by Terry Brooks
He stared at the sword now, stunned. It was the most singular piece of workmanship he had ever encountered. Even the smeared glass and the poor light could not hide the high sheen of the blade’s polished surface or the keenness of its edge. The sword was huge, seemingly too large for an average man. Intricate scroll-work had been carved into the great hilt, a montage of serpents and castles overlaid on a forest background. There were other, smaller blades, equally cunning and fine, forged by the same hands, if Kinson did not miss his guess, but it was the sword that held him spellbound.
“Sorry, I’m closing up,” the shopkeeper announced, beginning to extinguish the lamps at the rear of his worn but surprisingly clean establishment. There were blades of every kind—swords, daggers, dirks, axes, pikes, and others too numerous to count, mounted on every wall, on every available surface, in cases and racks. Kinson took them all in at a glance, but his eyes kept coming back to the sword.
“I won’t take a minute,” he said quickly. “I just wanted to ask a question.”
The shopkeeper sighed and walked over. He was lean and wiry, with muscular arms and strong hands. He moved easily as he approached Kinson, and it looked as if he could handle a blade himself if the need arose. “You want to ask about the sword, am I right?”
Kinson smiled. “I do. How did you know?”
The shopkeeper shrugged, running his hand through thinning dark hair. “I saw where your eyes traveled when you walked through the door. Besides, everyone asks about the sword. How can they not? As wondrous a piece of workmanship as you’ll find in all the Four Lands. Very valuable.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Kinson said. “I suppose that’s why you still have it for sale.”
The shopkeeper laughed. “Oh, it’s not for sale. It’s just for display. It belongs to me. I wouldn’t sell it for all the gold in Dechtera or any other city. Craftsmanship of that sort can’t be bought and only rarely can it be found.”
Kinson nodded. “It is a fine blade. But it would take a strong man to wield it.”
“Such as yourself?” the shopkeeper asked, arching one eyebrow.
Kinson pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I think it is too big even for me. Look at its length.”
“Ha!” The shopkeeper seemed amused. “Everyone thinks the same! That is the wonder of the blade. Look, it has been a long day and I am tired. But I will show you a little secret. If you like what you see, maybe you will buy something and make the time I spend with you worth my while. Fair enough?”
Kinson nodded. The shopkeeper walked to the display window, reached down under the casing, and released something. There was a series of audible clicks. Then he took away a chain cleverly looped about the handle to secure the great sword to its mount. Carefully he lifted the blade down. He turned, grinning broadly, and held the weapon out before him, balancing it in his hands—easily, as if it had no weight at all.
Kinson stared in disbelief. The shopkeeper laughed in recognition, and then he passed the sword to the Borderman. Kinson took it from him, and his amazement grew. The sword was so light that he could hold it in one hand.
“How is this possible?” he breathed, bringing the shining blade up before his eyes, dazzled by its ease of handling as much as by its workmanship. He looked at the shopkeeper quickly. “It can have no strength if it is this light!”
“It is the strongest piece of metal you will ever encounter, my friend,” the shopkeeper announced. “The mix of metals and the tempering of the alloy make it stronger than iron and as light as tin. There is no other like it. Here, let me show you something else.”
He retrieved the sword from a wondering Kinson and restored it to its case, resecuring the locks and chain that held it in place. Then he reached farther in and brought out a knife, the blade alone fully twenty inches long, carved with the same intricate scroll-work, clearly crafted by the same skilled hands.
“This is the blade for you,” the shopkeeper declared softly and passed it to Kinson with a smile. “This is what I would sell you.”
It was as wondrous as the sword, if not so impressive in size. Kinson was immediately entranced. Light, perfectly balanced, finely wrought, sharp as a cat’s claw, the knife was a weapon of impossible beauty and strength. Kinson smiled in recognition of the blade’s worth, and the shopkeeper smiled back. Kinson asked the cost, and the shopkeeper told him. They bargained for a few minutes, and a deal was struck. It cost Kinson almost every coin he had, which was a considerable sum, but he did not once think to walk away.
Kinson stuck the knife and its sheath in his belt, where the blade rested comfortably against his hip. “My thanks,” he offered. “It was a good choice.”
“It is my business to know,” the shopkeeper demurred.
“I still have my question to ask,” Kinson said as the other moved to show him out.
“Ah, that’s right. Your question. Haven’t I answered it? I thought it was about the sword that you . . . ?”
“It is about the sword, indeed,” Kinson interrupted, looking at the blade once more. “But another sword. I have a friend who is in need of such a weapon, but he would have it forged according to his own specifications. The task will require a master smith. The man who made your sword seems right for the job.”
The shopkeeper stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “You wish to have a weapon forged by the maker of my sword?”
Kinson nodded, then added quickly, “Are you him?”
The shopkeeper smiled bleakly. “No. But you might as well ask me as ask the man who is, for all the good it will do you.”
Kinson shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t guess you do.” The shopkeeper sighed. “Listen close, and I’ll explain.”
