The Paper Sword (14 page)

Dark Under Houses

T
here
were no signs of life anywhere. But this route had obviously been well trodden for the crystal debris was compact underfoot. By Xemion's reckoning they were now in the part of the city known as the Thrall Quarter. Anya Kuzelnika had told him in some detail all the history she knew of the Thralls. They had acquired their name because of the centuries their ancestors had spent in blood thrall to the Necromancer of Arthenow across the western ocean. Having shaken their thrall of sorcery, and thereby slavery in their homeland, they had arrived in the Phaer Isle five hundred years ago, still wracked with the compulsions of obedience but gifted enough to channel them into other disciplines: art, for instance, or, in the case of many female Thralls, soldiering. The men were generally the smaller of the two genders and they were known for their fine miniatures and other less social compulsions such as romance, literature, and architecture.

Examples of the latter soon became evident to the two travellers as the tops of particularly tall spires and towers began to emerge from the heaps. These were of such elegant construction that Xemion and Saheli couldn't help but catch their breath as they beheld them. The Thralls adorned most of their buildings with giant crystals and lenses in an attempt to re-create the spell-made environment of their former homeland and many of the half-buried towers still had exposed facets that glinted blindingly if you caught them at the right angle. Some were pitted or cracked or dulled by time, but many were still perfect and beautiful and seemed to be uninhabited.

There was less and less of the crystal dust as they proceeded. Soon their feet began to touch upon the ancient paving stones themselves. This thrilled Xemion. He saw it as a sign of his long-anticipated destiny. Saheli took no comfort in it at all. Her mind was filled again with that lilting melody. Only she was beginning to hear it more clearly. There was a voice now, her mother's voice she was sure, and there were words, but they were utterly incomprehensible to her. It was almost as though they were being dragged backward through time. She saw again the wrenched-around face of the woman at the wells and reached into the inner pocket of her cloak and drew out the black bottle. Somewhat furtively, as Xemion strode on just in front of her, she uncorked it, lifted it to her lips, and drank deeply.
Forget well and go forward
. She had now drunk half of the liquid, but there was still no noticeable effect. The melody roared on accompanied by ever more brutal memories. And one in particular that kept cycling and recycling, making her feel like she was being ripped apart: an old man with a long white beard turning the crank handle of a large spell kone …

The road now began to have a slight downward slant, but up ahead it looked as though it levelled off and then began to rise somewhat steeply. When they got to the beginning of the ascent, however, they realized it wasn't the road that rose at all but the houses that floated up above the road without any apparent support.

“This must have taken some strong spellcraft to have lasted this long,” Xemion whispered. The first house was mere inches above the ground, but as they continued running along the road, the houses were poised at higher and higher elevations till they were a foot above the ground and then a yard. And all the while there was not a single sign of life anywhere.

Xemion had seen the look of numb horror deepening on Saheli's face, but there was no turning back now. He wished he could take her hand to comfort her but he had never done that and he didn't dare now. Instead he rested his hand on the hilt of his painted sword. For a while, as they proceeded, the elevation of the floating houses about them remained constant. But soon there were more and more of them, so many they were jammed window to window with one another, and some were pushed over sideways like balloons on the edge of a big bunch all tied to the same string. And they were hovering now not just beside the road but over it, darkening the way. Before long, Xemion and Saheli entered a dim twilight punctured only by whatever little beams of sunlight found their way through the bunched up houses overhead. Saheli's fear quickened with each step. She wanted to turn around and run, but where to? And that melody was playing so loudly in her mind she could hardly hear anything else. Xemion knew nothing about the melody but he could feel the panic growing in her.

Suddenly the music stopped in Saheli's mind and in that moment, in the dark under the houses, she sensed someone or something very close. It was just over her shoulder. An eye. A great yellow eye with darkness at the centre. For only the briefest moment, she turned to look at it, and in that moment it quickly came in much closer. Huge and looming with suffering, it wanted terribly to be seen. She felt its longing, its beauty, but Saheli, her heart beating cold and quick, looked away instantly and thereafter faced straight ahead, focusing forward and away from that eye. This took so much will power she couldn't even speak. Little by little, as Xemion lead them on, the black centre of that sidelong eye kept welling and pulsing into her field of vision, huge and somehow intimate, almost as though it were her own eye, out there. For a moment, the sun flared through a crack between the houses overhead and she saw other shapes reflected in the shining surface of its pupil: dark fragments, shadow-bits of people gravitating to her. Saheli turned and looked right into that dark, beautiful eye, and screamed as something like night seemed to rush in on her.

“Close your eyes! Close your eyes quickly,” someone shouted, but there was now a black whirlwind of shadows winding around her, eyes everywhere homing in, zeroing in on Saheli, pressing at her.

