The Swordbearer

by Glen Cook

  "It's still here. I'm afraid it'll be with us for a while."

  Breakfast was quick and cold. The horses were lacking in a properly enthusiastic attitude. Gacioch talked at length when Gathrid questioned him, but had nothing concrete to say. It was not an auspicious beginning for the day.

  "Let's go, Loida. We've got a long way to go." The map in his mind was daunting, though his shared souls assured him the journey was easier than it looked.

  Gathrid set a hard pace once more. Not only did he want to reach the Library before the Ventimiglians thought to seal it off, he wanted to get there before Nieroda appeared. He suspected restraint on the part of the Toal reflected its expectation of the controlling spirit's imminent arrival.

  They entered the foothills of the Chromogas shortly before noon. They started collecting new followers there. These soon formed a veritable parade. Gathrid drove the horses harder.

  A flying thing appeared. It circled high overhead. It did not resemble the dragon thing Nieroda had ridden in Gudermuth. Who bestrode it Gathrid could not tell. It did carry a rider, he believed.

  The Toal remained a fixed two hundred yards behind him, changing its pace when he did. The Ventimiglians stayed that far behind it. Gathrid wondered where their loyalties lay.

  By now, he thought, there could be no doubt of his destination. This was the wildest country he had seen since leaving the Nirgenaus, though even here there were manors. They perched atop the terraced hills. He searched his encyclopedia of memories. The Library was the only thing on the map of his mind. They could not think he was bound anywhere else . . . .

  They were letting him go where he wanted, then. To their purpose. They wanted him at the Library. Was he doing Nieroda's work? Was he killing these animals and punishing himself and Loida for nothing?

  Logic battled emotions long keyed to danger. Once again he wished Rogala could advise him. "Take a chance," he said aloud. He had played hunches before. He slowed to a walk.

  The procession did the same. No one made a threatening move, though the Toal did station itself closer.

  People were watching from the hillside farms. The peasants were not working today. They were lined up as if to observe the passage of a parade. When he appeared, some retreated. Some fled toward places of hiding.

  He experienced that feeling of power which heretofore had come only with the drawing of the Sword.

  Then he came to the Library, sooner than he expected. And found the answers to several riddles. Why his progress had not been interrupted. Why the serfs were on holiday.

  The Mindak Ahlert was there waiting for him.

  Chapter Ten

  Ansorge

  Gathrid's hand leapt to Daubendiek. He spurred ahead. Gacioch laughed. The feeling of growth came over the youth. Daubendiek whined in its scabbard, begging to be freed.

  The men with the Mindak, captains and sorcerers all, backed away. Gathrid's horse reared, hammered the air with its hooves. It screamed, came to earth prancing.

  The Mindak was not intimidated.

  This was the first time Gathrid had seen the man unarmored. At Kacalief he had been but another suit of dark plate, indistinguishable from the Toal. Today he had eschewed all warlike gear save a ceremonial dagger. He was afoot, wearing clothing more suited to court than the field.

  Have I guessed right? Gathrid wondered. Is this really Ahlert? Or might he be some viceroy?

  Gathrid spied a circlet half-hidden in the man's heavy, dark hair. It was a simple gold serpent with a ruby egg in its mouth.

  The minds within the youth reacted, saying the coronet was another product of the Library. It was the infamous Ordrope Diadem, which had been Grellner's secret weapon. It gave its wearer the ability to look into minds, to ferret out character flaws and hidden dreams which could be twisted and manipulated. Anyone who looked into the jewel became entranced.

  Only the Mindak would wear the Diadem. It was one cornerstone of his Power.

  Ahlert slowly spread his hands, showing himself unarmed. He peered intently, trying to draw Gathrid's gaze.

  The temptation was too much. Gathrid glanced at the ruby.

  Ahlert moaned and reeled back, throwing a forearm across his eyes. Gathrid swayed. He almost fell from his saddle. For an instant he felt a great vacuum sucking at his mind.

  They exchanged stares. Ahlert's men withdrew to a safer distance. The Toal moved nearer Gathrid. A shadow fluttered along the ground. Gathrid glanced up at the flyer.

  Then he examined Ahlert more closely.

  He had expected an elderly caricature of Gerdes Mulenex. What he saw instead was a thirtyish, lean, dark man with mouth-corner quirks suggesting a rich sense of humor. But the man's dark eyes were cold, calculating, the windows of a nighted soul, of a man of boundless ambition.

  Gathrid found him reminiscent of Yedon Hildreth, particularly in the aura of stubbornness he exuded.

  Ahlert spread his hands again. "Come down, Swordbearer. Let's talk."

  Daubendiek quivered hungrily. Loida begged, "Kill him while you have the chance. He'll trick you."

  "No doubt. Or I might fool him." He believed he was safe. The Mindak had something on his mind. Conquering his memories of Kacalief, Gathrid said, "Speak."

  "Here?"

  The youth glanced around, understood. "Into the Library, then. You and me. Alone together." He met Ahlert's eye, squeezed Daubendiek's hilt. "Maybe only one of us will return."

  Gacioch laughed again.

  "The Library?"

