Roger Taylor - Into Narsindal

Choices…

‘Men must fight men.’ A chilling knell…

The fearful stirring clarion call of battle trumpets…

Turmoil… Flickering flames and choking smoke… Destruction, terror…

‘You’re here, Hawklan,’ came Andawyr’s voice gen-tly. ‘Still safe, in Anderras Darion.’

Hatred…

But still hope shone, like a silver twisting thread glittering through the gloom.

‘Stand your ground,’ was the command and the intention.

Then, like black vomit, memories that could not be faced. Failure. Defeat. Broken ranks. Rout. The finest destroyed under the endless waves of…

‘You’re here, Hawklan,’ Andawyr’s presence was beginning to waver.

And then there came the memory that Hawklan knew too well. His body and heart wracked beyond all pain and weariness. Endless, endless hacking and killing, and all to no avail; a mere sideshow as His army swept past unhindered. On and on they came… unending… chanting, screaming… eyes and swords glinting red in the blazing fires… the sky black with acrid smoke and the great birds, also fighting their last…

And the ground under his feet, uneven, treacherous-a ghastly mound of the broken bodies of his men.

And this was his doing! This was the fruit of his arrogance and folly.

A distant cry of horror and guilt began to form in-side him.

‘Hawklan, you are here,’ said Andawyr’s voice, anx-ious and more distant. ‘You are safe. Nothing can harm you.’

But the cry grew, long and agonized.

He felt his last friend die at his back, gasping out, ‘I’m sorry,’ even as he fell.

Hawklan’s terrible cry grew until it seemed to fill the sky, mingling and overtopping the final triumphant roar of his enemy as blades and malevolence closed around him.

‘Hawklan!’ Andawyr’s voice was faint and desperate. ‘Hawklan. You are here… ’

But Hawklan could not hear it. He was plunging headlong into the dreadful, bloody darkness.

Then, abruptly, a hand was laid on his shoulder.

Eyes wide in horror, mouth gaping, he lurched for-ward, but the hand sustained him, and others reached out to support him.

He sank into their strength.

Slowly, the darkness of the battlefield faded to be-come the gentle light of the small torch and the radiant stones that lit Andawyr’s room. His scream dwindled to become his own gasping breath.

Andawyr’s arms were wrapped about him as if he were a hurt child and the little man’s face was both pale and covered with perspiration. It was suffused with a mixture of concern and distress.

A hand still rested on his shoulder, sustaining him until he was truly back in Anderras Darion.

He turned his head and looked up. The hand was Gulda’s. She seemed to tower over him though her face was full of compassion, and tears shone in her eyes. Gavor sat on her shoulder, head bent forward, eyes intense.

‘You are with us,’ Gulda said, part statement, part question. Hawklan nodded and Gulda slowly released his shoulder. Andawyr too gradually let him go, helping him back into his chair. Then he sat down heavily on his own and, producing a large kerchief, began to mop his face in undisguised relief.

‘Thank you, Memsa,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect such… power.’ He looked uncertain.

Gavor hopped on to Hawklan’s shoulder and closed his one claw about it reassuringly, though he did not speak. Hawklan reached up and touched his beak.

Gulda liberated a chair from its burden of docu-ments and sat down between the two men. ‘You’d have got him back,’ she replied to Andawyr simply. ‘I shouldn’t have interfered, but… I couldn’t bear his pain, I had to… ’ Uncharacteristically, she left the sentence unfinished.

Andawyr looked at her then laid his hand on hers. ‘Thank you,’ he said again.

Hawklan watched vacantly as the memory of the turmoil that had so nearly overwhelmed him washed back and forth like a frustrated ebb tide.

‘What…?’ he began, but Gulda held out her hand gently to quieten him.

‘Rest a little while longer,’ she said. ‘We can talk in a moment, when the Castle’s seeped back into your bones completely.’ She smiled.

You were very beautiful once, Hawklan thought, though even as the thought formed itself, it became you are beautiful, and his head began to swim as his eyes tried to focus on the confusion of images that was Gulda’s face.

She reached out and put her hand on his forehead. Its coolness cleared his vision. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Rest.’

The four sat in silence for some time and gradually the intensity of the eerie happening began to dwindle. As a sense of normality returned, Hawklan’s breathing quietened and Andawyr finished wiping his face, though even in the red glow of the fire he was still pale.

‘Not as… easy… as last time,’ Hawklan said even-tually, his voice unsteady and hoarse.

Andawyr shook his head. ‘All things happen in their time, Hawklan,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t the knowledge to take you further then though I didn’t realize it.’ He smiled reflectively. ‘I thought at the time that your early life had been sealed away by some other hand. Now, I think perhaps it might have been a deeper, wiser part of either you or I who created that strange barrier we found, for our own protection.’ His smile became a chuckle. ‘It’s very difficult to be simple and straightforward when we have such a capacity for deceiving ourselves.’

Hawklan tried to smile but his face did not respond. ‘And what else have you learned?’ he asked. ‘Those memories were mine, I know, but I’m no wiser.’ He spread his arms out, hands palm upwards in a gesture of helplessness. ‘And where was Ethriss in all that whirling confusion except as someone other than myself? He it was I followed and failed.’

Andawyr and Gulda exchanged glances.

‘And how are you here?’ Hawklan asked, turning to Gulda.

She looked at him. ‘I was drawn by your joy and happiness and then by your pain,’ she said, then, lowering her eyes. ‘I’m not sure I should have interfered. Perhaps what we need to know lies in the darkness that came after you fell on that field.’

Hawklan’s eyes opened wide in horror and he wrapped his arms about himself. ‘After my… death?’ he said very softly. ‘No, I’ll not go back again.’

Gulda nodded. ‘Neither of us would take you,’ she said.

‘You did not die,’ Andawyr said.

Gulda looked at him sharply.

Andawyr shook his head. ‘There’s an inexorability about death that would have drawn us in like a great maelstrom. No power could have pulled us from it. Even Hawklan’s own memory of his… end… was nearly irresistible. It was folly on my part to venture so close. I should have known from what you told me that that memory dominated all others.’

Gavor flapped his wings restlessly, throwing great shadows over the walls and ceiling and the waiting mountain range of books.

Andawyr looked at Hawklan, his expression enig-matic.

When he spoke, his voice was flat and toneless. ‘You are not Ethriss, Hawklan,’ he said. ‘And I fear our position is more grave than I had thought.’

Hawklan felt suddenly like a small guilt-ridden child. ‘Who am I then?’ he asked.

Andawyr turned to Gulda. ‘Tell him about the Orthlundyn, Memsa,’ he said.

Gulda looked uncertainly at Andawyr. The little man nodded and gestured her to begin.

A brief look of pain passed over Gulda’s face and, fiddling nervously with her stick, she glanced awk-wardly about the room as if looking for something that might tell her where to start her tale.

‘The war of the First Coming was unbelievably long, Hawklan,’ she began at last. ‘And it was fought on many levels and between many different peoples in many different ways. Some, mostly the battles of men, we know a great deal about. Some, involving other than men, like the Alphraan and the Mandrassni, we know a little of. Others, like the terrible cloud wars of the Drienvolk, the vengeance of the great ocean mammals, we know mainly by repute-by legend. Ethriss rarely spoke of them. "All must be won," he would say. "But men must fight men, and Sumeral has come as a man among men, thus man’s burden will be the greatest, for they must fight Him in His mortal frame."’