Then they were before him, Galaphile first, and Bremen lowered his head into the crook of his arm helplessly.
—Hold forth the sword—
He did so without question, thrusting it before him as he would a talisman. Galaphile’s hand reached out, and his fingers brushed the Eilt Drum. Instantly, the emblem flared with white light.
Galaphile turned away, and another Druid approached, touched the emblem, and departed. So it went, as one by one the spirits paraded before the old man and touched the sword he held, their fingers brushing the image of the Eilt Drain before they passed on.
Over and over again the emblem flared brightly in response. From within the shelter of his raised arm, Bremen watched it happen. It might have been a blessing that they bestowed, an approval that they gave. But the old man knew it was something more, something darker and harsher. There was a transference being wrought upon the sword by the touch of the dead. He could feel it happening. He could sense it taking hold.
It was what he had come for. It could not be mistaken for anything else. It was what he had been seeking. Yet even now, at the moment of its happening, he could not decipher its meaning.
So he knelt there at the edge of the Hadeshorn in the gloom and the spray, dismayed and confused, listening to the sounds of the dead, a witness to their passing, and wondered at what was taking place. At last the Druids had all come before him, touched the Eilt Drum, and gone on. At last he was alone, hunched down in the night. The sounds of the spirit voices faded, and in the ensuing silence he could hear the rasp of his own labored breathing. Swear drenched his body and glistened on his face. His arm was cramped from holding forth the sword, yet he could not make himself withdraw it. He waited, knowing there was more, that it was not vet finished.
—Bremen—
His name, spoken by a voice he now knew. He lifted his head cautiously. The Druid shades were gone. The column of water was gone. All that remained was the lake and the blackness of the night and, directly before him, the shade of Galaphile. It waited on him patiently as he rose and drew the sword against his body as if to find strength there. There were tears on his face, and he did not know how they had gotten there. Were they his own? He tried to speak and could not.
The shade spoke instead.
—Heed me. The sword has been given its power. Carry it now to the one who will wield it. Find him west. You will know. it belongs now to him—
Bremen’s voice groped for words that would not come. The spirit’s arm lifted to him.
—Ask—
The old man’s mind cleared, and his words were harsh and filled with awe. “What have you done?”
—Given what part of us we can. Our lives have passed away. Our teachings have been lost. Our magic has dissipated in the wane of time. Only our truth remains, all that belonged to us in our lives, in our teachings, in our magic, stark and hard-edged and killing strong—
Truth? Bremen stared, uncomprehending. Where did the sword’s power lie in this? What form of magic came from truth?
All those Druids passing before him, touching the blade, making it flare so brightly—for this?
The shade of Galaphile pointed once more, a gesture so compelling that Bremen’s queries died in his throat and his attention was immediately commanded. The dark figure before him swept away all but its own presence as its arm lifted, and the silence surrounding it was complete.
—Listen, Bremen, last of Paranor, and I will tell you what you would know. Listen—
And Bremen, captured heart and soul by the power of the shade’s words, did so.
When it was finished and the shade of Galaphile was gone, when the waters of the Hadeshorn had become still and flat once more and the dawn was creeping silver and gold out of the east, the old man walked to the rim of the Valley of Shale and slept for a time amid the littered black rock. The sun rose and the day brightened, but the Druid did not wake. He slept a deep, dreamfilled sleep, and the voices of the dead whispered to him in words he could not comprehend. He woke at sunset, haunted by the dreams, by his inability to decipher their meaning and his fear that they hid from him secrets that he must reveal if the Races were to survive. He sat amid the heat and shadows in the darkening twilight, pulled the remainder of his bread from his pack, and ate half of it in silence, staring out at the mountains, at the high, strange formations of the Dragon’s Teeth where the clouds scraped against the jagged tips on their way east to the plains. He drank from the aleskin, now almost empty, and thought on what he had learned.
Of the secret of the sword.
Of the nature of its magic.
Then he rose and went back down out of the foothills to where he had left his horse the night before. He found the horse gone.
Someone had taken it, the thief s footprints plain in the dust, one set only, approaching, then departing, the horse in tow. He gave the matter almost no thought, but instead began to walk west, unwilling to delay the start of his journey longer. It would take him at least four days afoot, longer if he had to avoid the Northland army, which he almost certainly would. But there was no help for it. Perhaps he could find another horse on the way.
The night deepened and the moon rose, filling out again, brightening the sky, the clouds brief shadows against its widening crescent as they sailed past in silent procession. He walked steadily, following the silver thread of the Mermidon as it snaked its way west, keeping in the shadow of the Dragon’s Teeth, where the moonlight would not reveal him. He considered his choices as he walked, turning them over and over in his mind. Galaphile came to him, spoke to him, and revealed to him anew. The spirits of the Druids filed past him once more, solemn and voiceless wraiths, their hands reaching for the pommel of the sword, lowering to the image of the Eilt Druin, touching it momentarily and lifting away.
Passing on the truths they had discovered in life. Imbuing it with the power such truths could provide.
Empowering it.
He breathed deeply the night air. Did he understand fully now the power of this talisman? He thought so, and yet it seemed so small a magic to trust in battle against so powerful an enemy. How was he to convince the man who bore it that it was sufficient to prevail? How much should he reveal of what he knew? Too little, and he risked losing the bearer to ignorance. Too much, and he risked losing him to fear. On which side should he err?
Would he know when he met the man?
He felt adrift with his uncertainty. So much depended on this weapon, and yet it had been left to him alone to decide on the manner of its use.
To him alone, because that was the burden he had assumed and the pact he had made.
The night wore on, and he reached the juncture of the river where it branched south through the Runne. The wind blew out of the southwest and carried on its back the smell of death. Bremen drew up short as the stench filled his nostrils. There was killing below the Mermidon, and it was massive. He debated his course of action, then walked on to a narrows in the river’s bend and crossed. Below lay Varfleet, the Southland settlement from which Kinson had been recruited five years earlier. The stench rose from there.
He reached the town while morning was still several hours away, the night a silent, dark shroud. The smell sharpened as he neared, and he knew at once what had happened. Smoke rose, lazy swirls of gray ribbon in the moonlight. Red embers glowed. Timbers jutted from the earth like spears. Varfleet had been burned to the ground, and all of its people killed or driven off. Thousands of them. The old man shook his head hopelessly as he entered the silent, empty streets. Buildings were razed and looted. People and animals lay dead at every turn, sprawled in grotesque, careless heaps amid the rubble. He walked through the devastation and wondered at its savagery. He stepped over the body of an old man, eyes open and staring sightlessly. A rat eased from beneath the corpse and scurried away.