Whistler [A sequel to The Chronicles of Hawklan] Page 52

  'That's enough!’ he shouted. ‘Remember who you are. This is doing no ...'

  Before he could finish, a hand had gripped his shoulder and spun him round. He found himself facing the blank mask of one of the Knights. ‘Keep your hands to yourself, unbeliever. No one may touch the Chosen One's wife. Go down on your knees for forgiveness before her.’ The Knight's voice was quivering with passion; he held a bloodied knife in his hand.

  Skynner recognized the voice and, still in the mood for settling long unfinished business, he seized the hand and twisted it violently. The Knight arched up on to his toes with an incongruous cry then, equally rapidly, began to sink down in response to the agonizing pressure on his wrist. As he did so, Skynner wrenched the mask from his face, and in one swing took the baton from his belt and brought it down on his captive. It was a pitiless blow and Yanos's body shook the floor as it landed. ‘You keep your hands to yourself, young man,’ Skynner snarled. ‘You're under arrest for threatening a Keeper with a weapon.'

  Some of the Knights moved as if to intervene, but a swift flurry of blows sent three of them reeling back crying out in pain and nursing elbows and wrists. The remainder lost interest in defending their fallen leader. Skynner pressed home his advantage. ‘And if it proves we're under militia rule at the moment, then you know what the punishment for attacking a Keeper is, don't you?'

  They didn't. Nor did Skynner for that matter, but there was too much menace in his voice for debate.

  'Take those stupid masks off, drop those knives and get over there out of my way. And don't move.’ Although the Keepers were outnumbered, Skynner's authority and his grim-faced companions, watching them, batons drawn, ensured acquiescence, reducing the sinister masked Knights to a group of surly young men.

  Skynner turned back to Dowinne, who had stood transfixed as these events took place. What he saw almost unnerved him. It was as though he were looking into the eyes of a wild and cornered animal. Something deep stirred within him. ‘Kill this or flee,’ it said, but habit held him there and he simply took his eyes from hers.

  'Let's look at your husband, lady,’ he said, kneeling down by Cassraw. At the same time he motioned one of his men to go to Vredech. Jarry, he could see, was dead. Before he could begin examining Cassraw, however, he was interrupted by an angry female voice.

  'Let me through, damn you.'

  Looking up, he saw Nertha pushing her way through the crowd. He snapped his fingers and two of his men went to help her. When she reached the podium, she stepped over Cassraw's body without a glance, and went straight to Vredech. Dowinne made to move towards her, but Skynner discreetly detained her.

  'Where was he hit?’ Nertha demanded of no one in particular as she examined Vredech.

  'He wasn't hit,’ one of the Knights volunteered. ‘He just fell over.'

  Nertha carefully lifted one of Vredech's eyelids, then quickly released it and stood up. ‘He's just unconscious,’ she said, though Skynner sensed an awkwardness about her. ‘Keep away from him, please. Give him air.'

  She looked sadly at Jarry's body then moved to Cassraw. At first her examination was almost off-hand. Then she became alert. ‘He's alive!’ she said, her voice soft and urgent. She looked around. ‘Get these people out of here and get me some proper light.’ She began unfastening Cassraw's robe.

  Dowinne stepped forward. ‘No,’ she said forcefully.

  Nertha looked at her with a mixture of anger and amazement. ‘He'll be bleeding like a pig under this lot,’ she said brutally. ‘Looking at where he was stabbed he's lucky to be alive, but he won't stay that way unless ...'

  'The Chosen One will lose no blood,’ Dowinne said stiffly. She signalled to the Knights. ‘Take him up and bring him to the summit of the Holy Mountain.'

  'What?’ Nertha exclaimed, eyes wide with disbelief. ‘Are you mad?’ She turned to Skynner. ‘You can't let her do this. She's insane, for pity's sake. He's liable to die if we try to move him to the Sick House, let alone up the Ervrin Mallos.'

  Skynner looked at her. ‘Best for everyone if he did,’ she read in his eyes, and for a moment she faltered, understanding Skynner's stern and practical compassion for what might follow if Cassraw survived, and remembering again all that happened over the last few days.

