Fred Saberhagen - Lost Swords 04 - Farslayers story

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PRAISE FOR FRED SABERHAGEN

"[THE FIRST BOOK OF LOST SWORDS] is one of the more exciting fantasies of the season as far as I'm

concerned."

- Andre Norton

"Saberhagen writes in a style at once economic and evocative. [He] keeps the reader interested and

involved."

- West Coast Review of Books

"The swords notion is an arresting, simple and durable one, with plenty of mileage left in the

various permutations."

- Kirkus Reviews

"Fred Saberhagen has always been one of the best writers in the business."

- Stephen R. Donaldson

"Fred Saberhagen has proved he is one of the best."

- Lester del Rey

Tor Books by Fred Saberhagen

BERSERKER BASE (with Anderson, Bryant,

Donaldson, Niven, Willis, and Zelazny)

BERSERKER: BLUE DEATH

THE BERSERKER THRONE

THE BERSERKER WARS

A CENTURY OF PROGRESS

COILS (with Roger Zelazny)

THE DRACULA TAPE

EARTH DESCENDED

THE HOLMES-DRACULA FILE

THORN

THE VEILS OF AZLAROC

THE FIRST BOOK OF SWORDS

THE SECOND BOOK OF SWORDS

THE THIRD BOOK OF SWORDS

THE FIRST BOOK OF LOST SWORDS:

Woundhealer's Story

THE SECOND BOOK OF LOST SWORDS:

Sightblinder's Story

THE THIRD BOOK OF LOST SWORDS:

Stonecutter's Story

THE FOURTH BOOK OF LOST SWORDS:

Farslayer's Story

THE FIFTH BOOK OF LOST SWORDS:

Coinspinner's Story

THE

FOURTH BOOK

LOST SWORDS

FARSLAYER'S STORY

FRED SABERHAGEN

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious,

and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

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A TOR Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

49 West 24 Street

New York, NY 10010

Cover art by Segrelles Cover design by Carol Russo

ISBN: 0-812-55284-9 Can. ISBN: 0-812-55285-7

First edition: July 1989

First mass market edition: March 1990

Printed in the United States of America 0987654321

PROLOGUE

IN the middle of the day the black-haired mermaid was drifting carelessly in a summery river,

letting herself be carried slowly through the first calm pool in the Tungri below the thunder of

the cataract. It was a pool that was almost big enough to be called a lake, surrounded by the

greenery and bitter memories of the shores.

Her name was Black Pearl, and she had been a mermaid now for something like six years, even though

she had been born with two good legs and no tail at all, into a family of fisherfolk seemingly as

far removed as anyone could be from magic.

Black Pearl's pale face, now framed by the water, held an expression of intent listening, as if

she might be trying to read some information from the open sky. Her black hair swirled in the

water around her head, her small breasts poked above the surface. Drifting immobile now, holding

her tail perfectly still, she was allowing the current to carry her out of the broad pool which

was almost a lake, on a course that would take her between the two islands that were the most

prominent features of this portion of the river.

To judge by the expression on Black Pearl's face, if the sky was indeed trying to tell her

anything, she did not care for the message it conveyed.

Mermaids' Island, overgrown now with summer's own green magic, slid by to the mermaid's north, on

her left hand as she floated on her back. Magicians' Island, somewhat smaller and stranger and

somewhat less green, with a certain aura of the forbidden about it, would soon be passing to her

south.

According to her own best calculation, Black Pearl had recently turned eighteen years of age, at

the beginning of the summer. She knew, therefore, that she had not very many years of life

remaining. Mermaids, fishgirls, of her age never did. Black Pearl's mother would be able to

remember her age with accuracy, she supposed. But for years now her mother had no longer wanted to

come to the shore and talk with her. If, indeed, her mother was still alive. A long time had

passed since Black Pearl had tried to see any of her relatives.

As for the bitter memories;

Somewhere to the south and west of where she drifted now, no more than a few kilometers over the

water, was Black Pearl's home village though it was home to her no longer. Now, the only semblance

of a home she knew was Mermaids' Island. Her only family were the two dozen or so other fishgirls

inhabiting this stretch of the Tungri, and with many of them Black Pearl did not get on at all.

