An Armory of Swords

Blind Man's Blade

Fred Saberhagen

The gods’ great Game of Swords, and with it the whole later history of planet Earth, might have followed a very different course had the behavior of one or two divine beings-or the conduct of only one man-been different at the start. Even a slight change at the beginning of the Game produced drastic variation in the results. And Apollo has been heard to say that there have been several such beginnings.

One of those divergent commencements-which, in the great book of fate, may be accounted as leading to an alternate universe, or perhaps simply as a false start-saw all of the gods’ affairs thrown into turmoil at a remarkably early stage, even before the first move had been made in the Game. It happened on the day when the Swords, all new and virginally fresh, all actually still warm from Vulcan’s forge, were being brought to the Council to be put into the hands of those players who had been awarded them by lot.

The sun had just cleared the jagged horizon when Vulcan arrived at the open council-space, there to join the wide circle of deities already assembled in anticipation of his coming. They were his colleagues, all of them standing much taller than humans, their well-proportioned bodies casting long shadows in the lingering mists, but still dwarfed by the surrounding rim of icy mountains. There were moments when they all looked lost under the breadth of the cold morning sky.

The Smith brought with him a whiff of forge-smoke, a tang of melted meteoric iron. His cloak of many furs was windblown around his shoulders, and his huge left hand cradled carefully its priceless cargo of steel and magic, eleven weighty packages held in a neat bundle. And, despite the fact that a small but vocal minority of the Council still argued that no binding agreement on the rules of the Game had yet been reached, the Swords-almost every one of the Twelve Swords-were soon being portioned out among the chosen members of the meeting.

Among those gods and goddesses who received a Sword in the distribution, no two reactions were exactly the same. Most were pleased, but not all. For example, there was the goddess Demeter, who stood looking thoughtfully at the object limping Vulcan had just pressed into her strong, pale hands. She gazed at the black sheath covering a meter’s length of god-forged steel, at the black hilt marked by a single symbol of pure white.

Demeter said pensively, in her high, clear voice: “I am not at all sure that I care to play this Game.”

Mars, who happened to be standing near her, commented: “Well, many of us do want to play, including some who have been awarded no Sword at all. Hand yours over to someone else if you don’t want it.” Mars had already been promised a Sword of his own, or his protest would doubtless have been more violent. Actually he thought he could do quite well in the Game without benefit of any such trick hardware; but he would not have submitted quietly to being left off the list.

“I said I was not sure,” Demeter responded. A male deity would probably have tossed the sheathed weapon thoughtfully in his hand while trying to decide. Demeter only looked at it. And she was still holding her Sword, down at her side, the dark sheath all but invisible in one of her large hands, when her tall figure turned and strode away into a cloud of mist.

Another of her colleagues called after her to know where she was going; and as an afterthought added the question: “Which Sword do you have?”

“I have other business,” Demeter called back, avoiding a direct answer to either question. And then she went on. For all that anyone could tell, she was only seeking other amusement, displaying independence as gods and goddesses were wont to do.

Meanwhile the distribution of Swords was still going on, a slow process frequently interrupted by arguments. Some of the recipients were trying to keep the names and powers of their Swords secret, while others did not seem to care who knew about them.

The council meeting dragged along, its proceedings every bit as disorderly as those of such affairs were wont to be, and not made any easier to follow by the setting-a high mountain wasteland of snow and ice and rock and howling wind, an environment to which the self-convinced rulers of the earth were proud to display their indifference.

Hera was complaining that the original plan of allowing only gods to possess Swords, which she believed to be the only good and proper and reasonable scheme, had been spoiled before it could be put into effect: “That scoundrel Vulcan, that damned clubfoot, enlisted a human smith to help him make the Swords. And then chose to reward the man!”

Zeus stroked his beard. “Well? And if it amuses Vulcan to hand out a gift or two to mortals? Surely that’s not unheard of?”

“I mean he rewarded the human with the gift of Townsaver! That’s unheard of! So now we have only eleven Swords to share among us, instead of twelve. Am I wrong, or is it we gods, and not humanity, who are supposed to be playing the Swordgame?”

The speaker had meant the question to be rhetorical; but not even on this point could any general agreement be established. Many at the meeting expected their human worshipers to play a large part in the Game-though of course not in direct competition with gods.

Debate on various questions concerning the distribution of Swords, and the conduct and rules of the Game, moved along by fits and starts, until Vulcan himself came forward, leaning sideways on his shorter leg, to demand the floor. As soon as the Smith thought he had the attention of a majority, he haughtily informed his accusers that he had decided to give away the Blade called Townsaver, because the gods themselves had no towns or cities, no settled or occupied places in the human sense, and thus none of them would be able to derive any direct benefit from that particular weapon.

“Would you have chosen that one for yourself?” he demanded, looking from one deity to another nearby. “Hah, I thought not!”

As the council meeting wrangled on, perpetually on the brink of dissolving in disputes about procedure, at least one other member of the divine company-Zeus himself-complained that the great Game was already threatened by human interference. How many of his colleagues, he wanted to know, how many of them realized that there was one man who by means of certain impertinent magic had already gained extensive theoretical knowledge of the Twelve Swords?

Diana demanded: “How could a mere human manage that? I insist that the chairman answer me! How could a man do that, without the help of one or more of us?”

Chairman Zeus, always ready for another speech, began pontificating. Few listened to him. Meanwhile, Vulcan sulked: “Who pays any attention to human magic tricks? Who cares what they find out? No one said anything to me about maintaining secrecy.”

In another of the rude, arguing knots of deities, the discussion went like this: “If putting Swords in the hands of humans hasn’t been declared officially against the rules, it ought to be! It’s bound to have a bad result.”

“Still, it might be fun to see what the vile little beasts would do with such weapons.”

Mars drew himself up proudly. “Why not? I hope no one’s suggesting that they could do us serious damage with any weapon at all?”

“Well…”

Someone else butted in, raising a concern over the chance of demons getting their hands on Swords. But few in the assembly were particularly worried about that, any more than they were about humans.

