Roger Taylor: Arash-Felloren

Then the creature was howling. Its awful lusting voice echoing through the Jyolan and beyond. He felt it spreading over the city, through the tunnels, deep, deep into the ancient caves far below. Calling to its own.

Some part of Pinnatte reached out to deny it. He would not be responsible for the horror that this thing would bring.

The creature turned towards him, its mouth gaping, livid red, its eyes burning yellow like diseased suns. Its desires washed over him, re-awakening those he had felt at the Loose Pit. This was the way things should be. This was the way he must be. All power must be his. All people should bow before him.

Still a part of him denied it. Confused images of Ellyn and Atlon and Heirn floated around him. The mirrors became blurred and indistinct. He was only vaguely aware of the creature pacing the room.

And there was escape, clear and hopeful before him!

He was a mote – the least of things – separate from his body, tumbling through a swirling darkness, countless sounds and images all about him, mindless and meaningless, yet significant. He was moving and not moving, aware that he was both here and in the Mirror Room. As was the creature. It was hunting now, but not as it wanted to. It was hunting in another place, another way, because its deep bond with Pinnatte gave it no choice but to obey him.

Then, without transition, he was whole again, looking at a bright sunlit sky marred by gathering thunder clouds. There was a great crowd in the distance. Pennants and flags were waving, ranks of horsemen were galloping around it. It took Pinnatte a little time to realize that he was watching a battle. A movement to one side caught his eye. He turned to see two men in the distance. They were watching an old man, running and looking repeatedly over his shoulder. Something hissed past Pinnatte to thud into the grass by his feet. Looking down, he saw that it was an arrow. He stepped backwards with a cry.

As if he had always been there, he was on a grassy soft-scented hillside in the fading evening sun, strange foot-tapping music all about him. Then he was in the streets of a strange city. Only his thief’s footwork kept him from being trampled by the crowd among which he found himself, for his mind was reeling at what was happening. Mainly women and children, he could see they were fleeing in awful panic. And they were crying out in a language he could not understand. Bright lights caught his eye through the dusty air. There were riders in the distance, sunlight flickering from the rising and falling of their swords.

Somewhere he could feel the Serwulf trying to reach him. And there were other animals howling, far away. Wolves, he sensed, though he had never heard wolves howling before. Their song reached out to ease him in some way.

An impact jarred him. He had been falling for ever. Faster and faster. And now he had stopped. All that had happened seemed to have taken but a single heartbeat, but now there was a pause. His every instinct held him still and silent. Wherever this place was, he did not belong. No one belonged. The sights about him now were not sights that eyes could see. He was aware of worlds within worlds, between worlds, shifting and shimmering in and out of existence, rich with life and dancing to rhythms unknowable. He was aware too of many eyes turned to him. And terrible fear, all around.

For this place, this eerie vantage, could not exist. It stood outside that which was without bounds. His touch had the power to change all things. Yet his least action might disturb this dynamic equilibrium beyond all recovering.

As might, perhaps, his inaction.

He dared not move.

There was an awful, lingering moment, in this place where Time did not exist.

Then uproar.

Barran, encouraged by the silence that had followed Pinnatte’s cry and the creature’s howl, had managed to rouse his men sufficiently to have them storm the Mirror Room.

It was a mistake.

Bursting through the door, the attackers found themselves staring not at one of the dismal rooms typical of the Jyolan, but at a vast and shapeless greyness devoid of all perspective and points of reference, save for the seated figure of Pinnatte watching them from some indeterminate distance.

And the Serwulf.

Which was upon them instantly. Hard fighting men all of them, not one managed a stroke against it, and all died. For a moment the greyness became tinged with red.

A second team of men waiting along the passage, listened hesitantly to their friends screaming and the Serwulf roaring, then turned and fled as the last victim crashed out of the room, his head almost severed. The Serwulf’s howl sped them on their way. Barran was sufficiently experienced to know when men could be rallied and when they could not. He made no effort to stop them. Fury filled him but it could not overcome his terror.

‘Let us through.’

The cold voice pierced Barran’s silent rage. He spun round to see Imorren and Atlon. Atlon was flushed and a little out of breath from a hasty stumbling journey through the tunnels, but Imorren was as immaculate and calm as ever. Atlon had noticed her hand going to her throat and her wrists at times and knew that she was sustaining herself with crystals. Though such a use of the crystals was abhorrent to him, he had thought to tell her to conserve her energies against what they might find at the Jyolan, but her actions were obviously those of habit, and paradoxically he also found himself thinking that, perhaps, the weaker she was, the better.

Barran’s throat was too dry for him to speak, but he had nothing to say anyway. The creature was hers, let her deal with it.

Pinnatte felt the approach of Atlon and Imorren. The event was at once trivial and profoundly significant. Trivial in that both of them could be expunged at a thought, significant in that the consequences of such an act were unforeseeable.

As they entered the door, both of them stopped. Imorren’s face twitched slightly before the training of years stilled it. Atlon was openly afraid. Where Barran’s men had seen a textureless greyness, both Atlon and Imorren saw a swirling ferment of the Power, restrained only by the presence of Pinnatte – or some part of Pinnatte – a shimmering likeness pervading him. Neither understood what they saw, save that such a thing should not be possible and was dangerous beyond imagining.

The Serwulf crouched as if to spring. Imorren gestured towards it and it hesitated. Then it opened its mouth and screamed at them. It was an appalling sound, but the two figures did not yield. The scream subsided into a rumbling growl and the Serwulf made no attempt to attack.

At a loss to know what to do, Atlon stepped forward slowly to speak to Pinnatte.

Coils of the Power wrapped themselves around him. Despair and self-reproach welled up like vomit inside him. Imorren had bound him. He had thought that she was cowed for the moment, that she had recognized the danger and, albeit reluctantly, was working with him in the hope of dealing with it. Given a fraction of warning he might have defended himself, but now he was helpless.

‘Do not struggle, Atlon,’ Imorren said. ‘You know I can destroy you, but who can say what events will be set in motion if we try our strengths here – at so delicate a balancing.’ There was a mocking note in her voice that redoubled Atlon’s rage at his folly. ‘Besides, if you live, I’d like to talk with you further when this is over.’

Then she was kneeling before the motionless Pinnatte. Though ignorant of what had happened to him she had determined to act as had always been envisaged should the Anointing prove successful.

‘Great Guardian of the Ways, I offer you this man, who would have sought to destroy you. Do with him as you will. Bring to this place, I beg you, the True Lord of this world so that He too might bow down before you in gratitude for His release from the unjust bondage that has so long held Him.’