Mindsword's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  Then he was on his feet again, and briskly on his way. The hardest part of the long descent, down to where he’d left his riding-beast, must be completed before nightfall. Early in the morning he’d ride on, in the direction of Sarykam. He had a great gift now to give. A truly worthy gift, to place in the lovely hands of the Princess Kristin.

  Chapter Two

  In a small village at the foot of the Ludus Mountains, not many kilometers from the spot where the adventurer had very recently obtained his Sword, but at a considerably lower altitude, a blind albino man sat huddled in one corner of the small main room of a solidly built though sparsely furnished hut.

  Few people could have determined the blind man’s age by looking at him, but certainly his youth was decades past. His angular body, now slumped and blanket-covered in a crudely constructed peasant’s chair, would still have been very tall but for the fact that he never stood fully erect. Long ringlets of unclean white hair hung past his bony shoulders, entering into confusion with a once-white beard now colorless with old stains of food and drink.

  No mask or bandage concealed the empty sockets of his eyes; long-lashed lids sagged over spots of raw softness in a face that was otherwise all harsh masculine planes and angles.

  The blind man had lived in this hut, or in another very similar dwelling nearby, for the past fourteen years, rarely stirring out of doors for any purpose. Apart from his blindness he was not physically crippled, though his lack of deliberate movement, together with occasional nervous tremors in his limbs, suggested that he might be lame.

  Actually the chief cause of his immobility lay in a disability of his will. For fourteen years he had been obsessed with certain events in the ever-receding past.

  This afternoon two visitors were standing in the blind man’s hut. Both callers were men, and both wore the humble dress—common furs and homespun cloth—of inhabitants of the nearby village. Half an hour ago the pair of visitors had tapped at the unlocked door of the blind man’s house, waited with habitual patience for an answer that never came, and at last had let themselves in, calling loudly to announce their arrival. Since then they had been standing deferentially in front of the albino, waiting for him to show some awareness of their presence.

  At last the one who sat huddled in the chair deigned to acknowledge, by a certain stillness of his body, a cessation of the long-continued nervous movements of his hands and feet, that he had perceived his callers’ existence.

  Seizing the opportunity the moment it arrived, the elder visitor spoke softly. “Lord Vilkata?”

  There was no immediate response, even when the quiet salutation was repeated. For some time the man slumped in the chair pretended not to hear his callers. They did not take offense at such behavior; it was only the Lord Vilkata’s way. Since their rescue of the blind man from deep snow at the foot of a nearby cliff some fourteen winters ago, many if not quite all of the villagers had been convinced that he was one of the vanished race of gods, in fact the last survivor of that august company. Therefore, his hosts believed, his presence in their village was certain sooner or later to bring them inestimable benefits. True, their life so far had remained as harsh as ever despite the albino’s presence; but at least no disaster beyond the ordinary had befallen, and who knew what might have happened were the Lord not here?

  The blind man for his part had accepted deferential treatment, and the regular satisfaction of his bodily wants, as no more than his due. Beyond that he had made few demands upon his hosts. Some of the demands he did make were quite incomprehensible and never met. Others were quite clear. From the first day the guest had insisted that his rescuers call him by what he said was his proper name. So long as the villagers did that, and fed him as well as they could, and kept him warm, and allowed him from time to time the company in bed of one or two of their more comely daughters—then he would deign to speak to them.

  Sometimes he even listened to them as well. “Grandfather?” This was the younger visitor, trying out a theory of his own, that after all these years the eminent guest might be ready to answer to a simpler title.

  The experimenter might have saved his breath. The Lord Vilkata took no notice of him.

  The senior of the two visitors said nothing for a while, and remained impassive. He had been perfectly sure that the experiment would fail.

  After a while the senior tried again, sticking to his own kind of patient communication. “Lord Vilkata?”

  “Yes, what is it?” This time the snappish answer came at once, sooner than the elder had expected. Something out of the ordinary was perturbing the blind god-man today.

