Ibryen

by Roger Taylor

  ‘I’ll stay at the back and keep listening,’ the Traveller said, anticipating his orders.

  Progress was very slow at first, Rachyl moving with great caution in the poor light. As the sky brightened, they began to move more quickly.

  ‘At least he’s made no attempt to disguise his tracks,’ Rachyl said.

  ‘I doubt he’d know how to down here,’ Ibryen replied. ‘It must be as strange for him as being underwater would be for us.’

  ‘I told you. He’s not gone for any dishonourable reason. It wouldn’t occur to him to hide,’ the Traveller said. ‘He probably thinks he’s a burden to us. Being independent and self-sufficient is important to the Dryenvolk.’

  Isgyrn’s trail led them steadily upwards through the forest and they pressed on in silence for some time. It was fully daylight when they came to the upper edge of the forest, but the sky was grey and overcast and threatening rain. Rachyl stopped and looked at the Traveller expectantly. He shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Wherever he is, he isn’t moving.’

  Rachyl grimaced. ‘His tracks are faint enough here,’ she said. ‘Once we get to the rocks it’s going to be really hard to find them. Not to say impossible.’ She cast a sour look upwards. ‘And if it starts to rain…’ She left the conclusion unspoken. They set off again.

  After a while they left the forest completely and all sign of the Dryenwr’s tracks disappeared as they found themselves facing sheets of tumbled boulders and the choice of routes they had faced two days previously – a mountain on either side. The Traveller was about to speak when Rachyl raised a hand for silence. Ibryen nodded a confirmation to him. Rachyl stood for a long time, slowly looking from side to side, like an animal wary of a hiding predator. It started to rain, but still Rachyl did not move. Then she pointed. ‘This way, I think,’ she said. The Traveller looked at Ibryen for an explanation but received none.

  A few minutes later Rachyl, with a combination of triumph and relief; showed them a small skid-mark in the moss lining a boulder. ‘He’s heading back up towards where we found him,’ she announced.

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Ibryen asked the Traveller.

  The Traveller shook his head. ‘I doubt he is,’ he replied. ‘I doubt he’d want to go into that cleft again. He’s probably just looking for a high place. Somewhere where there’s more sky than land.’

  Shortly after that they came to the ridge and, quite unspectacularly, found him. As the Traveller had said, he had made no attempt to conceal himself and he was visible for some time before they reached him. Indeed, he had not even made any attempt to shelter from the wind that was sweeping the rain horizontally over the ridge, and he was kneeling on the rocky ground, relaxed, but very straight, with the Culmaren about his shoulders.

  ‘Isgyrn.’ Rachyl announced herself softly before she reached him, for fear of provoking a violent response with too hasty an approach. The Dryenwr did not reply however, and as she drew nearer she saw that his eyes were closed. Rain was running in wind-blown streams down his face. She spoke his name again, a little more loudly, tentatively laying a hand on his arm. Still he did not respond.

  Ibryen and the Traveller reached her. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ she asked anxiously.

  Ibryen looked at the Dryenwr, then shook him gently. This had no effect either. He crouched down and touched Isgyrn’s throat and forehead, then carefully checked his head. ‘His pulse is slow, but it’s strong enough,’ he said. ‘And he’s not feverish. He seems to be in some kind of a trance, but I can’t find any sign of head injury.’

  Rachyl lifted the Culmaren from Isgyrn’s shoulders and draped it protectively over his head. ‘He might be fine now but if we leave him like this he won’t be in a few hours,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to get him to some kind of shelter while you two debate what’s wrong with him.’

  It was not a conclusion that could be denied. Ibryen moved to lift him.

  ‘No!’

  The Dryenwr’s voice was resolute but distant, as if he were having to turn from some other task to speak. Ibryen started violently. But there was no other response from Isgyrn. His face remained impassive, his eyes closed, and his posture unbent.

  The Traveller took Ibryen’s arm. ‘Leave him,’ he said, then, to Rachyl, ‘See if you can rig up your tent to give him some shelter.’

  He led Ibryen a few paces away down-wind. ‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Ibryen replied with some surprise. He patted himself then, concerned, asked, ‘He hasn’t got something catching, has he?’