  But still she could not let him die if some effort on her part might save him.

  'Serjeant.’ Dowinne's voice interrupted the silent exchange. ‘See that he's taken as I've commanded. Immediately.’ She turned to Nertha and inclined her head towards Vredech. ‘You look to your ... brother,’ she said, a sneer breaking through her cold haughtiness.

  Nertha's eyes narrowed and her jaw tautened but she said only, ‘He'll die if you move him.'

  'No,’ Dowinne said, cold still and categorical. She turned to the Knights with a commanding air. Skynner nodded, and they moved forward and picked up Cassraw's body. Nertha winced at the action and looked again at Skynner, her eyes anxious.

  'Leave it,’ he said simply. ‘Tend to Allyn.’ She was about to remonstrate with him further, when he turned her round gently and said, ‘Look.'

  With Dowinne leading the way, Cassraw's body was being borne on the shoulders of his Knights down the central aisle of the Debating Chamber. Without any command the crowd had fallen silent and opened a way for the slow procession. Many were circling their hands over their hearts and, as the body passed, they fell in behind it, heads bowed.

  'Like worshippers,’ Skynner said, suddenly afraid.

  * * * *

  The diamond-hard nothingness that was Allyn Vredech's awareness hovered amid the flickering lights and shapes that were there and not there, and which danced to the endless gibbering chorus of sounds that could and could not be heard.

  It was no longer unfamiliar, but still it disturbed.

  Between the dreams, he thought.

  Timelessly he waited.

  Then into the awareness came memories of the PlasHein. Of his own failure, of Jarry demented, of blood and confusion, of Cassraw falling, Dowinne raging.

  Why was he here?

  Was it all over? Was Cassraw dead? Had poor simple Jarry with his clear, tormented vision succeeded where he, with his self-indulgent agonizing, had failed?

  Futile questions, he knew. However he had come here, he was helpless and, as always, he felt incomplete. Something was missing—something that would guide him.

  Then he sensed danger somewhere in this lost, dimensionless world. Terrible danger. The lights and shapes swirling about him became agitated and jagged, slicing and glinting like a myriad tumbling knife-blades. And a swollen redness rose to taint everything. Fear threatened to overwhelm him, but he could do nothing; could not move, could not scream. And soon, in so far as time meant anything here, for this was all that had ever been, he would be tumbling through this fearful, menacing chaos...

  A presence stirred.

  Vredech was filled with sensations utterly alien to him, strange, overwhelming scents, each bearing its own message, and sounds that should be beyond hearing, acutely heard. And overlying all, a musky lethargy shot through with lusts and greed.

  This was not his, yet it would suffice.

  The sudden knowledge came from deep within, and though it made no sense to him, yet it was true.

  'What are you?’ he asked into the presence.

  The question echoed back through him.

  'I am Allyn Vredech,’ he replied and, though the words merely flickered over the surface of the true meaning, ‘You are my Guide.'

  There was bewilderment and denial. ‘I'm Leck. I'm Privv's. This can't be.'

  Vredech was suddenly angry, as if he were being defied. ‘This is,’ he said brutally. ‘Do what you have to do. Guide me, guard me.'

  Realization flooded through him—Leck's realization. This was how it should be. This was her true task. Briefly a surge of regret for things done, time wasted, soured the knowledge, then, though Vredech felt no movement, she was leading him down, through, along, the tangled dreamways
of which he was now a part. The bond between them, new-formed though it was, would lead the cat to the place where they were needed.

  There was no time to ponder the many thoughts floundering in the wake of this journey.

  And, without any sense of change, he was there. He was Cassraw, standing motionless, staring at the summit of the Ervrin Mallos. It moved uneasily within a shifting haze. Vredech had stood in the dreams of others before, albeit briefly, and felt their emotions and thoughts while remaining aloof from them, but here such unbridled desire pulsated that nothing could have protected him from its impact!

