by Dave Duncan
"Thank you, sire! Yes, yes!" He kissed
the royal fingers.
Raider was gaping at him in dismay, but he had
said the words. He would become Sir Wasp after
all.
Now. Right away.
Master of Rituals was currently the only
teacher in Ironhall who was not a knight in the
Order. A large, bluff, sandy-colored man
resembling a sturdy farmer, he had been an
adept with the Royal College of Conjury when his
predecessor was elected Grand Master and lured
him away to Ironhall to be his replacement.
He had very little experience of dealing with princes and
none at all of resisting His Majesty King
Ambrose IV in full pursuit of an
objective. Royal enthusiasm reverberated
through the little room like an earthquake in a glass
factory.
"It is not long past midnight, is it,
Master? Close enough that we can proceed directly
with the binding?"
"But, sire ... the fasting, meditation ..."
"The two principals have been fasting--and
meditating also--for several hours now. So there should
be no problem. I do not wish this night's events
to become known beyond the eight of us here, Master.
Is it not fortunate that eight is exactly the
number we need?" The King advanced a couple of
steps, and his unfortunate victim automatically
gave ground.
The unequal struggle would have been funny
to watch had the stakes not been Wasp's life.
It was his heart that was going to be nailed, and if
anything went wrong with the ritual, the damage would
be extremely fatal. He remembered
Wolfbiter describing how he had seen that
happen when he was the Brat, very few years ago.
"... swords, sire ..." Master of
Rituals bleated, "... have to get Master
Armorer to identify the right--"
"I can do that." Commander Montpurse's voice
was quiet, but it cut like steel. "I spent some
time with Master Armorer earlier and he showed me the
swords he has been making for the seniors.
Candidate Wasp's is very distinctive."
The King's smile was a more fearsome sight than
most of his frowns. "Then we can proceed at
once. Grand Master?"
Grand Master still had a little backbone
unbroken. "Such haste in a potentially mortal
ritual is highly inadvisable, sire. Strict
order of seniority is enjoined by--"
"We asked them in order of seniority! This
one changed his mind, that's all. Nothing in the
Charter against that."
"But we shall need a Second and Third, and the
Brat normally signifies the element of chance.
..."
"Sir Janvier and I," Montpurse said,
"will be happy to play whatever roles are needed.
We could chant the words in our sleep, I'm
sure. As it happens, neither of us has eaten
since morning."
"And I," boomed King Ambrose, "will handle
the role of the Brat. I am notoriously
unpredictable."
The night was blustery, cool, and very dark. The
wind's turmoil was more than matched by the legions
of butterflies flapping inside Wasp, but he
wasn't going to admit to a single one of them. In
fact, he thought he was managing to appear
admirably composed. Beside him, Raider sounded
much more agitated than he did.
"This is insane! I don't need a Blade!
I am not going to poke a sword through you! I
want you as a friend, not a guard dog."
He was rarely so tactless. They were walking from
First House over to the Forge, following the bobbing
lights of lanterns carried by the Masters of
Archives and Rituals. Grand Master was
escorting the King, and it was ominous that
Montpurse and Janvier were not close
to Ambrose, as they would normally be. Instead,
they were right behind Raider and Wasp, which suggested that
the Commander now shared Janvier's distrust. They were
close enough to have heard themselves classed as dogs.
Wasp staggered in a gust. "You are so going
to bind me, you barbarian Bael!" he shouted.
"If you don't, Ambrose will drop me in the
deepest dungeon he's got and pave it over."
"Why should he?" Raider was arguing to soothe his
conscience. He knew that neither of them had any
choice but to obey the King. "Why not just kick your
cute little ass out the gate and be done with you? Why
go to all the fuss of binding you? Why waste a
Blade on me? I'm not a close relative,
nor important enough. It makes no
sense."
It made a lot of sense if candidates who
refused to be bound were wiped from the collective
Ironhall memory as if they had never existed.
It made sense if the King was planning to use
Atheling Radgar as a pawn in international
politics and needed to make sure Wasp kept
his mouth shut in the meantime. This unorthodox,
improvised binding might well shut it
permanently and Ambrose must know that.
Possibly he was even counting on it. Oops!
What a pity ...
"Another thing," Raider grumbled, "I know you
have cause to hate Baels for what happened to your
family and I don't blame you for being bitter.
Now you know my evil secret, how can you
possibly bear the thought of being bound to a Bael?
I've heard you curse every Bael ever born.
