Beyond the Burning Lands

by John Christopher

  Greene and Bristow were giving orders for the night. Hans was already seeking a place for me to sleep. I saw him dragging away one of the fallen tapestries to provide me with a bed, and hoped it was less damp than some I had seen. But the suspicion was unworthy. I knew already that I had never had a servant as intelligent or as careful of my wishes.

  I said: “Since we have nothing to do we may as well explore upstairs.”

  The staircase like the floor of the hall was marble. A crack had opened between two steps but otherwise, apart from dirt which had blown in and here and there sprouted blades of grass, it seemed undamaged, though many of the wooden balusters had broken or fallen away. Halfway up it turned on itself and split, forming a double flight to the next floor. We reached a broad wooden landing with many doors. Some had fallen and others hung from broken hinges; some were closed.

  There were fewer signs of damage by animals—only small rodents would have been likely to climb the stairs—but much of decay from weather. In the first two rooms we looked at, the ceilings had fallen in heaps of cracked and moldering plaster, covering floor and furniture. In one there was a gaping hole through which one saw another room above, and past that a patch of shattered roof. We turned to others which were in less ruinous condition.

  Light was draining out of the sky as the day drew to a close. The wind blew in through naked frames and tugged at a loose strip of paper on the wall. Soon—next year if not this—it would have ripped it free. I pulled at it myself and tore it off; then felt regret. There had been splendor here. The elements were doing their work of destruction in their own good time and needed no help.

  Edmund called: “Luke!”

  He had opened one of the closed doors and was standing just inside. It was a room which had been more protected than most. The ceiling was almost intact and both windows had glass in them.

  It was also smaller and perhaps this had contributed to its preservation. There was dust everywhere but the furniture seemed unharmed and the thick red carpet, except where the moths had taken their meals, was dry and unfaded. Along one wall was a sofa, its covering also moth-scarred but otherwise intact, and several chairs were dotted about. Edmund, gingerly at first, sat in one which had a hooped back supported on wooden struts. I said: “This looks more comfortable,” and headed for one with a high back and sides. It was turned the other way. I pulled it toward me—and stopped in shock.

  That which sat in the chair collapsed at my jerk and in a moment was no more than a jumble of bones inside a crumpled heap of cloth, but for one brief instant I had seen it as it had rested for countless years: the upright skeleton with its grinning skull staring out of the window at what had once perhaps been lawn not forest.

  Edmund and I looked down in silence. He said:

  “Do you think the Disaster killed him?”

  “Maybe. But it is more likely he died later. This place was strongly built but the shock that brought down the other part would surely have tumbled him from his chair. Perhaps he lived here afterward, waiting for people to come. Perhaps for years.”

  A low table by the chair had an intricately engraved jar of crystal glass, which was empty. Beside it lay an oblong box made of gold. I lifted a lid and found inside small cylinders of a fragile white material packed with dried grass. Or so it seemed, but the smell was not a grass smell; it had a peculiar aromatic richness.

  “And this,” Edmund said.

  It stood in a corner and I had not seen it because of the shadows there. It was a cabinet of polished wood with a row of metal knobs near the top, containing a square glass screen with darker glass behind it. I knew what it was from a picture I had seen in the Sanctuary: the device by which our ancestors had received moving pictures through the air, across the breadth of the planet and even from the distant Moon. I stared at it in fascination. Under one knob it said BRIGHTNESS, under another CONTRAST. Words which once had meaning. Edmund said:

  “A machine.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you show no horror of it.”

  I said quickly: “I did not realize what it was.”

  I turned away from the television set. Edmund said:

  “You are different since coming back from the Sanctuary. As Martin is since he turned Acolyte.”

  I felt the sting of rebuke. We had been the closest of friends and yet I must keep so much from him. Reading my face, he said:

  “It does not matter, Luke.”

  And I knew that was true. The rebuke was my own, to myself. I would have been jealous if I had thought Edmund put something else before our friendship, but he was not. His smile showed it.

