The Return of the Sword

by Roger Taylor

  Where, before, a thin line of light had appeared, now great swathes of brightness swept out, engulfing the two riders.

  Chapter 35

  Nertha was veering wildly between near-panic and manic confidence. The greyness all about her seemed to be seeping into her very soul and, though no reason informed her, she knew that if she faltered, gave way to the despair that was clamouring at her, it would sweep her into oblivion. Resolutely she kept her thoughts from considerations of what had happened and what might happen. She was a physician – a healer; she must tend her four charges, here, now. They were all that mattered.

  All were breathing, all had good pulses. While this was so, all would be well, she told herself, over and over, continuing her steady, sustaining ritual of checking them.

  Then Antyr’s pulse began to falter.

  * * * *

  ‘As you see and feel, so shall we,’ Antyr said, speaking the words from long habit rather than from any clear intention.

  But, he realized immediately, it was no ordinary dreamer he was addressing, nor any ordinary dream that he and Vredech had entered. When he had confronted Ivaroth and the blind man, a strength had come out of depths within him that he did not know existed. From those depths came now the terrible knowledge.

  ‘This is the dream of the dead.’

  It was Vredech who voiced it.

  ‘The long-dead,’ Antyr added.

  Row upon row of figures extended in every direction to an unseen horizon. They were all staring in the same direction, their faces lit by a bright and unnatural light, though no source was apparent in the black and lifeless sky. Although no one of them seemed to move, a slow rippling constantly disturbed the whole and a low moaning rose and fell. It might have been a winter wind blowing across an empty and snowbound land but Antyr knew that it was not. It was the plaint of this multitude.

  ‘How have we come here?’ Vredech’s question mingled with the shifting sound.

  ‘Perhaps we should ask why we’ve brought ourselves here,’ Antyr replied. ‘We are the dreamer, we are the dead. The dead should not dream like this – joined, sharing, lingering through time so long. We will become as them if we linger too.’

  Tarrian! Grayle!

  Antyr roared the names of his Earth Holders in the silence of his mind but only the song of this place echoed back to him.

  ‘Nertha’s slipping from us.’ Vredech was suddenly fearful.

  ‘Cling to her,’ Antyr said urgently. ‘As you love her, cling to her, like a child to its mother. And call for Tarrian and Grayle . . . they’ll be hunting for us. You must hold us both while I seek an answer.’

  He was walking among the vast crowd.

  Each one he looked at seemed to be the same, yet at the edges of his vision they were all different – men, women, many ages, many races – all locked in this suffocating dream.

  What had brought them to this?

  He remembered Thyrn’s account of the Great Searing. A brightness moving across the land – reshaping, remaking.

  And in that remaking had been born the flaw that had set all this in train.

  It came to him that some part of the will of these people had not been remade – some part persisted past what should have been death.

  And it had called to him and Vredech at a depth beyond their hearing. Whatever else might be happening, there was a need here.

  Yet what was it?

  Antyr felt his thoughts mingling with the sighing song. Bewilderment, anger, cries for vengeance, many things were there, but somewhere, tantalizingly, a truer meaning lured him on.

  Then there was stillness, and the meaning was there.

  Darker than the black sky that over-arched this moving throng of unmoving people.

  This was not just the dream of the long dead, it was the deep dream of those now alive. A living remnant of the ancient times that had spawned the horror that had become the Great Searing – a sink of ignorance and fear that bound all of them to that terrible past . . .

  And that might draw it back.

  The sound was all about him, passing over and through him. There was no mistaking its truth.

  But now it held him.

  And fear began to pervade him.

  The ancient song was engulfing him.

  * * * *

  Breathing heavily and still holding his stomach from the impact of catching Andawyr, Isloman clambered to his feet and moved to place himself between the approaching rider and the fallen Cadwanwr. He had taken barely two steps, however, when he was pushed violently against the walls of the passage. Though not capable of using the Power himself he recognized it immediately and knew that nothing was to be gained by trying to oppose it. He relaxed and the force holding him left him instantly.

