Sword Quest (14 page)

Maldeor signaled to one of his knights to keep an eye on the two.
But then…maybe they actually
do
live on this cold island. It’s magical. Perhaps the phoenix and the rest are hidden somewhere. Perhaps this is a test.

After the feast, the penguins gave a concert on their ice xylophones. Maldeor continued to worry. Today was Hero’s Day. The atmosphere was pleasant enough, but the weather was too cold for an archaeopteryx. If he could get the sword immediately, he would fly back to warmer lands.

When the last music piece ended, Maldeor strode fretfully up to Lady Gwendeleine. “Lady, would you be so kind as to show me your swords now?”

With Winger at her side, Gwendeleine nodded. “Come and bring the special swords,” she called into the empty tunnels, as planned. There was a soft pattering of feet on ice as stocky penguins entered, balancing weaponry on cushions on their toes. Each bowed courteously and asked Maldeor, “Sir, is this it?”

Besides steel and iron swords, there were even ones made of ice. After inspecting twenty of them, he started to feel foolish and angry. Yin Soul had hinted that the magical sword had the eighth gemstone on its hilt. None of the swords here had a gemstone anywhere.
There’s something behind this,
he thought, narrowing his eyes. Something wasn’t right. Again his doubts clouded his mind, and then quickly he formed a plan.

He turned around and smiled pleasantly at a penguin scholar. “It seems you have guests here? There’s a woodpecker and an eagle.”

“Yes, sometimes birds come and go. Seabirds are the majority,” said the penguin scholar.

“I can see why. It’s so beautiful here. Even the toucans would want to come.”

The penguin scholar beamed. “I sure hope they
would! They’re neighbors, after all.”

Too late, the penguin realized his mistake.

The feathers on Maldeor’s face all rose on end, and his eyes squeezed into ugly slits.
First my shriveling wing, then my toothache, now this!
he thought. “You tricked me! You’re trying to delay me further!” He seized the penguin scholar by the scruff of his neck, holding the end of his sword against the penguin’s forehead. “You know where it really is. Tell me, which direction?”

“It’s not…I…”

“Tell me!” Maldeor bellowed. The sword point shook. Blood seeped out of a cut between the penguin’s eyes.

“How dare you!” Lady Gwendeleine raised a flipper-like wing. “Release the scholar. Stop!”

Maldeor seized the scholar even tighter and ordered his soldiers to charge the penguins.

Only now did he realize how low the ceiling was. He could not fly. His troops charged as best as they could, staggering and slipping on the ice, but Maldeor could tell they were too full to be in good shape for battle.

The penguins grabbed the heavy ice plates. They hurled them like discuses into the ranks of the charging knights, then turned around and ran into the tunnels.

“Kill them! Kill them!” Maldeor commanded. His
soldiers blundered together in a heavy mass as they chased after the penguins in the tunnels. The ice floor collapsed beneath their weight. Screaming, they disappeared as the black ocean closed over their heads.

When the remaining soggy troops finally drove the penguins into the wide hall of the throne room, penguins kept popping in and out of the tunnels, agile and quick. They ducked blows so that the swords of the archaeopteryxes hacked onto the ice pillars instead.

“Be careful! No!” yelled Maldeor, but it was too late. The damaged pillars wobbled and collapsed. Whole icicles fell down, and the ceiling caved in. What had been beautiful was now deadly. A chilling tune filled the room as the ice fell onto the floor. The archaeopteryxes were trapped. Seeing Maldeor distracted, the penguin scholar wriggled from his grasp and escaped.

“This is a trap, a trick!” Maldeor shouted to his soldiers as wind from the sky blew upon them from a gaping hole in the roof. He hurriedly assembled his carriage and harnessed the geese. “Upward! Upward! Don’t waste time fighting the penguins! Upward and northward, to Kauria immediately!” His knights and soldiers abandoned the fighting and hurried to follow him. Soon, the remaining archaeopteryxes and the geese
were on the move again.

“They’re going to Kauria. We must try to stop them!” Winger cried to Fleydur.

Gwendeleine nodded. “But they shall not be speedy. The food in their bellies will drag them down, and the water on their wings will stiffen. Their wings will feel like lead. There seems to be some fog gathering too. Hurry and you may fly ahead of them yet! Farewell, my friends. Thank you and good luck! Without you, many penguins might not be alive now!”

