Silo had been neglecting his education, but with Ryker teaching he drifted back to school and found it a better experience than he remembered, for Ryker had the gift of making classes interesting, especially when he told them about the Uplands and beyond. The Islanders always spoke of the Island as if it were the only one in the world, but now Silo learned that it was but one of many in the Kingdom Isles. There were islands inhabited by savage zoo animals, islands where Raiders lurked, but biggest of them all was Mainland. Ryker sketched it in mud on the classroom wall, and the Island itself, which had previously seemed like the whole world to Silo, turned out to be the merest dot on its eastern coastline.
He told them about the Capital, home to the Government and its inspectors. The Capital was the hub of Mainland and all its satellite islands, and once it had been a great city of the Ancients and then, at the dawn of their own age, in Year One, it had become the center of government for all the Kingdom Isles. The buildings of the Ancients still stood there in all their glory, including the great Lion and Unicorn Towers, set on a hilltop, encircled by city walls and bordered by the mighty river Rampage on its long run to the sea.
Whereas once Silo’s future had seemed bleak and predictable, after lessons with Ryker, he now sensed his destiny. He would go to the Capital and use his powers as a seer to save it from dangers yet unknown, earning the gratitude of its people and the Government. He would become a great man and live his days in comfort, forever free of floods and famine, and he would never eat another eel as long as he lived. Silo Zyco, Seer and Savior, Hero of the People, Eel-Spurner.
Silo mentioned his plans to Ryker, but Ryker wasn’t as enthusiastic as he had hoped. He just looked thoughtful.
“Well, I always assumed you’d end up at the Capital one day,” he had said. “You’re the restless, ambitious type, and restless ambition and marshes don’t mix. But wait a while. You’ve a lot to learn still. The Capital can be a dangerous place for strangers.”
—
As he trailed the inspector and Ruddle down the Causeway he heard the great horn on the lookout tower bellowing out across the marsh, jerking him out of his thoughts. Moooo-OOH, moooo-OOH, moooo-OOH. It sounded like a cow, albeit a large and furious one. Ben Mudford had spotted the visitors approaching and was blasting out the news. By now the Islanders would be out fishing, and Silo imagined the quick flurry of activity as they upped oars and cast loose rafts and the whole fleet hastened back, converging on the Island from all points of the compass. He quickened his own pace and presently the familiar mound of the Island loomed through the rain.
He knew, however, that the Government was always on the lookout for seers who could warn the nation of impending disaster. If only he could convince the inspector that he was a genuine seer, he could hitch a ride to the Capital with him. If all went to plan, Silo wouldn’t be seeing the Island again for a long time and he felt a sudden affection for it, for it was no ordinary island. In the time of the Ancients a huge building had stood here and the houses of the Islanders clustered upon the ruins like barnacles on a rock. Most were tumbledown two-story huts made of mud and driftwood, topped with a reed thatch and jostling each other in the steep maze of narrow alleyways that made up the village. The Island was encircled by a clutter of jetties and huts perched out over the water on stilts. The biggest of these structures was the communal toilets. Silo hoped that the inspector would be impressed, but he thought it a little doubtful somehow. He untied his raft and paddled across to the Island, struggling to make way against the incoming tide.
—
When Silo docked, the village was deserted, and he headed to the meeting hall. It stood at the top of the alley and was the largest building on the Island, perched on its highest point and dwarfing the little rain-sodden huts around it. It was topped by a steeply pitched roof, then the lookout tower and a big weather vane shaped like a mudfish. Silo passed beneath its shadow and crept onto the porch. He wanted to enter unobserved, if possible, so he peered through a knothole in the door to judge what stage the meeting had arrived at.
The whole village was gathered. Everyone looked a little cleaner and tidier than usual, and those who had boots were wearing them. The inspector sat at a table at the end of the hall with the current volume of the Chronicles open before him amid a litter of papers. Headman Bean paced the floor in front of the table. He was an unfortunate choice for headman, but he was oldest of the Beans, the largest by far of the Island families, and Beans always voted for Beans. They took up the whole right-hand side of the hut, a blondish family with doughy faces and eyes set a little too far apart. The Pattles and the Mudfords sat to the left. They would have liked Ben Mudford as headman, but he always came in a few votes too short.
