Perhaps, he thought, I should hire a wizard to break the spell and live out my life normally. The war is long over; why do I need a magic sword?
He remembered then that Darrend had thought the spell was unbreakable. Well, Darrend could have been wrong. It would undoubtedly take a very powerful wizard to break the spell, of course, and wizardry was expensive—not just because of the greed of its practitioners, but because so many of the ingredients needed for charms were so difficult to obtain. He recalled when a call had gone out, years earlier, for the hair of an unborn child, needed for some special spell Azrad had wanted performed; he wondered if any had ever been found. Other ingredients were said to be even more difficult to acquire. By ordinary standards he was well off, as the inn was successful, but, if he tried hiring high-order wizardry, his savings could easily vanish overnight.
He resolved to ask whatever wizard Tandellin might bring back about the possibilities of hiring powerful countercharms, but for the present he had no intention of actually having the spell broken. Wirikidor could be useful. Dangerous, but useful. He could safely draw it at least fifteen more times, perhaps as many as twenty-three, by his best count. That was still a safe margin.
When it dropped to single digits he might reconsider— or when his health started to go.
He would mention it to the wizard—assuming Tandellin did not bring a witch or theurgist instead—but for now he would simply bury the sword out back.
Two days later, his wounds magically healed, he did just that, working alone late at night by the light of a lantern, using a patch of ground that he had thawed with a bonfire that day.
The earthquake that followed a sixnight later was small and localized. It broke a few windows, emptied a shelf or two, sent a wine barrel rolling across the cellar floor, and, of course, split open the ground and flung Wirikidor up, to lie against the inn's kitchen door.
Valder considered throwing it in the river only until he had estimated how much damage would be caused by a flood big enough to carry the sword half a mile up the slope to the inn. The flood might not come, but he was not willing to risk it.
He wondered idly what a concealment spell would cost, but finally just tossed the sword under his bed and forgot about it.
Chapter 25
The news of the death of Gor of the Rocks in 5034 sent Valder into a brief depression. He had admired Gor once, but that admiration had largely worn away, starting with the overlord's request that Valder serve as his personal assassin in peacetime. The loss of the territory where Valder had served, when it became the Kingdom of Tintallion, had been another blow. The Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, which had once seemed so pure and all-embracing, had been corrupted and whittled down.
Gor's part in putting Edaran of Ethshar on his father's throne had not raised Valder's opinion any; it had left the entire central region that Anaran had once controlled at the mercy of Gor and Azrad, who had taxed it heavily. Gor had gotten an edge over Azrad by marrying off his son and heir, Goran of the Rocks, to Edaran's sister Ishta of the Sands in 5029, despite Ishta being eleven years older than the boy.
Over the years Gor had gone from being virtually an object of worship in Valder's eyes to just another conniving tyrant, but still, his death was not welcome news.
It removed any possibility of further difficulty over Valder's long-ago refusal to serve as an assassin, but it also removed the last vestige of his boyhood hero.
Gor had been only a dozen years older than Valder, at that, and yet he was dead of old age. Valder still felt strong and healthy, but Gor's death was another reminder that he, too, was growing old and that Wirikidor was doing nothing to prevent it.
Goran was now overlord of Ethshar of the Rocks, a young man in the prime of life—and he had not even been born until thirteen years after Valder built his inn. The thought of that oppressed him as he sat in a corner staring at the half-dozen patrons in the dining room, every one of them too young to remember the Great War.
Perhaps, Valder mused, part of the depression was because he had never taken a wife and, to the best of his knowledge, had sired no children. He had had women, certainly, but none had stayed. When he had been a soldier, none of his pairings had been expected to last by either party, because most did not in a soldier's life, and since becoming an innkeeper the only women he saw were those with the urge to travel. Some had stayed for a time, but all had eventually tired of the calm routine of the inn and had moved on.
It seemed a bit odd that Tandellin, who had always seemed rowdy and irrepressible as a youth, had been happily married for thirty-seven years, while Valder, who had always thought of himself as dull, ordinary, and predictable, had never married at all. It went against the traditional stereotypes.
He knew that he could have found a wife in Ethshar of the Spices, had he ever wanted to; but since the completion of the inn, he had never once returned to the city. He disliked the crowds and dust and knew that swords were no longer worn openly there, save by guardsmen and troublemakers, so that the necessity of carrying Wirikidor would mark him as a stranger.
He had always done well enough for himself without visiting the city. His lack of a family had never really bothered him; Tandellin and Sarai and their children had been his family in many ways.
He mulled all this over, sitting in the main room with a mug of ale that Sarai the Younger kept filled for him. As he glanced up to signal her for another pint, his eye fell on Wirikidor, hanging over the hearth.
The sword had lain neglected beneath his bed for scarcely a month before he restored it to its place. He had gotten tired of questions about its absence from familiar customers; too many had gone away convinced that the thieves had indeed gotten away with it, even if they had lost one of their number in doing so. Although that might have deterred thieves on the grounds that there was nothing left worth taking, it grated on Valder's pride. Besides, Valder had gotten tired of seeing the empty pegs and could not think of any way to remove them short of sawing them off as close to the stone as possible.
