Wayfinder's Story Read online

  At last she demanded: “What is it? Why do you all stare at me?” But in her heart she thought that she already knew the important part of the answer.

  “My lady…” This was Zoltan, her traveling companion for several years, now suddenly hushed and reverent. “My lady, you have grown young again.”

  Ben, his ugly countenance a study in awe, was nodding soberly. Valdemar stood gaping.

  “Young again? Nonsense!” And to confirm that it was nonsense the Silver Queen could see strands of her own long hair, still gray, drifting before her eyes. She could clearly see her own hands, weathered and worn, not at all the hands of a young girl.

  Yet even as Yambu contradicted Zoltan, she felt that he must be speaking some fundamental truth.

  “You are all looking at me so … has anyone a mirror?”

  * * *

  What had seemed almost a spell was broken. Zoltan’s thought was that there might possibly be a mirror in one of the Blue Temple or bandit packs that now lay scattered about. He went to look.

  Ben agreed, and joined the search. But he failed to prosecute this effort vigorously, stopping every few seconds to turn and look back at the Silver Queen.

  Valdemar was in this case the most practical of the four. He said nothing, but went a little apart to squat on the very shoreline of the river, where he scooped up sand with his huge hands, and splashed and puddled water into a concave excavation, muttering the while. When his efforts at magic had born fruit, he lifted from the bank a kind of reflective glass, as broad as a human countenance, formed by the solidification of warm river water.

  The object he handed to Yambu was as heavy as liquid water but no heavier or colder, flat and mirror-smooth on one face, rough as stone on its round edge and convex back. “My lady, be assured that the glass as I give it to you is completely honest.”

  Accepting the gift, Lady Yambu stared into the brilliant surface. There was no denying it, she now looked forty again, or even slightly younger, instead of the sixty she had appeared to be before Woundhealer touched her—or her true age of fifty-one.

  Her hair was still white, or nearly so; but this alteration in color now appeared premature. Lines of tension and weariness, so long-engraved she had forgotten they were there, had been expunged from the face which now looked back at her, in which a long-vanished light and beauty had now been re-established. This was the countenance of no mere girl, but neither was it any longer old.

  Zoltan, who had been her fellow pilgrim for several years, continued to stare at Yambu in timid awe, as if she were a stranger.

  It was time now for the others to enjoy their turns at gaining what benefit they might from the Sword of Mercy’s power. None of the three underwent any visible transformation. Ben stretched and groaned with the enjoyment of having several minor aches and pains removed, as a tired man might luxuriate in a massage. Valdemar was silent and thoughtful as Woundhealer’s blade searched his flesh for damage; the youth had evidently not accumulated much.

  When Zoltan had had his turn, it was time to make camp for the night. Even freshly healed, they were tired enough to camp where they were, right by the ford, with water readily available. But the dozen dead still held that field, and none of the four were minded to spend their own time and energy as a burial or cremation detail.

  Another problem with this location lay in the fact that Brod would be able to find them easily should he return with some mischief in mind. But these were minor considerations beside the counsel of the Sword of Wisdom.

  It was Yambu who at last put the question directly to Wayfinder: “Where is our safest place to camp tonight?” And the Sword promptly pointed them across the ford, away from the field of death.

  Before leaving the battlefield, Valdemar did as Brod had been forbidden to do. He armed himself with two of the many weapons, now ownerless, that lay about for the taking.

  From one fallen soldier Valdemar chose a battle-hatchet, and from another one a dagger, with its sheath. He had to unbuckle this last tool from its owner’s stiffened corpse. The business was unpleasant, but still he did it without hesitating.

  He muttered to himself: “If I am to be a warrior, I am going to need a warrior’s tools.”

  Zoltan asked him: “Have you any skill with those?”

  “Not with weapons. But knives and hatchets are familiar implements enough.”

  “Then I suppose you’ve chosen well.”

  * * *

  Having forded the river, the four headed northeast by north, still following the Sword of Wisdom in Ben’s hands.

  Following them, for a short distance only, came the healed loadbeast.

  The creature paused, watching them depart. Then it shook its head and went back to where grass grew along the river.

  Chapter Seven

  Atop the highest tower of the sprawling white stone Palace in Sarykam, standing on a paved rooftop that overlooked the red-roofed city, the placid harbor, and the Eastern Sea red-rimmed with dawn, Prince Mark of Tasavalta, wearing nightshirt and slippers, wrapped in a robe against the morning chill, was leaning on a railing, gazing to the south and west, waiting and hoping for the arrival of one of his numerous winged messengers or scouts.

  Dawn was a good time, the most likely time in all the day, for certain birds, the night-flying class of owl-like scouts and messengers, to come home.

  The Prince of Tasavalta was a tall man, strongly built, his face worn by weather and by care, his age just under forty, his hair and eyes brown, his manner distracted.

  The semi-intelligent creature whose arrival Mark was anticipating presently became visible in the dawn sky as a faraway dot that in time grew into a pair of laboring wings.

  Twelve-year-old Stephen, Mark’s younger son, already fully dressed, joined his father on the rooftop, as he did on many mornings, to see whether any messengers might arrive.

