The cask, balanced on the worm’s head, fell. The torch struck its oil-slicked side and set the creature afire in a rush of flame.
She heard the boy and the horse both scream, and perhaps the fear that she should feel would come later in dreams. For now she was here to kill the worm.
It towered up to the sky, a column as big as the body of an ox and glistening with the juices running from its split, seared flesh. Its head was ringed with ruined eyes, and clashing triangular teeth lined its mouth and throat. It smelled of rotting cheese.
Ruana Rulane ran up the side of the worm-hill, over the new wetness that made her boot soles smoke. She reached the marrow-fat translucence of the body of the worm and cut deep into the leather-over-jelly of it. Slow, grey-white gobbets of ooze began pushing through the widening rip.
The worm wailed—she felt its soundless cry as a lancing pain in her head. It tried to retreat, but even the smooth sides of its tunnel were too painful against its skin. Thrashing blindly, it searched for the source of its agony, slamming its body again and again against the ground outside its nest.
The third time it hit the ground, Ruana jumped to its back. Before it had time to throw her off, she locked her ankles together behind its head and drove her good iron sword into its skull.
The treetops flashed by below her as it reared, carrying her up into the last rays of the setting sun. The sword sank in deep and she began to saw, wondering for a brief moment if she would have done anything so foolhardly as face down a worm alone at eventide if she weren’t grieving already about giving up that Duke’s bawbee of a glass sword.
Then there was no time to wonder, only to curse, as the pale jelly of the worm foamed up over her gauntlets and began to burn on her skin. Black liquid sprayed out of its mouth and seeped up through the wound she had made; one of her hair-rings cut her cheek as she was whipped giddily around. And still it would not die.
“Crownking!” she cried, but the Sleeping God did not hear. Furious now, she stabbed and gouged and plunged her hand deep into the acid slime of the worm’s body to find something solid to cut that would end its life. Her fingers met around a gut-slippery thickness somewhere inside—she squeezed and, madly, pulled.
Then the pain in her head was blinding, and for an instant she was free of both earth and worm.
It was still dying as she shook her hair out of her eyes—knowing enough, even now, not to touch her face. Her hands closed on emptiness; her sword was gone.
The trees had broken her fall and not her neck. She groped to her feet with a groan. Better than she deserved; how could she have been so stupid?
There were some questions better not asked. She stripped off her half-eaten gloves and looked at the raw red flesh beneath. Water, first, to wash them, then the other cask of oil to save the skin, always assuming the horse that carried it hadn’t managed to bolt.
The worm was lying fully extended now, dead and already beginning to rot. Eighteen feet, maybe twenty. A prize specimen…
But not big enough to do the damage she’d seen at the farmstead.
She heard a scream—Dickon—and looked up.
A second worm was coming. This one flew.
And she didn’t have a sword.
The Crownking, before he slept, had seen fit to put two of every kind of beast into the world, and the worm was no exception. What she was seeing now, Ruana guessed, was a she-worm, and it looked like being the last thing she was going to see. The creature’s body bulged and tapered, and wings like rainbow and pond-slick made a haze over its back in the fading twilight.
Find a plan, damme—otherwise you’ve just wakened the thing to raze the holding again!
Things happened too fast. The buzz of the she-worm’s wings filled the air, and Ruana saw the white flash of Dickon’s face off to her left. He was terrified, but he was here, and then he grabbed for something and she knew what it must be. She ran toward him, shouting “No!”
The flash of blue fire made her leap back, and for a moment she saw every bone in Dickon’s body illuminated like bright day. He drew the god-sword free of the earth before it killed him, and even dead staggered two steps toward her with it, wide eyes blankly white and hair dancing in a spirit-wind from hell.
Ruana Rulane was the Twiceborn, and knew to a nicety the hurt that magic could do. But whatever the sword might do to her now was nothing to what the worm would do—to her and to others. She dragged the sword from the dead child’s hands and turned to face the worm.
