Free The First Book of Lost Swords - Woundhealer's Story by Fred Saberhagen Page A

some of them accompanied by their attendants.
           With the last admonition of their leader still in mind, the intruders cut through this line almost courteously, giving the lame and the halt time to scramble out of their way. The bandit column halted just inside the compound walls, where, at the sharp orders of their leader, its members dismounted and were rapidly deployed, some to guard their rear, a few to hold the animals. Most of them moved on foot against the pyramid.
           The pyramid had one chief doorway, at ground level. Half of the small handful of White Guards who were now assembled in front of that doorway decided at once to take to their heels. The other half were not so wise, and the attackers’ weapons, already drawn, had to be used. Blood spilled on the white pavement and on the chalky stones of the pyramid itself.
           The bandit leader and others went into the Temple, and shortly afterward another Sword was brought out of the small interior room where it had been enshrined. When the bandit leader had satisfied himself that the object he had just acquired was indeed the genuine one he had been expecting, he left it in the hands of his chief lieutenant—in the case of this particular Sword he was willing to do that—and turned his attention elsewhere.
           The Sword that had been at the leader’s side when he arrived at the Temple had come out of its sheath, briefly, while the fight was on, though there had been no need for him to use it. Now it was again sheathed firmly at his side; this was one blade that he was not about to hand over to anyone else.
           The leader looked about him now. “You, there!” he shouted, and gestured imperiously.
           An ashen-faced, white-robed priest came forward, trembling, to learn what the next demands of this robber and murderer might be.
           “Bring out some food and drink for my people here. Enough to make them happy. And there’s someone I’d like to see. I’ve been told that she lives here now.”
     
    * * *
     
           Eight years had now passed since anyone had called her Queen, and when she heard that title spoken by one of the servants chattering and whispering in fear and excitement outside her bower, it required no very quick thinking on her part to suppose that she had at last been overtaken by someone or something from those old times.
           Listening to the voices more carefully now, she soon recognized a familiar, careless booming that broke in among the others. No need to guess any further. She could tell that the tones of the familiar voice, even as loud as they were, were intended to be soothing; he already had what he wanted, obviously, and he was trying now to set these harmless white-robed folk at ease. Panic, she had heard him declare many times, was always undesirable, unless you wanted to make things unpredictable.
           Now the familiar voice outside said: “Tell Queen Yambu that Baron Amintor would speak with her.”
           The woman who had been listening from behind a leafy screen arose and went to the entrance of her bower, so that her caller might be able to see her for himself.
           “Amintor,” she called out softly. “I had heard that you were still alive.”
           He turned toward her in the open sunlight, showing her a face and body changed by the eight years, though not nearly so much, she knew, as she herself was changed. He bowed to her, not deeply but still seriously, she thought.
           He said: “And I had thought, my lady, that you were dead. Only quite recently did I learn that you were really here.”
           “And so you have come here to see me. Well, you will find me altered from the Queen you knew.”
           “Aye, to see you. And I had one other reason for wanting to come here, which I thought it better to make sure of first. Now we can visit at our leisure. But you look