Read The Last Book Of Swords : Shieldbreaker’s Story Online
Authors: Fred Saberhagen
Whatever conscious fear he had experienced a few moments ago was now completely gone, and even his dizziness and disorientation were now abated, swallowed up in a burst of murderous rage directed at this intruder. Shieldbreaker’s steady, muffled hammering sounded no louder than the beating of his own heart.
When he saw who stood beside the Dark King in the pose of an adviser, Stephen’s rage, unreasonably enough, extended to Karel. But Karel at the moment was in no danger; he was not the one who had to be struck down.
The young Prince’s quarry, a powerful man, an almost matchless wizard, seemed unable to hear or see the doom which was coming upon him. This tall creature before Stephen, pale and eyeless as a cave-worm, repulsively malignant and at the same time helpless, was the evil man who two years ago had almost killed Stephen’s mother and had come near bringing disaster upon the whole realm.
* * *
Yet again the moment of final confrontation was postponed. One of the flock of circling demons, evidently caught up in an ecstatic urge to worship the figure it perceived as its true Master, came flitting toward Stephen—then, at the last moment, turned in terror, on the point of flight from whatever sudden alteration it now saw in the shape before it.
In a spasm of hatred and revulsion the youth armed with the two Swords killed the demon. An effortless flick of the young Prince’s right wrist, a single drumbeat from the Sword of Force, and the hideous thing was gone—he wondered why the man who was going to be his next victim should not at least have heard that much warning? Because, the demon-killer quickly understood, Sightblinder muffled and transformed everything. …
Yet perhaps the Dark King had heard something after all. His demeanor changed; he was almost alert. Warned by his powers that some new violence had occurred, but unable to pinpoint precisely what had taken place or where, he looked about him nervously. …
The magical and physical searches of the armory and lower palace, which moments ago Vilkata had commanded certain demons to perform, had already been carried out. Helpless against the Sword of Stealth, the searching demons had discovered no human presence unaccounted for—none save their Master’s own, and that of his loyal converts.
The searchers were once more swirling round him even now, reporting. “There is no one here who means you harm, great Master, no enemy at all. …”
But of course, the Dark King thought, cursing suspiciously, such a negative result was all one would expect in the case of an enemy working under Sightblinder’s protection—the searchers however diligent and clever, would be unable to perceive—
* * *
In the next moment, just as Stephen with weapons raised approached the door to the Sword-chamber, Karel, the real Karel standing just inside, turned an astonished countenance to confront him briefly.
“Master?” the old man asked, in wild bewilderment. Then, turning from Stephen to the genuine Vilkata standing just beside him, he uttered the same word once more.
“Master?” And with that the helpless old magician, befuddled like all Sightblinder’s victims, fell down in a near-trance of terror or worship, and was for the moment forgotten by the dueling powers that were about to come crashing into conflict.
* * *
Vilkata’s thought on the subject had no chance to develop further. Stark terror gripped the Dark King’s guts and seemed to stop his heart.
Because a figure of utter and abysmal terror had just stepped from somewhere into the very room where he was standing. This entity came seemingly from nowhere, and immediately the Dark King knew in his bones that this confrontation meant his doom.
Facing him now was Prince Mark, in full battle gear, smiling a terrible smile of triumph, and lifting Shieldbreaker for the killing blow—
or was the truth yet worse than that?
The fact that the approaching figure was being transformed even as Vilkata watched it made the apparition more terrible rather than less—the truly powerful were often capable of appearing in any guise they chose. The Eyeless One now perceived with merciless clarity, he was for a moment utterly convinced, that he was confronted by Orcus, the king demon, archfoe of Ardneh.
Not Mark. Still worse even than a triumphant Mark.
Orcus of old legend, the equal at least of Arridu in strength, peerless even among demons in sheer malignity, and somehow now rendered immune to Sightblinder’s control…
But in the next moment the figure was transformed again, and the Dark King beheld Ardneh himself, a body looking squarish and half-mechanical, ancient and utterly terrible to demons; the implacable enemy as well of wizards who preferred demons to humanity.
And yet again, repeatedly, Vilkata’s perception of the figure changed. Flickering in rapid succession, there came an image, more an intimation, of Vilkata’s own archrival in evil magic, Wood—then he was certain he was seeing Wood, pretending to be Orcus. Then vice-versa.
And now once more he beheld Prince Mark, fully armed with the Sword of Force, immune to any influence Skulltwister could exert. …
Whipsawed by these various possibilities, the Dark King was left in a state of terror beyond thought, worse than what could have been evoked by any single, simple presence. His instinctive reaction was to pull a trigger of enchantment, to activate a long-prepared reflex of flight.
