Whistler [A sequel to The Chronicles of Hawklan] Read online

  'But yours!’ the Whistler exploded, all animation again. ‘As am I, I suppose.’ He spun round and brought the flute down to slap into the palm of his hand, before swinging it up to point accusingly at Vredech. ‘Another of your games, Priest? Damn you to whatever passes for hell in your black-clad religion. I'm not some gullible peasant to be cowed and swayed by twisting words and blustering oratory. I see what I see, and I see it for what it is. I've spanned dreamways beyond your imagining, floated sun-carried amid the glittering cities of the clouds, trekked through deserts of eye-scorching sand and eye-blinding snow, led legions into battle, conquered ...’ He stopped and waved his hand wildly as if to stop the flow of memories. ‘And you, you black-eyed crow, you rake across my soul with your probing just for a game.’ He raised the flute high behind him as if to strike Vredech.

  'The other is that He's not your creation or mine but real!’ Vredech roared at him. His face flinched away from the intended blow while his feet carried him forwards as if welcoming it. ‘As am I. As are you. As are all the things you've ever known. Real, Whistler.’ His voice faded into the faintest of whispers. ‘Not your creation, nor mine, but someone else's.'

  The Whistler, his hand still poised, stared at him, his eyes searching Vredech's face desperately.

  'Real.’ He spoke the word very softly, as if testing it for some mysterious power. ‘Real.’ Slowly he lowered his arm and, equally slowly, he lifted the flute to his mouth. He blew a solitary note, long and steady, but growing softer and softer. To Vredech, it was like a shining silver rope. He had a vision of it twining out into the darkness, on and on, twisting its eternal way through the stars.

  Even when the Whistler stopped playing, it seemed to Vredech that the sound was continuing, and would continue for ever.

  'The Sound Carvers taught me to play this,’ the Whistler said, shaking his head sadly. ‘Strange, elusive people. But the noises I make are scarcely a shadow of theirs. I wonder if I'll meet them again? There's so much I want to ask them now.'

  Vredech did not speak. The terrible violence that had radiated from the Whistler but moments ago was gone utterly and his voice held such poignancy that to have interrupted would have been like a gratuitous cruelty.

  The Whistler looked at him. ‘You're a rare one, Allyn Vredech. The best I've ever made.'

  'Or met on your wanderings,’ Vredech added, forcing a smile. ‘And I'm hard pressed to know where I could have conjured you from. I never had much of an imagination.'

  The two men stared at one another for a long, timeless moment.

  'There is no answer, is there?’ the Whistler said, looking at his hand as if he had never truly seen it before.

  'I'm not sure we're asking the right question,’ Vredech replied.

  'A priest's answer, for sure,’ the Whistler replied, his mood lightening.

  'A thinker's answer,’ Vredech said in mock reproach.

  'Another priest's answer,’ the Whistler announced definitively.

  'Let's discuss our situation, then. Let's reason—like priests.'

  The Whistler laughed loudly, making the shadows dance. ‘Reason and priests. Oil and water.’ He laughed again. ‘First you call me a liar, then a priest. You're certainly free with your abuse, night eyes.'

  'I think you'll survive any abuse I can offer you.’ The Whistler was playing again, the three notes that Vredech had first heard, though a little faster, their character one of curiosity almost. ‘True, true, true,’ came the Whistler's voice across the mouth-hole.

  'Tell me about the man,’ Vredech risked. ‘Whatever, wherever, whenever, we are—whoever we are—it is he who brings the pain to you.'

  The Whistler stopped playing and gazed upwards as if he were looking for something. ‘I'm not sure I know how to talk any more,’ he said. ‘You've given me such strange doubts.'

  'A priest's answer,’ Vredech said.

  The Whistler looked at him sharply, his eyes mocking. ‘Priests never doubt,’ he declared.

  'True priests always doubt,’ Vredech retorted instantly. Then, simultaneously, the two of them said, ‘A priest's answer!’ and burst out laughing.

  'Be silent, night eyes,’ the Whistler said, with heavy friendliness as their laughter faded. ‘I have a tune to play.'

  And the air was suddenly full of bouncing, irresistible music that left Vredech no choice, despite his priestly dignity, but to lift his hands and clap them in response to its pounding rhythm. The Whistler was bobbing and jigging as he played, his body marking out its own dancing counterpoint to the swirling music.

