Spear Bearer

Spear Bearer

  Book One

  Stephen Clary

  eBook Edition

  Copyright 2010 Stephen Clary

  Discover other titles by Stephen Clary:

  Mimic: A Spear Bearer Short

  Superhuman: A Spear Bearer Short (Summer 2014)

  Abomination: Spear Bearer Book 2

  Bowels of Hell: Spear Bearer Book 3 (Summer 2014)

  The Globe

  Freezer

  eBook Edition, License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away. Even if you received this eBook for free, you do not have the right to distribute this book. If you did not purchase and/or download this book from an eBook retailer, please do so now to own a legal copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Katie who heard it first.

  “...tradition gives the one thing many shapes.”

  —The Celtic Twilight by W. B. Yeats

  Prelude

  A boy knocks on the door of an RV trailer. In bold letters on the side of the trailer is “THE AMAZING GORDON.” It is past eleven moving on toward midnight. Even the carneys, apathetic group though they may be, would be compelled to make sure the boy was not lost if they knew he was only ten years old. But the boy is easily tall enough to pass as a teenager.

  An absolutely bald man opens the door and looks at the boy. His face is raisin-like: wrinkled and black; but his golden eyes are bright. “What?” he asks brusquely. Even with this one word, a British accent is evident.

  The boy holds the man's gaze without flinching. “You said during the show you were looking for an apprentice.”

  “Ha!” says a voice from inside, “That one's not the Watcher's brood.” The accent is the same as that of the man at the door, but the voice is higher and edgier.

  The old man reaches out, takes the boys chin in his hands, and holds it with unexpected strength. The lines of the boy's face are perfect, his dark skin as smooth as porcelain. His eyes are a marvel of brown facets.

  “Could be...could be,” the old man mumbles to himself.

  “He's too small,” the voice calls from inside. “The Nephilim are bigger.”

  “How old are you?” the man asks.

  “Ten.”

  The old man smiles approvingly. “Too small indeed!” he replies over his shoulder. “The nipper's only ten.”

  “So he's tall for his age,” the voice from inside says. “Bollocks, I say. He's as thin as a pole. Does he have the strength of the Nephilim?”

  The old man lets go of the boy's chin and holds his hand out. “Give me your hand.”

  The boy does so. The old man begins to squeeze, squeeze hard. It hurts. The boy squeezes back, fighting to keep his hand from being squished.

  “See there?” the old man says, “he's as strong as an ox.”

  The boy pulls his hand free and shakes it to get the blood back into his fingertips.

  “So he's strong,” the voice says, “but I'll wager he's not quick. He just exercises a bit, that's all. But there's nothing an ordinary mortal can do to make himself as swift as the Nephilim.”

  A silver coin suddenly appears in the old man's hands. “You can have it, if you are fast enough.”

  There is a blur of motion as the boy's hand darts out and the man closes his fist.

  They both look down as they open their hands. The coin is now in the boy's hands.

  “This is no ordinary boy,” the old man says. “After all these years, have I finally found another like myself?”

  “I suppose we might should give him a closer look,” says the high voice from inside.

  The old man motions for the boy to follow him inside.

  The boy closes the door behind him and looks around. The walls are lined with shelves filled with thousands of books and hundreds of glass jars. The glass jars have powders (white, red, gray, gritty, grainy) or liquid (clear, green, glowing, opaque) or pale embryo animals. A pine-scent air freshener hanging from the overhead A/C unit doesn't manage to cover up a sulfuric odor.

  “It's half past ten. Your mum know you're here?”

  The boy nods. “She went to the car. I told her I would catch up.”

  “And your dad?”

  The boy just shakes his head.

  “What does your mum tell you about your father?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all? You can tell me.”

  The boy hesitates, but eventually says, “He came in through her window back when she lived down in Guatemala with her parents. He looked like an angel. She thought it was a dream. But then I came along.

  “She says I look like him. She calls me 'Cara del ángel'—angel face.”

  The old man raises his gray eyebrows. “And what does she call you otherwise?”

