After a moment, Neeps said, “So are you.”
“What did you say to Marila, just before we left the ship? When you took her hand and ran off toward the Silver Stair?”
“You mean Thasha hasn’t told you?”
“Told me what?”
Neeps actually managed a laugh. “Pazel, Marila and I had already talked right through the blary night. We didn’t leave the stateroom to talk. We went straight to Captain Rose and asked him to marry us. And he did.”
An hour later the whole western range was bathed in sunlight. There were vineyards here, and pear trees, and herds of sheep and goats and birthigs that scattered at their approach. Lamps passed from window to window in the waking farmhouses. Dogs appeared out of nowhere, challenged the hunting dogs briefly, changed their minds. The land was as peaceful as Masalym had been chaotic.
Suddenly Cayer Vispek cried out a warning: dust clouds behind them, and faintly, the pounding of hooves. Someone was giving chase.
The soldiers raised spears and halberds. Pazel’s hand went instinctively to the sword at his belt, though he knew nothing about fighting on horseback. Ensyl stood up on her horse and studied the road through the monocular scope that had belonged to her dead mistress. “It is just one rider,” she said. “A dlomu, coming fast.” Then she lowered the scope and looked at them, amazed. “It’s Counselor Vadu,” she said.
He was dressed in the same fine armor he had worn at the welcome ceremony, the gold breastplate gleaming in the early sun. He rode with a great battle-axe lashed sidelong across his back, and on his belt hung the shattered Plazic Blade. He galloped right up to the travelers, then reined in his horse.
“If you think to turn us back,” said Hercol by way of greeting, “you have made a worthless trip. Unless it be that the sorcerer is found.”
Vadu glared at Hercol as he caught his breath. “The mage is not found,” he said at last, “but the city is calming under Olik’s stewardship. And I… I will not sit and wait for death at the hands of the White Raven.”
“She will forgive nothing short of the Nilstone’s return,” said Bolutu, “and that you cannot provide. We are not setting out to wrest the Stone from one sorcerer only to hand it over to his ally. Go your own way, Vadu. Or ride with us to Garal Crossing, and then turn east on the Coast Road and follow the Issar into exile. But do not seek to thwart our mission.”
The soldiers began to grumble ominously: whatever the chaos in Masalym, Vadu had been their commander for years, and now this strange dlomu, who had come on the ship with the mutant tol-chenni, was trying to dismiss him like a page.
“I say he’s more than just welcome,” said one sicuna-rider. “I say that if anyone’s to lead this expedition, it’s Counselor Vadu.”
The other soldiers shouted, “Hear, hear! Vadu!”
A sword whistled from its sheath. Hercol raised Ildraquin before him, sidelong, and the men stopped their cheering at the sight of the black blade. “Olik entrusted this mission to me,” said Hercol, “and my oath binds me to the cause as well. I cannot follow this man, who ordered regicide, and helped Arunis gain the Nilstone to begin with.”
Everyone went sharply rigid. The Turachs nudged their mounts away from the dlomu; the sfvantskors watched the others like wolves tensed to spring. But the dlomic soldiers were all looking at Vadu’s Plazic Knife, still sheathed upon his belt. “You can’t fight him,” muttered one. “Don’t try, if this mission means anything to you at all.”
“Counselor,” said Hercol, “will you depart in peace?”
Vadu’s face contorted. His head began to bob, more violently than Pazel had ever seen, and suddenly he realized that it was not a mere habit but an affliction, involuntary, perhaps even painful. The counselor’s eyes filled with rage; his limbs shook, and his hand went slowly to the Plazic Blade. Muscles straining, he drew the blade a fraction of an inch from its sheath. The sicunas crouched, hissing, and the horses of several warriors bolted in fear, deaf to their riders’ cries. Pazel gasped and clutched at his chest. That poisonous feeling. That black energy that poured like heat from the body of the demonic reptile, the eguar: it was there, alive in Vadu’s blade. He could almost hear the creature’s agonizing language, which his Gift had forced him to learn.
