TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) (15 page)

“Well, I’m glad you know how to do that,” I said, as Morgan unlatched a tall wooden gate.

“I don’t, I’m sorry. I was ejected from the classroom link before I could learn how to do that one. Unfortunately, when the tutor asked me what I’d try first if I was faced with that error, I told him I’d open a window,” he said, and he shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, but the tutor wasn’t impressed………and my quest training tutor wasn’t impressed either when she had to write an apology to the school administrator,” he added, and when I glanced at him, Morgan shrugged innocently. I smiled before I looked around us at the +2059 street.

We were in a wealthy gated community. This community was nestled against the edge of a forest and I could see the same tall, evergreen trees I’d seen from the back courtyard of the Quest house rising behind the houses all the way along the street. The street itself was wide and clean, and it was edged with slightly fake looking, genetically manufactured grass. There were more houses behind high walls and, as we walked along the spongy grass, a large van drove by silently and stopped automatically outside a house further up the street. An automated control arm deposited a large, plastic wrapped package over the fence before the arm retracted and the car drove itself towards its next delivery.

The suburb was very quiet and the light was beginning to fade. It was impossible to see the exact location of the sun through the pale, neon haze but I could tell it was low in the sky. The haze had a pinkish hue to it near the horizon, and it was getting cold. We walked past a house with an ornamental tree growing just behind its fence. The leaves of the tree were gold and red, and one of them had blown from the branches and now lay on the fake looking grass. The four pointed leaf lay in all its crimson glory against the unnatural, uniform greenery and it was a welcome touch of disorder in the ‘too perfect’ streetscape. I wondered if anyone was at home behind the high, rendered fences, but I guessed, if they were, they were busy living their isolated lives in their voice and oxygen controlled houses. Another silent car drove by and I noticed pale, unsmiling children sitting in the back seat. They stared at us as they pressed their faces against the rear window glass and Morgan said he felt sorry for them. A middle aged couple passed us on the other side of the street and they walked very quickly and didn’t speak at all. They didn’t smile either as they walked their debarked, pure bred dog on its short, plastic coated lead. I shook my head when they disappeared into a gate in one of the high rendered fences. Even the dog didn’t look happy.

“Who were your previous finals partners?” I asked Morgan, as we wandered slowly down the edge of the street.

“Dominic, Imogen and Erin,” he said, and I nodded slowly.

“They don’t like you,” I said, and Morgan glanced at me and shrugged.

“That’s not my fault,” he said smoothly, and I looked at him carefully.

“That’s not true,” I said, and he glanced at me with a mixture of annoyance and surprise. “Did you deliberately provoked them?” I asked him, and he glanced at me again.

“Do I deliberately provoke you?” he asked me innocently, and I grinned. “You do when you answer my questions with another question,” I said. He rolled his eyes.

“Alright, you’re right. I didn’t like them either,” he said, and he shook his head. I nodded slowly.

“Fair enough,” I said slowly, and this time, when he glanced at me, he smiled.

A baby cried and we heard it faintly from somewhere behind a fence. It was nice to hear that the sounds of real human life hadn’t completely disappeared from this neighbourhood…..although it may have been a televised baby; it was hard to tell.

“How did you know Zurina’s Titanic question was a test?” I asked Morgan curiously.

“Because everything here will be a test and Zurina’s in charge of testing us. Now, thanks to her open question, she knows Dominic will lie to gain her approval, Caz is more interested in science than quests, Evangeline is calculating and self-serving, and you’re stubborn, but kind hearted,” he said.

“Thanks……I think,” I said dryly. “And, she also knows you’ll try and outsmart her whenever you can because you like a challenge,” I added. Morgan glanced at me with the same mixture of annoyance and surprise again before he nodded reluctantly.