A dark-faced, turbaned god raised his voice. “Cease your quarreling! No doubt we’ll have the chance to learn the answers to these interesting questions. If we are to use Vulcan’s new toys in a Game, of course they’ll be scattered promiscuously about the world. Sooner or later at least one of them is bound to fall into human hands. And, mark my words, some demon will have another.”

Meanwhile, in a small cave at the foot of a low cliff of dark rock about two hundred meters distant from the nearest argument, a mere man named Keyes, and another called Lo-Yang, both weather-vulnerable human beings, shivering with cold and excitement though wrapped in many furs, were sitting almost motionless, watching and listening intently as they peered from behind a rock. Keyes, the leader of the pair, had chosen this place as one from which he and his apprentice could best observe the goings-on among the gods and goddesses, while still enjoying a reasonable hope that they would not be seen in turn.

A dark and wiry man, Keyes, of indeterminate age. His companion was dark as well, but heavier, and obviously young. They had come to this place in the high, uninhabited mountains searching for treasure, wealth in the form of knowledge-Keyes, an accomplished magician, was willing to risk everything in the pursuit.

Lo-Yang was at least as numb with fear as with cold, and at the moment willing to risk everything for a good chance to run away. He might even have defied his human master and done so, at any time during the past half hour, except that he feared to draw the attention of the mighty gods by sudden movement.

Keyes was in most matters no braver than his associate and apprentice, but certainly he was more obsessed with the search for knowledge and power. He cursed the fact that though some of the gods’ stentorian voices carried clearly to where he crouched trying to eavesdrop, he could understand nothing that he heard. Despite his best efforts at magical interpretation, the language the gods most commonly used among themselves was still beyond him.

Keyes, exchanging whispers now and then with his companion, whose teeth were chattering, considered an attempt to work his way even nearer the place of council. But he rejected the idea; it would hardly be possible to do better than this well-placed but shallow little cave, inconspicuous among a number of similar holes in the nearby rock.

He was in the middle of a whispered conversational exchange with his apprentice Lo-Yang, when without warning a great roaring fury swirled around him, and Keyes realized that he had been caught-that the enormous fingers of some god’s hand had closed around him. Hopelessly the man tried to summon some defensive magic. Physically he struggled to get free.

He might as well have endeavored to uproot a mountain or two and hurl them at the moon.

Mars, who had captured Keyes, was not really concerned with the obvious fact that the man had been spying. Who cared what human beings might overhear, or think? The god was focused on another problem: he was due to receive a Sword, though Vulcan had not yet put it in his hands. Mars wanted a human for experimental purposes, so that he could learn a thing or two, in practical terms, about the powers of whatever Sword he was given before he used it in the Game. Mars considered himself fortunate to have been able to grab up a human so promptly; the creatures were not common in these parts. Keyes had happened to be the nearer of the two specimens Mars saw when it occurred to him to look for one.

The captured man, knowing nothing of his captor’s purpose, certain that his last moment had come, could feel the cold mist on his face, and thought he could hear the echo of his own frightened breath.

The god-hand which had scooped Keyes up did not immediately crush him into pulp, or dash him on the rocks. The sweeping breeze of god-breath, redolent of ice and spice and smoke, told Keyes that an enormous face loomed over him.

But his captor was not even looking at him. Only when the man saw that did he fully realize how far he was, for all his impertinence, beneath the gods’ real anger. Nothing he might do would be of any real consequence to them-or so most of them thought. Some mice were doubtless nearby too, scampering among the rocks, but none of the debaters paid any heed to them at all.

The god who had captured Keyes considered how best to keep him fresh and ready. Physically crippling the subject might affect the results of the experiment; and anyway some measure less drastic should suffice to do the job. A simple deprivation of eyesight, along with a smothering of the man’s ability to do magic, ought to make him stay where he was put… so one god-finger wiped Keyes’s face…

Now. Where best to put him, for safe-keeping, until Mars should come into possession of the Sword he wished to test?

The captor, still holding casually in one hand the wriggling, moaning, newly blinded human form, looked about. Presently the terrible gaze of Mars fastened on the handiest hiding place immediately available. A moment later, treading windy space in the easy, heedless way of deities, he was descending into a house-sized limestone cave, by means of the wide, nearly vertical shaft which seemed to form the cavern’s only entrance and exit.

At the bottom he set his helpless captive down, not ungently, on the stone floor. Keyes was still mewing like a hurt kitten.

“Here you will stay,” Mars boomed in Keyes’s human language. “Until I get back. That won’t be long-there’s something I want to try out on you. As you can see… well, as you probably noticed when you could see… the only way out of this cave is a vertical climb up a steep shaft with slick sides and only a few scattered handholds.”

The god started to ascend that way himself, but disdaining handholds, simply walking in air. Halfway up he paused in midair, looking back down over his shoulder, to warn the once-ambitious wizard about the deep pits in the floor. “Better not fall into one of them. I don’t want to find you dead and useless when I return.” The tone seemed to imply that Keyes would be punished if he was impertinent enough to kill himself. And then the god was gone.

The newly blinded man was seized by an instinctive need to try to hide, some vague idea of groping his way voluntarily even farther down into the earth. Maybe the god who’d caught him would forget about him-maybe he wouldn’t even notice if Keyes disappeared-

But soon enough the man in the cave ceased his gasping and whimpering, his pointless attempt to burrow into the stone floor, and regained enough self-possession to reassure himself that although his vision was effectively gone, at least his eyeballs had not been ripped out. As far as he could tell his lids were simply closed, and he could not open them. There was no pain as long as he did not try. Attempts to force his eyes open with his fingers hurt horribly, but produced not even a pinhole’s worth of vision.

Physically his body seemed to be undamaged. But he felt that even more important components of his being, directly accessible to the divine intervention, had been violated…

Presently, his mind having begun to work again at least intermittently, he went on groping his way around the cave, in search of some way out, or at least of better knowledge of his prison. He had barely glimpsed even the entrance to the cave before his sight was taken from him. It was warmer down here out of the wind, so much so that he shed some of his furs. In some locations, as he moved about, he was able to feel the warmth of the sun, which was now beginning to be high enough to penetrate the cave. There was tantalizing hope in the red glow of the direct sun through his sealed eyelids.

