Swords: 08 - The Fifth Book Of Lost Swords - Coinspinner’s Story (8 page)

      
He had paddled back to a place near the middle of the pond, and was wondering in confusion what to do next, when he had a strong sensation that he was no longer alone. Inhuman creatures that he took at first for incubi and succubi from the Temple were standing semi-transparent on the very edge of the pool, the females clutching their transparent garments coyly round them. There were six of them, eight, ten. No, more. Numbers beyond counting. Many of the shapes were strange and indecipherable, but all were evil. Now Adrian understood that some of them might have come out of the Red Temple, but most had issued from somewhere else, only the gods knew where.

      
Heart pounding, throat suddenly a dry knot, the prince realized that he was surrounded by ferociously antagonistic powers, forces of hostile magic. So subtle had been their approach, so arcane the spells that shielded them from his view, that he had never perceived them until now. For hours, for days perhaps, they had been closing in on him, walling him subtly but powerfully away from the outside world.

      
Now he could see, he could feel, that they were on the brink of some climactic action that might destroy him. He had no time or nerve for careful thought. Acting instinctively in self-defense, his mind and his perception reached deep beneath the surface of the earth. As a drowning boy might have clutched at a log, so Adrian reached for and seized the energies of earth, molding them, prodding them into detonation.

      
The result was an elemental.

      
This particular elemental, born among the strains and heat of rocks many meters below the surface of the earth, was very powerful even of its powerful kind.

      
Whirling and dancing in the circle of Adrian’s enemies, there were no demons, but a foul host of other hostile powers. These at first jeered at his efforts to create a counterforce, taunted him with what they supposed must be his feebleness.

      
It was not a matter of the Prince’s unleashing the elemental at them—for he had made no effort to restrain it in the first place. This was no comparatively gentle derivative of sky or water. Rather an earth-elemental, vast and imbued with the power of gravity. Suddenly granted sentience, this creature battled its way toward the surface, sending before it from the body of the planet a deafening eruption of shattered rock, geysering water, splattering fountains of mud.

      
Havoc resulted. All other forces of magic blurred, within the narrow locus of the elemental’s influence. This zone contained the enemy powers surrounding Adrian. Their ring was broken, the ground reshaped, and the local course of the small river temporarily disrupted.

      
The essence of its being invisible, having no form but that of the earth from which it had been born, the elemental reached the surface and there jerked to a stop. The canoe, with Adrian still in it, was hurled into the air, to splash back violently. Somehow, clutching hard at both gunwales, he avoided being thrown out into the water.

      
The small dam had already burst, or rather it had been obliterated. The water contained in the deep pool was hurled downstream, the flood carrying the boat with it.

      
Adrian in his canoe was carried away upon this miniature tidal wave of water, propelled by a buckling and heaving landscape. He was borne downstream, through the broken ring of the powers that would have confined and perhaps destroyed him.

      
The elemental, still full of life and ferocity, drove dumbly on behind its creator, and tumult swept along the riverbed. Behind its passage the crash of falling buildings partially blocked the stream, which fought a new channel through the wreckage almost at once.

      
Stretched out in the bottom of the canoe, clinging for his life as waves and mud poured in on him, the Prince could only close his eyes and wait. At last the thunder of the erupting earth was quiet. He could only keep clinging to the thwarts and gunwales, and allow himself to be borne along. Drained by the great effort he had made in raising the elemental, he drifted into a semiconscious state.

      
None of the creatures evoked by his enemy’s hostile magic pursued him; for one thing their formation had been shattered, and for another they had been given no such orders. They were constrained to soothing and trapping and holding.

      
Still the canoe continued to be borne forward, although now at a gradually diminishing speed. The elemental was following the craft downstream, but by slow degrees the creature was ceasing to propel it forward.

* * *

      
The dazed boy, being swept downstream, muttered the name of Trilby once or twice. But Adrian had no way of knowing what might have happened to her. Nor, if he had known, would he have had any means of turning back to try to help her.

      
Once raising his head, groggily, to look back, he saw shapes of blackness, as if the shadow of the whole earth, the City’s skyline visible in silhouette, were being cast upon clouds high in the sky by some great sun-light in the center of the planet. And then he slumped into unconsciousness.

