The Eleventh Hour

"In the dark of that second night," Sophie read aloud, "great Vondrel died of the wounds which Gryphius inflicted on him. His marvellous sword returned by mysterious way to its unknown birthplace. Estienne de Clari vanished from the face of the earth, spirited away to dwell in Paradise. The war-machines were brought within range of the Western Keep, where the prideful Ostrac worked his evil spells in vain. Great stones began to break its walls. The golden magic of Solomas, Ricard and Morgendal overcame the black magic of Ostrac and Khrohr, and rendered it impotent. Of Graf's host, so many were slain that the walls could no longer be defended, and when morning came the castle was breached. Ostrac and Khrohr were taken dead from the Western Keep, and their bodies were burned at twilight. Their foul schemes were ended forever."

Michael couldn't tell why the words had such a powerful effect on him. They seemed to take hold of his heart and make it race, as if they were saying to him: this is the real world; this is the real life; that which has been given to you is but an idle and worthless daydream. But the battle described in the document had happened eight hundred years ago, and it had been the last one ever to be fought on Iridian soil. Things were very different now. There were no more heroes equipped with magic swords and no more black magicians; the age of such marvels was long dead. He had been born into a world utterly different from the legendary past, and would never know any other. Why, then, did his heart ache for the impossible?

It was a hot, still day in July, twenty days into a dry spell that seemed as if it might go on forever. It was the quiet time before the gathering of the harvest. Michael and his three companions were sitting on the ridge of the high hill which overlooked the city of Alicydon, some distance away from the palace of Trystan IV -- the palace which had been raised in the aftermath of the battle which Sophie had just described.

Michael tried to imagine the larger edifice which had adorned the hilltop before the great battle: a thing of sprawling walls and tall towers, built to withstand attack and siege. It wasn't easy; all that remained of the ancient fortifications was a single tower half a mile to the south of the palace -- except for the ragged heap of rubble and fallen stones against which he was leaning, which lay close to the lip of the cliff that dropped sheer from the western edge of the hill's crest. The ruin was still called the Western Keep, but it was difficult now to conjure up the scenes of that fateful morning, when the two dead sorcerors had been brought out of it so that their bodies might be burned.

The Western Keep was nowadays a good hiding-place for children at play, and in recent weeks had become a favourite place of refuge for Michael and his friends. Now that Edgar had no further use for them, and because they had not quite reached the threshold between the worlds of childhood and adulthood, they had no duties and ample time to dream. It would have been very pleasant, but for the ominous shadow which the future cast over all their lives.

All his life people had told Michael how extremely lucky he was. He, a mere gardener's boy, had been fortunate enough to be born within a few days of the prince of the realm, and had been chosen to be one of his childhood companions, for lack of others more nobly born. He didn't feel lucky now -- now that his special duties were ended, and it was time to revert to his true station in life. He didn't feel lucky at all. The whole world seemed to have turned sour, and he yearned for a different one to put in its place: a brighter, more vivid world, of the kind which had existed a thousand years before.

Sophie, who was the daughter of the Royal Archivist, had been reading from an ancient volume she had borrowed from the vaults. The story which was told there was a story they had all heard before, in different versions. The tale had been written and rewritten by a dozen later archivists, each desirous of doing something more interesting than recording the ceremonial routines of peaceful times.

"It's not very good, is it?" said Adam, carelessly. "It doesn't have any description of the fighting at all. I liked the other one better -- the one that had the long description of Vondrel's duel with Gryphius, and Estienne de Clari fighting Graf the Tyrant hand-to-hand. That was much more exciting." Adam was the son of the captain of the palace guard. He was the only one of the four who wasn't entirely sick at heart over his prospects. He was enthusiastic to begin training with the next batch of new recruits.

"This is a much older book than the others," said Sophie. "It was written a hundred years after the battle, but it's the earliest one I could find -- the accounts written at the time have rotted away. Most of the details in the later versions were probably made up to make the story more exciting."

"What were the war-machines it talks about?" asked Francis. "They aren't mentioned at all in the other versions."

"Big catapults, I should think," said Michael. "They must have bombarded the keep from down there." He pointed at the neatly laid out gardens where his father laboured day in and day out

"They'd never have got them up the terraces where the rose-bushes are," complained Adam.

"The rose gardens weren't always there," said Michael, wishing that they weren't there now. "In the days of the battle there was just a rough and rocky slope." As he looked out over the petty empire of the palace gardeners, whose numbers he was destined to swell, Michael saw in his mind's eye nothing but a wild heath, interrupted by ditches and rows of pointed stakes, strewn with the tents of Valentine's ragged army. He added teams of men and horses hauling huge catapults and siege-towers through the mud, their helmets and swords glittering in the sunlight.

