Alphabet of Thorn

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  She hunched over the thorns protectively. “It’s mine,” she heard herself say sharply. Then she lifted one hand, touched his arm. “Laidley,” she pleaded. “It’s just something I’m doing.”

  He dragged his attention from the thorns finally, looked at her. She was reminded then of what intelligence he carried behind his vapid expressions. “It’s that book, isn’t it,” he said shrewdly. “The one from the Floating School that you said the mages had already translated. You’ve had it all along. You didn’t give it to the librarians, and you didn’t show it to me.”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. There were no excuses, she realized; she had deceived and stolen and lied again. All for a tangle of thorns, for a language she had never seen in her life.

  But it spoke to my heart, she thought confusedly. It said my name.

  Laidley was still gazing at her, waiting. She nodded finally, wordlessly, and shifted so that he could see.

  He studied it silently; she heard him swallow. He touched a thorny letter tentatively, as though it might prick.

  “What made you take it?” he asked with wonder. “What compelled you?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I just wanted it. Laidley. Don’t tell anyone. I need to do this. I don’t know why yet, but I need to know. Bourne says it might be magic.”

  “Bourne?”

  “The student from the Floating School who gave it to me.”

  “Magic? As in spells?”

  “It doesn’t seem to be.”

  “Well, what does it seem to be?”

  “It seems to be—I don’t know yet. A story, maybe. About two people. If I’m right, then the language is very old, and they died so long ago no one really knows when.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Axis and Kane.”

  He stared, brushing at a straw-colored strand sliding over one eyebrow. “Axis and Kane,” he said incredulously, “compelled this fervor in you? They’ve been dust for thousands of years.”

  “We don’t choose our passions,” she said meekly, hoping the subject would compel him to lose interest in it. But he lingered, trying to comprehend what drew her to the thorny matter. He saw no way into the brier; stubbornly, she did not enlighten him.

  “I’m only guessing at their names,” she said evasively. “It might not be about them at all; it may be a different history entirely.”

  He took himself away at last, casting a final, baffled glance at her. Alone with the story, she continued her painstaking path through the thorns, shifting a cane here and there just enough to glimpse what might be behind it, if it shaped this letter, or what might not, if it shaped that.

  She did not see Bourne again for days after he first came. She refused to think about him; he was dangerous, a chimera. Lords’ sons took penniless foundlings lightly, infatuated as they might be with a dark fall of hair, eyes that changed color in a shift of light. And the library, burrowed into solid stone, buried as deeply underground as a catacomb, its entry ringed by the labyrinth of palace walls, was barely less difficult to breach than a wall of thorns.

  He came when she least expected him, one early evening when she sat at one of the long tables in the refectory, eating a briny bowl of stew and trying to hear the librarians speaking at the next table. Beside her, Laidley ate silently, wordless as usual except when they spoke about words. There was some kind of gossip that had worked its way down from the palace; Nepenthe was straining to piece it together, chewing as quietly as possible. Waves of chattering and laughter, some story that Oriel was telling farther down the table kept rolling over the interesting glints and shapes tumbling from the librarians’ table.

  “She just vanished—they say she went to hear the sea.”

  “He got lost in ancient mathematical scrolls—”

  “She was found on the very last—”

  “And found his way out among the sandstone tablets, which meant—”

  “Legend says it is there. But who knows? No one has been there since—Who was the last?”

  “He was really lost then, because no one had seen the sandstone tablets since the dead king’s father was crowned.”

  “Did she know?”

  “No one knows. The mage Vevay says she couldn’t possibly.”

  “He finally found his way back hours later, but he couldn’t remember where he had seen the tablets. So they’re lost all over again.”

  “Knows what?”

  Laidley made a sound. Surprised, Nepenthe looked at him. His head had sunk tortoise-fashion between his shoulders; he stared at his stew as though a fish had leaped in it. On the other side of the table someone in a dark robe shifted the hood around his face, and Nepenthe coughed on a mussel. Within the hood Bourne smiled at her. His gold hair was tangled; his eyes seemed not quite human, as though a windblown tree had glanced her way. They cleared slowly, as Nepenthe, spoon suspended, stared at him.

  She rose abruptly, walked without looking back across the refectory to the outer doors, which were open to the evening winds. Torches on either side of the doors shivered and flared, revealing and concealing sporadically. Bourne appeared after a moment, but whether he had walked or flown through the refectory, Nepenthe was suddenly uncertain.

  They were alone on the massive balcony, but for the night winds and a gull or two. Still Nepenthe kept her voice low, for the hooded man had a wild, secretive look about him, as though he might vanish at the wrong word.

  “How did you get here?”

  “We’re practicing movements through time and space.” His own voice sounded on the verge of laughter. “I didn’t think it would work.”

  “What?”

  “You were on my mind. So I envisioned you in the library among the books. Something happened. I took a step toward my heart’s desire and there you were, with a spoon in your mouth, and a man with a face like a pike beside you gawking at me.”

  “Laidley,” she said breathlessly.

  “Yes. I thought it would be a Laidley.”

