Bedtime Story Page 4
The monastery: the old man was one of the Brotherhood.
“I am a translator,” Loren said in a thin voice, “of the ancient texts. When I learned of the attacks on the watchtowers, I was reminded of a manuscript that I translated, some years ago. Not a book. Private papers, from the reign of King Harkness.”
“And why did it remind you of that?” the Queen prompted.
“Because of when the attacks happened,” he explained. “On a night when the moon was swallowed by the dark.”
Matthias remembered the night, almost a week before, when he had stood outside the tavern next to Arian as the moon seemed to disappear momentarily into the night sky. He sat forward to listen more closely to the translator.
“There is a prophecy,” the old man said. “In those scrolls. A prophecy which I am only now beginning to understand. It is mostly fragments, scattered within another text.” He opened the book in his hand, balancing it carefully as he turned the pages. “It begins:
The fall of man shall come,
As a fall comes to all things.
The mighty walls of Colcott shall crack
And bleed
On the night the moon dies in the sky.”
The old man looked up from the book and fixed his eyes on Matthias. “There is more. Much more. And it concerns the boy.”
“Me?” Matthias asked, before he could stop himself.
“You,” the translator said.
“But—”
The old man shook his head, and Matthias closed his mouth. Loren continued speaking, but Matthias barely heard him over the rushing in his ears. It couldn’t be him. He was … nobody.
“Hidden as it was, the prophecy has long puzzled scholars. But the confluence of events, the attack on the watchtowers on the night of the disappearing moon …” His voice trailed off. “I believe I know what it means.”
Matthias shifted, uncomfortable in his chair.
“The prophecy describes a treasure, a relic so powerful that it was hidden away before the time of King Harkness. A relic that will save this kingdom. The Sunstone.”
“A sunstone?” Matthias asked. It was the symbol of the kingdom, on every flag, every gate, and sewn onto the shoulder of Bream’s tunic.
“Not a sunstone,” the scholar corrected. “The Sunstone. The first Sunstone, carried into battle by Stephen the Bold, before he was the First King.”
There was a long moment of silence before the captain said, “That’s just a myth. A children’s story.”
“It’s much more than that,” the old man said. “Do you know why the Sunstone is the symbol of our kingdom? Not because it was Stephen’s sigil, but because of what it could do. What it did, in our darkest hour.”
“What could it do?” Matthias heard himself asking.
“It is believed the stone held great power. How else to explain the victory at Corindor Field, when the brave five hundred broke the army of the Berok, more than ten thousand strong, turning them back and forging this kingdom in blood and iron?”
Matthias recognized the last few words from a poem that every child was taught, the chronicle of the founding of the kingdom.
“Tactics,” the captain said. “Bravery. Loyalty. As battles have always been fought and won.”
“You would believe that, of course,” the old man said. “But the truth is much stranger. The truth is that Stephen rode into battle with the Sunstone, the first Sunstone, on his breast, and a magus at his side.”
“Are you talking about magic?” Matthias asked.
“Indeed I am. A magic so powerful it can render an army unbreakable. A magic so powerful that King Stephen, even in the flush of victory, could see its dangers. After Corindor Field, he ordered the Sunstone hidden where no one, not even he, could find it. He entrusted his dearest friend Gafilair, the first of the Brotherhood to be paired with the king, the first high mage, to hide the stone. To wrap it in mysteries and magics such that no man could ever find it.
“The magus did as the new king instructed, hiding the stone away where it would remain for more than a thousand years, until the kingdom once again was in such grave danger that the stone’s powers would be its only salvation.”
“If it is hidden so well—” Captain Bream began.
“There is one who can find it,” the scholar said. “That is the reason for the prophecy. That the Brothers of Gafilair, his heirs and followers, might follow the signs, might find the right person at the right time to recover the stone and return it to the King. The clues to finding the stone are in here,” he said, gesturing to the book. “As is the information we needed to find the one who could retrieve it.”
“Me?” Matthias asked incredulously.
The captain nodded.
“Captain Bream has selected a troop of his finest men,” the Queen said. “His most loyal and true. You will ride out with them to find the Sunstone, and bring it back that it might protect the kingdom once more. Loren will ride with you to decipher the signs left by the first high magus.”
“But it can’t be me,” Matthias blurted.
The magus spoke slowly: “There are signs, portents, in this book. We have studied them. Studied you. The signs of your birth. Your parentage. There is enough for us to be sure.”
“Matthias,” the Queen said. “You’ll ride out at dawn in three days’ time. You’ll be well cared-for, well protected. And when you return with the Sunstone, you will receive a hero’s welcome. Do you understand?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
He had no choice.
“Come,” she said. “The importance of this journey cannot be overstated.”
The Queen led the three men around the stone platform at the end of the room, to a double door hidden behind a tapestry. The captain opened the door, and stepped back to allow the Queen to enter. Matthias followed.
