The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree (56 page)

“Hey,” I said. “I smile. When nobody’s looking, I smile a whole lot.”

“And that’s why you’re creepy.”

The gunslinger bowed over his fist; we did the same. “You must be the individuals we were briefed on this morning. I will go and announce you.”

“No, that’s all right,” said Sawyer. “We’ll go in ourselves. No need.”

He seemed put off balance by the shirking of custom, but recovered quickly. “Very well, then. Go on ahead.”

We went through the ebony door and into the council chamber, which had nobody in it. A door stood open behind the dais, spilling bright golden sunlight across the backs of the thrones standing there.

I looked at Sawyer and he shrugged, going around the chairs and through the archway. I followed him into a large courtyard between two of the seven rook towers. The space sprawled atop a plateau of rock carved out of the mountainside, jutting from the back of Weatherhead like a Cadillac’s tail fin.

As we walked outside, we passed a stone bench that had a tall metal canister standing on it with a valve spout on the bottom. Steam issued from the top of it and curled from its sides in the chilly early air.

“Oh, coffee,” I said. “I wish I had a cup.”

We passed a ring of rocks that enclosed a small, crackling campfire. Hanging on a spit was a pot of some bubbling gruel, and a man in a linen suit and suspenders was tending it. He nodded as we passed, and we did the same.

Normand was at the very end of the courtyard where it jutted out in a great arc of stone, looming over the hillside.

If one were to vault the parapet, it was easily a twelve-meter drop to a steep, rocky slope, and a very injurious tumble ending in a head-on crash against Ostlyn’s innermost wall. I peered over the edge, imagining this plummet, and leaned back with a wince.

The old man only wore a pair of canvas trousers and roper boots. His bare skin was a biography of pain written on pages of taut glove-leather. Some of the arcing scars marred a tattoo that engulfed his left shoulder, an intricate enigma of lines and symbols that looked like an illustration from a medieval text on the occult.

He was lost in thought as we approached, performing what appeared to be slow, meditative tai-chi katas. I noticed when we got close enough that he had a revolver in either hand.

The polished guns caught the dawn’s light and flicked ghostly sun-cats across the floor at our feet. He stepped this way and that, with no wasted movement, light and clever, moving around the balcony in a graceful, sweeping slow-motion waltz. His muscles rolled as he moved, his tendons as fine as guitar strings.

Every time he stopped, whether he had them thrust out straight or tucked under his elbow or behind his back, the pistols were leveled at some invisible opponent. With each pause, I could hear the actions click and the hammers hit empty chambers.

When he saw us watching, Normand turned the weapons with subtle gestures and slid them into his gunbelt. I realized that there were four holsters.

“Good morning, children,” he said in that wrought-iron bass-baritone. His long silver hair curtained down his temples. He tossed his head back to clear his face, put down the belt, and took the undershirt draped over the parapet, putting it on.

I have to admit I was impressed and not a little intimidated—the years had been kind to the old man. He had to have been in his early seventies, but he looked like a chiseled statue. A slender, hungry, battle-scarred old wolf. Even his icy eyes looked wolven.

“Good morning, sir,” said Sawyer. I echoed the greeting.

“How goes your first day in our fair city?”

“We haven’t been up long,” said Sawyer, and I handed him the K-Set chestpiece. “We had a few questions and wanted to come see if you had any possible answers.”

He strode past us, pulling his suspenders on. “I am an open book, my friends—but if you’ll excuse me, I’d like a few minutes to put on my cover and warm my pages. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll see if Merritt can’t rustle you boys up some coffee and something for breakfast.”

Merritt was the man in the linen suit tending the campfire. He followed the King into the citadel, and a few minutes later came out with two ceramic decanters, two tin cups, a little pewter boat full of sugar, and a tiny jug of cream.

Sawyer showed me how to use the decanters; apparently, here you don’t stir your coffee, you pour it from the carafe into the decanter. Then you add the cream and sugar to the decanter, swirl it around, and pour it into your cup. We sat on the stone bench and sipped coffee while Merritt fried bacon and made omelets over the fire.

When Normand came back, we had just been handed our plates. He was wearing a blue frock coat with leather elbows and a pair of canvas slacks. His gunbelt was on the outside of his doublet. He looked a bit like a Union general as he sat next to Sawyer and the attendant handed him an omelet.

“Now then,” Normand said, putting the armor on the ground by the bench. He illuminated his next point by gesturing at the air with his fork, “—let us continue. Good conversation always aids digestion, or so I hear.”

“I told you about my hallucination under the influence of the Acolouthis,” I said.

The gunslinger cut off a bite and chewed it thoughtfully. “Ahh, so you did. The Sacrament is a powerful experience. It is forever in debate...whether the events that take place in that ethereal consciousness are real or imagined. For instance, how do you know you ever even visited that abandoned town by the wayside? The entire thing could have been wholly in your mind.”

‘That’s an unsettling thought.”

“You said yourself that you read the sign on the wall in that town. It was in the Earth language. Haven’t you asked yourself
why
you could understand it?”

(WELCOME TO THE STICKS!)

It hadn’t even occured to me. I’d been in such a state at the time that the fact had completely eluded me.

“I have to admit I haven’t.” I didn’t know what else to say. It was a strange epiphany, one that made me doubt myself. I began to feel a little crazy again, and the sensation was not pleasurable. “Wait—that was
before
the outlaw ever gave me the stuff. How could—”

“Remember what we said yesterday about shifting time and space?” asked Sawyer.

“Not to undermine your senses,” Normand said. “I apologize. I do have a fondness for speculating about such things. The sensations one encounters under the Sacrament are not always real, but the insight one gains from the experience is...more often than not, rooted deeper in truth than you realize. Some might even call it
clairvoyance.”

