Valder had no idea what Darrend was talking about. Only recently awakened from his nap and still not entirely recovered from his adventures, he was not very much interested in anything but once more disposing of the sword. “True Owner or not, I’d prefer you take the sword and finish your tests, if you’re going to,” he said testily. “Sir,” he added belatedly.
“Yes, of course,” Darrend said, accepting the weapon’s hilt.
Valder relinquished the sword and scabbard and then paused. “How long will the tests take?” he asked.
Darrend shrugged. “I have no idea. It depends on just what was done to it. With luck, we’ll finish by midnight; without it, we may never figure it out completely.”
“Oh.” Valder looked at the sword. “Well, good luck, sir.” He turned and marched back toward his tent.
He was fairly certain that sooner or later either the sword would again find its way back to him or he would be drawn to the sword. He wondered how much of his future would be tied to Wirikidor and whether the enchantment might be broken, or perhaps just the Spell of True Ownership removed, so that anyone could use the sword.
Darrend watched him go, fighting down a sudden urge to follow. He found himself thinking of urgent errands to be run in the vicinity of Valder’s tent.
Annoyed, he recognized the action of the Spell of True Ownership, trying to return the sword to its master — or perhaps its slave. One could never be sure with magic swords. He worked a simple counterspell against compulsions and stalked back toward the laboratory tent.
CHAPTER 13
After four days of study, days during which more than half the camp had been packed up and sent north while Valder did nothing of any use other than finally obtaining his accumulated pay, the wizards had finished their investigation of Wirikidor’s properties. Shortly after the noon meal, a messenger fetched Valder and brought him to the magicians’ circle.
Darrend was waiting for him in a blue-and-gold tent, where Wirikidor and its sheath lay on one of the two cots. Valder took the seat he was offered on the other cot and listened as Darrend spoke.
“We have finished our studies of the sword you call Wirikidor, despite its resistance to being handled by anyone but you and despite its constant attempts to get back to you. There are several details of its enchantment we can’t make out by any means currently at our disposal, but we have the basic characteristics figured out.”
Valder nodded, listening attentively.
“I’ve discussed it with the general. I don’t know if he has any use for it in mind yet, but he told me that, as the sword’s owner, you should be informed.”
“Very kind of him,” Valder remarked with mild sarcasm.
“Yes. Well, firstly, we were right about the Spell of True Ownership. The sword does have a variant of that spell on it, a deteriorating and unhealthy form. The Spell of True Ownership can be bad enough in any case, since nobody has yet established whether the person owns the enchanted object or the object owns the person, but in your case it seems to be especially bad, due to the spell’s decaying nature. The link between the sword and yourself is quite strong and will stay that way for... well, for a time. Before I can explain that, let me explain some of the other things.” He paused, as if uncertain what to say, and Valder prodded him, asking, “What other things?”
“Other spells — there are several other spells here, all woven together. I’ve never encountered anything like it. There’s Ellran’s Immortal Animation, for example — that’s a nasty, awkward spell, and your crazy hermit had no right to use it, if you ask me. It’s irreversible, completely irreversible — and what’s worse, it makes any spell linked to it irreversible, too. It’s the Animation that allows your sword to move of its own volition, as you’ve seen it do. Furthermore, the Animation makes the other spells on the sword permanent and unbreakable — unless one were to use really powerful counterspells, and, even then, it would be incredibly dangerous. The combination of the Animation and the True Ownership has the effect of linking you and your life to the sword — breaking the spells would kill you, at the very least, as well as destroying the sword.”
Valder stared at the sword on the cot opposite him. This was not anything he had expected. What it would mean to him was still unclear, but it appeared that Wirikidor’s existence was not going to be a mere passing episode in his career.
“This has its good side, of course,” Darrend went on. “The sword is virtually indestructible now, and there’s a curious benefit for you in that, as nearly as we can determine, you can no longer be killed by any ordinary means. Since your life is now bound up in the sword, you see, you can’t be destroyed by anything outside the sword.”
