* * *
Murat, as if he were not yet aware that his son had plunged to the ground, still barked orders at Akbar, commanding him to put the sheath back on the Sword. “Then bring it to me, to me, your master!”
Akbar, posing on the balcony in the form of a maiden, sent an amused glance toward Murat.
“I have decided,” said the maiden, “that someone besides you, my Lord Murat, should bear the Mindsword from now on. I’ll carry it myself, for the time being, though I don’t look forward to all the attention it will bring me.”
The Crown Prince, unbelieving, made a strange sound in his throat.
Akbar continued: “Because you—you, my gr-r-reat Master!—live increasingly in a world of your own megalomaniac fantasies. Therefore, in my judgment, you are becoming undependable.”
“You are to serve me! I command you—I charge you—”
“Yes, yes. I know you are convinced you are my master. Most humans who, deal with me willingly are under some such illusion. But very few indeed can keep the relationship in those terms. Very few. And you are not one of them.”
“—by the Sword’s power, I command—”
“Fool. What are mere Swords to me?”
* * *
Mark, who had been in a distant part of the city when he was alerted to what was happening in the palace, was hurrying desperately in that direction now. As he passed, he could see swarms of troops and magical assistants gathering, torchlit ranks forming, at somewhat more than a hundred meters from his invaded quarters. These defenders, under good discipline, were deploying somewhat outside the range of the Mindsword’s effective action.
At least no one who now held the Mindsword within the palace would find there an army ready-made to fight for him.
* * *
“Such delusions are very common when one of my kind—forms a relationship—with one of yours,” said Akbar—the maiden was sitting now on the balustrade, modestly swinging her shapely legs.
The demon was obviously toying with his enemies before he reached out to pick up Skulltwister.
Meanwhile Vilkata, only five or six meters from the demon, was almost gibbering at it, plainly trying one spell after another. Plainly none of them were working.
Akbar went on, speaking in leisurely tones: “After I pick up this weapon—after that, I say—you will, each and all of you, be delighted to serve me, for the rest of your miserable lives. And I intend to see to it that—at least in your case, great wizard, and your case, glorious Master—those lives are very long. But, sadly, it is only now, beforehand, that I can enjoy your anticipation of that prospect.”
* * *
Fuming and raging, now standing recklessly on a minute ledge in a position where moments ago he had been clinging with both hands, the Crown Prince would not listen, would not understand.
Angrily, with demented determination, he once more ordered the demon to crush Vilkata, and to properly sheathe and deliver the Sword of Glory.
“I think not, Master—but no, it no longer amuses me to call you by that title. I am wearying of this game. ‘Fool’ is a much better name for you, I think. I am not, and never was, compelled to take your orders. What is the power of a mere Sword, to me?”
Murat’s speech was becoming unintelligible.
Akbar went on: “The fact is, I do not want to crush the man you call Vilkata just yet. I may well find some better use for him.” And the maiden cast a speculative look in the Dark King’s direction.
Vilkata was about to say something, but before he could speak the maiden’s slender hand gestured in his direction.
“There. I withdraw my gift of vision. You, my dear Vilkata, shall be blind—for the time being at least. You must be made to understand what the true nature of our partnership is to be.”
The Eyeless One clapped hands to his face. Now truly blind, he groped and whimpered helplessly on his slippery roof.
“Be of good cheer. If you were to grovel properly in supplication, I might be willing to shorten your period of darkness.”
But instead of groveling, Vilkata ceased to whimper. Drawing himself up, he regained and maintained some dignity in the face of this threat.
He muttered a few words in a low voice.
“Calling for help, great wizard? Feel free to do so. I can repel your—” Akbar’s voice broke off.
The Dark King had risked all, diving bodily forward, over empty space, in a blind lunge aimed at the Sword he could no longer see; his right hand and arm, groping, grasping for treasure or for a life-saving grip, made violent contact with the razor-keeness of the Blade. The impact gashed Vilkata, and knocked Skulltwister from its perch.
The Sword fell again, once more passing out of everyone’s immediate reach.
Vilkata, his gamble lost, clung blindly to the cornice for an instant, with his uninjured hand. Then he fell—but not to his doom. The shape of his newly summoned demon blurred through the air, catching him in mid-tumble.
