Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  He took a slow, meditative draft of brandy and let it rest in his mouth while he considered.

  "I had a lot of time to myself to think shit over not too long ago," he said at length, holding up his right hand so that the lamplight fell upon the scars the Shaft shackle had left on his wrist. "I'll tell you what I think. I think capital-L Life has no meaning in a human sense—it is what it is, like a rock, or the sun, or anything else. It means itself, and that's all. But that doesn't mean our lives have no meaning, you follow? Life might not have a meaning of its own, but the stories we tell about it do. You told me once that the universe is a structure of coincidence. It means whatever you decide it means. Which is another way of saying: What your life means depends on how you tell the story."

  "That's not good enough," I said. Like all words of wisdom, those had been much easier to say than to accept. "What meaning can I possibly give a story like mine?"

  "How the fuck should I know? Maybe if you just tell it the best you can, it'll grow its own meaning."

  And that is what I hold on to, now. That is how he saved me, yet again. It's my life.

  What it means depends on how I tell the story.

  14

  I said good-bye to Caine in a grey dawn at the dockside, lashed by spits of winter rain. Lady Avery was already bundled into her cabin within the riverbarge, and the crew stood at ready, waiting for Caine.

  Past his shoulder, as we embraced, I saw Lady Faith, still on deck, watching with wide, solemn eyes—making sure that her father was not going to leave her again. Beside her, Orbek stood in motionless guard, an assault rifle cradled in his massive arms.

  I was at the dockside incognito, dressed in a commoner's tunic and pants, covered only by a woolen cloak that hung heavy and wet about my shoulders. I do not fear to walk unguarded among my subjects; I still have skills of hand and mind to defend myself at need, and the word of T'nnalldion that the Empire will not go untended should I fall.

  Caine wore no cloak of his own, only a tunic and pants of black leather that seemed to bristle with knives at every angle. These made embracing him an uncomfortable business

  But I suppose it would have been so, regardless.

  "What will you do, now?"

  He smiled at me from under hair plastered flat by the freezing rain. "After I get Faith and Shanks settled in? Maybe it's better you shouldn't know. I don't want you to worry."

  "I'm not your mother." I fisted him in the ribs and tried for a tone of cheerful banter. "I'm your king."

  "Yeah, well, let's keep that just between us, huh?" Then he shrugged, and grinned at me. "It's occurred to me that if I'm gonna be raising a daughter on this world, I'm gonna want this to be a decent world to raise her on. So I'll be heading southwest—down into warm weather. There's a place in northern Kor I need to visit. Chanazta'atsi."

  "Chanazta'atsi?" The name was familiar, and after only a moment I remembered why. "There's a dil in Chanazta'atsi."

  His grin spread. "I know."

  Before I could pursue this further, his eyes shifted toward something over my shoulder and his smile faded. His face hardened to stone.

  I followed his gaze. Toward us through the rain came a man dressed as I was, though the hood of his cloak was drawn up until it occulted his face. He carried a large black valise in his right hand, and only when I saw the bulge of white linen around his left did I realize who he was.

  A twist of motion in my peripheral vision: Orbek adjusting his grip on the rifle to hold it at low-ready.

  Caine stepped away from me and moved to intercept Raithe. He stopped midway, and his hand went beneath the hem of his tunic at the small of his back; it came out with a large, matte-black automatic pistol, which he held against the back of his thigh, where Raithe could not see it. He waited, motionless, as Raithe approached. He said something that I did not hear, and Raithe replied by lifting the valise and offering it to Caine.

  "It is the only gift I can offer that might have meaning," I heard him say. "And the greatest gift you can give in return is to accept it from my hand."

  They spoke together then for some little time, while I watched. As did Orbek.

  As did Faith.

  What they said to each other is not part of my story, but it was not long before Caine shrugged, showed Raithe the gun he held—and then put it away.

  Raithe departed with a bare nod in my direction. Caine returned to my side and handed the valise to me. "You might find this useful," he said; then he explained to me what it was, and how it is used, and left me there on the dockside in the rain, holding the Caine Mirror in its case.

