by Roger Taylor
There was a strange, subtle fragrance in the air, and he became aware of a low, all-pervading humming. He had the impression that many people were making him welcome and were moving round him very quietly to avoid disturbing him. He tried to quieten his own breathing to match theirs.
'You rest there quietly, you've had a long hard journey, now you shall have some of the comforts of the Gretmearc,’ said the soft voice somewhere. ‘Here's a drink to refresh you.'
Hawklan mumbled thanks and looked at the goblet that had appeared in his hand. Like the building—where was it he'd seen that building?—it swirled and flowed and welcomed him with a shifting kaleidoscope of colours. The soporific humming continued. It seemed to be right inside him now, like his own heart, and the fragrance was becoming stronger, heavier. He felt his hands sagging. A gentle grip took the hand holding the goblet and turned it upright maternally.
'Not yet, Hawklan,’ the voice said, kindly. ‘Not yet. Look at your drink.'
Hawklan screwed up his eyes to focus on the goblet. The surface of the liquid was smooth and inviting, and the goblet seemed to be infinitely deep, he felt he was looking across the universe. Figures formed in it—smiling figures. Through his half-open eyes he could see them: Tirilen, Loman, and then Isloman standing over them both. They were smiling and Tirilen was beckoning to him. The fragrance rising up from the cup was now almost overpowering, and Hawklan could do nothing to stop himself falling, falling, falling into dark depths beneath him to meet his friends. He felt Isloman's welcoming grip on his right arm.
Then he became aware of a faint ripple in his calm. Something about the figures in the goblet was strange—wrong, even. His mind tried to reach out and identify the sour note that had crept into this magic harmony. It was familiar. Slowly, like icy raindrops falling on an upturned face, he felt flashes of wakefulness jolting him.
The eyes!
What were his friends doing in a wine goblet?
An alien sound penetrated through the drowsy haze that enveloped him. He made a faint effort to stand up but Isloman's grip on his right arm urged him comfortingly back into the chair.
The strange noise persisted, and for a moment came into focus. It was someone singing and shouting. Someone ... drunk?'
Hawklan felt confusion swirl about him.
These kind people who were helping him—he wanted to tell them that his friends were in the goblet—that something was wrong—but there was now a sense of urgency around him. He became vaguely aware of people running about, and the clamour was growing, breaking through to him with increasing clarity.
He felt the goblet drop from his hand and heard it splash onto the ground.
Slowly turning his head to apologize, he saw three figures struggling: one of them a small, scruffy individual. As he watched and tried to focus on this strange interruption, he felt the warm euphoria that had pervaded his limbs turning into a leaden weight, and cold chills of fear began to form inside him.
A noise drew him away from the slow, slow, struggling figures, and he looked down at his feet. In the pool of spilt wine he could see the caricatured figures of his friends reaching out to him, their hands clawlike. Gleaming eyes and gaping mouths transfixed him. He could feel the tiny hands seizing his foot. He tried to move it, but it would not respond.
'Wanna shee wot's appening,’ came the garbled cry of the small struggling figure. ‘Gorra right. Gretmearc rules. All shstallsh to be open to everyone—shee?—everyone.'
Hawklan turned again and tried to call out to the men struggling with him to leave him alone, but no sound came. The little figure staggered and with a joyous shout fell to the ground taking one of his assailants with him.
'Shorry,’ he cried in a jovial sing-song voice.
Staggering to his feet he sent another man sprawling, and then he lurched into a table which fell over, crashing noisily into a large and elaborate display of some kind. The lights inside the pavilion went wild, flickering dementedly.
The little figure laughed infectiously and gave a cheer of approval.
Hawklan smiled at the man's antics and tried to rise so that he could intervene. But the grip on his arm tightened, and the scrabbling at his foot grew more frantic. He tried to call out again.
Suddenly, through all the flickering commotion and the noise of the happy destruction being wrought by the drunken man and his pursuers, a solid black shadow flapped into the pavilion and flew over Hawklan's head.
Hawklan heard a sickening and vaguely familiar thud behind him, followed by a cry, and some of his leaden stupor eased. Then a familiar grip tightened on his shoulder and an equally familiar voice, now urgent and fearful, said, ‘Get up. Hawklan. Get up.'