  "The underground city. The place where you dredge up these horrors." He indicated the Toal.

  "Ah. Ansorge. Come along, then." The Mindak seemed to be a man of few words.

  Loida was not pleased. "Don't leave me here! They'll sacrifice me."

  Gacioch leered and jeered.

  The Sword, though undrawn, made itself felt. Gathrid could summon no emotion concerning the girl's welfare.

  "No one will harm you." The way the Mindak spoke, while surveying his officers, made that sound like a statement of natural law.

  Gacioch wanted to go, too, but argued with no special vehemence. "Don't buy any cats in a sack, boy," he said by way of parting.

  "You're certainly a puzzle," Gathrid told him.

  "Glad to hear it. Glad to hear it. I'd stop being fun if I was predictable."

  The Toal, too, wanted to go. It asked no permission. It dismounted, took lance in hand and began to follow.

  "Begone," Ahlert ordered. "Mohrhard Horgrebe, I command you. Go you forth, whence you came. This I command in the name of Great Chuchain."

  The hairs on Gathrid's neck stirred. Chuchain. Where had he heard that name? Something Rogala had muttered. An entity the equal of Suchara. Sometimes her ally, more often her rival.

  The Toal came on.

  "I was afraid of this," the Mindak said. "The break is complete."

  "The name of Chuchain may be impotent, but is the Sword of Suchara?"

  "Never mind. Let it come. There's another one here that can't be kept out. It's discorporeal."

  Gathrid shrugged, followed the Mindak. The Toal Mohrhard Horgrebe did likewise. Then it stopped. It seemed to listen. After a few seconds in that attitude, it took three jerky steps to one side and seated itself on a boulder.

  Instructions from Nieroda?

  Ahlert led Gathrid into a tunnel that showed signs of recent mining. He strode a dozen steps inward, halted, intoned, "The Child of the Father, Great Chuchain, and He Who Bears the Wrath of the Mother, Suchara of the Sorrows; He Who Slew the Son. I say three times, let us pass! Let us pass! Let us pass! In the Name of Great Chuchain."

  Something stirred. Something caressed Gathrid's face with spider's silk, with the light, nimble fingers of elves. Unbidden, words formed on his lips. "In the Name of the Mother, Suchara Beneath the Sea."

  The fingers of gossamer withdrew. "Come," Ahlert told him.

  It was not a long passage, and hardly as miserable as his subterranean trek with Rogala, yet Gathrid was relieve
d when they departed the tunnel. The sense of presence there, of unseen, hungry things watching, was overpowering.

  "Ansorge," the Mindak said. "City of Everlasting Night. City of the Night People. The ones remembered as elves and trolls in your legends. They're all dead now. An unfortunate aftereffect of the Brothers' War. Only their guardians remain. Their last project was to collect the wrack of the war. They didn't survive long enough to finish. Daubendiek and the Shield of Driebrant were their most noteworthy oversights."

  For a minute Gathrid was just an awestruck sightseer. The cavern and city it contained stretched as far as he could see. Countless thousands of balls of light drifted around, mostly on aimless currents of air. Some bounced and dodged like playful butterflies while others swooped and darted like swallows on the hunt. They came in every color. Occasionally one changed hue.

  "What are they?" Gathrid asked.

  "We don't know. My best people have studied them. They might be alive, or magical. Or both. They won't hold still for a close examination. If you cage them, they die, and leave behind nothing you can dissect. Maybe we'll find out once we learn to decipher the underpeople's writing."

  "You can't read their records?"

  "Only their pictographs. The exploration has been haphazard. We're like barbarians looting a temple. Like the Oldani and Hattori during the Sack of Sartain. We're probably missing the most interesting things simply because we don't recognize them." He stopped walking. "Earth. Air. Fire. Water. And this. A fifth vision, perhaps? Greater than the others? But it was neutral. Always neutral. And now it's dead."

  What was the man talking about? "You brought me here for a reason."

  The Mindak resumed walking. "You asked. I came. We're here together. Chuchain and Suchara have moved us. We pawns can but go to our squares."

  "A quote cribbed, no doubt, from Theis Rogala." Gathrid surprised himself with his boldness. He did not feel bold. He wondered if all self-assured men were just nervous, frightened boys hiding behind well-schooled facades.

  "There is Purpose in our coming together," Ahlert told him. "The hourglasses have turned. The tides have shifted. I'm not the man I thought. I'm no general. I'm not much of a leader. I excel only at thaumaturgy. I'll tell you something, Swordbearer . . . though you'll learn it for yourself, the way we all do. All ambition is self-delusion. It comes. You overreach. Then you find yourself in a death-struggle, just trying to hold onto what you had at the beginning."

  Ahlert reminded Gathrid of his boyhood teacher. "Nieroda has challenged you," he said.

  "Nieroda, the Toal, and men whom I believed were loyal captains. Because I showed so poorly in the west. No. I didn't fail there. I could've won. But I was too timid. And I didn't get the help I should have from Nieroda. It puzzled me then. I understand now.

  "I was frightened of Yedon Hildreth. I thought I could handle him easier by stalling because he couldn't avoid politics. I didn't realize that I couldn't avoid them either. Then, too, there was what you did at Katich. It made me Doubt." He said the last word as though it were the name of some dread deity.

