Dark Tidings: Ancient Magic Meets the Internet Book 1 (13 page)

Tung and Madrick appeared as instantaneously as they had disappeared. They hurtled into the twenty-first century naked and confused. Both men crashed heavily to the ground. Tung hit it head first, as usual, but amazingly there was no pain because this time he’d hit sand. The pair had landed on a beach somewhere.

They gradually regained their senses and surveyed their surroundings. Waves sloshed onto the yellow beach behind them and in front of them a row of tiny wooden huts stared out at the sea. The little houses were tightly packed, extremely colourful and looked well constructed.

An icy wind nipped at their extremities and the light was beginning to fade.

“At least there’s no one else around, so maybe luck is looking out for us.”

“This is no time to celebrate. Have you looked at us?”

Their nudity was mortifyingly uncomfortable. This was worse than the last time they’d been naked together, at least then they’d been invisible. They needed to get indoors and dressed as quickly as possible.

They crept up to the nearest of the houses. A quick listen at the door gave them the impression it was unoccupied, but they couldn’t be sure because there were no windows at the front for them to look through. What now? They listened some more, there was still no sound, and the fact that the double doors were bolted and padlocked on the outside seemed to confirm the building was empty. After a short search, Tung found what he needed to prise open the lock. In no time at all they were inside.

“You’re quite skilled at that.”

“Years of practice,” said Tung as he pulled the doors closed behind them.

A frantic rummage around the single room dwelling revealed a few clothes; enough to restore some semblance of dignity. They also found some blankets and a bag of sickly sweet biscuits. In their time sugar was almost unheard of, so the biscuits tasted superbly unusual.

As they searched, they both marvelled at the quality of the furnishings and the strangeness of many of the items they found. Having exhausted their scavenging, they moved on to the house next door and then the next. They gathered more clothes, a pair of shoes each, some food provisions and a good handful of silver coins.

Madrick studied one of the coins.

“Have you seen this, Tung?”

“What?”

“This isn’t round which means people are still clipping pieces off the coins.”

“The slivers of silver add up over time. Come on, we all used to do it.”

“I know, I was just pointing out that nothing much has changed.”

“How much are those things worth anyway? Are we rich?”

Madrick checked it out, it said fifty pence on one side. He’d no idea exactly how much it was worth, but fifty anythings can’t be bad. The other side showed the year 2008 although the dominating feature was a lady’s head. She looked rather regal with her crown, but surely a woman couldn’t be the one in charge. He remembered childhood stories about a queen called Boadicea. That hadn’t ended well, so surely people wouldn’t make the same mistake again?

The coin was well worn, so today’s date was probably later than the 2008 shown. Unbelievable, if this was indeed later than 2008, Madrick calculated they’d travelled nearly one thousand years into the future. Surely that was impossible? Maybe the number on the coin wasn’t the year. Maybe it meant something else, but for the life of him he couldn’t think what. Then again, as far as he knew there was no limit to the length of time the spell leapt, so maybe it was a thousand years. A thousand years, he mused, if that was truly the distance of their time jump, then things were going to be mightily different. They were the epitome of strangers in a strange land.

Darkness seemed to be winning the battle with the moonlight, so staying put for the night was definitely a good idea. This place seemed quiet and safe, and they needed time to recover and get their bearings. Tung slept while Madrick browsed through a selection of books he had picked up during their spree of break-ins. The language was a little strange, but he quickly adapted his reading to cope. The books showed amazing pictures of wonderful foodstuffs, great cities, fantastic machines and people in strange costumes. He read prolifically while Tung snored noisily in the corner. Eventually the moon gave up its struggle and darkness claimed the night. Madrick could no longer make out even the pictures so he reluctantly gave up and joined Tung in sleep.

It was an uneasy sleep because his dreams constantly reminded him of the wondrous things he’d seen in the books. He was wide awake at first light and wasted no time in getting back to his studying.

