“Sad?” Helmut had drunk; now he held the mug poised and stared at the old man. How like Sigrieth he was! thought Sandivar. Then the sorcerer nodded. “Aye,” he said. “King Gustav of Boorn, your half brother, is dead.”
“Oh, no!” Then, after that single outcry, the princeling had himself under taut control. He drew in a long breath. “That you had forecast, but—How came it?”
“Boar spearing in the Frorwald, with Albrecht,” Sandivar told him, not without irony. “The young King’s spear haft broke, he was unhorsed, and ere Albrecht, Eero, or any other could intervene, the charging boar ripped him wide. So it was announced; and then a council of nobles called. Most suspicious were they of events, but tamely the greater number yielded liege to Albrecht. A few, however, held back—Hagen of Markau, one or two others who, despite the overwhelming numbers of half-wolves already gathering to the flag of Wolfsheim, were not intimidated and spoke openly of inviting the return of the exiled bastard—Helmut—so that true blood of Sigrieth should continue on the throne.”
“Boar spearing?” Helmut said incredulously. “Thus Gustav died? He who must be ordered directly by my father before he could muster courage to face a charging pig, who abhorred the sport for its danger and the strength it took? He died boar spearing?”
“So Albrecht gave the word out.”
“Poor Gustav.” Helmut stared down at the floor. “Poor, weak, well-intentioned Gustav, whose mother my father never loved.” With head bowed for a moment, he was silent. Then he whispered, “Ah, Sandivar. If I were only older and had a good right hand—”
Sandivar felt a thrill. “You would do what?” he asked.
“Return to Boorn. Reclaim my father’s throne. Avenge Gustav—”
“And perhaps your father, too,” Sandivar said quietly.
Helmut stared at him. “My father—?”
“His illness long, his physician helpless. But really so helpless? Physicians can be bribed, and certain powders can they give that sap the strength…”
“Poison?” Helmut whispered. “My father poisoned?”
“Aye,” said Sandivar. “At the behest of Albrecht, who, fair-favored and wealthy as he is, could subtly corrupt the Gods themselves. Yes, poisoned, and a long time dying of it. Now, you exiled, Gustav dead, and Albrecht crowned Emperor of the Gray Lands. So all comes round neatly as he has from the first so carefully planned.”
“Then the Gods curse him!” cried Helmut furiously and struck the bed with hand and stump. “And curse me too for a youngling and a cripple!” Savagely, he struck the bed again and again until Sandivar shouted: “Hold!”
Helmut sprang to his feet. “Hold?” he cried. “My sword hand gone, my half brother murdered, my father poisoned, my kingdom usurped, and you cry hold?” Then he shouted: “Rage! Vengeance! Death! Destruction! These you once promised me as my portion. If you have wizardry, give them now to me—”
Sandivar cut in coldly: “Wouldst have revenge against Albrecht?”
“Revenge? I’d give my life—”
“Aye.” Again Sandivar’s cool voice cut across the boy’s shouting. “But life is easy to give. How much more would you pay?”
Helmut stared at him. “What more is there?”
Sandivar sighed, a gusty sound of resignation. “Do you not understand? Revenge must always be bought with the soul.”
For a moment, there was silence. Then Helmut said, evenly: “If only I could wield broadsword, use chain-mace and lance, a soul would be small coin.”
“The soul of a prince is never small coin,” Sandivar said, in a voice full of strange emotion, and then he turned away.
He could hear Helmut breathing hard behind him. Finally the boy asked, in a voice still controlled, “There is, then, a way?”
Sandivar closed his eyes. Now, he thought, I must be very honest. “Aye,” he said at last. “There is a way.”
“Through necromancy?”
“Through that and battle.”
“Then tell me of it.”
“Demand that I tell you of it,” said Sandivar. “Do not ask me. Demand it.”
“I so demand.” The boy’s voice had an iron ring; it was almost as if Sigrieth spoke in the tower room.
