Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  Her voice breaks. She is crying.

  Rowan wishes he could make everything better, he wishes he could fix it all.

  But despite the pain and confusion around him, something tremendous has been released. Many people have been reunited with loved ones. And even those who are missing, at least people will be able to remember them at the next Great Night, at the Blot. That seems to be important to people here.

  And Rowan did it. Because of him, this has been possible. And Ari is at his side.

  “Nothing a good meal won’t fix,” says Ari of his wounds. “Besides, I’m better off than you. How many slashes across your head, boy? You’ll frighten off the girls with your scars.”

  Sigrid dabs at her eyes, and draws closer with a tremulous look. “I think they give him character.”

  The smile on Ari’s lips locks in. “Do you?” he says thoughtfully.

  At that moment the clouds, hanging overhead, break. The sun streams down upon them all in a moment so beautiful it is almost ridiculous. Red and orange and purple, the sky, and the sun is molten gold.

  Someone back in the line breaks into “Help”—why do they like The Beatles so much here? Rowan joins in with a harmony, and Sigrid takes his arm.

  Rowan is not some miserable kid in a café, sitting like a question mark now. He is striding forward, followed by hundreds and hundreds of Antilians, into the most beautiful sunset he has ever seen.

  —

  There is no sleeping that night.

  Kalmar is alive with celebration and grief, an outpouring of feeling as people learn who has been found and who most likely must be given up for dead. And the volcano, too, seems to feel it; the ground trembles, and trembles again. Off to the south Rowan can see it, a dull red glow against the sky.

  “Something huge is going to happen.”

  Rowan walks with Ari through the streets of Kalmar, flanked by the Whetungs. Fires are lit on every step, and every door is flung wide. People sing, weep, call out. Everywhere Rowan is seen, people come to him and seize his hands, or salute him with the forearm-scraping gesture.

  “Something has already happened,” Ari responds.

  “But I feel it. Soon, something . . . Maybe it’s the Council meeting tomorrow morning. Maybe we can make the Council promise to stop ruling the North this way, Ari!”

  Ari looks dubious.

  Mere hours ago, Rowan wouldn’t have believed it possible that dull anger toward his friend could rise up inside him. Why is Ari so doubtful? They’ve accomplished so much. Rowan’s accomplished so much. He admits his decision to visit Brandr was insane. But if he hadn’t done it—defeating the gang who tried to rob him of the sword, confronting Brandr in front of the rest of the Council, and exposing him for an imposter—if Rowan hadn’t done all that, Ari would still be languishing in the Council farm-jail.

  And the resistance has taken Rowan on. They wouldn’t have done that if Rowan himself hadn’t managed to win their trust.

  Ari has been in Antilia for his entire life, and yet no one here seems to know who he is, let alone trust him.

  But all Rowan says is, “Your enthusiasm is a little underwhelming.”

  Ari smiles. “Underwhelming.”

  “Don’t you think they would have killed us at the jail if that was their plan? I think the regime is crumbling, and they know it.”

  Their feet have led them across the square and around the building, to the great double doors Rowan remembers seeing when they first landed in Kalmar. “The old meeting place,” Ari says.

  Rowan steps inside the broken doors. It is entirely dark. He senses a vast, echoing space. Bricks and stones litter the floor. Lifting his face to the ceiling he sees stars high, high above, where the ceiling has fallen in.

  “Yes, Ari is right. It was here that we used to meet,” Yishay rumbles behind him. “Since before time began. I remember coming with my mother when I was very young. Leading up to Great Night, all of Antilia gathered, she told me: some here, some in the great southern city. It all depended where you lived, and where you felt was your home.”

  “Everyone,” Yonah echoes. “It was how things were decided.”

  “What things?” Rowan asks.

  “Everything.”

  Nobody says anything for a while; the big space fills with their breathing, the clink of stones rolling against each other, disturbed by their shifting feet.

  The ceiling above creaks; there is a weird knocking sound, then silence.

  It is a big place, a sad place. Ghosts of meetings past fill it; the air is thick.

  “How long did that take?” Rowan says at last, as much to break the silence as anything.

