The Prophecy

by Hilari Bell

  “Why should I?” The unicorn sounded surprised. “It’s only bones.”

  “Perryn.” Lysander’s voice was tense. “There isn’t a mark here to show how this man died.”

  “Maybe he was shot by an arrow and it didn’t hit a bone,” Perryn suggested. “A falling-out among thieves?”

  “Then where’s the arrowhead?”

  “So maybe he was stabbed,” said Perryn impatiently. Part of him was curious, but the sword was so close! The thought of claiming the final piece of the prophecy made his heart beat faster. “Come on. There’s nothing we can do for him.” Perryn strode down the corridor. The torchlight found another skeleton. And another.

  “This is worse than Wyr forest,” said the bard. “Why do I let you talk me into these things?”

  A muted gasp in Perryn’s mind warned him.

  “Prism!” The unicorn’s eyes were rolling up. “Take deep breaths and put your head down. Another breath. Another. That’s it.”

  The unicorn’s eyes came back to normal, and she looked frantically at the dim corridor. With a mind-splitting shriek she bolted out of the tomb.

  Perryn winced. “At least she didn’t faint.”

  The bard was rubbing his temples. “Was that supposed to be an improvement?” Then Lysander jumped and stared wildly around him.

  “What is it?”

  “Something touched me.” The bard’s face was pale.

  “But there’s nothing here!” Something cold brushed across Perryn’s face and he flinched. “What was that?”

  The cold touch ran over his arm next.

  Lysander backed up against the wall, his eyes searching the shadows. “Perryn, we’ve got to get out of here.” He started forward and then jumped back.

  A freezing hand ran over Perryn’s shoulder and down the inside of his arm. He yelped and swung his torch. The cold vanished.

  “Use the torch,” he yelled.

  The bard burst away from the wall. Swinging his torch wildly he ran for the exit.

  Perryn followed. The icy air was thick in front of him, yielding only to the flame. Frigid hands stroked his back as he ran, only stopping as he burst through the door and out into the night. The cold, fresh air felt warm on his chilled skin. He was gasping with fear, and felt deeply, strangely weary. He stared at the open door of the tomb. There was nothing there.

  “Ghosts.” Prism came to stand beside him. She was trembling all over, her eyes fixed on the doorway. “They’re going back now. They probably can’t leave the corridor.”

  “You can see them?” Perryn asked.

  “You mean you can’t?”

  “Well, now we know why they didn’t need to lock the door.” Lysander joined them. “And what happened to those men in there.”

  “The ghosts killed them? But how?” Perryn asked. “And why?” Ghost stories were one of the few subjects that hadn’t interested him, and now he regretted it.

  “For the warmth,” Prism told him. “For the life in their bodies. Ghosts are greedy for it. They suck it right out of you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I could hear them talking about it. They’re the ghosts of King Albion’s enemies. They don’t have a choice.” She looked down, refusing to meet Perryn’s eyes, and he decided he didn’t want to know what else the ghosts had said. The ancient mages had possessed great power, but not even the legends claimed that they were all good men. Some of them emphatically weren’t. Perhaps the loss of man-made magic in the world wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

  “That’s that,” said the bard. “No Sword of Samhain for us. It’ll be nice and warm in the south this time of year.”

  “No!” said Perryn. “I won’t turn back. The sword is in there and I’m going to get it.”

  “The sword may be there,” said Lysander. “I can’t imagine a grave robber who could get through that. So how, may I ask, do you plan to do it?”

  “With fire,” said Perryn. “They gave way before our torches. We fought our way out with them. We can fight our way in.”

  “I knew I should have turned you in for the reward,” said Lysander. “I am never going in there again.”

  “I am,” said Perryn. “Before I lose my nerve.”

  He grasped his torch firmly and ran through the mouth of the tomb.

  “Wait! Perryn, stop!” the bard cried.

  Then he was through the door. The cold swirled around him as he thrust forward, spinning and slashing wildly with his torch. He could almost see them, like wisps of mist at the edges of his vision, but when he looked for them they vanished. His back was growing cold. He couldn’t defend it and still move forward.

