The Sword of Straw (24 page)

Proceeding down the line of dancers was a man whose face was vaguely familiar, a chubby man with a high color wearing what Nathan guessed was a doublet, the blue outer sleeves slashed to show red sleeves underneath. Costumes of that kind tended to layers, sleeves within sleeves, overskirts, underskirts—perhaps because there was no central heating. He had a crown on his head, not a heavy serious crown but a lightweight coronet like an item of fancy dress. Nathan remembered the sick king lying in the bed with his leg plastered in honey, and realized with a shock that it was the same man.
This isn’t the future,
he thought.
This is the past—before the king lifted the Traitor’s Sword. If Nell’s around, she’ll be just a toddler.
There was a gallery at the far end of the hall, overlooking the dance floor, and, gazing up, he made out a small face peering through the balustrade, but, though he hoped, he couldn’t be sure it was her.

The king’s dancing partner was a woman with the figure of an egg timer in a dress that glittered and clung, showing off her tiny waist and the full curves above and below. Most of the ladies wore their hair tucked into tall headdresses or piled up in nets of gold and silver thread, but hers hung down her back in a single thick braid, very long and almost jet black. Her face was attractive in an earthy sort of way, with broad cheekbones and a sultry mouth. This must be Agnis, Nathan deduced, Agnis whom the king had loved, rejecting her—nobly—until his wound should heal. For a minute, he thought he recognized her, too, though he couldn’t recall from where. As he watched, the movement of the dance brought the king around to face her, and he seemed so happy that Nathan, remembering the hollow-eyed invalid in the four-poster bed, felt a stab of pathos.

Someone else was watching from the sidelines—a silent, solitary figure among the chattering courtiers. Instead of gaudy clothing he wore a long shapeless robe of no particular color, ribbed with darns and blotched with assorted stains—chemicals, ink, wine, soup. From a cord at his waist was suspended a magnifying glass, a pocket knife, and what looked like a corkscrew. His head was already bald but around it the fringe of his hair was thicker and darker than in later years, flowing over his shoulders, and a drooping mustache gave him a slight look of Don Quixote. He was studying the woman Agnis, and there was an intentness about his expression that Nathan found curiously disturbing. He had always thought Frimbolus Quayne slightly comic; now he seemed potentially sinister. He didn’t like Agnis, Nathan thought. He didn’t like her at all. Nathan had never seriously imagined it could be Quayne summoning the Urdemons, but suddenly he wasn’t certain.

He wanted to get out of the past, back to the woods and the princess. He tried to wrench his mind away, and the dancers blurred, melting into a dim swirl of color, and the music ceased, and his spirit landed back in his body with an impact so violent it jerked him wide awake. He opened his eyes on his own bedroom, sat up to switch off the light. When he lay down again, he was sucked back into a quagmire of sleep.

It was a confused night, a night of sleeping and waking, of brief, vivid dream journeys jumbled together like the visions of delirium, so that afterward he couldn’t remember every detail, or the sequence in which they occurred. When he didn’t materialize his experiences were always more surreal, closer to actual dreams. He found himself moving between worlds like a phantom, an awareness that hovered on the periphery of a scene and then fled, reappearing a moment later—a century later, a life age later—in another place, another cosmos.

He saw the Grandir in his high chamber in Arkatron, where the spy-crystals were suspended in darkness, enabling him to survey the multiverse. He held one globe between his hands, without touching it, and on the ceiling, upside down, was an image that must be Wilderslee. Nathan made out the causeway across the marshes, and a running figure, and a brown pool heaving with bubbles as something stirred beneath the water. Then he was there, no longer watching from outside but skimming the marsh, and the running figure was a boy with dark hair—he thought it was Roshan Ynglevere—sprinting for the city with one swift backward glance. The brown water bulged, and something burst out—something mud-colored and slime-colored, festooned with weed, dripping marsh ooze, rearing up—and up—and up…It was like the slug-creature he had seen in the city only far larger, a giant eyeless worm, its sides frilled with undulating flaps that drove it through the water, its open mouth salivating greenish froth. It arched above the causeway, lunging at the boy, but he managed a final desperate dash that left the marsh behind, and the danger, and the creature threw back its head, emitting an Urulation of frustrated hunger that carried over the swamp and was borne far away, reaching the Deepwoods as an evil wind that moaned in the branches.

