The Silver Stone

by Joel Rosenberg

  Yet another: “I agree with my fellow the Count of the Pine Barrens.”

  And another: “As do I.”

  Marta’s father rose yet again, and faced Ian. “So, Ian Silver Stone, you claim to be the herald of one Harbard the ferryman, with information for the Table.” He made a come-on gesture. “Declare yourself, if you please.” He sat back down and folded his hands in his lap.

  Ian’s shoulders were aching from holding Gungnir at port arms. He brought it down, to set the butt against the floor, gently. “Well—”

  Whoom.

  The floor vibrated, a gong of an infinitely deep bass.

  All of the men behind the table were on their feet, most shouting, their faces contorted with anger. It took a moment for Argenten Horcel Tyrson to quiet them, by forming his silver hand into a fist, and pounding it on the table, like a built-in gavel.

  It felt like a long time until the argenten spoke again. “It will not be necessary to threaten us with the spear Gungnir, nor will that win you a vote from the Table that is to your liking.” He looked up and down the Table. “I see no dissent here on that, Ian Silver Stone.”

  “But…” Ian was going to say that he hadn’t intended to do anything with the spear. He had been able to set it down without making everything shake before, and that was all—

  But an explanation would seem like an excuse, and this wasn’t an audience that would tolerate excuses.

  He squatted, slowly, and carefully, gently, set Gungnir down on the marble floor, willing it to do nothing, to shake up nothing, willing it so hard that, again, Harbard’s ring pulsed on his thumb.

  The spear lay there, a foot in front of him. He looked from side to side, among his companions. “Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t touch the spear, not even with the toe of your boot.”

  He pulled off his gloves and tucked them into the back of his belt. “I apologize,” he said, quietly, “for the disturbance. It was unintentional.”

  “As it was at the dock?” Argenten Horcel Tyrson asked. “Did you not mean it there, either?”

  Ian didn’t like Horcel Tyrson, but that didn’t mean he could ignore him. And it didn’t mean that the guy didn’t have a point, after all. “Oh, I meant it there,” he said. “I wanted to make the point to you that I’m not just a guy with a stick.” He raised his voice as he addressed the rest of the Table. “I am not this Promised Warrior of yours. But I’m not somebody to be ignored, either. Not here and now. What I am is the herald of one who calls himself Harbard the ferryman. He believes that a war is about to start between Vandescard and the Middle Dominions, a war that threatens to shatter a peace that he finds to his liking. He has gone to some trouble to send me here to stop that.”

  Horcel Tyrson was still on his feet. “And what if we do not want to heed the words of this… ferryman?”

  “He said I was to threaten you with Odin’s Curse,” Ian said. He extended his hand toward Horcel Tyrson with the curious cupping gesture Odin had made. “He set an apple on the table, and murmured something, willing it to …”

  At first, Ian thought that Horcel Tyrson was simply sitting back down.

  But then he made a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a scream, and pitched forward from his seat, the spastic motion smashing his face down on the Table itself so hard that Ian couldn’t help groaning in sympathy.

  But it didn’t slow him; Horcel Tyrson fell to the floor, his body contracting and relaxing like a frog’s leg touched by an electric wire.

  Ian took a step forward, stopped, then leaped across the spear and onto the surface of the table, and then to the other side, unsurprised to find Thorian Thorsen at one side of the twitching man, Torrie at the other. Arnie Selmo was only a few moments behind; he slid under the table and came out on the other side of Horcel Tyrson.

  The argenten was still in seizure, and Ian grabbed onto his tunic to prevent his bloody face from being smashed against the table again. Arnie Selmo kicked the chair out of the way, and the two of them bore Horcel Tyrson to the ground, Ian following what felt like centuries-old direction from Doc Sherve on how to handle an epileptic.

  There was the quick clickety-click-click of steel on steel, and Ian looked up to see Thorian Thorsen standing between Ian and a dozen drawn swords, while Torrie protected him on the other side. Both Thorsens had drawn their swords, and the sounds of clashing swords had announced that they had engaged, but Ian could see no blood on either of their weapons.

