by Roger Taylor
‘But…’
The restraining hand was there again.
‘Help me, Vellain. As you’ve always helped me.’
Vellain held his gaze for a long moment. Then, slowly, she lowered her eyes. When she raised them again she was his ally.
‘What shall I do?’ she asked.
Vashnar looked up at the rough-hewn timber beams, black stripes against the white ceiling. Various hooks and large-headed nails protruded crookedly here and there, painted black like the wood now, their original purpose long forgotten.
‘Turn the lamps down,’ he replied uncertainly. ‘Then… just watch over me while I try to find this wretch… wherever he is.’
Vellain did as she was bidden, and when she had finished the room was suffused with little more than a soft candlelight, a new landscape of shadows bounding it. Vashnar nodded approvingly and closed his eyes. Vellain sat down again, choosing this time an upholstered chair which accepted her without a sound.
She waited.
Secure in her presence and with renewed strength in his purpose, Vashnar tried to focus his mind on the distant uneasiness that he identified as being Thyrn. It was no easy task. Plans, schemes, ideas, thoughts of things past, of things to come, trivial and important, but all irrelevant to the moment, appeared from nowhere and tumbled recklessly and without order through the darkness of his mind. For some time, as was his way, he tried to deal with them methodically, taking each in turn, examining it and then dismissing it, in the belief that so dispatched it would not return. But it soon became apparent to him that such an exercise was one of futility. It was like trying to part a way through water with his hands, for each thought so confronted led him a taunting dance down endlessly dividing ways, and a cascade of other thoughts swirled into his wake and demanded attention.
His face stiffened and he scowled as he fought against this seemingly endless and growing clamour. Vellain watched him silently. She sensed nothing untoward. This restless figure she was familiar with, but the balm she would normally offer him at such times was, for the moment, inappropriate.
Vashnar turned on to his left side. The pillow was cool on his cheek and, at its touch, for a moment, the turmoil in his mind drained away. He heard a long breath leaving him and he felt his body softening. It came to him that he must not chase after the distant whisper that was Thyrn. It was like a faint star at the edge of his vision. To turn to it was to have it disappear. It was like a familiar name, momentarily forgotten. Pursued, it would burrow into the depths like a hunted ground creature. Left alone it would emerge unrequested.
He must trust himself. He must be patient. He must let Thyrn’s hold on him reveal itself in its own way and its own time. Some of the eddying thoughts began to return but he ignored them. Logically he knew that none of them needed his immediate attention; intuitively he knew that plunging after them again would merely stir up further confusion and disorder.
Through the growing ease, he became aware of a source of comfort somewhere, almost childlike in character. It took him a little while to identify it as his old habit of rubbing his thumb against the ring on his right hand. Hagen’s gift.
Hagen.
‘You are one of us.’
His eyes flickered involuntarily. Amid the shapeless forms that danced with the colours behind his eyelids, something glinted. The light fragmented, almost painfully, in his blurred vision. Keeping his eyes almost closed, he focused on it. For a moment he thought that he was looking at an evening sky with a solitary silver star shining bright against the soft gold of a vanished sun. Then the golden sky became the back of his hand, resting close to his face and lit by the room’s lowered lamplight. And the star in its turn became his ring, catching a light from somewhere and transforming it into this unexpected brightness. Vashnar made a cursory effort to think where the flame was that might be causing this but he could not remember where the room’s lamps were. It was of no consequence.
Nevertheless, the brilliance in the ring held him and increasingly its seeming solidity reduced the image of the hand to something vague and distant, like a dull painting. More questions drifted to him idly. Was the light coming from the crystal or from that strange clear mirror-like mounting?
That too, was of no consequence. Let it go.
But the light was important. It seemed to be growing in intensity, swelling – the word ‘blossoming’ came to him – until it filled his entire vision, save for a darkness at its centre – small, circular and of a blackness so intense that he knew nothing could escape from it. That too was growing.
How was it that both the light and the darkness could simultaneously be so dominating?
He heard the question form as a low, mewling whine at the back of his throat, then it tailed off into nothingness and he was falling.
Vellain canted her head and leaned forward as she heard the slight sound, but she could make out nothing articulate. Her husband was lying like a child, with his right hand dangling awkwardly in front of his face.
Asleep, she diagnosed. Whatever he had gone searching for, sleep had found him first. It had been a long day and the needs of his body had overtaken the desires of his mind. Though she had in the end supported his intention, the prospect of his slipping into another mysterious trance and waking wide-eyed, bleeding and disorientated, unsettled her badly and she was more than relieved that he had apparently failed. For a moment she considered joining him on the bed, but though it had been a long day for her too, she was wide awake. More so than when she had first entered the room. There was no point taking her place by her husband; she would inevitably wake him and there was no saying what his mood might be if he found that his search for Thyrn had ended in his simply falling asleep. No, she would do as he had asked. She would watch him. At least until she fell asleep.
But far from that silent bedroom and his wife’s dutiful vigil, Vashnar was still falling.
Falling?
