The Paper Sword

by Robert Priest

  “I’m glad you’ve finally trusted us with your secret,” Torgee said gently.

  She returned her own grim smile. “I’ve got amnesia. My whole life is a secret — even to me.” She said it like a joke, but there was a tone of despair there too.

  Xemion started to say “But now you’re starting to remember —” when suddenly there was a freakish stone howl from far off in the distance.

  “Pathan dogs!” Tharfen whispered. The sound reignited the terror in her blood.

  “Run!” Torgee bellowed.

  “Get Chiricoru!” Saheli shouted. Tharfen reached for Chiricoru, but the suddenly agile bird neatly dodged her and darted away.

  “Come here!” Saheli and Tharfen both screamed desperately, but some mischief had gotten into the bird. Before they could catch her she was running off at a surprising speed through the long golden grass, headed back the way they had come — straight into the jaws of the Pathan dogs!

  Terrified, they all chased Chiricoru, Tharfen way out in front of the others, only her red hair visible above the fluffy white flower tops. But the bird was outstripping them. Then she did something she hadn’t done in many years — she spread her golden swan wings wide and took to the air. At first she flew straight up, high into the blue sky. Then the wind took her and carried her much farther yet. It looked as if she might fly forever and be gone, but when she was little more than a spec somewhere way back above the plateau she began to spiral down.

  As she descended, the distant echoes of the Pathan dogs intensified. She landed on a rocky patch where there was no grass. At first she just stood there on a plinth of grey rock, looking from side to side. Tharfen screamed for her to run as the dogs closed in on her, but Chiricoru’s feet appeared rooted to the spot. Only when it seemed too late did she turn and see the distant glimmer of the dogs speeding toward her over the stony ground. Chiricoru began to flap one wing as she tried to run but all she achieved was a kind of lame waddle. Tharfen saw the horrific arches of the dogs’ backs as they leapt at her, and she thought they had her, but just as it seemed she would be torn apart, the bird spread her ancient wings one more time and leapt into the air, dodging them. She struggled to stay aloft, but soon she was so low they began to leap at her. Desperately she remained just out of their reach as one by one they jumped, snarling, snapping their jaws on emptiness. But she couldn’t stay up forever and the dogs knew that. And they were very hungry. Finally, she dropped so low one of the dogs came away with a golden feather in its mouth. The scent of blood sent the dogs into a frenzy and they chased her with all the more determination. But she, too, seemed empowered by her loss. Flying parallel to the ground, she flew just beyond them, leaving the rocky terrain behind and streaking over one of the great expanses of golden grass. She was barely three feet above the flower tops, easily within their reach if they could just catch up with her. Tharfen, with Saheli not far behind, was now close enough to see the wavelike movement of the flowering grass tops that marked the pursuit of the dogs. Sailing just out of reach, Chiricoru led them through the grass, and when the grass ended she sailed a few feet more above the bare rock of the plateau. Barking madly, the dogs burst out of the grass, leaping as one. But before they got to her she took to the air in a quick and graceful curve while they in an equally quick but infinitely more shrieking curve began to fall at midleap into a very deep ravine.

  “She tricked them,” Xemion yelled ecstatically as the four friends sprinted toward her. “It was a ruse. She tricked them into jumping over.”

  Chiricoru came fluttering back to earth close to where she’d taken off and, seeing Tharfen and Saheli running toward her, she lifted her beak and crowed as though in greeting. Tharfen, who had set off first and was far ahead of the others, got to the old bird first and wrapped her arms around her. But there was one more terrible golden wave through the tall grasses that no one had seen. For a terrifying instant Tharfen looked into the mad crystal eyes of the Pathan dog. She saw its long fangs as it leaped at her and bowled her over. But it wasn’t Tharfen the beast was after. In an instant Chiricoru was seized in the terrible jaws and torn from her arms. For a few seconds there was a lot of flapping and struggling and squawking as they rolled toward the same cliff the other dogs had fallen over, and then the two of them were gone. Torgee and Xemion arrived at the edge just in time to see Chiricoru, still gripped in the jaws of the dog, being swept over the crest of a waterfall in a river far below.

