Whistler

by Roger Taylor

  The Whistler seemed to be more at ease when Vredech eventually fell silent. He stopped playing though his head was moving from side to side and he was waving the flute delicately as if he, too, were hearing music other than his own. He looked back into the cave. ‘The Sound Carvers lived in caves,’ he said. ‘Deep, winding, unbelievable caves, full of marvels you could scarcely imagine. I come and play in places like this from time to time, just in case they’re here and might want to remember their old pupil. I sometimes think I hear them.’

  He gave a pensive sigh. Then his eyes widened lecherously. ‘I like the sound of your sister,’ he said. ‘Quite a woman. I wouldn’t mind…’

  Vredech’s fist tightened and his jaw came out. The Whistler’s hands rose in rapid surrender. ‘Sorry,’ he said, his voice full of mock abjectness. And, as suddenly, his manner was earnest and concerned.

  ‘You spin an excellent tale, but I’ve heard it before. Chaos and confusion in public, blood and terror in private. His hallmarks, night eyes. His hallmarks. Your friend must be a most apt host to have brought this about so quickly.’

  Being swept along by the panic-stricken crowd, and learning of the murder of the young men had shaken Vredech, but the implication that Cassraw had something to do with either of them shook him even more.

  ‘No!’ he protested heatedly. ‘No. You’ve no right to assume that Cassraw was involved in the murders. Or the panic. You can’t possibly think…’

  ‘I can think what I want, Priest,’ the Whistler interrupted. There was an unpleasant edge to his voice.

  Vredech retreated a little. ‘I meant…’

  ‘You meant that you knew what I should and should not think,’ the Whistler said, suddenly very angry. ‘That’s the way it is with religions and priests. They give you the authority to walk the easy way, to wallow in ignorance and bigotry and call it divine revelation – anything rather than admit that perhaps everything is not simple, that people might have to make their own judgements, think for themselves, delve into the wonders that are all around us, discover, learn, search out their own destinies, go to hell in their own way. You look down from your lofty pinnacles, with your god at your elbow, and inflict every conceivable kind of cruelty on anyone who has the temerity to ask, “Are you sure?”’ He kicked the fire savagely, sending up a spiralling cloud of sparks. ‘Ye gods, I hate the lot of you.’

  So vitriolic was the outburst that Vredech was stunned into silence. A flood of indignant replies piled up so chaotically in his mind that he could not give them voice.

  ‘That’s unjust,’ he managed after a long silence, and with a softness that surprised him.

  The Whistler made no acknowledgement, but began playing again; a bitter, hard-edged marching tune with a driving rhythm which he tapped out with one foot so heavily that Vredech could feel the vibration through the ground beneath his own feet. It rose into a shriek and stopped without resolution, though the Whistler’s foot continued tapping, and a vague echo of the tune pulsed softly out of his pursed lips.

  ‘And all this business in your… Troidmallos… happened, between this and this.’ He snapped his fingers twice as he spoke.

  Vredech was taken aback by the sudden return to their previous conversation. Despite the gentleness of his first response, he was still burning with a desire to engage in angry debate about his religion, but a certain regret in the Whistler’s manner prevented him. He could not resist one shaft, however.

  ‘You wanted to know, seeker after knowledge,’ he said icily. ‘And I told you. So spare me any more of your scorn.’

  The Whistler’s foot stopped tapping and he slouched forward. Vredech deduced that that was as close to an argument as he was going to get and he remained silent.

  When the Whistler spoke, his voice was quite calm. ‘Do as I told you a few minutes ago,’ he gave a rueful smile, ‘or a few weeks ago, as you’d have it. Go to this friend of yours, this Cassraw, and kill him. Do it now, while you still can, and before any more innocent blood is spilt.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Vredech replied viciously. ‘Canol Madreth is a civilized country. We have laws about such minor matters as random murder, not to mention procedures for properly determining guilt. And anyway, we don’t execute people no matter what their crime. And, not least, there’s the fact that I couldn’t even contemplate such an act.’ The unspent anger at the assault on his vocation spilled out. ‘If you can’t say anything sensible, shut up.’

