Brief glowered at the black bag and the long, thin nose that protruded from it.
‘I was given to understand,’ said Brief, ‘that it was you yourself who instructed him to lead us here.’
Imbolc looked innocent and avoided answering by asking, ‘Have you known him long?’
‘Not very,’ replied Brief shortly.
‘But he’s a hydden with some experience?’
‘Just the opposite.’ Brief shook his head. ‘He’s eleven years old and has no experience whatsoever of the real world.’
Imbolc looked even more interested. ‘Yet he still contrived to get you all here?’
‘He’s very . . . persuasive,’ replied Brief grudgingly, and yet not without a tinge of admiration in his voice.
‘Go on, Master Brief, go on.’
A conflict of emotions showed in his expression, before one alone triumphed. It was simple excitement.
‘He says – and he’s not the kind who says anything without meaning it, and feeling confident of proving himself correct – that a, well, the . . . I mean to say he is quite certain that . . .’
‘What, Master Brief? “The” what?’
‘He claims,’ murmured the scrivener, ‘that somebody important to us all will appear hereabout this very day. He says you told him so!’
‘Does he now!’ said Imbolc ambiguously. ‘And just how important will this person be?’
‘You’re more likely to know that than a humble scrivener like me,’ said Brief. ‘But since you ask the question I’ll answer it in good faith. The timing, the bad weather, and the fact you’re involved in some way tells me that we are about to meet one who is giant-born. Am I right?’
‘If you are,’ said Imbolc, ‘then this would be the one who by prophecy and tradition is going to save the Earth and through that the Universe.’
They fell silent, both of them pondering this mystery.
She nodded again towards the animated refuse bag.
‘Tell me about him. What’s he like?’
Brief sighed, shook his head as if in disbelief at the strange times in which he was living, and finally announced with that same tremor of excitement in his voice, ‘The honest truth is that, in all my years, I’ve never met anyone quite like him and, well, I do believe he’s the most extraordinary hydden I have ever met!’
11
STORM WARNING
Jack was sitting alone in the waiting room of a health centre in Thirsk, a small market town in the Vale of York and a few miles east of the motorway to London.
It was the health centre the foster home regularly used and was now a convenient transfer point for Jack from the custody of one health authority to another, after the incident with the other boys. The only problem was that the woman due to pick him up and take him to London hadn’t arrived yet. Bad weather had slowed progress on the motorway, but she had checked in with them on her mobile to confirm she was on her way.
The health centre had agreed to keep an eye on the lad while he waited to be picked up for his further journey south.
Jack sat there expressionless, seemingly confident that somebody would eventually come for him. In the small square outside the trees fretted under gusting winds, while patterns of raindrops slanted down the exterior plate-glass wall. Inside everything felt just fine.
Nothing much happened for quite a while, until a frown unexpectedly settled on the boy’s forehead. He suddenly loosened the strap of his leather backpack and dug inside it. Finding what he wanted, he paused in thought for a moment more before pulling it out, a decision finally made.
He got up and went over to the pile of toys in the corner, and carefully laid the item he had taken from his bag on top of it.
It was his soft toy horse, but a white horse shaped unlike any other – long extended legs, a single eye, pointy ears and head, a long lithe body. A horse so old and worn with travel and time that only the essentials of its life and form remained, with a tail that swirled back into the past just as far as its flowing motion and eager eyes led it forward into the future.
Jack stared at it, muttered something, nodded briefly as if some secret agreement had just been made, and then went back to his seat and to his silent waiting.
He didn’t look at the horse again, rather it stared at him and the world all about it, or seemed to.
Across the room the television flickered as a wild wind outside beat garbage against the clear glass looking onto the square beyond. A sequence of words flashed onto the screen and the grim images that followed made the message’s meaning plain enough. It was a warning of particularly severe weather.
A nationwide alert.
Jack closed his bag and gazed at the television. He looked as if he was carrying the burden of the whole world on his shoulders, but was resigned to that fact uncomplaining.
