Leather straps with buckles hung loose from the chair by his hands and arms, ankles and legs, adjacent to his chest and up by his head. As if, sometime in the past, the chair had been a place of horrible restraint and might yet be again.
This antique assemblage was in the centre of a rock-bound Chamber so vast that it could have accommodated a human Gothic cathedral.
There was no light, none at all.
Only darkness palpable.
Had explorers found themselves on the threshold of this lost place and tried to penetrate the dark with the darting beams of their torches, the dreadful chair and its ghastly occupant would not have been immediately obvious.
They would first have been lulled by a sense of wonderment. For one thing, an endless drip, drip, drip of subterranean rain fell from the rocky shadows of the Chamber’s roof. It created a swirling mistiness driven by strong draughts and sudden winds.
Then there were the strange unnerving objects that were scattered like ghosts across the vast, uneven floor.
The Chamber was human-made. It had been used as a sorting floor for grading coal and rock. The machinery for these operations had been left behind when the mine was abandoned, along with a host of wheels, derricks and chains, rail tracks, hawsers, giant tools and trolleys. Over time every single thing had been covered by thick layers of rock-hard lime deposited by the continuous ‘rain’. These secretions had turned the objects into swollen versions of their former selves, some still identifiable, many not.
There were piles of pit props, massive spanners, a bucket, rectangular tanks, a table and three chairs and even a pit engine standing on its old track, complete with boiler, funnel and driver’s cabin, all subsumed beneath deposits of lime.
Only when the explorers had passed through these unnerving relics, stumbling and slipping on the slimy floor, would they have found their lights fixed finally on the dentist’s chair protected from the rain by a sloping canopy that kept it dry. Even then, they would have had to go very near to comprehend the appalling nature of the thing they had found.
It was a hydden, his wasted flesh mottled with decay; his muscles and sinews so twisted by disuse and shrinkage that his limbs and joints had contorted beyond any recognition of who and what he had once been; his teeth were discoloured and rotten, his hair, once sleek and blond, had thinned into transparency and was so matted with filth that it formed a cakey plaster on his scalp.
Yet he was not dead.
This ruination of a living thing lying helpless in a chair made for humans was Slaeke Sinistral I, Emperor of the Hyddenworld, most powerful hydden who ever lived, progenitor of the Empire and all its works, once a son, a spouse, a lover and a friend.
It was age that had struck him down, and that he was still alive at all seemed a miracle. The records clearly showed that he was over one hundred and sixty years old when he was incarcerated in the Chamber.
He had gone there voluntarily, not to die but to sleep. He had hoped and believed that when he finally woke certain prophecies would have come to pass and the means to his salvation, even his full recovery, would finally be at hand.
That was eighteen years ago.
How he had survived so long was not obvious, but there were small and large footprints in the slime about his chair, discarded rags which had been used to clean him up, and the tubes appeared to have been utilised to feed him water and nutrients. If so, he and his unseen helpers were running out of time. The Emperor’s rate of decay was now such that keeping him alive in his state of sleep had become a losing battle, which was why he had sunk so far.
Now something had woken him to the nightmare of terminal decline to which time had delivered him . . . and down there in the dark, unseen, alone, he was struggling to let it be known that he was awake again.
A finger trembled, an eyelid struggled, lips stuck fast with filthy phlegm tried to part. But even had he opened them no meaningful sound would have issued forth. He was quite unable to call for help from hydden in the normal world above.
What had woken Slaeke Sinistral was a tremor of the Earth, the very same tremor that in those early hours of the first day of Summer had revealed the gem to Stort in Englalond.
Now Sinistral hoped his time had come again.
Life, so long lost to him, was going to return.
Power would be his once more.
Redeeming love, which did not quite elude him in all his long and dreadful years, might be enjoyed again.
He could not smile – his facial muscles were too wasted for that – so he smiled inside.
He could not speak, so the words he uttered were silent ones . . . and strange though this may seem, joyful.
His mouth finally opened into an attempted laugh. All that came forth into the darkness was the hiss of fetid breath and a dribble of gritty phlegm down his creased and straggle-bearded chin.
Yet still he strained to make his body work again.
A foot stirred, his left thigh twitched, his head began to move from side to side, faster and faster as if to hurl something from its brain.
An eyelid trembled once again, then the other too, the top and bottom eyelid struggling to pull apart lashes stuck fast with congealed, hardened, yellow tears, their hairs entangled. He wanted to open his once-beautiful eyes in the dark, to seek light, to see anything. To be trapped as he was by his own decay, able to hear but not to see, to think but not to speak, was a torture for the hydden who once ruled the world.
The part of his body he most needed to move was his right hand, with which, if only he could find a way, he could do a very simple thing: touch a finger to a button that would ring a bell and signal he was alive to someone from the upper hydden world who could help him. He tried to move his fingers and failed, utterly exhausted. He knew that though he was awake now he was also dying fast.
His head stilled and he ceased to struggle, controlling his panic with the same strong will that once created an empire. He decided to rest a little, to recoup, and try again.
His equilibrium returned. Slaeke Sinistral spoke silent words inside his head which, had they been able to break through his skull and be heard, might have sounded like the tolling of a warning bell right across the Hyddenworld.
