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‘Dodd will step into that breach if Dodd must.’

  Two hours and a stolen boat and an outboard engine later, Dodd did.

  But just before they embarked on this new stage of their journey Katherine said, looking puzzled, ‘Did you say earlier that today’s a weekday? I thought it was a Sunday.’

  ‘Dodd did make that observation,’ said Dodd, ‘because a weekday it is. A Tuesday, in fact.’

  ‘Either I can’t count my days,’ said Katherine quietly, ‘or somewhere since we first arrived at Half Steeple on the Severn, we have lost two days.’

  Stort frowned and thought a bit.

  ‘Of that,’ he finally said enigmatically, ‘we must talk more. I would venture to suggest on that evidence alone, that Half Steeple is a place we should be very cautious about ever visiting again.’

  ‘All aboard!’ cried Dodd, cutting their talk short. ‘After what I heard today from a passing pedlar who dared to do some business with the Fyrd, we have a good reason to hasten back to Brum.’

  They fell silent as one and turned to him.

  ‘Good news or ill?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Hard to say,’ said Dodd. ‘It seems that the Hyddenworld has a new Emperor.’

  ‘What happened to Slaeke Sinistral, the old one?’

  ‘Dead. Deposed. Or “Disappeared”. Don’t ask me! Now, let’s be on our way.’

  14

  THE NEW EMPEROR

  As emperors went, Niklas Blut was not an impressive figure, even when dressed in his robes of office and surrounded by the panoply of state and court officials. Sitting upon his throne in the Great Chamber in the Imperial City of Bochum in north-west Germany, his courtiers in attendance, his official champion Witold Slew standing guard, the senior Fyrd present and trumpets and suchlike blowing, he looked like the grey bureaucrat he had so recently been rather than the Imperial leader he now was, having been enthroned, crowned and generally sanctified before the Mirror-of-All and his people on August 2nd of that same year. What a contrast the rough and ready world of Englalond was to the sedate, predictable and orderly life of the Imperial Court. But it was in Englalond he now was, plucked by circumstance, political necessity and his own wyrd from all he knew into the light of day and finding himself where he had no wish to be.

  No wonder he was finding being Emperor a lot harder than he could ever have thought possible.

  True, the position gave him power, but it was not, he was rapidly discovering, unlimited power. In fact it was remarkably circumscribed – by the civilian wing of his administration on one side, represented by Chief Courtier Vayle, and on the military by the formidable and ruthless General Quatremayne.

  Niklas Blut had not sought office.

  For the previous twenty years he had been blissfully occupied behind the scenes of Court and Empire as Commander of the Emperor’s Private Office.

  It was a role that suited him perfectly. He was highly intelligent, highly organized and highly motivated in the practice of the art and science of government and administration.

  He was beyond loyal to his remarkable recent employer, the Emperor Slaeke Sinistral I, as he liked to be known. In fact, there was no II or III because Sinistral had been Emperor for more than a century and alive for a good many decades more than that. He was, in Blut’s view, and that of many others, nothing less than a genius.

  Certainly, the world that the former Emperor Slaeke Sinistral I had created in Bochum was unique. Unlike most hydden cities, which nestle on the surface in the deep secret interstices of their human counterparts, it was largely subterranean. In only seventy years it had become the heart and administrative capital of the Hyddenworld,

  It extended from the first to the eighteenth levels of the abandoned coal mines which lie under the human city of the same name in the Ruhr Valley in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany, making it nearly half a mile deep.

  A very few surface buildings were cleverly concealed from humans in an area of ruined and dangerous mine tips, factories and toxic wasteland to the west of the city. These were used as residences by senior officials, or for occasional respite and vacation by a few lucky hydden workers who otherwise spent their lives below ground.

  For the most part, Bochum’s life was conducted in the first few levels. Level 1 was a buffer to the human world above, consisting of tunnels used for communication laterally and by shafts vertically to the levels below.

