The next morning found Rothesay, true to her word, at the top of the hill on Padriag‘s doorstep. No greeting answered her knock and hail: the wizard had not yet returned from this latest of his odd little disappearances. Shrugging, she murmured the small charm that asked the wizard’s door to loose its latch for her, her slim fingers sweeping gracefully in the accompanying gesture. The door, darkly friendly—most objects in the wizard’s home were at least partially awake, and of widely variable tempers—obliged; the latch clicked and she slipped inside, into the dim cavernous hall and its familiar smells of rare incenses and old pipe smoke.

Stone mosaics colored the polished floor; the rooms were wide and airy, though the bright frescoes were fading. This had been the main house of a villa of fair breadth. The outbuildings, the barns and stables, servants’ quarters, shops and smithy had long ago burned in war, or been pulled down to raise Harrowater; what remained had been only modestly restored by Padriag, but it still staggered the Geillan imagination to know that it had been the home of a nobleman of no very exalted rank. The Sferan cities that lay countless leagues to the south, some still unconquered, shimmered in local imaginations as wonders of gold and light at the very edge of reality.

She puttered about her usual tasks with unusual care. The dusting was easy: there was little damage she could do with only a feather duster for weapon. The broom gave her a few scares, as when a thoughtless thrust bowled over the standing mirror and a still more witless recovery bent a corner of its brass frame in her hand; though she was almost more afraid of its cover coming off than of its breaking: what she had seen in it when with the wizard more than inspired her to leave it alone when without him; it had a macabre humor. But when the copper pot slipped from her polishing cloth like a seed squirting from its pod and shot out the kitchen window (luckily open under its deep eaves, for airing) into the garden, she began to think she had had enough of housekeeping for a while.

She carried the surprised pot back in, very thoughtfully. Setting it down, she balled up one thin hand into a fist, and regarded it as if it were one of the many fabulous puzzles that crowded the wizard’s shelves. Of a sudden, out she half-strode, half-tripped to the garden again, not heeding the doorlatch bending under careless pressure, seized up a plank of ash that had been waiting too many summers to become a garden bench, and propped it up against the window opening. Then she paused, looking again at her fist. The skin seemed thinner, more delicate than ever across her tattered knuckles; the ash, very hard. She thought about the chieftain, and the wild leer she had imagined on his face as she ran; she remembered the perfectly real taunts of the hunters, and threw all her force into the ash. The wood burst in two with a sharp retort, almost as one with the crack of wood on skull.

She blinked up at the dark eaves and the cloud-streaked strip of sky beyond them. The crest of her forehead throbbed with blunt pain; groping, she found a knot already swelling in her hairline. Beside her lay two pieces of ash, cleanly broken, but she could not recall feeling an impact, either of hand or head. A little while longer she lay, hoping that this was not the beginning of a new pattern in her life, to knock herself daily senseless, then dragged herself out of the wet grass and into the house.

Later, clean and poulticed, she settled herself with tea and a slim codex in front of a small and cozy fire, moodily sucking her bloodied knuckles, hoping to do no more mischief. If she had had some thought of laying into Blackhand Fil, the plank cautioned her against it; how ash compared with human meat she did not know, but rather fancied the wood would prove much the hardier of the two. She wondered who now might have a side of beef hanging where she could slip in and take a poke at it. (And what would they say if they came in and caught me beating up their larder?) She chuckled it off and turned to her text, fire-magic of the Sferan warrior-mage Artame, to work on her translation; but her mind was not on her parsing. Who would have beef hanging at this season?

Shortly, she gave up her pretense of study. She tidied up codex and cup, gathered a few apples and a small cheese into her tunic skirts for the family, tucked the sword under her arm and trotted off, still unsteady on her queerly powerful feet. Down the wizard’s round green hill, picking a route to circle rather than pass through town, she ran weightless as mist, vanishing into the willows at the edge of the common fields, black with the tilling and the damp, on under the eaves of the east-side woods. But she did not go home, she kept on eastward, coming out on a remote section of the beach among concealing brown crags. There for hours more, she played at hurling rocks and stones, boulders, really, into the roaring grey-green surf, without coming any closer to understanding what the old tomb’s magic had wrought in her.

The sun was setting, knifing a last gleam between low, sodden cloud-skirts and the lowering hills as she at last approached her house.

