by Roger Taylor
Or whatever else might emerge from the pending chaos.
A face came into his mind. He shivered. It was the head graven into the arch over the entrance to the Jyolan. He would surely revel in what was to happen. Mutual killing was His way when all else was lost. Thus had ended the First Coming with the death of the Great Alliance’s leader. Was it to be so again, an awful vengeance reaped so many years after He had been dispatched for the second time from this world?
Yet it was inconceivable that He could have brought this about. Even if He had had the Power and the insight to do so, He would not. Such a creation could destroy Him along with everything else.
Atlon pondered the image.
Why should that awful face come to him now? What was his deeper knowledge trying to tell him?
He looked at Imorren.
‘There are ways to the Jyolan from here other than the streets?’
Imorren nodded uncertainly. ‘Through the tunnels.’
‘We must go there. That is where they are.’
Chapter 31
Pinnatte sat back and looked at his work. All the mirrors were bright and clear. It had taken him less time than he would have thought, but he seemed to be tireless now. He felt as though he could run and run forever, down street after endless street, climbing walls, vaulting obstacles, dodging and weaving effortlessly through the thickest of crowds. Why he had cleaned the mirrors he did not know. Why he had come back to the Jyolan he did not know. Perhaps it was some remnant of his commitment to Barran, though he no longer needed the goodwill of such people.
He sought no further explanation. Thoughts, ideas, images were pouring through his mind in such a torrent that he could not pause to pursue any of them. He leapt from conclusion to conclusion – momentary stepping stones in the flood. It was sufficient explanation for his actions that he could choose to follow such whims now. Now he could do anything he wanted. For none would be able to oppose the Power that he could feel relentlessly growing within him, a constant in the swirling confusion.
Such progress he had made these last few days since his fateful contact with Rostan! Had not Barran himself stepped aside, wide-eyed with fear, and then fled, after he had opened the door of the Mirror Room to confront him, with the creature at his side?
As he looked at the mirrors, Pinnatte was taken by the frantic activity in different parts of the Jyolan – it echoed his own inner confusion. The sounds of it too, washed over him for, in his haste, Barran had left the key that operated the grilles by each mirror. Now they were all open, filling the Mirror Room with their clamour.
Barran was gathering armed men for what was obviously to be a determined assault on the Mirror Room. He had tried earlier, sending half a dozen of his men to deal with, ‘that crazy street thief and his… dog.’ – Pinnatte smiled at the word – but the Serwulf had burst out and killed two of them before they were within a dozen paces of the door and the others had scattered, screaming. They too would have died had not Pinnatte imposed his will on the animal and made it return.
The Serwulf was a bloody streak winding through Pinnatte’s confusion. Since it had come to him in the alley, after the death of Rostan and his guards, it had been communicating with him in some way. Some of the images and sensations he was feeling belonged to it, he knew. They were alien, feral and awful, and though he could not understand most of them, two things were dominant. One was a seemingly limitless urge to kill and feed, though on what, Pinnatte could not properly grasp, save that the thought of it chilled him. The other was a cringing fear of Pinnatte himself – or someone, something, that had a shimmering likeness to him. His linkage with the creature both thrilled and disgusted him, but gradually the former was growing in dominance.
Pinnatte watched Barran’s efforts with the outward air of a disinterested spectator. Whatever he did, Barran was doomed to failure. If he succeeded in injuring the Serwulf, Pinnatte knew it well enough now to know that the consequences would be appalling. And if it were somehow drawn away, so that he himself was apparently defenceless, they would find that he was not. Indeed, he was beginning to realize that, if he wished, he could scatter this earnest and noisy gathering just by reaching out through the images in front of him. Yet he had some liking for Barran – and what he was doing was… interesting.
