The Book of the Crowman

by Joseph D'lacey

  Gordon thrust his palms against his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut.

  How can I be the enemy to the people I’m trying to help?

  He let his hands drop to his sides and raised his head to meet Kieran’s eyes. Even with the fury of his mother’s death still hot in his blood, the boy could not hold his gaze. Gordon allowed the Black Light to come, feeling it bead and swell at his fingertips, letting it drip like venom to the wet ground. Where the spent, dead earth had been the colour of charcoal, the droplets of Black Light brought colour: deep fertile brown and the first stirrings of green growth. Kieran and his crew backed away.

  Gordon looked at them, weeping. He sank to his knees.

  “Just do one thing for me,” he said. “If you truly are Green Men, if you value this land and believe in her future, never… ever… speak of this.”

  Gordon let his hands be drawn towards the woman. Anything he could do to lessen the impact of what he was about to do was a bonus. His hands went to her throat, as though he intended to throttle her. The Black Light, gravitating to sickness and death, found its lodestone.

  He felt the bullet dislodge from the woman’s cervical vertebrae and travel forwards and out towards his hands. With deft fingers, he removed the mangled lead slug and dropped it to the ground. He returned his hand to her neck and sensed the wound shrinking closed within, the flesh reconnecting, the entry hole sealing.

  The woman blinked. She coughed. Her eyes focussed on Gordon, with his hands still clasped at her throat, and she screamed. The scream of the living with no wish to die.

  Gordon leapt up and ran, no idea which direction to take and half expecting the whistle of arrows to follow him. He sprinted from the playground and from the ruined park, taking left turns and right turns as haphazardly as he could. It was the healings that brought both Green Men and Ward out looking for him, the rumours of a boy with power. The gift was a threat to his mission. Faces peered from broken windows and shelters in rubble. He knew that everyone who saw him would remember his passing. Anyone who ran among the streets of London now, had something to run from.

  “Never again,” he whispered as he fled. “Never again.”

  Archibald Skelton regarded the dead Wardsmen in silence for a long time. Three years of pursuing the boy had done little to reduce his cask-like paunch or the amphibious blubber of his face. However, his surviving eye was keener than ever.

  Blood had turned the churned brick and masonry of their position black, as though the three men whose throats had been cut had leaked oil. Their faces were stiff and ashen in the permanent gloom that choked the streets of the capital; each expression of horrified acceptance more like studies in stone than true death. The four men with arrow wounds lay collapsed and staring, but all of the fallen reminded Skelton of toy soldiers. Perhaps it was their youth that gave them that aspect, perhaps the casual ease with which they appeared to have been dispatched.

  “They were just youngsters,” said Skelton. “We should have sent men with more history. More guile.”

  When there was no response, Skelton glanced over at his long-serving partner. The hulk that was Mordaunt Pike might also have been dead for all the colour in his sunken cheeks, for all the movement in his limbs. Even Pike’s eyes were dim and unfocused, waiting for a true threat to rouse the power in his massive hands or a command to fire the resolute circuitry of his mind.

  “It was the boy, of course,” continued Skelton in the wheezed tones of a schoolmistress.

  At that, there was a stiffening of muscle in Pike’s huge frame, an almost mechanical creak from deep within him. Skelton smirked.

  “I wonder how many he’s taken now, Pike,” he said. “How many of our boys have gone down under that dirty little blade of his, do you think?”

  Pike straightened, eliciting further groans from the cabling of his joints. Something ignited in his eyes and he seemed to see the final position of the Ward unit, the dead men and the playground beyond, for the first time.

  “Sometimes, I think he’s too smart for us,” said Skelton. “Too… strong.”

  The machinery of Pike’s body strained beneath his grey trench coat and he turned to face Skelton. Cold rage glowed in his eyes. He was alive once more. He took a step towards his partner, towering over him. Skelton swallowed the wonderful dread in his throat but there was nothing he could do to prevent the hot stiffening at his groin. Pike’s eyes, the headlamps of some killer automaton, blazed with hate.

