Blades

by Sonia Orin Lyris

Copyright (c)1989

I have a story to tell you. Yes, you can sit on my lap, little one. Now the rest of you, settle down and be quiet because this is going to be a good story, and you want to hear it, don't you? All right, quiet now.

There was a certain man who was named Duri, and he had a special skill, more than skill, it was a brilliance, a path, and he might have been the best in his time or maybe ever at what he did. See, he knew the making of the blade like no other. He was as good at it as you can ever hope to be at anything. Sarel, your father probably knows more about making blades than I do, and because the story isn't really about making blades, it's about Duri.

Duri was a young man, young for a master of his trade, but his hands weren't young, and his soul, where it touched the blade, where it knew the blade and knew it like you each know your own faces, that wasn't young either. You don't know how it is, but maybe you will someday, how it is when you learn something so well that every detail of it fades away into a kind of dance, so smooth and beautiful that everything you do is like something out of the center of the world. He was that good, Duri was, so good that he didn't have to worry about how to hammer the steel, or how to shape it, or how to fashion a handle. His body and spirit spoke to the metal and the fire and then a blade was born.

Whether the blade was a sword for some warrior to carve up the evil that attacked his land, or a wealthy whore's thin blade for explaining the price to a customer, it didn't matter, it was like breathing for Duri to make such fine work that you couldn't find better anywhere for all the money in the world.

Now maybe Duri was too young to be so old, and maybe the passion that was in him was eating something inside him, too, because he wasn't really a happy man. He had money, all right, a lot of it, because anyone who wanted the best blade they could have came to Duri and wouldn't settle for less if they could help it. He had money and he had fame and he had plenty of people coming to him all the time for his work.

Maybe he just had too much. You ever think about that, little one? You ever think about just having too much? No? Maybe you should.

Or maybe Duri saw that his work was for hurting and killing and not much good for anything else, and maybe he was tired of that. I don't know what was in his mind when he went into the caverns past the town, where there were deep, deep lakes and dropped his newest blade, which was the best he'd ever made, into the lake where it sank right away to the bottom.

He let it be known that anyone who wanted that sword could have it, all they had to do was go and get it. And then he went home.

They say he didn't say much of anything when they told him about the first boy that had drowned trying to get the sword back up. And he didn't say much when the second boy drowned, or the third, which was a girl, or the fourth, which was a man, or any of the rest who drowned diving deep into the cavern lake looking for that sword.

The townspeople were pretty upset by then, and so they piled the bodies outside the cavern so that people would see them and maybe think twice about trying for the sword at the bottom of the lake.

They looked at Duri with a lot less respect and a lot more anger now, because young and old were dying trying to get at the sword he'd made that it seemed no one could have. They began to call the sword cursed, and the town elders called Duri up in front of them and they told him that too many people were dying because of his sword and to make it stop.

Well Duri must have been a sight to see when they said that. He was pretty mad. He told them that they were fools and idiots if they thought he had any control over the greed in men's hearts that made them do stupid things to get at a sword they didn't need anyway.

And it began to look like that sword in the lake was going to be Duri's last one. He had stopped forging blades completely. When people asked him, he told them that now only the willing would die from his work, and that was fine with him. A lot of folks were real mad when Duri stopped taking their orders for more blades, and some powerful folks got even madder and Duri didn't have a lot of friends anymore. He kept mostly to himself, and his forge was just a quiet home for spiders.

You're young but you probably know by now that people love to talk about other people. But if something doesn't change for a while, they get bored with it and forget about it some, and then some more, and that's what happened to Duri. The years went by and Duri didn't make any more blades, and fewer and fewer people would die trying for the sword at the bottom of the lake until hardly anyone talked about it anymore, and after a while no one believed it was really there, either. No one saw Duri very much anymore and no one particularly missed him. They could hardly even remember what he used to do.

When he came out of his house at all, Duri would sit and just watch people go by. He looked older now, older than he was, probably. Maybe it had been the passion of the blades that kept him young and now that he didn't have it anymore he was aging faster. Maybe he just didn't have anything much to live for and was hurrying to die. Who knows?