  The elder visitor asked gently, deferentially, what the honored one’s trouble was.

  The reply was quick and petulant: “My trouble stems from the Sword, of course. What else?”

  They were back to the incomprehensible. The two visitors, standing before the huddled figure in the chair, silently exchanged glances. It was nothing new for dear Grandfather—everyone called him that, outside his hut—to talk about the Sword, though none of his hearers knew what “the Sword” might be. For some time after his rescue, long years ago, the honored guest had talked of almost nothing else but this strange Sword of enormous importance, and the elders of the village in those days had expended much effort and time in a useless attempt to discover just what he meant. For hours on end, sometimes seemingly for days, their guest and prisoner and lucky charm had harangued the people who had saved his life in an effort to get them to organize search parties, go out into the mountains, and find this mysterious weapon that so obsessed him.

  During the first few years after their guest’s arrival the people had listened to these tirades patiently—taking shifts when necessary—and tried to understand. Of course the villagers knew in a general way what swords were like, but really they knew and cared nothing about them beyond that—they had their spears and slings and clubs for hunting, and for those rare other occasions when weapons were essential. They harkened tolerantly to the blind man’s urgent mumblings, and sometimes to soothe him they pretended to search, but really they made no effort. Only madmen would waste strength and time combing the mountains for objects that were not needed and perhaps did not exist.

  Before he had been three years among them, the villagers reached a consensus that their honored Grandfather was quite mad. They accepted the fact that he was mad, as holy men and old men sometimes were, but his madness did not diminish his holiness or his importance to the village. The value of a resident lord, or god—the distinction was not a profound one for the villagers—really did not depend on anything he said, or anything he did overtly. They soothed their guest and prisoner as best they could, and told him pleasant lies to keep him quiet. Yes, Great Elder, excuse us, Lord Vilkata, soon the weather will improve, and then we will climb back up into the high country and resume the search. Next time we will certainly find your Sword.

  Eventually the honored one had seemed to forget about the mysterious Sword, or at least he spoke of it less and less frequently. Instead he spent what strength he had in other lamentations, chiefly for his lost youth and fame and power.

  But today the older of the pair of visiting elders was growing worried that those early days of fiery obsession might have come back. Because:

  “Someone,” Old Grandfather was croaking now, “has found the Sword, and is carrying it away. Taking it away, farther and farther, while we sit here and do nothing.”

  Once more the two men who stood before him exchanged glances. “What Sword would that be, Grandfather?” the younger visitor asked, quite innocently. In the early years of the god’s visit this man had been only a simple villager and not an elder, too young to pay any attention to talk about some unessential Sword. So his question now was no attempt at mockery. But still it was too much for the albino, who lapsed into incoherent abuse.

  Where once high intelligence had ruled, inside the skull of Vilkata the survivor, now stretched a ravaged mental wasteland illuminated only i
ntermittently by flashes of his former intellect. The mind of the quondam Dark King ached in its concentration on a bitter craving for revenge upon the world in general. Revenge, for the impertinence of the world, in having dared to escape his domination! A sharper and more localized craving for vengeance was centered upon Prince Mark and Princess Kristin of Tasavalta—and to a slightly lesser degree upon the Tasavaltan people—for what Vilkata considered good and sufficient reason.

  Inextricably mixed with these cravings for revenge there persisted a monumental regret for the Mindsword’s loss. Somehow, on that last day of Vilkata’s power, that very nearly peerless weapon had slipped out of his possession.

  On that day, in staggering retreat with a band of fugitive gods, crossing the mountains at no very great distance from this hut, Vilkata had been either carrying the Mindsword or wearing it at his belt—he could not now remember which. That black day had seen the Dark King in full flight from his last battlefield, where Soulcutter in the hands of the Silver Queen had finally snuffed out his bid to rule the world. And then within hours he’d somehow lost his own Sword—condemning himself to spend the next fourteen years trying to remember exactly where and how.

