Sightblinder's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  Each room was lighted and aired by two narrow windows, built out in a slight bulge of wall and equipped with interior shutters, most of which were standing open. Arnfinn supposed a slender person might have been able to squeeze his way in or out through one of these windows, or at least could do so if there were anything but the sheer face of the wall outside. There were no other visible entrances or exits to the apartment, except the tunnel through which Arnfinn and Ninazu had come up.

  As Arnfinn went through these rooms he received a strong impression that no one could have occupied them for a long time, perhaps for years. A thin film of dust covered all horizontal surfaces, and there was unmistakable evidence that some of the waterfowl so plentiful around the lake had taken advantage of the open windows to come in from time to time.

  Several times during the hour that he spent alone in these rooms Arnfinn had interrupted his examination of the place to look out into the dim passageway again and speak softly to Ninazu, trying to persuade her to join him. He had almost given up on being able to do this, when he looked up from the examination of a cabinet and saw her standing in the doorway of the passage, looking in at him.

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Arnfinn said gently: “Your brother isn’t here after all.”

  She looked back at him helplessly, saying nothing. Her elaborate long dress, not made for boat rides and climbing through dark passages, was smudged and slightly torn in a couple of places, and her hair hung round her face in disarray. She was absolutely the most beautiful thing that Arnfinn had ever seen.

  Arnfinn, now feeling as helpless as the lady looked, cast his gaze around the room in which they were standing. It was on the lower level of the apartment, and roughly semicircular in shape. There were chairs and dusty tables in the middle of this room, as if for some kind of bookish work, and shelves of books around the curving walls. Arnfinn had learned to read, better at least than most of the people in his village. But he had never seen as many books as this, and many of the titles were in languages he did not know. Even those in his own language were hard to understand. At least some of them, he was sure, must have something to do with magic.

  He said: “I suppose you and Kunderu must have lived in these rooms. There are beds in the two rooms upstairs.”

  “Yes, my brother and I lived here much of the time.” Ninazu came closer to him, walking slowly into the center of the room. It was as if she had forgotten again that there was something here of which she was afraid. “We were always together when we were children. We made up our own games, Kunderu and I. Even when we were very young we knew we were both going to be magicians.”

  “Like your father.”

  “Oh, father, yes. Father pretty much let us do whatever we wanted.” The lady shrugged. “He was usually busy with his own work.”

  Arnfinn felt a tremendous relief that she was at least talking to him rationally again. “What about your mother?” he asked. “You’ve never told me anything about her.”

  Ninazu drew symbols with one finger in the faint dust on a workbench. She said: “I don’t know much about her. She died when Kunderu and I were very young.”

  “That must have been very sad for you.”

  “I don’t remember.” Ninazu’s voice was remote. She turned away from Arnfinn and went to a set of cabinets, tall and ornately carved, that stood against the flat interior wall beside the doorway to the adjoining room, and below more shelves of books. She pulled open the doors of one of the tall cabinets, and then stood looking at the diverse objects arrayed on the shelves inside as if she had expected to see something rather different. Many of the things on the shelves were hard for Arnfinn to recognize. There were bones and a stuffed bird, and little piles of what looked to him like rather ordinary rocks.

  The lady was pointing at one of the small piles of rocks now. She said thoughtfully: “Kunderu was trying to evoke a demon once, when he was only twelve. He was using these. Father found out before he got very far and made him stop.”

  Arnfinn was aghast. “Fortunately!” was the only comment he could find to make.

  Lady Ninazu looked at him with almost open rebellion in her eyes. “My brother could have controlled a demon, with my help.”

  “But—Ninazu, a demon! You felt the ones outside just now. How could you have wanted—that? How could your brother want it?”

  Ninazu’s gaze had become almost demure. “You have never dealt with demons, lord?”

  “That—that’s beside the point.”

  She shrugged boldly. “We didn’t know quite what it was going to be like. But we could have managed, we could have stayed in control, Kunderu and I together.” Then the growing, visible anger of his wizard-image crushed her opposition, and she shrank back timidly. “Oh, great lord, we were very young.”

  “Yes. You were. You must have been. Demons are tremendously dangerous, and I am glad that you did not succeed.” Arnfinn spoke with great conviction, as if he really were a wizard and knew what he was talking about. Maybe, after this morning’s brief whiff of demons in the tunnel, he knew enough.

  Ninazu looked at Arnfinn strangely now. “I have told you, my lord, my lover, that you were our first success.”

  “I?”

  “Yes, lord. I see that you are pleased to have another jest at my expense.”

  “How, in what way, was I a success for you? When? I want you to tell me.”

  Ninazu stood with downcast eyes, almost in the attitude of a child fearing punishment. Still her tone dared to be reproachful. “It was two years ago, lord. A little more than two years now… but you know all this as well as I do, lord. You know it better.”

  “Tell me, I say. I want you to tell me what you are talking about, what happened, just as you remember it.”

  “Yes, lord. I am talking about the help we gave you, Kunderu’s help and mine, that enabled you to find your way here across the ages.”

  “Across the what?”

