The Misenchanted Sword Page 4

  By the time he judged the crabs to be fit to eat, he was calm again. The heat of the fire had dried most of the rain, mist, and marsh out of his hair and clothing, and the improvement in his comfort had contributed to his improvement in mood.

  He called, "Wizard! Breakfast is ready!"

  For several seconds the only reply Valder received was the bubbling of the water in the broken jar, and the crackle of the flames. Finally, the wizard paused in his mysterious gesturing and called, "Keep it warm, will you? I can't stop here."

  Valder shrugged. "Please yourself," he answered. He fished out a crab with his knife and sat down to eat.

  When he had eaten three of the four—as might be expected so far north, none were very large—he threw three more in the pot and settled back against a hillock, feeling reasonably content. Settled comfortably, he watched the old man.

  The candle-stubs were burning, and the smoke was weaving about unnaturally, forming something resembling blue .tatted lace hanging in mid-air; his sword stood upright, unsupported, in the center of the tangle. Valder had no doubt that the wizard was doing something to the weapon, though he had no idea what.

  The old man barked a single word that Valder didn't quite catch, in a voice surprisingly powerful for so short and thin a body; the sword and smoke froze, hanging immobile in the air. The wizard rose to his feet, arms spread wide, walked sideways around the column of petrified smoke, then turned away from it and strolled over to the cookfire.

  "Let me use your knife, soldier; all mine are either lost or in use." He gestured, and Valder noticed for the first time that the wizard's own dagger was balanced on its tip below the sword, spinning about and gleaming more brightly silver than the light of the sun could explain. He shrugged and handed the old man his knife.

  The wizard ate all four of the cooked crabs in silence, wolfing down the flesh eagerly. When he had finished and tossed the shells in the marsh, he remarked, "Magic is hungry work, and that smoke is making my throat dry. Go for some more water, soldier, if you aren't doing anything else."

  "Give me back my knife first," Valder replied. He saw no point in wasting argument or courtesy on the old man.

  The wizard handed back the dagger, and Valder reluctantly set out for the stream.

  He spent the rest of the day alternately sitting doing nothing, and fetching wood or water—or, once, three black pine cones, an item the wizard needed for his spells. Valder discovered that black pine cones were a scarce item; most were brown or gray. Eventually he located an odd bluish tree that yielded the desired objects.

  The sun crawled across the cloud-strewn heavens and sank toward the sea, and still the wizard continued with his spell-casting. Glowing runes and weaving smoke were just two of the myriad odd effects Valder observed, and he wondered more and more just what the old man was doing to the sword.

  Well after the sun went down, Valder finally dozed off, not far from the fire, while the wizard was etching fiery red lines in the dirt with a golden something-or-other that was oddly unpleasant to look at.

  He was awakened suddenly by a loud whooshing sound and a shout. He started up, reaching automatically for a sword that wasn't there. He glanced about wildly.

  The fire had almost died, and there was no longer any magical glow anywhere—no runes in the air nor lines on the earth nor glittering blades. It took him a few moments to interpret the dim shapes he could make out.

  The wizard was walking toward him, the sword sheathed and cradled in his arms.

  "Here, soldier," he said, thrusting the weapon forward. "Take your damned sword and get out of here!"

  "What?" Valder was not at his best when suddenly awakened. He looked blankly at the completely ordinary-looking scabbard and hilt in the wizard's arms.

  "I'm finished with your sword, I said. It's carrying all the enchantments I could put on it under the circumstances. If it won't get you home safely, then nothing I know will. Take it and go. And don't draw it until you're over the horizon."

  Still befuddled, Valder accepted the sword and looked at it stupidly for a moment before hanging it in its accustomed place on his belt. It looked no different, as far as he could see by the fire's faint glow, from what it had been when he arrived. When it was securely in place, he reached for the hilt to check the draw; a soldier needed to be able to get his blade out quickly.

