The Narrows

by James Brogden

  The stone that anchors his power, Carling had called it.

  The impasse between the two men was throwing the earth into further turmoil; concentric ripples were pulsing outward, tearing fissures in the ground and tumbling buildings.

  With sudden dismay, she realised that the closest thing she had to a weapon or even a tool was the iron stake – and that was stuck in the ground several miles and an entire world away. She looked around desperately and seized the nearest thing to hand: a pair of cobblestones from the ruined road. Running forward with a yell, she flung one at the Kiftsgate Stone with all her strength.

  And missed.

  Closer, still running, but with her offhand she hurled the second. Amazingly, her aim was better. Slightly. It hit Barber square on the shoulder and bounced away.

  He turned and looked at her. There was nothing remotely human in that gaze. With a dismissive flick of power he swatted her away.

  She landed in a tangled heap by the church lychgate but barely felt the impact; her nerves were crawling with black fire from his touch. She had just enough coherence of thought to wonder how Andy could still be alive if that was what Barber’s merest glancing blow felt like. The simple answer was that he couldn’t. He was going to die, and there was nothing she could do about it. She shut her eyes and waited for the end.

  ***

  All life. Barber’s words burned in his brain. In all worlds.

  ***

  ‘Are you all right?’ said a trembling voice behind Bex, and a child’s hand appeared on her shoulder. ‘Can I help?’

  She looked up. Ted’s face was pale, and his eyes were slightly glazed with shock, but he was there. She nearly yelled at him to get out, to get back to his family and as far from here as he could, but then she caught sight of the catapult sticking out of his back pocket and remembered the bruise still smarting in the middle of her forehead.

  ‘Depends,’ she answered. ‘Exactly how good a shot are you with that thing? Think you can hit that stone?’

  ‘Watch me.’

  He stood up, loaded a ball bearing into the rubber band and pulled it right back to his cheek, sighting carefully. The tendons in his neck stood out as taut as the rubber itself. Seeing the movement, Barber turned, and Ted nearly quailed under the naked animosity in his expression.

  ‘Dear me now, Edward, what do you think you’re doing?’ he asked in tones of perfect reasonableness, as if he didn’t at that moment have his fingers hooked into another man’s skull. Andy sagged in the momentary respite. ‘He’s a Rousler, Ted. I’m saving everybody’s lives. Don’t be foolish now.’

  ‘I’m not foolish,’ Ted replied and shifted his aim fractionally.

  Too late, Barber realised that the weapon was not intended for him, and his face dropped in alarm. ‘Don’t you dare!’ he screamed. ‘Oh don’t you dare, you bad, bad boy!’

  ‘I’m not bad, either,’ Ted corrected him. ‘I am awesome.’

  His aim was true.

  Subjected to stresses beyond endurance and held together only by the will of its master, the Stone exploded.

  ***

  The one and only time Bex had been to the seaside, her big brother Nick had taken her beachcombing, and during their explorations they’d found a length of rope sticking out of the damp sand. They came to the only sensible conclusion that the other end was tied around either a treasure chest or the corpse of a pirate, or, ideally, both. Grasping the end – and on Nick’s ‘One… two… three!’ – they’d hauled as hard as they could, but rather than being showered with gold dubloons (or bits of pirate skeleton, which would have been even cooler), the rope had simply thrupped out in a long straight line, flinging seaweed and sand in their faces. Six-year-old Rebecca had declared the enterprise to be stupid and gone off to torment some crabs, but that memory was the closest she could get now to an analogy for what happened when Ted’s shot destroyed the Stone.

  The life-devouring noose tightening around the village winked out existence instantaneously as the suddenly-released Ryknild ley tore itself out of the ground like a length of rope yanked out of wet sand.

  It resembled something serpentine, a dragon-wall of blue fire, and she could see through it as if through a severe heat haze. Andy and Barber had been flung apart by the explosion; Andy was on the same side as herself, lying naked and as if dead, but Barber was a dimly blurred and wavering shadow limping away through the graveyard.

  ‘Help me!’ she shouted to Ted. ‘We’ve got to get him out of here!’ They each grabbed one of his arms and began to drag him away.

  Then the dragon-ribbon began to move as it tried to earth itself along its original course. Eight miles in length, anchored at the Bidford-on-Avon bridge, but only one mile sundered from its true path, it began to describe a long and shallow arc across the Vale of Evesham. Close up, it looked like a slow-moving wall of blue fire stretching from one horizon to another, moving inexorably towards her. It was shot through with venomous black veins which resembled the symptoms of blood poisoning, as if the very life-energy of the earth were diseased. Now that it was free of Barber’s rapacious demands, it was no longer destroying everything in its path, but it was still violent, stirring trees and plant life with hurricane-like force, and Bex didn’t much feel like waiting for it to hit her.

  For another thing, the landscape on the other side of it seemed to be changing. One moment it was fields; the next, marshland; then jungle, desert, primeval forest, and a hundred permutations in between, all layered over one another and shifting in and out of focus. It was like what happened when she’d opened the way to Holly End just a few hours ago – but infinitely more complex. An infinity of worlds nestled like the layers of an onion, and breaking towards her in a standing wave. If that thing hit them, Christ alone knew where they’d end up.

