Awakening

by William Horwood

  Not wishing yet to disturb Brief, whose day off it was, on the basis of nothing more than his usual worry and fretting about matters of security in Brum, he paid a call on another of the senior librarians, who had also taken the Sunday off.

  ‘I know the fellow, earnest and dull and not a great scholar by any means but worthy enough I’m sure.’

  ‘What’s his area of interest?’

  ‘The seasons, especially the Spring. Unsurprising really, considering Bedwyn Stort’s great discovery. Everyone has an interest in that subject at the moment, though few show quite the persistence of our Brother Slew. Incidentally, when are we going to get to actually see the gem Stort found?’

  Pike did not dally.

  First he ascertained that Slew was even at that moment in the Library, next he visited his lodgings and talked with his fellow travellers. He realized that news of his enquiries would be known to Slew the moment he returned to his lodging and the advantage of surprise, if surprise was needed, would be completely lost.

  He had decided that he must talk again with Brief, and it was as he was on his way to see him that the awful truth suddenly dawned. He himself had spoken with Stort about the gem’s safety before he left Brum and decided that the safest thing of all was to leave it up to him where it was hidden during his absence. After that he might be persuaded to give it up to the safe keeping of the city itself, but before, he had certainly been unwilling to part with it.

  Stort had at least been persuaded not to carry the gem about with him and said, suddenly, that he knew where it might be placed in complete and utter safety. No one could get to it but himself and one other – and that other (Stort did not name him) would never give the game away.

  ‘So you’re going to tell this other, this him or her, are you?’

  Stort had said there was no need. If anything happened to him he, or she, would be sure to be able to work it out.

  It was Stort’s mischievous mention of a ‘she’ that had fooled Pike. Of course there was no she. Stort had nothing to do with females, except Cluckett, and she was certainly too recent an acquaintance to be entrusted with a secret of that magnitude.

  It was quite obvious now who that other was – Master Brief, Stort’s former mentor.

  Obvious, therefore, where the gem was hidden: in the Library and most probably in a part of it that Stort knew best.

  Brief’s residence was adjacent to the Library and Pike hurried through the rain towards it, his hand tightening on his stave as he did so. Nothing felt right about any of this any more: everything felt wrong.

  Brief was not in, he had taken it into his head to go to the Library.

  ‘On a Sunday?’

  ‘First time he’s ever done so in my memory,’ said Brief’s housekeeper, ‘but he said it was urgent. He took his stave of office with him. That’s unusual too!’

  Pike cursed himself and ran down to the Library.

  ‘Where’s Master Brief?’ he asked a startled librarian.

  ‘He went down to the basement, Mister Pike, and he was hurrying like you are. What’s afoot?’

  All eyes were on Pike, from those of the librarians down to the most withdrawn of the Sad Readers.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pike, but obviously it was.

  Slew, having failed to find the gem in the cloth the second time, stepped back once more and tried to look at it anew.

  He had seen the scenes of nature in the imagery but the figures in the landscape had seemed less important.

  Now he wondered if that was the point – they were less noticeable and so less obvious.

  A girl, a youth, a wedding . . . an older couple among them, Slew thought their parents . . . all in Spring.

  Lovers and their parents?

  A spousal certainly, the beginnings of the making of new life.

  And in Summer they were older, children born, life rich and good, the Summer of their lives . . . whose lives? Slew stared and tried to make the story of them out and ask himself to which of these figures Stort might attach himself, or his imagination, seeking out a place to hide the gem whose magic and resonance would make it all the harder to see . . .

  Slew pulled himself away, for the imagery was reaching into him, or drawing him into it, like some play, not of shadows but of colour and life.

  He took up the pouch again to check once more that the gem was not in it. It was not.

  But was that itself a clue?

  He returned to the embroidery and moved on to Autumn.

  A river flowed, the leaves along its bank had turned, the lovers in Spring, who became parents in Summer, now seemed distraught. Something, someone, had died. Autumn was when the whole world began to die.

