01 - The Tainted Sword

by D. J. Heinrich - (ebook by Undead)

  Flinn gestured toward Johauna, and she stepped forward. The dwarf’s intense, almost avaricious scrutiny fell on her, and she was suddenly aware of the dirt and blood on her clothes and the tangled mess her hair had become. How interesting that Braddoc has that effect on me and Flinn doesn’t, she thought quickly.

  “This is Johauna Menhir, my squire,” Flinn was saying with surprising warmth. “Jo, this is my old friend, Braddoc Briarblood.” Flinn smiled broadly.

  “Salutations, Braddoc Briarblood.” Jo nodded stiffly. She met the dwarf’s eyes, but he stared silently back. Feeling compelled to fill the silence, she added, “Are you any relation to the dwarven King Aedelfed Briarblood? I heard stories of him while I lived in Specularum.”

  The dwarf’s intense expression didn’t fade, though he did lose eye contact when he bowed rigidly. “I’m a poor relation of sorts, but, then, so are many,” he answered. He added formally, “And greetings to you, Johauna Menhir.”

  Flinn’s eyebrow rose. “You never told me you were related to the king.”

  “You never asked,” Braddoc retorted.

  Flinn, glancing at the animals and the darkening sky, hastily pointed out the boy. Braddoc led the three riders into the snug bam, where he lit a lantern.

  “You’re looking as fit as ever, Flinn,” the dwarf said, gazing intently at his guest, “though a bit grayer than when I last saw you!” Flinn only snorted as he led Ariac into a stall. He began removing the griffon’s tack.

  The dwarf turned to Dayin, and this time Braddoc snorted. “You smell of magic, boy,” he said, suspicion edging his voice. He jerked a large thumb toward a second stall. “Take the mule in there and care for him. We’ll be eating soon.” Dayin did as he was bid, his shy blue eyes wide with curiosity.

  Braddoc turned to Jo then, the light swinging and shining fully on his face as he held up the lantern. The dwarf’s blind eye added to the intensity his stare. He scrutinized her from the top of her disheveled hair to the bottom of her muddied boots. Then, nodding, he gestured for her to put the gelding into the third stall.

  Keeping his gaze still on Johauna, the dwarf called out to Flinn, “I’ve finished with my washing ritual for the day, Flinn. The girl wishes to bathe now. Do you and the boy want to go before her?”

  Flinn turned toward the dwarf. “You know I’m not bound by the old customs, Braddoc. Quit trying to unsettle Jo; she has a perfect right to bathe where men do. Show her the lodge. Dayin and I will bathe after we’ve seen to the animals.” He turned back to the griffon.

  The dwarf hung the lantern on a peg, lit another one, and silently led Jo out of the barn. She wondered how such a seemingly friendly person could become so taciturn. She wondered, too, just what taboo she was breaking by bathing before Flinn. They walked past the corral, behind the house, and out to a small building about the size Flinn’s cabin had been.

  Braddoc entered the lodge and gestured for Jo to follow. She did so reluctantly, stooping under the short doorway. The unexpectedly warm room inside centered around a large pool glazed over with ice. Benches lined the walls, and a huge brazier stood in one corner. Braddoc hung his lantern on the wall, picked up the wood axe standing near the door, and chopped at the pool. He threw the chunks of ice onto some stones contained in the brazier.

  Jo was startled by the sudden hiss of steam rising from the stones. Smoke and steam mixed and swirled throughout the room. The odor was strangely appealing, and Jo guessed Braddoc used a sweet-smelling wood for the fire. She sat down on a low bench in the room and waited for the dwarf to finish.

  Braddoc threw one last piece of ice on the hot stones and then walked to the door, obviously intending to leave. Jo called out nervously.

  “I—I beg your pardon,” she stammered, “but I’ve never been in a sweat lodge before….” Her words trailed off as the dwarf turned to stare at her.

  “That’s like as not,” he said gruffly. “It’s usually a rite reserved for men, but you are Flinn’s squire—” the dwarf’s stare grew more piercing “—and as such you’ve a right to the ritual.”

  Jo crossed her arms and forced herself to say, “Will you show me the ritual?”

