Beyond the Burning Lands

by John Christopher

  I said: “Thank you, sir. But I must . . .”

  He pushed me ahead of him through the entrance to the tent and steered me to a table at the center. I realized that this was not the first tavern he had visited since he sold his cows. He shouted for mulled ale—a pint for him and a gill for me. There were others round us and he was between me and the entrance. For the moment there was nothing I could do.

  I expected questions: who I was, where I lived, all natural enough but things to which I might find difficulty in making safe answer. To my relief, after he had seen me take my first sip of the hot spiced ale, he turned his attention to other men sitting at the table. They were talking of some scandal involving a Captain of the Prince’s guard, and my farmer had much to say and loudly. I sat quiet beside him. When I had finished my gill, I would slip away. He was so engrossed that he perhaps would not notice my going.

  Concerned with this and not much interested in local gossip, I did not at first realize that the conversation had changed. I was made aware of it when my companion declared, loudly enough to make me sit up despite the wool over my ears:

  “That I don’t believe! No one can cross the Burning Lands. Whoever says so is a liar.”

  “But he that told me saw the man himself.”

  It was a thin, leathery old fellow who spoke, a veteran judging by the scar that ran down one cheek. The farmer said:

  “And knew it was so, I warrant, by the flames that came out of his boots and the cinders in his beard!”

  The veteran said stubbornly: “There is a pass. It lies due north of Marlborough.” This was a town in Oxford’s territory and lying nearest to the Burning Lands. “He had to go through hot ash, he said, and he did indeed singe his boots with it. But he came through. His city lies far to the north, beyond savage places.”

  “He tells a good tale,” the farmer said. “But there have always been liars and the world will never run short of fools to believe them.”

  He laughed and so did others. The thin man said:

  “The one who told me fought at my side through a score of campaigns. No liar and no fool.” He rose to his feet and stared at the farmer. “Do you say he is, friend?”

  At our table there was sudden quiet. The veteran might be fifteen years older than the farmer and scarcely more than half his size, but his voice had a honed edge of menace. The farmer laughed again but with less ease.

  “I say it is time we had another drink! All of us. You too, old soldier.” He waved to the potman. “And I will pay the round. And one for your comrade, if he comes in, and one for the traveler from beyond the Burning Lands!”

  He was doing his best to pass it off as a joke but I knew, as all there did, that he was backing down from fear of an older and smaller man. The veteran said nothing but kept his cold gaze on him. The farmer said:

  “By the Great, it’s hot in here!” He undid his coat. “I am sweating like a pig. And look at this lad!” He wished, I realized, to turn attention from himself. “Sitting there stewing in a balaclava. Take it off, boy, and be at your ease.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I do not—”

  “I say you shall!” He had found someone he could safely bully and was not to be thwarted. His hand tugged open my tunic top and grasped the bottom of the balaclava. I tried to prevent him but he did not want for strength nor against a boy off the streets, courage. He ripped the woolen helmet roughly up over my face and head.

  I heard a shocked murmur as my shaved head was exposed. The farmer said:

  “What have we here?” Disgust and triumph were both present in his voice. “This is a fine sight—an Acolyte in an ale tent on the eve of the Feast! We will see what the Seer says to it.”

  • • •

  The stocks were in the open square in front of the Prince’s palace. I was fastened in, legs and arms through holes in the wood, and the planks locked down. There had been a heavy frost in the night which lingered in a dank white mist. But I did not have much time to brood on being cold. A crowd had collected even before I arrived under escort, and wasted scant time in showing what it thought of an Acolyte who went from the Seer’s House in disguise and supped in ale tents.

  There was no shortage of rotting vegetables and similar refuse, and one would think the hens of Salisbury were trained to lay month-old eggs for this very purpose. A Sergeant stood by to make sure no stones were thrown, but a roll of stale bread, as I learned, can be hard enough. Several rapped my skull and one drew blood from my face when I did not duck fast enough.

