by Perrin Briar
“It was from then that we managed to really begin to advance and develop, able to build the wall that could protect us. Of all the lords we’ve had, my father has had the most effect on the improvement of the people and their lives. I’m really proud of him.”
“Your father never considered removing the clause?” Cassie said. “To cement his power and stop anyone from doing what he did to the last lord?”
Roland looked like he had never considered the idea before.
“No,” he said. “He likes having it there. It keeps him on his toes. I like it too. I wouldn’t want the position if there was no chance of me being overthrown.”
“What did your father do before all this?” Cassie said.
“He was a stablehand,” Roland said. “He worked at my mother’s noble house before they got married. Then the dragon attacked, and the rest is history.”
“But they seem so…” Cassie said, searching for the right word.
“Cultured?” Roland said. “It’s an act. A practised act. One they’re exceptionally good at. They wouldn’t have been taken seriously by the nobles if they didn’t sound and look the part, and so that was one of the first things they did—make themselves look the part.”
Cassie began to realize just how special and unique the lord’s family was. They were not only the most powerful family in the town, but they were also the most forward-thinking. If the town was to change for the better, it was going to need them to lead.
27.
THE STAIRS wound around the inside of the cylindrical wall in a spiral. Before undergoing their adventure Zoe would have found it a difficult slog. Despite all the hours of running she’d put in on the surface, it was nothing compared to the workout she got down under the surface every day.
The stairs ended at a thick wooden door. Lady Maltese put her shoulder to it and pushed, but it was too heavy for her. Zoe joined her and pushed. They had left the guards at the bottom of the tower. At the time Zoe had liked the idea of being alone with the lady, but now she was beginning to regret that decision.
The workshop was located in the highest tower of the castle. It did not look like much on the outside, but on the inside it was full to bursting with worktables packed with tools and equipment.
It was a mess, as all the cleverest and more creative people were prone to be. Zoe supposed human creativity was the same wherever you went. A human mind preoccupied with thoughts was always less likely to be concerned with trivialities like tidiness.
“Originally Jeffrey’s workshop was located on the other side of town,” Lady Maltese said, “but my husband wanted to keep an eye on any new developments. So we relocated him here, where he could work in peace, with all the food and drink he might require, and all the silence he could ever need. We keep him very comfortable.”
“So I can see,” Zoe said. “A mind like his needs to be protected and well fed.”
Buried amongst it all, sprawled in a moth eaten armchair, were the empty bottles of a drunk. Sitting amidst it was the creative genius drunk himself, Jeffrey. He was fast asleep, drooling, a thick mucus growing on his flat chest and grey-white beard.
A wire bird cage hung in one corner, and when Zoe approached it it became clear it wasn’t as empty as she’d first thought. Flies buzzed around it, a pile of shapeless feathers in the bottom. So much for a pet to keep you company. Zoe wondered how long it had been dead. Not that it mattered. Dead was dead.
“Should we wake him?” Zoe said.
“The bird?” Lady Maltese said. “I think it’s a bit late for that, don’t you?”
Zoe looked at the lady, who grinned.
“Sh,” Lady Maltese said, pressing her finger to her lips. “Let him awaken naturally. It’s how he comes up with his best ideas.”
Great. What were they meant to do in the meantime? Zoe had wanted to see the workroom and inventor at work, and now here she was. Jeffrey was hard at work. Drooling. Snoring.
Zoe decided she would take her time and poke around. As she moved around the room she realized that, despite the mess, there was nothing that would have looked all that out of place in the modern world. To be sure, there were items that looked like early prototypes of modern instruments, but their shape and materials were not all that different.
There was a makeshift TV, but the glass was too thick and wouldn’t have produced much in the way of a picture. But the theory was there, and the pieces of electronics to make it to boot. How someone from this time could have dreamed up something so sophisticated was beyond understanding for Zoe.
Newton was a genius of pure mind, unprecedented in his day, matched only by Einstein. These two men went into their own private rooms to figure out the laws of the universe and, incredibly, managed to come up with something so profound, so incredibly simple, logical and yet beautiful, that it could only be correct.
Jeffrey perhaps wasn’t able to solve the riddles of the universe, but had the remarkable ability to glimpse the future, or rather the present, on the surface. He could then develop his own systems of how they might work in this day and age.
Looking around, Zoe could see some of his inventions were rough, childlike interpretations of what he’d seen in his mind. Early stepping stones in the rapid evolution of man.
Zoe began to wonder about their moral code for helping these people. Was it right to give them a hand up? To help them to develop these forms of technology? She supposed it wasn’t like they would be helping them create dangerous weapons, or ways to split the atom. But wasn’t all technology inevitably pointing in that direction anyway? If so, giving them any help whatsoever was dangerous. Zoe wasn’t sure. She would need to speak to Bryan about it before they made any decisions.
