Swan Knight's Sword

by John C. Wright

  “You are a minor, so you do not get a lawyer,” the tired man said. “Child protective services has control of your case, and they pled guilty on all charges on your behalf, as this was in your best interest. And you are being held for a military tribunal since you are a serviceman in the armed forces of a hostile foreign power. After that, you will be transferred to a high security mental asylum.”

  “I am not insane,” said Gil. “The asylums are run by elfs.”

  The tired man grunted. “If you say so, pal.”

  Gil said, “Which power?”

  “What?”

  “Which hostile foreign power do I serve?”

  The tired man looked at the paper. “Ah. Great Britain. Says here you swore fealty to the English sovereign. Is that true?”

  “Why? Are we are war with Great Britain?”

  “I am sorry, but since you are a serviceman in the armed forced of a hostile foreign power, I cannot discuss matters which have national security implications.”

  Gil held up his diamond badge as an officer of the Special Counter-Anarchist Task Force. The words THE LAST CRUSADE caught the light and blazed, but the man’s eyes could not focus on it.

  Gil said, “This is not a real police station, is it?”

  The tired man said, “No, we are the Federal Bureau of Land Reclamation Management, Oceanic Homeland Intrusion, Mental Health, Personal Revenue Seizures, Paperwork Reduction, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firewater, and Diversity Compliance.” He took up a windbreaker thrown over the chair next to him and showed Gil the letters written on the back: FBLRMOHIMHPRSPRATFDC.

  “There is no such bureau,” said Gil skeptically.

  “How could anyone tell? It is not like anyone keeps track.”

  “I mean you are outside the writ of the law, or else you’d be able to see this badge in my hand. Didn’t you take an oath to uphold the law?”

  “Oaths? Uphold the what? Are you from the Dark Ages or something?”

  Gil’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

  The man glared at him, a cynical smile on his lips. “The president swore an oath to defend the Constitution. Think he means it? His job is to get around it. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath. Do they mean it? The ones who execute prisoners for us, or do abortions, or euthanasize comatose paralytics? How about witnesses on the witness stand? Promise to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth. They’d lose their cases if they didn’t lie. The lawyers tell them to lie. My wife promised to love, honor, and obey me, in sickness and health, until death do us part, all that jazz. She took up with another guy when I was stationed overseas. And she lied on the witness stand.”

  That was the only moment when the man did not look tired, and his eyes did not seem clouded by the elfin mists. Gil knew he was hearing the man’s deepest, most secret thoughts hidden in his heart. He saw his very soul.

  It was like flinging open a buried treasure chest and finding nothing but offal and rotting rodent carcasses within.

  5. Piskies and Gremlins

  Back in the main office, he saw a slender female figure about four feet tall. She looked like a miniature woman, perfectly proportioned, not like a midget and not like a child. She was dressed in a green shift and green ballet slippers, sitting atop a filing cabinet. She had gauzy wings like a dragonfly and two whiplike antenna issued from her brow. She had a sweet smile and a satanic glint of malice in her narrow eyes.

  This fay maiden was surrounded by mist and no doubt thought herself invisible. Gil turned his head to look at her, but he guessed his eyes were shadowed in the eyeholes of his helm, for she did not seem to notice his gaze.

  In fact, Gil was not sure she saw him at all. Suzy the witch’s apprentice had told him that people saw whatever they expected to see when they looked into the mist. What did elfs see? They were not immune to their own glamour.

  Around the feet of the fay maiden danced piskies no larger than lightning bugs, glowing. They were going back and forth between the papers on the sergeant’s desk and the filing cabinet, switching photographs, erasing and rewriting entries on forms, and forging signatures. The tiny, swift creatures were infallible forgers since illusions woven of mist hid any imperfections.

  He saw his own picture from his yearbook photograph being affixed to some other thick file of crime reports.

