warmth of summer and the first snow, and that was what had arrived in the last few days. The only warmth Garth could detect anywhere in the world around him was the heat of the sword's hilt in his hand.
It was oddly comforting. He knew that he should be uneasy about feeling anything positive about the thing's power, but the warmth was welcome nonetheless.
None of the few people he passed on the way out of town paid much attention to him; they had become accustomed to seeing him wandering about the village, hoping to find some means of release from the sword's thrall. Even the guards at the West Gate did nothing more than nod polite greetings.
Out on the open plain, the north wind drove through him; his right flank became so cold that his left seemed warm by contrast. The sword's hilt in his right hand burned like a live coal, but it was a good, soothing heat and did not cause him any pain.
He strode on across the wasteland. Skelleth was not considered part of the Northern Waste, but it was still harsh, barren country, little better than his homeland. The few farms that he passed or crossed were empty and silent; the hay had been cut and gathered a month before, and the farmers had taken their crops and their goats and gone to the village to take shelter for the winter when first the north wind blew down from the hills. Only the ice-cutters ventured out on the plains once the snows came, and then only in large groups.
At the end of an hour he had traveled something over four miles, a distance he thought should be sufficient. He stopped and looked around.
The plain lay, bleak and empty, in all directions. To the north, it ended in low hills; to the east, Skelleth was still visible as a line on the horizon; to the south and west, there was nothing else for as far as he could see. He had left the old Yprian Road a hundred yards from the gate, and it was now lost in the distance.
He took the sword in two hands and stood for a moment feeling the warmth that now bathed them both; the left seemed to be thawing, though it had not actually frozen. He concentrated on the heat and let it flow up his arms.
He was not sure at first how to go about what he wanted to do. He recalled that, when he was possessed, he often lifted the sword above his head just prior to performing his magical feats; feeling slightly foolish, he raised the blade up.
Without any conscious volition, his hesitant gesture changed; he thrust the sword powerfully upward, pointing at the sky, until the red gem was directly before his red eyes, its glow as bright and warm as fresh blood. Overhead, the steely gray sky was darkened by wisps of black cloud.
The glowing jewel held his gaze. He stared at it in fascination for a long moment, and the clouds gathered above him. Thunder rumbled in the northern hills.
The sound broke his trance, and he looked upward.
The sky had not been clear when he left the town, but it had shown no threat. Now it was filled with blossoming thunderclouds. There would be a storm long before he could reach the shelter of the village walls.
He still held the sword before him, its point toward the sky; now, involuntarily, he thrust it up above his head, crying out, 'Melith!'
The name was unfamiliar to him; it was answered by a flash of lightning and a low rumble of thunder.
He remembered suddenly that, when he had entered the temple of Bheleu in Dыsarra and first taken the sword, the sky had been full of thunder, and lightning had blasted the broken roof of the temple. Lightning had struck the altar and scattered the bonfire that surrounded it.
Lightning had struck the sword while he held it.
He realized suddenly that he was standing on a deadfiat plain in a thunderstorm, holding up six feet of bare steel. Lightning had an affinity for metal, as everyone knew, and was drawn as well to the highest objects in reach. Standing thus would ordinarily have verged on suicide.
This was no ordinary sword, however, and he began to wonder if it was an ordinary storm. Was it natural or had the sword summoned it? Had the storm that shattered the temple of Bheleu been natural?
He did not think he cared to try so dangerous a test of the sword's nature as to invite being struck by lightning. Merely because he had survived it once did not mean he could do so again. He yanked the sword down.
It resisted, but obeyed.
Immediately the seething clouds overhead stilled; where it had seemed that the storm would break in seconds and pour a torrent upon him, now the clouds were calm, and it seemed as if there were no storm at all. No lightning flashed. No thunder roared. Even the north wind died away to a breeze.
He recalled Saram's proposed test; would the sword burn the earth? He thrust it out before him, pointing at the ground a dozen feet away.
The gem flared up brightly, and a rumble sounded. At first he thought that it was fresh thunder, but then the ground heaved up beneath him, rolling under his feet. Staggering to keep his balance, his left hand fell from the hilt, while his right, holding the sword, swung out to his side.
The tremor stopped, and the earth was again as still and solid as ever.
He no longer felt the cold; the warmth of the sword's touch had spread through his body. As he looked at the blade and realized what had just happened, sweat broke out on his forehead.
He could not believe that the sword had caused an earthquake. He took it in both hands, in a reversed grip, and placed the tip on the soil at his feet.
Nothing happened.
He held it in that position, waiting and thinking. He realized that he did not want anything to happen. Perhaps that was affecting his experiment. He forced himself to stop denying the sword's power, and instead recited to himself, 'Move, earth, I command it!'
The ground shook, roaring; he saw dust swirl up on all sides.
'Stop!' he cried.
It stopped.
Earthquakes frightened him. The uneasy movement of that most immovable of things upset his view of the way the world should be. Such displays undoubtedly consumed vast amounts of the sword's energy, but he could not bear to continue.
Storms, however, were something he was accustomed to.
He looked at the gem. It was glowing brightly, vividly red.
It could not be limitless, he told himself. It must exhaust itself eventually.
With that thought in his mind, he raised the sword above his head and summoned the storm to him.
The light of the jewel bathed him in crimson, and the blade glowed brilliantly white as the storm broke about him with preternatural fury. A bolt of lightning burned through the air over his head and shattered against the sword, bathing him in a shower of immense blue-white sparks, but he felt nothing but a slight warmth and a mounting joy in the power he wielded.
Another bolt followed the first, though Garth knew that was not natural; and then a third came. He was washed in white fire, and the ground at his feet was burned black.
Lightning continued to pour down upon him while cold rain beat against the plain around him. He stayed dry in the heart of the storm, for the lightning and the heat of the sword boiled away the rain before it could touch him, encircling him in steam and mist.
He discovered that he could steer the lightning away from him and direct it where he chose by pointing with the sword, as he had spread flame in Skelleth. He drew the sword's heat into him and thrust it upward, and the rain turned warm around him; then he sucked it back down and away, and the rain became first sleet, and then hail-though the frozen drops were smaller than natural hailstones.
He called aloud another strange name, 'Kewerro!' The wind howled down out of the north, and the storm became a snowstorm, then a raging blizzard.
He was drunk and staggering with the power of the sword, and still the gem glowed as brightly as ever, the blade as gleaming white as the moon.
He sent the snow away again, turning the north wind back, and allowed the south wind to bring rain in its place. The sky was black, the sun buried in thunderheads; only lightning and the light of the sword lessened the gloom.
