The Paper Sword (15 page)

“Tell me the riddle. I know many riddles. If I don't know the answer, I can probably figure it out.”

Under Saheli's nervous gaze, Xemion recited from memory the rhyme the locket library had posed.

Who'll be gouged

And who'll be gored

By the sword

Within the sword

Will its power

Be ignored

O who will wield

The paper sword

Vallaine shook his head. “I confess I haven't heard that one. But when there are layers in a riddle as there are in this one, you can expect it must be spelling for some kind of multilayered results. There's even something a little cross-spelled about it. But don't worry, Xemion, even if the old lady was trying to cast a riddle spell upon you there is no chance in these blocked times that such a thing could ever take effect over anything more than your curiosity.”

“Do you have any guesses?” Xemion smiled.

“In one of the stories there's an old Elphaerean emperor and he always threatened his subjects with an army and incredible weapons he didn't really have. When they found out and finally rebelled against him, they called him the Paper Tyrant. I imagine it's something like that.”

“That's exactly why I thought it must have something to do with this sword that I made. But I made it only as a prop, as something to perform a salutation with.”

“Let me see it again. Hold it up to the light so I can look at it.”

Xemion reached into his cloak and slowly withdrew the painted sword. He had not been holding it in the sun very much during the last day, but it still held a slight spectral glow that startled Vallaine. He drew back from it, a look of fear on his face.

“It's just silver paint for stars,” Xemion assured him. “It was left behind by the astrologers who used to live in my home. So there really is a sword within the sword. And I have used it as a paper sword in the sense you mean. When the examiner tried to kill our swan I could see he had a sword with him and that he was dying to use it. And I had nothing but this accursed toy. So I drew it anyway and it was somehow convincing enough that he completely surrendered.”

“And that's why you think it is in some sense a paper sword?”

“And when the dragon might have burned me, I raised it again and for some reason the dragon let me go.”

“As I said, there are bound to be more layers to this or you would not be asking me now.”

“But you said there is very little chance of a riddle spell having any effect,” Saheli said with concern.

“That's true.”

“So is there
any
chance?”

“As I said, there are those who believe that some spells work sometimes.”

“Who? Who says that?” Saheli demanded, her fear now edging on anger.

“They say that the magic never did entirely stop responding to proper spells. It just became inconstant. Uncertain. Sometimes it would respond and sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes it would run one way and sometimes another.”

“But how do you know all this?” Xemion asked incredulously.

“A long line of mothers taught my mother who taught me,” he said with a wink. “And I have always learned as much as possible from first-hand experience, which is an opportunity, by the way, that the two of you are now going to have yourselves.”

They had been ascending a small slope in the road and now that they had reached its crest the landscape of the western side of the city centre opened before them in a panoramic view.

To Xemion it was an awe-inspiring sight, but when he turned to Saheli he could see that she was barely aware of it. She seemed elsewhere. Before them, long lines of ruined lapis lazuli domes stood among wrecked green pavilions. Once made from slender sheets of jade, these structures now lay collapsed and scattered like windblown cards, their green sheets leaning haphazardly against the bases of broken white towers that, even in their shattered state, still suggested the beauty they once had. And here and there among them were other buildings whose curious, hybrid constructions seemed to be the result of strangely melded architectures.

“We are coming now into the most unsettled area of Ulde. This is the heart of a spell-knot. Nothing is resolved here. Thousands of wishes and spells still contend for dominance. And now, since they began the cleanup on the East side, they're dumping all the spell-crossed animals from there onto this side to die or de-spell, whichever comes first.”

As he led them on, they began to see the melded animals everywhere: camelphants, dogcats, hideous hogtoads. Xemion almost stepped on a snakemouse. It had the head of a viper but on its other end was a terrified rodent's body. The snake-part, hungry for its mouse part, kept lunging at its own tail, while the horribly squeaking mouse kept fleeing and dodging those terrible fangs. Then there were unrecognizable creatures — “omnimals” as Vallaine called them. They were made of thousands of bits of other creatures which writhed and wriggled and hopped and flapped all about, apparently in their death throes. They, Vallaine explained, were thought to be the cruel handiwork of schoolchildren who had learned to insert new words or syllables into the spell kones that had created them.

For Saheli, all of this was accompanied by the melody running through her mind. Neither her will nor her terror could stop it. And it seemed to be dragging her awareness away from here, back to those eyes, back to other eyes; the eyes of that ghoul by the wells, hateful eyes; her mother's eyes. An old man's eyes. Saheli almost remembered something. She almost saw a scene with an old man turning a large upright spell kone. She almost looked again into his ancient face, but suddenly red fingers snapped before her eyes.

“Are you there, Saheli?”

