Alphabet of Thorn

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “I’m afraid,” Vevay said tightly.

  “Of what?”

  “Of what, I don’t know. I’m afraid for Raine.”

  “Sit down,” Felan suggested, and she did so on a broad stone bench strewn with cushions and furs and littered for some reason with dried flower petals. The wood, she noted, not for the first time and always with wonder, had made its own moon. It was quite full that night, spilling light into the open casements. Over the rest of Raine, no moon was visible. The odd animal collapsed, sighing, across Felan’s feet. He leaned back in his chair, his calm eyes on Vevay. “Are you afraid of the Crowns working against the queen?”

  “Well, that, yes. That’s always on my mind. But every ruler I have ever counseled in my long life has always had to contend with—contention. The possibility of war if they weren’t making it themselves, trying to add another Crown to the kingdom. If that’s all I’m afraid of, I should be able to recognize it by now.”

  Felan was silent again. A single line appeared and frayed across his brow; she had shattered his tranquillity.

  “If that’s all,” he repeated slowly. “There might be something worse than twelve Crowns at war with one another?” He was on his feet so quickly she barely saw him move. The animal gave a guttural whine of protest as he stepped out from under it. “Something at war with the Twelve Crowns?”

  She gazed blankly at the possibility. “There have been no rumors. No indications.”

  “But you’re not afraid of nothing.”

  “Maybe I am. I’m very old and trying to remember my past. Perhaps I’m simply unburying ancient fears. That’s why I came to you. You’ve known me longest; you can tell me if I’ve roused one of the fretful squalls of old age.”

  His face had grown still again, watchful now rather than serene. “You’ve known yourself longest,” he reminded her. “Are you afraid of death?”

  “I don’t have time to think about dying. I’m too worried about Tessera.”

  “Then perhaps together we can see what it is that’s troubling you. Come.”

  He stepped to the center of the patterned floor; she followed him. A circle of aged ivory lay there like an ancient moon, with many intricate paths raying out from it. Felan stood at the rim of it, facing the wood’s moon, so that the light illumined the ivory; his shadow fell behind him. He gestured. Vevay moved to stand opposite him, so that the moonlight fell on her back; her shadow lay across the face of the moon at their feet.

  “The wood’s moon suggested this to me,” he explained. “Perhaps the wood is speaking to us. Or perhaps I am making an entirely random connection between two white circles. We’ll see. You must show it what you fear.”

  “How can I, when I don’t know myself?”

  He smiled. “Just tell it silently what you told me.”

  So she told the moon her fears, word by word, until words became unnecessary; it became easier to feel fear than to speak. The ivory at their feet rippled like water, became insubstantial, cloud. It glowed through her shadow like the true moon through night, seeing, revealing. Something began to take shape on its face, a shadowy form, human it seemed, yet faceless and gleaming strangely. Vevay frowned, trying to make sense of it. It seemed to be sitting on a roughly carved stone chair, in a hollow of stone. It held a long streak of white light across its knees and carried a circle of gold on its head.

  She gave a sudden hiccup of astonishment.

  “What is it?” Felan asked.

  “I think—” The figure became clearer, faceless because its helm was down; the long streak of light was a sheathed sword, the circle of gold a crown. “I think it’s Mermion.”

  “Who?”

  “The first king of Raine. The Dreamer. Asleep in his cave within the cliff until he is roused to defend his realm. But why in the world—” She stopped abruptly, without knowing why, only that suddenly she did not want to know why, she wanted to close the moon like an eye and creep back into ignorance.

  The Dreamer’s mailed hand tightened on the sword; light melted down it. The helmed head turned slightly, as though disturbed by some sound from the world above. Vevay stared, frozen, her white brows lifted as high as they could go. She heard Felan’s uneven breathing.

  Within the moon, the Dreamer woke and rose.

  TEN

  The Thunderbolt

  The Emperor of Night

  The Lord of Time

  With his army the stars

  Rode out of the Gates of Nowhere,

  Shook the tall towers of Zirxia

  To the ground

  And plundered the ancient graves of its kings.