One book was particularly engaging and enlightening. It was a most amazing history of Britain through the ages. He started at the beginning and saw many things he recognised from his day; things like the Danish Invaders who’d ravaged parts of England. It had pictures and descriptions of some of the towns they had built, but it was a bit frightening to see pictures of ancient ruins; ruins of buildings which he remembered as newly built. This would take some getting used to. Fascinating as this was, curiosity got the better of him and he skipped to the end of the book and started reading backwards. Every page held a new wonder. This was an absolutely incredible world into which they had arrived.

Madrick was totally transfixed by what he read and saw, but he wasn’t overawed. His training as a wizard had introduced him to the most fantastical phenomena. These modern things, which now surrounded him, were amazing, but they were no more amazing than some of the things he had seen in wizard school. He knew he could adapt quickly to his new environment. He wasn’t so sure about Tung.

He found a chapter on inventions. It began with a quote under the heading ‘Clarke’s 3
rd
Law’ which read ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’. What a fascinating thought, it suggested that eventually science would catch up and explain all the things he’d been taught were magic. And apparently what Clarke said was true, because it was in fact a law. Maybe things had caught up already; maybe they already had an explanation for the Scroll. That’s highly unlikely, he thought, as he wondered what Clarke’s first two laws were. No ideas sprung to mind so he got back to his reading.

The inventions section particularly intrigued him because he had always loved machines and contraptions. He read about steam power and trains, the internal combustion engine and motor cars, and then he ‘discovered’ electricity. What a fantastic discovery that was. He leafed through pages of incredible gadgets all powered by the mystical force which was electricity. He looked around and immediately recognised the light switch. With a little trepidation he flicked it down. The room was instantly bathed in a soft, yellow light. He clapped his hands as he played with the switch - off, on, off, on, off, on - he could do this all day, although all night would make more sense. If only he’d discovered this last night he wouldn’t have wasted the hours of darkness sleeping.

Eventually he returned to the book and read the captions under the pictures of other electric machines. As he read he spotted some more of the illustrated gadgets in the room around him. He worked out how to plug them in; it was obvious because the plug fitted the socket precisely. He plugged in anything which had a plug and turned knobs and pushed buttons. He couldn’t make the radio work although he had more success with the toaster. It certainly got hot, however, he realised too late that the slots were not for warming your hands. He had a lot to learn and clearly some of the lessons were going to be painful. The burns didn’t dampen his enthusiasm as he moved towards the plug in the corner of the room; the plug on the television.

This was Madrick’s first great modern-day success. He got the television to work. It came on showing a twenty-four hour news channel. He watched the moving pictures and was totally fascinated, at first by the images and then by what the world had become. When he could contain his excitement no longer, he woke Tung and got him to watch this miracle. They ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ as story after story mesmerised them.

Weather forecasts regularly interrupted the news stories. Neither of them understood the mystical symbols which peppered the map, but it was nice to see that at least one of the old spells had survived. Madrick’s thoughts drifted back to Clarke’s 3
rd
Law. Maybe, one day, science would explain how it was possible to forecast the weather but that, like an explanation of the Scroll, seemed highly unlikely. Also, it appeared that the accuracy of the forecasting hadn’t improved since their own experience with the Weather Prophecy Spell all those years ago.

Deep in the bowels of the British Meteorological Office, the two most senior Met men were having a meeting.

“We need to discuss the accuracy of our forecasts.”

“Lack of accuracy, more like.”

“That’s the point. The public make fun of us because we can’t even predict the weather an hour ahead never mind a week.”

“And we need to stop using the word ‘changeable’ because everyone knows it just means we’ve no idea what’s happening.”

“I know, they say we’d do better if we just looked out the window.”

“We should buy a big computer… like the one the Americans have.”

“Have you any idea how much they cost?”

“Fair point, maybe it’s best to stick to the way we’ve always done it.”

With that, the more senior of the two unrolled an old scroll and prepared himself to produce the next forecast.

All in all, watching the television was a brilliant introduction to the twenty-first century and it could all be achieved in the safe seclusion of their little beach hut. Tung adapted better than Madrick had imagined. Maybe his crash course (and he had crashed many times) in spell casting had prepared him well for accepting the miraculous.