  The Traveller shook his head. ‘No, no, nothing like that. But how do you feel? The part of you that’s… somewhere else.’

  ‘That’s a bizarre question.’

  ‘Answer it nevertheless.’

  Ibryen hunched his shoulders against the blowing rain. ‘I’m not sure I can. The discomforts of this world are dominating my thoughts at the moment. Why the sudden interest?’

  The Traveller bared his teeth impatiently then patently rebuked himself. ‘The Dryenwr aren’t arbitrarily separated into their castes by birth as in some societies, they’re separated by their aptitudes and abilities. But it’s not a rigid separation…’

  ‘I’ve gathered that from our talk the other night,’ Ibryen interrupted. ‘It’s an odd way to do things if you ask me, but what’s it got to do with what’s happened to Isgyrn?’

  ‘It suits them,’ the Traveller declared, irritably dismissing Ibryen’s digression. ‘Just listen. Not only is it not a rigid separation, they each tend to take a pride in whatever skills they have that lie outside those of their own caste.’

  Ibryen fidgeted with the hood of his cape, which was flapping in the wind, and turned to Rachyl wrestling darkly with the tent. The Traveller drew him back. ‘One of the Dryenwr castes is that of the Hearers. Those who, like you, can reach into the worlds beyond – or at least that world in which the Culmaren’s true nature lies.’ He glanced towards the still motionless form of Isgyrn. ‘I think perhaps Isgyrn has drawn on whatever Hearing skills he has and is trying to reach out to contact the Culmaren.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s lost, man!’ the Traveller exclaimed heatedly. ‘Lost in time, lost in place. From what he told us, he doesn’t even know whether his homeland even exists today or whether it, and presumably his friends and kin, were destroyed fifteen, sixteen years ago in the cataclysm that threw him here, down to the middle depths.’

  Ibryen held up his hands both to apologize and to subdue. ‘Why shouldn’t he try to seek out the Culmaren, if he can?’ he asked.

  ‘Because it’s dangerous,’ the Traveller said with a heavy emphasis. ‘The gift of the Hearer is no light thing. Guides and Mentors are needed. Their lore is full of stories of Hearers who have gone beyond and never returned.’

  Ibryen’s eyes widened. ‘Dangerous! You never told me anything about that.’

  The Traveller’s reply held little comfort. ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, would it? There was nothing I could do about your… talent. I’ve neither the knowledge nor the ability to help. You came, you went, all to some inner need of your own. Had you gone and not returned… just left a comatose shell behind you,’ he nodded towards Isgyrn, ‘I’d not have been able to do anything for you.’ He seemed unhappy with this apparently ruthless abandonment of his companion. ‘You’re part of my journey back to the Great Gate, Ibryen,’ he went on. ‘I’d no choice but to follow you. And you’re much more.’ His voice fell and became almost awe-stricken. ‘Some deep instinct protects you. You are guarded by a great and ancient strength. Don’t ask me what, because I’ve no measure of it, but it is so. I doubt even the finest of the Dryenvolk’s Hearers move into the worlds beyond with the ease with which you do, still less carry a waking awareness of them as you seem to do.’

  Ibryen looked at him unhappily. ‘All of which means what?’

  The Traveller waved the question aside. ‘I don’t know. Just tell me how… what… you feel in that o
ther part of you now, Ibryen?’ he asked again.

  There was an intensity in his voice that forbade any more questions. Ibryen closed his eyes. A gust of wind shook him. He felt the Traveller taking his arm to steady him. Danger, he thought nervously. Bewilderment he’d felt almost constantly at the strangeness of all that was happening. And fear, certainly, though that had been fear for his sanity and an inevitable fear of the unknown, not the skin-crawling fear of a silent night attack against greater odds, or the heart-pounding terror of pitched battle against an equally terrified foe intent on killing you. But he had never had any feeling that the very act of moving into these strange other worlds was intrinsically dangerous. Perhaps he was indeed protected by some great and ancient strength as the Traveller had said, for the change that had come upon him over these last few days did not have the character of a wrenching metamorphosis, but had been more like a simple opening of the eyes and a raising of the head to see for the first time what had been there all his life.

