The Book of Swords

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Aus looked down at the sword in his hand. The complications along the blade felt like writing in a language he almost knew. His breath came hard, like he’d run a race. Or fled for his life. He tried to put names to the emotions that spat and wrestled in him: humiliation, anger, despair, grief. The coldness of the hilt grew intense, as if he held a shard of ice. He gripped it harder, inviting the chill into his flesh. Into his mind. Something to stand against the raging armies in his heart.

  He shouted before he knew he meant to shout. Swung the blade hard, the movement starting in his legs, his hip, reaching out with a single flowing gesture, extending the sword as if it were part of him. The Imagi’s eyes went wider, and the tip of the blade split his jaw. It made a sound like an axe splitting wood. No blood fell from the wound, only a thin runnel of clear fluid.

  The prince wrenched the blade free and struck again, screaming as he did. The Imagi lifted a hand to block the attack, and the bloodless fingers scattered on the floor. Great gashes opened in the pale flesh, the body splintering and falling apart under the assault. If he called out, the prince’s war cries drowned out his words. Prince Aus found himself standing with feet on either side of the pale corpse, swinging down and down and down, his wrist and shoulder aching from his effort. The Imagi lay still and dead, his head a pale pulp with neither muscle nor bone nor brain. Prince Aus lifted the sword again, in both hands this time, and drove it deep into the pale man’s torso, then put his weight upon it. He drove it deeper and twisted, his strength and his weight and his mad will pressing at the metal, bending it past its tolerance. All the power he possessed, he threw into this one terrible moment.

  And the sword broke.

  Prince Aus fell to his knees. The stump of the blade stood a few inches from the twisted hilt. The labyrinthine pattern was open now, its puzzles solved by violence. A shard of metal fallen at his knee glittered in the soft candlelight. The motionless body of the Imagi Vert looked like a hillside, the greater half of the sword standing proudly from it like a tower. Aus gasped for air and dropped the freezing hilt. His whole body ached, but the physical pain claimed the least of his attention.

  The blade broken, his hopes fulfilled, he waited for something. A sense of release. Of victory. The soundless scream of his father’s soul at last set free from the world. A rush of the mystic energy that had forged the deathless vessel. Anything.

  The candles shed their light. The plinths held their treasures. The silence folded around him until his own chuffing sobs broke it.

  He rose unsteady as a drunk, stumbled against a plinth. The hilt of the broken sword slipped from his numb fingers and clattered on the floor. A sweet, earthy smell rose from the dead man, and the nausea it called forth drove the prince back toward the brass door. He’d dropped the lantern somewhere. He couldn’t recall. The passage back to the world stood dark as a tomb, but he made his lightless way. One foot before the other, hands out before him to warn him before he walked into the stone. His mouth tasted foul. His arms trembled. He wept empty tears with no sense of grief or catharsis. For a time, he felt certain that the cave would go on forever, that the death of the Imagi Vert had sealed him also in the immortal’s tomb. When he stumbled out into the starlit mouth of the cave, he more than half thought it a dream. The visions of a man with a broken mind. The dead guard, lying in his pool of blood brought the prince back to himself. It was a war. It was the war. Terrible things happened here.

  The night sky glittered with stars. The trees shifted in the open air. All the world seemed terrible and beautiful and empty. Prince Aus turned toward the path, the town. Behind him, the Mocking Tower whose roots he had dug changed and changed and changed again: a threefold tower with bridges lacing between the spires like a web, a vast tooth pointing toward the sky with a signal fire blaring at its tip, a glasswork column that rose toward the stars and funneled their dim light into its heart. The prince didn’t watch it. The night before him carried terrors and wonders enough.

  He made his way to the path between the trees, toward the town where he’d lived—it seemed now—in some previous lifetime. To the Traveler’s Hearth, where the keep once sheltered and offered fair work to a boy named Simin, who in fact had been a being of skin and lies.

  The thief’s door was barred from within, but candlelight flickered at the edges. The prince pounded until he heard the hiss of the bar lifting and the door swung open. The thief blinked at him, uncertain as a mouse.

