Roger Taylor - Into Narsindal

Yatsu’s words floated in the wake of this acceptance, uttered in the moonlit calm of Eldric’s mountain stronghold. ‘You carry more weight on the playing board than I do, you’re nearer the player.’

Nearer the player?

Gulda touched his arm again to bring him back to the present. ‘While ours?’ she prompted.

Hawklan rested his head on his hand. His forehead furrowed. ‘We must be aware of His treachery and cunning but I think it would be a mistake to try and emulate it,’ he said slowly, speaking the thoughts as they occurred to him. ‘He is our master there, beyond a doubt, and to oppose Him thus would be to fight only with the weapons He offers us. I think that simplicity and directness will serve us better by far.’ Gulda and Andawyr exchanged glances.

‘But surely we must ponder His deeds, try to fathom His intentions?’ Andawyr queried.

Hawklan shook his head thoughtfully. ‘According to Arinndier, Eldric set up the cry "Death to Oklar" in the battle and aimed his cavalry in close formation directly at him; directly at the source of Fyorlund’s ills.’ His face was grim. ‘Nothing was to stand in the way of this goal. And Oklar had to flee the field. Eldric’s was the shrewd instinct of a true and hardened warrior. We should think about Sumeral’s scheming, and make due allowance as appropriate. But not to the extent of faltering in our own straight sword thrust to His heart-our single simple killing stroke which must be delivered regardless of all else.’

There was a coldness in his voice that seemed to chill the hall. He looked again at the window picture above him. A man torn away from the simple pleasure of his daily life, from the warmth and closeness of his wife and the innocent but absolute trust of his child, to face a horror that was none of his making. And his final parting was both marred and made strangely whole by his child’s honest but fearful response to his grim armour. Whether such ties of affection would prove a strength to sustain and bolster him in battle, or a weakness to drag him to hesitant defeat, would be his own choice.

‘When we look at His strengths,’ he went on, still pensive, ‘we must see in what way they are also His weaknesses.’

Andawyr looked puzzled. ‘How can a strength be a weakness, Hawklan? He has no weaknesses such as you and I might perceive. He’s profoundly armoured in every way.’

Hawklan nodded. ‘Yes, but every strength shows where a weakness lies,’ he said. Then his thoughts became clearer. ‘Why does He come to destroy us as a man? As a man leading great armies of men? Why doesn’t He come as earth, sea, air, which seemingly His power could shape to smash us all? Or as some other terrible life-blessed creature of His own making such as still lingered in the Alphraan’s Heartplace? Why does He come in human form?’ He leaned forward, his manner fretful.

‘That’s all it is,’ Andawyr said dismissively. ‘A mere form. A shell to house His true Self… ’

Gulda laid a hand on his arm to stop him.

‘No,’ Hawklan said firmly. ‘He comes thus for a reason. If it were just a shell, He’d find a better one. Perhaps it’s in the nature of the Old Power itself that only like can truly destroy like.’ He paused briefly then shrugged. ‘However, whatever the reason, He’s chosen it and He must accept with it the flaws of that form: vanity, anger, jealousy, physical vulnerability.’

Andawyr shook his head. ‘Everything that’s known about Him says otherwise, Hawklan,’ he said, almost impatiently. ‘He shows only a cold, unending patience, and an indifference to everyone and everything around Him that goes beyond words such as ruthlessness.’

‘Human traits, Andawyr,’ Hawklan said quietly. ‘There’s an Uhriel in each of us.’

Andawyr’s eyes widened as if he had been struck at this echo of the words he himself had only recently recalled.

‘And where does your knowledge of Sumeral come from to deny His humanity, Andawyr?’ Hawklan went on forcefully.

‘From… from the recorded words… of those who knew Him… ’ Andawyr stammered at this unexpected assault. ‘I don’t deny His humanity… I… ’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘I never thought about it, I suppose. Ethriss took our form-or gave us his. It never occurred to me… ’ His voice trailed off.

Hawklan ignored the little man’s confusion. ‘And what of the knowledge of the hidden time? The time before He was known. The time when He walked among men as a man, just as Dan-Tor did in Fyorlund these past years. When even Ethriss didn’t know of Him.’

‘Little or nothing is known of those times, Hawklan,’ Andawyr said, recovering some of his composure. ‘Except legend and story. We separate the two clearly in our scholarship.’

Hawklan nodded. ‘The legends and stories of Sumeral the wicked adviser to Kings and Princes. The wizard granting boons to men in return for terrible payments.’ He raised a conclusive finger. ‘In His humanity is His greatest weakness,’ he said. ‘As a human, He faltered and He fell to human missiles as He assaulted the Iron Ring. He wouldn’t come again in such a vulnerable form if He were not constrained to it by some need beyond our sight, or because of some overweening trait of vanity or arrogance.’

Gulda raised an eyebrow. Hawklan caught the movement and its implication.

‘If it was through vanity or arrogance that He made the choice, then it’s a trait that lies in His true self, not in the form He chose,’ he said carefully. Abruptly he smiled. ‘Perhaps the traits we call human are Ethriss’s own; inherent in the nature of things.’

‘Perhaps Sumeral is the essence of Ethriss’s weak-ness and frailty splintered from him in the Great Searing,’ Gulda said darkly.

Hawklan looked at her enigmatically, then his smile broadened out into a bright laugh which warmed his listeners as previously his manner had chilled them. ‘I think we’re getting well beyond ourselves,’ he said. ‘It just shows how we need the Fyordyn to keep our debates from rambling.’

Gulda smiled, but Andawyr still seemed discom-posed.

‘There’s no harm in rambling,’ he said, a little tetchily. ‘Providing you know you’re doing it. Many things are to be found by walking a different way down a familiar path. But let’s see if you were looking where you were walking, Hawklan. Where has your rambling led you?’

The brief irritation had been replaced by a stern seriousness which dampened Hawklan’s levity. He looked intently at the bright-eyed little man who had faced his greatest trial at the Gretmearc while he, the warrior, the healer, whose life Andawyr had just saved, had stood by helpless.

He leaned back in his chair, silent for a while.

‘Whatever Sumeral truly is, Andawyr, we face a man,’ he said eventually, his voice thoughtful. ‘You and your brothers with those special skills that the chances of history have granted to you. We with our swords and spears. All of us with whatever wit and courage we can find. But still He is, or chooses to be, a man, not a god, and He can and will be defeated as such.’

‘That’s rhetoric,’ Andawyr replied. ‘I’ll grant that it’s important for firing the will of the people, but what does it give us in the way of specific tactics?’

Hawklan was at a loss. ‘He can do nothing that we cannot do,’ he said uncertainly. ‘His power against us is levied through humans: his Uhriel, the Mathidrin, the Morlider and doubtless many others. All weak and fallible as we are.’

‘Be specific,’ Andawyr pressed.

‘I can’t,’ Hawklan admitted. ‘But the simple realiza-tion of Sumeral’s humanity is important in itself. I feel it.’

Andawyr nodded reflectively. ‘You may be right,’ he said, abruptly ending his interrogation.