Awakening

by William Horwood

  Now they were yards away and smiling still, the chanting ever louder from the mob behind, and the Fyrd looking at each other uneasily, their hands beginning to prepare to draw their crossbows.

  Jack slowed the pace, as if coming in friendship, though the chanting gave the lie to that. But every second of indecision by the Fyrd was a second gained.

  ‘I need to know the layout of the Hall and see where the gems are,’ said Jack. ‘Therefore use your staves to form a barrier and push the Fyrd back so that we have time to see what it is that Stort must do.’

  ‘Halt!’ one of the Fyrd finally cried.

  Jack suddenly charged, buffeting the nearest backwards before turning his stave to the horizontal. The others did the same and the Fyrd retreated, still unsure what was going on.

  Jack stepped back into the protection of the small enclave so created and Stort came to his side. There was shouting, stave thrusts and a couple of crossbows taken from belts, but they stayed calm, trusting that the others would protect them long enough to assess the position.

  They saw the throne, the arras behind it, the lectern to one side and the two jewelled arks before it, bright and multicoloured in the candlelight.

  ‘The gems must be in those arks,’ said Stort. ‘Green for Spring and yellow for Summer. Very original. We must hope they are not locked in some way.’

  It was obvious to Jack who the Emperor was: he was tall, blond and exquisitely robed in black. By his side stood a female courtier, in her forties and beautiful, his consort perhaps, in grey silks set with jewels of moonstone, pearls and agate.

  In front of them, dressed in black, was a younger version of the Emperor who might easily have been mistaken for his son. No more than two or three years older than Jack himself, but taller, broader and holding a mighty stave of office.

  ‘That’s the Master of Shadows, Jack,’ said Feld in his ear. ‘Take him down and the rest will fall . . . But by the Mirror, if I am not mistaken I know him. He is—’

  But Feld was unable to finish, for the Fyrd countercharged and the barrier had to be broken if they were to defend themselves properly.

  ‘Stay close, Stort, stay very close . . .’ rasped Jack as a Fyrd charged him and he too had to upend his stave and strike a counterblow before he was hit.

  A few moments later he heard a scream behind him and felt a sharp slicing burn across the back of his neck and side of his throat. For a moment Jack thought that someone had taken a knife to him and slashed at his neck and throat.

  He struck a blow ahead, put one hand to his neck, felt hot liquid and for a moment feared the worst. He turned to see who his assailant was, fearing that Stort must have been struck first, and saw the cause at once. One of the great candles had fallen over, knocking another down. This had sprayed hot wax on him even as fires broke out around both candles. The screams were of courtiers fleeing the sudden blaze.

  Jack turned back to the fray, Feld now at his side. There was shouting, grunting, and Fyrd came at them hard and fast.

  Another candle fell and flames shot up a hanging nearby towards the high roof and windows above.

  ‘Keep moving,’ cried Jack. ‘Keep the momentum up! Force them to turn and run . . .’

  It was obvious that their arrival came as a total surprise. The Emperor was only lightly guarded and the courtiers around him were middle-aged or elderly. They were unsure whether to stand by him or to turn tail and flee.

  Of them all only the Master of Shadows stood his ground, but even he seemed uncertain whether to guard the Emperor or the two arks.

  But there was something more, something dark, as if the fight in general and in its individual particulars was happening in air so thick and murky that everything was slowed down and hard to see. At first Jack thought this was merely the smoke from the fires. But then it seemed caused by something more.

  While, behind them all, from the corridor, those still marching forward continued the cry ã Faroün ã Faroün ã . . . which Jack wanted them to stop because it was ugly to his ears and was beginning to confuse him, as if its simple sing-song syllables were interlaced with evil.

  Blut, watching the action from the Emperor’s side, knew within moments that this was a fight they could not win: too many, too sudden, too resolute. While at their head was a fighter the like of which he had never seen. Dark, grey-eyed, powerful, with a stave that caught the candle flames and turned them into shards of confusing light. At his side a former Fyrd Blut knew from past times and the recent report of Slew. He was General Meyor Feld, second in command in Brum and as experienced a Fyrd as could be.

