The Paper Sword

by Robert Priest

  Xemion stayed awake a long time keeping watch. All about him moonlight silvered the ground, speckling this and that leaf in the thicket as the wet wind blew in off the not-so-distant sea. His hands kept wandering down to the hilt of the sword, which was warm from almost constant contact with his palm. But it was just a painted stick. When he woke up Torgee for the second watch, he decided, he would search through the trees for a better weapon: a sharpened stick or a big blunt stone. But he was wearier than he knew, and before he could search he slid into that middle region between wakefulness and sleep where a thought like a submerged bubble had been trying to rise to the surface for hours. In his dream it broke through and rose before him with all its naked terror: the dragon at that very moment when it had looked into his eyes. He gasped and drew in again that acrid saurian scent. His hand grasped the sword tighter, but the movement only served to break the dream dragon out of its trance. Its eyes darted to his hand and beheld the sword just as it had done earlier in the day, but this time the flame burst from its mouth directly at Xemion. Before he could scream the fire struck his hand. But instead of searing heat, it brought only strange warmth that rushed up his wrist, through his arm, and into the sword, causing it to glow luminous and green. A great wave of pleasure passed through Xemion and the sword shone like a lamp, but when he looked at his hand that held the sword he saw that it had turned a deep livery red. And now, somehow in the misty metamorphosis of the dream, the heat from the dragon fire became the heat that had come off of Vallaine’s red hand and it filled Xemion with a feeling of horror. He tried to scream in his sleep but he could not. He tried and tried until finally his eyes opened to see the first red rays of dawn coming on. Xemion was at first relieved to know that he had been dreaming, but when he looked at his palm he saw that it had indeed been turned a faded purple like a newly healed scar.

  “Saheli!” he called out, alarmed, holding his open palm before her waking eyes.

  Saheli sat up, puzzled, and then held her own hand out to him. It, too, was a faded purple colour. She smiled broadly. “Beets,” she said, and then she laughed. Awakened, Torgee and Tharfen also held up their hands, which were likewise red, and they also laughed. This was a good start to their day. Xemion laughed too.

  As they had agreed the night previously, they set off with the idea of finding their way as soon as possible to the coast road. Xemion had argued that Torgee and Tharfen could then go back by themselves to Cape Sho while he and Saheli continued on to Ulde. But Saheli wouldn’t have it. “They risked their lives coming to warn us and now it is our duty to make sure they get safely home.” When he scowled at this, she continued, “We will never get to the rebellion on time now anyway. We’re way off course. We would arrive too late.”

  Xemion didn’t like it, but he saw the sense in her argument and reluctantly agreed. Now, though, as they reached the foot of the mountain and entered a long, narrow plain shored up on both sides by heaped up walls of crumpled bedrock, he had to force every step and fight his reluctance and bitterness. He wasn’t as sure as Saheli that they couldn’t somehow get to Ulde by tomorrow morning. If only there was some way to be rid of Torgee and Tharfen so that there weren’t these endless delays. Torgee sidled up to him as the four continued their fast pace. “Are you remembering anything unusual?” he asked.

  Xemion coughed, his chest still hurting from being trapped in the gate. “I don’t think so,” he answered. “But Anya always said that the ancient spoken spells don’t necessarily work right away. Maybe in a few days I’ll start to remember things I’ve forgotten.” He turned to face Saheli. “Are you forgetting anything?”

  She shook her head grimly. Her levity had vanished. That melody kept picking away at her mind as though it were a summons demanding to be received.

  “Do you still remember being in that house?” Tharfen asked. “In the forest with the old man up on —”

  “I remember,” Saheli snapped, cutting her off. “I just wish I could forget.”

  Xemion turned angrily to Tharfen and shushed her. Her eyes squinted back angrily at him but she obliged, shrinking her lips into a resentful pout.

  “What if you forget something important?” Xemion asked.

  “Like what?” Saheli stared at Xemion.

  Xemion shrugged awkwardly. And then Saheli stopped and put her hand over her heart. They all stopped and looked at her, puzzled. She lifted her hand to her neck and found the slender silver chain.

