Swords: 06 - The Third Book of Lost Swords - Stonecutter's Story (16 page)

      
And, whoever they might be, Natalia was definitely expecting them. The way she had glanced in their direction and then started a diversion was good evidence of that.

      
Whoever they were, there was no doubt in Kasimir’s mind that they were going for the Sword.

      
From beyond the wall of fabric Kasimir could hear the sculptor’s weary voice: “We can put up a prop for you to rest your arms on.” Then de Borron’s voice grew louder, barking orders at the people who were still banging away at their work on the other side of the big room.

      
A moment later all the sounds of hammering had ceased. Kasimir, with his eye again to his latest observation hole, saw that the people on the far side of the room had now put down most of their tools and were coming this way.

      
The Sword of Siege, with no one very near it at the moment, hung gently bobbing in its homemade tool-holder. A few meters from the Sword, de Borron was pacing back and forth, pushing his hands against the small of his back as if to ease the muscles there.

      
Natalia was stretching herself too, and rubbing her side under her robe where perhaps the cramp was real. Now, as if following a sudden impulse of curiosity, she moved to stand close beside the low table holding one of the radiant Old World light-globes. Then she reached out one hand to touch the dark material of the lamp’s base.

      
“How does this work?” she asked in a clear, innocent voice. “Why is there no heat?”

      
“Don’t fool around with that light, girl. Stop it, I tell you! That’s not your—”

      
But de Borron’s shouted orders were ignored. Natalia’s fingers had found the control they sought, and suddenly the lamp went dark.

      
The other lamp, the one nearest the elevator shaft, was still lighted, flooding the big room with plenty of illumination for everyone to see what happened next. In a moment the remaining lamp had been snatched from its table and extinguished by the first of the three dark-clad figures who now burst out of concealment and came running into the room from that direction.

      
Kasimir had already made up his mind to act, and when he saw the dark figure running for the one remaining light source he knew that the moment for decisive action had come. The barrier of draped cloth in front of him was no impediment at all. Even as the studio went almost entirely dark, he pushed between the folds of hanging canvas, heading for the Sword.

      
He was certain that a number of other people would be rushing toward the same goal, but he felt sure of having at least a moment’s start on most of them. And when the lights went out he was already moving in the right direction.

      
As his legs drove him forward the few necessary strides, he heard the blackness around him come alive with oaths, cries of surprise and fear, and sounds as if people were colliding with one another. There was even what sounded like a clash of steel blades; perhaps the Red Temple guards were after all not totally incompetent, or perhaps they had only drawn swords out of fear for their own lives.

      
The bulk of the unfinished likeness of Natalia, and its scaffolding, loomed up just ahead of Kasimir and to his left, back lighted by the faint red glow that came through crevices from the lights along the front of the temple. The same dim light showed Kasimir something else: Despite the speed with which he was rushing for the Sword, he was not going to be the first to reach it. De Borron was there ahead of him, and the sculptor already had Stonecutter out of its wooden sheath before Kasimir could come to grips with him.

      
The sculptor had Stonecutter’s hilt in his right hand, and was ready to use the Sword as a weapon, when Kasimir crashed into him, determined to wrest the blade away. Kasimir’s left hand closed in its hardest grip on de Borron’s right wrist.

      
The physician was no trained warrior, but rough games had been a part of his growing up and of his youth, and he possessed considerable stocky strength. De Borron was perhaps just as strong, but when the two men fell together Kasimir was on top, and most of the sculptor’s wind was jarred out of him in the impact.

      
The Sword fell free. For a moment only it lay unattended on the floor of the studio, almost within reach of the struggling men; and then someone snatched it up. Kasimir had only the impression of a lone running figure, unidentifiable in the near-darkness, grabbing the Sword of Siege in passing, and running with it in the direction of the elevator shaft.

      
A moment later the wrestling match had reached an end, by common consent. Kasimir and de Borron were both back on their feet, trampling and clawing at each other in an effort to gain some advantage in the pursuit of this most recent Sword-thief.

      
Around the running pair, other skirmishes were still proceeding under cover of darkness, with oaths and cries and sounds of impact.

      
Kasimir, glancing to one side caught a glimpse of Natalia, distinguishable by her robe and her pale legs running below it, running in the same direction he was. This time he could be sure it was not she who had seized the Sword and was getting away with it.