  And an angry rabble large enough to worry the most secure Emperor.

  All here? In the Great Hall?

  Schlotle had failed, the system had failed, everything had failed. He had failed.

  And yet . . . something odd. Their leader was slowing and seemed confused, as did the Emperor, as did many of them.

  Not Blut.

  ‘My Lord,’ he said urgently, ‘we must get you away to safety, and the gems too. Order Slew to bring them. My Lord . . . while we have this moment to do it . . . My Lady, tell him . . .’

  But she too seemed struck still, though whether by that cry of ã Faroün or something else Blut could not say.

  ‘My Lady . . .’

  She turned slowly to him, her face shocked, saying nothing.

  Is the world going mad? thought Blut. Will no one take command?

  Then she spoke, but her normal confidence had deserted her and her voice was thin with fear.

  She was looking at Slew, who was looking at the intruders’ young leader as she said, ‘He knows . . . he remembers . . . he knows, Blut. May the Mirror help them!’

  ‘Knows what?’ demanded Blut, stepping forward to take up the gems himself and then hustle his Lord to safety. ‘Help me!’ he commanded a courtier next to him. ‘I speak in the Emperor’s name!’

  Jack’s moment of strange slowness, when his mind seemed invaded by dark worms of dismay, was brought to a halt by Feld.

  He had warded off another Fyrd, a stand-off was approaching as if no one quite knew what was happening, and he said, ‘I know that face . . .’

  ‘Which face?’ whispered Jack, struggling to drag himself from the heaviness the name ã Faroün put into him.

  ‘The Master of Shadows. His face . . . I know it. He is the one who killed Master Brief. He’s the one!’

  Jack felt shock.

  ‘He killed Brief?’

  ‘He did.’

  Stort heard it and with a cry tried to run forward and avenge his mentor, but his stave flailed uselessly in his scholar’s grasp.

  ‘No!’ said Jack. ‘Not you, Stort . . . it is for me to deal with him.’

  Then, as if time had speeded up again and the thick air dispersed, Jack stepped forward towards Slew, whose eyes were filled with hate and the light of the flames that now rose round the Hall, where the fallen candles were.

  He said calmly, ‘You want the gems your carelessness and Brief ’s stupidity gave me? Then take them . . .’

  Jack tensed, expecting a body thrust from his stave. But Slew simply moved it slightly to one side so that it formed a shadow as he did so, and then another when he moved it back such that Jack could not see his feet or legs or read his intent.

  His feet darted one way, then another, and the stave arced out of darkness so fast that Jack could not raise his own stave to deflect the blow that suddenly came.

  Bang!

  The blow hit the side of his face like a hammer and then . . .

  Bang!

  Another from the other end of Slew’s stave to his ribs . . .

  And bang! to his head again and Jack was falling, flying, staggering back into empty chairs as Feld began coming forward to help him.

  ‘No!’ cried Jack, his ears ringing, his head in thundering pain. ‘No! Leave him to me.’

  While behind Slew, the Emperor seemed to have come to his senses. He had raised his arms to right and left to sto
p his own people going to Slew’s aid.

  ‘Let them fight!’

  ‘But my Lord, the gems, the fire, your safety . . .’ said Blut.

  ‘I am alive, Blut, never more so . . . It is the Master’s task to fight on my behalf and, it would seem, this young hydden’s desire to challenge him on behalf of . . . whom?’

  ‘Brum, it seems, my Lord. They are citizens of Brum.’

  The Emperor laughed, looking around with such command that all those of his Court remaining fell back.

  As for Lady Leetha, she still seemed in shock.

  She turned to the Emperor saying, ‘You must stop them, Lord, please stop them . . .’

  ‘No,’ said the Emperor, ‘I will not.’

  While Feld, understanding Jack’s wish to fight on his own and thinking perhaps that this way fewer would be hurt and if right was on their side the gems would be theirs, held their own people back.