  Even as he pondered these ideas, the blustering mountainside slipped into the echoing distance and he became aware of the floating emptiness that he had entered when he separated the spirit of the Culmaren from Isgyrn. But this time there was a rippling disturbance moving through it – something calling, thrashing helplessly, like a drowning man. It jerked him back to the cold mountain. He opened his eyes and spun round to look towards Isgyrn. The tent had been crudely rigged and Rachyl was approaching.

  ‘Thanks for the help,’ she said caustically, but she did not pursue the observation when she saw the look on Ibryen’s face as he strode past her. He crawled into the tent, motioning the others to follow. Rachyl and the Traveller could not enter the tent with Isgyrn kneeling in it and Ibryen settling himself on the rocky ground as comfortably as he could, but they were able to squat in the entrance out of the worst of the wind and rain.

  ‘Tell Rachyl what you just told me,’ Ibryen said to the Traveller. ‘I understand none of it, but I think you’re right… no, I know you’re right. I can’t leave him there, he’s utterly lost. I’ll try to fetch him back. I don’t know how long it’ll take, or what you can do. Just keep us both warm, I suppose.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Rachyl demanded of the Traveller fiercely, but the little man lifted his hands in a plea for silence, as did Ibryen.

  Then, with no more thought than he would give to the taking of a single step, Ibryen was in both the cramped, rattling tent and the world beyond.

  Though he knew that Isgyrn was immediately beside him in the tent, the emanations of panic that Ibryen could feel in the world beyond were elsewhere – distant from him, in so far as distance existed in this place. The fear that he felt in them chilled him, so primitive and awful was it and he had to steel himself before he could move towards the disturbance.

  ‘Isgyrn,’ he called, though he had neither body nor voice… such things had no meaning here. ‘Isgyrn. Be calm. There’s no danger here except what your fear makes.’

  The fear shifted and changed but did not diminish. Ibryen moved steadily towards it, though even as he did so he could feel it infecting him. He repeated the call, this time as much for his own benefit as for Isgyrn’s. ‘There’s no danger here except what you make for yourself.’

  Then he was proved correct, for the danger that Isgyrn had brought was all about him. Tales flooded into him of men drowned as they had sought to rescue others, weaker by far, but given an adamantine embrace by primordial fear. Such was his position now. Isgyrn’s fear clung about him, thrashing and clawing, beating out a battering rhythm which echoed that of the wind shaking the tent in the world where Rachyl and the Traveller sat watching, as helpless as they were unaware of what was happening.

  Ibryen found himself resisting with weapons and skills he did not know he possessed. He reached into the very heart of Isgyrn’s terror, for he knew that the Dryenwr was no coward. He was a man, already desolated by events beyond his understanding, who had woken to find himself in one alien world and had now entered another, even stranger. A world that was vast and empty and dead and at the same time teeming with life and circumscribed by the merest mote. A world in which time did not exist yet in which it also flickered and was different in all directions. He was a man too, burdened by the lore of his people and by a lack of the sight that was needed here, Ibryen realized, as he contended with the corrosive contagion of the Dryenwr’s terror. For though he saw this world with a strangely cold eye, he knew that Isgyrn could see it only as through a cracked and distorted lens.

  Yet still Isgyrn was whole. That which had made him Warrior Caste and had made him stand fearful but unflinching before his greatest and most feared foe, high amid the clouds, sustained him even now, though it was failing rapidly.

  Ibryen spoke, imbuing that which served for his voice here with such calm as he could muster, though Isgyrn’s struggling was taxing him grievously. ‘Isgyrn. Hold to me. There is nothing to fear here. Nothing can harm. What you see are but shadows.’

  ‘Who…?’

  ‘I am Ibryen. The Traveller tells me your people would call me a Hearer. I see this place more clearly than you, and I see your pain. Hold to me, I’ll take you back to the world where you properly belong.’

  Denial washed over him and, for a moment, Isgyrn’s fear threatened to sweep them both away.

  ‘It is so, Dryenwr!’ Ibryen shouted. ‘Even now, Rachyl and the Traveller are watching our bodies, waiting for our return.’

