Swords: 09 - The Sixth Book Of Lost Swords - Mindsword's Story (15 page)

      
Murat, controlling a sudden surge of fear and loathing, firmly stood his ground inside his pentacle, brandishing the Mindsword in front of him.

      
The demon turned a blank, pale face in the direction of the Crown Prince, then recoiled with a scream of rage when it found itself gripped by the power of the weapon nestled in Murat’s right hand. But even demonic rage could not endure the Mindsword’s force. A moment after it screamed, the foul quasimaterial beast had assumed a dog-like shape, and a moment after that Akbar had thrown himself down, brutally fawning and cringing, near Murat’s feet.

      
The dog shape did not persist for long. Looking as helpless as any mere converted human, Akbar groveled before his new lord and master, presenting himself in a series of suitably humble and would-be disarming images, some human and some animal. Babies, old women, cuddly pets, appeared and disappeared in swift succession.

      
Murat, feeling a tremendous disgust, and at the same time exulting in the establishment of his authority, drew back a few paces. Now he felt confident that his safety was assured by the Sword of Glory, and did not depend at all upon the merely human magic embodied in the diagram scratched in the earth.

      
As in his earlier confrontation with Vilkata, the Crown Prince was holding the Sword level, pointed at the demon, as if he might be required to skewer an enemy physically upon the blade. But this time he felt less of an urge to kill, and greater physical loathing. In fact he felt sick to the point of nausea. Akbar’s current display of sniveling cowardice and self-abasement was if anything more repugnant to him than the show of demonic arrogance he had unconsciously been expecting.

      
Vilkata was watching with great vigilance. Now he made a prearranged gesture to Murat, signifying that the demon was safely Murat’s to command.

      
The Crown Prince called out in a sharp voice: “Foul demon! Your name is Akbar.”

      
“Yes, Master.” The demon’s voice was unlike any sound that Murat had ever heard before.

      
“I order you to choose some coherent shape, and remain in it, so a man can look at you at least.”

      
At once the demon assumed a distinct human form, youthful, plump, and eunuchoid. It sat there smiling at its master timidly.

      
Murat, finding this shape particularly repugnant, quickly commanded Akbar to change to something else. In a moment the eunuch had become a comely maiden, dressed simply and with a fair amount of modesty.

      
The Crown Prince, even more than most people, had always feared and loathed demons. But tonight, to his great satisfaction, he found himself quickly able to master his natural sentiments and adopt a businesslike attitude.

      
The demon seemed to sense almost immediately that the worst of the Crown Prince’s fear and disgust had passed. The maiden rose lithely to her feet, her peasant skirt swirling lightly, and said in a clear voice: “I am at your service, glorious Master! What are your commands?”

      
Murat drew a breath of satisfaction. “My first demand upon you—and upon the unfortunate human who admits to having been your partner—is to be told all the details of the plot that you hatched between you.”

      
Both offenders bowed in reverence.

      
“First, I command you to tell me: Is any other plotter, human or otherwise, implicated?”

      
Both villains at once began to blubber in unison—even the demon’s image seemed to cry. With one voice, speaking with tearful vehemence, they assured their new master that no other conspirators had been involved.

      
“Very well. I’ll take your word on that—for the time being. Next, tell me, what exactly was the object of your conspiracy?”

      
Akbar stuttered, doing an excellent imitation of an appealing maiden in distress. Vilkata confessed that they had been plotting, of course, to get their hands on Murat’s Sword. Both partners wept—Vilkata could still weep, it seemed—and tore their hair—or seemed to tear it—at the mere thought of having contemplated such a crime.

      
But after a few moments of this demonstration, Vilkata pulled himself together.

      
“I was—I am—the Dark King.” This much was no longer a confession, but had become a proclamation, made with a certain pride. “Like other players in the great game, I wanted to eventually possess all the Swords. Like others, I wanted to rule the world with them.”

      
The Crown Prince glared at him. “And now? What are you now, fallen king, failed wizard? No longer a player in the great game, as you call it. What do you now want?”

      
“I am—I devoutly hope to be—Your Lordship’s magician, and faithful counselor. Certainly I would still be glad to have a Sword, or many Swords. But now, I would want them only as effective tools, that I might be better able to serve my lord.”

      
“Well answered—I suppose.” The Crown Prince nodded judicially. “And the demon?”

      
Akbar, both he and his fellow plotter agreed, was to have been content with the role of second in command when his master Vilkata had succeeded in winning his way back to power.

      
Murat, suddenly feeling tired almost to exhaustion, lowered his Sword and thought for a moment. Then he made a gesture that was not quite one of dismissal.

      
“All right, enough. You may spare me the vile details.” But his curiosity on other subjects was still unsated, and a moment later he was questioning the scoundrels again.

      
The next thing the Crown Prince wanted to know was the location of Akbar’s life. Everyone knew that the only absolutely sure way of controlling any demon was to have in one’s control the object wherein its life was hidden.

      
Vilkata swore that he had no idea where Akbar’s life might be concealed—that was naturally the last thing that any demon wanted to reveal. He turned to his former partner expectantly.

      
Akbar, who unlike the man seemed to remain in a state of abject surrender—the maiden’s head drooped pitiably—proclaimed himself unable to withhold anything from his new master.

      
“Well, then?”

      
The demon’s slender maiden’s arm stretched out, forefinger pointed at Murat’s right hand.

      
Her tender voice murmured: “My life is hidden in the Mindsword itself.”

      
Vilkata’s jaw dropped, in what appeared to be genuine surprise. But the wizard-king said nothing for the moment.

