David Gemmell. The Hawk Enternal

‘We are decided then?’ asked Leofas.

‘It seems so,’ said Maggrig.

Caswallon’s first realisation that anything was wrong came early on the fourth morning of his stay in Citadel. Borrowing a horse, he rode into the hills seeking Taliesen and the Gate. He was anxious to hear of the Aenir advance.

When he arrived at the slope he found no entrance. At first he was unconcerned and returned to the city, spending the day with Sigarni, listening as she talked warmly of her youth and the early days of her rule – days of bloody war and treachery, and close encounters with disaster. Through the conversations Caswallon’s appreciation of the Queen grew. She was a natural tactician but, more than this, knew men, their strengths and weaknesses and what drove them.

She had a close-knit band of followers, fanatically loyal, led by the powerful Obrin, the Queen’s Captain, a man of iron strength and innate cunning. Sigarni talked of a black general called Asmidir, who had died holding the rearguard against the Earl of Jastey and his army, and of a dwarf named Ballistar who had journeyed through a Gateway in the company of Ironhand’s ghost. But of the Redhawk she had known she said little, save that he had appeared following the death of Asmidir and had helped her to train her men, leading the left wing against Jastey and his thousands.

‘Do I have friends here?’ he asked.

‘Apart from me?’ she countered, with a quick smile. ‘Who would need more? But yes, there is Obrin. You and he became sword brothers. I think he is a little hurt that you have spent so little time with him.”

The Queen had agreed to lead her warriors into the Farlain, but said she could gather only four thousand. The call went out, and the muster began.

At dawn Caswallon tried again to find the Gate. This time an edge of anger pricked him.

What was Taliesen doing, closing the Gate at such a time?

Taking supplies for three days, he rode north to the great Falls of Attafoss. Leaving the horse tethered on a grassy meadow he swam across to the isle of Vallon and entered the deep honeycomb of caves beneath the hill. Near the entrance he was met by an elderly druid he had seen with Taliesen.

‘Why has the Gate been closed?’ asked Caswallon. The man wrung his hands. His face was pinched and tight as if he had not slept for days.

‘I don’t know,’ he wailed. ‘Nothing works any more. Not one word of power.’

‘What does this mean?’

‘The Middle and Lesser Gates have vanished – just like the Great Gates of yesteryear. We are trapped here. For ever.”

‘I will not accept that!’ said Caswallon, fighting down the panic threatening to overwhelm him. ‘Now be calm and tell me about the words of power.’

The man nodded and sank back on his narrow cot-bed, staring at his hands. Caswallon’s enforced calm soothed his own panic and he took a deep breath.

The words themselves are meaningless, it is the sound of the words. The sounds activate devices set within the hillside here. It is not dissimilar to whistling for a hunting-dog, which responds to sounds and reacts as it has been trained to do. Only here we are dealing with something vastly more complex, and infinitely beyond our comprehension.’

‘Something is … broken,’ said Caswallon, lamely.

‘Indeed it is. But we are talking about a device created aeons ago by a superior race, whose skills we can scarce guess at. I myself have seen devices no bigger than the palm of my hand, inside which are a thousand separate working parts. We do not even have the tools to work upon these devices, and if we did we would not know where to start.”

‘So we cannot contact Taliesen?’ asked Caswallon.

‘No. I just pray he is working towards a solution on the other side.’

‘Are you one of the original druids?’

The man laughed. ‘No, my grandfather was. I am Sestra of the Haesten.’

‘Are there any of the elder race on this side of the Gate?’

‘None that I know of.’

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *