The Return of the Sword Page 42

  As Gavor finished, the Labyrinth’s whisper became a soft sighing. He coughed theatrically, then flapped onto the table in front of Hawklan who immediately repeated his question, though more gently.

  ‘He said Sumeral sent me here?’

  ‘I do wish you’d listen, dear boy,’ Gavor replied wearily. ‘He said Sumeral sent you between the worlds. But how we all came here, he didn’t know. And if he didn’t, I’m certain Sumeral didn’t when He disposed of you. And that’s probably what He did. I’d say He just didn’t want your mangled remains found on the Battlefield. You’d greatly weakened His army, and He knew if you were found hacked to pieces He wouldn’t be able to stand against Ethriss’s rage. But if you were simply missing . . . that would make for fretfulness, not anger. He made the best of a bad tactical situation – dumped you and ran. Shrewd move, really. But heat of the moment – nothing planned.’

  Hawklan’s face became unreadable as he held out his hand and lifted Gavor back on to his shoulder.

  ‘What do you make of all this, Hawklan?’ Yatsu asked hesitantly.

  ‘Precious little,’ Hawklan replied, shaking off his reverie. ‘Everyone’s said what had to be said – made some semblance of sense out of what’s happening. But I don’t know where I belong in it. I can’t use the Power, I’m certainly no Dream Finder. As I said, I’m with you – just another soldier – and a patcher of cuts and gashes. A relic from another time.’

  ‘No,’ Andawyr said. ‘You’re close to the heart of this, I’m sure.’

  ‘You can prove this, too?’ Hawklan said, a gentle taunt in his voice.

  ‘No, but I’m not afraid to trust my intuition when I reach the end of the reasoning. You and that sword are important, I’m certain.’

  Antyr agreed, adding, ‘As is the Labyrinth. I was drawn to both from the Cadwanen, if you recall.’

  Hawklan grimaced. ‘Yes, the Sword. It troubles me that, though I’ve no need of it, the memory of it’s becoming increasingly obtrusive. I can’t shake off a sense of loss or, worse, of folly, in letting it go so easily. And what I’ve just heard doesn’t help. It fell between the worlds to land at my feet in a time of need and I just dropped it back again.’

  ‘It fell between the worlds to land at your feet in the Armoury,’ Gulda said. It was the first time she had spoken and all eyes turned towards her. She looked at the dark columns at the end of the hall. ‘On the far side of the Labyrinth.’

  Chapter 32

  Hawklan looked at Gulda intently, then suddenly stood up and began walking towards the Labyrinth.

  There was a momentary silence before Andawyr and several others were on their feet running after him. Andawyr caught his arm and almost stumbled as Hawklan came to an abrupt halt.

  ‘You can’t go in there,’ the Cadwanwr exclaimed breathlessly as Hawklan righted him.

  Hawklan raised a hand for silence.

  ‘Listen,’ he said softly.

  The sound from the Labyrinth was shifting and changing constantly, albeit imperceptibly. Now it was a wind discoursing with the mountains, now wordless voices rising and falling, now a warning animal rumble, now the breathing of a watching colossus – a sound that made several of the spectators taken an involuntary step backwards. Then it was something indefinable – unnatural and disturbing.

  ‘Where are Tarrian and Grayle now?’ Hawklan asked Antyr half whispering.

  ‘Gone from me,’ the Dream Finder replied. His face was pained. ‘There’s only emptiness where they should be.’

  ‘Alphraan, do you hear this?’ Gulda said, her voice not loud but very clear.

  The faintest of whisperings made its way through the Labyrinth’s shifting sound.

  ‘This song we do not know, my lady. It is ancient beyond any knowing. And it is wrong – it should not be. Look to yourselves, you are going beyond. What you feared is upon you. We cannot help. We are sorry. We . . .’

  The final words dwindled into nothingness, but the fear and urgency that hung about them was both desperate and unmistakable. Immediately the Goraidin were forming a defensive line between the Labyrinth and the others.

  ‘Those of you who aren’t armed, make yourself so, quickly,’ Yatsu said forcefully, indicating the stacks of weapons lining the walls.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Nertha demanded. ‘Who was that speaking?’

  ‘The Alphraan,’ Yatsu replied hastily as he snatched up a couple of sheathed knives. Deftly he tested their edges and then thrust them into Nertha’s belt before she could protest.

  ‘As for what’s happening, I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘But they’re stout allies; they wouldn’t warn us for nothing. And they sounded very afraid.’ His cold and purposeful gaze held her. ‘These are good blades, you’re a physician, you know how to use them if you have to.’ For an instant, Nertha was back at the rain-soaked summit of the Ervrin Mallos in Canol Madreth, gasping for air as she struggled to protect Vredech from the manic apparition that had once been Dowinne.

  Yatsu gripped her arms to shake her but she pulled free. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I’m all right. I understand. Look to the others.’

  ‘I think it’d be a good idea to leave,’ Yatsu said to Andawyr. ‘Something might have happened outside.’

  Andawyr agreed. The tone of the Alphraan’s warning had shaken him. Before he could speak, however, a cry drew all eyes away from the Labyrinth.