* * *

      
On regaining full consciousness at last, and bringing his head up out of the bottom of the canoe, Adrian found that the elemental seemed to have completely dissipated. Natural darkness had overtaken him. And from the feel of his environment, he was sure that he was no longer in the City. The stream and the canoe had carried him along some natural escape route, doubtless perilous, that had brought him clean away from immediate danger.

      
“Trilby,” he groaned again. Wherever his partner had been when the disaster struck, when the trap had tried to close on them, he realized that they might now, for all he knew, be separated by hundreds of kilometers.

      
The paddle was still aboard, wedged under one end of a thwart. The boy couldn’t really recall putting it there. Taking up the implement again, Adrian shakily directed the craft to shore at the nearest level place. Then he got out and stood with his feet sinking into warm mud, trying to see back in the direction from which he had come. Vague, dark masses indicated heavy vegetation along both banks.

      
The heir to the throne of Tasavalta could be sure only that the City was now completely behind him, and that he was now standing, completely naked and utterly alone, on the bank of a strange river.

Chapter Six

      
As soon as Wood had completed the first phase of his magical attack upon Prince Mark’s son, a process that took only a few minutes, the blond and beautiful enchantress called Tigris leaped astride the griffin once again. She waited for her master to mount behind her, ready to snuggle herself provocatively against him. But this time the magician had elected to use a different means of transport. He remained at a little distance from the griffin, standing in an area shaded from the moonlight by the knotted branches of a dead tree; and by means of the flickering spots of silver light his assistant was able to observe swift changes in his physical shape. Among other alterations, Wood’s body as a whole grew smaller, and his own dark pinions came sprouting from his shoulders.

      
Tigris, seeing how things were, whispered a command into the griffin’s ear, and the great beast sprang upward, bearing her into the air. She saw her master’s shadowy form rise after her.

      
Their flight was not a long one, and it was conducted entirely through darkness and whistling wind. Tigris was aware when, at about the halfway point, the first other powers joined them in midair. Before they landed, several airborne demons, accompanied by other powers less susceptible to ready classification, had already met her master to fawn upon him. These immaterial creatures manned the outermost line of protection of Wood’s domain.

      
Now, as the two humans and their escort descended toward the earth again, the wind abated somewhat. Their landing was in a wild and lonely place, still well within the natural boundary of night. The griffin crouched meekly on the rocky soil, making it easy for Tigris to dismount.

      
She did so with a quick jump, then looked around her. By the time Wood had landed too and she had located her master on the ground, his appearance was once more that of a handsome and broad-shouldered young man.

      
Standing within an ancient circle of stones, evidently a place for which he felt some special preference, Wood was holding the naked Sword of Chance up in his right hand and gazing at the blade. Here, in this pool of relatively deep natural darkness, Coinspinner responded to his touch with sparks, some of which were momentarily dazzling in their brilliance.

      
Despite his triumph in obtaining the Sword of Chance, Wood’s thoughts at this moment were troubled. Having completed—satisfactorily, he thought-—the first phase of his magical attack on the young Prince, he found it necessary to reach a decision: whether or not to go immediately into the City himself, to take possession of the trapped prey.

* * *

      
Tigris, while her withdrawn master pondered, had perched herself seductively upon an enormous skull nearby—the unfleshed head looked like that of some mythological beast, higher than her own head when she stood before it. Only the head of a great worm, she supposed, could be so huge—but she was no expert in inhuman anatomy.

      
Despite the pertness of her attitude, her voice was humble in tone when next she spoke, daring to interrupt her Ancient Master’s private deliberations to ask him what his next move was going to be. Somehow, during the brief interval of travel from the gaming table to this half-real wasteland, she had come to be wearing a short black skirt instead of trousers, and now there was a flash of pale thighs when she crossed her legs.

      
Wood, turning his head to peer out of the shadows of the tall stones, gazed at her blankly for a moment. As a rule the great wizard was not insensible of his assistant’s physical attractiveness—far from it. But now other matters of greater importance had first claim on his attention.