“If the sword is destroyed, you’ll die, very definitely — but it’s almost impossible for anyone, even a very high-powered wizard, to damage the sword, let alone destroy it. Ellran’s Immortal Animation is indeed very close to the immortality it claims. The sword itself can kill you, under certain circumstances — I’ll speak of that in a moment — but to the best of my knowledge, after intensive study by myself and my comrades, there is nothing else in the world that can.”
“What?” Valder blinked. He did not believe he had heard Darrend correctly. He was shocked out of the torpor that had beset him since Felder’s death.
“You can’t be killed, Valder; you can’t die by any means whatsoever, except to die on Wirikidor’s blade, or if someone should find a way to destroy the sword.”
“What?” Valder stared, still not comprehending.
“No one is going to destroy the sword; doing so would almost certainly cause a catastrophe. Valder, you are going to live until you die on Wirikidor’s blade. There is no other way you can die, not since you first drew the sword.”
Valder stared in mute astonishment.
“This doesn’t mean you’re invulnerable. You can still be injured — you just can’t die. You can be maimed, tortured, blinded, deafened, driven mad, crippled, dismembered, even cut into pieces — but you won’t actually die until Wirikidor kills you. That’s part of what’s so nasty about the Immortal Animation.”
Valder struggled to assimilate this information. “I can’t die?”
“Not from any ordinary means. However, there is a catch, and this is where that deteriorating spell comes into it. Your hermit substituted something else for the ring of drawn gold that’s supposed to be a part of the Spell of True Ownership, and the resulting enchantment is corrupt. You became the true owner of the sword when you first drew it; whoever drew it would have owned it. However, because of the flaw, you won’t stay the true owner forever — only gold never tarnishes, not whatever substitute was used here. You’ll be able to draw the sword and use it one hundred times, give or take one or two — and that’s all. After that, the sword will renounce you. The next time the sword is drawn after that — and you, Valder of Kardoret, will be the only man in all Ethshar not able to draw the sword then — whoever draws the sword will be its new owner, and you will be the first man to die on Wirikidor’s blade when that happens. The new owner will be able to draw and wield it ninety-nine times, give or take — one fewer than you, at any rate — and then it will turn on him. After that the third owner will be allowed ninety-eight, and so on, until some poor fool, centuries from now, will draw it and have it turn on him immediately. That will use up the spell completely, and there will be no true owner thereafter.”
“Wait a minute — nothing else can kill me, but Wirikidor is going to turn on me and kill me?”
“That’s more or less correct.”
Valder was outraged. “That’s insane! What sort of an enchantment is that?”
Darrend shrugged. “Hermits often are insane. I suspect this one didn’t like you.”
“How long will this take, then? How long do I have to live?”
“Who knows? That doesn’t seem to be built in anywhere. There isn’t any compulsion to draw the sword; leave it undrawn and in theory you could live forever.”
Valder stared first at the wizard and then at the sword. He was still having trouble taking this in. As a soldier, he had long lived, albeit reluctantly, with the idea that he might be killed at any moment. Now that was no longer true. How could the hermit have wreaked such havoc on his life?
He could still be harmed, though. “I’m not sure I want that,” he said slowly. “Can the spell be removed?”
Darrend sighed. “Not by me. I don’t think anyone could do it. Your hermit was either very lucky or an incredibly talented wizard. It would take a spell more powerful than all the ones he used put together to remove the enchantment, the way he has everything linked up, and I doubt that any wizard alive could handle such a spell. I certainly can’t. Ellran’s Immortal Animation is usually rated as an eighth-order spell, and that’s just one of the charms he used. Only one wizard in a hundred or so makes it past fourth-order enchantments alive. On a good day, I can handle one eighth-order spell, but not a tangle like that; nobody I ever heard of short of Fendel the Great could undo that mess.” He paused, a startled look on his face. “I just thought of something,” he said. “Nobody really knows what happened to Fendel; do you think he might be your hermit?”
