Roger Taylor - The call of the sword

Loman’s composure wavered again. He seemed to be struggling with some powerful emotion. Eventually he shook his head and without looking at Hawklan, said softly, ‘It’s beyond words. Even the finest poet couldn’t describe it. It has a harmony in it that nothing could sully. And it’s killed many evil things. Many.’ A silence fell between the two men.

‘A happy chance find then?’ said Hawklan. Loman looked at him and shook his head.

‘I’m no sage, Hawklan, and I always take travellers’ tales with a mighty pinch of iron. But there’s no denying there are strange forces in this world. Some good, some bad, and most of them beyond the understanding of ordinary men. Over the years I’ve spent many hours in here studying these weapons and nothing’s ever tumbled down of its own accord like that before-nothing. Nor have I felt the presence of such a creation as this, as surely I must have done had… something not been hiding it. Chance never laid this at your feet.’ He swayed a little. ‘This is something from your past. Take an old soldier’s tip… watch your back.’

‘How strange,’ said Hawklan. ‘That’s what Gavor said the other day. But no one would want to attack me. I’m only a healer.’

Loman replaced the sword in its scabbard gently and handed it to Hawklan. His hands were shaking.

‘If this sword sought you out then you have some great need and the enemies you could face will be worse by far than any an unlucky traveller might stumble across in the mountains.’

Hawklan looked at Loman in silence, his dour, down-to-earth castellan, whose only concerns seemed to be his smithing and the day-to-day running of the Castle. He had never heard him speak in such a way before, and the seriousness of the man chilled him. He shuddered in the spring sunshine.

Without realizing what he was doing, Hawklan swung the belt of the sword around his waist and fastened it. Loman watched him silently. The movement was practiced and familiar, and the belt fitted perfectly.

The ease with which Hawklan had donned the strange sword did not move Loman as it might have done but minutes earlier. The onset of impending change crystallized in Loman’s heart as soon as he saw the black sword sliding down the great mound of weapons to land at Hawklan’s feet. The very movement in that huge, familiar and infinitely still room had unnerved him more than he cared to admit, but the brief touch of the black metal had dwarfed his first reaction by plunging him into another world: a world of perfection and singing voices, of wisdom that spread through every particle of his smith’s soul and told him tales and epic sagas of times and worlds long gone. Of evil victorious, of evil conquered, of terrible prices paid and great rewards reaped, of courage and cowardice, fidelity and treachery.

He could scarcely bear to touch it again. It made everything around him insubstantial and inadequate. Even the mountains became dreamlike. Only Hawklan still seemed solid. More solid indeed than the sword itself.

It was the same too for Isloman when he first held the sword. Loman took it to his workshop to seek his opinion on the strange black stone hilt. He handed it to him with a brief warning.

‘Take care, brother,’ he said, looking into Isloman’s eyes. Isloman returned the gaze, and felt the word "brother" reaching through the encrusted layers of affectionate chafing that separated them in their daily lives like a shield protecting a vulnerable breast.

He took the sword gingerly and, holding the scab-bard in his left hand, gently laid the hilt in the open palm of his right. As soon as the black stone touched his hand, his eyes widened and he drew a breath that seemed to last forever.

Concerned, Loman took his arm and whispered his name urgently.

Eventually, Isloman lifted the hilt from his hand and stared at it intently. Then he looked at Loman, his eyes almost closed as if he were having difficulty in seeing him. Laying the sword on a table, he put both his hands to his temples.

‘Where did this come from?’ he asked.

Loman told him.

Isloman sat down on his favourite stool and stared out into the spring sunshine.

‘What did you… learn, from the hilt?’ Loman asked after a long silence.

Isloman opened his mouth but made no sound, then he shook his head.

‘So it is with the blade,’ said Loman hoarsely. ‘Where has it come from, Isloman? Who could have made such a thing? How could it have lain so close to us for so many years and we not feel it?’

Isloman shook his head again. ‘And it sought out Hawklan?’ he said.

Loman nodded. ‘Rattled and clattered down that mound like any old piece of tin, to fall right at his feet. And he felt something when he took hold of it I’m sure, but he wouldn’t… or couldn’t say what.’

Isloman nodded. ‘This sword is beyond our words, Loman, and he sees deeper than you or I ever will.’

‘He just said, "my sword". Very quietly.’

The two brothers sat for a long time in silence, with the black sword lying on the table between them. Slowly a sense of normality returned as the sound of children playing outside wafted into the room.

‘What’s the device embedded in the hilt?’ Loman asked eventually. Isloman picked up the sword again, and lifted the hilt into the dust-laden sunlight streaming through the window. Twinkling in the inner depths of the black stone were two intertwined strands which seemed to stretch into an eternal void filled with countless stars. Briefly he felt the urge of float forward into that great harmony, but a sense of unfulfilled need came over him and kept him earthbound.

He laid the sword down and stared at it. Then some-thing occurred to him and he raised his hand as if to halt the memory before it moved on.

‘Just a moment,’ he said, and he walked over to the end of the workshop where he kept his collection of books; all manner of dissertations and commentaries and lore about carving. Strictly speaking the collection was not his, it was the Guild’s, he being its trustee as First Carver until one more worthy came along.

His craggy block of a head nodded up and down slightly as his finger tapped its way along the old spines, and he put out his tongue like a ‘do not disturb’ sign.

‘Aha.’

He reached down an ancient tome and, after blow-ing the dust from it, began gently turning the pages. Without looking up from the book he motioned to Loman.

‘I thought I remembered,’ he said. ‘Look.’ Loman gazed at the book blankly.

‘This is a very old book, Loman,’ Isloman explained needlessly. ‘And it’s written in a tongue and a style which I can barely understand. But look… ’ His heavy finger tapped a diagram lightly. Loman squinted at it and frowned.

‘It means nothing to me, Isloman,’ he said. ‘It’s one of your carvers’ drawings.’

‘Uh-uh,’ muttered Isloman to himself, engrossed in the page and not hearing his brother. ‘As far as I can make out, it says that following the Rise of Six… someone or other, before the Age of the Great Alliance, I think, and long before the Golden Age, certain weapons were forged… or re-forged by Theowart… Sph… Sphaeera, and… Enartion, with earth, water and air taken from the Places of Great… that might be, or Old, Power. And they were blessed by Ethriss… and consecrated to life.’

He nodded his head in satisfaction.

‘So?’ queried Loman.

‘So,’ said Isloman. ‘This diagram… ’ He prodded the picture in the book. ‘This diagram shows a sword like that.’ He pointed to the sword on the table.

Loman looked intently and disbelievingly at the diagram. ‘Does it say anything else?’ he asked.

Isloman scanned the page again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But, as I said, it’s a very old book, and it talks about times that were ancient when it was written.’