The Fourth Book Of Lost Swords : Farslayer's Story (Saberhagen's Lost Swords 4)

by Fred Saberhagen

  When Gelimer had hidden the Sword, he had thought vaguely that with good luck the terrible weapon might remain where he had put it for years, for generations even, until no one any longer sought it in the valley. But already that had come to seem a foolish hope.

  Very well. If he was now inescapably involved, then he must try to be involved as intelligently as possible.

  By now Gelimer had logically reconstructed, at least to his own satisfaction, what must have happened in his house on the night of the storm. His visitor, Cosmo Biondo—if that had really been the man’s name—must have awakened, perhaps delirious with his head injury, in the middle of the night, while Gelimer himself still slept. Then the visitor, whoever he was and whether delirious or sane, had taken the terrible Sword in hand and carried it outside. What had happened immediately after that was still uncertain, except that the Sword must have passed from the hands of the man Cosmo into the possession of someone else. Possibly, even probably, Cosmo had decided to invoke Farslayer’s awful magic against someone at a distance, and had gone outside where he had room to swing the Sword, and privacy to chant whatever words he thought were necessary.

  However he had rid himself of Farslayer, Cosmo had had time, before the Sword came back to him, to reenter Gelimer’s house. Time to latch the door after himself, and to go to stand beside the bed—as if, having used that Sword, he might be ready to go back to sleep.

  As indeed, in a sense, he had done.

  Whether the violent death of Cosmo had been merited or not, Gelimer reflected that it had probably done no one any good, and settled nothing. Evil moved on through the world as before, and was now gathering in the vicinity of that hidden grave.

  Even if Gelimer had been minded to take up the Sword himself and strike at that evil, he would not know where best to aim the blow. At the demon? Such creatures were notoriously difficult to kill. Gelimer had no idea whether even a Sword would be effective in such an effort, or to what physical location the Sword might go if he tried to slay a demon with it, or into whose hands the Sword of Vengeance would fall next. He knew that demons’ lives, their only vulnerability, were apt to be hidden in strange places.

  No, he would not try to kill the demon now roaming invisibly through the valley—at least not yet. For decades now everything—or almost everything—in the hermit’s nature had shrunk from the deliberate taking of any human life. I have put all that behind me, he thought. I am not a god, to judge and punish humans for their crimes. Even the gods did a very poor job of that when they were still around. Not you, of course, Ardneh, he added in his thoughts. You know I don’t mean you. And you know which gods I do mean—the ones who created these damnable, almost indestructible Swords, thirty years ago, for the purposes of their Game. The ones who thought that the entirety of human life was no more than a game carried on for their amusement.

  Well, the game of human life had swallowed up what had turned out to be the lesser reality of those gods and goddesses. What those divinities had deemed a mere amusement had destroyed them. And perhaps the limit of what human life was going to accomplish in the universe was not yet in sight.

  * * *

  Sitting by his woodpile now, Gelimer closed his eyes, wincing as if he felt an inner pain. He could tell that the demon had just passed, in some dimension, near him. But at the moment he stood in no immediate peril, for the thing was already gone again.

  Even a nonviolent man could hardly scruple to kill a demon, by any means possible. In fact it might be thought a crime against humanity to fail to kill one if you had the power.

  Despite its violence, the idea was developing a powerful attraction: To cleanse the earth of such afoul blot why should I not for once be willing to use the clean steel of a god-forged blade?

  But he must be very careful. He must be sure of what he was doing before he moved.

  Who had the ordering of demons, who employed such difficult and deadly dangerous tools? It was certainly not likely to be any of these local fools, even though one or two of them dared to call themselves wizards. No, it would be some vastly greater power, from outside the valley. And what would bring such a power here? Certainly the Sword Farslayer, as a prize to be won, might do so.

  Gelimer’s thoughts kept coming back to the same conclusions, but those conclusions never brought him any nearer to knowing what to do.

