Roger Taylor - The call of the sword

Neither spoke for a long time and the sound of chil-dren playing in the distance filled the room again. Very softly, Loman began to speak about things they had not discussed for many years. There were no records of Anderras Darion ever having been open, other than in children’s tales. In the past, the skills of generations had failed so totally to open its Great Gate or gain access in any way, that all attempts had long since been aban-doned, and public wonder at the castle had been confined solely to the Gate. Then Hawklan had come out of the mountains one bleak winter when all paths were impassable, and opened it with a key and a word. A man with no memory, who knew the castle as if he had lived there all his life. A man who was a healer, not a prince or a warrior as might be expected. And now this mysterious sword had sought him out.

‘Who is he, Isloman? And what does all this mean? Your book doesn’t tell us much. We know that this sword is far beyond our understanding. But it seems to presage danger. Danger for Hawklan, danger perhaps for us all. What shall we do?’

Isloman answered without hesitation. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘We can’t do anything but wait. If Hawklan needs help and we can give it then we will, won’t we? Some-thing’s happening which we can’t begin to judge. But I know this, and so do you-there’s no evil in that sword, and no evil in Hawklan. And I trust Hawklan’s sight without question.’

Returning to the castle, the two brothers found that Hawklan had taken Isloman’s advice to find clothes more appropriate for the long journey to the Gretmearc than his long loose habit and soft shoes.

As they entered his room with the sword, Tirilen was eyeing him critically and making small, pecking adjustments to his unfamiliar garments.

‘Isn’t he lovely?’ she said, a cryptic expression on her face. She took him by the elbow and turned him round to face them. Hawklan looked faintly embarrassed. Loman and Isloman exchanged brief glances although neither spoke, nor made any other outward sign of what they had seen. Each knew the other had noted Hawk-lan’s remarkably changed appearance.

Loman covered their awkwardness by stepping forward and looping the sword belt around Hawklan’s waist. For a moment he looked like a faithful squire attending on his lord.

‘What did you find out about it?’ Hawklan asked.

‘Nothing definite,’ said Loman. ‘Isloman thinks as I do. It’s very old and it’s done some rare deeds in its time. It was made by craftsmen of… ’ He paused, at a loss. ‘I doubt a finer weapon exists in the whole Armoury… or anywhere for that matter.’

Hawklan turned directly to Isloman, trying to ignore Tirilen still moving around him making final adjust-ments to his clothes. ‘And the hilt?’ he asked.

‘It has the qualities that Loman tells me are in the metal. They’re quite… overwhelming. I certainly don’t understand them fully and I doubt I could explain them to you even if you weren’t rock-blind,’ said Isloman.

Hawklan nodded. ‘What about the device in the hilt? Did you recognize it?’ he asked.

Isloman told him of the old book and its obscure references to times long gone. At the names Theowart, Sphaeera, Enartion and Ethriss, Hawklan seemed to hear again the distant note he had heard when he first handled the sword, but it slipped from him just as before.

He looked at his two friends, dominating the room with their massive presence. They were looking at him strangely although patently trying not to. Tirilen too, had an uncertainty about her as she stood back to examine her handiwork.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. Both the men seemed to start a little at the question.

‘Oh nothing. You just look different in your travel-ling clothes,’ said Loman with a slightly nervous smile. Hawklan knew they were keeping something from him, but he did not press them. They would not deceive him in any serious matter. He probably looked rather foolish in the clothes that Tirilen had found for him and they were too embarrassed to tell him. That would be typical of them.

But it was not that. Quite the contrary. Hawklan wore the clothes and the sword as if they were a natural part of him. The brothers saw before them the man they knew as a healer: a gentle, slightly innocent man, full of stillness and light. But his healer’s cowled robe had been laid aside and, standing armed, breeched, and booted, in a metal-buckled jerkin and with a long hooded cloak over his shoulders, the whole in black, his bearing was purely that of a warrior and leader. A warrior and a leader the like of which could be seen in the thick of battle in many of the carvings that filled the Castle.

Before he left, Hawklan asked Loman and Isloman to teach him some basic sword skills, but, strangely, they both refused.

‘If I try to use it I’ll probably cut my foot off… or worse,’ he protested jokingly. ‘I’ve never handled a sword in my life.’

But the two men did not respond to his levity. They shook their heads. ‘That sword’s far beyond our understanding, Hawklan,’ said Isloman soberly, almost reverently. ‘We can only learn from it, not teach.’ Then, as if reluctant to deny a friend such help, ‘But I doubt you’ll be able to draw it in an ill cause. You must do as we must. Learn from it. Trust its judgement. It sought you out, not you it. Have faith in it.’

Hawklan was gone. Off on his strange pilgrimage to the Gretmearc. It thus fell to Tirilen to repair her uncle.

Isloman had spent the whole day in a towering fury-his hand gashed by his new chisel and, worse, far worse, his precious, long sought rock tortured by the rending scar the chisel had made when it slipped from his hand.

‘Months this rock and I have searched for one an-other,’ he fumed, as Tirilen treated and bound up his bleeding hand. ‘And for this to happen. To me of all people.’ He leaned forward and put his head in his hands in distress.

Tirilen had been businesslike in treating the hand, although the cut had an unpleasant quality about it, but she was at a loss to contend with this uncharacteristic outburst, following as it did his equally uncharacteristic rage. After a moment, she put her arms around him hesitantly and held him almost as if he had been a hurt child. Eventually he sat up and looked at her.

Putting his large hand against her cheek, he said quietly, ‘You’re very like your mother, Tirilen. In many ways. I’m sorry I’ve been such an old woman. I shouldn’t have burdened you with my carelessness and its consequences.’

‘Don’t be silly, uncle,’ she replied. ‘It was an ugly cut. You couldn’t have left it.’ She frowned a little. ‘That tinker was like a bad wind. He threw dust in our eyes, and whatever he was, we couldn’t see him for it. I’ve set aside the pendant I bought from him. Look what it did.’

She lifted up her chin and showed him a small but angry red mark where the pendant had rested against her. ‘And it was so pretty when I bought it.’

Isloman scowled and clenched his fists menacingly. Tirilen became businesslike again.

‘Where’s the chisel now?’ she asked before he could speak.

He answered a little shamefacedly. ‘I… threw it away when… ’ He indicated his damaged hand. Tirilen stopped winding up a bandage and looked at him, her face a mixture of concern and surprise. Nothing was ever ‘thrown away’ in Orthlund. Everything had its use and its time, its place in the Great Harmony.

‘Threw it away?’ she echoed in a tone of disbelief.

‘Yes. I’m afraid so,’ Isloman replied, looking even more shamefaced. Tirilen laid the bandage neatly in its place in her box, and took his hand.

‘You must go and find it, uncle,’ she said firmly. ‘Straight away. Who knows what harm it might do left lying idly?’