  "No, I said!" the wizard barked at him; a bony hand clamped around his wrist. Irrelevantly, as he looked at the hand, Valder noticed that the last traces of the Sanguinary Deception had vanished. "You mustn't draw it here! It's dangerous! Don't draw it until you need it, and you won't need it until you're well away from here."

  "Whatever you say," Valder said, taking his hand off the sword.

  The wizard calmed. "That's better. Ah... I gave it a name."

  "What?" Valder was still too sleepy to keep up with this apparent change of subject.

  "I gave the sword a name; it's to be called Wirikidor."

  "Wirikidor? What kind of a name is Wirikidor?"

  "An old one, soldier. It's from a language so old that the name of the tongue is forgotten and no trace remains of the people who spoke it. It means 'slayer of warriors,' and it was part of the spell I put on the thing, so now that's its name."

  Valder glanced down and resisted the temptation to grip the hilt again. "I was never much for naming swords; some of the men do, but it never seemed to do them any good."

  "I didn't say it will do you any good, but that sword's name is Wirikidor now, and I thought you ought to know, since it will be yours. Ah... that is, it should be. It's got an untriggered spell on it, a variant of the Spell of True Ownership; whoever draws it next will be its owner for as long as he lives. Make sure that's you, soldier, and the blade will protect you."

  "Protect me how?"

  "Ah... I'm not quite sure, actually."

  "It will protect me once I draw it, but I mustn't draw it until I'm leagues from here?"

  "That's right."

  "What's to protect me until then?"

  The wizard glared at him. "Your native wits, of course— except that leaves you unarmed, doesn't it? We'll just have to hope you won't need protection, I guess."

  Valder was becoming more awake and alert, awake enough to decide that arguing with the wizard might not be wise. Still, he asked, "That's all you can tell me about it, that it will protect me?"

  "That's all I'm going to tell you, you blasted fool! Now take your sword and get out of here!"

  Valder looked around at the darkness surrounding them; the fire's glow faded within a yard or two, and the clouds were thick enough to hide the moons and stars. He saw no trace of the sun's light to either east or west.

  "What time is it?" he asked.

  "How should I know? I finished the spell at midnight exactly, or at least I intended to, but you've kept me here arguing long enough that I have no idea what time it might be. It's after midnight, and it's not yet dawn."

  Valder said, "I don't know what time it is either, old man, but I do know that I'm not going anywhere until dawn. An enchanted sword isn't going to do me much good if I trip and drown in this stinking marsh."

  The wizard glared at him for a long moment, then growled. "Please yourself," he said as he turned and stalked off.

  Valder watched his back fade into the gloom, thinking how absurd so small a man looked when angry, then sat down and looked at the familiar scabbard on his belt. He saw nothing different about it, yet the wizard had undeniably worked over it for a day and half a night, with indisputably real magic. The urge to draw it and see if the blade was visibly altered was strong, but Valder had a healthy respect for magic of all sorts; if the old man said it was dangerous, it probably was dangerous. Perhaps enough magic lingered in the air from the spell-making to react with the sword's enchantment.

  Or perhaps, the thought crept in, the wizard had decided to retaliate for the destruction of his home, and the sword would work some terrible vengeance when drawn, a vengeance the old
man did not wish to see.

  Valder drove that idea back down; he had little choice but to trust the hermit. He settled back against the hump of ground and was quickly asleep.

  Chapter 4

  His legs were stiff and cramped when he awoke; he unfolded them slowly, then flexed them again, working out the stiffness as best he could. When he felt up to it, he pushed himself up onto his battered feet and looked around.

  The sun, he was appalled to discover, was halfway up the eastern sky; he had not intended to sleep so long as that. He saw no sign of the old hermit.

  He told himself that the wizard had probably gone off to fetch water or food. He decided to wait for the old man's return so that he might say his farewells before heading southward. With that resolved, his next concern was breakfast. He glanced about casually.

