Shards of a Broken Sword

by W. R. Gingell

  They sped high on the breeze and buffeted between clouds, until Dion said suddenly: “Here! We need to stop here!” She felt it with certainty: this was where Faery was to be sealed away from the world of men. This was where the Broken Sword had once been forged, and where it had been broken.

  The Fae are following close, said Rafiq’s troubled voice. Fancy and Carmine, who must have been speaking with Kako, looked across the void at Dion and nodded.

  “As quick as you can, then,” said Barric, and Dion saw that he was not the only one checking his knives and loosening his sword in the scabbard. Fancy, her legs edging back to grip Carmine’s at the ankle, was also methodically checking her weapons. Carmine sent a bright spit of crimson magic arcing high across the void between them, and smiled such a dark, deadly smile at Dion that she caught her breath and wondered how she could ever have thought Fancy the more dangerous of the two. Rafiq turned his nose toward the swiftly moving grass and began to descend in a stomach-churning dive.

  The grass came up to meet them as quickly and inevitably as Dion’s doom, and they charged through the long stalks, sending leaf blades and flowers flying in an explosion of green and pink. Barric leapt for the ground before Rafiq had even slowed and caught Dion as she followed him.

  “Where?” he said, panting.

  “This way,” Dion said; and, seizing his huge hand in her own, she ran for the fold in the land directly ahead. It was deep but narrow, and the hill that rose beyond it rose both in the world of men and in Faery.

  “We’ll give you as long as we can,” called Fancy. Dion, her heart thundering in her ears, half-turned and raised her hand in a last goodbye; or perhaps it was a salute. She wished she could have stopped and said goodbye properly, but even as she and Barric ran for the entrance into Faery, Rafiq and Kako took to the air again, their battle-colours dark against the pink of the late afternoon sky.

  Dion and Barric leaped the boundary together, quick and breathless, and Dion stopped dead as she found the world changed and alien around her. Beside her, Barric seemed to let all his breath out in a sigh of home-coming, his fingers curling through hers to grip tight for an instant. He released her hand again almost immediately, and said: “Here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dion, and there was a tremble in her voice that wasn’t from lack of breath. She drew the Broken Sword clumsily from its makeshift scabbard, its leather grip tacky against her palm, and tried to bring back the clarity of sense she had had when in the air.

  There was nothing. No guiding light, no certainty of purpose. Here she was, standing in Faery, where the sun wasn’t quite warm and the breeze didn’t quite touch the skin, the Broken Sword reforged in her hands—Ywain’s daughter, come to seal the land, as prophecy foretold—and Dion had not idea of where she was supposed to be or how the Binding was to be begun. Her eyes lifted beyond the sword to where Rafiq and Kako spun and dived in the air; behind them the vast company of Fae that had been following hot on their heels, and before them the very meagre protection of Carmine and Fancy. She could see Fancy’s knives glinting in the sunshine, reflecting back Carmine’s scarlet storm of magic as it rolled down to meet the approaching Fae.

  “Barric–”

  He moved until he was in front of her, blocking the sight. “Put it from your mind. You were made for this day. The Sword was made for you.”

  Dion, as she had done so many times when nothing seemed to make sense, went back to the simplicity of the magic itself. Barric had taught her that. He had taught her that and so much more. She studied the magic of the Sword: its components, its rhythms, its patterns, and its purpose. And deep inside herself she felt the tugging of her own destiny-cord where it nestled within her soul.

  “It’s time,” said Barric; and Dion was so deep in the rhythms of the Sword that she didn’t recognise the rhythm of rough-edged sorrow to his voice. She thought of Aerwn—of their parents—and most of all, of Padraig. It was time. Time to be gone; time to go home. Time to join Padraig in the whispering silence of death.

  She adjusted her grip on the Sword and let herself relax into its overwhelmingly strong magic. Her first impression was one of incredible vastness: as if her eyes had been opened to see worlds that had been there all along, but were far too massive for her comprehension. Dion saw Avernse spread before her, and considered it all. Then she moved beyond Avernse to Montalier, where the castle was under siege, stopping for a fleeting view of Markon and Althea as they stood hand in hand. Dion let the world move on again, her sights on Llassar and Aerwn, and for a brief, unsatisfactory moment saw her sister and Owain ap Rees fighting furiously back to back amidst a throng of Fae.

