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 oppo-nents.’ 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 tardi-ness 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 compassion 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 reassert 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 compassion.
‘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 sad implacabil-ity. 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 passed 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 massive 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. Out-side, 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.