“Thanks….I think,” he said, before he smiled slowly. I smiled too as the light faded a little more. We walked to the end of the street and it rose to a slight hill where we looked out at a sprawling metropolis. We were on the outskirts of the city and, in the distance, beneath the haze, we could just see more forests and rolling hills. The haze looked to be thickest over the city centre. The air was breathable, just thick with signals in its upper levels, and those signals were changing the behaviour of the atmosphere. Evangeline and I had lived in +2134 and the haze had been so thick there, we’d hardly been able to see through it at peak signal hours. Quite a few intelligent men and women in this time segment had already guessed that the haze was the earliest sign of the Meltdown which was to come. Unfortunately though, no one would listen to them.

We stood on the rise and Morgan pointed to a red and blue light display flickering on a signal satellite which was flying in circles above the city. The satellite flew in the lower levels of the atmosphere and it appeared on and off as it circled through the thickest part of the haze. The daylight faded again and, when the temperature dropped again too, I fastened my jacket and turned up my collar before we turned back towards the Quest house. We had plenty of time, but Morgan was starving and he didn’t want to risk being excluded from the evening meal just for being a few minutes late.

We returned to the house just as darkness fell and, when Morgan pushed against the front door with the flat of his hand, it opened smoothly thanks to a control panel which was now set to ‘manual voice override”.

The others, except for Caspian, were already standing in the dining room when we arrived and Caspian arrived a few minutes after us just before Marko wheeled a trolley into the room. Morgan sat beside me at the end of the table and Caspian sat down opposite us. Seth and Dominic sat beside Caspian, and Evangeline sat on my other side with Erin who sat opposite Imogen. We served ourselves from large bowls of food Marko placed in the centre of the table. He’d made us slow cooked meat with barley and autumn vegetables, and there were small loaves of bread as well. Marko disappeared after he set the dishes out and neither he, nor Zurina, joined us for the meal. Two of the marker guards joined us, but they sat at the other end of the table and ate in silence. We ate in silence too for a while until Dominic took it upon himself to entertain us with a story about the time he was invited to Aldiris to take combat classes with the Champions for a week.

“They were as surprised by my skill as I was by their lack of it,” he said arrogantly, as he laughed. Beside me, Morgan looked at him across the table.

“Were these the Champions trained by the King of Aldiris that you suggest had no skill?” he asked Dominic curiously, and everyone at the table looked at me before looking to Dominic for his response. Dominic glared at Morgan but Morgan looked back at him with amusement.

“No, of course not,” Dominic said smoothly, and he turned to me. “Your father trains only the very best Livia, but I’d wager I could challenge any quester here to combat and remain victorious,” he added arrogantly. Morgan sat back in his chair and folded his arms.

“Really? How much would you wager?” he asked Dominic thoughtfully, and Dominic looked at him dismissively.

“I don’t make wagers with servants,” said Dominic scornfully, and I saw Seth and Imogen exchange smirks while Morgan simply shrugged. Seth cleared his throat.

“I went to a Tournament last turn and I was able to witness firsthand the calibre of Champions your Father produces, your Highness. The Tournament coincided with my home visit and my father and I were invited to sit with your mother to watch the first half of the day,” he said to me enthusiastically. “Our Champions defeated the Denborites in the first battle of the Tournament and it was a particularly bloody one….for the Denborites that is. Two of the Denborites were wounded almost as soon as the battle began and one lost his sword arm just below the shoulder. He refused to make the gesture of defeat and leave the field though, and he picked up his sword and kept on fighting,” Seth added, just as enthusiastically.

“I attended that Tournament too,” said Imogen, as Evangeline shook her head.

“Surely, the Denborite didn’t think he had a chance against an Aldirite Champion when he only the use of his weaker arm?” she asked Seth, who grinned.

“I think he did, but our Champion slaughtered him slowly just to teach him a lesson. The crowd loved it,” he said jovially, and Dominic and Imogen laughed.