  Slew remembered the magical Autumns of his youth in Thuringia, his mother, her preoccupations, her concerns for others than himself, he felt that loss as a falling of leaves, a blowing through of unwelcome winds.

  He felt old sadness which even his training with the shadows could not ease.

  Clever.

  Stort had been so clever.

  He had hidden the gem in a place to which most people might find it hard to go.

  Courage, he had that; and resourcefulness. Now . . . cunning.

  Stort was no ordinary opponent.

  So, where might a person not want to go with the passing of the years, the seasons of their life? Where would they not want to look?

  At their Winter and their death, obviously.

  Slew found he had to support himself, shadows of his own chilling him now, reaching into him, trying to stop him . . . clever Bedwyn Stort, stopping him . . .

  He pulled back yet again, found the pouch still in his hand, shoved it in his pocket before returning to Spring to see if somewhere there among the figures was one who carried such a pouch. So many, when he looked, more it seemed than the first time he looked, crowding at the wedding, laughing, young and old.

  Then he saw her.

  A girl, hidden by her father, and her mother too, watching the wedding as if from behind the bars and barriers of their legs and arms. In her belt a pouch like the one he had now in his hand.

  He reached to touch the embroidery, his finger feeling it for something inside, as if it was real, there in the most magical embroidery he had ever seen.

  He touched it and felt nothing but stitches and a sadness greater than before. Did the girl see him? It felt as if she did; did he imagine her eyes on him then? He did, he did, and he looked away, distressed.

  He knew now where the gem was going to be, but to get there he would have to go through the seasons of her life, which he did not want to do, not then, not ever.

  In Summer, she was there all right. Nearly lost to sight again, behind a thicket of brambles whose berries were blood-red and black, she looking out, parentless, alone, angry. As for the pouch, it was there in her belt which, when he touched it, pricked him like a thorn, which it should not do, being only cloth. But it did.

  Slew felt tired and lost, as she did, and weary, as she was; and alone and lonely.

  He could barely stand now, nor did he want to go on. He wanted to leave the gem where Stort had so wisely put it; it was not his but hers, it was not for mortal touch, not for him.

  When he reached Autumn he thought he saw Sinistral’s eyes in the crowd urging him on, and he obeyed, searching for the girl, then woman, now something older still: unfulfilled, ageing, so angry and so lost, so sad, so very sad.

  That pouch she had was empty of all life, empty of hope, empty of its gem and Slew was unable to go on.

  ‘Open this door!’

  It was Master Brief, only a few yards behind him, on the far side of the barred gate. ‘What are you doing? What have you done?’

  Brief had seen Thwart on the ground, blood pooled by his head, eyes open but now sightless.

  ‘What have you done!’

  The shouting brought Slew back to himself, though the sadness was still there.

  He put Brief out of his mind and returned to his ta
sk and turned finally to the embroidery of Winter.

  It was not hard to find her, alone at Winter’s end, all people gone, all life absent, just she herself wandering through a bleak mountain pass, the tops above covered in blizzard snow. He reached to touch her where she walked, but it was hard, so hard, to enter into such wretched loneliness as that.

  Her pouch was where it always was, there on her belt, but it was old and tattered now, the stitches worn and broken. She too was broken by her life’s terrible journey, angry from first to last, her eyes bereft, her body bent, an old woman in pain of body and heart, unloved in the high passes of the mountains, chilled by the bleak winds, frozen by the ice and snow.

  So clever was the imagery, so powerful the presentation, that it seemed to him that what he saw was real and the old woman was right there before him, pitiful and alone.

  Which, being so, it felt as if he were stealing from her personally, not simply finding a cleverly hidden gem. Even more than that was the sense that the cloth put into him a dark reality, a future history, a place he had not wished to go.

