The Blue Sword d-1

by Robin McKinley

  Harry was staring at the blade, and barely heard Corlath's words; she was watching a flame-haired woman riding in a forest that seemed to grow against the flat of the shining sword; in her hand was another sword, and the hilt sparkled blue.

  All the other Riders were standing up, and Corlath reached down and seized her wrist. "Stand up, disi," he said. "I'm about to make you a Rider." She stood, dazed. A disi was a silly child. There was another who rode with the woman who carried the Blue Sword; he rode a few paces behind her.

  "A Rider?" Harry said.

  "A Rider," Corlath replied firmly.

  She dragged her eyes away from the winking sword edge and looked at him. Another man of the household set a small flat pot of yellow salve at Corlath's right hand. The king dipped the fingers of that hand in it, then drew them to smear the ointment across his palm. He had shifted Gonturan to his left hand; now he seized the blade near the tip with his right, and gave it a quick twist. "Damn," he said, as the blood welled between his fingers and dripped to the floor. He picked up a napkin and squeezed it. "Take my sword, Harimad-sol," he said, "and do the same—but not so enthusiastically. I think, though, that Katuchim has not the sense of humor that Gonturan does, so do not fear him."

  She dipped her fingers in the salve, and touched them gently to her palm; reached out and, as awkwardly as if she had never learned one lesson from Mathin, dragged Corlath's sword from its scabbard. It was so long she had to brace the hilt against the table to get a reasonable angle on the edge. She closed her fingers around it, thought about something else, and felt the skin of her palm just part. She opened her hand, and three drops of blood only sprang from the thinnest of red lines across her skin. "Well done!" said Mathin over her shoulder, and the Riders cheered; and the whole hall picked it up, shouting.

  Corlath grinned down at her, and she could not help smiling back. "There have been more graceful kings and Riders since the world began, but we'll do," said Corlath to her, quietly, below the roar around them. "Take your sword, and mind you treat her well. You will have Aerin's shade to answer to, else."

  Harry's fingers closed round the blue hilt and she knew at once that she would handle this sword very well indeed—or it would handle her. For a moment she found herself wishing that she had been carrying Gonturan the day of the trials, and at this a slow sly smile spread across her face. She raised her eyes to Corlath's face—he had taken his own sword back and sheathed it, and one of the Riders was tying the napkin around the wounded hand and saying something sardonic; but Corlath only laughed, and turned back to watch her. Such was the slow sly smile he offered her in return that she rather thought he knew just what she was thinking.

  "Damalur-sol!" the people cried. "Damalur-sol!"

  CHAPTER TEN

  Harry had trouble falling asleep that night; she listened to the gentle sound the water made walking down the three stone steps, and often she stretched out her hand to touch the hilt of the blue sword that lay beside her, carefully laid upon a small carpet of blue and green and gold that she had found in a corner of a hall on her way back to her mosaic palace after the feast. She had appropriated it, rolled it up, tucked it under her arm, and glared at the woman of the household who was conducting her. The woman dropped her eyes, but did not seem unduly disturbed. Who would grudge a damalur-sol a little rug? Harimad-sol thought airily.

  But each time she touched the blue sword it was as if a shock ran through her, and she listened to the quiet night, hearing the echoes of sounds that had rung themselves to silence hundreds of years ago. Her restlessness made Narknon grumble at her, although the cat did not offer to leave the bed and sleep elsewhere. At last Harry tucked her hands firmly beneath her chin and fell asleep, and in her sleep she saw Aerin-sol again, and Aerin smiled at her. "Gonturan will do well for you, I think, child, as she did well for me. You can feel it in the way she hangs in your hand, can you not?" Harry, in her dream, nodded. "Gonturan is far older than I am, you know; she was given me with the weight of her own years and legend already upon her. I never knew all she might lead her bearer into—and as it was, I learned more than enough.

  "Gonturan has her own sense of honor, child. But she is not human, and you must not trust her as human; remember it. She is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous."

