Roger Taylor - Ibryen

‘I’ve no answers, Isgyrn,’ Ibryen replied. ‘I think we must await events.’

Even as he spoke however, Ibryen felt a pattern in the shifting shapes and sounds about him. A feeling of hopefulness rose inside him, like the sun over the mountain tops. He took Isgyrn and moved into it.

And they were whole again.

Though they were not cramped in a noisy tent on top of a rain-swept ridge. They were standing on a small grassy hummock in a forest. Sunlight danced through the swaying tree-tops, sending dappling shadows everywhere; birdsong filled the air, counterpointing the rustling of the trees, and forest scents pervaded everything.

The two men stood for some time carefully testing hands and arms, then gazing at one another, before finally examining their new surroundings. Isgyrn’s eyes were wide with inquiry, but Ibryen shook his head.

Tentatively he stepped forward, as though too sudden a movement might cause the whole scene to vanish. Soft woodland sward yielded under his foot. Isgyrn followed him. ‘This is a forest, isn’t it?’ he said as they walked slowly down the hummock. ‘It’s so beautiful. Such colours, such perfumes. How…?’

Ibryen shook his head again. ‘This is a forest, yes,’ he said. ‘But I’ve no more answers now than I had a few moments ago, only a great many more questions.’

Isgyrn rubbed a hand down his arm unhappily.

‘Don’t worry. You’re still here,’ Ibryen said. ‘We’re both here, though where here is belongs to that list of questions.’

‘This is nowhere that you recognize then?’ Isgyrn said. ‘No part of your land?’

Ibryen chuckled softly. ‘I wouldn’t pretend to be familiar with every tree and field of Nesdiryn, but no, I don’t think it is. And it’s summer, judging by the state of the trees and the temperature.’

Isgyrn nodded. ‘What shall we do?’ he asked simply.

‘Await events still, I fear,’ Ibryen replied. ‘But we might as well try to answer your other question – where are we? – while we’re waiting.’

They selected a direction at random and set off. As they disappeared into the trees, a figure emerged moving in the opposite direction. It was a youth mounted on a well-groomed horse and leading a sturdy pack pony. His head was bowed and his face lowering, and unlike the two newcomers he seemed to be angrily oblivious to the beauty of his surroundings.

The echoes of her scream faded, but a greater terror threatened to take possession of Jeyan as she stood blinking in the darkness. Carefully she extended her trembling arms forward. They touched nothing. Then, softly, she said, ‘Excellencies?’

There was no answer. She repeated the call, but still there was no reply.

And she could not feel their presence!

What had happened? It occurred to her that all this had been an elaborate trick so that she would be left abandoned in this dark world within the mirrors as her final punishment. But even as the idea formed, she dismissed it. The hissed quarrel she had overheard had been no act, nor the effort she had felt being exerted as their strange creation had slipped from their control. The terrifying memory of that onrushing power was still vivid in her mind. It seemed inconceivable that anything could have survived it.

Were they dead? Had that monstrous tunnel and its destruction destroyed them? Yet she was alive. But then, she had been a mere bystander – while they had been at the heart of it. And now there was not even a hint of their cloying presence about her. She felt a flicker of exhilaration. Maybe they were dead, maybe not, but they were gone from her. She was free!

True, she was utterly lost, and surrounded by darkness, but though she was afraid of many things, darkness was not one of them. Perhaps she was its creature, perhaps it was simply that as a hunter she knew that what she could not see, could not see her.

She was about to turn around when she remembered what the Gevethen had said when they first carried her through the mirrors. ‘You must not look back. Not yet. There is a deep and awful madness here for those who are unprepared.’

She paused for a moment, then sneered and turned around.

Nothing happened. The darkness was all about her.

Arms extended she began to walk slowly forward. Then she became aware of a familiar presence.

‘Hagen?’

There was a shifting in the presence, as of something waking, or pulling itself away from a deep reverie.

‘The new Lord Counsellor again, I presume.’

The voice was full of sour weariness. Gall rose in Jeyan’s throat at the sound of it. ‘Indeed,’ she snarled. ‘The new Lord Counsellor. And your judge and executioner. I trust that whatever passes for your soul is burning endlessly here.’

There was a long silence.

‘It seems you are to share this place with me, upstart. Sent here without their protection for me to dispose of. Have they discovered the flaw in you already?’

The presence closed about Jeyan. For an instant, fear threatened to flare up inside her but it was transformed into anger and hate almost immediately. The presence faltered. ‘You’ve no terrors to offer anyone, Hagen,’ Jeyan rasped. ‘Least of all me. I opened your veins. Sent you to this place. I’ve slept in your bed, eaten from your plates, sat in your grand seat of judgement, seen into your worthless soul. Whatever you are here, you are nothing in the real world. A mouldering corpse somewhere. Probably dumped in the death pits, where my dogs used to play, your precious limbs mingling with those of your victims, while this dried and shrivelled remnant lingers howling in the dark.’

‘You’ll see how dried and shrivelled a remnant I am when you look into your own worthless soul, Jeyan Dyalith.’ Hagen’s voice was full of taunting rage. ‘Already I can feel the joy inside you that comes from the power of the Judgement Chair.’

A dreadful chill closed around Jeyan’s stomach as memories returned of the relish she had taken at times as she had sat in Hagen’s chair during the last two days. ‘No!’ she cried out. That had been in revenge for the betrayal of the Count, she wanted to say but dared not. As it was, there was grim disdain in the response.

‘Too loud, Lord Counsellor. Too loud. Too shrill a protest. If you lift the veil that hides your true self you’ll see me looking out at you. We are one and the same.’

The taunting continued. ‘How do you think I came here? Even after death I was to serve them. My body was committed to the Ways. They needed me to find the truth of them, but all I found was that those who come here without the gift or a true guide can look to be trapped in Ways of their own making. Like you, Lord Counsellor. Ask me why you’re trapped in the Way that is mine and mine alone if you are not me?’

Jeyan found herself almost choking. ‘You’re rambling, dead man. The Gevethen bound you here. They need nothing from you; they have the mirrors to bring them here and guide them.’

Black amusement and scorn washed about her. ‘Here is nowhere, child. A rough-hewn ante-chamber, crude and ill-formed, at best a window of bent and crooked glass.’ Then, incongruously confidential, ‘Great knowledge. Knowledge beyond our imagining made the mirrors, but they are as nothing to the gift. And they are dangerous. So dangerous. This I know now.’

‘This you know,’ Jeyan echoed witheringly, recovering herself. ‘You know nothing. Leave me. You contaminate even the darkness with your bleating.’

The response was almost childishly petulant. ‘They needed me to find the truth of the Ways, to open again that which would bring them to…’

It stopped abruptly and Jeyan felt the presence withdrawing. Suddenly suspicious, she seized it. ‘To where?’ she demanded, then, savagely, ‘To whom?’