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

for me the spell I need. Undo for me the barring of this chamber door, and let me in . …”
           Stephen tried to think. But he couldn’t think. Not beyond the knowledge that he was going to be killed—yet there remained something he must do.
           Of course. The Swords.
           For the moment his body would not move. But remembering a purpose gave him strength, and he tried to talk to the thing that was about to kill him. “Who are you? What—?”
           The tones of the demon’s utterance, taking form more in the mind than in the ears, were an inhuman rattling among dead bones. “You must know, child of the Prince of Scum, that I am called Akbar. … I say that you must open this door.”
           Akbar. Indeed Stephen knew the name from his father’s stories, and from a hundred other tales, and that it meant overwhelming malignancy, sheer terror. He must not give way, he must not open the gate for it—no, he had to open the inner vault, recite the spell that would let him reach the Swords.
           And now the demon had succeeded in forcing another part of itself—an arm that was not really an arm—partway in through Karel’s barrier. One giant finger—something half-material that was not quite a finger—flicked at the young Prince.
           The impact knocked Stephen off his feet, sent him rolling across the stone floor, out of reach of the doors which he must open. Scarcely aware of the bruising of his knees and elbows on the stone, he tried to scramble out of the way as the quasi-material thing came probing, reaching, after him again.
           Again it struck at the young Prince, and this time a veil of darkness started to descend across his mind.
     
     

 
    Chapter Four
     
           Dazed and battered as he was, the young Prince retained enough awareness to hear Bazas screaming weakly and hoarsely, the old man lying on the floor just outside the doorway of the Sword-chamber.
           Stephen himself was also sprawled on the stone pavement, but well inside the doorway where the demon’s groping power had flung him. Where he ought to be protected by Karel’s magic, but yet seemed to be not quite out of Akbar’s reach. His knees and elbows hurt from the fall on the stone floor. The whole world felt sick and strange around him.
           Drawing a deep breath, clenching his fists and his jaw as tightly as his eyelids, Stephen denied sickness. A hundred times his father had told him of the several confrontations he, Mark, had had with demons, occasions when he had been able to banish the foul creatures with a command. These were not matters of which the elder Prince ever spoke boastfully. Rather Mark described those encounters in the manner of a man still trying to understand how he had served as a conduit for powers greater than himself. And many times, Mark’s younger son, when listening to the stories, had wondered whether he himself might have inherited his father’s ability.
           Now the boy’s voice cracked again as he desperately shouted the mysterious formula which had never failed his father: “In the Emperor’s name, forsake this game! Get out!”
           In Stephen’s own ears the slurred words sounded more like a scream of panic than a firm command. But at once the multiple foul images of the demon vanished from under the young Prince’s eyelids. Some force had obviously intervened against his attacker, and the hideous thing, which a moment earlier had seemed on the point of crushing Stephen like an insect, was being forcibly separated from him. Akbar reacted with a bellow of outrage.
           Raising himself on his elbows, Stephen dared to open his eyes.
           His monstrous antagonist, its form still only half visible, was thrashing about as if some unseen power larger than itself had seized it and was pulling it by main force out of the doorway of the Sword-chamber, farther and farther from its