  “Tell me again,” she begged. “I don’t understand. You walked across space? You folded up time?”

  “I suppose it was something like that. I didn’t think that there was the remotest chance that I could do such a thing, so I wasn’t listening very well when Felan explained it. I did hear him say something about a place I really wanted to be, so I thought of you.”

  “What was it like? What did you see?”

  “Your face,” he answered, “coming more and more clear, as though you were rising up out of water. I kept moving toward it…” He did so as he spoke; she felt his hand slide across her neck beneath her hair. The torches blew his direction; she saw his eyes again, dark and full of wonder, at his own magic, or at hers. “It was like crossing some immense, black chasm in one step… And then I heard all these voices, and smelled fish. It was much easier than finding my way down here—that takes days.”

  “How will you—”

  “Get back?” He laughed. “I don’t know. I’d need your face at my journey’s end. I’m sure,” he added, his own face drifting closer, “that I’m not the first student to lose his way and not find it again until morning.” She stood very still, while his lips brushed hers. “Onions,” he whispered. “And celery root. And something out of the sea.”

  “Mussels.”

  “Mussels,” he agreed, shaping the word as he kissed her. “They have to go very far down to get them, don’t they?” he murmured between tastes. “So far down you could actually hear the sea. You could taste it…”

  She drew a sudden breath. “That’s it—That’s what they were talking about.”

  He opened one eye, squinted at her. “What are you thinking of, at a time like this?”

  “The steps on the cliff—that’s where she was. The last step. You might hear the sea from there. And it is a place of great antiquity; there is a legend—”

  “There always are,” he said bemusedly. “They gather on places of great antiquity like barnacles. Who
was where?”

  “I think they were talking about the queen.” She linked her fingers around his neck, banged her head against his lightly. “But what was the legend? I can’t remember.”

  “The queen went down those winding slippery old steps?” he said incredulously. “What for?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t hear.”

  “She might have killed herself.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “She might have.” He was silent briefly, considering the notion curiously. “How strange. This legend you can’t remember—might it be in a book?”

  “It might.”

  “Might you look it up?”

  “I might.” She peered at him, her face inside the hood with his. “Now?”

  “No. Now, I want you to think of your heart’s desire and take a step toward it.”

  She slid her hand down his arm, took his hand, and said simply, “We’ll get there faster if we walk.”

  However he left her chamber, on foot or folding back into his thoughts, he was gone by morning. Nepenthe woke in the early dawn. Bourne had set the coals burning in her brazier. Love? she wondered. Or just cold? Whichever it was, she was grateful for the unexpected warmth. She lay empty-headed, watching the single star in her slit of a window swallowed by billowing morning mist. At any moment the gong would thunder, pulling them all into day; anticipating it, the still world seemed to be holding its breath. She listened for the sea in that pent silence, knowing she could not possibly hear it, but trying anyway, for some of the night’s magic might have lingered into day.

  She saw the queen then, in her mind’s eye: a tiny figure with a coin’s profile standing on the final, terrifying step into nothingness carved into the face of the cliff. Halfway there at that point, she must have heard the sea. A word popped into Nepenthe’s head. Legend, she thought. And then the great, deep voice of the gong splashed through the world like a stone into water. Doors began to open; voices called sleepily to one another down the corridors. Legend, she thought again as she swung her bare feet to the stones. She was halfway to the baths before her drowsing thoughts caught up with themselves and she remembered why the word was in her head.

  She glimpsed it now and then swimming behind the fish, a glint of color and shape that didn’t belong with them. Later, after she had done enough work to satisfy Master Croysus should he find his way out of the revelries, she wandered among the thorns. Her mind snagged on the word; she gave it half a thought. Half a thought turned into Bourne, which was why, she realized, the word persisted. For some reason he was curious about this legend involving the cliff and the steps and the queen’s journey down them. He could appear out of nowhere again; he would ask; she could give him that small thing to watch him smile…

  The word, having been given attention, vanished out of her head again as she worked her way, bramble by bramble, into legends far older than Raine. Canes suggested letters; letters suggested words; she was surrounding herself with briars when she saw Laidley again, trying to find his way through them to her.

  She blinked; the thorns dwindled back down onto the page. He hovered beside her stool; she waited, without discernible patience, for him to collect his thoughts.

  “Who was that?” he asked finally. “Last night?”

  He looked sullen; so did she, she felt, at the sight of his bleak face. “A student from the mages’ school,” she said shortly. “Why?”

  “He looked arrogant. Spoiled. I didn’t like his expression.”

  “I don’t suppose he liked yours.”

  “Who is he? Some noble’s son taking up with a transcriptor, who will break your heart?”

  She looked at him silently until he shifted, and blood rose under his sallow skin. “Maybe,” she answered evenly. “But I don’t want to think about that now. I’m busy.”

  “You’re obsessed.”

  “Did you just find me to pick a quarrel over everything I’m doing?”

  He swallowed. “No. I didn’t.” He put a small, leather-bound book on her desk. “I found this. It’s a translation of an eyewitness account of the defeat of the armies of the ancient city Denub by the Emperor of Night, and his triumphal entry into the city, accompanied by the Masked One.”

