David Gemmell. The Hawk Enternal

‘No,’ he said, his mind reeling. Moving back from her, he stood and returned to the window. The moon was high over the mountains and he stared up at the sky, righting to make sense of her words. They were lovers! How could this be? For Caswallon loyalty was not like a cloak, to be worn or discarded, but an iron code to live by. And yet…

‘Talk to me, Redhawk,’ said Sigarni.

He swung to face her. Once more her beauty struck him like an arrow. Taliesen told me that you understood the Gateways. You know, therefore, that they allow us to move through time as well as to other lands?’

‘Of course,’ she told him. ‘What has that to do with you and me?’

He took a deep breath. ‘In all my life I have seen you only four times. Once as a babe in the forest, the second time by Ironhand’s Falls, the third …’ he hesitated and looked away ‘… in my own realm… and the fourth tonight in the great hall. Everything you say to me – about us – is… new and strange. If we are to be lovers, it is not now but in a time – for me – that is yet to be. As I stand here I have a wife, Maeg, whom I adore, and a small child, Donal.’ He saw she was about to speak and raised his hand. ‘Please say nothing, for I know I would never betray Maeg while she lived. And I do not want to know what the future holds for her.’

Sigarni rose, her face thoughtful. ‘You are a good man, Redhawk, and I love you. I will say nothing of Maeg . . .’ She smiled. ‘Just as you hesitated about our meeting in your own realm. I will leave you now. We will talk in the morning.’

‘Wait!’ he called out, as she opened the door. ‘There is something I must ask of you.’

‘The debt,’ she said. Then, noting his incomprehension, she smiled softly. ‘You always said there would come a time when you would ask me a great favour. Whatever it is, I will grant it. Good night, Redhawk.’

‘You are a rare woman, Sigarni.’

Turning back, she nodded. ‘You will one day say that to me with even more feeling,’ she promised.

Taliesen sat alone in the semi-darkness of his viewing chamber. It was cold, and idly he touched a switch to his right. Warm air flowed through hidden steels vents in the floor and he removed his cloak. Leaning back against the head-rest of the padded leather chair, he stared at the panelled ceiling, his mind tired, his thoughts fragmented.

He transferred his gaze to the gleaming files. Eight hundred years of notes, discoveries, failures and triumphs.

Useless.

Allofit….

How could the Great Gates have closed?

And why were the Middle Gates shrinking year by year?

The Infinity Code had been broken a century before his birth by the scientist Astole. The first Gate – a window really – had been set up the following year. It had seemed then that the Universe itself had shrunk to the size of a small room.

By the time Taliesen was a student his people had seen every star, every minor planet. Gates had been erected on thousands of sites from Sirius to Saptatua. Linear time had snapped back into a Gordian knot of interwoven strands. It was a time of soaring

arrogance and interstellar jests. Taliesen himself had walked upon many planets as a god, enjoying immensely the worship of the planet-bound humanoids. But as he grew older such cheap entertainment palled and he became fascinated by the development of Man.

Astole, his revered teacher, had fallen from grace, becoming convinced of some mystic force outside human reality. Mocked and derided, he had left the order and vanished from the outer world. Yet it was he who had first saved the baby, Sigarni. Taliesen felt a sense of relief. For years he had feared a rogue element amid the complexities of his plans. Now that fear vanished.

He understood now the riddle of the Hawk Eternal.

‘You and I will teach him, Astole,’ he said, ‘and we will save my people.’ A nagging pain flared in his left arm and, rubbing his bicep, he rose from the chair. ‘Now I must find you, old friend,’ he said. ‘I shall begin by re-visiting the last place Caswallon saw you.’ His fingers spasmed as a new pain lanced into his chest. Taliesen staggered to his chair, fear welling within him. He scrabbled for a box on the desk-top, spilling its contents. Tiny capsules rolled to the floor … with trembling fingers he reached for them. There was a time when he would have needed no crudely manufactured remedies, no digitalis derived from foxglove. In the days of the Great Gates he could have travelled to places where his weakened heart would have been regenerated within an hour. Youth within a day! But not now. His vision swam. The fear became a tidal wave of panic that circled his chest with a band of fire. Oh, please, he begged. Not now!

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