If she made the effort, and sent her mind groping under a cloud of black and evil magic for the

appropriate memories, Black Pearl could vaguely recall being caught, lured ashore from these

waters three or four years ago. Caught in a net, and sold, and carried upstream riding in a tank

of water carried in a wagon driven by strangers. Upstream, she had first become part of some small

traveling show.

And then, somehow, she had been with that relatively innocent traveling show no more. But still

she had been upstream, somewhere, so far that there the Tungri bore a different name. There she

had been under the domination of a terrible and evil magician, whose face she could recall but not

his name. A magician who had used her. There were certain gates of memory beyond which she was

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always afraid to go.

Outside those ominous gates, memory produced another face, this one with a clear name attached,

that she had known briefly in those strange days. It was the face of a young man with curly hair,

and who walked upon two legs of course as far as Black Pearl knew, nowhere in the world did there

exist any young men who were equipped with tails and scales instead of legs that fate was reserved

for females. The name of this young man with curly hair and two strong legs was Zoltan, and though

she still sometimes dreamed of him, in recent months such dreams were becoming rare.

Now, at the pace of the river's flow, here about that of a walking man, Magicians' Island was

drawing near. With mild surprise the mermaid observed that she might actually be about to drift

ashore on it, where only moments ago she had expected to pass at a good distance.

Drifting still, Black Pearl raised her head slightly from the water, looking down almost the full

length of her body, white skin above the hips and silver scales below. Skin and scales alike were

as magically immune to summer's sun as they were to winter's watery cold. As she raised her head,

the ends of her long black hair floated about her delicate white breasts.

Once Zoltan's hand had touched her there.

Thoughts of Zoltan abruptly vanished. Only now did Black Pearl realize that there was a kind of

music, Pan music, pipe music, in the air, and that for the last several minutes she had not been

drifting in such perfect freedom as she had imagined. Rather the music had been drawing her

unawares, influencing her ever so slowly, and gently inducing her to steer herself by subtle

movements of her tail toward the island.

The music was coming had been coming, for now it ceased from somewhere among the greenery and

rocks that made up the irregular shoreline, all strange projections and hidden coves, of

Magicians' Island.

And now abruptly the musician became visible. A young man, one Black Pearl had never seen before,

a well-dressed youth, stood staring at her from behind some of the tall reeds of that

unpredictable shoreline. One of the young man's hands was holding the panpipe, letting it hang

loosely as if it had been forgotten. Though the instrument was silent, the subtly entrancing music

it had produced seemed still to be hanging in the air.

This young man was nothing at all like Zoltan. She had a good look at this one now, and his

intense dark eyes returned her stare as she came drifting past him at a distance of no more than

ten meters.

"I have been trying to summon up the spirits of sunlight," he called to the drifting mermaid in a

rich tenor voice, at the same time holding up the panpipe carelessly for her to see. "Trying to

call into being an elemental, composed of summer and the river. And, lo and behold! Success,

beyond my fondest hopes! What a vision of rare beauty have I evoked to gaze upon!"

"Even in summer," Black Pearl said and with her tail moving underwater she stopped her drifting

motion gracefully "even now the depths of the river are dark and cold, and full of hidden, ugly

things. Are you sure you really wanted to raise an elemental of that kind?" A careless wave of the

panpipe in the young man's hand dismissed the idea altogether. Judging by the animated expression

on his face, a busy mind was rushing forward.

"Will you sit near me for a few moments?" The question was asked of the mermaid in tones of the

gravest courtesy, even though he who asked it did not bother to wait for a reply. Instead he came

stepping toward her through the muddy shallows, with little concern for his fine boots or

clothing. At the very edge of the current he sat himself down cross-legged on a flat rock whose

top was no more than a few centimeters above the restless surface of the river, and once he was

seated there gave trial of a few more notes upon the pipes of Pan.

This time, thought Black Pearl, if it was indeed a magical net that had drawn her to this island,

it was a very subtle one. Not like that other time, when she had been sold upstream like so many

kilograms of fish.

Curiosity overcame caution. With a surge of her body and a spray of droplets, Black Pearl came

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sliding lithely out of the water to sit, mermaid fashion, upon another rock, a little bigger but

very similarly situated, about three meters from the one where the young piper had settled. She

thought he was a few years older than herself, and now that she looked at him closely she could

see by his jewelry and clothing that he possessed at least some of the outward trappings of the

magician. It was a subject in which she had firsthand experience.