  “No!” Saheli screamed in disbelief. She looked around desperately as though she might find a pathway down and somehow rescue the ancient bird, but Xemion knew it was too late for that. Directly beneath them three of the fallen dogs lay sprawled on the hard rock surface beside the river, obviously dead. But another two or three of the beasts, including one very old dog, must have landed in the river. They had managed to pull themselves out of the rapids and, having gained the thin rocky shore, were now shaking the water off and looking back up the sheer cliff to see how they might return to the chase. Tharfen stared down just long enough to see the extra-long, white talons emerge from their claws as they began to try to rip their way back up the grey grim stone. For only a second she imagined those talons ripping into the backs of her lacerated thighs and then she turned and fled.

  Even as she ran she was telling herself she should be hard and brave, but those thoughts were swept away like leaves before a hurricane in the force of her panic. The great stone that marked the passage to the ravine was a long way off. And every step of hers would be five of the dogs’ she thought, and there was a much closer ravine to the right. She heard her brother screaming her name behind her, “No, Tharfen. No!” But she couldn’t stop herself. She was sure there was no safety from those dogs on the plateau. But there might be something down here.

  13

  The Vale of Two Wells

  The ravine narrowed as Tharfen ran and she realized she had made a mistake in coming this way. But there was no way to turn back now. Soon it was little more than a downward-slanting crack in the mountain. The walls grew higher and higher about her, smooth and regular with no footholds where she might climb. She had only one way to go — forward — and this panicked her all the more, especially as she realized she had endangered the others as well. She kept saying “No! No!” and pounding her fist into her palm, ashamed of herself. She kept looking up at the sky as though she might see some resurrected version of Chiricoru flying by up there, but soon the ravine had become a very narrow canyon and the walls had grown so steep the sky seemed little more than a blue thin flag flying high over them.

  Just as the canyon floor began to widen considerably and level off and the distant glint of sunlight from the other end started to promise an exit, she saw ahead of her two high black gates covered in dark-leafed vines. They looked to be bolted into the sides of the canyon and the black metal bars they were made of curved over and inward at the top, making them unclimbable. The malignant-looking coils and tendrils that wove themselves through the narrow black grilling rustled audibly in the slight wind. They hung thickly along both sides of the towering canyon walls, dipping into one or the other of two wells that were there. The wells were about fifty feet back from the gates, one on each side of the canyon. The well on the right was obviously tended. It had a wide stone rim into which letters had been carved by some ancient hand. Various small, colourful bottles, vials, and decanters were arranged neatly about the rim. The other well, about four yards to the left, was more unkempt and also had ancient letters carved into the rim, though these were much more eroded than those on the other well. Several plain vials and bottles and small cups were arranged about it. What these letters might have said Tharfen didn’t know, for she couldn’t read. In fact, she hardly saw any of this as she dashed by in her increasing panic, desperate to find a way to get by those gates before those crystal-faced dogs and their brutal master caught her here.

  The two sides of the gates met in the middle and overlapped. She pushed there with all her might but they
hardly yielded at all. Desperate, she tried to wriggle through the bars, but they were far too narrow. She grunted with rage and pushed again and summoned the strength of her mother and her father. Something gave. The outer gate shifted a little. There was now a narrow opening where one of the overlapping edges came away from the other. It was a tight squeeze and she scraped her chest and felt trapped for a moment, but fortunately she was still small enough to get through.

  Panic still seized her, but she took the time to look around. There was a small grove of angular windbent oak trees just ahead and about fifty yards beyond that a deep fissure intersected the canyon at a right angle. Quickly she ran up to its edge, looked both ways along it, and saw that from here it zigzagged on through the grey, fractured rock of the mountain in both directions like a splinter in a glass pane. On the far side of it, about another hundred yards away, the roadway she stood on began anew. But in between the fissure was clogged and covered with dark, twisted vegetation so that she couldn’t tell how deep it might be. She took all this in quickly, panting and terrified. In a renewed frenzy she darted back to the largest of the twisted oaks, scurried up it, and hid, trembling, among the broad-backed oak leaves. She felt powerless and ashamed and disgusted with herself, but she remembered her mother’s instructions about times like this: face your fear. Peering out from the shelter of the foliage she saw Torgee’s frantic arrival at the gates.