  The handful of crabs that had not been eaten the day before were gone; Valder supposed they had served as the old man's breakfast. The broken jar was also gone, which supported his theory that the hermit had gone after water. As he continued to look, however, it gradually sank in that everything that might be of use was gone. Nothing remained on the site' of the destroyed hut but ash and broken glass. The piles of salvaged magical paraphernalia had vanished with their owner.

  An automatic check told him that his sword was still securely in its sheath on his belt; he was relieved by that.

  He could not imagine how the old man could have cleared everything away so completely, or where he might have gone with it all. Puzzled, he clambered up the rim of the crater, wincing at the scratching of shards of glass against his bare feet.

  Runes were gouged into the ash in the center of the crater, showing black against white. They were nothing magical, but merely a message in common Ethsharitic runes.

  "Found new place," they said. "Not returning. Good luck."

  No signature was included, but one was hardly necessary under the circumstances. Valder stared at the words for a moment, then shrugged. It might be that the wizard was actually somewhere nearby and would return as soon as Valder was gone, he thought, but if so it was none of his concern. The hermit obviously wanted him to leave without further contact, and he saw no reason to argue about it. He took a final look about, then marched southward into the marsh.

  He reached dry land without incident. By noon he could no longer see or smell the salt marsh, though a faint whiff of the sea could still be detected on the breeze from the west. Although he was eager to return to his comrades in the south and get out of the wilderness, he stopped when the sun was at its zenith and sat down abruptly on a moss-covered log.

  His feet were blistered and would carry him no further without a rest; the day's walk of a mere two or three hours was not so much responsible as was the prior day's abuse and the lack of footwear. He had not taken the time to rig any sort of substitute for the boots that had been burned to ash in the wizard's hut, and his weight was distributed differently without them, putting pressure on parts of his feet that were not accustomed to it.

  He was not sure what sort of a substitute he could improvise; he had never before lost a pair of boots while out in the country. It was not a subject that he remembered hearing discussed, either in his training or in barracks chatter; when a pair of boots gave out, they were replaced with another pair of boots. That was one item that had never been subject to shortage, so far as he knew.

  His socks, which he had left on for lack of replacements, had worn down to absolute uselessness, their soles consisting of a few stray threads; he peeled them off and hurled them away.

  As if aching feet were not sufficient annoyance, he was ravenously hungry. Enough streams had crossed his path to make thirst no problem, but he could not eat pine cones, and the only wildlife he had seen had been a chipmunk he had not thought to pursue.

  He stared around at the empty forest, the sun dappling the thick bed of pine needles that covered the ground. He had no food—he had been out on a two-day reconnaissance, and with the sustenance spell, at that—who would have thought he might need food? He had survived for two months without any, thanks to the bloodstone's magic, but that enchantment was broken and gone now.

  He did not have any ready means of acquiring food, either. He had his belt, his sling, his knife, and his mag-icked sword, but that was almost the full extent of his supplies. He had a silver bit tucked away, not so much as a lucky piece as because one never knew what might happen, and even a single coin might bribe a peasant—not that any peasants lived in the northern forests. He had managed to hang onto his flint and steel and he still wore kilt, tunic, and breastplate, though his helmet was long gone. The bloodstone was still safe in its pouch, but useless until he found another wizard to renew the spell.

  He wondered if the hermit might be able to cast a Spell of Sustenance and upbraided himself for not asking when he had the chance. If he went back, he would probably be unable to find the old man.

  Of course, it was unlikely that he would have been able to help in any case. Valder knew that casting the spell required a mysterious powder or two, and the little hermit's supply of whatever it was had probably burned and would not be readily replaced.

  He ran through a quick mental inventory of what he had and decided that the sling was his best bet for obtaining food. He would need to find some pebbles, or at least wood chips, for ammunition, and he would need to find some sort of game to use it on.