  Nepenthe paused to study her translation. “Zirxia,” she murmured. “Where is Zirxia? Was Zirxia? And was it even Zirxia? Maybe that thorn is not a Z. Tirxia?” She frowned at it, weaving her pen through her hair. “And what are the Gates of Nowhere?” She shook her hair loose, slumped on her stool, sighing. Books surrounded her on all sides; thorns filled her eyes, her thoughts. Here, she thought. In this library stand the Gates of Nowhere through which the Lord of Time will lead his army…

  But only Laidley came through them, carrying yet more musty scrolls. She watched him, happy to see another human face after hours of work, yet perversely wishing that the human face belonged to someone else. She envisioned Bourne everywhere, like the thorns, just because once he had appeared out of nowhere when he was the last thing she expected. Maybe that’s where the Gates of Nowhere are, she thought, illumined. Anywhere but here.

  “I found some old epics about Axis,” Laidley said.

  Nepenthe straightened instantly, reaching out for the scrolls, forgetting about Bourne. “Laidley, what do you know about Zirxia?”

  “What?”

  She showed him the fragment of poetry. He studied it, his young face wrinkling like a walnut in concentration.

  “Are you sure that’s a Z?” he asked finally.

  “No. What might it be if it’s not a Z?”

  “Dirxia. It was a small, very rich kingdom in the south deserts of what is now the Ninth Crown.”

  “That must be it.”

  “But.”

  “But?”

  He looked at her without seeing her, the way she usually looked at him; his own eyes were full of thorns, she guessed. “It didn’t exist when Axis lived. So he couldn’t have conquered it. That must be a later piece of poetry, which means that the book you are translating was written centuries after his death. Which means, of course, that everything in it might be suspect. A compilation of fact and legend and poetry, all jumbled together.”

  “It doesn’t seem like that,” she protested. “Kane seems to be trying to separate fact from legend.”

  “Kane?”

  “Well, it’s her alphabet. She invented it.”

  “She?” Laidley was looking fishlike now, goggle-eyed and breathing through his mouth. “Kane was a woman?”

  “This book says she was. That’s why she was masked.”

  “That may be, but how could Kane write about a kingdom that didn’t exist until centuries after she died?”

  Nepenthe mused over that, twirling hair around the wrong end of her pen. “Then,” she concluded, “it must not be Dirxia.”

  “You’re getting ink on your cheek. Unless the later kingdom took its name from an earlier one.”

  “Do kingdoms do that?”

  He shrugged. “They could if they wanted to, I suppose. But how could Kane be a woman? He is Axis’s brother. His twin, in at least one account.”

  “And not related at all, in others. Legends change through time. They get tangled up with other legends, names change, events that have nothing whatsoever to do with the legend cling to them and change.”

  “I know that. But sex is usually constant. Men don’t change into women.”

  “He is she in this book.”

  “Are you sure you’ve got the right thorn for her?”

  “It’s more than just a pronoun,” she said patiently. “It’s the way she fit i
nto her culture before she became Kane. It’s unmistakable. She had to hide her sex to stay with Axis when he married. She became the faceless figure of mystery. The Masked Sorcerer. The Hooded One.”

  Laidley grunted, not entirely convinced. “Sounds like wishful thinking on the part of a writer enchanted by Axis’s legend, and trying to be part of it while making sense of all the unlikely pieces of it.”

  “Then why is it written in Kane’s alphabet of thorns? Who would bother to invent a secret alphabet for that?”

  “Someone who could,” he said simply. “Anyway, how do we know it was a secret language back then? Maybe all other records of it were obliterated by a conqueror who allowed no language under his rule but his own.”

  “Axis?” she suggested drily. “Laidley, go away if you can’t be more helpful. This was all becoming clear until I told you about it.”

  “Do you want me to stop bringing you books?” he asked wistfully.