  “Xemion,” she said quite seriously as she withdrew the locket from within her blouse. “You should take this, just in case.… I know how important it is to you.”

  A blush rushed to Xemion’s cheeks as she held the silver loop of the chain open for him and he ducked his head through. Once he had it on, Saheli stood there for a moment looking at him and he wished he had something to give her in return.

  “We should go,” Torgee said impatiently.

  “Yes. My mother is waiting. That’s important to me,” Tharfen threw in bitterly. Xemion made a slightly exaggerated bow to Saheli.

  “Thank you, Saheli,” he said gruffly, and with that they continued on their way, all of them feeling a little awkward.

  “I wish I could forget,” Tharfen said after a while. Nobody responded, so she said it again. “I said I wish I could forget.”

  “And why is that?” Xemion asked a little sharply. To the south a high wall of fitted stone lined the side of the road.

  Her eyes darted back at him just as sharply. But they softened when she looked at Saheli. “I wish I could forget … forget what happened to Chiricoru,” she said.

  “Do you mean you’d like to forget about how you let her get away?” Xemion snapped. He realized immediately what he’d done and he bit his lip, but it was too late. Tharfen turned white and her lower lip began to tremble.

  “That is so unfair,” Saheli chided him. “It would have happened with any of us. Chiricoru was just doing what swans do. They pretend to be wounded to lead predators away from their young. She wasn’t trying to escape from us; she was trying to protect us.”

  Xemion should have apologized, but he said nothing, and Tharfen’s rage at his unfairness took hold of her. Staring at his proud face with its haughty high cheekbones, her feelings for a moment were clarified into an irresistible hate. “You will pay for your insults,” she growled through gritted teeth. “You will pay dearly. Don’t you worry.” Remembering what had happened only yesterday with the examiner, they all became very quiet and Xemion’s complexion notably turned a little ashen.

  “You should take that back,” Saheli whispered to Tharfen. “He didn’t mean it.”

  Xemion still said nothing.

  “I won’t,” Tharfen shot back fiercely.

  “You should say sorry,” Torgee advised Xemion quietly. He turned over his forearm to show him various scratches and scars that had been left there. “She did every one of these.”

  But Xemion’s silence had become entrenched and he just jogged along sullenly. Both sides of the road now were lined with the remains of an ancient, though still very high wall that was mostly covered in flowering vines. It was high enough to cast half of the roadway into shade, but ahead of them a wide swath of sunlight slanted in from the south, spilling over the closely fitted stone.

  The cause of this as they discovered when they got there was that a marble portal had been cut into the wall. Tharfen angrily tugged away some of the vines that covered it and peered through. And what she saw relieved her. On the other side of the portal a roadway ran in the direction of the coast. She pulled more of the vines away and they saw that various emblems and insignias had been carved into the marble of the portal, including a clear engraving of the Great Kone at the top. The roadway beyond the portal had a strange silver sheen that was not at all unpleasant to look at.

  “This is where we turn,” Tharfen stated in a hard voice. The others made no move. Instead they eyed the silver roadway beyond the portal and the insignia engraved into the marble apprehens
ively.

  “Come on. Why are you stopping?” she demanded in a voice full to the brim with barely contained passion.

  “It just doesn’t look right,” Saheli answered, eyes fixed on the engraving of the Great Kone. Xemion read aloud the name engraved over the curve of the archway. “Shissillil,” he said in a puzzled tone. “I remember when I was very very young Anya told me something about a place called Shissillil.”

  “We all promised we was going this way first chance we got,” Tharfen hissed.

  “It was a place where they kept accounts,” Xemion went on, ignoring her, “and there was some kind of very early spell kone that caused a catastrophe.”

  “Yes, it caused you to lie,” Tharfen spat. “Come on, Torgee, let’s go.” She yanked her brother toward the portal, but he resisted.