  “Aerwn!” she gasped. She hauled herself grimly back through Shinpo, desperate to complete the Binding. There was the overtaken Shinpoan castle: there was a young boy, so similar to Kako, desperately fleeing a Fae pursuer through hidden passages and magical byways; an older girl anxiously waiting for him; the imprisoned family they were trying desperately to rescue. She left them behind, seeking Avernse.

  It took Dion some time to realise that she was already in Avernse: that she had always been in Avernse. Her sight had telescoped, and now that she could refocus, she saw something else. Before her was a vast host of bright lights, spread throughout the human world; behind her, a still larger host that dwarfed it many times over. Dion exhaled in wonder. She was seeing Fae-lights: the very essence of each and every Fae in both Faery and the human world. The Sword knew them all– could reach them all.

  I can kill them, she thought, almost dizzy with the idea of it. I can kill them all. None of them would ever kill or enslave another human.

  The Fae company far below her shivered and stopped in the midst of the fight. She felt their attention quivering on her; caught and frightened, and all too aware that they could be sealed away from their homeland or slain in an instant. For just one moment Dion felt that she really could kill them all. But there was still that one Fae-light glowing strong directly in front of her human body; and further on was a crimson one that grew in hope as the other Fae-lights around it sank in fear and quivered.

  And Dion found that she knew what she had to do next. She reached out to every one of the Fae-lights and sank claws into them with the desperate call of Now or too late. Then she sliced through every barrier between Faery and the human world in one decisive motion of the Broken Sword; an open invitation. She saw the Fae-lights brighten—saw the battle line in Llassar waver and then disintegrate; saw a young boy in Shinpo flop to the floor in relief as his Fae attacker disappeared; heard a vague echo of Carmine’s victory cry as the Fae host around him forgot about fighting and rippled like a flood across the hills for the closest Faery/human boundary—she saw it all in a moment.

  She watched Aerwn and Owain ap Rees on the battlefield, laughing and bright-eyed as their soldiers roared in joy around them. She wished, for a brief, traitorous moment, that she could be present with Aerwn one last time. Embrace her and say a proper goodbye. But there was no time: Fae-lights were winking out of the human world and into Faery every second, and soon there was only one left. Dion brought her sight back in closer to her body’s location, where Rafiq and Kako glided to meet the others on the ground, sweeping through grass that steamed a little as it met their scales. Dion smiled gladly to see them unscathed, and wondered that she could still think in terms of smiling at all. She saw her body smile as if in sleep, and they both laughed softly together. She joined briefly with her body again, feeling the weight of it as a burden, and stood with Barric supporting her.

  Ahead of her was the crimson Fae-light, somehow still visible and winking bright on Carmine’s forehead. “You’d better come in now,” said Dion, the words heavy and unfamiliar in her mouth. “I’m about to seal the border. If you stay there you’ll be caught.”

  “Oh, I’m already caught,” said Carmine. It looked as though he merely whisked away a stray hair that fell across his forehead, but his Fae-light was between his fingers the next moment, and he
dropped to his knees with the effort of magic.

  Fancy fell to her knees beside him, her face white. “Don’t! Not for me!”

  “Never for you,” Carmine gasped, clinging to her hand. “I’m a selfish being and I won’t have it said that I stayed for anyone’s sake but my own! Take it, Dion ferch Ywain. I don’t want it. I have all that I need here.”

  Dion took it from him and it tickled across her arm until it sat on her forehead, whispering nonsense to her eyebrows.

  “Oh, the wrinkles!” said Carmine woefully. “I can feel them forming already.”

  Fancy snorted a wet laugh into his shoulder and clung to him. “You never looked so pretty,” she said.

  Dion readjusted her grip on the Sword, and was distantly pleased to find that her hands were neither sweaty nor shaking. “It’s time,” she said. To Kako she added: “Your family are safe. I’ve seen them.”

  Rafiq and Kako didn’t shift from their dragon forms, but they made a dragonish obeisance amidst the crackling of grass. Thank you, said Kako’s voice. For that– and for other things. It’s been an honour.