  But pain and discomfort were nothing compared with humiliation, and humiliation was overridden by hatred—not so much against the throwers as against the High Seers for allowing me to suffer such a punishment. I felt so bitter, so betrayed, that I had a mind to shout out the whole truth about them and the Sanctuary—to tell these people who mocked me that they themselves were mocked, that the Spirits were a lie and the Seances webs of trickery.

  It would have done no good, of course. They would merely have thought me mad as well as wicked. There was nothing for it but to endure the jeers and the filth in silence.

  At the point at which I reached this conclusion I found myself with defenders after all. A group came who by the crosses embroidered on their clothing were plainly Christians. There were half a dozen of them and they remonstrated with the ones who were pelting me with rubbish. I could just make out the drift of their argument above the din. The stocks, they declared, were an evil custom at best, but on this, the day of the birth of their Lord, it was foul blasphemy to torture another living creature.

  I did not know which Lord they spoke of—I had thought they recognized no human authority except their priests—but I welcomed the small relief from my tormentors. Small indeed; they did not waste time arguing but continued throwing. Then the Christians carried their folly further, walking out to form a screen in front of me. I felt less gratitude for this than contempt for their idiocy. No guard could stand by and tolerate such interference with an official punishment, especially one not only ordered by the Prince but asked for by the High Seers.

  The Sergeant gave his orders. The Christians offered no resistance as the guard put them up also to be shied at. There was only room for three more in the stocks, so the rest were manacled hand and foot and left lying in the snow beside us. All this put the crowd in a thoroughly good humor, and with so many more targets I got off more lightly for the rest of my stay.

  The Christians sang their chants all the while they were there. They were still singing when the guards released me and led me away.

  • • •

  It was Murphy who received me in the Seer’s House. He was cold and distant in the presence of the soldiers, but said when we were left alone:

  “Well, Luke, I hope they did not give you too hard a time of it.”

  I stared at him. I was covered with filth and my head throbbed. The cut beneath my eye was swelling. I said:

  “Hard enough, sir. It is kind of you to inquire.”

  “Listen,” he said, “you did a foolish thing in going out last night. You were caught, and punishment followed. It is something that must be accepted.”

  “I was brought to you. You did not need to hand me back to them, to ask to have me put in the stocks.”

  “No? I think we did. You are by your age plainly a trainee, too young to have taken vows and so lacking the protection of our cloth. It is essential for the common people to respect that cloth. Since you disgraced it in their eyes, it was necessary that those eyes should witness your thing. To be made sport of by the mob is another.”

  I said: “There are things due to me also. My father was Prince of a greater city than this. Punishment is one thing. To be made sport of by the mob is another.”

  “It offends your dignity?”

  “I have been trained to fight,” I said, “to face wounding or death, even death by execution. But not to endure the mockery of curs. I saw polymufs grinning at me.”

  “Your dignity is no
t important. That is something you have to learn.”

  “But the dignity of the High Seers is?”

  Murphy shook his head. “No. What is important is the restoration of human order and human knowledge. Everything must serve that.”

  I looked at him angrily, in silence. He said:

  “Remember that we made your father Prince and made you Prince in Waiting. We brought you from Winchester when there was a score of men eager to cut you down, confident that the new Prince, your brother, would thank them for it, and glad anyway to see one Perry the less. We have kept you in the Sanctuary and may yet restore you to this dignity which you prize so much.”

  “Yet! In what time? Five years? Ten? Fifty, perhaps?”

  “Sooner, I hope.” He relaxed and smiled. “How would you like to leave the Sanctuary and go back to Winchester, Luke?”

  I shook my head. “Do not mock me, sir.”

  “No mocking. I have a Christmas gift for you. Your brother seeks your return and pledges his word to your safety.”

  I said, scarcely trusting myself to believe it: “This is not a joke?”

  “News came this morning while you were in the stocks. Your brother is married to a Christian, as you know. The man they say was a god was born, they also say, on this day more than twenty-two centuries ago. Perhaps she asked it of your brother; the Christians’ ways are strange.”

