G. Kelly - Sword and Circle

“What is it, Longsword?”

“Those stones. I don’t remember them being there.”

On each side of the bridge, resting like a recumbent sentry, lay a large round white stone, perhaps three feet in diameter.

“Some kind of foundation stones, perhaps,” Allazar opined, “Exposed by the blast of Morloch’s Breath?”

“Perhaps. But I know this bridge well, there’s a stream not far from here where Gwyn chose me, so long ago now.” Gawain looked upstream, towards the south.

“Covered by grasses then, and now exposed. I doubt you had eyes for such things in your younger days, and I doubt you had eyes for such things last time you passed this way.” Allazar said, gently in spite of his own sadness and horror at the wasteland around them.

“You’re probably right, wizard,” Gawain acknowledged with a sigh, turning Gwyn along the road again. “Perhaps I’m simply trying to delay the inevitable for a while.”

“There is no rush, Longsword, if you need to take more time…?”

“No,” Gawain announced firmly, regally. “We have travelled far together, wizard, and for a single purpose. To delay now would be foolish, and indulgent. Come, let’s put these few more miles behind us at last.”

And with that, Gwyn set off at a brisk canter, Allazar and the pack-horse not far behind.

At the outskirts of the castletown, the rubble which had once been the symbolic wall surrounding the town lay bleached and exposed like the contents of a desecrated grave now that the dust and ashes of destruction had been blown and washed from them. Gawain barely glanced at them as they road through what had been one of the several north gates of the town, still following the cobbled road.

Three miles from the Keep, and they saw its remains, rising at an angle, like a jagged finger pointing to the west. Closer still, and rubble and ruins no taller than a man were all that remained of the once proud stone towers and buildings that ringed the mighty keep, the landscape harsh now that the dust and ashes no longer soften edges and blurred outlines.

Then through the gap in the rubble that had been the north wall, the wall that had encircled the Great Hall and Keep of Raheen, the wall that had once declared to all: Here dwell the Crowns of Raheen.

Finally, with Allazar gazing stunned and disbelieving at the ruin all about them, they came to the great cobbled courtyard, and here the horses stopped, and Gwyn let out a low whinny towards the empty space where once the stables stood.

Ahead of them, warped and twisted, the remains of the massive iron gates once bound and riveted to the mighty oaken portals that gave way to the Great Hall. Allazar, slack jawed, gazed up at the gaping rents in the scorched and blackened walls of what was once the mighty Keep of Raheen, Gawain’s home, home of the Kings of Raheen.

Gawain dismounted, and held Gwyn’s majestic head, rubbing her ears and speaking softly. Tears filled his eyes, and Allazar’s too, and the wizard dismounted quickly, anxious to place his own horse between himself and the Longsword warrior, so that the younger man would not see the sorrow and pity streaming freely down his cheeks. The wizard sniffed, and wiped his eyes and his nose on the sleeve of his robes, muttering a quiet chant for strength and calm to quell the great turmoil of tears he knew had been but moments away. Small wonder the young man despised wizards so; it was Morloch who had done all this, and Morloch was a wizard.

“Come Allazar, this is what I would have you see.”

The wizard took another deep breath, sniffed again, and stepped out from behind his horse with a small bag slung over his shoulder. “Coming, Longsword, just fetching a few things.”

Gawain walked ahead, picking his way through the wreckage about the arched entrance to the great hall. A year of weather had done the work of many hands, the southerly winds whistling through the rents in the walls sweeping away dust and ash and debris, the rains of all four seasons washing them clean.

Allazar gazed around the scorched and broken walls, noting here and there a twisted sconce or a cracked socket where once a torch or proud banner had hung. Ahead lay the thrones upon their great marble pedestals, cracked and blackened like the walls all around them. Sea breezes whistled through the ruin from time to time, and but for the echoing of their booted heels upon the stone floor, a cavernous silence demanded respect, and awe.

“This is what I brought you all this way to see.” Gawain said softly, and came to a stop.

Behind them, the sudden clopping of hooves made them wheel in alarm, reaching for weapons, but it was Gwyn, of course, and the other horses following behind. There was nothing without the broken Keep, and the loneliness outside had been too much for Gwyn to bear. Gawain nodded sadly, and turned back to face the thrones.

“There,” he said. “There on the floor.”

Allazar stepped forward and stood alongside his king, for standing there, before the broken thrones and within those broken walls the wizard knew beyond all doubt that that is what Gawain had become, and not just in name. Before he had seen Raheen, Allazar had bound himself by oath to the Longsword warrior he instinctively knew possessed a destiny, and before that of course by order of Brock of Callodon. But now Allazar had seen Raheen. Now he understood a measure of the forces which had moulded the dreadful warrior who had wrought such vengeance upon the Ramoth. Now he understood what power had driven the young man on his quest into the Dragon’s Teeth, and why, after a year of wreaking vengeance and justice upon those who had done this, why Morloch was right to be afraid.

Looking down, Allazar saw the slotted home-stone in which the mighty blade upon Gawain’s back had spent so long in repose, undisturbed. And all around, within that Circle of Justice, where petitioners and accused alike had stood awaiting the King’s judgement, strange runes etched in the highly polished marble which bore no sign of any damage at all.

Allazar wiped his eyes and looked again. No, he thought, not etched in the marble, but within the stone itself!

“May I?” He asked tentatively, indicating the circle.

Gawain simply shrugged, and while the wizard gaped up at the sky at the sound of gulls wheeling, walked across the circle to sit upon the polished steps in front of the thrones. He took a lump of frak from his pocket, studied it for a moment before looking around the hall as if he expected Cordell, the Lord Chamberlain, to chide him for eating thus, then pared a slice and began to chew, lost in memories.

Allazar, still gazing up and about the Keep, turning this way and that, stepped into the circle, and then walked its circumference, gazing at the runes below the polished surface. He had not seen the like, either in reality or in books during his studies at the D’ith Hallencloister. He reached into his shoulder bag, took out a pencil and notebook ‘liberated’ from the Callodon outpost at the foot of the Pass, and with the King’s throne as a point of reference, he began making copies of the runes, moving slowly from each to the next as he worked.

In no time at all the wizard forgot where he was, forgot Gawain sitting on the steps which formed the raised platform upon which the thrones of Raheen had reposed for countless centuries. There was only the work, the floor, the circle, and the runes.

There were three concentric circles of runes and one hundred and twenty runes in each circle. Then an expanse of polished marble floor in or upon which Allazar could see nothing except his reflection gazing back up at him. And at last, in the centre of the floor, encircling the slotted home-stone, another circle of runes containing only twelve symbols. When he was certain he had transcribed all of them, in their correct relationship and orientation, he hurried to sit beside Gawain to display his handiwork.