  Braddoc gestured to the pool of water, a bar of soap, and a nearby brush. “You bathe in the spring there, but be careful. The water has magical properties—”

  “Magic? But you distrust magic—”

  “Aye,” the dwarf interjected, his good eye sharp in the lantern light. “But the magic here is a natural thing, not crafted by humans. It is a magic of the earth, of the waters that lace the rocks beneath your feet, Johauna Menhir. Only those who are pure of heart may bathe in this water—all others are rejected by the spirit of the spring. You will know immediately if you are worthy of her gifts, for if you can’t stand the cold, then your heart isn’t pure enough to receive the sending.”

  “The sending?” queried Jo.

  “Aye, the sending—the vision the waters may grant you. They grant a vision only once per day, and the waters denied me earlier. That’s why you should’ve waited until after Flinn had bathed. The knight deserves the vision and not the squire,” he said. “But perhaps the waters will deny you, too, and wait for Flinn.” He crossed his arms.

  Jo caught herself mimicking the dwarf.

  “After you have bathed,” Braddoc continued sternly, “lie on the bench and cleanse your mind and body of all thoughts, all desires, all hopes.” He pointed to the bucket. “Pour water on the stones when you are ready to be purified, and the steam will prepare your soul. If the spirit of the pool so grants it, you will see a vision of the future in the steam.”

  Braddoc paused, as if he were about to say something but then shook his head. He muttered, “When you’re through, come into the house. You can help me prepare the meal while the men have their turn in the lodge.”

  Johauna was glad to see the strange dwarf turn and leave. She gazed at the pool. “Superstition,” she muttered. The lodge appeared to be nothing more than a purification sauna, something she had heard about in Specularum. “Sweating cleans the skin, not the soul.”

  Jo discarded her clothes and frowned at the thought of putting them on again after she bathed. Perhaps when she reached the Castle of the Three Suns, Flinn could outfit her in better clothes, as befitted a squire. Naked, she looked at the water. Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the pool.

  The water was breathtakingly cold. For a moment she wondered if she could bear it. But she wanted to prove to Braddoc that she was “pure of heart.” She gritted her teeth and washed as quickly as she could. The thought of plunging underwater to wash her hair made her heart skip a beat, but she longed to be rid of the tangles. Strangely, she felt her skin grow warmer each time she ducked under water. By the time she had finished washing her hair, she felt as though she could stay in the pool forever. But she knew she should finish the ritual so that Flinn and Dayin could bathe. Languorously, she left the pool and poured a bucket of water on the hot stones. She sat down on the bench.

  The tension began to leave her body, and Jo felt wonderful. Her eyes began to flutter, and her head fell to her chest. She jerked upright, afraid of falling asleep in the lodge. There, in the swirling steam before her, she saw a faint image of herself. Jo blinked. The image remained, the vapors inside the lodge still swirling around and through the vision. She was standing before a forge, waiting for a smith to pull something from the fire. Her stance was strangely expectant, and Jo felt that same emotion course through her now. What was she so eagerly awaiting? Oddly enough, Braddoc stood beside her. Flinn was nowhere in sight. Then, as abruptly as the image had appeared, it vanished. The steam in the lodge was nothing but steam again. Jo waited for the vision to return, her eyes searching the swirling mists. But the vision was gone.

  She dressed again in her now-damp clothing and tied a thong around her hair to hold it out of the way. Jo left the lodge, closing the door behind her. Flinn and Dayin were coming up the path.

  The tall warrior stopped in front of he
r and asked teasingly, “Any visions?”

  “Visions?” Jo repeated tentatively. She felt uncertain about telling Flinn about her sending because it hadn’t included him.

  “Yes,” Flinn laughed. “Braddoc claims the pool grants visions. None of Braddoc’s mercenary cohorts ever had a vision there. They thought Braddoc touched in the head.”

  “Perhaps they weren’t pure of heart,” Jo responded lightly.

  Flinn looked at her with a strange expression. “No, perhaps they weren’t,” he said slowly. “Are you going in to help Braddoc?”

  Johauna nodded, blushing as she thought of her own vision. I probably just imagined it, she told herself unconvincingly.

  “Braddoc can be a… difficult sort to know,” Flinn was saying, “but he’s a good dwarf. Forgive him, if only for my sake.” Flinn touched her arm, and then he and Dayin entered the sweat lodge.

