Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  “What have you done with Ari?”

  One of the men leaps up, opens a door, and looks outside; cool night air blasts inside. The other holds his palms out in a gesture of supplication.

  “Now, my beauty, quiet now.”

  “Who are you? Where is my friend?” Rowan keeps the sword up. But he lowers his voice.

  The first man, after a swift look up and down outside, barricades the door. “No sign of anyone.”

  “Good,” says the second.

  And they both gaze upon Rowan. They are powerfully built, shorter than Rowan, but broad. Both have long, straight black hair in several braids. Red-brown skin, thin moustaches. They look enough alike to be brothers. The firelight gleams dully on the chain mail they are wearing, and one has an axe hanging from his belt.

  Rowan seriously doubts he could do anything effectual, should they decide to attack him.

  “Well, he looks well enough,” says the first after a pause.

  “Tall,” says the second.

  “But a bit weedy, don’t you think?”

  “Nice long reach on him.”

  “How’s that cut healing?”

  It takes Rowan a second to realize that this last is addressed to him. “Did you . . . bandage it?”

  The men both nod.

  Rowan lowers his sword.

  The first man says, “I’m Yonah, by the way. Yonah Whetung.”

  “And Yishay.”

  “At your service,” they say simultaneously.

  At your service? That sounds friendly. “Um, I’m Rowan.”

  “Rowan? That’s your name, is it?”

  “Of course it’s his name. He’d hardly say ‘I’m Rowan’ unless it was his name, would he?”

  “Sorry about the cellar, my beauty,” says the man called Yonah. “We had to get you out of the way, and quickly.”

  “Too many council supporters,” adds Yishay.

  “Where is Ari?”

  The men look at each other. “Ari? That fighty fellow who brought you in?”

  Rowan nods.

  “Well, I’m afraid he was seized.”

  “Seized?” Rowan goes cold.

  “Brought to the Council farm. Which is really a prison.”

  “Sorry,” says Yishay.

  “There wasn’t much we could do.”

  “Why the hell would he be put in prison?” Rowan’s voice breaks; he doesn’t care.

  “The Council.”

  “New laws for new times.” Both men spit over their shoulders.

  “He didn’t do anything! They all just attacked us!”

  “Shhhhh . . .” implores Yishay.

  “Sit down, my beauty.” Yonah’s voice is hushed. “We will tell you what we can.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Anything Is Possible

  The first thing that becomes clear is that there has been another tsunami.

  “Much worse than the last one,” the men say. That one—the wave that sent Ari so disastrously off course—was mainly diverted by the fact that Kalmar is nestled in a deep fjord running southeast to northeast; the water took out some flimsier wooden constructions near the coast, but most of the city is steeply uphill and was spared.

  This time, when the mountain erupted and the land shook, another, bigger wave hit the city. Stone quays were pulverized, some of the outer walls were sucked out to sea, and a few people died.

  “The wave didn’t reach anywhere near where we all were when you pulled that amazing stunt.” Yishay jerks his chin at Rowan’s sword.

  It lies on the table in front of him, alongside a large copper cup of water, and the crumbs from some very hard bread and sour cheese which they offered him, and Rowan unceremoniously devoured. Rowan’s eyes keep straying to the beautiful thing. The flat of the blade does have pictures engraved on it: on one side, there is a long, snaking dragon, flames coming out of its maw—classic; the other side shows a knight stabbing another, smaller knight through the heart with a long sword—it comes out the smaller knight’s back—and the blade in the engraving has the same picture engraved on it. Rowan thinks that if he could look at the sword under a microscope, he’d see the picture repeated over and over, fractal geometry expressing itself in a pure descending loop.

  “It was a good thing so many gawkers followed you up there, or more people would have gone to a watery grave.”

  “And between the earth tremor and the wave, we had a bit of distraction to work with,” adds Yonah.

  They look so alike and finish each other’s thoughts so seamlessly that Rowan has to ask. “Are you brothers?”

  The men look at each other. “Of sorts.”

  “We’re half-brothers,” says Yishay. “His father, a randy sort of gentleman, got my mother knocked up, you see.”