People arrived and people left, but Jack remained seated in his chair, his backpack clutched tight, waiting patiently.
The alert on the television was repeated a few times more, while the receptionist continued to keep an eye on things in general, and the lone boy in particular.
Outside the first really heavy drops of rain began falling out of an ugly sky. It was no day for a journey.
12
PRODIGY
The chill wind gusting around the railway-bridge arch under which the hydden were sheltering was stronger now and as the rain grew heavier the day darkened.
The five stavermen huddled over to one side, while Imbolc and Master Brief continued talking quietly on the other. The subject of their conversation was now Bedwyn Stort, who had detached himself from them all and gone to squat down at the far end of the arch, resting his back against the dank brickwork.
From time to time the Peace-Weaver glanced discreetly in his direction, hoping to catch a clearer glimpse of him now that she knew something of his history. But he remained almost totally covered by a black plastic bin-bag, from which only his nose and feet protruded.
His story was a strange one, as she had now discovered.
It began when Brief received an unusual request from a retired scrivener living in an obscure hydden village on Englalond’s bleak borderland with Wales. The place itself was called Wardine-on-Severn, and it seemed one of the scrivener’s pupils had expressed a strong desire to learn Welsh.
‘I confess I thought that a little strange,’ commented Brief, ‘but, even in these troubled times, learning is not quite dead.’
As Master Scrivener, it was one of his duties to assist in all matters of education and learning within the former capital city of Brum, which, as all hydden with any love of lore and tradition will know, lay within the heart of the human city of Birmingham, but far down out of sight among its sewers, conduits and waterways, in the tunnels and subterranean arches of its railways, and in the interstices of roads and buildings which humans cannot reach. Brum’s rich and fabled culture was in sorry decline, yet not quite lost.
‘Our archives remain the best in Englalond, and there I found a text that might serve this special purpose. As it was rare and valuable, I entrusted it to a staverman whose integrity was well known to me, namely Mister Pike yonder – the same who is the leader of the five accompanying me today.’
Brief discreetly pointed out the fiercest-looking of the small group. He had the familiar bearing of one who has done military service, his garb clean and well pressed, his cloak heavy but short, his bare arms muscular and his hair cut close.
Brief added confidentially, ‘Pike is very intelligent, utterly dependable, and a fearsome fighter when need be. He also has experience of the Welsh Marches, which is no terrain for the faint-hearted. The grammar I sent him to convey covered the basics of the Welsh language, as well as the topography, history and the strange folklore of that wild and dangerous country. I did not expect to hear much more regarding Wardine, and on his return Pike revealed little about his mission.
‘But, not long after, I had a further missive from my former colleague. He explained that
his pupil, who you’ll guess was Bedwyn Stort, now required something rather more advanced so far as his Welsh studies were concerned. He also wanted any similar texts dealing with the other Celtic languages, such as Breton and Irish, but also the lost languages of Pictish, Ivernic and Lube – the last being the mystic language of the ancient bards, of which even I had barely heard.’
Imbolc looked both surprised and impressed.
‘You may very well imagine that my interest was now aroused,’ continued Brief. ‘Again I sent Pike off to deliver the texts. On his return he this time expressed the view that young Stort might benefit from a little of my attention, but . . . I was busy and I put the matter to one side.
‘A year passed and then I had a further request, this time for texts on a much wider variety of subjects.’
‘Such as?’ asked the Peace-Weaver.
‘Well . . . certain other lost languages, also mathematics, the history and lore of the Mirror-of-All, something on Beornamund, founder of Brum, as well as a tome or two on cosmology and mystic knotting, which, as you know, are somewhat complex subjects for someone barely more than a child.’
Imbolc nodded. Mystic knotting was not a subject most youngsters even knew about let alone desired to study, even assuming a topic so abstruse could be studied at all.
‘So what did you do, Master Brief?’ She noticed that Pike was watching them carefully.