Men were being dressed in chain-mail, and given brief but effective instruction in how to fight from behind a shield wall in the narrow confines of the Jyolan’s passages with swords and short spears. There were archers there too. It might have been a long time since Barran had fought on a battlefield, but he had forgotten none of his old ways, and his rage at being so ignominiously dispossessed of this most precious of places, keenly focused his intentions. Pinnatte watched and listened avidly. Oddly, he felt a twinge of disappointment at what he knew would be the outcome.
Such talents deserved better. Very distantly, he thought he heard something inside him saying, ‘Keep this man alive,’ but such a thing could not be. If Barran opposed him, Barran would die. That was to be the way of things.
Pinnatte pressed his hands to his temples. Thoughts like that weren’t his. Barran had helped him – had been honourable to him.
The creature whined uncertainly. Pinnatte snarled at it and it cowered.
He pushed his chair back angrily, wiping his arm across his forehead. As he did so, the many images in the mirrors became one. The many sounds too, became coherent.
He froze.
He was at the heart of the Jyolan.
He was the Jyolan!
And the Jyolan was…?
For an instant there was a pause in the torrent of thoughts and sensations that were possessing him. A solitary voice pierced the silence. The voice of Pinnatte the street thief.
This was not what he wanted!
Something terrible was coming. Something that would come from him – through him – pour through him – bringing only destruction.
‘No!’
All movement in the mirrors stopped. Even through his pain and fear, Pinnatte sensed the stillness. And he knew its cause. From here, his voice, his will, was that of the Jyolan, of Arash-Felloren itself. Nothing could happen that he was not aware of. Nothing could happen that he could not reach out and change.
Then the creature was howling. Its awful lusting voice echoing through the Jyolan and beyond. He felt it spreading over the city, through the tunnels, deep, deep into the ancient caves far below. Calling to its own.
Some part of Pinnatte reached out to deny it. He would not be responsible for the horror that this thing would bring.
The creature turned towards him, its mouth gaping, livid red, its eyes burning yellow like diseased suns. Its desires washed over him, re-awakening those he had felt at the Loose Pit. This was the way things should be. This was the way hemust be. All power must be his. All people should bow before him.
Still a part of him denied it. Confused images of Ellyn and Atlon and Heirn floated around him. The mirrors became blurred and indistinct. He was only vaguely aware of the creature pacing the room.
And there was escape, clear and hopeful before him!
He was a mote – the least of things – separate from his body, tumbling through a swirling darkness, countless sounds and images all about him, mindless and meaningless, yet significant. He was moving and not moving, aware that he was both here and in the Mirror Room. As was the creature. It was hunting now, but not as it wanted to. It was hunting in another place, another way, because its deep bond with Pinnatte gave it no choice but to obey him.
Then, without transition, he was whole again, looking at a bright sunlit sky marred by gathering thunder clouds. There was a great crowd in the distance. Pennants and flags were waving, ranks of horsemen were galloping around it. It took Pinnatte a little time to realize that he was watching a battle. A movement to one side caught his eye. He turned to see two men in the distance. They were watching an old man, running and looking repeatedly over his shoulder. Something hissed past Pinnatte t
o thud into the grass by his feet. Looking down, he saw that it was an arrow. He stepped backwards with a cry.
As if he had always been there, he was on a grassy soft-scented hillside in the fading evening sun, strange foot-tapping music all about him. Then he was in the streets of a strange city. Only his thief’s footwork kept him from being trampled by the crowd among which he found himself, for his mind was reeling at what was happening. Mainly women and children, he could see they were fleeing in awful panic. And they were crying out in a language he could not understand. Bright lights caught his eye through the dusty air. There were riders in the distance, sunlight flickering from the rising and falling of their swords.
Somewhere he could feel the Serwulf trying to reach him. And there were other animals howling, far away. Wolves, he sensed, though he had never heard wolves howling before. Their song reached out to ease him in some way.
An impact jarred him. He had been falling for ever. Faster and faster. And now he had stopped. All that had happened seemed to have taken but a single heartbeat, but now there was a pause. His every instinct held him still and silent. Wherever this place was, he did not belong.No one belonged. The sights about him now were not sights that eyes could see. He was aware of worlds within worlds, between worlds, shifting and shimmering in and out of existence, rich with life and dancing to rhythms unknowable. He was aware too of many eyes turned to him. And terrible fear, all around.
