TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) (12 page)

I’d only been to one memorial procession and I’d been very young at the time, but I could still vaguely remember it. There were no such things as hospitals in Aldiris, and there was no such thing as aged care or nursing homes either. In fact, death wasn’t hidden away at all. People died in their homes with their families, and I’d witnessed death regularly from an early age when our Champions died in brutal glory on the Tournament field. To become accustomed to death was part of a Champions training and, to a much lesser extent, it was part of a questers training too. Over the last two turns, my weapons tutor had taken me regularly to join tribal and civil battles where I’d had to kill or be killed, and death had been all around me. Death, no matter the age at which it occurred, was seen by Aldirites, and by Denborites too, to be the natural culmination to having fulfilled your purpose in this world. Grief was seen as natural and important too, and a memorial procession was a procession of friends and relatives as they walked from the home of the deceased to the burial site. The mourners walked slowly and they covered their faces with thin, dark cloths as well so they could grieve privately. The Community couldn’t see their tears but they could see who it was who’d need a helping hand in the days to come. When the mourners arrived at the burial site, the thin cloths were removed and these were then burnt in a stone bowl above the grave. This symbolised that life would go on, and when the fire died, the name of the deceased was carved into the underside of the bowl. It remained then, to mark the site of the grave, and chariots returned the mourners individually to their homes. Unlike the people of this Era and the next, our people kept no photographs, films, or holograms to remember our dead. Aldirites remembered their loved ones with only a wooden plaque engraved with a name. We believed visual memories should reside only within the mind and we thought it was unnatural and unhealthy to assist those memories in any way.

I’d attended my mother’s father’s memorial procession too, but I’d hardly known him and had no memory of him at all now. I wondered if Morgan had been close to his mother’s father as I walked slowly through the school halls with Josh………….

Morgan returned, as promised, just before the last class of the day. He appeared in the doorway just in front of the classroom tutor, and he looked at me apologetically as he sat down beside me and took out his books. I looked at him apologetically too which seemed to make him uncomfortable so, after the class was over, I made sure I talked about something other than his unscheduled trip home. Tomorrow, we’d travel together to our finals orientation and, as we walked home slowly, we talked about this instead.

As we turned into our street and approached our gates, Morgan told me he had a full schedule for the afternoon, so we wouldn’t be able to play another game of Aldirite hand ball in his back garden.

“I have tutoring, followed by studying, followed by running, followed by weapons class, and Jonah will be home all afternoon,” he said, and he sounded disappointed that we wouldn’t get to play again.

“I have tutoring too, and I got away with it once, but I probably shouldn’t be late two days in a row,” I said. Morgan grinned.

“Jonah would never forgive me if I was late to one of his tutoring sessions. He only talks about what he’s supposed to for the first five minutes, and then he finds an excuse to lead into his two favourite subjects. Once he gets onto them, he finds it difficult to stop,”

“What are Jonah’s favourite subjects?” I asked him curiously, and Morgan grinned again.

“Techniques he recommends for use in sword play and the secret ingredients he adds when he’s cooking his favourite recipes,” he said cheerfully. I laughed.

“Don’t laugh. Jonah’s cooking is the best I’ve ever tasted,” he said seriously, just as we reached my front gate.

Morgan left me as soon as I keyed my security code into my gate, but before he left, he reminded me that he’d see me tomorrow…..in the park.

A tremor of excitement coursed through me at his words but it wasn’t until I lay in bed that night that I realised I hadn’t felt restless at all since I’d walked to school with Morgan the previous morning. I still listened to Josh’s music though, and while the restlessness seemed to have disappeared, the strange sense of longing that surfaced when the songs filled my head, had grown stronger. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling and, as I listened to the Synthetic Era music, I wondered if Morgan ever found it difficult to fall asleep………. 

CHAPTER 6:

The day of orientation had finally arrived. I’d already packed a set of my clothes into my leather travelling bag and I tied the leather drawstrings together before I buckled the straps over the wide, leather pocket. I’d hidden my music in the bottom of the bag and I’d packed a waterproof jacket as well. My hair was braided neatly around the back of my head and I took one last look at myself in the bathroom mirror……..It was almost midday and I was ready to leave.

Mirren was waiting patiently for me at the bottom of the stairs. We’d run around the park, gone out to a combat class, and had a tutoring session already today, and not surprisingly, I’d found it difficult to concentrate in all three of these sessions. I’d been too busy anticipating my trip through time to my Quest house. Mirren had made the midday meal early so I could eat before I left and she’d told me word had been sent from the Quest house that only an evening meal would be provided today. Mirren was still acting differently around me, but I was getting used to her thoughtful gaze now, and when she raised her clear blue eyes and looked directly at me, I ran quickly down the stairs.

“Do you have everything you need?” she asked me briskly, and I nodded and smiled at her before I followed her out of the front door. We opened our gate to find Jonah and Morgan already waiting for us out on the street.

The Quest orientation was scheduled to begin just after midday, and this was to cater for those of our group who’d be leaving their time segments from both setting and rising markers. Morgan and I were leaving from the setting marker in the park, and as we walked briskly through the park gates, the sun reached its midpoint in the sky directly above us.

The park was busy on a Saturday and the marker guards had already set up hazard markers and caution tape. It was sometimes necessary to block the path in order to make sure we’d have an uninterrupted drop. As was expected, for security reasons, our tutors didn’t give us the marker settings for our Quest house until we stood beside the patch of grass that lay in the centre of the park marker.