  * * * * * *

  Meanwhile, Chilperic on that same morning had no clear idea of where his demon was at the moment or what it was doing—filthy creature, he would like to forget that it existed, if that were only possible. Today Chilperic himself was back on the south side of the river, and in fact he was within a few hundred meters of the hermit’s house. He was coming back to question the hermit again, but had decided that it would be wise to look around in the vicinity a little first.

  Chilperic did not think the hermit had lied to him. But during his second night at the Senones manor, it had gradually come to him that neither Cosmo Malolo nor the Sword he had carried might ever have left these high crags. There had been a great deal of killing on that night, and there was really no reason to think that Cosmo had survived it.

  And now today the sight of a scavenger bird or two, rising in bright sunlight from somewhere among the rocks that formed the lip of a precipice, suggested to Chilperic that some large creature was lying dead in that location.

  To get anywhere near the place Chilperic was forced to dismount, then edge his way forward carefully on foot, until he was standing on the very brink. Forty meters or more below him, the Tungri grumbled and fumed eternally, sawing its way down through rock, day after day infinitesimally deepening its gorge.

  Wrinkling his nose at the smell of death, chilly and stale in the spring air, Chilperic reached the last necessary foothold, braced himself with one arm on a rock, leaned over and looked down. Not two meters below him he saw the startling white of bone, protruding from amid coarse hair and decaying flesh. Leaning forward again, even more precariously, he was able to assure himself that the victim had not been human, but a riding-beast; there were no saddlebags, but the saddle and other tack were still in place. The discoverer could remember seeing leather worked in similar patterns when he had poked his curious nose into the Malolo stables.

  Interesting. And more than that.

  His heart beginning to beat faster, Chilperic looked around him carefully. He clambered back and forth along the rough brink of the cliff, probing into every nearby crevice of rock. He even managed at last to get close enough to the dead animal to move what was left of it, using his own sword as a lever. He shifted the carcass enough to see that there was no man’s body, and no resplendent Sword, pinned underneath it.

  Cosmo’s riding-beast, quite probably. Almost certainly, if Chilperic could find Cosmo’s initials or some other identification on the leather. But still the Sword of Vengeance was nowhere to be found.

  Reluctantly Chilperic returned at last to his own tethered mount. He swung himself up into the saddle and sat there motionless for a moment, gazing thoughtfully down toward the thundering stream below. It might be a hopeless search down there at the bottom of the river, but then again it might not.

  He could, of course, employ Rabisu in the search. But how much help the demon would be was problematical. Chilperic had for some time suspected that the foul creature might prefer, after all, that the Sword never be found. Its own life, however carefully hidden, might be as vulnerable as the life of any puny human to that blade.

  Probably, Chilperic concluded, it would be best not to try to use the demon at all. It was his understanding that there were other creatures nearby, just as intelligent and much more docile, who would be even more at home along the bottom of the river.

  * * * * * *

  Chilperic, on leaving the place where he had discovered the dead riding-beast, hastened to recross the river, and long before nightfall he had returned to the headquarters of the Senones clan.

  Today the homegrown militia guards stationed around t
he perimeter of the clearing in which the Senones manor stood were not as grim and tense as they had been yesterday. And today, Chilperic noted as he handed his riding-beast over to a groom, there was more ordinary activity around the place, as if things might be beginning to return to normal.

  But even before he had passed through the gate into the inner grounds, this last impression was firmly contradicted by an apparition in the sky.

  Suddenly some of the people around him were gawking upward. Following the direction of their collective gaze, Chilperic beheld a marvel. Outlined against a fluffy cloud was a huge griffin, spiraling in descent. A single human figure was mounted astride the creature, which possessed the head and wings of an oversized eagle, and the four-legged body of a lion. Such creatures were extremely rare, and their flight depended more on magic than on the physical power of their wings.

