The Last of the Runners

The buzzards were circling high against the blue sky. What were they calling to each other, Kyrin wondered. Did they praise the beauty of the sunlit sky or the mauves and greens of the Myddlyn Mountains? Did they just call to each other for fun or were they saying what prey they could see? What did the world look like through their eyes, soaring across the heavens above the forest and rivers? Could they see over the Curtain Mountains to the outside, to the wild place it was said their ancestors had escaped from? Did they have wild dreams that they did not understand? Were there songs in them that they had never heard? What threatened their happiness but a lack of prey?

“Kyrin!”

It was his mother’s voice. Kyrin remained where he was in the long grass, gazing up at the sky. She would want some chore done – water fetched, logs chopped, potatoes peeled – and Kyrin was far too happy to want to do that. It was summer and the school doors were closing tomorrow until the autumn.

“Kyrin! Where are you? Gan’s come to see you!”

Kyrin leapt up and ran down to the house. Gan was his best friend and had been as long as he could remember. With her usual faded yellow headscarf holding back her hair, his mother was sitting by the back door, shelling peas, the dark haired Gan standing next to her.

“There you are. Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you all afternoon. What have you been up to?”

“Just thinking, Mother,” said Kyrin.

“He does too much of that, Gan,” she said. “Can spend whole days doing it if I don’t keep him busy. I mean, what good is all this thinking for boys of your age?”

“It’s important to think,” said Gan seriously, “so that you can make the right choice.”

“Thinking’s for dreamers and Story Weavers,” she said. “Just do as the Elders tell you and all will be well.”

“She’s been saying that for months,” said Kyrin.

“My mother says the same thing,” said Gan.

“Because we just want the best for you,” said Kyrin’s mother.

“She says that, too,” said Gan, “even more often.”

“Be off with you, cheeky little monsters,” she said. “There’s a good hour before dinner. Will you stay and eat with us, Gan?”

“I’m not sure if I’ll have time,” said Gan, “but thank you.”

The two boys walked back out into the meadow and lay down in the grass.

“You never said no to my mother’s cooking before?” said Kyrin. “What’s the matter?”

Gan looked at him. There was fear in his eyes, fear and excitement.

“I’ve made up my mind,” he said quietly. “I’ve come to say goodbye.”

“I don’t understand,” said Kyrin.

“I’m not going to wait till the autumn. I’m going now. Tonight.”

“What? Why tonight? The holiday starts tomorrow.”

Gan motioned Kyrin to be quiet. He leant over so his mouth almost touched Kyrin’s ear.

“I’ve been thinking and I’m sure that’s why the others got caught,” he whispered, “Because they left it too late. The minute you start in that place, they begin to get their claws into you and to drain your imagination. You can’t run if they have taken that away – not for long. For most, it’s the last spark of their imagination that makes them run, and because the spark is so weak, they get caught. Not me though. I’m going now – while my imagination is still burning brightly. And I have to see what is out there, all those things we talked about.”

“You don’t believe they’re real, do you?”

“You have to believe, Kyrin, you just have to!” said Gan angrily. “You have to believe there is something better out there, away from this city!”

“But Story Weavers and all, it’s just a legend!”

“So your mother says!”

“But it is. Someone has just made up a very good story about them, that’s all.”

“You’re wrong,” said Gan. “Just because you’ve got better marks than me at school doesn’t make you right. Just because your stories are better than mine, doesn’t make you right!”

“Did I say that I was?”

“I don’t care anymore,” Gan said wildly, “I believe and I know how important the Story Weavers are. I am going to be better than you for once. I am going to find them.”

“What about your mother?” asked Kyrin. “Don’t you care what happens to the parents of runners they catch? Do you want her cleaning the walls of the Council House during the night?”

“They won’t catch me,” said Gan.

“How can you be certain?”

“Because they won’t expect me to go now, silly. Who runs through the holiday? So they won’t be ready and I’ll be away before they notice. I’m going all the way.”

“All the way where?” asked Kyrin.

“Villombre. It’s the only place.”

“It’s a dangerous place, Villombre.”

“Who says? Your mother?”

“The Elders…”

“Exactly,” said Gan. “They say it’s a dangerous place. Of course they do. They want to frighten you into staying. Not just that. They don’t want you to think how bad it would be to stay here and face the Training School and the soulless life afterwards.”

“But they say it’s full of thieves and magicians!” said Kyrin.

“And Villblanche isn’t?” said Gan angrily. “They will steal your life and make you believe it’s wonderful when really it’s dull and worthless. Isn’t that magic?”

“Have you been talking to Mrs Bruntler again?”

