The Paper Sword (8 page)

As evening fell, Xemion and Saheli found themselves on the cool floor of an overhanging valley full of pine and cedar of magnificent height. The groundcover here was minimal, leaves and needles mostly, sometimes bare soil, rich and dark, which they padded over at great speed, breathing long and slow to sustain themselves. They were good runners, but it was a very long valley that slanted lower and lower within the similarly sloping bastion of bedrock it was recessed into, and the weight of the swan after a long hungry day of continuous running seemed to increase with each step.

Even after sunset they were able to continue by the light of the full moon. But whenever a cloud drifted across the sky the shadows grew longer about them. Finally, a huge cloud completely covered the moon and they were cast in complete darkness. There they froze, both of them gripping the same birch sapling. For a long time as the cloud's slow drift continued, they waited there, listening to the chorus of the insects and the tree frogs about them.

“We'll have to stop here,” Xemion said in a hushed voice. “It would be dangerous to go any farther in the dark.”

“If the examiner somehow survived and now has his dogs after us, do you think they will be tracking us in the dark?”

“It's possible,” he admitted. “They are underearth dogs. So they have good eyes for darkness.”

“Then I think we should keep waiting until the cloud cover passes. It has before. Then we'll continue on our way.”

“Don't you need to rest?”

“I don't need to rest. Do you?”

“No, I don't. But if you want to rest while it's dark, I will stay on guard and wake you immediately when the time is right. You can have my cloak.” Over her protests, Xemion undid the clasp of his cloak and suddenly their faces were bathed in a spectral green light and they could see each other.

“The sword —” Saheli said. Xemion slowly withdrew the blade from its sheath within his cloak and it shone much more powerfully than it had the night before when it had so spooked the examiner. “I think it shines a lot more when you have it out in the sun a lot,” he observed. He held it up before him like a lamp and they could see two or three feet all around. “Well, that's safe enough for me,” Xemion said. “Is it safe enough for you?”

And so by the light of the sword the two proceeded farther into the forest. They travelled for some time like this. It was hot and sticky and the forest was full of inexplicable reverberations: clicks, snaps, chitters, and calls. Then someone or something let out a long reeling rising cry of what seemed sheer sorrow. Human sorrow. The sound of it chilled their blood. It continued without a break for a long time before it began to fade. Right at the end it turned into a sound that could only be called a titter — as though it somehow found the expression of its own agony amusing.

Xemion whispered, “I think it might be some kind of spell-crossed deer. There'll be more things like that the closer we get to Ulde.”

Before long, the luminescent glow of the sword began to diminish until all too soon it grew ghostly and pale, the only thing visible. They stopped in the dark. The wind seemed to be whipping around in every direction, trying to find exit from some predicament, huge and wet. And again something let out that long rising lonely half-mad call. Its ending tapered off just like the previous one, but before it entirely faded again there was that slightly hysterical titter, twice as long this time. Then the moon shone through a vast hole in the clouds and suddenly they saw where they were.

Somehow they had walked out onto a narrowing promontory and were standing mere footsteps from its tip. They gasped as they looked down and saw their shadows fall away on either side of them, deep into an abyss whose bottom the moonlight did not reach. Far beyond and below they could see shadows of the great crags and canyons continuing on down the mountainside. And not far to the north, level with them, was the great bastion of stone that was the rest of the plateau. “That's the way we should've gone,” Xemion pointed. “We're going to have to backtrack.”

“This wouldn't be a good place to spend the night,” she said.

“It is not defensible,” Xemion agreed. “But … I have an idea.” He searched out her green eyes in vain as he explained. “If we backtrack along the far side of the promontory, then, even if the dogs by some miracle did make it this far, the footprints we've left so far will still be clear and pointing this way and that might well fool or at least delay them.”

She agreed, and the two doubled back as quickly as possible while the moon was still shining. Twice they had to pause while clouds passed over, and both times, in the pitch blackness, whatever being it was out there let loose that awful cry, its ending titter even more prolonged than before.

Halfway down the promontory they came to a small clearing about fifty yards wide. In its centre there was a round cabin, its windows shuttered. They only saw it for a moment before another dark cloud rolled in and covered the whole sky. As they waited in the darkness, there was a distant rumble of thunder and a great wind came up so fierce the thick cedar trunks began to creak and complain as the treetops were buffeted to and fro.

