Age of Swords

by Michael J. Sullivan

  “Where is it?” Moya asked.

  “Still buried,” Suri replied.

  Arion looked at the swords. “What do you plan to do with those?”

  “Whatever we can.” Moya challenged the Fhrey with a glare. She was in a fighting mood.

  Arion simply nodded.

  “Why aren’t you doing anything?” Frost said to the Fhrey. “You had no problem in the forest. Quit relying on this girl. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. You need to finish it.”

  “Is that why it didn’t work?” Suri asked Arion. She had a desperate, guilty expression. “Is it because I—”

  “It’s not your fault,” Arion said. “I couldn’t have killed it, either. Balgargarath can’t be killed, because it isn’t alive.” The Fhrey glared at the dwarfs.

  She looked back at Suri. “Didn’t you feel it? Didn’t you see it?”

  “It looked…bright,” Suri said. “Like…I don’t know. Almost like…a chord.”

  “That’s because it is. It’s not solid, not natural, its form isn’t made, it’s cast. It has its own song, its own pattern. It is the Art manifested into corporeal form. I’ve never seen anything like it. I would have said such a thing is impossible, but I tried to push against it and nothing happened, as if it weren’t really there, as if it were smoke.”

  She switched to Rhunic and continued. “Neither you nor I can harm it.” She looked at the naked weapons. “I don’t think anyone can.”

  “Then it’s over.” Frost’s mouth hung open, his arms dropped limply to his sides.

  “We should have kept going north when we were in Rhulyn.” Flood’s hands came up and grabbed the sides of his head.

  “Not over yet.” Arion looked to the dwarfs. “Seal the opening.”

  “That won’t do anything. The rock here is brittle. It won’t stop that thing,” Frost said.

  “I’m going to help,” Arion replied.

  “You said you couldn’t hurt it,” Persephone said.

  “I can’t, but I should be able to slow it down. Stop it even.” She made fists with both of her hands and butted them together, knuckles-to-knuckles. “The Art doesn’t work against itself, understand? So I can do nothing to Balgargarath. I’m hoping it works both ways. We just need to create a barrier between it and us.”

  They all felt the ground shake. Everyone looked out the opening at the distant blue light that was the remaining half of the cavern.

  “And hurry,” Arion said. “It’s breaking free.”

  True to their word, Frost and Flood were superb builders. Using stone they found in the rubble, and what Rain broke up for them, they rapidly chipped, fit, and stacked a tight stone wall that filled up the crack.

  As they worked, the tremors grew stronger and more frequent. It wasn’t long after the last few stones were placed that Balgargarath could be heard breaching the surface of the cave-in.

  Arion didn’t wait for Suri this time. The Fhrey started her own little song.

  “What are you doing?” Suri asked, worried. Although Persephone didn’t understand why the mystic would be so concerned.

  “It’s okay, this is small.” Despite her words, Arion sat down slowly.

  A moment later the beast reached the door. They all felt the quake as it slammed against the pile of stones. Arion stumbled backward with the jolt. The barricade shifted slightly but held. Another shudder shook the chamber, then two more. This time the rocks didn’t move at all.

  Suri crouched beside Arion, but the Fhrey waved her away. “Fine. It’s fine,” she said.

  “So it’s holding?” Moya looked around. “We’re safe then. As long as we stay in here, right?”

  “How long before it gets tired and leaves?” Persephone asked the dwarfs.

  “I don’t think that will ever happen,” Suri said. The mystic faced them with a miserable expression. “Arion is right. It’s not alive. It’s a weave of some sort. It won’t ever leave. It’ll struggle for eternity to get through those stones.”

  “Well, thank Mari,” Moya said. “We’re fine then.”

  “We don’t have enough food and water for eternity,” Roan pointed out.

  This one truth was evident to all as they stood in a circle with long faces and unfocused eyes peering into a bleak future. Persephone felt someone walking over her grave again…and this time they must be directly overhead.

  —

  Suri saw a bloody tear slip down from Arion’s nostril. The Fhrey didn’t notice until the droplet hit her upper lip. She wiped it away, leaving a rosy smear.

