Chapter 5 #2
“Somehow that news does not shock me. I’m going to make more tea. Is it supposed to taste like this?”
“Not really, no.” Edmund took the cloth away from his forehead. “You boil the water first and then let it steep. For no more than two minutes.”
The Dervish scowled down at the pot he was using to heat water. “Right.”
Once the silver-eyed man had gathered snow and started it melting, Edmund said, “It’s just that if we can get to Archon’s Glory, maybe we can talk to this scholar and if he knows about the swords, maybe he would know how to break the spell.”
The Dervish’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Err … I can’t promise anything, but it seems like if anyone was likely to know, it would be a scholar who specialized in this sort of thing, right?
They wouldn’t have requested the sword if they didn’t have some idea what it was, would they?
It’s not … err … no offense … but it’s not a particularly striking example of workmanship otherwise. ”
“I know,” said the Dervish. “You’d think there could at least be gems on it or something, right? Rubies the size of pigeon eggs and whatnot.”
“It’s probably good there aren’t, or it would be stolen a lot more often.”
He shrugged. “All the same to me if it is. I’m not bound to the thief unless the wielder gives it away. But you really think this person might be able to break the curse?”
Edmund spread his hands. “I’m not an expert, but I know of at least one magical device that was rendered inert, and it was a creation of the ancients and probably a lot more complicated than this.”
Silver eyes sharpened. “Rendered inert how?”
“A creature weighing several tons stomped on it.”
“And that worked?”
“Oh yes … and no, Sweetness doesn’t even weigh half a ton, so don’t look at her like that.”
“I should have known that contrary beast wouldn’t help,” the Dervish muttered.
Edmund considered this. “Usually destroying the object is enough to break the spell. Have you tried melting it down?”
“It doesn’t burn,” said the Dervish gloomily.
“Not even the leather bits. They get hot, but that’s all.
And you can’t snap the blade, even if you’ve got heavy rocks and a lot of leverage.
Those are the only two I’ve been able to try.
My previous wielders were not keen on the idea of losing my services. ”
Edmund winced. “They sound dreadful.”
“You have no idea.”
Edmund knew that he probably didn’t. “Maybe this scholar will be able to help. At any rate, I should at least tell them that the sword isn’t going to be delivered.”
“Technically you’ll have the sword with you. I’ll be right there.”
“Yes, but obviously I wouldn’t just hand you over to someone!
” said Edmund, appalled at the idea. The Dervish was a person, not an object, even if some long-dead smith had muddled the lines between the two.
You couldn’t just hand people over for research purposes.
“That would be monstrously unethical, and—and rude!”
“Glad to hear it,” said the Dervish, in a tone dry enough to desiccate a lakebed.
“But still, they should know that they’re not getting the artifact. Otherwise it’ll look like I failed to deliver it.”
“I thought you’d left your temple anyway.”
“Well, yes, but I don’t want them coming after me. What if they tried to take Sweetness?”
The Dervish snorted. “We should be so lucky.” But the tense lines of his shoulders had eased and Edmund dared to hope that he’d reassured the man that there was no chance of being handed over like an object of curiosity.
“Would it help if I promised not to tell anyone about you without asking you first?”
For a moment, Edmund thought that he’d said the wrong thing entirely. The Dervish stared at him with an expression so blank that the lines of silver looked more alive than the flesh around them.
“Yes,” the living sword said finally. “Yes, I would appreciate that very much.”
So the scholar had been fleeing a priesthood.
The Dervish felt a rush of fellow feeling for the man.
Obviously Edmund had not been mistreated as the Dervish had been—he was still alive, for one thing—but they had both suffered harm at the hands of servants of the gods.
He wanted to ask more but the scholar was obviously exhausted from the effort of speaking. Perhaps later.
Or perhaps never. Do you want to discuss what you have suffered? The net and the chains, the stone slab and the knives? The cutting, day in and day out?
The thought of even talking about it left him feeling nauseated.
Or maybe that was simply the price of not eating for a day and a half.
There was jerky in Edmund’s saddlebags, which Edmund wasn’t going to be chewing with a bruised jaw.
The Dervish helped himself. It tasted a little like meat and a lot like salt.
The word dedicate was interesting. The magical working that translated languages between the Dervish and the wielder of the sword sometimes faltered when there was no exact translation, and sometimes he could tell that the magic was trying to shoehorn one word into another that didn’t quite fit.
In this case, however, there did not seem to be a close translation at all, and what the magic dropped into his skull was “a nonreligious servant of the gods” and “un-priest.”
That was fine. The Dervish had no fight with the gods, just with their servants in general and the servants of one god in particular.
A former temple scholar would generally be enough to get his hackles up, but it was obvious within moments of speaking to Edmund that he was the sort of person who felt guilty about swatting mosquitoes.
Annnnnd you’re brooding about this because you don’t want to think about the possibility of breaking the curse, aren’t you?
The Dervish considered himself quite good at self-deception, but clearly there were limits.
No, he didn’t want to think about breaking the curse. If he thought that there might be an escape, he would start to hope. He didn’t think he could handle that. Despair had broken him, yes, but hope would grind him into dust.
But what if …
No. He stomped on that thought as if it were a scorpion crawling toward his bedroll. Don’t think about it. Think of this as a mission. You have to get Edmund to this city however far away, and whatever happens after that, happens.
And if Edmund turned out not to be harmless after all … well.
If the sword that bound the Dervish had been moldering in the archives of some temple for decades, he’d obviously managed to take his tormentor with him. He felt a dark satisfaction at that, like black honey on his tongue.
Even if everything went ill, he had found the loophole in the sword’s magic. There was an escape.
He would not be bound again.