Gulda looked at him and spoke simply and without hesitation. 'That's a tale for another telling, Hawklan.

And probably not mine. Do you doubt me?'

Hawklan recoiled from the pain in her look as the bright blue eyes pierced him. This time, they too were filled with doubt, but such doubt that his own fretting of the last few weeks dwindled into insignificance.

Had she placed too much hope in a foolish empty-headed man who had some little skill in healing and who had perhaps stumbled by chance into the possession of an ancient and magical Castle?

For an instant he felt again her appalling despair and loneliness at the realization that her long, aching journey might after all have to continue, and continue into who knew what distant darkness. Something in his mind shifted, like the dropping of the keystone into an arch, and the doubts and turmoil ceased.

He took her face between his two hands. 'I'm sorry, Gulda,' he said. 'I didn't understand.'

She lifted her stick and placed it on the table, then she covered his hands with her own and for a moment closed her eyes.

'And I'm sorry I doubted you, Hawklan. For an instant I thought you were the wrong man and that I'd have to . . . But I see now your doubts were the last throes of your life with the Orthlundyn. It would be a sorry man indeed who wanted to leave what you've had here.'

Hawklan nodded slightly. 'Finish your story your history,' he said gently.

Gulda smiled sadly and releasing Hawklan's hands recovered her stick. The mutual doubting had been cathartic. She continued her tale.

'Not everyone was seduced by His cunning though. Many remembered the tales of the Guardians handed down through the generations and saw Sumeral for what He was. They resisted Him.' She shook her head. 'There's many a tale there to bring joy and sadness to you. Many a tale.' She held up her hands as though she were clasping a sphere. 'Strangely, as those who opposed Him shrank in number, so their resistance hardened. And even among those under His sway, there were murmurs against Himwhen the degradation of the land and the seas became increasingly obvious.'

She leaned forward, nearing the crux of her tale. 'So, ever the master of originality, He created His most cunning and evil device He taught His people war.'

She stretched out the word, war, and it sounded like a death knell.

Gavor c.o.c.ked his head on one side.

Gulda lapsed into her sonorous storyteller's voice again. 'He delved into the deepest pit of darkness that can be dug in men's minds and drew out wild-eyed, screaming war. "As you worship Me, so you must worship this, My most mighty creation, for it alone can lead you to crush those who stand between you and the greatness that is yours by right".'

Hawklan looked at one of the window images brought into the Library by the mirror stones. Outside, storm clouds flew overhead, themselves like raging hordes.

Gulda became matter-of-fact again. 'With this He hoped to quell the murmurings of His own people, and destroy those who opposed Him. And for a while He was successful. But He'd overreached himself.

The clamour and torment that only war can bring woke the Guardians.'

Gulda rested her head on her hand and shook it bitterly. 'Oh, Hawklan. There are so many terrible "ifs"

in this tale. If the Guardians hadn't slept, if they'd wakened earlier or been less drowsy from their long sleep. If, if, if. Such a long and terrible word.'

Hawklan waited as the shadows of the clouds marched across the Library.

Gulda continued. 'Sumeral felt their waking, and He was afraid. His power equalled theirs, but He knew that to combat them directly would be to risk His own destruction, even if He were victorious. So it spurred Him to yet another evil deed.' A little of the storyteller's lilt returned. 'He took His three most terrible regents and filled them with secret knowledge so that they became the most powerful of all men, then He gave them immortality and bound them with ties unimaginable to become ever His servants.'

'The Uhriel,' said Hawklan softly. Gulda nodded.

'Creost,' said Hawklan.

'With power over the waters of the earth, to bind Enartion.'

'Dar Hastuin.'

'With power over the air and the sky, to bind Sphaeera.'

'And Oklar.'

Gulda paused. 'The greatest of them all. With power over the land and mountains, to bind Theowart.'

The words hung in the air like a chanted catechism.

'They it was who locked the Guardians in combat and tended to matters of earthly generalship, leaving Sumeral to face Ethriss unhindered.' Into Hawklan's mind came the tales of battles and glory that he had been reading about so recently. He felt a reluctant stir of excitement.

'Tell me about the war,' he said.

Gulda caught a note in his voice and looked at him for a long time without speaking, her eyes seeming to pierce into his very soul. Her face wrinkled into an expression of disgust and resignation, mingled with compa.s.sion and understanding.

