Roger Taylor: Arash-Felloren

She must remain as she was if he was to stand any chance of dealing with Pinnatte, the Serwulf and her, and surviving.

‘Where is he?’ he demanded. ‘You can tell me what you did while we go to him.’

Imorren did not reply.

‘Where is he?’ Atlon repeated, fiercely.

Imorren looked at him. Her expression filled him with both terror and pity. He wanted both to embrace her and to draw his sword and strike her down.

‘The Serwulf has taken him as its master,’ she said simply. ‘It is one with him now.’

Silence floated into the glittering corridor. There was not the faintest suggestion of the fighting beyond the walls. Two frightened people stared at one another.

‘Where is… where are they?’ Atlon said, very softly.

Imorren shook her head.

Atlon closed his eyes. What was he doing in this awful place?

He should just turn and walk away – let the Vaskyros, the whole of Arash-Felloren burn in whatever damnation Pinnatte and the Serwulf would unleash. It would be an end to the threat that the Kyrosdyn posed, at least.

But it was not an alternative. Countless tiny bonds held him to what he must do. Heirn and the thousands like him, who asked no more than the right to pursue their own lives, seeking their own quiet ways, burdening no one. That they offered this right to others less benignly disposed to their fellows, and then found themselves trapped as helpless observers, was a failing shared by most people. It was its own punishment, but it did not warrant death.

Or whatever else might emerge from the pending chaos.

A face came into his mind. He shivered. It was the head graven into the arch over the entrance to the Jyolan. He would surely revel in what was to happen. Mutual killing was His way when all else was lost. Thus had ended the First Coming with the death of the Great Alliance’s leader. Was it to be so again, an awful vengeance reaped so many years after He had been dispatched for the second time from this world?

Yet it was inconceivable that He could have brought this about. Even if He had had the Power and the insight to do so, He would not. Such a creation could destroy Him along with everything else.

Atlon pondered the image.

Why should that awful face come to him now? What was his deeper knowledge trying to tell him?

He looked at Imorren.

‘There are ways to the Jyolan from here other than the streets?’

Imorren nodded uncertainly. ‘Through the tunnels.’

‘We must go there. That is where they are.’

Pinnatte sat back and looked at his work. All the mirrors were bright and clear. It had taken him less time than he would have thought, but he seemed to be tireless now. He felt as though he could run and run forever, down street after endless street, climbing walls, vaulting obstacles, dodging and weaving effortlessly through the thickest of crowds. Why he had cleaned the mirrors he did not know. Why he had come back to the Jyolan he did not know. Perhaps it was some remnant of his commitment to Barran, though he no longer needed the goodwill of such people.

He sought no further explanation. Thoughts, ideas, images were pouring through his mind in such a torrent that he could not pause to pursue any of them. He leapt from conclusion to conclusion – momentary stepping stones in the flood. It was sufficient explanation for his actions that he could choose to follow such whims now. Now he could do anything he wanted. For none would be able to oppose the Power that he could feel relentlessly growing within him, a constant in the swirling confusion.

Such progress he had made these last few days since his fateful contact with Rostan! Had not Barran himself stepped aside, wide-eyed with fear, and then fled, after he had opened the door of the Mirror Room to confront him, with the creature at his side?

As he looked at the mirrors, Pinnatte was taken by the frantic activity in different parts of the Jyolan – it echoed his own inner confusion. The sounds of it too, washed over him for, in his haste, Barran had left the key that operated the grilles by each mirror. Now they were all open, filling the Mirror Room with their clamour.

Barran was gathering armed men for what was obviously to be a determined assault on the Mirror Room. He had tried earlier, sending half a dozen of his men to deal with, ‘that crazy street thief and his… dog.’ – Pinnatte smiled at the word – but the Serwulf had burst out and killed two of them before they were within a dozen paces of the door and the others had scattered, screaming. They too would have died had not Pinnatte imposed his will on the animal and made it return.

The Serwulf was a bloody streak winding through Pinnatte’s confusion. Since it had come to him in the alley, after the death of Rostan and his guards, it had been communicating with him in some way. Some of the images and sensations he was feeling belonged to it, he knew. They were alien, feral and awful, and though he could not understand most of them, two things were dominant. One was a seemingly limitless urge to kill and feed, though on what, Pinnatte could not properly grasp, save that the thought of it chilled him. The other was a cringing fear of Pinnatte himself – or someone, something, that had a shimmering likeness to him. His linkage with the creature both thrilled and disgusted him, but gradually the former was growing in dominance.

Pinnatte watched Barran’s efforts with the outward air of a disinterested spectator. Whatever he did, Barran was doomed to failure. If he succeeded in injuring the Serwulf, Pinnatte knew it well enough now to know that the consequences would be appalling. And if it were somehow drawn away, so that he himself was apparently defenceless, they would find that he was not. Indeed, he was beginning to realize that, if he wished, he could scatter this earnest and noisy gathering just by reaching out through the images in front of him. Yet he had some liking for Barran – and what he was doing was… interesting.

Men were being dressed in chain-mail, and given brief but effective instruction in how to fight from behind a shield wall in the narrow confines of the Jyolan’s passages with swords and short spears. There were archers there too. It might have been a long time since Barran had fought on a battlefield, but he had forgotten none of his old ways, and his rage at being so ignominiously dispossessed of this most precious of places, keenly focused his intentions. Pinnatte watched and listened avidly. Oddly, he felt a twinge of disappointment at what he knew would be the outcome.

Such talents deserved better. Very distantly, he thought he heard something inside him saying, ‘Keep this man alive,’ but such a thing could not be. If Barran opposed him, Barran would die. That was to be the way of things.

Pinnatte pressed his hands to his temples. Thoughts like that weren’t his. Barran had helped him – had been honourable to him.

The creature whined uncertainly. Pinnatte snarled at it and it cowered.

He pushed his chair back angrily, wiping his arm across his forehead. As he did so, the many images in the mirrors became one. The many sounds too, became coherent.

He froze.

He was at the heart of the Jyolan.

He was the Jyolan!

And the Jyolan was…?

For an instant there was a pause in the torrent of thoughts and sensations that were possessing him. A solitary voice pierced the silence. The voice of Pinnatte the street thief.

This was not what he wanted!

Something terrible was coming. Something that would come from him – through him – pour through him – bringing only destruction.

‘No!’

All movement in the mirrors stopped. Even through his pain and fear, Pinnatte sensed the stillness. And he knew its cause. From here, his voice, his will, was that of the Jyolan, of Arash-Felloren itself. Nothing could happen that he was not aware of. Nothing could happen that he could not reach out and change.