Roger Taylor - Ibryen

‘He has led us here. Ibryen is to be our guide through the Ways. Our enemy shall be our salvation and our slave. We shall come to Him once again. And in triumph.’

The manic fervour that had fired their anger returned, though now it was sustaining an excited and frantic elation. ‘He must be found and brought to our service.’ Over and over. ‘He must be found.’

No praise came down to the still-prostrated Jeyan, but she knew that she was safe for the time being.

Yet, despite this change in the mood of the Gevethen, the shocks and vibrations that were continuing to shake their strange world were undiminished. In fact, just as they had seemingly resonated to their anger, so now they resonated to their excitement.

And they grew worse, though the Gevethen seemed to be oblivious to them.

Then, there was a sudden, jarring jolt and, for the briefest of moments, there was terrifying chaos. Jeyan felt as though she was being torn in half. She could hear herself screaming – screaming with two voices. And she could hear the Gevethen screaming too, though with countless numbers of voices. She had a fleeting vision of a line of Gevethen figures, arms thrashing frantically, disappearing into a distance that seemed to outreach the stars. Then the vision was gone, almost before she could register it, and at the same instant, she was whole again.

Slowly, the world within the mirrors reformed. The moving, intangible shapes and lights returned to pursue their own mysterious, bewildering paths, the sounds became again the rising and falling of a senseless chorus. And finally, she noted the faint reflected images of her room hovering about her.

For a moment she thought she was going to be violently sick. Then the hands of the Gevethen closed about her shoulders.

‘We are served by flawed creatures, Lord Counsellor…’

‘… Lord Counsellor.’

‘The offenders must be punished for their weakness and folly…’

‘… weakness and folly.’

Jeyan did not know what they meant, though she suspected, from their tone and their returning control, that it was associated with what had just happened rather than anything previously.

Then they were moving. Very quickly. Though not in flight, as before, but in furious excitement. It filled their voices when they spoke again. ‘He shall be ours, Lord Counsellor. He shall be our guide. The traitor Ibryen shall bring us again to His feet.’

‘He must be found. He must be found.’

It was a considerable time before the clamour of voices in the wind and rain-battered tent began to reach any semblance of order. Rachyl’s dogged insistence that, ‘You never left here, you must have been dreaming,’ proved to be not the least of the difficulties to be overcome. Ibryen knew better than to attempt to force her to silence by use of his authority and, in the end, it was only Isgyrn’s description of the Gevethen that made her reluctantly concede that something more substantial than a dream had affected the two men.

But a more worrying plaint than the voicing of Rachyl’s doubts was that of Isgyrn and his fretting that he must somehow contact his land. Ironically, where Ibryen had declined to use the authority he held over Rachyl to silence her, he used an authority that he did not possess to silence Isgyrn.

‘You can’t contact any of the Culmadryen, Isgyrn,’ he said forcefully as the Dryenwr seemed set to circle through his concerns again. ‘If only for the simple reason that none have been known over Nesdiryn in recorded memory. And I require your word, Warrior, that you’ll not try to enter the world of the Culmaren again.’

‘But…’

‘Your word, Isgyrn,’ Ibryen’s tone was unequivocal. ‘You said yourself you had no knowledge of how to survive in that place and, as far as I know, it was the purest chance that took me to you and brought us both safely away. There’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to do it again. For all I know, we could easily have died there.’

‘I’m of no value to you here,’ Isgyrn protested. He pointed upwards. ‘I belong among the clouds where I’m a leader and can truly serve.’

‘I’ll determine your value here, Isgyrn,’ Ibryen said. ‘And as you’ve already saved me from the Gevethen, I’ll start it high. As for service, you must decide that for yourself. I think you’ll provide far more than just another sword against the Gevethen, but in any case it’ll also be a sword against this enemy of yours.’

‘Of ours, Count,’ Isgyrn corrected. ‘The Great Corrupter is the enemy of all living things. He’s an evil from the very Heat of the Beginning, not some petty prince or warlord.’

The Traveller spoke before Ibryen could reply. ‘I don’t pretend to understand fully what you’re talking about, Isgyrn,’ he said. ‘But I’ve seen enough strange things not to dispute with you too heatedly. Yet if this Great Corrupter is as you say, He must have been defeated. You said that others were fighting Him, down here, and you yourself saw His lieutenant’s land destroyed even as you were thrown down into the middle depths. And although I heard some odd rumours in Girnlant, there’s been no news of wars spreading out into the world as surely there must have been over the last fifteen years if He’d won.’

‘It’s fifteen years or so since those creepy little birds disappeared and since the Gevethen began to grow conspicuously strange.’ It was Rachyl. She offered no conclusion.

For the first time Isgyrn faltered.

Ibryen laid a hand on Isgyrn’s arm. ‘None of us can say what strange forces are moving events, Isgyrn,’ he said softly. ‘Or what part each of us has to play.’ He indicated the others. ‘I’m not usually given to talking in such portentous terms, but we’ve not been from the village a week, and yet the world – my world, at least – is vastly different from what it was. I haven’t begun to get a measure of what’s happened and still less what it all means. I can’t command you to do anything, but if you enter the world of the Culmaren again, I doubt I’ll be able to abandon you, so I ask you not to try for both our sakes.’ He straightened up. ‘Let’s you and me confine ourselves to simple practicalities. I will go into Culmaren’s world for you and…’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘… call out, or send some kind of a message, whatever seems fitting. You, if you wish, can return with us and turn your fighting skills to helping us defeat the Gevethen. Whether this terrible leader you fear so much has been defeated or not – and it seems that He might have been – other of His lieutenants are perhaps still doing His work. You faced one in the air and defeated him, and we apparently have to face two of them down here in the middle depths.’

Rachyl looked anxiously at Ibryen. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea, you going off into a trance again, if half of what you’ve just told us is true,’ she said.

Isgyrn too, was concerned. ‘I can’t ask you to do what I’m not prepared to do,’ he said.

Ibryen smiled. ‘But you are prepared,’ he retorted. ‘You’re just not capable.’

Isgyrn lowered his head. ‘Let me think for a little while,’ he said. ‘I need to be alone. I’ll go outside.’

Ibryen looked at him uncertainly. ‘I’ll do nothing foolish,’ Isgyrn promised sadly. ‘So many strange things have happened in these last few hours. I just need to have the sky above me and to feel Svara’s will about me.’

As he crawled out of the tent Ibryen offered him the Culmaren which had slipped from his shoulders. Isgyrn refused it. ‘It has too many powerful memories,’ he said. ‘I need to be free for a while.’