  Aerin paused, and the dream began to fade; her face was pale, and half imagined, like a cloud on a summer's dawn, with her hair the sunrise. "What luck I had, may it go with you."

  Harry woke up, and found the sword gleaming blue in a light that seemed to come from the blue mosaic walls, from the blue stone in the hilt, even from the silver water of the stream.

  Several days passed, while some of the Riders went forth on errands; but the newest Rider did not. She spent long hours in the mosaic palace, staring at the air, which hung, or so it seemed to her, like tapestry around her; and in that tapestry was woven all of history—her own, her Homeland's, as well as Damar's. Sometimes she saw a little bright shimmer like someone tossing back a fire-red mane of hair; and sometimes she saw the glint of a blue jewel—but that was no doubt only some chance reflection from the glossy walls around her.

  But most of all, she slept. Mathin had been right about the sorgunal. For several days she was content to sleep, and waken to do nothing in particular, and sleep again. Narknon enjoyed it as much as she did. "I'm sure Mathin did not put any of that stuff in the porridge," Harry said to the cat; "there's no excuse for you."

  On the fourth morning Mathin came to her, and found her pacing from fountain to fountain and from wall to wall. "This is not a cage to enclose you, Hari," he said.

  She turned, startled, for she had been deep in her thoughts and had not heard his approach. She smiled. "I have not felt caged. I have … slept a great deal, as you warned me. It is only today I have begun to … think again."

  Mathin smiled in return. "Is it so ill, this thinking?"

  "Why am I a Rider?" she replied. "There is no reason for Corlath to make an Outlander girl, even the laprun minta, a Rider. Riders are his best. Why?"

  Mathin's smile twisted. "I told you, long ago—long ago, more than a week since. It is a good thing for us to have a damalur-sol. It is a good thing for us to have something to look to, for hope. Perhaps you do yourself too little honor."

  Harry snorted. "Has a laprun ever been made a Rider before?"

  Mathin took a long time to answer. "No. You are the first to bear that burden."

  "And an Outlander at that."

  "You Outlanders are human, for all of that—as the Northerners are not. It is not impossible that some Outlander might have … a Gift, kelar, like ours, as you do—for you do. There is something in you we recognize, and we know it is there, for Lady Aerin has chosen you herself. Corlath makes you a Rider to … to take advantage of whatever it is you carry in your Outlander blood that has made you Damarian, even against your will."

  Harry slowly shook her head. "Not against my will. At least not any more. But I do not understand."

  "No; nor do I. Nor even does Corlath. He—" Mathin stopped.

  Harry looked sharply at him. "Corlath what?"

  The faint smile drifted across Mathin's face again. "Corlath did not steal you of his own free will. His kelar demanded it."

  Harry grinned. "Yes; I had guessed, and once he told me—something of the sort. I saw dismay on his face often enough, those early days."

  Mathin's face was expressionless when she raised her eyes again to his. "You have not seen dismay there for a long day since."

  "No," she agreed, and her eyes went involuntarily to the mosaic walls around her.

  Mathin said, "You are a token, a charm, to us, Daughter of the Riders and Rider and Damalur-sol."

  "A mascot, you mean," Harry said, but without bitterness; and still she looked at the mosaic walls. She asked timidly, not certain of her own motives, "Does Corlath have no family? I see here, in the castle, the people of the household, and the—us—R
iders, but no one else. Is it only that they are cloistered—or that I am?"

  Mathin shook his head. "You see all there is to see. In Aerin's day the king's family filled this place; some had to live in the City, or chose to, for privacy. But kings in the latter days … Corlath's father married late, and Corlath is his queen's only surviving child, for she was a frail lady. Corlath himself has not married." Mathin smiled bleakly. "Kings should marry young and get heirs early, that their people may have one thing less to worry about. There has been no one in generations whose kelar is as strong as Corlath's; it is why the scattered folk along our borders and in the secret hearts of our Hills, who have acknowledged no Damarian king for many years, rally now to Corlath. Even where he does not go himself his messengers are alight with it."

