The Demon's Blade (4 page)

Darien summoned all his strength and charged forward into the water. He swam out into the fog, keeping just below the water’s surface as much as possible, surfacing only briefly to collect his breath. He could see nothing in front of him, and the shore quickly faded behind. He found no way to mark his progress or even know that he was still on course, as the bottom lay far below out of sight. As he continued, he began to tire. Even the Demon Sword could not keep him moving for much longer. His will wavered, and he wondered if it might not be better to simply give up, sinking to the bottom and accepting the futility of his struggle. Yet, he did not. Whatever force kept him moving forward, whether it was something from the Demon Sword or from inside himself, was enough.

After what seemed like ages, he saw dim shapes in the water in front of him. He surged forward, throwing all the last of his strength into one final push. At last, he could see the bottom rising rapidly up beneath him. Finally, he laid his hand upon dry ground, heaved himself up on the bank, and laid the sword a few feet away. The moment it left his hand, he became aware of the incredible pain in his body. He had pushed his body farther than ever before, and the pain tore through him as though every muscle was burning from the inside out. Fortunately, exhaustion quickly overcame pain, and Darien slept, a deep, dark, and troubled sleep.

Chapter 4. An Encounter in the Fog

Thin rays of yellow sunlight danced in the fog as it stirred overhead. The fog concealed the sun’s position, leaving the sky a cloud of shifting shades of light gray and white. Darien lay on his back just where he had laid down, and stared up into it wondering how long he had been asleep. He might have slept for days for all he knew. He sat up, looked around, and attempted to orient himself. The fog made it hard to see more than a few yards in any direction, but he could make out the shapes of structures further from the bank. Blurred shapes of fallen archways, broken spires, and ruined buildings formed and then disappeared in the shifting gray distance. I must have found the island, Darien reasoned, but I cannot afford to linger long here. The Master will eventually guess where I am, if he hasn’t already. His servants won’t be able to cross the lake as easily as I, but I still shouldn’t linger here. I have to get across the island to the western side, then swim to the western bank of the Saldean.

The bedraggled fugitive
picked up the Demon Sword, and trudged into the fog, across what must once have been the ruins of an old city. He stumbled through stone paths, which might have been narrow streets, or hallways whose ceilings had long ago crumbled. Long years of weathering had worn the limestone bricks, leaving them with sharp edges, long grooves, and deep pits. Bright green moss, nourished by the moisture of the fog, dotted most of the stones, and wholly covered many of the dilapidated structures. Darien followed the streets to the west, careful to keep to a straight line. In fog such as this, even without magic, it was perilously easy to become disoriented, and end up walking aimlessly in circles.

After about a half hour of walking, a malaise began to fall over him. He became aware of the pain in his body again. His sleep, however long it had been, had been too little to fully recover. More troubling were the effects of the Demon Sword. A strange, unnatural sensation, like a cold emanating from within his own body, ran from his shoulders down to the palms of his hands, especially his right hand, which held the weapon. The fog played tricks with his eyes. Out of the corners of his eyes, the Executioner saw the shapes of pursuers, and he would whip his head round only to see them disappear into the sullen fog. Worse yet were the whispers, unintelligible murmurs coming from somewhere behind him. They began as barely audible, then continuously grew louder, until he stopped and turned to face them, when they would suddenly fall silent once again. The Demon Sword’s madness had begun, and it would only get worse, eating away at his sanity until he was left a gibbering madman. He stumbled slowly onward like a drunkard, barely able to keep himself moving.

As he stepped through an archway into an ancient garden filled with empty fountains and moss-covered planting beds, his mind suddenly weakened. How long can I go on like this, he wondered? A day, a week, a month? What does it matter? What am I doing here? There’s no point in going any further. In his heart, Darien began to understand how truly foolish it had been to take the sword. He fell to his knees and held the point of the blade against his chest, again. He had to find the strength to end his life while it was still his own. Yet, he still could not. It seemed as though his own body had rebelled against him. No matter how urgently he commanded his arms to finish the deed, they would not.

"Well, finally awake and about, are we?"

The voice startled him and he snapped back to awareness, wondering who could possibly be here. He looked over to his right, from where the words had come. There, upon a crumbling stone wall, sat an old man. He had a long white beard which hung down onto his chest, and wispy gray hair which fell far down his back. His long gray robes were ragged from wear, eyes nearly the same color gray. He must have been a tall man once, but now bent with age. He held a simple wooden staff
in one hand, a twisted thing that might have grown straight from the ground into the man's thin, withered hand. Clearly a homeless wanderer, or a hermit
.

