The Indigo King

by James A. Owen

  Chaz set a pace that was swift, but not impossible to keep, even for the badgers. They were slowed only by bewilderment, remorse, and no small amount of fear. It wasn’t a scholar who had looked at them, but a predator. And it ran contrary to animal sense to follow a predator into its own lair.

  A short distance farther on, John unconsciously checked the time on his watch, noted the fixed hands, then smiled ruefully and put it back in his pocket.

  “Why don’t you carry one that works,” suggested Jack, “and keep that one in another pocket to show Priscilla when she asks about it?”

  “I can’t quite manage the deception,” John admitted. “It seems like a small thing, to be sure—but when I tried it, I found myself fussing about with them and worrying about which one was draped on the waistcoat and which was hidden … and then I forgot, and Pris saw the other one, and the hurt in her eyes was excruciating. So it’s the Frog-in-a-Bonnet time or none at all, I’m afraid.”

  “Perhaps you could ask Father Christmas to give her a good watch this Christmas, to be passed on to you,” Jack said, grinning.

  “That’s not a half-bad idea,” John said. “I’ll have to ask him about it the next time we’re in the Archipelago.”

  Jack turned his head, but not swiftly enough for John to catch the look of doubt that crossed his features. Bantering about home and family was one thing. But mentioning the Archipelago brought them both back to the present dilemma, and the creeping despair that was becoming impossible to push away.

  It took longer for the companions to get to the small village where Chaz lived than it might have if John or Jack had been in the lead. The entire area seemed deserted, and the only other structures they saw were more of the odd stilt-houses that pockmarked the roads. But Chaz had insisted on taking a circuitous route that roamed back and forth across the entire countryside.

  “It’s because of the Wicker Man,” he finally explained when the others pressed for his reasons. “He was out looking for you lot in partic’lar, and there’s no telling how many more are doing the same. Their Sweeps follow your scent, an’ so it’s best to leave a trail that’ll confuse ‘em before they finds you.”

  “How many more what might be out looking?” asked Jack.

  “Wicker Men,” Chaz replied without turning around, “and their Sweeps. That wasn’t the only one, you know. And there are other creatures too. Some better. Most worse.”

  “We saw the giants,” John said. “Should we be talking aloud, with them lurking somewhere back there?”

  “Oh, the giants is no worry,” Chaz said breezily. “They can’t be loosed until they been summoned, an’ …”

  He stopped as if he’d said too much, then scowled at John. “Be that as it may, mayhap we shouldn’t ought t’ be talking aloud, anyroad.”

  After another hour of Möbius loops, Chaz finally brought them to his strange abode. Unlike the dozen or so stilt-houses that clustered nearby, it was set into the side of a hill. It had a round door that was lightly camouflaged and heavily fortified. Through the doorway, they could see that the ceilings were low, but it seemed a good enough place, if not really one suited to guests.

  The area itself was more intriguing to Jack. It was disconcertingly familiar. The trees, what remained of them, were bare, but the soil itself, the reddish hues, the texture … It was all the same, along with the spot nearby where the quarry should be.…

  And then he knew.

  It was the Kilns, Jack suddenly realized. Home. His home, at any rate. His and Warnie’s, and Jamie’s. Chaz had brought them to the one place Jack most wanted to be, except it wasn’t that place at all—it was a place that looked like home but was really in some hellish otherworld in which they were trapped, perhaps permanently.

  “So how have you managed to survive on your own?” Jack asked.

  “I makes do,” Chaz said after a moment. “I scavenge, mostly, and trade a little of this, a little of that. But I gets what I needs.”

  “I think I need some sustenance,” said John, “if you have anything you can spare, Chaz.”

  “My stores is scanty, save for roots and a bone or two,” said Chaz, eyeing the badgers while trying to look as if he wasn’t, “but it may be enough for a thin soup, since we have nothing else t’ put in the pot.”

  “Soup—thin or not—sounds fine to me,” Jack said, folding his arms and standing protectively in front of the badgers. “I just wish we had Bert’s magic stone to help it along.”

