The Paper Sword

by Robert Priest

  At the word Chiricoru, Saheli quickened her pace.

  “I’m sure she’s fine, Saheli,” Xemion said, but they both began running even faster.

  At length the rain stopped falling and they came to a thicket of tall sunflowers, hollyhocks, and roses. Ducking their heads, they disappeared into one of the tunnels through the mesh of stem and leaf and strode on toward the green, welcoming light at the other end. In the clearing beneath the broad branches overhead, Saheli paused and looked almost guiltily at the stone they had placed over Anya Kuzelnika’s grave. Normally she would have remained by it for some time with her head bowed, but today she was worried. With a hasty nod to signal her departure, she ran toward the tower tree.

  From the outside, Xemion and Saheli’s home looked like an enormous maple tree. Hidden within the massive trunk, though, was a stone tower, very ancient and large enough to accommodate spacious living quarters. Closing the door quietly behind them, the two friends entered the lavender fragrance of the front room. Light slanted down from high window slits, which had once allowed the arcing of telescopes to scan the night skies for astrological omens. Saheli didn’t pause. She darted up the narrow staircase that led through one of the tower tree’s massive branches to a large room at the top. The observatory, as the room was known, was well lit by a glowing crystal dome that sparkled overhead in the late afternoon sun. Saheli’s face softened with obvious relief as a large golden swan waddled over to her. Chiricoru was clearly very old but her ancient eyes brimmed with life and feeling. She let out a soft honk of greeting.

  “Oh, there you are my dear Chiricoru,” Saheli answered gently as the bird’s beak nuzzled her hand. She put her arm tenderly around her long neck.

  Chiricoru looked just like a normal swan except for her gold colouring and the red cock’s wattle that decorated the upper portion of her neck just beneath the beak. This would not have seemed unusual to a Phaerlander of a hundred years ago, when the creation of spell-crossed creatures was fairly common, but to a Pathan in this new modern era it was a hideous and dangerous affront to decency and public safety that needed to be exterminated. It was for this reason that the late Anya Kuzelnika had hidden the bird away for the past half-century. In all that time she had allowed only Xemion, and in the last few months Saheli, to see her. Xemion, knowing Saheli’s fear of the spellcraft, had told her that the cock’s wattle was a purely natural aberration. Saheli did not doubt this to be truth, but in the days before Saheli’s arrival Anya had told Xemion a different story.

  Just before Anya’s birth, two of her uncles had both independently commissioned spell kones to be written to create a guardian animal for her. Unfortunately, as was too often the habit in those days, when both kones were spun at once, they acted as one — a classic cross-spell. The result was a Phaer mix of both spells; a creature mostly swan, but a little bit rooster. Or as the Pathans called such beings, a chimerant. Fortunately, baby Anya loved the colourful bird as soon as she set eyes on it, and from that day until the end of her life Chiricoru, had been her beloved companion. It was no wonder, then, that the sad quality of the bird’s tone had notably increased in the two weeks since Anya’s passing.

  “I told you she was safe.” Xemion grinned as he entered the room.

  The bird honked a greeting at Xemion and for a moment stood there eyeing them expectantly. Then she waddled her way over to the purple divan where a large silver locket hung by a copper chain from a knob on Anya Kuzelnika’s chest of drawers. She gave the locket a quick peck, causing it to swing back and forth.

  “Are you ready for the last story in the cycle then?” Xemion asked the bird gently.

  The bird honked in reply and pecked the locket again.

  Xemion eyed the crystal dome in the ceiling above them. “It looks like the sun is in just about the right position,” he said. “I’ll get the equipment.” He took down a wooden box from a shelf and removed two lenses, one as big as a plate, the other about a quarter the size. These he positioned in slots at either end of a copper housing that sat on the table. Next, he extracted a small square mirror from a case and slid it in at an angle to another slot in the top of the housing.

