Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  Without a word she rises; all the other women rise with her. One child begins to cry, and is swiftly hushed. They file out of the room, guards saluting as they pass.

  Ten robed men and, at a quick count, as many guards, are left in the room.

  Rowan tries not to look as scared as he feels. He makes sure his back is to a wall, and keeps a firm grip on his sword.

  “So, Rowan,” the man says, “welcome.”

  He has a look like he’s trying not to smile. This makes Rowan’s heart sink into his sneakers.

  “Why didn’t you have them kill me?”

  “Who?”

  Rowan restrains himself from saying, The men dying outside your door, you conniving idiot. He will be direct. “We both know you can’t touch this sword.”

  The man doesn’t take his eyes from Rowan. “It’s true.”

  A couple of the robed men gasp; others, Rowan sees, do not. Some of these councilmen might be closer to the council head than others. Do they all know that he is lying when he calls himself the Render?

  The man addresses the gathering. “The deception was necessary.” He turns back to Rowan. “The failure of the last Render has created troubles for this world that you can only begin to imagine.”

  “The last Render?”

  “Another person from your world. Surely you know that.”

  Rowan says nothing.

  “Those from your world bring nothing but trouble to Antilia.” The man turns back to the gathering. Is it Rowan’s imagination, or is there some actual emotion vibrating behind his words? “Throughout history we have been tied to you, frightened like children. Without the Chosen the world will split and fall, forever lost, into the ocean! But we are outside time now. The Chosen failed, last time, and that failure is the crucible that will release us. The cycle has been broken.”

  Rowan doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Outside time? The man keeps speaking. This rhetoric is for the benefit of the councillors, Rowan realizes. He had best keep his own ignorance to himself.

  “That is why I wished to take possession of the sword. People will only be frightened by your coming, and it is my responsibility to keep the peace. New laws for new times.”

  “New laws for new times,” the other councilmen echo.

  Rowan attempts a stab in the dark. “And yet the people are discontented, and the volcano continues to speak.”

  Silence.

  Rowan looks around the table at the men seated there. “So, this is the council of Kalmar?”

  “The part of it that matters,” the man says.

  The councillors release tension in laughter.

  “Yes, the part of it that matters!” a balding man chortles.

  “What is your name?”

  The laughter stops. The council head stares at Rowan.

  “My name?”

  “Everyone calls you the Render, or the imposter, depending on their views. But you must have a name. You know mine. What is yours?”

  The man clears his throat, then smiles. “It has been a long time since anyone called me by it. But my name is Brandr.”

  “Brandr.”

  “Yes.”

  You could cut the silence with a knife. None of the councillors betray surprise—Rowan guesses that they have known the man’s name, or knew at least that he at one time had one. Maybe it doesn’t matter. But it makes him more human.

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  Rowan decides to make things a little more uncomfortable for the man—Brandr. He slowly paces around the table until he stands behind the man. It sort of works; Brandr looks a little pissed off.

  “What do you want, Chosen?” a tubby man asks, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He looks familiar; Rowan remembers him from landing on the quay with Ari. He was the councilman who greeted them and led them to the sword in the stone.

  Rowan takes the bull by the horns.

  “First, I want all prisoners in the jail outside the city released on amnesty.”

  There’s a stir. Some of the councilmen laugh. “But they are dangerous criminals,” says the tubby man. “Surely . . .”

  “That is my principal demand,” says Rowan.

  The room becomes quiet.

  “And?” Brandr says after a pause.

  “And what?”

  “You have other requests to make of the council?” He’s hoping to give me enough rope to hang myself, thinks Rowan. Make a fool of myself.

  He decides to just ask them, see what they’ll say. “Do you think the people are happy?”

  He might as well have dropped his pants. The councillors stir, look concerned, embarrassed, look at each other, at the table, at the curtained windows.

  They think I’m trying to trick them, Rowan thinks.

  The shuffling silence goes on so long that he speaks again. “There’s a famine in the land?” It comes out a question. Damn it, what else can he do? He’s not from here, he doesn’t know how it all works.

  “One of the highest priorities of the Council is the redistribution of food resources,” says a small guy with a big chin.

  “Is it working?” asks Rowan.

  Another silence.

  “Look,” Rowan says, “people seem to feel I can do something. I represent something to them. Hope.”

  The man, Brandr, comes in smoothly. “No, boy. You represent change. The louts will jump at anything that looks different. They are easily amused, the herd, and as easily lose interest.”

  The tension in the room relaxes somewhat. Rowan sees some of the men nodding, looking gratefully in their leader’s direction.

  For some reason Ophelia comes into Rowan’s mind at this point. Listen to the language, Rowan almost hears her saying. She would, she’d notice the words, she’s sensitive to them. “Do you often describe your people as animals?” Rowan asks.

  “What are you talking about?” Brandr snaps.

  “You called the people a herd,” Rowan points out.

  “We have cleansed the population!” a thin, dark man blurts. “We are not animals!”

  This doesn’t make any sense, and the idea of population cleansing has only the most sinister associations for Rowan. “Aren’t you?” he says, but it means nothing, he’s only saying it to be irritating.