  Perryn kept going. Icy hands stroked his spine. His head ached from the chill, and his back was freezing.

  With a flurry of footsteps and a roar of fire, Lysander appeared behind him. Back to back, they moved slowly down the long corridor. A few frigid hands reached past their whirling torches, but not many.

  A dark doorway loomed and they stepped through it together. The swirling cold of the ghosts vanished.

  “We made it!” Perryn slid to the floor; his knees were limp.

  “No thanks to you,” Lysander declared furiously. “What were you doing rushing in like that without a word of warning? You could have been killed. I could have been killed!”

  “What was there to wait for?”

  “For one thing,” said Lysander, “we could have kindled the third torch.”

  “Oh.” Perryn blushed.

  Lysander could have been killed, but he’d followed Perryn anyway. The warmth of that knowledge banished the last of the chill from Perryn’s heart. It had been a long time since he’d had a friend. Or was this the first time? For years he’d wished for a friend—and now that he’d found one, Perryn had led him straight into danger, and would probably lead him into more. He pushed the thought aside. “At least we made it.” Perryn lifted his torch to look around him and gasped.

  The tomb of Albion, twenty-seventh of the great warrior-kings of Idris, held all the things he had most cherished in his life. A game board caught Perryn’s eye; the playing pieces were hounds and hares, cast in silver and gold, the silver black with tarnish. The board was inlaid with emeralds. Clearly, the ghosts had been good guardians. Perryn and Lysander must be the first people to see this room since the doors were closed. The rusty suit of armor beside the game board was plain steel, but beautifully crafted. It was also dented and worn. The king’s armor. Not ceremonial armor, but the armor he had fought in.

  Perryn staggered to his feet and went to the coffin in the center of the room. It was stone, the lid carved into a likeness of King Albion. He was shorter than Perryn had expected, and bore no resemblance to either Perryn or his father. On his chest, its hilt slipped between his stone hands, lay a sword. It was very plain, but its grace and strength showed through the rust that covered it.

  “The Sword of Samhain,” Lysander breathed. He hadn’t even glanced at the other treasures around them. “The sword with which King Darian slew the evil wizard Andross. The sword that defeated the army of Mandeen the soul slayer.”

  Perryn reached out. Grasping the sword, he worked it loose from the carved king’s stone fingers. It slid free in a shower of rust.

  “Adan, the second warrior-king, was knighted with that sword,” Lysander murmured reverently.

  “And what a party that was!” The sword vibrated in Perryn’s hands as the voice vibrated in his mind. He almost dropped it. “All the lords and half the ladies were drunk and a walloping brawl started. Old Duran—he was the first king, though they just called ’em barons back then—he should have stopped it, but he was under the table by that time and Adan himself was in the thick of things. It was almost as much fun as a battle. Who’re you fellers?”

  Lysander’s mouth was hanging open, but Perryn wasn’t as surprised. He remembered reading that the Sword of Samhain had a mind-voice—like the Mirror of Idris once had. Though he hadn’t expected it to be quite
so…alive.

  “I’m Perryn. I mean, Prince Perryndon, son of Rovan, the forty-fourth warrior-king of Idris. My companion is the bard Lysander.”

  “Forty-fourth king? How long have I been moldering in this boring box? I’m the Sword of Samhain, which means I was forged by Samhain, way back in the elder days. He was a pretty good smith and a pretty good wizard, but he’d have been a total loss as a fighter if he hadn’t had me. I’m pleased to death to meet you, so to speak. Call me Sam. And tell me why I’ve been sitting around here getting rusty for seventeen generations. Albion’s kid swore he’d have me out of here within the week!”

  “He probably tried,” said Perryn, “But I think the ghosts stopped him.”

  “Ghosts? You mean old Alby brought in ghosts to guard me? No wonder it’s been so long. Never could abide ghosts—horrid, chilly things.” A grating chuckle sounded in Perryn’s mind. “’Course, they can’t abide me either. It’s one of my powers, dispelling ghosts. But tell me, what brought you fellers this way?”

