![]() ![]() "Part of the reason I failed and let the kingdom go smash," he said, "was that my sword was always the first answer I picked to solve a problem. His elbows were on the railing he rested his chin for a moment on his tented fingers, an oddly contemplative pose for a man who was usually in motion. "There's more to being King of the Isles than just being able to use a sword," Carus said. It had sunk with him a thousand years before. On the king's head was a circlet of gold, the diadem of the Kings of the Isles. Carus wore a blue velvet doublet and suede breeches, with high boots of leather dyed a bright red. Garric was barefoot with the wool tunic and trousers of a Haft peasant. Both were tanned and as fit as an active life could make a man. He had his height and strength, but compared to the full adult growth of the king beside him he looked lanky. Garric would be eighteen in a month's time. ![]() He was broad-shouldered, long-limbed, and moved with a grace that gulls might envy as they slid across the winds. Carus had been a man of forty when wizardry swallowed down his ship. The two men on the dream balcony were so similar that were they visible no one could have doubted their relationship. "Already the strength you put into your strokes makes you good enough for most work." The king's expression softened into bright laughter again. "A scythe uses a lot of the same muscles, but I never had the wheat swing back at me. He'd reacted defensively instead of listening to what he was being told. Even as the words came out of his mouth he'd been embarrassed. "When you've been through the real thing, you'll know what tired is." "You think you're tired, lad," he said softly. "My body's tired, I mean."Ĭarus smiled with a glint of steel in his gray eyes. Then you'll find his point waiting for your chest just that much before your own blade gets home." "One day a smart opponent will notice that your foot moves an eyeblink before your sword arm does. "You lead with your right leg," Carus said, gesturing. The men who guarded the compound of Master Latias, the rich merchant who was sheltering Garric and his friends here in Erdin, watched the exercises with approval and professional interest. He turned his attention to the figure below, Garric's body swinging the blunt practice sword. "And I'm not sure that you could have had a better one." ![]() "You could have had a worse father than Reise," he said. "And I don't care to be beholden to another man for work that I ought to be able to do myself."Ĭarus laughed with the full-throated enthusiasm of a man to whom the strong emotions came easily, joy and love and a fiercely hot anger that slashed through any obstruction. "My father didn't raise me to shirk duties in order to save myself effort," Garric said. Garric grinned at the king, pretending that he hadn't heard beneath the banter a wistful note in the voice of the man who hadn't had a physical form for a thousand years. When Garric was in this state he had the feeling that nothing existed beyond the corners of his vision: if he turned his head very quickly, he might see formless mist instead of the walls of the building from which the balcony jutted. Roses climbed a supporting pillar and flooded their red blooms across the balcony's solid-seeming stone. "Of course," he went on, "you can always save yourself the effort and let me take over running your body when there's need for that sort of work." He pretended to study the clouds, picture perfect in a blue sky. But to be really good, you have to go through the exercises till every movement is a reflex." "At least they always told me I did, and my worst enemies never denied my skill with a sword. "You've got the build to be a swordsman, lad," said King Carus from the railing beside Garric. "And there at least you have a furrow to show for it." "It's as boring as plowing a field," he said. Garric gestured toward where his physical self hacked at a post with his lead-weighted sword. In this reverie he met and spoke with the ghost of his ancestor who had died a thousand years before. He wasn't asleep, but his conscious mind had become detached from the body's motions. ![]() Garric or-Reise leaned on the rail of a balcony that existed only in his fancy, watching his physical body practice swordsmanship in the garden below. ![]()
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