TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) (5 page)

I braided my hair neatly into a single braid which I pinned in a circle around the back of my head. All female questers wore their hair this way. This was the way it had been worn for the last three hundred years, and it was likely it would be worn this way for the next three hundred to come. Such was the manner of our people. I picked up my bag and swung the leather straps over one shoulder as I headed downstairs.

Mirren was waiting silently at the door with her own travel bag, and when we were joined by Evangeline and Jonah, we all headed across the street to the park. The marker was in the corner of the park and we followed the running path once we entered the gates. Markers were circular in shape and they weren’t always in the most convenient of places. Where a house was built over a marker, our people had to buy the house, and usually the house either side and across the street as well. Markers in the middle of busy, modern roads, or in the middle of the ocean couldn’t be used at all. Markers miles from civilization were inconvenient and these markers were only used to gather herbs, plant samples, rare animals and seeds. Across the eras, markers were on mountains, beside rivers, in valleys, and on desert plains. In modern eras, there were markers on busy docks, in factories, in shopping centres, and in churches; and some of these could only be used at certain times, or on certain days. When markers lay in the middle of farm fields planted with corn crops, they made tell-tale crop circles whenever they were used. The people of the Synthetic Era had some amusing explanations for these, but to us, they were just the pattern left behind when one of our race travelled through time.

I walked briskly beside Mirren along the path through the park, and we passed mothers who chatted on their signalling telephones while they pushed small children in rolling prams. Some school students sat together on the neatly trimmed grass and they wore the uniform of a local school. An old man fed some pigeons with bread crusts, and he was so busy talking to his feathered friends, he didn’t even glance at us as we walked briskly by.

The running path circled the park and, at one point, it passed behind a toilet block with a garden bed on one side. On the other side of this garden, was a small patch of grass littered with fallen leaves and it was here that all four of us stopped.

Jonah spoke briefly to a man in a heavy jacket who sat on a park bench on the edge of the path. The man was heavy set and had been reading a paper, but when we arrived, he put it down immediately. Jonah gestured dramatically as he spoke to the man and he spoke softly, but I could imagine his words. I gritted my teeth and pulled my pendant out from beneath my clothes. Beside me, Evangeline and Mirren took out their pendants too. As we left the path and walked out onto the grass, the blue crystal needle in the middle of my pendant started spinning. This told me I was now standing right in the centre of the +2013 marker, and all three of us stopped walking. When Jonah finished talking to the guard, he joined us as well, and we each began to set our pendants for home.

We were travelling to the Aldiris setting marker and its coordinates were
Pegasus +3570 set 112º
. Any marker could be used for arrival at
any
time, but a
setting
marker could only be used for departure at a
setting
time. The park marker was a setting marker and it was now about two minutes until set four, according to the outside dial on my pendant. I turned the next dial so the tiny Pegasus constellation was in line with the marking for 112º, and then, I turned my pendant over. Although we called the year at home +3570, this was simply to match with modern recorded history. On our pendants, the addition sign reminded us to add 7000 to the year, so I set the earth’s year to 10570 before I checked my pendant carefully again. An incorrectly set pendant could send you into a bottomless drop…..and all time travellers feared this above everything else.

Beside me, Evangeline dropped her pendant back under her jacket, and she glanced at me as we stood with our tutors in the middle of the grass. I thought I saw a brief expression of sympathy cross her face, and I nodded slightly in acknowledgement of her glance before I turned up the collar of my jacket in preparation for what was to come.

I hadn’t been home for almost half a turn. The last time I’d been home it had been spring, and now, it was early autumn. Home was in the northern half of the world too, so the season would be the same as here. In the park, the leaves on the trees above me were already turning yellow and rust, and the late afternoon sun was throwing long shadows across the small patch of grass where we stood. The marker guard left us to patrol the path during our exit, and I watched him fold his newspaper and put it under his arm.

We were leaving at exactly set four, so we’d arrive home in Aldiris at exactly set four too. Our pendants were designed to drop us to the same time of the day or night when we travelled, so we never lost or gained clock time. The travel induced jet lag people of this era liked to complain about was non-existent in time travel. It hurt in other ways though, and as I waited with Evangeline and our tutors for the air around us to move, I also waited for the inevitable pain.

The air was slow at first and it moved around me in circular patterns. It whipped intermittently at stray wisps of my hair and I could feel it stinging my face and hands. My pendant was hidden beneath my clothes again, but if it had been visible, I would’ve been able to see the numbers and star patterns glow with a bright blue light as my drop began.

The air patterns sped up around me and the temperature dropped slowly as icy cold air hit my face in waves. It chilled my hands and, as the patterns spun faster, the air patterns around me increased to a loud roar. The temperature dropped again, and as the park disappeared, an icy cold pain seeped into my skin and lodged itself somewhere in the centre of my bones. Deep blue darkness surrounded me now and an excruciating, knife like pain radiated within me. My skeleton was so deeply cold, it felt like I was on fire, and that fire burnt me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. The pain was inside me, and all over me, and it radiated in agonising waves as it pulsed a path throughout my entire body…..

As always, just when I felt I could no longer endure it, the pain began to ease, and the deep blue darkness around me suddenly became colours. Those colours turned and merged, and when the colours became late afternoon sunlight, I glanced down to see a familiar mosaic appear suddenly beneath my feet. The pain was fading very quickly now and it was already barely an ache. The temperature had risen rapidly too and the air patterns slowed around me; and by the time the faces of Aldiris marker guards appeared, I could feel only a slight autumn breeze against my face. It blew the wisps of my hair in one direction only…..and I took a deep breath as the last remnants of pain faded away completely…………….. 

