This first became obvious during the Battle of Phaer Bay, just as the Phaer forces, relying on spellcrafted arms, faced a small contingent of sea peoples known as Kagars. The magic suddenly shuddered in its gyres and the Great Kone began to spin at a vastly accelerated pace. With a bright green burst of spellfire and the loss of the most significant battle in all the history of the Phaer Isle, the Great Kone came to a slightly charred halt. Many of the objects left half-created or half-destroyed at that time were shattered, spun and hurled away from the epicentre of whatever force welled up in the kone. Their remains now lay heaped up against the high cliffs of sheer bedrock exposed by the earthquake, which had dropped one part of the borough two hundred feet lower than the other.
It was into the side of one of these massive mounds of shimmering crystal that Xemion came down. His impact was such that he created a small elliptical crater about him as he landed, pushing on like a plow through the widening debris beneath. Standing up, unhurt, with the sun bright and hot above, he was half dazzled by the myriad spectral rainbows cast in the air. Small silver fragments carried down with him from the road above shone so brightly as they fell he had to shield his eyes with his hands.
“Saheli!” His voice came back to him as though from nowhere, its sound deadened, its expression blunted.
“Saheli!”
Looking up, he saw the portal he had emerged from suspended about a hundred feet in the air just out from the top edge of the cliff. Even if he could somehow claw his way back up to the cliff top, there would still be no way to reach that portal.
“Saheli!” he screamed with every ounce of strength in his body. He looked about him and saw more glittering piles diminishing in size as they proceeded into the distance. Shielding his eyes from the brightness, he spied between the most distant of the heaps the figure of a golden gorehorse mounted on a pillar. He knew where he was! This was the famous statue that stood at the gates of Ulde. Whatever had befallen Shissillil in the upheaval of the Great Kone fire, its gate still exited where it had always exited; in the Thrall Quarter of Ulde.
“Saheli!”
He should be able to walk toward that gorehorse, and before too long, before noon even, he could get to the uprising. And on time. But not without her. Surely she, too, would sooner or later be ejected through the portal above.
Unless there were other portals. What if she just stayed up there whirling around or what if she had been spat out in some other realm where he would never find her? Again he screamed her name desperately. And again his voice came back dead, leached of sound and meaning. He waited and waited while a dread feeling grew in him. It was like the first tremor of the ground when an earthquake is coming; a feeling of certainty that she was gone and that he’d known from the moment he saw her that one day she would be gone and that this was that day.
“Saheli!”
He wished he’d been born a Thrall so that he could get down on his knees now and pray to someone or something to bring her back.
“Saheli!”
Just then a shadow shot over him and there she was soaring overhead. Her staff landed not far in front of him and she came down not far beyond that, sinking up to her thighs in the multicoloured rubble. He retrieved the staff and waded through the shimmering rainbows to her. “Saheli!” She stood up and faced him, and he came as close as he ever had to hugging her.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head. But she had just been overwhelmed by magical forces and she couldn’t hide the terror this aroused in her
“You didn’t burn your hands trying to steer yourself?” he asked.
She shook her head again and held out her open palms to him. With a look of relief, Xemion lifted the staff horizontally and gently lowered it into her palms.
“Thank you,” she said, trying to control the quaver in her voice. Her eyes were fixed on the portal above them.
“Were Tharfen and Torgee far behind you?” Xemion asked, also turning to look.
She shook her head. An expression of intense feeling rippled through her features. She moved both of her hands to illustrate two forces colliding with one another. “I was going one way …” She paused and Xemion’s stomach was gripped with a strange cold feeling that sickened him. “And … I crashed into him … right through him, but neither of us was hurt. In fact it felt …” Colour rushed to her cheeks as she broke off. “And then the next time I saw him he was sliding along beside me for a long while. We kept calling out to Tharfen and you and then faster than … than a boulder can drop from a cliff, Tharfen came shooting toward us. Torgee leaned over one way to grab her, and then she hit him and they both got pulled off to the side and I continued along above them and … and … I saw them both go through a portal. But a different portal than this one.” She hung her head so that her hair hid most of her face.
He wanted to say, “Well, at least you have survived,” but he stopped himself for fear she’d think he didn’t care about Torgee and Tharfen. He did care, but he was glad that there was nothing he could do to help them right now.
“When I crashed through Tharfen,” he offered, “it was as though I came away with a tiny little sandy bit of her in me and …”
She looked up suddenly. “That’s how it was when I crashed through Torgee!”
“And … I’m not sure I should trust it,” he went on with a wince, “but it kind of feels like wherever she is she’s alive.”
“And Torgee …” she paused. “Torgee is such a good tracker. He’d be better at getting back home then even you and me.”
“And wherever they are, you and I can only move forward.”
She nodded. “But where are we?”
“I think I know exactly where we are,” Xemion said. He pointed to the distant statue of the gorehorse. “I believe that marks the east gate of Ulde.”
The sun was shining bright and she had to shield her eyes to see.
“Between here and there can’t be more than a mile,” he said.
“So, we’re somewhere in the city of Ulde.”