  Ninazu ignored the question. “We were looking for something that would-—irritate our father, show him what we could do, that we could be magicians too.”

  “The help you gave me?” Arnfinn was struggling to understand, but at the same time not at all sure that he wanted to understand.

  “You and I have talked about all this before, my lord and lover.” Ninazu sighed. “Many times we have laughed about it in our bed.”

  Arnfinn was very tired. He sat down on a stool before one of the tables. “Never mind that. I would hear it all again.”

  The lady leaned against the other table, her arms folded. She recited: “Kunderu and I were very angry at our father for being so oppressive all the time. We had been experimenting with ways to get back at him. We worked and worked, until finally our efforts—brought us in touch with Your Lordship, across the gulf of years.”

  Arnfinn couldn’t understand what she meant by the gulf of years. “You were trying to evoke a demon, I suppose. And you got me instead.”

  “Have I displeased you, great lord, with my poor telling? Did it really happen in some other way?”

  “I don’t suppose so, Ninazu. No, you must know what happened. I am sure it must have happened as you say.” Arnfinn rested his chin on his fist and tried to think.

  Ninazu was musing aloud, as if she too were grappling with some kind of puzzle. “You could have found someone else in this time to help you, I suppose. But Kunderu and I were the ones you chose.” Suddenly grief and fear overwhelmed her again. Raising her head, she cried out: “Kunderu, where are you?”

  A gull-winged lake bird had been just about to land on the sill of one of the open windows behind her, and her sudden outcry frightened it off. The bird veered away from the tower, letting out a loud, harsh cry.

  Ninazu screamed, and spun around in terror.

  Arnfinn experienced a sudden insight. “It was only a bird, Ninazu. Are you really so afraid of your brother as all that?”

  “You are wicked to say that!” Then, aghast at her own boldness, she
brought her hands up to her mouth.

  “You were afraid to come into these rooms when you thought he might still be here.”

  “I love my brother, and I will save him!”

  “Are you sure that he is really a prisoner? How are you so sure? These rooms are not a prison,” Arnfinn pointed out. “We got into them easily enough, without passing any locked doors or guards. Kunderu, if he was here, ought to have been able to get out the same way. Besides, it doesn’t look to me like anyone has lived here for a long time.”

  “He was here!” Ninazu whispered the words with tremendous conviction.

  “He’s not here now. Maybe he’s somewhere else in the castle. Or maybe somewhere else altogether.”

  Lady Ninazu’s eyes had closed, as if she were in agony. “Kunderu is here somewhere,” she breathed, softly but with great intensity. “My brother is here, and I am going to save him.”

  “All right, if you say so. But I don’t see or hear anyone in these rooms but us. He’s not here now.”

  “Great lord,” she breathed more softly and hopelessly still, “I had thought that you were going to help me.”

  And with that Ninazu slumped down into one of the dusty chairs and abandoned herself to the saddest, most hopeless weeping that Arnfinn had ever heard.

  In a moment Arnfinn was at her side, all his efforts to be firm and practical crumbling into dust. “I will help you. I will help you, whatever you say. Whatever I must do.” And he held her fiercely, in bewildered helplessness.

  * * *

  Mark, with Ben and Lady Yambu nearby, had been standing atop one of the lower parts of the grotto wall when he shouted at the demons to disperse.

  “The same shout that sent them off,” Ben commented, “will draw some people here. People of a kind I fear we’ll like no better than the demons.” He gestured at the wall with the hidden exit. “Let’s move on up.”

  “Yes, it would seem to be time for that.”

  With Mark in the lead, the three of them climbed to the niche where Ninazu and the latest Sword-bearer, whoever he was, had disappeared. They entered the dark tunnel that they found there, and advanced cautiously. As they climbed farther they began to speculate in low voices on the possible identity of the person who was now carrying the Sword of Stealth.

  Yambu, ascending between the two men, said that she now felt reasonably sure it was the youth Arnfinn they were following.

  Ben, who was bringing up the rear, was more than a little skeptical of that suggestion. “That scrawny peasant? I find it difficult to believe he would have had the guts to come after Zoltan and me, and hit Zoltan over the head in that shed. And then, to get aboard a griffin, and ride it out here-”

  Here in the dark tunnel where no one could see her, Yambu allowed herself to smile broadly. “What you tell me you went through to get here, my friend, was hardly less fantastic.”

  Ben grunted something, then swore softly when he stumbled in the darkness. Mark, alertly in the lead, was silent.

  The three of them went on up.

  Their general plan now was to reach one of the hiding places high in the structure of the castle recommended by Honan-Fu; also Mark and Ben in particular nursed some hopes of being able to get back the Sword of Stealth from Arnfinn, if it was really he who was carrying it again.

  Their whispered planning session had not made much headway, nor had they gained much distance upward along their gloomy escape route, when Ben hissed for silence. His two companions halted with him, holding their breath. In a moment they were all able to hear the soldiers arriving in the grotto they had just left. It sounded like one had come over the wall to open the locked gate for the others. In another moment there was a whole squad of them in the grotto, beginning a clamorous search.

