“Being a pilgrim generally means not staying in one place, that’s right.”
“There’s nothing for me here either, not really. With all the elders in the family dead, Bonar inherits the manor, the villages, everything.” Rose was looking at him through narrowed eyes; in candlelight she was far from unattractive. Suddenly he realized that she must have recently put on some kind of perfume.
Just now, thought Zoltan, was not the time for him to say that he had committed his thoughts and his entire future to someone else.
Now his attractive companion, still obstructing the exit, had him by the sleeve, which she fondled as if testing the gray fabric. “Sometimes I think I’d like to be a pilgrim, too.”
“Really?”
“Yes. What else is there? There’s nothing else for me around here.”
“The life of a pilgrim is not easy, either.”
He tried to put her gently aside. Rose grabbed him, and made her plea more openly than before. “Zoltan. When you leave here, take me with you.”
Zoltan was doing his best to frame an answer that would not provoke a crisis, when, to his considerable relief, another candle appeared down the dim hallway. It was Violet, in a hurry, obviously bringing some kind of news.
Violet looked at the two of them sharply, as if she suspected what her older sister was up to. Zoltan was beginning to believe that Violet tended to see everything in terms of jealousy and suspicion. She was an anti-Senones fanatic, always ready to suspect some betrayal in that direction. At the same time, Zoltan thought, she might be somewhat jealously attracted to him, too.
And in the privacy of his own thoughts he tried to imagine how outraged both women would be at the idea that any man they considered at all interesting could be as obsessively smitten as he was—with a creature they considered little more than a fish.
But the message brought upstairs by Violet allowed little time for debate. The disgruntled soldiers had renewed their pounding on the rear door. It sounded this time like a serious attempt to break it down.
The upstairs seemed secure, as far as Zoltan could tell. So he hurried back downstairs. As he arrived in the kitchen he could hear the mercenaries outside, threatening now to burn the whole manor to the ground if their demands for more treasure were not met.
The doors themselves were truly strong, and for the moment seemed secure. Gesner, the claimed magician, was at least keeping his head well, even if not contributing much beyond that. He now assured the visitors that the manor’s sloping roof was of slate tiles. Most of the rest of the building was stone, and it would not be easy to burn. Gesner had now equipped himself with some serious-looking magician’s paraphernalia, and announced that he intended to do what he could with fire-preventing spells. And if a fire was started by anyone outside the house, he’d attempt to make the flames snap back at and burn the fingers that had ignited them.
Yambu approved this plan. Then she and Zoltan concentrated for the moment on organizing a more mundane line of defense, ordering servants to stand by in key locations with buckets of water. A well-filled cistern on the roof offered some prospects of success.
Bonar meanwhile had unlocked an armory on the lowest level of the house, next to the improvised mortuary, and was passing out weapons to his sisters and the remaining servants, or at least to those among the servants he could persuade to take them. Violet armed herself eagerly, and Rose with some reluctance followed suit.
Entering the arsenal himself, Zoltan selected a bow and some arrows from the supply available. Thus equipped, he ran upstairs again and stationed himself in a high window that gave him a good view of the rear yard. The fools out there were getting a fire going in the rear of one of the outbuildings, and a moment later Zoltan shot a man who came running with a torch toward the manor itself. The fellow screamed so loudly when he was hit that Zoltan doubted he was mortally hurt.
Another pair of mercenaries came to drag their wounded comrade away, and Zoltan let them do so unmolested, thinking they might be ready for a general retreat. The barn, or shed, or whatever it was, was burning merrily now. Fortunately it stood just outside the compound wall, and far enough from all other buildings that the spread of the fire did not seem to present an immediate danger.
Meanwhile the fire was giving him plenty of light to aim by, which put the attackers at a definite disadvantage. But Kosazlin’s shouts could be heard, rallying his men, and they were not yet ready for a general retreat. Taking shelter as best they could, they began to send a desultory drizzle of stones and arrows against the house.
When this had been going on for some time, Bonar, in a fever of martial excitement, entered the room where Zoltan was, crouched beside him and looked out. This window afforded the best view of what was going on outside.
“What’s burning? Oh, the old barn, that’s nothing much. How many of them have we killed?”
“None, that I know of. I hit one but I doubt he’s dead. Is the rest of the house still secure?”
“The ground floor is fine, I’ve just made the rounds down there.”
There was a sound in the hallway, just outside the bedroom, as of a servant running, calling. Then a brief scuffle.
Bonar and Zoltan both leaped up, leveling their weapons at the doorway. The door pushed open—
Zoltan found himself confronting a tall and powerful man who gripped a drawn Sword in his right hand. In the firelight that flared in through the open window Zoltan had no trouble recognizing his uncle, Prince Mark of Tasavalta.
Chapter Nine
Zoltan’s hands sagged holding the half-drawn bow, and the ready arrow fell from his fingers to the floor. For a moment he could only stare at this apparition blankly, and for that moment he was sure that it must be some kind of deception, that he was facing some image of sorcery, an effect of the Sword of Stealth or some other magical disguise and the apparition, if such it was, was lowering the Sword in its right hand.