  There was a noise on the landing and the peddler came in. He poked about among the contents of the room. Neither the broken skeleton nor the television set got more than cursory glances, but his eyes fastened on the gold box.

  “Genuine,” he said, “and heavy!”

  He moved to put it in his jacket. I said:

  “Leave it.”

  His gaze met mine, sharp and calculating. “We’ll split two ways.” He glanced at Edmund. “Three. But let me do the selling. I have contacts.”

  “Put it back,” I said.

  “But why? That is stupidity. Who owns it?”

  I dropped my hand onto my sword hilt. The peddler put down the box, shrugged and went away. We heard him stamp off down the corridor. Edmund said:

  “He will slip up here afterward and get it. Or mark the place down for his next trip south.”

  “Very likely.”

  There would always be greed and meanness and spoiling, and maybe all good things must fall to them in the end; but at least one did not have to take part in it or watch it. In the darkness that was fast deepening, I peered at a picture in a gold frame on the wall. It was small and murky and showed an old and ugly man, but there was something about it, about the patient eyes in the wrinkled face, that caught the heart with its beauty. I read the artist’s name on the brass plate underneath. Even I, knowing little of the craft, could tell that he had been a far greater painter than Margry, this Rembrandt.

  When we left I carefully closed the door behind us.

  • • •

  Our journey continued through several days. We did not find as good a shelter for the night again, but made do. The beasts we saw for the most part kept their distance. Once the peddler took us to a village where he was known and where we could buy food. They accepted our money though the head of the Prince of Winchester on the coins could have meant nothing to them; but silver can always be melted down. The peddler haggled with them on our behalf. They sold us bread and beef, the latter in joints. I wondered what the animals had looked like on the hoof—what sort of hoofs they had, in fact, if they had any—but held my peace, and if Greene had scruples he kept them to himself. After all, who could tell what sort of corn the bread was made from?

  The villagers were a rough and dirty lot, poorly fed and clothed in skins. Not all had this protection. I saw an almost naked child, shivering, blue with cold, and gave him a woolen from my pack. Within five minutes one of the men was wearing it. I would have taken it from him and restored it to the child, but Edmund restrained me. The moment we left the child would lose it again. I was not convinced, and he said:

  “And be beaten for it, into the bargain. This way he may gain something—a crust of bread thrown to him, maybe, for conscience’s sake.”

  “Conscience? In such a one as that?”

  “Who knows? And the beating would be well-nigh certain. Have sense, Luke.”

  These people were of all kinds—human and polymuf with a few dwarfs—and it was shocking to find that they seemed to make no distinctions: one of the leaders of the tribe had a purple mark covering half his face. But of course they were savages and could not be expected to follow civilized practices. They invited us to stay there that night and I was glad that Greene refused, even though in the end we slept under bushes and awoke in the small hours with rain soaking us.

  • •
•

  Five days after crossing the Burning Lands we were attacked.

  We had left the river valley we had followed so long and were heading, west of north, through hilly country. The track passed through a defile which narrowed toward its end. At that point our ears were assailed by a dreadful caterwauling and savages dropped down on us from an overhanging ledge of rock.

  They had the advantage of surprise and one of the first half dozen dragged a soldier from his horse before he realized what was happening. They also had superiority in numbers—at least three to one though it was impossible to make anything but a rough guess. But their preponderance ended there. I saw one jump at me and slashed with my sword so that he fell howling. Another, who had first dropped to the ground, came at me from the side and hung gibbering on my horse’s saddle for a moment or two before I chopped him away. Garance reared, and her descending hoof cracked the skull of a third.

  The engagement, if one could give it such a name, lasted a very short time—no more than minutes. As soon as they realized we had their measure they fled. Those who had dropped on us ran off down the ravine and the rest, after yowling at us briefly, melted away also, though they were perfectly safe up there from any counterattack. They left a dozen of their fellows behind, some dead, some noisily writhing.

