Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

‘He’s a Mynedarion,’ came the terse reply.

‘It seems they may all be around here,’ Antyr said. ‘But at least they’re benign.’

‘Maybe, but that’s where your answer lies. And in that sword.’

Antyr let out a noisy breath. He could sense that Tarrian and Grayle were talking to each other beyond his awareness. They invariably did after they had been in the dreamways and he knew from past experience that nothing was to be gained by badgering them. Tarrian would have said all he wanted to say for the moment and he could do no other than follow his suggestion.

‘Tell me about this sword,’ he said to Andawyr.

‘Yes, the sword,’ Andawyr mused. ‘Strange I should think of that after all this time.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Using my dreams to fulfil my wishes, that’s all.’

‘It’s very special, then?’ Antyr asked.

‘Oh yes. Very special. I don’t have a great many regrets in my life, but one of them is that I didn’t take the opportunity to study it further while it was here.’ Andawyr shrugged. ‘Still, we weren’t then what we are now, we’d probably not have learned much from it. Not to mention the fact that we’d a good many other things to occupy us at the time.’ He became dismissive. ‘It’s probably come to mind because I’ve been thinking about Hawklan so much today. I can’t see that it’s of any particular relevance to what happened.’

‘Tarrian thinks it is, and if you feel at all reluctant to talk about it then that’s even more reason why we should.’

A spasm of irritation passed over Andawyr’s face, though whether in annoyance at himself or at his interrogator, Antyr could not hazard.

‘You’re right,’ he said after an uncomfortable pause which he ended by fiddling with his pillow again. ‘It’s hard to know what to say about it. It was Hawklan’s sword when he fought in one of the great battles of the First Coming.’ His hand was reaching out to forestall Antyr’s startled question even before he had finished speaking. ‘There’s no point in asking,’ he said. ‘We’ve no idea how Hawklan – or some aspect of him – could be both in that time and here with us now. No idea at all. Nor has he. But it is so. Indisputably so, as far as we can tell. There are many mysteries from that time. Although I’ll admit that could well be the greatest.’ He stopped abruptly as the difficulties of this long-debated problem threatened to rehearse themselves again, then he pressed on quickly. ‘For now, let’s concentrate on our own particular mystery. As I said, the sword was, and is again, Hawklan’s, though after he was lost in that awful battle Ethriss took it for his own and reforged it. Hawklan found it this time in the Armoury of Anderras Darion. Or rather, it found him. It literally fell at his feet from a heap of weapons. Drawn to him, almost. No one knew what it was at the time, still less how it came to be there. When we realized what it was, the presumption was that Ethriss had left it there – he went unarmed to the Last Battle, definitely – but no one really knows.’

Antyr’s mind was full of questions about Hawklan but Andawyr’s manner had indicated unequivocally that he did not wish to pursue that subject. He forced his attention back to the dream.

‘So this sword is special because of its association with Ethriss – it’s a symbol of former victory?’ he posited. ‘A rallying point, like a battle flag.’

‘No,’ Andawyr said simply. ‘It’s special because it’s special. In its own right. It’s a very unusual artefact. It’s something like… a focus… a concentration of the Power itself. It’s not easy to explain. In fact, it’s not possible to explain.’ He held up two clenched and quivering fists like a petulant schoolboy. ‘I just wish I could have hold of it again.’

‘What happened to it?’

The clenched fists wilted. Andawyr looked down at them sadly. ‘Hawklan dropped it into Lake Kedrieth when Sumeral confronted him. Dropped it.’ There was reproach in his voice.

‘Hardly surprising under the circumstances,’ Oslang said sternly, offering a reproach of his own.

Andawyr recanted hastily. ‘No, of course not. Still…’ His face became thoughtful. ‘He only ever spoke about that time once – to me, anyway. I remember him saying it fell and it fell, through the darkness, until it landed with a great ringing sound. I’ve no idea why I didn’t ask him what he meant.’

‘As I recall you and the others telling me, there were a lot of strange noises at the time, to put it mildly,’ Oslang said. ‘What with Sumeral’s passing and Derras Ustramel being destroyed.’

‘True,’ Andawyr conceded. ‘But this was before all that. And he was quite clear about it. It fell and it fell through the darkness until it landed with a great ringing sound. What a strange statement. It didn’t just splash into the Lake as it fell off the causeway. More mysteries. And why have I hardly bothered to think about it since?’

‘You have,’ Oslang retorted sourly. ‘Or have you forgotten delegating to me the job of organizing those High Guards to search for it?’ He turned to Antyr as though to an ally of long standing. ‘Weeks we were there. In the very bowels of Narsindal.’ He shivered massively. ‘It’s a wonder I didn’t throw all this up and go back to the family farm afterwards, I can tell you. As for those poor young men, doing their damnedest – dredging, trawling, even diving into that awful lake – diving, for pity’s sake. Some of them were so ill. You can’t imagine how dreadful it was. Blighted doesn’t begin to describe the place. Do you know…’

‘Yes, yes,’ Andawyr intervened heatedly. ‘I do recall it. And I also recall apologizing for it at great length thereafter. And several times.’ The two men eyed one another silently until Andawyr established a truce with a final schoolboy flourish. ‘Even so, I still wish I had the sword now. We must make a point of talking to Hawklan about it when we get to Anderras Darion.’

‘All of which isn’t bringing us any nearer to finding out what happened in your dream,’ Antyr said as tactfully as he could, in case Oslang decided to continue the old spat. ‘Whatever became of the sword, it is definitely lost?’ he inquired of them both.

Cursory nods confirmed his conclusion, though both men seemed to be preoccupied.

‘Then I am, too,’ Antyr declared. ‘Although I have the impression that this weapon’s more important to you than you’re prepared to concede at the moment, whether you know it or not. That might perhaps account for the unusual sensations I experienced as you made to touch it, though that doesn’t feel like an adequate explanation. And it still doesn’t account for the sudden danger.’

He glanced towards the symbols glowing softly on the panel by the door. ‘If that… Beacon thing… that machine, whatever it is, truly isn’t faulty, then why did it do what it did? And why were you surprised that it had only set off a few others in the corridor?’ He addressed this last question to Oslang.

There was a long silence and Oslang’s tone was sober when he eventually spoke.

‘The Beacons aren’t machines, Antyr. At least, not as I imagine you’d normally conceive a machine. In many ways they’re more a great store of knowledge – our knowledge, accumulated over the years. They’re all linked together, continually testing for… inappropriate… uses of the Power throughout the Cadwanen. They don’t exactly think, but it’s almost as if they did, the way they check and double-check each other constantly to provide many overlapping and different layers of defence and protection. You have to understand that they were designed to protect us against an enemy of both great cunning and great ability and that they’re very sophisticated devices. More so now than ever before. What that one signalled was a threat of the first order – a serious and unexpected use – abuse – of the Power. For such a thing to happen under normal circumstances, we’d have expected a major incursion of some kind, with Warnings sounding all over the Cadwanen. To just activate spontaneously like that really makes no sense.’