He knew that his Enemy, whatever mask It wore, whatever powers It wielded, was One. Certainly someone, a single being, had slipped inside Vilkata’s ring of ferocious demonic bodyguards, had confused and blinded them, neutralized them, with such ease and strength that they might as well not have been there at all.
* * *
And in these moments of Vilkata’s freezing terror, the young Prince approaching, his deliberate strides now bringing him almost within Sword’s-length of his foe, his own perception now feverishly enhanced by holding Sightblinder, was able to do more than recognize with absolute certainty his father’s great and almost lifelong enemy the Dark King.
Now Stephen found himself empowered, even compelled, to study the man, in the most chilling and disgusting detail.
The face strongly featured, except for the ghastly empty eyesockets—a face looking neither young nor old—the clothing, rather nondescript for a great king and wizard—the pallid, powerful body.
With a feeling of unutterable loathing, the young Prince stepped forward and willed to strike with the Sword in his right hand.
And, at the same time, the thought existing simultaneously, Stephen consciously reminded himself that he must be ready to try to rid himself of Shieldbreaker on short notice, should his enemy at the last instant be unarmed. Then he, Stephen, would have to use the weapon in his other hand instead; use Sightblinder as a simple piece of sharpened, weighty steel, a physical killing device like any other sword. The Swords were all of them, save Woundhealer, effective in that simple deadly way.
* * *
And Vilkata in that same instant, overwhelmed by a mind-bending agony of fear, instinctively raised his own weapon, and at the same time willed with all his soul his magical escape. …
* * *
The man’s body was almost completely dematerialized in flight before metal clashed on metal and one phase of the gods’ great magic broke against another.
In the almost instantaneous surge of combat, the Sword of Force responded at once to the movement of Vilkata’s Sword, and simultaneously to Stephen’s will to kill. There was a jar of opposition, an instant of overwhelming violence—the Mindsword was blasted into splinters.
A stunning explosion accompanied the clash, an echo in the ears of Stephen of the recent blast in which Dragonslicer had perished. This latest detonation stung at Karel’s helpless, fallen body, and wounded more than one of the converted people who happened to be standing near. The demons nearby too felt pain from the passage of those smoking fragments.
* * *
Stephen, as in his earlier encounter with Bazas, felt his arm pulled violently through a hacking motion. Fresh pain shot through his shoulder.
The young Prince assumed for a moment that his enemy must be dead. Then, when he could see clearly again, he realized that none of the bodies he could now see on the stone floor was that of the Dark King.
* * *
Vilkata had been slightly injured by the Sword-blast, but not enough to interfere with his escape. He continued instinctively to concentrate all his remaining energies upon the magical retreat he had already willed.
The Dark King’s vanishing, to somewhere outside the palace walls, was magically swift, quick enough to save him from most but not all of the Sword-fragments.
Had Vilkata’s flight been an eyeblink slower Stephen could have and would have killed him on the spot, thrusting Sightblinder awkwardly, left-handed, into the guts of the suddenly unarmed man.
That thrust was ready, but it was never made.
Chapter Seven
With a crash that resounded in his own ears like a minor thunderclap, Vilkata’s body arrived—somewhere.
So rapid had been his magical escape from the underground armory that he had even been separated from Pitmedden, the demon who provided him with vision, thus rendering himself at least temporarily sightless. Still, the flight-spell had succeeded admirably, and the Dark King felt reasonably sure that for the moment at least he was physically safe.
The utter, weak-kneed terror induced by his confrontation with the ultimate horror in the armory was gone. He had escaped, and for the moment he was alone. …
But where was he now?
All he could be certain of was that he was lying awkwardly facedown upon a curved surface that felt like wet stone, his body caressed by a whispery breeze that suggested outdoor air, amid invisible surroundings which smelled like a mudpuddle. This place, wherever it was, was quiet, shockingly so after the abrupt termination of the Mindsword’s cheering noise. But somewhere nearby water was trickling audibly.
Against the power of the spell Vilkata had just uttered, mere stone walls, regardless of their thickness, could have had little or no constraining effect, and he had no doubt that he was now outside the palace walls.
But where?
A quick groping about him with both hands provided no very helpful information. His body was draped, in what occurred to him must be a most undignified manner, over a hard, wet surface curved, now that he thought about it, like the rim of one of the fountains in the central plaza of Sarykam—certainly the shape felt more like a fountain than a watering trough. He remembered a number of each located in the plaza before the palace, and along the adjoining streets.
And the Dark King could still feel, clutched in his right hand but emptied of all magic, the Mindsword’s hilt. Reflexively he passed the fingers of his left hand over the raw, splintered end, making absolutely sure that all the Blade with all its power was really gone.
