Then I concentrated on his head, driving stroke after stroke into his skull while avoiding his flailing hand. Finally he collapsed and lay motionless.
I studied the mangled, seemingly inert carcass for a few heartbeats, then turned and strode toward the exit.
At my back, a harsh voice hissed rhyming words.
The patch of floor beneath me turned to soft muck, treacherous as quicksand. I sank to my knees in an instant, and as I floundered, Yshan began a second incantation, no doubt to finish me off while the ooze held me helpless.
I cast about, spied the open sarcophagus, and tossed my broadsword into it. Then I stretched out my arms, and, straining, succeeded in hooking my fingertips over the lip of the stone receptacle. I heaved with all my strength, and dragged myself up and out of the sucking slime. In the process, I noticed the tiara lying inside the coffin, not that I cared anymore.
I grabbed my sword and leaped at Yshan.
Some shapeless phosphorescent thing was rippling into full existence above him, but it vanished when I cut into his chin and silenced his conjuration. I finished removing his jaw, severed his head, cut the tongue out, and hacked off his fingers. Afterward, I still wasn’t certain he was altogether dead, but reasonably confident I’d deprived him of the ability to cast any more spells.
That should have been the end of it. But I hurried back the way I’d come because I feared it wasn’t.
Practitioners of Dark Magic don’t always pass from the world as easily as normal folk, especially if they leave a dying curse behind. While the feud between the Greens and Blues raged, Yshan had apparently rested easy. But the prospect of peace roused him, and he resolved to avert it.
He had the power to observe things at a distance, and so discerned a sword among the wedding gifts, its blade smeared with grease as such fine weapons generally come from the maker. He decided to switch the sword for the costly one his family had interred with him. Baltes and Lukinda had received such an abundance of presents that it seemed unlikely anyone would notice the substitution.
Yshan emerged from the crypts late one night, had the bad luck to encounter Venwell, and killed him to silence them. He then gave his sword a more thorough cleaning than any common housebreaker, eager to flee, would have done. It couldn’t have even a drop of blood on it if it was to pass for a new weapon.
He made the substitution, stole the tiara simply to bolster the impression that an ordinary thief had invaded the mansion, and returned to his vault. In the days that followed, the enchantments he’d laid on the emerald sword began their work. First, a glamour made Baltes yearn to wear the blade without delay. I’d felt the power myself, if only I’d had the wit to realize it. Next, its influence nudged the Keenspurs back toward the rancor of yore.
And through it all, Tregan never sensed supernatural forces at work because Yshan had trained him and held some tricks in reserve. Tricks that allowed him to operate without his successor detecting it.
I doubted he was detecting anything now, either, and that meant I had to get upstairs fast. Because I suspected the warlock’s sword had a final trick to play.
The Keenspurs were holding the wedding in their great hall, before hundreds of guests. Lukinda was plump, freckled, and pretty in her gown of shining white, the priestess, matronly in vestments of green. Baltes wore the emerald sword. From the looks of it, the ceremony was nearing its conclusion.
“Stop!” I bellowed, starting up the aisle. “Lord Baltes, throw away your sword! It’s cursed!”
Everyone turned to gawk at me, and I realized what a peculiar spectacle I must be, clad like a laborer, my legs filthy, a blade in my hand.
Then Dremloc cried, “It’s Selden!” The dye in my hair wasn’t enough to fool him.
Several of the Keenspurs rose to bar my way. “Get out of here, lunatic,” said one, hand on the hilt of his dagger.
“You don’t understand,” I said.
Nor were they disposed to listen. As they advanced on me, and all the other guests gawked at us, Baltes whipped Yshan’s sword from its scabbard and lifted it to threaten his dumbfounded bride.
The priestess grabbed his arm, but he shook her off and shoved her reeling. Nobody else saw, because they were all looking at me, and I could do nothing. The entire length of the hall, and the folk intent on ejecting me or worse, separated me from the altar.
Which meant that despite all my efforts, Baltes would commit the atrocity Yshan had intended. Then the Blues would rise up in fury, the Greens would have no option but to defend themselves, and any nobles who survived this day would prosecute the blood-feud for years to come.
Or so it seemed. But it turned out that someone had heeded my warning after all. Marissa hurled herself at Baltes and grappled with him. She softened him up with a knee to the groin, then twisted his arm. The emerald sword dropped from his fingers.
As soon as it did, he stopped struggling. “Blessed Goddess!” he whimpered, his voice full of horror. “Blessed Goddess!”
By then, people were finally taking note of what was happening before the altar. I cast about and found Tregan. “The evil’s in the blade,” I reiterated. “Surely you can sense it now.”
He peered at the fallen weapon, then growled, “Yes.” He muttered words of power, swept his right hand through a pass, and a ragged darkness swirled up from the sword. People cried out and cringed, but Tregan had the demon, if that was what it was, under control, and it couldn’t hurt us. It wailed as it withered away.
Afterward came explanations, and reassurances to the frightened Lukinda and her understandably agitated kin. During the course of it all, Baltes, still white-faced and shaky, told me, “Master Selden, I owe you a hundred apologies. What can I do to make amends?”
I grinned. “Finish the wedding, invite me to the feast, and give me a purse heavy with gold.”
Marissa said, “I think I’m due a split.”
DAWN OF SORROWS
by Brenda Cooper
Brenda Cooper has published fiction and poetry in
Analog, Oceans of the Mind, Strange Horizons,
and
The Salal Review,
and been included in the anthologies
Sun In Glory
and
Maiden, Matron, Crone
. Brenda’s collaborative fiction with Larry Niven has appeared in
Analog
and
Asimov’s,
and their novel,
Building Harlequin’s Moon,
appeared in 2005. Brenda lives in Bellevue, Washington, with her partner Toni, Toni’s daughter Katie, a border collie, two gerbils, and a hamster. By day, she works as the City of Kirkland’s CIO, applying her interests in science, technology, and the future to day-to-day computer operations and strategic planning. She writes for
Futurist.com
and can sometimes be found speaking about the future, and suggesting that science fiction books make great reading. The rest of the time, she’s writing, reading, exercising, or exploring life with her family.
BARD Jocelyn paused at the crest of the hill and looked down at the peaceful town of Sunny Valley spilling between two sets of lower hills below. The midday sun washed the houses and fields in bright, cheerful warmth, as if the town smiled up at her and Bard Silver. She turned to look back, where Bard Silver trailed behind, one slender white hand against her side, the other wiping sweat from her forehead. Jocelyn wanted to push down to Sunny Valley, buy supplies, and keep right on going. But Silver needed a break, even if she wasn’t complaining.