Andawyr laid a hand on Hawklan’s arm as he reached for his sword, but all the others drew theirs.
‘I should prefer not to kill you all,’ said the voice ahead of them. ‘But the choice is yours.’
A solitary figure emerged from the mist, sword in hand.
It was Aelang.
As he walked forward, swaying shadows in the mist behind him darkened and slowly took form to reveal his Mandroc patrol.
Yatsu and the others slowly closed in front of Hawk-lan and Andawyr, but Jaldaric pushed past his companions and strode forward to stand in front of the Mathidrin, his sword levelled.
Aelang made no move other than to incline his head quizzically. ‘Ah,’ he said after a moment, his tone contemptuous. ‘I remember you. The solitary twig from Eldric’s creaking tree. Stand aside, child, I’m in no mood for trifling with you as I did in Orthlund. Indeed I’m in no mood for trifling with any of you. We’ve been waiting for you for some time, and we’re missing the slaughter of your friends.’
Jaldaric continued to stare at his erstwhile captor. ‘Nor will I trifle with you, Aelang,’ he said in a tone that, though calm, made his companions look at one another uneasily. Tirke made to step forward but Hawklan put a hand on his shoulder.
‘In due course, you’ll be charged with other crimes,’ Jaldaric went on. ‘But now I’m arresting you in the Queen’s name for the crime that I witnessed: for the murders you committed at the village of Ledvrin. You’ll be taken to Vakloss where’ll you’ll be given the oppor-tunity for a full Accounting. I must ask you to surrender your sword.’
His manner was so authoritative that for a moment a flicker of doubt passed over Aelang’s face and he glanced uncertainly at the swords behind his accuser. Then his face became livid. ‘I see that blow to the head I gave you has addled what few wits you had,’ he snarled. ‘However, this one will end your confusion perma-nently.’
Without warning, he swung his sword round to beat Jaldaric’s blade down. It was a swift and sudden blow, but Jaldaric avoided it almost casually, and in turn beat Aelang’s blade down.
‘That was one more chance than was allowed to anyone at Ledvrin,’ Jaldaric said, a hint of his inner rage creeping into his voice. ‘You’ll have no other if you don’t surrender.’
For an instant disbelief, then fear, filled Aelang’s eyes as he stared into Jaldaric’s emotionless face. He stepped back a pace, uncertain again.
Hawklan’s hand tightened about Tirke’s shoulder in anxious anticipation.
Then Aelang spun round, the sword following him with a scything power that would surely cleave the young Helyadin in two, from neck to hip.
Aelang had risen through the Mathidrin ranks not only by cunning and ruthlessness but also by displaying a fearsome prowess in all manner of fighting tech-niques. He would have been a match even for the experienced Goraidin and as a swordsman he was far superior to Jaldaric.
But as Aelang had emerged out of the gloomy Narsindal mist, Jaldaric had recognized a terrible opportunity and knew that he must be prepared to accept death now if he was to be free of the doubts and guilt which lined the path of his life like mocking ghosts.
Thus it was with a deep inner stillness that Jaldaric entered the swirling maelstrom of Aelang’s attack. As the Mathidrin’s sword swept down, Jaldaric moved with the blow and stepping aside, drove his sword straight through his attacker.
‘Go stand for your Accounting before your victims, then, Commander, if that’s your wish,’ Jaldaric said as disbelief returned to Aelang’s eyes.
Jaldaric tugged at his sword, but the blade was wedged. Aelang made a strange noise and danced a brief, obscene dance. Gritting his teeth savagely, Jaldaric wrenched the sword free.
Aelang took a single step forward and stood for a moment like a stricken marionette. Then he dropped to his knees and slowly tumbled face forward onto the road.
His sword clattered noisily from his hand.
There was an eerie silence.
‘Close ranks and follow at the double!’ Yatsu’s command was soft, whispered almost, but its power galvanized the stunned watchers.
Then they were all running, Tirke seizing Jaldaric and dragging him forward, the others forming up around Hawklan and Andawyr.
Yatsu led them down and along the embankment past the Mandrocs who were standing bewildered by this sudden, unexpected happening.
