by A J Dalton
Behind him, Freda came on like an earthquake, deliberately shaking his flighted stride whenever he was forced to touch down. The Peculiar laughed like a delighted child, though he hardly had the breath for it. He inevitably slowed and Freda managed to draw level with him.
What an amazing creature she was. Part of the reason the Peculiar had suggested they run was so that he could test her. The fact she could keep up was amazing in itself, but over a longer distance, with her relentless and stone-based stamina, she might even be able to overhaul him, for he would eventually tire. No wonder the elseworlders wanted her for themselves.
Yet that fool Goza had simply intended to have her for a snack. Did that mean the elseworlders weren’t actually aware of her potential? That would mean they were also likely to be unaware of her quest for the lost temples, the old gods and Haven. All the better for him then. Could it be that this simple golem would finally deliver him the Geas where all else had failed? Incredible if it were so, but tellingly ironic. Where his scheming and manipulation were too often frustrated, faith and innocence found a way. And he had never met one as innocent as her. He found that she charmed him as much as his nature despised her. In some ways it would be a shame to reach that moment when all her illusions were shattered and she was thereby destroyed. But it was the way of things, the essence of his being and the nature of his will. As it had always been, so it would always be, and getting there still gave him pleasure.
Thomas guided their wagon out of the trees and onto a route that passed through a cluster of small dimly lit buildings just as it was getting dark. ‘Welcome to Linder’s Drop! May not be much to look at, but there are a few outlying farms too and a meeting house yonder. My forge is just beyond the stream there.’
‘It’s quiet,’ Jillan said, looking around owlishly.
‘There are people watching us though,’ Ash said, rubbing the back of his neck as if it prickled.
‘The people here are shy and gentle,’ Thomas said softly. ‘They are rightly suspicious of strangers. Some of the other forest communities are far more belligerent than we are. But the people will all come to say hello in the morning, you’ll see, once Bion has had a chance to size you up and has given the all-clear.’
‘Bion is your wizard, yes?’ Aspin nodded. ‘Is he your holy man?’
Thomas chewed on his answer for a moment or two. ‘In a manner of speaking. People will ask him to explain things from time to time, and he’ll choose either to answer them or not. It’s not always clear if he’s giving an answer or avoiding it, though. Once I asked him something quite simple and he remained silent. I thought he was refusing to answer and left him sitting on his rock. But he found me the next day and spoke the answer, explaining that he’d been so busy working it out that he hadn’t even noticed me leave. He says strange things quite a lot that I’m sure are responses to things he’s been asked years before. But is he holy? We don’t worship him and he doesn’t lead us in worship, if that’s what you mean. Each of us chooses our own relationship with the Geas, making observances to the gods as we also choose.’
‘Does he have matted hair, walk around naked and eat pine nuts all the time?’ Aspin asked.
‘Er … no. He is hunched, well dressed, constantly smokes a pipe and eats more than any ten men put together without ever getting any bigger. Suffice to say, he doesn’t get invited to dinner by anyone any more.’
‘Sounds as bad as my wolf friend, although the wolf doesn’t usually wait to be invited. When I’m having dinner, he tends to be of the opinion that I’ve stolen the food from the forest, and since the forest belongs to him I’ve stolen it from him. He therefore has no qualms about taking it back if he chooses.’
‘Then I pray Bion and the wolf do not meet, lest the wolf give the wizard ideas.’
They all laughed, although Jillan had long since tired of the back and forth between Thomas and Ash. He needed to get to Hyvan’s Cross to free his parents. Everything else was an unwelcome distraction at best and a dangerous loss of time at worst. He understood Aspin’s argument that coming to Linder’s Drop might be a useful means to an end, but he was finding it hard to have faith in anyone or anything any more.
Well, it was your parents who told you to find this Thomas Ironshoe in the first place, remember? the taint observed.
‘Do you trust him then?’ Jillan asked silently.
Me? Ha! I don’t trust anyone, do I? I hardly trust myself sometimes.
‘Precisely.’
That would mean your parents were wrong then, wouldn’t it?
‘I suppose,’ Jillan conceded.
Parents make mistakes all the time, I imagine. Thomas said he hadn’t seen them in how long? Perhaps he’s changed in that time.
