by Roger Taylor
Unexpectedly, Nyriall smiled. ‘This looks like a nice place. It’s certainly better than the Moras. I wonder if there are people here?’ He opened his arms wide. ‘A new start at my age, Antyr. To be blunt I’d have considered myself fortunate if I’d survived another winter of Menedrion’s smoke-laden fogs; I’ve got a cough that tears me in half. I’ll see what this place has to offer. Perhaps even learn how to find the Doorways, and see what else is here.’ He paused. ‘I’ll miss Grayle, though,’ he said sadly. ‘I’ll miss him a lot. Look after him if you get back. Tell him I’m sorry to leave him, but it’ll probably be for the best. And thank him, I couldn’t have had a finer Companion.’
Antyr nodded. ‘I will,’ he said.
Then, on the soft breeze came a distant sound. It was the howling of wolves.
‘Listen,’ Antyr said, leaning towards the sound urgently. ‘Grayle and Tarrian are searching. Somewhere in the darkness they’re seeking me. And they’re drawing nearer.’
Nyriall cocked his head on one side, listening intently. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I recognize Grayle. And that’s his brother, you say? Such wonders . . .’
He stopped suddenly, his eyes wide and afraid, and fixed over Antyr’s shoulder.
Hesitantly, Antyr turned. The landscape behind him was darkening. Black clouds were building, mountainous and massive in the blue sky. A low rumble of thunder rolled ahead of them. But the objects of Nyriall’s attention were two figures . . . or was it one? And the coming darkness seemed almost to emanate from them.
Antyr screwed up his eyes to clarify the vision. There were two figures.
The thunder came again. Antyr frowned; the storm had come from nowhere, and its apparent association with the two figures was disconcerting. He looked up at the clouds. They seemed to be both far and near and the effect was disorientating.
‘I think they bring it,’ Nyriall said, following his gaze and nodding anxiously towards the two figures.
‘Who are they?’ Antyr asked, though he already knew the answer. Without any prompting by Nyriall, he could feel the menace, the evil, that radiated from them.
One of the two figures waved his hand and there was a dazzling flash of lightning, followed immediately by a deafening thunderclap. As it rumbled into the distance Antyr heard a high-pitched hysterical laughter, and it seemed to him that one of the figures was swaying and bending in some obscene, motionless dance.
Antyr felt a wave of nausea overtake him. The enemy was in sight and he wanted to flee. Then he remembered Nyriall, and anger filled him at the sight of the old man’s new domain defiled by these corrosive intruders.
‘Run!’ he said suddenly to Nyriall. ‘They mustn’t find you. This is your world now.’ He looked around. ‘Quickly. Hide in the trees over there. I’ll protect you, somehow.’
So urgent was his tone that Nyriall set off immediately. He had gone only a little way, however, when he turned as if to come back. ‘But . . .’ he began.
Antyr waved a hand across the still sunlit land spread out in front of them. ‘This is yours now, Nyriall,’ he repeated, then, turning and pointing to the two figures, shadows now, in the ominous clouds. ‘And they are my enemies now. Go, and my thanks for your wisdom and guidance and your brief friendship. I shall tend to Grayle.’
Nyriall still hesitated.
Antyr waved him on. ‘Live well and light be with you,’ he said, the words coming unbidden.
Nyriall tilted his head on one side and looked at him curiously. ‘And with you . . . Master,’ he said after a long hesitation. Then, raising his hand in salute, he turned and ran towards the trees that Antyr had indicated.
Antyr could not forebear smiling. Nyriall was making good speed for an old man with a bad chest.
But the lightness passed almost immediately as the import of his actions dawned on him. He turned again to look at the two figures.
The sight made him draw in his breath. It was as if the lowering, lightning-shot clouds had drawn together and descended to focus around the strange couple totally so that they carried their own storm-tossed night with them. Antyr felt that he was looking through into another world, so intrusive was the sight amid the sunlit landscape that still fringed it at the edges of his vision.
Menacing peals of thunder rolled out to surround him and, amid the awful din, he heard again the faint strains of the shrieking laughter he had heard before. It stirred deep and frightening emotions within him and he felt his flesh crawling.