  “You look terrible.”

  “We have to go,” the prince said, and his voice seemed to belong to some other man.

  “You did it? It’s done?”

  “We have to go now. Before the changing of guards, first light I’d guess. But it could be earlier. Could be now.”

  “But—”

  “We have to go!”

  Together, the two men ran to the stable, chose which horses to steal, and galloped out to the road. They turned east, toward the first threads of rose and indigo where the light would rise to meet them. A dawn that would rise elsewhere on army camps and burned cities, fields left uncultivated for want of hands to farm them and river locks broken open for fear that an enemy would make use of them. The ruins of empire, and a war still raging.

  And in the depths of the Mocking Tower, something stirred.

  At first, the body moved only slightly, reknitting the worst of its wounds with a vegetable slowness. Then, when it could, the body levered itself up to unsteady feet. Pale eyes looked all around the chamber of treasures without suffering or joy. The rough cloak creaked and crackled as the body—neither alive nor dead but something of both—stepped out of the light and into the darkness. It felt a vague comfort in the darkness underground, to the degree that it felt anything.

  The mouth of the cave came all too soon. A human body lay there, a cast-off forgotten thing. The pale man, jaw still hanging from his skull by woody threads, turned away from town and tower, walking into the trees where no path existed. He moved with the same deliberation and speed as he would have on the road and left no trail behind him. The Mocking Tower at his back shifted, fluttering from shape to shape, miracle to miracle, as compelling as a street performer’s scarf fluttering to draw attention away from what the other hand was doing.

  Birds woke, singing their cacophony at the coming dawn. The light grew, and the wild gave way to a simple garden. Wide beds of dark, rich soil, well weeded so that no unwelcome plant competed with the onion, the beets, the carrots. A short, ragged-looking apple tree bent under the combined weight of its own fruit and a thin netting that kept the sparrows from feasting on it. In the rear near a well, a rough shack leaned, small but solid with a little yard paved in unfinished stone outside it. A little fire muttered and smoked as it warmed a pot of water for tea.

  The pale man folded his legs under him, rested his palms on his knees, and waited with a patience that suggested he could wait forever. A yellow finch flew by, its wings fluttering. A doe tramped through the trees at the garden’s edge but didn’t approach.

  Old Au came from the shack and nodded to him. She wore long trousers with mud-crusted leather at the knees, a loose canvas shirt, and boots cracked and mended and cracked again. A thin spade and gardener’s knife hung from her belt, and she carried an empty cloth sack over her shoulder. Heaving a sigh, she sat across from the pale man.

  “Went poorly, then, did it?”

  The pale man tried to say something with his ruined mouth, then made do with simply nodding. Old Au looked into the gently boiling water in the pan as if there might be some answers in it, then lifted it off and set it on the stone at her side. The pale man waited. She pulled a little sack from her pocket, plucked a few dried leaves from it, and dropped them in the still-but-steaming water. A few moments later, the scent of fresh tea joined the smells of turned earth and dew-soaked leaves.

  “Did you explain that the war was only a war? That humanity falls into violence every few generations, and that his father, if anything, was too good at keeping
the peace?”

  The pale man nodded again.

  “And could the boy hear it?”

  The pale man hesitated, then shook his head. No, he could not.

  Old Au chuckled. “Well, we try. Every generation is the same. They think their parents were never young, never subject to the confusions and lust they suffer. Born before the invention of sex and loss and passion, us. They all have to learn in their own way, however much we might wish we could counsel them out of it.” She swirled the tea. “Did you warn him what it will be like once he takes the throne?”

  The pale man nodded.

  “He didn’t hear that either, did he? Ah well. I imagine he’ll look back on it when he’s old and understand too late.” Old Au reached out her well-worn hand and took the pale man’s fingerless palm in hers. She shook him once, and he became a length of pale root again. Scarred now and ripped, paler where the bark peeled back. She hefted the root back close to the shed. She might break it down for mulch later, or else use it to carve something from. A whistle, maybe. Return it to the cycle or transform it to something Nature never dreamed for it. They were simple magics, and profound because of it.