I listened to Seth and Imogen absently as they launched into a blow by blow description of the battle between the wounded Denborite and the Aldirite Champion, and it crossed my mind that there wasn’t much honour in a slow victory over a wounded opponent, even if he was a Denborite. Our Champion was lucky an Aldirite hadn’t fallen somewhere else on the field while he was toying with his wounded opponent. The battle would have been won by the Denborites then. I kept my thoughts to myself though, and instead, I watched Caspian surreptitiously take his wad of parchments out of his inside jacket pocket. He removed a writing stick as well and he placed the parchments carefully beside his meal bowl before making a note on one of the bound pages. As usual, Caspian appeared deep in thought and he paid no attention at all to the conversation at the table as he returned the wad of parchments to his inside jacket pocket. I glanced at Morgan and he was watching Caspian too. Morgan looked at me then and shrugged. He obviously had no idea what Caspian was doing either.

Dominic and Evangeline continued to dominate the conversation for the rest of the meal and it was a relief when it was finally over. When our bowls were empty, Marko appeared magically to inform us that we were to meet Zurina in the sitting room again and he took the bowls firmly from Morgan, who had automatically begun stacking them. “You too. I’ll see to this,” said Marko, as he ushered Morgan away from the table.

Zurina was already waiting for us in the sitting room and we sat down on the sofas quickly as she put her hands on her hips. The moment we were seated, she began her session and she gave us first a brief overview of the types of quests we could expect in our finals. She opened the cupboards that lined the wall and they were filled with shelves of rolled parchments. The parchments were organised in eras and they contained lists of customs and an overview of the history of each era. She said we were welcome to peruse them before any quest. She then explained that the finals were intended to replicate the quests we could expect to be involved in once we arose and joined the Quest officially.

“The nature of a quester’s work is to travel through time to gather those materials needed for our Community to grow and function well. It’s also a quester’s duty to explore the past for new discoveries that might also be of benefit to Aldiris. Quests to new and unexplored markers are called discovery quests and those that require a collection of either materials or ideas are called gathering quests. As you can imagine, a quester can find him or herself in danger on even the most basic of gathering quests and it is the purpose of these final challenges to prepare you with the ability to deal with any and all dangers as a matter of course,” lectured Zurina briskly. She folded her arms and marched across the room.

“What is the worst situation a quester could find themselves in?” she asked us, and she was looking at me so I felt obliged to answer.

“To be without a pendant or to lose their bearings,” I said hesitantly, and Zurina almost smiled.

“Exactly,” she said. “As I’m sure you all know, your pendants only mark your way within a radius of roughly five days walk from the centre of a marker. It is imperative, especially in the Ancient, Nomadic and Synthetic Eras where it’s possible to travel at speed, that you keep one eye always on your pendant. If you lose your bearings, your pendant will no longer point to your marker, and if you lose your marker you’ll find yourself stranded in time,” said Zurina sternly, and we sat in silence as she walked around the room. “And, if you lose your pendant, you’re not worthy to be a quester after all,” she added firmly.

“How else could a quester find themselves stranded in time?” she demanded and she nodded to Caspian who frowned slightly and leant forward in his chair.

“If a quester needed to drop from a rising marker at a setting time, that’s simply not possible so they’d be stranded in that time segment until a rising time as the marker can only be used then…..and the opposite would apply for a setting marker of course,” he said, and Zurina nodded.

“That’s right Caspian. You must keep your marker settings in mind at all times. Your tutors have organised your drops for you thus far, but it will become your responsibility to remember that a drop can only made from a rising marker at a rising time and you can only make a drop from a setting marker at a setting time,” said Zurina briskly, and she went on to outline numerous situations and examples where questers may become stranded in time due to imprisonment, or injury, or wild weather, just to name a few. She also told us of a pair of questers who were stranded in the Ancient Era for just over three weeks when a wild phoenix decided to make a nest in the middle of their marker while they were out collecting ancient plant seeds. Zurina then went on to her next topic, which covered passing and failing the challenges themselves.