  This time it was Dion who bowed. She said almost formally: “The honour was mine. And– and thank you. Barric, we need to move further in. I don’t want to be caught half way.”

  Barric lifted her bodily, the Sword resting against his shoulder but still firmly gripped in Dion’s white-knuckled fingers. He bowed to the assembled group; and turning his back, he carried Dion further in and further up. She delighted for one last time in the touch of breeze—how she could feel the Faery breeze now that Carmine’s Fae-light rested on her forehead!—and revelled in the heat of the day, Faery sun though it was. She ducked her head once more to rest on Barric’s shoulder, sighing at the familiar warmth and scent of him, and said: “Just here, Barric.”

  Barric set her down gently in the leaves and she saw that the others hadn’t left: they watched from beyond the fold that spanned Faery and the human world. They were standing witness, their faces upturned to gaze into Faery as long as they could see it. Dion drove the Sword into the ground and felt it join with the Faery earth, sending a network of Binding into the soil deep beneath their feet and spreading high above them into the sky. She smiled at Barric one last time, feeling the heaviness of mortality leave her, and slipped out of her body in a joyful rush to join with the Binding that grew around them. The barriers between Faery and the human world rose swiftly, stronger than ever before; a vast, root-like network of magic that flexed and grew as it knit around Faery. She spared a look for her body and saw it crumpled in Barric’s arms, his shoulders bowed and heaving as tears fell silently down his scarred face. Dion found that she could still feel regret, and for a moment wished she had the use of her human body again, just to cling to Barric once more and tell him that it was all right. But the Binding waited, empty and hollow, and she didn’t dare to leave her attention divided. In its hollowness Dion seemed to sense a purpose. She gazed at the network of magic that surrounded Faery and found it incomplete: it was only half a spell, a honeycomb of empty spaces and hollow areas that needed to be filled. Into that honeycomb of empty spaces Dion poured her magic; her life; her self. She sank into the spell, filling every empty space and incomplete piece, and was astonished at how much of her there was. She was bigger and fuller and so much more alive than she had ever thought.

  When Dion had filled the Binding to the brim, her grip on Faery all-consuming and complete, she searched within herself for the crimson dash of destiny that she had seen in Padraig’s hammer and anvil. It was the only thing she had been really sure of when it came to binding the land, and it came to her willing and ready, the ethereal ends of it snaking up and around and through every part of the binding. She caught a brief glimpse of her body again; saw the redness that blossomed around its wrists and bound them to the sword. And when, following Padraig’s example, she tied the returning ends of the cord together, they knit together until there was no beginning and no end. There was just Dion and the Binding; and Dion was the Binding. She found herself wearier than she had ever been, the weight of the Binding heavy on her shoulders. That was ridiculous, of course; because she had no shoulders here and there was no real weight. Yet she found herself being compressed and pushed back toward her body by that weight.

  No, Dion thought, shocked. No. It wasn’t meant to be like this. She was meant to die. She was ready to die. She wanted to die. Why wasn’t the Sword letting her die? She flowed through the scarlet thread of destiny that bound her to the Sword, searching desperately for wrong ties and missing threads, but found it unfrayed and wholly binding. It was then that she understood, in a terrible clarity of knowledge. The Binding didn’t want her death; it wanted her life. Aerwn had been almost right: the Binding was Dion and Dion was the Binding, but Dion would live in spite of it. And while she lived, Faery would be bound.

  There was an ache in Dion’s heart, and somewhere at the back of her consciousness something was still tugging, tugging. A heavy certainty dragged her down; back to the ground and back to her body. Dion was thrown back into her body with a painful thump, gasping and struggling, and found herself looking up into Barric’s stunned eyes. They stared at each other until Barric’s scar stretched and he laughed huskily through his tears.

  “Dion,” he said, his voice weary and curiously satisfied. And then again: “Dion.”

  Dion’s face crumpled. “It doesn’t want my death,” she said. There was still a terrible aching in her heart. She could have died without Padraig, but how was she supposed to live without him? “It doesn’t want my death, Barric: it wants my life.”

  Barric pulled her close and Dion clung around his neck, her face buried in his shoulder. “It wasn’t meant to be like this!” she wept. “I was supposed to die! He was supposed to live and I was supposed to die!”