“She understands what is wrong here,” said Gan. “That’s why she stayed when her husband left for Villombre. She’s shown me what is out there, away from the City. When you want to know what is wrong in Villblanche, go and speak to her.”

“You can tell me.”

“I can’t,” said Gan sadly. “There isn’t time. And you are not ready yet. You have not been asked the question.”

“What’s that?” asked Kyrin.

“When they ask you to decide how you are going to serve the state and you find there is nothing you want to do, and you can’t imagine a life doing what they want. That’s when you go and see Mrs Bruntler.”

“And if I can imagine a life following what the Elders say?”

“You won’t need to see her,” said Gan sadly. “In which case, you will join those grey faced boys we laughed at as they trailed home and this is where our lives part forever.”

He held out his hand to Kyrin, who took it, accepting this formal gesture of farewell.

“I will miss you, my friend,” said Gan. “And all our years of friendship.”

“I will miss you,” said Kyrin, trying not to allow his tears to well up. “Can we not meet again? Can we not remain friends?”

“Not in Villblanche,” said Gan. “For I would be a failed runner and those who choose to stay do not mix with those who tried to run away and shirk their responsibility.”

“In Villombre then?”

“In Villombre, in the house of Mr Bruntler,” said Gan. “Perhaps if we meet there, our friendship is assured. Now I must go. Forgive my angry words. Farewell, good friend, I will not forget you.”

Gan hugged Kyrin and they stood there for an instant, a childlike embrace holding the adult world at bay. Then the moment had passed. Gan smiled weakly and ran off.

Kyrin slumped back down into the grass and stared up at the sky. The buzzards were still circling and crying out to each other. A single tear escaped from the corner of his right eye but he brushed it away crossly. He did not want to cry. It would make his mother ask questions and that would cause problems for Gan. Kyrin knew his mother would be round to Gan’s house like a shot if she thought he was going to run for she had an absolute hatred of the runners – he had been slapped for just asking about them. No, giving his mother any reason to suspect would see Gan caught before he got started.

Lying there in the grass, it was hard to see what there was to run away from. They had lived in a perfectly ordered sunlit world. Nothing had troubled them in this first decade of their lives. Only the move from the village school to the Training School in Villblanche now loomed on the horizon. He had seen the change in the others from his village that had gone there. The grey uniform soon was matched by the grey faces and weary expressions as they trudged home, the joy squeezed out of them by the homework and assessments. He and Gan had joked about it, finding it funny how old and worried these children started to look and how quickly they had stopped playing games. However, now it had become very real. For Gan, it had been due to start in the autumn – Kyrin had four more seasons to wait. How would he react when the question was asked? Would he stay or would he run?

The taut golden threads quivered as the pattern changed once more. It was drawing near. She could feel it in the depths of her slumber, the excitement of the two boys. Yet it could not be two. Only one could run if the prophecy was to be fulfilled. If they ran now, it would be too early. He needed to arrive on the Solstice for the sign to be clear to all. So let him hesitate for the moment. Let his friend run now, because his pattern had to trace another story.

The Training School arched into the sky close to the centre of Villblanche. Above its imposing double doors, the scrubbed white stone stretched seven storeys high. Like every important building in the city, the Training School was kept spotlessly white. None of the soot that coated the rest of the city was allowed to stain these symbols of authority. Just below the great steam clock at the top of the Training School, with its small windows shut tight, was the office of the Head Learner. Perched on her grey leather chair, the Head Learner faced an unpleasant and unwelcome visitor, the second most important man in the city.

“The number of runners remains higher than I’d expect, Head Learner, despite all your recent efforts.”

“I’m sure that we will see a change soon, Rector,” she simpered behind the owl-like glasses. “The training programme is beginning to pay dividends.”

“So you have been saying for the last year, Head Learner.” The toad-like jowls of the Rector shook above the collar of his slate grey robes. “I do not think the Proctor will continue to wait for these promised dividends, nor to hold back the Inquisitorial Officers.”

“We have made significant progress, Rector, in recent months,” The Head Learner’s head seemed to swivel atop her ash-grey collar, her grey eyes widening as her sense of panic grew and the steady hiss and thud of the great clock took on a menacing tone.

“Progress, Head Learner?” the Rector sneered. “Progress toward which target?”

He gestured towards the charts that lined the grey panelled walls behind the Head Learner’s desk with all the malevolence of a toad that had spotted a fly.

“The number of students coming in from outlying villages is at its highest level for twenty years. In fact, we are one hundred per cent over our target.”

“The target the Proctor wishes to see met most of all is the elimination of the runners. Not just to see them caught, stopped from running in the first place.”

