Desperately, Nertha bent close to Antyr, first listening for his breathing, then offering her cheek. But she could feel nothing. She checked his pulse. It was still there, more distant than weak. She had never felt anything like it before.
A bizarre mixture of fear and professional pride wrapped about one another and became a deep anger.
She swore. ‘I will not lose you to this – whatever it is. I will not lose you!’
Her face grim with determination, she quickly checked the others. Lying on their sides like sleeping children, as she had placed them, they were unchanged. She lingered briefly, running a loving hand down her husband’s cheek, then she rolled Antyr on to his back and, holding his nose and arching his neck, placed her mouth over his.
His chest rose as she blew, then sank as she stopped. Still she counted as she worked, periodically checking his pulse and the condition of the others. After a while, she began to intersperse her counting with profanity and an aching inner cry for help.
‘Tarrian, Grayle! Tarrian, Grayle!’
‘Tarrian, Grayle!’ Antyr cried out. ‘To me!’
But no sound came, other than the dreamsong of the dead in the living.
Vredech’s voice reached through it, like a distant sound carried on the wind.
‘No one can help us here, Antyr. This is our burden.’
Anger from the song leaked into Antyr.
‘Your faith tells you this, Priest?’ he cried.
The reply was unexpected.
‘Yes. Faith in you, Dream Finder. That and the hold I have both on Nertha and on you… just.’
‘But…?’
‘This is what I do here, Antyr, and what I will do, while I can.’
Antyr felt the song drifting over him again.
‘But why am I here?’ he managed.
‘What are you?’
What am I?
Dream Finder. Adept. Warrior of the White Way. Words. Only words. To hide as much as to reveal. He was Antyr, son of Petran, flawed and frightened, blundering and ignorant in a place where no one should be. He was no different from the endless rows of figures stretching away from him in every direction, their faces lit by the unseen light that had unmade them and that had bound them to this time.
He did not know what to do.
But flawed and frightened as he was, blundering and ignorant as he was, he was also the Antyr who had faced Ivaroth in mortal combat and the terrible power of the blind man.
He could not do nothing.
He looked into the unseeing eyes of the nearest figure. ‘Turn away from this fearful glare,’ he said. ‘You hold the living to your time. Your pain is the source of Sumeral’s strength here. Release them, and be free. Turn to the light that reveals, turn to the truth.’
He placed his hand over the figure’s face and, for a timeless moment, as with his Earth Holder, he was it and it was he, knowing all that he knew and was.
The figure closed its eyes.
He passed to the next.
And the next.
Faintly he could hear Vredech calling.
‘I can’t hold you, Antyr, I can’t hold you…’
He moved on.
Antyr’s heart stopped.
Nertha searched for its beat frantically. Her profanity worsened. She tore open the neck of her tunic so that she could breathe more easily. Both sweat and tears ran down her face.
Fingers entwined, she began pressing Antyr’s chest rhythmically. Counting, swearing, and calling openly now on Tarrian and Grayle.
Then they were there. Eyes like wild suns. Deep-throated growling like the sound of tumbling rocks and pitiless killing teeth bared white in the greyness.
Her every instinct told her to flee, but her will denied them. She met Tarrian’s awful gaze with one of her own and bared her teeth into his slavering maw.
‘This ismy domain,’ she snarled. ‘Find them in yours. Find them both. Bring them back.’
Gavor flapped his wings.
The Labyrinth, its columns becoming ever more like roots and trunks, twisting and tangling up into unseen heights, was becoming steadily brighter. With the increasing light came also sound, and a breeze.
It was no pleasant zephyr, however. There was a harshness in it that made Hawklan turn his face away. Nor was the sound kinder. Shattering glass, wind-torn roots and yielding timbers, the screams of midnight prey and battle-wounded, all were there, and more.
Hawklan looked up.
Above him was a foaming vortex, dark and ominous, like the mingling of countless broken worlds. As he stared at it, he could not tell whether the columns of the Labyrinth reached up to it, or hung down from it like searching, twisting tentacles.
Then they were out of the Labyrinth. In front of them, the ground ended abruptly. Hawklan stepped forward carefully, to find himself at the edge of a plunging height. It dropped sheer, into a depth he dared not see. He took in a throat-closing breath and stepped back unsteadily.
Normally Dar-volci and Gavor relished taunting him for his fear of heights, but they were silent.
Looking about him, Hawklan saw that he was at the edge of a great pit.
At its centre was a vast tapering column and, to his right, was a slender bridge spanning across to it. At the end of the bridge stood a familiar figure.
He ran towards it.
