The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree

by S. A. Hunt

  “Remember what we said yesterday about shifting time and space?” asked Sawyer.

  “Not to undermine your senses,” Normand said. “I apologize. I do have a fondness for speculating about such things. The sensations one encounters under the Sacrament are not always real, but the insight one gains from the experience is...more often than not, rooted deeper in truth than you realize. Some might even call it clairvoyance.”

  “Maybe the Acolouthis had your brain ramped up so much you were able to understand Ainean,” said Sawyer. “Maybe it was so powerful it affected you before you even took it.”

  I gave him a dazed look. “Anyway, sir, I wanted to ask you about something related to the hallucination.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Right before Sardis slew the Silen with the Timecutter, the Silen said something about finding the ‘First Sword’...he said it’s the only thing that can kill—that can kill the Sileni, I’m assuming.”

  “Yes. Edward mentioned that they were immortal. If anything could kill them, it is the Dragonslayer. But I don’t know what the ‘First Sword’ is.”

  Sawyer rubbed the bridge of his nose, squinching his eyes shut. “The Rhetor said that he’d been going from world to world hiding the First Sword of each world. He mentioned Excalibur and a few other names, and said that the Timecutter is the First Sword’s ‘facet’ here in Destin. I’m guessing that this First Sword is something that exists singularly, alone, but in all worlds at the same time.”

  “Kinda like a man standing at the Four Corners in Utah,” I piped up. “That’s where you can stand in four states at the same time: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. The Mariner said something similar about the Wolf Oramoz. He said, She exists in many worlds, with many names.”

  “Yeah. A lot like that, I guess,” said Sawyer. “God Christ, I wish Ed were here to explain this shit.” He was obviously pained. His food was growing cold in his lap, but he had drained his coffee cup.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I just have a headache. I’m...remembering things that never happened.”

  “You too?”

  “Yeah. It’s like—damn, we need to write this stuff down. I’m forgetting it.”

  “Forgetting what?” I asked.

  “Here, have you got a pen? You lost that paper you found in Ed’s cottage, didn’t you?”

  “I did, it was in the satchel. The only pens around here are fountain pens, Saw. You’ll have to go find one.”

  Sawyer got up and went into the Weatherhead. A moment later, he came back out with a piece of paper and a fountain pen. He put the paper on the stone bench and made a big ugly ink-blot on it. “How the hell—?” he asked, but then he seemed to get used to it.

  He wrote, TOTEM TIMECUTTER CAN KILL SILEN on it, then held it up and blew on it to dry the ink. “I feel like I’m forgetting the things we saw and heard down there,” he said. “It feels like—like—there was a wound in reality, in time, and now it’s closing back up. It’s healing. It’s replacing the bad part with what should have happened.”

  “Like a skin graft?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “A time-graft. When you wrote us out of the Void and fell into the Vur Ukasha, you went down—you went down and put the story back together. I think that’s what happened when you went down and saw the giant glowing ball with words all over it.”

  “You think so? You think I did that?”

  Normand looked at the paper. “You are the Messenger now, after all,” he said. “The task of bringing life and light to the story of this world has passed from Ed to you. It only makes sense that you would have the capacity for repairing it.”

  “I thought the Mariner did it.”

  “The Mariner is only a guide.”

  Sawyer poured himself another cup of coffee. “He can only lead a horse to water, Ross. He can’t make you drink.”

  I got up and tucked my hand into my armpit, hugging myself. I took a sip of coffee, finishing my cup. Normand smoothed out his mustache, studying the paper, and presently he said, “You know, I think I’ve heard this word before. Totem.”

  “Have you?” I asked.

  “I have. I heard it several times, while I was in the Antargata k-Setra. The Wilders spoke of it.”

  Sawyer swirled his coffee decanter, pulling his legs up to sit cross-legged. “Yeah? How come it wasn’t in The Cape and the Castle?”

  “Most of what the Wilders said was gibberish,” said Normand. “Their gibberish language. Only Lord Harwell, rest his soul, could remotely understand them. I got the feeling, though, that Totem was not a thing. It was a place. They often spoke of it and their god, Obelus, in the same breath. It was probably the ghost-god’s home. I didn’t talk to Ed about it because I didn’t consider it important at the time.”

