Swords: 10 - The Seventh Book Of Lost Swords - Wayfinder's Story (17 page)

      
“Will you fight for
him
, then?” Tigris, her voice become unrecognizable, demanded of the thing. “You had better revolt, with me!”

      
“It may not be, great sorceress, it may not be! When his life ends, so does mine.” The aerial blur of Dactylartha’s presence seemed to intensify. A crushing weight seemed to be descending upon the stomach, and the soul, of Valdemar.

      
The woman was ready for combat. She had sheathed Farslayer, and her hands, one holding Wayfinder, rose in the subtle gesture of a great magician. “If I must slay you first, I will!”

      
The struggle was closed between Tigris and Dactylartha.

      
To Valdemar’s limited perception, the outcome appeared horribly uncertain.

      
Made more desperately ill than ever by the increased activity of the monstrous demon, the young man thought he might be dying. But suddenly he found himself completely free of illness, for the moment, as the magical powers of the two contestants strained and nullified each other.

      
Terror of the demon overrode all other fears. Valdemar lunged desperately for the Sword still sheathed at the slender waist of Tigris. In a moment he had seized the black hilt of Farslayer, pulled it from its scabbard, and was hurling it with all his strength at Dactylartha’s overwhelming presence—it was a crude effort, such as any unskilled fighter might make in desperation, throwing any sharp object at a foe.

      
The Sword of Vengeance, relentlessly indifferent to its user’s skill or lack thereof, shot straight through the demon’s flickering, half-substantial image, and in a moment had vanished over the distant horizon.

      
Valdemar had forgotten for the moment that the demon’s life must be hidden elsewhere.

      
Dactylartha, frozen in position, stared for a long moment at his two human foes, glaring with eyes that were no longer eyes, out of a face no longer even a passable imitation of humanity. And in the next moment the demon died, shrieking a great shriek, his image exploding in spectacular fashion, and yet so quickly that he was able to do no harm to Tigris or Valdemar—nor carry any reports back to the Ancient One.

      
His guts hollow with fear, but his eyes and mind once more clear, Valdemar discovered Tigris down on one knee, struggling with the after-effects of the contest.

      
Stumbling closer, he seized her by the arm. “It’s gone. I think it must be dead.”

      
“Dead and gone,” Tigris confirmed, in a dull voice. Moving slowly, also stumbling at first, she regained her feet. Then some energy returned. Shaking herself free of Valdemar’s grip, she cursed him for a peasant coward: “I could have managed that demon without wasting Farslayer on it! But nothing else will give me a chance to kill my Master, or to break free! I will be helpless without it … Damn you! Damn you, grower of poisoned grapes! I might have coped with the fiend by my own strength! You have cost me my chance for freedom, and damned me to hell!”

      
The youth recoiled, shaken. “We might get it back—”

      
“There will be no time.”

      
Valdemar asked humbly: “What do we do now?”

      
For a moment Tigris brandished Wayfinder, as if she meant to cut him down with it. Then, in a voice bleak with depression, close to despair, she admitted: “Still I dare not hurt you.”

      
Valdemar could find nothing helpful to say. The woman cried out: “Sword, what am I to do? How am I to survive?”

      
Wayfinder, displaying the infinite patience of the gods, silently indicated Valdemar.

      
Tigris glared speculatively at her silent counselor. Then a gleam of hope appeared in her eyes. “Is it possible that the Sword of Wisdom has allowed for your idiocy in wasting Farslayer? In that case, peasant, it appears there may still be hope.”

      
“I suppose we are to travel again?”

      
“Is that it, Sword? Yes, I’ll drag him with me again, wherever you command. But which way?”

      
Promptly Wayfinder directed her to the griffin, which had been cowering like a beaten puppy in the demon’s presence. Now, with Dactylartha gone, Tigris was quickly able to re-instill in the lesser creature something like a sense of duty.

      
As soon as she and Valdemar were airborne, Wayfinder aimed them back eastward, in approximately the same direction from which they had come. Tigris accepted the command without comment.

* * *

      
Once more they went hurtling above the clouds. Their speed soon filled Valdemar with awe by bringing on a premature sunset behind them. Both of the griffin’s passengers drew the obvious conclusion from their direction: that Wayfinder was guiding them back to somewhere near—perhaps very near—their original point of departure, at the overrun Blue Temple camp.

      
Tigris said little as they flew. Her thoughts were dominated by the notion that the pair were getting closer to Wood with every passing moment.

      
Once her companion was able to hear her questioning herself, or fate: “Am I to go to him, try to lie to him, defend my actions? That cannot be! As well plead with him for mercy.”

      
The young man, despite his own desperate situation, felt a stirring of something like sympathy.

      
The enchantress muttered several somewhat amended forms of her wish for survival and for freedom, asking the Sword for some means of protection against the Ancient One, rather than the ability to destroy him.

      
“Sword, save me from him! Save me, somehow!”

      
From the very beginning of her contemplated escape, Tigris had been aware of the extreme danger involved in defying a wizard as powerful as the Ancient One. And Tigris knew, far better than most people, how powerful he was.

      
Even so, she now feared that she had almost certainly underestimated the truth.

      
“What am I to do?” she breathed. She was looking at Valdemar as she spoke, though perhaps not really seeing him.

      
He glared at her sourly. “Do you now want my willing cooperation?”

      
The sorceress snarled back, “From the first moment I saw you, I have suspected that you could not be as innocent as you appeared. Very well, if you have any revelations that you have been holding in reserve, let’s have them now.

