Sky of Swords

by Dave Duncan

  It took several hours to burn out, but she stood watch there with the swordsmen. Many of them wept, but she shed not a single tear. She could not regard Dog’s death as permanent—she was resolved to go to Ironhall and revise the course of events. He would live again; they would all live again. When at last the evening shadows lengthened, Burningstar managed to drag her indoors and feed her. She still refused to go upstairs, or even sit down for more than a few moments at a time. She wanted to talk politics with Winter, inspect the conjurers’ work, see to the outfitting of Seahorse—anything at all except rest.

  It was then that Queen Regent Martha arrived, coming incognito and without ceremony. The two queens were left alone to talk and Malinda found herself talking—as she never had before, even to Dian—about the man she had loved and had now lost. The storm broke. She fell into Martha’s arms and wept inconsolably until the recently widowed queen joined and wept with her.

  She barely remembered being led upstairs and put to bed.

  It was about noon the next day when she met with her council-in-exile: Burningstar, Audley, Wasp, Jongleur, and Lothaire, who was now healed but obviously still shaky. They were all grim-faced. Yes, the conjurers admitted, what she proposed seemed possible.

  “The risks of outright failure,” Sir Lothaire put in, “are less than the risks of disaster—death or madness. With respect, my lady, you would be utterly crazy to stand within that octogram.”

  “If I am already crazy, that halves the risk.” Dog had gone into danger to rescue her; could she do less for him?

  Jongleur had been up all night and was having trouble smothering yawns. “But we must have the swords and we don’t know where they went.”

  “I am sure they were returned to Ironhall,” Lothaire said.

  “The law required that. I don’t remember them being mentioned. What happened to them would be up to Grand Master. He was hanged a month ago, so we can’t ask him. Master of Rituals or Master Armorer would know, but where they are…” He shrugged. “Seventy swords? Even if they hung them in the sky without a ceremony, I’m sure I would have noticed. Most likely they were taken to the Forge and disassembled, blades and hilts melted down separately, cat’s-eyes put in storage….”

  “The blades alone might suffice,” Jongleur said without much confidence, “but the rebels may have taken them also.”

  “I know where they are,” Malinda said. “When can we leave?”

  Before she could be questioned, Audley intervened. “As soon as possible! If you are adamant that you must try this, Your Grace, then we must move as fast as we can. Sir Wasp, can we sail tonight?”

  Wasp shook his head in disbelief. “Captain Klerk has not stopped gibbering after that trip down the Gran…. Yes, if we must, but why?”

  Audley stared glumly at the floor, meeting no one’s eye. “Because we have almost certainly been betrayed.”

  “Winter?” Malinda asked quietly.

  “He or others. Jarvis and Mercadier disappeared right after the funeral. They may or may not have learned what Your Majesty proposes. But Winter certainly knew, and he has gone.”

  No one spoke for a long, hurtful moment. She had started with four Blades, and those four had seemed special even after she inherited the rest. But Abel had gone very quickly, then Dog, and now Winter. “I cannot blame him. He knows that if I succeed, Bandit will not have died, so Dian would not be a widow and the child she is now carrying will never be. If I can undo disaster for myself and my country and for the Blades, then I must undo good fortune for others. How will he try to block us?”

  “Chivial has a consulate here,” Burningstar said. “The Dark Chamber will have agents watching this house and your supporters in general. His hardest job will be to make them believe his story. Once he does that, then they must send word to Grandon and Grandon must dispatch troops to Ironhall.”

  “We can be there before them?”

  Wasp sighed. “Depends how much start…But the wind is fair. Yes.”

  “Can we muster enough men?”

  “Yes,” Audley said, “but only just.”

  “Have you completed your rituals, conjurers?”

  Jongleur tried to speak and was caught by a yawn. Lothaire nodded.

  “Then let us sail tonight, and go to Ironhall.”

  43

  Home is where journeys end.

