The Paper Sword (3 page)

Her peal of delight was accompanied this time by laughter from Torgee and Vallaine. “Very accurate!” Vallaine said. Xemion, though the impact had hurt him, cupped his hand playfully over his heart and proclaimed in a dramatic voice “I am sore wounded. I fear unto death.” He fell to the ground and remained still. This seemed to satisfy Tharfen. With a look of triumph she pocketed her sling and caught up with Torgee and Vallaine. Xemion got back to his feet with a beckoning wave to Saheli and went on with them.

Saheli stomped her foot angrily, but then she too set off through the fleeing fog-shadows and the bent-over-backward daisies in the direction of the sea. In front of her, Tharfen was now striding proudly along beside Vallaine, her hand as it swung back and forth keeping good time with his. Was it Saheli's imagination, or was his hand even redder than before?

The Mammuth That's Not There

T
he
sun shone brightly above them as they looked down at the sea from the edge of the promontory. The wind seemed to be gusting every way at once, but the thunderhead, massive as a mountain, had stalled at the horizon. A thin, patchy sea fog scurried before it like some vassal army sent in to test the isle's defences. It bunched up at the foot of the promontory, obscuring most of the road that ran along the bottom of the cliffs. Saheli reached into the pocket of her cloak and removed the ancient telescope that she had brought from the tower tree and peered into it anxiously as though it might somehow enable her to pierce through the fog.

“Where is your mammuth?” she asked indignantly.

“I'm not sure,” Vallaine replied with a smirk. “I last saw it down at the shore, below us. Which as you can see is now buried in fog.” He put a hand over his eyes and looked in an almost mocking way into the thundercloud as Saheli's sense of alarm steadily increased.

“You said there was a mammuth. You convinced them to come with you and see this mammuth. So where is it?” Her voice was sharp and shaking a little, but her hand was tightly wrapped around her sunflower staff. She had made it from the tallest of Xemion's collection of giant sunflower stalks. It was hollow on the inside but hard like wood on the outside and she wondered if it came to it whether it was strong enough to knock Vallaine down the side of the cliff quicker than he could draw that cutlass and do whatever evil deed it was he had planned.

There was a sudden gust of wind from the west and the thin veil of mist on the sea shifted. “There!” Tharfen shouted. A massive grey face was suddenly exposed moving steadily forward out of the sea fog. It had red ruby eyes, a trunk as wide as an oak tree, and two dreadful tusks curved up to dripping red tips.

“Yes, there she is,” Vallaine announced proudly. As the fog parted, they beheld a beautiful Elphaerean war galleon, its green sails full of wind, its prow carved in the shape of a mammuth's head. They watched as a tall sailor came onto the deck and blew a long white curving horn that might actually have been a mammuth tusk. The call shimmered over the waters and thundered up the side of the cliff.

“That's it!” Xemion exclaimed.

Saheli put aside her telescope. “What a beautiful ship,” she whispered.

“So?” Vallaine asked, turning to her with a grin.

“So … so,” she replied. “I guess you tricked me. With words.”

“No apologies needed, young lady. You must be careful whom you trust in this world. I was just having a little fun with you.”

The galleon slowed to a halt about two hundred yards from the water's edge. A small rowboat was lowered and several sailors and one man-like creature that seemed to have the head of a bird started to row toward shore as they all looked on in awe from the cliff.

Vallaine took the opportunity to take Xemion and Saheli aside.

“I wonder if I might talk to you two privately now,” he asked. “It is an issue not for the ears of the other two,” he whispered. “I believe them to be the children of kwislings.” His face took on an expression of extreme contempt as he pronounced this last word, for it was the name given to those Phaerlanders who had betrayed their own people by swearing fealty to the Pathan magma god.

“It's not their fault if their parents are —”

“I'm not blaming the children. Believe me,” Vallaine cut her off. “But there will be risk to me and my cause whether Tharfen spills the truth deliberately or by accident. The less they know the better.”

Despite Saheli's continuing hesitation, Xemion agreed and the three of them walked a little farther along the edge of the promontory. When they stopped, Vallaine grew serious.

