Awakening (14 page)

He let it fall upon his flesh.

He touched the gem to let it do its work before raising his arms in gratitude to feel the healing it had given, which was its potent rejuvenation of himself.

Slaeke Sinistral felt, as well, the Universe.

He had found his true home.

Later, he slept.

When he woke he knew they had been.

There was food, there were warm clothes, there was pure water and much else.

He did not recognize them then as offerings.

No matter, there was harmony and trust between them and he knew, as surely they did too, that he would come again and bring with him the gem whose rays would begin their healing, their return to light, as it healed him too.

Soon after, Sinistral brought his people to Bochum and rebuilt his Empire there, but this time as a community, not just as a business.

The Remnants were left in peace.

The tunnels beyond Bochum, by which the evil hydden of the Ruhr brought destruction, were sealed off and guarded by the Fyrd.

Beneath Bochum an Imperial City came to be.

There the Empire was born.

And now the Emperor was ready to return and rule again.

‘Blut!
Blut!?’

Blut came running.

‘What news?’

The Emperor was getting more restive by the day. He was also showing more and more signs of final breakdown. He could sit up now, but his skin was opening into raw red fissures beyond Blut’s skill to tend. He could talk and laugh, but sometimes he began a cough that was hard to stop. He could think clearly, even acutely, but his mind drifted to notions of the Universe that seemed to make no sense.

‘When you are well, my Lord, and return to the court, you will find you have a new Master of Shadows. You will not be displeased.’

‘His name?’

Blut had been saving this item up for just such a moment.

‘Witold Slew.’

‘Well, now there’s a thing!’

‘There is a thing indeed, Lord.’

The Master of Shadows was the Emperor’s Champion, the wielder of his stave. On formal occasions in the Great Hall, up on Level 2, the Master took a position in front of the Emperor, his guardian and protector. When occasion demanded it he was sent forth, as Champion, to defend the Emperor’s rights in single combat or to act as his agent, secretly or otherwise.

The position was not just honorary, but won in combat against the existing Master. Only the greatest masters of the stave ever won the position, and their skill lay in knowing how to shadow-fight.

‘Slew! My beloved’s firstborn!’

‘Yes, Lord, your hopes have been fulfilled. He defeated Otta Kreche before all the Court, fairly.’

‘It
would
be fair,’ murmured Sinistral.

Kreche had been Master for ten years and seen off many challenges. He and the Emperor were close.

‘He has sworn his loyalty to Slew and his fealty to yourself. He enjoys his retirement.’

‘Kreche would.’

‘He does the practice daily, nurturing the young.’

‘That too I would expect. I am well pleased in this and I will see both as soon as I am recovered. Now, about my Lady . . .’

Blut sighed and said apologetically, ‘She has been delayed. The Earth, as we now know, is angry. There have been tremors and travelling is difficult.’

‘But
she
is safe?’

‘I sent Kreche to fetch her; since he is no longer Master of Shadows he had time.’

‘Her son Witold Slew was surely more suitable?’

‘Mother and son they may be, Lord, but they do not get on.’

‘Kreche knows her, likes her, and will see she gets here safe and sound.’

‘Just so.’

The Emperor laughed and then coughed painfully.

‘She . . . she . . . she was always late,’ he said eventually, then added, ‘Let us hope she gets here in time to help me.’

‘I told her exactly that; I said, “My Lady, this will not do, your”—’

The Emperor held up his hand. ‘You scolded her?’

‘I did.’

‘Never did any good, but thank you all the same. She’ll arrive as death takes me and haul me back from its grasp. I knew that from the first.’

‘Even so, Lord . . .’

‘Even so.’

15

D
ECISION

T
hree days after his friends so dramatically discovered he had found the gem of Spring, Stort was summoned to Lord Festoon’s Official Residence opposite the Main Library. Brief, Pike and Barklice were already there and others arriving.

Festoon greeted Stort warmly. He was pink-cheeked and well groomed, his dark hair silvering, and he wore a flowing silk robe of grey, with a chain of office in a semicircle across his chest.

Also present was General Meyor Feld, middle-aged, grey-haired and the second in command of the military in Brum, and Captain Backhaus, the young aide-de-camp of Marshal Igor Brunte, leader of the coup against the Fyrd two years before.

The last to arrive had been Igor Brunte himself. He was in his early thirties and had a stocky, well-muscled body. Though his manner was friendly and his expression genial there was menacing glitter in his dark eyes and power and confidence to his movements.

He had been trained as a Fyrd and came originally from Poland, with the stolid stance, strong chin and resolute gaze that Stort associated with hydden from Eastern Europe.

Festoon indicated that they should take their places in easy chairs in his large and elegant salon with refreshments to be served and left available on a sideboard.

‘There are many issues to discuss,’ he said, ‘so I have brought together all those who, I think, may have something useful to contribute. We shall not be disturbed, nor will minutes be taken. Feel free to say, do and eat what you like!’

He turned to Stort.

‘Perhaps you can start with an account of the finding of the gem?’

They all leaned forward expectantly.

Stort never did like such meetings and he certainly didn’t like this one. To be asked to speak of the gem so publicly felt like a betrayal of something private. In fact his first instinct was to get up and leave, but he realized that this might not be wise. Instead he kept his account of the discovery brief and unemotional, describing what had happened on Waseley Hill in the early hours of the first of May and afterward.

‘If I behaved strangely it was because the gem has great power and perhaps I should not have actually touched it, but in the circumstances I had to. I would not recommend anyone else to do so. It is for the Shield Maiden to wear one day and meanwhile we should hide it away out of sight.’

‘Excellent, Mister Stort, thank you! Perhaps we could see the gem. I assume you have it with you?’

