by Kate Story
“I tire of this. Seize them.” And the man turns his back.
“You see?” Ari shouts. “He won’t put the Chosen to the test!”
“What test?” Rowan asks.
“The sword in the stone.”
“Sword in the stone?” Rowan asks incredulously. Like Arthur? he thinks. That’s just silly. . . .
But there’s no time for incredulity. An armed man comes at them, then two, three.
“Defend yourself!” Ari draws his sword and tosses it through the air to Rowan.
And then Ari charges, barehanded, to meet the first man running at them, and everything slows down.
Ari’s sword arcs through the air toward him, but Rowan instinctively shrinks away from the blade. It hits the grass pommel first, bounces, and lands flat, gleaming in the weak sunlight. A man, face twisted, grabs at it and Rowan lunges, wraps his hands over the man’s on the hilt. They grapple. Rowan’s taller, but the man is burly, very strong. Rowan sticks his foot behind the man’s leg and pushes him backward so he tumbles. The sword is somehow in Rowan’s hands. Ari is beside him.
“You take it!” Rowan thrusts the sword at his friend; he doesn’t know what the hell to do with a sword anyway.
Ari takes it and Rowan watches as he stabs—he actually stabs—another man who is coming at them with a sword over his head, face distorted.
The man doubles over the blade. Ari pulls it out. The man drops his sword and puts his hands over his belly. Blood comes from between his fingers and then his mouth opens. Blood comes out of that also.
Ari’s already slashed the throat of another assailant, cut deeply into the arm of a third. Blood sweeps through the air, spattering Rowan’s cheek.
Most of the people are hanging back, as if they are uncertain what to do. But not all. Another man comes at Rowan with a blade. Rowan tears off his jacket and sweeps it at the sword thrusting at him, entangling the man’s arm. He jerks with all his strength on the jacket, and the assailant falls forward. Yelling—Rowan realizes he’s yelling at the top of his lungs. He kicks at the man’s face, but the grass is slick and his foot goes out—he’s falling—he’s down. He lands on the man and feels him shudder and go still.
Rowan pulls the sword from the unconscious man’s hand and rolls away, hearing a sickening thunk as a chopping blow from above just misses him. He jumps to his feet and swings wildly with the sword; he has no idea what to do. They did sword forms in his childhood kung fu classes: slow, graceful movements with wooden blades. This is all yelling and stomping noise. He can’t bear to stab, uses the flat of the sword instead like a bat, hitting around himself with all he’s got. But there must be twenty men on them, there’s no way they can take them all. They’re back-to-back, Ari and Rowan, being forced toward the white stone.
The sun gleams out of the clouds and ash, the white rock is stained with its redness. There’s something sticking out of the white rock above Rowan’s head, something that shines like metal. It looks like a handle, a lever.
A man stabs, Rowan jumps aside, brings his sword down on the man’s weapon and it makes a silly clinking noise, just like he expected. The man stumbles and Rowan’s arms go numb with the impact; he drops his weapon.
Rowan and Ari have their backs to the rock now. Ari is fighting madly. A large warrior comes straight for Rowan, sword raised, ready to slash. Rowan sees how it will be. The sword will come down and split him from the top of his skull to his navel, the way it is described in so many of the pleasant tales his father read him from his mother’s homeland. He will be split like a fish on the rock.
He gathers himself and jumps straight into the air, grabbing at the metal lever-thing sticking out of the rock. He grasps it with both hands; he’s hanging above the ground. The man is going to gut him. Rowan tucks his knees to his chest, striking out at the assailant’s face with his feet. The man falls back.
Rowan swings from his arms. He sees the robed leader-man standing, watching the fight. He sees the onlookers from the city, ranged all the way up the stairs and along the top of the cliff. He sees the red sun.
The metal thing is loose. It is coming out of the rock. There’s a grinding noise; it cuts through the yelling and the grunts and the groans of those Ari has wounded. And then Rowan is falling. He keeps hold of whatever it is in his hands, and comes down on his feet. He lands in a crouch, does not stumble. And stands, holding the thing from the rock.
It is a sword.
The men stop coming at them.