  She held her breath, loosed it noisily. “No. And it does help me to be able to talk about it. But you can’t see what I’m seeing without—without—”

  “Without translating the thorns,” he finished for her. She looked down at them; her hands rose protectively, slid over the coiling letters, hiding them. For no reason, she told herself bewilderedly. No reason that either of them could see.

  “Kane was a sorceress,” she said softly. “Her alphabet was a secret between her and Axis. No one else knew it. Maybe she put some kind of seal on this book that still lingers even after thousands of years.”

  “Then why does it let you into its secrets?”

  “I don’t know. But it makes me want to keep it secret.”

  He tried to peer at it through her fingers, gave up. “Well,” he said finally, “if you ever do want me to learn it, tell me. Meanwhile…” His voice trailed away as he gazed at her. He reached impulsively toward the smudge on her cheek. She ducked reflexively; he drew his hand back without touching her.

  “Meanwhile what?” she asked, to help him regain composure.

  He only reddened more deeply, and mumbled, “I’ll pay closer attention to Kane’s—to the question of—”

  “Pronouns.”

  “Yes,” he said tightly and wandered off into the books. Nepenthe stared down at her hands for a moment or three before she saw the thorns they were protecting.

  She read late that night in her chamber, trying to find, among the epics Laidley had brought her, some reference to the dubiously named Zirxia. She kept an eye on pronouns, too. But in every different epic, even in the badly translated shards that came out of forgotten kingdoms, the Hooded One was male. Axis’s brother, Axis’s twin, younger by a breath, Axis’s mage, whose age and origins were obscure, Axis’s closest companion, whom he trusted as he trusted neither wife nor lover. Regarding either wife or lover, poets rarely commented, except in the flowery conventions of the time. When Bourne appeared, unexpectedly out of nowhere, Nepenthe had fallen asleep face-down on the open pages and was dreaming of herself, hooded and masked in black, telling Laidley her true name.

  I am Kane.

  She woke with a start, saw the hooded figure stirring the coals in the brazier. She squeaked; it turned, revealing a familiar pronoun.

  “You…”

  Bourne pushed his hood back, smiling. “I’m practicing my movements across distances. It’s easier to be private now that I know where you sleep.” She rolled over, struggling with clinging bedclothes. “Don’t get up.”

  “I thought you were Kane. No.” She rubbed her eyes. “I dreamed I was.”

  “That sounds like a riddle. What is Kane? Another foundling?”

  “No.” She looked down at herself. “I’m still dressed.”

  “So you are.”

  Their eyes met across the brazier. She smiled then, fully awake. His smile deepened. “There is still some distance,” she observed.

  “Only a step,” he said, and crossed it.

  In the morning, he seemed inclined to linger past the awakening splash of the gong’s powerful voice, even past the hour when he should have been at the school.

  “I’ll tell them I got lost last night,” he said with a laugh. “Forget your fish, or whatever it is you’re working on. We’ll take a journey down the cliff steps and look for the Dreaming King in his cave and listen to the sea.”

  “I can’t,” she said, thinking guiltily of the scholar’s fish. But it was the thorns she wanted. Even more than Bourne, she realized surprisedly, she wanted the ancient, unfinished tale growing under her pen. “And you should go back to the wood before the mages start searching for you and find you here in my bed.”

  “No one will come,” he assured her. “Students get tired or frustrated, wander off for a day. Usually they’re back by supper time. So I will be.”

  “I have to work.”

  “No, you don’t. Not today.”

  “Yes,” she said, taking his face between her hands to hold his eyes. “I do.”

  He gazed back at her, reminding her of what she was so carelessly tossing out of her bed: all that wealth of gold hair and eyes and skin, that smiling mouth. At her implacable silence, his eyes narrowed; he breathed incredulously, “It’s that book. Isn’t it?”

  She let go of him, rolled out from under him. “I work,” she said doggedly, “for the librarians, to repay them for my upbringing and education. I may even get a coin or two from the scholar with the fish manuscript. I can’t just absent myself for the day for no reason.”