  “I’m up here,” she called to him. “Squeeze through the gate.”

  Saheli and Xemion had also just arrived but they had paused at the wells while Xemion read the ancient signifiers engraved into the stone rim of the well on the right. “Remember Well and Go Forward.” It took a moment to decipher the more eroded letters on the other well. “Forget Well and Go Forward.” He called out to Torgee “Stop!” but it was too late. Torgee had squeezed himself into the space where the two gates overlapped. But he was larger than Tharfen and couldn’t get through. Suddenly, even though there was no wind, the black-leafed vines that clutched the gate began to rustle and tug. “Get out of there!” Xemion cried, but Torgee’s only answer was a groan as the gate tightened on him. Xemion and Saheli pushed desperately at the gate, trying to free him. It moved a little but not enough. Now Tharfen, agonized by the sound of her brother’s groans, managed to overcome her fear enough to abandon the safety of the tree. From her side she began to pull at the gate. Torgee’s face was turning a deep red. Xemion squeezed into the space beside him and pushed with all his might. He edged in farther yet and pushed again, and this time the gate shifted just enough for Torgee to gasp in a bit of air. One more mighty push with all his strength and Xemion shoved Torgee with his shoulder, propelling him sideways and out onto the ground on the other side. Instantly the black vines tugged again at the gates and it was now Xemion who was clamped in tight, barely able to breathe.

  And so the struggle began again, this time to free Xemion. But nothing Torgee and Tharfen and Saheli could do could force the gates to release him. If anything, the black bindweed tugged the gates even tighter against their captive. Xemion strained to take in a breath and with its exhale he grunted, “Bring me water.”

  Saheli had seen the two wells when she arrived, and the sight of them had sent a shiver of terror through her. She looked back and saw the many beautiful glass bottles positioned as though by some fastidious presenter about the rim of one of the wells. She ran back, grabbed one of the bottles, and returned with it to Xemion. By now his face was purple and he had lost consciousness. She pulled the stopper from the bottle and began to pour the clear cool water between his lips. But it just spilled over his face and she felt the tugging of the bindweed and the shutting of the gate even tighter against him. She held his nose and kept pouring the water into his mouth until it was all gone and Torgee and Tharfen kept tugging from the other side as she pushed but there was no letup.

  Desperately she ran back to the well to get another bottle, but before she got there she heard a gurgling gasp behind her and saw that Xemion had finally taken a breath. With that the gate creaked and opened a little. From the other side, Torgee dragged him out of the compressed space and Xemion fell to the ground, coughing and gasping. Quick as she could, Saheli ran back to the gate, but before she got there it closed again. She pushed and they pulled but it couldn’t be budged.

  “You have to drink some of the water,” Xemion croaked. She looked back in horror at the wells and shook her head. “It says Remember Well and Go Forward,” he yelled. “You have to drink some of the water for the gate to open.”

  In the distance the sound of high-pitched baying echoed down the canyon. Saheli knew she didn’t have much time. She turned to run back to the wells, but even as she approached, a grey hand parted the dark vines that hung down over the canyon wall beside the well and a figure stepped out of a hidden cave and lurched toward the well. Who or what it was was completely concealed in a ragged grey cloak but the head sat atop the shoulders at a weird angle. Saheli continued forward but the figure was closer and got there first. She heard a deathly but familiar voice say “Remember well, Saheli.” The figure bent down and lifted up a goblet filled to the brim with the beautiful clear fluid and held it toward her. Saheli stopped a few feet away, terrified, not knowing what to do.

  “Come,” the ghastly voice said and Saheli felt a strange compulsion to obey. She moved forward a couple of steps, but just as it seemed she might take the goblet and drink from it, she darted to the left where the other well was. It was nearly strangled by the vines that swarmed over it and dipped down into its depths. She scooped up one of the bottles from its edge and tried to pull the cork out, but before she could do so the cloaked figure’s freezing cold grey hand grabbed her wrist. Shrieking “No!” she tugged herself out of the clawing grasp and shoved the figure away.

