by Chris Walley
“Accident?” His thick lips smacked in indignation. “Surprise me? Tut, I knew it weren’t that. It was them in the north that was behind it.”
“Ah,” Brenito said; it was a single, long, slow word of discovery. “And who,” he continued, as delicately as if his words were on tiptoe, “are they?”
“I don’t rightly know.” The leathery face wrinkled, revealing uneven teeth. “But I know as they aren’t good. That’s obvious anyway. And there’s something there that ain’t flesh and blood either, if my dreams are right. Or, at least, not natural flesh and blood. Not warm, living, flesh and red blood, like what you and I have under our skins.” He chewed his lip. “And I think this something is old—”
“Old?” Brenito’s question was barely a whisper.
“As old as the hills. No—older. Older than the stars.”
“I see.” Merral caught Vero’s glance.
“And they don’t like us, Mister Brenito. They hate the King’s people. Always have.”
“Hmm.” Brenito shifted awkwardly in his chair. “What else do you know about them?”
“Know? Oh, I know little. It’s what I reckon, really.”
The old sentinel smiled. “Go on. I’m very interested.”
“We all are,” added Vero quietly.
“For instance, where are they?” Brenito asked “Exactly? Do you know?”
“Up north, I reckons. Beyond the mountains.” Jorgio shivered. “I get cold at night thinking about the north. The ice, the frost. But it’s colder than that now. Now it has them.”
Jorgio fell silent, looking at the floor and twisting his gnarled fingers.
“Why are they here?” Brenito asked.
“It’s ’cause the barrier is down.”
“The barrier is down?” Merral echoed and received a cautionary glance from Brenito.
“Yes,” Jorgio said, scratching his uneven nose, “leastways, that’s how I look at it.”
“What barrier, Jorgio?” Brenito said in a soft voice.
“Well, see, I don’t say as I’m right or I’m wrong. But I always reckoned there has been a barrier. Like a wall, see?” He tapped a finger on the masonry beside him. “I expect it’s invisible except to the Lord and the angels. It’s his handiwork, of course. Round the Assembly. And it keeps ’em out. Or it did.”
“Did?”
“Well, I reckon. No, I knows. But either they have been let through, or something—someone—has made a hole in the barrier. And they’re getting through. Now.”
“This barrier—where does it lie?”
Jorgio gestured sharply upward at an angle. “Beyond Farholme. We’re at the edge. We are Worlds’ End.”
There was a long silence.
With a loud creak, Brenito leaned back in his chair. “Well, thank you, Jorgio. I think what you have said is very significant. I am delighted to have heard it from you personally.”
“Mr. Serter.” The sound of Perena’s quiet voice made everyone turn toward her. “Just before the Gate went . . .” She paused. “I met a strange figure. A man—only he wasn’t a man. He warned me that night was falling and the war was beginning. He told me that the Gate was under threat—” she swallowed—“he said he was an ‘envoy’ sent from ‘our Lord the King.’ I was wondering if you knew anything about him.”
Jorgio looked at her, then broke out into a broad smile. “Well, bless his Holy Name, I am glad to hear that.” Jorgio gave a little clap of pleasure. “Best news I heard in a long time. ’Course, it’s not surprising. The King never leaves his people on their own.”
“So you know who he is?” Brenito asked with a raised eyebrow. “This envoy?”
“Oh, I don’t know who he is but I can guess what he is: one of the King’s warriors, he is. There’s old stories as all the worlds have angels. He’ll be ours.”
“Thank you,” Perena said quietly. “Thank you very much indeed.”
There was a long silence, a silence deep enough for Merral to hear the sound of Brenito’s heavy breathing. Suddenly, the old man gave a sharp little gasp. Merral saw the look of concern on Vero’s face and understood his expression perfectly; this was not a well man.
Jorgio rose slowly. “Mister Brenito, would you like to lie down on my bed while I prepare lunch?”
“P-please,” said Brenito in an unsteady voice. “Thank you—I don’t mind if I do. . . . And a glass of water? Thank you.”