Saheli screamed again and batted at the air with her staff, but it did no good. Suddenly there was a hissing sound and a light erupted so bright it could not be looked at. As quickly as they had come, the eye and the shadow beings dissipated. In their place, barely visible as whatever fuel he had ignited flickered out, she saw the silhouette of someone in a dark cloak. Saheli thrust her staff forward into the centre of the person's chest so hard he fell over. She began to flee blindly the other way into the darkness. With Xemion not far behind, she bolted toward a dim light far up ahead. Behind them the man shouted “Stop!” But his voice was suddenly cut off. It wasn't until Xemion tried to call out to Saheli and heard not even the sound of his own voice that he realized they had entered an area that allowed no sound, not even the echo of their footsteps as they fled. Saheli screamed soundlessly and when no sound emerged from her mouth she screamed again in even greater terror.

The houses were now so low to the ground Xemion and Saheli had to run crouched down, almost doubled-over. Just as Xemion began to fear they were trapped, they rounded a corner and burst out into the sunlight, startled to hear the sound of their own gasps for breath, relieved to hear anything. They were in some kind of meadow where wild grass grew, punctuated here and there by bushes and small trees.

Saheli glanced back desperately the way they had come but there were no obvious signs of continued pursuit. She looked up. Not a cloud in the sky, only distant birdlike specks way high up. She released a long shuddering sigh of relief, but Xemion was still looking around anxiously. Something was wrong. He was dimly aware of a far-off whistling sound. Slowly it began to increase in volume. Xemion scanned all around before he looked up.

“Oh no!”

Saheli was already staring up at the sky. One of those small specks was rapidly growing larger and larger. Soon the whistling became a shrieking. They both froze in terror as a shadow loomed larger and larger over them. Suddenly, a figure leaped out of the rubble. Running low, quick like light, he pushed Xemion and Saheli, launching them out of the shadow just as the house hit the ground. A mighty eruption of broken bricks, exploded soil, glass, and tile swept them up into a rolling ball of debris that knocked them off their feet. Coughing, hacking, Xemion and Saheli arose, their eyes stinging with the still-flying grit.

“Do exactly as I tell you,” the man who had rescued them shouted, standing up and shaking the dust from his black cloak.

A three-legged Thrall with a huge lens abruptly emerged, as though from nowhere, and began to scour through the debris, picking out items of value and stuffing them into a sack. Two skinny Thrall children with nets attempted, without much success, to snatch out of the air various household objects that were rapidly floating back up into the sky.

“Watch out!” the man said. He pointed to the sky and they saw that another house was falling. “This way,” he ordered, darting off to the left. Without question they ran after him. “Come on!” The man ran around the heap of debris the falling house had left and led them back into the dark under the houses. Here, illuminated by one of the sporadic beams of sunlight, he stopped for a moment and drew back his hood so they could see his face. But Saheli already knew who it was. She'd known from the moment his hand had pushed her. It was Vallaine.

Riddle Craft

V
allaine
led them some distance under the houses before drawing them into a protected alcove under an extended upside-down roof that looked out on the sunlight. There, he removed a telescope from inside his cloak, which now that the light was stronger Xemion saw he wore with the grey side out. His hand, Xemion also noticed, was not as red as he remembered it. Carefully, Vallaine examined the sky. “We'll have to wait here. Another two are due to fall and it won't be safe to proceed any farther until they do.”

“We are greatly in your debt,” Xemion acknowledged breathlessly, his voice still trembling.

“You are very lucky I was sent back this way this morning,” Vallaine responded. “However did you get so far off course?”

Xemion began to explain what had happened to them, but before he got beyond the burning of the tower tree there was a whistling above and soon another structure crashed down.

“Well, my bad luck is your good luck,” Vallaine shouted as the dust began to settle. “I should be in my quarters right now shining my buckles and preparing my finest clothes for this long-awaited day, but we received reports just this morning of a possible emergency in Ilde and we —”

Saheli looked up sharply. “Emergency?” she asked.

“Nothing for you to worry about, Saheli,” he replied in as comforting a voice as he could muster. “My suspicion is it's another false alarm.”

“What do you mean?” Xemion asked.

Vallaine shrugged and shook his head, showing a little exasperation. “Another one of these dragon sightings, I'm afraid.”

“But it's not a false alarm,” Xemion spoke up excitedly. “I saw a dragon myself.”

“You did?” Vallaine looked sideways at him.

“I did. I looked it in the eye.” A ripple of fear ran through Xemion again at the very thought of that cold dragon gaze.