The maidenly human shape of Akbar was leaning over the balustrade, watching the Sword fall, when a bulky man burst into view behind it on the balcony and grappled the demon from behind.
* * *
Murat, still single-mindedly intent, resumed his infinitely determined, crawling descent. He could still see Skulltwister, which this time had come to rest point uppermost, hilt and pommel stuck down into a drain on a roof’s corner. Again his Sword had not fallen far, and he thought he could quickly get within reach.
* * *
In the instant of being seized by human arms, Akbar the demon let out a little sound of genuine fear. The maiden’s shape vanished in an eyeblink, to be replaced by the semblance of a great ape. A violent struggle began.
* * *
Murat, his immediate enemies vanished or distracted, had needed only the space of a few breaths to get within reach—or almost—of the Sword. From the wall to which he clung, the man, stretching his right arm out to the uttermost, might have barely touched Skulltwister’s point. It was impossible to clamber any closer, without going an impossibly long way around.
Drawing in his body, pressing himself against his own wall once again, the Crown Prince took a moment’s rest. If only Carlo could help. But Carlo…
Concentrating totally on his goal, working as swiftly as he could, Murat unhooked the long empty sheath from his belt. As when he had once before picked up and claimed the naked Sword, he would now have to work the sheath onto the Blade before he dared try to seize the god-forged thing, whose unstemmed tide of magic now bathed him at close quarters.
Sheath in hand, Murat stretched out again. One last effort brought leather sliding over steel. But in making that effort he had reached too far, and felt his supporting fingers slip.
* * *
He fell. No intervening cornice here.
The last clear thought of his life was that the sheathed Sword was tumbling after him, and that he might still have a chance to catch it in midair.
Kristin screamed. She had been out on the roof, trying to make her way closer to the scene of action, and at the same time trying to compel her son to stay back on the balcony, to save himself.
Karel had at last appeared inside the royal quarters, and then upon the balcony; the old man was in time to keep Stephen from rushing out onto the roof after his mother, but not in time to hold the Princess back.
Madly scrambling over the wet tiles toward the place from which Murat had fallen, she did not stop at the roof’s edge, but plunged down after him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Despite warnings to depart, given by Karel and others, a few servants and a handful of soldiers had gathered and were still gathering on nearby balconies and in windows, to watch the struggle for the Sword of Glory.
Stephen and Karel watched from their balcony, the old man’s powerful grip restraining the boy from rushing out on the roof after his mother.
Upon a balcony in the next wing of the palace, the dark and apelike shape of the demon Akbar struggled desp
erately, but to little avail, as if the strong man who had seized it were really more powerful than any mere human could possibly be. The combatants swayed back and forth.
Karel had no trouble recognizing Ben, who was not only maintaining the solid hold he had obtained at the start, but was gradually improving his advantage.
It was not long until Karel, at least, understood what must be happening.
“Shieldbreaker!” he muttered to Stephen, who still struggled in his grip. “The demon must have it!”
The moon emerged briefly from behind rain clouds, and swiftly retired again. For long moments the struggled was conducted in darkness and near-silence. A faint glow of light, from distant windows and courtyards, still made shapes and movements dimly visible. The hideous demon thrashed about and made noises as if it were trying to scream. But the human limbs that held it were tightening inexorably.
Now those who watched could see that something was wrong with Akbar’s right hand, or with the image of a right hand that the demon flailed ineffectually at his opponent.
Moment by moment the image of that bestial hand and arm became a little clearer. There was a solid object at its end.
Presently it could be seen that Akbar was gripping a bright-bladed, dark-hilted Sword. With this weapon he attempted to punish and to slay the one who wrestled with him, but the slashes and thrusts directed at an unarmed foe accomplished nothing.
Again and again that shimmering blade and point penetrated the clothing and the flesh of the man who wrestled with the demon. But no blood was drawn, and the wrestler remained uninjured.
Karel muttered again: “The beast indeed has Shieldbreaker! But it must rid itself of that Sword, or lose this fight.”
