by Dave Duncan
Then he took another sheet.
Grand Master:
You are hereby authorized and requested to prepare Prime for binding on the night of the fifteenth instant.
Done by my hand and in the King’s name this fourteenth day of Thirdmoon, in the three hundred and fifty-seventh year of the House of Ranulf.
Durendal, companion.
He folded the papers, held wax in the candle flame, sealed them with his ring. He wandered over to rejoin Scrimpnel and Parsewood, enjoying their baffled stares and hoping his own face was not too scrutable.
“Whose throw?”
“Yours, obviously,” Scrimpnel said. There were two groups in the Guard now, and he was one of the young ones, those who had not been in on the Nythia campaign. Good man with a rapier, though. “May spirits of chance favor you wherever you’re bound.”
“Writing out your will?” asked Parsewood, who was newer yet, but a powerful saber fighter and clearly another good guesser. “You won’t tell us a thing, you big bastard, will you?”
Before Durendal could frame a reply with enough scathe, the door swung open to admit the most recent Blade of them all, although even he had several months’ experience now—a reminder of just how long the King had kept the respected Wolfbiter dangling. Despite His Majesty’s disapproval, Sir Snake’s name was apt, he being about as long and as slender as a Blade ever was. He affected a thin mustache, a supercilious manner with a nose to match, and he sat a horse like the shine of its hide. He would do very well.
Durendal sprang up and intercepted him before he could join the group. He passed him the letter. “Deliver this to Grand Master, no one else.”
The kid raised his eyebrows. “The Moor? Tonight?”
“Yesterday. And keep your mouth shut, totally. Report to Leader when you return.”
“But tonight is the—” Snake took another look at the deputy commander’s face. “At once, sir.”
As he went out, Chefney came in. Excellent! His luck was holding.
“Take over from me here, please, brother?”
Chefney nodded, curious but not questioning. Durendal followed Snake out, almost colliding with the returning page. Kate was no longer in the hall, but that was to be expected.
He tracked down Montpurse as he left the fencing gym. A distinctly frosty stare suggested the Commander already knew there was something afoot and he had not been informed. He still looked no more than fifteen.
“I’ve been detached for special duties,” Durendal said. “May be gone some time. Will you hold this for me—it’s my will—and see my things are put in a safe place? The cups are worth a fair bit.”
The Commander’s face went bleak. “Talk to Chancery. That’s their job, and Blades can’t always keep promises. Friend…I’m going to miss you.”
“These things happen. He’s the boss.”
“Yes.” Montpurse’s ice-pale eyes were asking how bad it was.
“I’d like you to wear my sword breaker for me, though.”
“I’ll see it’s kept safe.” He was not going to wear it, obviously, any more than his deputy would say where he was going. “Is this good-bye?”
“I’ll leave tomorrow.” Durendal told him about Snake and the changes that would be needed in the duty roster. Then there was nothing more to say and nothing left to do except go and find Kate.
6
He headed first for the White Sisters’ quarters. Crossing the western courtyard, he saw her coming toward him. They both began to run, shocking several elderly sniffers and a few grandly dressed courtiers. Before they even met he watched the hope die in her eyes and wondered if his face was as readable to everyone or if women were more perceptive than men.
They embraced in an impact that should have knocked her hat flying but didn’t. Eventually they broke loose and began to walk, holding hands still. Passersby coughed disapprovingly.
“It didn’t work,” she said. Statement, no question.
“I had no chance to ask. He called me in and gave me a posting, too.”
Her eyes scanned his face for clues. “Dangerous. And long. If it were short you’d be making plans.”
He would not lie to her. He never lied to women or had reason to lie to men. “And yours?”
“Just a dull guild of merchants in Brimiarde, worried in case some conjurer tries to steal their money.” She shivered. “Their halls will all be stinking with conjurements. Never mind. Is it true that Blades never sleep?”
“Almost never.”
She forced a smile. “Then we have the whole night ahead of us.”
They talked. They made love. They did both all over again. Moonlight crept down the wall, across the bed, and up the other side, dragging inevitable morning behind it.
“I will wait for you,” she said many times.
His heart ached. He had always believed that was only a manner of speaking, but there was a real pain in his chest.
“No, dearest, you must not. A Blade is not meant to be loved, because the King will always come first in his heart. I could have told him about you. Then he might have withdrawn his orders or delayed them. He’s not a cruel man by nature. I just couldn’t. Much as I adore you, I had to obey. Find a better man and forget me.”
“Will you come back? Do you expect to come back?”
“I hope to come back, but not for years.”
“I will wait for you, no matter how long.”
Once, after a long kiss, he said, “You have told me how Blades sound and feel and seem, but how do they taste?”
“Like strong wine.”
“Tis passing strange! So do White Sisters.”
“I will wait for you.”
“You mustn’t, but if I do come back and you are still free, then I shall sit on your doorstep till I die or you agree to marry me.”
Although he had revealed nothing about his task, he did let slip a remark about inquisitors—a breach of security, perhaps, but his mind was on other matters. It was one of those times when women like to talk and men don’t but will humor them in a good cause.