Gulda pushed her hood back when he reached her. She held up a finger before he could speak.
‘I’ve no answers, Hawklan,’ she said, her bright eyes pained and her hand opening and closing about her stick. ‘Many threads are coming together and I am drawn here by one of His weaving.’ She looked at him significantly. ‘As you know. I dare not trust myself to act, but you must. Trust yourself.’
‘But…’
She stepped to one side and pointed her stick along what Hawklan had taken for a bridge. It was scarcely a pace wide. The breeze had become a wind and it was growing stronger.
‘You have done well. Your transformation of the world where the Sword fell, imperfect though it was, has opened the Great Way and brought you to Me.’
‘Our hurts are made whole by Your Praise, Great Lord. With our Power and Your wisdom we will release You and sweep Ethriss’s folly away.’
Gory heads bowed and gashes leaking, the Uhriel were kneeling. Without looking up, the blind man held out his hands. Resting on them was the black sword.
A hand closed about its hilt.
‘Your Power will indeed cleanse this place. I accept it. Accept now My wisdom.’
A single stroke severed all three heads.
‘I can’t walk along that,’ Hawklan said, his eyes wide with fear.
Gulda did not answer but lowered her stick and resumed her silent vigil. There was neither reproach nor encouragement in her manner.
‘Out of words, dear boy,’ Gavor said. ‘But I’ll stay with you.’
‘And me,’ Dar-volci said.
It was difficult to hear them; the wind was growing stronger and the noise from above louder. Hawklan looked up again.
The vortex was lower. It was a fearful sight, grim and vast. He glanced once more at the motionless figure of Gulda, head bowed now, then at the narrow pathway ahead of him.
At the far end, suffusing the top of the isolated column, was a bright light.
‘Great mercy, I’m afraid,’ he said, his voice trembling.
Then, with a deep breath, he walked onto the narrow span, the wind tugging and buffeting him. Gavor spread his wings and floated off Hawklan’s shoulder as the healer pressed on uncertainly, shoulders high with tension. Hawklan struggled to keep his gaze fixed resolutely in the distance, but it was drawn inexorably downwards. His legs were shaking so violently that he could scarcely control them, but he was a long way from the beginning when he stopped.
The depths on either side tempted him.
‘One step at a time,’ Dar-volci said.
‘I need to rest a moment,’ Hawklan said, breathing heavily. ‘This wind, this noise…’
He crouched to make himself less vulnerable to the tugging of the wind.
Then he was on all fours, scarcely able to move.
‘I don’t think you have a moment,’ Dar-volci said, shaking him gently.
Hawklan looked up. A light was moving towards him along the bridge. For a moment his fear threatened to become outright panic but as it surged to a peak, so it was transformed into cold anger and battle-readiness. His legs were still trembling – his whole body was trembling – but the movement was familiar and he knew it for what it was: ancient reflexes releasing him to fight.
He stood up.
The light drew nearer.
Hawklan began walking towards it as steadily as he could. The wind was continuing to grow stronger and the noise from the turbulent sky louder. Violent, roiling and shot with lightning and endlessly shifting colours, it was still descending. Whatever it was, there could be little doubt that nothing would survive its touch.
Wings reaching into the ways of the wind to keep his flight steady, Gavor suddenly soared above him, a black and sharp-edged silhouette stark and clear against the confusion.
Hawklan looked back along the bridge. Gulda was still there, though he could see her only indistinctly. He turned back to the approaching light.
It was nearer now.
And he felt again the presence he had felt as he had trekked across Narsindal to stand before the mist-shrouded castle of Derras Ustramel.
Sumeral had been given form again.
Hawklan moved forward. He was alone, unarmed, racked by the tearing wind and menaced by the siren call of the abyss beneath him, but he knew he must stand against this abomination. Futile it might seem but even as the thought came to him he could hear Andawyr proclaiming, ‘Never underestimate the effects of the smallest action.’
‘You are smiling.’
The cold words formed within him as they had when he had heard them on the causeway across Lake Kedrieth.
Hawklan straightened and gazed into the light. It was barely five paces away from him. There was the hint of a figure at its heart. He did not reply.
‘Ethriss’s creations were ever flawed. Smiling in the face of their destruction.’
Still Hawklan did not speak.
‘You have no questions? No plea to make – for his sorry world – for yourself? You, who could have been the greatest of My Uhriel – My chosen.’
Silence.
Hawklan opened his arms in a gesture that might have been acceptance or welcome. He looked up at the vortex.
‘This is the dance of My new creation – the wiping away of all things so that perfection can be made.’