Valder shrugged. “I suppose he could be.”
“Oh, probably not.” Darrend waved the possibility away.
“Isn’t there any other way of getting the enchantment off, other than this impossible counterspell?”
“Not that I know of. There are legends about ways of canceling out wizardry entirely, like snuffing a candle, but I’ve never believed in them. If they existed, the northerners would have found them by now and used them against us.”
Valder knew enough to dismiss such scare stories.
“Why worry about it, though?” Darrend said. “You don’t need to remove the spell; it won’t be that hard to live with, if you’re careful about drawing and not drawing the sword. You’ll have to keep Wirikidor with you, of course — leaving a Truly Owned object around can be dangerous. If it takes a tidal wave or an earthquake to bring it to you when the spell has built up enough potential, you’ll get a tidal wave or an earthquake and all the damage that would cause. It’s a ruthless sort of spell.”
“Oh,” Valder said. He had been thinking of quietly burying Wirikidor somewhere to keep it from being drawn that hundred-and-first time — or ninety-ninth or one-hundred-and-third or whatever.
“I think that covers the ownership angle,” Darrend said. “Now, about the sword’s name and what it does. The hermit told you that ’Wirikidor’ means ’slayer of warriors,’ but that’s a bad translation. ’Mankiller’ is closer. It doesn’t care if its victims are warriors, so long as they’re human, male, and past puberty.”
“Oh,” Valder said again. That explained why the sword had not killed the dragon or the woman and why it had hesitated against the half-human shatra.
“Furthermore, as you have discovered, it’s ’man killer,’ not ’men killer.’ It’s only interested in taking one life each time it’s drawn.”
“I had noticed that,” Valder agreed.
“Yes, I’m sure you have. Each time it’s drawn it will kill a man as quickly as you can provide it with a victim. You’ll want to be careful about that. I think you can control which man of several it kills, but I doubt you can hold it back entirely — it needs to kill someone. You saw that with that convict. Against its proper foe — a single man — it’s as close to unbeatable as wizardry can make it. You’ll never need to worry about being outmatched. Besides the Animation that lets it all work, it’s got three separate blessings — one of which I never encountered before — and the Spell of Perpetual Sharpness and a few other little charms and cantrips. This hermit may have been mad, but he knew an amazing amount of magic and he didn’t stint in using it. If he could do something like this after most of his supplies were destroyed, he’d certainly be an asset to the war effort.”
“He said he had already served.”
“If he did, he either kept his talents hidden, or has developed them since — or maybe he was kept secret. Ordinarily, I’m sure I’d have heard of anyone with his abilities.”
“He seemed quite old,” Valder said. “Maybe he was before your time. Maybe he is this Fendel the Great you mentioned. I don’t know.”
“Well, whoever he is, you’ve got an impressive weapon here. Not flashy, but powerful. I’m returning it to you — no point in letting the Spell of Ownership get dangerous — but I want to warn you to be extremely cautious with it.” He reached out and pulled the sword and scabbard from the table, then handed them to Valder, who accepted both, then slid the blade into its sheath and hung it on his belt.
“Get to know it,” Darrend said. “You and Wirikidor are going to be together for the rest of your life, so you had better become accustomed to its behavior. Be grateful that it hasn’t got a mind of its own — reflexes, yes, but no mind that I can detect, no whims, no personality. It’s a very powerful and valuable item — and a very dangerous one as well, both to you and to others.”
“Yes, sir.” Valder was not absolutely certain that Darrend was technically a superior officer, but he spoke like one and obviously commanded considerable respect, so that the “sir” seemed natural.
“Remember that it will keep you alive but not safe. Don’t get overconfident, or you might wind up so badly crippled or maimed that death would be mercy. And don’t forget that you’re destined to die on its blade. That sword is both friend and enemy; remember that.”
“Yes, sir.” Valder did not think he was likely to forget anything of such vital personal importance.
