by Roger Taylor
Rachyl nodded. ‘It seems he's even more remarkable than we thought. I still find it hard to believe the tale you've both just told. Those other ... worlds ... you say you found yourselves in, and the Gevethen rising out of a river and actually seizing Ibryen. It's far beyond the bounds of my simple, sword-swinging commonsense. If I didn't know my cousin so well, and if he wasn't so patently sane, I'd have said he should be fed on calming gruels and given over to kindly relatives in the country.'
Isgyrn turned to her. ‘It is true,’ he said soberly. ‘Although ordinary words don't really do justice to what we both experienced. And the Gevethen didn't come out of the river. It was as though they fractured their way into that forest world from somewhere else.’ He looked up at the grey sky. ‘It was a profound act of folly for me to do what I did. Even respected Hearers do not try to reach the Culmaren alone. Your Count saved my life and found his own at risk as a consequence.'
'We've all done foolish and dangerous things at times,’ Rachyl said.
'Indeed,’ Isgyrn agreed bitterly. ‘But not at my age. I'm a Commander of others, not a young and reckless man.'
'It's finished and everyone survived,’ Rachyl said, abruptly dismissive, concerned by his tone. ‘Great Corrupter or no, we're still at war, for all there's been no fighting of late. You can't afford the luxury of dwelling on such things excessively if you're going to be of use to yourself or anyone. If I can accept the wild tales I've just had to listen to, you can accept that. And, Commander or not, your circumstances are unusual to say the least. I presume you'll be taking Ibryen's advice and not trying to go into this other place again?'
Isgyrn frowned at Rachyl's forceful rebuke. ‘I'm not that foolish. Some lessons even I can learn at one telling,’ he replied caustically. ‘I'm content to stay here and fight by your side, if Ibryen will have me. Especially as we seem to have a common enemy.’ He began walking towards the tent. ‘I'll take whatever oath of allegiance your people require, and without condition. But I can't allow Ibryen to seek out the Culmaren for me. That's too great an imposition.'
Rachyl took his arm and stopped him.
* * * *
Ibryen drifted in the echoing vastness. Untroubled by the waves of fear that Isgyrn had created in his panic when he had come here before, Ibryen slowly realized that this world was stranger by far than either of the others he had found himself in. Stranger than the world of shifting lights and sounds where only his awareness existed, and more impossible than the wooded land which had allowed him a wholeness both there and on a windswept mountainside.
No words could compass a description of where he was. It was as though he was in a world that reached out through the stars yet touched none of them. That existed in directions that could not be—not up or down, not here or there. That existed in times that could not be—not past, not present, not future. A world in which each part touched all and all touched each part.
This was a place that was deeply alien. Even for someone with his mysterious gift he knew that the limitations of his very humanity meant that he could experience only a single, simple aspect of it. Though, to him, it had a wholeness, it had also a quality akin to that of a painting ... a picture of Now, lifted from its future and its past and fixed forever in the shifting Now of the observer. Whatever he perceived here, however rich and complex, it would be less than a shadow of its true reality.
The knowledge was frightening, but only because of the perspective it offered him of himself and the world he lived in.
Yet he felt no fear, no threat. He was both here and at ease in the crudely rigged tent with the Traveller watching him and Isgyrn's carefully folded Culmaren in his hands. Nothing would wilfully harm him here except his own fear.
As before he felt both a great emptiness and a teeming bustle of life pervading the place. Somewhere there would be that aspect of the Culmaren which his inadequate senses could detect but it would be pointless for him to search for it. He knew that all of this world was already aware of his presence, and accepted it, and that his call would be heard even if it was not understood.
He could feel the softness of the Culmaren in his hands. He allowed the sensation to permeate him and he spoke into it the essence of the words he had spoken before. Your charge is safe again. Your duties more than fulfilled. But he is as I am—in a place that is not truly his—and the pain diminishes him. Come to him if you are able. Bring him his true kin.'
Very faintly, he thought he heard a long sighing call, plaintive and beautiful, but it slipped from him even as he turned his attention to it.
