Roger Taylor - Dream Finder

And the countless worlds of the Threshold, necklaced and joined about the hurt that was his birth world.

He could reach and touch and know. Know everything. From the least to the most.

This was the Great Dream.

Wonder and terror overwhelmed him.

He felt his mind unhinging.

'Where is the power?'

The blind man's words were jagged and querulous, like shattering crystals amid this wonder, but they gave Antyr his centre again in this place of infinities.

'We have the power,’ said the voices. ‘The Adept is our way. You, our instrument, faithful one.'

Antyr's soul froze at the touch of the will behind the voices. ‘Through the long ages we have waited since we were chained here. Now we shall be free. Now, in you, we shall return to that desecration you dwell in and right its vile wrongness.'

'Who are you?’ Antyr managed.

There was dark amusement in the answer.

'We are the spirits of those who occupied the land and were driven from it. Those who learned of the true power and used it against our enemies. Those who lingered in the mountains before our people deserted us and fled to the plains, and before they came to pinion us here, beyond all things.'

The voices stopped.

'But now we are wiser. For there are others here. Now we see our travail was but part of a greater ill. Now we shall avenge ourselves and be also the vanguard for the remaking of all things.'

'I shall oppose you,’ Antyr said, the words coming unbidden.

'It is not within your power,’ the voices replied, their words full of malevolence.

A memory rose in Antyr's mind. ‘Adept you called me, and Adept I am,’ he said. ‘And Adepts of the White Way it was who bound you here, beyond the reach of all save for the gravest mischance.'

'You have not that skill, blunderer. They were great and powerful beyond your imagining. You are scarce an apprentice. You are a thing of clay and dross with the merest mote of past greatness trapped within you.'

For a timeless, fleeting instant, even as he stood in the Great Dream, Antyr was on the darkened battlefield again. He felt the fearful onslaught of Ivaroth's horde and the furious courage of his defenders, and, deep inside him, the spirits of Tarrian and Grayle holding him firm, their quiet stillness belying utterly their slavering, wild-eyed stance about his body.

He spoke. ‘I am indeed a weak vessel, but my making is beyond your knowledge by far, formed as I was in the world whose chance creation gave even MaraVestriss a measure of his wisdom. I am tainted by your works and the works of your kind, as are we all. But I am of the line of the Dream Warriors, and I see the taint, and know it for what it is. And I will not allow it to turn me from the truth and the light.'

There was a terrible silence. It seemed to Antyr that the worlds hovering about him waited.

Then, ‘Mynedarion. Let him know our power,’ the voices commanded.

Antyr turned and faced the blind man.

'You have followed many false paths, old man,’ he said. ‘And wrought great harm. But you are of my world. Know your frailty now, before it is too late.'

'You will obey me, slave,’ the blind man hissed. ‘Or you will know torment such as you could not have thought possible. And though you will cry for death, yet you will live forever . Obey, for this will be your last defiance no matter what your will.'

His long hands reached out towards Antyr.

Antyr met his gaze then reached out and took the menacing hands.

And he was the blind man. Saw through his sightless eyes. Knew his terrible secrets, his foul apprenticeship, the fearful loss that had taken his sight and his mind, the countless desires that held him thrall.

A great pity filled him.

But he could do no other than what he had to do.

For he knew, too, the power. Knew its heart. Knew that its use or misuse was, as ever, in the hands of the user.

And he was himself again.

The blind man staggered, bewildered by having found himself in the body of another, and staring at himself through sighted eyes. But unlike Antyr, he had not truly seen for that timeless moment whom he had become: had not learned.

He tore his hands free and, in his fury, unleashed the power that would bind Antyr forever.

Antyr opened his arms to receive it.

Pain and horror beyond description swept through his very soul, but at his centre he held his true self.

Then, with his new knowledge, he returned the blind man's power, cleansed of its malice and hatred, and all its other corruptions.

Darkness, swirling and turbulent, overwhelmed the vantage, and a terrible cry of despair and rage rose from the blind man as he saw and knew his own, dark folly, and felt the impotence of his long garnered skill against this, his own onslaught.

And, too, a terrible cry rose from the long-bound spirits as their own malevolence returned upon them to re-forge their ancient bonds.

Antyr reached again for the blind man, swaying frenziedly against the tortured darkness, his arms flailing, his mouth agape and raging. But he touched nothing.

And he was lying, wide-eyed, at the centre of the bloody circle before the farmhouse, his whole being ringing with the last cry of the Mynedarion as he had been swept into oblivion.

Then the sounds about him were the sounds of battle. Though now they were different.

Words more terrible than any Mantynnai's sword were cutting through the close-packed ranks of the invaders: ‘The Mareth Hai is dead! The Mareth Hai is dead!'

And soon the defenders were motionless. Watching, through battle-weary eyes, the ebbing of the great tide that had been Ivaroth's mighty army.

On the other battlefield, the two great hosts were moving apart. The Serens moving from line to column and marching eastward back towards Whendrak, the Bethlarii dispersing and scattering to their various homes. The battle unfought.

As Menedrion had raised his lance to give the signal to advance, Feranc had laid a hand on his arm, untypically excited.

'No,’ he had said. ‘Not yet. Their line's going to break. If we attack they'll unite again, for sure.'

And even as he spoke, the Bethlarii line began to disintegrate.

Within the hour, ghalers, under flags of truce, had brought the news to Menedrion.

'There has been growing discontent at the increasing power of the priests,’ was their gist. ‘Few of us wanted this conflict, and fewer still applauded the manner of its making. Now we have received word that Navra, Endir, indeed the whole north-east, have been taken by a horde from across the mountains and that even now they may be moving against your own territories. It seems that the priests meddled in the affairs of the gods, and our whole land is now to pay for their folly.'

'I'd not have you linger further in superstition and ignorance,’ Menedrion told them. ‘No gods brought you that word, only my father's Dream Finders. It was they who discovered the reality of the deception that had been wrought on you and they visited you last night both to tell you the truth and to undermine your will to fight.'

It was a crucial admission.

'The dreams were but a test by Ar-Hyrdyn,’ the priests had claimed in both bewilderment and desperation, as years of resentment at their oppression had begun to flicker into life amid the battle-ready Bethlarii following Antyr and Pandra's strange sending. Then, exhausted stragglers had arrived from Endir to confirm the news in graphic detail, and all further priestly persuasions and threats had been swept aside.

Now Menedrion's revelation dispelled the last, lingering doubts in the minds of the Bethlarii that they had been both brought to the field and dismissed from it at the whim of some god.