A Tale of Time City

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “That’s right. They were cutting those trees down in the next era, where we’ve just been,” Jonathan said, rather muffled in his helmet.

  The horse had pricked its ears at suddenly finding itself in a forest. Their voices must have given it the idea that it had to get somewhere. It began to walk forward over the uneven ground. Its back swayed under them like a hairy boat on a sea. Vivian felt herself slipping. She grabbed at Jonathan’s scarlet shoulders. Whereupon they both started tipping slowly sideways across the horse’s vast right side.

  “Oh help!” she said.

  “Let go! Press your low-weight stud!” Jonathan said desperately.

  Vivian clawed her hand under the tough armour and somehow found the stud. She was suddenly about the weight she would have been without armour. By flinging an arm across the horse, she managed to work herself upright, and Jonathan managed to do the same. But the strange floating effect of the belts meant that they were now sliding slowly backwards towards the horse’s tail. Jonathan had to seize the horse’s mane and Vivian had to seize his shoulder again. That seemed to anchor them. The horse, quite unconcerned by all the scrambling about on its back, went on pacing slowly forward through the trees.

  “We have to stop and look at the map and use the metal detector,” Jonathan said. “How do you get a horse to stop?”

  “Pull the reins,” said Vivian.

  “It hasn’t got any reins. There’s only a strap-thing round its face.”

  “Stop!” shouted Vivian. “Whoa!” And when that made no difference to the horse, she racked her brains and shouted “Arrêtez–vous!” in case the horse spoke French. But it might have been deaf for all the effect that had. Trees continued to slide by and the great hooves continued to crunch dead leaves and lichen. Jonathan tried the method that worked on his automat. He hit the horse on its vast brown shoulder and banged at it with his heels. The only result of that was that the horse went slightly faster.

  “Look!” he said despairingly.

  Up to then Vivian had not really believed that this forest might be London, or that they might be riding through the remains of Buckingham Palace. But Jonathan was pointing to where a tree had fallen sideways, tearing up a big circle of roots and earth. In the gap under the circle, she saw an old greenish piece of stone wall.

  “It could be there!” Jonathan said. “Stop, you stupid time-bound brute!”

  But the horse marched steadily on and trees slid steadily by, until they came out into more open ground, where its hooves smashed brambles and trudged upon briars. Soon after that, Vivian noticed that they were going up a small round hill. If that was Buckingham Palace, she thought, then this hill must be that ornamental roundabout in the road outside.

  Halfway up the hill, the horse trampled sideways a little. They had a glimpse of an animal in the grass almost under its hooves, springing up and dashing away, snarling over its shoulder as it ran. It was yellowish. It gave Vivian the same jolting fright that she had felt when she touched the Iron Guardian.

  “Wild dog, I think,” Jonathan said, sounding as shaken as Vivian felt.

  The horse tramped on peacefully, over the rise and down the other side. Vivian saw the Mall stretching ahead. There was somehow no doubt about it, though it had shrunk to a long lane of wet green grass hemmed closely in by mighty old trees. It was too straight to be anything but the Mall. The horse descended into it quite speedily and as soon as it reached the grass, it stopped and started to eat. Jonathan only just saved himself from sliding off down its head.

  “Now what?” he said.

  “We could get off,” Vivian suggested.

  “But then it would just walk away and we’d never get on again.”

  They did not seem to have much choice but to sit there and wait for the horse to finish its meal. They sat, and the cloud of midges that had accompanied them ever since they arrived worked their way under the armour and bit. Vivian began to think that they would be better off without the horse. She was just going to say so, when Jonathan went stiff in front of her.

  “Look,” he said. “Over to the left.”

  Vivian looked and went stiff too. There were people there in the trees. Whoever they were, they were keeping quite still and wearing dull greenish rags of clothes, so that Vivian only had glimpses whenever one of them moved. When one did, it was to shift a nasty-looking home-made spear in a skinny arm. When the next moved, it was to adjust a sheeny knife in his mouth, and that gave her a sight of a savage bearded face.

  “They’re probably after the horse,” Jonathan said, with a slight wobble in his voice. “To eat.”

