Sightblinder's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  Restlessly Lady Yambu moved back to the window again. Down at the shabby docks, some of which were visible from this vantage point, there was still no sign of the long-awaited riverboat that was to carry her out of the lake and down the Tungri as far as the next cataract. The Maid of Lakes and Rivers, she had heard that the riverboat was called. The Maid was days overdue already, and she supposed more days were likely to pass before it arrived.

  If it ever did. She had heard also that traffic on the lower river was at best far from safe.

  This was her eleventh day of waiting in this inn. It was good that the earlier years of her life had schooled her thoroughly in patience and self-sufficiency, because—

  Making a brisk decision, the lady suddenly scooped up a few small essential items that she did not want to leave unguarded in the room while she was out of it, and moved in two strides to the door. Locking the door behind her, she strode along the short and narrow upstairs hall of the inn, and down a narrow stair. This stair, like most of the rest of the building, was constructed in rustic style, of logs with much of the bark still on them.

  As the lady descended, the common dining room, now empty, was to her left, and the small lobby, with three or four pilgrims and locals in it, was to her right.

  She had almost reached the foot of the stairs when she saw, through the open front door of the inn, to her right, the figure of a man who moved along the middle of the unpaved street outside, advancing toward the waterfront with a steady, implacable-looking tread. No doubt it was the size of the man, which was remarkable, that first attracted her attention—his form was mountainous, not very tall but very bulky, and not so much fat as shapeless. Lady Yambu could see little of this man but his broad back, but still his appearance jogged her memory. It was not even a memory of someone she had seen before, but of someone she ought to know, ought to be able to recognize….

  Moving quickly through the lobby and out the front door, she stood on the log steps of the inn above the muddy and moderately busy street, gazing after him. A second man, much younger and much smaller, was walking with the one who had caught her attention, and already both of them were well past the inn, heading down the sloping street in the direction of the docks. The big man carried a staff, and the smaller wore a sword, which was common enough here as in most towns. Both were dressed in rough, plain clothing.

  The lady, on the verge of running after the two, but not choosing to brave the mud and the loss of dignity involved, cast her eyes about. Then with a quick gesture she beckoned an alert-looking urchin who was loitering nearby, and gave him a trifling coin and a short verbal message. In a moment his small figure was speeding after the two men.

  * * *

  “Alas,” the lady was saying to the huge man a quarter of an hour later, “I doubt that there is any messenger, winged or otherwise, to be found in this village who could reach Tasavalta sooner than you could yourself.”

  She was back in her room at the inn, sitting on one end of the small couch that also served as a bed, while the two men she had invited in from the street stood leaning against the outer wall, one on each side of the window. They had now been in the lady’s company long enough to tell her their story about the kidnapping of Prince Mark at dawn, only a few hours ago. She had heard them with considerable interest; the Prince of Tasavalta had been a person of some importance in her old life.

  The lady asked her informants now: “And he still had Shieldbreaker with him when he was taken?”

  The smaller, younger man nodded. He was called Zoltan, and had been a total stranger to Yambu until today. He said: “But my uncle did not draw it. As you must know, lady, that would have been a mistake in a fight against unarmed attackers—doubtless they knew he was carrying a Sword, and which one of the Twelve it was. And they knew the only way to fight against it. Or they would not have attacked him without weapons of their own in hand, or at least at their belts.”

  “So Shieldbreaker has presumably gone to the master of those men now, whoever he may be. And he commands a griffin. That is not good. I have never even seen a griffin,” said the lady, and sighed, reminding herself that the time was long past when she had to concern herself with such things as the balance of power. “And of course now you are in a desperate hurry to send word to Tasavalta, and get help from Princess Kristin and the others, or at least let them know what has happened. But I have no messenger to lend you.”

  In response, the huge man, Ben of Purkinje, looked pointedly at the lady’s pet winged dragon, which was still perched on the washstand.

