Spring

ALSO BY WILLIAM HORWOOD

The Duncton Chronicles

Duncton Wood

Duncton Quest

Duncton Found

The Book of Silence

Duncton Tales

Duncton Rising

Duncton Stone

The Wolves of Time

Journeys to the Heartland

Seekers at the Wulfrock

Tales of the Willows

The Willows in Winter

Toad Triumphant

The Willows and Beyond

The Willows at Christmas

Other Works

The Stonor Eagles

Callanish

Skallagrigg

The Boy with No Shoes (Memoir)

To Deborah, with love

First published 2010 by Macmillan

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Copyright © William Horwood 2010

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Beornamund’s Prophecy

I  The Rider and her Quest

II  Fires of the Universe

III  Ten Years Later

IV  Into the Hyddenworld

V  Brum

VI  Spring

VII  Shield Maiden

There was once a metal-smith named Beornamund who lived in Mercia, one of the seven great kingdoms of Englalond, that land of mist and mystery that lies on the north-western edge of things.

In his youth he loved his Master’s daughter Imbolc, a name which in the old language means Spring.

When she was carried away in a flood and drowned he dedicated his life to making objects in memory of her beauty and their love.

So great were his skills, so profound his understanding of the mortal spirit, that he was made CraftLord, maker of great things. Many say he was the greatest of them all.

Two objects above all gave birth to legend.

The first was a flawless sphere of metal and glass he made in anger the day she died. It was so perfect that when he hurled it into the sky in defiance of the Gods who he thought had let his Imbolc die, it stole something of the fires of the Universe and all the colours of the earthly seasons. Seeing which, the Gods broke it into a hundred thousand fragments. He found only three of these, each a flawless gem which carried in itself the essence of a single season: one for Summer, a second for Autumn and the last for Winter.

Beornamund was sure that the gem of Spring also lay near his workshop, but he never found it.

The second great object was linked to the first most strangely. It was a pendant disc of gold in which he set the three gems he found in the belief that Spring, the lost one, might one day come to light.

This pendant was worn down the centuries by Imbolc, whom the Gods had made Peace-Weaver in recognition of her purity and goodness and who rode the world of mortals, whether human or hydden, upon a white horse.

Beornamund prophesied that before the gem of Spring was ever found those of Summer, Autumn and Winter must fall unseen and forgotten from the pendant he gave Imbolc. When the last of these, Winter, was lost, her journey as Peace-Weaver would be over. Only then could she return to him as Imbolc, his beloved, her duty done.

But he also warned that so destructive were the greedy hands of mortals that with Imbolc’s final passing the Earth and Universe would face extinction. All that could save them was the coming of her fabled sister, the Shield Maiden, aided by a group of courageous mortals. Their first task would be to find the lost gem of Spring. After that and down the years the other gems of the seasons must be recovered from where they had been scattered across the Earth during the Peace-Weaver’s wanderings. Only when that quest was complete might the Sphere Beornamund first made be recreated, the fires of the Universe rekindled, the earthly seasons renewed and the Earth and Universe be saved . . .

S
hortly before dawn on the first day of Spring the White Horse and its rider came out of the darkness of winter to pause awhile on Waseley Hill near Brum in Englalond.

Wraiths of cold mist stirred with the fretting of the horse’s hoofs and lingered in the hollows and ditches downslope of where it stood, more fearful of the rising sun than of the rider on its back. For she was nothing much to look at now and barely more than a wraith herself.

As she was too old to easily dismount, the White Horse dropped gently to its knees and let her down. Her hands and fingers were bent, her eyes rheumy, her white hair thin and her papery face wrinkled with fifteen hundred years of journeying.

Around her neck was an old pendant disc of gold, worn and battered, its gems nearly all lost – yet still a thing of beauty.

The rider had seen through all the seasons of her life and with the coming of Spring she had started to live on borrowed time while she completed her great task, before returning to the stars. For her quest was not yet done, and with what little time and energy remained to her she intended to see it to its end. Her body might be that of a crone but her eyes shone still with the light of the love she had received when she was young and beautiful, which she, in return, had given back to the Earth and mortals ever since.

So now she stood on the wet grass of a hill where she’d once been held in her lover’s arms and surveyed the still-dark landscape below. In the fading gloom of the human city she saw that which no human was able to see, the secret and most fabled city of the Hyddenworld.