Swords: 10 - The Seventh Book Of Lost Swords - Wayfinder's Story (18 page)

      
Suddenly some part of her terrible rage was directed at Valdemar. She glared at him and snarled.

      
Turning in the central saddle, she raised the Sword of Wisdom in both hands, to strike.

      
This madwoman was on the brink of killing him! There was no way to dodge the stroke. He was trying to straighten his cramped legs in the basket for a hopeless effort to seize the deadly Sword—when a sudden and violent change transformed the finely modeled face above him.

      
Suddenly and unexpectedly, the last curse died in the throat of Tigris.

      
Her body lurched in the saddle. Her eyelids closed. Wayfinder, which she had been brandishing for a deathstroke at Valdemar, slipped from her hands and fell.

Chapter Twelve

      
Zoltan was gone, and Woundhealer with him, and there was nothing Ben could do about either loss. Doggedly the huge man had resumed his trudge into the north. From that direction, as the bird-messengers had told him, the Prince of Tasavalta and his force were now advancing; and if all went well he ought to meet Mark soon.

      
But Ben was unable to make much headway. Time and again flying reptiles appeared in the sky, forcing him to lie low, waiting in such shelter as he could find until the searchers were out of sight again.

      
At night, great owls, dispatched by Mark as forerunners of the advancing Tasavaltan power, came to bring Ben words of counsel and encouragement. They kept him moving in the right direction, and helped him to remain hidden successfully through the hours of darkness. Freighted with tokens of Karel’s shielding power, the owls drifted and perched protectively near Ben while some of Wood’s lesser demons prowled through the clouded skies above.

* * *

      
Yambu lay in another self-imposed trance, placed by her captors in a newly erected tent in what had once been the Blue Temple camp. The Silver Queen’s condition was the subject of cautious probing by minor wizards who had been part of Tigris’s attacking force. These folk were prudently waiting for orders, from their vanished mistress or from Wood himself, before they took any more direct action regarding this important prisoner.

      
Only partially, intermittently aware of the world around her, Yambu lay drifting mentally. Her dreams were often pleasant, rarely horrible, on occasion only puzzling. Most of the dreams in the latter category concerned the Emperor.

      
As often as not, Yambu’s recent near-rejuvenation now seemed to her only part of the same continuing dream.

* * *

      
At the moment when Wood’s vengeance fell upon Tigris, a thunderbolt no less startling for having been expected, her last coherent thought was that the Sword of Wisdom had somehow failed her.

      
The crushing spell aimed at her mind permitted her a final moment of mental clarity in which she gasped out some curse against the Sword. After that she was aware of crying out in desperation for her mother. And then a great darkness briefly overcame her.

      
Tigris—or she who had been Tigris—was still in the griffin’s saddle when an altered awareness returned, and her eyes cleared; but when her lids opened they gazed upon a world that she no longer knew.

* * *

      
When Valdemar saw the hands of stricken Tigris relax their grip upon Wayfinder’s hilt, he lunged upward and forward from his basket. He was making a desperate, almost unthinking effort to catch the Sword of Wisdom as it fell.

      
The hilt eluded his frantic grab; the blade did not. Cold metal struck and stung his hands. His try at capturing the Sword succeeded, but the keen edges gashed two of his fingers before he could control its weight.

      
For a long moment he was in danger of falling out of the swaying basket. At last he recovered his balance, now gripping the Sword’s hilt firmly, in hands slippery with his own blood. Valdemar glared at the dazed woman whose face hovered a little above his own. In a tone somewhere near the top of his voice he demanded: “What happened? What’s wrong with you?”

      
The young woman was slumped down in the saddle, the reins sagging in her grip. She swayed so that he grabbed her arm in fear that she might fall; but still she appeared to be fully conscious. Her only reply to Valdemar’s question was a wide-eyed smile and a girlish giggle.

      
Meanwhile the griffin, evidently sensing that something well out of the ordinary had occurred, was twisting round its leonine head on its grotesque long neck, trying to see what was happening on its own back.