  It was Ar-Billan. He was pointing to the far end of the hall . . . or what had been the far end. Now, where there had been a stone wall, a few piles of weapons and, not least, a doorway, there was only a greyness. Not the greyness of a mountain mist concealing something, but a cold emptiness.

  ‘Keep away.’

  Both Farnor and Thyrn spoke simultaneously.

  ‘What is it?’ Andawyr asked. A glance told him that the two young men were very afraid.

  ‘A tear – a gap,’ Farnor managed to say. He was stretching his hand towards it and was obviously in great distress. ‘Too much,’ he said, and slowly he sank to his knees. Someone caught Thyrn as he too collapsed. Nertha was with them immediately, urgent and practical.

  ‘They’re like Vredech and Pinnatte were,’ she said after a rapid examination. ‘As if they’re asleep. Hawklan, help me.’

  But Hawklan was looking again into the Labyrinth.

  Andawyr, by contrast, was peering into the greyness. He could not tell whether it was near or far – it seemed to extend infinitely in every direction and its featurelessness was both disorientating and luring him. It took a deliberate effort of will to tear his gaze away and look at the hall. At first, the tables, scattered chairs and strewn documents looked dark and unreal, as though they were part of a soiled painting, but as his vision cleared he could see that the greyness was slowly spreading.

  As was the fear amongst the group, trapped between this eerie phenomenon and the Labyrinth.

  ‘In our minds.’

  Andawyr felt someone shaking his arm. It was Antyr.

  ‘In our minds.’ The Dream Finder had to repeat himself several times before Andawyr registered what he was saying. He felt a surge of anger twisting up out of his fear.

  ‘This is no hallucination,’ he said furiously. He glanced quickly at the fallen forms of Thyrn and Farnor; Nertha was still examining them but she was radiating helplessness. ‘It’s real. It’s the worlds coming together.’ He slapped his forehead brutally. ‘Not enough time – too stupid, too slow – to work it all out. I . . .’

  ‘Calm yourself, old man, and listen.’ Gulda’s voice was strong and imperious. It jolted Andawyr and momentarily stilled the mounting commotion of the milling group. The greyness was arching over them. Antyr began to shout, for it seemed that everything was being drained from what was left of the hall.

  ‘In our minds.’

  His eyes were becoming like pits of night.

  ‘Our minds reach into the very heart of this. They’ll guide. Whatever happens, don’t doubt its reality – trust yourselves – you’re stronger than
you know – we all are – our . . .’

  His voice was lost.

  Andawyr had a fleeting glimpse of Hawklan, his face riven with pain and doubt, turning and walking into the Labyrinth . . .

  Then all was greyness . . .

  * * * *

  The air was acrid and the sky was a blue that none of them had ever seen before – save one: Pinnatte.

  He was the first to speak.

  ‘Their place,’ he hissed, crouching low as though to avoid being seen.

  ‘Quiet!’

  Yatsu’s command was forceful but equally soft.

  And unnecessary, at least for the Goraidin. Both training and experience had kept all of them silent and they were looking around urgently, assessing the terrain they found themselves in without question as to how they had come there. There had been no sense of change or movement. They had been in the Labyrinth hall, suddenly, terrifyingly, dissolving into greyness, then they were here. Despite a fear that was almost choking her, Marna felt a frisson of satisfaction that she too had managed not to cry out. Quickly she began copying her chosen mentors.

  Gentren, however, was no Goraidin. ‘Yes – my world,’ he exclaimed, his voice alive with conflicting and painful emotions. He pointed to a nearby ditch. ‘This is where I hid – where I stabbed one of them.’ His voice fell as several hands motioned him to silence. Then his anger and distress became suffused with bewilderment.

  ‘It’s the same as when I left it,’ he whispered, bending down and laying a hand on the coarse mountain grass as if to test what he was seeing. ‘This was the last part of the world unchanged. Why haven’t they destroyed it – made it the same as everywhere else?’

  ‘Perhaps you did more harm than you thought when you stabbed one of them,’ Jenna offered, but Gentren did not reply.

  ‘Don’t doubt its reality,’ Dacu said, echoing Antyr’s words for everyone’s benefit. He patted his chest and dug his toe into the ground, dislodging a small stone.

  Yatsu was counting. The eight Goraidin were there plus Marna, Gentren and Pinnatte. Despite determined efforts to maintain an appearance of calm, all of them were visibly shaken.

  ‘Where’s Andawyr? And Antyr – all the others?’ someone asked.

  Yatsu glanced around with everyone else, then frowned and shook his head. ‘Whatever the Cadwanwr were expecting, this must be just a part of it.’ He turned away briefly, then said, ‘I suppose we’d better concentrate on our own survival before we start bothering about them – or about what’s happened.’

  They were on the lower slopes of a small mountain. A little way below them the land levelled out into undulating countryside, and though it was difficult to see either any detail or for any distance in the strange blue twilight, there were no signs of anything moving. Yatsu pointed in the other direction, towards the shoulder of the slope they were standing on. ‘Let’s check the other side then see what we can do about making camp.’