      
His attack on Prince Adrian, launched with the help of Coinspinner, was only one of these, though one of the most pressing. And his decision was still not made as to whether he would go himself into the City of Wizards and collect his prey.

      
But now he decided that there was one other decision to be made first, one that Wood had to admit must take priority over all the rest.

      
Holding up the naked length of Coinspinner, he inspected the Sword more closely. Frowning at the Blade as if he could wring its secrets from it by sheer force of will, Wood twirled it, somewhat awkwardly, in his strong right hand. At the same time he was resting his left hand on the almost identical hilt of Shieldbreaker, which very rarely left his side by night or day. Touching two Swords at once, he could feel his own immersion in the godlike power of the Swords. It was like no other power he had ever encountered, either in the ancient world from which he came, or in this one. Perhaps not even Ardneh or Orcus, his enemies of thousands of years ago, would ever have been quite able to match this.

      
Tigris, shifting her weight restlessly on the great skull, her short skirt riding yet a little higher, persisted in her nervous questioning: “What will you do with it now, my lord?”

      
For a moment he blinked at her distractedly, as if he were not quite sure who this woman might be who questioned him.

      
But at last he answered her aloud. “With Coinspinner?” The magician held the blade up, then paused, holding it very still. “Perhaps I will destroy it.”

      
For once his clever assistant could only stare at him without comprehension. “My lord?”

      
The man on the ground, he who could grow reptilian wings, or dispose of them again, whenever he chose to do so, chuckled dryly. “Do I mystify you, Tigris? But I suppose that is inescapable.”

      
Then he twirled the Sword of Chance again, and cast it down before him forcefully, so that the point stabbed deep into the rocky earth, and the weapon remained standing upright.

      
His right hand, having thus emptied itself, went promptly to the other scabbard hanging at his other side. From that sheath it drew out his second Blade, equally dazzling to look at.

      
Now the wizard said to the young-looking, innocent-looking woman who sat above him on the great skull: “Look, here’s Shieldbreaker!”

      
“I see it, my lord.”

      
“Do you? Do you see that I am now granted an opportunity that may never come again? Here in my hand I now hold the Sword that blocked Coinspinner’s power in tonight’s game, when that power would have been used against me; this same blade can shatter the other’s metal forever. Believe me, it can. It has done the same for both Doomgiver and Townsaver, in times past.”

      
“But … O master, to destroy Coinspinner! Why?” Tigris was openly aghast at the thought that Wood could even consider annihilating such a magnificent weapon, an almost matchless treasure, nullifying the great advantage that he had just managed to acquire.

      
Actually, though the woman appeared to be taking seriously his threat to destroy the Sword, in her heart she could not really do so. Her master, for his part, could almost read her thoughts: Was this talk of destruction only some regal jest? But no, hardly that. She would know that Wood was too sober to play such games, not much of a jester at any time.

      
She would, he thought, probably be virtually convinced that his talk of shattering a Sword was only some kind of a test he had devised for his subordinate.

      
While on occasion he might arrange such tests, now he had no time or inclination for them. Nor had he much patience for giving explanations. Still, he saw that if he wanted any intelligent response from his assistant at all, something in the way of explanation was a necessity.

      
“I am perfectly serious, girl. Consider that this unpredictable Sword now lying at my feet will always pose an obstacle to me, or to anyone else, who seeks to attain perfect power.”

      
“My lord?”

      
“But you really don’t see that, do you?”

      
“My lord—”

      
He gestured impatiently. “Suppose that I managed to get into my possession every Sword, including this one, of the ten that still remain intact. Yet this one, with its cursed independence, might fly away from me at any time. It might leave me, and then it might create problems for me, only the gods know what problems, once it had arrived in the hands of someone else.”

      
Tigris, having grasped the point as soon as it was stated plainly, was quick to be reassuring. “You’ll find some clever way around that, my wise and powerful lord. Some way to bind Coinspinner’s power forever to your service, and to that of no one else.”

