Roger Taylor: Whistler

‘A little way,’ he decided. ‘But move carefully, and keep together.’

And the group was off again, moving hesitantly through the eerie light.

‘I wonder what it could be,’ Morem mused out loud.

‘It’s Ishryth’s will.’

Vredech turned to the speaker. It was Laffran. To his horror, a violent urge bubbled up within him to curse at Laffran for his stupidity. They were on this wretched and now dangerous trail because of Cassraw’s ridiculous superstition, and they wanted none of their own to confuse their judgement. The thought was almost heretical, but it was the force of his anger that shocked him and he turned away from Laffran sharply. ‘All things are Ishryth’s will,’ he muttered.

‘Thus let it be,’ he heard Laffran responding.

Vredech lifted a hand to his forehead. He felt as though he were suffocating. Judgement Day . The words returned to him again and this time refused to leave him.

‘Are you all right?’ Morem’s voice was anxious.

‘Yes,’ he replied as casually as he could manage. ‘Just a little shaky. Not as fit as I thought I was.’ But deep inside him something was turning and heaving, like vomit.

Then he saw them…

Shadows.

He froze.

They were moving towards him, black against the unnatural darkness.

Weaving…

Swaying…

Vredech stood motionless, paralysed by the conflict between the primitive terror welling up within him and the promptings of his rational mind telling him that what he was seeing was some strange optical illusion. He must be suffering a trick of the senses brought about by the unfamiliar exertion of clambering up the mountain in this bizarre, disturbing light.

He rubbed his arm across his eyes. The gesture should have been comforting but it felt alien and unnatural, as if the arm was not his any more, but some empty shell. And there was worse. He drew in a sharp breath. In the momentary, private gloom behind his closed eyes, where he had sought shelter, the shadows were there also; dancing, at once seductive and repellent, through the dull lights and patterns that hovered there. He opened his eyes in terror. He could feel the cold mountain air filling his chest but it did nothing to restore him. The shadows were still there. They were both beyond and within him, and all sense of normality was gone.

Yet still his reason clung on. Were these something real, or was he indeed suffering from some form of mountain sickness? He should turn to his companions and speak to them, ask them what they thought was happening; ask them what they could see. But he could not. He was unable to move, unable to cry out…

The shadows suddenly closed about him.

In the darkness that was not darkness and the now that was not now, a clamour of voices cascaded through Vredech. Voices full of hope rekindled, of an appalling fate avoided. Voices raised in raucous thanksgiving.

But there was no glory in the sound… if sound it was. It was more the gloating triumph of barbarian warriors revelling in the slaughter of a weaker foe. No! It was worse even than that. It was something primeval. Something out of the darkest reaches of the human mind. Something from a time before humanity was humanity.

Something to shrivel the mind of even the most depraved.

Under the impact of this revelation, Vredech lashed out, searching for some anchor that might hold him sane and whole amid this horror. Prayer came to him.

Ishryth protect me.

The words formed silently in the darkness.

The tumult did not so much falter as change character at the sounding of this slight clarion. It took on a jagged, unreal quality. Vredech became vaguely aware of his own breathing, shallow and fearful. It focused his awareness still further.

‘ What is this? ’

Vredech felt the question rather than heard it, though its utterance was cold and awful, the very essence of the terrible celebration that hung now in the background.

Then the darkness was passing through him, searching. There were hints of sudden doubt and fear in it. And a burgeoning, terrifying rage. Yet, all too human though these emotions were, there was a quality in them such as could not be sounded by any ordinary measure. Through his growing terror, Vredech sensed his hands trying to move, trying to rise up and protect him from some sudden and unexpected attack. But nothing could prevail against what held him now. Into the silence another prayer came to him, a prayer of denunciation. He roared it into the darkness.

‘Leave me, Ahmral’s spawn! Leave me!’

It echoed futilely about him, inconsequential beyond reckoning. And yet, around its tiny impact something formed.

A dark amusement?

Then… relief?

And, abruptly, he was dismissed. He was less than nothing. The merest mote.

Briefly the doubt returned, chilling Vredech utterly.

And he was dismissed again.

He was falling. Plummeting into the darkness.

‘Vredech! Vredech!’

Voices all about him broke into the darkness and buoyed him up. As did arms wrapped about him.

Vredech’s eyes opened on to the lesser darkness that was pervading the mountain. It seemed almost dazzling, so stark was the contrast with… wherever he had been.

‘Vredech, what’s the matter? Are you all right?’ The voice restored him further. It was Horld’s, as were the powerful arms holding him. He realized that his fellow Brother was sustaining his entire weight. He willed his legs to support him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, his voice strange in his own ears.

‘Are you all right?’ the question came again.

He nodded and gently unwound Horld’s arms from about himself. ‘Did you see that, hear that?’ he asked, looking round at his companions.

‘See what? Hear what?’

‘The shadows. That terrible sound. That presence. His voice faded as normality settled further about him. There was an awkward silence.

‘I only saw you suddenly wave your arms then start to collapse,’ Horld said, looking at him anxiously. ‘You’ve probably been walking too fast. You’re not as fit as…’

‘No,’ Vredech interrupted, stepping away from him and gazing intently into the gloom. ‘There was something here… shadows, moving. You must have seen them!’ He put his hand to his head. ‘And something worse. Something… alive. And awful. And it was in my mind as well.’

Morem took his arm gently. ‘I think we’d better head back, Vred,’ he said, though the remark was addressed to the others. ‘There were no shadows, or anything else. All we saw was Horld grabbing you.’

Vredech wanted to argue. He might not be the man he was but he was fitter than all of them here, save perhaps Horld, and he hadn’t suffered some hallucination brought on by exhaustion. Ishryth knows, he’d walked the mountains often enough! And he had seen what he had seen, heard what he had heard. Worse, he could still feel inside him a lingering after-shadow of the fearful presence that had touched him. It was all he could do to avoid shuddering. Yet he had been too long a member of the Chapter not to be able to stand apart from himself and view his conduct as it would be seen by his companions, with all that that implied. Obviously what had happened had happened to him alone, and if he persisted in questioning the others about it then they would assume, not unreasonably, that he was raving. Infected perhaps in some way by his contact with Cassraw. This little expedition would have to be abandoned and another arranged, which must inevitably involve the Witness House servants or the novices, and which would thus find its way down into the town gossip where Cassraw’s spectacular flight would be lavishly embellished with tales of his own apparent derangement. It was unlikely to cost him his place in the Chapter, but it would undermine his authority there and, by the same token, increase that of Mueran and the other timeservers. This was not in the best interests of the church. And as for what the Sheeters would make of it…