  But Isgyrn was barely listening. Then, for the first time, Ibryen began to feel a fear which was other than that which was rising in response to the Dryenwr’s. He had no words for the knowledge, but he knew that Isgyrn’s wild thrashing must be contained or harm would be done that could destroy them both. Such as time was in this place, it was moving against them. Bounds were being strained which could tolerate little more. The very fabric of this world seemed to be groaning under Isgyrn’s onslaught.

  For a moment, Ibryen teetered on the edge of panic himself, then, the ancient legacy of the battle-hardened transmuted his fear into anger. He blasted contempt into the Dryenwr’s frantic spirit.

  ‘Is this the Warrior who led his Soarers against overwhelming odds and prevailed? Is this the Warrior who faced your white-eyed usurper and his screaming mount? Or is it some mewling child, fearful of the dark?’

  Briefly his mind was filled with a vision of Isgyrn’s Soarers Tahren carried beneath their arching, many-coloured wings, as they swooped and dived upon the black ranks of their enemy, like great fighting birds. Though the vision was fleeting he saw the order and discipline and courage which sustained the fighters. He saw the long-trusted tactics of this extraordinary arena forged anew by vision and desperate imagination to turn the hitherto irresistible tide of the enemy. His heart both soared and cried out in pain as he saw too, and heard, the all-too-familiar consequences of battle as the sky rang with war cries and death screams, and was streaked with skeins of blood and gore. And he felt the deep injustice of the insult he had just offered. Then, the vision was swept away – his baiting had proved as effective as it had been crude and it was an unknown reflex that protected him from the first flush of Isgyrn’s anger.

  It came to Ibryen that perhaps he had made a mistake.

  Isgyrn might not have understood the nature of the place where he now found himself but he understood honour and insult, and he understood fighting. And now, as Ibryen’s fear had become anger, so did his – an awful, berserker anger – the anger of a man who has only death before him and who, with no further fear left, will carry as large an entourage of his enemy with him as escort into the shades as his strength will allow. It was also an anger re-doubled by shame for what he perceived as his previous cowardice and it seized Ibryen with a crushing power, threatening to extinguish him with a single monstrous effort.

  But just as Isgyrn’s fear had threatened to infect Ibryen so now did his fighting frenzy, for Ibryen was no stranger to wild and desperate combat. Further, this was his world
. Defeat was unthinkable.

  Thus, while Rachyl and the Traveller sat in the mouth of the tent huddled against the driving rain, and nervously watched the silent, apparently sleeping men, that part of them which existed in the world beyond wrestled in a manner that neither of them truly understood.

  Ibryen, the more aware of the two, defended himself while he sought for a way to overwhelm Isgyrn, though it was no easy task against the Dryenwr’s primitive but battering attacks.

  ‘No, Isgyrn,’ he shouted, over and over. ‘Stop fighting. You’ll destroy us both.’ Then a small inspiration floated into the mayhem. ‘Think Warrior, think. The Hearer in you has failed, the Warrior in you brings only pain here. Be a Seeker. Think. Think of your land, of your kin. Think of the Culmaren that died to bring you this far and keep you alive until help came for you. Is this a fitting reward for its sacrifice?’

  The onslaught faltered, though whether because of Ibryen’s challenge or Isgyrn’s exhaustion was not apparent. Part of Ibryen tensed instinctively, scenting victory and preparing to leap and seize the advantage. But the part of him that was a leader of his people, reined the urge back and waited. Twice, in the ensuing silence, Isgyrn seemed set to renew the conflict, but twice he hesitated and twice Ibryen remained still, carrying only the thought of the dead Culmaren in his mind.

  Then came a hesitant and bewildered voice. ‘Ibryen, is this truly you? How have you come after me? Where is this place? What has happened to me?’

  Ibryen winced as an acrid mixture of fear and shame touched him. He did not allow the Dryenwr to speak further, but reached out in reassurance and silent, unconditional forgiveness. ‘More questions than I can answer, Isgyrn,’ he said. ‘But I am Ibryen here just as I am Ibryen elsewhere. As to how I came here, I don’t know, but I can take no more pride in it than in my black hair and black eyes, as it seems I was born with the skill to travel thus for all I’ve only just come to know of it.’