  Barric held her in silence until she ceased to cry, and then for some time longer after that. When Dion had cried herself out she simply sat where she was, clutching wrists that were still scarlet-bound in a physical reminder that she herself was now as much the Broken Sword as the Sword itself. The two wedding-bands that were on her left wrist—hers and Padraig’s—had seamlessly joined with the binding, bright bubbles of contrasting colour in the smooth red. Dion knew without tugging at them that she would never be able to remove them, but she ran her fingers over them anyway. They were smooth and light.

  “We’ll have to find somewhere safe to keep the Sword,” she said at last. “It’s not– well, I don’t think it’s breakable, but just in case.”

  Barric nodded. “There’s a place ready. Careful.” He caught her as she tried to stand and found that she wasn’t quite steady. Dion gripped his arm with one hand and pulled the Broken Sword from the ground with the other. It didn’t feel as heavy as it had felt before, and it slid back into its scabbard as smoothly as if she had carried it all her life. “I’ll speak with the other Guardians. See if there’s a way of getting you back to the human world.”

  Dion tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a sob. “There isn’t,” she said. “I can’t go back. Even if there was a way I couldn’t. If I leave Faery, the Sword will break again and the borders will begin to fall.”

  “Then we’ll find somewhere safe for you as well,” said Barric. He took her hand; and Dion, feeling the dappled warmth of Faery sunshine on her face, allowed herself to be led through the trees and into her new life.

  The Turning of the Season

  Aerwn ferch Pobl had been queen for five years before she brought herself to enter her sister’s suite once again. She wasn’t sentimental, but the loss of her twin had cut deeply, and even Owain ap Rees’ strongly worded criticisms hadn’t been enough to break the seal on a door that held only sorrow within.

  Nor did she mean to enter the suite again when she did. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision—as quite often happened with Aerwn—and had she not been passing by Dion’s closed-up suite on the way to her own old suite, it may never have been made. But she d
id find herself there late one afternoon, passing the royal seal that closed up Dion’s door; and Aerwn had never been one to back away from a forbidden thing, even if she was the one who had forbidden it. On a whim, she drew her ceremonial dagger and flicked away the seal, turning the door-knob before it could occur to her to turn back. She found herself amidst cobwebs and ghostly dust-covers, her footsteps sending up puffs of dust as she walked a path she had often walked, years ago. Back then, Aerwn would have thrown herself on the bed and waited for Dion to finish dressing. Her sister would nervously check her appearance in the mirror–

  That mirror! thought Aerwn, startled. It was still there. She had all but forgotten it: the window into Faery that had brought Dion to her doom. It occurred to Aerwn that if she could just see Barric, she would give him a proper piece of her mind. She tore the dust-cover from the mirror, sending dust and cobwebs into the air in choking cloud, and for an eye-watering moment was too busy coughing and sneezing in tandem to pay attention to anything else. She wiped her streaming eyes, and thought she heard Dion’s voice saying: “Aerwn?”

  Aerwn looked up wildly. A familiar, startled face looked back at her from the mirror, and she was crushed by a ridiculous disappointment until it occurred to her that the room in the mirror was not the one in which she stood– the long, loose, curling hair around the face in the mirror not her own short-cropped curls.

  “Dion!” she gasped. “Dion!”

  “Finally!” said Dion, her eyes luminous with bright, happy tears. “Oh, finally! Aerwn, you have no idea how long I’ve waited to see you!”

  “You’re dead,” said Aerwn, sitting down rather suddenly on the bed. “You’re not dead! How are you not dead? And who are they?”

  She saw the flush rise to Dion’s face as easily as it had ever risen, and looked past her sister again to the two children who were playing behind her. The girl—a quick, pale-skinned thing with dark curls just like Dion’s and a pair of blue eyes that could only have come from Padraig—gave her a swift, uninterested look and went back to her window, but the younger child’s eyes were fastened on Aerwn and had been for some time. He was a solemn, fat, little thing with dark, smooth skin and wide grey eyes that looked impassively at his aunt. Aerwn, who had been unnerved more than once by the same gaze from Barric, gaped.