Farslayer's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  The hermit ran forward. Regardless of the slippery mud, regardless of the protests of his own painful body, he plunged his shovel into the cratered ground and began to dig again.

  Presently the smell of old death, as if at some opening of hell, came surging up to meet him. He choked on it, but persisted.

  In a few moments he was sure of what had happened. He could see now that the body of Cosmo Malolo, which had been decomposing for the past month inside its crude blanket-shroud, had for a second time been pierced through the heart by the Sword of the Gods.

  Gelimer threw down his shovel. His muddy fingers, trembling, closed upon that black, mud-spattered hilt. With that contact his fingers ceased to tremble. Muttering half-finished prayers of gratitude to Ardneh, and perhaps to other, darker gods as well, the hermit carried the Sword up out of the shallow, blasted pit.

  Exactly who had thrown the Sword this time, and why vengeance had been wasted upon a victim already dead, were questions that did not now even cross his mind.

  The grove around him was as silent and tranquil as ever. Though the day was bright, here under the trees it was almost dim with their heavy shading. Standing erect, Gelimer saluted the grave of Geelong with the Sword. Then, gripping the knurled hilt in both hands, the hermit began a ponderous, spinning dance—

  His dance was carrying him, step by step, out of the grove and into the open air, where you could see for kilometers in all directions except that of the mountain whose shoulder he was standing on. He had not whirled thrice beyond the trees before there appeared to him, standing only forty or fifty meters away in sunlight, the image of the demon Rabisu. The demon came in the guise of an armored man, tall as a house, half transparent but immense, who ran forward threateningly, raising some blurred weapon—

  Gelimer saw the approaching shape, and uttered a hoarse cry. In the next instant he felt the Sword fly free, tearing itself by its own power out of his grip, an instant before he would have let it go.

  The blade passed straight through the demon’s image as through a mirage, seeming to do no harm. Then, like an intelligent arrow, Farslayer curved its own pathway in mid-flight. But not back toward the apparition. Instead the Sword went down on the north side of the river, somewhere over the Senones stronghold.

  The figure of the demon had stopped in its tracks, and turned to watch that darting descent. Now it turned back to confront Gelimer. Rabisu’s assumed countenance, which had been recognizable as the semblance of a human face, was now chaotic, indescribable. The apparition stood as if paralyzed, and from its demonic throat there issued a last cry, a great howl that went on and on.

  That outcry lingered in the air even after the image of the demon had disappeared.

  * * *

  The mermaid, Soft Ripple, had plunged into the river immediately after she threw the Sword. But she surfaced again very quickly, risking retaliation by the angry men around her, unable to resist the attraction of watching the weapon in flight. Not that there was much to see, a mere rainbow flicker toward the slope of the mountain to the south.

  A moment of silence hung over the boats and the island. It was broken by another loud outcry, near at hand.

  This scream had come from the throat of a woman Zoltan had never seen before. Her thin figure, wrapped in the robes of a sorceress, came tottering forward from a recess among the rocks of Magicians’ Island. Facing the mermaid, this apparition halted, and uttered another hoarse scream. “Not Cosmo! No! You shall not kill him!”

  Bonar raised a hand and pointed. “That is the Lady Megara Senones, the bitch- sorceress. We must take her prisoner. Gesner, can you deal with her magic?”

  Gesner opened his mouth and closed it again, making no promises, not even of effort.

  But Prince Mark was paying little attention to his immediate companions. “My lady,” he called to the figure on the rock. “Are you in need of help?”

  The woman Bonar had called Megara, the supposed sorceress, turned a distracted gaze in Mark’s direction. And Zoltan, as he got his first full look at her face, took her for an old woman, even older than Yambu perhaps. At a second look he was not so sure of her age, but certain that she had been through terrible things.

  Soft Ripple, thrashing in the water nearby, shrilled at her “I know who you are, old woman. Your Cosmo is dead now! Even for you there can be no stopping that Sword. Not even you damned arrogant magicians can manage that!”

