Into Narsindal

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2Andawyr dived into his small tent, sealed the entrance and, rubbing his hands together ferociously, swore roundly, in a manner most unbecoming in the chosen leader of the ancient Order of the Cadwanol.

It was bitterly cold in the tent and his breath steamed out in great clouds, but at least he was now out of that merciless wind.

Gathering his cloak tight about him, he crouched down and fumbled in his pack. After some muttering he produced a small bag and immediately began to struggle with its tightly laced mouth. It took him some minutes of finger blowing and further profanity, together with judicious use of his incisors, to release the leather thong, but eventually he succeeded and with some relief emptied the contents on to a small tray.

He looked at the radiant stones dubiously. He’d never been any good at striking these damned things. And they didn’t look very good either. He’d bought them very cheaply from a shifty-eyed blighter at the Gretmearc. Rubbing his still frozen hands together again, he decided now that that might have been a mistake — a very false economy.

The wind buffeted the tent to remind him where he was and he shrugged his self-recriminations aside; good or bad, there’d be something in these things and he must get them lit quickly. Delving into his pack again, he retrieved the striker and, tongue protruding slightly, scraped it along one of the stones. Somewhat to his surprise a glowing white line appeared and spread out across the surface of the stone. Less to his surprise, it faded almost immediately into a dull red. He eyed the stone malevolently and struck it again, but the result was the same. Turning his attention to the striker he adjusted it and tried again, but still the stone refused to ignite satisfactorily.

Several minutes later he had made little further progress, though he was a good deal warmer by then, and his face was redder by far than most of the stones he had managed to strike into some semblance of life.

He threw the striker down irritably. There was a soft, deep chuckle.

‘I can do without any of your comments, thank you, Dar,’ Andawyr said testily. ‘It’s all right for you, snug in your own place. I’m freezing to death here.’

‘I never said a word,’ came the injured reply, radiating insincerity. ‘I told you that you should have brought a proper travelling tent, bu...’

‘Don’t say that again,’ Andawyr said warningly. ‘It’s hard enough on foot through these mountains without struggling with a pack-horse.’ He held out his hands over the dull red stones. ‘And these things are useless as well,’ he added.

‘You bought them,’ came Dar-volci’s unsympathetic voice. ‘These were matured stones when I bought them,’ Andawyr protested unconvincingly. ‘I’ll lay odds that that beggar at the Gretmearc switched them when he bagged them.’ He turned one of the unstruck stones over with an expert expression on his face. ‘I’ll report him to the Market Senate next time I’m there.’

‘Matured,’ Dar-volci was scornful. ‘You couldn’t tell a matured stone from a potato. They were baked. I told you that, but you wouldn’t listen.’

Andawyr grunted sulkily and muttered something about the Market Senate again.

‘The Senate would throw them at your silly head,’ Dar-volci said. ‘You’re so naive. Why don’t you listen to someone who knows, once in a while?’

‘They were a bargain,’ Andawyr said indignantly. Dar-volci made a disparaging noise. ‘Well, warm yourself on your cheery profit then,’ he scoffed. ‘You and your bargains. They see you coming, great leader. You shouldn’t try to horse-trade; you’ve neither the eye, the ear nor the wit for it. You should know that by now. Do you remember that bargain cooking pot you bought — very cheap...’

‘Dar!’ Andawyr’s eyes narrowed menacingly, but Dar-volci continued, warming to his theme. ‘Genuine Harntor smithing... where the Riddinvolk get their precious horseshoes from.’ His deep laugh filled the tent. ‘Backside melted out of it the first time you used it. What a stink! Then there was tha...’

‘That’s enough,’ Andawyr snapped. ‘Go to sleep.’

Dar-volci chuckled maliciously. ‘Good night then, old fellow,’ he said. ‘Sleep snug.’

Andawyr ignored the taunt and turned his attention back to the sulky radiant stones, struggling fitfully to shed their red warmth. Unnecessarily, he glanced from side to side, as if someone might be watching, then, muttering to himself, ‘Well, just a smidgeon,’ he brought his thumb and first two fingers together, and with a flick of his wrist, nodded them at the stones.

There was a faint hiss, and a white light spread over the reluctant stones.

‘I heard that,’ Dar-volci said, knowingly.

‘Shut up,’ Andawyr said peevishly.

The heat from stones filled the tent almost immediately and Andawyr removed his cloak and loosened some of the outer layers of the clothes he had hastily donned at the sudden onset of the snow storm.

He had always been reluctant to use the Old Power for simple creature comforts, sensing that in some way it would weaken, even demean his humanity. And since his ordeal in Narsindal and his flight along the Pass of Elewart, this reluctance was even stronger. Still, the others did twit him gently about his excessive concern... and this was an emergency, he reassured himself faintly.

The wind rattled the tent again as if in confirmation of this convenient rationalization.

After a little while, he reached out and dimmed the bright glow of the stones. Then he lay down and, staring up at the roof of the tent, listened to the howling wind.

What would tomorrow bring? When he had set off for Orthlund he had expected a cold, perhaps dismal, journey through the mountains, and had equipped himself accordingly. But this...? This was winter. Granted he was at the highest point of his journey, but such a storm was still unexpected, and he hadn’t the supplies to sit for the days it might take to blow itself out; the journey had already taken him longer than he had anticipated. He would have to move on tomorrow, and would probably have to use the Old Power both to guide himself and to survive.