      
Tigris giggled again.

      
“Fly!” Valdemar yelled at the curious beast. “Fly on, straight ahead for now!”

      
The hybrid monster, presented with these commands by an unaccustomed voice, kept its head turned back for a long disturbing moment, fixing the youth with a calculating and evil gaze, as if to estimate this new master’s strengths and weaknesses. After that long moment, to Valdemar’s considerable relief, it faced forward again and went on flying. The reins lay along the creature’s neck, where Tigris had let them drop.

      
The evening sky was rapidly darkening around them. Demon-like masses of shadow and cloud went swirling by with the great speed of their flight.

      
The young woman raised her head and spoke in a tiny, childish voice.

      
“What did you say?” he asked.

      
She blinked at Valdemar. “I just wondered—where are we going?”

      
Her smile as she asked the question was sweet and tentative. She looked somewhat dazed, but not particularly frightened. She seemed really, innocently, uncertain of where she was.

      
The dropped Sword, the cut fingers, the sudden change, were briefly all too much for Valdemar. He felt and gave voice to an outburst of anger. He threw down the Sword—making sure it landed safely in his basket—and raved, giving voice to anger at his situation and at the people, all of them by his standards crazy, most of them bloodthirsty, among whom the precious Sword had plunged him.

      
Meanwhile, the strange young woman who was mounted just above him recoiled slightly, leaning away from Valdemar, her blue eyes rounded and blinking, red mouth open.

      
What was wrong with this crazy woman now? But even that question had to wait. The first imperative was to establish some real control over the griffin. Now the beast’s unfriendly eyes looked back again. The course of their flight was turning into a great slow spiral.

      
The first step in dealing with this difficulty, obviously, was to use the Sword. Valdemar did so. While Tigris looked on wide-eyed but without comment, the young man asked to be guided to a safe place to land. Wayfinder promptly obliged.

      
The indication was toward an area not directly below. Therefore Valdemar was required to head the griffin there. Strong language and loud tones accomplished the job, though only with some difficulty. When he thought the creature slow to turn, he even cuffed it on the back of the neck. As a farmer’s son, he had had some practice in driving stubborn loadbeasts, and saw no reason why the same techniques might not work in this situation—at least for a little while.

      
Presently they were over a good-sized lake, with a single island of substantial size visible near the middle, a dark blob in a great reflection of the last of the sunset. Soon Valdemar managed to guide the creature to a successful landing on the island.

      
Tigris, her face, arms, and lower legs pale blurs in the deep dusk, remained in her saddle until her companion told her to dismount.

      
At the same moment Valdemar began to climb out of his own basket, then hesitated, worried lest the griffin fly away once they both got off. But he could not very well remain permanently on board. Tigris had already leapt from her saddle to the ground, and in a moment he followed.

      
The griffin turned its head and snarled; the young man spoke harshly and gripped his Sword, wondering if the great beast might be going to attack them.

      
Well, that was simply another danger they would have to accept for the time being. Still carrying Wayfinder, and keeping an eye on the griffin, the youth went over to where Tigris was standing uncertainly. Angrily he began to question the woman who, an incredibly short time ago, had taken him prisoner.

      
Truly, the change had been drastic, whatever its cause. Valdemar was now confronted by a stricken girl who looked back at him anxiously.

      
Feeling angry all over again, he demanded: “What is this, some kind of joke? Some kind of pretense?”

      
Recoiling from him, the young woman abruptly burst into sobs. There was a convincingness about this sudden relapse into childishness that caused Valdemar to feel the hair rise on the back of his neck, an unpleasant sensation that even the demon had not managed to produce. This was no game or trick, but something completely out of her control.

      
She mumbled something through her tears.

      
“What’s that you said?”

      
“I’m—afraid,” she choked out. Tears were making some kind of cosmetic run on her eyelids, blotching her cheeks. Another moment, and she was clinging innocently to Valdemar as if for protection.