  Slowly, in small jerky movements and little slumps, Megara standing on her rock relaxed from a posture of rage and anger into one of weariness and despair.

  When she spoke again, she glanced toward the mermaid, and her voice was very tired. “I fear that you are right, fishgirl. If Cosmo was not dead before this…” Then she saw Bonar glaring at her in something like triumph. She cried to her hereditary enemy: “Will you kill me, then? Strike, if you will, there is nothing to prevent you now!”

  Ben edged a little nearer Bonar, ready to restrain him from accepting this invitation.

  Mark, still speaking calmly, told the lady: “We are going to the south shore, after the Sword. Come with us, if you will.”

  “It no longer matters to me where I go,” the sorceress said after a pause. “What magic I can attempt no longer works. Except my little boat … yes. I accept. I’ll go with you. If I could even see his body there—it would be better if I could know with certainty that he is dead.”

  “Cosmo Malolo?”

  “Of course. He and I are lovers.” The claim was made proudly but it seemed grotesque.

  “Ah,” said Yambu, who until now had been attending silently. “And that night, on this island, where the killing started—the two of you were discovered by your father?”

  “Yes. That is what happened. And Cosmo killed him, with the Sword.”

  Mark had by now gone to the lady’s side, and was offering her his arm, while Bonar seethed in not-quite-silent protest. His protests had no effect. Both boats were shortly under way again, Megara riding with Prince Mark aboard the one that did not hold the clan chief of the Malolo. Soft Ripple followed swimming, staying within easy earshot.

  The young mermaid had more that she wanted to tell Megara about Cosmo.

  “I knew what you were doing, the two of you, meeting on the island. I watched your two boats coming and going. And I knew what he did to my friend Black Pearl. Did you know that your marvelous Cosmo screwed around with mermaids?”

  Megara was sitting straight in her seat, looking straight ahead, as if she could not hear.

  “Tell us about it later,” Ben grumbled at the mermaid in a low voice.

  “No,” said the prince. “No, I think that we should hear Soft Ripple’s story now.”

  The oarsmen worked, the two boats moved steadily toward the south shore of the river. Soft Ripple kept on talking.

  “I knew Black Pearl was up to something,” the mermaid said. “Finally I followed her, and I found out that she made many visits to Magicians’ Island. Eventually I found an underwater tunnel there.”

  Soft Ripple went on to relate how she had discovered that a Malolo boat, the same one, was invariably tied up in one of the island’s concealed coves when Black Pearl paid her secret visits there. Later on she became aware of another boat, one that came out to Magicians’ Island from the Senones side of the river, propelled by sail and with a single occupant. It was a small craft, and Soft Ripple thought that perhaps it was partly propelled by magic. Certainly magic had somewhat protected it from observation. It had invariably come out to the island when Cosmo’s craft was also there. On the first occasion this might have happened by accident, but on later occasions their meetings had obviously been planned.

  Soft Ripple had at length grown curious enough to risk the secret underwater passage for herself, choosing a time when the island was otherwise deserted. Overcome by curiosity, and perhaps by jealousy, she had forced herself to go on, despite the buzzing of minor powers that generally frightened away her mermaid sisters as well as the fisherfolk of
both clans.

  Later, her curiosity grew so great that she even dared the passage when she knew that Meg and Cosmo were in the grotto, and she had spied on them, unsuspected, as they lay together.

  “We can sometimes see quite well from underwater, did you know that? And we can hear. I saw and heard the two of you, holding up the Sword and talking about it.”

  Lady Megara turned finally. She changed her position so that she was looking down at the creature swimming in the water beside the boat.

  Soft Ripple’s eyes were glittering as she spoke. “Then, later, I spied on Black Pearl and Cosmo. He was magician enough to fix it so she grew legs, if only for a little while. Did you know that? Legs, and what’s between them, too. That’s what he wanted from her. That’s what men always want. Yours wasn’t enough for him.”