  Abruptly he stopped, leaving Vredech with his hands thrown wide, expectant. ‘You're no drummer, Priest. But there's hope for anyone with music in him.’ His eyes were sparkling and his face flushed. Vredech smiled broadly, as though this were considerable praise. Then he saw that the Whistler was motioning him to turn around. As he did so, a strange sensation under his feet drew his eyes downwards. He was standing on grass! And he was casting a shadow across it!

  He looked up.

  At first he could not make out what he was looking at, so used had he become to the world of shadows in which he and the Whistler were conversing. Then he saw that he was standing on a hillside and looking across a broad, rolling landscape towards a distant sky, red with the light of a setting sun.

  'Where...?'

  'Shh,’ the Whistler replied very softly, coming to his side.

  Vredech did as he was bidden, and for a few silent minutes the two men stood and watched the fading sun. Long, deceiving shadows disguised the land over which he was gazing, but Vredech could make out trees and woodlands and fields and, he thought, dwellings of some kind. A broad river wound golden through it, and the air about them was soft and warm and full of evening birdsong. Vredech could feel a great peacefulness passing over him.

  A dull thud drew him out of his reverie. Looking around, he saw that the Whistler had sat down on the grass and was lying back, his hands behind his head. He sat down beside him.

  'Where are we?’ he asked, unable to contain the question now.

  'Here,’ came the reply. ‘We're only ever here.'

  'Stop that, and answer properly,’ Vredech demanded sternly.

  The Whistler chuckled to himself at this response as he brought the flute to his eye and peered along it, swinging it slowly across the reddening horizon. ‘You'd be none the wiser if I told you,’ he said. ‘It's just a world I made once. I carry it with me for when I need to lie down and think.'

  Vredech shook his head. ‘Even I could imagine somewhere as gentle and peaceful as this,’ he said.

  Unexpectedly, the Whistler gave him an approving look. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Do so, then. And carry it with you always.'

  The remark brought Vredech's earlier thoughts back to him: how he was going to carry this sense of well-being back into his own world when he returned there. It seemed to stir something deep inside him.

  'Would you rather I'd carried you to some land desolated by plague and famine, devastated by the passage of warring armies?’ the Whistler said.

  'I'd rather you told me about Him,’ Vredech replied. ‘Talked about the heart of your concerns.'

  The Whistler sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees. ‘Why the interest?’ he asked. ‘He's my bane, not yours.'

  Vredech spoke the answer before he had even thought about it. ‘Because He's in my world now,’ he said. ‘And whether you're real or figment, you're here to tell me about Him.'

  The Whistler cocked his head on one side and studied Vredech carefully. ‘I know nothing about Him,’ he replied. ‘He is, that's all I can tell you.’ He picked a small white flower and held it out to Vredech. ‘He is. Like this flower, like this hill, that sunset.'

  'You don't scream denial at the flowers and the sunset,’ Vredech said, taking the flower. ‘You don't run away from them, flee into worlds of your own making.'

  'You flee the forest fire, the flood, the tempest ...'

  'Stop it,’ Vredech
said, his face pained. ‘Stop running. Just tell me who He is and why I have to know about Him.'

  'He is me ...'

  'Stop it, damn you!’ Anger surged through Vredech, as savage as it was unexpected.

  An echoing spasm flitted across the Whistler's face, but his voice was calm when he spoke. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We agreed we'd not debate that, didn't we? Who is He, then? He is Evil personified. His guise is always different, but He is always the same. It's almost as if, at the beginning of time, out of the heat of the Great Creation, He came together as a whole when He should have been scattered through all mankind, like a ... tempering, sobering influence.'

  Vredech watched him cautiously, wondering whether he might not suddenly shy away from the topic into some irrelevancy. But the Whistler seemed totally absorbed. The setting sun shone red on his face. ‘It's almost as if,’ he hesitated, ‘as if the whole process of the Creation had gone wrong. “Fabrics's torn, ‘fore all was born".'

  Despite himself, Vredech felt his eyes widening in shock. This was sacrilege! The Creation was Ishryth's and it was perfect. It had been marred only by the natural sinfulness of man. It...

