Chapter 35, 36 and 37 of the Bard's Apprentice

Chapter Thirty-Five

It looked like a long drop, and it felt even longer. Fox had fallen down the stairs in Grandy’s house a few times, when he was smaller. The feeling was the same; a curious calmness came upon him, as he hurtled towards the pond. He was facing upwards, and he could see Kandorian looking down at him, his face without expression.

Then he hit the water. He expected to crash into it-— his body was tensed—- but there was none. He felt like he had fallen into thick mud, from no great height. The landing was soft, and before he could think about it, Kandorian and the cave had disappeared. He was underneath the surface, and he could feel himself sinking rapidly.

He had closed his eyes, and his mouth, and he was holding his breath. Now the panic that had been suspended as he fell crashed over him. He felt a spasm of horror pass through his whole body. His life couldn’t end like this; it was too awful to be true. Somebody would save him, he thought...Truevow...Grandy…

He held his breath for as long as he could, trying to swim back towards the surface. But he had never learnt to swim. He fainted, and the water surged into his mouth and lungs.

A few minutes later, he woke up, and realised that he was still breathing. The water in his lungs felt exactly like air, but more…refreshing. Every single breath was like pulling air into his body after a long run.

He opened his eyes. He could see perfectly, but there was nothing to see besides the cabbage-green waters. There was no near or far. There was no shadowy forms. There wasn’t so much as a swirl or a bubble. There was light, but it didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere. He closed his eyes again.

He was still sinking. He kept sinking an absurdly long time; surely the pond couldn’t be so deep? He was beginning to think he would go on sinking forever, when his descent slowed, and suddenly he was floating. Though he seemed to be breathing, he could feel the waters around his body. They were warm, he realised. They were the perfect temperature.

He realised how tired he was. He had never felt so tired. His twelve years lay upon him like centuries of soil on buried ruins. But the tiredness felt good, like hunger before a feast. He felt ravenous for sleep, a sleep like he had never known.

And he slept. And it was a sleep like he never known.

Suspended in the caressing waters, his mind travelled back through time. To the time before time, before birth. All the cares of the years rolled away, and he knew for a second time the utter contentment of the womb.

Then life began again, unfolding just as it had unfolded before. He relived it, not moment by moment, but moving from memory to memory like a bee flying from flower to flower. Sights and incidents that he had forgotten as soon as they occurred returned to him now, as well as all those that had tarried in his memory. Days of life were relived in hours of his dreaming state; months passed in weeks. The pool tended to his physical needs. The waters were full of living things too small to be seen, and they nourished him.

He lived it all again, but differently this time. This time, he saw. Nothing was added to his memories, but he saw them with keener vision now. He remembered Grandy scolding him for wetting the bed when he was eight years old. He remembered Grandy scolding him for crying when a big dog barked at him on the street. He remembered asking Grandy whether a murderer could break in through his bedroom window, and Grandy said: “It’s possible.” He remembered, after that conversation, watching the yellow-curtained window all night, waiting to hear the crash of shattering glass.

He felt what he had felt then; distress, and underneath the distress, anger. Anger towards Grandy for his refusal to comfort him, for punishing fear with more fear. He felt the undending vulnerability of his early childhood, when every day felt like a walk through woods where man-eating wolves are stalking.

But he felt something else now. It was something of which he had been darkly aware even then, but which he only understood now. He felt Grandy’s fear. The world seemed no less frightening to the old man than it seemed to the boy. It was a world where weakness led to destruction, where a sea of harm was flowing around every soul, just needing that one chink of vulnerabillity to flood in and destroy it. He heard again Grandy’s tales of his youth on the streets of Silvershore, the son of a factory hand, in the savage Rubble Quarter of the city. He remembered his stories of the army, of months-long campaigns, disease taking away as many souls as enemy soldiers did. And there were his stories of his years building trains, of the furious determination that had been needed to ram his plans into reality, to get them seen in the first place. Life was a fight for Grandy.

He felt something else, too; he felt it for sure now, where he had only had a desperate hope before. He felt love, love as strong as that of any indulgent mamma felt towards her firstborn. Grandy had loved him as dearly as ever parent had loved a child. All of his harshness had been fear, fear of the world that would grind Fox down if it got the chance. The old man knew the world so well, but still didn’t undestand that nothing gives strength like unconditional love.

Fox basked in that love at last.

He met Jasma again, and spent long hours by the fireside with her. Heard her heaping abuse upon men, upon drinkers, upon the lazy poor. He felt the lash of her tongue himself, every time he knocked over a plate or muddied the floor. He felt the flat of her hand, which was less painful than the shame her lectures planted in him.

But once again he saw what he had not seen the first time around; the cold fury in her eyes when she spoke about her father, who had left his family before Jasma was born. The bitterness in her voice when she spoke about the families in her neighbourhood, hardly less poverty-stricken than Jasma’s own family, but who treated them like underlings. Poverty to Jasma was like fear to Grandy. It was the one deadly weakness, the destroyer of souls.

And so he went through his experiences, living them again, seeing them clearly for the first time. And all the time, he slept a deeper sleep than he had ever known, in the silent sanctuary of the dreaming pool.

Then, suddenly, he felt himself rising to the surface, and his soul rose up in protest. Not yet, he thought, his mind only vaguely aware what was happening. I’m not ready to leave yet…I don’t want to go…

But he had broken the surface, and when he had re-emerged into full consciousness—it was a slow and reluctant process—he realised that Kandorian was calling to him from above. There was upset in his voice.

“Fox! Swim towards the rungs on the wall!”

He looked around. Now he saw that there was a set of metal rungs set into the sheer edges of the pool, leading up to the place where Kandorian was standing.

“I can’t swim!”, shouted Fox. He expected his voice to be rough, since it hadn’t been used in a long time, but it was clear as ever.

“It doesn’t matter”, the Bard called back. “Just move towards it.”

Fox realised he was floating in the water. He thrashed his arms, mimicking the action of swimmers, and he started moving towards the rungs. He began climbing them—they were perfectly firm. He wondered, as he climbed, how long he had been in the pool. He knew it had been a long time. He could feel it. He still felt unhapp. He longed to be back in the waters.

He realised that his body was drying rapidly, as were the night-clothes he was wearing, that he had been wearing when Swan had set up the blade above his head. By the time he reached the top, they were not even damp.

Kandorian was unhappy. His expression hardly changed when he was upset, but there was a tenseness in his body, and the lines of his face were tighter. He reached a hand out to help Fox off the top rungs, and gave him a long, examining look.

“I’m sorry”, he said, when he had looked his fill. “Nothing seems to go right for you, Fox. Nobody should be pulled from the Dreaming Pool before his time.”

“How long was I in there?”, asked Fox, remembering how Kandorian had pushed him in. He understood why he had, now; nobody could explain the Dreaming Pool to you. There would have been no point in trying.

“Seven months”, said Kandorian. Fox was startled. He knew it had been a long time, but not that long. It hardly seemed possible. “Fox, I would never have called you up, but you’re needed.”

“What for?”, asked Fox, beginning to feel afraid.

“Your friends are in trouble. They need your help. Come on”, he said, turning back in the direction from which they had come, seven months ago.

“Where are we going?”, asked Fox, hurrying after him.

“The Lake of Fire”, said Kandorian, over his shoulder. “There’s something that you have to see”.


Chapter Thirty-Six

For all his alarm, Fox felt excited as they approached the Lake. He had only seen it once, but it had already entered into his soul. He felt like an old man returning to the cottage where his boyhood had been spent.

“That feeling never goes away”, said Kandorian, watching him. Fox blushed. He hardly knew why. His feelings about the Lake were as powerful as any of the emotions that caused grown-ups to get embarrassed.

“Look in the Lake, Fox”, said Kandorian, but Fox was already hurrying to the brink of the waters. He ran to the exact spot they had been standing before, by the statue that had once been Swan.

He looked down. The waters seemed to be agitated, in the very spot where he was looking. Waves surged across the surface of the lake here. All around it was almost entirely still.

“Look”, said Kandorian, who had come behind him. Fox realised that—for all his rush to the lake’s edge—he was avoiding actually looking down. He did so now.

The glow of the lake was a blurry shimmer at first, then it began to take shape. Then Fox was looking at an image in the waters. Once again, there was nothing more than a formation of ripples and gleams of light, but they made a perfect picture. After a few moments, he was not looking at shapes in water, but a scene tinged in purple.

It was Greatcastle. He hadn’t expected to be looking at him. Swan had told him that Greatcastle had bought a tavern with his savings. He certainly looked like a man of property now. He was sitting by his fireside, drinking from a tall glass, wearing a long embroidered shirt that looked highly expensive. His hair had been curled, and his feet were crossed on a low table in front of him. He looked very pleased with himself.