  Meanwhile, small men the size of mice were toying with two of the computers, dancing on the keyboard, prying open the housing, hooking what looked, at first, like dead insects or dry leaves to the electronic innards. Upon closer inspection, Gil’s eyesight could see the small, bejeweled, well-made electronic circuits hidden under the appearance of leaf and bug. The small men were dressed in coveralls and wore tiny baseball caps. They chewed tobacco and spit sparks. Each one had a rag or a wrench in his back pocket, like a cartoon caricature of a plumber or mechanic.

  He had not seen this particular breed of elfin creature before, but he heard what name the laughing fay maiden called them as she urged them to their efforts: gremlins.

  As Gil was led past the filing cabinet and desk where the fay maiden sat, Gil peered closely. Perhaps the piskies were merely stuffing random unsolved cases into his folder without even looking. Gil was accused of overgrazing on federal land, methamphetamine distribution, gunrunning, subordination of perjury, espionage, witness tampering, bribery, failure to pay licensing tax for class three firearms, campaign finance law violations, jaywalking…

  Other crimes listed on the papers he glimpsed seemed to have at least some relation to reality: theft and tortuous conversion of a cot from the YMCA, trafficking in stolen antiques, arson with a blade of over nine inches, multiple counts of assault and battery, trespass onto federal lands without a camping license, hunting without a gaming license, fishing without a fishing license, keeping a dog without a dog license, obtaining licenses without a licensing license, truancy from school…

  6. A Prisoner

  The officer gave him into the custody of the jailer, a thin man with long hair grown out from above his ears, and combed over his bald spot. The man seemed not to notice that Gil was dressed in forty pounds of armor, with a tall silver helm, and a four-foot-tall shield. Again, the balding man acted like a broken robot, trying over and over to pat down Gil for weapons, strip him, search him for drugs, force him to shower, and issue him an orange jumpsuit, actions that were impossible to perform on an armored man. Gil merely told the balding man in a soft voice that he had, in fact, gone through the routine correctly.

  The man froze. Gil repeated it in a soothing voice, “The prisoner has been searched and showered. Everything is fine. Everything is under control. The prisoner has been thoroughly searched and given an ugly orange suit…”

  It was with considerable disquiet that Gil saw the balding man, his eyes entirely dull and dead, nod dumbly. Then, the balding man took up a big, old-fashioned key ring, and unlocked the door leading to the security wing.

  Gil found himself wondering if he had committed a crime by trampling on a fellow man’s free will and vowed never to do that sort of thing again.

  In the upper corner of the door was a spider web. In the spider web one of the piskies had been caught, a tiny girlish imp small as a fly, glowing like a lightning bug. She was wrapped in webbing and called out in a high, thin voice: Help me! Help meeee!

  Gil was in no mood to help one of the miniature freaks who had been falsifying records and writing lies about him to get him in trouble with the human world. But he did not think knighthood was a matter of moods or feelings. He doffed his gauntlets, reached up with his bare hand, brushed the spider web away, and plucked the sticky strands carefully off the tiny figurine. She snarled, cursed, complained, and flew away after hissing angrily at him.

  He watched her go with a sigh of annoyance. He had not saved her for the sake of being thanked, but a small sign of gratitude would have been polite.

  Down the gloomy corridor he went with the thin and balding jailer.

  The doors were iron, and the ceiling was brick. Th
e dim yellow lights were in cylindrical metal brackets. One after another Gil paced past them. There was no one else in the wing.

  An iron door led into a cell. The door had one slit at eye level and another at the foot of the door. There was no thumbprint pad or slot to receive a magnetic card. Light shined in a thin beam through the keyhole, which told Gil the lock was a large and clumsy antique.

  Inside the cell, a light fixture was recessed into the low ceiling, above a rusted drain in the floor. A low cot of wooden slats was bolted to the floor.

  The window was a plate of iron padlocked shut. The iron plate had holes punched into it, large enough for air to enter, barely, but too small for a finger. Putting his eye to a hole, he saw he was three or four stories above ground. There was a chain link fence topped with barbed wire and, beyond that, wooded hills.

