The Sword of Skelos

—Balzac

Naked, bearing marks of hunger and the torturer’s skills, the two men stood in the stone-walled pit and glared upward. On the landing just within the door at the top of the dungeon steps, four men stared back. Three were bearded; two were mailed and helmeted. Two were robed and one wore an odd cap. Swords were sheathed at the hips of three while the fourth held a sword in his unwrinkled hand.

The young man in the strange Ferygian hat and long mauve robe took his gaze from the prisoners below, and addressed him in the multicolored robe. “You have all you require of these two prisoners, my lord Khan? You would have them slain, now?”

Greasy of ringleted black hair, protruberant of belly and yet not an ill-featured man at all, the man in the silver-girt, gold-trimmed robe of diverse hues raised his brows.

“Aye,” he said; “surely though,
you
do not intend to go down there and act as executioner?”

One of the two soldiers grinned beneath his peaked helm of bronze on leather over sponge. He made a sound, and the robed man with the sword cast him a dark look. His squared face took on a thin smile, however, and he returned his gaze to the khan.

“No, my lord. I ask only that you wait a time, and observe. Just a little time, my lord.”

Nearby a low, bandy-legged iron brazier squatted like a black demon whose head was flame that cast eerie flickers of light over the walls of the dungeon. On either side of the robed man rested a pail; one held sandy earth, the other water. Squatting, that square-faced and cleanshaven man laid the sword on the landing, so that its blade pointed directly from him. The blade was well made, a long deadly leaf of shining steel whose tang disappeared into a silver hilt: the neck and rearing head of a dragon. The
quillons
or guard formed its wings, and the topaz pommel crowned its head as with gleaming yellow gold.

Muttering, the squatting man sprinkled dirt from the pail of earth over the sword. He soiled thus its blade, hilt, guard and pommel, and he had care to cover the entire weapon, minutely. The older soldier, obviously disapproving, stared down and his face was grim. To treat thus a weapon so well made and so laboriously, the end result of the genius of a master artisan!

Turning the sword, the mage—for so he manifestly was—repeated his action. All the while he continued his sorcerous, murmured invultuations.

Heedless of the wine-dark robes stretched so taut over his upturned rump, the mage went onto hands and knees as though in worship of the blade. Hardly; he continued to mutter while he blew gustily, all over the weapon. Again he was at pains to cover it completely, this time invisibly with his breath.

Dirt stirred, then was flung free when he lifted the sword and slashed it thrice through the air of the silent, close chamber. The very air moaned, sliced by that keen blade.

Below, naked and weal-marked prisoners gazed up at these rites. They exchanged looks of puzzlement and apprehension, and returned their gazes upward. Both knew sorcery when they saw it, for their native Iranistan farther still to the east was hardly free of mages and visitors from the plain between the dimensions.

Likewise stared khan and soldierly pair, and they too felt a stirring at napes and a certain breathlessness. They knew that they watched sorcery. They could only wonder at its purpose and ultimate result, in this chill and murky dungeon.

The mage dipped his hand into the pail of water. Again and again he sprinkled and dipped and sprinkled the sword—whilst he muttered. All this to the obvious scandalizing of that same older of the two guards; this man had seen action and had great respect for a good weapon. Anyone could own an ax, but a sword was a thing of art and great craft. The veteran had saved and saved to purchase the one at his side. He treated it with more respect and care than he gave his wife, who had after all not come so dear. Lips tight, he watched the crouching mage cover the blade with the worst enemy of a good blade or steel armor: water.

And all the while the mage muttered, murmured so that his watchers knew he bespoke words though they understood none of them.

Now that soldier was perhaps somewhat mollified: taking up the dripping sword, the mage continued his throaty incanting. His lips barely amove, he passed the blade through the flame dancing above the brazier.

The metal hissed as if in preternatural anger. Turning it over, the mage repeated the action and, presumably, the words of his curse or ensorceling invocation.

At last, still murmuring his incomprehensible cantrip, the mage rose. With no warning whatever and almost without taking aim, he launched the sword in spear fashion at the naked pair below. And now the caster of spells spoke aloud, and all understood the words.

“Slay him.”

The sword was still in air, a streak of silver, when the mage spoke those words in a deadly dull voice full of menace and malice like deadly spores crowding the pod of a Black Lotus from Khitai’s doom-shadowed jungles. Soldiers and khan stared—as did the two Iranistani prisoners below. The one, scarred and sunken of cheek and belly, made to dodge from the blade that rushed at him, point foremost. Voices rose then, murmurs from lips other then the mage’s; did the flying blade swerve, just before it plunged into the breast of the dodging man… just a fraction left of center?

Taken in that fictional wise beloved of the more careless tellers and scriveners of tales—precisely through the heart—the Iranistani jerked violently. He voiced a sepulchral sigh, and fell. He did not lie still at once, but twitched in his dying. The sword had plunged deep. It quivered above him.