  I thought of the Christians putting themselves between me and the mob. I wondered if they were still in the stocks, and still chanting.

  I said: “It is really true? When do I leave?”

  “You are eager to be rid of us,” Murphy said. “We return to the Sanctuary tomorrow and you will leave a few days after that.”

  I believed it now and forgot my anger and my bruises. I forgot even the filth with which I was smeared. It was Murphy who reminded me of it. Sniffing, he said:

  “A more urgent need is that you have a bath and change into clean linen. Our somber black for a while still. But because of your disgrace you will not appear at any ceremonies, nor sit solemn at the banquet. That is another good thing you get from today’s misfortunes.”

  TWO

  TOASTS AT A BANQUET

  EZZARD ACCOMPANIED ME ON MY return to Winchester. It was accepted by Peter that my life had been in danger in the days following our father’s murder and his own accession, and that the Seer had been right to take me away. That was the official story, but I imagined there was more to it. Though he had married a Christian Peter himself was a Spiritist, as far as he was anything, and so also were his Captains. It was not easy even for a strong Prince to defy the Seers for long.

  We went on horseback, openly, Ezzard in Seer’s robes and I in clothes befitting my rank. I wore also a sword, a parting gift from the High Seers: the Sword of the Spirits which had been promised to me when they came to Winchester after the taking of Petersfield. Handing it to me, Murphy said:

  “Steel, case-hardened in an induction furnace. You will find no metal to come near it, and no blade that will match it in strength and cutting edge. Look after it and it will serve you well.”

  We called at various towns on our way. Everywhere Ezzard let it be known that I was returning on my brother’s invitation, thus binding his honor more firmly to my safety. The precaution, as he said, was probably unnecessary, but it was best to take no chances. So despite my impatience we did not hurry on the journey.

  But at last, having spent the night as guests of its Prince, we left Andover in the morning and I had high hopes of reaching Winchester by night. The weather dashed these: a light fall of snow before midday turned, in the afternoon, into a driving blizzard. We had passed Headbourne Worthy, the nearest village north of the city, and had not much more than a mile to go. The distance was tantalizingly short but as the wind howled and the blinding snow drove into our faces, even I was forced to agree that we must seek shelter. We found it in a farm, where we were respectfully received and well looked after. They gave us tidings of the city, to which I listened greedily. The farmer and his wife had a son, a boy of twelve. He told me he had seen me win the Sword of Honor in the Contest, and recited a full account of it. His dream was to be a warrior, and I told him to come to me when he was of age and I would enlist him in my troop. He was deeply grateful for the promise, which I thought was likely to profit me also. He was a strong, capable lad, with the makings of a soldier. His mother was less pleased, since he was her only son, but she would reconcile herself to losing him: she must have known he was not the sort of boy to stay on a farm once he was grown.

  I had feared, when we retired to bed with the blizzard still howling, that we might be immured in the farmhouse for days. The morning dawned clear, however, the sky gray but no longer threatening, and when the servants had cut a path through drifted snow to the stable we were able to leave. Our horses floundered at times where the snow was loosely packed but we made fair progress. I saw, even in this landscape blanketed in white, landmarks I knew: Wherry’s mill, a clump of fir trees that leaned in toward each other like conspirators, a rusty crumbling shaft that came from the ancient times and was shunned by children, being thought to harbor ghosts. And beyond these, so familiar and so dear, the walls of my native city. I was home again. Turning my head so that Ezzard would not see, I put up my sleeve and brushed the dampness from my eyes.

