The Last Book Of Swords : Shieldbreaker’s Story by Saberhagen Fred

someone behind him. Glancing back momentarily over his shoulder, he saw that the old armorer had come hurrying after him from the workroom, come as far as he could, to just outside the guarded doorway. Bazas must have acted quickly and purposefully, delayed only by the need to free Dragonslicer from the clamps which had held the Sword upon the bench. Now the elderly man, his progress stopped by the invisible hands of Karel’s magic, had come to a halt. He was holding up the keen Blade in his right hand, and had his free hand raised as well, as if to test the magic sealing of the doorway, or pronounce a benediction.
           The armorer called out urgently: “My prince! The Sword of Heroes must be put in a place of safety.”
           The words of Bazas were partially muffled by the intervening magic, but Stephen nodded his understanding. Dragonslicer was not the weapon of choice with which to repel a raid or an invasion—except in the highly unlikely event that one’s foe came riding on a dragon. It was the expression on the old man’s face that made the young Prince experience a sense of awe. A seasoned soldier was actually looking to him for leadership, and this realization gave Stephen the night’s first moment of genuine fright.
           It was not to be the last.
           Nodding, the boy wordlessly turned his back on Bazas. Facing the sloping plane formed by the closed doors of the inner vault, he quickly let his right hand rest on the hard surface. There was no physical handle or knob on either door, no bolt or latch, but the guardian powers required identification of the petitioner for entrance. He started to recite the brief spell of opening—
     
    * * *
     
           —but before Stephen had managed to utter more than three of the seven necessary words, he choked and stumbled in his recitation. At the same time the world turned sick and strange around him, the stone floor seeming to tilt alarmingly sideways underneath his feet.
           This was far more, far worse, than the choking of anxiety. Involuntarily he cried out, and heard what seemed a responding cry from just outside the room. Looking again in that direction, Stephen saw old Bazas, Dragonslicer still in his right hand, slumping to the floor. Now another figure, strange and startlingly gigantic, completely filled the doorway, its image wavering so that it looked to the young Prince both more and less than human. There was nothing about it that Stephen’s mind wanted to acknowledge as a face. With a transparent appendage that was like and yet unlike a human hand it appeared to be working to put aside the defenses put up by the master-magician Karel. So far those defenses were holding back the thing, the presence, whatever it might be—
           Yet already the invader could project some form of power past the barrier. Stephen was aware that he was losing consciousness, and with what shreds of sense remained he knew the cause: he was being confronted by a demon at close range. Though the young Prince had been brushed by demons’ wings before—he had been in the palace during Vilkata’s attack two years ago—he had never experienced anything like the force of this evil manifestation, and he found it all but completely overwhelming.
           Again the world seemed to tilt crazily, wrongly around Stephen, and he clung helplessly to the rounded stonework side of the inner vault, swaying with physical illness.
           In his terror Stephen involuntarily closed his eyes. But this was no help, for the monster immediately started to force its image under his eyelids.
           And now a voice, a sound of dead leaves crushed that had to be the demon’s voice, was calling to him. It was commanding, demanding that he do something for it.
           He answered with a nearly helpless, incoherent mumbling: What was it that he had to do?
           The dried leaves swirled and rustled. “You must recite