For a second the song and the scene were gone. For a second she had no memory at all and she stood there in the present moment gazing down a long avenue that ran through the verdant remains of a huge circular park. Its greenery had obviously been left untended for many years so that most of it was overgrown with dense thorn bushes and large, looming oaks with misshapen trunks that bent over almost sideways. Beyond them was a great curved wall crudely made of red bricks. The recent earthquake had destabilized it so that parts of it were now riddled with large cracks. Through these fissures a beautiful green light glowed.

The Great Kone.

Middle Magic

A
decade ago, when Pathan scientists first became interested in retrieving and reverse-engineering old spellworks, they ordered this massive brick wall built about the Great Kone so that none of the Phaerlanders whose forced labours they required could see the text. The great curve of brickwork Saheli and Xemion now beheld was easily twenty feet high and a hundred yards long, but it covered only the upper rim of one side of the Great Kone. If its point lay beneath it, it must be buried many leagues deep in the earth.

Now that Saheli dared to look at it, she couldn't tear her eyes away. Even in the light of the sun the glow of the Great Kone shone through the cracks in the wall like green luminous rivers on a map. “It's so beautiful and terrible,” she whispered.

“It's much wider than I thought,” said Xemion. “How deep does it go down into the ground?”

“It doesn't literally go underground at all,” Vallaine answered. He was keeping his eye on the sky again as they proceeded through the grove of twisted oaks toward the wall. “If you were to dig under it, as the Pathans once tried to do, you'd never find it. It's as though it's not there at all. But if you take the staircase that winds around it, it just goes down and down, deeper and deeper, and the text written on the outside of it just keeps spiralling around and down, getting smaller and smaller. And according to many it never does come to a point, it just goes on and on getting infinitely smaller.” To Xemion's quizzical look, he responded. “Let me explain. Picture a kone standing on its point with another kone upside-down beneath it so that they touch, point to point. It is said that each of those two kones is the underword to the other and that each of them creates a world that is the underworld to the other — their only common point being that one pointless point at the base of both of them. Now add another kone at right angles to the first two with its point also touching their points and then picture its mirror image opposite — its
underword
. Now multiply that by infinite kones at infinite angles all intersecting at that one point, and on those infinite kones imagine that infinite koans or codes or spells are written — overlapping, contradicting, clashing, and each of them creating its own world or universe — none of which are visible or detectable in our world except for one point — that nonexistent midpoint nexus that all the Great Kones share. And that is what is really at the bottom of the Great Kone and every other kone. It is a zero place that has no magic of its own, but draws magic from all the worlds that centre on it and imply it. It is, therefore, a conduit, a connecting place — a medium to what we call the middle magic.”

“We?” Saheli asked.

He looked at her but didn't answer. He looked at the sky. “The sun is almost at midday now,” he said. He pointed toward the kone. “You see how the shadow of the Great Kone is at its least now?”

Saheli nodded.

“That is the best time for you to pass.” He looked at Xemion. “Not only does it minimize the time you might encounter wraiths but it also serves the purpose of delivering you to the Panthemium almost exactly at midday. You must follow this track. As you will see, the wall extends on both sides of the Great Kone right across the city, but if you pass by the kone on the south side, just beyond where the shadow ends, there is a breach in the wall.” He narrowed his eyes and pointed. “You can just barely see beyond that breach to where a newer wall has been built, but there's a small fissure there that you can make your way through and then you'll be on the other side of the city. Now listen carefully to me. Even if some trait wraiths should be hiding in there when you pass through, just keep your eyes on the sky over the Great Kone and you'll have light in your face. Only if you look into the darkness and let the light leave your face will you be vulnerable.”

Saheli felt a wave of fear surge through her so mightily she thought her knees might buckle. The more she gazed upon the Great Kone and thought about passing close by it, the more her terror grew.

“Now, Xemion, we are in no danger at this distance, but when you get closer to the kone you must take care. When you pass by those places where the wall has cracked or fallen you will want to start reading the text. Everyone does, even the illiterate, but you must not. You
must
not!
Can I trust you both not to do that?”

Xemion nodded.

“If you disobey me — if you read even one letter, you may ever after be compelled to read the rest of it, do you understand?”

Xemion nodded again.

“Do you know what a Kone Thrall is?”

“I can imagine,” Xemion answered, looking away from the Great Kone and into Vallaine's dark, black eyes.

“So pay attention to what I say. I don't think you would want such a fate.”

“Yes, of course,” Xemion assured him. Saheli also nodded in agreement.

“Good. Then my heart will be lighter as I leave you here, comrades.”

With that, Vallaine's red hand grabbed Xemion's hand and began to shake it exhaustively. As he did so he looked directly into Xemion's eyes and said, “You have used your little stick sword in the manner of a paper sword two times now and survived. You've been lucky. You must never use it that way again. When you get to Ulde, the first chance you get you must burn it, do you understand me?”