  One reason I had felt no alarm even at the launching of the attack was that I had taken them for polymufs. They were nearly naked and I saw that their skins were not white but blue. This blue now was stained with red and examining them one saw that it was not pigmentation but paint, which covered them from their foreheads to the soles of their feet. They were true men. Any polymufs there may have been among them had either not joined the attack or had got away safely.

  Their armament was pitiful, consisting of small daggers, the largest less than a foot long. One of our soldiers had been wounded, but although his arm had bled freely the cut was a surface one only. They had not even hamstrung any of the horses which had probably been the greatest risk we ran. I think the horses had frightened them as much as we had.

  The peddler made more of all this than was reasonable. I heard later that during the skirmish he had buried his head in his hands against his horse’s neck and might have been our other casualty had the soldiers near him not dealt briskly with his assailants. Now he hymned our bravery and discipline in extravagant terms; one would think our few minutes of parrying and beating off these decorated dervishes was a feat to be compared to the storming of the walls of Petersfield in the teeth of deadly cannon fire. I reminded myself that he had probably never seen warriors in action before but I still found his enthusiasm surprising.

  We left the dead and wounded where they lay, presuming that when we had gone their comrades would return and dispose of or aid them as they thought best. Edmund had ridden ahead with Greene and Hans took his place at my side. The dwarf was happy as I had never before seen him, his face glowing. He held his sword up over the pommel of the horse. Blood dripped down the blade and stained the hilt. I said:

  “There is a rag in my pouch if you wish to clean it.”

  Hans shook his head. “No, Captain.” He gazed at the sword a moment longer and then resheathed it. “I will leave it as it is.”

  • • •

  In the middle of the next day we reached a village standing on the confluence of two eastward-flowing rivers. The people here were not savages but wore linen clothes, exotic in style and color like the peddler’s. He was known to them and they crowded round us in curiosity and welcome. They fed us well and would take no payment. We were ambassadors to the King and must be given due hospitality.

  In fact, as the peddler told us, we were less than ten miles from the city. We set out to cover the last stretch in the early afternoon, resisting the efforts of the villagers to ply us with more cakes and with sweet sticky drinks that even when measured in tiny pots two inches high made one’s head spin a little.

  We rode up a valley between hills that drew in on either side and were backed by high mountains. The road ran close by the river and was in good condition, and we saw farms and houses, the latter so painted as to look like the dwellings of dwarfs; but the peddler, when I asked him this, said no—the Wilsh loved color and used as much of it as they could.

  And gradually the houses were more numerous and packed closer together. I was riding in the van with Greene, the peddler between us. I saw what was plainly a forge, its fire visible through the open door.

  I said: “That is strange, Yews, surely—a forge outside the city?”

  He shook his head. “Not outside, Captain. We are in the city now.”

  Greene, as astonished as I was, asked: “But where are your walls?”

  “There are none.” The peddler smiled. “We have no need of walls.”

  SIX

  KING CYMRU’S DAUGHTER

  ROAD AND VALLEY TURNED A corner and there was no more doubt that we had entered a city: on either side rose buildings, high built and crowding together up the slopes. They were altogether different from those to which we were accustomed. Apart from their tallness, which could have arisen from the narrowness of the valley and consequent scarcity of land, they formed a coruscation of color, a wild profusion of towers and domes and spires. Their tops looked like spears, thrust up to the sky in bright defiance of its lowering grayness. All was sharp and pointed: the slim square towers had spikes at their corners and the domes were tined like so many gaudy onions.

  And suddenly our presence was known and welcomed; everywhere faces looked down from windows or slim balconies and there was cheering and the waving of gay cloths. The pigeons must have been sent from the village to give word of our coming. This was made fully evident when, clattering along a road built of smoothly joined blocks of granite, we found the way blocked by other horsemen. Greene signaled us to walk our horses, and I saw his hand go from the gesture to touch his sword hilt. As mine, for reassurance, had already done. Not that we would have much chance against armed warriors in their own city.

