An Armory of Swords

by Fred Saberhagen

  She went to the Red Temple at Wellfleet. She listened to the random bragging of her clients. She kept the coins that were her due, and avoided the gaming tables. She spent some of them on lessons in swordplay, telling herself it was only to keep her body hard and tight, for she sought clients who liked hard, tight bodies, and found them.

  The deceptions that the world called beauty, she learned those, too, cosmetic arts, gestures, the uses of a low and murmuring voice. Even among the wrecked souls of the Red Temple, there were skills to be gained.

  If the women of Small Aldwyn, her mother, her sister, knew how she had gained her wealth in those visits she made them, they pretended not to know. Then Lyse’s husband vanished, Lyse’s child with him. Lyse’s grief had led Tegan in a search for knowledge of the lands around Idris—and she found Osyr, a fitting tool to use against Idris.

  Osyr now used, now dead.

  As she would be, soon, and for naught.

  In the mine, Ninidh’s presence seemed stronger, as if each stone she gathered from the floor added to her substance. Laughter filled the cave and echoed back from the tunnels.

  Did you think to hold me? the demon asked. Oh, foolish mortal.

  Tegan struck again at the gems, scattering them to the far corners of the cave.

  The demon’s breath washed across Tegan, a wave of ice, of terror. Cold sweat drenched Tegan’s face.

  Ninidh would be loosed to do as she would, and her theft of whatever gems she wanted would only make the ones yet to be found more valuable. Another duke would hold power in Idris, in Osyr, and the mine would be restocked with little ones. Ninidh would like that, an ever renewed source of innocent souls to chew up and spit out.

  The demon’s malice leached away the last of Tegan’s strength. She fell to her knees, weakness bringing her down as if she were made of melting wax. Darkness rose from within her, darkness that filled the cave and left her helpless, paralyzed. Her sword slipped from her hand. Her breath sighed out and she knew that her muscles would not move to draw in another.

  Was this how dying felt? Where were the bright memories, the peace that the priests of Ardneh promised? Where?

  The cave filled with a space where falling stars streaked across the night, a space of utter silence in which Ninidh’s shriek of immortal terror tore at the hills themselves.

  Ninidh shrank away from a sword wielded by a goddess in silver armor that reflected the red of Tegan’s dress, or it was a chiton she wore, gauzy draperies spun of unearthly silk.

  Ninidh retreated, her substance torn by the invisible path of the terrible blade. Tegan got to her knees, released from the demon’s attention by the onslaught of the Sword of Stealth.

  “Tegan! Get out!” the goddess cried.

  Idane struck with the Sword, a blow that divided one Ninidh into many and flung her divided selves to the ground where her treasures lay—a Ninidh shown as she truly was, a creature made of wisps of greed, of puerile pleasure in baubles and sparkles and groveling incarnations of persistent, immortal vanity, a vanity that reflected only its own image and spiraled inward, forever. Ninidh screamed at what she saw, a thousand tiny Ninidhs reflected in a thousand tiny mirrors, Ninidhs that clung to the opals on the filthy floor, to grains of faceted sand, to dust. Ninidhs the size of gnats burrowed into the earth, sifting it like flour.

  Tegan stood, wobbly on her feet. She took a position by the lady’s side, guarding her as best she could. The two of them backed toward outside air, toward the useless iron grate.

  “Bury her, Idane!” Tegan yelled.

  “She buries herself!” Idane shouted. “Look!”

  The floor of the cave shifted, its stones loosened by a demon’s greed. Sand and pebbles, then stones, fell from the walls. One of the timbers at the entrance cracked and sagged.

  “I have her soul!” Tegan shouted.

  “Bury it with her, then!” Idane ducked through the narrowed space at the mouth of the cave and pulled Tegan with her. “Throw it, Tegan!”

  Tegan tossed the ugly soulstone into the dirt, into the rainbow colors of the opals that lay scattered on the churning earth.

  Idane’s Sword scribed out a circle around the mouth of the cave. “You are bound here, Ninidh,” Idane cried. “Sleep well.”

  From the soiled earth, a multitude of tiny shrieks rose. A rumbling began deep in the tunnels. Its soil loosened by restless demons, the cave fell in on itself, on vanity and greed, on gems buried forever and forever guarded by a presence that forced the two women back, back, toward a battle won.

