with a tackle.
And then they were all on him again.
Now another group of people, these in white robes,
recognizable to the struggling Smith as ser-
vants of the Dead God, Ardneh, were running into
the street before the house. These, coming late to
the scene, were clamoring in protest. From their
words Vulcan could tell that they thought they
were witnessing a lynching, a mob attack upon
some poor helpless man..
The people who were grappling the Smith down
tried to explain. “Completely mad, he thinks he’s
Vulcan.” And a kind of exhausted laugh went round
among them.
An aged priestess of Ardneh, looking wise and
kind, came to take the useless Sword out of the
madman’s grasp. It came to her easily out of his
cramped grip.
“To keep you from hurting yourself, poor fellow,
or anyone else… my, what a weapon.” The priest-
ess blinked at the Sword. “This must be put away,
in safety somewhere.”
“I’ll take it,” said Ben.
The old woman looked into the huge man’s eyes,
and sighed. “Yes, you take it. There is no one better
here, I think. Now we must bind this poor fellow for
a while, so he does no more harm. How strong he
is!-ah, such a waste. But these cords will hold him;
carefully, for we must do it out of love.”
CHAPTER 19
In all of his fifty thousand and more years of life,
the creature named Draffut, the Lord of Beasts, had
never been closer to death than he was now. Yet
life, his almost inextinguishable life, remained in
him. He clung to it, if for no other reason than
because there was an injured human being nearby,
who cried out from time to time in his own pain.
Draffut, still true to his own nature, felt compelled
to find a way to help that man.
But he was unable to do anything to help the
man, unable even to move enough to help himself.
The very stream that laved his wounds seemed to
be slowly drawing his life away instead of assisting
him to heal.
It was daylight-whether of the last day of the
fight, or some day after that, he was not sure-when
he became aware that another presence, intelligent
but not human, was approaching him.
The Beastlord opened his eyes slowly. A goddess,
recognizable to him as Aphrodite, was standing
above him at a little distance, looking down at him
where he still lay in the mud at the water’s edge.
Aphrodite was standing just where Vulcan had
stood, and there was a Sword in her hands too. But
Draffut knew at once that this was different than
Vulcan’s approach, and he felt no fear as she drew
near him, and raised the Sword.
It struck at him, and he cried out with a pang of
new life, as sharp as pain. “Woundhealer,” he said,
suddenly strong enough to talk again. “And you are
Aphrodite.”
“And you are the Healer,” she said. “Therefore I
think it right that you should have this Sword. Humans
quarrel and fight over this one, even as they do with
all the others. So I took it back from them. And I am
weary of trying to decide what to do with it next-so
much love allows but little time for pleasure.”
With a motion marked by a slight endearing
awkwardness, she dropped the Sword of Mercy on
the surface of the mud beside him.
Draffut, able to move again, put out his huge hand,
weakly and slowly, and touched the blade. “I thank
you, goddess, for your gift of life.”
“There are many who have life because of me . . .
ah, already I feel better too, to be rid of it. But that
Sword suits you, I think. You are not much like me.”
“Except in one way. We are both of us creations of
humanity. But I only in part. And out of their science,
not their dreams. I will still exist, if-when–humanity
changes its collective mind about me.”
The goddess tossed her perfect hair-and was it
pure gold, or raven black? “You say that about us, but
I don’t believe it. If humanity created us, the
gods and goddesses, then who could possibly
have created them? But never mind, I am tired of
all this philosophy and argument. There seems to be
no end to it of late. I think the world is changing.”
“Again. It always does.” And now Draffut was
dragging himself to his feet. The mud that had caked
upon his fur when he was dying was falling off now,
crumbling and twisting even as it fell, moving in the
glow of the renewed life within him.
Painfully, a stopped, slow giant carrying the Sword
of Mercy, he began to make his way across the
muddy ground toward the injured man.
Rostov listened long and intently to what his latest
and best source of information had to tell him about
what was going on inside the walls of Tashigang, and
what had happened last night during the outrageous,
heroic sally against the Dark King’s camp.
One of Rostov’s patrols had luckily picked up the
young man, who was carrying Coinspinner in his right
hand, in the garden of one of the abandoned suburban
villas along the Corgo.
“Trust a bad copper to turn up,” the General had
growled at first sight of him; then he had allowed his
steel-bearded face to split in a tight grin. “The
Princess will be anxious to see you, Mark. No, I
shouldn’t call you that, should I? What’s the proper
term of address for an Emperor’s son?”
“For . . . who? The Princess, you say?” the
wounded youth had answered weakly. “Where is
she?”
“Not far away. Not far:” Rostov still grinned. He
could begin to see now what the Princess had seen all
along in this tough young man. Who, as it now
turned out, not only had good stuff in him, but
Imperial blood. That was evidently, in the rarefied
realm of magic and politics where these things
were decided, something of acceptable importance.
Rostov was glad-it was time that Tasavalta had
some sturdy warrior monarchs on the throne again.
On a field not many kilometers from Tashigang,
the armies of Yambu and Vilkata confronted each
other, in a dawn dimmed almost to midnight by an
impending thunderstorm. The Silver Queen was
preparing herself to draw Soulcutter. She knew
that she would have to do so before the Dark King
brought the Mindsword into range; if not, her army
would be lost to her, and she herself perhaps mad-
dened into becoming Vilkata’s slave.
She had recently received a strange report: first
the god Vulcan had been seen inside the city, bound
helplessly by the gentle hands of white-robed
priestesses and priests; and then he was gone again.
Some said that an angry unarmed mob had seized
the Smith, and the wooden frame he had been
bound to, and had thrown him in the river, and he
had floated out of the city through the lower gates.
Queen Yambu thought: and is the world now to
belong to us humans, after all? If we can overthrow
the gods, and kill them-possibly. Not that they
had ever bothered to rule the world when it was
theirs. Perhaps it has been ours all along.
Without really being startled, she became aware
that a man was standing in the doorway of her tent,
and gazing in at her impertinently. She assumed he
was one of her officers, and was about to speak
sharply to him for staring at her thus, when she
realized that he was not one of her own men at all.
The words died on her lips.
His face was in shadow, and not until she shifted
her own position did she see the mask. “You,” she
said.
He came in uninvited, pulled the mask off and
helped himself to a seat, grinning at her lightly. He
had not changed at all. Outside she could still hear
the sentries walking their rounds, unaware that
anyone had passed them.
The Emperor said to her: “I still have not had my
answer.”
It took the Queen a moment to understand what
he was talking about. “You once asked me to marry
you. Can that be what you mean?”
“It can. Didn’t you realize that I was going to
insist on an answer, sooner or later?”
“No, I really didn’t. Not after . . . what happened
to our daughter. Have you forgotten about her? Or
is this visit just another of your insane jokes?”
“I have not forgotten her. She has been living
with me.” When Queen Yambu stared at him, he
went on calmly: “Ariane was badly hurt, about four
years ago, as you know. But she’s much better now.
She and I have not talked about you much, but I
think that she might want to meet you again some