But Sightblinder was a different matter, and the more Murat thought of that Blade the larger it loomed in his calculations. The Sword of Stealth could render even an otherwise negligible opponent deadly dangerous; and Prince Mark was anything but negligible. In fact Murat knew him to be strong, clever, ruthless, and determined, and of all human beings perhaps the most familiar with the Twelve Swords’ powers. In Mark’s hands Sightblinder might well pose a murderous threat, even to one as well armed, experienced, and wary as Murat.
* * *
Sarykam, as Kristin assured him, was nearly a full day’s ride away, and Murat had no wish to arrive there at night or with tired men and exhausted riding-beasts. Therefore at sunset he called a halt, went through the painful process of dismounting, and ordered his followers to make camp. Murat saw to it that Kristin was provided with her own small tent, one that the troopers had been carrying; he and Carlo lay nearby, under the stars.
The Crown Prince had much to think about before he slept. When he said good night to Kristin, and made it plain that he did not intend to join her in her tent, she had asked him what was wrong.
In answering Murat chose his words slowly, and his voice was grim. “There is no difficulty that we cannot overcome in time. Princess—there is nothing I want more in this world than to embrace you. And, when you have been three days free of the Sword’s power, I intend with all my heart to do so.”
“Foolish man,” she whispered fondly. “Do you still believe that your Sword there has enslaved me? Is there some magical significance in a period of three days? What I feel for you is not going to change in three years, or in three centuries.”
“I’ll not wait as long as three years, I assure you. But grant me the three days, for my conscience. It seems a reasonable interval.”
“Of course.” The Princess smiled, and looked around their little camp. Everyone seemed to be studiously avoiding watching them. “By then, perhaps, we will have found a place where we can be more completely alone.” And, leaning forward, she swiftly kissed Murat on the cheek. A moment later she had disappeared into her little tent.
* * *
Next morning at dawn, the Crown Prince, his escort, and his close companions resumed their march. Murat tried to convince himself that his leg at least felt no worse than before.
As the city came into view in the distance, then grew closer and bit by bit more distinct, Murat became more intensely alert, and steadily more suspicious. These roads near the capital, which at this hour ought to have been at least moderately busy with all kinds of traffic, were ominously deserted.
Kristin, too, frowned on observing all these empty fields and highways, and spoke of her concern to her lover, who was riding at her side.
Murat only shrugged fatalistically. “I suppose we ought to have expected it. No doubt someone has spread word of what has happened—that you have joined me.” His hand was already resting upon the Mindsword’s hilt.
Kristin tossed her glorious hair, and smiled with a determined optimism that Murat decided he had not yet—quite—begun to find irritating. She said: “All of my people are going to learn the truth sooner or later anyway; our love cannot remain a secret.”
“Of course not.”
“Poor Murat. I see your conscience is still bothering you unnecessarily.”
The inhabitants were still totally and ominously absent when Murat and his group reached the city wall. The broad gate which normally allowed access to and from the high road was tightly closed. No sentries appeared on the high wall, and only a distant barking dog responded when the Tasavaltans escorting the Crown Prince and Princess tried to hail their countrymen.
At Kristin’s order several of her soldiers pushed and pulled on the massive timbers of the gate, but evidently it had been barred on the inside. The obstacle caused only a short delay; a couple of soldiers with a rope, working unopposed, made short work of getting atop the wall, and moments later were able to open the gate from inside.
One of the two troopers, on emerging from the gate, reported to Murat in a puzzled voice: “It looks deserted inside the walls, sir. How can my people fear you that much?”
Murat did not attempt an answer. He only commented to the Princess: “I fear we may find the armory already emptied of what we would like to find in it.”
“I share your fear,” said Kristin in a subdued and troubled voice. “Are they all in hiding, or in ambush? What can they be thinking of?”
Alertly, the party advanced toward the city’s center, traversing one street after another normally thronged with people, but this morning as deserted as the country roads had been. Certainly, Murat thought, someone had assumed leadership within the city, and had acted decisively and effectively during the night. Stout stone-built houses looked down in utter silence on the visitors. Were the folk who lived here all hiding behind their closed shutters and doors, or had they evacuated the city? Murat, riding the eerily quiet street, could not tell which course the populace had taken, and did not particularly care. Well, he could easily understand why these people were fleeing him and his Sword as if he were the plague. But even so, such a welcome was annoying.
The great square in front of the palace was as deserted as the broad streets. Again, somewhere in the background a single dog was barking, a forlorn and frantic sound. The stout doors of the armory, adjacent to the palace, were closed and locked just as the city gate had been, but Kristin was in possession of the keys, both mechanical and magical, that would enable her to enter here.
No human guards had been posted outside or inside the armory. Not one additional recruit, it seemed, was to be left for the Mindsword to enlist in an intruder’s cause. But the strong spells of protection woven by old Karel, Kristin’s magician-uncle, were still in place, and Kristin warned Murat and his son as well as the converted troopers against trying to enter. Only the Princess herself approached the doorway, through which she was able to pass freely.
