Child of the Dark Star

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

The Crown of Garrar FeathersGlidd built Firilla, and the boy they had named Bardek, a sturdy cabin, half against the mountain rock, and half free standing. At first he spent a great deal of time back at the lodge with his friends, but gradually he spent more and more time with Firilla and Bardek, and she made no protest when at last he drew back the furs he had provided for her and climbed into her bed beside her.

Together they watched the growth of Bardek closely, teaching him all that they thought he should know of their planet. The only lie they deliberately told him was that he was conceived under the Green Star of his mother and born under the Red Star of Glidd.

Seemingly all went well, for the boy was bright and quick of eye and mind. Under Firilla’s tutoring he learned about the growth and care of plants. In the Long Dark when they stayed indoors as much as possible he listened fascinated to the stories and myths that had been handed down through the generations, some so ancient that they were from that Other Place, Earth, the sad and distant planet that had ceased to be. Together they taught him writing, and sometimes he wrote stories of his own on the parchment Glidd brought back from the city, or painted strange devices on the vellum they had made themselves from the skins of the animals they hunted for food. Bardek learned to make inks from certain plants and to gather the quills dropped by whains. He grew as agile as a mountain creature and soon knew every rock and cranny in the whole range of the Kariva mountain chain, as happy to follow Glidd in the hunt and to fetch what had fallen to his arrow as to work with his mother in the garden or to sit dreaming over an ancient legend.

Firilla watched him time and again set off with Glidd to learn the art of the bowman, content that she had made the right choice in preserving his life, her love for both of them growing every day.

But one day Bardek set off by himself in search of feathers for a new set of arrows he was fletching, and was away so long Firilla began to fret. She pleaded with Glidd to search for him. ‘He can’t be lost,’ said Glidd, ‘he knows these mountains better than a fear-all.’

‘The Dark is coming.’

Glidd smiled and kissed the top of her head. ‘You and the fear-alls have much in common,’ he said tenderly. ‘I’ll have to make you a hat of their white fur, and you can call them brothers.’

‘You may mock, but he often dreams when he should be alert. Garrars may be out. He’s never been alone in the dark.’

Glidd sighed and fastened on his arrow belt and his bow. The knife he always wore on the hunt he lashed to his leg.

‘You may need light if he is far afield,’ Firilla called, and rushed to give him a slow burning berga bough and his double pouch of fire powders.

Firilla watched him go and her heart stirred uneasily. She sensed that something was reaching for them that she did not want to face. These days she rarely climbed the ridge to look to the west where the heavy rain fell and the forests of Tree-garths separated her from her former home. She had accepted that she could never see her family and friends again, and contented herself completely with her love for Bardek and for Glidd. The only horizon she looked to was the eastern one, where the city of Bar-geda lay beyond the plains of Marvara. It was there that Glidd sometimes went for provisions or for entertainment. When he was gone, she and Bardek would watch for the tiny plume of dust in the dry landscape that would indicate his return, Bardek as eager for his presence as she was, asking questions without ceasing about the city and what Glidd could be doing there.

As he strode across the mountainside in the deepening shadow, Glidd called the boy, and his voice flicked from rock to rock and then, dying, rumbled underfoot in the cracks and deep hidden caves of the mountain. A furry white fear-all scuttled from almost under his foot, terrified. Above wheeled the feathered whains, crying out to each other, dreading the coming dark.

Bardek did not usually stay out so long, and for all his mocking Glidd was as concerned as Firilla. ‘Bardek!’ he called. ‘Bardek!’ But no voice than his own came back to him.

He had determined to give up the search, convincing himself that Bardek must surely have returned home by now, when he came upon him in a place where the rocks formed a natural amphitheatre. There, standing on top of a rock, his arms lifted as though delivering an oration, stood Bardek. On his head was a crown of tall black feathers.

Glidd felt suddenly chilled. The boy was looking at something Glidd could not see and his face was flushed, almost feverish.