Jeffrey grumbled under his breath. Then his eyes shot open. Lady Maltese approached him slowly and handed him a piece of paper and a pen. The inventor took it, not blinking, dipped the pen in the ink and began to draw on the parchment, slowly at first, and then gradually building into a frenzy, working faster and faster.
“What’s he doing?” Zoe said, sidling up to Lady Maltese.
“Drawing his dreams,” Lady Maltese said. “Inspiration has struck.”
They waited for him while he completed his drawings, and didn’t approach him again until he had finished. He put the pen down and lay back in his armchair.
Lady Maltese picked up the old man’s sketch and extended it to Zoe so she could see. To her it looked like a bunch of scribblings and black shapes. She was disappointed.
“What is it?” Zoe said.
“I don’t know,” Lady Maltese said. “No one does, save him. Later, he will come to it and begin outlining whatever it was he originally saw in his dreams. Only once he has completed it will we begin to understand what it is he has drawn. Even then, with his description to us, we might not understand. Such is the mind of a genius. It works at its own speed and doesn’t feel the need to slow down to cater for us.”
Zoe looked again at the image. This time her mind came up with a dozen modern inventions it might have been. She looked at Jeffrey, who was already falling back to sleep. He really was a force of nature.
It wasn’t for another fifteen minutes that the inventor decided to wake fully. He stumbled into the bathroom and washed his face, coughing up something Zoe didn’t like to imagine. It could have been a lung by the sounds he was making.
A little refreshed, Jeffrey returned to his workroom. He started when he saw the two ladies standing there. He clearly hadn’t noticed them earlier.
“Good morning,” Jeffrey said.
“Evening,” Lady Maltese said.
Jeffrey peered at the sky out the window.
“So it is,” he said.
“How are you able to come up with such things?” Zoe said.
“I go to sleep and when I wake up, poof! It’s there!” Jeffrey said.
“That’s remarkable,” Zoe said. “We need more people like you on the surface to come up with solutions to our problems.”
&nb
sp; “I get dizzy, feel a headache coming on, and I know then it’s time for me to lie down and let nature take its course,” Jeffrey said. “When I wake up, my hands are covered in oil or grease, or whatever it is I used during the night, and the finished item is on the table. The only difficulty then is trying to figure out what it is the damn thing does. I’ve near blown my ear off experimenting with these things.”
“Incredible,” Zoe said.
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” Jeffrey said with a grumble.
“No, I meant about your process,” Zoe said. “I know there are creative people on the surface who have ideas while they sleep and then use those ideas once they wake, but to do what you do… It’s like sleepwalking, but sleep inventing. It’s an amazing gift.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not always amazing,” Jeffrey said. “I get the worst headaches, usually when I wake up after a hard night of inventing. It doesn’t happen every night, only when inspiration strikes, I suppose.”
“We thought it best to keep him in isolation while he’s coming up with his designs,” Lady Maltese said. “We don’t want to wake him, in case it disturbs him from his work. Besides, I usually like to retire around this time. I have to keep up with my knitting somehow.”
“Yes,” Zoe said, still in awe. “That sounds like a good idea to me.”
28.
ABIGAIL LED Aaron through the streets of Silene, introducing him to the various districts and the people who ran the local businesses and services. She knew everyone by name, and they all knew her. She received free samples of their produce, which she always split in half and shared with Aaron. They were now returning to the castle.
“No one knows how old the town of Silene really is,” Abigail said. “But everyone knows the story of George and the dragon associated with it.”
“George and the dragon?” Aaron said.
“You haven’t heard it?” Abigail said. “It’s pretty famous. Well, so the elders say.”
“I might know of it,” Aaron said. “Refresh my memory.”
“It’s about a dragon that attacked a town, our town the story goes, the town of Silene,” Abigail said. “This was back before we got sucked down a sinkhole and trapped here, when we were on the surface, in England. It attacked and destroyed everything we’d built. It came up out of the lake, killing the locals, drowning its victim as it descended back into its lair.”
“What happened?” Aaron said.
“Well, the town began sacrificing its livestock to the dragon,” Abigail said. “But they soon ran out. And then they began sacrificing their children to the beast. They did it via a random lottery. Whichever two kids’ numbers were chosen, were sent to the beast. Then one day the lord’s daughter’s number came up.
“The lord pleaded with the people, offering half his lands, half his possessions and half his gold. But the townspeople refused, and his daughter was taken down to the lake. It was blind luck that George was passing by. He slayed the dragon and rescued the lord’s daughter.”
“It’s a good story,” Aaron said. “Is there any truth to it, do you think?”
“Who knows,” Abigail said. “You’re from the surface. Could there be much truth to it?”
“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “Only in the most abstract terms, I guess. It wouldn’t have been a dragon. It would have been something else, a virus or a lion or some other dangerous thing.”
Abigail shrugged.
“It was just a story,” she said. “That is, until we came down here. History has a funny way of repeating itself.”
“What do you mean?” Aaron said.
