The Fourth Book Of Lost Swords : Farslayer's Story (Saberhagen's Lost Swords 4), Fred Saberhagen [100 best novels of all time TXT] 📗

      Anselm’s sister or cousin—Chilperic was not sure at first—a young lady named Alicia, made an appearance also.

      “A dozen dead on that night,” Alicia proclaimed. “And our aunt Megara still has not recovered her wits, a month later.” Her eyes glittered venomously. “We owe a huge debt to those Malolo slime, and we mean to pay it.”

      “Your aunt Megara?” Chilperic murmured sympathetically.

      “Mine, too,” said Hissarlik. “She saw her father—he was the clan chief—struck down before her eyes.”

      “Oh, I see. Terrible, terrible.” And Chilperic, looking appropriately grim, gave his head a shake.

      Hissarlik, the nominal leader of this immature and yet dangerous looking crew, seemed to have a few years to go before turning twenty, but still he gave a first impression of inward maturity. Only after Chilperic had talked with him for a while did he begin to suspect why this young man had been so far down the structure of leadership and responsibility as to be still surviving after that great exchange of Sword blows. This young fellow talked so boldly yet vaguely about the feats of arms for which he was responsible—bragging about a raid he’d ordered two nights ago against a Malolo fishing village—that Chilperic suspected that the problem, or one of the problems, might well be cowardice.

      Refreshments were brought in after a while, and the talk went on. Chilperic, when he thought the proper moment had arrived, and without dropping his pretense of being an old friend of some deceased members of the family, revealed himself as an agent of the macrowizard Wood. He expected that these people, or at least their best surviving magician, would have heard of Wood, and he was not wrong.

      That claim, as he had expected, somewhat perturbed and perhaps frightened his new acquaintances. Chilperic was ready to offer some kind of demonstration to back up his words. He reached inside his coat to touch the leather wallet at his belt; he was just magician enough himself to be able to detect the powerful demonic life that throbbed so vulnerably within.

      As soon as he saw that Hissarlik was groping for some way of expressing polite doubt about his relationship with the famous Wood, Chilperic once more touched glossy but wrinkled leather. Muttering a few words he’d had from the Ancient One himself, he called up the demon.

      This time the manifestation was much quicker, and distinctly visual. While the owners of the house shrank back, the demon appeared in their great hall in afternoon sunlight, blocking out some of the bright beams that came slanting in through the high windows. Rabisu, taking the image of a gigantic though transparent warrior—a demon could look like almost anything it chose—acquitted himself impressively, offering a demonstration of obedient power that would have gladdened the heart of any magician-master. He bent a steel bar into a loop, and caught a rat somewhere inside the wainscotting, and turned the little creature inside out, at the same time sucking it dry of life and blood, so deftly that there was hardly any mess.

* * *

      It was about an hour after this demonstration when Chilperic, feeling that he had now established himself with the Senones leadership, decided to strike while the iron was hot, and began asking important questions.

      Anselm, in response to a direct query, told him that the last person to be struck down by Farslayer on that night a month ago must have been some Malolo youth. Cosmo’s name did not come up here directly.

      Hissarlik, Alicia, and Anselm each laid claim to having killed one of the Malolo on that night, but they could not agree exactly on each other’s claims. Chilperic soon lost interest in the details, and managed to switch the conversation.

      An hour after that, Chilperic and his hosts were halfway through a banquet celebrating their new alliance.

      Chilperic had seen to it that their talk never strayed far from the Sword for very long. Chewing thoughtfully on a tough piece of fowl, he remarked: “And it never came back into this house again.”

      “No.” Anselm hissed a sigh of exasperation. “It appears that our enemies still have it.”

      His sister murmured tensely: “They’re trying to break our nerves. Well, we won’t break.”

      Their cousin Hissarlik, seated at the head of the table, shook his head slowly. “I think they may not have it after all. Their last man to be struck down may have been away from the others when it happened. It’s possible that they just have never found him, or the weapon, either.”

      “Where else would he have been?” Alicia challenged him at once. “We searched the islands. We searched all over our side of the river, and they would have searched on theirs.”

      The chief could only shake his head. And Chilperic had no intention of enlightening his hosts at the moment.

      The story Chilperic had heard in the Malolo stronghold was of course not about their last man to be struck down, but rather about the misfit Cosmo. Cosmo Malolo, the mysterious one in that family, misfit and leading magician as well. Cosmo, who on that night of terror had simply grabbed up the Sword and ridden off with it, effectively putting an end to the cycle of revenge. It appeared that no one, except the hermit whom Chilperic had stopped to question, had seen Cosmo since that night.

      Chilperic wondered now whether he should have questioned the hermit further.

      In any event, it would seem that Cosmo had not been a simple defector, bound for enemy headquarters. Or, if so, he had never reached it. It would not have been reasonable for Cosmo to stop at the hermit’s at all if he intended to go no farther than the Senones manor. But then everyone agreed the weather on the night of the massacre had been terrible, the mountain trails deadly dangerous, and that might have been a factor in his whereabouts.

      Chilperic was increasingly sure that the Sword had not been carried here