Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

Realgar staggered on the brink of the ledge, Stormblade clenched in his right fist. Stanach saw panicked astonishment screaming in the derro mage’s eyes the instant his foot missed the crumbling stone. Panting raggedly, Hornfel dove for Realgar’s arm and caught it in both hands. He fell to his knees, dragged to the stone by the weight of the struggling mage.

“Let him go!” Hauk cried.

With all Realgar’s weight pulling on him, Hornfel gritted his teeth and pulled back.

“Let him go!” Stanach whispered.

Hornfel’s grip slipped, his hands slid up Realgar’s arm to his wrist, his fingers touching the hilt of the Kingsword just as Realgar threw back his head and screamed. The mage fell and Hornfel lunged for Stormblade. Steel flashed, fiery heart catching the last gray light, as Hornfel snatched it back from the void.

Stanach closed his eyes, sharp tears clawing at his throat. For a long, dizzying moment, he didn’t know if his heart tightened for regret or for rejoicing.

They weren’t Hauk’s hands on Stanach’s arms now, but Lavim’s. Hauk had rushed to Hornfel. Still staggered by the Theiwar’s kick, Stanach looked around at the kender in confusion. Lavim was saying something but Stanach couldn’t make it out.

“Slow,” the dwarf whispered hoarsely. “Lavim, go slow.”

Lavim tugged at Stanach’s left hand. “Come with me now, Stanach,” he urged. “You have to come with me now.”

The dwarf said nothing. He wasn’t up to arguing with Lavim and simply went where he was pulled. He heard Kelida’s voice, low and weary. He looked around for her, his vision skewing a little. The dwarf found her on her knees at the gaping door to Northgate, supporting Tyorl. Her hunting shirt was torn where she’d been struck, the gray leather slit neatly where Kembal had cut it away to clean and bandage her wound. She spoke a word to Lavim, and the kender, his wrinkled face white, bolted for the gate, shouting for Kem. From where he stood, Stanach could see Kelida’s grief-stricken expression, the shaking of her hand as she rested her fingers on Tyorl’s throat to feel for a lifebeat that, if it still existed, could not be strong. Too much blood stained the elf’s hunting leathers.

He heard Hauk’s voice behind him. Stanach turned. Hauk looked down at Stormblade in Hornfel’s hand.

Slowly, Hornfel laid the sword down beside Tyorl. The flash of loathing in Hornfel’s eyes toward the Kingsword, momentarily seen and instantly hidden, chilled Stanach’s heart. Stormblade’s sapphired hilt caught the fading light. The fire of Reorx’s forge pulsed in the flat of the blade.

Wordlessly, Hauk took Lavim’s place. He placed shaking fingers on Tyorl’s arm. His lips moved soundlessly, repeating the name of the friend who had traveled so far to rescue him from Realgar’s torments. Hauk’s were the bleakest eyes Stanach had ever seen.

Stanach touched Kelida’s shoulder gently. “ Lyt chwaer. ” He went to his heels beside her.

“I sent Lavim for Kembal.” Grief made a tattered thing of her low voice. “It won’t matter. Tyorl is dying, Stanach.”

He wrapped his arms around her, supporting her while she held Tyorl.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Kelida leaned against Stanach’s shoulder and buried her face in his thick, black beard.

Stanach stroked her shoulder gently and looked up to meet Hauk’s eyes. The ranger’s disbelief, and his struggle to understand that his friend was dying, made him seem suddenly very young.

Tyorl stirred. His lips moved as though he tried to speak. When his hand moved in Kelida’s she turned, green eyes shimmering with her tears. Gently, so that she didn’t jar him, Kelida bent and lightly kissed him.

“Ah,” Tyorl whispered, “you kissed me for luck and farewell once before—in Long Ridge.” He lifted his hand, touched her face, her hair.

“Kelida.”

Stanach felt her move as she caught Tyorl’s falling hand. Kelida sobbed, and Stanach’s heart ached with stunned grief.

Tyorl was dead of Stormblade’s steel.

Stormblade.

Kingsword made from pieces of twilight and a midnight star. Though it was his, Hornfel had not buckled on the sword, not felt its weight on his hip, in all the three days since the battle in Northgate. Though the dwarves of Thorbardin acknowledged him, cheerfully some and sullenly others, as king regent, his investiture would not take place for seven nights. It would not be appropriate for him to wear the Kingsword before then.

Hornfel lifted the lid of the coffer that held Stormblade. Lined with velvet the color of smoke, satin the color of the steel’s red heart, this coffer had held the Kingswords of generations of high kings. Now it holds that of a king regent, he thought, and holds it here in the Court of Thanes, well under guard, but here for all to see, wonder at, exclaim over.

They had come like people seeking the blessings of a relic. The Court of Thanes had never been so well guarded as it had these two days past. The house guards of each of the six thanedoms stood shared watches for all the hours of the day and night.

Hornfel stepped back from the coffer, away from the long display case, which looked more and more like a bier each time he saw it. He wondered if any Kingsword had ever cost so dearly as Stormblade had cost. When word returned to the Theiwar fighting at the Klar city that their thane was dead, they had fallen into confused disarray and fled back their dark cities.

It was a confusion, Hornfel thought now, that would not find resolution until the Theiwar found time to stand back from the bloody waters of their own internal politics and choose a leader from among those still living. Though Ranee would not admit to a death count, in the farming warrens Ranee’s Daergar had moved swiftly and savagely against the refugees. Sturm had pinned them neatly in the south entrance to the farming warrens and Caramon had closed them in from the north. Tanis and his captains had stood true.

It was the end of the revolution. Ranee stood by his claim of defending his holding when he’d thought it surrounded by Outlanders taking advantage of the Theiwar uprising to loot and pillage. None could prove he was allied with Realgar.

Hornfel shuddered and found his eyes drawn to the sword. Silver chased gold hilt, perfect sapphires, and a flame-hearted blade of finest steel: it was the price of so many lives!

His weariness was soul-deep and he didn’t know how he was going to make his regency worth the lives of the kin, friends, and strangers who had died for it.

He heard a footstep behind him. Hornfel turned, thinking suddenly of Piper. He almost called the mage’s name aloud, but stopped himself when the kender, Lavim, rounded a broad, high column.

Hornfel stared at the kender. He had gotten past twenty-four armed warriors and none of them could have so much as thought a shadow was passing!

The kender, cheerfully unconcerned, greeted Hornfel with casual goodwill. “You know, sir, they’ve been looking for you all over the place. It’s almost sunset now. They’ll be waiting for you in the Valley of the Thanes. Me, I figured this was where you’d be, so I came to get you. Besides, I kind of wanted to get another look at Stormblade.” He cocked a thumb at the Kingsword. “I’ve been looking at that thing for a couple of weeks now. I have to tell you, it doesn’t look like itself in there.”

Hornfel smiled. “What does it look like?”

“Well, bigger, I guess.”

Lavim stepped closer to the coffer for a better look. Hornfel kept close beside him. Amusing and ingenuous as he was, Lavim was still, after all, a kender.

“No,” Lavim said, revising his opinion. “Not bigger. Just—I dunno, not like Kelida’s sword. Or Hauk’s. Or whoever’s it is.” Lavim shrugged and then looked up at a deeply shadowed corner of the far ceiling, his eyes narrowed. “Right. His.”