“The western side of the city of Ulde,” he added carefully.
The implications of this sank in. “The affected side,” she said, more as a statement than a question.
He nodded. “But right now the sun is bright and ghouls and ghasts and such re-risers hate the sunlight.”
“And …”
“… and the man with the red hand said that they were meeting at the Panthemium which is close by the gorehorse.”
“So the gorehorse …”
“Is in the part of the city we need to get to.”
“And you think we can get there from here?”
“I know it,” he answered uncertainly. “All we have to do is walk in that direction for about a mile and we’ll be there. And besides, there is no other way. We would never get up that cliff, and even if we did, who knows where we’d be or what we’d face. The only way to go is forward.”
She took a deep breath to still her panic at this thought, nodded, and the two of them set off down the heap. It was true that the statue of the gorehorse was only a mile away. What he hadn’t mentioned was that it wasn’t likely they would get to the Panthemium without passing directly by the Great Kone of Ilde.
19
Dark Under Houses
There were no signs of life anywhere. But this route had obviously been well trodden for the crystal debris was compact underfoot. By Xemion’s reckoning they were now in the part of the city known as the Thrall Quarter. Anya Kuzelnika had told him in some detail all the history she knew of the Thralls. They had acquired their name because of the centuries their ancestors had spent in blood thrall to the Necromancer of Arthenow across the western ocean. Having shaken their thrall of sorcery, and thereby slavery in their homeland, they had arrived in the Phaer Isle five hundred years ago, still wracked with the compulsions of obedience but gifted enough to channel them into other disciplines: art, for instance, or, in the case of many female Thralls, sol
diering. The men were generally the smaller of the two genders and they were known for their fine miniatures and other less social compulsions such as romance, literature, and architecture.
Examples of the latter soon became evident to the two travellers as the tops of particularly tall spires and towers began to emerge from the heaps. These were of such elegant construction that Xemion and Saheli couldn’t help but catch their breath as they beheld them. The Thralls adorned most of their buildings with giant crystals and lenses in an attempt to re-create the spell-made environment of their former homeland and many of the half-buried towers still had exposed facets that glinted blindingly if you caught them at the right angle. Some were pitted or cracked or dulled by time, but many were still perfect and beautiful and seemed to be uninhabited.
There was less and less of the crystal dust as they proceeded. Soon their feet began to touch upon the ancient paving stones themselves. This thrilled Xemion. He saw it as a sign of his long-anticipated destiny. Saheli took no comfort in it at all. Her mind was filled again with that lilting melody. Only she was beginning to hear it more clearly. There was a voice now, her mother’s voice she was sure, and there were words, but they were utterly incomprehensible to her. It was almost as though they were being dragged backward through time. She saw again the wrenched-around face of the woman at the wells and reached into the inner pocket of her cloak and drew out the black bottle. Somewhat furtively, as Xemion strode on just in front of her, she uncorked it, lifted it to her lips, and drank deeply. Forget well and go forward. She had now drunk half of the liquid, but there was still no noticeable effect. The melody roared on accompanied by ever more brutal memories. And one in particular that kept cycling and recycling, making her feel like she was being ripped apart: an old man with a long white beard turning the crank handle of a large spell kone …
The road now began to have a slight downward slant, but up ahead it looked as though it levelled off and then began to rise somewhat steeply. When they got to the beginning of the ascent, however, they realized it wasn’t the road that rose at all but the houses that floated up above the road without any apparent support.
“This must have taken some strong spellcraft to have lasted this long,” Xemion whispered. The first house was mere inches above the ground, but as they continued running along the road, the houses were poised at higher and higher elevations till they were a foot above the ground and then a yard. And all the while there was not a single sign of life anywhere.
Xemion had seen the look of numb horror deepening on Saheli’s face, but there was no turning back now. He wished he could take her hand to comfort her but he had never done that and he didn’t dare now. Instead he rested his hand on the hilt of his painted sword. For a while, as they proceeded, the elevation of the floating houses about them remained constant. But soon there were more and more of them, so many they were jammed window to window with one another, and some were pushed over sideways like balloons on the edge of a big bunch all tied to the same string. And they were hovering now not just beside the road but over it, darkening the way. Before long, Xemion and Saheli entered a dim twilight punctured only by whatever little beams of sunlight found their way through the bunched up houses overhead. Saheli’s fear quickened with each step. She wanted to turn around and run, but where to? And that melody was playing so loudly in her mind she could hardly hear anything else. Xemion knew nothing about the melody but he could feel the panic growing in her.
Suddenly the music stopped in Saheli’s mind and in that moment, in the dark under the houses, she sensed someone or something very close. It was just over her shoulder. An eye. A great yellow eye with darkness at the centre. For only the briefest moment, she turned to look at it, and in that moment it quickly came in much closer. Huge and looming with suffering, it wanted terribly to be seen. She felt its longing, its beauty, but Saheli, her heart beating cold and quick, looked away instantly and thereafter faced straight ahead, focusing forward and away from that eye. This took so much will power she couldn’t even speak. Little by little, as Xemion lead them on, the black centre of that sidelong eye kept welling and pulsing into her field of vision, huge and somehow intimate, almost as though it were her own eye, out there. For a moment, the sun flared through a crack between the houses overhead and she saw other shapes reflected in the shining surface of its pupil: dark fragments, shadow-bits of people gravitating to her. Saheli turned and looked right into that dark, beautiful eye, and screamed as something like night seemed to rush in on her.