  The Imperial Court – its officials, courtiers, officers and the many related institutions that served them – was on Level 2, the airiest and most pleasant part of the city. Bochum’s commercial heart was on Level 3, where banks and counting houses and other institutions had been established. The Imperial army or Fyrd occupied Level 4, and from Level 5 downwards much that was covert or required security was carried out. Access there was only by express permission. Here were the city archives, money vaults, penal institutions and the utilities.

  These five levels were all serviced by vertical shafts which carried power lines, ventilation, fuel supplies and accommodated various lifts and chutes. The perimeters at each level were clearly defined and it was a serious offence to go, or attempt to go, into the continuation of the tunnels beyond. Below Level 9 little happened until Levels 17 and 18, where the Emperor mainly dwelt.

  The many tunnels at all levels beyond the confines of Bochum were degraded, collapsed, flooded, broken and defunct. But everyone in Bochum had a story about the hydden folk who lived there, creatures of the dark and the night, of a lowly uncivilized kind who would kill and eat you if they could.

  The only certain thing, because they were seen from time to time, was that whatever the dark history of these ‘Remnant tunnels’, a peculiar species of bilgesnipe lived there. Which meant that down in the deep levels there must be water, for the chubby, greasy bilgesnipe were a water-folk, skilled in all matters maritime and fluvial. The Remnant bilgesnipe of Bochum were unique for being albino and blind, doubtless caused by inbreeding and living too long without light.

  The deepest levels of this great Imperial complex were 17 and 18, which were the Emperor’s private domain and the place from which the real work of running the Empire, as opposed to Bochum itself, was done. Access was by way of a lift from the corridors behind the Throne on Level 2, to which only a few senior executives had access

  These lower levels, despite the fact that the Emperor lived there, were much less well maintained than the busier ones above. They were ill-lit, unpainted and unswept. The detritus of human mining operations was everywhere – rusting machines, narrow-gauge rail tracks, stacks of wooden pit props, piles of spare parts. Even the skeletons of lost souls, human or hydden, who had found their way into that cold, dripping, eternally dark and draughty place and become disorientated were sometimes found.

  The Great Chamber on Level 2 had a strange and mysterious vast counterpart at Level 18, which was why Slaeke Sinistral spent so much of his time down there.

  This was the Chamber of Sleep, which was as wide and tall as the greatest human buildings. Its roof was unreachable and unexplored and from it fell endless drips of water, hundreds and thousands of them, carrying dissolved lime. The lime was deposited on whatever lay on the floor beneath, turning wooden sleepers, rails, cog wheels, capstans, coiled hawsers, great metal tools and even a steam engine into sickly pale, swollen versions of themselves, their form only vaguely discernible when light was carried into the terrible dark.

  In addition to the endless rain there were constant draughts and contradictory winds from the innumerable fissures, cracks, faults and broken tunnels in the chamber walls and its roofs.

  This combination of falling water and draughts, which sometimes whispered and occasionally raged, produced a miracle of sound, which Slaeke Sinistral recognized the moment he heard it as the musica. Endless, self-perpetuating patterns of harmonic sound produced in the great Chamber by what he called the four dimensions: falling rain, endless wind, an unfathomable space . . . and time. By musica he meant Musica Universalis, which anci
ents called the Music of the Spheres, the harmony of all things, the sound of the Universe. Sinistral had found a place and a new preoccupation for his later life.

  The Empire he built from the base of a ruined business, of which the Fyrd were the warriors and enforcers of his power and the civilians in Bochum the executives, became to him no more than a pastime. His real work lay in learning how to meld his spirit and body, his mind and soul, with the musica and through that with the Universe.

  To sustain himself and his life beyond that normally allotted to mortals – he was born in the mid-nineteenth century in Brum – he had recourse to the power that lay in the gem of Summer which he had secretly possessed for more than a century.

  The energy from this gem kept him alive, but cruelly so.