"What happened to Estienne de Clari, do you think?" asked Francis. "It doesn't say that he was killed -- just that he disappeared. The writer can't possibly have known that he went to Paradise." Although Francis was the son of a kitchen-maid, and fatherless -- liable, therefore, to go through life as the lowliest of manservants -- he had an inquiring mind and nimble fingers. Michael knew that Francis wanted to be a musician, but the musician's guild would never entertain the notion of admitting someone like him to its ranks, whether he could play an instrument or not.

"I suppose that was just what people said," admitted Sophie. "Anyway, there's no guarantee that this version's any more accurate than the others. The man who wrote it couldn't have had the slightest idea what happened to Vondrel's sword or to Estienne de Clari. It was ancient history to him, just as it is to us." She closed the book.

Something caught Michael's eye, and he sat up in order to take a proper look.

Two men were approaching the ruins. One was carrying a bundle of pointed sticks, the other a reel of green cord. The man with the sticks pushed one of them into the ground, and the other tied the end of the cord to it. Then he began paying out the cord as he marched away, measuring his paces very carefully.

"What on earth are they doing?" Michael wondered, aloud.

"Haven't you heard?" said Adam, airily. "They're marking out a croquet lawn. Tomorrow they're going to start work on all this rubble. They're going to build a new summer-house. I've been told to help with the digging. Haven't you?"

Michael hadn't, but he had an awful suspicion that he would have been, if he hadn't been so careful to avoid his father that morning -- and, for that matter, for several days previously.

Francis frowned. "They're not supposed to build here," he said. "It's a kind of monument. Anyway, there's a curse on it."

"That's kitchen talk," scoffed Adam, bringing a blush to Francis' cheek. "Nobody entertains that kind of superstition these days -- except old Morgendal, of course, and he's mad. Hasn't uttered a sensible word in a hundred years, my father says."

"He's not mad," said Sophie, "just old."

"Far too old," said Adam. "All the other so-called undying stopped trying to live forever after they began to get old, so it's said. Morgendal would have done the same if he hadn't lost contact with reality. What's the point of having a court magician whose magic doesn't work any more? The palace guard ought to have that tower of his -- nobody lives there apart from the old man and his talking bird. All the other rooms are full of junk. If he won't have the grace to die, he ought to be sent to one of the almshouses in the city. That's what my father says." Unlike Michael, Adam had a great respect for what his father said; that wasn't unnatural, given that he hoped to follow in his father's footsteps one day, and become captain of the guard.

"He is one of the undying," said Francis, seemingly shocked by Adam's irreverence. "Perhaps the only one left in all Iridia. And he's a magician. He couldn't go to an almshouse."

"I don't see that he's entitled to any special consideration because he's a magician, given that he can't actually do magic any more," retorted Adam, "or because he's undying, given that all the rest of the so-called undying have died. You can't make yourself a special case just by giving yourself fancy titles."

"Other people do," said Michael softly. "There's the Seneschal and the Archivist and the Captain of the Guard -- not to mention the Grand Duke and the Crown Prince and the King. Anyhow, he's not done so badly. He was there, remember, when the Western Keep was smashed up. He's older than any of the written accounts of the battle. He might not live forever, but he's had at least a thousand years."

"What use is a thousand years if you keep getting older and dafter all the time?" said Adam, not to be put off.

"I suppose you wouldn't take it if it were offered to you?" Francis challenged him.

"You're not being fair, Adam," Sophie said. "I've talked to Morgendal several times -- my father sometimes sends me over there on errands. He doesn't go out of his room much, but he's not helpless or mad. I don't suppose he remembers very much about the battle, because anyone would forget things after eight hundred years, but he could probably give us a more accurate account of it than books written hundreds of years later."

Adam stood up, and kicked the old stones against which he had been leaning, moodily. "Oh, what does it matter! It's just a story. It's nothing to do with us -- we have to grow up now, and go our own ways."

Michael was surprised to hear the sourness in Adam's voice. Even Adam, apparently, was not without his regrets about what they were losing. Sophie's account of the battle -- however lacking in bloodthirsty detail -- must have re-minded him of all the occasions on which they had pretended to be the heroes of the battle, at the insistence of Prince Edgar. Edgar, of course, had always played the part of Valentine the Just, but the other parts had usually been allocated according to Edgar's whim of the moment. Adam had always de-manded -- not always successfully -- to be Vondrel, while Francis had always hoped to be designated as Estienne de Clari. Neither of them liked to be villains.

