Seventh Sword - The Reluctant Swordsman Part 8

Light began to creep in around him. He blinked, then made out the shape of the rocks and the beam below and then more rocks, a steep slope of jumbled talus, boulders as big as houses or small as a desk, plastered with debris like the beam -- which was obviously a piece of a s.h.i.+p's mast -- and planks and tree trunks and branches, heaped and piled in steep chaos. It was a hillside, a giant's junk pile, with him clinging on it like a fly.

His chest was bursting. He breathed in small gasps, every one a death.

There was no source for the light, but it blazed up brighter and brighter like a winter sun. All the rocks glittered with it, and the lumber shone like mirrors. The roof was a jutting ledge of rock. The s.p.a.ce below was enclosed in brilliant draperies of crystal and silver, frozen white splendor -- iridescent jagged ice curtains. And downward, almost directly below his feet, the monstrous waves churned by the waterfall were stilled into immobile chasms of dark blue-green obsidian, encrusted with timbers and other deadly flotsam, grading to indigo and black in their depths. The air s.h.i.+mmered with myriads of brilliant specks, a mist of airborne diamonds. This was a s.p.a.ce behind the falls, frozen by miracle.

He was in no state to appreciate a miracle. He saw a flat rock, pulled himself onto it, and collapsed. Torrents of water gushed from his lungs in spasms of pain. He retched and puked and then lay still, breathing once more in huge, rasping lungfuls.

At length his mind cleared. The pain subsided enough for him to raise his head and look around at this silent crystal-and-stone cathedral, this glacier cave s.h.i.+ning whitely like the palace of the Snow Queen. The rugged drop below his rock perch was horrifying. The petrified waves were enormous -- angry giants momentarily balked of their prey.

"You have arrived, then," said the voice of the little boy, "safe if not quite sound?" He was sitting cross-legged on a nearby rock, higher, flatter, and more comfortable-looking than Wallie's. He held his leafy twig. He was showing his tooth gap in a mocking grin.

"I think I'm dying," Wallie said weakly. He no longer cared. Every man must have a limit, and he had pa.s.sed his. The G.o.ds could play with someone else.

"Well, we can fix that," the boy said. "Stand up."

Wallie hesitated and then obeyed, staggering to his b.l.o.o.d.y and pulped feet, unable to straighten, swaying dangerously.

"My! You are a mess!" the boy said. He looked Wallie over and then pulled a leaf from his twig.

Wallie felt himself heal. A wave of healing pouring through him. It started at the pounding pain in his head, was.h.i.+ng that away. His vision cleared, then his loose teeth seemed to grip tightly into his skull, his ribs knitted, his sprains soothed, cuts closed, bruises eased, and his swollen t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es shrank back to normal size. The miracle reached his feet and died out.

He looked himself over, sat down, and inspected his feet. They were better than before, but a long way from being cured. His eyes remained puffed and swollen, his bruises visible, if no longer very painful. The insides of him no longer felt too bad, but the outside was still an obvious catastrophe, and walking on those feet would still be h.e.l.l.

"Give me another shot!" he demanded. "You ran out of juice about halfway."

The boy frowned warningly. "h.e.l.l does much more for you than heaven, Mr. Smith. I'll leave you a few reminders."

There was no way to argue with such power. Wallie looked anew at the strangely vitrified waterfall. It had taken a miracle to bring him here alive. It would certainly take another to get him out. He wondered where the light was coming from. But he was still in pain, angry, and resentful.

"You proved your faith," the boy said. He leaned his reedy forearms on pointed knees, staring thoughtfully down at Wallie. "You told me that faith was an attempt to explain suffering by postulating a higher meaning. Does that help?"

"I thought it amused you," Wallie said, still bitter.

This time there was menace in the frown. "Be careful!"

"Sorry," Wallie mumbled, not feeling sorry. "You've been testing me?"

"Proving you. You proved yourself. That is a tough body, but being tough is more than muscles and bone." He chuckled. "The G.o.ddess does not need a swordsman who will sit down and convene a committee at every emergency. You displayed great courage and persistence."

"And I suppose that I wasn't capable of that three days ago?" Wallie squirmed on the rock, trying to find a smooth spot to kneel on. He a.s.sumed he should be kneeling.

