Whistler [A sequel to The Chronicles of Hawklan]

by Roger Taylor

  Nertha watched him closely. ‘Vivid?’ she said.

  His face twisted with the pain of the memory. ‘Yes. There was so much in his music that I can't find words for. I don't want to think about it.'

  Nertha looked out across the valley. ‘Strange,’ she said. ‘I'm half-envious of you and your strange new friend.'

  They stood silent for a little time, before Vredech said, quite simply, ‘Don't be,’ and started walking away. Nertha followed him.

  There was no more solemnity as they continued on their journey, now walking, now riding, trotting, galloping until they reached the Witness House. They gave their horses to a groom there and continued on foot. Vredech strode out strongly until they were out of sight of the Witness House then he slowed.

  'I suppose you did that because I rode faster than you,’ Nertha panted as she caught up with him.

  Vredech chuckled. ‘As a matter of fact, no,’ he replied. ‘But only because I forgot. I just wanted to be away from the Witness House because I think I'm going to be living up here over the next few days, discussing what's happened.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘I wonder what else Cassraw said while we were outside?'

  'Forget it, and get up that mountain, or go and see Mueran right now,’ Nertha insisted. ‘I'm not having you looking over your shoulder every two minutes. It's one or the other ... I'll do whatever you want.'

  'Very well, father,’ Vredech said piously. He turned and looked at the steep grassy slope ahead. ‘Let's see how fit your legs are after so long away from any proper hills.’ Nertha curled her lip at him and motioned him upwards with an sharp inclination of her head.

  Vredech made no effort to race, however. He had given up that kind of folly many years ago, as time had given him a little more awareness of his own vulnerability. And besides, he was far from certain that he could outstrip Nertha, for all his bluster. Thus they walked more or less side by side, moving steadily upwards until they came at last to Ishryth's lawn. They paused there, as did most people, and rested for a little while in the silence and the sunlight. Neither spoke.

  Then they began the final ascent towards the summit. Nertha kept pace with him easily and Vredech made a quiet resolution to do more walking when all this was over.

  When all what was over?

  His own question jolted all his concerns back on to him. As if sensing it, Nertha turned and issued a brisk, ‘Come on. We'll stop at the next skyline,’ and then moved off smartly. It was sufficient to release him for the moment, but Vredech knew that some of the magic of the impromptu journey was irreplaceably lost. Nevertheless he was still content to be where he was, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other and moving quietly upward through the clear mountain air.

  When he reached the skyline he found Nertha, a little red-faced and breathless, staring curiously at the summit which, for the first time since they had started up the mountain proper, was now in view.

  The strangeness about the summit which Nertha had casually identified as heat haze, was there still: an uneasy distortion which made the summit appear to be shifting and changing, although when any one part of it was examined, it seemed quite still.

  'I'm not even sure I'm seeing what I'm seeing,’ Nertha said, rubbing her eyes then squinting up at the peak. ‘Can you see it? Moving and not moving.'

  Vredech nodded. It was as good a description as any.

  'What do you think it is?’ Nertha asked.

  Vredech felt something stirring deep inside him. Not so much an anger as a combination of hatred and a predator's lust for its prey. ‘I've no idea. Let's do as you said. Take the devil by the tail.’ He bared his clenched teeth. ‘And twist it,’ he said, his hand miming the deed. Nertha glanced at him uncertainly and then squeezed his arm.

  As they began clambering up the final rocky slope, Vredech felt far less assured than he seemed outwardly. Despite his best efforts he found himself thinking of the many legends that hung about the mountain: about how it had been torn from a land far away by Ishryth to crush a terrible foe, or how it had been driven upwards from deep below to escape the awful cries of a king imprisoned by Ishryth, and too, how the Watchers of Ishryth looked over it from their great palaces in the clouds. A whole gamut of stories were wound about the mountain, from holy texts in the Santyth to children's tales and dancing rhymes. Most of the tales in the Santyth were either allegorical in character or had obvious historical derivations and, of course, as he kept saying to himself, none of the more fanciful myths were to be taken seriously. But the Ervrin Mallos dominated not only the land of Canol Madreth, it also loomed large in the hearts and minds of its inhabitants, and no one was absolutely free of some superstition about the place. That it had become the site for the heart of their religion testified to that.