  He stopped himself. Sacrilege or no, he must listen.

  Whatever was happening here, this was something that had to be heard.

  The Whistler was shaking his head, as if rejecting the idea himself. ‘He wanders the worlds like a lost spirit—no, like a predator, a parasite—in search of a host.’ He fell silent, rapt in thought, his eyes fixed and staring, the flute swinging slowly from his hand like a pendulum.

  Not ‘my worlds', Vredech noted. Though it was part of their agreement, it made him feel deeply uneasy. He risked a comment. ‘You sound as if you're talking about Ahmral—the devil,’ he said. ‘A supernatural manifestation of ...'

  The Whistler's hand came up sharply to silence him. Its long forefinger waved from side to side hypnotically. ‘There is nothing supernatural, Priest. There is only the darkness where your ability to measure the natural ends. And it's up to you, above all, to shine the light into it. He is all too natural, all too human, and He carries with Him the essence of all that is dark and foul in the human spirit, all that wallows in ignorance.’ The long hand tightened into an agonizing fist. ‘He's as real as my fist. And though He normally uses others to fulfil His benighted will, should the whim take Him, He'd throttle you with His bare hands, throw your babes into the fire, ravage and slaughter your women—and His heart would revel in it. Supernatural!’ He spat.

  There was such scorn in his voice that Vredech wanted suddenly to turn away from the very course that he had set the Whistler upon. Wanted to taunt him back into quarrelling about their mutual reality—‘But you said that He was you, your creation, your darker self.’ But the words would not form. Nor could he force himself to remember that he was listening to the ramblings of someone who was nothing more than his own creation. His senses forbade all forms of solace. Everything around him cried out that both he and the Whistler, and this silent, summer-evening world, were all real, for all it defied reason.

  There is only the darkness where your ability to measure the natural ends.

  He was impaled on that. Immovable.

  Damn him!

  The Whistler was talking again. ‘If He's in your world, Allyn Vredech, and something prompted you to say He was, then He's one of you—a priest. That's how I saw Him.’ He frowned, as if trying to recall something. ‘And He's hung about already with an aura of carnage—drawing it in. Feeding on it. He'll be plotting, thinking, deceiving, seeking power. You'll probably find Him gently sowing disorder and discontent where He affects to bring calm and tranquillity. Find Him, Priest. Kill Him.'

  This pronouncement seemed to cut through the balmy evening air like an icy mist. The very simplicity of its utterance gave it a chilling quality that no emotional ranting could have done, and Vredech started back in horror.

  He began to stammer out, ‘I can't ...’ then some furious, but almost childlike reaction welled up inside him. ‘Why haven't you killed Him, if you know Him so well, if you've met Him so often?’ His voice was shrill.

  The Whistler seemed reluctant to answer and there was a long silence. ‘I have,’ he said, eventually. ‘And so have others.'

  'Then why...?'

  'It's not enough,’ the Whistler answered before the question was asked. ‘Killing His body brings a respite to His victims of the moment—no small thing, I can assure you. But it merely cuts Him free from His own voluntary bondage. Releases Him to wander, to find another place, another time, another host. To begin again. He is endlessly patient.’ He turned to Vredech, his face grim. ‘And each time He comes, He spreads His ways a little wider, a little deeper. Endlessly, endlessly patient.'

  'I don't understand you,’ Vredech said. His head was beginning to ache again. ‘If He's dead, He's dead.'

  The Whistler's mouth curled into a sadly ironic smile. ‘Don't you believe in souls in your religion, Priest?’ he asked.

  The remark flustered Vredech for a moment. ‘Yes ... the soul is that part of man that returns to the body of Ishryth on death. It's not some ... entity ... capable of wilfully taking possession of others.'

  The Whistler chuckled softly to himself and shook his head with the sadness of a parent who knows he cannot begin to explain some profundity to his child. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Just accept my word in this. The death of His body is merely a setback.’ He chuckled again, a little more loudly. ‘One He strives murderously to avoid, I'll grant you, but only a setback for all that.'

  He lay back on the grass again, his face suddenly pensive.

  Vredech waited.

