Ben could smell the fecund moisture of the Lake of Life for some time before actually entering the great cave in which it lay. The impression on entering was far from cave-like—a crystal ceiling, startlingly distant, was lighted by refracted sunlight. Ben remembered Draffut’s mentioning that the slow lunar sunrise would soon take place in this region of the lunar surface.
* * *
On hearing his goal described as a lake, Ben had envisioned some kind of underground pool; but the reality surprised him, even though the Lake itself was not yet in sight. He was standing on one edge of a vast columned space whose glowing overhead suggested an Earthly sky and whose floor sloped down toward a mass of bright vegetation, concealing whatever might lie beyond—presumably including the Lake of Life itself.
He had not advanced much farther when he stopped suddenly in his tracks. All he could think was: Sightblinder cannot be here. The Sword of Stealth has been destroyed. What I see now must be an image cast by some other magic.
Or else—
Perhaps fifty meters from where he stood, on the far side of the visible space, in the garden area where the light was brightest, Ben saw Ariane, the red-haired love of his long-vanished youth.
Birds rose in alarm from among the nearer trees as he went bounding and stumbling forward, all else forgotten.
The young woman—to all appearances still unchanged from when Ben had last seen her more than twenty years ago—was dressed in simple but attractive clothing. When he first saw her, she was busy about some routine task—some kind of gardening, troweling rich black and very Earthy-looking soil.
At the sound of Ben’s voice, Ariane looked up. His last doubt vanished—it was she. Joy came to her face, but no enormous surprise. In a moment she was running to greet Ben happily, as if she had been expecting him.
For a long, cold moment, the thought of Sightblinder’s illusions returned to torment Ben’s mind. But he knew, if he knew anything, that that Sword had been destroyed.
Then the moment of renewed doubt was past. Ben clutched the young woman’s large, strong body to him, swept her off her feet. This was no illusion. No. His knees had felt weak as she came running toward him, but now his whole body felt strong again.
* * *
A minute later, he and Ariane were seated side by side, on the fallen bole of some odd tree or giant fern, quite near the spot where she had been gardening. The whole garden, smelling of damp earth and life, seemed a fascinating mixture of the controlled and the natural.
And peaceful. In a dazed way Ben became aware that this lunar environment, so strange and changeable, sometimes so antagonistic, had in the last few minutes, even apart from the miraculous presence of Ariane, grown astonishingly friendly.
Even the gravity now seemed more like that of his home-world—he wondered if that meant that he was weakening. But at the moment illness and injury were the farthest things from Ben’s thoughts.
It required recurrent mental effort to reassure himself that he was really still on the Moon, and not somewhere beside one of the warm seas of his own world. There were green things, some plain, some exotic, spiked with a profusion of multicolored flowers, growing on three sides of where he sat. And in the middle distance beyond the thickest greenery, where the distant crystal cave-walls were no longer visible, a bright mist suggested almost irresistibly that gray sky, and not a cave-roof, lay beyond.
Here and there among the nearby shrubbery, several fountains played—Ben had not noticed them before. The statuary in at least one of them was slowly shifting shape, as if on the verge of bursting into life—and it was into this rippling, unquiet basin that Ariane dipped a crystal cup, then brought it to Ben, saying: “Here, drink this.”
Until that moment Ben had not been conscious of thirst, but having brought the cup to his lips he drank deep. It was, he thought, the best drink he’d ever had.
Feeling refreshed, seeing and hearing everything more clearly, he cocked his head a little on one side. “You know, I hear something that sounds like surf, big waves. Or I think I do.”
Ariane glanced back over her shoulder. “Yes, there are waves. It’s the Lake of Life just over there. The people of the Old World made it. They made a smaller one on Earth, too—or so Draffut tells me. But that was destroyed two thousand years ago.”
“I thought that Lake was only legend.”
The waves of red hair bobbed. “Legend, yes. But also as real as Draffut is. He says it was immersion in the Lake on Earth that first made him something more than a dog.”
“I think I could use some of it myself.” Though at the moment he really felt quite well.
Ariane’s green eyes twinkled. “You don’t really need it any more—anyway, you’ve just had some.”
Ben nodded slowly, as if on some level he was beginning to understand. What little he could see of this lake through the screen of vegetation, no more than a small glimpse here and there, suggested that it might stretch on for kilometers—or was that only an effect of mist and light? Certainly the forest of growth on this shore was diverse and fertile beyond anything Ben had ever experienced or even imagined.
* * *
Ariane had put a hand on his shoulder and was looking him in the face—as if she were looking at a young man, in a way that stirred his blood. Then she smiled and asked him: “Tell me how you came here?”
In a few moments, after a false start or two, Ben was relating the tale of how Coinspinner had been blasted out of his hand in the coastal cave near Sarykam. He added the comment that there must now be very few Swords left on Earth or anywhere else, though he had no up-to-date certainty about numbers.
