The Towersmith

In the blue morning as he worked in the broken spire of the tower Connor thinks he sees something moving, a bright flashing of colour far off at the edge of the woods. He looks in vain but sees nothing more.

It was hot and he had nothing for company but scattered fragments of skylark song and the gentle breeze singing in the limbs of the tower. He had been working hard since dawn and now he was sweating in the heat. It was a good tower - he felt as if it was working with him.

Bolts came loose with just the right amount of leverage from his heavy spanner. Rivets popped on the first blow of the sledge, as if the tower was acquiescing in its dismemberment. It was ready to come down.

At noon he climbed down to rest. He gathered up the dozen or so struts that he had liberated from that morning and added them to the pile that he was making for this tower. In two days time the landlord’s men would come for them with their heavy cart and dray horses. There would be over two hundred struts when he had finished with this tower which would be worth twenty pounds to him and forty to the landlord.

The midday sun blazed down as he sought the shade of his camp to eat and rest. His heavy horse, Rex, blew a greeting through huge nostrils as Connor approached.

He had made camp on the edge of the forest, midway between two of the towers. The towerline strode over a ridge and from his campsite he could see for miles across the rolling hills and forests of the empty countryside. Far over to the west, the towerline continued, beyond the boundaries of this landlord’s holdings. The towers there were still strung and Connor had been eyeing them with interest for several days. Power line sold for a penny a yard, and the price was always going up. As yet Connor had not been able to find out who owned the land on which they stood. It was high ground and not forested. Sometimes he saw wild sheep moving there. If the land was not claimed by a landlord, then there was always the possibility that Connor could take the line and the struts for himself, but that would mean hiring a cart and horses, and men to help him. The number of possible problems that such an enterprise might throw up discouraged him.

He sat down in the cool shade of the camp. The shelter was made from three tarpaulins stretched and roped between the tree trunks. Beneath one shelter he had unpacked his smithing tools and beneath another his provisions and his treasured books. Beneath the third was nothing but long cool grass scattered with wild flowers and he lay down beneath it, savouring the shade and the respite from the heat. He drank from his metal bottle, and poured the last of the water over his face, ringing the drops from his beard with his hands. It was another hot day — this summer had stretched on beyond its customary length. By his reckoning it was the third week of September.

Connor lay back in the grass and closed his eyes. He span a fantasy about retrieving the power line and selling it to an Oxford scholar at Bishop Stortford market. He would talk to the scholar about electrical power, Connor confident in the knowledge he had gained from his books and the Oxford scholar would be so impressed that he would invite Connor to Oxford where he would work to rediscover the secret of electrical power. His mind wandered into thoughts of flying tacsis, the heat of the day and the scale of his morning’s labours pushing him towards sleep.

‘Drumlin they call me for that is my name.’ a loud voice announced, startling Connor from his reverie. He leapt to his feet and snatched up a prying bar – the nearest thing he had to a weapon.

Almost in silhouette against the brilliant blue of the sky on the other side of the encampment stood a man. He held his hands open before him, revealing that he was unarmed and implying that he was harmless. He wore an amused look on his face, and on his back the bright yellow waistcoat of a Trickster.

‘I’m sorry if I startled you, towersmith. I was passing and it seemed unmannerly for me not to introduce myself. Chance meetings are so rare in this empty land of ours.’ Drumlin said.

Connor nodded warily. He knew he had little to fear from the trickster, but what the newcomer had said was true. It was rare to meet others outside of the towns and markets and a wise man was careful.

‘Will you join me?’ asked Connor, ‘I was about to eat. I have bread and some cured hare.’

‘That is kind of you.’ replied the Trickster, ‘I have food of my own to bring to our meal mutton, apples and a little ale.’ He held up his backpack to indicate its weight, ‘It will be quite the feast!’

Connor had always had a quiet regard for the Tricksters. They played the fool and were happy to let people think them witless, but Connor knew that the Tricksters valued cunning and intelligence. On market days they would please the crowd with magic shows that featured sleight of hand and illusion. Connor had seen many such shows, and always marvelled at the skill of the showman. He stood back from the crowd one time at the Midsummer Fair in Bishop Stortford and saw the mastery that the Trickster had over the crowd, saw who the real fools were. The Trickster Guild was formed in the time between the Dyings. It was a dangerous time but the Tricksters had made themselves safe by appearing harmless.

They sat down in the grass of the little encampment, spreading the food before them.

‘I think I saw you this morning. Your colours.’ said Connor, making conversation.

‘Ah, the Trickster colours!’ said Drumlin smiling, ‘Where would we be without them? A gift of the old world that lets us hide in the light! Yes, I crossed the ridge top this morning and seeing the tower half broken knew there must be a smith at work there.’

‘Where are you headed?’ asked Connor, taking a small cut of mutton from Drumlin as he offered it.

‘To the City.’

…

…

‘Perhaps you would like to hear a tale? It is not right that a man should labour directly he has eaten!’

Connor felt the ale flowing in his veins, and the fullness of his belly. The dead heat of the afternoon seemed to press him to the ground, making all thoughts of climbing the tower seem unreasonable.

‘Very well then, friend Trickster, spin me a yarn.’

‘It is a tale of Sereban!’ announced Drumlin.

Connor allowed himself a smile at the beginning to the story. For a moment he felt childlike and safe again as the familiar words continued.

‘It was said that in the Greater Dying for each man who lived there were a dozen who died and it was said that in the Lesser Dying for each man who lived there was one who died. Between the Dyings was a time of war and chaos when the old cities burned and the old world was swept away in the ashes. For a man to live in such a time took cunning and wit. Such a man was Sereban whom men called King of the Tricksters.’

‘In those days of chaos, the world was come undone and turned upon itself over and again. And in that time the worth of things was muddled and a man’s life was weighed cheap in the balance. It was said that a pound of solid gold would not buy you food for a day and that to drink your fill of clean water required wealth beyond imagining. But more valuable than gold or food or water was the magical stuff which men called cillin. It was a thing of the Old World - a magical elixir that could cure any ill. Some said it was so powerful that a single drop of the cillin could make the dead live again.’

It was a favourite theme of stories about Sereban. How he had tricked a soldier king into giving him charge of his huge hoard of cillin and had then made good his escape, before healing the poor and the sick of whichever benighted kingdom he had been in. At last, and as always, Sereban healed the beautiful daughter of another soldier king.

‘And they lived happily as ever they could for a year and a day is and after that no man can say more for Sereban was the king of the Tricksters and the world was wide before him.’

…

He turns the little thing over in his hands in the dying firelight. Light from the flames is too weak now he sees and no number shows in the grey window. He feels the weight of it again and shakes his head. So light, like so many things from the old world, but the things it can do still astound him. He studies his calloused hands and then the clean lines of the ancient thing they hold. His heart sinks. For all these years he has fancied himself a student of the old world, an adept of the mysteries of electrical power, but nothing that he knows or has seen can explain this thing and the wonder it holds. He places it carefully back into the little velvet pouch and walks out beyond the dwindling circle of firelight.

He stood gazing out across the plain into the dark night. There were no lights in the empty land beneath; there was no moon in the heavens.

The stars blaze out cold and alone and Connor knows in his heart that the towers will never rise again and staring out into the blackness his cheeks grow cold where the wind takes his tears.

And the world is wide before him.

□