The Misenchanted Sword

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  "This is my inn," he said. "And I want no trouble. You will have to tell me whom you're looking for and why."

  "We seek Valder of the Magic Sword."

  The woman insisted on speaking quite loudly, and the entire population of the room—three of Valder's employees and fourteen guests—were now listening closely, the chowder forgotten for the moment.

  "I'm Valder, now the Innkeeper," he said. "Come inside and close the door." He had no idea why anybody might be looking for him and was not at all sure he wanted to find out. This group hardly looked like anything Gor might send after him. He remembered Tesra and Selmer, who had insisted on calling him Valder of the Magic Sword, and wondered if they had anything to do with it.

  He was about to suggest a more private conference when the thought struck him that Gor of the Rocks might not care to send anyone obvious on a mission to deal with his former assassin. Gor was tricky enough to have contrived a group like this. Valder decided abruptly that privacy was not called for. When the woman in blue had closed the door, he led the way to an unoccupied table and gestured for the newcomers to sit.

  The woman in red hesitated, and the others were all obviously following her lead. "Is there no place more private?" she asked.

  That convinced Valder that he did not want to be alone with his group. "No," he said. "We speak here if you wish to speak with me at all."

  Reluctantly, the woman in red nodded and took a seat; her companions followed, and Valder, too, sat down.

  "I am Sadra of Pethmor, Pethmor being the rightful capital of all Ethshar. We have come seeking your help."

  Valder interpreted this to mean that Pethmor was indeed one of the Small Kingdoms. Most of them claimed to be the ancient capital. "What sort of help?" he asked.

  "We came to Azrad's city to find someone who might be able to help us, and two men there told us where you might be found. They said that you were the greatest fighter that had ever lived, that you had slain a northern demon in single combat. Is this true?"

  "No." Valder was reluctant to elaborate.

  "No?" Sadra was taken aback. "But you are Valder of the Magic Sword? They swore..."

  "They swore? What did they swear?"

  "One of them swore that you had slain a demon..."

  "Oh. Well, yes, I did kill a shatra, which is half demon, but I'm hardly a great fighter. I had a magic sword." It seemed unwise to mention that he still had the sword and that it was in fact hanging in plain sight not ten yards away.

  "Ah. The sword is gone, then?"

  Valder shrugged.

  "Of course it is, or you would not be an innkeeper— but perhaps you could get it back? Or perhaps you might help anyway?"

  "You still haven't said what sort of help you want."

  "Oh, it is quite simple. There is a dragon, a rather large one, that has been scorching the fields..." Again, as seemed to be a habit with her, she let the sentence trail off.

  "You want me to kill a dragon for you?"

  "Yes, exactly."

  Valder put his palms on the table as if to rise. "I'm sorry, Sadra, but I can't help you. I wouldn't stand a chance; the only time I ever fought a dragon single-handed, I wound up running for my life."

  "Then you have fought dragons before?"

  "Just a little one and, I told you, it almost killed me. I will not fight your dragon for you. Talk it out of burning your fields, or hire a dragon-tamer from the city, if no one will fight it. Now, will you have supper here, or a room for the night, or will you be going?"

  The party from Pethmor stayed for supper and for the night, and for breakfast as well. Sadra made several more attempts to enlist Valder as a dragon slayer, but without success.

  In the morning, as she was about to depart, Sadra stopped and turned back. "Selmer told me you were a hero," she said. "That you would be glad of an excuse to give up this dreary inn. I think he misjudged you badly."

  Valder nodded agreement. "I think you're right. I like it here."

  Sadra nodded in turn, plainly disgusted, and left.

  Valder thought that was the end of the matter—until the next party turned up, trying to recruit him. This group was not after a dragon, but intended to loot the ruined cities of the north and wanted to hire Valder as a guard. A few surviving shatra were said to linger still amid the ruins, and what better protector could they have than the only man who had ever slain one in fair fight?