Everything is quiet.
Ari stares at him, black eyes glittering. “The sword,” he whispers. Then, turning out to the others, a great full-throated roar: “The sword in the stone!”
Like Arthur, yes, Rowan thinks. It’s ridiculous, he wants to laugh, and then realizes he is—he’s laughing, and then he wants to cry. He feels dizzy, he feels like he’s going to be sick. The ground is moving. There’s a flash in the distance, dull and red. He hears people crying out: Chosen! Chosen! But some are also saying, The mountain! The ground is moving. The mountain is on fire. The last thing he sees as he slides sideways is Ari’s face, teeth bared in triumph.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Going Under
“Today, we will hold the games.”
That’s what Pim had said. Games, to celebrate Ophelia’s arrival. The words conjure images in Ophelia’s imagination: playing cards, children skipping rope, an impression of a Monopoly board. But she knows that Pim means something very different.
As they make their way down the stairs, the crowd—rather than waiting for them as Ophelia expects—turns and drains away through the streets. Voices swell and roar, echoing between tall buildings like crashing waves. She and Pim follow, stately at first. Then, when the streets echo with distant voices and there is no one left to see, Pim grabs her hand and leads her, laughing, at a flat run.
They come to a vast curving wall pierced with arched windows, like a coliseum. This is where the people are, dashed up against the wall and pressing to get inside, like the edge of a high tide. In places she can see where the wall has crumbled and been repaired.
“Come this way.” Pim leads Ophelia, still at a run, to an entrance with no lineup. Gold leaf crowns the stone of the arched entrance, soaring above their heads ten or fifteen metres. Sound contracts and the air goes cold in the shadow of the archway. Then they are through, inside the great bowl of a building. It is open to the sky, with rows upon rows of stone seats. It’s an arena, a great medieval arena in the centre of the city, paved with stone.
Pim takes her high up, to a box-shaped enclosure with stone seats. It could hold maybe ten people, but they have it to themselves. They sit at the front and Ophelia watches the crowd.
The place is almost full. People jostle and wave to each other, voices filling the great stone bowl. Those sitting higher up are beautifully dressed, mostly in robes; some affect the half-dressed look of The Gor. Lower down the people are more ragged, many of them nearly naked. Some move through the crowd, hands outstretched, begging. Squeezing through everyone, trays around their necks, salespeople hawk everything from roasted meat to ribbons. And some of the people aren’t people. Some of them are half-goat, or centaurs. There’s a woman with a cow’s head. . . .
Ophelia can’t help noticing the faces turned toward her and Pim, pointing, scrutinizing. Over and over she sees a gesture repeated, one that the welcoming committee used, too: people bending their arms in front of their chest, wrapping their hands over their opposite elbows, then dragging their palms over their forearms, and shaking their hands. It looks like pulling off a half-sleeve or long glove, and throwing it to the ground.
“They’re afraid.” Pim raises her dragon-marked forearms, shakes them at the crowd. She bares her teeth.
Is that what the gesture means? “They’re afraid of your . . . tattoos?”
“No, my dearest. Of you. And a little of me, but only because of what I represent.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“The conn
ection with you. You and your world.”
The smells, the noise, the strangeness . . . she feels herself making it all small and far away. She will pretend that it is a movie, or a fantasy.
“Are we going to meet the . . .” Ophelia swallows. “The Mender?”
“Afterwards.”
People dressed in short red tunics are harrying the crowd, getting them into their seats. These people carry sticks that they use freely, striking around themselves. Slowly the people settle like a vast flock of birds.
There’s a sudden stir, a place where the crowd knots, yelling. Out of the knot wriggles a small ragged boy with curly brown hair. He vaults over the seats, knocking a fat man to the ground. People shout, pointing: Thief, thief! A red tunic moves to intercept the boy. The boy is running, he’s little but fast. He will make it; he’s almost to an archway.
The red robe gets to the boy. It’s hard to see in the shadow of the arch, but Ophelia is sure the red robe raises his stick and brings it down on the boy’s head. The boy falls, shudders. Ophelia feels sick; she imagines she can almost hear the thunk of the stick coming down on the skull.