“No need to think you’re seeing visions, nephew,” said the tall man, having observed the two occupants of the room carefully for a moment He spoke in Prince Mark’s familiar voice. “I would have hailed you down on the hillside, but I couldn’t get close, and I didn’t want to yell your name at the top of my voice. You gave us the devil of a chase uphill from the river. After we followed you to this house, we decided we’d look in to make sure that you needed no help.” Now Mark sheathed his Sword.
“We?” Zoltan could only repeat the word numbly.
“Ben and I.”
Behind Mark, entering from the hallway, appeared another big man. This one was indeed monstrously massive, though somewhat shorter than the prince and a few years older. Ben of Purkinje’s ugly face split in a reassuring smile at the sight of the bewildered Zoltan.
And he, the prince’s nephew, shaking his head in wonder and relief, at last remembered the chief of the Clan Malolo. “Bonar, put down your sword. This man is my uncle Mark, the Prince of Tasavalta.”
While Bonar was managing some kind of greeting, the Lady Yambu put in her appearance, to greet both Mark and Ben with great surprise and equally great relief.
* * *
A couple of the more trustworthy servants were posted as lookouts, while a conference of explanations was conducted. Almost the first question the two newcomers were required to answer was how they had gained entrance to the house. Mark explained, and apologized, for the secret violence of their entry. The Sword he carried at his belt was Stonecutter, and he and Ben had used it to carve their way in through the solid stone wall of the manor, a process Stonecutter’s magic accomplished swiftly and almost silently.
By now Rose and Violet, as well as Gesner, had joined the conference around the two newcomers, and were being introduced to them with a mixture of relief and apprehension.
Fortunately it now appeared that the mercenaries’ assault, such as it had been, had abated at least for the time being.
Ben, scowling out the window, muttered: “Maybe when the fire in back dies down the
y’ll try again.”
“Maybe.” The prince nodded. “That means we should use our time meanwhile to good advantage.”
And now for a time the conference adjourned to the great hall of the manor, where Mark and Ben were provided with food and drink. They found this welcome, having been through some hard traveling in the past few days.
Their riding-beasts, as Ben explained, had been lost in some minor skirmish with unnamed foes “between here and the desert.” Ben waved a huge hand in a generally southeast direction. For the past three days they had been on foot.
“But what brings you here?”
In answer to that question Zoltan’s uncle Mark explained that he and Ben had been on their way back to Tasavalta after concluding a deal with the desert tribesman Prince al-Farabi, by which al-Farabi had been allowed to borrow the Sword Stonecutter for a time.
With that transaction concluded, and after starting home with Stonecutter, Mark had received, by winged messenger, word from his father the Emperor. In a written message the Emperor informed his son Mark that important matters, requiring almost his full attention, were developing somewhere in the extreme south of the continent.
The Emperor had warned Mark to prepare for urgent action, and to await another message which, Mark hoped, would spell out in some detail just what he was expected to do.
“That still doesn’t explain how you and Ben come to be here. Did you mean to follow the river east, or—?”
Mark shook his head. “There was another part to the message. It suggested rather strongly that we might want to locate you. You, Zoltan, and you, Lady Yambu.”
The two pilgrims exchanged uncertain glances. “Did the message say why?” Yambu asked.
“It did not. But it did say that a Sword was at stake here, and that Swords should not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. So, we started for the valley of the Tungri as fast as we conveniently could. And here you are, and here we are.”
Zoltan whistled his amazement softly. “My great-uncle is quite a magician.”
Prince Mark sighed, but made no other comment.
Ben shrugged. “I’ve seen enough, that when the Emperor suggests something I’m inclined to listen.”
Yambu nodded her head. Meanwhile the folk native to the manor were watching and listening in silence, though Bonar once or twice seemed on the verge of breaking in with some sharp comment.
“How did you recognize me in the dark?” Zoltan wanted to know. “I mean earlier tonight, on the hill down toward the river?”
Huge Ben snorted gently. “Who else would be talking to a mermaid?”
“Oh.” Zoltan wondered if everyone in Tasavalta knew of his obsession.
Now Violet asked: “Excuse me—Your Grace? Your Majesty?—you say that the Emperor knew that your nephew and his friend were here? But how?”
Mark only shrugged. The gesture seemed to say that he did not understand his father’s purposes or his father’s powers. But the prince’s continued smile indicated that he had learned to trust those powers; and it no longer surprised him that he did not understand.
Ben asked: “But what’s going on here, Zoltan? Yambu?”
The two pilgrims told Mark and Ben of Farslayer’s presence here, and how the Sword had wrought such havoc among the clanspeople on both sides of the river.
Mark nodded. “We must do what we can to get it.”
* * *
A little later, when the people of the clan had left them, Mark also fretted aloud to his nephew about his ten-year-old son Adrian, who had been recently enrolled, or was about to enroll, in a new school, unspecified. There, his father hoped, he would be able safely to master the arts of magic for which he had such a natural aptitude, and which might otherwise prove such a burden to him as he grew up.
To Ben, Zoltan, and Yambu, Mark declared: “Old Karel has arranged something in the way of schooling. This time I expect it’ll work out successfully.”
