The Paper Sword (11 page)

Mother

T
he
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 cayenne 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.

The examiner had now reached the ledge, but it didn't seem to lead anywhere. He just stood there, his sword in one hand, as the ghouls began to climb up the steps toward him. He called to the boar, but the boar, squatting in a heap of its own defecation, had suddenly discovered disobedience. “Come here!” he commanded again. But the boar only pressed all the tighter against the gates, watching as the mass of the ghouls shifted their attention to the examiner and began to converge on the stairway. Some of them had already reached him and he had dispatched them with his sword, sending their still-writhing limbs and torsos plummeting to the floor of the canyon. But now a giant twice as big as any of the others came at him. With a grunt, he drove his sword into the creature's chest, but once there he couldn't dislodge it, and when the heavy ghoul fell, his sword fell with it. He screamed to the boar again but the boar, seeing a clear route back down the canyon the way it had come, bolted off with a speed the examiner had never before witnessed. He was trapped now, doomed if he couldn't summon help. This is where the efficient part of his mind clicked down through the devolving series of strategies planted there by his Pathan masters until it reached bottom. Trickery and surrender.

He could now see Torgee watching him from the other side of the gate, half hidden in one of the trees there.

“Help me! Help me! You cannot let me die like this,” he shrieked. “I know you're there. I beg you. I summon you by the old Elphaerean code. Please.”

“I hope you enjoy your death,” Torgee called back to him. But the examiner's citing of the old Elphaerean code had not fallen on deaf ears.

“I have no sword. No dogs. I surrender. If you have even an ounce of Elphaerean justice in you, you must help me.”

Saheli couldn't bear it. “You have to drink from one of the bottles to open the gates,” she yelled. She pointed to the memory wells. There was still a large bottle perched on the rim of the well of remembrance. The examiner hurled himself down from the ledge and hit the ground running. Above him the backward ghouls screamed in outrage. They began to scurry down the stairway as he bolted to the well. But he was far ahead of them and faster. A small smile of victory curved the corner of his mouth. Trickery had worked once again. He raised the bottle. But before a single drop of the water could touch his lips there was a pinging sound and the bottle exploded into fragments, the water spilling all over him and down to the ground. He gasped. He looked back. The ghouls were now almost upon him. But there was another bottle at the other well. He darted to it and lifted it to his lips. Again, before he could swallow any of it, there was a pinging sound and it, too, shattered. Just before the ghouls swarmed over him he saw why the bottles had broken. Standing just the other side of the black gate, with one hand still holding her slingshot, he saw a small redheaded girl with a look of righteous, joyful vengeance on her face. Tharfen smiled at her tormentor as he was pulled under and out of sight.

But some of the memory water that had splashed on him must have seeped into his system. And he must have been particularly susceptible, because immediately he began to remember. He remembered being a child in Ilde so long ago. He remembered the screaming face of his mother as he was taken away because of that rich quality in his voice. “Mother,” he screamed then and now, and that was his last word before his head was yanked around.

The Valley in the Valley

T
he
four of them stood as closely as possible to one another at the edge of the chasm beyond the mistletoe-ridden oak trees. It was about a hundred yards across and on the other side the narrow road whose faded remnants they now stood upon began again. Whatever lay in its depths was entirely obscured by a cover of white vines and massive green leaves that wove in and out of one another over the treetops below and spanned the ravine from side to side.

They talked quietly, still in shock, about how to proceed — whether to wait until the last of the ghouls had retreated back into their caves and then attempt to run back through the gates and down the canyon and thereby get back to the plateau; or to brave this ravine and whatever else might lie ahead.

Torgee turned periodically to scan the terrain between the ravine and the gate, but whenever he wasn't looking a long, thin shadow not far behind them leaned out from its hiding place by a boulder at the side of the road, the sunlight gleaming in its one eye like a star of hunger.