  Saheli, meanwhile, had opened the locket and was looking inside. Anyone with normal vision would have seen that one side displayed a picture of a gorehorse. But Saheli had extremely fine vision. Even without a glass she could see that the image was actually a mosaic made from the close-packed spines of rows and rows of tiny, differently coloured books.

  Except for the tiny spine of one red book the slots on the other side of the locket were entirely empty. When they had been full the spines of the books in them had formed the picture of a red lion. Slowly though, as the books had been withdrawn and read, the spines changed colour so that as they were slid into the matching slots on the opposite side of the locket the image of the lion slowly diminished and an image of a rampant gorehorse gradually grew. It was the final book, the last remaining red tip of that lion’s mane, a volume whose spine was hardly wider than the scale of a fish, which Saheli now removed delicately with her tweezers. She placed it carefully on a glass slide at the bottom of the copper housing and then drew a black curtain around the windows so that the room darkened considerably.

  “Why do you keep rubbing your hand like that?” Xemion asked her.

  She shuddered and looked at her hand as if she had just become aware of it. “Because I’m imagining your hand in that man’s hand and it feels so horrible I want to rub it off.”

  “But my own hand doesn’t even feel like that. He seemed honourable and honest to me.”

  “I don’t know how you can say that.” The pace of the rubbing increased. “You heard him say that he could do wicked things.”

  “He was jesting!”

  “Well, even to jest about wickedness in this world —”

  “But even in The Phaer Tales they jest about wickedness.”

  “You didn’t think he was just trying to get us onto that ship for some evil purpose?”

  “Saheli, if he was a slaver or a pirate he would’ve just pulled that sword and forced us.”

  Saheli thought a moment and her mood changed. “I hope I haven’t been unfair to him. I hope —”

  “Well, as he himself said, you shouldn’t just blindly trust people, so …”

  “But you seem to feel an almost blind trust in him.”

  Xemion looked up to see what the position of the sun was according to the various calibration points etched into the circular frame the crystal sat in. He quickly turned three of the seven crank handles, each of which adjusted the position of one of the tiny sun-steering mirror facets. Now it was Xemion who had to pause and think. “It’s true. I would have gone off with him right then if I’d been free to.”

  “So you think …. you believe there really will be a rebellion in Ulde on the equinox?” she asked.

  “I don’t doubt it at all.”

  “And you would go if you could?”

  “Of course I would. We both would.”

  With that, he turned a final crank handle and the sunlight came through the crystal in the ceiling, compressing it into a tight white beam and steering it through the lens, thereby projecting the tiny text of the last tale onto the wall. Anya had always insisted that Xemion restrain his voice whenever he was anywhere outside the tower tree, but there was no need of that now. He began to recite loudly and eloquently, revelling in the new deeper qualities that had entered his voice in the last few months.

  It was the story of two warrior beloveds — Xemion’s hero Amphion and his beloved, Queen Roe. As in so many of these tales the two fated lovers have long been separated and are constantly frustrated by forces that wish to keep them apart. Queen Roe has tried six times to cross the Eastern Sea and reach the Phaer Isle, where she knows Amphion is imprisoned, but a sea serpent always prevents her. Finally she bargains with the serpent. She tells him that she knows of a special food that will end his hunger forever. If she brings him this food, an
d if he is indeed forever satisfied, he must agree to let her pass. And if he is not forever satisfied she will lay down her very life and allow him to eat her. When the serpent agrees the Queen goes to the Isle of Zize and retrieves a whole grapevine from the Valley of the Blessed. She sails back in her coracle to the middle of the ocean, but just before she gets to the leviathan she stops, anchors her boat, and dives deep into the sea to retrieve something. She brings it back along with the vine to the serpent, who awaits her, planning to first devour the food she has brought and then the Queen herself.

  Just as the sun began to sink, Xemion reached the part of the story where the Queen tells the serpent he must suck the vine in all at once in one quick gulp in order to be forever satisfied.

