Roger Taylor: Ibryen

For a little while, as the daughter of one of the Count’s staunchest allies, she had found herself the focus of a group who talked boldly about rising up and ridding the land of the Gevethen. She was no longer alone. Hope blossomed again. But just as her father’s name drew this band about her, so too it drew the attention of the Gevethen and soon a whispering betrayer brought the Citadel Guards upon them. Jeyan’s revolutionaries had neither the stomach nor the skill for such a conflict, and those who had not fled, had died.

It was the final severing of Jeyan from her former life… a terrible, learning time.

Shortly afterwards, half-crazed at the destruction of this, her second family, she crossed another awful threshold by killing the betrayer. She gave him neither warning nor mercy and he had Gevethen coins in his mouth when he was found. Tales began to circulate of a wild, vengeful spirit that flitted through the night shadows of Dirynhald. A spirit that was as cruel as the Gevethen themselves.

By a dark irony, it was this notoriety that made those involved in the soft, silent network of opposition to the Gevethen reluctant to pursue their search for her.

From then on, Jeyan had walked alone, living by the harsh code of the Ennerhald, watching, listening, lying, stealing, and making only such acquaintances as need dictated. And Ennerhald society, like any other, having its own hierarchy, she also learned to defend herself against those who would have preyed on her. She became horribly proficient with the knife she carried – agile and fast but, worst of all, quite without hesitation. She was greatly feared.

Not that she was even aware of the opinions of others for, above all other things, her thoughts were dominated by a single vision – a vision of the Gevethen, dead, and dead by her hand. She nurtured it obsessively. Only the rumours and, later, the knowledge that the Count had survived and was in the mountains with many of his followers, prevented her from sinking into rambling insanity.

Now the obsession and the skills and the temper that the Ennerhald had bred in her had come together and set her on the road to attaining that vision. And she had taken that first simple, practical and bloody step with relish. She had struck a blow close to the Gevethen’s heart. It was a rehearsal for a future event. Consequences were irrelevant.

Rain began to fall, a few large drops heralding a spring downpour as the clouds that had been lowering over the city all day abruptly released their charge. The pace of the street changed and, with considerable relief, Jeyan took the opportunity to change her shambling gait to one more matching her mood. It carried her through the now bustling crowd without remark. The two dogs went their own way; in so far as they were noted at all, they were assiduously avoided.

Then Jeyan was gone from view. It would have taken a keen observer to note her action, as she disappeared down an opening that gaped in front of a derelict building. Free of the public gaze at last, she slipped nimbly under the stone steps that led down from the street and, wriggling through a hole in the wall, scarcely visible in the gloom, resorted again to outright flight.

Sharp eyes and practised but cautious feet carried her through a confusion of dank and disused cellars, lit only by occasional shafts of light which struggled through long-forgotten windows and gratings, and the holes and cracks that years of neglect had brought to the wooden floors above. Such slight sound as she made was well-hidden by the incessant dripping and splashing of the rainwater which found its way into the darkness through a myriad more devious and destructive routes.

Once or twice she caught a glimpse of other shadowy figures moving through this twilight world but she paid them no heed, nor they her, save to avoid her.

Away from the open street and moving at her own pace through ever more familiar terrain, Jeyan’s trembling began to abate. A cloak of unreality still hung about her however, as the enormity of what she had actually done seeped into her.

Hagen dead!

And by her hand!

The Gevethen’s cruellest lieutenant no more.

How many murdered innocents had she avenged today? Hundreds… thousands? It didn’t matter. He was gone.

Abruptly she stopped. Alone in the darkness she found herself searching for a flicker of regret, remorse. But the only regret she could truly feel was that Hagen’s death had been so quick, so merciful. Worse, it had been banal and ordinary, just like that of any other man – now alive and thinking himself so for ever – now gone, all fears faced, all fleshly needs and ills ended, all ambitions dust. His face had shown only surprise and… irritation.

Rage filled her. Irritation! He should have suffered more. He should have been harrowed as he harrowed others, should have felt himself dying slowly from the inside out as his victims did, felt his screams choking him because he was too afraid to utter them.

Her victory was not enough.

She swore under her breath and clenched her teeth. She was rambling, thinking thoughts such as these. It was sufficient that he was dead. It was sufficient that the people would know that the authority the Gevethen vested in him and which, in his arrogance, he had deemed to be a shield against all ills, had failed him. It was sufficient too that the Gevethen would know that. Would know that their protection was imperfect, that a random stone might unshoe a horse and bring down a king.

She took out the knife and gripped it tightly until her arm ached. Would that she could come within arm’s reach of them as well.

The moment was cathartic, and as it passed she felt much calmer, although a faint tremor still seemed to be shaking her whole person – body and mind. She sheathed the knife and set off again.

Within a short while she came to a place where the floor above had collapsed completely. The destruction was old. Well-established bushes and shrubs now grew out of the cellar floor and swathes of grasses and climbers festooned the ramps of rubble and broken timbers that partly filled the opening. The rain had stopped but the air was filled with an elaborate tattoo as the vegetation above continued to shed the water that it had intercepted.

Despite the gloomy sky, the area seemed unusually bright after the darkness of the cellars and, as was her normal habit, Jeyan waited, silent and still, all senses alert until she was quite satisfied that nothing was to be seen, heard, or felt there that should not be. Then she clambered through the dripping foliage and, pausing again to reassure herself further that all was safe, she emerged into the remains of one of the buildings that lay at the fringe of the Ennerhald. Around her were the decaying remains of the roof and floors that had collapsed many years before. Like the debris in the cellar they were scarcely recognizable under the vegetation that was repossessing the site.

From here, Jeyan moved through a large and spacious hall. Who could say what it might once have been?

Banqueting Hall, Meeting Hall, Court? Perhaps it was not even part of the old city, for, just as the Gevethen rotted Dirynhald society from within, so people edged nervously away from the unsettling presence of the Ennerhald and thus it spread outwards, slowly but relentlessly encroaching on the city that had supplanted it. Now, whatever its past, the roofless building, its stained and lichened walls perforated by circular openings and pocked with holes where floor and roof beams had once rested, was just a chasm – another way from here to there; its only significance now as a quick escape route – should need arise.

Vaulting through a window, Jeyan glanced from side to side quickly, then straightened up. All around were other, smaller buildings, all decaying. Here and there some had collapsed across the narrow street, while others leaned forward as though to whisper profundities to their neighbour opposite, and were actually touching one another. They formed bizarre arcades. Once the Ennerhald had been as distant from her life as the moon, but now it was her land. Here, the Gevethen’s writ faltered, whether by design or through indifference did not matter. Here no Citadel Guards, no soldiers, strutted and brutalized, no officials of the new order wove their endless webs of petty regulations to control the every deed of every individual. The only enemies here would be her own kind, and few of those troubled her now.