Sisay’s Quest | Part Two: The Knife’s Edge
This content was originally included in an issue of Duelist magazine. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.
Main Magazine Page: The Duelist #23
Short story by Kij Johnson
Long before she met Gerrard and joined his quest, Sisay began collecting the artifacts that made up Gerrard’s mysterious Legacy. After a confrontation with the Talruum Minotaurs, Sisay and the crew of the Weatherlight have traveled to the destroyed city of Oneah.
“The Knife’s Edge” is the second installment in an exciting new series of short fiction in The Duelist. Written by Kij Johnson, winner of the Theodore A. Sturgeon Award, this is a story of Sisay’s youth—and of her own quest.
Sisay knelt on the filthy marble floor, picklocks in hand, eyeing the elaborate brass lock on the carved door.
Behind her, Tahngarth shifted his weight. “If this is a library,” he said in what probably passed for conversational tone in a minotaur, “where are the books?”
Sisay sighed, her breath moving a loose curl of black hair that had fallen over one eye. “Do I know? Maybe the goblins burned them all.”
It seemed possible. Sisay and Tahngarth had been prowling through a series of apparently endless halls, and she had discovered no more than this: that the Great Library must once have been beautiful. Even now, thirty years after the goblin invasion that had destroyed the shining city of Oneah, the library’s rooms retained shreds of their former glory, lovely and poignant as rotting tapestry. Not even goblins had been able to destroy every scrap of the stone filigree that had once laced across the archways. The tables and chairs had been shattered, but every so often some detail of leaf or fur, perfectly carved, caught her eye as she walked.
Tahngarth seemed to feel no such wonder. He had marched past ruined artwork and over floors soot-stained by goblin fires. He didn’t even mind the heaps of human hones marked with sharp teeth marks or broken open for their marrow.
What they hadn’t seen anywhere were books, though the mined shelves and cabinets were evidence that every room had once been filled with documents—lost books and forgotten maps, all the lore of the great Oneahn Empire. And there had been no living thing—not a rat or spider—in all the halls they had passed.
Sisay took a deep breath of air that smelled of ancient ash. “Strange that no one’s here. Not humans, not goblins.”
“Why should they stay? Nothing here for goblins to eat.”
“I suppose. Thirty years is a long time.” She inserted one of the steel picks, then a second, and began moving them carefully, feeling for the tiny snag that would mean they had caught.
“Look.” Tahngarth pointed up at the high windows that lit the corridor. The light filtering through the dirty glass was dim with gathering twilight.
I know.” Sisay rubbed her face against her shoulder, trying not to sneeze. “I must get this door open. There has to be some sort of clue here about the Bubble.”
“Picking locks is not honorable,”Tahngarth said.
“Picking a lock gets it open,” she responded, trying not to snarl. He had joined her crew only a few weeks before, and she ocassionally found his minotaur pride fatiguing. She felt the picks catch and began jiggling them gently. “Push the latch.”
“Why?” Tahngarth snorted. He slammed his fists against the scarred double doors.
“Wait,” Sisay said, hut he shoved again. With the sound of tearing wood the doors ripped completely free of the lock. One hung askew from a single hinge. Sisay’s lockpicks dropped into the jumbled trash covering the floor.
“We were trying to get in quietly!” Sisay snapped. “Next time, think first!”
Tahngarth looked at her. “My way is the knife’s edge,” he said. “See a knot, cut it. See a challenge, meet it.”
“No. See a challenge, think it through.” She thought of her first mate, Meida, kicking her heels back at the Weatherlight down by the main plaza. Meida would never have been this difficult.
Tahngarth shrugged and stepped around the dangling door—and stopped dead. “By the Horns!”
Sisay slid past him. “So that’s where all the books went,” she breathed.
The hall they had entered was immense, the roof soaring on gold stone pillars. Fantastically tall bookcases had been nailed together from the remains of other shelves and were crammed with leather-bound volumes. Heavy tomes made teetering piles higher than Tahngarth’s head. Scorched scrolls were gathered in pots and barrels and untidy heaps. Hinge-books made of sewn palm leaves spilled from an armchair. Sisay picked up a book at random; the pages had been transformed by water and time into blurred shadows.
“Look…” she began. And stopped.
She heard a soft shuffling, like slippered feet trying not to make noise. Tahngarth was already still, head tilted, ears swiveled. The stealthy footsteps came again from the other side of a towering bookshelf. She gestured Tahngarth toward one end of the bookcase and pressed her finger against her lips. He nodded, drifting silently through the scuffed dust in the direction she indicated.
She stepped toward the other end of the bookcase, trying to make enough noise for two. “Tahngarth, I just wish we could find someone here to help us. We only want information, after all.” She was almost to the end of the bookcase. “But perhaps no ones still here. And… now!” Sisay dove around the end of the shelves just as Tahngarth leapt around the other end.