‘Changed how?’
How do I know? You’ve changed in just the short time you’ve been away from Godsend, haven’t you? People change. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible to have faith in anyone or anything though.
‘I haven’t changed.’
Of course you have.
‘How?’
You’ve become far more annoying and you ask far more stupid questions than before.
‘Not true. Minister Praxis said I always asked too many ignorant questions too.’
Yes, and it was your questions that started all this in the first place. Have you learned nothing by asking them? Why can’t you just stay quiet and behave yourself like everyone else? Why can’t you just do as everyone tells you, eh?
‘Because then nothing would ever change. The bad things would last forever.’
Precisely. Nothing would ever change, and where would we be then, eh? It’s important you remember that and have faith in it from hereon in.
‘What do you mean? Taint, answer me! Why is it important I remember that? Taint, please. Is it to do with Thomas? Is it to do with freeing my parents?’
But there was only silence and now they were pulling up to a long two-storey wood-beamed building with lime-washed plaster between the pillars and cross-beams. Lanterns shone from behind half-closed shutters and a coal fire glowed invitingly deep within. There was the tantalising smell of freshly baked bread and the air was rich with stewed meat and vegetables. Adjoining the main house was a large shed containing a brute of an anvil and a full range of buckets, pincers, hammers, some surely taller than a man, and other tools.
‘This is your home?’ Aspin asked in awe.
‘Giants must have built it,’ Ash whispered.
Thomas smiled with some pride. ‘Honest hard work – and the help of my neighbours and the wizard, of course. But I need such a place to contain my good wife and our three girls, for verily they are forces of nature, as you will soon see for yourselves. What say you, Jillan? Was it worth the visit?’
Jillan was spared the need to answer as a gale of shrieks and excitement assailed them.
‘Papa! Papa!’
‘Papa is home!’
‘And he has brought visitors, Mama!’
‘Did you bring us ribbons, Papa?’ called the youngest of the voices. ‘You promised me a yellow one!’
Thomas looked at his companions ruefully. ‘Some say I spoil them, but I am powerless before them.’ Then he jumped down from the wagon and spread his arms wide as three girls burst from the house and threw themselves at him all at once. Large as Thomas was, they almost bowled him over. Fluttering eyes looked over their father’s shoulder and around the side of him at Jillan, Aspin and Ash.
‘Look at that one, Betha! He’s your age.’
‘No, Ausa, he’s older. Too old for me. Yuck!’
‘Not that one. That one!’
‘Oo, yes!’
Only the youngest noticed her father’s loss of hair.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll grow back once Bion’s found a magic cowpat large enough to cover my head,’ he said, and she giggled. ‘Now, Stara, may I introduce you to my good friend Jillan. Stara, Jillan saved my life.’
Stara stared and stared. Then she became bashful and hid
behind her father, until he dragged her back out and forced her to face Jillan. She suddenly thrust her hand out and an embarrassed Jillan had to clamber down and shake it. Stara then wouldn’t let his hand go and pulled him after her and up the several stairs into the house.
‘Mama!’ Stara called. ‘This is Jillan and he saved Papa’s life!’
‘Then he shall have pride of place at the table and will be toasted by us all. Stara, lay extra places. Maybe Jillan will help.’
Wooden bowls and spoons were thrust into Jillan’s hands as Stara directed him towards a large dining table. He’d hardly managed a nod to the homely looking woman in the kitchen area. She wore a startlingly white dress, like all her daughters. How on earth did they manage to keep them clean? He looked down at his soiled and torn clothes guiltily. His mother would have told him off at length for coming home like this.
‘Here, slow-snail, I’ll do it,’ Stara said energetically and whipped the bowls back out of his hands.
He dropped several spoons.
‘Clumsy claws!’ she giggled and swept them up before he could bend down.
Ash and Aspin entered, each with one of Thomas’s daughters on his arm. Ash was with Ausa, a tall china-skinned brunette, while Aspin escorted Betha, a dimpled auburn. Stara was suddenly before Jillan again with twinkling eyes and rosy cheeks. ‘Come sit next to me,’ she breathed, her breath smelling of cinnamon, which was also the colour of her hair. She put her hands to his shoulders and pushed him round the table to the top chair. Thomas’s other daughters peeled away to help their mother bring through piled trenchers of food, while Thomas poured beakers of ale from a keg and waved Aspin and Ash over to seats at the table.
