Sightblinder's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Not at the moment, Your Lordship,” she replied, and bowed her appreciation of his magic.

  At a nod from the lord of the castle, the Prince was allowed to splash back into the lake. He sank like a stone, his rope tugged taut again.

  Then Yambu gestured toward the second rope nearby, which presumably led to another submerged form. “And who is our dear Prince’s companion, Ancient One?”

  “None other than this castle’s former owner, my dear queen. Another acquaintance of yours, perhaps—? No? Well, no one can know everyone of importance in the world. I should like to try to do so, though.”

  Interruption in the form of a flying messenger spiraling softly down between the grotto’s walls came at that point to cut their conversation short. The Ancient Lord, having heard the message that the beast had come to hiss into his ear, announced as much, with what seemed genuine regret.

  “But we have much more to say to each other, dear Yambu. I insist that you remain here as my honored guest for some time before you resume your pilgrimage.”

  She would not have dreamt of trying to decline.

  Chapter Nine

  Arnfinn awoke, on that unreal morning after his first arrival at Lady Ninazu’s manor, into what seemed at first a gloriously prolonged dream. He was lying naked amid the marvelous white softness of her bed, and he thought the place was still warm where she had lain beside him. Even after he had experimentally cracked his eyelids open, it was perfectly easy to believe that he was still dreaming. This world in which he found himself this morning seemed to bear but small resemblance to the ordinary waking universe in which he had spent his life before encountering the Sword of Stealth.

  It was in fact the nearby voice of the young lady herself, raised in shrill and ugly tones as she berated one of her servants, that convinced Arnfinn of reality.

  Turning his body halfway over amid the bed’s incredible luxury, he lifted himself up on one elbow and surveyed the room in which he had awakened. Lady Ninazu’s voice sounded from beyond rich draperies concealing a door, and for the moment Arnfinn was alone. His own clothes, the few poor garments he had worn upon his journey, made a crude and grimy scattering across the floor’s thick bright rugs and colored tiles. But the Sword of Stealth, with sheath and belt and all, was with him in the bed. Even at the peak of last night’s excitement he had remembered to make sure of that. If the lady had been at all aware of Sightblinder’s presence between her sheets, she had been diplomatic enough to say nothing about it.

  She had said several things, though, that were already, despite the considerable distractions he now faced, coming back to Arnfinn’s thoughts this morning.

  For example, at one time last night she had said: “I am surprised, lord, that you have come to me alone and unattended.” Only to amend that a moment later with: “But then I suppose a wizard with powers like yours is never really unattended anywhere.”

  Last night Arnfinn’s attention had been consumed by other matters. But this morning that last statement struck him as important. He could not help thinking that it could be of great importance indeed to know exactly which wizard Lady Ninazu thought he was.

  It appeared that he was going to have a few moments longer for reflection; Lady Ninazu was still out of sight behind closed and brocaded draperies, tongue-lashing her servants in the next room over some female triviality of hairdressing or clothing. He shifted again in the bed, marveling anew at its whiteness and softness. He had never really imagined that anyone lived like this.

  And now another memory of last night came back: Her Ladyship, unbelievably naked, incredibly lying in bed with him, sleepily clasping Arnfinn’s work worn, underfed arms and shoulders in her hands, and murmuring, without the least trace of mockery in her voice, about how marvelously muscular he was.

  And again she had declared, in a voice soft with passion, “I sometimes wonder, lover, whether I fear you or I love you more.”

  And again: “It is now, as you must well remember, two years since we first met—a little more than two years. And yet sometimes I feel I don’t know you at all.”

  And yet again, in what now seemed to Arnfinn her most mysterious utterance of all: “I have heard from others that there are times in which the appearance of your body changes. I hope that is only a lie, spread by your enemies.”

  “Changes?” Arnfinn had dared to ask. She wasn’t, at least he hoped she couldn’t be, talking about the changes wrought by the Sword of Stealth—but if not that, what?