  It took Vredech far more mental effort than he would have imagined to hold his growing anxiety at bay. He found it comforting simply watching Nertha clambering agilely over the rocks and looking about her constantly, eyes prying into the faint haziness about the summit. She seemed in some way to be invulnerable, while fear was hovering increasingly at the edge of his mind. Fear of the darkness that had hung over the mountain when he had been here last, and of the deeper darkness that had enveloped him, and, not least, of the strange barbarous paean of rejoicing he had heard, and the terrible, interrogating coldness that it had presaged.

  He looked up at the sky. Bright blue and littered with small white clouds, it was the very antithesis of that day. Yet though the sun's warmth more than compensated for the cool breeze that was beginning to blow as they neared the summit, he began to feel a chill deep inside—a tiny, ice-cold knot. They must have moved into the region of the haziness by now, yet there was no sign of any disturbance in the air.

  'Nertha, wait!’ he called out.

  She stopped and looked back at him. ‘What's the matter?'

  All he could think of to say was, ‘Be alert.'

  He moved quickly to her side and took her arm. ‘Be aware.'

  Her face filled with questions but she asked none of them. They continued upwards. The chill inside Vredech began to grow. It was not the chill of the mountains, nor was it the chill of fear, or the clammy iciness of death. Rather it was the cold of complete absence. Coldness of the heart from the absence of love, coldness of the mind from the absence of doubt, coldness of the spirit from the absence of awe at anything beyond itself. Coldness that was the very negation of life, that was the very opposite of the Great Heat from which all things were said to have come.

  And he recognized it. It was the coldness that had held him, searched him...

  Dismissed him!

  Anger welled up inside him as the memory returned of the judgement that had found his inadequacy, his worthlessness, so total, and left him nothing but fist-waving fury by way of rebuttal. Yet, in truth, why should he want the approval of such a fearful judge?

  'You're looking grim.’ Nertha brought him back to the present.

  'Just remembering,’ he said.

  Nertha looked at him closely. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  He smiled faintly. ‘I'm beginning to know your physician's manner,’ he said, then, ‘Why do you ask?'

  Nertha's nose curled. She was about to say, ‘No special reason,’ but instead she told the truth. ‘There's an ... unpleasantness about this place.'

  Vredech borrowed a phrase of their father's. ‘Be specific,’ he said. They smiled at the old memory, but only briefly, as if such light-heartedness were too alien a bloom to flourish in this place.

  Nertha looked troubled. She put a hand to her face. ‘I can feel the breeze blowing, and yet I can't. There's a terrible stillness about this place.'

  Vredech glanced around at the sunlit vista of Canol Madreth laid out before him. There was still no shifting haze that he could see. All was clear and bright. Yet something was amiss. Here, on a day like this, he should feel deeply relaxed, joyous even, with many petty perspectives righted by the massive and ancient presence o
f the mountains and sight of the tiny houses far below. But now, there was nothing. He did not know what he had expected to find up here, but it was not this cold emptiness that forbade all responses.

  'Let's go on,’ he said, very softly but with a determination that made Nertha frown anxiously.

  They did not speak again until they were clambering over the jagged rocks at the very top of the mountain.

  Nertha folded her arms about herself and shivered. She looked at Vredech reproachfully. ‘It's you and your damned superstitions,’ she said, offering an explanation before one was sought.

  Vredech shook his head. ‘No, it's not,’ he said gently. ‘It's whatever's attached to this place. You feel it, too, don't you, but you don't want to talk about it because it makes no sense. Something's reaching into you and laying a cold hand over ...’ He paused. ‘... over everything in you that's human. Perhaps even everything that's living.'

  Nertha turned her head from side to side, as if trying to free herself from something. Then she grimaced and let out an almost animal growl. ‘Everything has a rational explanation. Nothing is to be feared, it is only to be understood.'