“Then you must tell me where it was and after I set you two on the right path I must hurry as fast as I can, for that poor beast is in danger where it is.” In response to Xemion's querying look, he continued. “As you know, our people always had a mystical bond with the dragon kind, but among the Pathans, the flesh of dragons is considered a delicacy. Now that the dragons are indeed returning to the Phaer Isle, as is increasingly being reported, we must do our best to protect them.”

When Xemion described where he had seen the dragon, Vallaine said, “I know that valley well. It is not so far beyond the Vale of Two Wells.”

“Yes, that is the way we came.”

Vallaine raised his eyebrows in surprise. “The two of you traversed the Vale of Two Wells?” He looked at Saheli for confirmation, but she stared right through him, not hearing.

“Yes, we did,” Xemion spoke up.

“But however did you get by?” Vallaine asked, sounding a little alarmed.

Xemion looked away. “The only way was to drink some of the water.”

“I see.” Vallaine's brow creased in concern. “So you had to take a little sip of the memory water?”

“Well, I did. I drank from the well of remembering and Saheli drank from the well of forgetting.”

“And?”

“And we both drank a lot more than a sip, I'd say.”

Vallaine had that amused or concerned look again. “And?” he asked.

“And what?”

Vallaine looked at Saheli until she looked back at him. “And have you forgotten anything, Saheli?” he asked finally.

Saheli twisted her mouth as though she had just tasted something sour and repulsive. “No,” she said bitterly. “Ever since we stopped in that cabin in the woods, memories — brutal memories — have been returning to me. I wish I
could
forget them.” By the end of the statement she was gritting her teeth and her fear had developed an edge of anger, but as soon as she stopped speaking the anger melted away.

“Hmmm. Well, I doubt if you have much to worry about then,” Vallaine said with a glance at Xemion. “Those wells were made by oral spells spoken by the ancient Magi themselves, they say. Before they committed their spoken spells to the text of the Great Kone to make this world, they made those wells. But even those ancient foundational spoken spells have been uncertain since the time of the spellfire. It would likely require a skilled middle mage to initiate their powers over memory.” He grinned at her and made a little bow. “I just hope, fair maid, that the taste of that water won't make you forget your noble friend with the red hand.” He moved as if to place his hand upon her shoulder, but she flinched away from him.

“What is a middle mage?” Xemion asked.

“You've heard of a medium? Well a middle mage is a medium — someone who has no spellcraft of his own but carries the thaumatological charge across obstacles. If a spell is initiated, but blocked, a middle mage may sometimes carry it across the void and deliver it to its true intention.”

“I have never heard of such a thing,” Xemion said.

“I'm not surprised.” Vallaine smiled. “They were always a secret society little-known outside the circle of the Magi. During the time of the spell kones, the intricacies and instruments of the old oral thaumaturgy seemed no longer necessary. People forgot the mages and their middle mages. The whole complex art was entrusted to the venal machinations of ignorant, untrained spell kone writers. And that's how you got this mess.” Vallaine gestured at the upside down house.

“How long must we wait here?” Saheli suddenly asked in her trembling voice.

Vallaine laughed. “It's hard to say with any surety. We have to wait until the next house falls. Then there will be time to get you onto the road that leads to the Panthemium. In fact, if all goes well you will even arrive early and be first in line. All of those who came from the other side of the isle are outside the eastern gate waiting to be let into the city. That's good for you because an enormous number of people — far more than were summoned — have shown up, and we may not have enough housing for everyone.”

Saheli nodded with a grim smile. But there was no relief inside her.

“The high houses are good examples of what happens when spellcraft is handled by ignorant, greedy fools,” Vallaine explained quite jovially as they continued to wait. “The story goes that one day a certain woman of Ulde had a spell kone written so that her new home might be a humble two-storey abode.” He winked at Xemion. “Unknown to her, her husband, had another spell kone written to ensure that it be the highest building in all of Ulde.”

“A classic cross-spell,” said Xemion, nodding.

“Exactly,” Vallaine acknowledged. “And, as you probably know, in a cross-spell the magic will always attempt to be Phaer. So when the two kones were spun on the same day they both got their wish. She got her humble two-storey house, but it floated up ten stories above the ground so that he could get his spell too. It was at once the highest and lowest house in all of Ulde.

“Afterward, of course — you know how the Phaerlanders of that time were — everybody wanted high houses. And they wanted them by spell-crossing. Ridiculous. Fifty years ago the sky here was all but blotted out by high houses. And then came the spell fire and they started to fall, one by one, one after another. Sometimes whole neighbourhoods fell in a single day. All that crystal dust and rubble you came through used to be the high houses of the west city. The lucky ones just slowly drifted down as you have seen, but most dropped like stones. There are still a few way up there, higher than you can see with the naked eye. Those of us who have cause to travel this way try to keep track of them, but nobody knows how many remain, unseen.”

