The Paper Sword

by Robert Priest

  10

  Sun, Moon, and Sword

  Xemion and Saheli ran all that morning, only stopping in order to pass Chiricoru back and forth. When he wasn’t carrying the swan, Xemion ran with the painted sword in his hand, its silver glinting brightly in the hot sun. Saheli balanced the sunflower staff on one shoulder or used it to steady herself when they had to climb over jagged rocks. There was nothing else to carry. All the food and other supplies they had gathered so carefully had gone up in the fire. They were thirsty and beginning to get hungry.

  Yesterday’s storm system had not yet passed. Another dark thundercloud was piled up on the western horizon but the autumn sky was otherwise clear and blue, the sun shimmering and hot. There were few trees here and their flight would easily be visible to anyone positioned on the heights behind them, but Xemion had chosen this way in keeping with Vallaine’s directions. He doubted if even on the odd chance Smedenage had survived his fall he could have retrieved his dogs so quickly as to be within sight of them yet. And once they got to the other side of the plateau they would enter dense forest where there were lots of rivers and streams flooding down from the glacier. They could wade in cool waters and slake their thirst and wash away their scent and thereby be that much more untrackable.

  Toward midafternoon they reached the other side of the plateau. They picked their way carefully down the few last yards of rocky, mossy slope into the beginnings of the forest beyond it and they were at last out of sight from the heights they had left. In all this time they hadn’t said a word.

  Xemion was conscious of the fact that he was now farther away from home than he’d ever been. Slight tremors of terror at what he’d done to the examiner still shuddered through him, but surrounding all those deep feelings with its infinitely more powerful shimmer was the fact that he was on his way toward his lifetime dream. And not just the standard small lifetime dream that had once seemed so impossible to him — to somehow get training as an Elphaerean warrior — but the larger even more impossible dream that she was going with him and that she was his warrior beloved. For the hundredth time that morning he pushed the cycling delicious thought away. But it bounced back. What would happen tonight? What would happen when, as they must eventually, they came to a halt in the dark. Would they lie down together? Side-by-side?

  Saheli had no such questions. She was just putting everything she had into running and carrying the bird as gently as she could. She didn’t remember much of her life before she rescued Xemion from the river, but she did remember running. Running was good. It was always desperate and dangerous — a way to get free — but it was always good. Chiricoru’s frequent half-blocked raw coughs coming from the jute bag, however, were not good. She signalled to Xemion at the first stream they came to and they stopped in the cool shade and watered Chiricoru and themselves and comforted the poor bird, for her neck was swollen and defeathered where the examiner had strangled her. With expressions of mutual guilt and anger, they gently lifted her back into the jute bag. Xemion strapped it to his shoulders and the two proceeded on their journey, leaving almost nothing behind as a sign of them having been there.

  The examiner had no trouble getting through the thicket around the tower tree this time. It had been burnt to the ground, the smoke still rising up from it in ghostly coils. In the centre where the tree had stood, there remained only the burned-out hulk of a tower, smoke escaping through the high slits of its windows. The crystal observatory, long hidden in the foliage at the top, was now exposed from the ground, its many facets blackened and scorched by the conflagration.

  Rotan Smedenage approached the smoky ruin cautiously. The closer he got to the tree, the more his lack of a sword gained prominence in his various strategic calculations. What if that mad youth somehow managed to slay all of the dogs with that sword — his sword? This had seemed so unlikely when he set out but now it seemed a distinct possibility. Well, he had outrun him once and he could do it again if it came to that.

  Braving the heat and dragging the dogs over the charred ground, Smedenage kicked open the fire-blackened door and surveyed the inside of the tower tree. Such a structure hidden in a tree could only mean one thing, he thought: either a mage or someone else with great power had hidden here. But he had no time to examine it now. Once he had captured them he would have it thoroughly investigated. One thing was certain: They weren’t in there. In all probability they had fled. He let the dogs go and they scampered quickly to the perimeter of the ashes where the fire had burned itself out. He was about to leave when he saw the scorched shape of his sword still leaning in a corner not far from the doorway. For the first time that morning the examiner smiled. Holding his breath against the smoke, he dashed into the tower and, wrapping part of his robe about his hand to protect it from the heat, he took back his treasured weapon.

