Roger Taylor - The Return of the Sword

Memories of the training he had received from Antyr since his arrival at Anderras Darion were unfurling, steadying him. It had been limited but it had been enough for Vredech to recognize the truth of what he was being told. Nevertheless…

‘That was with Tarrian and Grayle holding me. This is…’

‘Different. Yes. But not so different. You can feel your body, can’t you? With Nertha tending us.’

‘Yes, but… everything’s wrong. She’s alone, and afraid… this is fearful, Antyr, for pity’s sake help me. I…’

For a moment, his panic threatened to return and overwhelm both of them. But Antyr cruelly crushed it.

‘No! Quieten yourself. I don’t know what’s happened any more than you do, but whatever’s drawn us here has drawn us together and left Nertha guarding us. You know her worth better than I do, so cling to it – just as I’m clinging to the knowledge that wherever Tarrian and Grayle are they’ll be seeking to protect us.’

‘But without them…’

‘Without them, we’ll be guided by our deeper natures – our deepest natures. We are the elite, remember? We must trust ourselves.’

Ironically, it was the honest uncertainty in Antyr’s repetition of his final injunction in the Labyrinth hall that helped Vredech finally take some semblance of command of himself. As he did so, a question came to him about the nexus that he and Antyr were caught in. As he touched Antyr’s mind with it, he found it was already being asked.

‘Who is the dreamer?’

The darkness rang and echoed with cries.

Andawyr rooted frantically through the junk in his pockets until he found the small radiant-stone lantern. He struck it and the cries changed in character, becoming the accompaniment to a confusion of dancing shadows.

Another lantern was struck.

‘Where in the name of pity is this?’

Isloman’s voice overtopped the noise. He was staring at the glistening walls of what appeared to be a large tunnel. His face looked haggard in the unsteady lantern light.

Other voices were asking other questions.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Where are we?’

Andawyr held up his lantern to identify the speakers.

Oslang and Atelon were there, as well as Usche and Ar-Billan.

‘No good place, for sure.’ It was Isloman again. The babble of questions grew louder.

‘Quiet!’ Andawyr shouted. ‘Just be quiet for a moment. All of you. Let me think.’

‘Where are the others?’

‘I said, be quiet!’

The second command had the desired effect and a shuffling and uneasy silence descended on the group. Andawyr looked around both at his bewildered companions and at the strange place they found themselves in. He focused his lantern to a tight beam but it merely confirmed that they were in a tunnel before the darkness swallowed its light.

The silence he had demanded, however, brought him neither stillness of mind nor clarity. The unspoken questions written on every face were the same as his own.

What had happened? And where were the Goraidin and the others who had been in the Labyrinth hall?

The only answer he could find to the first question was that this was certainly not the culmination of the conjunction that had been foreseen. Whatever form that might take it was unlikely that any of them would survive it. But this must be an ominous presage of it. A tremor before an earthquake. Insofar as they had any grasp on events, how much longer would they have before they were torn away completely?

An unreasoned insight came to him.

‘It’s that damned Labyrinth,’ he said angrily. ‘Anderras Darion might be Ethriss’s castle of light, but that place has always been a dark secret at the heart of it. If I were given to wagering I’d say it was the place where this all began. Part of a battle centre of some kind for the monstrous conflict that brought this about. Perhaps Ethriss was telling us something he himself was unaware of when he put the Armoury within it.’

‘Or built the Labyrinth around it,’ Oslang said.

Andawyr shrugged. ‘It’s all irrelevant, anyway,’ he said, unconvincingly brisk. ‘Whatever’s happened I suppose we’d better try to find a way out of here.’

This appeal to common sense prompted another inspection of the tunnel. The walls were perfectly smooth and curved round in a high circle until they intersected the level floor which was as smooth as the walls and apparently of the same material. At its crown the tunnel was some four or five times the height of Isloman.

‘I can’t imagine how this has been built,’ the carver said. ‘No honest chisel’s ever been near it – there’s not a mark to be seen.’ He looked pained as he ran his hand down the wall. ‘This rock’s been tortured, not worked,’ he said softly.

‘The floor slopes a little,’ Usche said. She looked significantly at Andawyr. In common with most of the older Cadwanwr, Andawyr’s years of living and working in the Cadwanen caves had given him a remarkable instinct for navigating below ground. An inclination of her head asked the question, ‘Up or down?’

Andawyr, however, had nothing to offer. Too many questions were vying for attention for such subtleties to make themselves heard.

‘Upwards is presumably out of here, but downwards may go to the heart of something,’ he said eventually. ‘Perhaps to whatever’s brought us here.’

‘It might be no more than chance that’s done that,’ Oslang said.

‘Possibly,’ Andawyr conceded. ‘As the conjunction grows nearer, extreme probabilities will come to pass, including more of Usche’s “cracks in the building”. I presume we’ve just tumbled through one. But why us and not the others, I’ve no idea.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Somewhere there’s consciousness at work here, reaching down into the depths.’

‘Whose, for mercy’s sake?’ Oslang demanded impatiently. ‘Mine? Yours? Sumeral’s?’

‘I don’t know, damn it,’ Andawyr retorted. ‘Maybe all of us. But I keep hearing Antyr shouting as that greyness swept over us. We must trust ourselves; we’re stronger than we know.’ He took Oslang’s arm and shook him. ‘Whatever caused all this, unravelled things to their very roots and whatever our thoughts are they both stem from and go to those roots – affected by and affecting what happens there. Antyr hasn’t a fraction of our knowledge but he worked that out for himself.’

‘Which leaves us where?’ Oslang pressed.

‘Here, wherever here is,’ Andawyr replied, shaking him again. He looked at the others. ‘Scared, but not scared witless yet. And while we’re alive and in full possession of those wits, we’d better use them.’ He clenched his teeth and hissed out, ‘Just keeping the will to fight might be as important as the way we fight.’ He pointed along the tunnel.

‘I’m for going down. Let’s see what’s brought us here.’

The journey to the Armoury, short though it was, was never easy. The path through the Labyrinth defied all marking and the echoing columns that lay beyond it both lured and deceived with a song that reached into the darkest reaches of the soul. The guiding of people through it to fetch weapons for the hastily levied Orthlundyn army during the war had cost more than a few of them nightmare-troubled sleep for many months afterwards.

Hawklan stumbled along it, not daring to turn for fear that the consuming greyness would be at his back. Driving him forward, too, was the fear that the greyness had been drawn here by him, that his friends had been swept into nothingness because of his presence.

Questions formed slowly in his tumbling thoughts. Was this the fearful conjunction that had been so exercising Andawyr and the Cadwanol – everything lost in a bleak and desolate emptiness?