Chapter Nine
THE CARVEN FOREST
Within the shadow of the gate were waiting a small group of people; not soldiers, for they bore no weapons. As they moved forward to greet us, Avran and Ilven slid gracefully from their mounts. I dismounted also, though more awkwardly. Whilst they were exchanging greetings with the welcoming persons, I ruffled the neck of the sevdru I had ridden and whispered a thanks to him for bearing me so well. He turned and nuzzled me, so angling his head as to ensure that my face was in no danger from those sharp nasal horns. As I responded by stroking his muzzle, I experienced a very definite surge of mutual affection. That pleased me, but it puzzled me also.
Thus distracted, I did not immediately realize that Avran had led forward one of the group to meet me. "Simon, this is our uncle Eldrett Estantesec. He has no English, I'm afraid, but I have told him you are my friend and he wishes nevertheless to greet you."
"Bazatie etreyen, Simon!" Though not especially tall, he was a massive man, with rough-hewn features and with beard and hair so short and dense as to appear like dark moss on an oak trunk. His clenched, outstretched hands were so huge that I could not properly enclose them between my own.
"Eldrett is the elder brother of our mother. He serves as--oh, as chancellor, I suppose you'd say, to my father."
"I am honoured to meet him," I replied carefully. "Please tell him that I look forward to the day when we can properly converse--when I've learned your language, that is." Avran translated this and the craggy features arranged themselves into what I took to be a smile. The chancellor growled a few further amiable-sounding phrases, then Avran said: "My father is holding a meeting of the Ruling Council. However, since the meeting will shortly be over, Uncle Eldrett suggests we should go up and wait. We may leave our cloaks and our bundles here; they'll be taken to our rooms. Our swords, also; we'll have no need for such weapons."
As Avran spoke, he was unbuckling his sword-belt and handing it to one of the men nearby--a servant, I presumed. I followed suit though, after so many days of bearing it at my hip, the prospect of even a temporary loss of my sword made me feel uneasy. I was relieved that Avran trusted me well enough to allow me to retain my knives.
The sevdru I had ridden still stood patiently by me; there had been no attempt either to tether our beasts or lead them away. I could not resist again caressing the soft cheeks of my own former mount before leaving him. In response, he tossed his head and gave a sort of amiable snort. Then, as I turned to follow the chancellor and Avran, all four sevdru moved quietly away, out onto the still sunlit portion of this inner bailey where, as I now saw, other animals--all of them sevdru--were standing or feeding.
We walked up toward the castle, Avran deep in conversation with his uncle. Ilven walked beside me.
"Simon, you surprise me more and more!" she said. "I thought--we thought-you would have trouble during your ride, but you managed so well! You did not need my brother's help at all."
"Well, I've ridden horses of course; and I was rather scared at first; but these sevdru, they're--well, they seem nice animals... But you used no bridles, no saddles, no stirrups. Do you always ride thus, bareback? I don't understand how you instruct your mounts what to do!"
"No, we need no accoutrements when riding casually like this. Though a soldier in war would use a saddle, stirrups also perhaps, we never need, nor use, bridles. And, as for instructing them what to do, why should we? A sevdru is not a horse; it is more than a horse. If its rider and it are friends--if they are in sympathy--why, it knows what its rider wishes! Did you not feel that sympathy during your ride? Of course you did! That is why you rode so well. Truly, you surprised us! You rode not like a foreigner, an Englishman, but like a Sandastrian--like one of us!"
While I puzzled at this, she went on: "A horse--well, I understand you can ride them and, Avran tells me, even have affection for them. Yet they are like your cows, they are dull creatures--like the hasedain, which we keep primarily as a source of milk and meat. Sometimes we use hasedain as beasts of burden, but we don't ride them. Perhaps it maybe because they are grazers, creatures of abundant food and open land, where little intelligence is needed to survive. The sevdru is a browser, a creature of the wooded hills. Several of our forest creatures have--oh, a special understanding. It is hard to explain, but--well, you'll see..."
Here Ilven was interrupted, for the chancellor turned to rumble some question at her; yet she had already given me much food for thought. Yes, I had been aware of that special sympathy, that understanding shared with my mount; how fascinating! And, if sevdru were browsers, that explained why this inner bailey was not merely grassed, like the bailey of an English castle into which cattle might be driven for safety during an attack, but planted with so many bushes and small trees. Obviously these were to provide food for the animals!
We were climbing broad stone steps now, up the last steep rise to the castle itself. Ahead of us were yet more gates. Again they were sheathed with burnished copper, but this time they were elaborately decorated with inlaid silver, in a pattern of branches and swirling leaves that seemed to move as one looked at it, as if in a wind.
