Once A Hero (5 page)

At the courtyard's center, a huge stone ring surrounded what I can only describe as a firewell. Incandescent gases burned there in pulsed jets that filled the area with the heat of a forge. The ghoulish architecture had been used in this area with the terraces being bone-thatch, and the blocks making up the ring looking like compacted skeletons, where skull rested on knees with arms holding leg bones tight to the chest.

Opposite us, across an audience of fifty Reithrese individuals, a High Priest of the Dark Goddess stood resplendent in a cloth of gold robe hemmed to look as if his garment were made from flame. The fiery glow behind him softened his thick outline and, no doubt, revealed us to him, but either he did not notice us or took no concern over our presence.

In his two hands he held aloft a scabbarded sword. I did not understand his words, but I recognized the motions of an auctioneer offering something for inspection and bids. To me, after five years and twenty yards distant, the sword looked different, but I knew the blade he presented was Cleaveheart and that it would be mine before the night was out.

Aarundel leaned toward me and kept his voice low. "He says this is Khiephnaft and offers it for bid."

In the center of the crowd a Reithrese stood up. He turned this way and that to nod at the others present, and gave me a good look at his profile. Though more slender than his brother, he had the same hungry look in his eyes. His smile, from where I stood, appeared a sparkling black gash on the lower end of his face, but that was because, as a magicker, his teeth were diamonds. He pointed to the sword and began to speak.

I stepped forward before Aarundel could grab me and drop a hand over my mouth. "Begging your pardon, Takrakor, but would you mind speaking in Mantongue? My Reithrese is not that good, and I'll be bidding against you."

Only the fire's roar answered my request. The Reithrese and Reithressas present all turned to look at me, with their jeweled teeth not nearly as pretty displayed in shock as they were when flashed in a smile. Then, all of a sudden, everyone spoke at once in a riot of angry, angular words.

Aarundel stepped up beside me and shouted in guttural tones to the high priest. The priest considered the words, while Reithrese gesticulated at me furiously. He then looked down at the crowd and shouted one word that brought silence. When his head came up, the priest looked directly at me.

"The Elf has said you wish to invoke wirt kalma."

I nodded. "I understood that the determination of inheritance brought with it a truce, else I'd not have been mad enough to come here."

"It does, but only for those who are meant to be here."

The priest stared sternly at someone who grumbled from the front row. "
If
your suit for possession of the sword is successful, then we will know you were meant to be here and you will be granted wirt kalma."

The murderous stares of the others in the room told me what would happen if I was not given possession of the blade. "I understand."

"Very well. Takrakor, you were stating the reasons why Khiephnaft should pass to you."

The Reithrese sorcerer nodded slowly. "My brother was not alone in his desire to reestablish our empire. This was a dream we had together, and together we realized it. In the time it took me to devise and implement the plan that put my brother back into the field, our efforts became welded together as had our dreams. He meant the blade, which is the catalyst for realizing our dream, to fall to me. It is upon this that I base my suit."

The priest looked up at me. "You, Manchild, state your case."

I smiled easily to hide the snake crawling around in my belly. "I found the blade for Tashayul because without my efforts, he never would have located it. I fought against the blade, and it drank my blood. And I cut Tashayul down and when Cleaveheart fell from his grasp, I returned it to him. A year ago I killed Tashayul and would have taken the blade then, as befitting the spoils of war, but his Skull-riders—may their frozen bodies one day molder here—brought him and my sword to Jammaq."

I pointed at the sword. "In other words, the blade should be mine—is mine—and I'll be taking delivery of it now."

Takrakor shook his head. "My brother did not intend for you ever to gain possession of Khiephnaft. His thoughts on this matter were quite clear."

"That's because he knew it was meant to be mine." I glanced at Aarundel, and the Elf nodded back. "He knew it, you know it, I know it, and the blade itself can prove it."

Takrakor's hands flexed. "More treachery from the mountains?"

"Just proof." I looked at the priest. "Unsheath the blade." I dropped my hand to the hilt of the scimitar I had borrowed from the natari I'd slain and took no comfort from the fact that Aarundel did not see fit to bring his ax to a guard position. "This better work, Aarundel."

