The Return of the Sword tcoh-5

by Roger Taylor

  Yengar was with them again, his eyes wide.

  ‘One of them’s disappeared,’ he said. Yatsu made him repeat the news.

  ‘Just vanished into one of those lights,’ Yengar amplified. ‘One moment he was there, then he was gone.’ He snapped his fingers softly.

  Yatsu looked at Pinnatte who shrugged.

  ‘None of them vanished when we were here, more’s the pity,’ he said sourly.

  ‘What about the others?’ Yatsu asked Yengar after a brief and bewildered pause.

  ‘They just carried on. We heard a faint shrieking noise like Vredech told us about.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s not a nice sound, even at a distance, but I suppose it confirms who they are.’

  ‘One down, two to go,’ Yrain said.

  ‘No, it’s eleven to go unless we keep our wits about us,’ Yatsu retorted curtly. ‘Don’t forget, none of us would have dreamt of attacking one of the old Uhriel and if the Memsa’s correct, which she usually is, these… creatures… are many times more powerful. Furthermore, I need hardly add, this is their world. We don’t even know whether this vanishing is to our advantage or not, yet.’ He looked across the blue-tainted countryside. ‘It’s very open. Precious little cover if we go as a group and not much more if we split up.’

  ‘We should stay here if we can – near the Gateway – wherever it is,’ Dacu said, reiterating his earlier concern.

  Yatsu nodded. ‘How far does this cave go back?’

  ‘Not far,’ Jaldaric said. ‘Twenty, thirty paces and nowhere to hide except amongst the rocks on the ground.’ He held out his hand. It was dirty. ‘No water I’m afraid, but there’s a damp patch at the back,’ he said, wiping the dirt from his hand across his face. ‘At least we can make ourselves less conspicuous.

  Yatsu was grim as he returned to Olvric and Yengar. The two riders were conspicuously closer, though it was still not possible to judge how far away they were. Apart from two more brief flashes of light, nothing else had happened since the disappearance – other than the remaining riders’ relentless progress.

  ‘Time to hide,’ Olvric said, very softly.

  A hand signal dispatched the Goraidin into the cave, but Yatsu whispered stern instructions to the others. ‘Do exactly as you’re told. Keep your faces to the ground – they’ll be visible in the dark if you look up. Don’t move. Don’t speak. If any fighting breaks out, keep out of it.’ He nodded towards the cave. ‘We know one another, and we know how to fight together. You’ll certainly hinder us and you might well get cut down by accident. Do you understand?’ Gentren and Pinnatte gave a reluctant ‘Yes’ in the face of this cold-eyed ultimatum but Marna was obviously considering defiance.

  Yatsu’s hands flicked out. One tapped her lightly on the cheek while the other took a knife from her belt. Even as she was flinching from the blow the knife was at her throat. ‘That’s an order, cadet,’ he said, unexpectedly gently, as he returned her knife. ‘Your courage isn’t in doubt, but you’re not good enough yet. Not for what might have to be done here.’ Then, to all three. ‘But if the worst comes to the worst, do what you have to do to survive.’

  Inside the cave he checked everyone’s positions and whispered a few instructions to the Goraidin before lowering himself into the deep shadow of the rock-strewn floor. Within moments, Yengar and Olvric, crouching low, slipped silently into the cave and vanished from sight.

  This would be the testing time, Yatsu knew. Waiting always was. It was what the Goraidin were supremely good at but it tested the calibre as much as any combat. In silent stillness the mind wandered, making sounds and images out of nothing to torment and delude, while the body cried out for movement. And here, who could say what deep shock waves the terrifying disappearance of the Labyrinth hall and their mysterious translation to this place might yet release? Even he was having difficulty setting aside the voice inside him clamouring that perhaps all he had ever known had been swept into oblivion and that he was going to die futilely, cursing an invincible enemy in the blue-tainted darkness on this benighted and ruined world.

  Gradually, he became aware of a sound – distant, but high-pitched and flesh-crawling.

