The Paper Sword

by Robert Priest

  Now that Saheli dared to look at it, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Even in the light of the sun the glow of the Great Kone shone through the cracks in the wall like green luminous rivers on a map. “It’s so beautiful and terrible,” she whispered.

  “It’s much wider than I thought,” said Xemion. “How deep does it go down into the ground?”

  “It doesn’t literally go underground at all,” Vallaine answered. He was keeping his eye on the sky again as they proceeded through the grove of twisted oaks toward the wall. “If you were to dig under it, as the Pathans once tried to do, you’d never find it. It’s as though it’s not there at all. But if you take the staircase that winds around it, it just goes down and down, deeper and deeper, and the text written on the outside of it just keeps spiralling around and down, getting smaller and smaller. And according to many it never does come to a point, it just goes on and on getting infinitely smaller.” To Xemion’s quizzical look, he responded. “Let me explain. Picture a kone standing on its point with another kone upside-down beneath it so that they touch, point to point. It is said that each of those two kones is the underword to the other and that each of them creates a world that is the underworld to the other — their only common point being that one pointless point at the base of both of them. Now add another kone at right angles to the first two with its point also touching their points and then picture its mirror image opposite — its underword. Now multiply that by infinite kones at infinite angles all intersecting at that one point, and on those infinite kones imagine that infinite koans or codes or spells are written — overlapping, contradicting, clashing, and each of them creating its own world or universe — none of which are visible or detectable in our world except for one point — that nonexistent midpoint nexus that all the Great Kones share. And that is what is really at the bottom of the Great Kone and every other kone. It is a zero place that has no magic of its own, but draws magic from all the worlds that centre on it and imply it. It is, therefore, a conduit, a connecting place — a medium to what we call the middle magic.”

  “We?” Saheli asked.

  He looked at her but didn’t answer. He looked at the sky. “The sun is almost at midday now,” he said. He pointed toward the kone. “You see how the shadow of the Great Kone is at its least now?”

  Saheli nodded.

  “That is the best time for you to pass.” He looked at Xemion. “Not only does it minimize the time you might encounter wraiths but it also serves the purpose of delivering you to the Panthemium almost exactly at midday. You must follow this track. As you will see, the wall extends on both sides of the Great Kone right across the city, but if you pass by the kone on the south side, just beyond where the shadow ends, there is a breach in the wall.” He narrowed his eyes and pointed. “You can just barely see beyond that breach to where a newer wall has been built, but there’s a small fissure there that you can make your way through and then you’ll be on the other side of the city. Now listen carefully to me. Even if some trait wraiths should be hiding in there when you pass through, just keep your eyes on the sky over the Great Kone and you’ll have light in your face. Only if you look into the darkness and let the light leave your face will you be vulnerable.”

  Saheli felt a wave of fear surge through her so mightily she thought her knees might buckle. The more she gazed upon the Great Kone and thought about passing close by it, the more her terror grew.

  “Now, Xemion, we are in no danger at this distance, but when you get closer to the kone you must take care. When you pass by those places where the wall has cracked or fallen you will want to start reading the text. Everyone does, even the illiterate, but you must not. You must not! Can I trust you both not to do that?”

  Xemion nodded.

  “If you disobey me — if you read even one letter, you may ever after be compelled to read the rest of it, do you understand?”

  Xemion nodded again.

  “Do you know what a Kone Thrall is?”

  “I can imagine,” Xemion answered, looking away from the Great Kone and into Vallaine’s dark, black eyes.

  “So pay attention to what I say. I don’t think you would want such a fate.”

  “Yes, of course,” Xemion assured him. Saheli also nodded in agreement.

  “Good. Then my heart will be lighter as I leave you here, comrades.”

  With that, Vallaine’s red hand grabbed Xemion’s hand and began to shake it exhaustively. As he did so he looked directly into Xemion’s eyes and said, “You have used your little stick sword in the manner of a paper sword two times now and survived. You’ve been lucky. You must never use it that way again. When you get to Ulde, the first chance you get you must burn it, do you understand me?”

