Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

Gulda took Loman’s hand and squeezed it powerfully. ‘Light be with you, young Loman. You were a handful but you’ve done well. I always thought you would in the end. Give my love to your child and hers.’

‘I will, Memsa,’ he replied, massaging his hand. ‘And thank you. Send for me if I’m needed. Failing that, I’ll be back – in a week or so.’

As the two men prepared to mount, Tarrian and Grayle emerged from somewhere and headed purposefully towards Endryk. He looked down at them uncertainly.

‘Nals is well.’

Endryk started as the voice sounded in his mind and Tarrian had to repeat the message twice before Endryk realized what was happening. Nals had been a stray dog that had been with him for much of his time in Arvenstaat. He knelt down in front of the wolf, the damp grass staining his trousers.

‘He says he was sorry to leave you at the border, but he knew you were going to be all right – you’d found your way,’ Tarrian went on, adding, with heavy male confidentiality. ‘And he’d caught wind of a bitch. Got quite a pack now. And slowing down a bit, by all accounts. He says thank you for your companionship, it was good running with you.’

It was a peculiar and unexpected relief to Endryk. The sight of his sole companion of many years standing on the river bank as he and Thyrn and the others had crossed it and ridden away northwards still came back occasionally to disturb him.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘But how do you know all this?’

‘It’s a wolf thing, Endryk,’ Tarrian replied, wilfully mysterious.

Then the two men were riding slowly down the winding road that led from the castle. The small group watched them until they were out of sight.

The atmosphere in the Labyrinth hall was nervous and fretful. There were more than a few bleary eyes present, many discussions having carried on late into the night and sleep, in any event, having been generally elusive.

As before, Andawyr went straight to their concerns. ‘Given that no one has an alternative to Vredech’s suggestion, we’ve at least two problems in carrying any conflict to the enemy. Firstly, we know little or nothing about the nature of these Gateways between the worlds, and, secondly, should we locate their world, we know from experience that striking down an Uhriel is going to be no easy task. However, to our advantage, and as Vredech reminded us yesterday, we know that the use of the Power they apparently have now doesn’t seem to be helping them pass through the Gateways, while some amongst us slip through them with ease – incontinently, almost. And we know that, given surprise, they can be hurt.’

‘That’s as may be,’ Yatsu said, indicating the other Goraidin. ‘But we’re having some difficulty with the practicalities of all this. When Antyr was… transported… to wherever it was he fought with Ivaroth and the blind man, all Jaldaric and I saw was his body being guarded by Tarrian and Grayle. When Vredech and Pinnatte found themselves in the Uhriel’s world, they too were here, apparently asleep.’ He raised his hand to forestall a reply. ‘I’m not disputing what we’ve been told, but it defeats me how anyone can be in two places at once.’ He made an abrupt and dismissive gesture. ‘But leaving that aside for the moment, we still don’t know where these Gateways are, what they’re… made of… for want of a better word, or how we can pass through them in any predictable way which is what we’ll need to do if we’re going to resort to some kind of assassination mission.’

Unusually, Andawyr looked helpless. ‘The Gateways are just points of contact between our world and other worlds,’ he said unhappily. ‘Like an ordinary doorway they’re… nothing… defined by what’s around them.’

Yatsu’s expression told him what he already knew – this didn’t help.

Usche caught Andawyr’s eye and he nodded to her.

‘These Gateways shouldn’t be as accessible as they are,’ she said. ‘The different worlds just shouldn’t touch this frequently. The fact that they are is just another indication of what Andawyr spoke of yesterday – something seriously wrong at the deepest levels of what we think of as our reality – something that goes back to the Great Searing. A deep harm was done at that time. What we call Gateways are more akin to… cracks… slowly spreading through a building.’

She hesitated for a moment, suddenly intimidated both by what she was saying and the intensity with which her audience was listening. She almost flinched as Dacu raised his hand to speak.

‘Accepting what you’re saying – and I’d dearly like not to – where does Sumeral fit into it? Is He the cause of this… cracking… or is He just taking advantage of it?’

‘The latter, we think, though in truth we don’t even know what Sumeral really is – whether He’s a cause or an effect. He could be a manifestation of the flaw itself, or he could be a consequence of it.’ Usche was trembling. Andawyr motioned her to sit down.

‘We’ve no absolute answers, Dacu,’ he said. ‘This is the most we know. You’re hearing in minutes what’s taken years of floundering endeavour – painstaking thought, experiment, analysis. I’ll be frank with you: as I stumbled towards these ideas, I felt that the roots of everything I’ve ever known were being shaken. At one point I thought I was going mad. But the roots weren’t being shaken, I was just beginning to learn how deeply and how far they really go. Ethriss told the Cadwanol to go beyond and we’re pushing the limits of our knowledge so far and so fast now that it’s giddying for me, let alone you.’ His manner darkened. ‘It’s just as well we are, though. Without this knowledge we wouldn’t even have seen these problems coming. As for what we can do, we’re doing it – talking, listening, keeping our minds and imaginations open – bringing everything we have to this. Carry on, Usche.’

The young Cadwanwr had composed herself but she remained seated as she spoke.

‘We’ve known for some time that what we thought was the beginning of all things, the Great Searing as we call it, wasn’t,’ she began carefully. ‘Too many things around us are just too old. We think now that it was caused by a weapon – or weapons – and that it or they also caused this fatal flaw.’ A murmur of disbelief greeted this but she pressed on. The Labyrinth carried an echo of her sing-song voice around the hall, giving emphasis to it. ‘I understand your doubts. I’m Riddinvolk. Like the Fyordyn we’ve a strong military tradition – a remnant of the Wars of the First Coming. We all carry weapons and are prepared to protect ourselves and our neighbours if an enemy threatens. We live in peace because of it and that we’re all here today is testimony to the rightness of it. But I find it difficult to imagine a weapon capable of affecting an entire world, and impossible to imagine a society that would use such a thing! Nevertheless, this seems to have been the case.’

Yrain was drumming her fingers on the table.

‘Oklar set the entire battlefront ablaze in Narsindal,’ Yengar reminded everyone by way of support for Usche.

She acknowledged the comment gratefully but shook her head. ‘The weapon we’re talking about was no simple battlefield device. Nor was it anything that simply destroyed, like sword or fire. It was something that reached down into the depths of what we – what all living things – are. It unmade the essence of every living thing it touched – transformed it into something that fed on itself – grew and spread…’

It was becoming too much for Yrain.

‘This is nonsense!’ she burst out scornfully. ‘In a war, all that weapons transform living things into is dead things. And how can you possibly know what happened before the beginning of everything?’