In a conscious effort to force himself to think logically, Keyes took an inventory of his assets. He had the clothes he was wearing, a small dagger sheathed at his side, and a small pack on his back, which his captor had allowed him to retain. The pack contained a little food, and very little else.

Lo-Yang, Keyes’s assistant on his dangerous quest for knowledge, had been ignored by the deity who had grabbed Keyes up. And moments later the stout apprentice, unpursued, had scrambled successfully away, running for his life in the direction of the distant camp where he and Keyes had left their riding-beasts.

After sprinting only a short distance, Lo-Yang, out of shape and also unable to endure the suspense, had felt compelled to look back. Then he had paused, panting. The god who had caught Keyes was in the act of disappearing underground, his prisoner in hand. All the other gods were considerably more distant, and none of them were paying the least attention to Lo-Yang.

Fatalistically, the apprentice dared to crouch behind a rock and wait, catching his breath. Paradoxically his fear had become more manageable, now that the worst, or almost the worst, had come to pass.

Presently the great god who had taken Keyes-Lo-Yang was able to identify Mars, by the helmet the god was wearing, and by his general aspect-Mars came up out of the ground again, but without his prisoner, and went striding away to rejoin his colleagues.

Time passed, and the sun rose higher. The frightened apprentice remained behind his rock. Eventually, gradually, the council of the gods broke up, though not entirely. The remnants, still wrangling, moved even farther off.

When it seemed to Lo-Yang that all the gods were safely out of the way, he crept out from behind his rock, and dared to come back to the upper rim of the cave, looking for Keyes. With a surge of relief he saw that his master was at least still alive.

But Keyes took no notice when his apprentice waved. Lo-Yang called down to him cautiously.

At the sound the man below raised his head, turning it to and fro, in a feverish motion that spoke of near-despair and sudden hope. “Lo-Yang? I’m blind, I…”

“Oh.”

“Lo-Yang, is that you? Where are the gods?”

“Yes sir, I am here.” The apprentice raised his head, squinting into the sunlight, then looked down again. “They’re all moving away, at the moment. Slowly. Still bickering among themselves. No one’s paying any attention to us. Master, if Mars has blinded you, what are we going to do?”

“Your voice seems to come from a long way above me.”

“I’d say twelve meters, master, or maybe a little more. I saw him carry you down there, and I thought…”

“Lo-Yang, get me out of here, somehow.”

The young man surveyed the entrance to the cave below, and shook his head. It pained him to see his proud master reduced to such a state of helplessness, to hear an unfamiliar quaver in the voice usually so proud. “We need a long rope, master. Looking at these rock walls, I wouldn’t dare to try to climb down without one. I’d only fall in there with you, and…”

“Yes. Of course. And you have no magic that will get me out.”

“Unhappily, master, you have as yet taught me nothing that would be useful in this situation.”

“Yes. Quite true. And I also find that my own magic has been taken from me, along with my sight.” Keyes paused. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its urgency, had become slow and resigned. His shoulders slumped. “Hurry back to our camp, then, and get the rope. We have a coil in the large pack.”

“Yes, master.” A pause. “It might take me a couple of hours, or even longer, to get there and back. Even if I bring our riding-beasts back with me. Should I bring them back here, master?”

“Yes. No! I don’t know, I leave the details to you. Go!”

“Yes, master.” And Keyes could hear the first few footsteps, hurrying away. Then silence.

He was alone.

Fiercely Keyes commanded himself to be active, more to keep himself from dwelling on his fate than out of any real hope. Slowly the approximate dimensions and contours of the flatter portions of the cave’s floor revealed themselves to the blind man’s probing. With his hands he explored as much of the walls as he could reach. Seemingly the god had not lied. The cave consisted of a deep shaft, down which Keyes had been carried, and an adjoining room or alcove whose bottom remained in shade. The whole space accessible to the prisoner’s cautious crawling was no larger than the floor of a small house, and it was basically one big room. Here and there around the perimeter were certain crevices which might, for all Keyes could tell, lead to other exits. But the crevices were too narrow for him to force his body into them. He was going to have to wait until Lo-Yang got back, with the rope.

If Lo-Yang came back in time.

If the assistant ever came back at all. If he had any intention of doing so. Mentally the newly helpless magician reviewed the times in the past when he had treated his apprentice unjustly. He had hardly ever beaten him. Surely, on the whole, he had been a fair master, and even kind….

Mindful of the divine warning about pits, Keyes continued his exploration for the most part on all fours, and, when he did stand up, walked very carefully. By this means he located several perilous gaps in the floor, holes into which tossed pebbles dropped for a long count before clicking on bottom. Presently in his groping about the cave he came upon some bones. After he had found a skull or two, he became convinced that the bulk of the bones were human, evidence that other human victims had died in this cave before him. Sacrifices, perhaps? Or simply unlucky hunters, blinded by night or by driving snow, who had fallen in by accident.

Lo-Yang had said that the god was Mars-and Mars had said that he was coming back, and soon. Mars had spoken of using Keyes in some kind of an experiment…. Once more quivering with horror and fear, the trapped man persevered in his compulsive search for something, anything, that might offer him some chance of escape.

And so it was that at last, behind some loose rocks in the comer farthest from the entrance, the blind man’s trembling, groping fingers fell upon something that was round, and smooth, and narrow, and was not rock. When he pulled on the object, it came toward him.

When he stood up again, he was holding in both hands the padded, meter-long weight of a sheathed Sword.

Even with his sense of magic almost numbed by Mars, Keyes could tell this was no ordinary weapon. He had no real doubt of what he had discovered, though he had never seen or touched one of Vulcan’s Swords before, and had not expected to ever have the chance to touch one-at least not for a long, long time.

Thanks to his magical investigations at a distance, the difficult, painstaking studies he’d carried out even before the forging of the Blades had been completed, he knew the Twelve Swords well in theory-understood them better, no doubt, than all but a few of the gods yet did. But how one of the Twelve Blades had come to be tucked away in the remotest corner of an obscure cave was more than the human magician could understand. Certainly it had not been placed there for him to find; only his fanatical thoroughness in searching, his determination to keep busy, had led him to the discovery.