  'There is only the darkness where my ability to measure ends,’ Vredech said.

  Nertha's angry expression changed to one of surprise. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Vredech met her gaze and extended a slow embracing arm across the craggy summit. ‘Then there's great darkness up here, for both of us,’ he said. ‘You can't explain what you're feeling, but you're feeling it nonetheless, aren't you?'

  'Hush!’ Nertha said sharply. ‘I need to think.'

  Holding out a hand as if to keep him at bay, she sat down and leaned back against a sloping rock, then closed her eyes. Vredech sat down nearby and rested his chin in his hand. He did not close his eyes. The last thing he wanted now was to be confined in his own darkness. He wanted to take in the familiar mountains and green valleys billowing away into the distance. He wanted every possible contact with this real familiar world, wanted to embed every least part of it into him as protection against the cold alien presence that was pervading the mountain.

  But it would not be enough, he knew. What hung here, what was somehow seeping into Canol Madreth through Cassraw, was no passive spirit. He remembered again the all-too human triumph in the clamour he had heard during his search for Cassraw. Rampant, savage joy. The kind of joy that danced on the crushed body of an enemy. Devoid of respect, of compassion, of everything save awareness of itself and its insatiable needs.

  What hung about this place was merely the aftermath of its touch. The will that had brought it about was gone.

  'Who responds to His song builds a way for Him, and He will not relinquish it,’ the Whistler had said. ‘And there are many ways in which He can come. He builds ever.'

  Vredech nodded to himself as he pondered the remark. He found he was staring absently at the motionless form of Nertha. She seemed to be more solid even than the ancient canting stones about him, yet, ironically, she also looked soft and very vulnerable, leaning back against the rock. He was happy that she was here with him.

  Not cavalry country. The thought came from nowhere and made him smile. What in the world could Nertha know about such things? But in its wake, as if suddenly released, came other, more sobering, martial images:

  Cassraw's first sermon with its talk of armies—multitudes marching forth, united under His banner; the Whistler showing him the awful sacking of that alien city; then, almost prosaically, the faint menace of real conflict with Tirfelden that was hovering silently around the edges of the political mayhem in the Heindral. A spasm of terrible fear suddenly shook him at the prospect and he clenched his hands together in the manner of earnest prayer. In the name of pity, let none of this be, he thought desperately, as the images persisted. Then, untypically, and not without a touch of guilt, he asked of his god, ‘Reach out and stop it, Lord. Reach out, I beg You.'

  Bridgehead.

  The word came out of his rambling war-filled thoughts with an almost physical vividness. It seemed to be important and he scrabbled after it as if it might suddenly be snatched back and interrogated. In common with most Madren, he knew nothing of war save such of Canol Madreth's early history as he had been obliged to learn at school, and such as could be gleaned from various dramatic passages in the Lesser Books of the Santyth. Yet, as he turned over the word ‘bridgehead', memories began to return from the time when, as a child, his father had read him a tale of a single warrior who had held an entire army at bay while his companions demolished the very bridge he was standing on. The idea and the manner of the telling had thrilled him enormously, and he had spent many exciting daydreams holding one of the local bridges against unspecified but overwhelming odds for a long time afterwards. To his surprise, some of the excitement lingered yet, his palms tingling slightly with the feel of the grip of his long-sheathed and quite imaginary sword that had solved so many problems so invincibly and so simply. He allowed himself a smile of regret at the passage of such childish intensity. And as the word carried him back across the years, so it spanned into the future. Doubts about what was happening fell away from him. Not his intellectual, reasoning doubts, but those ill-formed doubts that prowl the realms of the mind beyond the depths of reason and gnaw at the roots of faith. He shied away from using the name Ahmral, but he could no longer turn away from the inner knowledge that some power was intruding into his life and, potentially, the lives of everyone in Canol Madreth. Nor could he turn away from the knowledge that Cassraw was being used by Him. And, just as Cassraw was His, or, being charitable, was becoming His, so He had chosen this place. A bridgehead. An enclave deep inside enemy territory.