  It was a much more confident Smedenage who emerged from the tower. “Come, my boys,” he called gleefully to the Pathan dogs who silently awaited him. “We’ve got some hunting to do.”

  He proceeded to the rain barrel at the scorched edge of the clearing. Here he paused to dip the heated blade into the water, and when it was cool enough he slipped it back into its scabbard. Just as he did this he spied something incongruously golden at his feet. His smile deepened as he bent to pick it up. Yes, his luck was changing. He waved what he’d found on the ground under the eager noses of the dogs — one stray feather from that chimerant’s neck. At this the Pathan dogs went into an ecstasy of barking. Rotan Smedenage, sword at his side, remounted his sullen boar and followed their high-pitched baying as they set off hungrily into the forest.

  Most of the Pathan dogs hunted together in a pack, but there was one, a lean grey wraith called Akil, who stayed apart from the others. He was old. He had been top dog when top dog meant something. When the Pathans themselves ran the kennels — when they scoured the hills and valleys and scaled the peaks with their trusted crystal canines and there was good hunting among the scared folk and there had been good children to eat. He remembered it more piercingly now that he was famished. He had also recently lost an eye. It was this that caused the rest of the pack to shun him and deny him food. He was even more malnourished than the others, but he was still crafty and good with a scent. He would show them. If they didn’t need his guidance, his wisdom, then he’d be sure not to inflict it on them. That would not be being a good dog, would it? He would show them who was a good dog.

  In the late afternoon, Xemion and Saheli came to a grove of ancient oak trees. By now the reverberations of the insects and the chittering of birds and tree frogs was loud and choral. There was a feeling of electric expectancy in the air. Perhaps it was the rain, which even though the sky was clear of clouds at the moment, seemed ever-threatening. A distant, barely audible rumble of thunder out at sea testified to this.

  Having paused to water Chiricoru again, they took up their loads anew and rapidly descended the scarp into the damp, ragged shadows. It wasn’t long after that when Saheli first became aware of the hint of an old melody playing in her head. Her mind grasped at it as she strode along but it was like a wisp of thread that slipped away with every attempted touch. It couldn’t quite be heard. But it seemed like it must be a beautiful melody. At first it gave her such a feeling of security and strength she sought to clarify it — to hear the lulling undulation of its refrain in full, but it continued to evade her as she and Xemion moved forward through the undergrowth.

  It took Rotan Smedenage, the earth pig, and the dogs a long time to cross the high plateau. And all the while the hot sun beat down as the dogs sniffed and scurried in all directions. By the time they got to the far side their tongues were hanging out and they were panting with thirst. The examiner cupped his pale hands and drank from the same stream quite near the place where Xemion and Saheli had drunk five hours earlier, but he didn’t let the boar or the dogs drink until he’d had his fill. He made them stay before the stream, their own parched faces visible to them in the rippling current. How he en
joyed their obedience. When he had held them there that way long enough, he snapped his fingers and they darted for the water, too thirsty to even fight among themselves for first lap.

  The other dogs kept the old dog called Akil away though, snarling and baring their teeth at him when he tried to get close to the water. He had to go upstream in order to drink in peace.

  “Come back here,” the examiner shouted angrily. But the dog knew if he didn’t drink soon he would die, so for the first time in his long life he disobeyed. Keeping his one eye downstream where the others were furiously lapping, he came to the very place were Xemion and Saheli had crossed, and there he found something of note. He barked and barked at the examiner, but the examiner was now ignoring him completely. So he picked up the golden feather delicately in his front teeth, swam with his head high to the other side of the river, and trotted back until he stood across from where the others were still drinking. One by one, their crystal eyes blinking in the brilliance of the sun, the other dogs slid across the cool waters, shook themselves off, and stood atop a crest a few yards beyond Akil. The earth boar hesitated, uncertain of these strange waters, till the examiner with a gleeful shriek of “Go” whacked his backside and sent him squealing across. Smedenage then waded up to his waist in the cool waters so that the encrusted blood on his cloak began to stream away from him. As soon as he reached the other side, Akil scurried up to him, and with his long snout laid flat to the ground, deposited the feather at his master’s feet.