Somewhere, too, into his hearing, came again the distant howls of the two wolves. Not searching for him, though, Antyr realized. Just singing out to say that they were there, in their home, their territory, singing out to say that all was safe and to tell their kin that they could return and to tell others not to approach. And their song was louder.
‘To me, Earth Holders. To me!’ Antyr shouted silently in reply.
Then, glancing quickly at the now distant and still-retreating figure of Nyriall, he started walking slowly towards the darkness.
As if his cry to his Companions, or his purposeful movement, had caused a great disturbance, the two figures turned towards him, and though Antyr could not see their faces, he knew that they were now watching him intently. He could feel their malevolence, but he walked on.
Then the attention wavered, and one of the figures raised a hand to indicate the fleeing Nyriall. Antyr sensed the storm whirling, darkening, gathering itself to launch some power against the old man. Shadowy shapes began to form in it, sinister, predatory.
‘Ho!’ Antyr cried, lengthening his stride, in spite of an inner voice asking him very earnestly what he was doing. The shapes faltered.
The sound of Tarrian and Grayle grew louder.
He called again. ‘You do not belong here,’ he shouted. ‘Who are you and why do you bring this uproar and destruction with you? Why do you pursue the innocent and why do you search for me?’
Abruptly, it seemed that the storm was rearing up like a ravening animal, battering frenziedly against some flimsy barrier in an attempt to reach and rend him.
The demented laughter, however, had stopped. In its place, Antyr heard a sound like the gurgling, lusting anticipation of some evil child. It was worse by far than the laughter.
And he had felt it in Menedrion’s dream.
Somehow, he maintained his progress forward, though the sound of the thunder was pouring about him now with the pounding intensity of a rock fall and he felt that at any moment it might crush him utterly.
Then he was in the darkness. A darkness lit blue by cascades of forking lightning and riven by a howling wind that snatched and tore at his cloak, thrashed his hair into his face and momentarily buffeted him to a standstill. The strange dark shapes flitted about him, circling, swooping suddenly and veering away. Watching, waiting for the moment to pounce.
Antyr straightened up and, gritting his teeth, forced one foot in front of the other.
‘This is folly,’ cried his inner voice, louder now. ‘You don’t know who or what these creatures are, but you see their power, and you feel their evil. You can’t stand against them. Run while you can.’
‘I will hold. I will hold.’ He muttered the phrase to himself like a litany. It had sustained him in battle, it would . . .
‘There you had companions at your side and your back, and a spear to your front,’ came the reply. ‘There you fought for your homeland. There you faced men.’
He faltered. The thundering storm raged about him. The shadows danced, faster and faster, lusting.
‘Nyriall,’ said some other part of him. ‘He is lost in this place and he is in your care.’
His feet began to move again.
Looking ahead, he caught occasional glimpses of the two figures – stark black silhouettes in the purple, lightning-lit darkness – watching, waiting, also.
Was he being drawn to them? Or pushed? Either way, it seemed to him that his feet were being moved by some will other than his own.
And what he was do
ing was folly, beyond a doubt.
Desperately, he thrust his hands into his pockets. They were full of their usual clutter and he realized that he was in this place exactly as he had been when he had left Nyriall’s room in Serenstad. And the only thing he had that could be used as a weapon was a small knife and that would be of little use against anyone, let alone these . . . creatures . . . and their seemingly elemental powers.
It came to him, unhelpfully, that the ancient traditional formal dress of the Dream Finder included two knives and a sword. He knew why now!
His hand went to his belt, but he did not even have his weighted club with him. That had been left behind when Feranc had called to bring him to the Duke, and set him on this increasingly terrifying slide into the unknown.
And was that barely two days ago?
Momentarily, he was in two places at once. Here, in this thunderous, haunted turmoil, and sitting in Nyriall’s room in the Moras, Tarrian and Grayle whimpering and twitching at his feet, and Estaan sitting on the edge of his seat by the window and staring at him wide-eyed.
