The Sword of Straw

by Amanda Hemingway

  “Must there be a sacrifice?” Nathan asked.

  “There is always a sacrifice,” Osskva said, and the sentence fell heavily on the air, as if written in stone.

  NATHAN WOKE abruptly, jerked back into his own universe by he knew not what, with the stony echo of those words still in his ears. His frustration at being unable to enter Wilderslee was forgotten; unanswered questions crowded into his head. Did the Grandir know the truth about his ancestry, and if so, had he deliberately sent Nathan to find out? No—Nathan had opened the portal himself, on both his visits to Osskva; whatever fate or hazard had guided him, the Grandir wasn’t part of it. And how far would it affect any attempt at performing the Great Spell, if the magus in charge wasn’t a full-blooded descendant of its originator? He’s descended directly from Imagen, Nathan reasoned; surely that will be enough. He couldn’t believe Osskva’s theory about incest guaranteeing genetic supremacy—even if the biology was different in the world of Eos. It’s like Hitler and all that stuff about the Aryans, he concluded. Hitler was stupid and wrong—Osskva is clever and wrong—it’s still wrong. Mixing genes is good for you. (It sounded a little like an advertising slogan for a better, more tolerant world.) Whoever made the Ultimate Laws could not possibly have intended to encourage controlled breeding and the arrogant dominion of a single race—or a single family…

  Nathan thought of the Grandir as he had first seen him in his semicircular study, a man whose very back view had presence, whose thought waves were so powerful they could distort the planet’s magnetic field. An autocrat, a dictator, lord of a billion suns and star systems beyond count—the same man who had leaned over him, naked without his mask, an expression on his face that might have been concern. But the physiognomy of his kind was unlike ours, with fractional differences in proportion and feature, even in muscular movement, which meant expressions could not be easily read. Nathan touched the vials that were still tucked inside his sleeveless jacket, and turned on his side, pushing thought away, reaching not for the portal but for a rest from both doubts and dreams. Sleep came soft-footed, so he barely noticed it, drawing a kindly veil over the world.

  When the veil drew back he was in Wilderslee. Once again he was standing in front of a door. The door was at the end of a passage, dim not with the gloom of night but with the habitual gloom of the palace, the tapestried, cobwebbed, ill-lit gloom of a place where no one ever opened the curtains or cleaned the windows. The door added to the effect, being made of dark wood and carved into a complex maze of geometric shapes, squares and triangles and diamonds. The long curved door handle was of iron, or something like it, black from lack of polishing. Nathan decided to dispense with knocking. He pushed the handle down and went in.

  He was in a bedchamber—the king’s bedchamber. There was the massive four-poster with its laminated drapes, the high ceiling festooned with tassels of dust, the windows muffled in a moth fodder of shredded velvet and brocade. A single casement was open to light and air. The king was slewed against the pillows with his nightcap awry and an embroidered bed gown bunched and scrunched around him. Having seen him recently as a younger man, Nathan was shocked afresh by the change: his plump face had sagged like melted wax, his eyes were scalloped with paunchy shadows. To his right Frimbolus Quayne was holding his wrist, frowning at a turnip-watch on a short chain. To his left the princess was perched on the edge of the bed, stroking his other hand. When Nathan came in she looked up, and such a radiance lit her face it almost took his breath away. She dropped her father’s hand and jumped up, running toward him.

  “Nathan! I was so afraid—I was afraid you—”

  But she didn’t fling her arms around him, not this time. Presumably the presence of her father and Quayne inhibited her. She stopped just in front of him, her eyes filled with liquid light, grabbed his wrist, and drew him toward the dais.

  “Father, this is Nathan, the one I told you about. He’s saved me twice now. I think he’s the mysterious stranger we’ve been waiting for.”

  “Depending on which legend you’ve been reading lately,” said Frimbolus. “Humphlelump! I heard, young man, you’d been eaten by an Urdemon. Thought it was too good to be true.”

  “Sorry,” Nathan said, risking a grin.

  “For one thing, never known an Urdemon to actually eat anyone. There’ve been plenty of rumors, but no eyewitness evidence. It would’ve been a bit of a first.”