Michael, on the other hand, had never minded much when Edgar had instructed him to be Graf or Gryphius; he had never wheedled or complained in the hope of persuading Edgar to allow him to take the side of right.

Michael took up the book which Sophie had laid down, and opened it on his lap; but when he looked at the spidery writing on the page it seemed grotesque and meaningless. He looked up again, and met Sophie's eye. Adam's outburst had soured her expression too. Michael knew that Sophie would have loved to follow in her father's footsteps and become Royal Archivist, but that position was barred to her because custom dictated that it was a man's job. The son of one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting had been training for the post for three years now, and he would be heir to the position as surely as Edgar would be heir to the throne. Sophie would become a palace servant, of far higher rank than poor Francis or himself, but no happier for that.

"Well," said Francis, quietly. "I hope there is a curse, and I hope the dead and the undead who sleep here find a way to keep the living away."

Michael smiled at him, and reached out a hand to ruffle his hair. They all thought of Francis as the small boy of the group, although he was only the youngest by a matter of days. He was shorter than Sophie and very slender too, tiny beside Adam's massive bulk.

"Let's go," said Sophie, rising to her feet. Michael got up immediately. Now the workmen were here they were no longer secure in their private world. There was no hiding place left for them now.

They walked away along the edge of the cliff. Their path took them past Morgendal's tower, and as they passed it Michael could not help looking up, curiously. He was surprised to see the ancient magician sitting at his window, looking back at him. Sophie waved to the old man, but instead of waving back Morgendal simply looked away, staring out over the outskirts of Alicydon toward the green fields which stretched away to the south and west.

Lost in some dream of long ago, thought Michael. And why not? There are far worse places to be lost.

"He's creepy," said Adam, as they turned on to a winding path which led between the rhododendrons. "I don't like him, or that pet bird of his."

"He's harmless," Michael told him. "And the mynah's not a pet -- he's a person. He used to be a court jester back in the old times, but some magician turned him into a bird."

"If you believe that," said Adam, "you'll believe anything."

"It's true," said Sophie, looking back at the two of them. "His name's Kiri. He doesn't talk to anyone except Morgendal, but he's a person all right."

"He's talked to me once or twice," Michael confessed. "He told me that he doesn't mind talking to anyone, but that most people feel uneasy about talking to him. Intelligent birds are outside the ordinary run of things, and people don't like that. It's only natural, I suppose."

"Only supernatural," Francis corrected him.

"When did you talk to him?" asked Sophie. "I never saw you."

"Quite recently," Michael told her. "I was down at the ornamental pools in the lowest garden, keeping out of my father's way. We just got talking. He's lived through fifty generations of men -- our lives must seem very odd to him, and very dull. He remembers the Golden Age."

"We're supposed to be still in the Golden Age," said Adam. "According to the stories, that's why they stopped the Great Clock of Cloridan -- to preserve the Golden Age in Iridia until the end of time, wasn't it?"

"That's why they did it," confirmed Sophie. "But afterwards, they weren't entirely sure whether that's what they'd done. I think they wanted to start it again when things settled down, after Valentine was safely on the throne -- but the Great Key had gone missing in all the confusion, and they couldn't wind the clock without it."

"This isn't the Golden Age," said Francis, dismissively. "In the real Golden Age, when the Fountain of Youth produced its water, magicians could do almost anything. Everything was better then."

"I don't suppose it was much different for people like us," said Michael -- lightly, but not without a certain sadness. "There must have been cobblers in those days as well as magicians, bakers as well as heroes. Magic didn't make the gardens grow, or do the housework for the nobles. For the likes of Edgar life might have been more fun, but not for the likes of you and me. Even Edgar might be better off today -- in those days kings were always being overthrown or assassinated. Nowadays he's guaranteed a long and peaceful reign, and the biggest danger he'll ever face is defeat on the new croquet lawn."

"No chance of that," observed Adam. "The first rule of every game we ever played was that Edgar had to win. I don't suppose it'll be any different when he's king."

"I suppose not," said Michael. "But it won't be you or I who has the privilege of losing to him. We can be thankful for that, if nothing else."

"Your father's spotted us," said Francis. "I think he's waving to you."

Michael looked up, and saw that it was true. Rowland had emerged from the gate in the wall where the gardeners' cottages were, and he didn't seem pleased to have caught sight of his son.

"I'll have to go," said Michael. "But I'll slip away later, if I can."

"You can't keep slipping away for the rest of your life," said Adam. "Sooner or later, you'll have to buckle down to work. We all will."

That's what you think, Michael thought, as he moved to answer his father's summons. That's what everyone thinks. But it isn't true. Some day soon I'm going to slip away for good.