The Call of the Sword

by Roger Taylor

  ‘I’ll give you some more facts then, Lawyer Darek,’ said Eldric, still chuckling. ‘Do you seriously maintain that our great body of literature – so coherent, so consistent – has come about just because of some old mountain bandit? Or our military traditions – so practical – the Riddin Muster, our High Guards – so well trained, so numerous – were intended to deal with a few marauding Mandrocs or Morlider?’

  He waited until Darek was about to speak, then he leaned forward and spoke earnestly.

  ‘And do you seriously maintain that Narsindalvak, that enormous, towering fortress was built because of those same Mandrocs? Built in a manner we can’t begin to duplicate, I might add. No, Darek. Mandrocs are a nuisance, and have been a serious nuisance at times in the past, I’ll grant, but never a menace. We are what we are, and Narsindalvak is what it is, because long ago something massively evil came out of that place or . . . was imprisoned in it.’

  He stood up. ‘Isn’t it part of our very Law? We’re the Watchers of Narsindal. The Protectors of the Orthlundyn and the Southern Lands. The Riddinvolk with their Muster guard the Pass of Elewart – the only other exit from Narsindal – and they kept their Muster well up to scratch even before the Morlider turned nasty. The more I think about it, the more I remember what Narsindal used to feel like, the more I’m convinced that something evil’s afoot, and when it’s ready it’ll come out of Narsindal, and if we do nothing, Fyorlund will fall like a rotten tree.’

  His tone had suddenly become sombre, and when he sat down he looked grim. Darek’s face was tight and anxious. Arinndier recognized that he was exercising the discipline of the Geadrol, and thinking well before he spoke, but it was obviously proving an effort. He seized the opportunity.

  ‘Lords, let us be formal,’ he said firmly. The others bowed in acquiescence and some relief at this traditional call. The King might have suspended the Geadrol but its ways were sound and practical and should be applied here before they went to see the King, otherwise they would spend the evening in fruitless and wandering discussion, perhaps even acrimony, neither reaching conclusions nor making plans. Arinndier spoke again, clearly and steadily as at a First Gathering.

  ‘The Lord Eldric has raised for discussion the suggestion that the Lord Dan-Tor is an agent of an unknown enemy in Narsindal, and that he has worked assiduously to destroy our ability to stand as effective resistance to this enemy.’ He listed the points that Eldric had raised and finished equally formally. ‘Lord Darek, continue.’

  Darek raised his hands as if to speak, then he lowered them, and folding his arms, leaned back in his chair and looked down pensively.

  ‘Lord Darek?’ Arinndier prompted.

  Darek spoke very quietly. ‘I can only treat your Gathering as being acceptable.’ He paused reluctantly. ‘A childish memory has just reminded me that Sumeral had many human servants and they were granted immortality. I must add to your Gathering that Dan-Tor looks no different today than he did when we first saw him.’

  Despite the discipline of the Geadrol, a flicker of distaste passed over his face.

  ‘Accepted, Lord Darek,’ said Arinndier. ‘Lord Hreldar, continue.’

  Hreldar moved his right hand across his body from left to right, palm downwards, in a cutting motion. He had nothing to say.

  ‘Lord Eldric, continue.’

  Eldric made the same gesture.

  ‘All the evidence is thus accepted as being adequate as First Face?’

  They all nodded.

  ‘This being accepted then, we each know it is our duty to seek further evidence on this matter as circumstances permit. I raise for discussion next, the matter of what action should be taken to protect the King, the Lords, and the people, should the King’s accounting be found wanting or should his behaviour enhance this First Face evidence.’

  It had been an inspired move by Arinndier to formalize their discussion after Eldric’s extraordinary suggestion. In addition to preventing the night being wasted in angry argument, it also gave some shape, however apparently absurd, to the nameless and vague unease which all knew had been growing for many years. Now they could focus their attention on the immediate problem of what practical action they should take when they spoke to the King the following day and, still maintaining their formal procedure, they spent several hours talking away the frustration of the last few days by deciding their detailed tactics for the immediate future – insofar as they could foretell it.