  “The gathering? Oh, days and days.”

  A participatory democracy, Rowan thinks. Or consensual decision making. Or . . . something strange and vast, as vast as the memories inside these stone walls.

  Yonah speaks. “I will go down to the quay now. Some people are leaving the city.”

  “I will go with you,” says his brother. “It would be good to get a sense of the mood.”

  “People are leaving tonight?” Rowan wonders. “But tomorrow is the day Brandr gives power back to the people.” He’s saying this partly, he realizes, for Ari to hear. He wants Ari to acknowledge what he’s accomplished.

  “Yes. But some say this is a trap. Others do not believe that your coming can fix the world. After all, the last Chosen one failed.”

  Unexpectedly, Ari defends him. “Rowan is not the last Chosen one. He is new, and himself.”

  “But it’s not like it’s supposed to be either, is it? He is alone.”

  A cold hand wraps around Rowan’s heart at that.

  The brothers say their farewells and leave Ari and Rowan on the threshold of the great hall.

  Alone. That was Yishay’s word.

  “Ari, was I supposed to come in with . . .” Rowan tries again. “You’ve started telling me before. Are there are supposed to be . . . two Chosen?”

  “Yes,” Ari confirms. “The Chosen arrive from your world, and . . .”

  Ophelia.

  Does Ari mean himself and Ophelia?

  “But the last time, they could not . . .” Ari’s voice roughens. “They fought each other. So things have become less . . . good, here.”

  The cold grip around Rowan’s heart tightens. “But this time, it’s even worse. Only I came. Alone.”

  Ari puts his hand on Rowan’s shoulder. “It is not your fault.”

  “It’s not?” He sees himself clearly now: a child standing on a sidewalk letting the only person who has ever understood him walk away. He wants to shake the ceiling down. “Ari, I let her go! I let my goddamn parents scare her away!”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “No.” He will be honest, as much as he can be. “I knew. I knew she was . . . We were . . . Ari, we don’t talk like this in my world.”

  “Like what?”

  “We don’t say things.”

  “I know.” Ari’s voice vibrates with barely suppressed excitement. “You are from a hell. But try. What is the true thing you want to say?”

  The true thing I want to say. Rowan takes a breath. “I love her,” he says. Fuck, he wants to cry when he says that. No, not here, this is stupid. “I do. I just met her but I knew. I just knew. But, see, you can’t know things like that. It’s crazy. You can’t just . . . be in love all of a sudden.”

  “No, no, this is good!” It’s the most excited Rowan’s ever seen Ari. “If you feel that, maybe there’s a chance . . . She could still come . . . Maybe there’s a way!”

  They both fall silent, echoes running sibilantly over the stones.

  “After tomorrow, we will go see the Render, right?” Rowan says at last. The Render is supposed to be from his world. Maybe that man, whoever he is, can help.

  “He is hidden with his forces in the wilderness. I was supposed to take you there as soon as you arrived.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.” Ari sounds thoughtful
. “He will be angry that it’s taken me so long.”

  “You have a pretty ironclad excuse. Jail and all.”

  Ari looks down at the ground. “He’s not fond of excuses.”

  As they leave, Ari suddenly turns back and stares into the blackness.

  “What is it?” Rowan asks.

  Ari puts up his hand for silence. He is still and tense as a greyhound about to run.

  Finally he breathes, turns away. “I thought I saw, or felt . . . something.” In starlight, Rowan sees the man’s grin. “We’d better hope the old roof doesn’t come down on us tomorrow. That would be a swift and ignoble end to the insurgency, no?”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Lost

  By the time the sun comes up, the people of Kalmar have debated furiously.

  Many are ecstatic, the Whetungs tell Rowan, and believe that Rowan’s coming foretells the healing of Antilia. Others have left the city.

  “Let them go. There is no safety anywhere, if the land splits,” Ari says cheerfully.

  As the sun rises, voices fill the streets. When Ari and Rowan step out of the Whetung’s small stone house, they are almost swept away by the throng of people pouring uphill, toward the great hall.