Slowly one possible explanation took shape in the man’s mind: One of the divine gang might have stolen another’s Sword, as a prank or as a ploy in their great mysterious Game, and had found a handy, nearby hiding place at the very bottom of this cave.

Impulse urged Keyes to draw the unknown Sword at once, to end, if possible, the suspense of waiting in ignorance, and to endow himself immediately with whatever powers his find might confer upon him-but there was one ominous contingency which made him hesitate. Fate, or some cruel trickster of a god, might have given him Soulcutter.

He was aware that in recent months his ambition had, perhaps more than once, irritated certain of the gods. Until now, by good fortune, none of them had become more than half-aware of him, as humans might be vaguely cognizant of some troublesome insect in the air nearby-but his magic, practiced as subtly as possible on Vulcan’s human assistant, had been clever and strong enough to bring him extensive theoretical knowledge of the Twelve Swords and their unique powers.

It was utterly frustrating that he had no way to determine which Sword lay in his hands. He knew that all but one of the Twelve Blades were marked with distinguishing white symbols on their black hilts-a target shape for Farslayer, a human eye for Sightblinder, and so on. But sightless Keyes had no way to perceive the sign, if any, on the Sword he held. Holding his breath, he tried with all his will and care to find and read the symbol with his fingertips-but for all he was able to discern by touch, there was no sign there to read.

Ah, if only Lo-Yang with his two good eyes had stayed with him a little longer!

Suppose it was only the black hilt, unrelieved-that would mean that he was holding Soulcutter. Keyes shuddered. But he could not be sure. The odds seemed to be against it. For all he knew, there might very well be a symbol right under his hand, dead flush with the rest of the hilt, undistinguishable by touch.

Everything depended upon his finding out. An enemy more powerful than any demon had stuffed him into this hole, and was coming back, perhaps at any moment now, to use him in an experiment. It was vitally important to identify the Sword, before he made any plan to use it.

Which one did he have?

Well, there was one sure way by which Soulcutter, at least, could be ruled out. Hesitantly Keyes began to draw the weapon, starting it first one centimeter out of its sheath, then two. Meanwhile he held his breath, hoping that if the hilt in his hand was indeed Soulcutter’s, he could retain enough sense of purpose to muzzle that deadliest of all Blades again before its growing power overwhelmed him with hopelessness, before all possible actions, and even life itself, were robbed of meaning.

If this experiment should demonstrate that he was holding the Sword of Despair, Keyes decided that he was desperate enough to use it, by threatening to draw it against the returning god.

His cautious tugging was exposing more and more of the Blade, but still no black cloud of despair rose up to engulf Keyes. He felt no more miserable with the Sword half-drawn. With a sigh of relief he concluded that his prize had to be one of the other eleven.

He pulled hard on the unseen hilt, and with a faint, singing sigh, the long steel came completely free.

Keyes soon disposed of any lingering doubt in his own mind that the weapon he held was genuinely one of the Twelve Swords. Proof lay in the facts of its unbreakableness, and that the extreme keenness of the edges-he tested them on the tough leather of his dagger’s sheath-could not be dulled by repeated bashing on rock.

Several of the Swords, his earlier investigations had informed him, ought to produce distinguishing noises when they went into action. But the only sound so far generated by this one was the bright clang, purely mechanical, of thin steel on tough rock.

The blind man uttered a prayer to Ardneh that the hilt he was gripping belonged to Woundhealer, and that that Sword’s power would let him see again. Feverish with hope, maneuvering the long Blade awkwardly, he nicked first his eyebrow, finally the bridge of his nose and very eyelids, with the keen edge. All he achieved were stinging pains and a blood-smeared face. His fevered hope that he might be holding the Sword of Healing, that its steel would pass painlessly, bloodlessly, into his flesh on its mission of restoration-that hope was lost in a few drops of blood.

Hope was lost briefly but not killed. Actually his situation would be better if this was one of the other Swords, carrying some power that could free him completely from his enemy.

Under the stress of his predicament, the attributes and powers, even the names of all the Swords seemed to have fled his memory. Might this be Wayfinder, then, or Coinspinner?

Keyes whispered a short string of urgent requests to the magic Blade he held. He asked it to show him how he might get out of the cave, and where he might find help. When nothing happened, he repeated his demands more loudly, but as far as he could tell, he was granted no response of any kind. In this situation, either Coinspinner or Wayfinder ought to be pulling his gripping hands around, bending his wrists in a particular direction, showing him the way he ought to move. And Coinspinner, whether it indicated any particular direction or not, would bring him great good luck, in fact whatever extreme of luck he needed. If necessary the Sword of Chance could call up an earthquake on behalf of its client, to shatter the rocky cage around him and let him walk or climb away unharmed.

But nothing of the sort was happening. Two more possibilities, it seemed, eliminated.

When it occurred to Keyes to make the effort, testing for Stonecutter was simple enough. One thing he had in ample supply down here was rock. And Stonecutter in fact could be just what a man in his situation needed, the very tool with which to carve his way out, creating a tunnel or a stair, slicing hard stone as easily as packed snow.

But the cave’s walls did not yield effortlessly to this Sword when he swung it against them, then tried it as a saw. Now he realized that his first attempts to test the durability of the blade ought to have been enough to convince him of this fact. Hard, noisy hacking produced only dust in the air, small chips and fragments which stung the man’s blind face. A steady pressure, indestructible edge against limestone, did no better.

Well, then, quite possibly he was holding Farslayer. But Keyes could think of no way to distinguish that Sword from its fellows, short of naming a victim and throwing it with intent to kill. The stony walls that closed him in would pose no obstacle to the Sword of Vengeance, which would pass through granite as through so much air, if that were necessary to reach its prey. Farslayer would kill at any distance-but would not come back peacefully to its user. To employ that weapon at a distance was to lose it, and even should Keyes succeed in slaying the god who had trapped him here, he would still be trapped.