  But his question seems to electrify the council. Scattered shouts: “The halves are gone!”—“We are not animals!”—“Not anymore!”—“No!” Some jump to their feet. A big fellow, red in the face, yells, “We have cleansed the north country!” with such force that he looks like he’s choking.

  Before Rowan can respond, the red-faced man demands, “And what are you? Chosen?” He spits the word. “Did you come down from the hills like the others?”

  “What others?” What is he talking about?

  “The bandits, the renegades!”

  “Gentlemen, be cool,” says Brandr, and Rowan almost wants to laugh at this, the colloquial nature of the phrase. “I think we have only heard one demand from the Chos—” he stops himself “—from Rowan, and I think we are in a position to grant his wish.”

  “Never!” shouts the red-faced man, but Brandr stares him down until he sits. Undercurrents run through the room, they mystify Rowan.

  Brandr turns to face Rowan, and he makes the peculiar gesture Rowan remembers from people on the quay when he first arrived: folding his arms in front of himself, he claws his hands down from elbows to wrists.

  There are gasps from the others.

  “You are the true Chosen,” Brandr says. “I salute you. We must work together now.”

  He meets Rowan’s eyes.

  “I have been working for the good of the people. They have needed a strong leader. The land threatens to split every day; in danger we wake, and in danger we try to sleep at night. Never did I imagine a Chosen one would walk among us, and yet now I see that this is what you are.

  “We will release the prisoners tomorrow.”

  Some shouts burst from around the table, but Brandr raises his voice.
“We will,” he enunciates, “release them. On my cognizance.”

  Rowan can’t believe he’s hearing this. “You will?”

  “Yes. At, let’s say, high noon. I will send a messenger tonight.” He turns to the stunned councilmen. “This action will prove that in this hour of need, when legends walk among us, we are united as a people. Antilia belongs to us all.”

  Rowan looks around the table. Confusion, rage, but also fear. They’re afraid, they really are. “My friend Ari. I want him safe.”

  “Certainly.” Brandr’s gaze doesn’t waver.

  Rowan remembers the faces of Yishay and Yonah, lit by candlelight. The many, many dead. He feels a burden. He can’t leave it here, he must try and deliver something. Change. “May I come back to address the Council, after the prisoners have been released?” Maybe between now and then he can figure out what to do.

  “Oh, certainly,” says Brandr. “Certainly. If you wish to address the Council you could come to our morning gathering, the day following the release of the prisoners. In fact, I think it would behoove us to appoint you the newest member of the Council.” He gestures to Rowan, a half-bow.

  Rowan isn’t sure he wants to join the Council. “Where do you meet?”

  “Here,” Brandr says, but then he gets a thoughtful look. “Perhaps,” he muses, “as a fitting symbol of this new dawn, we should meet in the old gathering place, the great hall?”

  That must be the great domed building.

  “It is sadly damaged by time and the shaking of the earth, but I think it will serve the purpose.”

  The big building must have immense significance for everyone in Kalmar. Yes, that makes sense; and the more of them that are able to gather, the better. Rowan nods.

  Brandr gestures to a guard standing against a wall, who steps forward. “This man will guide you out.”

  “Thanks.” The guard has paced in front of him and is waiting for him to follow. Rowan wishes he could think of something epic to say. He looks at the dinner party, all of them staring at him with expressions ranging from horror to curiosity. “Um, good night. Enjoy your . . . enjoy your fish.”

  He makes himself walk tall. His spine trying to crawl out of his body, but he makes himself walk tall.

  The guard bars the door behind him. There are streaks of black blood on the stones, but the wounded are gone. Rowan heads away from the stone mansion, following twisting alleys around and downward, always downward. The sword cut the howling man’s arm almost off, it was hanging, swinging by threads of flesh. He finds the market square, empty now it’s night. The intestines of the other looped out on the stones, wet. He stumbles, falls. They’ll die, those two, he knows they will. He’s killed them. It would have been better to finish the job instead of letting them die slowly like that. Rowan lies down. Walking is too difficult. He’ll sleep here, on the stones, tonight.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  You Cannot Do This Alone

  Rowan awakens to a voice. He opens his eyes. Light around a girl’s head like a halo; he can’t make out her face, but she smells sweet. She’s saying his name, over and over.

  For a glorious heartbeat he thinks it’s Ophelia.

  “Rowan, what’s happened to you?”

  Rowan shuts his eyes against the light. Ophelia is far away, in the city they grew up in. She probably thinks he’s taken off on her. A pang runs through him. It’s been days, and yet he hasn’t given a thought to how time must be unfolding for her. No texts, even, from him, nothing to let her know how he feels, how sorry he is.

  If only he could tell her about all these things that are happening to him. Ophelia, it’s real, Antilia is real! He imagines her eyes opening wide, that slow, secret smile spreading over her face. The single dimple. I have a sword. I killed two people last night, Ophelia, I killed them. Will she hate him for that? It’s just like we imagined, only . . . it’s so hard, Ophelia.

  “Rowan, Chosen. Can you hear me?”

  Rowan forces himself to open his eyes again. He turns his head against the light. Every muscle in his shoulders and neck hurts, and his head is a heavy aching stone.

