s despite the other’s graceful height and beauty. Of course, she had known Rothir longer. A full seven days longer. But such days.
“If that’s what it takes,” said Rothir. “The Farwth’s word is not to be ignored. If you can discover what a skeln is, we need to know.”
So once the others had departed to sort out their gear, Yaret began to run through songs inside her head. In her present state she found it hard. Therefore she began to sing aloud – though quietly – beginning with the songs she remembered from the earliest days of childhood. She was not always sure which were by Madeo and which were not, but she sang through them anyway, though some were little more than nursery rhymes. There was no skeln in those.
Eled listened and at times smiled and nodded along. That the songs were all in Bandiran did not seem to bother him. The more rhythmic the song, the more he enjoyed it. She encouraged him to clap his hands in time: he could do that, and was pleased.
Rothir came back in and sat down on the floor opposite them with his pack. He took out a small pot and a piece of rag and began to grease his boots.
“Music while I work,” he said.
“I don’t sing well,” said Yaret apologetically. “I can hold a tune, that’s all.”
“You sing well enough. Any sign of the skeln yet?”
Shaking her head, she went on with her song. This one was about a mountain: for many of Madeo’s songs were on the theme of travelling. But several of the words escaped her. It was so long since she had heard some of these songs that trying to recall them was like dredging them out of a deep, muddy pond.
She remembered the stagnant pools before they had reached the Gyr: the darkburn struggling in the water: and stopped singing in a wave of pity and revulsion. It took her a few seconds to pick up the thread of the song again.
“Not that one,” she said. She started another one, Long Walk, but ran down after the first few lines as they blurred together in her memory. She shook her head in disappointment. “No, it’s gone. It would be easier to remember if I had a lutine.”
“A what?” said Eled tentatively, as if he felt he ought to know.
“It’s a musical instrument,” she explained, “a kind of five-string lute that we play back home. I’m used to having the accompaniment.”
“They play a six-string one in Kelvha,” Rothir said.
“And in Caervonn?”
“Also six strings. They used to, at any rate. Is one string any use?” he asked.
“One string?”
He reached into his pack and tossed something over to her. She looked at it in bemused wonderment.
“Oh,” she said, “my gourd! But I left it in the Gyr cave.”
“And I picked it up. It’s not heavy, after all. I had an idea that you might want to keep it. It may help to occupy you here while you recover.”
“Well,” said Yaret. “Thank you.” She opened it and tested the mournful plink of the string. It was like an old friend that she thought she’d left behind, to be seen no more. Welcome, friend, she thought; although it was more than the gourd itself that warmed her heart.
She began to sing Long Walk again, accompanying herself on the gourd, and this time the words came back to her with ease. Eled laughed at the slow doleful pecking of the string. But half a dozen songs later, no skeln had yet emerged.
“Those are pleasant tunes,” said Rothir. “Even though I don’t understand the words, most of them seem to me to hold a sense of yearning.”
“You’re right, they do… I suppose that’s because Madeo lived a life of exile.”
Rothir put down his boot and rag. “Madeo was in exile?”
“Yes; along with all the rest of our people after they were forced to leave their home up north. Even once the Bandiran had settled in their new home, Madeo kept on wandering.”
“And those songs that you’ve been singing, they were all written by your ancestor?”
Yaret’s fingers stilled on the gourd-string. She looked up at him in puzzlement. “What do you mean – my ancestor?”
“That’s what the Farwth said: that Madeo was your ancestor. It had certainly heard of Madeo. I think that was the main reason it allowed you to stay here.”
Yaret was almost dumbfounded. “What? The Farwth said that? When?”
“Yesterday, while you were still unconscious.”
“But it’s impossible. Madeo had no children,” she protested, staring back at him in disbelief. “None that are recorded, anyway.”
Rothir shrugged. “Well, perhaps he had one that he didn’t know about.”
“Oh, I think she would have known,” said Yaret. She gazed across the hollow tree into the mysterious distance of the past, pondering the matter. “It’s true that there are many gaps in our knowledge of her life. She roamed around so much. What we know is mostly through her songs, and old traditions. But we do know that Madeo came here.”
“To Farwithiel?”
“Yes. She didn’t call it that. She called it by a different name.”
“Which is Ulthared.”
“Naturally. She is supposed to have stayed here quite a while.”
Rothir sat up. “So when the Farwth told you to look for the skeln, was it because the Farwth itself had heard it in one of Madeo’s songs?”
“I suppose that’s possible. The skeln must be there in my memory somewhere.” She rubbed at her forehead in frustration. “I just can’t find it.”