  At first its power sustained him for many decades, but gradually he needed more and more of its light and fire – which was nothing less than the Fires of the Universe – because each period of recovery lasted for a shorter time.

  Gradually his times of decline and recuperative sleep before another exposure to the gem lengthened.

  The last, which was overseen by Blut, who started the period as a young hydden and ended it at the beginning of his middle age, lasted eighteen years.

  Throughout these successive and ever-longer periods of sleep, the Emperor lay in the cocoon of a dentist’s chair in the Chamber of Sleep, bathed in the musica, learning all the time, his body and spirit leaking into the ether as the musica fed into him.

  His beauty, which was always great – tall, graceful, fair, well made, shot through with the light of intelligence, good humour and a growing compassion – grew greater, yet more fragile as the decades passed.

  It had been Blut who dared discover the secret of Sinistral’s longevity. Though only a very junior official in Hamburg at the time, aged eighteen, he had minutely studied Sinistral’s strange episodes of illness followed by recovery and wondered how he did it. What made Blut so exceptional was that, having asked the question, he found the answer. The clue lay in the stark fact that Sinistral’s periods of wellness got steadily shorter, his periods of recovery, which meant retreat and sleep, were getting longer. So much so that he was absent from things more than he was present. Yet he so organized his Court, he appointed representatives with such skill and his charisma was so great that no one ever moved to depose him during his ‘sleeps’.

  What Blut discovered was that Emperor Slaeke Sinistral’s source of strength and startling recoveries to youthfulness and vigour while all around him aged and died like normal hydden was that he possessed the gem of Summer, the second of the ‘lost’ gems that the Mercian CraftLord Beornamund so fatefully made in the sixth century.

  He also discovered that Sinistral came by the gem by dint of removing it from its possessor and mentor, ã Faroün, famed architect, lutenist, philosopher and genius. Whether Sinistral did this through murder or some other means, foul or fair, had been a matter of debate since the nineteenth century.

  That Blut had worked this out was remarkable, but it was nearly fatal. He was only rescued from sentence of death by Sinistral himself. He recognized in the eighteen-year-old a talent of a very remarkable kind.

  Instead of having him executed, he trained him and later elevated him from miserable Hamburg to glorious Bochum and there put him in charge of his office on Level 18.

  It was a stroke of brilliance.

  As the power of the gem of Summer had worn off once more, Sinistral began to age very rapidly and he realized that this sleep might be the longest of all, perhaps terminal. In the event, he slept for eighteen years, during which, having been duly instructed by Sinistral himself, Blut held the reins of power and managed them masterfully.

  Through that time he matured, he married, he had two children and he got to know the ins and outs of the Empire better than anyone alive, bar Sinistral himself. As for his loyalty, it never wavered, not for a moment. It even increased as he understood Sinistral’s flexibility in imposing the harsh rule of the Fyrd so necessary in founding a great enterprise, and then relaxing it, little by little, as the different parts of the Empire matured.

  Sinistral’s judgement had been sound. Niklas Blut was the perfect servant: he had a grasp of details, a subtle, clever mind that saw the warp and weft of people and situations, and absolutely no interest in being master.

  What Sinistral had gambled on before he retreated to his Chamber of Sleep was that, during his absence, the prophecy concerning Beornamund’s lost gems would come true. Simply stated, this was that a group of honest and rather ordinary hydden would somehow find the lost gem of Spring, the first of the four, because it would be needed to save the world.

  Sinistral was not sure of that, but he felt certain that if he was to continue his long reign, which he was sure he would wish to do when he woke up, he would need to add to his arsenal of self-recovery the gem of Spring, as well as that of Summer.

  What he did not reckon with at all when he awoke was that he himself might have changed fundamentally during his time of sleep, so much so that he might lose all interest in notions of an eternal life, but desire at last to age as mortals do.

  In his case, the ageing was rather rapid, for his body had taken youth into itself artificially and, once he eschewed further contact with Beornamund’s gems and their power, the years would catch up with him very swiftly indeed.