He had done all that he could.
* * * *
Isgyrn was crouching at the entrance to the tent. Rachyl was standing behind him and he was being gently restrained by the Traveller as Ibryen opened his eyes.
'What have you done?’ he asked breathlessly.
'The best I could,’ Ibryen replied, almost apologetically.
Isgyrn grimaced with self-reproach and shook his head. ‘No, I meant what risk have you taken for me?'
'None.’ Ibryen smiled. He held out the Culmaren. Isgyrn took hold of it. As he did so, Ibryen held it for a moment.
'This is he,’ he said silently into the world beyond.
Something touched him in the timeless moment that did not exist in the tent.
Isgyrn let go of the Culmaren with one hand and reached up as if to brush something from his face. ‘You put me under an obligation I can see no way of repaying,’ he said.
'Nonsense,’ Ibryen said gently. ‘I saved you when you were lost. You tore me from the grip of my enemy. Obligations can't exist between us. All I've just done for you is simple courtesy such as I hope I'd offer any stranger ... an unusual one, I'll grant ... but nothing more, for all that. You're a free man. You may come back to our village, our besieged camp, and fight against the Gevethen, if you wish, or you may go wherever your fancy takes you, with my blessing, and never to be forgotten.’ He looked at the Traveller. ‘Would you take him with you to find this Great Gate of yours?'
'If he wants to come, yes,’ the Traveller replied without hesitation. ‘I'm getting quite used to company, and I've questions to ask him that should last us the entire journey and more.'
Isgyrn waved his hand impatiently and dropped on to one knee. ‘I pledge you my sword, Ibryen, Count of Nesdiryn. I have few fighting skills suitable to this place but they are yours if you would have them.'
Taken aback by this sudden formality, Ibryen did not reply at once.
'I will lay down my life for you,’ Isgyrn pressed on.
Rachyl's eyebrows rose in amusement and expectation. Ibryen recovered himself and looked at Isgyrn sharply. ‘If you fight for me you'll fight by me, and you'll lay other people's lives down, Soarer, not your own. As many as are needed to end this business.'
Isgyrn gaped at him uncertainly. Rachyl laughed and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on, let's get this tent down and make our way back to the village.'
A little later they were ready to leave. Rachyl, swinging her pack on to her back and hitching it to and fro until it was comfortable, looked at Ibryen.
'What are we going to tell them when we get back?’ she asked unhappily. One man and his blanket and a plethora of strange tales, her manner said, though she spoke none of it.
'Let's see if we can get back down to the forest and make camp before the light goes,’ Ibryen said, avoiding the question, then, ‘What we always tell them,’ he said. ‘The truth, as far as we're able. I set out on this journey on little more than a whim. Perhaps a desperate whim, I don't know. I'd no clear expectations and if I'd had any I doubt very much whether they'd have matched the reality of what's happened. We go back with an extra sword and changed from what we were. Perhaps that'll show us the way.'
'Lead us to the Gevethen from a direction they don't even know exists?’ Rachyl said, echoing the reassurance they had left behind them.
Ibryen's expression suddenly became pained and he put his hand to his head. �
�What is the greatest danger that winter offers us, Rachyl?’ he catechized.
'It makes us forget,’ she responded, surprised but without pause. The exchange, and variations of it were common fare in the village during winter.
'It does indeed. We stop thinking,’ Ibryen said. ‘And not least myself.'
'What's the matter?'
'I had the Gevethen within dagger's reach,’ Ibryen said angrily. ‘Not that I could've used it, but it's only just occurred to me that this was the way to which I was being directed. The way to come upon them unseen and unheard. And not only does it take me half a day to grasp that, it's only just come to me that it was they who attacked me! They who came unseen and unheard on me. They know of these strange worlds beyond. They too can travel between them.’ His voice was full of despair.