  And that was the only moment during the night in which the lady had apparently come close to being disconcerted. With lowered, fluttering lashes she had murmured: “I meant no offense, my dread lord.”

  “It does not matter,” her supposed dread lord had responded awkwardly, not knowing what else to say, having no idea of how a real lord might have phrased the thought. And the lady had looked blank for a moment, as if something in her bed-partner’s speech or manner puzzled her. But still the power of the Sword prevailed; whatever else the victim of its deception might suspect, the identity of the person who held Sightblinder was usually the last thing that the victim could be made to doubt.

  After that exchange of words Lady Ninazu had busied herself again with dedication to Arnfinn’s pleasure, and he had forgotten her words until now.

  And now he forgot them again, for the draperies opened. The lady, wrapped in a loose garment of white fur, stood in the doorway smiling down at him for a long moment before she closed the curtains behind her again and came over to the bed. On her way toward it she paused to wrinkle her pretty little nose at some of the disgusting peasants’ clothing on the floor, and kick it out of her way. “Where can that have come from?” she murmured crossly to herself.

  But she was smiling again by the time she reached the bed. “I am very pleased,” she said, “that my lord, who for a thousand years, or perhaps ten thousand, has had his choice of women, continues to be pleased with me.”

  Arnfinn, who had had exactly two women in his lifetime previously, without the idea of choice having really entered into it on either occasion, swallowed. “How could I not be pleased?” he responded.

  The lady curtsied, a small movement that flirted with mockery while still managing to give an impression of humility; but at the same time he, even Arnfinn the innocent, could see the calculation in her eyes, and the fierce pride.

  She whispered: “And will I continue to please you?”

  Despite the enchantment of her beauty, there was something … Arnfinn could feel a wariness developing in him. What would a real great lord have said in response to her question? “You will always please me. But there are many demands upon my time.”

  “I am sure that there are more than I can possibly imagine. But now you have at least established firm control of my father’s stronghold. Tell me—that bothersome man—my father—I take it he is no longer in a position to bother anyone?”

  Moment by moment the dream was developing imperfections. There was something in the way this girl spoke of her father that began to curdle both lust and satisfaction.

  “No,” Arnfinn answered, going along with what she evidently wanted, again not knowing what else to say. “He is not.” This, then, he was thinking, was a daughter of Honan-Fu. And a daughter who rejoiced in her father’s downfall. Once again Arnfinn knew the beginning of fear. Without really understanding why, he could feel a disagreeable knot beginning to form in the pit of his stomach.

  Approaching the bed, the lady sat down close beside him. Then, as if it were a gesture requiring boldness, she reached out to put her hand on her dread lord’s arm.

  “And”—her voice dropped; something of great importance was about to be said—“my twin brother. How is he?” Lady Ninazu seemed to be holding her breath as she awaited her wizard lord’s answer to that. Her eyes were enormous.

  The lady was hanging on Arnfinn’s response so raptly that it almost seemed that she had ceased to breathe. The rise and fall of her breast was almost suspende
d. Arnfinn could feel the knot in his own gut grow tighter in the presence of this intensity of will and of emotion, neither one of which he understood.

  What to say?

  “He is as well as can be expected,” Arnfinn replied at last. “Under the circumstances.”

  “Ahh!” It was more an animal’s unthinking snarl than it was a word. Her eyes blazed at him fiercely, though what the passion was that made them blaze he could not tell. “What does that mean?”

  A moment ago this girl had been all fluttering subservience, and now she was almost threatening. The fear induced in her by Sightblinder had been and continued to be genuine, though she was keeping it under control; what could bring her to raise such a challenge despite her fear?

  Arnfinn’s own fear awoke again, as if in sympathy with hers. He knew that if he once allowed himself to give in to his own timidity in this situation, terror could overwhelm him. Instead he forced himself to sit up straight on the edge of the bed—making sure that he was still touching the sword belt with one hand—and to stare at the woman with as much regal authority as he could try to mimic.

