by Roger Taylor
No!
‘Let me be!’
Such anger. Such fear.
Vashnar reached out in denial. This spirit – this spirit above all – must be bound. Its soaring freedom was a deep offence.
And a threat.
No! Two wills clashed, wringing and choking, like warring serpents.
From somewhere came a blow that racked Vashnar, fragmenting and scattering his tenuous awareness. The darkness itself shuddered under the impact, throwing him again into a tumbling emptiness.
Sinking, fading, a slow spiralling dwindling down towards…
Nothing.
Save a faint quivering line which questioned.
Was this all?
A quivering line, unbearable to look at.
A quivering line that was a sword-slash brightness cleaving through the darkness, turning silent desperation into a distant cry.
A wash of fear and hope – a flickering image of a longed-for haven – a vast teeming city, spanning from horizon to red-skyed horizon. But it was gone, and a face was staring at him intently, concerned, familiar. There were others with it. And a bright blue sky behind them.
Hyrald?
The question boomed and echoed through his mind. As it swelled, the sky brightened, filling his eyes painfully and swallowing the faces.
The afternoon sun, low and searching, shimmered, rainbow-brilliant, off the polished facets of the crystal ink-stand that formed a centre-piece to the strategic array on his desk. It shifted, drawing him forward giddily. Instinctively he caught the edge of the desk to steady himself. Something fell wetly on to his hand. It was dark in his bleached vision. He became aware of his nose running. Another dark drop fell. Eyes blurring, he watched as it ran off his hand and formed a small, misshapen pool on the glistening wood.
* * * *
Thyrn jerked forward violently into the waiting arms of Nordath, almost knocking him over. Nordath held him tightly.
‘You’re all right, you’re all right,’ he kept repeating desperately, as he restrained the struggling young Caddoran. ‘You’re safe. Don’t be afraid.’
Hyrald and the others came running to them, alarmed, but Nordath motioned them not to interfere.
It was some time before Thyrn became calm enough for Nordath to risk releasing him.
‘What happened?’ Hyrald asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Nordath replied.
Hyrald addressed the same question to Thyrn, who gazed up at him blankly. Though he appeared to be recovering, he was still pale and trembling. Hyrald saw that no matter what the answer to his question might be, Thyrn had just suffered a genuine fright. He used the insight to continue his interrogation. Whatever had happened to Thyrn and whatever condition he was in, this strange episode merely added to the many questions that had to be answered before they could continue their journey. Crouching down, he took Thyrn’s arm.
‘You gave us a fright. Particularly your uncle. Are you all right now?’
It took him some effort to affect a quiet concern, but it seemed to settle Thyrn further, though he replied only with a tentative nod of his head.
‘Has anything like this happened before?’ Hyrald pressed gently.
The nod became a shake then a nod again. Hyrald managed an encouraging smile. ‘Is that a yes or a no?’
Thyrn lifted a hand as if to deflect the inquiry, then leaning on Hyrald, he stood up unsteadily. He looked younger and frailer than his years, but his voice was unexpectedly steady when he spoke. ‘Something… similar has happened before but I can’t talk about it. It’s a Caddoran matter.’
Hyrald felt Rhavvan bridling and Adren shifted uncomfortably. He stepped close to Thyrn. His posture was confidential and protective, but his voice was quietly determined.
‘I don’t want to know anything about your Caddoran affairs, Thyrn, I’ve told you that. But there are things we need to know. We’ve travelled through some dangerous times these past days, and whatever we decide to do, there’ll be more to come for sure. It’s not been easy for any of us and you’ve handled yourself well, but if you’re suddenly going to pass out without warning you can see that might be a problem, can’t you?’
Thyrn turned away from him. ‘I have to go north,’ he said, gathering resolution from his questioner. ‘Away from here. Away from…’ He put his hands to his temples, though it was not a histrionic gesture. ‘I have to get away from Vashnar. There are lands up there where we can hide. A great city…’
Despite himself, Hyrald could not disguise his irritation. ‘Hiding, hiding. We can’t spend the rest of our lives hiding.’ He pointed to Rhavvan and Adren. ‘We’re Wardens. We, above all, know you can’t hide for ever. No one can. Sooner or later, fugitives are always caught. Either that or they die dismally somewhere, alone, forgotten. Not to mention the fact that we’ve all got lives to live. Homes, friends, families back in Arvenshelm.’