  “Look at this!” Smedenage bawled at the other dogs as he bent down and held it up to the sky. “You missed this, didn’t you?” The dogs all hunkered as one, from their various vantage points. “Do you see this?” He held up a chunk of third-grade salt cod, which he used to reward them. He looked down at the still submissive Akil. And then he popped the cod into his own mouth. He had just realized that the one thing he’d forgotten to bring along in his hurry to leave was some beef jerky. He had nothing to eat — except the dogs’ cod. Savouring the salty morsel, he bent down to Akil and backhanded him hard across the face. “I’ve told you, don’t run off like that. Or I will have your other eye next time.”

  As evening fell, Xemion and Saheli found themselves on the cool floor of an overhanging valley full of pine and cedar of magnificent height. The groundcover here was minimal, leaves and needles mostly, sometimes bare soil, rich and dark, which they padded over at great speed, breathing long and slow to sustain themselves. They were good runners, but it was a very long valley that slanted lower and lower within the similarly sloping bastion of bedrock it was recessed into, and the weight of the swan after a long hungry day of continuous running seemed to increase with each step.

  Even after sunset they were able to continue by the light of the full moon. But whenever a cloud drifted across the sky the shadows grew longer about them. Finally, a huge cloud completely covered the moon and they were cast in complete darkness. There they froze, both of them gripping the same birch sapling. For a long time as the cloud’s slow drift continued, they waited there, listening to the chorus of the insects and the tree frogs about them.

  “We’ll have to stop here,” Xemion said in a hushed voice. “It would be dangerous to go any farther in the dark.”

  “If the examiner somehow survived and now has his dogs after us, do you think they will be tracking us in the dark?”

  “It’s possible,” he admitted. “They are underearth dogs. So they have good eyes for darkness.”

  “Then I think we should keep waiting until the cloud cover passes. It has before. Then we’ll continue on our way.”

  “Don’t you need to rest?”

  “I don’t need to rest. Do you?”

  “No, I don’t. But if you want to rest while it’s dark, I will stay on guard and wake you immediately when the time is right. You can have my cloak.” Over her protests, Xemion undid the clasp of his cloak and suddenly their faces were bathed in a spectral green light and they could see each other.

  “The sword —” Saheli said. Xemion slowly withdrew the blade from its sheath within his cloak and it shone much more powerfully than it had the night before when it had so spooked the examiner. “I think it shines a lot more when you have it out in the sun a lot,” he observed. He held it up before him like a lamp and they could see two or three feet all around. “Well, that’s safe enough for me,” Xemion said. “Is it safe enough for you?”

  And so by the light of the sword the two proceeded farther into the forest. They travelled for some time like this. It was hot and sticky and the forest was full of inexplicable reverberations: clicks, snaps, chitters, and calls. Then someone or something let out a long reeling rising cry of what seemed sheer sorrow. Human sorrow. The sound of it chilled their blood. It continued without a break for a long time before it began to fade. Right at the end it turned into a sound that could only be called a titter — as though it somehow found the expression of its own agony amusing.

  Xemion whispered, “I think it might be some kind of spell-crossed deer. There’ll be more things like that the closer we get to Ulde.”

  Before long, the luminescent glow of the sword began to diminish until all too soon it grew ghostly and pale, the only thing visible. They stopped in the dark. The wind seemed to be whipping around in every direction, trying to find exit from some predicament, huge and wet. And again something let out that long rising lonely half-mad call. Its ending tapered off just like the previous one, but before it entirely faded again there was that slightly hysterical titter, twice as long this time. Then the moon shone through a vast hole in the clouds and suddenly they saw where they were.

