Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

‘Anderras Darion, young man,’ came a stern voice. ‘More to the point, where have you been to come back bearing such a gift?’ He turned to see an old woman sitting nearby. At least, he thought it was an old woman, though there was an ageless quality about her face that made it difficult for him to tell. Bright blue eyes held him fixed, however, preventing him from either replying to her question or asking his own.

Hawklan turned to her sharply. ‘Gently, Memsa,’ he said with both reproach and surprise. Gulda tapped her stick on the floor impatiently and seemed set to dispute with him for a moment. Then, with a curt nod, she released her captive.

Pinnatte and Vredech had been brought back to Anderras Darion as quickly as the night and the road would allow. Both Hawklan and Andawyr had examined them again as soon as they reached the castle, but neither had been able to reach any conclusion as to what had happened. In the end, there being no danger to the two men immediately apparent, and bearing in mind Nertha’s strange but unequivocal pronouncement that they could well be in some other place, they had reluctantly had to settle for making them comfortable and watching them, pending fresher thoughts the following day.

They had been joined shortly after dawn by a grim-faced Nertha, well rested but less than grateful for the sleep that Hawklan had given her. Gulda had been with them throughout. She had confined her own examination of the two men to laying her hand on their foreheads but otherwise she had said nothing. For what was left of the night she had sat motionless in her characteristic pose; hands clamped over the top of her stick and her chin resting on them.

When the two men suddenly woke and the room filled with the piercing screams of the riders, Andawyr, Hawklan and Nertha all cried out and covered their ears. Gulda, however, straightened up sharply and gazed about her, as if following every echoing nuance of the sounds as they clamoured about the room like trapped and demented animals.

Hawklan knelt down between the two beds. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked both of them.

‘I think so,’ Vredech said, though he was pale and visibly confused. ‘This is really Anderras Darion?’

‘Yes,’ Hawklan replied. ‘Welcome to my home.’

Vredech levered himself upright. The movement made him feel light-headed and he took his wife’s arm for support. He realized that his legs were shaking, a reminder of his reckless dash down the mountainside. He looked at his host and managed to smile.

‘So you’re the man we’ve journeyed all this way to meet.’ He held out his hand. ‘I don’t know how we came here, but I think we owe you a debt of thanks…’ He stopped abruptly and turned to Pinnatte guiltily. Swinging off the bed he leaned forward and looked at his companion anxiously. He echoed Hawklan’s question earnestly. ‘Are you all right?’

Pinnatte nodded, then shook his head.

‘Cobwebs back?’ Vredech asked, his face pained.

Pinnatte grimaced and nodded again.

Vredech squeezed his arm encouragingly. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll remember. I’ll make sure everyone knows. You’ll not be left out. And thanks for whatever you just did.’

Pinnatte shrugged. ‘You,’ he said.

Vredech shrugged in his turn. ‘It’s not important,’ he said. ‘What’s important is that we’re safe here.’

‘No,’ Pinnatte said flatly. ‘No one’s safe.’ He looked around the room. ‘Tell.’

‘Yes,’ Gulda said, tapping her stick forcefully on the floor as she stood up. ‘Tell.’

‘No,’ Nertha intervened, placing herself resolutely between the two men and the advancing Memsa. ‘Talking can wait. These two need to wash, change their clothes and have something to eat before they do anything else.’

The two women stared at one another for a long moment, then Gulda gave a brief grunt. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I apologize.’

Hawklan and Andawyr exchanged a look of open surprise, though they ensured that Gulda did not see it.

The door opened and Atelon entered, his face flushed and concerned. ‘What was that noise? Oh!’

The exclamation came as he saw Vredech and Pinnatte awake. His concern became relief and then concern again. ‘You’re bleeding,’ he said to Pinnatte.

Nertha swore under her breath and with an angry look at Hawklan and Andawyr pushed them both aside as she moved to Pinnatte.

‘He wasn’t bleeding before,’ Andawyr protested plaintively as he was drawn into her wake.

‘Well, he’s bleeding now,’ Nertha retorted, untying Vredech’s already slack kerchief and looking closely at the cut. ‘It looks worse than it is, I think.’ She smiled at Pinnatte. ‘At least it’s clean. Get my bag, and some water.’

While Pinnatte was being attended to, Vredech looked at his own hands. Just as they had been in that strange blue world, they too were scratched. What else had he brought from there? he thought. And what had he left?

Andawyr took Atelon aside. ‘Take care of Pinnatte and Vredech.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And Nertha. Keep a close eye on them. And stay alert.’

As Atelon took his charges in hand, Gulda flicked her stick at Hawklan and Andawyr. ‘Come with me, you two, we need to talk.’

She led them along a bright corridor at the end of which was a door that opened on to a broad, circular balcony. It overlooked a small park and children’s voices rose up to greet them. Gulda leaned on the stone parapet and watched the children for some time before speaking. She seemed to be unusually uneasy.

‘What’s the matter, Memsa?’ Hawklan ventured.

‘What indeed?’ she replied, maintaining her vigil over the playing children. ‘What indeed?’

Hawklan and Andawyr looked at one another but found no enlightenment.

‘No slight thing, I’d deduce, from your manner,’ Hawklan said. ‘Indeed, I’d deduce that from the fact that you’ve come back to Anderras Darion. I’d thought never to see you again.’

Gulda looked round at the towers and spires of the great castle, then at her questioner. ‘I thought I’d never be back,’ she replied. ‘I thought that with the Uhriel slain at last and Sumeral destroyed so totally there’d be no more need for me.’ She turned back to the children. ‘Except as a wandering teacher.’

‘But?’

‘But… little signs everywhere. Little signs – and doubts deep within myself that, though chance and courage had conspired to give us victory, perhaps all was not truly over. That what was scattered might come together again, as it had before.’ She drummed a brief tattoo on the parapet with her long fingers. ‘Only vagueness, Hawklan. A strangeness in the wind that says that rain is coming, winter, spring, something. A call beneath the senses.’

‘It’s a deep call if it’s beneath your senses,’ Hawklan said, without irony.

‘Who can truly assess the effects of the least thing?’ she replied. ‘Who knows what things we truly know? Who knows how we guide ourselves?’

She abandoned the children and began walking around the balcony. ‘Suffice it that I sensed a coming together of some kind. It was a dark and ominous feeling. And my feet turned me towards here.’

Unusually, Andawyr showed a hint of impatience. ‘We’ll talk about that over the next few days, together with everything else.’ He put his hands to his temples. ‘So many things are happening so quickly we mustn’t confuse coincidence and cause. We’ll have the tales of our visitors – and, from what I’ve heard so far, these are mightily strange – and we’ll have the Accounting of the Goraidin. If there’s a pattern there, we’ll find it, you know that. We’re all of us wiser than we were.’ Following Gulda’s deceptively fast stride, they moved into the shade of the tower. The sound of the children was replaced by the clatter of horses’ hooves in the stone courtyard below. ‘But that’s not why you dragged us out here, is it?’