  After Mathin left her, Harry thought of taking another nap, but decided against it. Instead she rode out on Sungold, Narknon deigning to accompany them. She found at the back of the stone castle and beyond the stone stables a practice ground, stepped into the sides of the Hill, for those wishing to practice horsemanship and war. It was deserted, as though the menace of the Northerners was too near to permit of practice. But she jogged slowly around the empty field, Sungold stepping up or down as they came to each edge, and decided to practice anyway: she who was laprun victor, who had never held a sword till a few weeks ago, who was suddenly a Rider: she felt, a little wildly, that she needed all the practice she could get.

  She was wearing Gonturan, a little self-consciously, but she had felt somehow that it would be impolite to leave her behind. She unsheathed her and wondered if the ancient sword had ever been used to hack at straw figures and charge at dangling wooden tiles. She galloped Tsornin over poles laid on the ground, piles of stone and wooden logs, and up and down turfed banks, and over ditches. She felt a little silly; but Tsornin made it plain that he enjoyed it all, whatever it was and however humble, and Gonturan always struck true.

  Harry took Tsornin back to his stable and put him away with her own hands, studiously ignoring the brown-clad groom who hovered near her. Hers was the first human face she had seen since she rode out. The stables were on the same scale as the castle: large and grand, the loose-boxes the size of small fields. There were over a hundred stalls—Harry lost count when she tried to multiply them out in her head—in the barn Sungold was quartered in, and two other barns as big stood on either side of it. Sungold's stable was nearly full; sleek curious noses were thrust out at them as they left and returned. Harry saw no other men or women of the horse; they must reappear at some point, she thought, to tend the horses. Unless Hill horses can be trained to take care of themselves—it wouldn't surprise me. The silence was uncanny. Tsornin's hoofs had echoed around the practice field; and when she thanked the brown woman and said no, she needed nothing, her voice sounded strange in her ears.

  Over the next few days she rode out again and again, and spent some hours slaying straw men with the Dragon-Killer's sword, and then some hours riding out from the stone ring of the castle, and into the stone City, down the smooth roads. She saw mostly women and young children, but even of them there were rarely more than a few. The women watched her timidly, and smiled eagerly if she smiled at them first; and the children wanted to pet Sungold, which he was good enough to permit, and Narknon, who usually eluded them; and sometimes they brought her flowers. But the City was as empty as the castle was; there were people, but far fewer than its walls might hold. Some of this, she knew, was because the army was massing elsewhere—on the laprun fields, before the City; messengers came and went swiftly, and the gathering of forces hung heavily in the air. But most of it was because, as the king's family had dwindled, so had the king's people; there were few Damarians left.

  She thought again of the mounting strangenesses of her recent life; and she wished, if she was to be given to Damar, as apparently she was, that she would be given no more long pauses of inaction in which to brood about it all.

  One of the young women who had assisted her at her bath brought her food, in the blue front room with the fountain, or outside in the sunshine where the other fountain played; and she managed to convince her and the other women sent to wait upon her that, at least as long as there were no more banquets requiring special preparations, she might bathe herself. For three more days she slept and watched the shimmering of the air and rode Tsornin and played with Narknon. There was a friendship between the horse and the hunting-cat now, and they would chase one another around the obstacles of the practice field, Narknon's tail lashing and Sungold with his ears back in mock fury. Once the big cat had hidden behind one of the grassy banks, where Harry and Sungold could not see her; and as they rode by she leaped out at them, sailing clean over Sungold and Harry on his back. Harry ducked and Sungold swerved; and Narknon circled and came back to them with her ears back and her whiskers trembling in what was obviously a cat laugh.