  But that was now of no consequence to him.

  He knew the reason for this change of heart, this acceptance of death. His long years of sleep had taken place to the eternal, ever-changing musica of the Universe. It had entered his being, his soul, and so sensitized him to life and death, to the Earth and the Universe, that he understood as others could not that his time of rule was over. Like an eastern mystic, or one who has dwelt in the desert and seen the truth, Sinistral had seen the truth of things.

  All is illusion.

  All is but a reflection which, for the hydden, is made in that infinitesimally thin Mirror-of-All, that fragile shifting plane, on whose near-non-existent surface all things seem to be, yet nothing is at all.

  In his remaining months, for he knew that was all the time he had, Sinistral wished to journey into the musica, to understand the nature of the gems and the fires that had sustained him, and discover how illusions cease to be and what there is, if anything, once they are no more.

  Perfect peace?

  Utter chaos?

  Endless silence?

  No-thing?

  Sinistral did not know but he wished to find out.

  Which Blut understood, deeply and well.

  His master must be master no more if he was to be free to follow where the musica led him. To a place, Blut guessed, where illusion ceased to be and all was truth.

  To Blut, whose admiration for Sinistral had turned to a nearly filial love, this final decision in the great hydden made him respect him even more.

  But he had naturally always feared what might happen after Sinistral’s demise. It came as a shock to discover that he wished to abdicate his position, but after they had discussed the reasons why, and Blut fully understood them, he knew what he must do and did it.

  He took control and claimed the Emperor’s throne for himself, coolly and calmly, without bloodshed or rancour, doing his best to behave, as Sinistral had taught him to, as if he was born for it.

  He was clever and assured enough to stake his claim in the presence of the most likely contenders for the office on the military and civilian side and to have them acknowledge his ascendancy over Sinistral.

  The primary weapon he therefore had to sustain him in office was legitimate title.

  The second was subtler and more powerful by far if only he could act on it decisively. He was greatly feared for what he knew and might do to those who challenged him.

  Feared as well for what he knew about every individual in the Imperial Court, the records of whom he had himself compiled.

  Feared for the access he had had to Sinistral and all tha
t meant in terms of his knowledge of Imperial governance, law and the strategy of power. Even if Blut was not plotting, it would always be assumed that he was, and that was enough, for the time being, to keep his enemies at bay.

  He was feared for the obvious speed of his thought and the eclectic power of his mind. He not only appeared to know more than anyone about the Empire, in detail and depth; he actually did so. He had the power of recall of almost every decision taken over the past twenty years in terms of the pros and cons and the outcomes. It was hard to pull the wool over Blut’s eyes.

  Though he did not look Imperial close-up, that intelligence shone through and gave him a charisma that he was inclined to underestimate.

  Court satirists, when making mock of Blut, had recourse to the same physical characteristic every time to convey the hydden himself: his round gold-rimmed spectacles. These were of flat glass which he kept spotlessly clean. They sent disconcerting oval reflections all about the place as he spoke, which occasionally shone directly into the eyes of those talking to him, leaving the uncomfortable feeling that Blut had glimpsed their soul and laid it bare.

  Then, when someone saw past the glass, they found themselves staring into discomfiting pools of a grey, unwavering kind, as unyielding as ice.

  This was not to say that Blut himself was hard. Far from it. He had a sentimental side, the wife he loved, the children he cherished, the modest lifestyle that suited him. True, his office had always demanded a discretion that prevented him forming close friendships, but there was no evidence that he had ever abused his position of power and trust, and never had been.

  More than that, no one who ever witnessed the robust nature of his conversations with Slaeke Sinistral could doubt for one moment that he had felt for his former Emperor anything but abiding respect and deep love. Nor could anyone think that he had plotted Sinistral’s sudden abdication or that the fact of it caused him anything but disappointment and pain.

  Blut might well be called the most reluctant Emperor who ever lived.