Headman Bean was speaking. “…So now that we’ve finished the tax stuff, let’s get on to seers. We know the Government’s always on the lookout for them, and we happen to have one on the Island.” Silo paused with his hand on the door. It was sometimes useful to know what people said about you when they thought you weren’t there. But Headman Bean’s next words were: “Step forward, Boris, where the inspector can see you. Boris has predicted all kinds of things. He’s a first-rate seer.”
This was news to Silo. Boris was Headman Bean’s son, he of this morning’s “Zyco the psycho” taunt. He was many things—Silo’s least favorite person, his parents’ pride and joy, and the worst student Ryker had ever taught—but Silo was positive he wasn’t a seer. The inspector looked doubtful too. He gave Boris a hard stare and then addressed the Islanders. “Is this true?”
The Bean family nodded, but the Mudfords and Pattles sat in pointed silence. The inspector sighed and drew a weary hand across his face. “So you’re a seer. I suppose you’d better tell us what you’ve seen.”
Boris glanced around to make sure he had their undivided attention, then raised his eyes to the roof beam and spoke in a high, unnatural voice. “I see a vision from the future. I see a beautiful walled city on a hill. In the middle are two tall towers. One has a lion on top and the other has a unicorn.”
“That would be the Capital, I suppose,” said the inspector, “but it can’t be the future. The Unicorn Tower burned down last autumn.”
“They have rebuilt it, more beautiful than ever,” said Boris, showing an unexpected quickness of wit.
“What else?”
Boris frowned, and a look of horror passed over his face. “The Capital is in danger! I see thousands of ships—Raiders’ ships—sailing in from the west—”
The inspector cut him off. “The west is mostly turnip fields. You do know that the Capital is thirty miles inland, don’t you?”
Boris was silenced. Apparently not. Behind the door Silo allowed himself a rare smile of satisfaction.
The inspector gave Boris a dirty look and waved him back to his seat. “On the subject of seers—you have a Chronicle Keeper called Silo Zyco. He knew we were coming this morning. He wrote it in the Chronicles and he met us at the end of the Causeway. Did you have news here that we were coming?”
The Islanders muttered and shook their heads.
“Interesting. And has Silo predicted anything else? Something that actually happened?”—this with a dark glance at Boris.
There followed what seemed to Silo a long, long silence, and then finally Lula Pattle said, “He knows when the geese are coming. Every year.”
Her mother, Emma, backed her up. “Most of us here think Silo’s a seer.” Crouching behind the door, Silo felt a glow of pride. “It’s not just the geese. He knows when the eels are going to spawn and when the seals will arrive at the point. He’s predicted storms a few times…” Emma paused. “And then there’s that thing that happened at the Hump.”
The thing that happened at the Hump: the day Silo knew for certain that he was a seer. It was the day his life changed forever: 11 June 362.
Silo had been six in 362. His history, as recorded in the Chronicles, was not only short but tragic. The first entry read:
29 February 356: Born today a boy, Silo. Mother Zenda Zyco. Father a mystery.
Five years later an epidemic of marsh sickness swept the Island and his mother’s name was listed among the victims, so the rest of the Zycos had taken on his upkeep and, in Silo’s opinion, were making a wretched job of it. He found himself hustled from hut to hut, a month here, six weeks there, and never made to feel welcome anywhere. Over the years his family had acquired a reputation for being a shifty, antisocial crew: violent, rude, argumentative, and much inclined to borrow things without asking—or steal, as the other Islanders more simply called it. Having studied the Chronicles, Silo was privy to 350 years of history in which the Zycos were recorded doing all that and worse:
25 May 299: Died today, Ray Bean, aged 11. Pushed into a whirlpool by Otto Zyco.
(Although in this case justice had been swift for the next day’s entry read: Died today: Otto Zyco, aged 13. Struck on head with spade by Ollie Bean.)
