The Last Book Of Swords : Shieldbreaker’s Story (5 page)

      
No, not even that.

      
Really what it sounded like was—was—

      
Stephen’s eyes, widening, met the suddenly frightened gaze of the old man who stood across the bench from him. Even Bazas could hear the racket now, and in this he had been quicker-witted than his young Prince.

      
Realization had come to man and boy at the same time, and they both uttered almost the same words, almost in unison: “It is the Sword of Force!”

      
Shieldbreaker only gave such warning when actually in use, or when combat impended. So Prince Mark had taught his sons; and Mark had impressed upon the two young Princes also that in his experience the Sword was never wrong when it sounded the alert. This current uproar from the chamber where the Sword of Force was kept must mean that a serious assault was about to fall upon the palace at any moment.

      
Stephen, having been taught the lore of Swords almost from his cradle, realized that whatever kind of armed attack might be impending, they had only a few minutes, or perhaps only a few seconds, in which to act before it struck.

      
The troublesome dragonscale fell unheeded from the hand of the young Prince. Everything but the alarm forgotten, Stephen turned away from the workbench, his first impulse being to run up the nearest stair into the palace, shouting out a warning … but before he had taken more than two steps, he realized that there was no figure of real authority near at hand, none close enough to relieve him of the burden of decision and action which had been so suddenly thrust upon him.

      
He had no time to seek out Great-Uncle Karel, or General Rostov, or even the officer of the day; besides, the latter was not privy to the secret code of magic necessary to get the Swords out of their vault and bring them into action. Neither were any of the regular armorers, not even trusty old Bazas. The only person able to act immediately and effectively was the young Prince himself.

      
With swift agility Stephen turned in the opposite direction. Two driving strides and he was running at full speed toward the chamber in which the Swords were kept.

      
Just in the last few moments Shieldbreaker’s noise had swelled to a hammering bedlam of terrible urgency. The young Prince experienced a choking sensation as he thought that there might be just time for someone as near to the repository as he was, someone able and willing to act boldly, to get the Sword of Force out of its case and into action before the threat, whatever it was, arrived.

      
The constriction in his throat proceeded from a fear of failure. He, a Prince of Tasavalta, should have known better, he should have known the sound of the Sword at once for what it was, he should have been alerted to the danger long minutes ago! Possibly the unthinkable had already happened, he had ignored the warning for too long, it was already too late for him to act. …

* * *

      
In the few heartbeats of time which had elapsed while those thoughts ran through his mind, Stephen’s running feet had brought him to the Sword-chamber. He jolted to a stop just outside that room’s single doorway, darkened now. The opening lacked any material door but was gauzed with almost invisible but effective barriers: his Great-Uncle Karel’s powerful magic, spells keeping everyone out with an action like that of unseen hands.

      
Muttering the necessary secret password under his breath, the boy felt the hands immediately cease their opposition, the barrier of enchantment divide like a curtain to let him in.

      
He sprang through into the vaulted space where all of the Swords in the possession of the realm of Tasavalta, along with a few other very precious things, were ordinarily kept safe.

      
The low-ceilinged Sword-chamber was octagonal, and comparatively small, extending no more than about five paces between opposite walls. Two of the walls supported racks of ceremonial crowns and weapons, kept here for the sake of their jewels and gold. There were a few sword-belts and empty scabbards, there as works of art; other shelves held jewels and comparatively minor treasures. A few lamps and candles, none of them lighted at the moment, stood about on stands and ledges. The place was cool and very dim, particularly to eyes so recently accustomed to the brightness around the workbench. In fact the chief source of illumination in the Sword-chamber at the moment was the indirect glow of the Old World lamp still burning two rooms away.

      
Only a small handful of individuals had ever been empowered to enter this room. An even smaller number had been granted the immaterial keys required to open the inner vault and remove a Sword. The necessary secret magic, simple enough for even a non-magician to use, had not been entrusted to Stephen until very recently, on the occasion of his fourteenth birthday.

      
This expression of his parents’ confidence had made him very proud. He had used the spell (with his mentor, Karel, looking on) for the first and only time only yesterday—actually a mere matter of hours ago, in the morning just past—to get Dragonslicer out of its case for his secret project.

