The Sword Of Angels

7

To Gilwyn, the world was like an ocean, black and featureless. He felt its tug. He struggled to awaken. His eyes fluttered open to the darkness of the ocean, but the ocean was like space, cold and completely without end. He could not feel his body, but he did feel afraid, and he knew that he was somewhere immortal, trapped in a place of magic where he should not be able to tread. His eyes — if indeed they were eyes — studied the darkness. He gazed down to glimpse his hands, but although he felt them moving they were nowhere to be found.

Gilwyn fought to remember. He could not recall his last conscious thoughts, and he considered that he was sleeping, and that he had been asleep for a very long time. He knew his name, and he knew his mission, and it all came suddenly back to him, how he had fled across the desert, being chased by Aztar’s men.

And then?

He could not remember.

‘Hello?’ he called. He felt a presence in the darkness, straining to reach him. A familiar tremor coursed across his disembodied mind. ‘Ruana?’

He had only to speak her name, and she was there. Ruana’s sweet face shimmered in the darkness near him, shining with relief. Her hand reached out but did not touch him.

‘Gilwyn, you are alive.’

Puzzled, Gilwyn felt himself shrug. ‘Ruana, where am I? What is this place?’

‘Gilwyn, you must go back,’ said Ruana. ‘You are alive.’

‘Go back? Where? I don’t understand. Why did you bring me here?’

‘I did not bring you here, Gilwyn. This is not the place of the dead.’

She had read his thoughts, and her answer confused him. ‘No?’ Gilwyn looked around, but could see nothing familiar, only darkness. ‘Where, then?’

‘Your mind, Gilwyn,’ said Ruana. ‘This is your mind.’

The emptiness seized him. ‘My mind?’ He groped through the blackness. ‘What’s happened to me?’

‘You must awaken, Gilwyn. You must try very hard. Do you understand? Try now.’

It was like a horrible dream, but this time there were no monsters chasing him or molasses to slow his feet. Ruana’s words meant little to Gilwyn, yet they frightened him. His lungs filled with air, yet still he couldn’t breathe. If this was his mind, then it was an empty void he couldn’t fill.

‘Gilwyn, you must rouse yourself,’ Ruana continued. ‘You are very close. That is why I can reach you now. Are you listening? Can you wake yourself?’

‘From sleep? Am I sleeping?’

‘You are ill, but you are coming out of it. Wake yourself now, Gilwyn.’

‘Ill? What’s happened to me?’

‘Find your body. Connect it to your mind.’

Ruana’s urgings made breathing unbearable. Gilwyn searched his empty mind — a great field of nothingness — for the mortal part of him. He felt a wave of nausea, then pain.

‘That’s it,’ said Ruana, noting his fear. ‘That is your body, Gilwyn. Go back to it.’

‘What’s happened to me?’ Gilwyn asked. ‘Ruana, I’m afraid.’

Ruana’s face suffused with kindness. She stopped urging him and gently smiled. ‘You will be all right soon. I promise. But you must return. That pain you feel — it is necessary. It is your body calling you back. Go to it, Gilwyn.’

‘Don’t leave me. .’

‘I am always with you, Gilwyn. When you awaken I will be there.’

There was no sense to her riddles. Gilwyn surrendered to his puzzlement. The pain he felt was growing enormous, and though he wanted to flee, he felt it calling to him, dragging him into its nauseating maw. Before him, he watched as Ruana shimmered and dimmed, her beautiful face yielding to the darkness. He began to cry, yet as she vanished she smiled.

‘Ruana!’

Then she was gone, and the strange, empty world began to fade with her.