Apart from his initial command, Yatsu made no sound as he ran, nor did any of the others, knowing that the silence would give them precious seconds where a roaring battle cry would soon bring their enemies to their senses.
Thus they were running back up on to the road before the Mandrocs began to respond.
‘Hawklan, Andawyr, go!’ Yatsu shouted. ‘We’ll hold them off.’
Hawklan hesitated briefly, but Andawyr grabbed his arm and dragged him forward along the road.
As the two men ran into the mist, the sound of des-perate fighting began to follow them. Hawklan clenched his teeth as part of him rebelled against this flight from his friends in need. But the other part of him drove him forward beside the Cadwanwr. His friends might die without his help, but they might die with it, and their deaths then would be one of utter futility. They were here, in this awful land, solely that he could flee now, to find and face his true enemy.
Gradually, the sounds of battle faded, to be replaced by the sound of their footsteps and gasping breaths.
Suddenly, Andawyr tripped and fell awkwardly, crying out in pain. Hawklan bent to pick him, but as he did so, figures came running out of the mist ahead.
They were Mandrocs, Aelang’s rearguard, Hawklan realized. Left here against the possibility of anyone escaping his trap.
One of them came charging forward, spear levelled. Another followed close behind. Hawklan reached for his sword, but a glimpse of Andawyr’s imploring face stopped him drawing it.
Instead, he twisted sideways and laid his hand on the shaft of the first spear as it passed by him. He pressed it downwards as it ran under his hand, and the sudden change in direction drove the point into the ground. The charging Mandroc ran into the butt end of the shaft with a grunt and then pivoted incongruously over it to fall heavily some distance away.
Even as the Mandroc was falling, Hawklan had swung the spear up and pushed it between the out-stretched arms of the second attacker. Stepping forward, he twisted the spear to entangle the arms and then turned to send the creature hurtling through the air to join its fellow.
A straight thrust drove the butt of the spear into the gaping mouth of another and as it fell to the ground choking, Hawklan impaled a fourth.
The destruction of all four had taken scarcely as many heartbeats and the remainder pulled back a little way, uncertainly. Hawklan yanked Andawyr to his feet, but the Cadwanwr cried out in anguish, and Hawklan winced as the healer in him felt the jagged pain of a damaged ankle.
The cry seemed to give the watching Mandrocs the heart they needed and they charged forward as one. Hawklan dropped Andawyr and stood astride him.
‘No!’ Andawyr shouted in despair, seeing his inten-tion. But no other path now lay before Hawklan. He drew Ethriss’s black sword and in one seamless flowing movement cut down the attackers as if they had been no more than the dank Narsindal mist itself.
The blade rang out, joyous and clear in the gloom, as if every glittering star in its hilt were singing a hymn of triumph.
In their ghastly armour and mounted on their dreadful steeds the Uhriel struck a chilling fear into even Loman’s burning anger and he felt his body become rigid.
Oklar raised a mailed hand towards him, and his eyes blazed blood red as if from some terrible inner fire. His mount pawed the ground with its clawed foot, its head swaying from side to side and staring at the smith.
Then the hand clenched in frustration and Loman felt hope bubbling up through the icy stillness that had descended on him.
He drove his sword into the ground, snatched up a fallen spear, and with a great roar hurled it at the apparition threatening him. Impelled by the smith’s great strength, the spear hissed as it cut through the rain-soaked air on its journey towards Oklar’s heart.
The Uhriel, however, brushed it aside almost casu-ally with a sweep of his arm. The force of the impact shattered the stout shaft.
Oklar urged his steed forward. The creature did not move at first, but its eyes shone with a deep malevolence and its mouth opened to emit a rasping snarl. Oklar drove great spurs into its scarred sides and with another snarl it began loping slowly forward, its movements angular and peculiarly unnatural.
With his heightened awareness, Loman saw, albeit dimly, the true nature of the Uhriel, rending its way into the reality of this time and this place.
‘Your old men protect you from our true wrath, for the moment, Orthlundyn, though they wilt and fade even as we speak.’ Oklar’s voice seemed to shake Loman’s soul. ‘But we are warrior kings whose empires spanned the world, even before we saw and knew the One True Light. Nothing can save you or your army from our swords when we deem it fit to draw them.’