New strength sang through her body, and she didn’t grudge the blood that dript from raw hands onto the hilt of the sword. The hero with the magic sword faced the dragon, and called it in gleeful north-land accents to come and die.
But the thing danced on wingtips just out of her reach and slashed at her with its barbed tail. A circle of eyes, glass and mirrors, gave Ruana back a thousand self-images. So she did what she had to, luring it back into the darkness of the trees where it could not use its wings, where her only defense against the vague murderous paleness was Shadowkiss.
No ritual blade this, but a killing engine edged sharper than glass, lighter and stronger than any smith-forged sword. Each time the sword struck it bit ruinously deep; fast and deadly and meant for her hand alone. Ruana butchered the loathly worm in darkness so total she could not be sure when it died, only that it was dead when she staggered away from the body.
There was no moon. She followed the sound of the water to the riverbank and fainted with her hands in the stream.
In her dreams she rode the worm again, and its torso writhed and bucked between her thighs—only to change, dreamlike, to the body of a man who laughed and clasped her and held her close.
“Ruana, Ruana, Ruana Rulane—Rulane the Twiceborn!” He sang her name and shimmered away to mist before she could see his face.
“Who are you?” She knew the answer. Demon-dreams, and she too tired to wake. She reached, dreaming, for her sword.
“Name me and I’ll tell you! Name me and I’ll stay!”
The promise came from nowhere and everywhere. She bit her lips shut over the name.
She was standing on a misty plain. Shadowkiss was in her hand, sensuous as jade. The light from its gems stained the shrouding fog pink.
“Who am I?” mist-echo demanded.
“Where am I?” Ruana countered. On the edge of heart’s desire, came the inward certainty. Ahead the mist thinned. Rocks appeared; a cave.
She was standing on the wet sand of ebb tide, and as she walked toward the sea-cave her boots made no sound. Once inside she heard the booming rhythm of the surf, and by the glittering salt-blue flame of torches she could see damp-rotted frescoes weeping down the curving walls: Crownking and Starharp, the lesser gods, heroes, ancient kings, and men. Battles and wars in undiscovered countries, and at their center the Starharp waited, to wake the Crownking and play to life new universes.
It glittered on its altar, recurving framework charmed golden out of starlight and strung with a silver purer than any metal. Here was the linchpin of the turning world, waiting only the mortal who would take it up and become the centerpiece of all the gods.
This was what she wanted. This was what drew her, through a life of bad inns, worse food, and no more home than blanket and saddletree. To take the Starharp and do a deed remembered down through the ages, to change the shape of the world.
The other entered the cave behind her. This was the truth, the answer, and the bargain. She could name the other if she chose, and gain…
A hero’s sword for a true hero, chosen of the gods to be the herald of a new age. A lover for her love, and the promise that everything she had done to reach this place was justified and paid for, burnished right and inevitable and necessary.
She lowered the swordpoint to the sand. She did not need the outward symbol now.
“Ruana,” said the other, shadow of her self. Arms embraced her from behind, and on their hands’ fingers were green glass rings set with rubies.
&
nbsp; “Name me,” said her shadow, and in the words echoed every consequence of her actions. The Starharp filled her eyes with gold and silver light.
Loved. Worshiped. Glorified. Avenged.
“You killed the boy.”
For a moment it seemed even the Starharp glowed less bright.
“It is my nature. Soon all will know our legend, and no one from the lowliest peasant to the highest lord will dare to lay hands on the sword of the Twiceborn. Do not set one unimportant boy against that. Do not shame me. I have waited for you since the universe was made; together we are complete. With me you take up a mad god’s curse and a glorious destiny; to play the Starharp and bring order to all the worlds. Ruana. Beloved.”
And all at the cost of one unimportant boy. Take the sword—or decide that some glory asked too high a price.
Ruana Rulane made her choice.
“Name me.”
“Shadowkiss.”
