The Seventh Book of Lost Swords : Wayfinder's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  Valdemar felt a sudden return of the physical sickness. Still he was unable to assign a cause.

  The lovely young woman regarded him in silence a little longer. Then she said: “I am still trying to fathom why the Sword of Wisdom should have pointed you out to me. Have you any idea why?”

  Before Valdemar could attempt a reply, one of the lady’s human subordinates came up to request orders, interrupting her train of thought. Turning aside, she commanded this man to dispatch a message to Master Wood. “Inform the Master that we have had great success.”

  “Shall I tell him, my lady, that the Sword we have taken here is not the one we were expecting to find?”

  “No, fool! The Master will know of that already. Use just the words I have just spoken: ‘great success.’ Nothing more and nothing less.”

  “Yes, my lady.” The soldier bowed himself away. Tigris returned her full attention to Valdemar.

  “Where is the Sword of Healing?” she demanded abruptly.

  “I don’t know.”

  Tigris stared at him. If she was really determined to find Woundhealer, he thought, all she had to do was put to work the Sword she had just captured. But he was sure that she had had some other goal in mind when she put her first question to Wayfinder. And she had been quite as surprised as he was at Wayfinder’s answer.

  In another moment Tigris, still with the Sword of Wisdom in hand, was giving orders that the camp be guarded well. She herself, she proclaimed to her subordinates, was about to go apart from them, because she needed solitude to work a certain special spell.

  With that accomplished, a new word and a gesture from the sorceress sufficed to grant Valdemar another degree of freedom from the magical restrictions on his movement. Suddenly he felt he could walk normally; he wondered what would happen should he attempt to run. Brusquely ordering him to follow, her eyes on Wayfinder, which she held in front of her, Tigris led the way out of what had been the Blue Temple camp.

  Stiffly Valdemar followed. His legs still moved only slowly, his powerful arms hung almost useless at his sides. Maybe, he thought, he could use both arms and legs effectively if he really tried. But probably that thought was delusion. The confident small woman who had just turned her back on him did not seem to be worried about anything that he might do.

  She continued to carry the Sword extended horizontally ahead of her, and he thought she was muttering to it again, though he could not make out her words. As if she might be asking Wayfinder for the best place to take Valdemar—for what purpose? He supposed that he was going to find out soon.

  As they paced on across the sandy wasteland, Lady Tigris still in the lead, the rain continued, a sullen dripping from a lowering, overcast sky. The birds were silent now, or absent, having taken flight from the ominous presence of the demon.

  * * *

  This stalwart, healthy-looking youth, as far as Tigris could tell, was a damned unlikely candidate to be of any magical or political prowess or importance whatsoever.

  Physically, of course, he was impressive. It occurred to her to wonder whether he might have been someone’s personal bodyguard. Not Hyrcanus’s or the Director’s, because he was not Blue Temple. But then who…?

  “Who are you, fellow?” she demanded, turning to stare at him again, but almost as if asking the question of herself.

  He shook his shaggy head, perhaps to rid his eyes of rain. Looking down at her from his great height, he answered simply: “My name is Valdemar, lady.”

  “That tells me almost nothing.”

  “I am a grower of vines and grapes.”

  For a moment Tigris regarded this reply as brave mockery indeed, and was on the brink of administering punishment. Then, reconsidering the tone of the answer, she came to the belief that it had been sincere.

  She shook her own wet blond curls, impatient but wary, pondering, ready to kill or to bless, as might be required. “I can smell some kind of magic about you, I believe … though not, I think, any impressive power of your own. What have you to do with the Swords?”

  Again the towering youth shook his head. “Nothing at all. Except that the one you now hold, lady, was once given to me.”

  That surprised her. “Given to you? Why?”

  The young giant sighed. “I wish someone could tell me why.”

  “Who gave it?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  Tigris made a disgusted sound. “I fear that getting at the truth about you is going to take time, and my time just now is in extremely short supply. If I thought you were being willfully stubborn … but of course that may not be the case at all. You may in fact know nothing, and still be vitally important—somehow.”

  When Valdemar’s feet slowed, and his shoulders moved as if he wanted to wave his arms and argue, Tigris with a gesture of her own increased the paralytic restriction on the movement of his arms. “Keep moving, and be quiet!”

  Then she once more consulted the Sword, murmuring: “Guide us to the safest place within a hundred meters.”

  Following Wayfinder’s indication, she continued to march her prisoner quickly along until after another forty meters or so they reached a place where the Sword indicated that they should stop.

  Here Valdemar thought at first that the two of them were now entirely alone. But when he looked and listened carefully, calling into play such sense of magic as he did possess, he became aware of a faint disturbance in the air, just at the limit of his perception. They were in fact being attended by certain immaterial powers, of which his human captor evidently was well aware.

  And in another moment these magical attendants were gone, dismissed by a wave of a small white hand.

  Their mistress looked steadily at Valdemar. “When Hyrcanus had this Sword,” she asked, “what question or questions did he put to it?”

  “As I have already mentioned, lady, he spoke chiefly of the Emperor, and the Emperor’s treasure. Why the Chairman of the Blue Temple should do that I do not know—I have always thought that the Emperor, if he really existed, was no more than a clown.”