  “Completely,” Xemion answered, flushed with the intensity of Vallaine’s delivery.

  “Will you remember?”

  “Most definitely.”

  “Then say ‘I will remember.’” Vallaine was staring so intently at him that Xemion felt uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he answered, “I will remember.”

  “Good.” Vallaine finally let Xemion’s hand go. He turned to Saheli.

  “Are you ready?” he asked gently.

  Saheli shook her head, terrified. She felt so ashamed and foolish. “There’s no sense in me even trying to walk past that thing,” she said through gritted teeth. “I can feel the emanation of its evil from here. And my insides feel like one side is going one way and one side the other. Like my head is going to be yanked backward like —”

  “None of that is going to happen, Saheli, but noon comes and I am sorry, I can’t stand here with you any longer. Now take my hand and bid me goodbye, for I have served you well, maiden.”

  Saheli didn’t want to but she didn’t feel she had a choice. She let him wrap his hand about hers and shake it. He looked her fiercely in the eye and in a rough voice asked, “When you said you wished you could forget, did you mean it?”

  She tried to withdraw her hand, but he held on to it. “Yes, I did,” she said, angry at his insistence. “Now let me go.”

  “Then forget your bad opinion of yourself. Forget whatever was done to you that convinced you that you are not worthy. You are worthy.”

  She kept trying to disengage her hand, but he went on. “Forget being ashamed, Saheli. You have nothing to be ashamed of.” And now her hand began to tingle as he spoke. “Forget whatever it is that keeps you from your talent and your power.”

  At last she pulled her hand from his grip. With a fearful, angry glare, she yelled, “You had no right to do that!” Then she turned sharply, fiercely away from him and began striding toward the Great Kone with Xemion at her heels.

  “May our ways always be Phaer,” Vallaine called out after them. “May our paths ever cross.”

  Xemion looked over his shoulder, puzzled by what he had seen, and nodded back to him. “Travel safely,” he called out, but Saheli did not look back. She kept striding forward angrily until she reached the place where the Great Kone cast its shadow. Here she hesitated slightly, but then, swallowing her fear, stepped forward and into it bravely. Almost immediately she sensed a presence. She gasped in horror but caught herself and immediately aimed her gaze at the sky over the top of the Great Kone as Vallaine had advised. Still, she had to fight hard to keep her terror down. There was a sharp pain in her middle and she felt like she was unravelling. That song seemed to be running two ways at once now, forward and backward in her mind. Relentlessly, the eye inched closer as she proceeded through the shadow. She turned her head away, only to find another eye there on that side too. A radiant, red eye. It seemed to well inward with an exquisite sorrow and promise, but at its centre there was nothing but malice and lewdness. After that, with each step forward the two eyes kept trying to nudge themselves into her field of vision. First one would edge toward her, its dark black iris like the centre of a whirlpool, and then when she turned away the other eye would press in from the other side, its hunger and desperation widening its iris l
ike a leech’s mouth trying to latch onto her soul. The sweat was dripping down Saheli’s brow and her normal copper tint had become a pallid yellow as it welled ever larger, seeking to draw her in. This was as close as Saheli came to outright panic. She felt like screaming, running away again, but instead she did something she had never done before — she reached for Xemion’s hand. As soon as she felt its warmth she squeezed it tight, took a deep breath, and managed to focus on a space in the sky far beyond the Great Kone.

  Xemion, who was only dimly aware of the spectre-like eyes, could feel her hand trembling. It filled him with a strange, almost painful, warmth. It felt as though there was another small sun in his palm and it was radiating up his arm and into his soul. What strength she had.

  Saheli started to make a rattling, guttural noise in her throat almost like a purr that increased in volume the deeper she proceeded into the shadow. Xemion could hear the pain in it but he could also hear the increasing strength. Near the outer edge of the shadow a whole hoard of eyes came at Saheli. The pressure on Xemion’s hand doubled for an instant, but when he and Saheli finally stepped out of the kone’s shadow and into the full light of the sun, it was released. Saheli let out her breath, her shoulders slumped and she made a final small sound in her throat. She turned to face Xemion with an exhausted smile.

