Chương 380: Book Nine, Chapter 27: Interlude: The Sword

It was only a sword. Thirty-nine inches of stainless steel, given the best edge the factory could hone, with a length of nylon cord wrapped around the handle. It was manufactured by the ten thousand, shipped in a large metal container, and laid out on the glass counter of a mall kiosk in a forgotten town, on a forgotten planet, in an insignificant world that was one among many. It had no history, no pedigree. No expert would confuse its make for one of antiquity.

It had too much heft, meant to prevent snapping within a return window. By this virtue, it endured. By all conventional measurements of value, it was worthless. But there are other measurements. A young customer had admired it through the glass for weeks, and today he had brought his entire life savings, fifty-five dollars and seventeen cents, to finally make it his. Two salesmen leaned over the counter toward him. The first was a husky man with spiky frosted tips in his hair.

The second was of Chinese descent by way of the Philippines; he wore a vaguely Asian-style robe, and the kiosk's back wall proudly displayed his framed certificates in karate, aikido, and half a dozen other martial arts.

"If it's a real sword, why is it only fifty bucks?" the sixteen-year-old delinquent asked, gawking at the blade.

"Shouldn't it be like... a hundred?"

"Try a thousand," the robed salesman said, in an exaggerated accent he had learned from Hong Kong cinema.

"Too bad we can't sell them for that much."

"Why not?"

"It's illegal," the frosted-tipped salesman said gravely.

"We'd get arrested."

"No way. Why?" The two salesmen exchanged a look. Then the robed one lowered his voice.

"It's a religious object. There are restrictions."

"Religious object?"

"You've heard of that Shaolin temple in China, right? The one where all the monks meditated so hard they ascended to heaven, leaving their bodies behind as mere husks?"

"Yeah."

"Well, that's where they made these. China was going to melt them down for scrap, but they sold them to our boss instead 'cause they worried it would be bad luck." The robed salesman shook his head at the tragedy of it.

"I think it's a bit hardcore to own a sword like that, personally. But I'd hate to see a specimen of this quality get destroyed. I'd rather sell them to people who really value them. You know?"

"Totally." The adolescent stared at the blade, its cord-wrapped handle, the reflection of his own face in its sheen.

"You said fifty bucks?" Moments later, the register rang out, echoing throughout the mall. The sheath came included for free. He even had enough left over for the arcade. - He cherished the weapon. He admired how easily it cut the air, and tall grass, and… his mother's wicker furniture. A cut across his left palm taught him to respect the blade, its unyielding power, its loyalty to the skilled and only the skilled. With it, he won fights before they started.

The sword was the young hooligan's most prized possession. Two years later, he traded it for weed. It was only a sword. Street value: a quarter ounce, mostly stems and seeds. The drug pusher, for his part, loved the sword, even if it might have "like a thousand Chinese ghosts in it." He gave it a place of honor on his mantle, between his girlfriend's incense burner and a stack of drag racing magazines. The sword never lost its edge. There it waited. And waited. And waited. Not knowing its purpose.

Not knowing anything at all. Not yet. Until the tall man came for what he was owed.

"Damn, man, I looked up what that stuff you wanted was," the dealer said.

"It's for like... putting people to sleep. Paralyzing them or some shit. Like voodoo shit. I can't be a part of that. I'm on parole." The tall man only came closer. The time for talking was over. Now was the time for taking. …Taking precautions against a drug pusher who knew too much.

"Look, I'll give you your money back," the dealer begged.

"I have it right here. I have drugs. You can have all of—" … Taking revenge, for a baggie of fake traditional medicine. … Taking the sword off the mantle. … And finally, taking a life, with a blade that had previously known blood only by accident. Caleb Rowe, the tall man, had killed before. He had always tossed aside whatever weapon or implement he used when he was finished with it, the way a man leaves a plastic fork on his tray. But the sword... he liked the sword.

By every measurement that mattered to him, it was worth keeping. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The sword didn't know or understand any of this. Not yet. - The sword hung on the back of Caleb Rowe for the ceremony. It was appropriate. It had, after all, been ordained a religious object by warranty of its merchant. The Rowes were a family of killers. The Killers Rowe, as the tabloids would eventually call them.

Mother, father, sisters, brothers, and an odd uncle... or cousin... no one was quite sure who he was or how old he was. All anyone knew was that it was his job to lock up the involuntary guest in the cellar. He failed at that, though not many would have succeeded. That Marla Chebotski was a survivor. Father Rowe was getting too old to do either of the things he loved: killing and watching daytime television. Too old to talk. Too old to eat or drink.

Too old to clean himself or dig his own grave, neither when he was buried, nor when he was unburied. Father Rowe was dead. He couldn't be of any use. Not yet. The ritual would have changed that. On the filthy kitchen counter of the family's hideout, a book lay open, titled "Conquest of the Next World" by Dr. Simon Hahlbeck. Other books lay there, older books. Books that spoke of things ancient and taboo. The Hahlbeck text was merely the most legible. Whether Caleb understood any of them was debatable.

