Hawklan struggled to cry out again, but around him suddenly were worlds of beauty and perfection where such a cry could not be uttered.
He gazed in wonder for a timeless age, at the silent, glittering, revelation. His heart sang out.
‘Thus shall Ethriss’s folly be remade.’
Silence.
‘It is without flaw,’ Hawklan whispered.
‘And it shall be yours.’
Silence.
‘Let slip Ethriss’s cruel goad, and come forward to the power and glory of your rightful place.’
Hawklan’s hand opened, and the black sword of Ethriss slipped from his grasp. He felt it falling, falling, falling, through the darkness of Ethriss’s flawed and swirling world until, with a ringing, sonorous, chime, it was gone.
The perfection closed about Hawklan and drew him forward.
But the ringing of the sword would not die. It ech-oed and re-echoed, growing upon itself, its beating, beating, rhythm, like the sound of powerful wings, shaking the perfection of His realm until it was but a faint shadow in a light that shone and danced with the great joy of being. At its heart swooped the black, familiar form of Gavor.
Sylvriss looked at the tableau in front of her. It was as Oslang had described. The appalling toll of the day, though scarcely distinguishable from the mud, now carpeted the entire field. Isolated groups were strewn about the field, some in savage hand-to-hand combat, some, larger, stabbing and thrusting from behind beleaguered shield walls.
But the greater part of the army, though intact, was struggling to prevent the encircling enemy closing about them.
Steadily they were losing ground, and against such numbers, exhaustion and sickness of heart must surely defeat them eventually.
Sylvriss checked her sword, then threw back her hood and let the rain fall cold about her head. She looked from side to side at her force: Fyordyn, Orthlundyn and Riddinvolk; cooks and clerks, ostlers and armourers; the just too old and the just too young who had been guarding the southern flanks of the force against the unknown strength that had cut their supply lines; and, not least, such of the wounded as could hoist themselves into the saddle.
It was no Muster squadron, but it was all they had left, and she had spread the Riddinvolk through the ranks to help maintain its cohesion. ‘Courage and will would win this battle, not horsemanship,’ she had announced.
She lifted her lance high above her head.
At the signal a great fanfare of horn calls sounded above the din of the battle.
The pace drumming began and the line started to walk forward.
Tackle clinked and jangled.
Slowly, the drums increased the pace.
Trotting, then cantering, the hooves splashed through the sodden Narsindal earth. The fanfare sounded again, purposeful and menacing.
Sylvriss tightened her grip on her lance as her Rid-dinvolk soul responded to the urgency of the horse beneath her.
Then, the blasting horns and rattling drums gave way to the shouting and screaming of battle cries, and the line came to the gallop, thundering through the teeming rain, over the dead, and those living foolish enough not to flee.
Hawklan became a mote; a spectator.
He trembled as he felt the gathering of great and terrible power.
‘I had thought My last cast slew you, brother.’
The power was gathering still; drawn from all His many selves on many planes; frantically almost; its momentum seemingly uncontrollable.
‘My prince of ravens with his true sight, caught my spirit as it fled the Iron Ring. Now his spirit has wakened him You thought lost so that he may destroy You.’
‘Only you can destroy Me, brother, and you shall not this time, for now My power is undivided; unhindered by the tenancy of your flawed creations. Its totality is within and about Me now and it is gathered for your doom.’
There was a long silence, then, very simply: ‘I have nothing with which to oppose Your might.’
There was another time-rending silence.
‘YOU LIE!’
And the fullness of Sumeral’s power was unleashed.
‘GAVOR!’
Hawklan’s voice filled his own universe in his de-spair for the fate of his friend.
But the tiny winged figure was gone even as the Ancient Power of the Great Searing, jagged with the barbs of humanity’s every dark emotion, surged forth into the void where he had been. Only words lingered there.
‘I forgive You Your wickedness; forgive You me mine, I beseech You.’
Then they too were gone. Gone in the scream that rose into the grey misted sky of Narsindal and echoed out over the world beyond, and those other places that knew Him. The scream that came as His long-hoarded power flowed through His mortal frame and, being unopposed, slipped from its grasp and destroyed it utterly; the scream that came as He measured His folly in this deed, and, most terrible of all, the scream that came as Ethriss’s forgiveness rent His tormented spirit into a myriad gibbering shards.
As it reached and rolled over the awful battlefield, Sylvriss’s riders crashed into and over the crowded ranks of Mandrocs.
Hawklan swayed.
Faintly a voice spoke to him. ‘Sumeral and I were but aberrations in the Great Searing. Now He is spent utterly, and I am among you all, as I should be, and as I have been for many eons. Forgive me my folly, Hawklan. Live well, and light be with you.’
Hawklan reached out to ease the poignant pain in the voice.
Then, dwindling finally, very human. ‘Ah, prince, your touch is true. And it was good to soar awhile in the stout heart of your friend… It was… good… ’
‘Hawklan, Hawklan.’ A loud voice brought Hawklan back to the tumult of a solid, familiar, world. Someone was pulling at him desperately.
It was Andawyr. Hawklan, dazed, succumbed to the little man’s limping urgency.
The ground was shaking violently and a screaming wind was tearing at them as they staggered forward. Then the waters of the lake were boiling and foaming, and great waves began to spill across the causeway, threatening to wash them away.
Suddenly, out of the turmoil came figures running towards them. It was Yatsu and Isloman following Dar-volci. Without preamble, Yatsu seized the hobbling Andawyr, hurled him over his shoulder indecorously and sped off, splashing through the waves and leaping over yawning cracks. Isloman did the same for the still bewildered Hawklan despite a feeble protestation.
As they reached the end of the disintegrating cause-way, Hawklan looked up suddenly as if his name had been called. Briefly he saw three shadowy figures in the howling storm. Their hands were raised, in salute. Then they were gone, and a sound greater even than that of the destruction of the Viladrien over Riddin filled the air. Hawklan and the others fell to the ground, their hands over their ears in a vain attempt to shut out the appalling noise. In its wake, the shaking became so violent that the ground was rippling beneath them as if it were the surface of the lake.
The noise rose to a climax and then faded suddenly. The trembling of the ground faded with it and then all was still and quiet.
The four men lay motionless for a long time, until Andawyr looked up and whispered into the silence. ‘It’s over. He’s gone. I can feel it. He’s gone.’
‘And the Guardians have cracked the foundations of Derras Ustramel,’ Hawklan said. ‘I saw them… again.’
The thought triggered a memory. ‘Where’s…?’ he began.
He was interrupted by an oath from Andawyr who had scrambled to his feet and put his weight on his injured ankle.