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

with at least one, and perhaps more, of the ten surviving Swords at stake, he was certainly not about to take any chances.

      One thing that the Ancient One did secretly fear intensely, without trying to deceive himself about the fact, was Farslayer. Though he betrayed no sign of this externally, in his imagination he could feel the great cold of that steel as it slid between his ribs, or split his breastbone.

      But the Sword of Vengeance had evidently gone to finish Dactylartha.

      Wood actually did not know where that demon’s life had been hidden, except that he thought it had been at a reassuringly great distance. Well, there was nothing to be done about that problem just now.

      But Tigris. … If she was indeed now armed with the Sword of Wisdom, she would be very dangerous. He could not afford to put off action for a moment.

* * *

      As night fell, and the stars came out above her speeding griffin, Tigris, still mounted in the saddle with her prisoner Valdemar huddled beside her in his basket, felt increasingly certain that her treachery must now be known to Wood. She knew a foretaste of the terrible punishment that it would no longer be possible to avoid.

      Her worst fears were coming true. In an abyss of terror, feeling her mental defenses crumbling, Tigris realized that nothing could keep her Master from trying to wreak terrible vengeance upon her.

      Valdemar stared at his companion helplessly. He could see by Tigris’s behavior that she thought something terrible was happening or about to happen to her, and he was afraid of what this would mean to him.

      At this point Tigris in her panic redoubled the urgency of her demands on Wayfinder. She stormed and pleaded with the Sword, that it must show her a way to escape.

      “Help me! Save me!”

      The Sword still pointed straight ahead, along the griffin’s rippling neck.

      Then, staring hollow-eyed at the Sword, the blond sorceress almost despaired. “Or is it,” she whispered, “that even the gods’ weapons cannot help me? That you can only guide me straight back to him—that he is too strong—even for you?”

      A moment later, with her passenger watching and listening in frozen horror, the terrified young woman was retracting that statement, fearful that she had offended the mighty powers ruling Wayfinder.

      Valdemar, hesitant to speak, gaped at his companion. In this raging, cursing, pleading woman there remained no visible trace of a figure he thought he had once glimpsed, a wistful girl who had once paused to listen to a robin sing.

      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