      
Automatically he put his arms around her, comforting. Paradoxically, Valdemar found himself even angrier than before at Tigris. Angry at her and at his general situation.

      
Not only angry at her, but still afraid of her in a way. What if she were to recover from this fit, or whatever it was, as abruptly as she had fallen into it? He didn’t know whether he wanted her to recover or not.

      
Whatever magic might still have been binding Valdemar at the moment the sorceress had been stricken—obviously there had not been enough to keep him from lunging for the Sword—was now undone. He had felt the last remnants of that enchantment passing, falling from him, like spiders’ webs dissolving in morning sunlight.

      
“Where are we?” she was asking him again, now in what sounded like tearful trust. She wiped at her eyes. “Who are you?” she added, with more curiosity than fright.

      
“Who am I. A good question. I ask that of myself, sometimes. Here, sit down, rest, and let me think.” Seating his oddly transformed companion upon a mossy lump of earth—she obeyed directions like a willing child—Valdemar paced about, wondering what question he ought now to ask the Sword.

      
His cut fingers, still slowly dripping blood, kept him from concentrating, and he used the peerless edge of Wayfinder to cut a strip from the edge of his own shirt, thinking to make a bandage. The crouching griffin kept turning its head watchfully from time to time, as if estimating its chances of successful escape or rebellion. Valdemar thought that the beast’s eyes glowed faintly with their own fire in the deepening night.

      
Tigris, sitting obediently where he had put her, had ceased to weep and was slowly recovering something like equanimity. Now, when he got close enough in the gloom to see her face, he could tell that she was smiling at him. It was a vastly transformed smile, displaying simple joy and anxious friendliness. A child, waiting to be told what was going to happen next.

      
As Valdemar stared at the metamorphosed Tigris, a new suspicion really hit him for the first time: the suspicion that this impossible, dangerous young woman could be, in fact, his Sword-intended bride to be.

      
Going to her, he unbuckled the empty swordbelt from her slender waist, and, while she watched trustingly, fastened it around his own. Then he sheathed Wayfinder. Waving the little bloodstained rag of cloth which he had been trying to tie up his hand, he asked: “I don’t suppose you could help me with this?”

      
“What?”

      
“It’s just that trying to bandage my own fingers, working with one hand, is rather awkward.”

      
And when he held out the cloth to Tigris, she made a tentative effort to help him. But the sight, or touch, of blood at close range evidently upset her, and the bandaging was only marginally successful.

      
Gripping the black hilt of the Sword of Wisdom in his now precariously bandaged hand, Valdemar drew it and asked: “Safety for myself—and for my intended bride—whoever she may be!”

      
The Sword promptly gave him a direction. Generally south again. He decided that, since this island had been certified safe for the time being, further travel would have to wait till morning.

      
The next question, of course, was whether the griffin was going to get restless and fly away before sunrise. Or grow hungry, perhaps, and decide to eat its erstwhile passengers.

      
Valdemar sighed, and decided they would take their chances here for the night.

* * *

      
The remaining hours of darkness were spent uncomfortably, with each passenger sleeping, or trying to sleep, in one of the side-baskets, which were still fastened to the griffin’s flanks. Some cargo in the right basket—the most interesting items were food and blankets—was unloaded to make room for Tigris. Valdemar thought it would be hard for the magical beast to attack them while they were on its back; and if the thing felt moved to fly during the night, it could hardly leave its passengers behind. As matters worked out, the griffin remained so still during most of the night that Valdemar wondered from time to time whether the beast had died. But he definitely felt more secure staying in the basket.

      
As if his current crop of problems were not quite enough, Valdemar continued to be nagged by worries about his untended vines back home, and about his lack of a wife. The images rose before him of several of the women with whom he had had temporary arrangements; all of them, for various reasons, had proven unsatisfactory.

      
At last he slept, but fitfully.

* * *

      
In the morning, when it seemed that no more sleep was going to be possible, Valdemar stretched and took stock of the situation. Tigris, as he could see by peering across the empty saddle, was still sleeping like a babe. She actually had one finger in her mouth.