The Paper Sword (19 page)

At these words, Xemion's panic doubled.
Where was she?
He felt as though he had seen every face now in the entire stadium and none of them had been hers. His hand ached where her hand had been. The way she had gripped him by the Great Kone, the way she had tugged her hand away from Vallaine's red hand. Suddenly he saw another red hand in his mind's eye, but it wasn't Vallaine's. It was a fat red hand. It was glistening. There was the sound of a cry in his memory. It came from him and he saw himself as a baby and he knew that other red hand belonged to the midwife who had delivered him. A shudder of fear ran through him and his hand tingled so intensely it almost hurt. The way it had whenever he shook Vallaine's red hand … Then he realized why he was remembering.
Remember well and go forward
. The memory water was finally taking effect. How hadn't he seen it till now? That red hand and that feeling of activation that came with his touch. Vallaine was a middle mage! When he had last shaken Xemion's hand by the Great Kone he had bid Xemion remember and now Xemion was remembering. For several moments he stood there shocked, overwhelmed by images, sounds, smells from his own birth. They flickered through his consciousness like cards torn from a heap by a gusting wind. And then when the wind abated, the present-moment thought came — more important than any other. If he was remembering, Saheli was … forgetting! Twice he had seen her take that black bottle from her cloak and sip at it. How much would she forget?

Abandoning all courtesy now, he pushed his way through the crowd. He was within ten rows of the front of the stage when he saw someone up the front tying up a topknot. He was only seeing her from behind but he was sure it must be her. He pressed forward and was about to call out to her but just then Veneetha Azucena shouted, “Now I ask you to stop wherever you are and turn and take the hand of the one beside you and shake it in our sacred vow of friendship.”

Xemion's attention had been so intent upon that topknot he had not even noticed those around him, but when he finally turned, there, standing so close to him they were almost touching, her black eyes impenetrable but intense, her face dirty and bruised and freckled … was Tharfen. He gasped. He barely had the time to whisper her name before the recital of the vow began. Face to face, hand to hand, they spoke the sacred words.

I swear by the blood of my ancestors,

by the tears of those yet to be.

I swear by the will of the way

and the way of the will,

by fortune Phaer and fortune ill.

Here, where Azucena paused to take a breath, Xemion spoke quickly and quietly to Tharfen. “Have you seen Saheli?” he asked. In the next breath they were reciting again, but Tharfen's eyes were no longer indecipherable. They were filled with rage.

I swear by sinews hale and strong,

by hungry mind and trials long,

by full moon and Phaer earth,

by father's toil and mother's birth,

with this one I shall bonded be.

She commands me I am free.

Her will is our freedom.

So say we. So say we.

Before Xemion could extract his hand from Tharfen's or even think to ask her where her brother Torgee might be, Azucena's words rang out again.

“Now turn to the person on the other side of you and recite the second verse.”

All Xemion wanted to do was get to that top-knotted figure at the front. But just as he caught a glimpse of the back of that top knot again, standing beside someone who might well have been Torgee, another hand took his. The grip, though powerful, was cold and wet. Xemion turned angrily and there, accompanied by his maliciously grinning thugs, was Montither. Squeezing each other's hand with maximum strength, Xemion and Montither spoke the second verse of the vow together.

Nor will I shirk from ceaseless work,

with dagger, sword, shield and dirk,

to learn the hallowed ways of blade

until, in skin and burnished shield,

my warrior self shall be revealed.

I swear to strive

in freezing shade or scalding sun,

till I am knit with you as one.

“Now, my beloveds, we cross our arms over our own breasts and reach across ourselves to one another —” Veneetha Azucena extended her right hand over her left hip her left hand over her right to illustrate. When Xemion did this he held Tharfen's hand on the one side and Montither's on the other. Gripped like that, crossed over himself, held in a great long line of cross-vowed promisers that went round and round the stadium, Xemion strained to see past the heads and shoulders in front of him to where she might be as he took up the third verse of the vow.

To Phaer command I hereby yield,

bound unto you shield to shield.

And if I stray may every sickness bend my way,

and every curse upon me stay,

with succour driven far away,

until my dying form shall haunt

a burning field of endless want.

And to this wisdom strong and Phaer,

we pledge our honour to her care.

And yay and yay and glory be.

So say we. So say we.

Lexicon of the Phaer Isle

Arthenow
: the continent across the western sea from the Phaer Isle ruled by the blood magic of the necromancer of Arthenow. Original home of the Thralls.

Chimerant
: living creatures who are blends of more than one species, usually as a result of spellcraft.

Common magic
: magic that can be initiated by the turning of a spell-kone rather than by the vocalizations of a trained mage.

Cross-spell
: contrary or contradictory or paradoxical spells invoked upon the same person or object or locality. Often the magic will compromise, pleasing one part of one spell and another part of another.

The Crumbles
: earthquake-ravaged area on the eastern slope of Mount Ulde.