  They sat there, high on the horse, conspicuous in their shining red armour, feeling quite helpless. They could only hope that the horse would decide to finish its meal before the people plucked up courage to attack. But the horse went on peacefully tearing up mouthfuls of grass.

  “Oh, move, horse, please!” Vivian whispered.

  And the horse suddenly did. It raised its head. Its ears pricked and then swivelled forward like two gear-sticks in a car. Then it uttered a shattering whinny and set off down the green Mall in a bone-destroying trot. Jonathan and Vivian bounced and slid and clung. Vivian bit her tongue painfully. Trees rushed by. The only good thing she could see was that they were leaving the lurking people behind fast.

  The horse broke into what might have been a canter. “What’s it doing?” Jonathan gasped.

  The answer came when they could see the grey broken remnants of Admiralty Arch among the trees ahead. Another horse, which had been hiding behind the left-hand lump of arch, swerved out into the Mall and came galloping straight towards them. The rider on its back wore the same kind of armour as they did, except that his was black streaked with green for camouflage. He was carrying a long heavy-looking spear under his right arm, and this was pointed straight at them.

  “Stop, stop!” they both shrieked. “Friends!”

  The rider took no more notice of them than the horse did. He thundered down on them, with clods flying out behind, while their own horse cantered trustingly to meet the other one. Jonathan scrambled himself round and gave Vivian a frantic push. They both sailed sideways off the horse and went tumbling and wafting to the ground. The low-weight-function meant that it did not hurt a bit. Everything seemed to be in slow-motion from then on. Vivian saw their own horse lumber to a stop, looking puzzled, and the rider shoot pounding past. She had time to think: oh why does Jonathan always end up making a mess of things! while she was landing and trying to climb to her feet again.

  Beyond her, Jonathan was struggling to get his helmet off his eyes. The piece of armour on Vivian’s right leg had gone round to the back of her knee, like a splint. As she fell down again, she saw the rider pulling his horse up in a long gouge of brown earth. While she was trying to work the armour back round her leg, he swung his horse round and came galloping back. His spear was pointing downwards now, straight at Jonathan. Then the rider was between her and Jonathan. She heard a crunching bang. Above the trampling legs of the horse, she saw the spear sweep in a vicious half-circle, coming towards her. Vivian threw herself backwards. She had one sight of the rider’s face, a blank unpleasant pale face, with slitted eyes and no pity in it. Whoever he is, he’s not the Guardian, she thought. Then the spear crashed against her helmet and she was not sure of very much for a while after that.

  It was probably only a minute or so. When she sat up, the rider had gone and so had their own horse. Jonathan was half-sitting in a bush at the side of the Mall, spread out like a blood-eagle, staring at her with eyes that were wide and queerly blurred under the flicker of his eye-function. The front of his armour was crushed in, into a big dent. It was so much the colour of blood that Vivian could not tell whether he was bleeding there. But she knew it was blood that ran out of the corner of Jonathan’s mouth when he spoke to her.

  “I think he’s killed me,” he said in a quiet, matter-of-fact way. “My chest’s all broken.” The blood running from the corner of hi
s mouth was a much more purple colour than his armour.

  Vivian wrenched the piece of armour off her leg and crawled towards him unbelievingly. It can’t have happened! she thought. The two time-ghosts meant that we came back! Then she thought, this is an Unstable Era. Anything can happen. And she realised that, just like Sam and Jonathan when they kidnapped her, she had been treating everything that happened as an adventure. And it had suddenly turned very serious indeed.

  Two large black crows came planing down out of the trees and settled in the bush above Jonathan’s head, where they sat looking down at him expectantly. They peck out the eyes first! Vivian thought. She did not dare touch Jonathan. She did not know what to do. Without stopping to think any more, she put back her face and screamed, “Help, help, help!”

  “All right. I’m coming,” somebody said irritably, pushing through the undergrowth beyond Jonathan. At the sound, the crows wheeled up from the bush to a branch overhead. “And stop shouting,” the woman added sharply. “There are bandits all over this forest.” She came wrenching through the brambles on to the clear grass, leaving a lump of her greenish hand-woven skirt on one, and knelt down in front of Jonathan. “I came as quick as I could,” she said. “But I didn’t want him to see me. Oh good grief, this looks a mess!”