But if this youth was indeed a wizard, still somehow she found nothing about him frightening. "Now

that you have caught me," she asked saucily, "what do you mean to do? Sell me up the river to live

in a tank, for country folk to goggle at in fairs?"

"I? Sell you? No, not I." And the young man seemed not so much scornful of that idea as hardly

able to comprehend it. It was as if the ideas of capturing and selling lay so far from the place

where his thoughts were occupied that he could not accept them as entirely real. "And you have

gray eyes," he murmured, looking at her closely.

And he raised the panpipe to his lips again and tooted on it, displaying moderate skill. He sat

there on the rock wearing his ill-fitting wizard's paraphernalia, which somehow looked as if it

did not truly belong to him at all. He was very handsome, and though he was almost as young as

she, somehow Black Pearl had already caught the flavor or image of something tragic about him.

She said challengingly: "I've been sold up the river, you know, once already."

The dark eyes fixed on her again. "Really? I didn't know that. But I did think from my first look

at you that there was something..." He put the silent panpipe away, letting it fall into his

pocket, and made a polite gesture toward rising, which was hard to accomplish neatly on his

slippery rock. He said, as if introducing himself to an equal: "My name is Cosmo Malolo."

Malolo. He was a member, then, of one of the valley's two contending clans, whose domain included

her home village among others. But it had been people from the other clan, or so thought Black

Pearl, who had sold her up the river before.

"My name is Black Pearl," she said in turn, remembering the manners of her childhood, those ten or

twelve years in which she had been wholly human. But she stared at the young man levelly, being as

ready to assume equality as he was. Mermaids were beyond, or beneath, the usual rules of social

intercourse, as their families of fisherfolk were not.

She saw the young magician's gaze pass, hungrily for a moment, across her breasts, and she made no

move to try to cover them with her hair. Mermaids had nothing to hide, very little to lose, and

little to fear in the way of rape. Or so Black Pearl thought. She was as far beyond fear as she

was beyond courtesy.

He looked away from her at last, and once more seated himself on his rock, this time settling

squarely, knees up, elbows outside knees, staring at the linked fingers of his two hands, on which

certain rings of power flashed in the sun.

"Let me speak to you plainly, Black Pearl," Cosmo said in a level voice, not looking directly at

her. "It was not the spirits of sunlight that I sought to call with my music today, or any

elemental of the river. I set out to call up a mermaid, and I have done so. But please believe

that my purpose was not to capture you or sell you."

There was a pause, long enough so that at last the mermaid felt compelled to ask: "Why, then?"

"It may be no accident that you, out of all the fishgirls in the Tungri, were the one my little

spell attracted. Oh, it's only a very little spell indeed. Quite gentle. You can break it at any

moment, if you wish. Plunge off that rock and swim away."

"I know that. I can feel my freedom. But I am still here."

"Good. Black Pearl" and here his dark eyes turned full upon her once again "are you happy to be a

mermaid? Or would you like to walk the land on two good legs once more?"

"That is a madman's question. What woman could ever be happy like this?" And the flatness of her

tailfins smacked at the water, with a violence worthy of some much larger creature.

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He looked a question at her.

Her anger quivered in her voice now. "Don't you understand? We lived on land, all of us, until we

were ten or twelve years old, not knowing that this was going to happen to us, but knowing that it

might. All because of some curse pronounced a hundred years ago, in that damned stupid feud

between your family and those others. And then one day, like a bad dream really coming true, the

curse struck me. And when that happens it is really the end of life. Because what is there for a

mermaid to live for? We can never be women. We can never walk, never be away from the smell of the

river and of fish. And in a few more years the curse strikes its final blow, and we die, and float

down the river like so many dead fish for the turtles to eat. Have you ever seen an old mermaid?

One who lived long enough to have gray hair?"

Halfway through this tirade the young man, Cosmo as he had named himself, had begun shaking his

head soberly. When Black Pearl was finished he said quietly: "I believe your answer. Believe me,

in turn, that I did not ask the question lightly."

"Why then do you ask it at all?"

"Because I think I may be able to help you."

"Help me how?"

"Help you to cease to be a mermaid." With a swirl of the short wizard's cape that hung from his

shoulders he stood up on the rock. "How willing and able are you to keep a secret?"