  For all these reasons his every instinct told him not to go closer, as it felt, to try to find the gem. But then he glimpsed it. Not on or in her woven pouch but secreted away in her hand, a glimmer of something catching the dull light. He reached forward, tugged at it and found he had grasped the first link of a chain. It unravelled itself free from where Stort had cleverly hidden it, behind her hand, behind the woven pouch; the chain to which a pendant was attached, empty of all stones it seemed but one, and that, at first, non-descript. He pulled it clear and took her last hope away.

  Then, awed, empty, desolate, he looked at it and it seemed nothing much at all. Just a little grey stone in a battered old pendant. Had he journeyed so far for this? Further than across the sea with Borkum Riff.

  Further than a lifetime.

  For this stone?

  Then suddenly it glimmered, it shot through briefly with light, the pendant turned and twisted in his hand, it began to have a life of its own and it shone forth so brightly he was blinded.

  He struggled, fell back, fell down, the gem in its setting rolled from him, its green, exquisite dangerous rays across Thwart’s deadened eyes, its rays in Slew’s, its light entering a thousand books, bouncing about, beginning to be uncontrollable.

  He reached and grasped it, and with an enormous effort of will closed his great hand about it, cutting off the rays one by one until none were felt and he was able to thrust it into the pouch he held. At once all grew dark again.

  Moments later the gate into the cell crashed open, Brief having sought and found another key.

  He stood there; bold in his robes, angry and wary, his stave of office in his hand. Its ancient carvings still held something of the fires of Spring just seen.

  But Slew had the advantage of youth.

  He took his dark stave and watched as Brief’s swung at him through the air.

  He moved and it missed him.

  He moved a second time and it missed again.

  Brief had fought the shadows once and won, more or less.

  But this was something different.

  Slew, too, was a Master, and to his strength was added that of the gem he carried.

  Perhaps if Brief had been able to strike Slew then, while he was still saddened and bewildered by his journey in the embroidered cloth to retrieve the gem, he might have been able to defeat him.

  Perhaps if Pike had been able to reach the Library sooner, then, well, the wyrd of things would have been different.

  The one who came closest to stopping Slew was Thwart.

  The light of Spring had shone into his dying eyes, it had reached to his spirit, fleeing as it had been from life, and whispered it back home again. Thwart awoke to life terrified.

  He saw his Master trying his best to fight.

  He saw a darker Master raising his stave with one hand, holding the embroidery with another. Of the gem he knew nothing at all.

  Thwart might have stayed as he was, he might have feigned death and not risked his life again.

  But he saw chaos where only order should be and he saw the greatest and most loved scholar of his age bravely fighting a younger, stronger hydden than himself.

  So Thwart stood up and, weak though he was, and frightened too, he found his courage to challenge the Master of Shadows.

  Slew turned, saw him, was amazed and moved to kill him where he stood.

  No one knew then or after, least of all Thwart himself, why he did not do so. Perhaps in passing from Spring to Winter and feeling the sadness of she who had the gem, he had no will to hurt Thwart more. Maybe in himself he saw, somewhere deep in his dark, hurt heart, the better thing.

  Maybe it was Brief who saved his life when he roared out, ‘Take me but do not hurt him, he has a whole life left to live, take me.’

  Slew turned back to Brief, saw he was in his way, needed to escape the terrors of that place and his own self, raised his dark stave and moved as shadows do, one way and another. His thrust at Brief then was deep and powerful; there was no defence against such a thing.

  His second thrust was something worse, a killing blow to Brief ’s old head.

  His third and last was into the Master Scrivener’s chest, into his heart.

  As Brief fell amongst the tomes he loved, Slew stepped over him, passed through to the stairs, took them like the shadow of a hydden he truly was, and passed right through the Library and out of its doors.

  Pike did not see him.

  No one saw him.

  He was gone down the lanes and ginnels of fabled Brum, his robes left behind, his dark stave going before.

  Thwart survived.

  Pike found him in the shadows the murderer left behind, cradling his dying Master’s broken head and body.

  Pike did the same, distraught to know that he had not been there to protect the hydden he respected and loved most in all the world.