His musings were interrupted by the onslaught of a swarm of large, furry, carnivorous bats. No doubt disturbed by the racket he’d been making, the creatures came fluttering out of some of the high, dim recesses of the deep cave. Indifferent to sunlight, they erupted from their holes by tens or dozens to threaten Keyes, who at the sound of their approach got his back against a wall and raised his Sword.

He could hear the bats piping, crying out blurred words in their thin little voices, uttering incoherent threats and slaverings of blood-hunger. They were flapping their wings violently-they got close enough to let him feel the breeze of their wings, and he cringed from the expected pain of their needle-like teeth and claws-but that did not follow. In blind desperation he waved the naked Sword at his attackers, and he remained untouched. Once the blade clanged accidentally on rock, but he had no sensation of it striking anything fleshy in midair. Still, one after another, the little bat-cries became shrieks of anguish, and then died away.

Panting, gripping the hilt of his still-unknown weapon with both hands, Keyes stood waiting, straining his ears in silence. Not a bat had touched him yet, nor had he touched them, but when he cautiously changed his position by a step or two, his foot came down on a dead one. Gingerly he felt the furry little thing with his free hand, making sure of what it was, then kicked it away from him.

Not Farslayer, then. Whichever Sword he held had somehow killed at least one animal without making physical contact.

The bats had not been routed for more than a minute or so when the demon arrived-drawn up out of the rocks, perhaps, by a sense of the proximity of helpless human prey, or simply by the disturbance man and bats were making.

Even sightless as he was, Keyes could tell that a demon was near him, and coming nearer. He knew it by the feeling of sickness, a gut-deep wretchedness, that preceded the monster’s physical presence. Again the man experienced overwhelming fear, panic that made him cry out and tremble. Better to be torn to bits by flesh-devouring bats than to wind up in a demon’s gut, where flesh was the last component of humanity to be destroyed.

And then he heard the creature’s hideous voice, a tone of dry bones breaking, dead leaves rattling, reverberating more in the man’s mind than in his ears. It sounded as if it were standing almost within arm’s length of Keyes.

With stately formality the demon announced its name. “I am Korku. Will you introduce yourself?”

“My name is Keyes.”

“Unhappy man named Keyes! Here you are down in this deep hole with no way to get out. And newly blind! Is it possible that you have angered a god? If so, that was unwise.”

“He’s coming back, the god who put me here. He’ll be angry if anything happens to me.”

“Oh, will he? But he is not here now.”

Keyes was silent. His lungs kept wanting to pant for air, for extra breath with which to scream, and he struggled to control the urge.

The demon said: “It is too bad that you are unable to appreciate my beauty visually. If only you could see me, I am confident that you would be-overwhelmed. Most humans are.

“Go away.”

“Not likely.” The dry bones crackled, the sound formed itself into words. “Not until you have handed over to me that ridiculous splinter of metal you now clutch so tightly. Then I will leave you in peace to wait for your dear god.”

“Go away!” Keyes tightened his grip upon the unknown hilt.

In response came a voiceless snarl that made his hair stand up, and then the voice again: “Hand it over, I say! Or I will cut you into a thousand pieces with your own weapon, and swallow you a piece at a time-and put you back together in my gut, where you will dwell for a million years in torment.”

“Not likely!” Keyes replied in turn. He thought it quite possible that this demon had as yet learned nothing about the Twelve Swords and their god-given powers. Or maybe the damned thing had learned just enough, or guessed enough, to make it determined to have this Sword for itself. But demons were notoriously cowardly; and so far it was being cautious.

This was not the man’s first contact with a demon-no magician adept enough to acquire deep skill was able to avoid all encounters with that evil race. But only magicians who had turned their faces against humanity entered willingly into commerce with such monsters, and Keyes still found pride in being human. In his present desperate situation, he might well have tried to bargain with a demon to lend him its perception, as other more powerful and unscrupulous wizards had been known to do-but he had nothing with which to bargain.

Except his unknown Sword; and that was all he had. He continued to brandish the mysterious weapon at his latest enemy, instead of handing it over as Korku had commanded.

The demon tried a few more arguments. It shouted at Keyes more loudly. But presently, when it saw that it was getting nowhere with mere words, it lost patience and reached out for the man with its half-material talons.

Keyes saw nothing of his enemy’s extended limbs. Nothing at all happened to the blind man waiting. But he heard Korku’s screaming threats break off abruptly in a muffled, bubbling sound. Then came a soft thump, as of a heavy mass of wet pulp falling some distance upon rock, followed by a slithering, which gradually receded.

Then silence.

Straining to hear more, unable to interpret what he had heard, the man uttered a small moan, compounded mostly of relief with a strong component of tormented puzzlement. Again his Sword, whichever Sword he held, had saved him somehow!

Yes, the demon must have been defeated. But perhaps not slain, not annihilated. Keyes probed about on the cave floor with the point of his Sword, and his imagination shuddered at the image of himself stepping blindly into a demon s body.

For several minutes he discovered nothing more helpful than a few more dead or dying bats. But eventually, when the blind man bent, listening intently over the brink of a certain deep but narrow pit, he heard Korku again. A tiny, screaming, threatening voice, muffled almost below the threshold of hearing, rose from the distant bottom of the pit.

After listening for a little while, the man dared to call down: “Korku? What has happened to you?”

The faint sounds coming back included nothing he could interpret as an answer-and, in any case, a human would be foolish to trust anything a demon said.

Logical thinking was still required-was more essential now than ever, since time was passing, and Mars would be coming back to subject his prisoner to some unknown horror. But logic was still difficult to sustain. By eliminating possibilities Keyes had made a beginning in the task of identifying his weapon. But the task was not accomplished. Which possibilities had he not yet considered?

There was Dragonslicer. There was Townsaver. There was Doomgiver, of course. Ah, in that last name might lie some real hope of survival! If only Keyes could be certain that he had the Sword of Justice in his hands, then he would dare to brazenly defy the gods. Even gods would risk bringing disaster on their own heads if they tried to harm him further. For example, if they poured in fire or water on him, he might make his way out to find them all burned or drowned.

Unless…

Unless, of course, one of the gods confronting him happened to be armed with Shieldbreaker. If Keyes’s extensive research was correct, and so far he had no reason to doubt its accuracy, no other weapon in the world, not even another Sword, could ever stand against the Sword of Force.

