I paused trying to gather my thoughts. Could this be some kind of a trick? “That sounds about right. Yeah, four weeks.”
“Did he say anything to you about where he and my master might be heading?”
“Hell, he didn’t even say anything about going to visit your master.”
“I’m worried,” she said, sounding worried.
“I am too,” I confessed.
“Perhaps we should pool our resources and try to find them.”
I thought about that for a moment. I was worried about my boss, sure, but could I trust Sabrina? Even if I could, should I? “You could come to the store and we could discuss this if you’d like.”
“Your store is awfully public. We have no idea who might be behind these disappearances. I’d rather meet someplace more private. You could come to our place. It’s on the edge of the city and it’s rather secluded.”
I had not realized that the two lived anywhere near the city. “Okay, what’s the address?” She gave it to me and I hung up the phone after agreeing to be there in an hour.
I looked up at the sword on the wall and wondered if I should take it with me. This could be a trap. I’d trained long and hard on the uses of the sword. But my boss Sam—not his real name, real names have too much power—had instructed me not to use it unless I was certain that it was needed. He also told me that when the time came I’d be certain. And I wasn’t certain what I needed to do, so that ruled out the sword. And really nothing says I trust you like showing up wielding a sword. Still, one likes to take precautions.
I opted for my trusty Colt 45 in a shoulder holster. That necessitated my wearing a light jacket that the weather didn’t really call for. Honestly, I wasn’t worried about Sabrina or her master trying to set me up. The rules don’t work that way. You can’t just kill one of the Powers, or their apprentices, in a drive by or with a weapon other than one of the swords. And even if you have one of the swords at your disposal you can only use it when the conditions are correct. Remembering how every fiber of my being vibrated with power during the last duel, I knew the conditions weren’t correct. But what if some other player had entered the game? What if someone was hunting both sides? Did they have to play by the same rules we did?
At the appointed hour I found myself driving up a long, winding driveway. The house, really a mansion, was tucked away from the road by a series of rolling hills. Finally the driveway opened out into a wide parking area in front of the well manicured lawn. Just down the hill from the house was a large gazebo overlooking a sprawling ornamental pond. The overall effect was one of enormous wealth. I knew my boss also controlled vast amounts of wealth, but he chose not to display it quite so openly. In fact, he’d been rather put out when I’d purchased the convertible Aston Martin I was now driving.
I parked the car, looked up at the clear sky, and decided not to bother putting the top up. I pushed my sunglasses back onto the bridge of my nose and got out of the car. Gravel crunched under my shoes as I walked to the front door. Sabrina opened it before I got close enough to ring the bell. I hadn’t seen her is nearly 25 years. If she’d aged even a day it didn’t show. She had a very pretty face framed by long blond hair that seemed to be moving about in a breeze, except that there wasn’t one. Her eyes had a hard edge to them, but they were green and beautiful, and I knew that if she smiled her teeth would be very white and quite perfect.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, showing me those perfect teeth.
I nodded.
“Please come in,” she said moving aside.
I did that thing.
“Can I take your coat?”
I smiled, “Thank you, no it’s really quite comfortable.”
She smiled back at me and I noticed she was also wearing a light jacket.
She lead me to a bay window with two comfortable chairs and a small coffee table. The window looked out over the ornamental pond I’d seen coming in. There was a pot of tea and two cups on the table. “Can I offer you some jasmine tea?” she asked sitting down.
I took the other chair. “Yes, please,” I said, taking off my sun glasses and placing them into the inside pocket of my jacket.
She poured tea into both cups and handed one to me. As I was thanking her she took a sip of hers. Well, that made it clear it wasn’t poisoned, so I took a sip of mine. It was very pleasant with just a hint of honeysuckle under the subtle jasmine.
“This is very nice,” I offered.
She smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “So you don’t have any idea where our masters are?” she asked, getting right to the point of our visit.
“None. Honestly, I don’t think my boss was planning to leave. I’ve gone through all of our accounts and I can’t find any transactions that suggest he planned anything at all.”
She seemed to shrink a little into herself. “I’ve gone though all of ours and came to the same conclusion. My master never went anywhere without plans. If you knew where to look you’d always know when he was planning something. I’d tried to explain to him over and over again that computers leave traces, but he just couldn’t understand it.”
I chuckled.
She stood up and approached the window, her back to me. I realized right away why she’d done that. A tear had slipped out of the corner of her eye and she hadn’t wanted to show me that moment of vulnerability. I’m not sure why I did it, but I stood up and placed my hand on her shoulder, she turned slowly towards me and then I hugged her.
She let me hold her for a long moment and then broke away. She wiped at her tears, which were streaming freely now. “Why did you do that?” she demanded.
“You looked like you needed a hug.”
She studied me long and hard. For a moment it almost seemed as though she was reading my mind. “You mean that don’t you? You didn’t have any ulterior motives at all.”
Sabrina might very well be the most beautiful woman I had ever met, and she was certainly my type, but in that moment my only concern had been for her pain. “I didn’t,” I said barley above a whisper.