  The Whistler did not respond to Vredech’s anger. Instead, his voice remained calm. ‘That’s still the most sensible advice I can give you, though I can see it’s unlikely to be accepted. One of the problems for so-called civilized peoples is that they’ve usually forgotten the darkness from which they came, and have little or no resistance to it when others, less civilized, bring it down upon them. Barbarians have swept away golden temples and glittering cities, time after time after time. And the ignorant have yoked the learned, time after time after time.’ He picked up a few pieces of wood and began repairing the damage his kick had done to the fire. ‘You know what the dominant response is, of people so conquered?’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow and, for the first time since his diatribe about religion, he looked at Vredech.

  Vredech shook his head hesitantly, his anger fading and uncertain now.

  ‘Astonishment,’ the Whistler said, turning back to the fire. ‘It’s bubbling under the surface in you, right now.’

  There was a long silence. Untypically, the Whistler sat very still, his flute lying idle across his knees. Vredech watched him. The scene, with its soft lantern-light and gently moving firelight, looked like a picture in a book. For a moment, he felt that if he reached out, he would turn over a page and find himself reading some old tale.

  Vaguely, he felt powers about him, contending for him, trying to draw him away. But he needed to speak further with this strange individual.

  ‘Answer my first question then,’ he said quietly. ‘What will happen? What will this evil spirit of yours do?’

  The Whistler did not seem to hear. Then, as Vredech was about to repeat the question, he said, ‘What will happen is up to you, I suspect. No – Iknow it will be up to you. You are near the heart. You’re a pivot. A tiny thing about which great things will turn.’ He looked sharply at Vredech, angular and alert again. ‘These things I’ve seen. As to when, or where…’ he shrugged, then pursed his lips and began whistling.

  The sound filled the cave instantly, sharp-edged and penetrating. Vredech felt it wrapping around him, cutting through him. Without being aware of any transition he was standing on a high vantage. There was a naturalness about the change that left him unsurprised, but it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. It was a town, though bigger by far than Troidmallos, spreading out in every direction as far as he could see. Bigger even than one of the Tirfelden cities that his father had once taken him to as a child. And, also unlike Troidmallos, with its winding sloping streets and rows of stepped houses, it was flat. Born and reared amongst mountains, Vredech found the perspective unsettling. Far more unsettling though, was the realization that the whole city seemed to have been destroyed. The view immediately around him was jagged with shattered walls and blackened timbers and, in the distance, great fires raged, hurling flames and dense black smoke into a mocking blue sky.

  Then, from whatever eyrie he was perched in, Vredech began to make out movement in the streets below. He needed no telling to identify it, it was hanging in the Whistler’s eerie music that was still all about him. The movement was that of people, fleeing. Women, children, old men – the young and the less young were already dead, the music told him. Then there was more movement. Horsemen! A surging tide of them flowing black and relentless in pursuit through the crowded streets, riding over the panic-stricken survivors, crushing them, hacking them down. But this was no battle. That had already been won. This was a hunting, a revelling sport, part of the reward for that winning. The music continued, twining together lau
ghter and screams in an unholy harmony, telling him that of those who did not die here, some would be kept for further, more leisurely sport later, others would be bound and broken in slavery, while the seemingly most lucky, those who would escape, would serve as the bearers of hideous tales to begin the destruction of the next city even before the enemy had set spur towards it. He tried to turn his head away, but it was held firm. Nor would his eyes close. For a brief, terrible instant he was sucked down into the crowd to become once again part of a suffocating, screaming throng, though this time the cries around him were foreign and strange. The terror, however, needed no language.

  Then blood filled his vision. Filled his world. Choking…

  The Whistler was looking at him inquiringly. ‘There are many such songs,’ he said.

  Vredech drew in an agonizing breath. He held out a hand, at once restraining and denying. ‘It cannot be,’ he gasped. ‘Not in Canol Madreth.’