“Farewell! Keep your gemstone safe!” the eagle and the woodpecker cried back. Then, swinging up into the fog, the two birds flew north.

Wind-voice wasn’t sure how far the wind had carried him. For the last several minutes he had been flying through a bundle of fog so thick he could not see the water below him or the dying evening sun ahead. But now the mist was thinning around him. He broke through the last few shreds of cloud to find himself over a sea that seemed endless, sprinkled with icy white islands. Far away, in the blue-black water, his eye caught a glimpse of green.

Yet there was something bright, much closer—two birds, one large, one small, flying furiously as they broke
free of another thick band of fog not far away. The smaller bird had a bright red head. Wind-voice heard, very faintly, the chiming of bells.

The sun dazzled Fleydur’s and Winger’s eyes as they dove through the last clinging shreds of fog. They hovered for a moment, trying to get their bearings. Winger blinked as something white flashed against the background of darkening evening sky. He gasped.

“I’m so glad you’re alive!” Winger shouted as the three
friends fluttered around one another in midair. Delight and astonishment were close to making them dizzy.

Wind-voice seemed larger than the woodpecker had remembered. Fleydur swooped around, his bells jangling joyfully.

“Where is Stormac?” Winger suddenly whispered, though he understood at once when he saw the strawberry charm around Wind-voice’s neck. They hovered still, in the air. In a trembling voice Wind-voice told the sad tale. He slowly took off the charm and held it out to Winger.

The woodpecker reached out his bamboolike claws and touched the wooden berry delicately. Two shining pearls of tears spilled down his face and onto the worn red wood. His eyes stared at the sea below.

“We’ve come this far, with a sea storm lifting our wings. We’ve traveled over desert, forest, ocean, with a storm of purpose and worry giving us determination. Pray, where is our own storm, to lift our hearts?” Then he recited softly,

O ye great pounding waves

Of this sorrowful sea

How much of thee

Are tears?

He sniffed and nodded his head jerkily, then handed the berry back to Wind-voice.

Fleydur bowed his head. Without a word, he took out a small sack. From it he scooped out the last of the tinsel stars that Stormac had loved so much.

He tossed them into the sky. “Stormac!” he bellowed. The silvery stars looked magical as they shimmered and scattered in the wind. “A valiant warrior. A valiant death.”

“Stormac!” Wind-voice stared at the sparkles. He felt the grief shake him all over again. “It was at the island where he died that I found a clue from an alliance of seabirds: ‘Find flowers amid ice.’ Fleydur, we met your tribe, too. ‘Look into the eyes to choose your path,’ that’s their clue.”

“My family!” Fleydur looked scared and excited at the same time. He could find no other words to say.

“Wind-voice, we also found two other gems!” Winger exclaimed. “The robin’s ruby said, ‘What you love most is the key.’ The penguins have a light blue Leasorn. It says, ‘Find the bird who flies through waters.’”

Wind-voice shook his head. “They must point to the sword. But I don’t understand what they mean.”

“The penguins told us that there’s an island with
green nearby,” Fleydur said. “It’s probably Kauria. We must take to our wings. The archaeopteryxes might have spotted it already. We can’t stay here any longer.”

The three friends stretched their wings and headed for Kauria.

Before long, Ewingerale was faltering. His wings ached with each beat. Wind-voice flew up under him. “Rest on my back a few minutes,” he murmured.

“You’re tired too,” Winger whispered. “You can’t carry me.”

“I can do it.” Wind-voice caught up to Fleydur. The two tried to fly steadily. Winger could feel the body heat of Wind-voice as his friend silently strained. The wind blew in their faces, pelting them with tiny, sharp flakes of ice and swirling a mist around them. Whiteness blotted out the world for a moment. When it cleared, Winger let out a sharp cry. “An army ahead of us!”

He pointed at a moving mass. The wind had seized a banner that a bird in the vanguard was carrying. It was blue in the darkening sky, and on it was a mountain peak and a black cloud split by a lightning bolt.

“Skythunder,” Fleydur cried, astonished.