They had company: three horses stood in the sandy, shell-strewn yard, nosing disgustedly among the salt-hardy weeds for something sweet. Rothesay stopped dead. These were no slow, stupid farm animals. Their plain, sturdy trappings conveyed nothing to her, but the creatures themselves rippled with strength, strength matched to speed, and they looked up intelligently at her approach. She knew all the local horses. No one in Harrowater owned such beasts. Who did, that they would ride to the door of the meanest hovel in a remote fisher-hamlet, and why? Without thinking to ask the horses, Rothesay bolted for the door of her home.

Before she had cleared two uncannily long strides, a man stepped out, slamming the feeble old door back on its leather hinges, breaking loose more cracking withies. Sheen of helmet, glint of mail in the dull light set her scrabbling to stop, slithering into the sand. Apples rolled free, to the great interest of the horses.

“Huh! She’s here!” the man barked over his shoulder. “Get up, girl.”

Rothesay climbed shakily to her feet as two more strangers stormed out amid a small knot of bleating children, the littlest sisters, Brannar, Meryth, and Persli, followed by a growling Thyrne.

The first man reached for Rothesay’s arm. Brannar, ten and fearless, broke from the flock and seized his baldric. “Roshi, run!” she shrieked. He tore himself effortlessly from her hungry grasp and flung her roughly to the sand.

Rothesay vaguely noticed her weight shift oddly, as if body moved ahead, towing thought after, but paid no heed in her rage. Her thin avenging fist swept up smashing into the side of the man’s helmet, numbing hand and arm with the shock: he measured his length and more upon the ground. She had a moment of deep gratification before the second man snarled, leaped past his friend and drew his sword to frighten her. Sunset glimmered on the length of the blade like a corpse-light.

Rothesay obligingly panicked. And out flashed the barrow sword, sped by a will other than her own; again she felt her body move seemingly without her. Steel on bronze whispered and chimed, the stranger’s sword whirled flickering into the dusk, and the barrow-blade stooped like a falcon to the kill. Rothesay rebelled, tried to reclaim command of her flesh from whatever demon-power possessed it, and the descending sword broke the man’s shoulder instead of severing his neck. A last, insolent flourish defied her shock and the blade licked into the open face of the man’s helmet, once, twice as he crumbled to the sand, clutching his arm, choking in pain.

From beyond the ridge of grass-crested dunes, the cold surf rolled its thunder over the silence in the yard. Sand crunched under someone’s tread: the third and last standing carl edged toward his fellow writhing at Rothesay’s feet, but he did not look at him. Following his riveted gaze, Rothesay saw at last what still compelled his fascinated horror, what vision rooted her family in silent thrall. The side of the first man’s head, helmet and all, could have collected rainwater. Something darker pooled there now. Aghast, Rothesay turned to her sisters, seeking some token of reassurance, some wakening from the nightmare darkening about her, and found in their white faces only terror of the changeling.

She could bear no more. With a little wail of desolation, she turned and fled, blundering, into the gloom.

∞∞∞∞∞

An hour later she fetched up, bruised, torn, shaking with horror, on Padriag’s back doorstep, huddled in under the wide eaves away from the wanton rain that cast itself upon the earth, wiping rain and tears from her face with the back of a hand equally wet. With the sword clenched under her arm, her thin shoulders hunched against the wet, she reached for the door-charm, meaning to hide out here till the wizard chose to return from wherever he had gone.

The heavy wooden door swung open silently. Silhouetted in the cheery yellow light, a little round button mushroom of a man beamed kindly up at her. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, overcome by a sudden delight. “Stand on one foot!”

Stunned, but habituated to Master Padriag’s erratic fancies, Rothesay complied wordlessly. The little man began to chuckle, and then to laugh, a soft but deep and fruity spasm that rippled through his whole body. “The very picture of a southern black heron! Come in, my dear. Tea’s hot and the cakes are just—about—”

“Burned!” Rothesay, smelling the tang, sprang for his oven door. The forgotten sword crashed to the flags, her overwhelmingly obedient body flung her over the kitchen bench, and she sailed gracefully into the rack of pots and pans that hung by the fireplace. Tin and copper rang down around her.

“No, the first batch burned,” Padriag amended, following placidly. He stood gazing down on her, a slight smile crinkling his cheeks like an old apple. She stirred, cautiously; pans slithered away like pieces of ancient armor as she looked back up, eyes brim-full of two days’ terrors; then she seized the hem of his brown robe and wept into it bitterly. With immense tenderness, then, he patted her wet hair, before bending low to murmur, “As will this batch in a minute.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Rothesay shook herself, bewildered; more pans slid away. “Oh. Right.” Padriag moved off to the hearth oven. “I’ll just pick these up, then,” she said vaguely, suiting action to the tone. Moving as if in a dream, she eased each one back into its rightful place, and when she turned to find the wizard, it was at the table laid with white cloth, yellow candles, gold cakes, and dark, dark tea.

