The Paper Sword

by Robert Priest

  I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

  By a chance bond together

  — Thoreau

  The river flowed both ways. The current moved from north to south, but the wind usually came from the south, rippling the bronze-green water in the opposite direction.

  — Margaret Laurence

  For Marsha Kirzner, Eli and Daniel Kirzner-Priest,

  my parents Betty and Ted Priest, Eitan and

  Erez Lebo, and William Broome

  Contents

  Cover

  The Paper Sword

  Epigraph

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Lexicon

  Copyright

  1

  The Stick

  It was a strange call welling up from the sea that caused him to change course. The sound echoed off the side of the mountain, hollow and huge, like some haunted beast seeking its ghost mate. It could have been the moaning of the wind through the jagged rocks of the fiord, but it could also have been the call of a dragon, and he had been waiting all his life to see a dragon. Lean and tall for his age, he veered off the path and proceeded along the top of the riverbank to the falls, close to the place where he had first found Saheli. The water had tumbled so long from this high point it had cut a channel through the rock. Standing on the ridge atop it, he had a good view over most of the valley and the bay below.

  A large thunderhead was gathering on the western horizon but the sky above was still blue and clear. The sea was grey and rough, the wind coming in steadily from the south. He scanned the beach and peered through the tendrils of mist clinging to the lower reaches of the valley but saw no dragon. Again the strange sound came. But from which direction? There was still a small section of the shore below that he couldn’t see from here so he began to climb down the bank to the river to get a wider view.

  He had only about nine feet to go but the last part of the slope was almost straight down and the spray had made the clay especially slippery. There was what looked to be the projecting nub of a root not far from his right hand. He leaned over and gripped the palm-sized protrusion, tugged at it, and, judging that it was solid enough to anchor him, leaned his weight on it and stretched his foot down. Without warning the root came away in his hand and with a startled shout he fell down onto his back on the narrow ledge beside the river. If not for the desperate claw-like grip of both hands into the wet clay, he would have slipped into the torrent and been swept away. His heart beat loud in his ears, louder even than the roar of the falls, as he got carefully to his feet. It took a second or two for him to even notice the stick lying at his feet. He picked it up. It was about three feet long. There were still clotted lumps of mud and clay on it, so just to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him, he knelt down and dipped it into the river, amazed at how mightily the rapid current tugged at it, trying to get it away from him. His excitement grew as he withdrew the clean white stick from the waters. Yes, the part he had first grabbed was just like the pommel and haft of a sword. There was no hand guard but the rest of it was straight, thin and flat, tapering to an edge on one side exactly like a blade. The very tip had been broken off, but it wouldn’t take much to fix that.

  The falls roared beside him as he gripped the stick excitedly, waiting to hear again that awesome call. He had an urge to hold the stick up to the sky in the first pose from The Manual of Phaer Swordsmanship, which he had just last month uncovered from the locket library, but the sword was not yet complete. It had to be perfect. He waited a long time, but when no further call came he set off back up the mountainside. Before he entered the shade of the forest at the top of the ridge, he couldn’t resist turning to face the sun and slashing the blade diagonally through the air. Slash one way and slash the other — the first letter of his name: Xemion.

  The many generations of astrologers who had previously inhabited the tower tree, where Xemion lived, had left little behind to tell of their occupation, but recently, in one of the many oddly shaped rooms under the tower, Saheli had found two tiny brushes and two pots of silver paint. The astrologers, Xemion conjectured, had used the silver to paint stars on their maps of the sky. But today he had another use for it. First he repaired the sword, using pine pitch to attach a copper bowl for a hand guard and a carved piece of pumice stone for a point. Then when it had dried he set about feverishly applying the silver paint. The paint was thick and the brush small and it took a long time. The sun illumined first the lower window and then the higher window of the workshop as he worked his way up the blade. By the time he neared the pitch-darkened point the silver paint was all but gone and he feared there would be too little to complete the job. But when only the tiniest black tip of pitch and pumice remained he managed to scour one last drop of the liquid silver from the pot. He laughed out loud at the result. It was so realistic! He could hardly wait to show it to Saheli. He left the silver sword balanced on the table to dry and went back to the tower tree in search of her.

  “Saheli!” he called.

  She had probably awoken, and when she’d discovered that he was gone, decided to go and do some foraging. After a while he returned to the workshop and, seeing that the sword was still not quite dry, he sat upon the stone step outside and with some strips of leather, a bone needle, and some black twine began to make a scabbard. Several more times he called out to her. Briefly, an old worry, a worry that she would disappear from his life just as suddenly as she had arrived in it, arose in him.

  By the time he heard Saheli coming at last, the scabbard was finished. Tying it about his waist, he hurried back into the workshop and, after making sure that the paint had completely dried, he slipped the sword into the sheath and wrapped his purple cloak back around him.

  “What is it?” Saheli asked as the door opened, ushering in a long streak of sunlight. “I heard you calling from way down on the plateau.”

