Stormblade

26

Tyorl sagged against the rough barked trunk of a tall pine. His hunting leathers hung wet and heavy on him, covered with mud from the bogs, smeared with black ash and mud. His legs strengthless, his arms and back a mass of aching muscle and bone, he knew that if it were not for the tree’s support he would fall.

Smoke and ash sent hot tears running down his face. Shivering with cold, Tyorl wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands, smearing soot and mud across pale cheeks in the horrible semblance of a mourner’s ashes. Behind him raged a swiftly advancing wall of flame. Guyll fyr rioted in the bog, flames shooting high into the sky. Pillars of fire pierced the thick roil of smoke billowing toward the foothills. There would not be more than a few moments for him and his friends to rest.

“Finn,” he rasped. The word caught in Tyorl’s hot, dry throat. “Finn, what do you know of these mountains?”

Finn shook his head, his lips twitching in a bitter, cynical smile. “I’m no dwarf. I know as much as anyone does of this arm of the mountains—which is about nothing. I hear the dwarves call these foothills and mountains the Outlands. But then, they have never been ones to encourage visitors. Pity you don’t have your broken-handed friend with you now.”

A pity, indeed, Tyorl thought. While the young dwarf had never been a favorite companion, he would be useful now. But Stanach, ever cold and silently brooding, was likely dead.

Tyorl winced at the callousness of the thought. Cold Stanach had always been, and distant, but Tyorl knew that Stanach had leaped for the dragon and hauled himself, one-handed and exhausted, onto the beast’s back more for Kelida’s sake than for that damned Stormblade.

Tyorl shook his head, tired with running and tired with thinking. His companions were both dead now. They were part of Stormblade’s bloody toll.

Finn coughed in the thickening air and Tyorl looked up. “We are guideless, Finn. We’ll have to do the best we can and make outrunning the guyll fyr our goal.”

“Not all of us will see the goal.” Finn gestured toward Lavim. The kender, too, braced against a pine’s supporting trunk. His head low, Lavim’s heaving gasps for breath shuddered through his small body, rattling in his chest like wind in the reeds. He’d been limping the last mile, muttering about stones in his boot.

There was a big enough hole in one of the kender’s old boots to support the excuse. Still, it was an excuse Tyorl did not believe. Even now, thinking himself unobserved, Lavim bent over his right knee, rubbing it with slow, careful strokes. He’d wrenched it hard coming out of the bog. Tyorl glanced at Finn. The rangerlord shook his head again, a light of pity in his smoke blue eyes. Though Finn had argued for cutting the kender’s throat and leaving him in the swamp, his anger, as always, had been short-lived. It was he who hauled Lavim, cursing and sputtering, out of the last and deepest waters.

We are the last of four who set out, Lavim and I, the elf thought. And none of us really knew a thing about the others but their names. He suddenly realized that, in a handful of days, these people had become important to him. The deaths of two of them—aye, even grim Stanach!—would echo darkly in his heart for long years.

Tyorl pushed away from the tree.

“We’re wasting time. Stanach isn’t with us. I know the direction he intended to take. South of the bog and east. I know little about Thorbardin, but I do know that we must be yet north of the place. The winds are pushing the fire north and east. It will be a hard road up and south to Thorbardin. We’d best get moving now while we still can.

“As for Lavim, he’ll get as far as I do, Finn, because when he can’t go any farther I will carry him.”

Without a backward look, Tyorl left the rangerlord and went to join Lavim. Dropping to one knee, he laid a hand on the old kender’s shoulder. Lavim looked around and flashed his ever-present grin. It took him a moment, though, to get that grin rightly in place.

“How are you, kenderkin? Are you ready for another run?”

“I’m ready, Tyorl, whenever you are. And I think—well, that is Piper thinks—”

“Piper thinks what?” Tyorl said warily.

“He thinks that he can guide us to Thorbardin from here. He sort of recognizes some of the landmarks, and he says you’re right about heading south and east. He wants to know if you’ll let him be the guide for a while.”

A ghost as a guide? Tyorl sighed tiredly. Why not? When fleeing a house afire one abandons everything in an effort to get out alive. He turned to look at the western sky, crimson and roiling with thick black smoke.

“Well, we’ve no guide at all now. Tell Piper I’d be grateful for his help.” Tyorl smiled. “But let me tell Finn about it, aye?”

