And abruptly, he was free. Free and running through the greyness.
Yet not free. For somewhere, he knew the blind man was pursuing him.
Antyr ran and ran. All was greyness, but about him he sensed many different ways.
And then, though all was still greyness, he knew that the blind man was close upon him. Pursuing. Or just following? He felt his terrible menace reaching out to seize and bind him again.
He turned suddenly. There, ahead of him, was his escape. Hope swept over him. He dashed forward towards it.
As he passed through the inner portal, the blind man's triumphant hand closed about his shoulder.
Carried on high, distant winds, the dark storm-clouds swept in front of the sun, bringing sudden and premature night to the battleground.
The battle faltered momentarily.
Then, as if emulating the clouds themselves, Ivaroth's hordes pressed forward again. Ibris's bodyguard fought now over a terrible redoubt of dead and dying men and horses, but still the tribesmen came, an endless black tide beating at this tiny resolute rock.
Two crawled from the heap and threw themselves towards Antyr's motionless body. Estaan, bloodied and exhausted, pinned one to the ground with a spear he had wrested from someone. Grayle tore the throat out of the other in a killing frenzy.
Hackles raised like armoured spikes, teeth bared in all their bone-crushing power, eyes brighter than the noon sun, Tarrian turned to Estaan.
'Take no more of our prey, human, friend though you be.'
Estaan returned to the fray with his own kind. It was the lesser terror in that circle.
'He is here … He is here … He is here. The voices echoed through Antyr.
'The Adept … The Adept…'
Antyr was whole. He stood beside the blind man on some strange vantage.
But he looked about him with eyes that were not eyes, and saw with a sight that was not sight. Around him he knew a myriad worlds in their entirety; shifting, changing, merging. All the planes of existence that were, that could be, that would be.
And the countless worlds of the Threshold, necklaced and joined about the hurt that was his birth world.
He could reach and touch and know. Know everything. From the least to the most.
This was the Great Dream.
Wonder and terror overwhelmed him.
He felt his mind unhinging.
'Where is the power?'
The blind man's words were jagged and querulous, like shattering crystals amid this wonder, but they gave Antyr his centre again in this place of infinities.
'We have the power,’ said the voices. ‘The Adept is our way. You, our instrument, faithful one.'
Antyr's soul froze at the touch of the will behind the voices. ‘Through the long ages we have waited since we were chained here. Now we shall be free. Now, in you, we shall return to that desecration you dwell in and right its vile wrongness.'
'Who are you?’ Antyr managed.
There was dark amusement in the answer.
'We are the spirits of those who occupied the land and were driven from it. Those who learned of the true power and used it against our enemies. Those who lingered in the mountains before our people deserted us and fled to the plains, and before
The voices stopped.
'But now we are wiser. For there are others here. Now we see our travail was but part of a greater ill. Now we shall avenge ourselves and be also the vanguard for the remaking of all things.'
'I shall oppose you,’ Antyr said, the words coming unbidden.
'It is not within your power,’ the voices replied, their words full of malevolence.
A memory rose in Antyr's mind. ‘Adept you called me, and Adept I am,’ he said. ‘And Adepts of the White Way it was who bound you here, beyond the reach of all save for the gravest mischance.'
'You have not that skill, blunderer. They were great and powerful beyond your imagining. You are scarce an apprentice. You are a thing of clay and dross with the merest mote of past greatness trapped within you.'
For a timeless, fleeting instant, even as he stood in the Great Dream, Antyr was on the darkened battlefield again. He felt the fearful onslaught of Ivaroth's horde and the furious courage of his defenders, and, deep inside him, the spirits of Tarrian and Grayle holding him firm, their quiet stillness belying utterly their slavering, wild-eyed stance about his body.
He spoke. ‘I am indeed a weak vessel, but my making is beyond your knowledge by far, formed as I was in the world whose chance creation gave even MaraVestriss a measure of his wisdom. I am tainted by your works and the works of your kind, as are we all. But I am of the line of the Dream Warriors, and I see the taint, and know it for what it is. And I will not allow it to turn me from the truth and the light.'
There was a terrible silence. It seemed to Antyr that the worlds hovering about him waited.
Then, ‘Mynedarion. Let him know our power,’ the voices commanded.
Antyr turned and faced the blind man.
'You have followed many false paths, old man,’ he said. ‘And wrought great harm. But you are of my world. Know your frailty now, before it is too late.'
'You will obey me, slave,’ the blind man hissed. ‘Or you will know torment such as you could not have thought possible. And though you will cry for death,
His long hands reached out towards Antyr.
Antyr met his gaze then reached out and took the menacing hands.
And he was the blind man. Saw through his sightless eyes. Knew his terrible secrets, his foul apprenticeship, the fearful loss that had taken his sight and his mind, the countless desires that held him thrall.
A great pity filled him.
But he could do no other than what he had to do.
For he knew, too, the power. Knew its heart. Knew that its use or misuse was, as ever, in the hands of the user.
And he was himself again.
The blind man staggered, bewildered by having found himself in the body of another, and staring at himself through sighted eyes. But unlike Antyr, he had not truly seen for that timeless moment whom he had become: had not learned.
He tore his hands free and, in his fury, unleashed the power that would bind Antyr forever.
Antyr opened his arms to receive it.
Pain and horror beyond description swept through his very soul, but at his centre he held his true self.
Then, with his new knowledge, he returned the blind man's power, cleansed of its malice and hatred, and all its other corruptions.
Darkness, swirling and turbulent, overwhelmed the vantage, and a terrible cry of despair and rage rose from the blind man as he saw and knew his own, dark folly, and felt the impotence of his long garnered skill against this, his own onslaught.
And, too, a terrible cry rose from the long-bound spirits as their own malevolence returned upon them to re- forge their ancient bonds.
Antyr reached again for the blind man, swaying frenziedly against the tortured darkness, his arms flailing, his mouth agape and raging. But he touched nothing.
And he was lying, wide-eyed, at the centre of the bloody circle before the farmhouse, his whole being ringing with the last cry of the Mynedarion as he had been swept into oblivion.
Then the sounds about him were the sounds of battle. Though now they were different.