* * *
Ben had come to the same conclusion earlier, on seeing and hearing how the demon defied the Mindsword and Vilkata’s spells. Now the huge man steadily increased his advantage—as he had expected. He knew the demon would lose this match against even the weakest barehanded human opponent—unless Akbar could manage to rid himself of the pernicious Sword of Force before it was too late.
Once he, Ben, had outwrestled a god under similar circumstances; no mere demon, handicapped by Shieldbreaker, was going to defeat him.
The demon gurgled, a hellish sound, as if the foul thing were being forced to try to breathe. And waved its right arm frantically—no longer slashing and thrusting. Now it was as if the demon strove to free its hand from the bite of a clinging serpent.
And at last—to Ben’s horror and surprise, well after he had thought the feat impossible for Akbar to achieve—the Sword of Force flew free.
Vilkata, bleeding and weakened by the gash inflicted by Skulltwister, had been forced to withdraw temporarily from combat. Now, somewhat recovered, his vision restored by a new demonic partner, he came rushing back, borne through the air again by captive powers.
The sheathed Sword of Glory in its last plunge had fallen all the way to the ground, landing not far from the inert bodies of Murat and Princess Kristin.
A few people, emerging from doors at that level of the palace, had just started out into the paved area, heading toward the bodies and the Sword. But the sight of Vilkata and his onrushing escort drove them back inside in panic.
* * *
The demon Akbar, in the next moment after ridding himself of Shieldbreaker, had regained strength enough to hurl Ben aside.
Then Akbar gathered his energies for an effort to beat Vilkata to the Sword of Glory. But he saw that he was going to be too late.
Karel was and had been doing his best to repel all demons, but edged weapons had been drawn, and at the moment the old wizard’s best was not going to be adequate. Vilkata, stooping from the back of his demonic mount, had just scooped up the Sword of Glory in his uninjured hand—
At that moment Mark, gasping for breath, came running out onto the balcony where his son and Karel stood.
“In the Emperor’s name!” the Prince of Tasavalta bellowed hoarsely at his foes—and had to pause to gasp again.
In fact no more words were needed. A swirling blast, as of a hurricane, erupted out of the steady rain and darkness. In a moment the storm had gathered around all the demons, Vilkata caught up in their midst. Nor was Akbar spared. In the matter of a few heartbeats the whole roaring, twisting mass of air and cloud, now shot through with lightning, had mounted high above the palace, then whirled away. Before Karel could draw a deep breath, it was gone, vanishing at last far out to sea.
Silence fell on Sarykam, broken only by a distant rumble of thunder. Then another roll more distant yet, and beneath those sounds the steady plash and drip of rain.
The invasion had been repelled. The demons, including Akbar, were all gone. So was Vilkata. And so was the sheathed Sword of Glory, which the Dark King had just picked up.
Karel feared that, sooner or later, in one pair of hands or another, Skullwarper would be back again to plague humanity.
Right now the wizard, at the moment feeling very old indeed, was confronted by more immediate problems.
Prince Mark, leaning on the balustrade, slowly regaining his breath, was looking around for Kristin.
Tentatively he called her name.
Stephen was already gone into the building, running for the stair that would take him down to where his mother had fallen.
Karel could see (though not with his aging human eyes) how her body now lay there, twisted, resting partly on stone and partly on softer matter. On another body, whose heart no longer beat.
The right hand of the Princess moved, as if it sought to grasp something. Then it was still again. Of the three who had fallen, she alone still breathed.
“Prince,” the magician said softly, “she fell from the roof. She is still alive, and she may live. But—there are terrible injuries.”
Before Karel had added those last words, Mark was already gone, racing after his son.
Left alone, the old man was in no hurry to run anywhere. Ignoring the rain, he let his body sag on the stone railing. His eyes were closed, but lids could not shut out the visions of his magic.
About The Author
Fred Saberhagen is widely published in many areas of speculative fiction. He is best known for his Berserker, Swords, and Dracula series. Less known are the myth based fantasies: Books of the Gods. Fred also authored a number of non-series fantasy and science fiction novels and a great number of short stories. For more information on Fred visit his website: www.fredsaberhagen.com
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Table of Contents
Copyright Page
The Ardneh Sequence
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
About The Author
Mindsword's Story Page 23