  The griffin’s descent was quick, and not many people actually witnessed its arrival. Which was probably just as well, for most of those who did were petrified. The winged beast came down gently and peacefully enough, to land on the flat lawn immediately in front of the manor. Though not one person in a thousand among the general population ever saw one of these uncommon beasts, Chilperic was no stranger to the sight—nor was he, actually, very much surprised by the arrival of a griffin at the Senones manor just now. He had a good idea who the creature’s passenger might be.

  The gates in the inner wall of the manor had already been opened to admit Chilperic, and he strode in, practically unnoticed. The new Tyrant, who seemed to have been waiting on the lawn, quite possibly to welcome him, had now instead turned his back on Chilperic and the gate for which he could scarcely be blamed and was gaping like a yokel at the unexpected aerial arrival.

  The human figure who had just arrived was at this instant in the act of dismounting from the griffin’s back. This was a diminutive female with her long blond hair bound up closely, dressed in a close-fitting jacket and trousers, what looked like eminently practical garb for hurtling through the air astride a monster’s back. The woman was very young—to all appearances, at least—and very pretty. She could only be the healer that Wood had promised to send.

  Meanwhile the griffin was crouching on the lawn in the pose of a docile cat. Still, it managed to impress and even cow most of the local people who were quickly gathering—at a respectful distance—to behold it. Chilperic thought that the monster’s presence might well worry the more thoughtful among the local people, offering as it did more evidence that whether they liked it or not they were now closely involved in the affairs of the great world.

  The young woman with the neatly controlled blond hair and the small backpack immediately decided—whether through deduction or divination—which of the people present was the clan leader. For the moment she ignored everyone else, including Chilperic, and came walking straight to Hissarlik. Her movements possessed a grace that Chilperic had seldom seen matched. Genuflecting briefly before the Tyrant in a gesture of great respect, the new arrival introduced herself, in a soft voice, as Tigris, physician and surgeon.

  The Tyrant, staring distractedly at this beauteous arrival—as many a more experienced man in his place would have done—murmured and mumbled something in return. Then he recovered himself sufficiently to take the young lady formally by the hand and bid her welcome.

  “Thank you, my lord.” The healer’s eyelashes fluttered demurely, and her gaze became downcast. “Will you now have a servant show me to my quarters—my room will be next to my patient’s, I pray—and provide me with a maidservant to attend me? Soon I will be ready to examine the patient.”

  “I, uh. Yes, of course.” The Tyrant, recovering further, clapped his hands and gave the necessary orders.

  Meanwhile the griffin, as if it had received some hidden signal, spread its wings again—at a closer look those limbs appeared to be more reptilian than avian—and soared suddenly into the air. The gawking crowd fell back even further, but Tigris ignored the departure of the beast completely. She had now raised her eyes and was gazing, in a way that might be thought inappropriate for a physician, at the man she had greeted as her lord.

  Only when she turned away to follow the servant who was to lead her to her quarters did her gaze brush Chilperic’s. It was a cool, appraising glance. He supposed it likely that the lady had come with some special orders from Wood having to do with himself. He would have to take the opportunity to meet with her alone as soon as it was practical.

  Hissarlik’s grim young cousin, Anselm, limped from somewhere to intercept the healer just as she was about to enter the house. At first Chilperic thought that Anselm intended to stop her from going in, but after a few moments’ conversation they entered the manor together.

  As for the Tyrant himself, his gleaming eyes followed his new guest until she was out of sight. Only then did he turn, with a sigh, and speak to Chilperic. “Though I have scarcely met the woman as yet, I am deeply impressed. Your master, the Ancient One, certainly fulfills his promises quickly.”

  “Oh, indeed he does,” Chilperic assured the Tyrant. “I would not be likely to attach myself to any master who did not.”

  “Nor would I be.”

  “I see.”

  Now the two men, by unspoken agreement, began to stroll. They passed around the side of the sprawling house, and entered what must once have been a flower garden, though it was sadly neglected now.