“It’s your brother!” Wind-voice exclaimed. “It’s Forlath. He said he’d bring help.” He peered more closely at the far-off mass of birds and made out flashes of
color—the bright red wings of parrots, and white and gray that might be seagulls. Did he even catch a glimpse of a heron’s long yellow legs?

“But how—” Fleydur said. “But why—”

“No time now!” shouted Wind-voice. Behind them, the archaeopteryx army broke out of a cloud and flapped closer. Wind-voice realized the enemy had spotted them and had changed course to intercept them. He and his companions would be trapped. But from the mass of gray archaeopteryx feathers and bright steel, a single bird pointed a sword, not toward Forlath’s army, but toward something that had been obscured by a stray layer of mist that hung over the sea.

“Maldeor.” Wind-voice shuddered.

What separates a hero from a villain?
Now I understand.

—FROM
“E
WINGERALE’S
D
IARY,” IN THE
O
LD
S
CRIPTURE

T
he woodpecker and the eagle! No, eagles…” Maldeor crouched on the edge of his carriage, ready to launch himself. He turned to Kawaka. “Those sniveling Skythunder hook-beaks have finally come out of hiding. Ha, golden eagles fighting over water! Ridiculous. Sir Kawaka, attack them!”

Maldeor gargled one last beakful of medicine and leaped down.

All around, the two armies clashed together in one turbulent cloud that rained feathers and blood. Before Maldeor could fly farther, an arrow fell toward him. It went right through his magical wing, but the vaporous wing did not seem to heal as quickly.

He looked back. Ewingerale, Fleydur, and Wind-voice surrounded him. “Not dead? Not blind?” Maldeor gasped at the sight of Wind-voice, who was much bigger than before.
Calm down, Maldeor,
he said silently to himself.
Fight the weakest one first, and get rid of them one by one.
Maldeor swung his sword at Ewingerale. Within a few moves, the woodpecker tumbled, and the first gust of wind sent him falling.
The eagle next,
Maldeor thought, and turned.

Wind-voice dived down to rescue Winger. “I’m all right,” the woodpecker murmured.

“Fleydur, come here and help!” Wind-voice shouted, but when he looked back, he saw the eagle veering in a circle, defeated by Maldeor as well.

“Now you!” Maldeor cried. “One on one.”

Fleydur recovered and went to tend Winger while Wind-voice rose up in the air to face his enemy.
What? He’s much more skilled than he seems…I can’t waste time parrying him when there’s only a few hours left to Hero’s Day.
Maldeor abruptly turned and dove down
toward the shroud of mist.

“No!” Wind-voice cried.
I must stop him.
He followed where Maldeor had gone. The mist swallowed him. “So this is Kauria,” he said to himself as an island, sandy yellow and fringed with green, appeared below.
Find flowers amid ice,
Wind-voice thought. This was what the first clue had meant.

Wind-voice swooped lower. The island was bird-shaped. Long sandy beaches stretched out on either side; it looked as if the bird were soaring through the dark blue ocean.
Find the bird who flies through waters.
The gems indeed held the clues he needed. “Oh, Stormac,” he whispered, thinking of the skeptical myna. “You should be here to see this.”

The sea wind swept him inland. A clue suddenly leaped into his mind.
The eye of the bird sees your wish.
He aimed for the part of the island shaped like a bird’s head. A steep gray cliff formed the beak. He hovered toward where the bird’s eye should be. Suddenly a pyramid appeared there magically, in the middle of the sandy waste.

Wind-voice felt all the feathers on his neck rise. He charged at a small gate set in the side of the pyramid just in time to see a tail, gray and feathered, disappear inside.

Wind-voice dove through the empty doorway and into a long, narrow tunnel. He soared down the stone corridor.

He was in a great round hall. There were towering panels of stained glass standing on all sides but no sign of Maldeor. Where had he gone? Wind-voice hurried down the hall, peering around him. As he passed the first panel, a candle behind it burst into flame, making him jump back. It showed a finch, dying, crushed beneath the claws of a huge archaeopteryx who, laughing, held a long sword.

Cruel scenes blazed out from each panel as Wind-voice passed by. But still there was no sign of Maldeor.

There was only one panel still dark. As Wind-voice
dashed past it, the image on it glowed with brilliant color. Wind-voice stopped, hesitated, and came back to look.