  Yambu nodded. “Yes, that creature could serve as a messenger, of sorts. But I fear my pet could not be made to carry any word back to Tasavalta for you. Still I would like to do something to help Prince Mark, provided he is not, as you fear, already beyond help. Though we were enemies, I suppose he is now as close to being my friend as anyone who walks the face of the earth today.” She paused. “And you, Ben of Purkinje, though I think we have never seen each other before today—you have been much in my mind for the past several months.”

  That surprised the big man, distracting him if only briefly from his deep concern over his Prince. “Me? Why me?”

  “Because between us, you and me, there is a connection of a sort—I mean apart from our having been enemies across the battlefield. You knew my daughter.”

  “Ah,” said Ben, distracted even more, against his will. “Yes. I knew Ariane.”

  “That is her name. I have no other daughter. And you were with her, eleven years ago or thereabouts, in the vaults of the Blue Temple.”

  The impression made by her words on Ben was deepening. Eventually he said in a dull voice: “She died there, in my arms.” And Zoltan, so young he was, perhaps not even fully grown as yet, looked at the older man with sympathetic wonder.

  Yambu said: “And you had been with Ariane for a long time before that.”

  Ben gazed back at her in silence. His face was grim, but beyond that hard to read.

  She who had once been the Silver Queen went on: “As you know, I have been living for years in a White Temple, withdrawn from the world. Almost, I have ceased to have either friends or enemies at all. Now I am only an old woman, making my way out into the world again to try to wring some answers from it. I am sure you can provide me with some of the answers that I want—a portion of the truth about my daughter. In return I will be willing to do whatever I can for you, and for your Prince. Perhaps there will be nothing I can do; but I am still not entirely without resources.”

  For a little time Ben prolonged his thoughtful silence. Then he said: “As I suppose you know, lady, Ariane suffered a head wound when we were fighting down there in the Blue Temple’s vaults. For a time after she received the injury—for many minutes, perhaps an hour—she was able to speak and move about. Then suddenly she collapsed. I was standing beside her, and I caught her as she fell. A few minutes later she was dead.”

  “The two of you were lovers?”

  The huge man turned away to look out of the window momentarily, and then turned back. His ugly face was full of pain. “We had known each other for a matter of a few days—no more. From the day that Mark and I and the others broke into a Red Temple and brought her out, until the day she died in that damned hole.”

  “I want to know,” said Yambu, royally persistent, “whether Ariane was still a virgin when she died.”

  “How can that matter now?”

  “And I want to know much more than that.” The silver-haired woman was still capable of ignoring questions in the manner of a queen. “I would like you to tell me everything, any detail you can remember, about those days the two of you spent together. Whether the truth is harsh or tender, I would know it. Lately the fate of my only child has come to be of tremendous importance to me.”

  “I have no objection,” Ben replied, “to telling you the whole story. Someday when I have time. If both of us live long enough. Right now, as I have explained, Zoltan and I are both extremely busy. We are i
n danger, and we need help.”

  “I understand; we have a bargain, then, and I will do what I can to help you. Tell me, why was the Prince here, so far from home, and with so few attendants?”

  Ben hesitated; then he nodded and took the plunge. “The largest of the islands in this lake is, or was, the home of a friendly wizard of great power, allied to the White Temple. His public name is Honan-Fu. In his academy a few select apprentices—”

  “I know something about Honan-Fu,” Yambu rapped out impatiently. “Go on.”

  “The Prince wanted to learn something about Honan-Fu’s establishment. He thought that by coming here incognito—”

  “You need not be so cautious with me, big man. By now everyone knows about Mark’s eldest son. Adrian’s still only a child—he’d be nine years old now? No more than ten—but blessed with great magic. Or would ‘cursed’ be a better word for his condition?”

  “All right, then. Mark wanted to see the place at first hand, before he sent his nine-year-old heir to be apprenticed.”

  Yambu was nodding. “That should be interesting—one day to see a true magician-king upon the throne of Tasavalta.”