  Jo walked down the path to Braddoc’s house. She stooped through the back entry and found she was in the kitchen. The house was substantially larger than Flinn’s cabin had been. Through the short hall straight ahead of her lay the front door and the main room. To her right, two doors opened, one to a supply room and the other to the dwarf’s bedroom. To her left lay the kitchen, which she now entered.

  Braddoc was stirring something in a large pot hanging over the fire in the kitchen’s hearth. He looked up as Jo entered, then silently gestured for her to sit at the large wooden table at the center of the room. Two benches flanked either side. She considered sitting on the bench farthest from the dwarf, but decided against it. Like as not, he would think she was being impolite—which she would have been. Besides, the warm fire is inviting, she thought as she sat down on the sturdy wooden bench. It had been sanded smooth and painted a pale green, though the paint was old and wearing thin.

  The dwarf turned toward her, his eyes level with hers. In the ample light of the kitchen his hair looked richly russet, a shade redder than her own. The few strands of gray indicated that he was fairly young in dwarf years, but Jo couldn’t guess his age. He had rebraided his beard and hair, for golden threads now intertwined with the plaits. The braids began and ended in elaborate clasps. Braddoc wore a golden yellow tunic of finely woven cloth; the edges were embroidered in a colorful, repeating pattern of graceful curves. A copper torque circled his neck, fashioned in the same style as the cuffs on his wrists.

  All in all, the dwarf was a splendid sight. Jo, accustomed only to squalor and poverty for most of her life, felt awed. She had seen such finery only from a distance in Specularum, and then only rarely. She didn’t immediately notice that the tunic was nearly threadbare, or that the clasps and the torque had been stripped of gems.

  The dwarf wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air. “Flinn told me about the fire,” Braddoc said at last. “You truly have no other clothes?”

  Jo crossed her arms irritably and shook her head. “I only had the ones I wore on the day I met Flinn. They were ruined by a creature Flinn calls an abelaat. Flinn made me these, and what I am wearing is all I possess.” Jo rested her hand on the pommel of her sword, deriving some confidence from the weapon she had learned to carry always at her side. The dwarf’s refined ways left her feeling boorish, which annoyed her.

  Braddoc wrinkled his nose again. “They will have to do, then.” He looked at her clumsily bound hair. “We can do something about your hair, however.”

  “My hair?” Jo repeated.

  The dwarf left the room without responding. He returned almost immediately. “Turn around,” Braddoc said.

  Jo looked at him, still unsure of what he wanted.

  “Turn around,” Braddoc repeated, “and I will braid your hair. Long hair such as yours should be properly bound, as is mine.”

  Johauna saw that he held a comb in one hand and a silver clasp in the other. Slowly she pulled off the leather thong that had gathered her hair.

  Braddoc came and stood behind her. He paused for a moment, as if to gather his bearings, and then he began combing out Johauna’s still-wet hair. His strokes were gentle, and he worked out every tangle without unduly pulling at her scalp. Jo found herself relaxing in the silence that followed. The careful actions of Braddoc’s fingers felt almost pleasurable.

  “You had a sending?” Braddoc asked quietly.

  “Y-yes, I did,” Jo answered. “How did—?”

  “Tell me about it,” the dwarf interjected.

  Something about the tone in his voice and the gentleness in his hands inspired Jo to trust him. “I was standing near a forge,” she said, seeking to find the words. “You were beside me, and we were waiting for the smith to pull something from the fire.”

  “Could you see what it was?” Braddoc asked.

  “No. It was in the fire—I saw nothing of it. But you and I, and even the smith… we were all filled with expectation,” Jo said suddenly, her mind whirling with the emotion she was trying to describe. “It is the strangest feeling. The image of the vision is leaving me, but the feeling isn’t.”

  The dwarf finished Jo’s long braid and attached the silver clasp. He turned Jo around and pulled the plait to her front, letting it fall to the hollow of her arm. Jo watched his brown eye travel from her rough boots, linger at the calloused hand on her sword, and then continue to her eyes. Then Braddoc smiled, a smile of genuine warmth.

  “Your vision was a true one—you didn’t make it up. I would have known if you had, and it’s good that you didn’t he to me,” he said. “I see now why Flinn chose you to be his squire.”