  She poured the tea into an old cup and sipped it as she squinted into the sky. It looked like a good day. Warm in the morning, but a bit of rain in the afternoon she guessed. Enough for a few hours of good work. She took the spade from her hip and broke a little crust of mud from just below the handle with the nail of her thumb, humming to herself as she did. And then the gardener’s knife with its serrated edge for sawing through roots and the name Raan Sauvo Serriadan scratched into the blade in a language no one had spoken in centuries.

  “There are some bulbs in the west field that want thinning,” she said. “What do you think, love?”

  For a moment there, the breeze and the chirping of the birds seemed to harmonize, making some deeper music between them. Something like the murmur of a voice. Whatever it said made Old Au laugh.

  She finished her tea, poured what remained out of the pot, and started walking toward the gardens and the day’s work still ahead.

  ⬩  ⬩  ⬩

  C. J. Cherryh is the author of more than forty novels, the winner of the John W. Campbell Award and four Hugo Awards, and a figure of immense significance in both the science-fiction and fantasy fields. In science fiction, she’s published the eighteen-volume Foreigner series, the seven-volume Company Wars series, the five-volume Compact Space series, the four-volume Cyteen series, and many other series and standalone novels; in fantasy, she’s the author of the four-volume Morgaine series, the three-volume Rusalka series, the five-volume Tristan series, the two-volume Arafel series, and, as editor, the seven-volume Merovingen Nights anthologies. Some of her best-known novels include Downbelow Station, The Pride of Chanur, The Betrayal, Gate of Ivrel, Kesrith, Serpent’s Reach, Rimrunners, Festival Moon, The Dreamstone, Port Eternity, and Brothers of Earth. Her short fiction has been collected in Sunfall, Visible Light, and The Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh. Her most recent books are two new novels in the Foreigner series, Visitor and Convergence. She lives in Spokane, Washington.

  Almost everyone knows the story of Beowulf, one of the most famous pieces of mythological poetry ever written—but what happens a generation after the deadly events at Heorot, when the ruins lie quiet and wreathed in weeds? Here Cherryh takes us for a look at the aftermath, and plunges us into an adventure no less perilous for a young man in search of his family heritage than those that took place on that fateful, monster-haunted night long before.

  ⬩  ⬩  ⬩

  “May your journey be swift. May the gods greet you with strong mead and beautiful women.”

  Halli smoothed his muddy hands across the sad little mound and blinked away the drizzle that clouded his vision, trying not to think of that withered body curled beneath his hand, tried not to imagine mud seeping through the stones they had laid and curdling around the wise old face. Great lords lay in stone ships out across the meadow, or slept in massive barrows, rich in grave goods.

  A thrall might be buried in a muddy pit. They had at least done better than that. Grandfather’s cup, his drinking horn, and one of the pigs went with him. They had combed his beard, braided his hair. They had cut his nails, so at Ragnarok the Jotunn could not summon him to build the Nauglfar ship. Best of all hopes, Grandfather might be safe behind Valhalla’s walls. He had died no hero’s death, to be swept up to the skies, but Odin called great men, too. And Grandfather had been a brehon, a judge, a wise counselor. That his lord had not listened to him—could the Allfather fault that?

  The drizzle fell and stood in puddles on the trampled ground. The sun had shone fair this morning. This evening, overtaking them at their sad work, the rain had started. Halli and his father had kept working, building up the earthen mound, few words exchanged, breath saved for digging up muddy ground and piling earth into a mound atop the stones. At the last, it was mud they piled on, and the place where they had dug the dirt had turned to a puddle.

  Father slung a wet load onto the mound, which stood only knee high. The shovelful ran with water. “Enough. Enough. The light’s leaving. We’ve done what we can.”

  “I can keep going.”

  “He was a crotchety, demanding old man. At least he won’t walk. We gave him the best damned pig.”

  Father hadn’t been happy about that. Halli had picked the pig, brought it out, and slaughtered it at the grave before Father had come back with the stones.

