The Paper Sword

by Robert Priest

  Xemion looked triumphantly at Saheli as the wind picked up again, buffeting the daisies and giving the rowboat containing the sailors more momentum as it headed to shore.

  “And?” Xemion’s voice was full of a lifetime of yearning.

  “And we can offer you that training. You have heard of Tiri Lighthammer, the triplicant?”

  “Of course,” Xemion replied, his excitement mounting. “He stopped the Kagars at Phaer Point.”

  “Well, he lives yet. But he’s finally dying from his wounds of fifty years ago — and that is why I seek the hundred, because he and some others want to pass the old skills and traditions along before it’s too late.”

  “Why would the Pathans allow such a thing?” Saheli inquired pointedly.

  “Have you not heard about their civil war?” Vallaine asked incredulously.

  Xemion shook his head. “We hear almost nothing from the outside world here.”

  “Ha. Well let your joy be great then, for the Pathans, for various ethical reasons too complex for we poor Phaerlanders to comprehend, have been murdering, not us and our kind, but each other for the past five years. Soon they say the rebel army will be at the very gates of Pathar Deeps. They’ve had to call every single legion home to defend it. Soon there will be no one to guard the Phaer Isle for them but their traitorous kwislings. And they are weak and corrupt and frightened. This is a moment when even if we only stand up to them with whatever few weapons we have hidden or made we might take back our Phaer Isle with the least risk of bloodshed.” Vallaine paused for dramatic effect. “Two days from now. Midday on the equinox at the remains of the ancient Panthemium. That is the time and place. Any later than that will be too late. That is when my chosen hundred will gather and speak vows and take up once again the weapons of liberty. Now, my ship down there is setting sail for Phaer Point this very evening,” Vallaine continued. “We’ll be climbing the cliffs of Ulde by tomorrow’s dawn. I want the two of you to be there with us.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but we can’t,” Saheli said firmly. “We have duties to return to.”

  Vallaine snorted. “What of Xemion’s grand speech when he assumed the Phaer postures? What duty could be more important than this duty to our people — to our history?”

  “We have a duty to one who depends on us,” Saheli shot back fiercely. “And you really must not try to keep us from it.”

  By this time, Tharfen had approached them and was listening in. “Old Mum,” she piped up.

  “Ah,” said Vallaine.

  “Really old.”

  Vallaine looked at Xemion. “And she needs both of you?” he asked.

  Xemion and Saheli looked at each other uncertainly. “Please return to your brother and give us some privacy,” Xemion snapped at Tharfen. She sneered at him but obligingly made her way back to Torgee, who still stood at the edge of the promontory watching the Mammuth bob up and down in the waves.

  “Perhaps just you could come, Xemion. This will be a historic day. Anyone there will be forever honoured. This will be the rebirth of the Phaer Republic, Phaer swordsmanship.”

  Xemion finally said what he had been avoiding saying. “We are both bound by a vow to return.”

  Vallaine sighed. “How long will you be bound by your vow?”

  Xemion looked at Saheli sadly. “It is indefinite,” he said quietly.

  “I see,” said Vallaine, regret in his voice. “So there is no chance then that you can join us?”

  “I’m sorry,” Xemion replied. “I cannot.”

  Saheli saw the disappointment in Xemion’s eyes. “But what can we do, if … if somehow we can be free to join you later?” she asked.

  Vallaine turned and peered at her sharply. “Well, there is a way to go overground if you leave today, but I cannot tell you.”

  “What do you mean you can’t tell us?”

  “If it should become known to the kwislings that there’s an overland route to this part of the Phaer Isle, they will come even faster.”

  “But we are not kwislings.”

  “I know you aren’t but …” He nodded toward Torgee and Tharfen.

  “We won’t tell them,” Xemion said adamantly.

  Vallaine took a deep breath and eyed the two of them intently before he reached his decision. “I’m going to take a chance and tell you then, but I’m afraid I will have to ask you to swear a traditional Phaer oath.”

