by Dave Duncan
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."
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 spoken, 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 h
ung from the blackened walls, but any
swords that had been overlooked 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
Blackwat
er 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."
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