“I’ve passed on a complete report, and your superiors are considering just what to do with you. Since your old unit is disbanded, you’ll be given a position here, I understand. I think they’ll probably find some special use for you and Wirikidor — it would be a shame to waste such a sword’s talents.”
“Yes, sir.” Valder was still too busy absorbing what he had been told to wonder about what special duties he might be given.
“I believe the general had hoped we might produce more swords like Wirikidor — after all, a weapon that can kill shatra at close range is impressive. Unfortunately, though we have identified most of the spells on it, we can’t figure out how to reproduce most of them without killing half a dozen people in doing it, so it looks as if you, Valder of Kardoret, are going to remain unique.”
Valder could think of no sensible reply to that. After a moment’s pause he simply said again, “Yes, sir.”
“That’s all,” Darrend said, motioning toward the tent flap. Valder got to his feet.
“Yes, sir,” he repeated, as he stepped out into the sunlight.
CHAPTER 14
Valder settled quietly on his cot, Wirikidor on his hip, and mulled over what Darrend had told him.
The wizard had seemed very sure of his findings. Valder saw no reason to dispute them, but had vague recollections of once hearing that magical analysis of enchanted weaponry was not always reliable. He glanced down at the sword in the dimness of the tent. It looked like an ordinary sword, just as it always had, yet its power had supposedly made him virtually immortal — so long as he did not draw the sword too often. About a hundred times, the wizard had said. Since leaving the marsh he had drawn it three — no, four times. He had killed the coast-watcher, the swordsman, the shatra, and the prisoner. That left him with a minimum of ninety-four and a maximum of ninety-eight more drawings, which seemed like a safe enough margin. Very few soldiers actually confronted a hundred enemy soldiers at close range in their whole careers, let alone killed that many. He himself had served six years before Wirikidor’s enchantment without ever being sure he had killed anyone.
Of course, there was the mention of possible special duty. That prospect might prove troublesome. He was a scout and preferred to remain a scout if he was to be a soldier at all. He tried to think what unusual service Wirikidor’s characteristics would be suited to.
He certainly wasn
’t going to be a fencing instructor, or anything else where he might need to draw his sword for any reason other than battle to the death. That eliminated sentry duty and guarding prisoners, as well, unless he were to carry a second sword, which would be awkward, to say the least.
He could be a fine executioner, but that seemed a waste of the sword’s power. Besides, he violently disliked the idea. He did not like killing anything, especially not people, most particularly Ethsharites. The fact that they would be helpless prisoners made it even worse. Not, he reminded himself, that the army had beheaded anyone in centuries or that they used a professional executioner in the first place. Murderers and deserters and so forth were usually hanged by whoever was handy. The poor fool he had killed in the general’s tent had been an exception; dying by the sword usually happened only in battle.
He tried to approach the question logically. Wirikidor’s magic was directed toward keeping him alive and killing other men one at a time, if the wizards had analyzed it correctly. The men that his superiors would presumably most like to kill would be the enemy’s soldiers. Therefore, it followed that Valder would be sent to kill enemy soldiers.
How was that a special duty? And would it be practical to send him into battle when he would need to sheathe his sword after each killing before its power would serve again?
He sighed and gave up. Whatever the special duty might be, it was likely to be dangerous and unpleasant, and there was no point in making life unpleasant by worrying about it sooner than necessary. He would have plenty of time to worry when he knew what was to happen. Whatever the duty, he could live with it — or if not, he would find some way out. There was always a way out.
With that thought, he rolled over and went to sleep.
He found himself in a dream — very obviously a dream, as huge runes on the wall in front of him spelled out, “This dream is being provided by Sharassin of Shan.” He supposed such runes might be drawn on a real wall somewhere, but he had no reason to doubt what they said in this instance; he felt as if he were dreaming. As soon as he had read them, the runes writhed about and reformed to say, “Dreams and communication wizardry of all sorts at reasonable rates.”
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