And suddenly she was in my arms again. But this time her lips sought out mine and she kissed me with a passion fiercer than any I’d ever experienced before in my long life. There was an awkward moment when we each ran into the other’s holstered gun. But her laugh broke the awkwardness and the passion returned.
I spent the night and in the morning we decided to search out our missing mentors together. We went through all the records that they had left behind. In the end we spent three months traveling the world, moving from one place of power to the next. We met with hundreds of people who had had dealings or connections with our missing mentors, but no one had seen or heard from either of them. Looking back on it, those were some of the most glorious days of my life. As much as we were genuinely seeking out our lost mentors we were also getting to know one another. The time was very much like a three month long honeymoon.
Honestly, it was my first real relationship. Sam had always warned me about getting close to anyone. If we loved, the enemy would use that against us. So we could never let ourselves care too much about anyone lest they be used as leverage against us. Of course, falling in love with Sabrina meant not having to worry about the enemy using her against me; she was the enemy.
We spent hours amiably debating our positions. I’d tried to get her to switch to my side, but she insisted that she owed it to her master to continue on in his footsteps. She’d tried to get me to defect, pointing out that virtually all of the ills of the day were created by science. Global warming and pollution were the new dark ages, she’d argued, and only magic could put right what science was destroying. In the end neither of us could sway the other, but still our relationship grew stronger and I was almost glad we didn’t find either of our missing mentors.
On the night we arrived home I decided it was time to tell Sabrina something I’d come to realize. “Sabrina, I love you.”
She had been looking down at something and s
he looked quickly up at me. “You know that eventually one of us will have to kill the other.”
I nodded, “But that doesn’t change how I feel for you, and I’ve never been any good at lying to myself.”
She smiled, but the smile didn’t make it to her eyes. “You are a wonderful man, and I’m glad that fate has tossed us together as it has, but. . .”
‘But?”
“But if I let myself love you, then it might slow my hand when it is time for me to kill you, or once I’ve killed you it might torment me for eternity that I killed the only person I’d ever loved. I’m not signing on for that.”
I resisted the urge to tell her I didn’t think she had any chance of killing me in a duel. My father had been a gold medalist in fencing in one of the early Olympics, and I was considerably better with a blade than he had ever thought of being. It was that ability that had attracted Sam’s attention to me. And in the more than one hundred years that I’d been in Sam’s employ I had studied with scores of sword masters in every style imaginable. Frankly, other than Sam, and perhaps Sabrina’s master, I wasn’t certain that there had ever been a better swordsman than myself. Still, her master wouldn’t have chosen her if he’d thought she had no chance of defending herself. There’s a saying that no swordsman should ever forget: A good big swordsman always beats a good small swordsman. Instead of giving voice to any of these thoughts I said, “Does that mean we’re over?” I think a tear might have slipped from my eye.
She laughed, “No, it just means I don’t plan to let myself love you. I can’t imagine having a relationship with anyone else. How would I explain who I am and what I do to them? No, being with you is as uncomplicated in that department as it could possibly be.”
*
That had been three years ago. My love for her had grown deeper than I would have thought possible. She still would not admit to loving me, but I could live with that; she was there and that was all that mattered. But I could feel the power growing around me. It was going to happen tonight. Tonight I would heft the magic blade to defend the powers of science and light and Sabrina would brandish her darker blade for the powers of magic and darkness. There were three ways it could end. One of us could die and that would fix the course of the world for all of eternity. One of us could bind the other and then the course of the world would be set for hundreds of years. Bindings had caused the dark ages and the industrial revolution. Or we could fight to a draw, and that would give us, if the records our mentors left behind were correct, another twenty-five to two hundred and fifty years before the power rose again. There was no way of knowing how long between times.
But really, I’d be lying if I said I had any other concern than how I was going to live without Sabrina. I couldn’t sacrifice my own life for her no matter how much I loved her. Not and have mankind fall into an eternal dark age. It was also too risky to try to fight for a draw. If one of us bound the other it would be hundreds of years before we’d have any kind of interaction again. And even if we were fortunate enough to fight to a draw, how could our relationship possibly survive such a life and death conflict. Tonight my life changed forever and damn it, I didn’t want it to. I liked my life exactly as it was.
Some indeterminate time later I looked up and there was a wall of fog pressed up against the glass of the shop’s door. I hadn’t seen it roll in; one moment it hadn’t been there and the next it was. I recognized the fog, I’d seen it before. Morosely, I walked over to the case that the sword hung in. I fished a key out of my pocket and unlocked the case. My boss has always kept it in a case that could only be opened by smashing the glass, but as the one who had had to sweep up the glass afterwards, I’d insisted on a cabinet with a very good lock instead.
I reached into the case and took the sword down by the hilt. I’d held the sword in my hands before and each time I had I’d been able to feel its immense power like a strong current just below the surface. This time, however, the power came roaring through the blade and flooded my being. This was strength like nothing I’d ever experienced before. How could anyone or anything hope to stand before it?
Resolutely I walked to the door and opened it. The fog seemed to open up a tunnel for me to follow. I locked the shop’s door and walked into the tunnel of fog. As I strode towards what I knew would be my first, if not my last, battlefield it felt as if I were walking on one of those electric walk ways that they have at the larger airports. Each step covered far more ground than a single pace.