  “It doesn’t hurt as much as you’d think,” Jonathan remarked in the same calm, matter-of-fact way as before.

  “Just as well,” said the woman. She had fair hair twisted into a bun, and she would have been beautiful, Vivian thought, if she had not been so weathered-looking and so worried. The look on the brown lined face reminded Vivian of Jenny or of Mum, and it grew more worried still when the woman put the flat of her hand on the dent in Jonathan’s chest. “He did really mean to kill you, didn’t he?” she murmured. “Let’s see what we can do.” She took a deep breath.

  The dent billowed and noisily straightened itself out. Clap-boing. Jonathan gave a great sigh of relief and put up a hand to wipe the blood from his mouth.

  “Hold still,” said the woman. “That’s the ribs and the breast-bone, but there’s still your collar-bone to mend, not to speak of all the torn muscles.”

  She kept her hand on his chest. Jonathan stayed as he was, with his hand up. After a while, his face turned a better shape and colour, though his eyes were still blurred looking. “That feels all right now,” he said.

  “It is,” said the woman and took her hand away. “But go steady for a time. The bones and flesh are healed, but the shock is still with you.” She took Jonathan’s arm and helped him to his feet. The crows left their branch at that and flapped disgustedly away along the Mall.

  “How did you do that?” Vivian asked, feeling rather dizzy.

  The woman gave her a harassed smile. She lifted Vivian’s helmet off and put her hand to the bruise on the side of Vivian’s head. “Hm. I think that’s sound,” she murmured. “There could have been a fracture, but I don’t think there is.”

  A headache which, up to then, Vivian had not noticed, was suddenly gone. “How do you do it?” she said.

  “How do I—” the woman said distractedly. “I suppose because we’re far on in history here. Things get learnt in the course of time. Where were you two trying to go?”

  “Nelson’s Col—er—Laununsun,” Vivian said.

  “Then take off that silly armour and I’ll go with you,” the woman said.

  “But—” Jonathan began.

  “But me no buts,” the woman said in her irritable way. “It sticks out like a sore thumb. If anyone sees it, they’ll think you’re going to try to kill them and they’ll try to kill you first. That’s the way of life here. Whoever gave you the stuff made a bad mistake.”

  Feeling rather ashamed of themselves, they unstrapped the armour and threw it into the bushes. Vivian felt soaringly light for a second, and then very heavy. “I think my belt’s run out,” she said.

  “Only the low-weight-function,” said Jonathan. “So has mine. Turn it off and let it recharge.”

  “Will you come on!” the woman said impatiently. She was listening and watching the bushes as if she could hear someone coming.

  They hastened with her along the rest of the Mall and between the trees growing on the stumps of Admiralty. Arch. Beyond that, the forest opened out into a large squarish meadow a little smaller than Vivian remembered Trafalgar Square. There were no buildings to show her that this was Trafalgar Square. The meadow was surrounded in tall trees. It sloped gently upwards, rippling with grey-headed grass and a few flowers.

  The woman sighed and looked a little less harassed, “Safer here,” she said. “The bandits don’t usually come out into the open. But walk carefully. And stamp. There are snakes.”

  The ground was very uneven under the grass. Occasionally an old square stone turned under their feet. They picked their way after the woman, stamping as they went, and there were various rustlings that could have been snakes or could simply have been wind in the grass. Vivian found this scary enough. But she could tell from the way Jonathan’s head turned from side to side that he was scared of the wide open space and probably about the bandits too. She found she was admiring his courage. He may have started it just as an adventure, she thought, but he really is trying to carry it through.

  Towards the middle of the field, the woman stopped and pointed to a high clump of bushes, wild roses mostly and hawthorns. “There it is,” she said. “You won’t get right up to it. The Watcher keeps a good guard up.” She sat down on a straight-edged bank that may have been part of a fallen column and turned her back on the bushes.

  “You’re not coming?” Jonathan said to her.

  She shook her head dourly and wrapped her home-made cloak round her shoulders. “He takes no notice of me. I don’t know why I come here,” she said. She sighed. “I suppose because it’s peaceful. You go on. He might take account of you.”