Before the day was over Black Pearl had learned from the young magician of the existence of a

grotto on Magicians' Island. In the island rather; it was a strange cave of a place carved out at

some time in the dim past for some purpose of magic or ritual that no one any longer understood or

believed in. A daring mermaid could reach this grotto easily by swimming underwater for only a few

meters, from an entrance almost un-findable amid the outer limestone rocks of the island's

upstream end, and emerging at last into a pool in the bottom of a roofed cave near the island's

center. Here on this island, as Cosmo said in welcoming her to the grotto, the influences were

favorable for good magic.

But mermaids as a rule kept clear of this small isle entirely, for there were certain frightening

things, creatures of magic, who dwelt here. Black Pearl became fully aware of those powers for the

first time only when, at the young magician's insistence, she was swimming through the tunnel.

When the powers came buzzing invisibly around her ears, considerable determination was required

for her to go on. Had she not already begun to believe Cosmo's promises to her, she would have

managed to turn around somehow no matter that the underwater tunnel was barely wide enough for her

to pass straight through and would have hurried back to the open river.

As it was, she clenched her teeth and swam on, meanwhile hearing and feeling the magic powers as

they swarmed about her head and body. They were small, no more intelligent than insects, and like

certain insects indifferent as to whether they moved in air or water.

But the tunnel was really very short, and the guardian powers did not sting, at least in the case

of this invited visitor. Black Pearl was intrigued by what she found at the inner end of the

tunnel. The small pool and its enclosing cave had rough walls of stone and appeared to be partly a

natural formation. Higher up there were a couple of ways into the cave for people who breathed

only air, and walked on land. Through those openings enough daylight was coming in now, on a

bright day, to make the place almost cheerful.

Still Cosmo had a small oil lamp burning, at least partly for magical purposes, as Black Pearl

supposed.

There was an easy, sloping ledge on each side of the little pool in which the tunnel terminated,

and at the magician's invitation Black Pearl sat on one of these flanges of rock. She and the

young magician talked for a while, and as the minutes passed she gradually came to feel at ease.

They discussed, among other things, her history. In general it was rare for any mermaid to come

back to this valley after having been sold away. Rare, but not unheard of. And in Black Pearl's

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case, at least, no complaining purchaser had so far come looking for her. That had been known to

happen in other cases in the past.

Cosmo expressed his own quiet outrage over the whole situation, his own quiet determination to

find a way by which the mermaid curse could be ended for good and all.

Only then, when the mermaid had begun to feel fully at ease with him, did Cosmo's magical tests

begin.

Words were chanted, incense was burned. By the power of the young wizard invisible forces were

gathered in the air of the grotto and then dispersed again. Black Pearl's tail remained firmly in

place, and she gave no sign of growing legs. The problem, said Cosmo, as he had expected from the

beginning, was proving to be a difficult one, and a single session of course was not enough to

develop a proper counterspell.

Again and again, on that day of their first meeting, before Black Pearl swam away through the

narrow tunnel, Cosmo pleaded and threatened and urged absolute secrecy upon her. He assured her

again and again that his magical investigations, her hope of ever being cured, depended entirely

upon that.

Black Pearl kept the secret until their next session on the following day. Even her friendship

with the mermaid Soft Ripple was not enough to induce her to talk about this, though she had the

impression that Soft Ripple sensed that something in her had changed, and was trying to puzzle out

what it was.

And on the following day, during Black Pearl's second visit to the secret grotto, in a pause for

rest, Cosmo said to her: "You are a strange girl, I think, even for a mermaid. Perhaps it is

because of the unhappy experience you had with that magician upstream."

"He was a much stronger magician than you are."

Cosmo did not appear to be upset by the comparison. "I don't doubt it. I know that there are some

whose powers exceed mine."

"But he was wicked, and I hated him from the start. And yes, I think that you are right, there has

always been something out of the ordinary about me."

"Why do you say that?"

The mermaid shrugged her ivory shoulders. "I don't think my parents were even surprised when I

became a mermaid. It happens only to about one of four girls, you know, in the villages. No one

knows in advance which girls the curse will strike, but I don't think anyone was surprised when it

struck me."

"I admit that I have been intrigued by you, since I first saw you." Suddenly the eyes of Cosmo

blazed, so that it seemed remarkable that his voice could remain steady. "Have you kept the secret

of our meetings? Even from the other mermaids who sometimes swim about with you?"

"I have kept our secret," she said softly.

"See that you do. We have already progressed too far, much too dangerously far, for the secret to

be revealed to anyone else."