  * * * *

  Nertha continued to quieten her frantic thoughts by methodically checking the pulse and the breathing of each of the four unconscious men at regular intervals. She did this with deliberate slowness, using her own pulse as a guide to the passage of time. This was easily done. While the pulses of her involuntary charges were normal, hers was fast and urgent. It needed no careful seeking with delicate fingers. It pounded hollowly in her chest and ears.

  * * * *

  Who is the dreamer?

  Awash in a swirling confusion of sounds, shapeless colours and a myriad elusive, evocative scents, the diamond-sharp awareness that was Antyr shied away from the question.

  In its eddying wake he was suddenly whole and as real as the body that he could feel a fearful Nertha tending. By him was Vredech, present but not visible, as he would be to him.

  ‘This is the Nexus,’ he said. It was the place into which leaked fragments of all the dreams that the dreamer had ever created. But here, he was lost. Here, it was the spirits of Tarrian and Grayle who would carry him to where the Dreamer’s need was. But Tarrian and Grayle were gone on a hunt of their own.

  He wanted to reassure Vredech, but he could not. There were too many questions.

  Had they both come here to fulfil a purpose determined by a knowledge hidden in the depths of their minds…?

  Or had it been an instinctive response as the encroaching greyness had overwhelmed the Labyrinth hall? Sheer panic? Vredech would not have abandoned Nertha, surely, but…?

  Or had they been drawn here by some other power?

  And Vredech’s awful question returned.

  Who is the dreamer?

  Who was the creator of the chaos dancing all about them?

  Then, as was the way in moving from the Nexus to the dream, without any seeming change, they were the dreamer.

  * * * *

  The five Cadwanwr and Isloman had been walking steadily for some time. There were no features within the tunnel from which they might learn anything about where they were or even gauge their progress – though, from time to time, Atelon marked the wall with a small chisel he had borrowed from Isloman.

  The sound of their footsteps was oddly dull and the nervous jostling of the shadows cast by the solitary lantern they were using added to their already considerable unease. Though they were not reduced to whispering, such conversation as they had was both sparse and subdued.

  ‘We can’t carry on like this,’ Usche complained at one point, prompting a sharp, ‘What else can we do?’ from Andawyr.

  She was on the verge of plucking up courage to complain again when Andawyr stopped and held up his hand, unnecessarily, for silence.

  ‘I thought I heard something,’ he said.

  ‘Felt something, more like,’ Oslang rejoined. ‘Like someone using the Power, but quite a distance away.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Come on.’ And, without any pause for debate, Andawyr was striding out.

  ‘Do you think this is wise?’ Oslang asked as he caught up with him.

  ‘At the moment I’m trying not to think,’ Andawyr replied. ‘In the absence of any indication about where we are or what’s happened there’s not much point, is there? We’ll have to settle for travelling by instinct.’

  ‘There’s a light ahead.’ It was Isloman. He moved past Andawyr and covered the lantern with his big hand. The group bumped to an awkward halt as he peered intently into the darkness.

  ‘Yes,’ he decided. ‘Definitely – light ahead.’ He released the lantern.

  ‘You and your Orthlundyn eyes,’ Andawyr said, blinking. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  Isloman did not reply but took the lead.

  Very soon the tunnel walls were tinted with a dim blue haze that grew in intensity until the lantern was no longer needed.

  ‘This place
is very bad,’ Isloman said, as much to himself as the others. ‘The rock cries out.’

  ‘And it stinks of the Power being misused,’ Andawyr added, giving voice to what he could see the other Cadwanwr were feeling.

  ‘It stinks ofconsiderable Power being misused,’ Oslang said emphatically. ‘We must be careful.’

  The source of the light came into view. It was an opening in the side of the tunnel, identical in shape and size to the tunnel itself. As the group stopped to one side of it, the blue light pouring through it gave a ghastly hue to their anxious faces.

  Cautiously, Andawyr peered round the edge. Then, motioning the others to follow, he stepped into the opening. It proved to be not a branch tunnel but a doorway. A few paces brought them on to a wide balcony that ran round a vast circular chamber.