  Ben grunted. “As for the Prince being unattended on this trip, well, you see his entire escort before you. Zoltan and I came with Mark down the Sanzu, then down the cliffs beside the Upper Cataract to reach this lake. That part of the route you must have taken yourself.

  “We brought no magician with us—a grievous mistake, perhaps. Still, we thought we were headed for a friendly reception in the castle of an enchanter stronger than any we could have brought with us. But from the moment when we arrived on the shore of Lake Alkmaar two days ago, we could tell that there was something wrong out there on the magician’s islands. We knew that Honan-Fu had been expecting us in a general way at least, and anyway I suppose a wizard of his stature ought to have known that we were here. But he did not know. At least no boat came for us, and no messages.

  “We were suspicious, and hesitated even to go into any of the villages. At last we talked to a few of the fisher folk who live in isolated huts along the shore. They were reluctant to speak to strangers, but certainly something else besides our presence was bothering them.

  “And then this morning, at last, we had our greeting from the island.” Ben gestured savagely toward the lake.

  The lady moved to stand beside the huge man at the window, and rested one hand lightly on his shoulder, as if to seal a bargain. She said: “I have dealt for many years with magicians—most of whom were far indeed from any alliance with the White Temple. And so I think I know that other kind, know them well enough to smell them when the air is as thick as it is here and now with their effluvium. Sometime during the past ten days, Honan-Fu has been supplanted on his island. How, and by whom, I know not, though the town is full of rumors, and suddenly invading soldiers in gray and red are everywhere. They have little to say about the one they serve. But obviously the new ruler is a wizard of tremendous power, who is no friend of the Prince.”

  Then with a decisive motion she turned from the window, toward the odd little dragon that still perched preening itself upon its stand. She said: “It will be best, I think, if we dispatch a messenger.”

  “You said that creature was no messenger.”

  “I said that it would take no word to Tasavalta for you. But as for bringing help here for the Prince—it may just possibly be able to do that. And the sooner it is dispatched the better, I think, if Mark is not already beyond help.”

  Moving beside the washstand, the lady whispered a few words into the beast’s small curving ear.

  With this the backbone of the dragon stiffened, and its demeanor changed abruptly. It drank noisily from a jar of water beside it on the stand, then hopped onto the lady’s wrist. Ben could see semitransparent membranes on its eyes, which he had not realized were there, slide back to leave the orbs a shiny black. The creature had turned its head toward the window, and stared out into the sunlight.

  Lady Yambu carried it to the sill and sent it out with a sharp tossing motion. The wings of the small dragon beat rapidly and it rose with surprising speed into the sky.

  “What message did you give it?” Zoltan asked. “Where is it going?”

  “There is only one message that it will carry. Trust me. I have a reason for not offering you a better explanation now.”

  Ben, squinting up into the bright sky, presently rumbled an oath. There were a few patchy low clouds above the lake, and out of one of them a set of leathery wings far larger than those of the small dragon had appeared. This creature was not nearly as big as the griffin that a few hours ago had carried off the Prince, but still large enough to be a formidable hunter of game no bigger than the messenger.

  Now Zoltan muttered too; a second and then a third of the predatory flyers had come into sight out of the cloud. Their grotesque shapes sped in pursuit of the small dragon.

  The issue of the chase was lost in yet another cloud.

  Chapter Three

  A little before sunset of that same day, all three of the predatory flying creatures Ben had watched returned, gliding, to their new base on the island that had so lately been the domain of Honan-Fu. On their return to the magician’s castle all three flyers selected flight paths that would tend to shelter them from observation, and each came down as softly and as unobtrusively as possible upon a different high place. For their final descent they chose a moment when almost all the human eyes within the castle walls were focused elsewhere.

