Winds Of Fate

'But. I am a sword... from a tale. Boy.' The mind-voice still had the quality of humor, a rich, but dry and mordant sense of humor..And horses don't talk... except in tales, either.' Skif sat in his saddle like a bag of potatoes, his mouth still gaping, his eyes big and round. If Elspeth hadn't felt the same way, she'd have laughed at his expression. He looked as if someone had hit him in the back of the head with a board.

His mouth worked furiously without anything coming out of it. Finally,' It talks!' he yelped.

'Of course I talk.' It was getting better at Mindspeech by the moment, presumably improving with practice. 'I'm as human as you are. Or I was.

Once'

'You were?' Elspeth whispered. 'When? How did you end up like that? And why-' A long story,' the sword replied. 'And one that can wait a little longer.

Get your priorities, child. Get in there, get shelter. Get a place to sit for a while. then we'll talk, and not before.' And not one more word could any of them get from it, although the Companions coaxed and cajoled along with the two Heralds. And so, with all of them wondering if they'd gone quite, quite mad, they entered the trade- city of Kata'shin'a'in.

The inn was an old one; deep paths had been worn into the stone floors and the courtyard paving, and the walls had been coated so many times with whitewash that it was no longer possible to tell whether they had been plaster, brick or stone. The innkeeper was a weary, incurious little old man who looked old enough to have been the same age as his inn. The stone floors and the bathhouse indicated that the place had once catered to prosperous merchants, but that was no longer the case.

Now it played host to a variety of mercenaries, and the more modest traders, who would form caravans together, or take their chances with themselves, their own steel, and a couple of pack animals.

Their room was of a piece with the inn; worn floor, faded hangings at the window, simple pallet on a wooden frame for a bed, a table-and no other amenities. The room itself gave ample evidence by its narrowness of having been partitioned off of a much larger chamber.

At least it was clean.

Elspeth took Need from her sheath, laid the sword reverently on the bed, and sat down beside it-carefully-at the foot. Skif took a similar seat at the head. The Companions, though currently ensconced in the inn's stable, were present in the back of their minds.

So now is the time to find out if I'm having a crazy-weed nightmare.

'All right,' she said, feeling a little foolish to be addressing an apparently inanimate object, 'We've gotten a room at the inn. The door's locked. Are you still in there?'

'Of course I'm in here,' replied the sword acerbically. Both she and Skif jumped. 'Where else would I be?' Elspeth recovered first, and produced a wary smile. 'A good question, I guess. Well, are you going to talk to us?'

'I'm talking, aren't I? What do you want to know?' Her mind was a blank, and she cast an imploring look at Skif. 'What your name is, for one,' Skif said. 'I mean, we can't keep calling you 'sword.' And'Hey, you' seems kind of disrespectful.'

'My holiest stars, a respectful young man!. the sword chuckled, though there was a sense of slight annoyance that it had been the male of the two who addressed her. 'What a wonder! Perhaps I have lived to see the End of All things!'

'I don't think so,' Skif replied hesitantly. 'But you still haven't told us your name.' Trust a man to want that. It's-: There was a long pause, during which they looked at each other and wondered if something was wrong. 'Do you know, I've forgotten it? How odd. How very odd. I didn't think that would happen.' Another pause, this time a patently embarrassed one.

'Well, if that doesn't sound like senility, forgetting your own name! I suppose you'd just better keep calling me'Need.' It's been my name longer than the one I was born with anyway.' Skif looked at Elspeth, who shrugged. 'All right-uh-Need. If that doesn't bother you.' When you get to be my age, very little bothers you.' chuckle 'When you're practically indestructible, even less bothers you. there are advantages to being incarnated in a sword.' Elspeth saw the opportunity, and pounced on it. 'How did you get in there, anyway? You said you used to be human.'

:It's easier to show you than tell you,: the blade replied :that's why I wanted you locked away from trouble, and sitting down.: Abruptly, they were no longer in a shabby old that was long past being first quality. They were somewhere else entirely.

 Another dry mental room in an inn A forge; Elspeth knew enough to recognize one for what it was. Brick- walled, dirt-floored. She seemed to be inside someone else's head, a passive passenger, unable to do more than observe.

She rubbed the sword with an oiled piece of goatskin, and slid it into the wood-and-leather sheath with a feeling of pleasure. Then she laid it with the other eleven blades in the leather pack. three swords for each season, each with the appropriate spells beaten and forged into them.