For this place, this eerie vantage, could not exist. It stood outside that which was without bounds. His touch had the power to change all things. Yet his least action might disturb this dynamic equilibrium beyond all recovering.
As might, perhaps, his inaction.
He dared not move.
There was an awful, lingering moment, in this place where Time did not exist.
Then uproar.
Barran, encouraged by the silence that had followed Pinnatte’s cry and the creature’s howl, had managed to rouse his men sufficiently to have them storm the Mirror Room.
It was a mistake.
Bursting through the door, the attackers found themselves staring not at one of the dismal rooms typical of the Jyolan, but at a vast and shapeless greyness devoid of all perspective and points of reference, save for the seated figure of Pinnatte watching them from some indeterminate distance.
And the Serwulf.
Which was upon them instantly. Hard fighting men all of them, not one managed a stroke against it, and all died. For a moment the greyness became tinged with red.
A second team of men waiting along the passage, listened hesitantly to their friends screaming and the Serwulf roaring, then turned and fled as the last victim crashed out of the room, his head almost severed. The Serwulf’s howl sped them on their way. Barran was sufficiently experienced to know when men could be rallied and when they could not. He made no effort to stop them. Fury filled him but it could not overcome his terror.
‘Let us through.’
The cold voice pierced Barran’s silent rage. He spun round to see Imorren and Atlon. Atlon was flushed and a little out of breath from a hasty stumbling journey through the tunnels, but Imorren was as immaculate and calm as ever. Atlon had noticed her hand going to her throat and her wrists at times and knew that she was sustaining herself with crystals. Though such a use of the crystals was abhorrent to him, he had thought to tell her to conserve her energies against what they might find at the Jyolan, but her actions were obviously those of habit, and paradoxically he also found himself thinking that, perhaps, the weaker she was, the better.
Barran’s throat was too dry for him to speak, but he had nothing to say anyway. The creature was hers, let her deal with it.
Pinnatte felt the approach of Atlon and Imorren. The event was at once trivial and profoundly significant. Trivial in that both of them could be expunged at a thought, significant in that the consequences of such an act were unforeseeable.
As they entered the door, both of them stopped. Imorren’s face twitched slightly before the training of years stilled it. Atlon was openly afraid. Where Barran’s men had seen a textureless greyness, both Atlon and Imorren saw a swirling ferment of the Power, restrained only by the presence of Pinnatte – or some part of Pinnatte – a shimmering likeness pervading him. Neither understood what they saw, save that such a thing should not be possible and was dangerous beyond imagining.
The Serwulf crouched as if to spring. Imorren gestured towards it and it hesitated. Then it opened its mouth and screamed at them. It was an appalling sound, but the two figures did not yield. The scream subsided into a rumbling growl and the Serwulf made no attempt to attack.
At a loss to know what to do, Atlon stepped forward slowly to speak to Pinnatte.
Coils of the Power wrapped themselves around him. Despair and self-reproach welled up like vomit inside him. Imorren had bound him. He had thought that she was cowed for the moment, that she had recognized the danger and, albeit reluctantly, was working with him in the hope of dealing with it. Given a fraction of warning he might have defended himself, but now he was helpless.
‘Do not struggle, Atlon,’ Imorren said. ‘You know I can destroy you, but who can say what events will be set in motion if we try our strengths here – at so delicate a balancing.’ There was a mocking note in her voice that redoubled Atlon’s rage at his folly. ‘Besides, if you live, I’d like to talk with you further when this is over.’
Then she was kneeling before the motionless Pinnatte. Though ignorant of what had happened to him she had determined to act as had always been envisaged should the Anointing prove successful.
