“Do you think the Traitor’s Sword could come from another universe?”
Frimbolus’s eyebrows soared, plunged, frowned. “Now, that is an idea. Perhaps that is at the root of its malevolence—it’s in the wrong world and it wants to go home. And the so-called curse on the kingdom is actually a symptom of disturbance in the balance of nature. It completely vindicates my theory…I like it.”
The princess, increasingly piqued at being sidelined, said skeptically: “How would it get here? Swords don’t dream.”
“I’m not sure,” Nathan admitted. “If it’s what I think it is, the sword was sent here for safekeeping by a very powerful magician in the world it comes from. He wanted to hide it from possible thieves until he needed it, and an alternative universe must have seemed the best place. He…he might have had a contact here to help him establish a link. That’s what happened in my world when something was hidden there.” He was thinking of Josevius Grimthorn, original holder of the Grail.
“How many worlds are we dealing with here?” Frimbolus complained. “Never mind. According to the stories, the sword was brought to Carboneck by a venerable knight, or alchemist, or both, named Gryphonius Tupper. We don’t know precisely how long ago it was—they didn’t record time in those days, I’m afraid—but probably several hundred years. Gryphonius was supposed to be holy, and he committed the sword to the care of the kings of Wilderslee, as a God-given charge.”
“What kind of god do you worship here?” Nathan asked.
“The usual kind,” Frimbolus said rather sniffily. “Invisible, ineffable, doesn’t interfere much.”
“Oh,” said Nathan, slightly at a loss. “One of those.”
“Right,” the princess intervened. “I’ve had enough of this. We need to talk”—she seized Nathan’s wrist—“and not about Alternative Universe Theory, or whatever it is. Frim, I expect you have important work to do. We are leaving—before Nathan disappears on me again.”
“You can’t possibly go wandering off with a strange young man,” Frimbolus objected. “Especially when I’m talking to him.”
“I’ll do what I please,” Nell announced with sudden haughtiness. “I’m the princess.”
Frimbolus muttered something about teenagers—a remark common to older generations in all the worlds—but Nathan, borne off into the passageway, didn’t catch what it was.
“Let’s go somewhere private,” Nell said.
“In a place as empty as this,” Nathan commented, “that shouldn’t be difficult.”
“You’d be surprised,” Nell said darkly. “Sometimes, either Frim or Prenders seem to be everywhere. Prenders fusses, but Frim’s not usually like that. Only just lately…”
“You can’t blame them,” said Nathan. “They love you. It’s natural they should want to look after you.”
“Do you have to be so reasonable?”
Nathan laughed suddenly. “You sound like Hazel!”
The princess, who was walking briskly along a gallery, stopped abruptly. “Who’s she?”
“My friend,” Nathan said. “Sort of like a sister. We grew up together.”
Nell looked unconvinced.
“I like her,” he went on. “I like her a lot. But not the same way I like you.”
He found he was gazing straight into her eyes. Afterward, he couldn’t have said what color they were, whether they were dark or light, but it seemed to him that her soul gazed back at him. It was a magic moment—a moment when he felt he could do anything. Such moments are rare in anyone’s life, and all too often slip away unregarded, but Nathan sensed that instant of power and certainty, and flowed into it. He took her hands, took her gaze, opened his mind, and let his spirit stretch out…and out…The gallery vanished. There was a second that was neither night nor day, dusk nor dawn—and then everything was different.
They were standing in the middle of a wood. The ground sloped gently near the bottom of what seemed to be a shallow valley; it was soft with moss and crunchy with dead leaves. The trees were of every kind and no kind, faintly familiar, subtly different, akin to beech and birch and oak but with traces of maple and mallorn, baobab and banyan. It was spring, and the new leaves came in every shade of yellow and green, but those underfoot held more colors than any autumn in our world, their gold deepening to tints of crimson and bronzy purple. If there were flowers Nathan didn’t notice them; only the mingled hues of a million leaves. It was, he thought, the woodiest wood he had ever seen. Humans were out of order here and even animals would be intruders, unless they were very small and unobtrusive. Yet it didn’t feel unfriendly or dangerous, only wild, with the aloof wildness of a place where people never come.