  “I hear you.”

  “You’re alive, at least.”

  Rowan presses his palms against the stone and makes himself sit up. For one horrible moment he thinks his sword is gone again, but then he sees it, between his body and the stone wall against which he wedged himself last night.

  “You’re covered in blood.”

  “Sigrid.” His throat is dry. He looks around the city square. It is empty, and the sun is beginning to peer over the tall building to the east. It’s cold; God, he’s cold. “What are you doing here?”

  “Market day; I came early to set up. Are you hurt?”

  “My head . . .” Rowan feels at his skull; nothing’s seeping, but he has a big egg on the side of his head on top of the original gash, and no doubt he looks a scabby fright. “I’m all right.”

  And then the evening comes flooding back to him.

  “Sigrid, I met the Council. The leader—he said he will release the prisoners.”

  “He what?”

  “He said he’d release the prisoners, the people in the jail, the work camp, the Council farm, whatever you call it.” He’s almost stuttering. “At noon.”

  “When?”

  Ari could be walking free, right now. “Today.” He struggles to stand up. “I must . . . Which direction is the farm? Can someone take me there? We have to go—”

  She looks frightened and overjoyed all at once. “It’s not possible. Today? They would never.”

  “We have to . . .”

  “Get up—you’re filthy!” She’s pulling him to his feet now, trying ineffectually to dust him off. “Are you still bleeding?”

  “Sigrid, I need your help.”

  Her face becomes so happy when he says this. He feels, obscurely, guilty.

  —

  Sigrid leads him to her home, dragging her cart filled with musical instruments behind her. “It’s not far,” she says. Then, more ominously, “They’re all very excited to meet you.”

  “Who?”

  “My family, of course! I’ve told them all about you.” She bursts into a few bars of “Fake Plastic Trees.”

  Rowan thinks he’d better think more about what songs he introduces to these people, if they’re going to fasten onto every little thing.

  Sigrid has convinced him not to charge directly toward the Council farm, but rather to come with her. “We will mobilize as many of us in the resistance as we can. You cannot do this alone.”

  “But it might be a trap.” He can’t be responsible for more people dying.

  “You must let us decide that. Hurry! The sun’s rising waits for no one.”

  Fingers of rosy light are beginning to pierce the streets.

  She lives in a warren of stone buildings in the heart of the city. The stone is black with age here, edges worn and rounded, like some ancient honeycomb. Laundry is strung back and forth across the narrow alleys, clumped in shafts of rare light like flowers. As they pass doors, Sigrid strikes out with her palm, calls softly. “Meet at my house! Now! The Chosen one is with me!” And people come out. They have over fifty following them now, and more and more come all the time, alerted by others.

  “Are you sure all these people are trustworthy?” Rowan murmurs.

  “As sure as I know my own name.”

  Rowan wonders. He remembers the man Bob Song Tao, his suspicion. And indeed, Brandr knew exactly where to find him in the Great Night celebrations. But there’s nothing he can do about it now, is there?

  They burst out into a small courtyard. “Here,” she says, and a door swings wide at her approach. The woman holding it open can only be Sigrid’s mother, so similar are they.

  “I’ve got the Chosen,” Sigrid says, voice vibrating with pride. “And he needs our help.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Balancing The Risks

  And he promised he would release them all at
noon . . .”

  “. . . release them all at noon, at noon . . .”

  It’s creepy hearing his words repeated, the sibilant esses, the soft percussion of consonants, stuttering back through the crowd in waves as people repeat what he’s said to those farther back, and back, up alleys and around corners. There’s no way to see how many people have gathered, and more arrive all the time.

  “He acknowledged that I am Chosen.”

  Is that true? The council leader had said he believed that. Whether he does or not, it’s a powerful tool.

  “It may be a trap.”

  He has to say this.

  “But I will head toward the farm now, with any who wish to accompany me. My friend is inside, and I must see if he is safe.” The west gate of the Council farm is a half day’s walk from the city, Sigrid has told him.

  He sees the faces lifted to him. He stands on a doorstep, flanked by Sigrid and her mother, Iduna. They think I can do something, Rowan knows. They want me to do something. He wishes he knew what.

  “Rowan!” It’s Yishay Whetung, pushing his way through the crowd.

  Rowan steps down and embraces the man. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he says.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For sneaking off like that. I didn’t want to risk—”

  “You’re alive, that’s the main thing. Now, what’s all this about the prison?”

  —

  The people begin now, to debate.

  Rowan wants to leave immediately. It will take the better part of a day to travel to the jail. If Brandr has kept his word, prisoners will be filing out of the gates within hours—Ari himself will be walking toward the city—while he stands here wasting time, talking.

  “Not everyone who has been incarcerated will be able to walk,” points out Iduna. She has Sigrid’s red hair, and a hooked nose rather like Yishay’s. “If the Council keeps its word, then we’d best send carts, horses, whatever we can.”

  “Do you have someone inside?” Rowan asks. Her face freezes, and he realizes how tactless the question is. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry? No sorry. My husband, and my parents, and my eldest son.” She puts her hand over her heart. “It is so in every family. They are sent there to be re-educated through work.”