The panel showed a group of hopeful birds—a robin, a kingfisher, a penguin, an eagle, a seagull, a parrot—reaching their claws out. Above their heads hovered gemstones.

As Wind-voice stared, the glass window split and opened like a door.

Inside was a tunnel that curved up and out of his sight. He launched himself forward and pumped his wings for height. The smooth, rounded walls of the tunnel were covered by a smooth white surface, like mother-of-pearl, that gave off its own light so he could see where he was going. The tunnel spiraled, taking him higher and higher. One wing tip lightly brushed the outer wall as he flew faster and faster. The turns were tight but the slope was not steep.

Then he heard vibrating booms inside. They got louder as Wind-voice flew higher.

The tunnel abruptly ended and he nearly ran into the back of the archaeopteryx, hovering, staring at a solid flat wall, a dead end, before him. On the wall hung a carving of gray feldspar. Concentric rings went dizzyingly around a central point, where two flat rocks twice
the size of Maldeor overlapped each other. Maldeor jerked his head up at the sound of Wind-voice’s panting.

His eyes widened momentarily. Wind-voice was now the same size as he was!

“Trying to stop me, are you? Seeking death?” he snarled. He drew his sword and dove at Wind-voice.

Wind-voice flew to one wall, braced himself against it, pushed off, and leaped to the left. He kept his sword between himself and Maldeor. He must distract him and buy time for the hero to arrive and claim the sword.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” he heard himself saying. “How can you wage such war and yet say that you want to bring peace?”

Maldeor snorted as if it were obvious. “I will make a better world, free of ignoramuses and meaningless fighting, where birds have common sense, like me.”
Better kill him off immediately now when he has little room to escape,
Maldeor thought. The archaeopteryx unleashed his ultimate move, the Deadly Fate. Wind-voice met it with a vertical slash. His cheek and neck burned and he felt blood beneath his eye. Otherwise he was unharmed.

Maldeor stared at Wind-voice. “You ought to have died! Slave you have been; though you’ve grown in size, now you bear such a mark again.” Maldeor laughed, trying to cover his confusion. “And you have a slave’s
stupidity, too, or you would understand the obvious. Peace can only be gained by force. Birds must be controlled. There is no other way.”

“Peace cannot be forced,” Wind-voice retorted firmly. “There is no true peace under force.”

Maldeor’s face was a picture of derision and contempt. He slashed out again, but Wind-voice parried successfully. The clang of the steel blades rang and echoed off the close stone walls.

Where was the hero? Surely he would come any moment now. Wind-voice knew he could not hold out for long. “When the hero comes,” he murmured. “When he comes…”

“He is here,” Maldeor said. “I am he. How does this door open?” Maldeor demanded. “You wouldn’t have come here unless you thought you could open it. Tell me and perhaps I’ll let you live!”

Wind-voice retreated until the stone wall was at his back, and Maldeor swooped in closer. Wind-voice could see a vein pulsating on the archaeopteryx’s left eyelid like a small azure snake.

“I don’t know!” Wind-voice shot back.
Peace opens the door
, he thought.
But what does that mean?
He folded his wings, dropping suddenly below Maldeor, and then rose up beneath him. Maldeor screeched with
rage and struggled to turn in the narrow space. Now Wind-voice was nearer to the mysterious door than his enemy was. But when he tried to lay a claw upon it, something unseen but too powerful to be resisted seemed to brush him aside.

All of a sudden, something clicked in Wind-voice’s mind. To get through that door, he must not be armed. He must go in peace.

He looked back. Maldeor was growling at him now. Would he be crazy to disarm himself when he was a mere wing’s length away from a murderer?

The hero wasn’t here, and if he let Maldeor kill him, the archaeopteryx might easily figure out how to open the door, and then the sword would be his.

Wind-voice dropped his weapon. It fell and clattered on the shining floor of the tunnel and started sliding, curving out of sight along the spiral.

A deep grinding noise shook the carving on the wall. The two flat rocks trembled and slowly slid apart to reveal a round gaping hole.

Maldeor understood at once.
I must disarm myself, but I won’t let 013-Unidentified off so easily….
Instead of dropping his weapon, he flung it at Wind-voice’s head. As Wind-voice ducked to avoid the whirling blade,
Maldeor got a head start. He charged into the hole and disappeared.