However, in the winter of 361/362 things had come to a head and the whole Zyco family had moved to the Hump. The Hump was about a half mile distant from the Island, a soggy mound that protruded from the marsh like a half-submerged whale, and the Chronicle was vague as to the reasons—Today the whole Zyco family moved to the Hump after a big row—but Silo found it a change for the worse. The reed huts the Zycos built on the Hump were damp and uncomfortable, and to avoid it, he now started spending his evenings at the dock where, weather permitting, groups of Islanders would gather to discuss the events of the day. Ryker often produced small packets of fish or smoked eels, neatly wrapped in seaweed, from one of his many pockets and passed them absently to Silo, for food was often short in the Zyco family.
On the morning of 11 June he left the Hump early—much too early for school, but he had his reasons. Just then he was staying with a particularly ill-tempered uncle who had neglected to feed him the night before. Silo had found a fried eel the uncle was saving for breakfast and, in the time-honored tradition of the Zyco family, he had borrowed it without asking—eaten it, in fact—and he wanted to be clear of the Hump before it was noticed. Ben waved to him from the lookout tower as he nosed his raft into the waters of Goose Creek. Half a dozen Mudfords were digging for bait worms, and a little fleet of rafts was setting off for the reed beds. And then Silo saw something impossible. A huge gray wall of water rose up in his mind and smashed down on the peaceful marsh like a fist, shattering rafts and whirling away Mudfords like matchsticks.
He blinked and the world settled slowly into place again like grains of sand in a swirled glass. But it had been a seeing and the birds knew what he knew, for the marsh behind him suddenly exploded in a flurry of wings as thousands of ducks and waders took to the sky, crying and wheeling aimlessly across the marsh in great ragged flocks. Something dreadful was going to happen, and soon. Silo dug his paddle into the water and shot out into Goose Creek, screaming at the distant figure in the lookout tower, “Ben! Sound the flood warning! The FLOOD WARNING!” But his voice was lost in the wind. He saw Ben standing stock-still on the tower watching him and the wheeling birds, and in desperation he threw down his paddle and mimed the vigorous pumping of bellows. Ben understood. Within a moment the great horn was bellowing out over the marsh. The rafts stopped, spun in midstream, and started back to the Island. Silo stabbed at the water with his paddle and powered the raft forward with all his strength, for he felt an overwhelming sense of danger. The very air seemed to crackle with it despite the still waters of the creek and the peace of the morning. Silo looked westward to the open sea and saw nothing but calm waters to the horizon, serene under a clear sky. But then the horizon seemed to ripple. It was no longer flat but bulging here and there, and then suddenly there was no horizon at all but just a single great wave higher than any wave had a right to be, a wall of gray water topped with flying spray that came surging inland at terrifying speed.
The raft men had reached the Island and were joining the mass of people running uphill to the surest place of safety—the great meeting hall on the highest point of dry land. Silo put in a last desperate effort to reach the dock and run up the hill. Looking behind him, Silo saw the great wave thunder over the Causeway and surge up Goose Creek; then it struck the Island with a deep boom and he saw, in an explosion of white water, whole rows of houses shiver and shatter under the impact and then be swept away with a grinding roar. It came boiling up the Island, its surface churning with shattered timbers, uprooted jetties, and great swaths of seaweed ripped from the ocean floor. The little houses on either side of the alley shuddered as it swept higher and higher and then, finally, it drew back with a long hissing roar, leaving a ragged trail of destruction in its wake.
Silo was silent, looking out to the Hump, or rather where the Hump used to be, for now there was nothing visible there but a solid sheet of stormy foam-flecked water.
