by Roger Taylor
'Another hour and we'll be almost on the snowline,’ Rachyl said.
'And in need of somewhere to camp,’ Ibryen added.
It was an accurate estimate. When they stopped an hour later, streaks of snow were to be seen in hollows here and there, and a low, brilliant sun was flooding in under the mountain's cloud, washing out such colour as there was in the rocks and throwing long, fantastic shadows. It seemed also to wash out the remains of the inner gloom that had darkened the day for the three companions as they gazed around at the transformed landscape. It would have been possible for them to climb a little higher with the help of the fading light, but they decided against it. Once the sun was gone, the clouds overhead would darken the mountain quickly and the going would become very difficult, not least because of the thickening snow they could see ahead.
They found an area out of the wind, and Ibryen produced the small tent he had been carrying. ‘It's a touch intimate, but it'll take the three of us,’ he said.
The Traveller looked at it critically and then tested the fabric between his forefinger and thumb. ‘Not bad,’ he conceded. ‘But I'll decline your offer, Count, if you don't mind.’ He patted his pack. ‘I have my own protection against the elements, and I tend not to sleep very much anyway. I'm afraid you'd find me a restless bedfellow.’ He winked at Rachyl who turned away from Ibryen and, shielding her eyes with her hand, began peering towards the sun. The Traveller laughed. ‘And I doubt I'd be able to resist doing something with your snores.'
Rachyl turned round, indignant. ‘I do not snore,’ she proclaimed forcefully.
The Traveller retreated, waving a self-reproaching finger. ‘Ah! Of course. My mistake. I meant your susurrant breathing, my dear, with its many subtle textures—gossamer tinged with the innocent peace of sleep ...'
'Nor am I your dear,’ Rachyl added grimly, cutting across his laudation. ‘Come on,’ she said brusquely to Ibryen. ‘Let's get this tent up and some food inside us.'
They ate well enough, having with them the remains of the two birds, some tubers and herbs and enough kindling to light a small fire. It lacked the relaxed quality of their previous meals however, not for want of either geniality or decent food, but because of the wind. Now resolute and full of the remains of winter it kept buffeting round into the lee of the rocks where they had set up camp, shaking them all like an unwelcome guest. The fire, encased in an impromptu oven the Traveller had made from stones, snarled and roared at it for some time, like an ill-tempered guard dog, though eventually it sank back, spent, and became a dull red glow. Such light as they had came mainly from a small lantern that Ibryen had lit as the daylight finally faded.
No one seemed disposed to talk a great deal, each being rapt in their own thoughts. Rachyl drew her sword and examined it. The blade was dull except for the edge which glinted brightly in the lantern-light. She tested it carefully with her thumb, then took a neatly folded cloth from a leather bag on her belt and began wiping the blade with it. A pungent, oily smell filled the tiny camp.
'You anticipate needing that?’ the Traveller asked after watching her for some time, his expression unreadable.
'Oh yes,’ Rachyl replied, sheathing the sword and delicately folding the cleaning rag. She looked up and met the Traveller's gaze. ‘Perhaps not within the next few minutes, or even on this whole journey, but yes, I anticipate using it again—many times until the Gevethen are defeated.'
'Or you're dead.'
Rachyl nodded. ‘Or I'm dead,’ she agreed without emotion.
'A waste,’ the Traveller said.
Rachyl closed her eyes briefly then opened them and held him with a relentless stare. ‘No. Not so. I'd have preferred another direction for my life, but who could say where and what I might be now if things hadn't gone the way they did. We all of us do what we do because of where we are, and nothing's to be served by howling to the moon about it. It would have been worse than a waste for me to sit idly by while the Gevethen destroyed everything I'd ever cared for.’ She spoke quietly and without either the passion or bitterness that often coloured her speech when she talked of the Gevethen.
The Traveller held her gaze gently for a little while then lowered his eyes and looked into the dying fire. ‘It was an insensitive remark. I'm sorry. I live a simple and selfish life. I'm still not fully used to being amongst people again. It's so complicated.'