  In the far wall was a row of what appeared to be windows and it was through these that the blue light which filled the chamber was coming. The walls rose up to disappear into a dark blue gloom. Atelon moved towards the edge of the balcony, then dropped on to his knees to look over it – it had no balustrade.

  ‘It’s a long way down,’ he said, reaching back with one hand to warn the others against approaching too quickly.

  There were two other balconies beneath them, apparently deserted. As was the floor of the chamber. This was decorated with a single star at its centre. It had a silver sheen that cut through the blue light, and fine rays shone from it, dividing the floor into equal segments. Some way from the centre, and also symmetrically spaced, secondary rays continued the pattern.

  ‘A bad symbol,’ Atelon said grimly.

  Andawyr nodded. ‘We might have expected it.’ He indicated the windows on the far side. ‘Let’s see where we are.’

  The windows proved to be nothing more than holes cut through the wall. They reached down to the floor of the balcony and had no glazing. Hugging the wall and holding on to Isloman, Andawyr stepped inside one and edged tentatively forward.

  Where the view down into the well of the chamber had been disconcerting, the view through the window was terrifying. His hold on Isloman tightening so hard that the big carver grimaced, Andawyr found himself looking down the giddying perspective of a curved wall that was many times higher than the highest towers of Anderras Darion. Radiating from it ran great saw-toothed ridges, their peaks rising and falling in elaborate curves all the way to the horizon – and, presumably, beyond – like frozen waves. Away from the base of the building, and spaced between these at regular intervals, other similar ridges began, the whole giving the impression of patterns within patterns, great complexity built from simplicity. But there was an obsessive, diseased quality to the scene, heightened by the fact that everything was blue. Even the air, Andawyr thought, as he blinked into the disturbing distance.

  Isloman’s grip tightened on him suddenly as, too engrossed in the scene, he leaned forward and his toe eased over the edge of the wall. He acknowledged the carver’s urging but did not move.

  Where was this place? And how could such a landscape have come about?

  Answers came immediately and without deliberation. Even without the symbol of the single silver star, this building, everything he could see, was obviously Sumeral’s work. It must be Gentren’s world – a world transformed by Sumeral’s new-found Uhriel for who could say what purpose? But the Power that must have been used was beyond imagining. Not the entire resources of a hundred times the Cadwanol could undo such work. Andawyr’s spirit suddenly quailed and a suffocating blackness rose up within him. There was nothing anyone could do against such an enemy. All his learning, all his experience, was worthless. He felt an urge to pull himself free of Isloman’s sustaining hold and hurl himself into this jagged blue nightmare – to end it all. His mind teetered and his world filled with the sound of his rasping, indecisive breathing.

  He could do it. Isloman’s grip was not so tight.

  But it was there. Quietly purposeful. Jump he might, but trip he wouldn’t.

  The blackness shifted.

  To go that way would not end it all, would it? Such an act would merely abandon his immediate charges to whatever lay in this place, burdened even more. Their shocked and accusing faces swam into his mind, especially those of Usche and Ar-Billan – in many ways the innocents of the group. And, too, it would abandon everything he had ever worked for and valued – and the work and sacrifice of countless others who had opposed Sumeral in His many different guises.

  As suddenly as it had come the blackness vanished. The prospect ahead was no less daunting but he realized that he had accepted the Goraidin’s way at its deepest level. He could do no less than direct his every skill towards defeating Sumeral, futile or not. He might well die in the process, but he would not die either willingly or quietly.

  Antyr’s words, shouted as the greyness had engulfed them all, came back to him.

  ‘Our minds reach into the very heart of this.’

  Antyr’s intuition about the workings of the mind had led him to a place that the Cadwanol’s sophisticated reasoning and experimenting had hardly dared point towards. And, too, he reproached himself, though his own work on the pending conjunction had foundered because the stern and ordered thinking that had foreseen it could not cope with the infinity of events that might occur in a single moment, that same thinking told him that the smallest of actions at that moment might shift the balance and determine the outcome – the very smallest.