      
This time, he vowed grimly, no one was going to do that, unless it was himself.

      
Someone was giving the trick a great try, though. The person carrying Stonecutter had now disappeared in the general vicinity of the head of the elevator shaft, and Kasimir assumed that he—or she—must be climbing down the rickety interior sides, or sliding down the chains and cables, in near-total darkness. But how would anyone be able to carry a Sword while doing that? Suddenly Kasimir understood why the latest set of intruders had been wearing empty Sword-sheaths at their belts.

      
Running up to the shaft himself, the physician in his haste came near diving into it headfirst. His entrance was not quite that precipitate. Having climbed the sides of the shaft before, he was better able to handle it in darkness than most of those pursuing would be.

      
De Borron, reaching the top of the shaft only a step or two behind him, delayed the start of his own descent briefly. He took time out to bellow uselessly for lights, and for more guards to come and save the Sword.

      
Then, despairing of any effective help, the sculptor swung out boldly on the chains and ropes. On the end of a loose line he started an almost free-fall plunge into the dark depths below, and had to grab at another chain to save himself.

      
Meanwhile Kasimir kept doggedly to his own more patient method of getting down, and whoever was carrying the Sword ahead of him and below him still maintained a lead in the descending race. Kasimir looking down could barely see a movement, shadow deeper into shadow, and only some faint sounds, clinking together of the long chains, drifted up.

      
Now a brief outcry in a familiar voice came from above, and Kasimir glanced in that direction. Something had delayed Natalia, but she had reached the shaft at last, and was struggling with de Borron a couple of meters above Kasimir’s head.

      
In a moment the sculptor was somehow pushed free, or lost his grip on chains and ropes, and started to fall down the shaft. At the last possible moment before disaster he saved himself by regaining his hold on one of the cables or chains.

      
Once more steel weapons clashed in the near-darkness. The members of the intruding group, one above Kasimir’s position and one now somewhere below, had drawn blades to defend the Sword-bearer, and indeed he or she must certainly be using the Sword itself, meanwhile trying to hang on with one hand.

      
Someone climbing in the gloom nearby lashed out at Kasimir. He stuck to his climbing and succeeded in getting away from this attack. If the attack should be renewed he thought he would have to draw his dagger and try to fight with one hand while he hung on with the other.

      
With a sharp splintering sound, a loose slat in the wall nearby gave way under someone’s grasp. There was a scream and a falling body, followed after a sickeningly long interval by a crash in the darkness far below.

      
But there was no indication that the person carrying the Sword had fallen.

      
Scarcely had the sound of that first fall died when de Borron, still a meter or two above Kasimir and just to one side of him, fell again. Someone or something had knocked the artist loose from his grip inside the shaft, and he tumbled past Kasimir, screaming a string of imprecations that were cut short suddenly when he hit the invisible bottom.

      
And, half that distance below Kasimir, at about the level of the highest inhabited rooms, the vague shadow he had tentatively identified as the Sword-bearer left the shaft, to glide almost silently into some kind of opening in its wall.

      
Kasimir followed.

      
His pursuit of the latest thief went on relentlessly, crossing narrow beams and leaping gaps over darkness, going more recklessly with each momentary frustration.

      
Nor were any of the other pursuers giving up on the confused chase. Rather the number of hounds seemed to be growing, with the guards of the Red Temple forming a gradually increasing presence. However tardily and ineptly they were being mobilized for action, they were everywhere in the building, and they greatly outnumbered all the other participants together.

      
Kasimir now had lost sight of Natalia completely. But not of his primary quarry, the sinister shape who bore the Sword. The figure tried to lose him and the other pursuers, leaping from one narrow beam to another. But Kasimir, his blood now aroused to the full excitement of the hunt, would not be shaken off. His quarry climbed a stony column, dropped down again, and leaped another gap. But Kasimir stuck with the other as if his teeth were already fastened in his prey’s flesh.

      
They were both centimetering their way across the thin ceiling of one of the orgy rooms on the third floor when Kasimir at last caught sight once more of Natalia’s unmistakable bare-legged figure. She was starting to creep toward the quarry too, though holding on with one hand to a solid support. Whether she meant to strike at the Sword-thief or aid him Kasimir could not—

      
The ceiling underneath them all was giving way.