  She was past the shadow of the Great Kone. The eyes had disappeared. And, though she hardly noticed it at first, there was silence in her mind. Silence in her memory. Saheli suddenly felt as carefree as she ever had. She felt like taking in a deep breath of light and air and shouting out joyfully. She felt like dancing in the sun. But she didn’t. She flung her arms wide, wrapped them around Xemion, leaned forward, and kissed him on the lips.

  All this time Xemion had been trying his hardest not to look at the lettering that peaked out through the cracks in the wall. But now, as his head turned with the kiss and the first blush made its way through his astonished being, his eyes alighted on a luminous gap in the brickwork. He looked away again as soon as he could, but not quickly enough. He read one letter: X.

  22

  Panthemium

  Saheli strode along purposefully. A strong salt wind was blowing in from the sea and the sun shone back from the crystal facets of the newly renovated buildings with a multiplicity of tiny suns that mirrored the shining joy in her heart. Xemion’s sense of destiny was rising in him, and his heart was like a tiny boat on its great tide. It lifted him with a magical shimmer that almost made him want to cry. It wasn’t the magnificence of the Elphaerean architecture all about him that so infused Xemion though. It wasn’t that he would soon have a real sword in his hands and be able to pursue his lifelong dream. These things were important, but … that kiss … it was stunning him. He could only hold the thought of it a moment in his mind before his stomach went giddy and he had to let it go skidding away from him, leaving a strange, trembling uncertainty in its place. He had loved Saheli ever since that day he rescued her from the river, but that wilder thought — that she loved him in return, that she was his, sent to him to be his warrior beloved and that they were fated for glory together — had seemed so storylike, so like a dream, he had tried to give it no credence at all. But now she had kissed him — on the lips. Once again his heart thumped into the back of his chest like a stone dropped a thousand miles upon a damp heath and he felt the urge to either dance or sink into the earth forever out of sight. He hardly dared look at her. Yes, his eyes took in the newly excavated buildings; the beautiful crystal work cleansed of its dark carbon glaze and allowed to shine. He looked at them, but he didn’t actually see them. He barely saw the green gardens whose high stems dangled long green beans down from the pillared roofs. Or that where there had once been jade panelling these new residents had fitted fine frames covered in light green hemp cloth to better approximate the way things were before the fall of the Republic. He wanted all this. He wanted this city of his ancestors. He wanted this chance at freedom. But most of all, and from here on in, he would really only want one thing — another kiss.

  At the next corner they got their first sight of the great stadium of ancient Ulde, the Panthemium. Its high golden eastern wall intricately etched with obsessive runes, ideograms, and hieroglyphics ran all down an avenue that intersected the one they were on at an angle.

  About fifty feet farther along it there were two large black closed doors beside which stood two Nains. The one closer to the doors, like all Nains, was short compared to Xemion and Saheli. He barely reached Xemion’s chest, but was compact, broad-shouldered, and had that fierce look in his eye typical of his people. He wore traditional earthworking garb and sported a red beard that extended down to his stomach. The other Nain was of a similar size and stature. He wore a brown sackcloth tunic and was clean-shaven, even his well-rounded skull. The pointed leather hat slung about his neck on a thick leather band and currently hanging down his back indicated that he was an acolyte of the Nainish theology. Xemion thought from the similarity of their faces that they must be related.

  “Hello,” Saheli offered politely. The bearded one did not acknowledge her in any way but the shaven one gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head.

  “Is this the Panthemium?” Xemion asked the bearded one directly, rather insulted. The Nain’s only answer was to take a big puff on his pipe and expel a gust of malodorous smoke in Xemion’s general direction. The other Nain gave the slightest little bow of his head and made an eloquent gesture toward the area behind him. Unfamiliar with the protocols of lining up, having never done so before, Xemion took up a position facing the Nains, on the other side of the black doors.

