Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

Isloman was the first to recover. He looked at the star. It was slowly twisting and turning as though it were struggling to be free from unseen bonds. A thin bright ray of light shining from it swept about the chamber. The Uhriel was staring at it, transfixed.

Andawyr grasped Isloman’s hand and pulled himself up.

There was both triumph and desperate fear in his face.

‘He did it,’ he gasped. ‘He struck the star with the Power – released it. I knew he’d no control. Get us out of here.’

‘What? Where to?’ Isloman exclaimed. He was dragging Oslang to his feet.

‘Anywhere!’

The others needed no bidding. Usche, Ar-Billan and Atelon were supporting one another and staggering towards the passage.

They had taken barely a step when the light from the star struck the mirrored wall and the vast blue plain was instantly enmeshed in a lattice of brightness. Before they could move further, the lattice had grown and become solid, and a glaring flood swept through and over them.

As he felt himself fading, Isloman, through tightly narrowed eyes, saw the star fragment. Hovering where it had been, a wavering shadow in the terrible light, was a sword.

Then he was nothing.

Hawklan looked away from the giddying heights swaying above him. Wherever they were and however they had come there, this could no longer be the Labyrinth he had known. But what was it? Surely it should be a device of Ethriss’s? But might it be one of Sumeral’s? Or was it a manifestation of the conjunction? Or a creation of his own mind?

To centre himself amid these doubts he touched the nearest column. A whirling confusion of voices rang through him.

‘You are he? The healer? As Farnor and Thyrn?’ The voice was both many and one and was hung about with deeply unsettling resonances. It was as though behind each word lay a long and complex debate.

‘We will shelter you from the return of the Great Evil.’

‘Who are you?’

There was a reply, but Hawklan could not understand it. Images, dark and deep, bright and sun-dancing, burgeoning-new and ancient beyond imagining filled him. Dominant amongst them was a broad thread of fear.

‘You are the Great Forest,’ Hawklan said, grasping at an inspiration.

‘We are.’ It was a statement, not a reply.

‘How can you be here?’

‘Here? We do not know “here”, healer. We are.’

‘How do you know me?’

‘You are. You are Mover and Hearer. You are rare. Few are with us so in this place.’ The fear returned, and urgency. ‘The Great Evil comes again. For Farnor we will shelter that which is your essence, until He passes once more.’

A feeling of warmth and rest enfolded Hawklan.

‘Oi!’

Dar-volci was shaking his leg violently. ‘This is no time to be nodding off.’ His voice was loud and brutal after the subtlety of the Forest’s language, but it jolted Hawklan free. There was no malice in what he had been offered, he knew, but there was error. He remembered Farnor telling him of a glimpse he had once had of the Forest’s knowledge of times long gone, of what had probably been the Great Searing, and the fears that lay deep-rooted in them about that terrible change.

The Forest should know the truth. Who could say what part its ancient will might play in the unfolding events?

As he looked up, the wavering columns seemed to be both cold stone and gnarled trunks. He had a momentary vision of Ethriss binding a wounded place with a strange knowledge that he had found and that he himself did not understand, a knowledge that he suspected perhaps was older than his own.

Was this where his own doubts began? In the Great Forest?

Hawklan let the thought pass and extended a placating hand to Dar-volci.

‘Far worse than the Great Evil returns,’ he said inwardly, to the Forest.

A deep silence filled him, listening.

‘Your judgement – the judgement you most feared and that you revealed to Farnor – has been sound. That which ended the time before and remade all things was indeed deeply flawed. Now a wind is coming that may uproot and scatter us all beyond any knowing. All your wisdom and knowledge, all that you are, is needed to oppose it. And that of Farnor and Thyrn.’

The silence lingered for a moment. Then, timelessly, Hawklan felt a myriad sky-turning seasons pass through him as, with a fleeting hint of both gratitude and terror, the Forest went from him.

He did not move for some time.

‘Are you all right, dear boy?’

Gavor’s anxious tones brought him to himself again. ‘It was the Forest,’ he said, attempting no explanation. ‘The Forest and the Labyrinth are joined. They’ve taken Farnor and Thyrn to shelter them. I told them the truth.’

Dar-volci and Gavor looked at him steadily, then both said, ‘Funny things, trees.’

‘Still, better they know than they don’t,’ Dar-volci added. ‘You did right.’

Hawklan was less convinced. Andawyr had judged him to be somehow pivotal in the pending events but he had only a growing sense of inadequacy and ignorance. He looked around. As before, the columns seemed to be both stone shafts and tree trunks.

But now, in one direction, it was lighter. He pointed.

‘That way.’

Pinnatte’s eyes were full of pain and desperation. Within the wavering lights he had created could be seen two worlds. One, alive with mingling rivers of molten rock, its wound-red sky black-streaked with choking smoke and lit by a rain of blazing stones. The other, stark and dead – a bitter landscape, so cold that the wind itself was frozen and ancient mountains had been crushed and remade into buttressing heights and frozen cascades of glittering ice.

The two Uhriel, held by the lights in the space which was of no world, struggled frantically to escape, their steeds rearing and screaming.

The Goraidin moved forward hesitantly.

‘Keep away from me,’ Pinnatte gasped. ‘Keep away from the Gateways. I thought I could send them through, but… I can’t… I’m not strong enough, I…’ Sweat was running down his face and he was swaying. He was obviously weakening.

‘What can we do?’ Yatsu shouted.

‘Whatever you have to if they break free,’ Pinnatte managed. ‘You’ll have little time. I can…’

Then he was sinking to his knees and the Uhriel were redoubling their efforts.

The Gateways closed.

Pinnatte slumped forward.

The Goraidin needed no discussion to determine their actions and only a brief flurry of hand signals presaged their plunging forward towards the suddenly released Uhriel.

Swift and cruel sword strokes cut the throats of the two foul mounts before their riders could fully control them, while others hacked and thrust at the two Uhriel as they fell amid a confusion of flailing legs and writhing bodies. Though it was not in the nature of any of the Goraidin to murder, the ability to kill quickly and efficiently was something they took a dark pride in – it was a necessary part of their profession. They brought it to bear now, four of them setting on each of the fallen Uhriel while Marna and Gentren stood back, looking to reach Pinnatte through the fray.

But it was to no avail.

Whatever armour it was that the Uhriel wore, it withstood such blows as struck it. But, more frightening by far, though many well-placed points struck through open joints and at exposed flesh, and though wounds gaped and what might have been blood poured out, the Uhriel did not fall.

Marna felt her mouth parch and the blood drain from her face as she watched both of them rising to their feet despite a hail of attacks that would have killed a score of men. A seemingly deliberate slowness of their movements added a further horror to the sight. Her stomach was hard with a cold terror as she saw them look around at their futile attackers. Attackers on the faces of whom Marna saw open fear.