  * * * *

  Outside, the Lord Dan-Tor’s globes wavered a little in the night breeze, buzzing as they shone their garish light across the square. The heat from them twisted upwards and wasted itself into the night as if in fruitless homage to the stars whose light they hid. Occasionally a figure would walk across the square, and feeling exposed in the brightness would move rapidly for the darker shadows at the edges.

  One such was an old torch-maker. He looked longingly at a stone he had caught with his foot, and then up at the globes, with an expression of distaste that verged on hatred. Past experience had taught him however, that the globes were too high and too hard to be damaged by such a missile.

  His whole craft had been destroyed almost overnight by Dan-Tor’s globes and he and his Guild, though provided for after a fashion, were left without any purpose. They knew, more than anyone, that the globes were an abomination, though few would listen to them. Their skills were ancient and yet they would die out totally within a few years. Their torches had filled the night streets of Vakloss with yellow, clear light, with softened shadows that blended with the moon and the starlight, and in which people could walk and talk in the reflective quiet of the night. He looked vainly for the moon and stars tonight, blasted out of existence by Dan-Tor’s lights. And people skulked and talked in whispers these days.

  And the waste! He shuddered. The torches held and used the very sunlight itself. But these things! What horrors fed them? He kicked the stone bitterly and turned towards his home. The word abomination did not seem strong enough for what he felt. With their very brilliance, the torches oppressed the city. It seemed to be full of foreboding these days.

  * * * *

  From a window high above, Eldric watched the man fade into the gloom. The four Lords had finished their discussion and were taking leave of one another when the lone figure had caught Eldric’s eye.

  Scarcely had the man disappeared when a group of liveried men marched in a tight formation across the square.

  ‘Who are they?’ he asked. ‘I don’t recognize that livery.

  The others joined him in the curved window alcove.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Arinndier. ‘But I’d like to know why they’re marching in formation at this time of night.’

  The others expressed their ignorance also. A servant, who was adjusting the torches, glanced out of another window.

  ‘Lords,’ he said, ‘they’re the King’s High Guard.’ He raised his eyebrows significantly.

  The four men turned as one.

  ‘The King has no High Guard,’ said Darek. ‘You know that. He has a palace retinue drawn by rote from the High Guards of the Lords. They wear the Regal Sash over their own livery.’ His tone was a mixture of admonishment and inquiry underlain by alarm.

  The servant shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Lord Darek. They’re the King’s High Guard. They appeared a few days after the Geadrol was suspended. The proclamation said they were needed because of increasing disorder in the city.’

  ‘Proclamation? Disorder?’ exclaimed Hreldar.

  The servant nodded. The four men were silent.

  ‘The rote Guards were stood down as usual for the Grand Festival so that they could return to their Lords. Then these people suddenly appeared,’ the servant continued.

  Eldric let out a noisy breath. ‘Thank you, Alar,’ he said, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Leave these few things; we’ll attend to them. Get to your bed.’

  The man bowed and left the room.

  Darek drove his fist into the
table in an uncharacteristic display of passion. When he spoke, he could not keep the anger out of his voice. ‘The suspending of the Geadrol is without precedent, but it’s an arguable matter. It may or may not be acceptable depending on the circumstances. But the King is expressly forbidden his own High Guard. It’s the exclusive right and duty of the Lords to maintain them. This is an illegal act beyond all doubt, beyond all argument.’

  With his shoulders hunched high he levered his weight on to his two fists on the table. Then he dropped back and brought the flat of his hand down onto the table again with a resounding slap accompanied by an oath.

  The others watched him. It was their habit to tease him and call him Lawyer Darek because of his scholarly ways and interest in the Law. They all knew that the formation of a King’s High Guard was directly contrary to the Law. A grave and serious offence. But no single act since they had heard of the suspension of the Geadrol had chilled them as much as this passionate outburst from their staid friend.