“Horrible people!” she said. “All time and earth and death. No love or air at all.”
He was sitting up cross-legged, admiring her body in the moonlight, exploring its contours with his fingers, not really listening. “You can tell what elements were used in a conjuration?”
“Usually. You do have scars! I hadn’t noticed them before. Let me see your back.”
“No, I’m busy. What elements do you sense in a Blade?”
“Love, mostly.” She sat up also. “I want to see your back.”
“No. Lie down and submit. Love, you say? I’m a killer, and you think I was made by spirits of love?”
She kissed him in passing, climbing around and over him. “Love isn’t only man and woman. It is many other things—motherhood, man and master, brother and sister, men in bands, simple friendship. Turn around; your back’s in shadow. There they are. They’re closer together at the back. Love can be dying for someone, even. Understand?”
“Love can be this, too!” He pulled her back into her proper place. She had already found his ticklish spots. The wrestling became heated.
“Now you see why Blades are such great lovers,” she said. “Because they’re bound by mmmph—”
Her lips were too precious to waste on speech.
It was dawn.
“I will wait for you.”
“I will be true to you.”
“Just come back safe and I will never ask if—mmmph!”
7
“We have met before, Sir Durendal.”
“So we have. I was not at my best that day.”
Durendal knew the sallow face, the bloodless lips, the lank hair, because they were part of his Nutting nightmares. He would not have known the name, Ivyn Kromman.
Grand Inquisitor’s gloomy office was a room oppressed by too many papers, folders, bookshelves, tomes, and unhappy implications. Even the dust and cobwebs seemed to whisper of
broken lives and buried secrets. Mother Spider herself had her back to the window, a huge and hunched blackness against the light. Durendal had been placed across the desk from her, better lit. Kromman sat at the end so that he, too, could watch the Blade’s face. Making other people uneasy must be an inquisitors’ instinct, like dogs’ barking.
“Have you reservations about having Inquisitor Kromman as your colleague, Sir Durendal?” Grand Inquisitor’s fish eyes neither blinked nor moved. Her fat white hands lay like dead things on the desk.
“I welcome his help in my mission.”
“You do understand that he has been working on the case for a long time and that your experience of foreign travel is considerably less than his?”
“I have the King’s word for it that I am to be the leader.”
She ignored that. “How much do you know of the matter?”
“Assume I know nothing at all and begin at the beginning.”
“Why do you not answer questions directly?”
Perhaps he was managing to give her a rash—he hoped so. “Why do you never blink?”
“Is that question relevant?”
“Yes. If Inquisitor Kromman stares at everybody as he likes to stare at me, then he will attract suspicion.”
She smiled without making a wrinkle. “I assure you that Ivyn can evade attention most expertly and has done so many times on His Majesty’s service. Does staring make you uncomfortable?”
“No. It just annoys me as a demonstration of bad manners. I have nothing to hide.”
“Do you feel happy at being chosen to undertake such an exotic quest?”
“Any man would be honored to be so trusted.”
She smiled again, but only with her mouth. “You see? You do have something to hide. By ‘any man’ you mean ‘all men’ and thus you are lying, because you have some reservation you do not wish to admit. A romance, perhaps? Ah!”
He reminded himself sternly that she was just guessing. She had a conjured ability to smell a spoken lie, but if he remained silent she was forced back on purely secular skills like face watching—at least that was what the Blades believed. It was also why criminals were put to the Question. Nevertheless, she had nettled him.
“Must we fence all day, or can we start shedding blood?”
“As you wish. Six years ago now, Master Polydin came to His Majesty with a wild tale of faraway lands. He told of the city called Samarinda in Altain, wherever that is, at the back of nowhere—ancient and isolated, a place of strange legends. Yet he swore that he had been there and that the strangest of these legends was true. The city is ruled by a military order, the Knights of the Golden Sword. He thought that there were twelve of these knights. They possess the secret of the philosophers’ stone and so they live forever.”
“Wild indeed! A sword of gold would be useless, of course, soft as wax. Unless it was enchanted, I suppose. What proof did he offer?”
“Only what he had seen. He may have been deceived, but he believed that he was telling the truth. I can testify to that—he was convinced in his own mind. He told us what he had witnessed. Each morning at dawn, the order will accept a challenge from any man of quality. One of the knights comes out to the courtyard of their castle, and the two of them fight with real swords. Almost always, the knight slays the challenger.”
Durendal was both skeptical and intrigued. Of course the King would have chosen to send a Blade to investigate such a story. His first choice had been Durendal himself, the candidate reputed to be the finest fencer Ironhall had produced in memory.
Grand Inquisitor smiled, reading his interest in his face or just guessing it. “A champion who succeeds in wounding the knight—a rare event, apparently—is rewarded with as much gold as he can carry to the gate. In so poor a land, there are aspirants aplenty. Men wait months for the chance to win their fortunes with a single stroke. And some do, that is the surprising thing. The house does not win every time, so it never lacks for players. It charges no entry fee and pays out in real gold. Where does the gold come from, if not the philosophers’ stone?”
It might be always the same gold, “won” by accomplices and smuggled back into the castle by night.