Sandivar let out a shuddering breath. “Then since you have demanded, I will tell you. Whether you can comprehend is another matter. Here, however, is its cost: ten years off the span of life in this, our world—and those, ten youthful years, precious beyond all others. Also this: to look upon horrors few could endure, horrors beside which the mrogg you encountered this morning becomes as the lap pet of a lady-in-waiting. And this more, and this perhaps the worst of all. A risk you run, should you endure that which I have mentioned, of damage to the soul, the core of it, the very kernel of it—the risk that never more will you be able to love.”
“Love?” said Helmut. Then repeated the word contemptuously: “Love. In return for vengeance, I would—”
“No.” Sandivar held up his hand. “Say it not lightly. You are too young and know too little of the world. But should I tell you that you may, should you do what I suggest, never laugh again—that, perhaps, you could comprehend.”
Staring at him, Helmut frowned. “Never laugh?”
“Perhaps not. What you will look upon, whom you will meet, and the ordeals you will endure will be such that they may indeed freeze the soul, so that all love, all laughter will have fled.” Wearily he sat down on a bench. “Now, hear me.”
Helmut also sat. “I listen,” he said gravely, and already he seemed years older.
Sandivar mustered his thoughts. “In ways beyond explaining,” he said, “there are worlds within worlds and worlds beyond worlds. You have seen those wonderfully carved balls of ivory from the East, in which globe rests within globe within globe, ad infinitum?”
“I have seen them.”
“So all these worlds. And there is only one thing that keeps them separate and discrete—and that is Time. Each world functions on a different time—otherwise they would blur and merge. And only in two ways can Time be bridged: by necromancy or by death, which is a kind of sorcery in itself.”
He hesitated. “But no time or reason for complicated explanations. Suffice this: that through certain powers I possess, I can send you from this world into one far less pleasant, and there you would live ten years in what, in this one, would be ten minutes. Then, by the same art, I could summon you to return. Ten years in that world, as many minutes in this one—and Albrecht suddenly has to deal not with a child but with a man full-grown.”
There was a long pause while Helmut digested this. “In ten minutes I can be a man?”
“No. You do not comprehend. Men are not made so quickly. In another world, you will live ten years, and ten years of an existence that you can not now imagine. That is what will make you a man. No one escapes payment in full for manhood, and you would pay more than most. But that ten years will amount only to so many minutes here, and—” he turned over an hour glass, “you would return before this sand ran out.”
Again Helmut thought hard and at last nodded. “Now I think I see. But what good is manhood if I am untrained in the warrior arts? Even had I full growth, ten years more it would take to make me righting man the equal of Albrecht or even Eero—”
“You do not know the world to which I propose to send you,” Sandivar said, in a voice almost like the toll of a bell. “It is, as they say, an Underworld, a place made for the shades of only the greatest warriors. Or, to be more blunt, it is a kind of hell in which the fighting is endless and relentless. But so much would you learn there in those years from such great men condemned to endless battling, with all its horror and all its glory, that upon your return no warrior of this world could stand against you.”
As he said these last words, he saw something move in Helmut’s eyes. The boy asked: “Not even Albrecht?”
“Not even Albrecht.”
Helmut was silent for perhaps five seconds. Then he arose. “That being the case,”
he said quietly, “I will go.”
They were the words Sandivar had been waiting for, but now he hated the sound of them. “Perhaps,” he temporized, “you do not still understand—”
“I understand enough,” Helmut said. “I understand that in ten minutes of this world’s time I can return as a full-grown man and trained warrior and Albrecht’s equal. I understand that Albrecht will then die. Unless you make sport of me, send me to this place, good Sandivar, and this at once.”
“Look me fair in the eyes,” Sandivar said.
Helmut did so, unblinking.
“You are certain?”
“Aye. I am certain.”
“Then,” Sandivar said, a catch in his throat, “come give me kiss, my son. For it is the last I will have from childhood.”
“Aye,” Helmut said. “I will give you kiss. You have been as father.” And he embraced the old man.
When they broke apart, Sandivar pulled himself together and said, “Now, come.” Quite briskly, he led Helmut up a ladder to the second floor, an area heretofore prohibited to the boy. This part of the tower was completely empty except for a huge book on a lectern and a great urn in one corner. Now Sandivar went to the urn, dipped the contents from it, and very carefully traced a pentacle on the floor. What fell from the dipper was neither totally liquid nor powder, but something in between, a shining, dazzling substance that all at once seemed to light the dark with a cold, white fire. At last the pentacle was fully traced, and, breathing hard, Sandivar turned to face the child. “As in death,” he said gently, “one must go naked and alone.”