  Valder got rid of them politely and marveled at how nobody acknowledged the part the sword's magic had played. They all credited him with far more prowess than he actually possessed. They wanted to believe in heroes, not ordinary, everyday magic.

  Valder was no adventurer, no great warrior; he was just an innkeeper and glad to be one. He said as much to anyone who asked. Yes, he had a magic sword once, and yes, he had killed a shatra with it, and yes, he even admitted to having served as an assassin when that story finally surfaced—but all he was now was an innkeeper.

  That was what he told the doddering wizard who wanted to hire him to fetch the ingredients for a certain unspecified spell and what he told the self-proclaimed mercenary captain who was trying to raise a company of war heroes to fight in the continuing border squabbles in the Small Kingdoms. From what Valder had heard from his guests, these little conflicts were too small to be considered real wars. The "captain," who had never risen above sergeant in the Great War, believed a small group of experienced men could make a big difference. Valder suspected he was quite correct in that, but was not interested in being one of those men and said as much.

  He liked being an innkeeper. He enjoyed hearing his guests talk of their travels, their hopes, their goals. He enjoyed seeing the weary to bed, feeding the hungry, and serving drink to the thirsty, and watching their faces relax as their problems faded. As an innkeeper, he took no great risks. True, he made no great gains, but that did not bother him. He had not killed anyone since the end of the war, nor had anyone seriously attempted to kill him—he discounted a few drunken threats from men who could barely stand, let alone fight. The worst problem he ever confronted as an innkeeper, once he had found reliable suppliers of food and drink, was an occasional boisterous drunk, and the one advantage he saw in his growing fame as Valder of the Magic Sword was that troublemakers who had heard of his reputation avoided him. As the inn's proprietor, he was his own man; admittedly, he took orders from his customers, but only when he chose to. It was nothing like the military.

  Yes, he liked being an innkeeper. It was infinitely more enjoyable than being an assassin or an adventurer. He preferred Wirikidor over the mantel, not on his belt. . He had to repeat this often. The talkative Selmer and the various guests who had overheard his conversation with Sadra or with others who had tried to coax him away spread his fame far and wide. In general, Valder did not mind; he rather enjoyed being famous and suspected that his reputation drew business that might otherwise have passed up the Inn at the Bridge in favor of other, newer inns that had sprung up along the highways.

  He turned down offers that ranged from dull and dangerous to downright bizarre, requests for aid from silk-robed aristocrats and starving children—the latter leaving disappointed, but always well fed. He refused to rescue princesses, slay dragons, depose tyrants, locate lost siblings, kill pirates, loot tombs, battle wizards, terrorize witches, dispose of demons, settle boundary disputes, and search for everything from ancient magical treasures to a missing cat. Whenever possible, he tried to suggest someone who might serve in his stead. He was dismayed that, even safely sheathed, Wirikidor was still affecting his life.

  He suspected that nobody ever believed him when he said that he enjoyed innkeeping, that many thought him a coward or a fraud. When a messenger from Gor of the Rocks came to ask if he had reconsidered his retirement, Valder turned him down politely, as he had all the rest, and was relieved when the man departed peacefully, apparently convinced that Valder was a harmless coward.

  Nobody, not even Tandellin, believed that all he wanted was
to be an innkeeper, but it was the entire truth.

  Chapter 23

  The Inn at the Bridge flourished. Valder flourished with it, and in fact all the World seemed to be doing well once the initial confusion had passed.

  In 5000 the three overlords of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars announced that the last northern stragglers had been eliminated and the last vestiges of the Empire destroyed. In celebration, the annual Festival that began 5001 ran for seven days instead of the traditional five. A few realists pointed out that this corrected astrological errors resulting from wartime neglect of the calendar, but they were generally ignored in the widespread merry-making.

  That was the year that Valder finally got glass panes in all his windows.

