Long-shadowed in the light of the setting sun, a small, shifting crowd stood in front of the castle, waiting for the approaching riders. When they arrived, it was immediately apparent that they had been riding hard for some distance. The horses were exhausted and the riders were in little better shape. Hawklan was at the forefront of the group that ran forward to meet them. Surprise heightened the concern on his face as he recognized the riders.
‘Dacu, Tirke! What’s the matter?’
The two Goraidin declined help as they dismounted wearily but they gratefully accepted the removal of their steaming horses. Dacu wasted no time in greetings, delivering his message to Hawklan immediately. It was as clear and straightforward as it was urgent.
‘You’re needed. We have two men down.’
Only after a brief explanation did he notice the presence of Andawyr and Gulda. Though obviously surprised to see them, he made no pause for inquiry, merely bowing respectfully to them both and saying to Andawyr, ‘Come yourself, if you can.’
Thus it was that, shortly after their arrival, the two Goraidin, mounted on fresh horses, were moving back down the steep road towards the village. They were accompanied by Hawklan and followed at a distance by Andawyr and Isloman driving a soft-wheeled cart. Despite their fatigue, Dacu and Tirke had restricted their rest and refreshment to the brief interlude while the new horses were saddled and a plunging of their travel-grimed faces into the icy stream that surged up by the Great Gate after an uncharted passage deep beneath the castle.
Passing through Pedhavin, the group turned south and began to ride faster. As they travelled, Dacu and Tirke told Hawklan of all that had happened on their journey through Canol Madreth and Arvenstaat and of their meeting with Atelon. Hawklan listened impassively as the strange tales of Vredech, Thyrn and Pinnatte unfolded.
Though they had powerful Riddin horse lanterns to light their way, they were not able to ride as quickly as the Goraidin had dashed to the castle and it was the middle of the night before a swinging light signalled them into the camp that was their destination.
They were greeted warmly by a fretful Atelon.
‘Nertha’s with her husband and Pinnatte,’ Atelon told Hawklan, speaking softly as if to avoid disturbing anyone. ‘Thyrn and Endryk are asleep – they’re exhausted. Come to that, so is Nertha, but…’ He gave a disclaiming shrug.
‘She’s a healer as well as a wife, Dacu tells me,’ Hawklan said. ‘Doubly blessed with insomnia, under the circumstances.’ He turned to Dacu and Tirke. ‘Speaking of which, you two must rest now. You’ve done well and there’s nothing else you can do, at least not until Andawyr and Isloman arrive. Get what sleep you can. Atelon will tend the horses, then he’ll sleep too.’ Tirke seemed inclined to protest, but Hawklan’s raised eyebrow coupled with a nudge from Dacu kept him silent. Atelon bowed slightly, then took the horses.
Nertha emerged from one of the tents. Her face was drawn and anxious in the dancing shadows that an unsettling mixture of flickering firelight and staring lantern light was casting about the camp. Seeing Hawklan, she straightened her jacket, pulled herself erect and came towards him briskly, her hand extended. Hawklan took it and felt immediately the strength of her healer’s will vying with the weakness and doubt that were an inevitable consequence of tending someone close.
‘Dacu’s told me what he knows about your husband and Pinnatte,’ he said, leading her back to the tent. ‘Which is both a great deal and very little. Has anything changed while they’ve been away?’
‘No,’ Nertha replied, her consciously adopted physician’s manner barely managing to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘They’re still… asleep.’
There had been considerable alarm in the camp when they had been unable to rouse Vredech and Pinnatte. It had been eased more by Nertha’s sternly controlled manner than by her diagnosis after she had examined them.
‘I don’t know what’s happened, but the last time my husband was like this – seemingly asleep, but unwakeable – he, or some part of him, was alive and conscious in another place, perhaps another time.’ She ruthlessly crushed any debate. ‘He told you about it. Now I am. A similar thing’s happened to you, Thyrn, hasn’t it?’ Thyrn nodded but did not speak. He was clutching Endryk’s arm like a child. ‘I’ve no explanation,’ Nertha went on as if fearful of stopping. ‘Seeking reasons is why we’re here. When it happened before, he just woke up. I think all we can do now is keep them comfortable and… wait.’
Dacu looked at the two apparently sleeping figures and frowned. ‘Hearing about such a thing around the camp-fire is one thing, seeing it is unsettling, to say the least.’ He took refuge in practicalities. Looking around at the camp he said, ‘We can’t wait here. These mountains are hardly formidable but they’re more than enough to kill us. Our supplies won’t last indefinitely and if the weather changes we’ll be in serious trouble.’