‘Great Guardian of the Ways, I offer you this man, who would have sought to destroy you. Do with him as you will. Bring to this place, I beg you, the True Lord of this world so that He too might bow down before you in gratitude for His release from the unjust bondage that has so long held Him.’
Pinnatte heard the lies in Imorren’s words, but just as a Kyrosdyn act had brought him here, so part of him was bound to them and must obey. Across countless worlds he felt a gathering, a coming together. It was his doing, he knew, but it was beyond him to prevent.
A myriad whispering voices soughed through the dancing vista and, somewhere far away, he felt them shift and change, and re-form until they were bright and piercing, like the light of a single silver star. But it was no joyous event. At the touch of such a light, the whole world would become like the Jyolan until it was shaped in the bleak and barren image of its new Lord.
Drawn by him and to him, the light came nearer.
Yet there was fear and uncertainty in it. There was great danger for it here.
Pinnatte the street thief turned his eyes in appeal to Atlon, as bound and helpless as he was.
This thing must not be.
The despair in Pinnatte’s gaze drove the self-reproach from Atlon. Die he might, but fail he must not. Cautiously he tested the bonds about him. Each of them tightened. So near to the culmination of her life’s work, Imorren’s awareness was at its manic height and, assisted by the crystals, her considerable ability with the Power was enhanced beyond anything Atlon could oppose from such a position.
He sensed the approach of something through the skeins of the Power winding about Pinnatte. Something awful.
Imorren’s eyes shone, wild and exhilarated.
Then a high-pitched shrieking pierced the whirling silence and a sinuous brown form darted into the greyness. A cruel claw slashed across Imorren’s back.
Atlon was free.
And so was the Serwulf.
‘Kill her!’ Dvolci roared to Atlon, leaping high in the air to avoid the Serwulf’s charge, and landing on its back. Trembling, Atlon drew his sword and raised it to strike the stricken Imorren, her hand clutching futilely at the bleeding gash across her back. Their eyes met and he hesitated as he saw into the heart of the young girl cruelly used by others.
Then the pitiful mask was gone and he was hurled across the room. The sword clattered from his hand as he
struck the wall. Imorren’s Power tightened about him pitilessly and would have crushed him utterly had not the Serwulf collided with her in its frantic attempt to free itself from the clawing form of Dvolci clinging to its back.
Atlon slid to the floor. Too shaken to stand, he rolled toward Pinnatte. Reaching him, his head spinning and his body screaming in protest, he dragged himself upright. All about him he could feel the clamouring realities that were so unnaturally focused around Pinnatte. And he could see the gathering light being drawn inexorably nearer.
Then, to his horror, though he saw the pain and the plea in Pinnatte’s eyes, he did not know what to do. Nothing in his experience or his learning had equipped him for this.
Desperately, he reached out to take Pinnatte’s hand. He was no great healer, but healing was all he could offer. As he reached out he saw Imorren, her hand about her throat, preparing to strike him again.
The frenzy of the combat between Dvolci and the Serwulf filled his ears. Dvolci would never give up – not ever. The Brothers he had stood with on the battle field, the armies he had watched, none of them would yield. He must not yield. But he was too spent, and she too powerful, to defend himself.
Yet he would give what he could to Pinnatte, and he would give this fearful woman nothing but his contempt.
He clutched at his own throat mockingly and returned Imorren’s triumphant sneer. ‘Do your worst, crone. Do you think I’d come amongst such as you unprotected? Know this: I was one of those who helped send your erstwhile Lord to His deserved oblivion, who scattered His screaming will across the worlds beyond.’
Imorren hesitated, then her face became a mixture of fear and rage. The hand about her throat tightened, whitening her knuckles, and she levelled the other at Atlon. He straightened up and held out his arms scornfully to receive the blow. But no blow came. Instead, Imorren faltered, a terrible realization coming into her eyes. Just as the Novice had done when he attacked Atlon, so now, lured on by Atlon’s taunts and threats, she had done the same. The crystals that sustained her had been stressed too far. Where they had given, now they were taking.