  “Ah yes,” said John. “His Stone Soup. Meal fit for, well, a king. Or a group of lost scholars.”

  “Who’s Bert?” Chaz said without looking up from his dinner preparations. “Not that I really care, but talking passes the time.”

  “Are you sure he’s not Charles?” Jack whispered to John.

  “Heh,” said John. “Bert’s our mentor, Chaz. A great man. And I really wish he were here.”

  “Maybe he is,” offered Fred. “If Scowler Char—uh, I mean, if Mister Chaz is here, and he’s almost like Scowler Charles, than perhaps others we know are here too.”

  “Everything here is upside down and sideways anyway,” Jack said, indicating their reluctant host. “Perhaps Bert goes by Herb or Herbert or George or some such.”

  Uncas nodded sagely. “Th’ Far Traveler can be knowed by many names.”

  For the first time it seemed as if the conversation had engaged Chaz’s full attention. He stood abruptly, ladle in hand. “Far Traveler? This Bert fellow is also called the Far Traveler?”

  “Does that make a difference?” asked John.

  “It does if I knows a ‘Far Traveler’ and not a ‘Bert,’” Chaz replied, suddenly animated. “Is he really a friend of yours?”

  “Friend and teacher,” said John. “I think what we need is to get some food and rest, then get our bearings in the morning and see if Bert really is somewhere hereabouts.”

  Chaz dropped the bowl of roots he’d been pulling out of a cupboard and turned to them, incredulous. “Are you mad?” he exclaimed. “Why would you possibly go about during the day?”

  “Why would that be a worse plan than traipsing about at night?” asked Jack. “What with giants and Sweeps and Wicker Men roaming around.”

  “There are worse things than them what serves the king,” Chaz said slowly, “an’ they go about when the sun is high.”

  The fear in his voice was enough to convince them. The companions ate the meal he prepared, then stretched out on the dirt floor as the sun began to rise, to sleep until dusk. And so none of them saw the raven Chaz kept in the cage in the rear of the house, or the name he wrote on the note he tied to its leg before he turned it loose into the harsh Albion daylight, closing the door behind it.

  When the sun had finally dropped to just a sliver of blood-tinted light on the horizon, Chaz finally opened the door again, and they began the journey to find the Far Traveler.

  Chaz led them south and west, to the channel that was the nearest access to open waters in that part of Albion. As they journeyed they could see more towers in the distance. None were close enough for the companions to worry about being sighted, but they kept watchful eyes all around, just to be safe.

  It was still fully night when they reached their destination, a small hamlet Chaz called Trevena. It consisted of fewer structures than the village that had been the Kilns, but all here were on the strange stilts. The largest of them, made of stone, was at the edge of the beach, surrounded by a courtyard. A wooden bridge ran up at a slope to the front door, which was open.

  The courtyard was bare rather than clean; and the shack simple rather than orderly. Spareness might resemble cleanliness, but it cannot disguise the bleak dreariness underneath.

  Chaz passed over the bridge and through the shack with a proprietor’s ease and opened the door at the rear of the building. “He’ll be out this way, on the pier,” he said, gesturing. “Follow me close-like.”

  The pier, which was itself a generous description, was high off the ground, bu
t short. The beach dropped away sharply, since there was no longer any water flowing underneath, and the sand stretched out into the darkness.

  “Must be low tide,” John observed, “but the beach seems awfully parched.”

  Chaz chuckled. “‘Tis, ‘tis,” he said in agreement. “Been low tide for almost two hundred years, as I heard it said. The ocean’s still out there, somewheres, but no souls alive has seen it.”

  “Strange pier,” Jack said. “If there’s no water, where do you moor the boats?”

  “Hsst!” Chaz hissed, looking behind them. “You can’t just go round sayin’ words like that. Words kill, you know.”

  “Sorry,” said Jack.

  “Is that him?” John asked, pointing.

  At the end of the pier, a shadow stood against a piling. A shadow with a very familiar shape.

  John began to move closer, but Chaz motioned for him to hold back. Instead Chaz stepped to the far right side of the pier, where he could be seen in the dim light—but without getting too close to the figure at the end of the pier.