  He seemed to remember that, at one point during the disastrous retreat, the god Vulcan had been carrying him on his back … but that might have been only a dream, or nightmare.

  By the time the Dark King had lost his Sword, he’d already been half mad, suffering the psychic pain of terminal defeat, and on top of that, the acid despair engendered by that other Sword, Soulcutter. That output of the Sword of Despair had begun on the battlefield to eat into Vilkata’s innermost being.

  On that day, on that particular field of combat, the dull dead force of Soulcutter had proven even stronger than the Mindsword’s blazing, dazzling call to glory. Vilkata’s host, thousands of warriors fanatically loyal to him and ferociously triumphant, had in a frighteningly short span of time degenerated into something less than a mob. His large and powerful army had become little more than an assembly of lethargic bodies. The warriors were slumping to the ground, all their blood still in their veins and their bones unbroken, but their strength melting in a lunatic inertia. The great mass of helpless men had been slain or taken captive before they could recover. Only those few who remained physically close to Vilkata, deep inside the zone of the Mindsword’s power, had been able to survive. And even those survivors were badly shaken.

  But since he’d fled the battlefield he’d seldom thought about the battle. Ever since that day, most of the Dark King’s conscious thought had been expended in a fruitless effort to recall just how and where and when during the terrible retreat he’d lost his Sword. He’d been separated from it somewhere in these very mountains, of that much he was certain. The region was thinly populated, and wherever he’d dropped the treasure, it might still be there.

  Alas, these local people, his faithful rescuers, had proven useless in this urgent quest. Vilkata was beginning to wonder, though, if they might not know more than they pretended. It was quite possible, he had recently begun to realize, that they wanted his great Sword for themselves. Might they have already found it, and lied to him of continued failure?

  No. In his clearer hours he knew that his mind had tended to wander since his loss, but rationality still prevailed. He’d have known, he’d have felt the change, if anyone had picked the Mindsword up. And, as the remnants of his once-mighty magic had continued to assure him, no one had done so.

  Not until today.

  Today someone else had seized his treasure. The full horror of the fact was slowly being borne in upon the man who had been the Dark King. He could even, behind his sightless eyesockets, conjure up and nurse a fragmentary vision of the one who held it now…

  Suddenly screaming renewed abuse, he drove the pair of village elders from him. If they could not comprehend his problem, at least they must be made to leave him alone so he could think. When the two men were gone, some of the women who usually tended to him still remained in the hut—he could hear them moving about in the next room—but they would know better than to bother him.

  Vilkata lapsed back into his dark solitary thoughts. The nervous, unconscious movements of his hands and feet soon resumed.

  By sunset, the women had also departed, save for one girl, the youngest of several who currently took turns sleeping in an outer room against the possibility that their guest-god should awaken and require something during the night. When the older women looked in on him before leaving, the blind man had let them know in a few savage words that tonight, as on most nights, he preferred to sleep alone.

  Though his empty sockets were utterly dead to light, Vilkata was always able to tell when sunset arrived. There were certain changes in the faint sounds of village life that drifted into his small house from time to time, alterations in the sound of birds and insects, and a subtly different feeling in the air.

  * * *

  On this particular evening, the sun was not long gone before another change occurred. This alteration began very subtly, and was almost impossible to define at first. Only one long skilled in magic could have noticed it as soon as the blind man did.

  It was also completely unexpected, and it caused him to hold his breath for a full half minute when he first became aware of it.

  But there was no mistake. A very different sort of visitor was soon going to arrive.

  Vilkata’s senses, long trained to the implements and materials of enchantment, had been able to detect the approach of this caller from afar, though he doubted very strongly that anyone else in the village had the least inkling of who—or what—was coming.