But even as Nathan approached the trees the dream changed, and he was somewhere else. The desert of Ind, on Eos, and the moon was rising—Astrond, the Red Moon of Madness, staining the sands with its dull ruby light. A wild white xaurian like the one he had once ridden wheeled above him; its breast gleamed pale in a roving beam from somewhere on the ground. There was a noise like
zzzip,
and a flash. The xaurian jerked abruptly and plummeted earthward. A voice Nathan thought he recognized said: “It has served its purpose. I will not risk it interfering again.” Nathan felt a surge of anger and grief, though he couldn’t tell if it was
his
xaurian—the xaurian that had saved his life—nor imagine why anyone would wish to kill it.

But his fury went with the dream, and he moved on. He was in a world he had visited before, two or three times, a world all sea. His former visits had shown him a tropical archipelago overwhelmed by a great storm; now he was near one of the poles, but he knew somehow it was the same place. It was a feature of his dreaming that after a while he could identify instinctively which world he was in. The sea here was a cold deep green, and huge ice floes drifted past, one as big as a whole island, with a cluster of penguins on board. On another, he saw something that gave him a thrill of startled wonder. A mermaid had pulled herself up out of the water and leaned there, supported on her hands, her tail fin dipping in the sea. But as he drew closer he saw her tail wasn’t that of a fish: it was a seal. Her skin was snow-petal white, her eyes dark and large, her long straight hair silvery gray like seal fur. He thought:
She’s not a mermaid, she’s a selkie. A real selkie…

She turned suddenly and slid off the floe back into the sea. He had a fleeting glimpse of her streaking through the water, the light rippling in bewildering patterns along her body—then there was only a seal, diving down into the green deeps.

There were other dreams, other worlds. He was back in Wilderslee, in a small round room with no windows or door. A tower room, he concluded, or a circular dungeon below ground level—a room where something important was kept, or dark deeds were about to take place. In both medieval palaces and futuristic skyscrapers, secrets and crimes always seemed to happen in rooms at the very top, or subterranean basements far below. This room was illuminated only by the daylight that filtered through a louver in the roof—or perhaps there were a couple of tiles missing and, it being Carboneck, no one had climbed up to repair them. He could make out a pedestal in the center of the chamber, and a long chest on top, heavy with ironwork. He couldn’t lift it—he had neither substance nor form—but from the shape it was easy to guess what it contained.

Suddenly a section of the wall slid back with the grinding noise of stone on stone, and a light came in. An oil lamp, held aloft by an unsteady hand, and followed by a face—the king, no longer in party mode, looking both anxious and daring, like a schoolboy egged on by his fellows to some questionable act. The woman Agnis came behind him, in a dress even more clinging than the one she had worn at the ball, her black hair loosened and falling nearly to her waist. She seemed to be hanging back, hesitant or afraid, and in the shadow of her hair her expression looked surreptitious and sly.

“Is it here?” she whispered, glancing from side to side. “The spirit-guardian—is it here?”

“It’s in the sword.” The king didn’t whisper, but his voice was stiff with tension.

“Will we see it? How does it show itself?”

“I don’t know.” The king approached the chest, setting the lamp down on the pedestal beside it. “I’ve—I’ve never actually
seen
the sword.”

“But it’s your family heirloom!” Surprise made her forget to whisper. “You said your father—”

“He brought me here when I was a boy—showed me the chest—but he wouldn’t open it. He said best not. We guard it; we don’t need to see it. Some things should be left alone.” He was staring at the chest as if he agreed with his parent.

“Weren’t you ever curious?” Agnis said in the accents of Pandora.

“Not really. It’s a sword—brings bad luck—you can’t even touch it. Not a good idea to be too curious about that. Are you sure you—”

“Yes.” Agnis sounded resolute. “I just want to
see
it. Only once. I won’t marry you with some dark mystery hanging over us. Anyway, how do you know it’s still there?”

“Of course it’s there. Where would it go?”

“Somebody might have stolen it.”

“Not possible. I told you—”

“With all this secrecy and security,” Agnis said, “your ancestors must’ve been worried about thieves.”

