The Waking of Orthlund Read online

  Looking round, he could see that Dacu and Tirke were similarly affected. Gavor was shaking his head and muttering something unintelligible but obviously derogatory. The horses too were suddenly restless. The Alphraan were keeping their word. Everyone else in the cave could hear what he was hearing.

  He waved his arms. ‘We don’t understand,’ he said. ‘We haven’t your skills. You must find the words, however crude, if you wish to speak with us about . . .’ He bent forward and laid his hand on Hawklan’s shoulder.

  The sounds and the images faded into silence, leaving the three men looking at one another, bewildered. ‘It’s difficult,’ said the voice plaintively, after a long pause.

  Despite himself, Isloman laughed at the tone. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But you can come down to our level; we can’t rise to yours.’

  There was another silence, then, ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Who is who?’ Isloman replied.

  ‘The one you carry. The one with Ethriss’s sword that you’ve shown with Oklar outside Anderras Darion.’

  In each of the words, Ethriss, Oklar, and Anderras Darion, came the crowding subtleties and complexities that had swept over the listeners before. To Isloman it seemed that each individual word was merely the glowing centre of a great sphere of shifting lights and shades of meaning. One day I shall carve such meaning, he thought.

  ‘This is Hawklan,’ he said simply, laying his hand on Hawklan’s shoulder again. ‘But how did you know of Anderras Darion and Oklar?’

  Immediately his head was full of the sounds of amusement which seemed to focus on his surprise that they should be acquainted with Anderras Darion. Laced through it, however, were threads of distaste at the gaucherie of his own knowledge of the Castle as enshrined in his speech.

  ‘We know of Anderras Darion,’ said the voice, openly amused, but without amplification, then, almost grimly, ‘We know of Oklar also. But why should you cut his image thus?’ Isloman felt his eyes drawn to his carving. ‘And who is . . . Hawklan?’ The voice tested the sound, Hawklan, and found it wanting. ‘And why does he carry Ethriss’s sword?’

  ‘Hawklan’s a healer,’ Isloman said. ‘Perhaps much more, we don’t know. He came with Gavor out of the mountains some twenty years ago. I cut what I cut on a whim, following the song of the rock. Dan-Tor . . . Oklar . . . came thus to us at Anderras Darion, bringing a corruption with him. When we sought him out in Fyorlund, he . . . hurt my friend, as you see. And many others far more cruelly. We’re going back now to Anderras Darion to find help to oppose him.’

  His last remarks, however, were swept away on a great, confining roar. It did not, however, overwhelm him as the previous noises had. Rather it seemed that many voices were quarrelling amongst themselves and that he and the others were merely inadvertent eavesdroppers.

  He looked at Dacu and Tirke. The latter seemed nervous and uncertain, but Dacu just pulled a wry face at him and shrugged his shoulders. Then he craned forward as if listening intently to the cacophony: Isloman half-closed his eyes and did the same.

  Though most of the noise was unintelligible to him, he began to catch some semblance of meaning in it. It centred around what he took to be Oklar, and the images that swarmed around that name made him shudder. So vivid and accurate were they that he found himself again cowering behind the failing Hawklan at the palace gate as such of Oklar’s power as was not being reflected back upon him by Hawklan’s sword tore around them to rend its terrible pathways across the city. His mind was filled again with the roaring and screaming that dominated that memory, and his whole soul was filled again with the same terror.

  But there was doubt and dissension in the noise of the Alphraan. It was a debate. An argument, in fact. Its content ebbed and flowed. The sound ‘Oklar’ was denied. It could not be, Oklar was destroyed, millennia ago, as were Dar Hastuin and Creost and Him. Terrible, hate-laden resonances in this last sound chilled Isloman even further. Then, images of human treachery and deceit were formed, and Isloman felt himself and his companions becoming the focus of the debate.

  He began to feel alarmed. There were strange whispering elements threading through the debate. Elements that formed into a vision of him fighting with Dacu, fighting with such ferocity that both would probably die. Elements that showed Gavor and Hawklan crushed underfoot and the horses scattered, foaming and terrified, across the mountains.

  Dacu, too, seemed to sense these sinister undercurrents and, catching Isloman’s eye, nodded towards the entrance of the cave again. Isloman bent down to pick up Hawklan again.