Then a woman came into view, approaching Greatcastle from behind. It was not Jasma. She was dark-haired, and very pretty. She was wearing what looked like a maid’s costume. It was very similar to the ones worn by the maids in Swan’s house. She was smiling down at Greatcastle, who couldn’t see her yet. She reached her hands down the back of his chair, wrapping them playfully around his neck.

Greatcastle’s smile broadened, and he closed his eyes for a moment. Their lips moved in silent speech. Greatcastle rose from his chair, moved towards her, and then they were kissing passionately. Fox blushed again, aware of Kandorian behind him.

To his relief, they pulled apart within a moment or two, both of them looking to their side. Greatcastle settled back into his chair, and the maid turned her back, busying herself about something in the background.

Jasma walked into view. She was wearing a fancy dress, decorated with a complicated floral pattern. Her hair had been arranged in braids, each braid with a strip of some fine, silvery material wound around it. She did not look happy, however. She looked miserable and furious—- more furious than he had ever seen anybody—- and from the way she glared at the maid’s back, Fox had no doubt she was knew what was happening.

He saw Greatcastle smile to himself, hidden from Jasma’s view. He realised that Greatcastle knew that Jasma knew, and that it pleased him.

He suddenly felt boiling hatred towards the man. He had never expected to feel so protective towards Jasma. But after his time in the Dreaming Pool, he knew the humiliation and want that had darkened his old nurse’s past. This humilation, just when she was looking forward to happiness at last, was almost too painful to think about.

Then the scene dissolved into ripples and gleams again. Fox turned to Kandorian, and opened his mouth to speak, but Kandoran said: “There’s more. Look”.

He turned back to the fiery water, and saw that another scene was taking shape.

It was a man lying on a floor. A young man. It was Truevow, Fox saw with growing dismay. For a moment he thought he was dead. Then he saw the body stir, and he could breathe again. Truevow looked as if he had been beaten up. There were bruises and cuts on his face, and his shirt had been torn in several places. Blood oozed from his mouth. He lifted his hands above his head, sluggishly, as if he was expecting further blows.

Then Fox saw another man was standing over Truevow. It was a tall, hulking man in overalls and a grimy shirt. He had shouder-length hair, a pockmarked face, and there was blood spattered on his clothes.

He crouched beside Truevow, and dragged him by one arm along the floor, out of view.

“We have to go there now” said Fox, taking another step towards the waters. “Now.” He blazed with guilt, remembering his biting words to Truevow on that day in the wilderness. He felt like a murderer.

Kandoran grabbed him by the shoulder, restraining him. “Not yet”, he said. “There’s more.”

“But Truevow—“

“Luria won’t let you go anywhere until you’ve seen it all”, said Kandoran. “Look.”

The scene had faded away again, and already another was taking its place.

This time it was not a single figure close up. It was a group, he could see, and they were moving. They had horses, and wagons. He assumed that it was the Ezwanya on their way to the Anarchy. But the image grew clearer, and he saw that it was not. It was a group of men he had never seen before; there were perhaps sixty or seventy of them.

Their clothes were worn and somewhat ragged, and they all wore long beards. They had flat caps on their heads, and there was a hard look about them that frightened him. Some of them had rifles.

It was a wild landscape, with enormous mountains in the background, and huge rocks studding the ground. Fox had never seen it before.

“Who are they?”, he asked. “Where are they?”

“I was watching them earlier”, said Kandorian, and his voice was low, even cautious. “I was listening to their talk—“

“How can you hear them?”, asked Fox. “I can’t hear them.”

“It comes with practice”, said Kandoran. “The point is—“ He paused, and Fox looked up, alerted. “The point is, they’re heading towards the Ezwayna.” Another pause, and he said: “They heard about the coldfire stones.”

“How could they have heard that?””, asked Fox.

Kandoran didn’t reply. He just looked back at Fox, and his eyes were soft, even pitying. Fox suddenly remembered Jasma lying on the grass with her eyes closed, in the days before she left for the Anarchy, and the words that had slipped out of his mouth: The cold fire...the cold fire of his courage.

“It seems pretty clear what happened”, Kandoran said, gently. “Somehow Jasma heard something, and mentioned it to Greatcastle. When they reached the Anarchy, Greatcastle went to those thugs, and sold them some kind of map, or directions to the Ezwayna’s camp.”

“I can’t believe Jasma would do that”, said Fox, although he wondered if perhaps she could.

“I don’t believe it, either”, said Kandoran. “I don’t think Jasma knew what coldfire stones were. I doubt she even knows what Hardcastle did. Perhaps she just heard the word coldfire...and mentioned it to him..”

”It was me”, said Fox, sick with guilt. “I told her. It was a slip of the tongue. I didn’t think she’d noticed.”

“I thought that might be it”, said Kandoran, more gently than ever.

“We have to do something”, said Fox. “We could take a hundred Bards—- do you have guns here?”

“Fox”, said Kandoran, and now there was pain in his voice. “That’s not the way of things, here. Luria doesn’t allow it. Only one person can help any of these people you’ve seen.” He paused, and then added—- as if this last word cost him blood—- “You.”

“Me?”, echoed Fox, too shocked to feel anything. “What can I do?”.

“There’s always a way”, said Kandoran, though Fox could hear the doubt in his voice. “Luria never shows us these things, unless there’s a way. But...sometimes there’s only the slimmest chance. You don’t have to risk your life, Fox. I wasn’t even going to pull you from the Dreaming Pond. I just thought...I thought you had the right to choose.”

The right to choose, thought Fox, feeling Death’s fingers close around him. “What about you?”, he asked. “I thought I was your apprentice? Why can’t you come with me?”

“I wish I could”, cried the Bard, and he closed his fists. His face was a mask of frustration, and it was marble white. “But Luria…Fox, this tale began with you, and it has to end with you. If I had been there from the beginning, it would be different. If I tried to step through with you, nothing would happen. Luria doesn’t make exceptions.”

“I hate Luria”, said Fox, savagely.

“Me, too”, said Kandorian. “A lot of the time. It doesn’t change anything, though.”

“What am I going to do?”, asked Fox, his voice weak now. He had felt a new strength within him, after emerging from the Pond of Dreams, but it seemed to have failed him now. “I can’t leave them. It’s my fault, all of it!”

“Don’t panic”, said Kandorian. “That’s the most important thing, Fox. Don’t panic, and forget about blame. Those thieves are still a hundred and fifty miles away from the Ezwayna settlement. You have time.”

“What about Truevow?”, asked Fox. “Has he got time?”

Kandorian looked away, towards the lake. “I don’t know. He’s tougher than he looks, remember.”

Not tougher than that other guy, thought Fox. “What can I do?”, he asked.

“Luria chooses for us”, said Kandorian. “I think it’s chosen already. Look.”

He looked at the lake. There was another image in it now, and his stomach tightened with fear when he saw it. He saw a range of benefactor trees, and there were frolic bears leaping from branch to branch. The last time he had seen that place, he had expected to die.

There was something different about the picture, this time. It wasn’t following any action, any event. It was just there. Waiting.

“That’s where Luria wants you to go”, said Kandorian, his voice hollow. “Its choices are often…strange.”

“I can’t go there”, said Fox. “It makes no sense. And it’s suicide.”

“You don’t have to go”, said Kandorian. “A wise man knows when he’s defeated.” But there was no strength in his voice, and they both knew that Fox had no real choice.

“I’ll do it”, said Fox, after a long silence, and the Bard gave a miserable nod. “What do I do? Just step in?”

“There’s no need to go like that”, said Kandorian. “We can get you something warmer from our wardrobes.”

“How about getting me a gun?”, asked Fox.

“No”, said Kandorian. It was the answer Fox had expected. “You can only take the clothes you’re wearing when you step through the Lake. Nothing else. Not jewellery, or money, or even so much as a tinderbox. None of makes it to the other side. I’m sorry Fox.”

Fox’s eyes were still upon the frolic bears. He couldn’t help it. He was remembering what it felt like to be clutched in a frolic bear’s paws.

“Come on. Let’s get you ready.” Kandorian took the boy’s hand, and they moved back towards the warren of passages where the life of Luria was lived.

He was given a solid meal, and he was dressed in thick black jacket and trouses, with an overcoat of thin brown leather. He had never seen as many clothes as were contained in the cave that Kandorian called “the wardrobes”. At least a dozen Bards were rifling through the huge wardrobes. They were all watching him, and he heard whispers. He wondered how much they knew.

They returned to the edge of the lake, Kandorian and Fox, walking like prisoners going to their execution. They stood staring into the waters. The frolic bears had gone, and the benefactor trees stood alone. They were probably sleeping.

“Remember”, said Kandorian. “You might be able to flash from place to place now, of your own accord. But even older apprentices can’t fully control that…I don’t know what will happen. You can try.”

“I’ll try all right”, said Fox, staring at the benefactor trees. It was dusk in their world.

