Roger Taylor - The call of the sword

Hawklan smiled and patted his friend on the arm. ‘No, Isloman,’ he said. ‘It’s just a whim. You follow the songs of the rocks. I must follow this song.’ Isloman nodded in reluctant acceptance.

‘You can tell me how to get there and give me the benefit of your great experience in travelling far and wide,’ said Hawklan, to ease his friend’s concern.

Derimot Findeel Dan-Tor pleasantly declined the hospitality offered by the villagers as he filled his enormous pack and fastened it in a great flurry of knots and tapes and splendid shining buckles.

‘You’ve already been generosity itself to an impover-ished wanderer, and I’ve a friend I hope to meet in the next village tonight.’

So he was escorted to the leaving stone by an entou-rage of laughing children.

Some way outside the village he stopped, lowered his pack to the ground and straightened up. His crooked form seemed to unfold for ever, until eventually he stood very tall and very straight, and quite free of the twitchings and twistings that had characterized him in the village. He looked up at Anderras Darion, still visible over the hillock that separated him from the village, and reddening now in the setting sun. The red glow from the Castle reflected in his eyes, and he averted his gaze as if in some pain.

Raising his left hand he snapped his long, bony fingers with a crack like a snapping twig. Out of the deepening gloaming a small brown bird with blank yellow eyes appeared and perched on the still upraised hand. He lowered it until it was opposite his mouth. The bird tilted its head and the tinker spoke to it long and earnestly. Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the bird was gone, flying in a straight line towards the moun-tains, its wings whirring purposefully in the evening quiet.

Watching it, the tinker tapped his foot unthinkingly. The ground around it rippled like water and churned up tiny dust devils which danced around him, as if in homage.

Loman ran his finger along a small ledge as he walked down the winding corridor. He examined the slight skim of dust on the end of it carefully, then brushed it idly with his other hand.

‘Scallywags,’ he muttered.

The scallywags in question were the apprentices of the Carvers’ Guild who, amongst other things, were charged with the cleaning of the Castle and who were allowed special days away from the fields to do so. It had been Isloman’s idea. He believed, in fact he knew, that the apprentices could gain nothing but good from the close proximity to the countless carvings that were to be found throughout the Castle, covering almost every wall and ceiling as fully as they covered the Great Gate. And it would be a small repayment to Hawklan from the village for his many services.

Loman however, had earthier reservations, as the organizing of these ‘scallywags’ fell on his shoulders, and, as he had said at the very beginning, some of them were far from being as diligent as they might be. He went through the duty list for the day in his mind, and narrowing his eyes, fixed the apple-shaped face of the negligent culprit for later attention.

He grunted to himself as he went down a short flight of stairs.

‘Worse than being a nursemaid sometimes. I could do the jobs myself by the time I’ve sorted those imps out.’

He was a little out of sorts today because of the disruption of his routine. It was a good routine and he did not like to change it. In fact he did not like change at all very much, and today seemed to be full of it, with Hawklan suddenly wanting to go to the Gretmearc. ‘On a whim,’ no less! And Isloman more than half encourag-ing him. Then Tirilen almost throwing a tantrum like the old days because Hawklan refused to take her. Now, thanks to his own zeal, he had to find him a sword. A sword-for Hawklan! He grunted again.

And that damned tinker with his fancy tools. Loman was not only the castellan of Anderras Darion; he was, unusually for one of the Orthlundyn, a consummate smith. As his brother saw into the heart of the rock, so he saw into the heart of metals, and as his brother heard the song of the rock and drew a greater beauty from it, so he did with metals.

The tools he made were part of a greater harmony, rarely spoken of but always understood by the Orthlundyn. They did not tear shape from the rock; that would be destruction. They discovered it and drew it out gently, parting it from its parent when the time was right, like the natural and painless dropping of fruit from a tree for the benefit of both. That was creation.

He stopped for a moment and raised a pensive hand to his mouth. He had not seen the tinker nor any of his wares and he wondered why Isloman had bothered to purchase anything from him. And the other people as well. Why had they bought tools and implements they did not really need, nor knew the origins of? They, above all, knew that ill-conceived implements could rend and destroy. What blindness had come over them? More change. And not for the better, he was sure.

Shaking his head, he strode out again, dismissing his reveries in favour of the business in hand. He moved for some time along corridors and down stairways until, turning a final corner, he paused and clenched his fists nervously. This was never easy and always he had to pause and take his fear in hand despite the familiarity of the route ahead.

Always too, as he stood here, as if as an antidote to the grimness ahead, he recalled the events of some twenty years before. Events presaged by his brother bursting noisily into his workshop on the coldest night of that long bitter winter.

Only recently returned from the horror of the Mor-lider War with its terrible winter night-fighting, Loman was brought to his feet by cruelly learned reflexes and, seizing a nearby hammer, he found himself facing his brother wild-eyed and savage, hand poised for a fearful blow, and mind uncertain for the moment where he was.

Isloman screwed up his face in self-reproach, seeing immediately the folly of his hasty intrusion. Briefly be cast his eyes downwards.

‘I’m sorry, Loman,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

But then his urgency overrode his regret. ‘Come quickly. Quickly. The castle.’ And seizing his brother’s arm, he dragged him out into the deep snow.

Loman swore robustly and stepped sharply back into the warmth to gather up his cloak. Fastening it about himself with a scowl, he prepared to take his brother severely to task for his conduct, but Isloman merely pointed up into the blackness that shrouded the mountains. Loman followed his gaze.

Where all should have been darkness, a single light shone out, soft and warm. For a moment he was again disorientated, then…

‘It’s the Gate,’ he whispered in disbelief, his breath cloudy in the light from his own door. ‘The Gate’s open.’

He could never remember clearly what must have been a leg-wrenching walk up the steep, snow-clogged road to the castle, but he remembered standing awe-stricken with several other villagers in front of the long sealed Gate, its two great leaves now swung wide like a welcoming embrace.

He remembered too, following the line of footprints that led him across the snow-covered courtyard lit gently by lights whose source he could not see. Foot-prints that brought him to an open door and whose melting remains took him down a long passageway and into a low-ceilinged hall illuminated by a flickering fire.

The cowled figure sitting in front of it with a great black bird perched on its shoulder, might have been an image of terror, but Loman’s heart told him there was no terror there. Only a great peace. It told him he had not known such peace for many a year, if ever.

The figure rose as he entered and turned to face him. Before he could speak however, it turned to Isloman and held out its hands.