  “Fables and fairy stories,” said Lady Megara instantly. Her voice was as soft and certain as any that Zoltan had ever heard. “Cosmo told me about you. And about the other one, Black Pearl or whatever her name was. How he had been trying to help you, out of the goodness of his heart. How you became impatient and angry when he couldn’t cure you immediately, how you were starting to make up lies about him. Yes, yes indeed, he told me.” And the lady in the boat nodded and smiled, almost sweetly, at the accursed creature in the water.

  “Oh no. Oh no. It’s you who lie.” The mermaid, swimming on her back, gazed up at the people in the boat, gazed at the Lady Megara in particular. It was as if the enormity of what the lady was saying held her hypnotized. “I talked to Cosmo, yes. Why shouldn’t I? I told him that I wanted legs, too. And he—he said he’d kill me if I tried to make trouble. But if I waited, and was patient, and said nothing to anyone, then maybe it would be my turn next. I knew what he meant, he meant after he was through with Black Pearl. Then he would see to it that I got legs. But I would only have had them for a few minutes at a time. Now I know he never really meant to help any of us…”

  Lady Megara had long since ceased to listen. She said, to Mark and the others in the boats: “Cosmo showed me the Sword that he had hidden. He told me what it was going to mean for our future. Our families were both hopeless, lost in feuding. But that was not for us … the two of us were going to run away, taking the Sword with us. We would sell Farslayer in some great city, and that would give us the money we needed for the future.

  The lady had grown animated in telling her story. “Let our families feud and kill each other if that was what they wanted. We would get away, and live our own lives, lives of peace and decency, somewhere else.”

  “Of course”—and her animation fled—“we would have to avoid my father at all costs.”

  “And then,” said Lady Yambu, “one night your father caught up with you.”

  * * *

  The two boats still made progress toward the south shore, while the mermaid continued to swim beside them. Now, reviving from the near silence of pain and despair, she once again shrieked curses against Megara and her beloved Cosmo.

  Lady Meg continued to ignore her. But Zoltan, listening to Soft Ripple, believed what she said, or most of it, and thought that most of the other people in the boats believed her also. Zoltan wondered if Megara had ever suspected that her lover had been given to seducing mermaids. If so, Megara had put the idea firmly from her, and was not going to entertain it now.

  Judging by Megara’s expression, she was still refusing to credit such outrageous allegations, or even to think about them. Refusing to admit that such creatures as lowly fishgirls could have any important role to play in anything. That anything about them could be of any importance to the important people of the world.

  But the lady in the boat was more than willing to converse with Mark, the prince who would accept her and listen to her as an equal. “I loved him,” she repeated brightly, proudly, confidingly, as if she and Mark were the only people on the river. “We met on the island—the first time quite by accident. We loved each other from the first.”

  Again the mermaid screamed something foul.

  The lady ignored the fishgirl. “And then, Cosmo showed me the marvelous Sword that he had hidden here.”

  At last, with an appearance of confidence, she deigned to answer the one who taunted from the water. “Yes, Cosmo told me that sometimes he caught mermaids. He was a kindhearted man, and he wanted to do something for the poor creatures. So sometimes he took them in one of his magical nets, for purposes of experimentation. It was all for their benefit. Of course I never asked their names. As for the idea that he might have had affairs with them…” That was obviously too absurd to deserve denial.

  “He had Black Pearl. And he was going to have me next, I tell you!” Soft Ripple shrieked, her voice almost unintelligible now. Her small pale hands were pounding water into foam.

  “But he never did, did he? I’m sorry for you, my dear.”

  “He had Black Pearl, and—and—”

  Soft Ripple’s voice broke, then collapsed completely in grotesque hatred, jealousy, suffering, and rage. And then suddenly she was only a young girl, weeping, drifting almost inertly beside the boat.