  They hoisted Andy’s dead weight between them and shambled away through the wreckage of the village, but Ted was only a kid, and she was barely a few years older. Out into the fields, the ground became steeper, and as the ley neared its true course, it picked up speed until they could feel it roaring silently at their backs. There was really only one thing she could think to do.

  She dropped Andy and flung herself on him, hugging with one arm and drawing Ted down to clasp him with the other.

  ‘Whatever you do!’ she shouted as they were overborne, ‘Whatever happens, don’t let go! Do you hear me? DON’T LET…’

  And they were swept away.

  The ley continued on its way for another half-mile before regaining its ancient course and quite literally earthing itself. The blue fire slowly dissipated amongst the trees and meadows and was gone as if nothing had ever happened.

  ***

  The following day, quite a few locals who were driving through the area about their everyday business remarked to their loved ones or their mates down the pub that night as to how the roads all suddenly seemed slower than usual, as if they were longer, or there were more of them – except that was, of course, nonsense. And by the way, didn’t you see a lot of strange vagrants about, these days?

  9 The Dobunni

  Bruna was enjoying the view from the caral’s roof deck when it threw a wheel, two days out from Caer Trefni. How it had happened, none could say. Being of a respectable middle-caste clan, they had been just forward of the Dobunni nation’s centre, and dozens of carals of all shapes and sizes had passed over the same ground before them. The leather-smocked wheelwrights who clustered around the front of the great vehicle, pointing out bits of damage to each other and stroking their long moustaches sagely, came to the conclusion that the stone which did it had been gradually worked loose by the passage of many wheels before finally ricocheting up into the gearing.

  One or two of the older and more superstitious engineers wondered whether it might have had anything to do with the violent display of blue wyrdfire
which had lashed the eastern plains the day before, but the consensus argued against them – though with due deference to their seniority. The last thing anybody wanted was a coven of Seers poking around under there.

  Certainly nobody suggested that the driver might have erred or that the family’s maintenance of their caral was lacking – to have done so would have been the gravest of insults. Nevertheless, the fact remained that repairs had to be made, and the delay would be costly. Lady Holda herself laid no blame, but gave orders in her customarily terse, unarguable manner: the family’s animals were to be cut out of the Dobunni’s great communal herds which grazed like clouds in the grassland on either side, and the services of a wheelwright would have to be bartered for quickly.

  The nation would not stop for them. It could not. Not even in the ordinary course of events – some of the high-caste carals were so large that they required half a mile to stop – and especially this close to Caer Trefni’s great Overwinter Market, where a day’s delay would mean the difference between the coming year being one of richness or simply bare subsistence. The unwed men would drift away to find more prosperous homes, and the nation would degenerate into a ragged caravan of vagabonds and rustlers. The central plains were littered with them. Lady Holda was fiercely adamant that she would not be the cause of such shame, and the nation’s Council honoured her sacrifice by stationing a warband for her clan’s protection.

  Bruna stood on the caral’s forward parapet with the other wieve-maidens and watched as the tall, clean-limbed young men rode back towards them. Their hair was chalked back into sweeping spikes, they wore checked warriors’ britches, and their gleaming javelins were held aloft by well-muscled arms banded in gold. They laughed and sang as they rode.

  But long after the other girls had gone back down to flirt, she stayed to watch the nation pass by. First the big carals like her own – each of which was home, nursery, school, and workplace for a clan – then the smaller four-wheeled wains of the lower-caste families, and finally the straggling collection of carts, ponyteams, and disreputable single riders. It was strange to see them go by. For as long as she could remember, they had always been behind her, just as those ahead of her might have moved up or back slightly according to the shifting fortunes of their clan but never really moved. She stood on that high place, below the bright midwinter sky, and watched her place in the hierarchy of her people slip away into the dustcloud of ten-thousand wheels.

  It would have been unfair to say that they were left entirely alone. True, the caral was the clan’s heart; more than just Lady Holda’s residence, it was moothall and temple, workshop and goods store. But the extended families of the weavers, drovers, herdsmen, warriors and artisans who comprised the clan rode satellite in numerous smaller wains, and these pitched up in a loose circle around the caral, forming an instant village. In moments, awnings were guyed out, cookfires lit, and children took advantage of the unprecedented halt to go tearing around like small, dusty comets.

  When the cloud of the nation’s passage was nothing more than a lingering smudge on the wide, northern horizon, she looked around at the vast plains which stretched in a rolling sea of grass and the tumbled wolds behind, through which they’d passed yesterday – and despite the cheery chatter and bustle which surrounded her, was suddenly struck by the immensity of it all. The emptiness.

  The wide world was no place to find yourself unguarded and alone.

  ***

  Iaran and Edris of the warband let their mounts graze on a small rise of land overlooking the solitary caral and its village of satellite wagons. Despite the earlier excitement, there had never been any real prospect of fighting; the broad vale through which they were journeying was too open to provide much refuge for bandits.

  ‘There’s talk of sorcery at work, I hear,’ remarked Edris casually.