* * * * * *

      
Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud—

      
Here under the low vaulting, the sound of hammering seemed notably amplified. There could now be no possible doubt about the source. The white stone walls, and Stephen’s bones alike, reverberated with Shieldbreaker’s pounding tocsin.

      
The actual place of storage for the Swords was a waist-high coffer or strongbox built into the center of the room. In this Shieldbreaker and its peers were locked away, behind a pair of carven, slanted doors of wood and metal. This coffer had been constructed of mixed materials, mostly rounded masonry, but incorporating the wood of certain exotic trees as well as several kinds of metal, ivory, and horn, all woven fast within tight nets of Karel’s magic. Precious metal had been incorporated as well, gold and silver used more for their magical qualities than as mere decoration. Even rings of unidentifiable material from mysterious Old World devices had been built into the structure.

* * *

      
THUD, THUD-THUD, THUD—

      
As Stephen stretched out his hands toward the slanted doors of the inner vault, he was vaguely aware of someone behind him. Glancing back momentarily over his shoulder, he saw that the old armorer had come hurrying after him from the workroom, come as far as he could, to just outside the guarded doorway. Bazas must have acted quickly and purposefully, delayed only by the need to free Dragonslicer from the clamps which had held the Sword upon the bench. Now the elderly man, his progress stopped by the invisible hands of Karel’s magic, had come to a halt. He was holding up the keen Blade in his right hand, and had his free hand raised as well, as if to test the magic sealing of the doorway, or pronounce a benediction.

      
The armorer called out urgently: “My prince! The Sword of Heroes must be put in a place of safety.”

      
The words of Bazas were partially muffled by the intervening magic, but Stephen nodded his understanding. Dragonslicer was not the weapon of choice with which to repel a raid or an invasion—except in the highly unlikely event that one’s foe came riding on a dragon. It was the expression on the old man’s face that made the young Prince experience a sense of awe. A seasoned soldier was actually looking to him for leadership, and this realization gave Stephen the night’s first moment of genuine fright.

      
It was not to be the last.

      
Nodding, the boy wordlessly turned his back on Bazas. Facing the sloping plane formed by the closed doors of the inner vault, he quickly let his right hand rest on the hard surface. There was no physical handle or knob on either door, no bolt or latch, but the guardian powers required identification of the petitioner for entrance. He started to recite the brief spell of opening—

* * *

      
—but before Stephen had managed to utter more than three of the seven necessary words, he choked and stumbled in his recitation. At the same time the world turned sick and strange around him, the stone floor seeming to tilt alarmingly sideways underneath his feet.

      
This was far more, far worse, than the choking of anxiety. Involuntarily he cried out, and heard what seemed a responding cry from just outside the room. Looking again in that direction, Stephen saw old Bazas, Dragonslicer still in his right hand, slumping to the floor. Now another figure, strange and startlingly gigantic, completely filled the doorway, its image wavering so that it looked to the young Prince both more and less than human. There was nothing about it that Stephen’s mind wanted to acknowledge as a face. With a transparent appendage that was like and yet unlike a human hand it appeared to be working to put aside the defenses put up by the master-magician Karel. So far those defenses were holding back the thing, the presence, whatever it might be—

      
Yet already the invader could project some form of power past the barrier. Stephen was aware that he was losing consciousness, and with what shreds of sense remained he knew the cause: he was being confronted by a demon at close range. Though the young Prince had been brushed by demons’ wings before—he had been in the palace during Vilkata’s attack two years ago—he had never experienced anything like the force of this evil manifestation, and he found it all but completely overwhelming.

      
Again the world seemed to tilt crazily, wrongly around Stephen, and he clung helplessly to the rounded stonework side of the inner vault, swaying with physical illness.

      
In his terror Stephen involuntarily closed his eyes. But this was no help, for the monster immediately started to force its image under his eyelids.

      
And now a voice, a sound of dead leaves crushed that had to be the demon’s voice, was calling to him. It was commanding, demanding that he do something for it.

      
He answered with a nearly helpless, incoherent mumbling: What was it that he had to do?

      
The dried leaves swirled and rustled. “You must recite for me the spell I need. Undo for me the barring of this chamber door, and let me in . …”

      
Stephen tried to think. But he couldn’t think. Not beyond the knowledge that he was going to be killed—yet there remained something he
must
do.

