The Destiny of the Sword (10 page)

Whose side was he on?

His mission, obviously, was to drive the sorcerers back into the hills and restore the rule of swordsmen in the seven cities. Now mat he knew what it was, he also knew why his divine master, the demigod, had been so chary of defining it. What would Wallie have replied, on that day when he received the sword, had he been told: “Go forth, Shonsu, and make the World safe for barbarism!”?

Whose side was he on?

A whisper: “My lord?” It was Honakura, frail as a dry leaf hi the forest darkness.

“Go away!” Wallie said harshly. “I want none of your priestly dissertations tonight.” “But, my lord—“

“None!” Wallie shouted. “Yes, I know all the standard palliatives. You can soothe all hurts and calm all misgivings and have me laughing and giggling inside ten minutes. I must not judge the gods, you will tell me. I do not know all the story, you will say. The boy may have a brother who will make a better king than he, we may surmise. He may be rewarded in another life, very likely. Stock phrases, old man, threadbare promises! Just the old excuses that men make for gods.”

He should have known that he could not scare Honakura away. The little priest merely stood there with his head bowed until Wallie ran dry like a water clock. “It was my fault, my lord.”

“Yours?” Wallie gaped. Then: “No! It was mine. Do you know why it happened, old man?” He dropped his voice to a hiss, remembering in time that mere were portholes below him and there would be many folk not sleeping well this night on Sapphire. “It happened because your precious gods wanted Nnanji to have a hairclip!” “I know.”

“A silver hairclip, very old. It belonged to the great Arganari. Nnanji will love it! I can’t think of anything in the World that would please him more, A generous wedding gift for a loyal... you knew?”

“Pardon, my lord,” Honakura said, “I must sit...” He tottered over to the helmsman’s bench. Wallie followed with suspicion, wondering if this was some ploy for sympathy. But the old man had been unusually subdued these last few days. Sparing a thought for something other than his own troubles, he now realized that Honakura had seemed very gray and shrunken lately, more so even than normal. He was incredibly old, of course, and this was not his former serene life of pampered luxury.

The priest settled on the bench, an indistinct hump in the darkness. Wallie stood before him, keeping a wary eye on the River beyond.

“My fault, my lord,” he wheezed. ‘The god said that you

could trust me... but I did not trust you, you see.”

Obviously! Wallie waited.

“I have known many swordsmen, my lord. So I did not trust you. You remember the curse?”

“What curse?”

Honakura coughed as if coughing hurt. “When you first met Adept Nnanji—Apprentice Nnanji, then. He could not fight his way across an empty courtyard, you said.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Why, my lord? Did you ever wonder why the gods had laid a curse on him?”

Wallie believed that Nnanji had laid that curse on himself, a mental block caused by his ambivalent feelings toward the corrupt swordsmen of the temple guard—but this was no time to start discussing Freudian psychology. “Why?”

Another racking cough. “He would have been a threat, my lord.”

Wallie tried to imagine the young Nnanji without that impediment. He would have shot up the ranks of the guard like a cat up a pole, even with the inferior instruction, a swan among the ducks. And Nnanji was incorruptible.

Tami?” he said.

“And Lord Hardduju,” the old man agreed in a whisper. “They would have killed him. So the Goddess protected the only honest swordsman in Her guard, by hiding his talent. Seniors can impede good juniors. I have seen it happen, my lord, many times. In the case of swordsmen, the impediment may be permanent... I did not trust you.”

“Nnanji?” Wallie scoffed. “Nnanji a threat to me? But we are oath brothers now! He would not hurt a hair on my head. He was willing to throw his life away to avenge me... You thought that I was frightened of Nnanji?”

The fog was moving in thicker around the ship and over the deck. Honakura rasped another hah cough.

“Nnanji is no threat,” WalUe said. “He fancies himself as a fj” Sixth, but he isn’t there yet. Another couple of years and he’ll be ,.;• •,* Seventh and a damned good one. But not yet—and I’m not V, worried about Nnanji anyway. Not my oath brother!”