“Goblins!” a voice screamed.
Sisay stopped. The man they’d trapped between them was clearly no threat: small and unarmed, dressed in rags, head turning wildly as he tried to watch them both. “Goblins!” He cowered against the books.
“No,” Sisay said. “Were not goblins. I’m a human. Human, see?” She held out her hands. “No weapons here.”
He was shaking. “You goblins killed my family—mother, father, sisters, all the nice librarians who used to give me sweets—and hurt my books, my precious books! Goblins!” The air was darker now.
“No,” Sisay said again. As a little girl, she had talked to nervous goats in just this tone of voice. “’That was a long time ago. We’re not goblins. The goblins are all gone.” He must have been just a child when Oneah fell. Had he been alone ever since?
“No!” His voice was tight with panic.
“Foolishness!” Tahngarth growled, and jumped at the little man.
The darkness gathering in the air rippled. There was just enough time for Sisay to think, that’s not dusk! before it coalesced and dropped at Tahngarth. The little man scrambled out of the way, climbing the shelves like a ladder. Ripping her cutlass free, Sisay leapt forward, but the darkness was already on Tahngarth. He swung his crystal sword.
Sisay’s first impression was that the darkness was a monster made of phantoms, all black fog and darkness with glittering eyes and teeth in rippling rows. Tahngarth swung, and it lifted out of range and dropped again. Teeth clamped on his sword arm. With a roar of pain and anger, he slammed his huge fist into the darkness. Sisay slashed overhand at the phantom monster. The cutlass sank hilt-deep. She felt the weapon slow for a instant as if she had been slicing at honey, and then it slid through effortlessly. The monster recoiled and Tahngarth snatched his arm away.
Cutlass waving slightly in a ready position, Sisay panted, “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Tahngarth grunted, but Sisay could see it wasn’t true. Blood ran from a crooked row of teeth marks stretching from his shoulder to his wrist. He tossed the sword to his unhurt arm. “It’s like trying to cut night.”
With a noise like the whistling of wind, the phantom monster attacked again. Sisay swung as the darkness seethed back and then poured forward, hungry mouths open. There was no time. She threw up an arm to protect her face and felt a rush of pain as the teeth connected. She ripped herself free, falling to the ground. With a roar of rage Tahngarth swung, and the monster focused its many eyes on him.
We cant kill it. She pressed her hand against her arm and felt blood drip past her fingers. Tahngarth dodged as the monster swept at him. He was panting heavily, the injury beginning to tire him. Why did it attack us? A movement caught her eye; the man in rags still crouched on top of the shelves, watching them. It didn’t attack until we threatened him.
Tahngarth roared. Sisay leapt at the shelves and pulled herself up toward the odd little man. His reaction was slow. Then, with a flurry of tattered robes he stood, preparing to leap. Grimly, she launched herself upward as he jumped. She caught his flying hem and together they fell to the ground.
“Make it leave us alone!” she gasped.
“No!” the little man yelled. “Go away, goblin!”
“We’re not goblins!” She dragged him upright. “ This is your creature, isn’t it?” The monster dove at Tahngarth again. He slashed and gored, but the wound sapped his strength. Teeth glittered. A wave of darkness struck at Tahngarth, driving him to his knees.
Sisay bodily threw the little man at Tahngarth’s feet. “Make it go away, or we will kill you!”
The man gestured. Papers and books flew, and she covered her face with her hands. When the wind stopped, she looked up. Dust whirled in the fading sunlight, but the monster was gone.
The little man collapsed. “Goblins.”
“We are not goblins,” Sisay said, but the man continued unheeding.
“Books were burning, and I knew that mother would he very angry—and then other things burning—meat. Goblins everywhere, and you made me get rid of my beautiful monster. They try to steal my books! But I fool ’em every night, me and my monster. Wait… can you hear them?”
Silence. “No,” she said finally. “There are no goblins now. The goblins have been gone for a long time.” She heard Tahngarth’s snort of disgust, but ignored him. “We don’t want to hurt your books. I only want to know about one thing, and I was told the chief librarian of the Great Library would know.”
“Mother,” the man said. “She knows where everything is. You’re a goblin. Why do you want to know?”
“Because my mother and father sent me here, told me she would know.”
“Goblins dont have mothers!” he interjected.
“They’re a long way away, my parents, in a place so far away the sun set many hours ago.”
“Night! The goblins!” He caught her hand. “You ruined everything, now you must help me shut the doors.”
“I think they’re broken.” She sighed and tried again, “Do you know anything about an artifact called the Juju Bubble?”
“It’s not here, he said, “but mother left notes.”
Sisay smiled with relief. “Can I see them?”