  “Back there,” the bearded Nain barked in a voice that was inordinately raspy and grating, like the sound of a file over a nail. He put his hands on his hips and looked up, chin out aggressively, as though he might be prepared to fight about it.

  “I think that means we should stand behind them,” Saheli suggested.

  “That’s it,” the other Nain rasped.

  And so as the sun approached midday, they took their places for the first time in a lineup. They turned and stood side-by-side so they could lean against the wall, but there was at first a bit of an awkward silence between them. Xemion could hardly bring himself to look at her directly lest he see something there that nullified or altered or even challenged that joyous feeling of certainty that was rising in him.

  “I feel so suddenly free and completely right here in this moment. I feel as though anything is possible for me,” she said at last. With this she finally turned, and he turned too, and they looked into each other’s eyes. Xemion’s stomach fluttered and he blushed and he wanted to kiss her again.

  But just then came the loud sound of a bell followed by many voices — more voices than Xemion or Saheli had ever heard — breaking into a cheer. The bell must have been a signal to those who were waiting at the eastern gate because the streets then began to fill with people and a long line slowly began to form behind them.

  Many were youths who had come from their indentures in the rich farmlands and vineyards to the east. But there were numerous Nains and Thralls as well, both male and female, young and old. Some arrived alone, shy and uncertain, but there were others who came in groups, hooting and hollering and carrying on. A lot of them had their goods stuffed in bags, which they carried on the end of long thick poles balanced over one shoulder. Others, like Saheli, arrived with staffs. And many were barely more than dirty-faced children. They had run away. Or been lured away. Some had come with the man with the red hand on the good ship Mammuth. Most of them had been walking for days. They were all the children or grandchildren of murdered Phaer islanders. They were heirs to the greatest literary tradition the world had ever known but they’d had it yanked from their grasp, all its works burned and destroyed. Their parents had grown up illiterate in Pathan workhouses, destined for enslavement in the fields. This third generation should have been clean of the stain of what their oppressors called the “Phaer Arts.” But
some of the culture and the truth of their history had filtered through to them by word-of-mouth in the captive cities of the north.

  Whisper by whisper they had heard the tales. And now, as though in response to a clarion blast in one of those stories, they were all finding one another for the first time. The new cohort.

  They arrived chaotically but there was order in the way they set about lining up. The line went down the wall behind Xemion and Saheli to the corner where it doubled back and once again reached the black door. Here it doubled back to the corner again and over and over until they were ten abreast and still more were coming. The sound of what must’ve been hundreds of people all at once murmuring in excitement, laughing and joking, holding hands or fooling with their staves or just jumping up and down and vibrating washed over Saheli and thrilled her to her very soul. And she knew she was among her people and it touched something in her that had been lonely a long time and she cheered with joy.

  When Brothlem Montither and his retinue first appeared they came down the street from the opposite direction as everyone else. They must have gone around the other side of the Panthemium, Xemion thought. His initial impression was one of great admiration. For Brothlem Montither was the biggest and by far the most gloriously dressed of any who came that day. In fact, he looked a bit like Xemion’s childhood hero, Amphion. Physically he was huge — very tall with massive shoulders and a broad chest. His hair was long and black, straight cut at the back to meet a square jaw somewhat speckled by black stubble but neatly trimmed to a chinstrap beard. He wore an elegant green military-style jacket over a leather jerkin, a knee-length kilt, and sandals strapped halfway up his calves. Behind him, a crew of much less finely dressed and much scrawnier fellows followed along, two of them huffing and puffing as they pushed a large golden trunk on wheels.

  Montither stopped some distance away from the front of the lineup as one of his retinue, a wiry-looking fellow, fondly known by his colleagues as Gnasher, approached the bigger of the two Nains. Gnasher had a black eye and even blacker teeth, and it looked like several people at various times might have made several attempts at adjusting the position of his nose upon his sallow, narrow face.