She tried several times to tell him what had happened, but he shushed her, claiming that in no wise could she give an intelligent account with stomach empty and mouth full and would she pass the cream or must he charm the pot? Then there was the washing up, which Padriag always performed—or had her perform—in silent reverence, and indeed the ritual served her well this evening, a warm and calming immersion in the eternity of a mundane chore.

At last they settled by the fire in Padriag’s great hall, in a half-sphere of firelight, the room beyond lost in the night. Aided by a foamy tankard of Padriag’s ale, she told in a low, quiet voice about the hunters and the barrow, the sword and her queerheadedness since; and the men at her home, and what happened there.

“The one—I guess I killed him,” she murmured dully. “He’s dead—he must be dead, and I hit him. . . . So I think that the sword is an agent of evil magic. It’s too light to be real, and yet it broke the other man. Master?”

Padriag picked up the sword from the fur at his feet and chuckled. “Is it?” he inquired brightly, stroking the tooling of the scabbard. “Just fetch down the Hallack, will you, ywysta?”

She obeyed with a sigh. Kief Hallack was author of a monstrous great tome of arcane practices, Padriag’s favorite reference work; and also, apparently, of the alchemical mystery whereby lead might be transmuted into parchment, retaining only its weight as a reminder of its former character. The book took an evil delight in its heftiness. Without love, she clasped the almost cubic volume to her heart, vowed to provide Master Padriag with so much furniture as a bookstand, and heaved mightily.

Flying over backwards, she feared desperately for the fate of such a mighty codex upon the stones, and pillowed it on her midriff. “Whoof!” It was the last thing she said, or did with breath, for some minutes; but a clatter by the hearth diverted her from her impacted lungs.

The barrow sword had fallen to the floor as Master Padriag lay back limply in his seat, arms dangling loosely at his sides, his body quivering like a tea-jelly with spasms of silent laughter. Rothesay hurled imaginary imprecations at him.

She had recovered her breath, the book, her seat and her ale before Padriag recovered himself. Still chuckling, he ground a knuckle into the corner of his eye to clear away the tears, and asked reasonably politely for what she thought had happened.

Frowning, she put down her ale and lifted up the Hallack to balance it on one hand. It was rather awkward to hold single-handed, but it was not heavy. “I guess I tried too hard.”

“Mm-hmm.” Padriag blinked thoughtfully at her, still smiling. “Thank you, child—and I’d like you to take care of a little something for me.”

The ‘little something’ turned out to be nothing less than a complete reorganizing of the wizard’s library, followed by moving half the woodpile from the back porch to the niche by the main fireplace and the other half into the kitchen, and capped by bringing the keg of ale up from the cellar—and then taking it back down when Padriag decided it took up too much space in the kitchen. He hated to be crowded. Sporadically, he would call for this or that volume—and of course the one had to be put back to make room for the next on the little gaming table. Rothesay fulfilled her tasks faithfully, in silence though strongly suspicious of their spurious nature. It would do no good to ask why: the master would explain only when the thing had run its course. But he would always explain, and she had learned faith, and patience.

She did not fail to notice that it was all vastly easier than it ought to have been. She shortened the work by carrying four times as many books as she had known herself capable of, and felt limited by volume rather than by weight, at that; and as for the keg, by rights she should never have budged it. At least, by the time Padriag had her put the last book away and they sat down to a late supper of apples and cheese, she had gained a new idea of how heavy things were now.

She said as much when he asked if she had learned anything. Padriag shook with soundless laughter again. “Roshi, my dear, in most respects you have been easily the quickest of all my apprentices, but when a matter touches you personally, you promptly quit thinking. If I told you that I had carried the keg up from the meadhall, should you more reasonably infer that ale were suddenly lighter or that I were suddenly stronger?”

“Um.” Rothesay put down her tea and flexed her hands thoughtfully. “I do seem to be a bit more capable.”

“A bit,” he agreed with a twinkle. “A triggered spell for strength is fairly simple to shape, though quite expensive to imbue—he must have had a friend who was a worker: that sort of thing is not for the buying. It will wear off presently. It was intended, you see, for a—a ‘last wind’ you might say, a final effort in battle.” His smile turned wistful. “My guess is that he never had a chance to use it. So I did. Did you think I was being entirely frivolous?” He rose, took a few steps to the newly-piled wood, pitched two more sticks into the fire, and returned to his seat.