Bremen’s first reaction to Mareth’s words was to want to tell her straight out that the charge was ridiculous. But the look on her face warned him to reconsider. She must have spent a long time arriving at her conclusion, and she had not done so lightly. She deserved to be taken seriously.
“Mareth, how did you decide I was your father?” he asked gently.
The night was fragrant with the smell of grasses and flowers, and the light of moon and stars lent a soft silver cast to the hills above the garish brightness of the distant city. Mareth glanced away for a moment, as if looking for her answer in the darkness.
“You think me a fool,” she hissed.
“No, never that. Tell me your reasoning. Please.”
She shook her head at something unseen. “From long before the time of my birth, the Druids kept to themselves at Paranor. They had withdrawn from the Races, abandoning their earlier practice of going out among the people. Now and again, one would return home to visit family and friends, but none of these were from my village. Few bothered to venture into the Southland at all.
“But there was one who did, one who visited regularly. You. You came into the Southland in spite of the suspicion directed at the Druids. You were even seen now and again. It was whispered among the people of my village that when my mother conceived me, you were the demon, the dark wraith, who seduced her, who made her fall in love with him!”
She went silent again. She was breathing hard. There was an unspoken challenge in her words that dared him to deny that it was so. She was all tension and hard edges, her magic a crackle of dark energy at the tips of her fingers.
Her eyes burned into him. “I have been looking for you for as long as I can remember. I have carried the burden of my magic like a weight around my neck, and not one day has passed when it has not reminded me of you. My mother could not tell me of you. The rumors were all I had. But in my travels I always looked. I knew that one day I would find you. I went to Storlock thinking to find you, thinking you might pass through. You didn’t, but Cogline gave me entry into Paranor and that was better still, because I knew that eventually you would come there.”
“And so you asked to come with me when I did.” He considered. “Why did you not tell me then?”
He nodded slowly, thinking the matter through. Then he folded his hands in front of him, old bones and parchment skin feeling used and weathered beyond repair.
“You saved my life twice in that time.” His smile was worn and his eyes curious. “Once at the Hadeshorn, once at Paranor.”
She stared at him, thinking back on what she had done, having nothing to say.
“I am not your father, Mareth,” he told her.
“Of course you would say that!”
“If I were your father,” he said quietly, “I would be proud to admit it. But I am not. At the time of your conception, I was traveling the Four Lands and might even have come to the village of your mother. But I have no children. I lack even the possibility of children. I have been alive a long time, kept so by the Druid Sleep. But the Sleep has demanded much of me. It has given me time that I would not otherwise have, but it has exacted a price. Part of that price is an inability to sire children. Consequently, I have never entered into a relationship with a woman. I have never taken a lover. I was in love once, long ago, so long that I barely remember the face of the girl. It was before I became a Druid. It was before I began to live my present life. Since then, there has been no one.”
“I do not believe you,” she said at once.
He smiled sadly. “Yes, you do. You know that I am telling you the truth. You can sense it. I am not your father. But the truth of things maybe harsher still. The superstitions of the people of your village probably helped make them believe that I was the man who conceived you. My name would be readily known to them, and perhaps they settled on it simply because your father was a black-cloaked stranger who possessed magic. But listen to me, Mareth. There is more to consider, and it will not be pleasant for you.”
Her mouth tightened. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I have been giving thought to the nature of your magic, even before this. Innate magic, magic born to you, as indigenous to who and what you are as the flesh of your body. It happens seldom. It was a characteristic of the faerie people, but they have mostly been dead for centuries. Except for the Elves, and the Elves have lost their magic—all but a little. The Druids, myself included, lack any form of innate magic. So where did yours come from if your father was a Druid? Suppose for a moment that he was. Which of the Druids has that sort of power? Which of them, that magic would have been necessary for your conception?”
“Oh, Shades,” she said softly, seeing now where he was going with this.
“Wait, say nothing yet,” he urged. He reached forward and took her hands in his. She let him do so, her dark eyes wide, her face stricken. “Be strong, Mareth. You must. Your father was described by the people of your village as a demon and a wraith, a dark creature who could take on different looks as needed. You used the words yourself. That sort of magic would not have been practiced by a Druid. For the most part, it could not have been. But there are others for whom the taking on of such magic would have been easy.”
“Lies,” she whispered, but there was no force behind the accusation.
“The Warlock Lord has creatures in his service who assume the appearance of humans. They do so for various reasons. They will try to subvert the ones they pretend to be. They will try to deceive them. They do so to win them over and to use them. Sometimes the subversion is done for no better purpose than to capture what was lost of their own humanity, to relive in some small way the life that was lost to them when they became the things they are. Sometimes they do so simply out of malice. The magic these creatures have embraced has become so much a part of who and what they are that they use it without thinking. They do not differentiate between two separate needs. They act on instinct and to sate whatever desire drives them at a given moment. Not out of reason or emotion, but out of instinct.”
There were tears in Mareth’s eyes. “My father?”