  She quailed at once; before he had to say a word, her eyes fell before his gaze.

  “Oh, well,” she murmured. “If you will not answer.” Then, to Arnfinn’s amazement, a tear appeared in the corner of Lady Ninazu’s eye. She folded her arms in the sleeves of her white fur robe and rocked back and forth in the immemorial way of women grieving. Her voice dropped so low that he could barely hear it. “It has been more than two years since my brother and I have been allowed to see each other. Since that day on which we served you so well, master, he has not even been allowed to see the light of day. And year after year, day after day, my father has treated him so cruelly. He was still like a child two years ago; and anyway what we did was right—Kunderu and I opened the way for you to come into this world, didn’t we? Isn’t it wrong, isn’t it monstrous, that his punishment should have gone on so long?”

  “Your twin brother,” Arnfinn muttered to himself, gaping at the lady, trying to understand. It was the first time he had ever heard of the existence of any such person.

  “My dread lord, do not toy with me!” The words burst from the lady’s lips, though a moment later she would have bitten them back. Arnfinn had never seen anyone so gripped by emotion—not even the madwoman in the village, though she had been much noisier.

  In the next moment Lady Ninazu had fallen on her knees before him. “My brother, Kunderu. Why cannot you let me see him now? Even though he is a great wizard himself as you well know, all power is in your hands now. Can you not at least allow me to see him? If I could see my brother again, if I could know that he is free, and happy—for two years now I’ve lived for nothing but that. Oh, great lord, oh, great lord, help me!”

  The world was beginning to turn gray in front of Arnfinn. Shame and love and guilt and fear swept over him together. He had all that he could do to keep himself from leaping up and running from the room, even as he had run from the poor people on the roads and in the town, the deluded fools who had thought that he was the most important person in their lives.

  “I will be your loyal slave forever,” she implored him. “What does it matter to you now that he once angered our father? Unless—unless, oh, gods, unless you have some agreement now with Honan-Fu—?”

  It was like that woman in the first village all over again, only a hundred times worse. Like the girl with the baby in the town square, only a thousand times more terrible.

  “I will do what I can!” Arnfinn barked at last, almost shouting. At the same time he jumped to his feet, and even as he jumped his left hand went out and grabbed the jeweled belt, dragging the Sword with him. It came with him as inexorably as some prisoner’s chain. With muscles energized by desperation, he pushed the lady violently away from him.

  Ninazu cried out in pain as her body crumpled to the floor on a soft rug.

  Arnfinn stood momentarily paralyzed. Now, on top of everything else, he had hurt her, bruised her physically. He stood in the middle of the room, eyes shut, hands clenching his head, one arm looped through the sword-belt, holding it to him, in agony lest in his own fear and torment he should commit some greater violence that would hurt her yet again.

  But Lady Ninazu was not much hurt. She scrambled to her feet, and in a moment was at Arnfinn’s side again, murmuring in his ear, soothing him when she saw that he appeared to be stricken. It seemed that she had made an amazingly swift recovery from her grief and pain. Now she moved lightly about Arnfinn, talking, almost as though a moment ago she had not been on the verge of hysterics.

  And Lady Ninazu must have given some signal to her servants, for now some of them were entering the chamber, pushing before them a cart that rolled on large silver wheels and was topped with a golden tray. The metal part of the cart looked like solid gold to Arnfinn, and it was laden with food on golden plates. He could recognize none of the dishes, but the aromas reminded Arnfinn, even in his distress, that he had not eaten for many hours.

  Despite his ravenous hunger, he had to get away. He could no longer face the lady, knowing how he had deceived and cheated her. Her every worshipful glance accused him. Her beauty and her tears had become more than he could stand.

  He kissed her once more, hopelessly and chastely this time. To her look of astonishment he muttered half-incoherent promises of return and promises of help. Meanwhile he was busy pulling on his clothes, going through contortions in the process so that the Sword of Deception should remain always close at his side.