  “No it wouldn’t,” Nell said sharply. “No eyewitness—I was looking the other way. Father…”

  Nathan saw King Wilbert’s hand on offer, and shook it carefully. It felt limp and slightly clammy, the hand of a sick man. “Good to meet you,” he said. His voice was faint and whispery. “Thank you for protecting Nellwyn. Good man.”

  “If he hadn’t dragged her off to the Deepwoods she wouldn’t have needed protecting,” Frimbolus said, evidently determined to find fault. “What’s more, in my day young men didn’t take young girls to the woods for protection—they usually had something quite different in mind. Ha!”

  “I asked him to take me!” Nell fumed. “And he behaved like a perfect gentleman!”

  “He did?” Frimbolus looked scornful. “Spineless young fool!”

  “Well, except for…”

  “Except for what?”

  “Nothing. Nothing that’s any of your business, anyway.” Nell assumed her haughtiest princess-look.

  Nathan thought of the kiss (several kisses) with a twinge of guilt that he decided almost immediately was a waste of time.

  “Furthermore,” Frimbolus resumed, rivaling the princess in loftiness, “if young what’s-his-name here is the mysterious stranger who’s going to perform a miracle cure on His Maj, what about it? He just touched the king, and I don’t see anything miraculous happening yet, do you?”

  “I don’t do miracles,” Nathan said hastily. “I never said I did. But I brought these.” He extricated the crystal vials from inside his jacket. “My uncle made this stuff. He’s a wizard—sometimes—and good with herbs and things. The balm’s to go on the wound—he says it won’t cure it, but it should make it more comfortable. And this is just a medicine, to—to help the king relax and sleep well.”

  Frimbolus unstoppered the vials one at a time, sniffing their contents, his eyebrows leaping up and down on his forehead like acrobatic caterpillars. “Doesn’t smell very miraculous to me.” He was peering closely at the salve.

  “I told you, it isn’t meant to. But…” Nathan hesitated.

  “Yes?” Nell said encouragingly. “Have you got an idea?”

  “My uncle says magical wounds can only be cured with the weapon that made them.”

  Frimbolus glanced up quickly, caterpillar brows frozen in mid-leap. “That’s true,” he averred, “or so they say. I never thought of it. Blinkus! I’ve been an imbecile. All these years, and it takes a jumped-up whippersnapper from another world to tell me something I’ve known all along. But handling the sword…”

  “No,” said the king. His voice croaked on the word; his face was crumpled with agitation.

  “If no one can touch it…” The princess looked doubtful, hopeful, vaguely beseeching.

  Nathan knew he was on the receiving end of her plea. “We can keep it in the scabbard,” he said, “and uncover the hilt. Like—” Like when you showed it to Agnis, he was about to tell the king, when he realized the concept of his spying on people in dreams wasn’t going to recommend him to anyone. (Nell had resented it from the start.) And in view of what had happened that time, it would have been an unfortunate reminder.

  “You know…about the scabbard?” Wilbert had seized his sleeve, and was gazing up into his face. “You are young for a magician. Shows I’m getting old—when even wizards start looking young to me.”

  “I’m not a wizard,” Nathan said. “That’s my uncle. But I do know about the sword. Is it still in the secret room?”

  The king nodded. “Got to stay there. Best place. Couldn’t bear it if Nell…if anything happened…” />
  “Nell can stay out of the way,” Frimbolus said briskly. “We’ll have the Prendergoose lock her in her room.”

  Nell’s eyes gave a creditable imitation of shooting lightning bolts at him. “You—will—not! Anyway,” she added, her tone reverting to normal, “my room doesn’t have a lock. It rusted when the roof leaked, and now it’s broken.”

  “In that case you can go to the kitchen and help Prendergoose with dinner.”

  The palace evidently didn’t run to dungeons, Nathan deduced—although of course it was castles that had dungeons, not palaces. The argument escalated when Thyrma Prendergoose herself arrived, carrying a basin of water for washing the king’s leg wound. On being introduced to Nathan she gave him a glare of undisguised hostility before rounding on the princess, in a rare alliance with Frimbolus. If they were going to do something with that terrible sword—which she for one thought was a pointless exercise, potentially disastrous for all concerned—her Nell wasn’t going to be anywhere near it. Everyone knew it was utterly evil—it would jump around by itself, slashing people’s heads off…She turned pale at the mere idea, making an odd gulping noise in her throat so that for a moment Nathan thought she was actually going to be sick. Nell took advantage of the pause, drawing herself up to her full height and then a bit more, donning an expression of regal authority.

