Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Go away.”

  “Not likely.” The dry bones crackled, the sound formed itself into words. “Not until you have handed over to me that ridiculous splinter of metal you now clutch so tightly. Then I will leave you in peace to wait for your dear god.”

  “Go away!” Keyes tightened his grip upon the unknown hilt.

  In response came a voiceless snarl that made his hair stand up, and then the voice again: “Hand it over, I say! Or I will cut you into a thousand pieces with your own weapon, and swallow you a piece at a time—and put you back together in my gut, where you will dwell for a million years in torment.”

  “Not likely!” Keyes replied in turn. He thought it quite possible that this demon had as yet learned nothing about the Twelve Swords and their god-given powers. Or maybe the damned thing had learned just enough, or guessed enough, to make it determined to have this Sword for itself. But demons were notoriously cowardly; and so far it was being cautious.

  This was not the man’s first contact with a demon—no magician adept enough to acquire deep skill was able to avoid all encounters with that evil race. But only magicians who had turned their faces against humanity entered willingly into commerce with such monsters, and Keyes still found pride in being human. In his present desperate situation, he might well have tried to bargain with a demon to lend him its perception, as other more powerful and unscrupulous wizards had been known to do—but he had nothing with which to bargain.

  Except his unknown Sword; and that was all he had. He continued to brandish the mysterious weapon at his latest enemy, instead of handing it over as Korku had commanded.

  The demon tried a few more arguments. It shouted at Keyes more loudly. But presently, when it saw that it was getting nowhere with mere words, it lost patience and reached out for the man with its half-material talons.

  Keyes saw nothing of his enemy’s extended limbs. Nothing at all happened to the blind man waiting. But he heard Korku’s screaming threats break off abruptly in a muffled, bubbling sound. Then came a soft thump, as of a heavy mass of wet pulp falling some distance upon rock, followed by a slithering, which gradually receded.

  Then silence.

  Straining to hear more, unable to interpret what he had heard, the man uttered a small moan, compounded mostly of relief with a strong component of tormented puzzlement. Again his Sword, whichever Sword he held, had saved him somehow!

  Yes, the demon must have been defeated. But perhaps not slain, not annihilated. Keyes probed about on the cave floor with the point of his Sword, and his imagination shuddered at the image of himself stepping blindly into a demon’s body.

  For several minutes he discovered nothing more helpful than a few more dead or dying bats. But eventually, when the blind man bent, listening intently over the brink of a certain deep but narrow pit, he heard Korku again. A tiny, screaming, threatening voice, muffled almost below the threshold of hearing, rose from the distant bottom of the pit.

  After listening for a little while, the man dared to call down: “Korku? What has happened to you?”

  The faint sounds coming back included nothing he could interpret as an answer—and, in any case, a human would be foolish to trust anything a demon said.

  Logical thinking was still required—was more essential now than ever, since time was passing, and Mars would be coming back to subject his prisoner to some unknown horror. But logic was still difficult to sustain. By eliminating possibilities Keyes had made a beginning in the task of identifying his weapon. But the task was not accomplished. Which possibilities had he not yet considered?

  There was Dragonslicer. There was Townsaver. There was Doomgiver, of course. Ah, in that last name might lie some real hope of survival! If only Keyes could be certain that he had the Sword of Justice in his hands, then he would dare to brazenly defy the gods. Even gods would risk bringing disaster on their own heads if they tried to harm him further. For example, if they poured in fire or water on him, he might make his way out to find them all burned or drowned.

  Unless . . .

  Unless, of course, one of the gods confronting him happened to be armed with Shieldbreaker. If Keyes’s extensive research was correct, and so far he had no reason to doubt its accuracy, no other weapon in the world, not even another Sword, could ever stand against the Sword of Force.

  The thought of Shieldbreaker gave him pause. Suppose that he, Keyes, was now holding that one? Shieldbreaker’s invincible presence in his hand would have easily disposed of the demon, and the bats. But wait—here in the presence of enemies and danger, the Sword of Force ought to be audibly beating its drum-note of power.