  In 5002 the northern territories surrounding Sardiron of the Waters refused to acknowledge the rule of the Hegemony when tax collectors came around. Instead they set themselves up as an array of baronies under the erstwhile officers of the occupying armies, with a high council meeting at Sardiron itself. The triumvirate, well aware that the people of the Hegemony wanted no more war, did nothing about it. The rumor circulated that Azrad and Gor had decided to wait, outvoting Anaran, in hopes that the baronies would tear themselves apart in petty rivalries as the Small Kingdoms had done, allowing the Hegemony to move in and pick up the pieces. If the rumor was true, this appeared to be a miscalculation; no reports came of internecine strife in the north. Instead, caravans came down the highways and .barges down the Great River, filling Valder's guest rooms and his purse.

  Valder heard all the news and all the rumors from his guests, but paid little attention. That was the year he finally considered his cellar to be adequate, with thirty wines, a dozen ales and beers, and both brandy and oushka in stock. One of his former workmen now fan a brewery and provided much of his supply. His staff was down to just himself, Sarai, Tandellin, and Part.

  By 5005 virtually all the veterans were settled, and the offer of free land was discontinued. Almost all the old battlefields were now farms, and the vast grasslands that had stretched from the Great River to the western ocean had been plowed under and sown with com and wheat and barley. Ethshar of the Rocks and Ethshar of the Sands were real cities now, rivals—but never quite equals—of Azrad's Ethshar, now called Ethshar of the Spices in recognition of its most profitable trade. The Small Kingdoms were still splintering and fighting amongst themselves, and most of the people of the Hegemony had come to think of them as barbaric. It was hard to remember that they had once been the heart of civilization, Old Ethshar. But then, nobody mentioned Old Ethshar any more. The past was forgotten, and the Hegemony and its three capitals were the only Ethshar.

  That was the year that Valder tried unsuccessfully to start a ferry service in competition with Azrad's toll bridge. A torch "accidentally" dropped from the bridge onto the ferry one night and burned it down to the waterline, putting an end to that enterprise. Valder decided against rebuilding; the next stray torch might have hit his inn. The walls were stone, but the roof was thatch.

  In 5009 the northern coast followed Sardiron's lead and declared itself the independent Kingdom of Tintallion, with joint capitals on the mainland and on the island from which it took its name. Valder calculated, after much discussion with travelers who had been there, that the mainland capital was just about on the site of the camp where he had served prior to the desperate enemy drive to the sea that had left him stranded alone in the woods.

  That was the year an incompletely tamed dragon accidentally burned down Valder's stable. Terrified by the results of its actions, the dragon had smashed its way out through the wall and vanished, never to be seen again. Fortunately, the dragon's owner did not get away in time to avoid a generous cash settlement for the damages, and the only injuries were to two boys knocked down and bruised when they attempted to catch the other animals fleeing through the hole left by the dragon's departure.

  In 5011 Anaran of the Sands died at the age of sixty-three, and, after a month or so of widespread concern, Azrad and Gor declared Anaran's ten-year-old son Edaran of Ethshar to be the new overlord of Ethshar of the Sands. Since would-be commanders could no longer prove themselves in battle, the surviving overlords had decided to make their positions hereditary. Nobody seemed to object, Valder noted, and it did ensure peaceful transitions. Azrad and Gor both had sons to succeed them, and no one seemed very concerned about having a mere child as cornier of the Hegemony.

  That was the year that someone tried to rob the Inn at the Bridge.

  It was a slow night in deep winter, the fourth day of the month of Icebound. Enough snow was falling to discourage the neighbors from dropping in for a meal or a drink, and no trade came down the highway from the north at this time of year. The river never froze this far south, but, as it happened, no boats had stopped that day, and no travelers from the Small Kingdoms to the east or the Hegemony's other cities to the west had happened by. Tandellin and Sarai had gone home to the house they had built for themselves on the other side of the highway, and Parl had gone off, as he often did, with a young woman. He might not be back for days, but in winter he was rarely needed. Valder sat alone in the dining hall, keeping the fire alive and contemplating the coals, not thinking about anything in particular.

