Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons) (9 page)

We pixies have many names. But just because we have many,
do not think the names are lightly given, or one less true than the next. Call
me Carolina, as my mother did. No one has called me Carolina for three thousand
of your earth years.

I smiled.

Carolina
, then. How should I call you, if I need
your advice?

Put you hand on my home, here at the top of your sword,
on the pommel, and say my name inside your head. I will answer at once, even if
I’m busy somewhere else. Why don’t you try this: Open your eyes, talk to Woltan
some, and then just touch me casually, and say my name
.

I opened my eyes.

Woltan was smiling. “I’m pretty sure from what I saw on your
face that you were successful. But appearances can be deceiving. Did you find
what you sought? Were you able to communicate with the pixie?”

I nodded. “She was very friendly, actually. She said she
knew my grandfather, and his father, and his father and so on down the line,
but not my own father. I wonder why that is?”

Woltan shrugged. “We are very disconnected from the outside
world here. I can only make guesses. These are things you would do well to find
out yourself.”

“She said she knew her cousins served my kin among the Kriek
and the Merpeople, and they were jealous.”

“She said they were jealous?”

Woltan looked puzzled.

I nodded and paused. “Maybe she was just teasing me.”

“The pixies have a reputation for flirtatiousness. Did she
give you any instructions?”

I nodded.

“Then what are you waiting for? Follow them.”

I nodded again, reached my hand down to the sword and
touched the pommel.

Carolina
.

Anders! Long time no see.

I grinned.

Actually it was just a minute ago. Before that, it was forty
years or so when I last saw your grandfather. Everything is relative, though.
Even forty of your years are just a quick dip in the waters of time for a pixie
like me. My grandmother lived fifty thousand of your earth years. I am a young
four thousand.

Young at four thousand? I’m only sixteen!

Are you saying I’m old?

An image of Carolina flashed in front of me, wrinkling up
her face and stooping over, a cane in hand.

Maybe I’d said the wrong thing.
You sure look young to
me. Pretty, too.

Carolina smiled.
Flattery will get you everywhere with us
faeries… You know you’re not so bad yourself. Stop worrying about your skin so
much. Although if I were you, I would listen to Kara. It sounds like she has
some good beauty tips.

My face must have just turned redder. She really had been
prying in my thoughts. Or overhearing things.

I’m just embarrassed about how young I am, and people say
I’m not a man yet.

Remember, age is relative. But listen, you have things to
do. Remember to use me, when you need to, but not to rely on me too much. And
let me tell you this: if we are ever separated, you can call me to you: think
my name in your head, and call me to you with all your heart. I will hear your
call and propel the sword to you, flying through the air like an arrow if need
be. But try to keep me by your side — that would be wiser.

You will always be able to hear me?

You have my word. Now get back to Woltan, who’s staring
at us.

Carolina was right, of course. Had he been staring at me the
whole time? Probably. Would I ever be able to see the people around me while I
talked to Carolina? This time I hadn’t even closed my eyes. And yet I’d tuned
everything else out. I guessed being aware of so many things at once came with
practice, and Carolina would probably realize when I needed to focus on the
outside world. I hoped so, anyhow. I trusted her completely, somehow, although
I couldn’t say why.

My hand had fallen from the sword.

“Have you accomplished what you set out to do?” Woltan
asked.

I nodded. “I know how to contact her, now.”

“Did she accept you? Was she friendly, or irritable?”

I felt my face grow hot. “She was extremely friendly,
actually.”

Woltan stared at me for a moment. “She was flirting with
you, or what?”

My face grew hotter. I looked down at my feet in embarrassment.

Woltan laughed. “Don’t be embarrassed. This is normal. It’s
a good sign, actually. You are still very young, and have not had a lot of
experience with girls, have you?”

I shook my head.

“This is just one more way the pixie and the sword will test
you, to make you stronger. You will find her advances more welcome and less
disconcerting once you have found a real girl, here on earth. Until then, she
is attracted by your loneliness, because she is lonely too. The faeries in our
blades spent an enormous amount of time alone; even when they visit other
realms part of their essence is left in the sword, and this part of her was
left alone for a long time, I take it.”

I nodded. “I don’t understand it, but for some reason my
father never used the sword, and the last person to bear it was my
grandfather.”

“Perhaps you will need to talk to your father, to find out
why.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think he would tell me, even
if I could even talk to him.”

“You think he’s angry you left him, without telling him
anything?”

“Angry is not the right word. He is either extremely
worried, or furious. And I’m afraid of what that wizard Gerard may have done to
him, or threatened him with.”

Once I said it, I realized it was true.

I hoped my father was all right. I hadn’t even thought about
my parents for days. What if something had happened to them, and it was all my
fault?

Woltan nodded. “You have to contact him.”

“I want to, it’s just...”

Woltan shook his head. “No, now. Before we go any further
with your training. I expect your pixie can help, if need be.”

“But they are thousands of leagues away!”

Woltan smiled condescendingly. “Anders. You’re Kriek. You
can contact them, as Kara contacted you.”

“But I don’t know how!”

“You managed it very well, when you contacted Kara, didn’t
you?”

Now I was angry. He was mixing everything up, like he always
seemed to do. Making it all seem so simple.

“She contacted me! I didn’t even know what I was doing.
Everyone tells me I’m a prince and I can do all these things, but I don’t know
how to do anything!”

“She told me differently. I had a long talk with her while
you were sleeping. Perhaps you thought she was contacting you, but she thinks
you contacted her. And since she is the more experienced Kriek, I tend to think
she knows what she is talking about. Are you implying that she lied to me?”

I shook my head. Why was everyone telling me I knew how to
do things I didn’t?

“Do you think she doesn’t know what she’s talking about?”