  “Gordon Black’s life will be a short one,” he said in a monotone. “We’re getting closer all the time. And he’ll pay, Skelton. We’ll make him pay. For all of this.”

  Skelton’s pulse beat thick and heavy at his neck. He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and patted his forehead. As much as he adored the lethal energy that rolled off Pike when they discussed the boy, the fact was that they were running out of time.

  In three years of searching, coming tantalisingly close to capturing the boy so many times, they still didn’t have him. Sometimes, in the small hours, when Pike’s engine was a faint rumble of snores from across the room, Skelton wondered if they were doomed. So many of the cataclysmic prophecies had already come true: the earthquakes and epidemics, the floods and landslides. In those anxious and debilitating insomniac watches, Skelton could almost believe that if they didn’t stop Gordon Black soon, the Crowman’s work would be complete and the Ward would be as extinct as everyone else. By morning, though, such thoughts would always have disappeared to the realms of paranoid fantasy, where they belonged.

  One thing Skelton was certain of: once they had Gordon Black, the world would be the Ward’s. Forever.

  Taking a deep breath, Skelton reached for Pike’s shoulder, ended up with his waxy, swollen fingers on the bigger man’s biceps. Pike’s eyes watched the contact, the coals of fury still smouldering in his gaze.

  Skelton swallowed and spoke.

  “Listen, Mordaunt…” For a moment words escaped him. He swallowed again. “You know I feel the same way as you about the boy, about everything. But look around, man. There’s not much world left to save from the Crowman. Look at these youths, their lifeblood joining the torrent of such that Gordon Black has already spilled. Three years, Mordaunt. Three years and we haven’t seen him, haven’t so much as grabbed at his coattails.”

  Pike’s slab of a hand, cold and vicelike, removed Skelton’s from his arm. Death crouched in his eyes.

  “What are you saying?”

  It took all he had but Skelton held his partner’s gaze. He thanked God for love and the strength it gave him. He became formal once again, his partner’s superior – just as he’d always been when they were in uniform.

  “We’re going to change our approach, Pike.” And, as Skelton’s heartbeat clattered on, bearing feelings he had no words to express, it came to him what they must do. He took Pike’s arm again, only for a moment. “Walk with me,” he said. “I have an idea.”

  2

  As the sun sets behind the hovels and squats on the far side of the river in Shep Afon, Mr Keeper and Carrick Rowntree sit on the soft silt and smoke their pipes beside a small fire. A little farther up the riverbank, wrapped in a blanket, Megan sleeps, exhausted by the effects of the sacrament and the journey it took her on. Sometimes she murmurs or cries out, kicking weakly at the sandy earth and causing Mr Keeper to cast her a concerned glance.

  “We could take a room at one of the inns,” he says. “She’s been through a lot.”

  Carrick looks unconcerned.

  “What could be more renewing than being cradled in the arms of the Earth Amu?” he says.

  Mr Keeper shakes his head.

  “I know. It’s stupid of me. But she’s been through such a lot. And she’s still so young. I want to… make it up to her. She deserves a reward.”

  “A night spent on one of Shep Afon’s splintery pallets is no reward for one who seeks the Crowman. Look at her, Aaron. She’s at home right where she is. Besides,” says Carrick, patting s
omething hidden inside his tunic. “You know as well as I do that Megan has already taken her reward.”

  For a while there is no sound but the plunge and slop of the market town’s creaking waterwheels and the distant murmur of trader’s voices raised in cheer as they throng the taverns around the hub.

  “It took me years to see our work as anything other than a curse,” Mr Keeper says eventually. “Even now there are days when I think things might have been simpler if I’d stayed in my apa’s smithy. He was a bastard to me and never taught me a damn thing worth repeating but I’d have known, of a morning, what was in store for me between sunrise and nightfall. Hell, Carrick, I’d be happily shoeing horses now. Making pokers and mending gates, instead of worrying about the future. And her.”

  “You’d have your own children, Aaron. You’d be just as worried about them and just as worried about the future. We Keepers are folk, plain as anyone else. The only difference is the knowledge we hold and the burden it bestows upon us.”