Ibryen watched and listened to the exchange, sensing a deeper meaning in it than just the words. But he was too troubled with his own concerns to give it too much heed. Though he had somehow learned to set himself apart from the call that had drawn him here, it was not easy and the need within the call was becoming more intense, more disturbing.
'Enough,’ he said, forcing it aside again. ‘We'll tell you when you're causing offence, Traveller. Why don't you ...’ he waved his arms vaguely, in search of an idea. ‘... teach us that whistling language of yours?'
'Yes,’ Rachyl agreed, abruptly enthusiastic.
Her enthusiasm was not shared by the Traveller however, who looked at the supplicants rather as if they had asked him to teach a rock how to swim.
'It's very difficult,’ he claimed uncomfortably. ‘I wouldn't know where to start.'
'Yes, you would. Go on.’ Rachyl's arm reached across the fire and pushed him, uncharacteristically girlish. It was not an argument that could be withstood and for some time thereafter the mountain rang to a mixture of penetrating whistles and laughter.
'It's no good,’ Rachyl conceded finally, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘I'm out of breath, sweating like a bull, and my jaw's aching.'
Ibryen was little better, rubbing his face and laughing. He nodded in earnest agreement. The Traveller was looking as much bemused as amused. ‘I don't see what the problem is,’ he said. ‘This is very elementary. All you have to do is ...'
'No more, no more!’ Ibryen protested, still laughing. ‘We'll be foaming at the mouth if we carry on. I'm afraid we'll have to admit defeat and stick to our crude signalling language.'
'It goes against the grain to give up on you so soon,’ the Traveller said, ‘but at least you've fulfilled one requirement of the language already—you're enjoying yourselves. I think you'll make good progress if you give it a few hours’ practice a day for a year or so.’ This brought on a further spasm of laughter.
When it died down, the Traveller smiled broadly. ‘A good sound,’ he said, looking around as if watching the laughter on its journey through the darkness. Then he started whistling, if whistling is the word for the full, deep sound that he made. A bouncing jig of a tune emerged which defied hands and feet to remain still and, for a few minutes, Ibryen and Rachyl could have been sat about a comfortable hearth celebrating some happy occasion, two people far removed from any form of conflict. The tune finished with a loud, high-pitched note which, as it faded, was lost under the applause of the audience.
'You're a writer of tunes as well as a Sound Carver, then?’ Rachyl said.
The Traveller affected modesty. ‘I'm no Sound Carver, I'm afraid—a passing fair apprentice, perhaps, but a mere shadow of a true Carver. And even that tune isn't mine.’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘I learned it not long ago, from a man in a dream.’ He cocked his head on one side. ‘At least I think it was a dream. As I remember, he was very insistent that it was his dream. Quite a disturbing experience in many ways.’ He shrugged. ‘Still, I'm here and he isn't, so he was probably wrong—I think. And it's an excellent tune, isn't it?’ He whistled the last few measures again.
This time, as the sound died away, a gust of wind swept into their shelter, bringing a brief brightness to the dying fire and reminding them that they would be best advised to retire and let the night become dawn in the wink of an eye. But it brought other news as well. Both the Traveller and Ibryen started, and Rachyl reached for her sword again. For in the wind, faint but quite unmistakable, was the sound of someone whistling.
* * *
Chapter 21
Fearful of be
ing pushed painfully against the mirror, Jeyan stiffened and prepared to resist the Gevethen's urging grip. A sudden wash of biting coldness passed over and through her, taking her breath, and she had been thrust a pace forward before her mind began to register what was happening. She had been almost touching the mirror yet there had been no impact! Nothing! Nothing except the coldness which seemed to be lingering inside her. She shivered and, unbidden, opened her eyes. At first she thought she was in absolute darkness. Then she saw, or sensed, the reflected lights of the Watching Chamber. But they were not immediately in front of her like fixed stars, they were all about her, seemingly hovering in mid-air. And they were vague and unclear, as though she were looking at them through sleep-misted eyes. Her hand had come up instinctively as she had been pushed forward and she saw it now, lit by some unseen light and with a quality about it that made it feel like someone else's. When she moved it, the strange reflections passed through it. She blinked desperately to clear her vision, but it made no difference.
