TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) (2 page)

“Hadn’t there been enough death and destruction already? We’d already lost a great mass of our people to a dark cloud. Did we really want to start losing more lives?” I asked my tutor, and she looked at me with an unreadable expression for a moment before she shuffled the parchment nervously.

“Why would you suggest this?” she asked me, and she followed this with the slight shake of her head that always accompanied her brief answers to my constant questions. “Would you suggest we leave the Denborites to continue in their wicked ways? Should we allow them to lie and steal their way to a dishonourable, all be it prosperous future, under a name linked to ours in the past?” she asked me slowly. She frowned and I frowned too.

“Well, it’s just that we’ve been at war with them for nearly three hundred years now and nothing ever changes. The Denborite Tournament Champions are just as skilful as our Champions, so most Tournaments end in a draw with lives wasted on both sides. Our questers, however, are far superior when it comes to fighting so when we ambush the Denborites on quests we take their stolen riches easily. But, the trouble is, the Denborites are excellent thieves, and sometimes, even before we get the riches back home, they simply steal them straight back again…..and so the cycle continues……..Wouldn’t it be better for us to preserve young lives and just leave the Denborites to their thieving, dishonourable ways?” I asked, and my tutor shuffled her parchments again. She avoided looking at me directly and, this time, she didn’t answer my question at all. Instead, she briskly declared my lesson to be over for the night.

“Be sure to be asleep by set ten,” she said to me hastily, as she stood up from her chair.

I watched her turn the thin metal cylinder so the light she’d read by dimmed to a tiny glow and I watched her collect her pile of parchments far too hastily. They fell untidily from her grasp and they rolled about on my desk top as she tried to gather them together again.

This tutor had been with me for only six weeks, although she’d been stationed in this time segment previously with a younger student. She’d been both unresponsive and slightly nervous right from the start, but lately, she seemed a little more flustered than usual. Her name was Mirren and she was only twenty nine turns of a marker, which was much younger than most of my past tutors had been. I’d hoped we might get on well. That hope had been short lived though. On her first day, I’d asked Mirren about her life thus far and she’d reluctantly told me she’d been handpicked from her class of scholars to join the travelling tutors. By the way she’d spoken, I’d thought this had been a bit of a surprise to her, as had her appointment straight to the ranks of private tutorage. After that though, she’d not offered me anymore personal information and, despite my awkward attempts at friendship, she’d stuck rigidly to our schedule and kept to her own company outside of our allotted class times. Even more strangely, unlike my previous tutors, she’d given me no historical time segment research to do on my own and she’d conducted most of our tutoring sessions straight from the pages of parchments already stored in the house. She was tall and thin with prominent cheek bones and a heart shaped face. Being female, her sandy hair was worn long, as was our tradition, and tonight, she’d braided it loosely over one shoulder. With her parchments bundled untidily together and held under one arm, she deliberately kept her blue eyes averted from mine as she glanced down at the pendant that hung around her neck. Before hurrying from my rooms though, she muttered a barely audible ‘good set’ and, when she was gone, I rubbed my fingers against my forehead and sighed wearily.

I didn’t ask so many questions just for the sake of it. Sometimes, I truly wondered what our constant war with the Denborites would ever achieve. For want of a better word, it was a civilised war, if war can ever be described that way. Neither we, nor the Denborites, believed in senseless mass destruction. In fact, in almost every way our societies were identical. We favoured only the weapons of skill and honour, such as swords and bows, and we’d never use any of the barbaric exploding weapons we’d seen used in the new past. Other than when we occasionally met and fought on quests, we always conducted our civilised battles with small numbers in purpose built arenas. These Tournaments were watched by members of the Community and the Royal House, and they usually only saw the loss of a small number of young lives each time they were held. But, waste was waste, and I didn’t like to see any of our young Champions die before their time just for the usually short lived possession of a few dozen chariots of ill-gotten Denborite gold.