To Stort such a request seemed too much too soon and he murmured, ‘Perhaps later, High Ealdor . . .’

He did his best to pay attention to the discussion that followed, which ranged widely, but he could not get out of his head the notion that their main purpose was to see the gem and handle it, which was the last thing he wanted. Again and again each of them asked to see it; each was refused.

It was when, for the umpteenth time, Stort found himself saying, ‘It’s for the Shield Maiden to take it from me, gentlemen, her alone,’ that Igor Brunte intervened. He reached a hand towards Stort and said, ‘Show me the gem, Mister Stort, or I shall have to conclude that you do not have it, never found it and you are wasting my time. That is not something I take lightly or can let go unpunished.’

Stort stared at the hand, which was scarred. It had a mean, grasping look about it.

Stort suddenly closed his eyes, put his hands to his ears, sat humming for a few moments until at last, his decision apparently made, he stood up.

‘You all want to see it, that’s obvious enough,’ he cried, ‘and I am reluctant to show it, that’s obvious too, which is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Have I got it? Of course I have!’

With that he dug into his jerkin, felt about, pulled out the leather pouch in which he kept the gem and tossed it on the sideboard.

‘You want it, take it! Examine it. Peer at it, caress it, poke it, polish it . . . Discuss its security, value, and Mirror knows what else but . . . but . . .
but
. . . remember that the gem is not mine or yours and least of all is it a committee’s.

‘The gem of Spring is our heritage. It is a thing of power. It is beauty. It is the fire of life. What it is not is an object to be gawped at and pawed by ex-Fyrd, by Ealdors, by scriveners and stavermen . . . or even by a Marshal, especially one who threatens me! We of Brum, foolish though we must seem to others, do not like to be browbeaten into doing things our instincts tell us we should not.’

He stuffed the pouch back in his jerkin and said, ‘I shall now go and hide the gem somewhere safe and I . . . I’ll not stay here a moment more!’

With that he headed for the doors.

He had almost reached them when he heard someone say, ‘
Mister Stort!
’

The voice was so sharp, so strong, so full of command, that it would have stopped a herd of charging elephants. It certainly stopped Stort.

It was Marshal Brunte again.

He was smiling.

‘Mister Stort,’ he said, very gently now, ‘may I ask a question?’

‘You may,’ said Bedwyn Stort.

‘It’s a simple question but one which, before you answer it, I wish you to confirm that you will answer truthfully.’

‘I must do so I suppose,’ said Stort, who perhaps sensed what the question was going to be.

He came back and stood by his seat once more.

‘Do you, or do you not, have the gem?’ asked Brunte.

‘I do.’

‘And do you, or do you not, have the gem in that pouch?’

For answer Stort came to the edge of the table, loosened the cords and turned the pouch upside down.

A small nut tumbled onto the table, bounced about and then lay still.

Everyone but Brunte looked utterly astonished.

‘Whatever is that?’ asked Barklice.

‘A cobnut,’ said Stort. ‘The truth is I have already hidden the gem where no one is likely to find it.’

Everybody looked shocked but for Brunte, who beamed.

He alone had guessed the truth.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I think what we have just been witness to is rather more than the spirit of freedom and liberty, and quirky bloodymindedness, for which Brum is rightly famed throughout the Hyddenworld. We have seen demonstrated why the gem of Spring, which certainly would appear to have a mind of its own, has chosen Bedwyn Stort as its guardian. He is clearly a hydden of very remarkable tenacity, cleverness and courage.

‘First, he was sensible enough not to bring it with him today. Second, he has been canny enough to resist all attempts to reveal it here. Finally, when his options were all gone, and we had as good as put a knife to his throat, he bluffed us! It seems to me that the time has come for this meeting to stop telling Mister Stort what to do and ask him what he wants
us
to do!’

The Marshal stood up, reached a hand across the table, and shook Stort’s vigorously, and rather less painfully, than the first time.

‘Now,’ continued Brunte after a short recess, ‘before Mister Stort addresses us again may I briefly say something more?’

They all sat down again.

‘I have heard from various sources that Slaeke Sinistral, Emperor of the Hyddenworld, has in the last week or two woken from his sleep of eighteen years.’

Festoon nodded, Pike too, for he had also been informed.

‘It may well be, as Master Brief told me privately only yesterday, that there is a direct connection between the re-emergence of the Emperor into daily life and the discovery by Mister Stort of the gem of Spring. That bodes ill for Brum. I know the Fyrd, I know the Empire and I know the Emperor. They will attack, take the gem and then destroy us. So while Stort here must decide what he is to do about the gem, we who love Brum must plan its defence against the Empire.

‘Now, I am neither scholar nor historian, but if I remember the legends about Beornamund’s gems right, is it not true that once Spring has made its way into mortal hands it becomes an imperative that the gems of Summer, Autumn and Winter are found as well? Am I right?’

Brief thought for a moment and said, ‘It was no accident that Stort found Spring on the first day of Summer. One season leads to another, so do the gems lead on to each other. The Summer gem is surely next in line to be found, and of course the rumours from Bochum, about the Emperor’s waking and that he possesses Summer, are well known and I believe well substantiated.’

‘The gem’s discovery by Stort brings grave danger to this city,’ said Brunte. ‘There seems little doubt that Sinistral owes his continuing youth to the gem of Summer. But his prolonged rests suggest its power for good is waning with him while its bad effects are increasing. Sinistral will want to gain possession of the gem of Spring to compensate. I suspect he will send the Fyrd to get it. But more than that, if he gets it, then, trust me, in combination with the gem of Summer he will be invincible and in time will gain for himself the gems of Autumn and Winter, wherever they may be.’