  Gil wondered at the obvious age of this building, of his cell. What had his mother said about certain modern weapons being too new to be reflected in dreams? Was it easier for the elfs to cast their spells on people who lived in old houses? Gil had never heard of a haunted house that was brand new or of a haunted skyscraper.

  On the other hand, looking once more at the jailor’s unblinking eyes, Gil felt such a stab of hatred for the Black Spell of the elfs and their mesmeric tricks, he was not sure if it were safe or healthy for his soul if he learned too much about exactly how it worked.

  This much he did know: the mist was a double-edged sword. Apparently, it was thick enough about this federal facility to put all the humans into a sleepwalking state and let the piskies and gremlins forge and fake the records.

  But, by the same token, mist that thick allowed Gil to carry forty pounds of shining metal war gear into his cell, unhindered.

  In his pouch was a tin of polish, a rag, and a brush. He spent the morning cleaning his armor, closing bent links with pliers, and checking the joints, straps, and buckles.

  7. Stegodyphus lineatus

  Thus occupied, Gil did not notice the passage of time. Perhaps it was an hour later, perhaps more, when a thin, sinister voice from the ceiling spoke.

  “You robbed from me my due prey. I am come to curse you with my deadly curse, you who are so cruel to mothers. I must fatten myself. Must my children starve?”

  Gil looked up, but saw no one. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. I have great respect for motherhood. Please don’t curse me. My life is hard enough as it is. And short.”

  “My wrath is great against you! You destroyed my house!”

  “I don’t remember destroying any houses,” Gil said politely, puzzled, wondering why he could not see the woman speaking. He thought he should have been able to see even someone hidden by an elfish glamour. “Besides, we rent from a man named Mr. Umstead. Are you his wife or something? If you are talking about the tree growing up through the rented apartment, my mother did that, not I.”

  “Do you blame your mother? Your hand smashed my house! How dare you put the crime on her!”

  Gil felt anger like a swallow of warm wine spread out from his heart into his chest and guts. “Now, you hold on, whoever you are! I respect and love my mother! I obey her in all things! I listen to all her crazy questions, and… and…” Gil found himself suddenly with hot tears in his eyes, and he wiped his face, sobbing.

  The thin voice said, “I hear a dishonest twitch your voice when you lie. It is very obvious. You did not obey your mother, did you? When my eggs hatch, my children, my beautiful children, will issue forth and consume me alive. All children are alike.”

  Gil suddenly realized what he was talking to. “Where are you?”

  “Here. Up here. This crack between the two bricks.”

  Gil peered, standing on his tip toes.

  It was a tiny spider.

  Gil could have easily raised his hand and crushed her beneath his thumb. Instead, he wiped his eyes again, and said, “I wanted to obey my mother. But I chopped off a man’s head and agreed to travel to the Green Chapel where he lives so that he can chop my head off in turn.”

  The spider said, “People heads don’t grow back. Someone should have told you that.”

  “No one tells me anything! And I have to leave today! I don’t know the way, and I am locked in jail. He said someone would show up to lead me there, lead me to my death. If I run away—I will be less brave than Arthur’s knight. Gawain did not run away! He must have really want to, too.”

  Gil drew a deep breath and tried to regain control of himself.

  He muttered, “I bet his mother also told him to stay home and break his word.”

  The spider said, “Your mother gave you life. It is not yours to throw away.”

  Gil said angrily, “What do you know about it? Your children eat you!”

  The spider sniffed and said softly, “All mothers suffer for their children. The mercy that the Creator grants to all the mothers of my race that our sacrifice takes place only once, all at once, and our suffering is done.”

  Gil’s anger evaporated. “I am sorry for you, ma’am. That does not sound very merciful to me.”

  “You pity me? Your estate is no better. I could have stayed a virgin and never known love. You could have stayed a civilian and never known knighthood. My bloodline is preserved; yours dies with you.”

  “Why do it? Why let yourself die?”

  “I promised my mate. He would not come into my embrace until I gave my word.”