  Then he fled, at the last moment grabbing up some food from the cart to eat on the way. When Lady Ninazu called after him, Arnfinn only roared at her and rushed on, as he had run from one woman in the small village, and from another in the streets of Triplicane.

  He was out in the grounds of the manor, heading for the rear gate where he had come in, when he encountered one of the stable’s supervisors, who dared to speak to him.

  The man bowed nervously. “It’s about the, uh, the griffin, my lord.”

  “The griffin.”

  “Sire, the steed on which you arrived last night. If it needs care, feeding … I confess that none of us this morning are able to see it as anything but an ordinary load beast.” And the man smiled, shaking his head in humble awe at the power of the lord’s magic.

  “Then care for it as you would a load beast. I will return for it later.” And Arnfinn stalked on.

  He wasn’t going to need the load beast now because he wasn’t going home. He couldn’t go home now….

  On foot he wandered despairingly back toward the town. He was hopelessly, cruelly, insanely, suicidally, in love with Lady Ninazu. And in trying to love her, taking advantage of her, possessing her so falsely, he had wronged her terribly. If she were ever to find out how he had tricked her with the Sword…

  But worse than her revenge, infinitely worse, would be the fact that then she would know him as he really was. The contemptible, vile, ugly, scrawny, cowardly, deceitful wretch he was—

  Arnfinn sobbed as he walked, almost staggering with the burden of his guilt and his remorse. Not knowing, hardly caring, where he was going at the moment.

  It seemed to him inevitable that he would be found out. And when he was, the lady, or the powerful wizard who must be her real lover, would have him cut up into small pieces, and the pieces burned. But no, before it ever came to that, he would kill himself out of sheer shame. It was impossible that he could ever find a way to make amends for what he had done to her—

  If I could see my brother again, if I could know that he is free, and happy … I live for that.

  Arnfinn could feel the terrible weight of the Sword dragging at his side. With such a weapon even a coward might be able to accomplish almost anything.

  Between the lifeless trees of autumn he could see part of the lake, and the castle on its island.

  * * *

  Kunderu, she had said the man’s name was. Her twin brother, held prisoner out the
re for—how long, two years?—in punishment by their father, the oh-so- kindly Honan-Fu. In punishment for what? Arnfinn wondered briefly. She had said, implied, something about how she and her brother had helped the wizard she now called her dread lord….

  But then that thought was pushed aside by another. Everyone ought to have known better, thought Arnfinn, than to believe that such a powerful old man as Honan-Fu could really be as benevolent as the stories painted him.

  Arnfinn found a quiet place on a hillside, a little off the road, where he could sit down with his Sword and stare out at the castle. He had decided that he was ready to lay down his life, if need be, for the lady he had so cruelly wronged. He would find her twin brother, if the man called Kunderu was still alive, and he would release him.

  The trouble was that Arnfinn had no idea of how to begin to go about performing such a feat. Except that he would have to take Sightblinder to the island, and somehow use its powers to achieve his end.

  He would have to go out there to the castle ruled by the commander of the soldiers in red and gray, who had all the folk of Triplicane terrified. Out there into the den of the murderers and torturers. He, a country yokel—he knew what he was—would have to stand alone among them. Even if he did have one magic Sword, a weapon whose powers he scarcely understood—

  Arnfinn was trying to picture himself where he had never been, in a world that he had never seen and could not very well imagine. In his imagination the parts of that world that he could not see clearly quickly filled up with terrible shadows.

  Suppose, just suppose, that he were standing there now, in the great hall of that castle, making demands of one who sat there upon a throne—of one who was in all likelihood the real and jealous lover of Lady Ninazu. In a great hall with columns taller than the trees of the forest, and filled with people, crafty and deadly people, devious magicians and brutal warriors who did not know what it meant to be afraid, men and women whose business had been plotting and uncovering plots almost from the day that they were born.