‘No,’ said the voice. ‘But the Heartplace is near.’ A note in the voice made Hawklan pause. Anger? Distaste? Not quite either. Resentment? That was it: resentment.
‘But you asked me here,’ he said defensively, though no words had reproached him.
Sounds of surprise and contrition surrounded him briefly. ‘You hear more than you know, Hawklan,’ said the voice, this time very close. ‘We are sorry for what you heard.’
Hawklan peered in the direction of the voice but still he could see nothing. ‘It pains you that a human should come near your Heartplace?’ he said. ‘Even to help you?’
‘Yes,’ the voice replied simply. ‘We are sorry,’ it said again. ‘But you give us hope too. We have many things to learn. Help us, please.’
The voice moved on, and Hawklan followed it quickly, until he found himself at the foot of a broad flight of steps. They were small, as though they had been built for children, and, like the floor he was standing on, they were covered in dust.
‘Up,’ said the voice ahead of him. Hawklan hesitated and frowned slightly. There were no tiny footprints in the dust to indicate the previous passing of his guide.
‘Please tell me where you are and what’s happened,’ he said yet again, starting up the stairs.
‘We are here, Hawklan,’ said the voice, without fur-ther explanation. ‘As we neared our Heartplace, His creature attacked us and… ’
It fell silent. Hawklan tightened his grip on his sword, and quickened his pace. The steps wound around a wide bend and then divided into three separate flights.
‘What was this creature?’ he asked.
The question was ignored. ‘We could not defend ourselves,’ said the voice, along the central of the three flights. ‘There were killings.’ A terrible grief slipped briefly into the voice.
‘Songs were ended… ’ The voice faded into a long sigh and then became silent.
Hawklan found himself on a wide landing, facing several tunnels. ‘Which way?’ he said impatiently into the silence.
There was a long pause. Hawklan thought he heard distant noises rising up faintly from below, but he dismissed them.
‘We cannot ask this of you,’ the voice said abruptly, very close. Startled, Hawklan spun round, expecting to see his guide standing nearby, but still there was nothing.
‘What do you mean?’ he said, bewildered by this unexpected statement.
‘It is our Heartplace. Its cleansing is our burden,’ said the voice, gabbling almost.
They fear to be in your debt, said the cold pan of Hawklan’s mind.
His anger burst out. ‘Stop this nonsense, and answer my questions,’ he shouted. ‘What kind of a creature is it that’s attacked you? And where is it?’
His angry voice rolled into the tunnels facing him and faded away without echo.
There was a long silence, then a strange high-pitched scream came from one of the tunnels. Gavor tightened his claw on Hawklan’s shoulder. ‘Dear boy, I think perhaps we ought to… ’
But Hawklan was not listening. He was running forward, following the dying thread of the scream. Gavor relinquished his perch and flew a little way behind him.
Then they were in an open space again.
Hawklan stopped and Gavor floated down a few paces from him.
There was a fearful, breathless silence around them, and Hawklan noted smells; vaguely familiar animal smells mingling with a retching sweetness that stirred dark shadowy memories in him.
Something nearby was watching and waiting, he knew. But what? And why? And most important of all, where?
He peered intently into the darkness, holding the torch high, and his sword horizontally in front of him.
‘Look,’ Gavor whispered very softly, tapping the floor with his wooden leg.
Hawklan looked down. As far as the torch shone, he could see that the dust which overlay the floor here too had been disturbed by countless tiny feet.
Cautiously he bent down to examine the footprints.
As he leaned forward, every part of him suddenly sensed the attack rushing towards him, but before he could move, a great weight crashed onto his shoulders, knocking him to the ground and sending the torch and the sword rattling in opposite directions.
Distantly, Hawklan heard Gavor cry out in alarm and then rage, but his immediate preoccupation was with whatever had dropped on him. It was large and heavy and its snarling breath stank inches from his face. He had a fleeting glimpse of bared yellow fangs and green eyes, cruel in the now faint torchlight, as the creature recovered from its jump and launched itself at him again.
Instinctively he threw up his hands to protect him-self and then rolled over desperately in the direction his sword had fallen. He was not fast enough, however. The creature landed heavily on him again, and he felt powerful, bone-crushing jaws beginning to close around his upper arm. He cried out as they tightened pitilessly and in sheer terror smashed his free hand into where he presumed the creature’s head was.
The blow landed with some considerable force, and the grip on his arm slackened momentarily, but before Hawklan could react, the jaws seized him again. A deep growl underscored the creature’s intent.
Hawklan twisted and turned to escape the relentless pressure, trying frantically to gain some point of leverage to use his own weight against the creature. Abruptly, as if tiring of this irritating prey, the creature shook its head from side to side violently. Hawklan felt himself almost lifted off the ground by the creature’s strength, and somewhere he heard himself screaming at the pain in his arm. The darkness around him was flooded with a myriad bursting colours.
Stay conscious, some inner voice shouted through his terror.
Then a blast of air in his face returned him to the present.
He heard a familiar voice, raucous with fear and rage, and caught a glimpse of Gavor above him, wings thrashing, attacking the attacker.
The creature gave a cry of pain and released Hawk-lan to deal with this new assailant. With an immense beat of his wings, Gavor rose almost vertically into the air screaming abuse. The creature leapt after him, a muscular, purposeful shadow in the darkness. Hawklan heard the loud snap of the powerful jaws closing just short of his friend’s legs.
Free of the terrible grip, he rolled over and felt the creature stumble as it landed heavily on his moving legs. He recognized the sound of claws scrabbling on the floor as it tried to regain its balance.
Even chances now, the thought came to him, unex-pectedly calm through his fear and pain. As he rolled over again, a tiny light, bright in the darkness, caught his eye. The sword hilt, he realized, catching the light of the distant torch.
Another roll and his hand closed around it. Then the momentum of his movement was helping him swing up on to his feet though he was crouching and unsteady and, strangely, the sword felt heavy and awkward in his hand. Something was amiss, he sensed, but there was no time to debate it; he could just make out the shape of the creature rushing towards him.
Raising the sword high, he stepped back with the intention of turning sideways to strike the creature as it passed him, but his retreating foot sank into something soft and yielding. A repellent smell filled the air, and his foot skidded from under him. As he fell, the creature hit him full in the chest, accelerating his already heavy fall.
He felt the sword slip from his hand as his arms extended reflexively to beat the ground in an attempt to spare him the worst of the impact. It clattered into the distance and for an instant he was glad to be rid of it. It was not helping him. Now, in some awful way, he was free; unrestrained.
He heard rather than felt the wind go out of him as he struck the floor with the creature on top of him, but his arms, bouncing off the hard floor, reached up automatically to protect his head from the descending jaws.
Teeth seized his sleeve but his free hand reached up and struck the creature’s chest. It was an inadvertent blow and had no effect on the assault, but Hawklan pushed as strongly as he could in a desperate attempt to prevent the creature gripping his arm further. He could feel the creature’s feet digging into him as it struggled for purchase, and he could feel too its enormous strength and terrible murderous intensity.