  “The snake’s long tongue forked out and tasted the end of the vine and found it very sweet indeed. He exhaled all his breath in preparation to ingest the long vine. But just as he pursed his lips to begin sucking the vine in, Queen Roe substituted the thing she’d dived down to the bottom of the sea to find — the other end of the snake. She watched, hardly even smiling, as the snake unknowingly ingested more and more of itself quicker and quicker until with a last rending yawning pop not only its hunger but the snake itself disappeared forever. And so the mighty Queen Roe, after seven years of trying, finally made her way across the ocean toward the Phaer Isle where soon, surely, she would be united with her warrior beloved.”

  For a while, when the story was over, Xemion stood there staring at the place on the wall where the text had been. He was so agitated he didn’t notice that he too had begun to rub his hand down his leg. Nor was he much aware of the burning sensation in his palm and the urge to clutch at the hilt of the painted sword still hidden beneath his cloak.

  “What did you think?” he asked Saheli, not looking directly at her. He was a little embarrassed now that, for the first time, the idea of beloveds had come up in one of the stories. She showed no emotion. Her eyes were on Chiricoru.

  “What exactly are warrior beloveds?” she asked.

  Xemion gulped. “There is a tradition in the Phaer militia,” he told her, his voice breaking a little, “that two warriors can become joined in a certain way to form a special kind of fighting unit called a dyad, or warrior beloveds.” Her eyes veered close to his, slightly bemused, and he continued. “It was believed that when two warriors loved one another deeply it gave them together a much greater strength than any two warriors who were not beloveds.” He shrugged. “Usually they are a man and a woman, but it can also be two men or two women. It is an ancient and honoured tradition.”

  She took a moment to think about it, then she said, “It seems like it will have a happy ending. I hope she finds him.” She smiled, and for once as her eyes skidded by she allowed them to connect directly with his for a second. Xemion almost gasped as the two glints of green ricocheted down into his soul.

  Saheli took in a deep breath. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking I’d better explain something …” she said, and Xemion thought she must surely be about to address the issue of betrothal. “I’ve been thinking, and …” But just then Chiricoru, who had received the story’s ending with an unusually puzzled expression on her face, started to crow and peck at the door. “All right, Chiricoru,” Saheli said, shaking her head. Then she whispered, “She wants to visit Anya’s … place.” In her normal tone she said to the bird, “I’ll let you out.”

  As they disappeared down the stairs, Xemion got the tweezers and retrieved the tiny book from the bottom of the projector. Holding the locket in his palm he bowed his head in close and attempted, unsuccessfully, to slide the book into the one remaining slot at the topmost point of the gorehorse’s horn. He hadn’t realized how much his hand was shaking. He looked at his palm and wondered if it was slightly redder than normal. He bit his bottom lip, gripped the tweezers firmly, focused his mind, and in one smooth motion slid the tiny book into its awaiting slot. The image of the gorehorse was now complete. He gazed at it with sad satisfaction. This was the locket’s fourth image and the fourth cycle of stories, but the first one for which he’d done all the recitation. He thought of Anya, who had read the first three cycles to him, and tears rose a little in his throat. On her deathbed Anya had not only repented of beating him but also of teaching him to read. It would get him into trouble she had said as she lay dying. But Xemion replied that he had no fear of Pathan overlords and was more than glad that he could read. In fact, he said, he would always be thankful to her no matter what it might one day cost him.

  He was just about to close the locket when he noticed what was happening inside it. Somehow the backs of the books that created the image of the gorehorse had begun to change colour. As he watched, this shuffling of colours resolved itself into an image of the Great Kone of Ulde. And it was turning! Xemion did not share Saheli’s horror of spellcraft, but this alarmed him and he began trying to imagine what kind of mechanism or chemistry could possibly accomplish such a thing. In the midst of this, tiny letters began to appear on one side of the kone’s upper rim as it revolved. They then spiralled around and down to its narrow bottom end where they seemed to roll off the point and disappear from sight. A second later the first of the words reappeared at the top of the kone and the process was repeated. “A riddle!” he said to himself. He’d almost forgotten. Years ago, after Anya had read him the first cycle of stories, the locket had posed a riddle. Xemion squinted but the words were too tiny to be read.