'No!’ Isgyrn's firm voice cut through Ibryen's distress. ‘They were neither unseen, nor unheard, if you recall. In fact they made a fearful din. And I saw their faces more clearly than you. However they came there, they were shocked to see you. And afraid, for all they seized you.’ Ibryen looked at him, his eyes doubting. ‘Think, Ibryen. If they knew the secret of these other worlds so well that they could move where they wanted, when they wanted, why haven't they discovered your secret village and sent their army against it? Or, for that matter, why haven't they come to your room and killed you while you slept? It's not only you who's been changed by this journey. You touched them. Their enemy came upon them unexpectedly and touched them. Whatever they were, they're different now. Whatever they thought, they're thinking differently now. Change has been set in motion. Incalculable change. And where there's change, there's opportunity.'
Ibryen clenched his teeth. ‘You're right, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Forgive me. It was just a momentary ...'
Rachyl slapped him on the back. ‘Come on,’ she said heartily. ‘Enough talk. Let's get down the hill and make ourselves a decent camp. I'm starving.'
* * * *
Jeyan hesitantly moved to the door of her room. It had been left slightly open. Cautiously she pulled it wide and peered out into the dimly lit corridor beyond. There was no one about. Almost to her own surprise she stepped backwards away from the door, then sat on a nearby chair and stared at this unexpected invitation to freedom.
What had happened? She had been asking the question continuously since, with a rush of piercing cold that had chilled her to the core, and which still lingered, she found herself staggering uncontrollably across her room. Two servants caught her and she held on to them as though they might offer her protection when she turned round.
As the Gevethen had screamed abuse at one another when Ibryen had escaped from them, so now, transformed into an arm-waving multitude, they were screaming abuse at the mirror-bearers. She could not see those who were supporting the two great mirrors that became one, but she could see the mirrors shaking. With each tremor, the Gevethen's screaming became worse. The moon-faced multitude milled about wildly. Yet something was wrong. The endless dancing movements of the mirror-bearers were stilted and jerky, and some of the images of the Gevethen flickered unevenly, appearing and disappearing.
Jeyan could feel the two servants beside her trembling. Gradually the two mirrors became still. Then they parted. As a black shadow cut between them, Jeyan briefly felt again as though she were being torn in half. She gasped and shuddered. Is part of me still in there? she thought, without knowing what she meant.
As she recovered, she noticed the state of the room.
Chairs and tables had been knocked over, ornaments and crockery broken, rugs and carpets scattered. It was almost as though the servants and the mirror-bearers had been brawling and rampaging while their masters were away. She had barely taken in the scene however, when the mirror-bearers washed to one side of the room like an incoming wave up a beach. She stepped back involuntarily, then there was a sudden whirl of activity and the still-screaming Gevethen rushed from the room, escorted by a furious mob of their own kind. Jeyan stood still for a moment, as shocked by the sudden silence and stillness as she had been by the frenzied movement and noise. What she took to be another piece of upturned furniture caught her eye in the half-light. She looked at it curiously then took a lantern and moved to examine it further.
She stopped as the light from the lantern fell on two bodies. Their simple dress identified them as mirror-bearers, and what she had taken to be the ornamental legs of a small table jutting into the air proved to be their arms reaching up, fingers bent into claws.
She turned up the lantern and stepped forward uncertainly. The floor became alive with glittering lights and there was a noisy unsteadiness beneath her feet. She paused and crouched down carefully. The floor about the two mirror-bearers was covered with countless fragments of glass. She picked up one of them. Her face, tiny, drawn and fearful in the light of the lantern, looked up at her. About her feet, other images of her stirred as she moved. For a moment she thought she was going to sink into them. The fragments were the remains of their mirrors, she realized as she shook off the impression. But what could have broken them so totally? And what had killed the mirror-bearers? For she needed to check no pulse to know that they were dead. Even if their rigid postures had not told her, their gaping eyes and mouths would have.
She shivered. What had happened in the Gevethen's ‘crude and ill-formed ante-chamber’ to bring this about? What had been the consequences in this room of the buffeting and vibrating that had shaken the mirrors’ inner world? And which was cause, which effect?