“Oh no…” Worry gnawed at Wind-voice’s heart. He immediately zipped into the hole as well. Blackness blanketed him. Nothing could be seen ahead. Where was Maldeor? The darkness lasted for a few seconds, and then unexpectedly two monstrous eyes lit up before them.
What’s that?
Wind-voice wondered. As he flew closer, he discovered that they were only eye-shaped crystal doors. “Look into the eyes to choose your path,” Wind-voice said to himself.

A milky white mist swirled across the doors; then it cleared and on each crystal a scene appeared. Wind-voice saw himself raising a blazing sword in his claws on the right crystal. On the left crystal loomed ghostly, thin faces, all sorts of birds, ragged and dirty, with big eyes. They reached out their claws beseechingly.

“Which way did Maldeor go?” Wind-voice wondered. He looked at the image of the poor birds on the left. He pushed it and it swung inward.

The left door didn’t lead to a room at all but into a deep green forest. Above was a clouded sky. A shining light low in the mid-distance caught Wind-voice’s attention. “A fallen star,” he whispered, and drifted toward it.
But the light spilled from a crystal casket, caught in the twining boughs of an oddly shaped tree. The sheer intensity of the light made the casket glow like a white cylinder.

Where is the hero? Where is Maldeor?
Wind-voice thought.
Since the hero’s sword is here, and since Maldeor is near, Maldeor could get the sword at any moment. I’ll stay here and fight him if he does. But what if I lose? I must take the sword out and hide it somewhere for the hero so that Maldeor cannot find it.

A golden disk remained visible where the keyhole should have been. At the very center a heart had been etched, so painstakingly detailed, it seemed to throb in the flickering light. Seven round, clear stones were inlaid in a circle around it. A miniature object was suspended in each stone: a ruler’s crown, two crossed swords, a treasure chest, a bird holding a green sprig, a rose, a book, a grass nest.
What you love most is the key,
Wind-voice said to himself.

Suddenly a deep, rich voice echoed out of the darkness.
“You have only one choice.”
Wind-voice turned around, but there was nobird. Mystified, he looked down again at the stones.

A crown…ruling,
he thought.
I certainly don’t want to control others.
His eyes fell lower.
The two swords together
could only mean battle, and battle is cruel. Then the treasure chest? With riches, a bird can help the poor…
he thought, and hesitated before continuing.
The bird with the branch is the only image that contains an animal.
He hesitated again, longer this time.
The rose might mean love; the book, learning; and the nest, family…All of those are surely important.
Wind-voice swayed in a second of indecision. He looked back up again, and his eyes stayed on the stone of the bird with the branch.
It looks like an olive branch. It must mean peace,
he thought.
How can families stay together and survive in the cruelty of battle? Aren’t books destroyed in war? Even if there were books, how could fighting birds have the time to read them? War is synonymous with death. Can riches stop any of it? No. To have love, learning, and family, peace must come first. I care about peace,
he thought. He raised a foot and pressed the stone with the bird holding the olive branch.

Though it was only a click, in the echoing forest it sounded like a loud clattering bang as the casket opened, the lid slowly rising and swinging back.

The voice spoke again.
“This is the hero’s sword.”

How often had Wind-voice thought about the sword since the first time he had heard of it from Fisher?

The beauty of it was its pure, strong simplicity—it was long and straight like a ray of sunshine. The ivory
scabbard’s designs of water and wind were clean and flowing; the bold curves on the dragonlike hilt seemed alive. The source of all the light was the Leasorn gemstone embedded in the hilt. A living rainbow seemed to swirl inside.

“How can I make sure Maldeor doesn’t get the sword?” asked Wind-voice.

“There is only one way. You must use the strength of your heart to seal the casket from evil. This is a sacrifice. Are you willing?”

Wind-voice gazed at the sword. Then he closed his eyes. He could almost see the figure of his mother in the sunshine. His memory was blurred by time, but Wind-voice tried to bring the picture into focus. Then, in the background, a lost heron drifted into view.
“He made the most beautiful candles,”
Aredrem whispered.
“Even ones of heron chicks…it’s a pity, but they’ve all burned out now…”