“But what was that h-huge eye?” Saheli suddenly blurted out.

“Ah, yes.” Vallaine responded with a grin, but there was concern in his eyes, too, to see Saheli so visibly frightened. “Not everyone can see them. But if you can, you mustn't. Never look directly at such things, Saheli. It only gives them more power.”

“I tried not to look. But —”

“What you saw were trait-wraiths,” Vallaine explained. “Phantom parts of people's inner beings that have been removed by kone craft. In the days of the spell kones, the authorities often treated criminals by having the criminal part of their nature removed by a spell kone. What you saw was likely part of someone's spirit that had been excised. Of course it needn't necessarily have been a criminal. Some people did it to themselves for purposes of purification. They sought to remove all anger, sorrow, or greed from their beings by spellcraft. But those lost parts still wander out here: rage-wraiths, heartbreak-wraiths, and greed-wraiths, forever exiled from their former beings. And so they seek new beings — hosts.”

Saheli shuddered.

“But as you saw, on their own they are weak — and they fear the light. That is why I carry magnesium flares such as I used under the houses there to send them running.”

“You mean — that eye — wanted to enter me and take me over?” Saheli asked, horrified.

Vallaine nodded. “It wanted to, yes — but it didn't.”

“Magic is so utterly evil,” she said.

“You mean kone craft.” Vallaine frowned, almost indignantly.

“Magic, kone craft, what's the difference?” She shrugged, warily watching the sky. “They are all one evil.”

“No, no, I heartily disagree,” Vallaine asserted stridently. “Magic made the world and the word — and you too. Most people agree that it was all the poorly made spell kones working in opposition to one another just before the spellfire that unbalanced it.”

As if to illustrate this, the sky was rent by an increasingly louder whistling sound until a large crystal structure hurtled down with a ground-shaking crash, shooting stone fragments and crystal shards and fine dust everywhere. This house also contained various skeletons of people who must have died stranded up there in the sky. Once again, the Triplicant Thrall emerged from the shadows with his triangular-faced children and they began catching and stuffing into sacks anything of value that floated up from the ruin.

“Now we can go,” said Vallaine. With that he led them out from under the houses and they began walking south through a neighbourhood of half-buried very ancient buildings, some of which had been civic offices, art galleries, and libraries in the times of the Elphaereans. The roadways were twice as wide here and often the remains of titanic monuments stood in the midst of their own rubble beside them. Vallaine continued to lecture as he led them forward.

“Don't confuse spellcraft with magic itself,” he insisted, looking at Saheli. “Spellcraft just begs at magic. It tugs at its hem. Before our people came to this isle during the time of the ancient Elphaereans there were very few mages. They were instructed by the Magi and charged mainly with the upkeep of the Great Kone. In that time they only spelled for small, necessary things — like a change in the weather. A spell could not just be spun off a spell kone by anyone who could turn a handle. It had to be spoken aloud by a learned mage who had studied that spell for a lifetime and knew all its implications. They never had problems with spellcraft when they did it that way. Not one catastrophe in thousands of years.”

“You think the magic was ended by too much spell-crossing?” Xemion asked.

“You keep saying
magic
, Xemion, when you mean
spellcraft
. Magic will never end. It is in the essence of the universe. No one knows what really happened fifty years ago or even what is happening right now for that matter. Some claim that everything in our world is and always was spell-crossed; that in every spell there is some cross-spell working contrary to the original will — billions of contesting wills and underwills and overwills and spells and vows in every move we make. Others say that the spellcraft is not over, just blocked, stalled — crossed. They believe the Great Kone will turn again and spellcraft will be renewed.”

“Who says that?”

“Well … many people do. Haven't you heard that? Why do you think the Pathans were so intent on murdering all the old mages and spellbinders and burning all the books and exterminating the singers of songs and even the riddle-crafters? To stop the magic from ever rising again.”

“Riddle craft?” Xemion asked.

“You don't know about riddle spells?”

“No.”

“We're used to thinking of the invocation of a spell as being some kind of statement or imperative. But a spell can be asked as well. This is called riddle casting. A riddle may be cast upon someone simply by having them start to consider the question posed. The spell will then take hold until the riddle is solved.”

This alarmed Xemion. His hand rose to the middle of his chest. Under his shirt he felt the bulge of the locket library.

“The old woman who raised me told me a riddle, but she died before she could tell me the answer.” Xemion didn't know why he lied about where he'd heard the riddle. All he knew was that Saheli had trusted him with the locket library, and if he told Vallaine about it, Vallaine would ask to look at it, and Xemion wasn't ready to surrender it to anyone.