  Eldric gazed out into the darkness in the direction the men had marched. He could not avoid the thought that he too would soon be walking into the shadow, and possibly many others with him.

  Chapter 17

  Gavor was suddenly wide awake. Something was wrong. Looking round in the dim light of the dying fire he could see no sign of anything that might have disturbed him, until his gleaming eye fell on the place where Hawklan had lain. It was empty. He blinked and shook his head, but no image of a sleeping Hawklan formed in the empty place to indicate he might have been dreaming. Flapping his wings anxiously he began to hop round and round on the pack where he had been perching, peering intently out into the night.

  Through the high hedge that surrounded the sleeping area he could see that the Gretmearc seemed to be as busy as it had been during the day, if not busier; all manner of lights flickering and shining as traders vied for the attention of the passing crowds. The harsh shadows and the many strange colours that formed as these lights mingled and washed across the crowded pathways gave the scene a slightly sinister, unreal appearance in Gavor’s eyes.

  But no familiar silhouette etched itself against this background. All was still around the sleeping area, in contrast to Gavor’s mind, which was beginning to whirl at the behest of some unseen and growing alarm that reason could not allay.

  A nearby figure mumbled something and turned over.

  The proximity of the sound overlying the muffled hubbub of the Gretmearc made Gavor start.

  ‘Shush, dear boy,’ he whispered unthinkingly, and then his body chose action as a response to his mounting fears.

  Had the fretful sleeper opened his eyes to examine the owner of the soothing voice that exhorted him to rest, he would have seen a silent shadow flying swiftly out of the shelter as Gavor took to the air in search of his friend; wings, blacker than the night, sweeping the air aside purposefully.

  Gavor’s fears took him up up up desperately, through and into the darkness, until he found himself resting on a cool breeze and high above the glittering turmoil. Gliding slowly in wide, wind-swishing circles he began to grow at once calmer and more concerned. Concerned that his friend had left the shelter without wakening him, and concerned about the panorama below him.

  From his lofty vantage he saw that the Gretmearc was much bigger than it had seemed during the day, as all the tree walkways around the western edge were lit and their twinkling lights penetrated deep into the forest. Also, many of the larger buildings, dull and still during the day, were now teeming with activity. Most even had rooms below ground from which light and sounds cascaded up into the air through open windows and stairwells. Worse, not all the sounds were those of merrymaking. Angry voices floated up to him occasionally, and the sounds of fighting also. It did little to ease Gavor’s concern to realize that the Gretmearc of the night was not the same as that of the day.

  He flew a little higher.

  ‘Where’ve you gone, dear boy?’ he said, as if the sound of his own voice would keep at bay the realization that his chances of finding Hawklan were remote.

  Where to start in those two great pools of light, joined by the slender glow-worm thread of the bridge, its lights edged by turbulent reflections from the water below? He closed his eyes and rolled over and over, tumbling as he did so. When he opened them he flew straight towards the first lights that caught his eye, in a wind-whistling dive that arched the tips of his feathers upwards.

  The Gretmearc held and sold many truths, but in its day-to-day intercourse it was not a place in which to seek out the literal truth. Its people thrived on gossip and rumour and wild fanciful tales which came and went as intangibly as midges on a summer’s evening. It was therefore some credit to Gavor that his antics on that night formed the main topic of conversation among the locals for almost a week and eventually took a small but interesting part in the Gretmearc’s folklore, to be brought out at festive moments and retold and embellished until they finally took their place as one of the Minor Tales of the Gretmearc.

  ‘Nearly had heart failure when that black bird came swooping down the passageway straight at me.’

  ‘Wings beating like a tent in a storm – blew two of my torches right out.’

  ‘Bowled Jearl right over just as he was coming out of the ale parlour. Right down the stairs he went – never touched a drop since.’ Laughter.

  ‘And your stall, Sarti. All those laces and ribbons and what-not. It flew out with half your stock around its neck – better dressed than your wife.’ More laughter, though not too much from Sarti.

