Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

Dar-volci was not normally given to uncertainty and his hesitation added to Hawklan’s unease. He risked an element of levity in his reply. ‘You can attend to that, then. You felcis are supposed to come from a time before the Great Searing, aren’t you?’ he said, unclear himself whether he was being serious or not.

‘We do,’ Dar-volci replied flatly. ‘Or our line does, to be more accurate.’ His half-closed eyes opened suddenly, bright, wide and challenging. ‘How do we know such a thing, you ask? It’s buried deep in the spiralling knowledge that lies at the heart of every least part of us.’ Then he responded to Hawklan’s need, becoming ironic again. ‘But I’m afraid we don’t have it written on a piece of paper somewhere to show everyone,’ he said, his manner heavily confidential.

Hawklan laughed, grateful for the humour, though it served only to dispel briefly the darkness into which Dar-volci’s original analysis has plunged him. As he pondered it now he saw that, in many ways, it was a darkness that had perhaps been growing since the war itself. It was quite separate from the pain and the suffering he had seen and tended. That was something he had been able both to accept and yet detach himself from. That was a necessary part of his lot as a healer. This was different. It was unclear, ill-formed. It came from another place within him and it hung around the words that Sumeral had spoken to him as, Ethriss’s Black Sword in his hand, he had run along the causeway across Lake Kedrieth and towards the mist-shrouded fortress of Derras Ustramel to destroy this returned abomination.

‘ Greatest of my Uhriel ,’ He had called him.

Whenever this memory returned to him, he was running again on that dank and empty causeway with no sounds about him other than his own soft footfalls and the icy lapping of the lake. A coldness had possessed him as Sumeral’s voice had rung through him, as beautiful as it was fearful.

‘ Greatest of my Uhriel. ’

Every part of him had screamed out in denial. This could not be so! Had not Ethriss’s own hand snatched him from the point of death on an ancient battlefield of the First Coming to bring him to face Sumeral in this time?

‘ That hand was mine, Hawklan. Ethriss spared none of his creations. I saw your true worth and took you to be mine when I should rise again. ’

Soul-shaking words.

‘ See your inheritance and deny it if you can. ’

Then had come His vision of Ethriss’s world and those beyond, and how they were to be remade in His image. Flawless, perfect, without the least impairment. Even now, it lingered hauntingly in Hawklan’s thoughts, though he rarely spoke of it. He seemed to have no ability to go beyond it, to question it. It was there. Finished. A totality.

And with the memory came another. One that racked him. Numbed by Sumeral’s revelation, and tempted by His words, he had let slip the Black Sword. ‘ Ethriss’s cruel goad .’ That had been a deed of the profoundest folly, he had come to believe, though any reason for this certainty was denied him. He needed no sword in this now-peaceful world, and even if he should there were countless in the Armoury at Anderras Darion that would serve him perfectly well. Yet something that was a part of him had been lost.

He felt his hand opening and the Sword tumbling from it. It could only have fallen into that grey, cold lake, surely? But he remembered it falling for ever, through the darkness, falling, falling, until a ringing chime had signalled… what? He tried to rationalize what he had heard. There had been so many other sounds dinning through that dank Narsindal greyness as Sumeral and his great fortress had been destroyed. It could not have been as he remembered it. Yet…

‘At the lakeside again?’ Dar-volci’s voice shattered his reverie.

‘Despite your denials, I still think you read minds,’ Hawklan replied, looking up.

Dar-volci shook his head. ‘I prefer both depth and quality in my reading.’

He spat into the fire.

‘Bad taste in your mouth?’

‘At the lakeside again,’ Dar-volci said sourly.

‘Do you think we’ll ever leave it?’

Dar-volci’s firelit eyes glinted at him. ‘I left it that same day,’ he said. ‘I only go back because you’re still there.’ He shook his head with an irritated growl and spat into the fire again.

Hawklan bowed apologetically. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I value your company.’ Then he heard himself saying, ‘I shouldn’t have dropped the Sword.’

For a timeless moment, there was nothing anywhere save the man and the felci by the fire, hovering in a universe of absolute silence. Dar-volci slowly inclined his head.

‘Well, well, well. It’s taken you some time to say that, hasn’t it?’

Hawklan let out a long breath. There was a feeling inside him such as a vast and still ocean might know as the unseen forces holding it imperceptibly eased past a point of balance and turned its smooth rippled equilibrium from ebb to flow.

‘I think you may be right,’ he said.

‘You’re not contemplating sending another batch of poor volunteers out to plumb that foul lake, are you?’

Hawklan hurriedly disclaimed that notorious enterprise. ‘Fortunately that was never my idea. Besides, wherever it is, it’s not there, I’m sure of that now. It’s gone as mysteriously as it came.’

Dar-volci turned towards the tent where Vredech and Pinnatte were lying. ‘Somewhere else, eh? Like our two friends, perhaps? Maybe they’ll come across it for you.’

A companionable silence settled between the two. Dar-volci eventually broke it. ‘Do you ever have the feeling that at some deep level everything is coming apart, unravelling?’

Hawklan gave him a perplexed look.

Dar-volci stood up and shook himself. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just a fancy. I’m sure if anything’s amiss it’ll show itself soon enough.’

‘Andawyr says he feels things are not so much coming apart as coming together,’ Hawklan said. ‘You, Atelon, Thyrn, all the others, suddenly appearing with your frightening stories, is going to give him even more to think about.’

‘Andawyr’s at Anderras Darion?’

Hawklan catalogued. ‘And Yatsu and Jaldaric. And Yengar, Olvric, Jenna, Yrain. All of them, like you, with unusual guests. And Gulda!’

Dar-volci was sitting on his haunches. He emitted a series of excited whistles. ‘Do tell, dear boy,’ he said, imitating Gavor. Then he cocked his head sharply on one side and muttered something under his breath.

‘Don’t bother, they’re here.’

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Vredech said.

‘Hush!’ came the urgent reply.

No sun was to be seen and the sky rang with a dark and peculiar blue. Beneath it was a harsh and rugged landscape.

Blue-in-black shadows shaped out a curving line of jagged peaks and crags that lowered over a wide plain. Stretching to a blue-echoing horizon, it was cracked and split by deep ravines, which gave it the look of something dead and long decayed.

Vredech did not know why he had said, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ because he was very afraid himself. A habit brought with him from his pastoral duties, doubtless, he decided. Trying to bring comfort even though he saw cause for none.

He and Pinnatte were standing near the top of a broad col which rose up on either side of them to buttress sharp and cruel peaks. Where they were, how they had come there, how long they had been there were mysteries to him. He had gone to bed quite normally, then, abruptly, without any sense of change that he could recall, he had been here, Pinnatte crouching by him.

Pinnatte’s instincts, as a street thief, had been to remain still and silent in the face of an unexpected development until he could properly assess it. For danger there was here, he was sure. He too had found himself in this place without any recollection of how he came there.