Menish wished he could contain his madness for times when the rain was not blowing in their faces. He did not want to delve into the strange passages of Azkun’s mind just now. All he wanted was for them to remount their horses and continue their journey.
“Then let us cross the bridge,” he called back through the rain.
That delighted Azkun. Althak helped him back onto his horse and Menish nodded to Hrangil to start forward. Althak was suddenly beside Menish.
“M’Lord, this bridge is old. Will it bear us all? Perhaps we should not all cross at once.” Menish nodded, though to him the bridge seemed safe enough. Hrangil had already started when he called:
“One at a time, wait until Hrangil has crossed.”
So, one by one, they crossed the bridge. Althak followed Hrangil and then came Azkun, utterly delighted with the bridge and forgetting his pains, and then Menish himself. The bridge was wide enough for two riders to cross abreast and had chest high ramparts on either side, but even so the vast drop beneath the stone was perilously accessible. His horse shied once before it set foot on the bridge but it gave Menish no further trouble. At the centre of the span the wind was so strong that Menish dismounted and walked the rest of the way. Sitting high up on a horse did not give him any confidence against that dreadful fall.
Grath, Bolythak and finally Drinagish crossed, all leading their horses from the beginning. Drinagish looked quite discomforted by the crossing. When they finally assembled on the other side Hrangil looked at Menish reproachfully.
“You did not trust the bridge of Gilish.”
“It was wise to be cautious.”
But the barriers between Menish and his old friend were flung up again. Hrangil turned his horse and led them off in silence.
Once more they had to pick their way along the old road as it wound across the cliffs. The slope was generally downwards now, where it had been roughly level before. They were slowly working their way towards the bottom of a gorge. Still the wind blew and the rain slapped at their faces. Menish resolved many times that he would not make such a journey again. Adhara had said he should not, he was too old for such things. But she had not been plagued by evil dreams. And those dreams still left him troubled him somewhat. The nagging feeling that he had been summoned by them to meet Azkun was still there. What god would make such a summons? Aton? Or perhaps Gilish himself? But Thalissa had not climbed from the Chasm, and Azkun was plainly mad. What kind of summons was that? At least he could sleep again, and for that he was grateful.
When they left the gorge they found themselves travelling through forest again. Menish checked the direction of the pale smudge in the clouds that marked the sun’s position. It was late. He was about to ask Hrangil if they would still reach Lianar by nightfall when it began to rain again. Instead he hunched his cloak around himself and lost interest. They would arrive when they would arrive. He was quite cold now, his hands were numb and he felt weary, so weary.
He jerked awake suddenly, feeling alarmed and foolish. He had gone to sleep on his horse! None of the others were watching him, so either his hood had hidden him or he had slept only briefly. Even so he was surprised at himself, and somewhat horrified. He remembered jokes he had repeated as a boy about old men and women who were so senile they fell asleep on their horses.
As he fumbled with his thoughts, telling himself that he was very tired today and making other excuses, he became aware that Azkun was speaking with Althak again.
“That is what I realised as soon as I saw the bridge. The road between corruption and the dragons is broken by a great gulf, a chasm not a wall. This chasm must be crossed and to cross it a bridge is required.”
“Fine words, my friend,” said Althak. “But what do they mean? I see no bridge, I see no chasm.”
“You see no chasm because you stand in its shadows, as I did once. I did not know there was an upper world until I was called from the Chasm. That calling was my bridge.”
“So what is to be my bridge?”
Azkun was silent for a long time, then he spoke.
“I am your bridge.” He said it loudly enough for Hrangil to hear, and Menish wondered what he would make of that remark. Althak only laughed. Menish heard him clapping Azkun on the shoulder.
“A bridge to the dragons! You have a great heart, Azkun. One day you'll have me believing you.”
Azkun no longer wanted to flee. He had reconciled himself to the futility of that course. The corruption had insinuated itself into the very rocks. Their jagged edges had attacked him mindlessly in the river and he still felt their wounds. Running from his comrades would not escape it.
He resolved to resist the evil he felt around him, to face it and to somehow defeat it in the end. Yesterday, before they had killed the pig, his perception of the world had been so different. Yesterday the trees and the rocks and the water were things of beauty he had taken delight in. But yesterday he had not realised the fundamental darkness that infested everything even during the day. The spectres of the night were merely hidden. He perceived that darkness with a desperate clarity. He was in a place of death among people who killed, who deliberately sought that terrifying darkness that had swallowed the pig.
But he fought many battles within himself that day to contain his panic. Sometimes it lurked in his mind just beyond a scream. Sometimes he was almost able to ignore it, but it was always there. At first he wondered if he could possibly last the day. His mind would sometimes brush against the thoughts of the others, and he would clench his teeth against horror. But as the morning wore on his defences became more secure. He remembered the dragons and that gave him hope.
So it was that he began to speak to Althak about dragons. Althak, because he was most receptive to talk of dragons. Althak, because he had, after all, shown him kindness. He was not all darkness and death. Azkun felt he had some measure of success, but he had no answer to the Vorthenki’s assertion that he must eat if he was to live.
The bridge provided him with that answer. They had struggled along the face of the gorge for hours. It reminded him so much of the Chasm with its sheer cliffs and its biting wind. He felt the instinctive numbness creeping back into his mind. It was almost a relief from his contained panic. But the bridge had driven all that away. The bridge was the answer.
When he tried to explain this to Althak he found that his grasp of the symbol was incomplete. A bridge was needed between the corruption and the dragons. A bridge across the chasm. But Althak could see no bridge except the one of stone. In the silence that had followed his question the truth had whispered the answer. It was Azkun himself who was the bridge.
He did not know how, or even why. But this was the purpose of the dragons. He himself was the bridge. In spite of the spectre of corruption that lurked so close he rejoiced. He wanted to sing, but he knew no songs. Surely there were songs of dragons to be sung. He looked at Althak, for he had heard Althak sing before, but Althak’s song was not what he wanted.
On his other side, a little ahead, for he was leading them, Hrangil’s horse plodded through the rain. Hrangil was rigid with his doubts and hopes and weighed down by the water that ran off his cloak. Azkun had not heard him sing, but he told tales. Perhaps he knew a tale of the bridge, and perhaps it would please him to tell it.
He nudged his horse and it trotted obediently up beside Hrangil’s. A spasm of anxiety and alertness from Althak twitched in his mind but his senses were too dulled by the rain for it to register deeply.
“Master Hrangil?” The others called him that. It seemed to be a title of some sort.