“Not worried, my lord, no,” the old man persisted. “But I thought you might become jealous. That was why I would not tell you the tale of Ikondorina’s red,haired brother. I only thought you might be envious.”

So he was going to tell it at last, was he? “You saw the hairclip?” Honakura asked. “Yes, I saw it.”

Again the old man coughed. ‘ have not. But t had asked Adept Nnanji to recount the meeting in Tau, my lord, when Master Polini came aboard—like you, I thought it strange. Of course he gave me every word, and I heard of die hairclip.” “A stiver griffon,” Wallie said beginning to understand. “The royal symbol,” Honakura agreed hoarsely. “Nnanji a king?”

Wallie’s mind reeled. Of course, Nnanji was still so young. It was hard to imagine him five or ten years hence.

“I believe so, my lord. I don’t think the prophecy has anything to do with your quest. I mink it happens afterward. That was what I hinted to Apprentice Thana today—that Nnanji is too good to remain a free sword. The Goddess will have greater plans for him. The clip was a message to Thana, not to you.”

Now Wallie understood the old man’s machinations. But Nnanji as a king would take a lot of thought. He was conceivable as a revolutionary, perhaps, but not as a ruler. Like a dog chasing a car—good sport, but what did he do when he caught it? It was not hard to see Thana as Lady Macbeth, though, urging him on.

Wallie joined Honakura on the bench. The fog had thickened until the water around the ship was invisible and even the old man was hard to distinguish. All mat guards could do in this weather was listen. There would be two of them on the main deck and another up on the fo’c’sle, standing in silence. Even to pace up and down would make noise—better to remain still and let possible marauders float by, unaware of a juicy prey lying in the gloom.

“So tell me the prophecy,” Wallie said quietly. “If you wish, my lord,” the old man croaked. “But it is even more trivial than the other, it does not even thyme,”

Ikondorina’s red,haired brother came to him and said, Brother you have wondrous skill with a sword; teach me, mat like you I may wrest a kingdom. And he said, I will. So Dcondorina taught, and his brother learned, and then Dcondorina said, I can teach you no more, now go and find your kingdom; and his brother did so, and his realm was more vast and much greater.

Indeed?

“Had I told you sooner,” Honakura whispered, “then you would have recognized the significance of the clip when it was first offered...”

Sutras could be long or short, complex or simple, banal or inscrutably devious. They could contain epitome, episode, and epigram, or any combination of those. But Wallie had never met one quite so puerile as that. A nasty worm of suspicion began wriggling around inside his mind.

“That is all?” he demanded.

“That is all,” the old man wheezed.

“You swear that?”

After a pause, Honakura asked, “What oath will you have me swear, my lord?”

And Wallie’s suspicions collapsed in a heap of guilt. Every craft had its oath, except the priesthood. A priest must never lie, not ever. For a priest even to compliment the chef was perjury, if the meal was bad. Honakura was as devious as a waltzing snake, but he would never tell an outright falsehood. Hastily Wallie begged forgiveness for his doubts.

King Nnanji? Obviously the old man had been correct. This / was Nnanji’s destiny, after the tryst, after the sorcerers. It had nothing to do with Wallie at all.

He discovered that he was relieved to know that—and so he had been worried! That was perhaps why he had been so relentlessly chewing at his other troubles: He had been keeping his v mind off Nnanji and his griffon hairclip.

Then Honakura began to cough again, and Wallie’s conscience / sank its teeth into him. It was unkind and very foolish to keep the “;’_ old man there in that cold dampness.

“Come, my reverend friend,” he whispered when the attack had passed. “I shall guide you down the steps. This weather is not for you.”

The fog was thicker now.

Wallie saw Honakura safely to his cabin and returned to his post. When Holiyi came to relieve him, he fulfilled his promise to Jja and went to her.