  Who could say which action would prove to be pivotal?

  Pivotal.

  The word took him back to the stream near the Cadwanen where he had lain, seeking inspiration in its sun-dancing ripples.

  How long ago had that been…?

  Two weeks? Three weeks? He could not remember exactly, but it seemed like a lifetime ago, so many things had happened so quickly.

  As he knew they must.

  They would happen even faster now.

  ‘We’re stronger than we know,’ he said, echoing Antyr as he turned away from Gentren’s ruined world and back to his friends.

  ‘Let’s see what we can find out about this place.’

  Chapter 34

  A brief search brought Isloman and the Cadwanwr to an opening that led on to a wide landing. Where they might have expected stairs, however, was a sloping ramp.

  ‘Down?’ Andawyr asked rhetorically as he set off purposefully.

  The ramp sloped more steeply than the tunnel they had first found themselves in and it was uncomfortable walking. It spiralled steadily downwards, pervaded by a blue light that was sufficiently bright for them to see where they were going without the aid of a lantern. It prompted some comment but no one could find a source.

  ‘It’s the rock itself,’ Isloman said, his voice strained. ‘It’s screaming. This is a dreadful, dreadful place.’

  As Orthlund’s First Carver, Isloman was unusually sensitive to qualities in rock that others were quite unaware of. Now his whole posture radiated distress.

  ‘Whatever this place is, it isn’t the work of master builders… it hasn’t even been built,’ he said. ‘It’s been twisted and torn from the virgin rock.’

  Andawyr laid a comforting hand on his arm, but said nothing.

  They passed openings that led on to the two lower balconies and a cursory inspection showed them to be similar to the one they had left. Eventually they came to the floor they had seen from high above. Andawyr held out a cautionary hand as they gathered in the broad doorway.

  What had appeared to be a mosaic at its centre proved to be very different. The silver star was hovering some way above the floor, solid and many-faceted, with thorn-sharp points pricking the blue air. No support to it was immediately apparent. The rays that, from above, seemed to run from it were actually ridges rising from the floor, undulating up towards it.

  ‘They’re like those… mountains… outside,’ Ar-Billan said. ‘Same pattern.’ He bent forward and looked at them intently. ‘Probably the same proportions, by the look of it.’

/>   He was about to step closer but Andawyr stopped him.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘But we must be careful. This is no decoration. Everything here will have a purpose, and a bad one at that.’

  Looking anxiously from side to side he stepped into the chamber.

  ‘It’s strange,’ he said, apparently satisfied that there was no immediate danger. ‘This must all have been achieved by the use of the Power, but I can feel nothing of it.’

  He looked around and scowled. Serried ranks of unkempt Cadwanwr scowled back at him, for the circular chamber was lined with tall, narrow mirrors. The result was a vast blue desert, littered with ridges and overlooked by row upon row of ill-omened stars. As the others joined Andawyr, so crowds appeared all around them.

  Despite their predicament, Usche was wide-eyed. ‘It’s like being at the centre of infinity,’ she said, spinning round and watching her myriad counterparts aping her.

  Andawyr grunted and fiddled with his nose. ‘I’m open to suggestions,’ he said.

  ‘Smash it. Smash it all.’

  Isloman’s harsh verdict drew all eyes to him.

  ‘I meant, what’s all this about?’ Andawyr remonstrated.

  ‘I know what you meant, but this isn’t the time for debate,’ Isloman retorted. ‘We don’t know how or why we came here – whether it’s chance or some devilment on Sumeral’s part – or whether we’re all dreaming, for that matter – but there’s nothing here I want to learn about any more than there’s anything I’d want to learn from murdering children in their beds. Smash it.’ He took his chisel back from Atelon and made to stand on one of the ridges, apparently with the intention of assaulting the baleful star.

  ‘No!’ Andawyr cried out urgently, seizing the big man’s arm and pulling him back.

  Isloman jerked his arm free angrily and seemed intent on arguing, but Andawyr did not give him the opportunity.