  “It’s killing you,” Suri said. “Holding it off is too much.”

  Arion looked at the blood on her fingers. Her hand was trembling.

  “Let me do it,” Suri told her. “Show me how.”

  Arion shook her head. “It’s trickier than it seems. Balgargarath is a clever conjuration. It’s stopped just beating and is looking for gaps…trying to pry the barricade open. It requires my constant attention. I need to keep shifting the shield to stop it from ripping through. It’s not easy. I told you, part of my training was learning how to split my thoughts, to do two, even three, things at the same time. It’s what I’m good at, and what takes me just a little effort might be quite difficult for you.” She allowed herself a little smile. “It’s funny. Just before I left Estramnadon, I was trying to teach the prince how to split his thoughts, do more than one thing at a time. That seems so long ago…”

  Arion’s expression was so sad it just about broke Suri’s heart. “And I left my home in such a mess. I told myself it wouldn’t take long to deal with Nyphron and that I’d clean it when I got back.”

  Even though Arion had said it wasn’t her fault, Suri knew it was. The guilt threatened to consume her. Failing to defeat the monster, Suri had let everyone down. No. She’d done worse than that. She’d killed them. This wasn’t like forgetting to gather firewood or eating all the strawberries.

  Minna must have known how Suri was feeling, for she came over and laid her head in the mystic’s lap. Such a good and wise wolf. Minna always knew how to make Suri feel better, but not even Minna could lift her spirits this time.

  “How long can you keep the shield in place?”

  “I’m not sure.” She waited for several minutes before saying, “Tell me about death.”

  “What?”

  “We live so long that death is a rare thing. But being short-lived you must have seen it often. Haven’t you? Is it awful? Gryndal’s and Zephyron’s deaths were both violent and horrible. Is it always such a terrible, awful thing?”

  Suri thought about all the people in Dahl Rhen, Magda and the other trees, and animals like Grin the Brown and Char the wolf. Mostly she thought of Tura and Maeve. When Tura died, Suri hadn’t been there. She’d found Tura lying in the garden, facedown in the freshly dug soil. But she had been with Maeve. Suri had been touching her, talking with her, when she passed on. “I don’t think so,” Suri said, trying to remember how it was. The old woman just closed her eyes, and she died with a big smile on her face. “Seems a lot like going to sleep, except that you never wake up.”

  Arion nodded. “Sleeping doesn’t sound so bad. I like sleeping. I wish I could sleep now.” Arion reached out and took Suri’s hand. The Fhrey had long delicate fingers. They wrapped Suri’s and squeezed tightly. “Remember. None of this is your fault. It’s mine. The Art, like anything, has good aspects and bad. Nothing can be wholly good. It’s impossible. Creation gives birth to all things, positive and negative, or what we think of as good and evil. Like all life, the power of creation seeks to exist. The Art’s greatest problem is its ability to seduce, telling you what you want to hear. It’s easier to believe the most outlandish lie that confirms what you suspect than the most obvious truth that denies it. Fenelyus taught me that. Arrogance…narrow-minded arrogance. It comes with power, and the Art is power. I thought…I believed…that even if you couldn’t defeat this Balgargarath, I could. I never doubted it, not for a second. I made the same mistake
I once condemned Gryndal for: I imagined I, too, was a god. I’m not.” Her lip trembled. “If I hadn’t been so confident, I would have insisted we start up the trail to the surface the moment we arrived in that chamber out there. I wouldn’t have let us delay. And maybe we wouldn’t have gotten out, but we would have had a chance. Now…well, now…I’m so, so, sorry, Suri.”

  Arion began to sob.

  The ground shook. The stones placed in the crack rattled, and they all heard the thunder of the beast throwing itself against the barrier.

  Arion gritted her teeth and pursed her lips. “See!” she said, wiping her eyes. Another tear of blood ran from her nose. “It’s always looking for a way in.”

  —

  Frost, Flood, and Rain snored.