  Not the least doubt now. There was a subtle smell of sickness in the air, a feeling like an uneasy shifting of the world beneath the blind man’s chair, so he could easily have imagined himself perched on the mast of some ship far out of sight of land on the great sea, with storms surrounding him. This evening there was for a little while a more unusual manifestation, a heavy throbbing as of a distant drum. This last Vilkata was able at once to recognize as no mere human sound, and indeed it proceeded from a source that was ordinarily well beyond the reach of human ears.

  From the moment when the man who had been the Dark King first detected his approaching visitor, he entertained no doubts about its nature. Most humans would have been terrified, but Vilkata was not altogether dismayed. The time had been when he, by choice, had spent more hours of each day with demons than with human beings.

  The knowledge that a demon was swiftly approaching, the first such visitation he had experienced in fourteen years, was not now the total surprise that it would have been a day ago, or on any day when no one had laid hands upon his Sword. Still the event shocked Vilkata into a mental state more closely approaching normality.

  The drumming sound soon faded and disappeared, but the other manifestations grew rapidly in strength. This evening the first overt sign of the newcomer’s immediate presence was—happy surprise!—a welcome return of vision to the blind man. Not ordinary vision, no, rather a lurid and distorted approximation, more colorful than ordinary human eyesight and keener in some respects. Despite this seeming acuity, Vilkata knew well that the demonic mode of sight was even less trustworthy than that enjoyed by common folk.

  “I can see,” he suddenly whispered aloud, into what had been the unrelieved darkness of his hut. Now the stark outlines of walls and furniture, the colors drab, were plain in lightless night. His first reaction was that of a man awakening from dull sleep to horror and ugliness. Was this the room in which he spent his days, and years? This shabby hovel, cramped and dirty—

  Before Vilkata could complete the thought he heard the demon’s voice. The syllables sounded in the man’s ears as any human might have heard them, light desiccated sounds evoking thoughts of dead leaves swirling among dry bones.

  “Receive and enjoy my humble gift of sight. Dark King,” the demon said—and its tone was reassuringly deferential, as of old.

  Vilk
ata thought that he recognized—or rather that he ought to recognize—this particular demon. In the old days he had known many of the foul things—many. He ought to remember this one’s name…

  The man mumbled his response, as if he were speaking to himself, unaccustomed to any real conversation,

  “I can see my room now—but not my visitor.” Still the thing’s name eluded him, still its individual presence hovered tantalizingly on the brink of recognizability.

  “I hesitate to show myself,” the dry bones scraped.

  “I know your nature, visitor. That would indeed be hard to mistake. What can you have to fear from me? Be bold and show yourself, assume whatever form you choose. What is your name?”

  Without further hesitation the demon took form in Vilkata’s vision, appearing as if from nowhere, adopting a shape utterly incompatible with its voice—or with its real nature. The chosen form was that of a naked woman. Vilkata was not surprised. In all the dealings he’d had with demons in the days of his power, naked humanity was one of the most common illusions they projected.

  Distrustfully he stared at this almost-convincing semblance of a female human body, lusty and youthful. The woman-face was blurred in detail, as usual in these visions, but what did that matter? The rest of the body, the sexual regions in particular, was very clear. Long black hair fell around full breasts. The firmly rounded thighs were slightly parted, the painted eyelids half lowered, the red lips smiling. The nameless female, archetype of a palace courtesan, sprawled wantonly in a crude chair across the room, her body unadorned save for a long string of pearls.

  The Dark King knew well that as a rule these erotic images lacked substance. He commanded sharply: “Put on a different shape, I do not care for that one.”

  “As you wish, Lord Vilkata.” The woman’s lips moved to form the dry demon’s voice, and even as they moved, they changed. In a twinkling her shape had become that of a male human, an anxious-looking, honest, sturdy yeoman of early middle age, unarmed and clothed for rough service, standing beside the chair in which the woman had been sitting. Briefly the yeoman’s shoulders sprouted rudimentary wings, which disappeared again the moment Vilkata frowned at the manifestation.