  Jonathan and Vivian stamped their way up to the bushes. They were growing above them, on some kind of raised place. And it was the stump of Nelson’s Column, Vivian realised. They stumbled against steep stone steps under the grass and Jonathan saved himself by catching hold of a mound that, even covered with earth and grass, had the shape of a large stone lion. They got up. And stumbled again. Somehow they could not get up the last of the stone ledges. After two more tries, they saw that they were not going to be able to get right up to the bushes.

  “Is anyone there?” Vivian called.

  The twined-together briars above them shook a little. A few rose petals blew down. Vivian felt a jolt of fear, fear of a kind she was beginning to recognise. She looked up to find an extremely large young man standing on the ledge in front of the bushes with his arms folded, looking down at them consideringly. He made her think of a farmer’s boy. He had a lumpish weatherbeaten face. The fairish hair under his jaunty green hat badly needed combing. He was chewing a straw. He looked very strong and very solid. There was none of the unreal look of the poor sad Iron Guardian about him, but he was wearing a billowy green shirt and tight green trousers.

  “‘He is clothed in green, for he lives in a forest that covers a town that was once great,’” Jonathan said. “Are you the Guardian of the Golden Casket?”

  The young man shifted the straw to the other side of his mouth. “They call me the Watcher of the Gold,” he said. He had a raw, rather booming voice. “And if that’s what you mean, then yes I am. Who are you?”

  “We’re from Time City—” Jonathan began.

  “Then you’re too early,” the young man interrupted. “I know my business. When the City comes to rest in the gap between the beginning and the end of time, that’s when I bring the Gold to the City, and not before. Don’t worry. I’ll be there.”

  “But it’s nearly got to the gap now,” Vivian said.

  “And someone’s trying to steal the Caskets, we’re fairly sure,” Jonathan said. “He got the Iron Casket. We saw him take it. We came to warn you—”

  “Kind of you,” the young man sai
d, shifting the straw back to the left-hand corner of his mouth. “But I know all about him, thanks. He’s been lurking round here and Spauls and Buck House for two weeks now—he knows the Gold’s in one of those places, but he doesn’t know which. So I’m staying right here in this patch of time with him. He’s not getting a chance to come near the Gold.”

  “But he’s got the Iron—couldn’t that help him against you?” Vivian asked.

  The Watcher shrugged. “Only maybe. Gold’s stronger than Iron ever was.”

  “From what Mr. Donegal said this morning, I think he’s nearly got to the Silver by now,” Vivian said. “I didn’t listen properly, but if he steals that too, couldn’t that be too strong for you?”

  “It might,” the Watcher conceded, wrinkling up his ploughman’s face. “But he’s left it too late. You said yourself the City’s nearly in the middle of the gap. When it is, I bring the Gold and it unites with the Lead, and Lead and Gold together are stronger by three than the other two. No, no need to worry. It’ll be all right.”

  “Listen,” Jonathan said. “The City’s in a bad way. It may be going to break up. Faber John’s Stone has cracked all over since the Iron Casket was stolen. I think you ought to take the Gold to the City now, to be on the safe side. Or we could take it for you, if you like.”

  The Watcher spat out his straw and laughed. “And unbalance the whole of time? No thanks. The Gold goes where I go, and we both stay here until the proper moment. When midday strikes on the tower clock on the last day, I’ll be there. But thanks for the warning.”

  He turned away as if he was going back among the briars. Jonathan said hurriedly, “Then, please—tell us which Unstable Era the Lead Casket’s hidden in. Tell us where the Silver Casket is. We ought to warn those Guardians too.”

  The Watcher gave him a wary look over his shoulder. “Uh-huh,” he said. “I don’t fall for that one. If you know how to find me, you know where Silver is. As for Hidden Lead, if you’re honest about coming from Time City, you can work out where it is for yourself. If you’re not, you don’t find out from me!” He unfolded his arms and stretched, in a lazy way, like people do who know they are very strong. Then he was gone. The bushes quivered a little, but it could have been through heat-haze. The Watcher had not walked away into them. Vivian thought he had just ceased to be in that particular piece of time. She had a feeling he had not gone far—perhaps only a week or so back to keep watch on the lurking thief—but he was definitely not where they were.