In parallel with their TV watching, the pair planned for their eventual excursion into the outside world. They knew they needed to get moving, so it was probably just as well that they never discovered how to change channel or they might have stayed put, glued to the box forever.

Madrick also forced Tung to create spells until they had one which would be useful once they left the safety of this sanctuary. The owner of this little wooden house would be excited by the remnants of some of the spells. For example, the ancient parchments would fascinate, the great silver sword would definitely be a talking point and the scattered gold coins would clearly enrich him in every sense of the word. In fact, there were going to be a number of very happy owners because Tung had insisted they leave some coins in all the huts they’d raided. He understood from bitter experience what being poor was like and these people were clearly not well off, given the tiny size of their dwellings.

Three days passed quickly, filled by watching the TV and systematically raiding the adjoining huts. They rested, learnt about modern life and fed themselves on a variety of weird and wonderful foods. They might have stayed even longer had it not been for the banging on the door and the voice shouting strange words.

“Barry. Barry. Barry,” the voice cried.

It’s funny how the same word, or name, said over and over again with no change in tone or volume sounds really bizarre.

“Barry. Barry. Barry,” the voice cried, still in the same monotonous manner.

Tung and Madrick panicked. They grabbed their valuables, actually they were mainly someone else’s valuables, and crouched behind the only two bits of furniture big enough to hide them. They made no noise as they listened to the pounding on the small wooden doors.

“Barry, are you in there?” asked the mystery voice. “We’ve had our hut broken into. It looks like a lot of the huts have been robbed. I can see the TV on, are you in there?”

The voice belonged to the owner from two huts down who’d come to collect some odds and sods from his holiday house. He’d found the lock broken and when he went inside he could see the place had been searched and a number of items stolen. There had been nothing of real value there, but it was still annoying to know that someone had invaded his private little retreat. If he’d checked things more carefully, he’d have found the gold coins which Tung had left him and that would undoubtedly have changed his mood for the better.

As he banged on the door, he realised the lock there had been broken too. It hadn’t been immediately obvious because Tung had managed to pry it open with minimal damage. The man, who was no hero, started to become anxious.

“I’ve called the police. They said they’d be here in a few minutes. Are you in there?”

He hadn’t really called the police. He knew from experience that the police wouldn’t come. There had been break-ins here before and it always turned out to be a tramp or homeless person trying to grab a night’s sleep and a bit of warmth. There was no point in prosecuting them so the police felt there was no point in investigating.

Tung’s survival instincts kicked in and he came up with a rather pathetic plan which he whispered to Madrick. It sounded ridiculous, but it was all they had.

“The back window, let’s jump out the back window,” shouted Tung as he smashed the small window at the rear of the hut. This was merely a distraction tactic because the window was far too small for either man to get through. There would be no spring-roll, dramatic escape through that little opening.

They couldn’t believe their luck when the man ran to the back of the hut. In reality, he was scared and he’d scarpered back to his own house. He wasn’t about to tackle one tramp never mind more than one. The instant they heard him racing from the door, they bolted out the front and ran for their lives; here we go again, they thought as they headed for the trees.

They hid in the shadows and peered out to see if they were being followed. There was no sign of anyone and the voice had disappeared. They crept away, constantly listening and checking for pursuers. Luckily, no one seemed to be after them, which was a welcome novelty. They soon began to relax a little and enjoy what was effectively a quiet walk in the woods. After a few hours they knew for sure they were not being followed so they took a break to assess their situation. They had clothes, food and some modern coins, so things were actually pretty good. They also had the ‘never empty’ gold coin pouch which Tung had magicked up and a useful spell in Tung’s head in case things took a turn for the worse. They kept walking, away from the huts and heading inland. They hoped they would come upon a town soon so they could get lost among the townsfolk there. Madrick knew that being amongst modern people would throw up all sorts of new challenges. They would just have to adapt because there was no other choice. Deep down, the prospect excited him. They were in a strange and fascinating era so there’d be a world full of wonders to explore.

Let the new adventure begin.