The Seventh Book of Lost Swords : Wayfinder's Story Fred Saberhagen (phonics books txt) 📖

I suppose? Well, what do you expect me to do with him next? Sacrifice him, eat him alive, lie with him? You will have to give me some further sign.”

      The Sword, of course, was not to be commanded thus, and it said nothing in reply. It still pointed where it had been pointing—straight at Valdemar—and that was all.

      Valdemar cleared his throat. “I have noticed, that this Sword’s way of conveying meaning can sometimes be rather hard to interpret.” Though his voice was calm enough, he could feel how his ears had reddened, oh so foolishly, with the echoing in them of those three words: Lie with him. Odd, that now, with his very life at stake, he should be so affected by that suggestion.

* * *

      Tigris did not notice Valdemar’s reaction. She cared nothing for her captive’s ears, or for his whole head, come to that. Her trained senses, contemplating the Sword whose hilt she gripped so hard in both her hands, could perceive the intricate knots of magic interpenetrating the hard steel, strands invisible to ordinary vision, stretching forth and fading away in all directions, becoming lost in bewildering complexities of power… Even she, long accustomed to the tremendous capabilities of Wood, was awfully impressed by this, forced to an attitude that had in it much of reverence.

      And this enigmatic Sword, each time she questioned it, only kept reinforcing the importance of her captive, this otherwise inconsequential youth who called himself Valdemar.

      Letting Wayfinder’s point sag to the ground, looking keenly at the bold and ignorant fellow, Tigris was totally convinced that there must be something more to him than he admitted. Whether he himself realized what his peculiarity was or not.

      Haughtily she insisted: “Who are you, fellow? What are you holding back? I must somehow determine your importance to me.”

      The giant shrugged. “I have told you my name, and who I am. Tell me who you are. Perhaps a meaningful connection can be established. Maybe I have heard of you.”

      “You have a kind of serene insolence about you, unusual in a peasant. Very well. My name is Tigris.”

      That much he had already heard. He blinked rain from his eyes. “The name means nothing to me. I don’t suppose you are from Tasavalta?”

      “I am not—are you?”

      “No, I have never been near the place.”

      “And have you,” Tigris asked her captive, “any connection with Prince Mark of that land?”

      Valdemar answered as usual with the truth: no, he had never seen Prince Mark, and knew very little about him. He volunteered no information about having made contact recently with Prince Mark’s friends.

      Tigris next asked him if he knew anything of a magician called Wood. “He has other names as well.”

      “I have heard,” said Valdemar, “that that one is a powerful and evil man.”

      Tigris muttered under her breath: “This is getting me nowhere.” She tried another tack in her interrogation. “When I arrived, you were a prisoner of the Blue Temple.”

      “Yes ma’am, I certainly did spend an uncomfortable hour or two in that condition. It seemed like days. I thank you for putting an end to that. I believe they would have killed me.”

      “How polite he is. That’s good. Yes, certainly the late Hyrcanus and his associates would have killed you, if they thought there was any profit to be made that way—making your hide into parchment perhaps—but they did not. What did they actually want of you?”

      “Actually it was only the Sword Wayfinder they wanted. And when they got it, they were so busy worrying about what to do with it that they never got around to wanting anything much from me … except to ask me where I had got Wayfinder, and from whom.”

      “And what did you tell them?”

      “Lady—Lady Tigris—I could give them only the same poor answers I have given you.”

* * *

      With every heartbeat of time that fled, she could feel her brief allotment of opportunity rapidly running out. Every moment Tigris spent asking questions, puzzling over the answers, and yearning to rend this poor fool to bloody ribbons with her nails, the inevitable end was drawing steadily nearer. Her end would come when Wood learned that she had taken the Sword of Wisdom, and was keeping the discovery from him. At that moment her gamble for freedom would turn out to have been a catastrophic blunder.

      Valdemar, in the moments when her attention faltered, had begun to tell her the story of his life. The existence of a grape-grower sounded extremely dull.

      Still she forced herself to listen patiently, hoping to gain the clue she needed, even though the timekeeper in her head was running, as regularly as her speeding pulse.

      Now the first real suspicion has been born in his mind. Now he is considering sending out a demon to check up on me…

      “Cease babbling about grapes!” she shrieked at her captive. “Why are you here? Why were you in the camp of Hyrcanus?”

      Valdemar, with an effort maintaining his own calm, revealed to his questioner his purpose in setting out on the journey which had brought him first in contact with the Silver Queen, and then afoul of the Blue Temple.

      He did not say anything to Tigris about the Sword of Healing, and she did not raise the subject.

      All this seemed to Tigris to be bringing her no closer to understanding what she ought to do next. It was maddening to think that the Sword on which she had abruptly decided to risk her life was giving her the answer she had to have, but she was unable to interpret it. Her anger flared at this babbling fool of a peasant, at the Sword, at the whole world and her life in it. And then her rage began to settle, to congeal into a deadly calm that tasted bitterly of despair.

      She said: “All very fine … for a grower of grapes. But I don’t see how any of that helps me.” She raised the Sword of Wisdom again, glaring at it. “All right! Powers of the Sword,