“All right,” the boy said; and he stripped off the kirtle. His flesh looked greenish in the glow as he stepped into the pentacle. He stood there, watching Sandivar, betraying no fear, as the old man stepped behind the lectern.
Sandivar’s mouth was dry; he swallowed hard. The strange script of the pages seemed to blur before his eyes as he began to read from the book. But that was all right, for he knew the spell by heart. His voice droned on and on, pronouncing each syllable precisely and carefully, for that was part of the secret. At last, after what seemed to him ages, he heard his own voice stop. Drawing in a long, deep breath, he slowly raised his head.
But, of course, the pentacle was empty. And all the cold, glowing, glittering fire of it had died. The room, save for a candle Sandivar had lit, was in darkness.
Sandivar waited. Truly, now, time was endless. Outside, he heard Waddle scratching at the door. Overhead, bats stirred and rustled, for it was nearing sundown. A great distance away, a horn blew, summoning home the fishermen of the fens, who would rather have died than venture this far into the marsh.
Still Sandivar remained motionless. In the darkness of the room, he watched until his eyes hurt. He knew what to expect; and yet this was the first time that he’d a stake of his own in the words he’d mouthed. Then the pentacle began to glow again. At first the light was like fox fire in wet woods, faint, illusory; but it brightened steadily, as Sandivar watched and held his breath. There was a precise second, a tick of time, which he must grasp… The cold light intensified; then Sandivar thought: Now! And he quickly said the necessary half-dozen words. Immediately an explosion of radiance cold as death and bright enough to sear filled the room; outside the tower, Waddle howled and moaned in terror. Sandivar stood unmoving, eyes closed. In a moment, he opened them. The radiance was subsiding. In its midst stood a figure. Sandivar could see it only in silhouette—the tall, wide-shouldered, barrel-chested, slim-waisted outline of a man. Instinctively Sandivar’s eyes went to the right arm. Where a hand should be, it was lacking, and the arm ended in a stump.
The fire died. Behind Sandivar, the candle flickered and guttered, the light it shed pathetic after all that hellish radiance. “Helmut?” Sandivar said, almost hesitantly.
The figure moved forward, into the candle-glow. This was a giant of a man, far taller than two meters and in his early twenties. Blond hair the color of hammered gold fell down to his shoulders, and a thick, silky beard of the same color masked most of his face; but Sandivar could make out the strong, hawklike nose, the wide, firm lips, and the eyes—most of all, the eyes. As Sandivar saw the eyes, he thought: May the Gods forgive me…
Beneath craggy bone and heavy brows, they were the color of steel, and they were terrible. Something in them made even Sandivar turn his head away, as they beheld him steadily. For these eyes had looked upon things that had left a record in them and on the wide, grim mouth—such things that a living man could not even imagine and retain sanity, though there was no lack of this in the cold, steel-colored eyes of Helmut. For an instant, Sandivar almost felt pity for Albrecht.
“Yes,” Helmut said. “It is I.” His voice was deep and steady, tinged with melancholy, yet also somehow ringing with steel. “And it was as you said. Beowulf, Siegfried, Arthur, Charlemagne, and—well, I have the skill of arms now. When shall we leave for Boorn?”
Sandivar rubbed his face wearily. “We do not leave for Boorn immediately. First we have business in the Lands of Light.”
“I have no business there,” Helmut said. “I need only weapons. Then all my business is in the court at Marmorburg.”
Sandivar drew in a deep breath. “Aye,” he said. “But you are to return to lay about you with Rage, on galloping Vengeance, with Death and Destruction at your stirrup-irons. And for these reasons, we must go to the Lands of Light.”
Helmut nodded. “Then give me something of clothing,” he said, and there was command in his voice. “And as soon as I have dressed, let us depart.”
“Yes,” said Sandivar. “Yes. As you desire, Helmut, Emperor of the Gray Lands.” The deference in his voice was real.