Zoltan said: “We could use someone here right now with a little natural aptitude along the line of magic and a little schooling, too.”
No such luck.
Bonar and his sisters gawked at this royal personage when he rejoined them, and made efforts not to be overly impressed. They struggled not to be awed by his presence, or by that of the Sword he carried. Yet, at the same time, the Malolo survivors were more at ease now. If their manor was to be occupied at all, far better that it should be done by a reigning prince and his entourage.
It was easy to see that Bonar, despite his rather hollow protests that it did not matter, was somewhat perturbed by the tunnellike hole carved in the stone wall of his house, and by the ease with which these strangers had penetrated his defenses. But the physical damage could be easily enough repaired, and in the morning the huge man Ben helped the Malolo servants push back into place the blocks of stone that had been cut free.
* * *
Zoltan had already told Mark of his, Zoltan’s, successful search for Black Pearl, and in the same breath had informed the prince that Black Pearl had said she knew something of the Sword’s hiding place.
Bonar and his sisters repeated to Mark and Ben what they had already told Zoltan and Yambu, about the man Chilperic, who had come through here saying that he acted as the agent of the great magician Wood.
That got the prince’s full attention. “What did you tell him?”
“There is little enough we can tell anyone. He went on his way dissatisfied.”
Yambu and Zoltan also told Mark of the hermit.
Mark, who had of course heard of Black Pearl at great length while Zoltan was still in Tasavalta, listened sympathetically now to his nephew’s continued pleas to help her, but could not promise to be of any real assistance. “You’re sure it’s the same wench, hey?”
“Of course!”
“Pardon, Zoltan. Of course you are. It’s just that I have many other things to think of. Like Farslayer.”
Still, Mark promised that if another winged messenger should come to him here from Tasavalta, he would use it to send a return message, asking Karel about magical help for mermaids.
Zoltan momentarily regretted bothering his uncle with a personal problem. But only momentarily.
An hour or two before dawn, when the fire in back had burned itself out without any renewal of the mercenaries’ attack, and when most of his comrades were asleep, Mark found his way alone up to a flat portion of the manor’s roof.
Here he found a comfortable seat, which for a time he occupied in silence and solitude, regarding the night sky and its mysteries. But when a quarter of an hour had passed, there came an almost inaudible whisper of wings. The expected messenger, an owlish, half-intelligent creature, whose wingspan was greater than the span of the prince’s arms, came gliding down out of the stars to land beside him on a small parapet.
The prince of Tasavalta was not surprised and did not stir. “Hail, messenger,” he murmured in greeting.
“Greetings to the prince of Tasavalta.” The words were clearly only a memorized formula, and the thin, small voice in which they were spoken was far from human. Still, the words were clear enough.
“Do you bring me word from my father? From the Emperor?”
“Message for Prince Mark: No news from home. All goes well at home. I stand ready to bear a message back.”
No news in this case was good news. The prince had been away from Tasavalta for several months now, and he tended to worry about matters at home.
True, Mark had left the affairs of Tasavalta as well as the care of his second son, Stephen, now eight years old in the very capable hands of his wife, Princess Kristin. But still he inevitably worried.
“Any news from the Princess Kristin? Or greetings from either of my sons?”
“No news from home. All goes well at home. I stand ready to bear a message back.”
Mark sighed, and began to say the words he wanted the creature to memorize.
Chapter Ten
On the morning after that on w
hich the prince conversed with a winged messenger, the hermit Gelimer was sitting on a block of wood in his dooryard, gazing in the direction of his woodpile, which had been much depleted by winter. But at the moment the hermit was hardly conscious of the wood, or anything else in the yard around him. Gelimer was enjoying the promise of an early spring sun, and thinking back over his life. He found much material there for thought, especially in the days of his youth, before he had become a hermit.
He had become an anchorite long years ago, chiefly out of a sense of the need to withdraw from evil. But from time to time it was borne in upon him that evil, along with much else from his old life, was not to be so easily avoided.
Gelimer possessed, as did many folk who were not magicians, the ability to sense the presence of magical powers. And he could sense that there was a demon in the valley now.
He thought he knew why the foul thing had come. It was the Sword, of course, like any other great material treasure a lodestone drawing all the wickedness of the world about itself. When the hermit thought of demons, and of the men and women who consorted with such creatures and tried to use them, he was tempted to reclaim the Sword from where he had hidden it, and employ it to rid the world of at least some of those evildoers. But so far he had managed to put the intrinsically repulsive thought of violence away from him.
Another aspect of the Sword’s presence was inescapable. As long as he, Gelimer, knew where it was, had it virtually in his possession, he could no longer distance himself from the local political and military situation. Ordinarily he ignored the inhabitants of the valley, those of high station as well as low, and neither knew nor cared about the latest developments in the bitter feud between the clans. But now that was no longer an option; Farslayer had brought him an unwanted burden of power and responsibility.
When Gelimer had hidden the Sword, he had thought vaguely that with good luck the terrible weapon might remain where he had put it for years, for generations even, until no one any longer sought it in the valley. But already that had come to seem a foolish hope.
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