The Crown Prince waited nervously, but he had not long to wait. In a matter of moments Kristin emerged again, her expression grim.
“My lord Murat, all three of the Swords are gone.”
Under his breath Murat blasphemed various of the long-departed gods. Beyond that there was not much to be said. No doubt someone—whether it was young Stephen or not made no difference—had reached the city long hours ago, bringing an eyewitness account, or perhaps some garbled version of one, telling what had happened to the Princess. Whoever had taken charge here on receipt of that news had issued orders swiftly and forcefully.
“Neatly done,” Murat commented. “But I wonder where they can all have disappeared to?”
“To no great distance, I suppose,” said Kristin, sadly. She was obviously hurt that her people had run out on her, without waiting to hear what she might have to say to them. “But it doesn’t really matter. I’ll explain to them.”
Finding pen and paper in the deserted office of the armory, she announced her intention to quickly write out several messages, some addressed to various individuals, others to her people in general. Then she would dispatch runners to leave these notes in prominent places within the city where they could not fail to be discovered.
Standing in the doorway of the little office, watching Kristin as she began to write the messages, Murat smiled fondly at her. “What exactly are you telling your people?”
“Simply that I am going to be their Princess, as before—but no, not quite as before. There will be certain changes in the realm, but only for the better, because from now on I will serve in the name of the most glorious Crown Prince of Culm, who is soon to be Prince of Tasavalta also—and tomorrow, perhaps, the Emperor of the World!”
Murat sighed gently. “I think it will be better, my dearest, more conducive to peace, if you do not claim any thrones for me just yet.”
The Princess hesitated. “Very well—I suppose you’re right.” She crumpled a paper and threw it away, picked up a fresh sheet and began again.
Minutes
later, the letters having been hastily distributed nearby, the Crown Prince, Princess Kristin, and their entourage were on their way out of Sarykam.
* * *
When the city was an hour’s ride behind them, the Crown Prince began to see Tasavaltan cavalry in the distance, but so far the uniforms of blue and green were only scouting, warily maintaining a prudent interval of several hundred meters.
Presently there also appeared a few high-flying winged scouts, keeping track of Murat’s small moving column from above.
Murat had cursed energetically on learning that Sightblinder was already gone. But the full implications of his failure to seize that Sword were only now becoming apparent to him. The Sword of Stealth in the hands of a determined enemy meant that from now on, he’d have to be agonizingly suspicious every time he saw someone he loved approaching him—and doubly fearful if ever he saw a being he feared too much to face in combat. Not that, in Murat’s case, there were many human or inhuman entities who’d fit either category.
Ah, if only he’d been able to get Sightblinder into his own hands! Then he might have been able to enforce peace. That weapon and the Mindsword might well have formed a practically irresistible combination for controlling minds. Besides providing its possessor with deceptive concealment, Sightblinder also allowed him or her a better perception of the true nature of other folk.
Yes, he was going to have to take the most careful precautions against the great and subtle Sword of Stealth.
And not, perhaps, only against that one. To the best of the Crown Prince’s knowledge, six more of the Twelve Swords forged by the god Vulcan were still scattered about the world.
Murat had passed almost his entire life not being in possession of any of the Swords, and in that state had never spent much time worrying over what might happen if one were used against him. But on those rare occasions when he had got his hands on one of the Twelve Blades, he always found himself suddenly much concerned about the others.
Of course, anyone having one Sword became a much more likely target for whoever controlled the rest. The titular Crown Prince of Culm as an itinerant and landless nobleman was one thing, and the same man as a Sword-holder was quite another. It was as if the acquisition automatically thrust him, willy-nilly, into some great, only vaguely defined game, whose players had each as his object the domination of the world.
The Crown Prince carefully corrected his thought. The other players, perhaps, had such an objective. His own ambitions remained much more modest.
Now moving briskly along toward the frontier that he and Carlo and Kristin must cross on their way to Culm, Murat considered what he knew of each of the other Swords still in existence. The strongest was probably Shieldbreaker, which immunized its bearer completely against the Mindsword’s power, or indeed against the action of any other Sword or lesser weapon, whether material or magic. Only an unarmed opponent could—and almost certainly would—prevail against the holder of the Sword of Force.
The great and evil magician Wood had grasped that fact, certainly, a year ago when he had been forced to cast away the Sword of Force to save himself in Sha’s casino. Someone else must have picked up Shieldbreaker there. But who had done so, and who might hold that tremendous weapon now, were unanswerable questions to Murat. Nor was it likely that anyone in Tasavalta had the answers, as his new ally the Princess had already assured him.
Next on the list, somewhere out there in the world, was Wayfinder. The Sword of Wisdom could help its owner avoid fatal traps, doubtless including the Mindsword’s sphere of influence, and could indicate to him or her the proper path to any goal. Wayfinder’s use entailed certain drawbacks, however, usually increasing its owner’s risks.
