Roger Taylor - The waking of Orthlund

The judgement in the voice angered Isloman, and despite a feeling of vulnerability in facing this voluble darkness, he strode forward into it, holding his torch high and increasing its brightness.

‘Oklar lives,’ he said defiantly. ‘I have seen him. Hawklan has faced him. The truth is in my work there’ amp;mdashhe pointed to the carving, now clear and vivid in the bright torchlight amp;mdash‘though it may be as far beyond you to see it as it is beyond us to understand your ways with sound.’

A murmuring began, as if to speak in rebuttal, but Isloman cut across it harshly. ‘And how can truth be a profanity?’ He brought the torch nearer to the carving, and moved it slightly from side to side. The images of Hawklan and Dan-Tor seemed to move, Hawklan with doubting uncertainty, Dan-Tor with cunning sleight.

‘I’ve done better work, admittedly,’ Isloman said critically. ‘But it has its own song, for all it’s only a sketch.’ Then, turning back to the darkness he spoke angrily. ‘Look at it. Look at it. Look as you’d listen. The profanity is yours, if you would turn away from such truth.’

The debate broke out again, though this time it was like a malevolent whispering. Gavor flicked the sheaths from his spurs, and almost involuntarily Dacu laid his hand on his sword hilt. Serian’s eyes whitened, and his forelegs flicked out as if in preparation for further movement.

‘Would you threaten us… humans?’

There was a taunt in the voice, but also doubt, be-wilderment even, in the word ‘humans’. Isloman sensed that the actions of the animals had surprised the invisible speakers.

‘We would leave you, Alphraan,’ he said. ‘We would go in peace back to Anderras Darion. I have to seek help for my friend, and we have to take the truth to those who will see its worth, and act accordingly.’

He turned away and started walking towards the entrance, signalling Dacu and Tirke to do the same.

‘You’re lying.’ A voice hissed out of the darkness behind him like an arrow from an ambush. Isloman found himself unable to move.

‘If Oklar lived, no man could face him.’ There was blistering contempt in the word ‘man’. ‘Your friend… Hawklan,’ amp;mdashmore contempt amp;mdash‘is stricken because he stole Ethriss’s sword. And you talk of the song of your scratchings. What do you know of song? You and your kind are as treacherous and faithless as ever. You must be punished for your blasphemy.’

But around the voice, doubts and debate still hov-ered. The carving was true, they said. Sketch it might be, but it was the work of a master craftsman. The voice denied them, swept them aside angrily.

Isloman forced his eyes to look again at his carving. Something helped him. As he gazed at it, it seemed that in Dan-Tor’s eyes there gleamed a look of triumph. Isloman knew that it was no device that he had put there, but carvings invariably yielded more than their makers intended, and it should have been no great surprise. Nonetheless, the look struck deep into Isloman and released a great rage in him.

‘No,’ he whispered. The strange bonds holding him faltered. ‘No,’ he said again, louder. ‘No. You may choose to be bound by your ignorance, but we will not.’

He was free.

Waves of sound billowed around him, almost in panic, but striding forward, he bent over Hawklan and unfastened the scabbard of the black sword. Then, holding the sheathed sword in his left hand, and his torch in his right, he strode into the darkness. The rear of the cave tapered into a wide tunnel.

Gavor stretched out his wings and launched himself after the retreating figure. ‘Dacu, guard Hawklan,’ he said. ‘Tirke, bring torches.’

His tone was so authoritative that the two men moved to do his bidding without question. The torches however, were hardly needed, for Isloman stopped, only a score of paces down the tunnel. Gavor landed on his shoulder.

In front of them, the tunnel divided into four others, and down these, at the faint extremity of the torchlight, could be seen more junctions.

Isloman seemed inclined to go forward, but Gavor closed his claw anxiously on his shoulder.

Isloman nodded, then held out the sword. ‘Know this, you… sound weavers,’ he shouted. ‘Hawklan is no thief. He came from the mountains with Gavor, bearing the key and the word to open Anderras Darion… ’

‘Anderras Darion is open?’ Voices cut across his outburst.

‘Is open?… is open?… is open?… ’ echoed end-lessly into the distance. Other sounds joined it. ‘The word… the word… the word… ’ A whispering confusion began.

Isloman frowned and brandished the sword again. ‘This sword chose him, not he it.’

‘Chose… chose… chose… ’ joined the mounting chorus.

‘Listen to me, damn you,’ Isloman shouted. ‘Oklar lives. All the Uhriel live.’ Sounds flooded out of the tunnels in front of him. He bellowed into it. ‘He too lives. Scurry through the darkness where you wish, hide where you will, but know that Sumeral is risen again, and to deny His being is to aid Him.’

Suddenly the sounds came together like a wind-tormented ocean and crashed over him in an irresistible tide. With a cry, he staggered backwards, dropping the torch and the sword.

Instinctively he closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears, but as before, this only seemed to trap the terrible sound inside him.

An impact winded him slightly, and part of his mind realized that he had fallen over. Somehow he opened his eyes. The torch lay some way from him, though it was undimmed, and the clarity its light gave to the scene seemed to stem the appalling, crushing, noise momen-tarily.

Rolling over, Isloman had a fleeting glimpse of his companions. Gavor, on his side, one wing flapping desperately and his wooden leg ineffectually sliding on the rocky floor as he tried to stand. Dacu and Tirke struggling with demented horses. Serian, his great head bowed low and shaking frantically from side to side. The whole scene juddered and shook as if his eyeballs were going to burst from his head. The only stillness in the scene was the dark shadow of Hawklan, resting against the wall.

He tried to rise, but somehow his legs were no longer part of him. He tried to cry out, but as his mouth opened to voice his feeble protest, the noise seized it for its own, like an awful predator and, thrusting it back inside him, began to crush every part of his body with it.

Briefly a great fear overwhelmed him as he realized he was helpless and about to die. Then, swimming in the tide that he knew was to carry him beyond, came a shimmering kaleidoscope of memories: his father and mother, and little Loman, picnicking in front of the silent, sunlit Gate of Anderras Darion; his first tingling excitement as the master carver in him began to stir; the grim and grimy-faced friendships and affections he found in the Morlider War; the welcoming grace of Hawklan, hooded and strange in the flickering firelight, as he rose to meet his wide-eyed visitors from the village. So many rich memories.

‘No,’ he made his voice cry out, and this time the flood moved around it as though it were a rock. He would not die other than in honouring both the pains and joys of such a life and in struggling to oppose the power that would deny such choices to others.

His left hand closed around the scabbard of Hawk-lan’s sword, but as he lifted it, a final wave swept over him, cold and black, and everything was gone.

All was silence. A great, deep, motionless silence from which all things had come and which lay yet at the very heart of all things.

And a great darkness. Not the darkness of fear, but the timeless, eternal empty darkness of beginning.

Only one thing disturbed the silence and the dark-ness.