  Mr Keeper taps the ash from the bowl of his pipe and refills it. He lights it with a stick from their fire. As the light fades from the day, the glow of the flames picks out the deepening creases in his forehead, around his eyes and mouth. He looks at his old master.

  “Carrick…” He hesitates for long moments. “The story has been eroded over the generations. The people tell it wrong around their hearths when evening comes. They don’t understand the Crowman like they used to. If we lose the thread of his life, we’re finished. You know that. All of this rests on her shoulders now.” Mr Keeper takes a long pull on his pipe stem. “It sometimes strikes me as unreasonable that an innocent must carry such a load.”

  “There are no mistakes in this world. She’s where she’s meant to be.”

  Mr Keeper’s eyes flash.

  “Don’t try to placate me, Carrick. Those are worn out words. They have no meaning now. Nothing is certain. Nothing is ‘meant to be’.”

  The old man sighs but when Mr Keeper glances over it’s a smile he sees on Carrick Rowntree’s face.

  “Listen, Aaron, if it makes you feel any better, I was just as concerned about you.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. I lost a great deal of sleep over it. But you should understand that it’s absolutely right and proper to fret about your life’s work. Our work is the Black Feathered Path and we can’t help but care for those who travel it. If we didn’t, well, all this would be nothing more than a joke. A bad one.” Carrick Rowntree glances at Megan’s huddled form. “The girl is strong. She is equal to the task. Guide her right and you’re giving everyone a chance at the future.” The old man shakes his head, again good-naturedly. “You’re no different than when you came to me, Aaron, all those years ago. A boy who held a vision. What did I always tell you?”

  “Don’t be distracted by what others are doing. Concentrate on what you’re doing.”

  “Exactly. You need to do the same now. Get your part in all this right and Megan will get hers right. It has to be that way around or nothing will work.”

  Mr Keeper clamps his pipe between his teeth and scoots closer to his old master so that he can whisper.

  “She’s a young woman, Carrick. The first there’s ever been. It’s not as simple as working with a lad. Everything I do or say, it has to be correct. And I can’t just give her a beating when she gets it wrong like you used to do with me.”

  The old man chuckles.

  “It’s not funny,” says Mr Keeper. “I have to think carefully before I speak and act. On every single occasion. And I have to maintain a certain… distance. It would be so much more comfortable if it was a boy.”

  “No it wouldn’t. Lads are troublesome. They don’t concentrate and they think they know better than you do. They’ll earn themselves a beating every day given half the chance. Just like you did.” Carrick takes Mr Keeper’s arm in his old fingers. “Listen to me, Aaron. As a friend. What you have with Megan is unprecedented. It’s as much a challenge for you as it is for her and that is absolutely as it should be. Guiding her, teaching her our ways as you do, you are forced to maintain a sacred mindset throughout. You are required to respect the girl as you respect… who?”

  Mr Keeper blinks.

  “Are you testing me?”

  “Indeed I am. Answer the question, Aaron.”

  Mr Keeper’s anger rises.

  “Listen Carrick, there’s too much water under the bridge for this. How dare you sit there and think you can treat me like a...” The answer comes to him and Mr Keeper’s annoyance vanishes. “Great Spirit,” he whispers. “Oh dear sweet heaven above.”

  “Do you see?” asks the old man.

  Very slowly, Mr Keeper nods.

  “I don’t know why I never saw it before.”

  “Because it was right in front of you, Aaron. That’s how it always is. The Earth Amu has sent a girl child. Even in the Black Dawn the time of men was waning. It was men whose ideas forced the Crowman from blackness into existence. And though we’ve changed, made amends and redressed the balance to some degree, men alone cannot heal the wounds they inflicted. Only a woman can do that. I’ve seen things in the weave, Aaron. Women already wearing the mantle of Keeper in many lands across the water. But this girl,” Carrick nods in Megan’s direction. “Well, she is different – special. And that is why, if she can complete the path, Megan will be the one who changes our world forever, bringing harmony where even the Keepers have failed to find it. Even now, Aaron, there are factions out there in our land, all men, who search for the lost knowledge, who thirst for its resurrection. And they are dedicated. They will not stop and we must find a way to deal with them.”