      
Wood answered slowly. “I might. Such magic would be a supreme challenge, but I might attempt to manage it—if only I were not so busy just now with other matters. On the other hand, if I destroy the Sword of Chance now, now while I have the certain power to do so…” Again he brandished Shieldbreaker. There was no other known means to destroy any of the Swords. “Then I need fear Coinspinner’s power never again.”

      
Once more Tigris shifted her shapely weight on the great skull, her pale thighs flashing as if she could not choose to be anything other than seductive. “And yet,” she murmured. “And yet, my master hesitates.”

      
The master, plunged deep in thought again, scarcely looked up at her. But he did reply. “I do. I hesitate, indeed. Whilst Coinspinner is in my grasp, I can use its power to achieve … great things. Yes, already it has given me advantage. Presently I’ll have Prince Mark’s princely whelp firmly in my grip. And then I think his father—aye, and his grandfather too—will cease to be such sharp thorns in my side.”

      
The woman spoke cautiously. “I understand that your decision regarding this Sword must be a very difficult one, my lord.”

      
He did look at her now, and carefully. “Do you understand, Tigris? Do you begin to grasp my problem? I wonder if you do.”

      
And Wood closed his eyes briefly, casting abroad his inner vision, doing his best to follow the progress of the spells he had cast and the powers he had dispatched to snare young Adrian. The trouble was that the Tasavaltan whelp was guarded, better protected than Wood had ever realized … but yet, with Coinspinner’s help, success now seemed imminent.

      
Oh, the overwhelming force of Chance, of Fortune, that came with this Sword was too great a power to give up!

      
And yet…

      
The wizard opened his eyes. He paced about, groaning intensely though almost inaudibly. Demons and spells were of no help to him now. His mind was in a frenzy, unable to come to a decision.

      
Then abruptly he stopped in his tracks. Suddenly he issued a sharp order. “Back to our headquarters! I will make my decision there. Wait, this time I will ride with you.”

      
The griffin, which had dropped out of sight for a time, now appeared again as if from nowhere, spread its wings and lowered its body to make it easier for the people to get aboard. In another moment, the creature and its double human cargo had whirled into the air again.

      
This leg of their flight was considerably longer than the first had been, though still not long enough to bring them into daylight.

      
The aerial voyage terminated at Wood’s headquarters. This edifice, when seen from the outside, appeared to be—and indeed was—a fortress of dark stone, sprawling along a mountain peak. It looked a forbidding place indeed, its lofty stone walls surrounding the sharp central crag that arose within them. The two arriving humans, on landing inside the high walls, entered an aspect of the place somewhat more civilized in appearance. They dismounted from the griffin at one end of a courtyard garden. This garden boasted fountains and statuary, though many of the plants that grew in it were not ordinary flowers. Blue flames, welling from some of the fountains, provided an eerie but serviceable illumination.

      
Nor would the statues have been of ordinary appearance, even in ordinary light. Two of the strangest among them, standing about a meter apart from each other at the lower end of the garden, were of stone carved into the shapes of squat and ugly men. This pair of grotesque carvings had been standing here before Wood built his fortress, and evidently represented a remnant of some ancient and evil shrine that had occupied these lonely heights long before he, or any other man now living, had ever seen them.

      
The night by now was far advanced, and overhead the sky was strange with shapes that were not ordinary clouds. An observer familiar with the City of Wizards might have been deceived into thinking that this garden and its immediate surroundings belonged to it—indeed, that this represented one of the City’s more dangerous neighborhoods, remote from the much less perilous, relatively prosaic region that Trilby and Adrian had entered. But in fact this mountaintop formed no part of the City at all, though at times the magical intensity within this domain was equally great.

      
Wood had put down Shieldbreaker—he felt secure enough to do that here, in the middle of his own stronghold—and was now pacing about his garden with the Sword of Chance, swinging and twirling the blade in a physically inexpert way, occasionally hacking down some exotic plant. He cursed the weapon, almost steadily, because of the problem that it posed him. But yet he hesitated, not quite able to make up his mind to smite it into fragments with the overwhelming power of the Sword of Force.

      
At last the magician ceased to pace. Throwing back his head, he shouted at the sky: “No, I
must
use it once more!”