As he spoke his actions imitated his words, and he drew a great sword. His steed let out a raucous cry of delight at the sound. Out of the corner of his eye Loman saw the watching Mandrocs moving back, some falling to their knees. He felt the two Goraidin involuntarily retreating from him.
But he could not move. His eyes were drawn to the Uhriel’s blade. It seemed to be alive, flickering red and yellow as though it were the mobile, changing heart of his own forge. The sight fascinated him as much as it terrified him and, for all he knew that it was to be his death, he wanted to touch and handle it in its glory; or use its power to make those transcendent creations that lay beyond the outer fringes of his great skill.
Yet even as these thoughts occurred, the image of Hawklan’s black sword formed, with its transcendent chorus of wonder beyond all words.
From somewhere inside him he found the courage to denounce Oklar’s work. ‘Is there no end to your corruption, creature?’ he said sadly.
Oklar’s steed craned its neck forward and bellowed at him, its foetid breath making him grimace.
He wrenched his sword out of the ground and lev-elled it at his approaching doom.
Oklar loomed tall and hideous in front of him, his sword suddenly blood red.
Loman felt his terror melt into raging anger and he gathered his mind and his body together for a strike that would cut down both horse and rider even as he died.
Suddenly, he felt a ringing song pass through him and the ominous form in front of him seemed to start in alarm. Its fearsome eyes dimmed a little and then blazed out anew, more terrible than ever. The foul steed too was affected; it twisted its serpentine neck to and fro, and then let out a high-pitched snarl as though it were being strangled.
Then Oklar turned to his two companions and with a great screeching cry dragged his steed about and charged from the field, trampling underfoot any too slow to avoid his awful charge.
Loman stood aghast as he listened to the terrible cry of rage that rose over the tumult of the battle even as it faded into the distance. Relief surged over him.
‘Strange fortunes look over you this day, smith.’
The voice brought Loman back to the heart of his terror again with its dark icy stillness. Oklar was gone, called by some strange event beyond this battle, but Creost and Dar Hastuin remained and it was Creost who had spoken.
So soon sentenced again after his reprieve, Loman was almost unmanned as he turned to face Sumeral’s two other terrible aides. Creost with his flaccid, mouldering, skin, and his black, empty, eyes; and Dar Hastuin, gaunt and blasted, whose empty white-eyed gaze exuded a malevolence quite equal to that from Creost’s dark pits and whose white hair writhed and twisted from under his helm like a mass of blind, venomous, snakes.
Creost’s mount, like Oklar’s, was a grotesque, preda-tory, caricature of a horse, but it was covered with scales, and it glistened with a clinging dampness that was not that from the teeming rain. Dar Hastuin rode Usgreckan.
Both carried swords whose wrongness bit into Lo-man’s soul as deeply as had Oklar’s, but they offered him no temptation now and he tried to watch the approaching figures as he might any other two oppo-nents.
As they neared, he noticed that both the Uhriel had newly healed and livid scars about their faces.
Gavor, he thought, finding strange solace in the sight. His trembling grip tightened on his sword.
He felt Yengar and Olvric come to his side again, swords raised, though neither affected anything other than terror in the face of the slowly advancing Uhriel.
‘If they’re men, they’ll die as men,’ Loman managed to say as he raised his sword to meet them, though he could not keep the tremor from his voice.
‘Indeed they will,’ said the voice behind him.
Loman started violently and looked quickly back over his shoulder.
A rider was there. For a moment he thought it was one of the Lords as he took in the red cloak and the white surcoat, emblazoned with the symbol of the Iron Ring, and covering a fine chain mail armour.
But the rider’s face was covered with a visor and he saw that though blood had oozed through great scars in the armour, and the cloak and surcoat were torn and bloodstained, the blood was old and long dried. He blinked to clear his vision, and as he did so, he heard the song of the metal that formed the mail coat and the simple undecorated sword that the figure carried. It was a lesser song than that of the black sword of Ethriss, but it was beyond any that he had ever made or taken from the Armoury at Anderras Darion.
And the horse was Serian.
‘Hawklan?’ Loman asked, knowing the answer.