In moments all were seated and staring longingly at the bread, vegetables and cheeses. Thomas’s wife ladled an aromatic stew into bowls, which were passed quickly round the table.
Thomas stood with his beaker of ale in hand. ‘I know it is a terrible test to ask you to hold your appetites in check for a minute longer, but the stew is piping hot and will only burn the hasty eater. I’d like to welcome Ash and Aspin to our table, and also Jillan, to whom this family is indebted. I’d therefore like to ask you all to raise your cups in a toast to him. The ale is my best and as restorative as my wife Sabella’s fare is hearty. So, the toast is to Jillan and new friends!’
Everyone repeated the toast and drank from their cups, Ash draining his in one and only then realising that everyone else had sipped theirs. ‘Sorry,’ he said with a cheeky smile. ‘I think there was less in mine than everyone else’s.’ There were giggles from the girls and Thomas tapped him another generous measure. The blacksmith then looked at Jillan expectantly.
Jillan squirmed slightly and blushed. ‘I … Well, it was nothing, you know. I don’t know what else to say really.’
Sat next to him, Stara beamed proudly as if he’d spoken with inspirational grace and wonder. ‘Can we eat now, Papa?’ she asked, saving an immensely grateful Jillan from further embarrassment.
Thomas chuckled fondly. ‘Of course, daughter.’
And anything else he would have said was lost in the hubbub of requests for trenchers to be passed, arms stretching, the clatter of cups and serving spoons, and excitement. Aspin wasted no time tearing off a large piece of bread for himself, heaping stew onto it and then cramming too much into his mouth.
‘He eats with more alacrity than my wolf,’ Ash declared, winning the attention of all three girls at once as they gasped, cooed and begged to hear about the beast.
Aspin didn’t mind one bit as he grinned at Jillan with bulging cheeks, juice running down his chin. Jillan had to smile to see his friend so happy. Then Jillan turned his attention to his own bowl and realised he was hungry beyond sense or description. He shovelled food into his mouth, swallowed and felt dizzy for a second. He took another spoonful. He’d had a sick emptiness in his gut since he’d left Godsend but the well-seasoned stew was already doing much to put an end to that. As he ate, his spirits began to lift and he felt a strange mix of emotions: giddy relief, guilty pleasure, happy discomfort and the quelling of fears. He finished his ale and Stara refilled his beaker.
‘I don’t mind telling you we never had anything this good in the mountains,’ Aspin said as he cut into a crumbly white cheese.
‘You’re from the mountains!’ Betha sighed, hanging on his every word. ‘I knew there was something special about you. They must be beautiful. I’d love to see them one day.’
So Aspin regaled them with tales of the mountains and a comical holy man called Torpeth who wandered around naked and worried the goats. The mountain warrior enjoyed being the centre of attention for a while and none begrudged him it. Thomas listened attentively to everything that was said, smiling and nodding with the rest. Jillan recalled that when they’d been travelling in the woods, Aspin had avoided saying he was from the mountains, but now it didn’t seem to matter. What difference could it make anyway?
Jillan smiled winningly as Stara offered him another beaker. He felt a twinge of conscience as Hella came into his mind for the first time since they’d arrived in Linder’s Drop, but he suppressed any feelings of guilt. I haven’t done anything wrong, he told himself, and her eyes are nothing like Hella’s.
In the dark his helmet shone so brightly it was hard for her to look at him. It lit the nearby water he called a stream and the hollow among the trees where they’d stopped to rest for what he called the night. There were white twinkling things up high, which she took to be large diamonds embedded in the roof of the sky-cave, and a silver crescent, which looked like some sort of hook. Maybe the Overlords ran chains over the hook to lift heavy objects. Maybe the silver metal was particularly strong, but she couldn’t sense anything from it.
‘Anupal, doesn’t the sun-metal hurt your head? It would burn me.’
He blinked at her. ‘Actually, my head would hurt even more without it. Yes, it burns a little, but I use some of my strength to restore my skin. It’s a constant drain on my power, of course, and the only reason I didn’t thrash you more easily in the race.’