  “You go get warm, pabbi. I’ll finish.”

  Father just stared at him, water trickling off his hat, dripping off his beard. They’d broken a shovel on the job. They’d owned two. Now it was one, the other to be mended, another job to be done, an endless chain of jobs to be done before the leaves fell. And that was all it was to his father, Eclaf, son of Unferth son of Eclaf, hero of the Skyldings, wielder of the great sword Hrunting. Father gathered up the broken pieces and the surviving shovel, flung them into the muddy little cart, and hauled it off, empty now, an easier job than the stones had been.

  Grandfather’s death was a relief for his father. Grandfather had needed everything at the last. Old age had robbed him of every faculty. And Father had said it, over Grandfather’s grave—Grandfather Unferth was a constant reminder of their family’s fall from grace; and they had chosen this place, near one of the great barrows, but screened off by brush, so that the village could forget it was there.

  So that the village would forget.

  “It’s wrong,” Halli had said. “It’s wrong that it’s just us to witness, it’s wrong that he’s out here alone.”

  “He’s got a lord beside him,” Father had said. “Best we can do for him. Gods know he’s done nothing for us. We’ll drink the sjaund for him seven days from now, and we’ll have all the inheritance he’s left us. A house and three pigs. At least he didn’t lose that.”

  He didn’t lose the sword, Halli wanted to say. He’d lent it. He’d only lent it.

  But they didn’t talk about the sword.

  Everybody else did, when they talked about Grandfather. Nobody ever forgot it.

  Halli had other memories. Alone in the fading light, he smoothed down the mud, patted it even. He tried to imagine Grandfather youthful and strong, entering Valhalla with the heroes. A raven had flown over this afternoon, and he hoped it was Odin’s eye, scouting out Grandfather, to call him up to the halls of the gods, young again, but wise as he had ever been. The Allfather knew the truth about things. And the Allfather, who himself had given an eye for wisdom, surely knew the value of it in an honest judge, who had dared challenge his lord’s judgment and question a guest’s reputation.

  Grandfather had risked his lord Hrothgar’s anger, and had no way to prove his case, when Hrothgar’s boon companion, Aeschere, an older man, white-bearded, had taken him to task for discourtesy to a guest. Handsomely had Grandfather atoned for it—handsomely, if Beowulf had been the hero he claimed.

  Grand
father had lent the family treasure, the sword Hrunting, ancient, and infallible if a hero wielded it. It never failed, for a hero true in battle.

  Until then.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. He concentrated on the mud, on patting it down smooth, making it as fine as he could.

  He had never seen Heorot in its glory. He had never seen Hrunting. His father said he had no memory of either. He had been too young. His father remembered only fire, when Heorot had gone down. Grandmother had died in that fire. Grandfather had gotten Father out. That was all. Then Grandfather had built the little house in Lejre village, near the ruin, near the burials of the great lords and heroes.

  His own first memory of Grandfather was of a wrinkled face peering nearsightedly at him, wondering why a fool of a five-year-old had tried to slop the pigs himself. He had had as much mud on him that day as now. It had been a day like this, drizzling summer rain, and the hungry old sow had knocked him down. Father had rescued him and cuffed him so his ears had rung—from fear, having almost lost him.

  Grandfather had asked him why he had done it. That was always Grandfather’s way with things. Why? and Why not? were Grandfather’s favorite questions. He imagined Grandfather in his days as a judge, wearing gold, and always, before judgment, challenging people with that one question.

  The sun was sneaking below the earth, and the rain was down to a mist. It was a treacherous hour, a time to fear ghosts. But not Grandfather’s. If any draugr got up from his stone bed and went walking, Grandfather would rise up and protect his grandson, he had every confidence.

  “Ha!”

  His heart froze. He turned about, seeing shapes in the mist—but not ghosts, those. Young men. Four of them. The very ones he’d hoped would never visit this place.

  “Well, well, well. What have we here? A beggar, a worm, burrowing in the mud?”

  Halli stiffened, slowly, deliberately smeared a muddy hand across his face and even more slowly rose to face the owner of that voice.