“Don’t think they were trying to keep anyone
out,
” the king said unhappily. “More like something
in
.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Agnis declared stubbornly. “Come on, Wilbert: open the chest.”

The king fumbled in his doublet and produced two keys hung on a chain around his neck. He took it off and jabbed the larger key at the lock, though his hand was trembling so much it took at least a minute before he could slot it in. It turned very smoothly for a key that couldn’t have been used in a generation or more. Agnis leaned forward, nervous and eager, her lips parted in the breathlessness of anticipation. But it was the king who raised the lid, lifting the lamp so they could see inside.

“There it is.”

The sword lay on a bed of velvet, completely encased in the scabbard the Grandir had made for it. Even the hilt was covered with a leather guard that seemed to be fastened to the sheath by a strap with metal rivets. Nothing could be seen of the blade within. Nathan had been sure this was the weapon Romandos had forged, in another world, another age, but here was confirmation. This was the Sword of Straw—and in the unseen blade the spirit slept, dreaming its dreams of freedom and vengeance, waking at a touch.

“Take it out!” Agnis hissed.

“Are you mad? I told you—”

“You don’t have to actually handle it, silly. Lift it out in the scabbard and unfasten that leather thing so we can take a proper look. You can’t chicken out now we’ve gotten this far. As it is, the scabbard could be empty. We’re here to check.”

It’s not empty,
Nathan thought. The sword was in there, with its occupant. He could sense the spirit even in its sleep.

The king still hesitated, plainly reluctant, but Agnis alternately pestered and cajoled, and Nathan knew he would give in. (Of course he knew—this was the past, Nell’s past, ten years before he left her in the Deepwoods. There would be no surprises.)

At last the king said: “All right, I will, but shut the door. We
must
be private.”

Now it was her turn to falter, looking around at the windowless walls. “I’d rather not. You know how I am about closed-in places. Supposing we were shut in? You said yourself this room is a family secret. That stone must be virtually soundproof: we could call and call and no one would hear us. No one would come. We might starve to death in here.”

Eventually the king agreed to leave the door open. He lifted the scabbard out of the chest—Nathan felt the spirit stirring, sensed the changing pattern of its slumber. The blade seemed to be nearly four feet long and very heavy: the king staggered under the weight of it. He rested the point on the floor and inserted the smaller key into what looked like one of the rivets on the connecting strap. He had never seen it before, yet it was clear he had been given precise instructions, though Nathan couldn’t help questioning the logic of that. If you weren’t meant to touch the sword, why pass on the details of how to gain access to it? He suspected Bartlemy would say it had something to do with human nature.

With the lock released, the strap sprang free. The king took hold of the scabbard lower down, and carefully prised the leather guard off the hilt. It gleamed with a dim blue sheen; Nathan remembered it from earlier dreams. No gems were set there. Apart from the luster of the metal there was nothing else to distinguish it.

“It doesn’t look all that special to me.” There was a note of disappointment in Agnis’s tone. Her awed whisper had long gone. “What about the spirit-guardian? Where is it?”

It’s there,
Nathan thought.
Don’t disturb it.

“In the sword,” the king said. Now it was his turn to lower his voice. “Like I told you.”

“How do you mean,
in
the sword? I don’t see—”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.”

“Couldn’t you just draw the blade a little way? Hold it through your sleeve or something.”

“You can’t do that,” the king explained. “The spell on it doesn’t allow cheating. You can hold it through the scabbard: that’s all. My great-grandfather was the last man to draw it—he wore gloves. The duke of Quilp had challenged him to single combat, I forget why; we weren’t on very good terms with Quilp at the time. One of the king’s ministers suggested he use this—thought it would give him an edge, sort of thing. The duke was the best swordsman this side of the Deepwoods.” He fell silent for a moment.

“What happened?” Agnis prompted.

“Not exactly sure. No witnesses except the duke, and he wouldn’t talk about it. My great-grandfather was killed, with his minister, and the duke’s second. Quilp was wounded in the shoulder or the side—forget which—it crippled him, he never fought again.”
So much for the Gauntlets of Protection,
Nathan thought. “After that, my grandfather made this room, sealed the chest inside. Out of harm’s way. The Traitor’s Sword won’t be lifted, except by the right man.”