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

Valdemar were airborne, Wayfinder aimed them back eastward, in approximately the same direction from which they had come. Tigris accepted the command without comment.

* * *

      Once more they went hurtling above the clouds. Their speed soon filled Valdemar with awe by bringing on a premature sunset behind them. Both of the griffin’s passengers drew the obvious conclusion from their direction: that Wayfinder was guiding them back to somewhere near—perhaps very near—their original point of departure, at the overrun Blue Temple camp.

      Tigris said little as they flew. Her thoughts were dominated by the notion that the pair were getting closer to Wood with every passing moment.

      Once her companion was able to hear her questioning herself, or fate: “Am I to go to him, try to lie to him, defend my actions? That cannot be! As well plead with him for mercy.”

      The young man, despite his own desperate situation, felt a stirring of something like sympathy.

      The enchantress muttered several somewhat amended forms of her wish for survival and for freedom, asking the Sword for some means of protection against the Ancient One, rather than the ability to destroy him.

      “Sword, save me from him! Save me, somehow!”

      From the very beginning of her contemplated escape, Tigris had been aware of the extreme danger involved in defying a wizard as powerful as the Ancient One. And Tigris knew, far better than most people, how powerful he was.

      Even so, she now feared that she had almost certainly underestimated the truth.

      “What am I to do?” she breathed. She was looking at Valdemar as she spoke, though perhaps not really seeing him.

      He glared at her sourly. “Do you now want my willing cooperation?”

      The sorceress snarled back, “From the first moment I saw you, I have suspected that you could not be as innocent as you appeared. Very well, if you have any revelations that you have been holding in reserve, let’s have them now.

      “Or else,” she continued a moment later, speaking now as if Valdemar were not there, as if she were talking to her griffin, “some other power may be cleverly using this peasant as a catspaw.” Suddenly she faced her prisoner again. “What say you to that, grape-grower?”

      He shook his head, as calmly as he could. “Why is it necessary for me to be something other than what I am?”

      The eyes of Tigris, filled with pain and fear, seemed to be boring into him. “When one has lived with Master Wood for any length of time, as I have, nothing can any longer be considered simply what it is. It is necessary to approach every question in those terms.”

      “Why did you choose to serve him, then?”

      This, it appeared, was an unanswerable question. Tigris faced forward again, and the griffin flew on, magically tireless. Valdemar wondered if it would ever have to stop and rest, or feed.

* * *

      When Tigris’s attack had fallen on the Blue Temple encampment, Sergeant Brod had been close enough to observe the results, and to be shaken by the experience. But by good fortune he had also been distant enough to survive, unnoticed by the attackers.

      In Brod’s estimation, the new conqueror, even if she did appear to be hardly more than a girl, was obviously powerful enough to be a worthy patron. He wanted to attach himself to her somehow, if that were possible without taking too much risk.

      Torn between fear and ambition, the Sarge considered approaching the camp, and representing himself to its new masters as a victim of the Blue Temple. But soon caution prevailed; there were events in progress here that he could not begin to understand. Later, perhaps, when he had learned more. For the time being he decided to sneak away instead.

* * *

      Ben, hiking industriously toward home, warily scanning the skies ahead, was just saying that, in his opinion, they might be going to get away with Woundhealer after all. At that instant he heard Zoltan scream behind him.

      Spinning round, Ben was almost knocked off his feet by a swooping griffin. The thing must have come down at them from behind, and was now rapidly gaining altitude again with both Zoltan and the Sword of Mercy in its claws. While Ben stared, open-mouthed and helpless, the great beast swung round in the air, and rapidly departed in the direction of the Blue Temple camp.

      On the ground Ben ran hopelessly, shouting curses, after the rapidly receding griffin. “Drop the Sword!” he screamed at his hapless comrade. “Drop—”

      But Zoltan either could not hear him, or was powerless to obey.

* * *

      Meanwhile, the Ancient One’s most malignant suspicions of Tigris were in the process of being inflamed by a whispered report from a certain lesser, junior demon. This creature had just arrived at Wood’s headquarters with the report that Dactylartha had been slain.

      And even that was not the worst news: To the surprise of the attackers, the Sword of Wisdom had been in the Blue Temple camp—and Tigris had seized that mighty weapon for herself, and taken it away with her.

      Wood, seated now on a plain chair in a small room near his laboratory, did not move a muscle. He said quietly: “She sent me no report of any such discovery.”

      The bearer of bad news offered no comment on that fact.

      “Her official report,” the great magician continued, “was very vague. Something about ‘great success’—and that was all. I suppose there is no doubt of any of these disquieting things you tell me?”

      The creature made no attempt to conceal its unholy glee. “Absolutely none, my Master! And—no doubt of this fact either, great lord!—Dactylartha was slain by Tigris herself!”

      “So.”

      “With the Sword of Vengeance!”

      Wood sat listening carefully to the few additional details that he was told. His eyes were closed, his face a mask. He tended to believe the allegations against Tigris. Yet he could not be absolutely sure that his most favored aide has in fact turned traitor—this report might be a mistake or a lie, the result of some in-house intrigue.

      But