“Then here it is”, said Kandorian, and he put an arm around Fox’s shoulders. “Good luck, Fox. Good luck”. But the look he gave Fox said: He’s just like the last one. The girl who never lived to become a Bard.

“Thank you”, said Fox, preparing himself. He stepped towards the Lake of Fire, sure he would never see it again. Sure that the last place he would ever see would be the savage home of the frolic bears.


Chapter Thirty-Seven

Putting one experimental foot into the lake, Fox was surprised—- but not too surprised—- that his foot didn’t even feel wet. It felt warm, instead. Warm, and somehow more solid and real than before. He could see the fiery water flowing over it. He hesitated a moment, and then followed it with the other foot.

He fell, and the cave disappeared. He was surrounded by a purple glow just like the one that had whisked him from the Empire to the home of the Ezwanya. His entire body now felt awake, more intensely alive. For a moment he forgot all about the frolic bears, and Truevow, and the thieves. He rejoiced to feel one with Luria. For a few seconds, he felt like he was the Lake of Fire. He felt immortal, and as old as the night sky.

Then he struck ground, and the glow and the ecstasy faded.

He was underneath the benefactor trees, as the autumn twilight closed around him. Fear clutched him again, all the stronger for its brief absence. He was already bracing for the paws of the frolic bears. He looked around. It was getting dark, and monstrous shadows stretched from the trees. He couldn’t see any bears, or any creature other than birds.

He felt lonelier than he had ever felt in his life.

He had already decided on the first thing he was going to do. He was going to try to flash to some other place. Any other place would do. He closed his eyes, and imagined the inside of the Eldest’s stone house. He pictured the low ceiling, the generations-old furniture, even the slightly curved poker. He willed himself there with all his heart. But nothing happened.

He hadn’t really expected anything to happen.

He stood there for ten or twenty minutes, the fear inside him thickening every moment, trying to imagine himself in other places; in the Spiral House; in the tamzan where he slept; sitting beside Armala’s fire. Nothing worked. There was only the gathering wind, and the deep footprints of frolic bears all around, and the heavy scent of their bodies on the air.

The old-fashioned way, then, he thought. When Truevow had rescued him from here, it had taken them almost a week to get back to the village. He knew he could remember the way. But was there enough time to warn the Elders? The thieves were a hundred and fifty miles away, Kandorian had said. Would he find anything left of the Ezwayna in a week?

Thinking about Kandorian made him realise that the Bard must be watching him now. The thought comforted him. It made him feel less alone. And now the strength that the Dreaming Pool had given him was flooding back. Twelve years was really a long life, he thought. Three of Jasma’s sisters had died as babies. If this is how it ends, he thought, I want to make it a good end. To be worthy of Luria.

But another voice, deeper in his mind, said: This isn’t a heroic story to send people off to their beds. This is your whole life, and you don’t get another try.

He started to make his way towards the crest of the hill, trying to move fast and slow at once. He didn’t hear any frolic bears. Maybe they were sleeping. Their snores had been almost deafening, in the cave where he’d been trapped. But even the loudest snores would hardly reach here.

The evening air was exhilarating. After his seven months in the Pool of Dreams, he felt fresher than he could ever remember feeling. The miles ahead suddenly began to feel…almost enticing. He quickened his pace.

Then he heard the screech of birds and the creak of branches from behind him. He felt the ground vibrate beneath his feet, and the sound of a heavy thump on soil. He started to run, not even needing to look behind him to know what was there. All his fear disappeared, and all that occupied his mind was the need to escape.

But he could hear something enormous gaining on him every moment, and then pain filled him. It was the sensation that had haunted his nightmares for months; the paws of the frolic bear closing around him, squeezing the breath from his body. The overwhelming smell of the bear filled his nostrils, like the smell of dog multiplied by a hundred. The heat of its breath eveloped his neck, his shoulders. It had grasped him around his middle, and it was lifting him in the air.

It was yelping now, the yelp that sounded so innocent, like the yapping of some enormous puppy. So it might have seemed to somebody far away, somebody who had never encountered a frolic bear. To Fox, it was the sound of pure horror.

And then a cry echoed all around, like the death-cry of a savage beast. Fox was already too terrified to pay much heed to it, but the frolic bear did. It froze, and its suffocating grip on him relaxed a little. Air poured back into his lungs, making him feel suddenly light-headed. Colours swam before his eyes. He was only dimly aware that the frolic bear was setting him down, almost gently. He was lying on the ground, and his ribs felt like they had been smashed in.

He became aware of something else looming over him. It was another frolic bear. This one was even bigger. It was the biggest he had seen. And it was crouching to the ground, watching him, its eyes glowing green in the last light of day. He tried to crawl backwards, but he was too stunned to move at all.

He must have passed out for a moment, because the next thing he knew, somebody was standing beside him.

He stared up, his vision blurred as he swam back to the light of consciousness. It was a man, he saw after a few moments. It was an old man.

It was Grandy.

Despite the pain from the frolic bear’s embrace, Fox blazed with sudden and amazed joy. In the deeps of his mind he had known that Grandy was dead. There hadn’t been the faintest gleam of hope. But somehow—- impossibly-— he had been wrong. And the next moment he heard the first voice that had ever been dear to him, speaking the first word he had understood: “Fox. Fox. Fox.”

Grandy was bending over now, shaking him, checking to see if he had been harmed. He seemed to be wearing a costume made of some kind of skins, stitched together. His beard reached almost to his chest, and he looked ten years younger than when Fox had last seen him.

Fox closed his eyes. His experiences in the Dreaming Pool came back to him. He remembered Grandy’s anxiety at every sign of vulnerability, every sign of soft emotion. He longed to weep with happiness, but he stopped himself. The memory of the Dreaming Pool stopped him. Instead, he opened his eyes slowly and said: “What are you doing alive?”

Grandy stopped shaking him, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. He stared at Fox for a moment, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open. Then he laughed, and his face creased with pleasure. With pleasure and—- Fox saw, and glowed—- with pride. Pride on his own behalf, and pride for Fox.

“Your old grandfather is sturdier than anybody thought, boy”, said Grandy, and his eyes twinkled with pleasure. “But what made you come here? Running after those coldfire stones, were you?”. Even now there was a hint of approval in Grandy’s voice. He had told Fox about all the orchards he had raided in his youth, the hats he had stolen from the heads of wealthy people on city streets. Stealing coldire stones from frolic bears probably seemed no different to him.

“It’s a long story, Grandy”, said Fox. “But I didn’t come here for the coldfire stones.”

The frolic bears were standing behind Grandy, watching him. Fox stil felt nervous in their presence, but he could see they weren’t going to attack. From the moment he had seen Grandy he had felt safe. Only now did he wonder how that could be so.

“Why aren’t they attacking us?”, asked Fox, holding his ribs—- still aching—- and looking up at the bears. One of them gave a little yelp, little more than a sigh compared to the echoing sounds he had heard from them before.

“Don’t worry about them”, said Grandy. “They’re friendly creatures, really. I’ve come to quite an understanding with them. They take me as one of their own now. I get on with them better than with most people I’ve known.”

“I’m not surprised”, said Fox, and Grandy beamed again. He wondered how anyone could possibly befriend a frolic bear, or even—- as Grandy seemed to have done—- get them to obey him. But then he remembered how Grandy would say The stronger will always wins out, Fox. Strength and numbers hardly even come to it. For so much of his boyhood, Fox had believed Grandy was a superhuman who could do anything he wanted. Recently he had begun to think of him a weak, foolish man. It made him happy to think his first idea had been closer to the truth.

“Are you hurt very bad?”, asked Grandy. And now Fox understood that Grandy waited this long to ask, not because he didn’t care, but because he cared so much.

“Yes”, said Fox. “But I’m going to be alright. I don’t think that anything is broken.”

“You’re pretty sturdy, too, Fox”, said Grandy, and Fox could hear the relief in his voice, like a cooling breeze on a hot summer’s day. “Though you don’t look it.”

Then Grandy helped him walk to a place by a stream, not far away now, with a burnt patch of ground where he must have built his fires. There were bones of small animals strewn beside the bushes. The frolic bears did not follow them. “I don’t have so much as a pot to boil water in”, said Grandy, though he made it sound more like a boast than a lament. “But I don’t need a tinderbox to start a fire.” True to his word, he had one flickering within ten minutes, while Fox took a drink from the stream in his cupped hands.

“Now tell me everything”, said Grandy. “You look different, Fox. Older. And younger, too. Less of an old man than you used to be.”

Fox laughed with pleasure. He understood what Grandy meant. But now the fear was seeping back to him; the fear for the Ezwayna, the fear for Truevow and Jasma, the fear that his slip of the tongue would turn out to have caused the destruction of a people.

