The Sword Bearer Read online

  The Archies ofAnthropos by John White

  The Sword Bearer

  Gaal the Conqueror

  The Tower of Geburah

  The Iron Sceptre

  The Quest for the King

  The Dark Lord's Demise

  JΟΗΝ WHITE

  * * *

  THE ARCHIVES

  OF ANTHROPOS

  Cover Illustration by

  Vic Mitchell

  Interior Illustrations by

  Jack Stockman

  * * *

  InterVarsity Press

  Downers Grove, Illinois

  ® 1986 by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of the United States of America

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515.

  InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a student movement active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, 6400 Schnieder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895.

  Cover illustration: Vic Mitchell

  Interior illustrations: Jack Stockman

  ISBN 0-87784-590-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  White, John, 1924 Mar. 5-

  The sword bearer.

  (The Archives of anthropos)

  Summary: On his thirteenth birthday John Wilson is transported to Anthropos, a land of dwarfs and talking animals, where he is hailed as the Sword Bearer, destined to slay the Goblin Prince and deliver the world from eviL

  [1. Fantasy] I. Title.

  PZ7.W5837Sw 1986 [Fic] 86-2860

  ISBN 0-87784-590-5

  * * *

  25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

  14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01

  To Nancy, Paul and Stephen

  1 The Birthday That Went Wrong

  * * *

  2 Troubled Sleep

  * * *

  3 John Makes a Dream Journey

  * * *

  4 Slapfoot Comes for John

  * * *

  5 The Lord Lunacy

  * * *

  6 Death Sentence

  * * *

  7 The Prophet and the King

  * * *

  8John Behaves Badly

  * * *

  9The Goblin Prince

  * * *

  10The Secret Plan

  * * *

  11 Oso and Aguila Attack

  * * *

  12 The Two Towers

  * * *

  13 The Seer

  * * *

  14 The Coming of the Copper Moon

  * * *

  15 The Hideous Head

  * * *

  16 The Cup in the Tower

  * * *

  17 The Sword of Geburah

  * * *

  18 The Building of the Castle

  * * *

  19 The Fight in the Cave

  * * *

  20 Descent of the Four Winds

  * * *

  21 Goldcoffin

  * * *

  22 Folly's Comfort

  * * *

  23 Journey into Pain

  * * *

  24 Tragedy in the Amphitheater

  * * *

  25 Efel Spawn

  * * *

  26 The Third Pross Stone

  * * *

  27 Battle of the Titans

  * * *

  28 The Seven-Headed Dragon

  * * *

  29 Old Nick's Triumph

  * * *

  30 Ian McNab

  * * *

  31 Link between Two Worlds

  1

  * * *

  The Birthday

  That

  Went Wrong

  John Wilson was no good at whistling, but he whistled anyway. He whistled in spite of the fog, and the fog was one of Pendle-ton's worst

  Pendleton people used to call them pea-soup fogs because of their dirty yellow color. Scientists said the color came from pollution, the pollution caused by thousands and thousands of tiny houses. People warmed their homes with coal fireplaces in those days, and the coal sent smoke belching out of all those chimneys. And all the factory chimneys belched smoke too.

  Pendleton fogs used to be so dense that sometimes you couldn't see across Ellor Street. Ellor Street was the street John Wilson followed most of the way home from school. The gathering darkness made it harder for John to see. He walked past a bus that was crawling along Ellor Street following a man who walked ahead waving a white flag to help the driver. "You might just as well walk!" one lady said indignantly as she stepped off the slowly moving vehicle.

  John stopped whisding and laughed softly to himself. Then he thought of how he had tried to cross Ellor Street a few minutes before and giggled some more. He had stepped off the pavement (that's what they call the sidewalk in England), and like someone lost in a forest he had walked in a circle until he arrived back on the same side of the street. It was very confusing, but he got himself sorted out eventually, on the right side and going in the right direction.

  As a matter of fact he had worked out a system. He had one foot on the pavement (that's the sidewalk, you remember) and one foot in the gutter. He could have walked beside the wall, touching it to be sure he was walking straight ahead. But everyone else was doing that, and they kept bumping into one another and saying things like, "Oo, excuse me! Isn't it awful. It's absolutely dreadful!" or, "Lors! I can't see a blessed thing! Am so sorry!"

  John's plan was a lot better. The only things he had to watch out for were lamp posts. And since the lamplighter had just been lighting them ahead of John, he could see the eerie glow of a shining lamp several steps before he reached the lamp post. So he didn't have to touch anything or bump into anyone. At least, that was his plan.