"Of course you were," the G.o.d said, "but you didn't know it. Now you do. Enough of that! You proved your faith and you have agreed to undertake the task, right? The rewards can be whatever you want -- power, riches, physical prowess, long life, happiness ... your prayers will be answered. If you succeed. The alternative is death, or worse."

Wallie s.h.i.+vered, although he was not cold. "The carrot and the stick?"

"Certainly. And now you know both. But from now on you must earn your rewards."

"Who are you?"

The boy smiled and jumped to his feet. He bowed, sweeping his twig over the rock as a courtier might have swung a plumed cap over a palace floor. But he was only a skinny, naked little boy. "I am a demiG.o.d, a minor deity, an archangel -- whichever you wish. You may call me 'Master' as it is forbidden for you to know my name." He dropped back to his seat. "I choose this shape because it amuses me and will not alarm you."

Wallie was not impressed. "Why play games with me? I could have believed in you sooner if you had chosen a more G.o.dlike form -- even a halo..."

He had gone too far. The boy pouted in anger. "As you wish," he said, "just a small one."

Wallie screamed and covered his eyes, but too late.

The cave had been brilliant before. Now it blazed with glory like the face of a star. The boy remained a boy, but some small part of his divinity gleamed through for an instant, and that was enough to reduce a mortal to abject terror.

In that flicker of majesty, Wallie was shown age beyond imagining, enduring since before the galaxies and continuing long after such transient fireworks would have faded; mind that would register an IQ in the trillions and could know every thought of every being in the universe; power that could snuff out a planet as easily as clean a fingernail; a n.o.bility and purity that made all mankind seem b.e.s.t.i.a.l and worthless; cold, marble purpose that could not be withstood by anything; compa.s.sion beyond human conception that knew the sufferings of mortals and why they suffered, yet could not prevent those sufferings without destroying the very mortal essence that made their sufferings inevitable. He also sensed something deeper and more terrible than all of those, a presence for which there were no words, but which in a mortal might have been boredom or resignation, and was the dark side of immortality, the burden of omniscience and of having no limit to the future, no surprises in store, no end even beyond the end of time, forever and ever and ever...

He became aware that he was groveling and writhing on the rock, gibbering with terror and contrition, wetting himself, howling, begging for mercy and forgiveness. His limbs shook uncontrollably. He wanted to hide, to die, to bury himself in the ground. He would have run all the way back to the jail, had that been a way to escape from that memory of glory.

It took him a long time to regain control. When his eyes cleared and he could rise to his knees, the little boy was still sitting in the same place, but had turned his attention to the curtain of coruscating crystal that had once been a waterfall. He was pointing a finger at it and fragments moved at his bidding, building themselves into a tall lattice of mind-warping multidimensional complexity. Divine sculpture ... even a glimpse at it was enough to make Wallie giddy. He looked away quickly.

"Master?" he whispered.

"Ah!" The skinny little boy turned back to him with a satisfied and gap-toothed smile. He did not wait for any attempt at apology. "You have recovered! I see you have sc.r.a.ped some more skin off. Well, now that we have straightened out your soul, more or less cured your body, and improved your att.i.tude, perhaps we can get down to business?"

"Yes?"

"Yes, _what_?"

"Yes, Master," Wallie said as humbly as he could. Obviously G.o.ds did not take kindly to smart-aleck mortals.

The boy put an elbow on a knee and wagged a finger in the air, as though telling a story. "Now -- Shonsu was a very great swordsman. There is perhaps no greater in the World at the moment." He paused for a moment, considering. "Possibly one about equal. Hard to say -- we shall see." He grinned mischievously. "Shonsu had a mission, a task. He failed, and the penalty was death."

Wallie opened his mouth, and the little boy said, _"You must not question the justice of the G.o.ds!"_ in a voice that stopped anything Wallie might have been about to say.

"No. Master."

"The G.o.ddess requires you to bring about what Shonsu could not."

How far dare he question? "Master, why me? How and why was I brought here? How can I succeed where the greatest -- "

The boy held up a hand and snapped, "You expect an explanation? You could not even understand the politics of the temple, let alone what all this is about. I have stopped time so that we may talk, but I haven't stopped it for you, and if I tried to explain the whole thing, then you would die of old age before you got out of here." He sighed.