'Hawklan, Sumeral and Ethriss fought on planes and in ways we can't begin to understand. But amongst us, each led mortal armies in human form.' She put her hand to her head. 'Dismiss from your mind all the rhetoric you've read about war glittering arrays of armoured men, spear points shining in the sun, bronzed helmets, plumes nodding, brave fluttering flags and on and on. Fine poetry, but not truth. Such small good as comes from war is no more than a solitary star shining through the fog to a man lost in a barren wilderness. Heroism, honour, dignity they happen only because Ethriss's children are infinitely adaptable and will strive eternally to survive, the wiser among them having regard for the needs of others.

In the total sum these offerings are outweighed tenfold by the horrors that war works.

'Instead you should feel terror to loosen your bowels, know steel hacking beloved flesh, hooves trampling skulls into the blood-soaked mud. Years of creation gone in seconds. Know great areas of land blighted for generations, rivers choked with mutilated bodies, men suffocating under mounds of their dead and dying friends, men dying of disease and unspeakable wounds, dying without solace or comfort, far away from everything they love. Old people slaughtered, children maimed and wandering. That's war, Hawklan. No glory. No splendour.'

Hawklan bowed his head under this onslaught.

'But the real horror is worse,' Gulda continued. 'Not for nothing did I say war was Sumeral's most cunning and evil device. When Ethriss realized the truth, he wept.'

Hawklan looked at her uncertainly. 'What could be worse than what you've just described?' he asked.

Gulda seized his wrists. Again Hawklan wondered at the overwhelming strength of her grip.

'In any combat, be it between men or nations, only the strongest and most ruthless can win, and they can win only by inflicting appalling losses on their opponents.' Tears ran down Gulda's face. Not petulant sobbing, but an overflow from some well deep within.

'When Sumeral launched war against His enemies, they scattered and fell in dismay and confusion, like chaff in the wind, totally ignorant of the nature of the terrible thing that was afflicting them. They'd have been swept out of existence had not Ethriss . . .'

'Taught them war,' said Hawklan almost inaudibly. Andawyr's words at the Gretmearc returned to him: the Guardians had to teach Sumeral's evil to overcome it. Then Isloman's voice in the soft grey rain: you have to be worse than your enemy. Don't think otherwise or you'll die. And his own inexorable conclusion: we act to preserve ourselves. It's the most ancient of laws. Written deep into all living things.

Gulda nodded and released Hawklan's wrists. 'That's why Ethriss wept. He had to complete Sumeral's own work to defeat Him. He had to become a greater teacher of corruption than even Sumeral.' Hawklan put his face in his hands as if to shut out his own thoughts as the logic of Gulda's tale swept all before it.

'Ethriss's self-reproach at his own sloth and tardiness is a burden none of us can imagine,' continued Gulda. 'The only leavening he could add to the horror of what he had to teach was that men should fight only to preserve what was theirs and not to impose their will on others. And that in victory they . . .'

'Should stay their hands from excess.' Hawklan finished the sentence.

Gulda looked at him, her head tilted slightly as if she had heard a distant sound. 'Yes,' she said. 'They should embrace compa.s.sion and eschew vengeance. Lonely and delicate flowers to grow amid such a harrowing. Nor did they always survive.'

The wind outside had dropped and the grey storm clouds hung solid and menacing overhead like an army awaiting the order to advance, Hawklan thought. He sat up and looked around. Gavor was gazing transfixed at the lowering grey sky, occupied by who knew what thoughts. Gulda, pale and distressed from her long tale, but peculiarly triumphant, was wiping her eyes.

But Tirilen was sitting motionless, with her arms wrapped around herself and her head bowed low.

Hawklan felt the fear radiating from her. She was trapped, like a child in a nightmare who, on waking, finds it is no dream.

Hawklan put out his arms and cradled her to him as he had done so many times when she had been a child. Though whether it was to console her or himself, he could not have said.

Chapter 22.

'Why are we listening to this, Hawklan?' Tirilen said, looking reproachfully at Gulda. 'It's horrible. I don't believe it. People don't do things like that, nor ever did. It's just an old tale like those on the Gate.

A horrible tale.'

Hawklan made no reply, but held her close, until the woman in Tirilen could rea.s.sert herself over the young girl.

Gulda, woman to woman, was less gentle. 'It was no old tale that cut down your friends from Fyorlund and has brought half the countryside down on us for help, young lady,' she said harshly.

Hawklan winced at the tone, and Tirilen shivered then bridled. She pulled free from Hawklan and thrust her face forward angrily at Gulda. 'No,' she cried out, but her voice cracked with doubt. 'No. I won't believe it. I won't believe in fairy-tale monsters coming to life, and such nonsense. And how could you possibly know such things, you silly old . . .' She dropped her head abruptly, ashamed at her outburst.

Fumbling with her hands in her lap she muttered an apology.

