The Longsword Chronicles: Book 02 - Sword and Circle
Page 7
Gawain stared, and blinked slowly, and then, to Allazar’s utter astonishment, burst out laughing.
“What? What have I said?” Allazar gaped, notebook in one hand, a doorstep of a steak sandwich in the other, as Gawain’s hysterical laughter echoed around the shattered walls of the Keep. Then the laughter turned to great wracking sobs, and Gawain drew up his knees, burying his face in his arms, and wept.
Allazar’s stomach sank, as his surroundings crashed back through the enthusiasm of his wizardly work. He reached out a hesitant hand to pat Gawain on the shoulder, but felt the hard cold scabbard of the longsword beneath his palm instead. He hastily put aside his sandwich, and sidled closer along the step.
“Oh my dear young friend… forgive me.” He whispered, and sat quietly, until Gawain’s shoulders ceased their heaving, and silence reigned once more in the shattered halls of Raheen.
When Gawain at last looked up and wiped his face on his sleeve, he found the wizard gazing at him with such profound sorrow and guilt that for a moment a wave of pity for the older man washed over he, and to the surprise of both, Gawain patted Allazar on the back.
“It’s not your fault, Allazar. I don’t know what came over me. I thought I was master of myself again, and could cope with… It’s just this, everything…” and he waved a hand that would encompass the entire world.
“I’m sorry. Excitement, you see, the runes… it got the better of me.”
Gawain nodded. They shared the silence and each other’s company for a long while, staring into the middle distance. Then a sudden breeze blew in through a gash in the wall behind them, and rustled the paper packaging of Allazar’s sandwich.
“I can’t believe you brought half a cow wedged between two loaves of bread with you.” Gawain muttered. “And you let me sit here eating frak, in the hall of my fathers.”
Allazar shrugged, and picked up his sandwich, and looked from it to the younger man’s red-rimmed but humour-filled eyes. “What can I say, Longsword. They had no rabbit at the outpost kitchens.” And with that, he took another bite.
Gawain snorted with laughter again, and this time there were no tears. What manner of mighty inner portals the young man kept tightly shuttered against his ineffable sorrow, one could only guess, but they had been closed again, and he was master of himself once more.
“So,” he sighed. “Do you think I was right to bring you here, Allazar? And right to suffer the ire of my lady?”
The wizard gazed at the floor, and carefully packed away the remains of his sandwich, chewing frantically. “Yes,” he said at length, “Yes I do. Though I know not what these markings mean, I am sure with careful study I can decipher their meaning. The key must be in the relationship between the three rings of runes, see…”
Again, Gawain laughed, and again Allazar felt a sudden alarm. But this time, there was sadness in the young king’s expression, muting the humour. “We had wizards too, Allazar, and they say that for many years, centuries ago, other wizards tried to decipher the meaning of the inscriptions. They gave up, declaring it beyond their ability.”
Allazar sniffed, indignant. “Times have advanced since then. We have all the knowledge of the modern age at our disposal,” he declared.
Gawain shook his head sadly. “Stand up here,” he said, rising and leading the wizard up to the topmost level upon with the thrones sat. “You get a better view of them from here.”
Standing in front of his father’s throne, Gawain looked down upon the circle, a confused wizard beside him.
“They change,” Gawain said softly, sadly. “Every time someone steps into the circle, they change.” And leaving Allazar on the top step gazing down at the circle on a floor glistening like a pool of obsidian, Gawain descended the steps, and strode into the circle. Though there was no commotion, no sound save the fading echo of Gawain’s footsteps, sure enough the runes shifted within the floor, like living beings, dull silver-gold amoebas, changing shape, and then freezing.
Allazar gasped in astonishment and wonder, and hurried down the steps to join Gawain. Again, as soon as he stepped into the circle, again the runes changed. Remembering his notebook, Allazar rushed back to collect it and again, the moment he set foot in the circle, the runes changed once more.
“It is hopeless.” Gawain sighed.
But Allazar ignored him, scurrying here and there within the circle, checking for patterns, looking for a key, some kind of commonality.
“Allazar.” Gawain said softly.