“Yet our training programme results have improved year on year,” the Head Learner twittered.

“While the number of runners remains unchanged.” The Rector spoke quietly, his small eyes boring into the woman in front of him. “The runners are those with the strongest imagination. If we cannot tame the strong ones, the training programme results are meaningless.”

“But the results…”

“Of the average and the weak!” The jowls quivered. “What do I care about their results? There is nothing praiseworthy about that. Stop the runners, Head Learner. Stop them running – or join them!”

Her pen scratched across the paper, not daring to blot. The Head Learner was perched upright at her desk, fidgeting like an owl about to regurgitate a pellet. The lines she wrote marked the paper as sharply as any claw, scoring black lines across the vellum.

The Rector’s visit had unsettled her. It had taken more than five minutes to bring her heart beat back to its normal steady pulse that matched the great clock. It never went faster than the clock; she would not allow it, as it showed unproductive emotions, not something the Head Learner considered appropriate for a person in her position.

She had hoped that her success in raising the training results would have deflected his attention – and that of the Inquisitorial Officers – from the runners. It was always the runners – those who chose to shirk the responsibility of life, who refused to leave their childish imagination behind and become serious students. It did not matter how many they caught, the loss of those few was seen as always more important than the achievement of the many! How the council fretted over the number of runners, spent money on catching them, wasted money on taming them! For all the talk, a recaptured runner rarely achieved the highest results – so much effort having to be spent in drilling those wild minds, to impress upon them the virtues of compliance and hard work when compared with the pointless excesses of uncontrolled imagination.

The claw’s pressure on the vellum was too great at the thought and it pierced the sheet. Just the merest mention of imagination and even the icy control of the Head Learner could be broken and anger allowed out. Another futile emotion – anger – which stopped one devoting one’s energy to the benefit of the state.

Each person’s energy needed to be devoted completely to advancing the prosperity of the state of Villblanche. It was the only point of education. Why else spend such time and effort training youth unless it was to repay the state through their industry and achievement.

Industry and the amassing of wealth were the ideals most prized in Villblanche, valued above all other art or science. The steam machines had brought progress, lifting the city out of its backward past. These machines now controlled many aspects of life. Time was marked by the great steam clock, its four huge faces dominating the skyline and a web of cogs, chains and wires took that time to every clock in the Council House and the Training School. Factory machines were driven by great engines which never rested. The streets were packed with steam carts and wagons, carrying in the coal and raw materials that were transformed into useful items in the factories. Occasionally, an officer of the city would go by on a steam horse, the closest machine to a luxury allowed in Villblanche. Within the walls of the city and on most of the roads to the nearest villages, guidance magnets had been placed in the cobbles to allow the officers to continue with other work as they travelled.

Villblanche had so dedicated itself to toil and industry and embraced the luxury of steam that the stones of the buildings themselves, the fair white stone quarried from the Mountains of Myddlyn had turned grey with the soot and ash that such amassing of wealth produced. No one minded. No one tried to clean it off. No one dared, not even in the warren of houses down by the Lattern Gate, which had once been so colourful. They were made to be proud of the working garb in which the city had clothed itself. It was a mark of its solidarity with the efforts of its hardworking people. Only the Council House and the Training School, the symbols of the city’s authority were kept clean, a shining example of the virtue of the Proctor and his colleagues. Those people whose children had disgraced themselves by running were ordered to spend nights mopping the stones of these buildings so that they shone white in the first rays of the sun. It was a fitting way for such people to make amends.

Steeled by the recollection of the purpose of the people of Villblanche and the need to stop the runners, the Head Learner rang the small brass bell that sat by her inkwell. Almost immediately, a mousy little woman poked her head round the grey panelled door, not much above the handle.

“Yes, Head Learner?”

“Send the Magister to me.”

“The Magister?” The fear and loathing were evident even in the tiny voice of the Head Learner’s secretary.

The mouse head disappeared. The Head Learner put down her pen and sat back. The runners had to be stopped. Her existence depended on it. These were no longer just wayward children. They were a real threat. For all the encouraging presentations she made at the village schools, despite all the attempts to make the training programme less forbidding, the wild ones kept running. She had no choice. The Magister would have to be allowed to do his work freely. This was no time for restraint.

There was nothing pleasant about the person shown into the Head Learner’s office an hour and a half later. Pear shaped, badly shaved, with an ugly bristle of a moustache, short of breath and sweating, the Magister held out a clammy hand, which the Head Learner managed to shake briefly, despite her distaste – something she barely managed to disguise. It was like picking up a rotten fish.

“You sent for me, Head Learner,” he wheezed. “I came as fast as I could.”