  Of course the drawback to relying upon Shieldbreaker was that any unarmed god, unarmed man, or unarmed child for that matter, could easily take that Sword away from whoever held it, regardless of the holder’s normal strength.

  Keyes, probing gently with one finger at the slight self-inflicted cuts around his face, decided that the bleeding had already stopped. He tried desperately to recall whether wounds made by one Sword or another ought to heal quickly or slowly. But that information, if he had ever possessed it, escaped his memory.

  Touch, smell, taste, none of them of any use in his predicament—but hearing! In that sense might lie his way to the answer!

  Thinking, keeping track by counting on his fingers, Keyes decided that seven of the Swords, if all he had found out about them was correct, generated some kind of sound when they went into action. The other five exerted their individual powers in silence.

  The man’s thoughts were interrupted by a pair of deep booming voices up above, outside the cave. The conversation of the gods was still somewhat muffled with distance, but coming closer at a pace no walking mortals could have matched. They were speaking to each other in the god-language that Keyes did not understand.

  Mars, the god who had put Keyes in the cave, was coming back, holding like a toothpick between two fingers the sheathed metal of the weapon he had just been given by Vulcan, and now wanted to test. Hermes, a fellow-player in the Game, came with him, and the two deities discussed the matter as they walked.

  The Wargod’s plan was to drop Soulcutter into the cave for Keyes to find, and let the man draw it, just to see what effect the Tyrant’s Blade really had on humans. Vulcan had promised the Council that Soulcutter—and indeed all the Swords—would have tremendous, overwhelming impact upon all lesser beings.

  Mars commented: “I expect our respective worshipers will be using the Swords a great deal on each other, you know, when the Game really gets going.”

  “What if he doesn’t draw it?” his companion asked.

  “My man down in the hole? I think he will. Oh, not intending to use it on us!” Mars laughed. “I doubt he’ll be that arrogant. But there are some vermin down there, bats and such, that are probably bothering him already. He’ll want the best tool he can get to fight them off.”

  Hermes shook his head. “Those flesh-eating bats? They may have finished him by now.”

  Mars frowned. “You think so? He was carrying a little dagger of his own.”

  “But getting back to this Sword, Soulcutter—what about the effect on us? We’ll be nearby, won’t we, when your subject draws the weapon?”

  “Bah, nothing we can’t overcome, I’m sure. And I understand that Soulcutter’s effect on humans, whatever it may be precisely, spreads comparatively slowly.”

  Keyes continued to listen intently when the two voices stopped, not far above him. He was startled, and immediately suspicious, when a moment later he heard some object, obviously dropped by one of the beings above, come providentially bouncing and sliding down into the cave, landing with a thump practically at his feet.

  Without loosening his grip on the hilt already in his possession, he groped his way forward to where he could put his free hand on the fallen object, and identify it as another sheathed Sword.

  Only now, it seemed, did the pair of gods above really take notice of the man who was trapped below, and of t
he sprinkling of dead and mortally wounded bats around him. Only now did they observe that their subject was already holding a drawn Sword.

  Mars’s companion pointed down, in outrage. “Look at that! Where in the world did he get that?”

  And Mars himself, gone red-faced, bellowed: “You down there! Drop that Sword at once! It doesn’t belong to you, you have no business using it!”

  Keyes needed all his resolution to keep from yielding to that shouted command. But instead of dropping his Sword, he raised its point in the general direction of his enemies, as if saluting them, and turned his blind face up to them at the same time—let them do their damnedest. He had naught to lose.

  He called out, in a voice that quavered only once: “You have just given me another Sword—why?”

  “Impudent monkey!” the Wargod shouted back. “Draw it, and find out!”

  They have given me Soulcutter now—it is the only Blade one would give to an enemy.

