Where are you?
A door. He needed a door. But there was none. He needed a sign, something to set him off in the right direction. All his life the path had been before him. The solution had always presented itself. He had always known when to talk or to fight or to run.
‘But you’re not alive now, are you? And none of the rules apply.’
Sol stood where he had appeared. He turned another slow circle. For all its vastness, the place bore down on him, closed around him, sought to smother him. He dropped to his haunches to feel the ground beneath his feet but his hands transmitted nothing to him. Neither did they sink in.
‘There is substance here.’
In his mind time passed terribly quickly. Only he could help the living and the dead and he had no idea where to start. He forced his mind back over what he knew. Ulandeneth was a place where he had been. Where he had fought and lived and from where he had escaped. It was the place, so Auum and Sha-Kaan had it, that held the doorways to all other places.
It was a place where will and belief held sway over the rules of the living lands.
‘You have to believe,’ he said to himself, his voice swallowed up by the immensity of the space around him. ‘But in what?’
The capacity to succeed and the victory of the righteous were just too huge, too imprecise. Not beliefs he could hold on his own. Not yet anyway.
‘So, let us start at the beginning.’
Sol stood tall. He held his arms out from his body and in front of him as if he was about to orate. He jutted his chin and spoke loudly and clearly to whoever, whatever, would listen.
‘I am Sol. I am The Unknown Warrior. I am Raven.’
The simplicity of his conviction flowed through him. He felt energy surging through the shadow. He felt warmth. His fingers began to tingle. He stared at them. Flesh burst through the shadow like he was picking his hands out of black oil. Sol saw the swirls on the tips of his fingers, the hard skin of his palms and every nick and scar that had never quite faded.
The skin flowed down over his wrists, across his forearms and round his elbows. He watched it form his shoulders, pick out the lattice of old scars on his chest and his legs. He felt it creep around the back of his shaven head. He felt a breeze on him. A glorious, beautiful, cool breeze.
‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’
Sol was aware of other changes in the atmosphere of Ulandeneth. His nose twitched and in that there was joy. His sense of smell had returned and with it he found an acrid, burned odour in his nostrils. His ears picked up distant sound yet though he narrowed his eyes there was nothing to see. Wait. Forms in the mist, if such it was. Unrecognisable but moving all around him.
‘I am Sol,’ he repeated and he smiled, feeling the familiar pull of muscles in his face. ‘And I never walk outside naked.’
Clothing began to form on his body. Shirt, trousers, trail boots. The ring he wore that Diera had given him seven years ago was there on the middle finger of his right hand. A delicate piece, depicting a raven in flight.
‘Almost there.’
Sol tried to remember his thoughts when last he was here. Then as a living being. Some of them eluded him. He remembered he had travelled home but now he could not think how. He supposed that was right and just. He remembered that he had been without a weapon when he arrived then too.
‘That I can do something about. I am The Unknown Warrior. Sword of The Raven.’
Across his back he felt the comforting weight of his scabbard and in it his two-handed blade. Interesting. Not a weapon he would use now. His hip wasn’t… But then of course that had been when he was alive. He laughed. Around his waist came his belt and everything that hung from it. Daggers, flint and steel.
‘Now all I need is a place to go.’
Sol took a pace forward and six Garonin stood before him. He backed up and looked behind him. No one there. He turned back. Light flowed around the armour of the Garonin. Their hands rested by their sides. None appeared to be carrying the white tear weapon but something that looked like a blade hung from each waist. Sol snapped his sword from his back and held it before him.
‘I believe,’ he said.
In front of him the blade felt momentarily light and it all but fell from his grasp. He reformed his grip, taking careful note of how it felt, how the steel shone sharp and how even the nicks along its edge were part of its perfection. It rested balanced in his hands.
‘Good. Right. I may go down here and now, but some of you fuckers are coming with me.’
Chapter 40
The dead clustered at the end of the passageway. The Raven and Auum’s Tai were at the head of them. Ilkar still probed the wall. Behind them, the passageway fled off beyond their senses. Outside, the void clashed and raced. But surrounding them was an ivory light that came from beyond the end wall.
Every one of them could feel it. They were drawn to it, pulled along by it. None would so much as consider moving away from it by even a toe. Yet none of them could reach it. None, they assumed, but one.
‘Where is he?’ asked Hirad.
‘Gone,’ said Ilkar.
‘Now if I’d replied that way to you, I’d be on the end of a long, long line of abuse.’
‘Sorry, Hirad. Gone through here. He must have done. Ulandeneth. ’
‘We have to get through,’ said Sirendor. ‘He’s going to need our help.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t,’ said Ilkar. ‘Perhaps this is part of the whole scheme.’
‘Not if Sha-Kaan is to be believed,’ said Auum.
‘Something must open this wall,’ said Ilkar.
‘Another astounding revelation,’ said Hirad. ‘Is it too stupid of me to ask what that might be?’
The dead surrounding them were restless and anxious. Adrift at the end of their journey. Feeling vulnerable as they stood waiting for answers in a place open to attack. They made a hum of chatter and a swirl of emotions that sometimes made coherent thought difficult.
‘We must stop thinking like the living,’ said Auum. ‘This door will never have an iron latch.’
‘Sol had an advantage over us all,’ said Thraun. ‘He has knowledge of this place. Did that help him travel there?’
‘Well if it did, I wish he’d given us some pointers,’ said Hirad. ‘Unhelpful, just disappearing like that.’
‘I don’t think he had any choice in the matter, do you?’
Ilkar’s ears would have pricked when he said that. Hirad smiled, another invisible gesture.
‘No, probably not. So. Any ideas?’
‘Everything so far has been an act of will,’ said Thraun. ‘Or a use of the soul’s energy. We should start there.’
‘You think we can will ourselves over there, do you?’
‘Got a better idea, Hirad?’ asked Thraun.
‘No, it’s just that it’s difficult to will myself to a place where I’ve never been and which lies somewhere… you know… else.’
‘I don’t want to rush you but I think you’d better start believing as quickly as you can.’
Sirendor’s shadow was facing back down the passageway. Hirad rose above the mass of the dead and looked in the same direction.
‘This does not look promising.’
Three Garonin were pounding up the corridor but none of them was intent on attacking the dead. All three had eyes only for what was behind them. Panic spread among the dead. There was a concerted move to the wall, which remained steadfastly blank and impenetrable.
All the while the Garonin ran on. And well they might because the passageway was folding up behind