  So John Wilson whistled. It was his thirteenth birthday, and Grandma Wilson had promised to bake him a birthday cake with thirteen candles on it. John and his grandma had lived together for as long as John could remember. He could recall nothing about his parents, which was what made this day so special. Grandma Wilson had promised to tell him about his parents on his thirteenth birthday. Always before she had told him, "When you are older I'll tell you. You're too young to understand yet."

  Sometimes John wondered whether his parents had been very wicked, and whenever he thought like that he grew angry and scared. At other times he thought he may have been bad when he was small and that his parents hadn't liked him and had left him with Grandma Wilson. But mostly he thought that his parents were on a secret adventure. Perhaps they were in the Secret Service. And now that he was thirteen he would find out. So he whistled his way through the fog, excited about the mystery that was about to be solved.

  John Wilson loved mysteries. He borrowed mystery books from the library and went to the pictures (we would say movies now) as often as he could. He also spent a lot of time in a dream world where he was the hero in a hundred mystery stories he would make up himself.

  He fumbled in his blazer pocket and pulled out a dirty piece of string from which a gold ring and a gold locket hung. Inside the locket was a faded brown picture of a World War I soldier wearing a moustache and looking very stern. (You were supposed to look stern in those days when you had your picture taken.) There was also a lock of curly red hair. The gold ring was a man's signet ring, but it seemed very old and it was impossible to read the letters on it. John was sure the ring and the locket had something to do with his parents, and he had ofte
n asked Grandma Wilson whether the photograph was of his father. But always she would make the same reply, "You're too young yet. Wait till you're a bit older."

  "How much older, Grandma?"

  "Stop bothering me, John. You'll know soon enough!"

  But John continued to bother his grandma till at last she told him that if only he would stop, she would tell him at tea time on his thirteenth birthday.

  He pulled the string over his head, tucking the ring and the locket inside his shirt and frowning as he did so. They were a source of trouble as well as a mystery. At first his grandma had insisted he wear them round his neck on a pink silk ribbon; yet the children in the earlier grades at school had made fun of him. After a number of arguments with his grandmother, a compromise was made. John could use ordinary string so long as he always wore them. But the teasing had continued until at last John had got into the habit of putting them into his pocket on the way to school and replacing them round his neck as he drew near home. He didn't bother to tell his grandma about the new arrangement and since she never asked, John felt he wasn't really disobeying.

  Don't let me give you the wrong idea about Grandma Wilson. She was kind. She did all she could to make John happy. She was a smiling, fat old lady whose white hair had a yellow streak in it and was tied in a bun at the back She always wore white blouses and dark gray skirts that came down to her ankles. She read John stories long after he could read for himself. There was something special about the way Grandma read which made the stories seem more exciting than when John read them alone. He especially liked the stories by Nesbitt, like The Phoenix and the Carpet. So for years he had coaxed her to read and had sat on the floor, snuggling against her knees and feeling the warmth from the fire as he closed his eyes and listened.

  She was proud of John and even more proud after he had won his scholarship to Salford Grammar School, a sort of special high school for boys only. Salford Grammar School was a mile from Pimblett's Place, the side street John lived on, and he walked there and back twice a day. At that school they had forms instead of grades, and John was in a form called third form removed, a form for bright students who were skipping a year.

  He liked the school, but soon after he arrived in form 1 (the equivalent of seventh grade) things became difficult, not at school, but on Ellor Street. No one from anywhere near where John lived had ever gone to Salford Grammar School before. It was a school for "toffs" and "snobs" and "sissies"—or so the boys on Ellor Street said. What made it worse was that John had won money with his scholarship so that he could buy things like the school uniform. And it was the uniform, just as it had used to be the pink ribbon, that caused the problem.

  There were gray shorts and gray socks with green bands round the top. There was also a green blazer trimmed around the edges, and the collar had a bright yellow ribbon. On the pocket a yellow lion was embroidered, glaring defiantly. And from the front of the green school cap John had to wear, the same yellow lion clawed aggressively at anyone who cared to take notice.

  And a gang of boys roaming Ellor Street were happy to do so, snatching the cap from John's head and tossing it from one to another. Grandma Wilson had taught John not to fight. But John soon found that it was fight or go under. He decided one day that a sudden and ferocious attack on the leader of the gang would be the best strategy, fists pummeling as accurately as possible on the gang-leader's nose. I don't know that he was right in his decision, but after a couple such attacks—all of which ended in victory—the gang became decidedly friendlier. There was no more hat snatching and no more name calling.

  He held his head higher after that He was not only clever. He was tough—or so he thought. Secretly he began to look down on the Ellor Street gang. Who else was smart enough to go to Salford Grammar School and strong enough to hold his own against this gang?