  Moving slowly, deliberately, Thorian Thorsen dropped the point of his sword. “There is no need for a fight,” he said.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Ivar del Hival said, his voice loud and booming. “They seek only to stop the argenten from hurting himself further.”

  Maggie’s voice cut through the babble of voices. “Leave them be!” she shouted. “They do no harm.”

  Well, they weren’t doing a whole lot of good, but they weren’t doing any harm, either. That was the idea when you were dealing with somebody having a grand mal seizure. Don’t interfere with his movements; just try to keep him from hurting himself.

  The twitching slowed, then stopped, and Horcel Tyrson sagged back onto the floor. It was slick and wet with blood from his nose.

  Arnie was mopping at Horcel Tyrson’s face with a blue bandanna, now mostly dark with his blood. “It’s okay,” he said, turning Horcel Tyrson’s head to the side. “Don’t need to inhale any vomitus, eh, Argenten?” he asked the unconscious man. “Just rest,” Arnie said, patting him gently on the shoulder. “You have had what you would call a fit, but we call a ‘seizure’ where I come from.” He was supposedly talking to Horcel Tyrson, but his voice was pitched loud, to carry throughout the hall. “You’ll be just fine in a little while,” he said. He raised his head and looked Ian in the eye. “A seizure. Brought on by Odin’s Curse. You’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

  Yes, he was. Perhaps it was no wonder that Hosea had been having seizures, and that they seemed to stop when Hosea had reached Tir Na Nog, heading for Harbard’s Landing.

  Odin, you cheat, he thought.

  Odin had lived up to his reputation for trickery and deception when he had tried to keep Maggie and the Thorsens from coming after them. It was entirely possible that Odin’s Curse had been what had started all of this, that his scheming had been intended, from the first, to bring Hosea to Tir Na Nog, accompanied by some sucker who would carry his spear—and his curse—to the Seat.

  And if all that ended up neatly disposing of that merely human nuisance Ian Silverstein… well, that wouldn’t bother the old god at all, now would it?

  Arnie laid a couple of fingers against the side of Horcel Tyrson’s neck, and held up his free hand for silence. “He looks bad, but he’s okay,” he said, his mouth twitching. “I just happen to have some medicines for epilepsy back in our rooms, but I think we’d best not use them. I don’t think we’ll need to.”

  “Yeah.” Ian nodded. There was a serious question about how effective Newer World medicines would be in Tir Na Nog. And there was, at least in Ian’s mind, some real question as to whether or not Harbard would have found occasion to tamper with them while they were at his cottage.

  He looked over at Torrie and at Thorian. If they hadn’t been here, Arnie would be dead right now, a sword of a Fellow of the Table stuck through him. Or, at best, if they hadn’t vaulted the table and tried to help Ian, they all would have been hauled away to the local dungeon.

  And the two Thorsens wouldn’t have been here at all if Maggie hadn’t come along with them.

  Ian caught Maggie smiling at him. He raised a finger to his forehead, in a casual salute.

  Nicely done, he thought.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Mouth of the Wolf

  It took some time to quiet the Table. By then, soldiers in the many uniforms of the Seat Guard arrived, and had borne off the now sleeping Horcel Tyrson on an improvised blanket stretcher.

  When the nobles of the Table resumed their seats, it was
a different atmosphere, less formal but even less friendly.

  The Duke of Bight’s Bay stood up, and the murmuring ceased. “I assume that you didn’t intend to harm Horcel Tyrson.”

  Ian shook his head. “I didn’t harm him, at all. That was Odin’s Curse, not mine.” He spread his hands. “I… don’t have those kinds of powers,” he said. “I’m not an Old One, after all. I’m just a … just a man.”

  “But you hold the spear of a god, and it doesn’t harm you. And you… seem to have cast Odin’s Curse on Horcel Tyrson.”

  Ian shook his head. “I… if I did, and I don’t think I did, I don’t know how.” He spread his hands. “I just don’t know.”