  Mark asked the Lady Megara: “If I may, my lady, go back to the Sword for a moment. Where did Cosmo first obtain it? Did he ever tell you that?”

  “He told me, freely, that he traded with a mermaid for it. And he had begun to fear that some of the creatures were developing their—their own grotesque feelings for him. That they were making up fantasies. I only know that he never…”

  * * *

  Lady Megara talked on, and now it was the mermaid’s turn not to listen. Soft Ripple had fallen quite silent, gliding on her back, looking up expressionlessly at the sky. But still she swam beside the boats, as if secured to them by some invisible chain.

  The woman in the boat continued speaking. “But my father grew suspicious. He must have followed me, secretly, that night. It may be that some of my magical powers were beginning to fade, because I was no longer a virgin.” The Lady Megara made the declaration proudly.

  “He came upon us as we lay together. He stood over us, hand on the hilt of his sword, thundering judgment, consigning us to our fates. I, the faithless, treacherous daughter, was going to spend the rest of my life in a White Temple. As for Cosmo, the Malolo seducer, a hideous death awaited him.

  “But for once the judge was not allowed to enforce his sentence. He turned his back on us, and I suppose he was about to call out to his men to come in. But as soon as he did so, Cosmo pulled the great and beautiful Sword out of its hiding place, and stabbed him through the back.

  “I had risen to my knees, about to try to plead with my father. When I saw Cosmo strike him, I could neither speak nor move. My father never uttered a sound. He turned partway around, with the Sword still in him, and looked at me with a great and terrible surprise; it was as if he thought that I had been the one to strike him. And in a way I had.”

  “Now, for once, I saw him as someone who could be hurt, someone who could need my help. He tried to speak again, but he could not.

  “And then, a moment later, he fell dead.”

  Lady Yambu said something, so low that Zoltan could not make it out. Still the oarsmen rowed stolidly, and the boats advanced.

  “Cosmo must have tried to talk to me after that. But I was paralyzed in shock.

  “Perhaps I said something to him then, something terrible that made him leave me and run away. I don’t remember. I don’t remember. All I know is that I loved him, and I love him still.”

  Megara suddenly slumped over in her seat, swaying as if she might be on the brink of complete collapse. Yambu soothed her, stoically and almost silently, with memories in her own mind of some similar experience herself.

  Eventually Megara raised her head and spoke again. “The next thing I remember is that my father’s men had rushed into the grotto, and were trying to revive me. His body still lay there on the couch, or just beside it. Someone had already pulled out the Sword that had killed him, and I suppose had alread
y used it again. When the men saw that my father had been struck down by Farslayer, they naturally assumed that it had come magically into the grotto from a distance and that one of the Malolo must have thrown it. Of course none of them blamed Cosmo, or even thought of him, I suppose. If they ever thought of him at all, he was not considered dangerous.

  “And so began our night of the great slaughter but I knew no more about it. I knew nothing else very clearly for about a month.”

  Soft Ripple, abstracted now, continued to swim silently beside the boat.

  And Bonar, riding in the other boat from Megara, confirmed how, on that night of terror, Cosmo had returned from one of his magical night outings, at about the time of the first (as the Malolo thought) Sword-death.

  It had been a night of vile weather, of sleet and wind and snow. As a result, almost all members of both rival families had been gathered around their respective hearths.

  There had been quite a number of eager, excitable young Malolo men on hand that night, the flower of the family youth. The same thing across the river. And the leaders on both sides had been killed quite early that night.

  Cosmo on coming home that night had of course said nothing about his having been on Magicians’ Island, or about the patriarch of their enemies having died there at his hand.

  But Bonar could say something now about his cousin having gone to that island frequently.

  He added that, on that night, Cosmo had tried to get the others to interrupt the cycle of killing. But as usual no one had paid him much attention. Cosmo had been no more highly respected by his own family than he was by their enemies. He was looked on as a failed magician, who had not been very good at anything else, either. His pleas and warnings on the night of killing had been scorned and disregarded.