  Down below, the bird-headed man jumped out of the rowboat and pulled it in to shore. Vallaine’s whisper grew even quieter. “Do you swear not to tell anyone else what I am about to tell you?”

  They both said yes.

  In a quiet but steady voice Vallaine described to Xemion and Saheli the overland route they would have to take to reach the city of Ulde. It didn’t seem such a grand secret when they heard it because most of it was to travel along the old coastal road and go around the outside of the city to the eastern gate.

  “Now remember … you’ve sworn to tell no one.”

  “We won’t forget,” Xemion said solemnly.

  “We must shake on it then.” Saheli’s heart pounded with sudden fear as Vallaine once again stuck out his red hand. Xemion gripped it for the second time that day, but there was no extended shaking this time. After a few moments Vallaine stopped and offered his hand to Saheli.

  “Agreed?” he asked.

  “Agreed,” Saheli said, but instead of extending her own hand to shake his she pushed it firmly into a pocket of her cloak and bowed,

  “Come now, Saheli. Surely you know an oath can only be bound by the shaking of hands.” Saheli shook her head sternly. Vallaine kept his red hand out, a look of determination and annoyance on his face. “Now you told me you would swear a traditional Phaerland oath and the traditional Phaerland oath always ends with the shaking of hands. I’m going to have to insist that you shake my hand,” he said sternly. “Otherwise, I have told you my secret and I and my fellows are left vulnerable with no good reason to trust in your silence.”

  “You should’ve told me before that I would have to shake your hand,” Saheli said, her heart beating so hard Xemion could almost hear it in her voice.

  Vallaine stared at her angrily as Xemion shifted from foot to foot. “I don’t like to be tricked.”

  “Well, Xemion speaks for me,” she said with a blush.

  Vallaine let out a snort of disbelief, his hand still thrust forward. “No man may speak for a woman unless they are bound in marriage.”

  “Or betrothed,” she blurted out, shooting a hurried glance at Xemion and gripping her staff in both hands.

  Vallaine swung around on Xemion. “Betrothed, Xemion? At your age?”

  Even though Xemion’s heart was fluttering like some kind of trapped bird trying to get out of his ribcage, he managed to stand up taller and put his shoulders back a little. “I have sixteen years.”

  “Do you speak for her?”

  “I do,” he said. There was surety in his voice but his eyes were on the ground.

  “What if I don’t believe you?”

  “Then you will know how I feel about you!” Saheli shot back.

  Vallaine stared back at her with whatever antagonism there was between them in full view, and then suddenly the thundercloud broke and the rains came pelting down, full fat drops right off the sea, almost as hard as hail. Within seconds it was a deluge.

  “Come on, we have to run!” Saheli shouted to the others.

  Torgee and Tharfen seemed suddenly to wake up in the dousing and like startled deer from a forest fire they took off across the plateau.

  “No! You should take shelter,” Vallaine yelled, but Saheli had already darted off, the impact of the rain resounding on her chest with extra force as she drove herself forward at a terrific pace. For a moment, Xemion hesitated, staring at Vallaine, caught up in the grip of his contrary desires as the thunder rumbled over them.

  “You have to make your choice,” Vallaine shouted over the rain. “Are you going to go running after her
or will you come with me and take up your destiny?”

  The only thing Xemion knew for sure about his destiny was that it was with the person who was currently dashing away. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then he turned and ran after her. When he was about a hundred yards away he stopped and took one look back, half-expecting Vallaine to be pursuing him. But there he stood in the downpour at the cliff’s edge, shaking his head as though with disdain. Seeing Xemion’s backward glance, a little smile lit up his lips, and with his red hand to his brow he gave, before he turned and started down the cliff, an Elphaerean salute.

