The Destiny of the Sword (26 page)

Wallie smiled at the woebegone old eyes. “You’ve done very

well, holy one! You didn’t stop them, but you delayed them— and I’m sure most of them weigh three times what you do. A whole temple plus a thousand swordsmen is not a fair match against half a priest!”

Honakura sighed. “It used to be. I feel as old as all of them put together.” Then he snarled. “And dinghies are just as bad as I feared.”

“How is the town?” Wallie asked, aware mat Nnanji and Thana had come to stand in the crowd around him, waiting for orders—and he did not know what orders he could give.

“Very peaceful!” Honakura conceded. “Lord Boariyi imposed discipline right away. There hasn’t been as much as a cookie stolen since. Not a lewd glance!’* He chuckled, “Well, I suppose I exaggerate there, but the virtuous maidens are emerging from the cellars. It is the evildoers who are leaving town, they say.”

Wallie glanced up to see the satisfaction that he knew would be showing on Nnanji’s face. Some of what Boariyi had said to him had been sincere, evidently, and Nnanji’s lecherous tendencies in personal matters never interfered with his puritanical professional standards.

How to assess this new idea? The sorcerer’s information about Boariyi had been correct, but Wallie’s scheme to delay the tryst had succeeded. Now what? He had argued this case with Nnanji for hours, without reaching any decision. He felt limp and battered, filthy and foul both inside and out, after four days of sailing—and two of those confined with both an arrogant, bitter old captive and a lunatic minstrel.

“This service, holy one,” Wallie asked. “I don’t suppose we can have the call for challengers included again?”

Honakura shook his hairless old head. “It is a blessing on the tryst, that is all.”

“They will all be sworn,” Nnanji agreed. “It is too late for mat.”

“You will not swear this terrible oath of yours to Lord Boariyi and accept him as leader?” the priest asked.

“No!” Wallie barked. “The first thing he would do would be to demand my sword. He would probably even make me give it to him!” Seeing the priest’s puzzled look, he explained: “Dedicate it—kneel to him and say the words. No one gets the seventh

sword, except off my dead body! I’d rather challenge him.”

Nnanji snorted. “Challenge a thousand men? He would send mem up in threes and save the last place for himself.”

Boariyi was paramount. The ways of honor would not apply now unless he wished them to. “Then I need counsel,” Wallie said. “We did catch a sorcerer, the wizard of Sen himself, the man who provoked the tryst.”

Honakura gasped and beamed. “That is a great triumph! Another miracle? No, a Great Deed! Wonderful, Lord Shonsu! How can we use him, do you suppose?” He screwed up his wrinkles in thought.

The wind blew, the sun shone, the ship rocked, and after a while he shook his head. Everyone looked blankly at everyone else.

No ideas.

“You could call another tryst, my lord,” Nnanji suggested.

“The Goddess has blessed this one,” the priest said. “Surely She sent Her sword for the leader to use? Otherwise, I just don’t understand.”

Wallie rose stiffly to his feet. “If you don’t, holy one, then none of us do. It is a long sword. It needs a tall swordsman. Boariyi is taller than I am. I suppose I must give him his chance at it.”

“But you need a fair match!” Nnanji shouted. “You can’t fight the whole tryst!”

“If the swordsmen are gathered,” a rich contralto voice said, “then I shall sing them my new epic.”

Doa had come aboard and was standing behind the listening sailors, peering over their heads. She looked worse than anyone, her eyes sunk into her head, her face drawn and bonier than ever, her hair a tangled bush. She had probably not slept at all since Sen. She had done what she had said, spending two hours locked up with Rotanxi—interrogating him, Wallie supposed, although perhaps merely reporting to him, if she were indeed a sorcerer spy. Then she had retreated to a corner of the hold to strum aimlessly on her lute at all hours of day and night. She had refused food and conversation. Any attempts to reason with her had been met with screams that she was to be left alone, that she

was composing an epic without blood. He had been expecting her to lapse into complete autism.

