The Sword Of Bheleu

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

As Koros reached the top of the first low ridge, Garth turned for a final look at Skelleth. The town's silhouette was subtly changed from the last time he had seen it from this spot, when he had ridden down from Ordunin with his little trading party; a few of the old rooftops were gone, lost to the fires he had spread, and not rebuilt. None of the new structures were high enough to be seen from this distance.

The snow, too, changed the outline, blurring the lines and bleaching the surfaces to an even white that made the shadows stand out more sharply.

When last he had ridden the Wasteland Road, he had been accompanied by Larth, Galt, and Tand; now Galt was an outlaw and Tand had not yet returned from the Yprian Coast. He wondered what had become of his double-cousin Larth; he had not been among the sixty volunteers. He was probably living safe at home, going about his business as always, never questioning the wisdom of the City Council.

Garth turned his gaze forward once again, then cast a quick glimpse over his left shoulder. The sword's gem was glowing more brightly than usual, he thought. He wondered why. Was it pleased to be leaving Skelleth?

There was little he could do about its glow; there was no guarantee that turning back toward Skelleth would make any difference, and he was determined to speak with the Wise Women of Ordunin.

He looked at the road before him-or rather, at the ground ahead of him. He could not be sure that Koros was actually following the Wasteland Road; the snow made it impossible to see where the road lay. He was heading in the right direction and knew the landmarks; he was not concerned about becoming lost.

There was a dip, and then a second low ridge ahead; after that, the road veered to the right somewhat, to follow the lay of the land and avoid the steeper slopes. The snow was smooth and unbroken; no one had passed this way of late.

There was a curious bluish mist hanging in the air above the second ridge; as he watched it seemed to thicken.

It was definitely unnatural, he decided as Koros reached the bottom of the slope. It was a small cloud now, and an utterly impossible shade of blue.

Then, abruptly, the haze was gone, and three men stood atop the ridge looking down at him.

He leaned forward and spoke a quiet word in the warbeast's ear; the beast stopped dead.

He studied the three men. One was tall and thin, with light brown hair, and carried a strange curved sword; he wore a thin, gray cloak that flapped open in the breeze, revealing richly embroidered garments underneath. The second was of average size for a human, with thick black hair and beard, and wrapped in a heavy black cloak; he carried a staff of carved wood trimmed with bright metal. The last was large, with a dark complexion and very short, very black hair-and no beard, which struck Garth as odd indeed. He had never seen an adult male human without any beard at all. This last man wore no cloak, but a tunic of black leather trimmed with silver and breeches also of black leather; he carried a cross-hilted broadsword.

The third man fascinated Garth; aside from his beardlessness, this was the second human he had seen with skin as dark as an overman's, or nearly so. The first had been the wizard Shang, in the city of Mormoreth, who had been even darker than this newcomer or than Garth himself.

Judging by the manner of their appearance, at least one of these three was evidently a magician of some sort; Garth wondered whether wizards had some special predilection toward dark skin. Or perhaps there was a land somewhere inhabited by dark-skinned humans, whence many wizards came.

The three men were looking about them, as if unsure where they were and why they were there; Garth watched without moving.

Then the tallest of the three, the one with the curved sword, pointed at him. Garth could not hear his words over the intervening distance, but there was no doubt he was calling his comrades' attention to the overman and warbeast.

Garth had no reason to believe the strangers to be hostile, but he found his right hand reaching up toward the hilt of the Sword of Bheleu. He stopped it and considered.

The sword obviously wanted to be drawn, as he had made no conscious decision to move his hand toward it and would have preferred to use his more ordinary blade. The thing had demonstrated in the past that it wanted to protect him and keep him alive for its own reasons-but it had also demonstrated an incredible bloodlust and eagerness to kill anyone within reach.

These strangers were obviously here by magic; the only explanation for that blue smoke was magic, even if it had been nothing but a means of covering their appearance over the top of the rise, and Garth thought it more likely that the smoke itself had somehow materialized them from thin air. The three men might be wielding the magic themselves, or might be innocent victims-but would innocent victims be carrying drawn swords? And that staff that the center one carried looked very, much like a magical device of some sort.

The only defenses Garth had against magic were the feeble natural resistance of magically created species such as overmen and warbeasts to other magicks, and the much more powerful magic of the Sword of Bheleu.

He decided that his own survival was more important than any danger these three strangers might face from the sword. After all, they were in the Northern Waste, which was overman territory; the accepted border ran along the top of the first ridge. As invading enemies, their deaths would be acceptable. Garth drew the great sword.