  5

  Arrivals and Departures

  Ever since he had heard old Anya recite the first of the Phaer tales from the locket library when he was just a little boy, Xemion had been waiting for just such a glorious invitation as Vallaine had extended to him; yet here he was running away from it. He wasn’t even thinking about it. Nor was he thinking about the rise of the new Elphaerean Republic with the proposed throwing off of Pathan chains. All he could think of was that she had told Vallaine that he and she were betrothed.

  Every time his mind landed on this thought he felt giddy and weak. In all the four months since he’d rescued her from the river he’d never known her to lie for any reason. In fact, she seemed incapable of lying. But this was either a lie — a lie told strategically and expertly to avoid shaking the man’s hand — or it was the truth, and thereby a truth that confirmed what he himself felt in every cell of his body: he was betrothed to her and she to him in some ancient way that was preordained and inevitable. The warm rain pelting down through the canopy and pouring over him and down onto the forest floor did nothing to cool the fire he felt at this thought, this hope as he ran along beside her. He wanted to stop and ask her right now. Why did you say that? But she had never been one to answer direct questions directly. Not since the first day he’d known her.

  He would never forget that day. Anya had slapped him full in the face and he had called her a hag and almost struck her back. He left the tower tree in a rage, fully intending to never return. But when he got down the mountain as far as the river crossing he discovered a second river had come careening down the side of Mount Ulde, crashing into River Ilde from the side, doubling and tripling its width. He’d had to walk much farther along the bank to find another spot to cross. That was when he first saw her about a hundred yards upstream. All he saw was a flash of long black hair stretched out on the torrent before she rolled under the rapidly moving surface and disappeared.

  Many long seconds passed by pierced by the shrieking of seabirds and the hissing of spray before she came up again just ahead of where he stood searching. He didn’t know if she was dead or alive but he dived into the thick, cold waters to save her. Farther than he’d ever swum in the thinner version of the river he swam now deep into the middle of the torrent. He couldn’t see in the muddy water, but somehow he managed to grab hold of her hair and pull her closer so that he could hold on to her with one arm and swim with the other. Her face was turned away, toward the falls, but he could tell by the limpness of her body that she was unconscious. Also, he saw that her left wrist was tightly bound to her side by a thick rope that trailed behind her. Thrashing with his one free arm, he strove to drag her across the current to the opposite shore, but the two of them were caught up in the rapids and quickly swept into the oxbow where the second river collided with the first. He barely managed to hold on to her as the conflicting currents buffeted and spun them. Then they were swept into the torrent that sped toward the falls. Normally the river ran along the bottom of a deep gorge here. But the volume of the water had increased so much it now filled the gorge almost to the top. And the precipice wasn’t far off.

  “Help me!” he shouted as the power of the water, compressed between the walls of the narrow gorge, welled about them deeper and quieter and quicker. He tightened his arm around her and gave her a quick, hard squeeze. There was a cough and a cry and then he felt a shudder of energy through her body. She lifted her head and her one free arm shot out of the waters and began to drive powerfully against the current. Gasping, thrashing at the rapids, the two of them, each with one arm, struggled like two halves of a bird against a gale. Beside the falls, the willow atop the ridge that was normally forty feet above the water was now literally in the river. The thin soil that held it there was almost completely washed away so that it’s long roots flipped and waved like suddenly released tentacles in the roaring waters. With everything he had left in him Xemion lunged, trying to catch the end of one of those roots. He felt the scrape of one of them in his desperate palm, but before he could close his fist the might of the water dragged both the root and the girl out of his grip and he was swept along the last few feet toward the falls and certain death below. Even as he came to the great curve of the waterfall and saw thousands of feet beneath him the jagged rocks he would die upon, he was thinking I’ve lost her.