  She had grown in the four months he had known her, but she was still not as tall as Xemion. Today, though, with her hair piled up high on top of her head, she towered over him by at least two inches. He had never seen her wear a top knot before, and for a moment the beauty of it — the way it set off the elegance of her long neck and high cheekbones — caught him off guard. As did the fact that her lips were stained raspberry red. “Berry?” she asked, holding out a brimming basketful.

  Xemion took one and said, “I have a surprise. Hide your eyes.”

  Obligingly she held one hand up over her green eyes and waited, her brow slightly furrowed. Xemion took the blade out from under his cloak, grasped the hilt in both hands, and finally did what he’d been waiting all day to do. He held the sword straight up in the first pose from The Manual of Phaer Swordsmanship. It was a heroic posture and he was delighted at how firm but flexible the sword felt.

  “Behold!” he announced in his deepest, most dramatic voice. Saheli took her hand away from her eyes and gasped at the smiling figure before her.

  “But Xemion —”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not a real sword,” he was quick to assure her. “It’s just a strangely shaped piece of wood I found. See, this part here is a bowl held on with resin. Then I used th
e silver star paint you found.” He bowed to her, swooping the sword elegantly to one side.

  The crease in Saheli’s brow deepened. “Let me see it.”

  He held it closer for her scrutiny. “I imagine it washed down from the spell-crossed forest on the other side of Ulde.”

  Reluctantly she nodded. “So you’re not going to use it against Torgee and Tharfen then?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Because if Tharfen gets any angrier at you I believe she may tell her mother and it will all come out about us playing at sword fighting, and if —”

  “I just want to do one Phaer salutation with it. I’ve gone as far as I possibly can using sticks. And I’ve been longing for a sword, and suddenly I find this stick shaped so much like a sword you’d think it was carved by some kind of tree spirit on my behalf. And besides, who, other than you, is going to see me?”

  “What about the new examiner who’s supposed to be coming around?”

  “According to Torgee,” he said somewhat contemptuously.

  “Well I don’t think Torgee would lie.”

  “Anyway, examiners never come up the mountain.”

  “What if today was the first time?”

  He shrugged. “I will throw it away if you like.”

  She nodded in the affirmative.

  “Saheli, I guarantee you there is no one on the mountain today but you and I. I just want to go down to the promontory with it once and do the salutation right up there beneath the sun the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Xemion’s pose had now turned mock-heroic. He felt slightly embarrassed. “Well, I’ll burn it or fling it into the river if you like but …” He could see she was giving in.

  “What about Chiricoru?” she asked. “She’s been alone all day.”

  “No, I fed her and watered her and walked her while I was waiting for you and now she’s gone back to sleep. She’ll sleep for hours yet. We’ll dash down to the plateau and we’ll dash back. She won’t even know we’ve been gone.” Saheli looked skeptical. “And I’ll keep the sword sheathed all the way there and all the way back and only take it out when we get to the promontory.”

  Saheli took in and expelled a deep breath. “And if we do meet anyone, you’ll let me do all the talking like Anya said?”

  “Of course.”

  “And when we get back, you’ll throw it away?”

  “Right into the river, if that is thy command.”

  She attempted a sigh but smiled despite herself. “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Playing.”

  “Most certainly, milady,” Xemion replied, bowing elaborately. And as he bent forward he reached into the basket, removed another raspberry, and popped it into his mouth.

  2

  Phaer Salutations

  Xemion strode through the long, rippling grasses like some newly arrived explorer stepping over the last few waves onto a never-before-seen shore. With the wind tearing at his long black hair, he climbed the rocky hillock that was the highest point of the promontory known as Dragonsveld. He had resisted all this time in withdrawing the silver blade from its scabbard, but now that the moment was imminent he was filled with a feeling of great glory. As he stood atop the bare stone, the sun bright overhead and the jade green sea rough and misty on all three sides, even the far-off thunderhead seemed at one with the moment.

  But Saheli had an intense feeling that someone was watching them. This was a feeling she often had. This was why she was inspecting the stand of fireberry bushes that stood on one side of the hillock. Its berries were red and ripe, as large as crabapples.

  “Just think, once an actual dragon fed on that bush,” Xemion said as he slowly withdrew the silver blade from within his green cloak. “That’s why they call this place Dragonsveld.”

  “Torgee says they are coming back.”

  “Torgee says many things.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “Yes, I do. Or if they haven’t yet returned, I believe they will, and that the Phaer Republic will rise again. Do you smell that phosphorus-like smell the berries have?” he asked as she peered through the thick leaves into the interior of the bush.

  “No one could miss it,” she answered, assured that no one was hiding in the bush.

  “They say that the reason dragons feed on fireberries is so that they can absorb the phosphorus. They have a kind of flint bone in their throat that they can click together to ignite the flame.”

  She smiled. He smiled back at her, her glance skidding away from his as it always did.

  “And so it begins,” he said in a dramatic voice.

  Cupping both hands and the haft of the sword at his breastbone and arching his back, he pointed the tip and thereby the centre of his being into the very heart of the sun, and so he became, according to The Manual of Phaer Swordsmanship, a “stem unto the sun.”

