Roger Taylor - Whistler

Cassraw turned from the summit and looked out across the land. Before him lay the whole of Gyronlandt, subdued and compliant. Armies of his Knights held sway over all the land while, ‘for the greater good’, hooded Judges of the Court of the Provers relentlessly sought out and ‘brought to the light’ those lost souls whose faith was inadequate, or whose thoughts deviated from the True Word. Rivers ran red with the blood of doubters and unbelievers, and glinted in the light of their living funeral pyres. And he himself, with his hand upon the Santyth, which he alone could interpret, stood at the pinnacle of all power, the Judge of Judges. With the least of his gestures, towns and cities were put to the sword. He bore the cries and screams of the slaughtered with stoic fortitude and accepted the adulation that washed across the land to sustain him in his ecstasy.

Chilled to his core by this vision and consumed with guilt at his failure to slay its architect, Vredech remained very still.

Cassraw turned back to the wavering summit.

‘Here is the gift I shall bring You, Lord,’ he intoned. ‘Show me Thy will and that, too, I shall bring to pass.’

As he watched, the summit began to change. Sometimes rapidly and erratically, sometimes slowly and with a strange grace, towers and spires and ramping walls began to rise from it. They shifted and changed as their creator tested them and found them wanting. And as they grew, so Cassraw saw them all simultaneously, from every vantage point at the foot of the mountain, from high above as though cloud-borne, from far horizons and from immediately beneath the sheer walls looking up at the giddying perspective looming above. Inexorably the building rose high into the sky, glistening menacingly against the gathering black clouds, like a blessed hand reaching out to bring forth the Lord.

But where Cassraw saw a fulfilment, a culmination, Vredech saw the work of a dreadful and inhuman intelligence. He felt its every spire impaling him with its awfulness. Its clawing points and edges tore through the fabric of what was and brought together those things which should be kept apart. It was a monstrous creation that would draw through to this world a darkness and horror that even Cassraw’s mind had not yet encompassed.

And as if in confirmation, as the towers rose ever higher, so he received a vision of labyrinthine tunnels and shafts and dank passageways burrowing deep into the heart of the mountain and yet further below, like sapping roots drawing sustenance from the world.

Then, worse by far, came the knowledge that this impossible structure was to be built by men. That the blood and terror of Cassraw’s campaigns across Gyronlandt were merely to supply what was needed in people, materials and skills. That its awful image would be branded in the hearts of all. That the pain and horror involved in its creation were an integral part of it – indeed, they were its bloody heart.

Vredech felt himself reaching out to touch Leck’s consciousness for reassurance. The cat was nearly demented with fear, but she would hold her ground, he knew. The gift that made her what she was, and had brought her to him in his moment of need, carried deep obligations, heightened now by her deep sense of past regret. Yet her fear sharpened his own awareness, and he began to sense a presence in the dream other than himself and Leck. The dream was strained, distorted. It was more than a dream. It reached beyond the dreamways.

This could not be…

He felt Leck’s fear tearing at him but he ignored it.

Then he knew that the terrible crown growing from the top of the mountain was not of Cassraw’s creating. It was being created for him. Through that part of the dream which was not a dream was coming the Will that was forming this monstrosity, embedding its every detail into Cassraw’s mind.

Vredech could do no other.

‘No,’ he said.

The dream moved, and the scene before him became like a faded picture in an old book.

And he was no longer Cassraw. He was himself. And, for some reason, terrifyingly, Leck was gone, although he was faintly aware of her scratching and screaming in some place unknowable. Somewhere she was hunting for her lost charge more ferociously even than she would have defended her own young. But he was alone. Inside and outside the dream. Standing before a portal, he sensed, though neither sight nor sound informed him.

Some of the Knights shifted their feet uneasily. They were at the foot of the road which led up to the Witness House and Dowinne had stopped, almost as if she had heard a command, and called them to a halt. Since then she had stood silent, her hand resting on Cassraw’s chest as he lay on the makeshift stretcher hastily rigged from PlasHein pikes and curtains.

It was still raining.

A little way away stood Skynner with Stiel and Kerna. The Serjeant had quickly superintended the removal of Jarry’s body and the safe transporting of Nertha and the unconscious Vredech to their home, then he had set off in discreet pursuit of Dowinne with his two colleagues. Ostensibly, it was to ensure that the new Covenant Member came to no harm through neglect, but his real motives were an unsteady mixture of curiosity, suspicion and alarm at unfolding events.

In this timeless place, Vredech waited. Then, seeping slowly about him he felt again the Will that had touched him when he had stood in the darkness on the Ervrin Mallos as he and the other Chapter Brothers had searched for Cassraw.

It curled through him, searching, testing. But where before it had dismissed him scornfully, now it paused.

A long sigh of comprehension passed through him.

He reached out in fearful appeal towards Leck’s frantic clawing. ‘Help me,’ he cried out. But Leck was not of this place.

Dowinne’s eyes opened suddenly and she stiffened. Her movement was copied by the tired Knights still supporting their injured master’s body, expecting an instruction to continue their journey.

‘I hear, Lord,’ she said. Then before any of the Knights could react, she drew a long knife from beneath her robe and plunged it twice into Cassraw’s chest. For a moment the Knights gaped then, as she raised the knife to strike again they let the stretcher fall, tumbling Cassraw on to the wet ground. Some of them leapt away while others made to wrest the knife from her. The first who came near died on a single rapid thrust while the second was cut from shoulder to hip by a whistling slash. The others retreated immediately, forming a ragged, uncertain circle about her and the bloodied heap that had been her husband. Then she stabbed Cassraw again, and plunged her hand into the wound.

Skynner, gasping from his sudden frantic charge to reach the group on seeing what was happening, pushed his way roughly through the men to stand facing Dowinne. Stiel and Kerna were close behind him. Dowinne was a grim sight, her eyes wide and crazed, her nostrils flaring and her teeth bared like a cornered animal. As she moved the knife slowly to and fro in front of her, she was hissing.

Skynner drew his baton.

All was roaring chaos about Vredech. It was as though he had been caught in an avalanche. Great forces had swept out of nothingness to beat about him, to draw him inexorably into…

What?

Instincts he did not even know he possessed rose to tell him of an appalling danger and that he must escape while he could. But no guidance came with this knowledge. All that sustained him in his terror was the faint, hysterical scrabbling of Leck trying to reach him; a slender, failing thread weaving through the turmoil.

A soft, kindly voice spoke to him. ‘Do not oppose what must be, Allyn Vredech. Follow your true destiny.’ And it seemed to Vredech that a great roadway was opening before him, one which would lead him calmly from this fearful maelstrom.