  “My name is Manuel.”

  “So Manuel, you know any magic?”

  The boy looks around and sees a deck of cards. They are very large, and the pictures on them look strange. He looks at them doubtfully, but then says, “I've taught myself some card tricks. You want—”

  “Didn't I tell you?” the voice he had heard earlier asks. The boy looks toward the voice. A shrunken head about the size of a grapefruit hangs from the ceiling by its dry black hair. Its eyes are sewn shut, but the threads that had sealed its mouth are cut and they dangle from its lips. It continues, “Sparky knows tricks. Silly little parlor tricks.”

  “Shh,” the old man admonishes the talking head. “There is no reason for him to know magic. He doesn't even know what he is.” He waves a hand toward the cards, and even though they are five feet away, they blow off the table as if caught in a breeze.

  “What am I then?” the boy asks.

  “It would seem,” the old man says with a wink, “you are a magician's apprentice.”

  Chapter 1 — Beyond Muddy Brown Bayou

  As Lizzie approached the back gate she noticed the crow. It stared at her with a beady black eye. It always seemed to be around these days, perched high up in one of those tall leafy trees just beyond her backyard. The bird appeared to be more than just curious, and though she knew it really couldn't be anything more than an overactive imagination, Lizzie felt it was spying on her.

  “Go away,” she shouted at it, directing her anger at the bird, even though it was her mom and sister that had put her in this mood.

  The crow only turned its head and stared at her with its other eye.

  Birdie jumped up on Lizzie for the umpteenth time and for the umpteenth time Lizzie pushed the black lab down. “Get down,” she said between clenched teeth. Usually it wouldn't have bothered her; usually she would have let Birdie stand up against her while scratching her behind the ears. But today she was upset. Today she had missed her soccer game.

  If they'd gone to early Mass they would have made it. She'd done her part—she'd reminded her mom the night before, and in the morning she had eaten breakfast, put on her shiny maroon dress, brushed her teeth and combed her hair in record time. But her little sister Lori had dawdled and acted like a baby, so they ended up going to late Mass anyway. And what would it have hurt if they missed just one Sunday?

  “Go away,” Lizzie shouted at the bird again.

  The crow stretched out its wings, fluffed its feathers, and sidled a few steps down the branch. It was as if it were saying, 'Yell at me all you want. I’m not leaving and there isn’t anything you can do about it.'

  However, there was something she could do about it. She had her bow. Her plan had been to vent her anger on a tree or two using her blunt-tipped points, but the crow presented a more satisfying target. The blunt tip wouldn't kill the bird, but it would think twice before coming around this way again.

  Lizzie pul
led her arrow out of the quiver and nocked it onto the string. But as she lifted up the bow the bird alighted and quickly disappeared into the deep green of the nearby woods

  She shook her head as she snapped the arrow back into the quiver. The dumb bird had won. But then she knew it wasn't a dumb bird—it had proven that just now. And those clever black eyes...those clever spying eyes...thinking of them gave her the creeps.

  Birdie whined from behind the fence as Lizzie shut the gate. They were a pair, Birdie and her, and they always went together out into the fields and woods. It wasn't fair to leave her. But then life isn't fair—that's what her dad always said. If life were fair, her team wouldn't have had to play without their starting forward. Besides, she didn't want Birdie getting in the way while she was practicing archery.

  The Long family house sat at the very edge of a neighborhood on the outskirts of Vicksburg, Mississippi, so with a jump across a little ditch they called Crawdad Creek she left the city behind. She ran down a skinny dirt trail, created and maintained by the constant action of her feet, through a narrow stand of woods, and across a soybean field. It was late August and the air was heavy with humidity; sweat beaded up then trickled over her skin. By the time she reached the dirt road on the other side, her shirt was damp. Lizzie wiped the moisture from her brow with the back of her hand.

  Now she walked. After all, there wasn't any reason to hurry. Her victims, the trees, weren't going anywhere.