"Truth is like a fine jewel, Mr. Smith, with a million facets. If I show you one facet of this jewel, will you be content, but remember that it is only one and that there are many others?"

"I shall try, Master," Wallie said. He squirmed some more on his rock and eventually sat on the edge and dangled his legs over the abyss.

The boy eyed him thoughtfully. "After all," he said, "you believe that life is worth living, yet you know that death is inevitable. You believe that an electron is a particle and a wave at the same time, don't you? You know that love and l.u.s.t are the finest and most base of human motives, and yet are frequently almost inseparable. You do have some capacity for reconciling incompatible truths?"

Wallie nodded and waited.

"Well, then ... I gave you a couple of hints."

"Chess and bridge? The G.o.ds play games?" Wallie did not want to believe that; all human history merely a game to amuse the G.o.ds?

"That is one facet of the jewel," the boy said. "Think of it as an allegory. And somebody made a bad lead, as your dream showed you. There is no rule against profiting from a bad lead! In the affairs of G.o.ds, you see, there is no coincidence and no unexpected, but sometimes there is the unusual. You were unusual. It explains why you were available. That is all I can tell you."

He gave Wallie a disgusted look. "And don't go rus.h.i.+ng off to found a religion over this -- that is a hazard for mortals who are told things by G.o.ds. You see, whereas that one facet means that certain ... powers ... are opponents, on other facets of the jewel, they are partners. Confusing, isn't it?"

Wallie nodded. Confusing was not half of it.

"And on many other facets there is no game at all. So don't think my parable means that you are unimportant. In your former world, when the tin-chested, square-jawed warriors gathered to play war games, were they playing games?"

Wallie smiled. "Yes and no, Master."

The boy looked relieved. "All right, then. Let's go on, and not worry about explanations. You have shown that you have courage. You have Shonsu's body and his language and you can be given his skill. Are you worthy?"

Wallie thought that this had to be the strangest job interview in the history of the galaxy -- whatever galaxy this was. A small naked boy interviewing a large naked man on the side of a cliff behind an immobilized waterfall?

"I am a better man than Hardduju. He is the only standard I have to judge by."

The boy snarled something inaudible about Hardduju. "All the crafts have their sutras," he said, "and in most cases the first one contains a code. When a boy becomes a swordsman he swears to follow the code of the swordsmen. Listen!"

He reeled off a long string of promises. Wallie listened with growing dismay and skepticism. The swordsmen, apparently, were something between Knights Templar and Boy Scouts. No mortal could ever live to such a standard ... at least, not Wallie Smith.

#1 THE CODE.

I will be evermore true to the will of the G.o.ddess, the sutras of the swordsmen, and the laws of the People.

I will be mighty against the mighty, gentle to the weak, generous to the poor, and merciless to the rapacious.

I will do nothing of which I may be ashamed, but avoid no honor.

I will give no less than justice to others, and seek no more for myself.

I will be valiant in adversity, and humble in prosperity.

I will live with joy.

I will die bravely.

"I will swear it," he said cautiously. "And I hope I will keep it as well as any man may, but it is more a code for G.o.ds than mere humans."

"The swordsmen are addicted to fearsome oaths," the boy said ominously and stared at him for a time, until he trembled. "Yes," he said at last, "I think you will try quite hard. You are starting at the top, as a Seventh, and you will not have the advantage of a long apprentices.h.i.+p to teach you the proper att.i.tudes. Your past life has hardly been a suitable training. You need to understand that the battle against evil may require harsh measures, and that sweet reason is not enough."

"Well, I have some idea," Wallie protested. "My father was a policeman."

The little G.o.d leaned back on his pipe-stem arms and laughed a long and childishly shrill laugh, for which Wallie could see no cause at all. The crystal echoed it back until the ice cave rang.

"You are learning, Mr. Smith! Very well, then. The first thing you have to do is to go back to the temple and kill Hardduju. That is not your task! It is your duty to the G.o.ddess, and a favor from Her to you. He is insufferable. Obviously the G.o.ddess could dispose of him -- a heart attack or a poisoned finger -- but he is so bad that he must be made an example. She could throw a lightning bolt at him, but that would be a very crude miracle. Miracles should be subtle and un.o.btrusive. There is justice in having a better swordsman come along and execute him in public. Can you do that?"