I shook my head again, my face still hot.

“In that case, would you be willing to try?”

I swallowed hard. I was scared. I had been scared of this
moment for a long time, somehow, and had avoided it until now, but I didn’t
know why. “I have to try, I guess. Maybe part of me was happy to get away from
my parents. Sometimes it seemed like they never let me do anything. But maybe
they didn’t want me to get hurt. Maybe they were trying to protect me. And now
it’s they who might get hurt. I love them, even if I don’t always like them. I
have to try.”

“Let’s try to recreate the situation when you contacted
Karla. Were you seated, or standing?”

“I was seated, drinking this special tea my mother made me,
and smelling this incense my tutor had told me to buy.”

“Sit down at this table, here. I will go fetch you some
spiced tea. For now, try to relax, and forget about everything. Try to
concentrate on your father, or your mother.”

Woltan walked out of the room.

I sat down. The table was large, made out of some hard dark
wood. There were runes along the edge of it, and I had to work hard to resist
running my fingers along them. Still they spoke to me, whispering words in
languages that only my blood knew, that just escaped my hearing, blending into
a murmur that hinted at power and knowledge. My fingers itched and prickled with
desire to touch them.

I distracted myself by looking across the room. It was much
larger than my study back in the castle. I tried to remember what it had felt
like, being locked in that room. It came back easily. I had spent years
studying in that small room, locked up with spell books, geography and history
tomes. I closed my eyes. I remembered the room, smelled the spicy incense,
tasted the tea in my mouth...

I opened my eyes and I was staring into my study.

The door had been blasted open, and everything was turned
upside down, broken, burned. I could smell the acrid smell of burnt wood, burnt
rock and burnt books.

There was no incense burning here. Just old scorch marks. No
one.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, the vision
was gone.

Perhaps this was not what I needed to be thinking about. I
needed to see my parents, after all, not my old study that had seemed like a
prison cell much of the time.

So I concentrated on our salon: where my parents had sat and
read and talked to their friends, where they had sometimes even let me sit on a
chair in the corner and study, while they entertained guests and pointed at
their pimply son, reading in his corner.

I closed my eyes and breathed in, then let the air out. I
could see the image in my mind’s eye. The room was full of people, laughing,
eating pastries from large silver trays and drinking coffee out of china cups.
I opened my eyes.

I was looking into the room, but it was not full of people.

It was empty.

I almost closed my eyes again, but something made me stop
and look. Something was wrong with the room. The furniture looked twisted,
melted, burnt. There were scorch marks along the floors, along the walls. A
burnt smell reached my nose. Several chairs were toppled over. I leaned in to
look more closely at something on the floor. There was a stain there. A dark
black stain in the carpet. And I didn’t need to reach forward to touch it, to
know what it was, but I did, anyhow, feeling the gateway pull at me as I
reached my hand through.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, and opened them again, and
found myself back totally in the room where Woltan had left me. He was walking
in the door with a tray of tea and biscuits. My hand was wet and I stared at
it. A dark brown stain was on the tips of my fingers. I could smell it even
before I brought it to my face. The iron stink of it. Like rust, but it wasn’t
rust. It was drying blood.

Woltan put the tray down, and stared at my hand.

“What is it? What happened?”

I looked up at Woltan. “I don’t know. There was blood, and
all the furniture was broken, and there was no one there, at all.”

“Where?”

“In my parent’s living room. There was no one in my study
room either.”

“I thought you were going to wait until I got back.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t really do it on purpose. I was just
imagining those places with my eyes closed and then I opened my eyes, and there
was no one…”

Woltan frowned as he sat down in a chair to the side of the
room, and sighed. “You should have waited until I got back with the tea,
Anders. Had anything happened to you, Kara would have had my head. I won’t
leave you again. Drink your tea, and then try concentrating on people, instead
of places. That may give you better luck.”

I wasn’t so sure. I felt drained already, even though the
two gateways had only been open for a few short moments. I drank some more tea
and took a bite of a biscuit. The food radiated warmth out from my stomach, and
my head felt a little clearer.

“In that case, I’ll picture my father. He’ll tell me what’s
going on.”

He wouldn’t keep secrets from me now, after all that had
happened. Or would he?

I took another bite, another sip, and then closed my eyes. I
tried to remember my father, his smell, the smell of his sweat, his hair, when
he had hugged me, which was not often. I remembered my father hugging me right
before they hired my tutor and pulled me out of school. I held onto that
memory, and opened my eyes.

Nothing. I was staring across the room. I took another
biscuit, chewed mechanically. Think. I needed to find something more powerful,
a stronger, clearer memory.

I tried to remember my mother instead.

It came to me suddenly, like a slap in the face. Well, it
was
a slap in the face. I had been in a conference with my tutor and my mother. I
admitted it now, I had been fresh. Sick of Herr Hansson, who taught me nothing,
I had been rude, laughing at something he had said. Herr Hanson told my mother
how rudeness could not be tolerated, how the young needed to learn from their
elders, how he couldn’t be my tutor if I didn’t show respect. My mother asked
me to apologize: seated right next to me, in an armchair, she’d said:
“Apologize to Herr Hansson, Anders, and let us put this behind us.”

Now I realized that she must have been as tired of the whole
thing as I was. She’d probably realized why I was frustrated, why I was rude.
But at the time I didn’t understand her at all. She just seemed one more person
putting me in my place. And that place was
boring
.

“This is so pointless,” I had said.

My mother slapped me.

I felt the stinging imprint of her hand even now, as if the
blow had left a permanent mark on my cheek. I remembered the look of surprise
on everyone’s faces, even my mother’s. I remembered the shock, the
embarrassment, but most of all the pain on my mother’s face. The shame. The
tears. I closed my eyes. I felt my face burning once again.