LUCKY WOKE very well rested, his long sleep having been uninterrupted by any dream he could remember. The smell of mocha wafted from a steaming mug on his night table—somebody must have told Thurlock he’d started to like coffee. He spent a few bleary moments wondering whether the wizard had brought the hot drink to him or magicked it in, but of course it didn’t matter. It was thoughtful and a sweet welcome to the new day either way.
He sat up carefully, as he was very near the edge; Maizie had claimed most of the bed. After indulging in a slow, languorous stretch, Lucky picked up the mug and took a careful sip to test the temperature. It was perfect, so he followed up with a more substantial swallow. He flipped back the covers and rose, then carried his mocha to the window—which he’d left open to the cooling summer evening when he’d gone to bed—and stood looking out at the early morning world. He smiled as Maizie thumped her tail twice, but otherwise didn’t stir.
It was unlikely the day would be a peaceful one—they never seemed to be lately—so he made the best of the few moments’ peace he had right then. Birds sang in the maple tree, newborn sunlight limned the leaves with a glow of gold, and the air was the freshest Lucky had ever breathed except on the slopes of Gahabriohl.
A knock came on his door just as he’d finished his cup and turned to go out, ready to discover what the day would hold. Without asking, he knew it was Han who’d come to see him.
“Come in, Uncle,” he said, smiling at the coincidence in timing.
“Good morning,” Han chimed as he entered. “You’re well, today?”
“I am! Slept really good. You?”
“Well, I’ve slept better, but it’s still a good day to be alive overall. Better than the alternative, anyway.” He smiled.
“What’s up?”
“It dawned on me that it’s been a good long while since I worked with you on fighting skills. I’m going to be really busy later, but if you think you can get by with a very quick bite for breakfast, maybe we could go out to the yard for a couple hours’ practice and sparring. What do you think?”
Although sparring with Han could be brutal despite the care he took never to do any real harm, it actually sounded like a great way to spend some time. “Yeah. I need the practice, like you said. And it will be good to get the kinks out and take my mind off… other stuff.”
“Excellent. We’ll make a pact. No thinking about ‘other stuff’ for a couple hours.”
They went out to a secluded part of the Sisterhold’s main yard, a spot with gentle slopes but no rocks or gullies, surrounded by trees, with one fallen log perfect for taking a break when the time came. Maizie had followed them, but when Han laid out the practice weapons he’d brought—wooden swords, deliberately dulled daggers, and even bows and arrows—she barked once, gave Han a meaningful look, and left.
“She doesn’t approve,” Han said, then asked, “What do you want to practice first?”
“Uh… well, I’m no good at the bow, as you know. So I doubt practicing that will help much—I need hours and hours and hours—”
Han laughed. “Okay, how about hand-to-hand, then daggers, then we’ll spend most of the time on swords. I think it’s important for you to feel good with sword tactics because your blade—the Black—can be a sword you have with you all the time. Your father was a master with it.”
“Better than you?”
Han made a wry face and wagged his head back and forth. “Honestly, I don’t know. Though he beat me that last time we… sparred.”
Lucky knew avoidance when he saw it. “Sparred, or fought?”
“Leave it lie, Luccan. Today, we’ll use practice swords. I don’t want you to remove my arm by accident.”
But instead of swords, they started with reviewing hand-to-hand self-defense techniques—evasions, blocks, blocks that led into offensive blows. Defending against someone taller, someone shorter, someone with a weapon. Han took Lucky through all the moves he’d been taught before, and a few new ones. Then Han pretended to be an assailant, gave no warning about what kind of approach he’d make.
“Defend yourself,” he said, and didn’t allow even a little time for Lucky to think about it.
He came at Lucky directly, leaning forward as if to shove him backward. Lucky turned sideways and aimed a slightly downward kick at the top of Han’s kneecap. It should have worked, but Han twisted to the side and bent the target knee, stretching the other leg behind him for balance, and then came up under Lucky’s arms to throw him to the ground.
When Lucky could breathe again, Han helped him to his feet. “What did you do wrong?”
“Um. I was too slow?”