  “It was something to do with stories,” Xemion continued. “They made some kind of spell kone to stop people from making up stories. There was an error in the writing of the spell kone and when they turned the kone something went terribly wrong, but I can’t remember …”

  “That’s because you’re just making it up right now. You’re a liar. Come on, Torgee, or I’ll be talking to mother.”

  But Torgee didn’t like either the look or the smell of the gate, and like the others he sensed there was something not quite right about the appearance of the road beyond. “I want to get home just as bad as you do, Tharfen, but —”

  “You do not!” Tharfen screamed in full fury. “You want to stay with Saheli. You want to go to Ulde and be a hero.”

  “It’s … it’s … it’s really not that …” Torgee stuttered and blushed a deep crimson.

  “This is all your fault, Xemion!” Tharfen bellowed. “You turned my own brother against me —”

  “Stop it!” Torgee yelled.

  “I swear by my mother’s blood, one day you will pay in blood and in loss and in failure,” Tharfen shouted.

  Torgee was now angry. “You do not swear on anybody’s blood!”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Not on my mother’s blood you don’t.” Thrusting his square jaw forward, he positioned himself with crossed arms in front of the portal. But this only infuriated her more.

  “You go whatever way you like,” she roared, quickly dashing forward and dodging around him. Torgee grabbed hold of the back of her cloak, but the moment her foot touched the roadway on the other side of the portal, some force seemed to grab hold of her, tugging her forward so powerfully that Torgee had to hold on to one side of the portal in order not to get drawn in after her.

  “Help!” he called.

  Saheli grabbed Torgee’s cloak from behind, anchoring herself on the other side of the portal. But just then, whatever force had hold of Tharfen lurched and dragged Torgee so far forward he had to put one of his heels on the other side too. But the moment his heel came down, it slipped forward and he was upended. Saheli strained to keep her grip on the back of his cloak, but as he was drawn onward, the edge of the portal came away in her hand and she fell in after him and began to slide away on her stomach as though she had landed on a sloping sheet of ice.

  “Xemion!” she screamed, and as she slid along the long silver road toward the silver city perched on a height in the distance, Xemion leapt in after her.

  17

  Shissillil

  As soon as his heel hit the other side and he began to slide, Xemion remembered in a flash the finer details of what Anya had told him about the borough of Shissillil. The council of Shissillil had indeed commissioned the writing of one of the very first public spell kones in order to enforce their new ordinance against the creation of fiction within their precincts. The kone stood nine feet high and was mounted in the city centre encased in a wrought silver frame with a crank handle of solid gold. The spell on the kone had been composed by the finest mage then working on the isle and it had been thoroughly checked with the council of mages to assure that there were no contrary, paradoxical, or otherwise problematical additional spell kones registered by any of the other mages. On the night before the scheduled public turning of the kone, however, some fiction writers on a vengeful prank gained access to the newly written kone and climbing up a ladder had inserted into the word fiction a small, barely detectable but still legible letter r.

  Next morning in the town square, with the mayor and counsellors and the high citizens all looking on, the mage took the crank handle in both hands and, as he turned it, recited a verse:

  As the eye goes down

  The words go round

  All in one turn

  The spell is bound

  But when the witness-stone passed over the last word at the bottom of the kone, the spell it invoked did not, as intended, banish all fiction. Rather it banished all friction. In that second, Anya said, all those high dignitaries and their gathered families began to slide away. And the more they struggled and tried to gain their feet, the faster they slipped. This had all happened a hundred years ago, but up until the battle of Phaer Bay and the ensuing spell fire, the situation had not been repaired and access to and from Shissillil was cut off, even in Anya’s childhood.

  Xemion had considered the story more the product of his guardian’s fancy than a true historical account, but now here he was, sliding along a seemingly frictionless roadway. It ran through a grassy expanse bordered on both sides by high walls and then took a steep curve up. Saheli was still in sight in front of him but she was a long way off. Far ahead of her was Torgee, and that even more distant speck must be Tharfen just about to enter the city gates. Xemion had to catch up. Instinctively he pushed at the roadway with all his force but his hands broke through the surface as though it were water and underneath he felt a heat that increased the deeper down he went. He pulled back with a pained cry. But now he was on his way up the hill and he was going slightly faster than before.

