Chapter 3
The Dervish looked down at the young man at his feet, unconscious and already shivering with cold, and thought, Ancestors be praised, this is the first good luck I’ve had in a century.
The young man who had drawn the sword was now the sword’s wielder, and thus the master of the servant of the sword, namely the Dervish.
The magic of the sword’s enchantment bound him to the wielder with a power that transcended death.
The Dervish’s death, specifically. His wielders could still die just fine.
Particularly if, to take an example completely at random, they had been badly beaten by bandits and were now going to die of exposure in the middle of the roadway.
“It’s nothing personal,” the Dervish told his wielder. “I’m sure you’re a fine person. It’s just that I need you to die now, if you wouldn’t mind.”
This statement seemed rather rude, and the young man was in no shape to answer, so the Dervish lowered his voice half an octave and answered for him. “No, no, I quite understand. These things happen. No hard feelings.”
He sat down by the side of the road to wait for the man to die.
The Dervish could not kill his wielder himself.
The sword’s magic saw to that. Nor could he simply have stood back and allowed the rough men to finish their work.
The magic compelled him, stronger than death, to throw himself between his master and their blades.
He would defend the young man with his life, whether he wanted to or not. That was what the magic did.
But while the wild-eyed smith who had trapped him in the blade had constructed a terrifyingly elaborate enchantment, it had its limits.
The man could freeze to death and the Dervish was not compelled to do anything about that.
The sword could not force the Dervish to build a fire, nor to hold water to his lips, nor even to drop a blanket over him.
Once he’s gone, I’ll be free, just as long as the sword stays out of the sheath. No more wielders. No more masters. Just me.
It was almost too convenient. The Dervish looked down at his wrists, at the ragged bands of silver that ringed them.
It had been so long since he had stood outside the sword, unweighted by chains, that his arms felt impossibly light.
When he had gone after the bandits, the lack of fetters on his ankles made him feel as if he were flying.
He had succeeded. Somehow. And his reward was a wielder that would no longer be wielding anything soon.
“Really,” he told the man, “this is incredibly convenient. You have no idea how much of a help you’ve been.”
The man had reddish-brown hair and a round, boyish face that was turning puffier and less boyish by the minute as his bruises swelled. The Dervish reached out and touched his jaw, moving it carefully. Not broken, but the mumble of pain was clear.
Took quite a beating before you drew the sword, didn’t you?
The Dervish was fairly certain that his wielder had no idea what he had done.
All that babbling about angels, and the fact that the sword was still mostly wrapped in cloth?
The fact that the fellow was draped across a pile of books?
He would have put money down that the youngster did not know that the sword was magical, and certainly not that there was anyone bound within it. An innocent bystander, then.
The world was hard on innocent bystanders. The Dervish felt a twinge in what remained of his conscience.
Look, I don’t know that he’s innocent. Those men could have been chasing him down because he’d despoiled their sons, daughters, and nanny goats. Just because people are trying to kill you doesn’t mean that you’re the victim.
He didn’t look much like a despoiler of nanny goats. Not that you could ever tell just by looking. Carrying piles of books around didn’t make someone a good person.
He could be an unrepentant book thief. Or a mule thief. Or a book-and-mule thief.
Somehow he doubted that the dead men in the roadway had been that interested in books. You couldn’t tell a person’s literacy just by looking, of course, but they’d been standing on the books in order to kick his wielder in the ribs. Not exactly the actions of a vengeful band of librarians.
No, the Dervish suspected that he’d been right the first time. The fellow was an innocent bystander set upon by rough men, who had drawn the sword entirely by accident. Apparently by falling on it.
That’s a first. The Dervish had had fourteen wielders since his first death. Generally he hated them on principle, but it appeared that this one was purely a victim of circumstance. He felt another twinge.
“Tell you what, I’ll ask around about your relatives when I get to the next town.
Parents. Siblings. Errr … spouse? Maybe?
” The man’s jaw was rough with stubble. Not quite so young as he looked, then.
Old enough to be married? It was possible.
Perhaps he was cursed with one of those faces that looked twelve when the owner was twenty.
For all I know, they marry them off young in this land.