  Gil said, “You believe in a creator?”

  She sniffed again. “Of course. I weave webs and place each strand just so to serve me, the capture lines, the control lines, the guy lines. The web is intricate, but I am more intricate, for spiders are higher and better than spiderwebs. Then, I see my life, how wonderfully and fearfully its parts are woven and fitted together, and I know I too was placed just so to serve a higher and a better.”

  “Ma’am, bless you for saying so! I don’t know how to make amends for destroying your house. But… wait…” Gil plucked a silver hair from his head and thrust it into the little crack in the brick. “…I have heard that the hairs of my head are blessed and can grant protection to those who know how to use it. Can it be of any use to you? Wolves and birds I know have found it valuable.”

  “You are Gilberec Moth, son of Ygraine, of whom the birds never speak?”

  “Yes. You know me?”

  “Bird are my enemies. I study them and know what they know.”

  “Do you know why they never speak about my mother?”

  “No. They never speak of it.”

  “Then how do you know– aargh! Never mind. Yes, I am Gil.”

  “You know not what a noble gift you give, Son of the Swanmay. This hair will allow me to build a web neither man nor brute can brush away and no prey escape. I will cling to a windborne thread and fly to Madagascar, and across a river there raise a web eighty feet wide, and be accounted eminent and famous among my kind for ten generations! That is one generation of men, or two decades. But it would be uncomely of me not to recompense you for so magnanimous a gift. Ask of me three boons, anything within my power, and I will perform.”

  “First, your forgiveness for destroying your house.”

  “Granted.”

  “Can you free me from this cell?”

  “I do not know how.”

  “Could you find a friend of mine? A dog named Ruff. He is also a pooka. His name has an S and a G at the beginning, but I can’t remember it. So go long. Sounded something like that.”

  “Am I a flea? They are the insects given stewardship over dogs. I am a spider. I reduce the excess fly population and teach them humility. Ask something else.”

  “Can you talk to a bird?”

  “In peril of my life. But I can summon one here. Carry me to the window and give me your blessing as a Son of Adam. This is your second boon.”

  And with a bravery that impressed Gil greatly, the spider hung by her thread out the window, and taunted passing birds, using herself as bait to lure one close.

  8. Pico
ides borealis

  When a Red-cockaded woodpecker dived at her, the little spider yanked herself back through one of the tiny air holes in the metal plate padlocked over the window, and Gil saw the sharp hammer of a bill follow her.

  Gil said, “Picoides, I need your help.”

  The woodpecker said, “I hear a voice! Are you inside this metal plate? Who are you?”

  “Gilberec Moth.”

  “The pine tree’s friend?”

  “Uh, yes. I think.”

  The bird rapped a moment on the metal plate, as if experimentally. “I heard that this very tree got reincarnated and showed up at the house of She of Whom We Never Speak.”

  Gil said, “Trees get to be reincarnated?”

  “They have vegetative souls, so the cherub in charge of pine trees recycles them.”

  Gil said, “So trees reincarnate back to this world, but humans go to Heaven?”

  “Is that where they go? Huh. The world is weirder than I thought. I have seen the ghosts of men lined up on the banks of the river Tiber, and then they get into a boat where a mighty angel stands and uses celestial wings as sails. They go across the sea. I am a nonmigratory bird. I don’t go over the sea.”

  “Then how did you get to the Tiber? It’s in Italy.”

  “That was a one-time thing, a pilgrimage, to pay my respects to Picus, first king of Latium. I don’t migrate yearly like a goose does. Geese are crazy. How can they dig bugs out of tree bark with those flat, weird-looking goose bills, eh? Can you send that spider back out? I’m hungry.”

  “The spider is a friend of mine.”

  “Well, just keep it platonic. If she mates with you, she’ll kill you and eat your corpse. Nasty creature, spiders.”

  The spider said, “Do I look like a Black Widow to you?”

  The woodpecker said, “Step outside, and let me inspect you more carefully.”