  His mind raced. It was obvious that Odin could cast his curse from some great distance. Was it the ring? No; that didn’t seem likely. The only thing the ring had done was to pulse on his thumb every now and then. If it had simply been Ian extending his arm …

  Not the right time to test it. But it should have felt different, or it at least should have felt like something.

  “Truly, I meant no harm,” Ian said. “I don’t know…”

  “Then it’s clear that you have to prove yourself,” the Duke of Bight’s Bay said. “All this talk of you being the Promised Warrior or not the Promised Warrior, of curses that aren’t curses, and spell that aren’t spells.” He looked up and down the Table. “I… I find myself uncertain. I had no inclination to war with the Dominions, not now, not with—” He stopped himself. “Not with the present situation, by and large, as it is, by and large.” He shook his head. “But I must say to my fellows that I’m torn. Putting a hand in the Wolf’s Mouth has long been a privilege, not a right.” He held up his metal hand. “We all have faced the Pain, but we faced it to prove ourselves worthy to lead, worthy to follow, worthy—not to prove ourselves not… untruthful.”

  He walked to the curtain behind the Table, and pulled it to one side. It moved silently.

  Behind it lay a stone table, just short of chest high. And on the stone table was a stone sculpture of the head of some animal.

  It took Ian a moment to decide it was a wolf; it was too large, the teeth too many, the jaw too broad, giving it an almost cartoony look.

  A rack behind the table held what Ian at first would have guessed were a dozen lances. Instead of being tipped in a spearpoint, each was topped by a wooden disk, about the size of a dinner plate.

  “Each of us has, like our Father Tyr, faced the wolf, and put our hand in his mouth, and gripped the Pain.”

  “And that’s how you lost your hands, eh?” Torrie said, startling Ian. Torrie had been silent, which was too quiet even for him.

  “No,” the duke said. He held up his metal hand. “That is how we sacrificed our hands, demonstrating our worth and virtue.” He took one of the poles down from the rack. “It is the right of those who think the candidate worthy to attempt to push him off, after he’s gripped the Pain; it is the right of those who think him unworthy to block those attempts.” He replaced the pole. “But the Promised Warrior, of course, will feel no pain when he grips the Pain; his hand will not wither and burn.” He gestured toward where the spear Gungnir lay on the hard floor. “Just as you grip the spear of Odin without harm.”

  Bullshit. Ian had touched the spear while he wasn’t wearing Freya’s gloves. Just once, in his sleep. He rubbed at the still-sore spot on his left arm where the blister had been.

  “And you’re asking me to stick my hand in that statue’s mouth, and grab hold of this Pain, while you stand around and decide if I’m going to die or not.”

  The duke nodded. “Yes.” He sat back down, and waved a hand toward it. “That is precisely what we ask.”

  Ian swallowed, heavily, but it didn’t remove the metallic taste of fear from his mouth. They expected him to burn his hand off—at the very least. And what if one of them decided that they were all better off without Ian?

  “But what if he doesn’t?” Maggie stepped forward. “What if he says, ”So be it, you’ve received the warning, do with it what you will—I’m going home.“ What if we just turn our backs and walk out?”

  The Margrave of the Hinterlands rose. “You have appeared in front of the Table by your own choice, all of you. Do you think you will leave without being judged? Do you think that we are helpless old men for you to taunt and then just walk away? Step forth and be judged.”

  Torrie’s mouth was dry. Time had run out. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.” He took a step forward. “Judge me, instead. I’m his champion.”

  Arnie remembered a smile.

  He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember what village that crossroads was just outside of. But it was somewhere between Nam’po and Sindae-Dong. Dog Troop had been cut off from the rest of the Seventh. The Old Man—the captain’s name was Young, and while he was really in his midtwenties, he looked like he was about eighteen, maybe; he was destined to be known as the Old Man, although not to his face—had gotten his orders over the radio, and had ordered what was probably officially called a strategic withdrawal, but everybody knew was a retreat down the road until they met up with some support.

  The Old Man had left behind a two-man machine-gun team with orders to hold out as long as they could, and then get away, if they could. They’d probably slow the lead elements of the oncoming division for a few minutes, and minutes were in short supply.