Thus it was that they had spent the day and much of the night continuing their journey, carrying the two prostrated men. The terrain for the most part was too uneven and difficult for the use of horse-drawn litters and it proved necessary to carry Vredech and Pinnatte on hastily rigged stretchers. Though neither man was particularly heavy, it was nevertheless desperate and wearying work. Throughout, their condition did not change, and when the group finally stopped and made camp, Dacu decided that after a few hours’ sleep he and Tirke should head for Anderras Darion as quickly as they could to bring help. Atelon and the others were to stay where they were but, as it transpired, they ignored this injunction and, at no small cost to themselves, had made useful further progress northwards by the time the Goraidin returned with Hawklan.
Nertha turned up the light of the lantern as Hawklan examined the two men. Routinely he checked their pulses and various other vital signs, though he judged from what he had both heard about Nertha and concluded from his brief acquaintance with her that nothing untoward would be found.
‘They seem simply to be asleep,’ he confirmed. ‘I can’t find anything other than the normal stresses and strains I’d expect to find in people who’ve been travelling for a long time. In fact, they’re so relaxed I’d say they were dreaming, except their eyes aren’t moving.’
‘My husband says he doesn’t dream,’ Nertha said absently. Hawklan took Pinnatte’s injured hand. ‘This is peculiar, though. It’s almost as if it’s part of something else, something… beyond him.’ He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘Still, they don’t seem to be in any danger.’
‘Not here, anyway,’ Nertha said, watching Hawklan’s face intently. ‘They are somewhere else, though, I’m sure.’
‘Yes. So Dacu’s told me,’ Hawklan replied. He saw her eyes testing his doubt. ‘I’m a healer, like you,’ he said. ‘There are a great many things I don’t understand, but I’ve learned to accept what is, however odd or frightening. It’s a strange tale, I’ll admit, but I’ve heard stranger.’ He gave a soft, self-deprecating laugh that seemed to warm the tent. ‘In fact, I’ve been in stranger.’
His brow furrowed, then, on an impulse, he knelt down between the two bodies and placed his hands on their foreheads. ‘You are safe and watched over here,’ he said. ‘Do not be afraid. All is well. All will be well.’
Then he stood up. ‘There’s nothing we can do now that you haven’t already done. There’s a cart following behind us. We’ll get them to Anderras Darion as quickly as we can. There’re more facilities, more knowledge, more everything there. In the meantime, you should sleep.’
Nertha shook her head. ‘I belong here.’
‘You’ve done all you can, you know that,’ Hawklan said. ‘I’ll be here and I’ll wake you if anything happens.’ Nertha’s face became uncertain.
‘If you’re needed you’ll be needed rested and strong,’ Hawklan insisted.
Nertha looked at him earnestly, then came a little nearer to the point of capitulation. ‘You’re probably right,’ she admitted. ‘But I may as well stay with you. Needing sleep and being able to are two different matters.’
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Allow me.’
Without waiting for permission and with a movement that was as swift as it was easy, he passed his hand slowly over Nertha’s face, then caught her as she fell.
‘You always did have a way with women, didn’t you?’
It was Dar-volci, greeting Hawklan as he carried Nertha out of the tent, her head cradled on his shoulder.
‘Good to see you, rock eater,’ Hawklan acknowledged. ‘Though it seems I can’t let you wander off on your own for more than a few days without you turning the world upside down. Which is her tent?’
Settling Nertha and checking that everyone else in the camp was asleep, Hawklan placed a signal lantern to guide Isloman and Andawyr, then sat down by the fire. He threw a handful of small branches onto it and watched the sparks scurrying up into the night sky. Dar-volci curled up opposite him.
‘What do you make of this?’ Hawklan asked the felci.
‘Nothing good. Sumeral’s taking shape again, somewhere, and He’s struggling to return.’
Hawklan felt as though he had been suddenly plunged into icy water. For an instant he could hear nothing but his own heartbeat, and his vision was filled with Dar-volci’s triangular head. The felci’s mouth was moving. ‘Arash-Felloren stinks of His presence.’ A matter-of-fact tone helped draw Hawklan out of his shock and back from the memories of the war that were suddenly threatening to overwhelm him. ‘It must have been one of His citadels once – ancient, corrupted roots. And those damned Kyrosdyn nearly brought Him back, using Pinnatte.’ He chattered his teeth angrily, then scratched himself. He was silent for a moment. ‘You know, I’m not so sure that mightn’t have been a bad thing, now I look back on it.’ The expression in Hawklan’s eyes turned from shock to incredulity, but he said nothing. ‘Whatever the Kyrosdyn had turned Pinnatte into, it was unstable. Very unstable. It couldn’t have lasted. How it ever came to be defeats me.’ Dar-volci’s tone became briefly ironic. ‘Andawyr would probably be able to show you a calculation proving it these days, but all you needed to feel it was to be there. Ask Atelon. I think if He’d taken Pinnatte’s body it might have doomed Him utterly. Still, ever impetuous, we went and leapt to the rescue, didn’t we? And Pinnatte’s a nice enough lad in his way.’