“Your quest house is located at
Vela +2059 rise 205º
,” said Mirren, and Morgan and I pulled our pendants from beneath our shirts by their cords before we began to set the dials. I turned the vela constellation until it was in line with the 205º mark, and then I turned my pendant over and added 7000 to the year, before setting the dials carefully.

Today, it was only Morgan and I who walked off the path onto the grass, and it was at that moment that I realised I’d never travelled without a tutor before. A fresh tremor of excitement overlayed my feeling of anticipation as the air patterns blew at the wisps of my hair, and I glanced at Morgan as Mirren and Jonah reminded us they’d be here to meet us just before set twelve tomorrow. Morgan glanced at me too, and he raised his eyebrows and grinned as the temperature around us dropped suddenly. The air patterns roared in my ears and the park disappeared as it was replaced by the almost unbearable pain that spread right through me to the centre of my bones………

When the darkness was replaced suddenly by colours, I looked around me curiously and we stood in the middle of a walled courtyard surrounded by four burly guards.

“Move to your left and wait for further instructions.”

The brisk voice reminded me a little bit of my mother’s. It had the same commanding undertone and I glanced at the woman who’d spoken. She was older than my mother and very tall. Her grey hair was braided tightly against her head and this only added to the severity of the expression on her face. She wore Aldirite quester clothes and she held herself in such a way that it was clear her age had not diminished her ability in combat, nor her strength. Her bony hands were on her hips and she narrowed her eyes at both Morgan and myself as we joined the other questers already waiting in a small group.

The courtyard was paved with smooth, perfectly square stones, and the dark grey, rendered walls were higher than my head. There was a wooden gate in the back corner of the courtyard and it was painted grey the same as the walls. A number of metal, decorative grills adorned the walls and there were plants with wide, glossy leaves growing in square, terracotta planter boxes. These were placed at regular intervals around the courtyard. The house appeared to back up to a forest and I could see the tops of thick, evergreen, cypress trees above the rendered walls. The sky above us was blue, but hazy, and the air felt thick, although the temperature was cool. The courtyard adjoined a house which was dark grey also and it had narrow, tinted windows bordered by metal trims. The house was two storeys and the second floor was smaller, and it rose from within the dark coloured metal roof sheets that covered the remainder of the first floor.

There were four other questers who’d already arrived. Evangeline was here and I nodded to her very carefully as I avoided the watchful gaze of our quest mistress. Evangeline nodded to me just as carefully and I saw she stood beside a boy with a serious expression on his face. This boy had dark, brown hair which fell across his face from a natural part just above his right eye and most of his hair was tucked behind his ears. He looked like he was deep in thought and he had shadows beneath his pale, blue eyes. There were two other girls in the courtyard as well. One of them stood with her arms folded and she had a round face, and light golden hair with a rosy hue to it. She looked at the rest of us with a calculating gaze as if she was already competing with us and had already found us wanting. The other girl looked bored. She was a head shorter than the rest of us and her light, brown hair was braided immaculately. She folded her arms too and glanced at me.

Air patterns disturbed the courtyard once again as the last of our group arrived in the centre of the marker. Two boys appeared. One was tall; as tall as the Quest mistress, and he had thick, golden hair that was cut very short, but still managed to curl around his ears. The other boy was broad and solid. He looked more like a Tournament Champion than a quester and he had medium length, dark hair tied together at the back of his head. He was grinning broadly, but when he looked at our small group, his smile faded suddenly.

“Now that you’re all here; follow me,” commanded the Quest mistress. She spoke to us in the old language and we followed her obediently towards the back door of the house. The door itself opened to her command as well and I wasn’t surprised.

Inside, the house was almost bare. The walls were freshly painted in a pale shade of grey and we passed an Early Era iron shield which was mounted on the wall beside us as we walked along a terracotta tiled hallway that appeared to run right through the middle of the house. To our right were wide, dark wooden doors and these were mounted on oversized, black iron hinges. All the doors were all closed. To our left, the hallway opened up to a large, open plan room and this room was tiled as well. There was a partition at one end of the room and I could just see a twenty first century kitchen through some folded doors which stood slightly ajar. A thick, oak wood table filled most of the rest of the room and dark, wooden chairs made it possible for ten people to sit around this table. We followed our quest mistress past this room and the hallway opened up to the right as well. Here, there was a smaller, tiled sitting room which held a square arrangement of dark coloured leather sofas and a heavy wooden coffee table. In this room, built in modular cupboards lined one wall as well. The double front doors of the house were ahead of us now but we turned up some stairs to our left and these took us up to the second level of the house.

The Quest mistress stopped when she reached the top of these stairs and she turned to face us before addressing us in a loud, commanding voice.

“I am called Zurina, and those of you with any weight of intelligence at all will have guessed I’m to be your Quest mistress. The room to your left here, is the dormitory for the females amongst you only. There will be no exceptions to this rule. The room to your right is for the rest of you. A single bathroom adjoins each dormitory. Some of you may be unfamiliar with the concept of sharing, but you will learn this, and many more skills here, over the coming weeks. We speak only the old language inside the house and anything at all that happens within these walls comes eventually to my attention so I suggest you follow all my instructions to the letter and make no variations of your own. Consider yourself duly warned. Do I make myself clear?” she asked us sharply, and we nodded as she let her narrowed gaze sweep over our group.

“You have a quarter of a clock turn to claim your beds, after which you’ll present yourselves downstairs promptly. We will meet in the sitting room at the bottom of the stairs,” she said briskly as she headed back down the stairs herself. When she was gone, the other questers ran for their respective rooms to fight over the beds and I was left standing in the middle of the hallway with Morgan. I glanced at him.

“I thought the Nazis had been wiped out completely by this time segment,” I said quietly. Morgan grinned.