“Good set your Highness and welcome home,” said a marker guard briskly, as he strode into the marker circle to escort us through the border. Here, the marker guards wore their uniforms of black boots and dark blue pants. They wore dark blue fitted jackets too, and the Aldiris flag patch was sewn to their right sleeve.

The guards who stood around the circle lowered their bows and they stood easy again with their swords against their sides. Mirren, Jonah, Evangeline and I walked across the tiled depiction of the lost river Zahar and its golden tower bridge, and we waited by the gate house to officially enter Aldiris through the border gates. The border marker was surrounded by a high, circular sandstone wall and a guard opened a set of heavy, gold plated gates for us as he marked our names and our entry time on his parchment. We pressed our palm prints against a clear crystal panel too and blue lights flashed within the crystal to show we were registered as owners of Aldiris pendants.

A chariot waited for us immediately outside the golden gates. Two horses stood patiently in the late afternoon sun and their glossy manes looked like they’d just been brushed. Their sleek coats were a dove grey and they were harnessed to the chariot with dark leather straps and buckles which were made of pure gold. The chariot itself was made of brass and gold, and it was embossed with a depiction of the lost river Zahar and the lost Palace too. I touched my hand against the closer of the two horses, patting her fondly as I followed Evangeline towards the hovering, covered dome to which the two horses were harnessed.

All around me were the sights and sounds of the city of Aldiris. The buildings were no more than three stories high and they were made of thick, multi-coloured sandstone blocks. The blocks were irregular around the edges as they were cut by hand before being bonded together with a mixture of sap and mud. Windows were rectangular and made from multiple glass blocks rather than single panes, and each individual block could be angled and opened. Roofs were tiled with hard baked, interlocking, corrugated sheets that came in all the colours of the earth. Some roof tiles were sandy white and others were deep grey and burnt brown. Some structures were pyramids, and some were domes, and yet others, were rectangular with arched roofs. The shape depended on the purpose of the buildings, and whether sound, light, crystal or magnetic energy was used within them. Residences were clustered around community squares and children ran and played under the shady trees which lined the wide, paved streets. The city was colourful, and almost radiant in the afternoon sun as the light hit angled glass blocks, coloured rooftops and white, painted domes. The air was as clean as the city itself, and the pace was easy, relaxed, and slow. All around me, people spoke in the old language and I closed my eyes for a moment and listened to harmonious patterns of spoken sound.

If only I could stay right here.

I breathed out slowly as I stepped up into the covered chariot, and I sat beside Mirren on the plush, cushioned seat. Our chariots had no need for wheels. Though we revered the circle as a thing of great power and central to many things, including time itself, wheels made ruts in roads and broke axils. To remove the pull of gravity beneath a chariot in the exact amount needed to suspend it half a length above the earth was a simple thing to us, and much preferable to having to repair wheels on a regular basis.

Our driver perched on the front of the covered dome and I caught a glimpse of him as he roused the horses from their afternoon rest. In bad weather, we rode in a full carriage, but it was fine today and the temperature was mild and only a little cool. The woven material covering the chariot let in the afternoon light and it was designed to gather the warmth from the late afternoon sun. The material was gathered together in even folds and it was tied back in sections so we could see out to the street on both sides of the chariot.

People walked on the streets and we wove around them at an unhurried pace. A man sold dried fruit from a cloth covered street stall and he called out his bargains in a deep, friendly voice. Men and women perused the goods sold from the open street stalls and they carried their purchases in woven baskets. I could smell freshly ground spices and slow baked bread, and everywhere we went, people watched us and raised their hands and their hats to us as our horses trotted by. The driver slowed the horses to a walk when we crossed busy community squares and I saw a young man whistling as he carved a child’s rocking horse by hand from a single chunk of wood. He was working in an open workshop and he stood up and watched us go by. He had light, sandy hair and bright, pale blue eyes, and he raised his woollen cap to us, as a sign of respect.

The walls of the Aldiris Palace came into view above the roof of the man’s workshop and, as I glanced up, the bleak, grey stone blocks of the Aldiris Royal house reflected my mood. The narrow windows were edged at the bottom with white stones and the thick glass blocks in the middle of the windows were angled to catch the last rays of the afternoon sun. The Aldiris flag flew from one of the turrets. It was a red and white striped pattern overlayed with a plain, blue circle. The large white dome in the centre of the palace was edged with trimmings of pure gold and the sunlight made it gleam with added brightness.

It wasn’t long before the horses pulled us up the slight hill towards the gleaming, golden gates and guards stood still on either side of us with their swords raised. We passed by them and entered the Palace grounds through gardens of exotic greenery as we followed the white, paved road towards grand, entrance doors.

As the chariot came to a smooth stop, I didn’t look up at the glossy wooden doors that rose above my head and stood open on their heavy, iron hinges. Instead, I set my face into a resemblance of a smile and breathed out slowly before I stepped from the chariot and raised my eyes.

The woman was waiting for us at the open doors just as I’d expected.

Her light golden hair was immaculately braided and it was pinned to the top of her head without a strand out of place. Her face was perfect and she was classically beautiful in every way. She had high cheekbones, and full lips, and her eyes were a glistening, pale blue that graduated to a darker blue around the edge of her irises. Her skin was flawless, and barely lined at all, despite her age, and a long, soft blue dress was draped across her shoulders as it hugged her perfectly proportioned frame.

“Mother,” I said carefully, and I spoke in the old language as I paused at the Palace doors.

“Livia,” said my mother briskly, and her tone didn’t bode well for me as she looked me up and down with her eyes narrowed into a critical stare. “Have you been retiring at the allocated time? You have the shadows of a night guard beneath your eyes, and a dullness about you that makes me wonder whether you have been ill,” she said disapprovingly, as she pursed her lips. Mirren, Jonah and Evangeline waited awkwardly behind me and I walked past my mother deliberately then so she was forced to follow me or be left at the door.