  ‘Stay,’ said a voice abruptly, cutting with stark clarity through the whirling mosaic of sound. The debate faded as suddenly as it had arisen, but Isloman could not determine whether it had been concluded. The voice was not the one that had spoken previously. It was grim and serious, and though Isloman felt no restraint upon him, he waited silently. Gavor stood protectively in front of Hawklan.

  ‘Oklar is dead,’ said the voice, its tone unequivocal. ‘He was destroyed utterly. Why do you profane our . . .’ The word eluded Isloman. House? Life? ‘. . . with his image? And from where did you steal the blessed Ethriss’s sword?’

  The judgement in the voice angered Isloman, and despite a feeling of vulnerability in facing this voluble darkness, he strode forward into it, holding his torch high and increasing its brightness.

  ‘Oklar lives,’ he said defiantly. ‘I have seen him. Hawklan has faced him. The truth is in my work there’ – he pointed to the carving, now clear and vivid in the bright torchlight – ‘though it may be as far beyond you to see it as it is beyond us to understand your ways with sound.’

  A murmuring began, as if to speak in rebuttal, but Isloman cut across it harshly. ‘And how can truth be a profanity?’ He brought the torch nearer to the carving, and moved it slightly from side to side. The images of Hawklan and Dan-Tor seemed to move, Hawklan with doubting uncertainty, Dan-Tor with cunning sleight.

  ‘I’ve done better work, admittedly,’ Isloman said critically. ‘But it has its own song, for all it’s only a sketch.’ Then, turning back to the darkness he spoke angrily. ‘Look at it. Look at it. Look as you’d listen. The profanity is yours, if you would turn away from such truth.’

  The debate broke out again, though this time it was like a malevolent whispering. Gavor flicked the sheaths from his spurs, and almost involuntarily Dacu laid his hand on his sword hilt. Serian’s eyes whitened, and his forelegs flicked out as if in preparation for further movement.

  ‘Would you threaten us . . . humans?’

  There was a taunt in the voice, but also doubt, bewilderment even, in the word ‘humans’. Isloman sensed that the actions of the animals had surprised the invisible speakers.

  ‘We would leave you, Alphraan,’ he said. ‘We would go in peace back to Anderras Darion. I have to seek help for my friend, and we have to take the truth to those who will see its worth, and act accordingly.’

  He turned away and started walking towards the entrance, signalling Dacu and Tirke to do the same.

  ‘You’re lying.’ A voice hissed out of the darkness behind him like an arrow from an ambush. Isloman found himself unable to move.

  ‘If Oklar lived, no man could face him.’ There was blistering contempt in the word ‘man’. ‘Your friend . . . Hawklan,’ – more contempt – ‘is stricken because he stole Ethriss’s sword. And you talk of the song of your scratchings. What do you know of song? You and your kind are as treacherous and faithless as ever. You must be punished for your blasphemy.’

  But around the voice, doubts and debate still hovered. The carving was true, they said. Sketch it might be, but it was the work of a master craftsman. The voice denied them, swept them aside angrily.

  Isloman forced his eyes to look again at his carving. Something helped him. As he gazed at it, it seemed that in Dan-Tor’s eyes there gleamed a look of triumph. Isloman knew that it was no device that he had put there, but carvings invariably yielded more than their makers intended, and
it should have been no great surprise. Nonetheless, the look struck deep into Isloman and released a great rage in him.

  ‘No,’ he whispered. The strange bonds holding him faltered. ‘No,’ he said again, louder. ‘No. You may choose to be bound by your ignorance, but we will not.’

  He was free.

  Waves of sound billowed around him, almost in panic, but striding forward, he bent over Hawklan and unfastened the scabbard of the black sword. Then, holding the sheathed sword in his left hand, and his torch in his right, he strode into the darkness. The rear of the cave tapered into a wide tunnel.

  Gavor stretched out his wings and launched himself after the retreating figure. ‘Dacu, guard Hawklan,’ he said. ‘Tirke, bring torches.’

  His tone was so authoritative that the two men moved to do his bidding without question. The torches however, were hardly needed, for Isloman stopped, only a score of paces down the tunnel. Gavor landed on his shoulder.