  But these offered us no defiance. Their snorting horses formed two lines, on either side of the road, with a single rider between. One was aware of his magnificence first. I thought he must be a polymuf giant, so tall he was, until I realized that much of his height came from the helmet which rose high above his head and ended in an even higher plume of white feathers that swayed and jiggled with each movement of his horse. Nor was that all. His breastplate gleamed silver against a yellow doublet with great puffy sleeves, and the red leather boots which came high up his thighs had ornamental silver trimmings down the sides and a row of big silver buttons at the top. I saw something else as we drew near but could scarcely believe it. The boots ended in false points, fully nine inches long, which were silver tipped. How in the name of the Great, I thought, could a man mount wearing such monstrosities; and what would happen should he need to dismount in a hurry?

  The attendant warriors though not reaching his splendor were vivid enough. We would have looked shabby by comparison even on setting out, and we had traveled far and in conditions that offered small opportunity for grooming. Doubtless we were a sorry lot in their eyes. And yet . . . their boots, too, were pointed. Not quite to the length of those of the solitary rider but I would not have cared to sit a horse while wearing them.

  Their leader raised one hand, open with facing palm. I noticed a broad belt and a long sword hilt, both thick with colored stones, but his aspect was peaceful. Greene signaled again, and we halted.

  The man said: “Greetings. I am Kluellan, Colonel of the King’s Guard. King Cymru bids you welcome to his city and his palace.”

  Greene made courteous reply, his mustache points bristling but his manner easy. He had a talent for such things. I watched Kluellan while formalities were exchanged. He was not a big man but small, his face dark and thin with a wispy beard. And his horse, though caparisoned with a luxury beyond anything I had seen even in Ladies’ jennets, was not remarkable: I would not have exchanged any one of ou
rs for it.

  This ceremony over, the Colonel rode beside Greene at the head of our column while his horsemen flanked us. The spectators made it a festive occasion, shouting and cheering and giving vent to bursts of song in surprising unison and tunefulness. The warmth of our welcome was as much beyond normal here as it had fallen short in Marlborough. It resembled a return after a victorious campaign and looking at some of the flushed faces and hearing the wild cries I wondered if they could have been drinking. But I dismissed the notion as absurd: it was not yet mid-afternoon.

  • • •

  I had thought, from the gleam in the peddler’s eye when my brother gave him gold and from the tawdriness of the ornament which he had himself presented as a gift for Ann, that his land might be as poor in precious metals as he had admitted it was poor in stock. His greed over the gold box had made my suspicion sharper.

  It was in stupefaction therefore that I sat down that night at the King’s table. The table itself, running fully seventy feet down a dining chamber half as long again, was covered by a white cloth of spotless heavy damask, so far as I could see without a join in its entire length. On it stood a variety of silver vases filled—incredibly at this season—with red and white roses. Then there were the plates. In Winchester, where we did not reckon ourselves paupers, the Prince and his companions above the salt dined off silver and the Prince himself drank from a gold pot. Here the whole table was laid with gold: plates and pots and even forks.

  Later I learned there was no contradiction between this and the peddler’s greed. In our cities of the south it was true, as it always must be, that some men had more than others of gold and goods. But, polymufs apart, the difference between rich and poor was far less than it was among the Wilsh. The people of Klan Gothlen, all of them, loved color and sparkle, but only the nobility had possessions of much value: the commoners decked themselves with thin copper and colored glass.

  The peddler, even without the gold box, had done well out of his trip; though not well enough to acquire nobility. This was something else I was to be astonished by in the Wilsh: nobility was not granted for bravery in battle but could be bought the way a man might buy a dog, or a bangle for his wife. As Yews had said, they were a trading nation. Someone like him, from being a peddler could become a merchant and, when at last able to buy a house in that part of the city surrounding the palace, be reckoned gentle for doing so.