Sightblinder's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  The lady, her patience wearing out, began to nag at Ben in a whisper, sounding like the angry child she was. If only, she was saying, she could get to speak to the Ancient One himself, all would be well. She would have these incompetent officers who had delayed her boiled in oil. And then, when at last she reached her brother and made sure of his release, she would have Ben rewarded—

  Ben ceased to pay attention. He forbore to ask her just why this Ancient One, if he was truly her great friend as she claimed, still insisted on keeping her brother locked up. Instead he gently hoisted the lady through the window, then forced his own great shoulders out. He had to bend the second bar yet a little more before he was quite able to fit through. Then he and Lady Ninazu were standing side by side on the dark pavement, with nothing between them and the stars.

  Ben whispered: “Now, where are the prisoners kept? Have you any idea, ma’am?”

  She raised her eyes. “My brother will be found high in that central tower. If we were on the other side of it I could point out to you the very windows of his room. But—before we go to him, I think I ought to talk to the Ancient Master.” She paused, looking around her uncertainly.

  “Are you sure that would be a good idea, my lady?”

  “Of course it would. Who are you to question my decisions on such a matter?”

  “I am no one, my lady.” He wondered if the time would come when it would be good policy to strangle her.

  “Of course you are not.” She looked round her and appeared to get her bearings. There were several exits from the areaway in which they stood. Ben prepared to follow, at the most cautious distance she would tolerate. At the earliest opportunity he meant to separate himself from her and start in earnest to look for Mark—or try to make contact with Lady Yambu, if the opportunity offered. He felt reasonably confident that she was here somewhere.

  Boldly the young lady started walking straight toward the central tower, the one she had indicated earlier. Ben followed, out of the areaway and into a relatively well-lighted court. But before he had moved more than a score of paces, there was an outcry behind him.

  What seemed like a whole company of soldiers were running after them; the uniforms seemed to come pouring out of every passageway and crevice in the stones. There was no way to avoid them. Before Ben could quite decide that the time had come to fight to the death, the odds were hopeless, and he and the lady were both closely surrounded.

  “My lady,” an officer shouted, “you were told to wait!” There was no great courtesy in his tone.

  Lady Ninazu flared back with angry words, which seemed to make little impression on the officer. Ben had just resigned himself to the probable necessity of making a hopeless fight after all when a shout from somewhere in the middle distance made him wait again. “What-—ho? What have you there?” The voice, unfamiliar to Ben, was harsh and masculine.

  Ben, turning slowly and carefully, beheld a tall, ghastly, half-reptilian figure. From the fervent descriptions often given him by Zoltan, he had no difficulty in recognizing one who had to be the Ancient One himself.

  The call had interrupted Lady Ninazu’s heartfelt and outraged protests; she too had fallen silent for the moment. Like Ben she had turned to look across the courtyard to where the tall, malignant figure stood waving at their captors.

  A moment later Ben, experiencing a sensation of dislocation, realized that the small, pale face looking toward him over one of the figure’s shoulders was that of Lady Yambu. And that the face of Zoltan, looking not at all like that of a defeated victim, was peering at him past the other. Even at the distance Ben thought that Zoltan looked as if he would have liked to wink but did not quite dare.

  Ben let out his breath, making a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sob.

  The guards who had surrounded Lady Ninazu and himself were saluting the monster across the courtyard, and they were not slow or slovenly about it. In response to gestures and shouted orders from that commanding figure, they put up their weapons and withdrew.

  Ben, moving on shaky legs, led the way across the courtyard. Lady Ninazu, for all the demands that she had made to be taken to the new master of this castle, was not so eager now, and hung back slightly. A moment later Ben and the two ladies, along with Zoltan and whoever had the Sword, were shut inside the little grotto like enclosure surrounding the deep, black pool.

  * * *

  When at last Arnfinn, Zoltan, and Lady Yambu were inside the grotto, Zoltan pulled the gate closed after them again. Then he and Arnfinn looked around them uncertainly. It was a narrow place, open to the sky but closely confined between high walls into which fantastic niches and decorations had been carved and built out of the dark stone. The grotto was only a small place, but still the single torch, in the hand of the Sword-bearer, seemed inadequate to light it.

  Almost all of the ground space was taken up by the surface of the black, deep-looking pool, with only a rim of pavement around its edge. Ben looked in puzzlement at the surrounding walls, and the two ropes that went down into the still water. On the far side of the pool, a dim mouth blocked by heavy metal bars was open in the stone, the beginning of a watery tunnel that led out of the pool to some unknown destination.

  * * *

  But Lady Yambu paid no attention to this setting. She went directly to the edge of the well, where the two secured ropes went down into cold, dark, quiet water. She knelt down there, close by the great iron ring to which the ropes were fastened, and rested her fingers on the ropes, one hand to each.

  Closing her eyes, she said: “The two of them are still alive down there—I have just enough of the art myself to be able to feel that. Still alive now, but I fear that hauling them back up into the air is likely to kill them.”

  “The Prince is down there? Under water?” Zoltan was outraged.

  “Down there?” echoed Ben.