So he had returned Wirikidor to its place of honor, but devised another approach to the problem of removing temptation. He held contests whenever the inn was crowded, offering ten gold pieces to any man or woman who could draw the blade. This served as good entertainment on many a night and demonstrated to all present just how useless the sword was to anybody else. Rather than suppressing details of the sword's enchantment, as he had before, Valder made a point of explaining that it was permanently linked to him and that every time he drew it a man died.
That had discouraged any further attempts at theft. After all, who cares to risk one's life for a sword that nobody can use, knowing that, if it does leave its scabbard, someone will die—and that that someone will not be the sword's owner?
He had not mentioned that the spell was limited to another score or so of uses, however, nor that it would then turn on him. He did not mention his theoretical immortality, lest someone be tempted to test it.
He stared up at the dull gray of the scabbard and the tarnished black hilt. Wirikidor was such a very ordinary-looking sword; how could it have such power over him?
That is, if in fact it actually did. At times Valder was uncertain whether he should so trustingly accept the assessment made so long ago by General Karannin's magicians. Karannin was long dead; Valder had heard that he had been knifed ignominiously in a brawl in 4999 or 5000. He had no idea what had become of the wizards. Sometimes it seemed as if most of the World's wizards had vanished after the war; once the army's control was gone, the Wizards' Guild's compulsion for secrecy, which had done so much to restrict wizardry's effectiveness in the war, had taken over unrestrained. Now even simple spells could be difficult to obtain or prohibitively expensive. Certainly there were still wizards around, but most seemed to be severely limited in what they would undertake.
That virtually eliminated the possibility of having Wirikidor's enchantment removed, even if he decided he so wanted. When last he had sent an
enquiry to the city, he had been told that no wizard in Ethshar would attempt to remove an eighth-order spell for less than a thousand pieces of gold. Valder was not sure whether Wirikidor's enchantment was in fact eighth-order, but he remembered a mention of that number. A thousand pieces of gold was considerably more money than he had ever had in his life and far more than he had at present, as business had trailed off slightly. Furthermore, as he grew older, he turned more and more of the work over to his helpers, which meant he needed more helpers—all three of Tandellin and Sarai's children now worked for him—and that meant more money. He had more than enough to live comfortably on, but he was not rich.
Karannin was dead. Gor was dead. Anaran was dead. Terrek was dead. It seemed as if all the men who had fought the war were dead or dying. Valder had not seen a man in a wartime uniform in decades; the soldiers of the Hegemony, such as were posted in the guardhouse at the bridge, had long ago switched to a new one, with a yellow tunic and a red kilt replacing the old familiar brown and green and with no breastplate at all.
Azrad was still alive, of course, and still ruled over the seas and the southwestern portion of the Hegemony, from the Small Kingdoms halfway to Sardiron—but he was a doddering old man now, three-quarters of a century old and showing it. He had not aged well.
And Valder of Kardoret still lived, no longer the young scout, or the desperate assassin, but the aging proprietor of the Thief's Skull Inn—the skull had fallen and been buried years ago, but the name still lingered. Valder wondered if his younger customers even knew the name's origin; he rather expected that the name would soon change again, perhaps back to the Inn at the Bridge.
He finished his ale and put down the mug, signaling that this time young Sarai was not to refill it. A pleasant young woman, that, more like her father than the mother she was named for.
Life was still good, Valder told himself, and as long as it remained so, he need do nothing about Wirikidor. Gor's death did not change anything.
Still, he could feel himself growing older. He knew that he would have little chance in a fair fight, either with swords or unarmed, against almost anyone. He would not stay healthy forever.
When the time came that his health was irretrievably going, he promised himself, he would take decisive action to free himself from Wirikidor's curse. There was always a way out; he had only to find it.
He reminded himself of that resolve periodically from then on and even wrote it down, lest he forget. When the time came, six years later, that he could no longer deny that he was losing his sight, he made his decision.
He could put it off no longer. His vision was slowly deteriorating, and he was certain that in a year or two he would be blind. The thought of spending an eternity helpless in the dark was more than he could take, particularly when he realized that he would become a perpetual invalid, with no prospect of dying, and that Tandellin and his family would be forced to care for him indefinitely. He had heard—his hearing was still good—his patrons speak with scorn of old Azrad, who still clung to his life and his throne despite his eighty years of age and poor health. He did not care to engender similar scorn. Azrad could abdicate, if he so desired, and be taken care of in luxury for as long as he lived; Valder did not have that option. Tandellin and Sarai were not his family and had no obligation to stay on if he fell ill, but he was sure, nonetheless, that they would. They were far from young themselves, as evidenced by the recent birth of their second grandchild; where else would they go? They had lived their lives as his helpers at the inn; it was all they knew. If he became an invalid, they would have little choice but to tend him for as long as they could. He would not saddle them with a blind old fool who would live forever; that would be unforgivably unfair.
And if he were to reach a point where death became preferable to living on, how could he die, if he had grown too old and feeble to draw Wirikidor?
