Stormblade

17

“Where are you?” the kender had asked.

Piper didn’t know where he was. He’d told the kender he was right behind him. It was a good enough answer. He might have been, since he seemed to be both nowhere and everywhere at once. There were no landmarks in this fogbound drifting plane, it all seemed to run on forever. The things he “saw” he didn’t see with his eyes, but rather with his mind. It was not magic that showed him these things. There was no magic left to him but the spell he was caught in now.

Piper was a ghost, made so by his flute’s magic. He was dead. He stopped thinking for a moment. It was rather like holding his breath. But, like breathing when he was alive, thinking was not something he could go long without doing.

Tentatively, like a man running gentle fingers over a healing wound, he reached for the memory of his last living moments.

There had been all the pain and all the bone-deep exhaustion. He’d heard the young woman call for help, heard her cry Stanach’s name. He hadn’t heard anything else after that for a long, long time until Stanach’s thoughts, grieving and heavy, brushed up against the edges of his mind. Ah, Jordy! I’m sorry, Piper!

He’d wanted to speak then, to find some way to warn Stanach about Realgar’s men. He hadn’t the strength. He had only the need. When Stanach laid his flute beside him, he saw the instrument, though he could see nothing else at all. The flute held his music and his magic. It sang his own songs to him with a friend’s voice and gave voice to songs he’d never imagined. He found the small strength to work one last spell. The magic was the flute’s.

Was this ghostly state more or less than being dead? He reached around him with his mind. He couldn’t “see” everything the way he’d imagined a ghost would be able to. He saw—or knew—only a little more than he would be able to see were he alive. However, that was changing even as he tried to extend this new sense. Like the potential he’d once sensed in his strong body, he knew that the ability to “see” farther would increase with using it. He would have to explore this netherworld the way he would have done the physical world, a little at a time. He was not alone here. The souls he sensed behind the fog were few and showed no interest in him at all. They were, like he, beings moving to their own purposes and only brushed past him like sighs.

Piper laughed ruefully and the fog shivered. How many of the spirits here were bound to a kender for the rest of his natural life?

That’s what the flute’s spell had done: tied him to Lavim, the person who had triggered it, for as long as the kender lived. The spell not only gave Lavim a ghostly companion, but because of the connection to Piper, access to the flute’s magic.

Of course, he hadn’t imagined that the kender would be the first to play the flute. He’d thought Stanach would. The dwarf hadn’t and Lavim had. The summoning spell had called Piper back, all right, but it had called him to a kender’s attention. It had taken Piper all night and half the day to make his way through the labyrinths of Lavim’s confusing mental chatter and get to a place in the kender’s mind where Lavim could hear him. Stanach, when he was taken by the Theiwar, had dropped the flute for fear that it would end up in a Theiwar’s hand. He couldn’t have known that the flute’s magic would work for no one but Lavim now. Piper hoped he wasn’t in for more trouble than he could handle. He’d have to convince Lavim to give Tyorl the flute.

The fog seemed to thicken and grow dark and heavy with Piper’s fear. Soon it would be too late to help Stanach.

Lavim danced impatiently from one foot to the other. As delighted and surprised to find himself in conversation with Piper, he’d come to his senses before he’d come to the place where Kelida and Tyorl waited near the path. He had tucked the cherry wood flute into the deepest pocket of his old black coat, certain that Tyorl was going to want to snatch it right out of his hand.

Now, he had Tyorl plaguing him with questions in one ear and Piper whispering directions in the other. He didn’t know who to answer first. Tell him about Stanach and give him the flute.

Tyorl clamped both his hands on the kender’s shoulders and held him still. “Lavim, tell me about Stanach!”

“I will. In a minute.” Lavim blinked, not exactly sure who he was answering.

Tyorl’s blue eyes flared with sudden anger. “Tell me now!”

Tell him now! Give him the flute!

