Part 15 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+fted, 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 wors.h.i.+p Me, so you must wors.h.i.+p 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 generals.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+ning 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.