He stopped. None of them could afford the self-indulgence of fretting about what they had left behind. That would merely add to their burdens. He forced himself to renew his assault as calmly as he could.
‘As for this great city you keep talking about, it may just be a myth.’ He pulled a sheet of paper from one of his pockets, unfolded it and smoothed it out noisily. ‘We’re still in Arvenstaat, but even this place isn’t on the map. Look.’ He tapped the paper. ‘As for up there, there’s no saying what there is, what dangers we might be walking into. Great cities, magic castles, lands full of gentle people carving, tending horses. All tales. And there are just as many tales of blasted lands, full of mists and swamps and tribes of wild creatures – scarcely human. And vast forests that no one who enters ever comes out of.’ He managed to soften his manner. ‘A few years ago – you’re probably too young to remember – the gossip was all about a great war that was supposed to have been fought in the lands to the north. But that’s all it was – gossip. The fact is, nobody knows anything about what’s up there.’
Thyrn turned to his uncle but found no aid. For a moment Hyrald thought there was going to be a repeat of his mysterious collapse.
‘Tell us what’s frightening you,’ he said urgently. ‘Until you do that you’re going to be a fugitive whether you stay here or keep running.’
Thyrn put his hands to his temples again and his face stiffened. ‘I broke away from him. Pushed him out.’ The words came out with great force, as if suddenly overcoming an obstacle. He looked both surprised and pleased with himself.
‘Broke away, pushed who out, what do you mean?’
‘Vashnar – broke away from him.’
Hyrald looked at Nordath for clarification but none came. ‘When?’ he asked, in the absence of greater inspiration.
Thyrn was down to earth. ‘Now. Just now. When he tried to take me back. I pushed him out.’
Hyrald could only repeat, ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’
This time it was Thyrn who looked irritated. He spoke as to a pestering child. ‘When he came for me, just now. Tried to take me back. I got away from him.’ Then he smiled, surprised and pleased again. ‘Hit him, I think. Somehow.’
Noting the expressions on the faces of the three Wardens, Nordath intervened. ‘How did he try to take you back, Thyrn?’
Thyrn tapped his head. ‘In here. He’s in here.’ He was gaining confidence.
‘He’s nuts,’ Rhavvan hissed to Hyrald. ‘No wonder Vashnar wanted him brought in. Ye gods, we’ve been…’ Hyrald motioned him silent.
‘You’ll have to explain to us,’ he said. ‘We’re not Caddoran, we don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I,’ Thyrn said, abruptly angry. ‘Not any of this. I don’t even understand how I can do what I do. None of us do. We just do it.’
There was an uncomfortable pause. Hyrald risked the obvious. ‘But how can Vashnar be in your… head… here, now?’
‘I told you, I don’t know. But he was here. The Joining I had with him…’ Fear lit his face again.
‘Joining?’ Hyrald tri
ed to make his query encouraging.
‘Explain to them,’ Nordath intervened. ‘Tell them what a Joining is – that’s no Caddoran secret, is it?’
Thyrn thought for a moment, eyeing his questioners, then let out a noisy breath. ‘It’s what happens when we’re remembering messages. We just become very quiet inside, so that we can feel what a client wants – become like them – become them, to some extent – hence, Joining. I can’t explain it any better than that.’ His tone was final.
Hyrald gave the accepting shrug of someone who is none the wiser but grateful and anxious to press on. ‘Tell us about “Joining” with Vashnar, then.’
Thyrn’s manner changed again. As he spoke, he began to gesticulate and his voice became more emphatic, as though he was now anxious to explain himself fully. ‘For some reason, what I do is much deeper – more intense – than for most other Caddoran. So I’m told anyway – I wouldn’t really know, would I? Anyway, it’s something like that, and that’s why I’m so good at my job. That’s why I got the job with Vashnar.’ He wrinkled his nose in distaste.
‘Caddoran to the Senior Warden is a much coveted post. Normally there’s fierce competition for it within the Congress,’ Nordath added by way of explanation.
Hyrald, however, was struggling with what Thyrn was saying. In his fairly limited dealings with Caddoran he had reached the commonly held conclusion that they were all ‘a bit odd’, but in so far as he had ever thought about how they worked he had imagined that they simply listened, remembered and repeated, like trained birds.