  The Whistler played the three notes again, long, slow, plaintive. He played them several times, then he closed his eyes. ‘Weak,’ he said softly. ‘He was weak. It comes back to me now. He was holding on like a failing climber. Clinging desperately to the tiniest crevice in a rock face. Desperately.’ His eyes opened suddenly and the flute gave out a rising and anguished shriek. ‘He's met a terrible foe,’ he said, sitting up sharply. ‘Someone who's succeeded in destroying not only His body but has reached almost into the heart of Him and struck again—scattered Him far and wide. Reduced Him to what He should have been.'

  'I don't understand you,’ Vredech said. His headache was getting worse and he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep pace with the shifting realities that were implied in what he was hearing.

  The Whistler held up his hand for silence. ‘I've heard of people—rare people—with the gift of change. Those who for some reason lie nearer to the essence of all things than most, and who can transmute it at will—air, water, earth—life itself.’ He stared into the dull red sky. ‘They say He searches for them always. He can use them—they ease His way between the worlds. But He fears them, too. All making is unmaking, and with their unmaking, they can destroy Him.'

  He stood up suddenly. ‘He is weak, He is weak, He is weak,’ he said, almost rapturously. ‘Perhaps now the slaying of His body alone might release that frantic fingerhold He has here. Dispatch Him for ever.’ He began to move about agitatedly, looking this way and that, the flute flickering red in the dying sunlight. ‘I must find Him. And I must find the changer who did this to Him.’ He came to a halt, between Vredech and the final glow of the setting sun. ‘As must you, Priest. Find Him. Kill Him.'

  Vredech could stand no more. He could see only the vaguest outline of the Whistler etched into the darkness, and his head was throbbing unbearably.

  'None of this is real,’ he cried out furiously, making to stand up.

  A scream and a startled cry greeted this outburst, and light flooded painfully into his face.

  * * *

  Chapter 19

  Vredech closed his eyes and jerked his head away violently. The light swayed unsteadily.

  'Dim the lantern, quickly,’ a man's voice said, and Vredech felt powerful hands at once supporting and restraining him. The light faded. ‘Gently, Brother, gently,’ t
he voice went on. ‘Don't struggle. You're safe. You must've been having a dream.'

  Out of habit, Vredech mumbled, ‘Don't dream,’ but it was barely intelligible.

  'Yes, yes,’ the voice said, comfortingly but not listening.

  'Whistler?’ Vredech said uncertainly.

  'What?’ came an amused inquiry, then to someone else, ‘I think he's still dreaming.'

  'Is he all right?’ a woman's voice asked anxiously.

  There was a noncommittal grunt by way of reply. ‘Brighten the lantern a little.’ Vredech felt the returning light through his closed eyelids. ‘Are you all right now, Brother?’ the man asked. ‘It's me, Skynner. You've had a fall by the look of it. Is anything hurting?'

  Vredech's mind raced. Where was he? Was this another dream? Where was the Whistler? The hillside—the sunset?

  'Brother?'

  'I knew something like this was going to happen,’ came the woman's voice again, sounding agitated. ‘He's been neglecting himself so ...'

  'Be quiet,’ Skynner said brusquely. ‘Get me some water and a cloth to bathe his head.'

  Vredech opened his eyes. As they slowly focused, he saw the indignant form of his housekeeper bustling from the room. Then his view was dominated by Skynner's face. There was some concern in it but the Serjeant was smiling. ‘I'm having a deal of trouble with preachers falling over tonight,’ he said. ‘I'm beginning to think you've all broken your vows of abstinence.'

  As Vredech's vision cleared, so did his mind. The perspective was strange, but he could see familiar furniture. This was his study, in his Meeting House, in Troidmallos. Skynner and House were fussing over him for some reason.

  And he was on the floor!

  Had a fall, Skynner had said. Yes, that was it. He must have had a fall.

  The throbbing pain in his head interrupted his reasoning and he began to move his hand to it. Skynner restrained him. ‘Let me have a proper look before you start meddling with it,’ he said with authority. Vredech offered no resistance. Back home he might be, but the memory of the Whistler was still with him, clear and sharp. A real incident of barely a minute ago. Real and solid. Nothing like the vague memories he had had of ... other people's dreams. He chased that thought away almost in panic. He had enough to contend with at the moment determining which reality was the true one, without fretting about whether he was suddenly having dreams now...