The red robe pulls the boy up by his shirt, shakes him. The boy jerks around like a monkey on a stick. The red robe drags him out of sight.
She won’t ask Pim what happened. It’s a movie, she tells herself.
Another surge buoys up the crowd. The black-robed women from the welcoming committee, the Virgos, are filing in. The red veils on their heads stand out against the stone walls like blood.
The people lift their voices in a cheer.
There are seven Virgos, and one holds something between her hands. She raises the thing for the crowd to see. It’s a metal thing, copper perhaps, shaped like Aladdin’s lamp, a picture Ophelia remembers from a fairy-tale book. The whole building feels it will shake apart from the cries and shouts.
“They are the chaste ones,” Pim says, a wild grin on her face. “The keepers of the Night Light.”
“Night Light?” What is this, a child’s nursery?
“They tend the flame.”
“What happens if they let it go out?”
“It has never gone out.”
Another person enters, stooped, supported by the doctor in his ridiculously tall black hat. The person wears a pale robe, blinding white in the sun.
And with the entrance of this person, the crowd goes silent. Doctor Capricus helps the person to sit. The crowd watches. The figure seems to go still. Then it stands, raising itself up straight as an arrow. One of the Virgos, the one who holds the lamp, stands, too, and holds the figure’s arm with her free hand.
“That is the Mender,” Pim says.
They lean their heads together, the white robed person and the Virgo.
And Ophelia hears a beautiful voice, cold and deep like the sea. The voice fills the arena with muttering. You can’t hear the words exactly. It’s a poem, maybe. But gradually it takes on a rhythm, a driving beat. Something about Johnny, Johnny wanted to run.
It makes her feel like she’s under water again, drowning, before Pim turned her into a seal or an octopus. Cold and lost, and also excited. Somewhere in her brain, she thinks she knows this poem.
The packed coliseum sways to the muttering, entranced. Voices join in. They start saying the name over and over: Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.
The Mender’s recitation rises from the driving monotone, gets louder, higher. Something about a locker? A beating? Everyone raises their arms and reaches up into the sky, a reach toward nothing. Even Pim is humming, swaying, they are all like seaweed on the ocean floor. And then the Mender changes the chant: Horses! Horses! Horses!
A person below cries out, flings their arms asunder, falls back in ecstasy. Another, and another. People falling like they are mowed. Horses! the crowd shouts. Ophelia does know this song, yes—it’s that punk or new wave or whatever, Patti Smith, magnificent in her white shirt and black pants in that famous photo, brave as a warrior.
How did that song get here?
The people chant, the Mender sings in a deep vibrato almost like Elvis, Gotta lose control, gotta lose control.
Ophelia grips the edge of her stone seat with her fingers. Hard, above water.
Finally the singing builds, becomes something about the sea, crashes against two notes over and over. You can’t even tell what they’re saying. Everyone is crying out, howling, and somewhere behind, high, tight singing threads like ice under her skin. The crowd roars, sways. The white figure, the Mender, abruptly sags back. The Virgo catches her and lowers her to sit. Doctor Capricus ducks his head and backs out of the box, disappearing from sight.
And that’s when everything takes off.
There’s a rattling sound, squeaky wheels, filling the bowl of the arena. Out from a huge set of wooden doors, flung open by red-robed figures, comes a tall wooden framework on wheels. It is taken to the centre of the arena. From it swing things: ropes, ropes with nooses. It is a gibbet.
“Is this a hanging?” Ophelia’s mouth is dry.
Pim nods. “Criminals who for the past year have been awaiting their sentence.”
“What kind of criminals? Murderers?”
“People who have tried to betray us to the Northerners. Murderers. Thieves.”
“You hang people for stealing?”
Ophelia hates capital punishment. She joined a group at school to protest attempts by the NAU to impose capital punishment on what had been Canada. But it’s happening here, in the land of her dreams. Already a line of people with hoods over their heads are being led toward the gibbet. The hoods are black, their hands are bound behind their backs, like the terrible pictures from detention centres, wars in the Middle East, kidnappings in Mexico.