‘And a Master may pass through the Gateways into the Threshold, and there journey through the Doorways between the worlds. But only if his skill be great, and his courage high. For he must go alone, separated from his Earth Holder.’ Nyriall’s quotation from the Treatise came back to him. A Master must be his own Earth Holder, he realized suddenly, though again, the knowledge was of no value to him.
‘And he must suffer the travails of these worlds, even unto death.’ The final sentence brought him sharply back to his present predicament.
One of the shadows made a movement and Antyr saw a sword blade glisten in the flickering lightning. It was oddly reassuring. Some part of these creatures was mortal despite the darkness they had brought. Then he felt a will reaching out to him, greedily, wanting him, needing him. It was repellent.
He stopped. ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ he shouted above the din.
There was no reply, but the noise and power of the storm increased. And the searching will increased in intensity. Antyr felt an anger forming within him. ‘Speak, or go from here and trouble us no more,’ he heard himself saying.
Then the skin-tearing laughter returned, this time low and loathsome with dark glee.
Anger and terror rose to fill Antyr’s mind in equal proportions.
‘Tarrian! Grayle!’ he roared inside his head. ‘To me! To me!’
It seemed to him that the figures and the shadows retreated a little before his call, but he could not see clearly enough in the constantly shifting light.
He cried out again.
This time, he felt the storm itself lessen in intensity, though a sudden flash of lightning revealed the figures to him. Still motionless.
Faintly, he could still sense Tarrian and Grayle howling, searching for him. But he did not know how to reach them.
His feet started to carry him forward again and he found a soldier’s thinking guiding him. Whatever powers these creatures possessed, he had not been struck down. Indeed, only a sword had been drawn against him. They could not destroy him. Or chose not to!
Long-forgotten memories of sweaty training yards returned to him. Manoeuvres formed in his mind. All he had to do was get inside that sword, then . . .
‘And he must suffer the travails of these worlds, even unto death.’ The rest of Nyriall’s quotation brought him to an abrupt halt.
The lust reached out to him again.
He had not been struck down because he was wanted, he realized chillingly. He might perhaps be able to defend himself unarmed against a swordsman – perhaps, he emphasized to himself – but could he truly defend himself against whatever had the power to cause this dreadful tortured darkness? Could he prevent himself from being bound if that was its desire?
‘Tarrian, Grayle,’ he whispered, desperately. ‘To me. To me.’
Still faint, but nearer, the wolves’ calls filtered into his mind; urgent, running; that leisurely lope that could carry them effortlessly for league after relentless league.
Then the figures were but a few paces from him.
They were indeed in the heart of the storm. More than ever, the lightning-etched darkness danced and whirled about them. It was like a frenzied pack of hounds, yelping and barking; waiting on their will.
Yet even so close, Antyr could not make out any details of the appearance of the two figures. As the lightning came and went, it seemed that they were like two grim, black monoliths, carvings rather than men, like ancient, enigmatic standing stones; windows into another, eternally dark place.
Though the sword was still of this world, glinting menacingly.
And the will and the desire were there too. He felt them as clear and stark around him as he could see the black silhouettes in front of him.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’ he asked again, shouting into the storm, but barely able to hear his own words.
A long grasping sigh of fulfilment reached him, and one of the figures slowly extended its arms towards Antyr as if offering him an embrace. The gesture was peculiarly monstrous and again Antyr felt the hairs on his arms and neck rise up in revulsion. He tried to step back, away from this apparition and its foul intent.
But his feet would not move.
‘Mine,’ said a soft, enfolding voice that seemed to freeze Antyr’s limbs.
‘Tarrian, Grayle. To me. To me,’ he cried out again, clinging desperately to the faint calls still ringing in his head.
‘Ah . . .’
The figure, its arms thrown wide, like a black abyss, was closer to him, filling his vision, though he had not seen it move.
Antyr’s eyes flicked from side to side, but he could see nothing except the tormented darkness and the shadows closing around him. And, try as he might to prevent it, his eyes were drawn inexorably forward until he could do no other than stare into the widening embrace of the figure.