With a smooth motion Hercol dismounted, never lowering Ildraquin, and walked toward Vadu’s prancing steed. The counselor drew his weapon fully, and Pazel saw that it was no more than a stump upon the hilt. But was there something else there? A pale ghost of a knife, maybe, where the old blade had been?
“I can kill you with a word,” snarled Vadu, his head bobbing, snapping, his face twitching like an addict deprived of his deathsmoke.
Hercol stood at his knee. Slowly he lowered Ildraquin toward the man-and then, with blinding speed, turned the blade about and offered its hilt to the counselor.
“No!” shouted the youths together. But it was done: Vadu snatched the sword from Hercol with his free hand. And cried aloud.
It was a different sort of cry: not tortured, but rather the cry of one suddenly released from torture. He sheathed the ghostly knife and took his hand from the hilt. Then he pressed the blade of Ildraquin to his forehead and held it there, eyes closed. Slowly his jerking and twitching ceased. The sword slipped from his grasp, and Hercol caught it as it fell.
Vadu looked down at him, and his face was serene, almost aglow, like the face of one clinging to a marvelous dream. But even as they watched him the glow faded, and something of his strained, proud look came back to him.
“Mercy of the stars,” he said. “I was rid of it. For a moment I was free. That is a sword from Kingdom Dafvniana.”
Hercol polished the blade on his arm. “The smiths who made her named her Ildraquin, ‘Earthblood,’ for it is said that she was forged in a cavern deep in the heart of the world. But King Bectur, delivered from enchantment by her touch, called her Curse-Cleaver, and that name too is well deserved.”
“My curse is too strong, however,” said Vadu. “The sword cannot free me from the curse of my own Plazic Blade-but time will, if only I can remain alive. Listen to me, before the knife seals my tongue again! The Blades have made monsters of us, and a nightmare of Bali Adro. Through all my life I’ve watched them poison us with power. Olik told you that they are rotting away. Did he tell you that we who carry them rejoice in our hearts? For we are slaves to them, though they make us masters of other men. They whisper to our savage minds, even as they break our bodies. What happens to the Blades, you see, happens also to those who carry them. When they wither, we scream in pain. When they shatter, we die. Many have died this way already: my commander in Orbilesc swept an army of Thuls over a cliff with a sweep of his arm, and we all heard the knife break, and he fell down dead. That is how the knife came to me-a last, loathsome inch. I am a small man to own such a thing, or be owned by it. But I mean to survive it. When only the hilt remains, I shall be able to toss it away. Until then I must resist the urge to use it, for any but the smallest deeds.”
“Better no deeds at all,” said Cayer Vispek. “That is a devil’s tool.”
Vadu’s eyes flashed at the elder sfvantskor. But there was struggle in them still, and when they turned to Hercol they were beseeching.
“Pazel,” said Neda in Mzithrini, “tell the Tholjassan to drive this man away. He will bring us all to grief.”
“I can see by the woman’s face what she wishes,” said Vadu. “Do not send me off! I tell you I mean to survive, but there is more: I wish to see my people, my country, survive. Do you understand what I have witnessed, what I have done? And in another year or two the horror must end, for all the Blades will have melted. Our insanity will lift, and Bali Adro can start to heal the world it has profaned. I live for that day. I cannot bear to see the harm renewed by something even worse. I rode out to help, not hinder you.”
Hercol studied him carefully. “Then ride, and be welcome,” he said at last, “but guard your soul, man of Masalym. It is not free yet.”
As the track moved away from the river it grew into something like a proper road, running between fields neatly laid out, and sturdy brick farmhouses with smoke rising from their chimneys. They rode faster here; the smallest of the hunting dogs had to be picked up and carried. At midday they did not pause for a meal but ate riding; Olik had advised them to cross the open farmland as swiftly as possible, and to rest where the track entered the riverbank forest called the Ragwood, where the trees would hide them. Pazel found it hard to imagine anyone watching from the Chalice of the Mai. But there were nearer peaks and, for all he knew, villages scattered among