  The shadow raised its head in alarm, then lowered it in resignation.

  “Whatever it is you’ve come about, Chaz, I want no part of it. Go back to your game-playing with the Wicker Men, or better yet, go play some pipes outside the bone towers, and let the giants have some fun with you. I don’t care either way—just leave me be.”

  “Weren’t my call to come seeking you either, you old goat,” Chaz retorted, “but I run into some fellows who says they knows you. Calls you ‘Bert’ or summat.”

  At this the shadow stood upright, startled. “Bert? There’s no one else still alive who would use that name, not in this world, not unless …”

  He pushed away from the piling where he’d been braced, and hobbled out into the hazy light. For everyone but Chaz, there was a shock of recognition, and for John and Jack, a further shock of seeing nightmares made real.

  It was indeed Bert. But he had been changed.

  The cheerily ruffled tatterdemalion of their first meeting was barely in evidence here. The clothes and hat were the same, but threadbare and shabby. He was thin, nearly emaciated, and his face haggard and drawn. There was no spark in his eyes, no twinkle. Neither of them had ever seen him without the twinkle, even in the grimmest of circumstances. But then again, neither of them had seem him without all his limbs, either.

  Bert supported himself by gripping a small ash walking stick with his left hand—his only hand. His other sleeve was folded and pinned just below his elbow. And in place of his right leg, fastened just under the knee was a piece of wood wrapped in leather, which ended with a crude wooden foot inside his shoe.

  Before John or Jack could say anything, Bert threw aside his stick and hobbled forward, grabbing John by the lapels. Weakly, but driven by surprise and rage, his hand shook as the younger man tried to steady him. Bert pressed close, eyes wild, and all but screamed at John.

  “Where have you been? Where … have … you … been?!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Serendipity Box

  Bert! “John said in choked astonishment. “You know us? You really know us?”

  “Of course I know you, John,” the ragged old man said, finally letting go of John’s coat and brushing him away. “I gave you the Geographica. I helped the three of you learn your roles in the great clockwork mechanism of things that are. I stood by you against a great evil, and we saved the world, once. And then you let it degrade to … to … this,” he spat, gesturing with his good arm. “Here, you. Badger. Give me my stick.”

  Fred jumped forward and retrieved the short ash staff, handing it to the old man. Neither he nor Uncas understood what was taking place, and so they remained quiet while the humans played out the drama.

  Bert stood a few feet from John and Jack, forming a rough triangle, but he refused to look at either of them—not directly. Chaz stood farther back, observing.

  “Fourteen years,” Bert wheezed. “We came here fourteen years ago, to … heh … SAVE you … to HELP you …”

  “You said ‘we,’ Bert,” Jack said, interrupting. “Who else came with you? Surely not Aven?”

  “No, not Aven,” Bert replied. “Your pretty ladylove stayed in the Archipelago, where she needed to be. She doesn’t love you, you know,” he added, almost conspiratorially. “Never did. Didn’t love the potboy, either. No, Nemo was her companion, but you fixed that, didn’t you, Jack?”

  In earlier years Jack would have reddened at this and become flustered. But he’d matured a great deal in the intervening time, and could face his own shortcomings and mistakes foursquare, as a man is supposed to do.

  “I stopped feeling responsible for that a long time ago, Bert,” he said calmly. “James Barrie told me things about Nemo, and you, and …” He stopped. “Verne. You came here with Jules Verne.”

  Bert sighed heavily and turned his back to them before answering. “Yes,” he said finally. “Jules and I came here together. We came … here.…”

  Without warning, the old man suddenly burst into tears. “Why did you have to bring her up, Jack? Why did you have to mention Aven, now that I’d finally nearly forgotten about her?”

  Jack started to reply, but John silenced him with a gesture. Bert was speaking from a long, deep pain, and perhaps they might learn something of what was happening.

  “If she’d been killed in battle, I might have been able to live with it,” Bert sobbed. “But here, after what’s happened, it’s as if she never existed! She is worse than dead!”