Lavim nodded, grinning. “He’s not real fond of Piper, is he?”

“Let’s say he’s not fond of the idea of Piper.”

Tyorl ran the flat of his hand absently along the smooth cherry wood flute at his belt. He’d snatched it from Lavim in the bog and fastened it to his belt by its leather thong. He hadn’t let it out of his sight since. Tyorl smiled.

He’d make Finn understand somehow. It was time to abandon everything, including all the good sense he once credited himself with having.

Hauk had no idea where he was, and he was quickly growing tired of the feeling. There was no way of determining direction under the mountain, with no landmarks to follow and no light but that spilling from Isarn’s leaping torch. He followed that torch through dark and deep corridors the way he would follow the pole star in strange lands. Isarn had drawn, from among the supplies he had in the sanctuary cave, a dagger and a sword. These he’d given to Hauk with a proud light in his mad old eyes.

“I made them,” he said simply, watching Hauk test the balance of the finely crafted weapons. “Carry them. I will carry the torch.”

The dagger in his belt, the sword in his hand, Hauk felt better than he had in many long days. Weaponed, he felt almost whole again, almost strong. He’d accepted the steel with a curt nod of thanks. The tunnels through which Isarn led him seemed labyrinthine, winding and turning with no pattern or reason. Some were wide, with cressets for torches on smooth, high-reaching walls. Others were narrow and cramped and so low that Hauk had to stoop to get through. The smoke of Isarn’s torch coiled back and caught in Hauk’s lungs, choking him. At the end of one of these, shoulders aching and back stiff, he caught Isarn by the arm and halted him.

“How much farther? And where are we?”

The old swordcrafter slipped away from Hauk’s hand. “Deep Warrens. Not much farther. Only a few tunnels.”

“Aye? If they’re no higher than the last, I’ll be no good to anyone.”

Isarn said nothing, only shrugged as though to suggest that the tunnels hadn’t been delved for tall Outlanders in the first place. They hadn’t been delved for the common traffic of Thorbardin either. In many places, Isarn found them a tight passing as well. When, at the end of another corridor, Hauk saw the dwarf bend low, he groaned inwardly and dropped to his hands and knees.

I’m going to be on my belly, he thought, before I ever come to where this crazy old bastard is taking me!

So low was the ceiling in this tunnel that Hauk imagined he could feel the whole weight of the mountain pressing down on him. So narrow were the walls that rough stone scraped against his shoulders and arms. The smoke of Isarn’s torch poured back over his shoulder and then suddenly eddied ahead, caught by a cold crosscurrent of air.

Hauk realized then that this was no corridor at all but a kind of passage between corridors. He dragged himself out of the tunnel on his elbows and cautiously climbed to his feet.

Isarn, calm and almost steady till now, shuffled from foot to foot. His breathing quickened, his hands trembled so that the torchlight was useless for anything but making the walls of the corridor seem to dance and sway.

“What is it?” Hauk whispered.

“Here. They’re here. The lad and the girl.”

Hauk’s heart lurched suddenly, leaping hard against the cage of his ribs. “Where?”

Isarn didn’t answer but to press the torch into Hauk’s hand and slip into the weaving shadows and darkness ahead. Hauk followed, his mouth dry, his blood singing high in his ears.

She was here! The fire-haired girl whose name he’d never known. The memory of her, straight and slim, green eyes shining, had kept him whole and sane through all the torments that Realgar had inflicted upon him. When he couldn’t tell whether he was dead or alive, when he’d seen and felt Tyorl’s death, known that he’d killed him and known that he hadn’t, the girl’s eyes had shown like emeralds in his heart.

She was here.

Slowly, following the sound of Isarn’s agitated breathing, Hauk edged around a corner. Orange light from the torch spilled across the far wall, revealing the dwarf where he knelt before a jagged crack in the stone. Just barely wide enough for Hauk to fit through, the gap reached from the floor to well out of the ranger’s sight.

“In there?”

Isarn nodded. “Aye. The lad and—”

Low and ominous, a rumbling filled the corridor, rising to a high scream in which Hauk somehow recognized dark, fierce joy. The stone itself seemed to vibrate with that cry, to sing echoes back to whatever voiced the soul-chilling scream.