Kristin, who shared much of her husband’s extensive knowledge of the Swords, had confirmed that no one knew what had happened to Wayfinder either. At least neither she nor her husband had heard anything new of the Sword of Wisdom since it had vanished from the body of the dead god Hermes, some eighteen years ago.
* * *
…The Mindsword’s sphere of influence, yes. What factors set its limits, exactly? Murat had observed that the effective distance seemed to vary slightly from one use to the next, but what caused the expansion or contraction he did not know. Whatever the causes, he knew that his Sword’s influence extended throughout a space of about a hundred meters in every direction from the Sword itself.
And what an influence! All along Murat had known, in a theoretical way, what he might expect the Mindsword to do for him, because he knew what it had done for others who’d possessed it in the past. But the actual experience of drawing and using such a weapon had been beyond his power to foresee. He wondered if the previous owners of the Sword of Glory had felt the same way. Who had they been? The most famous of them, of course, was Vilkata, the Dark King whose image still haunted Kristin’s nightmares, a man Murat had never met, now missing for fourteen years and presumed dead.
* * *
After checking with Carlo on their line of march, the Crown Prince proceeded with his mental inventory of Swords. There was of course Soulcutter—Murat experienced a faint internal shudder at the mere thought of that Sword, though he had never seen it in action, even from a safe distance. He’d heard that the Silver Queen, who’d used it once, had spent most of her years since then on one religious pilgrimage after another.
Murat knew that Soulcutter had beaten the Mindsword at least once before. But on that occasion, an open confrontation between armies, the two Blades had never been brought into actual physical opposition. The Crown Prince had no idea which might prevail if that were to happen.
—And Coinspinner, which had so recently been his, might one day be his again. That Sword came and went as if by its own random preference, and no human being, it seemed, could do anything to keep it once it chose to leave. The Sword of Chance would probably provide anyone who held it with the good luck necessary to stay out of the Mindsword’s sphere of influence; and Coinspinner was also capable of inflicting bad luck, sometimes disastrously bad, upon its owner’s enemies.
The Sword of Mercy could give protection against injury or death to anyone who held it. And it could heal even the wounds, otherwise practically incurable, inflicted by the Mindsword when it was used as a physical weapon.
The last of the six Swords still somewhere out there in the world was Farslayer. Enough to say of the Sword of Vengeance that it could unerringly strike the Mindsword’s holder, or any other target, when thrown from any distance. No defense was effective—except of course that provided by Shieldbreaker. Neither Kristin not Murat could guess who now held Farslayer.
Keeping an eye out for more Tasavaltan cavalry, Murat urged his steed to a faster pace. He and his followers still had a considerable distance to go to reach the boundaries of Culm.
Chapter Ten
Prince Mark and his single companion were still some hours’ ride west of the Tasavaltan border when the small winged messenger from Sarykam, having located the Prince, came spiraling and crying down toward him, a tiny black omen falling out of a vast gray sky.
The Prince reined in.
“Ben!” he called in a cautious voice. At the same time he held out his left arm to make a perch for the small courier.
The huge man who had been riding a few meters ahead of Mark along the narrow trail turned at the call, then tugged his own mount to a halt and watched the messenger descend.
Of the two riders, both still under forty, the Prince was slightly younger, somewhat taller, and much less massive, though certainly robust enough by any ordinary standard. Both men had time to dismount before the spiraling, skittish messenger ceased to fly in circles and came to perch upon the Prince’s wrist.
Having alighted at last, the small feathered creature stuttered in its inhuman, birdlike voice that it was carrying a written communication to the Prince from the wizard Karel.
“Mark, Mark, are you Mark?” it demanded boldly of the man who stroked its head, as if it might even no
w be able to withhold its burden from an impostor.
“I am Mark—you know it, wretched beast—you must have seen me around the palace since you were a hatchling. Hold still and let me have the message!”
And the Prince of Tasavalta reached for the tiny leather pouch and slipped its belt off over the creature’s head.
Ben made no comment, but lumbered closer, openly positioning himself to look over the Prince’s shoulder and read the message as soon as it should be unfolded.
The written words, in old Karel’s familiar script, were few. Mark’s magician-uncle urgently and tersely urged him to abandon all other projects, whatever they might be, and get home as soon as possible. The phrasing hinted at tragic happenings in Tasavalta, though clearly reassuring Mark that there had been no death in the royal family. What had actually gone wrong was not spelled out, against the possibility that the message might fall into the wrong hands.
Ben, having read the message, grunted and said nothing.
Mark made no comment either, but folded the paper briskly and stuck it in his pocket. Then he tossed the winged creature back into the air, calling after it: “Tell the old one I am coming, as quickly as I can.”
“Pardon, Prince, but I must rest!” the winged one squawked.
“Come back and rest, then, on my saddle, or behind me if you can. It seems that I must ride.” And Mark swung himself up into the saddle again. Moving homeward once more, no faster than before upon a mount already tired, he absently dug out food and water from his saddlebags for the messenger.
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