The Crystal Empire (8 page)

“But I was only—”

Parcifal sighed. “It has come to me—believe me, son, I didn’t look for it—to be a go-between in life, disputes to resolve among my fellows and to keep the peace. ’Tis a path of moderation.”

Bending, he took Frae’s elbows, gently lifting the child to her feet.

“I’ve imperiled my reputation—not to mention my neck, boy—interfering with the Brotherhood on your account and on your f
a
ther’s. Ne’er mind. Like him, ’tis a mad bare-chester you are, boy, a seer of the blood-haze. In the Brotherhood you’ve earned an enmity which must culminate in disaster, for yourself, your family, for anyone else unfort
u
nate enough to be present when it arrives.

“Come, daughter, we’ll leave this young demon—and his corrupting i
n
fluence—to himself for the time being.”

He turned, almost tripping over the pile of dogcart parts. Regaining his balance, to Sedrich he said, “And your
dreams
, boy—yes, I heard you spea
k
ing of them ere now—your dreams would accomplish naught save disturb an unspoken truce ’tween our people and the Red tribesmen west. A truce won in your father’s time, at a price beyond your powers of i
m
agining.”

They left the shed.

As the boy watched their backs diminishing in the twilight, one young and upright, the other bent beyond its years, his eye lighted upon his mother. Ilse Sedrichsfrau stood apart, thin hands folded across the top of her staff, an expression of pain upon her face as she contemplated what had transpired between the man Hethri and her son.

For the first time in Sedrich’s memory, she, too, looked old.

“Marry the spouseless among you, and your slaves and handmaidens that are righteous....”—
The Koran
, Sura XXIV

In time, as Sedrich somehow knew it would, Hethri Parcifal’s frigh
t
ened anger passed away. He wasn’t the sort long to keep a grudge—nor, the boy conceded to himself, much of any other feeling. Such wasn’t the manner of “moderation.” This quality in him made a decent neighbor.

Perhaps it would make an amiable father-in-law.

Following that one terrible night, there was, for a time, peace. The Brotherhood soon discovered others to call upon. In one respect, at least, Oln Woeck was wrong: fisherfolk, not from their village alone, but from many neighboring settlements along the coast, found use for Sedrich’s “dange
r
ous” innovation.

Seldom needing to be shown something twice, the boy forged anot
h
er boat-crank, without Owaldsohn’s help. Then another. And another. Small thanks to Parcifal, in whose friendship Sedrich in any case came to feel his father’s confidence misplaced, an exception was made where interests of the belly outweighed Helvetian conservatism.

In time, great Owaldsohn’s help became necessary. Soon after, it was indispensable. By the following season, the smithy was producing more of Sedrich’s simple marine equipment than the remainder of their cu
s
tom a
c
counted together. Before another twelvemonth was out, father and son were required to find a carpenter to fashion wooden paddle wheels. They’d no time for it themselves.

Three more summers passed in this prosperous, happy wise.

2

“Now the left hand!”

One ankle crossing the other, Owaldsohn lounged against the shed, bearlike arms folded, a malicious grin buried in his white-shot beard. The sun glowed orange atop the razor-edge of the horizon. Klem, begi
n
ning to grow old himself, dozed in the afternoon warmth. Willi watched Sedrich’s labors with interest.

Sedrich groaned, sweat-drenched, trembling, but obedient to his f
a
ther’s command. His weak wrist ached, bruised in the marrow with what already he’d demanded of it this morning. By turns, he wiped wet palms upon the clout which was all he wore. Shifting the great weapon for a
n
other two-handed assault upon a creosoted post planted in the smithy yard, the youth, grown man-tall with time’s passage, changed his stance.

Whirling
Murderer
high above his head, he suddenly lengthened his reach with a roar which was half agony, half fury, letting the gleaming steel lash out.

No wood-chips flew. Though the edge bit deep, the heavy tarring u
p
on the post preserved its life somewhat. Whittled remains of a dozen predecessors did dot the yard, making hazardous navigation of a moo
n
less nighttime. They’d have to be dug out ere long.

Levering the great blade free, Sedrich watched the blackened timber “heal” itself for another attack. Cleaning creosote off his father’s sword had become almost as arduous as the effort which put it there. In sun, snow, and rain, summer heat and winter cold, he’d repeated these pai
n
ful motions a hundred times each dawning the last two years. Given a
n
other five, his wrists would come to resemble bundled iron staves, his forearms outsi
z
ing the calves of many another man.

Another whirl, another scream of unleashed power, another bite into the unyielding butt Sedrich had come to view as a personal enemy. Shock sang up the blade into his tortured wrists.

Yet, with each swing of the legendary
Murderer
, he’d come to a
p
preciate his father’s genius more. Seven winters in the forging, begi
n
ning when the apprentice smith had been little older than his fifteen-year-old son, the sword was enormous, for grim Owaldsohn was a big man, bigger than Sedrich would ever be. The naked blade spanned a handwidth, its guard three times as wide. When
Murderer
was rested upon its point (which neither S
e
drich would think to do in practice), the fist-sized pommel stood even with the younger blacksmith’s chin. When the sword was slung across his back, handle high above his head, with the broad guard at his right shou
l
der, the scabbard-tip slapped the back of his knee.

The grip—fashioned not from leather windings, as was customary with the Helvetii, but of iron disks separated by mandrel-wound glass was
h
ers—constituted a third of the entire greatsword, allowing leverage necessary to swing the thing. The broad iron cross-guard tips pointed straight forward, splayed to trap an opponent’s weapon. And trap it was, a broad path leading along the flat, polished edges of the unground “forte” onto a wedge of case-hardened steel inset upon the guard-face. This would notch another blade. With a hearty twist of the wielder’s wrist, the dinted blade would snap like dried sea-oat.