  “As I could say of your father.”

  “The same. Only he had the decency to be married to your mother first.”

  “Dear old Pa. Couldn’t keep his pants buttoned.”

  The two of them collapse forward, wheezing, onto the table; are they having an asthmatic fit? No, they’re laughing.

  “Anyway,” Yishay says as he recovers, “what with everyone yelling and swearing and the Council guards trying to drag everyone off, we just picked you up like the sack of potatoes you were, and took you back over the stairs and into the bowel of Kalmar. To our place.” He sweeps his hand around the kitchen like it’s the grandest palace in all Antilia.

  “But we weren’t able to get your companion, Ari. He went down under a pile of soldiers.”

  “The man can fight!”

  “But he’s alive?” Anxiety is a stone in Rowan’s throat.

  The brothers nod. “We were able to ascertain that much.”

  “What is this Council farm, then? Is it a jail or a farm or what?”

  “Both.”

  “Both, it’s both . . .” Yishay tries. “Almost fifteen years ago, the imposter—the man who calls himself the Render—took over the Council. And he put all the rich of Kalmar in charge of what had been family farms. They took over the farms along the richest length of coastline on the island, just southeast of here, and built walls around them. Did it for the good of the North, he says. Competition breeds quality, he says. But soon it all just became one vast conglomerate. And there’s precious little food these days. And of course the Council—” and they both spit over their shoulders “—have prohibited fishing. Want to keep all the food for themselves, and the farms are just a simple way to control how much food gets out. And people . . . disappear in there.”

  “They get taken for so-called insurgency, and sent to work there, and mostly, we never see them again.”

  “But I have to get to Ari!” Rowan stands. “How big is the Council? Do they have an army?” Rowan remembers the way one brother checked outside the door, how they ask him to be quiet. “Spies?”

  “Both.”

  He should be suspicious, find some way to see if the men are telling the truth. They could have been the ones to hit him over the head during the fight, just to get him away from Ari. His mind spins, but his gut tells him the men are genuine. He sits down again. “Why are you helping me?”

  “Because, my beauty, you are Chosen.”

  “You proved it when you pulled that thing out of the rock.”

  “Anyone could have done that,” Rowan mutters.

  The brothers shake their heads. “Don’t you think people have tried? You are the next Render.”

  Rowan’s head whirls. “Isn’t Render what this leader guy calls himself?”

  “Ah. There you have it. Calls himself.” Yishay touches the side of his nose.

  “But he’s not the Render. The Render has to be someone from your world.”

  “Other people from my world, here?” The implications are staggering.

  But Yishay shakes his head. “No, my beauty. There is no living Render, not that we know of. The imposter would have had him killed long ago.”

  “So we believe,” his half-br
other says.

  “But Ari was going to take me to him. Ari said he’d explain. . . .” Rowan trails off at the look on the men’s faces.

  “Well. Anything’s possible.” And they look at each other. It’s obvious that they don’t hold out much hope for this Render person Ari spoke of being alive.

  “But you see, if the imposter was the real Render, he’d be able to touch that.” Yishay nods at Rowan’s weapon. “I bet you he can’t. If he could, he’d have taken it out of the rock long ago.”

  “Can’t touch it?”

  “No. It burns any Antilian who tries.”

  Recklessness grips Rowan. “It’s right there. Be my guest.”

  Yishay shakes his head. “Not me. I already got burned trying to wrap the damn thing up.” He holds up his hand. It takes Rowan a moment to recognize the spiral pattern of the sword’s hilt, burnt, as Yishay says, into his palm.

  “It was hot somehow?” His own hands are unscathed. He touches the hilt; yes, cool as metal should be.

  “It’s for you,” Yonah says. “Only you, a Chosen one.”

  “As the legends say. It will burn anyone else.”

  This sounds insane.

  Rowan spins the sword on the table, and the brothers lean back, out of the way. “Go ahead. Show me.” What’s gotten into him? He feels mean, mean and reckless.