"It will be a pleasure," Wallie said, surprising himself, but remembering that fat, red face sweating with joy in the jail. "I shall need a weapon, preferably napalm."

The boy smiled slightly and shook his head. "You may use this weapon," he announced. He pulled another leaf from his twig.

A sword and harness appeared on the rock beside Wallie.

The hilt was silver, trimmed with gold, and the guard was shaped like some heraldic beast, so finely wrought that every muscle, every hair was visible. Held between the beak and the tiny claws of the forelegs, forming the top of the hilt, an enormous stone shone like a blue sun. The artistry was superb.

Reverently Wallie raised it and drew it from the scabbard. The blade was a ribbon of winter moonlight, chased with scenes of battles between heroes and monsters. It flashed and shone more brightly than anything else in the s.h.i.+ny crystal cave. It was a Rembrandt, a da Vinci of swords. No, a Cellini: it belonged with the crown jewels of a world empire.

Wallie was not sure which impressed him more -- the artistic beauty or the sheer monetary value of such a marvel. He looked up at the boy and said wonderingly, "It's magnificent! I've never seen anything so beautiful."

The demiG.o.d sneered. "You may find that it comes at a heavy price. Every alley thief will sharpen his knife as you go by. Every swordsman in the World will be ready to challenge you to get it."

That was a disturbing thought, if the swordsmen were the police.

"I can guess," Wallie said apprehensively. What would the G.o.d do to him if he let the sword be stolen? "And the first one up is going to get it. I can handle a pool cue better than this. I'm just not a swordsman, Master."

The boy said, "I promised you Shonsu's skill." Another leaf fell.

Wallie felt nothing in himself, but the sword was transformed in his hand. It was still a masterpiece of art, but now he could see that it was also a masterpiece of the swordmaker's craft -- a da Vinci, but also a Stradivarius. It was no longer heavy, it was amazingly light. He jumped to his feet and swung it.

Guard at quarte...

Lunge...

Parry...

Riposte quinte!

The balance was perfect, the grip firm. Now he could see the superb combination of flexibility for strength and rigidity for sharpness. He could have shaved with it, had he any need now to shave. It was an incredible triumph of metallurgy and design and beauty, and a fingerlength longer than most swords, to balance the ornate hilt. Yet the metal was so fine that he need not fear that the extra length would weaken the weapon. With his long arms he could draw such a sword -- and he would have a fearsome advantage in reach. Instinctively he quoted from the fourth sutra, "On the Care of Swords:" _"The sword is the life of the swordsman and the death of his foe."_ Then he stopped and stared in astonishment at the cross-legged boy on the rock. There were eleven hundred and forty-four sutras. He could have recited any of them. Together they gave him all he needed to know...

He was a swordsman of the seventh rank.

"Truly, you do a great miracle, Master."

The child giggled like a child. "One rarely gets the chance. But be warned -- that is a mortal sword. It has no magic powers. It can be lost or broken, and you are a mortal. I have given you the skill and knowledge of Shonsu, that is all. You can be defeated."

Wallie picked up the harness, slipped it on, and slid the sword expertly into the scabbard. He fastened the buckles, and the fit was perfect. Faith and confidence poured through his veins, and now, suddenly, he could revel in this unfamiliar but wonderful youth and strength and ability that he had been given. His terror of the G.o.d had faded to a wary respect. For the first time since he had awakened in the pilgrim cottage he could look forward to the future. He discovered that he even had some idea of what those seven swords on his face meant -- in medieval earthly terms he was roughly a royal duke. The World was his to enjoy. Small wonder that the G.o.d had questioned his ability to handle such absolute authority. _All power corrupts!_ The townsfolk had shown their feelings toward swordsmen of the Seventh.

"May I swear that oath to you now, Master?" he said, taking a firm grip on his excitement.

"That oath is not sworn to me!" the boy snapped. He sprang up. "But I will witness it for you. Go ahead."

So Wallie drew the sword again. He raised it to the oath position and swore to follow the code of the swordsmen. The ancient words filled him with reverence, and he felt very satisfied as he sheathed the blade once more. Now he need not worry about keeping it straight on his back -- Shonsu's reflexes would handle that for him.

"What is my task, Master?" he asked.