“Books are better organized, too,” said Rothesay, snapping an apple in two, and privately rejoicing that she did not mash it into sauce. “But who was ‘he’? Where did he come from, and what could have happened?”

Padriag turned the sword in the firelight and peered at the inscription on the sheath. “Runedaur,” he announced.

Rothesay started, and signed one of the glyphs for warding off evil.

“Don’t be superstitious,” Padriag chided her. “Runedaur are only men.”

“Right.” Born men they probably were; but possessed by demons at their Oath-taking, according to legend. One Runedaur fought like ten ordinary warriors, it was said, and they drank the blood still warm, and in their halls feasted on the slain. They moved like ghosts and no wall could bar them. They could look into a man’s eyes and lay bare his soul, sap his will and compel him to unspeakable acts. Breathe no word against them, for the very wind bent to their desire, and brought them word of what men thought most secret and secure. Their sorcerous women called up storm and plague on the lands without; within their halls, the Runedaur harlots called up other, no less violent storms no man could withstand. And if that old hole was a Runedaur’s tomb, then it was fitting that Death and his minions haunt that hill, for the Runedaur were the Silent One’s chiefest priests.

Once upon a time they had also been the chiefest weapon in the hand of the High King of the Sferiari, their dread power leashed and compassed to the royal will for the shaping of an empire and centuries of peace after. Only the true king held the secret that commanded the Knights of Death. Only with the Master of Runedaur lay the authority to anoint that king. And since Talherne had died childless, no one of that line now lived in Peria, and the Runedaur ran lawless, serving whichever master offered the brighter coin, while Peria bled.

“Quite old,” he went on absorbedly, seeming not to notice her preoccupation. “Seventeen hundred, twenty-six of the Order, here; do you see?”

Padriag’s finger traced out the letters for her, but still she could not read the words: no vowels?

“Almost five centuries ago,” he mused; “well before Berulf’s Conquest; this fellow saw the glory days of old Peria. ‘Arngas.’ Arngas. I wonder which one? I shall have to send to their mother-house, at Colderwild: Dav maybe will know.”

“‘Fortune’ Dav?” she snorted.

“That is no way to speak of the Master of Runedaur,” said Padriag placidly, but with a twinkle.

“Master of marauders, you mean.”

“But a matchless scholar!” he laughed. “I must ask his opinion. It is no tin mock-up, my dear, but a true sword, and—” he tapped significantly at the smith’s mark just below the hilt, “Móriad-made, which is more to the point.”

“Ooo!” She snatched it from the table and studied it with new eagerness: the smiths of remote Mór Feria were fabled, and the blades from their forges were matters of legend. Iron had been their trade secret for centuries, and still in steel they had no peer. Especially they worked in star-steel, the rare metal cast from the heavens and that all the North now called Móriad-steel; her whole sword seemed made of the stuff.

“As you say—oo. And Dav will be no less interested than you, child.”

Rothesay tore her eyes from the mythic wonder in her hands, to frown at Padriag in honest puzzlement. “You’re really going to—to talk with. . . . But they’re destroying the country, Master! They betrayed King Talherne when Berulf invaded, and there’s been nothing but war for two centuries and at their profit off the Geillari and the old Sferan houses alike! Er—”

Padriag blinked her quizzically to silence. “I must ask, little one, what you know of war and conquest, beyond traveller’s tales and bard-song? Anstrede has known an uncommon peace since Berulf’s Conquest, barring the occasional border-feud—with other Geillari, you observe. Bear in mind that it is seldom useful to take the vanquisher’s word about the vanquished. Our lord Kelmhal is on good terms with the Order.”

“You mean it’s a lie, then? They didn’t betray the High King?”

“That might depend on your definition of ‘betray.’ If your protectors are themselves slaughtered, does the failure of their purpose imply a betrayal of it?”

“Is that what happened?”

“Dear heavens, child, I have no idea! I meant only to suggest that whatever you may have heard might have some significance other than the obvious. If we wish to learn more about this fellow Arngas, and understand what happened to you, consulting with his Order is probably a practical first step—though not if you take them from the outset for faithless liars.”

She looked down at the blade again, wondering what it had seen. Perhaps Arngas had been one of the hearthguard of the High King himself, in his day; though Andrastir was far away. She rubbed her eyes wearily: the hour was late, and she was unused to staying up past sunset. Padriag shooed her off to the kitchen-loft to sleep in a nest of spare blankets amid a fragrance of onions and old apples, and the milky fur of a few cats.

She quite failed to notice that she could not call to mind anything prior to tea with the wizard.