  Side by side, Tegan and the Lady Idane fought free of the dust cloud that rose from the cave’s buried mouth. Weaponless, for her sword was buried in the mountain, Tegan looked for danger, but the battle had moved down the mountainside and seemed to be over. The afternoon’s gray light showed changes in Idane. Her hair had gone gray, and she seemed shorter. Or was it only that Tegan had thought her to be taller than she was?

  “Noya said you would not help us,” Tegan said.

  “We didn’t come to Osyr.” The Lady’s deeply lined face was pale with exhaustion. “We came to you.”

  Idane took a step forward. Her hands trembled on the hilt of the Sword she carried.

  “Hold this for me, Tegan. It is so heavy.” Idane held out the hilt of the Sword and Tegan took it in her hand.

  “Sheathe it,” Idane said.

  The great Sword’s invisible blade lighted the lady’s face, a face that Tegan saw clearly, a face she thought she had known and had never really seen until this moment. Idane was old, and kind, and her face held compassion and love, and pity. Why does she pity me? Tegan wondered.

  Tegan, obedient, lifted the blade and sheathed Sightblinder, the Sword of Stealth, whose power showed its enemies what they truly feared. Or truly loved.

  The Lady Idane straightened her shoulders and walked away from the sealed mine. Tegan followed her, bearing the heavy burden of the lady’s Sword.

  Halfway down the slope, Seagus and his men surrounded the Osyr banner, bronze and black victorious against green and gray. The ferretsnake had wrapped its long body under Dorn’s collar to keep out of the wet. It flicked its tongue at the women as they approached. The fighters stood helpless now, bewildered by the churning in the earth. Spring rain pattered in the sudden silence.

  It seemed the men would stand in the rain forever. Had they lost their wits? Tegan stepped forward so they could see her.

  “Seagus!” she called.

  He looked up at her, all the battle lust drained now from his honest, homely face, replaced by fatigue and wonder. The Lady Idane stood aside.

  “You have gained a duchy today! Hold it safe!”

  The tired men around him raised a cheer, and seeming to find strength in it, raised another.

  He left them and climbed the slope to where she stood.

  “You’ll be with me?” he asked.

  Would she? No. Not as a consort to Seagus, although she wished him well. The lands in Osyr and Idris were good farming lands, and the foothills of the mountains fine pasturage. Given no gems to twist his soul, and good farmers, Seagus would be a careful guardian of what he held.

  “Sometimes,” Tegan said. Yes, sometimes, I’ll come to you and laugh, and we’ll make love. We’ll comfort each other again, as we have before. But you’ll need a wife in time, a dutiful wife, and children. I’m not for that.

  The wiry, gray-haired woman had taken shelter beneath the branches of a new-leafed tree. Tegan watched her, afraid Idane would slip away. The lady was almost invisible, gray in the world’s gray rain. “We’ll talk about this, Seagus. Soon. Your men are waiting. Go to them.”

  He hesitated.

  “You’re the duke. Be a good one. Your men are tired and wet, and hungry.”

  Seagus blinked as if he’d just been awakened. He turned and looked at his new charges. “Dorn! Set out guards!” he shouted. “Blacknail, do something about this damned rain! All of you! Get the wounded to shelter!”

  He wal
ked down the mountainside toward his men, his future. In these brief moments, he had gained a lordly set to his shoulders.

  Tegan went to the Lady Idane.

  “Your Sword. Take it,” Tegan said.

  The woman folded her arms one in the other.

  “Of all those who came to me, you alone could bear it in my stead,” Idane said.

  “You sent me away!”

  “Yes. But the Sword is yours. I will not take it up again.”

  Idane had sent Tegan away, hurt and angry. Because of that anger, an untrained girl had learned the uses of loyalty, of power, of weapons of steel and of weapons that had no physical being but were useful in skilled hands. Of patience, of misdirected purpose. Of stealth, even if used to force someone to become what she, on her own, would not.

  “Did Noya watch me buy the stone?” Tegan asked.

  “Yes. She did not understand how you planned to use it.”

  Neither did I, Tegan thought.

  “It was a clever ruse, scattering the gems,” Idane said.