‘I let you win.’
His mouth dropped open in surprise and then he frowned. ‘You did not! You’re teasing me.’
She made the air boom within her chest to show she was amused.
‘I knew it. You minx!’
She boomed again and then stilled. ‘The sun-metal helps you then?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It protects me from all sorts of things.’
‘I’m glad it can be used for protection too. I thought its only use was weapons.’
‘I know what you mean. Let me tell you about the essential nature of sun-metal then. It is the distilled and counteracting force to omnipotence. Were it not for sun-metal, the gods would be omnipotent, but that would be impossible. If they were omnipotent, of course, there’d be no other life on this world, meaning that its gods couldn’t exist either. Thus, the existence of the gods demands the existence of sun-metal, to which they are vulnerable. In fact, I suspect sun-metal wouldn’t exist without the gods either, although I might be wrong there. Sun-metal is inert as far as I’m aware, which stops it from being omnipotent as well. Do you see?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. Well, hmm. Let’s see. To stop any of the gods becoming all-powerful, we have sun-metal. Imagine if one of the gods went mad and started destroying everything. That would be terrible, wouldn’t it? How could they be stopped? Well, we have sun-metal to do that. How about that?’
It made a sense of sorts. ‘Yes. So sun-metal is good?’
The Peculiar scratched his head, which turned out to be his helmet. ‘Only problem with this thing,’ he muttered, picked up a thin stick, inserted it between brow and helmet, and then waggled it about vigorously. ‘Ah, that’s better! What were you saying? Oh yes. Is it good? Well, it’s inert – dead – so it’s neither good nor bad really. It’s good it exists, I suppose, as otherwise nothing would exist. Hang on, is that right? Yes, probably. But forget that. Sun-m
etal is a weapon and a defence. It is neither good nor bad in itself. Only the things that people do with it are good or bad. Only people are good or bad, but it’s usually very, very difficult to know what’s good or bad. What one person thinks is good, another often thinks is bad, and vice versa.’
Freda pondered that for some time while the Peculiar watched the moths dancing around his helmet, touching it and then flaring as they died. ‘But you said you like to do good things to make good friends. Would some people think the things you do are bad?’
Oops. I’ve underestimated her again. That’ll teach me to run away with my mouth. Always was a weakness of mine, that. What do you expect when I haven’t spoken to anyone except those dusty old elseworlders for millennia? Of course, my vanity doesn’t help me keep quiet either. But I’m so beautiful, how could I not be so vain? Blithely, the Peculiar answered, ‘Why, you’re right, I suppose, friend Freda. Do you think the things I do are bad?’
She shook her head. ‘Of course not. You saved me.’
‘Well, there you are. It’s only when people agree like that that they can be friends, yes?’
‘Yes,’ she said happily. ‘So would me getting you more sun-metal help you do good things?’
What’s this now? ‘Why, I should think so. It is a powerful substance, after all. Why, do you think you could find me some?’
‘Oh yes. It’s easy to find. It vibrates in a particular way, you see.’
It does? Amazing! ‘Well, if it’s easy to find, I’d be grateful. Lot of it around is there?’
‘Not so much really, but there are areas of it. The Overlords had exhausted most of it in the mine. I’ll get some when we come close to more.’
The elseworlders are running out in the north then? That’s worrying. If they don’t have a breakthrough in the east soon, then we’ll all have problems. Still, if you can find more for me, I won’t have to deal with them any more. In fact, I might keep you for myself rather than hand you over to them. ‘That’s good, dear one. You must be tired, though. Time you slept, for we will have a trying day tomorrow as we pass through the central region. We could go around it, but we’d lose too much time. The central region is overseen by a minor functionary, one Saint Virulus. He’s in charge of very little because there are no towns, fields or mines in the region. The Overlords don’t want anyone coming too near them in their Great Temple, or sacred heart as they call it, you see. They struggle to tolerate even their attendant slaves – retainers, they call them – at the best of times. The region’s largely rocky crags, lichens and moss. There are small forts, of course, but they’re manned by the army’s undesirables, because no one else wants a posting to that barren place. Most Heroes would prefer a tour in the east than the central region.’