  In front of them, the tunnel divided into four others, and down these, at the faint extremity of the torchlight, could be seen more junctions.

  Isloman seemed inclined to go forward, but Gavor closed his claw anxiously on his shoulder.

  Isloman nodded, then held out the sword. ‘Know this, you . . . sound weavers,’ he shouted. ‘Hawklan is no thief. He came from the mountains with Gavor, bearing the key and the word to open Anderras Darion . . .’

  ‘Anderras Darion is open?’ Voices cut across his outburst.

  ‘Is open? . . . is open? . . . is open? . . .’ echoed endlessly into the distance. Other sounds joined it. ‘The word . . . the word . . . the word . . .’ A whispering confusion began.

  Isloman frowned and brandished the sword again. ‘This sword chose him, not he it.’

  ‘Chose . . . chose . . . chose . . .’ joined the mounting chorus.

  ‘Listen to me, damn you,’ Isloman shouted. ‘Oklar lives. All the Uhriel live.’ Sounds flooded out of the tunnels in front of him. He bellowed into it. ‘He too lives. Scurry through the darkness where you wish, hide where you will, but know that Sumeral is risen again, and to deny His being is to aid Him.’

  Suddenly the sounds came together like a wind-tormented ocean and crashed over him in an irresistible tide. With a cry, he staggered backwards, dropping the torch and the sword.

  Instinctively he closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears, but as before, this only seemed to trap the terrible sound inside him.

  An impact winded him slightly, and part of his mind realized that he had fallen over. Somehow he opened his eyes. The torch lay some way from him, though it was undimmed, and the clarity its light gave to the scene seemed to stem the appalling, crushing, noise momentarily.

  Rolling over, Isloman had a fleeting glimpse of his companions. Gavor, on his side, one wing flapping desperately and his wooden leg ineffectually sliding on the rocky floor as he tried to stand. Dacu and Tirke struggling with demented horses. Serian, his great head bowed low and shaking frantically from side to side. The whole scene juddered and shook as if his eyeballs were going to burst from his head. The only stillness in the scene was the dark shadow of Hawklan, resting against the wall.

  He tried to rise, but somehow his legs were no longer part of him. He tried to cry out, but as his mouth opened to voice his feeble protest, the noise seized it for its own, like an awful predator and, thrusting it back inside him, began to crush every part of his body with it.

  Briefly a great fear overwhelmed him as he realized he was helpless and about to die. Then, swimming in the tide that he knew was to carry him beyond, came a shimmering kaleidoscope of memories: his father and mother, and little Loman, picnicking in front of the silent, sunlit Gate of Anderras Darion; his first tingling excitement as the master carver in him began to stir; the grim and grimy-faced friendships and affections he found in the Morlider War; the welcoming grace of Hawklan, hooded and strange in the flickering firelight, as he rose to meet his wide-eyed visitors from the village. So many rich memories.

  ‘No,’ he made his voice cry out, and this time the flood moved around it as though it were a rock. He would not die other than in honouring both the pains and joys of such a life and in struggling to oppose the power that would deny such choices to others.

  His left hand closed around the scabbard of Hawklan’s sword, but as he lifted it, a final wave swept over him, cold and black, and everything was gone.

  * * * *

  All was silence. A great, deep, motionless silence from which all things had come and which lay yet at the very heart of all things.

  And a great darkness. Not the darkness of fear, but the timeless, eternal empty darkness of beginning.

  Only one thing disturbed the silence and the darkness.

  Consciousness.

  Is this death? it thought. Is this the great bane and wonder that all life strives to avoid while in its frenzy rushing towards it?

  There was no answer. The silence and the darkness were, and were not. To know of them was to hear and see them, and the silence and darkness that could be heard and seen were not the true silence and darkness.

  Consciousness.

  The silence and darkness shifted, like a great deep ocean touched by the distant moon.

  Rock song was there; faint and distant. Rock song?

  Am I dead?

  I?

  The silence and darkness shifted again, and the consciousness knew itself.

  It separated from the silence and darkness.

  I am Isloman. A carver. From Pedhavin, in Orthlund. Slain by the Alphraan defending . . . Trying to defend . . .

