David Gemmell - The Swords of Night and Day

‘Druss told me he was protecting someone there.’ Skilgannon sighed. ‘Landis Kan killed him in order to give me his body. We exchanged places in the Void.’ He laid his hand on Harad’s shoulder. ‘Get some sleep. It will be night soon.’

‘It will always be night for me, from now on,’ said Harad.

Skilgannon moved away from the axeman. Askari joined him, and together they walked through the ruined wood. ‘That was a good lie to tell him,’ she said.

‘It was what a friend of mine once called a velvet lie. The truth would have crushed him.’

They paused by the graveside, and Skilgannon lifted Snaga from the ground. One of the blades was smeared with dried blood. He plunged it into the earth, then pulled up a section of long grass and rubbed at the blade until all sign of the stain had vanished. ‘We like to think of life as a constant,’ he said. ‘Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘but that was a cruel way to die.’

‘They are all cruel, in their own way. And it wasn’t a complete lie. When the axe flew from Harad’s hand I think it struck the boulder and ricocheted. She would have known nothing. It was a swift, painless death.’

‘Yet pointless.’

‘Most deaths are,’ he said. ‘Even those that seem to have purpose. I died seeking to save a people I had grown to love. Now the nation no longer exists. The Angostin are part of the dust of history.

Ultimately my sacrifice was worth nothing. But then, ultimately, all the works of man are as nothing.’

‘Don’t agree,’ said Askari. ‘When I was a child I remember Kinyon rescuing a little boy from a cliff face. He was trapped on a ledge, a hundred feet above the ground. Kinyon climbed that rock face. It was raining, the holds were slippery. He almost fell several times. Yet he reached the child, swung him to his back, and made the long climb down. The boy died the following spring, of a fever. Does that mean Kinyon’s bravery was for nothing?’

‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘My old swordmaster used to talk about the Now. It is all there is. The past is a memory, the future a dream, the present a reality. All we can ever do is live in the Now, and try to ensure that our deeds are worthy. Kinyon’s deed was worthy.’ He sighed. ‘You are right to chide me.

What counts is how we live now , not whether in a thousand years civilizations will fall.’

‘So what will we do now ?’

‘We?’

‘You don’t want me with you?’

‘I don’t want you killed.’

‘If we can end the reign of the Eternal, then I won’t be,’ she said. ‘I don’t know much about destiny, and I don’t care about the Eternal and her magic. I never did. All I wanted was to live in the high country, to hunt, to swim, to eat, to laugh. It seems to me, though, that we are here for a reason. You, me, Harad.

Three Reborns, all from the same period in time. So tell me again of the prophecy, and let us try to make sense of it.’

‘There is no sense to any of it,’ he snapped. ‘Whatever Ustarte prophesied has become a piece of doggerel verse. Hero Reborn, torn from the grey, reunited with blades, of Night and of Day. Landis Kan did not tell me the rest of it, save, as I said, that it involved killing a mountain giant with a golden shield, and stealing an egg from a silver eagle.’

‘Perhaps the key to the riddle is in the tale of the eagle,’ she suggested.

‘A magical bird that flies round the sun?’

‘Feeds on the sun,’ she corrected, ‘and flies round the moon.’

‘Granting wishes to wizards,’ he said. ‘I was listening.’

‘Only with part of your mind. All legends have a base in fact. Kinyon told me that. They just get elaborated. They distort as they grow.’

‘There’s truth in that,’ he said. He laughed. ‘When Landis Kan first woke me I went to his library and studied all that was known about my life. I had no memory then, and wanted to learn about myself. Much of what I did was there, but hidden beneath ludicrous tales of flying horses and fire-breathing dragons.

Yes, you are right. We need to examine the fables. Tell me again all you can recall about the eagle.’

He listened as she spoke. ‘Why wizards?’ he said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘Why would the bird grant wishes only to wizards? Why not heroes? Why not farmers?’

‘I don’t know. Righteous wizards, so the story goes. What are you thinking?’

‘Wizards understand the nature of magic. They use magic to weave spells. So it is not a question of the bird making a choice to grant wishes. It is the wizards who take magic from the bird.’ He fell silent, thinking it through. ‘The eagle is not alive. It is merely a source of power for the wizards to call upon. It is silver,’ he went on. ‘Created. An artefact, just like the machines in the temple, and back at Landis Kan’s palace.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘What am I saying? A machine which floats in the sky and, somehow, sends power to the earth? It makes no sense. How would they send it into the sky? And why would it not fall back down?’

‘The why is not important now,’ she said. ‘Any more than your winged horse. The eagle is the answer.

And the egg that you must steal.’

‘Or destroy,’ he said. He swore softly. ‘There is something we are missing. Something central. If the eagle was placed in the sky by the ancients, and if all magic began in that moment, why is it only in this time that the artefacts of the ancients can be used again? We had a few Joinings in my day — Jiamads, as you call them. They were created by Nadir shamans. But nothing on the scale we see now.’

He paused by a fallen log and sat down. ‘This is making my head spin,’ he told her. ‘We are building theories about something implausible and impossible. A metal bird that had great power, lost it, and then had it returned. And what of the giants with golden shields?’ He suddenly froze.

‘What is it?’ she asked him.

‘The shield of gold. I have seen it. It is not carried by a mountain giant, but sits upon a giant mountain, above the Temple of the Resurrection. It is huge. The priests called it the Mirror of Heaven. It is coming back to me now. A young man I knew took me to the temple. He talked of it on the way, about abbots in the ancient days, and of the Mirror. They called it a mirror because when it first appeared lights blazed within the darkened halls. Lights with no flame, like captured sunlight. They believed the Mirror somehow reflected sunlight into the mountain. That was when the ancient artefacts had their magic renewed. I think I have it now. The metal bird always had magic, but only when the Mirror appeared did that magic flow freely back from the sky. It also explains the vanity.’

‘Vanity?’ queried Askari. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Landis Kan said the eagle was vain — in love with its own reflection. The eagle gazes at itself in the Mirror of Heaven. Only then does the magic flow.’

‘And it flows into the egg,’ she said.

‘Exactly. And it is from the egg that the artefacts somehow draw their power. If I destroy the egg, the machines will be useless again. No more Reborns. And the Eternal will be human, and face death like the rest of us.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I must find the temple.’

‘ We must find the temple,’ she corrected him. ‘How far is it from here?’

‘That is hard to say. I did not travel to it from this direction. I took a ship from Mellicane, a city on the eastern coast. It journeyed to an estuary on this side of the ocean, on the river Rostrias.’

‘Kinyon would know. Originally he came from the north.’