Elphaereans
: the ancient people now departed from the Phaer Isle, who are thought to have created and written the Great Kone.

Era of Common Magic
: also known as The Phaer Era, this is the fifty-year period after the invention of spell kones and before the Battle of Phaer Bay. It was a period of increasingly ludicrous magical achievements.

Examiner
: an official of the Pathan government empowered to examine Phaer youth in order to detect spellbinders.

Great Kone at Ulde
: a huge, mostly subterranean cone-shaped structure. The downward spirals of text written upon it are reputed to be the ancient foundational spell-riddle of existence; also the koan that is written upon the structure.

Ilde
: the isolated western portion of the Phaer Isle dominated by Mount Ilde.

Kagars
: a piratical sea people who defeated the Phaerland forces at the Battle of Phaer Bay at the end of the era of common magic, but were prevented from entering the city of Ulde due to the efforts of Tiri Lighthammer. Surrogates of the Pathans.

Koan
: a mysterious story/statement meant to disrupt normal cognitive approaches; a riddle.

Kone
: a conically shaped structure upon which a spell or riddle or koan is written.

Kone craft
: spells invoked by the turning of a spell kone; textual magic other than that written on the Great Kone.

Kwislings
: traitors who have collaborated with the Pathans.

Mage
: a learned master of the spoken magic. Applied to both ancient Elphaerean mages and Phaerland mages. All known mages have been executed by the Pathans at the time of this tale.

Magman
: the Pathan Magma God.

Middle mage
: a mage with no power of his own, but who is capable of transmitting the power of another mage's spell, usually by hand contact.

Nains
: a people of short stature renowned for their earthworking skills and their ferocity when forced to fight.

Natural magic
: the inherent biological magic present in small amounts in most Phaerlanders.

Necromancy
: blood-based magic most powerful in the continent of Arthenow.

Panthemium
: the stadium where athletic events such as the racing of gorehorses took place during the time of the Elphaereans.

Pathan science
: known for its achievements using reverse engineering on spell-wrought objects to advance technical knowledge. It is at odds with the Magman cult, a Pathan religion dominant in later years. Originators of crank and gear technology.

Pathans
: an underearth people whose armies have taken to conquering the surface world. They have a crystal-based biology.

Pathar
: city at the heart of the Pathan Empire located deep underearth, beneath the ocean.

Phaer Isle
: the mountainous, mid-ocean island, once the home of the Elphaereans and later home to the Phaer people. Lately conquered by the Pathan Empire.

Phaer people
: any non-Pathan residents of the Phaer Isle; also known as Phaerlanders.

Shissillil
: a former suburb of the city of Ulde. Due to the earliest known case of kone-based spell-crossing, a place reputed to be without friction.

Spell fire
: refers to the fire that occurred in the Great Kone when it stopped turning during the battle of Phaer Bay.

Spellbinders
: Phaerlanders, usually children, with the innate vocal quality necessary to become a mage.

Spell kone
: a crank-driven cone upon which a spell is written in one long spiral from the rim to the point. Turning the crank causes the cone to revolve while the eye or “witness stone” descends — thus “reading” and invoking the text of the spell.

Thralls
: descendents of those who escaped their enslave-ment to the blood magic of the necromancer of Arthenow and migrated to the Phaer Isle five hundred years before the events of this tale.

Trait wraiths
: disembodied parts of peoples' personalities magically removed for purposes of punishment or self-improvement during the era of common magic.

Ulde
: the capital city of the Phaer Isle. The ancient village was formed around the Great Kone.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank and acknowledge the generous contributions of many friends and first readers whose commentaries helped shape the narrative of this book: Barbara Gowdy, David Day, Allen Booth, Jane Mann, Sonya Kunkel, Carolyn Smart, Ken Setterington, Caroline Szpak, Sasha Graham, Alexandria Taylor, Verona Blackford, Marsha Kirzner, Eli Kirzner-Priest, Daniel Kirzner-Priest, Marie Wilson, and Chloe Wilson.

Special thanks also to: Natasha Graham; Jane Mann for her heroic efforts on behalf of this book; the master gatherer, John Robert Colombo; Mick Gowar; and master satirist Sherwin Tija, who is also a fine fantasy cartographer.

I also acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council for a writer's reserve grant during the twelve-year writing of this series.

Copyright © Robert Priest, 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Editor: Allison Hirst

Design: Courtney Horner

Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

Map by Sherwin Tija

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Priest, Robert, 1951-, author

The paper sword / Robert Priest.

(Spell crossed ; book 1)

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4597-0826-6

I. Title II. Series: Priest, Robert, 1951- . Spell crossed ; bk. 1

PS8581.R47P36 2014 jC813'.54 C2013-907401-5

C2013-907402-3

We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Canada Book Fund
and
Livres Canada Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit
and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.

Visit us at:
Dundurn.com
@dundurnpress
Facebook.com/dundurnpress
Pinterest.com/dundurnpress