Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

‘It’s the same as when I left it,’ he whispered, bending down and laying a hand on the coarse mountain grass as if to test what he was seeing. ‘This was the last part of the world unchanged. Why haven’t they destroyed it – made it the same as everywhere else?’

‘Perhaps you did more harm than you thought when you stabbed one of them,’ Jenna offered, but Gentren did not reply.

‘Don’t doubt its reality,’ Dacu said, echoing Antyr’s words for everyone’s benefit. He patted his chest and dug his toe into the ground, dislodging a small stone.

Yatsu was counting. The eight Goraidin were there plus Marna, Gentren and Pinnatte. Despite determined efforts to maintain an appearance of calm, all of them were visibly shaken.

‘Where’s Andawyr? And Antyr – all the others?’ someone asked.

Yatsu glanced around with everyone else, then frowned and shook his head. ‘Whatever the Cadwanwr were expecting, this must be just a part of it.’ He turned away briefly, then said, ‘I suppose we’d better concentrate on our own survival before we start bothering about them – or about what’s happened.’

They were on the lower slopes of a small mountain. A little way below them the land levelled out into undulating countryside, and though it was difficult to see either any detail or for any distance in the strange blue twilight, there were no signs of anything moving. Yatsu pointed in the other direction, towards the shoulder of the slope they were standing on. ‘Let’s check the other side then see what we can do about making camp.’

‘In the name of pity, what is this place?’ Yrain’s dismayed voice echoed all their thoughts as they reached the shoulder.

Where, before, the blue air had closed about and hidden the landscape, here it seemed to highlight and accentuate the terrain now spread in front of them. Two rows of towering mountains, sheer-sided and jagged, marched to the horizon, etched in blue-in-black shadows against the strained blue sky. It was similar to the scene that Vredech had described, except that here there was a far greater clarity of shape and a multiplicity of symmetries. And the plain between the two rows of mountains was different. Whereas Vredech had told of a disordered lattice of cracks and ravines, this was so smooth as to disturb the eye by its evenness.

‘Their place, more than ever,’ Pinnatte said.

Gentren’s face contorted, then he covered it with his hands and dropped to his knees silently. Yatsu made to speak to him but changed his mind. What could be said to someone whose entire world had been transformed into this abomination? It was no small measure of the man that he had retained his sanity.

Yengar and Olvric gently helped him to his feet as Yatsu turned them all away from the Uhriel’s handiwork and motioned them back to where they had arrived.

‘Practicalities, my friends, practicalities,’ he said. ‘Let’s do what we’re good at. Shelter, water and food, in that order. And, given that this is the Uhriel’s world, we’d better make sure the shelter’s well hidden.’ He turned to Gentren who had recovered a little. ‘I’ll have to press you,’ he said. ‘You know this land; are there any towns or villages nearby – farms, anything?’

Gentren shook his head. ‘The nearest town is a good half-day’s ride away but it’s deserted – if it’s there.’ He looked around in desperation. ‘And the most you’ll find are a few like me, wandering aimlessly.’

‘It’s probably not a good idea to go too far from here,’ Dacu said. ‘There must be a Gateway here somewhere that leads back to our world.’

‘We don’t even know if our world still exists,’ Yatsu replied grimly. ‘But you’re right. Besides, I don’t relish trekking over this terrain in this foul air Let’s find shelter.’

‘From what?’ Gentren asked. ‘There’ll be no wind, no sun, no rain to hide from. It’ll stay like this until… until they decide to do whatever it is they’re going to do.’

Yatsu scowled. ‘We’ll need a hiding place at least,’ he said.

A few brief instructions split the group into three parties. Olvric and Yengar returned to the shoulder of the slope to keep watch. Jenna, Yrain and Marna together with Jaldaric and Tirke were sent out to forage for food and water, while the remainder went with Yatsu in search of a suitable site for a concealed camp.

It did not take them long to find a cave that would serve admirably as both a shelter and a hiding place, but that was the extent of their good fortune. Jenna and the others had only bad news when they returned.

‘No sign of any animals or birds, most of the vegetation is dying, and the two stream beds we came across were bone dry,’ Jenna announced bluntly.

‘There’s been no rain for a long time,’ Gentren said.

For the first time since they had arrived, something like despair gripped the Goraidin.

‘What’s the matter?’ Pinnatte asked anxiously.

‘The matter is that without water we’re all going to be dead within a few days,’ Dacu said to him quietly. ‘And none too pleasantly, at that.’ Pinnatte licked his lips, then swallowed.

‘That changes our priorities somewhat,’ Yatsu said. He turned to Gentren. ‘Are there any rivers around here, or lakes?’ he asked. ‘They won’t all have dried up completely, surely?’

Before Gentren could reply, Yengar was with them. He spoke very quietly.

‘Three riders coming – across the plain.’

Nertha forced her hand to stop fiddling with the sleeve of her husband’s tunic. Then she forced her thoughts into words.

‘He’s alive,’ she said, her voice unsteady despite her clenched teeth. ‘They’re all alive. They’ll be somewhere else… doing something… fighting this.’

She knew that this was her head battling against the clamouring fears of her body, but she clung to it. It was the truth. It was something she had experienced before. Her understanding of events needed to be no deeper. No matter what happened here, while these people were alive, events, somewhere, would be moving.

‘And I’m alive,’ she reminded herself, equally determinedly.

Antyr’s words came back to her. ‘You’re stronger than you know.’

She didn’t feel it, she thought, but that too was nothing new. As a physician, she had seen many things that had left her wrung with pity and desperate helplessness but she had coped… and learned. Whatever had happened had happened and she must do what she could, while she could.

Face taut with control, she returned to what she knew – methodically checking the life signs of first Thyrn, then Farnor…

Then Antyr and Vredech.

For they too had collapsed as the Labyrinth hall with everything and everyone in it had silently faded away, leaving her with the four unconscious men, alone in a grey and featureless world.

He was screaming.

That much he knew.

He was without form and all about him was chaos.

It danced and shuddered to the rhythm of his cries.

On and on.

Then another rhythm was struggling to impose itself.

‘Vredech.’

Over and over it sounded until it began to dominate the shifting shapes and patterns and noises that were flowing through and around him.

He began to recognize it.

It was what he had been. Once, when…

When…?

Time was nothing here…

It changed. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ it said, insistently. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

A familiarity seeped into it…

Antyr!

Vredech knew himself, and his awareness wrapped itself about the intrusion like a drowning man about his rescuer.

But the Dream Finder’s will sustained them both.

‘We’re entering a dream nexus,’ he said. ‘You’ve done this before, with me, remember?’