The soldiers stationed here were clad, not in blue, but in surcoats, jupons and hose of silver-grey. On the surcoats were embroidered in gold the same bird (a hawk? an eagle?) that had been depicted on the harbour flag, and beneath the same crescent moon. The eyes of the bird, whatever it was, were tinted blue and seemed curiously large. These soldiers were armed not just with swords, but also with great axes like the Lochaber axes of Scotland. They seemed relaxed, however, and attempted neither to impede nor even to question our entry.
So in we went, under yet another stone arch and into a sort of stone tunnel, about twenty yards long. I realized to my astonishment that, within the wall of that great pentagonal keep, we were crossing a drawbridge over a moat. Below us, a dozen or so feet down, swirled the dark waters of a river; overhead were shafts down which, at need, boiling oil or other noisome substances might be emptied upon invaders.
Soon we were over the bridge and walking out through a second arch, with a great hallway directly before us and other hallways to left and right. In the ceilings of these halls, high overhead, were massive skylights. They were set with panes of glass tinted in many different hues, green, blue, red and yellow, so that the light of the setting sun painted a shifting pattern of colour upon the white stone walls. By this hour, the lower walls might have been in deep gloom, but massive torches set in iron brackets were driving away the shadows. Between these brackets were hung great banners, each decorated with some heraldic device. I recognized, without yet identifying it, the leaping fish of the Vragars, worn as emblem by the soldiers at that first, outermost wall. Later I was to learn that each banner bore the emblem of a particular vard.
A number of people--soldiers clad in blue or silver, men and women in tunics of varied colour--were hurrying purposefully about these halls. None manifested any special interest in us, though a few exchanged amiable words as they passed by.
All this seemed very wrong to me. Surely a returning prince ought to be greeted by attendent, enthusiastic crowds and fanfares of trumpets? Such a cool reception was really rather disappointing. Only later did I comprehend that, since Avran's journey to England had not been publicized, few Sandastrians outside his family and the Ruling Council were even aware that he had been away.
Ignoring the hallways leading off to left and right we walked straight ahead, in toward the centre of the keep. Despite the height of the hallway, our passage--and that of the other people in the halls--was quite quiet and our voices evoked no echoes. Looking down, I realized that the floors were covered by thick grey matting densely woven from plant fibres of a type I had never seen hitherto. (Later I discovered it was made from a seaweed, a variety of kelp common off the southern shores of Rockall). Not only did this silence our footsteps, but also it served to deaden other sounds. The castle was never noisy, even in its greatest chambers.
A sharp turn and we were beginning the ascent of a winding staircase-not the sort of steep, tortuous corkscrew such as ascends the towers of English castles, but one curving much more gently and with broader, shallower steps. Nevertheless it proved quite a climb, up past one floor with its great wooden door, elaborately carven and firmly closed; then on upward past one, two, three, four, five further floors and doors. By that time, chancellor Eldrett Estantesec was breathing stertorously and even Avran and I, after the idle days on shipboard, were becoming short of breath.
It was a relief when Eldrett halted at the seventh floor. He pressed his palmand fingertips against a great circular boss on the door and, turning it, opened that door for us.
We were admitted into a corridor so luxuriously appointed as to make me realize instantly that these must be royal quarters. Such indeed was the case. Whereas the great pentagonal keep of the Castle of Sandarro fulfilled a diversity of functions, its central tower contained only the residence and reception rooms of the eslef and his family. I learned later that the spiral staircase was within the stone spine of this great tower. The short corridor into which we had now entered, like its counterparts on the six lower floors and on four further floors above us, debouched into a broader corridor circling the tower on its outer side.
However, it was not the structure of the tower that fascinated me, but its decoration; for the corridors were like a dream-forest. Their floors were covered from side to side by carpets woven to represent a woodland floor, with leaves, mosses, fallen branches, patches of lichen and flowers, all in their appropriate hues. The walls were panelled with wood elaborately carven and painted to simulate the trunks, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit of a whole array of different shrubs and trees, this impression of the canopy of the forest being maintained by a carven ceiling above us. All the carving was in low relief, but it was done with such skill and artistry that one gained an impression of depth, even of distance. The leaves of the trees were sometimes tinted green, sometimes brown, sometimes golden, and they bore flowers painted in white, scarlet or blue.
I gasped in astonishment and Ilven said smilingly: "Yes, it is indeed wonderful, Simon. These carvings were done many years back and the carpet woven long ago. Yet the woodcarvers of Berodunesse and the weavers of Ildumil are still capable of such work; the carvings can be repaired, or even replaced, at need."
