The Last of the Runners

When he awoke, the rain had stopped. Kyrin breakfasted on the sweet bread and sausage the old woman had prepared for the journey. Fortified against the day, he stepped from his dry oasis into the damp world. He caught the movement of a brown shadow in the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look properly, there was nothing. A deer? Kyrin didn’t think so. It was too tall and thin. He had no reason to fear brown shadows. It was the grey ones that would threaten to take him back to Villblanche.

The air felt fresh after the rain, fresh and colder, and the undergrowth was sodden. The brown ferns and bracken had been bent over by the weight of water and made it slow going until Kyrin struck upon a path. A quicker pace and the cold did not feel so sharp and Racontour felt closer.Kyrin pushed himself that morning, driven by his keenness to reach Racontour naturally, but also by his growing awareness of the presence of brown shadows. He wanted to reach more open country, for there seemed to be more of them now. On previous days, if he had thought of it, he might have reckoned on one or two shadows following him. Today, there were shadows either side of him some in front and behind. They moved and disappeared among the trees and the bracken, visible one moment, invisible the next, but always encircling him. They never came close, or sought to block his path, but they were always there.

When he stopped for lunch after four hours hard walking, Kyrin watched the forest around him. He knew that something or someone was there, yet now all was still, he could see nothing but trees and the occasional bird or squirrel. It frustrated him as much as the fleeting corner of the eye shadows that had dogged him all morning and would do the same when he started to move again. If it was not for his urgent desire to get to Racontour and find Ash Couper, he would have tried to change his path, turn back or left unexpectedly and try to catch the shadows out, to see if they were more than just shadows.

As the glow of his fire weave faded that night, he did not see the shadow who maintained it from the other side of the clearing and stopped the first frost from falling on Kyrin. He could not hear the stories they wove to keep his dreams at bay and rest his mind. He did not hear the weave that took the fatigue from his legs, but it was there, threads of a nightweave that surrounded him, rested him and prepared him for the new day.

Yet what would he say about the sensations he experienced on his run?

It was like coming home.

The Rector’s heart sang as he swept along the corridor. He had been inspired. He had solved the problem of the runners with a word. Say that the runners have been stopped and they are. It had been so simple and had come to him in an instant. He stopped. No, not in an instant. He had been waiting for years, waiting to be revenged on that song and those who sang it. How even the tune grunted by the gagged women had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand, the childhood fears reawakened! They had laughed at him all those years ago, because he had been frightened of dragons.

“It’s only a story,” they had said, but they had sung the song nonetheless, and laughed as he had curled up on the floor, his hands over his ears, trying to block out the fearful words, trying to stop the dragons flying into his mind.

“Don’t let your imagination run away with you,” his mother had said, ruffling his hair. “It’s just a story. They aren’t real.”

So he had stopped imagining things. He had locked his imagination away and when he moved to the Training School, he found that his way of thinking was rewarded. The wild imaginings of others were frowned upon, particularly if their imagination did cause them to run wild. He prospered so in the grey classrooms, the sun shone on him. Stories ceased to trouble him and the dragons disappeared.

It had been good to conquer that fear, to subdue his own imagination to fact, but the Rector’s hate of the song ran even deeper.

He had had a friend, a true friend who had stood by him while the others had teased him. He and Kyrl had been inseparable. They had gone to the Training School together and, in those first months, they had achieved equally in their classes. Teachers had congratulated them and spoken of their high promise. It had been a happy time.

As spring had turned to summer, Kyrl had said to him, “Can you imagine this going on for ever?”

The Rector had been too happy to foresee how the conversation would develop and had said “Yes.”

“Really?” Kyrl had said, “It is going to be nothing but calculus and practical writing for ever? Are we to be trapped in grey classrooms until we are allowed to escape into grey offices? Is that it? Our lives ruled forever by the beat of the steam clock?”