He saw only one course of action. He would take Wirikidor and go to the city. He would seek out a wizard there, or several wizards, and learn whether Wirikidor's enchantment could be removed, allowing him to live out a normal life. Once that was done, finances permitting, he would also have his fading eyesight restored, so that he might live out his remaining years more pleasantly. He was ready and willing to pledge everything he owned toward the cost of such spells.
If the enchantment could not be broken, then he saw no option but suicide. He refused to live out all eternity as a blind, senile cripple. Blindness alone he might learn to live with, were he still young and healthy, but in time he knew his other faculties would go. He would have to kill himself with Wirikidor while he still had the strength to do so.
If Wirikidor would not kill him immediately, he knew he might have to kill however many other men it would take to use up the spell. That might be difficult, but he was sure he could manage it somehow.
With that firmly resolved, he made his plans and preparations. On the third day of the month of Green-growth, in the year 5041, he set out for Ethshar of the Spices, riding as a paying passenger on an ox-drawn farm wagon, with Wirikidor on his hip.
Chapter 26
The wagon's owner knew nothing about magicians of any sort and, in fact, expressed doubts as to the authenticity of most spells, so Valder thanked him politely and disembarked as soon as they reached Westgate Market. The guards at the gate were more helpful, but the directions they gave him to reach the Wizards' Quarter were not as detailed as he had hoped. He was to follow High Street for half a league or so—he had forgotten the city was that big—and then turn right onto a diagonal cross-street, a big one called Arena Street, and follow it past the Arena itself and on into the Wizards' Quarter, down toward Southgate. That sounded simple enough, but there were so very many cross-streets that he was not at all sure he would know the right one when he found it.
The guards had also strongly advised him against carrying his sword openly on his belt. The overlord did not approve of such martial displays, and some people took it upon themselves to enforce the old man's whims, even .though at the moment there was no valid decree in effect on the matter. Valder thanked them, but left Wirikidor where it was. He thought that the sword might discourage thieves who would otherwise be tempted to attack an old man with a fat purse. He had brought all his accumulated funds from forty-odd years as an innkeeper; magic, he knew, did not come cheap.
The crowds and dirt and noise were overwhelming at first, particularly as he was already weary from his long ride. Oxen were slow-moving beasts, and the farmer had been in no great hurry, so the trip had taken a day and a half. He had arrived at mid-afternoon of the second day, the fourth of Greengrowth, his back aching from toes to shoulders. He had not realized, sitting around the inn, just how much age had affected him.
Objectively, he knew at a glance that the crowds were nothing compared to the mobs that had overwhelmed the city when first he saw it, but he still found them daunting as he made his way along High Street, watching for the diagonal cross-street the guards had described.
He passed inns and taverns clustered around the gate-side market and assorted disreputable lodgings. He passed block after block of varied shops, built of stone and wood and brick, selling everything imaginable, from fishhooks to farm wagons and diamonds to dried dung—but very little magic, and none of the signboards boasted of wizardry or witchcraft. A passing stranger, when asked, told him that these shops made up the Old Merchants' Quarter; there was also a New Merchants' Quarter to the south. The Wizards' Quarter was much further on.
He came to a broad diagonal avenue that he took at first for Arena Street, but it was angled in the opposite direction from what the guard had led him to expect, so once again he asked, this time inquiring of a shopkeeper dealing in fine fabrics. The shopkeeper explained that this avenue was Merchant Street and that Arena Street was further on, past the New City district.
Valder trudged on along High Street and found himself passing mansions. Some faced upon the street, their rich carvings and gleaming windows pla
in to be seen, while others were set back and hidden behind walls or fences. A few stood surrounded by gardens, and one boasted an elaborate aviary. The streets in this area were not crowded at all, and most of the people he did see were tradesmen; only rarely did he spot someone whose finery was in accord with the opulence of the buildings.
The fine houses stopped abruptly, replaced by a row of shops facing onto a diagonal avenue, and Valder knew he had found Arena Street. He paused in the intersection to look around.
Far off to his left, at the end of the surprisingly straight avenue, he could see the overlord's palace. He had caught quick glimpses of it once or twice before on Merchant Street and again on one of the streets in the New City, but had not stopped to look at it.
That was where Azrad the Great lived, now more than eighty years old but still holding on to his absolute power as overlord of the city and triumvir of the Hegemony. He was said to suffer from bouts of idiocy, to have lost his teeth, and to drool like a baby in consequence. Valder shuddered at the thought. It was not that Azrad's current condition was so very unpleasant, but that it had come upon him in a mere eighty years or so, while Wirikidor could perhaps keep Valder alive for eighty centuries.
And for that matter, how pleasant could Azrad's life actually be? His elder son Azrad had died as a youth, in the waning days of the Great War. His wife was long dead. His surviving son, Kelder, was middle-aged and said to be a dreary sort. One grandson had died at the age of fourteen of some unidentified disease, and another was just coming of age. There were three granddaughters as well.
How happy a family could it be? Did any of those still living really care much for the old man? Kelder was surely waiting to inherit the throne, and the others had known Azrad only as a sick old man, never as the brilliant leader he had once been.
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