Roger Taylor - Ibryen

‘In essence, yes,’ Ibryen said. ‘Though you could add ruthlessness and terror to your list.’

‘It’s nothing new,’ the Traveller said, then he waved his arm around the valley and said, acidly, ‘But what do you expect to do against them with this?’ Ibryen started at this sudden jibe, and his shoulders rose menacingly.

‘You’re fighting a hit and run campaign, aren’t you? And you live in mortal terror of your little enclave here being discovered,’ the Traveller continued in the same manner. ‘You’re going to die here, all of you, eventually, unless you do something drastically different from what you’re doing at the moment.’

‘That’s enough!’ Ibryen began angrily.

‘No, it’s not,’ the Traveller ploughed on. ‘I haven’t begun yet.’

Ibryen made to step forward and seize him, but unexpectedly, Marris caught his arm. ‘Let him finish,’ he said softly.

‘But…’

‘Let him finish!’

The Traveller cocked his head on one side as if listening intently to something. He looked at Ibryen thoughtfully, then spoke again, more quietly. ‘I don’t know whether the Counts of Nesdiryn are warriors by tradition, or whether circumstances have made you one, but you need no military education to know that you cannot defeat the Gevethen going on the way you are. You know it’s only a matter of time before they find you and come in force.’

Ibryen listened grimly.

‘But they don’t even need to find you, do they? All they need to do is let you keep venturing out to harry their force and take a few of you each time. I doubt they give a fig for any casualties they take, but a warrior lost to you strikes at the heart of everyone here, and most of all at yours. Insidiously, wearing you down, drip by drip. How many more such blows can you take, Count, before your heart breaks and you and all your people fall?’

Ibryen swore violently and lifted his hand to strike the Traveller across the face.

Then he was in darkness, thunder all about him.

Helsarn did not move. Indeed, he was scarcely capable of moving. Though he could not see anything, he knew that the Gevethen were approaching him – they sent fear before them like a shadow. At the edge of his vision he could see the legs of one of the stretcher party. They were shifting as Hagen’s body was hoisted up on to their owner’s shoulders as the Gevethen had ordered, but all Helsarn could see was that they were trembling. A visible reflection of his own inner feelings. He was glad he could not see the man’s face.

‘Stand firm, my children…’

‘… my children.’

‘Hold him steady and strong as he held you…

‘… held you.’

‘Where will this city, this land, be without the likes of him, brother?’

‘Where indeed, brother?’

‘Chaos may ensue.’

‘Chaos.’

‘Sure of touch, perceptive of heart, gentle arbiter of our will…’

‘… our will.’

‘Such men are as water in the desert, as diamonds in the mire.’

‘Rare beyond price.’

‘Where shall such as he be found?’

‘Who would seek to wound us so?’

Both voices came together to speak this last; cold, piercing and dissonant. They spoke again.

‘Who, Captain Helsarn?’

Helsarn had had comparatively few dealings direct with the Gevethen, but they had been enough to teach him that no bravado could disguise his feelings from them and it would be folly to try. Hagen himself had bent the knee before them, and he was not Hagen. The question skewered him like an icy spear.

‘I do not know, Excellencies,’ he said, his voice steadier than he had hoped. ‘People have been brought here from the scene for questioning, but I fear the true culprits had escaped even before we knew what had happened.’

‘Merely fled, Captain. Not escaped. Escape is not possible. Such a deed carries the inevitable destruction of the doer at its very heart. Time will bring him to us.’

Rain began to fall. Helsarn could feel large, cold drops striking his bent back. They threatened to release the violent shivering that he was holding pent within him. Dark robes came into his vision. The Gevethen were in front of him.

‘Rise, Captain. We would look on your face…’

‘… your face.’

Helsarn forced his legs to respond, but the fear of the consequences of disobedience only just outweighed the fear of facing his masters.

Pale moon faces and drifting watery grey eyes hovered in the darkness of the hooded robes before him, while white and flaccid hands floated against it, having what appeared to be a life and will of their own, moving in ways quite divorced from anything that was being said.

The Gevethen were identical.

They were never apart.

When they moved, they moved as one. Sometimes like shadows, each of the other, and sometimes like reflections, opposing one another, unsettling and disorienting for any who saw them.

When they spoke, one voice would often follow the other, trailing behind like a lingering echo, though at times they would speak simultaneously, and then their voices were jarring and jagged, tearing through the hearer like a barbed weapon.

None knew from where they came.

Nor could any surmise what they thought.

Since the ousting of the Count, they had set aside all that might have drawn away from their disconcerting appearance, wearing now only simple black robes, undecorated save for the shattered half of a small iron ring which hung about the neck of each on a fine black chain. Frequently, the restless hands would carry fingertips to run delicately over this broken remnant, then they would linger down the palm of the other hand, and sometimes across the face. And, at times, after this, each would touch the other, as if to assure themselves that they were truly there.

The only colour to be seen about them lay in red, voluptuous mouths, as full and sensual as their garb was ascetic and spare.

And where went the Gevethen, there went their mirror-bearers; mute servants whose own gaze, fixed, as it seemed to be, on some other place, was almost as disconcerting as that of the Gevethen themselves. They moved elaborately about their masters as if dancing to music that they alone could hear, carrying black-edged mirrors which they shifted and turned constantly. Sometimes these were held so close as to form almost a shield wall, while at others they straggled in loose, fluttering skeins as though they were being swept out by a buffeting wind. When talking to one another, the Gevethen would often address their images instead of each other until the conversation appeared to exist only between the images, and reality and reflection became indistinguishable.

Occasionally a soft, hissed command would send the mirrors into a frenzy, quivering and changing for no reason that was readily apparent. Always however, they were arranged so that many images of the Gevethen paraded in front of the hapless onlooker. Who the mirror-bearers were, and how they had come by their appointment, no one knew, and no one inquired. They disturbed Helsarn. They disturbed everybody, as did all the Gevethen’s close servants.

Helsarn came to attention and fixed his eyes forward. The Gevethen being shorter than he was, he hoped that way to avoid looking directly at them. Who could tell what they could see when they looked into a man’s eyes? Or, worse, who could tell what he would see? It was said that men had been driven insane by their gaze. But he knew that the attempt would be in vain; the gaze of the Gevethen was not to be avoided. The rain began to fall more heavily.