  “Hmm,” said Sawyer. “Totem is an English word. Well, an English loan-word. I wonder why the Wilders would be using English words?”

  “What does it mean?” asked Normand.

  “I know it came from Native American, but it represents a concept from a lot of Earth societies. I don’t really know the definition of the word itself, but I know it has symbolic, spiritual meaning. People back on Earth talk about their ‘totem animals’. I think it’s a word for something that represents a definition larger than itself—like an icon.”

  I picked up the armor chestpiece and turned it around so Normand could see the printed label on the inside. “That reminds me. Do you know anything about this?”

  “I can’t even read it, I’m afraid,” said Normand.

  “It says Nevada Organon,” I said. “I don’t know what an ‘organon’ is, but Nevada is a place on Earth. It’s one of the United States.”

  “Peculiar. I do notice, however, that two of those letters look like Ainean letters. The first letters.” Normand leaned over and traced the words on the label with his fingertip, indicating the N and the O. “The sweep...here, and this is missing a line and a dot, but otherwise they look very similar. Similar to Ainean illuminated capitals, at any rate. I don’t see any similarities in these lowercase symbols.”

  “No,” said Sawyer.

  “Hmm?”

  “—I mean, N. O. I mean, yeah, come on. It’s obvious. That must have been where Aarne Hargrave got ‘No-Men’ in book two. He wasn’t saying they weren’t men, he wasn’t saying there were no men, he was talking about something he saw.”

  I shrugged, making a face.

  An armored retainer came out into the courtyard and announced, “S’rah, Councilwoman Noemi has arrived.”

  A lady came out of the central spire and strode straight to Normand as he got up. They embraced briefly and he introduced us to each other. “Friends, this is Councilwoman of Knowledge Eleanor Noemi. Eleanor, these are very special visitors...the tall one is the Chiral’s youngest, Sawyer, and the one with the shaven pate is Ross, the son of Ardelia Thirion and the scribe Lord Eddick we were so unfortunate to lose recently.”

  Noemi was slender and stately in a slim robe the gray of dove-down and a modest wide-brimmed hat. She took off the hat to reveal short silver-white hair and beamed with a genuine smile. Her face was friendly and open, and her crystalline-gray eyes completed the grave color scheme.

  “The pleasure is all mine,” she said. “It’s refreshing to see such handsome young men in court for a change. You never quite get used to being around these weatherbeaten old beasts.”

  “Tactfully tactical as always,” guffawed Normand.

  Noreen came out of the Weatherhead, Walter behind her. She was wearing a beautiful dress that swirled and capered in the slightest breeze, a white ankle-length dress that looked as if someone had thrown a bucket full of sky at her. Soft shades of dark blue cascaded from her left shoulder in blotches and spatters, trailing down the side in a whorl of droplets.

  She went straight over to Sawyer and he set his plate aside. She leaned against his back and draped her arms around his neck, commenting on his dazzled expression. “Mik
ey likey, huh?”

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  “It belonged to my mom,” she said. “The King gave it to me last night.”

  “Oh?” asked Sawyer. “Who is that?”

  “Josephine Rose.”

  “What? Are you for real? The outlaw from book three and book five?”

  “The very same,” she said. “That’s actually where my name came from. They put their names together.”

  Eleanor Noemi smirked quizzically. “And who is this bold and beautiful young lady who knows so much about your romantic exploits, dear Normand?”

  “That would be my daughter, Eleanor,” said Normand. “Noreen, this is Councilwoman—”

  “Noemi,” Noreen said, coming around the bench to take her hand. The girl did a little curtsey. “I know you from Lord Eddick’s books. I’m an admirer, ma’am. I know how hard you fought for your appointment to the head of Ainean scientific society. It’s an honor.”

  Noemi beamed. “And you’re as beautiful as your mother was. Too bad, however, that Josephine’s tongue wasn’t as silver as yours,” she said, and turned to the King. “Normand, why haven’t I met this dear child years ago? Where in the world have you been hiding her?”