Hawklan was hoping he would be able to accuse the felci of playing some dark, mocking fantasy for him, but it was patently not so. Even Dar-volci’s sense of humour was not so dark. Hawklan dropped his head into his hands and shook it slowly. It was some time before he could speak.
‘You talk about it very casually. I can hardly bear even to think it.’ He looked up into the night sky, after the fleeing sparks. His face was pained. ‘It can’t be true, surely, Dar? You’ve made a mistake. How can He return?’ He knew the questions were futile. Dar-volci would not have spoken as he had without being certain. Nevertheless Hawklan had to ask them. They were part of his way towards acceptance. ‘At least, so soon after He was… destroyed. There were countless generations between the First and the Second Comings.’
Dar-volci allowed no relief. ‘We don’t know how long He’d been in Narsindal before we learned about Him, do we? It was Oklar’s folly that exposed Him, not our vigilance. Nor do we know what brought Him back or in what form He came. But Derras Ustramel wasn’t built and the Uhriel weren’t resurrected and sent out to infest the world in any short span.’ The felci’s summary was coldly accurate. It was not new. The manner and moment of Sumeral’s return had been the subject of much debate amongst the Fyordyn and their allies after the war. It could not be otherwise for, however and whenever it had happened, it was a devastating measure of their failure to meet their ancient responsibilities.
Hawklan stared silently into the fire.
‘It can’t be, it can’t be,’ he said, more a plea than a statement. ‘All those people killed. Every kind of suffering. Suffering that’s still with us – endless consequences. I doubt there’s anyone who was involved who doesn’t have some memory of the war return to them every day. We couldn’t fight Him again, not like that. It was supposed to be over. He was destroyed before He gained His full strength. He destroyed Himself. Scattered Himself who knows where?’
‘Precisely,’ Dar-volci said. ‘Who knows where? From the very beginning no one ever knew what He was, where He came from, or why He was the way He was. All that even Ethriss knew was that, like himself, He had come from the beginning – the Great Searing. That, and the fact that He would return, though he never said how he knew that. I suspect he just guessed. But return He did. And He’s coming yet again if we don’t find a way to stop Him.’
Hawklan’s thoughts flailed. ‘Perhaps you and Atelon defeating Him in Arash-Felloren may have destroyed Him.’
Dar-volci shook his head. ‘We thwarted Him, that’s all. I sensed no destruction. And the destruction of such a thing I’d have felt, I know. Now, in addition to what happened to us, we have Vredech’s experience. Dacu’s told you, I presume?’
Hawklan nodded. ‘His friend – Cassraw, was it? – was possessed by something and tried to possess others through some kind of demented religion…’
Dar-volci interrupted him, his manner emphatic. ‘Always His favourite way, religion, you know that. The easy way. Ignorance masquerading as certainty. Endless opportunities for all manner of horrors when that kind of claptrap’s poured into the minds of the weak and the gullible.’ He uttered a low whistle. ‘You’re easily led, you creatures. Then there’s what happened to Thyrn. These things aren’t coincidences.’
‘You think Thyrn has been touched by Him also?’ Hawklan said warily. ‘That it was Sumeral who took possession of this man who employed him?’ He searched for the name.
Dar-volci found it for him. ‘Vashnar. Some kind of high-ranking government official.’ He stretched, then curled up again. The tension in his voice was replaced by thoughtfulness. ‘I don’t know about Thyrn. What happened to him feels similar but very different at the same time. Whatever it was that possessed this Vashnar character used the Power, if Thyrn’s description is to be trusted – and it is, as you’ll learn when you get to know him. But there’s something in the way he talks about it. It’s because he’s a Caddoran, I suppose. He reproduces what he’s heard with great subtlety. It’s remarkable. You must have him tell his own tale to you personally, you’ll understand what I mean then. When I listen to him talk about Vashnar and the power… the entity… whatever it was that was driving him, I get the feeling of something… truly ancient… something that perhaps comes from a time before the Great Searing. It’s very odd. Very disturbing. I can’t put my claw on what it is but I can’t shake it off.’
Dar-volci was not normally given to uncertainty and his hesitation added to Hawklan’s unease. He risked an element of levity in his reply. ‘You can attend to that, then. You felcis are supposed to come from a time before the Great Searing, aren’t you?’ he said, unclear himself whether he was being serious or not.