  “I should not have to remind you that I am the princess,” she said. “In a time of national crisis, a princess doesn’t hide in the cupboard. She doesn’t run away and allow her—her servants to face danger for her.” Mrs. Prendergoose bridled at being called a servant; Frimbolus’s eyebrows leapt. “This is my father—this is my kingdom—and I’m staying. Anyway, I have faith in Nathan. You yourself said he was right, Frim. Why don’t you have the courage to trust him all the way?”

  The dispute sputtered on, but Nathan, knowing Nell’s obstinacy, wasn’t surprised when she won her point. The king might have put up more resistance, but Nathan’s unexplained knowledge of all the circumstances surrounding the Traitor’s Sword filled him with an almost religious awe, and although he did much sleeve clutching, he allowed himself to be overruled by his daughter. As for Nathan, he was inclined to object to her participation, but the thought of what Hazel would have said in the same situation kept him quiet.

  Eventually the king unbuttoned his nightshirt to reveal the keys that still hung around his neck. He waved Frimbolus and Mrs. Prendergoose away, urging Nell to come nearer, mumbling instructions into her ear. The nurse kept up a muttered stream of objection in the background; Quayne, meanwhile, was bundling his sleeves above the elbow, preparatory to removing the royal bandages. When the king had finished speaking he subsided back onto the pillows, his face gray in the daylight. Nell looked at Frimbolus, then Nathan. “Do we do it now?” she asked.

  It was Nathan who said: “Yes.”

  AS HE had guessed, the secret room was at the top of a tower—or rather a turret, a tall slender structure that sprouted from one corner of the many-cornered palace like an ectopic limb. Inside, it seemed to be filled almost entirely with a precipitous staircase that spiraled around the central column until it came to an abrupt end beside a door leading back into the main building. In front was a blank wall. Like the rest of the palace, it was constructed of intersecting stone blocks, slightly irregular in size and shape. The princess studied them carefully, biting her lip in concentration, while Nathan held the oil lamp so the light fell on the area. Then Nell ran her hand over the uneven surface. “Papa says it’s around the sixth block, counting down from the ceiling. There’s supposed to be an indentation that you can feel but not see, cut in the shape of a crown. The stone’s all pitted…I can’t feel anything special.”

  “Shall I try?” Nathan offered.

  “No. This is my job.” He thought she was going to say I’m the princess yet again, but she didn’t. It was something she needed to assert, he realized, perhaps because of the bleakness of her everyday life, perhaps to remind herself of the duties that bound her. I have a father who is chronically sick, a kingdom under a curse, absentee subjects, and Urdemons in the backyard—no pretty dresses, no parties, no fun—but I’m the princess, so it’s all right.

  He felt as if she’d said it, even though she hadn’t.

  What Nell actually said was: “Got it.”

  She touched the spot with her fingertip, pressing lightly, murmuring a key word that Nathan didn’t hear. The wall creaked into action immediately, shifting back a few inches and then sliding laboriously aside. Beyond, the secret room looked dim and dusty, the hole in the roof admitting only a sliver of light. Nathan knew a sudden fear that the Black Knight’s body would still be there, a headless skeleton in rusted armor and a few rags of clothing, with its skull grinning from across the floor—but evidently it had been removed. Gingerly, the princess stepped through the doorway. Nathan came behind her, carrying the lamp, his other hand resting automatically on her waist.

  “There it is,” she said, indicating the plinth. Nathan didn’t point out that he’d seen it all before.

  She fiddled with the larger key while he tried to direct the light onto the clasp of the chest. The oil lamp was unhelpful, its all-around glow too diffuse for direction, blurring detail instead of highlighting it, while the shadows of Nell’s fingers obliterated precisely the section she was trying to see. Nathan thought he could have done with a pocket flashlight as well as a Kalashnikov. Eventually she managed it—he heard the scrape of the key turning, lifted the lamp so they could see into the chest.