The word hung about him, but though there had been a moment of terror, a feeling of all support about him disappearing, of tumbling headlong into a black emptiness – that had passed. Now, though he knew he was moving he could sense neither up nor down. Nor was there any rush of air tearing at him. Nor any fear, for that matter, as surely there should have been? Rather it was as though he was being drawn along, though he could feel no force pulling him. What was happening? Where could he be going?
The question made no sense. Ambivalence pervaded everything. He was and he was not, travelling. He was lying on the bed in his host’s house, and he was somewhere else, being drawn to another place. Surprise curled through him as the contradictions – the impossibility of what was happening – failed to disturb him. Nor did any of the lights and sounds that were moving through and around him on his strange journey. Shapeless and indistinct, they came from all directions, in so far as directions existed in this place, if place it was. Yet there was some order here, he knew – a meaning behind them – if he could apply himself to discovering it.
Then therewas fear. Though whether it was his own or someone else’s, he could not tell. The lights changed and streaked in response, bursting into bright shards of iridescence that seared painfully through his mind. And the sounds pulsed and shook, buffeting him. A rhythm, subtly beyond his grasp, began to make itself felt. He reached out into the confusion, to steady himself and to wring the meaning from it.
No!
The denial – his denial – formed clearly, shaking all about him.
The lights circled and spiralled. The sounds swirled after them dizzyingly, coming together and breaking apart again.
The darkness he had seen at the heart of the ring was there again, drawing all to it. Nothing could resist, nothing could escape. All was coming to an inexorable Joining.
Then he was himself and whole, blinking in a bright greyness. The journey was ended.
I am here and I am elsewhere, under the watch of my wife.
He tested the thought. It was insane. The imaginings of a mad
man. Yet too, it was not. Though it offended any logic he had ever used, it was nevertheless so. He was both here and there. What part of him was here his mind refused to speculate on.
Perhaps this is a dream? he thought, but he rejected the idea immediately. He did not dream – never had. What had happened – was happening – could not be so glibly accounted for. He was afraid, but less afraid than he thought he should have been. This place offered him no danger. This place had drawn him here; it wanted him. Yet there were terrible things here. But what kind of things?
And where was he?
He looked about him. He was having difficulty focusing though it seemed to him that shapes were struggling to crystallize in the greyness. Hints and suggestions of walls and doorways and strange high platforms and balconies formed wherever he looked, only to dim and fade at the edges of his vision. Images of a great echoing hall filled his mind. As if to help him, memories of some of Arvenshelm’s finest buildings came to him – and even the Count’s Palace in Nesdiryn. But to no avail. Whatever this place was, none of them compared to it. Such as he could make out of it was like nothing he had ever seen before.
One thing was for certain, however. The place was enormous… and grey… a dreary, monotonous grey, despite the brightness. Slowly his eyes adjusted and, giddyingly high above him, he saw a vast domed roof. It was dotted with brilliant lights, splaying out in radial lines, each of them sweeping down to vanish into a misty distance. And still it was as though the building formed wherever he looked – as though this was all it could do; as though without him, it would not be at all. And even with him, it could not come wholly into existence, strive though it might.
Everything shifted.
And the sounds were about him again – voices – unmistakably voices – rising and falling, chanting. He could not make out any individual words, but the whole sounded coherent and intelligible. And it was full of fervour and passion, with a stridency that thrilled him. He looked around in search of its source, but nothing was to be seen other than the same vague images, struggling to come into being. He focused on one, a stairway leading to a platform or balcony… he could not make out which. He moved towards it. The flat sound of his footsteps reached him as he strode out, oddly reassuring. Unconsciously he adjusted his pace to merge with the rhythm of the chanting.
The stairway remained clearly in his view as he approached it. Reaching it he paused, then he grasped the metal handrail. It was solid and cool and he knew that if he ran his hand along it he would find it tainted with a faint but characteristically acrid tang. He resisted the temptation to test this. Sniffing his hand had a childish, even animal-like connotation; it was not fitting, least of all here. He glanced upwards along the spiralling stairway. The platform – for platform it was – loomed darkly over him. He should go to a high place. From there, he would be able to see more. He began climbing. The steps were as solid as the handrail but an awkward height for him and he found, as was often the case, that he had to take two at a time to walk comfortably.
The platform proved to be higher than he had thought, and he was aware of some strain in his legs when he eventually reached it. The stairway opened into the middle of it and as he emerged he could see that it was a narrow oval in shape with almost pointed ends. A simple metal handrail like that of the stairway ran around it. He looked up again. For all the height he had climbed, the domed roof seemed to be little closer. He did notice, however, that the lines of lights converged directly over him. He was standing at the centre of whatever this place was.
He rubbed his thighs to ease the stiffening muscles. As he did so, a small spasm of fear shook him. How could he leave this place? For all he could not see it in its entirety, it was as real as the room he knew he was lying in. Could he be trapped here for ever, in this unsettling greyness?
As the fear threatened to well up and unman him, the awareness that he was both there and lying safely in Degelvak returned to him vividly, reassuringly. And with it came the realization that there was no hint of Thyrn’s presence anywhere in this place. It was his and his alone.