  Andawyr was opening his eyes when the rider stopped in front of him. He stiffened as he saw the angular head of the horse-creature swaying above him, malevolent eyes and twitching nostrils searching him. For an instant there was stark fear in his face. He had seen its like before, ridden by Oklar.

  Like his mount, the rider too was leaning forward and staring at him.

  Another champion gave Andawyr a little more time to recover.

  ‘Who are you?’ Usche demanded angrily of the rider.

  Oslang reached out to stop her but it was too late. The same force that had knocked Isloman down struck her also, though being much lighter than the big carver it almost lifted her off her feet. Isloman managed to catch her and prevent what would probably have been serious injury had she struck the wall. He thrust her behind him before she had time to protest. Ar-Billan’s jaw jutted and he made to move forward but Atelon jerked him back forcefully.

  The rider spoke. His voice was cold and inhuman, but its inflection was all too human, laden as it was with viciousness and malice.

  ‘You have defiled the most holy of His places. The place where the Great Way will open, to bring us to Him. Punishment for this will need great and special reflection. Who are you and how did you come here?’

  Andawyr tried to push himself backwards with the intention of standing but the creature brought its head closer and uttered a low growl. Andawyr wrinkled his nose in disgust as its breath wafted over him. Then, after a thoughtful pause, he punched it squarely on the muzzle.

  Everyone started, not least the animal, which jerked its head back and reared slightly. The rider had obvious difficulty in preventing it from lunging at the now standing Cadwanwr.

  ‘You’ll punish no one, you obscenity.’ Andawyr’s voice burst through the clatter of skittering hooves. ‘You’ll go the way all His servants go – to some dismal doom – lost and howling.’

  A hissing came from the dark figure as he finally gained control over his mount but Andawyr did not allow him to speak.

  ‘That we’re here – in His most holy of places . . .’ He spat contemptuously. ‘Is a measure of how flawed His plans are – how inadequate His will.’

  Oslang and Atelon, badly shaken by this raucous and uncharacteristic challenge, exchanged glances both bewildered and desperate.

  The hissing faded into an insect whine and the rider inclined his head slightly. Slowly, he removed his helm to reveal the thin, haggard face of an old man. It was framed with lank, lifeless hair and, though the pervasive blue light could not disguise its unhealthy pallor, it was lit with an unnatural energy. The eyes Andawyr found himself looking into were white and cloudy as though vision had fled from them at the sight of some terrible truth.

  The rider, like his mount, was moving his head from side to side inquiringly. The movement, both birdlike and serpentine, was repellent.

  Then Andawyr let out a sigh of recognition and understanding.

  ‘I had wondered,’ he said, more quietly. ‘When I heard Antyr’s tale, blind man. And it is you. The one who tried to blind Hawklan at the Gretmearc so long ago. Oklar’s sorry vassal – his miserable apprentice.’ He became dismissive. ‘I’d thought you dead at his hand long ago – he’d little tolerance for
failure.’

  The rider’s hands tightened about the reins, pulling the head of his mount down until it let out a screeching whimper. Usche moved out from behind Isloman, but his arm came out to stop her going any further.

  ‘Better he had killed you,’ Andawyr pressed. ‘Than that you should’ve fallen to this depravity. It seems you learned nothing from what I showed you.’

  The blind man bent low towards him, his head thrust forward by his mount’s neck, his teeth bared in a fearful rictus and his blind eyes wide and staring. ‘How did you come here?’ he said again with a frightening softness, his bony hand reaching towards Andawyr, claw-like.

  ‘Ask Him,’ Andawyr replied scornfully, meeting the dead gaze unflinchingly. ‘Are not all things here arranged by His will?’

  ‘With each of your blasphemies, you draw out your future torments by aeons. You have no measure either of your insignificance or of what you bring upon yourself.’