  Iaran smiled thinly. ‘The only spirits at work here are likely to have come out of a bottle. He wouldn’t be the first driver to blame a mishap on the Bright Folk.’ He was a veteran of thirty-nine summers, an achievement which he attributed very firmly to steel rather than superstition.

  ‘Ay, and not the only time today.’ Iaran did not reply, plainly having said all that was necessary on the matter. Taking the older man’s silence for indulgence, Edris warmed to his subject. ‘Strange events have happened all along the line since that wyrdfire storm yesterday. Ox-teams running wild. Lights in the sky. A bag of flour in the mielcaral is said to have turned into sand even as it was being milled. One of the men in Cordmaster Gaeled’s warband was bitten on the hand by a blue serpent which fell from the sky and crawled down his lance.’

  ‘Hmph.’

  ‘The whole warband witnessed it!’

  ‘Ridiculous. Men of honour would not give credence to such prattling.’

  ‘Then it must be true, must it not?’

  Iaran flicked his horse’s reins and moved it to graze a few yards further away. Edris knew he had pressed his patience far enough and let the matter drop. He remained where he was, watching the herdsfolk go about their business in the makeshift camp, listening to the murmurous ruminations of cattle and the high, ringing hammer blows of a forge flying out into the still, empty sky. A waiting sky.

  ‘Mark me,’ he murmured to Compa, patting his neck gently, ‘the land is troubled. We’ve not seen the end of it yet.’

  Compa munched grass and kept his own counsel.

  ***

  Ten-year old Hael was getting very, very cross. The calf blundered away from him along a narrow stream, crashing through bushes in panic and blarting for its mama as if he were a wolf or something. If anyone had a right to be afraid, it was he, not this big, stupid baby. Night was coming on. Da was going to beat him for this. But then, Da was most likely going to beat him for something or other anyway; it was the men and women of the warband that Hael was most afraid of. He was terrified that they might go to his Da and say that they couldn’t possibly allow the caral to be slowed down by a boy who couldn’t even look after a single stupid calf and needed to be searched for after dark, and that it would be better for all if he were left behind. His Da might agree. Two thoughts made his blood run cold with terror: what if there really were wolves out here, and, worse, what if nobody came looking for him at all in the first place?

  He put on a renewed burst of speed, but the big, stupid baby just rolled its eyes at him in fear again, charged away along the stream and disappeared. When Hael fought his way through the thicket and saw what was on the other side he stopped cold. Fear of losing the calf, fear of his Da’s belt and the warriors’ scorn, fear even of being eaten by wolves – all were eclipsed by the bowel-watering terror of what he found in the small clearing beyond.

  It was a boy.

  Much the same age as Hael himself, he wore an outlandish tunic which flapped open up the front like something disemboweled, and the sort of short hair that he had only ever seen on slaves or criminals. The calf had just galloped through his campfire, and he was half-rising with an O of surprise in the middle of his pale face. He hadn’t seen Hael yet, and for a moment the herdsboy thought he might just escape, until a second figure came striding up. This one was even stranger: its hair stood up in ragged tufts, and it appeared to be dressed in multicoloured rags. It was pointing at him and yelling in an alien language.

  Hael knew without a shadow of a doubt that these were two of the Bright Folk, and that the shouting one was casting a spell on him; soon he would be spirited away to be lost forever in their kingdom under the hills, never to see his Da or his clan or stupid calves ever again. Then the animal blundered back across the clearing, throwing everything into even greater confusion. Hael spared a second to thank the noble beast for this distraction and took to his heels.

  ***

  ‘Stay here!’ commanded Bex. ‘Pack our things!’

  ‘Why?’ asked Ted. ‘What are you goi
ng to do?’

  ‘I’m going to stop that kid from letting everybody know where we are, what do you think? You’re going to get us ready to move.’

  ‘What kid?’

  She snorted in disgust, muttered ‘Some watch-guard you turned out to be,’ and disappeared in pursuit.

  ‘Sorry!’ he called after her, but she was gone.

  Ted went back to the crude lean-to which they’d built against the coming night. Andy lay beneath it, staring sightlessly up at its branches. He didn’t respond to Ted’s approach, just as he hadn’t responded to anything either Ted or Bex had said or done since the wave of blue fire had stranded them here. He would move where he was put and obey the simplest of commands, but beyond that he was unreachable and insensate. Ted found his glassy stare deeply unsettling and kept away from it as much as he could. They had dressed him in what they could spare from their own winter layers, but with the onset of night, the temperature had started to drop rapidly, and Ted wasn’t at all sure that he would survive the night. And now, to top it off, Bex had said to pack everything and move just when they’d got settled. It had taken him ages to get that fire going.

  ‘Besides,’ he said to Andy’s blank expression, ‘why shouldn’t we let ourselves be found? We’re doing you no good like this. The trouble with your friend is that she thinks everyone’s out to get her, that’s what. We need help.’

  Abruptly, his stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast: toast and bramble jam. He’d picked the fruit himself in the Rimwoods, and his mother had baked the bread. Ted was suddenly, gut-wrenchingly homesick. He threw everything down and sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head buried against his forearms, and did what nobody could have blamed a twelve-year old boy in his position for doing: he began to cry.