Another day, another meeting.

Cosmo had been stroking with his fingers, making magical passes, across her shoulders and her

hair. Then suddenly he let her go. "The aura, the touch, of his powers I mean that one upstream

still clings about you."

Black Pearl shuddered slightly, through her whole body down to the tip of her scaly tail, as she

lay exposed on the flat ledge of rock. "Then cleanse me of it, if you can."

"I will. I will, as much as possible. But still..."

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"Still what?"

"I find it intriguing."

Her pink lips snarled at him. "You've said that before. His touch was evil!"

"Oh, I agree, his was an evil magic, to be sure. But now it is gone. Only the flavor, the aura,

the smell of it remains. Weak enough to be attractive. Like a pungent seasoning in food."

"If you can't wash it away, don't speak of it."

"Oh, I can wash some of it away at least. I am not totally incompetent, and there is much that I

can do. But let us thank all the gods that the power of that evil wizard is gone. And I am sure

that it was evil. I can sense the impression that it left on you as if you had been clamped

tightly in some great, iron fist."

"Sometimes I think that I can still feel the pressure of that fist around me."

"No, the power of it is gone. But what I would learn of it are the shaping, the ingredients, that

made it so powerful. So that my own magic, which is intended to do good, may be strengthened."

The mermaid, lying beside the little pool that was not much bigger than a bathtub, looked up at

him doubtfully.

Cosmo asked, almost pleading: "Does it seem to you that I am a bad man?"

Despite the feelings she had begun to have for the magician, it took Black Pearl a long time to

answer that. "No," she said at last.

"Then trust me. Will you trust me? It will be very hard for me to help you otherwise." * * *

It was during that same meeting, only their third magical session in the hidden grotto, that Cosmo

first slipped over Black Pearl's head the fine chain that held the amulet. She held it up before

her eyes and looked at it. The amulet was plain, almost crude, a little knot of glazed clay with

symbols on it.

Having put the little chain over her head, he hesitated. Then he said: "We are almost ready to

make a serious attempt now; still I fear you are not ready." But even as he spoke his great dark

eyes were glowing their message of compassion, of love, into her eyes, into her heart.

Cosmo moved a little closer, and with his right hand he brushed back Black Pearl's long, black

hair so that he could see more clearly into her eyes. Again he repeated another warning he had

already given her several times.

It was this: that the cure, even if against all odds it could be achieved this early in the course

of treatment, could be no more than temporary at first.

"However successful we are at this stage, you will revert to being a mermaid again, in less than a

quarter of an hour quite possibly much less. Such a temporary alleviation of the curse would be a

first step only. But it would also be proof that eventually other steps are going to be possible.

Strong evidence that in time we will find a way to cure you completely, permanently. You and all

the mermaid sisterhood."

The mermaid nodded.

His hand took her hand as she lay floating in the shallow water. And then, as he muttered

incantations, his fingers began to stroke her hand, her arm, her shoulder.

And it was during that very treatment, what Cosmo had said would be the first serious attempt,

that the miracle occurred for the first time.

Black Pearl's body, already awakened sensually by the magician's caresses even before the change

he wrought had come fully upon it her body found itself suddenly, entirely human. Completely and

wholly that of a woman. Utterly female.

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And Cosmo, responding to her sobs of joy with certain rather similiar sounds of his own, was right

at her side when the change came. Right there to draw Black Pearl from the water, cradling her two

lithe, gently kicking legs in his left arm, his right arm under her shoulders. There to swing her

round with a swift motion of strong arms to the soft bed only two meters distant, where, as he

said, he sometimes slept.

A quarter of an hour later, when the expected return change overtook Black Pearl, her new lover,

despite all of his cautions that such a relapse was bound to happen, looked disappointed. But not

for long. And she, absorbed in her new happiness, accepted the situation, too.

The sessions of magic, lovemaking, and magic again, went on. There were many such sessions, one

every few days, extending over several months. Sometimes the periods of two-legged normalcy were a

little prolonged once almost to half an hour but still the final, permanent cure eluded the

researcher and his patient lover.

Each time Black Pearl swam into the grotto to meet him, Cosmo questioned her sternly as to whether

she was continuing to keep their secret.

"We are not so deeply into this that everything your own fate as well as mine-depends upon your

sharing the knowledge of what we do with no one. If you fail, the powers of magic will, I fear,

doom you forever to keep your mermaid shape. Indeed I have no wish to frighten you, my darling,

but I must say this they might warp you into something truly hideous."