Akil had waited behind the other dogs. And when their howling and dying was all over and it was safe he crept along the shadows at the edge of the canyon toward the gates. He moved so quietly and so invisibly even the ghouls were unaware of him. And when he got to the gates his thinness served him well. He squeezed slyly and quietly through the bars. Stealthily, he hunkered down low to the ground as he undulated inch by inch toward the four travellers. He was close enough now to listen as they talked.

“There must be a way around,” Saheli was saying.

“It doesn't look like it,” Xemion protested, gazing along the length of the fissure. “If we cross here, at least we will still be on what was once a real roadway. That means it must lead somewhere.”

“But where?” Saheli argued, eyeing the chasm mistrustfully.

“Well, it must lead to Ulde, don't you think?” Torgee said.

“Perhaps, but through what peril?” she replied, her sense of fear suddenly inexplicably heightened. “We can't even see the bottom.”

Akil flattened himself on the ground and tried to remain patient, but his strength was running out. He needed some sustenance soon, even if it was just one deep bite of throat. He had tasted the blood of rebel boys many times with his former master. He knew just where in the soft flesh to sink his long, sharp teeth. But whose soft flesh? He licked his lips and looked at the sword, which the tallest one bore in his right hand. The girl's staff also looked dangerous. And one well-aimed blow from that fish club would be the end of him. The easiest prey was the little one with the red hair. And that way he could avenge the master. But he would still need the advantage of surprise. Hardly daring to breathe, he crept nearer, even though the vegetation was sparse here and he was in danger of being seen.

“How do we know there aren't more ghouls down there?” Saheli said. The hair was rising on the back of her neck, but she wasn't sure why. Xemion sheathed the painted sword and tugged some of the leaves aside. Parting the thin, sun-starved branches and stunted shoots beneath them, he peered down into the underbelly of the steeply slanted chasm.

“It looks just like a normal valley down there,” he said. “Mostly thin saplings. Hardly any undergrowth.”

“One of us should go down first as a scout,” Torgee suggested. “We can't stay here.” He sniffed at the air. The wind had shifted and there was some scent here he didn't like.

“I want to go home,” Tharfen whined.

Torgee turned around just in time to see two famished eyes lunging at his sister. “Tharfen, look out!”

The dog was going straight for Tharfen's throat, but Torgee's club caught the dog with a glancing blow off the side of his skull, deflecting the animal just enough to send him crashing into Xemion so hard both of them were sent sprawling into the chasm.

Xemion tumbled down the sheer slope head over heels. He kept trying to grab at roots and trunks of trees, but he couldn't stop himself. He rolled and bounced and hit hard. For a moment he thumped down on what seemed to be the bottom of the valley, but his momentum carried him onward and he shot helplessly over the edge of an even deeper valley within the valley. Down this almost vertical slope he now tumbled and skidded, leaping over logs, tearing through tangles of vegetation, and grabbing helplessly at slender tree trunks and branches until he landed, bruised, at the very bottom.

The huge leaves above him were an unwelcome vermilion that bathed everything in purplish-red light. As his eyes adjusted, he could distinguish large red-spotted ears of fungi and moss-covered stumps. It felt cold and wet and dark. Beside him was a bush with fireberries as big as pumpkins. Xemion stood up and opened his mouth to call to his friends, but stopped. Something was creeping through the undergrowth toward him. Briefly, he caught sight of one famished eye and braced himself for the worst. His hand darted to the hilt of the painted sword at his hip but then came a snort from the other side of him so loud it seemed to shake the ground. Xemion froze. The dog froze. At first he couldn't even move to look around, but then a wisp of smoke wafted before his eyes and with it he smelled phosphorus. He turned frantically and gasped: he was face-to-face with a dragon. Xemion leaped back in terror, but the dragon kept calmly, quietly staring at him, its enormous irises radiating out at him hypnotically. Somewhere, high above, Xemion heard the others calling his name as a thin, forked tongue snaked out of the dragon's mouth and licked at the ground in front of him.