  The gunner’s assistant was an acne-faced kid from somewhere in Georgia; he just nodded, once, his face white as a sheet. The gunner, though, was that loudmouth Petrocelli, from New Yawk, and for once Petrocelli didn’t mouth off. He just nodded, said, “Understood, Cap’n,” and smiled.

  Arnie still remembered that smile, the smile of a man about to spend his life to buy his brothers-in-arms a few minutes, a distraction.

  But shit, this wasn’t that bad. Petrocelli had been a kid, maybe twenty-three, twenty-four. He’d thrown away maybe a half century of life.

  But what did Arnie have?

  Not a damn thing worth keeping.

  Not his life. He wasn’t afraid of dying. It had already happened, more than not. The best part of him had died in his arms not so long ago, and the only reason he hadn’t gone along with her is that she made him promise not to, and Arnie wouldn’t lie to Ephie, not on her deathbed, and not any other time.

  Besides, he had been lucky. He’d had it all. It just hadn’t lasted forever. You get lucky enough to live with a good woman for ten, then twenty, then thirty years, you get to the point where you can’t even remember how long it’s been that you’ve known that the old cliché about your “better half” was just the plain truth, no embellishment.

  And then, after he had finally retired, and after he had just started to enjoy spending every remaining hour of his life with her, an old friend in a white jacket had called them into his office. He had known from the start that Doc had bad news: Doc only put on the professional look of concern when he had bad news.

  But Arnie hadn’t been prepared for how bad the news was. Nobody could be ready for that obscene, ugly word: metastasis. The pain got worse, and only ended with a needle that brought her, finally, easily, to the end of all pain.

  Somehow, he had gotten through each day since then. And sometimes it didn’t hurt for minutes.

  So it was with not even the slightest twinge of regret that Arnie took a running start to leap to the surface of the Table, then jumped over an empty seat, toward the Wolf’s Head.

  He landed hard, and wrong, and pain shot through his left ankle as his left leg buckled beneath him; even as he sprawled hard on the marble floor, he was already forcing his right leg underneath him.

  Arnie Selmo rose to a three-point stance like a runner would take, and then launched himself forward, toward the Wolf’s Head, bouncing on his leg like it was a pogo stick.

  It was like he had put a knife into his kneecap, but that wouldn’t matter, not much longer, as he thrust his hand deep into the stone mouth. Stone teeth scraped against his arm, drawing blood,
but that wouldn’t matter, not for long.

  There was what felt like a wooden bar at the back of the mouth, about where the throat should have been.

  Arnie gripped it tightly, and waited for the Pain, and the end of it all.

  But there was no pain. A distant humming filled his ears, growing so loud that he couldn’t hear anything else, making his whole body vibrate like a guitar string. The pain in his ankle and kneecap vanished in that vibration, along with dozens of other minor pains that he only noticed by their absence.

  He still lived, dammit. He should have been burned to a cinder in moments, but instead, he was still standing, still holding onto the wooden bar at the back of the Wolf’s Mouth.

  “No!”

  Nobody would ever believe him, anyway, so he would never mention that it was with anger and disappointment that he gripped the wooden bar in the back of the Wolf’s Head with all the strength he could muster, and yanked at it, shattering the stone sculpture into dozens of pieces, leaving him with what now was, inescapably, the handle of a war hammer in his hands, as he stood before the marble pedestal on which it had rested.

  He was angry, angrier than he had ever been, so it was the most natural thing to raise the hammer above his head, and smash down, hard, on the pedestal.

  It split in half with an almost unbelievably satisfying crrack!

  And in the rubble lay a diamond the size of an egg.

  Arnie turned to face the sea of faces, the rush of voices raised in shouts and cries, as he raised the hammer Mjolnir over his head.

  The words came to him easily, as he faced the men of the Table:

  “Does anyone,” he shouted, letting his voice rumble and roar, “any one of you care to dispute the safe passage of my friends from this Hall?”

  And then, only then, did the Hall fall silent.