Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

Who is the dreamer?

Awash in a swirling confusion of sounds, shapeless colours and a myriad elusive, evocative scents, the diamond-sharp awareness that was Antyr shied away from the question.

In its eddying wake he was suddenly whole and as real as the body that he could feel a fearful Nertha tending. By him was Vredech, present but not visible, as he would be to him.

‘This is the Nexus,’ he said. It was the place into which leaked fragments of all the dreams that the dreamer had ever created. But here, he was lost. Here, it was the spirits of Tarrian and Grayle who would carry him to where the Dreamer’s need was. But Tarrian and Grayle were gone on a hunt of their own.

He wanted to reassure Vredech, but he could not. There were too many questions.

Had they both come here to fulfil a purpose determined by a knowledge hidden in the depths of their minds…?

Or had it been an instinctive response as the encroaching greyness had overwhelmed the Labyrinth hall? Sheer panic? Vredech would not have abandoned Nertha, surely, but…?

Or had they been drawn here by some other power?

And Vredech’s awful question returned.

Who is the dreamer?

Who was the creator of the chaos dancing all about them?

Then, as was the way in moving from the Nexus to the dream, without any seeming change, they were the dreamer.

The five Cadwanwr and Isloman had been walking steadily for some time. There were no features within the tunnel from which they might learn anything about where they were or even gauge their progress – though, from time to time, Atelon marked the wall with a small chisel he had borrowed from Isloman.

The sound of their footsteps was oddly dull and the nervous jostling of the shadows cast by the solitary lantern they were using added to their already considerable unease. Though they were not reduced to whispering, such conversation as they had was both sparse and subdued.

‘We can’t carry on like this,’ Usche complained at one point, prompting a sharp, ‘What else can we do?’ from Andawyr.

She was on the verge of plucking up courage to complain again when Andawyr stopped and held up his hand, unnecessarily, for silence.

‘I thought I heard something,’ he said.

‘Felt something, more like,’ Oslang rejoined. ‘Like someone using the Power, but quite a distance away.’

‘Yes, you’re right. Come on.’ And, without any pause for debate, Andawyr was striding out.

‘Do you think this is wise?’ Oslang asked as he caught up with him.

‘At the moment I’m trying not to think,’ Andawyr replied. ‘In the absence of any indication about where we are or what’s happened there’s not much point, is there? We’ll have to settle for travelling by instinct.’

‘There’s a light ahead.’ It was Isloman. He moved past Andawyr and covered the lantern with his big hand. The group bumped to an awkward halt as he peered intently into the darkness.

‘Yes,’ he decided. ‘Definitely – light ahead.’ He released the lantern.

‘You and your Orthlundyn eyes,’ Andawyr said, blinking. ‘I can’t see anything.’

Isloman did not reply but took the lead.

Very soon the tunnel walls were tinted with a dim blue haze that grew in intensity until the lantern was no longer needed.

‘This place is very bad,’ Isloman said, as much to himself as the others. ‘The rock cries out.’

‘And it stinks of the Power being misused,’ Andawyr added, giving voice to what he could see the other Cadwanwr were feeling.

‘It stinks of considerable Power being misused,’ Oslang said emphatically. ‘We must be careful.’

The source of the light came into view. It was an opening in the side of the tunnel, identical in shape and size to the tunnel itself. As the group stopped to one side of it, the blue light pouring through it gave a ghastly hue to their anxious faces.

Cautiously, Andawyr peered round the edge. Then, motioning the others to follow, he stepped into the opening. It proved to be not a branch tunnel but a doorway. A few paces brought them on to a wide balcony that ran round a vast circular chamber.

In the far wall was a row of what appeared to be windows and it was through these that the blue light which filled the chamber was coming. The walls rose up to disappear into a dark blue gloom. Atelon moved towards the edge of the balcony, then dropped on to his knees to look over it – it had no balustrade.

‘It’s a long way down,’ he said, reaching back with one hand to warn the others against approaching too quickly.

There were two other balconies beneath them, apparently deserted. As was the floor of the chamber. This was decorated with a single star at its centre. It had a silver sheen that cut through the blue light, and fine rays shone from it, dividing the floor into equal segments. Some way from the centre, and also symmetrically spaced, secondary rays continued the pattern.

‘A bad symbol,’ Atelon said grimly.

Andawyr nodded. ‘We might have expected it.’ He indicated the windows on the far side. ‘Let’s see where we are.’

The windows proved to be nothing more than holes cut through the wall. They reached down to the floor of the balcony and had no glazing. Hugging the wall and holding on to Isloman, Andawyr stepped inside one and edged tentatively forward.

Where the view down into the well of the chamber had been disconcerting, the view through the window was terrifying. His hold on Isloman tightening so hard that the big carver grimaced, Andawyr found himself looking down the giddying perspective of a curved wall that was many times higher than the highest towers of Anderras Darion. Radiating from it ran great saw-toothed ridges, their peaks rising and falling in elaborate curves all the way to the horizon – and, presumably, beyond – like frozen waves. Away from the base of the building, and spaced between these at regular intervals, other similar ridges began, the whole giving the impression of patterns within patterns, great complexity built from simplicity. But there was an obsessive, diseased quality to the scene, heightened by the fact that everything was blue. Even the air, Andawyr thought, as he blinked into the disturbing distance.

Isloman’s grip tightened on him suddenly as, too engrossed in the scene, he leaned forward and his toe eased over the edge of the wall. He acknowledged the carver’s urging but did not move.

Where was this place? And how could such a landscape have come about?

Answers came immediately and without deliberation. Even without the symbol of the single silver star, this building, everything he could see, was obviously Sumeral’s work. It must be Gentren’s world – a world transformed by Sumeral’s new-found Uhriel for who could say what purpose? But the Power that must have been used was beyond imagining. Not the entire resources of a hundred times the Cadwanol could undo such work. Andawyr’s spirit suddenly quailed and a suffocating blackness rose up within him. There was nothing anyone could do against such an enemy. All his learning, all his experience, was worthless. He felt an urge to pull himself free of Isloman’s sustaining hold and hurl himself into this jagged blue nightmare – to end it all. His mind teetered and his world filled with the sound of his rasping, indecisive breathing.

He could do it. Isloman’s grip was not so tight.

But it was there. Quietly purposeful. Jump he might, but trip he wouldn’t.

The blackness shifted.

To go that way would not end it all, would it? Such an act would merely abandon his immediate charges to whatever lay in this place, burdened even more. Their shocked and accusing faces swam into his mind, especially those of Usche and Ar-Billan – in many ways the innocents of the group. And, too, it would abandon everything he had ever worked for and valued – and the work and sacrifice of countless others who had opposed Sumeral in His many different guises.