      
“Or else,” she continued a moment later, speaking now as if Valdemar were not there, as if she were talking to her griffin, “some other power may be cleverly using this peasant as a catspaw.” Suddenly she faced her prisoner again. “What say you to that, grape-grower?”

      
He shook his head, as calmly as he could. “Why is it necessary for me to be something other than what I am?”

      
The eyes of Tigris, filled with pain and fear, seemed to be boring into him. “When one has lived with Master Wood for any length of time, as I have, nothing can any longer be considered simply what it is. It is necessary to approach every question in those terms.”

      
“Why did you choose to serve him, then?”

      
This, it appeared, was an unanswerable question. Tigris faced forward again, and the griffin flew on, magically tireless. Valdemar wondered if it would ever have to stop and rest, or feed.

* * *

      
When Tigris’s attack had fallen on the Blue Temple encampment, Sergeant Brod had been close enough to observe the results, and to be shaken by the experience. But by good fortune he had also been distant enough to survive, unnoticed by the attackers.

      
In Brod’s estimation, the new conqueror, even if she did appear to be hardly more than a girl, was obviously powerful enough to be a worthy patron. He wanted to attach himself to her somehow, if that were possible without taking too much risk.

      
Torn between fear and ambition, the Sarge considered approaching the camp, and representing himself to its new masters as a victim of the Blue Temple. But soon caution prevailed; there were events in progress here that he could not begin to understand. Later, perhaps, when he had learned more. For the time being he decided to sneak away instead.

* * *

      
Ben, hiking industriously toward home, warily scanning the skies ahead, was just saying that, in his opinion, they might be going to get away with Woundhealer after all. At that instant he heard Zoltan scream behind him.

      
Spinning round, Ben was almost knocked off his feet by a swooping griffin. The thing must have come down at them from behind, and was now rapidly gaining altitude again with both Zoltan and the Sword of Mercy in its claws. While Ben stared, open-mouthed and helpless, the great beast swung round in the air, and rapidly departed in the direction of the Blue Temple camp.

      
On the ground Ben ran hopelessly, shouting curses, after the rapidly receding griffin. “Drop the Sword!” he screamed at his hapless comrade. “Drop—”

      
But Zoltan either could not hear him, or was powerless to obey.

* * *

      
Meanwhile, the Ancient One’s most malignant suspicions of Tigris were in the process of being inflamed by a whispered report from a certain lesser, junior demon. This creature had just arrived at Wood’s headquarters with the report that Dactylartha had been slain.

      
And even that was not the worst news: To the surprise of the attackers, the Sword of Wisdom had been in the Blue Temple camp—and Tigris had seized that mighty weapon for herself, and taken it away with her.

      
Wood, seated now on a plain chair in a small room near his laboratory, did not move a muscle. He said quietly: “She sent me no report of any such discovery.”

      
The bearer of bad news offered no comment on that fact.

      
“Her official report,” the great magician continued, “was very vague. Something about ‘great success’—and that was all. I suppose there is no doubt of any of these disquieting things you tell me?”

      
The creature made no attempt to conceal its unholy glee. “Absolutely none, my Master! And—no doubt of this fact either, great lord!—Dactylartha was slain by Tigris herself!”

      
“So.”

      
“With the Sword of Vengeance!”

      
Wood sat listening carefully to the few additional details that he was told. His eyes were closed, his face a mask. He tended to believe the allegations against Tigris. Yet he could not be
absolutely
sure that his most favored aide has in fact turned traitor—this report might be a mistake or a lie, the result of some in-house intrigue.

      
But with at least one, and perhaps more, of the ten surviving Swords at stake, he was certainly not about to take any chances.

      
One thing that the Ancient One did secretly fear intensely, without trying to deceive himself about the fact, was Farslayer. Though he betrayed no sign of this externally, in his imagination he could feel the great cold of that steel as it slid between his ribs, or split his breastbone.

      
But the Sword of Vengeance had evidently gone to finish Dactylartha.

      
Wood actually did not know where that demon’s life had been hidden, except that he thought it had been at a reassuringly great distance. Well, there was nothing to be done about that problem just now.

      
But Tigris. … If she was indeed now armed with the Sword of Wisdom, she would be very dangerous. He could not afford to put off action for a moment.

* * *

      
As night fell, and the stars came out above her speeding griffin, Tigris, still mounted in the saddle with her prisoner Valdemar huddled beside her in his basket, felt increasingly certain that her treachery must now be known to Wood. She knew a foretaste of the terrible punishment that it would no longer be possible to avoid.

      
Her worst fears were coming true. In an abyss of terror, feeling her mental defenses crumbling, Tigris realized that nothing could keep her Master from trying to wreak terrible vengeance upon her.

      
Valdemar stared at his companion helplessly. He could see by Tigris’s behavior that she thought something terrible was happening or about to happen to her, and he was afraid of what this would mean to him.

      
At this point Tigris in her panic redoubled the urgency of her demands on Wayfinder. She stormed and pleaded with the Sword, that it must show her a way to escape.

      
“Help me! Save me!”

      
The Sword still pointed straight ahead, along the griffin’s rippling neck.

      
Then, staring hollow-eyed at the Sword, the blond sorceress almost despaired. “Or is it,” she whispered, “that even the gods’ weapons cannot help me? That you can only guide me straight back to him—that he is too strong—even for you?”

      
A moment later, with her passenger watching and listening in frozen horror, the terrified young woman was retracting that statement, fearful that she had offended the mighty powers ruling Wayfinder.

      
Valdemar, hesitant to speak, gaped at his companion. In this raging, cursing, pleading woman there remained no visible trace of a figure he thought he had once glimpsed, a wistful girl who had once paused to listen to a robin sing.