He hoped that there would be no deaths.

The man with the staff was moving; he drew a circle in the snow around himself and his companions with the metal-shod tip as Garth watched, and then held the staff horizontally before him, gripped in both hands.

This looked more and more like magic at work, Garth thought; he lifted his own magical weapon in both hands.

The black-bearded man was speaking now, calling out words that reached Garth despite the fifty yards and wind between.

"Yahai Eknissa eknissaye!"

Garth knew that Eknissa was the goddess of fire, and assumed that what he heard was an invocation of some sort; he did not recognize the other two words. He had little time to worry about them before being distracted by their result.

A wall of flame had sprung up from the circle the staff had drawn in the snow, and was spreading outward with incredible speed. It roared up from the snow, melting it instantly as it marched, and reached a height of ten feet or more. Even before it came within twenty yards, Garth could feel its heat.

He raised the sword and summoned a storm to blow out the flames or drive them back toward their creator. He had had considerable practice in summoning storms in his attempts to burn out the sword's power.

The wind rose to a howling gale immediately, and clouds gathered overhead; the flames grew taller, and their advance slowed-but only slightly. Garth watched in dismay as they continued to approach.

The clouds were not yet thick enough to summon lightning, so he could not blast the wizard's staff-and there was no guarantee that that would stop the wall of fire; the death of the basilisk had not reversed the petrifaction of its victims.

The flames were within a dozen feet when he finally allowed the sword to act on its own. It had been tugging at him, but he had resisted it; he did not trust the thing. Now, with the heat beating against him as if he stood opposite the bellows in a blacksmith's forge, he let it have its way.

It twisted in his grip and pointed directly at the advancing barrier. The snow erupted into a second sheet of flame.

For a few seconds Garth did not understand how the sword hoped to save him by starting its own fire; then he saw that the ring had stopped expanding. It could not pass the new fire his sword had started.

The sword's fire spread; when it met the stalled ring, it vanished with a great roaring rush of hot air-and with it, several yards of the wall of flame vanished as well.

With the mystic circle broken, the remaining flames sank down and became nothing but flickering natural fires; when the sparse damp grass that had been under the snow was burned, they died into sputtering remnants, then went out completely, leaving charred earth behind.

The snow was gone and the ground blackened in a broad circle around the three human enchanters, and the heat had melted much of the ground cover well past Garth's own position, but the circle where the wizards stood was still untouched, their feet sunk past their ankles in snow. Garth could not see their faces clearly over the fifty yards distance, but he was sure that they were surprised by the failure of their attack.

Koros growled, and Garth allowed the warbeast to advance. It stopped of its own volition when it reached the edge of the scorched area; the ground was still hot and its paws were sensitive.

There was no need to risk the warbeast, Garth decided; as long as it remained within earshot, he could summon it if he needed it. He prepared to dismount and then stopped, one foot out of the stirrup.

The central wizard was wielding his staff again. Holding it as he had before, he called aloud, "Yahai Sneg ghyemye, yahai Srig srigye!"

The final word Garth recognized; it meant "cold."

He had no desire to waste time fighting off one assault after another; he raised the sword and cried aloud his own invocation. "Melith!"

Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder exploded deafeningly. He realized he had forgotten to direct the lightning; it had struck nothing. He was still inexperienced at wielding magic.

He had seen no new ring appear when the wizard spoke his spell, but the air about him was suddenly cold, much colder than it had been before the humans had appeared, colder than it had any right to be so early in the season. He ignored it and willed another bolt of lightning into existence; it struck with a blinding brilliance and earthshaking roar at the feet of the three strangers.

"That was a warning!" he bellowed, slackening the gale he had conjured so that he could be heard. "Annoy me no further!"

"Surrender yourself and your sword, and we will let you live!" shouted back the man with the staff.

Garth began to consider whether he might, in fact, be wise to surrender or at least to inquire about exact terms, but then dropped the idea as a rush of anger flooded through him. He was dimly aware that it was the sword's doing, but that did not give him the power to resist it.

"I am Bheleu!" he screamed. "I surrender to no one!"

The storm roared into redoubled frenzy, and twin lightning bolts bracketed the three wizards. Garth swept the sword through the air above his head, leaving a trail of flame glowing in the air. With a word he sent Koros charging toward them, though his left foot was still out of the stirrup.

He was within a few yards before the wizards could manage any reaction beyond cringing in fear; but before he could strike at them, the central human raised the staff again. This time his invocation was in everyday speech, not archaic phrasing, as he called, "By all the gods, help!"