  The lady was not interested in Valdemar’s opinions. “And what exactly did Hyrcanus ask of this Sword?”

  “I don’t remember the exact words. He wanted to be shown the way to the Emperor’s greatest treasure.”

  “And what answer was he given?”

  “Nothing very definite. The Chairman discussed this with his colleague—the man you were just talking to back there—and they thought the ambiguity might mean the Emperor was actually approaching. But … you arrived instead.”

  The red lips smiled faintly. “Perhaps the real answer was that the Great Clown has no treasure.” The smile vanished. “But you and I, grape-grower, we have no time to worry about that now.”

  “What are we to worry about instead?”

  Tigris did not reply.

  Her one overriding worry was Wood, escape from whose domination was the single thing in the world which she most desired. Now she caught herself instinctively looking over her shoulder. A useless gesture, of course, and she was irritated to catch herself doing it more than once.

  Valdemar took note of this quirk of behavior, and of the expression on the young woman’s face when she looked back toward the encampment where her troops were busy with the tasks she had assigned them. He wondered silently who or what it was that this mighty sorceress feared so much.

  He asked: “You are very powerful in magic. Also you have just won a victory, and captured one of the gods’ own weapons, which you now hold in your hands. What are you afraid of?”

  She raised the Sword a little, as if she wanted to pretend that she would strike him with it. “Yes, this is indeed one of the gods’ own weapons—but remember that the gods are dead. Or did you know that, grape-grower?”

  “I think the gods are not all dead, my lady. I still pray to Ardneh. Ardneh of the White Temple, who never allowed himself to be caught up with the other deities in their games—“

  “Ah yes—we
ll, grape-grower, it may surprise you, but I could wish sometimes that Ardneh still lived, and still ruled the world—not that I believe he ever really did.”

  “Why should such a wish surprise me? I could share it. I was once,” continued Valdemar, not really knowing why he chose this moment for his revelation, “a novice monk in a White Temple.”

  “So? And did those fat Brothers in their Temple warn you, when you abandoned safety for the great world, that you should choose to stay instead?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Tigris once more raised the Sword of Wisdom.

  Careless of the fact that Valdemar watched and listened, she couched her next question in clear terms: “Hear me, Sword! Show me the way to gain freedom from the one I fear above all others! I do not mean my own death; that road to freedom I could find without your help. I want a long life, in safety from any harm that he may try to do to me.”

  And again Wayfinder pointed, immediately and steadily, straight at Valdemar.

  “Just who,” he asked the enchantress, “is this one you fear above all others?”

  She ignored him. She gave the impression of a woman fighting back panic, trying to remain patient. There was a faint tremor in her voice. “Very well, Sword. I now have firmly under my control this great clod of farmyard mud that you keep pointing at. You are able to perceive that, I suppose? Well, what do you expect me to do with him next? Sacrifice him, eat him alive, lie with him? You will have to give me some further sign.”

  The Sword, of course, was not to be commanded thus, and it said nothing in reply. It still pointed where it had been pointing—straight at Valdemar—and that was all.

  Valdemar cleared his throat. “I have noticed, that this Sword’s way of conveying meaning can sometimes be rather hard to interpret.” Though his voice was calm enough, he could feel how his ears had reddened, oh so foolishly, with the echoing in them of those three words: Lie with him. Odd, that now, with his very life at stake, he should be so affected by that suggestion.

  * * *

  Tigris did not notice Valdemar’s reaction. She cared nothing for her captive’s ears, or for his whole head, come to that. Her trained senses, contemplating the Sword whose hilt she gripped so hard in both her hands, could perceive the intricate knots of magic interpenetrating the hard steel, strands invisible to ordinary vision, stretching forth and fading away in all directions, becoming lost in bewildering complexities of power… Even she, long accustomed to the tremendous capabilities of Wood, was awfully impressed by this, forced to an attitude that had in it much of reverence.

  And this enigmatic Sword, each time she questioned it, only kept reinforcing the importance of her captive, this otherwise inconsequential youth who called himself Valdemar.

  Letting Wayfinder’s point sag to the ground, looking keenly at the bold and ignorant fellow, Tigris was totally convinced that there must be something more to him than he admitted. Whether he himself realized what his peculiarity was or not.

  Haughtily she insisted: “Who are you, fellow? What are you holding back? I must somehow determine your importance to me.”

  The giant shrugged. “I have told you my name, and who I am. Tell me who you are. Perhaps a meaningful connection can be established. Maybe I have heard of you.”

  “You have a kind of serene insolence about you, unusual in a peasant. Very well. My name is Tigris.”

  That much he had already heard. He blinked rain from his eyes. “The name means nothing to me. I don’t suppose you are from Tasavalta?”

  “I am not—are you?”

  “No, I have never been near the place.”

  “And have you,” Tigris asked her captive, “any connection with Prince Mark of that land?”

  Valdemar answered as usual with the truth: no, he had never seen Prince Mark, and knew very little about him. He volunteered no information about having made contact recently with Prince Mark’s friends.

  Tigris next asked him if he knew anything of a magician called Wood. “He has other names as well.”