  "That, too, is something you'll have to face to understand."

  Self-revelation was not what Gathrid had expected. Argument or conflict, perhaps. Or a settlement of the debt of Kacalief. But not having his enemy talk to him like a brother. Nor his own willingness to listen.

  "While they were enemies, they were reconciled," he said, quoting something he had heard from Plauen.

  "Perhaps. Before foes with whom there can be no conciliation. But not forever."

  "Suchara would disapprove," Gathrid murmured.

  Ahlert smiled thinly, nodded. "Nieroda was another of my mistakes. I believed I could master her, against all the evidence of history. No one, not even Bachesta herself, can control that daughter of Hell. I realize that now."

  "Her? Daughter?"

  "You didn't know? I suppose not. There in the ruins of Anderle, you wouldn't. The memories have washed away. The books have been burned. Time is a cleansing rain. Yes. Nevenka Nieroda was female."

  "But the Toal . . . And I slew . . . "

  "The Toal are sexless. They never were human. They just possess the bodies of humans. But Nieroda was a Queen, in a land called Sommerlath, ten thousand years before the Immortal Twins were born. She was the greatest witch who ever lived. So great she elevated herself to virtual demigod status." They walked a way in silence. Ahlert was thoughtful. "A lot of people have tried. A lot more will. We all want to grasp the stars. Nieroda came closer than most. But like the rest of us, she overreached and drew back fingers webbed with damnation."

  Overreaching had been Anyeck's flaw, Gathrid reflected. That last time she had gotten her hands on pure damnation. "You place your bet and take your chances."

  "Exactly. Here we are."

  "Here we are where?" They were among crumbling structures now. Gathrid had a feeling these were far older than they looked. There was no gnawing weather down here.

  "What I call the House of the Eye." Ahlert stooped to pass through a low doorway. The cave dwellers had been small people.

  There was a man inside. Gathrid rested a hand on Daubendiek's hilt.

  "Magnolo Belfiglio," Ahlert said. "He lives with the Eye. He's the only one who can manipulate it. He watches the west for me. Any news, Magnolo?"

  "Nothing good, Grace. Nothing good. The Sixth Brigade has gone over. Gone over. That leaves the Imperial and the Ninth. The Ninth."

  Belfiglio was incredibly old. And shaky. And confined to a wheeled chair. He was the first truly old person Gathrid had seen since entering Ventimiglia.

  "The Western army is gone, then. I trust that Tracka and Marcagi have withdrawn."

  "They have, Eminence."

  To Gathrid, Ahlert explained, "The Imperial Brigade has to support the Crown, no matter what. The Ninth is Ahlert family. It was my command once."

  The Ventimiglian military was a curiously cobbled structure. Some larger families and trade associations maintained their own privately financed brigades. They were indistinguishable from those maintained by the Empire, but were loyal to their paymasters. The public units seldom took part in private ventures. The private units could be called by the Emperor at need.

  There were also mercenary brigades raised by adventurers from among the free peasantry. Such armed associations had made up most of Ahlert's Western army. They had been the first to defect.

  The Mindak's western adventure had, in reality, been instigated only by the man who wore Ventimiglia's crown, not by the Crown itself. Ahlert had been acting not as Emperor but as a plundering warchief.

  "And Rogala told me Ventimiglia had the advantage of a monolithic command," Gathrid muttered.

  "And here at home?" Ahlert inquired of Belfiglio.

  "The Corichs have repudiated their war captains. War captains. They know what Nieroda is, although they agree with her arguments. Her arguments."

  "Have there been desertions from the brigades? Anyone coming back?"

  "Very few, Luminence. Mostly career and family men with home ties stronger than their greed. Their greed."

  "Then it'll be Ventimiglian against Ventimiglian. Damn! What think the Corichs?"

  "Few will join an expedition, Grace. But none will hinder, nor will any support rebellion. There's been talk of denying the peasantry the right to form associations. Form associations."

  "There always is. People change their minds when they need a few hired swords. Did you see any discernible lean anywhere?"

  "No, Might. They await the rising wind. Rising wind."

  "How does he know all that?" Gathrid asked. "I see no mystic Eye."

  "It's all around you," Ahlert replied. "It's the room itself."

  Gathrid glanced round. "Unusual. But not that unusual."

  "I forget. If you had a mind like Magnolo's, you'd have noticed it right away. But Magnolo is unique."

  "Oh?"

  "You're thinking that makes him powerful? It does. He is. He's the factor that w
on me the crown. My enemies would give anything to see him slain. Yet he's only a slave."

  Were slaves less subject to temptation than free men? Ah. Of course. Ahlert had the Diadem. He could monitor Belfiglio's thoughts.

  "What brought you here?" Ahlert asked.

  "I don't know. Maybe I meant to destroy it."

  "I see. Moved by Suchara. Want to see more of Ansorge? You'll see how hopeless it would be for one man to try anything."

  Gathrid suspected he was being maneuvered away from the Eye. How could he harm it, though? By slaughtering the old man? "Might as well."