Swords: 09 - The Sixth Book Of Lost Swords - Mindsword's Story Read Free

rain. Somewhere birds were crying in the moving mist. He had not noticed until now that there were birds nesting and flying and hunting amid these lofty rocks.
           For a quarter of an hour after the Sword was sheathed the newly armed adventurer sat on a small ledge, resting with his treasure at his side, experiencing a reaction of weakness.
           Then he was on his feet again, and briskly on his way. The hardest part of the long descent, down to where he’d left his riding-beast, must be completed before nightfall. Early in the morning he’d ride on, in the direction of Sarykam. He had a great gift now to give. A truly worthy gift, to place in the lovely hands of the Princess Kristin.
     
     

 
    Chapter Two
     
           In a small village at the foot of the Ludus Mountains, not many kilometers from the spot where the adventurer had very recently obtained his Sword, but at a considerably lower altitude, a blind albino man sat huddled in one corner of the small main room of a solidly built though sparsely furnished hut.
           Few people could have determined the blind man’s age by looking at him, but certainly his youth was decades past. His angular body, now slumped and blanket-covered in a crudely constructed peasant’s chair, would still have been very tall but for the fact that he never stood fully erect. Long ringlets of unclean white hair hung past his bony shoulders, entering into confusion with a once-white beard now colorless with old stains of food and drink.
           No mask or bandage concealed the empty sockets of his eyes; long-lashed lids sagged over spots of raw softness in a face that was otherwise all harsh masculine planes and angles.
           The blind man had lived in this hut, or in another very similar dwelling nearby, for the past fourteen years, rarely stirring out of doors for any purpose. Apart from his blindness he was not physically crippled, though his lack of deliberate movement, together with occasional nervous tremors in his limbs, suggested that he might be lame.
           Actually the chief cause of his immobility lay in a disability of his will. For fourteen years he had been obsessed with certain events in the ever-receding past.
           This afternoon two visitors were standing in the blind man’s hut. Both callers were men, and both wore the humble dress—common furs and homespun cloth—of inhabitants of the nearby village. Half an hour ago the pair of visitors had tapped at the unlocked door of the blind man’s house, waited with habitual patience for an answer that never came, and at last had let themselves in, calling loudly to announce their arrival. Since then they had been standing deferentially in front of the albino, waiting for him to show some awareness of their presence.
           At last the one who sat huddled in the chair deigned to acknowledge, by a certain stillness of his body, a cessation of the long-continued nervous movements of his hands and feet, that he had perceived his callers’ existence.
           Seizing the opportunity the moment it arrived, the elder visitor spoke softly. “Lord Vilkata?”
           There was no immediate response, even when the quiet salutation was repeated. For some time the man slumped in the chair pretended not to hear his callers. They did not take offense at such behavior; it was only the Lord Vilkata’s way. Since their rescue of the blind man from deep snow at the foot of a nearby cliff some fourteen winters ago, many if not quite all of the villagers had been convinced that he was one of the vanished race of gods, in fact the last survivor of that august company. Therefore, his hosts believed, his presence in their village was certain sooner or later to bring them inestimable benefits. True, their life so far had remained as harsh as ever despite the albino’s presence; but at least no disaster beyond the ordinary had befallen, and who knew what might have