Now, astonishingly, she seemed to have recovered her former arrogance and poise, despite her haggard appearance. Her eyes were dark with exhaustion, but the wildness had gone. So the epic was complete? Wallie had commissioned an epic and he was going to get one, but he had no intention at all of letting her loose with it until he had had a chance to hear it himself—and probably not then.

The sailors moved aside hurriedly to let her in, immensely tall and barely decent in her two twists of filthy blue silk. Honakura gaped toothlessly at her, and then at Wallie. He rose to his feet and she saluted calmly.

“What is this epic about, then?” he asked, cautiously.

“It is about Lord Shonsu. It is very good.”

Swordsman and priest exchanged glances again. Wallie rolled his eyes to convey disapproval.

“I never heard of a minstrel performing in a temple,” Honakura said. “I should have to discuss it with Lord Kadywinsi.”

“My lady,” Wallie said, “you are tired and need refreshment. Thana, would you show Lady Doa the showers, find her some food and perhaps a place she could rest?”

Thana gave him a knowing glance and agreed. She led the minstrel away, and she went quietly. Wallie breathed more easily. Now back to the real problem...

“An epic?” Honakura mused.

“No!” Wallie sighed and avoided Jja’s eye. “I was a fool to take her in the first place—I was thinking with the wrong end of my spine. Perhaps she has composed something, but what good could it do? Another song about Lord Shonsu hiding in a ship and being devious? Forget Doa!”

The old man nodded doubtfully.

“If I go to the temple, am I safe there?” Wallie asked.

Honakura said, “Certainly!” as Nnanji said, “No!”

There was another silence.

Wallie felt angry and baffled. “This blessing? Who is blessed? The men? The leaders? The tryst itself?”

Honakura stared up at him, and then a wicked little smile

settled in around his shriveled lips. “Why not the sword?” he asked.

The tiny cabin was dim and rank. Its port had been boarded over before Griffon departed, and it had held a captive for two days and three nights. He was sitting in a corner, wrapped in his blankets, when Wallie and Nnanji went in.

Confinement had taken toll of a man accustomed to authority and respect. His face was skull,like, with dark caves around his eyes, and the lines near his mouth had deepened to slashes. His thin white hair was disheveled. Yet this prisoner had been well treated by the standards of the World—Wallie knew that from experience.

“We are at Casr,” Wallie said. “The tryst did not sail.”

“So you won?”

“So far. If you will accompany us on board Sapphire now, my lord, we shall allow you to bathe and we shall provide clean clothes, although not your own. Sorcerers’ gowns are what give them their power, you understand. That’s how we made you harmless.”

Rotanxi frowned and then nodded admiringly. “And what happens then?” The arrogance had softened, and he was almost pathetic, instinctively huddling back against the wall.

Wallie held up a rope. “I’m damned if I know! I shall have to keep you tethered, of course. I never imagined that we would capture a Seventh.” He chuckled. “You see, my Lord Rotanxi, the position is rather complicated at the moment. On one bank there are sorcerers and on the other swordsmen. The infamous Shonsu and his nefarious gang have been running up and down between the two camps, playing havoc with both. If you were to auction me off at the moment, I think the swordsmen might even outbid the sorcerers to get their hands on me.”

The sorcerer stared at him curiously for a moment and then reached for his shoes. “I doubt that,” he said. “Are you open to bribes?”

Wallie thought of the power of the demigod and smiled. “Not if you offered me the World! I shall display you as my captive, of course, but I swear you my oath that there will be no torture, and

as little degradation as is possible under the circumstances. And as you are likely to be of more value alive than dead, you will not be harmed.”

“So I am to behave myself? You take me for a fool, Shonsu.” Rotanxi was not too humbled to sneer. He rose stiffly.

Wallie shrugged. “I cannot make any real promises, because my own life is at risk this day, but if Master Nnanji succeeds me as your captor, he will respect my wishes.”

He led the way to the ladder. He and Nnanji were clean now. Thana and Katanji were dressing. Honakura and the priests had departed already.

“Where are you taking me in such a hurry? Are your coals cooling off?”

“The tryst is assembling in the tempk,” Wallie explained. “I shall produce you before the swordsmen and claim the leadership.”