  “It’s a very long story,” he said. “And I plan on recounting it once the rest of the council is here. We’ve got a lot of planning to do and I want everyone to be on the same page.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Noemi. “I do know how you are loath to repeat yourself.”

  The Best-Laid Plans

  THE REST OF THE DAY WAS SPENT with Walter practicing at the range while Normand and the available council members attended to their usual business. It turned out that—contrary to my own skills—Noreen was far better with a scoped rifle. I like to say that I’m a deft hand with a pistol, but she could lie on the gear table with a falling-block carbine and chew the heads off of the cutouts in the back forty.

  The last council members had arrived when we returned from the range that evening. A few of the attendants stayed late to prepare a small feast for us, a cookout that reminded me of backyard barbeques back home. I stood in Normand’s little kitchen as they bustled about, enjoying their banter and the smell of the spices they were using, until they ran me out.

  I found everyone sitting around Normand’s campfire out in the courtyard. The council members had changed out of their upscale riding clothes and dressed down in shirts and slacks. The mad gunslinger Seymour was even in attendance, plucking at a lap-guitar in a languid, dreamy melody, his eyes closed and his face upturned in rapture.

  I sat between Noreen and a gawky, weak-chinned old fellow I discovered was the Councilman of the Treasury, Ozazias Harper. He reminded me of the tortoise from the Looney Tunes cartoons; he wore a pair of coke-bottle glasses, had a nose like a cowcatcher, and the knot in his throat bobbled when he spoke, which was in a laconic farmer drawl.

  Sitting across from me were also Talbot Horn and Goddard Grey, the Councilmen of Merchantry and Justice respectively. Horn was a small, anxious man in a straw porkpie hat and pinstripe jacket. He served as the nation’s director of commerce, and liaised between the Council and the traders’ union. Hand in hand with Harper, the two of them did what they could to moderate Ain’s modest economy.

  Grey was a tall bearded man with a heavy, arboreal frame that made him look even bigger than rangy Normand and hands that made me feel like a little girl. He showed up in a wool military dress-suit the olive-green of strained peas and a tyrolean hat the same dulcet color. Councilman Grey ran the Ainean military, which served a dual purpose as the national protector of Ain and as her police force. He also advised Councilman Bennett on matters of state security.

  I liked the Council of Ain. I liked Ostlyn itself.

  There was a certain Old World backwater grandeur to the place that appealed to me, and the people that ran the country weren’t neck-deep in ostentatious bullshit, squabbling over petty issues like the politicians back on Earth. The city itself was ancient, older than anyone in it; the people in charge were like a bunch of old friends that’d stumbled across a set of mythical ruins and decided to run a country out of it.

  Which, I suppose, might have even been the case.

  We ate steaks grilled over the fire, beans, cornbread (hands down the best I’d ever had, and that’s saying something coming from a country boy), and roasted pieces of the apple-potato things on long steel skewers. I finally found out what the “applotatoes” were called: semefe.

  When we were all packed to the brim and sitting on the low slat benches around the fire, staring into the flames and letting our gluttony digest, Normand spoke up. The chill of the night hung on our backs like capes.

  “I had planned on saving this for a more appropriate venue tomorrow, as I don’t normally like to mix business with pleasure,” he said, and looked up at the sky with beatific eyes like a painting of a pious man. “And this is certainly pleasure. It’s been a long, long time since I had the chance to share a good meal with good friends under the stars like this.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Clayton.

  “Too right,” boomed Grey in his war-drum voice.

  Normand continued, “However in light of current events, circumstances dictate haste. Friends, issues have come to light that involve and affect all of us. Destin itself may be in danger.”

  There was a rumble of alarm in the Council.

  “It is time for me to divulge a secret to you which I have been holding for most of my life.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and gazed into the fire as he spoke. I was transfixed. He looked like Gandalf himself peering into a palantír. “The Old Ways, the religions our ancestors abandoned as archaic and obsolete, as it turns out, were not rooted in fiction and myth, but in reality.”