  As they walked, Hissarlik started to discuss his plans for the future. His only real goal, it appeared, was to determine just how, working together, he and his new friend Chilperic were going to wipe out once and for all those infamous Malolo brigands across the river.

  The older man smiled at him, gently and agreeably. “Undoubtedly a very worthy objective, sire. But before I can undertake to give you assistance in such a project, there are one or two other matters that I must see to for my master.”

  “Oh. I see,” Hissarlik said vaguely. He did not seem to be paying complete attention. His head turned away and his eyes kept straying toward the house, where certain windows on the second floor seemed likely to be those of the entranced family sorceress, next to those of the beautiful blond physician. “And what would those matters be?”

  Patiently Chilperic reiterated the story of how sincerely his own dread master, Wood, wished and pined to possess the Sword of Vengeance. Once that goal had been attained, then certainly the mighty Wood would be ready to reward his friend Hissarlik even more generously than by sending a healer—provided of course that in the meantime Hissarlik had been of help in recovering the Sword.

  Chilperic lowered his voice slightly when he imparted the next bit of information, which was that Wood might even have in mind something like the offer of a real partnership.

  The Tyrant, now sitting at ease in a worn-out garden chair, under a leafless tree at one end of his neglected garden, scratched his head. “Well, that’s all very fine, of course. If I had possession of the Sword, or anything else your master wants, I’d gladly give it to him. I hope he knows that. But the truth is I don’t have Farslayer, nor do I know where it is. You don’t believe I have it, do you?”

  “Of course not, sire. You don’t have possession of the Sword now. If you did you would already be attacking the Malolo.”

  “That’s right.”

  Chilperic paused momentarily. “But I do have an idea as to where it might be found. And how, with some help you can provide, we might be able to recover it.”

  “Is that so?” Hissarlik still sounded cautious rather than eager. “What sort of help do you need?”

  Chilperic explained briefly about his discovery, this very day, of the dead riding-beast, and his idea that the Sword might be lying at the bottom of the Tungri somewhere in that vicinity. “The water runs quite swiftly there, and I suppose that it is deep. But a creature capable of living and moving easily underwater ought not to have too much trouble in examining the bottom.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Yes.” Chilperic pressed
on: “Unless I’m mistaken, you Senones folk are able to call upon the local mermaids for service when you wish, though technically the creatures are supposed to be under the lordship of those fools across the river. Their grip on all their vassals, including even the fishgirls, is evidently weakening.”

  “Yes, we can call upon mermaids if we wish.” But Hissarlik did not seem to be immediately pleased by the idea of doing so. “If you mean by magic, it was Aunt Meg who generally handled that sort of thing, of course, when she was well.” Then he brightened. “What about your demon? Couldn’t it conduct a search even more swiftly and surely?”

  Now it was Chilperic’s turn to be less than enchanted by a suggestion. “The demon has many other tasks to accomplish.”

  “I suppose it must have,” the Tyrant agreed somewhat doubtfully.

  “Tell me, my friend. Is there something you don’t like about the idea of using mermaids?”

  “Well, the truth is that those creatures do tend to be somewhat unreliable. They’re totally lazy, of course. They can be forced magically to do some things, such as coming when they are called—though it’s not always certain that they even do that. And there’s no way to force them to obey perfectly when sent out on a mission. Actually they’re a pretty rebellious lot, and all in all more trouble than they’re worth, though we do manage to sell one once in a while.”

  Chilperic frowned in thought. “How long have there been mermaids in the river here? I was told their condition was the result of a spell inflicted on some villages by a Senones magician many years ago, in the course of the feud.”

  “Yes, that’s correct.” The Tyrant went on to explain that the ancestral magician, whom he claimed as his own great-grandfather, had been still in the process of perfecting the spell when he died. Great-grandfather’s ultimate goal had been to develop some similar curse that might be used directly against the vile Malolo leaders, but their magical defenses had remained too strong.