Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

He peered through the heavy blue twilight, seeking some clue in the mysterious and unpleasant terrain. But there was nothing. Yet, he realized, he was more himself here, more the Pinnatte who had flitted through the crowded streets and byways of Arash-Felloren, confident, sure-footed, ever watchful for both opportunity and danger. Gone was the haziness that seemed to have come between his mind and his speech since the Kyrosdyn had started their damned experiments with him. It was good.

‘If I didn’t dream, I’d say this was one,’ he said softly.

‘I don’t dream either,’ Vredech said. ‘And wherever this place is, it’s real. This kind of thing has happened to me before.’

‘What has?’

‘This moving to… other places… without warning. I don’t understand it. One of the reasons I was going to Anderras Darion was to find out about it. At one stage I thought I was going mad.’

‘Perhaps we’ve both gone mad,’ Pinnatte said.

Vredech shook his head and laid a reassuring hand on Pinnatte’s arm. ‘There’s no madness here. Not in us, anyway.’

Releasing Pinnatte, he put his hand to his face. Although no wind was blowing, there was a sensation on his face as though one were.

‘Your hands are shaking,’ Pinnatte said. ‘I thought you said this had happened to you before.’

‘I didn’t say I enjoyed it or that I wasn’t afraid,’ Vredech replied. He looked around. ‘And I was never anywhere like this. No clouds, no sun, no stars; this place is like nothing I could have even imagined.’

‘And the air smells funny.’

‘Acrid,’ Vredech agreed. ‘Like a smithy, burning metal, but cold instead of hot.’

‘How do we get back?’ Pinnatte asked hesitantly.

‘When it’s happened before I’ve found myself back where I was, just as unexpectedly as I… left,’ Vredech said, though he knew there was no comfort in the words. He closed his eyes. Faintly he could feel another part of him, lying in the tent. Nertha was watching over him. But how indeed to get back there? Pinnatte’s question started a panic mounting that took him some effort to control. There was nothing he could do. Nothing except wait. He passed his conclusion on to his companion.

Pinnatte was rubbing his hand. ‘Do you think it’s something to do with what the Kyrosdyn did to me?’

‘I’ve no idea, I…’

‘Look.’ Pinnatte was pointing.

Vredech followed his hand, reaching out over the fractured plain.

‘I can’t see anything.’

‘There, look.’ Pinnatte jabbed the air in emphasis.

Vredech blinked, then narrowed his eyes in an attempt to penetrate the all-pervading blue light.

As he saw the figures, so the sound of them reached him.

It was no welcoming hail. High-pitched, tearing and cruel, it cut through Vredech and Pinnatte as it cut through the acrid blue air. Both men brought their hands to their ears to keep out the awful sound, but to no avail. It seemed to Vredech that the mountains themselves quivered and rang at its touch. Pinnatte dropped low. Feeling doubly exposed, Vredech followed him. Crouching side by side, they watched the approaching figures.

Apart from the difficulties posed by the light, they were too far away for any detail to be seen, save that they were riding and that there were three of them with one leading and two following on either side. They maintained their stations so meticulously and kept to so straight a line that they had the appearance of an arrowhead as they moved across the plain. Both Vredech and Pinnatte gasped as the three riders jumped over a wide ravine without changing either speed or formation.

‘Who are they?’ Pinnatte whispered.

Alarm made Vredech’s reply irritable. ‘I told you, I’ve never been here. I’ve no idea who they are – or what.’

Pinnatte ignored his tone. His instincts spoke. ‘I think we should keep away from them.’

Another cry reached them. It was joined by others, screeching and frightening. Though he could detect nothing intelligible in the sound, the hairs on Vredech’s arms rose in response. A ghastly conversation was being held. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s probably a good idea. They don’t sound particularly hospitable.’

‘They sound terrifying,’ Pinnatte corrected him, his eyes wide. ‘I’m glad we’re halfway up a mountain.’ He pointed to some rocks nearby and, following his unspoken command, he and Vredech slipped silently into their lee. ‘This feels a bit better,’ Pinnatte whispered as Vredech joined him. ‘We can watch them from here.’

The noises stopped.

‘Keep quiet, keep still!’ Pinnatte said urgently. It was another command, but although the figures were a considerable distance away, Vredech did not feel inclined to dispute it. Though there was silence now, the cries still seemed to be ringing through him. They stirred such darkness within him that it was all he could do to stop himself from praying.

Where was this place? And how had he and Pinnatte come here? Or, for that matter, why? That was a bad question. He shied away from it and closed his eyes again to reach out for the part of him that he could feel lying safely under the watchful eye of his wife. It was still there, though there was something strange and confused about it now…

Pinnatte was shaking him, returning him to this eerie blue world.

The figures had come to a halt. They were standing side by side, completely motionless. Vredech found he was holding his breath. This place was unnaturally quiet, he realized. There was not even a hint of the susurration of distant tumbling streams and the blowing of the wind through low cols and around high peaks that was always present in the mountains. It was as though the peaks themselves were standing in fearful obeisance to these new arrivals.

Or were they too perhaps trying to avoid their attention?

Vredech forced out a gulping breath. Relax, he ordered himself. This predicament was strange enough without letting his imagination overwhelm him.

Then, with a slowness that was as unnatural as the silence draping down from the waiting mountains, the figures were moving again, this time behind one another. Very gradually, the gap between them increased and the line began to turn until finally they were equally spaced and moving in a wide circle. Soft mewlings reached Pinnatte and Vredech, but for all their softness they were as disturbingly unpleasant as the screams that had first announced the arrival of the three riders.

Like hunting creatures trying to lure out a shy prey, Vredech thought.

A further pattern was emerging. While the riders maintained their respective positions, the circle was slowly shrinking. At the same time they were increasing their speed. Unsettling in its precision, it became a giddying and hypnotic sight that seemed to stretch time itself for the two watchers.

The cries that accompanied this taut and inward spiralling changed in harmony with it, rising and falling in a broken, uneven rhythm, like a rasping incantation. Vredech leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. There was something at the centre of the circle, he was sure – something forming.

‘Be careful,’ Pinnatte whispered, drawing him back.

‘Can you see what they’re riding around?’ Vredech asked.

Pinnatte squinted in his turn. ‘No,’ he replied, then, ‘There might be a light or something. Moving about. I can’t see properly through this blue air.’

A wave of sound broke over them in an unexpected and jangling climax, making them both start. Then, as sharply as though a sword had cut through it, it stopped.

The sudden cessation was as jolting as the first hearing. Vredech shook his head. Were the sounds still reverberating in his ears, nothing more than a physical response, like the images that linger in the eyes after looking at too bright a light, or were they real? Echoes of the riders’ cries leaking down to him as they resonated from peak to peak, carrying their message to the farthest extremities of this bleak place. Pinnatte too was shaking his head as though to clear it, but neither man spoke. They renewed their observation of the distant figures.