I gathered my own parchments together slowly before I stood up from my desk and looked out the window. My rooms were on the second story of this house and the year outside my window was +2013. Here, they called it 2013AD. This narrow terrace residence was close to the centre of a thriving city and my window faced the street. I could see the headlights and tail lights of fuel driven motor cars as they drove along the street outside our gate, and over the top of the front hedge, I could see the dark outline of the treetops in the park across the street.

I glanced at the pendant around my own neck just as my tutor had done, and I turned it idly towards me as my fingers touched the cool, brass dials. This particular pendant had been presented to me when I was just twelve turns of a marker and I’d worn it constantly since. It felt like it was part of me and I traced my fingertips lovingly across the finely etched numbers and star patterns on the dials. Three thin brass discs were stacked on top of each other. The outside dial used the sun’s constant energy to mark time and I could see it was only a quarter turn until ‘set ten’. In +2013, the locals called this time 9:45pm but we called the times between midday and midnight ‘set’ because the sun was setting from its highest point in the middle of the day. We called the times between midnight and midday ‘rise’ because the sun was rising then, from its lowest point in the middle of the night.

I smoothed my fingers over the next dial. It was marked with tiny constellation patterns which had been named by the inventors who’d first crafted our pendants many thousands of turns ago. Somehow, these names had spread throughout the earth and great civilisations since had also used them to refer to these star patterns too. Orion, Andromeda, Vela, Scorpius, Centaurus, Delphinius, and Pegasus were all etched into the brass, and they pointed us to our markers when we travelled through time. The next dial was marked with the degrees of a mathematical circle and my pendant itself hung from a leather cord looped through a small brass ring. In the centre of the dials was a tiny compass set under glass, and this compass had a black needle to point north and a blue crystal needle to point to our markers. When I turned my pendant over, similar dials on the back could be set to the year. I smiled a little. Despite their ability to harness energy and their perfect mathematical accuracy, our pendants were also beautiful examples of stunning craftsmanship. Each one was cut by sound and assembled by hand before it was tested for optimal energy and presented to those children from the Royal House who were beginning their quest training.

That’s what I was doing here. My mother had been a quester and her father before that. My parents lived and worked in the Royal House, so tradition decreed I join the ranks of questers myself, and this was my sixth and final year of training. I was almost eighteen turns of a marker and the final challenges, one of the last training segments, would begin for those in my year in exactly two weeks.

Below me, dim light shone suddenly and briefly across the front path as the front door of the house opened and closed. From my window, I watched my tutor open the front gate before looking furtively up and down the street. Her hair hung loosely down her back now and she wore a dark coloured cloak. I frowned as I wondered what errand would require her to leave the house on foot at this time of the night, and I continued to watch her curiously as she walked briskly along the footpath. The house next door had a higher hedge across the front than ours and I soon lost sight of her. She wasn’t supposed to leave me alone after dark but I wasn’t concerned, only curious. I knew an Aldirite marker guard was on duty close by, and I was also more than capable of taking care of myself.

I glanced down at my pendant again. The blue crystal needle in the centre of the dials glowed slightly and it pointed across the street to the marker located in the corner of the park. It continued to point in that direction as I turned slowly away from the window too, and as I headed out of the study towards my bedroom at the back of the house. The house was silent and only dimly lit as always and when I reached my adjoining bathroom, I put the plug in the sink and turned the silver tap. I shook my head and smiled wryly as the water flowed instantly. In this time segment, I could drain a whole river if I chose. Soon, the empty space around me was filled with the comforting sound of running water and I dipped my hands into the marble basin and splashed warm water onto my face. The mirror in front of me reflected my image and I looked up into my own emerald green eyes. I blinked my damp lashes and turned off the water, and as I waited for my face to dry, I studied my reflection. My face was oval and my skin tone was neither dark nor light, but it did glow with good health. I noticed this particularly in this time segment as the sallow skin of the locals tended to point it out. As far as I could tell, my face was very ordinary, but I quite liked my hair. It fell to just above my waist and it was brown with auburn highlights that turned a deep rust colour whenever I was out in the sunlight. As I combed it quickly, the ends bounced back into large, loose curls.