Helped by Merral and Vero, Brenito managed to get out of his chair and into Jorgio’s bedroom, where he lay down. After taking some water, he seemed to improve and asked that he be left on his own.
Perena insisted on helping Jorgio with lunch, so Merral and Vero left the cottage. It was turning out to be one of the first really warm days of the year, and they went and sat down on a grass bank in the shade of a big western oak that faced the cottage.
“Brenito’s ill, isn’t he?” Merral said.
“Yes,” Vero said and shook his head. “It was a risk bringing him today. But, I think, a worthwhile one. What do you think of what Jorgio said?”
Merral thought for a moment. “It’s scary. The barrier being down, I mean. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? The idea of something outside the Assembly managing to get in.”
“Yes. I just think it makes what we are doing even more urgent.”
“Perena told me that the FDU is growing.”
“Yes, I think it is, gratifyingly fast. And then I hear Jorgio and I wonder what we are up against.”
“No news on Gerry’s quantum communication device?”
“None.” Vero shook his head. “She sent the message repeatedly; we have used up all the linked photons. There was no reply. Gerry wasn’t surprised though. I guess I don’t understand the physics. ‘We will know in fifty years whether it got through,’ she said. But Clemant was not happy about it. ‘It should have been approved, Sentinel.’ He didn’t care for your account of what had happened at Larrenport either, when that got out.” Vero shook his head as if trying to shake off a troublesome fly.
“But he has come around to supporting you?”
“Yes. He is fundamentally a pragmatic man. It took him some days for the gravity of the situation to sink in, but when it did—” Vero shook his head— “he became very helpful. He doesn’t care for what we are doing, but he acknowledges it is needed. But, Merral, tell me about your hunt for the ship. You really have found nothing?”
“Nothing.”
The look of disappointment on Vero’s face was unmistakable. “I had assumed from your silence that that was the case.”
“Vero, I’m spending six or seven hours a day on it. I can’t do any more. I’m now going over it square by square at a scale where I can make out individual trees. But it’s slow.”
“How slow?”
“It could take me another three months to do the entire area.”
Vero gave a cluck of dismay. “I’m not blaming you, of course, but can it be speeded up?”
Merral explained the difficulties.
“I see,” Vero said. “It’s like ‘looking for a needle in a haystack.’ ”
“Not heard that one. Is that another of these pre-Assembly sayings?”
“Yes. All my reading is in that period now. When I find time.”
“ ‘A needle in a haystack’ raises lots of questions; I mean, why bother trying to find it? Couldn’t they have used a magnet?”
“It was probably a ritual.” Vero thought for a moment. “But are you staying fit?”
“I try and run every day. Why do you ask?”
Vero frowned. “Because when you—when we—find this ship, we will need to mount an expedition to it. You’ll have to lead—”
“Vero,” Merral interrupted sharply, “you aren’t serious?”
“Of course.”
“I really don’t fancy turning up and knocking on the door, you know. Not at all.”
Vero laughed. “My friend, the work of almost my every waking hour is to ensure that if, and when,
we do meet them again, we meet them on very different terms than we did before. But let’s not talk of that now.”
Merral noticed that, by the cottage, Perena and Jorgio were putting out lunch on a table set up outside the door, and Zak was unrolling an awning from the cottage wall.
“Where did you get Zak from?”
“As soon as the FDU was approved I sat down with all the university academic and sports listings and looked up the best of the recent graduates in both areas.”
“Why sports?”
“I wanted them fit. If we have to go for the ship—” Vero left the sentence unfinished. “And I was also looking for the good team players. But Zak Larraine’s one of the best. He learns fast. I think he could master anything very quickly. He was in the first thirty-six I had.”
“The first?”
A sheepish expression crossed Vero’s face. “Oh, well. As I got them, we made plans and I realized we needed more than twenty-four. So we recruited another twenty-four. And so on—”
“ ‘And so on’? How many more are there?”