  The lady ignored the mild outburst. “Before we haul them up, we should have a counter spell prepared, and someone with skill enough to make it work.”

  As if involuntarily, she and Zoltan both raised their eyes to the impressive image of the great wizard that stood beside them.

  During the last few minutes Arnfinn had been making a firm resolution to strive for suavity and dignity befitting a master magician in all he said. But he forgot his resolution now. “I haven’t got,” he protested, “magic enough to chase a flea.”

  * * *

  Meanwhile Lady Ninazu had been very quiet, almost ignoring the others. She had backed up slowly, moving from the others, and away from the pool as far as the confined space would allow, until her back was leaning against one of the enclosing walls. She had been staring down at the black water and its secrets as if she could guess what those secrets were, and found them frightening.

  Now, suddenly, in a tight voice she announced: “Kunderu is not down there. I don’t see how he can be.”

  “If you are the daughter of Honan-Fu,” the older lady told her, “then your father is down there. Along with someone you do not know.”

  The girl appeared to find that relatively acceptable, but still it frightened her. “My father,” she repeated thoughtfully.

  “So I have been told. Quickly, are you enchantress enough to save these men’s lives if we pull them up at once?”

  Ninazu nodded abstractedly. “I am a very good enchantress. I could do more than that.”

  “That will be sufficient for the moment,” said Yambu in her queen’s voice, and gave a signal. Swiftly Ben and Zoltan stooped over the ropes. Seizing one at random, they began to haul.

  As they were working, Lady Yambu straightened up and whispered to the one who had the Sword. He nodded, and in a moment had opened the gate again and was calling out to the soldiers in the court, telling them to bring plenty of food and hot drink, blankets and dry clothing for two men.

  Within moments Ben and Zoltan had pulled a human figure out of the water. Lying on the stone pavement with steam forming in the air around it, it appeared to be little mo
re than a whitish blob of ice. The clothing and all the details of its shape were so rimed in pale needles and granules as to render the figure quite unrecognizable beyond the fact of its humanity. It was quite large enough to be the Prince. Only an occasional twitching of the limbs, and a slight, fitful turning back and forth of that ice-encrusted head showed that any life at all remained.

  Lady Ninazu, meanwhile, remained drawn back as far as possible from the rescue operation. She had fallen silent again, and the fear she had displayed before was now intensified, and focused on the frozen man.

  Suddenly she raised her head, with a motion so sharp and sudden that others turned to look in the same direction. There was only the square darkness of the central tower rising against the stars, punctuated at a few points with the narrow sparks of lighted windows.

  “He’s not down here,” she announced positively. “He’s up there.” And she raised an arm and pointed with assurance.

  “Are you going to help these men?” Yambu demanded in a threatening voice. “You must do it now.”

  The younger lady might not have heard. She continued staring at the tower.

  Yambu went to her and shook her. When that rough treatment had no apparent effect, she slapped Ninazu in the face. The swing was more like a man’s blow than a woman’s, and it brought forth a little shriek of sheer astonishment.

  The slap took Arnfinn by surprise. He shouted at Lady Yambu and took a step toward her. But she ignored him and did not shift her attention from Ninazu.

  The older woman pointed with a bony finger to the form stretched on the pavement. “Help this man!” she barked.

  And Ninazu, yielding to the other’s will, moved closer to the icy figure. Murmuring softly, she began to work a spell.

  With a sudden gasp the man on the pavement began to breathe again. The sound of his breathing, hoarse and deep, came as a new presence within these dark stone walls.

  Meanwhile the hands of others had been gently picking and brushing the frost away from the Prince’s gray-blue face. Already much of the frost was falling and melting away from his body.

  After that first deep breath, Mark’s body was racked with convulsive shivering. But his breathing continued, gradually steadying into an almost normal rhythm.

  And now Zoltan and Ben were drawing the second body up out of the dark water.

  And again Ninazu was retreating, shrinking back against the stones of the confining wall. She murmured: “That can’t be him, I tell you. He’s up in the tower.”

  Once more Yambu had to bully her. “As I have told you, this man is your father. And you will help him, now, if you want us to help you any further.”

  The younger woman’s eyes turned to Arnfinn. She raised her hand in a gesture of appeal, with wondering eyes, as if she was amazed that he would allow her to be so insulted.

  He was silent for a few moments, looking from her to Yambu, and back. Then he said to Ninazu: “My lady, help him. If you please.”

  Ninazu nodded, with acknowledgment of his command if not belief. Her look was one of dazed incomprehension.

  But she turned back toward the pool and repeated the spell that she had used before.

  Both victims were now undoubtedly alive and breathing, but neither of them was fully conscious, and it was obvious that both were going to need further help.

  There was a rapping on the gate, and Ben opened it to admit soldiers who had come delivering food, hot drinks, the clothing and the blankets that had been ordered, a whole mound of them. Arnfinn went to help Ben take delivery.

  Zoltan, attending to the two semiconscious men, muttered: “If we could only get them out to Draffut now—we need a boat for that.”

  “There is—” Ninazu began, and then stopped as if she thought she had better say no more.

  “There is what?” Arnfinn asked. “What, my beautiful one?” he coaxed.