  Soon he slid through the city gates and began to careen down a long silver avenue with many ancient-looking silver buildings on both sides. Up ahead the avenue split in two, one of the roadways proceeding at a slight angle from the other. Xemion’s stomach lurched as he saw Saheli take a sudden turn along the road to the right. Desperately he dug the heel of his left hand in deep trying to make that same turn, but despite how hot it grew when he came to the intersection he slid right by.

  He screamed her name and she turned and looked back at him, frightened. For a little while they held each other’s gaze as she slid off along the other road, but as the buildings rose around him, he lost sight of her. He was by now deep in the interior of the city, sliding down a deep chute of a street, streaking by bright silver houses with windows of some wafting silken glass full of outline people peering out. To Xemion they looked like they had no interior, only exterior, but he sped by so fast it was hard to know if his perception was accurate. Suddenly, he crested a hill and found himself heading straight down toward a tall silver tower. He dug in with both hands and feet, trying to steer around the building, but it was too late. He crashed straight into the wall. Instead of an impact, however, he felt the stomach-turning jolt of a sudden change in direction. It hurt, but now he was speeding up the side of the building. Ten floors he rose and at the top was briefly spat into the sky. Then he fell …

  Screaming, sure that he would die, he came down on the flat top of the building. The force of his landing just added to his speed, sending him gliding across the rooftop. Here there were magnificent silver statues everywhere that glowed like molten steel. And as the sun bore down and the heat began to increase the statues grew brighter and brighter until Xemion could hardly bear to keep his eyes open to steer through them. Somehow he managed to reach the other side of the ornate roof and was shot out over the edge.

  He hit the ground hard. He was compressed and winded, but the ground had somehow elasticized under him and he was once again horizontal and whipping along a silver roadway. Various residents now tried to grab at Xemion. He could see that they were enraged at his passage. But just as it seeme
d their outlined hands would close about him, he passed right through them as though they were ghosts. Travelling so fast now that the buildings beside him became little more than a blur, he entered a vast plaza with a park in it and he could see from afar another wide avenue that intersected up ahead. And there was Tharfen shooting along it screaming, her brother Torgee not far behind. Xemion did his utmost to stop himself with both his heels and hands dug in deep, bearing the burning rather than crashing into them, but these efforts had little effect. He barrelled straight at the crossroads, screaming.

  In the last few feet of their mutual approach, time slowed down for both of them. Xemion saw the look of terror on Tharfen’s face and she saw the look of horror on his. Just before they collided, Xemion beheld her in outline and he could see, like a map of great rivers, the veins inside her pulsing to the beat of her bare heart. Then they smashed into one another and he heard her scream so loud it felt like it was inside him. There was a slightly delicious feeling like stardust being propelled through stardust and then somehow he shot through and beyond her. He looked back and saw Tharfen slide out of sight. But where was Saheli? Xemion clawed at the silver surface frantically trying to stop, but no matter what he did he was propelled ever onward. Finally a shadow passed over him and he realized that he had now exited another set of city gates. He continued sliding down the long silver roadway a long time, all the while desperately looking back until suddenly there was no more road beneath him and again he fell.

  18

  The Debris of Spell-Made Things

  The outskirts of what had once been the western side of the city of Ulde now lay half-buried under piles of tiny multicoloured crystals, which on a sunny day like today shone brilliantly, filling the air with a multitude of small rainbows whose shimmers over the heaps gave them a slightly unreal atmosphere. According to Pathan scientists who study such phenomena, these heaps were composed of the debris of spell-made things: crystallized particles of whatever was just being spelled into existence at the time of the kone fire. When it stopped turning they were flung from it at gale force. It was the overuse of the small spell kones so common at that time, they theorized, that had brought about the catastrophe — or, as they saw it, the happy accident. Too many mutually opposing spells over too many years had manifested in a mass spell cross that could not then nor ever be resolved.