‘These are my enemies before they are yours, smith,’ said the figure, its voice muffled by the visor. ‘Go to your true battle-it hangs in the balance, and will remain so no matter what the outcome here. It needs your heart, your will, your skill.’
Loman reached up and the figure took his hand briefly.
‘Light be with you, Loman,’ said the voice softly, then the figure saluted and eased Serian forward past the silent smith.
Loman stepped aside as the figure turned to face the Uhriel. ‘Lord Vanas ak Tyrion, son of Alvan, and king and betrayer of the long dead Menidai. Duke Irgoneth, patricide and usurper of the throne of drowned Akiron. I greet you.’
The two Uhriel stopped their advance as if they had been struck and Loman felt their terrible presence waver.
‘In Ethriss’s name I offer you redemption and re-lease from your torment, if you forsake His way now,’ the figure went on.
There was a long silence, then Dar Hastuin spoke, his voice hissing and shrieking like the winds he rode. ‘What creature are you to know such ancient names and to speak of the Great Heretic thus in our presence?’
‘No creature, Lords,’ the figure replied. Then slowly it reached up and raised the visor. Loman could not see the rider’s face.
‘I offer you redemption, my Lords-or death,’ the voice said. For a moment, Loman saw the two Uhriel become once again men; powerful men, ever seizing, ever fearing, but faced now with that which they had been ever fleeing.
Then the vision was gone.
Neither Uhriel spoke, but both suddenly raised their swords and charged towards the lone figure.
‘We were great warrior kings… before.’
Oklar’s words returned to Loman vividly as he felt the ferocity and power of their charge. No man could stand against such force. He and his two companions would have been brushed aside like chaff for all his strength and their skills.
Usgreckan rose from the ground, shrieking, its huge wings throwing up clouds of spray. Creost’s steed crouched low like a great serpent.
Unexpectedly, Serian leapt forward to meet them. It was a seemingly reckless response to such an attack, but as the protagonists closed, Serian suddenly twisted to one side and the unknown rider struck Usgreckan a blow on the neck that half severed it.
With a terrible cry, the creature crashed into the ground sending its loathsome cargo tumbling among the heaps of dead and dying.
The fall, however, had little or no effect on the Uhriel, and as Serian turned, it was to the sight of Dar Hastuin clambering atop the bodies and shrieking as if the dying Usgreckan had entered his soul. His clawed hand reached out towards the rider who immediately dismounted and strode towards him.
Dar Hastuin screamed again at the approaching figure in some strange language, then he fell silent and the two were face to face, sword to sword-both quite motionless save for the whirling mass of Dar Hastuin’s clawing hair and the rain running from the rider’s armour.
The brief timeless stillness was filigreed about by the sounds of the battle around them and the clamour of Creost recovering control of his mount following Serian’s sudden avoidance. Loman watched, wide-eyed and intent. Then he started suddenly, as did Yengar and Olvric, though both were subtle and experienced swordsmen. They had seen scarcely any movement by either combatant, but now, without either threat or feint and in what seemed to be the flicker of an eye, Dar Hastuin was impaled on the rider’s sword.
His awful scream began, but petered out almost immediately, and the rider was lowering him to the ground amid the other dead, with a strange gentleness.
As his mind fought to recall the beginning and end of this almost unbelievable slaying, Loman saw that Creost had recovered and was charging again; silently and towards the rider’s back.
He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but his responses felt slow and leaden, and even as he heard himself cry out, the rider was turning to face the onslaught.
To Loman’s horror, however, the rider did not move back from the path of the charging creature, but stepped in front of it. Loman’s warning shout was still leaving him as the rider’s sword cut the creature’s throat and then swung round to deliver an upward lunge on Creost’s unguarded side. The bloody sword point emerged from Creost’s shoulder and he was torn from the saddle, such was the force of the blow.
With four strokes the rider had slain the two Uhriel and their steeds.
Then the rider struck two more terrible blows, mounted, and turned Serian in the direction in which Oklar had fled.
Hawklan ran on and on, supporting the hobbling Andawyr.
It seemed to him that since he had used the sword, everything was slipping from him and great forces were converging on him. He ran along Sumeral’s road through the bleak mists of Narsindal, but he did not know where he was running, or scarcely why.
Some voice within him propelled him forward faster and faster.