Hawklan struggled to obey. Black wings beat in his face and the cry was repeated. This time the voice was almost screaming. It was a tone he had never heard before.
There was another crash as the drunk continued to career around the pavilion.
'Gavor,’ mumbled Hawklan. ‘Gavor. Help me.'
He felt another presence at his back and Gavor was gone again. His mind groped for consciousness now as a drowning man strives for air. The knowledge that his friend might be in danger acted on him more effectively than did any awareness of his own peril, and he exerted what will he had left to try to stand up.
He was partly successful, but his right arm was still gripped tightly, and the scrabbling at his foot persisted and grew horribly. Without looking, he raised his foot and drove it down fiercely. The impact seemed to shake his entire body and he heard tiny cries of fury and hatred swirling off into the distance.
His vision was clearing, as was his head, but everything still seemed to be moving very slowly. He turned and saw Gavor deliver a pitiless blow to the temple of a strangely liveried individual who fell like a stricken tree and lay still. Gavor flapped desperately for a moment to recover his balance and then looked across at Hawklan's right hand.
Hawklan followed the wide-eyed stare and looked down in horror. He could feel his hand, but not see it. His arm stopped just below his elbow. The hand and forearm had been absorbed into the chair, and he could feel it pulling him further in.
The remains of his stupor fled and he became coldly and frighteningly conscious. He pulled desperately on his arm to try and free it, but nothing moved. He felt as if he was trying to lift an entire mountain, and worse, the grip on his arm tightened menacingly. Gavor was about to land on the chair and assail it with his beak, but Hawklan waved him away.
'Don't touch it,’ he cried. Then almost without realizing it, he seized the hilt of his sword in his left hand and pulled it from its scabbard like a great dagger. He felt a strange surging power run through him, and the grip of the chair eased momentarily, before tightening again, and drawing him in further, irresistibly.
Here was an obscenity that could be healed in only one way.
Arching his body awkwardly, he drove the sword down into the chair with all his strength, although, more correctly, the sword seemed to leap forward of its own accord, like a hound after prey.
There was a dreadful choking sound from the chair and the grip tightened on Hawklan's arm until he began to feel his bones being crushed. Abruptly he was in a dark and tormented place, assailed by clamour and death from all sides, and so full of unending despair that his whole being was filled with a dreadful killing frenzy. He heard his voice screaming both in pain and rage and, withdrawing the sword, he plunged it repeatedly into the horror that would have bound him.
The grip on his hand finally slithered away and the choking sound rose up into a howling scream. Freed, Hawklan staggered back and, his frenzy still on him, seized the sword with both hands and swung it down in a whistling, pitiless arc.
The blade seemed to pass through the terrible chair, leaving it intact, but Hawklan felt it cutting through something, and his flesh crawled at the sensation. He lifted the sword high again, the action harmonizing with his still mounting fury, then with a roar of murderous anger that mingled with and
overtopped the cry rising from the chair, he struck again.
The impact seemed to shake the very earth beneath his feet, and he knew he had struck some evil to the heart.
The screaming rose in pitch, a rasping shriek, becoming louder and louder, until Hawklan felt that the very sound itself was solidifying about him. For an instant it seemed that the seat and the back of the chair were the maw of some dreadful beast spewing forth hatred in its death agony.
Then, it was over. The screaming dwindled into a loathsome gurgling, and everywhere was suddenly silent. Hawklan was equally suddenly spent. He gazed around shakily. The two men who had been struggling with the drunken little man were staring, thunderstruck, at the chair, which seemed to be rotting away as they watched. Beside it, the liveried figure was stirring and groaning.
The little man leapt to his feet and ran over to Hawklan, remarkably sober.
'Run, man, run. We've been lucky so far,’ he said, his whole manner urgent.
Then, eyes wide, as he stared at the remains of the chair, he muttered, ‘This is unbelievable. Appalling.'
Hawklan hesitated and the man pushed him in the chest with unexpected strength, sending him staggering backwards through the doorway and out into the night.
* * *
Chapter 20
In the far north of Fyorlund, on its bleak border with Narsindal, stood the great tower fortress of Narsindalvak. Built on top of a high peak with its roots set deep into the ancient mountain rock, the single circular tower tapered high into a sky invariably leaden with low cloud.