“The Deepwoods,” the princess said. “You did it.”
And then, in case he should think her too impressed: “What about the picnic?”
“Sorry.” Nathan grinned.
“Can’t you conjure up some sandwiches?”
“I’m a dreamer, not a magician.”
“Oh well…” The princess sighed, then smiled—not quite her usual smile but one with an almost unearthly quality, touched with the wildness of the wood. “It’s wonderful to be here, even if we have nothing to eat. Thank you.”
“Come on then,” said Nathan. “Let’s explore.”
They walked for what seemed like hours, out of the valley and across a low ridge and into another valley, and another—through sun-speckled glades, under low-slung branches, over root-stumps and fallen boughs. In one of the valleys they found a little stream, running downhill between shaggy grasses and deep green water plants. They drank from it in cupped hands, and ate some wild strawberries that were growing nearby, and sat on the ground side by side, talking little, until sitting became lying, and they were gazing up through the treetops at a shifting kaleidoscope of leaf and sky. It wasn’t really a picnicky place, Nathan thought, unable to imagine anyone camped here with rug and hamper, eating ham sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs. It was just meant for the trees, and tiny wild things too cunning or too cautious to be seen. He had a feeling he had been here before, or somewhere like it, perhaps in a dream of long ago, but the source of the memory eluded him and he was too happy to search for it. Once, he asked Nell: “Are we lost?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“I thought you knew this place?”
“Only on the borders. I’ve never been so far in.”
After a pause, she added: “Does it matter? When we want to go, I thought you could just—sort of—dream us away.”
“I’ll try,” Nathan said. He wasn’t at all sure he could recapture the certainty of the moment that had brought them there, but he decided not to worry about it. He was lost in the Deepwoods with the princess, and it didn’t matter at all.
He propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at her face, with her eyes half closed against a probing gleam of sunshine and her hair spread out around her, tumbled among the leaves. Then he leaned over and kissed her, a brief, tentative kiss, testing the water. He hadn’t done a lot of kissing but it was her reaction that made him hesitant, rather than his own lack of expertise.
“I don’t think much of that,” the princess said.
At least she hadn’t punched him across the stream in a flash of righteous rage.
Unable to think of anything to say, Nathan turned back to his contemplation of the sky.
“It was awfully quick,” Nell explained. “I thought kisses were supposed to last longer.”
Nathan started up—then lay back again. “I was forgetting,” he said, going on the offensive, “how often you’ve been kissed.”
“I—beg your pardon?”
“From what I’ve seen, it’s already quite—quite customary for the boys around here to kiss you. I don’t really want to join the crowd.”
“Crowd? Crowd? How dare you—”
Then he flipped over, laughing at her, warding off a slap that—fortunately—had no magical force behind it.
This time, the kiss wen
t on for quite a while.
The day drew on. They set off again, going in a direction that the princess insisted was west, claiming she could orient herself by the sun. As it was frequently obscured by trees, however, Nathan felt little confidence in her. It didn’t trouble him. For the moment, nothing troubled him at all.
There were birds singing somewhere above, hidden among the leaves, disconnected trills and descants piercing the quiet of the wood. They saw pink bluebells and lemon-yellow butterflies and grasshoppers that seemed to be made of grass and stick insects like bits of twig. And every so often there would be a whisk of movement among the branches or a ripple in the autumn carpet, as if some swift small creature had passed by.
“Are there many animals living here?” Nathan asked.
“Not as such,” said the princess. “There are squirrels and wood mice and other small rodents, and foxes and deer live on the edge, but that’s about all. Of course, there are the wood-people, or so they say, but you don’t see them very often.”
“Wood-people?”