And despite his pain, Andawyr propelled him also.
Skittering footsteps caught up with them. It was Dar-volci.
The sight of the felci apparently unaffected by the mounting horrors of their journey made Hawklan feel calmer.
‘Where’s Gavor?’ he gasped.
‘No idea,’ Dar-volci replied. ‘I saw him deal with a few Mandrocs then I got a little involved myself and I didn’t see him before I left.’
Hawklan grimaced with self-reproach. In his own turmoil he had forgotten the others fighting to protect him.
‘What about the rest,’ he asked.
‘Still fighting when I left,’ Dar-volci replied. ‘I thought I’d be more use here than there.’
They ran on in silence, until Andawyr slithered to the ground.
‘I must rest,’ he said desperately.
Hawklan stared into the mist. There were no sounds of pursuit, but still he felt a driving urgency.
He bent down and took Andawyr’s ankle, but the Cadwanwr snatched it away.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The pain focuses my mind so that I can remain where I am and perhaps still hide us from His will. Go on with Dar-volci, quickly before I’m overwhelmed.’
He reached out to stroke the anxious felci.
‘I won’t leave you,’ Hawklan said. ‘What’s happen-ing? Why’s everything suddenly so… fraught, so… desperate?’
‘I don’t know,’ Andawyr said. ‘You used the sword. I can feel terrible things happening somewhere. I can feel my brothers. I can feel the Uhriel. And other things too-the Guardians, perhaps. But no pattern, no shape. Just a chaos and disorder with you at its centre. Only He seems to be steadfast-watching, waiting. Go!’
Hawklan peered along the mist-shrouded road. Its silence and stillness were bizarrely at odds with his own whirling inner confusion and Andawyr’s almost frenzied declamation.
Then, unceremoniously, he swept Andawyr up on to his shoulder and set off again. There was a brief protest from the Cadwanwr, but it foundered against Hawklan’s patent resolution.
As Hawklan ran, he felt again as he had felt earlier, that he was climbing some interminably long and increasingly steep slope. Eventually he came to an exhausted halt.
‘No more,’ he said slumping. ‘No more.’
Andawyr slithered down and stood in front of the despondent healer. He tried to smile encouragingly, but desperation leaked through and swept the smile aside.
‘Lean on me,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m fresher now.’
‘Hush, both of you,’ Dar-volci said suddenly.
Hawklan bent his head forward. There were still no sounds of pursuit. ‘What…?’ he began.
‘Hush!’
Then into the silence came the soft lapping of waves.
Andawyr seized Hawklan’s arm and, limping heav-ily, dragged him to the side of the road and down the embankment.
A line of dark, glistening waves came into view. Andawyr stopped and, hopping unsteadily on one leg, looked at the grim turbulent surface that disappeared into the mist.
‘We’re here,’ he said, his voice alive with a mixture of fear, disbelief and excitement. ‘We’re here. The causeway across Lake Kedrieth. We’ve reached His lair undiscovered, and His every resource is still turned towards the battle.’
Hawklan felt his confusion fall away. They had suc-ceeded. Now, whatever the outcome, his journeying was truly near its end. Soon he would come face to face with the monstrous author of all the foulness that he had come upon since that fateful spring day when a twitching sharp-eyed tinker had pranced his spider’s dance on the green at Pedhavin.
He helped Andawyr back to the road.
‘Across this causeway to our enemy, Cadwanwr,’ he said softly, loosening the black sword in its scabbard.
Andawyr nodded and ran the palms of his hands down his soiled robe as if preparing for some heavy task.
As they moved forward they began to pass aban-doned carts and wagons; anonymous hulking shadows in the mist.
Then, abruptly, one of the dark shapes rose up in front of them. Hawklan cried out and drew his sword. Dar-volci chattered his teeth and snarled.
‘Welcome, Hawklan,’ said Oklar. ‘I see that, as ever, you come to strike at the heart of your foe; like an assassin, silent and treacherous. You would have been wiser to keep Ethriss’s ringing sword sheathed. I heard it amid the heart of the destruction of your army and drove my steed to its death so that I could lay it and your carcass before my Master.’