  “It is time.”

  Joyfully the people stream through the city, and Rowan and Ari join them, the brothers behind. By the time they get to the hall, the place is already half full. It is the size of a giant sports stadium. Rowan sees now that the roof never did cover the whole area; instead it forms a ring around the outer edge, sheltering the stone seats that form tiers, up and up, all around the vast ring-shaped building.

  Here and there, on the top tier, he sees guards dressed in Council livery. There are not many of them, but he points them out to Ari and the brothers.

  “We are watching the outside of the building,” Yonah tells him. “If there is any show of force, we will have plenty of warning.”

  Rowan points to some big double doors at the far end of the building. “Where do those lead?”

  “The tunnels,” Yonah says.

  “Tunnels?”

  “There used to be tunnels under the city that let out in here, leading from houses. Performers used to gather there, back when we used to have performances. But the passages have been blocked with rubble. They would have been a route to invade Brandr’s stronghold, so he filled them up.”

  Unlike the battered and broken front entrance, those doors are whole and stand closed.

  Rowan and Ari begin to push through the people, more and more of them filing in. Antilians are filling the place, picking their way across the vast rubble-littered floor, clambering up the stone rings to get a good seat. Someone sees Rowan, begins to chant. Chosen! Chosen! Chosen!

  “God, this is embarrassing,” Rowan mutters.

  “Wave to them, Chosen,” Ari says with a mocking smile. “Wave!”

  Rowan gives a halfhearted wave, and a cheer breaks out.

  “God.”

  The place is full now, and yet people still push through the entrance.

  They are almost across the floor.

  And then the wooden doors right in front of them, the doors that are supposed to open onto nothing but a solid wall of rubble inside collapsed tunnels, begin to grind open.

  Shouts, some laughter, a weird shriek.

  Ari grabs Rowan and begins to drag him away, pushing through the crowd. Along the way the Whetungs join in. “Out!” the brothers are shouting. “Everybody, out!”

  Panic.

  Rowan risks a look back over his shoulder. The doors have ground open fully now, and weirdly, something that looks like a giant bale of hay is rolling out. And another, and another. He smells an acrid, chemical smell. The great round bales roll forward. He sees a woman go down under one, a child, a man. People high up are stumbling, falling, trying to get back down to the floor.

  The main doors are choked with people.

  Rowan looks up where he’d seen the Council guards. There are maybe twenty of them, evenly spaced now around the top tier of the great hall. They are pulling things out—bows, crossbows—and they are notching arrows. The arrows are alight.

  They shoot into the bales. The bales explode into flame.

  That’s when the screaming really begins.

  They have almost made it to the door; people are packed, pushing, helpless.

  Once outside the sunlight is blinding. They must keep moving. Ari has not let go of Rowan’s arm. The Whetungs have small shields raised overhead. Why overhead?

  Rowan sees a woman out in the square, one in the crowd. Something dark blossoms on her chest. She arches and falls back.

  It’s blood.

  People scream, ripple, fall back in waves. Arrows rain down on them from above.

  Ari looks up. “The roof!” Somehow guards secreted themselves on the rickety donut-shaped roof; they must have positioned themselves in the darkness of night, and waited all this time to begin shooting. “I am born and will die a fool.”

  Arrows fly into the crowd. The face of a man nearby disappears in rags of flesh.

  “Catapults,” Yishay grunts.

  Guards come in force down the streets now. Even over the screaming of the crowd, Rowan can hear them marching.

  “Scatter!”

  Ari and Rowan follow the wild-eyed Whetungs up an alley. They crouch in shadows and listen to feet pounding, shouts, a woman screaming.

  Over and over again Rowan sees the woman who fell back, and the man’s shattered face. That’s four dead now, his fault.

  What is he thinking? So many more than four.

  Rowan stands, his body and his mind completely separate; he must find the woman, maybe she’s okay but will get trampled, lying there in the middle of the square like that . . . Ari grabs his arm and jerks him back. Three armed guards run past, and somehow they miss the hidden quartet.