      
This time it was really—

      
The slow-motion sensation of desperate action took over. Kasimir knew a moment of despair, a moment of resignation; there followed in an instant an almost anticlimactic splashdown. He, along with numerous fragments of ceiling, had landed upon what he first took for a gigantic bursting waterbed. But when he went in up to his waist, he realized that the first impact of his fall had been borne by a flimsy raft afloat upon a shallow perfumed pool. Half a dozen naked bodies, looking clinically exposed and vulnerable, were thrashing in the shallow water now, and from the bottom of the tank unsavory things came swirling up. Wine and food, their fragile containers broken, were churning in the water, scattered into garbage.

      
Whatever performance had been in progress on the raft was over now. Another body, that of a security guard, fell through the ceiling, drenching Kasimir afresh with a great splash as it landed right beside him. The quondam performers were rolling, swimming, scrambling for shelter outside the pool, intent on getting out of any of the target area before more people fell.

      
An audience, some fifteen or twenty strong, was looking on.

      
There were two rows of chairs, the rear row elevated, making something like a small grandstand. All of the seats were full. The occupants of the chairs, a jaded-looking and weary crew, brightened enough at the violent innovations to offer a small round of applause, even as the Red Temple guards came crowding in through both doorways.

      
Kasimir, still waist-deep in the noisome artificial pond, looked round him in despair. There were plenty of blades in sight now, drawn and ready in the hands of the Red Guards who came bursting in the room’s doors, and dropping through the newly opened ceiling. Swiftly their attention was concentrated upon Kasimir.

      
And again the Sword was gone.

Chapter Fourteen

      
About an hour after dawn next morning, an elderly and majestic individual, announcing himself as the personal representative of the Hetman, and accompanied by an armed escort that augmented his already formidable dignity, came calling upon Wen Chang and Kasimir at the Inn of the Refreshed Travelers.

      
Despite the early hour, Wen Chang was wide awake and ready to receive visitors. Kasimir, on the other hand, had to be awakened, a task that was not accomplished without difficulty. The young physician had been intensely questioned by the Red Temple authorities until well after midnight, and then released only on Captain Almagro’s written acceptance of responsibility for any further crimes and outrages that this self-proclaimed investigator might commit.

      
The early-morning business of the Hetman’s representative at the inn was soon stated: The Magistrate Wen Chang, and his chief associate, one Kasimir the physician, were courteously but very firmly invited to attend a meeting that was due to begin as soon as they could reach the palace, and was to be presided over by the Hetman himself. The purpose of this meeting was the discussion of certain strange events known to have taken place recently in the city, and the resolution of the resulting problems.

      
Despite Wen Chang’s attempt to question him, the Hetman’s representative would be, or could be, no more specific than that.

      
As the two investigators were concluding their hasty preparations for departure, with the representative of the Hetman waiting in the room just below, Kasimir asked Wen Chang in a low voice: “Shall I tell them everything that happened to me last night?”

      
The narrowed eyes of the Magistrate widened momentarily. “I presume that you have told me everything?”

      
“Yes, of course.”

      
“Then I see no reason why you should not repeat the same story to the Hetman. Truth is very often an effective weapon; and we mean no harm to anyone in this city except Sword-stealers.”

      
Wen Chang and Kasimir were soon as ready as they could be; they descended to the courtyard and mounted for the ride to the palace. Their escort remained courteous, and the two were not searched, but once in the street they were surrounded continuously by mounted troopers. A light rain was falling again, adding to Kasimir’s thoughts of gloom; he took heart from the fact that Wen Chang appeared not at all discouraged.

      
As their small cavalcade entered the square in front of the Hetman’s palace, Kasimir observed that the scaffold that had been erected for tomorrow morning’s execution had somehow been severely damaged, and was now undergoing reconstruction. There were signs that fire had destroyed portions of the original wooden structure, while other parts of it had been knocked down and broken. The rebuilding was being carried out under military guard.

      
Raising his eyes, Kasimir saw that this morning there was a face looking out at one of the small barred windows that here overlooked the square. Looking carefully, he was able to recognize the man he had earlier seen riding in the tumbrel, on the occasion of Kasimir’s first visit to this square.

      
Why should Benjamin of the Steppe, or anyone else, trouble to stand at a window to watch the instrument of his own death take shape? It would seem to indicate a morbid, helpless fascination, certainly. Kasimir gazed up with a kind of sympathy at the face in the small window. But if the prisoner was aware that he had a commiserator, he gave no sign.