So Black Pearl continued to keep the secret faithfully.

She would have done anything, that the burning joy of her meetings with her lover might be made

permanent.

Autumn was yielding to the onset of this land's brief winter when a night came that changed

everyone's life. A riverboat, whose origin Black Pearl was never to discover, came plunging down

the Tungri from upstream, hurtling through the series of rapids and cascades known as the Second

Cataract. The passage was extremely difficult even in bright daylight, even for an experienced

crew. In wind and rain and clouds and fading daylight, the crew of this ship probably never had a

chance. The bits and pieces of their upriver craft that later washed ashore were of no familiar

make.

The riverboat might well have been in precipitous flight from someone or something. In any case it

failed to make the passage, which only experienced boatmen who were favored by a measure of luck

could ever hope to complete successfully. The craft was knocked to pieces upon the rocks within

the gorge, with the loss of all hands so far as could be told.

Most of the inhabitants of the valley, the many who lived on land and the few who dwelt in water,

were not aware of the wreck until hours or days later. Black Pearl, because she had just left a

secret rendezvous on Magicians' Island, happened to be first to reach the scene of the disaster.

And so it was she who discovered Farslayer, one of the Twelve Swords of power and legend, lying

undamaged and uncorroded on the river bottom, where the smashing of the boat had dropped it, among

the deep cold boiling wells of current just below the cataract. Only a mermaid or a dolphin could

have reached it swimming.

Whenever a wreck similar to this one occurred, which was not often, the mermaids as a rule came

swarming round, trying to help the injured and save the drowning if they could, trying also to see

what treasure and trinkets they might be able to salvage from the victims' cargo.

But here were no survivors or victims, living or dead, immediately visible. When Black Pearl first

saw the Sword lying in the twilight of the river bottom, her first thought was for almost-

forgotten Zoltan, because this impressive weapon so closely resembled one she'd seen him wear.

She'd seen him use it too in her defense.

Much additional memory that had been almost lost came rushing back. If Zoltan had indeed been in

the wrecked boat, she'd save him if she could.

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Swimming and looking amid the watery thunder at the bottom of the falls, Black Pearl searched as

only a mermaid could. She did indeed find one dead body, caught on the rocks nearby, but to her

relief it was not Zoltan's. One other man, who was still breathing when she found him, died even

as Black Pearl was trying to decide how best to carry him to shore, died without saying a word in

answer to her questions.

No other survivors or casualties were discoverable at the site of the wreck. The mermaid thought

to herself that there was no point in searching anymore, trying to look downriver for Zoltan;

bodies and wreckage would be scattered for kilometers downstream already, and scattering farther

every moment. Not even a mermaid would be able to find a single man, especially with nightfall

coming on.

Black Pearl gave up thoughts of rescue, and dove back to the Sword, which lay just where she had

seen it last. There was barely enough daylight still penetrating the depths to let her mermaid's

vision find it once again.

When she had brought the marvelous weapon to the surface, she could see that it was not, after

all, the same Sword that Zoltan had carried. His, as she remembered, had borne the symbol of a

small white dragon on its black hilt, where this one showed instead the concentric rings of a

small white target.

The young mermaid knew only a few fragments of the history of the Twelve Swords of Power. But she

could see that this Sword, whatever its true nature, must be quite valuable.

Zoltan dropped from her mind. Black Pearl's next thought on having discovered this treasure was to

take it straight to the man she loved.

Cosmo would know what to do with her find. And if there were any benefits to be had from it,

Cosmo, her true love, would see that those benefits were shared with her.

Fortunately for her plan Cosmo had not yet left the grotto on Magicians' Island; there was some

magical tidying-up that had had to be attended to. He was surprised to see Black Pearl back so

soon, and more than surprised to see what she was carrying.

Balancing the naked Sword thoughtfully and carefully in both his hands all magic aside, those

edges, as he had already proved, were ready to cut tough leather as easily as water lilies he

agreed with her that it was probably hopeless to seek any further for survivors of the wreck

tonight; tomorrow he would see to it that a party of fishermen went out from the villages on the

Malolo side, to see if any might have been washed ashore alive.

But his attention had never really left the Sword. "No, Pearl, I have never seen its like before."