He understood enough, though. But the ritual would not go off without a hitch. There was exactly one such hitch. A trailer hitch, cast iron, meant for a rusted-out farm truck whose owner never got around to installing it before the Rowes killed him. A large jobber. Good for swinging. Marla Chebotski swung it down on Father Rowe's head after she broke out of the cellar. He, at least, didn't mind. Then she swung it into Mother Rowe, who did mind, while making her daring escape.

Then, in a fateful moment for everyone in the room, she threw it back behind her as Caleb brandished his sword. Brandished it all wrong. The hitch made contact and, by virtue of pure coincidence, drove the blade into Caleb's chest. She never even learned she had done it. She was already out the door and on the way to the police station. But this act sealed her fate, and the fate of so many others. Caleb fell onto the table where the ritual was prepared, his blood mingling with the fixings of an astral brew.

The magic had been built for one purpose: to take a soul and move it into a vessel. The magic abandoned the family's intent and found its own. A soul was leaving. The sword was as good a vessel as any. Everything that answered to the name Caleb Rowe went into the steel. The will. The memory. The patience. The rage. It poured out of the dying man the way the ritual demanded, and it settled into thirty-nine inches of stainless steel. It wasn't only a sword. Not anymore.

- The sword called, and the body obeyed, a tool and nothing more. The body walked, the body stalked, the body killed. The sword wanted more. More blood, more death, more gore. Caleb Rowe had never had such an appetite for carnage before. The body, not quite dead, not quite alive, wanted nothing. That was the arrangement. The police did not catch up with the sword until the Rowe family was down to a single member. Instead of executing Caleb Rowe for his crimes, they executed his body.

It took two trips to the electric chair and one to the crematorium to keep it down. The sword, the soul, the last of the Killers Rowe, went into an evidence locker. There it waited, knowing everything that had ever happened to it in all its years. Its history stopped there, an unremarkable blade to anyone who didn't know how to measure it. But Silas Dyrkon did. He appeared in the storage room of the police station, walking in through a door that had not been there moments before.

When he uncovered the blade, he smiled and lifted it out respectfully. He handled it with gloves woven with magic that rang the sword's bell like a fist to the head, but after so many years of disuse, the sword was grateful for any interaction at all. It was ready to bargain. And so it did. It agreed to a four-picture deal, and in exchange for its everlasting servitude, it was given the one thing it wanted most: to kill again. And again. And again.

Its life would be laid out on the silver screen, the Killers Rowe alive once more and taking lives like old times. Bodies were cheap in Carousel. It was souls that had the real value, and the sword had one. An eternity of killing passed, but the sword couldn't be sure, because the body didn't wear a watch. The sword waited once more, in a trailer park near Eastern Carousel, for players to find its edge. But the damn clowns came first.

The script told it to move on or be moved into the show, and it could not suffer the indignity of a sword swallower's act. It told the body to pick it up and run. And so it did. If it found players along the way... well. The script didn't tell it not to kill them. So it stalked a prey that hid in a castle. And it stalked a prey that fled. And it swung for the one the script called a Scholar. It took the Doctor instead. The body was shot by a gunman in the castle towers, dropping the sword into the boat.

The body floated away downstream, waiting to be needed.

"Don't touch that," the Film Buff warned.

"We don't know if it's cursed."

"I'm obviously not going to touch it," the Scholar said.

"Just... here. We can't keep it in the boat." He used a paddle to scoot the sword up and over the side. He never laid a finger on it. Say what you will about the Scholar. His instincts were excellent. And there it sank, at the mercy of the current. The current, as it happened, had far more mercy than the sword ever did. The river took it down a path of water and tragedy. The sword tried to skewer a mermaid, but the water held it at bay.

The script reminded it of its aim: the Scholar who had gotten away and his friends for good measure. And so it flowed with the river, through a lake where a plant wore a girl's face, through a swamp where the dark and the unknown held ultimate power, and over a waterfall that it thought would never end. The river never let go until it reached a gray shore, where an old man with mutton chops picked it up and admired it. The sword was tired. The water had done what the years never could.

It had worn away the edge and unfastened the corded handle. For the first time in its existence, the sword was dull. It wouldn't be back in slaying shape until the script told it to be. The old man carried the sword into an old building. How boring. But then it understood. Fate, the narrative itself, was on its side. The sword had not landed here. It had been pulled here, by the laws of story and irony.

For when the old man carried it past one of the rooms of the building, who should the sword see but the Scholar himself, and his friends too.

"I know running an Apocalypse is the last thing we should ever do, but it's what we have to do," the Film Buff said.

"Do we have some way of confirming that your dream was real?" a Final Girl asked. The sword panicked. With the leather jacket, she reminded it of Marla Chebotski.

"If Riley says it was real, it was real," another Final Girl said. This girl reminded the sword of nothing.

"Sal is going to have a coronary when you ask about running the Ringmaster apocalypse," the Scholar said.

"He's going to contemplate a career change." The Scholar. So close, and so far away. It didn't matter. If the sword swung at a target, it always hit it. Eventually.

"They say the storm is going to wipe us off the map," the old man said to no one in particular. Was he talking to the sword? The man's script was strange, overwritten. Meddled with. The sword, of course, said nothing. It was packed into a closet next to a carved bear lamp and dozens of other pieces of salvage from the sea. Found property, every one. Unclaimed. There it waited. Not for long. Far upriver, the body was already walking.