She remembered that as Ibryen had disappeared and the Gevethen had staggered back, the scene had fragmented into a storm of jagged and frightening lights. Lights which passed clear through her. As she looked down at the dead figures she felt an unexpected twinge of pity. What terrible burdens did these wretched people carry in addition to their mirrors? What hideous bargain had they stuck to bring them to this?
She became aware of the servants gathering around her, hands raised to protect their eyes from the brightened lantern. She dimmed it.
'What's happened here?’ she demanded, though more from want of something to say than from any hope of receiving an answer. There was no reply. Briefly she considered pressing the question but she knew that it would be to no effect.
'Get help,’ she said quietly, standing up. ‘Get ... your friends ... taken away and tended to properly, and ... get this mess cleaned up.'
She had scarcely finished speaking when she was surrounded by hectic but disturbingly silent activity as the servants began to do what she had asked, though whether this was because of her order or in response to some other command she had no idea. As the bodies were carried out she noticed that they were as rigid as their arm positions suggested. It was as if they had been dead for some time. Then the fragments of the mirrors were removed. As Jeyan watched, this began to assume the quality of nightmare, so obsessively meticulous was the behaviour of the servants as they crawled about picking up first the large pieces and then bending closer and closer to the floor in search of ever smaller pieces.
At one point, she was sorely tempted to scream at them as the Gevethen had done, but again a sense of the futility of the action deterred her.
Now they were gone. And they had left the door ajar. A strange final flaw in the chaotic and frightening events of the day. No wiser for her further review of what had happened, she stood up and moved purposefully out into the corridor.
* * *
Chapter 29
Jeyan was far from clear about what it was she intended to do. She was also fearful about the consequences that this impromptu exploring might bring down upon her.
'I was anxious to follow your Excellencies but I'm unfamiliar with the Citadel and I became lost.'
Like a child she had prepared this excuse when barely a dozen paces from her room in the event of her encountering the Gevethen or being challenged. After all, the door had been left not only unlocked, but open, hadn't it? Initially she included an account of the time
spent removing the two bodies and the remains of the shattered mirrors, but some more reflective instinct told her to make no reference to these unless they were mentioned first.
Her heart was thumping painfully as she moved cautiously through the corridors of the Citadel. Not only was she afraid of meeting anyone who might call her to account but she had little or no idea where she was and still less about where she was going. During her trips to and from the Judgement Hall she had been surrounded by Guards and mirror-bearers and, more significantly, she had been too preoccupied to pay much attention to her whereabouts. Soon however, meeting no one, she grew calmer, and old Ennerhald habits returned, slipping her silently into darker shadows at the least sound or sign of movement. Several times she caught herself glancing rapidly from side to side to assure herself that Assh and Frey were keeping station. The involuntary action made her grimace, reminding her as it did, brutally, of the deaths of the two dogs and of the wound that their absence left in her life—a wound she was struggling to ignore. It gave her little consolation that in some way they were still alive. They were a hunting trio—she needed the touch, the sight, the smell and the sound of them, the look in the eye, the soft, scarcely audible whine. And she needed them in this world, now, not in some strange other world to which access could be made only through the mirrors and, as far as she knew, at the behest of the Gevethen.
Finally she made a determined effort to force the anger and distress from her mind. They weren't here and that was an end to it!
'Lord Counsellor?'
Jeyan spun round, hand reaching for a knife that was no longer there. In front of her stood one of the Citadel officials—an ordinary clerk of some kind, she registered, from his livery. His eyes were lowered and he was just dropping awkwardly to his knees. Jeyan recalled how those watching her as she was paraded to the Judgement Hall had knelt when she looked at them.
Relief followed the initial shock of the encounter and lingering remains of her old life prompted her to tell the man to rise. She should confide in him, ask him where she was, how she might escape from the Citadel. The thoughts caught her unawares and mingled confusingly with a frisson of elation at the power that the man's obeisance invested in her. Then came anger again that she should even think such foolishness after all she had learned in the Ennerhald.