Roger Taylor: Caddoran

‘Why are you not yet here?’

The figure was in front of him.

Vashnar was in no mood to be interrogated. ‘I am here. You brought me here. What’s happening?’

‘Then he is here. The one who opposes you. Why have you not destroyed him?’

‘Release me and I will,’ Vashnar roared.

‘I do not bind you,’ the figure replied. His arms opened to encompass the whirling chaos about them. ‘Yours is the key. Destroy him now!’

Vashnar was suddenly beside himself with frustration and fury. ‘Key! What key? I understand nothing of this.’ He leaned forward and peered into the darkness of the deep hood. ‘I am trapped here in this… half place… neither real nor unreal. I can do nothing.’ He drew his sword and levelled it at the figure. ‘Why have you brought me here? Why do you not use this vaunted power of yours to destroy Thyrn yourself?’

The figure did not move, but Vashnar felt its malevolent stare piercing him. It hissed – a sound like the wind across a bitter icy plain. ‘Do not challenge me, Vashnar. Your key and what you are opens these Ways – but it is my will that brings together the power that remains from the unmaking of the Old World – my will and only my will. As it was then, so it is now. I will be for ever. Time does not exist for me. Yet, in time, another will come in your stead. But you have only now . Falter and you are lost.’

For an instant Vashnar quailed before the force of the personality he could feel before him. But something was flawed. The faintest hint of desperation? It steadied him.

‘Do not challenge me either, shade. Whatever you are and wherever you come from, I feel your greed, your lust to be, your need for me. I ask you again, why do you not destroy Thyrn yourself?’

‘Because sight of me is denied to him, Vashnar, while sight of him is not denied to me.’

Vashnar felt the tumult about him fade and the hooded figure slip into the same motionless unreality as his riders.

The voice was Thyrn’s. It filled Vashnar’s mind. Knowing everything, denouncing everything.

‘What have you done, you madman? What have you unleashed? Can you not see the horror of it?’

Vashnar had a fleeting vision of his men. They were below him and charging towards him with painful slowness. At the same time he touched Thyrn’s thoughts. All was weakness and doubt. Whatever restraint Thyrn had on the hooded figure, he neither understood nor knew how to use; he was a mere infant loose in the armoury – armed but helpless.

All was solid about him again. Aghrid and his men were charging forward, screaming and shouting. Vashnar drove his spurs into his horse.

Rhavvan swore as Vashnar’s barked order reached him and the riders began surging towards him. ‘Ye gods, there must be twenty of them.’ He turned to flee, only to find Thyrn clinging to his arm, almost collapsing.

‘Stand, Rhavvan!’ the youth implored him. ‘In the name of pity, stand with me. I’ve seen his mind – seen what he’s going to do. There’s a power – an evil – in this place which no one will be able to oppose if it possesses him.’ He shook Rhavvan violently. ‘It doesn’t matter what happens to me. It doesn’t matter what happens to any of us, but you must destroy him, for everyone’s sake.’

Rhavvan looked at him, then at the advancing riders, then, with a cry of alarm he shook himself free and set off running down the slope they had just climbed.

Thyrn slithered to the ground. ‘No!’ he shouted frantically after him. But to no avail. Rhavvan kept on running. Thyrn’s voice cracked into a whimper.

The image returned to him of that final brief contact with Vashnar. That searing touch of the appalling power that might become his, and the will behind it, gorged with all that was savage and unrestrained in the human spirit. He felt it arcing back to the destruction of another world, another time, a destruction that had trapped it here, ravening, but bound.

Every part of him cried out in denial. He did not know how he had spoken to Vashnar, or from whence his words came. Still less did he know what touch inside him had released Vashnar back into this world. But it had had to be. Touched by his guiding spirit, Vashnar was protected. He could only be dealt with here, now.

On all fours now, tears of desperation clouded Thyrn’s vision. He had become a solitary, fragile pivot in events far beyond his understanding.

Always there are choices, came the thought. But all he could choose now was the manner of his dying. Flight would not protect him, and it would yield the field to an enemy more terrible than any he could possibly have imagined.

His towering friend had deserted him, but he must stand.

His hand tightened blindly about a stone and he stood up unsteadily and turned to face the advancing riders. As he slipped the stone into his sling he found himself almost overcome by a feeling of forgiveness for Rhavvan’s abandoning him. It mingled with a surging gratitude for everything that had happened to him during the past weeks. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes and tried to focus on his attackers. He was shaking uncontrollably but a residue of Endryk’s teaching flickered sufficiently to sustain him. He knew that he must use the racking desire of his body to flee to save himself long enough to kill Vashnar. He gave no thought to how that was to be done for he knew too, that somehow he would use the dark resources which Vashnar’s very persecution had led him to discover in himself.

At the sight of their quarry, the fatigue of their frantic dash across country and through the mountains had fallen away from the Tervaidin. Now Rhavvan’s flight urged them on even more and their cheering became jeering as Thyrn launched an ineffective stone at them.

But as they reached the bottom of the slope, the solitary figure above them was suddenly six, as Thyrn’s companions, drawn by Rhavvan’s desperate urging, joined him, dark, ominous and immovable against the lowering sky.

Five arrows were released. Three men and one horse fell, bringing down two other riders. The charge faltered.

A bow was thrust into Thyrn’s hand and arrows pushed into his belt.

‘Take your time and pick your mark,’ Endryk’s voice said, cold and frightening.

Three more volleys of arrows ended the momentum of the charge completely but Vashnar maintained a demented pace and together with Aghrid and one other reached the ridge without injury. A savage kick sent Nordath reeling and, in pushing Thyrn to one side, Endryk too was sent tumbling down the slope by a sidelong blow from Vashnar’s turning horse. As he slithered to a halt, he collided with one of the unhorsed Tervaidin. Recovering, the man swung his sword high to finish his downed victim, but Endryk’s foot shot out and struck him squarely in the groin. Rolling over to avoid the falling man’s sword, he snatched it up and hurled it at another of the Tervaidin charging towards him. The hilt struck him in the face and sent him staggering down the slope.

At the ridge, Rhavvan’s staff had unhorsed both Aghrid and the remaining rider, and together with Adren and Hyrald he was attacking with a combination of hurled rocks and brutal swordwork those Tervaidin who had survived the arrows and were struggling up the slope to fight on foot.

For a while it was bitter and desperate work, but the guidance and instruction that Endryk had given the three Wardens, and their deep and righteous anger at the events that had brought them here, combined to make them formidable, and their opponents eventually retreated.

As the last of them turned and fled, Adren leaned forward on to her sword to catch her breath. Aghrid, however, though unhorsed, had merely been winded. Seeing Adren defenceless and with her back to him, he stood up slowly and lifted his sword to strike her. Hyrald saw the pending attack but was too far away to intervene. His hand was reaching out in instinctive warning and he could feel a cry forming in his throat even as Adren’s head flicked slightly. Then she was stepping sideways, her sword held like a dagger and thrust backwards, the palm of her free hand pressed over its hilt. The blade went straight through Aghrid, lifting him off his feet. With a turn, she wrenched her sword free as Aghrid fell to the ground. His face a mask of hatred, disbelief and pain, Aghrid made a final cut at Adren even as he landed, but she avoided it with an almost casual step then finished him with a single savage blow.