Roger Taylor: Into Narsindal

To Loman’s horror, however, the rider did not move back from the path of the charging creature, but stepped in front of it. Loman’s warning shout was still leaving him as the rider’s sword cut the creature’s throat and then swung round to deliver an upward lunge on Creost’s unguarded side. The bloody sword point emerged from Creost’s shoulder and he was torn from the saddle, such was the force of the blow.

With four strokes the rider had slain the two Uhriel and their steeds.

Then the rider struck two more terrible blows, mounted, and turned Serian in the direction in which Oklar had fled.

Hawklan ran on and on, supporting the hobbling Andawyr.

It seemed to him that since he had used the sword, everything was slipping from him and great forces were converging on him. He ran along Sumeral’s road through the bleak mists of Narsindal, but he did not know where he was running, or scarcely why.

Some voice within him propelled him forward faster and faster.

And despite his pain, Andawyr propelled him also.

Skittering footsteps caught up with them. It was Dar-volci.

The sight of the felci apparently unaffected by the mounting horrors of their journey made Hawklan feel calmer.

‘Where’s Gavor?’ he gasped.

‘No idea,’ Dar-volci replied. ‘I saw him deal with a few Mandrocs then I got a little involved myself and I didn’t see him before I left.’

Hawklan grimaced with self-reproach. In his own turmoil he had forgotten the others fighting to protect him.

‘What about the rest,’ he asked.

‘Still fighting when I left,’ Dar-volci replied. ‘I thought I’d be more use here than there.’

They ran on in silence, until Andawyr slithered to the ground.

‘I must rest,’ he said desperately.

Hawklan stared into the mist. There were no sounds of pursuit, but still he felt a driving urgency.

He bent down and took Andawyr’s ankle, but the Cadwanwr snatched it away.

‘No,’ he said. ‘The pain focuses my mind so that I can remain where I am and perhaps still hide us from His will. Go on with Dar-volci, quickly before I’m overwhelmed.’

He reached out to stroke the anxious felci.

‘I won’t leave you,’ Hawklan said. ‘What’s happen-ing? Why’s everything suddenly so… fraught, so… desperate?’

‘I don’t know,’ Andawyr said. ‘You used the sword. I can feel terrible things happening somewhere. I can feel my brothers. I can feel the Uhriel. And other things too-the Guardians, perhaps. But no pattern, no shape. Just a chaos and disorder with you at its centre. Only He seems to be steadfast-watching, waiting. Go!’

Hawklan peered along the mist-shrouded road. Its silence and stillness were bizarrely at odds with his own whirling inner confusion and Andawyr’s almost frenzied declamation.

Then, unceremoniously, he swept Andawyr up on to his shoulder and set off again. There was a brief protest from the Cadwanwr, but it foundered against Hawklan’s patent resolution.

As Hawklan ran, he felt again as he had felt earlier, that he was climbing some interminably long and increasingly steep slope. Eventually he came to an exhausted halt.

‘No more,’ he said slumping. ‘No more.’

Andawyr slithered down and stood in front of the despondent healer. He tried to smile encouragingly, but desperation leaked through and swept the smile aside.

‘Lean on me,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m fresher now.’

‘Hush, both of you,’ Dar-volci said suddenly.

Hawklan bent his head forward. There were still no sounds of pursuit. ‘What…?’ he began.

‘Hush!’

Then into the silence came the soft lapping of waves.

Andawyr seized Hawklan’s arm and, limping heav-ily, dragged him to the side of the road and down the embankment.

A line of dark, glistening waves came into view. Andawyr stopped and, hopping unsteadily on one leg, looked at the grim turbulent surface that disappeared into the mist.

‘We’re here,’ he said, his voice alive with a mixture of fear, disbelief and excitement. ‘We’re here. The causeway across Lake Kedrieth. We’ve reached His lair undiscovered, and His every resource is still turned towards the battle.’

Hawklan felt his confusion fall away. They had suc-ceeded. Now, whatever the outcome, his journeying was truly near its end. Soon he would come face to face with the monstrous author of all the foulness that he had come upon since that fateful spring day when a twitching sharp-eyed tinker had pranced his spider’s dance on the green at Pedhavin.

He helped Andawyr back to the road.

‘Across this causeway to our enemy, Cadwanwr,’ he said softly, loosening the black sword in its scabbard.

Andawyr nodded and ran the palms of his hands down his soiled robe as if preparing for some heavy task.

As they moved forward they began to pass aban-doned carts and wagons; anonymous hulking shadows in the mist.

Then, abruptly, one of the dark shapes rose up in front of them. Hawklan cried out and drew his sword. Dar-volci chattered his teeth and snarled.

‘Welcome, Hawklan,’ said Oklar. ‘I see that, as ever, you come to strike at the heart of your foe; like an assassin, silent and treacherous. You would have been wiser to keep Ethriss’s ringing sword sheathed. I heard it amid the heart of the destruction of your army and drove my steed to its death so that I could lay it and your carcass before my Master.’

Hawklan released a long breath. ‘I have no words for you, Uhriel. It is your Master from whom I seek an accounting. Stand aside or die. My sight is truer than it was.’

Oklar bowed. ‘Then see this, healer,’ he said, extend-ing his hands.

Hawklan felt the dreadful presence of the Uhriel in all his power, tearing through the fabric of the reality around him. It gave him an awesome measure of his own inadequacy.

And this is but a servant, a voice said somewhere inside him.

But then Andawyr stood in front of him, and the presence of the Uhriel receded.

‘You above all will be punished when this day’s work is finished,’ Oklar said.

‘No, Uhriel,’ Andawyr said quietly. ‘This day will be ours. Your time passed millennia ago when Ethriss struck you down. This is but a dream in the great sleep he sent you to.’

Oklar’s eyes blazed red through the mist. ‘The dream is yours, Cadwanwr,’ he said, his voice taut with fury. ‘Your brothers fail before us, your army falls before us. Where are your Guardians? And where is the great Heretic himself?’

‘The Guardians are all around us, Uhriel,’ Andawyr replied. ‘Did you not wonder why your once great power is so weak?’

Oklar’s anger was replaced by contemptuous amusement. ‘A detail, learned one,’ he said. ‘One that time will overcome for us, as you, above all, know. And time we shall have when these irksome peoples about our southern borders have been crushed.’

‘Enough,’ Hawklan said, moving forward to stand by Andawyr. ‘Each moment this puppet and his Master live, people are dying in bloody horror.’

Andawyr interposed himself again, but Oklar stepped forward and struck him a blow that sent him sprawling. With a roar, Dar-volci leapt forward, his great mouth agape.

Oklar swung round and caught him squarely with his foot. The felci arced into the air and fell with a thud near to the fallen Cadwanwr.

Oklar’s eyes blazed again. ‘Learn Cadwanwr, as your fellows did, that while your vaunted skills can stunt our powers for the moment, we were warriors great in a world of greatness before we bowed to His will. And as a warrior I shall slay you here.’

Hawklan stepped back involuntarily as Oklar drew his sword. It glowed a menacing, shifting red in the mist.