Isarn wailed, a thin, high shriek of terror. The terrible bellowing struck Hauk like a blow and dropped him to his knees, He hung on to the torch with both hands while the sword fell to the floor. He didn’t hear the ring and clatter of steel on stone. As though the thing that made the cry were rising, the roar grew. Shadows from the torchlight spun madly across the walls and floor. Light, thin and orange, flickered around the corridor, alternately showing him the rough walls and the niches where darkness pooled.

There was no sign of Isarn.

Hauk shifted the torch to his left hand, grabbed up the fallen sword with his right. “Isarn!” he called softly. “Isarn!”

Nothing moved in the stony corridor but the trembling light and madly dancing shadows thrown by the torch. Urgent fear crowded into Hauk’s mind and raced through his heart. Isarn was nowhere to be found. Hauk caught his breath, listening. He heard nothing but the hiss and sputter of the torch. Where was the dwarf?

Then, he had no thought for Isarn at all. Soft, like wind sobbing, a low, moaning sound came from beyond the crack in the wall. Even as he recognized it for a woman’s voice, the moaning faded and died. Heart racing, not stopping to think, Hauk bolted through the crack in the wall. Isarn lay, huddled and small, to the left of the entrance. Hauk noted only peripherally that the old dwarf didn’t move. The cave was cold and filled with the dry, musty stink of reptile. In the far corner, memory made real, crouched a girl with hair like thick copper.

She was huddled over her knees, her hands high and fisted, green eyes wide in a white face splashed with shadows. A dwarf, black-bearded and thick-armed, stood over her. He reached for her with a bandaged hand. Hauk roared, a bear’s battle cry, and charged across the cave. As he ran, he realized that the dwarf was too close to the girl for a sword thrust. He reversed his grip on his weapon and raised the pommel high. She saw him and recognized him in the instant he brought the sword’s grip thundering down between the dwarf’s shoulders.

“Hauk!” she cried. “No!”

Her cry echoed in the vibrations of the blow, echoed in the dwarf’s gasping, and the sound of his body hitting the rocky floor. And it echoed in the horror and anger in her green eyes as she flung herself across the dwarf as though to protect him from the glittering steel of the sword. His hand trembling, his heart hammering painfully in his chest, Hauk lowered the sword. The torch guttered and died. Darkness leaped to fill the cave. The only sounds Hauk heard were the murmur of wind from some far, high place and the girl’s raggedly drawn breath.

He reached for her shoulder, touched her gently. When she pulled away, her cry of fear cut right to his heart.

After a long time of sickening darkness, a hand, fingers trembling, stroked the side of Stanach’s head.

“Oh, please,” a familiar voice whispered. “Oh, please, Stanach. Please, my friend, be alive.”

It was a child’s plea, made without any concession to logic and from the heart. The plea was typically Kelida’s.

The cold air gasped as fire sprang to life.

There was light in the darkness behind Stanach’s eyes and it confused him. He remembered very little beyond the sudden roar of the dragon. Kelida had cried out in terror. His own heart had stopped beating. He hadn’t expected to feel anything but the rip and tear of Darknight’s fangs. He certainly hadn’t expected to feel a sword’s grip crash down between his shoulders.

“Lyt chwaer” he sighed, unable yet to open his eyes, “there is no sense in pleading with the dead to live.”

She caught her breath in a sharp, startled gasp and took his left hand firmly in her own.

Stanach opened his eyes then, his head aching from the sharp invasion of light. Wavering light from the reanimated torch cast black shadows across Kelida’s face. Her green eyes seemed to flicker to the flame’s cadence.

“Stanach?”

“Aye,” he sighed, gratefully. “What hit me, Kelida?”

Shadows separated from shadows behind Kelida, and a young man, black haired and black-bearded, stepped into the light. His brown hunting leathers hung awkwardly from a frame that should have been thickly muscled and stocky.

Stocky, Stanach thought, when he is eating regularly. This one has not been eating regularly or often.

“I hit you, dwarf.”

There was nothing of regret in that cold voice. A feral light gleamed in the young man’s blue eyes; the eyes of a wolf held too long captive, the eyes of a wolf cut off from the pack and afraid.