Lavim squirmed away and put Kelida between himself and Tyorl. Though he was a lean, slim fellow, the elf had a bear’s grip and looked as though he’d like to shake all the information out of him.

“All right, all right, I am! There’s some rocks up ahead and I found, uh, footprints and some of them were Stanach’s and some of them weren’t. Stanach isn’t there now, and I don’t know where he is, but I came back here because—”

Because you’re going to give him the flute. Tell him about the flute!

“Because I figured you should know.”

Lavim! Give him the—

Lavim steadfastly ignored the voice in his mind. “Tyorl, what do you suppose happened to him? The other footprints were a dwarf’s and he was probably one of those, urn,—”

Theiwar, Piper muttered.

“Theiwar,” Tyorl said.

Lavim blinked. He was getting a headache. “Right. Those are the fellows who’re looking for Kelida’s sword, aren’t they?”

Tyorl reached for his bow. His mouth a grim, hard line, he drew an arrow from the quiver on his back. Kelida looked from one to the other of them.

“Tyorl, they’ll kill him,” she whispered.

The sunlight on the path had deepened to gold. Shadows gathered in the thickets and under the trees, soon to spread through the forest and become night. The breeze sighed colder now.

Aye, Tyorl thought, they will. Sooner or later.

“They couldn’t have taken him far,” the ranger said.

He’s in the river caves.

Lavim nodded. “He’s in the river caves, Tyorl.”

“How do you know that? Damn, Lavim! What else do you know?”

Lavim didn’t know what else he knew. He hadn’t even known that till just now. “Tyorl, I—” He started to try to explain, then he snapped his mouth shut as Piper bellowed No! right inside his head.

But, he demanded silently, how am I going to tell him if I don’t tell him about you? Stop yelling, would you? I’ve got a headache already and—

You can tell him later. There’s no time to go into the part about me now, Lavim. The way you tell it, you’d be explaining all day. Stanach doesn’t have all day.

But what am I going to say?

Piper sighed heavily. Tell him you saw the caves. But I didn’t see any—

Don’t get virtuous on me now, Lavim.

“I saw the caves. Where else could he be?” With Piper’s prompting, he told the rest of the tale. “There’s five of ’em. Not caves, dwarves. There’s only three caves. They’re this side of the river and—”

Tyorl knows where. He’s been here before. Finn caches weapons in a cave in the forest, but he doesn’t know that this one connects with the river caves.

Lavim nodded. “Oh, Finn caches—”

No! Don’t tell him that! And give him my flute!

Lavim shoved his hands into his pockets and grasped the flute. He wasn’t going to give that up yet. “—Uh, stuff in the forest, doesn’t he? Like weapons and things?”

Has he ever … ?

“Has he ever used those ca—I mean, any caves around here?”

The elf shook his head, impatient again. “Aye, Lavim, he has. But those are woodland caves, and they’re too far south of here to connect to caves in the riverbank.”

“Yes, they—I—well, I mean, maybe they do.” Lavim curled his fingers around the flute. He was beginning to get the knack of talking to two people at once. He hoped.

You heard something about caves …

“I heard something about the caves in these woods. I don’t know where I heard it, but I did. Something about, um, right, caves that start out at the river and end up back here in the woods.

“They were saying back in Long Ridge that bandits used to hide out in ’em and sometimes they’d go to ground here in the woods because they wanted to lose whoever was chasing ’em. You pick up all kinds of stuff like that if you just listen and—”

“Tyorl,” Kelida’s hand trembled as she laid it on the elf’s arm. “We’ve got to help Stanach.”

Tyorl let his breath out in a frustrated sigh. He was caught between having to believe something a kender had ‘heard’—which meant he could have heard it, or thought he’d heard it, or imagined the whole idea right now—and the realization that if Stanach was made to tell his captors where the sword was, Kelida’s life now stood in danger.