And where was her own reflection?
She tried to turn round to see what had happened to the Hall, but the Gevethen's grip tightened and held her head to the front.
'You are passing through the portal that will bring you to the Gateways and thence to the Ways. You must not look back. Not yet. There is deep and awful madness here for those who are unprepared.'
Their voices were subtly changed. Was it fear she could hear in them? The prospect of there being something here of which the Gevethen were afraid was not something she wanted to think too closely about.
'What's happened?’ she said. ‘Where are we?'
'Near the Gateways ...'
'... the Gateways.'
'Where's the Hall gone?'
There was cold amusement.
'Nowhere.'
'It is here.'
'All about us.'
'But ...'
'Rather you should ask, why are you here?'
She tried to drag her feet, to resist the inexorable movement forward, but nothing happened. Was she actually moving? She had the feeling of movement, but she could see nothing that could give her that impression other than the blurred images of the lanterns that hung all about her. And they were motionless.
Yet there were other things in this darkness. Wisps of sound, hints of voices. Voices that were speaking in many languages. Flickering lights which vanished as her eyes turned towards them.
Panic began to rise up inside her. This could not be happening. Her mind scrabbled frantically for something on which to gain a purchase other than the sustaining grip of the Gevethen. Somehow she was still standing in front of that wretched mirror. Some trick had been—was being—played on her. As a child she had seen street performers do amazing and impossible tricks, often, contrary to knowing but benign parental advice, losing money to them in the process of expounding her childish certainty. The panic subsided a little. That must be what was happening here. She must follow the advice she had eventually come to listen to—she must look to see things as they are and, in those circumstances in particular, mistrust everything she saw even then. The latter in particular presented no new problems for her.
But there had been no blandishing words here, no deceiving flourishes. Merely, 'Close your eyes,' and then that eerie coldness.
Again she blinked in an attempt to bring this place into focus, but again nothing changed. The blurred images of the lanterns still hung about her. She was still moving—or not moving—in a place which was pitch dark and yet in which there was light enough for things to be seen. Another alternative came to her. Perhaps she had simply gone mad and her mind had wandered into this place while her body was still standing in front of the mirror and gazing vacantly into it. This however, had the least ring of truth about it, not least, she reasoned, because if she had sought refuge in madness, she presumably wouldn't have brought the Gevethen with her.
'Care.'
The voices drew her back from her rambling.
'One is near.'
There was definitely fear in their voices. It occurred to her momentarily that something the Gevethen were afraid of might well prove to be her ally, but she relinquished the idea almost immediately. With Assh and Frey gone, she had no allies.
Then, without warning, she was in a world of light. Shapes of all colours were moving about her, some swift like flitting birds, some like slowly changing clouds, some like cascading, tangling ribbons. How near or far she could not have said, for there was nothing against which size could be judged. She reached out, but, like the images of the lanterns, the shapes seemed to pass through her. And with the shapes there came also sounds. The fleeting hints she had heard previously rose to become a great clamour. Sometimes it was a babbling chorus, sometimes a single voice, though she could make out no words. And, rising and falling in the background, was a noise that was perhaps thunder, perhaps a great crowd cheering, perhaps a roaring wind, perhaps something the like of which she had never even imagined.
The suddenness of the transformation made her start violently.
The Gevethen answered her question before she asked it.
'We are at the Gateway to the Ways, Lord Counsellor. Beyond here are all the things that can be, and that cannot be. The myriad worlds that lie between the worlds.'
The shapes and colours about her danced to the rhythm of their words.
'I don't understand, Excellencies,’ she said. ‘I can see nothing but ...'
'Confusion ...'