—
At noon that day, when the waters had started to recede, a group of Mudfords took the big raft out. All day long they poled slowly back and forth across the flooded marsh, but of the Zycos there was no trace, all but one having been seemingly swept from the face of the Earth. Silo found his own raft in the remains of someone’s bedroom and spent all day on the water, retrieving bits and pieces of people’s houses and towing them back to the Island, trip after trip from noon to sunset. He wanted to be too busy to think. He knew that his warning had saved lives, but he had been unable to help his own family, and the knowledge haunted him. Though they had been an unlovely crew they were all he had, and he felt he had failed them miserably. And he realized that he was also homeless. After tying off his raft, he stood undecided for a moment, then headed slowly uphill to find the only person who, like himself, had no family to call his own: Ryker. He found him crouched over a smoking fire outside the Chronicle Keeper’s hut and poking at a pot of eels.
“Silo, you’re just in time for supper,” he said. “Go on up”—this with a grand sweeping gesture to the rickety steps up to the door of the hut. When Silo went in he saw that the table was set for two and that an extra hammock had been slung from the beams, and felt an immense sense of gratitude.
“I would have invited you before,” said Ryker, coming in behind him with the pot of eels, “but your family were dead set against it. They seemed to think I wanted to get my hands on your Eel Rights.”
“Do I have Eel Rights?” This was unexpected.
“Your mother owned the Eel Rights to Mud Island. She left them to you when she died.”
Mud Island was a hump with a ruined hut on it, the loneliest spot on the whole marsh. It seemed a deeply depressing thing to inherit.
“Didn’t they mention it to you? I’m surprised.”
Silo wasn’t. It seemed typical of his family. And now, he supposed, he would inherit all the Zycos’ Eel Rights, together with their dark reputation.
That night Ryker made a new entry in the Chronicles: Missing, presumed drowned…and here followed a list of forty names, all of them Zycos. Sole survivor, Silo Zyco.
Silo Zyco, the last of the Zycos, son of Zenda, son of mystery, Sole Survivor. It seemed he had been born under a dark star, and that misfortune dogged him like a shadow.
—
Thus did he come to live with Ryker. Ryker was not a talkative man, but then Silo was not a talkative boy. Where Ryker came from remained a mystery. He never talked about his past, and Silo, a natural respecter of privacy, never asked him about it—though he did begin to have his suspicions, for in time he discovered something about Ryker that no one else knew.
Ryker had never adopted the Islanders’ casual attitude about dress. He retained his Uplander clothes, his shirt and breeches and jacket growing tattier and more patched as time passed, and one day while Ryker was washing his shirt Silo had seen an ugly mark branded across his shoulder. The burned flesh was raised in lumpy red scars and spelled out four letters, crimson against his pale skin: SOUP. It had been stamped there deliberately, presumably by people who had a powerful dislike of Ryker, f
or the process must have been horribly painful. So Ryker had enemies and was perhaps even a criminal of some kind. Given Ryker’s good nature, Silo couldn’t believe it was a very serious kind, but it did explain his long residence on the marsh, and Silo came to believe that Ryker stayed on the Island because he was a wanted man, hunted through the Uplands by unknown enemies.
Silo felt comforted by this evidence of Ryker’s outcast status because, ever since the tidal wave, he had felt a bit of an outcast himself. He had never been popular—he was, after all, a Zyco—but since that day he had noticed a subtle change in the Islanders’ behavior toward him. The other children mostly avoided him now, and even a few of the adults. He had somehow turned into a creature of ill omen. But worse was to come:
4 January 366: Died today Ryker, teacher and Chronicle Keeper, age unknown.
Mistaken for a muskrat and shot in the eye by Vernon Bean.
It was Silo’s first entry as Chronicle Keeper and written in his most beautiful handwriting, but blurred a little here and there by tears. Silo very rarely cried, for his short life had taught him there was little profit in it, but on that occasion he had been unable to help himself.
Ryker had been out duck hunting and was lying flat on one of the little reed-fringed islands, wrapped in a length of muddy sacking for camouflage. Vernon Bean was out hunting too and, seeing Ryker’s dark hair and whiskers protruding from behind a tussock, had let fly an arrow and killed him instantly. Despite Vernon’s noisy remorse, Silo cursed him from the bottom of his heart and was sorely tempted to add “an idiot” after his name in the Chronicle entry, but Ryker was dead, and nothing he wrote or did could change that awful truth.
Silo and the Rebel Raiders Page 2