  ‘He saved my life,’ said Thwart.

  Brief stirred and with his last breath said, ‘No, no . . . you saved your own and found the true direction in which your wyrd will lead you. Trust and follow it as I did mine. Live your life, Thwart, make every second count, it is the only way.’

  ‘I will try, Master Brief.’

  ‘I know you will . . .’

  Then he turned to Pike and said, ‘Old friend, I saw the gem of Spring, think of it, I saw it with my own eyes . . .’

  They say that as Brief died there was a roar of anguish from the Library that he cherished all his life.

  They say that it rocked and shook with grief . . .

  Such that its doors would not properly close, so that his great spirit, free for ever now, could come and go just as it pleased.

  All, in a way, quite true.

  For as Brief died, the earthquake presaged by the tremors of the weeks before, ever since Stort had found the gem, finally hit Brum hard. Many buildings seemed to roar and rock and shake. Many collapsed and in their awful ruins humans and hydden died alike.

  As for the Library doors of Brum, they never did hang true again.

  29

  QUAKE

  The earthquake that devastated Brum in the dark hour of Brief’s passing was one of many felt across Englalond and all Europe then and in the days following.

  Taken together these events left no doubt in any hydden mind that Mother Earth was angry and taking revenge for mortal kind’s disrespect towards her nature and being. What anyone could do about it no one knew, and long-held feelings among Brum’s citizenry of impotent foreboding for their city and the world deepened still more.

  That Brief himself had such worries was well known to many who had known him.

  ‘I was there myself, Lord Festoon,’ Pike told the High Ealdor in the days after, and before the funeral, when folk like to recount their memories of one who has died and who they loved, ‘when Imbolc the Peace-Weaver told him, not for the first time, that the world was coming to an end and the bad weat
her we’d been having was a foretaste of worse things to come. She said something to the effect that the world was not a larder to raid or a well to let run dry and that we need to tend it and honour it.

  ‘If we did not, she said, Mother Earth would wreak havoc upon us.

  ‘Of course Brief wasn’t going to agree outright to that, for he took a more positive view of things, but I know for a fact that since the gem was found and we began to experience tremors he had begun to fear the worst.

  ‘“Pike,” he said to me not a week ago, “the Earth’s building Herself up to something very nasty, very nasty indeed!”

  ‘Of course,’ continued Pike, ‘I don’t say the Earth’s directly responsible for his death, but whoever said wyrd worked directly?! Not Brief, that’s certain. He taught me that all things are connected and when one bit goes wrong, another goes awry. Who’s to say there’s not a link, however strange this may seem, between an angry word spoken at one end of Deritend and a slap in the face by someone completely different in Digbeth? Well, maybe the wider world’s like that too. Spill the Earth’s guts by mining for gold in Cornwall and a blizzard wipes out a hydden village in the Pennines! Brief’s thoughts not mine, may the Mirror guard his spirit!

  ‘No, there’s not a hydden in Brum doesn’t think that his death and the quakes we’re having are connected. But Mirror knows that neither he nor I ever thought it would come to this!’

  Lord Festoon considered this and said, ‘There are certainly connections there, though whether it’s with us mortals that the Earth is angry, or with the fact that a great one like Brief has been killed, or that the gem’s discovery is upsetting Her, I haven’t yet made up my mind. Then there’s the humans and what they do which, by comparison with the hydden, is monstrous and terrible.

  ‘Perhaps once Bedwyn Stort comes back and my friend Igor Brunte, who is now in the North with Feld establishing what support Brum might hope for up there in the event of us being attacked by the Fyrd, we may together and separately see these things in a better perspective. Then, too, we must have Brief’s funeral and a proper period of mourning. But for now, Pike, I’m more worried for Brum than I ever have been since I became its High Ealdor. Never in my lifetime have we needed more than we do now the vigour and energy of thought and deed for which Brum has always been famed throughout the Hydddenworld.’