‘Bardek.’ Glidd brought out the name gruffly, but he had to say it three times before the child looked at him, and then he looked puzzled, as though he did not recognise Glidd. Only gradually did the flush leave his face and pleasure come to his eyes.

‘Glidd!’ he cried, and jumped off the rock.

‘What were you doing?’ Glidd demanded, trying not to let the anxiety he felt show in his voice.

‘I was making a speech,’ Bardek said happily. ‘I was pretending to be a priest.’

‘Priests do not wear crowns of black feathers,’ Glidd said sharply.

‘Oh,’ said Bardek, reaching up and taking the crown from his head, ‘I found these. Aren’t they beautiful?’ He held them up proudly for Glidd to see. The last light caught the surface of their blackness and a kind of red fire seemed to flash from the surface of them. ‘They must be garrar feathers, but I never knew they could flash like that,’ he said.

The boy looked so cheerful and innocent Glidd was reassured that he was unaware of the significance of a crown of black feathers. ‘The garrar is a beast of ill omen. Throw them away, boy, they will do you no good.’ Glidd knew that Firilla would instantly see a dark meaning in this incident, and decided not to tell her of it.

‘I want to keep them,’ protested Bardek. ‘They’re beautiful.’

‘No,’ snapped Glidd.

He had never spoken so harshly to the boy before and Bardek looked at him in some surprise. His eyes clouded. ‘I want to keep them,’ he repeated.

‘They will frighten your mother. Throw them away. A garrar did her great harm once.’

‘But they are not attached to the garrar. They are just feathers!’

‘Nothing is ever just anything,’ Glidd said firmly. ‘Throw them away.’

‘I’ll hide them here so that mother never sees them, but I’ll not throw them away.’

Glidd hesitated. He could see the stubbornness in Bardek’s eyes, and he knew that the boy had a kind of strange strength sometimes, in spite of his youth, that he hesitated to challenge. ‘All right,’ he said unwillingly, thinking that a compromise was better than a defeat, and planning to return without the boy and destroy the crown. He watched carefully as Bardek found a crevice in which to hide his trophy, and marked its position.

‘What speech were you making?’ he asked curiously as they made their way back to Firilla.

‘I can’t remember!’ the boy laughed. ‘Although it seemed a great speech at the time. I was trying to rouse them to some kind of action... but what it was I just can’t think!’

‘Who are “they”?’ Glidd asked, stopping to light the torch. Carefully he took a pinch of the two fire powders, mixed them together on a rock, and lit the berga bough from the sudden flare-up.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ Bardek said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve never seen any people but you and mother and yet... and yet...’

‘And yet what?’ Glidd looked at him closely.

‘I do see others...’

‘Where?’

‘They just sort of... appear and... disappear...’

‘What do they look like?’

‘Oh, just people. Different kinds of people.’

‘Are you sure you don’t fall asleep and dream?’

‘It doesn’t feel like dreaming.’

‘Dreaming very often doesn’t!’

‘There is always one... more important than the rest...’ said Bardek thoughtfully.

‘Describe that one.’ Glidd almost held his breath.

‘He...’ The boy’s voice trailed away for a moment and there was a frown on his brow. ‘It is really strange. Sometimes I feel he is inside me and at other times... outside.’

‘Does he wear a crown of black feathers?’ The anxiety was unmistakable in the man’s voice.

Bardek suddenly laughed. ‘I just found those old feathers lying about and tied them with a piece of my sandal thong. Why do you make such a fuss about them?’

Glidd bit his lip. He could not tell Bardek of his true Birth-Star and of the dark god who governed those born under it.

* * * *

As soon as the light began to return Glidd hurried back to the rock amphitheatre. But there was no sign of Bardek’s feathers. Glidd stood on the spot where Bardek had made his speech, and looked out towards the plains of Marvara which stretched, in varying shades of blue, to the small blur on the horizon that was the distant city of Bar-geda. Two great columns of rock in the foreground framed it, and, as it shimmered in the light of the plain, it seemed to float above the land, insubstantial, unreal.

He frowned. Was he making too much of the crown of garrar feathers?