that too, sir?”
Frogmorton nodded. “Conceivably I can point you toward both, in a single
embodiment,” he said. “Conceivably. It may prove infeasible. I cannot
promise more.”
The wind skirled.
“Go on, please,” Ginny begged.
He looked past us into the darknesses that, despite the lamps, laired in
the corners under the ceiling. “I know of a sword.”
Presently he went on, still staring elsewhere, speaking like one in a
dream: “Long ago, as humans reckon time, a young man, during the
Kaiser’s War, I had occasion to visit York. That was the heart of the
Danelaw, you may recall. I served as a cryptographer. Someone in the War
Office got the idea that if we could turn up an inscription in an
obscure runic alphabet–there were several, you know–it might be
spelled into the basis of an unbreakable code. Balderdash, but orders
were orders, and so I went sniffing with my goetic instruments all about
the region.
“Exploring in the city itself, I came upon an object preserved in a
minor church, a sword. It had been donated centuries before to the Abbey
of St. Oswald’s by a nobleman who had no further use for it. The type
had gone out of style, you see. Besides, he meant to take vows and end
his days as a monk. It has never drawn much notice. Apart from being in
good condition, it does not appear unusual for its era, and any
historical associations were already more or less forgotten. It was
simply a curiosum, among numerous others.
“The abbey was razed after the Dissolution. Most of its treasures had
been confiscated by the agents of Henry VIII. However, some had been
ignored as being of no particular worth. There is a fugitive tradition
that the monks hid certain especially valued and sacred objects behind
brickwork. Be that as it may, pious hands did lay the pathetic remnants
of movable property in the ancient undercroft.
“In the eighteenth century the buildings that had sprung up on the site
were torn down and a new St. Oswald’s erected, merely a parish church to
help accommodate the rapidly growing city population. The known relics
were brought forth for display, albeit down in the vaults, since the
Georgian era had little interest in them. Nor did the antiquarianism of
the Romantic movement change this. The building was too recent and
architecturally uninspired. Its medieval objects had lain too long alone
to have any reputation left such as might attract the curious.
“A Victorian gentleman did impulsively pay for the sword’s restoration.
His diary records surprise that it had not rusted, but what with
chemistry being then an infant science, he does not seem to have
wondered why. Only the organic parts, grip and scabbard, had rotted away
and needed replacement. Shortly thereafter he died, before he could
publicize the matter.
“Thus the undercroft and its contents continued to have few visitors.
Vergers, of course, occasional clergy, tourists more active than most,
and chiefly, the guest book shows, military men. But their interest was
in the small souvenirs that soldiers back from the Napoleonic and
colonial wars had donated, as was not uncustomary. These too were mostly
downstairs. Among them, the sword was only an archaeological token.”
Frogmorton paused for a sip. Ginny leaned forward. Light slid flamelike
across her mane. “And?” she prompted.
“And I discovered a tremendous latent power in that blade,” Frogmorton
told us. “I established that it was dwarf-forged and given a spirit, far
back in heathen Norway. It came to England with the Vikings. It can
think, it can speak, it can hew through stone, steel, and spells. But
all this became as nothing. The sword fell into the Great Sleep
generations before it ceased to be carried into battle. It was still
dormant when it received its new scabbard, and its powers remain bound
until it is unsheathed.”
“You didn’t?”
“Good heavens, no. I detected the potential, but why loose it? I could
imagine no use for it in the ongoing affray–or, for that matter,
afterward in the Caliph’s War–considering how limited its range of
action must be. Rather, I visualized impetuous young men seizing on it
and causing nothing but mischief within our own ranks. I take my