The Last Book Of Swords : Shieldbreaker’s Story (25 page)

      
The Dark King, slowly, sadistically rending his own flesh, was now muttering disjointed phrases, cries of triumph mingling, alternating, with groans of pain.

      
Arridu, savoring this suffering, bent a little close to hear better.

      
In the intervals when Vilkata was capable of speech, he spoke, of future plans. When Earth was conquered he would command his demons to carry him off into space, there to complete his glorious conquest of the Sun. …

* * *

      
A few hours later Arridu, contemptuous of any human resistance which might face him when he arrived, completed his own swift return to Earth.

      
He brought with him two Swords, Shieldbreaker and Soulcutter. And he was well aware that on Earth, in the hands of his enemies, only one Sword, Woundhealer, still remained intact.

      
Arridu knew the bearer of the Sword of Love and sought him out at once.

* * *

      
The last duel took place in full daylight, upon a grassy summer hill not far from Sarykam, and it was fought between Arridu, carrying both Soulcutter and Shieldbreaker drawn, and Prince Mark of Tasavalta, armed only with the Sword of Love. Other loyal humans stood by ready to help Mark—until the arrival of Soulcutter cast all who were within arrowshot into a deep and paralyzing despair.

      
Mark, holding Woundhealer embedded in his own heart, was unaffected by the Sword of Despair. And the Prince had no thought, in this climactic confrontation, of simply banishing his tremendous foe.

      
“Should I do so, he will only come back, sooner or later, to attack me. Or worse, to ravage the rest of the world. Let the matter between us be fought out here and now.”

      
Prince Mark, when the subject of the Sword of Despair had lately been raised in discussion, or when it had come up in his own thoughts, would recall a brief meeting he had about five years ago with his true father. At that time the Emperor had denied possessing Soulcutter, even though Mark had earlier seen him pick up that Sword from a field of battle. And whenever Mark’s father made a flat statement like that, Mark had never known it to be wrong.

* * *

      
And now Mark faced a nice, practical, tactical question: How should an unarmed opponent—like himself, for one armed only with Woundhealer was effectively unarmed—how should such a one attempt to fight an enemy who held Shieldbreaker
and
the Sword of Despair?

      
And Mark thought he knew; his recent experience with Farslayer had helped him acquire the knowledge.

      
It could be assumed, or gambled, though no one could claim solid proof, that Woundhealer would save the mind as well as the body from ongoing damage—or repair the damage as fast as it was inflicted.

      
Mark, his left hand still clamping the hilt of Woundhealer hard against his own ribs, feeling the transcendent giddiness of the Sword of Love buried in his own heart, leapt in to wrestle with only his right hand.

      
Arridu immediately dropped Shieldbreaker—and was at once seized, staggered as he had dared to hope he would not be, by the mortal power of unsheathed Soulcutter still in his other hand. The impact of Despair was strong enough to stun the demon momentarily, send him reeling back. Soulcutter slipped from his weakened grip.

      
Mark, still holding himself transfixed with the Sword of Love, grabbed up the discarded Sword of Force and struck at the nearest vital target, smashing Soulcutter to bits as the Sword of Despair lay on the ground.

      
Its poisoned fragments stung him harmlessly.
At least, at last, if all our struggles achieve nothing else, that damned thing is gone. …

      
Now the great demon, stunned and terrified by the loss of two Swords, turned to flee. And Mark, determined that Arridu should not escape, hurled Shieldbreaker after him … he saw to his horror the demon’s figure twisting in mid-air, saw the gigantic warrior’s hand reach out to seize the spinning hilt of the Sword of Force. Screaming with new triumph, howling like a whirlwind, the enormous demon fell upon him.

      
Mark started to draw from his own breast the only Sword he had, meaning to meet the last attack full on.

      
His effort came too late. Shieldbreaker and Woundhealer were smashed together, inside a human heart.

Chapter Twenty

      
Ben of Purkinje and Lady Yambu walked out of Ardneh-tu’s lunar dwelling place together, having been told by that ancient intelligence that they would each find what they were seeking on the shores of the Lake of Life.

      
The path on which Ardneh-tu had directed them lay through the little spaceport. As the Silver Queen and Ben traversed that chamber with slow, almost bounding lunar strides, both humans glanced once more in passing at the Old World spacecraft which had brought them to the Moon.

      
“All right with me,” said Ben, “if I never have to ride in one of those things again.”

      
Actually the huge man had little thought or feeling one way or the other about getting back to Earth. He was rather surprised that the question seemed so abstract, did not seem to concern him. But so it was.

      
Nor, he decided, was this attitude entirely the result of his head wound, because the Silver Queen, whose injuries had been much lighter than his, muttered some vague agreement with Ben’s remark—her thoughts continued to be concentrated upon her promised opportunity to see her husband again, a chance to demand some answers from him.

      
Yambu and Ben, still following their respective directions given by Ardneh-tu, soon came to another temporary parting of the ways. Neither was concerned; all sense of danger had imperceptibly receded; and Ardneh-tu had assured them that they would be safe if they went where he had directed them.