Wherever it is. “Whichever. And I’ll tell them you died heroically, not on the ground on a pile of books. ”
There. The ancestors couldn’t ask for more than that.
His conscience twinged again.
Oh, shut up. He’d be dead anyway if I hadn’t killed those bastards. So his death got deferred a little bit. So what?
How long had it been deferred by, anyway? Hours now, surely.
The Dervish glanced up at the position of the sun, did some quick calculations, and figured that it had been … almost ten minutes.
He’d always been terrible at waiting.
It was certainly cold. The Dervish rubbed his forearms, feeling his own skin under his fingers, marred by thin lines of metallic scar tissue. I must look bizarre. No wonder he asked if I was an angel.
His tormentor had rarely cut the Dervish’s face, preferring the back of the neck in order to sever the muscles there.
The man’s concern had been with the other systems of the body, with nerve clusters and organs.
The brain had not interested him at all.
“Wet meat,” he’d said, nose wrinkling. “Wet meat that binds the spirit. Our jailer, eh?”
The Dervish could not remember if he’d said anything in reply.
It was too long ago and it had blurred together, cold slabs of stone and cold blades and cold fingers sliding into his guts to poke and prod and make sketches of what lay inside.
Probably he’d said something sarcastic, or had thought something sarcastic, anyway.
The boy gave a drawn-out, semiconscious groan.
Are you a seraph or an archangel?
Heh. The Dervish could not remember the last time anyone had considered him angelic. Usually it was demonic, if anything.
Ancestors, but it was taking an awfully long time for his wielder to freeze to death, though.
“I don’t suppose you could die a little faster?”
“I am freezing as fast as I can,” he answered for the boy, with offended dignity.
“Yes, of course. I know we’re all doing our best in these trying times.”
“I’m the one doing all the work here.”
“I’d help you if I could, but the magic would object.”
“Then you’ll simply have to wait.”
A cold breeze whipped down the roadway. The mule, who had been unimpressed by battle or murder or a man talking to himself in funny voices, snorted in annoyance. Cold affected mules.
Cold affected humans, too. The young man on the ground was shivering violently now, his teeth chattering in his swollen jaw.
“I bear you no malice,” he said to the young man, dropping all attempts at humor. “Truly I don’t. But I won’t be bound again.”
It wasn’t a bad death, freezing. He’d done it once.
At the end, you felt warm and sleepy. The Dervish tried to remember which wielder that had been.
A middle-aged man, who’d been determined to cross a pass in winter.
What had his name been? He hadn’t made it, anyway.
It had been spring before somebody found the sword again.
Unlike the Dervish, the man hadn’t woken back up in a sword after he died. Lucky him.
The mule snorted again. Her ears were the size of sails and trained on him.
“I suppose I should get you off the roadway,” he told her.
He did not want to be saddled with an animal, but he could sell her at the next stop.
He needed money. It wouldn’t do to finally be unbound from a wielder only to starve to death.
I suppose I could take up banditry myself, but how inelegant would that be?
It probably made sense to drag the man off the road, too. Otherwise there was a chance that somebody might come along and try to save him, and that would be exceedingly awkward for everyone. He’d probably have to fight them.
Mule first, he decided. He reached for the animal’s lead rope, caught it, and tugged.
Nothing happened.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re getting off the road, that’s a good thing. Come on, little…” He paused, glanced around the back of the mule, and finished, “… girl.”
The mule didn’t move.
The Dervish liked horses. Horses were excellent creatures. A good horse trusted its rider and a good rider trusted his horse. But he had no experience with mules. He tried to remember what little he’d heard about them.
“Half the time horses will balk for no reason,” Father’s Brother had told him, when the Dervish had had a beardless jaw and a different name.
“If a mule balks, there’s always a reason, but half the time you’ll never figure out what it is.
” And then he’d set the young Dervish up on the horse and slapped its rump and the Dervish had crowed with delight and kicked his bare feet against the horse’s ribs, which the horse ignored completely.
This was the sum total of his knowledge of mules, except having heard that they were smart and stubborn. Still, they couldn’t be that different from horses. They were half horse on their mother’s side, weren’t they?