  Ari gestures to the brothers, indicating a shattered window just above where they are crouching. The Whetungs climb through into the building, then Ari indicates that Rowan should go. Rowan is about to follow when two more guards come barrelling around the corner.

  The first sees Rowan and swings.

  Rowan dodges, tries to get his sword out of the sheath.

  It’s stuck.

  One of the guards attacks Ari, who skewers him at once, efficiently and emotionlessly. The other guard eyes Rowan.

  Rowan runs.

  Around a corner, he finds himself in another, even narrower alley. He smashes a leaded window, climbs in. This house smells like no one has lived here for a long time: musty, abandoned, damp.

  Time passes.

  Where is Ari? Rowan hopes he’s okay. Him, the brothers. Everyone.

  It gets lighter, then darker.

  The sounds outside—screaming, marching, all that—have subsided.

  Rowan climbs out the window. He does not know where he is. The crowd has dispersed, the streets are empty.

  He comes across a man and a woman in a heap, short dark shafts out their backs and sticky darkness in a pool around them, shuddering in the sinking light. The man’s arm is flung out, his palm raised upward.

  At times, in the distance, sudden screams and shouts echo through the streets, then, just as suddenly, die. The sun is going down.

  It becomes quite cold.

  He can’t find his way. He has lost Ari, the brothers, Sigrid—he’s lost everyone and he has lost his way.

  Rowan keeps walking. He’s heard nothing for a while; the city is silent. He takes turns and follows alleys, down, down, until he finds himself at the great stone quay.

  It is deserted.

  Is everyone dead?

  The sea sucks and pounds at the stones.

  Rowan sits. He stares out at the sea. Someone could come up behind him and kill him. He doesn’t care. The sky above is pale blue, darkening to pink in the west. The sun still hovers red in the sky, but on the horizon is a dark line of denseness, a fog. The wind comes out of it, and the wind is cold.
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br />   Northwest. If his father’s map was correct, northwest is more or less where North America would be. If it were possible to sail straight across water to find it, that is. Rowan pictures the map on the clean, white-painted wall of the hallway at home. The smell of the place, old wood and something nice, he’d never thought of it before but the house always smells nice. Yes, just in that direction would be home.

  The line of darkness is getting bigger. It’s eating up the stars. One by one they wink out. The cold wind is getting stronger. Rowan closes his eyes and leans into it.

  Maybe there’s a way to flag down a passing ship, or an airplane? Seems incredible that the island hasn’t been detected in modern times, but still, maybe if he sits here long enough he’ll see the lights of a passing long-liner, or blinking lights of an airplane overhead.

  He hasn’t seen a plane trail slice the sky, not once. Or lights out at sea.

  He got here by falling out of the sky. Going home is impossible.

  Rowan sits for a long time in the wind. The waves get larger, splashing at his feet. Maybe a storm is coming.

  A face looks at him from the water.

  It takes him a moment to recognize it as a seal. The sleek head bobs just above the surface, regarding him with dark, melancholy eyes. The seal dives and then resurfaces, or maybe it’s another animal . . . yes, now he can see, there are many of them. What’s a group of seals called? A pod? A herd?

  He hears Brandr’s voice in his head, talking about the people. The herd. And the other men, We have cleansed the north country! The seals bob on the water, they seem fascinated by him. Ari, saying, You took your time. He wishes he had a treat to give the seals. What do seals like? Fish, that’s right. That puts them on par with noblemen here in the North of Antilia.

  The seals, as one, suddenly dive beneath the choppy surface. Rowan strains to see them. He pictures it, the vastness of the water into which they dive. He pictures a globe of the Earth like his father has, all the continents marked green, yellow, brown and white. He forces Antilia upon the Atlantic, a red glimmer like an ember, shaped like a dragon’s head. It flickers, hovers over the fake, flat ocean blue. It will not stay. It pops and sparks, fades out, short-circuits. The globe shudders, the blue of the ocean deepens, feeding back on itself. The continents pale, begin to dissolve—the familiar lumpen shapes, the satisfying way South America fits into Africa like a lover, the coasts of Labrador and Greenland—they pale down into the azure depths.