      
Of course. The Swords.

      
For the moment his body would not move. But remembering a purpose gave him strength, and he tried to talk to the thing that was about to kill him. “Who are you? What—?”

      
The tones of the demon’s utterance, taking form more in the mind than in the ears, were an inhuman rattling among dead bones. “You must know, child of the Prince of Scum, that I am called Akbar. … I say that you must open this door.”

      
Akbar.
Indeed Stephen knew the name from his father’s stories, and from a hundred other tales, and that it meant overwhelming malignancy, sheer terror. He must not give way, he must not open the gate for it—no, he had to open the inner vault, recite the spell that would let him reach the Swords.

      
And now the demon had succeeded in forcing another part of itself—an arm that was not really an arm—partway in through Karel’s barrier. One giant finger—something half-material that was not quite a finger—flicked at the young Prince.

      
The impact knocked Stephen off his feet, sent him rolling across the stone floor, out of reach of the doors which he must open. Scarcely aware of the bruising of his knees and elbows on the stone, he tried to scramble out of the way as the quasi-material thing came probing, reaching, after him again.

      
Again it struck at the young Prince, and this time a veil of darkness started to descend across his mind.

Chapter Four

      
Dazed and battered as he was, the young Prince retained enough awareness to hear Bazas screaming weakly and hoarsely, the old man lying on the floor just outside the doorway of the Sword-chamber.

      
Stephen himself was also sprawled on the stone pavement, but well inside the doorway where the demon’s groping power had flung him. Where he ought to be protected by Karel’s magic, but yet seemed to be not quite out of Akbar’s reach. His knees and elbows hurt from the fall on the stone floor. The whole world felt sick and strange around him.

      
Drawing a deep breath, clenching his fists and his jaw as tightly as his eyelids, Stephen denied sickness. A hundred times his father had told him of the several confrontations he, Mark, had had with demons, occasions when he had been able to banish the foul creatures with a command. These were not matters of which the elder Prince ever spoke boastfully. Rather Mark described those encounters in the manner of a man still trying to understand how he had served as a conduit for powers greater than himself. And many times, Mark’s younger son, when listening to the stories, had wondered whether he himself might have inherited his father’s ability.

      
Now the boy’s voice cracked again as he desperately shouted the mysterious formula which had never failed his father: “In the Emperor’s name, forsake this game! Get out!”

      
In Stephen’s own ears the slurred words sounded more like a scream of panic than a firm command. But at once the multiple foul images of the demon vanished from under the young Prince’s eyelids. Some force had obviously intervened against his attacker, and the hideous thing, which a moment earlier had seemed on the point of crushing Stephen like an insect, was being forcibly separated from him. Akbar reacted with a bellow of outrage.

      
Raising himself on his elbows, Stephen dared to open his eyes.

      
His monstrous antagonist, its form still only half visible, was thrashing about as if some unseen power larger than itself had seized it and was pulling it by main force out of the doorway of the Sword-chamber, farther and farther from its intended human victims—

      
A moment later the demon was entirely gone.

      
As the young Prince scrambled back to his feet, he was dimly aware of distant screams and yells, in voices far more human than the demon’s. At the moment he could not tell whether these outcries proceeded from upstairs within the palace, or from outside. But he thought it did not matter. The whole palace, the whole city, must be under attack.

      
Now that the demon had been ejected from the armory, Bazas, just outside the doorway of the Sword-chamber, was slowly regaining his feet. The old armorer, shaking his head and quivering in all his limbs, was still holding Dragonslicer in one hand and propping himself with the other against the wall.

      
Stephen turned immediately back to the task he must perform, that of opening the inner vault which held the Swords—but the moment he again began the incantation to unlock the doors, he became aware, more with his mind than with any of his physical senses, that the demon he had caused to be hurled away had not gone very far.

      
Howling and screaming its rage at him, its insane hatred of all humanity but the adored Master, Akbar was racing, flying back—

* * *

      
Again the incantation must be interrupted. Again the young Prince had only a moment in which to bark out a command. This time, heartened by the partial success of his first attempt, he managed to put more authority into his voice. Gritting his teeth, he willed and yelled his swelling anger at the beast.

