The Keep was built stronger. But even now, from a distance of perhaps three miles, Gawain could see that it stood not proud and tall and arrow-straight, but seemed to lean at a terrible angle to the horizon.
The world was white and blue, and The Keep was all that stood apart from the two, neither of one nor the other.
Tears welled and streamed unnoticed down Gawain's face as they neared his home. Great rents were visible in the battlements, and the once grey and shimmering stone was blackened and scorched. No flag fluttered gracefully from the top tower. No one-eyed old soldier proudly stood guard there, where so many years ago Gawain had peeped over the walls, waiting for horses.
Nothing. All around, just small bumps and swellings in the white sheet where once the tall stone buildings of Castletown had stood. Far off, far up in the blue, seagulls wheeled and screeched to each other. Down here, down in the whiteness, nothing but The Keep, tilted, ruined, blasted.
The great iron gates lay shattered, visible only as a criss-cross pattern under the ash-sheet. The vast wooden doors were gone. In the courtyard, nothing. The stables, where Gawain had groomed his horse on his last day in Raheen before the Banishment, were gone.
Gwyn's hooves, clopping on the hidden cobbles, seemed to hesitate again. The building she'd come to know as her home simply wasn't there, and let out a low whinny which echoed mournfully from the scorched walls surrounding them.
Gawain patted her neck, and eased her forward, up the steps towards the gaping hole where once vast oaken doors gave admittance to the Great Hall.
It was light inside. Sunshine streamed in through rents in the walls. The Great Hall was cavernous, even when filled with people, which it wasn't now. There were no low tables, no benches. No proud banners, no flags and no rich tapestries. Nothing but ash.
Ahead stood the three thrones of Raheen, marble, scorched and cracked. No velvet cushions to soften their edges. Gwyn stood in the unfamiliar surroundings, and let out another low and heart-breaking whinny, and slowly sank to her knees in the dust, head down, breathing for all the world in great sobbing gasps.
Gawain slipped from the saddle and stood, head bowed, tears streaming, his hand resting lightly on the animal's head.
In this once mighty room, he had last heard his given name spoken. By his father, mother, and brother. Who would speak it now?
No-one. Ever.
Something glinted dully as Gawain knelt beside Gwyn, and for a few moments his heart leapt, believing, hoping, he'd seen movement, something alive. But when he looked up, there was nothing. Until he realised that a slender shadow, somehow familiar, was being cast in the white-strewn floor.
He stood, and approached the thrones, his booted footfalls echoing, a sad parody of his proud gait a year and a day before.
The Sword of Justice, coated in ash, stood before the thrones. Gawain gasped, and marvelled, and wiped away the tears that blurred his vision. Smothered in the ash that clung to everything, he hadn't seen it until now.
He blew on its handle, ash flew, and the familiar pommel glinted in the afternoon summer sunshine streaming in through shattered windows and broken walls.
His hand trembled when he reached out to touch it, to confirm its reality, and he knew that if he grasped thin air instead of the hard leather grip, he would go mad. But the sword was real. It had endured, where all of Raheen had been blasted to ash.
He drew it from its slot in the marble floor, and hefted it. The Sword of Justice. He'd hefted it thus on the day of his Banishment. The last day he'd seen Raheen, before this…this something had annihilated his everything. Apart from himself and Gwyn, this was the only thing Raheen left in the world of white and blue, of dust and sky.
He raised its heavy blade, both hands about the handle, and gave a single, choking cry:
"Raheeeeeeeeeeen!"
And then fell to his knees, and wept, his heart shivering into a thousand cold shards within his chest as total loss enveloped him, chilling him to the very marrow in spite of the warmth of summer noon.
Later, the tears spent, he stood, clutching the longsword. He turned a full circle, as if the ghosts of all Raheen were assembled around him, and if they were, then they would have known despair, for Gawain's expression was terrible to behold.
He raised the sword again, then struck the heavy blade against the ash-covered floor. Dust flew from the sword, revealing its former glory. Then he raised it high above his head, beams of sunlight lancing through the gloom and chasing ghosts around the shattered walls.
"By this blade I swear,” Gawain said coldly, his voice echoing back at him, strangely distorted, "Justice. And vengeance. For my home. For my people. I am Gawain, son of Davyd, King of Raheen."
The sunshine seemed to flicker and fade, and a breeze wafted through the Great Hall. Gwyn leapt to her feet and let out a great screeching whinny. The ground beneath Gawain's feet seemed to shift, and a new light filled the room. All around him, a glowing, emanating from the strange symbols etched in the scorched marble floor, etched into the Circle of Justice.
"The Fallen!” Gawain cried, and the sword seemed to become suddenly lighter in his hands, so light he could hold it aloft with one hand, and wield it with ease.
Again Gwyn whinnied, and pawed at the stone floor, the sound echoing like the applause of ten thousand ghosts as the ground shook, ash billowed, and a terrible resolve gathered up the pieces of Gawain's shattered heart, and bonded them together with a single, cold purpose as relentless as sunset.
9. Ramoth's Eye
Sunset found Gwyn and Gawain at the foot of the Downland Pass. There was no food to be had in Raheen. No water. No grass for Gwyn. There was nothing in Raheen. There was no Raheen. Only ashes.
The inns clustered at the foot of the pass were abandoned, but the wells were full, and both Gawain and Gwyn drank their fill. Food too, in one of the traveller's rests, a testament to the rapidity of their abandonment. Jars of preserves, kegs of ale and skins of wine, mouldy bread and the rotting remains of a wild boar decaying on a spit above a fire long since dead.
It was difficult to tell when the place had been abandoned, for the layers of dust over everything had a ghastly similarity to the ash high above on the plateau.
Gawain did not care when it had happened. Whether a day, a week, or a year ago. He only knew that Raheen, all that he had loved and cherished, all that defined him, shaped him, made him Gawain, was gone.
All he cared about now was his oath, and the cold fire which raged within him. Justice. And vengeance. For Raheen.
While Gwyn grazed, Gawain gathered provisions from the abandoned kitchens, bundled them into sacks, and tied them to his saddle. It was while he was fetching a jar of dried beef that he spotted an ancient Pellarn longsword hanging above the empty fireplace at one of the inns, and he took it down, examining the leather and iron-bound scabbard. The sword itself was rusted and blunt, useless. It was the scabbard that held his interest.
Outside in the fresh air he unstrapped the Raheen Sword of Justice from his saddle, and tried it in the scabbard. It was a loose fit, but not bad, and with a few judicious blows from the pommel of his knife upon the iron rivets, he tightened the scabbard's hold on his new blade, and strapped it around his neck so that the sword's pommel stuck up behind his right shoulder.