Bedtime Story (6 page)

“The great secret at the heart of the kingdom,” the Queen said slowly.

Matthias turned back to face the Queen and the Captain of the Guard, both still standing in the doorway.

“No one knows of the King’s illness. Your mission, therefore, must remain a secret, known to as few people as possible. You cannot go home. Not now. Not before you leave. Do you understand?”

“I do, Your Majesty.”

I
WOKE UP WITH THE ALARM
at four—there wasn’t really an option. I keep the clock-radio on an old wooden chair partway across the room, so I have to stumble out of bed when it goes off, fumbling with the plastic box in my desperation to silence it.

Standing there, half draped in covers, I faced the usual choice: the bed looked so enticing, so warm, so soft.

I stumbled toward the door and turned on the light. If there ever came a day when it all fell apart, finally and irrevocably, I would know it by the fact that I wouldn’t be up in the pre-dawn hours, sitting at my desk, willing the words to come.

After starting a pot of coffee, the next order of business was to throw the empty vodka bottle into the overflowing recycle box. As the coffee perked, I pulled on some clothes, then stood behind my chair, looking at the framed article hung over the desk. “Where are the books?” the headline read. It was a bitchy piece about the long-overdue second novels from a wave of new West Coast writers, all of whose first books had met with the sort of critical praise one dreams of. And then, nothing. No follow-ups, no new books, despite huge advances and early publicity. I had enjoyed writing the article, a year and a half after
Coastal Drift
was published.

A year after the article appeared, the framed copy had arrived in the mail. An inscription in the corner read:
How does it feel, asshole?
It was signed by one of the writers I had mentioned in the article, and the package it came in had also included clippings of the rapturous reviews her second novel had just received.

The paper my article was printed on was now yellowed and dark, and every one of the writers I had written about had since published
a second book, or third, and in one case his fourth, while I had produced nothing.

Fresh coffee in hand, I sat down at the desk and turned on the lamp. I ignored the laptop, not even daring to open it. My routine demanded that the writing come first, that everything else—e-mail, websites, online writers’ forums—wait until the day’s words were down. Avoiding temptation was the only way I knew that I would actually get the work done.

There was no temptation greater than the book sitting on the table beside my reading chair. I could just read one chapter, right? While I tried to wake up a little. One chapter wouldn’t hurt, would it?

I didn’t give in, and opened my latest notebook to the first blank page. Pen in hand, I stared down at the white expanse, trying to figure out what was wrong.

Right. The music. My secret weapon.

Once I had the Miles Davis CD playing, everything started to move. I wrote, head down, for almost two full rotations of the disk, filling almost four pages. It was good stuff. But then, I always think that.

It took me another hour, sipping at my second coffee of the day, to type in the day’s writing, making a few changes as I went. When I printed out the pages, I wrote the date in the bottom margin and set the sheets face down on the top of the eight-inch stack on the bookcase.

Normally, I would have gone straight into checking e-mails and the usual online haunts. Instead, I carried my coffee cup over to the reading chair and sat down with David’s book. I had a few minutes before it would be time to get David up and off to school. And besides, it’s not like I was just reading: now this was research. I had a column to write, and the beginnings of an idea.

At the top of a stone staircase, Captain Bream led Matthias through a heavy wooden door. The air was bracingly cold as Matthias stepped onto a walkway at the top of the highest tower overlooking the city. The Queen had told the soldier to escort Matthias to sleeping quarters, but he had led the boy behind another tapestry, through another secret door.

“I know you do not believe this, but you’re very important,” the captain said, breaking the silence that had overtaken them. “As important as this castle. As those battlements.”

“But I don’t understand …”

“I don’t either,” the captain said. “Not completely. But the Queen does. And the magus. I do understand this, though.”

He directed Matthias’s gaze beyond the battlements. Matthias was facing inland, and he could see Colcott Town stretching along the shoreline, facing the castle from across the bay. With the tide in, the causeway was swallowed under the churning tides, the single road between the castle and Colcott Town impassable, as it was for half of every day. A swarm of small boats and flat-bottomed skiffs ferried passengers and supplies to the island.

“Do you see those mountains?” He pointed at the distant, dark swell that seemed to rise out of the smoky green forests deep inland.

Matthias nodded.