  He followed her out of bed, caught her shoulders. “You promised me that you would let the librarians know you have it.”

  “I will,” she promised again. “When I’m finished with it.”

  “Show me what you’re doing.”

  “No,” she said adamantly. “It’s secret.”

  “Whose secret?”

  “Mine.”

  “No, it’s not.” His hands tightened on her shoulders; his eyes looked suddenly unfamiliar, a mage’s eyes, she thought, reflecting the magic that they glimpsed. “It’s someone else’s secret, and you’ve become part of the secret. You’re tangled in those brambles. I want to know what they’re hiding. Or I’ll tell the librarians myself. And the mages.”

  She stared at him, flushed and angry, wondering why she had ever liked him. “You won’t tell,” she said finally, “if I show you.”

  “Unless it’s dangerous—”

  “It’s not dangerous! It’s just some very old story that I want to know the ending to before I give the book up and never see it again.”

  “They’d let you finish it. You’ve already figured out the alphabet.” He pushed at her disheveled hair, trying to find her eyes again. “Wouldn’t they? Or is there some reason why you think they wouldn’t let you finish?”

  “It’s not—” She drew breath, trying to make sense of her own disorderly thoughts. “I don’t understand why I don’t want to give it up. Maybe if you let me finish it, I might understand. Maybe then I won’t need it anymore, and I can give it to the librarians without a second thought. But you’re right: I love that alphabet of thorn; it has worked its way into my heart. I’ll show you what it is, but you won’t understand. All you’ll see is the story of two people who died long before Raine ever existed.”

  “Perhaps.” His own face had lost color, she saw; he looked more serious than she had thought he could be in his facile life. “But the most powerful thing I have learned at the mages’ school is that words can have a life of their own. Show me what you’re doing. If I see danger in it, I’ll tell you. And then, if you don’t see it, I will tell the librarians.”

  She sighed gustily. “All right. Then you will leave me alone?”

  He blinked, startled at that. “Alone—”

  “For today at least,” she said, relenting; her own hands rose to cling to his straight shoulders. He dropped his face against hers; she felt him sigh.

  “For today,” he promised.

  They dressed then, scraped what was left
of the porridge out of the bottom of the cauldron in the refectory. She led him deep into the stones, down the long corridor that ended in half-bubbles of chambers carved along it, all of them so full of manuscripts, books, and scrolls that there was barely room for dust. Her desk, half-in, half-out of the cluttered alcove was, as always, undisturbed except for Laidley sitting on it.

  He caught sight of Bourne and slid off, stood, wordless and awkward. Nepenthe wished they would both disappear.

  She said shortly, “Laidley, this is Bourne of Seale. He gave me the book about Axis and Kane. I told him I’d show him what I was translating.”

  “Axis and Kane?” Bourne repeated, amazed.

  Laidley had flushed. His tongue became unstuck from the roof of his mouth. “You wouldn’t show me,” he said accusingly.

  “You didn’t threaten to go to the librarians if I didn’t,” she said dourly. “Bourne thinks it might be magic, or dangerous.”

  “That moldy old tale?”

  “No,” Bourne said precisely. “The language of the moldy old tale.”

  “Since you’re here, too, Laidley, I’ll show you both.”

  Laidley sniffed, but refrained from comment. Nepenthe opened the book and her manuscript paper and, index finger moving from thorn to thorn, began to read.

  “‘He fought his first battle at the age of seven…’”

  She broke into her reading now and then to question a troublesome word or explain a choice she had made. They listened silently, their eyes on her face until she finished. Then, unexpectedly, they turned their faces to gaze at one another for enlightenment.

  “I don’t understand the compulsion,” Bourne said finally.

  “Neither do I.” Laidley went to the desk, studied the coiling and uncoiling letters curiously. “But it is an odd little mystery, who actually wrote it.”

  “Kane wrote it,” Nepenthe said stubbornly.

  “How could he—she—have quoted poetry written centuries after her death?” Laidley asked reasonably.