The Book of Swords

The tunnel was long and the light was far down it. It did not flicker like a flame nor throw a beam like a mirror-backed lantern. He saw a shapeless yellow glow that gradually resolved into a sphere with a flattened bottom, the shape of the tunnel. The closer it came, the stronger grew the taint of brimstone with a strong underlay of putrefaction.

He felt motion beside him and realized that the woman was trying to fit herself between him and the wall. “Stop that,” he said, but she did not.

“I’m frightened,” she said.

So was Baldemar, but there was no point dwelling on it. He couldn’t quite bring himself to try to hide behind her, so he let her peep over his shoulder as the light came nearer. When it was a hundred paces away, he saw that there was something within the sphere. At fifty paces, he could almost make out what it was; at thirty, he could see it clearly and wished he did not have to. The stench became the olfactory equivalent of deafening.

A moment later, the yellow glow filled the mouth of the tunnel and the bottom of the well. There was neither torch nor lantern; the light somehow came sourcelessly from the creature before him. It regarded them from several eyes, then an orifice that resembled no mouth that Baldemar had ever seen spoke in a voice that was somewhere between a hiss and a gobble.

“Well, here we are again.”

“It is the first time for us,” said Baldemar. He felt Enolia’s head nodding against his shoulder in strident agreement.

“I don’t suppose,” said the demon—the man couldn’t think of another word that did the thing justice—“that you bring me a message from Duke Albero? Something along the lines of, ‘I’m ready. Take me’?”

Baldemar said that no message had been vouchsafed to him and felt the woman’s nose rub his shoulder as she signaled the same was true for her. “But,” he added, “I’m willing to climb the ladder and ask for one if you can give me some help with the lid up there.”

The demon made a sound that might have been a sigh, if a sigh could sound that horrible. “We might as well get on with it, then,” it said.

“With what?” Despite the almost unbreathable air, Baldemar felt a strong urge to extend this part of the encounter rather than discover just what “get on with it” might entail.

“The usual.”

“And what is the usual?”

The demon focused all of its eyes on the man. Baldemar felt an uncomfortable pressure in his skull and a terrible itching of his palms and soles, but he bore the sensations as best he could while maintaining an expression of polite interest.

Part of the glowing creature moved and settled. Baldemar thought he might have just witnessed how a demon shrugged. “Very well,” it said, “Duke Albero made one of those agreements I’m sure you’ve heard about. Wealth, power, health, longevity, and so on, until he should grow weary of the eternal sameness of existence. Meanwhile, I have to hang about and do his bidding.”

“He seems to have fended off the weariness,” Baldemar said. “Indeed, he looks capable of doing so indefinitely.”

“Hence the escape clause,” said the demon. “Every seventh year, he must send me a man and a woman of accomplishment. I ask them three riddles. If they can answer them, I go up and collect the Duke and take him back with me.”

“And if they can’t?”

Again the complex set of strange motions. “I take the messengers.”

“By any chance, would you take them to a paradise?”

“No, not a paradise,” was the answer. “Certainly not for them. Indeed, I find it rather confining, myself. I would much prefer to collect the Duke and go home.”

“Oh,” said Baldemar. The gibbering from behind him increased, but he forced himself to focus his mind, and said, “What is the first riddle?”

The demon said, “What walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and three in the evening?”

“Seriously?” said Baldemar.

“You can’t answer?” Another demonic sigh; a limb festooned with hooks and grapples reached for him.

“Of course I can answer,” said Baldemar. “Everybody knows that one.”

The arm or leg or whatever it was withdrew into the glow. “None of the Duke’s messengers has ever answered it correctly,” the creature said.

Baldemar realized that the seven-yearly contests were not intended to determine who among the Duke’s subjects were the most learned. They were instead tests of gullibility.

“The answer,” he said, “is ‘man.’ As an infant he crawls on all fours; that is the morning of his life. In maturity, his noon, he walks on his own two feet. And in the evening, which is his dotage, he relies on a cane.”

All the demon’s eyes again concentrated their gazes upon the man and again he had to resist the urge to rub itchy palms and soles together. “It’s hard for me to think when you do that,” he said.

The creature sent most of its eyes looking in other directions. “I was just surprised,” it said. “No one has got it right before.”

“The ‘accomplishments’ of the Duke’s previous messengers,” said Baldemar, “were not in the arena of intellect.”

“I should have specified scholars,” the demon said, “but now I’m encouraged. Here is the second conundrum. Do take your time.” The man thought that the contortion of its facial parts might approximate a smile. Shivering, he looked away and listened to the riddle.

“There are two sisters; each gives birth and death to the other. What are they?”

The conundrum rang a faint chime in the back of his mind, but he could not quite close a mental grip upon it. He said to Enolia, “Do you know it?”

“No, it makes no sense,” she said. She began to snuffle against his shoulder. “Poor me! I shall never see another dawn. Oh, woe—”

“Dawn! That’s it!” Baldemar said. “The sisters are night and day. Each gives birth to the other, each ends the life of the other.”

“Very good!” said the demon. “Very, very good!” The man could not be sure, but beneath the pure horror of its hideous voice and writhing facial parts, it sounded actually pleased. “And now the last, and simplest.” It paused portentously then said, “What do I have in my hand?”

Instinctively, Baldemar looked at the limb that had reached for him, then at another that arched up and over what he thought might be the demon’s head if it had a neck, finally at a third appendage that more or less curled at its more or less feet.

“Is there a clue?” he said.

“I wish there could be,” said the demon. “I have long wanted to leave here and install the Duke in my collection.”

“Let me think.”

“Yes, do.”

The first riddle had been easy. The second had come courtesy of a prompt from the woman. He now spoke to her over his shoulder. “Anything?”

Her voice was a whisper, “Nothing,” and he could feel she had gone back to wringing her hands.

“Can you repeat the question?” he said.

“What is in my hand?”

“Which hand?”

“No clues,” said the demon. “Oh, dear. Does this mean you’re falling at the last jump?”

“Give me a minute.”