  And Harry polished Gonturan and tried not to brood, and looked often at the small white scar in the palm of her hand. But with all her inevitable musings she found that a certain peace had come to her and made its way into her heart. It was not like anything she had known before, and it was only on that third day that she found a name for it: fate. Yet she wished that the business of war were not so all-consuming, that she might have someone to talk to.

  On the fourth day when the woman came with her afternoon meal, Corlath came with her; and evidently he was expected, although not by Harry, for there were two goblets and two plates on the tray, and far more food than she could eat alone. She was sitting on the flagstones beside the fountain in the sunshine, watching the prisms that the falling drops threw into the air; and Narknon was washing Harry's face with her razored tongue, and Harry was trying not to mind. She was trying not to mind with such concentration that she did not realize till she looked up, still dazzled by tiny intricate colors, that he was there; and she remained sitting, blinking up at him, as the woman set down her tray and retired.

  "May I eat with you?" he said, and Harry thought that he seemed ill at ease.

  "Of course," she said. "I would—er—be honored." She pushed Narknon's head away and started to scramble to her feet, but Corlath dropped silently down beside her, so she settled back again, grateful that her bones decided not to creak. He gave her a plate and took his own; and then sat staring into the fountain much as she had done, and she wondered, watching him, if he felt any of the queer peacefulness that crept into her with the same looking; and if he would call it by the name she had discovered.

  "Eight days," she said, and his eyes drew back from the water spray and met hers. "Eight days," she repeated. "You said less than a fortnight."

  "Yes," he replied. "We are counting the hours now." He made a swift sweeping motion with his right hand, and Harry said suddenly: "Show me your hand."

  Corlath looked puzzled for a moment, but then he held his right hand out, palm up. There was one short straight pale mark across it, obviously new; and many small white scars; she didn't have to count them to know there would be eighteen of them, the still-fresh—and longest—cut a nineteenth. She studied the hand a moment, cupping it in her own, not thinking that she was poring over a king's hand; then she looked at her own right palm. One tiny straight line looked back at her.

  He closed his hand and rested it on his knee. "They don't fade," Harry said. "The old ones don't disappear."

  "No," said Corlath. "It is the yellow salve, before we make the cut; it is made of an herb called korim—forever."

  She studied her own palm again for a moment. The scar cut through the lines a fortune-teller would call her life line and her heart line; and she wondered what Damarian fortune-tellers might see in her hand. She looked up at Corlath, who absently put a piece of bread in his mouth and began to chew; he was staring into the fountain again. He swallowed and said: "There is a story of one of my grandfather's Riders: the Northern border was restless then—but only restless, and this man had gone North to see what he might learn. But they caught h
im, and recognized him as from Damar; but he knew they would find him a little before they did, and he slashed his hand that they might not find the mark and hold him for ransom—or torture; for the Northerners, if they wish, can torture with a fine prying magic that no mind can resist."

  Harry thought: If the Northerners know about the Riders' mark, they must be a bit slow not to wonder about a spy caught with a cut-up hand.

  Corlath continued after a moment: "He had traveled dressed as a merchant, so when he knew they would find him he freed his horse and sent it home, and took off his boots, and began to climb the near-perpendicular face of one of the Hills that is the boundary between our land and theirs. When they found him he was half mad with sunstroke and his hands and feet were as tattered as autumn leaves. They decided they had not caught a prize at all, and after they had beaten him a bit, they let him go. He finished climbing the mountain with his hands and feet, because he remembered that much of what he was doing; and just over the summit, just inside the border of Damar, his horse was waiting for him, and she took him home. He recovered from the sunstroke, but he never held a sword again."

  Harry swallowed a lump of bread that didn't want to go down, and there was silence for a bit. "What happened to the mare?" she said at last.

  "Your Tsornin's dam is a daughter of his mare's line," Corlath said, but it was as if he were tracing some thought of his own. "The mare lived till she was almost thirty, and dropped a foal every year till the last. Many of our best riding-horses are descended from her." Corlath looked at her, coming back from wherever he had been.