The Call of the Sword

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

Tirilen was the daughter of Loman, the castellan of Anderras Darion. She was born in the same year that Hawklan had come out of the wintry mountains with Gavor in his arms, and opened the long sealed castle.

Not as tall as Hawklan, she was nonetheless tall for a woman, and tended to look even taller because she stood at once erect and relaxed. Her long blonde hair was normally bound by a single ribbon, but occasionally it would fly free, and then she would subject it to an endless sequence of unnecessary groomings, running it through her hands and teasing it this way and that, before sweeping the whole back with a toss of the head.

Her eyes slanted slightly and their blue was like a reflection of the spring sky, while her straight and rather narrow nose overtopped a straight and rather narrow mouth. A mouth that could become tight and resolute with grim determination, or peevish and pouting if she were caught in some misdemeanour that perhaps provoked her father too far.

Now she was a quiet, alert young woman, but for most of her young life she had behaved like a riotous twelve-year-old boy and had been the continual despair of the women of the village charged by Loman with her education into womanhood since the death of her mother. Tirilen looked and moved like thistledown in the breeze, but in her time she had hitched up her skirts and waded into the river to tease the slumbering fishermen, scrambled and run across the rocks like a rabbit in rowdy games, and routinely knocked the heads of any of the local boys who showed signs of becoming unusually tender. Generally she had shown little inclination to behave in anything approaching a ladylike manner.

Loman was a stern and solid man, with a strong sense of justice and integrity which he shared with most of the Orthlundyn. He had frequently castigated his daughter when taxed by the village women, but he had had little heart for it, and Tirilen had only to smile and put her arms around him to ensure she could carry on as usual. Since her earliest years he had recognized his own independent temperament housed in his wife’s frame, and he took solace from the knowledge that while she knew of his love and affection she would come to no great harm, nor do any, and he would keep her as a friend as well as a daughter when life eventually eased them apart. They had always been happy with one another and were more so now.

Only with Hawklan had Tirilen’s quieter nature appeared. He had asked Loman to be his castellan at their first strange meeting, but Loman and his toddling daughter only moved into the castle some three years later when, despite Hawklan’s aid, Loman’s wife died. Then Hawklan had helped with the upbringing of the noisy, blue-eyed child as Loman pulled himself through the blackness that followed. He was a second father to Tirilen, although their relationship was very different from that she had with her real father. Hawklan it was who received those confidences and confessions which Tirilen preferred not to bring to her father’s attention, but which needed to be excised by utterance. And Hawklan it was who guided her into looking behind the surface of the dour man to find the true father within.

Hawklan it was also, who found she had no small gift for healing, and who took charge of her instruction. Thus when the mood was right, she had learned about the herbs and other healing plants that could be found in the fields and among the rocks, and about repairing gashes and fractures. He could not teach her how to speak to the animals, because he himself did not know how he did it, but she was sensitive to their silent distress calls and frequently appeared in Hawklan’s workroom with some injured creature that she had found because ‘on impulse’ she had turned from her path.

* * * *

Like Gavor and Hawklan’s other close friends, Tirilen too had noticed his growing preoccupation; a lessening of his gentle ironic humour and, she alone noticed, an occasional strange, distant expression in his green eyes. In conversation and everyday intercourse he seemed happy enough, but he was increasingly to be found alone and pensive, and she sensed an unknown and mounting pain.

It was only Gavor who asked the question directly and received any semblance of an answer. And vague though it was, he was pleased, because he knew that once question and answer began to appear in the mind, then the inner conflict was beginning to be resolved. With the emergence into the light of this slender bloom from the depths, Gavor deemed it advisable to leave lest their normal banter trample it underfoot, and he was pleased to see the arrival of Tirilen, to whose hands it could be more safely entrusted.

However, the bloom having appeared, it transferred a portion of its uneasy perfume onto Gavor. Hawklan’s powerful intuition was not lightly set aside and Gavor felt dark clouds gathering distantly on his own inner horizons. Hawklan’s words began to crystallize unspoken concerns of his own, though not clearly. A change was in the air, and not a good one. He croaked at himself disparagingly as he flew above the rooftops of Anderras Darion. He had no intention of visiting his ‘friend’ in the north tower. Uncharacteristically, he too now wanted to be alone. Spiralling high above the Castle, resting on the warm spring air rising up from the front wall, he looked down at the crowd on the green by the crossroads, and at Tirilen leading Hawklan down the road to the village.

He started crossly as a small brown bird whirred past him at great speed and disappeared in the direction of the green.

* * * *

Not many could resist Tirilen when she chose to be persuasive, and, his heart lightened a little by speaking of his concern to Gavor, Hawklan made only a token opposition to her invitation to see the strange tinker and listen to his chatter.

He had to stride out to keep up with her as they walked down the road to the village. She, unusually, was talking incessantly.

‘He’s so funny, and he’s got so many wonderful things in his pack, you’d wonder how he could possibly get them all in, let alone lift it. And he seems to know so much about everything — sewing, farming, carving...’

‘And emptying purses,’ said Hawklan dryly.

Tirilen smiled at him knowingly and then linked her arm in his.

‘Look at this,’ she said, carefully unwrapping the pendant she had bought. Hawklan looked at it studiously.

‘It’s an unusual design,’ he said, ‘although there’s something vaguely familiar in the style. Gold too, by the feel of it.’

They were almost leaning on one another as they examined the pendant and they strode out in step down the last, steep part of the road. Hawklan rubbed the pendant gently between his thumb and forefinger and wrinkled his nose slightly.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Tirilen.

Just clouds on the horizon, thought Hawklan.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I just thought I felt a tiny sharp edge, but it must have been my imagination.’