"It will. The priest already knows it will."

The older Reithrese slowly stripped the scabbard from Cleaveheart's blade. As the leather sheath flaccidly slipped from the point, I saw a blade decidedly different from the one I expected. Whereas Cleaveheart had originally been the type of single-edged, serpentine blade the Reithrese upper crust favored, the blade had straightened. Now a broadsword, I saw orange highlights skitter across two razored edges, not just one. The hilt had changed slightly as well, and as far away from it as I was, I knew it would be balanced better than the broadsword I'd left back with the natari bodies and our horses.

I didn't know how the sword had changed, but the transformation had not been lost upon the assembled Reithrese. "You see, when it was meant for a Reithrese hand, it appeared as a Reithrese sword. Now it is meant for the hand of Man." I walked down the short set of steps and through an aisle to the dais upon which the high priest stood. Heat pulsing out from the firewell tried to drive me back, but I would not be denied. "My sword, if you please."

His flesh ashen, he gave me the sword. I turned to leave and found myself staring down the length of the blade at Takrakor's pale throat. "But for the wirt kalma, Takrakor . . ."

"One day, youngling, I will have that sword from your hand and Mankind will scream in pain."

"Will you, now?" I winked at him and tipped the blade toward the sky. "I'm to give this sword to an Elf in forty-five years, so you'd best be quick in getting it while it is still mine."

I stepped around him and rejoined Aarundel. "Before I leave, for I've no desire to tax your wirt kalma, one last thing: I also lay claim to this empire of yours. Give it to whomever you want, but remember it's just a loan. Someday I'll collect it."

Aarundel and I walked back into the tower complex and out through two cold bronze doors. Behind us angry voices rose and fell in time with the hot glow from within the towers. "I gather wirt kaima is breaking down?"

"As with their magicks, 'chaotic' and 'elemental' can be used to describe their interpersonal relationships. As much as they would delight in your termination, they revel in their internecine battles. Even now Takrakor is defending his right to destroy you."

"With luck that argument will last for a decade or two." I whipped Cleaveheart's bare blade up into a salute and felt its cold forte pressed to the flesh of my brow. I brought it down slowly after Aarundel acknowledged my salute with a nod. "Tell me, my friend, why does Finndali want this sword?"

"The Consilliarii have asked him to obtain it."

I bowed my head to him. "And why do the High Lords of Cygestolia want this sword?"

I saw reflected in his dark eyes the war being waged between his brain and his soul. He had his loyalties to me, but they were of recent vintage and might well be unreliable. He also did as he had been commanded by the Consilliarii and their agent, Finndali. In all the time we had been together, he had never once returned to his homeland for new instructions. Whether he could or would answer my question depended upon his assessment of me and, I supposed, my perceived threat to him and Elvendom.

A curt nod prefaced his answer. "Divisator is a blade of fate. It has many prophecies concerning it. It earned its name because of a black event in our history, proving the veracity of one prediction made of it. It is because of that prophecy being true that we have an interest in how the sword is used in case the others also come true."

I frowned. "Such as."

His dark eyes narrowed. "The blade will win an empire, but bring tragedy to the Man who wields it."

"Came true for Tashayul." I spun the blade in my hand.

"It was not necessarily meant to apply to Tashayul." The Elf looked back at the Reithrese towers. "That prophecy could possibly pertain to you, Neal. The Reithrese soothsayers were working from that same prophecy, but their translation may have been different from ours."

"I don't understand."

Aarundel shrugged. "Words can be chameleons, and translators can be magicians. 'Empire,' for example, could be read as 'immortality' or as a confluence of both terms."

"That's not so bad." I spun the blade again. "Immortality or an empire or both? Certainly the fare for a hero, I'm thinking."

"Yes, and more likely your get than any Reithrese. They read the word 'man' as a synonym for 'individual.' We believe it means Man."

That sobered me for a moment. "So the Consilliarii want the blade to prevent the winning of a human empire?"

