The Seventh Book Of Lost Swords
Wayfinder’s Story
By
Fred Saberhagen
Copyright Page
The Seventh Book of Lost Swords :Wayfinder’s Story Copyright (c) 1992 by Fred Saberhagen
Cover Art : Harry O. Morris
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Please purchase only authorized electronic editions.
Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Tor paper edition: ISBN: 0-812-50575-1
Electronic edition
JSS Literary Productions
ISBN: 978-1-937422-04-2
www.fredsaberhagen.com
The Ardneh Sequence
Empire of the East series
The Broken Lands
The Black Mountains
Changeling Earth /Ardneh’s World
( three titles also published in a heavily-revised omnibus form as Empire of the East)
The Book of Swords
The First Book of Swords
The Second Book of Swords
The Third Book of Swords
The Book of Lost Swords
The First Book of Lost Swords: Woundhealer’s Story
The Second Book of Lost Swords: Sightblinder’s Story
The Third Book of Lost Swords: Stonecutter’s Story
The Fourth Book of Lost Swords: Farslayer’s Story
The Fifth Book of Lost Swords: Coinspinner’s Story
The Sixth Book of Lost Swords: Mindsword’s Story
The Seventh Book of Lost Swords: Wayfinder’s Story
The Last Book of Lost Swords: Shieldbreaker’s Story
Ardneh’s Sword
Swords Anthology
(original invitational anthology edited by Fred Saberhagen)
An Armory of Swords
Blind Man’s Blade… . . Fred Saberhagen
Woundhealer… . . Walter Jon Williams
Fealty… . . Gene Bostwick
Dragon Debt… . . Robert E. Vardeman
The Sword of Aren-Nath… . . Thomas Saberhagen
Glad Yule… . . Pati Nagle
Luck of the Draw… . .Michael A. Stackpole
Stealth and the Lady… . . Sage Walker
Chapter One
His huge, work-roughened hands shaking with excitement, young Valdemar turned up the sleeves of his farmer’s shirt. Squatting on the earth floor of his solitary hut, peering intently by firelight and fading daylight, he reached for the long, heavy bundle that lay near the fire and began very gradually to undo its wrappings of gray cloth. The bundle was neatly made, tied with strong cord. As Valdemar worked to undo the knots, he did his best to keep himself from thinking of what he might expect to find within. He told himself he had no right to expect anything at all. But it was as if he wished to shield himself from an enormous disappointment…
The wrappings loosened and began to fall away. As soon as an area of unrelieved blackness came into view, unmistakably part of the hilt of an edged weapon, the young man’s fingers ceased to move. Like many other people, he had a sensitivity to the presence of powerful magic, and he was already beginning to realize just what kind of weapon he had been given.
Valdemar thought that he could feel the blood drain from his face. Leaning his enormous weight back on his heels, he did his unpracticed best to formulate a prayer to beneficent Ardneh.
Whatever prayer he at last managed to say went up in silence. Outside, spring wind howled fiercely, shoving against the rough stone walls of his lonely hut, rattling the crude, ill-fitting door, spattering rain through the hole in the roof that served as chimney, so that the small fire, fueled mostly by last year’s dried vines, hissed as if in pain.
He had a serious mystery to contemplate.
An unknown visitor, working alone in pursuit of some unguessable purpose, who had come and gone before Valdemar had been able to catch more than a glimpse of him—or her—had just made the young grape-grower a present of one of the Twelve Swords. The recipient felt overwhelmed by the discovery. And yet—even in this tremendous moment when Valdemar first glimpsed the ebon hilt, he found himself thinking that he ought to be more surprised at the nature of this gift than he really was.
He had the strange feeling that he had always known, had never doubted, that something like this—something truly great—was fated to happen to him sooner or later.
Well, here it was. And whatever unconscious anticipation might be keeping him from being properly astonished, he was certainly beginning to be afraid.
* * *
Scant minutes ago, the unexpected shadow and the silent form of the mysterious caller had moved almost simultaneously, and with a swiftness almost magical, past the door of Valdemar’s isolated dwelling, interrupting the young man in the midst of preparing his evening meal. The door had been left slightly ajar for more light, and to let the smoke-hole draw.
Until that moment, Valdemar had had no suspicion that any other human being was anywhere within a couple of kilometers. By the time he had jumped up and run outdoors, the figure of his anonymous visitor was already almost out of sight in mist and rain. Valdemar had caught only a single glimpse of a human shape, so muffled in gray garments that it might have been either man or woman.
The gigantic youth had started in pursuit, swiftly bounding up one, two, three of the narrow cultivated terraces that rose above his hut. But by the time he had reached the third terrace, his caller had already disappeared into the wet twilight shrouding the domesticated vines, the scant wild bushes, and the granite outcroppings of the lonely mountainside.
Shouting for his vanished visitor to stop, Valdemar had continued the chase a little farther, almost to the boundary of his cultivated land, but without success. Returning to his hut a couple of minutes later, the young man had picked up the bundle which had been so mysteriously deposited at his door. He had paused to reassure himself that at least it was not alive (he had heard stories of babies being left at the doors of lonely huts) and carried it in by the fire. After closing the ill-fitting door again, and shaking his garments dry as best he could, Valdemar had hesitantly begun to unwrap his present—a process which came, moments later, to a shocked halt.
Though he was scarcely past the age of twenty, and for most of the past year had dwelt in this lonely place, Valdemar