“You mentioned wounded? The knight is never slain?”
“Apparently not, although Master Polydin swore that he had seen one run through. A wounded knight reappears the next morning, healed and ready to fight again. They are reputed to be immortal. Old men swear that the current knights are the same ones they saw in their youth, still as young and virile as they were then.”
Durendal tried to consider the problem and decided that considering the problem would be a waste of time. The King and others must have investigated thoroughly and been convinced. He wasn’t, though. There would be a trick somewhere. “Our conjurers could not manage any of that.”
“Exactly. His Majesty resolved to send an expedition to the city in an effort to buy or steal the secret.”
“Buy? From men who own the philosophers’ stone? What could you offer them in return?”
Grand Inquisitor shrugged her heavy shoulders. “Knowledge. The King authorized Master Polydin to steal the secret if he could. He provided him with many arcane conjurations to offer in trade if he could not. If both approaches failed, and if he believed there was anything to be gained, Sir Everman had royal permission to accept the challenge.”
Everman had been a daredevil. He would not have been able to resist.
“And now? The King said he has an agent in Samarinda.”
“Hardly an agent. A collaborator at best. A local merchant who had befriended Master Polydin in the past and had dealings with him. He wrote a letter, which reached us a few months ago, claiming that Sir Everman has himself joined the order, the first new member admitted in centuries. He lives in the castle. Every twelve days or so, he answers the challenge.”
Gladiator, the King had said. But when Durendal had asked if Everman was to be brought back even if he did not want to return, the King had evaded the question. An immortal swordsman, the ultimate Blade.
“Those are the bones of the matter,” said Grand Inquisitor. “Ivyn knows the details and can provide them to you at leisure. You will have much time together for conversation.”
Durendal glanced at that flesh-crawling inquisitor and thought of several million people he would rather have as companions on a long journey. Almost anybody except Mother Spider herself, in fact. “I need a lesson in geography.”
“Ivyn has studied the route and spoken to merchants with connections in the east. In brief, the day after tomorrow you will sail from Brimiarde to Isilond, landing at Furret, and thence proceed overland to the Seventh Sea by whatever route seems advisable. The shortest route is across Fitain, but they have a civil war raging at the moment. Your way then takes you across or around the sea to Thyrdonia and up the Yvusarr River until you find a caravan traveling the Jade Road. A few deserts and mountain ranges later, you should arrive at Samarinda, probably on the back of a camel.”
He had been wondering if he should recruit more helpers, and the answer was obviously no. More people would merely find more opportunities for trouble. “Money?”
“His Majesty has been more than generous. Ivyn has been provided with ample funds in drafts drawn on reputable banking houses. You will have to convert most of them to gold before you enter Thyrdonia, of course.”
Ah! Someone was feinting. He turned to consider Kromman’s waxen features. “These drafts? Do they specify you by name?”
“Most do. Some are bearer instruments.”
“The King put me in charge of this mission—am I speaking the truth?”
The well-remembered croaky voice said, “Of course, Sir Durendal.”
“And are you prepared to accept my orders until we return to Chivial?”
After a barely perceptible pause, Kromman repeated, “Of course, Sir Durendal.”
“I want those drafts redrawn. I do not mind your keeping some minor amounts in your name in
case we become separated or I meet with misfortune, but the bulk of the funds will be under my control and I will carry them.” Whoever had the money would have the power.
The inquisitor looked to Mother Spider.
“Your request is much less reasonable than you realize,” she said. “Ivyn must leave in a few hours, and the clerks of Privy Purse are overworked as it is. To burden them further for a purely symbolic personal advantage seems very petty.”
“I will accept no other terms. Attend to it please, Inquisitor.”
Kromman nodded impassively. “As you wish, Sir Durendal.”
“I must be at Ironhall tonight. I can meet you tomorrow in Brimiarde. Where?” He had never been there. He had seen the sea only once.
“The Brown Fox in Seagate is adequate, Sir Durendal. I shall take a room in the name of Chalice, posing as a successful merchant who has hired two mercenary soldiers down on their luck for service in a private militia. You and your Blade should be dressed in suitable style—patched and threadbare. Please remember that cat’s-eye swords are well known in this country and keep the hilts under your cloaks. Make quite certain that you bear nothing that can be identified—no papers, letters, lockets, signets, nothing. The same goes for your horses’ tack, but you may lodge the horses themselves at the inn and I will have them attended to. You are listed in the ship’s log under the name of Sergeant-at-arms White, accompanied by Man-at-arms Ayrton, so you may as well use those names at the Brown Fox. The names on your passport for Isilond may be different, of course.”
Barely controlling his temper, Durendal said, “I can see why we may have to behave like criminals in Samarinda, but when did Chivial become so dangerous that a gentleman cannot use his own name?”
Kromman revealed a brief flicker of amusement, undoubtedly deliberate. “A swordsman should understand the importance of practice, Sir Durendal. His Majesty’s Office of General Inquiry is not merely responsible for the internal security of the realm, it also watches the King’s enemies in foreign lands. I have been smuggled in and out of other countries so often that all these habits are second nature to me. You and your Blade have much to learn if we are to survive our journey.”