Xemion breathed as quietly as possible. He could see mighty sinews rippling under its red and gold patterned scales. Dragons were fast on the ground. They could pounce and tear in an instant. He had never felt such fear. But his hand was only inches from the hilt of the blade. Slowly, he drew it out and held the hilt at his breastbone, cupped in both hands, the point up. A stem unto the sun. The dragon's lips lifted in a sneer; its pupils contracted to two tight, black dots as it took in a deep, long breath. Xemion, in his most spell-binding voice, intoned “Poltorir!”, the name of the dragon in the saga of Amphion. He went down on one knee in the way prescribed in
The Manual of Phaer Swordsmanship
. He felt the air rush by him as the dragon filled her mighty lungs. A red glow welled up round the rims of her gold-green eyes. He heard a clicking sound. A spark ignited deep in her throat and then, just as Xemion was sure he would be scorched to death, the dragon's head swivelled sharply to the left and spat a great burst of fire into the bushes. Akil hardly had a moment to scream. The fireball consumed him in one hot instant like a spider caught in a flaming brand. His old limbs clenched in the terrible agony of their incineration, and within a few seconds, during which time he writhed and gaped silently, he was dead.

Xemion saw none of this. He was already scrambling on all fours up the slope, his lungs burning with the effort of each breath. Faster than he had ever done anything, Xemion clawed his way up over the edge of the valley within the valley. He could hear the others somewhere nearby. “Run!” He screamed. “Get out of the valley!” There followed a lot of snapping of branches and tearing of leaves as they all scrambled in a frenzy of fear up the other side.

They emerged almost simultaneously and the moment their feet touched the roadway at the top they began to run and didn't stop till they came to a shallow cave in the side of a cliff. It was deep enough to offer some shelter from the sky above. Pressing to its sides as though it were the only thing keeping him from being swept away, Xemion breathlessly told them what had happened.

“It was like she let me go,” Xemion said, his voice still shaking with passion. “It was like she knew me. It was like she killed the dog to save me.”

Saheli stood at the mouth of the cave holding her staff crosswise before her, keeping watch on the sky as he spoke. “I thought you had died down there,” she said in a strange hushed voice. “I heard that roar and I saw that billow of smoke rising and …”

Xemion saw the fear in her at this thought. He saw her knuckles gripped white on the staff and he flushed to think that he was important to her. He felt like wrapping his arms around her and squeezing her tight, or at least placing his hand sympathetically on her shoulder, but he didn't. “Don't worry. I'm not going to die. Especially not by dragon fire.” He spoke with surety, but Saheli could sense how close he still felt to the terror.

“None of us knows how we might die,” Torgee said, not meeting his eye.

“If we do die,” Saheli said, turning and not quite facing Xemion, “I want to say one thing. I am glad for your friendship and patience with me. You have helped me a great deal.”

Xemion took in a deep breath and his nostrils flared with emotion as he exhaled. He wanted to say, “Your life is as important to me as my own.” He wanted to get down on one knee and pledge his allegiance to her here and now and forever more. But he was too keenly aware of Torgee's eyes on him and of Tharfen hunched at the back of the cave listening. “I take friendship very seriously,” was all he managed.

A long, awkward pause followed. Saheli looked so young and vulnerable. Their eyes met only briefly like two stones sent skipping off each other.

“Do you think the examiner and his dogs are dead?” Tharfen asked, looking at Xemion.

“I hope so,” Xemion answered.

“Maybe only for a while,” Saheli added.

There followed a silence.

“Do you mean them dogs could come back to life and start running around chasing us with their heads on backward like that?” Tharfen asked, not even bothering to try to hide the fear this thought aroused in her. She felt as though the sating of her vengeance should have won her relief from the anger and terror she had lived with from the first moment the examiner had assaulted her. But she felt even less protected in this moment. She felt as though her vengeance must surely trigger some retribution against her just as Amphion's had in the story from
The Phaer Tales
that Xemion had told her.

“If they do, I don't think it will be soon,” Xemion answered. “In all the stories where people come back to life they have to have been dead for one passage of the moon.”

After an hour had passed and no dragon wings had appeared in the sky, they all agreed to continue on the road and take the first route they could find that led toward the coast.