  The Whistler was playing his flute again, the angry march he had played before, though now it was soft and distant. ‘I told you – astonishment. You’ll be gaping in disbelief at the sword that kills you, thinking, “this cannot be”.’ He levelled the flute at him. The sudden silence in the cave was more startling than if there had been a thunderclap. ‘Everywhere. Anywhere. Such a fate is always waiting for those who forget the darkness in their nature,’ the Whistler intoned. ‘Learn it now, or you’ll be taught it again.’

  ‘What can I do?’ Vredech asked.

  ‘I’ve told you once and you won’t do it.’

  His body still reacting to the scenes he had just witnessed, and his mind reacting to the manner in which he had witnessed them, Vredech could not give voice to his returned anger. He shook his head despairingly and snatched at a thread of reasoning for support. ‘Your advice aside, Whistler, allow me a moment. If you are a figment of my imagination then perhaps I’m on the way to madness. But if I murder my friend at your suggesting, then I am truly insane, isn’t that so?’

  The Whistler made no reply for a moment, then he said, ‘And ifyou are a figment ofmy imagination, I’d still like to know why I’m taxing myself with such a problematic individual, with his inconvenient moral dilemmas.’

  Vredech’s thoughts started to reel as once again he groped for some anchor that would hold sufficiently for him to determine the reality of what was happening. Something inspired him. ‘Perhaps you value our debate,’ he said.

  The Whistler laughed. The sound echoed joyously around the cave but it jarred on Vredech’s ears. ‘You may well be right, in some perverse fashion,’ the Whistler said. ‘But I’m afraid I’ve no advice for you, other than what I’ve already given you.’ He became serious again. ‘If you choose not to follow it, then…’ He shrugged. ‘But if you want to stop Him rising once again to power, and devastating your land and its people, then His death is the only thing that will achieve this.’ He turned away sharply, and Vredech felt a great wave of sadness pass over him. ‘If you kill Him now, then perhaps it will go badly for you. But if you kill Him later, it will have already gone badly for many others.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid it’s usually so.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘You have your answer, Priest. If you won’t kill Him, then you’ll have to watch events unfold and respond accordingly. Public chaos and death, you say, has already begun. Private blood-letting and terror you have, too.’ He drew in a hissing breath and his hands curled painfully about the flute, as if he had accidentally struck a newly-healed sore. ‘They are related, trust me. And be warned. You defend your friend, understandably, I suppose, but he’s not your friend any more. He is His. Body, and what’s left of his soul. I’ve told you, he’s an apt vessel – very apt. The events you’ll be watching may well move with great speed. Disbelief and astonishment are luxuries you haven’t the time to afford.’ He became suddenly pensive. ‘Apt,’ he murmured to himself, as if the word had set unexpected thoughts in train. ‘There’s a quality about these things, like…’ He frowned as he struggled for the words, then lifted the flute and began playing random notes, very slowly, with his head cocked on one side, listening intently. ‘Like this,’ he said eventually, blowing a single note. As he lowered the flute, the note returned out of the darkness at the back of the cave and hovered briefly before fading. ‘An echoing, a resonance. There’s a quality in some of this rock that’s in deep harmony with this note. It responds when touched in the right way.’ He played the note again, and held up a hand for silence as it returned once more. ‘So it is with Him. But infinitely more subtle.’ He pressed his thumb and forefinger together. ‘Who responds just so to His song, builds a way for Him. Large or small, wide or narrow, it will be His way. And He will not relinquish it. He builds ever. And there are many ways in which He can come. Ways of the mind, the spirit, the heart, the flesh.’ He snapped his fingers and pointed at Vredech. ‘Don’t let this friend of yours build anything,’ he said urgently. ‘No monuments, no palaces. Nothing.’

  Vredech made to speak, but the Whistler was continuing. ‘Right place, right moment, right… qualities… prayer, adulation, terror – and such a place, with its shapes and deep and locking geometries can draw Him down on you like lightning down a tree, and the consequences of that bear no thinking about.’