“Werecreatures. Tree spooks, impies, brownies, gnomelins. There are supposed to be dryads and fauns and waterfay, too, but that’s nearer the mountains; I’ve never been that way. The trees are taller and darker there, and the ground is uneven and rocky, and there are deep pools and steep-sided dells and hollows hidden under leaves where you can fall in and never get out. Kern Twymoor went there to get the special honey to make the poultice for my father’s leg wound. He says he saw a dryad—a wispy little sprite with green hair who ran away when he called to her. Have you ever seen a dryad?”
“I don’t think we have them in my world,” Nathan said, “though they come into stories. Maybe they’ve all gone. But there’s a woodwose at Thornyhill where my uncle lives. We call him Woody.”
“I used to see woses when I was a child,” the princess said. “They’re shy of older humans—I expect we’re too big—but they’ll talk to children, if you stay very quiet, and still, and wait for them to come to you.”
“Are there…many woses here?” Nathan inquired, pointlessly. He already knew the answer.
“Probably,” said Nell. “But they’re very well camouflaged. You don’t see them unless they let you.”
Nathan said nothing. He was thinking: This is where I found Woody. I must have been here many times, even as a baby. I found Woody, and he talked to me, and I dreamed him into my world, because I wanted a special friend to play with. The arrogance of what he had done, the appalling responsibility, filled him with horror. Of course, he had been an infant at the time, acting in innocence, ignorant of his own power or its consequences—but somehow that only made it worse, not just selfish and heartless but terrifying. What else might he have done, in those far-off days of childish self-absorption? What other lives might he have uprooted and stolen? Most recently there was Eric—but Eric had been drowning; without Nathan’s impulsive rescue he would have died. And he was happy now, or so it seemed, married to Rowena Thorn, living in a world where he would die of old age after two thousand years of indefinite existence…
The value of a life is not measured by its length, Bartlemy had told Nathan once—Bartlemy the ageless, who had seen centuries go by, whose oldest friends had died so long ago he couldn’t even remember their names. And then, quoting someone, Nathan didn’t know who: The moment of the yew tree and the moment of the rose are of an equal duration.
Now, looking at the princess—thrusting the image of Woody to the back of his mind—Nathan understood. This is a rose-moment, he thought. We’re from different worlds, thrown together for a while—a little while—until our fates, or whatever you call it, pull us apart. But what we have, no matter how brief, is as important as a lifetime of loving. And he knew he must live the moment—live it with every cell in his body—before it slipped away.
Much later, the princess said: “I suppose we ought to go home.” She meant that she ought to return to Carboneck, but Nathan took the point.
“I’ll try,” he said again, “but I’m not sure…”
They were sprawled on a west-facing bank under a huge tree whose shimmery leaves hung down in tassels, swaying at the merest hint of a breeze. The princess allowed Nathan to cradle her in one arm, resting her head on his shoulder.
“Not yet,” she said.
Through a gap in the trees they watched the sky colors change, working their way through sunset before deepening into the blues of evening. A new moon appeared, considerably bigger than ours: the shadowy imprint of great mountain ranges and oceans of dust meant it really did seem to have a profile, with a half-smile, single eye, and flattened nose fitted into the curve. Unfamiliar stars came in its train. Nathan guessed one of them would be a spy-crystal for the Grandir, who might be watching them even now, but there was nothing he could do about it so he put the thought aside. The princess asked him about his own world and he told her—about his mother, and Uncle Barty, and the Grail, and some of his adventures last year. He knew they should leave, the princess would be missed, it was time to take her home, if he could, but this was their magic day—the moment of the rose—and neither of them wanted it to end. The evening grew cooler, and Nell snuggled closer, and Nathan put his arms around her, and felt his heart beat faster, and the tickle of her hair against his face.
Somehow, without meaning to, he fell asleep.
