"That had occurred to me."
"Agents, perhaps, of the Grand Duke?"
"Basil bears me no love, I'm sure of that. And of course he too may have learned of the existence of the swords, and he may be trying now to gather them all into his own hands, even as I would have them all in mine… hah, Blue-Robes, how I wish I knew how many all across the continent are playing the same game. I presume your latest divinations still indicate that the magic blades at least are not scattered all around the earth?"
"The swords are all still on this continent, Your Grace. I am quite positive of that. But as to exactly where, in whose possession… "
The Duke's darkening mood sounded in his voice. "Yes, exactly. And there's no telling how many know of them by now. Bah. Kings and princes, queens and bandits, priests, scoundrels and adventurers of every stripe… bah, what a fine mess."
"At least Your Grace has had a chance to get in on the game. You were not left in ignorance that it is taking place."
"Game, is it?" The Duke snorted. "You know I have small tolerance for games. But I must play, or be swallowed up, when others gain the power of the swords. And you need not remind me any more that I have your skill at divination to thank for my awareness of the game, late as it comes; I've thanked you for that already. Gods, I wonder whose men those were. The Margrave's, you suppose? They didn't even seem to know or care about the sword, at least according to the descriptions of events we have."
The wizard, his hands stroking the carven lid of the wooden chest, coughed. It was a sound as delicate and diplomatic as the Duke's habitual sigh. "I think not the Margrave's, sire. Perhaps they could have been agents of the Queen of Yambu?"
The Duke, nagged by irritation on top of worry, flared up sullenly, then recovered. "Have I not told you never to speak of that… but never mind. You are right, we must consider Yambu also, I suppose. But I do not think it was her… no, I do not think so."
"Perhaps not… then we must face the possibility, Your Grace, that they were agents of the Dark King himself. I did find it odd that a mere miller should have mentioned that august name." "I would say that this one-armed Jord is not your ordinary miller. But then, the commons in general are not nearly so ignorant of their rulers and their rulers' affairs as those rulers generally suppose."
"Just so, sire." The wizard nodded soothingly. "We have then primarily to consider Grand Duke Basil, Queen Yambu — and Vilkata himself. While remembering, as Your Grace so wisely points out, that there are still other possibilities."
"Yes." But now the Duke's attention was straying, drawn by a thought connected with the huge map. His gaze had lifted to the map, and had come to rest at an unmarked spot near the eastern limit of his own domain and of the continent itself, right at the inland foot of the coastal range that was labeled as the Ludus Mountains. Right about there, somewhere, ought to be the high village — what had the woman named it? Treefall, that was it — from which the god had conscripted his human helpers, keeping them for a night and a day of labor, death, and mutilation. It now struck Duke Fraktin as absurd that the village where such an enigmatic and almost incredible event had taken place should not even be marked on his map.
The woman had asked him… no, she had as much as told him that he, the Duke, had been there, and had fathered a bastard on her there, the night after Jord's maiming, in one of those hill country funeral rites. The Duke knew something about those.
A bold story indeed for any woman to make up out of nothing. Still, the fact was that the Duke could remember nothing like that happening, and he had, as a rule, a good memory. A better memory, he thought, for women than for most things. Of course he couldn't recall everything from thirteen years ago. Exactly what had he been doing at that time?
The insect-buzzing sound had died away. The wizard pushed up the lid of the huge box. Both men stared at the fine sword that was reveled inside, nesting in a lining of rare and fantastically beautiful blue fur. The sword had not been brought to the Duke in any such sumptuous container as this; in fact it had arrived, wrapped for concealment, in the second-best cloak of a Red Temple courtesan.
The clear light from the Old World wall panels glinted softly on mirror steel. Beneath the surface of the blade, the Duke's eye seemed to be able to trace a beautiful, finely mottled pattern that went centimeters deep into the metal, though the blade was nowhere a full centimeter thick.
Putting both hands on the hilt, the Duke lifted the sword gently from the magical protection of the chest. "Are they ready out on the terrace?" he asked, without taking his eyes from the blade itself.
"They have so indicated, Your Grace."
Now the Duke, holding the sword raised before him as if in ritual, led the way out of the blind room behind the arras, across a larger chamber, and through another doorway, whose curtains were stirred by an outdoor breeze. The terrace on which he emerged was open to the air, and yet it was a secret place. The view was cut off on all sides by stone walls, and by high hedges planted near at hand. On the stone pavement under the gray sky, several soldiers in blue and white were waiting, and with them one other man, a prisoner. The prisoner, a middle-aged, well-muscled man, wore only a loincloth and was not bound in any way. Yet he was sweating profusely and kept looking about him in all directions, as if he expected his doom to spring out at him at any moment.
The Duke trusted his wizard to hold the sword briefly, while he himself quickly slipped a mail shirt on over his head, and put on a light helm. Then he took back the sword, and stood holding it like the experienced swordsman that he was.
The Duke gestured toward the prisoner. "Arm him, and step back."
Most of the soldiers, weapons ready, retreated a step or two. One tossed a long knife, unsheathed, at the prisoner's feet.
"What is this?" the man demanded, his voice cracking.
"Come fight me," said the Duke. "Or refuse, and die more slowly. It is all one to me."
The man hesitated a moment longer, then picked up the knife.
The Duke walked forward to the attack. The prisoner did what he could to defend himself, which, given the disparity in arms and armor, was not much.
When it was over, a minute later, the Duke wiped the long blade clean himself, and with a gesture dismissed his troops, who bore away with them the prisoner's body.
"I felt no power in it, Blue-Robes. It killed, but any sharp blade would have killed as well. If its power is not activated by being carried into a fight, then how can it be ordered, how controlled? And what does it do?"
The wizard signed humbly that he did not know.
The Duke bore the cleaned blade back into the concealed room behind the arras, and replaced it in the magically protective chest. Still his hand lingered on the black hilt, tracing with one finger the thin white lines of decoration. "Something like a castle wall on his sword, the fellow said."
"So he did, Your Grace."
"But here I see no castle wall. Here there's nothing more or less than what we've seen in the pattern since that woman brought me the sword a month ago. This shows a pair of dice."
"Indeed it does, Your Grace: " "Dice. And she who brought it to me from the Red Temple said that the soldier who left it with her had been wont to play, and win, at dice." Annoyingly, that soldier himself was dead. Stabbed, according to the woman's story, within a few breaths of the moment when he'd let the sword out of his hands. The killers who'd lain in wait for him had evidently been some of his fellow gamblers, who were convinced he'd cheated them. Duke Fraktin had sent Sir Sharfa, one of his more trusted knights, out on a secret mission of investigation. "Am I to cast dice for the world, Blue-Robes?"
The wizard let the question pass as rhetoric, without an answer. "No common soldier, Your Grace, could have carried a sword like this about with him for long. It would certainly have come to the attention of his officers, and then…"