“My monster is gone,” he said. “The goblins will be here, and they’ll kill us before you can read them.”
Suddenly, Sisay heard scrabbling noises from the hall.
“You mean they’re real?”
“I was trying to tell you, goblin,” the little man said. “A family. They never left when the rest went. They eat the rats.”
Tahngarth’s voice rumbled, “How many are there?”
“Twenty.”
“Too many,” Sisay said.
“My monster used to scare them,” the man said sadly.
“Can you bring the monster back?”
“No. You made me send it away.”
“Twenty,” Tahngarth growled. “It will he a good battle. Perhaps my people will chant of it, if they ever hear the tale.”
“Wait.” Sisay raised a hand. “Perhaps force is not the solution here. I have an idea. Both of you, climb up on the shelves and stay quiet. I am going to teach the goblins to count.”
The goblins stepped slowly through the shattered doors. Goblins are cowards at best, and even knowing how greatly they outnumbered the human and his companions, they were nervous.
“Monster here?” one asked.
“Nope,” another said. “No monster. It’d be chomping us by now.”
“Door open, no monster? Hmmm.”
The goblins snarled and howled, working themselves into a frenzy. Eventually they poured through the doors to find… nothing. Silence, stillness, and near pitch-dark. They tramped aimlessly through the empty aisles, kicking at piles of books.
A thump on the ground: something (or someone) dropping from a height near by. The nearest goblin, Ghak, snarled and raised his club.
“Hey, no hitting,” the voice said, in the goblins’ tongue. “Goblin, same as you.”
“Um,” Ghak said. “You don’t sound like any goblin I know.”
“Chew yourself,” it growled. “I’m family.”
Ghak nodded.
“Whatcha doing?” the new goblin asked.
“Hunting. There’s a human, and we’re going to kill him!”
“How?”
Other goblins were starting to gather around the conversation. “Swarm ’im!” Thurkle called out.
“When there’re only fourteen of us?”
Ghak frowned. There were more than fourteen in the family: there was Jakk and Hugk and Ekha and Legmmie and Nker and Thurkle and—Ghak lost count. He heard mutterings all around, as the other goblins tried to work out the correct number. Jakk and Hugk and Legmmie and—no, wait.
The strange goblin had been muttering, too. “Oops, I counted wrong. I meant eleven of us. Against three of them. Maybe four.”
It didn’t sound so good. Jakk and Legmmie and Ekha and Thurkle and, um… Jakk, no wait, he’d already said Jakk, and…
“Four of them against eight of us!” the strange goblin shrieked. “That’s not fair!”
Ghak heard his family agree. The strange goblin was right. Eight goblins against four humans wasn’t fair. Ghak heard Deglek mutter, “So why are we sticking around here? They’ll swarm us!”
“Yeah! Right!” Goblin voices rose. “Let’s scram!”
“This is bad country for goblin,” the strange voice said. “I bet it’s better up by the mountains. Not so hard on five goblins just trying to get by.”
“I don’t know,” Ekha said doubtfully, but the other goblins agreed.
“What’re you gonna do? Four of them, three of us?”
That settled it. The goblins trooped out. After all, thought Ghak, listening to his family chatter as they headed up toward the looming mountains, what can you do when you’re outnumbered?
It was simple enough for Sisay and Tahngarth to backtrack in the dawn light; their footsteps were clear in the dust despite the goblin footprints. Tahngarth hadn’t stopped the odd growl Sisay thought was laughter since she had told him what she’d done to the goblins. Perhaps he had a sense of humor, after all. She hugged her own happiness close—the librarian had read his mother’s notes and told her the Juju Bubble was in Argive. She’d been there before and knew the way. She would have another piece of the Legacy in a month, and then home to see her family. It had been too long.
She hugged close another image as well—the mans face as she had unbuckled her belt and handed her cutlass to him. The goblins are gone now , she had said, but this will keep you and your books safe. He had smiled and said, You’re a good goblin. Thank you.
“Why did vou give him your sword?” Tahngarth said, as if he had read her mind. “Now you’re unarmed.”
“I have you here.” Sisay walked on, dust puffing from her steps. “Thirty years and he watches over his ruined library alone—always afraid of the goblins. Maybe the sword will help him sleep a little better.”
She hesitated. “Tahngarth, you say your way is the way of the knife’s edge. So is mine—but we use different knives, you and I. You cut a knot apart, and it is open, just like that. But all you have left are some scraps of string. I pick it apart and learn how it was made. When I’m done, I have learned a new knot—and I have the string to tie it with.”
“Where’s the knife in that?”
She snorted. “The knife is ‘wit,’ Tahngarth. I suggest you explore it a bit.”
Next, Sisay and crew find the Juju Bubble… and the fight of their lives.