Nathan woke in his own bed, wrapped in an afterglow of happiness that lasted about five seconds. He started upright, swearing, hoping his mother wouldn’t hear—she still thought he was too young for the stronger four-letter words, at least in the home. I’ve left her there, he thought, I’ve left the princess in the Deepwoods on her own. Anything could happen to her… Nell hadn’t mentioned any hazards in the woods themselves, but it was a long journey back to the city, even if she could find the way, and there were Urdemons waiting in the marshes—and she would believe he had abandoned her. And if she went the wrong way she might wander toward the mountains, and fall into a dark hollow, and never be seen again. He must get back to sleep.
He couldn’t.
Since the kidnapping Annie had forgotten her edict about him being grounded, and when in desperation he told her what he had done she suggested they go immediately to consult Bartlemy. “Maybe he’ll have some sort of herbal soporific to make me sleep,” Nathan said hopefully. He had tried reaching for the portal in his mind but, as had happened once before, it felt oddly blank, like a door closed against him.
“We’ll see.” Privately, Annie was not so sanguine. “At least he’ll be able to advise you. I’m sure you’ll get back to your princess very soon, one way or another.”
“I must,” Nathan said tensely.
When they reached Thornyhill, Bartlemy didn’t advocate soporifics. “Drugs induce the wrong kind of sleep,” he explained. “Even the mildest sedative can affect your dream patterns. You’d do better to wait for tonight.”
“Herbs aren’t drugs,” Nathan objected, “are they?”
“What do you suppose drugs are made from? Think of the opium poppy, the coca plant. A drug is simply a plant that has been rendered down and put through certain chemical processes. The herbal remedy is the drug in its natural state. Happily, most of the remedies that you see nowadays contain herbs or plants that are fairly innocuous and generally legal.”
“What about yours?” Annie asked suspiciously. “Are they innocuous?”
Bartlemy only smiled.
“Or legal?”
“Never mind that,” Nathan said impatiently. “What am I going to do?” He was haunted by the memory of Kwanji Ley, left in the Eosian desert to die in the poisonous sunlight. Frimbolus had been right: he was no good for the princess. If anything happened to Nell because of him…
“Remember the time factor,” Bartlemy said. “Different worlds move at different speeds. You might go back in a fortnight only to find it has been just a few hours there, or a few minutes.”
“If I have to wait a fortnight,” Nathan said, “I’
ll—I’ll probably kill myself. Anyway, usually when I go back more time has passed there, not less.”
“Then concentrate. Focus on the moment to which you wish to return.”
“I have no control—”
“You do sometimes,” Bartlemy pointed out. “You took the princess to the Deepwoods.”
“Yes, but I don’t really know how I did it. I’ve been thinking and thinking…There’s an instant when I can make it work—something sort of opens in my mind—and then it closes, and afterward I can’t analyze it, I can’t pin down what I did that was special…It makes me feel so stupid, so helpless. And wicked. I keep doing it—I move people about in their own world, or between worlds, for my own selfish amusement—and then someone gets hurt, or dies, and it’s all my fault. When naturalists study animals in the wild they’re not supposed to interfere, even if there’s a baby dying or something really unbearable: it upsets the balance of nature. But I keep interfering—playing God—and it always goes wrong. It always goes wrong…”
Bartlemy passed him a cup of tea, strangely perfumed, which he drank absentmindedly. “Be easy,” the old man said. “Understanding will come. Meanwhile, this princess of yours sounds like a resourceful girl. I’m sure she can look after herself. She’s in a familiar environment, with no immediate danger. And she appreciates the erratic nature of your visits—she must realize you would never deliberately abandon her.”
“She may realize it,” Nathan said, “but she won’t believe it—as a matter of principle. She’ll be furious. I don’t care about that, as long as she’s all right.” Mellowed by the tea, urgency was slipping away from him. He tried to hold on to it, clinging to his panic because it was all he could do—without it he felt distanced from Wilderslee, distanced from Nell, safe and remote in his own universe. He didn’t want remoteness and safety…
The Sword of Straw Page 20