“Longsword?”
“It is hopeless. I had hoped… I had thought you might see this and know something, perhaps some intuition, I don’t know….”
The wizard drew himself upright from gazing at the runes in the centre of the circle. “It is most certainly not hopeless, Longsword, and you were right to bring me here.” Allazar affirmed, his face stern, but his eyes excited and filled with conviction. “This is beyond common meaning. Just because we do not know its meaning yet does not mean it is not important.”
Gawain folded his arms and eyed the wizard, seeking reassurance. “So when my lady asks if it was worth the journey, you’ll be happy to bear the brunt of her ire if we leave here empty handed?”
Allazar was about to answer and then thought better of it.
“I think we’ll sleep in here with the horses tonight.” Gawain said quietly, and left the circle, leaving a silent wizard staring at the floor as the runes changed once again.
Several hours later, as the shadows lengthened from one side of the Keep to the other, Gawain finished laying out his bed-roll. While Allazar had spent the hours moving in and out of the circle, muttering and scribbling notes, Gawain had unsaddled the horses, and tended to his duties to them. Even the Callodon pack-horse seemed to have no desire to venture outside into the bleached desolation beyond.
Gawain adjusted the sword on his back, then as an afterthought removed the belt from which his shortsword hung and laid it across his saddle. He looked up, and found himself wishing the upper floors of the Keep had survived the blast, but he saw nothing but the sky and the remains of the stone corbels on which had once rested the great oak beams of floors and ceilings. He would have liked to have stood on the roof again, just once more, up where the old one-eyed soldier had raised the flag and remembered The Fallen every morning of Gawain’s life in Raheen.
With a sharp sigh, Gawain crushed the memory, and remembering the darkening skies to the east and hearing the distant rumble of thunder, he packed his bedroll away again, and moved all the packs and their belongings across the Keep into the relative shelter of the vaulted sentry’s post cut deep into the east wall at the northeast corner of the Keep. The post once guarded the spiral stairs leading up to the floors above, and Gawain remembered the faces of the guards who once stood quiet duty there, or sat on the uncomfortable misericords set into the wall when no-one was about. Gwyn and the other horses followed him, to stand quietly, looking as downcast as any horses could.
“I’m going outside, Allazar.” Gawain called softly, suddenly in need of space and fresh air to drive the ghosts from his mind’s eye.
“Hmm? Ah, yes, yes I’ll think I’ll join you, clear the head. My eyes could do with a rest too.”
Together, they walked quietly out of the Hall and into the sunlight beyond.
“Evening already?” Allazar muttered, stepping over the wreckage of the gates into the courtyard beyond.
“Yes, though made darker by the gathering storm. I never thought I’d see another here. I certainly never imagined I’d spend a night here.”
“Nor I,” Allazar admitted. “But take heart, Longsword, I certainly believe as you do that our journey was worth the effort. As for the haste of it, I cannot say, but we are here now, and that’s all that matters.”
Gawain nodded, and shielded his eyes, looking first to the far north, then to the west.
“What is it?” Allazar asked.
“I thought I saw something.” Gawain muttered. Then he shrugged.
“Trick of the light probably, after being in the shade so long.”
“Ah,” Allazar agreed, stretching with a sigh. “Or perhaps the lightning from the east? Tell me, Longsword, do you remember anything else of the wizards of the past, of their attempts to understand the circle?”
“Alas no,” Gawain looked sheepish. “I’m afraid I didn’t pay very much attention to the affairs of wizards. Like most young men in Raheen, I was more concerned with my training, and as Elayeen put it, spending great tracts of my life charging aimlessly about the place on horseback.”
“Ah.”
“Why? Has the knowledge of this modern age revealed something to you?” Gawain again looked north, frowning, and then west again.
“I’m not certain. But I have an inkling. Only the vaguest idea, of course, and one so simple it can’t possibly be relevant nor I’m sure would it have been overlooked, though it might…”
But Gawain wasn’t listening. He was scanning the ground frantically in a hopeless search for some kind of cover.
“Longsword?”