  The awful conviction in the Whistler’s voice made Vredech shiver. As if in response, the wood that the Whistler had thrown on the fire suddenly burst into flames. The surge of warmth struck him full in the face.

  ‘Allyn! Allyn!’

  Nertha’s anxious voice pierced the clinging heat as several arms seized him and held him upright.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m just…’

  A roar rose from the congregation, its awful weight crushing him once more. For a moment he was fully in two places. Sitting in the Whistler’s cave torn with doubt, and standing in the Haven Meeting House, sustained by unknown hands and full of fear.

  Nertha’s emphatic voice was saying, ‘No you’re not.’ Then she was shouting, her voice cutting through even Cassraw’s frantic rhetoric. ‘Clear a way at the back, sick man coming through.’ And before Vredech could speak, he was twisting and turning, being passed from hand to hand through the crowd that stood between him and the door, Nertha controlling the proceedings like a sheep dog herding her flock.

  Then the short, buffeting journey was over. The stifling heat and gloom of the Meeting House gave way to the warmth and light of the summer sun. The supporting hands became an arm wrapped about his shoulders and a single hand firmly grasping his elbow.

  ‘I’m not doing too well lately, am I?’ Vredech said wearily as Nertha led him around to the side of the Meeting House, away from the crowd momentarily distracted from Cassraw’s sermon.

  ‘Hush,’ she said, at once gentle and businesslike. ‘Sit down here in the shade and rest a moment.’ Even as she was speaking, she was skilfully manoeuvring him on to the base of a wide recess in the wall. Then she was looking into his face, prising his eyelids back. He pushed her hand away.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he insisted. ‘It was just the heat.’

  Nertha was shaking her head. ‘No, it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘I thought it was at first. It was the obvious thing.’ Her hands avoided his and touched his face and forehead, then the pulse in his neck. ‘You’re agitated, but you don’t feel like someone who was just about to faint. And you’ve recovered too quickly.’

  ‘Do you need any help?’ The question came from one of a pair of Cassraw’s Knights who had helped open the crowd for Nertha; they had followed in her determined wake as she had led Vredech away.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I am a physician. It’s nothing serious.’

  ‘It’s the power of Brother Cassraw’s great message,’ the young man confided. ‘It moves people in many different ways.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Nertha replied caustically, though the sarcasm was lost on the listeners.

  She turned and dismissed them with a smile of reassurance, t
hen bent forward and gazed intently into Vredech’s eyes. Her hands came up to examine them again. ‘Stop that,’ he said, seizing her wrists. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, Nertha. I can see perfectly.’ He pointed.

  ‘Look, there’s the Ervrin Mallos.’

  Nertha was patient. ‘Being able to see a mountain doesn’t really constitute a test of good eyesight, Brother brother,’ she said, smiling slightly at his indignation as he glowered back at her.

  He pointed again. ‘Then there’s the gate to Cassraw’s private garden, and Dowinne’s precious fruit trees. There’s a street lantern that someone’s forgotten to turn off. There’s those yellow flowers, what’re they called?’ He snapped his fingers.

  ‘Sun’s eyes.’ Nertha answered for him. ‘All right, your eyesight’s fine, then.’ But she was still looking into his eyes. ‘It just seemed to me that they looked very strange as you began to lose consciousness just now. Almost as if their entire orbs… went black.’ She hesitated, then said awkwardly, ‘Or rather, filled with darkness. It gave me quite a fright.’

  Night eyes, night eyes. The Whistler’s words rang in Vredech’s ears. And he remembered, too, the brief impression he had had when he looked in the mirror after his first encounter with the Whistler. The same fear possessed him now as it had then, but under Nertha’s searching gaze he kept his face immobile. ‘It was dark and crowded in there,’ he said flatly. ‘Lots of shadows.’

  He saw Nertha controlling her own face as a shrewd-eyed look of suspicion rapidly came and went.

  ‘Dark,’ he confirmed. ‘And confused. And you’d be shocked, seeing me passing out like that.’