      
Murat gazed at the Blade in his own hand, first with astonishment and then with new calculation. He swished the god-forged steel several times through the air.

      
At last he looked back at Akbar. “So! Very clever of you, beast. How did you happen to be able to accomplish such a feat of concealment? But never mind, I can hear that tale later.”

      
“At any time my master wishes.”

      
The look of calculation had not left Murat’s face. Suddenly he turned to the human magician and ordered him to make fire.

      
Vilkata blinked at his master. “Sir?”

      
“It’s a simple enough command. I want you to create fire for me, a small flame, here and now. Right here on the ground in front of me. Surely, as you claim to be a mighty wizard, such a feat is not beyond your powers? It seems to me that it might serve as a test for some low-level magical apprentice.”

      
“I fear, my lord, that I can no longer claim to be a mighty wizard. But—you are quite right. Fire ought to be simple enough.”

      
Creeping about on all fours, Vilkata with unsteady hands gathered dried grass and twigs from the fringes of the hedgerows, heaping his harvest into a little pile before Murat. The magician muttered words into his dark beard. A moment later, a small tongue of flame danced forth atop the pile.

      
Another moment, and the Crown Prince was holding the Mindsword’s blade directly in the fire. At the first touch of the live flames the demon emitted a scream of torment. In another moment Akbar was thrashing about on the ground, the demure maiden gone, the creature’s apparent body contorting madly as it changed into a bewildering variety of shapes.

      
The Crown Prince kept at his roasting for a little while, confident that a little heat was not going to hurt his Sword. Rare indeed, he thought, would be the human being who felt any compunction about putting any demon to the torment, for whatever reason; and he himself could feel none now. But for the moment, being under the necessity of holding rational discourse with the thing, he ceased to punish it.

      
“Very clever,” he remarked, when the Blade had cooled somewhat, and Akbar had ceased to scream, now lying huddled and twitching on the sand much as a broken human being might have done. “Very clever, choosing one of the Twelve Swords in which to hide your miserable life. Since the Swords are all but indestructible, there would seem to be no practical way for your life to be destroyed; therefore I cannot reasonably threaten you with extinction. But as we have just seen, your existence can be made hell; and I promise you it will be, if you disobey me.”

      
The demon raised its face enough to peer at him with one clear human-looking eye. “Never again will I even think of disobedience, Lord! Never! My only wish now is to serve you faithfully!”

      
“See that you do not forget it!”

* * *

      
In fact Murat no longer had the least doubt of the loyalty of either of his new slaves. Before dismissing the demon and his human partner, he formally placed them in charge of the magical defenses of the camp, warning them that they would be held responsible for any enemy success. Let there be no more mice, or other tricks. The pair responded with effusive expressions of gratitude and loyalty, vowing their determination that Karel would be frustrated.

      
The Crown Prince also ordered his newly allied occult experts to take the offensive as soon as possible against his enemies, Prince Mark in particular. The partners agreed enthusiastically with this objective.

      
Then, with a gesture of disgust, Murat ordered them both out of his sight for the time being.

      
In moments they were gone, the demon vanishing as abruptly as it had come, Vilkata trudging back to camp. Finding himself alone in the little hollow, the Crown Prince sat down in the sandy soil beside the dying fire, and threw on some twigs to keep it going.

      
Bleakly Murat tried to understand the new situation in which he now found himself. At the moment his chief worry was just how he would ever be able to free himself of this demon when the time came, as it inevitably would, to do so.

      
No matter the degree of loyalty to which Akbar might now be constrained, as soon as the Sword’s overwhelming power had been removed from him for a while—a matter of a few days at most—the demon could be expected to strike back at its former master and tormentor more readily, and with a more terrible effect, than even the most revengeful human. In the case of a demon, Murat could see no chance of a conversion becoming permanent, as happened in a certain proportion of the human ones.

* * *

      
Presently Murat, moving tiredly, also made his way back to camp. There he rejoined Kristin and his son, who both expressed great relief that he had come through the ordeal unscathed, and bombarded him with questions about the demon.

      
Kristin, as soon as she had heard the story of the summoning and confrontation just passed, protested mightily against any alliance with demons, or with the Dark King, who she described as a demon in human form.

      
But right now Murat felt disinclined to heed her objections on this point.

      
He returned to his tent, where, alone as before, he tried to get some sleep before dawn.

* * *

      
At dawn some enterprising Tasavaltan commander dispatched winged creatures, not couriers but larger raptors, trained for hunting, in a surprise attack on Murat’s camp. These flyers were all but mindless and so all but immune to the Mindsword’s power. Their objective, which had obviously been firmly impressed upon them, was to drive off the loadbeasts and riding-beasts from Murat’s camp.

      
The convert troopers standing guard duty at the time, and the remainder who were quickly wakened, sent up a barrage of arrows and rocks, wounding several of the attackers and driving the others off, before the four-footed targets could be stampeded.

      
Vilkata was at Murat’s side almost as soon as the Crown Prince came running out of his tent. The wizard hastened to assure his master that new magical defenses would be promptly put in place, to squelch any future flying assaults effectively.

      
“Akbar, Your Highness, ought to be particularly good at that.”

      
“So he ought. But perhaps we ought to take some other measures as well.”

* * *

      
Murat and his followers had long been aware of the existence, somewhat less than a kilometer from their present camp, of a sturdy farmhouse and its outbuildings. Murat and Marsaci had expected this farm to be occupied as an observation post by Tasavaltan reconnaissance units —or that it would be so occupied if there were any such observers so close to Murat’s camp.