“The west, Allazar,” Gawain cried, “Something approaches from the west! Back to the Keep!”
Allazar shielded his eyes. Something was approaching from the west, high above the ground, and it was growing bigger. “Elve’s Blood and Dwarfspit!” he gasped, “What is that?”
Gwyn whinnied from entrance to the Keep, her head bobbing frantically, pawing at the flagstones like a bull about to charge.
“Run! Allazar!” Gawain shouted.
But it was too late. A shadow, winged and broad, swept over them, a great wind following, and from above, a streamer of crackling black lightning crashed into the flagstones to the right of the wizard.
Allazar stumbled, then turned and began lurching towards the Keep, tripping on debris and finally ending face down upon the twisted remains of the great iron gates. He looked up to see Gawain stringing an arrow, and hurling it upward at something behind and above. As he stumbled to his knees, he turned his head, and to his horror he saw an image of ancient terror, an image which had graced many a page in the dusty tomes of D’ith Hallencloister’s library, an image which had troubled the dreams of many a sleeping child. Dust swirled, blinding him, as the immense form of the Graken back-winged into the courtyard.
Another arrow fizzed overhead as Allazar dragged himself up and ran, half blind from the swirling dust and half dazed from the sight of a dark-made beast not seen for centuries. Gawain’s arrow must have struck the creature somewhere, for the crack of the string that launched the shaft was drowned by a monstrous howl.
Allazar had cleared the wreckage of the gates and was turning, raising his hands and chanting, when another streamer of immensely powerful lightning blasted into the ground between him and Gawain, knocking them both off their feet. Gwyn whinnied pitifully, furiously, but seemed utterly incapable of leaving the shelter of the vaulted entrance to the Keep.
Silence, and then laughter filled the air, followed by a rhythmic snorting and a dragging noise Allazar couldn’t quite place. He pushed himself up, and glancing over his shoulder understood what the noises were. The Graken, breathing hard from its flight and with a Raheen arrow waving like a signal-man’s flag from the base of its neck, was moving slowly towards them, dragging its tail behind it. In the air it reigned unchallenged by any creature of Nature’s making, but on foot, on the ground, it was clumsy and slow.
The laughter, Allazar saw, came from the rider mounted in what looked for all the world like a high-backed armchair strapped to the creature’s back, holding braided rope reins attached to a complicated bridle and bit about the Graken’s grotesque, lizard-like head.
Another arrow fizzed over Allazar’s left shoulder, but the masked and laughing figure simply raised the long staff he was holding, a great black shimmering disk of smoke appeared, and the arrow flared into ash upon striking it.
“Foolish boy, do you not know who you face on this your end of days?” A malevolent voice, metallic and harsh rasped from behind the winged iron-grey mask the staff-bearer wore. The mask was plain, unadorned, and all the more menacing for it, just two simple holes for the wearer’s eyes, and half a dozen smaller holes drilled into the metal for the mouth.
Gawain hurled another arrow, and again the shield of smoke appeared before the staff, consuming the shaft. More laughter. Then Allazar, chanting at first under his breath and then crying the final words raised his hands and sent streamers of fire arcing towards the enemy.
This time, no black smoke shield appeared. The enemy wizard simply allowed the streamers to strike him, and laughed them off. Allazar felt a sudden sense of dread, of peril beyond his ability to describe.
“What’s this?” The masked rider demanded, pulling on the reins and bringing the Graken to a halt. “They have sent a child of a wizard to aid a boy of a king? Morloch commands I, Salaman Goth of Goria, to do the work of an apprentice!”
“You are of Goria?” Gawain called out, his voice strong, rich and powerful compared to the metallic rasp of his enemy. “And a Goth-lord?”
Sparks crackled at the ends of the staff the dark wizard held in his outstretched right arm. “I am Salaman Goth! Know you not my name, boy? Does your history not speak of me in fear and in trembling? Was it not I who created the Goth-lords in my image?”
Allazar’s shoulders slumped, and though a dread feeling of total helplessness threatened to overwhelm him, he still instinctively moved back a little at a time, and further to his right, allowing Gawain a clearer shot at the creatures before them.