  A clever ruse that had almost failed. Tegan had not been wise, or devious. She had only been desperate. Had she hoped the lady would come to her, and bring the Sword?

  Yes. Tegan had hidden her hope even from herself. She had taken a foolish risk, but she had won.

  Was she a fit successor to the woman she had seen in the cave, a woman of deadly wisdom, who fought even demons? She saw the answer in the Lady Idane’s tired, compassionate face.

  Tegan raised the sheathed Sword to her forehead in salute to her mentor.

  “Oh, bother,” the Lady Idane said. The fatigue of battle seemed to have left her. She looked as brisk as a spring wind. “It’s not going to be all fun, you know. You have a bit to learn about wizardry, for starts. I thought for a minute there that you didn’t know what you were about.”

  Infuriating woman! Was she smiling?

  “You’ll learn,” Idane said. “I did.”

  Idane stepped to a thicket and reached inside it with a fast swoop of her arms. She brought out a little girl, earth-stained, terrified, who clung to Idane and whimpered. Idane crooned to her.

  Beyond the Lady Idane and the child she held, half-hidden in spring leaves, a griffin whuffed in impatience. Close by the creature’s side, a man in gray waited with his instructions.

  About the Authors

  Gene Bostwick is a 1992 graduate of the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop in Seattle, Washington. His short-story sales include the Writers of the Future anthologies and Tomorrow magazine. He’s married (14 years) to his number-one fan, critic, and copy editor. He has practiced architecture and built most everything from doghouses to shopping malls. Creating a good story, he has discovered, demands as much and rewards as much as creating a good design.

  Pati Nagle, native and life-long resident of New Mexico, has been writing fiction since she could hold a pencil. Her work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and in Infinite Loop, an anthology of science fiction by computer professionals. She has a special interest in the outdoors, particularly New Mexico’s wilds, where many of her stories are bom.

  Fred Saberhagen has been writing—and sometimes editing—science fiction and fantasy for more than thirty years. He lives and works in New Mexico with his wife, Joan.

  Tom Saberhagen grew up in New Mexico where his passions were hiking, reading, and playing the piano. He graduated from Rice University with a degree in mathematics and philosophy. As a business systems consultant, he is engaged in battle with the berserkers of corporate America.

  Michael A. Stackpole is a writer and game designer who moved from Vermont to Arizona in 1979 after graduating from the University of Vermont. He’s best known for his novels in the BattleTech line and his fantasy novel Once a Hero. In his spare time he plays indoor soccer and defends the game industry from allegations of Satanism, murder, and mayhem. Future projects include another fantasy novel, Eyes of Silver, and four Star Wars™ X-Wing™ novels for Bantam Books.

  Robert E. Vardeman has lived in the Southwest since 1956, a resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, for most of that time, and is the author of thirty-five fantasy novels, including Tor® Books’ The Demon Crown series (titles: The Glass Warrior, Phantoms on the Wind, and A Symphony of Storms). Short stories have appeared in many horror anthologies including Greystone Bay, Doom City, SeaHarp Hotel, and most recently in Robert Bloch’s anthologies, Psycho Paths and Monsters in Our Midst. Vardeman is a longtime fan of the Swords books and is delighted to have a story in the current anthology.

  [Editor’s note: Sage Walker offers two biographical paragraphs. One of them—she claims—is a fantasy.]

  Sage Walker has survived an Oklahoma childhood, the Sixties, medical school, and seventeen years of practice in emergency medicine. Tor has scheduled her first novel for publication in April 1996. She is currently working on a fantasy set in Norway and first-century Britain. Sage lives in New Mexico and has been known to sing along with coyotes.

  Raven-haired, hard-bodied Sage Walker never has to do dishes. She writes three novels a year, all best-sellers. She is twenty-nine years old and attributes her unquenchable good spirits to a diet of champagne, buttered lobster, and Godiva chocolates.

  Walter Jon Williams lives in New Mexico. His books include Hardwired, Days of Atonement, and Aristoi. Many of his stories, including the novellas “Surfacing” and “Wall, Stone, Craft” were nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards. In addition to the Swords shared-world project, Walter has also written for George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards. Walter’s pastimes include kenpo karate, scuba, and small boat sailing.