  And, having landed, they avoided reporting to the Master of the Beasts, or any of their other human masters, who were the recent conquerors of this island and the domain around the lake. Instead of delivering information on potential enemies, on resources discovered, or perhaps news of some prey that had escaped them—and thereby risking punishment—the creatures brooded on their perches, waiting silently to be fed, and dropping dung down the once-spotless walls of the stolen castle.

  Very few of the humans inside the castle walls were at all aware of the flyers’ return. None of the people who might have seen them were paying the hybrid creatures any real attention at the moment.

  Perhaps the human breeders of the hybrid flyers had made them a touch too intelligent for their intended purposes.

  The beasts looked down upon a crowd of several hundred people, mostly soldiers in gray and red, who were gathered in the castle’s largest open courtyard. Only days ago this court had been a fair place, bright with flower gardens and musical with fountains. The flowers had all been trampled into mud since the castle’s new master had taken charge, and half of the fountains had ceased to run. The pipes were broken in several of the fountains, including the largest, in the center of the court, which had been smashed, the sculpture on its top destroyed. In place of the statue of some otherwise forgotten woodland god, erected there by Honan-Fu because he liked the art and craft that had gone into it, a flat-topped altar had been hastily and crudely constructed, out of beams and slabs of wood laid horizontally on piles of rock and broken statuary.

  The slabs that formed the center of the high table were now already dark with drying blood, the human blood of Honan-Fu’s apprentices and servants, required for sacrifice to the powers of dark magic.

  Upon a balcony overlooking this altar, an improvised throne had been set up. The occupant of the throne sat with his back close to a wall of the keep, and it would have been hard for anyone to approach or even see him from that direction. Nor was it easy for the people in the courtyard below the balcony to right or left to see him because of the tall screens that had been placed at each side of his chair.

  Only from directly in front of the man on the throne, where the high altar stood, was anyone able to view him at all clearly. From there it could be seen that the shape of his body was only partially that of a man.

  The right hand of the one who sat upon the throne was more plainly visible than the rest of his figure. That hand was extended at shoulder height, and clutc
hed the black hilt of a Sword. The gleaming blade of this weapon, a full meter long, was dug lightly, point-first, into the floor of the balcony at the base of the makeshift throne.

  Anyone standing close enough to get a good look at the fist that held the Sword could see that it was gray and taloned, almost as much like a bird’s or a dragon’s claw as it was like a human hand. Its owner’s survival over the millennia had not been easily accomplished, and it had involved him in several compromises, of which the one involving alterations in his physical shape had been only the most noticeable.

  The courtyard was nearly quiet now, a deepening pool of shadow as daylight began fading from the sky. Torches were being lighted, and once a long flame snapped like a banner in a gust of wind. But here, inside the castle’s outer walls, the wind did not persist.

  Only recently, within the past hour, had this quiet been achieved. Some of Honan-Fu’s apprentices had fought back against their conquerors even as they were being dragged to the altar, or even after reaching it; and some of those apprentices had been, by any ordinary standard, magicians of considerable strength. But against the powers that had seized this castle from their master, their best efforts had been infantile, completely useless. All of their powers were scattered before the sacrifice, and in the process of the sacrifice itself their bodies were burned and minced, their minds dispatched to meet whatever fate the minds of magicians encountered after death.

  The resistance of their master, Honan-Fu, had been more prolonged, but in the end no more effective. He had been overcome in magic, but he had not been burnt in sacrifice. His vanquisher considered that he had better use for him than that.

  The still-living body of Honan-Fu was bound now between a pair of tall stakes standing before the altar, and certain human servants of the conqueror were dousing the defeated magician with pails of cold water filled at the pulsing spray of a broken fountain. Magic, the magic of his conqueror, against which Honan-Fu was no longer capable of fighting, was going on him with the water, and his sparse frame and wrinkled face were being rapidly covered with a mail-coat of ice. The crystalline white coat was still thin, and it cracked with his uncontrollable shivering almost as fast as it was formed; but with every pail of water thrown upon him it inexorably grew thicker.