  As the creature stumbled backward, its hood fell away, revealing a grey face — a once beautiful face that Saheli had never quite forgotten and recognized now even though its head was fixed backward atop its shoulders. With a scream, Saheli fled to the gate. Before the woman could catch her, Saheli tugged the stopper out of the bottle. It was filled with a slimy black liquid and she saw now that its outsides were all encrusted with what looked to be bloody fingerprints. But the woman, running heels first in her hideous backward gait, was almost upon her. Even as the sound of the baying dogs reached her ears anew, she tipped the bottle back and swallowed deeply. In seconds those ghastly hands would clutch at her again. Saheli pushed at the gate and it opened. Screaming, she squeezed through and in a moment it closed after her with the woman left on the other side.

  “Saheli,” the voice shrieked, “you must remember. You must remember.”

  Saheli just stood there for a second, frozen, but the sound of the howling of one of the dogs jolted her out of her indecision.

  “Come on. We have to get up one of these trees,” Xemion yelled. Saheli nodded, her face as bloodless and white as birchbark. And with that the four of them, in a panic, scrambled each up their own tree to safety.

  14

  Mother

  The ghoulish woman had returned to her cave by the time the dogs, running at the ends of their long leashes, arrived. High up on the boar the examiner held the chains of the dogs in one hand and the reins of the boar in the other as he galloped along the canyon floor. His sword was flapping at his side and he was furious. Travelling through the night at great risk he had reached the cabin not long after his prey had left. But there the dogs, one of whom still had a fishhook in his nose from an earlier trap, filled their long snouts with the red pepper Torgee had so stealthily spread on and around the porch. For some time, despite his most energetic whipping, the beasts had been unable to do anything but roll and sneeze and whine in pain. Then they had been tricked by that chimerant swan. And now this — a locked black gate barring the way. And his prey was so close, just beyond the gate, somewhere, he knew it. The three remaining dogs hunkered timidly before the black gates, scenting even over the painful aroma of cayenn
e in their nostrils something strange, deathly, and unnatural about this place. The examiner dismounted and shoved at the gates, but there was no give at all despite his efforts. Grunting with rage, he leapt back atop the boar, backed it up a way, and then charged it at the gates. The dogs scurried out of the way as the poor beast slammed into the black metal grill, but still the gates remained tightly shut.

  Perhaps the mad youth and the girl were trapped here too. He spun around to scan the black leaf-covered walls of the chasm. But already creatures were parting the hanging vegetal veils and emerging from numerous hidden caves and crannies. A draft of fear ran through him as the grey-cloaked creatures ran toward him. There was something curious in their gait, and only when one of their hoods was blown back by the wind did he see that their heads had been yanked around atop their shoulders. Running backward, they came at him, and the dogs began to howl. They scurried back and forth before the gates looking for an exit, but there was none. One of them began to dig desperately.

  The boar, too, was unnerved by the unnatural procession before him. It backed up against the gates, trembling so hard the leaves on the vines that bound them were visibly shaking.

  The examiner drew his sword and charged at the first line of the ghouls, hacking his way through, severing a couple of heads as he did so. Even as he spotted a narrow stairway proceeding up to a ledge on the canyon wall, he heard the shrieking of the dogs and the squealing of the boar rise to a crescendo. He looked back only long enough to see the ghouls swarming over the dogs. The dogs were writhing and yelping and some of the ghouls had vines that grew out of their backs or their hearts, and with their arms and their vines they tangled up the dogs until only their whining horrified heads were visible. These, with incredible strength, they began to twist around. Terribly, the necks were wrenched right around backward, but still the dogs shrieked. Then, released by their captors, the dogs began to run around feebly, banging into the gates and the walls, unable to locate themselves, screaming and shrieking until they lay down shivering on the ground, their snouts and crystal eyes fastened to the searing light of the sun.