  ‘And that woman’s fancy hat.’ Universal and loud laughter at this height of the telling. The discomfiture of an outsider always has that extra relish.

  ‘And not forgetting Pytr.’ Applause and mock cheers as Pytr stands and pushes back his hat to reveal the dark scar in the middle of his forehead made by Gavor’s beak when Pytr leapt high into the air and seized him by the leg.

  ‘I’d have wrung the beggar’s neck . . .’

  ‘If I’d held him,’ comes the chorus, and Pytr grins and rubs his forehead ruefully.

  ‘Never came again though, did it?’ The mood begins to fade.

  ‘Wonder what it was after?’

  ‘Came with that queer fellow with the fancy black sword I heard tell. The one who saw old weasel-face off. Never saw him myself though.’

  ‘Probably left when he heard what his pet had done to Sarti’s stall. It would’ve taken Sumeral himself to frighten Sarti for a week after that, let alone a black sword.’

  The remark is injudicious, and while there is some laughter, it is nervous. Narsindal, with its dark legends, is a mountain range away, but it is too close to the Gretmearc to be too ready a source of humour. One or two of the older ones reflexively circle their forefingers over their hearts in the Sign of the Ring, and look nervously towards the north. The spirit of the gathering has been destroyed by that name.

  * * * *

  Gavor, flustered and exhausted, and still slightly beribboned, settled on a table outside a small tent near the edge of the Gretmearc, his heart pounding and his crop heaving.

  ‘Oh, Hawklan dear boy, where are you?’ he muttered. Then, in self-reproach, ‘Fine protector you are, you feathered clown.’

  He felt as if he had flown down every aisle in the Gretmearc a hundred times, and peered into every conceivable cranny. Knots of desperation and anxiety balled up in him and threatened to choke him. His claw opened and closed fretfully, scarring the coarse grain of the wooden table.

  ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  Gavor started and spread his wings in readiness for flight. He had had one of these yokels nearly pull his leg off tonight and had let him off lightly, but he was in no mood now for another. This one would get a right belt, as the locals would say.

  He turned round and saw a little untidy old man with bushy grey hair and a beard to match. He had an oval, strangely youthful face made slightly disreputable by a broken nose. Looking at him with his
head on one side, Gavor decided the youthful quality in his face came from the little bright eyes which gleamed like a baby’s. He was wearing a long, much-stained robe which was secured at the waist by an equally tired cord.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the old man quietly, ‘I’m afraid I startled you. My name’s Andawyr. I’m a healer, after my own fashion. You, I presume, are the gentleman who’s responsible for all that.’ He waved his hand in the direction from which Gavor had just arrived. A distinct uproar over and above the noise of the Gretmearc generally, marked where he pointed. Such a commotion had followed Gavor all that night.

  ‘I’ve been listening to your progress,’ he said, chuckling, then he pottered off into the tent to return after a moment with a bowl of water and some fruit which he placed on the table in front of Gavor. He stood well back. Gavor eyed him suspiciously and the old man returned his gaze with an amused twinkle in his eyes.

  ‘I’d consider it an honour if you’d join me in my modest meal,’ he said, sitting down. Gavor decided.

  ‘That’s most kind of you, dear . . . er . . . old . . . sir. Most kind. Thank you. I am rather jaded at the moment. Singularly humourless, some of these locals.’

  He tugged at a small string of beads that had become entangled in his wing feathers, and the thread snapped, scattering the beads across the table: coloured dots each reflecting a tiny image of the tent’s flickering torchlight up from the streaked brown table.

  ‘Do excuse me,’ said the old man, and stepping forward cautiously, he reached out and pulled a length of ribbon off Gavor’s head. Laying it delicately on the table, he said, ‘Fine workmanship that. Marshlanders probably. But not really your colour.’ Then his chuckle broke into a laugh, and Gavor could not help himself but join in.

  ‘May I ask your name?’ said Andawyr.