In the centre of the room stood a huge bed. The man lying on it was tiny, and clearly sick, his skin yellow and waxy, his hair missing in patches. He lay facing the door, considering his guests with pale, milky eyes.
Loren took several steps toward the bed before falling to his knee. “Your Majesty,” he said, almost in a whisper.
Matthias looked at the Queen.
“This,” she said, “is why we need the Sunstone so badly.”
The crumpled figure on the bed raised a shaky hand. “Loren,” he said weakly. “Loren, my friend.”
The mage rose to his feet and stepped to the bedside. The King took his hand.
“Have you found the boy?”
Matthias could feel his heart in his throat.
“I have, Your Majesty. He’s here.”
The King’s eyes searched the room, and prompted by a gentle push from the Queen, Matthias stepped to the old man’s side.
“This is him?” the King asked.
“It is, Your Majesty.”
A weak smile came to the King’s face as he took Matthias’s hand. The King’s grip was sticky and cool, and Matthias tried to breathe mostly through his mouth; the air near the bed was sweet and acrid with the smells of sickness.
“Yes, so it is,” the King said, as if finally able to see him. “It is all yours to do now,” he said to Matthias. He winced and strained with each word. “The future of the kingdom is in your hands.”
Dumbstruck, Matthias nodded. The King’s grip tightened, then fell away. His eyes sank shut. For a moment, Matthias’s hand hung in the air where the King had held it. But then a rough, wet breath brought a sense of relief. The King was only sleeping.
“The great secret at the heart of the kingdom,” the Queen said slowly.
Matthias turned back to face the Queen and the Captain of the Guard, both still standing in the doorway.
“No one knows of the King’s illness. Your mission, therefore, must remain a secret, known to as few people as possible. You cannot go home. Not now. Not before you leave. Do you understand?”
“I do, Your Majesty.”
II
Standing there, half draped in covers, I faced the usual choice: the bed looked so enticing, so warm, so soft.
I stumbled toward the door and turned on the light. If there ever came a day when it all fell apart, finally and irrevocably, I would know it by the fact that I wouldn’t be up in the pre-dawn hours, sitting at my desk, willing the words to come.
After starting a pot of coffee, the next order of business was to throw the empty vodka bottle into the overflowing recycle box. As the coffee perked, I pulled on some clothes, then stood behind my chair, looking at the framed article hung over the desk. “Where are the books?” the headline read. It was a bitchy piece about the long-overdue second novels from a wave of new West Coast writers, all of whose first books had met with the sort of critical praise one dreams of. And then, nothing. No follow-ups, no new books, despite huge advances and early publicity. I had enjoyed writing the article, a year and a half after Coastal Drift was published.
A year after the article appeared, the framed copy had arrived in the mail. An inscription in the corner read: How does it feel, asshole? It was signed by one of the writers I had mentioned in the article, and the package it came in had also included clippings of the rapturous reviews her second novel had just received.
The paper my article was printed on was now yellowed and dark, and every one of the writers I had written about had since published a second book, or third, and in one case his fourth, while I had produced nothing.
Fresh coffee in hand, I sat down at the desk and turned on the lamp. I ignored the laptop, not even daring to open it. My routine demanded that the writing come first, that everything else—e-mail, websites, online writers’ forums—wait until the day’s words were down. Avoiding temptation was the only way I knew that I would actually get the work done.
There was no temptation greater than the book sitting on the table beside my reading chair. I could just read one chapter, right? While I tried to wake up a little. One chapter wouldn’t hurt, would it?
I didn’t give in, and opened my latest notebook to the first blank page. Pen in hand, I stared down at the white expanse, trying to figure out what was wrong.
Right. The music. My secret weapon.
Once I had the Miles Davis CD playing, everything started to move. I wrote, head down, for almost two full rotations of the disk, filling almost four pages. It was good stuff. But then, I always think that.
It took me another hour, sipping at my second coffee of the day, to type in the day’s writing, making a few changes as I went. When I printed out the pages, I wrote the date in the bottom margin and set the sheets face down on the top of the eight-inch stack on the bookcase.
Normally, I would have gone straight into checking e-mails and the usual online haunts. Instead, I carried my coffee cup over to the reading chair and sat down with David’s book. I had a few minutes before it would be time to get David up and off to school. And besides, it’s not like I was just reading: now this was research. I had a column to write, and the beginnings of an idea.
At the top of a stone staircase, Captain Bream led Matthias through a heavy wooden door. The air was bracingly cold as Matthias stepped onto a walkway at the top of the highest tower overlooking the city. The Queen had told the soldier to escort Matthias to sleeping quarters, but he had led the boy behind another tapestry, through another secret door.
“I know you do not believe this, but you’re very important,” the captain said, breaking the silence that had overtaken them. “As important as this castle. As those battlements.”
“But I don’t understand …”
“I don’t either,” the captain said. “Not completely. But the Queen does. And the magus. I do understand this, though.”