  FONATELLES

  Newtor, the nearest port to Ironhall, comprised a dozen cottages around a fair natural harbor. It was much too small a place to support a livery stable, but it had always had one, secretly subsidized by the Order and run by a knight who was thus well placed to send advance warning of visitors arriving by sea. Ancient Sir Cedric, the last incumbent, had never had cause to do so. Now, with the Order dissolved and Ironhall itself in ruins, he had resigned himself to never setting eyes on another Blade. Common sense dictated that he should close down the business, sell off his few remaining nags, and go to live with his daughter in Prail, but either sentiment or inertia had so far stayed his hand. Hence his joy, that early morning in Fifthmoon, when a young man sporting a cat’s-eye sword turned up on his doorstep demanding his nine best horses and no questions asked. As luck would have it, his nine best were also his nine worst, that being the exact number he had in the meadow, but he parted with them all most cheerfully and was almost reluctant to accept the gold coins proffered in payment. He took them, though. Later he noticed a small craft of unfamiliar lines heading out to sea and a line of riders heading off over the moor; he wondered what strange nostalgia drove them.

  Much the same question spun in Malinda’s mind. These men were not being moved by loyalty to obey her commands—she was certain they considered her crazier than Queen Adela had ever been. Rather, they must feel a desperate yearning for the Blades themselves, the old Order, the ideal that had shattered so horribly at Wetshore. If her mad plan succeeded, she might save them from that. If it failed, they would have lost very little. She, of course…but she would not think about that.

  The Queen’s Men, last of the Blades. They were down to eight on this final outing. The conjurers, Jongleur and Lothaire, were both in their forties, but the rest were youngsters, with Oak the oldest, at about thirty. Audley was not quite nineteen yet, although he tried to keep this shameful fact a secret; Savary, Charente, Fury, and Alandale fell somewhere between. Wasp had very much wanted to come, but the conjurers had forbidden it. He was too closely associated with Radgar, they said, and his presence would enrage the invoked spirits. While it was unlikely that they could escape the octogram to attack him, they might well vent their fury on Malinda.

  The mood was somber as the nine rode up the gentle rise above Newtor, but once the sea was out of sight and sunlit moorland lay all around, Audley increased the pace and a mood of brittle humor began to show. Savary started a song that would not normally be heard in the presence of royal ladies, and some of the others joined in. Malinda wondered if they would sing on the way back tomorrow, if there was a tomorrow. It all depended on the swords. Had they been stolen or melted down or what? This whole expedition would be a futile waste of time unless they could find the swords.

  Or it might be a trap. When they came within sight of Ironhall, Audley called a halt and sent Fury forward alone to scout. Malinda thought he was being absurdly cautious. Even if Winter had betrayed them, the government could not possibly have reacted quickly enough to have troops there already—governments never did. Even so, it was a relief when a chastened-looking Fury returned to report that the coast seemed clear. They rode back with him in silence. From a distance the complex seemed much as it always had, and only when the pilgrims drew close did their eyes start to pick out missing roofs and daylight showing through windows. Then an eddy in the wind brought a rank stench of disaster. All burned buildings smelled bad, and Ironhall had been so meticulously burned that many buildings had collapsed. Even the moorland sheep and ponies seemed to shun it, for weeds already grew in the courtyard.

  Without a word sp
oken, the Queen’s Men dismounted. Audley handed Malinda down. In silence the group walked up the littered steps and into Main House until their way was blocked by piles of ashes and fallen masonry. From there they could just see into the open court that had once been the Great Hall. Half-melted fragments of chain still hung from the blackened walls, but any swords that had been over-looked by the looters were certainly buried deep under the ruins.

  “Come!” Jongleur growled. “Let’s try the Forge.”

  The Forge was in better shape, because it contained nothing flammable except stacks of charcoal for the hearths, and those had not been touched. The tools had been stolen and windows smashed, but the gloomy crypt itself was little changed. Water still welled up in the stone troughs, overflowing into gutters, and finally trickling down the drain. The heaps of ingots and scrap metal were scattered as if someone had picked through them; they certainly did not contain seventy-two ownerless swords. The very few blades the visitors could find were obviously unfinished blanks or discarded failures.