  A knock sounded; startled, Valder looked up. He did not particularly want to leave the hearth and get a faceful of cold air, so he bellowed, "It isn't locked! Come in!"

  For a moment he thought that the latch must have frozen or the new arrivals had not heard him, but then the door swung open.

  He did not much like the look of the two men who came in. The first one was short, with dark hair that looked curiously lopsided; it took Valder a moment to figure out that the man had been wounded on the scalp and that no hair grew from the resulting scar tissue, leaving him partially bald on one side and not the other.

  The second man was huge, perhaps six and a half feet tall and disproportionately broad. Both wore battered breastplates—not standard army-issue—and carried old swords on their belts, unusual in these peaceful times. The larger man had one of the strange, black, Northern helmets jammed onto his head, the first such helmet Valder had seen in years. Both had the look of men who were perpetually broke and always blaming others for it, though what money they acquired would invariably go for oushka or inept gambling. Valder had seen enough of the sort and did not like them. Such men usually felt that because they had served a few years in the army the World owed them a living.

  Valder judged this pair to be his own age or a year or two younger—mid-thirties, certainly. That would mean they had only served a few years each, probably not a decade between them. No one owed them anything.

  Still, he was an innkeeper. "Welcome!" he said. "Come in and get warm! What can I get you?"

  The two looked around for a moment. The big man remembered belatedly to close the door.

  "Cold out there," the small man remarked. "Have you got something that will 'warm a man's gut?"

  "Brandy or oushka" Valder answered. "Two coppers, or a silver piece for a bottle."

  "Oushka," the little man replied, as Valder had expected. These two did not look like brandy drinkers.

  He nodded and headed for the kitchen. He had not expected any customers tonight and had stored the keg away earlier than usual. "Make yourselves comfortable," he called back over his shoulder. He decided silently to be as quick as he could, so that he would be back before this pair could cause any trouble. There was little to steal in the big room, but they might decide it would be fun to smash a few tables.

  "Hey, innkeeper," the big man called after him before he had reached the door. "Is your name Valder?"

  Valder stopped and turned. "What if it is?"

  The big man shrugged. "Nothing; we just heard that this place belonged to someone named Valder of the Magic Sword, supposed to be a war hero."

  Valder sighed inwardly. These two were obviously not just going to express polite interest in his wartime experiences. They undoubte
dly wanted something from him, probably aid in some unsavory scheme, and might get ugly about it.

  Well, he could take care of himself. "I'm Valder," he admitted. "I was in the war; I fought and I killed a few northerners, but I don't know that I was a hero."

  "What was this magic sword, then?"

  "I had a magic sword; got it from a crazy hermit out on the west coast."

  The big man waggled a shoulder in the direction of the hearth. "Is that the sword, up there?"

  Valder did not like the sound of that. "What if it is?"

  "Hey, just asking. I never saw a magic sword up close before."

  "Well, that's it. Take a look, if you want, but I wouldn't try touching it." He hoped the vague threat would discourage the pair. He was not particularly worried. Unless he had been sleepwalking and killing people without knowing it, nobody else would be able to draw Wirikidor, and no other weapon could kill him.

  "What about that oushka!" the smaller man demanded.

  "I'll get it," Valder answered. He marched out through the door to the kitchen, leaving it open so that he could hear anything that happened.

  He heard nothing but low voices and quiet little bumps that could be chairs being moved about. That was fine, then, if the two were settling down at a table. He filled two crystal tankards with oushka. Most inns avoided using glass due to its high cost and breakable nature, but Valder was convinced that strong spirits did not taste right in anything else and had gone to considerable expense to have a wizard shatterproof his glassware. He had thought the expense was worthwhile, as his customers appreciated such nice little touches. Some of them did, anyway.

  He arranged the tankards on a tray and headed back into the main room, where he found the big man standing on a chair on the hearth, tugging at Wirikidor.