The thought of Shieldbreaker gave him pause. Suppose that he, Keyes, was now holding that one? Shieldbreaker’s invincible presence in his hand would have easily disposed of the demon, and the bats. But wait-here in the presence of enemies and danger, the Sword of Force ought to be audibly beating its drum-note of power.

Of course the drawback to relying upon Shieldbreaker was that any unarmed god, unarmed man, or unarmed child for that matter, could easily take that Sword away from whoever held it, regardless of the holder’s normal strength.

Keyes, probing gently with one finger at the slight self-inflicted cuts around his face, decided that the bleeding had already stopped. He tried desperately to recall whether wounds made by one Sword or another ought to heal quickly or slowly. But that information, if he had ever possessed it, escaped his memory.

Touch, smell, taste, none of them of any use in his predicament-but hearing! In that sense might lie his way to the answer!

Thinking, keeping track by counting on his fingers, Keyes decided that seven of the Swords, if all he had found out about them was correct, generated some kind of sound when they went into action. The other five exerted their individual powers in silence.

The man’s thoughts were interrupted by a pair of deep booming voices up above, outside the cave. The conversation of the gods was still somewhat muffled with distance, but coming closer at a pace no walking mortals could have matched. They were speaking to each other in the god-language that Keyes did not understand.

Mars, the god who had put Keyes in the cave, was coming back, holding like a toothpick between two fingers the sheathed metal of the weapon he had just been given by Vulcan, and now wanted to test. Hermes, a fellow-player in the Game, came with him, and the two deities discussed the matter as they walked.

The Wargod’s plan was to drop Soulcutter into the cave for Keyes to find, and let the man draw it, just to see what effect the Tyrant’s Blade really had on humans. Vulcan had promised the Council that Soulcutter-and indeed all the Swords-would have tremendous, overwhelming impact upon all lesser beings.

Mars commented: “I expect our respective worshipers will be using the Swords a great deal on each other, you know, when the Game really gets going.”

“What if he doesn’t draw it?” his companion asked.

“My man down in the hole? I think he will. Oh, not intending to use it on us!” Mars laughed. “I doubt he’ll be that arrogant. But there are some vermin down there, bats and such, that are probably bothering him already. He’ll want the best tool he can get to fight them off.”

Hermes shook his head. “Those flesh-eating bats? They may have finished him by now.”

Mars frowned. “You think so? He was carrying a little dagger of his own.”

“But getting back to this Sword, Soulcutter-what about the effect on us? We’ll be nearby, won’t we, when your subject draws the weapon?”

“Bah, nothing we can’t overcome, I’m sure. And I understand that Soulcutter’s effect on humans, whatever it may be precisely, spreads comparatively slowly.”

Keyes continued to listen intently when the two voices stopped, not far above him. He was startled, and immediately suspicious, when a moment later he heard some object, obviously dropped by one of the beings above, come providentially bouncing and sliding down into the cave, landing with a thump practically at his feet.

Without loosening his grip on the hilt already in his possession, he groped his way forward to where he could put his free hand on the fallen object, and identify it as another sheathed Sword.

Only now, it seemed, did the pair of gods above really take notice of the man who was trapped below, and of the sprinkling of dead and mortally wounded bats around him. Only now did they observe that their subject was already holding a drawn Sword.

Mars’s companion pointed down, in outrage. “Look at that! Where in the world did he get that?”

And Mars himself, gone red-faced, bellowed: “You down there! Drop that Sword at once! It doesn’t belong to you, you have no business using it!”

Keyes needed all his resolution to keep from yielding to that shouted command. But instead of dropping his Sword, he raised its point in the general direction of his enemies, as if saluting them, and turned his blind face up to them at the same time-let them do their damnedest. He had naught to lose.

He called out, in a voice that quavered only once: “You have just given me another Sword-why?”

“Impudent monkey!” the Wargod shouted back. “Draw it, and find out!”

They have given me Soulcutter now-it is the only Blade one would give to an enemy.

But trapped as he was, his life already forfeit, Keyes saw no other course than to accept the gamble. Silently he bent again, swiftly he pulled the second Sword out of its sheath. Doubly armed, he straightened to confront his tormentors.

The sun was shining fully on the man’s face, and in an amazing moment he was once again able to see the sun. Whatever magic spell had blinded him was abruptly broken, and his lids came open easily. His eyes were streaming now with pent-up tears, but through the tears he could see the two gods on the high rim of the cave.

He could see the two tall, powerful figures quite clearly enough to tell that they were gods-and also that they were stricken, paralyzed with Soulcutter’s poisonous despair, turned back on them by Doomgiver. The strands of their own magic had come undone. Keyes could recognize Mars, who’d captured him, and now Mars abruptly sat down on the rim of the pit, for all the world like a human who suddenly felt faint. The Wargod slumped in that position, legs dangling, for a long moment staring at nothing. Then he buried his face in his hands.

The other god-Keyes, seeing the winged sandals, now knew Hermes-took no notice of this odd behavior, but slowly turned his back on the cave and his companion, and went stumbling off across a rocky hillside. Now and then Hermes put out one hand to grope before him, like a blind man in the sun. In a moment his mighty figure had vanished from Keyes’s field of view.

Doomgiver had prevailed! The Sword of Justice had turned Soulcutter’s dark power back upon the one who would have used it against Keyes, while immunizing the mere man who had been the intended target. Both gods on the rim of the pit had been caught in the dark force, as must everyone else in range of its slow spread.

Keyes almost cried out in triumph, but the hard truth restrained him. He was still a prisoner. His own eyes, searching the smooth cave walls, now confirmed that neither Lo-Yang nor Mars had lied about the hopelessness of his trying to climb out.

He was beginning to feel dizzy, and ill-at-ease, a normal reaction in one holding any two naked Swords simultaneously. Now he could easily see the symbol, a hollow white circle, on Doomgiver’s hilt. To keep himself from collapsing he had no choice but to put away the other Blade, the unmarked one. He slid the Sword of Despair back into its sheath, and his rising dizziness immediately abated.