Bremen nodded slowly. “It would explain the magic born to you. Innate magic, the dark gift bequeathed you by your father. Not a Druid’s gift, but the gift of a creature for whom magic has become lifeblood. It is so, Mareth. It is hard to accept, I know, but it is so.”
“Yes,” she whispered, speaking so low that he could barely hear her. “I was so sure.”
Her head lowered, and she began to cry. Her hands clenched his, and the magic died away, fading with the anger and tension, curling into a hard knot deep within.
Bremen shifted closer, putting his thin arm around her shoulders. “One thing more, child,” he told her softly. “I would be your father still, if you would have me. I would be as much a parent to you as if you were my own. I think much of you. I would give you what advice I could in your struggle to comprehend the nature of your magic. The first thing I would tell you is that you are not your father. You are nothing like him, dark thing that he was, not even in your birthright. The magic is your own. You have its power to bear, and that is a heavy weight. But though the magic was given to you by your father, it does not define your character or dictate the nature of your heart. You are a good and strong person, Mareth. You are nothing of the dark creature who spawned you.”
Mareth’s head moved against his shoulder. “You cannot know. I may be exactly that.”
“No,” he soothed. “No. You are nothing of him, child. Nothing.”
He stroked her dark hair and held her to him, letting her cry, letting the pain of so many years leak away. She would be empty and numb when it was gone, and she must be given hope and purpose to fill her anew.
He thought now that he had a way to give her that.
Two full days passed before Kinson Ravenlock returned. He walked from the valley at sunset, striding out of the raw orange light generated by the smoke and fire of Dechtera’s great furnaces. He was eager to reach them, to give them his news, and he tossed off his dusty cloak with a flourish and embraced them both enthusiastically.
“I have found the man we want,” he announced, dropping down cross-legged in the grass and accepting the aleskin Mareth passed him. “The very man, in my opinion.” His smile broadened, and he gave them both a quick shrug. “Unfortunately, he doesn’t agree with me. Someone will have to persuade him I’m right. That’s why I’ve come back for you.”
Bremen nodded and motioned to the aleskin. “Drink, have something to eat, and then tell us all about it.”
Kinson put the aleskin to his mouth and tipped his head back. West, the sun was sinking beneath the horizon, and the quality and color of the light were changing rapidly as twilight descended. In the wake of its quicksilver transition, Kinson caught a glimmer of something dark and worrisome in the old man’s eyes. Without speaking, he glanced at Mareth. She met his gaze boldly.
The Borderman lowered the aleskin and regarded them solemnly. “Did something happen while I was gone?”
There was a moment of silence. “We told stories to each other,” Bremen answered. His smile was melancholy. He looked at Mareth and then back again at Kinson. “Would you like to hear one of them?”
Kinson nodded thoughtfully. “If you think there is time.”
Bremen reached for Mareth’s hand, and the girl gave it to him. There were tears in her eyes. “I think we should make time for this one,” the old man said.
And Kinson knew from the way he said it that he was right.
XXIII
Urprox Screl sat alone on the old wooden bench, hunched forward with his elbows resting on his knees, carving knife in one hand, block of wood in the other. His hands moved deftly as he worked, turning the wood this way and that, whittling with small flicks of his wrist, the shavings flying out in front of him. He was making something wonderful, although he wasn’t sure yet what it was. The mystery was part of the pleasure. A block of wood always suggested certain possibilities before he ever took a knife to it. You just had to look carefully enough to see what they were. Once you had done that, the job was half-finish
ed. The shaping always seemed to take care of itself.
It was evening in Dechtera, the light fading to hazy gray where the furnaces did not glare with their hot white eyes. The heat was oppressive, but Urprox Screl was used to heat, so it didn’t bother him to sit there. He could have stayed home with Mina and the children, dinner complete, the day at its close, rocking on the long porch or sitting out under the shade of that old hickory. It was quiet there and cool, his home removed from the city’s center. Unfortunately, that was the problem. He missed the noise and the heat and the stench of the furnaces. When he was working, he wanted them close by. They had been a part of his life for so long that it didn’t seem right not to have them there.
Besides, this was his place of business, same as always, same as it had been for better than forty years. It had been his father’s place of business before him. Maybe it would be his son’s—one or the other of them. When he worked, this is where he liked to be. This is where he belonged, where his sweat and toil had shaped his life, where his inspiration and skill had shaped the lives of others.
It was a bold statement, he supposed, but he was a bold man. Or mad, depending on whom you asked.
Mina understood. She understood everything about her husband, and that was more than you could say for any other wife he knew. The thought of it made him smile. It gave him a special feeling for Mina. He began to whistle softly.
The people of the city passed down the street in front of Urprox Screl, hurrying this way and that, busy little beavers engaged in their tasks. He watched them surreptitiously from under the knit of his heavy dark brow without letting them know he was looking. Many of them were friends—or what passed for friends these days. Most had been shopkeepers, tradesmen, artisans, or laborers for the same amount of time as he had been a smith. Most had admired him—his skill, his accomplishments, his life. Some had believed that he embodied the heart and soul of this city.