      
Wen Chang, taking in all of this with a glance or two, informed the dignitary in charge of their escort that he intended to pause for a moment. When this was allowed, the Magistrate called over the officer in charge of the military guard, and questioned him.

      
The officer, of junior rank, plainly enjoyed the chance to be seen talking in public to these important-looking people who were on their way to the palace. He provided what information he could on the situation regarding the scaffold. During the night just past some of those persistent rural protesters had tried to burn the platform down. When rain prevented that, they had mounted the wooden structure with axes and hammers and tried to knock it all apart. The Watch had finally come on the scene and driven them off, but not until the devils had managed to do quite a bit of damage. Never fear, though, the instrument of execution would be ready in time, and this time would be kept under careful guard—there would be a live hanging, drawing, and quartering to begin the Festival tomorrow morning.

      
Kasimir, who had no intention of attending that kind of a curtain raiser, muttered something about the hopelessness of people who protested by trying to burn a scaffold. Wen Chang was scowling—it was hard to tell just what his reaction was. But as the Magistrate signed that he was ready to ride on again, his eyes twinkled for just a moment.

      
Their pause in the square had been brief, and only moments later Wen Chang and his associate were being escorted through a rear gate and into a narrow yard behind the palace itself. There all dismounted, leaving their riding-beasts in the care of grooms.

      
Inside the palace the Hetman was awaiting them in an audience chamber of moderate size, two floors above the ground. A number of other people were also already present, including Captain Almagro, who looked grim and bone-weary.

      
But most of the small gathering turned actively hostile gazes toward Wen Chang as he entered. The High Priests of both Red and Blue Temples, each accompanied by his own small retinue of advisers, stopped talking and glared at the newcomers on their arrival.

      
Kasimir was surprised to see that Robert de Borron was also present. Last night Kasimir had reported to Wen Chang that the artist was probably dead following his tumble down the elevator shaft. And indeed, de Borron was in bad shape, with one leg and one arm splinted, and bruises evident on his face.

      
The silence of the Red Temple’s High Priest was only momentary. As soon as that official had recognized Wen Chang and his associate, he immediately accused them in a loud voice of not only taking part in the raid on his establishment the previous night, but of organizing the attack as well.

      
And of carrying off Stonecutter. “The Sword of Siege is ours by rights, and I demand that you return it to us at once!”

      
For once the glowering artist gave every evidence of being in complete agreement with what the High Priest said.

      
That official went on: “I shall make the charges more formal and specific.” He grabbed a scroll from an aide and began to read from it. The Magistrate and his associate were accused of conducting a raid last night upon the Temple of Aphrodite and Eros, particularly the House of Flesh, and there conniving in the attempted murder of the sculptor Robert de Borron, and also conspiring with person or persons unknown to steal and sell a treasure of incalculable value.

      
Wen Chang, who still had not responded, waited calmly until the string of accusations should be finished; this took some time, as the Blue Temple people, unwilling to wait, were trying to get in their own accusations and arguments at the same time.

      
Meanwhile the Hetman had been sitting silently in his place at the head of the table, evidently willing to let the uproar run its course for a time, in the hope that some facts constituting useful information might emerge. Presently it was evident that nothing of the kind was likely to happen, and he drew his dagger and pounded on the table with the pommel. Almost instantly he was granted the boon of silence.

      
Kasimir had never heard any personal name for the current ruler of Eylau, and he had gathered that lack was a usage established by tradition as long as the person was in office. The Director of Security at the Blue Temple was operating under a similar rule or tradition.

      
The present Hetman, whatever his name, was a short, stout man, dressed in an elaborate style that Kasimir considered as bordering on the effeminate. There were rings on almost all his pudgy fingers and his coloring was muddy and unhealthy looking. About forty years of age, he looked as if he might at one time have been very strong physically, but had let himself go to seed. As Kasimir observed him throughout the meeting, the impression he gave was one of fading moral strength as well as physical, of an overriding, undermining insecurity.

      
Kasimir like all other thinking observers knew that the position of the city-state governed by this man was insecure as well. Eylau was chronically beset and buffeted by the larger powers surrounding it, and sometimes also by international entities like the great and well-nigh universal temples.