He told Grandy everything. This time, Grandy’s expression hardly changed. He was already ready to hear wonders, and he took them in his stride. He was fascinated, but not astonished.

As Fox expected, he grew even more fascinated when he heard Spiral had been imported to the Anarchy. Fox had wondered how Grandy would take the news. Looking at him, he still couldn’t decide how he felt. He guessed Grandy wasn’t sure, either.

“I wish I could see what they’ve made of it”, said the old man, slowly beating his thigh with his fist in frustration. “That perfumed cissy Castleman, or whatever he called himself...he probably has them playing half-hour games that won’t strain the men of fashion too much.” His nose wrinkled in disgust. “And what will they do without the Records? Then again…” His grimace faded. “This is how things stay alive, after all. Spiral used to have thousands of players in the Empire, once. This might be the Second Great Age of Spiral”. And finally, he looked almost pleased.

When Fox described Luria and Kandorian, he could see that Grandy was impressed.

“A Bard’s apprentice,” he said, musingly. “That’s something. Seeing all those worlds….” He heard a wisftulness in Grandy’s voice, and for a moment—- only a moment—- it reminded him of Swan, of the longing on his face when he told Fox about the lake of purple fire.

But then Grandy coughed, and it was gone. All of a sudden his grandfather looked a little embarrassed. He was frowning, the particular frown that Fox knew—- from long experience—- signalled that his grandfather was about to admit that he had, perhaps, been wrong about something. It was in the pressing together of his lips, the tightness of his jaw.

“So it turns out the storyteller wasn’t such a fool after all”, he said, fixing his eyes on the stream, as if he was suddenly fascinated by its flow.

“No”, said Fox, more pleased than Grandy would ever have imagined at the words. “Kandorian said Armala was as wise as any Bard.”

“Hmm”, said Grandy, pinching his lips between his thumb and finger. He had done it a few times, and Fox had eventually realised he was missing his pipe. “I don’t know if I would want to be wise. It just means getting too cautious to make mistakes.” He barked with laughter.

“What am I going to do, Grandy?”, asked Fox.

Grandy suddenly looked very solemn, very grave. Fox realised that his grandfather was pleased. His grandson might have changed—- might have become less of a girl, as he probably thought of it--- but he still needed Grandy’s help.

“Well, if you can’t just close your eyes and nod three times and appear in the Eldest’s house, then our options are limited”, he said. He sat up and squared his shoulders. He was excited, Fox could see. “I think there’s only one course of action.”

“What’s that?”

Grandy smiled. “I have to stop these thieves before they ever reach the village.”

“You? But what could—“

“Me, and my furry allies”, said Grandy, looking more excited than ever. “I was being rather modest when I told you I’d become friends with the frolic bears. I’m more their leader, actually.” He laughed again. “It’s quite a good deal for them. I’ve taught them how to hunt better, how to use traps. I’m sure I could lead them into battle.”

“But these people have guns”, said Fox, imagining a hail of bullets sinking into Grandy.

“Of course they have guns”, said Grandy, impatiently, as if it hardly required saying. “But they won’t be expecting an attack, will they? They’ll probably have their guns put away in their packs. They think there’s no other people for a hundred miles, remember. We can catch them by surprise.”

“They’ll hear you coming”, said Fox.

“Maybe”, said Grandy, shrugging. “But maybe not. You’d be surprised how stealthy these bears can be. Did you hear the one that got you?”

“No, but dozens of them—“

“As for you”, interrupted Grandy, his excitement dimming a little, “you should go to the village and tell them to get ready. In case any of them break through.”

“No”, said Fox, emphatically. “I’m coming with you. You know I’ll never reach the village in time.”

Grandy glared at him, but within a few moments his expression softened. Fox could tell that Grandy liked Fox’s new atttiude.

“Well, it wouldn’t be fair to leave you out, I suppose”, said Grandy. “I just hope we can get a bear to carry you. It’s a bumpy form of transport, but you get used to it. Do you need to rest?”

“I’ve had the longest rest of my life, till just a few hours ago”, said Fox. “And I’m hardly hurting at all now.” This was true. The ache had all but gone from his ribs. Talking to Grandy was a tonic.

“Well, then, we’re both ready”, said Grandy, and he grinned like a schoolboy.

...............

The story concludes next Tuesday!

Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity

I am reading C.S. Lewis: A Life by Alister McGrath, the most recent biography of the great man. I was tempted to buy it on several occasions, literally taking it to the cash-desk (till? check-out? What would you say?), then changing my mind and putting it back on the shelf. Now UCD library has acquired it, so I don't have to pay a cent. It's a fine book.

Since Lewis was a life-long academic, the book frequently mentions Hilary, Michaelmas and Trinity terms. I remember my excitement and relish when I saw those terms used in some literature about life in University College Dublin, when I began working there. (Or perhaps when I was researching the job prior to the interview.) I really felt I was stepping into a world cobwebbed with its own time-hallowed ways and words, heavy with the ghosts of generations of undergraduates and professors and dinner ladies. I didn't quite expect immemorial elms, moonlit quads or undergraduates climbing over walls to get in before curfew, but I was hoping for some approximation to that spirit.

Sad to report, I have never heard 'Michaelmas' 'Trinity' and 'Hilary' used as the names of the terms in UCD, in over thirteen years. Not once. I just did an internet search and see that they are mentioned on the websites of some college departments. I don't know whether that is a historical hangover or whether the terms are still oficially extent. I think it must be the first. We've had a lot of restructuring of the academic calendar recently, and our bullish former President (who saw university as a conveyor belt for business, and who has only recently been superseded) would surely have winced at names as antiquated as Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity.

There are some professors who wear tweed and smoke pipes, and I applaud their zeal. There are even rumour of a library ghost-- though I have never encountered him, and I suspect, since the story originated with a particular library worker (who I never met but who indirectly went on to play a prominent part in a national political drama), I suspect it was simply a ruse to get out of going down to the store-room, where the phantom is rumoured to reside.

Suitable for Work

Just noticed (from a link in my statistics) that a website called Webwiki.com has rated Irish Papist as being "safe to visit from the workplace" and suitable for children. Hurray! It also contains no nuts or flash photography and is suitable for vegans.

I wonder if I should take this as a slur on my horror stories. Suitable for children, eh? The ignominy.

I Like This Picture Very Much

My taste in sacred art runs, perhaps, to the anodyne. I could write a long post about it (I mean, about my taste and thoughts on sacred art), and probably will at some point, but I don't have the energy for it right now. (I also like representations of the Blessed Virgin to be ethereal, even though I'm well aware she was a hard-working Judean mother.)

I have a strange memory of a trip to the mountains with my school (or rather, a summer holiday 'project' with kids from my school, a kind of recreational summer school). I must have seen, at some part of the day, a picture of Jesus that was painted in much the same style as the picture above (except more wishy-washy). I remember that sight was superimposed, in my mind, over the blue sky and fluffy white clouds of that day. I was about eleven but I remember being struck by that kind of sentimental religiosity (although obviously I wouldn't have understood such a phrase at the time). It seemed both very potent and very strange. I felt, though I couldn't have put it into words, how odd it was that a historical figure from such a distant time and place should be such a part of everyday life. It seemed odd but also right. I marvelled at the way Jesus inhabited the same mental and cultural world as car air fresheners, bottles of Lucozade, radiators, baseball caps and measles. I was a rather bookish and dreamy child, but I recognized that Jesus did not belong to the same realm as Frodo, Darth Vader and Dracula-- though he seemed like he should. It wasn't even a question of being real or imaginary. Pictures of Jesus were so dreamy and otherworldly-- but people who inhabited the world of rugged and solid things took Jesus seriously, or even for granted. I am striving to say the near-unsayable and not doing too well.

A commenter once remarked on the lack of Marian devotion on this site. I could write a long post about that, too. Maybe a whole series! Suffice it to say that I do pray to our Blessed Mother, that I honour her, and the fact that I seem to lack the spontaneous outpouring of Marian fervour shared by so many other Catholics is a cause of regret to me-- and one that I hope will be remedied in the future.

When I started this blog, I saw the battle (of ideas) with atheism and secularism as being the burning issue for Catholicism in the twenty-first century-- as being 'where it's all at'. But I care about this less and less. It's not that I don't think apologetics are important. I suppose I just think they're less important than I did even a few months ago. I increasingly feel that the real life of the People of God flourishes almost without taking any notice of the philosophical and ideological tussles that fill the world with such self-important thunder. I have more and more respect for popular devotions and for the lush, emotional, unselfconscious prayer life I see in so many ordinary Catholics-- the sort of Catholics who don't feel perpetually called upon to justify their Catholicism to contemporary scepticism.

I'm now more inclined to think that the real action is happening, not in the lecture theatre where a Catholic professor is debating an atheist journalist, but rather in the prayer group in a living room a block away. (But both are needed.)