'... Confusion.'
'You stand at the edges of the worlds beyond. They echo here.'
'Escape.'
'Exude.'
'But pass beyond and ...'
The sentence remained unfinished, but fear and doubt coloured all about Jeyan.
She became aware of the Gevethen reaching out. The shapes and sounds changed in response to their movement. For an instant, Jeyan felt herself standing in a bright summer field, then at the edge of a great lake, then at the heart of a great city, but then the impressions were gone and she was gazing down what appeared to be a vast tunnel. It tapered into an unseeable distance.
'Ah ...'
It was a soft exclamation of gratified desire. But even as it formed, the tunnel began to twist and convulse, as if it were the tail of some monstrous animal. Jeyan could feel the Gevethen struggling to stop this wayward movement, but the greater the effort they put forward, the more the paroxysms of the tunnel increased until finally, with a soul-wrenching screech it whirled into a giddying vortex and was gone.
Jeyan felt the Gevethen stop whatever it was they had been doing and through the tumult she heard them whispering to one another.
'This place is ours.' Petulant.
'But He tests us yet.' Fearful and resigned.
The brief exchange wrapped a cloak of human concerns about the Gevethen which unexpectedly fired Jeyan. She stood very still and made no response, sensing somehow that to acknowledge having heard it would be to die instantly in this eerie place. As it was, she felt a decision being made.
'Hold firm to us, Lord Counsellor.'
Without knowing why she did it, Jeyan brought her hands up to seize the Gevethen's hands holding her shoulders, for fear she might suddenly be relinquished. And, though she felt no change, she was in another place.
It was dark and cold.
'Where...?'
'Many eyes the glasses give us, to watch our foolish subjects. And many chambers they have.'
The answer was meaningless but it did not matter for, slowly, Jeyan was becoming aware of a brooding presence all around her. It was not that of the Gevethen, though—she still clung to their hands fearfully—yet it was familiar. There was a quality about it that she had sensed only recently. A bizarre mixture of malevolence and vanity, of weakness bolstered and shielded by great power.
It was Hagen!
The Hagen whose overweening spirit she had measured as she gazed about his room. But it couldn't be! He was dead, and by her hand. She had
seen him die. Exulted in it. Been captured and bound for it. The presence touched her.
It was Hagen.
She recoiled in horror, grasping desperately at the hands holding her shoulders, imploring them, but they would allow her no movement.
What was this place?
'You are the misbegotten creature who brought me to this?'
The words formed in Jeyan's mind. They were full of blistering hatred. Most would have quailed before such an onslaught, but, like flint to sparking flint, it served only to bring back to Jeyan her own hatred for the man she had killed. In full force, it flared up through the clamouring demands of her tottering reason and brushed aside the cautious acquiescence she had carefully nurtured before the Gevethen. It reached out through the darkness, clawing, gathering strength as she felt Hagen's presence retreat before it. But, abruptly, she was restrained. Hagen's presence began to close about her horrifically.
'You shall be the vessel of my return to the world. Within you I shall complete the work that you so sacrilegiously cut short.'
'That cannot be.'
The Gevethen's icy voices cut through Hagen's ranting venom and tore him away effortlessly.
'Your place in that world is ended. Your task is completed. There can be no return for you. Perhaps when the Ways are opened again may a place be found for you as you were.'
Then they were full of rage.
'And talk not of sacrilege. You are a mere servant of servants. It was an honour given to few to be allowed to serve Him as you did. That His blessing is with you is shown by your being here instead of being scattered, howling, between the worlds. You are here now to instruct the child. She is kin else she could not have come here. She will continue your work.'
'I have been betrayed.’ Bitterness and rancour filled the voice.
It met only disdain.
'You are beneath such effort. Mysterious are His ways. You were the first. You were flawed. The child is less so. And still less so will be those who follow her. When there is one who can truly stand in our place, then will the Ways be opened again and then shall we be at His left hand when the great righting of the Beginning is begun.'