  “I have heard,” said Valdemar, “that that one is a powerful and evil man.”

  Tigris muttered under her breath: “This is getting me nowhere.” She tried another tack in her interrogation. “When I arrived, you were a prisoner of the Blue Temple.”

  “Yes ma’am, I certainly did spend an uncomfortable hour or two in that condition. It seemed like days. I thank you for putting an end to that. I believe they would have killed me.”

  “How polite he is. That’s good. Yes, certainly the late Hyrcanus and his associates would have killed you, if they thought there was any profit to be made that way—making your hide into parchment perhaps—but they did not. What did they actually want of you?”

  “Actually it was only the Sword Wayfinder they wanted. And when they got it, they were so busy worrying about what to do with it that they never got around to wanting anything much from me … except to ask me where I had got Wayfinder, and from whom.”

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “Lady—Lady Tigris—I could give them only the same poor answers I have given you.”

  * * *

  With every heartbeat of time that fled, she could feel her brief allotment of opportunity rapidly running out. Every moment Tigris spent asking questions, puzzling over the answers, and yearning to rend this poor fool to bloody ribbons with her nails, the inevitable end was drawing steadily nearer. Her end would come when Wood learned that she had taken the Sword of Wisdom, and was keeping the discovery from him. At that moment her gamble for freedom would turn out to have been a catastrophic blunder.

  Valdemar, in the moments when her attention faltered, had begun to tell her the story of his life. The existence of a grape-grower sounded extremely dull.

  Still she forced herself to listen patiently, hoping to gain the clue she needed, even though the timekeeper in her head was running, as regularly as her speeding pulse.

  Now the first real suspicion has been born in his mind. Now he is considering sending out a demon to check up on me…

  “Cease babbling about grapes!” she shrieked at her captive. “Why are you here? Why were you in the camp of Hyrcanus?”

  Valdemar, with an effort maintaining his own calm, revealed to his questioner his purpose in setting out on the journey which had brought him first in contact with the Silver Queen, and then afoul of the Blue Temple.

  He did not say anything to Tigris about the Sword of Healing, and she did not raise the subject.

  All this seemed to Tigris to be bringing her no closer to understanding what she ought to do next. It was maddening to think that the Sword on which she had abruptly decided to risk her life was giving her the answer she had to have, but she was unable to interpret it. Her anger flared at this babbling fool of a peasant, at the Sword, at the whole world and her life in it. And then her rage began to settle, to congeal into a deadly calm that tasted bitterly of despair.

  She said: “All very fine … for a grower of grapes. But I don’t see how any of that helps me.” She raised the Sword of Wisdom again, glaring at it. “All right! Powers of the Sword, I have accepted that for some reason you want me to make this grower of grapes my own. Whatever happens, I intend to keep him, until you deign to show me what his usefulness may be. And when are you going to get around to that?”

  Valdemar shook his head. He offered mildly: “Wayfinder will never answer a question of that type. But it occurs to me that, being a sorceress yourself—no offense intended—you may be making too much of the idea of sacrifice and magic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the Sword might simply be indicating that you are to take me with you somewhere.”

  Her blue eyes widened. “Is that it, Sword? Am I now to travel to another place, taking this peasant along?”

  At once, to the young woman’s immense relief, the Sword responded strongly. The tip moved away from Valdemar, and now pointed almost straight west.

  “You do know something
, fellow, after all.” Her spirits rising abruptly, Tigris half-jokingly remarked: “Perhaps your function is going to be that of counselor, interpreter of Swords for me.”

  Valdemar shrugged his enormous shoulders. “It is only that I have had that Sword, and tried to use it, longer than you have. And you appear somewhat distracted at the moment. As if something were preventing you from thinking clearly.”

  But his companion was no longer listening. Once more addressing Wayfinder, Tigris demanded: “And where are we to go? How far? But no, never mind, of course you cannot tell me that. I have been given a direction. The real question is, should we walk, or run, or will we need a griffin?”

  Again Valdemar shrugged. Of course the Sword was not going to tell them how far away the goal, whatever it was, might be.

  The young man saw little future in trying to do anything but cooperate with this woman for the time being. She was evidently a practitioner of evil magic, but she had also rescued him from death and perhaps worse.

  Once shown a clear course of action, Tigris was decisive. Already she was giving a magical command, together with a shrill whistle, calling her own griffin from the camp a hundred meters distant.

  In another moment it was Valdemar’s turn to be distracted. He was awed, and frightened, watching the griffin approach and land beside them.

  Getting aboard the hideous winged beast required some courage of Valdemar. It was not, of course, that he really had any choice. His huge frame was cramped in the small space available in the left side pannier, but the extra weight seemed to make little difference to the griffin. The young man had heard that these creatures’ powers of flight depended far more on magic than on any physical strength of wing.

  His captor was already aboard, straddling the central saddle, glaring down at Valdemar in his lower seat with imperious impatience. In a moment they were breathtakingly airborne. Tigris steered the beast, sometimes by kicks, sometimes by silken reins, or murmured words, or all of these means in combination—steered so that the Sword always pointed straight past the creature’s leonine and frightful head.