Ben also expressed his worries about Shieldbreaker and Soulcutter, and how Prince Mark and the rest of Tasavalta were going to deal with them.
But Ariane did not seem at all perturbed. She assured the man she loved that he had done all he could do. He didn’t have to worry about such matters anymore.
He protested. “If Mark—”
“You’ve done all that you can do for Mark.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Ben put his face down in his hands and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up again. Ariane was still sitting right beside him.
“Are you really here?” he whispered hoarsely. “Am I?”
“I’m really here. And so are you.” And the young woman, garbed simply but richly in garments whose shapes showed her strong body to advantage, whose colors harmonized with her red hair, continued to sit close beside the huge man, looking at him lovingly. It was a restful attitude. There was no hurry about anything.
“Ben?” As if she were wondering—not worried, only curious—why he remained silent.
“Ariane? It’s really you?”
“Yes, foolish man, are you still worried? Of course it’s me.” Strong pale fingers pinched his arm.
He rubbed the pinched spot absently. “But how did you get here? On the Moon? And when?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” She made it sound like an eminently practical answer. “Well, I’ve been here, with my father, almost since I last saw you.”
Absently he rubbed at his forehead, where his fingers could no longer discover any sweat, or blood. Or wound. He asked: “You mean with the Emperor? Since when?”
“I’ve just told you. Yes, the man you call the Emperor’s my father—but you knew that. Actually, to me it doesn’t seem very long since you and I were parted. We were trying to steal some treasure, as I recall. All in a worthy cause, of course.” She smiled as at some memory of childhood pranks. She stroked Ben’s head, the back of his neck. If there was a little soreness still, pain had receded so far as to be faintly enjoyable, little more than a memory, as happened when a wound or a sprain was almost healed.
He asked: “Just you and your father live here?”
Ariane’s laughter tinkled; a delicate sound to come from a body so big and strong. “No, Foolish One. There are others. A great many other people. You’ll meet them. Some you already know.”
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br /> “Really?”
He wanted to ask who else was here that he might know, but instead closed his eyes. Whether magic was involved in what Ariane—and her father—were doing for him, or technology, or some sweet drug in the drink she’d given him, or what, Ben was being slowly overwhelmed by a sense of blissful tiredness and relaxation. In a little while, he felt sure, he was going to fall asleep. Now there would be time and security in which to sleep.
Ben felt a momentary regression toward childhood. How strange. But he was certain there was no danger, now, in such abandonment. Opening his eyes again, Ben told his love: “I wish I had a father like yours.”
She nodded soberly, as at some reasonable request. “He’ll be glad to be your father if you want.”
Ben thought about it. The last time he had seen the Emperor, the Emperor had looked younger than Ben. Ben started a chuckle but it quickly faded.
Then something occurred to him, to his renascent adult self. An item of information that should be passed along. “Your mother’s here,” he told Ariane. “Lady Yambu came with me in the shuttle, from—from the Earth.”
The green eyes of his beloved opened wide with eagerness; a delicious little personal trait that Ben realized he had forgotten until this moment. She said: “I want to see my mother—but there’s no hurry. Right now I just want to be with you.”
Ariane, Ariane. Yes, it had to be twenty years, Ben thought—really a little more than twenty—since he had seen this young woman or touched her hand. But he remembered perfectly how her hand felt, solid and warm and somewhat roughened by active use. It felt just like this.
So many seasons, so many events and people had come and gone that he was finding it difficult to be accurate about the reckoning.
“As I remember the way things were so long ago—you loved me then. You really did.”
“I really did. I really do.” And at this point the red-haired young woman kissed this man who loved her. Then she got up from her seat and her fingers became busy, rubbing her fingers over the now-painless spot on Ben’s head where he’d been wounded, then splashing him gently with more water from the fountain.
It was all delightful. Perfect. But Ben’s lingering sense of mundane reality, though fading by the moment, was still strong enough to be offended by this situation. “I was a young man then, when last we met. I’m getting to be an old man now. My wife and my daughter may both be dead, for all I know. They were taken hostage, I think. …”
“I know.” But here, now, no one’s death seemed to be of any great concern. Everyone had some difficulties along that line, but they were temporary. And Ben’s beloved, as young and beautiful as memory would have her, put a hand on his arm. Her touch was very real. She only smiled, faintly, as if there was something, some delightful secret, that she was going to explain to him, sooner or later, when she got around to it. But there was no hurry. Ben understood, without having it spelled out for him, that there was going to be plenty of time for explanations. All the time that anyone could want.
* * * * * *
A little later, Ben became aware of other people, moving, strolling, at some distance along the shore of the Lake of Life. He could hear other voices from time to time, though their words were indistinguishable. “Who’s that—?”
* * *
And at the same time, in a secluded cove not very distant along the shore of this Lake of Life, the Silver Queen, Ariane’s mother, was being reunited with her husband.
