Roger Taylor: The call of the sword

Hawklan screwed up his eyes to focus on the goblet. The surface of the liquid was smooth and inviting, and the goblet seemed to be infinitely deep, he felt he was looking across the universe. Figures formed in it-smiling figures. Through his half-open eyes he could see them: Tirilen, Loman, and then Isloman standing over them both. They were smiling and Tirilen was beckon-ing to him. The fragrance rising up from the cup was now almost overpowering, and Hawklan could do nothing to stop himself falling, falling, falling into dark depths beneath him to meet his friends. He felt Isloman’s welcoming grip on his right arm.

Then he became aware of a faint ripple in his calm. Something about the figures in the goblet was strange-wrong, even. His mind tried to reach out and identify the sour note that had crept into this magic harmony. It was familiar. Slowly, like icy raindrops falling on an upturned face, he felt flashes of wakefulness jolting him.

The eyes!

What were his friends doing in a wine goblet?

An alien sound penetrated through the drowsy haze that enveloped him. He made a faint effort to stand up but Isloman’s grip on his right arm urged him comfort-ingly back into the chair.

The strange noise persisted, and for a moment came into focus. It was someone singing and shouting. Someone… drunk?’

Hawklan felt confusion swirl about him.

These kind people who were helping him-he wanted to tell them that his friends were in the goblet-that something was wrong-but there was now a sense of urgency around him. He became vaguely aware of people running about, and the clamour was growing, breaking through to him with increasing clarity.

He felt the goblet drop from his hand and heard it splash onto the ground.

Slowly turning his head to apologize, he saw three figures struggling: one of them a small, scruffy individ-ual. As he watched and tried to focus on this strange interruption, he felt the warm euphoria that had pervaded his limbs turning into a leaden weight, and cold chills of fear began to form inside him.

A noise drew him away from the slow, slow, strug-gling figures, and he looked down at his feet. In the pool of spilt wine he could see the caricatured figures of his friends reaching out to him, their hands clawlike. Gleaming eyes and gaping mouths transfixed him. He could feel the tiny hands seizing his foot. He tried to move it, but it would not respond.

‘Wanna shee wot’s appening,’ came the garbled cry of the small struggling figure. ‘Gorra right. Gretmearc rules. All shstallsh to be open to everyone-shee?-everyone.’

Hawklan turned again and tried to call out to the men struggling with him to leave him alone, but no sound came. The little figure staggered and with a joyous shout fell to the ground taking one of his assailants with him.

‘Shorry,’ he cried in a jovial sing-song voice.

Staggering to his feet he sent another man sprawl-ing, and then he lurched into a table which fell over, crashing noisily into a large and elaborate display of some kind. The lights inside the pavilion went wild, flickering dementedly.

The little figure laughed infectiously and gave a cheer of approval.

Hawklan smiled at the man’s antics and tried to rise so that he could intervene. But the grip on his arm tightened, and the scrabbling at his foot grew more frantic. He tried to call out again.

Suddenly, through all the flickering commotion and the noise of the happy destruction being wrought by the drunken man and his pursuers, a solid black shadow flapped into the pavilion and flew over Hawklan’s head.

Hawklan heard a sickening and vaguely familiar thud behind him, followed by a cry, and some of his leaden stupor eased. Then a familiar grip tightened on his shoulder and an equally familiar voice, now urgent and fearful, said, ‘Get up. Hawklan. Get up.’

Hawklan struggled to obey. Black wings beat in his face and the cry was repeated. This time the voice was almost screaming. It was a tone he had never heard before.

There was another crash as the drunk continued to career around the pavilion.

‘Gavor,’ mumbled Hawklan. ‘Gavor. Help me.’

He felt another presence at his back and Gavor was gone again. His mind groped for consciousness now as a drowning man strives for air. The knowledge that his friend might be in danger acted on him more effectively than did any awareness of his own peril, and he exerted what will he had left to try to stand up.

He was partly successful, but his right arm was still gripped tightly, and the scrabbling at his foot persisted and grew horribly. Without looking, he raised his foot and drove it down fiercely. The impact seemed to shake his entire body and he heard tiny cries of fury and hatred swirling off into the distance.

His vision was clearing, as was his head, but every-thing still seemed to be moving very slowly. He turned and saw Gavor deliver a pitiless blow to the temple of a strangely liveried individual who fell like a stricken tree and lay still. Gavor flapped desperately for a moment to recover his balance and then looked across at Hawklan’s right hand.

Hawklan followed the wide-eyed stare and looked down in horror. He could feel his hand, but not see it. His arm stopped just below his elbow. The hand and forearm had been absorbed into the chair, and he could feel it pulling him further in.

The remains of his stupor fled and he became coldly and frighteningly conscious. He pulled desperately on his arm to try and free it, but nothing moved. He felt as if he was trying to lift an entire mountain, and worse, the grip on his arm tightened menacingly. Gavor was about to land on the chair and assail it with his beak, but Hawklan waved him away.

‘Don’t touch it,’ he cried. Then almost without real-izing it, he seized the hilt of his sword in his left hand and pulled it from its scabbard like a great dagger. He felt a strange surging power run through him, and the grip of the chair eased momentarily, before tightening again, and drawing him in further, irresistibly.

Here was an obscenity that could be healed in only one way.

Arching his body awkwardly, he drove the sword down into the chair with all his strength, although, more correctly, the sword seemed to leap forward of its own accord, like a hound after prey.

There was a dreadful choking sound from the chair and the grip tightened on Hawklan’s arm until he began to feel his bones being crushed. Abruptly he was in a dark and tormented place, assailed by clamour and death from all sides, and so full of unending despair that his whole being was filled with a dreadful killing frenzy. He heard his voice screaming both in pain and rage and, withdrawing the sword, he plunged it repeatedly into the horror that would have bound him.

The grip on his hand finally slithered away and the choking sound rose up into a howling scream. Freed, Hawklan staggered back and, his frenzy still on him, seized the sword with both hands and swung it down in a whistling, pitiless arc.

The blade seemed to pass through the terrible chair, leaving it intact, but Hawklan felt it cutting through something, and his flesh crawled at the sensation. He lifted the sword high again, the action harmonizing with his still mounting fury, then with a roar of murderous anger that mingled with and overtopped the cry rising from the chair, he struck again.

The impact seemed to shake the very earth beneath his feet, and he knew he had struck some evil to the heart.

The screaming rose in pitch, a rasping shriek, be-coming louder and louder, until Hawklan felt that the very sound itself was solidifying about him. For an instant it seemed that the seat and the back of the chair were the maw of some dreadful beast spewing forth hatred in its death agony.

Then, it was over. The screaming dwindled into a loathsome gurgling, and everywhere was suddenly silent. Hawklan was equally suddenly spent. He gazed around shakily. The two men who had been struggling with the drunken little man were staring, thunderstruck, at the chair, which seemed to be rotting away as they watched. Beside it, the liveried figure was stirring and groaning.