      
The silence obtained by the Hetman’s dagger-pounding was of brief duration. He allowed the silence he had won to stretch on a little too long, and the Blue Temple people took advantage of this leniency to burst into verbal action.

      
What they wanted, they said, was protection against robbers. This danger, they said, had escalated almost infinitely, now that a tool like Stonecutter was in the city, in unknown criminal hands.

      
“No one’s property anywhere will be safe, as long as that Sword is in the hands of irresponsible people!”

      
Before the Hetman had decided how to respond to that—or Wen Chang could formulate a reply—the Red Temple had seized the floor again, its leaders protesting that they were the ones who had actually been robbed, and had a real grievance to present.

      
The Hetman, exasperated at last, gave up all effort at a dramatic pause, all pretense at judicial calm, and shouted hoarsely for order. His voice, or something in the way he used it, was even more effective than his earlier dagger-pounding, and he was granted his wish immediately.

      
This time the silence lasted somewhat longer. As it endured, Kasimir found it possible to hear, faintly, the continual hammering from out in the square where the reconstruction of the scaffold was still in progress.

      
“Now,” said the ruler of the city, looking around the room. He had a bold, commanding voice when he wanted to make it so; but despite the tone and the determined look Kasimir had the definite impression that the Hetman was uncertain of just what ideas he ought to present to the orderly attention of his audience, now that it had been granted him.

      
It was with a subtle appearance of relief that the Hetman’s gaze at last came to rest upon Wen Chang. The voice of practiced boldness asked: “And you are the famed Magistrate?”

      
“I am, Excellency,” replied the lean man, bowing. There was no pretense of any particular modesty in the answer, and the bow was the movement of an experienced diplomat.

      
“Good.” The direction of the Hetman’s attention shifted slightly. “And I suppose you are Kasimir the physician?”

      
“Yes sir, I am.” Kasimir bowed in turn.

      
The stout man sitting in the elevated chair drew in a deep breath. “As you have just heard, it is charged against you both, among other things, that you have conspired to steal a piece of property belonging to the Red Temple. Very valuable property, too, I might add. What have you to say to this accusation?”

      
Wen Chang replied smoothly. “Only two things, Excellency. In the first place we have stolen nothing, and we do not have the Sword. And in the second place, the property in question—I assume the Sword of Siege, one of the Twelve Swords of the gods, is meant—does not belong to the Red Temple. It never has.” Raising his voice, Wen Chang overrode protests from that direction. “Not only are we innocent of the theft of Stonecutter, but we are engaged on behalf of the rightful owner to recover his property for him. The Red Temple has no more legitimate interest in that Sword than does the Blue, or than the people who have it now.”

      
The protests emanating from the Red Temple delegation only increased in violence and noise.

      
Wen Chang needed help from the Hetman, in the form of more dagger-pounding on the table, before he could regain the floor.

      
When a semblance of order had been re-established, and the Magistrate granted silence in which to proceed, he said: “It is true that Doctor Kasimir, acting as my agent, was inside the Red Temple last night. He entered legitimately, as a paying customer. He was not trying to kill or injure anyone, or to steal anything. His only purpose—in which, regrettably, he failed—was to recover the Sword for its rightful owner.”

      
“Ah,” said the Hetman. “You keep coming to that point. Who is this rightful owner?”

      
Wen Chang continued smoothly. “My immediate client, Excellency, is Prince al-Farabi of the Firozpur tribe.” That created a stir of surprise in the room. The Magistrate went on: “Not many days ago, the Sword we seek was stolen from the Prince’s camp in the desert, some three days’ journey from Eylau.

      
“But the Sword of Siege, as Prince al-Farabi will be first to admit, was only his on loan—a matter, I am told, of Stonecutter’s powers being needed to root out some bandits from a particularly inaccessible desert stronghold. The true and rightful owner of the blade is Prince Mark of Tasavalta, with whom I am sure Your Excellency is well acquainted, if only by reputation.”

      
“Of course,” said the Hetman after a brief pause. He acknowledged some kind of acquaintance with the well-known Prince almost absently, as if his mind were running on ahead already, assessing what the implications of this claim were likely to be if it was true. Tasavalta was not a next-door neighbor, but rather many kilometers to the north of his domain. Nor was it a particularly large country. But the Tasavaltans were said to be formidable in war; the reputation of their ruler had spread farther across the continent than this.