She woke in the morning to river mist that convinced her she still slept, to larksong that was no respecter of dragons, to a splitting head and blistered hands and an empty belly. Her back hurt.
She was glad to be alive.
The horse was dead. The worm and its mate were nothing now but odd bone barbs.
The boy Dickon was a featherweight in her arms. She took him back to the freehold and told the survivors the tale—that she and the freeholder’s son between them had slain the dragon and its mate, and that now the woods and fields were safe. The crofters gave her bandages for her hands and a share in their breakfast. They gave the hero’s sword a reverent distance, and buried the boy in the stableyard where the stones could easily be taken up. Ruana left before they were done.
Midday on foot she found a ford and then began the laborious process of finding the main road again.
Shadowkiss was wrapped in blanket scraps and slung over her shoulder. The Grey Duke had sent his men for the sword, and Ruana had told them she would take it to his priests. And so she would, but now it seemed she would take it to the duke as well—and farther. It was an inconvenient fact of life that the future seemed to hold killing and maybe imprisonment and certainly the disappointment of a powerful overlord in the matter of the god-sword Shadowkiss. The duke would certainly want what he considered his and she had no intention of giving it to him.
Her muscles protested the unaccustomed exercise, and her horseman’s boots weren’t meant for walking. It was something of a relief when the Grey Duke’s soldiers showed up.
They surrounded her with nocked arrows and conspicuous amulets, and one or two made the sign against magic. She eased her pack and saddle to the ground while a fat priest on a fat mule blew smoke and ash toward her out of a dish. A terrified acolyte dashed up to souse her with flower water.
She shook it out of her eyes with a curse and drew the sword. It sliced through the bindings of its improvised scabbard and flashed all the colors of ocean in the sun.
She could see each move she would make in her mind. It did not matter that the soldiers were six. First the man slain to gain her a mount, then the others dead from horseback, then the priest, left gutted and handless alive for the rooks, to warn his gods their freedom’s end was coming.
So simple.
“Take the sword!” The priest’s voice was cross but not yet frightened.
“You!” she shouted back. “Get you down; I’ve no mind to walk to the city.”
The duke’s men stared. Shadowkiss keened its disappointment in a voice only she could hear. Ruana filled her lungs and spoke again.
“Listen, my callants. Your duke will want to know what’s kept you so long on the road. Do you want him having the chanter’s way of it only? You’re sworn to take this sword to him and I’ll not stop you—so get that useless noise off his beast and we’ll be off.” The soldiers looked at one another. One of them smiled and the others laughed.
“And look you mind the sword,” she said, as the captain started toward the priest. “Happen it kills heroes, too.”
Her feet were tied beneath the belly of the mule and the captain led it. After the first day they got her a horse.
On the third day they gave her a scabbard to fit the sword, and her feet were untied.
On the sixth day they entered Corchado.
It was not the largest city for priests, or the biggest for markets, but it was the city you must take to take the South. Somewhere farther down the road they spoke of this as the northland, and even there they spoke of Corchado. It was built on a hill made of the broken stones of enemy cities, and enemy bones were mortared into the bricks of its walls.
The soldiers brought her through the town, and she brandished what she carried for all to see. Shadowkiss urged her to find the way to Ocean, where the Starharp waited and the Crownking slept. It forgave her betrayal and loved her again, dreaming and promising her destiny. Ruana had never seen the ocean nor spoken to anyone who had. The way to Ocean would be a journey through legend.
The castle portcullis closed behind her. The sword was in its sheath, and her hand was on her sword hilt as she dismounted. There was an inevitability about the situation it was hard not to admire. The duke wanted the sword, to which he had only a tentative claim at best. Ruana had a better one, but things being what they were, the moment she enforced it people would die. She had no faith in the healing power of common sense. She had come because she was no sneak thief, and because she had said she would, but against that waited the arrogance of princes, pat and foolish as a singer’s tale.