      
Ben could smell the fecund moisture of the Lake of Life for some time before actually entering the great cave in which it lay. The impression on entering was far from cave-like—a crystal ceiling, startlingly distant, was lighted by refracted sunlight. Ben remembered Draffut’s mentioning that the slow lunar sunrise would soon take place in this region of the lunar surface.

* * *

      
On hearing his goal described as a lake, Ben had envisioned some kind of underground pool; but the reality surprised him, even though the Lake itself was not yet in sight. He was standing on one edge of a vast columned space whose glowing overhead suggested an Earthly sky and whose floor sloped down toward a mass of bright vegetation, concealing whatever might lie beyond—presumably including the Lake of Life itself.

      
He had not advanced much farther when he stopped suddenly in his tracks. All he could think was:
Sightblinder cannot be here. The Sword of Stealth has been destroyed. What I see now must be an image cast by some other magic.

      
Or else—

      
Perhaps fifty meters from where he stood, on the far side of the visible space, in the garden area where the light was brightest, Ben saw Ariane, the red-haired love of his long-vanished youth.

      
Birds rose in alarm from among the nearer trees as he went bounding and stumbling forward, all else forgotten.

      
The young woman—to all appearances still unchanged from when Ben had last seen her more than twenty years ago—was dressed in simple but attractive clothing. When he first saw her, she was busy about some routine task—some kind of gardening, troweling rich black and very Earthy-looking soil.

      
At the sound of Ben’s voice, Ariane looked up. His last doubt vanished—it was she. Joy came to her face, but no enormous surprise. In a moment she was running to greet Ben happily, as if she had been expecting him.

      
For a long, cold moment, the thought of Sightblinder’s illusions returned to torment Ben’s mind. But he knew, if he knew anything, that that Sword had been destroyed.

      
Then the moment of renewed doubt was past. Ben clutched the young woman’s large, strong body to him, swept her off her feet. This was no illusion. No. His knees had felt weak as she came running toward him, but now his whole body felt strong again.

* * *

      
A minute later, he and Ariane were seated side by side, on the fallen bole of some odd tree or giant fern, quite near the spot where she had been gardening. The whole garden, smelling of damp earth and life, seemed a fascinating mixture of the controlled and the natural.

      
And peaceful. In a dazed way Ben became aware that this lunar environment, so strange and changeable, sometimes so antagonistic, had in the last few minutes, even apart from the miraculous presence of Ariane, grown astonishingly friendly.

      
Even the gravity now seemed more like that of his home-world—he wondered if that meant that he was weakening. But at the moment illness and injury were the farthest things from Ben’s thoughts.

      
It required recurrent mental effort to reassure himself that he was really still on the Moon, and not somewhere beside one of the warm seas of his own world. There were green things, some plain, some exotic, spiked with a profusion of multicolored flowers, growing on three sides of where he sat. And in the middle distance beyond the thickest greenery, where the distant crystal cave-walls were no longer visible, a bright mist suggested almost irresistibly that gray sky, and not a cave-roof, lay beyond.

      
Here and there among the nearby shrubbery, several fountains played—Ben had not noticed them before. The statuary in at least one of them was slowly shifting shape, as if on the verge of bursting into life—and it was into this rippling, unquiet basin that Ariane dipped a crystal cup, then brought it to Ben, saying: “Here, drink this.”

      
Until that moment Ben had not been conscious of thirst, but having brought the cup to his lips he drank deep. It was, he thought, the best drink he’d ever had.

      
Feeling refreshed, seeing and hearing everything more clearly, he cocked his head a little on one side. “You know, I hear something that sounds like surf, big waves. Or I think I do.”

      
Ariane glanced back over her shoulder. “Yes, there are waves. It’s the Lake of Life just over there. The people of the Old World made it. They made a smaller one on Earth, too—or so Draffut tells me. But that was destroyed two thousand years ago.”

      
“I thought that Lake was only legend.”

      
The waves of red hair bobbed. “Legend, yes. But also as real as Draffut is. He says it was immersion in the Lake on Earth that first made him something more than a dog.”

      
“I think I could use some of it myself.” Though at the moment he really felt quite well.

      
Ariane’s green eyes twinkled. “You don’t really need it any more—anyway, you’ve just had some.”

      
Ben nodded slowly, as if on some level he was beginning to understand. What little he could see of this lake through the screen of vegetation, no more than a small glimpse here and there, suggested that it might stretch on for kilometers—or was that only an effect of mist and light? Certainly the forest of growth on this shore was diverse and fertile beyond anything Ben had ever experienced or even imagined.

* * *

      
Ariane had put a hand on his shoulder and was looking him in the face—as if she were looking at a young man, in a way that stirred his blood. Then she smiled and asked him: “Tell me how you came here?”

      
In a few moments, after a false start or two, Ben was relating the tale of how Coinspinner had been blasted out of his hand in the coastal cave near Sarykam. He added the comment that there must now be very few Swords left on Earth or anywhere else, though he had no up-to-date certainty about numbers.