“You wondered, Saheli, why I hid and watched you. I'll tell you why. It is because I am looking for certain special people. But I won't know those people by their outward appearance. I'll know them by what they do.”

“And what is that?”

“I am looking for a cohort of new Elphaereans. I am looking for Phaerlanders with courage and strength and passion to come and join me and some others to take up arms and old ways once again in the city of Ulde.”

Xemion and Saheli were both astonished at this suggestion. The city of Ulde had lain in ruins for fifty years, ever since the Great Kone had stopped turning and the brutal Pathans, no longer held back by magical armaments, had conquered the Phaer Isle.

“But I thought —”

“I know what you thought,” Vallaine said, cutting him off. “But there has long been an outpost in the city. We've been recovering it block by block right under the Pathan's noses, waiting for the right time. And that time is now. That's why for the past month I have travelled all the regions of the Phaer Isle from east to west looking for one hundred worthies. I have found many brave, daring souls in other parts of the isle, but from this end, which has been so cut off, I've had no success. I've been through all the villages along the coast and found not a single one who was not an avowed kwisling. I tell you I had given up. I came up here to signal my ship in order to depart, and then I beheld you, Xemion, and your way with the sword and —”

“It's not a real sword,” Saheli cut in.

“It certainly looked like one. And how, by the way, can you have learned those ancient poses, Xemion? When all knowledge of them — all teaching and texts — have been banned or burned for a half-century. Well, it hardly matters. It's what he does with it — the way he feels about it. And you, Saheli, the way you almost disarmed me with your staff, and I a skilled warrior. You have the reflexes and strength of a lioness. Do you realize with proper training you could both make outstanding swordfighters?”

Xemion looked triumphantly at Saheli as the wind picked up again, buffeting the daisies and giving the rowboat containing the sailors more momentum as it headed to shore.

“And?” Xemion's voice was full of a lifetime of yearning.

“And we can offer you that training. You have heard of Tiri Lighthammer, the triplicant?”

“Of course,” Xemion replied, his excitement mounting. “He stopped the Kagars at Phaer Point.”

“Well, he lives yet. But he's finally dying from his wounds of fifty years ago — and that is why I seek the hundred, because he and some others want to pass the old skills and traditions along before it's too late.”

“Why would the Pathans allow such a thing?” Saheli inquired pointedly.

“Have you not heard about their civil war?” Vallaine asked incredulously.

Xemion shook his head. “We hear almost nothing from the outside world here.”

“Ha. Well let your joy be great then, for the Pathans, for various ethical reasons too complex for we poor Phaerlanders to comprehend, have been murdering, not us and our kind, but each other for the past five years. Soon they say the rebel army will be at the very gates of Pathar Deeps. They've had to call every single legion home to defend it. Soon there will be no one to guard the Phaer Isle for them but their traitorous kwislings. And they are weak and corrupt and frightened. This is a moment when even if we only stand up to them with whatever few weapons we have hidden or made we might take back our Phaer Isle with the least risk of bloodshed.” Vallaine paused for dramatic effect. “Two days from now. Midday on the equinox at the remains of the ancient Panthemium. That is the time and place. Any later than that will be too late. That is when my chosen hundred will gather and speak vows and take up once again the weapons of liberty. Now, my ship down there is setting sail for Phaer Point this very evening,” Vallaine continued. “We'll be climbing the cliffs of Ulde by tomorrow's dawn. I want the two of you to be there with us.”

“Well, I'm sorry, but we can't,” Saheli said firmly. “We have duties to return to.”

Vallaine snorted. “What of Xemion's grand speech when he assumed the Phaer postures? What duty could be more important than this duty to our people — to our history?”

“We have a duty to one who depends on us,” Saheli shot back fiercely. “And you really must not try to keep us from it.”

By this time, Tharfen had approached them and was listening in. “Old Mum,” she piped up.

“Ah,” said Vallaine.

“Really old.”

Vallaine looked at Xemion. “And she needs both of you?” he asked.