Eight men in gilded plate armor presented themselves in the courtyard. Their captain was in plumes and scarlet. Shadowkiss foretold their deaths and Ruana waited for them to demand the sword she carried.
But they didn’t.
“You’re to come with me, Rulane Twiceborn. The Duke will see you.”
The parade-captain looked at Ruana.
Not so much older than an unimportant boy.
Ruana took her hand from the sword hilt. This time it was harder.
The captain closed the door behind her. The room held one man.
Now Ruana drew the sword. In the dim room it gathered all the light and gave back color brighter than the tapestries. The Duke looked up. He stood at the tall desk by the window, turning the pages of a book with jewelled covers.
“Is this what you sent for, my fine one?” Ruana asked.
His eyes were a little darker than amber, his hair already streaked with grey.
“Apparently,” he said. “Will you give it to me?”
Begin here, and set the terms for a thousand years of war, because the sword Shadowkiss is invincible and the companion it has chosen will live until the end of the world. Ruana had carried the sword for a week and she knew. She could not give it up, or allow it to be taken from her, or destroy it, or let it be destroyed while she lived. And if somehow she were killed, the sword in fury and grief would take a new lover, and the killing would not end.
Elegant. Precise. A chain reaction begun when sword chose companion; inevitable, predictable, and infinitely repeatable as long as there were honor and glory and a desire to be…
A hero.
“Your soldiers did all you told them, but you should have gone yourself. The sword’s not for you, nor ever will be.”
The Duke closed the book and stepped forward. He wore no armor and his hands were empty.
“The sword is for no one. Do you know why I wanted it, Rulane Twiceborn? I wanted it to bury far beneath my castle where it would never see the sun, where no man would touch it and die—or touch it and live.” He took another step forward, and another, and now Ruana could smell the oils and spices of him, see the grace notes of power in the ivory fold of linen and the rich glow of the wool that he wore.
“Since before the universe was born,” the Duke said slowly, “Shadowkiss has waited to take a companion. It is powerless without one; that is its nature. It was forged to fight the final battle of ancient gods, and those who made it wrought cruel as the gra
ve and more cunning than Death. It is a living thing; the legends say it dreams. When I heard it was in the land, I sent for it—”
“To bury it. Aye, and if it’s what you say, that’d solve your fine muddle—until your son’s time, or your grandson’s. Or did you think no one would ever know about the god-sword with Corchado sitting on it? Armies have marched for less.”
Ruana lowered the sword slowly until its point touched the floor. It glowed bright enough to cast shadows on the stone and light the desperation on the face of the Duke.
“Even a lifetime is more than the world will have if you leave this room alive. Help me slay the sword. If there is any chance that I am right, will you take the chance that I am wrong?”
“I’d sooner spin flax into gold than try to find the truth in a prophecy. Or a prince. And I’m a mortal fond of taking chances.”
The lines in the Duke’s face were deeper now, but he smiled wearily. “I am too late, then. Whatever you’ve come to do, Twiceborn, try. I’ve had time to prepare. If you manage to get out of here alive I promise you a war such as the world has never seen. But tell me first: What has it promised you?”
A name. A song. Glory to outlast life and deeds to change the world.
“Never you mind. But I’ll tell you this: your chanter’s nonsense is a thought right, a grand name-calling, and proudful. You say my sword lives. You’re right. But what is yon sleekit thing but a bairn, with a bairn’s temper and a sharper edge? It wants its own way, that’s all, and no thought to afterward or anyone else. But living things learn. There won’t be war for Shadowkiss this spring or any other. I’ll see to that.”
She flipped the sword back into its sheath and rested her hand on the pommel. The effort it cost her was not visible for anyone to see.
“Are you saying you can control it? You’re mad. It will make you serve it.”
“How? Would I be here if I couldn’t control the sword—or would I be off waiting for you to bring me a pretty war to pass the time, all banners and causes and bad cess to you for a fool?”
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