He directed Matthias’s gaze beyond the battlements. Matthias was facing inland, and he could see Colcott Town stretching along the shoreline, facing the castle from across the bay. With the tide in, the causeway was swallowed under the churning tides, the single road between the castle and Colcott Town impassable, as it was for half of every day. A swarm of small boats and flat-bottomed skiffs ferried passengers and supplies to the island.
“Do you see those mountains?” He pointed at the distant, dark swell that seemed to rise out of the smoky green forests deep inland.
Matthias nodded.
The captain moved his fingers as if to trace the mountaintops. “They mark the edge of the kingdom, two days’ ride from here. There is a watchtower on each of the seven passes through the mountains, a ring of soldiers watching the King’s borders every moment of every day. Less than a week ago, three of those towers fell. Those soldiers died defending this land against an army that came under the cover of night, that stole through the gates and slew every man. They took no prisoners.” He took a heavy breath. “Do you know what this all means?”
Matthias had heard the emotion thick in the man’s voice. “No,” he said quietly.
“It means the Berok have no interest in diplomacy, no intention of treaty. They will not be satisfied until they level the kingdom to the waterline, taking every man, woman and child with it. They will not be satisfied until the crown falls in the dirt, until it can be crushed beneath their heels.”
Matthias nodded slowly, thinking about the savage Berok warriors just over the rise, picturing the village below in flames, the screams of his mother, of Arian—
“These are desperate times, Matthias.”
I got David to school about five minutes later than normal, but still well before the opening bell. Not a crisis. On the walk home I started mentally composing my column, trying to find the perfect opening line. Once I had that, everything else would fall easily into place.
I usually spent Monday mornings, after the real writing was done, working on my column for the Vancouver Sun. It would be nice if my fiction paid the bills, but that was still a fair ways off, especially with how late the new book was. I had been writing Off the Shelf for almost five years. It gave me the best of both worlds: a regular pay cheque, and the freedom to spout off on whatever I wished.
I brought up my e-mail and poured myself another cup of coffee, set David’s book on the desk next to the laptop.
I winced as the new message headers started to pop up. I had been waiting for an e-mail from Roger, my agent, for a couple of weeks, and here it was. He would, no doubt, just be confirming dinner for when I was in New York in a couple of weeks, but the subtext would be plain: Where’s the new book, Chris?
Ignoring the looming shadows of the inevitable, I opened a Google window and typed “Lazarus Took” into the search block.
Google came up with 947 hits.
Several of the entries on the first page were rare books dealers—I ignored them for the moment and clicked on the link to Wikipedia.
The entry on Lazarus Took was a stub, little more than a paragraph.
Lazarus Emile Took was an English writer, briefly popular in the mid-1940s. His first novel, Shining Swords and Steel, was published by Bartley-Knox in 1945. A purveyor of clichéd, derivative, post–Second World War British fantasy, Took benefitted from the new popularity of the paperback format for his readership, and is rightly overshadowed by his contemporaries including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
Not really useful, and it looked like the page hadn’t been updated in years. It was strange to think that in the age of the Internet, when people could get obsessed about the most meaningless of things—from obscure silent film stars to the toys inside Cracker Jack boxes—no one seemed to have the slightest interest in “derivative, post–Second World War British fantasy.”
The next hit made me feel better immediately. The LazarusTook.com page was entitled “Servants Bold, Treasures Untold” and described itself as “The Ultimate Resource
for Readers of Lazarus Took.” I clicked on its Books page, and scrolled down, looking for mention of To the Four Directions. Nothing. The final book listed was Long Journey Home, published in 1949.
I went to the Biography page. It showed a painting of a dour-looking, slim man, middle-aged and greying, leaning against a short stone wall with an ocean in the background, one hand resting on the crystal head of a straight cane.
I lingered over the picture for a moment: I’d never actually known what Took looked like, and the deliberate asceticism came as something of a disappointment. For someone whose books were so full of life, he looked like a prat.
Trust the art, I always say, not the artist.
But then, I would, wouldn’t I?
The picture was the most interesting thing on the page. The biography added little to the Wikipedia entry. Took was born in 1895 into a wealthy family. It seems he was a conscientious objector during the Great War, and was involved in one of the many mystical societies that flourished during that time, the Order of the Golden Sunset. The writer took pains to point out that other writers, including Yeats, had been involved in similar organizations. Took married Cora Agatha Tinsley in 1930, and the two settled in Norfolk in the middle of that decade. The biography listed the four novels that Took wrote before his death in 1950, but, again, there was no mention of To the Four Directions.
I brought up a new Word window and started to type.
The summer that I was eleven, my life was changed forever. No, more than that—the world was changed forever, and I was pulled along with it.
A soft scratching at the door jarred Matthias from his sleep. For a moment he didn’t recognize his surroundings: a large bed, plush down blanket, a crackling fire. Where was he? And then it all came rushing back: the Queen, the quest, the Berok, the captain leading him to the palatial guest quarters.