‘You say, you almost become your client when you’re taking their message?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when you’re passing the messages on?’
‘The same.’
Hyrald closed his eyes and thought for a moment, unconsciously imitating the Caddoran technique of feeling into the intention of the young man standing in front of him. When he opened them again, the sunlight, the shelter, the trees, everything, seemed a little brighter.
‘And you became Vashnar?’ he asked carefully.
Thyrn’s confidence faltered. ‘Vashnar’s… strange,’ he said, though the hesitation was more telling than the description. ‘He gave me the creeps from the start.’ The confession was almost blurted out. ‘When I made my first Joining with him, it was like going into a dark cellar.’ He shuddered. ‘I got used to it, of course. I’d been told that some people are peculiar to deal with and because of what I am – what I do – I’d be more susceptible to such things than most. I had to be detached, professional. Get on with my job. They spent more time telling me that than teaching me anything. I mustn’t let the Congress down, they said. It was a great honour to be given such a position so young. And good money too.’
Hyrald could not help smiling at the incongruous mixture of mature man and immature youth that Thyrn presented.
‘But it didn’t get any easier. In fact, it got worse the more I worked with him. There was always something frightening about him. Like something in the darkness, lurking there. Waiting to spring.’
‘Monsters under the bed,’ Rhavvan snorted, unable to contain himself. Hyrald angrily gestured him silent again, but Thyrn did not respond to the jibe. He simply looked straight at Rhavvan.
‘No, I’m not a child, afraid of shadows,’ he said. ‘I’m a Caddoran and a good one. I know my job. This was real. Very real. Very… disturbing. And it was there when I related the messages too. You could see it in people’s eyes sometimes. Fear. Nothing bad in the message that I could hear, nothing in the words, but something behind them. Something that came out when I spoke them. Something of Vashnar’s.’
There was silence. A light touch on his leg made Hyrald start. It was Endryk’s dog sniffing at him. The shoreman was standing nearby. He made a gesture to indicate that all was well. His arrival, however, was a reminder to Hyrald that time was against them. It had been a risk allowing Oudrence to leave, but with Endryk available to guide him on his way, the alternative of abandoning him here was peculiarly repellent. However, there was no saying how soon the young man might make contact with other Wardens and what the consequences of that might be. And too, for all Endryk’s protestations about their indifference to events in Arvenshelm, the local villagers could yet prove to be a problem.
Thyrn began speaking again. ‘It didn’t bother me too much at first. A job’s a job. Don’t get involved. Nothing bad was actually happening, after all. I tried to make a game of it – would this message be a frightener or not? That kind of thing. But as I said, it got worse. In the end I couldn’t do anything but try to ignore it – pass the messages on as quickly as I could. Get rid of them.’ He waved his hands as if shaking something off them. When he spoke again, he was weighing his words carefully, as though thinking aloud. ‘The thing is, I think it might have been working both ways. He used to look at me very strangely sometimes. As if he’d picked up something from me.’ He turned to Nordath. ‘I wonder if he’s part Caddoran?’
Nordath’s eyes widened, but he did not reply, other than to answer Hyrald’s unspoken question.
‘Whatever faculty it is that enables Caddoran to do what they do, they don’t practice their techniques on one another,’ he explained. ‘Strange things can sometimes happen to them when they Join to their own kind. Bad things. They get entangled in some way – can’t separate. It’s very bad. Caddoran have gone insane in the past, just experimenting. It’s not something that’s widely known. The Congress prefers to keep quiet about it. Hardly good for business if word gets about that using a Caddoran might drive you mad, is it?’
Hyrald was genuinely surprised. Like all Wardens, he prided himself on being worldly-wise, on knowing something about everything, and he was always a little affronted when this proved not to be the case. It reinforced the prejudices that as a member of a closed group he had for other closed groups. ‘I’d say, not widely known is a considerable understatement,’ he retorted acidly.
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ Rhavvan intruded bluntly. He had interpreted Endryk’s return as Hyrald had.