She was awake and waiting for him. They made love to celebrate her good news, and Jja, who had great skill in such matters, made sure that it was a long and very strenuous session of love,making, rousing her owner to innumerable peaks of passion and superhuman accomplishments of joy, finally wearing him out so thoroughly that he slept, when he had not expected to.

In the next cabin but two, Adept Nnanji had consummated his marriage with dispatch, expertise, encores, and vast satisfaction. He slept, also, while his young bride lay awake at his side, pondering their future.

Three cabins farther aft lay Novice Katanji, in Hana’s bed, where he had no right to be, dreaming of Mei, whom he had visited earlier.

While in yet another cabin, Honakura, priest of the seventh rank, spent the rest of the night on his bony knees, weeping softly and begging his Goddess for forgiveness.

And in the morning the fog had lifted, and Sapphire was anchored about seven lengths offshore, at Casr.

The virtuous Hull, priestess of the third rank, came striding along the riverfront at Casr with the hem of her brown robe swirling around her ankles and dark thoughts churning over in her mind. The sun was warm, but the wind tugged and jostled at her, throwing dust in her eyes so that she hardly knew whether her tears came from the dust, or from anger and frustration.

The city had become a madhouse, an asylum for the criminally insane. There were no bars to restrain the inmates, and more of them were arriving every day. She passed a fruit seller’s barrow on one side as two young swordsmen strutted by on die other, openly helping themselves to apples as they went. Not only did they not consider paying, they did not have the grace to thank the owner or even send him a nod of acknowledgment. So far as those two louts were concerned, the poor man did not exist—and he likely with eight or nine children at home to feed.

Swordsmen! She ground her teeth. She still had all her teeth.

Swordsmen in sixes. Swordsmen in dozens. They postured and they marched, they bullied and they lechered. She dodged angrily as a sword whistled—a Fifth leading ten men was saluting a Sixth with five. No one was safe anymore!

Daily the victims appealed to the temple—men mutilated or beaten, girls ravished, householders impoverished and driven out. The priests could give them little but solace. Daily, Priestess Huli gave thanks to the Holiest mat, being a woman of the cloth,

she was sacrosanct and safe from molestation. Of course those young debauchers normally preyed on less mature women than she, so that was another protection.

The tryst had turned the city sideways. Even her own humble existence... she had been giving very serious thought to accepting a proposal of marriage—from Jinjino of the Fourth, a most respected draper, a dignified and prosperous widower, father of three children who dearly needed a loving mother to teach them some manners. She had almost decided to accept. He had made most solemn promises that his demands on her person would be moderate and discreet. And now he had fled town, taking his children with him. That was something of a disappointment. The eldest was only twelve and even these sword,waving boors did not descend to that.

She scowled at the sight of three swordsmen encircling a young female, leering and bantering. Lewd humor, no doubt! She wondered if she could find the courage to intervene. They were only juvenile Seconds, but they were very large, rough,looking types. She paused in her progress, irresolute. Then she noticed with horror that the woman was obviously enjoying the attention —wanton! Huli continued on her way, frowning in disgust.

The wide plaza was always busy, but it was so vast that in ordinary times it could handle its traffic easily and still seem comparatively peaceful. On a normal day there might be a dozen ships tied up along the front, loading and unloading. Now there must be fifty, an almost continuous line of them, and the crowds swarmed everywhere. It was not only swordsmen who had invaded Casr, but their followers, also, from babes in arms to whores and cutthroats. Madhouse!

The problem was in knowing who to blame. The most holy Lord Kadywinsi, high priest of Casr, was the obvious culprit, but she could hardly bring herself to pass judgment on a man so revered and venerable, even if he was, just perhaps, maybe, a tiny bit... senile? Be charitable, she told herself as she detoured around a wagon to avoid a group of pedestrian,baiting young swordsmen, the holy lord is not the man he was when you were a novice, but he is still worthy of your respect.

A blue ship, she had been told, by the double statue. There was a small blue ship visible in the distance now.