  “A prophecy,” said Perryn. There was no use in concealing anything from the sword. This was a time for truth. “A prophecy made by Mardon the magus, that the Sword of Samhain, a true bard, and a unicorn could slay a dragon. I have the other two, but we need you. Will you do it?”

  “Mardon’s prophecy? But he only made…wait a minute. You mean a dragon’s turned up? A real one? You want to take me dragon slaying?”

  “Yes.” Perryn held his breath. It might be possible to find another bard, or another unicorn, somewhere, but if the sword refused…

  “Hot fights and hotter women! A battle! After all these years. Let me at ’em!” roared the sword.

  But Prince Perryndon’s enemies sought to stop the prophecy.

  10

  “THEN THERE WAS THE TIME ME AND OLD BRYNDON took on the snake woman of the vanishing caves,” the sword’s voice grated.

  “Half-python, half-woman, and all evil. Her hair was a mass of poisonous vipers,” the bard chanted.

  “Naw, she wasn’t a monster herself. She just had a pack of trained snakes, or maybe she controlled ’em by magic. Never found out. Anyway, she had this big old python, twenty feet if it was an inch, and he ambushed us just before we reached the main chamber of the cave. There we were…”

  “Humph,” Prism sniffed. As a creature of magic herself, she was notably unimpressed by Sam. Especially when she discovered that she had to carry the armor.

  Sam had insisted they remove Albion’s armor and war ax from the tomb.

  “It’s not magical or anything,” he told them. “But I’ve gotten kind of used to working with folks in armor. I’d feel downright nekked if someone weren’t wearing it. And the ax, well, I’ve been talking to it for the last couple of centuries. ’Course it didn’t talk back, but I got fond of it. Kind of like a pet, you know?”

  So now Prism carried a pack with the armor, and when she complained, Lysander told her to be grateful she was too small for anyone to ride. The bard had accepted the heavy war ax without complaint, and now Perryn watched him uneasily, as he sat by the campfire listening to Sam. Perryn wasn’t certain why he was so worried. He had assembled everyone he needed to make the prophecy come true. Even his father would have to acknowledge that. He should be rejoicing! And yet…

  When the cannons were gone, when their king, half-mad with grief, was rocking his wife’s broken body in his arms, the king’s men had tried to fight the dragon in the old way, with spears, arrows, and swords. They must have injured the beast—the fever known as the dragon’s wrath, which only occurred when a dragon’s blood touched the blood of a man, had killed almost all of his father’s wounded within a day. So the dragon could be cut by normal weapons, and magical weapons should work much better. Still, only a quarter of the men who had set out with their king had returned alive.

  “…Eighty of ’em there was, and me and Jadon with only fifteen men,” Sam continued.

  Prism sniffed again.

  “But the song says Mandeen’s army was hundreds strong,” the bard protested. “And you and Jadon were alone.”

  “You got to watch out for them songs, young feller. Never did know a bard that could resist adding a little polish to the truth. Not that some of ’em aren’t grand fighters, as well as grand musicians, but they do exaggerate. Nope, there was eighty of them, and seventeen of us, and the battlefield a sea of mud. It had been raining all week, you see, and—”

  “Lysander,” said Perryn. “Can I talk to you? Alone?”

  “Perryn, you interrupted—”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Sam said. “I know I’m talking too much. Always did, and after all that time with no one to listen, I’ll probably rattle on forever if you let me. You go talk to the prince. If we’re gonna fight a dragon there’s plans to make, yes siree. Plans to make and…”

  Perryn dragged the bard away from the fire, out of the range of the sword’s mind-voice, which seemed to carry about as far as a normal voice would. Perryn hoped the same was true of the sword’s hearing.

  “Perryn, if you’re going to make battle plans I’d think you’d want Sam’s help. He has far more experience than we do. More than you can imagine.”

  “Battle plans? Lysander, are you actually considering fighting the dragon?”

  “Yes!” said the bard enthusiastically. “Think of it! A new legend of the Sword of Samhain, in our own time! With that song in my repertoire I’ll be one of the great bards of history. Not to mention the richest. And how the tale of my exploits will affect the ladies! I’ll start on the melody line as soon as—”

  “Forget Sam; what about you? Do you even know how to fight?”