  The sword lay there, once more locked into its scabbard. Nathan sensed the presence of the sleeping spirit as something imminent, subtly menacing, a cloud on the horizon of a clear sky.

  Nell, unconsciously echoing Agnis, said: “Should we see—anything?”

  “Not if we want to live.”

  They stared down at it for a long minute—the scabbard with its unseen contents, heirloom of centuries, seat of the family curse—silent with a kind of awe, thinking of its doom-laden history, its potential for death. Nathan swung around so the lamplight reached the wall; he saw the splatter stains, ten years old, where the Black Knight’s blood had jetted from his severed head. They appeared unnaturally recent, still vividly red. The princess gave a gasp of horror, and pointed to the floor where they had walked, smeared with more ugly stains.

  “They look fresh,” she said.

  “Magic,” Nathan suggested. “If the wound doesn’t heal, maybe the bloodstains don’t fade. Perhaps Agnis’s hair never grew again.”

  The princess was trembling. “I wish we didn’t have to do this.”

  “At least we’re doing it for a good reason. Not because we want to fight some stupid duel, or are plotting to take over the country. Here, hold this.” He passed her the lamp.

  She took it, startled but unresisting. “What—?”

  “I’ll need both hands to carry the sword.”

  “You’re not going to—”

  “Yes I am. I’m the mysterious stranger.”

  “It belongs to my family—it’s my responsibility—I’m—”

  “And don’t say I’m the princess. You say that much too often. It’s getting to be a bore.”

  “You obnoxious—ill-mannered—peasant!” Nell’s fears were dissipating in the melting pot of indignation and rage. “You have no idea—”

  Nathan kissed her, very quickly, partly because some instinct told him it was the right move, mostly because he wanted to. “This is my job,” he said.

  Anger vanished instantly, allowing fear to return. “I don’t like it.”

  “Nor do I.”

  He reached into the chest before he had more time to worry about it, seized the scabbard with a firmness that belied his nerves, and picked it up. It wasn’t quite as heavy as he had expected; he realized that if you held it by the hilt, it was the sheer length that would make it awkward. But it was his sense of the spirit within that jolted him—the nearness of it, the tension in the blade, the evil
that only half slumbered under his hand. For a second he almost dropped the sword.

  “What is it?” On a reflex, the princess moved to support it.

  “Don’t. Don’t touch it—not even the scabbard. It’s—”

  “Why not?”

  “The spirit in there—I can feel it. It’s sleeping—if spirits sleep—but it’s going to wake up. Soon.”

  “We can’t do this. It’s too dangerous.”

  Her protest steadied him. “Yes, we can. We must.”

  IN THE king’s bedchamber Frimbolus had exposed the wound, cleaned it, and applied some of Bartlemy’s salve. “It does feel a little easier,” the king was saying. “Less tight and sore.” Some of the pain lines faded from his face.

  Then he saw Nathan with the sword.

  “You got it,” said Frimbolus, for once out of expostulations.

  The king’s pallid cheek had become a shade paler. Mrs. Prendergoose backed away a step, her gaze fixed on Nathan’s burden like a rabbit mesmerized by a snake.

  “Nell,” she said, “you must leave now. Leave.” Her tone was insistent, husky with terror.

  “It would be wise,” said Frimbolus.

  “I have to unlock the scabbard.” The princess took out the smaller key. Nathan lifted the sword like an offering, holding it by the shaft. Nobody argued with the princess anymore—none of them spoke at all. It was so quiet you could hear the sound of a very small key sliding into a very small lock, and the tiny click as it turned. The leather guard came loose; Nathan, grasping the sheath in one hand, peeled it away from the hilt. He could see it clearly now, closer by far than in his dream. He had always assumed the pommel was plain, without gemstone or ornament, but now he made out a design incised into the metal, the lines as thin as scratches, all but invisible. It looked similar to the pattern around the rim of the Grail. He bent nearer, forgetting caution, and Frimbolus’s soft admonition broke the silence.

  “Remember: don’t touch it.”