The base was unprotected by any wall, but was a solid and massive extension of the tower's flaring taper. It blended into the rock in a manner that a travelled observer would have likened to the construction of Anderras Darion.
Narsindalvak dominated the surrounding land for many miles and its sheer size imposed a respect and awe on even the most hardened of its occupants. But for all its soaring majesty the towering fortress attracted little affection, for inside its great sprawling roots lay the extensive barracks that had housed the generations of High Guards who until relatively recent times had maintained The Watch, the Fyordyn's ancient and traditional duty to guard their borders against the Second Coming of Sumeral.
In token of this duty, rings of windows peered out of every level of the tower like countless staring eyes, and at the top its sweeping sides flared out again to form the huge high-domed Watch Hall, the weary guard post for those same generations of High Guards.
Situated at the end of a long, weary and claustrophobic valley journey, Narsindalvak offered nothing to entice a visitor but a continually howling wind and an unending view of the monotonous greyness of the plains of Narsindal, misty and miserable at their best; dank, sinister and dangerous at their worst.
For the High Guards, the dreary hours in the Watch Hall, staring through the polished stones that brought distant objects so near, were punctuated only by the long patrols along the southern borders and into the interior of Narsindal.
The former were to discourage Mandrocs from establishing camps in the mountains from which they could raid the northern estates of Fyorlund for food and livestock. Very rarely however, were Mandrocs seen, although occasionally a patrol might come across the remains of a recent camp.
Figures bedded deep in Fyordyn lore, the Mandrocs were supposed to be the remains of hosts that had followed Sumeral, now confined forever to Narsindal because, unlike other of His followers, they were corrupted beyond redemption. Kindlier souls saw them as nomadic savages; vicious, admittedly, when provoked, but who would not be, scraping for survival in the midst of such harshness. None loved them however, and few inquired into their ways.
The patrols to the interior were ostensibly to examine Lake Kedrieth where, legend had it, Sumeral—the Enemy of Life—had built his stronghold, Derras Ustramel, and had been there destroyed by the Guardians at the Last Battle. However, while conditions around Narsindalvak and the southern borders generally, were unpleasant, in the interior they were appalling, and no one in living memory had ever actually seen Lake Kedrieth because of the ever present mists and the shifting, treacherous marshes that formed its shores.
Scarcely a year went by however, without one or two High Guards disappearing while on patrol in the interior, and this had helped make the gradual reduction and final abandonment of The Watch easier. There was a faint uneasiness amongst the Fyordyn about the loss of this ancient tradition, but it found no focus, no clear voice and, apart from some of the older High Guards’ officers who saw the Narsindalvak tours as important training for their men, few came to its defence. Fewer still claimed to be sorry to see this ancient anachronism quietly discarded.
Now, to the Lords and most of the Fyordyn, Narsindalvak stood empty, deserted, and nearly forgotten. However, in this they were deceived, for as the High Guards had abandoned the great tower, another force had replaced them. The Mathidrin, the black liveried Guards formed and nurtured by the Lord Dan-Tor and now pervading Rgoric's Palace. They did not keep The Watch.
* * * *
Captain Urssain handed his exhausted horse to a guard and, stretching his aching limbs, stared up at the dizzying perspective of the tower, clearly visible today against a sky whose thin clouds were lit by a watery sun. Briefly he gazed around at the view. The dreary landscape faded, as ever, into the misty distance and, free now from the pounding clatter of his journey, he became aware of the moaning wind that eternally serenaded Narsindalvak.
Good to be reminded of what I'm missing, he thought ironically. Palace life suits me fine.
He marched quickly up the wide ramp to the recessed door now being held open for him, acknowledging the attendant Guard with a curt salute. Despite his considerable fatigue, he knew that his approach would have been noted days ago and that any delay now would find little favour. Within a few minutes he was standing looking down at his Commander, making every effort to keep the nervousness from his voice and manner.
Commander Aelang stared at the papers in front of him for what must have been the fourth time then, swearing, stood up. He was a little shorter than Urssain but more heavily built and with a menacing physical presence. Short-cropped red hair and a heavy-jowled jawline framed a sallow face that housed red-rimmed, pale grey eyes, a broad nose, and an incongruously voluptuous mouth.