  Cassraw turned from the summit and looked out across the land. Before him lay the whole of Gyronlandt, subdued and compliant. Armies of his Knights held sway over all the land while, ‘for the greater good', hooded Judges of the Court of the Provers relentlessly sought out and ‘brought to the light’ those lost souls whose faith was inadequate, or whose thoughts deviated from the True Word. Rivers ran red with the blood of doubters and unbelievers, and glinted in the light of their living funeral pyres. And he himself, with his hand upon the Santyth, which he alone could interpret, stood at the pinnacle of all power, the Judge of Judges. With the least of his gestures, towns and cities were put to the sword. He bore the cries and screams of the slaughtered with stoic fortitude and accepted the adulation that washed across the land to sustain him in his ecstasy.

  Chilled to his core by this vision and consumed with guilt at his failure to slay its architect, Vredech remained very still.

  Cassraw turned back to the wavering summit.

  'Here is the gift I shall bring You, Lord,’ he intoned. ‘Show me Thy will and that, too, I shall bring to pass.'

  As he watched, the summit began to change. Sometimes rapidly and erratically, sometimes slowly and with a strange grace, towers and spires and ramping walls began to rise from it. They shifted and changed as their creator tested them and found them wanting. And as they grew, so Cassraw saw them all simultaneously, from every vantage point at the foot of the mountain, from high above as though cloud-borne, from far horizons and from immediately beneath the sheer walls looking up at the giddying perspective looming above. Inexorably the building rose high into the sky, glistening menacingly against the gathering black clouds, like a blessed hand reaching out to bring forth the Lord.

  But where Cassraw saw a fulfilment, a culmination, Vredech saw the work of a dreadful and inhuman intelligence. He felt its every spire impaling him with its awfulness. Its clawing points and edges tore through the fabric of what was and brought together those things which should be kept apart. It was a monstrous creation that would draw through to this world a darkness and horror that even Cassraw's mind had not yet encompassed.

  And as if in confirmation, as the towers rose ever higher, so he received a vision of labyrinthine tunnels and shafts and dank passageways burrowing deep into the heart of the mountain and yet further below, like sapping roots drawing sustenance from the world.

  Then, worse by far, came the knowledge that this impossible structure was to be built by men. That the blood and terror of Cassraw's campaigns across Gyronlandt were merely to supply what was needed in people, materials and skills. That its awful image would be branded in the hearts of all. That the pain and horror involved in its creation were an integral part of it—indeed, they were its bloody heart.

  Vredech felt himself reaching out to touch Leck's consciousness for reassurance. The cat was nearly demented with fear, but she would hold her ground, he knew. The gift that made her what she was, and had brought her to him in his moment of need, carried deep obligations, heightened now by her deep sense of past regret. Yet her fear sharpened his own awareness, and he began to sense a presence in the dream other than himself and Leck. The dream was strained, distorted. It was more than a dream. It reached beyond the dreamways.

  This could not be...

  He felt Leck's fear tearing at him but he ignored it.

  Then he knew that the terrible crown growing from the top of the mountain was not of Cassraw's creating. It was being created for him. Through that part of the dream which was not a dream was coming the Will that was forming this monstrosity, embedding its every detail into Cassraw's mind.

  Vredech could do no other.

  'No,’ he said.

  The dream moved, and the scene before him became like a faded picture in an old book.

  And he was no longer Cassraw. He was himself. And, for some reason, terrifyingly, Leck was gone, although he was faintly aware of her scratching and screaming in some place unknowable. Somewhere she was hunting for her lost charge more ferociously even than she would have defended her own young. But he was alone. Inside and outside the dream. Standing before a portal, he sensed, though neither sight nor sound informed him.

  * * * *

  Some of the Knights shifted their feet uneasily. They were at the foot of the road which led up to the Witness House and Dowinne had stopped, almost as if she had heard a command, and called them to a halt. Since then she had stood silent, her hand resting on Cassraw's chest as he lay on the makeshift stretcher hastily rigged from PlasHein pikes and curtains.

  It was still raining.