The sorcerer regarded him warily. “And then what happens?”

“Then,” Nnanji snarled, “the swordsmen will denounce him as a traitor, and he will not be protected by the ways of honor, and they will kill him.”

“I see!” Rotanxi glanced from one to the other thoughtfully. “I detect a disagreement on strategy. And when Shonsu is dead, whose prisoner am I?”

“You’re mine,” Nnanji said savagely. “But I die right after. Then you will belong to the tryst. Have a nice day, my lord.”

Their dinghy was met at the familiar ruined jetty by a nervous,looking priest of the Sixth, pudgy and elderly. Wallie knelt on the slimy planks and held out a hand to Tomiyano, still down in the boat.

“Captain,” he said, “if neither Nnanji or I... well, look after Jja and Vixini? And thanks for everything.”

Tomiyano’s eyebrows rose, pushing his shipmarks into his hair. He shook hands. “What do you fancy for dinner, my lord? I’ll tell Una.”

Wallie smiled and rose to follow the impatient priest.

The way led past the well,remembered refectory, then between the disused buildings, along paths choked with weeds,

through canted fences with fallen gates... past old icehouses and deserted chapels, abandoned stables, dormitories, and erstwhile lawns now converted to impenetrable bush. The tide was out in Casr, but in some other century prosperity would return, and all this would again be needed by a waxing temple bureaucracy.

The way led also toward the towering bulk of the temple itself, and soon it dominated half the sky. Then... an unobtrusive side door and endless dark corridors and hallways smelling of mold and rot. A distant sound of chanting ahead, and the guiding priest turned and put his finger to his lips. He opened a door, very slowly, and the chanting became loud.

It was more a large alcove than a small room, for one side was a bead curtain, beyond which lay the nave of the temple. The watchers could see out and not be seen; the half dozen could spy on the thousand. So Wallie stopped to watch and his followers crowded around to peer by him.

His first impression was how much smaller this temple was than the great edifice at Harm. Yet to his left stood the swordsmen of the tryst—five Sevenths in blue; behind them, at a respectful distance, a row of thirty or forty Sixths; and behind them, in turn, ranks of red,kilted Fifths. A thousand men and more—the Fifths hid the middlerank colors, so that only their heads and sword hilts showed—but the nave was not crowded, so smalmess was relative. This was still as large as any cathedral Wallie had ever seen. Not all were swordsmen. Behind the narrow,shouldered Firsts at the back was a collection without swords—heralds, bandsmen, armorers, healers, minstrels, and perhaps notables from the town.

To his right stood the choir, endlessly warbling up and down their dissonant scale. They faced toward the Goddess, an idol of carved stone that copied the great, naturally weathered figure at Harm—a seated and robed woman, hair streaming down, featureless face staring along the nave to the seven arches and the River beyond. Yet the sculptor had failed to catch the same air of majesty. The blue paint was flaking from the stone, giving it a scabby appearance, a Goddess with eczema. The dais bore treasures, but nothing to compare to the immeasurable hoard at Harm. Perhaps this temple had been looted a few times.

Wallie discovered that his Shonsu instincts were busily check,

ing for escape routes. Some hope! The main doors would be in the arches at the front, of course, below the glass screens. From the interior the missing panes showed as bright spots, unsoiled by the grime that blurred most of the vista of the River and far,off RegiVul under its guardian smoke plume. Between him and those doors stood the swordsmen. There was another bead curtain opposite him and there was probably a door behind that. There would be others behind the idol, also.

Then he saw Boariyi, standing by himself and looking very lonely. By rights, surely, he should have been directly in front of the Sevenths, at the head of his army. Instead, he had been placed well toward the far side. That seemed a strange location, but he was opposite Waliie. If Waliie emerged through this bead curtain, the two of them would be facing each other across the nave like equals. That was a welcome sign that the priests were indeed under Honakura’s control. Obviously Kadywinsi was an uncertain and unreliable ally, given to supporting whoever had spoken to him most recently. Hopefully, while this interminable chanting went on, Honakura was busy somewhere else, keeping the high priest’s vertebrae fused.