Woundhealers Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  Some time passed before the Prince looked back again, and when he did it was no longer possible to see who might be on the walls. The city was vanishing piecemeal now, disappearing almost magically by sections in this folded landscape. One piece or another would drop out of sight behind one hill or another, or slide sideways behind an edge of cliff. Then sometimes the walls and towers would move into view again as the road rose up beneath the travelers or carried them through another turn.

  Now Mark's gaze kept returning to the small figure that rode-so far in silence-at his side. Adrian's riding-beast had been specially selected, and specially trained, with magicians as well as beastmasters taking part in the instruction. The animal was an intelligent one, for its species-no riding-beast approached the mental keenness of the messenger-birds, some of which were capable of speech. It was also phlegmatic and dependable.

  The boy usually sat in his saddle as he did everything, indifferently, when he could be persuaded to do things at all. Sometimes when riding he would forget to hold the reins that had been placed carefully in his right hand. Instead he would extend one arm, or both, groping into the air above the animal's neck. At the moment, one of the young physicians, alert for any sign that the child might be going to topple from his saddle, was riding on his other side.

  So far all was well. Adrian's father had already observed that the child looked comparatively well this morning. The boy had spoken several connected words to his mother just before their departure and had seemed to understand at least that his father and he were going on a ride together. Now he was humming and crooning to himself in apparent contentment, and he had not yet dropped his reins.

  Mark turned again in his saddle and glanced back toward the rear of the column. Somewhere amid the baggage carried by the train of spare mounts and laden loadbeasts were the components of a litter, in which, strapped to a sturdy loadbeast or slung between two animals, Prince Adrian could ride when keeping him mounted became too difficult. Of late his seizures had increased in frequency, and it seemed inevitable that on this long journey the litter was going to see substantial use.

  But only on the outward-bound leg of the journey, his father thought. Mark was consumed with hope that the litter would not be needed on the way back. Pray Ardneh that on the way home my son will ride all the way at my side. And he'll talk to me. And he'll see me, look at me with his eyes and see me. He'll look at the world, and I'll explain the world to him. We'll talk, every day and every night, all the way as we're riding home.

  At last the walls of Sarykam and the towers of the Palace dropped permanently out of sight among the folds of the mountainous landscape. The journey still proceeded along well-kept roads, past neat villages whose inhabitants more often than not came out to wave. The border was still ahead.

  But it was not very far ahead. Tasavalta was not, in terms of geographical area, a very large domain.

  Now Mark looked back over his other shoulder. Three or four meters behind him, mounted on the biggest and strongest riding-beast that could be found in Sarykam, an animal of truly heroic strength and dimensions, was Ben of Purkinje.

  As soon as Prince Mark caught his eye, Ben urged his mount forward and rode at the Prince's side.

  Mark said, in a low voice and with feeling: "Truly, I am glad that you are coming with us."

  Ben shrugged his shoulders, beside which Mark's looked thin. "And I am glad to be here, for more reasons than one." He sighed faintly. "Barbara grows a little more shrewish with each passing year."

  "I suppose that she still nags you about giving me the Sword?" Mark tapped the hilt of Shieldbreaker at his side. He too had known Barbara for a long time.

  "About that, and several other things. So I'm glad enough for the chance to ride out of the city for a time. Besides, I grow fat and immobile sitting there in my office, trying to look to the clerks as if I know what I am doing."

  "Or sometimes trying to look as if you didn't.... I have no doubt, my friend, that you know what you are doing, in your office or elsewhere. I don't suppose that any last bits of useful information reached your ears before we departed?''

  "This morning? No." Ben shook his head. "Were you expecting something in particular?"

  Mark gestured. "I hardly know, myself, what I am expecting. Perhaps some news of one of the other Swords."

  Ben cuffed at a fly on his mount's neck. "There's been nothing really new about any of them since we heard from that fellow Birch about two years ago."

  Mark remembered the fellow called Birch. A poor man, he had come to the rulers of Tasavalta saying he was breaking a long silence and hoping to be rewarded now for his information. Birch's report had been to the effect that once, years even before the battle of Tashigang, the god Vulcan had been seen, by Birch himself, with the Sword Farslayer in hand. Birch even claimed to have seen Vulcan kill Mars with it; in that claim both Mark and Ben were inclined to believe him. But there were no other witnesses to the Wargod's death, or at least none had come forward.

  Another minute or so passed in silence, except for the sounds of moving animals, and a faint, contented crooning from Adrian. Then Mark said: "Doomgiver and Townsaver are gone." The statement sounded like what it was: the hundred-and-first rehearsal of the first condition of a puzzle or a riddle, which in a hundred trials still had not been solved-and to which, for all the puzzlers knew, no final answer existed.

  Ben nodded. "Both destroyed by Shieldbreaker, in Vulcan's hand. No doubt about that, for either of them. And Shieldbreaker, thank Ardneh, now rides there at your side. Stonecutter's safe in our deepest vault at home. And tricky Coinspinner's vanished from the same place, gone we don't know where."

  "That's five of the twelve more or less accounted for."