  Somehow they had walked out onto a narrowing promontory and were standing mere footsteps from its tip. They gasped as they looked down and saw their shadows fall away on either side of them, deep into an abyss whose bottom the moonlight did not reach. Far beyond and below they could see shadows of the great crags and canyons continuing on down the mountainside. And not far to the north, level with them, was the great bastion of stone that was the rest of the plateau. “That’s the way we should’ve gone,” Xemion pointed. “We’re going to have to backtrack.”

  “This wouldn’t be a good place to spend the night,” she said.

  “It is not defensible,” Xemion agreed. “But … I have an idea.” He searched out her green eyes in vain as he explained. “If we backtrack along the far side of the promontory, then, even if the dogs by some miracle did make it this far, the footprints we’ve left so far will still be clear and pointing this way and that might well fool or at least delay them.”

  She agreed, and the two doubled back as quickly as possible while the moon was still shining. Twice they had to pause while clouds passed over, and both times, in the pitch blackness, whatever being it was out there let loose that awful cry, its ending titter even more prolonged than before.

  Halfway down the promontory they came to a small clearing about fifty yards wide. In its centre there was a round cabin, its windows shuttered. They only saw it for a moment before another dark cloud rolled in and covered the whole sky. As they waited in the darkness, there was a distant rumble of thunder and a great wind came up so fierce the thick cedar trunks began to creak and complain as the treetops were buffeted to and fro.

  The rustling and complaining of the leaves only lasted a moment. Then the sky split open with an explosion of lightning that forked down into the forest in three great branches, one of which hit so close and so hard they both darted away from it in terror. In the blinded seconds that followed, Saheli felt the shadow of something shoot by her as she shot by it. There was a dull thud of impact followed by two grunts of pain. Close behind her a familiar voice screamed but she couldn’t quite place it. There were sounds of struggle in the grass and she ran toward them, just barely able to see two silhouettes struggling in the dark forest shadows. In panic she called out “Xemion!” And then another voice, somewhere behind her, called out “Saheli?” She realized who it was. She spun around to fa
ce him in the dark just as he ran into her.

  “Torgee?”

  Just then the storm cloud came away from the moon and Xemion saw who it was he’d run into in the dark and was currently wrestling with. “Tharfen!” he shouted with disgust. “What are you doing here?” Tharfen, who had taken quite a blow when she collided with Xemion, didn’t at first reply. She was too winded and stunned. “Do you have any idea how much peril you’ve put us in by following us here?” he shouted, infuriated.

  Xemion was standing up now, brushing himself off as Tharfen recovered her breath enough to scream at him “We came to warn you, you arse!” This was followed by a solid kick to Xemion’s shins. “Because the examiner is after you with Pathan dogs.”

  “I already know that!” Xemion shouted. At that, the sky exploded, five forks of incandescent lightning striking so symmetrically around them it might have been herding them toward that cabin in the centre of the clearing. A second later a massive crack of thunder shook the ground. They all converged on the long porch in front of the doorway, but Saheli regained control of herself at the last moment and stopped short of entering it.

  “I’m not going in that house,” she said with great certainty as the rain began to fall behind her.

  “But the lightning …” Xemion protested, raising his voice to be heard over the rain and the wind.

  “Yes, but we don’t need to go inside,” Torgee said. “There is shelter enough here on the porch.”

  “Torgee’s right. It will give us something solid at our backs if …” Xemion didn’t finish his sentence.

  “If what?” Tharfen demanded.

  “If we should need to defend ourselves,” Saheli said. She stood there for a few moments, Chiricoru silent in the bag on her back, both of them getting wet as the lightning struck again and again all round her until finally she had to come in.

  11

  Turning and Returning

  Fortunately for Xemion and Saheli, Torgee had come well-equipped. He shared his bread and fish paste and they ate for the first time that day. For a little while they all sat there on the porch, mutually embarrassed to be in one another’s presence at nighttime. Considering all the risk Torgee and Tharfen had taken on their behalf, Saheli thought it only proper that she tell them about Vallaine’s invitation and their plan to take up arms in Ulde.