  “The Masked One?”

  “Kane. I thought it might help you, knowing some background. Be careful,” he added, as she picked it up. “The binding crumbles.”

  She opened it gently, glanced at the neat, measured lines. “The Emperor of Night,” she murmured, “being Axis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.” She drew breath. “That will help. Thank you, Laidley. Why did they call him that?”

  “I don’t know. He had the name before he conquered Denub. Something to do with the moon? The stars?”

  “He always came at night?” she guessed. “Do armies war at night?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s dark. How could you know if you were killing your friend or your foe?” The glumness was easing out of his face, she saw with relief; the scholar, curious and greedy for knowledge, asserted himself. “I can find out for you,” he offered.

  She hesitated, reluctant for some incomprehensible reason to share her thorns, a moldering epic by the sound of it, with anyone. But if she refused, the dejected Laidley would return, and she had no idea what to do with him. “Don’t get obsessed,” she warned him.

  “I already am,” he breathed ruefully; the unexpected crook in his mouth made her smile.

  “Laidley,” she said, remembering the odd word wandering in and out of her head as he turned. “Do you know the legend attached to the steps in the cliff?”

  He nodded. “I ran across it once,” he answered vaguely.

  “What is it?”

  “That the steps were carved in the cliff face so that the body of Mermion, the first ruler of Raine, could be carried down for burial.”

  “He was buried at sea?”

  “No. We were all taught that part of it,” he reminded her. “He is not dead, but sleeping in a hollow in the cliff beneath the palace. The steps are how they got him into the hollow. In a time of grave crisis and peril to his kingdom he will wake and ascend the steps again to defend the Crowns of Raine.”

  She chewed on the end of her pen, trying to imagine his burial. “Is he really in there? A skeleton in a cave somewhere at the end of the steps?”

  “An armed skeleton,” he amended. “With a crown on its head and a great sword at its side. He will hear the cries of terror and despair from his land and rouse himself from his dreams to rescue it. Why?”

  She thought of the living queen again, young, vulnerable, and ignorant, standing a step above oblivion. She looked at Laidley, feeling suddenly, oddly vulnerable herself, though like Mermion of Raine they were all buried in stone.

  “We might need him.”

  SEVEN

  Kane gave herself to Axis for his wedding.

  Poets of the time paid their tribute to the young king’s marriage to the Princess of Cribex with flowery and forgettable verse. Theirs was not the matter of romance or epic; hearts were not crushed in the making, nor were kings slain.

  A thousand peacocks

  A hundred white stallions

  Ten coffers of gold

  And her heart

  The beautiful Princess of Cribex,

  The daughter of swans,

  The daughter of willow trees,

  Brought to the golden Lion of Eben.

  All princesses were beautiful, all kings were lions for the occasion. In truth, the princess, while comely, was plump, stood barely as high as Axis’s armpit, and looked more like a sparrow than a swan. Kane had behaved badly since the announcement of the wedding, weeping all day and refusing to eat. On the morning of the ceremony, which took place in the great palace beside the Serpent, she locked herself alone in her room and would not come out. Her mother and all her aunts threatened; she refused to open the door. Axis’s mother told them to leave her alone; she would come out when she was ready
. And so she did. She left a note upon her pillow and ran away. Later, various stories surfaced. She joined a sect of women dedicated to the Serpent. She changed her name and became a shrewd and very prosperous merchant. She flung herself into a well over her unrequited passion and drowned. History loses sight of Axis’s young cousin on the day of his wedding. It was assumed through the centuries, by anyone taking note of her disappearance, that it was brief, and that, during the blink of history’s eye, an inadvertent glance away, she was found or chose to return home. Whereupon she would have been hastily bound in a marriage suitable for a highborn woman of Eben, to become a mother and live a life otherwise devoid of significant detail.

  But she did none of those things. She did not even run away. She simply wrapped herself up so well that not even Axis recognized her and came to his wedding as a gift.

  She appeared at the door of a room along the courtyard where the gifts of nobles and rulers were displayed. The sight of a tall, dark figure in a hooded cloak, its face shrouded behind black silk, carrying a staff of ebony and gold, startled the guards watching over the gifts.

  “What do you want?” one asked sharply.

  The figure said nothing, only proffered a letter with oddly bulky fingers. The message was open, signed, bore a seal with flowing ribbons and the wax emblem of a distant kingdom. The guard squinted at it.

  “What does it say?” a second guard demanded.

  “I don’t know. I can’t read.”

  The other snatched it from him, perused it while the same puckered expression grew on his own face. Kane waited motionlessly.

  “What does it say?”

  “I can’t—I think it’s in some strange language.” He raised his head, glanced around vaguely for help.

  “Everyone’s at the wedding,” the first observed.

  “Well, what should we do with this—this—”

  “Is it armed?”

  Kane gestured quickly, indicated the wedding gifts, and then the vicinity of her heart several times, until one guard, hands raised to search her, drew back and scratched his chin.