  “Ah, what the hell. I’ve always been curious.” Yonah eyes the spinning sword, and claps his hand down on the hilt. “Argh!” He whips his hand to his mouth. Then looks at it, shows his brother. “See?” A fresh, livid mark brands the man’s palm. “It stings.”

  Rowan feels sorry. “I didn’t . . . I don’t understand. I’m sorry. I wish I did. All I know is that Ari is my friend. He . . . he has always been with me. I come from a different . . . a different place.”

  “Well, we can see that. You stand out like a peacock in a chicken coop.”

  Rowan searches his memory, through the jumbled images that accompany his arrival in the city and the terrible fight, the volcano’s eruption. “I know that Kalmar’s leader . . . knew someone from my world, once. And Ari says he is an imposter, and so do you. There is someone else called the Render, the real Render, who is supposed to help me. And something is wrong about the eruptions, the earthquakes. They’ve started too soon, or have been going on too long, or something.”

  “Too long? They haven’t stopped, my darling.”

  “The Chosen came from your world, the Dragon and Green Knight fought, the Chosen diverted them. Just like in the old stories. But something went wrong. We don’t know exactly what. The tremors continued. It’s not supposed to happen that way. After a healing, so it is said, the land stops speaking for . . . Well, at least . . .”

  “For a very long time,” Yishay finishes.

  “The Chosen came, you say?” Rowan grasps at straws. “More than one?”

  “Two.” They nod.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Why, seventeen years ago.”

  Ari said that. Didn’t Ari say something like that? And he’d seemed to believe that Ophelia was supposed to have come in with Rowan. Two, two Chosen. Rowan wants to yell with frustration, he wants to overturn the trestle table in some comical caricature of masculine rage. “Ari knows what I’m doing here. He’s the reason I am here!”

  “We’re trying to help you, my duckling.”

  “We’re part of the resistance, you see.”

  “Against that man, and the Council?”

  Again, the simultaneous nod.

  “Why?”

  “Why are we part of the resistance? Well, anyone with a heart and a mind would resist that arse-first, head-sucking, blood-thinning, tongue-twisting . . .”

  “No, beauty, I think he wonders why we help him.”

  “Oh.” Yishay contains himself. “You are Chosen.”

  Rowan sees newspaper headlines unscrolling before his eyes. Chosen One Drops from Sky! Imposter Pulls Sword from Stone! Stranger ‘Has No Idea’ What He’s Doing! “I don’t think . . .”

  “You don’t need to think,” says Yishay. “You just are.”

  Is it Rowan’s imagination, or are the man’s black eyes full of pity?

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Political Symbol

  The next day the brothers leave him alone in the house and go off to their work, down on the quay. Lots to repair since the wave. They leave Rowan with strict instructions: no going out, and be quiet.

  “There’s people about, know what I mean? No answering the door.”

  “Like Snow White,” Rowan attempts to joke, but they don’t get the reference, and in any case, he thinks better of comparing the Whetung brothers to the seven dwarves. “Sure, I’ll be quiet.”

  “Just keep it down, my beauty.”

  “I think he understands you, Yishay. Stop being an old fuss pot.”

  “But it’s important—”

  “—that he’s quiet, yes, I think we all understood that part. Do you know you’re supposed to be quiet, though?” Yonah addresses Rowan.

  “I’m not sure. Am I supposed to be, oh, say, quiet?”

  “Both of you go soak your heads.” Yishay stomps out of the house, followed by his brother, wheezing with laughter.

  Rowan, after they leave, carefully barricades the house, just as they instruct him, too. And then, he waits.

  Sun leaks through the shutters, moving up and along the wall.

  Around mid-morning there’s a small tremor, sending small objects dancing and the shutters rattling. Rowan, nervous, gets under the table. It passes.

  The sun moves, no longer sending small fingers through the shutters. It feels dark.

  He’s never realized quite so clearly how often he reaches for his phone or his laptop, how often he opens up a book. And even more than all those things, he misses his guitar. Without it, he feels lost, hollow and alone. It’s as if the songs he plays—covers or his own—give shape to the shapeless, lend structure to the chaos of his feelings and the endlessness of time.