  But just then something gripped him tight about the chest and yanked him back. The girl. The rope. Somehow it had wrapped itself about him in the oxbow and the other end was still attached to her wrist and her waist. She must have grabbed one of the willow roots with the other hand. The water tugged and battered at him. He tried to shout and tell her to release him but she didn’t or couldn’t let go. With a strength that belied the slenderness of her arms she pulled first herself and then him in closer and closer until he was able to grab at one of the roots. Now that he was secure she dragged herself up the willow roots to the shore. Xemion hauled himself in behind her and they both sprawled panting at the base of the willow. “Thank you for saving me,” he said, when he finally rose. It occurred to him that she might well say in return “thank you for saving me.” But she said nothing. She just lay there on her stomach, one side of her face pressed to the tangle of roots and clay, the other hidden in her long black hair. His first feeling when he knelt down and gently peeled the wet hair away from her face was of horror and then of compassion. The whole side of her face was terribly swollen and purple. Over her left eyebrow there was a deep diagonal split in the skin that was so straight it might have been cut with a knife. The light-brown shift she wore, still wet from the river, clung to the outline of her body, thin and long-boned and shivering. She was unconscious again.

  He didn’t know where she’d come from. Many rivers fed into this valley. Who knew in which of them she had first entered the water. If indeed she hadn’t fallen out of the sky.

  When she finally regained consciousness she had no memory. He’d had to swallow his pride and go back to Anya in the tower tree for curative Ilde water. For a week Saheli had lived out there in the forest and he took food from the tower tree and brought it to her, and every day the swelling of her features decreased. Then one day when he was tending the herb garden with Anya she found her way through the rose thicket to the tower tree and from the moment Anya saw her she seemed to love her. She threw her arms around her and hugged her and invited her into the tower tree — something she’d never done for anyone other than Xemion. That was only four months ago, but so much had changed since then. Anya had died; he had begun telling the stories not only to Saheli but to Torgee and Tharfen as well; and now, today, the strange stick and the visit from the man with the red hand.

  At a fork in the path, one side of which led south to the sea where the village of Sho stood, they parted company with Torgee and Tharfen. Torgee blushed as he always did when he talked directly to Saheli. “Farewell, Saheli, and I bid good health to your mother,” he said with an awkward bow.

  “Thank you, Torgee. I know she would want me to wish you good health in return,” Saheli replied.

  “She is well then?” Torgee asked.

  If Saheli had answered she would have had to answer truthfully and say that Anya had in fact died two weeks previously. But in accordance with what she and Xemion had agreed on, it was Xemion who answered. “She is still abed with the gout. But the fall is coming. She loves the fall.”

  The so
dden and sullen Tharfen gave Saheli a quick hug, but she didn’t even look at Xemion as she turned and headed off down the path.

  “Say goodbye to her,” Saheli whispered to Xemion.

  “Goodbye, Tharfen.”

  Tharfen turned and looked back at him impassively. Her rage, her hatred, welled up in her anew and she was sorely tempted to take out the sling and her biggest rock and launch it straight at his smiling face, but deep in her heart she knew it wasn’t really rage or hatred at all. It was something else that, according to all the stories she had ever heard, mostly from him, was just as powerful. She lifted her head haughtily, sneered, flared her nostrils, twirled her empty slingshot threateningly over her head, and with no words turned and continued on her way.

  “Now don’t forget,” Saheli called after them, “not a word about any of this, or we’re all in big trouble.”

  “Don’t worry,” Torgee called back.

  “Now don’t forget,” Tharfen mimicked her tone. “Not a word about any of this …”

  6

  Warrior Beloveds

  As soon as the others were out of sight, Saheli and Xemion headed off at a fast pace. They still had a long way to go before they reached the tower tree.

  “I feel guilty not telling them about Anya,” Saheli said. She kept rubbing her palm down the side of her hip as she ran.

  “I don’t,” Xemion replied. “There are good reasons not to tell them — the safety of Chiricoru for one, and our vow for another.”

  “I know. We promised Anya we wouldn’t, but it still feels a little … disloyal.”

  “I understand,” Xemion said, “but there’s loyalty to Anya and her memory, and then there’s loyalty to people like Torgee whose parents are kwislings. If people were to know that we are out here alone and word got out to the examiner, it wouldn’t be good for you or I … and it definitely wouldn’t be good for Chiricoru.”