I suppose our Lord's words put it best; we will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven unless we become as little children.

As for the sceptics themselves....I would never for a moment advocate that we should cease to engage with them. But it seems preposterous naivety to me, now, to think that your average New Atheist, or radical Marxist, or ultra-liberal, is somehow going to be won over by rational or historical or philosophical argument. The defence must be made, but more for the sake of the faithful than the (fervently) faithless. When it comes to them, I'm more and more inclined to think the best approach is pretty much:

Leave them alone, and they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them.

(But only if they see examples of vibrant, living faith around them.)

The Bard's Apprentice, Chapters 32 to 34

Chapter Thirty-Two

Fox could see the moon shining through the window. Only one sliver of it was visible, like a silver sickle. But the sky was cloudless, and white light flooded the room.

He started to rock in his bonds, knowing he couldn’t escape, but unable to stay still and wait for the blade to fall.

“Stop doing that”, said Swan, his voice becoming more firm. “If you keep it up I’ll cut this rope right now.” He lifted a knife that glinted in the moonlight, a thin knife with a jagged edge. Fox stopped trashing. He thought his heart was going to stop with fear at any moment.

“Now listen to me, Fox,”, said Swan, taking a step towards him. Fox stiffened. Swan was smiling, and his smile was so friendly that Fox thought, for a moment, that it was all some horrible prank.

“I don’t want to hurt you”, he said, and he extended a hand towards Fox. His fingers closed around Fox’s forearm. His grip was firm but not tight. “I don’t think you’re going to be hurt. I think you’re going to be just fine.”

Fox felt tears burning in his eyes. He blinked, and they rolled down his cheeks, hot and slow.

“This really is the only way to do it. From everything you told me, the power—the purple flash, the transport, the jumping spell, whatever you want to call it—seems to work best when you’re in danger. It’s worked at other times, too, but there’s no guessing those times. And it’s only when you’re in immediate danger of your life, too. It might have saved you a half-a-dozen other times, but it didn’t. It always left it to the very last moment.”

Fox looked up at the blade above him. It seemed to be balanced directly above his neck. He whimpered.

“And that would fit with what other people have said”, said Swan. Fox looked back at him. He looked pained, unwilling, but driven by some overwhelming force. “There have been tales of magical purple stones on this world, too. Not very many, and not for a long time, but they’re there. Buried under layers of legend, but there. And, when you’ve listened to as many old stories as I have, you get to telling the truth from the lies.”

Swan gazed into Fox’s eyes as if they were having this conversation over spiced wine, as if Fox had not been tied up and did not have a blade hanging above him.

“That’s why it’s got to be the blade, Fox. When I cut this rope, nothing could save you except for that wonderful power of yours. And, from all I’ve heard, the power seems to work for those around the...magical one.. too. It whisked away Grandy and Piper and the rest, didn’t it?”

Swan’s grip tightened on Fox’s arm with excitement. His eyes flashed.

“This is what I want you to do, Fox. You know how you were thinking of the pictures in my book, when the purple flash brought you here? That’s why I gave it to you, you know.” He smiled, as if congratulating himself on his cleverness. “I want you to imagine something else.”

He leaned over Fox, and Fox could smell the wine on his breath. He guessed he had not been to sleep, but had been drinking all night, getting ready for this drama. And what had he put in Fox’s glass, to put him to sleep so heavily?

“The stories tell of it”, Swan continued, getting more excited with every word. “A world, or a land, or a city—it’s not quite clear—called Luria.”

Luria. When Swan said the name, an extraordinary feeling passed over Fox. He felt that he not only recognised it, but that it was even more familiar than his own name. And yet, he was sure he had never heard it. The magic of the name almost quenched his fear, for a moment.

“The one thing they all agree on”, said Swan, “is a lake of purple fire. That’s the very words they use, without exception; a lake of purple fire. So imagine that, Fox, and all will be well.”

He saw a troubled look pass over the man’s face. It looked like guilt.

“I think fate brought us together, just like you said”. There was almost a plea in the words, as if he was begging the boy to forgive him before he released the blade. “You have this power, this miraculous ability. I have the knowledge...the knowledge that can guide you to that ability’s source. And I have the need to see it. To see its source.” He paused, and for a moment Fox could imagine an unspeakable weight pressing down upon the man. “I really do need to see it, Fox. It’s not a question of right or wong. It’s like air to a suffocating man. I hope you can understand that.”

Fox closed his eyes. He tried to imagine a lake of purple fire. He tried to think of nothing except that lake.

There was silence for a minute, two minutes. Every single moment Fox expected the sound of a knife slicing through rope. Then a knock came at the door.

It was a soft knock, but in the dead of night, it echoed through the room. Fox’s heart stopped, and then started thumping faster than ever before.

The knock came again several times, and then a voice. “Fawks?”. It took a moment for Fox to recognise it. It was the voice of the oldest maid, the one who had brought him to the library that morning.

She called his name a few more times, rapping even harder on the door. He heard her trying to open it. It was locked.

“I swear she’s half a witch”, said Swan, in the lowest and most agitated whisper Fox had ever heard. “Well, that does it. Think of the lake, Fox. Here goes.”

Swan’s grasp tightened on his arm, the maid outside began to bang loudly on the door, and Fox heard the whish of a knife and the snap of a rope. He didn’t see the blade fall, because his eyes were shut tight. He was trying, harder than he had ever tried anything in his life, to imagine a lake of purple fire.


Chapter Thirty-Three

And then it came, right on time; the purple flash, that had refused to appear when he was wandering on the streets of Arganth, cold and in pain.

But this time it was different. Before, it had been a deep, dark purple. Now it was dazzling. He had to close his eyes, and the darkness behind his lids was still coloured purple.

He could feel Swan’s hand gripping him still. After a few moments he felt him letting him go. But he was barely conscious of anything beyond that glow filling the universe, filling his mind. It inspired him with so many emotions that telling them apart would be hopeless; everything from ecstasy to horror, from excitement to the most profound peace. He forgot all about the blade that had been hanging above his head.

This time the flash did not pass in a moment, as it had on previous occasions. This time it lingered for what seemed an endless time. He felt like he had disappeared, and become nothing but his thoughts.

Slowly, the purple glow that filled all space began to shrink. Black edges appeared around the edge of vision, and grew thicker. The glow itself began to come...alive. It began to move and flicker. He saw what seemed like waves, or flames. The lake of purple fire, he remembered.

The vision came into focus slowly. It was a lake. It was a fire. One moment it was one, another moment it was the other. He still had little sense of perspective, but he could see that it was immense. It seemed to be perfectly circular.

Now it seemed that the centre of the lake seemed to be fire, the edges seemed water; both of them coloured the same rich purple. He was unable to see a point where the waves became flames; they simply blended into each other, absurd as it might seem. It didn’t look absurd. It was beautiful beyond description. Even the waves closest to him had something fire-like in the way they shone; the blaze at the centre of the lake sometimes looked like a mighty river’s waters.

He could feel the heat of that great fire from here, but it was too far away to cause discomfort. No, from this distance, it was an enveloping, tender warmth. He could smell it, too. It reminded him of a combination of smells from Jasma’s kitchen; steam and hot bread, along with a myriad of unnamed and faint and bewitching spices.

The lake held his attention for a long time, and made him forget everything that had led him to this moment. But then the darkness around the lake began to to come into focus, too. Reluctantly, Fox took his eyes from the fiery waters to see what sort of place he was in.

He was underground; that much was plain. An enormous rocky ceiling covered the lake of fire. It was not a smooth ceiling; it was uneven and craggy. The rock was dark grey, almost black, but with a faint red glow that seemed to come from within, rather than being a reflection of the fiery waters.

He was standing in a cave, but he could see many more caves—hundreds, perhaps thousands—studded in the rockface around the lake. He could see people standing some of them, but they were far away, and difficult to make out.

Suddenly he remembered the blade and the terror of the moment before. He looked to his side, to where Swan had been. He shuddered when he saw what was there now.

Swan was standing beside him, staring at the lake of fire. But he had been transformed. He was no longer a breathing being of flesh and bone. He had become a statue, formed of the same reddish-grey rock as the rest of the cave. There was a look of wonder on his frozen features. Swan had got his heart’s desire, and had paid the highest price for it. One arm still reached towards Fox, the fingers of the hand stretched open with surprise.

Fox hadn’t got time to wonder over this transformation. He heard footsteps from further in the cave, coming towards him.

His first instinct was to run, to hide. After the trap with the little girl, and after Swan’s betrayal, he expected hostility from all quarters. But a look around the cave showed him it was useless. There was nowhere to hide himself; the walls of this cave were as rugged as the great cavern outside, but there was no nook big enough to cover him. Short of jumping into the lake, whose furthest edges looked like they might be bottomless, he had little choice but to stand there and wait. He tensed, without believing for a moment that he could really resist whatever was approaching him.