The captain moved his fingers as if to trace the mountaintops. “They mark the edge of the kingdom, two days’ ride from here. There is a watchtower on each of the seven passes through the mountains, a ring of soldiers watching the King’s borders every moment of every day. Less than a week ago, three of those towers fell. Those soldiers died defending this land against an army that came under the cover of night, that stole through the gates and slew every man. They took no prisoners.” He took a heavy breath. “Do you know what this all means?”

Matthias had heard the emotion thick in the man’s voice. “No,” he said quietly.

“It means the Berok have no interest in diplomacy, no intention of treaty. They will not be satisfied until they level the kingdom to the waterline, taking every man, woman and child with it. They will not be satisfied until the crown falls in the dirt, until it can be crushed beneath their heels.”

Matthias nodded slowly, thinking about the savage Berok warriors just over the rise, picturing the village below in flames, the screams of his mother, of Arian—

“These are desperate times, Matthias.”

I got David to school about five minutes later than normal, but still well before the opening bell. Not a crisis. On the walk home I started mentally composing my column, trying to find the perfect opening line. Once I had that, everything else would fall easily into place.

I usually spent Monday mornings, after the real writing was done, working on my column for the
Vancouver Sun
. It would be nice if my fiction paid the bills, but that was still a fair ways off, especially with how late the new book was. I had been writing
Off the Shelf
for almost five years. It gave me the best of both worlds: a regular pay cheque, and the freedom to spout off on whatever I wished.

I brought up my e-mail and poured myself another cup of coffee, set David’s book on the desk next to the laptop.

I winced as the new message headers started to pop up. I had been waiting for an e-mail from Roger, my agent, for a couple of weeks, and here it was. He would, no doubt, just be confirming dinner for when I was in New York in a couple of weeks, but the subtext would be plain:
Where’s the new book, Chris?

Ignoring the looming shadows of the inevitable, I opened a Google window and typed “Lazarus Took” into the search block.

Google came up with 947 hits.

Several of the entries on the first page were rare books dealers—I ignored them for the moment and clicked on the link to Wikipedia.

The entry on Lazarus Took was a stub, little more than a paragraph.

Not really useful, and it looked like the page hadn’t been updated in years. It was strange to think that in the age of the Internet, when
people could get obsessed about the most meaningless of things—from obscure silent film stars to the toys inside Cracker Jack boxes—no one seemed to have the slightest interest in “derivative, post–Second World War British fantasy.”

The next hit made me feel better immediately. The LazarusTook.com page was entitled “Servants Bold, Treasures Untold” and described itself as “The Ultimate Resource for Readers of Lazarus Took.” I clicked on its Books page, and scrolled down, looking for mention of
To the Four Directions
. Nothing. The final book listed was
Long Journey Home
, published in 1949.

I went to the Biography page. It showed a painting of a dour-looking, slim man, middle-aged and greying, leaning against a short stone wall with an ocean in the background, one hand resting on the crystal head of a straight cane.

I lingered over the picture for a moment: I’d never actually known what Took looked like, and the deliberate asceticism came as something of a disappointment. For someone whose books were so full of life, he looked like a prat.

Trust the art, I always say, not the artist.

But then, I would, wouldn’t I?

The picture was the most interesting thing on the page. The biography added little to the Wikipedia entry. Took was born in 1895 into a wealthy family. It seems he was a conscientious objector during the Great War, and was involved in one of the many mystical societies that flourished during that time, the Order of the Golden Sunset. The writer took pains to point out that other writers, including Yeats, had been involved in similar organizations. Took married Cora Agatha Tinsley in 1930, and the two settled in Norfolk in the middle of that decade. The biography listed the four novels that Took wrote before his death in 1950, but, again, there was no mention of
To the Four Directions
.

I brought up a new Word window and started to type.

The summer that I was eleven, my life was changed forever. No, more than that—the world was changed forever, and I was pulled along with it
.

A soft scratching at the door jarred Matthias from his sleep. For a moment he didn’t recognize his surroundings: a large bed, plush down blanket, a crackling fire. Where was he? And then it all came rushing back: the Queen, the quest, the Berok, the captain leading him to the palatial guest quarters.

“Matthias?” a voice called gently, before the door opened a crack. “Might I come in?”

He recognized the voice as that of Loren. “Yes,” he said, standing up from the bed, straightening the covers. “Come in.”

The gaunt old man slid into the room, barely opening the door. He smiled. “I trust you rested,” he said. He crossed the room toward the fire.

“A bit,” he said, watching the old man carefully.

The magus settled in the chair closest to the fire, his grey robes settling around him. He began unpacking the bag he had been carrying over his shoulder.