  But trapped as he was, his life already forfeit, Keyes saw no other course than to accept the gamble. Silently he bent again, swiftly he pulled the second Sword out of its sheath. Doubly armed, he straightened to confront his tormentors.

  The sun was shining fully on the man’s face, and in an amazing moment he was once again able to see the sun. Whatever magic spell had blinded him was abruptly broken, and his lids came open easily. His eyes were streaming now with pent-up tears, but through the tears he could see the two gods on the high rim of the cave.

  He could see the two tall, powerful figures quite clearly enough to tell that they were gods—and also that they were stricken, paralyzed with Soulcutter’s poisonous despair, turned back on them by Doomgiver. The strands of their own magic had come undone. Keyes could recognize Mars, who’d captured him, and now Mars abruptly sat down on the rim of the pit, for all the world like a human who suddenly felt faint. The Wargod slumped in that position, legs dangling, for a long moment staring at nothing. Then he buried his face in his hands.

  The other god—Keyes, seeing the winged sandals, now knew Hermes—took no notice of this odd behavior, but slowly turned his back on the cave and his companion, and went stumbling off across a rocky hillside. Now and then Hermes put out one hand to grope before him, like a blind man in the sun. In a moment his mighty figure had vanished from Keyes’s field of view.

  Doomgiver had prevailed! The Sword of Justice had turned Soulcutter’s dark power back upon the one who would have used it against Keyes, while immunizing the mere man who had been the intended target. Both gods on the rim of the pit had been caught in the dark force, as must everyone else in range of its slow spread.

  Keyes almost cried out in triumph, but the hard truth restrained him. He was still a prisoner. His own eyes, searching the smooth cave walls, now confirmed that neither Lo-Yang nor Mars had lied about the hopelessness of his trying to climb out.

  He was beginning to feel dizzy, and ill-at-ease, a normal reaction in one holding any two naked Swords simultaneously. Now he could easily see the symbol, a hollow white circle, on Doomgiver’s hilt. To keep himself from collapsing he had no choice but to put away the other Blade, the unmarked one. He slid the Sword of Despair back into its sheath, and his rising dizziness immediately abated.

  In this case, at least, Doomgiver’s power had been dominant over that of another Sword. There was at least a chance that some of the other Swords might also prove inferior to Doomgiver. That anyone hurling Farslayer would be himself skewered by the Sword of Vengeance. That Sightblinder’s user would see a terrifying apparition, but would himself remain vulnerably visible. That the wielder of the Mindsword would be condemned to worship his would-be victim. And Coinspinner’s master would suffer excruciatingly bad luck.

  But of Shieldbreaker’s overall dominance there could be no doubt. And the unanswered question still gnawed at Keyes: Which god had Shieldbreaker? Or might that Sword have somehow come into the hands of another human?

  After Soulcutter was muzzled again, a minute or two passed before Mars, who was still sitting on the rim of the cave, took his hands down from his face. The Wargod’s expression was blank, and he appeared to be sweating heavily. His great body swayed, and Keyes thought for a moment that the god was going to topple into the pit. But instead Mars, taking no notice of the man below, shifted his weight and turned. Quietly, on all fours, he crawled away from the cave’s mouth and out of sight.

  Keyes knew that Soulcutter’s effects ought to linger for several days, at least, in humans. Probably the stunned gods would recover somewhat more quickly, but how soon they might come back to deal with him, Keyes did not know. When they did, he would have to risk drawing the Sword of Despair again—even though Doomgiver might not protect him next time. This time Soulcutter, though in his own hands, had really been a weapon directed against him by another.

  What now?

  Pacing nervously about in the confined space, trying desperately to imagine what he might do next, Keyes paused to look down into the hole from whence the demon’s muffled groans still rose. Far below, almost lost in shadow, something moved. Something as big as a milk-beast, but truly hideous to look at, like a mass of diseased entrails. In a moment Keyes realized that Korku on attacking him had suffered Doomgiver’s justice—the demon had promptly found himself folded painfully into his own gut, in effect turned inside out. When that had happened, the self-bound and helpless thing, still almost immortal, had gone rolling away to plunge into the deeper pit.