  • • •

  If I had any doubts of my welcome they were dispelled by the shout of joy from the guard on the North Gate. Its Sergeant, who had been in my father’s troop when he was still a Captain and whom I could remember, when I was five or six, fencing with me with wooden sticks for swords, gave me the ceremonial salute, and his men yelled their heads off in acclamation. The ordinary people took up the cry and followed us through the streets as we rode to the palace. And the news must have gone ahead because when we reached the palace yard many of the Captains were assembled. I saw Greene and Meredith and Nicoll, small watchful Harding who had hoped to he Prince after my father’s death, and blustering Blaine who had cuffed me into a corner when I urged them to ride against our own walls to avenge him. I saw Edmund’s brother, Charles, whose father had been Prince until my father, with Ezzard’s help, unseated him. And last I saw my brother, who held that title which the Spirits, through Ezzard’s trickery, had promised to me: Prince of Winchester.

  I dismounted and let a soldier take my horse. I walked toward Peter, my feet sinking into snow which the polymufs had not yet had time to clear away. I bowed my head and said:

  “Greetings, sire.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder. He said, smiling:

  “No ceremony between brothers! Come in, Luke, and we will drink your health.”

  • • •

  The day of my return had been proclaimed a feast, and in the evening there was to be a banquet in celebration. Meanwhile there was the confusion of people greeting me. Some were sincere; others, I very well knew, were not. Blaine, who fulsomely gave thanks to the Spirits for protecting me, would have liked to slip a dagger between my ribs. Harding, a more wily man, would have preferred to watch him, or any other, do it. But there were those like Sergeant Burke, who looked after me on my first campaign, and Wilson, my father’s most trusted comrade, whose gladness was real and unmistakable. There was also Ann, the Prince’s Lady.

  I had seen little of her in the old days. The estrangement between Peter and me had kept me from visiting the house in the River Road where they lived; and of course she was a Christian and so of no importance in the city.

  I had known her as a quiet, perhaps simple woman, without beauty or indeed much else to explain my brother’s choosing her. When I paid my respects I found she had only one woman in attendance—my mother had never had less than half a dozen. This one she dismissed, if dismissal is the right term to use of what was no more than a request, modestly put, that we might be left alone together. She said:

  “Let me look at you. Have they been taking proper care of you, your High Seers? You are paler than you were.
And taller. And they have shaved your head, but that will soon grow. We shall see that mop of fierce black hair again before spring.”

  I was surprised that she paid me such attention, or remembered me so well. And her smile surprised me with its warmth, and the way it changed a face which I had thought plain and insignificant. I made some sort of reply and she said:

  “I cannot express how glad I am to see you, Luke. Not only for your sake but for Peter’s. He could not be happy, knowing you were in exile and from fear of him. He would never have harmed you, and this reconciliation gladdens his heart. He has been so much happier since he asked the Seers to send you back and they agreed.”

  And also, I guessed, since he had done that which was pleasing to his wife’s strange Christian conscience. Nor had I any doubt that the main urging for my recall had come from her. Her influence over him was plainly great and this was something to be remembered. I could not see why it should be so—why a man should let any woman dominate his mind—but the fact that one did not understand a thing was no reason for not weighing its effects. There would not be many things in which Peter would run counter to her wishes.

  I said: “I am glad to be back, my Lady.”

  She shook her head. “Call me Ann, as your sister. My Lady is not a title I like, in any case. There is only one who merits it—the mother of our Lord.”

  The Lord being, as Murphy had explained, the Christian god. It was puzzling to think of a god with a mother but I thought it best to ask no questions. I was not, in any case, interested in the oddities of their religion. We talked together for a time and kissed as brother and sister when we parted.

  • • •

  I had sent messages to Edmund and Martin, saying I would be at our usual meeting place at four of the afternoon. I got to the Ruins a little before that. I went down the stairs and, lighting my way with a candle, through the secret way to the hidden door and our den behind it. Inside I found an oil lamp which I lit. It was still strange not to command the bright steady light of electricity at the flick of a switch; the illumination from the lamp was dim and patchy, leaving shadows in the corners. But even by its feeble glow I could see that the place had fallen into disuse. Dust was thick on every surface. The chessboard was set out with pieces and a spider had stretched its web across them. That probably meant that Martin had been here last. It was he who was keen on chess problems and Edmund, in any case, would have tidied up before leaving: he could not bear disorder.