He frowned as he realized just how deep was his reluctance to use this skill that he had struggled so long to master. He recalled a comment his old teacher had made many years earlier.

‘I sometimes wonder whether we use it, or it uses us,’ he had said. ‘It’s so beyond our real understanding.’

It had been a passing comment, lightly made, but it had stuck like a barbed dart in his young acolyte’s mind, subsequently making him work as hard at being able to sustain himself without the Power as he was skilled in using it. When later he had become head of the Order, this attitude had inevitably percolated down to permeate all its members.

‘We’re teachers,’ he would say. ‘We can’t teach people anything if we can’t live as they live, strive as they strive.’

But he knew that his real motivation was deeper than that and not accessible to such simple logic.

The Old Power was the power of the Great Searing, from which and by which all things were formed, and from whose terrible heat had walked Ethriss and the Guardians, followed silently by Sumeral with lesser banes at His heels.

Faced with the terrible dilemma that Sumeral’s teaching of war had presented him, Ethriss had given the Cadwanol the knowledge of how to use the Old Power so that they might aid both the Guardians and the mortal armies of the Great Alliance of Kings and Peoples against the Uhriel and His vast and terrible hordes.

However, as his teacher had said, to understand its use was not necessarily to understand its true nature.

Andawyr turned on his side and gazed at the stones, glowing even now with this very power. ‘How can we understand the true nature of such a thing?’ he muttered softly.

Even Ethriss himself may not have understood it. According to the most ancient documents in the vast archives of the Cadwanol, when questioned by his first pupils, all he had said, with a smile, was, ‘It is.’

‘It is,’ Andawyr echoed softly into the still air of his tent.

He was right, he knew. While skill in the use of the Old Power must be studied and practiced and improved, it should be used by humans only where all human skills had failed and great harm threatened. Its use was not part of the gift that Ethriss had given to humanity.

‘I created you to go beyond it,’ he had also said; an enigmatic phrase that had taxed minds ever since.

It was a knowledge that he had reluctantly thrust into the hands of men for use as a weapon only when their very existence and that of all things wrought by himself and the Guardians were threatened. Its inherent dangers were demonstrated all too clearly by Sumeral’s use of it to corrupt the three rulers who were to become His Uhriel.

‘Some part of all of us is Uhriel.’ Andawyr’s eyes widened. That phrase too, was one his teacher had used, but it was one he had not recalled for a long time.

He closed his eyes and tried to let the topic go. The debate was an old one amongst the Cadwanwr, and none disagreed in principle with Andawyr’s thinking, though the consensus was that the revered Head of the Order was a little over-zealous in his reluctance to use the Power for minor matters.

Andawyr smiled to himself as he felt the warmth of the stones on his face. He had seen the unsuccessfully hidden looks of patient tolerance, not to say irritation, as he had scratched vainly at stones in the past, or struggled with some heavy burden — and made others struggle with him — instead of lifting it the easy way!

Yet they too were right. It was a mistake to be too zealous in avoiding the use of the Old Power. Why should he have even hesitated here in this biting cold, where failure to ignite the stones might have proved fatal for him?

Balance, he thought. That’s all it is. Balance. Too much either way is wrong. But where was the balance? Only one thing was certain: the route to it lay along no easy path. Always judgement had to be used, and always judgement was flawed in some degree.

His thoughts began to wander as the day’s walking and the last hours’ increasingly anxious toiling began to take their toll.

‘G’night, Dar,’ he muttered faintly, but there was no reply.

Twice he jerked awake suddenly as the dark horror of his journey out of Narsindal came briefly and vividly into his deepening sleep. This happened almost every night, though much less so now than when he had first returned. He bore it with a snarl. ‘I survived the deed, I refuse to fear its shadow’, was the sword and buckler he reached for whenever he found himself hesitating to close his eyes.

The third time, however, it was no fearful memory that awoke him. It was the entrance to his tent being torn open and a body crashing in, accompanied by whirling flurries of snow and the icy blast of the storm.

Instantly bolt upright, his heart racing, Andawyr raised his hand to defend himself against this apparition. No hesitation to use the Old Power when it mattered, he noted briefly. However, a mere glance showed that the intruder not only held no weapon, but was exhausted. Not a threat, he realized.

‘Unless it’s to freeze me to death,’ he muttered out loud. Hastily he seized the body and, with a great effort, dragged it into the tent, nearly upsetting the radiant stones in the process.

As he sealed the entrance again, a hand clutched at him. He turned with a start, ready again to defend himself.

‘My horse,’ said the new arrival, his voice very weak. ‘My horse.’

Andawyr looked at the snow-covered figure and the few small flakes still whirling around the tent in the light of the glowing stones.

‘Please,’ said the figure, weakly but urgently.

Andawyr gave a resigned sigh. ‘Riddinvolk I presume,’ he said and, without waiting for an answer, he gathered his cloak about himself tightly and, with an ill grace, stepped out into the howling darkness.

Fortunately the horse was nearby, standing at the edge of the circle of light cast by the tent’s beacon torch. Andawyr suddenly felt his irritation and concern pushed aside by a feeling of humility at the sight of the animal standing patiently in the snow-streaked light, head bowed against the storm. Few travelled these mountains at any time, and none would normally be travelling at this time of year, yet, on an impulse he had lit his beacon torch; and now it had drawn this lone traveller and his mount here and undoubtedly saved his life.