I've heard you classify us as the filthiest
scum on Earth and wish infinite eternal torment
on all of us."
Wasp shuddered, remembering just a few of those
remarks. How many terrible things had he said in the
last five years? "How did you stand it? I can't
ever say how sorry I am. I still can't think of
you as one of them ... I expect Chivians can be
just as brutal."
Raider jabbed a friendly punch at his arm. "You
don't really believe that, but it's true. I could
tell you stories that would make you lose three
days' meals. You'd better decide, though--can you
really spend the rest of your life guarding one of
them?"
"You're not "one of them." You're different."
"Not as different as you think! Ironhall's
given me some Chivian manners and I'm mostly
Chivian by blood, but I'm a Bael underneath,
Wasp. All your life, you'll be bound to a
Bael!"
"There isn't anyone I'd rather be bound to."
Wasp could foresee a wildly exciting future.
"I do want something from you tonight, though, Your
Piratical Highness. A promise.
Promise you won't keep me waiting. Be
fast! Strike the instant I speak the oath!"
Raider groaned. "I still think we'll both
regret this. You'll be stuck, you know."
Gulp! "That's the whole idea."
"I meant being a private Blade is a
lifetime commitment."
Right then Wasp would settle for a lifetime of
; life.
The Forge was a cavernous chamber, half
underground. The eight-pointed star inlaid in the
floor was surrounded by eight hearths, eight stone
troughs of spring water for quenching, and the eight
anvils on which the splendid cat's-eye swords
were wrought. The ninth anvil, the great metal slab
in the center, was the innermost heart of Ironhall,
the place where human Blades were bound to their
wards. Usually at bindings the flames danced
while more than a hundred men and boys stood around
the octogram and sang their hearts out in the
choruses. Tonight the coals merely glowed and yet
the crypt seemed brighter, for there were only the eight
participants present--seven chanting in one key
and the King in several. No one could fault
Ambrose on volume, but the overall effect was
unconvincing.
Wasp had watched a hundred or so bindings
without ever being a participant. His tenure as
Brat had been unusually short, only six
days. Normally he would have played Third for
Mallory and Second for Raider before his own
turn came, but chance had given him lead role
on his first appearance. Although he was not especially
sensitive to spirituality, being inside the octogram
made a real difference, raising the hairs on his
skin when the powers began to gather. A skeptic
might say that he was just cold, of course, since
he and Raider and Montpurse had all been
required to bathe in four of the water troughs
successively and he had not been allowed to put
on his doublet and jerkin again afterward.
In shirt and hose he shivered at death point,
directly across from Raider at love.
Montpurse was singing a fair tenor on his right and
Janvier a resonant bass on his left. He
was a worry, that one, with his hostile stare
constantly fixed on Raider. He had little to do in
the ritual, but the balance of the elements in a
conjuration as complex as a binding was very delicate,
easily upset by any discordance. Janvier had
always been an odd character; his binding last year
seemed to have made him even more so. The whole idea
of a Blade "instinct" for danger to his ward was
pure goose gobble, based on no real
evidence. A few hard-to-explain incidents were
only to be expected in a tradition that
went back more than three centuries.
Nor was Janvier the only potential
tangle in the thread. A binding should begin at
midnight, but now it was nearer to dawn. The very
slight change in the oath Wasp was planning
shouldn't make any difference, but one never could
tell. So there were several breaks in the pattern and
when Grand Master had been Master of Rituals
and teaching the course on--
His sword! Rumbling out the words of dedication
normally squeaked by the Brat, King Ambrose
marched forward to lay the sword on the anvil. There
was the weapon the armorers had made especially for
Wasp, and of course it was a rapier. But what a
rapier! The cat's-eye glowed like molten gold;
the metal gleamed a spooky moonlight blue.
He could drool over a sword like that, for it was
to be his, his very own sword for all the days of his
life, and when he died it would hang in the sky of
swords as his memorial. He could hardly tear
his eyes away from it as he turned to face the
scowling Janvier. He kept sneaking glances as
Janvier unbuttoned his shirt and helped him out
of it and even after he had turned around and
Montpurse was counting ribs and putting a
charcoal mark over his heart. He barely
registered the Commander's encouraging wink. He
meant well by it, probably. ...
But now, at last, he could step over and take
up the rapier, a three-foot needle. Never
had he felt one so light! It floated in his
hand. ... Alas, proper examination would have
to wait. He jumped up on the anvil and spoke
to Raider, whose face was haggard with worry.