  The cry of ã Faroün died, the roar of the curtains of flame took its place, as Slew, still smiling, waited for Jack to come forward again.

  Take them,’ he said, stepping to one side of the arks. ‘They are yours . . .’

  His stave turned in the air, shadows formed about it, whirling about him, hiding where he was, his whereabouts confused by his laughter, which seemed like shadows too.

  Bang!

  And Jack reeled.

  Bang!

  And he spun round, his stave turning in the air above him. Thrust!

  And one of his ribs cracked and pain shot through his body, sudden stabs of pain from rib to side, from rib to lung, from rib to his upper back.

  Pain!

  Jack knew pain, his boyhood had been lost to pain, and it held no more fear, nor any power over him.

  He reached his hand and arm through it . . . and began to wield his stave as he should.

  Thrust! Bang! Twist! went Slew’s ironclad but each move was now parried by Jack.

  Then on through the blows that followed until Jack caught up his spiralling stave and rose into its power and let its spinning turn carry him off and away to safety.

  Shadows?

  He knew their meaning and their seductive darkness.

  He reached his other hand up, flipped his stave into an attacking position, shifted in the air, and turned the ancient carvings that Brief had honoured all his life towards the flames around the room.

  Shadows?

  Jack laughed as the carvings caught the light, fractured it into a thousand shards of brightness that spun out like starlings seeking the shadows with which Slew surrounded himself, breaking them up, revealing his feet once more, his legs, his arms, catching his dark cloak in their shining beaks and ripping it to shreds so that he was utterly exposed.

  Bang! and Jack’s blow caught him on the neck.

  Bang! and the next hit Slew on the arm and broke it.

  Thrust! And the third took him in the groin and Slew screamed and whirled away, his last shadows fleeing, his hair streaming, his eyes fearful, his stomach sick.

  Bang! and his head began to bleed, one eye to swell, his beauty to be destroyed as he fell onto the floor near the arks which, pushed and buffeted by his body, began to sway.

  Jack did not hesitate.

  He went in for the kill, and stood over him, the end of his stave raised over Slew’s throat.

  ‘For Brief,’ he said coldly, ‘five minutes of whose life was worth yours in its entirety.’

  ‘Nooooooooooooo!’

  It was Lady Leetha, running past the Emperor and to Slew’s side, her jewels torn and tumbling from her chest, her arms raised against Jack’s stave.

  ‘He is my son.’

  Jack’s eyes were cold and black as the agate she had worn, which now lay in the dust.

  To right and left the jewelled arks swayed.

  He reached a hand to still them, first one, then the other.

  ‘Your son killed a much-loved hydden to steal the gem whose possession you now celebrate. Why then should I not kill him?’

  He raised his stave higher.

  Tears came to Leetha’s eyes and her hands and arms fell slowly to rest on Slew’s chest and shoulder as he groaned.

  ‘Because he is your brother,’ she whispered. ‘Because of that.’

  Jack stood staring down at them, unable to make sense of what he heard, unable to believe into whose eyes he gazed, unable to think.

  Leetha helped Slew sit up, Jack backed off.

  Slew staggered to his feet, his stave clattering on the ground, his pale smile returning.

  ‘He doesn’t remember, Mother, he was too young. Let him then have something to remember me by next time we meet . . .’

  Slew opened the ark that contained the gem of Summer and reached inside.

  He found what it was he sought and sighed.

  He seemed suddenly to gain strength, his eye to heal, his face to glow with health as light suffused him for a time and dazzled them all. Then, closing his hand upon the gem, he quelled the light.

  He took his hand, a fist now, out of the ark and held it high.

  ‘You can take the other one as you will,’ he said, ‘but this I give freely to my brother . . . for – ’ he laughed a bleak, ill-intentioned laugh – ‘for letting me live.’

  He offered his clenched hand to Jack.

  ‘Take it,’ he said.

  Jack, confused by all that was happening, silently offered his hand.

  Stort pushed forward past Feld, ‘No! Jack! Do not touch the gem . . .’

