As if aching feet were not sufficient annoyance, he was ravenously hungry. Enough streams had crossed his path to make thirst no problem, but he could not eat pine cones, and the only wildlife he had seen had been a chipmunk he had not thought to pursue.
He stared around at the empty forest, the sun dappling the thick bed of pine needles that covered the ground. He had no food — he had been out on a two-day reconnaissance, and with the sustenance spell, at that — who would have thought he might need food? He had survived for two months without any, thanks to the bloodstone’s magic, but that enchantment was broken and gone now.
He did not have any ready means of acquiring food, either. He had his belt, his sling, his knife, and his magicked sword, but that was almost the full extent of his supplies. He had a silver bit tucked away, not so much as a lucky piece as because one never knew what might happen, and even a single coin might bribe a peasant — not that any peasants lived in the northern forests. He had managed to hang onto his flint and steel and he still wore kilt, tunic, and breastplate, though his helmet was long gone. The bloodstone was still safe in its pouch, but useless until he found another wizard to renew the spell.
He wondered if the hermit might be able to cast a Spell of Sustenance and upbraided himself for not asking when he had the chance. If he went back, he would probably be unable to find the old man.
Of course, it was unlikely that he would have been able to help in any case. Valder knew that casting the spell required a mysterious powder or two, and the little hermit’s supply of whatever it was had probably burned and would not be readily replaced.
He ran through a quick mental inventory of what he had and decided that the sling was his best bet for obtaining food. He would need to find some pebbles, or at least wood chips, for ammunition, and he would need to find some sort of game to use it on.
A sword was too big to be of much use against a chipmunk, but he looked down thoughtfully at the hilt on his belt. Something larger than a chipmunk might happen along eventually, after all.
The hilt looked just as it always had — simple, functional, and rather ugly, gray metal bare of any ornamentation or finesse, the sweat-softened leather of the grip bound in place with dulled brass wires. There was no gleam, no glamor about it, and he suddenly wondered whether the wizard had actually done anything to it. Spells existed, he knew, that did nothing at all save to look impressively magical, and the old man had had no supplies to speak of. Perhaps, in his fully understandable annoyance at the loss of his home, he had deceived his unwelcome visitor with play-pretties and phantasms. That would explain why he hadn’t wanted the blade drawn until he had had time to disappear; use would surely show that there was no real enchantment.
That, Valder said to himself, would be just his luck. Overcome with suspicion, he drew the sword.
It slid smoothly from the scabbard, the blade bright in the sun — but no brighter than might be expected. Valder saw no unnatural glow, no sparkling silver, just the shine of well-kept steel. He held it out, made a few passes, even got to his feet for a quick, if slightly clumsy, parry-riposte against an imaginary foe; there was no sign of any magic. The blade looked and felt just as it always had.
He lowered the sword and looked down at it in mild disappointment. He was not really angry; after all, the old man had probably not trusted him and had merely wanted to be rid of a serious nuisance. Quite possibly the old hermit was not as great a wizard as he might pretend to be — although he had certainly done well enough with minor spells like the Sanguinary Deception or the Finger of Flame.
A magical weapon would have been very nice to have, though, very reassuring. It would not save him from starvation, but he would have liked it all the same.
He briefly considered turning north again and trying to find the wizard, but dismissed the thought. The hermit was gone and probably not worth tracking down. And if Valder did manage to find him, what would he do with him? The old man had his own problems, just as Valder did; there was no point in combining the two sets.
The thought of turning north again did remind Valder that he was not yet very far from the salt marsh, and that meant that he was not far from the sea. Pine forests might not provide food, but the ocean would. Even if he found no crabs, no clams, no oysters, even if he could catch no fish and hit no gulls, he could always eat seaweed. Rather than north, he would head west and stick to the coast henceforth. His route south would wiggle back and forth, detouring around every bay and inlet, but he would not need to fear starvation or becoming lost.
That decided, he tried to sheathe the sword.
The blade turned away from the mouth of the scabbard.
Thinking he had slipped, due to weariness, he tried again. Again, the tip of the sword refused to enter the sheath, sliding to one side instead.
Still not actually thinking about it and with a trace of irritation, Valder formed his left hand into a ring around the top of the scabbard to guide the blade in and keep it from moving to either side. That worked, in that the blade did not move away, but he still could not sheathe the sword; instead of dodging, it now simply refused to slide home.
He pressed harder, building up until he had all the strength he could muster, shoving sword and sheath together, but whatever was holding it refused to yield.
His initial irritation gave way quickly to puzzlement; he took off his belt and held the scabbard up so that he could study it closely, inside and out. He saw nothing amiss, nothing in any way out of the ordinary, and felt a small tingle of excitement in his gut. The wizard had not lied!
He sat down again and very slowly, very carefully brought the sword and the sheath together. They behaved ordinarily, like any inanimate objects, until the tip of the blade reached the mouth of the scabbard, and then something stopped any further motion. It did not matter whether the point was in the center of the opening, at either end, or to one side or the other; it would not enter the scabbard.
Fascinated, Valder put the sword down and then discovered that he could not remove his hand from its hilt. He picked it up again and stared at it.
No difference was visible. It was the same standard military-issue sword he had had since becoming a scout. He could open his hand and wiggle his fingers, but could not, he found, pull his hand away from the grip entirely. Something held it, magically. He lifted his hand, fingers outstretched and palm down, and the sword clung to the middle of his palm as if glued there.
It was not glued there, however; he wrapped his hand around it again, then unwrapped, and this time had it hanging from his fingertips.
There was no discomfort involved; the sword simply refused to leave his hand. Experimentally, as it hung from two fingers, he reached up with his left hand and pulled at it.
It came away readily in his grip — but now adhered to his left hand just as it had to his right.
He passed it back and forth a few times, then decided to try something else. With the sword clinging to the tips of his fingers, he braced both feet against it, leaning back against a tree, and pushed.
His hand came free; both hands were now unencumbered. The sword was now attached to the bottom of his right foot.
He stared at it, unsure whether to laugh or scream. Laughter won; he smiled broadly and chuckled. The sword looked incredibly foolish stuck to the sole of his foot.
He played with it and found that, although the sword insisted on always being in contact with some part of his body, it did not seem to care very much which part. He could hang it from his nose, if he so desired — although it would swing toward his right hand, as if preferring that and trying to get back to it. Nor did it matter visibly which part of the sword touched him, hilt, blade, or guard.
Tiring of the game at last, he stuck the sword to the bottom of his foot again while he studied the scabbard. A quick experiment showed that his dagger would slip into it with no trouble; pine needles could be stuffed into it and then scraped out again. Obviously, the sword was the culprit, not the sheath.
He satisfied himself that this was indeed the case by trying to force the dagger’s sheath onto the tip of the sword’s blade; it would not go, any more than the sword’s own scabbard would.
An attempt to wrap the sword in his kilt showed him that the weapon refused to be covered; the cloth slid away from making contact with the metal of the blade; although Valder could force a few square inches into contact with the steel for a couple of seconds, something would not let them stay. The sword refused to be put away, and that was all there was to it.
This peculiar behavior was so intriguing that Valder spent well over an hour playing with the sword, experimenting in various ways and ignoring the growling of his stomach. Valder could no longer doubt that the old