  ‘You’re premature in imagining you have power over us, apprentice,’ Andawyr said, still scornful. An airy gesture indicated Oslang and Atelon, both of whom were struggling to maintain outward equanimity and to grasp their leader’s seemingly reckless intention in provoking this fearful creature. ‘They bound your erstwhile master’s companions to await their deaths. And I was there when he himself was killed. Taken down effortlessly by an inconsequential enemy more ancient than any of us. I see a similar fate awaiting you and, for all your seeming power, you are not the least shadow of him.’ He opened his arms as though to embrace the great building towering above them into the blue haze. ‘As for all this.’ He became scornful. ‘It may be that in His failing days He has cursed you with a knowledge of the Power far beyond anything your predecessors possessed but, corrupt though they were, they were shrewd and learned in the ways of men – subtle and cunning – keen judges of their enemy. You and your fellows are less than children beside them.’ He sneered.

  ‘What we have done to this world is scarcely the work of children, old man,’ the blind man snarled, very human now. ‘Such a garnering of the Power has never been known.’

  ‘It is precisely the work of children – unguided, uncontrolled children,’ Andawyr replied in like vein. ‘Vicious, crude, and futile – truly the work of lesser apprentices. And it is a measure of your insignificance and your folly that you hurried here so quickly at our call to face your own doom. Did you think we did not know your true worth?’

  Andawyr looked up at the hovering star, sneered again, then swung his hands over his head in a wide arc and brought them together in front of him. As they met there was no sound, but a blinding white light flared between them. The Cadwanwr and Isloman instinctively turned away as it spread out in an expanding sphere, cutting through the blue air and dancing black shadows about the arching confines of the wide doorway and the passage beyond. As it struck the mirrored walls so a myriad other lights sprang into life, illuminating the infinite plain and recreating themselves endlessly into distances beyond knowing. A tumbling mass of rearing steeds unseated their riders and crashed over on top of them. A host of young women dodged the arms of their protectors and surged forward, knives in hands, to dispatch the animals as only those who loved them truly could.

  ‘Whatever it was, it used to be a horse and it’s better dead, believe me,’ Usche protested as Isloman frantically dragged her out of the mêlée. The air was ringing with a high-pitched shrieking that struck to the heart of its hearers. Isloman looked to Andawyr in anticipation of an order to flee but the Cadwanwr had dragged Oslang and Atelon together and was shouting something at them desperately. Usche and Ar-Billan joined him also.

  Then, dark and awful against the lights still silently darting and dancing across the blue distance, the blind man was rising from the tangle of the dead creature. Isloman had been present when Oklar had revealed himself and unleashed the Power against Hawklan. The black sword had saved Hawklan but a great swathe of destruction had been cut across Vakloss. Nothing the Power touched could stand against it. And this one was even more powerful.

  This is how it ends, came the thought.

  And, for a time that could not be measured, he felt himself held at the finest of balances.

  Resignation flowed over him, soothing, calming – a destination had been reached, a journey over time; time to lie down, to rest, to let all travails go.

  Yet the scents and sounds of everything around him were washing through him, overwhelming in their intensity. At their heart was a glowing totality – a lifetime – his lifetime – leavened by many struggles and full of the joy of being. And though is was his and his alone, it was also part of a greater whole that would be diminished by its loss.

  It must not end thus.

  The resignation slipped from him like a soiled cloak. He prepared to face the monster who had made this awful place.

  But even as this decision formed about him, the five Cadwanwr were in front of him, facing the risen Uhriel. Andawyr, Oslang and Atelon to the fore, Usche and Ar-Billan a pace behind. Isloman hesitated. He knew that what Andawyr had just done was little more than a party piece for entertaining children. It was the least of any novice’s tricks. For some reason, Andawyr had engineered this confrontation, knowing that neither he nor his companions could hope to oppose such a creature.

  What was he doing?

  The question paralysed Isloman. Would some reckless action on his part bring a subtler plan to grief?

  There was a strange pause. Everywhere was silent and the blue air was full of the crackling tension of a pending storm.

  It broke.