“An
excellent
throw, Zafra,” the khan said in surprise, once he’d broken the bonds of petrific shock. “I had not dreamed that you—”

Below, the second prisoner had grasped the dragon-hilt of the sword standing like a slender silver-and-steel grave marker above his comrade’s body. He drew it forth, releasing a freshet of blood. He stared upward at the watching quartet of enemy captors. His thoughts and emotions could be read in his sunken, hunger-bright eyes: the khan! The very khan, only a few ells away, and the Iranistani with sword in hand…

With deliberate steps, the naked foreigner paced along the dungeon’s floor to the base of the stair. His gaze was fastened on the khan. Blood dripped from the sword in his fist.

Behind the mage, swords scraped from wood-mouthed sheaths as two men of weapons prepared to defend their ruler. The Iranistani, weakened by torture and lack of food, would be the work of but seconds. Surely the guards would survive little longer were their khan to be murdered, for he was a Turanian satrap and the Empire of Turan was powerful and jealous as a killer stallion just past its youth.

The young mage lifted a hand, staying them. Quietly he said, “
Slay him
.”

The Iranistani had a foot on the second stair when the sword came alive in his hand.

The dragon twisted, twisted again; it pulled free of his grip, for his fingers had loosened in surprise.

The sword whipped about. It lunged at him as though wielded, driven by a mighty, invisible arm. The prisoner threw up an arm in automatic defense—and the blade chopped nearly through his wrist. The hand dangled on a scrap of skin, a morsel of muscle and a stick of splintered bone. At once the sword redirected its aim and plunged into the man’s breast—just left of center.

Driven a pace back by the force of the blade’s driving into him, the Iranistani tottered and fell backward. He lay thus, one bare heel on the bottom-most stair. His legs twitched. The sword stood above his body. It quivered as if the silver dragon surmounting it were alive, and angry.

The mage turned to look at his khan with brown garnets of eyes cold as chastity. His squared, beardless face showed precisely nothing beneath the high cap; neither triumph nor expectancy lighted his features. Now he completely ignored the two guards, whose hearts were as invaded by a dreadful chill that was cold as steel—ensorceled steel.

“Impressive, wizard!”

The mage bowed at his khan’s words. And he smiled when his face passed thus momentarily from the others’ sight, for he was a young man recently apprentice, and not often praised, and his future and fortune had been in doubt. Now he knew that both were assured, more firmly than the khan’s. He was apprentice no more, but valued wizard to Akter Khan.

“Enchant a thousand swords so,” the ruler went on as his mage straightened, “and I shall have an army requiring no upkeep whatever and the smallest of quarters—and invincible!”

“Ah, my lord,” the young mage dared say. “I have shown you something horrifically impressive, and instantly you think only of more, more!”

From one of the soldiers came a gasp. Yet when his ruler spoke he knew that henceforth this shudder-some demon in human guise must be treated with care and respect, Ferygian cap, snake’s eyes and all.

“Think me not grateful, wizard… though I will not be chastised by you.”

The khan’s eyes shifted in their sockets, toward the two guards. It was a silent reminder that the prisoners were now corpses.

“I regret that only two blades can be so enchanted at any one time, my lord,” the mage said. Perhaps it was noted that he did not apologize; no comment was made.

“Why?”

The eyes of the mage shifted a glance at the soldiers; gazed again upon the khan.

“There is nothing here we need guarding from, now,” the khan said. “Await us beyond the door.”

After a moment’s hesitation and the opening of a mouth—which closed, words unspoken—the two soldiers departed. Their ruler did not glance after them; he continued to look into the face of the mage who had proven himself lacking only in years.

“Why?” the khan repeated.

“It is a Law of Skelos, whence comes the enchantment I laid on the blade, my lord Khan. One must employ the proper ancient words in
just
the right manner and tone, and the four elements in
just
the right order and while certain specific of the words of the invultuations are being uttered: the elements that comprise all things: earth and air, and water and fire.”

“Most unfortunate. However… a great feat, and I remain impressed and most pleased, wizard. You will wear this.”

A ring set with a huge sundane transferred itself from finger to palm, from palm to waiting fingertips and thus onto a finger of the mage. His bow was not low, nor did he speak.

“I will have that sword.”

“So I thought my khan might desire. And I had another thought, which is why I wanted us shut of the guards. Might I not instead lay the enchantment on my generous lord’s own blade?”

The khan laid his hand on the jewel-set hilt of the curved sword that thrust up past his left hip. “Aye! By Erlik’s entrails—aye!”

“The sword must be blooded immediately the spell is laid, my lord.”

“Aye; methinks we shall be able to find someone to give up worthless life that his khan may be protected by such a blade, wizard! Proceed.”

And the satrap of Zamboula drew his jewel-hilted sword, and presented it to Zafra his mage.

The big youth gave the girl’s tawny arm a squeeze and swatted her backside. She danced a step from the slap, tossing long hair the color of a roan horse, and gave him a look that combined taunt and caress. He’d done with her, this night. With a jingle of her belt of coins, she went her way while he went his.

She hurried to reach a better lighted area, for this was the very worst section of the City of the Wicked. Throats were swiftly slit in these dim narrow streets of the area called The Desert, and even more swiftly in the darkness of alleys slippery with refuse and vomit.

The big youth walked no more than four swinging strides before he turned to enter just such a narrow alley. Visibility might have been a bit less at the bottom of a well. The best light was at the corner of the street behind him, from a pair of lion-lamps outside a noisy tavern. Their light attempted to follow him, and soon gave it up.