The cave grewer narrower further back, until it became a passage, black with shadows. From these shadows stepped the form of a tall man. He was bald. He had a handsome face, but there was a deep scar across his it. He wore a light robe of black and amber stripes, over black trousers of some sort. He was looking at Fox, and he did not look happy.

As he came closer, Fox found himself trying to guess his age, but it was impossible. He might have been anything from thirty to sixty, but even this seemed wrong. He looked centuries old. Something in the way he walked made it seem as though his legs had carried him thousands upon thousands of miles. The light in his eyes convinced Fox that they had seen a hundred times more than most eyes saw in a lifetime.

And he looked disturbed.

“Not yet”, Fox heard him muttering when he came close enough to be heard. He spoke in the language of the Empire, to Fox’s surprise. His voice was deep, but his tones were cultured. “Too soon, far too soon.”

The man looked at Fox as though he knew him. He seemed upset but not all surprised.

“Where am I?”, he asked.

“I think you know where you are”, said the man, almost bitterly.

“Luria?”

“Luria.”

Speaking the syllables gave Fox a sudden strength. They seemed to make his spirit expand, like wind filling out a sail. But he still watched the man nervously.

“This is Luria”, he repeated, sounding resigned now “and my name is Kandorian. I’m sorry for my cold welcome. We weren’t expecting you for a long time yet, Fox.”

“How do you know my name?”, asked Fox, trying not to sound too confused, too lost.

“I’ve been watching you”, said Kandorian. Fox couldn’t decide what colour his eyes were. One moment they seemed grey, another blue, another green.

But always they sparkled with extraordinary brightness. He seemed both gentle and deadly at once.

“Watching me?”, asked Fox. “How?”

“The lake, Fox”, said Kandorian, waving his hand towards the water. “Just look, and pay attention.”

Fox looked back at the lake. All he saw were the flame-like waves he had seen before. The more he looked, the less like either fire or water they seemed, and the more like some kind of element that resembled both. But he still didn’t know what Kandorian wanted him to see. He had opened his mouth to ask, when suddenly he saw.

They were images in the water, or the fire, or whatever it was. At first they were blurry, but they sharpened the more he looked. It was just like seeing pictures in the fire, but they were much more than shapes that just reminded him of pictures. The pictures were there, perfect. It was just like looking through a pane of purple glass.

The image was that of the old maid who had been knocking at the door, back in Swan’s house. She was standing by the bed, looking at the blade which had fallen through thin air, landing on the mattress and slicing into it. The frown on her face seemed more confused than alarmed.

“I wish I could tell her what happened”, said Fox. “I wish I could tell her I’m alright.”

“I think she has a pretty good idea what happened”, said Kandorian. “Only fools use the term old wives’ tales as an insult. That lady knows plenty of old wives’ tales.”

“How do you know my language?”, asked Fox. “What is this place, exactly? And how come you were watching me?”. All of a sudden he felt frustrated, tired of being whisked from world to world, from place to place. He wanted an explanation. Realising that Kandorian wasn’t going to harm him made him brave.

Kandorian crossed his arms and smiled. Fox would have found it difficult to imagine a smile on that face a moment before. Now, he guessed that Kandorian smiled a lot. “And to think I expected you to be lost for words! Well, it does me good to be wrong from time to time.”

Fox flushed. Did he really think he could order this man around?

“Well, then”, said Kandorian, looking Fox up and down as if he was measuring him. “To answer your questions in order. I know your language because I came from the same world as you, many years ago. Though I know plenty of other languages besides”, he added, with a hint of vanity.

“As for what this place is exactly, I don’t know who could tell you that. Suffice it to say that Luria is the home of the Bards. And a Bard is what you are supposed to become, Fox. What I’m supposed to make of you.” He grimaced a little with these words.

“A Bard?”, asked Fox, wondering why the name Luria seemed so familiar to him when none of this other stuff did. “What’s a Bard?”

“Don’t you know your own language? A Bard is somebody who goes from place to place, reciting poems and telling stories and being paid with dirty looks and watered-down beer. The only difference is that the Bards of Luria go from world to world, and that we have a habit of getting mixed up in stories, as well as telling them.”

“Stories?”, repeated Fox, trying to make sense of Kandorian’s words and failing utterly. “Poems?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted when you went to Armala?”, asked Kandorian, raising his eyebrows.

Fox thought of the storyteller’s face, picturing it as it would sometimes appear in the light of the tamzan fire, like a mask made of gold. “Is Armala a Bard? Does she know about Luria?”

“She doesn’t know”, said Kandorian. “But she wouldn’t be surprised if she did. Armala is as wise as any Bard, Fox. Wiser than most, perhaps.”

Fox looked down. He was surprised by how ashamed he felt. He had begun to think of Armala as…well, almost as a foolish old woman. She was a guide who had taught him all she had to teach him, he’d started to think; he had grown past her. Now he realised how false that was.

“As for your third question”, said Kandorian. “Why was I watching you? That one is easily answered, at least. I was watching you because Luria has chosen you as a Bard.”

“Luria chose me?”, asked Fox, feeling more confused with each of Kandorian’s answers. “Is Luria alive?”

“Certainly it’s alive”, said Kandorian. “Though in a different way from me and you. That purple stone that crossed your path was a piece of Luria, Fox. There are thousands of them, scattered amongst the worlds. They can go years and years without choosing anybody, and then somebody crosses their path who seems to fit the bill. Not always an obvious choice”, said Kandorian, looking at Fox a little doubtfully. “But Luria knows better than us.”

“How many Bards are there?”, asked Fox.

“Never more than twelve thousand”, said Kandorian. “Men and women, drawn from tens of thousands of worlds. They tend to die a lot, so there’s a constant stream of replacements. But a twelve-year-old apprentice...I’ve never heard of that before. Too soon”, he said again, though it seemed more to himself than Fox.

“Why—“, Fox began, but Kandorian raised his hand, warding off the question.

“Enough for now”, he said. “Bards treat the Lake of Fire with great respect, Fox. Chatting by its edge is not an example of that respect. Let me show you the rest of Luria, and you can attack me with your questions as we go.”

And Kandorian led Fox towards the shadows from which he had emerged, and into the depths of Luria. The thing that had once been Swan gazed out into the fiery lake, wearing the expression of amazement that it would wear for thousands of years to come.


Chapter Thirty-Four

The cave narrowed to a passage at its far end, just about wide enough to walk through. The faint glow from the rock was enough to see by. It threw a scarlet light over everything. Fox felt a great reluctance to leave the lake behind—it was like getting out of a bath on a cold day. There was something addictive about the fiery lake. But he followed the Bard.

“What made you come to the lake?”, asked Fox. “How did you know I was there?”

“When you’ve been watching somebody”, said Kandorian, from a few paces ahead, “you develop a connection with them. After a few decades of practice, that is.”

Decades of practice? A thought struck Fox, exciting him. “Do Bards live longer than other people?”, he asked.

Kandorian laughed, a laugh that was almost bitter. “Only in experiences”, said Kandorian. “We get plenty of those. But no, being a Bard doesn’t put years on your life, I’m afraid. Sometimes it drastically shortens it. I first came to Luria when I was seventeen. I’m fifty-six now. That’s a lot of Barding, I can tell you.”

“And how come you…”, Fox started, and hesitated, wondering what term he should use.

“How come I got you as an apprentice?”, asked Kandorian. “Put that down to the weird wisdom of Luria. I was gazing into the lake and I saw your image. That made you my responsibility. I’ve been watching you from the day you disappeared from your grandfather’s house. I didn’t expect to meet you so soon.”

“What age should I have been?”

“I was very young for an apprentice, at seventeen. Most are nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years of age before they Set Foot. Some have been sixteen. But twelve years old…” Kandorian’s voice was not admiring, or congratulatory. It was troubled. “That idiot Swan. I should have guessed what he was about.”

“What’s wrong? What happens if I’m too young, Kandorian?”.

Kandorian stopped, and turned to face Fox. The red glow from the rock made his face look eery. “Fox, a Bard’s most important training is done outside Luria. That’s when he grows as a person, when he develops his own powers of understanding. A Bard should come to Luria of his own free will, not be pushed there by another. Finding Luria is the most important part. That’s been taken from you, forever. You may never be able to overcome that loss.”

Dismay filled Fox at the sorrow in Kandorian’s voice, the worry in his eyes. But then, as if sensing the boy’s anguish, the Bard smiled.

“Well, nobody believed that I would live past my fifth year, I’ve been told. And they said that Josper Stronghouse would never rise in the world, with his fits and his bouts of mania.”

Josper Stronghouse. It was so strange to hear that name here, so far from Grandy’s “library”. “He had a fit before the Battle of Dead Man’s Gap”, said Fox, keen to display the knowledge he had taken from those precious twelve volumes.