He began pacing the floor. Urssain watched him carefully. Commander Aelang was not a man to be trusted. He was not only a devious, ruthless, and ambitious schemer, he was capable of considerable personal viciousness when the mood so took him, and his mood now looked decidedly uncertain.
Abruptly he turned, and snatching up the papers from his desk, waved them in Urssain's face.
'I'm supposed to act on these?’ he said savagely. Then, reading, ‘"Commander Aelang. You will take the new deep penetration patrol and arrest the traitor Jaldaric of the House of Eldric—Rgoric, Protector of etc etc.” Just like that?’ As he spoke he revealed the discoloured teeth and prominent canines that had earned him the title ‘Mandrocsson’ amongst the Mathidrin troopers.
'They're the King's direct orders, Commander,’ Urssain replied reluctantly. ‘I don't see any alternative.'
Aelang dropped down into his chair again, and motioned Urssain to do the same. ‘Relax, Urs. Sit down, you look exhausted.'
Gratefully, Urssain lowered himself into a nearby chair, quietly resolving that under no circumstances would he relax.
Aelang rested his head on his hand. Recent events had moved so rapidly that he had had little opportunity to think matters through. It occurred to him that this was all some devious test by Lord Dan-Tor. Or perhaps even the King. But nothing seemed to ring true. What was going on? What did the King know about the deep penetration patrol? Was he, Aelang, Commander of Narsindalvak, being used as a pawn in some power struggle between the King and the Lords? Aelang curled his lip. He was no man's pawn, he was a player, albeit a minor one for the time being.
He looked up and caught Urssain's eye. ‘Didn'
t you try to dissuade him?’ he said.
Urssain returned the gaze steadily and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, without hesitation. ‘He never asked my advice and I wasn't going to volunteer it. I was content to remember yours. Keep your mouth shut, your head down, and your ears open.'
Aelang waited.
Urssain continued. ‘"Lock the Lords up on my signal,” he said. So I did.’ He shrugged. ‘It was so sudden I didn't even have anywhere to hold them. I've had to put them in some old servants’ quarters for the time being. Then when I got back to the King, he was muttering something about the wolf and his cubs, and he just handed me those and told me to bring them to you personally, straight away.’ He indicated the orders. ‘Personally, mark you, no messengers. I was going to ask him why, but...’ He shifted uncomfortably and leaned forward. ‘I didn't think it would serve anyone's ends to get myself arrested for questioning his orders, however stupid. And that's what would have happened.’ He lowered his voice. ‘To be honest, I think he's raving. I was glad to be away.'
He sat back to watch the effect of his report.
Aelang's face however, was impassive, and there was a long silence before he spoke, ‘What about the other Lords’ families?’ he asked eventually.
Urssain shook his head. ‘I don't know,’ he replied. ‘He said nothing about them to me.'
Aelang nodded and idly fingered the papers lying on the desk. Urssain was his man. He had taken considerable pains to have him placed in charge of the Palace Guards when the Garrison was suddenly moved to Vakloss at the King's behest. He too was a devious and ambitious man, but he knew where his best interests lay. And his assessment of Rgoric was remarkably unequivocal. Aelang wondered if its very simplicity might not indeed cut through all the convoluted possibilities and uncertainties that were vexing him.
The Geadrol suspended, troopers were transferred to Vakloss almost overnight, and then called the King's High Guards, of all things. Lords arrested, and now this! Could it be some unexpected move by the King against Lord Dan-Tor? That would be contrary to everything he had ever learned about the King. Could it be Dan-Tor using the King to precipitate some crisis? That was possible. Everything had the feel of Dan-Tor. But too much was happening too quickly, and too crudely. No. It was all too fast, too soon. Dan-Tor would surely never have sanctioned such crude action against the Lords. Certainly he would never have sanctioned the use of this particular patrol for a simple arrest. Perhaps after all, this was some aberration on the King's part. Perhaps Dan-Tor had misjudged the King when he went off on one of his jaunts and the King had slipped his leash and was running wild, implementing schemes long planned for a later time. It seemed to be increasingly probable.