The rustling and complaining of the leaves only lasted a moment. Then the sky split open with an explosion of lightning that forked down into the forest in three great branches, one of which hit so close and so hard they both darted away from it in terror. In the blinded seconds that followed, Saheli felt the shadow of something shoot by her as she shot by it. There was a dull thud of impact followed by two grunts of pain. Close behind her a familiar voice screamed but she couldn't quite place it. There were sounds of struggle in the grass and she ran toward them, just barely able to see two silhouettes struggling in the dark forest shadows. In panic she called out “Xemion!” And then another voice, somewhere behind her, called out “Saheli?” She realized who it was. She spun around to face him in the dark just as he ran into her.

“Torgee?”

Just then the storm cloud came away from the moon and Xemion saw who it was he'd run into in the dark and was currently wrestling with. “Tharfen!” he shouted with disgust. “What are you doing here?” Tharfen, who had taken quite a blow when she collided with Xemion, didn't at first reply. She was too winded and stunned. “Do you have any idea how much peril you've put us in by following us here?” he shouted, infuriated.

Xemion was standing up now, brushing himself off as Tharfen recovered her breath enough to scream at him “We came to warn you, you arse!” This was followed by a solid kick to Xemion's shins. “Because the examiner is after you with Pathan dogs.”

“I already know that!” Xemion shouted. At that, the sky exploded, five forks of incandescent lightning striking so symmetrically around them it might have been herding them toward that cabin in the centre of the clearing. A second later a massive crack of thunder shook the ground. They all converged on the long porch in front of the doorway, but Saheli regained control of herself at the last moment and stopped short of entering it.

“I'm not going in that house,” she said with great certainty as the rain began to fall behind her.

“But the lightning …” Xemion protested, raising his voice to be heard over the rain and the wind.

“Yes, but we don't need to go inside,” Torgee said. “There is shelter enough here on the porch.”

“Torgee's right. It will give us something solid at our backs if …” Xemion didn't finish his sentence.

“If what?” Tharfen demanded.

“If we should need to defend ourselves,” Saheli said. She stood there for a few moments, Chiricoru silent in the bag on her back, both of them getting wet as the lightning struck again and again all round her until finally she had to come in.

Turning and Returning

F
ortunately
for Xemion and Saheli, Torgee had come well-equipped. He shared his bread and fish paste and they ate for the first time that day. For a little while they all sat there on the porch, mutually embarrassed to be in one another's presence at nighttime. Considering all the risk Torgee and Tharfen had taken on their behalf, Saheli thought it only proper that she tell them about Vallaine's invitation and their plan to take up arms in Ulde.

“Well, you can go where you like. Torgee'n me will be going home first thing in the morning,” Tharfen stated.

“I don't think that's a good idea,” Xemion whispered back.

“We don't need no ideas from
you
,” Tharfen hissed at him. “We got a mother to think about.” She pushed her jaw forward and added pointedly, “Unlike you.”

Xemion almost blushed under the penetrating intensity of her stare.

“We saw the stone you put up,” Torgee said, not meeting Xemion's eyes.

He just shrugged. “Before she died she made me swear not to tell anyone, I had to —”

“To what?” Tharfen cut in. “Lie, lie, lie, and lie?”

“Please be fair,” Saheli pleaded.

“Yes, I'll be fair. When I get home tomorrow, I'll be fair to my mother.”

“But if you go back you will surely run into the examiner,” Saheli said worriedly.

“I ain't scared of that pig,” Tharfen said loudly. “I hope we do run into him. 'Cause now that we've warned you — at the risk of our lives, I might add — we can deal with him.”

“It's not just him … it's the dogs,” Saheli said gravely.

“Torgee's got stuff for the dogs,” Tharfen said. “Don't you, Torgee?”

“Some,” the taciturn Torgee grunted. “Used a lot on the way here.”

“What you mean?”

“Stuff to delay them. Pepper. Hooks.”

“You should come with us,” Saheli said.

“My mother would kill me,” Tharfen said.