  "Yes. Leaving seven more. Where Farslayer is now, we just don't know. And Woundhealer lies on this road ahead of us, or so we fondly hope."

  "That's seven."

  "Right. And Hermes once took Dragonslicer from my hand, and as far as we've been able to find out, no human eye has seen it since."

  "And Hermes, a moment after taking Dragonslicer from you, also seized Wayfinder from Baron Doon..."

  "... so Hermes ought to have been carrying those two Swords when Farslayer struck him down. But none of the three blades were there when you and I came upon his corpse. D'you know, Mark, I've wondered about that. I mean, maybe Farslayer wouldn't have killed him if he hadn't been carrying the other two Swords with him when he was struck. Three Swords at one time! I've touched two of 'em at one time, and so have you. You know how it is."

  Mark was shaking his head doubtfully. "You think just touching three Swords would be too much for a god?"

  "Hermes wasn't the god who forged them."

  "Even so, I think it damned unlikely that he was just overwhelmed by magic. No, I think the simple truth is that Farslayer killed Hermes, regardless of any other Swords, just as we both thought when we found him dead. As the Sword of Vengeance could kill anyone else in the world, god or human being."

  "I don't suppose it killed all of the gods."

  "No. Not most of them." Again Mark rode for a time in silence before he added: "I think that their time was simply over."

  "That's not really an explanation."

  But now Mark had turned his head and was looking at his son. The small boy had appeared briefly to be listening to the men's conversation. But now Adrian had tired and wanted to be carried, mewling almost like an infant and holding out his arms toward his father's voice.

  Mark picked him up and held him briefly before his own saddle. Presently that grew awkward too, and the march was halted while the litter could be unlimbered and put together. The people handling the assembly had not yet performed the task frequently enough to be accustomed to it, and the process seemed, to Mark, endlessly slow.

  Eventually the litter was ready, and the procession could forge on.

  Chapter 6

  EVEN as Zoltan watched, the reflection of dark hair, in an eddy where the surface of
the stream was almost still, turned into an image of black twigs and branches.

  He raised his head; there were the branches, part of a dead bush on the other side of the stream, as real as any objects could be. But no, something was wrong. The color of the vision in the water had been slightly different. And he had seen white skin, too. Hadn't he?

  Zoltan jumped to his feet and waded in without bothering to remove his boots, keeping his gaze fixed on the reflected twigs. He reached the other bank in half a dozen splashing strides.

  He bent over the leafless bush and examined it closely. What must have happened was that she had been hiding in the other bushes just here, and had leaned out...

  He plunged into the streamside vegetation, searching diligently, ignoring the thorns that clawed at him. But he looked in vain for a clue that anyone had ever hidden there.

  Zoltan was about to wade back to the other bank and reclaim Swordface when a changed note in the burble of the water downstream caught his ear. For the space of many heartbeats he stood motionless, listening. It had sounded like a trilling laugh...

  He started downstream along the bank, on foot, then made himself go back and get his riding-beast. He stroked the animal's head to keep it quiet. Here near the south bank there was almost a pathway, a game trail of some kind, Zoltan supposed. He had now come beyond the area where the marks of recent cavalry patrols had obliterated all other trails.

  The path beside the stream grew easier, and he mounted Swordface again and rode. Before he had ridden fifty meters he arrived at another pool. This one looked deeper, and its depths were even more clear.

  Something else caught Zoltan's eye. A few long, dark hairs were caught on a rough bush at one side of the pool. Zoltan dismounted and picked the delicate filaments from the bush. He stood mere running them through his trembling fingers; the repeated touch of his hands made the hairs turn into threads of common spiderweb and vanish.

  Enchantment. If only- At a sound he spun around. This time he caught a glimpse of movement along the water's edge, thirty or forty meters downstream, as of pale flesh again, and some tight, silvery garment. This time he did not really see her hair that clearly- what he saw next was more like a pure burst of sunlight, as it might leap back from moving water.

  Unthinkingly he shouted: "Come back! I won't hurt you!"

  No answer. She was gone. There was a faint sound from somewhere even farther downstream.

  He swore and splashed and waded. Then he went back to get Swordface again.

  The next rapids were steeper, and the path descending beside them was so steep that Zoltan had no choice but to dismount and lead the riding-beast along.

  Presently he was forced to leave the animal behind him, tethered lightly to a bush. The way down through the little rocky gorge had simply become too precipitous. It was easy enough for an agile human to clamber down, using both hands and feet, but the hoofed animal would never have made it.

  Beside the next little space of flat land there was no solemn pool, but a continuous sinewed rush of water. Zoltan stood beside it listening, watching, holding his breath as if even that faint sound might interfere with his catching the clue had to have. She, being an enchantress after all, might be able to hear his breath above the rush of water. He thought it very likely now that he would be able to hear hers.

  If only he had been able to tell old Karel about her. Karel could have helped him in this search ... but no, that wouldn't have been right. Because no one else was meant to find her, only he, Zoltan. A deeper understanding of that point was slowly growing in him. And he was going to find her, now. She couldn't be that far ahead of him.