In this case, at least, Doomgiver’s power had been dominant over that of another Sword. There was at least a chance that some of the other Swords might also prove inferior to Doomgiver. That anyone hurling Farslayer would be himself skewered by the Sword of Vengeance. That Sightblinder’s user would see a terrifying apparition, but would himself remain vulnerably visible. That the wielder of the Mindsword would be condemned to worship his would-be victim. And Coinspinner’s master would suffer excruciatingly bad luck.

But of Shieldbreaker’s overall dominance there could be no doubt. And the unanswered question still gnawed at Keyes: Which god had Shieldbreaker? Or might that Sword have somehow come into the hands of another human?

After Soulcutter was muzzled again, a minute or two passed before Mars, who was still sitting on the rim of the cave, took his hands down from his face. The Wargod’s expression was blank, and he appeared to be sweating heavily. His great body swayed, and Keyes thought for a moment that the god was going to topple into the pit. But instead Mars, taking no notice of the man below, shifted his weight and turned. Quietly, on all fours, he crawled away from the cave’s mouth and out of sight.

Keyes knew that Soulcutter’s effects ought to linger for several days, at least, in humans. Probably the stunned gods would recover somewhat more quickly, but how soon they might come back to deal with him, Keyes did not know. When they did, he would have to risk drawing the Sword of Despair again-even though Doomgiver might not protect him next time. This time Soulcutter, though in his own hands, had really been a weapon directed against him by another.

What now?

Pacing nervously about in the confined space, trying desperately to imagine what he might do next, Keyes paused to look down into the hole from whence the demon’s muffled groans still rose. Far below, almost lost in shadow, something moved. Something as big as a milk-beast, but truly hideous to look at, like a mass of diseased entrails. In a moment Keyes realized that Korku on attacking him had suffered Doomgiver’s justice-the demon had promptly found himself folded painfully into his own gut, in effect turned inside out. When that had happened, the self-bound and helpless thing, still almost immortal, had gone rolling away to plunge into the deeper pit.

Now the creature in the pit, perhaps sensing that the man was near, was turning its muffled, barely audible threats to equally faint pleas and extravagant bargainings for help. Keyes made no answer. Probably he could not have done anything, if he had wanted to, to relieve the demon’s doom.

Some minutes later, Mars, who was still in the process of gradually regaining his wits, and his sense of divine purpose, was having speech again with Hermes. They were standing fifty meters or so from the cave.

“What happened?” demanded Hermes, who seemed to be recovering somewhat more rapidly.

Mars stood blinking at him. Then he proclaimed defiantly: “To me? Nothing. A little test of the Sword called Soulcutter. As you see, there was no great harm done.”

His companion stared at him in disbelief. “No great harm? We both of us were stupefied! You should say that nothing happened to your human in the cave-except that his sight was restored, when your magic came undone. Oh, and he still has his Sword-no, now he has two of them!”

The Wargod remained determined to put a good face on the whole situation. “But he was forced to put away the one that annoyed us.” As usual, his tone was bellicose.

“Annoyed!”

Hermes went on to insist that dropping Soulcutter into the pit had been a serious mistake, in fact a debacle had resulted. Other gods must have been at least somewhat affected. They were going to be angry about having been put at risk.

Mars, still struggling against the lingering effects of Soulcutter, refused to tolerate such an attitude. The very idea, that a god could be endangered, not simply inconvenienced, by Sword-powers!

Mars darted away, but soon came back. He had argued or bargained or bullied another of his colleagues into loaning him another Sword, which happened to be Stonecutter.

Again Hermes protested. “Your man in the cave now has two Swords-are you going to give him a third?”

Mars considered this mere sarcasm, unworthy of an answer. Muleheadedly determined to do what he had set out to do, conduct tests on his specimen, he announced that he was going back to the cave again, with a new plan in mind.

“I think we had better first consult the Council.” Hermes paused. “Unless you are worried about what they might say,” he added slyly.

“What? I? Worried?”

Keyes, pacing his open-air cell on weary legs, kept shooting frowning glances at the Sword of Despair where it lay on the cave floor. He was trying feverishly to think of some way he might trade the sheathed Soulcutter for his freedom. Suppose another god, or goddess, were to appear on the upper rim of the cave, and he suggested some kind of trade? But no, he doubted they would be in any mood for bargaining. And he was still unable to climb out of the pit unaided. His magical capabilities, which might have got him free, were stirring, but he could tell that their restoration was going to take much longer than that of his eyesight.

Again he was being threatened by a sense of hopelessness.

He had now been in the cave for hours, and straining to study the gods for long hours before Mars caught him. As the afternoon wore on, Keyes sat down to rest, and in a few moments fell helplessly into an exhausted, stuporous sleep-with Doomgiver still gripped in his right hand.

A number of the gods, including Mars and Hermes, had hastily reconvened in Council. They were enough, or so they said, to form a quorum. And they were much concerned with Shieldbreaker too. None of those present would admit to being in possession of that weapon, or to knowing where it was. Who had received it in the lottery? Regrettably Vulcan was absent, and could not be asked. Maybe he would not have revealed the secret anyway.

Around midaftemoon, the Council passed a resolution stating it as their intention that all Swords should be reclaimed from human possession.

Mars the warrior, still stubbornly determined to establish himself as above Sword-power, volunteered to enforce the order.

Zeus told him to go ahead. Others, enough, it seemed, for a majority, were in agreement. “If there is any real problem, you seem to have caused it. Therefore you should find a remedy!”

Still, Hermes once again tried to argue Mars out of taking too direct an approach. “Doomgiver has now overcome you twice-wait, let me finish! I tell you, we must either arrange to borrow Shieldbreaker from whoever has it, or else get that other Sword out of the man’s hand by guile.”

“Guile, is it? I have other ideas about that. And I wasn’t overcome. I was only taken unawares, and-and distracted for a moment. Who said that I was overcome?” Mars glowered fiercely.

Hermes heaved a sigh of divine proportions. “Have it your own way, then.”

