Questors

by Joan Lennon

  And he had to face up to the fact that, once again, he’d been a failure. He’d been utterly useless in the Tube. He’d frozen stiff when those things started touching him – even thinking about it now made him shudder…

  He felt the old round begin again: fear shame anger shame fear… If he were big or strong or good at something manly, then he could break the round and be the way he was supposed to be – eager for danger, keen to meet the enemy, to get stuck in, to be the Hero.

  Two days ago he was still one of the ones being protected. He had a Castle, an army and a Castellan (with a smart Steward to tell him what to do) between him and any known danger.

  Now he was the Castellan, in a way (minus the Steward), with no Castle and no army and no way of knowing one danger from the next.

  He was the man.

  What a joke.

  So why was nobody laughing? And why – Madlen’s voice broke in on his thoughts.

  ‘That’s it,’ she said in a strangled voice. She pointed. ‘Over there.’

  At first glance, the school building didn’t look too bad. The big front doors had splintered, a few of the windows were cracked, and the sign announcing ‘Swithin Street School for Girls’ hung at an angle – but there was nothing much a lick of paint and a few screws wouldn’t fix.

  It was only when they looked at the upstairs windows that they saw daylight where it shouldn’t have been.

  ‘The roof’s come down,’ said Cam. ‘That whole top floor’s gone.’

  ‘That’s where the dorms are,’ whispered Madlen. ‘That’s where I sleep. Slept. What if it came down in the middle of the night…’

  ‘Keep talking,’ said Cam quietly. ‘And don’t look at me. Just go on as you are.’

  ‘What?’ said Bryn. ‘Oh.’ He turned back to Madlen. ‘No, there’d have been a warning. A big cave-in like that couldn’t just happen out of the blue. Here, look at this…’ He went over to Madlen and put his head close to hers, pretending to show her something.

  ‘I think something moved over there,’ he breathed, carefully not looking up. ‘I didn’t see what it was. Maybe a dog, maybe –’

  A sudden high-pitched squealing made them both jump, banging the sides of their heads together hard. Clutching their ears, they were in time to see Cam drag an extraordinary-looking creature out from behind some rubble.

  For a moment, they couldn’t tell what it was, because dirt and hair and the way it was struggling in Cam’s grip obscured its shape.

  Then, suddenly, it wasn’t alone.

  A tall, beautifully dressed man with a silky blond beard and silky blond hair was standing there in the street. He should have looked completely incongruous. He was wearing a really expensive suit, shirt and shoes, and a tie that probably cost more than everything Madlen and Bryn stood up in, and he didn’t look the least bit out of place. Standing there in the middle of a demolition site, he looked… perfect. He exuded rightness. Under any circumstances, we had it right, and everyone else was wrong.

  The thing squirmed out of Cam’s grasp. It was a boy, though it would be hard to say how old.

  ‘Get rid of them!’ he shrieked. ‘They touched me! Make them go away!’

  ‘No,’ said the man.

  Why did the three suddenly shiver?

  He turned his attention back to them and spoke.

  ‘My name is Erick,’ he said. ‘You may call me Master Erick, since you are children and I am not.’

  He flicked a finger in the direction of the boy.

  ‘Fred. My servant.’

  The boy almost exploded in indignation.

  ‘Your s-servant?! That is such a lie. You are such a –’

  The man yawned.

  ‘I’m bored,’ he said. ‘I’m taking them home. You’d like that, wouldn’t you.’ This was addressed to the three, and it was not a question.

  Bryn’s mouth hung open. There were danger bells clanging in spades inside his head – just look at him! he thought, the man’s practically pretty! And yet it seemed inconceivable that they would not go with him.

  Cam was perfectly familiar with elegant authority figures, and it knew there was something wrong with Master Erick. It also knew it would do anything he told it to.

  Madlen felt utterly dirty and insignificant in his presence. Even her shoelaces were undone. She bent to retie them and, as she did so, the hatchet fell out of the inside blazer pocket she’d stuffed it into. It clattered on to the ground.