  A sword was too big to be of much use against a chipmunk, but he looked down thoughtfully at the hilt on his belt. Something larger than a chipmunk might happen along eventually, after all.

  The hilt looked just as it always had—simple, functional, and rather ugly, gray metal bare of any ornamentation or finesse, the sweat-softened leather of the grip bound in place with dulled brass wires. There was no gleam, no glamor about it, and he suddenly wondered whether the wizard had actually done anything to it. Spells existed, he knew, that did nothing at all save to look impressively magical, and the old man had had no supplies to speak of. Perhaps, in his fully understandable annoyance at the loss of his home, he had deceived his unwelcome visitor with play-pretties and phantasms. That would explain why he hadn't wanted the blade drawn until he had had time to disappear; use would surely show that there was no real enchantment.

  That, Valder said to himself, would be just his luck. Overcome with suspicion, he drew the sword.

  It slid smoothly from the scabbard, the blade bright in the sun—but no brighter than might be expected. Valder saw no unnatural glow, no sparkling silver, just the shine of well-kept steel. He held it out, made a few passes, even got to his feet for a quick, if slightly clumsy, parry-riposte against an imaginary foe; there was no sign of any magic. The blade looked and felt just as it always had.

  He lowered the sword and looked down at it in mild disappointment. He was not really angry; after all, the old man had probably not trusted him and had merely wanted to be rid of a serious nuisance. Quite possibly the old hermit was not as great a wizard as he might pretend to be—although he had certainly done well enough with minor spells like the Sanguinary Deception or the Finger of Flame.

  A magical weapon would have been very nice to have, though, very reassuring. It would not save him from starvation, but he would have liked it all the same.

  He briefly considered turning north again and trying to find the wizard, but dismissed the thought. The hermit was gone and probably not worth tracking down. And if Valder did manage to find him, what would he do with him? The old man had his own problems, just as Valder did; there was no point in combining the two sets.

  The thought of turning north again did remind Valder that he was not yet very far from the salt marsh, and that meant that he was not far from the sea. Pine forests might not provide food, but the ocean would. Even if he found no crabs, no clams, no oysters, even if he could catch no fish and hit no gulls, he could always eat seaweed. Rather than north, he would head west and stick to the coast henceforth. His route south would wiggle back and fo
rth, detouring around every bay and inlet, but he would not need to fear starvation or becoming lost.

  That decided, he tried to sheathe the sword.

  The blade turned away from the mouth of the scabbard.

  Thinking he had slipped, due to weariness, he tried again. Again, the tip of the sword refused to enter the sheath, sliding to one side instead.

  Still not actually thinking about it and with a trace of irritation, Valder formed his left hand into a ring around the top of the scabbard to guide the blade in and keep it from moving to either side. That worked, in that the blade did not move away, but he still could not sheathe the sword; instead of dodging, it now simply refused to slide home.

  He pressed harder, building up until he had all the strength he could muster, shoving sword and sheath together, but whatever was holding it refused to yield.

  His initial irritation gave way quickly to puzzlement; he took off his belt and held the scabbard up so that he could study it closely, inside and out. He saw nothing amiss, nothing in any way out of the ordinary, and felt a small tingle of excitement in his gut. The wizard had not lied!

  He sat down again and very slowly, very carefully brought the sword and the sheath together. They behaved ordinarily, like any inanimate objects, until the tip of the blade reached the mouth of the scabbard, and then something stopped any further motion. It did not matter whether the point was in the center of the opening, at either end, or to one side or the other; it would not enter the scabbard.

  Fascinated, Valder put the sword down and then discovered that he could not remove his hand from its hilt. He picked it up again and stared at it.

  No difference was visible. It was the same standard military-issue sword he had had since becoming a scout. He could open his hand and wiggle his fingers, but could not, he found, pull his hand away from the grip entirely. Something held it, magically. He lifted his hand, fingers outstretched and palm down, and the sword clung to the middle of his palm as if glued there.