‘I immediately summoned Pike again, and asked him to tell me more about this talented student. What he told me . . . but let him tell you for himself. I think he realizes we’re now talking about him and Stort – of whom he can be somewhat protective.’
He signalled to the staverman, who came over, still looking at Imbolc suspiciously. Close to, he exuded a definite aura of physical strength and strong purpose.
Not a hydden ever to cross lightly, thought the Peace-Weaver.
‘Is she making inquiries after Master Stort?’ Pike growled, eyeing her coldly.
Brief admitted that was so but added, ‘She may be trusted, Mister Pike.’
‘Which means she ain’t really a pedlar,’ he replied at once, ‘seeing as pedlars and their kind are not to be trusted, eh?’
He stood looming over Imbolc, who smiled and said, ‘You’re right, Mister Pike, I’m not a pedlar . . .’
It is given to Peace-Weavers to pass on to mortals the sense of the wider Universe of which they are part. In Imbolc’s eyes Pike saw briefly the beauty of the stars, the orbits of the planets and the colour and vast shifting of the galaxies beyond.
Or was it but the light of love that shone from her to him? Whatever it was, the impression was enough to fill Pike’s eyes with awe, while Brief, who knew the Peace-Weaver’s way of doing things, smiled to see that even one as wary as Pike could be won over so quickly.
‘Oh, yes, she may be trusted, Mister Pike,’ repeated Brief softly.
‘Aye, well,’ said Pike, raising a hand to his eyes as if not sure what had just happened, ‘of that I am glad, for I’d lay down my life for the lad, seeing as he once saved mine. Master Stort yonder has a powerful wyrd about him, which seems to carry mine along with it.’
Imbolc let the matter of wyrd pass without comment, it being too large and profound a subject to discuss in the fading light of a cold wet day under a railway bridge. Anyway, as the weather worsened and the day darkened, there was the sense that things thereabouts would soon come to a head and they should all be ready when they did so, however that might be.
But one thing was clear. For a hydden of Pike’s strength and accomplishments to concede so freely that his own wyrd was subject to a mere child’s was unusual, to say the least.
‘Tell me how it came about that one so young saved your life?’ she asked quietly.
Pike looked both rueful and embarrassed. ‘He did warn me but I did not listen. He has the power of prediction, has Master Stort.’
‘Warn you about what?’
‘Quagmire, down by the River Severn. He would insist on going out and about without protection, refusing even to carry a stave. So I felt it my duty to accompany him, thinking that Master Brief would not like it if all that bookwork came to naught because young Stort had been waylaid and harmed, or worse, by the thieves and robbers who infest those parts.
‘As it was, it was me who nearly died. I ignored his warnings about the dangers of the place, and the next thing I knew I was stuck in it and sinking fast, and would have drowned there and then if he had not acted.’
‘He had the strength to pull you out?’
Pike shook his head. ‘A hundred folk working together couldn’t have got me out. The ground, you see, was treacherous, so they couldn’t have got near without sinking in it themselves. I thought I was properly done for.’
‘So how . . . ?’
‘I’m coming to that. You know what the lad did next, calm as you please? He makes himself comfortable on the nearest solid ground, pulls out a slate and chalk from his pocket, for the purpose of working a few things out, produces a chronometer from another pocket and proceeds to time my rate of sinkage.
‘Naturally, I cursed a bit, but he calmly says, “Mister Pike, I advise you to stop fidgeting, and spread your arms out horizontally. That’ll slow you down a bit.” I did as he said, but even so I continued to sink.
‘“Do something!” says I, beginning to get desperate, for the mud was up to my chest by then. He ignored me, his brow furrowing, and it was then that the humming began.’
‘Humming?’
Pike nodded, his gesture a mixture of weariness and affection.
‘He hums whenever he’s working out a problem. Only trouble is there’s no hydden alive less able to hold a tune or even produce a harmonious note, come to that. Stort’s humming is an agony to all about him, and I almost began longing for that mud to rise right up over my ears. Hum, hum, hum . . .
