Roger Taylor - Ibryen

‘We must try.’

The soft voice floated into her awareness. She tried not to listen.

‘It will fail again.’

‘We must try. He tests us ever. We must open the Way to come to His presence again.’

‘I am afraid of His anger. We have been so long.’

‘But the merest moment in His endless patience. We have much to tell Him. His will is being done in this place.’

Then, very softly, and so full of fear that despite her own cruel hatred of the Gevethen, Jeyan felt stirrings of pity:

‘What if He is no more.’

All about Jeyan froze. The endless moving stopped as if it had never been. She was alone in a frozen landscape. The voice continued and the landscape moved again.

‘The birds – our eyes – went. Vanished overnight. No warning, no message. Then the Way to His fastness closed against us and could not be opened.’

Jeyan waited, terrified lest her heart beat again and reveal her as an eavesdropper.

‘You blaspheme, brother.’ There was naked terror in the answer. ‘He is the One True Light. He is eternal. He will come again to right that which was flawed in the Beginning.’ Then there was venomous fury. ‘It is your lack of faith that has brought this about.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. Have you forgotten so soon the great powers He gave us?’

‘No. I…’

‘Curse you.’

The voice began to cringe and plead. It lost all semblance of the cold, grating harshness that marked the Gevethen voice. ‘No. I was just… He is testing us, as you say. Many Citadels He was building to prepare the world for His coming, and ours was to be the finest and strongest. Remember? I use the power better than you – you’ve always said that. It’s not my fault, truly. We’ll discover how to open the Way eventually. I’ll try harder. See, see!’

‘Wait!’

But the injunction came too late and Jeyan could feel something reaching out into the disorder. Almost immediately, another power joined it. The Gevethen were one again, she sensed. As had happened before, she felt herself briefly touching a myriad other worlds, each one vivid and real, but gone almost before she could register it. Then she was standing before the long tunnel again. Its walls glowed and shimmered uneasily, and in the far distance, it seemed to waver as if searching for something.

‘It is done.’ There was triumph in the voice. ‘Further than ever before. My power grows yet.’

‘Our power.’

‘Our power.’

‘Soon we shall come to His presence again.’

But as well as the triumph, there was strain also, and the distant unsteadiness began to move nearer.

‘No!’

‘Hold firm!’

Jeyan felt the trembling of their effort pass through her. But the wavering grew wilder and closer, gathering speed as it drew nearer. Then the walls of the tunnel immediately before her began to grow diffuse and to twist and turn until finally they were spinning giddily. An ear-rending screech began to grow out of the collapsing confusion.

The Gevethen’s effort grew increasingly frantic, but she could feel it worsening the disintegration. It became a hypnotic maelstrom. Only when the onrush was nearly upon her did Jeyan manage to tear her gaze from it. With a cry she pushed backwards. But the Gevethen held her still, their grip firmer than ever, despite the battle they were waging for control of the shrieking vortex the tunnel had now become.

Then, with the noise so intense as to be almost tangible, the mysterious Way that the Gevethen had opened came to its crashing end, drawing into it all the shapes and patterns that were floating around Jeyan and crushing them at its heart into nothingness. Jeyan knew that her mouth was open and that she was screaming, but she could hear nothing above the awful din. For an instant it seemed that every part of her was being drawn into the terrible destruction and that soon she would be nothing more than a tiny glittering part of the whirling kaleidoscope.

Then there was darkness, and silence, save for her own piercing shriek.

And the grip of the Gevethen about her shoulders was no more.

She was alone.

Where there had been a vast echoing emptiness, there was now milling confusion and colour and a cacophony of many voices and sounds. And floating amid this was Ibryen. There and not there. An awareness that was diamond-hard in its clarity yet tenuous as an idle summer breeze.

I should be afraid. The thought drifted through him. But he was not. He had had doubts about his sanity many times during these past few days, and this place, this state he was in, was so far beyond anything he could have imagined that those doubts should have become a screaming clamour. Yet they had not. For though he was not of this place, he knew that he was no intruder and that it was neither an unnatural rending of the fabric of reality nor the collapse of his mind that had carried him here. Strangely he felt less disturbed here than he had in the world of the Culmaren. That had been profoundly alien. It was as though he belonged here, albeit rather as he would belong as a guest in the domain of a neighbouring Lord.

Though there was no scrabbling fear however, there was concern. He was not a guest, nor was there any host. Rather he had wandered here inadvertently… an aimless traveller, and one deeply ignorant of the ways of the land to which he had now come. And he was lost, though that seemed to be inherent in the nature of this place. But his real concern was for the other awareness that was with him, held at once free and bound, like a planet by a more massive neighbour. And Isgyrn indeed now seemed to be teetering on the edge of insanity.

Ibryen reached out to him. ‘Hold firm to me, Warrior,’ he said, repeating the injunction he had given before they had found themselves transported here. ‘This has little more substance than our thoughts. Our bodies are safe, guarded by Rachyl and the Traveller on the mountain.’

The authority in his manner surprised him in that it did not surprise him. For while he might perhaps belong here, he knew that Isgyrn definitely did not, and that he was responsible for bringing him here.

Yearning images suddenly flooded into his mind: clouds, bright against a blue, all-encompassing sky; spires and domes glittering silver and gold, and lesser buildings, many-hued, nestling amongst them. And beyond, a strange undulating landscape, and vast cloudscapes. And everywhere, people. People walking broad highways that soared like rainbows from building to building, and people gliding beneath many-coloured wings like great birds…

‘Hold to me,’ Ibryen said again, powerfully, intruding with some regret into the vision. ‘You need no lessons from me, Warrior, to know that to survive you must see things as they are. Neither solace nor safety is to be found in such memories. They will sustain you in other ways. Hold to me. I will guide us from this place.’

Fear and panic replaced the longing memories, but at their heart Ibryen could feel Isgyrn’s stern will struggling with them. He sought for something to say that would help the Dryenwr, but no inspiration came, only the knowledge that Isgyrn’s inner battle was his alone, and beyond any helping. Whether at the end he would be returned to his body whole and wiser, or a gibbering shadow, was now his choice. All that Ibryen could do was wait and be there.

‘Helplessness does not sit well with me either.’

Isgyrn’s words startled Ibryen. The Dryenwr was suddenly in command of himself again. ‘I think I’d rather face that white-eyed demon and his shrieking mount than another such ordeal again,’ he went on. Then he answered Ibryen’s question before it was asked. ‘Of my various aptitudes the most modest is that of Verser – I haven’t the imagination to create a place like this. My friends…’ He faltered briefly. ‘… my friends often rebuke me for being stern – too logical. It causes… caused… great amusement. Maybe I’ve been driven mad, maybe I’ve perished and am in some hellish limbo, but for the time being I’ll consider myself and you, whatever we are, here, and all this around us, however strange, to be real simply because it seems to be so and because I remember setting off on this journey of my own free will knowing that places beyond our ordinary worlds existed and that I ventured thus without a guide at no small risk.’ There was a pause, then, ‘Though, warrior to warrior, and logic not withstanding, I confess I’m mightily afraid. You sit easier here than I do – do you know what this place is, or what’s happened to us?’