Long moments passed in which the Dark King continued probing his immediate environment by groping around him with both hands and listening intently. He learned very little by these means, but did get his body into a less awkward position. He was sitting now on the fountain’s rim, his booted feet on some kind of pavement. Wherever he was, his sight-demon still had not caught up with him.
Another thing to worry about. Suppose the creature had not survived the encounter with Shieldbreaker? That was a distinct possibility. And could Pitmedden’s fellows, the Dark King’s entire force of demons, have been scattered or destroyed as well?
He, Vilkata, continued to be utterly alone and Swordless. Gradually his body reassumed the crouched defensive posture he had instinctively adopted as his magic shot him like a spirit out of the armory.
Muttering spells, he loaded and surrounded his own sightless body with further protective magic. Afraid to move, he crouched where he was, and continued to concentrate upon his hearing.
Below a variety of other sounds, he could detect those of nearby crickets, cheerful elementary creatures remarkably unperturbed by human and demonic travail and violence. Farther off were a couple of barking dogs, and a distant outcry of human voices. And, at the moment, very little else.
Vilkata grunted as he came to realize—somewhat belatedly because of the general wetness of his surroundings—that he was bleeding from several small wounds, tears and punctures in his arms and legs. The wounds called themselves to his attention by starting to grow painful—inordinately so, it seemed, for their size. Gingerly he probed them, one after another, with a finger. They were throbbing as if they might have been made by some poisoned weapon. After a moment’s thought the Dark King realized that these injuries had very likely been made by tiny fragments of the shattered Mindsword.
He muttered curses to himself, and waited. Another seemingly endless interval—it was really only the space of a breath or two—passed before the demon Pitmedden managed to catch up with his angry Master and, apologizing abjectly for the delay, magically reattached itself to his very brain.
The Dark King’s sight immediately came back, his anger weakened with his relief, and he could see that his first thought about a fountain in the plaza had been correct. His trousers and boots and half of his upper garment were dripping wet. Now he disentangled himself completely from the low stone structure and stood erect, glaring about him into the night. Looming almost over him, less than a hundred meters distant, was the bulk of the Tasavaltan palace; his swift escape had carried him a lesser distance than he had thought. Behind many of the huge building’s windows, lights were coming alive and moving about uncertainly. From those same apertures there issued the sounds of exotic human ecstasies and sufferings, results of Skulltwister’s recent passage, making the Dark King smile.
Only now, having regained his sight and determined his location, did the Dark King slowly unclench his fingers from the dead hilt of what had been the Mindsword. He stared, with borrowed vision and gradually growing understanding of the implications, at the lifeless fragment on his broad white palm. Meanwhile his servant-demon Pitmedden had not only restored the Dark King’s sight, but in quick response to his urgent commands had started trying to heal his freshly bleeding wounds and relieve their pain.
Soon this unlikely physician reported that the injuries resisted the usual methods of magical treatment. The patient only snarled in response; the wounds were not vital, his tolerance for physical pain was high, and he had greater matters to worry about just now.
* * *
Along some of the main streets converging on the plaza, there burned gaslights, famed for their decorative effect; other main thoroughfares in Sarykam, like the plaza itself, were lit by magically-enhanced torches set on metal poles at regular intervals. Even as the demon finished its attempt at healing, Vilkata was distracted from his various problems by the sight of human movement nearby. A single passing stranger, a man of nondescript appearance simply garbed in gray, definitely a commoner by the look of him, had just turned onto the plaza from one of the adjoining streets and was now crossing the paved and planted area as if on his way to some early morning job. The fellow was carrying in a bag what might have been a set of gardener’s tools, as well as a spade or shovel over his shoulder.
Whether the briskly moving gardener—or perhaps a grave-digger, out on some early job—walked through darkness or through light, in the shadows from the plaza’s lamps or under their direct illumination, Vilkata could see part of him—not much more than an outline—equally well. The details of his person, perceived only through demonic vision, came out poorly—attempts to see certain things by that means were doomed to failure.
Beholding the man through the demon’s often selectively distorted perception, Vilkata thought at first that he appeared to be wearing a simple mask—and a minute later that the fellow had no face at all. The Dark King growled at Pitmedden, and the demon squealed in anguish, but the seeing got no better.
Meanwhile the man in gray was behaving as if he could see just as well as the Dark King could, or better, though Vilkata thought the place where he himself was standing must appear to normal human eyesight to be in heavy shadow.
This passing gardener, sexton, or whoever he was, favored the now-Swordless conqueror with a little saluting gesture. His voice was brisk and cheerful. “Good evening, sir. Or should I say good morning?”