  ‘Ernurgggg!’

  Erick’s face had turned pale and his eyes were big with horror. He grabbed Cam and swung it bodily between himself and Madlen.

  Madlen and Bryn stared at each other in amazement.

  ‘Um, what’s wrong?’ asked Bryn.

  The tall man seemed to be struggling to regain his poise.

  ‘We…’ he said, and then coughed as if to hide the quaver in his voice. ‘We appear to have a dilemma. The… horrible little implement the young lady has suddenly produced, I wasn’t expecting… it shouldn’t be… I’m allergic.’

  There was a bemused pause.

  ‘Allergic?’ repeated Madlen, unable to believe she’d heard correctly. ‘To hatchets?’ She picked it up and looked at it in amazement.

  THAT THING STAYS HERE!’

  The last words were spoken in a voice of absolute authority which had Madlen automatically beginning to put the hatchet down again, even while protesting, ‘But… I can’t just leave it lying around. It’s sharp!’

  ‘I am beginning to wheeze,’ said Master Erick, ‘even at this distance. My allergy is severe.’

  Madlen hesitated for a moment, and then turned on her heel.

  ‘I know where to put it!’ she said, and before anyone could stop her, she ran up the steps of the school and through the ruined double doors.

  She thought she could hear Cam calling to her to come back, it wasn’t safe, but she shut out the sound and ran on.

  See? If I’d handed over my key to Miss Gerard yesterday, I mean, all those years ago, the way a good girl would…

  Her heart was beating hard as she hurried along the shattered corridor. There must have been a fire at some point, for the walls were sooty and scorched. The ceiling over her head bulged down under the weight of the fallen roof. It creaked menacingly. She tried to move weightlessly; she tried not to breathe.

  And then she was there. The lockers stretched along a section of corridor that was amazingly undamaged, though the soot and the dirt everywhere would have made Mrs Alastair, the caretaker, weep. Madlen set the hatchet down in front of locker thirty-seven and, wiping the sweat from her hands on to her blazer, she scrounged in her pocket for the key. She had trouble at first getting it into the lock. She was starting to shake all over with the urgency of the message from her brain – GET OUT, GET OUT!

  Then, just as the key engaged, she froze. Something impossible was happening, just there, just out of the corner of her eye. Something…

  She let her hand drop and spun around to face whatever it was, except that when she did, it wasn’t there any more. Just the ruined building, the dirt, the decay. Nothing.

  Slowly Madlen reached for the key in the lock. As soon as her fingers made contact, it – whatever it was – was back, just there, at the edge of her vision. There were faint noises, and colours, and even smells. Madlen held absolutely still, fighting the urge to turn and look. The powerful aroma of Mrs Alastair’s polish flooded her senses, and she felt a ridiculously overwhelming nostalgia for the good old days – for yesterday. She was aware of clean uniformed girls rustling up and down the corridor behind, whispering that rose and fell as teachers paced majestically by, the faint leftover odour of burnt breakfast toast, and a feeling of being absolutely sure of what the day would hold. It was almost more than she could bear. It made the tears prick her eyes.

  The tears spilled over and everything went blurry. Working almost blind, Madlen turned the key and pulled open the door of locker thirty-seven. She felt about on the floor beside her, foun
d the hatchet and pushed it inside. She could still hear and smell the lost world going on behind her as she fumbled the door closed. For a long moment she stood, her hand on the key, the tears still running down her face. Then, slowly, she removed the key from the lock.

  The sounds of girls and gossip, and the smells of polish and disinfectant, faded. In their place, she smelt damp and decay, and heard only the random creaking of a ruined building. She scrubbed the tears out of her eyes and drew a ragged breath.

  Stumbling a little, Madlen made her way back to the nightmare world outside.

  As Madlen emerged from the school, she found it had started to rain. The others were looking anxious and miserable, except for Master Erick, who only looked majestic.

  Bryn ran up to her, but Cam just stood where it was, fists on hips.

