It was a considerable time before the clamour of voices in the wind and rain-battered tent began to reach any semblance of order. Rachyl’s dogged insistence that, ‘You never left here, you must have been dreaming,’ proved to be not the least of the difficulties to be overcome. Ibryen knew better than to attempt to force her to silence by use of his authority and, in the end, it was only Isgyrn’s description of the Gevethen that made her reluctantly concede that something more substantial than a dream had affected the two men.
But a more worrying plaint than the voicing of Rachyl’s doubts was that of Isgyrn and his fretting that he must somehow contact his land. Ironically, where Ibryen had declined to use the authority he held over Rachyl to silence her, he used an authority that he did not possess to silence Isgyrn.
‘You can’t contact any of the Culmadryen, Isgyrn,’ he said forcefully as the Dryenwr seemed set to circle through his concerns again. ‘If only for the simple reason that none have been known over Nesdiryn in recorded memory. And I require your word, Warrior, that you’ll not try to enter the world of the Culmaren again.’
‘But…’
‘Your word, Isgyrn,’ Ibryen’s tone was unequivocal. ‘You said yourself you had no knowledge of how to survive in that place and, as far as I know, it was the purest chance that took me to you and brought us both safely away. There’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to do it again. For all I know, we could easily have died there.’
‘I’m of no value to you here,’ Isgyrn protested. He pointed upwards. ‘I belong among the clouds where I’m a leader and can truly serve.’
‘I’ll determine your value here, Isgyrn,’ Ibryen said. ‘And as you’ve already saved me from the Gevethen, I’ll start it high. As for service, you must decide that for yourself. I think you’ll provide far more than just another sword against the Gevethen, but in any case it’ll also be a sword against this enemy of yours.’
‘Of ours, Count,’ Isgyrn corrected. ‘The Great Corrupter is the enemy of all living things. He’s an evil from the very Heat of the Beginning, not some petty prince or warlord.’
The Traveller spoke before Ibryen could reply. ‘I don’t pretend to understand fully what you’re talking about, Isgyrn,’ he said. ‘But I’ve seen enough strange things not to dispute with you too heatedly. Yet if this Great Corrupter is as you say, He must have been defeated. You said that others were fighting Him, down here, and you yourself saw His lieutenant’s land destroyed even as you were thrown down into the middle depths. And although I heard some odd rumours in Girnlant, there’s been no news of wars spreading out into the world as surely there must have been over the last fifteen years if He’d won.’
‘It’s fifteen years or so since those creepy little birds disappeared and since the Gevethen began to grow conspicuously strange.’ It was Rachyl. She offered no conclusion.
For the first time Isgyrn faltered.
Ibryen laid a hand on Isgyrn’s arm. ‘None of us can say what strange forces are moving events, Isgyrn,’ he said softly. ‘Or what part each of us has to play.’ He indicated the others. ‘I’m not usually given to talking in such portentous terms, but we’ve not been from the village a week, and yet the world – my world, at least – is vastly different from what it was. I haven’t begun to get a measure of what’s happened and still less what it all means. I can’t command you to do anything, but if you enter the world of the Culmaren again, I doubt I’ll be able to abandon you, so I ask you not to try for both our sakes.’ He straightened up. ‘Let’s you and me confine ourselves to simple practicalities. I will go into Culmaren’s world for you and…’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘… call out, or send some kind of a message, whatever seems fitting. You, if you wish, can return with us and turn your fighting skills to helping us defeat the Gevethen. Whether this terrible leader you fear so much has been defeated or not – and it seems that He might have been – other of His lieutenants are perhaps still doing His work. You faced one in the air and defeated him, and we apparently have to face two of them down here in the middle depths.’
Rachyl looked anxiously at Ibryen. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea, you going off into a trance again, if half of what you’ve just told us is true,’ she said.
Isgyrn too, was concerned. ‘I can’t ask you to do what I’m not prepared to do,’ he said.
Ibryen smiled. ‘But youare prepared,’ he retorted. ‘You’re just not capable.’
Isgyrn lowered his head. ‘Let me think for a little while,’ he said. ‘I need to be alone. I’ll go outside.’
Ibryen looked at him uncertainly. ‘I’ll do nothing foolish,’ Isgyrn promised sadly. ‘So many strange things have happened in these last few hours. I just need to have the sky above me and to feel Svara’s will about me.’
As he crawled out of the tent Ibryen offered him the Culmaren which had slipped from his shoulders. Isgyrn refused it. ‘It has too many powerful memories,’ he said. ‘I need to be free for a while.’
He walked a little way from the tent and sat on a rock. The rain had stopped and the sky was less overcast, but the wind was still blowing strongly. Nearby mountains and valleys were beginning to appear.
‘Will he be all right?’ Rachyl asked.
‘He might be from up in the clouds,’ Ibryen said, idly fingering the Culmaren, ‘but his feet are on the ground. He’s no real choices. He’ll die for sure if he goes searching for the Culmaren in their world again, and I think he knows it.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘Part of me belongs there,’ Ibryen replied. ‘Perhaps part of all of us does, but only a few can reach it, and still fewer know what to do with it.’ He held up a hand quickly as Rachyl made to speak again. ‘Until I meet someone a great deal wiser, I’ve just got to accept things as they are, and without explanation. I doubt a young bird could tell you how it knows that it’s safe to launch itself from a high ledge for the first time.’
Rachyl frowned. ‘I’ve seen squashed fledglings before now,’ she said.
‘Another bad analogy,’ Ibryen replied, laughter bursting out of him. ‘But you understand my meaning well enough.’ His laughter shook off much of the tension that had pervaded the group since he and Isgyrn had sprung so abruptly into consciousness.
A few minutes later, Rachyl walked over to join Isgyrn. The Dryenwr was staring thoughtfully out across a neighbouring valley.
‘This is a mysterious and beautiful place,’ he said. ‘Everything felt dead to my touch and my tread when I first woke, but now I feel many subtle things – in the rocks and the plants – even Svara’s will. It’s so elaborate and full of tales down here, twisting and turning over the crooked surface of this vast land.’
‘Your people don’t come down here?’ Rachyl asked.
‘Culmaren has the need to touch the peaks at times, and the seas, to draw sustenance.’ His eyes became distant. ‘A splendid sight, that. The roots of the land reaching down into the depths, like a slow cascading mist, so that when it touches, the whole land seems to be precariously balanced on a mountain peak, or to be rising out of the ocean like a huge tree.’ With some reluctance he left the scene and returned to Rachyl’s question. ‘But we ourselves rarely venture this low.’ He placed his hand on his chest. ‘I think my wing must indeed have changed me in some way to enable me to survive down here.’
A thought occurred to Rachyl. ‘Does that mean you might not be able to go back even if you could contact one of your lands?’ she asked. It was kindly put, but it was a stark question. Yet Isgyrn did not seem to be disturbed by it.
‘I’m not sure,’ he replied. ‘In fact, I’m not even sure whether I’ve been changed or not. I feel no different. No one ever comes low without protection, but that could be no more than a tradition handed down through the years.’
Rachyl gazed at him quizzically. Isgyrn, in his turn, looked apologetic. ‘There’s very little interest in coming to the middle depths, so survival here’s not a topic that’s been studied extensively.’
‘Funny attitude,’ Rachyl said, mildly offended.
Isgyrn smiled. ‘What do you know about the clouds?’ he asked.
Rachyl gave a tight-lipped grunt to indicate an end to the debate…
‘Your Count is a remarkable man,’ Isgyrn said, moving both to the centre of his concerns and on to safer ground.
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. ‘Itis 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 wasthey 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. Whateverthey 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.