Lightning had struck the sword while he held it.
He realized suddenly that he was standing on a deadfiat plain in a thunderstorm, holding up six feet of bare steel. Lightning had an affinity for metal, as everyone knew, and was drawn as well to the highest objects in reach. Standing thus would ordinarily have verged on suicide.
This was no ordinary sword, however, and he began to wonder if it was an ordinary storm. Was it natural or had the sword summoned it? Had the storm that shattered the temple of Bheleu been natural?
He did not think he cared to try so dangerous a test of the sword's nature as to invite being struck by lightning. Merely because he had survived it once did not mean he could do so again. He yanked the sword down.
It resisted, but obeyed.
Immediately the seething clouds overhead stilled; where it had seemed that the storm would break in seconds and pour a torrent upon him, now the clouds were calm, and it seemed as if there were no storm at all. No lightning flashed. No thunder roared. Even the north wind died away to a breeze.
He recalled Saram's proposed test; would the sword burn the earth? He thrust it out before him, pointing at the ground a dozen feet away.
The gem flared up brightly, and a rumble sounded. At first he thought that it was fresh thunder, but then the ground heaved up beneath him, rolling under his feet. Staggering to keep his balance, his left hand fell from the hilt, while his right, holding the sword, swung out to his side.
The tremor stopped, and the earth was again as still and solid as ever.
He no longer felt the cold; the warmth of the sword's touch had spread through his body. As he looked at the blade and realized what had just happened, sweat broke out on his forehead.
He could not believe that the sword had caused an earthquake. He took it in both hands, in a reversed grip, and placed the tip on the soil at his feet.
Nothing happened.
He held it in that position, waiting and thinking. He realized that he did not want anything to happen. Perhaps that was affecting his experiment. He forced himself to stop denying the sword's power, and instead recited to himself, "Move, earth, I command it!"
The ground shook, roaring; he saw dust swirl up on all sides.
"Stop!" he cried.
It stopped.
Earthquakes frightened him. The uneasy movement of that most immovable of things upset his view of the way the world should be. Such displays undoubtedly consumed vast amounts of the sword's energy, but he could not bear to continue.
Storms, however, were something he was accustomed to.
He looked at the gem. It was glowing brightly, vividly red.
It could not be limitless, he told himself. It must exhaust itself eventually.
With that thought in his mind, he raised the sword above his head and summoned the storm to him.
The light of the jewel bathed him in crimson, and the blade glowed brilliantly white as the storm broke about him with preternatural fury. A bolt of lightning burned through the air over his head and shattered against the sword, bathing him in a shower of immense blue-white sparks, but he felt nothing but a slight warmth and a mounting joy in the power he wielded.
Another bolt followed the first, though Garth knew that was not natural; and then a third came. He was washed in white fire, and the ground at his feet was burned black.
Lightning continued to pour down upon him while cold rain beat against the plain around him. He stayed dry in the heart of the storm, for the lightning and the heat of the sword boiled away the rain before it could touch him, encircling him in steam and mist.
He discovered that he could steer the lightning away from him and direct it where he chose by pointing with the sword, as he had spread flame in Skelleth. He drew the sword's heat into him and thrust it upward, and the rain turned warm around him; then he sucked it back down and away, and the rain became first sleet, and then hail-though the frozen drops were smaller than natural hailstones.
He called aloud another strange name, "Kewerro!" The wind howled down out of the north, and the storm became a snowstorm, then a raging blizzard.
He was drunk and staggering with the power of the sword, and still the gem glowed as brightly as ever, the blade as gleaming white as the moon.
He sent the snow away again, turning the north wind back, and allowed the south wind to bring rain in its place. The sky was black, the sun buried in thunderheads; only lightning and the light of the sword lessened the gloom.
He drew the storm around him, whipped it into a howling maelstrom, and forced its winds to whirl faster, until his cloak was flapping with a sound like the breaking of stone; still the gem remained undimmed. Maintaining the roaring hurricane, he moved the earth as well, rippling it around him like a lake in a breeze. He pulled the rain from the sky in sheets, in streams, and pounded lightning on the shifting ground, surrounding himself in a halo of crawling electric fire.
Finally, he could stand no more; he fell to his knees. The earth stilled. One hand fell from the sword's hilt; the lightning stopped, and the wind dropped. In the sudden silence after the final thunderclap, he closed his eyes and heard the beating of the rain soften to a gentle patter.
He opened his eyes and looked hopelessly at the sword. His fingers adhered to the hilt as firmly as ever.
The gem glowed fiery red, and he thought he heard mocking laughter, his own voice laughing at his despair.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The twenty-first councilor and Derelind's report from Mormoreth arrived almost simultaneously.
It was the Seer of Weideth, uncomfortable on a borrowed horse, who completed the Council's quorum; he arrived late in the evening while a light, chilling drizzle blew down out of the north, and his calls to the castle's gatekeeper went unheeded for fully fifteen minutes, unheard over the hiss of the rain and the mutter of the wind. There was only a single guard posted at the gate after dark and he was huddled well away from the window, drawing what warmth he could from his shuttered lantern and a skin of cheap red wine; finally, though, he heard something worth checking on and peered down to discover the Seer, shivering at the gate, wrapped in an immense gray cloak.
The gatekeeper was an honest man and not inconsiderate; he hurried to his winch and called down an apology as he cranked open the portcullis. That done, he rushed down the tower steps, stumbling in the dark and very nearly sending himself falling headfirst, and opened the Lesser Portal. In daylight there would have been two other guards to share the task.
"My lord, I am very sorry, truly I am! I had not thought any would be out in such dreary weather!"
The Seer nodded, but did not manage to say anything. His home village was kept perpetually warm and dry by the heat of the neighboring volcanoes, and he was not accustomed to the damp chill of autumn rains.
"I should have known better, though, with all of you folk arriving for these past several days; I don't suppose you're the last, either. I guess the rain caught you already on the road, and you didn't wish to waste money on an inn with the castle so close; I'd do the same myself. It's damnably strange weather for this early in the year, too, my lord-far colder than any year in my memory."
The Seer looked at the gatekeeper and realized that he was a very lonely man, spending his nights sitting alone at the gate. He was unmarried, with no children, and his most recent woman had left him a few days earlier.
That was not his business, the Seer told himself. His gift sometimes told him more than he wanted to know-and then other times it wouldn't tell him anything. He wished it were more reliable. He didn't particularly care if he were ever a great prophet, but it would be pleasant, he mused, at least to be a competent one, rather than having erratic flashes of insight and foreknowledge.