  “There is a small boat here,” Ninazu went on reluctantly. “The workers who maintain the pool use it to get back into the channel that leads from the lake into the well.”

  By bending over and peering back into the tunnel’s mouth, it was just possible to see the boat where it was tied up. Reaching it would require opening a metal grillwork that blocked the tunnel entrance.

  The grillwork could be opened only from inside the grotto, and Ninazu demonstrated how. In a moment Zoltan was splashing through the water, pulling in the little boat.

  Meanwhile Ben and Yambu were frantically busy getting the two victims into dry clothes and trying to feed them broth and brandy. Then they put them into the boat.

  “We must get them to Draffut,” Ben decided. This was a tactical decision, and Ben was in command.

  Zoltan, at Ben’s orders, got in and started paddling. The boat was a tiny thing, unseaworthy, really meant for only one occupant. To take it out on the lake with three people was chancy, and to put any more in it would be suicidal.

  Now Lady Ninazu approached Arnfinn. “I insist,” she dared to say, “that you take me to my brother at once.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  At about an hour past midnight, the man who called himself the Ancient One had jumped astride his griffin and launched himself confidently into the night air from atop the highest tower of his captured castle.

  His main objective was to find out what was happening on the mainland, in particular what had happened to his garrison at Triplicane. The last winged messenger to reach the castle from there had croaked out an almost indecipherable tale of calamity, a disturbing though incoherent report of what sounded like mass slaughter confused with entertainment, the performance of some show. To the Ancient Master it at first sounded like diabolically clever treachery by some member of that garrison.

  As soon as the creature had delivered this message, it had simply flown off again into the night, in direct disobedience to orders. That had been more than an hour ago, and the flyer had not returned. Nor had any of the others.

  It was also the powerful magician’s intention to discover what had suddenly gone wrong with his winged scouts. When he had climbed to the high aerie where his griffin rested, he had found the place empty except for the griffin, the cages and roosts used by the lesser beasts deserted. The two humans who were supposed to be in attendance on the beasts had looked on helplessly, fearful of their master’s wrath; the Ancient Master had only glowered at them, a look that promised much, before he hurried on.

  Ordinarily he would allow no one but himself to ride the griffin, and unless he gave the griffin special instructions it would refuse to carry anyone but him.

  Besides the difficulties on the mainland and the trouble with the scouts, there was another problem also requiring the wizard’s attention tonight. Something bizarre was reportedly moving around out in the lake, tipping boats and terrifying troops. All in all, the Ancient Lord had already become sufficiently concerned to take the first preliminary steps toward calling up a certain squadron of demons he had been keeping in reserve, a group that could be mobilized with relative ease. And the calling of demons was not a step that this wizard took lightly; he knew from bitter personal experience how great could be the dangers in trying to use such creatures as servants or allies.

  Once he was well airborne, soaring high over the lake, he was able to see that a great many more lights were burning in and around Triplicane than was usual at this hour of the night.

  From this altitude he could also see that the lakeside manor occupied by young Lady Ninazu was illuminated even more prodigally than the rest of the town. He decided that he would probably look in at the manor before returning to the castle, whether or not the garbled report of disaster proved to be a false alarm. There was no doubt that Ninazu could be an entertaining wench. There were several things about her that the wizard found especially intriguing, and if he had not been so busy trying to consolidate the gains he had won from Honan-Fu, he would have spent more time with her, or perhaps brought her to the castle—

  The griffin was rapidly bearing th
e magician closer to the town and manor. Now he observed that the open field close before the manor was also encircled by torches, some of which had burned out, though a number were still guttering. They shed enough light upon that field to let him see that it was littered with what appeared to be the bodies of many soldiers, in uniforms of gray and red. The sight banished all thoughts of pleasure for the time being. The wizard who rode the midnight air commanded his griffin to descend. He needed no magical subtleties now to be sure that the report of disaster had not been false.

  He was unable to count the bodies quickly enough to have the total before he landed, but certainly there were more than a hundred of them. More than half, at least, of the entire garrison.

  What had caused the officers to gather their men here? And what had struck the troops down, once they were assembled?

  The wizard landed and at once leaped from his steed’s back, drawing Shieldbreaker as he did so. The griffin, as accustomed as any beast could be to even stranger sights than this grim field, sat down as a dog or a lion might, with its forequarters high and its avian forelegs straight. In this position it waited quietly.

  The Ancient One, Sword ready in his right hand, looked about him. Shieldbreaker was quiet, indicating that no enemies were lurking in the immediate area now. All across the field the bodies lay in a kind of random distribution; here a pile of several together, there a scattered few, there again an open space. And everywhere the ground could be seen it was lightly trampled, as if by hundreds of human feet.

  There was something odd here, something beyond the fact of the slaughter in itself. It took the wizard another moment to realize what it was: many of the signs of a conventional battle were missing, including the inevitable broken weapons, the bits and pieces of equipment cast aside. He could hear no moaning wounded. And in fact, he realized after another moment, there was no blood at all to be seen. The men of his army had fallen in scores, perhaps in hundreds, but not one of them appeared to have drawn his weapon or tried to defend himself.