“She would,” Torgee confirmed.

“Surely she would want you to be safe,” Saheli said.

“She would want me to have my revenge,” Tharfen said with great emotion.

“But Tharfen —”

“Because I swear to you this,” Tharfen interrupted, “I will have my vengeance on him.”

This was a line she had learned from Xemion's recital of the saga of Amnon. Hearing it now, Xemion half wished he'd never told it to her. “Well, as long as you're going to quote Amnon, maybe you would like to remember what kind of a fate his vengeance brought him to.”

Tharfen snapped. “I hate you, Xemion. This is all your fault.”

“Please don't hate him, Tharfen.” Saheli asked softly.

Torgee said, “She doesn't really hate you, Xemion. You'd understand if you saw the ridges that pig left up and down her backside.”

Tharfen sat up, enraged. “Shut your mouth, Torgee, or …” But just then there was a gobbling sound from inside the jute bag and Chiricoru poked her head through. Startled, Tharfen turned around, and seeing the bird for the first time, instantly her eyes softened. “Oh!” she sighed. A tone Xemion and Saheli had never heard before entered her voice. “Who are you?” she asked gently.

“That's Chiricoru,” Saheli said, stroking the moonlit feathers on top of her head.

“Can I…?”

“Of course. Just be very gentle. She's had a rough time.”

And now Tharfen saw the injury to Chiricoru's neck. She looked to Xemion for confirmation.

“Yes, that was the examiner,” he said bitterly. “I had to stop him with my painted sword. Otherwise he would've killed her.”

“Well, don't worry,” Tharfen stated with great emotion to Chiricoru. “I will make him pay.” She glared back at Xemion as though just daring him to chide her for her vengeance again.

Xemion held her gaze and nodded. “Don't worry, you're not the only one who seeks retribution,” he said quietly. Their eyes met in a smile.

“He will get his,” Torgee said gruffly, a hint of tears in his large, sensitive eyes.

Tharfen softened. “Can I hold her?”

“Just be very careful with her.” Saheli turned toward Tharfen and the two of them cuddled Chiricoru between them.

“You should come with us in the direction of Ulde on the morrow,” Xemion said quietly. “We will be going near the coast road. It will be safer for you to go back that way.”

“I wish I could come with you,” Torgee said, looking shyly at Saheli.

“Don't forget your mother,” Saheli whispered, tilting her head toward Tharfen, who was half lost in her newfound love for Chiricoru.

“Yes.” He nodded.

They agreed to take turns keeping watch through the night. Xemion drew first watch and sat just inside the wicker entrance to the porch. Behind him Saheli cuddled up on the other side of Chiricoru while Torgee lay down with his back to his sister's back. Other than the soft falling of the rain the night was very quiet now.

Torgee and Tharfen quickly fell asleep but Saheli couldn't. She kept sensing and almost hearing that melody. And yes, it seemed to be a lilting, beautiful tune, but for some reason it was starting to make her feel anxious. It kept arising, quietly, tauntingly at the back of her mind as though trying to make itself known. But when she tried to actually listen to it, it would disappear and leave her trembling and wary. The more it seemed she might finally recognize it, the more her apprehensiveness increased. And then, just before it looked like it must finally come clear, it would be gone entirely, only to return seconds later in subdued form.

Finally though, with a long, slow fade, the song stopped and everything in her mind became blissfully quiet and she fell into a fitful slumber. Then with a smeary, uneven lurch the melody — the unheard melody — went into reverse. She didn't know at first this was what happened. All she felt was a sudden freefall as though everything in her had been suddenly dropped. But the instant the dream song touched her with the next note of its melody she was drawn back with it, wanting more of it, wanting to know all of it; whirling around backward in a sweeping curve. She was fastened by the back of her heel to something that turned away from her, a spell kone spinning her backward round and round, smaller and smaller pieces of her shooting off, hurled beyond her. Faster and faster it seemed the kone turned and then when she was almost nothing she saw a manic bearded face, brilliant grey eyes, an aged hand cranking a handle round and round.

Saheli opened her eyes with a gasp. Torgee was bending over her and she grabbed his shoulders in her fright and he grabbed hers and said, “It's just me. It's your turn.”