  John Wilson continued to hobble, right foot in the gutter, left foot up on the curb and twelve more lamp posts to go. He also continued to whistle. He was not only happy about his birthday cake and the solution to his mystery, but about something that had happened in school that afternoon. The teachers, who were all men and were called masters, wore black gowns over their jackets, gowns that were something like modern graduation gowns, only much more full and having sleeves that hung low. And among the boys there was a competition to see who could tear the biggest piece of silk from a master's gown.

  This was easier to do with some masters than with others.The German master's gown was in tatters. The French master's gown looked perfectly new. The French master never smiled. He had a little black lump in the middle of his forehead that he could move. He spoke quietly, and you knew just by looking at him that to fool with him was to invite disaster. German lessons tended to be rowdy, whereas French lessons were orderly and subdued. You really got to know French, but even if you were good you barely scraped through in German. I think the German master enjoyed getting his gown torn and just pretended not to notice when it was happening. Or he would say, "Oh, confound it! I'm forever ripping this dratted thing!"

  To tear a master's gown you had to wait until he stood beside your desk with his back to you. You then hooked his gown on a nail on the side of your desk, or else trapped it under your desk lid and leaned hard with your elbows on the lid. Some of the masters had the habit of moving suddenly toward the front of the classroom, and there would be a ripping noise as a new tear was made.

  It took at least two and sometimes three or four tears before you could actually capture a ragged bit of black silk and John Wilson had captured his first piece that afternoon. I can't say I approve, and I approve even less of the fact that he was hugely delighted.

  In his dreamy mind it was not just a piece of black silk, it was a piece of King Saul's robe and John Wilson was David, waving it in triumph. Then it was a piece of yellow silk cut from the robe of an enemy of the Genghis Khan, who was telling him that from then on he would be given the fastest horse on the steppes of Asia and that he would ride beside his master in triumph to the very heart of China.

  His dream began to fade as he stared into the deepening obscurity. The light from the next lamp had not appeared. He took off his glasses and rubbed them carefully with his dirty handkerchief. One lens was loose and he wiped it cautiously, taking care not to push it out But he could see no better when he put his glasses back on. Cautiously he edged forward into the foggy darkness.

  What happened next took place too suddenly for John to realize what was going on.

  He bumped against something or someone very solid, tripped and fell, banging his head against a lamp post as he did so, and knocking off his glasses. From above his head there came the sound of breaking glass. Pieces of glass fell on him and on the pavement around him. A familiar voice was muttering curses. He had bumped into Mr. Leadbetter the lamplighter, jerking Mr. Leadbetter's lighting pole through the glass of the lamp far above them both. (Mr. Leadbetter had a pole with a hook and a flame on the end of it, the hook to turn the gas on and the flame to light the mande.)

  "Oh, Mr. Leadbetter, I really am sorry," John said. "I couldn't see you."

  "Is that young John Wilson?" the lamplighter asked. "I suppose it couldn't be 'elped, lad. Are you all right?"

  John fingered his forehead where a lump was slowly rising. "I've knocked me glasses off," was all he said.

  Carefully the lamplighter rested his long pole against the wall of a store beside them. Then he got down on his hands and knees with John, groping around in search of the spectacles. "I 'ope it's not smashed," Mr. Leadbetter said slowly. " 'Ere. What's this?"

  In the dimness John could see his glasses in Mr. Leadbetter's big hands. "Thanks, Mr. Leadbetter," he sighed with relief. "One of the lenses is loose."

  "Ay, an' it's not there now."

  It took them a little longer to find the lens, and to John's delight it was not broken. "It's not even cracked, lad," the lamplighter said as John clicked the lens back into place.

  Slowly they walked together, and John
waited at each lamp post while the lamplighter pushed his flame-tipped pole up inside the lamp. With the hook he would turn the gas on, and John could hear the faint hiss followed by a popping sound as the mande suddenly glowed white and clear.

  "It's me birthday today," John said after a while.

  "Is it now? Many 'appy returns, lad! 'Ow old are you?"

  "Thirteen," John answered proudly.

  "Ee, bah gum! Thirteen! They'll be 'avin' you in long pants before you know what's 'appened!" English schoolboys wore shorts in those days.

  "Me granny's going to get me a suit when she's got the money."

  Soon they arrived at Pimblett's Place, where the lamps had already been lit. "Good-by, young John. Eat a piece of cake for me, will you? Don't forget now!"

  His tall figure dissolved into the fog and John waited until his muffled footsteps grew silent before turning toward home. Pimblett's Place was a short street ending in a tall brick wall topped with broken glass. The terraced houses, blackened with grime and soot, huddled together as if to comfort one another. There were no gardens. Front doors opened directly onto the pavement.