It had been years and years since anyone had bothered to ask Duri for a blade, but his work still traveled the world and was still the best, and eventually a man who maybe hadn't heard that Duri didn't make blades anymore came around.

The stranger went into Duri's house and didn't come out for a long time. When he came out he looked kind of thoughtful, and he went down to the caverns. People started to talk again, because now something was happening, and people started to remember what Duri used to do and they remembered about the blade in the cavern lake and they waited to see if the man would float to the surface after he drowned diving for the sword. But the man came right back out of the caverns, walked back to Duri's house and went in to see Duri again and didn't come out again for hours.

The next day Duri's forge was working again. Everyone came out of their house and stared around in surprise. They watched the smoke rise, listened to the pounding, and talked with each other about what had happened. They wondered about the stranger and what he had done to make Duri forge the blade again, and they watched him as he stood waiting in front of Duri's house.

When the smoke rose from the cooling of the metal it was strange and black. You see, Duri had bled himself and used his own blood to quench the thirst of the new blade. And when he was done with the blade, which was truly his finest ever, he slowly came out of his house and gave it to the stranger. Then he fell down on the ground because of all the blood he had given up. The stranger knelt down next to him and stroked his hair and spoke softly to him.

After a little while, Duri died, right there in the stranger's arms.

Don't you wish you knew what that man had said to Duri, little one? Maybe he thanked him for the sword. Maybe he just soothed Duri's way into the next world. Who knows? You'll just have to imagine.

So then the stranger took Duri's last sword and left, just like that, without a word, without explanation.

Someone must have thought about Duri some more and remembered the sword in the cavern lake and gone to look, because they say that they found the lake sword next to the cavern waters, on the bank, just after Duri died. And it was all red, just like blood.

They decided to bury the lake sword with Duri because it seemed proper. That night someone took it, though, stole the sword right out of the ground where it lay next to Duri, and no one ever saw it again.

And that was the end of Duri and his fine blades.

What's that? Oh, I said it was a good story, child, I didn't say it was a nice one.

You want to know what it means? Yes, of course you do.

Maybe that was Duri's problem, too. Everyone told him what everything meant, what he was and what he should do. He was born with a great light inside him and everyone told him how to shine the light outwards and make fine blades with it, but no one ever said anything about how to shine it inside first. Maybe they just didn't know how themselves. But maybe if Duri had used a little of his light to see his own way with he wouldn't have had to give birth to my sword with his dying blood.

Yes, the blade I carry, this one, this is the blade that Duri made in his own blood.

Yes, child, really.

Now you know that a woman can bear a baby in blood but a man can't. You, little one, you'll know this someday as I never can. A man can't make something come alive, only a woman can do that, and that is why woman is the greatest power in this world. Death is a door to somewhere, somewhere else, but the giving of life is the first magic of life. Every breath you take is from the magic of life and anything you lay your hands on to change is from the magic of your breath.

Duri wanted to make something out of the magic of life, make something of his own body, like a woman would bear a child. And I think he wanted to finally make a blade that would taste his own blood before it tasted anyone else's. But that's just what I think.

And now I've gone and told you what the story means and I didn't want to do that. But you shouldn't listen to what I tell you, anyway. No one can tell you what a story means, just like no one can tell you what you are because no one can tell you what you already know.

All right. That's the story I wanted to tell and it's only words and that's just about enough words for the moment. I'll put this sword down here so that you can all look at it if you want to. You know that blades are sharp, don't you? So don't touch it.

No, no, that's not right. Go ahead and touch it, if that's what's in you to do. Go ahead and touch what Duri made, what he died to make. Mingle your blood with his. See yourself in his reflection, and remember.

Sonia is a software engineer by trade. She has been writing fiction off on and on since she was able to read and write. She also sculpts SF/Fantasy critters and shows them at local SF/Fantasy conventions.

She can be reached at sol@lucid.com