‘We do,’ Dar-volci replied flatly. ‘Or our line does, to be more accurate.’ His half-closed eyes opened suddenly, bright, wide and challenging. ‘How do we know such a thing, you ask? It’s buried deep in the spiralling knowledge that lies at the heart of every least part of us.’ Then he responded to Hawklan’s need, becoming ironic again. ‘But I’m afraid we don’t have it written on a piece of paper somewhere to show everyone,’ he said, his manner heavily confidential.
Hawklan laughed, grateful for the humour, though it served only to dispel briefly the darkness into which Dar-volci’s original analysis has plunged him. As he pondered it now he saw that, in many ways, it was a darkness that had perhaps been growing since the war itself. It was quite separate from the pain and the suffering he had seen and tended. That was something he had been able both to accept and yet detach himself from. That was a necessary part of his lot as a healer. This was different. It was unclear, ill-formed. It came from another place within him and it hung around the words that Sumeral had spoken to him as, Ethriss’s Black Sword in his hand, he had run along the causeway across Lake Kedrieth and towards the mist-shrouded fortress of Derras Ustramel to destroy this returned abomination.
‘Greatest of my Uhriel,’ He had called him.
Whenever this memory returned to him, he was running again on that dank and empty causeway with no sounds about him other than his own soft footfalls and the icy lapping of the lake. A coldness had possessed him as Sumeral’s voice had rung through him, as beautiful as it was fearful.
‘Greatest of my Uhriel.’
Every part of him had screamed out in denial. This could not be so! Had not Ethriss’s own hand snatched him from the point of death on an ancient battlefield of the First Coming to bring him to face Sumeral in this time?
‘That hand was mine, Hawklan. Ethriss spared none of his creations. I saw your true worth and took you to be mine when I should rise again.’
Soul-shaking words.
‘See your inheritance and deny it if you can.’
Then had come His vision of Ethriss’s world and those beyond, and how they were to be remade in His image. Flawless, perfect, without the least impairment. Even now, it lingered hauntingly in Hawklan’s thoughts, though he rarely spoke of it. He seemed to have no ability to go beyond it, to question it. It was there. Finished. A totality.
And with the memory came another. One that racked him. Numbed by Sumeral’s revelation, and tempted by His words, he had let slip the Black Sword. ‘Ethriss’s cruel goad.’ That had been a deed of the profoundest folly, he had come to believe, though any reason for this certainty was denied him. He needed no sword in this now-peaceful world, and even if he should there were countless in the Armoury at Anderras Darion that would serve him perfectly well. Yet something that was a part of him had been lost.
He felt his hand opening and the Sword tumbling from it. It could only have fallen into that grey, cold lake, surely? But he remembered it falling for ever, through the darkness, falling, falling, until a ringing chime had signalled… what? He tried to rationalize what he had heard. There had been so many other sounds dinning through that dank Narsindal greyness as Sumeral and his great fortress had been destroyed. It could not have been as he remembered it. Yet…
‘At the lakeside again?’ Dar-volci’s voice shattered his reverie.
‘Despite your denials, I still think you read minds,’ Hawklan replied, looking up.
Dar-volci shook his head. ‘I prefer both depth and quality in my reading.’
He spat into the fire.
‘Bad taste in your mouth?’
‘At the lakeside again,’ Dar-volci said sourly.
‘Do you think we’ll ever leave it?’
Dar-volci’s firelit eyes glinted at him. ‘I left it that same day,’ he said. ‘I only go back because you’re still there.’ He shook his head with an irritated growl and spat into the fire again.
Hawklan bowed apologetically. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I value your company.’ Then he heard himself saying, ‘I shouldn’t have dropped the Sword.’
For a timeless moment, there was nothing anywhere save the man and the felci by the fire, hovering in a universe of absolute silence. Dar-volci slowly inclined his head.
‘Well, well, well. It’s taken you some time to say that, hasn’t it?’
Hawklan let out a long breath. There was a feeling inside him such as a vast and still ocean might know as the unseen forces holding it imperceptibly eased past a point of balance and turned its smooth rippled equilibrium from ebb to flow.
‘I think you may be right,’ he said.
‘You’re not contemplating sending another batch of poor volunteers out to plumb that foul lake, are you?’
Hawklan hurriedly disclaimed that notorious enterprise. ‘Fortunately that was never my idea. Besides, wherever it is, it’s not there, I’m sure of that now. It’s gone as mysteriously as it came.’
Dar-volci turned towards the tent where Vredech and Pinnatte were lying. ‘Somewhere else, eh? Like our two friends, perhaps? Maybe they’ll come across it for you.’