“Completely,” Xemion answered, flushed with the intensity of Vallaine's delivery.

“Will you remember?”

“Most definitely.”

“Then say ‘I will remember.'” Vallaine was staring so intently at him that Xemion felt uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he answered, “I will remember.”

“Good.” Vallaine finally let Xemion's hand go. He turned to Saheli.

“Are you ready?” he asked gently.

Saheli shook her head, terrified. She felt so ashamed and foolish. “There's no sense in me even trying to walk past that thing,” she said through gritted teeth. “I can feel the emanation of its evil from here. And my insides feel like one side is going one way and one side the other. Like my head is going to be yanked backward like —”

“None of that is going to happen, Saheli, but noon comes and I am sorry, I can't stand here with you any longer. Now take my hand and bid me goodbye, for I have served you well, maiden.”

Saheli didn't want to but she didn't feel she had a choice. She let him wrap his hand about hers and shake it. He looked her fiercely in the eye and in a rough voice asked, “When you said you wished you could forget, did you mean it?”

She tried to withdraw her hand, but he held on to it. “Yes, I did,” she said, angry at his insistence. “Now let me go.”

“Then forget your bad opinion of yourself. Forget whatever was done to you that convinced you that you are not worthy. You are worthy.”

She kept trying to disengage her hand, but he went on. “Forget being ashamed, Saheli. You have nothing to be ashamed of.” And now her hand began to tingle as he spoke. “Forget whatever it is that keeps you from your talent and your power.”

At last she pulled her hand from his grip. With a fearful, angry glare, she yelled, “You had no right to do that!” Then she turned sharply, fiercely away from him and began striding toward the Great Kone with Xemion at her heels.

“May our ways always be Phaer,” Vallaine called out after them. “May our paths ever cross.”

Xemion looked over his shoulder, puzzled by what he had seen, and nodded back to him. “Travel safely,” he called out, but Saheli did not look back. She kept striding forward angrily until she reached the place where the Great Kone cast its shadow. Here she hesitated slightly, but then, swallowing her fear, stepped forward and into it bravely. Almost immediately she sensed a presence. She gasped in horror but caught herself and immediately aimed her gaze at the sky over the top of the Great Kone as Vallaine had advised. Still, she had to fight hard to keep her terror down. There was a sharp pain in her middle and she felt like she was unravelling. That song seemed to be running two ways at once now, forward and backward in her mind. Relentlessly, the eye inched closer as she proceeded through the shadow. She turned her head away, only to find another eye there on that side too. A radiant, red eye. It seemed to well inward with an exquisite sorrow and promise, but at its centre there was nothing but malice and lewdness. After that, with each step forward the two eyes kept trying to nudge themselves into her field of vision. First one would edge toward her, its dark black iris like the centre of a whirlpool, and then when she turned away the other eye would press in from the other side, its hunger and desperation widening its iris like a leech's mouth trying to latch onto her soul. The sweat was dripping down Saheli's brow and her normal copper tint had become a pallid yellow as it welled ever larger, seeking to draw her in. This was as close as Saheli came to outright panic. She felt like screaming, running away again, but instead she did something she had never done before — she reached for Xemion's hand. As soon as she felt its warmth she squeezed it tight, took a deep breath, and managed to focus on a space in the sky far beyond the Great Kone.

Xemion, who was only dimly aware of the spectre-like eyes, could feel her hand trembling. It filled him with a strange, almost painful, warmth. It felt as though there was another small sun in his palm and it was radiating up his arm and into his soul. What strength she had.

Saheli started to make a rattling, guttural noise in her throat almost like a purr that increased in volume the deeper she proceeded into the shadow. Xemion could hear the pain in it but he could also hear the increasing strength. Near the outer edge of the shadow a whole hoard of eyes came at Saheli. The pressure on Xemion's hand doubled for an instant, but when he and Saheli finally stepped out of the kone's shadow and into the full light of the sun, it was released. Saheli let out her breath, her shoulders slumped and she made a final small sound in her throat. She turned to face Xemion with an exhausted smile.

She was past the shadow of the Great Kone. The eyes had disappeared. And, though she hardly noticed it at first, there was silence in her mind. Silence in her memory. Saheli suddenly felt as carefree as she ever had. She felt like taking in a deep breath of light and air and shouting out joyfully. She felt like dancing in the sun. But she didn't. She flung her arms wide, wrapped them around Xemion, leaned forward, and kissed him on the lips.

All this time Xemion had been trying his hardest not to look at the lettering that peaked out through the cracks in the wall. But now, as his head turned with the kiss and the first blush made its way through his astonished being, his eyes alighted on a luminous gap in the brickwork. He looked away again as soon as he could, but not quickly enough. He read one letter:
X
.