  “Well, it’s not like the old days, when most bards were warriors, too, but a wandering bard has to know how to fight….” Lysander paused. “At least a bit. And the Sword of Samhain will make up for any deficiencies on my part.”

  “But you never believed in the prophecy! I can tell that meeting Sam has impressed you, and the last thing I want is to discourage you, but my father took two cannons and fifty knights out to slay that beast and only a handful survived. I know Sam was a legendary fighter, but—”

  “You don’t understand, Perryn. You think Sam is bragging, but he isn’t. In fact, he’s being modest. If anything can slay that dragon, the Sword of Samhain can.”

  “But he’s rusting to bits!”

  “What’s the matter with you, Perryn? The prophecy is coming true! What’s the problem? Don’t you think Sam can do it?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Perryn. “I’m just not sure.”

  “Then ask him yourself,” said the bard. “I’m going back to the fire—it’s cold out here.”

  “THERE WE WERE,” THE SWORD WAS TELLING THE bored unicorn when they returned. “All but five of us down and twenty of them still to go. ‘At least we’ve reduced the odds,’ Jadon says. I—”

  “Sam,” said Perryn sinking down beside the sword. “I’d like to ask you a few things.”

  “Certainly! Glad to help out. What do you want to know?”

  “Ah…have you ever killed a dragon before?”

  “Nope, never have,” the sword answered cheerfully. “It’ll be a real challenge, facing something new at my age.”

  “Then you don’t know how to go about it? At all?”

  “I never was much for all those tactical flourishes. Just hit what I’m swung at, that’s what I do best.”

  “But are you sure you can? I mean, at your age?”

  “Well, I may have lost a bit of the old edge, sitting around in the damp all that time. Damp gets into steel, you know? Give us a lick with the whetstone, boy. That’ll do her.”

  Perryn took the sword into his hands. Flakes of rust peeled off against his fingers. The sword’s edges seemed to be entirely rotted away.

  “I don’t think I’d better,” he said nervously.

  “Ah, save all me metal for the dragon. Good idea.”

  “But what are we to do?” asked Perryn
. “How do we start?”

  “I can’t say for sure. But when you don’t really know what you’re up against, my favorite thing is to charge straight in and fight for all you’re worth!”

  “But if you don’t know what you’re up against—”

  “That way you find out real fast,” said the sword. “I remember once…”

  IT WAS HARD TO GET AWAY FROM THE OTHERS, TO be alone with the mirror. But the longer he watched Lysander, Sam, and Prism together, the more Perryn worried. Finally he excused himself. At least the night was cold enough that no one wondered why he extracted his cloak from his satchel before leaving the fire, and he managed to conceal the mirror in its folds.

  “Mirror of Idris,” he said softly, settling cross-legged in the grass. “It’s Perryn. Can you show me…?” He intended to ask whether these unlikely heroes could succeed in killing the dragon, but the usual question rose to his lips instead. “Can you show me my father’s reaction to my flight?”

  The mirror swirled just once and then the image formed—a battle against the Norse. It was day in the meadow between the rolling hills, and enemy warriors swarmed down the slopes toward his father’s men. Perryn watched with fear and pride as the king rallied his troops against charge after charge until the Norsemen finally retreated.

  Perryn frowned. Why hadn’t his father used those hills himself? Safranos of Nardon wrote that if there was a hill or a valley within fifty leagues of a battlefield, a wise commander would make use of it. His father probably had his reasons, but—

  The mirror’s focus tightened on the king. “We’re losing too many men,” King Rovan told the officer who stood beside him, watching the wounded carried off to the surgeons. “We didn’t get enough recruits this winter—and having to send almost a hundred soldiers after that worthless boy didn’t help.”

  The officer looked shocked. “But Highness, no one begrudges the men sent to look for the prince! Your son’s safety has to come first.”

  The king grunted. There was nothing on his face but concern for the next battle they’d have to fight.