The staff suddenly blazed with light and Garth was himself again, free of Bheleu's control, though the sword still flamed in his hands. He held the sword in one hand while he used the other to slap Koros on the neck, turning its charge aside before it trampled the wizard into the little patch of snow at his feet. He called for the warbeast to halt.

The other two wizards had turned and fled as the warbeast approached, but the man with the staff had stood his ground.

"Yield, Garth of Ordunin!" he cried.

"Don't be a fool," Garth replied. "You're no danger to me; why should I yield? Who are you, anyway?"

"I am Karag of Sland, and I hold the Great Staff of Power, lost these three centuries!"

Garth looked the man over carefully and decided that even Karag wasn't entirely sure if he was bluffing. Whatever this staff was, Garth guessed that he hadn't had it long.

"Why did you attack me?"

"You have taken the Sword of Bheleu and destroyed Dыsarra and Skelleth with it; you must be stopped before you usher in the true Age of Destruction!"

Garth was grateful that the man's desperate invocation had apparently had the unintentional effect of freeing him temporarily from the sword's control. He might, he thought, be able to settle this peacefully.

"I don't want an age of destruction any more than you do," he replied mildly. "If that staff is as powerful as the sword, though, what do you have to worry about?" As he spoke he tested his hands, and discovered that though his mind might be free, his fingers were not. He regretted that; he had hoped that this over-eager wizard might have solved all his problems for him without meaning to.

His conversation was interrupted abruptly by the return of the tall, brown-haired human, who came lurching back out of the surrounding storm. With a hysterical scream of "Die, monster!" he swung his strange, curved sword at Garth's waist mounted as Garth was, his neck was well out of the man's reach.

With one hand, without thinking about it, Garth brought the Sword of Bheleu around to fend off the attack. The two blades met in a spitting shower of red and white sparks; then the wizard's sword exploded into glittering shards that stitched red gashes across the man's face and chest. Garth was unharmed. He felt a twinge of annoyance and then a renewed surge of fury; the sword was winning out over whatever had restrained it.

He lifted the blade to the sky and lightning blazed down around him, wrapping him in blue-white fire for a brief instant and then jumping to the broken hilt of the Blood-Sword of Hishan of Darbul-though Garth did not know that was its name. The tall human staggered, his mouth open as if to scream, though all sound was lost in the booming torrent of thunder; the blood boiled from the wizard's wounds, and he fell in a charred heap at the warbeast's feet.

The fit of rage passed and, hoping that this death might serve him, Garth tried again to drop the sword. It still held him.

He did not even notice that he was in the center of a blazing pyre; there had been so many pyrotechnic displays in the last few minutes that he had lost track of them. Koros growled, and he looked up from the glowing red jewel.

He was surrounded by flame, but he felt no heat and remained unharmed; something held it back, protecting both him and his mount.

He waved the sword, and the flames parted before him. He found himself looking at the man who called himself Karag of Sland; the man stood, the staff in his hands and the blood draining from his face, directly in front of the warbeast and its rider.

Then, suddenly, red mist swirled out of nowhere and wrapped around the wizard. There was nothing Garth could do in time to stop it, other than slaying the man where be stood, which he chose not to do. He looked around and saw that a similar fog was appearing around the other two wizards, both the live one who was still fleeing some two hundred yards away, and the smoldering corpse.

As he watched, the red stuff vanished again, taking the three humans with it. He had almost expected that to happen.

He gazed around at the area where the battle had occurred. There was a large ring of blackened earth which had now frozen hard, pocked with small craters where lightning bolts had struck. The central circle of snow was mostly a puddle. A few glittering fragments of sword were visible, and a few traces of bright blood.

New snow would come and cover the signs, he knew; but, come spring, it would be months before anything grew here. It was only a minor work of destruction and a single death, but still he sighed. It seemed that even when the sword did not force him to destroy of its own volition, other forces drove him to destroy in self-defense.

No, he corrected himself, most of this destruction was not his doing, but that of the wizards. He was simply the focus for it. The death, though, was his doing; he regretted that.

This was a new complication in his life. He wondered whether it justified changing his plan to consult the Wise Women. If wizards were to pop out of nowhere everywhere he went, he could hardly keep a visit to Ordunin a secret.

He would move on slowly, he decided; if there were further attacks, he would turn back.

That decided, he took a moment to get his foot securely back in the stirrup and urged Koros forward.