"The infamy of the Eldsaga has not escaped us." The Elf opened his hands slowly. "A war with humanity sparked by a desire for vengeance is not something we wish to see initiated."

My head came up. "But Finndali was willing to give the Reithrese fifty years to destroy us."

"Ah, but Finndali knew Tashayul was wrong about the sword. After all, he did assign you a bodyguard to keep you alive until you reached your twentieth summer, did he not?"

Aarundel had a point, and it made me think of Finndali as being far more shrewd than I had thought before. "Is there any alternate interpretation to the word 'tragedy' in this prophecy, then?"

Aarundel shook his head.

I shook off the chill cutting at my spine. "Then I'll declare it a tragedy if I'm not able to bore Finndali to death with the tales of my scars in two score five years."

"It would be the height of tragedy indeed, my friend."

I threw him a wink. "And this 'immortality,' might it not be in tale and song rather than in a physical sense?"

"It could be indeed."

"Then, I'm thinking, in deed I'll win it." I rounded the corner of the alley in which we had hobbled our horses and killed the natari. "Do you think we can ride from Reith before they've stopped their squabbling?"

"Even if we were to carry our horses from here and not vice versa, yes."

"Dead men do not carry horses."

"Nor dead Elves."

I laughed and swung up onto my horse's back. "Now that we have that settled, let us be away from this place. It's time for us to come back from the dead and give bards plenty of fodder for insuring we never die again."

The bandits swarmed over the broken caravan like hyenas tearing at a carcass. Their howls of glee and yipped calls of triumph echoed through the vale, filling a placid dusk with the promise of a haunting night. Bright blades flashed red—tinted more by the sun's dying red light than by the blood they spilled—and left bodies scattered haphazardly on the road. Reduced to black silhouettes as they passed in front of a burning wagon, the bandits used their horses to herd crying women and terrified children into the grassy field on the downhill side of the road to Aurdon.

Exalted in their victory and masters of the chaos they had created, the bandits did not notice the two riders watching them from the crest of a hill above their kill. Even if they had, Genevera suspected they would have dismissed her and her companion. No one, assuming sanity and a choice, would be foolish enough to do more than ride away, and ride away swiftly at that. There were other ways to commit suicide, and most all of them promised an easier passage into death than attacking a superior force of bandits.

She looked at her companion, and Durriken smiled at her. "Only a dozen, m'love." He took the reins in his mouth and drew his two flashdrakes from the leather scabbard plate on his stomach. Holding one flashdrake in each hand, he cocked the spark-talons with his thumbs, then winked at her. The brown-haired man dug his heels into his horse's ribs and rode down into the tiny valley.

Genevera reached out toward him for a final touch, but her slender fingers just missed her lover's shoulder. Would you have waited were it two dozen, Rik? From their three years together she knew, had she asked or urged caution upon him he would have remained there with her, but she also knew she could never have made such a request. She accepted that as easily as she accepted the differences in their races, and drank in the fearful excitement rippling through her.

She followed him into the valley as quickly as she could. Her horse, a roan gelding named Spirit, was not as game as Rik's mountain pony in traversing a steep slope in the twilight. When Spirit reached the level grassland that ran from the road to the hills, his long strides regained much of the lead the pony had built up. Even so, Durriken reached the bandits first, giving Genevera time to begin her spell.

Durriken thrust his right hand forward as if his flashdrake were a lance. She saw a small spark as the talon fell, then heard an earsplitting crack as the handcannon vomited out a gout of flame that reached halfway to the nearest bandit. Durriken jerked his head to the right, pulling the pony back away from the caravan, then pointed his left hand at another bandit and triggered the second flashdrake.

As she had seen before, the flashdrakes worked as well as a spell to shift the nature of the battle. The first bandit Rik had shot slipped from the saddle and fell into the dust without much drama. The sound of that first shot had a strong effect and prompted half the bandit horses to shy, rear, or run. Rik's second target sat astride one of the bucking beasts, so when the lead ball from the flashdrake hit him, he catapulted into the air. Already dead, his limp body did a slow backward somersault, then landed with a thump on the rutted roadway.