Yet it was not, for everything here was beyond anything he could have wilfully imagined. He was no builder, but common sense told him that it was not possible to build anything so large, nor make lamps that shone so brightly. And what purpose could such a place serve? It was a freakish creation, the work of someone patently crazed. A colder thought came to him. Perhaps it was Thyrn’s, after all. Perhaps the Caddoran had made this place specially for him, as a trap. Perhaps even now Thyrn was hiding – waiting in ambush as Vellain had conjectured.
He straightened up. If this was Thyrn’s trap, so be it. Sooner or later, he would have to reveal himself. And when he did…
Whatever strange skills he might have, Thyrn did not possess the will to defeat him; Vashnar had no doubts about that.
He walked slowly to one of the narrow ends of the platform and, gripping the handrails, stared out over his eerie empire. As before, the building seemed to emerge only as he looked at it. He could make out other platforms surrounding the one he was on. For the most part they were lower, although six of them, some considerable distance away, he judged, towered high above. They looked to be dangerously slender for their height. Their shapes varied but they were laid out symmetrically around his platform to some pattern that he could not discern. What in Marab’s name was this place meant to be?
The chanting was still all around him, rising and falling.
‘Who are you?’ he called out. ‘Where are you? What is this place?’
Almost immediately the chanting started to fragment as a babble of countless different voices began to mingle with it. Still Vashnar could not make out any individual words, but where before there had been a united fervour and passion, now veins of confusion and doubt ran through it. The chanting filled the greyness but with it came questions – and recriminations.
Vashnar tightened his grip on the handrail. He felt his ring scuffing on the metal and automatically his thumb reached across to rub it protectively. He glanced down casually, but as he looked at the ring it seemed suddenly to fill his vision, then, with a momentary spasm, he was looking out from the platform again, as though he had never looked down. He shook his head sharply to clear the impression.
The babble continued undiminished. He repeated his questions.
‘Who are you? Where are you?’
A quality in the voices changed. Where before he had been an inadvertent eavesdropper, now he was becoming an object of attention. Though Vashnar could still distinguish nothing intelligible, momentary flashes of meaning began to come to him.
‘Is this victory? Are the heretics destroyed?’
The babble washed to and fro, more and more questions rippling through it.
‘Is this the Golden Land? The promised hereafter? The special place of heroes?’
The words were full of doubt. Then, in horror, ‘We are defeated. We are without form. This is a place of darkness – we are cast down into the place of the apostates.’
Vashnar could do no other than raise his hands to his ears in an attempt to keep out the ululating shrieks of terror that rose up from this. But the gesture was fruitless. The sounds were in his head. Their mounting panic threatened to overwhelm him. He felt his knees buckling and, gritting his teeth with effort, he forced his hands down to grasp the handrail to steady himself.
‘Silence!’ he roared into the empty, screeching greyness.
The word boomed through the howling din like the wave from a rock fall tumbled into a mountain lake, sweeping everything else before it. It took with it the screaming, twisting it tighter and higher until it vanished into a plaintive and distant insect whine. The sudden silence made Vashnar lurch forward against the handrail. It took him a little time to recover and, as he did, he noted that the clamour had been replaced by a pervasive susurration, like the sound of wind in the trees, or of many people breathing – listening.
And listening they were, he realized
. Listening to him. Listening to the one who had commanded silence. The one who stood at the centre of all this. But were they listening, or was this Thyrn about to spring his trap?
Vashnar asked his first question again.
‘Who are you?’
‘Who are you?’ The reply seemed to be both inside and outside his head; an unsettling, rasping chorus.
Vashnar tightened his grip on the handrail again. Whatever was happening here, however bizarre, he must see it through. Somewhere the hand of that damned Caddoran was to be found. All he had to do was wait.
‘I am the one you called here,’ he replied.
Bewilderment surrounded him. Vashnar felt his right hand becoming heavy.
‘He bears the Sign – the Light that is the Way.’
‘Are you the Guide? The one sent to take us to the Golden Land?’
Vashnar clung to his question. ‘Who are you?’
Bewilderment again.
‘We are the Chosen. The followers of the One True God. The Followers of the One Way. The Scourge and Destroyer of His enemies.’
Vashnar flexed his right hand. ‘Who are His enemies?’
More bewilderment. Then realization.
‘He tests us. He is the Guide.’ Words hovered about him then surged forward. ‘His enemies are those who follow not the One Way. Those who deviate from His Holy Words.’
Vashnar frowned. He had had to deal with one or two religious fanatics and their followers in his time and he recognized the reply. It was a rote answer, a talisman. Devoid of any real meaning, it and a plethora of others in the same ranting vein, were to be uttered as definitive responses to almost any question that tilted at their belief, or as justification for any action, however foul. Was this part of Thyrn’s ambush? Such people were at best a nuisance, but at worst they were appallingly dangerous. He must be careful. Best to maintain the interrogation.
‘And they are destroyed?’
Even the soft murmuring fell silent.