‘Rambling off into the blue beyond isn’t going to get us anywhere either,’ Adren spoke up, untypically forceful. We need to know what’s going on and Thyrn’s the only one who can tell us.’ Hyrald was glad of his sister’s intervention. He would wish for no one better than Rhavvan at his back in a crisis, but patience was not one of his stronger traits and he was always inclined to act in preference to thinking.
‘I’m sorry, Rhavvan. It’s all my fault, isn’t it? I did something wrong.’ The apology came quietly and unexpectedly from Thyrn. It took all of them by surprise. Already faced down once by the young man, Rhavvan gaped. An odd sound emerged which eventually slithered into, ‘No, not really. It’s just that…’ before fading away into a vaguely reassuring gesture. The others too, responding similarly to this unsought offering, eased forward hesitantly, making a protective ring about Thyrn. Endryk watched the group keenly.
Hyrald took back the initiative. ‘It’s Vashnar’s fault,’ he said categorically. ‘Don’t think otherwise for a moment. Whatever you did wrong – if anything – didn’t warrant even the Cry, let alone the Death Cry. And the rest of us have done even less than you.’ A momentary anger at their situation burst out. ‘Besides, nothing warrants the Death Cry, for mercy’s sake, not these days! We’re supposed to be civilized. We don’t hunt down people like animals. We don’t…’ He stopped himself. ‘Anyway, what we have to do now is find out what happened so that we can decide where we go. Try to tell us why you ran away from Vashnar. It’s very important.’
‘It’s difficult,’ Thyrn said in a low voice. ‘It wasn’t just one particular thing. It had been building for a long time. The sense of menace I felt whenever I Joined with Vashnar gradually got worse – and it was obviously leaking into his messages, judging by the responses I was getting from listeners. I think I was telling them much more than he intended.’ He straightened up. ‘I must have been. He began asking me ab
out my Oath. Did I understand what it meant – confidentiality? Did I understand what happened to Caddoran who were indiscreet? Those black eyes look right through you, you couldn’t hide anything from him even if you wanted to.’
He shivered. ‘I told him, yes, of course I did. It’s hammered into you incessantly at the Congress. But I could feel his doubt.’ His eyes flicked around the watching group and he took two very deep breaths. ‘Then, one day, we were sitting in his office. He seemed to be very relaxed. Jolly almost. As if something very good had just happened.’ Rhavvan and Adren exchanged a look of conspicuous disbelief. ‘He was giving me a routine message to one of the District Commanders. Nothing special. Something about moving men from one patrol to another…’
‘Speak it,’ Nordath suggested.
Thyrn waved his hands agitatedly. ‘No, no. It’s all one. It’ll bring it back.’
‘It’s all right,’ Hyrald said hastily. ‘The message probably isn’t important. Besides, we really don’t want you to break your Oath. Carry on with your tale. And don’t be afraid.’ Thyrn looked at him fearfully. ‘Nothing around here can hurt you,’ Hyrald added, waving a hand across the rolling green countryside.
Thyrn took another deep breath. ‘We were sitting there. Very relaxed. The sun was pouring in through that big window he has. Then… no warning… it’s dark. There’s a dreadful smell. Stinging smoke, a rancid rottenness.’ He put his hand to his stomach. ‘And something like burning meat – but it wasn’t meat – it was people.’ He shuddered and looked desperately at Nordath. ‘How could I know that, Uncle? I’ve never smelt anything like that.’
‘Don’t worry, tell your tale, get it out. We’ll talk about it all afterwards.’ Nordath’s voice was as strained as his nephew’s.
‘I knew everything that was there. Not how it came to be, you understand. But like in a dream. It makes no sense but you recognize each part.’ He stopped.
‘Darkness,’ Hyrald prompted. ‘You were in the darkness.’
Thyrn shook his head. ‘Not completely dark. There were flames all around. Lighting up great columns of smoke. Lighting up the clouds. The city was burning, the whole countryside was burning. And terrible cries. All around, terrible cries. People screaming – in fear and pain – awful sounds. But worse than that, I was filled with terrible feelings – feelings I shouldn’t have – that no one should have. Feelings there aren’t any words for.’ He leaned forward, face intense and finger jabbing accusingly. ‘And Vashnar was at the heart of it. Willing it on. Willing on a great tide of destruction and pain. Sweeping everything aside. Crushing everything underfoot. And delighting in it – delighting in it.’