“Close your eyes! Close your eyes quickly,” someone shouted, but there was now a black whirlwind of shadows winding around her, eyes everywhere homing in, zeroing in on Saheli, pressing at her.
Saheli screamed again and batted at the air with her staff, but it did no good. Suddenly there was a hissing sound and a light erupted so bright it could not be looked at. As quickly as they had come, the eye and the shadow beings dissipated. In their place, barely visible as whatever fuel he had ignited flickered out, she saw the silhouette of someone in a dark cloak. Saheli thrust her staff forward into the centre of the person’s chest so hard he fell over. She began to flee blindly the other way into the darkness. With Xemion not far behind, she bolted toward a dim light far up ahead. Behind them the man shouted “Stop!” But his voice was suddenly cut off. It wasn’t until Xemion tried to call out to Saheli and heard not even the sound of his own voice that he realized they had entered an area that allowed no sound, not even the echo of their footsteps as they fled. Saheli screamed soundlessly and when no sound emerged from her mouth she screamed again in even greater terror.
The houses were now so low to the ground Xemion and Saheli had to run crouched down, almost doubled-over. Just as Xemion began to fear they were trapped, they rounded a corner and burst out into the sunlight, startled to hear the sound of their own gasps for breath, relieved to hear anything. They were in some kind of meadow where wild grass grew, punctuated here and there by bushes and small trees.
Saheli glanced back desperately the way they had come but there were no obvious signs of continued pursuit. She looked up. Not a cloud in the sky, only distant birdlike specks way high up. She released a long shuddering sigh of relief, but Xemion was still looking around anxiously. Something was wrong. He was dimly aware of a far-off whistling sound. Slowly it began to increase in volume. Xemion scanned all around before he looked up.
“Oh no!”
Saheli was already staring up at the sky. One of those small specks was rapidly growing larger and larger. Soon the whistling became a shrieking. They both froze in terror as a shadow loomed larger and larger over them. Suddenly, a figure leaped out of the rubble. Running low, quick like light, he pushed Xemion and Saheli, launching them out of the shadow just as the house hit the ground. A mighty eruption of broken bricks, exploded soil, glass, and tile swept them up into a rolling ball of debris that knocked them off their feet. Coughing, hacking, Xemion and Saheli arose, their eyes stinging with the still-flying grit.
“Do exactly as I tell you,” the man who had rescued them shouted, standing up and shaking the dust from his black cloak.
A three-legged Thrall with a huge lens abruptly emerged, as though from nowhere, and began to scour through the debris, picking out items of value and stuffing them into a sack. Two skinny Thrall children with nets attempted, without much success, to snatch out of the air various household objects that were rapidly floating back up into the sky.
“Watch out!” the man said. He pointed to the sky and they saw that another house was falling. “This way,” he ordered, darting off to the left. Without question they ran after him. “Come on!” The man ran around the heap of debris the falling house had left and led them back into the dark under the houses. Here, illuminated by one of the sporadic beams of sunlight, he stopped for a moment and drew back his hood so they could see his face. But Saheli already knew who it was. She’d known from the moment his hand had pushed her. It was Vallaine.
20
Riddle Craft
Vallaine led them some distance under the houses before drawing them into a protected alcove under an extended upside-down roof that looked out on the sunlight. There, he removed a telescope from inside his cloak, which now that the light was stronger Xemion saw he wore with the grey side out. His hand, Xemion also noticed, was not as red as he remembered it. Carefully, Vallaine examined the sky. “We’ll have to wait here. Another two are due to fall and it won’t be safe to proceed any farther until they do.”
“We are greatly in your debt,” Xemion acknowledged breathlessly, his voice still trembling.
“You are very lucky I was sent back this way this morning,” Vallaine responded. “However did you get so far off course?”
Xemion began to explain what had happened to them, but before he got beyond the burning of the tower tree there was a whistling above and soon another structure crashed down.
“Well, my bad luck is your good luck,” Vallaine shouted as the dust began to settle. “I should be in my quarters right now shining my buckles and preparing my finest clothes for this long-awaited day, but we received reports just this morning of a possible emergency in Ilde and we —”
Saheli looked up sharply. “Emergency?” she asked.
“Nothing for you to worry about, Saheli,” he replied in as comforting a voice as he could muster. “My suspicion is it’s another false alarm.”
“What do you mean?” Xemion asked.
Vallaine shrugged and shook his head, showing a little exasperation. “Another one of these dragon sightings, I’m afraid.”
“But it’s not a false alarm,” Xemion spoke up excitedly. “I saw a dragon myself.”
The Paper Sword Page 12