  “Saheli!” he yelled, “Do you have the magnifying glass?”

  “What?” came the distant reply from outside.

  “Can you please bring the magnifying glass? You must see what’s happening.”

  “But I’m watching Chiricoru.”

  “She’ll be all right for a second or two. You must come and see this.”

  Saheli returned with the magnifying glass and examined the locket. “It’s turning just like …” Her voice hushed to a whisper. “A spell kone.” She said the words as though retrieving them from some deep well of forgetfulness and horror. Her face was ashen as she handed Xemion back the magnifying glass.

  “What is it?” Xemion asked.

  “I don’t know. The kone terrifies me.”

  “It’s not a real spell kone, Saheli. I assure you it’s just an illusion,” he said in an attempt to calm her. “Some kind of moving mosaic effect. I think it’s caused by a kind of chemical reaction activated by the heat of hands. There are different layers of ink in the spines of the books and the heat and the salt from our hands when we handle them take different amounts of time to become active in the ink and that is what changes their colour. One ink colour fades and another becomes visible. It creates the illusion of motion. It’s the genius of the Phaer culture.”

  “Well, what does it say?” Saheli asked, the tone of anger and fear brittle as glass in her voice. He put the magnifying glass close to the locket and the next time the spiral appeared at the top he put his eyes up to it and began to read in a calm, slightly worried voice:

  Who’ll be gouged

  And who’ll be gored

  By the sword

  Within the sword

  Will its power

  Be ignored

  O who will wield

  The paper sword

  “It’s almost like it somehow knows about the sword you made and —” Saheli said, quavering despite herself.

  Xemion interrupted. “No, no, no. It’s just a coincidence. I’m sure that riddle would’ve come up whatever we did today. It’s not about an actual paper sword.” Xemion was speaking confidently, but in truth the hair was rising on the back of his neck.

  “Well, what’s the answer then?” she asked.

  Xemion paused and looked up though the crystal dome above, as if the answer might lie there. “I don’t know. I have to think about it. But I assure you it’s not about an actual paper sword.”

  “But why does it say ‘the sword inside the sword’ then, when you actually have a sword within that sword you made
? And just today that man bid you go to Ulde and be trained as a swordsman.”

  “I don’t know, Saheli.” Xemion cut off her worried speculation. “But no one is going to Ulde. I’ll be going to the river tomorrow morning and throwing this thing over the falls. I should never have made it in the first place.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Xemion,” Saheli whispered finally. She came in close and she looked steadfastly into his eyes. “Let me explain something.”

  Xemion caught his breath. They had never been so close. So face to face. She was finally ready to say it.

  “You can go. Our vow to Anya was to look after Chiricoru to her dying day. It wouldn’t be abandoning Chiricoru if you left her with me. I can stay here and look after her myself if you want to go.” Her whisper betrayed no emotion, but she swallowed hard when she had finished.

  Xemion shook his head in protest.

  “No. No, Saheli. That’s not in the spirit of it. We go together.”

  “No, Xemion. I’m not ready to go. But I can see how much you want to go. You have a destiny.”

  “Yes, but you have a destiny, too. I have always said that.” She shook her head and continued to look at him earnestly. She continued in a softer tone. “Friendship doesn’t have to mean being together in the same place. We will still be friends wherever we are.”

  “Yes, but I can no more leave you than you can leave Chiricoru.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Anya made me swear that I would stay with you till you’re fully grown.”

  Saheli seemed almost insulted. “But I am fully grown.”

  “Not quite, Saheli. Even I have a little way to go.”

  The two gazed at one another fiercely, he a young man with the first stubble of a beard on his chin and she tall and long-boned, on the verge of womanhood. Her gaze softened and she gave a sigh of relief. “Then, then … it’s settled. We are both bound by our vows. Neither one of us can go.”