They were heading approximately west.
Tigris soon resumed her conversation with Valdemar, demanding help from him, impatiently listening to his replies, revealing more than she intended about her desperate situation. She was trying every approach she could think of, in an attempt to fathom this youth’s mysterious importance, perhaps absolute necessity, to the success of her effort to escape Wood’s dominance.
Suddenly she demanded: “What do you know about me, grape-grower?”
“Not much, lady. Only the very little you have just told me. And … one thing more.”
“What?”
“It’s plain enough, isn’t it? When I had the chance to hold Wayfinder in my own hands, and demand guidance from it—that very Sword that you are now depending on—it guided me to you.”
“What?”
Patiently Valdemar explained what his question had been, and concluded, “The Sword must have directed me to you. I asked my question of Wayfinder, and followed its directions consistently—and here you are.”
The enchantress almost laughed—but not quite. Though inexperienced with Wayfinder, her theoretical knowledge of the Swords was substantial. She realized that this one’s devious indications, like the powers of any Sword, had to be taken very seriously indeed.
She said: “You mean you think I am somehow going to help you find your bride- to-be?”
“I hardly think that you are meant to be my bride, so I suppose it must be that.” Valdemar added after a pause: “First I was led to another woman, who was not the one I wanted to marry, but I suppose somehow brought me closer to her. And now I have been brought to you.”
Tigris allowed a sneering comment to die unsaid. She supposed that in a way the Swords were all quite democratic; to Wayfinder, the status of its wielder, or the gravity of the quest, would not matter in the least. Vine-grower or duke, king or swineherd, princess of magic or homeless beggar, all would be on an equal footing to the gods’ weapons. And so would the goals they sought.
* * *
Wayfinder still pointed straight ahead; the griffin still bore on untiringly. A good thing, Tigris congratulated herself, that she had not decided to try walking.
“It could be worse, grape-grower. Had this mount not been available, we might be riding Dactylartha’s back.” Even as Tigris spoke, she looked round warily once more.
“Is that the name of another griffin?”
“No creature so mild and friendly as that.”
The youth looked back too, seeing nothing but the clouded sky. Was this mysterious Dactylartha the being that she feared? He inquired: “This creature, as you call it, follows us?”
“It does, right closely—but at my own orders.”
Then your fear, the young man thought, must be for someone or something else. Valdemar gritted his teeth and continued to endure the journey. At moments when, because of weather or an unexplained lurching of the beast beneath him, things got particularly bad, he tried closing his eyes. But being deprived of sight only made things worse.
Once or twice he asked: “Where do you expect the Sword to guide us?”
“To a place where I can find what I need.”
From time to time Tigris spoke again to Wayfinder, questioned it, in a language Valdemar did not know. He inquired: “Is it too much to ask—I couldn’t hear you clearly—exactly what query you have just put to our guide?”
Tigris ignored the question. Her face was grim.
The great wings beat on, marking out slices of time and space. With every fleeting moment Tigris felt an incremental growth of fear. An increase of the driving, nagging, growing terror that she would not be able to reach her goal before her Ancient Master caught wind of her treacherous intention. The goal to which the Sword was guiding her, for all she knew, might still be halfway around the world.
She had not asked the Sword of Wisdom for safety.
And Wayfinder, upon which her life now depended, was forcing her to bring this peasant clod along. And still she had no inkling why.
Chapter Eleven
On having Wayfinder fall so unexpectedly into her hands, Tigris had needed only a moment to make her great decision. She would strike for freedom, gambling impulsively on the Sword of Wisdom’s tremendous power. After all, there was no telling when, if ever, an equal opportunity would arise. She had expected quick meaningful answers from this weapon of the gods, affording her a fighting chance of success in her revolt against her Swordless Master.
But so far, to her growing terror and rage, things were not working out as she had hoped.
In her anger, she lashed out at the grape-growing peasant Valdemar. He was the handiest target; and besides, there was something intrinsically irritating in the very nature of this young man with whose presence the Sword had saddled her for some indeterminate time to come.
Bridling her impatience and fury, concentrating her attention, straining to be logical, she resumed her questioning as they flew. She dared not harm this oaf seriously until she could determine just what his purpose in her life might be.
The peasant answered her questions with an irritating lack of fear—as if he were confident in being indispensable to her. But she had practically no success in extracting useful information from him.
In something like despair she demanded: “So, what am I to do with you when I reach the end of this flight?”
“You will let me go my way, I hope. Perhaps my bride will be there.”
Tigris told him what he could do with his bride. Then, as the griffin bore them over a lifeless wilderness of splintered rock, an idea struck her, with the force of inspiration.
“I wonder if I have now carried you far enough,” she mused aloud. “Perhaps the Sword will be satisfied if I leave you in safekeeping here, while I go on, unencumbered, to solve the next step of the puzzle, whatever it may be.”
Safekeeping? Valdemar, not knowing what she had in mind, or whether to be pleased or worried, clung to his seat in silence. Decisively the young enchantress reined her griffin around in a horizontal loop, and caused the beast to land on a rocky pinnacle perhaps twenty or thirty meters high. The small flat space that formed this spire’s top was totally inaccessible from the ground.
