The Sword of the Spirits

TEN

THE SWORD OF THE SPIRITS

IN SLEEP LAST NIGHT I was in Winchester. I dreamed of an afternoon when Edmund and Martin and I climbed Catherine’s Hill together, with the sun burning out of blue gulfs of sky and the clouds huge and white and slow-sailing. We had taken nets with us to catch butterflies, but all we saw were cabbage whites which were not worth taking. So we lay on the grass, under the shade of the trees which cover the hilltop, and talked idly as boys will talk on hot summer days: of dreams and hopes and nonsense. And when it was time to go home for tea we started down the hill, and Edmund cried: “Race you to the bottom!” and we began to run. Edmund and I left Martin behind and Edmund began to outdistance me also. So I ran faster and faster, taking giant strides, and then as the descent grew steeper I was skipping over the grass, unable to stop or check myself, until my feet left the ground altogether and I cartwheeled through the air, and the whole earth seemed to rise up and crash against me.

All this was as it happened. I remembered lying on the ground, dazed, my head throbbing savagely with pain, and Edmund and Martin coming to pick me up. I remembered the concern in their faces and even the shirt Edmund was wearing, blue with a patch at the elbow.

But there the dream changed. I was in bed and smarting from different wounds—the burns I got in my struggle with the Bayemot. And Blodwen stood by me, in her dress that was the color of beech leaves in winter. She took my bandaged hand and said: “You are a fool, Luke. But very brave . . .” She said: “There is to be a banquet where my father will give you a great honor. A prize. Do you want to know what prize it is, brave, foolish Luke?” She leaned forward, laughing, her golden hair falling almost to touch my face. “A prize . . . ,” she whispered.

My heart was open and easy. In my dream I said what I had never been able to say in life:

“I love you, Blodwen.”

As I spoke the words she drifted from me. I called after her and she smiled and shook her head. I tried to rise and follow, but could not. Her figure faded in the distance, and I awoke and found my pillow wet with tears, and the high towers of Klan Gothlen framed in the window opposite my bed.

• • •

It is three years since I led the army of the Wilsh back across the Burning Lands. Cymru calls me his son. He governs in name but leaves the exercise of authority to me. I am to be Cymru after him, and the people applaud this. Although a foreigner, I am their hero. The great painting of Luke and the Bayemot covers one wall of the throne room, and Gwulum and his apprentice artists have nearly finished the other one that faces it. It is called “The Conquest of the South” and shows me at Cymru’s side in the Battle of the Itchen. My sword is raised to strike down a Captain who menaces him.

The High Seers came with us to Klan Gothlen. They do not call themselves High Seers any longer and do not practice mumbo jumbo and give messages from the Spirits in darkened halls. They are scientists. They have set up schools and a university, at which the ancient knowledge is freely taught.

The Wilsh take gladly to this learning. Almost every day, it seems, there are new machines and devices to change our way of life. Last week a motor car chugged uneasily along the main street of the city, to the cheers of the onlookers. There is talk of building a railway to make easier our conquest and development of the savage lands. As soon as the engineers can make up their minds as to whether it will be twin-rail or monorail, the project will be put underway.

My people are happy and contented. Snake is a good Chancellor and Kluellan keeps the army at a high pitch of ceremonial drill: there is no real need for anything else. Hans is busily occupied with this notion of a railway. He has married a girl of human stock, though not much taller than he is, and they have a human child, a daughter.

Our local Christians still sing well, and their numbers still dwindle. The Bishop, who comes often to the palace and whom I have learned to tolerate—he has a sharp wit after all—is enthusiastic for Science. He has even written a book, extolling its spiritual values.

Our writ runs, with increasing sureness, to the edge of the Burning Lands. We have no contact with the parts beyond. Not long after our return a small eruption sealed the pass. This is a temporary thing—the scientists say the volcanoes are dying down—but it has cut us off from the south.

I am glad of it, though the isolation cannot last. Even if the pass stays closed there are other ways of meeting. There is a town being built by the sea at the mouth of the River Mawddach, under the shadow of Cader Idris, and ships big enough to be safe from any Bayemot will go out from there. In a few years we shall have flying machines as well. The Burning Lands will offer no barrier.

So we shall meet with the cities of the south again, and when we do we shall conquer them. It will not serve them to line their walls with the living bodies of their citizens. We shall have weapons more subtle and more powerful than Sten guns and mortars: weapons of ease and novelty and riches. We shall conquer them because we represent the strength of the future, and they the past which must always bow to it. It will happen because it must, but I am in no great hurry to see it.

I am content here much of the time. I busy myself with work and government. It is the hours of idleness that chafe. Cymru would have me marry and the Wilsh nobles tempt me with their daughters. They are pretty enough, some of them beautiful, but they do not move me.

The Sword of the Spirits lies in a golden casket in the throne room. Swords have no use any longer, though there was a fashion last winter of wearing ornamental daggers, but this one is treasured for its history and will be as long as the towers of Klan Gothlen stand and Cymru rules there. It is a trophy, a legacy, that a man would be glad to leave to his son.

But I shall have no son.