And in that moment none saw a brightness on the horizon.
A brightness that was not the sign of a coming dawn.
They saw it only as it swept over them.
Chapter 36
Desperately, Nertha bent close to Antyr, first listening for his breathing, then offering her cheek. But she could feel nothing. She checked his pulse. It was still there, more distant than weak. She had never felt anything like it before.
A bizarre mixture of fear and professional pride wrapped about one another and became a deep anger.
She swore. ‘I will not lose you to this – whatever it is. I will not lose you!’
Her face grim with determination, she quickly checked the others. Lying on their sides like sleeping children, as she had placed them, they were unchanged. She lingered briefly, running a loving hand down her husband’s cheek, then she rolled Antyr on to his back and, holding his nose and arching his neck, placed her mouth over his.
His chest rose as she blew, then sank as she stopped. Still she counted as she worked, periodically checking his pulse and the condition of the others. After a while, she began to intersperse her counting with profanity and an aching inner cry for help.
‘Tarrian, Grayle! Tarrian, Grayle!’
‘Tarrian, Grayle!’ Antyr cried out. ‘To me!’
But no sound came, other than the dreamsong of the dead in the living.
Vredech’s voice reached through it, like a distant sound carried on the wind.
‘No one can help us here, Antyr. This is our burden.’
Anger from the song leaked into Antyr.
‘Your faith tells you this, Priest?’ he cried.
The reply was unexpected.
‘Yes. Faith in you, Dream Finder. That and the hold I have both on Nertha and on you… just.’
‘But…?’
‘This is what I do here, Antyr, and what I will do, while I can.’
Antyr felt the song drifting over him again.
‘But why am I here?’ he managed.
‘What are you?’
What am I?
Dream Finder. Adept. Warrior of the White Way. Words. Only words. To hide as much as to reveal. He was Antyr, son of Petran, flawed and frightened, blundering and ignorant in a place where no one should be. He was no different from the endless rows of figures stretching away from him in every direction, their faces lit by the unseen light that had unmade them and that had bound them to this time.
He did not know what to do.
But flawed and frightened as he was, blundering and ignorant as he was, he was also the Antyr who had faced Ivaroth in mortal combat and the terrible power of the blind man.
He could not do nothing.
He looked into the unseeing eyes of the nearest figure. ‘Turn away from this fearful glare,’ he said. ‘You hold the living to your time. Your pain is the source of Sumeral’s strength here. Release them, and be free. Turn to the light that reveals, turn to the truth.’
He placed his hand over the figure’s face and, for a timeless moment, as with his Earth Holder, he was it and it was he, knowing all that he knew and was.
The figure closed its eyes.
He passed to the next.
And the next.
Faintly he could hear Vredech calling.
‘I can’t hold you, Antyr, I can’t hold you…’
He moved on.
Antyr’s heart stopped.
Nertha searched for its beat frantically. Her profanity worsened. She tore open the neck of her tunic so that she could breathe more easily. Both sweat and tears ran down her face.
Fingers entwined, she began pressing Antyr’s chest rhythmically. Counting, swearing, and calling openly now on Tarrian and Grayle.
Then they were there. Eyes like wild suns. Deep-throated growling like the sound of tumbling rocks and pitiless killing teeth bared white in the greyness.
Her every instinct told her to flee, but her will denied them. She met Tarrian’s awful gaze with one of her own and bared her teeth into his slavering maw.
‘This ismy domain,’ she snarled. ‘Find them in yours. Find them both. Bring them back.’
Gavor flapped his wings.
The Labyrinth, its columns becoming ever more like roots and trunks, twisting and tangling up into unseen heights, was becoming steadily brighter. With the increasing light came also sound, and a breeze.
It was no pleasant zephyr, however. There was a harshness in it that made Hawklan turn his face away. Nor was the sound kinder. Shattering glass, wind-torn roots and yielding timbers, the screams of midnight prey and battle-wounded, all were there, and more.
Hawklan looked up.
Above him was a foaming vortex, dark and ominous, like the mingling of countless broken worlds. As he stared at it, he could not tell whether the columns of the Labyrinth reached up to it, or hung down from it like searching, twisting tentacles.
Then they were out of the Labyrinth. In front of them, the ground ended abruptly. Hawklan stepped forward carefully, to find himself at the edge of a plunging height. It dropped sheer, into a depth he dared not see. He took in a throat-closing breath and stepped back unsteadily.
Normally Dar-volci and Gavor relished taunting him for his fear of heights, but they were silent.
Looking about him, Hawklan saw that he was at the edge of a great pit.
At its centre was a vast tapering column and, to his right, was a slender bridge spanning across to it. At the end of the bridge stood a familiar figure.
He ran towards it.
Gulda pushed her hood back when he reached her. She held up a finger before he could speak.
‘I’ve no answers, Hawklan,’ she said, her bright eyes pained and her hand opening and closing about her stick. ‘Many threads are coming together and I am drawn here by one of His weaving.’ She looked at him significantly. ‘As you know. I dare not trust myself to act, but you must. Trust yourself.’
‘But…’
She stepped to one side and pointed her stick along what Hawklan had taken for a bridge. It was scarcely a pace wide. The breeze had become a wind and it was growing stronger.
‘You have done well. Your transformation of the world where the Sword fell, imperfect though it was, has opened the Great Way and brought you to Me.’
‘Our hurts are made whole by Your Praise, Great Lord. With our Power and Your wisdom we will release You and sweep Ethriss’s folly away.’
Gory heads bowed and gashes leaking, the Uhriel were kneeling. Without looking up, the blind man held out his hands. Resting on them was the black sword.
A hand closed about its hilt.
‘Your Power will indeed cleanse this place. I accept it. Accept now My wisdom.’
A single stroke severed all three heads.
‘I can’t walk along that,’ Hawklan said, his eyes wide with fear.
Gulda did not answer but lowered her stick and resumed her silent vigil. There was neither reproach nor encouragement in her manner.
‘Out of words, dear boy,’ Gavor said. ‘But I’ll stay with you.’
‘And me,’ Dar-volci said.
It was difficult to hear them; the wind was growing stronger and the noise from above louder. Hawklan looked up again.
The vortex was lower. It was a fearful sight, grim and vast. He glanced once more at the motionless figure of Gulda, head bowed now, then at the narrow pathway ahead of him.
At the far end, suffusing the top of the isolated column, was a bright light.
‘Great mercy, I’m afraid,’ he said, his voice trembling.
Then, with a deep breath, he walked onto the narrow span, the wind tugging and buffeting him. Gavor spread his wings and floated off Hawklan’s shoulder as the healer pressed on uncertainly, shoulders high with tension. Hawklan struggled to keep his gaze fixed resolutely in the distance, but it was drawn inexorably downwards. His legs were shaking so violently that he could scarcely control them, but he was a long way from the beginning when he stopped.