Stanach pushed himself up to sit. The young man watched his every move. Stanach shivered and thought for one long moment that he was looking at a ghost. Ranger’s garb and the look of a hungry predator. He knew, suddenly, who this young man was. And yet, how could he still be alive? How could he have survived the torments Realgar must have inflicted upon him?

Those had to have been horrible torments, indeed. The heart Stanach saw reflected in Hauk’s dark eyes was gaunt and needy.

The dwarf looked quickly to Kelida. She wore the wary and confused look of one who has found what she’s lost and now, for some reason she cannot determine, hears instinct clamoring that she must fear it. Stanach got to his feet, aching in every muscle. Hauk, head up and tense, watched him, tracking his every move with cold, deadly eyes. The dwarf forced what he hoped was a wry and appreciative smile.

“You are Kelida’s Hauk. You struck a good blow.”

The hard set of Hauk’s jaw softened and Stanach realized that the ranger hadn’t even known her name.

“Aye,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with a careful hand.

“Kelida.”

Kelida swallowed dryly and got to her feet. Her gestures quick and nervous, she brushed her straggling hair from her face, smoothed her wrinkled and stained cloak. “Do you—do you remember me?”

His lips moved, though he made no sound. He nodded.

“Will you—will you put up your sword, please?”

He stiffened and tightened his grip on the weapon.

“Please.” She took a small step toward him, her hand out. “We’ve been looking for you.”

Hauk shot a sharp, suspicious look at Stanach. He lowered the sword.

“Tyorl?”

Kelida laid her hand on his wrist and lowered the sword. “All right, I think.” She looked at Stanach.

“I’m fine.” He smiled, an ironic twist of his mouth. “You’d better tell him about his sword, Kelida. And if he found us, maybe he knows a way out of here. That dragon leaving so suddenly certainly means trouble.”

Stanach looked around the cavern. A figure lay hunched in the black shadows near the cavern’s entrance. He drew a sharp breath.

“Isarn,” Hauk said evenly. “I don’t think he’s dead. I—he led me here, and we heard that screaming, that roaring. He went in before me and must have caught a glimpse of the dragon leaving.”

As Hauk had guessed, the old master was not dead. Not yet. He lay in the shadows, drawing thin, rasping breaths. Stanach hardly recognized him. The madness that had for so long ravaged his mind, the grief that had for as long ravaged his soul, left their external marks. The old dwarf was thin, his once strong wrists and arms nothing but bones for weakened muscle and scanty flesh to cling to. His beard, once full, clean, and white as snow, was ragged, tangled, and filthy.

His eyes, gently staring, did not blink or track when Stanach approached.

Stanach dropped to his knees beside him. Once those dull brown eyes had seen the vision of a masterblade. Once they had watched the first light shine from the blade of the Kingsword. Stanach’s heart tightened. He felt the shadow of impending grief.

“Master,” he whispered. The old title came easily to his lips. “Master Isarn.”

His was a voice the old one knew well, and one not heard for a long time. Isarn ran a dry tongue over cracked lips. “Lad,” he said distantly.

“Aye, Master, it’s me. I’ve come back.”

He saw the dirty green bandaging binding Stanach’s right hand. Grief filled his eyes like tears. “What have they done to your hand, boy?”

Stanach winced but did not know how to answer.

He didn’t have to; the question faded from Isam’s mind. When he spoke again, his voice rang out strong with conviction. “Stormblade will kill the high king!”

Stanach caught his breath and held it. The words sounded like prophecy! They rang with foretelling, and Stanach felt the foretelling as cold fear along the skin of his arms.

It will kill the high king.

But there was no high king in Thorbardin. None had sat upon that throne for three hundred years. Aye, and no Kingsword had been forged in Thorbardin in three hundred years.

“Master,” he whispered, “I don’t understand.”

The vacant, staring light in Isarn’s eyes changed, glimmered faintly with sanity. He looked directly at Stanach, his lips moving in what could have been a smile.

“Always, lad, you tell me you don’t understand. And always, you do.”

Like ghosts, Stanach heard well remembered words from the long past of his life, from a time when his hands were filled with discovery, his head with learning.

Your hands have the knowledge, Stanach my lad, and your heart has the desire. It remains for your head—sometimes harder than the stone for which you are named!—to understand.

So saying, Isarn would impart another bit of knowledge to guide Stanach’s hand at the forge.