  The Council members seemed vaguely confused, but otherwise unfazed. I glanced at Sawyer and Noreen. Their faces were stoic marble busts, jaws set in stone. They’d never asked to come here, and they’d never asked to be connected to this place, but I loved them for their resolve and acceptance.

  “The Destin we know is in fact the brother of another world, the world called Zam. The people that live there call it Earth, but it is the very same land cut away from Behest when the Great Wolf Oramoz cleft the Time Dragon Angr’manu in two.”

  “Sounds like you’ve gotten into the larkweed, Normand,” said Armistead. “No one told me we were going to tell tall tales around the campfire tonight. I’ve got a few satisfyingly lewd jokes I’ve been saving for a time like this, if...?”

  Noemi gave the Councilman a deadly glare, but her expression resolved into one of concern as she turned back to the King. “Dear friend, I’ve always considered you one of the most rational, sound-minded people I know. Where did this come from?”

  “Yes, old man,” said Grey. “You are the one man I’d least beg flights of fancy.”

  Harper said simply in his gooble-gobble hillbilly voice, “How do you know?”

  Normand said without looking away from the fire, “I know because the young lady and two young men sitting with us tonight are from the other-world I’ve mentioned.”

  They were taken aback, making faces of concern and doubt at each other, and then they looked at Sawyer, Noreen and I. “Is this true?” asked Bennett.

  “It is,” I said. “We were born here in this world, but taken to Zam by my father Lord Eddick to keep us safe from Tem Lucas after the Battle of Ostlyn.”

  “Interesting.”

  “What is so special about the scribe?” asked Horn. “I thought he was merely a poet, tagging along with you to write your biography for posterity, and to keep you lot entertained on the road.”

  “My father was born in the other world.”

  Normand gave a deep nod and said, “Eddick told me the story one lonely night when we were young. There are beings from outside our worlds who made a pact with the Wolf at the beginning of time. In exchange for immortality, they promised to serve as the water-carriers of the Sea of Dreams, the Vur Uk
asha.”

  “They give stories to storytellers,” said Noreen.

  “My stars and garters,” said Noemi. “You’re serious, aren’t you dearie? This isn’t a prank.”

  “The day Normand Kaliburn pulls a prank on a man is the day I turn in my gun,” said Grey. “The man’s as funny as a baby in a well and twice as cold.”

  “Deadly serious, dove,” Normand said. “Listen to me, friends: these beings are called the Sileni. They are ageless and as dream-bringers, they are imbued with the capacity to talk a man into doing just about anything within the scope of his character. They cannot kill, but they cannot be killed, either, except by someone wielding the Timecutter.”

  “The Timecutter. Now I know you’re spitting wind,” said Bennett. “The Timecutter is a nursery tale straight from the old legends.”

  Normand held up a finger, and swept a hand at us. “If these boys and this girl, these children of legends, tell me they’ve seen it with their own eyes, seen it in the hands of Sardis Bridger himself, then I believe them. Do you trust me?” he asked the council. “Have I ever led you astray? Do you still follow me?”

  The moment crouched there like a coiled spring, and then Grey said, “You ain’t. Ever.”

  “Damn straight,” said Clayton, puffing a long-stemmed pipe.

  “Then trust me when I say that we may have another war on our hands. Some of these Sileni have grown weary of servitude and seek to sow discord and destruction throughout the worlds. And there are many worlds, other worlds than these, old friends, as many worlds as there are stories and storytellers to tell them.”

  He looked up from the fire. “I know these things because Lord Eddick was an Earthling chosen by the Sileni to tell our tale. That man was infinitely more vital than any of you knew, and now he is slain because of what he knew.”

  “And now we know what he knew,” I said. “That makes us a target.”

  “If this is true,” said Horn, “—why are you telling us?”

  “Because I am the only man in all of Ain who has traveled as far into the Antargata k-Setra,” said Normand. “I alone have been to the place where the Timecutter may now sleep. The Sileni must be stopped before they bring the universe down around our heads, and we need that mythical blade to accomplish that.”