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

      “Woundhealer? Where is it?”

      “I don’t know. It was with me for a while, before I met you—or rather I was with some people who were carrying that Sword. But where it is now … just help me put on a bandage again. My fingers will be all right, and we face bigger problems than a couple of little wounds.”

      The bandaging went more easily this time, perhaps because Delia was less afraid of hurting him.

      As she tied the last knot, Val said regretfully: “Better get dressed. We must be moving on.”

* * *

      The griffin appeared to be through feeding, for the time being anyway. But Val’s renewed questioning of the Sword, with safety as his goal, this time elicited no clear indication from Wayfinder.

      Valdemar, strolling about with his arm around Delia, bending now and then to kiss her, kept trying to picture her as his wife, working beside him in the vineyard. Yesterday such a vision would have seemed impossible. Now it was much clearer.

      He began to talk to her about his vines and grapes, and about the good wine that could be made from them in a year or two when the plants were fully matured.

      Delia, listening to Val’s description of his work, and his plans for the future, saw nothing frightening or unpleasant in the prospect. In fact she found herself quite pleased.

      His description of the vineyard stumbled to a halt. “Does this suit you, then?” he asked.

      “Yes,” she told him simply. “All I want now, Val, is to stay with you.”

      “Oh. Oh, my dear. Delia.”

* * *

      When the pair of them were busy gathering what food they could, foraging to augment the supplies still remaining from the griffin’s fast-diminishing store, she demonstrated a definite magical affinity for growing things—making thorny vines bend to and fro, to yield her their juicy berries without pricking her reaching hands and arms.

      “I foresee a great future for you in the country, little woman.”

      “I keep telling you, I have always lived on a farm.”

      “And do your parents live there still?”

      “I’m not sure.” A shadow crossed the young woman’s face. “I don’t want to think about them.”

      “Then don’t.”

* * * * * *

      Once more Delia, at a moment when her companion was inattentive, got her small hands—hands no longer as pale and soft as they had been—on the weapon of the gods. In simple words she whispered a new question to the Sword of Wisdom, asking it to guide them to the Sword called Woundhealer, so that her lover’s cut fingers could be healed.

      Yet again they mounted the griffin. Valdemar, thinking that his own most recent query was the one to which the Sword was now actively responding, gave the beast commands. Quickly they were airborne.

      They had not flown far before the young man noticed that a flying reptile was following them. He could not be sure whether it was actually trying to catch up with them or not, but the griffin was flying so slowly that that seemed a possibility.

      Grimly Valdemar urged their mount to greater speed. The nightmare head turned on the long neck. The eyes, seeming to glow with their own fire, looked straight at him. But the griffin ignored the command.

      “Faster, I said!” Val waved the Sword, as if threatening the beast with it. The threat was a bluff, and it proved a serious mistake.

      With a move that appeared deliberate for all its speed, the beast reached up, with an impossible-looking extension of one of its almost leonine hind legs. The blow from the great claws caught Wayfinder cunningly, knocking the Sword of Wisdom neatly out of Valdemar’s hand.

      Val uttered a hoarse cry of surprise and dismay. There was no use trying to grab for the Sword, it was already gone. In the next moment he saw the pursuing reptile catch the falling treasure in mid-flight, and with the gleaming blade between serrated teeth, go wheeling away on swift wings, carrying the prize.

      At the moment of the Sword’s fall, as if a successful and unpunished act of rebellion had given it courage, the griffin became totally unmanageable.

      Skimming low over forest and wasteland, it launched into a series of acrobatic moves, as if determined to dislodge at once its two uncongenial masters from its back. Val and Delia hung on all but helpless, shouting at the creature and at each other. Sky, wasteland, and patches of forest spun round them as the griffin looped. The couple clung desperately to saddle and basket.

      Suddenly a blue-white wall of water loomed, a pond or miniature lake. Hardly had the body of water come into sight, when the crazed animal plunged straight into it, diving and swimming like a loon.

      The water’s liquid resistance finally dislodged the humans. Valdemar, choking, almost drowning, felt a piece of basket rim break off in his hand. Swimming in water over his head, he fought his way to the surface, just in time to see his escaped means of transportation floundering ashore. From the wooded shoreline the griffin leapt into the air again, displaying magical celerity.

      Where was Delia?

      Treading water, turning this way and that, Val hoarsely called her name. A long moment passed before he saw her—floating face down.

      Desperately he stroked to reach her, got the muddy bottom of the pond under his boots, and carried her ashore. By that time, to his great relief, she was coughing and moaning feebly. She spat out a mouthful of muddy water.

      When he would have helped Delia to sit up on the bank, she cried out in pain. Her back had been somehow injured in the watery rough landing. She protested that she could not walk, could hardly move.

      Standing now on the shoreline, with a chance to look around, Valdemar thought that this territory looked vaguely familiar. As far as he could tell, they had returned to a point at no very great distance from the place where a young woman named Tigris had kidnapped him, and