Hawklan shook his head. ‘This will indeed sweep all things away – but it is not Your creation. The folly that brought it about created You also – the essence of all that is foul in humanity, unfettered and given form by cruel chance. This You must know, as Ethriss did. Prepare yourself for oblivion.’
He turned.
The bridge behind him was fading into greyness, but he felt no fear at the sight.
‘There is nowhere for You in this time. Whatever bound You here – sustained You – is passing on, free now. The Guardians too passed on when they realized the truth of their nature; so now will You.’
The brightness faltered momentarily, and though the howling of the wind and the rumbling of the vortex filled everywhere, Hawklan felt only a long silence.
‘You would have been a fine servant, Hawklan. Your treachery and guile are worthy of My favour. But I have been bound here too long. I will honour you as I honoured My Uhriel. With the key that will unlock Ethriss’s cursed Labyrinth.’
Hawklan stepped back instinctively and the point of the black sword passed in front of him, cutting a singing horizontal arc out of the brightness.
‘That ismy sword,’ he said. ‘It comes from the heart of whatever brought this upon us. Made by Ethriss when his doubts began, in the faith that it would protect us.’ He opened his arms again. ‘If You would be free, give it to me and perhaps I will have the knowledge that can truly end this.’
Two further steps back saved him from the diagonal cuts that came by way of reply.
‘It is my sword,’ he said again. ‘You cannot use it. It will doom you.’
‘Take My merciful thrust or avoid it again and step into the nothingness at your back.’
Hawklan turned his head slightly. At the edge of his vision was greyness. He could go no further.
He was aware of Dar-volci at his feet, of the vortex closer than ever, chaotic and wild, of the wind tugging at him and of Gavor struggling with it. And, not least, he was aware of the point of the black sword little more than a hand-span in front of his throat.
There was great clarity.
He was moving to one side of the blade as it was moving forward. His right hand was clutching the hilt of the Sword, while his left, opened wide, was extending into the brightness as he turned towards it.
Then it was gone. With a cry that pierced the roaring of the vortex, the figure was tumbling into the abyss, flaring like a falling star. As it guttered out, Hawklan was standing with his arms open, as though to embrace the whole world.
And clutching the black sword.
That it was his he had no doubt. There was a completeness to him that he had not known since he had lost it. Yet no new knowledge came with it. Sumeral, the evil that had destroyed Gentren’s world and plagued this one through aeons, was gone – but still destruction threatened.
He looked at Dar-volci and Gavor in desperation.
Gavor flapped in front of him, hovering briefly, before the wind tore him away.
‘Strike to the centre, warrior,’ he cried out.
Then Hawklan was running along the narrow bridge, the wind pounding him, grey emptiness at his back and the vortex ever closer above him, its roar rising in pitch until it became a screaming that threatened to rend him apart.
As he reached the place that had been the centre of the abyss, the turmoil began to worsen with each step he took until it was only his will that sustained him.
‘I will not yield,’ he shouted into the mayhem.
‘Nor need you, for you will be Mine soon enough.’
Hawklan cried out as the cold voice filled him again.
In front of him were a myriad facets. In each could be seen the whirling vortex.
Save in one.
In that was only his own image, watching him with cold amusement.
‘Did you think I would be so foolish as to face My chosen with his own Sword? That was but My shadow you destroyed – a faltering echo in your world sent to bring you to Me with the Sword.’
‘To end you finally.’
‘No. To free Me.’
Hawklan’s grip tightened about the Sword grimly and he urged himself forward. But he could not move against the wind, so powerful had it become.
‘No. It is beyond even you to take this last step. It transcends the ability of any man. You are bound where you are by what you are. Only the Sword and that part of you which is truly Mine will be drawn to Me when the final joining comes. And as it returns, so shall I be made truly whole, and so shall I come in glory to the remaking of My heartworld.’
Despair racked Hawklan. He raised the Sword to strike but all strength had left him. He was helpless. The vortex roared triumphantly, bloody and dark, all about him.
‘I will not yield,’ he cried again, though he could not hear his own voice and his heart was bursting.
Then, a whistling, high, loud and needle-clear, pierced the clamour, and a pulsing, pounding rhythm shook it. Hawklan recognized the call of Dar-volci and the urgent beating of Gavor’s wings. But they could do nothing now. He tried to set the distracting sounds aside.
Then he listened to them.
And surrendered to them.
As he did so, the hunting spirits of Tarrian and Grayle, feral, ancient and terrible, surged through him, releasing him, carrying him to where he could not go alone.
The Black Sword severed the mocking image from top to bottom.