Vero peered intently down at the ground by his side. “Currently I have around a hundred people—all busier than these ants.”
“That was fast.”
Vero looked up, his face gloomy. “But we may not be fast enough. Things are happening and it’s not good.”
“What sort of things?”
“At Larrenport the annual Team-Ball match between the Sunrise and Sunset sides was cancelled last week. There was abusive language between the supporters. Unheard of. ‘Stupid Setters.’ ‘Risers are slugs.’ Amazing stuff. And there’ve been problems in the Library.”
“The Library?”
“I’ll tell you about it when it is confirmed. But, Merral, I fear that time is not on our side.”
By lunchtime, Brenito seemed to have recovered, and he and Jorgio engaged in quiet and close conversation. After lunch, Merral and the others drifted away to allow them some privacy. As he walked around Wilamall’s Farm, Merral was disturbed to find how rapidly the complex was being run down. Shortly after two o’clock, they all returned to the house. The intense conversation between Brenito and Jorgio had ended, and Merral felt that the old sentinel had an oddly subdued air about him. They made their farewells to Jorgio and left.
On the rotorcraft journey back to Ynysmant, Merral noticed that Brenito barely said a thing but instead stared out of the window with a distant expression on his face. It’s his ill health, Merral decided.
At Ynysmant strip, they clambered out of the rotorcraft and walked over as a group to the courier plane. Midway, Brenito raised a large hand. “A moment,” he announced and gestured Merral over. “I need to have a private word with our forester.”
The others withdrew out of earshot.
“Hmm,” Brenito began, paused, and then began again. “Merral, over lunch and afterward, Jorgio said more than he had said earlier. He told me some things that I did not especially wish to hear.” The big man paused again, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “He is an extraordinary person. There are depths to him that I really cannot fathom. His counsel is of great value. Not always easy to understand, of course. And he may be wrong. . . .”
Brenito paused again, staring at the spires and roofs of Ynysmant. “A pity. A town I never visited—” Then he seemed to focus back on Merral. “Yes, Forester, two things: First, guard and protect Jorgio. I have played my part, but I feel he has yet a great part to play. What part, I do not know. But our stable hand and gardener is not just someone who sees things; like you, Merral—but in a different way—he is a warrior. Do not neglect him, but at the same time do not expose him.”
Merral found Brenito’s gaze oddly disconcerting.
Brenito’s slow voice continued. “You know, if I were the enemy, the person among you I would most fear would be Jorgio. So keep an eye on him.”
“I will do that, sir, as best I can,” Merral answered, struck by the sentinel’s solemn tone.
“Thank you. And secondly, a warning: I fear that you will all have many dangers to face. Jorgio sees the testing of the Assembly as being not just of an organization but also as a testing of people. I think he is right. You will face dangers. Some of those dangers may come from nearer at hand and in stranger fashions than you suspect. Jorgio warned me that not all who are drawn into the fight against the intruders will win. Some, alas, will be lost.”
“I see,” answered Merral, feeling very uncomfortable.
“That’s all, Forester,” Brenito said, extending a hand. After they shook hands, he said, “Thank you, Merral, it has been good to see you.”
“I hope to see you soon with the results,” Merral said.
“Do you now?” A quite unreadable expression crossed the heavy face. “Perhaps—I would appreciate your prayers for the next week. I have much to do. Good-bye, Forester.”
Then he turned and, with Zak at his elbow, walked with a slow and unsteady gait to the plane.
Vero came over. “I won’t ask what that was about. But he is in a funny mood.”
Merral, touched in a way he couldn’t understand or express by what Brenito had said, just nodded.
“But thanks, Merral, for arranging this today. And as soon as you get something, get on a plane and fly over.”
“I will, trust me.”
Vero smiled. “Look, do what you can, as fast as you can, but don’t worry. Even if we had a location, we aren’t ready for an encounter yet. Realistically, we need three weeks.” He turned and looked northward beyond the strip and trees. “And will we be ready even then?” he said in a voice that was barely a whisper.