  A little way away stood Skynner with Stiel and Kerna. The Serjeant had quickly superintended the removal of Jarry's body and the safe transporting of Nertha and the unconscious Vredech to their home, then he had set off in discreet pursuit of Dowinne with his two colleagues. Ostensibly, it was to ensure that the new Covenant Member came to no harm through neglect, but his real motives were an unsteady mixture of curiosity, suspicion and alarm at unfolding events.

  * * * *

  In this timeless place, Vredech waited. Then, seeping slowly about him he felt again the Will that had touched him when he had stood in the darkness on the Ervrin Mallos as he and the other Chapter Brothers had searched for Cassraw.

  It curled through him, searching, testing. But where before it had dismissed him scornfully, now it paused.

  A long sigh of comprehension passed through him.

  He reached out in fearful appeal towards Leck's frantic clawing. ‘Help me,’ he cried out. But Leck was not of this place.

  * * * *

  Dowinne's eyes opened suddenly and she stiffened. Her movement was copied by the tired Knights still supporting their injured master's body, expecting an instruction to continue their journey.

  'I hear, Lord,’ she said. Then before any of the Knights could react, she drew a long knife from beneath her robe and plunged it twice into Cassraw's chest. For a moment the Knights gaped then, as she raised the knife to strike again they let the stretcher fall, tumbling Cassraw on to the wet ground. Some of them leapt away while others made to wrest the knife from her. The first who came near died on a single rapid thrust while the second was cut from shoulder to hip by a whistling slash. The others retreated immediately, forming a ragged, uncertain circle about her and the bloodied heap that had been her husband. Then she stabbed Cassraw again, and plunged her hand into the wound.

  Skynner, gasping from his sudden frantic charge to reach the group on seeing what was happening, pushed his way roughly through the men to stand facing Dowinne. Stiel and Kerna were close behind him. Dowinne was a grim sight, her eyes wide and crazed, her nostrils flaring and her teeth bared like a cornered animal. As she moved the knife slowly to and fro in front of her, she was hissing.

  Skynner drew his baton.

  * * * *

  All was roaring chaos about Vredech. It was as though he had been caught in an avalanche. Great forces had swept out of nothingness to beat about him, to draw him inexorably into...

  What?

  Instincts he did not even know he possessed rose to tell him of an appalling danger and that he must escape while he could. But no guidance came with this knowledge. All that sustained him in his terror was the faint, hysterical scrabbling of Leck trying to reach him; a slender, failing thread weaving through the turmoil.

  A soft, kindly voice spoke to him. ‘Do not
oppose what must be, Allyn Vredech. Follow your true destiny.’ And it seemed to Vredech that a great roadway was opening before him, one which would lead him calmly from this fearful maelstrom.

  Leck's distant frenzy redoubled itself. It stirred something deep within Vredech, and even as he was about to step forth on the road before him, the knowledge rose to the surface, scorching in its urgency.

  'You are in the dream of a dead man. Flee!'

  It was primitive and irresistible, like the force that powers the struggles of a drowning man.

  'Allyn ...’ repeated the voice, still honeyed and alluring, but now Vredech saw to its corrupted heart and he shouted.

  'To me, Leck! To me! I hear you!'

  And suddenly the clawing, slashing presence of the cat was all about him and he was tumbling over and over, caught up in its killing fury.

  Then he was free of the dreadful lure and crashing through into wakefulness. But even as he did, to his horror, he felt Leck's heart bursting.

  'Too ignorant. Didn't know,’ the cat gasped feebly. ‘All my life. Didn't know. Sorry. And not truly yours. There is a companion for you somewhere. Learn what you are, Allyn Vredech. This isn't finished yet.'

  And spiralling, dwindling, into a never-attainable distance, she was gone.

  'No!’ Vredech cried.

  He lurched forward.

  * * * *

  Skynner felt the hairs on his neck stand on end as he looked at Dowinne, her crazed eyes staring at him, the bloodstained knife extended in front of her and her gore-covered hand beckoning him forward. Dealing with women who tipped over into violence was always particularly frightening because of their almost suicidal lack of restraint in such circumstances. And dealing with someone wielding a knife had its own special terrors. But it was not simply the combination of these two fears that was disturbing him. It was something else. Something namelessly awful.