  Mark, Yambu, and Ben crept on, as silently as possible. Almost at once cries of surprise sounded from below and behind them, indicating that the soldiers had found the two ropes severed and the prisoners gone.

  Mark methodically continued upward. The two others followed. Either the soldiers would quickly locate the hidden exit from the grotto, or they would not. After a minute Ben muttered: “I could wish for Wayfinder in a place like this. Or Coinspinner at least.”

  “Go ahead,” Mark whispered over his shoulder. “But you won’t have either one of them in hand after you’ve wished. So let’s get on with what we have.”

  Which was not, Mark added silently to himself, much in the way of weapons. Ben had left his staff behind him long ago, and Lady Yambu was an unarmed pilgrim. Mark himself had brought one dagger back with him from his trip out into the lake, a gift from the officer Cheng Ho passed on to Mark by Draffut.

  At least all three of them had eaten heartily last night, and all had been granted an interval for rest. These benefits, along with Draffut’s healing treatment of Mark, had restored them all to something approaching normal strength and energy. Before they left the grotto Ben had refilled a couple of last night’s drink containers at the well, and slung them on his belt; if they could find a hiding place, they ought not to die of thirst for a day or two at least.

  Presently the three came to the end of the first hidden passage, to find themselves in what looked like an ordinary if almost unused storeroom. Mark paused in the entrance to the storeroom, frowning. This was really not what any of them had been expecting. Honan-Fu’s directions for finding a hiding place had been hurried and perhaps unclear. The three paused for a brief whispered conference.

  There were two doors to the storeroom, besides the one by which they had entered, and the three people had no means of telling which way Ninazu and her Sword-bearer might have taken from this point.

  Before the three had chosen a way to go, they could hear movement outside one of the doors.

  Quickly and efficiently, making plans with no more than a swift exchange of gestures, they had arranged themselves in ambush, with the men against the wall behind the door.

  The door swung in. There was only one soldier, and he had come alone here to look for someone or something, not expecting trouble. He saw Yambu, standing alone in the middle of the dingy storeroom, and he took a step toward her and started to ask a puzzled question.

  He never got the question out. A moment later, Ben was able to unbuckle the sword belt from the soldier’s body; he needed to pick up the soldier’s dagger, too, and use the fine point to bore another hole in the belt before he could buckle that belt around his own waist over the strongman costume. While he was thus engaged, Mark dragged the lifeless body out of sight.

  Yambu signed for silence, then made another gesture, pointing back over her shoulder. There were faint sounds, as of cautious footsteps, in the tunnel through which they had come up. Evidently the enemy had found the hidden entrance to the tunnel and were already following them up from the grotto.

  The three went warily out into the corridor from which the lone soldier had entered. Mark shrugged over the choice of directions, and turned left. Moving in that direction, they quickly reached an ascending stairway, which took them steeply up again. Going higher within the architecture of any castle was very likely to bring you to a more defensible position. The structures were, after all, designed with defense in mind.

  This stair went up a little way without a break, or any other exit, and then emerged onto the cylindrical outer surface of the tower. At this point it became almost uncomfortably narrow, with only a sheer drop on the left side, and continued up around the outside of the tower in a spiral.

  The stair did not quite reach the top, but came to an abrupt end some three or four meters below a gap in the parapet encircling the roof. From the top of the stair a removable wooden ladder extended the rest of the way to the top. The three went up this ladder and found themselves on the tower’s flat, circular stone- paved roof, some ten paces in diameter.

  There was a small roof cistern here, which had some water in it; Ben’s jugs were probably not going to be necessary after all. Most of the tower’s rooftop was open to the s
ky, but at the side of the roof opposite the cistern a small, half-open shed had been constructed, to serve as shelter for a lookout and perhaps for a small signal fire. Some wood was stacked for this contingency. In another place a pile of head-sized stones had been neatly pyramided, a routine provision of armament for any last-ditch defenders who wished to discourage their enemies from following them up the stairs.

  The wooden ladder was obviously another means to that end, and Ben had already taken advantage of it, pulling the ladder up briskly after them. None too soon, perhaps. The ladder had only just been removed when Yambu took a quick glance back and down upon the exterior stair and saw red and gray uniforms coming up.

  “Hush!” she warned her companions softly.

  Listening, all three of them were able to hear a dogged, soft, dull thudding noise.

  “Shieldbreaker,” Mark breathed unhappily.

  The other two nodded. They had all heard before the sound made by that Sword as it was carried into combat range of its bearer’s enemies, whoever they might be.

  Whoever now had the Sword of Force in hand was coming along their trail, up the exterior stairway. But whoever he was, he could not get at them, at least for the moment.

  “But listen again,” Ben whispered, frowning. “I could swear that there are two of them. Two Swords.”

  Straining his ears, Mark found that he could indeed make out an extra, doubled thudding.

  “There cannot be two,” Yambu objected softly but angrily, as if she were quietly outraged that the rules of the Sword-game might have been changed without her being told.

  “Wait,” whispered Mark. “I wonder. Yes, that must be it. Sightblinder.”