‘Even unto death.’ The words of the Treatise came to him again.
‘No,’ he managed, first as a thought, then as a word, then as a denial with his whole being. The figure halted. But still it dominated his sight.
‘You will be my Guide,’ said the chilling voice again.
‘No!’
‘No!’
Another voice coincided with Antyr’s and he was aware of the flash of the sword blade.
‘Tarrian, Grayle!’
Then he was plunging into the darkness, nostrils full of the familiar, homing scent, powerful limbs pushing him forward, towards the call, towards the desperate need, towards . . .
Himself! Standing alone, and menaced.
Antyr felt the wolf spirit of his two Companions rise up from within him and take possession of him. His limbs were free, his eyes widened and his mouth gaped, and, predator now, he leapt with a roaring snarl at the abomination that was his prey.
He had a fleeting impression of a hand in front of him, wrenching something away. Rescuing it? Then, in a time less than the blink of an eye, the menacing will and its desire vanished, and with them the storm and all its whirling horrors. It dwindled to a tiny black clamorous vortex, until, with a last frenzied, high squealing shriek like finger nails drawn down glass there was . . . nothing, just warm sun, blue sky, white clouds . . .
‘Don’t move! Don’t move!’
The voice was Estaan’s, powerful and commanding, yet frightened. The place, Nyriall’s cramped room in the Moras.
Antyr put his hands to his head and blinked several times, his eyes momentarily dazzled by the brief brightness of the summer meadow.
As he focused again, he saw the dead body of Nyriall on the bed in front of him, and the memory of the old man scurrying across the sunlit grass returned to him. He touched the pained face tenderly.
Then he became aware of Tarrian and Grayle snarling and, looking up, he saw Estaan, holding two knives now, watching him wide-eyed and fearful.
‘No, no, no,’ Antyr said hastily to the two wolves, at the same t
ime lifting a reassuring hand towards the Mantynnai.
Estaan, however, did not relinquish his defensive stance. Further, Antyr noted, he was standing with his back to the door, holding it shut in addition to the chair that was wedged there. He could have fled from whatever had frightened him, but he had chosen to remain, and, presumably, to face and kill it if necessary.
‘What’s the matter?’ Antyr stammered, alarmed at the man’s demeanour.
‘Who are you?’ Estaan said, his voice strained. Then, without waiting for an answer, ‘What have you been doing?’
Tarrian, no longer snarling, but with his upper lip drawn back angrily, and his hackles lifted, wriggled forward a little towards Estaan’s left. Grayle, standing, moved one very slow step in the other direction. Antyr felt a subtle hunting communication between the two, somewhere below his normal awareness. Estaan’s eyes flicked between the two.
‘No!’ Antyr shouted again both into his Companion’s mind and out loud, for Estaan’s benefit. ‘He means no harm. He’s frightened. The evil we’ve been through must have reached him in some way. He’ll hurt no one if we don’t move. Come back to me.’ Neither of the wolves moved. ‘Come back, damn you!’ he thundered.
With an oath, Tarrian slithered back to Antyr’s feet, and Grayle sat down, though neither took their unflinching gaze from the Mantynnai.
‘He’s on the edge of killing all three of us,’ Tarrian said, unequivocally, his voice resonant so that Antyr knew he was speaking also to Estaan. ‘Something’s bubbling out of his past. A dreadful guilt . . .’
‘Shut up,’ Estaan shouted. ‘And get out of my mind.’
Tarrian growled menacingly.
‘We’re not going to harm you, or anyone,’ Antyr said, hastily, still struggling to quieten his own inner turmoil. ‘We’re going to sit very quiet and still until you can explain what’s . . . distressed . . . you so.’
Antyr’s words seemed to calm Estaan to some extent but, like the wolves, his dangerous posture remained. ‘Distress,’ he echoed, bitterly. ‘A poor word for . . .’ He stopped and looked around the room as if searching for some unseen foe. ‘But it’s gone.’ He nodded to himself in confirmation. ‘The evil’s gone. I’d never thought to feel its like again. I thought it had died with . . .’