"Then those weavers and woodcarvers are craftsmen indeed! I have seen nothing to match this, even in the cathedrals of my own land or among the best work of the Flemish weavers."
Ilven did not respond in words, but another smile told me that she was pleased. I had never seen eye so green--or, for that matter, eyes so beautiful....
As we walked along the short corridor, I noticed that here and there among the carven branches were depicted birds, some of familiar shape and form, some unfamiliar; and that in the glades of the simulated forests were beasts, small or large, that were quite unknown to me. I would have to pause and examine these more closely, but the chancellor and Avran, deep in talk, were keeping up a steady pace.
Soon we saw a group of men walking towards us--lords of Sandastre, by their beards and evident dignity. Almost as soon as I noticed them, chancellor Eldrett began intoning greetings, in a voice as sonorous as the diapason of a hydraulic organ. Indeed, the meeting of the Ruling Council was over already. The representatives of the forty-five vardai were coming from the Council chamber in an irregular, clotted and discontinuous flow, like a congregation leaving church. I found myself caught in a sea of courteous introductions to men to whom I could not properly speak--Keld Orexin, Helu Miodren, Valatt Andracanth, Vaien Exor and many another. Indeed, there were too many names to be grasped, too many faces to be remembered--bright-eyed or sombre-eyed, with hair and beards of many lengths and shades of red or brown and robes bearing many different emblems--a torrent of words and of people, or so it seemed! Eventually, leaving Avran and Ilven entrapped in a whirlpool of conversation, I edged away, out into the corridor circling the tower; for I was fascinated by the carvings and the animals they depicted.
Here, for example, was a group of sevdru, for the combination of brow-horns and nasal horns was unmistakable. So their fauns were hornless, like young deer.... Now here was a great lithe beast, like a dread combination of wolf with tiger; did such creatures roam the forests of Rockall? No, surely not, for here was a creature certainly mythical--a unicorn, twisted horn and all. That great blue beast--almost oliphant-sized it seemed, with nasal horn, pointed brow horns and ram's horns in combination and with a line of spines down back and tail-must be assuredly equally mythical. What was over there? Oh, some weird kind of deer with strongly convoluted antlers. Next came carvings of some creatures like great hogs distorted by nightmare; those were too repellent to be real, I trusted, for I misliked them greatly. I drifted along from carving to carving, as fascinated as a small boy at his first fair.
The light was streaming into the carven forest in places; how was that managed? Oh yes, at intervals there were recesses in the walls on my right, leading to windows made in cruciform shape--a vertical slip and two symmetrical cross-slits--for ready defence by bowmen, I presumed.
I was so intrigued by the strange birds and beasts of wall and roof that I passed two of these windows before it occurred to me that I might gaze out. By then I had wandered about a hundred yards along the corridor, away from the group surrounding Avran. The bright, late sunshine was beguiling and no one was near enough to notice what I did. Why should I not take a look through one of these windows? After a swift glance that ensured there were no watching eyes, I climbed three steep stone steps and edged up between the convergent walls of the recess to the window, to gaze forth with renewed wonder.
Yes, we were indeed high in the central tower of the castle. From the direction of the sun I must be looking due south. Lesser towers to my left and right were linked by soaring ribs of stone, like enormous flying buttresses, to the pinnacle of the tower by whose window I was standing. Directly below was the roof of the main keep, marged by crenellated walls and paved ways along which guardian soldiers walked. Within this walkway was a broad ribbon of glass, protected by fences, that must mark the skylights of the corridors. Closer beneath me, as I saw, to my astonishment, were gardens, with trees, shrubs, flowers and stone seats. In this evening hour I could hear the stridulations of crickets and glimpse a few drifting moths, come to seek out the more aromatic blooms. A rooftop garden; what a wonderful conceit!
Looking out further, I could see the red stone curtain wall. That gatehouse must be the southern one, controlled by the Grassads' allies, which Avran had so sedulously avoided. The hill beyond dropped away too steeply for me to be able to view the padin on its slopes, but I could discern the outer wall of Sandarro. The warehouses by the harbour looked like toy houses from this height and, beyond, the sea shone like a golden shield. Far over in the hazy distance at right, the sun was sinking behind blue hills. What had Avran called them as we sailed in? Oh yes, the Bernevren Hills. It was a fascinating view, very beautiful and, to my eyes, very strange. I would have liked to linger long, drinking it in; but Avran must by now be wondering where I was! Guiltily I turned about and edged back toward the corridor.