  The road curved through the fields and over little hills, and soon it ran near the real woods—a forest so choked with trees that the sunlight only filtered in. A forest so thick that twenty yards in Lizzie could pretend there was no such thing as civilization. She had been in these woods before, but never alone—never without Birdie. Although it felt a little reckless, she didn't hesitate a moment.

  The trail she followed was not well used—just a dark line through the grass and bushes, disappearing altogether here, only to start up several feet further there. Vines latched onto her legs, their thorns piercing through her jeans and into her skin—she slowed down and walked more carefully. Soon the trees crowded in around her. No sounds of nearby suburbia could reach her—no barking dogs, no shouting kids, no honking cars. No airplanes either. She was alone, except for the forest animals: striped lizards darting away to hide, madly chattering squirrels making daredevil jumps high up in the trees, sparrows singing, and a woodpecker pecking out “rat-tat-tat.” In the distance a crow cawed and, though she felt paranoid to be thinking it, she wondered if it wasn't the same crow following her.

  A creek she had dubbed Muddy Brown Bayou, for lack of knowing the official name, dug out a deep trench between Lizzie and the other side. Never had she gone beyond it. Looking at the water, she thought of what might hide beneath the milky-brown surface. There were stories of water moccasin and giant catfish, and her father had told her it was easy to misjudge the current and depth of even the most innocent-looking Mississippi bayou.

  “Give me a break,” she said, pushing the fear down. Today, she wasn't going to let it stop her. Today, she would be in control. She tossed her bow across the creek. No turning back now.

  After taking a few steps back, she ran and jumped. She landed short and began to slide down toward the water below. Down to where the water moccasin and the giant catfish waited to drag her to the bayou's murky depths. She grabbed for something on the bank, her arms working frantically, and she caught a little tree. Digging her toes into the mud, and pulling hard on the sapling—praying it wouldn't give—she struggled up onto the bank.

  Lizzie sat, breathing deep, heart pumping hard.

  Get a grip on yourself, she thought. “Take a deep breath and clear the mind,” her Tai Kwon Do master always told her before competing at a meet, and that is what she did. It worked, as it always did, and she rolled her eyes and laughed. Giant catfish...as if.

  She stood up and retrieved her bow, walking slowly, feeling the heaviness of the mud on her shoes and the uncomfortable wetness of her jeans around the backs of her knees.

  Some movement caught her eye. A brown and white rabbit.

  She didn't have any of the razorblade points that she'd had when hunting deer with her father, but she did have a couple of sharp-tipped field points. They would work. Maybe they'd have rabbit stew tonight. Slowly and quietly, she unsnapped one of the arrows from the quiver attached to the bow. Her dad was away on a business trip, and he'd be proud when she told him she'd bagged a rabbit. It would be her first kill.

  After nocking the arrow to the string, she drew it back until her index finger touched the corner of her mouth. She had started learning to use the bow when she was seven, and she was ten going on eleven now, so she'd had a lot of practice. But this wasn't a bull's eye—it was a real live animal—and her heart quickened with excitement. Gauging the distance and using her sight, she took aim. Steady, steady, she told herself.

  Twang. The arrow whistled and shot away. It hit the rabbit in the hindquarters, spinning it around.

  “Yeah!” Lizzie cheered.

  The rabbit began to squeal piteously. The pain in its voice hit Lizzie like a bucketful of cold water.

  She ran to the rabbit. The arrow leaned out of it at an angle and jiggled as it kicked and fought to escape. All the while it cried a desperate high-pitched cry. Blood gurgled from the wound and down its leg. Glancing up at Lizzie, the rabbit struggled harder, wild with fear.

  “Oh no,” Lizzie moaned. She dropped to her knees. Her stomach tightened and she felt like she was going to be sick. Reaching out to touch the animal, wanting to comfort it, she hesitated, her hand frozen in the air—it might try to bite her.

  “What have I done?” she asked herself.

  “It is obvious what you haf done,” came a nearby voice. “Ze question is: will you let me undo it?”

  Startled by the voice, Lizzie whirled around to see who had spoken. There was no one.

