Fred Saberhagen - An Armory of Swords

Was this how dying felt? Where were the bright memories, the peace that the priests of Ardneh promised? Where?

The cave filled with a space where falling stars streaked across the night, a space of utter silence in which Ninidh’s shriek of immortal terror tore at the hills themselves.

Ninidh shrank away from a sword wielded by a goddess in silver armor that reflected the red of Tegan’s dress, or it was a chiton she wore, gauzy draperies spun of unearthly silk.

Ninidh retreated, her substance torn by the invisible path of the terrible blade. Tegan got to her knees, released from the demon’s attention by the onslaught of the Sword of Stealth.

“Tegan! Get out!” the goddess cried.

Idane struck with the Sword, a blow that divided one Ninidh into many and flung her divided selves to the ground where her treasures lay-a Ninidh shown as she truly was, a creature made of wisps of greed, of puerile pleasure in baubles and sparkles and groveling incarnations of persistent, immortal vanity, a vanity that reflected only its own image and spiraled inward, forever. Ninidh screamed at what she saw, a thousand tiny Ninidhs reflected in a thousand tiny mirrors, Ninidhs that clung to the opals on the filthy floor, to grains of faceted sand, to dust. Ninidhs the size of gnats burrowed into the earth, sifting it like flour.

Tegan stood, wobbly on her feet. She took a position by the lady’s side, guarding her as best she could. The two of them backed toward outside air, toward the useless iron grate.

“Bury her, Idane!” Tegan yelled.

“She buries herself!” Idane shouted. “Look!”

The floor of the cave shifted, its stones loosened by a demon’s greed. Sand and pebbles, then stones, fell from the walls. One of the timbers at the entrance cracked and sagged.

“I have her soul!” Tegan shouted.

“Bury it with her, then!” Idane ducked through the narrowed space at the mouth of the cave and pulled Tegan with her. “Throw it, Tegan!”

Tegan tossed the ugly soulstone into the dirt, into the rainbow colors of the opals that lay scattered on the churning earth.

Idane’s Sword scribed out a circle around the mouth of the cave. “You are bound here, Ninidh,” Idane cried. “Sleep well.”

From the soiled earth, a multitude of tiny shrieks rose. A rumbling began deep in the tunnels. Its soil loosened by restless demons, the cave fell in on itself, on vanity and greed, on gems buried forever and forever guarded by a presence that forced the two women back, back, toward a battle won.

Side by side, Tegan and the Lady Idane fought free of the dust cloud that rose from the cave’s buried mouth. Weaponless, for her sword was buried in the mountain, Tegan looked for danger, but the battle had moved down the mountainside and seemed to be over. The afternoon’s gray light showed changes in Idane. Her hair had gone gray, and she seemed shorter. Or was it only that Tegan had thought her to be taller than she was?

“Noya said you would not help us,” Tegan said.

“We didn’t come to Osyr.” The Lady’s deeply lined face was pale with exhaustion. “We came to you.”

Idane took a step forward. Her hands trembled on the hilt of the Sword she carried.

“Hold this for me, Tegan. It is so heavy.” Idane held out the hilt of the Sword and Tegan took it in her hand.

“Sheathe it,” Idane said.

The great Sword’s invisible blade lighted the lady’s face, a face that Tegan saw clearly, a face she thought she had known and had never really seen until this moment. Idane was old, and kind, and her face held compassion and love, and pity. Why does she pity me? Tegan wondered.

Tegan, obedient, lifted the blade and sheathed Sightblinder, the Sword of Stealth, whose power showed its enemies what they truly feared. Or truly loved.

The Lady Idane straightened her shoulders and walked away from the sealed mine. Tegan followed her, bearing the heavy burden of the lady’s Sword.

Halfway down the slope, Seagus and his men surrounded the Osyr banner, bronze and black victorious against green and gray. The ferretsnake had wrapped its long body under Dorn’s collar to keep out of the wet. It flicked its tongue at the women as they approached. The fighters stood helpless now, bewildered by the churning in the earth. Spring rain pattered in the sudden silence.

It seemed the men would stand in the rain forever. Had they lost their wits? Tegan stepped forward so they could see her.

“Seagus!” she called.

He looked up at her, all the battle lust drained now from his honest, homely face, replaced by fatigue and wonder. The Lady Idane stood aside.

“You have gained a duchy today! Hold it safe!”

The tired men around him raised a cheer, and seeming to find strength in it, raised another.

He left them and climbed the slope to where she stood.

“You’ll be with me?” he asked.

Would she? No. Not as a consort to Seagus, although she wished him well. The lands in Osyr and Idris were good farming lands, and the foothills of the mountains fine pasturage. Given no gems to twist his soul, and good farmers, Seagus would be a careful guardian of what he held.

“Sometimes,” Tegan said. Yes, sometimes, I’ll come to you and laugh, and we’ll make love. We’ll comfort each other again, as we have before. But you’ll need a wife in time, a dutiful wife, and children. I’m not for that.

The wiry, gray-haired woman had taken shelter beneath the branches of a new-leafed tree. Tegan watched her, afraid Idane would slip away. The lady was almost invisible, gray in the world’s gray rain. “We’ll talk about this, Seagus. Soon. Your men are waiting. Go to them.”

He hesitated.

“You’re the duke. Be a good one. Your men are tired and wet, and hungry.”

Seagus blinked as if he’d just been awakened. He turned and looked at his new charges. “Dorn! Set out guards!” he shouted. “Blacknail, do something about this damned rain! All of you! Get the wounded to shelter!”

He walked down the mountainside toward his men, his future. In these brief moments, he had gained a lordly set to his shoulders.

Tegan went to the Lady Idane.

“Your Sword. Take it,” Tegan said.

The woman folded her arms one in the other.

“Of all those who came to me, you alone could bear it in my stead,” Idane said.

“You sent me away!”

“Yes. But the Sword is yours. I will not take it up again.”

Idane had sent Tegan away, hurt and angry. Because of that anger, an untrained girl had learned the uses of loyalty, of power, of weapons of steel and of weapons that had no physical being but were useful in skilled hands. Of patience, of misdirected purpose. Of stealth, even if used to force someone to become what she, on her own, would not.

“Did Noya watch me buy the stone?” Tegan asked.

“Yes. She did not understand how you planned to use it.”

Neither did I, Tegan thought.

“It was a clever ruse, scattering the gems,” Idane said.

A clever ruse that had almost failed. Tegan had not been wise, or devious. She had only been desperate. Had she hoped the lady would come to her, and bring the Sword?

Yes. Tegan had hidden her hope even from herself. She had taken a foolish risk, but she had won.

Was she a fit successor to the woman she had seen in the cave, a woman of deadly wisdom, who fought even demons? She saw the answer in the Lady Idane’s tired, compassionate face.

Tegan raised the sheathed Sword to her forehead in salute to her mentor.

“Oh, bother,” the Lady Idane said. The fatigue of battle seemed to have left her. She looked as brisk as a spring wind. “It’s not going to be all fun, you know. You have a bit to learn about wizardry, for starts. I thought for a minute there that you didn’t know what you were about.”