Darien gasped, shocked to find anyone living on the island.

The strange man continued speaking. "I'm afraid that's not going to work. If you mean to end your life, you'll have to think of something far cleverer. That blade has a will of its own, but you should already know that."

"Who are you, and how did you find me? Do you serve the Demon King?" The Executioner turned the sword away from his chest and pointed it at the mysterious stranger.

"My name is Ezra, I found you by looking for you, and no, I do not."

A wary Darien
eyed the old man cautiously, suspecting some sort of trick. The fact that this stranger immediately recognized the Demon Sword did not escape his notice. Few would know more than just the legend of the sword. The Master had guarded his secrets quite closely. Whoever this man was, he was more than he appeared to be.

"Tell me how you know about this sword," Darien demanded. "Answer carefully, as your position is more precarious than you understand, old man."

"Oh, but I do understand," the man said, unfazed by the threat. "That sword you carry is the most powerful and dangerous weapon ever created in this world. It is you, I think, who does not truly understand his peril. Powerful you may be, but I think you are in no position to make threats."

Darien lowered his blade, stood, and calmed himself. "You make a fair point. Perhaps I spoke hastily. My name is Darien, and I have taken this sword from my Master. I evaded capture and fled through the forest in an attempt to escape across the river." He would have said more, but was interrupted.

"Yes, yes. I know who you are and why you are here. The question is what do you intend to do now?"

The fugitive half-elf stood open-mouthed, stunned for a moment. The strange old man not only knew about the sword, but also about the man who held it.
Nevertheless, this was no time to indulge curiosity. His head now pounded and throbbed with pain that seemed to come from both within and without at the same time. Glimpses of the sword’s darkened world of bone, blood, and evil intruded into his mind, flashing behind his eyes, then disappearing. It did not matter who this man was. Darien had to ask of him the only favor he needed, for there was no one else.

He fell onto his knees, sobbing and stammering in desperation. "I am sorry. If you indeed understand the nature of this sword, then you will understand what I must request of you. Please, whoever you are, if you have any mercy within you, I beg of you, end my life, since I cannot. If it is indeed the demons within the sword that prevent me from taking my own life, then I might still be slain by another. You know what will happen if I live. Sooner or later, the demons will possess my soul. I will become as great an evil as the Master I fled, if not worse. You would be doing all the world a great service."

The old man blinked several times as he stared sternly at Darien, assessing the young half-elf before him. At last he spoke, “Interesting… you show considerable concern about what acts you will commit under the influence of the demons. Given your… reputation, it seems strange that you would care. You have committed a great many acts well worthy of that blade already. I had assumed you aimed to possess the sword’s power yourself and overthrow your master. If not that, why did you steal the sword in the first place, and why try to kill the Demon King?”

“I never intended to escape. My plan was to kill the Master then take my own life. I only wanted justice for my mother, to punish the guilty. The Demon King sent the man who arranged my mother’s death, the same man who brought me into the Order of the Shade. He promises order and justice through power, but in the end, it is all lies, lies to manipulate others to serve his ends. He stole my life. Everything that I knew, everything that I might have been, is all gone, lost because of him. Now I have only death to look forward to.” Tears rolled down his face into the mossy earth.

Ezra did not respond at first, instead stroking his beard thoughtfully. Finally, he asked, "If that is what you believe, then why come here? Why flee from death at the hands of your master only to ask for death at the hands of a stranger? Quite a curious course for one who values his life so little.” He sounded almost amused as he spoke, certainly not a tone Darien was expecting.

He hesitated, taken aback at this response. The old man mocked him, but he was also correct. Why did I flee, Darien questioned himself? He could find no clear answer. Death no longer held any terror for him. He had already decided upon his own death when he first settled upon his plan to steal the sword. That plan had now failed completely. He had no hope of finding peace in this life. The sword would corrupt his mind until it was no longer his own. Why have I come this far, he questioned, and why go any further?

Finally, his will faltered, his poise failed, and he wailed like a child.