Hawklan released a long breath. ‘I have no words for you, Uhriel. It is your Master from whom I seek an accounting. Stand aside or die. My sight is truer than it was.’
Oklar bowed. ‘Then see this, healer,’ he said, extend-ing his hands.
Hawklan felt the dreadful presence of the Uhriel in all his power, tearing through the fabric of the reality around him. It gave him an awesome measure of his own inadequacy.
And this is but a servant, a voice said somewhere inside him.
But then Andawyr stood in front of him, and the presence of the Uhriel receded.
‘You above all will be punished when this day’s work is finished,’ Oklar said.
‘No, Uhriel,’ Andawyr said quietly. ‘This day will be ours. Your time passed millennia ago when Ethriss struck you down. This is but a dream in the great sleep he sent you to.’
Oklar’s eyes blazed red through the mist. ‘The dream is yours, Cadwanwr,’ he said, his voice taut with fury. ‘Your brothers fail before us, your army falls before us. Where are your Guardians? And where is the great Heretic himself?’
‘The Guardians are all around us, Uhriel,’ Andawyr replied. ‘Did you not wonder why your once great power is so weak?’
Oklar’s anger was replaced by contemptuous amusement. ‘A detail, learned one,’ he said. ‘One that time will overcome for us, as you, above all, know. And time we shall have when these irksome peoples about our southern borders have been crushed.’
‘Enough,’ Hawklan said, moving forward to stand by Andawyr. ‘Each moment this puppet and his Master live, people are dying in bloody horror.’
Andawyr interposed himself again, but Oklar stepped forward and struck him a blow that sent him sprawling. With a roar, Dar-volci leapt forward, his great mouth agape.
Oklar swung round and caught him squarely with his foot. The felci arced into the air and fell with a thud near to the fallen Cadwanwr.
Oklar’s eyes blazed again. ‘Learn Cadwanwr, as your fellows did, that while your vaunted skills can stunt our powers for the moment, we were warriors great in a world of greatness before we bowed to His will. And as a warrior I shall slay you here.’
Hawklan stepped back involuntarily as Oklar drew his sword. It glowed a menacing, shifting red in the mist.
Hawklan took the black sword in both hands and let go such ties of fear as bound him.
The two assailants faced each other.
Then two objects landed with a dull thud on the ground between them.
As they rolled to a standstill, Hawklan stepped back in horror. They were the heads of Creost and Dar Hastuin, gaping and awful.
‘Have you no word for the Lord Vanas and the Duke Irgoneth, mighty Lord?’ said a muffled voice above his head. ‘Your erstwhile comrades-in-arms, and bloody perpetrators of His will.’
A horse pushed gently past Hawklan. It was Serian, foam-covered and steaming. Riding him was a visored figure.
Oklar knelt down to examine the two heads, then stared up at the newcomer.
His face was alive with emotion.
‘It cannot be,’ he said. ‘No ordinary blade could hurt them, Cadwanwr or no. Who…?’
‘Look at me, Uhriel,’ the rider said.
Oklar stared up at the figure and his eyes opened in terror. ‘It cannot be,’ he began again. ‘You wear the armour of the Lords of the Iron Ring; the true armour forged by the Heretic’s smiths.’
‘Why should I not, Lord?’ said the rider. ‘Did you not see me that day? Or did the ravens mocking you from above dim your true vision?’ Oklar’s hand clawed at the ground as he stared transfixed at the figure. ‘Did you not see me stare into His eyes and show Him His own soul, so that even He faltered at the horror of it and fell before Ethriss’s pity, and the Fyordyn’s arrows?’
‘It cannot be,’ Oklar said again, like a soothing re-sponse in a dreadful litany. ‘Who…?’
The rider moved forward and reached up to remove the visor.
‘Do you not know me yet… father?’
Oklar staggered back; for the moment, Uhriel no more, but a man. ‘Gwelayne?’ he said softly. ‘My… ’ His voice faded and Hawklan turned away from the torment in his face. Then Oklar let out a demented cry. ‘No, no, no. Gwelayne is gone. Gone even before I became… Gone into… ’
‘Gone where, father?’ the rider said. ‘Gone into leg-end? Into some misty cloud at the edge of your conscience?’ She leaned forward and her voice hissed with hatred. ‘Know this, father. That I have the gift you sought. The gift you so lusted for that you betrayed and sold me in the hope it would be given to you. Knowing what he was you sold me! Innocent and trusting; who could not have loved you more. Now it is I who have His greatest gift. It was His scornful, dismissive, blessing at our parting. "Be forever," he said, and I have walked the world ever since.’