A companionable silence settled between the two. Dar-volci eventually broke it. ‘Do you ever have the feeling that at some deep level everything is coming apart, unravelling?’
Hawklan gave him a perplexed look.
Dar-volci stood up and shook himself. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just a fancy. I’m sure if anything’s amiss it’ll show itself soon enough.’
‘Andawyr says he feels things are not so much coming apart as coming together,’ Hawklan said. ‘You, Atelon, Thyrn, all the others, suddenly appearing with your frightening stories, is going to give him even more to think about.’
‘Andawyr’s at Anderras Darion?’
Hawklan catalogued. ‘And Yatsu and Jaldaric. And Yengar, Olvric, Jenna, Yrain. All of them, like you, with unusual guests. And Gulda!’
Dar-volci was sitting on his haunches. He emitted a series of excited whistles. ‘Do tell, dear boy,’ he said, imitating Gavor. Then he cocked his head sharply on one side and muttered something under his breath.
‘Don’t bother, they’re here.’
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Vredech said.
‘Hush!’ came the urgent reply.
No sun was to be seen and the sky rang with a dark and peculiar blue. Beneath it was a harsh and rugged landscape.
Blue-in-black shadows shaped out a curving line of jagged peaks and crags that lowered over a wide plain. Stretching to a blue-echoing horizon, it was cracked and split by deep ravines, which gave it the look of something dead and long decayed.
Vredech did not know why he had said, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ because he was very afraid himself. A habit brought with him from his pastoral duties, doubtless, he decided. Trying to bring comfort even though he saw cause for none.
He and Pinnatte were standing near the top of a broad col which rose up on either side of them to buttress sharp and cruel peaks. Where they were, how they had come there, how long they had been there were mysteries to him. He had gone to bed quite normally, then, abruptly, without any sense of change that he could recall, he had been here, Pinnatte crouching by him.
Pinnatte’s instincts, as a street thief, had been to remain still and silent in the face of an unexpected development until he could properly assess it. For danger there was here, he was sure. He too had found himself in this place without any recollection of how he came there.
He peered through the heavy blue twilight, seeking some clue in the mysterious and unpleasant terrain. But there was nothing. Yet, he realized, he was more himself here, more the Pinnatte who had flitted through the crowded streets and byways of Arash-Felloren, confident, sure-footed, ever watchful for both opportunity and danger. Gone was the haziness that seemed to have come between his mind and his speech since the Kyrosdyn had started their damned experiments with him. It was good.
‘If I didn’t dream, I’d say this was one,’ he said softly.
‘I don’t dream either,’ Vredech said. ‘And wherever this place is, it’s real. This kind of thing has happened to me before.’
‘What has?’
‘This moving to… other places… without warning. I don’t understand it. One of the reasons I was going to Anderras Darion was to find out about it. At one stage I thought I was going mad.’
‘Perhaps we’ve both gone mad,’ Pinnatte said.
Vredech shook his head and laid a reassuring hand on Pinnatte’s arm. ‘There’s no madness here. Not in us, anyway.’
Releasing Pinnatte, he put his hand to his face. Although no wind was blowing, there was a sensation on his face as though one were.
‘Your hands are shaking,’ Pinnatte said. ‘I thought you said this had happened to you before.’
‘I didn’t say I enjoyed it or that I wasn’t afraid,’ Vredech replied. He looked around. ‘And I was never anywhere like this. No clouds, no sun, no stars; this place is like nothing I could have even imagined.’
‘And the air smells funny.’
‘Acrid,’ Vredech agreed. ‘Like a smithy, burning metal, but cold instead of hot.’
‘How do we get back?’ Pinnatte asked hesitantly.
‘When it’s happened before I’ve found myself back where I was, just as unexpectedly as I… left,’ Vredech said, though he knew there was no comfort in the words. He closed his eyes. Faintly he could feel another part of him, lying in the tent. Nertha was watching over him. But how indeed to get back there? Pinnatte’s question started a panic mounting that took him some effort to control. There was nothing he could do. Nothing except wait. He passed his conclusion on to his companion.
Pinnatte was rubbing his hand. ‘Do you think it’s something to do with what the Kyrosdyn did to me?’
‘I’ve no idea, I…’
‘Look.’ Pinnatte was pointing.
Vredech followed his hand, reaching out over the fractured plain.
‘I can’t see anything.’
‘There, look.’ Pinnatte jabbed the air in emphasis.
Vredech blinked, then narrowed his eyes in an attempt to penetrate the all-pervading blue light.
As he saw the figures, so the sound of them reached him.