  Are you all right?’ asked Bryn.

  ‘I thought the whole flipping roof was going to come in on you!’ yelled Cam. ‘Don’t you know how dangerous that was?!’ Then the tear smudges on Madlen’s face registered. ‘Yeah, so, are you OK?’ it mumbled, embarrassed.

  ‘Shall we?’ interrupted Master Erick impatiently.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Madlen. Her voice was a little hoarse, but she managed to keep it from wobbling. ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’

  Master Erick strode off down the street. At some point the boy Fred had disappeared again. No one had seen him go. The three looked at each other, shrugged and headed out.

  They found they had trouble keeping up with the man’s long legs. No matter how fast they walked, or even jogged, he always seemed to be just too far ahead for comfort. Surprisingly, though, he didn’t seem to be having the same overawing effect on them when he wasn’t right in their faces any more.

  ‘Why can’t the wretched man slow down?!’ muttered Madlen.

  ‘Because we are children and he is not!’ Cam mimicked, and Bryn made a rude gesture at Erick’s back.

  There was no way he could have known what they were doing or saying, and yet…

  ‘Naughty, naughty,’ he called back. At the same moment, the rain got heavier, and a nasty wind sprang up that chilled and bit, driving the wet into their faces no matter which way they turned.

  They were zigzagging through the streets, skirting piles of rubble and sometimes cutting through the ruins themselves. Madlen was too unhappy to pay close attention, and Cam was too cold and out of breath, but Bryn struggled to keep track of their route. He’d learned many of the skills of the hunter and tracker with his pack, though in a built-up area and without the sun, he was finding it hard to keep direction clear. Even so, he began to suspect that Master Erick was leading them in elaborate circles, as if he wanted them to be unable to retrace their steps. Then he stopped suspecting. He knew. The stranger was trying to get them lost.

  He stared at the man’s back, frowning, when he noticed something else.

  Master Erick was dry.

  Bryn and Cam and Madlen were drenched and shivering, but the tall man’s hair and clothes weren’t even damp. How…? Why…?

  Bryn said nothing. There was no point in worrying the others.

  He was worried enough for all three…

  17

  Camping In

  ‘Aah!’ said Master Erick. ‘Home at last!’

  The children hesitated at the bottom of a flight of steps.

  ‘But…’ said Bryn. ‘This is a church!’

  It was the last thing either Cam or Bryn would have expected on Trentor, and it certainly seemed an unlikely home.

  Madlen looked uncomfortable and a bit defiant.

  ‘We’re not barbarians; you know!’ she hissed. ‘The people in the Service Sector have a perfect right to their own ethnic traditions, as long as they’re discreet about it!’

  And she stumped up the steps.

  The other two looked at each other with raised eyebrows, but followed on anyway. They bumped into Madlen just inside the big doors and peered anxiously about.

  The church was high, and echoey, and cold, and dim. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust, and then they saw that the nave was a mess of overturned and broken pews, ripped-up hymn books and scattered debris. Partway along, a space had been cleared and there was an open fire on the flagstone floor. Fred was kneeling beside it, feeding it with bits of wood. He peered at them sideways from under his mess of hair and then looked away. The three began to pick their way through the clutter towards the fire.

  ‘Sausages,’ said Master Erick. ‘Potatoes. And marshmallows.’ He smacked his lips. ‘Fab!’ He looked at them impatiently. ‘Oh, stop pissing about there! I certainly hope you’re not going to be boring.’

  Fred sniggered.

  ‘Sausages sound great,’ said Cam hurriedly.

  ‘Yeah!’ agreed Bryn.

  ‘Thank you for having us,’ said Madlen politely.

  The man glared at her in disgust.

  ‘You sit there,’ said Master Erick to Bryn and Cam, turning his back on Madlen and pointing to a great heap of pew cushions, vestments and altar cloths by the fire.

  ‘You – sit over there,’ he grunted at Madlen, indicating a kneeler on the other side, further back from the fire.