The proverbial bear and the cliff’s edge, he thought bitterly. We’ve got to help Stanach, Kelida had said. That was another matter. He couldn’t leave her behind, alone and with the sword to mark her as the dwarves’ target, but he didn’t want to take her into danger with him either. Hands tied by circumstance, Tyorl cursed. Where was Finn? Thirty rangers in these woods and he should have run across their trail by now. He damned the sword, damned the dwarves, and made the only decision he could make.

Cautioning the girl and the kender to follow him as silently as they could, he slipped off the path and headed south.

Piper’s gusty sigh of relief made Lavim’s ears pop.

Horror crawled all over Stanach with clammy, plucking fingers. Trapped in the one-eyed derro’s magic, he wasn’t breathing well, nor was he thinking well. Like the echoes of dreams, he heard voices, thin and distorted.

No clear blue sky stretched above him now, only a rough, low ceiling of stone, smelling like mud and the river. Stones dug into his shoulders and back as he lay on a rocky floor. Though his hands were not bound, he could not move.

No, he thought, it wasn’t that he couldn’t move. He hadn’t the strength to move, or he didn’t want to move. Like thick, wet fog, lassitude seemed to have seeped into his muscles, his very bones.

Light, soft and fading toward gloaming, shimmered around the edges of the cave’s mouth. Stanach didn’t remember coining here. He had no memory of anything beyond the cold glitter in the Herald’s one black eye, the sudden, wrenching sickness that accompanied a transport spell, and a long, sickening slide into sleep.

And the distant voices.

They wanted Stormblade.

A dwarf, thin and holding an arm stiffly at his side, moved into Stanach’s field of vision, cutting the soft light with shadow. Wulfen they were calling him. Stanach knew him as one of the Theiwar whose blood he’d wiped from his sword in the grass on the side of the road to Long Ridge.

A cold lump of fear lay heavily in Stanach’s belly. He saw hunger for revenge in Wulfen’s eyes and heard it in his low, vulpine laughter. Stanach was no mage, as Piper had been. He had nothing arcane with which to defend himself. He had only his ragged strength and the hope that his companions would not try to rescue him.

Tyorl, he thought, get the Kingsword out of here! Find your rangers and get it to Thorbardin!

But would he? Or had he finally counted his friend Hauk as dead?

Aye, maybe. But Kelida hadn’t. Stanach had made sure of that. He’d given her a brave ranger to love, and she didn’t know that the ranger was dead. Stormblade would come to Thorbardin and Kelida would carry it there. The elf would go where she went.

Stanach stared hard at the roof of the river cave. He would not lose Hornfel’s Kingsword again. He’d do what he had to do, as Kyan Red-axe had, as Piper had.

Wulfen rumbled low in his throat. Stanach told himself that he was no longer a swordcrafter. He was a merchant, one who was in the business of buying time.

The cache was empty. Tyorl and Hauk had helped store the quivers of arrows, the swords, and daggers the night before they’d set out for Long Ridge. By the signs, Finn had been here only recently to gather supplies. Tyorl wished again that he knew where the rangers were. An empty cache place meant they’d had a need for the weapons. They were fighting somewhere and he’d seen no sign that any battle had taken place nearby. Damn! he thought. I need them and they’d likely appreciate my bow. Where in the name of the gods are they?

Tyorl smiled wryly. Likely Finn knew about the dragon-army supply bases by now anyway; likely the dragonarmy knew about Finn and his Nightmare Company by now, too.

The cave wasn’t high enough for Tyorl to stand comfortably and only deep enough for him and Lavim to enter. Kelida stood watch. Tyorl listened for her footstep scuffing on stone, caught a glimpse of gold-shot red braids, and turned to Lavim.

“There’s no way back to the river from here,” he said irritably. The kender nodded vigorously, his long white braid bobbing on his neck. “There is, Tyorl. It’s, urn, just behind the back wall.”

“Lavim, there’s nothing behind that wall but dirt and stone.”