“I am not emperor yet,” said Helmut. “But ere Albrecht comes in sword blade reach, I warrant I shall be. Now, make haste, Sandivar.”
“One moment,” Sandivar said. “Before—” He gestured toward the pentacle. “Before you went, we embraced.” A question rang in his voice.
“Aye,” Helmut said. “I loved you then. That was when I could still love. But you were right, Sandivar. It is a freezing of the soul. All laughter is frozen, and all love. What remains is death; but for my purposes, death is enough. Shall we go?”
Feeling cold all over, Sandivar turned away. “At once,” he said.
The throne room of the great hall in the huge palace at Marmorburg was columned with soaring shafts of iridescent marble, and its ceiling was so high that the frescoes which adorned it were on an enormous scale. Through the arched windows set in walls of alabaster white, sunlight poured in golden shafts, striking brilliant gleams from the rich garb of the group of lords and their retainers gathered at one end of the hall, awaiting audience. Contrasting with all this splendor was the black of Wolfsheim in which the King’s Guard was arrayed, lined up in double row to the throne—half-wolves all, their rankness filling the palace with the smell of an animal’s covert.
Albrecht, enthroned on the white marble dais at one end of the hall, was so accustomed to the smell that he hardly noticed it; or if he did, it was perfume, of a kind, in his nostrils. The weight of the crown of empire was heavy on his head; but his neck was more than strong enough to bear it; and the broadsword which lay across his lap was the Great Sword of Boorn, richly jeweled and filigreed with gold, yet perfectly balanced and with an invisible edge of keenness beyond belief. He had, deliberately, eschewed the bright, colorful garments of the royalty of Sigrieth’s line; his robes were of black sable and gray wolfskin, but beautifully made and very rich. Gauntlets and boots alike were of black leather, to match those of his guard.
From where he sat, the lords awaiting audience were so far away that they appeared small and inconsequential; but he frowned as his eyes appraised them. Hagen, the cursed Hagen of Markau, old lieutenant and fighting comrade of Sigrieth—he was the troublemaker, the questioner, and the fly in the ointment. Yet, he could not be dealt with summarily, not until the throne on which Albrecht sat was steadier than now it felt.
Some diplomacy would be required; if it failed, the force could come afterward.
Beside the throne, Eero, also in leather and black satin, though it, too, was now trimmed with sable, awaited orders, red tongue lolling. Well, Albrecht told himself, naught to be gained by delay. “Good Eero,” he said, “bid the lords come forward.”
“Aye, your majesty.” With clawed hand on sword, Eero swaggered down the aisle between the rigid, drawn-up lines of the troops he commanded. Albrecht’s first move had been to replace the Palace Guard of Marmorburg with half-wolves. Nor had that depleted his strength at Wolfsheim. He smiled faintly. Probably that had something to do with yonder fighting-cock stance of Hagen, which bespoke outrage.
Now, swords swinging and gear jingling, helmets in hand, the lords with their retinues strode down the aisle between the half-wolves to approach the throne. Albrecht sat upright, waiting, and his mouth curled faintly beneath his heavy mustache as each lord made a knee and bowed his head before the throne.
Hagen, though the leader of the group, was the last to bow, nor was it very deep. Then he straightened, and his dark eyes met those of Albrecht. “Have I permission to speak, Your Majesty?”
“Good Hagen knows how well loved he is by us and that he always has our ear.”
“Then,” said Hagen, “come we for redress of grievances. Certain petitions have we—” He turned to a retainer, who handed him a parchment scroll.
“One moment,” said Albrecht, raising a hand. “Not many weeks ere we mounted throne of empire. So early have you grievance for which you assign us responsibility? Perhaps more seemly, far, to wait ere our rule is truly under way and its results seen.”
Hagen’s face, topped by short, gray hair like a badger’s fur, was weathered to the color and texture of leather, deeply lined. His mouth thinned, chin jutted, and his eyes glinted. “As Regent have you ruled since the death of Sigrieth. Where responsibility is to be assigned presents no question.”
“That we let pass for this moment,” Albrecht said, eyes slitting. “Have your say. Only, be careful that you not o’er-speak yourself.”
The Sword of Morning Star Page 5