“I can’t either,” said Eled, who had been listening, but, it seemed, not entirely understanding. “I keep forgetting.”
“It will come,” Rothir said to both of them.
“But probably too late. I expect I’ll remember it once you’ve gone,” said Yaret with a sigh. “And how can I get a message to you then, from here?”
“The Farwth should be able to communicate with Maeneb, if it wishes, for a considerable distance. Although it does depend on where we are.”
“We are here,” said Eled.
“But we will not all be here tomorrow.” Rothir turned to the younger man. “You need to stay here with Yaret, Eled, and wait for your leg to heal. After we go, we hope to gain news of you from the Farwth, so that we can come back for you when you feel well enough.”
“I’m sorry I’m not well enough just yet,” said Eled, glancing at his splinted leg. “But it’s healing. And when it heals I’ll be better too.”
“I have no doubt of that,” said Rothir.
But Eled’s pleasure at the music had departed, to be replaced by guilt. He sighed and looked so unhappy that Yaret swiftly changed the subject.
“Why can’t the Farwth just tell us what a skeln is?” she said. “It would make things so much easier.”
“Ulthared,” said Rothir. “Maybe there are things that even the Farwth does not know, or is not at liberty to tell.”
“Rothir, how did the Vonn get to know the Farwth? How is it that the Riders are allowed here?”
“History,” said Rothir. “Also Ulthared, I’m afraid.”
Yaret sat back again, strumming at the gourd. “Ah, well. I expect the answer is that you people of the Vonn had your own Madeo, or someone like her, who found the Farwth on their travels.”
“I expect so,” said Rothir, and Eled nodded wisely.
“Somebody who loved trees,” she went on, “somebody with a large mind, and far-sightedness, and influence. Lots of influence. So that you are allowed back.”
“Somebody like that.”
She thought for a while, absently tapping the gourd.
“Could that person be anything to do with the skeln?”
Rothir looked slightly startled. “They would certainly be a good person to ask,” he said, “if we only knew where they were.”
“Oh! So they are still alive, then? Meaning that it’s not someone from four hundred years ago like Madeo.” When Rothir was silent she said, a little contritely, “I did not mean to trick you into giving away anything that is Ulthared.”
“You didn’t trick me. I was unwary.”
“You didn’t trick him,” confirmed Eled. “Nobody tricks Rothir.” He grinned at his friend, who reached forward to tweak his good leg.
“I’m glad you have such faith in me, Eled.”
“I do,” said Eled. He lay back and closed his eyes. They both watched him for a moment before exchanging a glance. In Rothir’s face she read sorrow and concern; and resignation.
“Well,” she said, “the skeln. Could it be a place? Madeo travelled widely.”
“So have I,” said Rothir, “yet I have never heard of a place called Skeln, or anything remotely like it.”
She put the gourd down on her lap. “Where was your favourite place, Rothir? Or is that a secret too?”
“Not really.” He gazed into space, reflecting, and then spoke quietly. “The city where I grew up is very dear to me – or rather the image of it, as it was back then. The memory of Caervonn is both a comfort and a hope, but the place itself is much changed by now, I dare say. I’ve not been back these last twelve years.”
“Caervonn… It sounds like the wind high in the clouds; a sailing ship, swift and easy. It is a lovely name.”
He smiled. “It’s a lovely place. I’m not sure about the sailing ship; Caervonn is twenty miles from the sea – although I suppose you could say that the city sails like a ship above the plain, but looking down on wheatfields and orchards instead of on the waves. There is rich land around it.”
“And all that once belonged to you? I mean to the Vonn?”
“You might say rather that we belonged to it. But yes.”
“What about all the other places you have travelled to? Are any of those as dear to you as Caervonn?”
“There are a number that I like,” he answered. “I have never ranked them in terms of how much they mean to me. There seems little point.”
“Why not?”
“Because I never stay at any of them for long.”
“But you must now have a home, somewhere, surely?”
He smiled at her again, ruefully. “I do. It moves around.”
“So did Madeo’s,” Yaret said, and she began to sing the Long Walk again, this time in the Standard translation. With the gourd’s help it came to her readily.
“The light on the hills is beckoning me
“As I set my foot on the track,
“And its beauty calls me forwards
“And bids me not look back.
“When I reach the summit the light is gone,
“But a further mountain beckons me on–
“And on and on and on…”
“And on,” said Rothir. Then he fell silent, listening while Yaret continued singing.
But in all the songs she sang there was no skeln.