  “Do you have the Sack with you?”

  I spoke: “The Sack, that is here;

  because apples, nut and almond core

  eat pious children gladly.”

  “Do you have the rod also with you?”

  I spoke: “The rod, it is here;

  but for the children, only the bad,

  those it meets them right, upon their part.”

 

  excerpt of Knecht Ruprecht by Theodor Storm

  Chapter 2 — Knecht Ruprecht

  “I can help zis rabbit creature, if zat is what you wish.”

  Lizzie looked around, but she couldn't see anyone.

  “I can help ze creature, but ze time to do so grows short. Do you wish zat I save it?”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “We neet to hurry. But first, you must make solemn promise. You must promise never to tell anyone—not a soul—that you haf seen me.”

  “I promise,” Lizzie answered.

  “Do you swear it on ze Bible?”

  “Yes, yes.” Anything, if he could just help the rabbit.

  “Zan you must do your part. Pull ze arrow from ze creature's leg.” The voice now came from where the rabbit lay.

  Lizzie looked down.

  He stood only as tall as her knees; he wore a red cone-shaped cap that bent to one side, a brown jacket and trousers, and a bright green vest. His shoes were green too, and they curled up on the end. A silver beard hung down from a face that had so many wrinkles it looked like the bark of a windswept tree.

  Lizzie blinked in disbelief. She had long since figured out where the presents under the Christmas tree came from, and she knew that tiny, winged ladies with wands didn't really pay cash for baby teeth. Only little kids believe in fairies and elves—but this guy at her feet was too small even to be a midget. He looked like one of those little figurines that people put in gardens: a gnome.

  “Ze arrow,” the gnome said, pointing at the rabbit. His voice was deep and strong, in stark contrast to his tiny body. “Hurry child. Death comes near.”

  The rab
bit lay motionless. Lizzie couldn't even tell if it still breathed. At least now she felt safe touching it—she knew it wouldn't bite. She kneeled, put one hand on its hindquarters, and pulled on the arrow with the other hand. It didn't come out easily; she had to tug on it, and once she had pulled it out a few inches, she had to reach down and get a new grip on the arrow closer to the body, wincing before wrapping her fingers around the shaft covered with sticky blood. But this was her fault, and she would do anything to make it better. The rabbit kicked once as the arrow came out, but then lay still again. Lizzie eagerly tossed the arrow away and wiped her bloody hand on her jeans.

  The gnome leaned over and put his hand on the wound. He closed his eyes and began to chant words she found both strange and soothing. His hand glowed red, and brilliant rays of light escaped between his fingers.

  After a moment, the rabbit looked up with darting, nervous eyes. Springing out of the gnome's gnarled hands it ran some ten feet before pausing and giving a wary and confused look back. There was blood on its leg, but the wound was gone.

  “You go on zere, furry creature,” the gnome said. “No neet to say sank-you.”

  With that, the bunny hopped away into the brush.

  The gnome turned to Lizzie and looked her over head to toe. “So, human child,” he asked, “what is it your people call you?”

  Lizzie just stared blankly. She had been responding automatically, caught up in the excitement of the moment, but now it began to sink in. He couldn't be real; he couldn't have saved the rabbit like that. It was impossible. But it didn't feel like a dream, and it was too realistic to be a hoax.

  “What is your name?” he asked again, slowly.

  Lizzie took a deep breath and then answered, “Lizzie.”

  “Lizzie? Just Lizzie?” The gnome narrowed his eyes. “But your folk most often haf more zan one name. Zere are so, so many of you, you need two or sree names even, yah?”

  “Well, yes. I'm Lizzie Long...really, my full name is Elizabeth Marie Long. Everybody calls me Lizzie, though.”

  “She is Long zen...yah,” the gnome muttered, looking up into the trees. He then stared at her hard.

  Lizzie shifted on her feet. Why did he repeat her name like it was something special? Maybe he just thought the name suited her; she was tall after all, especially compared to him. But then why was he staring at her like that?