“Now get off,” she commanded.
“Ma’am?”
“You heard me, insolent fool! Get out, get off. If this mode of transportation bothers you, you may be free of it for a time at least. I will be back for you, I suppose, when I have performed the next step required by the Sword.”
Silently, somewhat awkwardly, Valdemar climbed out of his basket, planting one foot after the other carefully on the one square meter or so of flat rock not occupied by the crouching body of the griffin itself. He stood there carefully, not saying anything. He was thinking that the Sword had brought him to this pass, and there must be some benefit in it for him. At least in potential.
Tigris settled herself in the central saddle and flicked the reins. Her mount sprang back into the air.
But then, when she would have urged on her steed again, she found the damned Sword in her right hand pointing inexorably straight back to the abandoned man.
* * *
Muttering abuse and imprecations, she steered the animal back to land on the spire again, a process that made Valdemar crouch and cling in fear, ducking under one of the great wings to keep from being knocked into a deadly fall.
“Get on!” his persecutor commanded.
The youth needed no second invitation. In a moment they were airborne again, the satisfied Sword once more pointing almost due west. Valdemar, settling himself more comfortably in his basket, remarked against the rush of air: “So, it seems that Wayfinder insists that our fates are somehow bound together.”
Tigris did not answer. “Do you know where we are going?” he asked patiently.
Eyes of blue fire burned at him. “Plague me with one more question and I’ll slice out your tongue!”
“No, you won’t.”
The griffin
, urged on by its mistress, was swiftly gaining speed, far beyond anything attained in the first leg of their flight; the terrible wind of their accelerating passage whipped Valdemar’s words away and tore them to shreds. Now Tigris made a magical adjustment to screen the wind somewhat, and managed to hear what her captive had said when he bravely repeated it. But she said nothing in reply.
Valdemar, fighting to keep calm, continued: “As I see it, you can’t afford to do me any serious harm. Because the Sword insists that you need me for something, but you don’t know what it is. I’d like to know the answer too, and it might help me figure it out if I knew exactly what you are trying to get the Sword to do for you.”
Tigris, resisting the urge to commit magical violence upon this fool, stubbornly remained silent.
Still she had no more idea than did her reluctant passenger of where they were going, and under her controlled calm the terror of her own ignorance, her fear of Wood, was threatening to overwhelm her. Her imagination could readily supply a hundred destinations, objectives to which Wayfinder could be sending her. But she had no real reason to credit any of them.
* * *
Hours passed, tempting Tigris to despair, while their great steed still hurtled toward the west, now angling somewhat to the south, at mind-numbing velocity. Valdemar was stunned to see how the sun’s normal westward passage slowed, then stopped for them, then began to reverse itself. The griffin’s wings had long ago become an almost invisible blur. Great masses of cloud, above, below, and near them churned past.
Tigris, almost lost in her own thoughts, became chillingly certain that Wood had by now had more than enough opportunity in which to suspect, if not actually prove, her treachery. And it was not the Ancient One’s habit to delay punishment until he was presented with airtight proof.
And then, just when the enchantress had begun to wonder if her Master’s magic had already found her and begun to destroy her life, and the terrible flight was going to endure forever, the Sword of Wisdom suddenly swung its sharp point downwards.
Tigris hastily moved to instruct her magic steed, directing it carefully toward the indicated goal.
Obediently the griffin descended, through layers of cloud and slanting sunlight to the waiting earth.
They emerged from the clouds at no more than mountain-top altitude. Valdemar, reviving from a kind of trance brought on by cold and monotony, observed in a dull voice that the object of their journey appeared to be nothing but an extensive desert. He had no idea how far they were from the wasteland where their flight had started.
Tigris, moved by some impulse toward human feeling to engage in conversation, agreed. Thinking aloud, she speculated that Wayfinder might have brought them here in search of the Sword of Vengeance.
“Farslayer? How would that help you?”
“A dullwitted question. A bright young man like you must know the virtue of that Sword.”
Within a minute or two the griffin brought its riders safely to a gentle landing on the earth.
Muttering words of control into the nearest ear of the huge leonine head before her, Tigris climbed lithely from her saddle with drawn Sword, to stand confronting a harsh, lifeless-looking landscape under a midday sun. Valdemar promptly joined her, without waiting to be commanded. All was quiet, except for a faint whine of wind moving a drizzle of sand around their feet.
The Sword in the young woman’s hand was pointing now in the direction of a barren hillock nearby.
Together Valdemar and Tigris began to walk that way.
As they drew near the hillock, he raised a hand to point toward its top. Up there, the cruciform outline of a black hilt showed against the distant sky, as if the point of a Sword were embedded in the ground, or in something that lay on the earth.
Silently, keeping their discovery in view, the pair trudged toward the modest summit. What at a distance had appeared to be a Sword was one indeed. At close range the weapon was identifiable as Farslayer. The Sword of Vengeance was stuck through the ribcage of a half-armored skeleton, nearly buried in the sand.
“So,” Tigris breathed, “I was right. It is to be his death. That is my only chance to escape from him. So be it, then.”