"I was a fool. I did not understand what I had done. I should never have taken this sword. I see now how pointless it was to come here. My will is already faltering and my strength is all but gone. I can go neither forward nor back. I am utterly powerless to do anything but ask this favor of you, for you are the only one here who I might ask." Then, Darien fell upon his face and wept before the old man's feet.

The old man sighed a deep, knowing sigh. "Would that it was that simple," he said, regretfully. "Unfortunately, your death would accomplish very little. There are some mistakes that cannot be corrected, no matter how much you wish it.” Ezra shook his head in resignation. “When you freed that sword, you set in motion a chain of events that cannot be stopped. The sword is more dangerous than even you understand. You knew, did you not, that your master became powerful by slowly siphoning off the energies of the sword, without ever touching it?"

"Yes," Darien replied, looking up at the old man through tear filled eyes. "I had hoped that the sword might still give me enough power to defeat him, but it was not enough."

"No indeed," the old man said glumly. "Still, when you freed the blade and bound it to yourself, you stopped that flow of energy. Your master's power will now diminish. Certainly not all at once, as you have no doubt seen, but slowly, just as he acquired it. As time passes, he will weaken, and the sword will grow stronger."

"So what does all that mean?" Darien asked. "Will he eventually lose all his power, becoming no more than a mere man? Have I already brought about his undoing? If so, then my death will close the circle, and it will be over."

The old man shook his head once again and sighed. "As I said, it is not that simple. Much of the energy your master absorbed he has already used to transform himself into his current inhuman form. That can likely never be recovered, as it is a part of him as he exists now, but that is not the worst of it. Though he never bound himself to the blade as you did, he still became connected to it. His bond with the sword is, as it were, a secondary one. Whatever role the crystal played in that was accomplished a long time ago. His bond with the sword, however, will remain until his death, just as yours will."

"I don't understand," Darien protested, rising to his feet again. "You said that his power would diminish. How can that be, if he is still bound to the sword? Why is my life so important?"

"Hm-m, I would have thought you clever enough to figure that out by now, but as time is short, I will tell you plainly," the man said, again sounding slightly amused. But a moment after he finished speaking, his amusement vanished, and his expression became grave as death.

"While you are alive, your bond with the sword is stronger, thus its power will flow into you, even that power which your Master had stolen over time. If you are slain here, your bond will be destroyed, and your master's bond will remain. Even if it were hidden from him, or cast into the sea, or buried beneath the mountains, or entrusted to his enemies, he would control its power until it was bound to another."

"Does that matter?" Darien frantically grasped for any argument his desperate mind could imagine. "Is not the sword's evil worse than The Master's? There is little question where the greater peril is. If I am killed, then it will be as if I never shattered the crystal."

"You may be right, and yet you may not," the man replied, his voice sinking as he spoke. "As I said, I do not fully understand how your master managed to establish a bond with the sword without ever touching it, nor do I understand what role the crystal played, yet I do know this. The power of the Demon Sword does not come from enchantments, as is the case with most magical weapons. It contains the souls of demons, how many I cannot say. The crystal is what kept those demon souls from corrupting his mind. Somehow it allowed magical energy to pass through, but kept their souls trapped, unable to dominate his mind as they now seek to dominate yours.” Ezra paused a moment, tapping his staff on the stone, perhaps lost in thought or considering his next words. Finally, he turned to Darien with a questioning expression and spoke again. “Without it, it seems likely your master will no longer be protected from them. If you are killed, there is no way to know what will happen. It may be that the Demon King can find the sword and create another crystal, or remake the broken one. It may be that the demons will overwhelm him before he can do this. It may be that he is arrogant enough to think himself able to control them, or mad enough not to care. You know his mind better than I. What do you think?"             

Darien realized the truth of the old man’s argument, though he did not want to face it. He fell to his knees again, and hung his head, answering dejectedly. "He declared that he would kill me, when I confronted him in Shade Castle. His hatred and malice are far greater than his reason. If he has any fear of my death, I did not see it. As for the other, I do not know if he can remake the crystal, but I do know that it required a starstone to make, just as I used a starstone to shatter it.” The Executioner pounded a fist into the stone in anger, inwardly cursing his fate, and his words trailed to a quiet mumble. “It took me many months and no small amount of luck to find that tiny stone. To form that crystal must have taken much more than that. It may be the crystal itself was made of starstone. I cannot believe he, or anyone else, would be able to make another."