G. Kelly - Sword and Circle

He’d rid the lowlands of Ramoths, exposed Morloch’s evil, smashed the great lens beneath the Teeth and in so doing destroyed Morloch’s vast reserves of aquamire. He’d discovered the armies in the north, alerted the lowlands to the enemy’s presence, instigated the first Great Council of Kings within living memory, and shown those kings and their councillors the face of the enemy. He’d shown them the armies already south of the Teeth, and shown them the thousands smashing away at the north face of the mountains forcing a breach for the coming invasion.

He’d bloodied Morloch’s nose at Ferdan, literally as well as figuratively, and after a dash across the plains he’d released the ancient power hidden in Raheen and smashed Morloch’s thousands to oblivion. Morloch was bound again beyond the Teeth, and all that remained of the dark wizard’s plans for the invasion and destruction of the southlands was the small force north of the farak gorin. And that, Gawain knew, was a problem only the lowlanders could deal with. He was but one man, and he was tired, and he ached and he hurt, on the inside as well as the outside.

He suddenly felt a wave of kinship with the mythical farm-boy Hurgo; an ordinary youth ripped from the life he knew and robbed of the future he’d expected, pummelled by forces beyond his control, shaped and moulded like Lady Merrin’s dough into a form and figure far removed from any he might have imagined for himself. Then baked hard in the furnace of cruel fortune before being destroyed and forgotten, the way the infant Travak might slam one of Merrin’s gingerbread figures on the kitchen table and gurgle with laughter at the pieces scattering before him.

Gawain sighed, stooping to heave Gwyn’s saddle over his aching shoulders while the great Raheen charger ambled towards a ribbon of a stream, ripping more clumps of grass along the way. Another glance westward showed the group gathering again, making ready to move off, and a rider heading his way. At the stream, Gawain lowered the saddle back to the ground, bruised back protesting painfully, and waited, arms folded and eyeing the approaching rider while Gwyn drank.

“My lord,” a guardsman announced, slowing from a gentle canter, “Captain’s compliments, my lord, the column is moving on.”

“Thank you. Please tell Captain Tyrane I’ll catch up with you all in a while. I have a duty to my horse.” On a sudden impulse, Gawain stooped to recover the brace of hares from his saddle and handed them to a slightly surprised guardsman. “And please give these to the quartermaster with my compliments.”

“Aye, my lord,” the guard smiled appreciatively as he hung the hares from his saddle-horn. “We’ve a heavy bag today, should be good eating tonight.”

Gawain nodded, and watched the guard ride all the way back to the caravan. After a few minutes, the column began moving north again. Gwyn lifted her head from the stream, eyed the road and the horses trotting along it in the distance, gave a brief snuffle, and then turned her attention back to the crystal clear water of the stream again.

“Me too, Gwyn, me too,” Gawain muttered, in no rush to rejoin the group.

On the open plains there was little if any chance of a sneak attack by man or beast, Morloch-made or otherwise, and just as it had felt good to hunt in the forest on his own, it felt good now, standing alone here on the plains waiting for Gwyn to drink her fill. Gawain decided he’d ride wide on the flank, perhaps swing around behind the column and take a station on the western side of the road; there was unlikely to be any threat from the east which the guardsmen of Callodon couldn’t cope with. Gwyn’s head bobbed up, and she turned sideways on to him, waiting patiently while he brushed. She was filthy from the quagmire on the road, and Gawain decided to take his time and restore his horse-friend to her full glory.

If only he could do the same for Elayeen. She had become a gaping wound deep within him and he had to tell himself that the loss he felt was a reaction to the throth dependency that had been ripped from them both, that she was in fact still alive and well and leading the column north even now. Voices seemed to whisper to him from the sound of the brush, the breezes, and the stream.

The elder magi foresaw the need to gift a wizard with knowledge and power far beyond his lowly station and education, and the need to gift an elfin with the mystic sight of her ancient forebears. It means, my friends, they foresaw that we would need them, together with the wielder of the sword.

Gawain wondered if Hurgo the Halfhanded had heard such voices, and imagined he probably had, though the voices would likely have been real and belonged to the ‘suckwits, soothsayers and sundry sycophants’ that Arramin of the D’ith Sek had spoken of.

We are far, far removed from the minds of those who made this place, and the world in which they lived. Who are we to meddle thus, with neither knowledge nor wisdom of their intent to guide us?

More to the point, Gawain thought back at the memory of Elayeen’s gentle lilting voice, who did they think they were? They are far removed from us indeed, dust these long centuries past. Yet Morloch lives. He endured to walk through the mists of myth and to emerge from his lair beyond the Teeth, while those elder magi, oh so wise in ages past, left nothing but the circles and the sword in Raheen. While their remains mouldered in their crypts, Morloch survived to draw up his plans against us. The knowledge given to Allazar is ancient knowledge. The sight given to Elayeen is ancient sight. Who was there left from those elder days but Morloch? Who could say for certain whether sword and circle were nothing but a useless legacy rendered obsolete a thousand years or more ago? How far advanced now was Morloch compared to the traitor the elders had known?

Adjectives.

From a bygone era, words hidden from view and revealed by accident in the curved reflection of a polished Dymendin rod five thousand years in the making. But for Elayeen that Dymendin staff would still be in the hands of Salaman Goth of Goria. The sword would be lost, Gawain and Allazar dead, and Elayeen, throth-bound to Gawain, dying. And Morloch gloating, victorious, his armies breaching the Teeth to flood across the farak gorin.

Soothsayers

Could such twists of fate, such accidents and coincidences which had led them all to stand together in the Circle of Justice truly have been foreseen? Or were sword and circle merely wishful thinking, a fool’s hope, an insurance policy against the future’s judgement of those who had failed to rid the world of Morloch and his evil, content instead to settle for locking him away in the gentler lands beyond the mountains of the north?

Gawain stepped back and admired his work, nodding approvingly before casting a glance to the northwest and at the backs of the group on the road slowly shrinking into the distance.

“Turn around, Ugly, time for the other side.”

Mostly what is known comes to us in the form of myths and tales and snatches of old songs, from which we may deduce little, but speculate much.

Gawain sighed. The truth, or such truth as ever there might be concerning Morloch, was, if it existed, locked away in the deepest vaults of the D’ith Hallencloister. And as Allazar himself had said, fat chance now of getting in there. After all, Gawain conceded, they really only had Morloch’s word that he was, in fact, Morloch. Who was there still living from the elder days to gainsay the foul and aquamire-stained figure unseen for centuries before the shimmering vision had appeared before Gawain on the plains of Juria far to the north? Perhaps ‘Morloch’ had become, like ‘Goth’, a title rather than a true name. Perhaps the foul creature Gawain had vexed so much over the past year was merely one of a long line of Morlochs, the head of some evil order founded by the original traitor so long ago.