He sat down before being asked, and mopped at his sweating face with a greyish handkerchief. The yellow tobacco stains on his pudgy fingers stood out brightly against the cloth.

“I think it is time for you to come up with a flawless plan to stop these runners: not just catch them, but stop them running in the first place.”

The Head Learner dispensed with small talk, choosing to move directly to the reason for summoning this unpleasant little man. The less time he spent in her room the better.

“Oh, I have, Head Learner.”

If his physical appearance and odour was not sufficiently off-putting, his habit of apparently having foreseen every request for information and then being able to deliver a plausible solution - or convincing excuse for not having done something – put the Magister at the top of most people’s hate list. This meant nobody wanted to be in the same room as the Magister longer than necessary. But the desire to leave his company as swiftly as possible distorted what you heard. On occasions, his responses had some worth, though most often they sounded more plausible than they actually were. Through this semblance of ability, the Magister had prospered and cemented this position of authority which was way beyond his true abilities. He had blown his own trumpet with such skill the Head Learner could not see how she could do without him, nor how she had managed before his arrival. Any attempt to dislodge him was doomed to failure and to rebound on the instigator.

The Rector’s visit had, however, highlighted the fact that the number of runners had not gone down. Stopping the runners was one of the Magister’s principle tasks and, for all his talk, without the fierce steam hounds he had built, more runners would have escaped – the speed and tireless energy of the hounds making up for their master’s lack of either.

“So you have a plan then?”

“Indeed, Head Learner,” The words oozed obsequiously from beneath the stubbly moustache. “It just requires the right person to emerge.”

“Right person?”

“Absolutely, Head Learner. Without the right person, this plan will not work.”

“So it is not flawless then?” she sneered.

“It is flawless, Head Learner,” he wheezed, “once I have the right person.”

“What makes the person right?” the Head Learner snapped. She had the impression that he was trying to avoid explaining his plan, but the urgency of the matter helped her master her desire to get him out of the room as fast as possible.

“The person needs to be an almost completely successful runner,” the Magister whispered, “One we have caught almost at the gates of Villombre itself, because the further he has gone, the more of the network he will have seen. There has to be a network out there, helping these runts. And when we bring the scum back here, we give him a chance to redeem himself by helping us. We encourage this one to hold onto his memories, not allow them to fade away like a dream. That’s what happens to all the others, however much we punish them or their families. They never remember anything that could help.”

“So how will this one be different?” the Head Learner asked warily.

“We won’t make him believe that his memories are worthless dreams, or that forgetting them is what we want. No, we will persuade him that they are something of value that he can use to buy success. For each useful memory he gives us, he will be rewarded. It’s very simple – “When you tell us something helpful, then we treat you more kindly.””

“How will that stop the runners?” The Head Learner did not sound convinced.

“It will make it impossible to run,” he said, “because it will close down the network of support the runners rely on.”

“How can it do this?”

“Because I will use his knowledge to pursue the runners to each safe house and hovel from here to Villombre. The runners will stop when they know there is no hiding place. When we know everything, and we tell them that we know everything, the runners will have nowhere to go. The steam hounds will do the rest.”

“You will use a runner’s memories and imagination against them? How safe is that? Will you be able to trust this person?”

“When I have finished with him, he’ll be as tame as a pup. He’ll see it as a new career, an opportunity to put his foot on the promotion ladder. Sub-Magister is a good title. It doesn’t sound as if he is betraying people.”

“So when will you find the right person?”

“I have to watch every runner,” he said excitedly. “Each runner we bring in needs to be interrogated. I’ll know the right one when I find him. I don’t care what happens to the others.”

“I’ll let you act on this, Magister,” the Head Learner said quietly. “But you have no more than one year. If the runners are not stopped soon, I won’t be able to deflect the Rector’s attention from your shortcomings or your excesses. Nor the Inquisitorial Officers. Do you understand me? Not from any of them.”

“Yes, Head Learner,” he stammered, more sweat breaking out on his forehead. “Indeed, Head Learner, I understand absolutely.”

He sidled out of the room. Relieved, the Head Learner reached into the top drawer of her desk and took out a box of matches. She struck three, one after another, allowing the sulphur to burn away the smell that hung in the room after the Magister’s departure.

It was a mad plan. To turn a runner into a Watcher! Was it possible? To not remove his memories and use them to betray those who helped the runners – it was incredibly risky: failure this time would be a disaster. However what else had worked – apart from the swift steam dogs? It was time to act decisively, in order to put a definite end to the runners. If it meant taking a risk, so be it. She would let the revolting man have his way. The time for caution was past.