      
Ben also expressed his worries about Shieldbreaker and Soulcutter, and how Prince Mark and the rest of Tasavalta were going to deal with them.

      
But Ariane did not seem at all perturbed. She assured the man she loved that he had done all he could do. He didn’t have to worry about such matters anymore.

      
He protested. “If Mark—”

      
“You’ve done all that you can do for Mark.”

      
“I suppose you’re right.” Ben put his face down in his hands and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up again. Ariane was still sitting right beside him.

      
“Are you really here?” he whispered hoarsely. “Am I?”

      
“I’m really here. And so are you.” And the young woman, garbed simply but richly in garments whose shapes showed her strong body to advantage, whose colors harmonized with her red hair, continued to sit close beside the huge man, looking at him lovingly. It was a restful attitude. There was no hurry about anything.

      
“Ben?” As if she were wondering—not worried, only curious—why he remained silent.

      
“Ariane? It’s really you?”

      
“Yes, foolish man, are you still worried? Of course it’s me.” Strong pale fingers pinched his arm.

      
He rubbed the pinched spot absently. “But how did you get here? On the Moon? And when?”

      
“You’re here, aren’t you?” She made it sound like an eminently practical answer. “Well, I’ve been here, with my father, almost since I last saw you.”

      
Absently he rubbed at his forehead, where his fingers could no longer discover any sweat, or blood. Or wound. He asked: “You mean with the Emperor? Since when?”

      
“I’ve just told you. Yes, the man you call the Emperor’s my father—but you knew that. Actually, to me it doesn’t seem very long since you and I were parted. We were trying to steal some treasure, as I recall. All in a worthy cause, of course.” She smiled as at some memory of childhood pranks. She stroked Ben’s head, the back of his neck. If there was a little soreness still, pain had receded so far as to be faintly enjoyable, little more than a memory, as happened when a wound or a sprain was almost healed.

      
He asked: “Just you and your father live here?”

      
Ariane’s laughter tinkled; a delicate sound to come from a body so big and strong. “
No
, Foolish One. There are others. A great many other people. You’ll meet them. Some you already know.”

      
“Really?”

      
He wanted to ask who else was here that he might know, but instead closed his eyes. Whether magic was involved in what Ariane—and her father—were doing for him, or technology, or some sweet drug in the drink she’d given him, or what, Ben was being slowly overwhelmed by a sense of blissful tiredness and relaxation. In a little while, he felt sure, he was going to fall asleep. Now there would be time and security in which to sleep.

      
Ben felt a momentary regression toward childhood. How strange. But he was certain there was no danger, now, in such abandonment. Opening his eyes again, Ben told his love: “I wish I had a father like yours.”

      
She nodded soberly, as at some reasonable request. “He’ll be glad to be your father if you want.”

      
Ben thought about it. The last time he had seen the Emperor, the Emperor had looked younger than Ben. Ben started a chuckle but it quickly faded.

      
Then something occurred to him, to his renascent adult self. An item of information that should be passed along. “Your mother’s here,” he told Ariane. “Lady Yambu came with me in the shuttle, from—from the Earth.”

      
The green eyes of his beloved opened wide with eagerness; a delicious little personal trait that Ben realized he had forgotten until this moment. She said: “I want to see my mother—but there’s no hurry. Right now I just want to be with you.”

      
Ariane, Ariane. Yes, it had to be twenty years, Ben thought—really a little more than twenty—since he had seen this young woman or touched her hand. But he remembered perfectly how her hand felt, solid and warm and somewhat roughened by active use. It felt just like this.

      
So many seasons, so many events and people had come and gone that he was finding it difficult to be accurate about the reckoning.

      
“As I remember the way things were so long ago—you loved me then. You really did.”

      
“I really did. I really do.” And at this point the red-haired young woman kissed this man who loved her. Then she got up from her seat and her fingers became busy, rubbing her fingers over the now-painless spot on Ben’s head where he’d been wounded, then splashing him gently with more water from the fountain.

      
It was all delightful. Perfect. But Ben’s lingering sense of mundane reality, though fading by the moment, was still strong enough to be offended by this situation. “I was a young man then, when last we met. I’m getting to be an old man now. My wife and my daughter may both be dead, for all I know. They were taken hostage, I think. …”

      
“I know.” But here, now, no one’s death seemed to be of any great concern. Everyone had some difficulties along that line, but they were temporary. And Ben’s beloved, as young and beautiful as memory would have her, put a hand on his arm. Her touch was very real. She only smiled, faintly, as if there was something, some delightful secret, that she was going to explain to him, sooner or later, when she got around to it. But there was no hurry. Ben understood, without having it spelled out for him, that there was going to be plenty of time for explanations. All the time that anyone could want.

* * * * * *

      
A little later, Ben became aware of other people, moving, strolling, at some distance along the shore of the Lake of Life. He could hear other voices from time to time, though their words were indistinguishable. “Who’s that—?”