  There is no clock. When Rowan gets hungry, he gnaws on some hard bread and chokes down two small sour apples that the brothers left for him. At this rate, he’ll starve to death.

  He takes out the sword and studies it, the pictures, the beauty and heft of it. There’s no room to really practice, but he tries to go through some of the forms Ari taught him. He can hear Ari’s voice in his head. Not that way, I’ll slice you in half! No, keep your stance strong! Low! Forward! Again. Again. Ah, that’s the way!

  Ari’s dark eyes glittering.

  We will make a swordsman out of you yet.

  A thousand times he begins to wonder why he is trusting these brothers, and a thousand times realizes he has no choice.

  His head feels woolly, his eyes heavy. He tries to rest. He wishes again he had something to play, something to read, that his phone worked. He tries not to think about Ari. He tries not to think about Ophelia.

  It gets darker.

  He hears footsteps coming along the street outside, and voices. The brothers. His heart leaps in gladness.

  After a simple meal, Yonah tells him that tonight there is a meeting of some members of the resistance.

  “We’re going to show you off, my beauty.”

  They give him a cloak and tell him to keep his face in shadow.

  It feels so good to get outside that Rowan barely cares whether this is some kind of trick or betrayal. Besides, his gut tells him it is not. He trusts the brothers, logical or not.

  The night air is full of smells: wood smoke and ocean breeze, food, garbage, and something else, sour and complicated. The street on which the brothers live is sharply inclined. “Just down that way,” Yishay indicates, “the wave got them. We’re lucky to not live in the lowest part of the city. They got swamped.”

  The street is narrow and paved with cobblestones, and grey stone buildings lean closely overhead. But Rowan’s eyes are on the fires. Small bowls, metal and stone, sit outside almost every doorstep,
tiny flames licking within every one. They curve up the street, flicker down side streets, and he can see them higher up the hilly city, too, suspended in the darkness like little glittering eyes. “What are the fires for?”

  “It’s the Year’s End.”

  “A ritual. To propitiate,” says Yonah.

  “The volcano,” Yishay clarifies. “People started all that after the last healing, when the tremors didn’t stop as they should have.”

  “You don’t light one?” Their doorstep is empty.

  The brothers shrug. “We’re doing what we can, aren’t we?” Yonah says.

  “Yes. We’ve got you,” says Yishay. “That’s worth more than some fire on a doorstep.”

  But his eyes stray to the southern sky. Rowan sees it, too: a dull, red glow. It’s the volcano, bleeding into the sky, bathing Antilia with its inchoate message. “Am I supposed to know how to fix that?”

  “It’s all right, my duckling. We’ll figure it out.”

  Rowan feels certain that the brothers’ faith in him is entirely misplaced.

  He tries, though. He remembers Ari, draws himself up to his full height, and follows them down the silent streets, through the flickering firelight.

  —

  Husband and brother and three sons.”

  “My wife. Ten years ago now.”

  “Father and mother.”

  People sit in a circle, and one after another they talk about who they’ve lost to the Council jail-farm. Old people and young, children and babes in arms. One woman so old she looks like a carven tree, bent and twisted with years. Rowan notes with interest that no one wears robes, like those worn by the Councilmen at the quay and at the sword stone. Most of the men wear loose trousers, knit sweaters, vests, and most of the women wear full skirts, although there are men in skirts and women in trousers, too. All patched, worn; people have an air of poverty.

  “I had to move to the city from down the coast, leaving my daughter and her husband to work the fields.” The woman jogs a baby on her hip, her voice rises. “Accused of working magic. It wasn’t nothing, what they did.” She’s talked a lot, this one; Rowan catches himself thinking she’s the kind of person who traps you on a bus and tells you her life story. His eyes stray again to the girl in the far corner. She looks to be his age or maybe a bit older, and pretty: auburn curling hair and slanted eyes. “Just the old spells for growing. You plant something in the field, you can’t just leave it there like a dead thing. It’s only showing respect to speak the words. That’s all it was.”