My Summer has begun and I am coming home, he told himself.
10
RECOVERY
Stort remained in a bad way for several days after he was taken home and put into the care of Goodwife Cluckett.
She brought order and calm to his life, established the routine of a healthy diet, daily exercise, sleep and no visitors.
Try as they might, his friends Master Brief and Mister Pike could not get past the goodwife, who kept the door on a chain, eyed them beadily and claimed, ‘My master is not yet ready to entertain!’
‘Really, Madam!’
Cluckett invariably closed the door in the face of protest.
But after a week, when Stort was beginning to recover his old spirits and wished to see his friends, she relented a little.
‘I have sent notice to Mister Barklice that he may attend you for tea today, sir,’ she announced over breakfast.
It was a wise choice and a happy visit.
Barklice’s friendship with Stort, built up over the years of their travels together, was of a gentler tenor than that which he enjoyed with Brief and Pike. The two had often talked late into the night by the campfire, usually of their deepest yearnings and most intimate desires. The mystery of love was their theme, along with the seeming impossibility of wanderers of the pilgrim road and independent spirits such as themselves ever finding an understanding mate.
Barklice was middle-aged and wiry. He was worn with the travel his job as a verderer, sorting out legal problems of land and property, made necessary. He was gentle by nature and liked harmony, perhaps one reason he had never been spoused.
‘Mister Pike has a good marriage, of course, and Master Brief has no need of one since books are his bride,’ he observed, their conversation turning to the o
ld subject the moment Cluckett had brought them tea and left them.
‘Indeed that is so,’ said Stort, who was wrapped up in a fluffy dressing gown, with pink, quilted slippers on his feet and a tasselled hat upon his head, ‘and I suppose the wonders of the Universe should be bride enough for me. But you know, Barklice, there are times when I wish to share those wonders with the beloved I seek but know I can never find, and there are times too . . .’
He fell into a ruminative silence.
‘Times too . . . ?’ prompted Barklice.
‘When I have worries I would wish to share, doubts that rack me and burdens I . . . burdens that . . .’
‘My dear fellow!’ cried Barklice, seeing that Stort was becoming upset, ‘is there something that burdens you now?’
It was clear he had something on his mind – perhaps that same thing that had troubled him so much when he had been found outside the city on May Day.
‘No . . . no . . . I am happy and comfortable.’
He smiled wanly – and unconvincingly. The truth was that the gem of Spring, of which he had so far told no one and which he had successfully hidden in the very parlour where they sat, bore down upon him. With it went that concern and worry for the Shield Maiden who, he was quite sure from all the signs of Earth and stars, violent and otherwise, had most certainly been born the same night – perhaps at the same moment – he had found the gem.
‘I am really very happy, Barklice . . . um . . . yes . . . really I am.’
‘Well, if there’s something . . . ?’
‘There’s nothing,’ said Stort, ‘so please have another cup of tea and a piece of this delicious cake.’
Though he could see Stort’s continuing worry and unhappiness, Barklice did not press the matter.
‘I must say that Goodwife Cluckett is looking after you very well. Your home is as clean and tidy as I have ever seen it . . . and you look . . . I mean you . . .’
Barklice eyed the fluffy dressing gown, slippers and nightcap.
‘You look very ah . . . well . . .’
Stort looked mournful.
‘I know what you are thinking and you are right. This garb she has dressed me in looks ridiculous. But if I removed it my life would be made miserable. To be happy when she is in my home I must be obedient.’
‘But Stort, that is against everything your free and independent spirit stands for. Can you not defy her in such matters while accepting the good things she does for you?’
As often before, his friend had shown the way to go.
‘You are right,’ he cried impulsively, ‘I will try to find a way!’
‘When?’ asked Barklice.
‘Now!’ replied Stort.
He stood up, kicked off his slippers, removed his hat and was in the act of taking off his dressing gown when the heavy tread of the goodwife was heard approaching down the corridor towards the parlour.
Blind panic overtook Stort at once and he cravenly returned the hat to his head and the slippers to his feet as Cluckett opened the door.
She stared about the room and then at them, her nostrils flaring as if she had smelt trouble. She spied at once that his dressing gown was loose and advanced upon him to pull it tight once more.
‘I hope, sir, that your friend here is not putting wild ideas into your head about these warm clothes which I insist you must wear for a little time yet?’
He shook his head meekly, as did Barklice.
‘Good. Actions have consequences, do not forget that fact,’ she said warningly. ‘Now. More tea, gentlemen?’
While she was absent making a new brew Barklice asked, ‘Has she interfered with any aspect of your life other than your clothes?’
‘She tidies anything she can lay her hands on, and I greatly fear that she threatens my laboratory with order! What am I to do, Barklice?’
‘Stand up to her, Stort. Fight for your rights or you will be subsumed by her orderliness and put into a box whence it will be hard to get you out again except as a pale shade of your former self. Take heed, my friend!’
Stort did not sleep well after this visit, his rest disturbed by nightmare visions of boxes, padlocks and huge females with large hands and commanding voices.