The Rector had tried so hard to make Kyrl see the Training School and their future employment in a positive light but his imagination had become so dominated by fact that he could only make everything sound more grey and lifeless. Kyrl could not be persuaded. Three weeks before the summer solstice, he ran, slipping away from the village on the moonless night. The Rector had seen him go. He had said nothing. He had been beaten for his silence, but he had said nothing, in honour of their friendship. It was the last time he had a single positive thought for a runner. Running had taken away his friend, so from that moment he made very effort he could to bring it to an end.

And what had Kyrl whistled as he disappeared into the dark. It had had to be that tune. Now, it was over. He had his revenge in one easy blow. It just had to be made public. Once it had been announced officially, it was fact. The city had to believe it and then he could remove every trace of the plague from the place. He would make sure nothing in the schools awoke the imagination of the children. They had to be taught to dream of the prosperity of the city, not of dragons, knights or princesses. There would be no reading or writing anything fanciful. Fiction would be banned and the rule of fact set down in law. Once the Proctor gave his consent, the rest would be easy.

“This is not the truth, Rector,” the old man had said, having listened to the Rector’s plan. “You cannot expect me to endorse untruth.”

Try as he might, the Rector could not persuade the Proctor of the virtue of his plan.

“Untruth undermines the law and the lore of the city,” said the Proctor. “for all we do is based on fact. It is through fact that we have prospered. Make this a fact and I accept all that follows.”

“Can I not at least report it as a probability?” asked the Rector. “It would suffice to deter the majority and that would allow us to progress from this backward era.”

“If my name is to go on the statement, it must be an unconfirmed report,” said the Proctor. “If you wish to publicise it under your own seal, you must take the consequences.”

“You would allow me to do that, Proctor?”

“Untruth undermines the city and its servants face the consequence.”

“Or reap the benefits,” said the Rector.

“What benefit ever comes from a lie?”

“Perhaps I need to show you,” said the Rector, smiling. “I think you’d be surprised.”

The Proctor did not smile. The behaviour of the Rector concerned him. To try to take forward the government of the city based on a lie at a time when the prophecy threatened the end of Villblanche seemed dangerous in the extreme. He knew the risks. If the populace stopped believing the pronouncements of the Council for any reason, the weave that had kept the city on its course for years would start to unravel. It was the secret at the heart of the government of Villblanche. For all the pronouncements they made against the Story Weavers, the will of the Council of Elders was maintained by an ancient weave. Proctor handed the secret onto Proctor and learned the secret of maintaining the weave. This Proctor had made a study of the art and had learned how little the Proctors actually knew of it. Part of him wanted to learn more of the Weavers’ art, but his long years of service to the city kept the desire in check. It would have been an idle pursuit, with no benefit to others.

“On the contrary,” the Proctor said slowly, “I think you would be surprised how much the life of Villblanche depends on truth. Rumour is a Weaver’s tool. It may work in the isolation of the cells, but it should not be allowed to run riot. It disturbs the calm progression of daily life.”

“But would this not silence those who believe in the prophecy? Would it not snuff out their last hope of a different life?”

“Rector, stop the runner. That is the priority at the moment. Direct your energy to that. Your grand scheme for the eradication of all memory of these troublesome people can wait until he is caught.”

The finger moved on the arm of the chair and the Rector saw that his interview was ended. If he needed another reason to hate the runners and what they represented, he had it now. The Proctor had not approved of his scheme, citing the importance of truth to the city. The man was getting old, his head too full of ancient lore to see how the world was running. One day.

Yet he would not cross him. The Proctor’s word was law. The Rector did not want any blemishes on his record for he had his eyes on the high backed chair with lion arms. One day, his word would be law. Stop the runner, that was it. Stop this one delinquent boy from getting to… where? Where did they go? And who was this boy, this nuisance. The Sub-Magister would tell him.

The Proctor’s finger continued to quiver on the arm of his chair. The situation was more serious than he thought. The Rector had no idea how important the two things were: the single runner and the prophecy. So much was in the weave of the world, but one cut thread could run and holes would appear. Would Villblanche remain intact? Could it withstand the coming of the Weaver King?