It was utterly frustrating that he had no way to determine which Sword lay in his hands. He knew that all but one of the Twelve Blades were marked with distinguishing white symbols on their black hilts-a target shape for Farslayer, a human eye for Sightblinder, and so on. But sightless Keyes had no way to perceive the sign, if any, on the Sword he held. Holding his breath, he tried with all his will and care to find and read the symbol with his fingertips-but for all he was able to discern by touch, there was no sign there to read.
Ah, if only Lo-Yang with his two good eyes had stayed with him a little longer!
Suppose it was only the black hilt, unrelieved-that would mean that he was holding Soulcutter. Keyes shuddered. But he could not be sure. The odds seemed to be against it. For all he knew, there might very well be a symbol right under his hand, dead flush with the rest of the hilt, undistinguishable by touch.
Everything depended upon his finding out. An enemy more powerful than any demon had stuffed him into this hole, and was coming back, perhaps at any moment now, to use him in an experiment. It was vitally important to identify the Sword, before he made any plan to use it.
Which one did he have?
Well, there was one sure way by which Soulcutter, at least, could be ruled out. Hesitantly Keyes began to draw the weapon, starting it first one centimeter out of its sheath, then two. Meanwhile he held his breath, hoping that if the hilt in his hand was indeed Soulcutter’s, he could retain enough sense of purpose to muzzle that deadliest of all Blades again before its growing power overwhelmed him with hopelessness, before all possible actions, and even life itself, were robbed of meaning.
If this experiment should demonstrate that he was holding the Sword of Despair, Keyes decided that he was desperate enough to use it, by threatening to draw it against the returning god.
His cautious tugging was exposing more and more of the Blade, but still no black cloud of despair rose up to engulf Keyes. He felt no more miserable with the Sword half-drawn. With a sigh of relief he concluded that his prize had to be one of the other eleven.
He pulled hard on the unseen hilt, and with a faint, singing sigh, the long steel came completely free.
Keyes soon disposed of any lingering doubt in his own mind that the weapon he held was genuinely one of the Twelve Swords. Proof lay in the facts of its unbreakableness, and that the extreme keenness of the edges-he tested them on the tough leather of his dagger’s sheath-could not be dulled by repeated bashing on rock.
Several of the Swords, his earlier investigations had informed him, ought to produce distinguishing noises when they went into action. But the only sound so far generated by this one was the bright clang, purely mechanical, of thin steel on tough rock.
The blind man uttered a prayer to Ardneh that the hilt he was gripping belonged to Woundhealer, and that that Sword’s power would let him see again. Feverish with hope, maneuvering the long Blade awkwardly, he nicked first his eyebrow, finally the bridge of his nose and very eyelids, with the keen edge. All he achieved were stinging pains and a blood-smeared face. His fevered hope that he might be holding the Sword of Healing, that its steel would pass painlessly, bloodlessly, into his flesh on its mission of restoration-that hope was lost in a few drops of blood.
Hope was lost briefly but not killed. Actually his situation would be better if this was one of the other Swords, carrying some power that could free him completely from his enemy.
Under the stress of his predicament, the attributes and powers, even the names of all the Swords seemed to have fled his memory. Might this be Wayfinder, then, or Coinspinner?
Keyes whispered a short string of urgent requests to the magic Blade he held. He asked it to show him how he might get out of the cave, and where he might find help. When nothing happened, he repeated his demands more loudly, but as far as he could tell, he was granted no response of any kind. In this situation, either Coinspinner or Wayfinder ought to be pulling his gripping hands around, bending his wrists in a particular direction, showing him the way he ought to move. And Coinspinner, whether it indicated any particular direction or not, would bring him great good luck, in fact whatever extreme of luck he needed. If necessary the Sword of Chance could call up an earthquake on behalf of its client, to shatter the rocky cage around him and let him walk or climb away unharmed.
But nothing of the sort was happening. Two more possibilities, it seemed, eliminated.
When it occurred to Keyes to make the effort, testing for Stonecutter was simple enough. One thing he had in ample supply down here was rock. And Stonecutter in fact could be just what a man in his situation needed, the very tool with which to carve his way out, creating a tunnel or a stair, slicing hard stone as easily as packed snow.
But the cave’s walls did not yield effortlessly to this Sword when he swung it against them, then tried it as a saw. Now he realized that his first attempts to test the durability of the blade ought to have been enough to convince him of this fact. Hard, noisy hacking produced only dust in the air, small chips and fragments which stung the man’s blind face. A steady pressure, indestructible edge against limestone, did no better.
Well, then, quite possibly he was holding Farslayer. But Keyes could think of no way to distinguish that Sword from its fellows, short of naming a victim and throwing it with intent to kill. The stony walls that closed him in would pose no obstacle to the Sword of Vengeance, which would pass through granite as through so much air, if that were necessary to reach its prey. Farslayer would kill at any distance-but would not come back peacefully to its user. To employ that weapon at a distance was to lose it, and even should Keyes succeed in slaying the god who had trapped him here, he would still be trapped.
His musings were interrupted by the onslaught of a swarm of large, furry, carnivorous bats. No doubt disturbed by the racket he’d been making, the creatures came fluttering out of some of the high, dim recesses of the deep cave. Indifferent to sunlight, they erupted from their holes by tens or dozens to threaten Keyes, who at the sound of their approach got his back against a wall and raised his Sword.
He could hear the bats piping, crying out blurred words in their thin little voices, uttering incoherent threats and slaverings of blood-hunger. They were flapping their wings violently-they got close enough to let him feel the breeze of their wings, and he cringed from the expected pain of their needle-like teeth and claws-but that did not follow. In blind desperation he waved the naked Sword at his attackers, and he remained untouched. Once the blade clanged accidentally on rock, but he had no sensation of it striking anything fleshy in midair. Still, one after another, the little bat-cries became shrieks of anguish, and then died away.
Panting, gripping the hilt of his still-unknown weapon with both hands, Keyes stood waiting, straining his ears in silence. Not a bat had touched him yet, nor had he touched them, but when he cautiously changed his position by a step or two, his foot came down on a dead one. Gingerly he felt the furry little thing with his free hand, making sure of what it was, then kicked it away from him.
Not Farslayer, then. Whichever Sword he held had somehow killed at least one animal without making physical contact.
The bats had not been routed for more than a minute or so when the demon arrived-drawn up out of the rocks, perhaps, by a sense of the proximity of helpless human prey, or simply by the disturbance man and bats were making.
Even sightless as he was, Keyes could tell that a demon was near him, and coming nearer. He knew it by the feeling of sickness, a gut-deep wretchedness, that preceded the monster’s physical presence. Again the man experienced overwhelming fear, panic that made him cry out and tremble. Better to be torn to bits by flesh-devouring bats than to wind up in a demon’s gut, where flesh was the last component of humanity to be destroyed.