Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

Andawyr made a concerned gesture, but Antyr did not allow him to speak. ‘You know you can’t help me. Not yet, anyway.’ His voice became very soft. ‘It’s possible that no one anywhere can help me; that I and I alone have to discover what all this means; that my real journey shouldn’t have been over the seas and mountains, but into myself. I don’t know. But if that’s so, and I find myself suddenly both here and in another place, then apart from the hurt that Tarrian and Grayle will do to anyone who intrudes, and the hurt you’ll then have to do to them, their need to protect my body here may draw them away from helping me against greater danger.’

Andawyr’s thumb and forefinger moved from massaging his nose to squeezing his eyes. His voice was strained when he spoke.

‘You’re right,’ he said, equally softly. ‘We can’t help you. Not with what we know at the moment. And, too, you may be right – perhaps your journey’s going to be for you alone. That’s something that many of us here are all too familiar with.’

He affected a heartiness he did not feel. ‘We’ll do whatever you wish. Everyone here is here freely. You’re welcome to stay or go as the whim takes you. If you choose to stay – which I should prefer – if only because I’ve taken quite a shine to your Companions – and to you,’ he added as a conspicuous afterthought. ‘Then we’ll do as you say. We’ll leave you wherever you fall.’

The next day, Antyr slept late, much to the scorn of Yatsu and Jaldaric.

‘I’m sure you two have letters to write, or something,’ he growled as the two Goraidin finally rousted him from his bed, adding reproachfully to the two wolves, silent witnesses to this atrocity, ‘Fine guards you are.’

‘I thought we’d resolved to emulate our good friends here,’ Tarrian retorted, affecting injured surprise. ‘You know, spartan, self-denying, uncluttered by unattainable desires, firmly rooted in the present, looking always…’

‘Shut up.’

‘Oh. I must have misunderstood. Then again, I usually do, whenever you make this particular resolution.’

‘We were up at a respectable hour,’ Yatsu said, correctly interpreting the half of the exchange he heard. He took on Tarrian’s righteous air. ‘We’ve done everything we need to for the time being. We thought you might like to eat.’

‘Did I ever tell you that your capacity for doing things with such cheery gusto first thing in the morning is one of your least endearing traits?’ Antyr said sourly.

‘From memory, every day, I think,’ Yatsu replied blandly, looking at Jaldaric for corroboration.

‘Not every day,’ Jaldaric offered in Antyr’s defence. ‘I’d have to look in my journal but I’m sure he forgot at least twice. When he was seasick, if you remember.’ He ignored Antyr’s baleful look and touched the panel covering the mirror stone window. It unfurled silently and gracefully and light flooded into the room. It was accompanied by a cool breeze. The two wolves stretched luxuriously, then jumped up to put their forepaws on the sill so that they could examine the view.

‘Isn’t this place splendid?’ Yatsu said, banter replaced by openness. Then, concerned, ‘I hear you had a bad time last night.’

Antyr was uncertain how to answer. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘I was whisked into some other place without warning. An awful place. Dark, frightening, full of terrifying sounds.’

‘Andawyr told us.’

‘Good,’ Antyr replied, with genuine relief. ‘I don’t particularly want to go through it again.’

Yatsu patted him on the shoulder, then gave a soldier’s shrug. The gesture told Antyr he had survived and that he had probably learned something, and that was all that mattered. He felt a twinge of injured indignation at this seemingly cavalier dismissal of his ordeal, though even as it came, he found he was able to set it aside. It was all that mattered. He had learned more than he had realized in the journey that had taken him to the Great Dream and thence brought him here. And he knew that Yatsu and Jaldaric were stalwart friends to him. Insofar as they could, they would guard and help him at all times, unbidden. They were quite deliberately helping him now, their presence anchoring him to the present so that he could cut away that part of the past which was valueless.

‘Everyone knows you’re to be left if it happens again unexpectedly,’ Yatsu said.

‘Everyone?’ Antyr echoed, incredulous. ‘Already?’

‘Everyone,’ Yatsu confirmed. ‘I told you this was a remarkable place. Get yourself cleaned up and decent, then we can eat.’

They ate where Antyr and Andawyr had eaten the previous day, though it was much busier now. At first Antyr found it difficult to cope with the undisguised attention he was attracting, though he soon learned to meet the looks he was receiving with an open greeting of his own.

‘I wondered how long it would take you to pick that up,’ Tarrian said patronizingly. ‘These aren’t the oafish inadequates that used to inhabit your old drinking haunts, you know. All of them are most intelligently curious. Indeed, they’re almost civilized.’

‘I’m sure they’ll set great store by your approval,’ Antyr retorted.

‘I’m sure they will,’ Tarrian agreed.

For much of the rest of the day, Yatsu and Jaldaric being occupied, Tarrian and Grayle chose to go their own way, leaving Antyr to do the same, alone. He set off with great confidence, wandering through busy halls and chambers, large and small, but despite his best efforts, he found the complex maze of twisting, interlinking corridors and divided and subdivided levels deeply bewildering. It did not help that no door he encountered bore any indication of what was behind it, and no junction bore any indication of what lay in what direction.

With the unerring knack of a stranger in a strange place, he sought advice mainly from those who knew little more than he did.

‘How do you find your way around this place?’ he asked one red-faced individual he found himself walking alongside.

‘With great difficulty, Dream Finder, great difficulty,’ came the reply. That he was known to this stranger was by then no surprise. However Andawyr had spread the news about him through his domain it had been singularly effective. It was just one of a mounting list of questions that he had about the place. A brief conversation identified the man as a novice of barely a week and the two of them parted firm friends in adversity and still lost.

Eventually his wanderings brought him through a suddenly widening corridor and into a spacious communal area of some kind. For a moment he thought he had stepped outside, as along much of one side was a vista of the mountains and the broad plains beyond. The sight brought him to an abrupt halt.

There were many people there, talking, reading, dozing, though the place was so large that there was no feeling of its being crowded. An abrupt silence greeted him as he became the focus of a collective inspection but it lasted for only a moment as the looks became as many smiles and several hands were raised to attract his attention. A hand on his elbow spared him the difficulty of making a choice about which to accept.

It was Usche.

‘I’m sure you’d like to sit down,’ she said, her voice full of laughter. ‘You have the despairing look of an irredeemably lost novice.’

‘I’ve met one of those,’ Antyr replied. ‘You’re probably right.’

Usche motioned him to a group at the far end of the room. She shooed one of them out of the way and placed Antyr on a low couch. He sagged into it with conspicuous relief and rubbed his ankles. His reaction provoked a response similar to Usche’s initial greeting. ‘You’ll get used to the place,’ was the common advice, but Usche shook her head.