“So I’ve read”, said Kandorian, not seeming in the least impressed. “Take my hand here, Fox, and look beneath you. There are pitfalls.”

They walked on for perhaps twenty minutes, Kandorian explaining the ways of the Bards as they walked. Bards spent as much time out of Luria as within it, it seemed. Once a day they stood by the edge of the Lake, gazing into its depths. If Luria wanted them to travel to a world, an image of that world appeared, and they stepped through there and then. Sometimes nothing eventful happened during their stay; they told their stories and their poems, picked up new ones, and Luria called them home when the time had come, just as it had pulled Fox from Swan’s house.

But sometimes there was more to it than that. Luria had a habit of sending its Bards into times of great commotions; revolutions, wars, conspiracies, disasters, discoveries. Often the drama would not involve nations or cities, but villages, or families, or just a hermit living alone on an island. It was not unknown for a Bard to be sent amongst birds or goats, to observe their wordless lives.

“Luria is pretty picky about where exactly it lands you”, said Kandorian. “Usually you don’t have any choice except to take a part in events. Like when it dropped me in the throne-room of a King Silvershower just as his enemies were surrounding it, swearing to kill everyone inside.”

“So what does an apprentice do?”, asked Fox.

“He follows his Bard”, said Kandorian. “Through thick and thin, through wet and dry, through disaster and boredom. He polishes his Bard’s boots, and saddles his horse when he has one, and lights the fires, and runs messages. After four or five years of polishing boots, he knows how to be a Bard himself. When in Luria, he spends a lot of time memorising poems and stories, and cooking, and spinning, and laundering.”

The passages were growing broader now. They had passed about a dozen hollows that seemed like cave-mouths, and firelight and voices had escaped from two or three of them.

“How many apprentices have you had?”, asked Fox.

Kandorian’s face stiffened. “Three”, he said. “One of them never lived to become a Bard. Now let’s put our mouths to better use than talking.”

Yellow light was flooding from the right-hand wall of the passage, and Fox could hear laughter. Thirty paces further down, he could see a narrow cave-mouth, and smell something that made his belly wake up.

“The Luria diet is simple, but wholesome”, said Kandorian, as they made their way to the source of the delicious scent. “Another of your duties as an apprentice will be food-gathering. There is a land called Garassia, in a world we call the Pantry World, whose farmers are the most well-entertained farmers in all the nations that we’ve visited. Centuries of exchanging food for stories have made them the most discerning audience in the Hundred Thousand Worlds.”

“There are a hundred thousand worlds?”, asked Fox, surprised.

“That’s just a term we use”, said Kandorian. “There are considerably more than that really.”

They entered the cave. The ceiling was high, so high that it was obscured by shadows and clouds of steam. It was difficult to work out how deep the cave was, either, since so many people thronged its narrow space. They milled around a long table, a table flanked by two benches that seemed to run its entire length. Kandorian pushed him onto an empty space, and sat beside him. The table was so smoke-blackened, so scratched and stained that it was impossible to tell what colour it had been originally, or what wood it was made from.

The Luria diet may have been plain, but it was also plentiful. Plates were piled with red meat, brown meat, white meat, potatoes, peas and many other vegetable Fox didn’t recognise. In between the diners lay plates heavy with thick breads, and jugs of various sauces and gravies. But the Bards seemed hardly interested in the food, though they were certainly wolfing it down. They were more intent upon their discussions. Each one of them was lost in some argument or debate, either with an immediate neighbour or the surrounding company in general. The thick scent of food and the excited babble mixed together in the air, and Fox immediately felt a surge of love. No place had ever felt more welcoming to him, though nobody seemed to even notice their coming.

Fox was surprised by how unremarkable the Bards seemed. There were at least a hundred along the table, and they could have been any hundred people he might pass on a city street. There were men and women, young and old, fair and dark. The only thing they had in common, on the surface, was that they all wore robes like Kandorian’s. But even their robes were of many different colours and patterns. Some were plain white or black or red, some were striped or hooped or quartered several colours. Some had insignia upon them, like the snake with angel’s wings on the chest of one lady across the table.

“What does the black and amber on your robe mean, Kandorian?”, whispered Fox.

“It means I like those colours”, said Kandorian, filling his cup with reddish liquid from something that looked like a teapot.

Two young men, who looked hardly older than twenty—Fox guessed they were apprentices, though they wore no special clothes, just the same sort of robes as the Bards—appeared from behind and set down wooden plates in front of them. The plates were already heaped with food. Only the choosiest eater would fail to find something that he liked in such a mound.

Fox realised that the two apprentices were staring at him, furtively. He looked around the table. He was the focus of more than one pair of eyes, more than one whispered discussion. People looked away when he met their gaze and pretended to be talking about something else.

“Nobody’s ever seen a child in here before”, said Kandorian, without looking up from his plate. He was cutting what looked like a hefty slice of beef. “You’ll be the talk of Luria tonight, you know.”

Fox instinctively strained to make out what people were saying, though he knew it was unlikely anybody would be speaking the language of the Empire. But, now that he listened to them, he realised that they were all speaking the same language. It was crisp, guttural, hard-edged to Fox’s ears.

“What language is that?”, he asked Kandorian.

Kandorian was chewing his piece of meat now, and it took him the best part of a minute before he could respond. He was not a dainty eater. Gravy dribbled down his chin “It’s Lurian”, he said. “And you’re expected to learn it, too. When I came to Luria, full of notions about poetry, I thought it was a very unpoetic sort of language. Now I realise there’s no such thing as a language that’s not poetic. You might as well talk about an ugly countryside, or a pointless animal.”

More Armala talk, thought Fox, and poured some of the red liquid into his own cup. He took a sip. For a moment it didn’t taste like anything much. Then he felt a tingling in all his veins, and a warm glow spread through all his body. He took another sip.

“Bard’s blood”, said Kandorian, nodding at the cup. “Not literally, of course”, he added, when he saw Fox’s reaction. “A mixture of berries found on five different worlds. The harderst part of an apprentice’s life is learning how to mix it.”

“Really?”, asked Fox, who was never sure when Kandorian was being serious.

“Maybe”, said Kandorian.

One of the apprentices appeared behind Kandorian, whispering him some question while darting an occasional glance at Fox. He wasn’t sure that it was a friendly look. Kandorian gave a quick nod, and looked towards Fox.

“They want to know what kind of a robe you want”, asked Kandorian, and when Fox only stared from the apprentice to the Bard, Kandorian took the fabric of his own robe between his fingers, rather impatiently. “Like this. What colour? What pattern? If you can’t decide, they’ll just give you a white one for now. Bear in mind that you might be wearing it a long, long time.”

Fox looked around the table. Every imaginable combination of colour and shape were on show. There was so much to take in right now, it seemed silly to worry over something like a robe. He was about to agree to a temporary white one, when an idea struck him.

“Give me one in a spiral pattern”, he said, addressing the apprentice, though he knew he couldn’t understand him. The apprentice, a hulky, pale fellow with white-blonde hair, glowered at him. “In green and red.”

When the apprentice had wheeled away, nodding curtly at Kandorian’s interpretation, the Bard said: “I understand the spiral, of course. But what about the green and red?”

“I like the colours”, said Fox.

Kandorian looked annoyed for a moment, and Fox thought he was about to scold him. Then his face smoothed out and he gave a hearty laugh.

“Very good”, he said. “But I’d be careful with the quips, if I were you. Most Bards consider they’re doing apprentices a great service by punishing any hint of cheek or self-satisfaction. A twelve-year old apprentice will be even less indulged.”

The woman sitting beside Kandorian asked a question, and the two Bards spoke together for a few minutes, watching Fox all the while. She was little older than the apprentices, and looked as fragile as the straw dolls Fox had seen in the shops of his own city. Her robe was halved orange and gold. Her black hair flowed over it a thick stream. The way she pressed her lips together somehow made Fox a little nervous of her. But when she looked at him, there was sympathy in her eyes. Too much sympathy for Fox’s liking.

“Why is she sad for me?”, asked Fox, when the fragile-looking woman was talking to the man to her left.

Kandorian did not reply for a few moments. He just chewed his food, and looked thoughtfully around the table, as if looking for the answer to Fox’s question in the faces of the other Bards. Finally he sighed, and turning back to Fox, said: “Because those years will never come back to you, Fox. A son of Luria is a son of Luria, and there’s no retreating from that. Most of us had a few years to be reckless and giddy and pleasure-seeking, before we came here. No matter how poor or war-torn the society they come from, most young people manage to have some kind of fun in it. But that’s not all. The rest of us chose Luria. You never had that choice.”

Fox had an image of Grandy grappling along a rope suspended between two second-floor windows, over a busy street. That had been one of the many youthful escapades he had told Fox about, over and over; of course, as Fox imagined it, Grandy was an old man even back then. Fox couldn’t see why anyone would bother with such capers; life was troublesome enough as it was. But he tried to look grave at Kandorian’s words.