Oklar shook his head, transfixed by the image in front of him.
The rider spoke again. ‘Now He has struggled to rise again, I shall cast Him down again, as I have these creatures. And so utterly that there will be no further awakening. I will deny Him the gift he granted me.’
Oklar’s head shook more and more, as if the action would dash all the words from his ears. ‘You could be His again,’ he gasped. ‘Rule as you did. Powerful, haughty… ’
He flinched back at some expression in the rider’s face that Hawklan could not see. Man and Uhriel fought for possession of him, then suddenly, he let out a great scream and, plunging forward, seized the heads of his slain comrades. Hawklan started towards him, ready to strike, for he was Uhriel again, whole and terrible-more terrible even than before.
‘Cadwanwr,’ he said, rising to his feet holding a head in each hand. ‘I see your hand in this foul charade, and you will live long to regret it.’ Andawyr raised a hand towards him, then stepped as if held by some great force. ‘I own I misjudged your power,’ Oklar continued. ‘But so did you mine. For in slaying these you gave me their power, and I am His equal now. His Will shall be mine. All things shall be mine.’
‘No, father. Please… ’ The voice was pleading.
Oklar’s eyes blazed and with a raging cry he swung his sword back to strike down this fearful spectre from his long-buried humanity.
The rider did not move, and briefly Oklar faltered in his terrible intent. As he did so Hawklan drove the black sword of Ethriss towards the Uhriel’s heart with all the skill and power he possessed.
With effortless ease, Oklar knocked it from his grasp. It clattered to the ground and he stood astride it.
‘Now no weapon can injure me,’ he said.
Strangely calm, his hand came round to point at Andawyr. ‘Your suffering shall begin now.’
But as he spoke, a sinuous brown body slithered from between the Cadwanwr’s legs and ran towards him.
Oklar hesitated, and Dar-volci scrambled nimbly up his lank form until he was on his shoulder. A mailed hand moved to dislodge him, but Dar-volci reached out a powerful claw and slashed a great gash in it.
Then he whispered in Oklar’s ear. ‘Know this, cor-rupter. We are creatures of the deep rock. Here before your time and brought unwilling to this new world.’
Oklar stared at the welling blood, and terror sud-denly filled his face. Desperately he reached back to seize the felci, but Dar-volci’s claws were already about his throat and his formidable teeth were closing around the back of his neck.
‘Noooo!’
Oklar’s scream rose above the sound of the crushing bones. It reached a terrible climax then faded suddenly and his long frame fell to the ground almost silently.
Dar-volci jumped clear of the tumbling destruction, then scratched his stomach and spat something out distastefully. The rider pulled the visor back over her face and dismounted. She bent down and with great tenderness lifted the dead Uhriel’s head into her lap.
Hawklan knelt down beside her.
She turned to look at him. Hawklan could see no part of her face, but he could see tears shining in her eyes.
He touched her gently and she bowed her head gratefully.
Then she reached out and, picking up Ethriss’s sword, handed it to him. ‘Your people are dying, prince,’ she said. ‘All hangs at the point of balance and all His power is returned to Him. You must destroy Him.’
Hawklan took hold of the sword and, for the first time, felt its true power. He turned and looked at Andawyr. The little man nodded urgently, his eyes wide and desperate.
And then Hawklan was running along the broad causeway, the only sound his soft footsteps and the icy lapping of Lake Kedrieth.
He felt the warrior in him listening, peering into the subtle shadows within the dense mist, and preparing every part of him for combat against any foe. He felt the healer too, silent but acquiescent, waiting for the terrible healing work that was to be done.
But above all, he felt alone.
Then a great coldness spoke inside him, like that which had touched him as he had fallen before Oklar’s fury at the palace gate. But it was worse by far. And as beautiful as it was fearful.
‘Welcome, Hawklan, Prince of Orthlund, and great-est of My Uhriel.’