Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

Still now, the three riders were standing side by side again. In front of them, Vredech could see a vague haziness. It was moving fitfully from side to side. As though held there against its will, Vredech thought. And it was twisting and turning, he was sure. It had the quality of the elusive shapes that flit across the resting eye, at once real and unreal, and though Vredech could see it, he could not focus on it nor even, he realized, judge exactly where it was. Was it just an illusion?

He blinked deliberately to see if it would move in response.

For an instant he was close to the riders and peering into the growing light. It was like a rift in the blue reality of this place.

And there was something within it, beyond it…

Then the cries were ringing about the mountains again, triumphant and malevolent, and he was crouching back down behind his distant shelter.

‘Are you all right?’ Pinnatte was asking. The street thief was holding his arm and looking at him anxiously.

Vredech nodded. ‘Yes. Just felt a little dizzy, that’s all.’

‘It’s the smell of this place,’ Pinnatte diagnosed, wrinkling his face to mark his own distress. ‘It’s setting my teeth on edge. And this damned light. It makes it difficult to see anything clearly. And it feels as though it’s shining right through me. As though I’m drowning in it… or not really here.’

The riders’ voices silenced him. Though still unintelligible they were obviously in a state of great excitement. Their ordered line had broken up and their mounts were rearing and kicking. Gone was all sign of the obsessive symmetry that had marked their approach and their circling of the light. As he watched them, something else disturbed Vredech. The movements of the horses were alien and strange.

Almost serpentine, he concluded. He let the thought pass and turned his attention back to the light that seemed to be the source of the riders’ celebration. It was no clearer to him than before, shifting and wavering erratically, though, at times, it moved to the pattern of the riders’ cries. Then their tone was different. Excitement was mounting, tilting now towards frenzy. One of the riders moved directly towards the light. It shifted and changed as he reached it, as if trying to avoid him, and the cries reaching Vredech and Pinnatte became a mixture of shrieking defiance and frantic urging.

The two other riders joined their fellow in this mysterious assault, but each time the first rider reached it, some unseen force turned him away.

‘What are they doing?’ Pinnatte asked, but Vredech waved him silent. Something about the unfolding scene was reaching deep inside him, shaking him, pounding him. It was both obscene and terrifying. Abruptly, he turned and vomited.

Pinnatte let out a hissing exclamation filled as much with alarm and disgust as concern.

‘I’m sorry,’ Vredech said, leaning back against the rock and wiping his hand across his now clammy forehead. ‘I don’t know what…’

Something had changed. Another sound was echoing through the mountains. It was full of despair and fury. Turning, Vredech saw its cause immediately.

The light was changing, slowly both shrinking and fading into the all-pervading blue of this strange place. For a while it faltered, growing fitfully as the pitch of the cries rose, looking set to return, then falling back again, smaller each time.

Its fate was inevitable, Vredech saw, though he could not have said why. No urging from the three riders could forestall it.

As it finally disappeared he turned away and covered his ears against the raging cacophony that he knew would follow.

Pinnatte did the same.

They remained thus for a long time, then both were suddenly aware of silence around them again. Looking up, they saw that the three riders were standing silent and motionless, equally spaced about a circle centred on the vanished light and facing where it had been. Vredech could feel a tension mounting that was far more menacing than anything he had felt before. Both he and Pinnatte stayed very still. It was not difficult; the mountains themselves seemed to be awaiting some decision.

‘They know we’re here,’ Pinnatte whispered, very softly. His eyes were wide and he was shaking.

‘No,’ Vredech said, rubbing his leaden stomach. ‘They can’t. They’re too far away.’ But even as he spoke he heard the lie in his own words. Nothing could be hidden for long on this desolate, ringing blue world. Some insight told him that each part of this place touched all others.

A solitary, almost coaxing cry rose up from the plain. Its unsteady tones rang round the trembling peaks like the keening of a hunting falcon. Vredech and Pinnatte both held their breaths as the eerie sound folded around them, echoing and fragmenting on the rocks that sheltered them before coming together again and swooping treacherously back down to the riders.

Pinnatte’s shaking infected Vredech. They can’t see us, they can’t see us, he repeated inwardly, over and over, as if repetition might make it so.

Another cry came. Harsher and taunting. Again the mountains carried the message and returned an answer.

Vredech saw Pinnatte’s hand close about a large stone. He tried to find a reassurance which a glance of the eyes might communicate to the young man, but could not. Though he had found himself in other worlds before, none of them had been as strange and disconcerting as this, and his leaving them had always been as involuntary as his arriving. Whatever it was about him that allowed such things was beyond his control. Should he be angry and frightened in order to carry himself and Pinnatte out of here? Or relaxed and calm? He did not know. He was helpless.

A third cry reached them, goading and confident.

The three riders began to move.

‘They’re coming for us,’ Pinnatte said.

‘You don’t know that,’ Vredech tried.

Pinnatte looked at him, almost scornfully. ‘I know when people are looking for me. I’ve known it all my life. That’s why I haven’t been caught very often.’ He became urgent and practical. ‘We need to get back where we came from, find a better hiding place, or get ready to deal with those three.’

‘I don’t know how to leave this place,’ Vredech said, doing his best to hold Pinnatte’s gaze.

‘Well, whoever they are, I don’t want to meet them face to face,’ Pinnatte retorted, without any hint of reproach at this admission.

Vredech glanced down at the approaching riders. ‘They’re not hurrying,’ he said. ‘And they’ll never get horses up here.’

Pinnatte was less sanguine. ‘I don’t know about the horses, but if they’re not hurrying it’s because they don’t have to. It’s not a good sign.’

With a grimace, Vredech bowed before the young man’s greater experience in such matters.

‘That leaves us with finding a hiding place,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps running.’

Pinnatte looked around desperately. ‘It’s not my kind of country. I’m used to streets and alleys and lots of noise and people.’

Vredech too was searching the terrain. He still clung faintly to the hope that the riders would not be able to make what looked to be a long and difficult climb to reach them.

A mocking cry circled around them. Pinnatte clamped his hands over his ears.

‘They don’t care what we do,’ he said, breathing heavily and obviously struggling to retain control of himself. ‘I’ve had to deal with people like that before. This is their place, their territory. All of it. Wherever we go, they’ll find us, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ He seized Vredech’s arm. ‘Are you sure you can’t get us back?’

‘I told you, I don’t know how,’ Vredech snapped, snatching his arm free.