      
Again a scream from an affronted demon—again the banishing was successful. Because the mental contact which had been established between himself and Akbar still persisted, Stephen could feel that this time his foe had been hurled to a somewhat greater distance. But the youth had no doubt that Akbar would be doggedly, relentlessly, returning yet once more to the attack. And Stephen was vaguely aware of the presence, somewhere in the background, of another demon—more likely several of them—approaching.

      
Meanwhile, Stephen’s latest repulsion of the enemy had earned him the moment of time, the breathing space he needed.

      
Half leaning against one side of the inner vault, the young Prince once again reached a physical position from which he could lay his right hand on the slanted doors. Breathlessly he hurried through the few and simple words, dreading lest he stumble in his pronunciation of one of the essential syllables, and so be forced to begin yet again.

      
But this time Stephen managed to do the incantation properly. The vault doors of their own accord jerked open with a double slam. At once the wordless voice of the Sword of Force, no longer muffled, boomed out through the armory.

      
Three god-forged Swords, as well as two empty, Sword-shaped spaces, were revealed within the vault. Each meter-long blade and white-marked hilt lay nested in a velvet lining of the blue-green color of the sunlit sea. The faint wash of Old World light coming into the chamber from two rooms away touched the bright magical lines of steel, and the flat sides of the three perfect blades gave back a mottled triple reflection—Shieldbreaker, Sightblinder, and Stonecutter.

      
In appearance the Swords were indistinguishable from each other, save for the white symbols on their black hilts.

      
Three Sword-belts of fine leather, each with an empty scabbard attached, were racked separately at one side within the inner vault. The receptacle for belts, like that for the Swords, displayed two empty spaces and three filled.

      
Despite the immediate threat posed by the returning demon, Stephen knew a sense of awe that compelled him to a heartbeat’s hesitation. These were the weapons of the gods, forged more than forty years ago by the deity Vulcan himself, with the human aid of Jord, a human smith—Jord who was also Prince Mark’s foster father, and thus the grandfather of Stephen. The young Prince and his brother Adrian had grown up hearing the marvelous old stories, as often as not from their foster-grandfather’s own mouth.

      
One of the pair of empty Sword-shaped niches within the vault was of course the usual resting place of Dragonslicer. The other space sometimes accommodated Woundhealer, which was also very often, as now, absent from this repository upon some mission of mercy. Part of Stephen’s mind took note of the fact that a tiny spider was even now spinning a web in the space reserved for the Sword of Mercy.

      
But Stephen just now had no eyes or thought for any of the Swords but one. That one, snug in its nest, positioned a little above its fellows, was now emitting a frenzied war-drum sound. The warning boomed out louder than ever, and a verse of the Song of Swords raced through his mind.

I shatter Swords and splinter spears;

None stands to Sheildbreaker.

My point’s the fount of orphans’ tears.

My edge the widowmaker.

      
The young Prince’s right hand darted into the vault, ready to seize the black hilt marked with the small white image of a hammer.

      
—and meanwhile the demon Akbar had once more returned and now was rushing again upon him, sweeping from the doorway the last shreds of protective magic—

      
The Sword of Force came literally leaping up out of its velvet casing to meet Stephen’s grasping fingers. He needed no particular skill in magic to feel the god-power surge along his arm. Such was the effect that in that instant he gasped with relief, as if the battle were already won.

      
Nor was the young Prince now required to display any skill or strength at arms. Darting out of its case as if by its own volition, Shieldbreaker continued its upward movement, pulling the young Prince’s right arm violently with it.

      
Shieldbreaker, hammering thunderstrokes, lashed out violently against the demonic intruder. Stephen’s right arm was pulled helplessly forward even as his body staggered back. Pain stabbed at his shoulder, where the movement of the Sword twisted it.

      
The demon, an image of horror seeming to loom larger than the walls of the Sword-chamber, emitted no bellow of outrage this time, but rather a choked cry, a grating and unbreathing sound that was to haunt the young Prince in nightmares. In the next instant Akbar’s image burst like a pricked bubble. The sickness provoked by the demonic presence immediately disappeared, as if it had been flushed into oblivion by cleansing waves of air and light. And then Stephen was vaguely aware that the creature which had called itself Akbar was no longer anywhere, anywhere at all.