Valdemar noted that the garments adorning the anonymous skeleton had once been rich, and gold rings still adorned some of the bony fingers.
Tigris, murmuring some words of her art in an exultant tone, stretched out her hand to take hold of the black hilt. But scarcely had she possessed Farslayer, when there sounded a deep, dry whispering out of the low clouds above. Valdemar, looking up sharply, could see them stirring in turmoil.
“What is it?” the young man asked in a hushed voice. At the same time he unconsciously took a step nearer his companion, as if some instinct told him that he needed her protection.
Before Tigris could reply, there emerged from the lowering cover of clouds a churning gray vortex, a looming threat the size of a griffin, but barely visible to Valdemar. He found the silent onrush of this phenomenon all the more frightening because his eyes were almost willing to believe that nothing at all was there.
“It is Dactylartha,” Tigris said in a low, calm voice. “Just stand where you are.”
Valdemar nodded. Meanwhile, though his eyes had little to report, wind shrieked and roared about his ears, and those of the woman standing beside him on the hill.
That was only the beginning. The wind soon quieted, but Valdemar’s stomach was literally sickened by the presence of the creature that now appeared; now he realized that this entity in the air above him, or something like it, must be what had sickened him before.
But Tigris was speaking to the thing, then boldly challenging it, with the businesslike air of a woman long inured to facing things this bad, and even worse.
Valdemar stood swaying slightly, averting his eyes from what was almost impossible to see anyway. He did not need his companion to tell him that, for the first time in his life, he was having a direct encounter with a demon.
Tigris, facing the thing boldly, appeared to be perfectly comfortable and in control. She spoke to the demon sharply, calling it by the name of Dactylartha.
Valdemar, retching helplessly despite his empty stomach, his knees shaky, had all he could do to keep from collapsing to the ground. Instead he forced himself to stand almost upright.
To his relief the great demon was paying him no heed. Dimly Valdemar could hear the voice of Dactylartha, a sound that reminded him of dry bones breaking. The demon was speaking only to Tigris, saying something to the effect that it would join her in rebellion, or at least refrain from reporting her to the Master, provided she immediately loaned it the Sword of Wisdom.
“Never.”
“Then will the gracious lady consent to ask the oracle of the gods one question on my behalf?”
Tigris sounded as if she might have the wit and nerve to be able to win an argument with the creature. “Why do you want that?”
“I wish to locate my own life, great lady,” muttered the ghastly voice of Dactylartha. “Where it has been hidden I do not know. But only by finding it again shall I be able to free myself of the power that the Ancient One now has over me.”
Valdemar, trying to remain sane, and to understand, remembered with a shudder what little he had ever heard of the man who was sometimes called the Ancient One. Valdemar could also recall hearing somewhere that the only way to truly punish or control a demon—or to kill one—was to get at its life, which was almost invariably hidden, sometimes a long way from where the creature appeared and acted.
* * *
Whether Dactylartha was telling her the truth or not, Tigris did not, would not, believe him. She was thinking that she dared not trust any of his kind—this one, perhaps, least of all.
Valdemar watched her as she balanced the Sword of Vengeance in her hands. Such was Farslayer’s power, he knew, that Tigris—or anyone else—armed with it would be able to cut down Wood himself, or any other foe, at any distance. Only one other Sword, only Sh
ieldbreaker itself, could provide a defense. What, then, was holding her back? Only the ominous presence of Dactylartha, it would seem.
“Will you ask the question I want asked of the Sword of Wisdom?” the dry bones snapped.
“After I have won my own struggle. Support me in my fight first!”
They were shrieking at each other now, the woman and her demonic antagonist. Valdemar reeled and shuddered.
He put his hands over his eyes, then brought them down and stared. To his horror the demon had now assumed the form of a giant manlike shape in black armor, standing frighteningly close.
“Will you fight for him, then?” Tigris, her voice become unrecognizable, demanded of the thing. “You had better revolt, with me!”
“It may not be, great sorceress, it may not be! When his life ends, so does mine.” The aerial blur of Dactylartha’s presence seemed to intensify. A crushing weight seemed to be descending upon the stomach, and the soul, of Valdemar.
The woman was ready for combat. She had sheathed Farslayer, and her hands, one holding Wayfinder, rose in the subtle gesture of a great magician. “If I must slay you first, I will!”
The struggle was closed between Tigris and Dactylartha.
To Valdemar’s limited perception, the outcome appeared horribly uncertain.
Made more desperately ill than ever by the increased activity of the monstrous demon, the young man thought he might be dying. But suddenly he found himself completely free of illness, for the moment, as the magical powers of the two contestants strained and nullified each other.
Terror of the demon overrode all other fears. Valdemar lunged desperately for the Sword still sheathed at the slender waist of Tigris. In a moment he had seized the black hilt of Farslayer, pulled it from its scabbard, and was hurling it with all his strength at Dactylartha’s overwhelming presence—it was a crude effort, such as any unskilled fighter might make in desperation, throwing any sharp object at a foe.
The Seventh Book of Lost Swords : Wayfinder's Story Page 15