He held the weapon in his hands up higher, the better to catch the light of his little lamp, and

marveled at it. "But yes, I know what it is. Once there were eleven others like it in the world,

and still there are probably nine."

"But what is it? Magic, surely."

"What is this one specifically? Magic such as you and I are never likely to see again. This one is

Farslayer, as I can tell from the symbol on the hilt. Farslayer kills, at any distance and with

absolute certainty. Hold it in your hands, and chant the name of your enemy, and swing the weapon

round, and let it go and lo! The Sword is gone to find your enemy, and he is dead. Even that evil

one who once held you bound would not be able to stand against one of these. No power on earth

could save him, I think except perhaps one of the other Swords."

Black Pearl's eyes were wide with wonder. "What are you going to do with it, then?"

"Put it away in a place of safety, for now. Then I must think." And the magician opened a small

locker or safe, cut right into the stone beside their couch, a safe that Black Pearl had never

known was there. And Cosmo put the Sword in there, and with a word of sealing magic closed it up.

He frowned down at her as she lay in the water. "Not a word to anyone else, of course. Now there

are two secrets you must keep, and this one is every bit or almost as big as the first."

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"Of course. Not a word to anyone." And joyously she saw in Cosmo's eyes renewed evidence that she

was trusted by him.

Then another thought occurred to the mermaid. "When I was swimming back here just now, I thought I

saw another boat, smaller than yours, coming toward the island."

"Oh? And from which shore?"

"The north."

"That probably means Senones. Don't worry. Even if they should dare to touch shore here, I've made

this ground my home, and I can make myself invisible to enemies whilst I am on it."

"Are you sure?" The Senones clan and that to which Cosmo belonged were ancient enemies.

"I'm sure. And now, besides, I have the Sword for my defense." He smiled. "The wonderful Sword

that you have brought me, and for which I am very grateful. And you must be very tired. Go and

rest on the other island. Or back to the wreck and look for other trinkets if you like." He seemed

very loving and very confident. He added at last: "I love you, Pearl."

Black Pearl, delighted to the depths of her heart that she had been able to bring her lover such a

prize, plunged obediently into the narrow tunnel and swam away.

Chapter ONE

HEAVY wind filled the bleak and rugged gorge of the Tungri, dragging heavy clouds through dark

night. The short winter of this land was not yet over, and the freezing rain that had been falling

at sundown had turned to snow some hours ago. The hermit Gelimer was snug under blankets and skins

in his lonely bed, and when the half-intelligent watchbeast came to wake him he turned over with a

faint groan and tried to pull the furs up over his head. Even before the hermit was fully awake,

he knew what an awakening at this hour of such a night implied.

But of course Gelimer's conscience would not have allowed him to go back to sleep when he was

needed on such a night, even had the anxious beast allowed it. Three breaths after he had tried to

pull the covers up, the man was sitting on the edge of his simple cot, groping for the boots that

ought to be just under the foot end.

He had both of his eyes open now. "All right, what is it, Geelong?"

The speechless animal, with melting sleet dripping from its fur, moved on four feet toward the

single door of the one-room house, and back again. Its movement and the whole shape of its body

suggested something between a large dog and a miniature bear. Geelong's front paws, capable of

clumsy gripping, came up in the air as the beast sat back on its haunches, and spread their digits

as much as possible in the sign that the watchbeast usually employed to mean "man."

"All right, all right. I'm coming. So be it. I'm on my way."

The animal whined as if to urge the man to greater speed.

As soon as his boots were on, Gelimer rose from his cot, a strongly built man of middle size and

middle age. Only a fringe of once-luxuriant dark hair remained around a pate of shiny baldness.

His bearded face in the fading firelight of his hut was shedding the last traces of sleep, putting

on a look of innocent determination. "Ardneh willing, I'm on my way." Now the hermit was groping

his way into his outer garments, and then his heavy coat.

He hooked a stubby battle hatchet to his belt there were dangerous beasts to be encountered on the

mountainside sometimes and grabbed up the backpack, kept always in readiness, filled with items

likely to be useful in the rescuing of stranded travelers.

Then, before Gelimer went out the door, he paused momentarily to build up the fire. Warmth and

light were both likely to be needed when he got back.

The small house from which Gelimer presently emerged, with torch in hand, had been carved out of

the interior of the stump of an enormous tree, easily five meters in diameter at head height above

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