More sparks showered from the ends of Goth’s staff, then a dazzling streamer of fire lanced into the darkening evening skies, great black thunderheads bubbling over them all the way from the eastern plains. Then Salaman Goth flexed his arm, raising the staff a little.
“Know you this stave, witless worm of the D’ith?”
“I… I know it not!” Allazar cried, and began mumbling anew under his breath.
More laughter. “Then learn, and know despair! For this is the body of the Dymendin tree, five thousand years in the making and beyond your infantile power to defeat! From the moment you crossed between the guardstones at the bridge you were doomed to know its wrath. ”
More sparks, and another blast of lightning sent skyward.
“If only there were rabbits!” Allazar cried pitifully, hoping Gawain would understand, and began chanting yet again.
“Now you die, worm of the D’ith.”
“Your stick has a problem, Slaver!” Gawain cried out, using the old insult reserved for all Gorians found east of the Eramak while Pellarn still stood. Salaman Goth’s head flicked around to Gawain, who hurled another arrow at the masked form. Again the black smoke shield appeared around the staff, and again the arrow was burned to ash in an instant.
“And there is your problem, Slaver,” Gawain shouted triumphantly, another shaft already strung and ready for throwing. “Your shield does not encompass your beast’s head!”
And with that, Allazar sent streamers of fire full into the face of the Graken. It reared up, blinded, screeching, and Gawain’s arrow slammed into the soft flesh beneath its jaw to bury itself deep in the bone of the neck beneath.
The Graken screamed in agony then, thrashing its head from side to side, spraying dark blood upon bleached stone courtyard, and rearing up and away from the direction of its pain toppled Salaman Goth from his seat.
In an instant, Gawain unsheathed the longsword and sprinted forward, a single swing almost severing the Graken’s head from its neck, ending its dark-made existence. Streamers of fire leapt from behind and to Gawain’s right, striking the Goth harmlessly, but providing enough of a distraction to make him stumble, bringing Gawain closer to his target.
Gawain brought the longsword down with all the outrage that coursed through him. But the steel struck a black shield, which seemed to envelope Salaman Goth. More streamers from behind, closer, Allazar standing close to Gawain now, and Gawain swung again, and again,
smashing down upon the shield Salaman Goth had created, the sound of the blows mingling with the sound of the thunderstorm roiling up from the east, deafening thunder and great, earth-shaking cracks moments after lightning dazzled all.
But to no avail. The power of the dark wizard and his staff was too great, the mighty blade and Allazar’s weakening streamers could not penetrate such defences. Salaman Goth pushed out the shield while Gawain hammered upon it with righteous fury, but using the staff as a hiker would a stick, he dragged himself up off his knees to stand before them. He held the staff vertically, staring with aquamire black eyes through the iron mask, bringing forth the shield each time Gawain swung at him. And this time there was no laughter. He simply stood there, waiting for Gawain and Allazar to exhaust themselves.
Realisation dawned upon Gawain slowly, but then a new clarity of thought washed away his fury and outrage at Raheen being invaded a second time. A new resolve, grim and irrepressible, flooded through him. Holding the longsword poised, he backed away a single pace, Allazar behind and to the right, well clear of his swing.
“If you start walking now, you might make your squalid homeland before winter, minion of Morloch!” Gawain spat, breathing hard.
“Futile, boy-king, your end has come.”
“Do you not know me, slave of Morloch, do you not know my name? Does not your miserable history record the name of he who slew your lapdog Armun Tal, created in your own image, here, on this very spot?”
The black shield emanating from Goth’s staff disappeared, and he advanced half a pace to answer Gawain.
But no answer came. For at that moment, Elayeen burst through the ghosts of the north gate, guiding her horse towards the northwest corner of the Keep, intending to pass Salaman Goth on his right flank. Gawain, poised to strike, watched as though caught between two worlds, the one with his beloved at full charge, her face contorted with furious concentration, longbow drawn, aiming at Salaman Goth, the other, a bedraggled and tousle-haired Forester, Gillyan Treen, astride her horse-friend, her short-bow drawn, aiming at Armun Tal…