There was a flicker of impatience in Gulda's face, but Hawklan caught her eye and sent a plea for compa.s.sion.

'Tirilen,' Gulda said. 'This is hard for you, I know. But you're a healer of sorts, and you know there are times when reason fails. When you have to trust your intuition. To let yourself go. You have to enter into the truth of your charge's pain and accept it. Look at Hawklan and know the truth.'

Tirilen looked up as she was bidden and stared into Hawklan's face. It bore an expression of sadimplacability. He had no words for her. She had a step into blackness before her and none could help her take it. She hesitated.

Gulda's voice spoke again. 'Hear the truth, Tirilen. Long ago, the world was once ravaged by a terrible evil. It may be that that same evil has risen again and if it has then it will ravage the world once more unless we who see it act.'

Tirilen did not move, but continued to stare at Hawklan.

Gulda's tone became sterner. 'As for what I know and how I know it, suffice it that I'm here now because of my folly. With good fortune, the Cadwanol may be here now because of their wisdom. More to the point are these two.' Her eyes pa.s.sed over Hawklan and Gavor. 'Who can say who they are or why they're here now?'

'Hawklan,' said Tirilen softly, desperately, a faint pleading smile imploring him to say it was not true, that all would be as it was.

Still Hawklan had no words for her, though he felt the smile would break his heart.

'Mandrocs killed the High Guards, Tirilen. Then we in our turn killed Mandrocs.'

It was Gavor's voice, simple and clear, like his own black shadow. It broke the last thread restraining the girl and too-long-held tears burst out like a flood. Her hands flew to her face to cover its contortions and her body shook convulsively.

Hawklan knew that Tirilen's tears were not for the ma.s.sive horrors of a long-dead past, nor the fear of its recurrence. They were for a more immediate loss, that of her erstwhile captors: young men, full of life, who had been so apologetic and courteous even while holding her prisoner and who had been so cruelly destroyed.

Both he and Gulda breathed out softly. Each had feared that her grief might be restrained too long. Her tears were essential, as had been Hawklan's and Fel-Astian's in the forest. They must run their course freely now, so that Tirilen's natural strength and courage could carry her safely forward.

Hawklan turned towards the window image. Outside, as if in imitation of Tirilen's release, great raindrops were starting to fall out of the leaden sky.

There was silence in the room until Tirilen's sobbing eventually stopped and she sat up and began to wipe her eyes with her sleeve in a most unladylike manner. Gavor fluttered up on to her shoulder.

Gulda took up her tale again.

Past its awful heart, she spoke long and easily into the darkening day. Telling of the generations of conflict that surged to and fro across the world as Ethriss and the Guardians sought to stay Sumeral's advance. Telling of Sumeral's continued corruption of men to form His great armies; and of His enslavement of others as workers; of His corruption of the gentle mountain-dwelling Mandreci into the barbarous Mandroc hordes; of Ethriss's formation of the Cadwanol, drawing the wisest men from all nations into a Great Order and giving them such of his wisdom and power as they could use to wage the battle on its many levels; and of the Great Alliance of Kings and Peoples that eventually swept Sumeral and the Uhriel up to their last stronghold in Derras Ustramel, the terrible fortress that rose out of Lake Kedrieth in the bleak fastness of Narsindal; and of the final fall of Sumeral and Derras Ustramel. 'For final they thought it was,' said Gulda. 'Sumeral's spirit was overcome by Ethriss, and His body was slain by Ethriss's guards. And with the fall of their Master, the Uhriel fell lifeless before the might of the Guardians.'

She sat pensive and unmoved by the victory she had just described.

'But the seeds of the Second Coming were sown,' said Hawklan, echoing Andawyr's words.

Gulda nodded. 'It would appear so,' she said. 'Though none had the sight, or perhaps the desire, to see it then. Except perhaps Ethriss. And he was gone.'

'Gone?' said Tirilen.

Gulda nodded again. Her storyteller's lilt returned. 'Ethriss was a great warrior. None could stand against him in combat, save perhaps Sumeral Himself. But he came unarmed to the Last Battle lest the preoccupation with the safety of his body should distract him from his true battle with Sumeral. An Iron Ring of Fyordyn High Guard protected him and Sumeral's hordes beat against them like waves against a cliff while he stood motionless, battling with Sumeral in ways we cannot understand. Then Sumeral, glorious and shining like the sun in His splendid armour, faltered at some unseen a.s.sault . . .'

She stopped abruptly as if an old memory had suddenly burst upon her, and her eyes filled with tears and ran freely down her face. For a moment she seemed to be struggling to speak, then she was free again. 'And missiles that had fallen from Him through all that terrible day now found their mark.