“Yes. What else.” Han had time to inspect the arm Lucky’d fallen on while waiting for an answer, making sure he didn’t get truly injured. “Well,” he finally asked, “any ideas?”
“Yeah,” Lucky said. “I think I didn’t have my balance good enough. That might be part of what slowed me down, plus then I couldn’t move out of your way once you changed things up.”
“Exactly right. Very good. Let’s slow it down on purpose, now. This time, do it just like you did before.”
Han stopped him halfway through and showed him how much more solid he became when he turned his kicking leg in from the hip. “And one more thing. Keep your arms close, like this.” He demonstrated having his kick-side arm in close to his ribs, and his off arm fisted and bent at the elbow. When Lucky copied it, he said, “Good. Let me see you practice the move on your own, keeping all those things in mind.”
Lucky tried it several times and nodded to himself when it felt like he got it.
“So aside from keeping your balance steadier, which makes you faster, what does that position do for you?”
“You can’t come up under my arms as easy.”
“Yeah. Any reason for that left fist?”
“Well, I don’t know, but if my kick doesn’t work, I could hit you maybe?”
“Sure. And suppose I manage to drop my stance before your kick connects—just like I did. Watch how easy it is for you to use my own momentum against me. You simply twist away, and suddenly it’s me who’s off-balance. I probably expect you to turn back at some point to get away from me, but instead you twist farther, open that left arm and swing it right into me. At the least, you’ll push me away and keep me off-balance. At best, that left elbow or fist or both will connect with something sensitive like my nose, or my neck.”
After a while Lucky was feeling kind of beaten up, so he was all too happy to move on to daggers.
“The big difference here, Luccan. If you’ve got a dagger in your hand—or two—you might be in the fight because you need to defend yourself, but the only thing that weapon can do to defend you is hurt the person you’re fighting with. It’s good to know where you can cut without killing, if that’s your aim, but you can’t be afraid to draw blood. If you are, don’t pick up the knife.”
“Well… honestly I’d rather not.” As much as he tried not to, he thought of the Echo’s vision, of blood in the street, soldiers sliced open, children screaming. He thought of himself standing on the mountain, sword in hand.
“But can you if you have to?”
With effort he pushed away the unwanted thoughts and replaced them with the most practical thinking he could muster. “I think so. But I hope I won’t have to. I uh… know that might be kind of naive. I mean, are we going to have a war?”
“I don’t know, Luccan, though it’s looking more likely. Thurlock told me about what the being showed you last night—about the battles. It seems like prophecy, but that would mean those aliens have the gift of foretelling. It could very well be, and as a country, I think the Sunlands will have to look on it as such. But for you and me, for today, let’s agree that the creature just didn’t like our world much and had a very vivid imagination.”
Lucky returned Han’s sudden smile. “Agreed.”
They started in with the daggers, and as usual Lucky found all the dancing around that a knife fight required to be less bruising than hand-to-hand, but more tiring.
After a while Han called for a break. As they sat on the log to breathe and slake their thirst, Han said, “I’ve been thinking. You’ve got the Black Blade. She’s more than a dagger. I’ve taught you a few sword moves, but I can’t really teach you how to use her. After we rest for a few minutes, we’ll go through some sword practice before I need to get to my work for the day, but you need to spend some time with your weapon. She can teach you, I think.”
ALONE IN the little yard, Lucky started up a conversation with Ciarrah. “Can you, C? Can you show me how to fight with you?”
“Blade-keeper, of course I cannot teach you to fight. I’m a rock.”
“A very smart rock.”
“This cannot be denied. But a rock is not a teacher.”
Lucky said nothing in response. Sitting around arguing with an object made of stone seemed like the most ridiculous thing possible, even if the object did respond. He sat with Ciarrah, inspecting her carved hilt. The twelve-rayed sun had become such a familiar symbol, he’d begun taking it for granted, but it had meaning, he knew that, and for the first time he truly wondered what it meant. “Ciarrah, can you tell me about the twelve-rayed sun?”
“No, but if you’ll open my light, I can show you.”
“Oh. Uh… beam, then?”