Eventually, I put my comb down and turned off the soft night light which was plugged into the twenty first century power socket above the bench. We didn’t use the overhead lights. They were much too harsh. Night lighting should be dim and very soft so as not to interfere with the natural rhythms of sleep. 

It was nearly set ten now but I doubted I’d sleep easily, despite the dim lights and my gruelling schedule. I was restless again tonight, and when I returned to my bedroom, I undressed in the semi darkness and slipped between fine, silk sheets. The high rise lights from the city shed their glow into every room of this house, but I didn’t pull the blinds. Instead, I stared up at the soft pattern the lights made on my ceiling and I could feel the comforting weight of my pendant where it lay against my chest. I rolled over then and reached under my mattress for the plastic, rechargeable cartridge Josh had given me at the beginning of last week. I smiled a little. Everything here was plastic. It was no wonder our people called this the Synthetic Era.

I wasn’t supposed to bring any extra items from this time segment, or any other time segment for that matter, into this house, but I guessed my tutor wasn’t the only one bending the rules a little. I put the plastic buds into my ears, and immediately, the loud, early twenty first century music filled my head. I did suspect it was the music from this era which was causing my restlessness but I wasn’t sure why, and I doubted I could make myself give it up, even if I tried. Listening to the songs stored on this cartridge had become my secret, nightly obsession and despite the unnatural, electronic sound of the instruments and voices, something about the beat and the lyrics immediately roused a strangely addictive feeling of longing inside me. For what, I had no idea, but the restlessness which was plaguing me at odd hours of the day and night had surfaced at around the same time as I’d started listening to this music, and tonight, as I’d predicted, my pendant turned at least a whole turn of the clock past set ten……..before I finally slept…………

CHAPTER 2:

The dawn light woke me as it did every morning and I rolled slowly out of bed. After searching for it briefly, I returned the twenty first century music cartridge and its attached head phones to its place beneath the corner of my mattress. There was no need to charge it. The first night I’d listened to it, I’d taken it apart and inserted a tiny crystal disc within the circuits. The crystal disc harnessed the natural energy which was all around us and I knew could listen to the songs again whenever I chose, and for as long as I wanted to.

I had to wear clothes from this time segment this morning and I frowned slightly as I pulled on synthetic fibre sportswear that scratched against my skin. Whenever I was allowed, it was my preference to wear my Aldirite clothes. They were sewn by hand and made only of the finest weaves of natural wools and fibres. Aldirite society, although far advanced in the areas of medicine and energy, and in our knowledge of the elements, would in some ways, have been seen as primitive by the people of +2013. We lived slowly and without convenience or waste. Our craftsmen worked only on things which would last us a lifetime and our people knew the value of working with the natural world instead of against it. The instant communication which had become a way of life here in +2013 was looked upon with horror by my people. It was against nature and hazardous to the health to receive messages instantly and to talk to those who were not by your side. Aldirites knew it was far healthier for the mind, and the body, to wait patiently for a message to arrive. The earth itself waited for the sun to rise and set, and for the seasons to pass from one to the next. Even the galaxy was required to wait. It waited centuries for comets to pass. In fact, the only thing our people did that went against the natural state of man within earth and space was to travel through time. And those of us who did this paid for it physically every time we made a drop.

I bent down and tied the synthetic laces on my rubber soled running shoes. The plastic fibres on the laces scratched against my fingers and I winced a little and frowned. My Aldirite shoes were nothing like these running shoes. They were knee high boots made of the softest leather which was crafted to stretch and mould closely to the shape of my calf and foot. The soles of my Aldirite boots were treated with the sap of a particular plant which was gathered and bought to our Kingdom from an ancient past. Many layers of a natural rubber like substance were bonded together with this sap to last us through a lifetime of running across all types of terrain.