'He crashed from His steed pierced by a score of good Fyordyn arrows. But even as He fell, He loosed one final cast of His spear and struck down the defenceless Ethriss, who fell in the melee, unseen, save by one in that ring of defenders.'

Gulda fell silent again for a while and sat motionless.

'When the battle was over, his body was nowhere to be found,' she said eventually. 'There was no sign of him nor of Sumeral and the Uhriel. There were rumours that the Mandrocs had hidden the bodies of the Uhriel deep in their caves and that the body of Sumeral was lost in Lake Kedrieth when the Guardians exerted their last strength and tumbled Derras Ustramel into ruins, but . . .' She shrugged.

'There was a peace to be made. A terrible price had been paid in the death of Ethriss, but the evil was destroyed, it was believed, and much was to be done. The world was a sorry place.'

Her face softened. 'The Great Alliance became a Great Congress, and p.r.o.nounced wisely. They remembered Ethriss's injunction to stay their hands from excess in victory. Those nations of men that had been bound or misled by Sumeral were freed and no acts of vengeance were taken, or few, at any rate.

Only the poor Mandrocs proved irredeemable. They were sentenced to remain forever in Narsindal. The Fyordyn were given the land you now call Fyorlund, and swore a sacred oath to maintain an eternal vigil over Narsindal and to protect the blessed land of Orthlund to the south. The members of the Cadwanol retired to their caves at the southern end of the Pa.s.s of Elewart to study and increase their knowledge, and also to protect the only other exit from Narsindal. And all the other armies returned whence they'd come, to gather up the threads of their old lives.'

Gulda slapped her knees gently and, sitting up straight, smiled. 'It was the start of the Golden Age, Hawklan. Ethriss was gone and the Guardians slept, exhausted from their own dreadful toils against the Uhriel, but the Cadwanol and Ethriss's Kings did due honour to them in their deeds. Fine happy times.' 'But?' Hawklan antic.i.p.ated.

Gulda smiled ruefully. 'It faded,' she said simply. 'No race on earth had escaped the corruption, taught either by Sumeral or by Ethriss. Slowly it bred ignorance and delight in ignorance, then discontent, until the world is as it is today. Peaceful enough, but a shadow of its former state, and heading steadily towards the darkness. We've all fallen into slothful habits, Hawklan. Telling this old tale again today has made me remember . . .' She stopped and her blue eyes locked Hawklan's gaze again. 'I can see now that Sumeral could well rise a second time. So many "ifs" again. If Ethriss had not been slain; if Sumeral's body hadn't been lost . . . or taken.' She shrugged and fell silent.

Gulda's tale finished, Hawklan stood up quietly and stretched. Taking a piece of bread from the tray he sat on the edge of the table next to her.

'All of which leaves us where?' he asked.

She looked up at him. 'It leaves you a little nearer the truth, which is where you needed to be. It'll help in whatever decisions we have to make.'

'But I still don't know who I am,' said Hawklan. 'Or who I was, or why this Dan-Tor thinks I'm so important. Come to that, who is Dan-Tor?'

Gulda looked at him enigmatically. 'Andawyr said he thought you were Ethriss himself; didn't he?'

Hawklan waved a dismissive hand. 'Andawyr was very disturbed. What happened in that pavilion had shaken him badly.'

Gulda nodded understandingly, but persisted. 'Just as Sumeral slept and has seemingly been wakened, so Ethriss may sleep somewhere in human form. And he too can be wakened. If I judge Sumeral truly, I fear He may have been awake a long time, spreading His corruption silently while His agents searched for Ethriss's sleeping form so that it could be destroyed or bound.'

Hawklan felt momentarily disorientated. 'This is nonsense, Gulda,' he said, his voice suddenly harsh and angry. 'Surely I'd know if I were Ethriss? An all-powerful . . . Guardian . . . from the beginning of Creation.'

Gulda flinched a little, but offered him no resistance. 'Consider, Hawklan. You arrive mysteriously in Orthlund bearing the Key and the Word to open Anderras Darion, Ethriss's greatest fortress. You know the Castle. You have great skill in healing and you know the speech of animals, Ethriss's own sword seeks you out.' She paused, still looking at him penetratingly. 'Once the Orthlundyn were a great and n.o.ble people. Their sacrifice was appalling, but it sounded the beginning of Sumeral's doom. It's said that as the last of their Princes fell before His army, Ethriss swept him from the field of battle and locked him in a deep sleep, to waken only when the need of Orthlund cried out again.'