‘I may have cursed a bit and he may have said, “More haste less speed,” or words to that effect. I know we both got angry with each other for a while. By then the mud was up over my chest, and with the pressure of it even breathing was becoming hard.
‘Then his infernal humming suddenly stopped – always a good sign as I have since discovered – and he stood up and said, “I know what I need. We have seventeen minutes, twenty-three at the most, depending, I suspect, on how deeply you breathe. Try to keep your chest well expanded while I’m gone.”
‘With that he set off in that lop-sided gallop that passes for Stort running, and he headed across the fields to Wardine. I continued to sink and, as the mud reached my chin, I cursed the Mirror and all that reside within it, including Master Stort, Wardine, Master Brief, book-learning and much else beside.’
The Peace-Weaver nodded sympathetically. ‘You must have been terrified.’
‘I was,’ said Pike, ‘but be that as it may . . . as the mud reached my mouth, Master Stort reappeared with some villagers carrying poles and ropes, and various other things they had assembled at his instruction. In no time at all they had rigged up a sort of . . . well, I would say it was . . . a contraption.’
‘Actually, Mister Pike, it was a block and tackle,’ interrupted a voice off to their right. It came from the black bin-bag, and it seemed Master Stort was about to emerge.
Pike grinned. ‘Whatever it was, he and those others rigged it up, and they somehow got a rope under my arm, pulled steady at the tackle he had made, and about thirty seconds later I popped out from all that mud like a cork from a flagon of fermented mead. And ever since that day, he has my loyalty and trust in all things. Eh, Stort?’
The bin-bag shuffled about a bit, and the nose disappeared inside.
‘Yes, thank you Mister Pike,’ came a muffled voice. ‘Our wyrds are as one, yet together make more than two! That’s a riddle as well as being a mystery!’
‘Yeh, well . . .’
Pike went back to sit with the other stavermen; the bin-bag continued to rustle and shift.
‘It must be said,’ Brief continued qui
etly ‘that Stort has an independence of spirit bordering on the eccentric. It’s a quality not helped by the fact that he sincerely believes that everything he does is entirely logical.’
‘Is that such a problem, Master Brief?’ asked Imbolc.
‘Yes, it is, because it means he does not know how odd his behaviour can seem to others, like wearing a bin-bag for a cloak. He’ll merely argue that it’s easier to carry.’
‘He’s right, of course.’
‘And he won’t carry a fighting stave, because he insists that fighting is not the best way to settle disputes, and that history shows it just provokes more of them.’
‘He’s right about that too.’
‘Maybe he is,’ sighed Brief, ‘but that kind of thing is hard for others to take, especially those of his own age, amongst whom, you’ll not be surprised to learn, he has very few friends. But Pike’s right about his gift for predicting things.’
‘For example?’
‘Things big, things small, from weather change to who’s about to come round the corner next. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough I daresay.’
‘So let me guess. You went off to see him in Wardine for yourself, and then brought him back to Brum to study further under your direct instruction?’
‘In a nutshell, yes,’ confessed Brief.
‘And now he’s led you here?’
‘Thanks to you, Imbolc, it would seem. But quite what we can expect to happen I have no idea.’
He waited for Imbolc to enlighten him. Peace-Weavers don’t suddenly turn up in the back of beyond unless they have a very good reason. Brief was feeling increasingly uneasy.
All Imbolc said was, ‘I am here merely as an observer. I cannot influence a thing, merely watch and take note, even though . . .’
‘What?’
‘I know only that what will happen here will influence all our lives, and therefore Mister Pike is right to be wary, as you are right to feel nervous. When Shield Maidens begin to show themselves we’d better all watch out . . .’
They looked around expectantly as if they thought that the critical moment would come just by talking about it.
Hyddenworld: Spring Bk. 1 (Hyddenworld Quartet 1) Page 5