  Though the Uhriel made no arcane gestures or incantations Isloman knew that he was assailing the Cadwanwr. His white eyes were manic in the blue gloom and the five figures seemed to shimmer as their hands came up as if to protect themselves from the heat of a suddenly opened furnace or the blast of a hail-loaded wind.

  Isloman felt nothing. But he knew he was of no consequence in this conflict – an ant under the churning hooves of the cavalry, surviving through chance rather than intention.

  Yet he could not stand idly by.

  But he had to.

  Then the Cadwanwr were failing. Unaware of the nature of the conflict Isloman might be, but it needed no great perception to read their postures and their expressions. And if they fell, he would be carried with them.

  Every part of him cried out in denial.

  He would not perish in this awful place or at the hands of this monster without doing hurt to both of them for as long as he was able.

  His eye rose to the hovering star. Isloman was a gentle man, a creator of beautiful things, but circumstance had plunged him into many conflicts and he had ridden with the Goraidin as one of them. He had learned that though there were many ways to destroy an enemy, in the end it was always best to strike to his centre – swift, straight and with every resource committed. And Andawyr had declared this star to the centre of something – a terrible focus. Who knew what would happen if it were destroyed?

  Isloman looked at the faltering Cadwanwr, locked in their silent conflict with the blind man, motionless amid the ruin of his slaughtered mount.

  His hand closed around the chisel in his belt. A good piece of iron, tempered and hardened by the deep skills of his brother and worn to his own ways of working. It had unlocked many a fine carving from the waiting rock. He tossed it lightly and felt all the memories in its familiar shape and weight. Then, with a sure and unclouded confidence, like that of a child, his powerful frame hurled the chisel at the star.

  Across the blue-mirrored plain, still flickering with the distant remnants of Andawyr’s sunburst, innumerable missiles twisted and glittered. As many Uhriel burst into black movement and reached up to catch them with both hand and will.

  And failed.

  The chisel made a sound more felt than heard as it struck the star, but the blind man let out a cry that sent Isloman and the Cadwanwr staggering backwards.

  Isloman was the first to recover. He
looked at the star. It was slowly twisting and turning as though it were struggling to be free from unseen bonds. A thin bright ray of light shining from it swept about the chamber. The Uhriel was staring at it, transfixed.

  Andawyr grasped Isloman’s hand and pulled himself up.

  There was both triumph and desperate fear in his face.

  ‘He did it,’ he gasped. ‘He struck the star with the Power – released it. I knew he’d no control. Get us out of here.’

  ‘What? Where to?’ Isloman exclaimed. He was dragging Oslang to his feet.

  ‘Anywhere!’

  The others needed no bidding. Usche, Ar-Billan and Atelon were supporting one another and staggering towards the passage.

  They had taken barely a step when the light from the star struck the mirrored wall and the vast blue plain was instantly enmeshed in a lattice of brightness. Before they could move further, the lattice had grown and become solid, and a glaring flood swept through and over them.

  As he felt himself fading, Isloman, through tightly narrowed eyes, saw the star fragment. Hovering where it had been, a wavering shadow in the terrible light, was a sword.

  Then he was nothing.

  * * * *

  Hawklan looked away from the giddying heights swaying above him. Wherever they were and however they had come there, this could no longer be the Labyrinth he had known. But what was it? Surely it should be a device of Ethriss’s? But might it be one of Sumeral’s? Or was it a manifestation of the conjunction? Or a creation of his own mind?

  To centre himself amid these doubts he touched the nearest column. A whirling confusion of voices rang through him.

  ‘You are he? The healer? As Farnor and Thyrn?’ The voice was both many and one and was hung about with deeply unsettling resonances. It was as though behind each word lay a long and complex debate.

  ‘We will shelter you from the return of the Great Evil.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  There was a reply, but Hawklan could not understand it. Images, dark and deep, bright and sun-dancing, burgeoning-new and ancient beyond imagining filled him. Dominant amongst them was a broad thread of fear.