  Zoltan went on. Always forward, always beside the rushing, babbling stream, and down.

  Presently he came to a place where the stream was behaving queerly. First, without any apparent cause, there were wide swirls across its surface. And then came a much more serious departure from the normal. The whole baby river meandered for several meters sideways across a slope, a steep place where it should have plunged straight down. Staring at this phenomenon, Zoltan pulled out his dagger and looked about him suspiciously. But then he felt foolish and put the useless knife back into its sheath. Probably one of Karel's elemental had really taken shape two days ago and still existed in the form of this disturbance.

  Ordinarily Zoltan would have been fascinated and somewhat frightened on encountering this phenomenon. Now it made little impression, except that thinking of the elemental recalled Karel once again to Zoltan's thoughts. But there was some reason, some important reason, why he should not even think of Karel now...

  Anyway, it was more enjoyable by far to think about the girl. To speculate on why she had signaled to him so enticingly, and what secrets-and perhaps other things-she might have to share with him when he had won this game by catching up with her. Zoltan no longer supposed that she might be a prisoner of the bandits, or really in need of rescue. She was just being playful with him, that was it.

  There were things about that explanation that puzzled him- but somehow it would be inappropriate for him to think of puzzling things just now. Now was a time for action.

  He had followed the stream yet a little farther-just how far was not important-when he actually caught a glimpse of the girl again, her head and arms and part of her upper body. This time she was trying to hide from him among the intertwined branches of two fallen trees, right at the water's edge, and holding herself so still that for a long moment or two he could not be sure that he was really seeing her at all. And when, without shifting his gaze away for even so long as a heartbeat, Zoltan had come right up to the place, still by some enchantress's cunning she had managed to slip away, so cleverly that Zoltan had never seen her go. All he could think of was that she must have let herself slide into the water and drift away, gliding downstream beneath the surface.

  And then he found one of her garments. The girl must have discarded it when she plunged into the water. But, when Zoltan came up to it and took hold of the fabric, it turned into brown moss in his fingers. Moss, grown long and tinged with gray, as if it had been growing here upon this log and rock for years. But though the cloth was no more than moss when he touched it, and seemed to be fastened in place, Zoltan could not be fooled.

  The trouble, he decided, was that he simply wasn't moving fast enough to catch her.

  Having reached this conclusion, he began to leap and run.

  All went well for a little while. Then halfway through a steep descent he slipped, stepping on a slippery, angled rock, and fell, striking his chest on another flat rock with a thud that sent a shock of pain all through his rib cage. The breath was knocked clean out of him before he splashed into the next pool down. If the pool had been much larger he might have drowned. As it was, the rushing water deposited him like driftwood upon a narrow fringe of beach.

  It seemed like a long time to Zoltan, lying in the grit and mud, before he could be sure that the pain in his ribs was going to let him breathe again.

  Now something really strange was happening. Where was all the light?

  Then he realized that the sun was going down. In fact it had gone down already. What light there was came from the full moon rising over the highlands, from which he had spent all day traveling.

  Some animal off in the distance howled. It was an unfamiliar sound, as if Zoltan might already have reached some part of the world that was completely strange to him.

  Groaning, he dragged himself up into a sitting position and decided that, after all, he was probably going to be able to go on breathing. Even though pain shot through his chest every time he drew in air.

  It was, of course, impossible for him to get lost here-all he had to do was to follow the stream back up into the hills. Not that he was ready yet to turn back. He would rest here for a little while, and then he would go on. She couldn't be far away.

  Something made Zoltan turn his head. There, illuminated by the last sunlight of the western sky and the rising moon high in the east,
he saw the top of the girl's head, no more than ten meters away. Her gray eyes, fixed on Zoltan steadily, were looking over the top of a pile of brushwood.

  Another white spot, at a little distance, might be the top of one of her shoulders. He was much closer to her now than she had ever allowed him to get before.

  The last light of day was dying quickly, and for the first time Zoltan began to be afraid.

  He thought the gray eyes laughed and beckoned, but still the girl moved away from him, going somewhere farther beyond the brush pile, and disappeared.

  He had to go after her. It was simply that he had no choice. Zoltan managed to stand up and follow her. Not only his ribs but his leg hurt, as he discovered when he tried to walk. He went on, with great effort and some pain.

  After only a little distance, on an easy slope, he came to a larger pool than any he had encountered yet.

  On a flat rock just at the side of the pool he saw her eyes again, and the black hair. But that object ought not to be her body. The shape of it was wrong, completely wrong. It altered further as he looked at it, the bones and skin alike becoming something different. And then Zoltan saw her scaly length, her flicking tail, go writhing across the rock, plunging down into the riverbank slime beyond.

  But there were still eyes-other eyes-looking at Zoltan, from another direction.

  He turned, raising his own gaze to meet them.

  The dark, winged shape, almost man-sized, perched amid shadows on a high ledge of rock. It looked as much like an illusion as the girl had looked like reality. But the eyes that looked down at him from the winged shape did not change. Gradually, heartbeat by heartbeat, he came to believe that they were very real.