  Pain.

  . . . failing . . .

  More pain.

  Something touched the pain and it was gone.

  Rock song; faint, but close. And the smell and feel of rock. Against his face, under his hand.

  His hand?

  And the other hand?

  It tightened around the scabbard of the black sword.

  Hawklan’s sword! It must not be lost!

  Isloman’s awareness rushed in upon him and, with a start, he rolled over and opened his eyes. A flood of images rushed in on him. Torchlight and moving shadows formed an unfocussed, ill-shaped background. But immediately in the foreground, a dark silhouette bent over him, hand extended.

  Isloman raised his left arm to protect himself, but the figure caught it and laid it aside.

  ‘It’s all right, Isloman,’ Hawklan said. ‘It’s all right.’

  Chapter 20

  Loman clattered down stairs and along corridors, struggling to keep up with the fleet-footed young apprentice who had brought him the message. At his side ran Athyr. Yrain, troubled by her foot, fell increasingly behind, accompanied by a reluctantly sympathetic Gulda.

  It was a long journey, deep into the heart of the Castle, but each time they slowed down to a walk, the boy looked at them anxiously. ‘Master Ireck said I was to ask you to hurry,’ he would repeat after about a dozen more leisurely paces. Thus both men were breathing heavily when they came upon Ireck and a group of others waiting in the hall in which the weapons were being temporarily stored and which marked the entrance to the labyrinth.

  Loman made straight for Ireck.

  ‘I hope this is as urgent as your little messenger here made out, Ireck,’ he began crossly. He was about to tell Ireck that the meeting he had interrupted was important, but immediately regretting his initial irritability, he reached for a threat at once more dire and less serious. ‘Gulda’s coming,’ he said, flicking his thumb over his shoulder.

  But Ireck’s face was grim, and showed a mood impervious both to Loman’s anger and his levity.

  Loman began again. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked seriously.

  ‘We can’t get near the labyrinth, to collect the weapons,’ Ireck said simply.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Loman said.

  ‘Just that,’ Ireck said, frowning abstractedly at this response. ‘We can’t get near it. Sounds are coming out of it . . . it’s
spreading . . . reaching out.’

  Loman looked at him and then across the hall. The neat stacks of weapons stood clear and glittering against the ominous gloom of the labyrinth’s columns at the far end, like a field of golden, sunlit sheaves waiting under summer thunder clouds looming darkly on a near horizon.

  He scowled, disturbed by Ireck’s vagueness. How could they not reach the weapons? They were only paces away. But Ireck had received a severe shock by the look of his face, and anyway was not a man given to hasty comment.

  Loman cut through his own conjectures and, without comment, strode off towards the weapons. He felt Ireck’s hand brush his sleeve briefly as if to stop him. ‘Be careful,’ came his anxious voice.

  Halfway towards the weapons, however, Loman needed no warnings. Crawling around his feet he felt the whisperings that were characteristic of treading too near the edge of the pathway through the labyrinth.

  He stopped, and the sound of his footsteps mingled with the whispering and rose up around him mockingly. He felt his chest tighten and his mouth go dry with fear.

  Slowly, face contorted with expectation, he placed another foot forward. A watchful expectancy came into the sounds hissing around him, and he seemed to feel a myriad tiny fingers plucking him forward. Horrified, he withdrew his foot quickly. A strange moaning sigh filled the hall, and he heard the group behind him shuffling further away.

  Very cautiously, Loman stepped back until the whispering faded away. Then he stood motionless, his flesh crawling and his hands and face clammy.

  Behind him he heard the group respectfully greeting the arrival of Gulda.

  Without turning round, he said, ‘Memsa,’ hoarsely. He heard the soft clump of her stick on the hall floor as she approached, then he felt her dark form appear by his side. But his eyes did not waver from the waiting columns.

  ‘What is it?’ he said, still without turning.

  Gulda moved forward a little, tapping her stick thoughtfully on the floor, then she walked to and fro across the hall just in front of him, her head craning forward, listening intently.

  After two such patrols she clicked her tongue, then, without comment, returned to Ireck and the others. Loman moved after her, walking backwards for a part of the way, loath to turn his back on this frightening new manifestation.