  Roan had always enjoyed the sound of a crackling fire, laughter, and a good deep snore. Iver snored when he came home drunk and lay flat on his back, a deep throaty roll. When the snoring stopped, that’s when Roan worried. Then Iver would cough, roll out of bed, and spit. From that point until he fell asleep again, she had to be prepared. For that reason, Roan liked to stay up late or wake up early. Spending her few safe moments sleeping was such a waste.

  Moya also snored. Most people wouldn’t think it by looking at her, but she did. Roan wondered if she, herself, snored, and pondered how she might sound and what caused it. Most people who snored did so when exhausted and while lying on their backs with open mouths. Roan was a light sleeper and preferred to sleep on her side, but she spent a week on her back trying to catch herself snoring. She never did. Either the sound didn’t wake her, or she didn’t snore.

  The three Dherg that Persephone called dwarfs, but who Roan collectively thought of as the little men, most certainly snored. Dahl Rhen’s gate horn wasn’t much louder than them, and she couldn’t understand how they managed to sleep through the racket they produced. What drew her attention, besides her usual interest in all things snoring-related, was that they made a specific pattern. Each repeated the same sound, the same pause, the same inhale, and then the same riotous, rattling noise. She focused on this because her mind was working on repeating sounds, and because her brain had a habit of drifting to similar events when she was working out a problem. She got many good ideas that way. A leaf spinning on the surface of a pool gave her the idea for Gifford’s pottery table, which later gave her the idea for the wheel. Roan was hunting something more elusive this time—how to draw language.

  What had begun as Brin’s obsession had become a puzzle for Roan as she sat on the floor looking at the stone table. From that angle, she could see the underside and found it was gouged and chipped. The quizzical expression she must have had on her face attracted attention.

  “Just leave her alone,” Moya whispered to Persephone. “That’s what she does, and believe me, right now we need her doing it.”

  Roan ignored them and continued staring at the table. Normally, when she wanted to focus, she chewed on her hair. When that wasn’t enough, she pulled on it hard until it hurt. This time she went to the extreme of lifting the strands, forcing the hair against the grain. Making the pain worse helped her concentrate, always had. Roan got her best insights when Iver beat her. In the worst of times, Roan’s mind learned to block the world out. Iver, the house, the pain, the fear: It all faded into a background haze as her thoughts converged on a single point. Focused in such a fashion, she could endure anything, and brilliance was often the result.

  The little men are snoring. No, the snoring isn’t important. It’s the space between.

  The pauses coincided with their breathing. Breathe in, snore, breathe in, snore—a pattern. People paused when speaking, too, but not always to breathe, rarely to breathe. Pauses occurred before and after words, and greater breaks when changing ideas. When drawing words, the lack of sound would be a lack of drawing. The gaps between the marks were those pauses. Words were divided by gaps. New line—new thought. What wasn’t there was as important as what was.

  Brin had already worked that out. The girl’s system of writing sounds based on symbols took this into account. Genius really. Each mark was a sound. A series of marks became a word. Gaps between, delineated one from the next. Using this concept, Brin had already begun deciphering the markings on the tablets. All this was fine and good, but what about snoring?

  And what about the table? Because…

  “It’s not a table at all,” Roan muttered to herself.

  Persephone, who was still sitting in the stone chair looking at her, said, “It’s not? What is it?”

  “It’s another tablet,” Roan replied. “I can see markings on the bottom.”

  Moya and Persephone bent down and looked.

  “It was set up this way to work on,” Roan explained. “Easier when you can sit in front of it and slide your legs underneath. I can’t imagine it’s easy to chisel all those marks—harder if you’re forced to crouch down on your knees. As this is the only one propped up, this would be the last thing worked on.”

  “Why is it upside down?” Persephone asked.

  Roan shrugged. “Maybe to make more markings on the back, or…to hide what’s on it.”

  Moya and Brin turned the stone over. Nearly all the rock of the Agave’s floor was shale, a layered rock made from mud that easily broke and split into leaves of surprising thinness. The tablets were all about the thickness of Moya’s thumb and not too terribly heavy. They were also soft enough to allow the markings to be scraped rather than chiseled. Once the stone had been turned, Moya and Persephone glanced at it with disappointment. Brin left the stack she was working on and, holding up the glowstone, took a moment to study the new markings.