Tyorl ran a hand over the rock, his thumb over the cracks forced there by the thick roots of the pines that lived on the cobble above. The place smelled of rich, dark earth and stone. Tyorl missed the warm fall of the setting sun’s light. Caves were fine for secreting stores of weapons, but they were too dark and heavy with the weight of the earth for the elf’s taste.

Lavim squeezed past Tyorl and dropped to his heels before the widest of the fissures. He shoved his right hand into the crack and curled his fingers around the stone as one would around the edge of a door. He smiled up at the elf, green eyes gleaming.

“There’s air moving back there, Tyorl.”

Lavim ran his left hand along the wall at arm’s length and shoulder height and followed the thin crack he saw there down to the floor. He peered up at the ceiling, squinting mightily, and saw a narrow fissure there as well. His smile became a grin as he eyed the distance between his outstretched arms. “We could fit through here easily.”

“Aye,” Tyorl drawled, “if we could walk through stone.”

“No, we don’t have to do that. There’s …” Lavim cocked his head as though listening for something, then nodded. “I think I hear echoes. Kind of like water—the river—and if we can get this stone to move, we can get right to the water. The cave back there runs … uh, the river smell means it heads straight and straight is east and … uh, that’s probably where Stanach is.”

“Guesses, kenderkin.”

“Oh, no, they’re not guesses I—” Lavim cleared his throat and nodded.

“You’re right. They’re guesses. I hear the river, Tyorl, and I can feel the edge of this stone.” He withdrew his right hand and held it up for Tyorl’s inspection. “This wall’s no thicker than my palm, and the edge of the crack is smooth. I’ll bet if we can just get this stone to move …”

Lavim pressed his shoulder to the wall and shoved.

“Lavim,” Tyorl sighed heavily.

The kender braced his feet against the stone floor and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, all his weight behind his efforts.

“Lavim, I don’t think—”

The kender grunted. “Could you stop thinking for a minute, Tyorl, and give me a hand here? Or a shoulder? Put your weight against the right of the stone.”

If only to disabuse the kender of his foolish notions, Tyorl lent the weight Lavim asked for. Almost immediately, the stone began to move. Air, dank and heavy with earth smells, moved lazily through the opening. Beneath the scent of dirt and stone drifted the odor of the river: fish, silt, and decaying vegetation.

“Bandits’ caves!” Lavim cried. “See! We—I was right!”

He dove for the opening, and Tyorl quickly caught him by the collar of his shapeless black coat. “Wait, Lavim!”

But the kender was waiting for no one. He squirmed away from the elf’s hold and darted into the newly opened cave.

Tyorl called quickly for Kelida. She slipped into the cave, eyed the dark, narrow doorway into the earth and then the light over her shoulder. She looked as doubtful as Tyorl felt.

“Where’s Lavim?”

Tyorl jerked a thumb at the fissure. “Where you’d expect. Ready?”

Kelida nodded.

“Stay close then, and let’s see if we can catch up with the kender.”

He hadn’t meant it as a jest, but when Kelida’s emerald eyes lighted with a sudden spark of laughter, Tyorl smiled and stepped aside as though ushering her into a safe and comfortable chamber. Unthinking, she laid her hand on his shoulder as she passed. He felt the light touch of her fingers long after he’d left the opening and the faint light behind. Three!

Stanach clung to the idea of the cipher through another red-hazed spin into darkness. They’d snapped three of his fingers. Seven, he thought, seven to go. Or two if they only want to leave me one-handed. Seven or two …

The lethargy of the sleep spell had worn away, but he still couldn’t move. It was as though invisible bonds held him to the stone floor. More of the Herald’s work, he thought.

The red star, the ember from Reorx’s forge, hung low in the purpling sky. The only thing Stanach could move were his eyes. These he kept fixed on the star.

Seven or two. It doesn’t matter … it doesn’t matter … soon I’m not going to be able to feel this at all.

Wulfen, his black Theiwar eyes like bottomless pits in the shadows of night, leaned forward. “Where is the sword?”