  The boy was sturdily built, his hair darkening to the medium-brown of his father’s. The facial resemblance between father and son was growing stronger year by year.

  The beastmaster attending the eyrie this morning was a man of exceptionally keen vision. He was the first to confirm the distant wings, now laboring in from the southwest, as those of a particular messenger-bird, whose arrival had been expected for more than a day.

  * * *

  The beastmaster climbed up on a perch to meet and care for the animal, which on landing turned out to have suffered some slight injury from the claws of a leather- wing. The Prince and his son, climbing also, were first to touch the large owl-like creature. Mark gently took from around its neck the small flat pouch of thin leather.

  The great bird, its huge eyes narrowed to slits against the early daylight, hooted and whistled out a few words indicating that it had been delayed for some hours by storms as well as reptiles.

  Leaving the bird to the beastmaster’s professional care, Mark carried the pouch down from the perch. After hastily performing a magical test for safety, he snapped open the container and extracted the single piece of paper which lay inside.

  Unfolding the note, Mark read, silently the first time through. The message had been sent by Ben of Purkinje.

  “Is it from Ben, Father?”

  “Yes. He’s several days away from Sarykam, or he was when he wrote this…” The Prince read on, skimming bad news, not wishing to contemplate any more of that than absolutely necessary.

  “Ben’s coming home?”

  Mark’s face altered. He stared at the note, his mind almost numbed by the two code words that leapt out at him from near the end. Almost he feared to allow himself to hope, let alone to triumph.

  Putting down the paper for the moment, he looked around to make sure that no one but his son was close enough to hear him.

  “Ben mentions an earlier message,” he announced softly, “and repeats it here, to the effect that he has found Wayfinder. We never got that message. Some are bound to go astray.”

  “Dad! That means—if we’ve got Wayfinder—that means we
can use it to find Woundhealer. Doesn’t it?”

  Mark held up the note. “We could, but there’s more. He already has Woundhealer too.”

  “Dad!”

  “He also says here that he’s encountered old friends, your cousin Zoltan, and the Lady Yambu. I don’t know if you remember her.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Mark grinned. “What would you do if you were in command?”

  “Go get those Swords at once!”

  “Not a very difficult decision, hey?”

  But there was a considerably harder choice to be made immediately: Whether to let the news of Ben’s evident success spread through the Palace, and thence inevitably, before long, into the ears of enemy agents. The boost in home morale that this news should produce would be welcome, but if the effort to bring Woundhealer home came to nothing, a corresponding letdown would ensue.

  Stephen was staring anxiously at his father. Mark commanded the boy to tell no one else the content of Ben’s message for the time being. The Sword was not yet safely home.

  When Stephen had been given a chance to read the note for himself, father and son, teasing and challenging each other like two twelve-year-olds, went skipping and jumping down a set of ladders to the next lowest level of the tower, and thence down several levels to the broader roof of the keep below.

  There, moving decisively, the Prince quietly began to set in motion preparations for an expedition to reclaim Woundhealer.

  Stephen, as his father had expected, wanted to come along.

  “Father, will you be leaving right away?”

  “Within a few hours.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  Mark made quick calculations. “No, you’ll be needed here.”

  The refusal sent Stephen into a silent rage; he asked no questions, said nothing at all, but his face reddened and his jaw set.

  Mark sighed; knowing his son, he was not surprised. He had no reason to expect or hope that this boy might be sheltered from danger all his life, and every reason to believe that the lad had better be hardened to it. The Prince would probably have acceded to his son’s request to join the expedition but for one fact: Stephen seemed to be the only person capable of brightening his mother’s countenance or manner in the least.

  Mark explained this point. Then he repeated his refusal, couching it this time in terms of military orders, which made the pill somewhat easier to swallow.

  When Stephen choked on another protest, his father ordered briskly: “Get control of yourself and speak coherently.”

  “Yes, Father.” And the boy managed. He was learning.

  “Now. This is an order…”

  With Stephen under control, for the time being at least, the Prince’s next impulse was to rush to Kristin with the good news.

  But then on thinking the matter over, he was not sure how much he ought to tell his wife.

  Catching sight of a junior officer going about some other errand, Mark hailed the man and dispatched him to find General Rostov.

  Proceeding in the direction of his wife’s room, Mark encountered the chief physician of the Palace, a tall woman with a dark, forbidding, ageless face and kindly voice.

  This lady inquired: “Good news, Highness?”

  “Yes. Or the possibility of good news, at least. I will be making an announcement presently.” Yet Mark hesitated; it would be terrible, he thought again, to raise hopes that might in a few days be dashed.

  Since Kristin’s fall, neither physicians nor wizards had ever been sanguine about her prospects for recovery. None of the experts saw any real hope, unless the Sword of Healing could somehow be obtained.

  The physician said: “I have just come from Her Highness’s room.”

  “What word today?”

  She bowed slightly. “Your Highness, I have no good words to say to you.”