  “The spirits are still present?” Oak demanded suddenly, his voice echoing.

  Fury, Savary, and the two conjurers were shivering as if about to freeze to death. No one bothered to answer. Instead, everyone gathered around the hole where the gutters ended as if to listen to its monotonous song.

  “Surely not!” Savary said. “They wouldn’t do that, would they?”

  “If someone thought it up three centuries ago, they’d still be doing it last year,” Lothaire answered, reasonably enough.

  “It’s what Durendal told me,” Malinda said. “And he would know.” But he had only been talking of one instance, Eagle. They struck him off the rolls, dropped his sword down the drain, and impressed him as a deckhand on a square-rigger trading to the Fever Shores.

  Now she must gamble everything on that chance remark. Roland might have meant some other drain, real or figurative. Or that ultimate disgrace might be reserved for those who betrayed their loyalty—as, for example, by kissing their ward’s daughter. Perhaps the Blades who rampaged and died at Wetshore had been seen as less despicable and their swords had been hung in the hall for Courtney’s army to steal. She remembered the hole in the floor as being covered by a bronze grating, but that had gone. The hole itself was barely a foot across, too regular to be entirely natural, not regular enough to be completely artificial. What lay below? Did it twist down into the earth as a bottomless crevasse, or did it widen into a cavern?

  If, if, if…If she succeeded, Dog would not be dead.

  Charente said, “I’ll get the chains.” He trotted out and Alandale followed. Audley sent Savary after them, to stand first watch.

  Charente and Alandale returned, weighted down with saddlebags that clinked as they were dropped. From them came long lengths of fine brass chain and a selection of hooks.

  “Who’s the best angler?” Alandale said cheerily. No one answered. It was Charente who lowered the first hook down the hole, and all the rest stood around him, listening. Clatter, clatter—no clink, clink. The hole swallowed it all. Oak went to help him. They attached the second chain to the first and began to feed that down also.

  “Fasten something to the other end,” Jongleur suggested.

  “We don’t want to see the whole contraption disappear.”

  Lothaire fetched one of the unfinished sword blanks, knotted the chain around it, then stood on it.

  “Anyone hear something?”

  The running water sang its own song and no one would admit to hearing anything else. Soon there was almost none of the second chain left in view. The chasm seemed to be bottomless.

  “Know something?” Oak said, puffing. “This isn’t getting any heavier! It’s piling up on something down there.”

  “Go to the end anyway,” Audley said. “Then haul it back up.”

  “Your lead, Leader!”

  With good grace Audley stripped off his cloak and jerkin. Alandale copied him and the two of them began to haul the chains back in. They retrieved the second chain, then about half the first.

  “Listen!”

  Under the chattering of the water, something rattled, clanged, and faded away…. When the hook came into sight, it was empty.

  Jongleur stated the obvious: “You caught something and dropped it! Try again.”

  On the second try they failed to gain even that much satisfaction. By the third try, the chain was allowed to feed itself into the ground, which it did with great speed. It came out no faster, of course, but this time the hook emerged from the waterfall with a catch. Many hands grabbed for it—a rapier, snagged by its finger ring. The superb Ironhall steel was as shiny as new and a cat’s-eye still gleamed on the pommel.

  Fury ran it over to the nearest window for light.

  “Suasion!” he read out, and the Forge rang with cheers and whoops of triumph. Where Bandit’s sword lay, so would all the others. Surely it was an omen that Leader’s sword had come first? Audley so far forgot himself as to grab his Queen and hug her.

  Her heart fluttered with sudden terror. She had been proven right, so now she would have to go through with this.

  Necromancy must be performed at night. Audley ordered Savary off to Blackwater to alert the Order’s agent there, if he was still at his post.

  It took the rest of the day to retrieve enough swords. The conjurers said they wanted eight and then slyly withdrew to a quiet place to go over their rituals once again. The five younger men stripped off jerkins and doublets and took turns at the backbreaking work. Most casts came up empty, but not all, and each time another sword was recovered its name was read out and identified in a bittersweet mixture of sorrow and joy by those who had been friends with its owner.