Survival then became a matter of avoiding the other fellow’s jagged stump as it flashed off the guard.

Only half the blade was ground—the foible, Owaldsohn called it, a flimsy naming, Sedrich thought, for such a length of deadly steel as this—sharpened to the whispery keenness of a blade of grass along both edges all the way round its leaf-shaped point.

Yet Owaldsohn’s truest genius lay in the fact that, the handwidth blade notwithstanding,
Murderer
balanced at the apex of the breaking-wedge. This miracle had he accomplished only in part by means of the weighted “four-hand” grip. The “fuller,” a broad, round-bottomed cha
n
nel exten
d
ing from a finger’s width behind the point the full length of the foible and halfway down the forte, was responsible. Where it was deepest, the blade felt parchment-thin. Yet in a single stroke (a more practiced stroke than Sedrich yet was capable of delivering),
Murderer
could hew down a tree the diameter of the boy’s head.

After decades of war against the western savages, the weapon’s sheen betrayed neither nick nor scratch.
Murderer
was a perfect impl
e
ment. Try as he might, Sedrich could think of no innovation, no alter
a
tion of form or fabrication—save perhaps in its monumental propo
r
tions—which might have improved it.

This annoyed him.

“Now the right hand for a while
,
and back to the left!”

But not as much as his father’s persistence.

3

Afternoon found Sedrich at the village boatshed, where the weat
h
ered pier jutted into the estuary. Save for the young blacksmith, the place was deserted. It was too late in the day for any boats to be depar
t
ing, too early for any to be coming home.

His tools lay spread about him.

At the request of some of the fishermen, Sedrich was attempting to determine whether it was practical to fit half a dozen of his devices to the steeply curved gunwales of a dory, presently hauled up for repairs. He wasn’t the only one, they’d told him, who could get new ideas. Each crank, forged wide for what came close to being a small ship, would be turned by two men, creating a craft which could run swift upon calm water as a whitetail through a forest clearing, keeping its bow into the nastiest swell if caught in unexpected storms.

Sedrich had his doubts about the latter.

Across the water, wading-birds called raucously.

The young man had come to shoulder much responsibility for one of his short years, always busy, his few idle moments filled with sketches, a
c
quiring scrap, altering its shape and composition, pursuing boyhood dreams his custom might have doubted, as he doubted theirs. Despite pe
r
sistent clamor for more boat-cranks, there was idle time to fill. Ilse, making certain of it, pressed this wisdom upon her men: labor must give way to rest and play, else accomplish less and less. That her husband’s “rest” and her son’s “play” resembled what they did for a living, she could but shrug to herself about and live with.

Thinking himself alone, he knelt beside the huge canted dory with his stick measurer. A shadow fell across the hull, startling him. He whirled, the stick becoming
Murderer
in his reflex-guided hands. This he acted to co
n
trol before the newcomer could notice.

“Good day, Sedrich, son of Sedrich,” a silvery voice commented. “Pray do not slice me with yon mighty weapon, warrior, for I assure you I mean no harm.”

Frae smiled shyly and then laughed. Sedrich joined her, flinging the stick aside as he rose.

“Good day, gentle neighbor. ’Tis no warrior I am”—he flexed his much-abused wrist, remembering the morning’s pointed comments to that effect from his father—“but tradesman and artisan.” He grinned. “Hast need of my talents?”

A soft salted breeze lifted her unbound golden hair. Falling past her shoulders, it framed a smooth, well-boned and pink-cheeked face, full-lipped, with an upturned nose. Her teeth were white and even. Her eyes, beneath long lashes, reflected the glory of the afternoon sky. Impro
v
ing upon it, Sedrich found himself thinking, and not only because there were storm clouds cluttering the seaward horizon.

Frae’s shift was of blue-dyed cotton reaching to her knees, rope-fastened at the waist. A pair of ribbons tied in bows held the simple garment upon her shoulders. From her rope belt hung scissors, token that she was mistress of her father’s household. Sedrich had fashioned them hi
m
self, the first gift he’d given anyone outside his family.

Jest still twinkling in her eye, she began, “Methinks—”

Never knowing whence the impulse came, in a swift and certain ge
s
ture he seized her by the wrist, pulled her close, kissed her upon the mouth, feeling her body pliant against his, back straight and slender, hips rounded. To his bewilderment, she didn’t return the kiss—the first for both—but stood as if nailed to the spot, then burst into tears. Co
n
fused, Sedrich stepped back awkwardly, catching his heel upon the dory.

He all but fell.

Frae advanced, placing a white hand upon his forearm. Wiping her eyes, she smiled, the truest smile, Sedrich would have sworn, he’d ever seen of her, unreserved and gay.

“I’m this night to be inducted into the Sisterhood. Your mother will perform the ceremony. It means I’m a woman grown.”

Laying his brown hand over hers, Sedrich scowled at the gray pier-planking, then looked into her eyes. Enormous they seemed, and inf
i
nitely trusting. Induction might mean naught but that she was another childless woman—were she not being groomed to succeed Ilse.

Aloud, he answered, “Frae, I’m glad for you. Were men permitted, I’d stand witness myself.”

“Dear my Sedrich, I’d in mind another ceremony. ’Tis said among women it’s bad luck to be inducted as a...as a virgin.”

She reached for the rope at her waist, pulling it free.