  “The Lady Aven is not dead,” came a soft voice. “I saw her myself just yesterday.”

  Fred was standing nearby, head bowed and paws folded respectfully, but when he spoke his voice was firm with conviction. “She is alive. Maybe not here, where we are, but somewheres. She is. And when Scowler John and Scowler Jack, and, uh, Mister Chaz help us t’ get back there, maybe you can come with us and see for yourself.”

  At first Bert reacted in rage, raising the ash stick to strike at the little creature. But Fred didn’t move. He barely flinched, and closed his eyes to receive the blow.

  Seeing this, Bert lowered the stick, then fell to his knees and grasped the badger, pulling Fred to his chest. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, little child of the Earth,” Bert said through muffled sobs. “I will not strike you. I won’t. It’s just … It’s been so long.…”

  Fred hugged the old traveler, and after a moment, Uncas moved in to do so as well. “It be all right,” said Uncas gently.

  “Animal logic,” Jack said to John. “Loyalty is all, and all things may be forgiven.”

  “We should go inside,” said Chaz. “The sun will be coming up soon.”

  “Yes,” Bert agreed, rising and wiping his eyes. “We have a great deal to discuss.”

  With the badgers supporting him on either side, Bert moved down the pier to the bridge that connected it to the house. John followed behind, but Jack pulled Chaz aside.

  “If this is indeed ‘our’ Bert,” Jack whispered, “how has he survived? You knew just where to find him. Wouldn’t the king have killed him long before now?”

  “He has, in years past, proved himself to be a friend to the king,” Chaz replied, “or at least, wise enough to seem as such.”

  “And this,” Jack said, indicating the damaged man walking ahead of them, “is how the king treats his friends?”

  Chaz shrugged. “Someone asked him that once. And th’ king laughed an’ said, ‘A friend this valuable you can’t eat all at once.’”

  Bert took them all inside the little shack, where he lit two candles, which he placed at opposite ends of the cramped quarters. For a single person, the accommodations were tight; for four men and two badgers, it was practically claustrophobic. There was a table and only one chair, which Bert took. The others sat on the floor, except for Chaz, who remained standing nervously in the doorway.

  “You’ll have to forgive my lack of hospitality,” Bert told the others. “I’d offer you tea,
but I haven’t any tea. I’d offer you brandy, but I haven’t any brandy. In fact, I don’t even have any crackers to give you.”

  “We did,” said Uncas, “but there was an emergency.”

  “There still is,” said Jack.

  “That’s a shame,” said Bert, “to run out of crackers before you’ve run out of emergency. And in Albion, it’s always an emergency.”

  “The king, whoever he is, sounds like an utter despot,” John observed.

  “Well said, John,” said Bert, “for he is just that. A despot. A petty, cruel dictator who hates himself and takes it out on everyone else. He suffers, and so makes the world suffer too.”

  “That sounds awfully familiar,” said Jack.

  “More than you know,” said Bert. “You’ve met him. Killed him, actually, more or less.”

  “That’s impossible,” said John.

  “Improbable, but clearly not impossible,” Bert corrected. “In the world you came from, the Winter King fell to his death in the year 1917. But here it is the one thousand four hundred and fourth year of the reign of our Lord and King, Imperius Rex, Mordred the First.”

  It took some time for the reunited friends to explain what had been happening to them, and Bert listened to their accounting of the situation with Hugo Dyson without comment. When they at last had finished explaining, he nodded sadly.

  “I begin to understand, at long last,” he said, still unwilling to look at any of them directly. “If Hugo went back to the sixth century, then he changed history. And everything proceeded apace from there to what we see now, today. Something that happened in the past gave Mordred the means to conquer and rule and emerge victorious against all opposition—if there ever was any.”

  “Why do you still know us, Bert?” asked Jack. “Chaz is obviously what Charles became in this timeline where he never knew us—but you’re still our Bert.”

  “Jules and I left Paralon right after the War of the Winter King,” said Bert. “He had come across a passage in a future history that mentioned the reemergence of Mordred, and so we returned here to England to warn you. When we arrived, we found things as you see them now, and we were trapped.”