29
Eight days passed. Merral’s life remained dominated by the search. There were just two breaks: the Lord’s Day and the annual holiday of Landing Day, traditionally marked by the first picnics of the year and a great deal of good-humored fun. This year, though, the picnics were not a success; they were blighted by a sudden rainstorm, and somehow the fun never really happened. And the next day, Merral was back again at his desk and staring at images on the screen.
Midmorning on the ninth day after Vero and Brenito’s visit, an envelope was brought to Merral. He recognized Vero’s handwriting on it and tore it open with a strange sense of foreboding.
“Oh no,” he heard himself say as he read the first line.
Dear Merral,
I’m sad to tell you that Brenito went Home a few hours ago. He was taken into Eastern Isterrane Main Hospital yesterday morning feeling unwell and had a series of heart failures which culminated in his death around three. They could have kept him alive longer, but we all knew it was the end. In the end, death—ever the King’s servant—took him Home gently.
I was there, and he said to me toward the end, “Vero, I have done my bit in this business. I would have wished to see the matter through to the end, but that is not to be. You play your part.” He said other things, some of relevance to you, that I will pass on to you when we meet.
You can imagine my feelings. Since the loss of the Gate I had come to see him as part of my family. I had hoped that he would continue to be around to help us as we enter difficult days. I shall miss his bluff wisdom and his common sense. He discouraged some of my wilder ideas, and without him around, frankly, I fear for myself.
He told me over the last week that Jorgio had told him—in effect—to put his affairs in order. We agreed therefore that, contrary to usual practice, the funeral would be soon and private. We decided, and Corradon agreed, that as a matter of strategy, news of his death would not be made public. As you know, he had no family here. He will be buried in the Memorial Wood on the headland by his house. I will leave the planting of the tree till later. An oak perhaps?
He fought the fight well. May we do the same.
Yours in the service of the great Shepherd who protects all his sheep,
Vero
Merral sat back in his chair, suddenly realizing how utterly expected the news
was. Yet it was a loss, and the idea that there was one less person to offer guidance was a hard blow. He left his office and went for a walk up through woods behind the Institute. There he found a quiet spot and gave thanks to the Lord for the life of Brenito Camsar, sentinel, formerly of Ancient Earth, and the man who, in summoning Vero to Farholme, had set in motion so much.
So much, Merral thought as, half an hour later, he walked back to his office, but so much unfinished business too. He wrote Vero a letter of condolence and then, telling himself that it was what Brenito would have wanted, he sat down at his imagery again. Perhaps today, he told himself, he would find what they sought.
But he didn’t.
Over the following days, Merral found that success continued to elude him. A week later, as he stood at the window of his office staring at the grayness of Ynysmere Lake, he realized that he was very close to despair. Nearly three weeks of searching, he thought gloomily, and I have found nothing.
His unhappiness was not just because the ship was still hidden. It was also because things were changing—and changing for the worse—in Ynysmant. Joylessness and dreariness now seemed widespread, grumbling and criticism were now common to be heard, and even Team-Ball matches were marked by grumpiness and bad temper. Even the weather seemed to conspire to depress him. The delayed spring weather had only just arrived and yet already they were having those dry, dusty days with the winds buffeting out of the interior of Menaya that normally only came in summer.
At home too Merral had found things emerging between his mother and father that he was uneasy about. In particular, his mother now seemed—almost as a matter of habit—to be telling his father to tidy up either himself or whatever he was doing. Surely, Merral wondered, she had been more tolerant in the past? Or was his father getting more slovenly? There too something was wrong.
The situation with Isabella also troubled him, although Merral was not sure whether this was part of the general malaise or something purely personal. He had not seen much of Isabella because both she and he had been so busy. But when they did meet there were problems. True, the matter of the intruders was no longer an issue between them, but the matter of their “understanding” with each other had replaced it. Merral preferred to see this as merely an informal agreement that they had a serious relationship. Isabella, though, clearly saw it as something else: as an unofficial statement of commitment, the formal public precursor to engagement and marriage.