The Sword Bearer
Authors: John White
Tags: #children's, #Christian, #fantasy, #inspirational, #S&S
The Archies ofAnthropos by John White
The Sword Bearer
Gaal the Conqueror
The Tower of Geburah
The Iron Sceptre
The Quest for the King
The Dark Lord's Demise
THE ARCHIVES
OF ANTHROPOS
Cover Illustration by
Vic Mitchell
Interior Illustrations by
Jack Stockman
InterVarsity Press
Downers Grove, Illinois
® 1986 by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515.
InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a student movement active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of
nursing. For
information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, 6400 Schnieder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895.
Cover illustration: Vic Mitchell
Interior illustrations: Jack Stockman
ISBN 0-87784-590-5
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
White, John, 1924 Mar. 5-
The sword bearer.
(The Archives of anthropos)
Summary: On his thirteenth birthday John Wilson is transported to Anthropos, a land of dwarfs and talking animals, where he is hailed as the Sword Bearer, destined to slay the Goblin Prince and deliver the world from eviL
[1. Fantasy] I. Title.
PZ7.W5837Sw 1986 [Fic] 86-2860
ISBN 0-87784-590-5
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
11
14 13 12 11
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
To Nancy, Paul and Stephen
14
The Coming of the Copper Moon
The Birthday
That
Went Wrong
John Wilson was no good at whistling, but he whistled anyway. He whistled in spite of the fog, and the fog was one of Pendle-ton's worst
Pendleton people used to call them pea-soup fogs because of their dirty yellow color. Scientists said the color came from pollution, the pollution caused by thousands and thousands of tiny houses. People warmed their homes with coal fireplaces in those days, and the coal sent smoke belching out of all those chimneys. And all the factory chimneys belched smoke too.
Pendleton fogs used to be so dense that sometimes you couldn't see across Ellor Street. Ellor Street was the street John Wilson followed most of the way home from school. The gathering darkness made it harder for John to see. He walked past a bus that was crawling along Ellor Street following a man who walked ahead waving a white flag to help the driver. "You might just as well walk!" one lady said indignantly as she stepped off the slowly moving vehicle.
John stopped whisding and laughed softly to himself. Then he thought of how he had tried to cross Ellor Street a few minutes before and giggled some more. He had stepped off the pavement (that's what they call the sidewalk in England), and like someone lost in a forest he had walked in a circle until he arrived back on the same side of the street. It was very confusing, but he got himself sorted out eventually, on the right side and going in the right direction.
As a matter of fact he had worked out a system. He had one foot on the pavement (that's the sidewalk, you remember) and one foot in the gutter. He could have walked beside the wall, touching it to be sure he was walking straight ahead. But everyone else was doing that, and they kept bumping into one another and saying things like, "Oo, excuse me! Isn't it
awful.
It's absolutely dreadful!" or, "Lors! I can't see a blessed thing! Am so sorry!"
John's plan was a lot better. The only things he had to watch out for were lamp posts. And since the lamplighter had just been lighting them ahead of John, he could see the eerie glow of a shining lamp several steps before he reached the lamp post. So he didn't have to touch anything or bump into anyone. At least, that was his plan.
So John Wilson whistled. It was his thirteenth birthday, and Grandma Wilson had promised to bake him a birthday cake with thirteen candles on it. John and his grandma had lived together for as long as John could remember. He could recall nothing about his parents, which was what made this day so special. Grandma Wilson had promised to tell him about his parents on his thirteenth birthday. Always before she had told him, "When you are older I'll tell you. You're too young to understand yet."
Sometimes John wondered whether his parents had been very wicked, and whenever he thought like that he grew angry and scared. At other times he thought he may have been bad when he was small and that his parents hadn't liked him and had left him with Grandma Wilson. But mostly he thought that his parents were on a secret adventure. Perhaps they were in the Secret Service. And now that he was thirteen he would find out. So he whistled his way through the fog, excited about the mystery that was about to be solved.
John Wilson loved mysteries. He borrowed mystery books from the library and went to the pictures (we would say
movies
now) as often as he could. He also spent a lot of time in a dream world where he was the hero in a hundred mystery stories he would make up himself.
He fumbled in his blazer pocket and pulled out a dirty piece of string from which a gold ring and a gold locket hung. Inside the locket was a faded brown picture of a World War I soldier wearing a moustache and looking very stern. (You were supposed to look stern in those days when you had your picture taken.) There was also a lock of curly red hair. The gold ring was a man's signet ring, but it seemed very old and it was impossible to read the letters on it. John was sure the ring and the locket had something to do with his parents, and he had often asked Grandma Wilson whether the photograph was of his father. But always she would make the same reply, "You're too young yet. Wait till you're a bit older."
"How much older, Grandma?"
"Stop bothering me, John. You'll know soon enough!"
But John continued to bother his grandma till at last she told him that if only he would stop, she would tell him at tea time on his thirteenth birthday.
He pulled the string over his head, tucking the ring and the locket inside his shirt and frowning as he did so. They were a source of trouble as well as a mystery. At first his grandma had insisted he wear them round his neck on a pink silk ribbon; yet the children in the earlier grades at school had made fun of him. After a number of arguments with his grandmother, a compromise was made. John could use ordinary string so long as he always wore them. But the teasing had continued until at last John had got into the habit of putting them into his pocket on the way to school and replacing them round his neck as he drew near home. He didn't bother to tell his grandma about the new arrangement and since she never asked, John felt he wasn't really disobeying.