  “Can’t understand it,” she declared with a scowl. She ran fingers lightly over the symbols. “I’ve worked out a lot of the words using the key and the Orinfar. A few phrases, too, but this…” Brin frowned at the table tablet. “I don’t recognize anything here.” She paused. “Well, I do. I mean the symbols are the same, but I can’t make out any of the words.”

  Roan nodded, and that’s when it all made sense. At such times, it was like a flash of light, an instant of perfect illumination. For that one moment, the whole world was revealed and she could see it down to the purpose of every grain of sand. Then the light went out and all she took with her was the afterimage.

  Roan pointed toward the snoring dwarfs. “Can you understand what they are saying?”

  Brin looked at her puzzled. “They’re snoring, Roan. They aren’t saying anything.”

  “But their mouths are open and they are making sounds.”

  “But the sounds aren’t words. They’re just sounds.”

  “Exactly,” Roan said. “What if that’s what’s on the table tablet…just sounds.”

  “I don’t understand.” Brin leaned over the table, looking at its marred surface.

  “I do,” Suri said. The mystic had been sitting, petting Minna; now she got to her feet and walked over to the table tablet. “Tell me what it says.”

  “It doesn’t say anything,” Brin insisted.

  “But you understand the symbols?”

  Brin nodded.

  “And they make sounds?”

  “Sure, but not words.”

  “Show us. Make it snore,” Roan said.

  “What?” Brin asked, confused to the point of bewilderment.

  “Make the sounds.”

  Brin shrugged. She looked down at the surface of the stone. “I don’t know all of them. I guessed at quite a few, so they’re probably wrong.” She placed a finger on the stone, using it as a placeholder, dragging from left to right across the symbols as she made noises.

  Suri shook her head after Brin had only gone down three lines. “That’s wrong.”

  “What do you mean it’s wrong? What’s wrong? How do you know it’s wrong?”

  The mystic shrugged. “It just is.”

  “Read from the top down,” Roan suggested.

  “But I learned from the tablets that the words are marked
left to right in lines.”

  “Try anyway.”

  Brin began making sounds again, this time dragging her finger down the tablet.

  Again, Suri shook her head.

  “Try right to left,” Roan prompted.

  “I don’t understand,” Brin said. “What are we even doing?”

  “Read it right to left.” When she did, Suri’s eyes grew wide and a smile formed on her face.

  —

  Suri listened to Brin as she started making the sounds again, this time running her finger from the right of the symbols to the left. The tones were elongated and awkward, like someone singing a song they didn’t know, in a language they weren’t too familiar with, but she heard it. As distorted as it was, the tune was there.

  Arion heard it, too. “That’s a weave,” she said from across the room.

  “What’s a weave?” Brin asked. “You mean it’s a spell? So if I were to finish this, I would make something magical happen?”

  “No,” Arion said. “You have no power.”

  “You’re just making patterns with string between your fingers,” Suri said, realizing for the first time how that piece fit. “But if you were an Artist and could draw from a source, you could weave with the real strings, the strings of creation—create the music of the world and alter its tone.”

  “Yes,” Arion said. “Exactly.”

  “How is this helping?” Moya asked. “Is this helping?”

  “This is the last thing the Old One was working on before leaving this room,” Roan said.

  “Wonderful, Roan,” Moya said. “How does that help?”

  “It’s a magic spell,” Roan said.

  “A what?”

  “It’s not just a spell,” Suri said. “This is the weaving pattern that created Balgargarath.”

  Suri had known what it was the moment she’d heard the drawn-out sounds Brin was making. The symbols scratched on the stone were like stages in a string game, and she could see the process: the steps and the patterns. The whole method had been worked out in preparation for the attempt. In doing so, it left a path behind, a map that pointed to the chords of creation. The mystic was still learning, still a novice, but she knew enough to understand that whoever had created this had been at least a little crazy, and quite possibly a full bowl of nuts.