      
Relief lasted for only a moment; another ghastly scream warned Stephen that he had no time at all for triumph. Turning with alarm, gazing toward the now-unguarded doorway, he beheld Bazas standing in that opening with Dragonslicer in hand. In the last few moments the old armorer’s face had undergone a ghastly transformation, had become a mask of exalted rage and hatred.

      
Glaring at the young Prince, screaming Stephen’s death and the exalted name of the Dark King, Bazas leapt forward with his Sword raised to kill—and struck, with a trained warrior’s skill.

      
The young Prince, still reeling from the demon’s onslaught, had no time to try to understand, to think, or even to react consciously. Fortunately he needed to do none of those things. As the blade of Dragonslicer swung toward Stephen’s head, slicing almost horizontally under the low ceiling, Shieldbreaker of its own accord pulled his arm along at invisible speed to parry the blow.

      
Steel clashed with steel, both products of Vulcan’s forge. With a single
thud
, monstrously loud, and a flash of light, the Sword of Heroes passed out of existence, dissolved in a burst of flying fragments that rang from stone or embedded themselves in flesh.

      
Stephen, his injured shoulder wrenched again, body sent staggering back against the central vault, caught one clear glimpse of the fact that Dragonslicer was gone, while the Sword in his own hand remained perfectly intact. Stephen himself was uninjured by the explosion—armed as he was now, no weapon had the power to hurt him—but he could see at once how fragments of the Sword of Heroes had torn the body of Bazas into bloody rags, dropped the old man in his tracks.

      
For a moment or two the consciousness of the young Prince dimmed toward faintness, then full awareness of the world came back. Breathing heavily, Stephen found himself once more slumped against the open Sword-vault, left hand clinging to the decorated stonework, right arm pulled down by the weight of the Sword of Force. His right shoulder burned with a sharp pain as if something inside it had been torn, and his palm and fingers were magically glued to Shieldbreaker’s black hilt.

      
The weapon was almost quiet at the moment, the magical hammer-sound muted, having subsided until it seemed that the Sword might be only talking to itself.

      
Clutching at one of the open vault doors with his free hand, gazing with shock and horror at what was left of Bazas, Stephen fought down an impulse to vomit. He wondered what could have driven the old armorer so violently, abruptly mad. The old man had shouted something just before he swung his Sword at his young prince and died—something crazy having to do with the Dark King. …

      
At that moment the frightening truth began to dawn on Stephen: Only the Mindsword could produce such instantaneous and frightful alterations in the thoughts of good and worthy people. Skulltwister must have been once more brought into play by his father’s enemies.

      
While struggling to cope with that idea’s horrendous implications, the youth became dazedly aware that his right hand was no longer magically welded to Shieldbreaker’s hilt. A lull in combat now obtained, for the moment at least, and he could if he wished put down the Sword of Force.

      
He actually started to do so, but then instead, despite his injured shoulder, gripped the black hilt with convulsive strength, at the same time whimpering with the thought of how near he had come to letting go—that would have meant death, or worse than death. Only Shieldbreaker could have saved him, must be saving him even now, from the same awful madness which had afflicted Bazas, almost within arm’s length.

      
The cheering, roaring noises which now came drifting down from the upper palace confirmed Stephen’s horrible suspicion that the Mindsword must be in action. This insight, along with the undoubted presence of demons in the palace, and the fact that Bazas in his madness had shouted the Dark King’s name, strongly indicated that this latest attack, like that two years ago, must be led by the terrible Vilkata.

      
But so long as he, Stephen, had the Sword of Force in hand, so long was he protected against any other weapon, including Skulltwister. In fact he alone ought to be able to defend the palace against any kind of attack—any kind save one.

      
As Prince Mark had impressed over and over again upon his sons, the only way known to defeat Shieldbreaker was to disarm oneself completely and then grapple as a wrestler with whoever held the Sword. But, as Stephen had known in theoretical terms for years, there was no way a demon could ever disarm itself; the foul creatures were nothing but weapons, at least as far as this Sword was concerned. Whenever they attacked its wielder directly, Shieldbreaker was capable of slashing them out of existence, as surely as if its edge could be laid against whatever material objects concealed their unclean lives.