…and then Lo-Yang, like some figure out of a dream, was bending over Keyes, shaking him awake. The magician’s body convulsed in a nervous start, bringing him up into a sitting position. He comprehended with amazement that his apprentice had returned after all. He saw the long, thin rope, its upper end secured somehow, hanging down into the cave.

“Master! Thank Ardneh, you can see again! What’s happened? Your face is all dried blood. And what are these two swords?”

“Never mind my face. Pick up that Sword on the floor, and bring it with us, but as you value your life, do not even imagine yourself drawing it. Let us go!”

They scrambled toward the rope. But before either of the men could start to climb, Mars appeared, his face set in a mask of stubborn anger, and put out one finger to snap the long rope from its fastening at its upper end.

Keyes could feel all hope die with the falling coil.

Mars said nothing, but he was smiling, ominously. And he had another Sword in hand. It was soon plain which Sword this was, for the god wielding it began carving out a block of stone, part of the solid cave-roof. It was a huge slab, and when it fell the men trapped in the cave would have to be very alert and lucky to dodge it and escape quick death.

Lo-Yang collapsed on his knees, forehead to the ground.

Mars’s companion, he of the winged sandals, was standing back a little watching, with the attitude of one who has serious misgivings but is afraid or at least reluctant to interfere.

Maybe, thought Keyes suddenly, all hope is not dead after all. A moment later, he could see the sudden opening to the sky as the block of stone came loose. Aiming Doomgiver at it like a spear, he saw the slab twist in the air, and then fall up instead of down, looping through the precise curve necessary to bring it into violent contact with the Wargod’s own head.

Mars reeled, and his helmet, grossly dented, flew aside. Only a god could have survived such an impact. The Wargod did not even lose consciousness, but in his shock let Stonecutter fall from his hand into the cave, the bare Blade clanging on rock.

“Now you know as well as I do, what I have here.” At first Keyes whispered the words. Then he shouted them at the top of his voice. “Doomgiver! Doomgiver! I hold the blessed Sword of Justice!”

Mars, battered, lacking his helmet but refusing to admit that he was even slightly dazed, still pigheadedly confident of his own prowess, came down into the cave with some dignity, treading thin air as before. Mars was coming to take the Sword back, hand-to-hand, from Keyes. Well, Shieldbreaker could be captured that way, couldn’t it? And it the strongest Sword of all?

While the two men cowered back, the god first grabbed up the sheathed Soulcutter, and tossed it carelessly up and out of the cave, well out of the humans’ reach. Any god who thought he needed a Sword’s help could pick it up!

Then Mars turned his attention to Doomgiver, and confronted the stubborn man who held it. Keyes noted with some amazement that his great opponent, bruised as he was, appeared less angry now than he had at the start of the adventure; in fact the Wargod was gazing at Keyes with a kind of grudging appreciation.

“You seem a brave man, with the fiber I like to see among my followers. I would be willing to accept your worship. And for all I care personally, you might keep Vulcan’s bit of steel and magic. Humans might retain them all; we who possess the strength of gods have no need of such-such tricks. But the Council has decided otherwise. Therefore, on behalf of the Council, I-”

And Mars reached out confidently, to reclaim Doomgiver from Keyes’s unsteady grip-but somehow the Sword in the man’s hand eluded the god’s grasp. Mars tried again, and failed again-and then his effort was interrupted.

A roaring polyphonic outcry reached the cave, a wave of divine anger coming from the place a hundred meters distant where the Council had so recently passed its resolution.

“My Sword is gone!” one of the distant voices bellowed, expressing utter outrage.

“And mine!” another answered, yelling anguish.

The protest swelled into a chorus, each with the same complaint. Keyes could not interpret the wind-blown, shouted words. But he needed only a moment to deduce their meaning. Mars acting in the Council’s name and with its authority had assaulted a man who held Doomgiver, by trying to deprive the man of his Sword, and intending to fling that Sword away-and Doomgiver had exacted its condign retaliation. The Council of Divinities had lost all of their Swords instead. The great majority of Vulcan’s armory had been flung magically to the four winds, and lay scattered now across the world.

The uproar mounted, as more deities realized the truth. A number of gods at no great distance were violently cursing the name of Mars, and the Wargod was not one to let them get away with that. He listened for a moment, then rose in his divine wrath and mounted swiftly from the cave.

His mind was now wholly occupied with a matter of overriding importance-the names the others called him. So he had forgotten Stonecutter, which still lay where he had dropped it.

Several more hours had passed, and the westering sun was low and red, before Demeter returned to the cave in which she had hidden the Sword of Justice. She had wanted to get it out of the way for a time, so that her colleagues should not nag her with questions when they saw her carrying a Sword.

Demeter had spent most of the day thinking the matter over and had come to a decision. The Game still did not greatly appeal to her, and it would be best if she gave Doomgiver to someone else.

On her approach to the cave, Demeter observed the tracks of a pair of riding-beasts, both coming and going, and when she looked in over the edge of the deep hole, she beheld a set of crude steps, more like a ladder than a stair, freshly and cleanly hewn out of one solid wall. Human beings! No other creatures would carve steps.

Rising wind whined through the surrounding rock formations. The only living things now in the cave were a helplessly immortal demon, strangely trapped in a lower pit, and a few mortally wounded bats.

No need to look in the place where she had hidden her Sword, to know that it was gone. Well, why not? Let it go. Perhaps the humans needed Justice more than any of Demeter’s divine colleagues did.

Perpetually at odds with each other as they were, the members of the Council needed some time to realize that their terrible Blades had been scattered across a continent, perhaps across the whole earth, among the swarms of contemptible humans. As that realization gradually took hold, the gods met the crisis in their usual fashion, by convening to enjoy one of their great, wrangling, all-but-useless arguments.

The only fact upon which all could agree was that their Swords had all been swept away from them. All the Swords, that is, except for Shieldbreaker, which remained, as far as could be determined, immune to the power of any other Sword, and thus would not have been affected by Doomgiver’s blow.

But whichever divinity still possessed the Sword of Force was obviously refusing to reveal the fact, doubtless for fear it would be taken away by some unarmed opponent.

For good or ill, the Great Game was off to a roaring start.