“About fifteen years ago some townspeople spoke of hearing growls and roars from the caves,” Abigail said. “No one took any notice of them, but then people started going missing, and before we knew it, we were missing five percent of our population. At first the people went missing in the caves, or near them, and then livestock started going missing, and then people from their own homes. And then one day the townspeople emerged from their homes to see the dragon with their own eyes, pulling a man toward the lake.
“People couldn’t believe what was happening. It wasn’t every day you saw a dragon. People ran to the church and prayed for salvation, for forgiveness for whatever it was they were supposed to have done to offend Him. As always, there was no response, and the killings kept happening. No matter what the people did, no matter what ideas the lord came up with, they always failed.
“We couldn’t sacrifice our livestock. Few enough had survived the sinkhole as it was. They were too valuable.”
“More valuable than people?” Aaron said.
“Sick, isn’t it?” Abigail said. “But true. If we lost every member of our flock there would be no way to replenish their number. We had more people, so they were more valuable. No one said it at the time, of course. But they all knew it. Their lives, and the lives of their children, were worth less than the sheep and the cows and chickens. I’m sure they would have come up with plans to defeat the dragon, but none of them would have worked. They were ill-equipped and badly trained. They would have all perished.
“First, they went through the old people. They mostly gave themselves up. But when they ran out, the decision was made to sacrifice the kids.”
“No,” Aaron said. “You can’t be serious.”
“Yes,” Abigail said. “Not the best chapter in our history. Kids couldn’t do the workload an adult could, and we couldn’t exactly start culling people who were doing important jobs already.”
“What about the parents of the kids?” Aaron said. “They let this happen?”
“They had no choice,” Abigail said. “They argued and said they would take their kid’s place, but it had been agreed beforehand that the kids would be chosen at random and had no choice but to take their place on the dragon’s platter. Hard to imagine now. There’s a noticeable gap in our demographic. A whole generation that was almost entirely eaten.
“Soon after my parents took over as the lord and lady of the town, they discovered the reason why the lake was always rotting and covered with flies,” Abigail said. “In the past, the townspeople stayed away from the lake, thinking it cursed. And then they discovered bodies were coming up out of the lake. They renamed it Lake Rebirth and fed the bodies to the dragon.
“The killings stopped. The townspeople immediately fell in love with my parents, supporting them with other things they wanted to do, like building a wall to protect themselves, in case the bodies stopped coming out of the lake.
“We made a statue celebrating the event. It shows George defeating the dragon, but really it was my parents that defeated it. It’s on the roof of the tower the inventor now resides in.
“We’re becoming stronger, more populated, and soon we might have the technology and manpower to destroy the dragon. It won’t take a single hero, but a whole town full of them. The statue will reflect the future too, of us overthrowing the monster. You see, our story is not yet complete. We still have to write the final chapter and, with any luck, it will be over very soon.”
29.
THE FAMILY returned to the castle to find another banquet had been laid on. Were they to expect this every night they were present at the castle? The family were tired, but they went through the rigmarole of having to mix with the townspeople again.
Bryan wasn’t sure which group he disliked most. The undisguised filth of the streets, or the perfumed stink of the nobles. How could you trust anyone who so obviously attempted to cover up the truth about themselves? In truth, his real dislike was being forced to converse with those he had no choice but to talk to.
There was no such thing as a free lunch, and payment in this case was to have to converse with the locals, who plied them with questions and concerns. They were much more open in their asking of questions than last night, and it made the family exhausted to have to keep answering them.
Finally, happily, the family made it to the front of the hall. They took their seats and prepared
to stuff themselves. Conversation was slow at first, the family necking as much of the delicious food as they could into their bodies. Only then did they share what they had discovered and learned with each other. Lots of interesting things, but no sign of the Passage.
The truth was frightening to Bryan. What if the lord was right and there was no Passage out of here? What if it had somehow been destroyed? What if this was as far as they could go? Suddenly the food tasted like ash in Bryan’s mouth.
The town of Silene was a perfectly nice place to live, but it was so small and parochial that Bryan wouldn’t have been able to live there for long without feeling depressed at everything he’d lost and worked hard for on the surface.
But no, Bryan thought. There had to be a Passage. There was always a Passage. They just hadn’t found it yet. The most likely place—if for no other reason than Murphy’s Law, was for the Passage to be in the one location they couldn’t yet get to: the caves. It would be tucked away in there somewhere.
After the desserts and cakes were served, Lord Maltese took to the stage and addressed the audience. Did any of them have any concerns they wanted to address? After their first round of questions the previous night, and the fact there had been no sign of the dragon for one whole day, meant the locals were more comfortable with their present situation.
“No one?” Lord Maltese said. “Does no one have a concern they would like to address?”
A hand went up. It was at the lord’s head table.
“Bryan?” Lord Maltese said. “You have an enquiry?”
“I do,” Bryan said, getting to his feet. “I have a question for you and the whole town.”
“We’d like to hear it,” Lord Maltese said, retaking his seat.
He was clearly intrigued by Bryan’s intervention.