  "See you around," he said as the poleboys unmoored the barge and shoved it away from the dockside.

  I could only wave.

  He returned my wave with a nod; then as the freezing rain thickened toward sleet, shading the barge and all upon it to grey silhouettes, I saw his dim ghost place an arm around the blur of his daughter's shoulders, and they turned and went into the wash of firelight through the cabin door.

  Orbek stood in the rain for a moment longer. He gave me one solemn nod, then followed them within.

  I stood in the sleet until the barge could no longer be seen.

  Then I came back here, to my writing table in the library, and poured myself more of this fine Tinnaran, and finally—hours or days later—summoned the courage to use Caine's gift to me.

  15

  Some months after the battle was over, war was finally declared. I wasn't there—I don't know the details—but I have a powerful and detailed imagination, which has proved accurate in the past.

  I see it like this:

  The members of the Board of Governors are summoned to emergency plenary session; their personal implants—similar to thoughtmitters—alert them to the emergency, and each of them hurries to find a private place where they can activate without fear of discovery or interruption.

  For Leisureman Marc Vilo, the alert comes while he's sitting on the toilet, off the master bedroom of his sprawling estate in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. This being already more than private enough for his purposes, he speaks the required code phrase, then sighs as the reality of the bathroom around him thins to translucency; his final independent thought, as his consciousness melds with the electronic group mind that is the Bog, is that this business of being on the Board—far from the huge accession of power it had seemed to him as an outsider—is really kind of a pain in the ass. Especially now that the entire Studio system has been shut down for more than a month. What he finds, though, is electrifying.

  Every POV screen in every Studio on Earth has suddenly come back to life, and they all show the same thing.

  Caine.

  He squats on his heels in some kind of desert setting: a rock outcrop-ping at his back, scraps of scrub like sagebrush around his feet. He wears his familiar costume of black leather, and his familiar wolf-grin. His hair is a bit more grey than some of the Bog recall, and his waist a trace thicker, but there is nothing about him that looks the faintest bit old, or soft.

  He bears no resemblance to the former Chairman of the San Francisco Studio.

  Shortly thereafter, telemetry confirms from whom the POV is being transmitted: an Actor named Francis Rossi, aka J'Than. Several of the Bog comment that this seems ironic—wasn't J'Than the Actor who had been used as a camera some months ago, when all this began? A lightning consult of the Studio's online data files confirms that he is.

  Caine, meanwhile, seems to understand that his audience is now assembled. "Hi there," he says, darkly cheerful. "You fuckers know who I am, so I'll bite right to the gristle."

  He stands. "I know there are people over there who are thinking, Yeah, big deal, we'll reopen the colonies. Yeah, we'll find a way around this transfer shield, and then we'll send Actors and tanks and guns and all the rest of that shit. I know people are thinking that. I know I'm talking to some of those people right now.

  "I know you're thinking: In the end, numbers and technology let you do w
hatever you want. You're thinking there really isn't dick we can do about it. Well, guess what?

  "I'm here to tell you that you're wrong.

  "We can hurt you."

  He walks away, around the outcrop of wind-eroded sandstone, and J'Than follows. Caine stares off, far down a long, sloping hill; several buildings cluster in the twilit distance, window lights winking on as the sun gives way to night. "Sure, you can probably find a technological answer that'll get you back to Overworld. I just wanted to let you know that we can get to Earth."

  He points down at those buildings. "See? You know what that is?" Marc Vilo, alone among the Board of Governors, does.

  Holy crap, he thinks. That's my house.

  Something seizes J'Than from behind—possibly Caine himself—and he seems to fly through the air: desert rolls beneath him, and the complex soars to meet him with terrifying speed.

  In his bathroom, Marc Vilo's hand finds a hazily translucent key on the pad beside the toilet, and alarm klaxons blare.

  They land on the pool deck, beside an artificial waterfall, and the shriek of sirens seems to please Caine in some darkly savage place. "Think about it," he says. "All of you. Okay, you can get at us. Now we can get at you. We know what your tanks can do to our cities. Imagine what a dragon can do to New York. Imagine being in a skyscraper in downtown Chicago while rockmagi liquefy its foundation.