  Saheli observed him with a mixture of admiration and concern. Her feeling that something or someone was watching them hadn’t entirely gone away. Her gaze kept shooting around the perimeter of the promontory. The grasses and flowers, even when they were not being bent over by the wind, were not tall enough to conceal anyone. In fact, the only place on the whole promontory large enough to hide anyone was the stand of fireberry bushes. And she had already checked there.

  Outlined against the heaped up ziggurat of the approaching thunderhead, Xemion proceeded to the second pose, Stars Avalanche. His right hand thrust the sword hilt high, his elbow bent, the blade angled down in alignment with his left leg, which was extended to the side. The wind gusted hard so suddenly that it seemed almost trying to challenge him. He smiled and gripped the hilt a little tighter, his dark hair streaming out behind him.

  Saheli allowed herself to study him. The fine angles of his face. The way the same set of features could be so deeply stern and then so utterly happy.

  In the middle of the next pose, the Gorehorse, a burst of wind hit the fireberry bushes with such force they swayed and rippled. In that instant, out of the corner of her eye, Saheli was sure she saw balanced on the crook of a branch inside the bush a deep red, almost purple, hand. She gasped and turned. But just then the wind let up and the branches sprung back into place. As Xemion moved on to the Seven Strokes of Crystal pose she cautiously used the end of her staff to move the branch aside again. She now saw that there was a large red bird in there, its beak tucked down against its breast. She shook her head at her own nervousness and returned her attention to Xemion. During the next pose the wind grew stronger and began driving wraith-like tatters of fog before it. And once again, as the fireberry bushes bent — only when her attention relaxed — out of the corner of the eye she clearly saw the dark red hand. But now it had moved to a lower, closer branch. And for just a moment she saw the ghostly outline of a wrist. Xemion had just finished the final pose. He was holding the blade out to her, hilt first. “Your turn,” he offered.

  “Xemion, put the sword away. Say nothing!” Saheli hissed.

  Xemion quickly obeyed, sheathing the sword at his side and closing his cloak over it. The wind paused and fog began to pile up at their feet. Saheli gripped her staff tightly on one end and thrust it into the centre of the fireberry bush. “Is there someone there?” she called, her voice trembling. She poked again with the sunflower staff. This time it hit something solid. Saheli quickly withdrew the staff, holding it at shoulder height, ready to thrust it forward with great force should she need to.

  “Very well done, young lady,” a deep, mirthful voice intoned. The outline of a man wearing some kind of shimmering cloak that exactly mimicked the green and red of the fireberry bushes stepped out and stood before them, half-buried in the ever-deepening fog. A red hand flung back a green hood, and a very agreeable face with bright, jovial eyes became visible. The man had a long black moustache that gave his face a dashing, romantic quality, like a hero in one of the Phaer tales. This was offset by the diagonal scar run
ning across his right cheek and the long black hair that flowed all about him in the fog and wind.

  3

  The Man with the Red Hand

  “I guess you’ve found me,” the man chuckled amiably as he gave a little bow. “Sorry to startle you. I was up here hunting and I heard someone approaching and thought I’d better take cover. It is said there are pirates and slavers and traitors in these parts.” He winked at Xemion, who in accordance with his promise to let Saheli do all the talking, stood silently some ways back, half hidden in the fog, which was now so thick they could barely see a few feet away.

  The man’s voice was rich and sonorous and there was a touch of humour in it that seemed to infect everything he said. “Now, please allow me to introduce myself,” he said. “I am called Vallaine.” He offered his red hand to Saheli, but she just stared at it, refusing to take it.

  “Why did you hide in the bush and watch us?” she asked tersely.

  “You sound so suspicious,” he replied in a reassuring tone. “Does my chameleon cloak scare you?”

  Saheli shook her head, but the shifting appearance of the strange garment was clearly unnerving her almost as much as his unnaturally red hand. Right now the cloak so accurately mimicked the grey tones of the fog that clung ever more densely about them that he had begun to look a little like a disembodied head floating six feet above the ground.

  “Here. I can fix that.” With one quick, swirling movement he removed the cloak, reversed it, and put it back over his shoulders, where it remained solidly grey.

  “Is that better?” he asked pleasantly. “I don’t blame you for your concern. It is a marvel to see the workings of this cloak. It is superb for hunting. I had it made from the skin of an Altarian chameleon.” Saheli did not look the least bit assured by this but Xemion’s eyes were full of enthusiasm and wonder. “It takes the appearance of whatever surroundings I’m in. That’s why you couldn’t see me in the bushes.” Saheli cast a worried glance at the man’s red hand. “Except for this, of course. I lost my glove.” With that, he made a deft wing-like movement with his hand and once again for a moment the red hand resembled the red bird. Suddenly, he flew it toward her, veering away at the last moment. When Saheli gasped he laughed a rich laugh and gazed over at Xemion. Then, with a click of his fingers, as though to dispel the illusion of a bird, he returned his hand to the pocket of his cloak. Saheli glared at him angrily, trembling slightly, her own hands tingling and tight about her staff.