The sharp ray of light beamed forth from her hilt, with a sharp-pitched ringing as accompaniment.
“Not like that,” she said.
“All right, then….” Lucky thought about what Han had said about her being a sword. He didn’t think the sword would be the light she meant, but if he could simply say “beam,” in his mind, and the ray sprouted from her handle, maybe he could just say… “Sword, Ciarrah.”
Instantly he held a sword in his hands, the like of which he’d never imagined. Her hilt was solid stone to look at, but had the feel of roughened leather, giving him a solid grip as he stood and experimentally moved through some practice positions and strokes. The guard gleamed black, three prongs curved perfectly to protect his hand and wrist, but then curled back in sharp points aimed toward an imaginary opponent. If they managed to slip past his blade, possibly they’d impale themselves there. The weapon was long and the blade wide—what Lucky thought of as hand-and-a-half size, judging from fantasy books he’d read in Earth where great warriors carried heavy broadswords and wielded them with muscles of steel. And the blade of the weapon Lucky now held looked like steel—or some kind of metal—yet if he looked closely he could see that it was made of Ciarrah’s light, and at the root of the blade, if he squinted and peered at just the right angle, he could see the stone that held its magic. Experimentally, he dragged a thumb over the edge ever so lightly. Pain followed instantly, but the skin had been cut so fine it didn’t bleed for nearly half a minute.
“You only needed to feed me blood once, Luccan Elieth. No more!”
He thought an apology to Ciarrah but went on inspecting his weapon. The most marvelous thing of all was her weight—or lack of it. As impressive as the size of the sword was, it weighed no more than the dagger-sized blade it emanated from.
Excited by the wonder of it, Lucky stood and began a slow dance through the moves Lem and Han had taught him, imagining an opponent, fighting off his attacks and felling him every time. Amazingly, none of his imaginings involved the horrors of the Terrathian’s vision; rather, he fought stormtroopers alongside Luke and Princess Leia, Orcs with Gimli and Legolas, and cursed pirates with Johnny Depp… or rather Captain Jack Sparrow. He played, and it felt good. He wove through the moves faster and faster, his sword strokes wild and hard, and soon he was spinning and leaping through a hero’s conquest, one evil opponent after another going down, until—
Oh crap.
He’d sliced right through the trunk of a smallish tree so cleanly that it wobbled for several parts of a long minute before it began to fall.
“Move, Luccan,” Ciarrah said calmly.
Lucky did, and he thanked Ciarrah for the advice, because if he had not stepped back, the tree would have fallen on him. He stood staring at what he’d done for some time, wondering if there was any way he could magically fix it. He’d probably only make matters worse.
“I’m not a toy, Blade-keeper.”
Which, of course, Lucky knew. What was I thinking? He hadn’t been thinking, that was the whole problem.
“Although I am happy you found a moment of joy.”
Lucky was winded from his wild pretend fights, and when he noticed it, he thought that at least he’d managed to get a feel for Ciarrah as a sword, so all was not lost. And he was hungry.
“I need to put you away, now, Ciarrah.”
“Just think of me as a knife, Luccan. I’ll change.”
She sounded a little annoyed, but he figured she’d get over it. Once he’d put her securely back in her sheath at his hip, he let any concern about it go. He briefly considered getting Ciarrah out again so she could show him the story he’d asked about before getting distracted by sword games. For the moment, though, he was more interested in food, so he walked back to the manor in search of lunch. If anybody asked about the tree, he’d tell them, but he didn’t plan to bring it up. And anyway, it’s good to know C can do that. He couldn’t think why he’d ever need the knowledge, but… well, you never know….
And then he smiled again, suddenly happy as he thought of the one person he would tell. The next time he saw Rio, he’d have a brand-new crazy story for him. When Maizie came bounding up to join him a moment later, he went down on one knee to hug her, running his hands through the soft fur around her neck and putting up with a bunch of sloppy kisses.
He knew better than to question his moments of happiness. Any time he could snatch a moment of “normal” in his unpredictable life—especially since he was convinced war was waiting for him around some hidden corner—the best thing to do was simply enjoy it.