When I came to the end of the tunnel I was not surprised to find myself at All Saints Cemetery. There was no fog here. The full moon shown like some cold, Greek goddess that had no care as to which Power might triumph. It was a beautiful symmetry that our first duel should take place where our mentors’ final battle had taken place. Tears welled up in my eyes as I looked at Sabrina. The landscape about us was in darkness and shadows, but my blade reflected and multiplied the moonlight, giving me enough light to see all that I needed to see. She was beautiful, with her pale blond hair moving about in a nonexistent breeze. She was dressed all in black, but the blade in her hand was blacker than the darkest void. It seemed to be drawing light into itself.
Aligned behind her were dozens of creatures of darkness scurrying about. They were misshapen and twisted like something out of a very bad horror movie. “We don’t have to do this.” I said, “You don’t owe your master anything now that he’s gone.”
She smiled that smile, the one that never makes it to her eyes. “No, I cannot betray his memory. But as I recall he offered your master a joint reign. I will offer that to you now, as well.”
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been mightily tempted. Why not try? Why not see if the two of us could entwine science and magic for the good of all mankind? But Sam’s words came echoing back through the years to my ears. “The enemy is seductive. But their power corrupts, we cannot allow it to abide.”
I shook my head. “No, I can’t accept that offer. Tonight we end this.” She nodded and then I said the words I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. “Sabrina, no matter how this ends, I love you.”
She didn’t respond to my words as she moved toward me blade swinging faster than I would have thought possible. “Abaddon, Balberith, Lerajie, Sorath,” she intoned.”
“Tyson, Sagan, Hawking, Einstein, Curie.” I responded.
“Lucifer, Vassago, Rahab, Kunopegos, Ronobe.”
“Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Aedesia.”
The world seemed to bend and fold in upon itself and I knew that we were now locked in a battle outside of space and time.
I had expected to take the battle to Sabrina, but her dark blade seemed to be flashing at me from every direction. My blade parried blow after blow, but she was so fast that I could not even consider trying to riposte for fear that I would miss her next blow.
I have faced fencers that were faster than me before. And in those instances I would wage a defensive fight and wait for them to tire. But Sabrina was so fast that I wondered if I could last that long.
I drew power from my blade as Sam had taught me and decided to try a bat parry. Sabrina’s blade came towards me and I knocked it away with every ounce of strength I had while directing my blade to move from the parry directly to her torso. But when my blade reached where she had been standing she wasn’t there and I felt a burning along my right bicep.
“Damn,” I swore as I realized that she’d scored a hit.
“You can’t win,” she said. Her words did not bother me nearly as much as the fact that she seemed not to be the least bit winded when she spoke.
“The night is yet young,” I replied with a false bravado that I hoped she could not detect. In more than a century as a fencer I had only faced one opponent who was better than me and that had been Sam. But I knew with absolute certainty that Sabrina was better than me. I had no hope of defeating her. And yet I had to try. If I somehow escaped this night with my life I would have to redouble my time with a blade in anticipation of our n
ext encounter.
“Where did you learn to fence like that?” I asked trying to distract her.
“In Hell,” she said, her blade lunging directly for my heart.
I beat the sword aside and tried to step into her as her momentum pulled her forward. Perhaps I could land a blow to her head with my fist and even my odds. Unchivalrous I know, but this wasn’t the Olympics. Again I missed and again I felt a burn as she passed. This time it was my left shoulder. How the Hell could anyone be this good? Neither wound was deep; she didn’t dare commit the time it would have taken her to push the blade deeper for fear that my strength might be able to come into play. I could see that her plan was to kill me with a thousand cuts if necessary.
You learn interesting things about yourself when you think you’re going to die. I realized I didn’t really fear death, but that it still made me angry—angry that I could dedicate more than a hundred years of my life getting ready for a single moment and find myself not good enough when that moment finally arrived.
I fought with everything I had, but Sabrina never once broke tempo. She was never in danger of my going on the offensive. Unless she made some major blunder she was going to carry the night. While she showed no signs of tiring, I realized that I was not tiring either. Our swords were feeding us the energy we needed to keep moving and we were, by the standards of this game, young. Perhaps I could fight to a draw—keep myself alive until dawn. The thought had no more then escaped my mind when I felt a burn across my right side. I hadn’t even seen the blow. Had she not been worried about my strength she could have killed me with that one.
A cold sweat broke out along my brow and I realized then that an even colder wind was blowing through the cemetery. The creatures that watched, Sabrina’s all, erupted into cheers and shouts. I staggered back and parried wildly at the barrage of blows that followed. She knew she had me and she was moving in for the kill.
I pretended to drop back even father and then as she came on I threw myself at her with abandon. In that moment I could see, from the widening of her eyes, that I had surprised her. Even so my blade missed her by the slimmest of margins. Still, it had been worth it, as she had had to forego a death blow and settle for stabbing me in the thigh. It was deep and I felt my leg buckle and I crashed to the ground. The fall saved me a second time as her blade flashed through the spot I would have been standing in if my leg had not failed me.
Shadows & Reflections: A Roger Zelazny Tribute Anthology Page 16