  "Imagine."

  The general consensus of the Board is that Caine must be bluffing. Dwarfs? Dragons? Magick on that scale cannot be done on Earth

  As if in answer, Caine turns away from J'Than. "Ma'elKoth?"

  A shaft of crimson flame bursts from his outstretched hands, and the building he faces explodes.

  He watches it burn, grinning.

  He turns back to J'Than and leans close, his face demon-lit by flames behind. "Marc? You home, old buddy? Knock fucking knock."

  The Vilo Intercontinental secmen who guard the estate barely have a chance to prime their weapons before Caine scatters them with a tidal bore of fire. He strides among the buildings, and his merest glance strikes ablaze even the brick of the walls.

  When he reaches the main house, he batters through the carbon-fiber-reinforced ceramic armor of the front door with his bare hands. Brick and stone shatter under his fists, and he disappears within, leaving the Actor staring helplessly after him.

  He disappears from the view of the Bog. But Marc Vilo sees him when Caine rips the bathroom door from its hinges. To Marc—half his consciousness subsumed in the Board—Caine seems translucent, only partially there, but his half reality is doubly terrifying.

  "Never expected you'd die on the toilet, huh?"

  "Hari—" he says. "Hari, for the love of God, please—"

  "Which god?"

  "Hari, I'm begging you, please—c'mon, kid, all the stuff I've done for you—I made you. Please, you can't—"

  Caine shakes his head. "You of all people, Marc. Of all the people in the world—in any world—"

  His lips stretch open over his teeth, feral and cold. "You should have known better than to fuck with my family."

  That is the last Vilo sees: his eyeballs boil and burst in the first wash of flame. He does, however, have time to hear himself scream.

  To the Bog, watching through J'Than's eyes, it seems the house detonates like a fuel-air bomb. J'Than himself is hurled tumbling through the air by the force of it, and lands gasping and stunned upon the lush green grass that defines this desert home's front lawn. For several seconds, the Bog allows itself to believe that Caine might have perished in the explosion, but then he walks out of the flames. Unhurt.

  Not even singed.

  "You want a war?" he says with that same dark and savage cheer. "Bring it on."

  He leans so close to J'Than that his teeth fill the world. "As of right now, the Studio is out of business. So is the Overworld Company. "Overworld is closed."

  He puts his hands on J'Than's face.

  "Thank you, and good night."

  The light from the last Actor's eyes contracts to a point, and winks out.

  16

  So:

  Here I am.

  At my desk, my head full of stories.

  There are so many heroes in these stories: Hari, and Caine; Raithe, and the Caineslayer; Avery Shanks and Kierendal and Damon of Jhanthogen Bluff

  Tan'elKoth, of course.

  And, I suppose—in my backward way—even me.

  I remember reading somewhere that the name for how we structure reality is myth: that myths are stories that offer a perception of order within the chaos of existence.

  I'm still not sure I will ever understand, but I think I see how to survive without understanding. I will tell the story as best I can, and let it grow its own meaning. And if I can't find myths that properly order the chaos of my life, I'll make up some of my own.

  My story begins:

  A tale is told of twin boys born to different mothers.

  One is dark by nature, the other light. One is rich, the other poor. One is harsh, the other gentle. One is forever youthful the other old before his time. One is mortal.

  They share no bond of blood or sympathy, but they are twins nonetheless. They each live without ever knowing that they are brothers.

  They each die fighting the blind god.

  There are some who say that Time is itself a hammer: that each slow second marks another tap that makes big rocks into little rocks, waterfalls into canyons, cliffs into beaches.

  There are some who say that Time is instead a blade. They see the dance of its razored tip, poised like a venomous snake, forever ready to slay faster than the eye can see.

  And there are some who say that Time is both hammer and blade.

  They say the hammer is a sculptor's mallet, and the blade is a sculptor's chisel: that each stroke is a refinement, a perfecting, a discovery of truth and beauty within what would otherwise be blank and lifeless stone.

  And I name this saying wisdom.