I was about to descend the stone steps when, suddenly, I perceived two men walking toward me. They were coming from the left, from the Council Chamber, and must surely be lords. I hesitated. What would they think if they saw me, a stranger, emerging from this recess like a spy from concealment? Embarrassedly I retreated, pressing myself back against the stone wall. With any luck they would not notice me, for the sunlight streaming in from the window would deter their gaze and mask me from their view.
As the two drew closer, I saw that they were very unalike. One was a massive, florid man in a maroon tunic and cloak, leaning heavily on a gold-banded stick. He was heavy-browed and pug-nosed, with dark brown, pouchy eyes and with dark hair and beard so closely cropped as unpleasantly to suggest a fur trim to his face. On his left breast he bore in gold the emblem of a lizard with forked tongue. His associate was leaner and sandier, cloaked in dark grey. His beardless countenance seemed as if etched with a pattern of lines curving down his cheeks and about his lips. He had a facial twitch that in one moment emphasised those lines, in the next wiped them away so that, though his face was never still, his expression could not be read. His eyes, palely blue, were equally unreadable. Altogether they were a striking, yet unprepossessing pair; I was grateful that I was hidden.
Because of the bigger man's limp, their approach was slow. They were conversing in undertones and attending entirely to each other; no, they would not perceive me.
Just as they came alongside me, the big man stopped abruptly. He was looking ahead now and his face was flushing crimson with anger. He seemed to swell, like a cat on a wall that has just noticed a dog beneath it; and, since he hissed his words quite as fiercely as such a cat might have hissed, I heard them clearly: "Ksalakass! Avran indreslef, esvrend! Ess'evrelet?"
I risked a glance out past him. Yes, Avran was in view now; his red head was unmistakable. He and a group of the councillors had emerged into the main corridor, still deep in conversation.
The lean man was equally startled; his face twitched convulsively. "Aldan drasselret - ievran Baroddnen ebressil!" he said savagely. "Vayin abran; ksalberet essnar." He urged his companion forward and they moved off down the corridor, towards the conversing group.
When they were fifty yards or so away from me, I hastened out from the recess into the corridor and followed them cautiously. As they joined the group, the big man called a jovial greeting to Avran. My friend's brows contracted momentarily and I was sure the greeting was not welcome, but he managed a smile and a cordial-sounding response. Then Avran looked past them, saw me and shook his head slightly. Taking the hint, I hung back and studied the wall-hangings.
Within minutes the conversation had ended. The councillors, the big man and his associate among them, headed for the staircase, only the chancellor, Avran and Ilven remaining.
Avran smiled at me and, nodding back towards the departing group, said: "Forgive me for any seeming discourtesy, Simon my friend, but I was not anxious that those two should know you yet. The large man is one of whom you have already heard much--Draklin Grassad himself. His associate, and our enemy also, is Vrek Harradas; Harradavard has long supported the Grassads. Dangerous men, both of them."
"Well, I must say they seemed to take little pleasure when they saw you were safely back. The big man--Draklin Grassad--practically spat!"
Avran grinned. "Well, our quiet entry into Sandarro achieved something, after all. It is always a pleasure to annoy the Grassads! I would be interested to know just what he said."
"Well, I didn't understand it, but I did hear it; I was looking out of a window, they didn't perceive me. It was something like this--" and hesitantly, surely inaccurately, I did my best to reproduce the words I had heard.
All three of my auditors tensed as I did so. The chancellor uttered a massive expletive and Ilven appeared deeply disturbed.
They exchanged a few sentences and then Avran said: "What you heard, Simon, leaves no doubt as to the responsibility for the attacks on me. Their words, in English, would have run like this. The Grassad said: 'Look there! Prince Avran, alive! Whatever happened?' and the Harradas responded: 'Something must have gone wrong--those damned, incompetent Baroddans! Well, come along; we must pretend pleasure.'"
He paused, then continued rather ruefully: "And do you know, Simon, the Grassad's greeting to me was indeed so well simulated--so apparently surprised, so cordial--that it made me doubt his involvement in those attacks! Fortunate it is, indeed, that you heard their words and that, though you do not know our language, you remembered them so clearly. And fortunate also is it that they did not know they were overheard. The Grassads are vengeful and I do not wish them yet to consider you their enemy."
Then his mischievous grin returned, driving the seriousness from his face. "Poor Draklin, though; how he must have hated uttering those congratulations on my return! I'm sure it will quite spoil his dinner--and Vrek Harradas's, also. Well, a little indigestion should prove good for their souls!"
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