  ‘In the name of pity, what is this place?’ Yrain’s dismayed voice echoed all their thoughts as they reached the shoulder.

  Where, before, the blue air had closed about and hidden the landscape, here it seemed to highlight and accentuate the terrain now spread in front of them. Two rows of towering mountains, sheer-sided and jagged, marched to the horizon, etched in blue-in-black shadows against the strained blue sky. It was similar to the scene that Vredech had described, except that here there was a far greater clarity of shape and a multiplicity of symmetries. And the plain between the two rows of mountains was different. Whereas Vredech had told of a disordered lattice of cracks and ravines, this was so smooth as to disturb the eye by its evenness.

  ‘Their place, more than ever,’ Pinnatte said.

  Gentren’s face contorted, then he covered it with his hands and dropped to his knees silently. Yatsu made to speak to him but changed his mind. What could be said to someone whose entire world had been transformed into this abomination? It was no small measure of the man that he had retained his sanity.

  Yengar and Olvric gently helped him to his feet as Yatsu turned them all away from the Uhriel’s handiwork and motioned them back to where they had arrived.

  ‘Practicalities, my friends, practicalities,’ he said. ‘Let’s do what we’re good at. Shelter, water and food, in that order. And, given that this is the Uhriel’s world, we’d better make sure the shelter’s well hidden.’ He turned to Gentren who had recovered a little. ‘I’ll have to press you,’ he said. ‘You know this land; are there any towns or villages nearby – farms, anything?’

  Gentren shook his head. ‘The nearest town is a good half-day’s ride away but it’s deserted – if it’s there.’ He looked around in desperation. ‘And the most you’ll find are a few like me, wandering aimlessly.’

  ‘It’s probably not a good idea to go too far from here,’ Dacu said. ‘There must be a Gateway here somewhere that leads back to our world.’

  ‘We don’t even know if our world still exists,’ Yatsu replied grimly. ‘But you’re right. Besides, I don’t relish trekking over this terrain in this foul air Let’s find shelter.’

  ‘From what?’ Gentren asked. ‘There’ll be no wind, no sun, no rain to hide from. It’ll stay like this until . . . until they decide to do whatever it is they’re going to do.’

  Yatsu scowled. ‘We’ll need a hiding place at least,’ he said.

  A few brief instructions split the group into three parties. Olvric and Yengar returned to the shoulder of the slope to keep watch. Jenna, Yrain and Marna together with Jaldaric and Tirke were sent out to forage for food and water, while the remainder went with Yatsu in search of a suitable site for a concealed camp.

  It did not take them long to find a cave that would serve admirably as both a shelter and a hiding place, but that was the extent of their good fortune. Jenna and the others had only bad news when they returned.

  ‘No sign of any animals or birds, most of the vegetation is dying, and the two stream beds we came across were bone dry,’ Jenna announced bluntly.

  ‘There’s been no rain for a long time,’ Gentren said.

  For the first time since they had arrived, something like despair gripped the Goraidin.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Pinnatte asked anxiously.

  ‘The matter is that without water we’re all going to be dead within a few days,’ Dacu said to him quietly. ‘And none too pleasantly, at that.’ Pinnatte licked his lips, then swallowed.

  ‘That changes our priorities somewhat,’ Yatsu said. He turned to Gentren. ‘Are there any rivers around here, or lakes?’ he asked. ‘They won’t all have dried up completely, surely?’

  Before Gentren could reply, Yengar was with them. He spoke very quietly.

  ‘Three riders coming – across the plain.’

  * * * *

  Nertha forced her hand to stop fiddling with the sleeve of her husband’s tunic. Then she forced her thoughts into words.

  ‘He’s alive,’ she said, her voice unsteady despite her clenched teeth. ‘They’re all alive. They’ll be somewhere else . . . doing something . . . fighting this.’

  She knew that this was her head battling against the clamouring fears of her body, but she clung to it. It was the truth. It was something she had experienced before. Her understanding of events needed to be no deeper. No matter what happened here, while these people were alive, events, somewhere, would be moving.

  ‘And I’m alive,’ she reminded herself, equally determinedly.

  Antyr’s words came back to her. ‘You’re stronger than you know.’

  She didn’t feel it, she thought, but that too was nothing new. As a physician, she had seen many things that had left her wrung with pity and desperate helplessness but she had coped . . . and learned. Whatever had happened had happened and she must do what she could, while she could.

  Face taut with control, she returned to what she knew – methodically checking the life signs of first Thyrn, then Farnor . . .

  Then Antyr and Vredech.

/>   For they too had collapsed as the Labyrinth hall with everything and everyone in it had silently faded away, leaving her with the four unconscious men, alone in a grey and featureless world.

  * * * *

  He was screaming.

  That much he knew.

  He was without form and all about him was chaos.

  It danced and shuddered to the rhythm of his cries.

  On and on.

  Then another rhythm was struggling to impose itself.

  ‘Vredech.’

  Over and over it sounded until it began to dominate the shifting shapes and patterns and noises that were flowing through and around him.

  He began to recognize it.

  It was what he had been. Once, when . . .