The depths on either side tempted him.
‘One step at a time,’ Dar-volci said.
‘I need to rest a moment,’ Hawklan said, breathing heavily. ‘This wind, this noise…’
He crouched to make himself less vulnerable to the tugging of the wind.
Then he was on all fours, scarcely able to move.
‘I don’t think you have a moment,’ Dar-volci said, shaking him gently.
Hawklan looked up. A light was moving towards him along the bridge. For a moment his fear threatened to become outright panic but as it surged to a peak, so it was transformed into cold anger and battle-readiness. His legs were still trembling – his whole body was trembling – but the movement was familiar and he knew it for what it was: ancient reflexes releasing him to fight.
He stood up.
The light drew nearer.
Hawklan began walking towards it as steadily as he could. The wind was continuing to grow stronger and the noise from the turbulent sky louder. Violent, roiling and shot with lightning and endlessly shifting colours, it was still descending. Whatever it was, there could be little doubt that nothing would survive its touch.
Wings reaching into the ways of the wind to keep his flight steady, Gavor suddenly soared above him, a black and sharp-edged silhouette stark and clear against the confusion.
Hawklan looked back along the bridge. Gulda was still there, though he could see her only indistinctly. He turned back to the approaching light.
It was nearer now.
And he felt again the presence he had felt as he had trekked across Narsindal to stand before the mist-shrouded castle of Derras Ustramel.
Sumeral had been given form again.
Hawklan moved forward. He was alone, unarmed, racked by the tearing wind and menaced by the siren call of the abyss beneath him, but he knew he must stand against this abomination. Futile it might seem but even as the thought came to him he could hear Andawyr proclaiming, ‘Never underestimate the effects of the smallest action.’
‘You are smiling.’
The cold words formed within him as they had when he had heard them on the causeway across Lake Kedrieth.
Hawklan straightened and gazed into the light. It was barely five paces away from him. There was the hint of a figure at its heart. He did not reply.
‘Ethriss’s creations were ever flawed. Smiling in the face of their destruction.’
Still Hawklan did not speak.
‘You have no questions? No plea to make – for his sorry world – for yourself? You, who could have been the greatest of My Uhriel – My chosen.’
Silence.
Hawklan opened his arms in a gesture that might have been acceptance or welcome. He looked up at the vortex.
‘This is the dance of My new creation – the wiping away of all things so that perfection can be made.’
Hawklan shook his head. ‘This will indeed sweep all things away – but it is not Your creation. The folly that brought it about created You also – the essence of all that is foul in humanity, unfettered and given form by cruel chance. This You must know, as Ethriss did. Prepare yourself for oblivion.’
He turned.
The bridge behind him was fading into greyness, but he felt no fear at the sight.
‘There is nowhere for You in this time. Whatever bound You here – sustained You – is passing on, free now. The Guardians too passed on when they realized the truth of their nature; so now will You.’
The brightness faltered momentarily, and though the howling of the wind and the rumbling of the vortex filled everywhere, Hawklan felt only a long silence.
‘You would have been a fine servant, Hawklan. Your treachery and guile are worthy of My favour. But I have been bound here too long. I will honour you as I honoured My Uhriel. With the key that will unlock Ethriss’s cursed Labyrinth.’
Hawklan stepped back instinctively and the point of the black sword passed in front of him, cutting a singing horizontal arc out of the brightness.
‘That ismy sword,’ he said. ‘It comes from the heart of whatever brought this upon us. Made by Ethriss when his doubts began, in the faith that it would protect us.’ He opened his arms again. ‘If You would be free, give it to me and perhaps I will have the knowledge that can truly end this.’
Two further steps back saved him from the diagonal cuts that came by way of reply.
‘It is my sword,’ he said again. ‘You cannot use it. It will doom you.’
‘Take My merciful thrust or avoid it again and step into the nothingness at your back.’
Hawklan turned his head slightly. At the edge of his vision was greyness. He could go no further.
He was aware of Dar-volci at his feet, of the vortex closer than ever, chaotic and wild, of the wind tugging at him and of Gavor struggling with it. And, not least, he was aware of the point of the black sword little more than a hand-span in front of his throat.
There was great clarity.
He was moving to one side of the blade as it was moving forward. His right hand was clutching the hilt of the Sword, while his left, opened wide, was extending into the brightness as he turned towards it.
Then it was gone. With a cry that pierced the roaring of the vortex, the figure was tumbling into the abyss, flaring like a falling star. As it guttered out, Hawklan was standing with his arms open, as though to embrace the whole world.
And clutching the black sword.
That it was his he had no doubt. There was a completeness to him that he had not known since he had lost it. Yet no new knowledge came with it. Sumeral, the evil that had destroyed Gentren’s world and plagued this one through aeons, was gone – but still destruction threatened.
He looked at Dar-volci and Gavor in desperation.
Gavor flapped in front of him, hovering briefly, before the wind tore him away.
‘Strike to the centre, warrior,’ he cried out.
Then Hawklan was running along the narrow bridge, the wind pounding him, grey emptiness at his back and the vortex ever closer above him, its roar rising in pitch until it became a screaming that threatened to rend him apart.
As he reached the place that had been the centre of the abyss, the turmoil began to worsen with each step he took until it was only his will that sustained him.
‘I will not yield,’ he shouted into the mayhem.
‘Nor need you, for you will be Mine soon enough.’
Hawklan cried out as the cold voice filled him again.
In front of him were a myriad facets. In each could be seen the whirling vortex.
Save in one.
In that was only his own image, watching him with cold amusement.
‘Did you think I would be so foolish as to face My chosen with his own Sword? That was but My shadow you destroyed – a faltering echo in your world sent to bring you to Me with the Sword.’
‘To end you finally.’
‘No. To free Me.’
Hawklan’s grip tightened about the Sword grimly and he urged himself forward. But he could not move against the wind, so powerful had it become.
‘No. It is beyond even you to take this last step. It transcends the ability of any man. You are bound where you are by what you are. Only the Sword and that part of you which is truly Mine will be drawn to Me when the final joining comes. And as it returns, so shall I be made truly whole, and so shall I come in glory to the remaking of My heartworld.’
Despair racked Hawklan. He raised the Sword to strike but all strength had left him. He was helpless. The vortex roared triumphantly, bloody and dark, all about him.
‘I will not yield,’ he cried again, though he could not hear his own voice and his heart was bursting.
Then, a whistling, high, loud and needle-clear, pierced the clamour, and a pulsing, pounding rhythm shook it. Hawklan recognized the call of Dar-volci and the urgent beating of Gavor’s wings. But they could do nothing now. He tried to set the distracting sounds aside.