Stanach did not have the heart or the strength to wonder why Wulfen’s tone was so coolly reasonable. The midnight wings of pain rustled around him. He swallowed back bile and vomit.

“I told you,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and thin, “I don’t know. I didn’t … find it.”

The Herald nodded, smiling.

Stanach screamed and the sound almost drowned out the searing pain and another dry snap.

Four! Six, his mind panted, six or one … six or—

Five!

When his thumb was finally broken, Stanach’s scream almost sounded like triumphant laughter in his own ears. His right hand was a swollen, blue mass of flesh on the stony floor.

Those don’t look like fingers, his mind’s voice observed thinly, not at all. Now there’s a hand that won’t be lifting a hammer again. Behind him, the Herald made a sound like rumbling laughter. Another of the Theiwar drifted past the cave’s mouth as he walked his patrol, paced back again, and turned. Faint as old memories, Stanach smelled the smoke of the guards’ watch fire.

The red star winked and vanished and appeared again. Icy sweat trickled into Stanach’s eyes, slid down his cheeks and into his beard like cold tears. He closed his eyes, then opened them, only to find the cave faded a little around the edges.

Wulfen took a dagger from his belt. The only light in the cave was fading twilight reflected in the mirror of the blade’s steel. Creeping and tentative, smoke wafted into the cave, stinging Stanach’s eyes as it passed him, clutching at his throat.

Stanach looked to the side, saw the fingers of his left hand, whole and straight, and closed his eyes. In the darkness he saw the Kingsword, red-streaked steel, four sapphires the color of twilight, a fifth like a midnight star. He’d seen the steel born in fire, and he’d seen Isarn’s wonder, his dawning understanding when the reflection of the forge fire hadn’t faded. He’d watched in grief and pity as the old master became slowly mad when Stormblade had been stolen. Kingsword!

Kingsword, he thought. Kingsword, Realgar! By the god’s forge, you won’t have it!

Steel, like winter’s ice, touched the thumb of his left hand at the first joint in cold caress. Stanach drew a long breath and let it out in a tattered sigh.

He’ll crack that knuckle like a tightly closed nut, Stanach my lad, with a thrust and a snap …

Stanach opened his eyes and saw only his own fear reflected in the dagger’s blade.

“Where is the sword?”

Stanach thought he might be a little mad. He laughed, and the laughter kept perfect time to the beat and thunder of the fire consuming his right hand. “I—told you. I don’t have it.”

No! That was the wrong answer! Stanach saw it in the flicker of interest in Wulfen’s eyes.

The Theiwar’s voice was soft as the smoke now. “Who does?”

Stanach couldn’t see the star anymore. The guard stood between him and the sky. He closed his eyes again.

If Realgar’s men found Kelida with the sword they’d kill her before she’d have a chance to scream.

Lyt chwaer, he’d named her, little sister. She’d tried to ease his grief for Piper’s death with understanding and a kinswoman’s gentle silence. Lyt chwaer, who has a dead ranger to love.

I do what I have to do. I lie to friendless barmaids, and I watch my own friends die. How does it balance, how does it balance?

Wulfen’s breath was hot against Stanach’s face. His strange derro soul shone in the madness reflected in his eyes. He was close now, and his dagger’s steel lay at the base of Stanach’s jaw. “Who has the Kingsword?”

The Herald moved forward. Stanach heard his breathing, soft as a snake hissing.

Stanach looked at his right hand, twisted and swollen out of recognition. He’d never lift a hammer again. He’d never again know the magic of crafting. His own masterblade lay lifeless, stillborn amid the wreckage of his broken fingers. Wulfen had stolen that. In that way, he and his mad derro kin would rob all of Thorbardin, twisting and breaking everything beautiful under their trampling reign.

The dagger’s tip traced a thin, bleeding line up to just below Stanach’s right eye. The muscles tightened across the back of Wulfen’s hand.

“I’ll ask again, but this will be the last time. Who has Stormblade?”

Stanach spat, and prepared to lose his eye.