  It was too late.

  Jack took it, fell back at the shock of it, steadied himself as Slew turned away, shaken by the fight, made weak by the gem. Jack opened his hand, shook his head in puzzlement, slipped the gem into the pouch Stort proffered and said shakily, ‘I’m all right, I think I’m all right.’ Perhaps he was, but he looked dazed and seemed unable to think clearly, or to know what to do next.

  It was Feld who took final command.

  ‘Stort, get the other gem and its pendant. Now. Barklice, help him. You others, form a protective ring around us; I am not convinced that Jack is well and we need to get him out of here.’

  Stort and Barklice took the other gem from its ark without a single word from the Emperor, who simply stood and stared and seemed not to care.

  Leetha went to his and Slew’s sides. She stared at Jack, horror-struck and guilty, but he did not look at her. He was too dazed, too confused.

  ‘Right,’ said Feld, maintaining the initiative, ‘. . . and where now?’

  The fire had taken hold in the area where they had come in. The hall had emptied through the other entrance but that was now filling with Fyrd, summoned to help and beginning to look threatening. The strength of the opposing forces, having gone one way, now swung back to the other.

  But there was one person there who had barely moved at all from beginning to end of these events, having taken refuge behind the arras. He now emerged.

  He was small, he was bold and he was Parlance, the most famous chef in the Hyddenworld.

  ‘Ah, Messieurs Stort et Jacques!’ he cried, unruffled by the mayhem all about. ‘’Ow good to see you again. Zis way!’

  He moved back quickly behind the heavy arras to an open door there. Feld pushed Jack through and Stort and Barklice followed, and as Blut shouted a command to stop them Barklice crashed it shut and bolted it.

  ‘Parlance?’ said Jack unbelievingly.

  The diminutive chef was dressed in his work clothes, his knives at his belt and his huge chef’s hat upon his head. The medal that the Emperor had awarded him earlier was on his chest.

  ‘It is moi,’ said Parlance, ‘but forget the politesse, your lives are at stake. They are slow now, but soon they will be fast. You will go that way . . . and I will tell them you went this way . . .’

  ‘That way’ was up some stairs and round a corner out of sight.

  ‘There is a door,’ said Parlance almost urgently, ‘take it for it leads to la liberté, but have a care, there are chie
ns méchants out there . . .’ He shrugged philosophically. ‘But paupers cannot be choosers, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Ah non!’ said Parlance, sadly, ‘I ’ave a soufflé awaiting my attention!’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Jack, suddenly hesitant.

  Something was dawning on him.

  If Slew was his brother and that woman was Slew’s mother then she must be his mother too . . .

  The door they had bolted was now being battered by heavy feet and staves and could not last many seconds more.

  ‘Quick mes braves! Shoo . . . shoo!’

  Which Jack and the others did, their heads full of questions, but in the knowledge that the gems were safely in Stort’s possession.

  ‘À bientô!’ cried Parlance, running towards the bolted door and affecting, as it gave way just as Jack and the others disappeared, to be trying to open it himself.

  ‘Ah! Messieurs et Madame! I am so short I cannot reach zis bolt! But quick, you may still catch les monstres from Brum, they ’ave disparu down zos stairs . . .’

  They charged in the direction he was pointing, Slew at their head, Blut following behind.

  Parlance, having made sure that Jack had made good his escape and no one was looking, darted up the stairs and closed and bolted the door through which they had gone up to the outside world.

  That done, the chef checked his chronometer and headed back down the stairs towards the Imperial kitchen, mopping his brow.

  43

  EVENING

  When Katherine and the Foales had got back to Woolstone Margaret still felt unwell. Next day Arthur took her for a check-up in Oxford. Katherine wanted to do the driving but Margaret preferred to go with Arthur alone.

  Until the last year she had never been unwell in her life. It had always been Arthur, and always she who looked after him. Now it was his turn to look after her and it felt right that way.

  They had been married nearly half a century, had good times and bad, and they had reached the point where, for some things, words were not needed.