And behind them—no hood—is the boy, the boy who almost got away.
Suddenly it’s not a movie. The boy is crying. A red robe drags him along, his hands bound like the others. Ophelia has no idea what he allegedly stole. Food maybe, or someone’s necklace. She doesn’t care. She stands up, she shouts, “NO!”
It’s strange, what happens next. The crowd stops yelling, the guards leading the hooded figures stop. Even the boy, dragged along, even he stops. All faces are turned to Ophelia.
“No,” she says again. Her mouth is dry.
“Ophelia,” says Pim, her words dropping soft as water into Ophelia’s ear, “do you want to free a prisoner? You can. You can pardon one of them.”
Ophelia looks wildly at Pim. “I can?”
Pim shrugs. “You are our Chosen one.”
Chosen one? What does that mean? But there’s no time for questions. “Then I do. Pardon him. That boy.” Ophelia says this as loudly as she can. By some magic of acoustics her voice echoes through the coliseum.
The crowd quiets. A sigh rustles through the people. And then the red robe takes the boy and drags him toward an entrance, away from the gibbet.
Ophelia’s knees give out. She sits down hard. “Can I pardon only one?”
Pim nods.
“I can’t save the others?”
“No.”
Pim’s face is unreadable.
Ophelia watches the boy for as long as he remains within eyesight. His shoulder blades are visible through his thin shirt; his head is too large on a thin neck. He looks like he is starving, that boy. The red robe takes him out an archway. They are gone.
Meanwhile the other condemned are led up onto a platform. Some cry out; piss streams from between another’s legs. The crowd jeers. Nooses are fitted around the prisoners’ necks; two of them are women, somehow that’s worse. Less like a movie. It is all chaos, there is no pause, no ceremony. As each red robe gets a noose over a hooded prisoner’s neck, he simply pushes the person off. The bodies jerk, they jerk around for a long time, some of them.
It’s a movie. It is just like a movie.
Ophelia looks down. She will not watch.
When the slide comes, when she gets back home, she will never come to Antilia again.
Finally the bodies all stop moving. Doctor Capricus lopes into the arena. He checks the bodies, nods as if satisfied, makes a slashing motion across his throat.
The crowd cheers.
The bodies are cut down and loaded into a cart, and the gibbet is wheeled away. The crowd doesn’t pay much attention to this part; Ophelia notices this because she is looking at them, not at the dead prisoners. The Virgos and the other figure in white—the Mender—they sit perfectly still in the box above her and Pim. She can’t tell if they watched the slaughter, can’t tell if they care.
The arena is cleared, and there is a long pause.
Faces turn up to the Virgos. Something is supposed to be happening. The silence fills the space, it becomes uncomfortable.
And then The Gor joins the Virgos. He still wears his tuxedo jacket, is still pantless. He grins, teeth bared in the sun. He raises his right arm, and then slashes it down.
This seems to be the signal everyone has been waiting for. The crowd roars. Red robes knock their spears against the huge wooden doors from which the gibbet issued. The doors swing wide.
From the vast, dark, yawning mouth comes a centaur.
His horse part is huge, like a Clydesdale maybe, or bigger, the muscles in his flanks swelling under his shiny brown hide, black tail braided with red ribbons. His human body seems wrong against that, too small, blunt, muscular. He wears a metal breastplate and carries a short spear and a shield. He doesn’t look like pictures. He’s real, less beautiful. He canters toward the bank of stone seats where Ophelia, Pim, and all the Virgos sit, where the Mender sits. He rises up on his hind legs, golden in the sunlight. Then he lands and bends his human body deep in a bow.
“He does this for the South. He does this for you, and for her.”
Ophelia doesn’t have to ask who “her” is: the Mender.
But then the crowd roars, it’s like a baseball game. Even above the yelling people, Ophelia can hear clanking metal.
Slowly, slowly something comes into the light. A warrior. He is covered in metal armour, the whole thing painted the colour of spring leaves. He is so burdened by this green armour that he can barely move. He has a sword in his hand. Knight! scream the people. Knight, Knight, the Green Knight! And Render! Render! They boo, violent.