Roger Taylor - Ibryen

‘Don’t move!’ she cried out, ignoring caution. ‘They’ll pursue you. It’s their nature.’ She reached up and seized the hands gripping her shoulders.

‘They’re His creatures come for us!’

‘We have failed!’

Jeyan tightened her grip malevolently on the faltering hands. It was good to know the Gevethen were feeling what they so readily subjected others to. But still she must not let them run amok.

‘Whatever they are, if we run, they’ll follow. They’re hunters, I can feel it.’

It was to no avail however, for as the dogs continued their barking, the Gevethen suddenly tore themselves free and were gone. Jeyan spun round. The Gevethen were nowhere to be seen. There was only a disorienting confusion of lights and shapes swirling in their wake.

‘Excellencies! Masters!’ she shouted, but her voice fell dead in the twisting air and there was no reply. She swore. Then the spirits of her two dogs were clamouring about her again, demanding attention. She reached out and embraced them, though their enthusiasm did little to ease her alarm at what would be the outcome of the Gevethen’s flight.

An inspiration came to her. Quickly she quietened the dogs then gave them the command that would set them hunting again, though this time silently. The dogs were away, Jeyan following them, attached to them in a manner that she could not determine, but which was quite different from the crude holding by which the Gevethen held her.

Sniffling, snuffling, twisting, turning, the two dogs moved through the unseen chambers and avenues of the world within the mirrors, their erstwhile mistress following, unseeing but trusting.

Then, in front of her, were the Gevethen. Silently dismissing the dogs, she fell to her knees. ‘Forgive me, Excellencies. I’ve not the skill to move as you do.’

‘Are they gone?’

‘They vanished just as they came, Excellencies,’ Jeyan lied.

‘It was your fault, trying to open the Way again,’ one of the Gevethen hissed softly to the other.

As before, Jeyan kept her head lowered and gave no indication that she had heard this remark.

‘No, it couldn’t be.’

‘The Way must be guarded by His creatures.’

‘No!’

‘Yes!’

‘No!’

Once again, Jeyan felt that she was in the presence of squabbling children. She had scarcely registered the first occasion but now came the frightening revelation that the Gevethen’s lust for power might be rooted not in the familiar arrogance of over-ambitious men but in childish vindictiveness – a trait quite without restraint. A cold shivering threatened to overwhelm her but she remained absolutely still and silent – it would take very little to end the quarrel and bring their combined anger down on her. Assh however, did not have this perception. Disturbed by the dispute in the immediate vicinity of his pack leader, he growled. The hissed exchange stopped immediately.

Jeyan’s tight-gripped fear goaded her into action.

‘Be still, Excellencies,’ she whispered urgently. ‘They’re back.’

To her considerable relief, no reproach came for this brusque order. Instead, the Gevethen took her shoulders again, though this time the hands were conspicuously unsteady.

Petty in your viciousness, jealous of each other, and afraid of dogs, eh? Jeyan found herself exulting in these continuing indications of the Gevethen’s vulnerability, but she was sufficiently in control of herself not to allow any outward sign to manifest itself. She reached up and took the two hands firmly.

‘Hold me, Excellencies,’ she said, as if pleading. At the same time, she reached out to Assh. The dog growled again. The hands tightened and she felt another flight pending. ‘Do not move, Excellencies,’ she said. ‘They haven’t attacked. Perhaps they’ve been sent to warn us of something.’ Her own viciousness took command. ‘Do you know what they are?’ she asked. ‘Are they often in this place?’

The solitary voice that replied was almost trembling.

‘Lord Counsellor, we must leave here quickly.’

‘We must not flee,’ Jeyan insisted. ‘If we move or run then they’ll follow and attack us for sure. It’s the way of all hunting animals. I learned this in my exile in the Ennerhald.’

Tightening her own grip on the Gevethen’s hands, she reached out to the dogs again. They both growled menacingly. As she had expected, the Gevethen’s meagre control broke and they began to run. This time however, she clung to them, crying out, ‘Excellencies, no, wait!’ while bidding the dogs to continue their barking pursuit.

There followed a buffeting nightmare as she was dragged in the wake of the fleeing Gevethen. Every sensation in her body told her that she was moving at great speed, falling almost, yet she saw no sign of this in the colours and flitting shapes that moved endlessly about her, other than that they seemed to change in character, becoming pale and frayed. She knew nothing of this place, and must not be abandoned here. Who could say what happened when the mirror through which she had been carried became two again? And what had Hagen said about the place? ‘A rough-hewn ante-chamber, crude and ill-formed – and so dangerous.’ No, she must return to the real world with these foul creatures, enhanced in their eyes perhaps by her conduct here, and wiser by far about them.

She made the dogs break off. It was not easy, either for them or for her. She could not conceive of where they were, or even what they were now, still less what journeying had brought them back to her, and leaving them again was almost unbearable. But they would be here again, she knew. She had heard them the first time she had been brought here and now they had found her. They would find her again, she was certain.

‘Guard,’ she cried out silently to them in the end. She might know nothing of this place, but that command would make some part of it hers irrevocably.

The dogs stopped their pursuit and their barking began to fade as the Gevethen’s unseen flight bore them relentlessly away. Jeyan allowed it to continue for a little while, then she began to cry out, ‘Excellencies, they are gone.’ It was some time however, before her message penetrated their blind panic and when eventually all felt still again, she sensed a marked difference in the atmosphere about her.

‘Excellencies, your courage and will defeated them, they are gone,’ she gasped before either of them could speak, anxious to assure them that she had not noted their cowardice.

But to her surprise and alarm, though she could hear them breathing heavily, they did not respond.

‘Excellencies?’

‘Gateway.’

‘Too close.’

The words, spoken very softly, seemed to take form in the air and hang there. There was a fear in them that was even greater than their fear of the dogs.

‘Something here…’

‘… here.’

‘Drawing us…’

‘… Drawing us.’

They released Jeyan and moved to her side. They were staring at something. As she watched, Jeyan saw the lights about them forming a coherent pattern. It was blurred and vague, as though seen through sleep-filled eyes, but it was unlike anything that she had seen since entering the mirrors.

Then she gave a startled gasp, as the pattern came suddenly into focus. The Gevethen cried out and, arms extended, lunged forward.

The reflections broke and scattered as Isgyrn and Ibryen reached down into the water with cupped hands. The walk had made them hot and they drank noisily and with relish.

‘Cold,’ Ibryen said, wiping his hand across his mouth and then down his tunic. ‘Perhaps not too far down from the mountains. Shall we go back to the bridge and the path or continue upstream a little further? See if we can get a view of this place.’