The Bard frowned, as if he was reluctant to continue, then said: “I may as well tell you the rest now, as well. Fox, Bards can never have children. I mean, it’s not possible. When you pass through that Lake of Fire, you lose the ability forever.”

“I don’t care about that”, said Fox.

“Not now”, said Kandorian. “But one day you might care a lot.” He took another deep draft of Bard’s Blood, and gave an unconvincing smile. “Luria always thinks a Bard would no make no kind of parent. And Luria, as usual, is right.”

A feeling of unreality passed over Fox, but only for a moment. How strange was it that he was sitting here, discussing his future life with a man who he had never seen until an hour ago, in a place that was literally alive? What was even stranger was that it didn’t really seem all that strange. He had experienced too much in the past few months to be very surprised by anything.

“Is Luria…” he started to ask, and hesitated.

“Yes?”, asked Kandorian, as if Fox had distracted him from important thoughts of his own.

“Is Luria…God?”

“I don’t think so”, said Kandorian, who didn’t seem surprised by the question. “Nobody really knows what it is; whether it always existed, or if it was somehow created some unimaginably long time ago. Whether it has one mind, or many. But God—I don’t think so. Perhaps it’s a servant of God.”

“But it is…the centre of everything isn’t it?”, asked Fox.

Kandorian thought over this. Fox liked the way he thought over his questions. It made them feel worth asking. “It’s the centre of things for us”, he said. “In the same way that a small farmer’s fire is the centre of his world. But the Hundred Thousand Worlds don’t really have a centre, Fox. There are great nations and mighty Empires. There are peoples of legendary wisdom and virtue. But the most fabulous city is no more important, no more interesting than a labourer’s hut on a windswept hillside, in some unsung and lonely land. To be a Bard is to know that there are wonders everywhere you look.”

Kandorian spoke like he was reading from a book, thought Fox, swallowing another mouthful of a pale green vegetable whose name he didn’t know but whose taste he definitely liked. “And what’s outside?”, he asked. “What’s outside these caves?”

“Nothing”, said Kandorian, evently. “These caves and passages seem to go on forever. Nobody knows if there is an outside.”

“That’s impossible”, said Fox, feeling somehow irritated.

Kandorian shrugged. “I’ve seen so many impossible things, I hardly know what the word means anymore. Is your hunger satisfied?”

Fox had become so used to metaphors—Armala, Swan and now Kandorian hardly seemed to talk in any other way— that it took him a moment to realise that Kandorian meant the question literally. “I’m fine”, he said.

“Good”, said Kandorian, rising from the table and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Bards have to endure many trials, but I have to admit we can’t complain about the food. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?, asked Fox, following him, aware of the eyes following them both out of the cave.

“Luria is a big place”, said Kandorian. “I’m going to show you a bit more of it. You won’t be seeing it again for a long time.”

“What do you mean?”, asked Fox, alarmed.

“We’ll get to that”, said Kandorian, and Fox thought there was a shadow of a smile on his face. “First, the grand tour.”

It lasted almost two hours, Fox guessed. (At one point he asked Kandorian how they measured time in Luria, but the Bard merely replied: “We don’t.”). The entire city—they called it a city—was made of the same red-grey rock, though its shade and texture differed in different places. In some places, it was as rough as the ceiling over the Lake of Fire. In other places, it was so smooth, it looked like it must have been built by men rather than nature. A deep silence hung over the whole city, a silence that seemed only deeper where there were voices and noise to disturb it. The temperature never seemed to change. Kandorian told him that the rocks themselves spread warmth.

He brought Fox through the long, long corridors lined with the Bards’ cells. They all seemed the same size, though for the most part he could only see the doors. The doors themselves, which were of as many different colours as the Bards’ robes, looked like coloured stone. He ran his hand along one, and it felt like stone.

“Ancient wood”, said Kandorian, watching him. “Instead of rotting, it seems to have hardened over the centuries.”

They went to Kandorian’s cell. It was smaller than Fox had expected. A man could walk from side to side in three paces, and from end to end in five paces. There was a hammock hanging from a frame that seemed to be made out of the same toughened wood as the doors. And nothing else.

“Don’t you even have books?”, asked Fox, anxiously.

“There’s no reading or writing in Luria”, said Kandorian, firmly. “It’s a hard rule, but a wise one. Writing is a wondrous thing, but Bards keep their stories and their poems here.” He tapped his head. “It’s amazing how easy it becomes to remember them when you can’t rely on writing them down. Don’t look so dismal, Fox. We don’t do much in our cells beside sleep. And it’s not like you’ll never read a book again.”

He took Fox to the kitchens, where ten or fifteen apprentices were working. It was difficult to see anything through the clouds of steam. Fox had never seen pots so huge. The oven, too—which was made out of stone, and looked as ancient as the cave itself—was three times as big as the oven in Jasma’s kitchen. But the kitchen itself was at least twenty times larger.

They saw the spinning looms, where the apprentice with the blonde-white hair glowered at Fox again. They saw the laundry rooms. They saw the bathrooms, which were formed from naturally-occurring hot water springs. They saw what Kandorian called a tavern. This was the first place in Luria that Fox had seen comfortable-looking furniture. The furniture looked like it had been smuggled from the world outside. The worlds outside.

Everywhere they went, the Bards and the apprentices were talking, talking; exchanging stories and poems, singing songs, and having debates that looked like they had been raging for hours and would rage for hours to come. There may have been no reading or writing in Luria, but there was no shortage of words.

They saw all this, and much more. There were many other kitchens and dining rooms and taverns than the ones he had seen, Kandorian told him.

A deep flush of pleasure spread through Fox’s soul. Here was home, at last. There would be no debates about abandoning Luria, no question of this city being destroyed or deserted. It had stood for untold centuries. It would stand forever. And it was his.

Finally they came to a ledge of stone that looked over a dark green pool. The pool was tiny compared to the Lake of Fire, but still so wide that one would have to shout to be heard on the other side. It seemed entirely still, and Fox had to peer at it to make out its gentle current.

“What’s this?”, asked Fox, when Kandorian had been staring into it for about a minute.

Kandorian seemed not to have heard him for a moment or two—he was still absorbed by the dark waters below—but then he said: “This is the first port of call for any apprentice. This is where you spend your first months in Luria.”

For a moment Fox thought the Bard must be joking. He scanned his face, but there was no laughter there.

“What do you mean?”, asked Fox, alarm rising in him. A part of him was thinking: Not again. Not again. He backed away from the ledge. The look on Swan’s face when they last spoke was a lot like Kandorian’s expression now.

“Don’t be afraid”, said Kandorian. “There’s no way to explain the Dreaming Pool, I’m afraid. You have to experience it for yourself.”

“Do you mean”-- began Fox, but that was as far as he got. Kandorian suddenly pushed him in the back, and sent him hurtling down to the dark waters below.

A Brand New Nightmare

Hallowe'en night. The bonfires have burned down almost to embers. Children have stopped trick-or-treating hours ago. Only a rare firework lights up the sky.

A woman is cutting apples in a kitchen. She is singing along to the radio, which is playing a country and western song. It's low, because the hour is late.

Every few moments, she looks up. Nervously? Expectantly? Excitedly?

In the sitting room, the DVD case of Hallowe'en III lies on the coffee table. The DVD is still in the DVD player.

The front door is closed.

But not unlocked.

A man is walking up the street, towards her house. His face is whiter than any skin could naturally be. Red streaks run down his cheek. When the street-lamps shine on his eyes, the irises glow an unearthly red. He walks slowly, unhurriedly. He is looking at the numbers on the front doors as he passes them.

He stops before the woman's house, and stares at it, an intent look upon his face.

Five miles away, in a small office, a skinny man with long hair is sitting in front of a computer screen. There is a carton of fast food on the desk beside him.

A colourful flyer lies right beside the carton of fast food. Wright's Frights, it says in big and wobbly writing at the top. Underneath a picture of a screaming skull, there is a caption in smaller writing: Want to Make That Halloween Party a Scream? Let us Scare Your Guests For You! Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves, Mummies and More!!

He opens a new email and curses. He reaches for his mobile phone, which is lying beside his keyboard, and makes a call. It is not answered. He curses again.

Hurriedly, he types a text: "Wrong house. 28 Burlington COURT, not Burlington Crescent. Abort!"

Five miles away, the woman is still chopping apples, singing along with Waylon Jennings. She doesn't hear the soft click of her front door.

The kitchen door bursts open...

This Was Number One in the American Charts The Week That I Was Born

And it's awesome. I'm lost and alone, chilled to the bone....seedy motels and no-star hotels...evocative lyrics or what? (I'm not being ironic.)

Is it really any wonder that I'm so super cool?