There was a black-brown curve of sandy beach, lapped by occasional waves, and out beyond the gentle surf the surface of the water in the Lake vanished into a shimmering, indeterminate distance. When the Lady Yambu came upon the Emperor in this spot he was also gardening, driving with his right foot to thrust his shovel firmly and unhurriedly into the black rich soil, getting ready to plant something new in the superfertile soil beside the Lake.
Gladly he paused in his work, wiped a trace of sweat from his forehead, leaned with muscular forearms crossed upon the handle of his shovel, and welcomed his caller with the calm of a loving husband who has perhaps been separated from his wife for a few hours.
In fact he moved at once to kiss Yambu, but she was still wary, and put him off.
The Emperor shrugged, stepped back and did not press the matter. He had all the time there was, and he could wait.
Husband and wife soon found several things that both of them were eager to talk about. One of the first such topics was their daughter.
Another was the fact that the Emperor really wanted the help of the Silver Queen in cultivating the new garden he was planning on this section of the Lake’s shore.
“Are you telling me that you’ve brought me here simply to help you tend a garden?”
This led the discussion to another item: some explanation for the fact that the two of them, despite an obvious mutual attraction, had frequently argued and quarreled.
And Yambu (she was now sitting on a beach-side boulder, the rock’s surface mottled with some ever-moving design of life, while her husband still leaned on his spade; and now she noticed, with a feeling of merely confirming what was right and proper, that her long hair when the breeze stirred it before her eyes was no longer gray but jetty black) said to her husband: “It seems to me, looking back on it, that we never got along at all when we were married. And yet, I doubt that I would ever consider marrying anyone else.”
He almost frowned. “If I have anything to say about it you’d better not consider that.”
“You’re jealous.” She said it unbelievingly.
“I am.”
Her anger rose up. “But of course it’s quite all right for you to be promiscuous, because you are…” Yambu stopped uncertainly.
“A man? You know me better than to think I would make that excuse.”
“You father children everywhere.”
“I give them life. It is not behavior I can recommend to every man.”
“But, of course, for you—”
“Yes. For me.”
Yambu shook her head as if to clear it. She meant to come back to argue that point later. “Speaking of your children, do you know your son Prince Mark for years has spent a great deal of time and worry trying to locate you? Even to the neglect of his own family?”
“I know.”
“Well?” Impatience flared. “The poor man wants to know who you are, beyond a name, an image. And so do I.”
Her companion raised an eyebrow. “You have been my wife for all these years, you’ve borne my child—and you don’t know?”
“If I had lived with you for all these years, perhaps I could comprehend the situation. As matters stand, I want you to tell me.”
The Emperor was no longer leaning on his shovel; his shovel had somehow disappeared. His face seemed plainer, more distinct, than any man’s face should be. He said, in a voice not grown louder, but much changed: “Some long ago have called me the Sabbath, or the Covenant—some have called me Wisdom. Some lately have said that I am the Program of Creation.”
A long moment passed before the Silver Queen persisted: “And you—? I want you to tell me what you are.”
He—plainly her husband once again—stretched out his hand to her. “Come live with me. And argue with me again, and learn. I am the Truth.”
* * *
Under a balmy Earthly sky a Tasavaltan celebration was just getting under way. And people were considering the result of the last Sword-combat. Arridu was dead, obliterated in the explosion of Shieldbreaker’s deadly fragments—and only Woundhealer, of all the Twelve Swords, still survived.
It was Stephen’s older brother Adrian, come home from his distant studies as quickly as he could, but just too late to join the fight, who at length deduced and announced an explanation—how Shieldbreaker, once in Mark’s heart, had become the Prince’s and not the demon’s weapon—and how the blast of its destruction, edge to edge against the one Sword it could not break, had slain the demon at close range.
* *
*
The victorious Prince Mark, his family, and all who stood by them were aware that Ben of Purkinje and Lady Yambu had somehow left them, but they were not unduly worried about either missing person.
Mark had his wife and his children safe, and for the time being he was content.
And it was Stephen, marveling, who discovered, at some distance from the field of combat, the charred, cracked, useless hilt of what had once been the Sword of Force. In the boy’s hand the black wood was now suddenly sprouting a green shoot.
Stephen went running to show the marvel to his father.
THE END
The Song Of Swords
Who holds Coinspinner knows good odds
Whichever move he make
But the Sword of Chance, to please the gods
Slips from him like a snake.
The Sword of Justice balances the pans
Of right and wrong, and foul and fair.
Eye for an eye, Doomgiver scans
The fate of all folk everywhere.
Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, how d'you slay?
Reaching for the heart in behind the scales.
Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, where do you stay?
In the belly of the giant that my blade impales.
Farslayer howls across the world
For thy heart, for thy heart, who hast wronged me!
Vengeance is his who casts the blade
Yet he will in the end no triumph see.
Whose flesh the Sword of Mercy hurts has drawn no breath;
Whose soul it heals has wandered in the night,
Has paid the summing of all debts in death
Has turned to see returning light.
Shieldbreaker's Story Page 24