  Mark interrupted the doctor at that point, and dispatched Stephen to look for Uncle Karel. “And when you have found him, I expect it will be time you are about your regular morning tasks.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  When Prince and physician were alone, the healer went on gloomily to explain that she had quietly alerted the attendants to maintain a watch against a possible suicide attempt on the part of the long-suffering patient.

  “As bad as that.” Mark was not really surprised; but no mental preparation could shield him from the chill brought by those words.

  “I fear so, Prince.”

  “Well, well.” He could still force his voice to be calm. “Carry on. We will do what we can.”

  The doctor bowed again, and moved away.

  Mark had not progressed a dozen paces farther in the direction of his wife’s room before he encountered General Rostov, who seemed already to have learned somehow that important matters were to be decided.

  Rostov was as tall as Mark, but the general’s barrel-chested frame was even broader. He had black skin, with an old scar on the right cheek. His curly hair had once been black, but was now almost entirely gray.

  Drawing Rostov aside, Mark quietly outlined for him the expedition he wanted to lead out to gain possession of both Swords.

  “Karel will be going with you?” Rostov asked.

  “He will.” Mark considered that Kristin’s uncle, the chief wizard of the royal family and of the nation, would be indispensable on such an expedition. “Therefore you will be left in charge here at the Palace.”

  After providing the Prince with requested advice on several points, and receiving a few detailed orders, Rostov saluted and moved away, going about his business with his usual efficiency.

  The Prince at last reached his wife’s room and entered.

  The Princess was occupying the same chamber as before her injury, though now the room was even more brightly decorated. Cheerful paintings, some of Kristin’s favorites in her days of health, hung on the walls, and her favorite flowers stood in vases, or grew in pots. Everything about the place was joyous, airy, lightsome, and pleasant—everything except for its occupant, who lay garbed in a plain white gown, her countenance like a mask of clay.

  Originally the nurses and other attendants assigned to care for the crippled Princess had been chosen as much for their cheerful attitude as for their professional ability.

  But those people had been replaced, when Kristin, complaining bitterly to her husband, had said she could not stand having such laughing fools around her.

  This morning Kristin was in her bed as usual. She was capable of leaving it only seldom and briefly. Her body, always slender, was twisted now by broken bones that had healed only poorly, and by spasmed muscles. Her face, once beautiful, had been eroded from within by pain and loss of weight. Indoor pallor had replaced her tan.

  Other than to utter an occasional grim comment on her own future, or lack of one, Kristin now rarely spoke.

  Pulling a chair close to the bed, Mark sat down and gave his wife a partial report on the information that had just arrived by courier. Mark said only that there was new hope now, and that he would soon be leaving town in search of Woundhealer.

  The Prince took this precaution against raising hopes that might be dashed, though in the bleak silence of his own thoughts he felt sure that the problem with Kristin was really the absence of any hope at all.

  Mark took his wife’s hand, but then let it go when the touch seemed to cause her some new discomfort.

  Kristin appeared to listen to what her husband had to say, but she made no comment. Obviously her attitude regarding the news was one of bitter pessimism.

  Her husband was saddened but not surprised by this reaction. That, he had learned, was consistently the disposition of his wife’s mind whatever news he brought, or when, as was more usual, he had none to bring.

  * * *

  After leaving the sickroom, Mark found the old wizard Karel waiting for him, a fat old man with puffing breath and a rich, soft voice.

  Karel, on learning of the morning’s message, was in a hopefu
l mood.

  “I might suggest, Prince, that you send a strong flying squadron to pick up the prize and carry it back to us, as we ride south. If this plan is successful, it would speed up your gaining possession of the Sword by a day or two at least.”

  Mark was impressed favorably by the old man’s suggestion, but he postponed making a final decision on it. If he were eventually to decide in favor of such a maneuver, there would be no need to tell Ben about it in advance. So the Prince omitted any mention of the scheme in the message he now began drafting to be carried back to Ben.

  As Mark considered it, strong arguments took shape in his mind against sending such a flying squad. Chief among these was the fact that any such half-intelligent flying force would run the risk of being detected, and then ambushed, by enemy magic, flying reptiles, or griffins. No birds were strong enough to stand against such an attack.

  Wood himself, who Mark loathed as one of his great antagonists, was known to travel airborne on a griffin, or sometimes even on a demon’s back.

  The danger presented by the possibility of ambush eventually came to seem too great. By the time he had dispatched the message to Ben, Mark had all but finally decided not to take the risk.

  * * *

  Shortly after sunset the Lady Yambu, her new reserves of energy not fully depleted by a long day’s hike, was pacing restlessly about the simple camp she shared with her three companions. The conversation that had begun a quarter of an hour ago had gradually died out, and the three were now all watching her in vague apprehension.

  Suddenly she stopped her pacing, and declared: “I think I must consult our Sword again. I grow doubtful that the road I must follow to the truth lies through Tasavalta.”

  Ben looked at her, grunted, then wordlessly detached Wayfinder in its sheath from his belt, and held the weapon out to her.

  Valdemar’s expression suggested that he was surprised. He said to Yambu: “If you are having doubts, then I must have doubts also.”