  ‘And this–’ sitting himself grandly in an ornately carved, throne-like chair – ‘is where I shall sit.’ He struck an elegant pose. ‘I look better in a chair like this than some fat-arsed priest – don’t you think?’

  Fred let out a guffaw, and the others smiled nervously.

  It was a bizarre picnic.

  Fred served up food to Master Erick and Bryn and Cam; Madlen, after a moment’s hesitation, helped herself. Erick was working his way steadily through a cache of beer by his chair. There was nothing for anybody else to drink, but that didn’t seem to embarrass him. And in the end it just felt good to be stuffed and drowsy around a campfire, even if it was a campfire inside a church, surrounded by a dead city in an incomprehensible Future.

  Master Erick belched and then gave a huge yawn.

  ‘Go away,’ he said, swinging his long legs over the arm of his throne. ‘I’m sleepy.’

  There was a startled pause.

  ‘Go…? Where?’ stammered Cam.

  The man waved a careless hand.

  ‘Put them in the balcony, Fred,’ he said, closing his eyes.

  With that, he fell asleep, and began to snore through his elegant nose.

  The children looked at the boy. He didn’t meet their eyes, but then he never did.

  ‘What now?’ asked Cam, and he indicated the back of the church with a jerk of his head. A balcony of pews was there in the darkness, with a stair up one side.

  They carried bundles of cushions and cloth up the stairs and constructed makeshift beds on the hard pews. Fred showed them how, but when they tried to thank him, he ran away. Back down the stairs he scuttled, as if they’d offered to hit him. They looked at each other and shrugged.

  The three lay down as the last light of the day disappeared from the stained-glass windows. There was silence for a little and then Bryn spoke.

  ‘So what happened in the school? If you want to tell us,’ he added cautiously.

  Madlen had been lying, stiff and staring in the dusk. It was a relief to tell the other two what had happened to her in that familiar, unfamiliar place.

  ‘It was as if it were all still there, all still going on, as close as I am to you, and yet I couldn’t get to it,’ she finished at last. ‘And I was desperate to. Which is so weird. When I was there – before, I mean, properly at school – I hated it. I never fitted and I was always scared they’d find out, you know?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bryn, and ‘Yes,’ said Cam, both speaking fervently in the dark.

  That’s strange, thought Madlen. I’d have said those two were just right for their Worlds. I wonder what they think they’re doing wrong?

  But tiredness is a powerful force…

  18

  Eavesdropped

  The carriage was old and decrepit… All the colour seeme
d to have been leached out… Less of a map and more of an amoeba… grey people – but where was their reflection?… ‘They’re not there! They’re not there!’… ‘Don’t do that!’… Too late. They’re coming, closer and closer, those ghastly eyes, blank, black, she knew she had to do something but she was frozen, she couldn’t move, and they were coming closer, they were all around her, bending over her, and their faces were all she could see –

  Madlen hit the floor, cracking her elbows and knees hard. Something was tangling her legs so she couldn’t get up. She seemed to be in a kind of open box, like a coffin, and the sides rose up around her in the dim light. Her heart thudded against her chest, and she was trembling and sweaty. She lay, rigid, until at last her brain caught up with her adrenalin-crazed body.

  This is the church, she told herself. I’ve been asleep on a pew. I must have fallen off. The others are here too. By craning her neck she could see them, further along the pew, two quiet bundles, wrapped up. That must be what was pinning her legs – she must have got herself tangled up in her own makeshift sleeping bag when she had the dream.

  It had been a dream.

  Still shaking, Madlen freed herself and struggled upright. It was cold. She wrapped herself in the bedding and sat for a long while, feeling stiff and miserable and on the verge of tears. It was only gradually that the pounding of blood in her ears quietened and, as it passed, she became aware of voices in the nave below.

  Treading as lightly as she could, Madlen crept to the edge of the balcony. Slowly, silently, she leaned forward until she could just see over the railing.

  It was a strange scene.