The Swordbearer

Yet his idealism had not vanished. He just seemed unable to apply it in any direct, specific fashion.

Grass and brambles infested Kacalief's remains. Bones still lay heaped in monumental piles round the castle hill.

Rusty weapons and armor could be found everywhere in the weedy fields.

A handful of stubborn, enterprising peasants had begun reclaiming the land. It was blood-enriched earth where plows more often turned on broken swords than stones. The peasants were collecting the iron in hopes of someday selling it.

Gathrid abandoned his eastward journey for a time. Some of the peasants remembered him from his youth. They were not thrilled with his return. They knew too much of his tale.

For days he prowled the ruins or sat staring at the mausoleum on the flank of the hill. He tried to wish back the dead.

They were gone from his mind as well as his world. He could find them only in his heart, in faint, sad echoes of feelings that once had been.

Sometimes he considered searching for Loida's people. They would want to know what had become of her. He never got around to going.

He was sitting in the tall green grass, sword across his lap, sucking a sweet stalk and staring at the mausoleum, when he heard the soft brush of grass against stealthy legs. He listened carefully as the sound crept up behind him.

"Come on up and take a seat, Theis."

He had not turned. The sound died. Nothing happened for several seconds. Then the dwarf moved up briskly and settled himself. "You're learning."

"Yes. I am." The dwarf had healed as quickly as ever, except for his eyes. He remained blind. "And I've been expecting you."

They stared at the gray stone mausoleum for a long while. The Mindak's artisans had told the story of each girl in skillful bas-relief.

"Why?" Rogala asked.

"The dagger. It was time."

"Suchara has lost you already."

"I left, Theis. She didn't let me go. No more, I think, than she'd ever let you go. Her pride will compel her to try something."

"You think she still rules me? I'm free, Gathrid."

"I don't hear your conviction, Theis. If you're free, what're you doing here with me?"

"Where else have I got to go? What else, whom else, do I know? They left me no options when they took my eyes. It's go with you or become a beggar. The Esquire has his pride too."

"Uhm." That sounded as though it contained a grain of truth. Long life was a curse upon Rogala. It made him a time traveler marooned far from home. He had nothing in this world but his fragile association with the youth he was supposed to kill once Suchara had tired of him.

Was there anyone else with a use for the blind dwarf?

Perhaps someone who would use him as Ahlert had used the Toal.

"How did it begin, Theis? What are the Great Old Ones? Where did they come from?"

"I don't know."

"Really, Theis? Pardon me if I have trouble believing you. You've always known more than you were willing to tell."

"Gathrid, I'm a tired old man. Rehashing the past, and my ignorance, won't do any of us any good."

"I want to understand, Theis. I've been a part of something. On a grand scale. I want to know what. I want to know what it means. And on a smaller scale, I'd like to unravel the mystery called Theis Rogala. You puzzle me more than the Great Old Ones."

Rogala's sightless eyes sca

"Who are you, Theis? What are you? Why do you live on and on? Even Nieroda has to change flesh.

Where were you born? When? Were you born at all? What's your real co

"That's all long ago and far away, Gathrid. None of it . matters anymore."

"It matters to me. Tell me about Suchara. Is she real? Is she a goddess? Why does she torment humanity so?"

"Peace, I say!"

"No, Theis. Not anymore. Peace is dead. I've lost everything I value. I've had my life shaped and warped in a direction I would've rejected had I been able. I've seen my whole world destroyed. I want to know why!"

"It can't be changed."

"Tell me."

"Damnit! Aarant was stubborn and nosy, but he wasn't half the pest you are. Let it lie, I say."

"Start with Suchara."

Rogala sighed. "You win. Yes. She's real. She does exist. She was a human woman once. One member of a family which delved deeper than even Nieroda. Farther and deeper than Nieroda could imagine, even as Queen of Sommerlath. And they went too far. They tempted fate too much. They outlasted most researchers, but they finally stumbled into the trap that takes them all. Now they lie caught in an endless sleep, hidden away somewhere. Sometimes they dream the shaping dreams. They touch the world with their minds. The world responds. They don't know that what they touch is real. They think they're playing on a game board with the scale of a world. After all, it isn't the world in which they fell asleep."

"I saw them awake, Theis."

"No. They only dreamed. Only dreamed."

"But ..."

"Were Suchara here, Gathrid, you'd see nothing but a woman. A plain woman who clothes herself in gauzes of aquamarine to distract the eye from her homeliness. She uses perfumes that smell of the sea. She has eyes of green and, perhaps, a strand of seaweed threaded into her coppery hair. Her voice would be modulated to contain undertones reminding you of the whisper of the waves. She's a dramatic, and a talent, but she's just a woman."

Gathrid watched the man while he talked, startled. This was his terse, insensitive companion, Theis Rogala?

"It sounds like you knew her. Like you were maybe in love with her."

"Perhaps."

"And the others?"

"Chuchain. Her husband. Bachesta and Ulalia are daughter and son. Bachesta was a dark one. An evil one. The sleep may have been her doing. She wasn't a patient woman. Ulalia was her antithesis.

Pure, if you like. And slow, lazy, and easily fooled."

Softly, Gathrid said, "I see why he attracted my sister. This family. Is their fighting for real?

Are they just whil-ing the time?"

"It's real. Endlessly, agonizingly real. They knew, as the sleep took them, that only one of them would ever come back out. Three must perish that one may waken. Or be wakened. It'll take an outsider nearly as great as they. And in that aspect, they may unconsciously know what they're doing to the world. They may be trying to create their deliverer.''

"Ahlert. ..."

"He might have revived Chuchain. He came near succeeding without realizing what he was doing. For a while he had control of the dream, rather than the dream of him. The people of Ansorge had done most of the work for him. Had he found Daubendiek before Suchara quickened, and taken it to a certain place ..." The dwarf shuddered.

"And what about Daubendiek? What is Daubendiek?"

"A sword. A trap. The Hell wherein Suchara's soul is tormented. In those days it was the practice to hide part of one's soul in some object. So with the Staif."

"And the Shield?"

"Like your blade there, just a creation of Nieroda's. No. Not 'just.' Bachesta nurtured Nieroda forages. And, as she did with Ahlert, she turned on her master. She became capable of matching Bachesta evil for evil, on this plane."

"She seemed more lonely and unhappy than evil." Gathrid related his experiences before the Great Old Ones.

"What is evil but misery and loneliness?" Rogala muttered. "The child of those parents, surely."

Gathrid frowned. Theis had taken quite a philosophical turn.

"Even Nieroda is human, Gathrid. Dead and immortal, but human. Loneliness is the price of power.

Even Gerdes Mulenex had his good side. You saw that side in your sister so strongly you couldn't see any other. So it goes. You should have learned that lesson by being Swordbearer. You tasted a lot of souls."

"There was love in Anyeck, Theis. There was even a spark of it left in Nieroda."