  “But what in heaven’s name can one young woman do against all that, Carrick?”

  “The fact that neither of us knows the answer should be reason enough to realise that it is time for a daughter of the land to take her turn. This is what the Earth Amu wants. It’s what the Crowman wants. And it’s the reason you and I exist, Aaron. Everything we’ve ever done and the wrongs of every generation before us will be met here and now by this girl. And it is up to you to train her right and well or all is lost.” Carrick Rowntree’s fingers clasp harder over Mr Keeper’s arm. “Hold your commitment, Aaron. Continue to lead her as you have thus far. Give her the best chance you can, and she in turn will give us a chance. One last chance for us all.”

  Megan stands on the silty river bank watching Mr Keeper and Carrick Rowntree and listening to their hushed conversation. She sees her own blanket-wrapped form, curled in exhaustion close by, and senses the ache in her belly even though for now she is disembodied, her spirit abroad within the weave.

  The seepage between her legs is strong and steady and it will soon be time to change the cloth she surreptitiously placed there before collapsing into sleep. One thing is immediately clear: neither Mr Keeper nor his teacher can see her in the weave, even though that very afternoon they both travelled with her, quietly keeping watch over her in the guise of two wrens as she searched for the Crowspar. It was soon after she returned that her bleed began, and she is in no doubt that the Keepers’ blindness is due to her moon. Her womanhood increases her abilities in the weave: Silence. Invisibility. Who knows what more?

  I’m free!

  Her delight, however, is brief. What has passed between the two elders is enough to clip these newfound secret wings. Now that the men have fallen into silence, Megan decides she has heard enough. The only power she holds right now is the power to flee, to be away from the weight of destiny, if only for a while.

  She turns from her guardians and takes a few tentative steps up the bank toward the rocks that lead up to Shep Afon’s hub and the now deserted market place. Glancing back she sees neither Mr Keeper nor Carrick Rowntree look up from their spiral of worries. Climbing the rocks is easy. Though her body is heavy with fatigue and the lingering effects of the sacrament, her spirit is light and fleet of foot. In seconds she stands on the wall separating the market from the
river, finding herself between two worlds. One is the world she knows, the world where Mr Keeper is her guide and protector. The other is the new world, the weave, the byways of which she has never trodden entirely alone.

  She hops down into the deserted hub where not a scrap of waste from the day’s trading remains. Even the beggars and stray dogs have moved on and the only noise now comes from the inns and taverns that line the hub.

  Megan hesitates.

  All this freedom and no idea where to begin. She closes her eyes for a moment and waits for a draw or ripple in the weave. It is barely a blink before she senses a glow among the inns and the pull that accompanies it. She takes a step into the marketplace but stops to look back over the low boundary wall. The Keepers seem very small and far away even though if she spoke quietly they would be able to hear.

  She turns her back on them.

  The boards and trestles that the traders leased for their day of commerce are now stacked in stone archways out of the weather. The hub of Shep Afon is a broad, perfect ring of compacted grit nestling in a semi-circle of the river’s meander, the inns, taverns and other premises forming the opposite half of the circle. At the centre of the market place, Megan stops, opening herself to prompts from the weave. When a distracted wind skitters across the deserted expanse, Megan hears the voices of a thousand stallholders, their songs and cries now whispered in the body of the breeze.

  One voice, that of a woman, is clearer than all the rest.

  Save us all. The girl’s got the Scarecrow in her.

  The pull from the weave intensifies and Megan begins to walk again, her pace quickening. She makes for a slim property, sandwiched between two inns. The building is timber-framed, its front wall formed in bulging sections of dun coloured daub, as though the inns on each side are crushing it. There is no sign to say what manner of business it houses, but to be in the commercial centre of the village, Megan assumes some sort of trade must occur on the premises.