  Let him build nothing.

  Many ways...

  'Nertha,’ he said, very softly. She opened her eyes immediately. ‘What are you thinking? Tell me right away, however foolish.'

  She looked up at the sky and then, as he had been doing, around at the surrounding mountains and valleys. ‘I'm thinking that the sky looks different here, and the mountains. I'm thinking that everything feels different, too, as if this place weren't the summit of the Ervrin Mallos any more, but something else—and somewhere else.’ She spoke without hesitation and with no sign of embarrassment. Then she stood up and looked at him. Vredech saw that her face was tense with the effort of keeping something under control. The same tension came through in her voice when she spoke again, her words measured and deliberate. ‘Yet I feel no different, and I think I'm an experienced enough physician not to allow my affection to cloud my judgement about what's been happening to you too badly. So I must presume that what I feel up here comes from something outside of me, for all it's as though it were coiling round my insides.’ The control faltered slightly and she folded her arms and hunched up her shoulders. ‘There's something here that's colder than death,’ she said. ‘Yet it's alive and wilful.'

  Vredech frowned. ‘You feel an actual presence? A will?’ he said, trying to keep the alarm from his voice.

  'Yes, I think so,’ she replied. ‘Faint, but there, definitely there. Something very old. Something very strange, and frightening.'

  Suddenly concerned, Vredech reached out and took her hand. ‘Perhaps we should leave,’ he said urgently.

  'It's all right,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I'm female. By my nature I'm nearer to the truth of things than you are. There's much easier prey available for it than me.’ She looked at him pointedly. ‘I'm also a devout sceptic and a trained physician. And what I smell here is the onset of a disease. The inconsequential symptoms of a grievous sickness to come. It can be resisted.'

  'I feel no presence,’ Vredech said, still anxious. ‘I did, when we were searching for Cassraw, but not now. I feel only a kind of ... desolation—a waiting.'

  Nertha took his hand. ‘Your turn,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you've been thinking.'

  Vredech coughed awkwardly. ‘I thought, “bridgehead",’ he said. ‘Something establishing itself here against a future
intention.'

  Nertha half-closed her eyes, testing the idea. ‘Yes,’ she decided. ‘That's good.'

  Vredech ventured his most fearful question. ‘What do you think it could...?'

  Nertha's free hand came up to silence him. ‘What or who it is, where it's come from, and why, I can't begin to think. I've precious little logic keeping me afloat as it is. I'm really sailing over deep waters just on my intuition.'

  'It's all we've got, I suspect.’ Vredech was not unhappy to abandon his question. ‘But it's all right saying nothing is to be feared, only understood. That doesn't necessarily make whatever lies in the darkness beyond where we can measure any less dangerous.'

  'Oh, it's dangerous,’ Nertha said, her eyes narrowing. ‘I can feel that.'

  'What can we do, then? We can't just debate and do nothing. But how can we fight something that we can't see?'

  A shadow fell across the summit of the mountain, making them both start, but it was only a cloud passing in front of the sun. Nertha pulled free from Vredech's grip with a cry of annoyance at being so foolishly startled. ‘I fight things I can't see all the time,’ she said angrily, striding away across the rocks. Then she stopped and pointed a determined finger at Vredech. ‘You do what you can. Say your prayers, speak your blessings, whatever you feel is right.’ For a moment Vredech thought she was being sarcastic, then he realized she was quite sincere. ‘I'm going to try to cure this place. If there's a disease here, then there's a cause.’ The pointing hand became a clenched and angry fist. ‘I'm going to look for it like I'd look for any other disease. And if I find it I'm going to root it out.'

  As Nertha moved away, Vredech felt the cold inside him intensifying. For a choking moment he thought that he was not going to be able to move, that he would become like one of the great fingerstones that marked the summit.

  'Come on!'

  The call transported him momentarily back to the night-time hillside where he had met the Whistler only hours earlier. Though he had not felt that his vision was impaired in any way, everything was suddenly in sharp focus, as though a fine veil had been drawn back. And the cold no longer bound him.