“Maybe the Acolouthis had your brain ramped up so much you were able to understand Ainean,” said Sawyer. “Maybe it was so powerful it affected you before you even took it.”

I gave him a dazed look. “Anyway, sir, I wanted to ask you about something related to the hallucination.”

“Fire away.”

“Right before Sardis slew the Silen with the Timecutter, the Silen said something about
finding
the ‘First Sword’...he said it’s the only thing that can kill—that can kill the Sileni, I’m assuming.”

“Yes. Edward mentioned that they were immortal. If anything could kill them, it is the Dragonslayer. But I don’t know what the ‘First Sword’ is.”

Sawyer rubbed the bridge of his nose, squinching his eyes shut. “The Rhetor said that he’d been going from world to world hiding the First Sword of each world. He mentioned Excalibur and a few other names, and said that the Timecutter is the First Sword’s ‘facet’ here in Destin. I’m guessing that this First Sword is something that exists singularly, alone, but in all worlds at the same time.”

“Kinda like a man standing at the Four Corners in Utah,” I piped up. “That’s where you can stand in four states at the same time: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. The Mariner said something similar about the Wolf Oramoz. He said,
She exists in many worlds, with many names.”

“Yeah. A lot like that, I guess,” said Sawyer. “God Christ, I wish Ed were here to explain this shit.” He was obviously pained. His food was growing cold in his lap, but he had drained his coffee cup.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. I just have a headache. I’m...remembering things that never happened.”

“You too?”

“Yeah. It’s like—damn, we need to write this stuff down. I’m forgetting it.”

“Forgetting what?” I asked.

“Here, have you got a pen? You lost that paper you found in Ed’s cottage, didn’t you?”

“I did, it was in the satchel. The only pens around here are fountain pens, Saw. You’ll have to go find one.”

Sawyer got up and went into the Weatherhead. A moment later, he came back out with a piece of paper and a fountain pen. He put the paper on the stone bench and made a big ugly ink-blot on it. “How the hell—?” he asked, but then he seemed to get used to it.

He wrote,
TOTEM TIMECUTTER CAN KILL SILEN
on it, then held it up and blew on it to dry the ink. “I feel like I’m forgetting the things we saw and heard down there,” he said. “It feels like—like—there was a wound in reality, in time, and now it’s closing back up. It’s healing. It’s replacing the bad part with what
should
have happened.”

“Like a skin graft?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “A time-graft. When you wrote us out of the Void and fell into the Vur Ukasha, you went down—you went down and put the story back together. I think that’s what happened when you went down and saw the giant glowing ball with words all over it.”

“You think so? You think I did that?”

Normand looked at the paper. “You are the Messenger now, after all,” he said. “The task of bringing life and light to the story of this world has passed from Ed to you. It only makes sense that you would have the capacity for repairing it.”

“I thought the Mariner did it.”

“The Mariner is only a guide.”

Sawyer poured himself another cup of coffee. “He can only lead a horse to water, Ross. He can’t make you drink.”

I got up and tucked my hand into my armpit, hugging myself. I took a sip of coffee, finishing my cup. Normand smoothed out his mustache, studying the paper, and presently he said, “You know, I think I’ve
heard
this word before. Totem.”

“Have you?” I asked.

“I have. I heard it several times, while I was in the Antargata k-Setra. The Wilders spoke of it.”

Sawyer swirled his coffee decanter, pulling his legs up to sit cross-legged. “Yeah? How come it wasn’t in
The Cape and the Castle?”

“Most of what the Wilders said was gibberish,” said Normand. “Their gibberish language. Only Lord Harwell, rest his soul, could remotely understand them. I got the feeling, though, that Totem was not a thing. It was a place. They often spoke of it and their god, Obelus, in the same breath. It was probably the ghost-god’s home. I didn’t talk to Ed about it because I didn’t consider it important at the time.”

“Hmm,” said Sawyer.
“Totem
is an English word. Well, an English loan-word. I wonder why the Wilders would be using English words?”

“What does it mean?” asked Normand.

“I know it came from Native American, but it represents a concept from a lot of Earth societies. I don’t really know the definition of the word itself, but I know it has symbolic, spiritual meaning. People back on Earth talk about their ‘totem animals’. I think it’s a word for something that represents a definition larger than itself—like an icon.”

I picked up the armor chestpiece and turned it around so Normand could see the printed label on the inside. “That reminds me. Do you know anything about this?”

“I can’t even read it, I’m afraid,” said Normand.

“It says
Nevada Organon,”
I said. “I don’t know what an ‘organon’ is, but Nevada is a place on Earth. It’s one of the United States.”

“Peculiar. I do notice, however, that two of those letters look like Ainean letters. The first letters.” Normand leaned over and traced the words on the label with his fingertip, indicating the N and the O. “The sweep...here, and this is missing a line and a dot, but otherwise they look very similar. Similar to Ainean illuminated capitals, at any rate. I don’t see any similarities in these lowercase symbols.”

“No,” said Sawyer.

“Hmm?”

“—I mean, N. O. I mean, yeah, come on. It’s obvious. That must have been where Aarne Hargrave got ‘No-Men’ in book two. He wasn’t saying they weren’t men, he wasn’t saying there
were
no men, he was talking about something he saw.”

I shrugged, making a face.

An armored retainer came out into the courtyard and announced, “S’rah, Councilwoman Noemi has arrived.”

A lady came out of the central spire and strode straight to Normand as he got up. They embraced briefly and he introduced us to each other. “Friends, this is Councilwoman of Knowledge Eleanor Noemi. Eleanor, these are very special visitors...the tall one is the Chiral’s youngest, Sawyer, and the one with the shaven pate is Ross, the son of Ardelia Thirion and the scribe Lord Eddick we were so unfortunate to lose recently.”