Vilkata only stared back at this workman who sounded courteous, though not at all like one freshly enslaved by the Mindsword. No doubt the fellow had been just beyond Skulltwister’s reach before the Sword was destroyed, and had no idea of his narrow escape. Even now the increasing uproar of the converts in and around the palace was spilling out into the streets; but the workman, as if deaf, was totally ignoring it. Before going on his way, the other paused to add: “The choice, I think, is up to you.”
* * *
No more than a few breaths after the arrival of his vision-demon Pitmedden, within the short interval of time after the workman had walked on but before any other human had yet discovered him, the now-Swordless Dark King with an effort of will managed to recover a large measure of his self-possession.
Suddenly his spirits rose. Here came Arridu, whistling down out of the night, a giant subdued and harnessed, compelled by the even greater power of the Mindsword to feel anxiety for the welfare of his human Master.
And here at last came a small handful and then a score of converted humans, including Karel himself, running across the plaza, as joyful as so many demons to see Vilkata alive and not seriously injured. Raising his voice to speak to all of them at once, Vilkata related to his followers a condensed and unemotional version of the confrontation in the Sword-vault, and his own hair’s-breadth escape. He mentioned nothing of his own abysmal terror.
On hearing of the Dark King’s close call, Arridu, inflamed with the need to protect his Master and avenge his injuries, screamed demonic outrage and flew back into the palace to scout. Arridu returned a few moments later to say that the enemy, whoever it had been, was no longer in the armory.
Vilkata only grunted. The demons freshly come from the Moon perhaps did not fully grasp the power of the Mindsword yet.
Arridu stood before him in the shape of a titanic warrior, armored all in black. “But who was it who attacked you, Master?”
“I—could not be sure.” He paused, looking about him at the rest of his retinue. “Understand, all of you, that this enemy is probably equipped with the Sword of Stealth. Perhaps I will have to explain more fully just what that means.” Vilkata himself had needed long moments after his escape to come belatedly to understand that the being he thought he had seen down there must have been only a phantom generated by Sightblinder, the deceptive image of some real person who not only enjoyed the powers of the Sword of Stealth, but worse, who struck with Shieldbreaker. …
And only now, when he began to try to put the event into words, did full comprehension dawn. Vilkata’s first sensation on realizing the deception was one of shuddering relief; he had faced only some well-armed human;
that being
was not coming after him. But then…
“Shieldbreaker,” the Dark King breathed aloud.
Pitmedden and Arridu were concerned, as was Karel and other converted humans; the number gathered around Vilkata was steadily increasing. “My great lord?”
“Nothing.”
Whoever his real opponent in the armory had been, he, the Dark King, had survived an armed encounter with the Sword of Force, a feat few men or gods or demons ever had accomplished … and those only when they had been able to break the skirmish off.
But even Shieldbreaker was not the whole story. He had actually, Vilkata now realized, survived a simultaneous confrontation with Shieldbreaker and Sightblinder. The figure which had terrified him so had not in fact been Orcus or Wood, but someone, some human enemy, not only armed with two Swords but able to use them both virtually simultaneously.
Vilkata realized that his arms were trembling. He was very lucky indeed to be alive.
Again he briefly studied the Mindsword’s dead hilt, and having done so started to hide the piece of useless wreckage in a pocket of his clothing—then he abruptly changed his mind and cast it violently away from him.
At least, he thought suddenly, he now had a good explanation for what had happened to Akbar.
For years Vilkata had been carrying that demon’s life around with him. Now he reached into a pocket with trembling fingers, brought out and unwrapped the object—like many chosen abodes of demons’ lives, it was in itself a simple, homely thing, in this case a small mirror of quite ordinary appearance.
Inside its untouched wrappings, the mirror had been diced, not broken, into a hundred fragments, as if by some steel edge keen enough to deal with glass like paper.
The time elapsed since the Dark King’s arrival at the palace did not yet amount to half an hour.
He threw away the glittering bits of what had been the demon’s life-object; no magical virtue of any kind remained to it.
Over the next minute or so Vilkata was distracted from the contemplation of his various problems, and somewhat heartened, by the continued arrival from the direction of the palace of still more of his demons, howling their joy to find him safe; and, within moments, more dozens, scores, hundreds of people, all rejoicing loudly in his living presence and outraged by his wounds. These starry-eyed folk came running up to gather round him at a respectful distance in the predawn darkness.
The numbers of these human worshippers seeking him out continued to increase. The thought occurred to the Dark King, bringing with it a wave of bitterness, that these folk were certainly the last converts the Sword of Glory would ever make.