Xemion and Saheli looked at each other uncertainly. “Please return to your brother and give us some privacy,” Xemion snapped at Tharfen. She sneered at him but obligingly made her way back to Torgee, who still stood at the edge of the promontory watching the
Mammuth
bob up and down in the waves.

“Perhaps just you could come, Xemion. This will be a historic day. Anyone there will be forever honoured. This will be the rebirth of the Phaer Republic, Phaer swordsmanship.”

Xemion finally said what he had been avoiding saying. “We are both bound by a vow to return.”

Vallaine sighed. “How long will you be bound by your vow?”

Xemion looked at Saheli sadly. “It is indefinite,” he said quietly.

“I see,” said Vallaine, regret in his voice. “So there is no chance then that you can join us?”

“I'm sorry,” Xemion replied. “I cannot.”

Saheli saw the disappointment in Xemion's eyes. “But what can we do, if … if somehow we can be free to join you later?” she asked.

Vallaine turned and peered at her sharply. “Well, there is a way to go overground if you leave today, but I cannot tell you.”

“What do you mean you can't tell us?”

“If it should become known to the kwislings that there's an overland route to this part of the Phaer Isle, they will come even faster.”

“But we are not kwislings.”

“I know you aren't but …” He nodded toward Torgee and Tharfen.

“We won't tell them,” Xemion said adamantly.

Vallaine took a deep breath and eyed the two of them intently before he reached his decision. “I'm going to take a chance and tell you then, but I'm afraid I will have to ask you to swear a traditional Phaer oath.”

Down below, the bird-headed man jumped out of the rowboat and pulled it in to shore. Vallaine's whisper grew even quieter. “Do you swear not to tell anyone else what I am about to tell you?”

They both said yes.

In a quiet but steady voice Vallaine described to Xemion and Saheli the overland route they would have to take to reach the city of Ulde. It didn't seem such a grand secret when they heard it because most of it was to travel along the old coastal road and go around the outside of the city to the eastern gate.

“Now remember … you've sworn to tell no one.”

“We won't forget,” Xemion said solemnly.

“We must shake on it then.” Saheli's heart pounded with sudden fear as Vallaine once again stuck out his red hand. Xemion gripped it for the second time that day, but there was no extended shaking this time. After a few moments Vallaine stopped and offered his hand to Saheli.

“Agreed?” he asked.

“Agreed,” Saheli said, but instead of extending her own hand to shake his she pushed it firmly into a pocket of her cloak and bowed,

“Come now, Saheli. Surely you know an oath can only be bound by the shaking of hands.” Saheli shook her head sternly. Vallaine kept his red hand out, a look of determination and annoyance on his face. “Now you told me you would swear a traditional Phaerland oath and the traditional Phaerland oath always ends with the shaking of hands. I'm going to have to insist that you shake my hand,” he said sternly. “Otherwise, I have told you my secret and I and my fellows are left vulnerable with no good reason to trust in your silence.”

“You should've told me before that I would have to shake your hand,” Saheli said, her heart beating so hard Xemion could almost hear it in her voice.

Vallaine stared at her angrily as Xemion shifted from foot to foot. “I don't like to be tricked.”

“Well, Xemion speaks for me,” she said with a blush.

Vallaine let out a snort of disbelief, his hand still thrust forward. “No man may speak for a woman unless they are bound in marriage.”

“Or betrothed,” she blurted out, shooting a hurried glance at Xemion and gripping her staff in both hands.

Vallaine swung around on Xemion. “Betrothed, Xemion? At your age?”

Even though Xemion's heart was fluttering like some kind of trapped bird trying to get out of his ribcage, he managed to stand up taller and put his shoulders back a little. “I have sixteen years.”

“Do you speak for her?”

“I do,” he said. There was surety in his voice but his eyes were on the ground.

“What if I don't believe you?”

“Then you will know how I feel about
you!”
Saheli shot back.

Vallaine stared back at her with whatever antagonism there was between them in full view, and then suddenly the thundercloud broke and the rains came pelting down, full fat drops right off the sea, almost as hard as hail. Within seconds it was a deluge.