Roger Taylor - Whistler

‘He’s come again,’ he heard himself saying. It was not a question.

‘His hand is here, for sure,’ Darke said. ‘I can offer no stern logic for this, but my every instinct tells me that dreadful events are in the offing. Your Cassraw does His will. And there is a strangeness lingering visibly about the summit of your holy mountain the like of which I’ve never seen before. Nor Tirec, and he was born to mountains.’

Bridgehead,’ Vredech said softly.

Darke’s brow furrowed quizzically.

‘A foothold in enemy territory,’ Vredech continued. ‘To it, He will come, and through it pass amongst us. He waits only for the temple that Cassraw will build, then…’ He left the conclusion unspoken.

Darke and Tirec glanced at one another.

‘What makes you say that?’ Tirec asked.

‘Who slew Him?’ Vredech asked, ignoring the question. The two men looked at him uncertainly. ‘Who slew Him?’ he said again with some force. ‘Ahmral! You said He was destroyed. Who destroyed Him? Who wielded the sword? Did you see Him slain? Did you see His body?’

‘We were… nearby,’ Darke said after some hesitation. ‘But no man slew Him. He destroyed Himself.’

‘Be specific,’ Vredech said coldly, his father’s voice echoing through his head as he spoke. It was a command that his two listeners seemed to appreciate.

‘This will not be easy,’ Darke said.

Vredech gave a grim laugh. ‘This was never going to be an easy day,’ he said. ‘Just tell me your tale.’

‘As you wish,’ Darke replied, though again, his face was pained. ‘He was destroyed because He believed that a flickering remnant of Ishryth’s conscious spirit was in fact Ishryth re-born, as He had been. In His rage – or terror – He unleashed such power that His human frame could not contain it and was destroyed utterly, as was the great citadel that He had built.’

But Vredech scarcely heard the tale. ‘What do you mean, a flickering remnant?’ he exclaimed. ‘Ishryth is the Source and Creator of all things – this world, the stars, the whole universe. He is Supreme.’

Darke cut across his outburst. ‘Ishryth came from the beginning of this world, and formed it thus. What was before, no one knows. What he is, or was, no one knows, save that for a time he took human form. But he did not create this world, still less the stars. If there is a Supreme Being, it is not Ishryth. And how could we frame such a creature in our puny minds? Two things Ishryth said as he faded from the final conflict. That he was amongst us all now, and that both he and Ahmral were aberrations of the Great Heat from which they came. Make of that what you will.’

Fabric’s torn, ‘fore all was born .

Vredech felt as though he had been suddenly plunged into freezing water. He began to gasp for breath. As he had in the strange night meeting with Horld on the Ervrin Mallos, he felt his mind lurching into darkness, all points of familiarity, of anchorage, gone. What were these two men? Were they indeed creations of his own? Was the Whistler? Were they Ahmral’s demons taunting him?

But no sooner did these thoughts appear than they vanished, and the certainty that had formed about him earlier returned. He could not test Darke’s story, subject it to any theological rigour, but it was as if it had reached below his thinking mind and shone a light into the doubts and hesitations he had fearfully stored there over the years. He felt the death of many things that he had accepted as articles of faith, but there was no true pain, no sense of loss. He had been given more questions than answers, but they were wise questions and asked in a wider, more wondrous world. He had told Nertha that his faith was changing but now, at the touch of this story, he saw that, as a dried and shrivelled seed becomes a flower, or a caterpillar a butterfly, so his faith had been transformed into something far greater than it had ever been.

He was who he was and he was where he was. And still he must do what he had set out to do, though it cost him his life. But now, there was hope. Now he was no longer pitted against a supernatural evil rooted in the essence of creation, but against the all-too-human evil he had heard exulting as it took possession of Cassraw on the Ervrin Mallos.

He looked at Darke. The man’s face was full of pain and guilt. ‘Don’t reproach yourself,’ Vredech said. ‘The truth is always to be preferred to ignorance, however painful. And I’m in your debt more than I could begin to explain to you. Tell me now why you’re here.’

Darke looked as though he wanted to pursue further the hurt he might have done, but Vredech’s manner gave him no opportunity.

‘Ahmral returned because of our negligence and our ignorance,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Now many of us are travelling the world. Some to seek out enemies who fled after the battle and who must be brought to account, others…’ He indicated Tirec and himself. ‘… just to learn more of the world beyond our own self-satisfied boundaries. And to see how far and how deeply His teachings had spread.’

‘And now you’ve found Him whom you’d thought destroyed?’

‘It would seem so. We heard and felt both His death scream and the destruction of His citadel. They were not things to be either misunderstood or forgotten. And those skilled in such matters pronounced Him gone. Yet…’

‘Yet the stink of Him is all around you?’

Darke nodded. ‘An apt phrase,’ he said.

‘I heard it from someone else who knows Him,’ Vredech said. Darke’s eyes widened, but before he could speak, Vredech asked, ‘What will you do?’

Darke shook his head. ‘I don’t know. We could try to destroy Cassraw, I suppose, but I doubt we’d get close enough from what we’ve seen of him so far. And we know from experience that people who have gained such powers are often armoured in ways we cannot understand. But what did you mean by “someone else who knows him”?’

‘You must return to your own people,’ Vredech said. ‘Tell them everything you’ve heard and seen.’ He leaned forward earnestly. ‘And tell them this. It’s important. There are worlds beyond this. I cannot say how and why, but I’ve been drawn to them of late, and it’s shaken my sanity to the core. But they are there as surely as we are here. And somewhere, spread through and between them, distorting, twisting, His spirit exists still. He’s done hurt in other places than this. Perhaps it’s there He must be sought, I don’t know. And tell your people, too, that though He is still strong by our lights, He was grievously weakened by what you did to Him.’ He held Darke’s gaze. ‘Will you tell them this?’

Darke’s eyes were searching. ‘Yes, I will,’ he said. ‘But…’

‘As for Cassraw,’ Vredech went on, allowing no interruption, ‘you were correct – you’ll not even be able to get near him. But he’s my friend, my Brother in the church, my responsibility. I will kill him.’

Darke started at this last pronouncement, then Vredech could see him calculating. He felt no resentment.

‘You’re a priest,’ Darke said eventually. ‘A priest in what, for all its ignorance, is at heart a humane and compassionate church. You couldn’t do it.’

Vredech drew the knife from under his robe. He heard a slight hiss from Tirec but before he knew what was happening, Darke had seized his hand and twisted the knife from it. He gasped as he found himself powerless in a grip that scarcely seemed to he holding him. Darke handed the knife to Tirec. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Vredech, though there was little apology in his voice. ‘You startled me. Old reflexes, I’m afraid.’

Tirec was examining the knife. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Bit rough, but robust and practical. Quite a good edge, too.’ Darke inclined his head and Tirec handed the knife back to Vredech who took it with a shaking hand.