  Jo stared back at him, glad that the dwarf had warmed to her. “Thank you,” she said simply.

  “Wait here and close your eyes,” Braddoc said suddenly. “I have something to show you.” Without waiting for her response, the dwarf left the kitchen.

  Obediently Jo shut her eyes, keeping them closed even when she heard Braddoc return. He placed something on the table before her, and then she heard a little click, as if a catch was sprung. She felt the faintest touch on her arm and opened her eyes.

  * * *

  Flinn opened the door. Dayin followed close behind. It feels good to be clean again, Flinn thought, and he looked forward to the meal his friend was preparing. Braddoc had always been a stickler for the finer things in life, like good food and cleanliness. Flinn had benefited from the dwarf’s predilections more than once.

  Flinn entered the kitchen and was unprepared for the tableau that met him. Jo’s face was flushed, and her eyes were bright. Braddoc was standing beside her, and they both turned at Flinn’s entrance.

  Jo stood up. “Flinn!” she cried. “Look!” She pointed to a case resting on the table.

  Flinn saw a case crafted of hammered gold, the comers reinforced with chased silver. Gems of brilliant color and clarity encrusted the case’s open top. The case was more than six feet long, and only two hands’ width wide. A case like that could hold—

  “Wyrmblight,” Flinn breathed. The warrior moved to the other side of the table and looked inside the case. There, on a bed of midnight-blue velvet, lay his sword, its gray-black blade shining dully in the lantern light. Tentatively Flinn touched the cloth, unable to touch the blade just yet.

  How long has it been? he thought, suddenly humbled. And why, oh why, did my friend keep you even when I told him you were evil? But Flinn knew the answer to that question even as he asked it: because Braddoc Briarblood was his friend. The dwarf had known, somehow, that Flinn would return for the sword someday. Flinn’s fingers lightly stroked the shining edge of the blade. The blackness still clung to it, though Flinn fancied the taint had faded with the years. Perhaps he had misremembered how much of the sword had been stained.

  “Aye, Flinn, the blackness is leaving it,” Braddoc broke the silence that had fallen on the kitchen. Flinn looked at his friend, wondering how the dwarf had read his thoughts.

  Braddoc withdrew the sword from the golden case and handed it to Flinn, the dwarf’s good eye glinting in the light. “I saved it for you, Flinn, for its
rightful owner. It’ll rest no more in that case,” the dwarf said respectfully. Jo and Dayin crowded around on either side of Flinn as he held the blade in his hands.

  “How—why—” Flinn fumbled for the words “—what is happening to the blackness? Have you done something to Wyrmblight? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t clean it….”

  The dwarf frowned. “I’ve done nothing but store it in the case, Flinn. It’s been brightening all on its own this past winter, particularly during the last week.” Braddoc’s good eye caught and held Flinn’s. “I had a pretty good idea you might be stopping in. And I think you know why the sword is brightening.”

  Jo reached out and touched the flat of the blade, her fingers lingering over the runes marking the Quadrivial. Flinn had taught her the images of the Four Paths to Righteousness, and she touched them now one by one. Two of the runes shone with silvern clarity. “You’ve regained your honor and your courage, Flinn,” she said slowly, her gray eyes watching him intently. “And so has Wyrmblight.”

  Flinn’s eyebrow rose, but he said nothing. He gazed at the sword, his eyes clearing. The sword was overcoming its taint, its evil. To Flinn it appeared to grow even brighter as he held it. With Wyrmblight once more in his hands, he stood a chance. With Wyrmblight he could defeat Verdilith, avenge the town of Bywater, and regain his good name. He could regain his knighthood and his pride.

  “Thank you, Braddoc,” he said humbly. “You are a true friend indeed. I… I am astounded.” He shook his head, looking down at the dwarf. Then Flinn turned his attention back to the beautiful blade. Memories crowded into his mind.

  Wyrmblight had been wrought many years ago, when Flinn first became a knight of the Three Suns. It was given to Flinn by old Baron Arturus Penhaligon. Though many folk marveled at the man’s generosity, all knew that Flinn was beloved by the baron. And the gift matched Flinn’s goodness and nobility.