"Radgar Aeleding!" Variations of this scene had
filled his dreams for the last five years, but he
had never expected to see his best friend down there--and
certainly never a Bael! "Upon my soul, I,
Candidate Wasp in the Loyal and Ancient
Order of the King's Blades, do irrevocably
swear in the presence of these my brethren that I will
evermore defend you against all foes, setting my
own life as nothing to shield you from peril. To bind
me to this oath, I bid you plunge this my sword
into my heart that I may die if I swear
falsely or, being true, may live by the power
of the spirits here assembled to serve you until in time
I die again."
Raider had noticed the omission. His eyes
widened, but he strode forward. Wasp
tossed the rapier to him, jumped down to sit on the
anvil, raised his arms. Montpurse and
Janvier should have been there to hold them so he would not
hurt himself in his struggles, but they were not ready for
such unseemly speed.
Raider was. "Serve or die!" he cried,
and ran the whole length of the rapier through Wasp's
heart until the side rings struck his chest.
Oh shit!
He had not expected such agony. He could not
scream with a sword through his chest. His teeth ground;
his back arched. Before Janvier and Montpurse
could grab him, Raider whipped the blade out again
and the pain stopped. He looked down in time to see
the wound close. All over.
At this point in an orthodox binding, the
spectators cheered to hail the new Blade.
There were no spectators in the echoing cavern that
night, but the new Blade sprang up with a yell
and his ward let out a Baelish war howl. The two
of them embraced, then joined hands and cavorted
all around the octogram in a frenzied victory
dance while everyone else jumped back from the
wildly flailing rapier Raider still held. This
was not an orthodox binding.
Sir Wasp, companion in the Loyal and
Ancient Order of the King's Blades!
Raider's Blade. Oh, it felt good!
Now at last he was free to take back that
wondrous weapon, the perfect sword, matched
to his hand, his arm, his style. He feasted his eyes
on the diamond-shaped blade--still bearing streaks
of his lifeblood--the silver quillons and finger
rings, the leather-bound grip, and above all the
cabochon cat's-eye of the pommel. It was
large, to bring the point of balance well back, but
on a weapon so light it need not be large enough
to seem clumsy. Incredibly, the bar of light that
gave such jewels their name was in this case twinned,
two streaks of shining gold brightness.
Distinctive, Montpurse had said.
"Look at this!" he whispered. "I never saw
one lik
e this!"
Raider was inspecting his friend's weapon just as
eagerly as he was. "Of course not. It's
made for you. Those are your stripes, Sir
Wasp! Oh, she's a beauty! What will you
call her?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? That seems very--"
"Not nothing, Nothing." Wasp had thought of this
when he was only a fuzzy and had been savoring the
idea in secret ever since. "Always remember,
you are my ward and Nothing can save you!"
Raider howled out a laugh. "And Master
Armorer's fast asleep, so he will write
nothing on her blade!"
Mirth died as they became aware of six
unfriendly glares fastened on them. Montpurse and
Janvier were closest, obviously disapproving of
an armed man in the King's presence. No one
looked more furious than the King behind them, though.
"Congratulations on your binding, Sir
Wasp."
"Thank you, sire."
"Did we hear correctly?" His Majesty
snarled. "It seemed to us that you left out part of the
standard oath for private Blades."
Wasp attempted to look bewildered. "I
don't think so, sire. Did I?"
The words in question were "reserving only my
fealty to our lord the King," and he had omitted
them because no man could serve two kings and one day his
friend and ward was going to be king of Baelmark. It was
done now and there was absolutely nothing fat
Ambrose of Chivial could do about it. Which was why
he was chewing his beard in fury.
"Hmm! Atheling?"
Raider spun around. "Your Majesty?"
"I want you to get that smart-ass brat out of
here before I wring his neck. We offer you
hospitality at our palace of Bondhill.
You will remain there for a few days until we
consult our Privy Council. Is that agreeable
to you?"
Wasp blinked. There was something wrong with his
eyes.
Raider bowed. "Your Majesty is most
generous. I shall gladly await your pleasure at
Bondhill."
Wasp tried rubbing them.
The King grunted. "Commander?"
"My liege?" Montpurse said, never taking
his pale stare away from Nothing.
"You said you and Sir Janvier missed dinner.
I suggest you take our new Blade and his ward
to the kitchens and see what you can scrounge. Then
send them off with Sir Janvier
to Bondhill."
"A larger escort could easily be spared,
sire."
"He will suffice. It is our pleasure that this