  Farewell? “That was Fairtrue’s!”

  Justice? “That was young Orvil’s, wasn’t it?”

  Inkling? “Herrick’s!”

  Gnat? No one was familiar with Gnat. It might belong to some other century. It was laid aside. Doom the same…Malinda hoped that they would not find Stoop, which had been Eagle’s. It was in there somewhere.

  Lightning? “Falcon’s.”

  “I’d rather not use that one.” Malinda had killed Falcon with that sword, but they would not believe her if she said so. She ignored the puzzled glances.

  They laid Lightning aside also.

  And Finesse, too, because no one could identify its owner.

  It was Malinda who attributed Master to Sir Chandos. Dian had told her.

  Savary returned to report that old Sir Crystal was now keeping watch on the Blackwater road; he claimed his grandson could outride anything that ate grass and would bring word of any suspicious travelers heading west.

  As the light began to fade, the swords stopped coming. Then Screwsley’s Leech broke the drought. That made six in all. After that, again nothing…. The men took turns eating while others kept the hunt going. The two conjurers were shamed into helping. Malinda made herself useful with the tinderbox, building charcoal fires in the hearths, adding scrap wood and brush to give light.

  They tried casting only halfway down; they tried different hooks, singly or clustered, but it seemed that the rest of the swords must lie either deeper than they could reach or around bends where their chain would not go. The men’s hands were swollen by the icy water and cut by the chain; midnight was fast approaching, the best time for necromancy.

  “It’s useless,” Jongleur said. “Six? Or seven?”

  “Seven,” Malinda agreed. She would have to risk Falcon.

  “Let’s give it one more try!” She picked up the hook and kissed it. “Please,” she said. “Go find me a man.”

  The weary men all chuckled, as she had hoped they would. She tossed the hook into the hole and watched the chain pour after it until stopped by the bar at the end. She even tried to start the pulling and was appalled by the effort required. Audley and Fury eased her aside and took over, but even they ran into trouble. The chain had jammed. More men went to help and managed to pull it free.
Three times the same thing happened, and when the hook finally came into view, it was holding two swords—Mallory’s Sorrow and Stalwart’s Sleight. They had eight without a need to invoke Falcon.

  “I suggest we take a brief break,” Jongleur said. “We suspect that closer to dawn might be advisable in this instance. And we all need to rehearse our—”

  Oak was on watch and now he came clattering down the steps; his voice reverberated through the crypt. “The boy’s here! Says they’re coming…about fifty Yeomen, right on his heels.”

  44

  Seconds matter more than years do. One instant can change your whole life forever.

  SIR DOG

  “We must leave!” Malinda said. “We have the swords. Any octogram will do.”

  “Not as well!” the two conjurers said in unison.

  “Not nearly as well,” Lothaire added. “They will answer a call from here when they might not—”

  “Besides,” said Jongleur, “other people handling the swords will weaken the personality imprints.”

  “Then start!” Audley shouted. “No arguments!” That command was directed at Malinda.

  It was crazy. The lancers might arrive before they had finished their first attempt, and a new invocation almost never worked on the first try. The Queen’s Men would be trapped; she would be taken prisoner again or just quietly murdered. Flight was the only sane course. But Audley rushed her over to the center, where Savary and Charente were busily wrapping rope around the great anvil. She sat on it, then changed her mind and knelt instead. The conjurers wanted the swords upright; and as it was obviously not possible to plant them in the ground when the floor was solid rock, they set them in the rope binding. She sat back on her heels within a wall of steel: Sleight, Sorrow, Suasion, Leech, Farewell, Justice, Master, Inkling. She thought of Sword, which had been lost in the confusion and was probably somewhere at the bottom of the Gran. The men lined up as they had been rehearsed, one at each point; outside the octogram they should be relatively safe. Lothaire handed out the scripts. There was some cursing as the men peered at them in the uncertain, flickering light. For some clandestine reason, sorcerers always wrote spells on scrolls, which tended to roll up at inconvenient moments.