Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

Then, abruptly, it stopped. The sudden silence was like an impact.

Pinnatte stiffened. He was no longer trembling.

‘Something’s different,’ he whispered urgently. ‘They’re…’

Yatsu’s hand shot out and covered his mouth.

Black against blue, the silhouettes of two riders appeared at the mouth of the cave. The heads of their steeds were swaying slowly, side to side, up and down, as they peered into the darkness.

‘Did you think to come here unnoticed?’

The voice was hung about with the lingering echoes of the shrieking from which it seemed to have been woven. A mocking concern in it intensified its jarring dissonance.

No one moved.

The voice came again.

‘You mar the cleansing of this place with your presence. Come into the light. If service to Him whose return is nigh can be found, you may preserve those transient, trembling shadows you call your lives.’

Abruptly and with unexpected swiftness, Pinnatte was on his feet and striding towards the entrance of the cave. Nimbly he avoided a frantic lunge by Yatsu who swore under his breath.

‘Come with me, all of you,’ Pinnatte said loudly.

As he stepped out into the blue light to confront the two riders, he turned and repeated the command authoritatively, adding, ‘These are two of the three who are to be judged. Hurry, the time is near.’ Then he was addressing the riders. ‘And did your companion expect to escape judgement by fleeing?’

Any possibility of either concealment or surprise having been lost, Yatsu signalled to the others to follow the lead that Pinnatte was setting. He was still addressing the riders as they emerged hesitantly.

‘Or did you think to blame him for your failure?’ Pinnatte’s voice was arrogant and taunting.

Yatsu’s mind was racing. All that he had seen of Pinnatte was a tongue-tied and confused young man, apparently aware of what was happening around him but somehow locked away from it. He had learned from Atelon that he had been a successful thief in the harsh streets of Arash-Felloren before the Kyrosdyn had laid their hands on him, and he had learned from Vredech, and now from his own limited observation, that Pinnatte was a markedly different individual in this world. But what game was he playing? Some reckless bluff?

Gulda had said that Pinnatte and Vredech could have been drawn to this world because Pinnatte might still have some residue of the apparently impossible ability both to move between worlds and use the Power. Could it be that this was coming to the fore here?

Listen! Yatsu ordered himself. Listen. Watch.

The latter, however, was not easy. The two riders were a fearful sight. Sumeral’s lieutenants, His Uhriel, made flesh again. Black-clad and livid in the blue light, sitting astride their evil-eyed and serpentine mounts that might once have been horses, they radiated a presence that defied description. Yatsu fidgeted casually, his hands and feet moving continually. The other Goraidin were doing the same. It was a device normally used to unsettle the concentration of a possible enemy, but here, Yatsu knew it was more to control the violent trembling that was shaking them all. His mouth was burningly dry.

A helm was removed to reveal a woman’s face. Once it might have been, if not beautiful, then certainly striking, but now it was gaunt and drawn, with a sickly, pallid lustre. Lifeless eyes, black and watery, stared out of it. Dowinne, Yatsu presumed with a shiver he could barely restrain; Vredech’s erstwhile nemesis. Her rasping voice cut through his tumbling thoughts.

‘You would take His name in vain? Blessed be it. You would utter such profanity on the very world that will open the Great Way and bring us to His Heartworld?’

Her voice and the sinuous writhing of her mount turned Yatsu’s stomach.

But was there a hint of doubt in that challenge?

‘Something’s different,’ Pinnatte had said before Yatsu had stifled him.

An Uhriel could have shrivelled all of them with the least effort, but one had fled and this one was debating…

Pinnatte held out his hand, fingers extended, and made a slow, vertical, cutting action. At his fingertips a line of bright light appeared. It widened and Yatsu had a fleeting impression of a landscape within it, then Pinnatte clenched his fist and the light was gone.

A dreadful life came into Dowinne’s blank eyes as she stared down at Pinnatte.

‘You are the one who came with Vredech,’ she hissed. ‘And you fled with him. Who are you?’

‘This is not how it should be,’ her companion interrupted. ‘Not now the fount of the Great Way is known to us. This is trickery by His enemies. We must destroy them. We must complete our work quickly or it will be less than perfect. The time is near.’

Though the voice was shrill and jarring, like Dowinne’s, there was almost fear in it, and Marna started in recognition. She pushed her way through the Goraidin.

‘Rannick?’ she exclaimed.

The rider looked at her for a long time.

‘More trickery,’ he said slowly. ‘You have the likeness of one I knew before I was born again. But that is not possible. You could not have come here.’

‘It is me, Rannick,’ Marna said, almost plaintively. ‘What’s happened to you? What’ve you become? What’ve you done here?’

The rider let out a piercing cry and tore off his helm. Marna found herself staring into rancid white eyes set in a face, pale and gaunt like Dowinne’s, but drawn and desert-leached. White hair moved about his head as though stirred by a wind in another place.

Marna stepped back in horror and whispered again, ‘Rannick, what in the name of pity’s happened to you?’

The Uhriel leaned forward and stared at her.

‘Whatever you are, you cannot be here. All lesser Ways lead only to the fount. Where is the Gateway you used?’ Marna staggered as he shrieked at her, but Pinnatte stepped between them.

‘It is not for you to question my servants,’ he said, his voice unexpectedly powerful. ‘It is for you to be judged and to accept sentence.’

He cut his hand downwards as he had before and a thin light hovered briefly in the blue air. ‘Here is a Gateway, doubter.’ Then he flicked his hand towards Rannick’s mount, which shied and let out a strange mewling cry. ‘And here is the Power.’ He turned to Dowinne. ‘I am the one who came with Vredech. The one you deemed flawed and imperfect. That was but to test your vision. And it was lacking! ’

The last words were filled with such menace and vehemence that both riders edged backwards. Yatsu looked at Pinnatte, suddenly even more fearful. Some strange attribute, hidden in their own world, was obviously available to him here. But had some darker trait come with it – something that the Kyrosdyn had seen in him? Were they now facing not two Uhriel, but three?

Pinnatte’s contorted features were not reassuring. His eyes were wide and staring, and his mouth was drawn back to reveal teeth clenched with either rage or effort. Abruptly he moved between the two Uhriel, thrust his hands upwards, then cut violently downwards.

Where, before, a thin line of light had appeared, now great swathes of brightness swept out, engulfing the two riders.

Nertha was veering wildly between near-panic and manic confidence. The greyness all about her seemed to be seeping into her very soul and, though no reason informed her, she knew that if she faltered, gave way to the despair that was clamouring at her, it would sweep her into oblivion. Resolutely she kept her thoughts from considerations of what had happened and what might happen. She was a physician – a healer; she must tend her four charges, here, now. They were all that mattered.