He knew Barklice was right. Cluckett had many good qualities, but if she was to stay on as his housekeeper after he was better, as he sometimes felt was a good idea, he would need to assert himself. But that, he knew, might be no easy thing where a female of her mettle was concerned.
The crisis soon came and centred, as he had feared, upon his laboratory.
This untidy rambling space was at the far end of his home. Stort had cleverly subverted various nearby steam and gas pipes and live electrical supplies of human origin and used these as sources of power and light.
A day or two after Barklice’s visit he ventured into it and was relieved to see that Cluckett had not yet touched anything.
What forgotten treasures of his past inquiries and research he found! He spied a mortar in which he had once ground up certain ingredients with a pestle that lay nearby. He had forgotten what it was and, dipping a moistened finger in, gave it a cautious taste.
‘Ah! Aargh! Utterly vile!’ he cried, stepping back. ‘But now I remember! This was my last attempt to rediscover Lysurgian’s lost recipe for that powder which he claimed in a footnote to his work was very efficacious in keeping dogs at bay!’
All wayfarers and pilgrims suffered from the problem of feral and rabid dogs abandoned by humans, which, unlike their former masters, could still see and scent hydden and enjoyed attacking them. He was sure that if he could rediscover that recipe his fortune would be made.
‘Hmm,’ he mused, spying some ingredients still waiting to be ground and mixed, ‘how pleasant it is to be here once more, free to try such things out, at liberty to think my own thoughts and do as I please!’
He idly put more ingredients in the mortar, ground them, and put them in a lettered and numbered envelope that he might know which recipe it was. Such simple physical acts of experimentation, preparation and cataloguing always calmed Stort.
But he was disturbed in these actions by the clear, firm voice of Goodwife Cluckett from the doorway.
‘I see you are up now, sir, and about! I am disappointed to see that you are engaged in some trivial pursuit rather than in tidying this messy place up! Let us do so now!’
She approached one of his untidy tables and swept its contents into a waste-paper bin.
Stort’s heart beat faster.
Sweat broke out upon his brow.
‘You shall not do that!’ he said as firmly as he could.
She stilled and frowned ominously.
‘My rule is,’ she said, ‘that if something remains untouched after three weeks it is probably best thrown out of the house. These items look as if they have not been touched in years! They should go!’
Stort grabbed a pencil and inscribed the number sixty-three upon the envelope he had just filled.
‘Thus do I work!’ he cried. ‘Who can tell what will be needed?’
‘Sixty-three,’ she said, ‘is that an important number? More important than sixty-two or four?’
He stared at her blankly.
‘Well, of course it’s important, Madam—’
‘Cluckett, call me Cluckett.’
He stared at her again, his thoughts confused. What had he been saying, what was his drift? Why did she so bewilder him? He waved the envelope about.
‘Sixty-three may be an important number, certainly it is an interesting one, but that is not quite—’
‘If it’s important, sir, would it not be better to look after that envelope more carefully?’
‘That is not the point I am trying to make, Goodwife . . .’
‘Cluckett is not a difficult name to remember, I would have thought, especially for a bookish kind of man like you.’
‘Well then, sixty-three may or may not be important depending on what is contained within, which is a recipe for c
anine dispersal. My point is that it might be a great loss to science and to mortality were it to be “tidied away”. I am ordering you to touch nothing.’
‘Canine is dogs and I don’t like ’em,’ said Cluckett.
‘Nor I,’ said Stort, ‘hence the vital, truly vital importance of this envelope and me being able to find it.’
‘Well, sir, you cannot stop me tidying things, it is in my nature. You are not, I take it, intending to stop me?’
She stared at him boldly with challenge in her eyes and Stort knew the moment of truth had come. Back down now and all would be lost, his home tidied away to nothingness, the good work of many years destroyed, and he, as Barklice feared, tidied away as well.
She advanced upon him as an army to battle, keys clanking warningly on her belt.
‘Madam, I . . . I . . .’
She came nearer still.
‘Yes, Mister Stort, you have something to say?’
‘I . . . yes . . . no . . .’
His chest felt constricted, his breath difficult, his throat so dry with trepidation that he could not speak. Nor finally could he stand up without the support of the nearest laboratory table, which he clutched, gasping for air.
This had a salutary effect on Cluckett, who rushed to a sink in the laboratory, filled an empty glass vessel with water, and proffered it to him. He took it gratefully and drank it at once, his stand against her beginning to weaken. The water tasted strange yet not unpleasant. It put a sudden fire to his throat and then his spirit too as it hit the lining of his stomach like a thunderbolt. Moments later his hair, as it felt, began to stand on end.
She stared at him in alarm as, while he still fought for words, his eyes turned a ferocious red.
Speechless still, he stared down at the retort in his hand and saw that what he had drunk was water mixed with the evaporated remains of a little experiment he had been working on a year before. The label on it read ‘CURE FOR WARTS’.
His nostrils flared and his ears trembled as a dragon-like heat came out of them both.
Then he heard a voice deep and strong, which sounded only a little like his own. He felt himself advancing upon her in his turn. To his surprise she began to back away, fear in her eyes.