  Now the creature in the pit, perhaps sensing that the man was near, was turning its muffled, barely audible threats to equally faint pleas and extravagant bargainings for help. Keyes made no answer. Probably he could not have done anything, if he had wanted to, to relieve the demon’s doom.

  Some minutes later, Mars, who was still in the process of gradually regaining his wits, and his sense of divine purpose, was having speech again with Hermes. They were standing fifty meters or so from the cave.

  “What happened?” demanded Hermes, who seemed to be recovering somewhat more rapidly.

  Mars stood blinking at him. Then he proclaimed defiantly: “To me? Nothing. A little test of the Sword called Soulcutter. As you see, there was no great harm done.”

  His companion stared at him in disbelief. “No great harm? We both of us were stupefied! You should say that nothing happened to your human in the cave—except that his sight was restored, when your magic came undone. Oh, and he still has his Sword—no, now he has two of them!”

  The Wargod remained determined to put a good face on the whole situation. “But he was forced to put away the one that annoyed us.” As usual, his tone was bellicose.

  “Annoyed!”

  Hermes went on to insist that dropping Soulcutter into the pit had been a serious mistake, in fact a debacle had resulted. Other gods must have been at least somewhat affected. They were going to be angry about having been put at risk.

  Mars, still struggling against the lingering effects of Soulcutter, refused to tolerate such an attitude. The very idea, that a godcould be endangered, not simply inconvenienced, by Sword-powers!

  Mars darted away, but soon came back. He had argued or bargained or bullied another of his colleagues into loaning him another Sword, which happened to be Stonecutter.

  Again Hermes protested. “Your man in the cave now has two Swords—are you going to give him a third?”

  Mars considered this mere sarcasm, unworthy of an answer. Muleheadedly determined to do what he had set out to do, conduct tests on his specimen, he announced that he was going back to the cave again, with a new plan in mind.

  “I think we had better first consult the Council.” Hermes paused. “Unless you are worried about what they might say,” he added slyly.

  “What? I? Worried?”

  Keyes, pacing his open-air cell on weary legs, kept shooting frowning glances at the Sword of Despair where it lay on the cave floor. He was trying feverishly to think of some way he might trade the sheathed Soulcutter for his freedom. S
uppose another god, or goddess, were to appear on the upper rim of the cave, and he suggested some kind of trade? But no, he doubted they would be in any mood for bargaining. And he was still unable to climb out of the pit unaided. His magical capabilities, which might have got him free, were stirring, but he could tell that their restoration was going to take much longer than that of his eyesight.

  Again he was being threatened by a sense of hopelessness.

  He had now been in the cave for hours, and straining to study the gods for long hours before Mars caught him. As the afternoon wore on, Keyes sat down to rest, and in a few moments fell helplessly into an exhausted, stuporous sleep—with Doomgiver still gripped in his right hand.

  A number of the gods, including Mars and Hermes, had hastily reconvened in Council. They were enough, or so they said, to form a quorum. And they were much concerned with Shieldbreaker too. None of those present would admit to being in possession of that weapon, or to knowing where it was. Who had received it in the lottery? Regrettably Vulcan was absent, and could not be asked. Maybe he would not have revealed the secret anyway.

  Around midaftemoon, the Council passed a resolution stating it as their intention that all Swords should be reclaimed from human possession.

  Mars the warrior, still stubbornly determined to establish himself as above Sword-power, volunteered to enforce the order.

  Zeus told him to go ahead. Others, enough, it seemed, for a majority, were in agreement. “If there is any real problem, you seem to have caused it. Therefore you should find a remedy!”

  Still, Hermes once again tried to argue Mars out of taking too direct an approach. “Doomgiver has now overcome you twice—wait, let me finish! I tell you, we must either arrange to borrow Shieldbreaker from whoever has it, or else get that other Sword out of the man’s hand by guile.”