Stanach leaned closer. “Master, there is no high king now. I don’t understand what you—”

Isarn’s brows contracted in an expression Stanach well knew. It was the fearsome scowl he turned upon an assistant or apprentice who has failed to listen to instruction.

“There is a king, boy,” he whispered hoarsely, impatiently. “There is a king. I made the sword for him. Stormblade, I called it—there is a king.”

Hornfel! Stanach trembled with exhaustion and sudden understanding of what Isarn was saying. Hornfel would be high king.

Stanach closed his eyes, trying to think. Isarn was inarguably mad. Was this more rambling? Some said Isarn’s descent into madness began when Stormblade was stolen. Stanach knew his master had begun that long descent when he saw the unquenchable heart of fire in Stormblade’s steel and knew that he’d created a Kingsword.

Aye, but not for a high king. For a king regent. Even Hornfel himself did not look to claim more than a regency. The old swordcrafter was confused and wandering in the murky hazes of madness and death. He could not know what he was saying.

“Master Isarn,” Stanach said, very gently.

Isarn made no response. Stanach looked at him closely, his heart racing. The old swordcrafter’s eyes were no longer wide and staring, but hooded and still. “Master?”

“I made the sword,” Isarn whispered, “for a thane. Realgar will use it to kill a high king.” His hand, gnarled with age, pitted with forge scars, crabbed across his chest. When his fingers touched Stanach’s they were dry as ancient parchment. “You brought the sword home. Find it again. Find it.”

A knot of pain, like tears, choked any reply Stanach would have made. He closed his fingers around the old dwarf’s hand. “Please, Isarn, no. Don’t charge me with …” His words died in a whisper and a sigh. Isarn Hammerfell was dead.

Slim, shaking fingers touched his shoulder. Stunned by the death of his kinsman and friend, Stanach turned blindly.

Kelida dropped to her knees beside him.

Wavering in the torchlight, a black shadow cut across the girl and the corpse. Stanach looked up to see Hauk standing behind Kelida. His eyes, feral once, were tamer. But they were still haunted. Images of torment lived in them.

The dwarf made to rise, then dropped back to his knees. He was too tired, it seemed, for even this. How was he going to bear the terrible weight of Stormblade?

Kelida reached to take his hand. “Let me help you.”

Stanach moved to accept her help. Before she could take his hand, Hauk’s came between them.

His was a large hand, fingers hard and scarred with the marks of sword and dagger. When he pulled Stanach to his feet, he did not, as the dwarf expected, immediately free his hand. Instead he closed his fingers around it in a warrior’s long clasp of companionship.

Stanach said nothing. There was nothing to say.

“I heard what the old dwarf told you,” Hauk said. “I don’t know anymore whether this sword, this Stormblade, is mine. I think it’s not.

“But I’ve been a part of this. Realgar—” Hauk’s voice dropped low.

“Realgar has done things to me—he showed me Tyorl’s death, and he made me believe that I had killed him. I know—I know you say he’s alive, but the memory of—murder is still in me. He has made me die, and he has brought me back.” He kept his eyes on Stanach’s now because he didn’t want Kelida to see the naked emptiness in them. “And he made me die again. Stanach, Realgar owes me something.”

Stanach looked down at his broken-fingered hand. He closed his eyes and saw crows in a hard blue sky, heard wind mourning around a cairn in the cold hills. Isarn’s last words had been madness, ghost-dreams of myth and legend. The reality was that friends and kin had died for Realgar’s poisonous longing for power. More would die, still.

Stanach watched with a chill of fear as Hauk handed his dagger to Kelida. “You, too? No, Kelida.”

“Yes.” She shivered, looking around the cold cavern. “I won’t stay here. I go where Hauk goes. Where you go.” She stroked the hilt of the dagger with her thumb. “You were the one who insisted that I learn how to use this. I think our friend Lavim was a good teacher. I still don’t know if I can kill with it, Stanach. I do think I can defend myself. I’m going with you.”

She touched his bandaged hand gently. “People have allowed themselves to be harmed for my sake. I have to go with you.”

The dwarf looked at Hauk and saw some of the emptiness vanish from his eyes. He saw fear for her there, too. In that moment, a silent understanding passed between the ranger and the dwarf. Come with them she would, but both agreed that she would not come to harm.